“Why don’t we just go to the police? The Lonely Hearts Club is DEFINITELY coming after you. They attacked you in your own home!” Thomas said. He and Dominic were standing alone in a train car, hurtling towards their next destination.

“We can’t go to the police,” Dominic reiterated.

“Why not? I mean yeah, they’re a deeply corrupt institution that serves to protect the capital of the rich rather than the rights of the working class, but they also have guns! Which is bad, but this is a situation where we need guns!” Thomas exclaimed, throwing up his arms in exasperation.

“It’s . . . complicated. Look, Thomas, I wish I could go to the police as well, but I can’t.” Dominic replied, sighing in disappointment.

“Then let me go after them. I want to protect you, Dominic. I want you. I NEED you to be safe.”

“And that goes for you too, Thomas. If you go after them, then you’ll be a target as well. And I don’t want that to happen.”

“What if they attack tonight then? Dominic, I’m already in danger all the time, so trust me when I say that you’re worth it.” Thomas put a hand on Dominic’s shoulder.

“You know you don’t need to come with me for this. I have people protecting me. It’s all right,” Dominic said, hopping out of the train with Thomas following behind him. He was wearing a suit.

“Well, you already have a pretty good idea of what I do. So, even if I don’t understand half of what you say, I should make the effort to support you,” Thomas responded as the two walked up the steps to a large domed building with ornate architecture—black pillars carved in a Greek style with purple LED lighting. Thomas Finn was going to court. But not for the reasons he suspected.

* * *

Aria Tourell was waiting inside for her brother. She was dressed in a suit as well, a pink one that matched her bright, bubblegum-coloured pixie cut. She was standing in a large bustling lobby filled with lawyers, criminals, and police officers alike. Dozens, maybe even hundreds, of qualified individuals, including her brother Dominic, were working to keep the gears of justice turning. And also Thomas was there. The couple had walked through the large entryway into the courthouse, Thomas ogling the various workers and officers, feigning interest in how justice operated, trying his best to be supportive but ultimately overdoing it with comments like “Wow, I’d like to do this when I grow up!” and “Maybe I can do a little lawyering too someday?” He was trying, though, and Aria was happy to see it.

“How are you, Thomas?” Aria asked, joining the dapperly dressed couple on their walk to Dominic’s courtroom. Her voice was bubbly and warm—just like had been when the two first met after being attacked by the Lonely Hearts Club in Dominic’s penthouse.

“I’m all right,” Thomas answered, before leaning in and whispering to Aria. “I’m glad there’s somebody else here who isn’t a smart law person. You’re a nurse, right?”

“Yup. And the feeling is mutual,” Aria answered.

Thomas wasn’t sure if she was a Civ user or not. He hadn’t seen her heal him, so he couldn’t be sure if it was a Civ at work. After all, it was possible that she was just a good nurse.

“Don’t be worried about trying to impress him or anything, though. He already really likes you,” she said reassuringly.

Thomas felt good hearing that, and he felt his posture grow in confidence as the trio walked into the courtroom. Aria and Thomas sat in what Thomas called “the audience,” although Aria wasn’t entirely sure if that was the right term for it. Dominic advanced to the front of the courtroom and sat at a large table facing a huge computer monitor. In most modern cases, the judge was an AI that was designed to follow the standard procedures of the courtroom, and the jury, which was off to the side made the actual ruling.

“All rise for the honourable JudgeBot in the case of Neonight City v. Pepper Morgan and the Lonely Hearts Club.”

Thomas and Aria rose along with the rest of the people standing in the sleek black courtroom. One of the things Dominic found the most frustrating about his job was the presence of various Civ users who could interfere in a case. Dominic thought about the legal system’s myriad shortcomings in relation to this issue as he sat back down at his table. If there are people in the world who are capable of controlling the minds of juries, killing an entire courtroom without getting up from their seat, or destroying all evidence against them with a blink, how are you supposed to do justice?

Dominic had his own ideas about how to fix the system, but what really mattered was what the system actually did. And the answer to that was absolutely nothing. The justice system hasn’t evolved since the discovery of Civs in the 2030s. Because evolving would mean getting rid of trials since they are so easily tampered with and just locking people up, which would be tyrannous. They could restrict who could enter the courtroom and who couldn’t, but there was no way of knowing who was and who wasn’t a Civ user. They could just let the entire thing be decided by a computer, but that gave an incredible amount of power to the person who built that computer. Everything just introduced a new set of problems. Which meant that the way the courts currently operated wasn’t really based on arguments or evidence; it was based on a shadow war that waged in every trial, where two teams of Civ users were pitted against each other in secret, pulling the strings and controlling the outcomes behind the scenes.

The courts had become coliseums.

Pepper Morgan was the defendant. Dominic had finally managed to get a shot at prosecuting the Lonely Hearts Club, after his previous attempt at doing so failed due to Civ shenanigans. But now he had a chance of sending their leader to prison, and he wasn’t going to waste it. Dominic believed very deeply in traditional justice, not in the proxy wars that really decided how these things went. He wanted to win by being right, not by being strong. But he knew that he needed to put Pepper Morgan away, so he’d brought along Thomas and Aria in case of any shenanigans.

Pepper, a young woman, was wearing a black tuxedo and had her orange hair tied into several small buns on the back of her head. She was leaning back casually, rolling her eyes as the jury rose and fell. She didn’t stand. Dominic stared at her with a scowl as he organized his notes on the screen of his Unit. This wasn’t the first time she had been taken to court for disregarding the law. The Lonely Hearts Club was a small organization but one that was full of powerful Civ users devoted to eroding the social fabric of Neonight City. And Pepper Morgan was their leader. This wasn’t the first time she had been arrested and found either innocent. She almost treated it like a sport—seeing how far she could push the legal system and win. And right next to her was her lawyer. Both Pepper and her lawyer were sporting heart-shaped badges on their sleeves. Same with people in “the audience.”

Thomas took a moment to inspect the jury. Nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary about them. First, it was Dominic’s turn to make an opening statement. Thomas wasn’t fully paying attention as his mind wandered through the courtroom, profiling the various individuals seated in the courtroom. He knew about Pepper Morgan—and it felt strange being in the presence of somebody so dangerous. He knew that people in the Lonely Hearts Club were littering the seating sections, maybe even in the jury. Thomas had been told by Dominic many times before about the kind of tampering that occurred in the courts. He was about 80 per cent sure, based on what Dominic had said, that one or more of these people was a Civ user who had already tampered with the jury or proceedings in some way—or was about to. And it was his job to figure out who it was.