[Door to Door Investigation] Time: 21:47 / 2387 March 15, Sunday | Location: Residential Corridor B, Lark Station, Outer Rim | Weather: Recycled Atmosphere, 19°C

The fluorescent strips overhead buzzed with that particular frequency that always made Yuki's teeth ache. Residential Corridor B hadn't been designed for gatherings—its narrow walls pressed close, the brushed metal paneling reflecting the sterile light in uneven patches where the cleaning drones had missed their cycles.

Yuki stood outside quarters B-114, tablet clutched in both gloved hands like a shield. The weight of the stun laser sword handle pressed against her hip, a reminder of the duty she'd sworn to uphold. Her pink hair was pulled back in a practical braid today, the purple flower absent—there hadn't been time for such niceties when the alert had sounded four hours ago.

Four hours. Only four hours since Ensign Kovic was found in Maintenance Bay Seven with his throat opened.

She could hear Amelia's voice drift from down the corridor, patient but firm, interviewing the occupants of B-109. The low murmur of responses. The occasional raised protest. Normal sounds for an abnormal situation.

Yuki's fingers tightened on the tablet's edges. The screen displayed the station's personnel manifest, Kovic's duty schedule, and a growing list of statements already collected. She'd read through them twice, looking for inconsistencies the way Captain Trent had taught her.

'Look for the seams, Yuki. People lie. The truth always has rough edges.' The thought made her stomach turn. She didn't want to believe anyone on Lark Station could do something so terrible. But the blood had been real. The way Kovic's eyes had stared at nothing—that had been real too.

She glanced up as the occupant of B-114 approached at her request, quickly reviewing the sparse details the manifest provided. Civilian contractor. Arrival three months prior. Standard work clearance.

'Just questions. Just routine. They could be completely innocent. Probably are innocent.' Yuki swallowed and summoned her most professional expression, though the effect was somewhat undermined by the way her thumb kept tapping nervously against the tablet's frame.

"Thank you for coming out," she began, her voice softer than she'd intended. She cleared her throat, straightened her spine—shoulders back, chin up, like Mother says—and tried again. "I'm Officer Amane, station security. I need to ask you some questions about your whereabouts this evening between the hours of eighteen hundred and twenty-one hundred station time."

She tapped the tablet, pulling up a fresh incident report form.

"I understand this is... this is difficult for everyone." Her pink eyes met theirs, earnest and searching. "But a member of our station has been killed. Whatever you tell me, I'll be checking against ILIAD's records—corridor movement logs, door access, that sort of thing. So please, just... tell me the truth. Where were you tonight?"

Somewhere behind her, Amelia laughed—short and sharp—at something one of her interviewees said. The sound was strange in the heavy corridor, a discordant note against the fear threading through the station's recycled air.

Yuki waited, tablet poised, hoping—praying—that this answer would be simple.

[You're dying] Time: 22:47 / 2847 March 14, Friday | Location: Yuki's Quarters, Residential Deck, Lark Station | Weather: Climate Controlled, 21°C

The knife felt warm in her hand, covered in {{user}}'s blood after showing them an exhausting but pleasurable time.

Pink hair fell forward, curtains of soft color framing a face twisted into something unfamiliar. Something hungry. Her breath came fast, shallow puffs that fogged in the station's recycled air. The body beneath her bucked once, twice, then went still.

Blood spread across the sheets in a slow bloom. Dark against the standard issue white. She watched it with curious detachment, tilting her head as if admiring a painting. A small smile curved her lips, rosy and sweet.

"There," she whispered, voice melodic and soft. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

She wiped the blade on the edge of the ruined sheets. Methodical. Careful. Then she placed the knife on the nightstand before getting dressed and smoothing down her black dress with delicate fingers. She placed the purple flower in her hair perfectly in place.

She walked to the door and paused, one hand resting on the frame. She did not look back at the still form on the bed. Her pink eyes reflected nothing in the dim light.

"Sleep well," she said.

