"He did," Abby replied over the rim of her coffee, lips set close to the rim to gently blow off the steam. She waved off his apology with a warm smile, as easily and quickly as he did hers, before she sat in the rolling chair Gavin offered. Her tablet was perched across her knees as both hands wrapped around the hot mug. "But the truth is, as talented as the man is? He's not a medical examiner - any more than my predecessor's an investigator."

Abby took a small, slow sip. [i]God this is amazing coffee... [/i] She had no idea how the hell Gavin did it, but his brew was always second to [i]none[/i]. The fruits and nuts she brought were entirely for him of course, a [i]"Good Morning Sunshine"[/i] gift for a man who had been so good to Michael, endearing himself to Abby. But all she and her lingering headache needed right now, was this unspeakably good hot cup of coffee.

"Please don't get me wrong," she said, swallowing down that mouthful of heaven before she continued, "I'm not criticizing what they did - there's nothing to say that any one of us could have done better. But in the end, I'm wondering if they asked all the right questions."

"Oh, and there's a reason you didn't have access to those autopsy reports - well, until right now." Abby took another sip of coffee before reluctantly setting it down on the counter beside her, by the plate. With an impish little grin, she reached for the pocket of Gavin's hoodie sweatshirt and helped herself to his reading glasses. "Sorry, completely forgot mine."

Finger and thumb held Gavin's purloined glasses daintily just over her nose as she peered at the tablet in her lap. The fingers of her other hand flew over the screen, that devilish grin disappearing behind a frown of concentration. "There. You should have full access to them." Abby folded Gavin's glasses again with one hand, and tucked them back into his pocket with a small sigh. "The last victim, the one who survived? She didn't go back to 'sleep.' She's pregnant now, and she's keeping it."

"But there's more to the sealing of those records, more than just this girl's 'privacy' - even if that is the official version of the story. Here... If you take a look at the names, you might semi-recognize one. Adrienne Lahan, the third female victim?" She held up her own tablet to Gavin, fingers widening the three dimensional image of a lovely young woman, dark brown hair and green eyes and the kind of beautiful that can even make official identification photographs seem glamorous. 

"She was General Lahan's daughter." Abby closed up the screen on her tablet and set it back in her lap, letting her words sink in for a moment before she spoke again. She bit her lip thoughtfully as she looked up to the decent, handsome face of one of the handful of people aboard this ship she genuinely trusted. Some small part of her desperately wanted to confide more of her thoughts about the Copernicus' commander, about Stanford's last words to her before he went to "sleep" himself... No. No, what she brought him now was enough for [i]anyone's[/i] plate. Let Gavin make of her words what he would. He'd have plenty on his mind soon enough.

"The autopsy reports though," she said quickly, "Yes, I read them and they didn't tell me anything I couldn't have guessed on my own. There was no sexual assault examination done on the deceased since, until the last woman was attacked? There was zero indication what they were actually dealing with. The unthinkable was out of mind - until it suddenly [i]wasn't[/i] - but the dead had already been 'buried at sea,' so to speak."

"Chemistry and toxicology findings all came back the same - these people, in essence, suffocated in their 'sleep' via an overdose of their meds. Now if there's anything awry with the reports themselves?" Abby laughed mirthlessly with a helpless shrug of her shoulders. "I sure don't have anything to offer in that department - that's [i]all[/i] you, Gavin." 

"But assuming those findings [i]are[/i] accurate? Here's what I'm wondering - and hey, I'm just a dumb cop, so take my random musings for what they're worth," she teased with a wink, though yet again, the levity couldn't last long. "We have the benefit of hindsight, and know all five of these people were murdered, that it was no kind of cryobed failure."

"But aren't there supposed to be safeguards on these beds? Correct me if I'm wrong, but every shift that's woken? This isn't simply done by a cryotech walking around with a notepad, flipping a switch and checking off a box. All of this is timed and calculated out, from the meds to the monitoring. No one is ever simply 'accidentally' woken. True, the 'sleep' medications have to be dealt with. But the cryotech Sy Jacobs, the one they executed, would have had the expertise to do that. My question is,[i] how did he get past those safeguards?[/i] Past the alarms, without leaving any kind of trace?"

"You're the man who created OLGA. You're the geneticist, the doctor. I can open doors, anywhere you'd care to go from here - well, until I [i]can't[/i]," she added meaningfully. "Honest to God, Gavin, I'm hoping there isn't a damn thing to find. Michael's still 'sleeping,' you know... ?" Abby's voice trailed off with the question and she looked away quickly. She blinked a few times, and forced a small smile to her lips that bowed upward but showed no teeth. Abby reached once more for her own cup of coffee, wrapping both hands around the mug tightly as she pulled it close.