Death was a part of every being's life. At some point, the living would perish. There might be a good reason why this was. The old needed to go so the new could come. The cycle needed to be continued, lest improvement would cease into a drawl. Cassandra disliked the latter argument, it being more or less a self-fulfilling prophecy. God is right because God said he always speaks the truth. What happens the moment he says he always lies? That was the right question to bring a cult into chaos.

It would come as a sudden thing. Death always came suddenly. It was rare nowadays that people got to know of it before their time. With technology being as it was, nobody really died of old age. One chose to die. Medical equipment could keep one alive for as long as one desired.

Not that it was a great experience. In all honesty, Cassandra had heard too many horror stories surrounding it. People over a century old, living in pain and fear, wanting it to cease but still wanting their minds to exist. An existential suicide plagued by the choice of wanting it all to end. They wanted to exist in the abyss, where matter did not exist, and there was no pain to be had or shared.

The choice of it was a haunting experience, and the woman tried not to think about the time where she would have to make the request herself. Or… would she? Recent times had shown off just how dangerous her job was, how high the risks were if something failed. A gun had been mere finger-widths away from her face, and the trigger had been pressed upon. It was only by a fluke that she sat on the chair, instead of being a corpse in a bag, ready to be sent over to the city’s incinerator. Death was something that Cassandra would meet in her job, no matter what.

Be that her own or somebody else’s, it would always be there. It might be rare, it might not happen in several years in a row, but it would get around to taking another shot. Somebody would fall to the ground, somebody would feel their body go cold, and somebody wouldn't even realise it before the void hit them from the back. Cassandra had accepted that part of her job long ago. She had listened to hour-long seminars about it, made to reiterate it in her own words, people making sure again and again that she understood what was being put on the line.

There was not a moment where the woman had cared too much about it. She had accepted the risks, and would therefore bear them with a smile. Crying over her own actions’ consequences was against her own moral code.

Yet… there was one thing where her code did not work. What happened when it came to another? Not another police officer but another person. A thief. How was one supposed to react to such a death? Was she meant to share her grief over the death of a criminal, to show that it was a bad thing that happened? Cassandra was not sure how to react.

Officer Grunwald did have a general idea, however, the older man getting up from his chair in the span of a second. His fists hit the table, and there was definitely something cracking from the impact, be that the fingers themselves or the inside of the wood board. Cassandra found herself not worrying too much.

“What!” Officer Grunwald shouted. It was clearly meant to be a question, but the volume hid that intention a bit too well. Cassandra would have likely winced from the sound if not for her training to deal with loud voices. If there was one thing her boss was good at, it was to shout at people delivering news like they were supposed to, apparently. Was that a good long-term decision? Probably not. Would the man do it anyway for a long time? The woman guessed that it would be so.

“One of the thieves is dead,” Jared said again, not seeming to realise that he needed to add some damn details to such a statement. Cassandra briefly tried to find the man’s after-action report, only to find that it had yet to be written. Curious. The woman had found shame in the fact she had not read it before the start of the meeting, but the fact there had been no opportunity to do so since the start was disconcerting.

“I know that one of them is dead since you just said that,” Grunwald stated, sitting down on the chair again. “What happened? What made them… kill themself?”

Jared cleared his throat, readjusting himself in the chair he sat on, before putting his elbows onto the table. The man looked ready to tell of a grand adventure spanning decades while showing off those little details that would make a historian orgasm like a pig. Cassandra, in stark contrast, was hoping to have been able to read the details in the report meant to have been done before the meeting itself. Was the lack of those files important enough to bring up during the conversation? There were regulations against the current behaviour, but Jared had seniority over her by a long stretch. A dumb excuse would be all that was needed to make the matter void.

“I am not too sure about that last part myself. The young one seemed much too willing to do it, as if being catched was much worse, for whatever dumb reason. Young people’s reasoning, I suppose. We will never truly understand,” Jared said, spoiling the ending of the tale from the get-go. Not the worst set-up, but one that was not needed in the current time. “As you already know, we got another ping sent off by the system, alarming us off the fact that a break-in had started. Since the alarm had said nothing, nor sent any messages at all, I assumed that it would be the… group that we have been looking for. It was just our luck that I have was stationed just two hundred meters away, ready to respond to anything that-”

“Save the lacklustre details for the filing,” Officer Grunwald said. Cassandra could see in the man’s vacant stare that he was using a digital notepad. There had clearly been a lacking skill in hiding such an action, but she found no reason to comment on that. Rather, she wanted the other one to continue at his earliest convenience. If she was to make the capture herself, she would need to know more. “Tell us your actions and the reasoning behind it. Nothing more.”

