12:17am, Friday the 10th October, 2132.
“This place looks dodgy,” said the dark-skinned woman, her teal hair almost luminescent beneath the lights of the midnight street. Though she was hardly the only woman with bright hair that night, none of the others had her confidence or authority, and she wore the blue of her leather jacket like a uniform.
Her partner nodded as he walked. “Welcome to downtown Fukaya, Greaves,” replied Kato, pulling his own jacket closer around himself to protect from the unceasing downpour of rain. “Where you’re never more than a corner away from something undesirable. I grew up near here.”
They kept walking down a small side-street, too small for cars, yet just as lively at night as during the day. In fact, Kato could have sworn it was even more lively. The entire place seemed hectic and on edge, its people marching around through the rain like ants in a disturbed nest of screen walls and holographic displays. They walked through one such display, a three-dimensional blue man – shrouded in a layer of real mist – who was built like a Greek statue, and advertising barely-legal muscle supplements to individuals it apparently picked at random.
“Don’t just get strong,” it said, non-existent eyes following Kato as he broke out through its illusion. “Get GetStrong. For all your bodybuilding needs.”
For a second, Greaves paused and looked up so she could watch the way the buildings reached into the darkness above. They weren’t as high as the buildings in the more central areas of Kanto, but they were still suffocating, and every so often pale lights would swoop through the rain and the smog.
“There are flyers up there,” she said, trying not to squint as the rain beat down on her face.
Kato raised a brow. “You mean cutters?”
“Yeah, those,” said Greaves. “Man, what I’d give to afford one of those. That’s how you know you’ve made it.”
“You’re getting distracted,” Kato told her. “We’re here for work and this isn’t exactly the nicest part of town.”
Greaves sighed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Are we close?”
Kato took out his screen and looked down at it, where a virtual map of the street plan displayed a pinging icon not too far from their location. “Should be just up ahead,” he said.
They walked for maybe a minute more, taking the opportunity to duck into the cover of an overhang that would shield them from the weather, until they saw a woman standing in a graffiti covered doorway and clearly waiting for them. She was in her early thirties, had jet black hair, and seemed to be of mixed Japanese and European descent. She wore a transparent raincoat, and beneath that a form-fitting dress that came down to her thighs. She had a lit cigarette between her lips, but as soon as she noticed Kato and Greaves, she stubbed it out on the wall besides her.
“Must be her,” Kato said. The woman leaned back and folded her arms as they approached her, and Greaves took the opportunity to squeeze some of the rain out of her hair.
“Erata la keisicia?” The woman asked.
Greaves blinked at her. “Pardon?”
“Crap,” said Kato. “She’s speaking Gengoma. Excuse me, Miss, do you speak English?”
“Disculmase?” She replied.
“Uhh… Nihongo hanasemasu ka?” Kato asked.
The woman shrugged. “Sukoshi… Uh, escaso.”
“This isn’t going to work,” he mumbled, before turning to his partner. “She’s speaking a pidgin language, a mixture between Spanish and Japanese. I can’t speak Spanish, she can’t speak much Japanese. And English is clearly out. The damn dispatchers should have told us about this.”
“Don’t worry about it. Gengoma, you said?” Asked Greaves. “Surprised I haven’t heard of it. Hang on.”
Greaves looked around them and just happened to see a hispanic looking boy hanging out under a doorway with a group of friends. “Hey, kid,” she called out to him. The kid didn’t notice her at first, but she called out louder and pointed at him, and soon he was regarding her with suspicion.
“What do you want?” The kid asked, his tone unsurprisingly defensive.
“You’re hispanic, right?” She asked him. “Do you speak Gengoma?”
The kid shrugged. “Don’t know,” he replied. “Depends how much it’s worth.”
Greaves rolled her eyes, then slipped her hand into her pocket. She pulled out an old plastic note, and both the kid’s and his friend’s eyes grew wide with awe. “See this?” She asked. “This is a real bank note. This shit right here is worth one hundred yen-dollars.”
The kid got up straight away. “Lady, for that I’ll speak Gengoma, English, Spanish, Japanese, hell, I’ll speak Swedish if you want me to.”
“Good. Wait, you speak Swedish?” Greaves asked, though she never got her answer. Kato nudged her with his elbow and she gave him a dirty look before returning to the matter at hand. “We need you to translate for this woman. We’re police.”
The kid paused at the mention of them being police, but his eyes were fixed on the bank note and he approached them anyway. “Alright. What do you want me to say?”
Kato stood back and watched Greaves take control of the situation, quite surprised by the way she was not only able to quickly come up with a solution, but get the kid to actually agree to it. She had a way with the streets he had to admire, and couldn’t help but feel the slightest tinge of jealousy at. She was even better than him, as though she had grown up running around the place herself.
