The Neo-Metropol Heist

28: Jaeger

Jaeger stood amongst the shards of broken glass around her feet.
To her left, the huge glass wall of the apartment gaped open with a few icicles of glass hanging like daggers. It had shattered into a million pieces and now lay across the apartment floor like a sea of crystal.
It was a swish place, even torn apart and broken, a luxury in a city that was slowly sinking, metaphorically and literally.
"What do you think, boss?" Stewart appeared behind her and forced his way aboard her train of thought.
Jaeger shook her head.
"Stewart, less of the boss, I'm not your boss."
"Rank says otherwise, boss," Stewart argued.
Jaeger grinned - he had respect in a fuck you kind of way. She liked the rookie.
They had only been working together a couple of days, but she'd taken a shine to him. He bought the coffees and said useful things when useful things needed to be said.
He was leagues ahead of Oscuro. Jaeger shuddered.
"Well, in my expert opinion, this place was most likely blown the fuck to pieces," Jaeger said, turning around and surveying the room around her. Techs and CSIs milled around her, collecting bits and pieces to dust and scan. They wouldn't find anything.
Stewart nodded.
"I agree," he said, "a bomb?"
Jaeger frowned and scratched her head.
"Nah, no scorch or fire marks on any of the walls, and the window was blown in from the outside," she said, "something emptied a boat-load of bullets into this place."
"Lucky nobody was inside," Stewart said. Jaeger wasn't sure about that.
"I'd say it was a gunship, but we'd have seen it. Nothing on the security cams in the area?" She asked, checking her datapad and frowning again. Her face was going to stick like that one day.
"Nothing, like, at all," Stewart said, handing her his terminal and pointing to a security camera image. It showed a shot of the traffic flow nearby, then after a few moments went black.
"Somebody scrambled it, right?" Stewart asked and Jaeger gave him a careful nod.
"This was professional," she mused, stroking her chin like her dad used to do.
Stewart picked up a picture frame from the floor nearby and held it up to the light. The image flickered around a deep black welt where a bullet had torn through it and shattered the screen. Behind it, a woman wrapped her arms around a man's neck and smiled.
"We need to track down the owners," Stewart said, giving one of his occasionally poor answers. Nobody's perfect.
"Nah, they'll be long gone," Jaeger said, taking the frame and turning it over, "Whoever lived here got themselves into some serious trouble and they won't be back anytime soon."
Stewart seemed baffled.
"So what do we do?" Stewart asked.
Jaeger didn't really know what to tell him - what could they do? The job had been a professional hit and something the NMPF wouldn't get in the middle of.
She instead turned and stepped between the shattered glass divider that split the room into a living space and a workshop area. It was well stocked with old parts and high quality equipment, mostly for robotics but it was an engineer's dream.
The barrage of shrapnel that had torn the apartment apart had rendered it a pile of scrap, which Jaeger thought was quite a waste.
"Whoever this guy was, they knew their shit," Stewart said.
He began to rifle through the stores of spare parts and Jaeger flicked through some blueprint plans modelled on a design interface in the corner. It was all impressive stuff, and for a moment Jaeger thought she knew why thieves in the city were so easily given free reign.
Then, something glinted in the corner of her eye and she froze. Something was tucked carefully behind a rack of spanners nearby, something that took the harsh light of the workshop and bounced in towards her.
A gust of wind blew in through the open window and her hair began to whip around on the breeze.
It looked like a diamond, but it was dull and somehow not quite perfect enough. Jaeger reached down and picked it up, looking at it in the palm of her hand.
As Stewart sighed, Jaeger's eyes adjusted to the strange diamond, and deep inside the glass a strange dark marking became clear. It was a tiny, almost insignificantly small, winking face emoticon.
Jaeger raised an eyebrow. She'd seen it somewhere before, but it seemed a lifetime ago and she couldn't remember where.
