Episode Transcript
Reyne: This is the log of Detective Derek Reyne, Homicide Unit, 8th Precinct Etherax. The date is September 26th, 2245. It’s been a few days since the death of Sophie Bestat, and…well I’ve been trying to deal with it. I managed to arrange a date for a funeral, gonna be at the end of the month. Managed to find her mother. She was doing alright, working as a teacher now at an independent school. Turns out some of the government officials have been trying to slowly rebuild the educational field outside of those run by the corps. Guess I missed that amidst everything else going on…I wonder if Cyndi had a part in that. Could ask Jane, haven’t seen her since she came by. Anyway, she was…well she lost her daughter, you can guess how she took it William. I introduced her to Optic, and last I checked they were dealing with finances and any measure of inheritance Sophie left, while Optic did her best to keep Sophie’s role as Ocularis on the low.
You ever have to tell someone their loved one’s died William? Of course you haven’t, how could you? I know I’ve already mentioned how interesting different grieving processes are and all that, but this isn’t about that. No matter how well they take it there’s always…there’s always that moment. When they learn that someone they loved, someone they maybe expected to outlive them or maybe knew were going to die before them, is gone. No final goodbye, no last words, just…gone. There’s no care you can offer someone in that moment. Not as a stranger, hell not even necessarily as a friend or family member. That first moment, that first few seconds when it happens…I feel like the worst person in the world. Yeah I didn’t kill them, but I feel like I might as well have just shot them right in front of them.
I still remember when Aidan and Mom died. My father had left a while before that, no real hate for him anymore, it just…didn’t work out. I barely knew the guy. I think he ended up leaving the city. For years it was just the three of us, doing our best to survive and make things work. Aidan wanted to be a pilot. He was always looking to the sky, always saying that if he could just get up there he’d fly away and no one could stop him. Mom did secretary work at some financial office, I don’t remember which one. I was at work when it happened. I was 24. Aidan was 27, Mom was 52. Like I said before, it was a misguided assassination attempt. They were walking by, just having lunch together and then…boom. Nothing. An officer I didn’t know came and told me. I think I wanted to kill him, make him take it back. And then I went dead. Just dead to the world, to everything, nothing mattered anymore. There was never any investigation. Just a file, tucked away in a cabinet listing casualties. Beyond anything…I think that broke me. The beatings and the “lessons” certainly didn’t help but…watching family get murdered, and not being able to do anything at all…well you don’t walk away from that ok.
And now here I’ve been, telling people that their families are dead, and nothing to show for it. But…well I guess I’m still trying. I want them to have answers, I want them to know that someone has been found responsible for these deaths. I don’t think they expect me to, why would they? So few people are ever truly held accountable in this city, at least not in a way that matters. You don’t learn who held the knife or the gun, you just hope that someone else gets them in the next tragedy that strikes. Railing against that feels impossible, but…I have to try. It’s worth waking up. Being alive again.
And speaking of being alive, it looks like I have to go look at someone who recently stopped being alive. Interesting…says it's urgent. That's different than normal. Well, I’ll be back in a bit William.
Reyne: Ok, William, this is just a short bit before I have to get back in the office but: The victim in this case was an officer, Erik Olen, who’s been around for some time. Exact same method, all that shit, but look; If I play this right, I might be able to get the rest of the police to actually investigate this. That could give us the last key to figuring this all out. Anyway, I’ll be back once I’m done in the office and I’ll update you.
Reyne: (Incensed) Hey William, you know how earlier I was talking about how we have to try and it’s worth trying to make the world better and all sorts of fun stuff like that? That there’s a purpose to all this, that I can make some sort of a difference? Yeah, fuck all that, and fuck this. It’s all fucking bullshit.
Let me tell you what fucking happened when I walked into that precinct today. So, as I said, an officer is dead! Clearly that warrants an investigation, especially when he’s killed in such an interesting manner. Now, I was on the case, and interestingly enough, so were Epenza and Halik. I thought that might be a bit excessive, but y’know, officer down, sure, sure, why not have some extra muscle? So we’re talking, and I’m noticing that they’re looking at me a bit funny, a bit weird, you know how it is. Regardless, I start telling them some hypotheses.
Now I make sure not to mention anything about Sophie or about Jet-Fire, gotta be careful after all y’know? But I’m telling them, hey there’s been several murders over these past few weeks that all have the same method, all kind of around here, I’ve got some names that might be worth looking into, I’ve got some theories, y’know, normal shit to talk about when you’re trying to find out who killed someone! Now I think this is going grand, they’re nodding along and then they stop and start saying some…rather interesting things. I wasn’t able to get a record of it, was in the Precinct and all, but I’ll just give you the lowdown right here.
So they tell me, that the chief and them and all the officers have been paying close attention to me recently, and were noticing that I seemed a little erratic. Now, I guess not being a mindless zombie is “erratic” to those dipshits, but sure, whatever, I guess I’ve been a little off of what I usually am, I don’t see why thats such a fucking issue. Then they tell me that they’re concerned about me, that I’ve been seen talking to gangsters and that I don’t seem to be taking my work all too seriously, what with my strange requests and weird behavior. Naturally I’m like, y’all are fucking ones to talk about being around gangsters, given that they’re both on the fucking take, so what the fuck is this? And I’m a detective, am I not allowed to investigate my cases in the manner I see fit?
