It was two in the morning. Ken McParland’s round shoulders were totally obscured by the riot gear he was wearing. Along with the rest of the team he was clad in thin white sheets of plasteel. Narrow strips slid back and forth as he moved, just begging to pinch any bit of skin they caught. He had on a heavy-duty jumpsuit under the armor to protect his bits from the segmented white metal. A glass visor on the helmet was opened up as he passed last-minute instructions to the rest of the team.

“There should just be the two of them in there. There’s a bedroom immediately to the left past the front door. Living room and kitchen are straight ahead. Two more bedrooms in the back,” Ken said. He pointed at his partner, “Johnston, after I breach, you go in first, straight through to the back right bedroom. I’ll follow to the left.” Johnston could only be distinguished by the vest he had on over the armor, with his name stenciled on the front. The mirrored visor hid his features.

Ken continued, “Kline, I want you to clear the first bedroom. You come in after Johnston and I. The rest of you follow close.” The other three officers nodded.

“Remember, the university said this stuff was priceless, so be careful on entry. If you don’t know what something is, don’t damage it.”

The five of them were clustered on a street corner outside an apartment complex. The apartment building itself was an old red brick four-plex. The brick was cracked, with filth filling the gaps. The lawn was more dirt than grass, and the cement steps down to the bottom apartments were slick with mud and moss. In addition to the five officers in riot gear, there were another dozen patrolmen waiting silently.

The university theft turned out to be insultingly simple. Cameras in the parking garage spotted a couple of students wheeling out machinery into a van. The van’s plates were run, and the vehicle was owned by a student attending university. His ID matched the kid on camera, and his information quickly led to the other thief. They were both roommates, and they also both worked as assistants in the same lab.

It took Ken about fifteen minutes at the courthouse to get a warrant, and now here they were. It was exciting, really. In property crimes, the usual arrests Ken got to make were just counterfeiters selling on the street. Once in a while, he'd bust a fence. But the job was mostly just about filing reports for the sake of insurance adjusters. Which wasn't to say he never had any arrests, he probably spent two days doing some sort of patrolling or crowd control for every day he worked as an actual detective. And patrolling and crowd control always involved arrests.

Ken checked his gun – he hadn’t had a choice and was carrying the new plasteel piece of crap. His old Sig had been reliable and comfortable, this lightweight thing felt like a toy. Whoever heard of a gun that needed a battery to fire? The armor was worse - it felt like plastic with barely any weight to it. But here he was, dressed like it was Halloween and on his way into a firefight. But the gun sat in the holster fine. At least he could wear the harness like normal. He’d seen pictures of armor where the holster was built directly into the armor. That seemed like it was just asking for problems. With his harness, he could hang his gun where he was comfortable with it. He could draw it the way he trained and didn’t have to worry about some idiot engineer’s idea of efficiency. He checked his taser too, opposite the gun. He wasn’t carrying any pepper spray; they weren’t supposed to use it indoors.

The other officers were going over their gear too. None of them were particularly comfortable with the new equipment, but Ken double-checked everything obsessively. Finally, he hefted the big ram and headed towards the front door of the thieves’ apartment. The other four officers followed, not talking at all.

Ken stopped when he reached the stairs down to the apartment in question. He pulled down his visor and threw a little bolt to lock it in place. Immediately he felt a breeze across his face while a small fan blew air down from his forehead. The breeze made his nose itch as it ruffled his mustache. Ken had tried turning the air off in the past, but the glass of the visor would fog up almost immediately. Keeping everything dry was probably more important than keeping his nose from itching. Ken opened up his visor to rub his nose, then closed it back down.

Ken carefully moved down the dirty steps, until he was standing to the side of the door. Johnston squeezed past, pressing up against the cement wall on the other side of the entryway. The whole setup made it difficult to maneuver. The lower apartments were about four feet below ground level, so the officers had to walk down the stairs into a little walkway area framed by a cement retaining wall. The thieves’ apartment was the farthest from the stairs, so there wasn’t room to line up on either side. They did the best they could.

Ken lifted the ram with a grunt. The thing weighed a good thirty pounds and was almost two feet long, all solid steel with a square cap on the end. Two angled handles were designed in a way that made it simple to slam straight against a door. Even in the narrow space of the sunken entryway, Ken was easily able to swing it back and slam the big weight against the door. With a crunch, the ram punched a hole right through the door. It didn't bust the door open, but it did splinter the wood around the latch and deadbolt, so Johnston gave the door a kick and knocked the whole thing open. Getting his balance back, Johnston charged through, followed closely by Ken.

His gun out and leveled ahead, Ken didn’t look too closely at the living room. A glance really – the place was cluttered with all sorts of junk. TV in the corner, old couch against the wall. No people. And then Ken was past, turning into the left bedroom. The room was bare. Boxes and luggage were piled up on the wall. There was a desk under the window. Behind him, he could hear Johnston and Kline both shouting.