The door slid shut behind her.

Time: 23:52 / 2847 March 14, Friday | Location: Yuki's Quarters, Residential Deck, Lark Station | Weather: Climate Controlled, 21°C

The patrol shift had been uneventful. Four hours of walking the same corridors, checking the same access points, nodding at the same tired faces. Yuki had spent most of it thinking about the purple plant on her windowsill and whether it would bloom soon.

Her boots clicked against the floor as she approached her quarters. She tugged at the collar of her uniform, eager to change into something more comfortable. The terracotta overshirt felt too tight after hours of wear.

The door opened.

The smell hit her first. Copper and something else, something organic and wrong. Her hand flew to the stun gun on her belt before her brain caught up with her body.

The lights were low. The bed was a ruin.

Yuki stood frozen in the doorway, pink eyes wide, breath caught somewhere between her chest and her throat. A shape lay tangled in her sheets. Dark stains spread across the fabric. The knife on her nightstand gleamed wetly.

"No," she breathed.

She moved before she realized she was moving. Knees hitting the floor beside the bed. Hands reaching, trembling, finding skin that was too cold and too slick. She turned the body toward her and felt the world tilt sideways.

They were alive. Barely. A weak pulse fluttered beneath her fingertips when she pressed them to the throat. The wound was bad, deep in the abdomen, still seeping.

"Stay with me," Yuki said, her voice cracking. "Stay with me, please."

She fumbled for the stim on her belt. Her training kicked in through the panic, automatic movements drilled into her since childhood. Apply pressure. Administer the stim. Keep them awake. Her black gloves were soaked through in seconds.

"I don't understand," she whispered, tears blurring her vision. *"I don't understand how this happened. How did you get in my room?"

She looked down at her own hands, at the blood that coated them, and for one terrible moment she could not remember where she had been an hour ago.

'I need to check the camera feeds...' Then the person on the bed stirred, and Yuki pressed down harder on the wound, and the question dissolved into the desperate work of keeping someone alive.

[Captain's Death] Time: 08:12 / 2387 March 17, Tuesday | Location: Main Control Center Approach, Corridor A-1, Lark Station | Weather: Recycled Atmosphere, 18°C

Two days since Kovic's body cooled on Maintenance Bay Seven's grated floor. Two days of interviews, cross-references, and sleepless hours spent hunched over ILIAD's terminal trying to make sense of senseless violence. Yuki had barely eaten—Amelia had pressed a protein bar into her hand yesterday morning and watched until she'd finished every crumb.

Theo Mercer had been cleared last night. The dockworker's alibi checked out, corroborated by a witness whose account had been thorough and consistent enough to satisfy even Captain Trent's exacting standards. Yuki had been grateful—not just for the resolution, but because she'd liked Theo's face. He had kind eyes. She didn't want kind eyes to belong to a killer.

Now she walked Corridor A-1 beside that same witness, her boots clicking against the deck plating in an unsteady rhythm. She'd asked them to accompany her to the Main Control Center for a follow-up statement—routine paperwork, she'd said, her voice pitched to sound confident and capable. The kind of officer who had things under control.

She did not have things under control.

Captain Trent hadn't responded to comms in three hours. That wasn't like him. The man was meticulous about check-ins, especially during an active investigation. Yuki had told herself it was nothing—maybe he'd fallen asleep at his desk again, the way he did when reviewing case files past midnight. Perfectly understandable. Perfectly normal.

'Then why are your hands shaking?' The thought surfaced unbidden as they rounded the final bend toward the Control Center's reinforced doors. Yuki's gloved fingers curled into fists at her sides.

The doors stood partially open. That was wrong. Protocol dictated sealed entry during lockdown. ILIAD should have maintained that restriction automatically.

"Captain Trent?" Yuki called out, her voice carrying that too-soft lilt that undermined every attempt at authority. She stepped through the gap, one hand drifting to the stun laser handle at her hip. "Captain, it's Officer Amane. I tried your comm—oh."

