Chapter Text
It was midnight. The lights were off. Everyone was asleep.
The perfect time to do some crime.
“Please don’t say it like that.”
The thief shrugged, pushing the window open. It was unlocked, which wasn't surprising considering it was located on the 12th floor-
"-wait, how did I get up here then?"
"I don't know, make something up, it's not important right now."
"Alright, if you say so."
Through the power of his rippling muscles and sick gains, the thief scaled the building and pushed the window open. He surveyed the dark room, looking out for any traps or alarms. When he found nothing, he slipped inside-
-only to knock over a tiny checkered side table, sending it crashing into the ground, but not before it clanged loudly against the side of a bathtub.
“Uh, oops?”
Footsteps echoed from the floorboards above him. Uh-oh, looks like the owner is awake. His eyes darted around in panic, looking for a place to hide. There was a couch against the wall to his left, big enough for him to hide behind. He’d have to tiptoe past the mess on the floor though if he wanted to remain undetected. The dresser to his right looked big enough for him to hide inside too, though it was closer to the doorway where the owner was sure to emerge from any second soon. He could even hide under another side table near the curtains of the opposite set of windows, as long as the owner didn’t look too closely once she entered the room. Or . . .
Decision made, the thief crouched down in wait. As soon as he glimpsed a cyan body walk through the doorway, the thief sprung into action:
He dropped to his knees, and started wailing at the feet of the surprised homeowner.
“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to break in!”
“Whoa whoa, cut! CUT!” Gavin yelled from the couch he was sitting on, Nines flicking on the lamp beside them. “Bud, what the hell??”
“I did something bad!”
“Yeah, but you’re not supposed to apologize!” Gavin slapped a hand to his face, groaning. “You’re supposed to be a thief and a murderer, you don’t exactly have a rigid set of morals here.”
“Oh.”
“So unless this is going to end with you stabbing Lily in the back once she lets her guard down . . .” Gavin continued, gesturing at the cyan frog holding a glowing wand as substitute for a flashlight.
“Oh,” Bud repeated, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Can I have a do over?”
“Please do.” They watched the lion fix the mess he made and then skip out of the front door, Lily getting back into bed upstairs. Once everyone seemed to be in position, Nines turned the light off.
Bud slowly slipped through the window, narrating his progress once more. He knocked over the side table again. This time, once he heard Lily’s footsteps hurrying down the stairs, the lion dove behind the other side table partially hidden by the curtain, and watched her come out of the doorway along the same wall, her eyes scanning the room under the dim light of her glowing wa- flashlight.
The thief waited for her to pass him by as she walked deeper into the room to inspect the open window on the opposite side, before he slowly slipped out of his hiding place. He grabbed the club he spotted on top of the table-
“Knife.”
“. . . what?” Bud looked towards Gavin in question.
“That’s supposed to be a kitchen knife.”
Bud looked confused. “Why would Lily keep her knife in the living room when she has a perfectly good kitchen?”
“ . . . I don’t know. Just go along with it.”
Bud nodded, switching his grip on the used firecracker tube into a stabbing grip. He slowly approached the owner, who had her back turned to him, and with a yell he slipped the knife between her froggy ribs. She let out a gasp, twisting around to take a good look at her killer and his jaw-dropping physique, before collapsing dead on the ground with a “blargh!”.
A long moment of silence passed. The thief stared at his handiwork, shuddering at the coldbloodedness of his act. But, well, he’d come this far, might as well get what he came here for. He strode towards the display cabinet by the stairs and pulled its doors open with his buff arms, frowning at the only worthwhile treasure in the house. He grabbed the golden trophy, walked over the dead body and its growing puddle of blood and exited through the same window he entered. A few seconds later, Bud entered through the front door, still frowning.
“I can’t believe I just killed someone for a trophy.”
“That you did," Gavin said, nodding solemnly.
“Was it at least a nice trophy?”
Gavin shrugged. “It was actually a diamond necklace.”
