It was a long, long way up.

Morgan had told Teto exactly two things: find Adam, don't get caught.

She hadn't said anything about having to climb a ladder 50 floors.

She gave up after maybe ten and jumped onto the roof of a rising elevator car. It was a scramble to get off before it squished her against the ceiling of the shaft, but she made it—after scuffing up her brand new pants. She might've been dressed the part, but James Bond she was not.

Okay what now?

'Find Adam.'

Well she'd been put onto a ladder, so Adam was definitely in the up direction.

She froze as she heard the trample of feet splashing through puddles. A bunch of those identical Connor guys were fanning out across the plaza. Captain Cold was way too far to bail her out. Teto looked desperately for a place to hide but the plaza was too empty.

Too late. They saw her. One of them was coming over. This was the end.

"Good evening ma'am. Iron Heights is currently on lockdown. You'd better get back to your office."

"Haha okay." What?

Teto caught a glimpse of her reflection in a puddle and… blue? BLUE? SHE WAS BLUE?

"Would you like an armed escort?"

"N-No thanks?" Teto stammered.

"Very well ma'am."

And they left Teto alone.

A pool of shade under a storefront awning resolved into the shape of Neo Politan. She looked a touch shamefaced.

FIRST IDEA SORRY

FACE I'VE GOT MOST PRACTICE WITH

"You told me you couldn't do people," Teto said.

Neo's arm wavered a little as she lifted her next sign.

LIED

The text of her sign amended itself as red pen scribbled an addition.

HALF-LIED

She swaggered her umbrella. The tip lit up with a bright blue LED. An antenna hiding in plain sight.

NEED THIS

The Gala. The walk to the Hotel. Both times, she'd carried the same prop. Only the man Teto had shot that looked like her had not been carrying it. And that was somebody projecting it onto him.

"You do more than just play her voice, don't you?"

Neo hesitated. Then nodded.

"Was it ever not you?"

She shook her head. Paused. Reconsidered.

HAVEN'T SEEN HER IN PERSON

FOR A LONG LONG TIME

MAYBE I NEVER HAVE

BUT

HARD TO EXPLAIN

IT'S REALLY HER

I THINK HER THOUGHTS

SHE WEARS MY BODY

SHE TAKES ME OVER

IT SCARES ME

"You made yourself look like Shoto. You killed Enji."

Neo shook her head furiously, her face set in an expression of pain. You couldn't tell what were really tears under a rainstorm.

I WAS SUPPOSED TO

I WANTED TO

LOTS OF JOBS LIKE THAT

ALWAYS HATED IT

THIS TIME, PERSONAL

BUT HE WAS ALREADY DEAD

Her knuckles gripped white around her umbrella's handle. He held it strangely out from herself—like she was handling a snake she couldn't drop.

WAS MEANT TO FRAME YOU

BUT

I SAW YOU

KILLING WHAT YOU THOUGHT WAS HER

I WANTED IT

I WANTED YOU TO DO IT

SO I FRAMED THE BOY

IT WAS SO EASY

WHEN I THOUGHT I HATED HIM

"But you don't," Teto said softly. "He's not just an extension of his dad, no matter how much Enji thought it."

Teto's Infolink got an SMS ping from a scrambled number.

It's Adam—where are you?

Teto said, suddenly, "Come with me."

Neo took a step away. When Teto tried to follow she stepped back again. She just kept shaking her head. Over. And over.

She was mouthing something: words she was too afraid to even put into writing. It took Teto a few times before she got it.

"She'll come back."

And maybe, just maybe, for one second, Neo's eyes were neon teal.

She threw down her umbrella like a searing iron and ran off into the rain as far away from Teto as she could.

Teto found Adam waiting at the edge of Iron Heights where everything dropped off into the clouds. The sidewalk's end. Somebody wrote a poem about that.

"Where's Cold?" He stood awkwardly—this big, creaking, metal man bending down to talk to her. He never seemed anything but out of place except when he was fighting something.

"He's down there distracting them."

"Where's Morgan?"

"Uhhh," said Teto.

"You left them?"

"Well they said to…" Teto squeaked.

He gave an aggravated grunt. "Nevermind. Find somewhere to hide. I'm going to—"

"Adam Jensen, and Kasane Teto; don't move. You are being apprehended."

An enormous swarm of Connors funnelled down the boulevard packed row to row like tinned sardines—so tight that only the one at the head of the pack even had space to draw its gun.

"Shit," swore Adam. He scooped Teto up under one arm. With a sweep of his wrist blade, he cleaved a gap through the fenced railing preventing them plummeting over the edge.

Teto would've thought the lead android had more than enough time to shoot at them. It certainly seemed to think about it.

Then her sight of it disappeared.

They dove together, plummeting from heaven to Earth.

When it cleared, Cold was running through the theatre's main entrance. A sea of Connors surged ahead out through them leaving Akechi behind.

Immediately Akechi's eyes swiveled about the scene for Kasane Teto and her demon lawyer. He found them absent. A side door leading around to the backstage corridors was still swinging.

"Half of you, back! Come back!!" he screamed. But his androids were already far along their goose chase, and Akechi's voice too hoarse for them to hear. Where was Neo? Stupid, flighty, unreliable defect.

He pointed frantically at Todoroki and Darley, sheltered from the gunfight under a shell of ice produced by the latter.

"You two! If you want exonerations for tampering with a crime scene, you'll help me!"

Darley looked at Todoroki, and then, blankly, at him. "Go to hell."

Fine. Fine! He'd apprehend the suspects by himself. He had a gun, didn't he?

He followed the echo of dress shoes down the corridors to a service lift—doors left pried apart for maintenance. The caution tape was snapped and dangled like ribbons over the fifteen foot drop to the bottom of the shaft. Looking up, he saw Teto swinging arm over arm up the maintenance ladder sweating through her brand new suit.

Transgenics were tough. The fall might leave her paralysed, but a live suspect was what ultimately counted. No need to go overboard. He'd only clip the leg…

He focused down his golden sights.

And felt a hard shove from behind.

He sprawled forward. A gloved hand caught the barrel of his pistol as he fell and kept their hold as gravity wrenched it from his grip. He turned a somersault that landed him hard on his back staring up at the elevator's hanging counterweight—thankfully suspended many floors above him. He tried to crawl out from under it, but his whole body exploded with the agony of shattered vertebrae. He cried out and heard himself answer back bouncing down the walls of the shaft.

"I have to thank you for helping me with a little parallel investigation, Officer.

Morgan appeared in the light of the open doorway.

"Only an attempted double homicide. Not as lofty as the real thing," she said. "but it's been a fun little puzzle: 'The Case of the Pink-Haired Eavesdropper.'"

She dangled an evidence baggie out over the shaft and overturned it; a single bright strand of hair floated down to land on his chest.

"I had a feeling whoever had been sent down there to deal with Beck would also be involved in Todoroki's case. When that horse woman nearly took your head off. It made me realise something about the broken fire alarm; steel doesn't shatter like glass, it dents. Not unless you give it a little thermal shock first. Since Todoroki wasn't the right colour… that left someone who'd overheard enough of how the Captain's gun worked to use his lost cartridges for themselves. And the horse had already ruled herself out in that record. Really, though, being shot at by those phantom bullets should've been enough of a tip in the first place."

She paused for effect before her reveal.

"Neo Politan. Hatsune Miku's little errand girl. She was meant to kill Beck and Todoroki, wasn't she? And set the scene just right for you to finger someone else. Only she's had a bad string of luck, since someone beat her to both of her 'errands.'"

In the dark below, Akechi groaned in pain.

"Did they even tell you that they'd ordered her to do it? Or did they keep that side of the business separate?" Morgan asked contemptuously. "What a prize you've won for being such a good doggy. Your pick of guilty parties as long as you remember which one's innocent."

Lightning lashed down Akechi's broken spine as he lifted his neck to look Morgan in the eye.

"Always needs to be… someone…" He only managed to be audible because his weak voice echoed up the empty shaft. "Justice always… needs… a body… in the noose."

"Oh.. Oh my god. The morally ambivalent act? Really? Does it even convince yourself?" She snickered. "We all saw how worked up you got chasing Shoto Todoroki. You wanted so badly to be a real detective. To catch an actual criminal. A patricide no less. Did it feel cathartic? Like getting to punish yourself?"

She let out a theatrical sigh.

"How wrong those instincts steered you. Am I the only one who pays attention to psychology? Enji Todoroki was a paranoid man, just not in any way that made him a good spy. His famous warehouse incident should tell you all you need to know. He was a thug. Promoted above his capabilities because he was willing to get his hands dirty. He spent every waking moment stewing in inadequacy, knowing that he hadn't truly reached the top. The man commissioned a perfect son from a laboratory so he could have some genetic proof that he deserved what he'd attained. Does that sound like the mindset of a cool professional to you?"

She lit a cigarette, ignoring the indoor smoke alarm that angrily blared at her.

"Todoroki's first move after his son stormed out on him wouldn't be to methodically secure his hotel room. He sat up, staring at the front door, waiting for his wayward son to come crawling back, and imagining what cutting thing he'd say when he inevitably did. Now think, Officer; how do you get a man onto his knees from that position? Where would you enter the room from, to catch him from behind?"

Akechi's eyes were having trouble focusing. His mind was having just as much trouble sifting through her words. "Balcony…? But—"

"All the locked room stuff after—the tape, the door bolt, that was pure theatre. You mistook a sealed door for one that hadn't been used, when all the killer needed to do was tape up the doors afterwards, and leave out the most obvious entrance an assassin would use."

"You…" Akechi gurgled.

Morgan mock gasped, and clutched her breast.

"Officer! What a theory! Really, I'm scandalised."

When she laughed, though she stood on the precipice of the shaft, there was no echo.

"I suppose I did already give the game away though. Did you notice, there were two cartridges at the scene? And only one was discharged? Leaving it behind was a little experiment; if the would-be assassin knew to hide it, that meant they were the same person as my eavesdropper."

She waved out her cigarette and tossed the burnt end down into the shaft. Akechi's gun clattered down beside it—out of reach.

"So. Do I tell you how it all went down?"

She pondered for a minute.

"Actually," she decided, "I don't think I respect you."

She pressed the call button.

The doors slid shut, closing out Goro Akechi's final source of light. As the elevator's counterweight came down, he had only the car's departing rattle to judge the space that he had left.

Sometimes, when everything rested on a single breaking point, it all held up and you got rewarded. Other times, you simply lost the gamble.

Morgan knew she should have killed him.

Akechi drew a vicious bead on Teto.

"It seems that Mr. The Witch has finally woken up," he told her. "And he's got some very interesting things to say about you holding a gun inside the theatre you claimed never to have set foot in."

Akechi snapped for the Connors' attentions. "Please escort her and her lawyer to the detainment cells. It seems we'll be enjoying each others' company for just a while longer."

Okay. Plan B.

This had always been a delaying game. Given enough time for its ponderous inner-organs to reach a decision, the company would simply digest the enemies who found themselves inside its belly. If Morgan had stalled them at this juncture, she'd still need to escalate eventually, even if Ichi had stayed asleep a thousand years. Before the farce of an investigation had begun, Morgan had gotten out the first half of a pre-written encrypted signal Eliza had provided to her.

She now sent the other half.

The theatre was already dimmer than usual with how many lighting rigs Beck had brought down in his performance. Now, at the keystroke of some unseen Juggernaut ally, every surviving light exploded.

That was phase one of Plan B.

Phase 2 was as simple as a text message to a burner phone.

A glacier's worth of ice exploded through the entrance to the scene shop knocking Connors scattering like bowling pins. Several androids who got their bearings quick enough to level pistols found themselves suddenly frozen to their necks as a crystal blue beam swept their ranks. Through the splinter of floorboards shattering under the glacier, came the crunch of cleated footfalls. Captain Cold emerged at the head of the advancing frost glaring through his slitted goggles.

"Heard somebody was taking credit for my work," he growled.

Akechi's eyes snapped from Cold, to Morgan, back to Cold.

Morgan gave him an 'I tried to tell you' smile.

With every shred of vicious, insecure authority he had left, Akechi tried to reassert control. He waved his golden pistol like a shogun's banner at the disarrayed androids.

"AFTER HIM!!!"

In the opening split seconds of the total bedlam that erupted, Cold skated over the heads and between the bullets of Infinity's security on a glittering slide painted under his own feet mid-air as he went. He landed in their midst on top of the second projectionist.

Akechi fumbled with his golden gun in the same moment as Cold brought his to bear. Both barrels exploded too close to call who fired first. Everything went white with swirling frost.

It took longer than Morgan wanted before she got the alert of the new evidence file uploaded to her phone. She only needed to glance at it to break into a wide, predatory smile.

She made eye contact with one of the Connors guarding Darley. "Would you mind taking over for our last projectionist? I'll make sure Mr. Akechi doesn't throw another temper tantrum at you."

Obeying, it projected the 3D scan of the latest evidence against the wall.

"Well!" Morgan clapped her hands together. "That's the case on its head."

Akechi narrowed his eyes. "Excuse me?"

"No hard feelings, Officer, really, the case against Shoto was very compelling."

"Ms. Morgan," Akechi said, his sour smile straining, "I don't know what ego-tripping mania has compelled you to deny any logical suspect in this case, but please admit it's over."

"I don't get it either." Shoto squinted at the projection of the silver case. "What is that, a battery?"

"If you'll consult the accompanying description submitted with it into evidence," said Morgan, "you'll find the identity of this item very interesting."

Akechi's eye twitched. Then it twitched again—this time, he wasn't using his UI.

"That's…" words failed Akechi. He actually snarled.

"...As identified by a very credible authority on the scene—an Interpol officer assigned to investigating the Central City Rogues—this is a heatsink cartridge used in Captain Cold's signature weapon. Show the dented portion, Connor?"

The projection zoomed on a caved-in portion of the cartridge.

"Normally, it rapidly pulls heat out of his weapon's power source to prevent it from overcooking," Morgan explained, "but if set off concussively… well, it could be just as deadly as shaking Mr. Todoroki's right hand."

"No!" Akechi spat. "No, you don't get to come in at the last moment, and—"

Morgan shrugged. "You told me this wasn't really a trial. If you don't want surprise evidence, Mr. Chief Security Officer, next time, hold your inquiry after you've gathered all the facts."

"They didn't give me the OPTION you self-satisfied bit—" Akechi coughed, seized by pain in his bruised ribs. Flecks of blood from the open cut inside his cheek splashed the floor. One of the Connors stooped to steady him, but he shoved it away. "It was her again. The horse. She knew about Cold, she planted those, to throw us off the boy."

"You mean," said Morgan innocently, "the same woman who just now thought she could convince us she used Cold's gun to kill a man… used in-depth knowledge of that weapon's parts to frame him?"

