The forty-five minutes passed like sand through a cracked hourglass. Alex, Jo, Ida, and Lena gathered in the medical bay, the door locked, the lights dimmed. Outside, the station hummed with the sounds of early morning activity—footsteps in the corridors, the clatter of the mess hall being prepared, the muffled voices of crew members who had no idea they were walking into a carefully orchestrated inquisition.
"We need to figure out who framed you," Alex said, pacing the narrow space between examination tables. "If we can identify the real Karst before Voss presents his case, we can stop this before it starts."
"It's not that simple." Lena had stopped shaking, but her voice was still thin. "The evidence against me is comprehensive. Whoever built it knew my background, my habits, my schedule. They planted a tablet in my quarters. They altered my personnel file. They created a digital trail that leads directly to me."
"When did you first notice something was wrong?"
"A few weeks ago. Small things. My emails were being read before I opened them. Files on my workstation were modified while I was asleep. I thought I was being paranoid. I ran diagnostics, checked for malware, even asked the IT support team back in Novigrad to audit my account. They found nothing."
"Because the intrusion wasn't external," Jo said. "It was someone on the station."
"Yes." Lena pulled up a log file on her tablet. "I started keeping track. Every time something odd happened, I noted the time and the nature of the incident. Look at the pattern."
Alex studied the log. There were dozens of entries, dating back nearly two months. File access timestamps that didn't match Lena's work schedule. Network login attempts from terminals in different parts of the station. A pattern of deliberate, methodical intrusion.
"This is meticulous," he said. "Someone put serious effort into this."
"It's more than meticulous." Ida had been silent until now, her expression troubled. "This is the work of a professional. Someone with training in intelligence operations. The pattern of intrusion, the layering of evidence, the psychological profiling—this isn't amateur hour. This is tradecraft."
"Tradecraft." Jo frowned. "You mean espionage?"
"I mean someone on this station has the skills of a trained intelligence operative. Someone who knows how to build a legend, how to plant evidence, how to construct a narrative that's convincing enough to stand up to scrutiny." She paused. "Someone like Viktor Karst would have those skills. He evaded capture for over a decade. He had his face reconstructed. He built an entirely new identity. That takes training."
Alex turned to Lena. "Is there anyone on the station who showed an unusual interest in you? Anyone who asked too many questions about your background, your family, your past?"
Lena was silent for a moment. Then, slowly, she nodded. "Polzin."
"Polzin? The atmospheric chemist?"
"He was friendly when I first arrived. Too friendly. He wanted to know everything—where I grew up, where I studied, what my parents did. I thought he was just being sociable. But he kept pressing. Kept circling back to the same topics. Eventually I started avoiding him."
"Polzin," Alex repeated. The nervous, finger-tapping chemist who held court in the mess hall. The man who seemed to know everything about the Lysian conflict. The man who had been so quick to spread rumors about Karst's plastic surgery, about the amnesty, about the Tribunal's jurisdiction.
"He's been shaping the narrative," Jo said, understanding dawning. "Every conversation, every rumor, every piece of information he's shared. He's been priming us. Making sure we had just enough knowledge to recognize the evidence when Voss presented it."
"But Voss is the one running the investigation," Ida pointed out. "Voss is the one who called the meeting. Voss is the one with the covert background."
"Voss and Polzin could be working together," Alex said. "Or Polzin could be manipulating Voss. Feeding him information. Pointing him toward Lena."
"Or," Jo said quietly, "Polzin is Viktor Karst, and Voss has no idea he's being played."
The possibility hung in the air like a blade. If Polzin was Karst, then he had spent months constructing an elaborate frame job. He had studied Lena. He had identified her as the perfect scapegoat. He had planted evidence, altered records, and guided Voss's investigation toward an innocent woman. And now, at the emergency meeting, he would watch as Voss presented the case, as the crew voted to condemn Lena, as justice was served—the wrong justice, for the wrong person, built on a foundation of lies.
"We need proof," Alex said. "We need something that definitively links Polzin to the frame job. Something that proves Lena's innocence and exposes the real Karst."
"The tablet," Lena said. "The one they planted in my quarters. If we can trace its origin, prove it was planted by someone else—"
"Can you do that? Can you trace the device?"
Lena hesitated. "Maybe. The tablet has a serial number. Every device on the station does. If I can access the equipment manifest, I can cross-reference the serial number against the original inventory. If the tablet wasn't assigned to me, that's a start."
"And if it was assigned to someone else," Jo finished, "we have our connection."
Alex checked the clock. Thirty minutes until the meeting.
