9

If working the beat in Corporate Center wasn't an actual punishment, it sure as hell felt like one. Sure, Corporate Center was one of the prettier parts of the city, if you didn't mind the miles of glass and steel and sterility. It was clean and safe in a way that was second only to the Highs. Maybe parts of the Kensington Autonomous District, if you liked your surroundings more au naturel.

But Detective Declan Cole had been a Cyber City Police Department officer for a long time, and he did mind, goddammit. There used to be real businesses here, with real employees working in them and making products real people could afford and use.

That had been 40 years ago, Cole's first ever patrol. Back when Corporate Center had been a dozen different cities and not some stitched together monstrosity. There'd been parks. Stores. Families. He and his wife had taken their daughter here on his days off. But over the years, walls had gone up around the office parks, and the corporate security teams had gone from smiling men and women in sensible uniforms to faceless private military contractors kitted out in military-grade gear. If all of that didn't make the suits feel safe, what the hell was he supposed to do?

Keep the riff-raff out of the district, he guessed. Cole reached into the admin pouch of his patrol vest, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. It was all so damn pointless, all this standing around trying to look like a lot of different things to a lot of different people. He had to look invisible to the suits that were there every day. He had to look friendly and helpful to the ones that were visiting from out of town. He had to look like a mean son of a bitch to the would-be petty criminals looking to ply their trade. And he had to not look like a joke to the PMCs that ran the checkpoints and drilled in the office parks and maintained air superiority over all of Corporate Center.

It was a miserable day to be walking to and fro. Cole could feel his shoulders and his neck beginning to tense up, sweat dripping down his back, the backs of his knees itching and overheating where his augmentations met his skin. He'd have a rash by the end of his shift. Wonderful. And on top of his physical discomfort, the suits and the PMCs looked right through him. The only people that noticed him at all were the groundskeepers and custodians that kept Corporate Center spotless, and they all looked at him like he was a wild animal that couldn't be trusted not to knock them to the ground and go for their throats. The ones who hadn't been replaced by robots, anyway.

Cole plucked the spent cigarette from between his lips, dropped it on the ground, and ground it underfoot. There's no crime here except for the kind people do in board rooms. And trivial bullshit like–

Like some punk mutant standing in just the right spot for the street cameras not to pick her up as she defaced a wall.

Fantastic. Petty vandalism. Forty years on the force, and the CHIEF had him chasing taggers. "Hey!" he shouted at her, and the punk kid turned to look at him. She didn't run, didn't drop her spray paint, didn't do any of the things she was supposed to. She just stared, gave him that vacant yet somehow still contemptuous look that only those under 30 seemed able to master.

And then she went right back to her work.

"Motherfucker," Cole hissed. Fine. She was about to find out the hard way that while Cole might look like a tired old cop, he didn't move like one. Cole's carbon-fiber and titanium-alloy legs drove him forward, his hands slicing through the air like blades as he charged down the alleyway. "Hey, goddammit!" he shouted. "Stop!"

The girl looked over her shoulder, probably to shout some kind of insult at him. Instead, she shouted "Fuck!" as she realized Cole was nearly on top of her. She turned to run, but stumbled and fell, her arms coming up to protect her face and her head. Good instincts, Cole thought to himself. She was scrambling to get up when Cole caught up to her, grabbed the back of her thin, ragged jacket, and tossed her onto her back. He got down on one knee beside her, his remaining organic joints aching in protest, and put a hand on her shoulder to keep her pinned.

He was breathing heavily. Cyborg legs, organic lungs. And decades spent smoking and drinking. Disappointing. He had to cut back on both.

Or maybe he'd just get another organ rejuve from the CCPD's Griggs-Weskott liaison. That'd be faster.

Stay focused, he told himself. Deep breath and hold it. Get your words out without gasping.

He glanced down at the girl, and he saw he'd been right pegging her as a mutant. All the tattoos, the piercings and other shit in her face, the same blotchy skin as every other kid he'd taken in working the polluted streets and canals of Bayside. Plus the aggression behind the graffiti she hadn't been able to finish: SKULLFUCK CORPO SCUM. Some people got jobs, some people turned their anger into their whole identity.

