Mirrorbreaker

[keinto]

Mirrorbreaker

You look at the poster of the movie selected in your monitor; it reads Mirrorbreaker, the last entry in the Leo Wyatt trilogy. Almost covering the entirety of the poster is the stern face of Leo Wyatt with his usual sunglasses looking directly at you. However, he is missing his iconic brown hat and coat, wearing a simple white dress shirt unbuttoned at the top. The right side of his face is lit with warm orange light that slightly reveals his brown right eye through the shades while his left side is completely in shadows. Throughout the entire poster are cracks of a mirror that originate from somewhere on his left side.

You glance at the other two entries in the franchise recommended below titled "Dreammaker" (A mystery/thriller set on the NSS Aurora. The Space Sleep Disorder has haunted the inhabitants of space for hundreds of years. However, for the past few weeks the NSS Aurora has been victim of multiple incidents where the disorder caused multiple horrific accidents, precursors to grand theft and sabotage, and even one death, leading Nanotrasen to believe a person might be behind all of it somehow. Newly-assigned detective Leo Wyatt is sent to the research station to investigate. Half-way through the story, Leo suspects the whole ordeal might be an insurance scam, until his own adoptive brother, Roy Wyatt, "coincidentally" falls victim to the disease, nearly killing him in the process of fixing a hull breach, prompting Leo to dig the culprit out.)

Next to "Dreammaker" is the sequel titled "Phoronbreather" (A crafty drug smuggler named Trey infiltrates the NSS Exodus and steals a large shipment of phoron. Finding out the thief happens to be is heading for Lowell City, Mars - the planet where Wyatt lived in an orphanage until he was adopted at five years of age- Wyatt offers his services to the LCPD to connect with his roots and gives chase across the stars all the way to Sol. As a cover for the operation, he goes on a vacation to Hollywood with Roy. Afterwards, he finally heads to Mars where he meets Shannon, a charming and mysterious woman whom he is immediately drawn to. She helps him find Trey's whereabouts and eventually reveals that the mastermind behind the operation is a man simply known as Mr. B. However, she takes Leo to an abandoned warehouse and reveals she was working for Mr. B all along, delivering him to the druglord's hideout in a silver platter. Mr. B, having realized Trey's end goal is to usurp him, delivers him a horrible death by unloading an entire canister of phoron into his lungs and igniting his lungs on fire with one of Wyatt's cigarettes. Afterwards, he has Wyatt's left hand and right leg amputated to teach him and anyone who would dare come after him a lesson. Wyatt is presumed dead for a few months before reuniting with his family. Still, Wyatt is full of rage and wanting revenge. The movie ends with a bittersweet ending as Mr.B is set up as the main villain in the next sequel).

You press the "Play Movie" button on Mirrorbreaker, and get comfortable.

[Track #1 - 'Reunion'] https://goo.gl/kFD4a4

A sweeping establishing shot fades in, bringing us back again to Lowell, a megacity in the middle of the Martian wasteland 15 square kilometers wide and split into two gigantic levels with colossal window panels in between. The setting sun bathes the domed city of the elites at the top. We go down through the cracks and holes of many floors until we enter the sewage system where we go through a broken pipe that is leaking water, making a one kilometer long drop to the bottom half of the megacity. Several elevator shafts scattered throughout cast beautiful yet ominous shadows on the less-than-flattering buildings crammed together. Multiple flying security drones shine spotlights down at the rooftops and police sirens can be heard here and there. The camera focuses on a fenced facility called "AVANJOR AIR PROCESSING PLANT" on the northern edge of Lowell. We dive in between two of its buildings and it becomes very quiet, except for humming noises. At the end of the alley, a dark figure wearing a coat and hat cautiously turns around the corner and approaches while clinging to the wall and looking behind them. The man passes a pile of trash on the floor where scarred salamanders begin to disperse from his presence. He briefly stops to not scare them further and cause more noise. The shadowed man continues sneaking past the buildings before looking at a window at eye-level a few meters from him. He crouches and slowly rises up to look inside. He can see a big room with several tall metal cylinder-shaped containers with chemical hazard signs all over them. In front of one of the cylinders in the far back of the room, the silhouette of a man wearing a hoodie stands in front of the cylinder's monitoring screen. He is guarded by a slightly taller man behind him as he showcases the cylinders to yet another man in executive clothing being guarded by the tallest human out of all four by far. The executive man nods and laughs with a slit hint of anxiety in his mannerism. The tall human nods and even bows as he is briefly addressed.

Outside, our detective peaking in reaches for something in his inner coat pocket and takes out a camera. He focuses on the man in the hoodie through the viewfinder and gets a better look; the camera's lense extends to an almost ridiculous length as he zooms. The man is of medium height and a strong build with short hair; his hands inside the pockets of his grey-ish blue hoodie most of the time.

[Track #1 Ends]

As he finishes adjusting the lighting settings and framing the picture, he drops the camera when an arm grabs him by the chest. The camera's lense shatters when it hits the floor and his entire body easily lifted off the ground. Two bright yellow eyes with black slits stare at him while he hopelessly struggles.

"Camerasss are not allowed in thessse premisssesss," says a voice in Sol Common.

The executive man adjusts his glasses and puts his hands on his back, saying in a high-pitched and well articulated voice, "As we are about to embark on this exciting business venture, I must confess you have greatly surpassed my expectations on what constitutes the quality of the storage and maintenance of our phoron shipments, Mr. B. My partners will be quite excited to hear-"

The executive and tall men are startled from the shattering window glass that flies into the room when the detective is thrown inside. The man in the hoodie casually turns to face him and looks slightly up at the unathi outside dusting his hands off.

"Found him ssspying on usss, sssir," says the unathi before jumping inside with a loud thud.

The detective pants and coughs in pain and shards of glass fall of his back while he shakily helps himself up to a sitting position. He weakly removes his hat and his face finally comes into the light to reveal Detective Francis Pike in his late 60's (Leo's mentor in the previous movies with whom he shared one small adventure in Hollywood) sporting a white mustache and balding short hair. The man in the hoodie continues approaching him, followed by his guard. He stops at the shadow of a cylinder and tilts his head. His guard behind him, also in shadows, has a chilling grin that can still be seen in the darkness. The other two men carefully follow them.

"E-excuse me, Mr. B? Heheh. Wh-who is this?" asks the executive man. The tall man seems terrified of the grinning man.

"I don't know, but he's gotta be from Ceti. They just love those stupid trench coats, don't they, Tarek?" Mr. B replies while motioning at the unathi.

Mr. B slowly takes a few more steps forward. Pike rubs his eyes and Tarek grabs him again, this time by the neck with both hands, and is lifted to face Mr. B. He begins choking.

We see the back of Mr. B and Pike's face is in complete disbelief as Mr. B comes into the light. Pike becomes horrified at the person he is looking at. Mr. B starts laughing wholeheartedly.

"Look at his face! That's a very interesting reaction!" he says in a mocking tone. "Usually, it's Valentine here who scares the fuck out of everyone. He just got out rehab, again. Come say hi!"

Mr. B pulls his guard by his clothes into the light. Valentine's decrepit eyes are surrounded by veins clearly visible through his skin. The left side of his nose has a burn scar many years old, probably from a cigarette; his teeth surprisingly well kept considering the rest of his face. He would be fairly handsome if his entire face did not look like he has not slept for days, or were not locked into a permanent grin with his eyes open wide.

Pike attempts to say something but cannot, either because of the lack of blood flow into his brain, or pure shock. Mr. B's laugh becomes louder with an echo as Pike begins to pass out.

[Track #2 – Mirrorbreaker] https://goo.gl/fEpMZp

A stylized credit sequence in the spirit of Paul McCartney's Live and Let Die begins. The brown silhouette of Leo Wyatt wearing his coat and hat tiredly walks in from left to right while inspecting things around him with a magnifying glass and the camera slowly moves to face him directly. He stops walking and stares, holding the magnifying glass at chest-height which then turns into a gun pointed directly at us. The picture freezes and the title Mirrorbreaker appears, then unfreezes as he raises his arm and shoots to follow the bullet from left to right. The main beat of the song starts and more credit names appear in the bullet as it spins.

A chrome mechanical hand is being built by robotic hands on an assembly line. Sparks fly all over and the bullet can be seen flying in the background, leaving a trail. The sparks begin forming a whirl, from which the shape of a person can be seen emerging.

On the left side of the frame Phoebe Essel is revealed from bottom to top leaning against a wall with her arms crossed. She shifts her posture slightly, revealing the end of a scalpel tightly gripped on her right thumb. The right side of the frame is then abruptly cut with a fire axe and Roy Wyatt pops in and an enthusiastic pair of a young man and woman with dyed hairs jump in behind him, all wielding tools. A reel slides in at the bottom showcasing scenes of Roy's previous exploits on the N.S.S. Aurora as an atmospherics technician, including screaming into his headset, getting into a bar fight, holding a fire extinguisher and yelling at an assistant knocked down on the floor and a rolling chair behind them, kissing a catatonic clone of himself on the lips, and taking a picture of himself in EVA gear with a Singularity behind him.

The entire frame is then skewed and twisted into a whirl inside the singularity which then turns into the planet Mars. The camera revolves around a green woman with a pony tail and a scarf as she fights and shoots several people of multiple species. They are all defeated except for the silhouette of Mr. B, who stops her forearm as she tries to strike him. He begins embracing her but she does nothing. She looks at Leo's bullet flying above them and we zoom into its white trail and a busy street at the top of Lowell with a red sky fades in. The violins in the song begin lamenting as we see a starving brown-haired boy holding the hand of a toddler and sitting at the corner of an alley with stairs heading downward. He is begging for food but is ignored by everyone walking by. He breaks down and sobs but notices something in the alley. Several gigantic hands emerge from the darkness and cover the entire frame in black as they are about pull him the children in.

A more uplifting part of the song starts and Leo's face slides in. He begins walking with the megacity behind him heading for a surreal black room where three gigantic pair of eyes await him; the predator eyes of a unathi, the wide-open eyes of a psychopath with an eerie grin, and two furious eyes with blue scleras behind all the other two. Leo's bullet flies past him just above his shoulder and the camera and all the eyes follow it as it passes them, heading straight for Mr.B. The camera zooms in between the blue eyes and the entire frame turns black.

[Track #2 ends]

[Track #3 – A Familiar Place] https://goo.gl/V17BRc

The camera zooms out and the blackness has turned into Leo Wyatt's shades. He is leaning against a tree and smoking a cigarette in a beautiful Terran forest. An owl lands on a branch nearby approaches him and stops to stare. It waves at him. Perplexed for a moment, Leo takes a gloved hand out of his pocket and begins reaching for the owl who in return does the same. It stops moving completely, and everything around him then begins fading away to reveal an enormous room surrounded by glass overlooking a series of floodlights that go on forever illuminating a dead and brown terrain. On the other side of the room, two doors stand next to a window where a red-haired woman dressed in yellow leans against a console.

Leo easily recovers his balance as the tree fades away, and looks at the woman. "Can't you wait for your turn, Ms. Byrd?," he asks while reaching for his coat pocket.

"You've been in there forever! I wanna' try the new version of the Thunderdome!" she replies while interacting with the console.

He begins walking out and puts his headset on. The room behind him transforms into a small Thunderdome stadium with a simulated crowd that waits in anticipation. Monique Byrd comes out of the console room and jumps into the room, calling for her coworkers in her headset.

Leo turns right on the hallway of a facility. He enters an elevator on the right and presses a button. When the doors close, they read "AURORA II". He patiently waits inside the elevator when a little noise comes out of his headset.

"On my way."

The doors open on the station's main level. Leo turns left and walks down the hallway. Assistants and civilians walk up and down. A lab assistant brings food into Research with a cart. Roboticists do maintenance on a pristine station synthetic. He reaches an intersection where a woman in a lab coat and carrying a sturdy case joins him walking down the hallway.

