At some point, whether from the heat or the sheer brutality of a crime unlike anything he had seen in a long time, Colonel Detective Pablo Rigel felt the need for fresh air and wandered across the clearing.

  He wished he could just leave everything to his team and walk away, but since that wasn’t an option, he let his mind drift for a moment, wondering what Marie, his ex-fiancée, would think of this place.

  She loved wild spots far removed from civilization, unlike him, who had grown perhaps too accustomed to the comforts of city life. The Tropical Canyon of the Hundred Caves was far from embodying that concept: endless cliffs covered in shrubs, humid jungles, and countless caves of all shapes and sizes that, while not exactly one hundred—a poetic liberty taken by those who named it—came close to ninety.

  For Marie, camping out there would’ve been a dream.

  For him, right now, it was a nightmare.

  His dark sunglasses, though covering most of his rugged face, were no match for the midday sun; his olive skin had started to take on a reddish hue, and his black hair—short as it was—felt matted beneath the dark cap. To make matters worse, the stifling uniform he wore did nothing to improve his experience there.

  Who in their right mind had thought it was a good idea for the officers in the Forensics Division to wear different variations of a sophisticated, thick petroleum-colored jumpsuit, complete with suspenders and a belt, when the nature of their work so often took them to places as hot and humid as this?

  On the other hand, Rigel had been serving in the army since he was sixteen, and he’d already spent about twenty-something years in the field; he’d long since learned how to handle the rough edges of his line of work. A bit of sweat shouldn’t bother him more than necessary.

  Clinging to the faint hope that a magical breeze might appear, he stopped in the middle of the clearing, brought his black-gloved hands to his hips, and scanned his surroundings. His solid frame—along with his nearly six-foot-six height and a serious expression framed by a sharply cut jawline—made him stand out against the flow of people coming and going at the crime scene.

  At the foot of one of the cliffs, he looked toward the mouth of the cave just ahead—cave 47-G. Officers were coming out of it carrying the bodies of the students—or what was left of them—in black bags. Others were photographing the cave entrance area, collecting samples of dried blood, footprints, and even a small metal grate, which was now being sealed in a transparent bag as evidence.

  Rigel noticed how large the pouches were that his men had strapped to their suspenders or belts—with tools that probably weighed more than a pile of rocks—and compared them to his own, small and almost hidden at his sides near his waist, and felt ungrateful.

  Continuing his visual sweep, he followed a long trail of irregular marks on the ground, flagged for documentation—footprints that led from the cave, through the campsite that hadn’t yet been dismantled, and into the forest. A laser fence enclosed the front face of the cliff, including the entrances to the three caves in the area, the clearing in front, and extended into the wild terrain.

  “Sir?” One of his men approached. “Sir, Peters has finished inspecting caves 48 and 49-G. Some animal feces in 49, but nothing else,” the officer reported. Then, clearing his throat, he handed Rigel a book. A Philosophical Study of Imperial Fascism, read the cover. “Sir… um… we found this among one of the students’ belongings.”

  Rigel flipped through the book. ‘Tyrannical Regulations of the Markabian Army and the Mind’s Decline,’ ‘How to Be a Free Student in a Slave Country,’ were some of the chapter titles.

  “So you’re saying we won’t be winning this year’s popularity contest with the citizens either?” he said. And to make it clear he was joking, he forced a smile—one that looked rather grotesque thanks to the harshness of his features.

  “Ah… yeah… I remember when we were that age,” the officer said. “We were so idealistic!”

  “Everyone’s idealistic until they remember what side of the world we’re on,” said Rigel, pointing at the rhomboid medal both of them wore on their chests: a crimson crest featuring the profile of a white Pegasus, rearing up on its hind legs with its wings spread wide and an open laurel wreath at its feet. “My ex used to say we all love to dream, but at the end of the day, it’s Daddy Empire who pays the bills.”

  Rigel handed the book back; its only value as evidence was to confirm that the murdered victims had been students—full of aspirations and eager to change the world. Nothing too relevant.

  “So many ideals… only to end up like this,” he muttered. And while his officer walked off to continue his work, another emerged from the trees and headed toward him.

  Officer Bill Serrano was an overweight man who, thanks to the brutal sun, was having a way worse time than Rigel. Even with his cap on, his head looked like a swollen red ball sticking out of the collar of his jumpsuit—like a strawberry candy poking through its wrapper. No, more than a strawberry candy, today his head looked like a sausage about to burst on the grill.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Panting, the officer took off his sunglasses, wiped the sweat from them against his jumpsuit, and put them back on. Was the case getting to him more than it should, or had the heat just killed his tolerance for this kind of thing?

  “Detective Colonel Rigel…” Serrano greeted, out of breath.

  “Bill… You look… rough,” Rigel said.

  Serrano wasn’t sure whether to be offended or laugh.

  “I’m starting to regret getting assigned to this case, Detective. We should’ve let the Gamma Quadrant handle this sector like they always do,” he said, having to tilt his head back to meet his superior’s gaze.

  “What can I say, Bill? It wasn’t up to me to refuse a request from the Directorate.”

