S4 E12: Death & Other Discomforts

Adio Adio Wake up Space Wake up Wake up Wake up, Doc What's wrong? Was I asleep? You and me both Jeez, you're covered in blood You're gonna wanna look down What? Holy shit, I'm Shit, I'm... Who's... Where's Alex? I found him like this. Oh, no. Alex. Yep. How did... Great question. And where's Huck? Another great question. So, we got a murder under our noses, and literal blood on our hands. Fuck. Yeah. Thank you. It was 4.45 when I woke up. It's 5.07 now. So, Alex was killed somewhere between midnight and 4am. What were you doing during those 15 minutes that you woke me up? Murdering the guy I was supposed to protect. Obviously. You don't seriously think I killed him, do you? No, I don't. Just like you, I woke up in a daze. Took me a while to figure out where I was, not alone why we were passed out on the floor. I don't remember falling asleep. That's what happens when you're drugged. You think we were drugged? Come on, you know what I meant. Why do you think that? Then just ask it. I felt like this when waking up before. It's not a normal feeling. You feel normal? Didn't think so. And I was trying to stay up last night to keep my eye on Alex. Wouldn't have fallen asleep. So somebody didn't want us to see what happened. How could they even do this? The injection? Something aerosolized? Despite food or drink? I meant this to Alex. Look at him. I already saw. There's blood all around his temple. Blood to the head. Can you hand me those gloves? This blood around his head looks odd. Compared to normal looking blood? What the... Look at this. It's a seam. Like a sewing seam. Jesus. Somebody cover him up. Whoa, hey. You're gonna disturb the evidence. There's no evidence to disturb. What? Of course there is. Iris? There is no evidence, because there's no investigation. Now step away, Dr. Spacer. What the fuck? You can't speak to the dead anymore, correct? And you. You were supposed to keep him alive. You're dismissed. Yes, Mom. Dr. Lewis. You need to go get checked by the medical bay. We're evacuating the base immediately. Evacuating? For the storm? What are you talking about? I know about the- You feel like you've failed Alex. We all feel that way. But it was written in his blood. So we have either a killer or something in this laboratory. We'll be evacuating. Now stop by the med bay before you go and leave the care of Alex's remains to me. That's an order. Guards? I'm going. Alex, I know you can hear me. I'll figure this out. So Iris hired you. Why didn't you tell me earlier? She didn't want Alex to know. I guess the whole your fate is inevitable thing is a lot less convincing if you also hire someone to intervene, huh? Yeah, she was hopeful. So was I. Now you're just leaving. Unlike you, Dr. Spacer, when I'm fired, I tend to leave the premises and not stick around for an unneeded investigation. It's completely needed. Not according to Dr. Lewis. Who actually killed Alex? What happened to us and where the hell is Huck? If I had to take an educated guess, seeing as it was the three of us and Alex in a room last night, one of us is now missing. Easy math. Says Huck killed him. Must be easy to be you then. Huck loved Alex. They were friends. In my experience, friends murder friends more often than not. He didn't kill him. A job offer is still available whenever you get out of it. So that's it then? You just leave after all this? What do you want me to do, John? I... You know, the whole time here, people kept asking me if I felt obligated. Like I was supposed to do my job just because I had this gift. Maybe I did it first, but that didn't mean I didn't like it and that I wasn't good at it. I can just let Alex leave without answers And I can figure this out on my own Alright Fine I guess we start with the security tapes Please ready for departure in 3 hours and 42 minutes. Down here. Here's the security office. They gave you access? Yeah, why not? Jeez, look at those cameras. It's a ghost town. The image. Huh? Ah. This one is the lab we were in. Here. Get that switch for me. Whoa. The timeline. 12 hours of feed. Let's narrow it down. You've been in here before. Every night, I monitor any suspicious activity. Guess that comes in handy. Between midnight and 4.45. There we are. Helpful. Alex is talking to Huck. He goes into the bathroom. I'm surprised you let him. I checked the bathroom. No exits, one entryway. I was pretty confident the man could pee by himself. I don't remember him coming back. Neither do I. What is that? Ah. Some sort of smoke. Gas, maybe. In from the vent. Looks like it. And then? Blammo. Passed out. Huh. All three of us. Pretty fast, too. What time was that? 1.19. 1.20. 1.22. Four. Nothing. There. Alex came out at 1.30. 