“You’re kidding, right?” Anika asks.

“Uhm, yes?” I say.

“Why does that sound like a question?”

“I don’t know what you're talking about. Anyway, there was something that I was wondering about.”

“And what might that be?”

“Why is the rat man here?” I say, looking up at Anika.

“What do you mean the rat man is here?” Anika whisper-shouts at me.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. He is here. I put a tracker on him in the tunnels. That tracker is now in your living room.”

“Yeah, but you are the smart one here. What does that mean?” she says, making me blush slightly.

“It was probably some kind of setup from the start. He was there to lead us to the bomb. Who knows, he might have been wearing the exoskeleton and sent it up there while waiting in the sewers.”

“That seems a bit like a stretch.”

“Yeah, that is fair, but thinking about it, the private investigator was probably a canary of some kind. Fuck, how do I keep missing these things?” I reprimand myself.

“Canary?” Anika asks, looking somewhat confused.

“So, when you do a coverup, sometimes it is difficult to hide everything, so you make one clue more obvious than the rest, and you monitor where that clue will lead. And once you get some people sniffing around there, you know that you have work to do. Have you never done something like that before?”

“No, I usually get a cleaning crew to solve the problem.”

“That…, and you never asked them what their plan was?” I ask her, trying to not sound too judgemental.

“I am sorry, okay, but can we leave that for later? How do we deal with the current situation?”

“That kind of depends on who is in charge.”

“The squad leader would be the one in charge.”

“And do you outrank him?”

“Only in matters where the Miss's life is in danger.”

“Is a possible bomber in the room dangerous enough?“

“Let's just hope so,” she looks me straight in the eyes. ”Let me talk to them. I will ask if they will let you take over for a bit.” She says, putting a hand on my shoulder. Sheesh, I am not that much of a problem.

We walk back out of the room. Sam and Cierra are both sitting on the couch now, discussing something, while the security team is sweeping the entire house. Hope she does not have anything valuable or breakable around. Anika walks up to, I assume, the leader of this group while I stay in the entryway. I don’t need another hopped-up bully with a badge to shout at me.

Anika and the officer are discussing something that seems to become more heated by the second until Cierra notices, walks up to them, and joins the argument. After a bit more furious whispering that is very hard to listen in on, they seem to come to a conclusion and then turn to me.

“Well, Miss Vance, this is your show. Go for it.” The leader says. Ooh, they want a show; well, let me deliver something then.

I slowly walk into the middle of the room. “I never thought that I would speak to the military like this, but how is everyone? How is it going? No reaction. That is fine, too. For the next moment, I will be asking questions, and you guys will answer.” I turn to the man who is supposed to be the rat man. He is in full uniform now, with a gun and everything. ”Anyway, you, what is your name?”

“I am Felix Koch, ma’am.” The rat man, or I guess Felix, says

“A German. Nice, but not important right now. Say, Felix. How long have you worked for us?”

“I have been with the company for about five years now, ma’am.”

“It has been a while, hasn’t it, and did you always belong to this squad?”

“No, ma'am, I used to be a security guard for the entertainment department.” He says, now a lot more confused.

“Hmm, so you have been working for Zaine, then. Interesting, did you ever work for Zaine directly? “ I ask him. While getting closer.

“No, I was just on-site security only; why are you asking these questions?”

“Ooh, just curious why someone likes you likes to dress up like a crazy person and spew nonsense.”

Like you are one to talk.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I don’t know what you're talking about, ma'am,” He says, but there is a slight tremor in his voice now. He also takes a more defensive stance.

“Sure you don’t, mister Ratman. You know, if you really wanted to stay hidden, you should have just burned out those augs and put new ones in. Knowing your employer's budget, they could have probably afforded it.”

And now I have a gun pointed at my face. Great, that is what this day needed: more things that go boom. How long till he realises it is no longer working? He tries to press the trigger a few times. Okay, so, that long that was like 3 seconds or so. He then throws the thing aside and gets out a knife. But before he can poke me with it, he is tackled to the ground by two guards.

“That was a bit extreme,” I say, getting up close to him, “but what I don’t understand is why you did it; as far as I can tell, you don’t have an additional revenue stream. No sudden gifts or expensive cars or anything. It makes no sense.”

“Of course, it doesn't to you”, he spits at me.

“Then explain it to me.” I kind of bite at him.

“Sure, you are the worst. You killed my brother. I don’t need to get paid to want to get rid of you; I'd do it for free.”

“I don’t remember doing something like that,” I say in my confusion.

“What about free big win pulls?” he says, with gritted teeth.

I take a few steps back. “Ooh… I… I.. am sorry,” I stammered out, a bit caught off guard. I did not expect to hear that again. I keep walking backwards. Until I walk into someone.

“Sorry! Are you sorry? My brother is dead because of you! You are just some evil bitch that deserves death.” he shouts at me.

When I hear those words, something inside of me snaps; I stop feeling any warmth and just feel an icy cold seep into me. My body moves forward before I can think of why, and I kick him in the face. Then I grab his head and push it into the ground.