The kicker was, of course, that she hadn’t. Greaves had grown up in a gated community, had gone to college on her parent’s money, and though she was shaping up to be a damn good detective, most of her confidence came from self-assurance and naivety. And yet, somehow, it was working for her. Kato, who twenty five years ago had been right there where the boy was now, was like a foreigner on those streets compared to her. And they had been his home.
“Ask her if she called the police,” said Greaves. “She had something she wanted to report. Something to do with the terror attack?”
The boy nodded and spoke to the woman in her own language, and the woman looked at them and said something that was clearly in the affirmative. She then told the boy something else, something that made the boy look confused, but he shrugged and turned back to relay the information.
“She said she saw a guy who looked like he just came from the hospital,” said the boy. Both Kato and Greaves immediately went closer. “Said he was barefoot, in ruined hospital clothes. He was wet. Looked like he had blood on his clothes, too. He was pretty thin, with short brown hair.”
“Was that the guy?” Greaves asked Kato.
Kato frowned. “Yeah. That sounds like him. Nearly an exact match. Kid, ask if her if she saw what colour his eyes were.”
The boy spoke to her again but the woman shook her head and, even though Kato couldn’t understand her answer, he already knew what it was. “She said sorry,” the boy answered, “but she wasn’t close enough. There were a lot of people.”
The woman then said something else, and pointed down the street in the direction they had already been heading. “He went that way,” said the boy. “She doesn’t know anything else.”
Kate looked at the woman and gave her a nod. “Alright, thanks for everything,” he said, and she apparently understood enough to smile at him. “Thanks, kid. You can go back to your friends.”
As Kato turned away, Greaves handed the boy the promised bank note, and before she could even properly give it to him he snatched it from her. He sprinted off as though he had just stolen it right out of her hand, and Kato grinned, watching the boy and his friends disappear inside.
“Probably thought you’d change your mind,” he said.
Greaves rolled her eyes. “Little shit. I’m no cheat. So, what are you thinking, Kato? If he really did go down this way he could be pretty close. Should we call for backup?”
Kato shook his head. “I don’t think he’s here,” he said. “Gut feeling. Besides, even if he was, us making a scene would just help him slip away. Let’s do this quietly and delicately. If nothing else, we should find out where he went.”
“You got it,” replied Greaves, then the two continued down the street.
The further they walked, the more underhanded their surroundings became. Restaurants and honest stores made way for clubs and whorehouses, and though that part of town had never been a particularly shining beacon of wealth and security, there were suddenly far more people in the crowd who were interested in the fact they were there. Dealers, prostitutes and lookouts followed them with their eyes from streetcorners and beneath rain shelters, and Greaves started to become uneasy.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“Don’t worry about them,” Kato said to her quietly. “They’re keeping an eye out in case we’re here for them.”
“I know,” Greaves replied. “But how are they meant to know we’re not?”
“Trust me, they know. Hey, look, see there? Security cameras.”
Kato was pointing up to the spaces above one of the nightclub doors, where a small, black orb was lodged into a metallic frame. Greaves eyed it too, then at space beneath where the street just happened to narrow enough for the entire thing to be in the camera’s view.
“If he came through here, he’ll be on that camera feed,” she said. “Unless he went into one of the other buildings.”
“Only one way to find out,” said Kato. He walked over to the nightclub door with Greaves following behind, and came face to face with a huge man who stood blocking the doorway.
“Invites?” The man asked, holding out his hand.
“Invites? Listen, we’re-“ Kato tried to say, but the man shook his head and cut him off.
“Private night tonight, I’m afraid. Invites only.”
“We’re detectives with the KMPD,” explained Greaves, taking out her ID card and showing it to the man. “We were hoping to speak to your manager, or the owner of the club. Or just whoever’s in charge right now.”
The man seemed unsure, and most definitely suspicious, and he touched the side of his head to speak quietly into his earpiece. After a few seconds, he looked at the two of them again and asked, “what is it you want?”
“We think a suspect in an open investigation may have been caught on your security camera,” Kato said, nodding up to the camera above the guard’s head. “We just want to take a look at the footage.”
The bouncer turned to speak to someone, then after a few seconds, he regarded the detectives with slightly less suspicion. “Go right in,” he said.
Kato nodded and entered, and Greaves followed him and gave the bouncer a wink. Inside, there was a quiet corridor with a red carpet that led to a set of double-doors, and an empty glass kiosk before it. They passed the kiosk, then Kato pushed the doors open and led them into the room beyond.
