Amy: Oh, great... aliens again! Just what we needed!
Per Colonel Spangler's request, Chief Marquez sends Amy and the player to the Pacific Area Space Agency launch pad, where they find the body of astronaut Tom Nelson with a massive hole on his chest.
Tropes:
- Accidental Murder: Brad killed Tom entirely by accident, since he believed a functional ray gun was purely science fiction. For this reason, Judge Dante gives him a lenient sentence of 8 years with chance of parole.
- Awesome by Analysis: How Roxie deduces that the killer is right-handed.Roxie: The victim was found propped up against a car. The car wasn't damaged, which means the body was moved there post-mortem.Where he'd been moved, the victim was leaning slightly to the right. This shows the killer's right side is stronger than the left, which in turn means they're right-handed!
- Black Site: One of the crime scenes is a secret war room deep in the desert, which can only be accessed via a password that changes every two hours.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: The first time the player speaks with Brad, who makes no effort to be humble about his own intelligence, he tells them that since Tom was a genius the killer would have to be an even bigger genius to be able to kill him. At the end of the case, Brad himself is found to be the killer.
- Cliffhanger: The case ends with Colonel Spangler requesting to meet you on a festival that soon will take place in the district, where he will tell you everything about what's going on with aliens and the army in Rhine Canyon.
- Cloudcuckoolander: This case introduces Randolph, a guy who dresses with winter clothes in the middle of the desert, speaks in Third-Person Person, and claims to be an alien from planet Krep-9 who crash-landed on Earth forty years ago. Even his suspect profile classifies him as "Weird Guy".Amy: Oh, dear... not another alien-obsessed lunatic!
- Conspiracy Theorist: Astrid Saucer, the victim's best friend, is an UFO fanatic who owns a blog about alien conspiracies and how the government tries to cover them with lies. She's even classified as "high risk" by the army for this reason.
- Continuity Nod: Amy mentions she reads Girly Gossip, the same magazine Jones admits to like in Case 44 of Grimsborough.
- Court-martialed: Spangler almost gets court-martialed for helping you access the secret war room, though you save him by proving he did so for the public interest.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: You meet General Freeman in this case, Colonel Spangler's superior who is even more of a douchebag than Spangler ever was towards you.Freeman: So you're the ones who entered the war room without my permission! Did that coward Spangler help you? If we were at war, you'd be shot for this!
- Fanboy: Brad was this towards Tom, thinking of him as the most intelligent person on Earth and the only one smarter than him.Brad: Tom was the smartest person on Earth, it's not like someone could catch him unawares! Whoever killed him must be an even bigger genius! Good luck competing with that kind of intelligence...
- Fantastic Flora: You find a strange plant that, according to Yann, doesn't match any of the 400,000 known species on Earth, and Randolph claims it's actually a plant from his planet he gifted to the victim.
- Food Pills: One of the killer's traits is that they eat space food.
- Forgetful Jones: Megan Steel, the lead scientist of the PASA, is very forgetful whenever you talk to her.Megan: Between you and me... sometimes, after a particularly trying day, I feel like my brain just gets wiped! I can hardly remember my own name!
- I Didn't Mean to Kill Him: Brad says this word by word whilst defending himself.Brad: I found the gun in the lab, and I decided to prank Nelson... I didn't expect to kill him for real! Laser guns only kill people in movies, <Player's Name>!I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the hole in Nelson's chest... I didn't mean to kill him!
- Insufferable Genius: Brad Raybury, a college post-grad working as an intern on the PASA, isn't humble about it in the slightest.
- Insult Backfire: When General Freeman tries to insult his scientist associates by saying that "science is for girls", Amy takes it as a compliment.
- Interplanetary Voyage: The victim was an astronaut who was going to be in the first manned expedition on Mars.
- Mysterious Past: Hannah discovers that all of Randolph's background is actually fake, leaving his true past entirely on the dark.Amy: All that... oh come on, Randolph! You're not going to expect us to believe your record is fake because you're an alien?!
- Noodle Incident: Brad remarks how Tom's death is the saddest thing that has happened to him, even sadder than the day his cat fell into the particle accelerator.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Astrid is convinced that Randolph acts like a weirdo so he can hide the fact that he's an alien.Astrid: This is all an act, can't you see? Randolph pretends he's stupid so no one will notice his high intellect!
- Parting-Words Regret: The last time Astrid and Tom spoke with each other, she called him a liar for denying that aliens existed, which she regrets as he was her best friend.
- Race Against the Clock: The final stretch of the case becomes this, with Spangler on the brink of being Court-martialed for helping you access the war room, with the only way to save him being solving the case to prove he did so for the public interest.
- Ray Gun: The victim was killed with one of these. While at first it appears to be an army project, General Freeman tells you he actually found it in the desert, claiming its origins to be unknown.
- Self-Destructing Security: One of the clues you find is an USB stick belonging to the PASA that deletes its files if someone tries to access it. Fortunately, Hannah still manages to discover who it belongs to.
- Shout-Out:
- The case's title is most likely a reference to Dead Space.
- Brad Raybury is a parody of Sheldon Cooper, and is named after Ray Bradbury.
- Randolph is a parody of Griffin.
- General Freeman is a parody of Miles Quaritch.
- In the Constellation Orb scene, there is a satirical picture of Barack Obama, as well as the head and arm of the Terminator.
- A show that one of the suspects watches is called "Battlestar Wars".
- PASA is a parody of NASA.
- Skewed Priorities: Despite being a huge fan of Tom, Brad is more concerned by the fact that now the Mars mission will be called off.
- Straw Misogynist: According to Megan, the victim told her she shouldn't be eating space food and instead should be cooking just because she's a woman, despite the fact she's the one leading the Mars mission for the PASA.
- Third-Person Person: Randolph speaks like this.
- Torso with a View: The victim is found with a massive hole on his chest, courtesy of a ray gun.
- Wistful Amnesia: Megan Steel, the lead scientist of the PASA, seems to be suffering of partial memory loss, making her a Forgetful Jones.
- You Have to Believe Me!: At the start of Chapter 2, Spangler begs to you go to a secret war room in the desert, claiming that it will help with your investigation and that he's risking his life by telling you about it.