Bud whistled in appreciation. “Oooh, fancy. I can get behind that.” His eyes flickered over to the ‘crime scene’, and when he spotted Lily struggling to get up from the floor, he quickly ran over to help her stand without sliding on the fruit juice that they used as fake blood splattered everywhere. Gavin internally thanks the game developers for making carpets highly replaceable in Animal Crossing, because he sure as fuck ain’t cleaning that mess up.
While the two animals were busy, Gavin turned towards Nines, who had chosen that moment to stand up, eyes darting around the ‘crime scene’. “What do you think? I mean, obviously the recreation isn’t exactly the same as how it actually went down, but . . .”
“. . . this crime makes no sense,” he finally muttered with a frown after a long moment. “How did the thief even manage to enter through the 12th floor window? You can't just wave that off, Gavin."
“Oh, that's because getting up several storeys isn’t that hard these days. The market has been flooded with legitimate spy gadgets for years; you have no idea how many times I’ve arrested someone for scaling the side of a privately-owned building with suction-padded gloves or grappling hooks. Not to mention the laser saws." Gavin shuddered, recalling one messy case involving a toddler and an unattended laser saw.
"I see. Then I guess the better question is why did the thief enter through the 12th floor window? According to you he was in and out within 5 minutes, going straight to the victim’s place. Why not choose a floor closer to the ground, or a unit with better treasure inside? If he knew the right angle to hide his face from the drone camera, that means he spent considerable time staking out the building, time he could've used to select other units with significantly more valuables."
Unless he chose that unit for another reason," Gavin pointed out.
Nines tilted his head to the side, curious. "You think the thief personally knew the victim?"
"Maybe. He was in and out quick enough to imply that he knew there was only one thing worth grabbing in that unit. Plus he killed her instead of knocking her out or something, so there might be a grudge at play, too."
"But then he should have known where the necklace was hidden. And yet he chose the wrong window."
"Maybe the victim had never invited the thief over to her place or shown it to him," a high-pitched voice enthusiastically interjected, "and he only knew that it existed because she kept bragging about it."
Gavin and Nines both glanced down to see Lily sitting cross-legged in front of the couch, still covered in sticky fruit juice. Bud had apparently given up on helping her up, rolling around on the fruit juice puddle a few feet away himself and poking around their stuff. Probably looking for something to lift, with how uninterested he seemed in their conversation, unlike Lily whose eyes were sparkling eagerly.
Lifting a hand off the armrest to poke at the beaming frog's cheek, Gavin grimaced as his finger came back sticky. "Uh, Lily? Don't you want to wash all that fruit juice off first? We have a jacuzzi over there."
Lily seemed to think it over, rubbing at her sticky chin before eventually nodding. "Okay!" she said, rolling on the floor towards the tub and rolling up the sides (thanks to her new stickiness) to drop herself into the lukewarm water. Nines walked over to flick the bubbles switch on and add soap, while Gavin scooted over to his roommate's side of the couch to flick the light on at the same time.
Once the sound of automated bubbles being created and Lily's delighted giggles filled the air, Gavin went over what Lily said. "So the thief knew the victim enough to know that she had a diamond necklace, but not well enough to be invited over to her house. That right?"
"Do you have a suspect list?" Nines asked, walking back to him.
“Not yet. It wasn’t my case originally, you know. Got dumped on me a few hours ago because Ben had to take an emergency medical leave.”
“Doesn’t that mean it’s possible you got the layout of the room wrong then? Because besides all the furniture being erratically scattered everywhere, I don't think you can explain the knife in the living room away as the victim being eccentric, not when the rest of the set is kept in the kitchen.”
Gavin shook his head. “Nah. I got that from the police drone. It has a clear view inside the house through that window. And hey, I can so claim that she chopped vegetables in her living room. I bring my coffee pot to my bedroom all the time, and it's not supposed to be there either.”
Nines looked thoughtful. “. . . can I see the footage?”