"And so it begins, Ms. Price" he says to the forensic technician with playful monotony.

"Yes! Our first case here. I wonder how it'll end?" she asks.

"With a bang, perhaps."

Price looks at him as they walk, then chuckles once he looks back.

"What?" he asks as the doors to the bar open.

A security officer and a cadet stand outside a maintenance access with its panel open, parks emitting from it. Leo grabs a handful of nuts from a table nearby.

"We just saw this on our patrol. Nobody has touched it since," the officer tells them.

"Already taking the station apart, hm?" Leo says while eating a nut.

"Yesss. It hasssn't even been two weeks!" the cadet replies.

Leo looks around the bar. The bartender comes out of their backroom configuring a EFTPOS scanner and Pun Pun behind him.

"You have this, Ms. Price?" he asks while reaching inside his coat.

"Yes, just need to have the power cut for a moment," she replies, putting the case on a table nearby, then reaches for her headset. "Can I get an engineer to the Bar?"

Leo takes a picture of the broken access, and approaches the young Bartender.

A nostalgic montage of the station begins, highlighting all the departments and their crewmembers (seen previously in Dreammaker). Cargo technicians use a RIPLEY to unload a heavy container from a shuttle, a phoron researcher analyses slow motion footage of phoron reacting with telecrystals, Leo taking notes on his PDA as he questions the Bartender before Pun Pun recognizes him and crawls all over his shoulders, messing his hat's placement, engineers and their chief setting the layout of a tesla engine in a gigantic room, a paramedic teaching a resident how to equip EVA gear, and the like. Leo finishes the conversation and nods to his colleagues as he exits the bar.

"... And though the second level as not been completed, there are plans to expand it even fur- Ah! Detective!" says a charismatic PR officer leading a group of executives and promoters out from the garden. Leo slows down and looks at him.

"What do you think of the Aurora II?"

"Well, it's no sheet of metal drifting across the emptiness of space..."

The man smiles in slight panic, as if begging for something.

"But... I can't complain," Leo replies before picking his pace again. He walks past medbay and stops. He looks at his friend, fan-favorite Phoebe Essel, speaking to another PR officer who is interviewing her. She notices Leo. They wave at each other slightly, then he walks off.

Leo enters his office, and hangs his coat on the corner. He sits down on the desk at begins typing a report on his computer. He hears a knock on glass. The doors open again, and the head of Security steps inbetween the doors.

"Ah, Mister Hawkins. How may I assist?" he asks, leaning back on his chair.

Hawkins smiles briefly before stepping inside, walking up behind the guest chair. "Your security record has finished transferring, and so have the Aurora and Exodus bonuses."

"Ah. I am glad to hear. Then... when you have time, could you please review my time-"

"Your time-off request? I have granted it," he says, putting his hands behind his back and leaning slightly forward.

Leo opens his mouth to say something, but does not. He simply nods in gratitude.

"But Wyatt, it hasn't even been a month here. Is everything alright?"

Leo glances up at him, then slowly removes his left glove, and holds the back his mechanical hand up for Hawkins to see, looking at him with a grim expression. Hawkins gets the message and looks worried, almost with pity.

"I see..." he says quietly. He makes his way out of the office. "I hope everything goes well."

Leo watches him exit, then puts his glove back on, as if ashamed. He begins typing on the computer. The scene fades into another.

The outside of a nightlife bar at the corner of a street in Mendell fades in.

"So, you gonna' lemme' inspect your pipes tonight?" asks a familiar voice while a glass is heard being placed down.

Roy Wyatt's overconfident face looks at someone as they both sit at a tall table. The top two thirds of his hair is dyed an electric blue, while his natural red color is beginning to grow from the bottom. He is slapped on his left cheek by a green hand. A young female skrell gets up from the table and begins reaching for her purse while walking away, highly offended and muttering in Nral'Malic.

"Aw!" he exclaims, knowing the line was probably not going to work. Two people begin approaching him from behind as he rubs his cheek. One of Roy's business card flies in from the direction of the skrell and hits him on the right cheek at incredible speed, then lands on the table.

"Ow! That one hurt!"

He begins rubbing his right cheek. He notices a female tajaran laughing at him a few tables from him.

"Welp. I won. Pay up!" a man in his early 20's with short white hair tells the woman next to him as they come next to Roy. She has long, smooth green hair.

"Why're you guys placing bets?!" Roy asks while putting his business card on his wallet. "And really, Izzy? You bet against me?!"

"I bet you would last less than two minutes, Annie bet on three minutes," he replies as they both sit down with him. "Here's a screwdriver."

Roy's communicator emits an EMP sound. He takes it out of his pocket while running a hand through his hair to fix it. "You guys and your fucking bets." He drinks half of the screwdriver drink.

A message from Leo to Roy and both of their parents appears on the screen.

Dear family,

I will be traveling to Earth again. There were so many more things I wanted to explore in Hollywood and all the famous cities. I will be there for about two weeks. I will be unavailable throughout the entire trip.

Love,

Leo

Roy stretches his cheek as he leans on his hands, thinking.

"You guys wanna' make another bet?" he asks. He notices the tajaran still looking at him and being told something by his group of friends, then laughing even louder.

"Something funny, cat?!" he exclaims while putting the communicator on the table.

"OHhh, nou..! She waas just thinkinng you woould look nice amun' herrr canddle collection..." the tajaran replies, receiving a pat on the shoulder from one of her friends.

"Just leave it, Roy..." Annie tells him while sipping on her drink.

Roy curses his breath and gulps half the screwdriver. "This isn't like him..." He says while tapping the communicator.

"What? He's just saying he's visiting Earth again," Annie says while drinking her beer.

"Naaah! He's telling us where he's going just like that? 'Unavailable for the whole thing'? Something smells fishy! Inspector Wyatt is on the case!" he exclaims while making an exaggeratedly speculating face, and adjusting an imaginary tie.

"Oookay, Inspector. Let's go inspect some more bars around. This place's getting slow," Izzy says.

The trio gets up and begin walking past all the tables. Roy glares at the tajaran lady and her group, giving them the middle finger.

"OOOooh...! She's soo scarrrrred! Someone call the police forrr herrr! OH, wait! They'rrree alrrready herrre! Weeeewooooweeeewooooo!"

The entire table bursts out laughing. Roy stops walking. He gulps the rest of his drink down, and slams the glass on a table. He turns around and runs toward them, preparing a punch and screaming.

"Roy, no!"

Crewmembers disembark a crewtransfer shuttle at Central Command. Leo exits the airlock and steps to the side, leaning against a corner and letting the others through.

"Phoe," he says the blonde walks by.

She continues walking toward the lounge. Leo begins following her as most people begin forming a line in front of a desk to their right. An assistant is escorted by two guards into the processing cell further inside.

"He hearrrrd they werrrre worrrrking on a terrrran theaterrrrr! He just wanted to see it! Stop looking at Him like that!" he exclaims while passing the line of people.

Phoebe enters the lounge and sits on a stool near the entrance, pretending to pay attention to a display near the ceiling showing a debate about Frost's invasion. Leo stands nearby and turns toward the display.

"It will need to be done in Sol, probably Mars. I can arrange the meeting in Olympia-"

"I am not stepping a foot on Mars or any of its moons, Leo," she replies with disgust, serving herself a glass of water.

"It's that, or a shuttle. I can't risk being caught at a port's customs."

"Shuttle it is."

Leo shifts his weight, clearly hoping for the first option.

"May I ask why?" he asks as if not even expecting an answer, serving himself some water.

"An entire planet under martial law, still ridden with crime, crumbling under its own infrastructure, and not a single decent park to be found. Need I say more? she replies while taking a sip. "Besides, I've heard the water tastes awful."

"Very well... I'll message you when everything is set," he says while sipping all the water in his glass, walking away.

"You will find him before you do the other thing, right?"

Leo stops and looks back.

"I suppose."

Phoebe checks her PDA as Leo leaves. He walks to the processing desk. A voice begins calling to him in Sol Common with a strong Freespeak accent.

"Hi..."

Leo picks up his pace.

"Excuse me..."

Leo has a flashback to two weeks ago. He is now entering the arrivals section of a busy starport in Biesel, carrying a briefcase. He walks past a person who follows him with their sight as he fails to notice them.

"S-STOP! STOP!"

Leo turns back to look at the man, frowning. A few concerned people look at the scene and continue walking. The man looks to be in his late 40's with an olive skin tone, his hair beginning to turn white, tired eyes, and dressed with an old, impermeable jacket. Leo continues examining him as he approaches, hunched down and with a strange walk.

"You are... Leo?" the man asks in a weak tone, tilting his head.

"Excuse me. Who are you?" Leo asks, looking up and down at him.

"My name i-is Oliver. I'm... You are... son. My son," he says in a shaky voice, motioning at himself with both hands repeatedly.

"What?" Leo asks, clearly angered and repulsed. He takes a few steps back.

"P-please! Do not... Come with me... now..." the man requests while opening his eyes wider.

Leo continues backing off, then gets lost in the crowd. He looks back at the man one last time who is trying to find him, biting his fist in frustration and sadness.

Back at the present, Leo is now entering his apartment, located in a domed residential platform orbiting Biesel. His walls contain a few framed movie posters, his livingroom occupied by an elegant TV set and VR goggles on the sofa. The only two sources of illumination in the room are a small yellow light in the kitchen, and the large window in the living room overlooking the dome with a portion of Biesel in the back. Next to the entrance, two small carry-on bags rest against the wall. He removes his shoes at the doorstep and walks to the kitchen table where he grabs a corded telephone and browses the green interface in the base. He stops at the name 'Francis Pike' and calls.

An automated voice states, "This call may contain an interstellar fee. Do you wish to continue?"

He frowns, thinking for a moment. He replies, "Yes."

A communicator is laying on a table in a dark grey lounge. Its screen reads, 'LEO WYATT – TAU CETI'. Mr. B's blue hoodie can be seen in a chair near it. His hand grabs it to look at the name, and then begins to lift it. The camera follows his hand, about to reveal his face, but Valentine's ever-grinning face is next to Mr. B's shoulder, blocking the orange light coming from their right. Mr.B's jumps in surprise once he catches Valentine out of the corner of his eye.

"Fuck's sake. You gotta stop doing that before I... But then... That's why I've kept you working for me, isn't it?" He says in Freespeak while grabbing Valentine's chin and giving him a few gentle slaps on the face. "You wanna take this?" he asks while shaking the communicator around. "Hah. Alright, go ahead."

He tosses it to his side, making Valentine accidentally activate it as he almost drops it. He puts it to his ear, somehow seeming even more excited. Leo hears the scratching noises on his side before complete silence.

"Hello?"

Valentine simply keeps breathing as he listens.

"Pike?"

Valentine tries not to laugh, quietly letting the air out through his nose.

"Mister Pike? Can you hear me?"

Leo waits for an answer before the call is ended. He thinks for a moment.

"So? Was it him?" Mr. B asks Valentine. He nods repeatedly, handing back the communicator with both hands. He sneaks out without making any noise, leaving Mr. B sighing to himself. Leo grabs a letter from the kitchen table and reads it. He folds it into three, and slowly places it back on the table. The scene fades out into another.

Leo and Phoebe are at the check-in section of Mendell's starport. They both lean against a tall table, filling their paperwork; their luggage next to them. Phoebe finishes the bottom of the form, putting her pen down. She looks at Leo for a moment, who is about half way through.

"Need help?"

"No. I just don't travel there as often."

Leo spins the pen around his hand while thinking. Phoebe can be seen in the background doing something. She returns and takes a napkin from the dispenser on the table, scribbling something on it while he is occupied.

"Ready," he says, taking a cigarette out.

