Through Glass Darkly Episode 1 by Peter Knyte Page A

would confirm the deed was performed by something from the Expanse.
    Even from a few metres away the signature was there. Several parts of the body were significantly colder than they should’ve been, clearly visible under the mid-infrared, while at the same time a lens combination that allowed me to see to the edge of the near ultra-violet showed that all visible trace of electrical energy were also gone. Few people realised how long it took the individual cells in a human body to actually stop functioning, and stop creating the miniscule electro-magnetic field that gave still living flesh, under the right lenses, a unique glow that distinguished it from that which was truly dead.
    We were a way off the main road in an old industrial area of Long Island near to the new airport, so there were very few people around beyond the substantial police presence.
    As soon as I confirmed my suspicions, I explained what I could see to Jenkins and Platt who had arrived on scene only a few minutes after the search team I’d been working with.
    He hid it better than most, but I could tell Jenkins was as affected as everyone else by the grisly scene, so when I suggested it would be worth checking the wider area he simply nodded and left me to it.
    This was only the second day that I’d been travelling with a Police Sergeant and two of his Patrol Officers, and we hadn’t really started to relax around one another yet, but they clearly knew the local area incredibly well, so after explaining what I wanted to do, I made a point of asking them where they thought it would be good to start. As Riley, the Sergeant, called the two Patrol Officers, Blake and Shelby over to join us, he explained the layout of the surrounding streets, and then suggested we work our way down the alley and toward the right into a nest of other back streets where it would be easiest for someone covered in blood to travel without being seen.
    Riley had tried the lensing scope I’d created and seemed to have quite a good eye for it, but it was Blake, the most junior officer, who seemed to be left using it most of the time.
    I wasn’t expecting to find a great deal, but this was a fairly unique situation, so I set the auto-sequencer on my lensing rig to automatically rotate through the fifty or so lens combinations that I thought most likely to show something. It would take just over a second to work through them all, so I could just keep the rig running as we moved allowing me to spot anything that was there.
    It was an old industrial area, and after we took the right that Riley had mentioned the alley twisted and split several times, each section broken up by numerous loading bays and stages, as well as short side alleys that years previous would probably have allowed several trucks to be loaded or unloaded at the same time without blocking the main thoroughfare.
    I was just peering down one of these dead end alleyways when I heard Blake suddenly stop behind me in the main alleyway. The briefest of glances told me he’d seen something that had surprised him.
    I started to move back over to him, unclasping my sidearm as I went. But his sergeant had picked up on it as well.
    ‘What is it Blake?’ He asked looking down the alley in the same direction as his officer.
    A moment later and I was back in the main alley in time to see the edge of something well over human height that glowed in the mid infrared disappear into a side alley just twenty yards from where we were.
    We were after it in a heartbeat, and as we got to the corner I could see the creature, a full grown Lamphrey, attempting to flee by scaling the sides of a covered docking bay in order to get to the warehouse roof.
    I’d been allowed to carry my Webley revolver, but only because I’d offered load it with some of the enhanced Buckingham bullets that started to burn with an incandescent light and heat once they hit. These only had two thirds the stopping power of normal bullets, but I’d suggested the