Neon Noir: The Vigil Of The Observer

"-rechecked all the lines-"

A faint voice awoke my slumbering mind, reluctantly pulling me into wakefulness.

Attempting to rise, everything that was supposed to be in control revolted, sending a throbbing pain surging through my head, accompanied by an involuntary groan.

"Ugghh...."

Struggling to pry open my eyelids, the world came into view through a distorted lens, like I was peering through the eye's of a fish. Everything in view swayed, spun and stretched, working out into a mess of confusion and nausea, as if a child were toying with my eyeballs, working it like clay.

The thumping pain stretched each moment into a tortorus eternity.

Why hadn't it subsided yet? What caused this discomfort?

Was it illness or the mumble that had roused me? Or perhaps something else entirely?

It mattered hardly when my eyes felt like they were being extracted for a transplant. Who would go to such lengths, and why? I don't really care since either way since, artificial ones would be an improvement, freeing me from the burden of carrying around those old fashioned glasses. It's about time I kept up with the times.

Recollections of the previous night danced hazily at the edge of my consciousness. Had I been dumped on the side of a street? My pounding head hinted at excess, yet the pills I should've taken seemed to remain ineffective.

My limbs, entangled with something cold like noodles on a fork, offered no solace. The sensation only worsened my nausea, compelling me to cease my explorations.

Resigned, I allowed myself to drift aimlessly, embracing the surrealism of my fragmented reality, letting myself lose to turbulent chaos of sickness.

Yet amidst the chaos, a thread of reason emerged, honed through a childhood marred by harsh lessons and bitter truths.

"The fucks going on…." confused words escaped my parched throat as the throbbing pain in my head plateaued coming to a peak.

The lack of control over my body was concerning. Is this another hangover? No, I can focus on everything quite well. Sleep paralysis? Or perhaps my blood has finally learned the art of being lazy from me?

I tried to force my hands to my head, to grab and pull it by the hair, but they wouldn't move. I could feel them and at the same time, I couldn't.

"What the hell…." I mumbled as things came into focus. Things that I was not very happy about.

Guns, wavers, lay on top of the table in front of me. Jailbroken for their electronics that had been modified to be a little more, lethal.

'Fuck….' 

I pulled my numb hands and nearly cursed out loud after feeling the sharp zip ties, around my wrist, dig into my skin.

*SLAP*

A sharp slap to the back of my head thrust it forward as the pain inside my head only worsened.

My vision shook again as a tanned, tattoed face with deep black glossy plastic eyes came into view. He peered into the depths of my eyes when I felt a hand grabbing my hair and bunching it over the back of my head.

As his face came closer one of the eyes spun around frantically looking all around my face.

Is his recognition system failing to find anchor points for the neural interface? Most likely the result of a hopscotch open-source project.

'Can he even use the wavers with such faulty eyes? Hopefully, his wavers have better eyes than him.'

The man waved my head by pulling it along with my hair, my eyes relearned to focus as water flowed and spread around with every blink.

"Wha-" I attempted to question, but another sudden clap caused me to feel a burning sensation across my face. Who the hell claps using someone else's cheeks?

'Only someone rude enough to dismantle and use wavers illegally could.'

"You only speak when you're spoken to fam, you get that?" The man with plastic skin spoke while he looked deep into my real eyes with his glowing artificial ones.

The force he used left me believing that his hands were metallic prosthetics. While the voice he used was undoubtedly a freely available artificial voice. The one that woke me up.

I didn't say anything.

"Goood. You got it right on the first try, fam. I wanted to rough you up a little though."

*PUNCH*

With a solid right hook connecting to my jaw, I felt my mind shake. The throbbing pain inside my head felt like it fizzled out for a moment before returning like the slam of a truck.

Everything felt so blurry for a second that I felt a chromatic aberration filter cover my eyes.

Keeping my mouth shut by clench my jaws as tight as possible, I muffled any groans. As the memories of what had just happened sometime earlier came crashing down on me.

'Shit. I'm not a machine, why did hitting me fix me?'

I immediately scanned the trap house, filled with modified wavers along with bolts.

"Ayiieee! Don't be so rough with our prophesied savior A.V." A new voice interrupted. A voice that sounded similar but had a filter or quirk. The actual owner of this trap house? No, maybe someone that handled all weapon deliveries?

"You not supposed to say that K.M…" The plastic man, A.V, spoke. Trying to control his annoyance by kicking the dead batteries lying flat on the ground. The force sent them flying into the walls and embedding them there for someone else to find. As he whispered, "Fucking walk in….think you own the gang just 'cause yo man saved Big B."

