YEAR 2342
Medical science had advanced rapidly towards the end of the 21st century. At the beginning of the 22nd, the moon had been colonized successfully. Towards the middle 22nd century, a new country Planet Earth was formed with a new government, one inclusive of all its inhabitants. Contact with sentient alien life froms occurred towards the end of the century. With time, our first galactic ally, the Kerzids, along with humans discovered what no one would have dreamed off a few centuries back: a prophylaxis to genetic disorders. This project involved vaccinating humans to produce DNA repair mechanisms that would automatically repair any faulty DNA. Though there was widespread suspicion, humans and Kerzids alike were vaccinated. No genetic disorder had ever been seen ever since. The alliance with the Kerzids had grown increasingly shaky over the past few decades...and now we lay at the brink of a space war.

GOING DOWN

"So what do you think, sir?"

I bent down over the dead woman. She appeared to have died in pain. And there was a newborn by her side, dead as well. There was nothing much to be concluded. I had been seeing this far too frequently beyond the outskirts: lone women dying along with their newborns.

"Died most probably due to post delivery complications. Judging by the sanitation here, I should say it was a rapid septic shock. As for the child, it could be anything."

The two officers accompanying me looked around the hut. It was a poorly designed structure and could've fallen in any day. I often wondered why humans still lived away from the cities...it was hardly safe in the outskirts and venturing beyond that was strictly prohibited. Unless you happened to be Dr. Scrifftor Hales, the chief investigator of the Planet Earth Police Corps.

My men came back and shook their heads. They had been my friends since childhood, Kyle and Bart.

I asked "How many such cases have we had recently?"

"This is the eighty second in the past four months, sir" Kyle replied.

"Well, pack up and load the equipments in the van. I doubt we'll learn much from a post mortem report. Might as well give the woman and her baby a decent funeral."

They left. I knelt down again by the woman. Something was clearly not right. Eighty two cases in four months, this was unprecedented. While this may have occurred due to unsanitary conditions during delivery, I still had trouble believing that this wasn't part of something larger. Even as a child, I loved puzzles. Especially jigsaw puzzles. And something struck me about the cut umbilical cord...

"Get me a fucking comparator right now!" I yelled out to them.

Bart rushed in, holding a device that had been a boon for quick identification. I took the blood samples of the mother and the baby. The comparator analysed them. And the result was much as I had expected. The screen read

Sample 1 - AB+ve
Sample 2 - O+ve

The baby was not that of the mother's. The original baby had been taken away. What was going on here? And why?

"Sir, what's wrong?" asked Kyle with all his good natured curiosity. I guess my face had given away too much.

"This is no ordinary death. This is murder."

Astonished at the lack of understanding from them, I gave them an irritated look.

"Have we ever compared the mother and baby in any of the previous cases? No, we haven't. What we have witnessed is not a tragic death. Its wilful murder of the mother and a child while the real child has been abducted."

I began to look around for clues, something had to be there, some trace of the missing baby. I had no idea what I was expecting to find. The baby was definitely missing and whoever had abducted him was no fool. It had been preplanned and my chances of finding anything were bleak. Again, I turned to the umbilical cord. I took two DNA samples, one from the cord and other from the baby. And they didn't match.

The abducted child had something very wrong with his DNA. Something that should not be happening. Something that couldn't be true. He had three pairs of chromosome 21. A Down's syndrome baby.

"Kyle, Bart. Inform the PEPC. We have a situation here."

"Yes, sir."

I compared the features of the baby with what should have been. He looked absolutely normal. No flat facial features, short neck, bulging tongue, slanted eyes or oddly shaped ears. Looked absolutely healthy. I heard a weird noise outside. The mutated rats that lived in the hut fled. And I had never seen a rat flee before. I called out to my friends, but stopped myself before I did. Instinct told me they would never respond. I heard footsteps. It was time to meet the foe.

*To be continued...hopefully ;) *

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