  “Yeah, I know…” the officer nodded resignedly, and after another gasp, pointed toward the forest he’d just come from. “We found the missing student, about a hundred yards into the woods… Gods! You have to see it, Detective. There are signs of a fight, fallen leaves, broken branches, and… Pieces of body everywhere… Ugh!”

  “Are you going to throw up, Bill?”

  “No, no,” Serrano said, shaking his head, though his expression suggested otherwise. He cleared his throat, steadied himself, and continued, “Just like the other victims found in the cave, there are no footprints—No sign of strangers, no sign of animals; not even a single hair that didn’t belong to the victim. It’s like someone came down from the sky, set off a grenade in front of the guy, and then flew back up.”

  “That’s an unlikely scenario,” Rigel said, “considering the rest of the victims were inside a cave when their grenade went off.”

  “Spontaneous limb combustion, then?” Serrano ventured.

  “You’ve got quite an imagination, Bill. Though that would be a convenient explanation.”

  “It’s the only one I’ve got, Detective. No one lives around here, the tents weren’t looted, nothing was taken… You know, I was thinking, what if this was some kind of retaliation against the University or a hit on the students? Maybe the Troublemakers did it.”

  Rigel gave him a stern look.

  Serrano noticed the change in his colonel’s mood and shrugged.

  “The University answers to the Empire, and the Troublemakers oppose the Empire,” he said, defending his theory. “Freedom fighters, some people call them. Ha! I’d call them Vermin. Have you seen the book? Maybe the students were working with them and…”

  “Bill, the Troublemakers are a paramilitary group of insurgents. Why would they murder a group of students in a remote place like this and in such a brutal way? And if the students were working with them, why kill them? The Troublemakers would have looted the camp before blowing it up.”

  Serrano lowered the brim of his cap, sweating more than before.

  “Well, yeah. When you put it that way…”

  “Colonel!” someone called from a distance. Rigel turned to see one of his men signaling to him from the entrance to 47-G.

  “Colonel, come quickly!”

  The urgency in that voice, the slight edge to it, suggested they had found something important.

  With his interest in the case reignited, Rigel joined Officer Snow inside the cave. Bill Serrano followed.

  Chris Snow was the opposite of Serrano—lean, with a sharp face and a chin covered in pale stubble. He was wearing one of the helmets they used in enclosed spaces—like a transparent space helmet with lights on the sides, though not as bulky.

  Snow handed helmets to Rigel and Serrano and motioned for them to follow him further into the cave. Just a few steps in, the temperature changed noticeably, a welcome relief from the blazing sun outside.

  On the way, Rigel took off his cap and sunglasses, tucked them into one of his uniform pockets, put on the helmet with ease, and activated the automatic oxygen system. Bill Serrano struggled with his glasses and the helmet for quite a while before managing to get ready.

  Thanks to the baton-shaped lamps placed around the rocky passage, silhouettes of various shapes marked with white lines were visible here and there, on the floor and even the walls. Dark, splattered stains were scattered across the surfaces, like bursts of paint: dried blood.

  “One of the students had been working on this wall,” Snow said. “The electronic sonar revealed a hollow space behind the section he chipped away. We thought it might be a side cavern, maybe between 49-G and this one. But in the rubble, we found pieces of acrylic that didn’t belong to their tools, so we broke through the wall a bit and…” The Officer stopped in front of an opening about the size of a narrow doorway. “Well, see for yourselves.”

  Rigel and Bill peeked into the opening. Behind the plastic visors of their helmets, both officers’ eyes went wide. Even the stocky Bill, stunned, let out a gasp. And who could blame him? Whatever lay before them might not solve the case, but it was certainly astonishing.

  Rigel took a flashlight from one of the pouches on his belt and shone its beam into the hole.

  Behind the cave wall, a few inches below ground level and hidden under clouds of dust, was an architecturally precise wall covered with laminated panels, yellowed slightly by humidity and time but still retaining some of their original shine despite being buried.

  As the beam of light penetrated further into the haze, Rigel realized it wasn’t just a wall; it was a corridor.

  As far as his eyes could see, and as the swirling dust allowed, running parallel to the cave was an entire hidden structure built within the cliff—a man-made place. A corridor about five feet wide, maybe six, perfectly intact but long forgotten, with a polished concrete floor, walls formed of vertical panels, bar-shaped lights—none of which worked, of course—and pipes of various sizes running along the ceiling, made of both metal and acrylic, along with air ducts with small grates identical to the one they had found outside the cave. The sound of air escaping through them was like the wails of a lost soul.

  “According to the sonar, there are multiple corridors inside,” Snow said, tapping the cave wall. “The structure is solid.”

  “A damn bunker!” Rigel whispered, amazed.

  Snow nodded. “Did you hear about the case of the trapped child?”

  “Yeah, the comrades from the Gamma Quadrant handled it,” Bill Serrano said. “What about it?”

  “Well, we’re standing where they found him.”

  “Good heavens!”

  Rigel contemplated the possibilities this revelation opened up. “Has anyone gone in yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Snow replied. “We were waiting for you to—” But before he could finish, Colonel Detective slipped through the gap and headed down the corridor.