Parks sat behind his desk, head buried in paperwork. It wasn’t the first time Cutter had been seated across from him patiently waiting to be scolded.

But it was hers.

He almost felt bad for her.

An ordinary person would interpret a meeting with their supervisor as a bad thing. But that didn’t stifle the part of him that felt like a proud parent. He wanted to give her a gold star. She had finally earned the privilege to get reamed out alongside him.

Atta-girl.

It was a lesson she was bound to learn sooner or later. As his partner, odds were on sooner.

Brown tufts of fur danced back and forth.

Cutter grimaced at the damned teddy bear Celia was playing with in her lap. She jostled it, holding its plush arms splayed in loose cruciform, gesticulating in strange simulated play.

“Seems we have this conversation all too often,” said Parks without looking up from his paperwork.

“This is my first time,” said Celia. Her voice chirped like a songbird.

Cutter couldn’t help but smile.

He had seen the toll the attack on the television station had taken on her. She took the Valerie Von Medvey case personally. Of course she did. Synths were being destroyed. But he wasn’t sure why he seemed to be the target of all her frustrations.

At the very least, he was glad that whatever misgivings they had between them, they hadn’t hampered her feelings toward the rest of humanity. He could be a curmudgeonly cynic. But Celia was innocent, perhaps even a touch naive. He didn’t want to see that taken away from her. And especially, not because of anything he had done.

Parks, on the other hand, glared over the top of his reading spectacles, looking less than amused by her antics.

In response to his stone facade, Celia slouched behind her teddy bear and waggled it at Parks. With a cutesy pitch, even higher than her own, she said, “It is my first time too.”

Cutter tried to cover his mouth, but the grunt-snort slipped out anyway. His eyes were upside down horseshoes, moisture glistening at their corners.

Parks pointed at Cutter with the back of his pen. “You think this is funny?”

Cutter shook his head, his shoulders shrugged, and his mouth said, “Kinda.”

“No harm, no foul—that’s how you like to play it, right, Cutter?”

“Uh, no. Very much foul, if you’re asking me.”

Parks held a stony glare, so Cutter tacked on the obligatory, “Sir.”

The brow over Parks’ left eye, just the left one, slammed down into the bridge of his nose. He was intent on harshing Cutter’s current parental high.

Spoilsport.

Cutter half expected a lecture on the cold hard realities of his duty to the taxpayer dollar.

If anything, he was offering a blue light special for his services. The city should be grateful. They were investigating synthetic dismemberment. Most of the owners, the real victims of the attacks, had already collected on their insurance claims. And those synths that someone actually cared about, like Valerie, were already put back together again, with a team of engineers standing in the wings should they be dismantled again.

He was going through the motions of the job. Present, but not really there. But it wasn’t like any other officer could make that claim. They weren’t even doing that much. Parks hadn’t said it, but Cutter already knew, he got these jobs because no one wanted them. For anyone else, these high profile, politically loaded cases were career suicide.

For him, they were the daily grind, the status quo. A small luxury of the arrangement was that he got to pick and choose how much energy he put into his cases. In this particular one, the personal risks far outweighed the payoff.

“And you,” said Parks, pointing at Celia. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Celia hesitated. She looked to Cutter for answers, for support. “Sorry, I am not following this line of questioning.”

“You are his partner, are you not? You’re taking the place of a Black and White. You’re supposed to be keeping him on track. Not letting him slack off. The technical aspects of this investigation are your domain.”

“I investigated the weaknesses of the scene to provide adequate—”

“Without Jack. You went solo. That is unacceptable. That would never happen with a real Black and White.”

The corners of her eyes tightened, a nearly imperceptible adjustment. Her reaction was almost human, thought Cutter. She didn’t like being told how she was different.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

She sat upright, leaning forward, the childish tone in her voice was gone. “Jack is teaching me how to be self-sufficient and how to investigate a scene—”

“Bullshit,” barked Parks. “You have everything you need to execute your duties. You know better. And Jack knows better, that’s for God damn sure.”

“Hey!” Cutter reached out, palm open, fingers splayed. “Go easy on the kid.”

Mechanically, Parks turned toward him, eyeing the assembly line of incompetent officers he had to deal with on a daily basis. One more misshapen widget he had to scrape the manufacturing defects off of.

“You like this little arrangement, don’t you Cutter? No official oversight. No one to answer to. Just do whatever you feel like whenever the wind strikes your fancy.”

“You can pull the plug anytime you want.”

Parks scoffed. “Like you’ve ever once listened to me? You’d be out on the streets with her at your side, doing God knows what with or without my permission.”

Cutter sank in his seat.

That was probably true. No. Not probably. He did what he liked. World be damned.

“Look, I’ll make it up to Mr. Von Medvey,” said Cutter. “And to his couple million friends he donated to the department. Not financially, of course. You’ve seen my paycheck.”

“You think this is about our funding?”

“Isn’t it?”

“This is about your performance. You don’t seem to be taking this case seriously. We have a madman leaving behind a string of dismantled synthetics that has now twice attempted to murder Valerie Von Medvey. I think that’s plenty cause for concern.”

“Vandalize.”

Parks pushed his reading spectacles flush to his face. “Excuse me?”

