Celia stood on her tippy toes trying to see over the counter. A pair of muddy boots rested on the sign-in sheet. They jutted through a six by twelve opening in the chain link fencing that sectioned off the evidence room. Dirt-encrusted bubble gum, now grey, was smooshed into the tread of the right boot. Hidden behind a newspaper, a military style flat-top tilted from side to side with every turn of the page.

Cutter grunted. Celia noted that it was his first sound since hurriedly dragging her into the evidence room.

The man continued reading. A barely audible croak rumbled from his throat, little more than an acknowledgment of their presence. Hardly, an indicator he was listening, or that he possessed a mastery of speech.

Cutter held out his hand in a loose fist. “Got something for ya.”

“Oh?” The man looked up from his paper. After a few seconds deliberation, he folded it in half, slid his feet off the counter and sat upright. The nametag on his chest displayed: CLARK.

“What’ll it be this time?”

“Same old.”

Clark eyeballed Cutter’s extended hand. “Normally, I wouldn’t care, but I can’t keep doing this.”

“Ah, poor Clark. Getting cold feet?”

“Ain’t nothin’ bout it. Ya seen the IA creep they got strollin’ around?”

“Once or twice.”

“Yeah, well. Gotta watch my ass.”

“I got you covered.”

“Sure, ya do.”

Cutter shook his hand like he was tossing dice. “You going to leave me hanging, or what?”

Clark begrudgingly slapped Cutter’s hand. Something slid between them, and he pocketed the transaction.

“As always, great seeing ya, Jack.”

Rolling his reading material into a tube, Clark headed for a door in the back of the cage. “Pastrami on rye ain’t sitting too well with me, if ya catch my drift. I’ll be a while.”

He paused, looking back over his shoulder and pointed the paper at Jack. “But don’t make yourself too comfortable. If you’re here when I get back—”

“We won’t be.”

“Yeah, well, make sure.”

There was a buzz, followed by a click. Celia was too busy watching Clark slip from the room to notice what the sounds were attached to.

“C’mon,” said Cutter. He was tapping his foot in an overly exaggerated manner, holding the door for her. “Get in here already.”

All these new techniques she was learning. Of talking to and persuading people to do things that weren’t procedure. Or even particularly in their own self-interest. Things not described in the department’s procedural manual and well outside the realm of the Black & White programming.

And this time Cutter seemed intent on including her.

Not just including her, but helping her develop her skills as an officer. As a future detective, like him, and not simply an unquestioning companion at his side by requirement.

Was he starting to treat her like an equal? Perhaps even putting her on the path to becoming all grown up.

Celia beamed. “You got it, Jack!” She skipped through the open door.

Cutter made a noise that she was sure was accompanied by a shaking head and rolled eyes.

The room stunk of mildew and a persistent haze of dust lingered in beams of light. Unlike the case files, which could be digitally sorted, organized, and stored, evidence needed physical space. Row after row of shelves contained cardboard boxes of varying sizes. On the front of each was an identification tag, complete with strings of seemingly random numbers. It wasn’t so dissimilar from how she arranged information in her head, thought Celia.

But it was strange seeing physical manifestations of information in front of her. Tangible objects she could pick up and hold. Weapons used in murders. Shreds of tactile evidence she could run her fingers across. Feel what the victim felt. What the criminal felt in the rush of the moment.

What was objective reality for the precinct’s flesh and blood officers was the surreality of the real for her.

Cutter disappeared down an aisle. She followed the echo of his boots on the polished concrete floor. He was half way down, leaning over an opened box. His hand slipped into his jacket and cleanly out again.

“What are you doing?” asked Celia.

“You want to learn the ins and outs of being a detective?”

The question was simple enough. But there was something in the implication, the way he was asking that she had to assume warranted a more complex answer.

She felt her features tighten. “Of course, Jack.”

“Do you see anything you like?”

She looked around. For the most part, boxes. But on a few shelves there were oversized items that didn’t neatly fit into a box. Instead they had a toe-tag with an assortment of numbers scribbled on it.

“What do you mean?”

Cutter held out his hand. In it was a fistful of small circular devices.

“Spark-discs,” said Cutter.

“I do not know what those are.”

“Portable Electro-Magnetic Pulse Devices. A super short-range localized EMP in the palm of your hand. They call ‘em spark-discs. Used to short out tech on the fly.”

“That is what the Von Medvey attacker used on RX-S7, is it not?”

“Lookit you, kiddo. Catching on already. These are from an older case, but yeah, same idea.”

Cutter extended his hand toward her. “Take them.”

Celia turned her head, cowering away from them as if they were radioactive.

“I cannot, Jack.”

“Sure you can. They aren’t going to hurt you.”

“I cannot take this. It is evidence.”

“Nobody’s using it.”

“What about the agent from Internal Affairs? What would he say about this?” Celia looked down at her feet. “He is already mad about me.”

“Yeah, well MacDonald can—” Cutter caught himself midsentence. Instead, he grabbed a box from overhead and brought it down to Celia’s eye-level. “Look at all this crap. There’s thousands of boxes in here.”

He popped the lid. Inside was a stack of ancient thumb drives. “This one’s been here since 2017. No one is coming back for this stuff. Someone might as well get some use out of it.”

He slid out box after box, treating each like a Christmas present. His demeanor mirrored the child-like joy of discovering what possible surprise could be contained within each and every box.

Despite everything in her programming screaming to the contrary, Cutter made sense.

Literally thousands upon thousands of boxes of illegal tech were stored within the room. Any one of which could surely help them, the precinct, really anyone, in the pursuit of answers. If they could provide assistance, if they could stop another synth from being attacked, destroyed, or dismantled, why shouldn’t they use it?

How could she be mad at Cutter for not pursuing the Von Medvey case aggressively enough and then turnaround and tell him that this was inappropriate.

They should be using every resource at their disposal.

“Look, kiddo, I’ll level with you. It’s not technically legit, but you’ve been in the field with me. How often do we need to go a little off-book to deal with these guys that out-match, out gun, and out tech us?”

Celia’s onboard UI was calculating the numbers. It scaled up into the hundreds before she realized the question had been rhetorical.

“Besides, what’s it going to hurt to use anything in here?”

“Anything?”

A new realization dawned on her, one that went beyond the simple act of law enforcement.

“I don’t see why not.”

Once again Cutter extended the fistful of spark discs to her. “I really want you to take these.”

She nodded and took them. They were surprisingly heavy for their size. An intricate pattern of circuitry wrapped the device like netting. She polished her new treasure with her thumb, before sliding the four spark-discs into her belt pouch. “Thank you, Jack.”

He kneeled down next to her, cupping her hands in his. “Celia, promise me, I need you to promise me, if you find yourself in harm’s way, you use these.”

His voice was soft. Uncharacteristically so.

She had wanted to be mad at him. To carry the chip on her shoulder for the way he had acted at KCAL 9 for as long as she could. But already, she was feeling it fade.

Maybe he didn’t care about the well-being of synthetics. But it was clear, at the very least, he cared about hers.

“I promise, Jack.”

“Atta girl.” Cutter brightened and tussled her hair. His tone went serious for a second. “Let’s not go telling that MacDonald prick, kay? We don’t need him breathing down our necks. I mean more than he already is.”

“Can do, Jack.”