She walked with purpose through the hall as she got closer to the conference room in city hall. How could they not come to her about this, a spur of the moment press conference to set citizens at ease when we don't even know if we're correct in the analysis. She was calling her friend Tom Fisher, a county commissioner for one of the cities that these slew of suicides did not touch. He eventually picked up, "we're on break here, are you coming? You were a DA and you're head detective on this case. If you show up you'd better have some answers for them because the county mayor didn't."
She sighed and grunted, "Who's idea was this?" The man was silent for a while, his guilt audible. "Don't tell me… what were you thinking?"
"I wasn't okay, I didn't expect them to take me seriously when I suggested it. Now we have the police chief out here and even he doesn't have much to say."
"I'm on my way, stay on the phone, I want to hear everything." She commanded.
In the conference hall the local government and law enforcement were trying their best to mend the situation. "The families of those lost will be aided through these hard times, but we can say with almost certainty that these were not murders this man spreading the idea there may have been foul play is probably in denial or is trying to make light of their troubles." The police chief said but in the middle of saying it he received a text but ignored it.
Unfortunately several people in the crowd also got the same message, "Liar? The police don't know anything? Look at the feet." Several reporters joined in until it became a cacophony of disgruntled and curious voices clashing to be heard.
Suddenly their presentation was taken over as the screen switched to one of a man, some guy in an all black lightly armored full body suit with a black helmet to match, standing over what looked like a corpse under a coat, "This isn't for the faint of heart. First and final warning. This foot here-"
The chief couldn't believe his eyes. The plain room, the tools on the desk, "That's the morgue. Get someone down there now!!!"
In the morgue the man walked over to the corpse and picked up its foot to show the camera, "you may mistake this discoloration as some bruising but due to no resistance it's written off as just possible damaging from their fall on to the tracks. I cover the rest because the rest of this fine young woman is mashed into paste. She's was so badly crushed that it was impossible to see if anything was in her system… for them maybe, I was able to find traces of an experimental drug from Cola-Citri. I don't have hard evidence now but I will-" the audio and video cut out as the man smiled. "Now." The room blacked out, "ARA! Way out, NOW!" The man shouted.
A digital woman appeared before him, "
as he rushed down the hall taking a left into an empty room with a window. He leaped out of the window landing half a second later on his feet already running towards a bike a whole football field away. He was able to cross the distance in a near inhuman amount of time.
He saw a man… he stomped his foot on the man's face his nose letting loose a loud crack as the bone snapped, "broken nasal arteries, fractured nose, boot print here, looks… size 13, large man then, probably 6'3 or higher that being the average height for someone of his shoe size, from the indentation around the skull… must have stepped with a force of 7000N… most men his size are around 200 pounds but to be able to stomp like that he'd be closer to a heavy weight in wrestling. He'd either have to be super strong or super large." The Black Knight shook himself, breaking out of his mental palace, the name he gave to the place that he would often go to to analyze something. It was a digital world fed to him through his BCI(Brain computer interface) and lenses that directly display this world on to his eyes, his HUD. It had super imposed itself on to the room the moment he started analyzing the scene. "Tell me what we have ARA, give me a status."
The pleasant sensual voice of his Augmented Reality Assistant entered his ears. "Reconstruction incomplete boss." She said last word sarcastically, "I need more information, this facility is… old school, you'll have a better time finding their tapes so we can work from there." He shrugged as she mentioned it, he figured this would be the case, it's the reason he brought the modified tape converter, but it never hurts to try. "I picked up vital signs when scanning the supposed corpse, his heart is still beating and he's still breathing."
"I know… I heard him. I'll call an ambulance after we're done here." He knelt down and touched the poor trampled man's chest.
"Vitals have been updated. He will live if treated soon."
"Then I'll make sure to hurry." He rushed down the hall, his the end of his coat fluttering behind him as he ran like Bambi did from the death of her parents, fast and focused on getting out of there quickly. He made it to the security room and went to open the door but it was locked. He proceeded to pick the lock and opened the door finding a man and woman talking over some clearly cold coffee. They turned and noticed him but by the time they did he was already in action, in the blink of an eye he had covered the small 15 foot distance and had already slammed their heads into the desk. He felt bad about it but his body was moving on autopilot as he slipped small amounts of alcohol into their mouths drinks and even injected them with a little. "When they wake they will only remember the door opening and then passing out. He called the front desk from their walkie to get them to rush some guards to the room, "Hehe, you guys, I think I see *Hic* what looks like, hehe, that's got to be a person. Looks so real." He made sure to slur his words as best he could.
"Jacob? Sending someone right up." He quickly grabbed tapes the entire conversation and had begun copying and converting them with a small gadget he had pulled out, it looked like a small new age cassette to MP3 converter with some… minor alterations. For one it seemed to expand to fit the size of the cassettes and it didn't download to a flash drive or MP3 player, no it seemed to be connected to his HUD somehow. "This enough for you?" His gravely voice seemed not to carry in what he now realized was a large open room, only noticing the size of the room when he realized that he may need to lower his voice due to the pitch being carried more than intended due to the minor echo normally imperceptible to people who aren't listening for it. "Hmm… why have such a large room if there is only this small wall of monitors? He searched the closets in the back only to find sleeping members and weapons, "so this is where their guards stock up? For this floor at least- wait."
