He placed the phone against his ear. “Jack Kinnaird.”

“Sorry for waking you at this unearthly hour, sir,” the senior officer said. “There has been a shooting involving some of our officers. Two dead—a victim and the suspect. I’m about to call Detective Sergeant Catherine York. Please pick her up on your way.”  The officer ended the call.

Jack checked the clock on his phone again. Yep, just past two-thirty am. An ungodly hour, but nothing out of the norm. The room returned to darkness as the phone’s screen went off. He sat up in bed and focused on a slither of moonlight on the wall, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. The dream was so real. He wanted them back. But his way of living didn’t align with those feelings. His mind was a battlefield. Fighting with evil, fighting with Erica. She’d tell him sin was crouching at the door, then they’d be fighting about religion. Yep, a battlefield. He’ll try and keep the door shut today. He’d been doing well lately.

The phone rested in the palm of his hand. He squeezed it, wanting to crush it, but brought his emotions into check and placed the phone on the bedside table. Night calls had a big impact on his marriage. But he loved what he did. Mostly. He wasn’t so sure on nights like tonight.

He lifted the thin bed covers and sat on the side of the bed. Okay, let’s get into it. Energised, he headed towards the shower. It would be quick, but he wanted to wash away the thoughts of family.

Ten minutes later, he stepped out into the night. Solar-powered lights barely lit the path leading to the stairs to his unit’s garage. He paused at the top of the stairs and looked to the night sky. A bright glow caught his attention. Mercury? Mars? Surely not. There was something odd about the orange glow. Maybe it was a comet on its way to destroy earth—he had mixed feelings about that. He descended the stairs.

The glow didn’t appear threatening, but he’d bet there would still be some panicked crazies contacting the police call centre regarding the menacing bright dot in the sky, sure UFOs or Mars were attacking. Jack let out a small chuckle. But that was human nature: panic at the fear of the unknown. Some people needed to watch less late-night streaming shows, spend less time on social media, spend less time feeding their irrational and unfounded anxieties. There were no piles of toilet paper in his garage.

Sleepiness had departed.

The greyness of the outside world slowly revealed itself in his rear-view mirror as the garage door opened. He took a deep breath in preparation for what awaited him as he backed out of the garage. The street was quiet. The roads were quiet. Quiet was to be expected this hour of the morning—the favourite time of the enemy, who lurked in the quietness and darkness of these hours.

After a short journey, he turned into Catherine’s street, pulled over and parked outside her house. Cath was his partner when the boss needed serious crimes to be investigated—they’d been partnered off and on for the last three or so years, to the point where they were now mates.

He turned the car’s lights off and waited, not wanting to disturb the sleepy street and raise the concern of those with suspicious minds. He rested his arms on the steering wheel and looked down the street. All quiet in this neighbourhood, although that strange light still showed in the night sky. The passenger door opened, bringing a slight chill and a small thump as a backpack found its place on the floor. He turned as Cath reached for the seatbelt strap. She smelled nice.

“Good morning, Detective.”  

“You’re half right.” She buckled up. “It’s morning. Did we have a weekend?”

He ignored her remark, started the car and drove off. The speck in the sky followed them through the rear window. He drove in silence, thinking, analysing, getting into the detective mindset. What was that thing in the sky?

“I have a vague recollection that you know something about stars. Not movie stars. Stars staring down from above.”

A quick glance at Cath showed a look of puzzlement.

“Something in the sky intrigued me.” He moved his head around to try and locate it, but it was no longer visible. “Not to worry. It’s gone.”

Cath rubbed some cream on her face. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are! Was it twinkling, Jack?’

She was chirpy this morning. “Nope. Just a bright orange blob.”

“Sounds like a planet.”

“That’s what I thought. But where’s it gone?”

“Cloud cover maybe.”  Cath leaned forward and looked at the night sky. “There are a few clouds around at the moment. The light pollution helps us see them.” She sat back. “Not sure if I told you that my dad now works at a NASA tracking station near Canberra. He took me there once, and we stood in the still of the night in the middle of a paddock. Have you ever been away in the bush, away from the city lights, and looked up at the night sky?”

“Don’t think I have.”

