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Image: "Concrete Jungle" by BoldCat

I cleared my throat and tilted my head to the right, slightly lifting my chin and projecting my voice to the ceiling. It was unnecessary, I knew: the room's microphones would pick up near sub-vocalisation levels of speech, but it was a nervous habit I couldn't seem to break. Despite years doing it, I'd never quite shaken off the unsettling feelings that came from talking with the dead.

"Inspector Smith, beginning Memory Autopsy for deceased #323477 — identified as Mr. Daryn Bright, twenty-six years old at the time of his death approximately fifteen hours ago. Preliminary cause," I said, glancing briefly at the angry, blotchy bruising around his throat, "believed to be strangulation, likely by hand. No other signs of injury present; no DNA evidence under victim's fingernails, no overt signs of struggle. Toxicology came back negative for alcohol, tranquillisers, or other substances. Given the anomalous nature of the murder, victim was referred to Memory for further investigation."

I looked at the four diaphanous apparitions hovering in a semi-circle about ten metres away from me. "Joining me remotely are Constables Hohnke, Sandes, and Johansson, as well as Inspector General Lammerts. Please provide verbal acknowledgement."

"Acknowledged," the four said in unison, communicating from whatever offices they worked out of across the globe. Given the slim window of time in which a Memory Autopsy could be performed, it behooved having facilities set up as local to population centres as was possible. I've never met any of them in person — and realistically, it was likely that I never would.

"Acknowledgement received and logged," I responded. "DELTA, commence cognition revival."

"Initiating revival," replied a tinny, inhuman voice seemingly coming from everywhere all around me. The facility's synthetic intelligence handled almost all aspects of this process, but communing with the dead did require a human touch. A somewhat unique touch, at that: these days we understood the electromagnetic fields radiating around one another and knew more about the invisible communications we'd unknowingly been broadcasting since before humans first figured out how to harness flame. In a less-enlightened era, these were talked about as auras or other pseudo-scientific terms, but now we had actual understanding about the subconscious network humanity had been perpetually jacked into under our noses all along.

But for all our species-level connectedness, people like me were fairly rare; people like me who had varying degrees of control over the nature of what we broadcast — and what signals we received from others. The sort of folks who always know when someone is lying to them, or if something is wrong emotionally when all outward signs seem fine, or cruised by as the life of the party but felt emotionally drained and needed a quiet, dark room away from the silent noise of other minds as soon as they get home.

I closed my eyes as DELTA began the procedure. The already-dim lighting in the refrigerated, sterile room flickered almost imperceptibly, and the walls began to vibrate from a low hum. Electrodes on my temples and wrists tingled slightly as the machinery surrounding me and the corpse were activated.

Everyone had their own process for getting into the right state of mind for an autopsy: I pictured myself falling into a dark ocean backwards and let the void swallow me until my breathing slowed to a steady, calm rhythm.

"Link confirmed," DELTA said after a moment of meditative silence. I opened my eyes and saw the victim's home manifested holographically around me as his last minutes alive were drawn out from the dead grey matter inside his skull.

"Constables, can you confirm that you're seeing the live link?" I asked. Again in unison, the ghostly quartet acknowledged that they were seeing the same thing I was. I gave a short nod to myself and took a deep breath. "DELTA, bring Mr. Bright back to life."

The machines around us shifted pitch and the walls shook with an intensity that would be concerning had I not done this process dozens of times in the past. Then, suddenly, a new ghost manifested in the room: hovering just above the corpse, a projection of Daryn's self-image appeared in front of me.

"Daryn, can you hear me?" I asked the apparition.

"Where am I? I'm very cold," came the response from the same speaker system that DELTA communicated to me through. Daryn wasn't actually alive, of course, and I was merely activating dying synapses firing on borrowed time.

"Daryn, I need you to think of the last thing you can remember. What comes to mind?"

"Where am I?" the corpse repeated, ignoring my question. I frowned to myself, pursing my lips as I looked at the tablet in my lap. DELTA was reading little subconscious activity in the victim's mind: whilst everyone handled their death in their own unique way, with some victims rejecting their final reality quite violently, me asking him to recall his last moments should have surfaced something even if he didn't want to remember anything at all.

Conscious of the small window of time that was available to us, I pressed on. "You've died, Daryn. Someone murdered you, and I need your help to find who did it."

The walls began to shake even worse than before, and for the first time I felt a gnawing sense of unease. "What? No — I'm not dead. I'm right here. I'm right here!" He began repeatedly screaming the last phrase as the high-pitched hum from the equipment nearby threatened to rupture my eardrums.

"DELTA, put him back to sleep," I called out over the noise and his screaming. At once, the din ceased and the projection above the body vanished. My ears rung in the silence.

"DELTA, reset his memory back to the state it was in when he was revived, then bring him back again."

