12:17am, Friday the 10th October, 2132.

“This place looks dodgy,” said the dark-skinned woman, her teal hair almost luminescent in the midnight street light, and though there were many people with such bright and unusual hair colours walking it, she seemed to be the only one wearing a blue leather jacket.

Her partner nodded. “Welcome to downtown Fukaya, Greaves,” replied Kato, pulling his own leather jacket closer around him to protect from the still rather heavy downpour of rain. “Where you’re never more than a corner away from something undesirable. I grew up near here.”

They kept walking down the small side-street, too small for cars, yet as lively at night as it was during the day. In fact, Kato could have sworn it was even more lively. The entire place was a neon jungle, a thousand different shades of colour walking through the semi-crowd, or blaring from screens on walls, or projected as holographic displays. Kato and Greaves walked through one such display – a three-dimensional blue man shrouded in a layer of real mist, built like a Greek statue, and advertising some barely-legal muscle supplement to close-by individuals it picked seemingly at random.

“Don’t just get strong,” it said, non-existent eyes following Kato as he passed out through the other side of the mist. “Get GetStrong. For all your bodybuilding needs.”

Greaves paused a moment and looked directly above her so she could follow the way the buildings around them reached up and disappeared into the darkness above. They weren’t as high as the buildings in central and downtown Kanto, but they were still suffocating, and every so often a flying vehicle would swoop silently around the building corners.

“There are spinners up there,” she said.

“Spinners?” Asked Kato, as though he had never heard the word.

Greaves snapped her fingers in realization. “Spinners. Um, you know. Flyers. Flying cars.”

Kato raised a brow. “You mean speeders?”

“Yeah, those,” said Greaves. “Man, what I’d give to afford one of those.”

“You’re getting distracted,” Kato told her. “We’re here for work and this isn’t exactly the nicest part of town.”

Greaves sighed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Are we close?”

Kato took out his screen and looked down at it, where a virtual map of the street plan displayed a pinging icon not too far from their location. “Should be just up ahead,” he said.

They walked for maybe a minute longer until they saw a woman stood in a graffiti covered doorway who was clearly waiting for them. She was in her early fourties, had jet black hair, and seemed to be of mixed Japanese and Hispanic descent. She wore a transparent raincoat over her for the rain, and beneath that she wore a form-fitting corset and fishnet tights. In her mouth she had a lit cigarette, but as soon as she noticed Kato and Greaves she stubbed it out on the wall besides her.

“Must be her,” Kato said. Greaves nodded in response, then they both approached her as she leaned back and folded her arms.

“Erata la keisicia?” She asked.

“Pardon?” Greaves asked her.

“Crap, she’s speaking Gengoma,” Kato said with a sigh. “Do you speak English?”

“Disculmasen?” She replied.

“Uhh… Nihongo hanasemasu ka?” Kato asked.

The woman shrugged. “Sukoshi… Uh, escaso.”

“Uzai. This isn’t going to work,” sighed Kato, before he turned to Greaves. “She’s speaking a pidgin language, a mixture between Japanese and Spanish. I can’t speak full Spanish, and she can’t speak full Japanese. English is clearly out too. The goddamn dispatchers should have told us about this.”

“Don’t worry about it. Gengoma, you said?” Asked Greaves. “Surprised I haven’t heard of it. Hang on.”

Greaves looked around them at the crowd and just happened to see a hispanic looking kid hanging out under a doorway with a group of friends. “Hey, kid,” she called out to him. The kid didn’t notice her at first, but she called out louder, and pointed at him, and soon he looked up at her.

“What do you want?” The kid asked, his tone defensive in that way a streetwise kid would be.

“You’re hispanic, right?” She asked him. “Do you speak Gengoma?”

The kid shrugged. “Don’t know,” he replied. “What’s it worth to the one who cares?”

Greaves rolled her eyes, then slipped her hand into her pants and searched around for some money. She pulled out an old plastic note, and both the kid’s and his friend’s eyes widened. “See this?” She asked. “This is a real bank note. This shit right here is worth one hundred yendollars.”

The kid got up straight away. “Lady, for that I’ll speak Gengoma, English, Spanish, Japanese, hell I’ll speak any language you want me to.”

“Good. We need you to translate for this woman. We’re police.”

The kid seemed to pause at the mention of them being police, but after considering the reward he sighed and came forward anyway. “Alright, what do you want me to say?”