“I’m shocked you haven’t. You need to add that to your bucket list. It’s an amazing sight. Words can’t explain it. It would be even more amazing to be in the outback—somewhere like Birdsville. You wouldn’t see clouds there. They’d be nothing but patches of black against the starlit sky.”

The dot reappeared, and with it a slight rush of excitement. “There it is. Over to the right.”

Cath leaned forward. “Interesting. Maybe a planet, but it’s not one I’m familiar with. It looks like a dad question.”

He remembered her lullaby. “Why doesn’t it twinkle?”

“Atmosphere. It distorts the image of the stars so they twinkle. Planets are closer, so they’re not affected as much. And that one looks close. Real close.”

“See, you do know a few things about the starry sky.”

“I do. But this one interests me.”

“Why?”

“In relation to something I’ve been reading,” Her tone said it was something he wasn’t likely to be interested in.

“A Bible thing?”

“Yes, Jack.”

“Should I be alarmed?” His question was tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes she bordered on the radical side of faith, at least compared to Erica. She was still finding her way. Said it took time and effort to learn a new way of life. But he accepted his semi-radical partner despite her beliefs. Good partners like Cath were hard to come by.

“Yes, Jack. I think you should be alarmed.”

He wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.

They arrived at the scene, parking as close as they could, and walked towards the flickering lights that showed a hive of activity. From the top of an embankment, the site below looked like a tent surrounded by glow-worms. The area was well-lit with portable floodlights. A shelter protected the body of the victim, preserving evidence. Forensic staff in blue protective clothing and face masks moved around. The river provided a dark and murky background enhancing the glow-worm effect.

Jack had a brief look at the body. A young woman, around twenty years of age. Wrong place, wrong time. He didn’t know what she was up to at this hour of the morning, but it didn’t matter. There was no excuse for what had taken place. He looked over at Cath, who had a tear at the corner of her eye. This was getting to them both. The world had become a darker place, and they both knew it.

2 - Packaged and energised

Thomas Wiley was supposed to be meeting one of his comrades at the river. He disliked the word, but that was how the group referred to its members and he slipped into ‘group talk mode’ whenever he was involved with them. The comrade hadn’t shown up. The comrade tended to be on the unreliable side, bordering on unstable. Who knew why the comrade was still allowed to be associated with the group?

Their relationship involved sitting on the riverbank, having a few drinks, while his comrade used an app on his phone to show Wiley the planets and the stars. His comrade knew so much about those things in the night sky—even more when he was in his right mind. That wasn’t happening a lot lately, and Wiley sensed his friend had ventured back into the drug world.

He looked to the sky and saw a few stars. A bright orange object stood out. Without the app, many stars and planets remained invisible as the city lights polluted the sky. Wiley had the app on his phone, so he opened it and pointed it at the orange dot in the sky.

Unidentified.

They hadn’t had time to update the app. His friend would often rave about an asteroid coming. One that he claimed he discovered on a stargazing trip in outback Australia. Was that it?

Movement across the river caught his attention. Flashing blue and red lights. An area lit up by floodlights. A drowning, maybe? Nothing unusual in the life of a river city.

Life must go on. He had to return to his room to attend to a task. His group, his secret society, had liked his idea and gave him the resources to execute his strategy.

He picked up a shoebox from the floor and placed it on the coffee table near the open window. A cool early morning breeze filtered into the room. He removed some packages and other items from the box and placed them on the table in front of him. The wrapping on the packages was mostly plain, with the magic word ‘organic’ displayed at the appropriate place. That word had grown in importance over the years for marketers, and people tended to follow the crowd. The marketers had them under their spell. People were so easy to manipulate.

There was a sheet of paper. Large capital letters advised Wiley to avoid skin exposure and breathing in vapours. He stiffened and his heart pounded in his chest. Shouldn’t the sheet of paper have been on top of the goods, so he saw it before he touched the items? He reached over and opened the window wider, placed his mouth near the opening, and took some deep breaths.

With the panic subsided, he followed the instructions on the piece of paper and put on the face mask, goggles, and gloves provided. He injected the substance into a number of packages. The instructions advised him to destroy the sheet of paper once the task was completed. He looked around for some matches but couldn’t locate any, so he folded and placed the sheet in a pocket in his shorts.