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“You saw Adin?” Captain Sands asks. “Making his way in the direction of Renn and the Friend, right before the murders?”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t going to NEAR 2,” Tal says. “He was just dipping into Storage Ring 5 to grab more alcohol, it was right next door to the others.”
“How long until he came back to the Habitation Ring?” I ask.
“I’m not sure, I was doing other stuff.”
“Thank you, Mt Smithson,” Captain Sands says, walking abruptly out of the room. I hurry after him.
“Sunset,” he calls as we approach the suspects all huddled in their little group with their two guards, “has Celi began doing the medical checkups yet?”
“Yes, ke’s with Lina now. Why?”
“Next time you see kem, can you make if very clear that I want the most thorough bloodwork that we can do? Neurostimulants, specifically. Mr Klees, your turn.”
Adin follows us back to our ad hoc interrogation room. “Are you alright?” I ask him quietly. He looks at me like I’m an idiot.
Tal’s still in the room when we get there, but leaves without a fuss. Captain Sands points to the bed; Adin sits down.
“Did you kill Renn Sunn and the Public Universal Friend?” the captain asks.
“No.”
“Tal says ke saw you heading in that direction at the time of the murder.”
“And you believe Tal over me? When ke was leaving the actual scene of the murder?”
“Did you run into Tal outside Habitation Ring 2?” I ask.
“Yeah, ke was heading through the storage ring while I was looking for Tinera’s alcohol. Because ke was returning from NAER 2. Where the murders happened.”
“Tal absolutely is a major suspect,” the captain says, “and we will question kem further on hes activities. But that doesn’t change the fact that your kitchen knife – ”
“Anyone could’ve grabbed that knife from the kitchen!”
“ – was buried in the Public Universal Friend’s back to the hilt, something that our doctor assured me would require an absurd amount of strength. Something that only Denish would be realistically capable of… or, perhaps, somebody suffering the side effects of a recent neurostimulator dose. So tell me, Mr Klees, are you currently taking neurostimulators against my orders?”
“I’m not currently experiencing the side effects, if that’s what you mean.”
“The bloodwork will show us that either way, I suppose. But you are taking them?”
Adin glares at him.
“Last time I stopped by the medbay, Celi mentioned that the locks on one of the medicine cabinets had been broken,” I say. “Have you been stealing neurostimulators, Adin?”
“What the fuck is it to you, Dr Greaves?” he snaps.
I step back, trying not to tear up. “I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this,” I say. “I’m not suggesting – ”
“You are suggesting, though, aren’t you? You’re suggesting that the big bad druggie dosed up so he could go and murder two people with a knife, aren’t you?”
“I’m just trying to eliminate possibilities!”
“And when you’ve eliminated them all, what then? Someone needs to be guilty.”
“And if it isn’t you, then this would all go a lot fucking smoother if you’d help us find out who it is!”
Adin raises an eyebrow at me. “You want to know who I think killed Renn and that Friend?”
“Yes!”
“I think it was you.”
I lean against the wall as my knees go weak. “What?”
“Sunset and Sam gave us the rundown on the situation. The two people in the right place at the right time are you, and Tal. And only one of those people has a history of actually holding a knife to someone’s throat and threatening to kill them.”
Captain Sands steps in. “Aspen’s history has nothing to do – ”
“Oh yes it fucking does. Because you, you high-minded, elitist piece of shit, seem to delight in treating half of your crew like dirt as much as you can get away with, and your excuse is always our pasts. And don’t pretend it’s about safety or whatever, because you let the cybercriminal run the computer systems and you let the drug runner prepare your food and you let the Angel of Death work in the medical ward, and you let this literal terrorist be your second-in-command instead of Tinera because Tinera has a criminal record and Aspen managed to get off on some technicality for being well-connected and a little bit famous. We’re suspects and they’re not because you’re a classist bastard who’s decided that prison is – ”
“You are suspects and Aspen is not,” the captain cuts in sharply, “because Dr Celi Tate determined that at the time of the murders, Aspen was still playing computer games with the rest of us. Aspen was sitting right next to me when this occurred. If they were absent at the time of the murders, I can guarantee that they too would be a suspect.”
“Bullshit. But it’s not like you care what I have to say, so.” He gets up to leave.
“We’re not done here,” Captain Sands says.
“Yes, we are.” Adin opens the door.
