"I don't like this."

"Yeah, you said that already."

"Well, I'm saying it again."

"Fucking hell, Nev, I thought you were supposed be the muscle out of the two of us."

Nevay shot him a glare along with a middle-finger. "Very funny."

"Just relax, would you? We can trust him."

"How in the hell would you know that? You've only met the fat bastard a handful of times."

Kirk sighed, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "Do me a favour. When he gets here, keep that sort of shit to yourself, will you?"

"I'm a model diplomat."

"Last time you took me along on a 'diplomatic' mission, you stabbed someone in the throat."

"Sometimes you gotta negotiate harder than others." She shrugged innocently.

Kirk rolled his eyes and started pacing back and forth. They weren't far from the station, tucked away in a back alley away from prying eyes, in a diminutive tech workshop run by one of Nevay's associates.

She'd gotten them to clear out for this meeting, but clearly her trust didn't run any deeper than that. Against Kirk's wishes, he knew that Targe was skulking somewhere nearby, armed with a heavy rifle so big that he doubted he could even lift it.

Insurance, a buzzword Nevay had gotten very fond of recently. He hoped to hell that Doser didn't have any idiotic plans to try and drag Cutter Jenning's niece back to a cell. The message had been vague by necessity, so he didn't really know what the detective had uncovered for them. It could, if his luck was bad enough, be a trap.

He doubted it though. Kirk just hoped his judge of character would be proved right.

A few minutes later, the detective arrived, right on time.

Doser could not have looked more nonchalant. He ambled through the door, cigarette between his teeth, hands stuffed into the pockets of his grimy trousers and an amused twinkle in his eye. He stopped in front of them, removing one hand to take a drag of the cigarette, exhaling smoke as he looked around.

"Nice digs," he chuckled, before turning his attention to them. "Glad you came, mate. Wasn't sure how cryptic I needed to be. I'm a detective, not a bloody spy."

"Well, we're here," Kirk replied. "You've got information for us?"

"I reckon I do." His gaze drifted to Nevay. "So you're the one keeping the flame of old Cutter burning, eh?"

"That's one way to put it." She sounded positively surly.

Doser shrugged. "Whatever. No concern of mine how you wanna run your business."

"Though you were a cop?"

"I am a cop. Have been for a long, long time. You know why?" He winked at her. "I know when to keep my neck wound in. Always knew to live-and-let-live with Cutter. Don't see why this has got to be any different. 'sides, seems like we've all got bigger problems."

"I'll buy that," she relented, unfolding her arms. "So what've you got?"

"Before we get started," Doser said, waggling an admonishing finger at her. "You wanna tell that big geezer with the bloody cannon that I'm not here to cause any trouble? Don't want anyone to get an itchy trigger finger." He lifted each side of his jacket in turn. "See, not wearing my gun. Which makes me either very honest, or very, very stupid."

"I think he's made his point, Nev," Kirk said, giving her an expectant look.

"Alright, alright." She huffed and let out a sharp whistle.

There was a faint scuffle of feet, and Targe slouched sheepishly into view at the back of the room, the bulky rifle hanging over one shoulder. He gave Doser a nod.

"Alright then." Doser beckoned them as he moved towards one of the computer terminals. "Let's get down to business, eh? I've not got long."

Heaving himself into the seat, he wedged his cigarette back between his teeth and started it up, his visor flickering into life across his eyes. 

"Couldn't risk sendin' any of this out to you direct," he explained. "It's all proprietary, cops only. Don't wanna set up more red flags than I have to."

Data shimmed across his eyes and he twitched. The next instant a map of their local sprawl flashed up on the screen. It all looked nice and clean when you stripped it back to the glistening grid-lines and placenames, but Kirk knew better. The Cartwright residential clumps crawled to the east of the station, merging into the dockside district where his actual home was – a miserly tract of housing stamped as the Fare Row Range.

"Right then," Doser said. "Here's where your spiv mates have set up their cordon." His pudgy fingers pulsed soundlessly against the holo-keys, his visor shimmering as he worked. A moment later a steel-blue line etched itself over a small portion of the map.

