~Wax
saw himself out of the office. He quickly made his way back down the hall and
out to where his steambike waited for him. His mind swarmed furiously with new
information and leads, but for now, he sped off to exchange his borrowed finery
for his thick coat. It was time he made another trip to The Gardenworks, and he
was going to need it.~
The dreary damp of the Gardenworks
had not improved since Wax’s last visit, and he silently muttered to himself as
he dismounted his steambike. He’d arrived at a relatively nondescript stone
building whose walls were alive with creeper vines and moss. Wax turned his
thick collar up to the damp and retrieved his smog tin, placing one between his
lips and lighting it with a flick of his flintstriker. Placing the objects back
into their respective familiar pockets, Wax blew a long, steady stream of smoke
into the air and walked inside.
The inside of the morgue, while
notably clearer of vegetation, was not much less dreary than the outside. The
lone office was adorned with half-dissected models, preserved cadaver segments
and books on anatomy, along with a cluttered desk littered with sheaves of loose
paper. Wax could hear familiar bustling coming from the back of the building,
and he followed the sound into the examination room. He was greeted by several
corpses shrouded by white cloth lying atop examination slabs, strange
instruments lining every wall and surface, and a familiar figure mumbling to
himself as he moved busily about the room. Wax exhaled a cloud of smoke into
the air and the man paused, giving a short sniff. “You’ll contaminate the bodies
like that, you know.” He muttered. Wax chuckled.
“I’m assuming you’re here to view
your handiwork?” The man asked, turning to face Wax, peering at him through his
comically large goggles. Jonas Flynt was slim, pale, and small, even for a Heartlander.
Wax thought he very much resembled the skeletons hanging from metal stands in
the corner of the room, save for his wild tangle of stark white hair.
“How’d you know it was mine?” Wax
asked as he stepped into the room. Jonas hobbled over to a nearby slab and
tossed aside the thick white sheet, revealing the dead man’s torso but preserving
his dignity. From the look of the carved chest, an autopsy had already been
performed.
“Firstly,” Jonas began, sifting
through his tools on a nearby table, “you never show up here unless you’ve shot
someone or knew someone who’d been shot, and secondly…” he continued, selecting
a long slender metal implement and gesturing to the hole in the dead man’s
chest. “Cause of death, one shot, clean through the heart, inch and a half
entry wound, nearly three and a quarter inch exit wound. Result of a shot from
a ball typically found in single-shot pistols or in one particular case,” he
gave Wax a knowing glance, “a heavy caliber hand cannon modified to fit a
six-shot revolver cylinder specifically designed to fit these rounds.” He concluded.
Wax shook his head, masking a grin with his hand as he lifted his smog to his
lips.
“If it’s any consolation, he shot
first.” Wax said. Jonas placed his tool back on the small table.
“Don’t they all?” He asked.
“So. Any idea who he is?” Wax asked.
Jonas shook his head, leaning back over the corpse on the table.
“Not even the foggiest, but I can
tell you, there’s some pretty strange stuff I pulled off of and out of this
guy.” He said. Wax’s silence cued him to continue speaking. “Firstly, from what
I pulled out of this guy’s stomach, he was on just about everything he could be
on. I found traces of Kapff, used to go days without sleeping, painkillers,
Hustle Punch, and Regret-Me-Not. Now, ruling out that last one, he must have
been absolutely twitching by the time he caught up to you. That’s not all,
though.” Jonas hobbled over to another cluttered surface and rummaged noisily
through the loose implements until he unearthed a stack of papers. He flipped
through them, hobbling back to the corpse. “Your guy here had a thing for cheap
snuff, and I found evidence of Nethervine Extract poisoning in his throat. That
stuff will usually have you hallucinating and feeling like your head is about
to split open, but not in amounts this small. The odd thing is, even a mild
exposure to the gas itself would cause more damage than this. I was confused
until I remembered his snuffbox.” Jonas pulled open a drawer beneath the slab
the dead man lay on and produced a simple, featureless snuffbox. “The poisoning
came from that. Now, I don’t know many people who go around flavoring their
snuff with toxic gasses, do you?” He asked. Wax rolled the small container in
his palm.
“So he was set up.” He said.
“It’s no wonder he didn’t hit you.
All that juice in his system, coupled with the fact that after snorting a
knuckle full of Nethervine Snuff, he was probably feeling the equivalent of the
worst hangover of his life. He never stood a chance.”
Wax pocketed the snuffbox carefully
and ground the stub of his smog into his boot heel. He gave one last look at
the unidentified corpse.
“There was one other thing.” Jonas
mentioned as Wax turned to leave. “On his clothes and under his nails, I found
a powder residue. It took me a while to piece together what it was, but it
turned out to be a dye pigment in powder form. Two separate colors, specifically:
a dark brass and a red.” Wax immediately recognized the colors from a
far-too-familiar company stamp. The brass and crimson logo of Kaus-Lonhark
Industries was stamped onto every tin of Wax’s favorite smogs he’d ever
purchased.
“You’ve been a great help, Jonas.
Let me know if you turn anything else up.” He said, heading for the door. Jonas
may not have been able to turn up a name, but perhaps a former employer would.
Wax fired up his steambike and headed for Central- and the Kaus-Lonhark
Industries factory.