Cole took that deep breath he'd been thinking about. "Defacing private property's a crime, Miss. You know that?"

She didn't answer. Cole looked down at her to confirm she was alright. She drove her fist into his face.

Cole's head snapped back. Not a lot, and he didn't relax his grip in the slightest or even give a grunt of pain. Just a sharp intake of breath from being surprised. But she had surprised him. And being surprised by a gutter punk with an attitude problem was embarrassing. Stupid, stupid old man. Didn't watch her hands, didn't get her on her stomach, didn't restrain her, didn't incapacitate her. The fuck are you even doing?

It was a correctable mistake, at least. The girl didn't have a follow-up plan to breaking his nose, and in less than a second, Cole's left arm split open like a spider spreading its legs, and the mechanical appendages wrapped themselves around the girl's wrists and elbows, restraining her and applying just enough force to let her know that further resistance would be a very bad idea.

Unfortunately for both of them, the girl didn't seem to be a very good student.

Cole took a good long look at the girl squirming beneath him. Beneath the unfortunate tattoos and self-scarification all the angrier youths in Bayside seemed to like, she was in her late teens or her early 20s. Maybe young enough she was truant from mandatory ed, maybe old enough that she'd be sent to the Q if the chips didn't fall her way.

Young enough that Cole didn't really want to ruin the next few years of her life out of spite.

Old enough that he was tempted.

"Miss, you've got some bad instincts," he said, forcing his voice to stay flat and even.

"Fuck you, pig! Get off me!"

"Kid," Cole said with a sigh, "you may not know this, but assaulting a member of the CCPD carries a whole mess of charges you don't want on your record." Cole leaned forward, his blood-streaked face inches from the girl's own. "So, I need to ask: did you just slip in a most unfortunate way, and you're very sorry and it won't happen again, and you're going to clean up your fingerpaints over there while I watch to make sure you get every last spot? Or am I about to drag you into the station and tell some very bored, very unimaginative police officers that you just punched one of their own in the face?"

The girl had defiance in her eyes, and she held his gaze. Cole had seen this response countless times in his career, and 9 times out of 10, it cracked after a few seconds. Come on, kid, Cole thought. Don’t be stupid.

She wasn’t, thankfully. Her eyes went from animal anger to animal fear, and she looked away. "I slipped," she said. "I'm sorry. I'll be more careful."

Cole grunted and let go of her, the restraints of his augmented arm clicking as they slid back into place. "Good. I appreciate it."

And then, in an instant, the fear was gone, and in its place, the feral sneer of an animal that knows it's about to get eaten and wants to be as poisonous as possible on the way down.

She spat in his face. "Corpo bootlicker," she hissed. "Don't you got grandkids or a family or someone who wants you at home?"

For a moment, Cole thought about tightening the restraints around her wrists until her bones splintered like cheap plastic. It wouldn't be fatal. None of the other police would say anything. BASIC would glue the bones back together and put some nuts and bolts in there if that would fix it, or cut the hand off and give her a prosthesis if it wouldn't.

But that wasn't the kind of cop he was. Never had been. Never would be.

He took another deep breath. "Miss, you've got some terrible fucking instincts," he said. Then he stood, yanked her to her feet, threw a restraining bag over her head, and summoned his patrol car.

***

By the standards of most of the CCPD, the Corporate Center Police Station was downright nice. The hallways were steel and glass, tile and marble. The air was full of the steady sound of talking, of doors opening and closing, of footsteps. But the sterility of the world outside the station's walls continued on in here, too. Most importantly to Cole in this moment, it was air conditioned.

It used to be different here, before the Seymour Incident, before the corporations stopped being businesses and became fiefdoms. Then, the station had had life in it. Officers processing criminals. Officers helping citizens. The occasional bark of laughter, the more-than-occasional shouted threat of violence. It had smelled, always of sweat and blood and oil, and often of vomit and shit and piss.

Of people.

