At the same time, back in that white room, Detective Anderson found himself more confused than ever. He didn't know he was being live-streamed to the world. Before he could say or do anything, the Lady Inquisitor raised her voice.
"John Hills." The Lady Inquisitor repeated once again. "You are guilty of sins beyond redemption. You have committed crimes that can only be punished by death. Do you acknowledge your offense and accept your punishments?"
That was enough to send confused cries across a billion electronic devices across the nation.
"What the hell…"
"Oh god! Is she going to kill him?"
"What even is she? Did she hack into our devices?"
"Is this...cosplay? Someone is doing cosplay on live-stream?"
"For god's sake...what is the government doing?"
"What is going on here? Someone explain!"
In one police precinct in Chicago, the officers still on duty found themselves exchanging glances as they recognized the man on the screen.
"Is that...Detective Hills? Oh god! What is going on here? Didn't he go home already?"
"He must have been abducted!"
"Someone, call this in!" One of the quick-thinking Detectives called out. "We may still be able to save him! And send a squad to his home address!"
Once again, Detective Hills had no idea that millions were watching this scene unfold at this very second. All he knew was he was about to die, and he had no intention of dying just yet.
"No!" The man cried out desperately. "No! I'm innocent! I have never done anything wrong! I...I am a police officer! A detective!"
The Lady Inquisitor snickered as if she heard something funny. Once again, she waved his hands, and under the horrifying eyes of the Detective and the shocked gaze of millions, the room around her started to morph and transform. Within moments, the environment settled in the form of a dark room.
Most of the audience had no idea what was going on, but to the Detective and a selected few in the precinct, this was a painstaking familiar location.
"Oh god…" The man found himself shaking. "That's...that's impossible! It can't be! How...how did you?"
"This is the evidence storage of the 6th Chicago Police Precinct, where you work. Every now and then, you and a few pals of yours will smuggle a few bags of confiscated drugs out of the storage and sell them on the black market. Of course, there are other parties at play here, but you are also involved."
"You...you can't prove that!"
"Yes I can. And I will."
A few hologram figures formed inside the evidence storage room and started moving like puppets under the manipulation of a master puppeteer. There were two uniformed officers guarding the room, both of whom stood up as a figure resembling Detective Hills entered. Instead of stopping him, they nodded at him, and one of them led him to the shelves of confiscated narcotics while the other stood watch. When the detective left the storage, his pockets were full.
"Holy crap! He's a dirty cop!"
"Don't be so sure! This is probably faked! If they can hack into all our devices, they can forge this video!"
In the 6th Precinct, two officers collapsed in their seats. They expected to be caught by IA or other officers sooner or later, but having their dirty deeds suddenly exposed for the world to see? They were really, really doomed! No amount of bribing or calling in favors could save them now!
In the same precinct, the Captain's face turned pale. The Lieutenant's face also turned pale. This was really bad for their career...they were sure by the end of the day, the world would know their precinct, and definitely not in a good way.
"This...this is fake!" Detective Hills tried to make a stand, but as he stared at the vivid hologram images of him with a smug smile on his face and two packs of drugs in his jacket, any and all attempts to defend himself just seemed meaningless.
"Really?" The Lady Inquisitor looked like she wanted to laugh. Another wave of her hand sent the holograms moving once again. This time, the projections showed the Detective in a bulletproof vest. He was part of a squad that was raiding a house. Fair enough. Except, as his squad broke into the house with a battering ram and pinned the suspect to the ground, the Detective, alone, sneaked into the bedroom.
He pulled out a large bag of drugs from his pocket and hid it below the bed.
When another member of the squad did a search of the bedroom and found enough drugs to land the suspect decades in prison, the look of horror and despair on the suspect's face was traumatizing.
"That happened two years ago. The man you framed...he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He lasted a week before getting his throat slit in the shower."
The Lady Inquisitor took another step forward at the Detective, who was shaking uncontrollably in fear.
"Of course, that was all part of the plan."
Once again, the holograms shifted. Detective Hills was still among the characters, but this time, he was talking to someone on the phone. The man on the other side promised the detective 50K for 'taking care of the issue'.
"Mind telling me who that is?"
"I'm not telling you anything!" The man tried to resist, but his resistance was futile.
"No? Too bad. Well...then let me tell you who that is. The man you are working with goes by the name "The Bulldog". He's a mobster in Chicago, and he leads a mob called...well, the Bulldogs. Would you look at that?" She snickered once again. Her voice was filled with absolute disdain. "How creative of him."
This time, the reaction across the nation was even greater than before.
"Holy shit...how did someone like this become a cop? And a detective! No less!"
"Well, law enforcement tends to get a bad rap. It also pays poorly and is a really high-risk career, so most people aren't too thrilled to join it. I guess the lack of recruits resulted in a few bad apples getting mixed in the force."
"These fuckers tarnish the name of police officers!"
"What is IA doing? A man just died because of this scumbag!"
"What if someone tries to do this to us? It's so easy! There's nothing we can even do to defend ourselves!"
"Fuck! Where does this son of a bitch live?"
"Don't worry, bro...didn't you hear? This gal...whoever she is, she's gonna make that scumbag pay!"
