Bleary eyed and a little sore, Mallory sprang right out of bed immediately upon waking. Grabbing her coat, her pistol, and self-defense stick*, she bolted toward the station on foot, only a few blocks away.

"Take the day off, Gowaneu. Naaaaah, ain't in trouble or nothin'. You really busted ass yestaday. First days ain't meant to be like that. Think of it as a mental health day, ya know? We'll run ya ragged again on Sunday kid, take it easy."

She was rather taken aback. She hadn't anticipated being able to get such an early start on her own investigation. This allowed her to be more thorough, but also meant that she wouldn't have immediate backup if something went wrong with this pursuant force during the daylight hours. On her way there she had expected to spend the bulk of the day working more cases and, should anyone else happen to look like her, use that information to build a suspect profile. There was however, one thing that struck her about the way her colleagues reacted to the victim's appearances. No one seemed to notice that they looked so definitively like her.

As she ran through possible explanations, her thoughts accelerated. As a detective, she was as cool-headed as anyone worth their salt, but when it came to her own affairs, she had a tendency to run off the rails.

"A step back and some deep breaths. We've been through worse for ourself and and exponentially worse for others."

She'd be working now without access to any crime scenes, past or present, but that also meant being free from protocol and assignments. After a moment, two concurrent courses of action were devised:

1. Suspecting above all else that the appearance of her own face on the murder victims is something that only she is able to perceive, it's not unlikely that there is some form of illusion in use. At the edge of the casino district was a mystic**. It felt like a bit of a stretch, but as a starting point it seemed a little more direct than spending the afternoon researching.

2. Knowing that these guys at least [i]had[i/] a presence there last night, there was still a possibility that traversing the same path would lead to another run in: A hastily calculated risk and a perfect opportunity to learn more.

Time to take the scenic route.

*Some states (a word that pertains on a planetary and galactic scale, in this context) have entirely outlawed the use of firearms and energy weapons. As a result, all law-enforcement, security companies, military, etc undergo a substantial amount of martial arts and non-lethal weaponry training. The most commonly used weapon of this variety is a weighted, curved, and aerodynamic stick made of a porous metal that resembles something between rosewood and the type of carbon fiber composite tennis rackets are made of.

**Mystics are a legally recognized class of any being, who study and demonstrate proficiency in magic and potions and all that... but what is legally referred to as "the scientifically unfeasible manipulation of energy, biological life, chemical interactions, genetic properties, and matter". It took quite some time for societies that practiced "Mysticism" to find advocacy in multi-planet governments, but as wildly divergent cultures merged there became pragmatic need on both sides of the issue for legal recognition.

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I know, it takes way longer to read the story and footnotes to this one than it does to listen to it!!
I wanted to do more with the sound design on this but I woke up four hours later than I wanted to and I worked down to the WIRE (and then my upload failed!)
There was some weird artifacting on the higher velocity piano notes from the XV5080. It's possible there was some amount of internal clipping on the synth itself, but I didn't have time to fix it unfortunately. Once the MU50 Bright Piano layers with it it becomes a non-issue.

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