For almost an hour, Gary follows Christopher down into the lower levels of Downtown until he finally pulls into an old rundown storage warehouse delightfully called ‘The Graveyard’ a place where things can come and rest in peace. ‘This is way too seedy an area for the rich and powerful to come visiting unless you have a secret to hide, what the fuck are you up to Dillinger?’

He watches as Christopher comes to a stop in front of storage unit twenty-two. He looks around quickly before pressing a button on his key chain and the door slides open with a grinding hiss, Christopher enters the storage locker, and the door closes behind him. ‘What have you got in there?’

Gary slowly makes his way towards the door of the storage unit, with a hiss the door begins to reopen, Gary quickly finds a place to crouch behind to avoid Christopher’s detection. To his surprise the sound of two sets of footsteps leave the storage unit, he quickly peers from behind the bin and is shocked to see only Christopher get into his car and drive away, Gary crouches back down his face showing his confusion. ‘I could’ve sworn two people just exited that storage unit?’

Once Christopher is out of site he re-emerges from his hiding place and walks to storage unit twenty-two’s door, “So my friend what secrets are you going to tell me?” Gays says as he looks over the locking mechanism, and pulls out a small device from his pocket and places it against the lock. After several moments the door hisses open. Gary walks into the storage locker, the room is bare except for an unusual looking chair that sits in the centre of the room, and he recognises the device instantly.

‘Christopher, you little fucker!’

#

 

Delta District-Nine Detective Sergeant Lance Finnell walks out of the seedy Downtown brothel as he tucks his shirt into his pants.

“Lance Finnell?” a voice asks from the darkness.

“You seem to have me at a disadvantage friend, who the fuck are you supposed to be?” Finnell replies as he faces the alleyway and tries to make out the approaching figure.

“Your end,” the figure replies as he steps out of the shadows and fires two shots into Finnell’s chest sending him crashing to the ground in a smoking heap. Within moments of Finnell hitting the ground, the figure is standing above him and pulls out a datapad.

“You’ve been a naughty boy Lance, you don’t mind if I call you Lance, do you?” Finnell manages to draw a couple of breaths and squeezes out a gasp or two, but nothing else.

“Didn’t think you would, so tell me, how does a guy like you sleep at night?” Finnell still only manages a few gasps.

“Ok, I get it, why would you tell the guy who just shot you in the chest anything, I can understand that,” the man says. “I guess you want to know what’s happening, so I’ll give you the quick version, because you obviously don’t have much time. You’ve been found guilty of crimes against the citizens of Delta City, crimes that has so by my count, a count that is still yet to be finalized, cost over four hundred and twelve downtown dwellers their lives and seventy-eight or more investigations that you have purposely interfered with over your career to be abandoned due to lack or loss of evidence,” Finnell grabs the bottom corner of the man’s large overcoat and struggles to say something.

“Sorry Lance, there is no plea bargaining, there is no eleventh hour save, your sentence has already been set, and it will now be dealt,” the man says as he picks up Finnell’s blaster and places it against his temple.

“For your crimes you are sentenced to death, there is no redemption, there is no future, all that your life is, and was, is no more.”

Finnell struggles to pull the blaster away, but the man holds it firmly down, a shot breaks the silence and it rips through Finnell’s head, which ruptures with the explosion of the blast and his eyes become blank and void of life.

The man stands up and pulls out his datapad once more, “Lance Finnell, you have been judged and sentenced.”

 

#

 

Gary climbs aboard his Modified AC-Stinger and quickly picks up his phone and dials a number, several moments pass before Andrew Fontaine’s face appears on the other end.

“The man, the hero, the saviour of the city, I’m hounoured you still know who I am and have even found the time to call me.”

“You know you’re not funny, right?”

“People pay for this sort of material.”

“No they don’t, anyway, besides the thank you for the flowers, I need to know if you’ve done any work for Caroline Hallowthorpe or a Christopher Dillinger recently?”

“I think I’m well below Hallowthorpe’s pay grade, but you know my business motto, who cares what their names are as long as the credits are golden.”

“What about this girl? Remember her?” Gary asks as he holds up one of the photos he took from Caroline.

