Katherine Lykos

The Man Who Could Not Be Unwritten

Chapter 1

The dashboard inside Mav’s vehicle chimed, drawing his attention to the flashing dust rating index: Stew. He lowered the floater onto a designated ‘X’ atop Police Headquarters. The original House City Cops building still stood beneath, slowly crumbling from centuries of buffeting dust winds. Why nobody had shown it the mercy of demolition was beyond him.

He stepped out, not bothering to watch his vehicle get shuffled down into a vacant spot among the stack. A rotate of the dial at his forearm to one notch below maximum tightened the cloak, fastening the hood over his hair and ears and projecting a transparent film over his face. 

The elevator doors slid shut and the whirring air filters started up. He loosened the cloak and removed the hood. Once the nub scanned him and gave clearance, he was able to select the floor. 

The lift clunked and rattled the whole way down, its descent noisier than usual from the added atmospheric grit. No matter what the latest promise, the dust couldn’t be kept out, not completely. As long as the lift got him to where he needed to be and out again he didn’t really care. 

The doors groaned apart, and he was met by the usual crowded corridor and accompanying racket. He sidestepped a trolley-load of offline Cutthroats being hurried into the lift, bound for Part Reclamation. 

‘How’s handsome?’ 

He turned to a woman with burgundy lips and cobalt hair. She flashed a smile with teeth sharpened to points. Mav was reminded of a blue iguana — mostly because of the colouring, but also the spines. Not that spines were teeth, but, hey, you couldn’t help what the mind made up. You could help what you revealed to people though. 

‘Terri the radiant bouquet, what’s happening?’ 

She grinned up at him while pirouetting a single finger across his chest. ‘Wanna meet up later?’

‘Umm,’ Every part of him said no. Well not every part. There was that sweaty region that jumped up way too easily with yesss. ‘Barry’s asked me to come in early for a brief on a new investigation, which I’m sure will keep me busy. Maybe some other time.’ 

‘First case huh? How sad for me.’ Her pout gave way when one of the Cutthroats that was being strapped to a trolley snapped upright, titanium bonds breaking apart before they were fully secured. Its reboot completed in less than a second. It spring-boarded free with a razor hand attachment slicing the air. The blade made contact, lacerating the jugular of a new recruit. 

Blood spurted in an arc as the body hit the floor. A bunch of cops flew into action. Terri pushed Mav aside as she thumbed the taser from her belt and aimed at the Cutthroat’s chest. She fired, just as the mechanoid was about to turn her scalp into a flapping blue cap. 

An electric charge zapped over the metallic Cutthroat. Sparks popped and fizzed across its hull. It seized up and locked rigid, then crashed to the floor. 

No one would be able to touch it for some time, not until the dregs of electric charge diffused from its core. Sure, there were insulated gloves for that sort of thing, but only an idiot would risk it. Better to wait, then load it onto a trolley and piss it off to Cutthroat Part Reclamation down at Basement 10. 

A team of knee-high bot Cleanaways came through to tape off the area and take away the body of the latest cop casualty. 

Terri was barking at no one in particular, ‘This is why we double and triple check their CPUs!’ She zeroed in on one cop. ‘Don’t give me that look, Delary, I know you were in charge of the shutdowns here.’

Delary had one hand cupped around her own throat and the other pressed over her open mouth. 

Mav slunk away, then power-walked to the end of the corridor to put as much distance as he could between himself and the sudden retching sounds of vomit.  

Inside his office, which was barely longer than a four-man urinal, Mav studied the case file left for him on the desk. It didn’t take him long to read the particulars. Strange couldn’t begin to describe the crime. Thinking like a perpetrator was normally his specialty, but as he reread the almost empty file in his hand, he couldn’t come up with a single good reason why anyone would want to steal a thousand-year-old corpse.

He pinched the bookmarked clip from the file and flicked it at the wall. The holo activated. 

It showed footage of the victim, Carmen DeCont, in her mid-thirties, seated at a small writing desk. She flipped open a relic computer of the past — a laptop — and began to type.  Her fingers sprinted over the keys while her eyes remained fixed somewhere beyond the screen, pumping out the text as if in rhythm to the beating of her heart. Blood in the veins, words on the page. 

Before long, a chilling story took shape, and Mav had the uneasy suspicion it wasn’t fiction.