“If you don’t come back here right now – ”
“You’ll what, Keldin? Lock me in my habitation ring and accuse me of murder? Fuck off.” Adin freezes. This is because Captain Sands has grabbed his arm. Adin glares at Sands. “Get your fucking hand off me,” he growls, “or I actually will demonstrate a sudden capacity for extreme violence.”
Sands lets him go. More out of surprise, I think, than actual fear.
Adin storms off.
The captain and I look at each other.
“Well,” Captain Sands says. “That’s a side of Adin that I can honestly say I never suspected existed.”
“He’s drunk and probably on neurostimulators,” I shrug. “And also two of his crewmates died. And we accused him of killing them. It’s an unusual situation.”
“What did you do to make him so pissed at you, specifically?”
“I have absolutely no idea.” There are a few reasons, I suppose, that someone might be so randomly aggressive. He could’ve been quietly resentful at me over something for a long time, and it’s bubbling up now that he’s drunk and stressed. He could just be generally angry at the situation, and lashing out. Or – since he’d accused both Tal and myself with absolutely anything he could think of, and a whole lot of fervor – he could have realised he’s caught, and be trying desperately to blame anyone else.
“So, I think that we can agree that we have a main suspect,” Captain Sands says. “The questions are, how certain can we be, and if it is him, was he acting alone?”
“Of all the people who’d actually murder proponents of Lyson projects, he wasn’t high on my list,” I say. “I mean, obviously he’d disapprove of the projects, but – ”
“What makes you so sure this is about Lyson projects?” Captain Sands asks as we leave the room.
“Um… because it’s the only thing that the victims have in common?”
“That’s not necessarily indicative. It’s possible that somebody had a personal quibble with Renn, and the Friend was simply in the way – plenty of people do not value the lives of Friends, and it’s very easy to develop a grudge against one’s psychologist. Or, there’s the other thing that they both have in common.”
“What?”
“At the time of the murder, they were both translating Kinoshita Keiko’s extremely informative diary.”
“Is this conspiracy stuff again? Yeah, captain Kinoshita was part of our ship’s weird science experiment, fine. And this may or may not have something to do with whatever Antarctica was or wasn’t doing on Earth. But the randomly awoken crew aren’t part of her weird conspiracy or of Antarctica’s weird conspiracy. They were woken up randomly. The chances are absurd.”
“I was woken up randomly, and I was put here as an agent to prevent such sabotage. We don’t know the density of players seeded through the ship.”
“There were five thousand people put in chronostasis on this ship. It’s not a giant game of counterspy.”
“Denish admitted that he went to inspect the aft engines tonight. The engines that may have malfunctioned naturally, or may have been sabotaged. It’s possible that since we’re now seriously looking into this issue, he was attempting to hide evidence of – ”
“Captain, as the current resident psychologist, I have to ask. Does your family have a history of clinical paranoia?”
“Captain!” Celi rushes over.
“How goes the medical investigation?”
“Fine, I’ve got Lina in the scanner right now. I ran the bloodwork of the victims while I was scanning, and thought you might want to be informed right away – both of the victims had antidrenomate in their bloodstream.”
“Antidrenomate? You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“Fatal levels?”
“No. Enough to make someone numb and sleepy, perhaps.”
They were drugged, then. Antidrenomate is a general anaesthetic that’s relatively cheap, easy to manufacture, can be stored unrefrigerated, can be given orally or intravenously, and is extremely unlikely to provoke allergic reactions, but it does have the downside of being fatal when overdosed, like pre-Neocambrian anaesthetics. The ship definitely has a good supply of it; any decent medical facility does.
“Celi,” I say, “that medicine cabinet with the broken lock. Did it contain antidrenomate?”
“Yes. I’d have to confirm if any is missing, but we do store some in there.”
“It’ll be missing whether it was stolen or not, since it’s inside Renn and the Friend.” But this is vital information. It means that this attack was definitely premeditated, not an attack of opportunity, which practically clears Tinera from an active role – she had no way to know in advance that she’d be able to leave the ring. And if the cabinet was broken into to obtain the drugs, then that just about clears Lina and our living Friend, too, since they’re doctors and can just unlock the cabinets.
“Find out if it’s missing,” Sands says. “If it was taken from another cabinet, then that means that Lina or our Friend almost certainly did it. Again, we’re certain it’s antidrenomate?”
“Yes. It’s very easy to detect and very distinctive.”
“Alright. Thank you for the information.”
Celi leaves. Captain Sands frowns into the distance for a bit.
“Is it important, that it’s specifically antidrenomate?” I ask.
