it's you and your world and I'm caught in the middle (part XXIII)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part XXII.)

Standing in front of the wall console in the fringe lab, Justine reviewed the autopsy report for anything useful. The autodoc had done a good job with the dissections and sample storage, and mating the biological components to the quantum storage containing the last known instance of the Duke's consciousness had gone smoothly.

She was just about to put the report away when something caught her eye. An incision in the back of the clone's skull, too tidy to have been caused by the security drones. Evidence that something had been removed. "What the hell...?" she muttered, mind racing. Who had access to the clone's body between termination and internment in the autodoc? Her hands flew across the console as she pulled up security access records. It was as she'd thought. Only she and the Duchess had been near the corpse. Pushing through record files, she found security can footage of the duchess's last visit and watched in horror as the winged figure knelt in the still tacky blood and lifted its head.

Her own face was wet with tears by the time the sequence ended, freeze framed on the picture of the small chip, gold and ivory sigils clearly visible, lying where Emilly had left it.

Justine locked the console before walking across to the fringe lab. There it was, plain as day. How had she missed this before? She let her hand hover over it a minute, closing her eyes and trying to feel the power that surely must surround it. But she was no fae, and had no abilities in the arcane arts. Her hand closed around it and she frowned. Emilly left it here for her to find, meaning her more prosaic ways must be enough. Or, at least helpful.

Taking the chip to the computing section of the fringe lab, she configured an interface that would accept and read it. Dumping the data to a file, she security keyed it to Lina's ident and sent it off for her security chief to analyze while she got back to preparing her quantum Duke.

(Continued in part XXIV.)