Kato stood back and watched Greaves take control of the situation, quite surprised by the way she was not only able to quickly come up with a solution, but get the kid to actually agree to it. She had a way with the streets that he had to admire.

“Tell her she called the police, yeah? She had something she wanted to report, to do with the terror attack?” Asked Greaves.

The boy nodded and began to speak to the woman in her own language, and the woman looked at the two of them and smiled, saying something that was clearly in the affirmative. She then told the boy something else, something that made the boy seem slightly confused, but he shrugged and turned back to the detectives to relay the information.

“She said she saw a guy who looked like just came from the hospital,” said the boy. Immediately both Kato and Greaves gathered closer, as though their increased proximity to the boy and the woman would somehow help them. “Said he was barefoot, in ruined hospital clothes. He was wet, looked like he had blood on him too. He was pretty thin, with short brown hair.”

“Was that the guy?” Greaves asked Kato.

Kato nodded. “Yeah, that sounds like him. Nearly an exact match. Kid, ask if her if she saw what colour his eyes were.”

The boy spoke to her again but the woman shook her head and, even though Kato couldn’t understand her answer, he knew it was a negative. “She said sorry, but she wasn’t close enough. There were a lot of people,” the boy answered.

The woman then said something else, and then pointed down the street in the direction they were already heading.

“He went that way,” said the boy. “She doesn’t know anything else.”

“Alright, thanks for everything,” Kato said to the woman, and she apparently understood enough to smile and nod at him. “Thanks, kid. That’ll be everything.”

Kato and Greaves turned from the woman then and began to walk away, but the kid called after them. “Hey, what about my yendollars?” He asked. Greaves paused and turned, and before she could even properly give it to him, he snatched it from her and sprinted away like he had stolen it.

“Hah. Probably wanted to get out of here before you changed your mind,” said Kato.

“Pft, he can have it,” said Greaves. “So, what are you thinking, Kato? He went down this way, he could be pretty close. Should we call for backup?”

Kato shook his head. “I don’t think he’s here,” he said. “Gut feeling. Besides, even if he was, making a scene would just let him slip through our fingers. Let’s do this quietly and delicately.”

“You got it,” Greaves replied, and the two began to keep going.

The further they walked, the more underhanded the street seemed to become. Restaurants and honest stores made way for clubs and whorehouses, and though the street had never been a particular shining beacon of wealth and security, there suddenly seemed to be far more people in the crowd who were openly interested in the fact they were there. Dealers, prostitutes and lookouts followed them with their eyes from streetcorners and under rain shelters, and Greaves started to become slightly more uneasy.

“Don’t worry about them,” Kato said to her quietly. “They’re keeping an eye out in case we’re here for them.”

“I know,” Greaves replied. “But how are they meant to know we’re not?”

“They’ll know. Hey look, see there? Security cameras.”

Kato was pointing up to the spaces above one of the nightclub doors, where a black orb seemed to be lodged into a metallic frame. Greaves looked at it too, then at space beneath it where the street just happened to narrow slightly. “You think he’ll be on the footage?” Greaves asked. “He could have gone into any these buildings.”

“Only one way to find out,” Kato answered. He walked over to the nightclub door with Greaves following behind, where a large man in a leather coat stood blocking the door.

“Invites?” The man asked, holding out his hand.

“Invites? Listen, we’re-“ Kato tried to say, but the man shook his head and cut him off.

“Private night tonight, I’m afraid. Invites only.”

“We’re detectives with the KMPD,” Greaves said, taking out her ID card and showing it to the man. “We were hoping to speak to your manager, or the owner of the club.”

The man seemed unsure, and most definitely suspicious, and he touched the side of his head to speak quietly into his earpiece. After a few seconds, he looked at the two of them again and asked, “what is it you want?”

“We think a subject in an open investigation may have been caught on your security camera,” Kato said, pointing up to the camera above the guard’s head. “We just want to take a look.”

The bouncer spoke into his earpiece again, then after another few seconds he shrugged, stepped aside, and opened the door for them. “Go right in,” he said.

Kato nodded and entered, and Greaves followed him and gave a wink to the bouncer as she did so. Inside there was a quiet corridor with a red carpet that led to a set of double-doors, and on the opposite side of those doors and slightly closer to the exit was an empty glass kiosk. The two detectives walked to the double doors, then Kato pushed them open and they stepped into the room beyond.

