The Gravity of Silence
An independent forensic specialist is summoned to the deep-space research station 'Erebus' following a fatal incident in a simulated rotation test. The investigation reveals a closed environment where personnel activity logs, security patrols, and maintenance records contain periods of altered data and conflicting timelines. The specialist must analyze physical evidence and system diagnostics to reconstruct the sequence of events.
Initial Crime Scene
The first thing that hits you is the smell: a faint, sharp ozone tang, the scent of overloaded circuitry. It blends with the sterile, recycled air of the observation deck. Your mag-lev boots make no sound on the polished deck plates. Ahead, frost patterns creep along the internal seals of a cryo-storage tube, a web of frozen geometry under clinical lighting. To your right, a static hiss emanates from a corrupted audio log terminal, the sound needle-jumping against encrypted silence.
Crime Scene Environment
The station's lighting is uniformly clinical, casting sterile, even illumination that minimizes shadow and accentuates the anodyne surfaces. The air is cool, recycled, and pressurized, holding a constant humidity level that prevents static but feels dehydrating. Acoustic density is low; the primary sound is the low, pressurized hum of the environmental systems, punctuated by the encrypted whisper of data flowing through secure channels.
Investigation Constraints
Mag-lev boots, encrypted personal data-slates, biometric life-sign monitors, centralized station AI logs (CORTEX), pneumatic door seals, handheld forensic scanners, sonic drivers, encrypted internal comms ('WhisperNet'). No FTL communication; all logs are local and can be corrupted by physical access to core nodes.
✦ Related Cases ✦
