It was the most sickening sight I have ever seen. In my two and half years with the Imperium forensic team, this ranks number one on my gross list. Blood was covering everything in the Green Room of the Elector’s Palace. It was a pity too. The maple desk was really a masterpiece, with maple based couches with soft black fabric. Yeah, it was a beautiful room before this assassin came in and destroyed everything. I was leading my first case. Why they chose me I'll never know, either way the assassinations of three Electors were not what I had in mind. Three years ago, I woke up in a hospital with amnesia. I’ve never anything of my life before the hospital. But I will probably never have it fully back. I make do with what I have. It had taken both of my brothers to persuade me to join the Imperium. I broke some of their records on my through the academy, too.

“Very thorough,” Said my older brother, Damian, who was standing on my left, “weren’t they?” Tall, dark, maybe brooding are the words I think best describe my brother. I’ve been told by some my female co-workers he looks like Michelangelo's statue of David dipped in bronzer, but way more buff.  Yeah, I know. I’ll never see where girls get such crazy ideas about my brothers. They don't have to deal with the stress that comes with their seemingly-constant-prefect behavior. This is how Damian and Luca both managed to be high school quarterbacks and have an "A+" average on everything. My parents go on and on about their perfect their boys are. It's enough to make you sick, physically sick. There is about nine years between them. The three of us couldn’t look more different each other. Now back to our story.

“Yeah,” I said trying to keep myself from hurling while once again wondering why I’d been given this case. I maybe a wiz with weapons, but I’ve never been one for blood or dead bodies. “But who would want to kill Stanton and risk angering the government? I mean Page and Jansen I can understand, but still.”

I swear Damian giving me and Bex dazzling smiles is one of his most annoying habits. “This is your first case with a dead body isn’t it?”

 I glared at him as pulled on my gloves. “You are so sketching the crime scene,” I declared as I knelt down to join Doctor Carter Chin, who is probably the best medical examiner in the country, next to Stanton’s lifeless body. (For those of you who don’t what sketching the scene is, it’s taking pictures of everything around the crime scene, in this case, where the bodies were found.) In life Stanton was on more on what my sister, Bex, would call the ‘attractive side’ given his age, but he was now marred by our killer’s hand.

“So Doc, did they go down fighting?” I asked

“Yes, it looks that way from the scanner.” Chin hesitated before saying, “the wounds don’t match up with Page’s and Jansen’s though. You’re welcome to get a better look as soon as Damian is done sketching the scene.” The scanner, God’s gift to medical examiners. No more autopsies with that baby. That it could tell you anything you want to know about the human body, or animal depending on what you did for a living. I stood up only to get blinded by a bright flash from a camera, this was followed by a snicker.

“Damian, I’m going to kill you!” I growled. I had to be stuck on the team with my older brother.

“Love ya too. Before you ask, I’m over here finishing sketching the scene, like you told me too.”

Blinking to get my vision back, a familiar face came into focus.  He had a mischievous look in his amber eyes. Meet Luca, the youngest in the Udinov family. He, like the rest of us Udinovs, has bronze skin. It sometimes amazes me from what I’m told that Luca made it this far in life without major damage to his body and brain. The guy is a mechanical genius and loves to make things explode. If you’re wondering what he does, he works in the Supremacy Armory. He, like our older brother, was the high school hottie. On the bright side, Luca is completely blind to that fact. At twenty, he’s more focused on doing what he loves, which is creating things followed by destroying them, than on settling down.

“Mom is going to thank me for that photo,” Luca laughed at me as I narrowed my eyes at him, as I tried and failed to take away the camera he was holding. This is why I hate that both Damian and Luca are over six feet tall.

“Lu, how did you get in here?” I asked, giving up. This is why I tend to blame genetics for me being 5’3.  Luca and I usually get along well, but this was one of those exceptions.

“Don’t call me that! I’m here to see why the alarm didn’t go off!” Now it was Luca’s turn to glare.

“Fine, just don’t blow anything up. Please!” I watched Luca stalk out into the hall as he called, “No promises!” over his shoulder. I turned around to see Damian standing behind me, shaking his head.

“That went well,”

“Oh I’m done, by the way.”

I shook my head and walked over to Page’s lifeless body to get a very unwanted closer look. Chin was right.  The wounds on her were different than Stanton’s. Moving to my knees, I removed the designer jacket, so I could see the way the knife had cut her. I lightly touched one of the many slashes on her body, and the room around me began to spin…

As the room came back into focus, I could see three people coming in through the door dressed like the staff, two men and one woman…. Stanton looks up from his desk. With a look of surprise on the Elector face… I could see the dead elector on the floor. The man who was closest to Stanton grabbed a laptop that had been on a desk…. The sound of the real staff coming up the stairs flooded into my ears … And the world shifted back into focus again.

I felt a presence in the back of my mind. “Good, you’re alive. We weren’t sure. Now run! Before they know about your gift!”

Next thing I knew I was flat on my back and Chin was leaning over me with an odd expression. Someone was talking to him over his shoulder. Chin stood up and moved out of my view, and next thing I knew someone was snapping their fingers in front of my face, but try as I might I could not react. Sound was trickling back into my ears. I could hear worried voices, and Luca’s was closest, so I assumed that it was his hand that had been snapping. I attempted to move or do something but I couldn’t do crap. All I could do was lie there as everybody else freaked out. Honestly I don’t know how long I laid there on the blood covered floor. The voice had said something about a gift. As matter a fact I could feel it in my head just drifting there.

"What gift?  And what did you mean you weren’t sure I was alive?" I said to it.

"Well," I could feel the voice’s amusement. "That’s the million dollar question isn’t it? If you’re smart you’ll leave first chance you get."

“Rina?” Luca’s worried voice brings brought me back to reality.  I could see his face in my peripheral vision, and after a great deal of effort on my part I was able to focus on his face. “Do you think you can sit up?”

I tried to nod, but it probably didn’t resemble anything like a nod at all. Either way, Luca got the message and helped me into a sitting position. My head hadn’t hurt this bad since I woke up in the ER three years back. It felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my head.  Yeah, it was that painful. I looked around at everybody’s faces, trying to guess how long I’d been out. Damian and Luca looked more worried than I’d ever seen them and Chin just looked perplexed.

“Please tell me that she was reacting to the blood and bodies,” Damian said to Chin, “not part of the something else.”

Chin shook his head. “The scanner didn’t pick up anything." He looked down at me. There was something behind his eyes, something that wasn’t right. I didn’t like it.