Cole froze in place. Wait. No. No, Corporate Center never smelled. That was… the Tall Tree Annex in the Lows. No, Eden Landing in Bayside. No. Fuck. It was one of them. I remember you could go outside and close your eyes and smell the stink of the bay at low tide.

Cole stood in the hallway of the police station motionless, trying to reassemble his memories into a coherent whole. The station that had stunk was… St. Laurence. It must have been, because the regrown cartilage in his right elbow was itching something fierce, the way it always did when he took that particular trip down memory lane. He'd been assigned to St. Laurence when the bots at that nearby assisted living facility had been hacked and gone violent. One of the damn things had broken the joint, and–

Beside him, the girl thrashed. She bumped against him, and the push brought him back to the present. He shook the thoughts of days gone by from his head. "You okay?" he asked automatically. "The fuck do you think?" she said, her voice muffled by the restraining bag. She complained as Cole dragged her through the station. The bag over her head was hot, the backseat of the patrol car had been uncomfortable, and he was sure her wrists and her shoulders hurt from her restraints.

Well, that was all too bad. He certainly wasn't about to take the restraints off her.

But the wait in processing would be long.

Cole grabbed the girl's head and gave it a shake. "If I take this off, you going to behave yourself?" She mumbled something and nodded. Cole undid the magnetic clasp on the bag and pulled it off her head. She gasped for air, sweat dripping down her face. Cole frowned. Kids these days. Yeah, the bags got hot, but he knew they weren't that bad. Every officer was required to get bagged and cuffed for a minute as part of their annual training. It kept them empathetic to the needs of the community.

Cole watched her for a moment, then dragged her towards processing. Ignacio was working the desk today, and Cole frowned. Ignacio was 20 years his junior and a raging prick most days.

"Detective Cole! What have we got here? Did you find a jaywalker out and about in the mean city streets today?"

"Officer Ignacio," Cole said, forcing his voice to stay flat and professional. He pulled the mutant girl forward. She grunted in protest, but that was all. "I found this individual trespassing in Corporate Center without having been processed at an entry gate, in possession of unregistered aerosolized paint, and defacing private property. When confronted, she attempted to flee on foot."

"Uh huh," Ignacio said, typing up Cole's report. "And your face? Did your little hood rat friend do that to you, or did you just wake up like that?" Cole frowned. Assaulting an officer carried a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in the Q if convicted, and there was a 100% conviction rate. Some people needed to be put away. For others, being in the Q just put them in touch with the kind of criminals that would turn them into something much worse.

"What's wrong with my face?" Cole said, turning to face Ignacio and giving him a sneer. "You saying I'm not pretty?" Ignacio chuckled. "Pretty as you ever were, Detective. Alright, then. Anything else?"

Cole was just about to open his mouth when the CHIEF's voice, raspy and gruff, like an older man with a pack-a-day smoking habit, came through the precinct's PA system. Everyone stopped and looked above them, like the voice of God Himself had rung out. "Detective Declan Cole, you get your ass in my office right now!"

Ignacio grinned. "Uh oh. Looks like someone's in trouble with Daddy."

"Shut the fuck up," Cole muttered under his breath, a burning itch beginning to flare up where the augmented prosthesis of his left arm met aged flesh. He shoved the girl forward into processing, then he turned and headed deeper into the station, into the CHIEF's office.

The CHIEF's office was sweltering, just as it always was. The rows upon rows of servers made the room feel like an oven, and the cooling was designed to keep everything functioning at optimum efficiency, not to keep officers from sweating through their clothes while getting chewed out. In the center of the office sat the main server unit, a squat ugly hunk of metal and plastic with a black screen, indecipherable blinking LEDs, and the words "Cyber City Happiness Index Enforcement Framework" emblazoned on it. There it was. The local version of Cole's boss. The CHIEF.

Cole stared into the dark monitor. His nose was off-center, but he'd wiped away the blood. His hair was dirty and grey, hanging limp over his forehead. At least it kind of hid the lines worn into his brow. But nothing hid the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the tired droop of his eyelids that gave him a perpetually sleep-deprived stare, the spots and blemishes of decades of sun damage on fair skin.