At this point, the chief comes in, apparently he’d been listening the whole time, just to stand there and look important I guess. And they keep going on, saying I’m wasting police resources, I’m getting us in trouble we don’t need to be in, don’t you know that Terik case was settled a while ago, and hey you weren’t even on Debrah Jane’s case so why do you know anything about that, they seemed shocked I was able to actually maintain independent thought! Given that none of them have ever had one in their working lives, I guess that is a fucking mystery to them. And they just keep talking and talking about how worried they are about me and how I’m risking all of their lives by not sticking to established protocols, yada fucking yada. At this point I was a little…incensed. So I yelled at them something along the lines of “IF ANY OF YOU COULD GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES FOR EVEN ONE FUCKING MINUTE YOU MIGHT REALIZE THAT WE COULD ACTUALLY HELP SOME PEOPLE AND THAT MAYBE THE FACT THAT WE DECIDED TO BE POLICE OFFICERS MEANS WE DECIDED TO PUT OUR LIVES AT RISK FOR THE SAKE OF OTHERS!”...they didn’t take too kindly to that, guess it struck a nerve. So then the chief tells me that they’ve actually found the killer for this case already. Claimed it was a White Skull killer, hitman known by the name of Sid Rot, who was after Olen for some debts he hadn’t paid. Never mind that Rot is a brutal killer who eviscerates his victims and leaves them hanging off of buildings, no no, he must have changed his method right now, for this one guy, funnily enough, just in time for the Blue Helm Corporation to take out the man who killed one of their VP’s two months ago! Fancy that!
But that wasn’t the worst part of it. No that…that’s normal bullshit. I had hoped they might be helpful to my investigation, but I shouldn’t have hoped for anything, that’s on me. It’s what came next that has led me to my…current state. See, once they were done explaining their ending to the case, stupid as it may be, I was told that I would be being put on indefinite leave. Paid of course, they’re not monsters, but I was not to conduct any sort of investigative or police work, I was not to interfere in police business, and I was to halt any interaction with the police or forces at large until I was deemed fit for service once more. While I was in shock, they also informed me that these two lovely officers, Epenza and Halik, would be my watchdogs, and are actually currently stationed outside and around my apartment building, and have been tailing me since I left the precinct. One of them attempted to come inside, and I very succinctly told them that if they entered my house I would remove their bowels and use them as a mantelpiece. It got the point across.
So that’s where we sit now William. I’ve been handcuffed by my coworkers and given fucking babysitters to make sure I don’t do anything to the detriment of the oh so sacred police force and all there money grubbing corrupt asshole piece of shit ways. They even took my notes on the Olen case before I left, said they didn’t want them “harming my mental state” or some bullshit. All I remember is that he was killed in the same way, assumedly at night, and it didn’t look like he’d been robbed? They ushered me away pretty quickly now that I think about it. I think they were planning this even before Olen was killed, and this was just their excuse to finally do it. Shows how much they cared about him.
So now…fuck I don’t know what to do. I haven’t told Risk, Lorenz, or Optic yet, honestly I’m partially worried they may have tapped my communication lines…I’ll have to see if I can check in and figure that out but just…how can I go about investigating now? Sure I have the digital world, and maybe if Optic can get a line in I’ll know when things happen but if I’m off the Police lines, how am I meant to learn when these murders happen? It’s not like we report murders widely here, if we did that there would be nothing else on the news ever. They’ve fucked me, well and truly. I was actually trying to do something good for once in my god forsaken life and they declared that that was just not to be allowed.
(Calming down) Look, I know that I shouldn’t just use this as an excuse to never try anything good again, I know this, I get it, I knew the cops were terrible and not to trust them but…man I just thought they might care if one of their own died and we could actually do something about it. I thought some of them were like me, where their apathy might fade once they knew there was a chance, that it didn’t just have to be what the corps said. But instead, the apathy was easier for them. It wasn’t that they wanted to do something but felt useless, they just never wanted to do anything anyway. And I know that feeling, I lived in that lethargy for years, but if I woke up…couldn’t they? Shouldn’t they?
They really looked at me caring about a case, trying to pursue something, but since it fell outside of the lines of how things are supposed to work, that was seen as wrong. I deviated, just the slightest fucking bit, and that was too much for them, too much for anyone. Y’know, I’ve been talking a lot about how hopeless Etherax is and how it’s full of murder and lies and that’s just how it is and there’s nothing to be done but…I’m starting to think it’s not just an inherent property of the city. If people are so scared of any kind of change or deviation that they enforce this status quo that’s so incredibly harmful to all of us and our existence just so they can still maintain what is a fundamentally broken life…well that’s not the cities fault. That’s our fault.
And I’m not exempt from that, hardly, but to see it happen so clearly, so cleanly, and thinking back…it’s always been like this. Deviation is to be punished. Improvement is to be stopped. Continue as things have always been, there is no point in imagining a better world, and if you do, we’ll crush the dreams before they can take root. What a fucking world to live in. No wonder we all try to just get drugged up.
But what the fuck do I do now? I’m trapped in my own fucking home, I’m actively being watched, I’m probably on a registry of some kind, I’ll be tracked all around the city…this is awful. And that killer is still out there. Could it be that one of the police is the killer and that’s why they had to lock me up like this? Maybe…worth taking a look at the least. There has to be a way to get word to someone without being noticed…maybe Risk’s off-network communicator? But what would I even ask him to do? Kill the guards? That won’t accomplish anything. But maybe he can get me in contact with Optic…god dammit, this is all so much more complicated than it needs to be! Why couldn’t they just leave me alone?
I am not going to let this kill me though. I will not let these cops grind me into the dust just because I want to do something good. I will live, and I will beat them, and I will get my own one day, but for now I will find this fucking killer if it takes everything I have. I will do one worthwhile thing with my life. I will not let them break me. I will rain hell upon them and on anyone who tries to stop me. This isn’t over. Not in the fucking slightest.