“I don’t have it with me now, but I guess I can request for the lab to send it over.” Gavin gave him a frown. “Why? You don’t trust my interior design skills?”
Thank you. It’s not that, it’s just . . . is it not easy to hack and alter camera footage? For androids, at least.”
“Are you saying that all this time, androids can manipulate video evidence??” What the fuck, does he have to go over all his past cases now to check for evidence of tampering?? Elijah was definitely going to receive an earful about this. Screw that asshole for making his job harder than it already is.
“Not all androids. Just the RK800. And me, if I had my body; all the necessary programs are installed in it. Also the military androids.”
"How about you lead with that?? Phcking hell, I was about to go throttle my brother because of what you said." Gavin rolled his eyes, reaching for his headpiece. "Be back in a bit."
He blinked hard several times, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of his room after taking off the Dream. Once he could see well enough to find where he threw his phone, Gavin texted Officer Wilson, asking for the footage to be emailed to him. The guy had night shift tonight so hopefully it wouldn't take too long.
Sneaking quietly out of his room in his own apartment was, unfortunately, a necessary sacrifice to make if he wanted to avoid waking Patty up. Much as he loved his princess, Gavin did not want to deal with her being cranky for being woken up at this time of the night. He tiptoed towards the front door, watching Patty warily as she slept soundly on the couch cushion. Crouching down to reach his bag, he slipped his laptop out before crawling back to his room and gently closing the door.
After flopping down on the bed and connecting his laptop to the internet, Gavin was surprised to see that he already had an email from Officer Wilson. Damn that was fast. He downloaded the file, replying with a "Thank you!" and a smiley face for added measure. As soon as he was done, he pulled the headpiece back over his head.
Considering that he had been gone for a few minutes at most, Gavin expected everything to be where he left it. Opening his eyes to see Nines crawling in through the window of their shared home was highly unexpected, but Gavin decided to remain quiet lest he interrupted . . . whatever this was supposed to be. Not that it took long: as soon as Nines made it through the window, he tripped on the potted orchids and fell into the jacuzzi with a loud splash.
"You okay?" he asked, walking over and peering into the tub. Lily was still playing with the bubbles, unaware of what just transpired (or uncaring. It was hard to tell how much the game AI recognized Nines when Gavin was also active in the game). Nines pushed himself up, legs kicking into the air until Gavin had the presence of mind to pull him out from behind.
"I was trying to see if the layout works. It really doesn't," Nines explained, grimacing. The water dripped off of him for a few more seconds before vanishing. "This place is a mess; it's impossible to enter without alerting the homeowner, and following that logic, it's impossible to get anywhere near the kitchen to grab a knife before she comes down. The closest possible weapons are all for bashing someone's head in."
"Yeah, honestly it feels like a storage room more than an actual living space. I got the footage, anyhow, maybe we'll get something new out of it." Gavin shrugged, then turned to Lily, who looked up from her bubble tower. "How do I project it here?"
"Turn on your bluetooth, I'll do the rest!"
Gavin left to do so, and when he returned to the game, the two were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, a large television in front of them. The carpet had changed; no traces of juice anywhere, except for Bud, who was still rolling around the floor for whatever reason.
Gavin sat down between the two AIs, scooping up the remote and pressing 'play'. Together they watched a mysterious figure climb up the sides of the upscale condominium, open the window to a 12th floor unit, and then exit out in under five minutes. It wasn't a single continuous shot, considering the police drone was circling around the block, but it told the story well enough.
Once the clip finished, everyone remained silent. Honestly, Gavin didn't get anything new out of rewatching the footage. Then again, he was kind of tired, so maybe he just needed to sleep on it. He waited for either of the two to say something before retiring for the night.
Nines was the first to react. "Gavin, why was the entire footage flipped?"
". . . flipped? What?" Gavin pressed 'play' on the remote again, squinting at the clip. He had no idea what Nines was talking about, it's not like the signs on the screen were legible from the height the drone was flying.
