A few days ago, Wan Sui, the founder and continued leader of the famed company sharing the same name, was found dead in his office. It’s right now under investigation, and they haven’t let anything out to the public yet. “Isn’t that the reason why people like you?” Alia asks me. “You’re the connect between the people and the truth.”
That’s very motivating, Alia. Sadly, I’m not exactly a person who can get motivated. In fact, I’m a psychopath. I was diagnosed it when I was a child. It was mainly when I watched a man get shot my military policemen and didn’t even bat an eye. “How could you see clear injustice and not care?” people would ask me. But what I saw wasn’t injustice: it was just the truth. The world is a pretty bleak place.
Now, back to the case for the Wan Sui. There are virtually no leads, unless I directly investigate his office in the Golden Quadrant. It’s not hard to get in there, but it’s hard to get close to a high level crime scene occupied by both military police and Wan Sui agents.
Suddenly, my phone rings. I answer it quickly. “Hello?” I start. The other end is the voice of a man who is currently panting. He sounds desperate, even before saying a word. “Is this Evania Searcher? The one known for finding the truth?” Glad it’s work related. “This is her. What do you need?”
He takes a second to respond, as if he’s making sure he’s safe by looking around. “Can you meet me outside the Golden Quadrant? Somewhere nobody will track us?” He sounds amateurish. He’s definitely not from around here. “We can meet in Alia’s Bar. I can arrange for a private indoor room.” He takes another second. “Okay. Sounds good.”
I make it over to the bar. Alia smiles like usual as she presents me my favorite drink. I turn it away. “Maybe later,” I tell her, “can you get me a private room for discussion? Meeting someone.” She laughs and bumps my arm. “You on a date? Finally?” She continues to laugh, as if she said the funniest joke. In my psychopathic opinion, these jokes suck.
My eye turns to the left, detecting a man walking towards me. He’s dressed in a black coat. He’s Asian. He has a pistol on his right hip. And he looks half terrified. Finally, he sits next to me and looks around. I can tell that he doesn’t want to be followed. “Are you Evania Searcher?” he asks me.
I nod and stand up. He stands up as well, still looking paranoid as ever. Alia understands my cue and leads the two of us inside her bar. Bringing us to a room in the back, she opens a door. “It’s sealed tight. Have fun on your date!” We get inside and close the door as Alia gets back to her business. Now it’s just me and this paranoid Asian man.
“People say that you find the truth,” he says, “that any mystery is just a truth waiting to be uncovered.” He shudders a little as he makes sure he can reach his pistol if needed. “I need your help to find the truth behind the Wan Sui case. Until you do, I will never be able to show my face to the Military Police again.”
Interesting case. The same case I was hoping to uncover. “What is your role in it? I want you to describe as much as you can,” I ask of him. He takes another second, closing his eyes for a second. It looks like he hasn’t slept in a long time.
“I was put on detail for Wan Sui’s arrival. I knew something was wrong, and one of the Wan Sui guards tried to kill me. I crawled up a vent and managed to get all the way to the top. It was strenuous and I was exhausted, but when I made it there, I was unsuccessful in stopping this cyborg from killing Wan Sui.”
That’s a decent amount to unpack. It is also physically phenomenal to not have any augmentations, and yet have climbed an entire tower’s ventilation system. “What happened afterwards?”
“A strange figure grabbed me and jumped out to the building. I don’t know what happened to the them, or how I survived, but I did.” Hmm. Figure sounds to be augmented, since there is no way someone could jump and survive. It’s a miracle this man is sitting here at all. “Go on.”
“The police were blamed for the assassination. I was especially blamed. The only reason I’m able to be here right now is because my Captain managed to pull some strings.” As I said, a complete miracle he’s standing here. “So,” he adds, “I want to restore my honor and prove that it wasn’t me who killed him.”
That’s a plethora of detail. I’m impressed that he managed to keep so much. Then again, it only happened recently, and this man looks like he hasn’t slept since then. “It doesn’t take a genius to say that he was killed by someone else,” I tell him, “that someone else is either related to the company or the government. At least that’s my leading hypothesis.”
“But how can I prove it was them? What can we even work with?” he asks me. That’s a good question. We’re working against big figures and players who have resources far larger than me, and definitely larger than this disheveled officer. They’ve got enough brains to know how to cover something like that up. That means no cameras, and they’ll be influencing the officers in charge of the investigation. “Here are two things that come to mind,” I tell him, “the figure that saved you, and the cyborg that killed Wan Sui.”
I stand myself up and signal for him. “We can look through my drive. Likely, either one of them has been present in one mystery or another. You can point them out and we can get a little closer to what happened.” He nods and stands up. “Thank you for your help.”
“Don’t thank me,” I respond, “not when we’re so far from the truth.” We get up and make it outside. Alia waves at us as we leave her bar. “Better not get killed! Military police are on the prowl!” She tosses me some cash as the officer and I get on my motorcycle. We drive off, heading towards my boondock apartment.
