Name: Clare
Story: robot rights
Colors: Caput Mortuum 7, Bloat
Supplies and Materials: none
Word Count: 281
Rating: R
Warnings: Dead body.
Notes: none


Moira turned over the body, disgusted by its bloated, soaked state despite thinking she was inured to such things after almost a year with the mob. “It’s him,” she said, standing up instantly to press her sleeve to her face. It didn’t block out the smell.

“They drowned him,” said May softly.

Mo backed away, past her robot friend. “Why? Why would they do that? What message were they trying to send?”

May shook her head. “They wanted him found, but not right away. That’s all I can think of.”

Mo thought back to the last few days. What had happened that would have been affected by the assassin’s death, what that their enemies would not want disrupted? She had no idea, of course, and neither did May; they weren’t high enough up in the operations to be privy to that kind of information. They’d worked with the dead man, but their orders came from Rose Findley, not from the Schuylers themselves. And whatever their enemies wanted, it was from the Schuylers.

She turned, shaking her head, and waved Bob forward. They hadn’t known they were being called to the scene of a death, but they were always prepared; Bob had a body bag in the car, and he and May went forward to bundle the bloated body into it. They would get him home to where his family could bury him.

And they would tell Rose and the Schuylers what they’d found. Mo might not get any answers, but it would explain something to the bosses. One pawn moved forward, captured in the great chess game that was their lives.

Mo just had to hope that she was a knight.