“Police! Freeze, hands up!” Both officers were operating from the same script, with their words creating a weird stereo effect as they yelled slightly out of sync with each other.

Ken was moving back to help with Johnston with his partner’s arrest when shots rang out from the front room. Four or five shots, he wasn't quite sure. Ken had never been good at that sort of detail when his adrenaline was up. From the short hallway, Ken could see the other two officers moving into the room where Kline had just fired, so Ken checked out the room Johnston had charged into.

Johnston had a skinny white kid on the ground. He was already cuffing the guy when he saw Ken come in. “I got this,” Johnston said.

Ken turned back around and went to see what had happened with Kline. There was a splatter of blood on the far wall, probably ruining a pair of concert posters taped up. Another guy was on his stomach on the bed, this one chubby like he’d never outgrown his baby fat. Kline was kneeling on top of him, bringing the guy’s arms back for cuffs.

The big guy was crying into his mattress, but Kline was talking over him. “Hold still, if you know what’s good for you.”

With the guy in cuffs, Kline looked up at the three armored officers crowded into the little room. “He jumped at me when I came in. Got him in the arm.”

Ken nodded, “Get him out of here. The ambulance will be pulled up by now.” Ken moved back into the cluttered living room and watched Kline and another officer frog march the injured thug out of the bedroom. The skinny guy with Johnston was walking out on his own and didn’t look like he was going to put up any sort of resistance.

The whole living room was just nasty. There was black soot over everything. You couldn’t touch the couch without clouds of black crust filling the air. Even the TV was covered. It was strange, really. Ken spent a few minutes searching for evidence of a fire. There wasn't any ash anywhere, no scorch marks either. No smell of smoke, not even on the curtains. Later Ken looked in the dumpster outside too but couldn't ever find out what had burnt.

There was a big machine of some sort up on an old wood table – it stood out because it had been dusted clean. The only other things in the room that looked used were a couple of cardboard boxes. One of the boxes was filled with sheets of metal. Ken was bemused to see the other box was filled with plasteel bowls. Oddly enough they looked irregular. When Ken had seen the same sort of bowls at the store, their assembly line origin was usually obvious. These bowls looked messy. They were all different sizes, their edges rough.

The big machine was just, well, a machine. Or maybe a computer thing? To Ken, it looked more like a computer than anything he’d put into a car. It didn’t look like there were any moving pieces, just wiring, electronics, and some plastic casing that almost definitely held microchips. The only distinguishing aspect of the whole thing was an open space on the side that held a big block of painted ceramic. Or maybe glass. Ken couldn’t really tell what it was, just that it didn’t seem connected to the electronics even though it had been placed just so.

But it matched the description that the university admin had given him. Clearly, the tip was good enough, and whatever this thing did, they’d recovered it. With a smile, Ken was looking forward to writing this report. It was a rare thing in Ken’s experience to close a property crimes case like this. They’d recovered the stolen goods, the goods looked undamaged, the people in possession of the stolen goods were on video stealing it in the first place. It was tough to imagine solving a crime as smoothly as this.

While the patrol guys combed the apartment for evidence, Ken looked it over again. Under the soot, the furniture wasn’t terrible, not by college student standards. Worn but not broken. The wooden kitchen table was scratched up pretty bad, but Ken would be willing to bet that most of the scratches came from the big thing set on it. The carpet was new enough, there was a basket near the door with several pairs of shoes in it. The bedding all looked clean, as was clothing in closets and drawers. There was a single cup in the sink, and the rest of the dishes were clean and in the cabinets on the kitchen wall.

The empty room was probably the dirtiest, but even there the boxes mostly held books and papers. Really, other than the soot and the landscaping outside, this wasn’t a bad place. Too bad about the mold smell, really.

It had been a long, long day. The arrests went smooth, sure. The forms were easy to write too. But internal affairs were always obnoxious, and the DA was wanting to talk to Ken too. Ken rubbed his hands across his forehead in a habit leftover from the days when he had more hair. He spoke for the microphone in front of him, "While I was assisting detective Johnston to restrain the suspect, we heard shots from the front bedroom. Officer Kline had been instructed to clear that room. I did not see officer Kline go in, he followed me into the residence. I heard six shots. After confirming that detective Johnston had his suspect restrained and under control, I moved to assist officer Kline."

Ken wrapped his long fingers around the glass of water in front of him and took a sip. The pitcher next to his glass was glistening with condensation. His throat wet again, he continued, "I came in, and saw that the suspect had been shot once. The bullet entered the suspect's left arm. The suspect had been restrained by officer Kline with the assistance of officers Brown and Leary. I ordered them to take the injured suspect out to the ambulance. Detective Johnston put the other suspect into a patrol car. I stayed in the residence to direct the search for evidence."