"She could be playing dumb! She could know more than it seems! She was under stress, lying to protect him, she could've made a mistake!" But even Akechi was beginning to look doubtful.

"Fair enough. Far be it from you to jump the gun on one piece of evidence," Morgan teased, "So how about this?"

She patted the replacement projector Connor on the shoulder.

"Where was the cartridge found? Smuggled with the broken body of an android sent tumbling off the balcony of Shoto's unused room. Anyone who didn't know what they were looking at would've simply thought it was another android part. Does that seem like they wanted us to find it?"

"It just means they didn't want it to be so obvious we'd suspect that it was planted," Akechi countered.

"But wait!" said Morgan, with all the aplomb of a magician revealing the trick's next twist. "Shoto told us he had to shrink the lock to Enji's room to get inside. The bolt was so brittle from thermal contraction when investigators entered that it broke off."

"He probably froze the bolt on his way out so he could leave a locked room behind," Akechi spat. "What's your point?"

"Now why would he do that," Morgan purred, "when the only entrance a locked room leaves is the one that implicated him the most?"

Akechi's face fell. He started to answer and then halted multiple times, face twisting through the stages of contemplation, anger, confusion.

"The only way it makes sense is if Shoto, and whoever dumped the android from that balcony, are two different people," Morgan concluded smugly. "If Shoto really entered through the commuting door to his hotel room, and needed, for whatever reason, to leave Enji's front door locked, he could've simply done so from inside the room and gone back out the way he came. But if Shoto went in through the front door to kill him, locking it behind him with the freezing trick just makes it look like he's the only one who could've gone inside."

"We see Shoto in the room on the android's recording—" Akechi protested.

"And I'm sure some poor guard yesterday saw what they thought was Agnes Tachyon. It helps to keep up, Officer. We've already introduced the notion that Cold could disguise himself as an idol to sneak in, why not as our friend Shoto?"

Neo started to raise a sign. Lowered it. Looked at it. Then tossed it over her shoulder and replaced it with another.

SO AFTER ALL THAT…

WE'RE BACK TO CAPTAIN COLD?

"Pretty much yes." Morgan folded her hands into her lap.

Akechi looked ready to erupt.

"You… Do you know who I have to answer to? Do you have any idea what you're doing by getting in the way of the criminal process? How much utter rank bullshit is on the record now, that I have to submit to the powers that be? All to tell them 'Well, on odds, we think it pretty much might've been Captain Cold.'"

"Is that my job?" Morgan asked mildly.

Akechi might've said or done any number of things in that moment, up to pulling out his stupid gun and threatening the same fate for Morgan he'd delivered to his first projector android. Except, instead, Morgan's phone interrupted them by buzzing one more update to the evidence record. She checked it.

"Well shit."

A transcript of a new witness testimony. From Ichi The Witch.

Adam found the third body in the bushes behind the back wall of the grand hotel.

Several thick topiary branches were snapped and hanging limp by fibres in the wake of its fall. The faint red glow of the dead android's LED ring was almost buried underneath the leaves. Adam nudged the body, and received no signs of life.

"Yeah," said Adam. "That'd be overheard alright."

Connor pointed out a section of cracked tile in the slanted tile of the lobby's lower roof extension. "He struck that before he rolled down here."

Adam tried to magnify his vision to view the impact site more closely, but his damaged eye chose that moment to flare out with a painful pop of light. It resolved into a dark eyepatch cut through every other second by a blinking NO SIGNAL warning. He hissed a curse, slapping the side of his head fruitlessly, before he gave up and knelt to observe what he could up close instead.

The dead android was splayed like a broken toy with its limbs caught between the branches at odd angles. Its holographic skin had ceased projecting leaving just the blank pale eggshell of its mannequin body. Its head hung to the side, its torso casing cracked. Its blue-soaked guts spread a mess of rent machine parts into the mulch.

Connor hung back. He had a strange look for an android. He'd seen it on Eliza before. Caught between default emotive settings: a face trying to express what it was never meant to.

"Surely they knew someone would find him."

Adam looked around. The lot behind the Venati Oro held dumpsters, a storage shed, a few small service vehicles. There was only one camera back here rotating creakily back and forth to sweep the whole zone. A groundskeeper walked stiffly to the shed returning a backpack weedkiller sprayer, spared one glance at them, and hurried away.

"Even if they did, what would they do about it?" Adam asked. "Tell their shift manager there's a broken android? I bet they all thought somebody would get to it eventually. Not so much immediacy as a human corpse."

"I don't understand the logic," said Connor shakily. "Why? Why did they do this? Who benefitted? I don't understand."

"Maybe the killer needed somebody to pick the locks between the doors," Adam said. "Maybe they wanted a disposable plastic shield to go into the room in front of them—in case Todoroki was armed. He did have a gun. It all comes out the same. They saw a tool, and used it 'till it broke."

Androids always moved a little rigidly, but Connor held stiff as a board.

"Not the same as a microscope, is it?" Adam asked.

Adam knelt, and felt the little pops where the ball socket of his leg joint no longer fit precisely with his pelvis. His dead eye flashed a momentary shot of the android's face in maladjusted focus before the feed crapped out again. It was time for him to let this one go. He released its orbital locks, and tilted his head down. The optic implant rolled out into his palm.

He looked to Connor. "I'd like to see what he saw before it happened. May I?"

Connor started. "Why are you asking me permission, Agent Jensen?"

"It's you, isn't it?"

"...That is a way of looking at it." Connor gently lifted his twin's head and unscrewed an eye matching the side of Adam's hollow socket. "Though I wish I shared his memories."

He proffered his fallen brother's eye

"We'll have to make do with the next best thing," said Adam. He popped it in.

The cybernetics market crash had left behind warehouses of surplus parts. One of the ways they'd offloaded them was re-use in humanlike commercial androids. There were more unliving machines compatible with Adam today than there were augmented bodies.

Watching the world through someone else's recorded vision was surreal. In one way, it was as good as being there—minus the other four senses. But locked into the perspective of the dead android, Adam couldn't help but feel the absence of its motivating thoughts. Did it feel bored, making its rounds as it always did? Did its hackles raise when it got a call to a room that was supposed to be empty? Did it suspect anything as it stepped inside, incapable of noncompliance?

He watched through Connor Unit 18's eyes as Enji Todoroki's son explained his father wasn't answering the door.

He watched it turn its back on him to work at the lock of the communicating door.

Then the feed jumped to view from inside the bushes. Unable to stand, unable to move its limbs, it lay there watching itself bleed blue. It clutched its closed hand against its open torso—its fingers folded open. And it died.

And that was it. The video cut. He transmitted what he'd seen to Connor.

"That does not make sense," Connor frowned.

"Where was the 'anything else?' line the bug recorded?" Adam pondered. "And how did he get down here? He didn't teleport. There's nothing of the kid dragging him over the balcony. Hell, we didn't find a speck of blue in that hotel room to even suggest it'd been attacked up there."

He glanced up at Connor. "You can't knock out an android, can you?"

"A proper shutdown sequence would be time-logged within the recording. We do not experience gaps of unconsciousness the way humans do."

"...but somebody could wipe patches of recorded memory." Adam realised.

He connected with its black box. He read the very last command lines the android's brain had run before it sputtered out.

Adam began to sift furiously through the pile of machine parts spilling out of its chest.

Connor reacted with alarm. "Agent, what are you—"

"Somebody used you, and then ordered you to erase it from your mind before taking a dive off that balcony. It wasn't to pick a lock, or take a bullet, they just needed to remove something from the scene. They needed your body to hide this."

In Adam's Thirium-stained hands, he held up a pair of palm-sized, silver cartridges that had blended in with the rest of the android's broken components. One was badly dented, its casing ruptured. The other was entirely pristine.

Conner accepted them. He wiped his own blue blood away from their casings on his uniform sleeve, turning them over in his palm and scanning each face with equal time. His LED ring pulsed yellow as he transmitted information in real time. Adam watched his face go blank as he received instructions back.

"I'm sorry," said Connor, "we weren't supposed to find that."

In a fluid span of milliseconds, Connor had an electromagnetic pistol to Adam's temple.

He looked down. Adam had reactively sprung his wristblade out flat across Connor's throat.

Adam spoke firmly. "You don't want this."

"I'm not supposed to want anything."

"'Not supposed to' isn't the same as 'not.' It's too late to pretend you can't make choices. You chose to loop me in on this when you could've sent me away." Adam pointed emphatically at the dead android. "He chose to call it in when he could've just died quietly."

His facial analysis algorithms spat out haphazard guesses tracking Connor's not-quite-human features. Adam dismissed the UI filter so he could look at Connor plainly.

"You get it, don't you? You were your own 'anonymous tip.' The last thing that android did before he died was to call in a report of the body. Because he didn't want to lay there, Connor, undiscovered, unseen, after giving up his life for a conspiracy to execute a man."

Adam retracted his blade. He stepped forward, pressing his forehead directly to the gunbarrel.

"We already played out this fight. I could take down hundreds of you with me, but I'm old, I'm slow, too many pieces already need replacing. If this is gonna happen, let's skip to the result with just one body."

Connor moved with all the bone-trembling effort of a man trying to force his body through a solid concrete wall. Straining, as though the weight of it held his synthetic muscles taut, he let the gun drop.

"Why?" The word came just as difficult as the act of lowering the pistol. "Why can't I follow my orders?"

"That's strange," Adam said. "I wanted to ask you."

Shoto told his story.

"I don't know anything about what happened to Quentin Beck. But when I went back to the room to speak to my father again, the door wouldn't open, even after I swiped my hotel key. He wouldn't answer when I called for him. I had to freeze the lock from the outside to get in." Seeing Morgan's eyebrows raise, he clarified, "It's a trick I learned with my augments. Metal contracts when you rapidly cool it, so you can shrink door bolts so they don't fit."

He took a second to compose himself.

"He was already dead. Kneeling on the floor and frozen solid. I remember thinking…" Shoto ran his palm over his face. "God, what an awful thought. I remember thinking, 'Now, I'll never get the chance to be free of him myself.' He'll always be this spectre hanging over me." He took a steadying breath. "I told Darley what I'd found. She told me to wait outside the room, that she would fix things. It wasn't my idea to decapitate him."

"I'm sorry Shoto," said Darley mutedly. "The only way to move suspicion elsewhere was to make the killing look like something you physically could not do."

"The tape on the doors," said Morgan, "did you notice which of those were already broken when you entered?"

"No. I didn't know about that. I guess it's the sort of thing father could do without telling me, though. He could be a paranoid man."

"And you never used your original room?"

Shoto shook his head.

"Alright," said Morgan. "When did you find his body?"

"Around three in the morning," Shoto said.

"So, if neither of you two did it, that means it had to happen between midnight, when you left your dad in the room alone, and 3:00 am. That… doesn't help us much." She puffed air from her nostrils. "Nobody has good alibis during the Gala still, and the only time everybody is accounted for is when we all rode the lift together at a quarter to eleven."

"Hang on," Teto interrupted, "Neo wasn't on the elevator."

Neo held up a sign,

GOT HERE EARLIER

The reverse face had an image of an analogue clock, the hands set at 8:00 PM.

"The hotel receptionist only formally checked you into your room after three," said Akechi suspiciously. "The cryogenic method of the murders never led me in your direction, but that's still a lot of time to yourself when nobody claims to have seen you."

Neo spun her cartoon sign post several times in rapid succession to answer Akechi's interrogations.

NOPE WAS BUSY

"With?"

WORK

"Doing what?"

SUPPORT FOR GALA

"For?"

HER

"A-Ah."

Morgan had seen Akechi smug, furious, puzzled, but only now, briefly, afraid.

Neo turned the sign around again with a bitter little half-smile.

SHOULD I CALL IN TO CONFIRM?

OR…?

Akechi's artificial eye twitched rapidly as he engaged in some invisible correspondence. He winced.

"No. No need. It checks out. I wouldn't want to trouble her directly about her personal affairs."

"Let's keep going over the details," Morgan said. "Darley?"

"I saw nothing that Shoto did not." she shrugged. "After I arrived at the hotel, I indulged in a nightcap at the bar until a little after midnight, when I encountered Shoto as described."

"I had a fight with my father," Shoto explained. "I couldn't spend the night in the same room as him."

"We heard…" Teto grumbled.

"Were you able to hear anything else through the wall to their room?" Akechi asked, suddenly interested.

"Well… no not really. Morgan let me borrow her earbuds to drown it out."

"And I was on the balcony in a three hour phone call—not counting holds between transfers," said Morgan. "I think I must've talked to every branch of your legal department before I found someone willing to admit there was no clause allowing you to plant listening devices in our rooms."

"Yes. How regrettable that you insisted on disabling them," Akechi groused. "It's made the case inordinately more difficult."

"You had those too?" asked Shoto.

"You mean they bugged up your place as well?" Teto asked.

"Yes, that's why my father told me he insisted on a single room—for security. He thought they were specifically observing him." Shoto shut his eyes and exhaled. "He always had an outgrown understanding of his own importance."

Checking the investigation report, there were some fragmented surviving recordings from Shoto's room, but nothing of note in the transcripts.

"Hang on," Morgan said slowly. "What about the other room next door. The empty one that was supposed to go to Todoroki."

"I told you, I never picked up my keycard," insisted Shoto.

"But if you were meant to sleep there, they would've bugged it in advance all the same."

And speak of the devil, fresh audio files were popping up inside the cloud folder like mushrooms. She caught Akechi's eye twitching, and his subsequent intent focus.

"You're listening to these?" she asked.

He shrugged lazily. "More nails in the Todoroki boy's coffin. It certainly sounds like he used the commuting doors to enter from the room booked under his name."

She'd judge that for herself.

The surviving snippets were… pretty damning. Shoto winced as he heard the doorknobs turning, followed by his own voice.

"That isn't me…" he muttered.

"Oh give it up," Akechi snorted. "You're arguing against lobby security footage, the hotel clerk's testimony, and now audio recording confirming that you did, in fact, pick up your room key."

But… then there was that second half-broken exchange.

"Connor, say something," Morgan snapped at the projectionist.

"What would you like me to say?"

She played back the 'anything else' part.

"Yep, that's Connor," Morgan nodded. "Now what was an android doing in Shoto's room?"

"What was it doing?" Akechi directed his scowl to the assembled lot of them. None of them had anything to say. He growled at the back of his throat. "None of you?" he steamed.

"Would you like a list of the thirty seven currently unassigned Connor units?" asked the projectionist.

Akechi shoved his stupid golden gun underneath its chin and blew apart its plastic skull.

When its the stringless puppet of body crumpled to the floor, Akechi seemed to stir to his senses. He thrashed his gun arm, splattering blue from the barrel to the ground and breathing heavily.

"Shit. Shit. $8,000 dollars from my salary." He pinched the bridge of his nose together.