Nines leaned forward, pointing at the illegible sign of the coffee shop beside the condominium. "There, the letters are reversed."
Gavin leaned forward even more, still not seeing it. "Do you have some sort of enhanced vision because I'm not seeing it. I can't even tell the letters apart."
"It says "EFAC RIALC TS"," Lily piped up from Gavin's other side.
". . . St. Clair?" He looked at the design of the cafe, and yeah, it did look like a St. Clair coffee shop, so those two were probably right. But then . . . "Why would it be reversed?"
"The only thing I could think of is a different unit was broken into - on the other side of the condominium - and whoever altered the footage must have tried to hide his crime and buy some time by flipping it over."
"And instead of a B&E in another room we just, what, accidentally stumbled into another crime scene?" Gavin asked, frowning. What the hell was even going on anymore.
"Hey, Mayor Gavin, I have a question."
Gavin turned his gaze towards Lily. "Uh, sure. Shoot."
The cyan frog tilted her head at him, big eyes wide with curiosity. "If a building says "Tower I", that means there's a "Tower II", right?"
Gavin mentally went over every single tower he remembered. "Generally, yeah. Why?"
Nines inhaled sharply beside him, but before Gavin could ask, Lily explained. "Because the building says "Detroit Residences", and underneath it is a small plaque that says "Tower I"."
Gavin went silent, mind racing with the implications. Well, part of his mind was, though it wasn't going anywhere besides blaring sirens acknowledging that this definitely meant something important. No, most of his mind was busy being annoyed that nobody on the case even bothered to tell him that it was a fucking Tower I of II. God, this is why he never liked taking on someone else's case when it was already halfway through.
"I just checked," Nines murmured, jolting Gavin out of his thoughts. "Detroit Residences Tower II is five blocks away to the west. There is also a St. Clair Cafe beside it and a police drone roaming around."
"Another drone?" Meaning . . .
"I think someone switched the drones around," Lily concluded, driving the final deductive nail into Gavin's brain. Or, uh, however the saying was supposed to go. Fuck, he really needed to sleep.
"Great. Just great." Gavin groaned. "Guess this means I have to go there now."
Lily slid off the couch, beaming at him. "This was fun, Mayor Gavin! I hope we'll do this again sometime."
"Right, thanks a lot for your help, Lily," Gavin replied, patting the frog between her eyes and walking her to the door. "Stay safe now."
She waved cheerfully at him as she walked away, which Gavin automatically reciprocated. Soon, he felt another presence at his back, and he turned around to see Bud behind him.
"I'm gonna take my leave now too, bro! I need my beauty sleep so I can wake up early to jog around town before anyone else," the lion explained with a big grin, sunglasses glinting from no particular light source.
"Okay. Thanks for your help here too," Gavin said, patting him on the arm.
"See ya later, sugartits!"
Gavin started choking on his own spit, slapping at his chest to try and clear his airway. "Excuse me??" he all but shrieked.
Bud blinked at him innocently. "I said 'see ya later, su-"
"I heard what you said! Where the phck did you pick that up??"
"Rocco," Bud answered, and yeah, in retrospect it was a stupid question, wasn't it. "I heard him calling you that yesterday, and I thought 'wow that sounds really cool' so I wanted to copy him. I don't know what it means, but I figured my catchphrase 'maaan' was starting to get stale-"
"It's a bad word," Gavin said firmly. "Very bad. Don't use it. The exercise gods would be ashamed of you, they'll dub you as a heretic and- and take away all your muscles!"
It was hard to see the lion's expression with his sunglasses, but that didn't mean Gavin couldn't see the complete despair that took over Bud, mainly because he started crying big tears. "WHAAAT? NO! I'm so sorry! I'll never do it again, please don't take them away!!!"
Before the guilt had the chance to settle in Gavin's stomach, Bud crashed into the door and ran out into the night, leaving a doorless doorway and dead silence in his wake.
