After the information exchange, amidst many teeth gnashing, four cups of tea remained untouched. The syrupy atmosphere persisted as the story was told in a neat package. 

It was Lin who quickly summarized everything.

“You are telling me,” Lin’s brows twitched from irritation, “that a foreign actor, led by Jehovah Atrum, laced our water supply with remote-triggered mystic poison, and we were none the wiser? Do you think we are idiots?”

Rem shrugged. “You are an idiot. Do I need to remind you that you failed to find me until I literally invited you myself?”

“Uh,” Chandra, still quivering like a cat lost in the snow, grunted. "I'm not going to lie. I think he has a point there.”

Lin was ready to explode, but, just in time, the black-eyed Tai threw another bomb at her nemesis.

Tai tossed Evidence A—Jehovah’s journal—on the table. Her mind, armed with prehistoric malice, found an angle to trip her nemesis one more time. Unlike her teacher and Chandra, Tai hasn’t bought into the grim necessity of a certain Remus Breaker needing to exist. That didn't mean she fell into Lin’s camp, petulantly obstructing him. Tai only needed two things: ways to control this variable and payback for her wounded pride.

“Your theory is sound. Nevertheless, you are still a suspect in a murder at the Solstice Palace. Jehovah might be a threat, but that doesn’t clear your innocence.”

Rem was expecting this. It was time to get his groove back.

“Hey Nova,” Rem smirked. “Aren’t you planning to execute the kid who forked over a vital testimony about..." He faked checking his phone. “Eight or nine hours ago. Now you are about to apprehend another witness. No wonder Jehovah got away with his bullshit this long.”

The Great Serpent felt the urge to deck this man across the room, and she resisted it long enough to give him a proper verbal retaliation.

“You are still a suspect,” Nova emphasized at that point. “The law…”

“A law nearly condemned an informant to death,” Rem said, clinging to his stand like a barnacle. “The thing about laws is that they keep society intact, but all things come with a dark side. The tragedy in this heinous case is that laws are made by the majority, and the majority are panicky lemmings led by snake-oil merchants who excel at twisting the truth and frankensteining society's rotten corpses. Nova, no matter how much you wish, I am not a murderer. If I am, three of your students will be meeting their maker, and you will be none the wiser.” Rem shrugged. “Not that I can pull off Jehovah's murder. I have absolutely zero point invested in assassination know-how and corpse animation.”

The Great Serpent and her students felt insulted, but it was Lin who was fast enough to catch on.

Lin said in incredulous fury, “Stop with the insult, and how does corpse animation get..."

The Daughter of Fall stopped, and the dot connected in her cranium.

“Oh,” Lin said as the truth dawned like a spotlight. “Oh, shit…”

“Ding! Ding! Ding!” Rem, who excelled at the art of reading people's roadkill expressions, was relieved someone finally caught on. "It took you long enough! Sure, some little hints were needed, but be proud, cupcake; you are far from hopeless.”.

“Get what?” Chandra, forever clueless, asked aloud.

“All of this time, we believe Atrum was assassinated in the reception by high-speed martialcraft—a feat that only someone of Tai’s caliber could have pulled off—but there is another possibility,” Lin explained. “The possibility that he was already dead by the time he walked into the reception.”

Chandra was stunned. “No way."

“Yes way,” Rem added. “Think about it: even with super-speed or invisibility, would you try to murder someone with a sword in a building’s reception? That is one place guaranteed to be filled with eyewitnesses and bodies to mess with your getaway. The only reason to do so is to use the corpse and the shock as a distraction.”

Rem raised his fingers dramatically, as if conducting the series of events that had transpired.

“We can assume the timing of Jehovah’s murder occurred between his meeting with Cytortia and his body being found at the reception. I believe Jehovah had a meeting schedule at this time. It was almost certain that he was having a chat with his would-be murderer. The ambush then occurred, successfully killing Jehovah. The murderer then altered the body, manipulating the bleeding and the state of the corpse and puppeteering it into the reception. The following carnage provided the perfect window to clean up the crime scene and move the Dramatica Codex out of the premises. Hell, they could even turn the scheduling into an airtight alibi.”

“That is a sound construction of the event,” Tai said. “Explain to me how did the killer moved the Codex the-"

Rem didn’t even wait for the statement to be complete.

“Bribery,” Rem stated. “Just pay someone to take a wrapped package to a pickup location.”

Rem then concluded his deduction.

“Using every assumption laid out,” Rem began counting on his fingers, “the murderer must have access to the following skill set: the political weight to arrange the meeting with Jehovah, the power to actually assassinate him with minimal effort, and most importantly, the sheer expertise in cleaning the crime scene and controlling a corpse.” Rem then sighed. “I almost forgot that he or she was nowhere near the reception area when the chaos went down.”