"Confirmed," chirped the facsimile. Seconds later the projection returned.

As did the screaming.

"DELTA, that's enough!" I shouted and once more Mr. Bright was turned off. I looked at the tablet screen and confirmed with my own eyes that even though his mental state had been reset, somehow he retained memory of what I'd told him. I'd never encountered anything like this before.

There was one other tool available to me. It wasn't unusual for a particularly violent death to reject an autopsy — though to this degree was outside of my experience — and a mind could be overridden and directly controlled if a cooperative conversation was beyond the victim. The downside is that doing so would burn out the victim's synapses entirely, so it was a last-ditch tool with a one-time use.

"Well, you saw what happened," I said to my colleagues. "I don't think we have any choice but to use an override."

The flickering apparition of Constable Hohnke frowned. "Are you being too hasty, Smith? Why don't you try interviewing him again." The others nodded and murmured agreement.

I grit my teeth. Every minute this dragged on was another minute that the victim's mind deteriorated and our already-slim chance at getting information out of him was reduced. Nevertheless, I couldn't use the override without a majority vote of everyone present. I instructed DELTA to try to reset his memories and revive him a third time and once more the pained screams of the dead man assaulted my ears.

"Very well," said Hohnke. "I think it's clear that we're not going to get through to him using gentler means."

The Inspector General tutted and shook her head. "Such a waste."

"All in favour?" I asked the group. The vote was unanimous.

"DELTA, initiate memory override. I will assume direct control."

"Initiating override in ten seconds, Inspector Smith."

I closed my eyes again and slowed my breathing to slip back into my trance state. DELTA continued to count down as I followed along in my own head and waited for the connection to begin. When it happened, I felt a surge of electricity through the contacts on my skin and my mind's eye exploded with someone else's memories.

"DELTA, confirm recording," I said in real life. The AI chirped back an affirmative. With my eyes still closed and knowing that what I was seeing was simultaneously projected to the room — and, by extension, my colleagues — I "looked" around.

From the crime-scene photos I'd already viewed, I knew that I was inside Mr. Bright's apartment. There wasn't anything particularly unusual about it, and he lived in what was an averagely boring sort of apartment for single people his age. The dead man, now resurrected to the last minutes of his corporeal existence, sat on the couch reading a book. I squinted at the cover as the book's title shifted into focus — "I, Robot."

Standing in place at the centre of the living room I passed my attention over everything I could see nearby. Who knew what details would prove important, and I knew this recording would be poured over by the other investigators involved in the case. As Daryn continued reading, unaware of my silent presence inside of his mind, a chime went off from an intercom panel in his apartment. Daryn closed his book and walked over to the panel. His body language didn't suggest that he was surprised, so this visitor was expected. I looked at the intercom and focused on the tiny LED screen above the call box, but whomever it was stood too close to the camera to make any identifiable details out. Daryn thumbed a button and a green checkmark appeared on the screen. The visitor moved out of the frame, and Daryn walked down a hallway and out of my view.

Locked in my vantage point in the centre of his living room, I couldn't see where the victim was now. "DELTA, bring me closer to him."

After a second, my perspective shifted and I was standing in a corridor as he walked towards the front door of his flat. Daryn unlocked the door and opened it slightly, leaving it ajar before he returned back to the living room and passed through my projection as if I was invisible. I instructed DELTA to shift my position so that I could both see Daryn and also had line of sight to the front door. Then, I waited for this unknown visitor to show themselves.

It didn't take long. The door creaked open and, much to my surprise, a young woman stepped through the threshold. She was average height, with brown hair pulled up into a tight bun. Attractive enough in a conventional sort of way. She had on a black t-shirt and jeans with heavy black leather boots on her feet. Her stance was confident and assertive — the first word that came to mind was "soldier."

And I had the uneasy feeling that she was somehow staring directly at me.

The woman took several purposeful strides into the apartment, closing and locking the door behind her. Then she turned to face me and there was no doubt about it — somehow, this person knew I was there despite being a disembodied presence within the memory of a dead man.

"Olle. Lovely to meet you, finally. Well, as much of a meeting as this can be."

"How —" I started, confused as to what was going on. The hair on my arms stood on end and my heart started racing with fear.

She held up her hand. "No, don't speak. Our time here is short anyway, but I've heard so much about you. We'll be meeting properly very soon."

The stranger's mouth twisted into a grin that was all teeth and held a feral sort of violence behind it. Then, without warning, she launched herself at me with her hands balled into fists. I flinched and yelled out reflexively as some sort of force slammed into my body. Back in the real world I fell back from my chair, electrodes ripping themselves from my skin painfully as I landed on my side. There was an electrical pop and I smelled the acrid smoke of burning plastic as something in the room sizzled and flared up. I didn't need to look at the tablet or ask DELTA what I already knew to be true — Daryn Bright was truly dead now.

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