“... Sure, boss,” Jared obeyed, giving a small salute. If it had been any other police station, that action would have earned a disciplinary hearing. Small acts of rebellion were not acceptable. “I arrived at the scene one and a half minutes after the alarm had stopped giving any signals. I would have gotten there faster, but the tighter roads made it hard to navigate. This is the reason why I decided to save time by parking right in front of the building.”

Well, that was one strike, according to the handbook. Letting the intruders know of them being noticed was not a good strategy overall. While not explicitly disallowed, there were strong hints regarding the needed subtlety of a cop. With no real clue of what to expect, it was almost a requirement to not be noticed before it was intended. Parking in front of a building that had been entered illegally… there was no way Cassandra would willingly do so herself.

“The door into the store was open, leading me to believe more strongly that this was the group that we had been looking for,” Jared continued, giving more clues into his own decisions. Even if the man had lacked the decency to write his own reports, he had clearly read Cassandra's. She had done her best to constantly note that flaw in the group’s breaking and entering. They always lacked subtlety when it came to going in and out without leaving any signs behind. “This is where I used that information of open doors to my advantage.”

“How so?” Officer Grunwald asked, not wanting to wait through Jared’s longer dramatic pauses. The man should clearly have been a storyteller instead. In that profession, he might have been seen as being less annoying.

“If a door was not open, it had not been opened at all. Any room with a single door to get inside must therefore have been empty of any would-be criminals,” Jared said. That… made a surprising amount of sense. Cassandra brought up a few pictures of the activity-site, to follow along with the man’s descriptions. A visual feed was always great to have. “As you might have seen from the pictures, the main store was one big room, where one person of average height could overview all the sides. This allowed me to look at every door that could have been touched. And, just my luck, not a single one had been opened. From this, I deduced one fact. The people who had gone inside were in the main room with me, hiding from me, and doing their best to go unnoticed. With me so far?”

Both Cassandra and the boss nodded, not wanting to spend time using words. Even if Jared did not let it out often, the man was still smart. Sure, he was holding a moral code a decade out of date, there were times where he would mess up badly, and there were moments where one had to think if he was doing alright mentally. But… sometimes, just sometimes, one could actually see the brilliance shine through his eyes. Years upon years of hard experience with clearing buildings made the man a master of his craft, and there was not one person in the room who would criticize that fact.

“There were some thoughts about how to draw them out,” Jared informed the two. Cassandra herself had a few ideas on how it might have been done, but she saved those for the reveal. Sharing notes was always the best way to learn, after all. “I thought about challenging them directly, making them know their position as prey. A standard fear tactic, you might say. But… I decided to do something different in my position. As Cass mentioned in her reports, multiple people are in the group. Fear does not always work when in large numbers.

Therefore, I tried playing the game of fake security. Since I could not see them, it most likely meant that they could not see me. There were no reflections, no nothing that would let him see me without sticking their heads out. If I made it sound like I was going into the next room, what would be the immediate reaction from the thieves?”

…

“They would try to escape?” Cass suggested. It was the most obvious answer. It could also be that they would try to find more items to steal, but would that not be too dangerous a game to play?

“Exactly what I thought, Cass,” Jared said with a smile, seeming happy that his logic was being followed along with. “And that one did. Tried to stand up, back bent a little forward, and take a small, silent jog towards the front entrance. Poor kid had no idea what was happening when I swung him through the window.”

Silence stretched the room in an instant. That was not right. Jared must have been joking. He had to be.

“Would you like to reiterate your last statement?” Officer Grunwald said, his eyes honing in on the other man in the room. He was also in need of more information.