Buried Alive

By: Carmen DeCont

Nate followed me as I moved around the suspended casket. I caught the broad man opposite watching me. A chill breeze cut through the fabric of my black dress and snaked around my legs. 

Nate and I were two of only a handful of people to attend the reclusive woman’s funeral. She had died suddenly from a stroke after a two-year battle with dementia. We all stood on a small rise of land, arranged in a semi-circle.

An unmistakable sound shattered the silence. It came from the coffin, a double rap on the wood: knock, knock. 

Nate turned to me, wide-eyed. He leaned over to whisper into my ear, his breath colder than the air around us. ‘At the open viewing… I think… she moved.’

‘What?’

‘Just a single flutter of the eyes.’ 

I had missed the open casket viewing, choosing to sit it out by pretending to be in need of the bathroom. By the time I returned, the coffin was closed, the ceremony over. 

None of the other guests seemed to have noticed anything amiss.

Nate continued, ‘The funeral people got real mad when I suggested that she might not actually be dead. They told me it was just twitches, happens to dead people, and then they slammed the coffin shut.’

My hand flew to my mouth. ‘What if…? We have to stop them burying her!’

The bear of a man came to stand near us, too close to be coincidence. It was unclear what his role was. He wasn’t the undertaker, and he wasn’t a guest. 

His huge arms folded across his chest as he barred our view of the burial site. ‘The funeral has concluded.’ 

‘What are you, security?’ Nate asked. ‘Weird thing to have at a—’

The man cut him off with a look. 

Nate squeaked out an apology before walking quickly away, leaving me without so much as a backward glance. Typical Nate. I stopped expecting more from him a long time ago.

I glimpsed the coffin as it lowered fully into the ground. Behind it, spindle-branched poplars waved as if in farewell, witnesses that would outlast us all.   

My face heated. I couldn’t let them do it; I wouldn’t. The thought of what might be happening turned my stomach. There was no worse fate than being buried alive. 

I took off, sidestepping the large man and sprinting toward the coffin. 

But he was quicker, and I felt a tug at my shoulder. 

I jerked my body away and heard the fabric tear. The poplars loomed. I spotted a gap between the trunks. I slid through, my dress billowing, my legs muddying. 

His thick arm reached in but missed me. 

I was almost at the open grave. The coffin had been lowered to the bottom. I ran as fast as I could, but before I reached the spot, the bear-man stepped in front of me. 

The man’s open arms blocked my way. He edged closer.

My heart skidded. ‘Please, I just want to check that the woman in the coffin is actually dead because my husband Nate—’

‘Don’t concern yourself in matters that aren’t yours to be concerned with.’ 

‘I can’t stand by while someone’s buried alive!’ 

I looked over his shoulder, pretending to speak to a person that wasn’t there. 

‘Nate!’ 

It drew his eye, as I intended. Knowing this was my only chance, I darted forward, trying to slip past his overbearing frame, but again he was too fast. 

An arm swung across my gut, winding me. I was breathless but I couldn’t double over; he had me squeezed against him in a bear hug. I struggled for air. I tried batting him away, but it only made his grip tighten. I could hardly breathe. 

‘Please, you’re hurting me.’ I gasped.

Pressed up against him I felt a hard line form against my hip. 

I gulped. ‘I’ll leave now. I promise.’ 

His reply came as a grunt. He slowly placed me back on my feet. 

I started walking away, then spun and darted to the grave. His muscled body tracked me but I managed to slip past. 

I leaped into the open pit, landing hard on the smooth polished wood. Dirt flicked into my face as I turned to peer out. 

The man’s face loomed above, a dark smudge outlined against the grey sky. He shuffled around the edge of the grave. There was a headstone beside him. The words caught me off guard: In Loving Memory, Carmen DeCont. 

The name — that was my name. 

What? How? 

Everything stilled. I stared at the coffin below my feet. It couldn’t be mine. 

My knees buckled, my hands slid over the glass-like surface of thick mahogany which held the answers. My nails scraped and clawed at the edges, prying, lifting. 

The wood creaked, groaning timber not made for reopening. Goosebumps coated my skin as I threw up the hinged lid. 

Inside was plush fabric, pink and fresh. Bare. No flesh and bone. No answers. Just emptiness. 

The clip ended with Carmen saving her story. 

Buried Alive > Narratives > Dreams. 