With every word spoken, the four listeners' expressions turned worse.

“Judging from your expression, I believe you have your man in the head,” Rem shrugged. “Frankly, I have no idea who is on the guest list, so I will leave that can of worms to you.” He then eyed the horizon. “That is assuming we can survive an impatient guest.”

Right on cue, an eruption of dirt and dust rocked the horizon.

Every combatant, minus Rem, shot up in attention. Meanwhile, Cytortia shrieked and pointed at the rising cloud of sand.

The pitiful girl shrieked, “is that…"

“Yep,” Rem said, getting up from his chair and finishing his cup of tea with a gulp. “That must be Tezca. Wonder why he starts attacking that far away.”

…

Why is this happening to me?

Jasmine, the white-haired maid, gasped, crawling her way out of the rubble. Her attacker jumped her so fast that she could barely react. If not for the incredible combat instinct she was gifted with, the maid wouldn’t have a second to dive into her shadow.

But the blood trickling down her forehead proved beyond doubt that reflex alone wouldn’t save her next time.

As the dust settled, the humongous frame of her assailant slowly came into view. It certainly wasn’t human. That muscle-bound body underneath the rippling purple skins. Its hands had four fingers, each thicker than a steel bar. Legs, which belong to an ape amped on a Super Soldier serum These traits were enough to make people wonder how he remained under the radar for so long, but it was his face that won the game. The crown of bonish horns, four eyes leaking with black fire, and mouth with canines so big an alpha would run away with its tail tucked.

It was a figure of power and brute strength.

Then it spoke.

“Shadow Necklace?” The beast said, intelligently identifying how Jasmine survived. “The little toys for Balperia’s Secret Service,” the creature groaned. “No wonder you managed to kill Atrum. Great, so the details of our operation are leaked from the start.”

“What do you mean?” Jasmine said in a vain attempt to play dumb.

The creature wasn’t impressed. “Oh, come on,” he said, “the body already fell from the closet, girly. You think I wouldn’t know you killed one of our agents? Just because I am larger than a house doesn’t mean I am stupid.”

“How do you know?” Jasmine said.

"Oh, nothing much. Just using a fairy god-mother and your mother’s burning underwear,” The creature’s eyes were raised in mockery, and his voice was laced with sarcasm.

“Fine,” Jasmine said, gritting her teeth. Knives slipped from the sleeve of her maid’s dress.

“Wow, did I say something that hit a little too close for home?” The monster noticed the sudden increase in hostility. "Ah, that must be the mother’s part,” he smirked. “Who would have guessed the little assassin maid was an orphan?”

Jasmine lit up in anger.

“So how did mommy die? Kill in the alley? Overworked to death? Suicide?” The monster taunted. He took a sniff and the familiar scent of the blood trickling down Jasmine’s forehead clued him in. “But given this spicy scent from your blood, I believe your cannibalistic daddy must have off your mommy.”

Jasmine’s crimson eyes lit up with rage.

The beast's smirk grew wider. Maybe a few more pushes would do the trick.

“Nah, given the circumstances, maybe mommy killed herself after giving birth to a blood-sucking hellspawn." The beast shrugged. “After all, it isn’t like her family wants her-“

Jasmine vanished and reappeared in front of the monster. Like a feral demon enveloped in flames of bloodlust and rage, she swung her knives in a flash of black. Velocity turned her body’s outline into a blur, and anger reduced her pupils into a demonic slit.

And her opponent saw this attack coming from a block away.

Instead of a knife landing on a monster’s neck, a fist hammered on the back of the raging berserker. Jasmine hit the ground with the weight of the anvil, crying from the pain of broken shoulders.

It took only one blow to knock the fight out of Jasmine, and the following grind on her back made the difference even clearer.

“I can’t believe you fell for the taunt,” The monster shouted in joy as he ground his foot on the girl’s back. “You should have used the Shadow Necklace to run away, but you couldn’t stop yourself-“

Out of nowhere, a translucent amber cuboid crashed into the monster mid-speech. The force of the collision blasted him sideways into a building.

Jasmine craned her neck. Through her hazy eyes, she saw a tan, handsome man of Arabic descent in a well-pressed suit walk through the cloud of dust.

“You must be Tezca, I presumed,” Hakeem De Darwin stepped in front of the girl. “Should we take this somewhere else?”

Dust and air exploded from the pulsating force, and the humongous monster named Tezca marched out to face his challenger.

“Fuck no,” the monster said. His fist glowed with a sickly aura.

“So much for damage control,” Hakeem sighed. An amber construct built itself into a shield in his left hand. Meanwhile, on his right, a foldable cane emerged.

The crash of red and orange hues shone across the Four Seasons Court’s skyline.