Steel Sky had a new dawn of possibilities. While giant cranes made a huge reconstruction of older buildings to modernize them to the better. It was a young, fresh nation in what once used to be the state of Pennsylvania. Freelife Industries had made a number on the fiendish Avalon during the war and was claimed to be the heroes of this newborn nation. The creator of Freelife was put as charge over this new founded nation. 

With help of another company called Steel Bend, this new nation would become a huge project to grow to become one of the most impressive cities ever created. The Promising Land, as it was called. 

But we are not here to talk history. Or the future for that matter. We dive down from the huge pillars reaching like beacons to the sky. Crawl over the glistening, almost perfect pavements. And make a halting stop at a shop in the outer corner of this metropolis. A small shop called Nine Lives. Small, but very profitable in making electronic cats as safe pets. With very advanced computers and statistics making these animals the perfect pet in a perfect household.

Nine Lives came to be during the Silver War already. But has gained so much respect for the common man. As the walls speaks for themselves with various awards and recommendations hanging from the walls. 

But life in these walls was not the best. Alice Heart was a skeleton-looking robot with a glowing face, always re-shaping to inform the public of her mood. Created to run a company by one of Steel Skies many, many operators in high-technology. Today, her face was blue. Cold blue. A sign of grief. 

Alice Hart had a sister, as she called her. A robot-partner who also was made to run business here. And now, her sister, was gone missing. Hanna Heart was best explained as a shorter, dark version of Alice. With less emotional range. But now, she was missing for three days.

Alice wanted to keep police out of the situation. And attention was not the best for her. Alice had known of a private detective who had made quite a name for himself. Even gotten himself a TV-show. Anton Stickler was a known figure in media. And one she was ready to afford! 

Sadly for Alice, a mistake was made. A simple, yet large mistake. She had accidentally hit the wrong keys via her own auto correct system in her computer. Ironic, as she herself, created the auto correct system. You might expect a robot to see something like that when she accidentally got in contact with Anton Stock. 

You might also expect her to read the intel on how he was involved in accidentally spilling official information on a secret client to media. A private investigator is supposed to remain private.

Alice did not notice these issues. While fact-checking was in her program, she had reduced the effectiveness in order to install a cleaning processor in her brain stem. 

By now, Alice was sweating bullets. Not really. Robots can not sweat…as far as we know of, unless they have a Decode 56 in the system. But…I digress.

Once Alice saw her mistake it was too late. The investigator was already hired. Deal was signed. And he proclaimed it was no backsies…even if he seemed to understand why she did not want to hire him at all. 

Alice was going to pay this…imbecile 500 Red Dollars. His usual fee was 8 Red Dollars.

It was clear to anyone who entered her little store that Alice was NOT having a really good day.

Anton Stock was a local fellow. Big in his body and with scars over his older face. His left arm was a bit out of color, like faded plastic. This was because he was a cyborg. His entire left arm was replaced with some cheap plastic material from China. It worked just fine, but was supposed to have a blade in it, able to shoot out a shock wave of energy if needed. This did, however, malfunction the first time he tried it. And he never had cash to replace it. It was, however, handy in opening cheap electronic locks with a small EMP-pulse.

He was involved in the Silver War but by accident tripped down a hill, severely injuring his left arm. Thus this replacement. 

Anton was, in many ways, clumsy. And did not hide it. Why bother anyway. Too much work. He suspected that his new job must have been a dud, but the amount of money let him keep his trap shut about it. And now the damage was made and it was too late for the costumer to change her mind anyways.

Anton appeared outside the big complex of the apartment where the suspected victim lived. Some kind of robot living in an Automatic Residence. A big house with energy panels on the roof. Just from the outside, Anton could tell that even robots lived better than he did in the slum-part of town.

Hanna Heart had an impressive decor in her apartment. A taste of asian culture including old flags and geisha statues. Anton could never work it out how robots made more money than he could in a lifetime. 

Her apartment was total clean. Nothing in the trash, nothing in the mail. No sign of anyone posing as a threat to her existence. And her sister Alice had no clue where the person could be. 

If Anton had any short idea to check out the shadows of his surroundings he would see that he was not alone upon entering the street outside. There was barely any people around apart from this one shadowed figure observing him.

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Anton was already out in the open market, searching the tall buildings toward the sky as if they had any clue where to go to next. He passed by stands of steaming apples, cotton candy, happy kids and all types of people in the crowd. The market was sprawling with energy today. 