“I never told you my name,” the officer says as we drive onto the street. “I’m Second Lieutenant Adam Chen. Well, I used to be a second lieutenant. As you can guess, the whole situation put me in a really tight spot.” I continue weaving through traffic as I notice the prolific amount of military police. Still offset by the assassination of Wan Sui, they patrol around and give me a look as I go past them. They know me, but I’m not their suspect.
“You’ve gotten yourself in quite the predicament, Adam. In the night, the military police usually aren’t as active,” I tell him. “You’ve got them stirred up. I don’t think that’s preferable.” He scoffs as he looks around, seemingly taken aback by the chaos of New Beijing. “Some of the policemen here aren’t wearing their uniforms right. I’m seeing unshined shoes and bad etiquette.”
He’s definitely too used to the Golden Quadrant. “Here,” I explain, “the police aren’t focused on uniform standards as much. Casualty rate is high since they fight against numerous insurgency groups, such as the Union of American Patriots. They’re more worried about getting shot for being an oppressor than being punished for having dirty uniforms.”
Suddenly, someone jumps onto the street right in front of us. He’s holding a rifle and it’s aimed right for the both of us. “Fucking chink! Really didn’t get the memo? This town isn’t open to you!” Police jump on him before he gets the chance to shoot. “哎呀 aiya！傻子 shazi！Damned lunatic!” the officer shouts.
They lock him up and put him in a vehicle before coming towards us. “Sorry about all that,” they say with subtle Chinese accents. “Wait, are you Evania Searcher?” I nod in response. For a moment, there’s tension. I can even feel Adam reaching for his pistol. But, instead, the officer starts to laugh. “I’m a big fan! Been reading your blogs to the whole precinct! Some idiots want to lock you up, but, I’m personally happy.” He moves out of the way and gently bows. “Don’t tell anyone I’m letting you through!” With that, I drive out of there.
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“He shouldn’t be letting you through,” Adam says. It’s almost palpable how different the Golden Quadrant precinct is from the rest of New Beijing. It’s almost as if they’re nobleman enshrined with a much safer utopia whereas the rest of the city has to deal with the real issues. “I shouldn’t be helping you then,” I say to him.
We make it to my apartment and I unlock the door for him. He comes inside and flicks the light on. The poor bulb shatters, since I’ve never used it in my time living here. “I do not advise touching anything,” I tell him. I let him sit in a chair as I work my computer. “This will take a long time, but I will try and show you different perpetrators and I want you to tell me if they are familiar,” I instruct.
“Sounds good.” He’s clearly agitated, since he wants this done sooner than later. He looks out the window, partially nervous as he shuts the blinds down. “How long have you been doing this?” he asks, “being a detective I mean.”
“A long time,” I respond, “since I can really remember. It doesn’t help that I have a good amount of attention to detail. I can even notice the sniper outside of our window.” He immediately upholsters his pistol and ducks, but I remain calm as I continue to go through my drive. “Don’t worry,” I tell him, “they’re harmless.”
He scoffs as he peers through the blinds. “What kind of sniper is harmless?” he asks. I start to get a cigarette as I respond. “The kind that doesn’t seem to have any ill intention. I don’t have enough information on them to confidently say what their plan is, but I just know they’re more like a pet at this point.
“A sniper? A pet?” he scoffs. He then takes the cigarette out of my hand and places it on the table. “Please don’t smoke,” he says, “it’ll kill you one day.” He’s not wrong, but I don’t plan on quitting. So I pick it right back up and light it. With a bit of irritation, he scoffs and sits back down.
I finally get a compilation of different profiles. Some of them have names. Some don’t. I scroll through each one and present them to Adam. “Is this it?” I ask. He looks and then shakes his head. “No. The figure who tackled me was far smaller. Now that I think about it, the figure was probably a girl, or at the very least a very skinny boy.”
With that information, I narrow down the search. After a little bit of data management, I get it down to a smaller list. “Is this it?” I ask. Once again, he shakes his head. “No. I’m not sure this is going to work since I don’t even know who—”
“How about this person?” I ask. He freezes for a bit before scooting closer to the screen. He takes a second look before finally nodding. “I think that’s them,” he answers, “How do you have them in your data base?” I check the records to be sure. “She’s been involved in different assassinations, heists, and robberies. I can play some captured media.” I click on a video and play it.
It takes place in a dark hallway with a group of gunmen aiming their guns for something in the distance. Suddenly, we see our figure jump into the frame with cat-like motions. Her arm transforms into a sword and she begins to dispatch of the gunmen. Adam watches with intensity as he nods. “That’s definitely her. Do you have any leads?” he asks.
“Alia knows her,” I respond. “A few days ago, on the night before Wan Sui was killed, she delivered a head to Alia.” A good memory goes a long way when you’re in this line of work. “I can go talk to her and find a time to meet her.”
“No, you need to kill her,” Adam interrupts. “She’s clearly part of the plot to kill Wan Sui, which is why she stopped me in the first place.” I scoff at his immediate plan. “For all you know, she could’ve been there for something entirely different. I’m sure plenty of people were looking at Wan Sui’s visit as an impetus.”