“Vandalize. He has twice tried to vandalize Von Medvey’s synthetic.”

This time, it wasn’t just Parks’ reaction. He could feel Celia staring at him. He thanked God she wasn’t pre-installed with heat vision or a smoking hole would be smoldering out the backside of his head.

But curiosity got the better of him.

She was no longer interested in the teddy bear resting limply in her lap. Instead, her dark brows spiked her giant saucer eyes and her mouth practically vanished. The look was a gut punch.

When Parks began reaming her out, despite all the rising static that had been building over the course of the past couple days—weeks, months? How long had it really been?—Celia still looked to him for support. For comfort. For guidance.

But with a word, it disappeared.

Betrayal took its place.

“I can’t believe you sometimes, Cutter,” said Parks. “This is a string of B&Es, assaults, and while they aren’t technically homicides, I think that jumps it up somewhere above petty larceny. Don’t you?”

Cutter couldn’t argue with that.

“I don’t care how checked out you are. I expect a modicum of professionalism.” Parks pointed his pen at Celia. “From both of you.”

----------------------------------------

Celia’s cold shoulder was glacial. As they walked through the precinct bullpen, icicles formed on everything in her vicinity.

Cutter placed a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, kid. What’s going on?”

Celia didn’t bother looking at him. After a moment, she curtly said, “Nothing.”

“Something’s going on.”

Celia stopped. She took her time examining his features, looking at him, formulating a response. “You tell me. What is going on, Jack?”

It wasn’t so much a question, as it was an accusation.

“Getting reamed out by the chief isn’t a big deal. It’s always a kick to the ego. You’ll bounce back.”

“I am not talking about the Chief. I think you know that.”

“Okay, kid. I’m done playing twenty questions. Why don’t you tell me what’s up?”

“How could you not know?”

He didn’t need grief. Especially not from a synth. And especially not from a kid synth, at that. There was nothing he could say to appease her, so he waited in silence, knowing that he could keep quiet forever. If she wanted to pursue the conversation, she’d have to chase it down.

“We have been partners for six months,” said Celia. “I have seen how you operate. You can be a good detective when you want to be.”

“Is this going somewhere?”

“You were not trying at the television station. You are not trying with the Valerie Von Medvey case.”

Celia took a breath, not that she needed to. A pause for effect some would say. Gauging Cutter’s reaction. She took another verbal swipe.

“Synthetics are being murdered—”

Cutter caught himself about to interrupt.

Vandalize.

Synthetics were being vandalized.

But making his point, didn’t change hers.

“—and we have the ability to catch the person responsible. We have seen him. We have come face to face with the man threatening synthetics. And I am afraid…”

She let the words hang.

Cutter didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to pry. Not because he wasn’t interested, but because he had a hunch he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“What are you afraid of?”

“I am afraid that you do not care.”

“I care.” He heard his own words. And they sounded hollow.

“Look, kid. I got IA breathing down my neck, I got—”

“You have excuses.”

Ouch.

There was a tap on his shoulder. Cutter spun on heel, directly into Stetler’s waiting hand. Held at its length was an envelope.

Cutter stared at it.

“Jack, I don’t mean to interrupt, but this came. I wanted to give it to you earlier, but with all that was going on with the Chief, well, ya know.”

The envelope flap had been opened. Flagged as suspicious by the precinct, no doubt. They’d clearly been through it. At the very least Stetler had.

“What is it?”

“You’ll want to take a look.” As Cutter reached for the envelope, Stetler jerked it away. “It’s addressed to Celia.”

“A letter for me?” Celia looked up. At least something could attract her attention, melt that cold shoulder.

Apprehensively, Stetler looked at her. “Yeah. It’s for you.”

“So give it to her.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Jack. You should take a look first.”

“Stop teasing already. Either hand it over or don’t.”

Stetler pushed the envelope into his hands.

The page barely slid out before Cutter noticed something amiss. The note wasn’t typed. Nor handwritten. Letters were assembled piecemeal, cut out of glossy magazines and advertisements, stuck to the page in haphazard orchestration.

The message was clear, simple, and concise.

Cutter glanced over the letter then flicked his eyes down at Celia. She stared up at him with a look of curiosity and bewilderment that only children have mastered.

Stetler was also weighing his expression for any indication that would betray his thoughts. “You going to do anything about it?”

“Gotta be a prank,” said Cutter. “Besides, it doesn’t fit the M.O. Our guy is going after S&O models.”

“What does it say, Jack?” Celia reached out for his sleeve, but she stopped herself halfway. “Show me.”

He grimaced, shaking his head. “Sorry, Ceil. Old Stet was mistaking. It’s not for you.”

“Oh…” said Celia, hanging her head.

Stetler shot him a look, and he returned one equally as steely.

“Ceil, why don’t you go wait for me in my office, okay?”

In a drawn out manner, making it sound like it was anything, but, she said, “Alright.” And sulked out of the bullpen, dejected.

“She should know, Jack.”

“There is no way that’s happening.”

Cutter absent-mindedly turned the envelope in his hands. Block letters clearly spelled out: Celia. He unfolded the letter, reading it again.

On the page, multi-colored letters of varying font spelled out two words:

YOU’RE NEXT.