The first thing they noticed was the music. Unheard outside the doors, it was loud, deep, and rhythmic; electronic in nature, yet primal and tense, and it reverberated through the floor and up through their bodies like the aftershocks of a thousand repeating bombs. It came from all around them – from the walls themselves – and twenty or so tough looking men and women, with various levels of cybernetic augmentation, suddenly stopped their conversations and looked at them.
Kato immediately raised his hand to show their peaceful intentions. Meanwhile, a male bartender rushed out from behind the bar, and soon ushered the two detectives into a back room before a single word could be spoken against them.
“Officers from the KMPD, yeah?” The bartender asked. He was bald, and wore white sunglasses, and a white suit, and he seemed on edge in that way that drugs put people on edge. He was slightly twitchy, and slightly overwhelmed by everything around him despite being in control.
“We’re here to look at the security cameras,” said Kato, who flashed his ID card at the man.
“Yeah, yeah, of course, of course!” The bartender said. “Through here.”
At the back of the room, which was nothing more than a breakroom, another door was opened to reveal a small office suite with a large network of computers and screens built into the wall. “Security’s here,” the man said, sitting down on his chair and immediately pressing buttons.
Kato and Greaves looked at one another, then Kato shrugged. “We’re looking for a strange man who probably walked past here earlier. Thin, torn hospital clothes, brown ha-“
“Oh yeah, I got it,” said the bartender. He opened up the live video feed and began to rewind it, and suddenly they watched as hundreds of people walked in reverse past the door, moving in that jittering way that only people going backwards in time could move. “Here it is.”
All of a sudden, the camera stopped on an image of their suspect. The image of a figure bursting past him on the hospital walkway immediately flashed before his eyes, and he suddenly remembered the panic and confusion of the men who had been cast aside like children around him.
“You alright?” Greaves asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Kato nodded. “Mark down the time. He walked past at exactly… 10:13pm, Thursday the 9th.”
Greaves tapped what Kato said into her phone screen. “At least we’ve got a solid lead,” she said. “We can get a unit down here to track him now.”
“Hang on a moment,” said Kato, looking at the screen again. “Can you play it forward slowly? Until he’s completely gone off screen.”
The man nodded and pressed play, and the figure resumed walking mid-stride. He was looking away at something off-camera, but then suddenly he stopped, and at first Kato couldn’t figure out why. He peered closer, examining every detail in the crowd, until finally he saw a figure at the very farthest edge of the screen.
“Greaves,” Kato said, “he’s talking to someone.”
The second figure was partially obscured by his position in the feed and the crowd of people walking around him, but just enough could be made out through the rain for Kato to see him. The second figure was a man, an imposing presence who wore a dark coat under a head of short, white hair. Kato couldn’t make out the specifics of the man’s face, but he watched the two speak intently.
“There’s no audio, right?” He asked. The bartender shook his head. “Shit.”
Eventually, the white-haired man took a phone out of his coat and showed it to Kato’s suspect, but Kato couldn’t make out what was on the screen. Then, shortly after, the two turned and walked out of the camera’s vision.
“Who’s that?” Asked Greaves. “You ever seen him before?” She asked the bartender.
“Nope, sorry,” the bartender answered with a shrug. “Maybe if there was a better feed. The feed here is shit.”
“Even so, we’re going to need a copy of it,” said Kato, and the bartender nodded and pressed a button on the keyboard. The video footage minimized, then when Kato tapped his phone against the screen, the footage transferred instantly to his device.
“Is that everything?” The bartender asked. “I have guests who need serving.”
“That’s everything,” said Kato. “Come on, Greaves, let’s call this in.”
Greaves followed Kato out of the office and back through the breakroom with the bartender following behind them. They were barely back in the main room when the augmented customers paused what they were doing to look, and the bartender went sheepishly back behind the bar to relieve a young woman who had taken over in his absence.
“Thanks for the help,” Kato told the bartender, raising his voice over the music. “If you find anything else, contact me.”
He pushed one of his old-fashioned cards across the bar, and the bartender snatched it and hid it out of sight as though afraid it would be seen. Greaves raised her eyebrows at this, but shrugged and turned towards the door only to find a man was now blocking her way.
“You going somewhere, miss?” The man asked. He was tall and slightly tanned, with well-built muscles and a close-shaved head. He wore a sleeveless black shirt, and while his right arm was covered in various tattoos, his left was made of metal and electronics.
“Just leaving,” Greaves told him, and tried to step out of his way to find the man stepped purposefully again into hers. By this point Kato had noticed what was happening and pulled back the bottom of his coat to reveal the large pistol holstered at his hip, and his hand hovered close to it in warning.