“You're right. That was my fault, but that does not give you the right to blow up an entire building full of people. 84 people died, 135 in critical condition, 216 injured, and 18 people still missing. For what? A grudge? What did those people do to deserve it?”

Evelin, calm down you're spiking.

Suddenly, all the warmth rushed back into my body and sent me reeling. I turn around to look at Anika. “Can you do the questioning? I really don’t feel like it anymore.”

As soon as I say that, I hear five very distinct pops. I look back to see Felix now dead, with 5 holes in his body: one in his skull, two in his spine, two on both sides of his chest, and one in his gut. Internal charges are meant to stop people from spreading information. Something I am more intimately familiar with than I would like.

I collapse to the floor. This is my fault. Sure, I have killed people before, more often indirectly than directly. But this is different. I was personally responsible for this. This is my fault. This guy was not a monster until I made him one, not like the people I usually kill.

I don’t know how long I sit there; at some point, someone wraps their arms around me. I am about to push them off when I recognise the dark skin. This is Sam. We stay like this for a bit longer until she drags me out of the house and into a car. There we sit until I finally calm down enough to speak.

“Thank you.” I say, leaning to the side and putting my head on her shoulder.

“One of your old victims, huh?” She says while patting my head with her free arm.

“I should have never made that program.” I sigh out.

“Well, nothing to do about it now. It already happened,” She says. “So we have the rest of the day off. Where do you want to go now? Home.”

I take out my mask and plug it into the USB e-port; then I turn to Sam “Let's get my notebook first”. I say as I push the location into the nav system. After about an hour's drive, through start and stop traffic later, we make it to an unassuming street. We quickly get out and head to a little corner with some vending machines.

“You hid it here? Why?” Sam asks.

“I had Cierra on the regular in my room, which means a bunch of inspections to see if I was hiding anything dangerous. So I needed to hide it somewhere else.” I say, pointing at the middle vending machine.

I quickly run a program, and the lock gets disengaged; I open up the front, putting my arm through the rows of soft drinks to a hidden panel and slide it away to grab my notebook. Then I quickly put everything back and lock the machine back up.

“Nobody ever found these?” Sam asks.

“Well, we are not in a very popular area. They probably only refill them once a month, and it is somewhat well hidden in there, so as long as the machine does not break, nobody cares.”

I quickly flip through the notebook, trying to find the right page. I do find it after a bit of searching, and I start to curse. Of course, it's like this: why did I not realise? I am so dumb! Before I start kicking myself anymore, I show Sam the page as well. As if this moment can’t get any worse, I get a message from Victor demanding that I come into the head office for a meeting at once.

“Fuck, now, really?” I shout at no one in particular.

“What's wrong?” Sam asks in a concerned voice.

“The big boss wants to talk, no clue why.”

“Maybe he found out who you are?”

“Fuck, I should have been more careful. Wait,” I look at Sam ”How would you like to be Maniac for a day?” I say, taking out the mask.

She gives me a brilliant smile. ”Oh, I have just the thing I want to do, but don’t you need it for protection?”

“Honestly, if they know and they want to attack, that mask is not going to do all that much, so don’t be getting into any firefights with it, please.”

“Don’t worry about it. What I will do is a lot safer.” She says, with a smile that makes me reconsider if this is a good idea

“Good, well, you do that then; I call dibs on the car.” I say as I start running.

“You don’t have the keys!” Sam shouts after me.

“Like we ever needed a key to get into anything.”

After getting into the car, I set its autopilot to drive me to headquarters. The good thing about a company car is that the address is preinstalled.

After some more of Neu Stuttgart's worst traffic ever, The car rolls into the parking lot and, puts itself down in its designated spot in the parking lot. I quickly head to reception. I kind of skip the line. I mean, sorry, but I am not waiting around any more today.

The receptionist gives me an annoyed look. “Miss, there is a line. You should probably get back in it.”

I take a look behind me at the line of people. “Yeah, no. Victor Agroria told me to come in immediately. Where can I find him.”

“He is in a meeting with the entire family on floor 72's deluxe meeting room.” the receptionist says, some kind of victorious smile on her face.

“Okay, thank you." I say, as I turn towards the elevator.

“Wait, hold up!” the receptionist shouts after me. “Normal people are not allowed in.”

“I am not normal people." I say as I flash my company id over every screen in this room, including everyone's augs. Let's just say that the amount of resistance after that is quickly diminished, and I head up with the elevator.

'The entire family, huh? This is about to turn into a mess.'

Lyssa will preheat the popcorn. Also, you might want to know that there is a hacker out there who claims to know Maniac’s identity.

‘Ooh, for fucks sake. Sent them an offer to meet somewhere private tomorrow.’

How would you like Lyssa to do that?

‘I don’t know. Can you say you pay them half now and the other half on delivery in person? As for the money, get it from wherever. I don’t care.

Lyssa will do so. Do you need extra assistance taking the hacker out

‘Taking them out, why? I just want to give them a job,’ I subvocalise, when the lift doors open. Well, let the show begin.