“Her I remember, easiest track and trace I’ve ever had.”

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds strange for me to be questioning my very excellent detective skills, but it was like she knew I was there, she was posing for god’s sake. I don’t know, but you know when you get that feeling deep down that something is just not right, well I got it with this one.”

“So you think it was all set up?”

“No doubt, but as I said their credits were good so who cares, why the questions?”

“Hallowthorpe is having a paranoid breakdown over this woman being up and walking around, apparently it’s her dead sister and she wants me to deal with the problem. Bill obviously sees this as another political power play, so he’s forcing me to be at her beck and call.”

“Sucks to be you. When you say he’s forcing you, you mean he’s hanging shit over your head to get you to play along?”

“That’s how it works, he promises to back off on me using you as a bouncing board.”

“What a fuck, you know he’s full of shit, right?” Fontaine says.

“I’m aware.”

“Look, I do have something you may be able to use though, I mean it could’ve just been me, but I think there was something really wrong with her, she was just not right. I don’t know how to explain it, besides the whole feel of it being a set-up there was something about her that just seemed fake, I guess that’s what you would call it, she seemed fake.”

“Remember the Lews-Philpher case from seventy-one?”

“I still have the scars,” Fontaine replies. “Holy shit, you think she’s a droid?”

“I’m beginning to think that.”

“It would be a big call, have to be major underground bullshit, droids like that are completely off the grid, Lews-Philpher made sure of that. Who wouldn’t fear droids after the carnage that fucking droid caused.”

“Well credits are no issue for these fuckers, is there anyone you can think of that would be able to get their hands on a droid if the credits were right?”

“Fuck man, even I couldn’t get you a droid, I mean not like that, well maybe if you really wanted one I could manage to find something or Johnny L could, tech savvy arse. But the ones that are readily available are sex toys anyway. If you want them to do more basic shit like this one, you either run them yourself with a headset, which is pointless. But believe me, some sickos use them to fulfil their weird sexual desires, or you spend a lot of time reprograming the fuckers and that is hard shit, and trust me I know, I’ve been there, on both fronts,” Fontaine replies. “People with credits can always get the good shit, I’d look for Hans Lews, he’s still out there, fucker was never found after the droid went batshit crazy, and I’ve sourced one or two upgraded models since seventy-one. For personal use mind you, and his name is all over the work.”

“You still think he survived all that shit?”

“Tiracom fuckers always manage to survive, they’re like cockroaches, as I said, his name is all over the work, you can just tell sometimes and that case took a lot of leg work back in the day, so I was pretty deep into his work, in more ways than one, if you catch my drift,” Fontaine replies with a laugh. “Lionel Banks would know where he is, but I doubt he’d ever admit it, Lews was their best GeoTech, he put them on the map and they still seem to be making striding steps forward without him. So I’d say Tiracom would be the place to go for info.”

“I don’t have time to try and locate a ghost or attempt to deal with Tiracom and Banks for information I know they won’t divulge. Have you got anything realistic I could use?”

“Sorry man, wish I did, but the best I can say is, if credits are no issue then Tiracom is the answer, I can check with Johnny L and see if he’s had any dealings with anyone lately, but besides that I’ve got nothing,” Fontaine replies. “There is one other option though, but it would require you to have the servo-chair, that would give you an open shot at the droid and the owner in one go.”

“Wait, what do you mean?”

“The chair, if you have the servo-chair for the droid you can use it to locate the droid and the controller, if it is being controlled that is,” Fontaine says. “Everything the droid does is recorded in the chair, and I mean everything especially if it’s a controller droid, because the chair is the link between the headset for the controller and the droid. Pretty much the only reason I purge my chair religously, but amatures have no idea what the chair really does, me I never leave anything to chance and I don’t use the controller headset either, but that’s because I’m not really into fucking myself, tried it once and just really freaked me out.”

“You’re fucking kidding me, you mean this chair?” Gary asks turning the screen around to face the chair that sits in the warehouse unit.

“That’s the chair.”

“How soon can you get to The Graveyard?”

“A lot longer than it will take me to talk you through what you need to know.”

“Well, you better start talking then.”

 

END OF ACT II