"Yeah…and you better stick those Waver poles together, or I'll do it for you by stickin' it up yo ass."

With a snappy walk like a retro prosthetic straight out of the twenties, another plastic man walked to me. He looked me up and down, evaluating something, trying to see if I fit the bill for some deal of his?

With a jarring motion toward his mouth, he raised his hand to eat the gel pouch that would grease his insides. I did recognize the company that made the orange and blue pouch. It was one they banned a long time ago, 'too addictive' they said. 

Like everything else wasn't made to be addictive anyway. Fuckin' Suimanto.

"You know why you're here?" The man continued to gnaw on the gel pouch like a strip of gum, trying to turn it semi-liquidy while it was still inside the pouch. Trying to extract as much flavor as he could from it.

"...."

Pthui

"You can speak brotha' I don't bite 'ike him." The man spoke calmly after spitting out the liquid that had leaked from the pouch he'd been algorithmically chewing for the last minute.

"You want to use me as a bargaining chip for your peddlers?" Quite the low bargain if I was allowed to weigh in my two creds.

"Hahahahaahahahahaha! A.V you hear that?! He thinks we want to bring them back." K.M spoke roaring with laughter, slamming A.V's shoulder with his hands, trying to not collapse to his knees. While A.V struggled to stand with the slams overloading his balancing system.

"You can't blame him brotha, he just a new kid, tho I wonder why Big B wan-"

"Hahahahaha~! Dave right?" K.M asked in a questioning tone while looking down at me. His fingers put up a show, rolling the flat nuke cell used to power wavers along his fingers like a coin.

I nodded, a little uncertain and a little scared but mostly focused. All I needed was one chance. A single chance to get to a single waver to wave them off.

"Dave. We need you here since we need you to prove our innocence." K.M explained, thumping my human shoulder that couldn't bear what a prosthetic could.

I just looked back at them. Mighty confused.

Innocence? Has knocking me out caused the rules of the world change? Did killing someone while they were ID'd on the scene unexpectedly become legal?

"What do you mean?" I asked K.M but he just sighed a little and went back to chewing on his gel pouch.

Pthui

Spitting another little squirt of liquified gel, K.M looked down on me with A.V holding my hair to force my face up.

"Just think about it a little….." K.M continued, while the dim blue lighting from all the wavers around the room gave it a gloomy feeling. "....why would members of the BloodSHA even go into the houses of moderates?"

".....no one can force you to go there." I countered, since the BloodSHA had become one of the biggest gangs in the new world. A gang that had a history of participating in all kinds of trades for nearly half a century. Some 'theorized' they were the dark side of Joy Corp, Suimanto, worked where they didn't, did what they didn't.

"Nah fam, this ain't another one of those low level, junkie, busta's speaking to ya. Ya feel me? Me and A.V, here all about helping them busta's to get some cred…that all we do…"

'So they're just glorified 'busta boys that are one step above the peddlers?'

"...we not into that Violent shit….hell ha'f these wavers you see here….they work only when they want to. I mean we homie's ain't even got them city passes', you get me?"

'So they're poor and don't have any power, look like the prime suspects for any case to begin with.'

Pthui

"This our bread and butter man….we ain't even got no time to be chasing around them bankers. This a set up brotha' someone's playing with us….you feel me?"

I stared back at the plastic man that sounded just like any other. The tweaking gears and actuators in his prosthetic legs were most likely stolen from a refurbishing office. His fingers fidgeted with the power cell likely due to a trigger-happy algorithm programmed into them.

He seemed like any other busta that came into the gang after losing everything in the normal world. Likely being gutted by another dog climbing the chain. The ladder to the top of the world. The ladder to become a slave representative of the algorithm that controlled it all.

"I don't think I can do much for you either way. What do you want me to tell the police? That I think you're actually the good guys?"

"Nah fam! As long as you promise to help us out, we'll give you all our files."

"Files?"

"Yeah…Big B, my family, he found them for us, picked them up just for us before he shot himself."

"Full Reset?"

"Yep..full reset…didn't even recognize me after…hell, I think muda fuka gonna try 'n be a cop himself."

"Fuck….that's messed up man." I blurted out in impatience due to the subtle feelings of long-lost memories that bubble up inside me.

"I feel ya' brotha'. You lost someone to a full reset too?" K.M asked in a polite tone as he put up an emotionally vulnerable expression that set off alarms inside my head.

'Remember Dave, they're just crooks. Algo crooks got no life.'

"Someone close…." I voiced without revealing much as I reeled back the emotional connection line I had thrown out.