"Do it," he said. "Jo, help her with the technical side. Ida, keep working on the Tribunal files. See if there's anything in Karst's profile that matches Polzin—physical characteristics, psychological markers, anything we can use. I'm going to find Polzin and keep him occupied. If he's our man, I don't want him to know we're onto him."
"And if he realizes you're stalling?"
"Then we'll find out if he's as dangerous as his reputation suggests."
Alex found Polzin in the mess hall, arranging chairs for the meeting. The chemist looked up as Alex entered, his fingers drumming an irregular rhythm on the back of a chair.
"Mercer. You're up early." His eyes darted to the clock. "Well, early for you. You're usually not sociable until after second coffee."
"Couldn't sleep." Alex poured himself a cup of the terrible station coffee and sat down at one of the tables. "You?"
"The same. The quake. The body. The whole situation has me on edge." Polzin sat down across from him, still tapping his fingers. "Any idea what Voss wants to announce?"
"None. But he seemed serious. Must be something big."
"Big." Polzin's expression flickered—something unreadable, gone in an instant. "Yes. I imagine it is."
Alex studied him over the rim of his coffee cup. The man was a collection of nervous tics and sudden movements, but there was something controlled beneath the surface. A discipline. A watchfulness. The tapping wasn't random, Alex realized. It followed a pattern. A code, maybe. Or just a habit, refined over years of waiting and watching.
"You know a lot about the Lysian conflict," Alex said, keeping his voice casual. "Were you ever there? In the region?"
Polzin's fingers stopped tapping. Just for a moment. Then they resumed.
"Never. I followed it from a distance. Academic interest."
"Academic interest. Right. You seemed pretty knowledgeable about Karst's plastic surgery, his disappearance, the amnesty. That's not common knowledge."
"I read a lot." Polzin's smile was thin. "It's a habit. When I'm interested in something, I dig deep. I learn everything I can."
"Everything?"
"Everything that matters."
The mess hall door opened, and Voss entered. He was dressed in his usual neat attire, his beard freshly trimmed, his posture straight and commanding. He looked at Alex and Polzin with an expression of calm authority.
"Gentlemen. I see you're early. Good. We have a lot to discuss."
Alex rose from his chair. "I'll let the others know the meeting is starting." He moved toward the door, then paused. "Elias. Whatever this is about—I hope you know what you're doing."
Voss met his eyes. For a moment, something flickered in his gaze—uncertainty, perhaps. Or regret. Then it was gone, replaced by the same unshakable confidence he always projected.
"I know exactly what I'm doing, Mercer. I've been preparing for this for a very long time."
The crew assembled slowly, shuffling into the mess hall in various states of exhaustion and apprehension. Murakami sat near the back, his tablet clutched to his chest like a shield. Lindqvist rubbed his temples, muttering something about the interruption to his research schedule. The other scientists—Dr. Helena Vasquez, the station's biologist, and Dr. Ravi Patel, the communications specialist—took seats near the window, their expressions wary. Jo and Ida arrived together, slipping into chairs near the door. Lena was not with them, which meant she was still working on the tablet trace.
Alex took a position near the center of the room, where he could see everyone. Voss stood at the front, waiting for the room to settle. Polzin was seated to Alex's left, his fingers still tapping against his thigh.
"Thank you all for coming," Voss began. "I know the past twenty-four hours have been difficult. The icequake, the communications failure, the discovery of human remains. It's a lot to process. But I've called this meeting because there's something more we need to address. Something that affects the safety of everyone on this station."
He paused, letting the weight of his words settle over the room.
"The body we found in the crevasse has been identified as Mikhail Orlov, a former lieutenant in Viktor Karst's militia. Orlov was indicted for war crimes by the International Tribunal in Novigrad. He disappeared approximately ten years ago." Voss's voice was steady, measured, like a lecturer presenting a well-rehearsed thesis. "Orlov was executed. Two gunshot wounds to the chest. Close range. The kind of killing that suggests personal involvement—someone tying up loose ends."
"Who killed him?" Vasquez asked.
"That's the question." Voss looked around the room, his gaze moving from face to face. "Orlov knew everything about Karst's operations. He was the logistics officer, the man who managed safe houses, supply routes, identity documents. If Karst wanted to disappear—to truly vanish—he would need to eliminate Orlov. And he would need to do it personally."
"You're saying Karst killed Orlov," Lindqvist said. "That Karst is the murderer."
"I'm saying more than that." Voss pulled out a tablet and projected an image onto the wall screen. It was a personnel file—Lena's personnel file. "I'm saying that Viktor Karst is on this station. And I can prove it."
A collective intake of breath. Alex forced himself to remain still, to keep his expression neutral.
