I saw the problem almost immediately. Timpton Tower was covered in cameras and ID scanners. Most of the tech looked kind of old, but it would still put a dent in my entry. I spent several hours casing the place and taking note of the cameras and their angles.

Of course, I didn’t just stare at it like a gonk. Casing the joint in an obvious manner would potentially be a quick and very uncomfortable interaction with a Blue Crusade Squire. I instead sat across the street at a cafe, losing half of my remaining Rayn. Oh, the woes of being poor. At least the food was somewhat decent. Small mercies and all that.

Hm… I could probably klep an ID during rush hour… as for the cameras… maybe a hat and sunglasses would do? It was a time-honored classic and I could even throw on a holo-mask just to be safe-

Nope! I was broke! Can’t afford a holo-mask! Great. Just great… Still, I could run back home and grab the hat and sunglasses. It didn’t look like they had actual security guards, so as long as I kept my head down it should be fine.

Should wasn’t exactly reassuring… Maybe I should use Blackout here? I could glide in invisibly according to Nael. This would be a good first attempt at the device, and the repercussions for it failing weren’t terrible.

Oh! I could totally go buy some fireworks too and set them off in the building. Surely that would count as mischief, right? Damn, I’m really a genius? Oh wait… Carone wanted this discrete. Dammit!

Hmm… probably best I wait till tomorrow for this. There’ll be more gonks moving about and better opportunities to blend in with the crowds. I could go ahead and test Blackout tonight just to make sure. It was kind of embarrassing I didn’t even know the extent of my own tech.

I approached Timpton Tower early the next day during rush hour. I tried to blend in the best I could, constantly walking up and down the street while keeping my eyes peeled toward the building. Passing patrols of Squires were equally as attention-grabbing as the people moving in and out of the place.

After waiting around for about ten minutes, my perfect opportunity arose. A rather young-looking guy ran out of the building, trying to tie his tie as he quickly moved down the sidewalk. He haphazardly threw his ID into his pocket, the lanyard still sticking out. Nova.

I activated my Perks fully and bumped into him as he was moving. Usually, I wouldn’t do such a thing, but the guy was obviously distracted by running late for work. As I said, distracted marks made for one of the few exceptions to the bump and pull method.

My shoulder slammed into his, knocking me to the side. Other than his attempted icy glare, he kept moving with the usual slack-faced look of corpos. Er- not slack face necessarily, but the dead mask that they all tended to wear. Tsk tsk, running late as a corporate exec. He didn’t even notice as I pulled his ID. What a gonk.

After that came the easy part. I entered a relatively dead zone and activated Blackout with a simple mental prompt. Almost immediately I could feel the Advent Phantom start to heat up. Not to a burning level, but warm enough to cause a bit of nausea. I didn’t let that stop me though. My time was ticking by as I swiped the ID and entered the building.

From there, I took the stairs - taking the time to deactivate Blackout to save battery - up to the eighth floor. I stopped to catch my breath just before I entered the hall and put on a pair of thick gloves to stop my fingerprints. I then reactivated Blackout and quickly moved to the door. It heated it quite rapidly this time around.

I already got the key from Carone, so the rather strict security didn’t even bother me. The door handle was rather pristine as I slipped inside; it probably wasn’t a B&E since the door was still in one piece. By the time I entered, the chrome eye was starting to approach a painful level of heat—definitely a major flaw in the Advant Phantom’s design.

Beyond the door was a full view of the scene. A man, maybe in his fifties, lay dead on the floor in a pool of deepest crimson. The neon lights shining in from the windows partly illuminated the scene with roving fields of red and blue as if blood stained the whole room.

I let out a silent sigh as I saw the man. His face sat twisted into an eternal look of surprise, and his eyes stared wide as if still trying to figure out what was happening. It was a common look amongst the slain, and a rather welcome one comparatively. The faces twisted into agony or despair were always the hardest to look at.

A suppressed gag reflexively hit me upon approaching the reeking corpse. He was in a state of half-dress when he died with only pants on. Several bullet wounds were scattered about his bare chest. Small caliber maybe? Looked to be a similar bullet to my Sidewinder. Probably some kind of pistol, but I wasn’t forensicsy enough to tell what kind.

His wrist had the tanline of a watch, and yet there was nothing there. Maybe he died in a robbery gone south? Or east, I should say. Wouldn’t be too surprising for someone from East End to come rob the place. And yet the door handle suggests otherwise.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Hmm… my spi- Insight senses were tingling. Something about the corpse just felt... off. I looked at the man for a good long while before I realized it. The bullet wounds didn’t have near the amount of blood they should’ve had.

I’ve seen quite a few murder scenes in my life and even played a hand in a couple. Anyone living in Aythryn City should’ve seen at least one in a decade and a half of life. Almost all of them gushed blood from bullet wounds. And yet the only spots of blood were the ones around his heart. Did… did someone shoot him after he was dead? But why?

