Part 48: Episode 48: Returning
This update covers:Final Story 7 - Demons and Death (Part 1 of 2)
Intro Video
For now, Naomi is holed up in Resurgam. There's no leaving to investigate, so there's no map. You just pass from Naomi's makeshift "office" to the operating room where the bones are being kept. She was apparently able to commandeer one even in the crisis. Hey, these people are willing to operate on cats in an outbreak, so why not?
In the "evidence" room, you can begin the process of reconstructing the skull.
Unlike last time, there is no longer any guarantee that the pieces or oriented correctly. Instead, they can be rotated in 90 degree increments by twisting the Wii Remote. This is essentially a jigsaw puzzle with a fairly uninteresting picture, and it will probably take a long time to do. Since this is an LP, we'll just skip to the end again.
Naomi: Odd... all the fragments that were given to me have been placed. Does this mean there's a missing piece of bone? Unless we find it, there's nothing more I can do with this skull.
This is all you can do here for now. Onward to the more interesting task of actually searching the body's effects for clues. Yeah, there were clothes with it. And Gabe somehow had them.
Naomi: If it was caused by physical trauma, then there's something unusual about it:
The other two points of interest can be pretty difficult to find. You need to check both of the pockets on the front of the suit, visible above. They each have something inside.
Naomi: If whoever this is had a criminal history, then they would be in the FBI's database. If I ask Little Guy about these items, it just might be easy to identify this skeleton.
That's all we can find here. Since Gabe is probably still trying to find the right way to rotate that femur, we'll have to ship some of this stuff off to Little Guy in the meantime.
Note that we have a card containing the bone fragments from Chloe. First, though, we give Little Guy the key.
LG: This is a very unique key. It involves magnetism.
Naomi: Magnets? What could a key like that be used for?
LG: Probably a safe, or something else high security. There's a number on it, as well.
Naomi: Can you find out where whatever it goes with is located?
LG: I can look into it, but we don't have any clue where this key came from. It'll take a long time to find out any specifics.
Naomi: That's fine. It's still better than me trying to find out by myself, right?
LG: Well, we are a nationwide organization. Fine, I'll take the key.
With that gone from the list entirely, we'll show off this fancy syringe box found in the other pocket.
Naomi: I found this in the deceased's personal articles. I get the feeling that it may be drugs.
Holy hell I keep getting confused and forgetting the implied "illegal" in front of "drugs." It's so weird for a Doctor to use the word like that.
LG: I'll look into what's in this ampules and see if the syringe has been used. It's going to take awhile. So you'll have to give me time.
Finally, it makes sense to have Little Guy analyze the blood stains as well. We need to confirm the source of the blood.
LG: It seems the DNA of the blood matches the skeleton. They're from the same person.
Naomi: Then, what caused it, if not physical trauma?
Now, what could the next step be? Well, we have a skeleton with a missing piece, and we have a few loose bone shards from an unknown source.
Naomi: The missing area of skull is the section from the mental tubercle to the angle. Chloe had swallowed pieces of human bone... Don't tell me...!
The game boots you here after that. With just a little work, we can fit those two shards into the space left over.
Naomi: So it was like I thought... After Chloe swallowed the bone fragments, the mysterious foci appeared in her body. There's something in this bone. Some kind of pathogen. Chloe's digestive tract was severely weakened, and the bone fragments had begun to adhere to the digestive tissue. That would mean that Chloe swallowed the fragment about a week before.
LG: Oh, Dr. Kimishima. That, uh, friendly guy came by a moment ago. He said something about having finished reconstructing the body.
Naomi: All right, now we can observe the corpse as a whole. Can you tell me what you observed from it?
LG: There wasn't much to get from the body. The person was roughly 185 centimeters tall. A histologic examination of the bone detected 15 types of amino acids remaining. There was also a very high concentration of nitrogen. I've sent those results to your computer.
The body can now be examined in more detail. And by that, I guess I mean "any detail at all."
Naomi: I need to look into what caused this damage.
As you can see, large sections of the body are missing, with the edges coloured black. Naomi doesn't have any specific comments on this.
Naomi: But why? In the human skeleton, the femur is the
Naomi: It's hard to think that an external force could cause this kind of effect.
You aren't told this, but that's all you can find here. The only thing to do is back out.
All of this stuff needs to be investigated, so we'll ask Little Guy starting with the femur fracture.
LG: This bone is hollow on the inside. I'm not surprised it broke if it was like this.
Naomi: I see. Did this fracture occur while the person was alive?
LG: I can't say about the fracture, but the loss in bone density must have occurred while the person lived.
Naomi: It seems safe to assume that the fracture was caused by the decrease in bone density then.
Secondly, we'll look at that joint damage.
LG: Bone abrasion caused this damage. Normally, wherever bones meet, there's a layer of fibrocartilage. In this case, the knee, that pad is known as the meniscus. That prevents damage like this from occurring in most people's bodies. The signs of wear I see here are consistent with the bones grinding together.
Naomi: That would mean the meniscus was lost while the person was alive and moving.
The reduced bone density and loss of the meniscus are both abnormal conditions related to the bones. They can be combined, then.
Naomi: From this, it can be deduced that the person was suffering from a weakened skeletal system. Furthermore, I believe this processes happened while the person was alive. If these conditions allow us to infer anything, it's that this person was severely debilitated by the time of death.
Next, the scrape-marks that were found on the armbone. Those are pretty unusual.
