The office of the Tribune was atop the tallest tower of Pharos, the Spire. Perched atop the Moirai headquarters, the concrete-and-glass structure reached so high that it looked like a gleaming pillar supporting the sky itself. In truth, it supported the radiation mesh, that marvelous invention that protected the city from the lethally radioactive dust that the storms brought in from the Wastelands every once in a while. Supported by additional structures throughout the city, the mesh extended into all directions from here, all the way to the wall. But even from the top of the Spire, the mesh was invisible to the naked eye. The view of the blue sky above was unhindered, and down below the cityscape with its white walls with copious amounts of glass and steel, adorned by vertical gardens looked like jewelry: ivory, silver, diamonds and emeralds scattered about the landscape.

Officer Hook envied the view that Tribune Nona had from her office every day, but as he watched the woman standing before the window, with her hands clasped behind her back, he wondered if so high above the city she governed, the burden of her task really felt any less oppressive. Pharos was a stunningly beautiful city, an utopia, a miraculous treasure in the middle of a devastated world filled with chaos and mortal danger. But it was not perfect. It was falling apart.

We are tiptoeing along the edge of an abyss that humanity would never be able to recover from, were we to plunge into it.

He recalled the words he had read in the log of that Keres cadet they had interviewed this morning. With passages like that, he could see why Bullet was so suspicious of the girl. The logs she had written could very well be interpreted as a sign of her ill intent. But at the end of the day, she was just a cadet who had written a bunch of logs as part of her therapy during Emotional Reprogramming. Those drugs could make you feel woozy, he had heard. He didn't take any of what she had written seriously, and there was nothing else to incriminate the girl. Heck, she even had been on the receiving end of AI malfunctions two times herself – during the Daidala incident, and during the accident of the previous night. Bullet had insisted that that made her particularly suspicious. But Hook didn't believe that the girl had done anything wrong, and they couldn't prove anything except that she had been among a group of students who had been at the old hangar, playing some games on a makeshift rig.

The girl had been their latest, and their last lead in their investigation. As he watched Nona's back, he could see the tension in the old woman's shoulders and it told him she was as displeased about this fact as Bullet.

Hook himself was beginning to think that perhaps the decay of the city was just a natural consequence of the laws of entropy, just a culmination of all the signs of wear that had chipped away at the foundation that this utopia was built upon over the centuries.

Time flows in one direction only, the words from the last log echoed through his mind.

And nothing can stop its ravages, he thought.

And yet, here he sat, in the office of Tribune Nona, the woman who somehow seemed to expect him to do exactly that.

"So one hundred sixty seven units are still unaccounted for. Is that really all you can tell me?"

The old woman's voice was laced with just a hint of ire underneath her cold impassive tone.

Hook had to swallow a lump in his throat before he answered.

"We will expand our search to the Shadow City," Hook reported, "The recall signal can't reach them down there, and if the units ended up there somehow-"

"We could employ the Searchlight Sequence," Bullet interrupted.

"Bullet... we have talked about this," Hook muttered under his breath. "It's too risky..."

"The Sequence is much more powerful than a regular recall. It's not just a radio signal, it's acoustic, so it's not affected if they are stuf anywhere with no reception. Once they hear it, it would force them to seek the nearest communication node and try to broadcast their location," Bullet explained.

"I know." Nona's voice had a dark tone to it as she spoke.

Hook pinched the bridge of his nose and heaved a weary sigh. "But you'd be forcing a full reset of any Artificial who hears it-"

"Any Artificial that hears it will be reset to Aleph-null, yes." Bullet scoffed.

"Complete shutdown of all higher system functions, and cessation of all autonomy," Hook elaborated, "They essentially turn into mindless shells."

"They're Artificials," Bullet growled. "They don't have a mind to begin with."

"Imagine if any of the crucial units heard the Sequence and simply stopped whatever they were doing?"

"But there shouldn't be any crucial units down in the Shadow City. Which is why it's the perfect solution in this case."

"Do it," Nona interjected suddenly.

Over the argument, Hook had almost forgotten that she was in the room as well.

"But ma'am, we-"

"You will do it," Nona said icily. "And there will be no more argument about this."

Hook stiffened in his chair, but next to him, Bullet only wore a smug little smile on her lips and leaned back, crossing her arms before her chest. Somehow, the fact that Nona had offered them to sit but had remained standing made him feel oddly uncomfortable.