“Hard to say. It’s a very common anaesthetic; it could mean nothing. But, well… I know you don’t like to be informed of this sort of thing, Aspen, but I feel that it’s quite relevant for you to know that antidrenomate is the weapon of choice of our resident Angel of Death.”
That’s the second time someone’s used that phrase today. “What’s an Angel of Death?”
Captain Sands sighs. “An Angel of Death is a doctor who takes it upon themselves to – ah, speak of the angel.”
I follow his gaze to see the Friend approaching. (The living one. Obviously.) It clearly should still be in the medbay, leaning heavily on a set of crutches for balance and squinting against the light like somebody incredibly hung over.
“Friend,” Sands greets it with a wave. “How can we help you?”
“The question is how this Friend can help you, Captain.” It fixes its gaze solidly on Captain Sands. “It is here to confess to murder.”
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Derin Edala 
What the fuck
(you have very effectively shocked me. also, you’ve revealed just enough information about how Friends a work to make me consider it a feasible possibility that the Friend is lying, not to protect a friend, but because it believes the true culprit going uncaught better serves the ship/colony/society. of course, i definitely think it’s still more likely that it’s telling the truth, considering Captain Sands said that the murder drug was its weapon of choice.)
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I’m actually inclined to believe that this Friend is telling the truth and that it did actually commit these two murders. It’s said in the past that it has killed in pursuit of what it perceives to be the greater good, and Renn recently admitted to some personal beliefs which might put the crew or the colonists in danger.
That said, it is unusual that it would leave the crime scene and then come confess only after the bodies were discovered. If its intent had always been to confess, why wait this amount of time? If instead it had learnt who had committed the murders, and why, and found the cause justifiable, then it makes sense to confess now and exonerate everyone else.
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The issue is, an Angel of Death is usually called that because they perform what they believe are mercy killings. People who are suffering and have little chance of recovery. This matches well with the Friends philosophy of helping humanity however they can.
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I have a hard time believing it was the Friend. But i also really don’t know
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Yeah, I… is the friend lying because it thinks it being put in a makeshift brig or killed is better because it sees itself as less valuable than everyone else, and so it being taken in for the murders is better for the other people? Or is it the truth. I’m very curious as to what comes next.
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Naaah no way, this is a misdirection, the friend might think they did, but,,, Idk is there anything that causes paranoia? Could there have been a fit enough for them to kill each other, or themselves? Id need to go look, Im hazy. Maybe the friend is taking the blame bc of negligence in tracking drugs? Or maybe they’ve got fucked up sleep walking? Hmmmmmm
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i might just be crazy but i still kinda think there’s a stow away from the second crew and whoever that is murdered them👀
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YES I think so too. There is a member unaccounted for!
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🤝🤝🤝 Literally, this feels like the only possibility for me at this point! I had my suspicions early on that it was possible not ALL of the second crew were actually dead, but it had slipped my mind for so long only to be shot to the very front of my brain with these recent chapters.
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That. Is the first time the friend has used the word “I” to refer to itself. In fact, I think that’s true of both friends? *squinting* Something is Up here.
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was the page edited after this comment was made? I’ve seen the first friend refer to itself with I/me/my pronouns a couple times in the early chapters, but that might have just been a mistake. I don’t see it using “I” in this chapter at all
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Oh I love how Aspen’s first thought is “if it’s stolen it would clear Lina and the Friend,” and Sands’s first thought is “if it’s not stolen, it would prove them guilty” 😭💖
I like that Aspen’s initial confusion, “why would a Friend become a doctor”, has come back into play 👀
Probably not the Friend, not even with an accomplice. The friend would simply overdose them to death rather than the whole thing with the knife. I suppose it’s possible that the bedridden Friend gave someone instructions that they botched, but unlikely – no one on this ship gets randomly inept like that.
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Unless, of course, the Friend did it and then somebody else tried to make it look like a stabbing to cover for them (against their will). I’m assuming it would be hard to administer an anesthetic to a corpse, and that it would be hard for someone under the effects of an anesthetic to punch through a monitor. Though that wouldn’t explain why they weren’t _lethally_ dosed, so I’m probably barking at least somewhat up the wrong tree
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I believe that the Friend is giving a false confession in order to sacrifice itself for crew harmony. The Friend has always said that if it came down to needing someone to go, it would be the one to do that. If the Friend confesses, then that means no one will suspect each other anymore and the immediate crisis of the crew tearing itself apart will be gone. Everything else after that would be a matter of time and (hopefully) healing.
