I gave Holste a few moments to stew in his sweat as I glared at him. His breathing was shallow and quick. He made his best effort to disappear through the wall behind him. The guy was pathetic. One step forward caused him to whimper and recoil away from me like I was a monster scaring a child.

Game time was over, and I took hold of his face with both hands.

Holste screamed as he struggled to escape, “I’ll talk!! I’ll talk!!”

I used my fingers to palpate his face and bald head.

“What are you doing?!” He shook as his voice cracked.

I ignored him and continued to search his face, probing for any hints that there was something other than flesh present. You can never be too sure, regarding cybernetics and synthetic augmentation. I applied pressure to what I thought was a plate in the left side of his head a couple of times.

“What are you doing?!” Holste squeaked.

His voice was far more annoying to me than it should have been, and I had already found the part of his head I was looking for. I gave him an ear-to-ear grin. You could figuratively see his stomach drop as his real eye’s pupil dilated. As he began to sputter another complaint, I hit him as hard as I could with a left hook across his jaw.

Holste cried out in agony, clutching at his face as I shook my wrist and flexed my fingers. It was satisfying and I wanted to keep doing it. I was told I couldn’t be bad cop, so I opted to be at least marginally responsible to mitigate the consequences.

“I said I would talk!” He whined and sounded like his mouth was full.

“I know what you said, and I know you will talk.” I scolded.

I took hold of his smock at the neck and shook him as I forced him to look at me, “That was for the beacon in my back!”

He tried to fight me, so I hit him again. For good measure I hit him one more time after that. He sputtered and choked and fell limp, so I dialed my physical aggression back to verbal abuse. Taking a firm grip of his smock again, I pressed him up against the wall and got into his face.

Feels good to be the king.

“Tell me about this damn beacon.” I spoke through my teeth.

He didn’t speak immediately, so I feigned like I was going to hit him again.

He coughed a spatter of blood down his cheek and slurred, “No, no, no!”, or “Nu, nu, nu!”

The bastard was crying, so I shook him and spoke a little louder.

“Talk!”

Hoslte sputtered.

“I don’t know where it came from! It’s a basic civilian grade tracking beacon they install in livestock!”

“You put a cattle tracker in my back!?” I snarled.

“I just did what I was told!” Holste pleaded.

I growled, “How old is it?”

Holste bellowed, “Manufacture packaged!”

I wanted to throttle the guy right where I had him. Those trackers were designed to be durable, originally intended for monitoring livestock in the Subs (farmland and rural areas outside the primary metropolitan centers worldwide. Each beacon came with its own encrypted message identifying the animal and updating the G.O.D.N with its GPS location. Anyone with the right information could easily keep track of their animals.

While rustling, as far as I knew, wasn’t as prevalent a problem as it once was, the beacons remained a cost-effective method for authorities to monitor property ownership. The saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”, had held true, as these devices had only become more affordable to produce over time and had no real competition on the horizon, neither near nor distant. Just my luck; anyone with the proper encryption could trace my location virtually anywhere in the world until I figured out how to remove the damn things from my back.

I shook him once more, forcefully pressing his back and head against the wall, eliciting another whimper and squeak. My voice remained controlled as I attempted to send a clear, intimidating message without losing my temper, “Who ordered you to do this?”

“They told me…” He shuddered as he spoke.

I interrupted him with a shake, “They Holste! Who’s They?”

He emitted a weak whining noise as he scrambled to think of the right words, “They told…”

I slammed his back against the wall again.

“They! Holste!”

“I can’t say!” He shrieked.

I slammed him against the wall, and slapped him for good measure, screaming, “Tell me!”

He screamed, “I can’t!”

I didn’t give him time to react as I stood up and hurled him a foot or so to the floor. He squealed some more as he scrambled in a panic for the door. I gave him a lite kick to his ribs, not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough to get the message across that he was not going anywhere. He coughed up blood and clutched his side. I thought for a moment that I may have kicked him too hard, but he had likely bitten his tongue at some point, and the thought of the beacon in my back curbed my empathy. I planted my boot on his neck, forcing his face to the ground.

“I…can’t…” He croaked under the pressure.

I twisted my foot a little, and spoke through my teeth, “Then I don’t need you anymore, do I?”

“My rig…” He pleaded.

I gave him a moment to continue. When he didn’t, I relieved the pressure on his neck by a smidge, “Continue…”

“Vocal… Limiter... rig.” He sputtered.

“Damn it!” I blurted out as I threw my hands up in frustration, “Why can’t it ever be easy?”

Holste did not have time to answer before I grabbed him by his smock and pulled him back to the wall he was previously sitting against. There was no real way to know for sure how limited his speech would be, and it was even possible that his rig could have become self-aware. The whole situation was beyond frustrating, so I threw him back down to the floor and gave him some space to catch his breath.

I pointed accusingly.

“Start talking.”

He rubbed his throat, and coughed another sputter of blood that ran down his chin, “They told me I could join the flock, if I took part in an off the record surgery.”

I rubbed my temples in frustration.

