Heartbreaker
Authors: Carmelo Massimo Tidona
Carmelo Massimo Tidona
HEARTBREAKER
Series “
Nocturnal
”
episode #2
Translation
from Italian to English
by
Carmelo Massimo Tidona
for
Zed
Lab
http://www.quellidized.it/zedlab
HEARTBREAKER
Copyright © 2013
Zerounoundici Edizioni
Copyright © 2013
Carmelo Massimo Tidona
ISBN:
978-88-6578-226-2
Cover:
image courtesy of
Victor Habbick /
FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Work autonomously proposed by the author, not submitted to selection from the publisher
Jenna was dependent on her routine. She'd been repeating it for years, always the same gestures and actions, every morning, every day, relentless and tireless, as if even a slight change could affect her destiny. She always resisted steadily any and each external attempt to modify her plans.
Six o' clock: wake up.
Half past six: breakfast.
Seven o' clock: start of the morning jogging session.
Half past seven: arrival to the east bridge, greet and make a small gift to Rupert, the homeless men who slept there, turn around, back to home.
Eight o' clock: shower and out to work.
A thoroughly-paced sequence.
Going to fail.
When that morning Rupert didn't answer her greeting, Jenna still didn't imagine that her plan was going to undergo an unexpected change.
When the man didn't move, although she invited him to pass her his bracelet for a little exchange of money, she started thinking that something wasn't right.
When she bent to touch his shoulder, believing he was still sleeping, and he fell backward, lacking support as well as life, the only thing she was able to think was that, for the first time in her life, that day she wasn't going to meet her schedule.
A gloved hand waved over a crystal sphere the size of an orange, mounted into a metal support, without even brushing it, and it glowed a light red glow.
«17th Trianar of the year 2009. This is doctor Michael Crew who is about to begin the postmortem examination of an unidentified subject, male, human, known as Rupert, apparently about seventy years old, with the help of my assistant, Thomas Gibsen.»
The voice of the coroner articulated each word clearly in an aseptic and professional tone so that the crystal could record it without distortion. The recording, which also included the visual representation of what was happening within six meters from the sphere, would be stored in the archives of the police precinct for the years to come, so to be available for consultation at any time.
Michael was one of the two coroners in force at the precinct, the only one who was an actual doctor, as the other, Seamus Owlfeather, was actually a shaman, specialized in postmortem examinations of deaths due to lethal spells. Between the two of them, Michael was the one with the most work to complete, a thing he never complained about anyway.
«The visual examination of the body shows no evident causes of death. There are some
ecchymosis
on the arms, unrelated to the decease, but no traumas of greater relevance.»
He sprawled his hands open and moved them down to the naked body, palm-down, careful not to touch it. He whispered a few arcane words and to his eyes the corpse started glowing lightly.
«The magical examinations shows the presence of a faint residual of magic on the body. Supposedly it is the trace of a non-lethal spell cast on it in the recent past, and will have to be subjected to further specific examinations. I will now open the chest.»
He took a scalpel from a tray nearby and performed the typical Y-shaped cut to allow access to the chest cavity and the internal organs. The blade cut through the flesh meeting no particular resistance. Then the doctor grasped the flaps of flesh and pulled them expertly, plying flesh and skin and exposing the bones laying below.
«Now my assistant will open the ribcage while...» he stopped, seeing the expression on Thomas' face as the man approached the table holding the tool he was supposed to use to cut the ribs. His features bore a mixture of disbelief and confusion. Not a normal reaction from someone who had attended autopsy after autopsy in the last few months.
«Is there anything wrong?» he asked, unsure whether to make it sound as a slightly worried question or a reproach for the lack of professional behavior.
«Doctor, I...» Thomas started to reply, then he swallowed noisily and approached further to better see whatever had drawn his attention in the first place «... I think you should reformulate that assertion... about the non-lethal spell.»
Shim Stonehand arrived at his office in the early hours of the morning, as he was used to. He didn't do that just to be a good example for people who worked under him. Actually he loved that particular time of the day in which night-shift officers were about to go off duty and the daytime ones weren't still there – a kind of temporal limbo in which you might almost expect that the day would be quiet and no one would blow his cellar in an attempt to become a makeshift alchemist or try to destroy the city with a hurricane.
Rarely such an expectation wasn't disappointed. In spite of this, Shim loved his job and everything that it represented. Being the head of the Magic Control Department wasn't something that happened to anyone. To be clearer, right there and till then it had happened to him alone.
Slightly more than fifty years had passed since the adoption of the Magic Code, born from the new awareness that magic was now part of the everyday life even for those who couldn't use it on their own. Several more had passed from the day in which some magicians, realizing that – in a world in which dragons were no longer sitting on treasure mounds, but on the presidential chair of some import-export company – the secrecy and confidentiality aura surrounding their practices had completely lost sense, had started crafting small magic artifacts to be sold to the larger public to provide to some everyday need. In a short time, what till then had been an arcane art for a few selected people, had changed into a business which turnover had hugely increased over a relatively short period of time. New schools of magic had been established, where apprentices were trained to specific tasks, such as replicating artifacts to allow mass production. Magical research had taken paths as yet ignored, having always been deemed of scarce practical value, that in the light of the new opening to the outside world had suddenly earned a primary importance. That had been the so called Magic Revolution, which soon led everyone to possess at least one artifact making their life easier. Light-generating items, available in an almost endless range, replaced torches and lanterns, just like old fireplaces and heaters were replaced by new models which could create flames or even just heat with no need of anything to burn. In time, magic had extended to any and all part of everyday life – traveling, information, communications – allowing common people to do things that not so long before were unthinkable, or seen as incredible wonders. It had gradually become common and available to anyone. Basic courses of practical magic and other no-longer-mysterious arts had been added to the plans of the main schools, mainly to select more gifted people which would be able to start a career in that field.
The quality of life, and life in general, had greatly improved. The other side of this particular coin was extremely dark, however, because magic in the wrong hands could become a huge threat, and if anyone could obtain it, it was unavoidable for this to happen sooner or later.
For this reason, the main world governments had come to the decision of creating boundaries to what was happening, which led to the creation of the Magic Code, so far the only collection of laws in force in all states and continents, with slight variations, if there were any at all, from place to place. The Code did not rule crimes performed with magic, which after all weren't that different from those in which it hadn't been used. It rather regulated magic itself, specifying which kinds and usages were allowed, and which weren’t. Among other things, it forbid summoning, large-scale weather alterations and almost all flavors of necromancy, only allowing its usage for a very limited number of scopes, and only provided the user had requested and obtained a specific license.
Almost a decade had to pass before the rulers of the time had started to understand that the Code alone was a very limited instrument while there was no one who had the precise task of enforcing it. Security forces were not up to the task, as they lacked the needed knowledge, and the situation had to be fixed by creating specialized squads, seamlessly integrated into normal forces but trained to face, understand and contrast arcane arts.
The Department Shim commanded had been one of the first experiments of this solution. Integral part of the police, made up by specifically chosen officers, heavily trained, which results had been approved and appreciated by the people in charge, today it was one of the landmarks of that field of expertise.
Although it was mainly a monitoring unit, it also had several more functions, including investigating on all events concerning the use of magic in violation of the law, and was invested with an autonomy and an access level to information far greater than those of the remaining departments. It would have been wrong to say it hadn't ever failed – there was still a certain share of unsolved crimes and more or less clamorous failures – but the scale leaned undoubtedly from the side of success, and more so than for any other similar corps. A large part of this remarkable curriculum had for sure been deserved thanks to the man – or rather the dwarf – sitting on the leader's armchair.