Julie had spent a fair amount of time in handcuffs, both criminally and personally. She got a kick out of wearing them, to be honest. Little old her, five foot two, a hundred and twenty pounds needing to be restrained by steel and chains.

The kids that showed up after Steve got folded onto the floor were nice enough about it. Trembling as they clicked them tight, not giving a fuck about the FBI badge. Worried that they would somehow get fired but wanting to pretend that they didn’t care. Standard stuff. What wasn’t standard was the office she was in now that the paddy wagon had dropped her off.

It belonged to the Niagara Falls chief of police Jerome Grant, and while the is wasn’t the first office Julie had to be dragged into, it may have been the most depressing.

Not for its size - although with the desk it could only hold two additional chairs - it was the angle of the window behind. Not a bay window, but almost, like the designers got drunk halfway through and thought no one would notice. It’s a small town, but come on, have a little respect.

The quiet was driving her crazy. No one else was around. There wasn’t even muffled voices or footsteps outside.

She pulled up her messages in her mind. Email, text, discord, all there. She tried to send another message to PB, but they didn’t answer, which meant they was, in fact, pissed. Or whatever their version of mad was.

It found us.

Not him, not “I”, us. What were they supposed to be running from?

PB had told her how the universe was formed. They explained humans are exceptional compared to beings more civilized and advanced due to our innate creativity, and they would know. She knew their dark secrets, like how many billions it had consumed in The Great Merger. It was all open to Julie, but not this. Why?

What was "It?" What could scare a god?

Just when she thought she might go out of her mind, a sound notification went off in her head that somebody on her friends list had come online. It was Zach.

She twitched her eyes in the way she had programmed her brain to take pictures and sent the view of the office to him with the caption “Arrested again. FML.”

They had met online while playing the strategy game Civilization VI, a game played on a map like the classic board game Risk. Julie had spent turns moving her troops into position to wipe India off the map when she encountered Zach, in the process of doing the same thing.

In the game, there was a hilarious bug in the artificial intelligence that leveraged the science boost the Indian society had into military interests, essentially making Ghandi the nuclear horror he was always meant to be. If you didn’t deal with him early, they would be neigh impossible to topple later on.

“Want to take them out before he nukes us?” he had messaged her.

The two played and chatted online daily since then. She had done a background check out of curiosity and found everything he said about his life was true. He was a year younger than her, Korean, lived in San Francisco with his grandfather.

A few months prior, she got wasted and video called him. It wasn’t something they had done, this hurdle she refused to cross.

He was akward and cute in the way most overweight guys were. She wished she remembered more about the conversation other than it ended when she threw up on her laptop.

"What the fuck did you do now? Kill somebody?" he responded.

"Why is that always the first question? Do you think that little of me?"

"I know you, thats why." Before she could reply, he sent "Sorry, Grandpa is sick again. ttyl."

The poor old man was in his eighties and not doing well. Cancer of some kind. Zach never offered details and she didn’t pursue any. There was enough of that in her past.

Julie jumped at the frosted glass door launching open. She had been so busy sending the message to Zach that she didn’t hear anybody coming.

It was Rachel, light black smears on her face. Her mascara hadn’t trickled, it ran a marathon. An unnamed uniform closed it shut behind her and she crumpled into the other empty chair next to Julie.

“I swear if they worked you over with the phone book or something when I get my gun back—“

“They didn’t do anything. I was just upset.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. What’s wrong?”

As soon as the question left her mouth every blood vessel in per face exploded. Are you a moron? Did you just ask the woman who watched her husband get murdered in front of her and be arrested for it what was wrong with her? “Never mind I said that,” she said before Rachel could answer.

“I thought you said this wouldn’t be a problem.”

“It’s not. Well, not usually. Something is wrong. I can see it. All of the words are moving around like I’m dyslexic.”

“What words?”

This wasn’t the first time someone had asked her to explain what it was like living life through the view of a video game hero. The first time was from Zach, and the idea of discussing it made her worry that a swat team would show up, or something worse, like Zach thinking she was crazy and stop talking to her. Previous experience taught her that it didn’t really matter how she answered. No one would believe her words.