[Track #4 – Phoebe's Clue] https://goo.gl/VK6PMd

The camera pans down to the napkin, now crumpled on the table as they walk off in the background. Another montage begins. They approach a long line of people; their carry-on bags follow them. Phoebe is held up in customs, explaining the contents of her luggage to an officer while a cyborg analyses it; Leo waits ahead of her. They walk toward a collosal shuttle of multiple floors docked at a landing pad. The shuttle flies through a bluespace gate. Leo broods on his window seat, looking at the bluespace matter fly by while Phoebe works on her laptop. They arrive at the busiest spaceport orbiting Sol where hundreds of civilian spaceships of all shapes and sizes come and go.

They approach a medium-size shuttle waiting for them at the pickup pads. A middle-aged male tajaran smoking a cigarette and waiting beside it greets them.

[Track #4 ends]

"Leo Wyatt?" he asks them.

Leo nods, examining the shuttle.

"He does not usually do this, but you have paid good money. His name is Tamirrr. Welcome to Sol. This is his ship, Terressa. Please allow him to load yourrr luggage," Tamir asks.

"I am fine," Phoebe replies. She grabs both of her cases and goes up the stairs into the shuttle.

Leo shrugs and does the same.

"As you wish," the tajaran replies. The inside of the shuttle is very spacious, with about five comfortable seats, a restroom and a kitchen in the rear. Tamir boards the shuttle and enters the cockpit, initiating the takeoff sequence.

"Rrright. Rrrendezvous with anotherrr shuttle nearrr Thrrree Juno in the main asterroid belt, then drrop off at Luna, corrrrect?"

"Correct. We should still make it in time," Leo replies, fastening his seatbelt.

"Please rrremain seated until we exit the porrrt. Therrre is Terrran food in the back. Asia orrr something, he thinks."

The shuttle exits the port, heading away from the star at an exponential acceleration. The scene fades out into another.

The shuttle floats in the shadow of a gigantic asteroid surrounded by smaller ones.

Leo's watch shows seven minutes before midnight. He sits against a window looking out. Phoebe is setting up a computer from one of her cases, now deployed into a basic robotics console. Tamir sits on the cockpit with the slide door semi-closed, enjoying some ramen and watching a tajaran romcom on a holographic display.

"They're late..." Leo says, checking his watch again. "It is to be expected for this kind of thing, anyhow."

"Or maybe you got scammed of your money, and I of my valuable time. How much did it cost, anyway?"

"Too much."

"More than you'd like to admit, obviously. How much? Fifteen, twenty-thousand?"

"... Two-fourty."

Phoebe stops working on her console. "Did you say two-fourty? Thousand?"

Leo glances at her, then looks back at the window.

"But that's an entire house! How are you paying for this?"

Tamir's ears and eyes pop out of the slide door as he glances at them, then gets back to the movie.

"Savings, and I'm selling my apartment and most things in it."

Phoebe keeps looking, frowning.

"I got a bonus from Nano as well."

Phoebe shakes her head. "To each their own, I guess."

The noise from Tamir's display stops, followed by him gently opening the slide door.

"He knows it is not any of his business, but who arrre you meeting?"

Leo glances at Tamir, looking for a way to explain.

"I bought something back in Tau Ceti. I am here to pick it up."

"He sees. It will fit on the ship, rrright?"

"It is small, but I won't b-"

Leo stops himself when a shadow runs across his face from the window. A dark purple anchor-shaped shuttle with red engines slowly begins lining up parallel; to them. Phoebe gets up and looks over another window. The shuttle deploys a tube-shaped airlock slowly transforming into a tube to fit Teressa's door. A beep comes from Tamir's console and a clear voice enunciates from it.

"Most kind greetings, excellent purchaser. Our vessel has begun docking procedures with yours. Once complete, you need only open your exit as if you were to disembark normally, without the stairs, of course!"

Tamir looks worried, as the airlock approaches. He presses the radio button to reply.

"He is sorrrry. He does not underrrstand much of what you said. Is this Trrrradeband?"

"They are docking with us, Tamir," Leo says, approaching him.

"He can see that."

"I apologize, pilot. But this is the shuttle where Leo Wyatt is, is it not?"

Tamir presses the button once again, looking at Leo.

"I am here."

"Ah! How do you do, Mister Wyatt! We hope your voyage went splendidly uneventful. We apologize for the tardiness. Our penultimate partners did not participate in the art of trade as properly as we would have liked."

The airlock makes contact with Teressa. Horrible clanking noises begin coming from the airlock, making the entire shuttle begin to tremble. Leo quickly walks toward one of his cases, lifting it and placing it on a table. He opens it and places his left hand inside. The voice in the radio begins talking, but is suddenly cut off. The clanking continues for a bit longer, then stops. Followed by a grinding noise, then loud bangs of metal. Leo takes his M1911 out of the case, pointing it at the ground.

"You did not tell Tamirrr you would be brrringing a gun," Tamir says, gripping both ends of the cockpit door frame.

"Aren't you glad I have it now," Leo says coldly, aiming at the door.

Phoebe looks around, probably for a locker to hide in. Failing to find one, she grabs something from the console, then turns to Tamir.

"What are you waiting for?! Get us out of here!"

"The airrrlock is securrred against the shuttle. Tamirrr cannot rrrisk brrreaking the doorrr and vent us all!"

Leo looks through the door's window. The airlock is in terrible shape with burn marks and dents all over. A small object appears in the middle of it and begins tilting up and down; it is a crowbar. The whole airlock opens slowly and a man with goggles and a dirty grey jumpsuit appears behind it, smiling. He gestures to the ship behind him and walks back into it.

"Wait here," Leo says, walking to the door and opening it.

"Gladly," Phoebe replies, putting what she was grabbing on the table. It is a scalpel.

Leo makes his way through the airlock. keeping the gun in his coat pocket. A section of the tube is filled with burn marks from some sharp object. He glances at them, remaining alert. A short woman in her 60's appears the airlock ahead. She wears a chrome-plated exoskeleton which increases her height slightly.

"Mister Wyatt! Pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am Madam Frera, as you know. Do make yourself at home in the Unlie Sensed. We shall get you familiarized with your purchase shortly."

Leo glances at the burn marks once again, then looks back at Frera.

"I reiterate my apologies. A former friend of ours introduced us to an uncivilized band of crimson individuals. The exchange did not culminate in the way a distinguished merchant such as myself would hope for, as you can see."

She returns to her ship, gesturing. Leo holsters his gun behind her back, following. The interior of the ship is filled with shelves and several mechanized drawers within them. Frera walks over to one such shelf, and taps a few buttons on the interface of her exoskeleton. A drawer at the top opens with a hiss which she reaches with an extended arm from the exoskeleton. She places a metal case on a table next to them.

"Alley, if you would please."

Her assistant enters the room and stands next to them. He leans over and delicately opens the case with one hand. Inside is black foam surrounding a metallic left hand in the middle and a small plastic sheet next to it. The hand is composed of many hexagonal pieces assembled together, similar to a scale vest. Alley reaches for it with both hands, raising it carefully for Leo to see. He opens his mouth to speak, but smiles instead when Leo interrupts him.

"In Common, please. My Tradeband is too rusty for this."

"Of course, Mister Wyatt. The Megalonyx 10K-X5, as its name suggests, provides a total ten-thousand kilograms of compressive force when all fingers are in use. In other words, a portable hydraulic press composed of a plasteel outer layer that can withstand most conventional ballistic weaponry with ease, although vulnerable to lasers. Allow me to activate its demonstration mode."

Alley presses a button on the inside of the wrist twice, and places the hand facing upward in the middle of the table. It remains still for a moment before exercising all its fingers, then making a fist. The pieces from between each knuckle retract and three angled short spikes emerge, the right one spins to function as a drill, and an electric arc forms between the other two. The spikes retract. The entire hand projects a hologram onto itself, camouflaging the surface into another mechanical hand, then into camouflage pattern, then into different hues, and finally into a human hand. It returns to its initial state. Alley reaches into the case again, this time pinching the transparent sheet on the case and holding it up.

"This goes in your right hand's thenar. You can discretely access the interface by holding the fingerprints of your middle and ring finger on it and navigate it by subtly using both fingers as an analog stick on the thenar. Do try it on."

He passes the sheet to Leo, who carefully places it on his right hand's thenar. The back of the megalonyx lights up with a green interface. Leo browses the options for a bit, then nods in approval. Frera smiles.

"Now, Mister Wyatt, although the installation process has been streamlined, you will of course want a specialist to install such a delicate piece. I have an aquaintance near a Jupiter sta-"

"I have someone with me."

"I see," she replies, moving her left forearm up to her face to secretly begin scanning Leo. The screen on her forearm displays an outline of him. His right leg is highlighted and then enlarged, displaying an unbranded and basic model of a prosthetic leg. "Then, may I interest you in a Grasshopper 30 utility leg? I believe it is quite obvious what it would allow you to do."

"As alluring as that sounds, I do not have any funds left."

"Ah... That is unfortunate."

"If you'll excuse me, I'd like to have this installed, then be on our way."

"Of course, of course."

Alley grabs the megalonyx and places it inside the case, elegantly handing it to Leo. He goes back to the Teressa, where Phoebe and Tamir converse about the Vaurca. Leo enters and the ship goes silent for a moment. He places the case next to Phoebe's console and opens it.

"Did they at least explain why they made us fear for our lives?" Phoebe asks.

" A deal gone wrong with some red people, whatever that means. They damaged the airlock," he replies while sitting down next to her.

"Ah. Are you ready to start?"

Leo nods. He activates the uninstallation process on his hand, and she does the same on the console. Both sync up and the hand emits a few clicks. Phoebe takes her scalpel and motions for Leo's hand. He places it on the table and she begins cutting the polymer between his wrist and the hand with the scalpel. A few moments pass and the megalonyx is now Leo's new hand. He presses the sheet on his thenar and begins to customize the hand. A thin material emerges from the wrist-end of the hand and tightly wraps around Leo's wrist. He continues customizing the hand until it turns into a perfectly human hand of his tanned skin color. Phoebe looks mildly impressed. Tamir watches quietly.

"But does it write incident reports for you?" she asks with sarcasm.

He smiles back slightly. "Thank you, Phoe," he says with humbleness, putting the old hand inside his coat pocket and camouflaging the megalonyx into a human hand.

"Oh, no. I have a few more things," she says, also walking toward one of her bags. She opens it and takes out a discrete case with ten syrettes inside. "One dexaline plus, two tricordrazine, Two spaceacillin, two inaprovaline, one oxycodone, one chloral hydrate, and one hyperzine."

She offers him the case, which he accepts thankfully. He begins reaching for his bags again.

"And this."

Leo turns again, not expecting another gift. Phoebe holds up a small device with a small hole in one of its sides.

"Phoe, my birthday was last week."

"A portable DNA analyser. Person puts their finger in; it displays their DNA string. Simple, and relatively fast."

"Remind me to make a biased report next time someone accuses you of malpractice if I get back," Leo says, storing the analyser in his bag. Phoebe begins collapsing the console, not amused by the joke in the slightest. He begins packing his things and moves both bags to the door.

"What? He is not going to Luna?" Tamir asks Leo.

"No, just her."

"Okay, okay. Tamirrr wishes him good luck in whateverrr he is doing."

Leo nods and smiles at Tamir. He looks at Phoebe for a moment.

"Enjoy your holiday," he says, and begins moving to the other ship.

"Leo."

He turns back.

"Be careful."

"'Careful' got me dismembered the first time," he replies with annoyance. "Give this to Roy if I don't make it. Maybe he'll turn it into a spiderbot to remember me."

Leo tosses his old hand toward Phoebe who catches it with ease. Leo disappears as he turns the corner at the end of the tube, entering the other ship.

"Ready, Madam Frera."

"How do you like it so far?" Frera asks. Alley enters the cockpit.

"Fits like a glove."

Frera talks into her exoskeleton's microphone. "Next stop, Lowell City."