“Doc, enough with the gender-neutral pronouns… They, as in multiple, or they as a single person?”

He quaked as if I was going to hit him again, shaking his head side to side. I rolled my eyes, took a deep breath to abate my frustration.

It didn’t work.

I made a threatening gesture.

“Look Doctor… If you do not start giving me information I can use, I will have to,” I made air quotes with my fingers, “Make you feel like a new man.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I hoped he remembered what he had told me when he said it the week prior.

“No, no, don’t!” Holste begged. “They found out that I have been illegally taking jobs in the Unders for the past year and approached me a month ago with an offer to join the Flock.”

I gave him a deadpan glare.

“Let me get this straight Doc... You were caught illegally working aug jobs in the Under. This “group or person” then decided to, instead of report you, offer you an exclusive membership to some club; then altered your rig’s programming to prevent you from being able to talk about them when you accepted?”

The lights came on in the closet, which meant that the entire fire safety system had finally been disengaged. I was going to have maybe, ten minutes or so to continue interrogating the good doctor before Tiara made her way down to the closet. That was of course, dependent on what exactly Baxter told her.

Holste nodded his head to my question.

“I should kick the crap out of you for thinking I am an idiot” I snarled.

“I am telling you the truth!” Holste cried out as he attempted to shield himself from whatever he thought I was planning to do to him.

I folded my arms across my chest.

“Alright then, what is “The Flock”, and why would you want to join?”

Tears rolled down his cheeks. I can’t even begin to understand how a rig actually interacts with a human brain. Someone had explained it along the lines of a filter system that pines through standard brain activity. Feasibly the rig could intercept brain patterns and signals and halt them, but the technology was entirely beyond my comprehension.

His mouth fidgeted as he opened it, clearly attempting to say something. His wheels were turning as he attempted to figure out a way to say what he wanted to, but all he could come up with were blanks. The moment was unbelievably frustrating, but then again, my ability to empathize with Holste had long disappeared.

I squatted down in front of him, to which he recoiled back against the wall.

“Will you stop that; I am not going to hit you…” I spoke empathetically.

He relaxed a little.

I hit him in the face one more time, in the same spot as the last time. He yelped in pain. It felt good, for no reason beyond that I wanted to hurt him for what he did to me.

“Why!?” Holste gasped loudly.

“For not thinking your life choices through.” I replied, holding up one finger.

“For solely being a facilitator in my general pain and suffering for the past twelve hours.” I held up two fingers,

Actual anger flared on his bruised face, mostly from his cybernetic side. He shouted, “They said I would never see you again!”

“They lied. Anything else?” I snidely replied.

He spit blood onto the ground, then gave me a glare.

“They said once I finished the job, I would not have to worry about you anymore. I would be paid for my services, and then all of my worldly concerns would be taken care of when I officially joined The Flock.”

I rubbed my temples in frustration.

“Ok Doc… You are running me around with contextless words and we are now back to where we started. I want details. You have maybe one minute before I start seriously hurting you. Don’t think I won’t, so start thinking really hard about how you can navigate your mental blocks and point me in the direction I need to go to speak with your boss.”

He looked at the ground and feverishly thought about how to respond. I quietly observed. There was no way he was going to survive an encounter with me. Whatever upgrade he managed to get for his rig was more of a security measure for the guy’s clearly present, lack of ability to keep a secret. It made me wonder how he managed to hide his operations.

The minutes seemed to last forever while I watched the guy stew in his sweat. I grew impatient and it sounded like it when I spoke, “So let's play twenty questions Doc.”

I stroked my beard a bit and then corrected myself, “Eh… more like three questions, because I am about to beat the crap out of you.”

The fear was palpable as his eyes widened.

I glared at him.

“How do you know Temple.”

“I don’t know Temple. I never met him I swear!” He shook his head side to side.

I rolled my eyes and made aggressive air quotes with my fingers, “Temple… Sends… His regards!”

He managed to raise a hand up to his cheek as I slapped him, so I slapped him again a little harder.

“I don’t know him! I was told to say that!” He shouted.

“Then are “They” working against Temple?” I shouted back.

“Yes!” He declared,

I gave him a flat glare. My sudden silence made him very nervous and he shrunk back against the wall anticipating another strike of some sort from me. He had just given me one of the first pieces of actual useful information, and he did it freely without interruption by his limiter.

I asked, “I thought you didn’t know Temple.”

“I know who he is, and what he does. I do not know him personally.” He replied hesitantly.

I stood up, stroking my beard as I paced back and forth a bit. Holste eyed me cautiously, waiting for me to kick him or something. As I paced, I ran the thoughts out loud, sorting them as I talked to myself.

“So if Temple was not directly involved with you, and someone else is against him that specifically has a motivation to erase me… That would mean that it was someone associated with the Kaldwin Case. It’s already clear someone wanted to destroy whatever evidence I managed to document, and I am assuming that the body count leading up to my day today are a result of the mutiny I averted a few weeks ago.”