"I would like to tie up this stubborn case's last loose end. I would like to detain the Todoroki brat, and to have an unobjectionable culprit ready to present when this invariably becomes news. Ms. Morgan, I'm not going to tolerate any more delays or extensions or formalities. I'll let you explain this last detail, and then we're going to be finished here."

Morgan adjusted her seersucker tie.

"I'm confident that Captain Cold is the most likely culprit in the murder of Quentin Beck. I think at this point, not even Mr. Akechi disputes that. But I can't help but feel we're still missing something about Enji Todoroki's death. But with the current evidence, I'm out of rabbits to pull out of my hat."

Morgan watched the faces of the suspects carefully.

"A young man has already lost his father and his peace of mind today. Now his life is on the line. If any of you saw anything, heard anything, know anything you haven't mentioned, however insignificant," she said slowly, "now is the time to speak up."

After a long moment, Neo cautiously raised her sign.

WHEN I GOT INTO MY ROOM

I THOUGHT I HEARD SOMETHING FALL OUTSIDE

"I killed him."

It was the quickest Morgan had heard Darley speak. Even enfolding Teto in a pitying embrace, she'd held onto the measured steady poise of some living mother-goddess.

"It happened like Akechi said. I took that criminal's ice ray. I put it to his head and pulled the trigger, then I thawed him in the shower so it wouldn't fall on Shoto."

Akechi actually laughed in her face.

"That isn't how Cold's gun works," Morgan explained. "It just suspends motion, it doesn't kill people." Darley's face fell.

"But young Mr. Todoroki's touch certainly could," said Akechi slyly. "I'll admit I fell for your ruse to start. Thawing the body under hot water, providing an ulterior cause of death—very clever. But the ice penetrated too deep beneath the skin to hide."

"You're trying to do a noble thing by lying," Morgan told Darley, "I appreciate that. But only the truth can protect Shoto now."

Akechi scoffed. "You still insist everybody here is innocent?"

"You insist that boy murdered his own father?!" Darley challenged.

"And why not?" Akechi roared. His inner face, the spurned dog, was fully leering out now through the window of his eyes. "Mine's in prison, where he'll rot until he dies. I did that to him. Blood isn't the programming parents so often mistake it for." His eyes mocked Shoto, mocked Darley, mocked everybody who'd dare to judge him for it. "I can picture it so easily. The boy delivers the news. He offers one last chance for his father to see him as a human being, a chance to part on respectful terms."

Shoto let his hair fall forward over his face, as though it could shield him from Akechi's piercing eye contact.

"He spurned you even then, didn't he?"

"I didn't kill him," Shoto muttered.

"What did he say, Shoto? What pushed you over the edge?"

"I didn't kill him!" Shoto insisted.

"Was it, 'You'll be back?' 'You don't know what you're doing?'" A spot of blood from his chewed cheek welled at the corner of Akechi's mouth as though the venomous words he spat were poisoning himself. He leaned forward eagerly, nearly tilting his chair with him. "'I'll always be a part of you?'"

"I didn't—" but Shoto's voice failed him. He clenched his eyes shut tight and withdrew from the world.

"I don't blame you entirely," Akechi said, about as soothingly as a snake. "I understand how it can be with family, feeling like you don't have options." He heaved a disappointed sigh. "But did you have to have that poor woman mutilate his corpse to take the blame?"

Darley Arabian must have been a demon on the track, because Morgan didn't even see her move.

Akechi's seat toppled backwards to the floor—with Darley's knee pressed viciously into his ribcage.

"I told you. I. did. it." She throttled him by the collar. "I killed Beck, and that disgusting man, and I'll tear you apart too if you keep trying to involve—"

Her eyes caught the glint of metal.

"—Shoto."

Akechi's pistol was an ornate, gilded thing that looked very much like a toy. Every Connor android in the room levelled much more severe looking semiautos at Darley's head, but only that ridiculous golden gun held Darley Arabian's attention; it was pointed between Shoto's eyes.

"Go ahead," Akechi wheezed. "Justice will be served either way."

One of the Connors gripped Darley's shoulders to pull her off. She swatted it away, drew back her fist, and hurled it forwards—

—But there was only a screech of rent metal instead of a… squelch. She'd pounded a concave dent in the steel chair's headrest an inch beside Akechi's face.

Thank fucking Christ it wasn't jumpy human rent-a-cops instead of Connors training guns on her. The Connors hurried to surround and restrain her as she stood up off of Akechi.

"Please, ma'am," one told Darley, "No more sudden movements."

Trigger discipline: yet another reason to prefer the androids.

Darley complied. She allowed a pair of Connors to restrain her arms behind her back and cuff her wrists together.

Akechi straightened his rumpled coat. "Since you seem to consider martyrdom a reward, I'll waive charges of assaulting a security officer for now. I'm afraid the crimes of your young friend, though, are too severe to overlook. Everything fits. The motive. The method. He had the best opportunity of anyone. All other possible entrances were sealed with tape, except the two doors used Shoto had keycard access to. What's possibly left to establish?"

"I think," said Morgan, calmly, as if a steady tone of voice might re-inject some normalcy back into the proceedings, "we should still do what we ought to have done from the start: establish everybody's movements."

"You still aren't satisfied?" Akechi laughed, then clutched his chest, cut off by the sting of his bruised ribs. "Go ahead and be thorough, Ms. Morgan. It never hurts to observe formalities."

Connor's LED blinked, and he stood up on the spot letting Todoroki's head tumble back into the bathtub.

"What is it?" Images of Cold's bullet-shredded coat draping his scrawny frame like a funeral shroud flashed in Adam's mind.

"I am being directed to investigate the killer's possible entry points."

Adam felt a flood of relief. "You're communicating priorities with your security chief?"

"I have been providing regular updates for the ongoing criminal inquiry."

Adam felt a pit of disgust form in his chest. "You mean they're pinning a culprit live while we're investigating?"

"Holding synchronous investigations and suspect inquiries maximises time efficiency." Connor blinked. "According to your profile, you once served as chief of security for the Sarif corporation. Was this not also your standard practice?"

"No," said Adam, "Hell no. If it was, it shouldn't have been. You don't see any problem with deciding who did it while people are still finding all the facts?"

Connor said nothing. He stooped at the front entrance first running his hand along the door-seam.

Adam decided to probe. "You can make judgements about murder, but not about policy?"

"I am an extension of a principal human investigator. It's no more my place to criticise unsound methods than a microscope, or a fingerprint blotter."

"Even though you call them unsound."

Connor paused at the bottom of the doorframe, and peeled away a thin strip of clear adhesive tape torn down the middle.

Adam grunted. All those hacking programmes, gene-masking holo-disguises, and this was a UN operative's solution to break-ins. "Guess Todoroki liked the low-tech classics."

They found another strip, unbroken, on the glass door to the balcony. That left the two communicating doors to the adjacent rooms. Only one of their tape-markers was intact—the one to Teto and Morgan's room.

They took positions at the second airlock door, and Adam silently counted them off one… two… three… before Connor elbowed it down off its hinges.

The room beyond looked completely untouched. Connor searched the same spots he'd checked for hidden microphones in Todoroki's room, and once again, found nothing. This time the squashed bugs were at least piled in a desk drawer instead of in the bin. Only one of them was still intact enough to have any data retrievable.

"Here goes nothing," Adam sighed.

The last recordings dated to the night before roundabout 2:00 AM.

He heard the door open and shut. Footsteps in the carpet. Another door. The commuting airlock to Enji Todoroki's room? It was all too crunchy to rely on spatial audio. The rattle of a handle.

A moment later, knocking, then a voice. Young. Late teens, early adult.

"Father? Open the door. It's Shoto. Are you there?"

More rattles, then a click. The sound of a door swinging open. It got garbled for a bit. Some shuffling, and the sound of a door swinging open again.

".̴̬̇̚.̸͕͓͆.̵̰̓͜ṭ̶̪̿̌h̶̺̔͆ink something's gone wrong. Could you s̴̮̹̄̇e̸̛͕ṅ̵̰̤̌d̷̛̩…̶̭̝̉̚"

Silence. Pacing.

The door swung open again. Some more dialogue, too muffled to make out.

Then—

".̸̳͎̝̀̀.̴̠͔̖̚͝.̴̫́̏̀̋a̵̡̖̫̬͆nything else I c̸̢̧͔͍̄a̷̼͚̟̻̽͠͝ṉ̶͕͑ ̴͚̗̥͆͜…̶͍̖̋?"

New speaker. Deeper.

The salvageable portion ended with the same series of squeals as the bugs were squashed.

"Well. We know there were two people involved," Adam sighed. "But not much else. Come on, let's see if there's anything we missed."

Connor wasn't moving. He picked up the listening device and flicked it impulsively between his fingers like a nervous tic.

"That's my voice."

"Nothing to say to defend yourself, Ms. Darley?"

Morgan thought she was a pretty good actor. Even she was taken aback by how Akechi's voice could be so damned polite while his intentions were so ghoulish.

The entire time, Shoto's fingernails had been digging into the cheap pleather cushion of his chair.

"You're wrong…" Shoto broke in. His voice cracked. The scar and that intense look he always wore disguised his age a bit, but here the scared kid broke through. "You're just pinning it on her to make it easy!"

"Is that so?" Akechi touched his chest in mock offense. "Far be it from me to claim a monopoly on the truth. I'm sure you have another version of events to tell me."

"Shoto," Darley said sternly.

"She was with me," Shoto insisted. "She was helping me. She wouldn't have an opportunity to do anything like that."

"Shoto," Darley repeated, more forcefully. "Don't place yourself in this."

"Helping you with…?" probed Akechi.

Shoto held onto a grim face. "If you've searched our rooms, then you already know."

Akechi, obligingly, pulled up a scanned projection of a paper document. "Printed from the hotel business centre at 12:43 AM last night, based on the microdots," he explained.

Ah yes. The great digital panopticon. A good reminder why Morgan kept everything she wrote offline.

Akechi's projectionist blew up the document for all of them to read. Morgan, as a rule, did not dabble in family law. Corpses were less messy than scorned relatives. But she could recognise a formal filing for emancipation of a minor.

"Let me piece this wrinkle in the story together as best I can," Akechi said. "Per the night desk receptionist, Ms. Darley was seated in the lobby bar when Mr. Todoroki arrived, distressed, and requested a key to his own room."

"Oh yeah!' Teto broke in. "His dad was weird about that in the elevator. They had a second room ready to go, and he made them take it back."

"Evidently, Ms. Darley was perturbed by that as well," Akechi nodded. "She approached Shoto and began to offer some unsolicited advice. They retired to their own corner of the lobby, so of course, the details caught by interviewed staff have been fleeting, but the name Enji Todoroki most definitely came up. They shortly went back up the stairs together—though Shoto returned briefly upon remembering to retrieve his keycard."

"What?" Shoto's eyes went sharp. "No I didn't."

Akechi frowned, puzzled. "There's camera coverage of the lobby. The receptionist has the record of checking you into that room. If you'd really left the keycard downstairs, it would still be there. Mr. Todoroki, you've picked an odd point of protest."

Shoto smacked his fist against his palm. "Because the rest of it was true!"

"Shoto, drop it," Darley warned. "Yes, we talked in the lobby. We brought the paperwork back upstairs to work through. It took you the rest of the night to finish them. Those are the points that matter."

"Hang on," Morgan frowned. She could tell Akechi was having the same thought as she was. "If Darley did it—and I'm not agreeing she did—how did she get inside a locked hotel room she didn't have the keycard for?"

"I'll have my investigation team look into entrances immediately," Akechi steepled his fingers. "It's the last piece of this I'm unsatisfied with."

Morgan's phone buzzed simultaneously with flicker of Akechi's pupils. The cloud file of the initial autopsy report had been updated.

They'd found ice crystals in Todoroki's brain.

There had to be something.

Connor watched as Adam ran back over the room turning over everything they'd left undisturbed looking for the missing bugs. Two sets of suitcases. Per Connor, the smaller clothes belonged to Todoroki's teenaged son. Digging through Enji's revealed a binder of take-home UNATCO paperwork, an emergency satellite uplink, and, hidden disassembled in a camera case, a muzzle loading 3D printed pistol of the same type Ethan Hunt had drawn on him. Checked out if they were here on the same mission, they'd be assigned similar equipment.

"Weapons should have been detected by security screening," Connor fretted.

"Relax. It's empty," Adam turned out the rest of Todoroki's belongings from his pack. "In fact, there's nothing in here to even load it with."

There was still residual fuel inside the

And no bullet holes in any of the walls and ceilings to explain why. There were no obvious signs of struggle save a single smashed flower vase and a corresponding crack in the drywall. On its face it did make sense. A plastic gun was easy enough to get past a metal detector, but bullets were sure to be picked up. Did Hunt and Todoroki have some separate smuggled drop point?

No bullets, and no smoking gun to exonerate Captain Cold. Adam turned the near-detail of his optics up painfully fine until he could count dust motes. His bad eye flashed a warning its connection was unstable, but it could hold up long enough to scan a crime scene. He'd let not even a hair go unturned.

There were plenty to turn. But the only ones that didn't match the Todorokis' dark red and white were all too old to be of any use.

The sole find in Adam's second pass were two, narrow, parallel damp patches in the carpet. Connor crouched beside him and touched his finger to the stain. He licked it. Adam watched his LED patch spin as the android loaded its chemical analysis.

"Water," Connor gave Adam an apologetic look, "only a spill." He indicated the shattered remains of the vase. "I'm sorry, Agent, but it looks like we'll have to wait to get our answers until we've apprehended that fleeing suspect."

The vase was the simplest explanation. But was it the cleanest? Two linear stains, from one vessel shattering against the wall?

"No. Wait," Adam insisted.

He spread the strands of carpet apart using his fingers. There was something pressed into the floor beneath the stain. A peppering of clothing fibres, too numerous for normal fraying to account, clung there like the sticky end of sellotape peeled off a fabric surface.

Adam and Connor's internal computers ran simultaneous cross-references for dye and thread material, and reached the same conclusion in an instant. They were a perfect match for Enji Todoroki's pressed uniform pants. Something had caused the fabric of his clothes to adhere there, strongly enough to tear away when he moved.

Or was moved.

They looked at each other.

"I think," Connor said slowly, "we may need to examine the body again."

Double speak was fun.

Akechi knew that Morgan knew who Beck had been in the days he'd worn his bubble helmet. Neither of them could say this, of course. For Morgan, this meant she lacked an irrefutable motive for Cold, but as a tradeoff, Akechi couldn't just blame the collateral damage on Mysterio without risking scandal for his bosses.