The Unlie Sensed begins retracting its airlock from the Teressa. Both ships begin moving in opposite directions, and part ways at full speed. The frame fades into another. Leo stands in what looks like a shipping space port inside a dome bathed in orange sunlight. The Unlie Sensed takes off behind him, making his coat flap around. Though we still cannot see his eyes, it is clear they are filled in determination.

"After you are done with your boss tonight, would you like to go somewhere? I will get you into the best clubs in town for free," Tarek asks a tall female Unathi next to in an alley with an exit door of a building in downtown Lowell.

"You are a Guwan. I will not go out you," she replies, tapping on her communicator.

He thumps his tail against the ground. "There are only a handful of Unathi besides me that actually live here. Nobody will notice. You must be feeling lonely after traveling from planet to planet for so long, right? Come on... Like the humans say, 'Live a little'." He adjusts the bag his back which contents make a metallic sound.

"I am sorry."

Tanek licks his snout and turns away. A woman in a navy suit comes out of the door and looks at both. Tarek reaches for his bag and takes out a small oxygen tank painted purple and hands it to her.

"Ah, cool," the woman says, spinning the tank around. "And when can I get more if I decide to go ahead?"

"In about two weekssss. Let usss know what you think," Tarek replies, handing her a small sheet of paper with a number on it.

She nods goes back inside and her assistant begins to follow. Tarek takes the Unathi's hand and places another piece of paper with another number on it.

"Call me."

She hems as the door closes behind her. Tarek begins makes his way out of the alley towards the sidewalk but someone trips on him as he exits the corner.

"My apologies."

"Yesss. Me too-"

Tarek's pupils widen and he grips the shoulder strap with his hand when he looks down at the detective with sunglasses, who looks right back at him.

"How could thisss happen."

[Track #8 – Chase in Upper Lowell] https://goo.gl/i7k4jE

He pushes Leo away and makes him fall with his tail as he spins around and runs into the alley. Leo grabs his hat from the floor and puts it back on, running after him. Across the street, a silver vehicle of a model from ten years ago parked across the street suddenly takes off.

A chase sequence begins where Leo chases Tarek who is greatly slowed down by the backpack, making the chase fairly even. They go through alleys, streets, a plaza full of kiosks, and the like.

"That lizard has taken that man's bag! Somebody call a drone!" A woman exclaims as they run past some tables outside a coffee spot.

When they enter another alley, one of the tanks falls off the backpack after jumping a fence. Tarek curses in his language and turns back to pick it up. Leo catches up and lunges toward him after climbing the fence with the megalonyx ready to grab him, but Tarek stops him by putting a hand on his chest with his longer arm, making Leo hit the ground with his knees. He gets back up but has to limp to keep going. Tarek sees the silver vehicle stops on the street at the end of the alley and gets on. When Leo approaches, he can see Shannon looking back at him from the driver's seat. They take off before Tarek has even closed the door. Leo stops moving and rubs his knees, panting.

[Track #8 Ends]

Edited September 14, 2017 by Guest

[keinto]

A window on the tower of the Avanjor Plant overlooks the nightlife of Lowell City's lower half is blurred in the background. The sound of an industrial air conditioning system can be heard outside the walls. Shannon steps into the right side of the frame, wearing pony tail and a scarf with black and blue stripes. She looks at someone behind the camera with a grim expression.

"Why are you back to early?" The calm voice of Mr. B asks.

"He's back," Shannon replies.

"Leo found me on the ssstreet after talking to Jussstine Bareta. I really do not know how. He looked at me like he had no idea I wasss there," Tarek says, now wearing a thick furcoat and checking the scales around his ankles while sitting on a sofa.

"Well, that sucks. Couldn't he have waited like a month? I might have to kill him this time," Mr. B says while we see Shannon fidgeting with her hands. "Go talk to the detective. Tell him we know Leo's here and see what you can get out of him."

"Alright..." Tarek says, getting up and exiting the room.

Shannon now fidgets with her scarf and looks at Mr. B. After a long silence, he finally talks.

"How did he look?"

"The same..." She says, now fidgeting with the tip of her ponytail. "He got a new hand... It looks real."

"The same? Sunglasses and all?"

Shannon nods.

"Psh. What a fucking weirdo. Better that way, I guess," he says with a sigh. "Anyway. We'll worry about him later. For now, we gotta speed things up."

Thumping sounds and screaming begin coming from the floor above. Shannon looks down.

The sun rises on the Martian city. Shop owners begin to setup in the bazaar of upper Lowell, a few police officers idly shop around before noticing someone walking at a brisk pace through the market into a building on the other side. Leo begins going up the stairs leading into the building while more officers look at him pass by. He enters the lobby of the Lowell City Police Department Headquarters and walks past the reception desk. Most people inside seem to vaguely recognize him as he politely bursts into the main offices where Commissioner Katel and her lieutenants are hunched over a planning table. They lock eyes with him, Katel does so with her usual fierceness, and reluctantly beacons him over with her head after a moment. The lieutenants look at her in slight disbelief as Leo slowly approaches.

A montage spanning multiple days begins where Leo is given access to police records, camera footage, crimewatch statistics, witnesses accounts, interrogation transcripts, and forensic reports to catch up on any activity that might be related to Mr. B and his affiliates in the last three years. After the first day of his investigation, he exits the headquarters and looks at the bazaar, now crowded with drones flying above patrolling the area or displaying holographic advertisements. He notices a particular drone flying closest to him about one-hundred meters away. We see the point of view of the drone and see it is looking right at him. After he looks at it a few more seconds, the drone suddenly faces its camera elsewhere and stumbles around before hovering away slowly. He does not think much of it, and keeps walking. More days go on while his search continues giving him dead ends. Detectives and lieutenants glance at him as they walk past him in the office. One day, Detective Jay even brings him a cup of coffee, despite the strong friction between them during the search for Trey years ago, and leaves him to work. After another day plagued with dead ends, Leo's frustration grows too big and he snaps a steel pen in half with his left thumb. He quickly hides it and stares at the monitor in front of him, sighing. He looks around and sees a monitor in the ceiling showing the local news reporting on ticket prices possibly rising at the interplanetary starport. He thinks for a moment, then gets back to typing away.

Back at the Avanjor Plant, Shannon trains on a punching bag inside a makeshift gym. She finishes with a combo of kicks, then grabs a towel and wipes her face while exiting the room.

"I'm done warming up," she says once inside the tower.

"Junior hasn't been keeping his part of the deal. It's time you go up there and pay him a visit."

We see intercuts of Shannon walking through the streets while their conversation continues back at their place. She has put make-up on.

"What should I tell him?", she asks.

She enters one of the elevators leading up to the upper side of the city with about fourty other people inside.

"Tell him he has fourty-eight hours. Also, give him a taste of the Euphoronia before you leave."

We see her enter another elevator inside a luxurious building. A casino can be seen in the background.

"He probably knows you're going to try getting back at him. If he sees me coming first, he might try to kidnap me."

She quietly waits inside the elevator while a tourist Unathi couple laugh in the background.

"Want to take Valentine or Tarek with you?" Mr.B asks. We see the very tip of his nose, the rest of his face covered by his grey hoodie.

"I can do it alone."

Shanon walks down a hotel hallway.

"You okay?" asks Mr. B in a softer voice.

"Yeah..."

Shannon waits outside room 2307. Music, laughing and screaming can be heard inside. She cracks her neck and takes a few deep breaths, getting in character. She knocks the door waits. A tall man in a black suit and a dark red tie opens the door.

"Oh, hey. What's up, Shannon? Boss' kinda' busy right now-"

Shannon jumps forward and punches him in the nose while pushing the door in the process. The room is a suite connected to another with a wide two-door entrance. On the other suite two men sit in a sofa surrounded by beautiful dancers. One of the men is in his early 30's, spiked light yellow hair, and the face of a spoiled brat. The other, in his 50's, has balding hair, a pink suit, and sunglasses, as well as two bodyguards behind him dressed in purple. Around the room are three other bodyguards dressed in black suits with dark red ties, posted like sentinels. On a table in front of the two men in the sofa, a severely beaten male tajaran is being held down by two other black-suited guards while another removes a strip of wax from the tajaran's stomach. They all notice Shannon knocking the other guard down. She closes the entrance door and drops her bag on the floor, looking at them.

"What the fuck?!" exclaims the young man sitting in the sofa.

All of his body guards rush into the other room, leaving the tajaran whimpering on the table. The purple bodyguards remain next to their boss, watching. A guard swings at Shannon, but she dodges him and uses his momentum to throw him toward a table made of glass. Another comes at her, she grabs a bottle of champagne next to her and hurls it at him, making a loud thud as it hits his forehead, instantly knocking him out. Two more come; she jumps at one, using her weight to take him down while knocking the other down with a kick to the face. She inserts her thumbs into one eye of each, leaving them squirming on the floor. The fifth comes, trying to kick her in the face while she is kneeling, but she simply moves her head to the side and uppercuts him between the legs. The dancers begin to panic and leave the room half-naked. The balding man stands up from the sofa and backs off, still watching. The sixth guard, beginning to show fear, squares her off. She raises an eyebrow. She knows he has no chance. She feints a blow to the ribs. He lowers his arms to protect, and leaves his throat exposed, where Shannon strikes, leaving him suffocating on the floor. She walks back to her bag and picks it up. The guard who first opened the door begins to stand up, showing extreme confusion. She hammers her heel down onto his head before he can get up.

"Wow! Did you fucking see that? She got all of 'em!" says the man in pink. The man in white, frozen in his chair, glares at Shannon as she calmly approaches.

"So, darling, who're you here for, him or me?" asks the man in pink, gesturing at both of them.

Shannon points at the other man. She glances at the tajaran, caring little for him. She jumps toward the man in the sofa with her knees up, knocking him and the sofa back, then begins to strangle him while on top.

"Junior, you know I hate coming aaaall the way up here," she casually says while reaching for something in her bag. "Why do you make me do this?"

She takes out a modified breathing mask and places it on Junior, who begins struggling. She presses a button on the mask and it makes a hiss. She eases her grip on his throat, making him breathe in a great amount of the purple gas from the mask.

"Remember this? You were supposed to-"

Shannon's communicator begins to ring. She takes it out from her bag and seems puzzled once she looks at it. She answers.

"Yeah?"

"Put him on."

"How did you know-" she begins to ask, but stops herself. She places the communicator on Junior's hear, who is coughing heavily.

"Listen here, you pathetic little shit. Even if you're the son of the man who pretty much raised me, I won't hesitate if I have to go up there myself and put a hole in your skull. I don't give a fuck. He and I had a deal, and he wanted you to uphold it once he passed. I want your dealers waiting at my old place tomorrow at sixteen-hundred, and don't even fucking think of turning on me. You think you can take on me? Look at what I did with one. Imagine what'll happen when I send all three. Do you fucking understand me, Junior?"

Junior affirms with a hem.

"You won't make me wait again?"

Junior quickly denies with a hem.

"Thank you, Junior. You know we're almost like family, and families got to help each other out."

Junior coughs and looks back at Shannon. She raises the phone back to her hear.

"Anything else?"

"… Break his wrist."

Shannon looks down at Junior hesitantly.

"Do it."

Shannon resigns herself. She grabs Juniors right hand and twists it until a crack is heard. He screams and insults her in all the ways he can think of. She puts the mask back in her bag and gets back up.

"Fucking amazing!" the man in pink exclaims; his bodyguards nod and smirk. "Hey, know what? I could use someone like you! How much you gettin' paid? I'll triple it, and you can live up here!"

"That's not why I do it," she grumbles back while walking through the unconscious men.

The tajaran begins to get up from the table, and looks at her.

"H-he th-anks you..." he says while putting his shirt back on, still in pain.

She ignores him and enters the other suite. She opens the exit door and a man in a bright blue shirt with coconuts and maracas waits outside, grinning at her.