The first thing they noticed was the music. Loud, deep, and rhythmic – it was electronic in nature, yet seemed primal and tense, and it reverberated through the floor and up through their bodies. It came from all around them – from the walls themselves – and about twenty or so tough looking men and women with various levels of cybernetic augmentation suddenly stopped their conversations and looked at them.

Kato nodded and raised his hand to try and persuade them it was okay, meanwhile a male bartender rushed out from behind the bar and ushered the two detectives into a back room before a word was spoken.

“Officers from the KMPD, yeah?” Asked the bartender. He was bald, and wore white sunglasses, and a white suit, and he seemed on edge in that way drugs made you on edge. Slightly twitchy, slightly overwhelmed by everything.

“We’re here to look at the security cameras,” said Kato, who flashed his ID card at the man.

“Yeah, yeah, of course, of course!” The bartender said. “Through here.”

At the back of the room, which was nothing more than a breakroom, another door was opened to reveal a small office suite with a large network of computers and screens built into the wall. “Security’s here,” the bartender said, sitting down on his chair and immediately pressing buttons.

Kato and Greaves looked at one another, then shrugged. “We’re looking for a strange man who probably walked past here earlier. Thin, torn hospital clothes, brown ha-“

“Oh yeah, I got it,” said the bartender. He opened up the live video feed camera and began to rewind it, and suddenly they saw hundreds of people walking in reverse past the door and moving in that jittering way that only people going backwards in time could move. “Here it is.”

Suddenly the camera stopped on an image of their suspect, and Kato could suddenly remember the way he burst past him on the walkway and escaped through several armed officers as though they were nothing more than children. “You alright?” Greaves asked him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Kato nodded. “Mark down the time. He walked past at exactly… 10:13pm, Thursday the 9th,” he said.

Greaves grinned and typed what Kato said into her phone screen. “At least we’ve got a solid lead,” she said. “We can get a unit down here to track him now.”

“Hang on a moment,” said Kato, then looked down at the bartender again. “Can you play it forward slowly? Until he’s completely gone off screen.”

The man nodded, then pressed play, and the figure suddenly resumed walking mid-stride. He had been looking away at something off-camera, but then suddenly a figure stepped in front of him and caused him to stop. Kato peered closer, but the second figure was obscured by his standing on the very edge of the screen and other people walking past him, and Kato could only see that he appeared to be a man with a dark coat and short, white hair. The two seemed to be speaking, and Kato began to watch it intensely.

“There’s no audio, right?” He asked. The bartender shook his head no. “Shit.”

Eventually the white-haired man took a phone screen out of his coat and showed it to the man in the hospital trousers, but Kato could not make out what was on the screen, and then shortly after he turned and walked away with the suspect following him.

“Who’s that?” Asked Greaves. “You ever seen him before?” She asked the bartender.

“Nope, sorry. Maybe if there was a better feed,” he answered with a shrug.

“We’re going to need a copy of this footage,” said Kato, and the bartender nodded and pressed a button on the keyboard. The video footage minimized, then when Kato tapped his phone against the screen, the footage transferred instantly onto his own device.

“Is that everything?” The bartender asked. “I have guests who need serving.”

“That’s everything,” said Kato. “Come on Greaves, let’s call this in.”

Greaves nodded, then followed Kato as he walked back out of the office and out through the breakroom with the bartender following behind them. When Kato stepped out into the main club room again, the tough guys in the booths again stopped what they were doing to look, and the bartender went sheepishly back behind the bar to relieve a young woman who had taken over in his absence.

“Thanks for everything,” Kato called to the bartender over the music. “If you find anything else, give me a call.”

He pushed one of his old-fashioned cards across the bar towards him, and the bartender snatched it and hid it out of sight as though afraid it would be seen. Greaves raised her eyebrows at this, but shrugged and turned towards the door only to find a man was now blocking her way.

“You going somewhere, miss?” The man asked. He was tall and slightly tanned, with well-built muscles and a close-shaved head. He wore a sleeveless black shirt and while his right arm was covered in various tattoos, his left was made of metal and electronics.

“Just leaving,” Greaves said to him, and she tried to step out of his way but the man stepped purposefully again into hers. By this point Kato had noticed what was happening and pulled back the bottom of his leather coat to reveal the large pistol holstered at his hip, and his hand hovered near it in case he had to draw.

The augmented man smirked. “Just leaving,” he mimicked. “Hey Alfonso, what were you doing showing cops in your back room? Stitching us up?”