20 minutes in the bathroom. Do you think he knew? I think he did it. Why do you say that? Look, Alex doesn't look surprised to see us on the floor. He heads right to the door. Maybe he was trying to hold his breath. Ventilate the room. Then why doesn't he come back to check? Swap the camera view back to him. Find out where he goes. Um, over there. Main hallway. Down the hall to the right. What room's that? The vaccination lab. Which camera is that? It's that one. The black screen. Was it one a minute ago? There goes another. What the hell? They're all blacked out. 136, 137. One by one, they go out. That can't be a glitch. If they glitched or were physically tampered with, they'd either all black out at the same timestamp or we'd see some video fading. This is a hard cut, meaning that someone deleted the footage. So whoever got to Alex killed him and then deleted the video? After they saw him go into the vaccination, though. Why would he leave on his own? That's a great question. Watch the other cameras to see if anyone's spotted around the time the gas field is in. I don't see anything. Then he comes out. It's down the hall, into the lab. And then... Black. Wait, what is that? Where? Rewind, like ten seconds before the blackout. Okay. Which camera am I looking at? Ours. With us passed out. Blackout? I'm not seeing anything. Right before the blackout, Huck disappears. It's got to be fracturing from the deleted footage. Look, slow it down. I don't know if you believed any of this, but Huck's power- Oh, like your power. He can go invisible, but no one's been able to see it until now. So he disappears while unconscious? Where is he now? When do the videos come back up? Three-ish. Look, three, thirty, two. And where is Huck? Gone. No, he's not. Look, the blood around the room. It's on us now. There's Alex. And the blood there, it's... It's flying. It's on Huck. But he's invisible. Play it forward till we wake up. Holy shit. Look, the bloodstain moves. It's on Huck and he woke up first. Right, not that I believe it, but... We've got an invisible guy hiding somewhere around the building. Anything? Sure, there's tons of heat signatures. Hands on doorknobs, lots of sweat. It's just that I don't know how I'm supposed to figure out which is Hux. You can do this. Really helpful. Why not just go around shouting his name? Because whoever killed Alex didn't realize Huck was in the room still. They're probably also looking for him, thinking he woke up early. I'm with Janine. Janine. Just play Marco Polo with this invisible bastard. We're not even supposed to be out of our room. You're supposed to be gone. Wait. Where's Dr. Dan? I'm not sure. Why? There's a recent handprint on his doorknob. So, he went into his office. Big deal. Look, there's particulates. Particulates? Leftover evidence. Very, very small. Look, blood droplets near the doorframe. Kind of smeared. Alex's blood? Well, I can't tell that, no can I? Holy shit. Huck! Huck! We know what happened. You're invisible! That's so exciting! I didn't kill Alex. Huck. Oh. Where? We know. Where are you? Over here I move the the current You guys didn kill him did you Of course not We woke up a little after you did We were just looking for you I didn know what to do I ran hid for a while and washed off all this blood in the bathroom sink And when I saw Iris moving Alex's body and you in your room, I figured something weird was going on. We're doing this. So you came here? I came to get this. Dr. Dan's batch? He has access to the medical bay. Where Alex's body went. Bingo. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the Shadow Dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s. And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark. every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. And this is Moms and Mysteries. We're two Florida moms obsessed with true crime. From infamous cases like Ellen Greenberg to shocking Florida stories like the Dan Markell killing. With 55 million downloads, we bring you new deep dives every Tuesday and Thursday. Listen to Moms and Mysteries on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't need to, but you can tell me if there's any heat signatures on his body where he was last touched. Oh, pfft, okay. Oh, mm-mm. He's lighting up like a Christmas tree. And there's blood. Oh, so much blood everywhere. W-w-where do I start? Lordy. I think that was meant for me. Here, at the head, I noticed something weird earlier that I'd like to explore. Explore? Right around here. Mm-mm. It's, um, brighter than some other parts, meaning more recent. That's what I thought, too. The blood looks like it didn't come out as a spatter. It's sort of... You wiped away the evidence of the sponge. The dried blood. We need to see. And look. The seam you mentioned earlier. Squires, put on a pair of gloves and hold this tray. Okay. What for? Oh, that's disgusting. His temple. That's what I was saying. There was a line under the blood and it ran right across his forehead. Apparently all the way around. You pulled his hecking skull off. His brain's gonna fall out. Can it fall out? Well, this time. He's right. Janie, don't look over here. You don't need