Shannon twitches when startled, but then scowls. "I said I didn't need your help!" then walks past him.

Valentine peeks inside the room, and sees the aftermath with some of the men still moaning. His grin slightly turns into an expression that says, "Ouch. That must have hurt," then he closes the door.

A puddle on a dark street is stepped on by a black shoe. Leo finishes crossing the street and looks up. A three-stories high run-down building several decades old stands on the corner of a street. He looks up at a sign posted on the corner of the building that reads 'Grove Hotel'. Above the building, the colossal bottom of the upper city stands with thousands of pipes and beams supporting it. He walks past a small burger restaurant called Fords' located at the bottom of the building and turns into a miniscule reception desk with a small door next to it. A robot sits behind the window which is ridden with mocking and obscene fluorescent graffiti.

"Welcome t-to the Grove.For Freespeak, say Freespeak-ak-ak."

Leo looks at the robot, then at the door. It has been broken into several times. He glances at the robot again, and opens the door, finding a very steep set of stairs which he begins going up to.

"Enjoy your visit-it-it-it-it."

Muffled sounds can be heard from the doors down the hallways as Leo finishes going up the first set of stairs. Echoes of creaking and footsteps can be heard as he walks around to the second set of stairs. An obnoxiously high laugh comes from one of the doors, music from another. He enters the second floor and begins walking down the hallway. He stops on a door with the 205 number on it. A cough is heard from inside. He takes a deep breath and gently knocks three times. After fifteen seconds, two clicks emanate from the door, opening sideways very slowly afterwards. Oliver peeks over the door, wearing a sleeveless undershirt and shorts. The two men look for what seems an eternity. Oliver opens the door all the way and slouches back to a chair in front of a small holodisplay of the news. Leo looks at the rest of the room which is as big as that of a hotel. A small kitchen and wardrobe space on one side, and the bathroom on the other. Oliver hides a few syringes and a smoking pipe on the drawer next to him, the top littered with plastic packaging of water purifying tablets and homemade packaging for some kind of powder, also from plastic. Leo steps in and the slide door closes behind him. He takes another chair and gently places it adjacent to Oliver's, both men not knowing where to look after he sits down. He takes the DNA analyzer from his pocket, and fidgets with it.

"You know what I am here for, Mister Arias," he begins saying, looking around the room once again. "This will confirm it," he says while offering him the analyzer.

Oliver shyly looks back and forth between him and the analyzer, then begins inspecting it.

"Insert your finger in the slot."

Oliver does so, and the interface begins blinking several lights. The analyzer emits a click, making Oliver wince a little as his finger is pierced. The apparatus begins to whirr and a loading sign appears on the interface. He takes his finger out and looks at Leo again, handing him the analyzer. Leo glances at him, but neither can think of anything to say as they wait. Leo looks at the holodisplay. A Thirteen Loko commercial featuring a space-diving skrell is just finishing up before being interrupted by a news alert segment.

"This just in, multiple victims of assault found in a suite at the Kipling Casino; among them, the son of recently deceased nightclub tycoon, Douglass Brett. Officials at the scene report Douglass Brett Jr. was found in a frenetic state with a broken wrist, and with traces of what appeared to be... phoron? In his system. Unconfirmed reports indicate that it was all done by a single person, seen exiting the building in this footage. Any information regarding..."

The footage shows Shannon's face zoomed in. However, her face is covered by her scarf. Leo immediately recognizes her, and freezes up. Oliver looks back and forth between him and the holodisplay. The segment continues on with an interview of the cleaning crew, but Leo has stopped listening.

He has a series flashbacks to three years ago. The first time he and Shannon met during a sting operation targeting what ended up being Mr. B's rivaling drug gang, unbeknownst to Leo and the LCPD, where she was an essential source of information. A meeting between the two of them at a bar where he asks about Mr. B's smuggler, Trey. He thinks of the steps she took to gain his trust, nearly seduce him, and lure him into an abandoned warehouse. How she and Mr. B stared down at him from a dark catwalk as Tarek, mumbled "Thissss isss jussst fucked up," while he and two other human henchmen almost hesitantly dismembered the innocent detective with machetes.

"It's done," says a voice in the distance.

"Leo..?"

Leo turns toward Oliver and frowns, never liking being called by his name by strangers. He remembers the analyser he is holding, and looks down at it. It only displays a subtle blinking red light. He gulps, pressing an arrow key on the pad. The interface silently displays the green word 'MATCH'. Leo looks at the word for several seconds, then slowly looks up at his father.

"And my mother..?" he whispers.

Oliver can barely stand to look back at him. "Danielle... She..." He gulps. "She left me after we had you... We... we d-didn't want you... we were just teenagers... drugaddicts... but her family made her..."

"How did it happen..? Did you give me up?"

"No! You were almost a year old... We were in the streets... Another riot started and the military... I-it was chaos... for many weeks... When she... D-Danielle... when she knew what happened... she..."

Leo's eyebrows raise above his sunglasses as he stares with eyes wide open.

"She killed herself..."

Leo looks away, hunched down in his chair. His breathing becomes slower, yet deeper. After a few seconds, he rubs his eyes inside his sunglasses and clears his throat.

"How did you find me in Tau Ceti?"

"You were on the news two years ago... when you were... You know..." he gestures at Leo's left hand with his head. "You looked li-like... I thought you looked like me..."

Leo turns to look at him directly. He admits to himself the man has his rarely-seen eyes.

"How old are you?" Leo asks with curiosity.

"Fourty-nine. You gotta' be around... thirty..."

"Three."

They both remain silent. The holodisplay continues broadcasting the news and Oliver's mind finally wanders off. Leo looks at him and his arms, and sees all the signs of an active drug addict. He gets up, reading the word 'MATCH' on the analyser one more time before putting it in his coat pocket. He walks toward the door and slides it open.

"I'll... keep in touch."

"I'm sorry..."

Leo looks back at him for a moment, then exits and closes the door.

A sink begins spouting air and water as it is opened. Shannon depressingly looks at herself in the mirror of a bathroom and washes her face and hands. She puts the shoulder strap of her camisole back up and enters a bedroom with a balcony wide open in the back. She rubs her eyes and lies down her left side near the left edge of a bed, her head resting on her hands and looking at nothing in particular. A figure wrapped up in a blanket on the other side of the bed stretches and sighs.

"You're doing this shit too often, Shannon. Are you getting tired of me or something?" says the voice of Mr. B.

Shannon remains silent. He gets up from the bed fully naked and walks toward the balcony. The moonlight of Phobos faintly shines his back as he leans over the handrail, looking down at the upper Lowell nightlife.

"You're thinking about him, aren't you? This is all it's been about ever since," he says from the background.

Shannon shifts her position slightly. Her face turns from sadness to guilt. "I'm sorry... but he wasn't just-"

"So what? I did what I had to do. We did what we had to do so he wouldn't bother us," he says while progressively getting quieter. "I spent my whole life getting us to where we are. Maybe it's not all been pretty lately, but it's where we grew up."

Shannon turns around to look at him. We see his shadow turning around on the floor hitting the foot of the bed, facing her.

"If you don't want to keep doing this or if you don't love me anymore, just go. All I want is for you get through these last deals and that'll be it. I promise I'll leave you alone."

Shannon sheds a small tear onto her pillow. She squeezes the pillow with her fingers for a moment before slowly getting up, dressing, and walking toward the door. Mr. B quietly watches her leave.

The next day, Leo is back at the LCPD headquarters yet again but with newly regained confidence. He hunches down on the chair and looks for camera footage from the Kipling Casino.

Unable to determine where Shannon has gone after exiting the casino, Leo shifts his attention to one of Junior's bodyguards being transported to a hospital. He discovers he is dating a 24 year-old girl named Lydia who seems to be doing more than one drug on a daily basis. Camera footage from city drones shows Lydia selling something to a soldier patrolling the streets. Further footage from a street light shows her meeting up with another young man at night on an empty street, both counting money. Leo gets her address in lower Lowell and heads out before the officers can ask him anything.

The sun shines some light into one third of lower Lowell. Lydia closes the fence door leading into her residential area on her way out. She carries an empty backpack and walks quickly through the sidewalk. From across the street Leo turns around the corner and follows, his head fixed looking forward. She turns onto a main avenue and looks at the incoming railbus at the stop. Leo notices this and signals the bus to wait for him to cross the street as it passes by. He waits for her and a few other people to board before getting on. She sits down in the far back and he remains standing for the rest of the ride. Halfway through, a bohemian IPC boards the bus and begins to sell water-purifying tablets, chargers, and the cheapest versions of pAI's Leo had ever seen. At a stop much closer to downtown, Lydia steps off the bus from the back and Leo from the front. He continues following her from a much farther distance. As they enter the beginning of another city area, Leo instantly recognizes the gigantic military recruitment poster for the Sol Coalition standing at fifty meters tall, greatly worn down. He begins following much more cautiously after realizing where she is heading. A young girl waves at Lydia as she approaches. Leo hides behind another bus stop while they meet up and look around them before continuing walking. They end up entering the premises of an abandoned warehouse, the one where Leo was brutalized. He crosses the street, looking around more than ever. He peers inside the entrance and sees the girls entering the warehouse in the distance. He follows.

Shannon stands with her arms crossed in front of a group of twenty people, all young, some doing drugs, or already heavily drugged. The warehouse is crowded with crates about to fall apart, rows of shells knocked over in a domino pattern, a deactivated cargo worker, and dust and glass littered everywhere. She sees the two girls enter, clearly irritated that they are late.

"Alright. We have enough," Shannon says as the girls lean against a wall. "You'll just have to catch up whoever shows up later. Hey, you," she tells a white-haired teenager pinching another, "Stop that. I ain't got all godsdamn day. Euphoronia is what we're calling it, alright? It's like Crystal meth in the way that it'll make you really happy and give you a rush, but it's also like Aranesp so you'll suffocate to death if you smoke too much of it."

Leo sneaks into the warehouse from the other side, carefully avoiding stepping into any glass. He hides behind a crate and opens the interface in his megalonyx and selects the icon of an ear. He then puts the hand on his left ear, listening to the amplified voice.

"… Not going to sell it at the nightclub like it's just any other, alright? This stuff comes from Ceti. Can't be found anywhere else right now. Let them know that while selling it. What's so fucking funny now?" Shannon asks the snarky white-haired boy.

"I-it's just like..." He begins, slowly laughing away the effects of vulgaris, "You guys didn't even have people posted outsi-side for security...! You're gonna' get us... US all arrested if somebody walks in on us...!"

"Valentine is here, you just can't see him."

The group begins whispering between themselves and look around.

"V-Valentine? The guy behind the Pink's massacre?!" The Wraith of Barinas?!

"Yeah, him. Now shut up."

Leo frowns, looking around him to assure himself he wasn't followed. Something gets his attention, however. Squatting with his arms resting on his legs on top of a catwalk nearby is Valentine, wearing an old butler coat and staring down at the group. He then turns directly to Leo and holds up a finger to his mouth, his grin is wider than ever. Leo is startled and loses his balance for a second. The group hears shoes rubbing against gravel but they ignore it. He looks back at the group and sees they are not looking back at him. He turns to Valentine but he has already vanished. He grips the revolver in his holster and slowly begins leaving, deciding it is too dangerous to stay.

"Don't forget. Tomorrow at twenty-hundred at the Avanjor Air Processing Plant on the northern block, got it?" Shannon says some time later as the meeting concludes. She wraps her scarf around and leaves the warehouse through the back, walking through an unfinished construction site toward the top of a large unloading dock leading into the building. She sits on the edge of the dock and takes an unopened pack of cigarettes from her pocket and lights the smoke, all as if she had never done it before. She looks into the distant sight of downtown lower Lowell and sighs. Sounds of shoes slowly stepping into gravel are heard behind her.