With his finger and thumb, he pinched the holo icon which retracted it to a tenth of its size. When he let it go, it automatically returned to the case file. There was an attached PrivNote: 

Assuming you’ve seen the news headline about this. Let me know your thoughts once you’ve watched the bookmarked clip. Barry.

He wasn’t going to reveal to Barry the real reason he hadn’t seen any news headlines, being too trigger happy with last night’s sleep aerosol. Before he spoke to Barry or caught up on dramatised news, he wanted to hear Dr Eve Portland’s recount of her discovery that Carmen DeCont’s remains were missing. 

He made the call.   

Dr Portland answered on the first ring. ‘Detective…’ she squinted to her right, ‘Mavros Gimley is it?’

‘Mav will do.’ Her details and research particulars were on his upper right wall-screen. ‘I’m investigating—’

‘Yes, I was told a detective would be in contact.’ 

It was fine by him to go along with anyone who had a derision to niceties and time-wasting. ‘Ok then, let’s dive straight in shall we?’ 

Her face remained blank.

Mav tried for a smile and still got no reaction. He cleared his throat wishing it were a reset button. ‘So, give me the run down, you’re conducting research for a behavioural science paper?’

‘That’s right. I’m scanning and collating data of tube-grown brains and skulls, comparing posterior cingulate cortex sections with bone and skull analysis, to discern whether physiology plays a role in predictive forecasting, rather than, or as well as, adaptions to environment.’

‘So the old nature-vs-nurture thing right?’

She pursed her lips. ‘In a nutshell.’ 

‘You’re studying the regrown brains and skulls of clairvoyants?’  

‘Correct.’ Frown lines appeared. ‘Look, can we cut to the chase, what do you want from me?’

He might have to work a little harder on the flattery if he was going to get Dr Portland to be more willing to share anything other than the wall she had double-bricked herself in. ‘Sounds like interesting research, when you’re done, send it to me, I’d love to read it.’ 

Her lips went from flatline to non-flatline. It wasn’t a smile, but it wasn’t a frown either — he would have to live with that. 

‘If I finish, now that I’ve had this major setback.’

He was glad she raised the issue, which was the reason for the call. He’d already read the cemetery curator’s short statement from the file stating that he had been as stunned as everyone else to find Carmen DeCont’s remains missing. 

‘Yes, tell me about that. You have a personal interest in people described as clairvoyants?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘My interest lies in the physiology of individuals who are known as having extrasensory perception, otherwise known as clairvoyance, yes.’

‘And how do you choose your research subjects?’

‘Proof and merit.’ 

‘So some people have more than others?’

She huffed. ‘Detective. To put it simply: there are clairvoyants, and then there is Carmen DeCont.’ She eyed him with a side tilt of her head, a question.

‘I’ve heard of her. Please go on.’

Dr Portland’s gaze hovered below the screen, fixed on a single point that Mav suspected was the nub system — the ever-observing government ‘eye’. 

With a slight jolt, her focus snapped back into place. She blew out a slow breath, then said, ‘Look, I don’t know what you want me to tell you that I haven’t already said in my statement. I’m sorry to be blunt, but I have a lot of work to get to, especially since I now need to replace a major gap in my research.’

Mav had read her statement. It said that she had received the necessary clearances to perform the scans on Carmen’s remains, but when she tried to do just that, the results came up blank. 

‘Before you go, doctor, can you tell me, have there been others who’ve tried to scan Carmen DeCont’s remains or attempted to gain samples to regrow her tissue?’

‘I have no idea, you’re the investigator.’ 

The call ended. 

He said to the now blank wall, ‘Point taken.’ 

Mav wouldn’t read too far into her sudden fixation with the nub. It wasn’t unusual for people to be extra careful with what they said around it. He hoped he was correct in this. If not, it opened up a whole can of questions and alarms that would only lead him into a conspiracy warren. Better to believe Dr Portland was just being paranoid. 

A phone icon flashed on the wall, signifying a call from the superintendent. With his finger, he made a tick sign over the green pick-up and answered with, ‘Yo, Barry G.’ 

By way of reply, the moustached man on the wall in front of him asked, ‘Anything?’ 

‘Not yet.’ How much did the man think he could achieve in a single morning? 

‘What do you think, are we dealing with a straight-up, old-school grave-robber, or what?’