And then the monitor flickered to life, projecting the waveforms of the CHIEF's text-to-speech audio, casting Cole in a sickly green glow.

"Your arrests are down this quarter, Detective," the CHIEF said. The server unit had speakers in it somewhere, tastefully hidden beneath its shell. "You mind explaining why?"

"I've been assigned to Corporate Center," Cole said, letting his eyes wander over the array of lights and status screens with code flowing across them and the beeping and buzzing of the electronics. "It's not exactly a hotbed of arrestable illegal activity."

"That's not a reason, Detective; that's an excuse! The good people of Cyber City don't pay their taxes for excuses – they want results!"

"You asking me to inflate my numbers, CHIEF?" Cole studied the server rack, the devices he didn't understand, the way they blurred together into noise. Someone could add or remove hardware and he'd have no way of knowing. At least when the CCPD chief had been a human, you didn't have to wonder if someone had reprogrammed them.

You could just follow the bribes.

Cole sniffed. CHIEF. Wonder how much some consultant got paid for that beauty.

"I'm asking you to do your damn job. I'm asking you to… I'm sorry, you look distracted. Am I boring you, Detective?" "No, Sir. Sorry, Sir."

The CHIEF made a sound that was supposed to be it clearing its throat, and Cole felt a surge of rage twist up his stomach. Forty years ago, one of these fucking things had almost ended the world, and now I'm calling one "Sir". How does that make any damn sense?

"Listen, Detective," the CHIEF continued. "I'm going to give it to you straight. You've got to shape up. You're underperforming relative to your peers." "Sir, I–"

"Don't interrupt me. I'm not blind, Detective. I can see your nose is busted. I could see that girl you brought in had contusions on her knuckles. It doesn't take a genius to piece together that you let her whale on you and then you failed to charge her with assaulting an officer."

Cole said nothing. He was confident the machine was fishing for another opportunity to cut him off and chastise him, some deeply ingrained part of its programming believing that its job was to yell. When Cole didn't give it the chance, it just grunted in irritation and continued.

"You listen to me, Detective. You've got one shot to turn things around or I'm busting you down to the desk duty you should have been on ten years ago."

Cole's jaw clenched. "Uh huh." Desk duty was beneath him, even if he had aged out of field work, and the CHIEF knew it. The CHIEF was trying to make him miserable enough to retire.

"I'm putting you on a murder case."

Cole grinned. Just for a moment, but it was unprofessional, he knew. He crossed his arms. Keep your cool, old man. You know the damn thing will be able to see your heart rate spike. "A murder? Where?"

"A couple executives and some foreign dignitaries were slaughtered here in Corporate Center, and the System's taken an interest."

Cole arched an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yes, really, Detective. In fact, we've got a System liaison waiting for you at your desk to brief you on everything."

Cole's mouth twisted up as his brain began turning over that news. Murders didn't happen in Corporate Center, at least not in any way that the local power brokers would tolerate. Corporate Center was safe. People didn't die here; they died right outside of the district's boundaries at a statistically anomalous rate. And the System never took an interest in Cyber City's murder cases, not unless the victim was a visiting System politician or an agent or something.

"Detective. Are you questioning me?"

"No, Sir."

"Good. This is your last chance, Cole. Don’t screw this up."

Cole frowned. "Understood, CHIEF."

Cole left the CHIEF's office, wiping the sweat from his brow and wiping his hands on his pants. Something in his gut didn't like this one bit. The CHIEF's urgency. The System's interest. That the case existed at all.

As Cole entered the bullpen, he saw the System agent right away. Their hands were clasped behind their back, the sleek leather greatcoat and the peaked officer's cap standing out among the simple, utilitarian CCPD uniforms. The agent looked like he was studying Cole's cork board. His eyes narrowed to slits: there was nothing on there but info on the Kulaks and their leader Nikolai Kuragin that he'd been gathering. He'd even angled the damn thing so CHIEF's cameras weren't pointed at it, and used pen and paper so it wouldn't sync to the CCPD's servers. The agent heard Cole's footsteps approaching and turned. He was grinning, a mirthless smug smile that came nowhere near his eyes. Cole was surprised at how young he looked, with pale skin and bright blue eyes and the smug sneer of someone savoring their first taste of real power. The brat must have been fresh out of the Academy.