"Come have a smoke with me, Valentine. Maybe it'll help you stop grinning," she says nonchalantly.

"No, thank you. I am trying to quit."

Shannon quickly gets up and turns around to see Leo approaching her at a brisk pace. She almost falls from the ledge and realizes she has nowhere to run. She prepares to fight, attempting to throw a hook at him, but her arm is firmly caught in his megalonyx. He clenches his jaw as the robotic hand squeezes her arm until she kneels in submission, shrieking in pain. She looks up at him in disbelief, then he applies even more pressure.

"You will take me to him, or I will push you off this dock," he tells her coldly before looking down the edge. "You'll survive."

"I-I'm s-sorry!" She says with her head lowered.

"Hm?"

"I didn't k-know h-he was going t-to do that to you!" She stutters while looking up at the megalonyx. He relaxes his grip a tiny amount after muttering.

"You manipulated me and used me and the police to get rid of your competitors, but you didn't stop there," he says through his teeth, spitting a bit in the process. "You could have told me what was coming, but you lured me into that horror house instead," he says while looking at the abandoned warehouse in the distance.

She looks up at him again, her eyes bloodshot and about to cry. She looks at his unforgiving sunglasses; he shields his soul behind the tinted glass like he had done countless times before.

"You only have to do it one more time. Take me to him, and we'll see what happens now that I'm prepared."

He raises her arm to help her up. He slowly begins letting go of her, but slides his hand down to hers, interlocking fingers. She looks at him, perplexed.

"If you try anything, I'll send enough milliamps through your body to damage your nervous system, then you can say goodbye to your hand," he says, smiling a little.

The pair begin making their way back to the bus stop.

"My hand's starting to get numb..." Shannon complains.

He stares at her. "Where are we going?"

"The northern block..."

Leo takes out a communicator from his coat and holds it up to her. "Enter the address here."

She takes the communicator and slowly types in the address with her thumb. He checks the screen. It has a personal transportation service program called "Chāo" loaded up with the address Shannon entered as the destination. He sees that from the western part of the city they are currently in, the destination is at the very edge of a northern part of the megacity 20 kilometers away. He changes the drop-off point to three blocks south of it and requests the service. The scene fades into another.

Both handholders sit on the backseat of a selfdriven car. Leo glances at the humble skyline of lower Lowell on his window as he rests his arm on the door. He turns to Shannon, who has been looking at him.

"How'd you find me?" She asks.

"Your business is too family-oriented. It wasn't hard to follow the breadcrumbs when everybody knows eachother. You should consider hiring more strangers."

Shannon gazes at him; a look of curiosity that always made Leo bothered.

"Are the police with you?"

"B has been keeping strangely low since I was last here so he is not the priority on their radar. I wonder if his inactivity has anything to do with the phoron Trey stole?

He begins squeezing her hand with the megalonyx. She looks at the hands and then at him with skepticism.

"You're not the type to torture for information."

"Ah... You're right," he mumbles while easing the grip. "You should still tell me what he's doing with it, however."

"And why is that?"

"Last time I checked you were wanted for... nine counts of assault. I could simply bring you to the police and I might as welltell them you are in his inner circle."

Shannon looks away. The vehicle enters a ramp and gets off the highway, turning left at an avenue. There is a prolonged silence until the car stops next to a bar called "Cutthroat's Pretension"

"You... want to kill him, don't you?" She asks as Leo opens the door.

He also looks away and thinks for a moment. "I don't know anymore. I suppose I will know when I see him."

They both exit the car as it cheerfully says, "Thank you for using Chāo!" Some smokers stare at the pair making their way north. A bulky shadowy figure wearing shaded assisted-vision goggles looks at them from a stool inside. He takes out an autoinjector and uses it on his neck.

Leo makes them both turn into an alley, then continue proceeding north. The top tower of the Avanjor Plant can be seen above, and a gargantuan window panel several kilometers in width behind it.

"That's it..." Shannon says, gesturing with her head.

Leo checks his phone again, zooming into the location. "An air processing plant? What does he want with a building like that? Cover all of Lowell in phoron and light it on fire?"

"Don't be silly... The plant closed years ago. He's using it to... make a new drug..."

"With phoron?"

"Don't ask me how. I just know it gives you a rush like no other product out there..."

"So, it is that kind of drug. Probably as strong as it is addictive as well, but made with fuel, and will kill the users within a few years if not careful. You are tempting me back to killing him."

They cross the first street of the three before getting to the building. They enter another alley between a mechanic shop and a storage facility. Shannon lowers her head as they continue.

"You don't have to kill him... you know?

Leo huffs sarcastically. "What do you suggest I do?"

Shannon looks up at him. "You could... talk."

Leo stops and turns toward her, baffled.

"He's had many people killed, he fills this planet with drugs, he brutalized me, and now he's going to have more people die to this drug!"

"Yeah... But... He didn't kill you..."

Someone turns into the alley behind them. The bulky man pulls his goggles down to his neck and drops his hat on the floor, revealing one of Junior's bodyguard (the one who was hit with the champagne bottle) with a bald head and a horrendous bruise in the forehead. He raises a handgun at them.

"Look at what you did to me, you stupid bitch! I've gone blind in one eye!"

Shannon attempts to shove Leo aside, but is hit by two bursts of bullets around her torso. He places the megalonyx wide open on her chest, blocking a third burst before throwing their bodies to the floor and rolling to hide behind a dumpster. He sits against the dumpster with Shannon facing up against his stomach. The man begins approaching, holding his gun up.

"Listen, man, you a cop, right? You know she works for Mr. B?! I didn't know she was a prostitute too! She was probably gonna have you killed or something back at their base!"

Leo takes the Instant Prosecutor out, listening at the footsteps.

"I don't wanna kill you, I swear! We gotta have cops like you around! I just wanna make sure she's dead! Throw your gun away and let me check!

Leo glances down at Shannon. His clothes are soaked in her blood. She grips his arm and holds the pain.

"D-do i-it-!" She whispers between her teeth.

Leo reluctantly tosses the gun at the center of the alley. The man turns around and stares down at them. Leo looks back with hate behind his shades.

"Hah! Got the sucker good!" He puts the gun on his waist. "I'm sorry about that, man. But don't worry, I'll hook you back up! Hold on." the man says before reaching for his pocket. "Just come by!" He says and tosses a card promoting the Kipling's casino nightclub at Leo's lap.

Leo faces away from him and with great effort says, "Thanks."

"You got it, man!" He replies, putting his goggles back on. He takes another look at Leo, and tilts his head.

"I'll meet you later," Leo says, growing impatient.

"Nah, nah, nah, nah... Hold up,"

"Ju-just fuck-king leave!" Shannon exclaims.

"You shut the fuck up!" The man takes his gun out again, aiming it at Leo. "Take off your fucking sun-"

The man emits a short gasp before falling to the floor. Valentine wipes the blood off his tactical dagger with a rag before looking down at them. Unaffected and still grinning, he grabs the bodyguard by the shoulders and begins dragging him off. Leo does not bother to check where he goes, instead gently leaning Shannon forward and moving to kneel beside her. The both look at her wounds and the pool of blood on the ground. They know it is too locate for an ambulance. He reaches for Phoebe's kit inside his coat and takes out the dose of oxycodone and quickly injects her.

[Track #23 – Not Quite the Same, but You'll Do] https://goo.gl/VfNF4M

"I-it's f-funny..."

"What is?"

"T-today could h-have been my l-last day working with him... He would've let me leave," she says while beginning to smile.

"And is it?"

She shakes her head weakly. "I don't think so... I just can't leave the guy..."

He rubs her shoulder, and she turns toward him.

"Leo... I r-really didn't know he was g-gonna do that to you..." She motions at the megalonyx with her head. "Will you f-forgive me if I tell you his name...?"

"I will, Shannon," he whispers back.

He leans forward, turning his ear to her, but she begins to remove the scarf from her neck with great effort. He helps her and inspects it.

"I-it's very c-cold where we live... You're gonna need this..."

She takes the scarf from his hands and wraps it around his neck.

"B-before I tell you... Please let me b-borrow your lips..."

Leo simply looks at her. He gulps as he allows his sunglasses to be removed. For the first time we get to see Leo's naked brown eyes, looking at her with saddened bewilderment. She grips both ends of the scarf and lets the weight of her arms pull him down. She kisses him passionately but her movements become weaker and weaker. She rests her head against the floor, and looks at Leo like no one had ever looked at him before.

"Edmund..." She finally whispers, closing her eyes with a smile.

[Track #23 ends]

"Thank you."

A tear falls on her cheek that is gently wiped off by a right hand, and before we can have a second look, Leo's eyes are already hidden under the shades once again. The artificial wind blows and the scarf waves slightly on his shoulders. He looks at Shannon one more time, and loops her gift around his neck. The scene fades into another.

Two blocks ahead, Leo peeks around the back of a pawn shop, evaluating the security of the facility. A closed and unoccupied checkpoint stands in front of the tall entrance gate, with motion-sensored and electrified wired fences surrounding the entire perimeter between the street and the window panel. He moves his mouth to the side in frustration and stops peeking. He notices a carwash a block down the street adjacent to the one in front of the Avanjor plant and looks at it for a moment. The excess water from the wash tunnel flows into the street, down the sewer. He begins exiting the alley, but the noise of a can coming from behind him stops him. He looks down the alley, and a can of Thirteen-Loko rolls down to the middle from a dumpster. He stares.

"Q****t y** du****ss!" A voice whispers behind a dumpster unit.

Leo presses his right thenar and the megalonyx unveils its true form, with two short spikes emerging from the knuckles as he walks toward the dumpster at brisk pace.

"O* f*** me!"

The spikes form an electric arc that he holds up to the source of the voice as he aggressively leans over the dumpster; three people hide behind it, sitting against the wall with their legs folded up, all wearing toolbelts. The megalonyx crackles and the arc's light reveals their young faces, and Leo would have tased them all had it not been the green puppy eyes looking at him from the one on the right.

He scowls at his now blue-haired brother, Roy, who looks back at him and then at the menacing unlicensed synthetic hand and back at him again.

"What are you doing here?!" Leo asks, moving his hand away and looking at both sides of the alley.

"I-I... u-uh... I-I came to help!"

"How did you even find me?"

"U-um... I-I asked... I was chatting with Phoebe on the relay the other day, and then I asked her to hang out, but then she said she was going to visit Luna, and then... then you sent us that message about you going to Earth again! I th-thought something was suspicious, so I kinda' waited for you guys at the starport!"

Leo keeps on listening. He glances at Annie playing with her hair tips, and Izzy fidgeting with his nails.

"So, I said, 'These guys finally hooked up and they're going on a secret date!', and I was gonna' surprise you and stuff! But then Phoebe saw me coming toward you and she looked at me, like, really fucking scary, you know? Like the way she looks at a doctor when they don't know what they're doing?! She told me to go away but then she left something on the table! It was a napkin that said, 'Lowell', and then I just knew I had to come!" He turns toward his friends and says, "By the way, you guys, thank you for coming with me! Then we waited for you to go to the LCPD! Looked like a place you'd go to..."

Leo raises an eyebrow above his glasses, relatively impressed at the last comment, then looks at Annie and Izzy and asks, "And you are?"

"Um. I'm Annie."

"I'm Izzy! Nice to meet you!"

"We work for Roy in his company. You actually met us once before, you know? It was right after he founded the company."

"Ah... Yes. My apologies." Leo turns to Roy. "You brought your employees with you to stalk me?"

"I-I a-ata... I'm gonna' pay them! He says, glacing to both of them. Izzy looks at Annie and silently says, "Ooooooh...!" Roy nods, "Business trip, and stuff!"

Leo steps back, letting them get up on their feet. They wipe the dust off their hands and look down the alley.

"You... saw what happened back there...?" Leo asks, motioning toward Shannon's direction with his head.