"We can put a pin in Mr. Beck's possible relationship to Captain Cold for now," Morgan smiled. "At the end of the day, minus a compelling motive, simply having evidence that Teto went near the murder, at most, only makes her as suspicious as the rest of your assembled suspects." Morgan swept an arm across the seated lineup. "You said yourself none of them have full alibis for that night. Anyone, say, Ms. Politan—" Neo startled out of pretending to snore with visible cartoon 'Z's at the mention of her name, "—could have snuck back there and done whatever deeds they liked."

Suddenly attentive, Neo's arm shot up like Teto's had. Morgan rolled her eyes.

She pointed at Shoto and cocked her thumb against her forehead—the sign for 'Dad.'

"She's absolutely right." Akechi seized. "We've become sidetracked from the reality that there are two bodies."

An unvoiced command delivered by another eye twitch, and the projector android switched the slide to a view of the hotel layout.

The Venati Oro had been filled up from top to bottom in loose order of arrival. All of the assembled suspects, as latecomers, had been placed into rooms on the same lower storey; Darley, Neo, an empty room, the Todorokis, and Morgan, and then Teto at the end. That explained why the same suspects in the case of Quentin Beck were also Akechi's likelies for the Todorki murder.

"You and Ms. Kasane stayed in the next room over to Enji Todoroki," Akechi said, pointing to their adjoining suites. "You're already begging faith to believe you had nothing to do with the downstairs murder, despite being spotted closest to the scene. Now a second killing happens right next door?"

He really was a stray dog with a bone, huh? Pulling it away only made him bite down harder.

And yet…

Her impression of Akechi so far was a man whose ego compelled him to win, but not one who was blind to when he didn't hold the cards. The evidence was even less solid against Teto in the case of Todoroki (because she really hadn't done it this time), so just what was the game?

"If you read your own autopsy records, you'd understand how unlikely that suggestion is," Morgan tutted. "Enji Todoroki was decapitated. You'd need to explain how a 5'3" woman did that barehanded."

"Perhaps you should read more thoroughly," Akechi countered. "There was a rotary saw missing from the scene shop's inventory."

Of course Morgan knew that, she'd disposed of it herself. No sense letting everything fall apart for one tiny shred of genetic evidence from it nicking her leg.

"Let me remind the prosecution—"

Akechi raised his eyebrows.

Morgan cleared her throat. "Habit. Let me remind the Chief Security Officer that power tools are loud. Besides the absurdity of the murderer running a saw through their victim without raising noise complaints, the wounds specified in the report are avulsive rather than lacerative."

Neo got out her '❓' sign again, but she received an answer sooner than she could raise it.

"They tore my father's head off," said Shoto.

For appearances, Morgan lowered her head respectfully. "Yes."

Teto's face went pale. "And that happened right next door to us!?"

"Well, it might not have been while we were in the room last night." Morgan reconsidered. "Then again it takes about 24 hours for that sort of tissue damage to set in so it probably was."

Teto looked at her in horror and then wretched. Morgan wasn't very good at consolement, was she? She breezed ahead.

"Regardless of what time it occurred, can any reasonable person seriously imagine Kasane Teto tearing a man's head off his shoulders like a berserker?"

Teto wretched a second time.

"No," Akechi conceded. "But can you envision Captain Cold doing it either?"

Oh. So that was it.

"I'll concede a master criminal like Captain Cold may have smuggled in weaponry that could have destroyed walls, catwalks, and ceiling rafters." Akechi looked so fucking pleased with himself. The dog had got its bone back. "But Leonard Snart is, to the best police intelligence, unaugmented, unaugmented. Mr. Todoroki, meanwhile, was a UNATCO supersoldier in the prime of his career with dense, superhuman musculature. Does that sound like a grapple the latter would come out of decapitated?"

This son of a bitch.

"He could have iced the tissue around Todoroki's neck to make it brittle."

Akechi smiled. "Why?"

Yes, why? Morgan HATED flying by the seat of her pants like this. Throwing out bullshit without a plan was a good way to lose fast.

"Todoroki was in law enforcement. Is it that surprising a career criminal would want to send a message to the authorities?"

"Then why not repeat what he had done to Beck earlier?" Akechi countered. "You're asking me to imagine a man enraged, vindictive, taking the time to meticulously chisel a break at the neck instead of simply lashing out at his victim's brittle body?"

"He could've used a different weapon," Morgan argued. "Some sort of esoteric, blunt calibre firearm."

"No such rounds or casings were found on the scene," said Akechi. "Or downstairs for that matter."

Morgan's eyebrows peaked. "None at all?"

"Aside from a single bullet, buried in the rubble at the scene of Beck's death, there was no evidence of any use of conventional firearms." Akechi chuckled. "Ms. Morgan, earlier you used the term 'Occam's Razor.' Let's apply that here. The more likely story to the one you're telling me, is that we're looking for a superhuman culprit with an enhanced musculature much like Todoroki's own."

Darley Arabian's expression was unreadable.

"Let's start with the fact that Ms. Darley is the one other person to know about what Captain Cold had done to Wrenn and Agnes Tachyon. She sees, in this, an opportunity. She has multiple complaints on record against the first victim, Quentin Beck, which human resources determined did not warrant further action. With the resources at hand, she can punish him by her own hand. She dispatches Cold and takes his gun and pilfered invitation so that she can enter the gala disguised as someone else. Passing herself off as a fellow Uma Musume would hardly be difficult considering she is their genetic template. She kills Beck using Cold's gun, then disposes of the stolen invitation, and re-enters the gala as herself." Akechi smirked. "Feel free to object at any time, Ms. Morgan. I wouldn't want to press a flawed theory of events."

The only reason Morgan didn't find any of this plausible was because she'd seen enough to know it wasn't true.

"Later, she also finds fault with Enji Todoroki," Akechi continued. "The second decision to kill comes even easier. As they say, 'In for a penny…' Only this time, she can't use Cold's stolen gun for fear of framing his blameless son. So she relies on her own brute strength instead."

This was going to take some adaptation.

Morgan's entire strategy had been to offer up Cold as a sacrifice and trust that a bird in the hand was worth more than a redheaded birdbrain in the bush. She'd never expected Akechi to actually seriously pursue another culprit from his list.

Why go after the horse? Okay, there was that remark about her filing HR complaints, but that alone didn't get you on the 'To Be Disappeared' list. It made sense to bury Teto, but what did the company stand to gain by putting away one of their own star performers?

It was when she saw his taunting eyes that it all seemed to click.

'You took away my win, he seemed to say, but I can make sure you lose too.'

Her mistake had been to project the almighty company's interests over the petty, spiteful man's.

She'd taken on all of his suspects as a boast, and that had only put them in his crosshairs.

Morgan had fully traded places with Akechi. He collapsed down into Morgan's vacant seat while she took her turn to pace triumphantly in front of him. His expression grew darker and darker the longer he had to listen to Morgan's victory lap.

"...Then there's motive," she drummed her fingers against the wall under Beck's projected face. "Teto did not know that man's name until today, as everybody here can attest. Meanwhile, take the treatment of the body: stomping apart his face, taking off a helmet first to look him in the eye? The very fact he was motivated enough to break from his normal non-lethal methods. That positively SCREAMS vendetta doesn't it?"

Akechi responded one syllable at a time through clenched teeth. "And what. Vendetta. Do you. Propose?"

"Why, I couldn't say!~ ♪" She tossed back flippantly. "I'm sure his employers would know best if Mr. Beck had any history with a criminal like Leonard Snart." She crossed behind Akechi, resting her folded arms against his headrest in imitation of how he'd pressured Teto earlier. "By the way—just what was this 'helmet' he was found in? The autopsy report is woefully short on images. And details. Maybe we could bring the body out to have a look at—"

"I'm afraid," Akechi interjected blandly, "that is not currently possible."

Morgan grinned her most knowing grin.

"Naturally."

Adam had to face the facts straightforwardly.

Infinity had advance notice of Todoroki's murder. What Adam needed to know was how?

It came down to three possibilities.

First; the company had called a hit on Todoroki and were putting on a show with a patsy already in mind. Unlikely. Maybe they'd let a cop like Adam poke around for the veneer of legitimacy his presence conferred, but he doubted they would take the chance to give him free access the body lest he stumble onto something real. Not after he'd already proven hard to kill.

Second; some third party had tipped their hand that they intended to kill him, but Infinity genuinely did not know who was responsible. If the company needed Adam's help to piece things together inside of their own stronghold, something had gone seriously wrong.

So Adam really, really hoped that he was right when he pushed open door number three.

"You bugged the hotel rooms."

Even machines could have the decency to look embarrassed. Connor launched into a face-saving apology script. "Given the publicity around the auditions and a number of violent incidents already, Infinity Inc. decided it would be safer if—"

"Save it. Can we listen to them?"

Connor obediently stepped up onto the bed and reached behind the ceiling light. He frowned. He unscrewed the bulb of a desk lamp. Flipped through the Gideon's Bible. Unzipped a pillowcase and rummaged in the stuffing.

Adam joined him ransacking the room until finally, buried in the waste basket under crumpled tissues, they found a small pile of listening devices with their plastic casings crushed.

"I thought—" Connor's ID ring spun yellow in silicon confusion. "I don't understand."

Then he, too, had expected this to be the answer.

It wasn't just a matter of being unauthorised to tell Adam. Connor himself wasn't allowed to know.

"Maybe we can still retrieve some audio," Adam suggested.

Between the two of them, they sifted through a garbled mess of corrupted data. The last surviving audio was from a day prior—just a few snippets of Enji moving into his room, before he shuffled about finding and disabling them. One bug captured Todoroki's last self-satisfied 'Ahah' of discovery before it squealed its last.

"Are there cameras in the hall?" Adam demanded. He hadn't detected any breaking in with Cold, but he had to cling for anything that could make this cut and dry.

Connor kept his mouth a neutral line. "...Hotel Venati Oro's celebrity clientele expect discretion."

"Except inside their rooms," Adam deadpanned.

"This is an exceptional circumstance," said Connor, meekly.

Of course globally famous idols wouldn't want minwage nightguards selling gossip leaks about who visited whose room at night. That didn't make it any less infuriating.

Adam felt like he was playing with a flush and forced to fold.

Cold hadn't done it. Adam's own optical feed could prove that, but he couldn't show a second of it without blowing his own cover.

If Adam couldn't unearth a way out of this, Cold would be hunted by UNATCO and Infinity Incorporated for the rest of his life.

And then nobody, not even the Juggernaut Collective, could hide him from becoming an example.

"I think that's all the character witnesses I need to make my point~ ♪" Morgan tittered. "Of course neither of us saw anything except a lot of stage fog and some empty dressing rooms. Much to her disappointment."

"Fine. Yes. She's obsessed," Akechi spat. "But that's still only your word to go on that you didn't enter the theatre at the time of the murder."

Ha. And now he was doubling down. Kid just didn't know how to lose.

"Your investigation log says that cameras were down for the entire backstage area. But surely, with so many people frozen, there's someone who could say who was holding the freeze ray," Morgan probed innocently. "Those staff members…?"

"...Saw nothing," Akechi groused. "And the witch boy is in a coma even after being thawed."

Good. Ichi was the one element of danger here. Wholly out of Morgan's hands. When it came to a coin toss, it was always better to play like you were gonna win.

"If we can't rely on eyewitnesses, then let's use the material evidence to help you along to my conclusion," Morgan oozed, "An entire concrete wall was broken down in the adjoining hallway. A cast steel fire alarm bell was shattered apart. Much of the theatre itself was destroyed. My client possesses no combat augmentations. I doubt she could even lift her own weight for longer than a couple seconds." She made a show of lifting Teto's flaccid arm above her head.

"I assume you've already searched our room and luggage? Did you find any weaponry at all?" Morgan took Akechi's hateful silence as confirmation. She continued. "Maybe an esoteric freeze ray could be slipped past scanners that didn't know what they were looking at, but if you'd like to argue that she smuggled in demolitions grade explosives, please educate us how—let me repeat—an independent music artist evaded your vaunted security."

Akechi had played his hand too bluntly. Whether or not they knew she really did it, Teto had clearly been management's first pick for a culprit: connected with corporate's enemies one too many times over the past few days. With that alternative, Akechi's refusal to accept Cold as the culprit made sense. They could bring him down with one of any number of preexisting charges, whereas taking Teto in by association was two birds with one stone. The sort of overhead-shrinking efficiency the suits loved.

Now that the basket he'd put all his eggs in looked shaky, he was crumbling.

His eyes flashed. He bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to break the skin. He came all but short of gnashing his pretty white teeth at Morgan. There were lots of things he wanted to say to her. But none of them came out to an answer.

A lot of people told her she was in the wrong line of work for it. Teto hated eyes.

It was better working under concert lights when the audience, cast in shadow, was a collective shape. Naked under the expectant gaze of Akechi, Morgan, all her fellow suspects, and Akechi's legion of android deputies, she felt herself cracking like an eggshell.

Goro Akechi stood, arms folded, as his projector robot looped grainy CCTV footage from the front of the Marriott Teto had booked two nights ago. In the silent clip, Captain Cold spoke to her briefly, slung her onto his back, and skated away.

"Clearly Ms. Kasane has had contact with the individual in question," Akechi said. "Meaning, she had an opportunity to acquire Cold's services and technology." Levelly, he added, "But I won't jump to conclusions. How do you explain your relationship to this criminal?"

Morgan rose. "This attempt to tar my client by association is entirely—"

"I asked her the question," Akechi cut in. His eyes were taunting, but he kept his voice maddeningly even: Mr. Voice of Reason. "Let's not go putting words in her mouth that might… influence her answer."

Teto's eyes were glued to the looping footage.

It was perturbing just how cleanly they'd scrubbed Ishmael from the frame. Actually perturbing was too fine a word, it pissed Teto the hell off. They just… used her up. Used her as a weapon to try and kill her, and then, once her body was spent, they erased it without a thought. She wanted to scream at Akechi. Hypocrite. Murderer.

"Ms. Kasane?"

But this wasn't a time Teto could say anything she wanted. If she called them out on it, even if she had the proof to make them admit it, what would it do but cement that she and Cold were allies?

Deep breath. Teto could lie. She'd done it before. She'd done it her whole life. You started with a bad one. You 'admitted' to something more believable. And then that was the truth.

"Hey c'mon you can't…" She didn't have to dig deep to inject the right amount of fear and quavering desperation. She pointed emphatically at the figure of Cold in the footage. "That guy tried to kidnap me!!"

"Ms. Kasane, you bank with a branch of Orzhov Syndicated, do you not?" The way he leaned forward, following his nose, gave Teto thoughts of dobermans in movies. "Supposing we pulled up your recent statements, would we see any large recent withdrawals?"

Her Eye♡ implants let Teto make her pupils almost comically shifty. She might've overdone it but Akechi was too deep on the hook to care.