The augmented man smirked. “Just leaving,” he mimicked. “Hey, Alfonso, what the fuck were you doing showing cops into back room? Stitching us up? That what this club does, now? Entraps its customers?”
The bartender grew tense. “N-No,” he stuttered. “They wanted some security footage an-“ his voice dropped suddenly when Kato raised a hand to shush him. Meanwhile, several of the other gangsters were now standing from their seats, and an unbearable tension suddenly filled the room.
“We’re not looking for you guys,” Kato said. “We’re just trying to find a missing person. He was on the cameras out front, that’s all.”
The man in front of Greaves leaned around her to look at Kato and shook his head. “We don’t like cops here, and we don’t trust cops. And you know what?” He asked. “By the time your backup got here, there’d be no cops left to find.”
Greaves leaned back away from the man. “Listen, man,” she said. “We don’t give a shit about you or your friends. Just let us go. There’s no need to get violent.”
The man looked down at Greaves and licked his lips. “Come to think of it,” he said, as he moved closer to her ear. “Maybe I could keep you for something else.” The man raised his hand, then began to brush it gently down Greaves’ cheek. Or, at least, he tried.
Instead what happened was, before he could so much as touch her, Greaves grabbed his hand and turned his wrist outwards, and shoved her knee hard into his sternum. Then, as the air was forced out of his surprised, gaping mouth, she turned and flipped him over her hip and to the floor.
At that same moment, several of the gangsters pulled out unlicensed pistols and submachine guns, and began to take aim at Greaves who, in noticing this, was already rolling away into one of the empty booths at her side.
The gangsters opened fire. Bullets shattered wood and glass around her and then, before she had chance to fire back, one of her attackers was hit by something and thrown off his feet. Immediately after, a second was hit in the shoulder and spiraled backwards, and right after that a man’s head popped open like a boil. By the time Kato turned his pistol and fired at a fourth, the force of the shot blowing off her cybernetic arm, the rest had adjusted their aims towards him.
One fired a small burst, and Kato was clipped in the shoulder and slid down the bar front towards the ground. Greaves started firing her own weapon over the booth seat, and one more gangster was hit in the leg before another two dove down under the table to protect themselves.
The room was suddenly a picture of chaos; a violent struggle that, although it had been only a few seconds, was already drenched in blood. The music had stopped, as though whatever computer controlling it had fled, and as Kato tried to steady himself on the ground, it suddenly occurred to him that he might possibly be about to die. That Greaves might be about to die.
“Fucking STOP!” Yelled their leader, the man who Greaves had thrown to the floor. He was reaching up his metal hand to try and parley, and for a second his people faltered and the bullets began to cease. Then the bartender pressed a button, and a section of the bar turned over to reveal a twin-barreled, revolving, chain-fed turret that took one look at the remaining gangsters and began to spray.
There was barely time to react before the dozen remaining gangsters were shredded to pieces. The walls broke apart and cracked behind them, and glass tables shattered and blood sprayed out over everything in an unimaginable mess of gore. Kato covered his head and hid down beneath the bar’s front, and it was only when the bullets stopped and the whir of the turret began to die that he looked in horror at what had happened.
“Don’t. Fuck. With. My. Nightclub!” Yelled the bartender, jumping up and down behind the bar. His voice was a manic and terror-filled drug-craze, and his arms danced around his head until the man that Greaves had thrown down shot him with an SMG and his head came apart over the shots cabinet.
“I’m going to fucking kill you both,” the man with the tattoos growled, and aimed his gun down to where Kato was now scrambling and rolling up to his feet. The man stood and pulled the trigger, but his aim was thrown off by the panic and recoil, and the bullets hit the wall behind the detective. Kato paused and then, in a single moment of sheer luck, shot the gun right out of the gangster’s hand.
He wasted no time in firing again, but the man raised his cybernetic hand and the bullet was stopped by the palm, the force of it enough to knock the arm back and almost break the shoulder it was attached to. The gangster began moving quickly towards him, and Kato fired once more to find that again the bullet was stopped. He fired a third shot, but this time aimed for the shoulder, and the force of it knocked the enemy around with one arm swinging out widely – just wide enough to catch the detective in the face and knock him down to the ground.
Kato’s pistol slid away from him across the floor, and the gangster lurched down and grabbed it with his real hand. Then, as he looked up from the floor to take aim, Greaves ran behind him and shot down into the back of the head.
When it was over, the two detectives looked at each other. There were no words to share, just the desperate intakes of breath to try and calm the adrenaline and the fear. A second later, as they realized how heavily Kato’s shoulder was bleeding, the young woman behind the bar began to scream.