Kirk leaned closer, squinting. Without the benefits of the implanted temple processors that Doser had, he relied entirely on old fashioned flesh and blood to make sense of what he was seeing. The area encapsulated several of the more run down dockside districts, places that even the corps barely bothered with. At this point, they were almost self-governing little slums.

That only underlined to him that something very bad was going on there, if the corporations had finally deigned to take notice.

"We ain't allowed in there," he continued, pointing. "Only thing me and mine are kept around for is crowd control and checkpoints. But, I've logged a few things that ought to raise a couple of eyebrows."

Doser keyed in more commands, resulting in a series of red X's appearing, outside the supposed cordon.

"And what are those?" Nevay asked quietly, her eyes narrow with interest as she examined the screen.

"Ain't anything on the scale of what you dredged up at that ferry terminal," Doser told them. "But we've had seven missing persons reports in the last eight days, all outside the corporate cordon. Way more than the norm."

Nevay looked dubious. "Nobody goes missing around here of their own accord?"

"I don't tell you how to go cutting throats do I?" he snapped. "So when I tell you that this ain't normal, you should sock it and listen to me, alright? This neighbourhood's hardly a bloody diamond, but people going missing? No ideas? no trace? Crystal clean crime scenes? No, no, that's not what happens round here. I got bar fights, gang dick-measuring, business deals gone wrong, assaults, murders, and none of them are clean."

Kirk nodded, folding his arms. "So you're saying whatever's supposed to be inside that cordon, it's gotten out?"

"That's sure what it looks like," Doser muttered as he ran his eyes over the map screen. "Corps talk a big game, mate, but I think that cordon of theirs is leakin' like a fucking sieve."

"That's corporate craftsmanship for you," Nevay snorted.

"Now that is something you'n'me can agree on."

"So what's happening to them?" Kirk asked. "Are they being abducted, killed?"

Doser shrugged. "Nobody bloody knows. For most of 'em it's like they just went up in a puff of smoke."

"And you're sure this is related?" Kirk traded in unconvinced glance with Nevay, scratching the back of his neck. "What we saw was a butcher's yard, Doser. They slaughtered those people."

"I know that, but I ain't got any other suspects on the books that fit the bill." He sighed, lighting a fresh cigarette and leaning back in the seat. "What would you be kidnapping someone round here for anyway? Nobody that lives in this shithole's got enough money to pay a ransom."

"Good point." Nevay nodded, giving him a pointed look. "So do you have any actual leads on any of the people that went missing?"

"Oh, I got one," Doser said with an impish smile. "It so happens, I've just got your kind of crazy sitting locked up in the station,"

Kirk frowned. "What does that mean?"

"Means, I've got some poor bitch in a holding tank who says she had a close encounter and lived to tell about it." His smile broadened, the cigarette flaring. Smugness radiated off of him as he exhaled. "So, we interested?"

*

"No, no, no, you gotta stay here. You and your bloody terminator." Doser made an irate gesture towards Targe.

Nevay's nose crinkled with annoyance. "Why?"

"Why do you think?" Kirk laughed, unable to stop himself. She punched him on the arm, but his smile still remained as he explained. "You think the heir to Cutter Jennings empire can just walk into a police station? They're not going to go out hunting for you, but if you actually walk through the front door they'll have no choice but to throw you in a cell."

"He's right, boss," Targe grunted unhappily.

She scowled, her gaze flashing to the bulky dark cube of the police station. It squatted there, a grubby bunker of a thing with half-lit windows pockmarking its exterior walls. People flowed in and out of the main doors with varying degrees of reluctance, trying not to get trampled by the constant rush of officers and detectives. Low-hulled cop cruisers sputtered past them – their old batteries screeching with effort, wheel gyros grinding.

Kirk watched it all grimly. Just enough funds flowing to keep the place functioning, but not enough for them to ever take the corporations to task over their own back room dealings.

"Fine," Nevay grated eventually. "We'll wait here. But don't take too long. And I wanna see a recording of your little chat."

"Some trust issues you're dragging around," Doser chuckled.

"You have no idea," Kirk told him, smiling thinly as he turned to Nevay. "Remember, eyes on the prize."

"Yeah, yeah. Just go." She gave him a gentle shove in the direction of the police station.