"Also...this Bulldog guy is really dead…imagine being exposed to the world like this as a mobster!"
The last person was correct. When his name was mentioned on the stream, the Bulldog stood up, smashed his laptop on the ground, and walked over to the cabinet and poured himself a drink.
Might as well enjoy himself before his downfall.
Detective Hills was already frozen and desperate, but the Lady Inquisitor wasn't ready to end there. This had always been more than just about the detective. No...this was about sending a message to the world, and right now, this message wasn't complete yet.
"Now, one final piece of evidence."
The surroundings shifted once again, something that the audience has gotten rather used to. This time, as the scene settled, everyone could see the now infamous detective was standing in the streets of an abandoned area in the city. He was accompanied by a fellow uniformed police officer.
On the ground in front of him was a dead man. An unarmed, dead man with a bullet wound in his back.
"Holy shit! You shot him!" The uniformed officer cried out as he turned to the detective. "Why?"
Detective Hills shrugged casually. "I thought I saw a weapon in his hand. My bad."
"Your bad?" The officer was far from unfazed as he glanced at the body, at the detective, and then back at the body again. "We just shot and killed someone! The IA shits will put us in cuffs!"
"No they won't." Detective Hills scoffed as he pointed at the surrounding. "Do you see any security cameras around here?"
"Uh...no?"
"And are we being recorded? You don't have your body cam on, do you?"
"I don't think so."
"Well, in that case, what happened is completely up to us." Hills smirked victoriously. "When we go back, just tell everyone that he tried to run...actually, say that he tried to resist. That makes things easier for us. So we shot him. Just like that. Case closed. It was a justified shot."
"But...if they do a full investigation…"
Detective Hills sighed. "Listen to me, rookie. Do you know who lives in this part of the town? Idiots. Idiots and scumbags. I mean...just look at his clothes! That guy there…" He pointed at the body. "He was nobody, ok? He's got nothing. Simply put, he's worthless. Why should we be concerned? Will his family hire an army of lawyers to come after us? Can his family even afford to sue us? No one is going to come after us. IA has better things to do than to come after two cops for this piece of shit over there. As long as we're not stupid enough to get all this recorded and uploaded to Youtube or Twitter, we'll be fine!"
The uniformed officer still wasn't convinced, so the detective gave it one final push.
"You want to be a detective one day, don't you? Well, if you have a fatal shooting record...good luck with that."
That was the last straw. What followed was expected...if not comforting.
By the time the hologram disappeared, most of the audience was silent.
In the 6th precinct, a detective closed his eyes in despair. A few other detectives and officers were looking at him with disdain in their eyes.
Detective Hills had given up already. How did this so-called Lady Inquisitor access this information? Did she read his mind? Or maybe she was simply omniscient? Either way, his innocence plea had failed.
"Nothing to say? Well then...the time has come."
The audiences once again erupted in conversation following that single declaration.
"Oh no...I'm not gonna watch this!"
"God bless America…"
"Is she actually going to kill him? Is she actually going to kill a man on live tv? A detective!"
"This is so fucked up! How come the government hadn't stopped this broadcast yet?"
"If you ask me, this fucking son of a whore deserves to die! Do it, girl! Kill him and rid this world of another scum!"
"He deserves to be handed to the police and the FBI! We don't need vigilantes! It is up to the law to punish people like him!"
Millions were speaking, but when the Lady Inquisitor raised her voice again, almost all of them went silent instantly.
"For crimes against humanity, I, the Lady Inquisitor, sentence you to die. May your death serve as a warning to all."
She lifted her hand, and the detective was horrified to realize his hand was moving, and not to his own free will. No...his trembling hand slowly reached into his back pocket and pulled out a magazine. He tried to resist, sensing his fate, but it was impossible.
Slowly but steadily, he grabbed onto and reloaded his Glock, pressed it next to his temple, and then pulled the trigger.
"How in the world did she do that? Telekinesis? Mind control?"
"This...this has to be fake, right? It's an act!"
"Well done! May you rest in hell, scumbag!"
"It's a conspiracy by the Anderson administration! It's to keep us in line! Wake up, you sheep!"
"Open your eyes and see the truth!"
The disgraced detective collapsed on the ground, his red blood staining the white floor, but the Lady Inquisitor wasn't finished yet. As the camera zoomed in on her, the world could finally see the figure who was responsible for all this. The silver armor. The helmet with the engraved 'I'. The black leather gloves.
"This execution wasn't the first, and it will not be the last. If you have committed crimes of any kind, then it is in your best interest to turn yourself in to the authorities immediately. Otherwise, sooner or later, you will receive my letter of notification, and by then...it will be too late for you."
"I don't care who you are. I don't care where you are. No sinner can deceive me. If you have hurt someone, anyone, then I will come after you, and nothing in the world can stop me. Not the military. Not the police. I will track you down, expose all of your transgressions to the world, and finally, I will execute you for your crime!"
She lowered her head and glanced at the detective's body.
"Future executions will be accessible by a public link. Do not waste time trying to block it. My technologies are far beyond anything this world has seen. Until then…" She suddenly held her fist into a ball and crushed the detective's body into a ball of gore.
"I am the Lady Inquisitor, and I wish you a good day."