“It’s hard to explain, but have you ever heard of those neural implants? Imagine that, but without the surgery. I can see messages, the Internet, stuff like that. But it’s distorted, not by much but enough to be annoying.”

“Okay, you really are insane.”

“Goddamnit,” she said. She focused her attention to the local Internet network, small potatoes really after PB had forced the knowledge of every programing language into her head.

Julie never wanted to prove her capability to anyone, but she needed Rachel to know there was more to her than an itchy trigger finger and sanity issues.

“My lawyer is here,” Rachel said.

“That’s probably smart.”

“I don’t have a lawyer.”

“Then who is here?”

“I have no idea, the name didn’t ring any bells. I thought you may know.”

“I hang out with some fucked up people, but no lawyers. I’m not into that shit.”

She was in. All of the files were in front of her; police reports, forensics. Hell, even the lights were controlled by the internet. Julie never knew why people liked making more security threats with crap that didn’t need to be plugged into the net, but it made it easier.

“Watch this.” The light in the room went off.

“See?” She said before turning it off and back on again. “I’m in the local network, I’m the one doing this.”

She looked through all the messages being sent back-and-forth between the staff and it looked like her shot really did get a lot of attention. The news station was there as was what resembled the newspaper. Some back-and-forth about the shit storm of arresting an FBI agent.

“Big whoop. How about you delete my criminal record and get me the hell out of here?”

She searched for Rachel’s name and the case against her appeared, consisting of a half a dozen felonies and a sprinkling of misdemeanors. Of course this was a better idea than twinkling the bulbs. Idiot, why didn’t she do this to start with?

Steve. Fucking Steve.

The door launched open. In walked the largest man Julie had ever laid eyes on. Tall, broad shoulders, a solid three hundred pounds packed into a very tight-fitting dark blue police uniform. The man grunted and grumbled in a low tone around Rachel who was a toddler next to him, before lowering himself into his chair.

The office situation had to be a practical joke.

“I’ve been in law enforcement in New York State for twenty years now, about the same amount in the military before that. In my career, I thought I’d seen it all. Favors, sweeping things under the rug. But you two? This is got to be the worst.”

He cracked the knuckles on his right hand, the bones sounding like they were breaking right in half. He rubbed the dark black stubble on his neck.

“Yesterday, the mayor said that he 'wished I would just fucking retire already.' That same man was just crying on the phone for me to look the other way. Openly weeping. I don’t know what you are involved in, but I don’t want any of it in my fucking city.”

“That’s pretty unfortunate for you, then. I live here and don’t plan to move.”

He smiled. “That’s fantastic. I was hoping you would say that, actually. You see, I’m about six months to retirement and six months past giving a fuck about my benefits. City’s probably going to cut the funding a few years after I leave, anyway. I’ve seen it happen first hand. So when I have those same kind of people telling me to lay off, I schedule round the clock surveillance. For you both.”

Julie’s jaw dropped. “Hey, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a local fucking cop. If you think that one of your disphits is going to be following me around and getting in my way, then you’ll be doing mall security by the weekend. You don’t have the jurisdiction or the balls.”

He reached over to his intercom. “Brenda? Make sure the stakeout teams are ready for when our guests leave.”

“No problem, Chief,” the voice said.

“Who’s going to stop me?”

Julie shrugged. “Remember, this is on you, now.”

Chief Grant slammed his fist on his desk, the force of which rattled his phone off the hook. The three of them sat for a moment, listening to the beeping from the phone screaming to return home.

“Was that a threat?”

Julie held her hands up. “How can I threaten you when do you still have me cuffed, daddy?”

Chief Grant reached across his desk and removed the cuffs. Julie couldn’t stop staring at how tiny the key was in his hand.

“Thank you,” she said and rubbed the red skin around her wrists.

Without taking his eyes off of her, he returned the handset, which started ringing.

Julie crossed her arms and sent him a look. This look said: “it’s time you answer the phone and learn what you just got yourself into, you fucking moron.”

“Grant,” he said. Then his face twisted into a horrific expression, tears started running along his large dark cheeks. She could hear the dial tone blaring but he never moved the handle.

“Looks like I’m coming with you,” he said. “And it says to bring the lawyer, too.”