Huh. He's carrying himself like he's God's gift to the System, which means there isn't a more senior officer nearby to chew him out. Weird.

"Detective Cole. I'm System Agent Derrig Hanssen, Cyber City Special Operations Division," he said, sticking out his hand for Cole to shake. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Cole grabbed his hand and shook. He applied pressure, letting the augmentations do the work of making his grip uncomfortably tight as he grinned. "Likewise, Agent Hanssen!" Then he made a show of looking around. "It's just you?"

The brat's mouth twitched, his smile threatening to break for just a moment. "Were you expecting someone else?"

Cole shrugged. "No, no. Just, I thought it was standard System procedure for field training officers to accompany junior agents on their missions? Where's your FTO?"

The brat's eyes flashed with irritation. The corners of Cole's mouth twitched the tiniest bit. Heh. You didn't think I'd know that, did you?

"The rules are a little different with Special Operations task forces. We're given more leeway to act independently."

"I see," Cole said, twisting his face in fake amazement. "Wow. You must be a real wunderkind to make Special Operations at such a young age!"

The brat forced a smile, his teeth more bared in a snarl than a grin. "I was top of my class, yes."

"Wow. Top of your class and your first assignment is corpse clean-up in Cyber City." Cole sat down, gestured at the open chair across from his desk. "Talk about getting thrown in the deep end your first day on the job, huh?"

The brat grunted and looked past Cole, his eyes surveying the room, the officers, their desks, their files. Finally, he sat down. "I requested the Cyber City detail, in fact. I've got a special interest in this city."

Cole leaned back in his chair, folded his arms behind his head. "Is that so? Huh. Kind of seems like an officer shouldn't have special interests in the cases they work." The brat turned his eyes towards him, and Cole saw petty rage festering there, threatening to spill out.

Might have pushed him too far. He was still System, after all. He had a System badge and he had access to System resources and he'd been trained in System methodologies: flatten your enemies with overwhelming firepower and declare victory over the rubble.

Cole sat up straight. "But hey, what do I know?" he said. "I'm not System."

The brat exhaled the breath he'd been holding. "No, Detective. You are not." He turned his attention back to Cole's cork board, nodded his head towards it. "You're trying to bring in Nikolai Kuragin. Is that a CCPD effort, or something you're doing on your own initiative?"

Cole frowned. Was this some kind of power play, or was the brat genuinely interested in the case he'd been building against Kuragin and the Kulaks? Let's find out. "That's something I'm pursuing on my own time. The CHIEF likes seeing officers pursuing personal projects outside of what they're directly assigned. So long as said projects don't interfere with assignments."

"Hm." The brat twisted in his chair, said nothing as his eyes swept across the board. "The case looks pretty thin. You don't appear to have much directly tying Nikolai to any serious crimes."

"Well, they got Al Capone for tax evasion, so you know."

The brat turned to Cole, his eyes dismissive. "Am I supposed to know who that is?"

You punk motherfucker, Cole thought. His left arm twitched, like the augmentation itself wanted to spring open and wrap itself around the brat's throat.

Cole fought the urge to let that happen. "Yes. Well. I guess they can't teach you about everything at the Academy, eh, Agent?"

"No. We focus on practical matters, not ancient history."

Cole's left hand twitched, the joints clicking in anticipation. He scratched at it, pushed it into his lap. "So," he said slowly, forcing calm into his voice. "The CHIEF tells me that you're my liaison on this assignment?"

The brat turned his attention back to Cole. His face had changed. It was still a portrait of youthful inexperience, but that earlier smugness was gone. In its place was something cold and analytical. Then the brat cleared his throat, puffed up his chest, stood up straighter. He pulled out a tablet, tapped it a few times.

