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7.

The Vixen and Tauber were too stunned for words.

When The Vixen took a look at the shrapnel Tauber had carried with him, and noticed that the shrapnel and the paper she had picked up off the dead body had a common symbol, the bottle she held in her hand fell to the floor and the beer spilled onto some equipment, thus shutting down one of the many monitors in her room. But she had already decided to tend to that later. There was a situation much, much more important that beckoned to her.

Tauber and The Vixen walked towards the monitor, the shrapnel in Tauber's hand. He held it next to the monitor, and the duo compared the symbols. Tauber's shrapnel had two irregular figures with an arrow joining them, the Venus symbol, and the face with the sad expression and moustache.

The Vixen had copied the writing/drawing from the sheet her pursuer had been carrying onto the computer and had pondered over its meaning ever since the incident. She, too, had the same face as Tauber's shrapnel did. She also had two irregular masses, with one at the North-West and the other at the South-East. An arrow connected the North-West figure to the South-East one, and it pointed towards the latter.

What surprised both of them was that the North-West figure was the same. Tauber's South-East figure, however, was an inverted triangle with a handle extending upward from the top left of the triangle, whereas The Vixen's South-East figure was a kite-like form. (The kite being the one that we fly, not that which flies.)

The Vixen could not sleep properly ever since she had been chased and had recovered the slip of paper, because what was written on it truly terrified her.

"Kuch khaas nahii, bus aapke haalchaal dekhne aaye the."

This Hindi sentence, when translated to English, read -

"Nothing special, I (we) had just come to see how you were doing."

There was also a chant written on the paper.

"Om Sham Shanaishcharaye Namah."

This chant is used by people to hail Lord Shani, one of the most powerful and feared Deities in Hindu Mythology.

The Vixen and Tauber sat in silence for some time, trying to piece together the information each one had got from the other.

"Some organization, this. Murders in cold blood, then leaves a calling card," said Tauber.

"And their motive?"

"Not known....yet. We have to find out."

"I feel that there have been more crimes, similar to this."

"Any that you know of?"

"No," said The Vixen, and rose from her chair. "But I can try to find out." She walked towards her main computer.

Marais looked down, and all she could see was grass.

She looked up, and saw her hands turn red from trying to cling on to the window-sill.

She had shocked herself when she jumped out of the window, but being a detective, risks were embedded in her system.

So was intellect.

While scouting the windows, before entering the headquarters in the lab coat, she had noticed that the window on the autopsy room had a ledge on the outside.

When she had heroically taken her leap of faith, she had held onto the ledge before letting the rest of her body drop.

And now she lay there, hanging, three floors above the ground.