Nines was the first to speak up. ". . . amazing. You managed to break your mayoral promise and got back into terrorizing your villagers in the same term." he flatly said, shooting Gavin an unimpressed look.
"Hey, do you want to be called 'sugartits' by everyone in the village?" Gavin shot back, snorting at Nines' answering grimace. "Yeah, didn't think so. Freedom of speech is overrated anyway."
"Because that doesn't sound vaguely horrifying at all," Nines muttered sarcastically, rolling his eyes at Gavin. "Shouldn't you be going to sleep soon? You said you needed to be at work early tomorrow.” A bell loudly chimed outside, to the tune of Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’. Gavin still has no idea who keeps changing it, considering he had set it to ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ last he checked. “Or later today, technically."
“I should, but . . .” Gavin hesitated, glancing outside. There wasn’t really anything to see besides the black and orange of Flower Field #1, but somehow Nines still understood what he meant.
“I don’t think she’s logging on anytime soon,” Nines said, frowning. “It’s been a week now, you’d do better to sell your turnips to our Reese instead of Graffiti’s.”
“I know,” Gavin sighed. “It’s just that she said she had something important to tell me last time, and I’m curious what it was.”
“. . . maybe it’s time you look for another player?” Nines suggested. “There must be someone out there who’s less- um, how did you describe her again?”
“Angsty with a possible side career in animal murder?”
“. . . yes, that. You know what, I take it back: you definitely need to look for someone else to play with.”
Gavin huffed. “Fine, I will. I suppose the bar she set isn’t really all that high; anyone has to be better than Susie Graffiti.”
----
Victim’s name: Susan Graff
Age: 21
Cause of death: blunt force trauma to the head
Primary suspect: ???
Connor frowned at the question marks in his HUD. It’s not that there weren’t any suspects- there were plenty, all with good motives considering how the victim had been acting, based from what the android could see from her web activity as he interfaced with her computer; No, his problem was that he couldn't decide who was more likely to have done the deed among all of them, because there was hardly any actual evidence of someone else’s presence at the crime scene.
Perhaps someone who lived in the same building? The people she interacted with online seem to be in the same economic bracket as her, going to the same sophisticated college, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to assume one of them might also be living in Detroit Residences. He could cross-reference the list of tenants with the list of people she bullied on her main social media account. Whether or not he’d find worthwhile information, he wasn’t sure yet. Even the victim’s unit wasn't registered under name, ownership belonging to her uncle, so the same might go for the others. If that didn’t bring up anything, well-
Someone snickered loudly behind him, a familiar yet unexpected voice, causing Connor to cut the interface and turn his head towards the door. His optical units confirmed that yes, it was Gavin, here for some reason despite his own crime scene being miles away and cackling at the same laser saw the other officers had also laughed at.
He still has no idea why they thought the serial number ‘2033-80085’ was so funny.
Gavin seemed to sense his curious gaze, because he looked up at that moment and shot him a smile. The detective handed back the evidence to Officer Miller, before shoving his hands into his pockets and walking over to Connor.
“Sup, RoboCop,” he greeted. “Chris says you have the footage from the police drone here?”
Connor held out his hand wordlessly in confirmation, waiting for Gavin to place his police-issued tablet in the android’s grasp. He transferred the requested file and handed it back as soon as he was done. “Is this for Detective Collin’s case?” Connor asked.
“Yeah. Turns out someone switched the drones between Tower I and II last week.” Gavin rolled his eyes, looking quite annoyed. “No one even told me there was a Tower II, you know how many hours I wasted watching the wrong video??”
Connor frowned at that. “Are you saying that your victim’s corpse was possibly moved to the other building from here along with the footage?”
“Or the other way around? Phck, I don’t know,” Gavin huffed. “Either way, it’s too early to be up right now without any coffee.”
“There’s free coffee in the lobby, I’m sure they’ll give you some on your way out,” Connor suggested.
“I’m pretty sure these aren’t the type of people to be very accommodating towards cops, Connor.”