The issue is, we all know it couldn’t have been the Friend, and I highly doubt the crew will buy whatever explanation the Friend comes up with for how and why it committed the murders. (Well, maybe Sands would be a bit swayed due to bias, but I don’t think even he would be convinced when the Friend can barely stand straight at the moment.)
As I’ve said in a previous comment, I don’t think it was anyone on the current crew (from Aspen OR Sands’ groups) that did it. I think a member of the original crews (probably the second crew) has been awake and hiding in the Storage ring this whole time.
I already listed a bunch of evidence for this theory in my previous comment (on chapter 82) but I’d like to add a few things. As Sands said… both victims were translating Kinoshita’s notes. The notes which could reveal more info about the original crew. That would be an obvious motive for an original crew member to kill these two. And you may be wondering: How could this person move between rings? If the AI isn’t detecting them despite them clearly being alive and awake, then their chip must have been removed somehow (likely before Aspen was woken up, at the very least before CR1 was ejected). The answer to this conundrum is that they survive in the storage ring, know the cameras’ blind spots. That’s how they’ve avoided starving or being found so far. As for getting in and out of rings, they simply wait for a crew member to pass through. We already know multiple people passed through those rings around the time of the murder, so they could’ve slipped in and out then (thought the more horrifying thought is…when Aspen discovered the bodies…the murderer hadn’t left that ring yet and was watching from somewhere.)
As for getting around before the murders…they’d only need to move a little bit. To get the drugs and the knife. They could survive and hide just fine inside the storage ring before that. The crew has a rough schedule by now. It’s simple to observe which people move through at which times, and which tend to group together. It’s easy to overhear conversations. It’s easy to slip through a door someone else opened when that someone doesn’t feel the need to look back. Think about it. They have no reason to suspect any of the second crew’s members are alive. They’ve got no reason to constantly watch their backs and check over their shoulders. How often do YOU look behind yourself when you enter a room? How often do you check over your shoulder when you enter a grocery store or something, just to make sure the doors closed and no one followed you in? My guess is: Never.
…Also, honestly, the murderer being revealed as someone who’s been hiding and watching them this entire time is the most horrifying option out of anything. Given Derin’s writing, that in itself feels like enough evidence for me! 😂
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if thats true that might explain why the ship didn’t wake anyone up for so long after the old crew all “died”: there was someone left! The ship then only woke up aspen for the task it needed.
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Count on a Friend to make the one move that you would never expect a normal person to make in a murder mystery. Of course, if they’re in such bad physical condition that they can barely walk it’s hard to believe that they could have killed the other Friend as described.
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Maybe I’m grasping at straws here, but Friend said it was there to confess to murder… as in singular.
My theory is that Dr. Friend killed one of them… the one who killed the other. Not sure which yet, but initial speculation is Dr. Friend killed other Friend, who killed Renn.
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Hii I’ve been following this for a bit and. oh man. oh boy. These constant curveballs sure are something! I’ve been loving this series so far, excited to see future twists.
And to join in on the speculation, this Friend reveal feels like a misdirection. Like.. We never did learn how this Friend got ill, did we? it just randomly developed muscle problems and seems in no state to execute a murder. Plan, maybe, but not enact. The random illness is INCREDIBLY suspicious, and makes me wonder if it’s being like.. poisoned somehow.
As other commenters have pointed out, it could totally also be lying to save face for someone else. But who would it conspire with, and why? I find it very unlikely a Friend would be against Lyson projects.
I think the idea of a stowaway is pretty funny, but idk about the viability of that. I’d be baffled if someone was deliberately hiding in an empty ship, before even Aspen came around. Not to mention all the hazards on this damn ship. You’d wanna at least TRY to solve those instead of rubbing your mits together and cackling in the (at the time mold-infested) vents, waiting for someone to be revived. It’s a very unlikely long-con to play, and for what? Why even hide in the first place, sabotaging the crew only now, when you could take the vacancy back then to manage the ship to your plans.
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Yes, and: how did the hypothetical stowaway remove their chip out oh their forearm? Cutting stuff out of your very bones is incredibly painful and not easy.
Also: the AI was able to track Captain Reimann sans forearm and chip. It tells Aspen at the start that they’re the only crewmember. Unless the stowaway was a) hidden from the start and the AI truly doesn’t know about them or b) doesn’t count as crew on some technicality (does the category “passenger” exist?) they should’ve been on the list.