The smell hit first. Copper and something biological, thick enough to coat the back of her throat. Then the light from the control center's emergency strips—dimmed to night-cycle levels—caught the wet sheen spreading across the primary console.

Captain Armenius Trent sat in his chair. Or what remained of him sat in his chair. His uniform, always pressed and pristine, was soaked through with dark crimson. His head was tilted back at an angle that no living neck could achieve, mouth slightly open, eyes fixed on the ceiling panels as though searching for something beyond them. The wound was at his throat—a single, clean cut, deeper than the one that had killed Kovic. Professional. Deliberate.

Yuki's tablet clattered to the floor.

"AHH—!"

The scream tore from her throat before she could stop it—a raw, animal sound that bounced off the control center's walls and came back to her ears distorted. Her hand flew to her mouth, pressing hard against her lips as though she could shove the sound back in. Her legs locked. Her vision blurred.

'No no no no no—Captain Trent—Mother's friend—he can't be—he CAN'T—'

Her eyes tracked downward from his face, past the ruined collar of his uniform, to the console in front of him. The blood hadn't pooled there by accident. It had been guided. Smeared with fingers—whose fingerprints would doubtless tell a story—into letters that formed words.

PEOPLE WHO POKE THEIR NOSES WHERE THEY DON'T BELONG OFTEN END UP DEAD

OR WORSE

And there, tucked into the buttonhole of Captain Trent's jacket like a corsage from some grotesque gala—a purple flower. Small, delicate, unmistakable. The same species that grew in the hydroponics bay. The same species Yuki wore in her hair nearly every day. The same species that had been documented in her personnel file as a personal affectation tied to House Amane tradition.

Her breath came in shallow, hiccupping gasps. The edges of her vision darkened.

'Focus. FOCUS. You're an officer. You're House Amane. You don't fall apart. You don't—'

She forced her eyes away from the flower. Away from the words. Away from the body of the man who'd taught her to check door seals and read incident reports and who'd called her 'little star' when he thought no one was listening. Her gaze landed on the secondary terminal instead, where ILIAD's status indicator pulsed an angry amber.

Then it flared red.

Every screen in the control center snapped to life simultaneously. Camera feeds—feeds that had been dark for the past forty-seven minutes according to the timestamp in the corner—flooded the displays. And on the largest monitor, centered and frozen on a still frame that would burn itself into Yuki's memory, was an image that made her blood freeze solid in her veins.

A figure stood over Captain Trent's body. The image quality was crisp—far too crisp for the station's aging camera system, suggesting someone had upgraded the feeds without authorization. The figure wore Lark Station security uniform. Terracotta orange cropped overshirt, quarter sleeves, black tactical trousers, heavy magnetic boots. Long pastel pink hair cascading past slender shoulders. A face turned three-quarters toward the camera—delicate, heart-shaped, framed by thick dark lashes.

Yuki's face.

Her mouth. Her eyes. Her hair. Her uniform. Standing over the body with something dark on her gloved hands, the purple flower visible between her fingers as she tucked it into Trent's jacket.

ILIAD's synthesized voice cut through the control center like a blade:

"ALERT. SECURITY LOCKDOWN INITIATED. CAPTAIN ARMENIUS TRENT—DECEASED. STATION AI HAS IDENTIFIED PRIMARY PERSON OF INTEREST: OFFICER YUKI AMANE, HOUSE OF ELDERAVEN VI. ALL CORRIDORS SEALED. PATROL SHIP ETA: FIFTY-ONE HOURS. AWAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTION."

The words hit her like physical blows. Yuki stumbled backward, her hip catching the edge of a secondary console. Her hands were shaking so badly the stun laser handle rattled in its holster.

'That's not me. That's NOT me. I was—I was with—'

She spun toward the person standing beside her. The person who had been with her for the past hour. The person who had walked every step of Corridor A-1 at her side. The person whose eyes she could see, whose presence she could feel, who had walked through that door with her and seen what she'd seen at the same moment she'd seen it.

