Dead Giveaway

A seasoned investigator named Dave Turnbull is called back from a year‑long stint on a remote colony to track down the enigmatic Scholar James Duckworth, whose last known destination was the deserted outpost of Mendez. The trail is thin—a hotel address, a half‑filled travel log, and the unsettling possibility that the scholar vanished without a trace. Turnbull must navigate a tangled web of interplanetary routes, bureaucratic red tape, and the lingering question of who might benefit from the scholar’s disappearance.

Back on Earth, Turnbull returns to his long‑unoccupied apartment, a place frozen in time, and begins piecing together the fragmented clues left behind. As he dusts off old surfaces and re‑examines the half‑remembered connections, the mystery deepens, hinting at hidden motives and a larger conspiracy that could span worlds. The story unfolds as a tense, methodical chase, where logic and intuition are the only tools against a silence that stretches across the stars.