At the sight of the patrolman, Tasìa did not hesitate to react.

And act.

"Oh, thank God that it's one of you," Tasìa exclaimed, breathlessly.

She peered down with a quick glance. Did she appear in anyway conspicuous? To that end, Tasìa was relieved that her weapons were well hidden.

The dead Czech agent was on her mind when she considered how the patrolman may react to the sight of weapons on her.

"Those two women goons scared the ever-living shit out of me. I came up here when they pulled out those awful machine guns."

She feigned a near catatonic expression. It was the best she could do. As much as she would like to sob to gain his trust, it just wasn't an emotional state that came naturally for Tasìa.

It just wasn't in her.

"I heard you scream," the patrolman answered as he pulled himself over the awning shoulder and squatted directly across from Tasìa. "Just as I shot the purp, and she dropped."

Oh, I saw. It was so . . . frightful."

Tasìa held her arms together and effected a nervous disposition.

The patrolman shrugged while giving her a quick once over.

The badge hanging from the left side of his contoured chest plate identified him as Corporal of 1st Rank D. Barro Rojas.

As he made himself comfortable, a pair of polyhedral dice hovered in a spin between his fingers. They seemed to defy gravity. Though Tasìa was aware of the conductivity trick that sustained their hover so long as they were near a warm surface, her eyes still disbelieved what was witnessed.

Rojas guffawed at her reaction.

"Habit I picked up when I quit smoking. Shootings bring back that craving something fierce."

Did shooting incidents tend to happen that often? Did Corporal Rojas have an overactive trigger finger?

Tasìa assessed: Rojas likely patrolled del Tesse as well as Industria Saliente, the never properly named burb they now inhabited, so the patrolman has seen action whether hair triggered or not.

When he met her eyes as he began to speak again, caution evaded her emotional state. His eyes were dark green inquisitive pools, she also assessed.

"I was afraid your reaction was indicative of an accomplice reacting to one of her own getting shot."

Tasìa gasped dramatically; her hand spread in a tight clasp against her chest.

"No. Not at all!"

Corporal Rojas shook his head with his cheeks held in, firmly stiff. He was suppressing a chuckle, obviously at her expense.

His index finger was at first held up stridently to make sure he had her attention, but then, with deliberative attenuation, he pointed to her boots.

"You look quite posh in that outfit, Senora del Alma-Gris. How did you climb up here in those boots? Not quite designed for climbing now are they?"

Tasìa blinked several times. He already had a run on her identification, or he simply recognized her from the street life of Vida Escondida.

She wasn't exactly an unknown quantity in this city.

"Excuse me?"

This time he did not suppress the chuckle, but he let it out full throttle, and very much at her expense.

"Keep your hands where I can see them. I already know you are lying about why you are up here. The mobile cameras show you casing this very spot several minutes before the two Czech agents arrived. What I don't know, my renown second story liberationist friend, is why you are really up here."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Tasìa frowned, tightly. Now she spotted the signal activity in his contacts through her own Katy Lieds analytic mode. He had her well surveilled with a constant infostream update from an AI assisting him.

"Damn," she uttered feeling defeated.

"Damn is right. Start talking."

She considered doing a backflip, and wall catch to then slide downward, but then she would be a fugitive on the run from every drone, car, and footpad on patrol in the city as soon as he called it in. She didn't need any more trouble with the VEAA then what she was already in.

Coming clean about the more minor matters of her escapades might get her off the hook if they had more important concerns to tend to as she suspected, given the dead body below, they did.

Tasìa thrust her chest out, waved her open palms, and let out an exasperated breath to signal her capitulation.

A limited hang out it was to be then.

"All right, all right. I'm looking for a friend who I strongly suspected would be coming through here, and I needed to be discreet about it because there was a chance he was being watched."

Corporal Rojas nodded sternly, as if she merely confirmed what he already knew.

"That turns out to be a safe assumption. Any idea why a foreign intelligence agency is invading our sovereignty to get at your friend who's just a low level flunky in a criminal organization?"