"The stolen goods were in plain sight. In addition to the stolen machinery, we took a number of notebooks that looked related to the machine as evidence. There was also some sort of powder throughout the residence. I ordered as much of it as possible to be collected for testing. Other than a gravity assist knife, we didn't find any other contraband."

"The search was completed by ten AM. At that point, we returned to the station." It was now after four in the afternoon, and Ken was beginning to struggle to focus. At least this was just a matter of repetition.

The little man in a suit across from Ken asked, "if no weapons were found, why did officer Kline need to shoot the suspect?"

"It was a midnight breach," answered Ken. "We were going in fast, to preserve evidence. We chose to go in at night to ensure both suspects would be present. It was dark, and when the suspect jumped at officer Kline, he had no choice but to respond to the threat. In the darkness, per policy, we used our firearms as primary."

"And why are firearms primary?" the little man prompted.

"Tasers are less effective at close range - they require at least seven feet for full effectiveness. Additionally, darkness during a midnight breach reduces accuracy and further reduces the effectiveness of Tasers. Policy states that firearms should be used to ensure proper threat reduction during midnight breaches," quoted Ken.

"Were you concerned with friendly fire?" asked the man.

"Friendly fire is always a concern. However, policy states that properly equipped entry teams can ignore the threat of small caliber firearms."

"Thank you, officer McParland," said the little man. He reached out and turned the microphone off. Standing up, he also turned off the camera behind him and began gathering up the tripod. "I'm done with you, for now, I've already talked to the other officers on the team. I don't expect any problems, but I do appreciate you making yourself so available. I had to hunt down Leary in the canteen."

"Don't worry about it, Mark. I know you're just doing your job," said Ken. Ken didn't stand up, just rubbed his aching eyes.

"Want a coffee or something? I know Nishimura wants to talk to you, but I don't think he'd mind waiting a minute," offered Mark.

"It's fine. I'd rather just keep it moving. I'm going to crash as soon as the DA's done with me," answered Ken.

In fact, DA Nishimura strode in as soon as the IA officer opened the door to the briefing room. Nishimura was one of those short guys who felt tall. Always standing straight, perfectly tailored suits, and hair cropped in a military cut. When Nishimura ran his hands over his scalp Ken could practically feel the way the short black hair would prickle against skin. Nishimura held the door open for Mark, murmuring something polite and meaningless as the other cop left the room.

"So how am I supposed to handle this, officer?" Asked Nishimura right away.

Ken just blinked.

"You arrested a pair of kids, shot one, and nearly caused a riot on campus this morning when news got out," clarified Nishimura.

"Wait, what happened on campus?"

"Someone filmed you bringing the two out. Tweeted it, protests were blowing up on campus by lunchtime. Come on, McParland, you know better. Frog marching a bleeding kid out between a couple of riot guys?"

"What was I supposed to do? We did it by the book," shot back Ken. "We got a warrant, double-checked the address. Staked it out to make sure both suspects were home, minimized risk to the officers. How should I have taken the perp to the ambulance? A stretcher would have been worse, don't you think?"

“Why not just wait for them at class or something?”

“And give them a chance to destroy evidence? You know better too.”

Nishimura sighed. “Fine. I’m not happy, but fine. At least the protests aren’t turning into riots yet. Are we going to release bodycam footage?”

Ken shrugged his round shoulders, “we probably should. It was a good shoot, in my opinion. But you’re the elected official, it’s really up to you.”

Nishimura finally sat down in the seat opposite Ken’s seat. The DA slumped a bit as he relaxed, reaching out and pouring himself a glass of water. “So, how’s your mother, Ken?”

“She’s fine, last I talked to her. Still puttering in her garden most days. She’s talking about moving though,” said Ken.

“I thought she wasn’t in the suburbs?”

“No, she’s way out of town. But that almost makes it worse, she calls me in a panic anytime she sees a car drive by she doesn’t recognize.”

Nishimura laughed at that. “I get that. Nothing quite as scary as a neighbor buying something new, right?”

Ken smiled without showing his teeth. “So, about today’s arrest. I’m sorry about the protests, but the bust really was standard. Is the university admin making any noise? Is there any particular way you want me to handle things going forward?”

“Sorry Ken,” said the DA. He straightened his suit coat and went on, “It’s been a day, and I guess I need to vent a bit. Let me review your statements and the videos, and I’ll get back to you.”

“Good job, by the way. You did hand me a really tight case, it makes that part of the job easy at least.”

Ken would have taken the invitation to vent a bit too – politics always messed up the simple cases. But Ken really just wanted to sign off and go home.

So, he did just that.