"That's sad too, my man….you don't even know who to trust anymore."

"It is. It is." A.V nodded in sync as he bobbed his head along with his hand, causing my own head to bob along with his hand holding my hair.

'Do I accept? Have I got a choice? I do. But my best bet to leave is to get close enough to them and get them to undo the fucking zip ties.'

"I'll do it." I replied in a calm and empathizing tone.

"Oh!" K.M looked at A.V as they both nodded using their eyes and then A.V slowly went behind me to cut me out of my zip ties.

"Watch it…it hurts." I whispered as A.V tugged hard on my hands, trying to snap the zip ties with just his hands.

"Hell! You're clean?"

"Yeah….I am."

"Shit. I didn't know 'bout that. Sorry man. I 'avent seen a clean muda fuka in ages. Here they all at least have metallic hands, ya know?"

A.V tried to keep the conversation going but I just closed my eyes and focused on the situation I was stuck in.

I heard a few clicks from my back that led to the distinct hum of the capacitors in the Waver charging up. As I waited for the waver to be fired, a near-silent zap buzzed through the air, heating it up as it washed over my hands.

My fingers felt a little painful when I stretched and flexed them even a little. But I ignored all that and pound my head trying to beat out the constant pounding that was happening.

"Ya got any meds?" I asked K.M since it didn't work.

"Some Joi gel…" K.M said, stretching out a handful of gel pods that he pulled out of his pockets.

"Nah…I'm fine…."

"As you wish, but I'd recommend taking some with you. Just in case you need that extra kick while you solve our case, ya know!?" K.M joked, both he and A.V looked like a caricature of someone selling you something shady in the backstreets.

Grabbing a few from his hands, I pocketed them carefully and moved around my chair to the door K.M was pointing at.

"We know your M.O, you like to work alone, away from distractions, we prepared that room specially for you."

I was reluctant to go anywhere near a room blocked by a thick metallic door that looked like a bunker from World War Two.

But given A.V was pointing his Waver at me and his finger was trigger happy, I moved away from the desk in front of me. Even though it had modified wavers, I shuffled along, moodily but speedily.

'Well, I better find a way to either get the ones they're using or figure out which one of all these work, hopefully before I'm disposed off.'

Passing through the door, I walked into what looked like a moist and mouldy-looking office room. The air was filled with the smell of burning chemicals that almost cured my headache. But much to my disappointment, immediately flushed out of my system.

'Shouldn't have been longer than five hours, that's how long purification pills last.'

'Five hours and no one has found me yet….'

'Where exactly am I? Didn't anyone pick up the signals of my hash wavelength all the way here?'

"There, you can sit over there." A.V said as he pointed at the chair that was bolted to the floor in front of a metal desk that was bolted too.

Walking over, I carefully forced my ass onto the chair constructed with rebar.

It's just as uncomfortable as I had expected it to be.

'Damn…even artificial fiber filling would do. Even the chair I was sitting on while being tied down to felt better than this piece of shit. The metal really digs into my undersides…'

Thud

K.M slammed a bunch of files onto my desk. A light, yellow and bright enough only to be a desk lamp turned on when A.V tapped something in the air visible only to him.

"Physical papers?" I asked, sounding audibly confused and visibly angry. "You, making a joke here? You want me to solve a case from over a millennium ago or something?"

'Do they not have a local network already set up for their own chips? Why give me a non-technological piece of ancient relic to work with?'

"Peculiar, isn't it? Our case files were stored inside physical files. Including the evidence. Almost as if someone wanted them to never be found."

"....." 'No one would do that when they could just delete the files. Why make such an elaborate attempt to hide something digital by making it physical?' I better keep this inside my head, I don't want to get beaten again.

"You got an hour to show us something. Anything." K.M explained as he revealed his true colors as he finally gave me a deadline.

"Hmm…" I made a low, uncomfortable humming sound that they picked up on due to their high dynamic range sound chips.

Stopping in their tracks while leaving the room to let me focus. "Need something, buddy?" K.M asked with a fake toothy smile where each tooth glistened with a bluish color gained from the Suimanto JOI gel.

"...do you guys have A.R glasses?" I asked to try and cover up any seemingly apparent dissatisfaction.

"Ha! A.R glasses? And you were just talking down to us about handing physical files over to you." he jeered.

"....."

"I'll see if we can find any…..perhaps you might get one when you figure something out…." K.M said, slamming the metallic door shut. As loud screeching metallic sound came from the latch being pulled across on the other side.

'It really is a vault door.'