Case - 1 : Deadend.

The tiny hint of mint that tried its best to cover up the absolute stink of smoke that blew into my face only made me feel like I was about to gag more, but I tried my best to keep it in.

"Silas." I grumbled, not wanting to turn around and face the monstrosity he was breathing out from his stuffy dry mouth that I expected to feel like sandpaper on the inside with how devoid of any moisture the breaths were.

"Ha! The little boy still remembers me!" He spat in sarcasm smacking my shoulder as he walked ahead to stand beside me.

"I'm not the little boy you used to know, you old fool!"

"Hahaha!!" Silas laughed in a thunderous manner that I was sure would've shaken up the internals of a few machines inside the casino and landed a few people their freshly minted jackpots.

"I know! I know! I watched you run around all those years ago! I'm glad to know you turned around for good! At least you left that bitch you married for good."

"She was mind wiped." I declared in a neutral tone, trying not to let my anger get the best of me.

'He's like this. Remember why you left him. You can't change him. Some people are just fools.'

"Is that so."

We continued walking in silence in sync for the next few steps until he spoke again, "How are you holding up?"

"Fine." I replied in a monotone simplistic expression, trying to keep the conversation stubbed.

"They're looking for you everywhere, you know?"

"Why else do you think I'm here?"

"You should keep your head down until you find whatever you're looking for. I hope you find it and get out of here as soon as you can." Silias said, causing me to pause in my steps and let him pass ahead.

"I can't keep them away from your back for long. You won't be able to leave as easily as last time kiddo."

"Who's looking?" I asked, since knowing was half the battle.

Silias stopped midway through walking away and spoke in a humorous tone, "You kidding? Your biography is basically the history of this city for the last twenty years, what do you mean 'Who's looking?' Everyone! Everyone's looking for you!" and then continued walking away, leaving me to battle against my own historic demons.

I looked around the casino for a little while with barely any focus until a notification rang on my AR glasses, blocking up my vision with a semi transparent box.

'Sarg! They've gotten a judge to sign off on pounding your AeroStrider!'

It was a quick message from Larkin warning me.

'The fool is risking his own job by keeping me updated.'

'This case is getting messier and messier. Although it only makes it easier for me to be able to hide my real motives under the cover of this case, it's also keeping me on the edge.'

Deciding that losing my bike wasn't going to matter for now as long as I solved this case, I stepped into the private gambling room and walked into a private booth that only had a single one way mirror which allowed the visibility of a large public screen outside and a sofa along with various options displayed on the smaller screen sleekly blended in with the armrest of the sofa facing the large public screen.

I walked up to the sofa and allowed myself to collapse into it while lightly gazing at the public screen which was displaying a scantily dressed dark skinned woman whose nature was hard to identify.

'Real or android?'

'I hope she's an android.'

Diverting my attention towards my own AR screen I scanned the files that Larkin had sent me using an onion network and started to investigate them with some seriousness.

'Hmm…So Revanche was married to Cassandra Sterling. And Cassandra was the one that worked in the bank.'

'So the banker killed Cassandra? And Revanche took his revenge by killing Mr. Waltinger?'

'But then why would Vera support him?'

I looked into the related files from the police database about Cassandra's Mind wipe incident and her eventual suicide that came from it.

The case files followed the proper procedure for such a case.

In case of a Mind Wipe incident, the proper procedure was to follow the victim dutifully all throughout the last few weeks using their wavelength ID and also scan their multiple videos where they stated they would like to get a Mind Wipe procedure done and doctors references matching the date and time of the procedure.

It was a strict process buried in drudgery to reduce any possible mistake and catch bad actors easily by creating multiple checks for catching any failure points in the system.

In Cassandra's case, her husband Revanche had failed to produce any evidence regarding her Mind Wipe procedure which he should've been given before since he was her husband and by law a person required to be present unless otherwise stated in the procedure files by court.

The problem was that all the other parties involved in the Mind Wipe surgery procedure had produced substantial evidence going back a few months all together relating to how both Cassandra and Revanche both had wanted her to get a Mind Wipe surgery done on her due to her having suffered a minor accident which caused her memories to feel jumbled and consequently her personality.

It was standard to wipe out the memories of the last few weeks of the participant in this case so that their brain could adjust to the stress of the accident and heal without any permanent psychological damages after recreating the part of the brain that had been wiped out using a tissue printer.

The trouble here was, 'Why was the procedure to mind wipe given a range of five years?'

The doctor's case report files that the police had been given stated, 'Patient suffers from late stage Alzheimer's and has trouble forming and remembering any significant long term memories about her loved ones.'

All the patient consultation reports had been included with the Wavelength ID locations of both the people during each of their visits.

'If all this was the case, then why did she end up killing herself?'

Most people that choose to get Mind Wiped consciously, always did well in the recovery phase, since something about the vile technique let them live guilt free. While the people that were forced into the Mind Wipe usually didn't make it past a few months after the incident.