‘Too early to know. The curator clearly states that there has been no disturbance to the site.’ He shrugged. ‘I need more time.’ Obviously.

‘Hmm. You saw the bookmarked piece I sent you?’

‘Yeah, seems the victim predicted her own crime.’

‘Perhaps.’ Barry shifted in his seat like he had a sudden prickle in his arse.

Mav had the feeling that Barry knew more than he was letting on. 

‘If it’s not a grave-robber, the next finger points to the film-makers responsible for her doco. The Obs are the only ones who have gone Back, so it’s possible they may have established a connection with her. I’m about to start interviewing them.’

‘Right,’ Barry scratched his chin. ‘Speaking of Obs, I got word that Dez isn’t doing well.’

Mav tensed. ‘And?’

‘He’s been asking for you.’ They stared at each other for a beat before the superintendent continued, ‘Up to you if you want to go.’  

It wasn’t a great shock, Mav had been half expecting it, having received word 18 months ago that Dez was fighting the last dregs of his longevity inoculation. There were no set guarantees on how many years the treatment extended life. For some, it enabled them to push to half a millennium, while others, like Dez, were wrung out a little over the two-century mark.

Getting clearance to go see Dez was odd. Normally the inmates’ requests were ignored, but for some reason Barry passed on the messages. Maybe the superintendent felt it was the right thing to do. It was that exact reason Mav decided to make his way down the sunken prison shaft (otherwise known as the ‘throat’) to pay Dez a final visit. 

Dez had been, like the majority of the population, an academic. And not just any academic. He was an Ob, a position held in the highest regard. Obs were weavers of a person’s life, compressing a lifetime of noteworthy achievement into a single doco. It took years of dedication and hard work to forge a story that was non-frilled, blunt and, at the same time, captivating.

Dez wasn’t in one of the usual cell alcoves. He’d been given the mercy of a four-walled cell with dimmed lighting to help him find the darkness beyond, when ready. 

Mav tightened the multi-ocular eyepiece as he stepped closer to the single stretcher bed which adjusted automatically to allow vision in the low light.

Dez stirred. His once muscular frame was now skin that looked like a wet rag strung over bone. His closed eyelids were wrinkled clamshells facing the ceiling. One mushroom remained, emerging from the side of his warped nose, its stem bowed toward the centre of his face. Even from where Mav stood, he could see the break-down of the gills — a sure sign that death knocked. From the medical diagram at the foot of his bed, Dez had five Angel of Death fungi sprouting from various parts of his body. It was well-known that once the fruiting stage began, the end was near. 

Dez’s breath rattled. 

Mav came closer, keeping his hood up and the multi-oculars set to Clarity HD. 

Dez was probably beyond speaking, so Mav said, ‘I’m here for you.’ 

And he meant it, he wouldn’t have come otherwise. The man before him was good, he was a good man who had done a bad thing, not the other way around. He knew plenty of people, like Carne, who were bad but did good things… well, not so much good things, but things that were considered ‘good’, like tracking down people like Dez, who were considered ‘bad’. 

As an Ob, Dez specialised in producing biographies of historically significant figures within the field of macro-biology. Somewhere along the way, he fell in love with the past and convinced himself it was worth breaking the law to remain there. He was caught, hauled back and sent here to live out his remaining days as a total and utter fuck-up.

Another rattle. This time Mav was sure he heard his name on that breath. He came closer and placed a hand on a bony shoulder. 

‘I’m still here.’ 

Dez seemed to settle back into himself, at least, the rattling turning more into of a rasp. Mav figured he should keep talking, so gave the man a rundown on his latest investigation, because it wasn’t like Dez was going to spill the beans of confidentiality. 

‘Pick-me…’

Mav startled. ‘You know I can’t pick you up,’ he left out the words, your bones are way too brittle man. 

‘… back,’ Dez’s voice came out as a sudden loud croak. 

Mav’s head emptied of blood as the word sunk in.

‘Back? You can’t go Back. I’m sorry.’ He paused when those clam shells cracked open and onyx pearls latched onto him. Dez’s pupils dilated, then seeped into his hazel irises. Blackness stared Mav down, and in that moment, he swore he glimpsed the dying man’s soul. 

A second later, the look was gone. 

With a last rattle, Dez’s eyes returned to the ceiling. 

Soulless. 