LG: First of all, this damage was done recently. There's no discoloration on the bone tissue in the area that's been damaged. This happened after they died. Secondly, from looking at the damaged area, it seems the bone had been shaved away using a tool like a router.
Naomi: The only reason I'd expect that to happen would be to obtain a sample from it. The staff at USAMRIID was using this bone for research. There's a good chance they shaved a sample from the bone in order to study it.
LG: Yeah, you need small fragments for the high-detail analysis. That's likely what happened.
Naomi: Wait a second... the researcher at USAMRIID was infected while studying this bone. Using a router on it would cause particles of pulverized bone to be ejected into the air. If the researcher came down with the disease after performing this procedure, then...
We don't have any evidence to jump to any conclusions there just yet. Instead, we'll keep moving by having Little Guy look more closely at the blood on the clothes. There's not a lot of indication to do this, but there are so few cards that adventure game "try everything" logic can win out pretty easily.
Naomi: Yes, but I want to know more details. We know that the bloodstain comes from the same person as the bones, but there was no damage to the clothing. Can you investigate in detail what kind of hemorrhaging would have caused that bloodstain?
LG: Alright. Can you give me some time for that, please?
Naomi: Of course. I'll be counting on you.
LG: Ah, the results on the syringe have just come in. Interferon, aciclovir, ribavirin, lamivudine...
Naomi: Slow down a second. What are you talking about?
LG: Um, it's the medicines that were confirmed to be in the syringe and the ampules.
Naomi: All that was in there?
LG: Seriously, I don't understand. Every antiviral drug on record is in this list. There was even a vial of ashvins in there, too.
Naomi: "Ashvins?"
LG: It's a medicine that hasn't been fully authorized by the FDA. It's an excellent antiviral drug, but there were some problems with side effects. It draws on the patient's calcium to suppress viral activities. If used in excess, the patient will become calcium deficient. The body then draws calcium from the bones, and it leads to all sorts of complications.
Naomi: A drug that robs calcium from the bones...
LG: That isn't its purpose, of course, but that's what happens.
I think this provides a sensible explanation for those bone problems, wouldn't you say?
Naomi: A fifty kilogram person's body contains roughly 1 kilogram of calcium. Ninety-nine percent of that is in the bones and teeth. In other words, the side effect of ashvins is decreased bone density. Considering the information that's been gathered so far, the person most likely administered the Ashvins drug to
We've run these paths as far as we can, but in order to draw any conclusions, we'll need a better look at the bones themselves.
Naomi: I need this bone analyzed, Little Guy. Be careful with it... There's a danger of infection.
LG: Could you warn me a little sooner next time? Let's see here... No, there's nothing especially unusual about it.
Naomi: That's odd. This is the bone that Chloe swallowed. When she did, the same black focus that the patients in the quarantine zone had showed up inside her body. According to what Gabe said, the serviceman who was investigating this bone had hemorrhagic fever. In other words, the pathogen lurking inside this bone is a deadly virus.
LG: B-but this is just a skeleton! A virus requires living cells from its host in order to multiply! So, this virus not only survives its host's death, but can continue within a skeletonized corpse...
Naomi: Can you really say that such a thing is impossible? Everything we've seen until now has taught us that there are diseases out there in this world that defy all our understanding and what we think of as common sense.
LG: ...All right. Let's assume that it is a virus. That doesn't mean all the mysteries have been solved. How does it survive inside the skeleton, and why aren't we infected?
Naomi: I can't say at this point. It's possible this person had the virus, or that the skeleton was contaminated after death. However, I can explain why you and I don't have the hemorrhagic fever. Gabe was told by the Assistant Secretary that airborne infection is impossible. That's because the infection wasn't spreading within USAMRIID.
LG: Then, how does it spread?
Naomi: Well, in Chloe's case, the foci were located under the bone fragments. Taking that into account, this virus' route of infection is mucous membrane contact.
LG: That explains the cat's case, at least, but what about the researcher? I doubt he'd be chewing on bones.
Naomi: Good point. There must be an explanation...
And we can provide that explanation with the card we already made showing that a portion was shaved off the bone.
Naomi: There's no way a researcher would lick or swallow a bone. However, he did collect a bone sample for their research. In order to obtain that sample, that researcher shaved the bone with a router. This is likely what caused him to become infected. That's because he inhaled the bone powder. The powder then carried the infection and made contact with the mucous membranes. That is my hypothesis to explain his infection.
More information can be obtained now by combining the card about the dust-borne infection with the one about the medications the skeleton was injecting.
Naomi: Whoever this was, their skeleton is infected with a virus, and they'd been taking large doses on antiviral drugs, including a dangerous unapproved one. It is likely that this person was infected with a virus.
LG: Then the cause of death was...
Naomi: I should stop making conjectures. I need some hard evidence. Hemorrhagic fever causes hemorrhaging all over the body, along with various other conditions. If we could find traces of that disease...
LG: Hemorrhaging all over...
Naomi: Is something wrong?
LG: Well, we just received the results from the analysis. It says that the bloodstain on the person's clothing contained traces of saliva.
Naomi: That means that the blood was vomited. Then... this person died of viral hemorrhagic fever. The evidence that suggests this is the unchanged clothes. If they had been alive after vomiting that blood, I highly doubt they'd go on without doing something about the bloody clothes. Thus, the person died soon after this attack.
Next time: We know how they died. Now, it's time to discover the identity of the mystery corpse.