"Huh? Wha? No. Our drone ran out of juice just when you got off the car so it's just lying somewhere! What happened, by the way? Where's the hot girl?" Roy asks, looking down the alley.

Leo stares at him, looking for any lies. He presses his lips together and says, "She... I let her go."

"What?! Why?"

"She led me to- Roy. You've got to go home."

"No way! You're here to arrest Mr. T, right?! Let me help you!"

"Absolutely not," he says, grabbing Roy by both shoulders and walking him away from the others. "It's too dangerous. Go now," he whispers.

"Please, Leo! Or... Or I'll tell them..." Roy says, pointing at his friends. "I'll tell them where you got your coat and hat!"

Leo moves his mouth to the side in annoyance. He looks at Annie at Izzy tilting their heads, then at the carwash behind them.

"There is something I might need your help with," he says looking back at Roy. The scene cuts into another.

The group walks down the sidewalk next to the carwash. Leo looks down a sidewalk grate as they walk over it. A woman finishes the washing cycle as they arrive and wait for her to leave.

"Got construction tape on you?"

"Sure! What for, though?"

Leo looks down both sides of the street; the oncoming traffic is several blocks away. He looks down at the grate and slides the megalonyx's fingers into a corner, squeezing the metal bars and ripping them out as they become thinned under the pressure. He begins lifting the grate up and the others help him move it to the side, revealing a three-meter drop with a tiny entrance into the main sewer tunnel. He grips the edge of the sidewalk and the megalonyx digs its fingers into it, shattering the concrete to give him in a better grip. He jumps down and offers a hand to Izzy. Roy and Leo help him and Annie jump down before Roy quickly places holographic construction tape around the opening and jumps down himself. Leo begins crawling through the tunnel, clearing most of the filth with the megalonyx; the others follow. They come out of the tunnel and stand on a platform beside the flowing water below. Leo raises the back of the megalonyx and a white light emanates from it. He turns right and shines it toward the direction of the Avanjor plant. Roy takes a few steps forward and stares at the hand. Leo looks at him as they begin to walk.

"Where'd you get it? Roy finally asks.

"The less you know, the better."

"Can I have it when we get back?"

"Absolutely not. You'll get a rapid construction device, eventually. Let's cross this," he says as they approach a catwalk going over the sewage.

They meet a T-intersection at which a few rats run away from the light when they go over another catwalk and turn left.

Roy shrugs. "Makes more sense for them to be here than in a space station."

Leo turns right at another T-intersection, finding a secure metallic door with thick hinges and a rusting door handle. A sign covered in mold is posted next to it.

 

AVANJOR AIR PROCESSING PLANT WASTE SYSTEM ACCESS

DO NOT TRESPASS

DO NOT LITTER

 

"Can the three of you do it?" Leo asks Roy after examining the door.

"Why don't you try it with your hand?" Annie asks.

"It's a mainly a machine press, not a drill," Leo replies, holding the megalonyx up and inspecting it.

"Yeah, we can! What are we getting in return thoooough?!" Roy asks, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow high.

"You can... wear my hat all the way back to Ceti," he tells Roy, then looks at the other two. "You can... visit the Aurora II with me."

"Yessss...!"

"Yessss...!"

"Oh, yeah! Inspector Wyatt!"

The three of them begin approaching the door, cracking their knuckles and necks.

"Okay, Annie, you're the best welder so see what you can do around the frame. Izzy, take those hinges apart. I'll get on the lock."

"Please be as quiet as you can," Leo asks, looking around the corners.

The other side of the door protects a small storage room full of cleaning supplies, crates, pipes, and protection gear. A ladder on the other end of the room drops some dust as the secure door opens with a clank. The megalonyx peeks inside with a holographic mirror floating above its back. After making sure the room is empty, Leo opens the door with a loud hiss. The others peep around the corner, then come out of hiding covered in sweat and dust.

"Alright, guys, meet me back at the hotel!" Roy says as he begins to step into the room, but Leo places a hand on the door, taking a tiny bottle out of his coat with the other.

"No."

"Huh? What's that? I bet it's hyperzine! Gimme' some!"

"Vodka," he replies before drinking all of it and putting it back, then looks back at his brother. "Roy, you're not coming in."

"What'd you mean? What if you still need help breaking into somewhere?"

"I already put your life in danger once. Never again."

"You mean twice! Whatever! It was years ago! I followed you all the way here! You can't stop me now?! Please!" Roy says while trying to step in.

"Stop it." He pushes him outside. "I have to do it- I want to do it alone."

Roy stares at him, frowning. He tries to say something but gulps instead. Leo steps outside and stares at him. He raises his hand and Roy tries to swat it away from petting his head, but it is not heading there. Leo takes his hat off and puts it on Roy, then steps back, looking at all three.

"If you don't hear from me in an hour, call the police. Tell them Leo Wyatt said to come here. Also, stay away from any grinning people."

Izzy and Annie nod. Roy walks away with his hands in his pockets. Leo holds the door open, watching him leave. Roy looks back.

"Thank you, little brother," Leo says in a slightly teasing tone. Roy huffs in frustration before Leo closes the door.

He goes up the ladder and slowly opens the hatch, once again peering into the room above with the holo-mirror. Once inside, the automatic lights kick in and show a spacious room with several rows of air scrubbers and spare components lined up against the wall with an elevator at the end of the room along with a door leading to emergency stairs. A map of the entire plant is posted on the wall above scrubbers. He walks across to get a better look and finds his location at the second sublevel of the storage building separated from the main facility. He leaves the room through the stairs, glancing at the room in the first sublevel, noticing some air canisters missing from the rows inside. He finds the exit to the surface level, barely opening the door to peek outside. The grounds of the plant seem completely barren. He runs across the open field and sticks to the walls once the reaches the main complex adjacent to the window panel, going through the same areas that Pike did a few days ago. He finds a broken window thoroughly patched up with vinyl and metal rods. He cuts through the sheet with a spike from the megalonyx and peers, barely able to identify the contents inside. He fidgets and looks to the sides while thinking of entering, but he is drawn to something in the tower, guiding his eyes from the bottom to the top.

"Roy, we shouldn't be so close!" Annie exclaims as Roy tries to look inside the grounds through the dry hedge plants in the border of the facility near the window panel. "Let's wait somewhere safe!"

"There's nobody inside! The lights aren't even on and it's almost dark!" Roy replies while squinting at the light of the sunset.

"Really hope it's not a trap..." Izzy says while rubbing his arms and looking around.

"Thanks, that really fucking helps!" Roy replies while getting branches out of his way. "If you jinxed it, you're fired!"

"I'm sorry! I actually really like your brother!"

"Just shut up... Wait, wait! I see something! Wha?!"

The heads of Izzy and Annie pop through the plants next to Roy's.

"That's him, right?! How is he doing that?!"

The silhouette of Leo rises behind the roof of a building next to the tower as he climbs a water pipe placed on the northern end of the tower that goes all the way up. The only thing holding him is the grip of the megalonyx, which slightly bends and scratches the pipe every time he slides his fingers on it to gain height. One-third through, he tries to wrap his legs around the pipe to speed up the process, but falls a few centimeters as he finds out his legs do not have the strength. He makes his way to the roof at snail pace where he finds the ventilation system still running. The tower and its rooftop are fifteen square meters wide. The access door is locked, so he places the megalonyx on the door's handle and begins to whirr as it applies pressure on it. He wiggles the handle around until all its pieces succumb to the pressure and come off, then messes with the locking mechanism randomly until the doors opens, showing spiraling dark stairs with a squared space in the middle that goes all the way to the bottom of the tower. He can see that the floor beneath him is lit. He goes down as quietly as possible, leaning down to see the next floor through the handrail rods before entering it. He sees an elevator to the right side and a door with a small rectangular window and the label "SECURITY" on the wall beside it. He approaches the door and peeks inside. He sees a wide room with windows on three of its sides overlooking the entire facility, consoles of security cameras and door access buttons, three personal lockers on the side, and a tall figure wearing a fur coat sitting in the middle desk facing away from the door. Leo places his hand on the handle and takes a deep breath before opening it wide and taking a step in.

Tarek looks away from the monitor in front of him, showing a news broadcast of massive riots in Ouerea. He casually turns his chair and grips the armrests once he looks at the door.

"Oh, shit."

Leo sprints toward him with his left arm held up. Tarek quickly gets up from the chair and grabs it, placing it between both of them. Leo stops, looking at a crowbar resting on a table to his left. He grabs it and begins straightening the bent side with his left thumb. Tarek looks at the megalonyx with concern as Leo passes the straightened crowbar to his right hand. He tries to throw the chair at him, but Leo lunges forward and gets a hold of the other end with his left hand and pushes back, trying to stab Tarek's legs with the other repeatedly. Tarek pushes the chair to the side before Leo can get a successful hit, then punches him right in the chest. Leo falls back and raises the megalonyx at chest height, facing the palm outwards and sideways with the other arm held slightly higher and back, ready to grapple. Tarek frowns at the strangest fighting stance he has ever seen but is forced to wrestle with his opponent before he can continue thinking about it. The two struggle around the room with Leo trying to crush anything he can get his hand on, and with Tarek trying to remember just where he left the taser when they first took over the plant. He finally remembers and manages to put Leo on the floor before looking for it in a drawer nearby, thumping his tail subconsciously again and again. Leo rolls to his right and miraculously grabs the tip.

Tarek roars in pain and turns behind him, grabbing Leo's coat and furiously throwing him across the floor toward the other end of the room. He stares at Leo as he gets up, who resumes his fighting stance.

"Thissss will not continue. I keep sssaying thissss whole thing is fucked up, and I am done."

"I'm not."

"There isss no point, Leo Wyatt."

For a moment, we see a monitor in a dimly lit room broadcasting the feed of a security camera in the top of a corner of the room Leo and Tarek are in, with Leo on the opposite side of the room the camera is in, near the door. The figure of Mr. B covers the entire monitor for an instant as he gets up from a chair.

"I will leave you and come back later while you two sssort thisss out."

Leo frowns. "You haven't gotten what you deserve," he says, squeezing the megalonyx into a fist briefly.

"You sssaw what he did to Trey. I had to do what he wanted, asss much asss I hated it. When I come back, I will gladly accccept to finisssh our duel, and I will win even if you have whatever that thing issss," Tarek replies, motioning at the hand with his head, then looks at the scarf on Leo's neck. "If you are ssstill alive, that isss. He will not like whatever you have done to hisss girlfriend..."

Tarek begins walking toward the door. Leo cautiously backs away from it.

"Are there copsss outssside?"

"I came alone."

"Do I have your word?"

Leo remains silent.

"You have my word I will not interfere anymore. If you are lying... I will desssstroy you. B is jussst two floorsss below thisss one."

Tarek exits the room and turns toward the elevator with his tail bent upwards more than usual. Leo leaves as well and watches the floor indicator go from 5 to 1. He adjusts his coat and takes the stairs again. The fourth floor holds a door with the sign MANAGEMENT next to it. He opens the door wide open to reveal an empty office, lit only by the fading light of the sunset. He silently goes down the stairs again, leaning halfway through to see the floor. A door to the left side of the stairs is secured with a locker, and the other in the middle is labeled LOUNGE, but this one is slightly open. Only blackness can be seen through the gap, however. He stares at it for a moment, but nothing can be heard from the other side. He goes down the final set of stairs, this time not bothering to mute his footsteps. He places the megalonyx on the door, and pushes it wide open.

Edited September 17, 2017 by Guest

[keinto]

The room, as spacious as the previous two, has its walls covered with tables and devices and tools on top of them, although Leo cannot make out what they are. On the ceiling, only the light bulb in the center of the room is on, illuminating nothing but the rugged floor under it. On the right side of the room, a tiny sliver of the sunset light passes through one of the three shutters on the western wall. The only thing that can be clearly seen from the person sitting next to the window with his arms folded are his furious eyes, looking directly at Leo. Something about the eyes terrified him, but Leo takes a step forward regardless.

