Eden & Echo - A Gritty Cyberpunk Noir Thriller

Rook let go, breaking his connection to the link. A few seconds later Sparky came over and linked up. Sapphire told him the ground rules and he walked us through his side of events.

She scrubbed through the data and stopped near the end. "So after Mr. Rook shot the intruder and the grenade went off, you saw fit to shoot the intruder twice in the head. Why is that?"

He pulled up the footage from his weapon. It showed a surreal vision of a figure in a malfunctioning stealth suit laying on the floor, trying to lift a pistol I recognized as Krieger's. The right half of the suit was showing a blurry image of the carpet beneath them. The other half was blackened with burns and bullet holes.

Sparky lined up a shot and put two rounds from his carbine into the side of their head. The suit stopped glitching and the intruder fell still. "They had a weapon aimed at me and I had to act quickly to defend my life."

"But surely you could have said something, asked them to stand down." Sapphire suggested. "Perhaps they would have surrendered."

"It wouldn't have mattered what I said. They couldn't hear me." Sparkly brought up two schematics for grenades and laid them side by side on the whiteboard. One had noticeably more explosives than the other.

"The one on the left is a regular flash bang, the one on the right is what they had. It's called a 'katzen double' and if one of those went off in the same room as you it would blow your eardrums."

He closed his little presentation. "They're about halfway between a flashbang and a high explosive grenade and definitely can be lethal in the right circumstances."

Sapphire nodded. "So that grenade was capable of killing."

"Absolutely." Sparky said.

"Well, that should do it. I will ask if I have any additional questions. Now I'm going to take some photos and video of the apartment then lock up everything not related to the incident." Sapphire broke the link and held out her hand. "Keys please."

I took off my bracelet and handed it over. "That should work on everything."

"Marvelous." She replied, grabbing her briefcase. "You wait here and I'll do my thing."

Sparky watched her go, his eyes lingering for longer than was strictly necessary.

"You like her." I observed.

"Oh yes, she's just my type. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure that I'm not hers." Sparky said as he sent a link to a news article. "Apparently she's dating a famous designer… or two if you believe the tabloids."

I opened the link and shook my head when I saw a paparazzi photo of Sapphire having dinner with a black and white furred katzen I recognized as ¡Hip-hop! followed by photos of them holding hands at fashion shows. "Good for them." I said. "It's nice to know she has someone."

"Are you… into that sort of thing?" Sparky asked. "I hear stories about humans."

"No, on both accounts. I'm not into women or the fur trade." I sighed wearily. Somehow just because I had expressed approval of someone else's non-conventional relationship Sparky had made the assumption that I was gay too. Maybe it was my buzz cut.

"I'm incredibly boring in that regard. Which kind of sucks, because since Haven fell a lot of men think it's their duty to repopulate the species."

"Oh. Yeah I can see why that would suck." Sparky seemed to zone out for a moment. "Ah, the police are here and security wants you to know that two detectives are coming up the elevator now. Apparently they didn't want to wait."

Sapphire poked her head into my bedroom. "Mr. Rook has informed me that the police have arrived. You stay here and lock the door, I'll go meet them."

She closed the bedroom door behind her and I heard the elevator ding a few moments later.

"She didn't ask you to disarm." I observed as I locked the door.

"That's because we wouldn't have. Until we know for sure that they haven't been bought by the same people who sent the intruders, we stay armed. Also, they will demand our carbines to take as evidence. She will make that hard then relent so they feel like they got a win." Sparky let out a low laugh. "Too bad the carbines record to our wetware and not local storage. They will attempt to illegally break the encryption then accuse us of destroying evidence when they realize the carbines don't have any logs or data they can use."

I listened as the officers entered the apartment and radioed in the call. A few seconds later there was a call of "Gun!" and I heard rapid pistol fire followed by swearing.

***

Sparky tensed up for a moment then relaxed. "Don't worry about it." He said. "The cops just got a little jumpy. Nobody is hurt. You'll see what happened in a bit, but I'll save the surprise so they get to enjoy your reaction."

Sapphire knocked on the door. "Come say hello to the police officers."

I unlocked the door and cautiously opened it. "They aren't going to try and shoot me are they?"

"I doubt it. They might be out of ammo." Sapphire joked. "But I also had them disarm and they are very sorry for what happened."

I came into the living room to see two katzen police officers in their blue uniforms looking sheepish and trying not to make eye contact. I looked around trying to see what they had been shooting at.

One of the patio windows was a mess of white impacts and fractures where the bullets hit, but not gone through. Rook waved from the patio, unharmed and unarmed.

I felt the anger rising. But remembering my promise to Sapphire I didn't say anything to the cops. Still, I was pissed. Krieger was dead and Mr. Brown was in the hospital. Then to top it all off these chuckle dicks tried to kill Rook. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

Sapphire waved me over, putting her hand on my shoulder and establishing a link. I heard her voice in my head. "Just let me do the talking. This actually works in our favor and you had better believe I'm going to milk this for all it is worth."

As I stood there, not speaking, I realized that I knew the two katzen from the academy. The heavier set orange furred one was called Mark "Marmalade" Mejia and the tall white one with the black fur around his ears and hands was Richard "Ragdoll" Rubio.

They had been at the academy, not as instructors, but as punishment for a 'tactical' error when they shot up a taco truck. The exact circumstances behind that particular incident were a closely guarded secret. But rumor around the academy was the two were on very thin ice with the department. Why they were still allowed to carry firearms was a mystery.

I passed this information on via link to Sapphire who made a note of it. "So, I believe an explanation is owed." She said in Hund-Katzen, pointing to the ruined window.

Marmalade scratched behind his ear awkwardly. "Right… well we were making sure everything was safe when we saw your guard on the patio. He had something in his hand that we thought might be a weapon. So we told him to drop it and when he didn't comply we opened fire."

I was shocked at how stupid and blatant the lie was. I wanted to say something but instead I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I couldn't believe how fucking stupid these two were.

"And what did that item turn out to be?" Sapphire pressed.

"A cellphone." Marmalade said miserably. "But the way he was holding it made it look like a gun."

"It's an easy mistake to make and he didn't obey our commands." Ragdoll cut in before turning to look at me. "Why do you even have bullet proof glass anyway? Are you some kind of drug dealer? That would explain all the security. Are they even licensed? How about I pull the serial numbers off their weapons and see if their permits are current?"

I wanted to scream at them for being so stupid. Of course he couldn't hear them! The patio windows and door were designed to cut down on noise from landing helicopters and wind. They were reinforced in case something bad happened during landing and pieces of fast moving metal went looking for a home. When helicopter blades snapped and it wasn't pretty. I took another deep breath and let it out.