Case - 1 : At Odds.

I watched as K.M's eyes stopped a centimeter in front of mine, my breathing struggling to keep itself shallow so as to avoid breathing in the chilling scents of the Joi pods that lingered around his face, I kept my gaze steady, holding it without any arrogance but also without subservience.

K.M stared into my eyes, while A.V kept his waver pointed at me and spoke in a hurried tone, "Fam thinks he can stand up to us brotha', why 'on't we show him who's on which en-"

"Shhhhh….." Holding up his arm, K.M silenced A.V while still looking into my eyes with my heart pounding as I remained caught up in thoughts about whether he was really silencing A.V or just asking me to calm my heart down.

The statistics of murders that happened around the old city rushed through my head as the few years I had worked up as a detective translated into experience and became the only thing that kept my body steady in spite of the crazy people I had become surrounded with.

'You got this Dave, they're just thugs. Buntas'. They've got no bravery, no courage, they can't think.'

K.M's chilly breath began to enter the steady streams of air that flowed down my wind pipes and caused me to become light-headed but the drugs to flush out the effects of any chemicals seemed to still be working, 'I wonder how much longer they'll last with this level of constant aggression.'

"You know what fam…?" K.M asked while bringing his cold metallic prosthetic latex covered hand to grab my face while caressing it like a lover would their beloved. His eyes gleamed like stars while they spun around, trying to keep focus while he remained so close to my face. 

Tiny audible whirrings emanated from his eyes while I tried my best to not let my focus shift with the movement of his eyes and focused on the dark lens that retained its position in the center.

"You're not the first one here. And all the rest of you, all of them, do you want to find out what happened to them brotha'?" K.M asked me while he swung my head around lightly as I stared back into his hollow looking eyes.

"No, right….? That's what I thought." K.M talked down on me while softly touching my cheeks like I was a doll and then patting my face to feel its texture and fleshiness like the meat of a dead animal.

Before I knew what had happened, the pounding in my head vanished as my free hand tightened around his neck as I looked him in the eye and spoke with determination that emerged from feeling humiliated at being treated like a pet.

"You know what? Fuck you." *Pthui*

Spitting into his face I leaned back into my harsh rebar chair to dodge the quick uppercut that flew my way as I felt the rebar dig into my back.

It wasn't even a moment where my trained instincts took over and pushed him away by placing my feet on his chest and using the iron chair as a weighted support that kept me from falling over given the imbalance in our weights.

I made eye contact with him as he tipped over and kicked his right in the face causing him to fall with a loud metallic *clang* and a *THUD*.

*BBBBZZZZZZ*

The waver in A.V's hand buzzed, probably ready to vaporize any cellular matter in its direction, but I quickly dived behind K.M as I took cover beside him and began using him as a human shield.

Before A.V's waver fired the shot through, K.M's modified artificial voice sounded from his position on the ground in an unperturbed and undisturbed manner, as if it was just another day that he had a waver close to the edge of firing pointed in his face. "Stop it."

A.V immediately shifted the end of his barrel upward as the world froze with silence for a second with the air heating up all around as everyone in the room 'felt' the air dry up, not of water vapor or moisture, but of life.

"Shit….." I cursed out in a mumble that no doubt both the thugs before me heard, 'I guess the meds are wearing off. I need more. I need something to slow things down.'

I stood up before K.M did, and made sure to always keep him in between myself and A.V as he stood up himself by pushing himself off of the ground with the actuators in his prosthetics twitching and turning at high speeds to give him gyroscopic help to realign his heavy body easier.

"Shit…." K.M cursed out loud while looking at the dust that had gotten painted onto his black, comfortable casual pajamas. Dusting it a little and standing up straight, K.M turned his head around as he looked at me while his hands reached into his pocket, causing the muscles in my legs and arms to tense up, ready to react to any situation, while my eyes remained trained on him and his hands as my head once again began to pound away, trying to tear itself apart from the inside.

Very slowly, almost agonizingly slow, K.M pulled out his hands from the pocket as his clear knuckles first became visible, holding onto something that was being moved up his pocket.

'It can't be a waver since they wouldn't fit. A traditional gun or a weapon? Perhaps a knife? A knife should be manageable.'

Just as I readied a stance to fight back, the lower part of K.M's hand became visible, revealing a white handkerchief, which he brought over to his face and used to wipe away my spit that covered the left side of it along with the dust and debris that had stuck to it from the soles of my shoe.

What can I say, the soles of a ground detective wasn't as clean as a banker's?

'Why the heck does a thug have a handkerchief? Did he pick it up from someone he killed?'

Stuffing his now crumpled handkerchief, K.M looked back up at me with his eyes flashing dangerously in between orange and blue until they finally settled on a blue that had an occasional under flash of orange.