"I didn't take you for a fan of theatrics like me," Leo says, making a fairly difficult effort not to let his voice shake. "Edmund."

"You'd be surprised of what we got in common," Edmund replies as we see his eyes for the first time, sending shivers down Leo's spine as he hears his voice closer than he ever has. Edmund's eyes look down to Leo's neck and squint. "I gave that scarf to Shannon. Why do you have it?"

"Because she gave it to me. She was... shot by one of Brett's bodyguards."

Edmund turns away and looks out the window and closes his eyes, visibly upset. Leo's heart skips a beat as he gets a glimpse of the area around his eyes.

"So, you came to arrest me? Go ahead. Try."

"I came here to do to you what you did to me. But it's become clear to me that the law enforcement around here won't keep you away for long. I'll have to kill you to protect myself and my family." Leo reaches for his holster and takes out the Instant Prosecutor. "Get up and die on your feet."

Edmund's eyes narrow again, but this time in amusement. "Okay." He gets up from the chair and begins walking toward the center of the room. "But how's that protecting your family, when your family is right here?"

Leo feels his head turn pale. The arm holding his guns begins shaking, and so does his jaw. He gets on one knee as he feels his legs losing strength and nearly collapses on the floor. It takes him so much strength to look up and see the person standing in front of him. A person with a build more fit than his, shorter hair than his, but a face just like his nevertheless. He begins hearing the voices of the people he encountered the last few days and seeing their faces in flashes. Shannon's voice endearingly saying, "Edmund..." He imagines how horrified, and not satisfied she must have been when Mr. B ordered the hand and leg of his own twin brother to be cut off. He realizes why Shannon always looked at him as if captivated, why the body guard suddenly looked at him a different way, why the grinning man did not simply kill him and instead led him here. He hears Oliver's voice hesitantly saying, "You looked li-like... I thought you looked like... me."

Leo gulps with pain, his breath becoming exerted. He holsters his gun slowly. "W-why didn't O-Oliver... tell me...?"

Edmund looks down at him, almost with pity. He huffs at the mention of Oliver. "Oh, you found that piece of garbage? Well, where else would he get his drugs from for free? Or maybe he finally tried not to fuck up other people's lives with his shit. 'Edmund, you need to get more money!' 'Edmund, get me this! 'Edmund, I need more crank!' Oh, and my favorite, 'Edmund, I just had a-' Oh. Speaking of the devil."

Edmund looks at the door. Valentine is peeking over the door but then fully reveals himself. Leo glances behind him, then crawls to the side of the room.

"Valentine... You were supposed to protect Shannon... Did he have anything to do with it?" Edmund motions toward Leo. "Was it his fault?"

The grinning murderer looks at Leo for a long time, then simply stares at Edmund. After a moment, Valentine nods.

Edmund glares at Leo. He opens and closes his fists. "I didn't kill you when I could have, and I tried to keep it between both of us, but you just had to come back and get the only person I ever loved killed... Now I'm gonna make you watch everyone special to you die. Get in the cell with your partner, little brother."

Edmund grabs Pike's communicator from his hoodie and throws it at Leo at full speed. Leo blocks it with his arm but then it grabbed by his shirt before he can get back on his feet. Edmund strikes him with his fists and knees in the face. His sunglasses split in half and are thrown across the floor. Edmund grabs him by his shirt again and lifts him against the wall, his nose and mouth starting to bleed.

"I just had a thought... Maybe I'll pretend to be you when I torture your family before they die. Hah! Can you imagine their faces?!"

Leo slides his left arm between Edmund's, who is completely taken by surprise when he cannot remove the left hand from his throat as it begins suffocating him. Leo puts him on the floor and gets on top of him. Edmund tries to free his throat with one hand while attempting to claw at Leo's face with the other. He looks at Valentine, still standing on the door, and manages to say, "H-h-help... P-please..." But Valentine just keeps on watching. His eyebrows and mouth begin turning from a grin into a face full of rage. He hears Edmund in his head, whose voice gradually turns to that of a child with each sentence.

"Try this one, it'll make you faster."

"Have some. It's been a while, huh?"

"Just smoke it! Don't be a fucking coward!"

"Come on! Try it, for me?"

In desperation, Edmund's hands begin reaching for Leo's holster. Leo begins crying as the megalonyx applies more pressure and before he can think of a way to stop this, Edmund's hands gently fall on his chest. He ceases strangling him, and just looks down. After a while, he looks at the door but there is nobody there. He gets up and stands still, looking at nothing in particular until he stops crying. He looks down at the body next to him.

Edmund looks so peaceful with his curled hands on his chest, as if sleeping. Leo takes off his coat and places it on Edmund like a blanket, then reaches for one end of the scarf and begins pulling it, but stops once the scarf gets tighter instead of coming off. He clumsily exits the room and looks at the door with the lock to his right. He breaks it with the megalonyx, then opens it.

Pike is resting on the floor on the other end of a tightly rectangular room that is devoid of anything but dirty walls and an empty plate on the floor. He wakes up and looks at the door. His face now heavily beaten and with a beard. Leo does not directly look at him, but both men recognize each other. Pike waits for Leo to pick him up, but Leo begins walking away instead. Pike gets up and begins following him.

"Leo, I came here on my o-"

Pike stops talking as he looks inside the lounge. He sees Edmund on the floor and his jaw drops slightly, then he turns to Leo and simply watches him go down the stairs like a zombie.

Leo goes down to the first floor and begins wondering aimlessly around the building, the sound of his shoes as he drags them through the floor echoing around the hallways. He looks around what might as well have been Edmund's home. He glances at the room with the metal cylinders as he walks by. A playroom with a dartboard has a low table with three bottles on it of Sarehzi wine, rum, and tequila. Many steps later, he finds himself in front of an airlock leading to the low pressure of the Martian atmosphere. He ignores all the hazard signs around him as his hand smashes a button on the wall, opening the airlock, then slows his breathing as he smashes the next button and the airlock begins cycling out. The sun has already set and the silence is almost deafening on the terrace housing the derelict air scrubbers. Leo is immediately drawn to the edge of the platform from where the red wasteland extends past the horizon, with a few abandoned settlements in between. He leans over the handrail and looks down at the 300 meter drop below him. A gentle gush of wind makes the scarf flap and he pushes himself away from the handrail. He presses his right thenar and the megalonyx emits a hiss shortly after. The synthetic skin around his stump is ripped apart as he pulls out the hand and flings it away from him as far as he can, watching it fall into the Martian dust below. He makes his way back to the airlock and takes out a crowbar from its emergency locker and places it on the outer airlock to prevent it from sealing. He then forces the inner airlock open and walks back to the lobby where he finds Pike waiting for him.

"I'm so sorry, Leo," Pike says, searching for Leo's eyes.

Leo just stares at the floor

Pike puts an arm around Leo's back and tiredly says, "Let's go home, kid." He hands him his sunglasses which are put back together with scotch tape. He helps Leo walk towards the exit and glances back at the airlock as an air alarm begins triggering.

"No! That sounds like an atmos alert! Fuck it! I'm going in!" Roy says while putting his insulated gloves on outside the plant.

"Wait! I think I see him! Let's go this way!" Annie exclaims, pointing toward the main building.

The three run toward the main gate and wait.

"Ehh? Mister Pike? The hells is he doing here?" Roy asks after the gate begins sliding open, showing the detectives coming out.

"Tsk. You brought him along?" Pike asks Leo, who simply shrugs.

Leo steps off Pike and strides toward Roy. He hugs him around the neck abruptly and almost makes the hat fall off Roy's head. Roy frowns awkwardly, and hugs him back after a moment.

"Um... Are you alright?"

"I am now," he whispers, squeezing Roy tighter.

"What about Mr- AHHHHH! WATCH OUT!"

Roy lets go of Leo and points somewhere behind him. Valentine watches them from the roof of a security checkpoint office. When Leo looks back at him, his lips finally close together into a smile, looking relatively less disturbing.

"He won't harm us," Leo says. He sees something familiar about him, but is unable to tell what.

"UH. Okay?! But did you see his face?! Now I know what you meant about the grinning people!"

Valentine turns away and jumps off behind the building.

"What about Mr. T? Did you find him?"

Leo takes a few steps back and slightly turns his head to Pike.

"He... Leo rescued me, then I shot him as we tried to arrest him. I had to."

The scene fades into another.

The next day, Roy, Izzy, Annie, and Pike are on the lobby of a starport on upper Lowell. They watch Leo as he speaks to Oliver near the exit.

"Who's that?" Roy asks.

"I would tell you, but you'd probably do something stupid. Now will you stop asking so many questions? I am getting a headache," Pike replies, folding his arms.

"Why are you always so mean to me!"

"Because you are loud, a fool, and I cannot stand you. Please be quiet during the trip."

Annie and Izzy cannot help but snicker. Roy gives Pike the middle finger and sticks his tongue out. He sees something past Pike and his face lights up.

"Ooooooooo! Whaaaaaat!" He exclaims as he begins running away.

"Hello, Roy-" Phoebe says but is interrupted by a hug.

"Phoebe! Phoebe! Phoebe! Phoebe!" Roy chants as he jumps up and down in the hug. Pike rolls his eyes.

Phoebe groans and closes her fists in frustration. "Where is Leo?"

Roy lets go of her and points. "Oh! He's over there!"

Leo looks at Oliver up and down one last time before firmly holding his hand up. Oliver shakes it and then Leo begins walking back to the group, staring at the ground.

"Leo, look who's here!" Roy exclaims.

Leo looks up and notices Phoebe. "You came," he says after a pause. "To Mars."

"I am not staying for long, thank goodness," Phoebe says while gesturing at the check-in desks. "Can we go now?"

Leo nods slowly.

"Leo! Who was that guy?" Roy asks, pointing at the exit.

Leo bites the inside of his cheek. "He's my biological father," he replies after a moment.

"Why didn't you introduce him to me?! What the fuck, man?!"

Leo moves his mouth to the side in discomfort. "There are a few things I have to sort out with him first. Then I will introduce him to you and mother and father."

"Okay! I'll tell them if you take too long! How'd you find him anyway?"

"Long story short, he found me. Let's go."

The group begins walking with Phoebe and Leo in the back.

"Roy called you?" Leo asks.

"It was Pike, actually." she replies. "He asked me to come after telling me what he saw." She nods at Pike when he glances back at them. "..Are you alright? Does Roy know?"

"He doesn't... I don't want to talk about it now."

"Of course. I have your hand. I can install it back while we wait for the shuttle."

Leo nods slowly. After a moment, he says, "I'm glad you are here. I'm glad you are all here."

The group walks past a coffee shop with a holodisplay on a corner. It is showing a news report with the title "ATMOSPHERIC ALERT LEADS TO DRUG AND PHORON CACHE". Leo glances at it and the scene fades into another.

The group is in a gigantic space shuttle as it travels through Sol, sitting in two rows of chair facing each other. Annie, Roy, and Izzy on one row, and Pike, Phoebe, and Leo on the other. Leo looks outside his window, brooding once again as the matter flying by.

The shuttle begins flying past us and the camera begins zooming out, but then suspiciously begins zooming in again into another window a few decks below. A man in a suit is finishing tying a rope to a balloon with the word "Welcome!".

Valentine is still smiling on his seat as he lets go of the red balloon which gently floats away to the chair beside him, revealing a slick white "S" on the other side as it spins around.

[Track #35 – Mirrorbreaker] https://goo.gl/uXCKfr

He looks directly at us. He cannot hold his smile another second, and it turns back into a grin. The first sound we ever hear come out of his mouth is a laugh, as if looking forward to what the future had in store for him and Leo Wyatt.

The shuttle quickly flies by, revealing a sea of stars where the credits begin to roll.

The end.