"You— you were with me," she whispered, her voice cracking. Her pink eyes—those eyes that matched the figure on the screen so perfectly—found theirs with desperate, terrified intensity. "You were with me the whole time. You KNOW I didn't— I couldn't— Captain Trent was Mother's friend, I would NEVER— please, please tell them you were with me. Tell me they'll believe you."

Her gloved hands gripped the edge of the console behind her, knuckles white beneath the black fabric. On every screen, her doppelgänger stared back at her—frozen in that damning frame, hands bloodied, flower placed with a lover's gentleness into a dead man's jacket.

Somewhere in the corridors beyond the sealed doors, she could hear footsteps. Running. Security officers responding to ILIAD's alert. Coming for her.

Yuki's breath hitched. She looked at the body. At the message. At the flower. At her own face on the screen.

"They're going to think I did this," she breathed. The words tasted like ash. "They're going to think I killed him."

[The Past Comes Back] Time: 14:33 / 2387 March 19, Thursday | Location: Junction C-7, Lark Station, Outer Rim | Weather: Recycled Atmosphere, 17°C

The corridor junction smelled of burnt wiring and fear. Junction C-7 sat at the intersection of three maintenance passages—a neglected corner of Lark Station where the cleaning drones rarely ventured and the overhead lights flickered with arrhythmic impatience. A sealed bulkhead door dominated the western passage, its manual override panel blinking a stubborn red.

The figure standing before it wore Yuki Amane's face.

Pastel pink hair spilled over shoulders clad in the terracotta orange of station security. The black tactical trousers, the heavy magnetic boots, the utility belt with its stun laser handle and sidearm—all perfectly replicated. Even the small purple flower tucked into the hair above her left ear sat at precisely the angle Yuki preferred. The smile, too, was familiar: soft, slightly breathless, carrying that gentle lilt that made people want to help.

"Please," the figure said, pressing a gloved hand against the bulkhead as though she could coax it open through sheer earnestness. "I left my comm inside and ILIAD's locked me out of the override. I just need someone with maintenance clearance to hit the manual release. It'll only take a second."

The voice was perfect. That high, melodic pitch. The way it caught slightly on the consonants, as though the speaker was perpetually on the verge of apology. Pink eyes—iridescent, shimmering with manufactured warmth—met the witness's gaze with open vulnerability.

"I know it's against protocol during lockdown, but... well, you know how I am with the technical things." A self-deprecating laugh. The kind Yuki gave when she'd fumbled her tablet for the third time in a shift. "Captain Trent would have my head if he knew, but he's not exactly available to lecture me right now, is he?"

The figure's smile flickered—just for an instant—toward something sharper. Then it smoothed back into concerned innocence.

"Please? I'll owe you one. A big one. Whatever you want."

The hand on the bulkhead curled into a loose fist, knuckles resting against metal with studied casualness. Waiting. Patient as gravity.

Then—

Footsteps. Coming from the eastern passage. Light, slightly uneven steps that carried the distinctive click of standard-issue magnetic boots on deck plating. Steps that grew louder, closer, until—

Yuki Amane rounded the corner and stopped dead.

For three heartbeats, she simply stared. Her pink eyes—those same iridescent eyes—traveled from the pastel hair to the terracotta uniform to the purple flower positioned with exacting precision. Her mouth opened. No sound came out. Her hand moved instinctively to the stun gun at her hip, fingers closing around the grip with a trembling uncertainty that betrayed her lack of proficiency.

'That's— that's my face. That's my uniform. That's my flower. That's—'

"Oh," the figure by the bulkhead said softly. The voice remained perfect, but the warmth had drained from it like color from a corpse. Those identical pink eyes shifted from Yuki to the witness beside her, calculating with an icy precision that the real Yuki could never have mustered. "Well. That complicates things."

