She had a beautiful hibiscus tattooed on her left shoulder, and Synn sighed as he saw the exquisite artwork. Delicate petals and vibrant colors made an image that was the kind of thing he would normally have enjoyed looking at from a closer, more personal, angle, but the woman being dead rendered that train of thought completely moot. One hand was still clutching at the cluster of carbon-fiber needles in her neck. They were centered right above the marks left from the violent removal of her string of pearls – pearls which even now lay strewn about the scene of her demise.

In the old world, they would have tracked her killer with satellites. Before that, maybe with a basset hound or other sniffer dog. Now, they sent Synn or one of those like him. Gengineered for tracking and combat, Synn was agile and strong. His enhanced senses could follow a scent trail or see clues others would easily miss, and decades of training and deployment – both real and hypno-sim – made certain he knew how to interpret the results of what he found.

“She reeks of gin,” he said. A microphone link carried his words to a monitoring computer to form a journal of his observations. He wore a series of small video links as well, and when returning from his mission he could hook straight into that computer to build a more complete document.

Elements: gin, delicate, hook, basset hound, pearls, hibiscus