As Anton turned around he saw her. The description of the robot was correct. It was the missing person, Hanna Heart. One eye dangling out her socket. She limped out to him through the crowd, slicks of oil leaking out of her left arm.

She reached out a helping hand at Anton, who was just about to grab it. She whispered to him an order. Asked him to keep her sister safe. 

The sharp sound of the gunfire blew the silence. And the head of Hanna Heart shattered open. She fell to the ground in a heavy collapse and the crowd was fleeing in all directions. 

Anton saw the man in head of him. A tall robot wearing a black robe. And he was running away from the scene!

Anton took after the perpetrator with great speed, whilst trying to reach his own gun. It was in that moment he realized he was unarmed. The gun makes no help from it’s safe distance in his kitchen counter. Luckily, fearless ambitions, was one of Anton’s best sides. Most likely his only good side.

He squeezed himself around the people running all over in the open market, trying to keep his eyes focused on the man he was hunting. He was gaining on him! Just in a matter of milliseconds, he was gaining on the bastard who shot Hanna Heart!

The bastard jumped over a table of groceries with ease. And Anton was not as fast in that motion, accidentally making a split with his legs, dropping down to the ground. He felt the stinging pain surging through his privates while doing this accidental split.

He forced himself to crawl under the table and got back up just the moment the man dressed in black ran into a parked car, as white and glossy as the tall buildings.

Anton, who had no gun, had to come up with another plan. Most people would stop the chase. Anton was not bright enough to do such a thing, for sure. 

Instead, he spotted something that could assist him. Something nobody else would think about. But yet again, Anton was not much for common sense once he saw the motorcycle nearby. A slick, cool, yellow thing with huge wheels. One expansive new model of Rat Racer! There for him to take!

Anton Stock jumped on the yellow bike and kicked-started it with ease. The owner turned around with a pissed face, like he could not believe what the hell was going on. Gunfire at first. And now, an idiot on his bike?

Anton drove out in the middle of the street, burning in extreme speed on a narrow path. Following the slick car in pursuit. I know what you are thinking. Could Anton handle this vehicle? A Rat Racer Neo Andromeda? Hell no!

The slick car up ahead made a sharp turn to the left in a crossing. Anton gunned after the car in extreme speed. An old lady on the sidewalk was stunned and dropped on her ass once the bike passed by her, wobbling like an uncontrollable fire on an open barbecue filled with gasoline. 

Anton took the sharp turn, but nearly drove into incoming traffic. Two nearby police cars were hot in pursuit of this madman on the bike. Anton tried to sort away the peer pressure of the police men behind him, eyes focused on his target, who just took left to a bridge up ahead. 

Anton, who was too close to the target, had to make a sudden turn to follow his enemy. But accidentally dropped control of the bike. They both smashed hard into the pavement, right in front of two cars who had to break to not run over him. 

Anton looked up, saw the car he chased vanishing into the horizon. But the police cars was already surrounding him.

The jig was up!

The station was crowded of workers. Not particularly police men, but decorators, carpenters. All these things. Jessica was a tall, dark haired and moody police woman. And that was her normal mood. She was not a popular worker among her coworkers. Or by the suspects. Hell, even her own mother disliked her. But the guy in front of her gave her a headache beyond words.

His name was Anton. He was a terrible private eye. The kind of guy with a bad reputation due to how sloppy he works. And this time he stole a motorcycle. Nearly ran over a pedestrian.

Jessica took some water and vitamins before hearing the guy out. A story about him been hired to help Nine Lives. A pet shop dedicating to electronic cats. Jessica had one of them herself and the cat was the only thing as grumpy as her. In other words, perfect match.

He spilled his beans about a co-owner disappearing into thin air. How he was hired to find the missing one. How a robot in a robe killed the robot right in front of him.

Hate crimes against robots is a thing in the police registers. Jessica cared not much about it as she saw it as property damage. But it was a criminal offense nether the less.

Jessica already had her believes in who wrecked the robot. But she had to find hardcore evidence. So she took the dumb-ass investigator to the apartment of Hanna Heart. And it would appear that he missed some spots to check out. No surprise there. The guy obviously was no expert. The residence was using a lock system to the doors. One that was made by Angus Mayor. Professional swindler who lured robots to purchase his cheap systems. Only so he could break in and make surgical removals on robotic parts.

Bastard always came clean out of the justice system. And this time he advanced from service drones to electronic owners of stores. 

Jessica gave some harsh words to Anton Stock for messing up the task so damn much. If he had come to the station first this would not have happened. Dumb fucking P.I idiot.

At the very least she knew where Angus Mayor used to hang around.