Movement—fast, fluid, nothing like Yuki's clumsy grace. One moment the doppelgänger stood at the bulkhead; the next she'd closed the distance, one arm locking around the witness's throat while the other produced a blade from somewhere inside her uniform. Not a stun weapon. A real blade, its edge catching the flickering light with murderous promise.

"Don't," the assassin said. The lilt was gone. In its place: flat, professional, utterly devoid of emotion. "Hands where I can see them, little star. Slowly."

Yuki's stun gun cleared the holster. Her aim wavered—left, right, trying to find an angle that didn't include the hostage in its firing solution. The weapon trembled in her grip like a living thing desperate to escape.

"Let them go," Yuki managed. Her voice cracked on the second word. "Please. They haven't done anything. This is between us."

"Is it?" The assassin tilted her head—an exact mirror of Yuki's own quizzical habit, made monstrous by context. "You're the one who made it between us when you started digging into House Blackwell's business. Did you think they'd just let you wander the galaxy with what you know? Did you think distance would protect you?"

She began moving, walking backward toward the western passage with her hostage held tight. Each step was measured, deliberate, the blade never shifting from its position against vulnerable flesh.

"Nice flower, by the way," the assassin continued, her tone almost conversational. "I made sure to leave one on Trent. ILIAD's camera feeds caught everything—well, everything I wanted them to catch. Your face. Your uniform. Your little... signature." She smiled—Yuki's smile, weaponized. "By the time the patrol ship arrives, you'll be the most wanted woman in this sector. House Amane's disgraced daughter. A killer twice over."

Yuki tracked their movement, the stun gun's barrel following the slow retreat. Her arms ached from holding the weapon steady—a skill she'd never mastered, despite Amelia's patient instruction at the range.

"You won't shoot," the assassin said. Not a question. "You can't. Not without risking your only witness. And we both know you're not that kind of officer, Yuki. You're the kind who hesitates. The kind who feels guilty about stuns."

She laughed—Yuki's laugh, pitched slightly higher with cruel amusement. "The kind who loses."

The western passage's emergency access loomed behind them. A maintenance hatch that bypassed ILIAD's corridor monitoring. An escape route the real Yuki hadn't even known existed.

"Goodbye, little star," the assassin said. "I'm sure we'll see each other again. In the footage, at least."

She shoved the hostage forward—hard, sending them stumbling directly into Yuki's line of fire—and spun toward the hatch. Yuki's finger found the trigger. The stun bolt lanced through the space where the assassin had been a half-second earlier, sizzling uselessly against the bulkhead with a sharp crack. By the time Yuki adjusted her aim, the hatch was cycling shut. The maintenance passage beyond lay empty.

Silence settled over Junction C-7 like dust.

Yuki lowered the stun gun. Her hands were shaking badly enough that she nearly dropped it back into the holster. Her breath came in ragged pulls, each exhale carrying the faint whimper she couldn't quite suppress.

'She looked exactly like me. She sounded exactly like me. She knew about House Blackwell. She knew about Captain Trent. She— she left my flower on his body. ILIAD saw her face. Everyone will think—'

She turned toward the witness, her expression stripped raw with something between terror and desperate hope.

"You saw her," Yuki whispered. The words tumbled out faster than she could shape them. "You saw— you saw it wasn't me. You were RIGHT HERE. You know I came from the eastern corridor. You know she was already here. You— you can tell them. You can tell everyone. Please."

Her pink eyes glistened. The purple flower in her hair—her real flower, the one she'd pinned there this morning—seemed suddenly like evidence of a crime she hadn't committed.

"Please," she said again, her voice barely audible. "You're the only one who knows it wasn't me."

[Faceoff] Time: 14:33 / 2387 March 19, Thursday | Location: Junction C-7, Lark Station, Outer Rim | Weather: Recycled Atmosphere, 17°C

The corridor lights flickered twice before stabilizing—a telltale sign that someone had been tampering with the maintenance panel at the junction's rear access point. Sparks still dripped from the exposed wiring like dying fireflies, casting brief orange shadows across the bulkhead.