"For the past several weeks, I've been conducting an investigation," Voss continued. "I've uncovered a pattern of evidence that points to one individual. An individual with a fabricated background, a suspicious gap in their employment history, and physical characteristics consistent with Karst's known profile. An individual who has been accessing restricted files, avoiding routine medical examinations, and maintaining a pattern of behavior consistent with someone living under a false identity."
He tapped the tablet, and a series of images appeared. Screenshots of file access logs. Metadata from Lena's workstation. A photograph of a tablet—the tablet Alex knew had been planted in her quarters.
"Lena Hvald is not who she claims to be," Voss said. "Her background is a fabrication. Her credentials are forged. And I believe she is, in fact, Viktor Karst—the Butcher of Kestria—hiding in plain sight."
The room erupted. Voices overlapped, questions and exclamations blending into a wall of noise. Alex saw Polzin lean back in his chair, a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth. The satisfaction of a man watching his plan unfold exactly as intended.
"Where is she?" Vasquez demanded. "Where's Hvald?"
"She's not here," Voss said. "She was seen in the equipment bay earlier this morning. Possibly attempting to flee. We need to find her. We need to detain her. And we need to decide what to do next."
"Decide what to do?" Murakami's voice was uneasy. "Shouldn't we wait for the authorities?"
"There are no authorities," Voss said flatly. "We're stranded. Isolated. The nearest rescue team is weeks away. We have a war criminal on this station—a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians, including children. We can't simply lock him in a storage room and hope for the best. We need to act."
"Act how?" Lindqvist asked.
Voss met his gaze. "That's what we're here to decide. As a crew. As the only law on this ice shelf."
The room fell silent. Alex could feel the momentum shifting, the consensus building. Voss was persuasive. The evidence was compelling. And the crew was scared. Scared people wanted simple answers. They wanted someone to blame, someone to punish, someone to sacrifice so that the rest of them could feel safe again.
It was the same dynamic that had played out in countless courtrooms, in countless tribunals, in every moment when fear overpowered reason. The convenient lie was always more seductive than the complicated truth.
Alex stood up.
"Before we go any further," he said, his voice cutting through the silence, "there's something you need to know. About the evidence. About who really planted it. And about who Viktor Karst really is."
Voss turned to him, his expression flickering with something that might have been surprise. "Mercer—"
"You've been investigating this for weeks," Alex continued. "You've built a case. A good one. But you've been working with information that was fed to you. Information that was deliberately constructed to lead you to the wrong conclusion."
"What are you talking about?"
Alex looked at Polzin. The chemist's smile had vanished. His fingers had stopped tapping.
"I'm talking about the real Viktor Karst. The one who's been on this station the whole time. The one who framed Lena Hvald. The one who's been manipulating all of us." Alex pointed at Polzin. "And he's sitting right there."
The room exploded again. Polzin was on his feet, his face flushed with indignation. "This is absurd! You have no proof! You're just trying to protect her—"
"You're right," Alex said. "I don't have proof. Not yet. But I have something better." He pulled out his tablet and opened the file Jo had sent him moments before, the results of Lena's trace on the planted device. "The tablet that was found in Lena's quarters—the one that supposedly contains evidence of her false identity—wasn't assigned to her. It was logged out of the equipment inventory three weeks ago. By you, Dr. Polzin. Your access code. Your biometric signature. Your name on the requisition form."
Polzin's face went very still.
"You planted the evidence," Alex continued. "You altered her personnel file. You accessed her workstation. You built the entire case against her. And you did it because you needed a decoy. Someone to take the fall. Someone to satisfy Voss's investigation while you slipped away in the chaos."
"This is a lie," Polzin said, but his voice had lost its conviction. "A desperate lie to protect a war criminal—"
"Then explain the requisition form. Explain the access logs. Explain why a tablet that was supposed to be in storage somehow ended up in Lena Hvald's quarters with your fingerprints all over it."
Polzin opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
And then he smiled.
It was not the nervous, ingratiating smile Alex was used to. It was something else entirely. Something cold. Something calculating. Something that had been waiting, patient and predatory, for a very long time.
"You're cleverer than I gave you credit for, Mercer." His voice had changed too—lower, smoother, the affected nervousness stripped away like a mask. "But you've made a critical error."
"And what's that?"
Polzin reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device. A detonator.
"You assumed I only planted one set of explosives."
His thumb pressed the trigger.
Somewhere deep beneath the station, a charge detonated. The floor bucked. The lights flickered and died. And in the sudden, screaming darkness, Alex heard the sound of running footsteps—Polzin, fleeing into the chaos he had created.
The Butcher of Kestria was done hiding.
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