“They will if you point out that they aren’t in compliance with Michigan’s Building Code,” Connor said with an innocent smile, making Gavin laugh.
“You know what, why not?” Gavin said, still chuckling. “Hey, you want a copy of the other drone’s footage before I bounce? I got it here.” He waved his tablet in front of the android.
“I suppose I might as well, there might be something relevant.” Connor plucked the tablet out of Gavin’s hands and interfaced with it again. In the meantime, Gavin turned his attention towards the corpse slumped over in a chair, letting out a low whistle at the sight.
“Yikes. Been a while since I’ve seen someone’s head bashed in hard enough to see brains.” The detective was quiet for a few seconds. “Is that a Cyberlife Dream on her face?”
Connor looked at device covering the victim’s face, the one Gavin was pointing at. “Yes. We believe she didn’t hear the killer approaching because she was too immersed in her playthrough. You have one too, don't you?”
Gavin nodded, then shivered. “Imagine dying because of that thing.”
Connor thought back to the android he saw at Jericho, suffering because of an unfortunate run-in with this very device, and quietly agreed.
They both stared at the corpse for a long moment of silence before Gavin broke it. “Wait. How do you know I have one?” Gavin asked, eyebrow raised.
“Tina said so when I asked her about the device. You just confirmed it.”
“Really? I told her to keep quiet about it. Why’d you want to know?”
“I got one for Hank. I was wondering if you could recommend any games that would be good for his health?”
“Whoa whoa, what? Isn't that thing expensive? How are you even able to afford it?”
Connor blinked. “Well, Hank lets me stay at his house, and I don’t need to eat. Also I decided to avail the SWAT team’s package.”
“. . . Okay I’ll bite. SWAT team’s package??”
“Cyberlife gave a discount to the SWAT team, hoping they’ll use it for their training exercises.”
. . . wow, they're really looking for reasons not to sell those things at full price, huh,” Gavin muttered, shaking his head. “Speaking of discounts, didn’t Tina mention that she herself has one when you asked?”
“No, I didn’t,” a loud voice said from right behind Gavin, making him jump. “Because I don’t have any games on it yet,” Tina explained, draping an arm across Gavin’s shoulders.
“You don’t? But you’ve had that since Christmas, I thought you said you wanted to play Just Dance in VR.”
“Well I haven’t had time to go buy the game yet,” Tina said, sighing dramatically. “And you’re going to get one for me, aren’t you? To make up for ditching your best friend a couple of weeks ago for your addiction.”
“My- I don’t have an addiction,” Gavin quickly said, shooting the officer a glare. Tina seemed to ignore him, rummaging in her pocket for something. At last she pulled out what she was looking for: a bagged piece of cotton, stained blue.
“Uh-huh. Hey Gav, take a look at this evidence,” Tina casually requested, thrusting the open bag under Gavin’s nose.
Connor wasn’t sure what happened; one moment Gavin was sniffing the bag, the next he was gagging loudly, slapping a hand on his mouth as he stared at the officer in horror.
Tina, on the other hand, was wearing a wide grin on her face. She leaned forward, into Gavin’s pale face, and whispered, “You can’t lie to me, rat boy. Now, either you get me what I want and we spend the next weekend playing together, or I tell everyone in the precinct about this little weakness here and you’re never going to live it down.” She shook the evidence bag of cotton stained with - as far as Connor can tell, short of placing it in his mouth to check - thirium. He has no idea what’s going on.
“. . . why am I friends with you?” Gavin whispered back, horror still painting his face.
Tina grabbed his shoulders, digging her fingers in. “Because you love me,” she hissed, manic grin on her face.
Connor watched as Gavin scampered away as fast as humanly possible, once Tina let him go. She turned to the android, smile a lot less scary than it was mere moments ago. “Should I be worried about what just transpired?” Connor hesitantly asked.
“Nope!” She cheerily replied, popping the ‘p’.
Connor slowly nodded, making a mental note not to cross Officer Chen.