“Sure. I snuck up behind the criminal, and, as the most obvious way of incapacitation, threw him through the store’s display window,” Jared said straight-faced. The man looked between his boss and Cassandra a few times before a light seemingly turned on in his head. “Oh, I should probably give a reason for that, right? As you might see from my words, these actions do not co-exist with the rules we have for arresting civilians who have done criminal acts. However, my actions do work with what we have in the allowed codex for actions against people with physical enhancements.”

“What led you to believe that they had physical enhancements exactly?” Cass asked. She had most definitely not written such a thing down in her report.

“Deduction through experience. Specifically, I believe that the thief I threw through the window was an enhancement-user that had been equipped with a constitution-specialised enhancement,” Jared explained. The other two just listened. “His description matched what Cass had described in her report. While not being explicitly said, I noted that the young man’s ability to throw off a high-tier sedative in the span of three minutes tops was highly unusual. It would take extensive conditioning for such a thing to occur in a normal human body, usually over the span of several decades. Since the kid had to be less than twenty-five, I naturally had to assume that other methods had been used. Hence the idea of the constitution based enhancement.”

Cassandra sat back in her chair. It made sense, yes, but the risks attached… she wouldn't have done it. Not that she could, really, her strength not good enough to throw somebody through a… wait.

“Did he go through the window?” Cassandra asked. Briefly, she chastised herself for not using her normal tone, but, neither of the others seemed to notice.

“Yeah,” Jared said, smiling a little. “It was surprising. Didn't know I had that kind of strength in me. Good to know that these bones are still good for something.”

“Then your guess must have been fact, after all,” Cass said. “The tensile strength of the glass was high. Extremely high. A human body would have had its bone crushed before there was any chance of making the window have the slightest of fractures… Are you sure there were no deformities on the panes?”

“None that I could see, no,” Jared said. That answer took Cassandra back a little, to the point where she briefly thought about going out and checking the window for herself. Maybe the documents had been faked? If not…

“Would you describe how the enhancer came to kill themself? I believe you left out a few details there.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Completely forgot about that part. That little detour threw me off a bit,” Jared said, before getting back into position. “As one might have guessed, the enhancement user was completely unfazed by my throw, getting up and beginning to run. Couldn't see his face, by the way. It was all blurry. Not nice on the eyes.”

Another detail that had been confirmed. But, not the detail that was desired. No comment was made to it, allowing the man to continue unheeded.

“It was not the most flashy of chases. With the distance that was gotten on me before I started to run, I couldn't catch up until the last moment. While there might not have been much in the speed department, there was nothing making the kid slow down. He could weave through the forest easily,” Jared said, sounding mildly annoyed by that fact. It was understandable, the man normally able to catch most runners. Cassandra had seen the tapes before. “We reached the river down that way.

Though I am unsure if it was planned action or not, we came to a standstill on the cliff sides, close to forty meters down to the river. The kid was on the edge, looking to be debating between me and the long way down. This is where he actually began talking to somebody through transmitters, so we can add that as another proof that it's a group we are dealing with. There's not really much more to it. The kid backed off the cliff, falling down into the river, and likely died on the spot. By the way, we’re going to have to get a team sent down so the body can be retrieved. Not sure if the animals will get to it or not.”

… Once again, Cassandra felt like putting her hands to her face, just spending a few seconds breathing in and out. It felt appropriate, but she didn't do it. Instead, the questioning began.

“Did you see the body to confirm the death?” Cassandra asked.

“Ah… no. With the distance down, I have to presume it slipped into the bottom. I waited a few minutes, but there was no sign of anything rising up.”

That nearly made her drop it. The keyword there was nearly. Looking over the cliffside near the river, Cassandra noted that the currents had been noted down as extremely powerful, to the point where they could be life-threatening if entered without proper gear.

Could… could they have survived. The forest made it hard to see much, meaning that the river could have carried the thief up down the current. Sure, it would have required a lot, but this criminal was apparently the user of an extreme constitution-enhancement. They could survive many things.

It was a theory for now. One she would hold to herself. The other two had already written the thief off as dead, but the chance was still there. Cassandra needed to be ready.

“That was that, then. Jared, I expect to see a written report sent my way before the end of the day,” Officer Grunwald said. “Now, I believe we have another matter to discuss today. How are we going to capture the remaining ones?”