Without turning away from the window, Nona cast them a glance over her shoulder. "Now. About the Bad Code..."

"We have investigated all the affected units thoroughly – the drones from the Daidala incident and infrastructure AI all over the city - but we couldn't pinpoint the error. No common problem that led to their malfunctioning. Nothing to explain the accidents as anything but... accidents. But... we hope that we will have clarity once we find the missing Artificial units and find out why they haven't obeyed the recall. The more data we gather, the likelier we'll find an answer."

The Tribune didn't react. She remained with her back to them, her gaze still directed at the landscape beyond the window. The silence that descended over the room was suffocating, and Hook could feel cold sweat break out at the back of his neck. When he had been recruited to the Lambda Task Force, and had learned that he would be working together with his old acquaintance from academy days, Bullet, he had prepared to deal with her intimidating demeanor on a daily basis. But what he hadn't expected was that Tribune Nona was at least twice as intimidating as the Commando, without so much as uttering a word.

Next to him, Bullet shifted in her chair.

"There is one more thing, Tribune."

Nona turned around slowly to face Bullet. The Commando met her stone-hard stare unwaveringly, but just sitting next to the recipient of that look caused Hook to shrink a few inches.

"Bullet," he whispered. "What are you-"

"We found somebody who might be a connection between several of these incidents."

Nona raised an eyebrow. "Somebody?"

"Yes."

Bullet pushed her tablet across the table towards her. She didn't pick it up, and just glanced down at the image it displayed. It was the personal file of a man.

Hook furrowed his brow. Bullet hadn't mentioned any of this beforehand, and he had no idea who this was. It was not the first time that she had gone behind his back during this investigation, but every time it happened again, he was still surprised.

He leaned a bit closer to chance a glance at the picture. The first thing he noticed were the man's strikingly green eyes, but those weren't the only cybernetics he had. Black lines were visible under his skin and traced an elaborate pattern over the upper half of his face. The lower half was concealed by a beard, with just a hint of a smile still visible on his lips.

"What about him?" Nona asked just what he was thinking about, albeit in a much more condescending tone.

"He is connected to the Daidala incident, and he was near the site of the last accident."

"That doesn't make him a suspect," Hook interjected sullenly. "Lots of people worked on the Agalma Program."

"A neurosurgeon?" Nona's interest was clearly piqued, and she picked up the tablet to have a closer look. She eyed the file of the man with an expression of impassiveness, but there was a spark in her dark eyes.

"Former neurosurgeon," Bullet said. "Now he-"

"Why would a neurosurgeon with an impeccable citizen record be involved in any of this?" Hook threw in.

"It wouldn't be the first time in history that a terrorist upholds a perfect façade... right until it's too late," Bullet objected.

"Now, now." Nona finally sat down behind her desk, her tone suddenly strangely sweet and amicable. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. But I do agree that it might be worthwhile to interrogate this man."

She looked up from the tablet and a smile flitted across her face. She looked a lot like in the broadcasts in that moment. A perfect picture of compassion and friendliness. But Hook couldn't help but see something menacing in that smile ever since the investigation had given him ample chance to meet this woman in person.

"You did well so far," Nona said. "Now apprehend this... Doctor Line, and bring him in."

"Bring him in?" Bullet asked. "As in-"

"The Moirai will take care of this, Commander. I trust you will bring him here, unharmed. But judging from his impeccable records..." She cast another glance at the tablet. "I suspect he will cooperate. And if not..."

She leaned back in her chair, and her lips curved upward in a smile that was like honey laced with arsenic.

"I trust you will know how to make him comply."

_____

A.N.
Well, here we are!
The very end of the story. It has been an interesting experience to write this over the past year.
This story is very, very, dear to me, so posting it here for others to read had this additional challenge to it that I felt like putting a part of myself out there on display. And of course, that made me very anxious about people's reactions. This wasn't just a fun 'on the side' project where I simply let my imagination run wild and looked where it would lead me. This story is much more carefully planned, but that also made it very hard to write - it's a mystery to which I know the answers, and I have to decide how and when to show you bits and pieces to intrigue you without boring you and without revealing too much at once. I sincerely hope I succeeded at that, and I am eternally grateful for your feedback, past and future!
If you have any general comments, remarks, questions... now is the time and place for that I hope you enjoyed reading, thank you for your reads and cotes and comments, and I hope to see you again when i post Part II :)