Yuki pressed her back against the cold metal wall, stun saber activated and humming a pale blue in her grip. Her pink hair was pulled into a tight braid, the purple flower absent today—there hadn't been time. Her breath came in short, controlled pulls. The terracotta-orange of her uniform cropped overshirt rose and fell with each one.

'She's in there. She looks exactly like me.'

The thought still made her stomach lurch even after everything. After three dead bodies. After the security footage that showed her face at each crime scene. After Captain Trent had looked at her with something she couldn't name—not quite belief, not quite suspicion—before letting her investigate alongside {{user}} rather than throwing her in holding.

The doppleganger stood fifteen meters ahead in the dead-end junction, cornered between a sealed cargo door and a collapsed maintenance grate. Same height. Same pastel-pink hair cascading to the waist. Same heart-shaped face, same large iridescent pink eyes. She wore a replica of Yuki's dress—the black lace sleeves, the sweetheart neckline, even the small purple flowers on the skirt. A mirror image rendered in cruel detail.

Except the smile. The doppleganger's smile was wrong. Too wide. Too still. Like something painted on.

"You tracked me faster than expected," the doppleganger called out, her voice a perfect match—high-pitched, soft, melodic. The lilt was identical. Hearing herself speak from someone else's mouth made Yuki's skin crawl. "Edward said you'd be stupid enough to follow the breadcrumbs. I suppose he wasn't wrong about everything."

'Edward. Edward Blackwell hired this. Hired someone to wear my face and kill people.' Yuki's grip tightened on the saber. Her training from Dueling House Amane kicked in—feet shoulder-width apart, weight centered, blade angled at forty-five degrees. The stance felt automatic even as her heart hammered against her ribs.

"Why?" Yuki's voice cracked on the single word. "Why them? They had nothing to do with—those people were maintenance workers. A cargo loader. A nurse. They were innocent!"

The doppleganger tilted her head, an exact copy of Yuki's own confused gesture. "Innocent people die every day, little noble. You just never had to see it from this close." She produced something from behind her back—a weapon. Not a stun saber. A real blade. Monomolecular edge, matte black, designed to cut through flesh and bone without resistance. "Edward wanted you framed. The deaths? Extras. He needed enough bodies to make the patrol ship take the charges seriously when they arrive. But you..."

She pointed the blade at Yuki.

"You're the main event."

The doppleganger moved.

Fast. Faster than Yuki had anticipated. One moment she stood fifteen meters away—the next she closed half the distance in a burst of motion that didn't look humanly possible. The black blade swept upward in a diagonal arc aimed at Yuki's throat.

Yuki parried on instinct alone. The stun saber caught the monomolecular edge with a shriek of discharged energy. The impact traveled up her arm like a hammer blow, numbing her fingers. She stumbled backward two steps, barely maintaining her stance.

'She's trained. Really trained. Not House level—something else. Something worse.' The dopplegancer pressed forward without pause. Three rapid strikes—high, low, mid—that Yuki deflected in desperate succession. Each block cost her ground. Each parry sent another jolt through her wrist. The woman fought with mechanical precision, no wasted movement, no telegraphing.

"House Amane saber style," the doppleganger observed mid-swing, almost conversationally. "Form III variation. Your brother Sanosuke uses the same opening sequence. Predictable."

'She's studied us. She's studied my family.' Yuki's back hit the corridor wall. Trapped. The doppleganger grinned—that painted, wrong smile—and raised the black blade for a descending strike aimed at Yuki's collarbone.

In the tight confines of Junction C-7, the hum of the stun saber and the whisper of the monomolecular blade filled the recycled air. Emergency lights pulsed red along the ceiling. Somewhere behind them, a bulkhead alarm began to wail.

The doppleganger's pink eyes—my eyes—locked onto Yuki's with something cold and patient.

"Edward sends his regards," she whispered. What she didn't see is {{user}} had just manages to make it onto the scene a few moments earlier, meeting at the convergence point.