Daniel pulled the vape from his lips and exhaled. His nerves were starting to fray as he turned the coin in his fingers. Something about the coin felt right in his hand from the very first contact, so much so that he didn't even ask Locke if he could keep it. Daniel took hit after hit from his vape. After releasing everything from his lungs with a slow, controlled breath, Daniel would instantly go in for another hit.
Detective Locke was sitting next to him, watching. "Jesus, do you ever come up for air? I've never seen anyone take so much into their system. How the hell are you walking?" Locke had a mixture of impressed and scared on his face.
Daniel smiled at Locke, which visibly threw him off. Daniel hadn't smiled the entire time Locke had been in his house, and honestly, Detective Locke was sure he would never see Daniel smile at all. However, something about Locke's Irish accent was getting to him, and the fact that an Irishman was shocked at how much he smoked gave Daniel a strong sense of pride that made him smile.
"You wouldn't believe how messed up I am," Daniel said, lowering the vape from his lips and letting the smoke billow out as he talked.
Locke laughed at that and turned his head to look out the window. "Oh, you don't need to tell me, Daniel. I've seen my share of messed-up cases."
Daniel took another puff and then checked the Grav-Mod strapped to his hip. Modern medicine had definitely progressed to the point of cloning, but healing the naturally born body was something different. Because of the extent of his injury, they healed him as best as Daniel could afford, but he couldn’t get the best available at the time because he was a CIP; there was nothing to help pay for the procedures that would have fixed his disabilities. So Daniel invented a gravity module and attached it to his left leg. Originally intended to serve as a cane, he had made major improvements since its creation.
The car began to descend in front of the Petit Chamin Memorial, where the police had already cleaned up everything from the murder. Locke looked down at the memorial as they descended, reaching up, he swiped across his brow; an incredibly thin visor appeared.
The car stopped; Detective Locke and Daniel stepped out. Daniel activated his own visor, darkening to protect his eyes from the bright sun. The user interface appeared as an overlay of his surroundings. The visor began by welcoming Daniel and reminding him of an update in the top-right corner. Daniel shook his head and tapped his fingers to dismiss the notification.
He followed Locke across a beautiful grassy knoll where a Petit Chamin memorial stood atop. It was one of many in the city, all featuring the same design. Polished stones cut into wedges bonded togeather, standing 20 feet high. Starting on the left, there was clear quartz, then the deep blues of lapis lazuli. Celestine was then bonded into green moldavite, and at the very end was the most beautifully polished amethyst. Together, the stones resembled a flower, and each memorial was called a Petite Chemin Memorial. Clones would travel to these stones and place their hands on the wedges. They would hum at different tones and stand for hours at a time with their eyes shut, as if listening for the stones to answer.
Locke walked to the base of the memorial and looked straight up at the top. "Wow, that's tall," he exclaimed, reaching out and touching it, then turned to Daniel, tapped his fingers together, and made a flicking motion with his fingers as if he were throwing a shuriken at Daniel. A notification popped up on Daniel's screen, and a voice spoke into his ear.
"Detective Locke would like to share a file with you. Do you accept?" Daniel tapped his fingers together to accept, and the file opened from the top-right corner, broadcasting the crime scene directly to him, making it look as though he were standing in the live crime scene.
At the base of the memorial lay the dead girl. Daniel thought she had a doll-like face for someone in her early to mid-thirties. The girl had a thick mass of dark hair that cascaded halfway down her back; it made her look as though she were lying on a feather bed. The injury to her chest was too familiar to Daniel, bending down to look at it more closely. The girl appeared to have been shot, but her chest had a large concave appearance, as if hit by a giant hammer, and there was no exit wound.
“So,” Locke said, leaning against the memorial. "Do you recognize her now that you're standing over her?"
"Detective, I have never seen this woman." Daniel stood up straight, not taking his eyes off the girl. "Did you obtain the surveillance footage? Has the murder been reconstructed?"
"Let me check." Lock went into his visor “I have surveillance footage for both this location and where the shot supposedly was fired, which is just in front of that coffee shop over there."
Daniel looked toward the coffee shop. "Let's start with the girl, and then we can see what is down there." Lock once again made a motion as if he were throwing a shuriken at Daniel, and a notification appeared for Daniel to accept.
