[Prompt] Gene modifications come in two flavors. Mods the rich give themselves to make them healthier and better looking, and mods they give their employees to make them better workers. Generations later, Elves and dwarves are different species, and earth is on the verge of it’s first interspecies war.
-Gregamonster
Ivaran Giljor was sprawled out in an unusual way. His long elfish limbs contorted and bent in ways that could leave only a dead man comfortable. Silvery blood pooled across the cobblestone floor of the dank suffocating underground railway station, shimmering with split chromatic reflections. By all accounts, the case was a common one. The unfortunate senator had been lured into the subway and beaten to death with a mace. I didn’t need to see the severed tips of his ears to know it was the dwarves that did it. They had nothing but murder in mind for their pointy-eared overlords. But even then, something about it seemed strange.
I took the cadaver’s sleeve and rubbed it between my fingers, feeling the smooth velvet fabric of his suit. Turning up the hem I found what I had expected. Custom Tailored. There was no doubt.
If I knew elves, I knew that they would never be caught dead in the underground, and certainly not in their finest attire.
“What do you think, Dain?” Folmon Said, “No doubt it’s the dwarves, those filthy soots would give anything to get their hands on this guy.”
I stood up and replaced my hat, my short half-blood stature arriving heads below my assistant’s.
“The murder is clear,” I said, “I just want to know how they got him down here. Nothing on the scene indicates a reason for our senator to have travelled so far out of his comfort zone.”
Folmon gave a string of half-baked reasons, prattling on about blackmail or impersonations. To him talk was cheap. The boys at the station called him ‘Silver Tongue,” in part because of his tireless blathering, but mostly because of his alleged gene purity. I could have guessed his percentage by his posture. Stiff-backed and tilted at the nose, his snide eyes glaring reproachfully out from under thin apathetic eyebrows.
“They have motive too,” Folmon continued, “This guy was about to vote for that new act the Emperor proposed; the one the workers have been rioting about.”
“I’m still not convinced,” I dismissed, “I’ll need more evidence.”
Folmon let out his usual conceited laugh, “Have it your way, Half-blood. But if the inspector gets impatient it will be your badge on the line and not mine.”
…
Cold fog weaved the labyrinthine thoroughfares of the city into a spider’s web, dimming the neon glow of the advertisements and shrouding the dark intricate designs of the countless tower’s rounded faces. The city wasted no time devouring newcomers that got caught in its web. What was once beautiful ancient sculptures became the crawling hordes of the underworld when lit with the modern neon glow the advertisements provided. Every consecutive imitation of the renaissance style lacked more soul than the last.
My boots fell into the same military march they were used to as I pushed through the suffocating smog, shivering slightly. I was almost glad my destination took me below ground, at least there the forges could provide some semblance of warmth.
~
‘I don’t care what his record is,’ The inspector had said, ‘We need an ambassador. The soots are too quick to distrust an Elfish Officer. Dain’s the closest thing we have to hiring an actual dwarf.’
I couldn’t hear the other man in the room and I didn’t dare get any closer to the door.
‘He’s been reprimanded harshly, sir, for that particular incident,’ The inspector responded, ‘I’d hate to lose him but if anything like that happens again I will stay true to my duty. That much you can be sure of, sir.’
~
The scene played out in my head repeatedly as I crossed the fuming grates and delved into the underground once more. Nothing about the conversation had been unexpected, but hearing it out loud felt different than my nervous fantasies had predicted.
…
The dwarvish dwellings were cramped and stifling. The red heat of the distant forges present in every corner of the decrepit underground ghettos. Even at my stunted height, I had to duck under the streetlamps that hung from the cavernous ceilings. Round, grubby faces looked out at me from dark porches, wiry beards obscuring missing teeth. Laughter died on children’s lips when I walked into view and they stared at me like I was a bad omen.
My destination was deep in the forge, in the dwelling of the dwarvish miner whose fingerprints were discovered on the mace. Despite its crude nature, the mace was a formidable weapon, even if useless in a gunfight. The runic symbol of the Headless clan was inscribed on the handle, the signature of a dangerous gang.
I stuffed the thing back into the inside pocket of my coat when I arrived, the forge’s heat now swimming visibly in the air. The burrows were even worse than the ghettos, but without a soul to be seen. In a matter of minutes, I had identified the correct door and kicked it open, a firearm in hand.
“Police! Do not resist!” I cried, but my demand met an empty room. It was a decrepit one-room apartment, the light from the forges shining dimly through the bullet holes in the front wall. It was clear they were not recent.
Empty bottles of mead were strewn amongst old garments and Eflish magazines. It was hideous stuff. The men and women inside genetically morphed beyond allure and into the uncanny, their proportions exaggerated beyond practicality. Little of humanity was left in them and for a moment it gave me pause. To my eyes, it was just as disfigured and hideous as the dwarves were to the elves. Except instead of being bred for work, they were bred for some sick idealization of beauty. My father had long held the belief that both sides were the abomination and that true humanity had been forgotten. Part of me always wanted to agree but it was an old mindset and it was no use to anyone. I turned my attention back to the task at hand.
With my firearm ready I cast the blanket off of the bed, releasing a foul stench into the room. As it turned out, the room wasn’t empty, but the eyes of the dwarvish corpse in the bed were and they had been so for days.
That’s impossible, I thought, how did his mace end up at the crime scene? I cast a glance around the room for clues but I was met with more questions. The dwarf owned a mace already, one in worse condition with initials scratched into the handle. The mark of the headless clan was nowhere to be seen.
…
This time I pushed through the door, regardless of the conversation within. The inspector looked up at me with annoyance and Folmon gazed snobbishly in my direction. The inspector stood swiftly behind his desk and addressed me,
“Dain. As I understand it you have neglected my orders again.”
“I did not believe the case was as simple as it appeared, sir.”
“Have you not learned your place? We identified the culprit already!” The inspector said.
“This weapon does not belong to him.” I dropped the mace on the desk.
“You’ve taken the murder weapon!? Ten gods! What dim-witted spirit gave you that idea?”
“It proved to be useful.”
Folmon interjected, “I tried to tell him it was useless, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Shut up Silvertongue!” I snapped, unable to maintain my cool, “Okrum Shatterbrow has been dead for almost a week. He’s been framed.”
The room went silent and the inspector turned away from me, swallowing his anger.
“And what exactly do you expect us to do about it?”
“Allow me to seek out the true killer,” I said.
The inspector sighed,
“Dain, you have pushed the line further and further with every case you’ve worked. I cannot allow it to continue.”
“Yeah, Half-blood, you’re a loose cannon!” Folmon interjected.
“Folmon, you are not a part of this conversation!” The inspector snapped. Folmon nodded his head and vanished through the door. The inspector walked over and shut it behind him.
“We must have misread the prints,” I explained.
“The prints were not misread.”
“Then how did they end up on this mace?”
“Because we put them there, Dain!”
“…I don’t understand.”
“You do not know your place, detective. Your job is to verify the murder so that the public can have what they want. Nothing further.”
A grim realization crossed my mind,
“Then it wasn’t the dwarves who did it. It was elves. The entire murder is a fraud!”
The inspector resigned himself, rubbing his eyelids,
“It is not something I understand. This isn’t a criminal murder, it’s a political one.”
“And we are just supposed to propagate the lies?”
“That is our orders.”
…
I lay in bed without an easy second the entire night, my mind racing as I stared at my crumpled coat in the corner of the room. The badge was no longer inside it. Instead, it was sitting on the desk in the inspector’s office where I left it.