The bartender tensed up. “N-No,” he said. “They wanted some security footage an-“ his voice dropped suddenly when Kato raised a hand to shush him. Meanwhile several of the other gangsters were standing up from their seats, and suddenly an unbearable tension filled the room.

“We’re not looking for you guys,” Kato said. “We’re just trying to find a missing person. He was on the cameras out front, that’s all.”

The man in front of Greaves leaned around her to look at Kato and shook his head. “We don’t like cops here, and we don’t trust cops. And you know what?” He asked. “By the time your backup got here, there’d be nothing left of you cops to find.”

Greaves leaned back away from the man. “Listen, man,” she said. “We’re not here for you or your friends. You should just let us go, there’s no need to get violent.”

The man looked down at Greaves and licked his lips. “Come to think of it,” he said, as he moved closer to her ear. “Maybe I could keep you for something else.” The man raised his hand, then began to brush it gently down Greaves’ cheek. Or at least, he tried.

Instead what happened was, before he could so much as touch her, Greaves grabbed his hand and turned his wrist outwards, then shoved her knee into his sternum, and then as the air was forced out of his surprised, gaping mouth, she turned her body and flipped him over her hip and onto the floor.

At that same moment several of the augmented gangsters pulled out unlicensed pistols and submachine guns, and began to take aim at Greaves who, in noticing this, had already rolled away into one of the empty booths at her side.

The gangsters began to open fire on her but, almost as soon as they started, one of them was hit by something and thrown back off his feet. Immediately after a second was hit in the shoulder and spiralled backwards, and immediately after that a man’s head popped open like a watermelon. Kato then turned his pistol towards a fourth and fired a shot that took off a woman’s cybernetic arm, but by that point those who had not drawn their weapons were doing so frantically with him in their vision, and those remaining who already had were adjusting their target.

One fired a small burst, and Kato was clipped in the shoulder and slid down towards the ground. Before any of the others could join, Greaves had started firing her own weapon over the booth seat, and one more was hit in the leg before another two dove down under the table to protect themselves.

The room was suddenly a picture of chaos, a violent struggle that, although it had gone on for only a few seconds, had already ended in blood. The music had stopped, as though whatever artificial intelligence controlling it had fled, and as Kato tried to steady himself on the ground he suddenly thought he was about to die – that Greaves was about to die.

“Fucking STOP!” Yelled their leader, the man who Greaves had thrown to the floor. He was reaching up his metal hand to try and parley, and for a second his people faltered and began to hesitate with their weapons. Then the Bartender pressed a button, and a section of the bar turned over to reveal a small, revolving, chain-fed turret that took one look at the gangsters before it began to spray.

They barely had time to make a noise before they were ripped and shredded to pieces, and the walls broke apart and cracked behind them as glass tables shattered and blood sprayed out over everything in an unimaginable mess of gore. Kato covered his head and hid down beneath the turret, and it was only when the bullets stopped and the whir of the chaingun began to die that he looked in horror at what had happened.

“Don’t. Fuck. With. My. Nightclub!” Yelled the bartender from behind the bar, his voice a manic and terror-filled drug-craze, his arms dancing around his head until the man that Greaves had thrown shot him with an SMG and his head came apart over the shots cabinet.

“I’m going to fucking kill you both,” the man with the tattoos growled, and moved his SMG down to where Kato was now scrambling and rolling up to his feet. The man stood then pulled the trigger, but his aim was thrown off by the panic and the recoil and the bullets hit the wall behind the detective, who then fired a round that shot the gun out of the gangster’s hand.

Kato fired again, but the man raised his cybernetic hand and the bullet was stopped by the palm, the force of it enough to knock the arm back and almost break the shoulder it was attached to. The gangster began moving quickly towards him, and Kato fired once more to find that again the bullet was stopped. He fired a third shot but this time aimed for the shoulder, and the force of it knocked the enemy around with one arm swinging out widely – just wide enough to catch Kato in the face and knock him to the floor again.

Kato’s pistol slid away from him across the ground and the gangster lurched down and grabbed it with his real hand, but before he could take aim Greaves shot him in the back of the head. The gangster stayed there for a moment, looking almost confused, then fell forwards into a suddenly eery silence.

Kato and Greaves looked at each other, both breathing heavily, both full of adrenaline and fear. A second later, as the two detectives realized that Kato’s shoulder was bleeding, the young woman behind the bar began to scream.