"Stewart, get me an evidence bag?" Jaeger asked, as politely as she could through the racing of her active mind. She was chasing something again and it felt good.
Stewart handed her an evidence bag and she slid it inside, then hesitated. She wouldn't risk this getting misplaced in evidence. She slid it into her bag and then met Stewart's eyes. He raised his chin for a moment and then nodded. The kid was smart.
Then, she felt her commlink buzz in her ear and she flicked her palm, her HUD appearing over her eyes and showing that she had a message.
"High-priority from the lieutenant, we're heading back to the precinct," Jaeger said, and Stewart nodded.
With one last look around, they left the apartment and headed back down through the foyer and back to the patrol car. The area around the main entrance was peppered with the glass that had fallen from above, and Jaeger glanced up at the gaping hole in the side of Sharpe Tower before climbing into the driver's seat.
The engine kicked in and Jaeger punched in the code for the precinct, the car automatically taking them into the traffic flow above.
Stewart flicked the radio on and began to rifle through the channels. Most of them were propaganda channels, so he flicked into the lower frequencies and began searching through those, like Jaeger did every time she was ever in the car.
"...And now we're headed for a nuclear war, but aren't we always? The people we leave in charge of our country, and our world, have dragged the rest of us down into their petty squabbles and look where we are now," a voice began to squawk, "Sergei Castells and his ilk are the hidden whip-masters, the Illuminati, the Stonemasons. They've molded our world in their image and we exist as depravity and in poverty whilst they sip pink champagne in their penthouse suites.
"It reminds me of that old saying that all of my listeners will know off by heart, my mantra from my heart, my wisdom from inside. When freedom is outlawed, kids, only outlaws will be free."
Jaeger scoffed. Empire Sparrow.
"Jesus, turn him off, he's worse than the official channels," she said.
"Not a fan?" Stewart asked.
"God no," Jaeger replied, "just another breed of liar, the kind that people listen to because he's not in power and because they think that makes him better. If he shouts loud enough, stupid people will think he's right."
"I never thought of it that way, how do you know he's lying?" Stewart asked, the question wasn't accusatory, just curious.
Jaeger looked at him, then tipped her head, feeling the car jolt gently as it switched traffic levels.
"His voice changes in tone whenever he goes off on a tangent about the evils of capitalism, it gets louder. He's probably got more corporate sponsors than the NMPF," she said.
Stewart looked at the radio and narrowed his eyes, Jaeger could see that he could hear it now.
"That's... pretty cool. How do you know to listen out for that?" He asked, turning the radio volume down. The car slowed to a stop at a junction.
Jaeger didn't really have an answer.
"I guess I've always been able to do it," Jaeger said, her eyes suddenly behind rose tinted glasses, "my dad used to say that I had a sixth sense. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell and bullshit."
Stewart grinned and for the first time in a while, Jaeger smiled properly.
They made comfortable small talk until they were back at the precinct, Stewart said he was going to sort out some paperwork as they stepped into the office and Jaeger crossed the office, stopping at her desk before going to Aguilar's office.
She took the evidence bag from her pocket and switched the fake diamond between her hands, before slipping into her reinforced desk drawer and locking it.
Switching on her desk terminal, she realised she was procrastinating and decided to bite the bullet, leaving the machine to turn itself on and reluctantly finding Aguilar's office, knocking on the door.
She waited for the keypad next to it to flash green and then stepped inside, to find Aguilar deep in conversation with a man who Jaeger didn't immediately recognise. They stopped their conversation abruptly as Jaeger stepped inside the office.
"Detective Jaeger," Aguilar said, wearing a fake smile, "take a seat. I assume you know Mr. Castells?"
Jaeger froze and looked down at the man sat in one of the comfortably plush office chairs. He had perfectly neat, combed back silver-grey hair. His eyes were sat back into his skull but his face had been nipped and tucked a hundred times to keep him pretty, and you could tell.