I gave Holste a look and pointed at him, “You have been taking orders from one of the Sanctuary defectors, and I think I have an idea who it might be.”

“You are not thinking big enough detective. High enough.” Holste replied uneasily.

I snapped a question at him as I rubbed my temples. “High as in what? The Sanctuary, or location?”

He did not say anything, so I pressed harder.

“You talking Mantle High? Tallest building?”

Holste looked like he was struggling again, of which pissed me off to the point of yelling at him, again, “How the hell does your Limiter work anyway?! It doesn’t make any damn sense as to how the damn thing can shut you down as soon as you are feeding me actual useful information!”

He recoiled back again as I made like I was going to kick him. I didn’t, instead I rambled a frustrated tangent to myself out loud, “If they are seriously up here in the Mantle, then you are talking about someone who could potentially have access to the Or…”

It then dawned on me.

Someone attempting to pull sway over the sanctuary down below, had to have had access to the Order. Someone, had to have access to a lot of leverage to make the things happen that had been happening the past few weeks. Someone must have been trying to pull a power play that would give them control over targeted levels of the district, both criminal underground and corporate overlord alike. I had managed to put myself in their crosshairs and it was fully possible I may not be safe even in the Mantle like I had thought.

My mind began to race, but I was interrupted by the sudden sound of escaping air as the door slid open into the ceiling. Tiara was about as unhappy as you would expect, Baxter used his height advantage to try and get a good view inside over her.

“The hell is wrong with you!” Tiara did not give me a chance to explain.

I opened my mouth and almost spoke a word before Holste erupted into a blubbering cry for help.

“Thank the Maker you're here! Officer this man is insane! Arrest him!”

Holste made to scramble away toward Tiara, bolstered by his new found confidence that she was here to help him. I caught him by his smock shouting, “Back against the wall you bastard!”

As I threw him back into position, Tiara closed the distance and was ontop of me before I could plant my foot into his chest. She caught my arm and twisted it to my back forcing me to stand stiff to alleviate the pain. I gasped in pain, and the Doctor continued to shout “Arrest him!”

She shouted at Holste, “Stay where you are Doctor!” She then forced me toward the door, released the pressure on my arm, and prodded me a foot or so toward it before I caught my footing. As I turned to raise a fuss, she prodded me with her metal finger hard enough that it was sharp and unpleasant through my clothing.

She hissed through her teeth, “The hell is wrong with you!”

“Nothing.” I protested, “I am conducting a necessary interrogation.”

“I said no “Bad cop, Good cop”!” She insisted.

“Bad cop, good cop?!” Holste quaked.

“Shut up Holste!” I shouted at him.

Baxter entered the room, stepping into view of Dr. Holste who began to panic much like he had done when it was just the two of us. He screamed for help.

Tiara shoved me hard, and I stumbled backwards out of the room. As I recovered, she pointed to Baxter, “Guard him, do not let him leave this room.”

“You got it boss.” Baxter stated with a toothy grin and a salute.

Holste’s cries for help muffled as the door to the storage closet shoomped shut behind Tiara.

She was mad.

“Look you gotta give me this one Tia-“

“March!” She pointed toward the elevator.

I obeyed without protest, and steeled myself to receive whatever she was going to give me.

We rounded a corner and continued walking toward the elevator. Tiara slapped me across my chest with the back of her hand.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she hissed.

“Look, I need answers fast Tiara, I am in danger. I am being hunted, and I am not even safe up here. This is big.” I spoke low so my voice didn’t carry through the halls.

She pushed me up against the wall aside the elevator and jabbed her finger into my chest.

“So, you beat the shit out of him?! Don, how are we supposed to get answers if you give him every reason to escape accountability by taking his place in a cell?”

I pushed her hand aside.

“Look, stop throwing me around, I get your auged you don’t need to throw that weight around on me. Fine, I overreacted. I don’t have a good answer for you.”

Her expression soured with some internal reflection as I mentioned her augments. She softened her stance and backed away from me a bit to give me my space.

“I’m tired Tiara. I am exhausted, and I don’t know if I am going to be able to wake up in the morning cause of this. I can’t even go home because there will likely be someone visiting me when I get there if they are not already there waiting. There must be some clause that would account for this sort of thing.”

She looked away from me down the hall, and said quietly, “I… can’t keep covering for you, Don.”

“Look I am not asking you to cover for me here.” I pointed down the hall toward the closet, “He can’t get away with this. His boss?” I made quotations with my fingers emphasizing the word “They”, “can’t get away with this. I have been a moving target since we left that crime scene Tiara. I am not going to survive the night at this rate if I go home without finding out who is trying to tie up their loose ends from what I was a part of a few weeks ago.”

“Did you get anything out of him before I got there?” Tiara sighed.

I was about to relay what little information I had gleaned from Holste when I saw her eyes widen as she looked down the hall from where we came. Baxter approached us without any rush, his fur wet with blood and gore that had spattered all over him.

“What did you do?!” I demanded.

He sounded dejected as he made an “boom” gesture with his hands from each side of his face.

“His head exploded.”