Chapter 167: 171. Atrocity Part 3

Shaula opens the stairwell door and sees a long hallway. None of the apartment unit doors on either side of the hallway are opened. She can hear heartbeats rapidly beating behind these doors. These are traditional apartment doors with fisheye peepholes similar to those found on Earth.

They must have already seen this then…

On the floor of this hallway, Shaula sees the lifeless bodies of four human women. All of them have died, she can confirm that because she can hear a distinct lack of heartbeat from each of the corpses. They haven't been frozen solid however, indicating to her that Ajax might not be responsible for this.

Who… are these women?

Shaula decides to walk closer to the women. There is nothing particularly glaring about the clothes they're wearing, nothing particularly cult-like either. Yet they are human. If any group of humans is going to be found dead today in this specific part of the city, it would have to be the members of the Twin Moons terrorist group.

Someone found them out, and stopped their plans with extreme prejudice.

Maybe Ajax… Maybe Dzan or Sigvor…

Shaula examines the bodies without touching them or getting so close that their blood stains her clothes. She perceives a specific putrid scent coming from some of the wounds inflicted. A smell of rotting flesh. These women have all been stabbed, though she can see that some of the wounds don't have blood flowing from them at all.

The rot is coming from those wounds in particular. Are these… Are these women actually a part of the Twin Moons? This is still… disgusting…

This is the first time Shaula has stumbled upon bodies left behind by other killers. She herself has been doing some freelance crime fighting since she came to this city, yet she's never stumbled across a dead body in this manner. 

Perhaps I was lucky so far. It would make our nightly vigilantism more harrowing… Though, it might have prepared Ajax for today’s sights.

The smell of blood starts to make her feel sick. The sight of their corpses lingers in her mind as well just like the bodies from downstairs. Shaula isn’t so innocent however. She has killed before and she is likely to kill again in pursuit of the greater good. Why should this sight bother her especially if the victims are likely to be members of a terrorist group?

It still does.

Shaula feels anguished. These people died such cheap deaths. Their bodies were left behind, uncovered, without even their eyelids closed. They're just waiting for someone to come and take them away from here to a graveyard or a crematorium. 

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They weren't really waiting. They are now lifeless husks, empty of souls. If these are Twin Moon members, they probably deserve at least this. Yet, Shaula is still surprised by the level of violence she has been exposed to in this world so far.

This world is cruel, just like her old one. In that place, the planet of her birth, violence was something under the surface of polite society, at least in the nation she was born in. In many ways, that is the case in this world as well, yet her newfound powers have been able to force her to bear witness to awful things.

The cruelty of the world is made manifest to her now only more so, as if she’s been given the ability to peel away the petals of the flower only to feel the sharp thorns.

No, there's no reason to think of things like that right now, I-I have to find Ajax. I just hope these are actually people from the Twin Moons and not people caught in the crossfire. Shit, I have literally no clue what happened here. I better not touch a single thing.

Shaula has her mask on covering her face so she doubts any of the people watching the hallway’s situation behind their doors through their peepholes will be able to tell the city guards anything that could be used to track her down.

To be safe though, she makes a mental note to dispose of the clothes she's wearing at the moment. It feels like a waste since she had already burned through one comfortable dress today, but she never assumed she would also be wandering through a crime scene after destroying a diamond statue.

Since Dzan and Sigvor aren't on these floors, Shaula continues moving upstairs. The scent of blood doesn't disappear as she climbs the stairs however.

There's more of this upstairs? How did you get involved with this, guys? If the two of you turn out to be murderers, I don't know what I'm going to tell Jelli… or Malia.

Shaula hears sobbing coming through from upstairs where Dzan and Sigvor are. Both pairs of people, the woman and the kid and Dzan and Sigvor, are crying softly. The stench of blood is getting stronger as she climbs. She had thought the sight of the four women was the worst of it.

Shaula opens the door to a hallway where she sees more corpses on the floor. These corpses are all men however, all of them still human. She sees people looking at her from slightly past those bodies. There is a beastkin woman holding a sleeping child with fresh tears still streaming down her cheeks.

Her forehead is disfigured by some kind of rotten wound and she's looking directly at Shaula with a deep fear in her gaze. Her eyes start to dart back and forth between Shaula and Sigvor.

Sigvor and Dzan are actually huddled together as well, both of them shocked by the sight of Shaula. Shaula can tell that the two of them have been crying as well, perhaps having gone through something harrowing. She immediately realizes that they're not the party in the wrong. Whoever the humans are, they must have been the instigators.

The sight of their bodies still defies expectations and makes Shaula wish to know as much as she can.

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