Reading the report further revealed internal documents that indicated that Revanche was the prime suspect in what they felt was a murder, but then the case was suddenly dropped after a few days and closed with a case of an 'unlucky' suicide due to stress.

'Did Revanche find a way to blackmail the department or was it orders given from somewhere higher up, like from the banker himself?'

'Perhaps it was a case of sexual assault and then AI was used to generate proofs regarding their positions and meetings for an easy cover-up?'

My legs unconsciously began to tap in rhythm as I continued to read through the files of all the cases involved, moving to Vera's case with her son's death.

'He died on the curb. What a strange location to die in.'

"Huh?" An audibly confused sound left my vocal cords as I stared at the report of the method of death on Vera's son, Nova's death.

'Ischemic stroke.'

A reason that was nigh impossible if not nearly impossible to happen to a person who was undergoing constant scans to monitor his health after his Mind Wipe procedure and also due to the absolute blunders one would have to commit using modern medicines to let him die even if he suffered from such a stroke.

An Ischemic stroke occurred when a blood clot traveled to the brain after forming in another part of the body.

Something most people that had their brushes with the law on either side experienced almost regularly, even I had recently when the waver was used on me to burn away multiple cells inside my body which would've undoubtedly caused blood clots to form somewhere all around and forced my brain to shut down and die.

The invention of Re-Genexiel or popularly called, Elixir, was a drug that speed up body regeneration which helped the body gain back its state right before it had been damaged, a drug that was used extensively in Mind Wipe procedures to make sure the body and brain had regenerated fully and perfectly.

A drug that had nearly doubled life expectancy all around the world and pushed it well into the two hundreds.

'What a blatant cover up.'

'I can understand why Vera was so furious at the police.'

'This thing is hilariously stupid.'

'How did no independent Media get a hold of this story? Oh yeah, wasn't there an article where Vera rescinded her position as a witness after being portrayed as a person who had undergone the Mind Wipe surgery?'

'But with all this going on, why would no one suspect the two of them joining hands in killing the banker?'

'Did he mess up somewhere and lose support from his higher backers, who decided he had to go and didn't care if his killer was caught?'

'Or perhaps they were bought out with something?'

'Suimanto.'

Given that he worked in a bank affiliated with Suimanto, what would he have done that might've made him lose their support?

I searched for the name, Neuinio Waltinger and began to scour through the various articles that had become available about him but came to a stop when I noticed all the articles were exactly two years old.

'So someone has scraped away all the information about him from the entire network.'

'So I can not get any more information.'

'....dead end?'

I closed my eyes and lay my head back on the head rest as I basked in the cool air that was circulating around in the room.

A soft clink woke me up and forced me to look in front of me where I spotted the receptionist placing her glass on the table in front of me.

Our eyes met as I looked at her with a confused expression.

'How did I not realize she was here all this time?'

Sensing my confusion, she looked at the wall that was to my left and I noticed a soft light coming from underneath one of the panels, 'Oh. A false wall.'

I looked back at her again, asking her using my eyes what she was doing here when she adjusted her hair a bit and somehow misunderstood my non-verbal communication to mean she had to undress.

I stopped her from pulling her coat and asked her using my voice as she looked up at me with a confused expression.

"Why are you here?"

".....I was told you would prefer me. Would you like someone else?"

"Fuck. These are all real." I mumbled under my breath as I looked at the absolutely robotic smile that was held with perfection on her face, an expression that sent my stomach in knots with bile threatening to surge up into my mouth, but I pushed it all back down.

"Did Silias send you here?" Her eyes widened a little at the question, but they went back to normal just as immediately as they had changed.

"Yes. Would you prefer that I was replaced?"

"Fuck is wrong with this place. What has been going on in this city for the last two years?" I mumbled.

I looked down at the woman who was sitting in the awkward position while I held her hand, so I took it off of her and went back to my sofa and collapsed into it with a deep *sigh*.

"Do you get paid to stay?" I asked.

"We do everything here off our own violati-"

"Do you get paid or not?" I asked in a brash tone, losing my patience as she tried to portray a casino like the 'saintly' sin free place it was.

"Numbers might go up somewhe-"

"Stay and just sit there quietly. You can order whatever you want to on my tab, I don't care. Just don't disturb me. And get that sick fuckin' smile off your face, or I'll tear it out." I spoke in a slightly venomous tone that might've been unwarranted but expressed my emotions perfectly.

My eyes glanced back at the false panel embedded into the wall as my thoughts about the case came back to the surface, with the circulating cold air inside cooling my head away.

'False Wall?'

'False wall….huh..'

'There is a piece of information that is false and has led me to a false wall.'

'A well designed trap.'

'But by whom?'

'No. That is a part of the trap. A distraction.'

'The real question is, what among all this is 'false'?'