If they were a stowaway from the start, they’ve managed to stay hidden for 35 entire years and are now at least 55. Physically, they’re probably in worse shape than the age suggests and mentally? What does 35 years without human contact (except for murderizing Renn and the Friend) do to you? Nothing good, I wager.
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i feel like there may be consequences to aspen saying “hey don’t you think you might have paranoia?” and then not getting to have a proper chat about it with Sands before being interrupted by Yet More Murder Business.
heck, if Sands ever figures out Aspen wiped the prints, the first question will be, “who are you protecting and why?” And then, probably: “Why did you need the psychologist out of the way? What do you gain? You just became the psychologist, which gives you unique access to undermine me, both in personal conversations and in the eyes of the crew.” That’s literally what Keiko’s diary is about, the psychologist undermining the captain by pursuing their own agenda. I don’t think it’s crazy to think Sands would reach that conclusion.
actually, i’d go further–I don’t think it’s a crazy conclusion to reach full stop. Sands would have good reason to be wary of that. It’s a bit late to shut Aspen out, after he’s told them why he’s there (AND that he has a potentially murderable husband to blackmail him with), but whether that makes him more or less likely to flip out is up in the air.
Adin is totally right to be royally pissed at Sands, and I understand why he’d feel like Aspen had turned over to his side and abandoned the original crewmates, but don’t yell at them theyre just doing their job 😦
also, I guess Aspen was right; they had a good thing going with their smaller crew numbers, adding more people clearly caused problems. Sands proooobably doesn’t want to hear that, right now. I have to say, being on the same side of a murder mystery and knowing he has a husband makes me sympathise with him a bit more. He has a lot going on he has to juggle. I think he probably views the convicts as more suspicious because he assumes they’re less vetted than the non-convicts, but like. If there’s somebody sabotaging the ship, they don’t want the ship to get to the colony destination, which means they would have wanted to be as high up the priority lists as possible. Indeed, Aspen’s piecemeal attitude to crewbuilding may well have circumvented that, because they were looking for specialists with specific viability statistics; if they had looked for people to actually holistically crew the ship, they may well have chosen people whose values had been artificially inflated for “backup crew.” The convicts are the LAST people that would be chosen for backup crew, literally. Being the highest in the Convict group still puts you behind 20% of the ship, and puts you in a scrutinised group. (Although I’m sure Sands thinks that it still makes sense because you can pack more of them in. Perhaps he’s even big braining it and thinks that if they chose a Tarandran, knowing their cultural prejudice against convicts, he would focus on the convicts, and therefore surmises that that’s what they wanted him to– actually, yknow what, that’s too much thinking).
Personal theory: it’s not the Friend, but they HAVE to be covering for somebody. That means there’s a good reason to cover for them from the Friend’s perspective, and that it’s probably old crew, since it just had more *time* to understand why they killed two people.
ergo, it’s not a stowaway or something (and if it had been, then to metagame a little, I think we’d have heard somebody complain of ghosts or the like to clue us in on it. No previous evidence + a PUF covering for somebody = gotta be somebody we know).
I’m having difficulty assigning the style of murder (overdose plus knife) to any particular crewmember we know well, so I’m tempted to say it has to be new crew, but I’m also aware that I want to think that, and that’s about as good a reason as Sands’ “i just don’t like convicts” reason for suspecting the old crew. so idk. My tentative guess is on multiple murderers.
Also, the Friend will 100% have juiced itself so it comes up positive for neurostims. If it was protecting Adin, that would be what it would do, and if it was protecting somebody else, it could have dosed Adin as well to make it *seem* like it was protecting Adin by taking the fall.
Or perhaps it actually was the murderer and is double bluffing Sands and Aspen.
aaaaa too much thinking again. That’s too many layers of 11-dimensional chess, now my head hurts. But the theorycrafting is so much fun.
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Huh. I’m actually inclined to completely believe Dr Friend is being truthful here and was the one who did it – some fucking how – but my question now becomes… fucking why?
Also how? Because he’s so fucked up right now he couldn’t have stabbed the other Friend.
… okay I am less inclined to believe him completely as I thought I was. What is going on?
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Holy shit! But is the Friend telling the truth, though…
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Ooh, so the brennan honorific is abbreviated “Mt” — what does that stand for?
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friend. are you taking one for the team. I understand not wanting any of your crewmates to get the death penalty (and the selflessness that’s central to public universal friends’ philosophy) but come on now
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