A video started playing of the girl getting out of a cab and walking straight to the monument. She stopped about ten feet away and just stared at it. She stood there for at least a minute before turning and starting to walk away. She had what Daniel could only describe as a look of joy in her eyes.
A second later, there was a rush of air, and the girl was struck by something, throwing her back. Daniel paused the scene with the girl falling through the air. "Rewind," Daniel said, and he moved closer to the girl again, pausing it at the image of the girl being hit by the bullet. There was a rush of air that circulated before the bullet struck. "Oh no," Daniel muttered when he saw the rings. This was serious.
"What kind of weapon would cause a ring like that to form?" Locke asked, turning to Daniel.
“The rings are because this is a gravitational-stopped bullet. It occurs with kinetic bullets propelled by a gravitational shift rather than magnetic shifts. This gravity shift launches the bullet from the barrel, creating significant gravitational pressure around the area where the bullet would strike, essentially using the force of the bullet to slam against the presser around the impact, killing with a high impact of the bullet but destroying all trace of anything being fired.”
Daniel turned to the coffee shop and looked into the distance. “Do you mind if we walk down and see what they were able to recreate?”
“Absolutely.” Locke started walking ahead of Daniel, leading the way to the coffee shop. When they got there, the program opened to show the moment the weapon was fired and its source.
The frozen image gave Danial and Locke pause.
“Well now, isn’t that curious,” Locke said as he walked up to the image of the shooter,
Daniel looked over the whole thing; the pressure in the bottom of his neck began to build again. This couldn’t be possible.
It looked as if there was a rip in the light that the weapon was extruding from. Daniel noticed that nearly the entire assassin was hidden. Only the arms and torso were visible through it. He tried to see every detail that he could. The assassin wore a specialized white suit with no trace of affiliation, except for a three-inch glowing circle on her waist. Daniel took note.
“Can we watch the moments up to this shooting?” Daniel asked Detective Locke.
“Absolutely.” Clicking his fingers, the video started to play.
There was a definite visual disturbance that walked around the corner, avoiding contact with everyone to avoid being noticed. The visual disturbance then stopped, and the tear revealed itself for a brief moment when the shot was fired, then became unseen again. The disturbance walked back around the corner, and the program couldn’t follow any more.
“Detective, we need to follow that, but first, can you ring up the image again? I want to better look at that gun.”
The image returned, and Daniel started looking at the gun with more intent to study it. It was a courteous design, something that he would have invented. The barrel was square, and it looked as if it had gravity thrusters lining its length. This would have been a powerful, silent weapon, and with the technology to use fractal light to move as if in another dimension, this was starting to look way too familiar to Daniel. He had used a similar weapon on a previous job, one that he had invented. The problem is that his technology would only work for him. How could something he might have invented be used in this assassination of a girl coming to see him?
Locke had been clicking his fingers together for a few seconds, when he exclaimed, "What do you mean you can't recover the image?" Locke was obviously talking to his AI, which was probably telling him that the image was corrupted and impossible to recover. Daniel wasn't shocked. If someone had the resources to make a kinetic gun as small as the one he was observing, he knew there would be no problem for them to conceal their identity.
Locke grew more and more irritated until finally he closed the program, revealing Daniel sitting on one of the monument benches, watching Locke with amusement. "You done?" Daniel called out.
"Yeah, we can go to the department and see if there's something they might be able to do there," Lock said, starting to pat his pocket in search of something but obviously unable to find it. Looking back at Daniel, who was still staring at him, Locke walked over to the bench and sat down. "Do you mind if I take a hit from your vape?"
Daniel hid that he was a little shocked, and he handed the vape pen over to Locke, who took a deep breath and blew a giant cloud of vapor out of his mouth. Daniel looked at the monument again before speaking. "Detective, I think you should go back to the station to try to find out who the shooter was. I have to go talk to an acquaintance, and you can't come."
Lock took another puff from the vape pen and then spoke firmly, "I’m following you. If you think you have a lead, then let’s follow it."
Daniel stood up with Locke and started walking toward the car. Locke asked as they got closer to the car “So, who do you think we should go see?"
Daniel reached over and took his vape pen from Locke again, taking a deep breath and letting the cloud escape his lips. "Well, detective, we're going to go talk to Bayek."
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