Empty. 

Mav threw off his cloak as he stepped inside his singles unit — pod G576 section, stack #539275, and stretched his neck muscles as he made his way to the horseshoe sitting area. 

Back. What the fuck was Dez thinking? Pick me up. Take me Back. How could he ask such an impossible thing? And in front of a nub. Take me Back. Even if Mav fully understood the process of stepping into the past, even if it were up to him to grant such approval (which it absolutely wasn’t), why would Dez want to go back? He was a man of science. What difference would it make where he ended up, in the past, or here? Dust is dust, now or then.  

Mav melted down onto the padded floor and offloaded the stack of research folders he’d brought with him from work. They flashed to life beside his thigh. With a finger, he sifted through Carmen DeCont’s narratives, choosing another piece under Dreams, ranked second by popularity. He flicked it up to play on the circular walls.

Chapter 2

Brain Transfer

By: Carmen DeCont

I was doing my usual protection spell, (not really a spell, I’m no witch) sending out my tendrils of love through the darkness, wrapping my family up in an invisible barrier of positive thoughts. I imagined strong, radiating euphoric beams, that kept them safe, gave them good fortune, good health, harmony, happiness. 

When I fell back to sleep, I was stepping along a dark, quiet corridor, past closed doors… searching… for what, I was uncertain. 

I floated to an open circular room. Cushioned seats surrounded the perimeter. I slid into one and when I reclined, the back of my head pressed onto something velvety. 

It was another human, with jet-black, scruffy hair that was soft like lambs’ wool. I thought it funny that our heads touched back-to-back. He was silent, like our surrounds, so I kept quiet too, turned back around and snuggled into his pillowy hair. 

I wasn’t frightened by the next part, so somehow, I must have expected it. A pressure began at the nape of my neck. It felt like two hands, fingers spread, thumbs pressing into the joints where the spine meets the skull. 

I waited patiently for it to finish. It was a transfer, although I don’t know how I knew that. Files of retrieved information were being extracted from me. It didn’t hurt, it wasn’t scary, it was a simple matter of patience. 

When the pressure subsided, I turned, expecting to see the mysterious face of the mysterious person, their fingers pulling away from my head, but all I saw were his black locks. It made me realise he hadn’t moved, that somehow the pressure had been created through space with no physical contact. 

The only logical conclusion I could make was this: the man was not a human, but an alien made to look like one. Still, I did not panic, I wasn’t shocked or frightened, I internally shrugged.

I don’t know what the download contained (what info the alien-dressed-up-as-a-human had retrieved from me), but I had the feeling it was nothing negative. It was probably similar to studying an animal, or plant, or any other life-form. There were no judgements, just the collection of info… just the transfer of data.

Mav ran a hand through the messy black hair he had been named for. If only it were possible to download data from a person’s mind. As far as he knew, human tissue could be tube-grown, people could be cloned and babies could be lab-created, but he’d never heard of the ability to collect the parts of us that make us ‘us’ — memories. 

Shit, if it were possible to obtain a decoded rendering of a person’s memories, he’d probably be out of a job. 

He toggled the paused clip, freezing the image at the moment Carmen rose from the desk, her eyes shooting forward for a split millisecond before turning. He closed the door to the horseshoe sitting area, letting the engulfing darkness provide more ‘intimacy’. It was just the two of them now, apart from the invisible Obs producing the film. He adjusted her holo, positioning it exactly where he thought the top of her head would reach if she were really here — just below his nose, so that if he leaned forward, his lips would brush her forehead. 

He studied the shape of her lips, her neck, her ears, her hair. His hands came up and raked through her image, vanishing into her skull. He imagined drawing her memories into his mouth, saliva pooling as he tasted her neurons mixed with fluid. A vampire extracting knowledge. 

Only one of the Obs credited on Carmen DeCont’s doco was still alive. No longer an Ob, he was now Dean of Film at University Alba, a prestigious title to add to the already prestigious role of Doco Director. 

Mav gave him a call.

A short squinting man answered. ‘Yes?’

‘Karl, my name’s Detective Mav Gimley and I’ve been tasked with investigating—’   

‘Dean Karl.’