"For someone with an iq over 300 you seem to forget the most important thing all the time."
He sighed, it wasn't that he was bad at securing the perimeter okay… he just didn't always think about his surroundings especially in the pitch black okay. He rolled his eyes as he yanked open the ones with people in them infecting them with some alcohol as well feeding it to them as he injected them with a low amounts of his home brewed tranquilizer. "Clear. No one will wake up before I'm gone."
A translucent blue woman looking like a young woman with dark hair and a scar from an old burn across her face appeared, she was holding a clipboard and wearing a black business top with a matching skit with a pair of thin glasses. She smiled, "now that you're done securing the area, This is our guy." A three-dimensional model of a large burly figure appeared, "with your description and the tapes I was able to find and then recognize one woman that fit the bill."
He blinked, "Woman?"
"Yes, you need to be more open-minded sir. She's 6'4 foot, 240 pounds, 6'6 foot wingspan, brown hair, dark eyes. Carla Sinclaire, she was a patient at one of the private hospitals. She had a rare condition, Hypogonadism, paired with other depressive symptoms. So they transferred her here for special treatment. She soon left and has now returned. Considering the power is out and the fresh wound, she must be on this floor."
"Define special in this context." He asked.
"She has an abnormally high testosterone count, extremely high counts of hemoglobin, and over production of adrenaline." She elaborated, "She was taken in to treat her mood swings and aggression but they seemed to realize she was abusing the drugs they were giving her."
Clang clang clang! Someone or something was banging metal against metal repeatedly. "Performance enhancers… she must have seemed like the drug abuser type and so it would be easy to write them off as most likely."
"Very easy, as that is the most likely case." She said seemingly defensively, but she wasn't programmed to care about such things, she must have truly thought him a fool, but if it was a serial killer or Cola-Citri, he'd give the serial killer the benefit of the doubt before trusting that corporate empire. Almost as bad as the Skiline agency that goes around flaunting what they call heroes, men and women in pretty costumes being mascots for different cities, occasionally stepping in to help police to keep a good so of faith, for the little they actually do they have results, steeper decline in crime if there is a chance you end up on YouTube for trying to rob a bank and failing miserably, it ruins your life when you know that businesses don't have to ask you if you were a convict. Clang, clang clang! the sound down the half grew louder. He continued down the hall, running into the woman, with the arrant screams and total lack of sight made her irritable. She had taken to smashing her entire bedframe against her door. Clang, snap! The door hinges snapped off. he watched as a woman a few inches taller than him looked down on him. In the dark she could hardly see him but she did pick out the dark silhouette that outlined his body.
She rushed him without hesitation, tackling him through one of the walls. He coughed and wheezed as she caught him by surprise. "This feels like a little more than abnormal." Carla straddled him and began to punch and pound on his body and face. His armor was strong, but it could only do so well when being hit at an above professional boxing level. " What did she do all day, knock out elephants?"
"Sir you asked me to remind you complaining won't fix your faults." Outwardly he kept up the act of struggling and fighting like a married couple with ARA, internally he didn't really care nor did he feel the slightest bit threatened by this woman. Life his purpose, it felt tedious, nothing was a challenge but he had to do a lot of it or have patience, he often put himself in bad positions because it was the only way for him to struggle again. The Black Knight had transformed himself into a calculating machine pretending to be human. He caught one of her arms at the wrist when she went to punch him dragging her arm across her chest and down yanking her unexpectedly to the side as he trusted his pelvis up knocking her off him as he quickly reversed the grapple and began beating on her. His mood changed to a more grim and gruesome one as he steeled himself and beat her bloody causing her to slump but her breathing was still steady if a bit ragged.
"Ara, collect some blood samples." his suit had pocket-sized chemical scanners built into the wrist. He turned to the woman's bloody face, "What's your connection to Cola-citri? What was the drug they gave you?" She looked like she was gonna speak but hesitated. He punched the floor next to her head, cracking the tile, "I won't ask again."
"Okay okay… I just used to work there. I'd been taking so many different drugs to help with my situation that when i found the company I worked for had a hand in an illegal drug that seemed to do the trick, I voulenteered. It's called PCV, phenolic compound V, I don't know anything else?" Her voice was a tad deep but he could hear the pleading in her voice, she likely hadn't been hurt this bad or taken down like this in a long time, maybe even thought she was invincible.
"Really? Who else knows? and where'd you get your extra supply?" He did probably feel sorry for her deep down, but he had stopped feeling sorry at all a long time ago.
"I'm not sure… Dr.Smartman, maybe some members on the board. Oh I did hear Smartman speaking with someone on the phone. some sort of big shot dealer, he's the guy I get my extra supply from but he never shows up in person."
"How can he afford to make all of these illegal drugs?" He continued his interrogation.
"I don't know?" she cried.
He grit his teeth in frustration, "ARA, Cola-Citri is public yes?"
"Yes sir."
"Buy up some stock and then use our company ownership to look into the records of all businesses under the company, look for something with little oversight and a lot of money, charities, offshore accounts and businesses… nothing is off the table."
"Compiling big data results… Yes, sir seems there is a big sum of money funding both an arcade and a charity foundation, seems the charity likes to donate to the arcade a lot seems like they are using the foundation to collect and the arcade to clean the money." He sighed… this was more than inconvenient, it sounded like Cola-Citri was using his job as a part of their money laundering.