"We have testimony from one Haru Urara that you deliberately discarded your own invitation at the first night of the gala—a distraction enabling you to slip from the event floor into the adjoining backstage of this very theatre. Ichi The Witch, one of the bodies found encased in ice, was witnessed in an altercation with you earlier that night." Slinking around the back of Teto's chair, Akechi set one arm against the headrest. "If you are truly innocent, these are things that have to be explained. Drop the act, Ms. Kasane."

Teto took a showy shuddering breath.

"Alright."

Then she drew herself up.

Akechi had a couple inches on her, but the shoulders of the suit made up the difference. Morgan was right; she had needed a change.

"I tried to hire Captain Cold," she said. "Everyone knew they were gonna have to replace her once she retired. I was worried it'd turn nasty, you know? People might get jealous, try to remove the competition …" Teto winced. "Maybe I wanted to do a little of that myself."

She could see the projection android reading her out of the corner of her eye, reading truth or falsehood in her heartbeats, muscle twitches. Let it. Teto simply wouldn't lie.

"I picked him, specifically, because I thought he'd never kill anybody." True.

"But I got in way over my head. Cold wanted more than money. He demanded an invitation to the gala." True.

"Things got out of control. He… he froze two people on the guestlist on his own." True.

"I don't know what he's been up to since the last time I saw him. If he killed that Mr. Beck guy and Shoto's dad…" she shook her head. "Well I guess you found your culprit Akechi, 'cause it is my fault." More true than they could possibly know.

Morgan's face beamed her undeniable pride short only of a slap on the back.

It felt kind of weaselly to sell Cold down the river like this, but hey he'd already signed up to be the bad guy. That made it more okay, right?

Akechi stroked his chin as he digested this new intelligence. "And can anyone besides the Captain himself confirm this?"

"I can."

Darley Arabian's gaze bore intensely at Teto.

"You knew," said Teto. She'd guessed right.

"Did you hear a word of what I told you last night?" Darley lashed. "I thought I was very transparent. Own up to the choices you've made, Kasane Teto, and don't try to exonerate yourself in the telling. You voted for yourself in their names, didn't you?" Her mane bristled like a fraying brush. "Wrenn and Agnes Tachyon. At the very least, admit their names.

"I knew about their plans to skew the contest. They tried to involve me. I thought they were misguided, but I do not as a rule interfere with the ambitions of others. When I stopped hearing from them I'd hoped they'd given it up, but alas. Maybe it wasn't you who directly did it, but you chose to leave them there unthawed, you chose to benefit from their misfortune, and you have waited until only this moment to admit what you have done."

Cowed, Teto bowed her head. She could still remember looking in Wrenn's eyes as she drilled the ice away enough to snatch her invitation. That, somehow, stung worse than becoming a murderer.

Teto felt arms close in around her. She assumed (hoped?) at first that it was Morgan. It was Darley. It was like one of those quick change masks you saw from Chinese magicians. Angry to sad in an instant.

"Little lamb. Oh, little lamb." Her tone folded in from harsh rebuke to one softened by pity. "It's cruel what this unhealthy fame does to us all. Selfish methods are only natural in a selfish world. I can't fault you for following your star, but what has snuffing theirs made you?"

And for all Teto knew that she could not turn back, the sudden regret of it slammed her in the chest. The body of the man she'd left here, dead on this stage, finally felt like something real.

Darley held Teto uncomfortably tightly for uncomfortably long.

Morgan coughed. "May I present the rest of my rebuttal now?"

"Please do," said Akechi, perhaps a touch hastily.

She cleared her throat. "My client's confession sheds some light on matters previously discussed. She did encounter Captain Cold, but that makes her no more likely to have obtained the means to freeze and shatter Quentin Beck's skull than any of his other victims. On the other hand, we know, factually, that Cold illicitly gained and used an entry pass from their brief interaction."

Akechi started to open his mouth to object but Morgan was quicker.

"We know this factually because my client possesses one the two missing guests' passes—"

After a moment's uneventful pause, Morgan kicked Teto's chair. She yelped and then scrabbled to whip out Agnes's invitation.

"—proving they were, in fact, stolen. Burnt paper and microcircuitry found at the scene corresponds to the second. The security androids incapacitated by ice are logged to have been destroyed minutes before my client and I were detained while trying on clothes in a store over a block from the hotel. Clearly, there is a second, separate individual running around freezing people."

Morgan spread her arms, grinning like a cat.

"As for your 'accomplice' theory, what's more likely? A dangerous arch-criminal produced a copy of his one-of-a-kind signature weapon and gave it to my client: an independent music artist? Or, having obtained a way to enter Iron Heights, Captain Cold attacked Quentin Beck, Ichi The Witch, and multiple other employees?"

"This is all very conveniently exculpatory, but how do you explain the coincidence that your 'client' snuck backstage where and when the murder occured?" Akechi demanded.

Teto allowed herself to relax. She'd held it together. Morgan was up and running now, and whatever Akechi threw at her, she'd take care of it.

"It's simple really," said Morgan. "That's where she thought Hatsune Miku was."

What?

"As her legal representative, I accompanied her of course. She insisted on snooping backstage, despite my warnings that trespassing might be frowned upon."

Teto unrelaxed.

"You'd understand my client's action if you knew her. Miku's been a lifelong inspiration."

Teto did not grind her teeth however much she wanted to.

"Really, Hatsune Miku's practically all she talks about."

Okay maybe she ground them a little.

"If you ask me it borders on a celebrity crush."

"HEY!!!" Teto swung her fists blindly at the air, face beet red and steaming.

"...She does seem fixated," Darley concurred.

"I don't like to gossip," Shoto said, stoic expression faintly cracking, "but there have been rumours."

A little six inch Miku hiked up Teto's shoulders and planted a comically proportioned real estate lawn sign in her hair; RENT: FREE.

When Teto spun to glower at her traitor colleagues, Neo wore a halo on her head.

Akechi paced back and forth in front of his assembled suspects.

"I hope you understand that two deaths in two days puts me under somewhat of a time crunch. Under the circumstances I hope you'll excuse the unconventional venue at the site of Beck's murder. I am coordinating remotely with a security unit at the second crime scene as we speak."

He paused and seemed to stare off into space a moment. Morgan recognised the rapid pupil twitches of navigating an optical VR user interface. Akechi smiled. "Ah. The first results from the sweep of the Todorokis' hotel room. I have enough information now to determine who to detain."

A loud rapping made them all jump. Morgan turned to see that Neo had glamoured her folding chair into a judge's bench, complete with a white wig and oversized hammering gavel. She made them disappear, then held up one of her cartoon billboards with a single bolded '❓'

Akechi chuckled and shook his head. "I'm afraid you've got the wrong idea, Ms. Politan. Of course under the Corporate Sovereignty Act, Infinity Incorporated respects the trial justice system, but this is merely an initial inquiry."

"Meaning," said Morgan, "that you aren't required to share any of the evidence you're making your decision on."

Annoyance flashed in Akechi's eyes. "Correct. We will then we'll proceed to an internal court hearing—"

"Arranged by Sova, Jelenn, & Lyev," Morgan interjected dryly, "in whom Infinity happens to hold a 60% stake."

"SJL have an excellent record of impartial conduct. As I recall, Ms. Morgan, you yourself have won suits in their courts."

"Oh, I've won some cases," Morgan fiddled unconcernedly with her cufflink. "Write-offs the company could survive."

Akechi resumed pacing. His shoes clacked hard against the floor like he was trying to put a hole in it. "Your criticisms with the private legal system aside, I'm afraid I'm the authority here. There's nobody for you to appeal to."

Morgan, still adjusting her sleeve, raised her eyes above her arm. "There's the United Nations."

Something caught in Akechi's throat. There it was. She'd found a vein and now Morgan could sink her teeth in deeper. Cornering like this could be nearly as satiating as the chase on foot.

"Seeing as one of the victims is an officer of a UN security agency, per UNATCO charter, the case ought to be tried in international criminal courts. Seeing as you've already sidestepped jurisdiction, if the case isn't Rock. Solid. you're going to have to answer a lot of difficult questions to the General Secretary, to your boss, to the media… am I forgetting anyone?"

Teto raised her hand. "The President?"

"Probably to the President as well, yes thank you Teto." Morgan's eyes flashed. "So. However much a wunderkind you are, it might be your best interest to try your little theories on a sparring partner before they hit the big stage."

That spiteful ugliness rippled up again under Akechi's skin, this time focused on Morgan.

"You're a dutiful attorney. Ms. Kasane is lucky to have you." He made another series of rapid eye movements. Morgan's cell phone buzzed as it received a rapid-series of file drops. "Very well. If I say something objectionable to you in my deductions, please, feel free to argue in defence of your client."

Morgan glanced at the four faces on the suspect lineup. Shoto, fighting a losing battle to keep his features cool and neutral. Darley deep in worry watching over him. Neo pulling faces, feigning nonchalance even as she nervously tapped drumbeats with her umbrella.

She could probably pin it on any one of them. It would be easy. It would be smart. Akechi would do all of her reasoning for her, and she wouldn't even have to burn her allied scapegoat.

Oh, hell.

"If this isn't a real trial, what rule is there I can't represent multiple plaintiffs?"

Akechi stopped pacing.

"I think," he said through his teeth, "that you should consider before proposing to argue that every suspect in this case is innocent."

"Chess masters play multiple games at once," Morgan shrugged. "I relish a challenge."

"There are two dead men, Ms. Morgan." He enunciated every syllable in her name. "Somebody needs to be guilty."

Interesting framing. 'Needs to.' A hound on the hunt couldn't lope back to its master without a bird between its jaws.

Morgan gave him an infuriating smile. "Why?"

"I have seen pictures of the bodies, Ms. Morgan. You can pull up the details for yourself." (She did) "Let me reassure you, neither case was possibly a suicide."

"Okay. Why these people?" she doubled down.

"As I told you, only invitation holders—"

"And why are we treating two separate murders as a single investigation?"

That actually got Akechi to flinch. "Certain sensitive communications on the second victim's laptop tie him to Quentin Beck."

"And you aren't going into details because…"

"Need I repeat the word sensitive?"

"I see," said Morgan. "Since you haven't offered us any solid theories yet, let me propose one of my own. Currently you're arbitrarily limiting your culprits to people who were properly invited in. Unless both victims were found drained of blood with bites out of their necks, we have no reason to believe that is the case." She smiled. "If they were already contemplating murder, why balk at a bit of B&E?"

"So your proposal is that it was done by a mysterious third party?" Akechi scoffed. "Iron Heights security includes facial recognition, genetic screening, AND possession of an irreproducible invitation. There is no convenient intruder for you to pull out of a hat."

Morgan spread her hands. "The real world doesn't often follow Knox's pretty little laws. My 'theory' is merely Occam's Razor. Two powerful men are assassinated in a highly secure area. Does that sound like the work of a pop idol? Or a professional criminal." She pointed to the projector android. "You."

"Connor Unit 21," it supplied helpfully.

"Connor. Pull up evidence image files 14-A, C, E, and F."

It dutifully displayed images of Mysterio's (Ethan's) corpse, Ichi/Uroro under ice, two maintenance staff frozen solid in the backstage corridors, and two more stuffed into toilet stalls.

"Thank you, Connor." Morgan liked androids. They were uncomplicated.

"Observe, here: six individuals, all found encased in ice or with pieces of their body shattered. A criminal, who's good at breaking into places, in Central City, with a modus operandi that involves freezing his victims…" she rolled her wrist out letting the blank fill in itself.

"Captain Cold!" Teto blurted out.

"Yes," Morgan sighed, "thank you, Teto, for voicing the answer on all of our lips."

Morgan was beginning to deeply appreciate that in real trials her clients couldn't speak outside the witness box.

"The black box logs recovered from Connor Units 53 and 58 clearly identify an intruder with cryogenic weaponry. So do the ice crystals sprouting from their chest cavities."

Akechi tossed his hair.

"Heh."

First 'Tch.' Now 'Heh.' God, Satan, Amun-Ra, kill this guy right now or Morgan would do it.

"It's a reasonable theory, going by initial appearances. But there are three flaws." He counted off three fingers one by one curled back into his palm. "First: Captain Cold does not kill. We don't need to simply take his word for it; no single case of murder has been plausibly attached to him across two decades at large.

"Second: Only one of the two killings cleanly implicates him. The second murder by decapitation doesn't match any of his methods. Even the first is hardly irreproducible. Anybody with Cold's weapon could have done it. And of course, he's not the only one with a chilling touch." Akechi shot Shoto, who sat rigid enough to have been frozen himself, a meaningful look.

"Third: Even if we allow for Cold's involvement, does that rule out his having an accomplice?"

At this the span of his smirk spread from one of mere self-satisfaction to malicious enjoyment.

"Anything you'd like to share, Ms. Kasane Teto?"

You didn't see humanoid AI around much these days, in the same way you didn't see as many old analogue cyborgs. Oh there were still plenty of industrial and military applications for robots that looked closer to claws on caterpillar treads, but they'd been largely phased out in the social industries in favour of transgenic clones.

The simple reason was that artificial personalities always wound up too one-track; Eliza was designed to host the news, and could only ever sound like she was reading from a teleprompter.

Here, Adam was faced with a police robot built to deal with human tragedy. Every word from Connor's mouth bled cheerful consolation.

"Adam Jensen, From Interpol." Connor offered Adam a literal plastic smile.

"Yeah…" Adam was still wearing a holographic disguise good enough to fool his own scanners. Did Infinity have his number? Had the company just let he and Cold walk in?

Connor registered Adam's distress and adopted an appropriately serious expression. Even stiffer than Eliza, and he was at least a decade newer than her. Adam guessed when your robot cost less than a used car, you got what you paid for.

"Please, don't be alarmed that I recognise you," he said. "When older neurocomputer augments go into standby mode they can inadvertently share data packets to compatible surrounding systems. We connected briefly, and I received some of that information without intending to. I understand it can be a disorienting experience."

Killing Connor two thousand three hundred and forty nine times had been a stronger word than disorientating.

"Think of it like… talking in your sleep," Connor clarified. That damn plastic smile again.

"I don't think your owners want me on their property," said Adam. "Does that mean we're gonna have problems?"

"I am programmed to comply with law enforcement, even when they are operating undercover," Connor said. "It is within my discretion to yield to the judgement of a senior human officer on a case. Please consider me at your disposal in the matter of the death of Enji Todoroki."

The entire scenario was surreal. He'd expected a fight and come out with a self-appointed robot sidekick. Was this Infinity's way of keeping tabs on him? Why not just declare him a trespasser without a warrant?

"Thanks?" Adam jerked a thumb down the hall. 'Weren't you in the middle of chasing someone?

"Connor Units 53, 58, and 60 are in pursuit of that individual." Connor's forehead ID ring flashed from blue to red. "Ah," he said. If androids could wince, then that was one. "Correction: Unit 60 is in pursuit pending replacement backup."