to tell me twice. Someone took out his brain. Scraped it out. And it looks like there's scalpel striations. His brain? So Dan killed him. Huck? You're supposed to be the lookout. It had to be Dan. Dan might have taken Alex's brain. He definitely did. But what we're seeing from the difference in blood and the heat signatures, right, I'm guessing there was at least an hour time difference between when Alex was killed and when his temple was cut open. Does that sound right, Janie? I think I blacked out. So, why would Dan kill Alex and then wait an hour to take his brain? Exactly. He's a fucking freak. Who knows? Huck. Fine. I'll go back to being guard dog. The skin around his temple didn't bleed like the blood was still fresh and pumping either. This was post-mortem. So while we can't automatically rule Dan out, you're right, squires, it would have been odd for Dan to kill him and then wait an hour before doing this. Okay, so I'm looking for any heat that's less warm than his head. Or close to it, yeah. Take a look at his chest. If it wasn't crazy, Dr. Dan, who are you thinking? I don't like to speculate. Yeah, but if you had to. Royce, Iris' dad or whoever. The CEO, the guy that started Springfield Corp. Alex was saying something needed to change with this place. Janie, look by the pattern of the blood on his chest. It's radial, and although it's covered in blood, I'm imagining when I cut his shirt open... Bullet wound. Yeah, help me lift him a bit. Just at an angle. No exit wound from what I can see here. And there appears to be gunpowder residue on his shirt, even mixed in with the blood. That's a classic blowback pattern, and see that? That's because the gun was placed on his chest. Point blank. Whoever did this would have gunpowder marks on them. Hard to get off even with scrubbing. His chest isn't what's glowing the most, though. Then what is? His left arm. All over it. Even his hand. So someone touched his left arm. Maybe they dragged him by it? I might be able to grab some particulates from his back. And that could give us an indication of what room he was killed in We saw where he went Where Look here I mean it small but it there There a puncture wound on his arm So someone injected him with something? There's no bruising around the wound. If someone forced a needle on him, you'd expect to see at least a little bit of bruising, but this looks like it was, you know, done carefully, taking their time. Instead, he's got bruises around his wrist. So what does that mean? That means I need a blood sample. Shit. Squires, can you grab a vial? I'll clean this up. You keep going. I'm gonna open them up. What are you looking for? We need the bullet and that blood sample. Here. Hmm. Can you put this in that centrifuge? The what? The machine over there. Put the vial in, turn it on, and click the start button. Guess I'll figure it out. Hmm. There. John. You need to get going. We can't. It's almost sunup, and- Not yet. We're close, I know it, and this might be our last chance. Okay. The thing is spinning. That's good, right? Anything? Yeah, I feel it. It went through his heart here. One shot, dead almost instantly. So, again, why would someone just inject him and then shoot him? Seems like overkill. So? What are you thinking? Got it. Here, hand me that. What's that look like to you? It's small. A .22 caliber. Mine's a .45, so it wasn't my gun. Alex had a .22? He did? He pulled it out when I first got here. He tried to use it on one of the patients. So, he was shot with his own gun and injected himself with something. This isn't looking like much of a murder. Well, is that blood sample done? Huck? Please step away from the body, Dr. Spacer. Dr. Lewis, you don't understand. Look, we made a promise to Alex, and I found something. Where's Huck? I mean it, John. Alex was shot with a .22 and then injected with something. We're thinking that Dan stole his brain, but that's not what killed him. So I wanted to check his blood to see- You don't need to check his blood. If I'm right, I'm thinking that Alex might have injected himself with the vaccine from the lab. So his blood will show... His blood will show that the vaccine worked. You already knew. You killed Alex? Why? Mr. Squires, if you'd please pull out your gun and aim it at Dr. Spacer. Your fingers got set on it. It's from the gun, isn't it? You still work for me, right? Sorry, guys. Squires. War twist. How I Died is an audio media original production. Written by Vince Dijani. With layout and sound design by Chris Harris-Beachy. And executive produced by Michael Freiberg. Theme song created by Silent Mike Music. Starring Shana Waring as Sheriff Crowley Luis Bermudez as Eric Mendez Caitlin Roberts as Amelia Chris Harris-Beachy as Officer Hart and Agent Squires Juan Carlo Herrera as Alex Juliette Angeli as Dr. Iris Also featuring performances by Albie Robles, Anthony Morales, Maya Murphy Jun Yoon, B. 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