He grunts a little as he looks away. “I’ll go talk to Alia myself then.” I put my hand onto his shoulder and stop him. “I have a feeling this isn’t because Wan Sui is dead,” I tell him, “this is because you think you failed at your job, something you devoted your whole life on, right?”
He turns around, his hand still on his pistol. “I don’t need your help anymore. I’ll just talk to Alia myself.” Suddenly my eye darts outside. There are people coming. “Looks like a squadron. Not exactly sure who they work for,” I blurt. “If you leave right now, that squadron will kill you easily.”
He tugs himself away, his pistol in hand. “I’ll find a way.” What a fool. “You had a few classes on squad tactics, and you have a brain,” I tell him, “you know very well that numbers count. We can take care of this squadron and talk to Alia together. Does that sound good?”
He takes a second, looking at his measly pistol. Finally, he looks back. “Fine. But if that girl we’re looking for turns out to be one with the assassin, I’m killing her.” He’s still bent on that, interesting. “Sure. That sounds good.”
I go over to the computer and log out. I then pull a timed thermite grenade and prepare to leave. “Let’s get out of the room,” I calmly say. We leave the room and the grenade makes the sound a can of soda does when it fizzes. In less than a moment, it melts through all of the hardware, meaning that they can’t just hack it and delete the cloud-based information.
The elevator is going up. My eye does a scan and finds a group of people. They’re equipped with metal augmentations as well as automatic rifles. “Looks like a group of cyborgs,” I tell Adam, “this is going to be a long night.” I draw my pistol and shoot out the lights. If we’re going to fight, I’d prefer to do it in the darkness.
The elevator slowly grinds to a halt as it makes it to our floor. Adam and I are both posted behind a wall, our weapons aimed right for the elevator. Eventually, the grinding slows to a halt. With a ring, it opens up.
The shooting is immediate as Adam and I manage to pop a few shots before being forced to take cover. Bullets launch downrange as they patter into the corridor. Adam and I start moving away and we reposition ourselves to a new hallway. “Aim for the cpu,” I instruct him, “if you hit it, you can disable them.”
Repositioned to a new wall, we aim our guns once more. As soon as one popped into view, I fire my pistol. Their metal cpu is no match for my Theta-27 as the cyborg slumps to the ground like a dead machine. Immediately, we’re suppressed once more as the bulk of the force moves back in. “We’re cornered!” Adam yells. Not yet.
I make it to one of the rooms and punch down the door with my metal arm. This is the only room on the floor with an escape ladder. If a fire had taken place, then most people would probably die. But, nonetheless, here we are.
We make it into the room only to find a couple engaging in some intimate activity. They scream and yelp at us, even though the gunfire outside should’ve interrupted them earlier. “I apologize for the inconvenience, but I would advise hiding in the closet until the cyborgs leave,” I tell them. As I make it to the window, Adam does an additional bow. “Sorry!”
We get outside and slide down the ladder. In moments, we’re on the ground and back on the run. The cyborgs shoot at us from above and I return fire, hitting a few of them and making them tumble down to the ground. I then use my phone to text Alia a quick message. “Code Echo. Fast.”
We make it to the street and take cover behind some road blocks. Cyborgs are some difficult things to kill. Unless you hit the cpu or their power source, they will stand and continue to hobble towards you. I watch as Adam fills an entire torso with lead only for the cyborg to remain alive. “The head,” I repeat, “aim for the cpu.”
Adam’s bullets just bounce off of the metal thing, since his gun is far too weak. “It seems that Wan Sui doesn’t like you,” I say as I start reloading. With bullets whizzing above us, Adam reloads as well. “They must’ve followed us for a while. Damned bastards!” He fires some more, but it has the same useless effect as before.
Suddenly, there’s the sound of a sharp shriek in the air. It’s a sniper rifle. From a few buildings away, the same sniper from earlier pops the cybrogs open as they fire into the cpus quickly and easily. Just in good timing, a car arrives to us. Opening the doors, Alia waves. “Hey guys! Get in quick!”
We get inside the car and drive away. “That sniper saved us!” Adam noted, “are you sure you don’t know them?” I shrug in response. “No,” I simply respond, “for all I know, it’s just a mysterious stranger.” Alia, who’s driving the car, continues to speed away as she laughs. “Been hearing a lot about you Adam! Seems that Wan Sui is paying a lot for your head!”
I feel Adam reach for his pistol, but I swat his hand away. Alia continues to laugh as she nods. “Don’t worry, I’m not all about money. Sometimes, I just like helping an underdog. That being said, I’ll find you another room in New Beijing, okay Miss Searcher?”
“Understood,” I say. With our bodies mostly unscathed and with the car driving off, we successfully evade the remainder of the Wan Sui assassins. I retreat my pistol into my arm and light a new cigarette. Exhaling the fumes out the window, I let the wind kiss my face. It’s been a busy day.