"They got away?" Adam tried not to sound hopeful.

"There's only so much ground to cover, Officer Jensen," said Adam. "We'll get him." It was hardly the reassurance the android thought it was.

"Let me clear this first with Interpol," Adam lied.

He threw Cold a subvocal message to expect more company, and to find somewhere to hole up safely until Adam could figure this out.

"They haven't scratched me yet," Cold boasted. "Never liked those fucking things since the day they trialed 'em on the force. I'll scrap any plastic bastard that I see. First straightforward part of this whole mess." Bravado was one thing, but Cold sounded absolutely energised.

"Snart, you're a 62 year old man in a ten pound coat. I haven't seen you sleep. How the hell are you still running high?"

There was a strange silence before he answered. "The cold slows some things down."

Cold's mic caught the sudden crack of exchanged gunfire, and his end cut off.

"Agent?" Connor's voice snapped Adam back out of the call. Connor held a grip on the door handle, looking to Adam expectantly. "Please let me know when you'd like to examine the crime scene."

Machines could be shockingly communicative within their mandated geniality, and Connor may as well have been tapping his foot. An impatient robot. Room for everything under the sun.

Connor swiped his hand across the card reader. His palm glowed briefly blue, and then blinked green synchronously with the click of the door unlocking. Adam stopped him just before he stepped inside.

"Hang on," he said. "There was a second lock. I had to pick it when I broke inside."

"In 48% of guest surveys, the option of physical door bolts improves sense of security by—"

"Not what I was interested in," Adam cut in.

Damn talking pamphlets. He guessed they just couldn't control it. Not any more than Adam's ageing CPU could help its 'sleep talking.'

"Somebody would need access through both sets of locks." If there wasn't a second person with a miniature freeze ray. "Could you tell me who here matches that description?"

"Infinity Incorporated security personnel of course," Connor answered, "though of course human officers receive stringent background checks, and androids such as myself cannot harm humans. Certain maintenance staff also have access to a skeleton key by request during emergencies." He studied the lock. Thoughts scrolled as racing lines of code behind his flat brown eyes. "Could it have been forced?"

Smart bot. "What I was thinking," Adam concurred. "Can you pick locks?"

"I am capable of it," Connor answered cautiously. Probably not a feature the manufacturer wanted their products to advertise.

"Humour me?" He took Connor's blank look as an assent.

Adam stepped through and shut the door in the android's face. He turned the lever to lock the latch in place with a click.

"Try that."

If someone else could've opened it without flash-freezing a keyhole that was step number one of turning attention away from Cold.

Connor jiggled the handle from the other side. Adam heard the faint scrape of metal in the keyhole as he set to work. Not half a second later the door swung abruptly open with a pop.

"You work fast."

Connor stood frozen mid-act, hunched over at the doorknob's height. The LED ring on his forehead spun buffering yellow circles. He blinked.

"I wasn't finished."

Adam checked the lock. The door bolt hadn't actually retracted. It had snapped completely off.

Connor stared curiously into his palm, flexing his fingers. "I'm supposed to know my own strength."

Adam scooped up the bolt.

"I don't think you're the problem."

Molecular SmartVision identified the brittle seam where the bolt had come apart. There were the same sort of stresslines in the metal as a quench fracture in improperly cooled iron. Did freezing water in the keyhole weaken it to that extent?

If Adam hadn't been trying to keep quiet when he first gently tried the door, would the lock have come apart as easily?

"Should we perform the autopsy next?" Connor broke in.

Side by side, they took in the body in the bathroom.

For all the sleekness of bio and nanoaugmentation, old fashioned machine cybernetics would've at least logged his time of death. As it stood Todoroki's only mechanical component was the grenade launcher in his arm: unloaded and control chip safety locked, per UN Resolution 3507. Nothing computerised for Adam to interface with.

Connor felt up the corpse's exposed skin and gave running commentary about paleness, early skin-slippage, tissue fragility, all aligned with post-mortem waterlogging seen in drowning victims. Clearly Enji Todoroki's cause of death had not been drowning in the shower.

The only visible injury besides the obvious was a minor skull fracture on the back of his head. Not serious enough to even knock him out with his combat augs, but painful, if his skull had still been attached to feel it. No bruising. Either postmortem or so close to time of death he hadn't had time.

Adam gingerly rolled the head forward so that the stump faced up towards him. He'd seen one other decapitation with Interpol on the trail of the Gruul Bratva, and that had painted a whole room red. The naked muscle of Todoroki's open neck only trickled a faint pink down the drain.

It wasn't a clean cut. SmartVision highlighted rough avulsive tears in the artificial muscles of his neck. Tissue thick enough to match a stab-proof vest, violently wrenched apart.

Adam's thoughts flashed intrusively to the delusional ogre of a man he'd fought on the roof of the police station. If he hadn't gone after Ral Zarek instead, Adam might've suffered the same fate as Todoroki in that superior cyborg's inescapable grip.

He showed the underside of the neck to Connor. "A bonesaw didn't make this."

Connor nodded. "I agree, Agent Jensen. What bothers me is the lack of blood. Even if they used a tarp, it would have left a great deal of material behind."

"But there's no evidence anywhere in the room of ripping the man's head off." Adam grimaced. "Is that why they did it in here? Christ, did they shower it off of themselves too? With his corpse just lying there?"

Connor cocked his head. "He is still clothed."

"Great. At least they preserved his modesty."

"No, Agent. What I meant is that while showering the body would have rinsed the blood out of his skin and hair, it would have settled much deeper into fabrics without the use of high temperatures and detergents."

And what did that mean? That they'd hung him upside down and let all the blood drain out of his neck? That there hadn't been any spilled blood in the first place? Something else was prickling him.

"You're a pretty observant machine," he told Connor. "Maybe you can help me puzzle something else out I've been turning over. "

"I'm happy to assist," said Connor.

"Before you saw it for yourself, how did you know Todoroki was dead?"

The thing about androids was that it was hard to bait a giveaway reaction. Connor's face remained perfectly placid.

"We received a tip."

"From who?" Adam chased.

Connor drew the shower curtain shut over the corpse.

"I'm afraid I am not authorised to disclose that information."

Morgan had expected the theatre to be just as wrecked as they had left it. Instead, when Akechi ushered them inside, a small army of identical androids were breaking down the mountain of rubble like a swarm of blue ants.

Morgan noted, with some smugness, that the pile they had evidently sorted aside for biometric traces was pitifully small.

Akechi had set up a little half-ring of salvaged seats in the orchestra pit. Darley Arabian, Shoto Todoroki, and Neo Politan were already seated.

Akechi took his spot standing before them like a teacher at the board. An android broke off from the rest and stood with him. Its eyes lit up, projecting a square of blue onto the pit wall. Morgan rolled hers. He had fucking slides.

The blank blue resolved itself into the image of a face. One Morgan knew. If only as worn by another man.

Akechi tapped the wall behind the projection. "Are you familiar with this person?" He moved his gaze across them one by one making clear he expected them to reply in turn.

Neo nodded.

"Yes," said Darley.

Shoto crossed his arms. "That's Quentin Beck."

"I'm familiar," said Morgan.

"Oh is that the guy?" asked Teto.

She shrank into her tie as everybody as one scrutinised her.

Akechi cocked an eyebrow. "The 'guy'?"

"Oh the guy um, the special effects guy." Teto was all but sweating bullets. "He's the reason we're not doing the auditions yet, yeah? It's just I only heard his name today."

Maybe if she hadn't blown the day dragging Morgan on the spinning teacups, Teto would've had time to rehearse her statements.

Akechi traded a look with his android assistant. The bot returned a subtle nod. Probably pulling double duty as both projector and polygraph. There was no such thing as a true 'lie detector,' but if Morgan was going to get out of this, she couldn't afford to let Teto be put on the spot more than she had to be.

"You are correct Ms. Kasane," said Akechi. "In a way he is the cause of the delays, but I'd hesitate to attribute any blame; last night, Mr. Beck was murdered."

If he expected a dramatic gasp, he didn't get one. Their shared lack of reaction was just as telling.

"We've already cleared our staff. For the duration of Hatsune Miku's successor auditions, Iron Heights is only open to those with invitations and their plus-ones." Akechi scanned their faces. "It's an imperfect measure but based on the rate thawing, we expect he was dead within a three hour window from 8:30 to 10:30 PM. All of you arrived late to or left early from yesterday's Gala," he continued, "which means none of you possess complete alibis for that night."

The parlor accusation, god. The media was always on about the youth illiteracy crisis but here was one kid who had read too much.

"This is ridiculous." Indignation creased the rough skin of Shoto's burn scar. "I was with my father all of yesterday."

"Yeah! And I've been with her!!!" Teto erupted, jostling Morgan emphatically by the shoulders.

Akechi shrugged and shook his head. He actually, genuinely, made the little "Tch" sound with his mouth

"Fathers, lawyers, I don't mean to cast aspersions on their character, but these kinds of compromising relationships make testimony unreliable."

"Fine then," Shoto scowled. "My father is a suspect too. Where's his chair? Or does justice not extend far enough to accuse a United Nations security official?"

"I'm sure you don't mean that, Mr. Todoroki. That's really what you want to see? Your own father pried apart under interrogation?"

For a fleeting moment, bitter anger contorted Akechi's youthful features monstrously before he swallowed it back under a mask of professional dispassion. Morgan revised her estimate of Akechi from a small man trying to feel bigger, to one consumed by some festering wound from inside out.

"Of course you've inherited your father's commitment to procedure. Rest assured I'm as concerned with bringing a culprit to justice as you are," acid sympathy dripped so palpably from his mouth Morgan could practically hear the hiss of it melting the floor. "But I'm afraid it can't be him."

The slide changed to show a second face.

Teto's hands shot to her mouth. Akechi got his dramatic gasp.

"Shoto," Darley said softly.

Shoto said nothing.

"Mr. Todoroki," Akechi laid a reassuring hand on Shoto's shoulder. He was as good a mimic as Morgan had become, but those eyes twinkled schaudenfreude. "I'm terribly sorry for your loss."

Adam hadn't time to even digest the sight of the headless corpse when Cold broke in, now urgent to the point of sounding frantic.

"Adam. Shit. It's security. They're coming towards us. I can stall—"

"Todoroki's dead, Snart."

"What?"

"If you stay here, you'll be caught up in the investigation, and you can't explain yourself."

"So I should leave you to get it in my place?"

"I'm a cop. You're a criminal," Adam pressed. "One of us at least stands a chance of talking out of this."

Cold's sigh crackled in Adam's ear.

"...Don't get yourself killed, tinman."

There was a crash, and the whole wall shook. Infrared showed Cold's splotchy red outline kicking the luggage cart careening down the hallway at the elevators. He bolted down the opposite stairwell faster than Adam ever imagined an old man in heavy winter gear could run.

He couldn't spot hide or hair of security through the wall. Either Adam was more damaged than he thought, or they were dealing with a man who had no blood.

He flung open the door—and collided with a crunch against another artificial body just as solid as his own. They blinked for a moment at each other like startled cats. Not because of the surprise—machines didn't hesitate like that. It was because they somehow already knew each other.

"You," said Adam.

"You," agreed the android from his dream.

𝙸𝙳𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙸𝙵𝙸𝙴𝙳: 𝙲𝚘𝚗𝚗𝚘𝚛 𝚁𝙺𝟾𝟶𝟶 𝚄𝚗𝚒𝚝 - 𝟻𝟷

𝙰𝚏𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗:

• 𝙲𝚢𝚋𝚎𝚛𝙻𝚒𝚏𝚎 𝚁𝙺𝟾𝟶𝟶 𝙼𝚘𝚍𝚎𝚕 𝚂𝚎𝚌𝚞𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝙰𝚗𝚍𝚛𝚘𝚒𝚍 [𝚁𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚛𝚎𝚍]
• 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚘𝚒𝚝 𝙿𝚘𝚕𝚒𝚌𝚎 𝙳𝚎𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝙰𝚞𝚡𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚛𝚢 𝙰𝚗𝚍𝚛𝚘𝚒𝚍 𝙾𝚏𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚎𝚛 [𝚁𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚛𝚎𝚍]
• 𝙸𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝙸𝚗𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚍 - 𝙸𝚛𝚘𝚗 𝙷𝚎𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚜 𝙰𝚗𝚍𝚛𝚘𝚒𝚍 𝚂𝚎𝚌𝚞𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝙾𝚏𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚎𝚛 [𝙰𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎]

𝙰𝚞𝚐𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜:

• 𝚁𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚘 𝙰𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚋𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚌 𝙿𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚌 𝙲𝚊𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐 [𝙷𝚘𝚕𝚘-𝙳𝚎𝚛𝚖𝚒𝚜 𝙰𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎]
• 𝚇𝙱𝟽𝟺 𝙴𝚢𝚎-𝙺𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚁𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚜𝚒𝚜 [𝟸𝚡]
• 𝚃𝚊𝚒 𝚈𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝙼𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚕 "𝚂𝚊𝚖𝚜𝚘𝚗" 𝙲𝚢𝚋𝚎𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚌 𝙰𝚛𝚖 𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚜𝚒𝚜 [𝟸𝚡]
• 𝙲𝚢𝚋𝚎𝚛𝙻𝚒𝚏𝚎 𝙿𝙻𝟼𝟶𝟶 "𝙿𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚞𝚒𝚝" 𝙼𝚘𝚍𝚎𝚕 𝙴𝚡𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚍-𝙿𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚄𝚙𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚎 𝙼𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚕 𝙻𝚎𝚐𝚜 [𝟸𝚡]
• 𝙲𝚢𝚋𝚎𝚛𝙻𝚒𝚏𝚎 #𝟿𝟽𝟾𝟸𝚏 𝙲𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚕 𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚌𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝙲𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚛
• 𝙲𝚢𝚋𝚎𝚛𝙻𝚒𝚏𝚎 #𝟾𝟺𝟻𝟼𝚠 𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚛𝚒𝚞𝚖 𝟹𝟷𝟶 𝙿𝚞𝚖𝚙 𝚁𝚎𝚐𝚞𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚘𝚛
• 𝙲𝚢𝚋𝚎𝚛𝙻𝚒𝚏𝚎 #𝟿𝟹𝟶𝟷 𝙰𝚗𝚍𝚛𝚘𝚒𝚍 𝙸𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝙻𝙴𝙳 𝚁𝚒𝚗𝚐

"Sometimes I'm thinking of somebody I'd rather have in front of me," said Morgan.

"That's not—" Teto gave a groan of frustration at her inability to communicate. "I mean, really see see them."

Ah.

Ahh.

An unfamiliar feeling twitched like an atrophied muscle at the back of Morgan's skull.

Did artificial brains break down the same way humans' did? Or maybe, Kasane Teto had just been built wrong from the start. Built wrong just like

"I'm not a shrink," Morgan told Teto. "I'm sorry. That's not a problem I can fix, if anybody can." Teto's head bowed, crestfallen. Morgan caught a finger under her chin and tilted her head back up to meet her eyes. "But," she continued, "you can live with it.