Mav paused, sizing up the half-bent figure who snorted thunder at him from the wall-screen. Oh, this conversation was going to be a blast. He zoomed in on the man’s face. He was old, even by their standards — Mav could tell. It was all in the eyes, the edges in particular. Windows with peeling frames. The soul of Karl wrinkled and quaked, old bones pressed by a storm. 

‘I’m investigating the disappearance of Carmen DeCont’s remains.’

‘Marv is it?’

‘Detective Mav.’ 

The older man waved a dismissive hand, ‘Yes, I’ve heard about that, what’s it got to do with me?’

These initial reactions would forever remain a fascination of Mav’s. He could write his own dissertation gained from dissecting past interrogation footage on knee-jerks and what they revealed about a person. It didn’t just put a spotlight on their insecurities, weaknesses, fear, but their lack of emotional intelligence. Whether they were a potential suspect, alibi or informer — when it came to interaction, the more switched-on humans always thought before they spoke. The smart ones waited and listened, rather than blurted out rudimentary thoughts. 

‘Tell me about going Back, to see her.’

Dean Karl threw spindly arms in the air. ‘What do you want to know? I’m not about to recite five hours of her life’s doco for you. It took a long time to compile that footage. Go and watch it if you want to know about the real her.’

Mav resisted the urge to fold his arms across his chest; he wouldn’t give the little snot the satisfaction that a patronising elitist would derive from the action. ‘I’m yet to watch the whole thing, I was hoping you’d give me a trailer version.’

The Dean huffed. ‘I fail to see why I should cater to your laziness, but very well. Carmen DeCont only started to receive recognition as a clairvoyant hundreds of years after her death. There were others before and after her who made predictions that came true, but they either didn’t write them down or weren’t as gifted as she was. Her fictional novel, set in the future, was the first to find its credit, having not only predicted technologies, but the names of notable scientists… or at least very similar sounding names — too similar to be coincidental. She seemed to have had an obsession with the future, and we are blessed with the added bonus that she was, for lack of a better term, a natural story-teller. Her short stories, dreams, memoirs and poetry all show glimpses of her predicting talents, but they don’t show the reality of her personal life. But I won’t go into that, you will have to watch the doco if you want to know more.’

‘What do you mean similar sounding names? Were her predictions not straight-up clear-cut?’ 

‘As clear-cut as any clairvoyant can be. The messages are written between the lines.’

‘Sounds like you have to be a bit… artistic to pull out these so-called messages.’ 

The Dean bit, hard and sharp on Mav’s bait. Mav wouldn’t reveal his personal opinions about the abilities of so-called clairvoyants. But if he were being truthful, he would admit that he thought it was all a load of shit, that people found patterns where there weren’t any, because they craved to find whatever it was they sought. 

‘What exactly are you insinuating?’

Mav shrugged, hiding his smirk at every roll of steam the man snorted his way. He shifted his angle. ‘So why’d you switch jobs?’ 

The Dean squinted. ‘Being an Ob is tiring to say the least. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve given you the trailer version as requested, I must get back to my schedule.’

Mav was already searching on the split wall-screen when the call ended. It didn’t take him long to find the Dean’s position particulars such as salary, and more importantly, all of the hours he put in overtime. Mav grinned at the evidence in front of him that contradicted the Dean’s claim. The man didn’t quit being an Ob because of tiredness, the man actually had no life beyond work (something he himself could relate to). 

So, there was another reason the bullshitting Dean had switched jobs, and it wasn’t lack of interest in the historical figures he researched. It hadn’t taken too much convincing to get the man to talk about Carmen. If anything, he had seemed almost smitten with being able to observe her… One might even say The Dean was obsessed with the clairvoyant. 

Mav checked the Dean’s socials page which brought up hundreds of thumbnail posts. Most were of him sitting at a desk speaking, or lecturing a group of academics. Some showed him receiving a trophy or certificate. Mav filtered a search for ‘Carmen’, and three posts sprang to the top. The first was of Karl’s name on the Obs honorary list in the doco credits. The second was of him and the other Ob involved in the doco filming, a woman named Perla Kiter who Mav knew was deceased. The third was of the Dean holding up a small jar. Creepier than the way the man looked with a smile plastered on his face was the description: Best spend of my life — Verified — Mandibular second molar of Carmen DeCont.

Mav shuddered. 

Was Karl’s obsession with Carmen the reason for the lie? He needed to find out, build a case against the man he now placed on the adjoining wall under Suspect 1.