Low level flunky? It was Tasìa's turn to feign indifference and keep her tongue firmly planted to cheek. A walk-around guy, caminador, was typically the highest ranked enforcer in a mid-twenty-first century organization.

It was the caminador's job to shake the tree, then point to the fallout for the men who answered to him, but there was no reason to expect beat security to know any of that.

Tasìa shook her head, hoping nothing in her expression disabused him of this false notion.

"I have no idea, sorry. I haven't seen him in several months. This for me is all about reestablishing contact. I heard he was laying low, but kept to this part of town."

Her scant bit of intel came from the notes left to her from Demona Heloïste's backup plan.

"Your friend has been, how to put it, flirting with disaster of late, but it appears you are not well informed on that."

Corporal Rojas was condescending, but deliberately so. He was testing her reaction.

"Care to enlighten me?"

The patrolman shook his head.

"I don't think so. You have been very busy this evening Senora del Alma-Gris. Since the time you arrived in our fair city approximately nine hours ago, a vehicle sequester was necessary due to you bringing in explosive materials into Vida Escondida. After which, you conducted a lethal excursion with Lieutenant Colonel Sol, an internationally recognized war criminal inexplicably allowed to operate through out the Quadra. That was followed by a breaking and entering that was authorized by my very own department onto a private contractor to the VEAA's property, and I find that one to be very odd, indeed."

She gave him her own once over glance. Clearly, Colonel Rojas did not know when matters fell above his pay grade.

Would he have shot the Czech agent if he was aware of her status beforehand? Such a matter could cause quite a few diplomatic problems if the Salvage had given permission to operate to the Czech.

She was getting the feeling that Colonel Rojas was the type of loose cannon who may have even been aware of that kind of special circumstance, but chose to ignore it.

Tasìa humored Colonel Rojas delusions about his place in the scheme of things, and protested without a show of indignation.

She even bit her lip to show vulnerability.

"Not at all, my rental vehicle was wrongfully acquired by that subcontractor of yours."

Colonel Rojas shook his head.

"Nevertheless, usually that takes hours even days for our legals to approve. You got authorization on the spot, someone intervened on your behalf."

Of course I did, you idiot!

But she kept her calm.

Tasìa shrugged, but said nothing in response.

"Let's continue. That is not the end of your escapades this evening. You were tracked going into the Grosse Prix Cyber Security facility just before things went dark there. We do not like the looks of that, at all. Care to explain?"

Tasìa considered his own refusal to answer her question.

"I don't think so. Surely, you know who else was there?"

"You were allowed to leave in the middle of their execution of a marque, that we have on record. The bounty hunters left, then matters there seem to have taken a very nasty turn."

Tasìa glummed up her puss mouth. She hated that she needed to take Rojas seriously to get real information out of him.

"What do you mean?"

"Nanospore activity follows you. This sort of thing occurs a lot for you, doesn't it?"

"No more than usual for the Quad, I would guess."

The patrolman cocked his chin.

"Up until now, you have seemed to be keeping things truthful as far as I can ascertain."

He pointed to Mel who watched them from a billboard post.

"That Nightwing hangs around you for a reason, Senora del Alma-Gris. I suspect visitations for you from the Nanospore Entities are anything but merely common."

Tasìa gave Corporal Rojas a stern warning with her eyes.

"Until now, I could connect your questions to legitimate VEAA concerns, officer, but that question definitely falls outside of your purview. I still have a friend to catch up with, Am I free to go?"

Corporal Rojas chuckled, and pointed with a nod behind her. There was something in that direction neither could see, but his infostream kept him abreast.

He stood up.

"I've got my own business to catch up on before I can call it a night, but you have friends waiting in that direction."

With that, the patrolman zipped the dice up in a pants pocket then he began his descent back down the awning.

Anxiously, Tasìa stood up and turned only to be relieved when she caught sight of a van in a nearby parking zone and the two friends within it.

Annebél Duarte set in the driver's seat with a radio relay headset speaking to someone and Sachmilli Cuervo napped beside her.

Not only relieved, but ecstatic she felt when Mel cahed out a high pitched chirp to convey Annebél's greeting.