"Like I told you brotha' you're our savior. So don't worry 'bout it! Tell us what you need fam! And we'll provide it to you!" K.M spoke in a grand tone with his arms wide, inviting me into a friendly hug as he stepped closer.

"....but all your coords-" I began to try and explain the hopelessness of the situation but got cut off when I tried to take a step back to keep equal distance between the two of us.

"-What do you need brotha'" K.M asked once again, this time taking two steps closer in the time I had taken one, and wrapped his arms tight around me while I chose to respond to get out of the 'unprompted' sticky situation.

"I need your personal records of your positions during the crime and a few days before and aft-" Before I could complete K.M turned me around, swinging me easily given his heavy body weight that was built with heavy titanium, an outdated material that only circulated amongst the outskirts nowadays.

Facing A.V I heard the familiar *BUZZZ* of the waver once again as I watched A.V point the now glowing bluish waver in my direction while K.M spoke in my ear.

"Now what brotha?" K.M asked while he tightened his grip on my body, choking me by turning my breaths shallow by forcing my lungs to contract when they needed to be filled with air.

"We both- *gasp* you *gasp* -more than I need you." I spoke with sharp gasps, trying to force breath into my lungs to fight against the crushing force that was acting on my rib cage, forcing it to crack if I didn't act soon.

"Oh trust me brotha', we don-"

"Thirty minutes rema-" I began speaking as my brain went into overdrive to try and give myself a simple fighting chance.

The 'surprising revelation' caused K.M's hands to freeze for a second as I heard his prosthetics audible twitch and stretch under their position of applying strength but holding it exactly in place.

I pushed away K.M and freed myself the second I felt his hands loosen enough for me to slip through as I nearly went on my knees *coughing* and *gasping* trying to gulp mouthfuls of air to satiate my need for oxygen.

K.M pulled his sports jacket straight and began walking back toward the door with his distinct stride that repeated on two's where A.V was waiting for him while glaring at me as best as he could with the artificial eye that kept going out of focus.

Stopping before he stepped out of the room and closed the door, K.M turned around and spoke in a louder voice, one that was turned louder by increasing the output volume on his speaker for the other person to hear better.

"You aren't very smart brotha' but I can respect the grift."

*SCREEEECCHHH* *THUD*

The metallic door slammed shut with a screech while I watched with a little emptiness the table filled with modified wavers on the other side as my only hope of getting away slipped out of my hands once again.

'Shit I need to do something about my meds….' I thought while my hands brushed against the Joi pods inside my pocket. 'Do I have these…? No…Joi pods bad. Joi pods bad. Joi pods bad.'

Slapping my cheeks I calmed myself down, taking unstable steps as my vision around the edges swam I moved toward the table and collapsed onto it and took deep breaths to stabilize my breathing, trying very hard to not let the hollowness dig deeper into my chest, trying not to get distracted by the faint scratches of the plastic of the Joi pods I could feel in my pockets.

'Why did you have to choose to get a full reset….why…..?'

I felt tears stream down my eyes as my head began to feel heavier and my body irritated, everything in me trying to keep me away from a total collapse once again as I looked back at the flashes of memories that I remembered, only one-sidedly now.

'Fuck….I'm going to get killed….'

Taking deep breaths, I wiped away my tears and pushed myself onto the chair and sat down on it with force to feel pain to distract myself from anything imaginary.

Waiting for a couple of minutes that felt longer than the entire life I had lived until then. I heard heavy metallic footsteps outside the door when the peeking window slid open with A.V still glaring down at me, which I met with an equally fierce glare.

Stepping back a little, A.V pushed into the slit another thin yellow paper file that fell to the floor with the pages inside it splattering around everywhere. 

An incident that would surely cost me extra time to set back up, leading me to look at A.V with a deadpan stare, at which I could clearly see him smirk, even though I could only see his eyes.

'Fucking idiots….can't even do simple things right. I guess I can be satisfied with the fact that if I die, they die too. Fewer idiots to torture the world with their nonsense.'

I walked over to the door and looked straight into A.V's eyes and spit straight into it and bent over while I heard him scream and *bang* on the door like I had just killed his best friends, as if he had any.

Slamming the collected papers onto my desk, I sat back down and began working to study their locations. 

I had blurted out this request on a whim. A rather important whim, a whim to save my life but a whim nonetheless since it could keep everyone occupied and help me buy time to get out of here.

Perhaps someone had falsified their positions in some way, possible, but they would also need to make sure these two never appeared on any official radar.

'If they really are as innocent as they claim, then shouldn't their own database contradict the official movements?'

'Well, that is, if they actually are innocent in the first place. Let's see if there are any records that don't properly match the official timings….'

'Hopefully I'll have something after thirty minu- scratch that, twenty five minutes.'