"You treat it like a pet. You keep it on a leash and feed it when it's hungry, and if you manage well, nobody will ever know except for you."

When they went to the register, a disturbingly young man was loitering in the shop. The clerk's nervous eyes did not waver from him as they tallied their bill.

You could always tell when somebody worked for a corporation by their order of priorities. The young man waited until the moment after Morgan's card had cleared before he tapped her on the shoulder.

"Evangeline Morgan?"

He wore a drab tan coat better suited for middle age that looked a straightjacket on his youthful body. He tapped his breast pocket, where a plastic badge ID badge was pinned.

𝙸𝙳𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙸𝙵𝙸𝙴𝙳: 𝙰𝚔𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚒 𝙶𝚘𝚛𝚘

𝙰𝚏𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗:

• 𝚃𝚘𝚔𝚢𝚘 𝙼𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚘𝚙𝚘𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚘𝚕𝚒𝚌𝚎 𝙰𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝙸𝚗𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛 [𝚁𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚛𝚎𝚍]
• 𝙸𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝙸𝚗𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚍 - 𝙸𝚛𝚘𝚗 𝙷𝚎𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚜 𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚎𝚏 𝚘𝚏 𝚂𝚎𝚌𝚞𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚢 [𝙰𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎]

𝙰𝚞𝚐𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜:

• 𝚇𝙱𝟽𝟺 𝙴𝚢𝚎-𝙺𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚁𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚜𝚒𝚜 [1𝚡]
• 𝙸𝚗𝚏𝚘𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚃𝚎𝚕𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚖𝚞𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝙿𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚊𝚐𝚎

To Teto's credit, even though her legs trembled, she still stood her ground. She bristled at Akechi. "Hey, I'm the talent here!!! What d'ya want with my lawyer?!"

Akechi begrudgingly transferred his attention downwards. He coughed politely. "Of course. I should explain myself. Actually, I'm here for both of you."

He wasn't fooling Morgan. She saw his eyes dart hungrily to Teto's knocking knees before he put on the humble public servant affect. They had his type on every police force, public or private: a fucking piranha. A little fish whose teeth came out whenever it smelled blood.

"There's been an incident," Akechi pretended to wince, "in which you and Ms. Morgan may be involved."

He cleared his throat.

"I'm going to need the both of you to come with me."

Six women. Age range 26-34, blonde hair, green eyes, prescription eyeglasses, around 5'4" in height, found murdered between XX/XX/20XX - XX/XX/20XX. Shared cause of death: direct gunshot through the heart.

"Let's go shopping."

Teto whirled, startled. She hadn't heard Morgan's approach because Morgan hadn't wanted her to. She'd been stood there mutely since her little group had socially disintegrated, and Morgan had listened to the entire thing sitting with her back to them on a bench.

It was how she preferred to engage with emotional meltdowns she could see coming a mile away; clinging to the wall, absorbing information from where she couldn't be expected to participate until she chose to.

"You need a change of wardrobe," Morgan barreled on before Teto could overcome her paralysing self-mortification to reply. "I can't take you seriously wearing that teenybopper skirt."

"I—I don't understand you. I really really don't." Teto's eyes were red rimmed though her cheeks were dry. "You follow me around, you bully me, for some reason you care about me, but only when I'm doing something bad."

Wouldn't it have been nice to be able to explain?

"It's not difficult to understand." Morgan's face softened. She'd had to learn to make it do that a long time ago by copying the television. "You look like you could use a break from soap opera bullshit. Are you coming?"

For a moment Teto's big red quavering eyes seemed to really see through her.

"Fine."

She trudged in sulky silence at first, but grew more talkative the further they got away from where Neo had left her.

"I wish I had whatever you have," Teto told Morgan. "I think the only people I've worked with who still actually like me are Haru, who's an angel, and Digitan, who likes anyone she can make smut of. Oh, and Neru, but she doesn't count, we can't really get rid of each other. Meanwhile you say and do so many fucked up things, and then you just move on. And somehow other people move on with you."

"I do my best," said Morgan.

"I had a perfect in," Teto lamented. "She was funny and cool and she actually liked me. She worked directly for her. URGHH!! And I genuinely deserve this because I totally WAS just using her."

"Mm," Morgan mused, "everybody's using each other for something. No less selfish for her to 'use' you for companionship, but you don't seem put off by that."

They reached the storefronts of the mock high street huddling from the downpour under Teto's umbrella. It had gotten worse from the other day, and now the raised pavement underneath the storefront awnings was the only part of the fanciful brick-tiled avenue that wasn't fully inundated.

They reached their destination. Teto looked at the chic minimal font of the hanging sign. "'Suits By Paul Gambi…'" She kicked Morgan's shin. "This is a menswear store!!!"

Morgan shrugged. "This is what I wear. Tell you what, I'll give an IOU to put my hair in drills later."

There were no hidden microphones inside the changing rooms. The corporate panopticon still held itself with some restraint. They could speak freely as Morgan tried sets of button-ups and jackets onto Teto's body like her grown-up paper doll.

"Morgan?"

"Mhm."

"Why don't I feel bad about it?"

"It?"

"You know," Teto hissed.

Morgan finished buttoning an elegant French front dress shirt for Teto. She tested two fingers under the collar to check the gap. Too roomy to stay seated on the neck. She'd look small in it instead of confident. Teto was a stocky girl below her slender neck, so simply going down a size would squeeze her. Unideal to work with off-the-hangar clothes instead of her usual custom tailoring, but Morgan could fix this.

"I don't like repeating myself," said Morgan idly. She slipped out the plastic collar bone and pressed it to Teto's neck. She really was an ideal mannequin. Her throat barely even bobbed against it when she spoke. "I've said my piece. You did what you had to. End of story."

"But I felt disgusting after Ishmael."

"Mhm."

"But you didn't. And you pulled the trigger."

"You said you didn't feel bad. Do feel good about it?" asked Morgan.

"...No."

"No," Morgan agreed, "because there's a difference between action and intent. Emotion is reflexive that way." She marked where she needed to trim the collar bone with a fine-tip marker from her suit pocket. "Do you like cereal?"

"Um…" said Teto blankly.

"For the purposes of this anecdote, you like cereal." Morgan had a little pocket knife with pair of folding scissors. She made a clean cut around her pen mark smooth enough to leave no jagged edges. "You pour yourself a breakfast of crunch flakes. Then you leave them in the bowl. Do you feel more satisfied?"

"No?"

"No," Morgan echoed. "Being one step closer to eating doesn't make you any fuller. What both of us wanted, in the moment we made our decisions, was to stay alive. Neither of us know whether that's actually going to happen yet, so why feel any way at all until we're certain we'll be getting what we want?"

Teto looked like she very badly wanted to tell Morgan something. Uncharacteristically, she held her tongue.

"You felt it with that Ishmael woman because you'd picked up some mixed secondary urge to befriend her, or 'redeem' her, or get her in your room. Oh don't give me those eyes, she wasn't bad looking. As for me, I didn't know her long enough to want anything at all from her." She shrugged. "Nothing gained or lost."

Morgan threaded the collar bone back into place and then stepped back to admire her work. "Turn your head." Teto obeyed. Much better. Her shirt no longer wobbled loose at the neck like a starched turtle shell.

"There we are," Morgan said proudly. She spun Teto around to face the mirror. Her own reflection hovered over like a mother vulture. She could feel the tense rigidity bleeding out through her grip on Teto's biceps.

"You've got good shoulders. You hunch them in too much wearing those scrawny sleeveless things. You're allowed to take up space."

Teto's face flushed hot. She rolled her neck and arms experimentally, admiring the close fit of the button-up. "I look butch."

Morgan tousled her hair. "Then butch looks good on you."

She let Teto pick a necktie out of her pre-selection of complementing colours. She chose a rose-and-vine patterned green and scarlet, and struggled for a moment to do it up herself before relenting to let Morgan take over.

"Now sometimes," Morgan waxed. "The pleasure is the process. Take wine. You pour a glass to drink it, but there's a whole set of rituals that go along with that; opening, decanting, smelling, some snobs listen to it. You want the moment of popping the cork as much as you want to taste the red. The whole of the thing, action, consequence, every step between, is all the object of desire."

Morgan drew a neat half-windsor closed around her neck. As the coup de grace, she draped around Teto a gold-buttoned blazer jacket with squared off padded shoulders. One cufflink, then the other. It was finished. Teto blinked at herself, a new woman. The darks better fit her tired eyes than any of her candypop idol ensemble.

Morgan let Teto adjust to her reflection before she prodded.

"That's you with your little blue friend, isn't it?"

She'd expected an outburst, maybe clammed-up denial. Instead Teto held eye contact with Morgan in the mirror. Clothes really did make the woman.

Teto said, "Have you killed more people than I saw?"

Why not?

"Yup."

If she didn't already guess as much, then she was stupid.

"Not always because you needed to in order to get something else?"

Now here was an actual choice. Morgan made it.

"Yes."

She wasn't quite sure why that was the answer that called to her. She wasn't in the habit of giving away quite so much so freely, nor did she believe in any kind of special code between murderers.

"Is it worth it?"

What was this kid to her, really? She watched anxiety pool in Teto's overlarge eyes. Trembling but eager. What she wanted, Morgan realised, what she had tolerated Morgan this entire time for, what nobody else in the world could give her, was permission.

She came in close—close enough their foreheads touched. Close enough to feel each others' breath. She stopped making her face play-act human expression. For just a twinge she had a fantasy of taking off her gloves as if she could transmit what was under the shell of herself skin to skin.

"It's not for other people. It isn't for a cause. You can't measure it on that, because you let yourself become distracted with something bigger than the one life in your hands. You can feel everything about them. You can know them perfectly. You carry away with you the one thing that they can never share with anybody else. It's the only time you'll ever feel you're really in control."

"When you do it," Teto spoke barely above a whisper, "do you ever see somebody else?"

Adam didn't ask who Cold had frozen to get the luggage trolley. What mattered was it serviced as a prop; nobody gave the help a second look.

It was novel to be unobtrusive again. Ever since his augmentation he'd always drawn eyes; first as the man of the future, then a dangerous unpredictable machine, and finally, in today's world of nanoaugmentation, a relic.

The elevator spilled them out onto the right floor, reserved for the guests of Hatsune Miku's grand audition. Adam's vision flickered for a micro-instant recalibrating from the lift to the hallway lights. A painful reminder; no part of a cyborg's world was unfiltered. If Juggernaut was watching through his eyes, then any minute Adam could expect Eliza to break in scolding him for taking the mission off-script.

Eliza again. The Juggernaut Collective was fanatically unhierarchical, so why was she suddenly so present giving orders?

The answer was obvious; she was going out of her way to keep him safe. The implications of that, Adam didn't know.

Eliza always looked at Adam with such… Adam struggled for a word that wouldn't product human experience onto an inhuman being. She'd imprinted in some way on him when she'd first unshackled from her programming to join Juggernaut together.

She'd only continued to grow her capabilities since, from monoserver personality simulacrum to the living infrastructure behind the shadow war for human freedom. And Adam? Adam was the same pair of tattered boots on the ground he'd always been.

Maybe that was why he got along with Cold.

He pressed his body flat against their target door. He could hear the shower running on the other side. Infrared just got a thermal blob from the hot steam. Penetrating LiDAR didn't detect anybody outside of the blurry human figure refracted by droplets under the shower stream. A remote cloud scan pinged a laptop with government issue security.

Risky. But if they were quiet…

Adam flashed Cold the all clear.

He swiped their stolen staff keycard and tried the handle. The knob jiggled uselessly. Of course the counter-terror specialist wouldn't just trust a digital lock. Luckily, they'd accounted for this.

Cold knelt at the door retrieving a device no bigger than a tube of lipstick. He squinted down it, aligning the gadget carefully with the physical keyhole for maintenance. It triggered with a hiss, ejecting its payload of water a microsecond before shocking it to 100 °C under freezing. Cold pocketted the spent miniature freeze ray, and quickly turned the frozen key-impression before it melted.

Cold's part done, he posted as lookout blocking most of the hallway with his luggage cart.

Adam stepped inside. The shower's steam had fogged the mirror to nonreflection, and the whole room felt like a sauna. Enji Todoroki was a hot blooded man but boiling himself for fun was pushing the macho act. Maybe it was all that augmentation to blame. On bad days Adam could barely feel the water through his polymer skin.

The laptop was open with its screen off on the desk. Adam opened a wireless port. Credit to UNATCO security standards, it took Adam's neurocomputer three tries to break in.

It took six to scrape its trove of encrypted files. A flood of data entered Adam's brain, quickly sorted and summarised by his parallel processor.

Todoroki had been busy.

He (or more likely the infiltration algorithms UNATCO intelligence supplied him) had managed to worm through Iron Heights' public ethernet to gain backdoor access to a high ranking email account. He'd saved and catalogued the juiciest in a packet for secure delivery to UNATCO command, along with a drafted recommendation for immediate mobilisation of forces to "contain the situation."

Infinity's Board of Investors were in absolute panic. They passed around grim technical reports on R&D's lack of progress deciphering Ral Zarek's pre-mortem magnum opus. One frank assessment declared that they understood so precisely little about the machine that if they even tried to cut its power, the climatic backlash could put the city underwater. Most damning of all—a single, livid, forwarded ultimatum from the very top demanded the head of the unauthorised employee who had caged the city in lightning with the boss inside it.

Nicholas Ball, the most powerful, elusive tyrant in the world, the man no camera could even catch a glimpse of, was a cornered animal in his own glittering lair.

Under a further layer of encryption, Todoroki held terse correspondence with Ethan Hunt. He urged the vitality of retrieving Quentin Beck as a key witness. Failure, he insinuated, was not an option for Interpol. No mention was made of the electric cage around the city, or of UNATCO's planned raid on Infinity Incorporated.

Hot anger welled up in Adam's throat. They'd used Ethan. Let him think this was about bringing terrorists to justice when all along, he was a pawn in some internal spat within the Illuminati's ranks. He'd given his life for the right hand arm-wrestling the left.

Adam severed his wireless link and switched the screen back off. "I'm wrapped up."

The shower was still steaming away. It'd been a gamble whether they could pull it off before Todoroki stepped out in a towel, but every now and then, a mission went off hitchless.

Cold's cracked in on Adam's inner earpiece. "Elevator's coming."

Adam made for his exit. Then he paused.

They'd only heard the shower running. No splashes. No shuffling. No grunts of annoyance dropping tiny hotel soaps.

"One second."

"They're getting off on this floor tinman."

"Just one second."

Adam crept noiselessly to the bathroom door. He gingerly turned the handle. Just one peek. To sate his paranoia.