"I'll be direct, Detective: earlier this morning, most of RoboCorp’s C-suite were murdered during a product demonstration. On top of that, the Panoceanian Ministers of Finance and the Environment were present and killed as well."

"Holy hell," Cole muttered. The brat nodded, his eyes locked on Cole's own, his face humorless now.

"'Holy hell' is right, Detective. This has all the makings of an international incident. That's why America needs your help to see this killer brought to justice."

"'Killer,'" Cole said. "Singular. You've got a suspect?"

The agent grinned. "Detective, I've got the culprit." He slapped his tablet against the cork board where it maglocked to the metal backing. On the screen was a picture of a man handsome enough to be a movie star: blonde hair, blue eyes, strong chin, a guileless grin that said "You can trust me" even as he picked your pocket and fucked your wife.

"Meet Chadwick Biggins, Senior Vice President of Business at RoboCorp. Son of murdered CEO Thaddeus Biggins. And now, the most wanted man in Cyber City."

Cole blinked. "This guy?"

The agent nodded gravely. "This is our man. The Panoceanians were in town for a product demonstration, some new environmental robot RoboCorp was making. Chad reprogrammed the thing to tear everyone present into pieces."

Cole was stunned. This was big. International, like Agent Hanssen had said. As a rule, Cole didn't follow corpo politics, but he'd heard enough over the years to know that RoboCorp was supposed to be one of the less evil zaibatsus.

"So. Chad here kills everyone and flees the scene. Where does he go?"

"That's the thing, Detective. He was never there. He was conveniently absent from the meeting at the last minute, and his vehicle is missing from his garage. He's gone underground."

"Any leads on where?"

The agent smirked. "Well, I know where he ditched his vehicle into the bay, but it's been abandoned. And I'm not the detective. I don't have the resources of the Cyber City Police Department at my disposal. That's why you're taking the lead on this."

Cole frowned. There it is. There's what stinks. "Why don't you have the resources of the Cyber City Police Department at your disposal, Agent? The Articles of Systemic Confederation require that all law enforcement agencies within the Independent States of America render aid to the System when so requested, don't they? So… why just me?"

The brat's expression cracked completely. Just for a moment, but Cole saw it. "I… I'm doing what you're doing. With the Kulak investigation." The brat gestured towards Cole's cork board. "I've suspected RoboCorp of harboring anti-System sympathies among its junior executives, and this decapitation strike on the C-suite proves it. As I see it, Chad wanted Thaddeus gone so he could assume control of the company."

Okay, so Chad's got means, motive, and opportunity. But how does he possibly think he's not going to rot in the Q after murdering an entire C-suite? That's not stupid, that's downright delusional.

The agent cleared his throat. "I have my superiors' blessing to pursue independent investigations as I see fit." He sighed. "But that doesn't mean I have access to the full suite of System resources. Including levying local assistance."

"Meaning…"

"Meaning you were the only detective the CHIEF was able and-or willing to commit to my efforts."

Cole's jaw clenched. He could hear Ignacio laughing in his head. He could hear them all laughing. The old man and the brat, the has-been and the never-was. He might as well turn in his badge and his gun now.

But.

But the handsome prick on the tablet was too handsome. Even just looking at a picture of him, you knew Chadwick Biggins had lived a life of luxury and privilege. He was young; he'd gotten to grow up in the world his daddy and people like him had built. And instead of waiting his turn to be handed the keys to the kingdom, just like he'd undoubtedly been handed everything else in his life, he'd grabbed them. He'd paid for them in other people's blood.

This was the kind of person who built walls around Corporate Center. Who turned the parks with families into gleaming monuments to greed and exploitation. Who made everyone else wait in line, get pushed against the wall and patted down by machine-gun-toting masked goons while they literally flew above it all.

"Corpo bootlicker," the mutant girl had called him. "Don't you have a wife, a kid, a family to go home to?" she'd said.

He didn't. Not anymore.

Because of this job.

Because of the CHIEF.

Because of men like Chadwick Biggins.

Cole took a deep breath in and out through his nose. His left hand twitched. "Okay," he said. "So. Where exactly did our suspect crash?"