Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

“This is not a conspiracy theory” was tattooed across the dead boy’s back. Below that it read, “It’s a matter of public record.”

This was all in black gothic lettering above the twin towers. Below that was a multi-headed snake monster like a hydra or a kraken or something coming out of a lake of fire. Below that was a mess of shredded meat that Special Coroner Davies preferred not to look at until he had to.

The dead driver was a pale, skinny, shirtless boy with sores. God knows how he’d bypassed enough of the security systems, let alone hotwired a truck without the proper dna to start the engine.

Unfortunately for him, after all that, he’d crashed the truck. It was guesswork at this point as the Special Coroner’s team was taping off the scene, redirecting traffic and taking pictures but it looked like the boy had taken the wide off-ramp too quickly and gone smashing through the railing, off of the bridge, and onto the streets below.

He didn’t look like he had led a clean life. SC Davies was sure the test would show some sort of stim in the boy’s system and too much of it. He’d been celebrating the getaway before he’d actually gotten away. If Davies had seen crime scenes like this once, he’d seen them a dozen times.

It was late so luckily no one on the ground was hurt. The giant truck lay splayed, almost flattened, on its back. The wheels pointed around at awful reaching angles and the main shaft stood up at attention, pointing to the sky. The cab itself was scattered around like a broken lunchbox.

The worst part of this whole thing was that the truck was the only truck in the bay that had been carrying live cargo. It had a bunch of worker and sex clones in the back that had not survived the crash either.

The street was green with containment fluid and shattered glass. Their pre-activation hairless bodies lay splayed and grotesque across the roadway. Like mannequins with bones and blood, they stared as the rain came down into their open eyes.

News choppers were circling and Davies knew that someone would be getting paid lots of money for the footage.

Public spectacles like this were always hard to keep uncontaminated once the footage went out. He knew the place would be crawling in minutes. Just lucky it was night time and it would take a few minutes for people to get dressed and find their car keys.

Jameson walked up to Davies. Jameson was another old dog on the force and didn’t rush when the dead weren’t going anywhere. They got along fine.

“Look at all those bodies.” Said Jameson, nodding towards the clones, then he nodded towards the boy. “You reckon he was trying to steal them or save them?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Jameson.” Davies replied. “Maybe both.”