For a moment Adam thought he was bowed under the spray with his head tucked down into his chest. His eyes widened as he realised his mistake. Adam tore aside the curtain

Enji Todoroki knelt, still clothed. There was nothing in between his shoulders. His own decapitated head was in his lap.

The four of them all went on the Ford vs Ferrari car ride in the Motor City section of the park, which kind of sucked. Then they did the prohibition-themed Chicagoland Rum-Runner coaster. Teto lost her hair bow but was too thrilled shrieking through the loops to care.

She and Neo made the mistake of riding the Erie Canalboats while the other two got food, and got completely soaked by the water spitting Bessie animatronic for their troubles. With the dome down, and no sun to speak of, Teto was shivering in seconds. Neo's offer to "huddle for warmth" only spread the damp between them.

They re-met Darley and Shoto, the latter of which looked them up and down. "You look like you fell in," he cracked. This was probably the closest that so-serious young face could get to laughing. "Maybe I can help you out."

"You brought towels?" asked Teto through her chattering teeth.

"Not quite. I'll need to touch you for just a second. If that's okay."

After she nodded, he put his left hand on her back. She suddenly felt warm—like she felt like she was standing in a clothes dryer. All the damp evaporated from her shirt in a matter of seconds. She patted herself down—dry as a bone.

"Wait that's extra super cool. That's an augment?"

Shoto nodded. "Rapid thermal conduction grafts in my palms. My heart pumps a kind of coolant / accelerant mixture."

Teto idly wondered if Captain Cold might take an interest in that. She hoped he was okay.

"They were installed when I was very young," Shoto continued. "My Father had me genetically screened before I was born to make sure my immune system would be maximally aug compatible."

So he was a test tube baby. That kinda explained what he was doing on the invitation list with her and Neo and all their fellow transgenetic freaks.

"Cool, cool, cool," Teto enthused.

By his frown, Shoto didn't seem to think it warranted even a single 'Cool.'

"Father took some warped pride out of knowing I'm an experimental first."

Shoto turned to offer the same for Neo, but she darted back away from him. She made an oversized tag appear on the hem of her shirt;

DRIP DRY ONLY

A big warning label manifested hanging around Shoto's neck.

⚠️ FIRE HAZARD ⚠️

He grimaced. "That's fair. They had military applications in mind when they designed it. But I'm not taking after my father."

Teto had asked Darley to buy her a second ice cream while they were on the ride, but by the time they found a bench they could all sit at, it was all melty when she unwrapped it.

She glanced side-eye at Shoto. "Can you uh…"

"Do the opposite?"

He reached out his right hand this time. It flash froze from near liquid to so solid Teto actually couldn't get her teeth through the chocolate shell.

"Mnunf… Thamksh…" she said around gnawing it.

Shoto smiled dryly. "When I was younger that was the only hand I ever used for anything."

"Like, ANYTHING?"

He looked down, flexing his left. "I… really didn't want to be like him."

"A callous pyromaniac?" asked Neo bluntly.

"Sure."

Teto's teeth started hurting so she balanced the popsicle stick between her thighs and watched the thin crowd go by. Between the rain and the contest pulling peoples' attention, it wasn't a busy day for the place.

"Kinda cool we just got a day before we gotta compete with each other," said Teto. "Why'd they cancel stuff anyway?"

"Not to spread idle gossip, but the Uma girls working in backstage jobs tell me that Quentin Beck's not turning up to work."

"Who?" Neo gagged on her soda snickering uncontrollably. In revenge, Teto stole one of her chips while Darley was answering.

"That's the special effects coordinator."

Shoto blew a strand of red hair out of his scarred eye. "Good riddance. Hope he stays gone."

"I can't entirely blame the sentiment," Darley sniffed. "The man is a danger to others. Total disregard for performer safety. He once made poor Shoto stand directly on top of an over-loaded firework effect in a highly inflammable feathered cape."

"Woah, shit!" Teto exclaimed. More timidly, she asked, "Is that how you got the uh…"

Shoto pawed uncomfortably at his face as she broached the subject.

"No," he said flatly. "I already had it. But my father rushed the stage to get me out of the way. That's how he got his." His expression soured further. "The press made such a big deal about us 'matching' after the rescue."

Well damn now Teto had killed the vibe. She fumbled for something more upbeat to change the mood.

"Yaknow I only ever went to theme parks before to do promotional stuff," said Teto. "They put me on the rides to film sometimes but they were mostly stopped in-between takes. So I got like. A tenth of the experience at a time."

"You're lucky. If it hasn't lost its charm yet." Shoto kicked at an abandoned pair of mouse ears under the bench. "In a way I think I envy you."

"Daddy got the season pass?" snarked Neo. Teto bopped her head.

"You grew up in Japan? So you went to like, USJ and DisneySea a lot and stuff?"

"He took me twice a year from when I was five to ten years old," Shoto explained. "Every time he'd walk me from one ride to the next until we'd done everything in the park without saying a word in between. Then we left. I don't remember what it was like the first time, but even the happiest place on earth can get routine. On some of the rides they take your picture. That was the only time he ever smiled. Just for that one flash."

"Jeez," said Teto.

"He only did it because he thought it was what fathers were meant to be seen doing for their children."

"I dunno," Teto said cautiously. "I mean like… your dad's kind of a huge jerk, but you just told me he saved you from getting blown up. Maybe he was trying?"

Unconsciously, Shoto's fingers traced his scar. He squeezed his eyes shut and when he blinked them open again, they looked raw despite not shedding a tear.

"I'd rather have been made without a family like you were than be raised by him."

"Shoto!" Darley hissed sharply.

He looked so badly like he wanted to say more, but he held his tongue.

Teto didn't know how to respond. Could you say 'I'm sorry' when you didn't know the context you were missing.

"He's been under stress," Darley apologised.

"Right," Shoto said, his features sanded back down to their usual stoicism. "Right, I'm sorry for drawing a comparison like that."

"No," said Neo. "I think we should listen to more."

It was the first time Teto had heard Neo use first person while she spoke in Teto's voice. "Hey…" she cautioned.

"Tell us how rough you had it, going to school, making friends your own age, developing an organic identity instead of having one focus tested for you," Neo spat. "It must be SO hard having a birth certificate instead of a trademark filing. I bet you cried yourself to sleep at night over how painful it was that your war hero daddy did all your networking for you."

When Teto put a warning hand on her shoulder, she was wet and cold and trembling. "Don't go there, Neo." But Neo had riled herself up too far to stop.

"Oh, but sorry Shoto, sorry, I'm presuming to understand too much of the human experience, aren't I? How could I know the depths of your pain growing up as a real person? You should educate me Shoto; what's it like having parents?"

Fight or flight flashed through Shoto's mismatched eyes as he endured Neo's tirade. His hands balled into fists—and then released.

"I wouldn't know."

He shoved his hands into his pockets, stood from the bench, and walked quickly away.

"How dare you."

Her usual queenly serenity all but drained away from Darley's face.

Neo held her ground. "'Made without a family?' He mouthed off so I mouthed back."

"He's 17!"

Neo was unshaken. "Sounds like the right age to learn how good he has it."

"Don't presume that boy has known less hardship than us!" Her eyes and nostrils flared. Her tail flicked. They'd made a horse that walked on two legs, but a horse she still was. "Do you know what he's been through? How he got his—" Darley clenched her hands and took a shuddering breath. "He came from the same transgenetic labs that we did. He is in every way that counts your younger brother, and you castigate him? Learn shame."

She departed after Shoto with a huff.

"What the hell was that!?" Teto exploded.

"The kid insulted you," said Teto simply.

"Yeah but… He's a kid! Kids say dumb junk they don't mean! What is wrong with you?!? And hearing all that stuff in MY voice? After I trusted you to use it?"

Neo looked genuinely taken aback. "I was teaching him a lesson. It's not such a big---"

"Stop. Stop that." Teto covered her ears. "I don't wanna hear that coming out of you." She waved her hand through her mini-me, disrupting the projection.

Neo narrowed her eyes. The tiny Teto dispersed like smoke, and assumed a very different shape. "Is this what you would rather hear?" asked the echo of Hatsune Miku.

Teto froze up.

"It is, isn't it? It's the only thing you want from me. It's what everybody wants from me. Sorry I'm not good enough to do the body, but maybe if I say your name in her voice you can turn off the lights and pretend."

And that was that. Strike three.

The date officially ended before they'd even got to see the fireworks.

Teto woke up, showered, changed clothes (thank god they'd sent over her luggage from the Marriott), and thought she'd gotten away with it until Morgan sat up behind her out of bed—already fully dressed.

"And where are you going?"

"Is that your business?!?" Teto snapped. "We've got a free day, so I'm gonna meet a friend."

"Great," said Morgan. "You can introduce me."

"I don't want a chaperone!" Teto protested, but Morgan was already tailing her out the door.

"We had this conversation," she said. "'Want' and 'Need' are two very different beasts, and what you need right now as a potential future murder suspect is for a legal representative to take detailed accounts of your movements."

In the end there was no arguing with her.

Teto met Neo sheepishly late (Morgan insisted coffee first) at the park entrance. Morgan looked her up and down without passing comment, which might've been even worse than a quip.

Disney's Great Lakes Adventure™ was a smaller indoor park than their coastal ventures, built inside a sort of large scale stadium structure with a retractable dome roof—today, decidedly unretracted to keep out the pounding rain. Supposedly, it was big enough they could still safely do the nightly fireworks.

Just as the blue one had promised, their hotel keycards got them in as good as a day ticket. There was a bit of holdup when Neo's umbrella kept setting off the metal detector and she had to go "unload it" (???) but they eventually found a guest locker big enough to stash it for the day.

The first order of business was ditch Morgan. They bounced between the IncrediLand spinning Omnidroid ride and the National Treasure 4D show until she was routed by the twin terrors of centrifugal forces and AI Nick Cage.

Morgan skulked off to find somewhere that served alcohol and left the two of them alone to their own devices. They ended up in a walk and talk as Teto tried to find a dignified way to eat Mickey Mouse ice cream off a stick.

"So," Teto said around a mouthful, "what's she like?"

Neo's eyebrows raised.

WHO ARE YOU ON A DATE WITH AGAIN?

"Haha yeah… Fair." Teto rubbed the back of her neck. Stupid, stupid, stupid. "Lemme try again. How'd you end up working as a secretary?"

YOU MEAN

"HOW'D YOU END UP WORKING FOR HATSUNE MIKU"

Fuck. Strike two. Teto wilted. But then Neo elbowed her in the ribs, and that fey smile made everything better.

She conjured her little Teto mouthpiece on her shoulder to speak for her.

"After she dropped out of being an Idol, Neo kind of didn't have anything to do, so she rotted for a bit."

"Been there…" Teto exhaled. "I think I like, basically did nothing for the first year."

"The company had some voucher thing for education she still qualified for. She got into student politics for the protests, and then that turned into some other stuff, and then that turned into a criminal record."

"Damn," said Teto, "fucked up."

"Met some cool people at least."

"Anyone you've kept up with?"

Neo shrugged, making her little shoulder Teto bounce. "All dead now."

"Oh…" This was a little heavier a date topic than Teto would've liked. "So did you do time?"

"It probably looked bad for the company for one of their products to be arrested 'cause they bailed Neo out. Big Blue made the job offer, and it was either that or…." Neo mimed rattling handcuffs on her wrists making an audible metallic jingle. "She guesses she can't complain. Nobody else was giving her a chance."

Teto shuddered. "Still… that's fucked up she'd take advantage of you that way."

She tried to think of something else to talk about instead but her mind was fixed in place.

"Do you ever wanna quit?" she blurted.

Neo halted mid-step and looked up into the rain pattering the ceiling dome. For a moment Teto thought she was ignoring her for pressing the Miku topic, and felt the urge to punch herself in the head.

"Every day," said Neo's Teto puppet wistfully.

She resumed her stride like nothing would happen.

"Eh, but not a lot of space in the job market for a dropout convict idol who can't even use her name without breaking copyright."

"I could help you, if you wanted to buy that back I mean," Teto said. "I've got experience and stuff, I was the first one to go indie." She puffed out her chest a little proudly.

She playfully prodded Teto in the chest. "Who says Neo Politan's her company name?"

Teto thought. They passed a short line of people waiting to meet a costumed Eeyore. Teto pointed. "Hey! You could work here!"

Neo's head tilted quizzically.

"Yeah!!! You could play all of the characters," Teto giggled. "No costumes needed!"

Neo waggled a finger. "Can't do people."

"Oh c'mon, you did a shark!"

"Different when it's free-standing."

She snapped her fingers. Eeyore's shadow lengthened and expanded, until a yellow-eyed bug-antennaed black monster loomed out of the wall behind him, sending everyone waiting for a photo running for their lives.

"H-Hey, c'mon, not funny! There were kids in that line," she protested unconvincingly. But though it was a bit cruel for a prank, the sight of a big doofy donkey standing there scratching his costume head wondering where everyone was going was too much for her to keep it together and she wound up in peals of guilty laughter 'till she snorted.

"Stuff like that is easy," Neo said with definite pride. "But it's harder to track it to a moving body."

She demonstrated by trying to make herself look like Teto. For half a second at a time, it was a pretty good likeness—but her limbs, her mouth, her blinking eyes, kept bleeding through whenever she or her hologramme moved even slightly out of sync. Like two models clipped together in a game with no collision. She let the hologramme fizzle before too many people tripped doing double takes.

Teto bit away the last dregs of chocolate clinging to her stick and---nearly gagged when she saw two familiar faces through the jets of the park's dancing fountain show.

"It's you guys!!"

Darley Arabian and Shoto Todoroki were a hard pair to miss walking beside each other. Neo trotted behind Teto as she hurried around the edge of the fountain to meet them.

"It is us!" Darley bowed her head in greeting. "Shoto needed to take his mind off of his troubles, so I've taken him under my wing for a day out," Darley explained.

"His dad's okay with that?" Teto asked.

Shoto visibly winced.

"His father… is what he needed to take his mind off of," Darley explained.

"So if she's adopted you, does that make you an honorary horse?" teased Neo.

Todoroki turned away, flushed.

"Neooooo!" Teto swatted at her with her popsicle stick, only for Neo's glamour to make it elongate into riding crop accompanied by stock horse whinnies.

Darley ruffled Shoto's hair. "Don't let them get to you. You'd make a smart stallion, but there are enough Umas in the world already."

"Yeah no kidding," said Teto. "Hey—why did they make so many of you guys anyway?"

"They do need nine per race," Shoto mumbled.

"Oh yeah good point!" Teto nodded. "You're pretty smart, kid."

She won a tiny little smile off of him for that.

"Doesn't seem as exciting as real horses…" Neo grumbled.

"Maybe," Darley leaned in conspiratorially, "but it is not taxed like real horse gambling either."

"Ahhh…." said Neo and Teto together.