The man wore a face that Jaeger had seen on newsfeeds since she was a little girl, and he was such an enigma that she couldn't quite believe that it was him, but the man sat in front of her was most certainly Sergei Castells.
The man stood up awkwardly and Jaeger heard a joint crack somewhere in his skeleton body, he held out a spindly hand and smiled a too-white smile.
"Detective, I've heard a lot about you," he smiled as she took his hand, "all good, I assure you."
"That's good to hear," Jaeger said, her back going rigid as steel as she remembered the protocol that had been drilled into her, "it's a pleasure to finally meet you, sir."
Castells nodded with practiced warmth and then sat down, Jaeger taking the seat next to him.
"Me and Mr. Castells were just discussing your record, Jaeger," Aguilar said bluntly.
"Anna, please, give the girl a chance to settle. And it's just Sergei, by all means."
Jaeger felt uncomfortable - she didn't give a shit what she could call him and she wasn't a girl. She just smiled.
The man had a strange exotic but Americanised accent, something that was always masked when he appeared on the feeds.
"What's going on?" Jaeger asked, a little more blunt than she intended.
Aguilar looked disgusted but Castells just laughed.
"You may be aware that in a few weeks I will be holding an event, of sorts," he began to explain. The event he mentioned was the annual CastellsTech investor conference at the Neo-Metropol, you couldn't not know that, "as usual, I am interested in taking on the highest performing detective to work alongside my usual protection."
By protection, he meant MetSec, his own private hit-squad. Everybody knew Castells had his talons into the NMPF, but MetSec were in another league. Mercenaries loyal to him with their bodies and their minds.
They were secretive and highly trained, which meant they were incredibly dangerous.
"You and Detective Oscuro came top of the perf eval this year," Aquilar exclaimed, her face darkening.
"Yes, I heard about Detective Oscuro's tragic passing," Castells said, fake sympathy in his voice, "my condolences," he bowed his head with a smile that turned Jaeger's stomach, "but I would still offer you the role if you were so inclined."
Jaeger didn't know what to say, so Aguilar spoke for her.
"It would be a great boost for the force, and it wouldn't majorly affect your work here," the woman said, her crows feet growing more apparent when she smiled.
Jaeger wasn't getting out of this, she knew it. She didn't want anything to do with Sergei Castells or his band of merry assholes, but Aquilar wasn't going to let it drop. She had a gun to Jaeger's head, so there was only one thing she could say.
"I'd be honoured, sir," she said.
Aguilar sat back into her chair and Castells smiled.
"Wonderful," he exclaimed, "absolutely wonderful, my team will be ecstatic to have you on board."
Jaeger nodded and tried to fake appreciation, which was harder than she'd anticipated and she ended up grimacing.
"You can select another officer to join you," Aguilar said.
"Stewart," Jaeger replied, without having to think.
Aguilar raised an eyebrow.
"The rookie?" She asked, tapping a few keys on her desk and bringing up Stewart's performance report. His record was pretty bare but he'd been the 'top of the class' type in the academy, and that was enough.
"Fair enough," Aguilar said.
Castells kept smiling, and Jaeger wondered if he was an incredibly good actor or he'd just forgotten it was stuck like that.
"I look forward to working with you, Detective Jaeger," Castells said, "you will meet with the man assigned to the force you will be attached to soon, Commander Garistag, I will have the details sent to you as soon as things are in motion."
Jaeger sat there for a moment thinking about what she'd just allowed herself to become entangled in and then realised that Aguilar was giving her a subtle 'get the fuck out of my office' look, so she got to her feet and thanked Castells again.
He bowed his head with another fake smile, and she left the office.
Outside, Stewart waited with a cup of coffee for her.
"Jaeger," he said, "some of the guys are saying they saw Sergei Castells go into Aguilar's office - what happened?"
Jaeger took the coffee and knocked a gulp of the scalding liquid back.
"I dragged you into a shitstorm," she told him honestly, "sorry about that."