Issue 1 Downtime

"I don't know. He... wasn't really home."

"He no longer has a head."

"I'm... trying not to think about that. He should have been dead a hundred times over and that... offends me, somehow."

"I know what you mean. It feels wrong. Like an insult to the natural order of things..."

"Aye, and... part of me wants to fix that."

"Anyone in their right mind would."

"...suppose so," she nodded.

"Maybe not everyone would feel it so strongly but even Klein knew this wasn't just the lights going out..."

"Aye. I'm just... it felt like reflex, or instinct."

"Well it makes sense, really..."

She nodded.

"...and I don't know who to send the bill to for this bloody suit," she joked weakly.

Leaning down with obvious disgust Nailah grabs a tag from the uniform still wrapped around the security guard.

"Might I suggest Bob Eelston?"

"I don't know as this poor bastard was anything but in the wrong place at the wrong time..."

"Someone had to open the gate..."

"We don't know. We don't know nearly enough yet."

"Well we're not getting anything from him."

"Aye. Have to check his employee records, if he was behaving oddly..."

Further investigation doesn't reveal much more. The security guard had appeared somewhat sleep-deprived and stressed in the previous days and weeks but nothing too out of the ordinary. He had shown up for his shift that night and security tapes show him entering the hallway before the tape cuts out and only produces garbled static. Everyone else in the building was accounted for at the time and still is, including other inmates. The GPS unit in Mel's inhibitor collar doesn't give out a signal, though oddly not even the one set to transmit when the unit is destroyed.

Samantha sighed after going over the tapes.

"...I'll make this right, love."