If I were a murderer, why would I shoot an already dead guy? Hmm… maybe to try and cover up the actual cause of death? Plausible. I inspected the wounds more thoroughly. One of them, on the right side of the heart, looked slightly wider than the others. At first, I considered a larger caliber, but the tattered flesh leaned towards a different weapon. Maybe a knife wound?

So someone shot the guy to cover up a stabbing? Oh, maybe the murderer was also the one who took the watch? Maybe somebody got his keys and broke in to rob the place, only to find my man still at home. They used a knife as a reaction, and then to cover up their tracks the robber shot him. The ruptured heart would’ve stopped blood pumping to the rest of the wounds.

Assuming he was stabbed, why didn’t he try to defend himself? He looked to have been stabbed in the heart, so the killer would’ve had to get close to him… someone he probably knew, which mostly eliminated B&E. He didn’t have his guard up around the person. The lack of wounds other than the bullet holes suggested he didn’t even try to defend himself.

I took a picture of the clues and the corpse with my new phone before I began looking around the rest of the apartment. I spotted several valuable-looking items just lying around, so the theory about it being a robbery was iced. No way a robber would shoot someone and then not loot the place. That would be a gonk move. Which also meant the disappearing watch was weird. I need to keep an eye out for it somewhere else.

I stumbled across the bedroom, finding the rest of the man’s clothes scattered about the ground. Maybe he had a lover who stabbed him? I looked around a bit more, noticing the wardrobe had quite a few… kinky items. Fuckin’ Aythryn City. In another, I found a bunch of new agey stuff. Crystals, wands, and the like. Most of it looked like gimmick items, though I wasn’t versed enough in magic to say for sure.

Okay, new working theory. Lover comes over. They do the deed, or maybe just get half undressed. Guy leaves bed. Lover kills him. Probably not premeditated since it was done with a knife. Realizing they just killed an exec, the lover shoots the body to hide the stab wound? Pretty brutal… Oh! Then the lover steals the watch to make it look like a robbery?

Or this was all just a red herring and he was assassinated by a corporate rival. Yep, never can tell in this damn city. Corporate assassinations and setups were almost as common as normal murders.

I looked around a bit more, finding an odd amount of books on street magic and adepts. More importantly, I found his phone sitting on the nightstand. Password locked. That being said, facial recognition is a common thing these days sooo…

I searched through the phone with my face covered, checking the recent messages. Most of them were work-related. Some were wondering where the guy, Davis apparently, was. I ignored most of them until I found something promising.

It was a short message between this guy and some chick named Paris. They were talking about meeting up two nights ago, so maybe she was the killer? It would make sense. She had access to the apartment that night, and the means to get close enough to shank the guy if she was his lover. But why?

I passed through the messages and checked the recent pictures. A rather awkward selfie of Davis and a flatbacker- no, based on her chrome, she was probably a doll. Paris maybe? It was dated at the same time they were supposed to meet up.

I looked around a bit more, finding a firearm permit for Davis thanks to Insight. What a gonk following gun laws. He probably spent more money getting a permit than actually buying a gun. Anyway, the important thing to note was the gun fired small caliber rounds. A Tornado Arms Gale-17. It was a holdout weapon through and through, probably only good against people in cloth.

I snapped a picture of the rest of the evidence, including this Paris chick, and did one more sweep of the place. A knife from an otherwise perfectly organized kitchen was missing. The murder weapon perhaps? Oh, and no watch anywhere. Whoever flatlined Davis probably took it.

I looked up Paris and Doll as keywords on the net. Almost immediately I got a dozen hits. Then it was as simple as cutting out everyone till I found the Paris I was looking for. Of course, the doll sites had pictures considering looks were the main selling point for such a… profession..

And who says you need to be a Netrunner to investigate shit? Easy. You’re so smart, Shiro! Oh thank you, it comes naturally. Ah ha ha! Shiro, you could become the best investigator in the city! Oh, well, let’s not go that far… subtle touch was more my speed…

According to the site I found, Lynn “Paris” Parker was a relatively new worker at Build-A-Doll Inc. as a, well, doll. Obviously. I snooped around a bit more, seeing that she wasn’t ‘on call’ on the site. Probably didn’t show up to work. I would go into hiding if I did such a sloppy job at cleaning up a crime scene too. Good for her to escape such a life-

Fuck! I need to actually find her to get paid… Damnit! Okay, okay, if I was a doll and I needed to lay low for a while where would I go? Not to the pimp. That was just asking to get sold off to Scavs or something… Family, maybe? Chooms? Run away to the dunes?

Hm… I needed better tools. I couldn’t very well just track someone down considering the size of this city… I could access the Crusade records and see if there were any Lynn Parkers recorded. But I didn’t have that program on my PA, and getting one from a runner would cost money…

Davis was dead, so surely he wouldn’t mind a couple of his belongings disappearing, right? I mean, it was for a good cause! To find his murderer! Or at least that's what I told myself as I snagged a couple of smaller fancy-looking decorations and a data slate on my way out the door.