With Targe close behind, she melted back into the shadows as Kirk turned, following Doser's lumbering gait towards the station entrance.

No-one paid much attention to them. Doser exchanged a few nods and grunted greetings with some of the officers and detectives, but most were too busy dealing with screaming citizens or wrestling prisoners to their cells.

Instead of the bullpen, this time Doser led the way through to an elevator, where they piled in with half a dozen uniformed cops and haggard looking admin staff, before getting spilled out two floors below to the temporary holding areas. Kirk's eyes widened at the sight of at least twenty people packed into each large cell, kept their by a combination of heavy metal bars and sizzling firewalls so potent he could see the red shimmer in the air.

"Stick close, would you," Doser muttered, giving him a nudge, "and for fuck sake, don't stare. Some of these nutjobs'd stick a shiv in your eye for looking at them wrong."

"I've seen worse," Kirk shot back. He'd been through far too much in the last year to be scared by the rank-and-file of Hadrian's street thugs.

"Alright, tough guy."

Kirk rolled his eyes as they carried on, passing several large and loud holding pens, with more unwilling residents being deposited inside as they went. He stayed close behind Doser, letting the detective plough a road with his big frame.

A bulky metal door with a security lattice shimmering over its threshold waited for them at the far end of the stretch of holding cells. Doser's visor gleamed for a moment when he stopped in front of it, then the lattice flashed from red to green.

"C'mon," he snapped as the door lock disengaged and he stepped through. Kirk scurried after him before the lattice could reset.

The security door thumped shut behind them, reducing the noise from the holding pens to a dull din. On the other side they found a uniformed officer at a desk, her ragged blonde hair tied back in a bun, boots slung up on the table as she scrolled disinterestedly through data pad.

"Hey, Dietrich," Doser grunted. "What's the word? Your boys holdin' up?"

"You know how it is," she muttered, pulling an irritated face without looking up. "Fucking Boles is a choker. Fourth quarter meltdown all over again."

"Gonna cost you a few crypts I bet?"

Dietrich dumped the slate down in front of her with a huff of disgust and swung her feet off the table. "I don't want to talk about it." Her fingers tapped over the holo-keys and her eyes flickered up to Doser. "Who's on your docket?"

"Headglitch in interrogation room eight."

"Man, who'd you piss off?"

"I stopped keeping track."

Deitrich let out a snort of a laugh. "Must be that sunny disposition of yours." Her eyes flicked to Kirk. "What, some work experience day I don't know about?"

"Witness on the case," Doser replied, giving her an exasperated look. "Mind your fuckin' business would you? Enough with the third degree."

"Alright, alright, alright. Cleared and logged." She waved them through.

They walked past, into the narrower passage beyond that branched off to various interrogation chambers. The walls weren't quite thick enough to mask to full extent of the yelling, crashing and screaming going on in here. Kirk tried not to think about it too much. Given the daily chaos that seemed to wash over this place, he wasn't surprised that some cops were willing to get a little ... heavy handed if they had to.

"And here we are," Doser muttered, stumping to a halt at one of the opaque window films. He swept his palm over a sensor at the side of the aperture, and the dark rectangle rippled out of existence, revealing a pane of reinforced glass, and a woman sitting behind it. Kirk moved closer, his hands clenching inside his pockets as he looked at her.

Maybe in her early forties, she had lank brown hair wrestled into a messy bun, her skinny frame swamped by a jacket and jeans. Her hands rested on the table in front of her, fingers picking at dirty nails. Her knuckles were bloody; her bloodshot eyes gazed blankly downward.

"Wait," Kirk glanced at Doser in confusion, "if she came here to report a crime, how the hell'd she end up in there?"

"Didn't get the reception she wanted," Doser replied as he extracted two foam cups of coffee from the machine. "Some idiot gave her the cold shoulder and she beaned him with a fire extinguisher."

"Seriously?!"

"Afraid so." He smiled thinly, handing Kirk one of the coffees. "Lucky you showed up when you did, or I wouldn't have even given it a second look. Turns out nobody else was that interested, so now she's on my case-log." He turned for the door of the interrogation room.

It opened with a heavy clunk, and they both stepped inside.

||