ABC - The Confession

A.B.C. – The Confession

My name is Luisa Maria Alvarez. I am a serving Street Detective in the Spitfield City Police Auxiliary, based at the Washima District Offices.

I have committed acts of Treason against the Pan Oceanic Special Zone. I have stolen proscribed goods from the Guard under which I serve. I killed my fellow Detective Peter Andrews in cold blood.

This is my confession.

November 12th V26 (2046 AD)

Washima Factory District

It began like any other day in the Auxiliary. It was a Monday night, still a few hours shy of midnight and the end of my shift. God almighty, but I hate Mondays.

I was running down a filthy alley in the Wash, chasing a perp. The little bastard was fast on his feet, I had to give him credit for that. Going flat out in my running shoes I reckon I could have caught him easily. Weighed down with my vest, gun and belt and wearing my tightly laced and oh-so-heavy tactical boots, he had the edge on me.

There was no choice, I had to set my hounds loose on him.

"He's all yours, Bingo" I said into the throat mike to one of my two partners. Like a blue clad Amazon she surged past me, six feet of muscle and cybernetic enhancements. Bingo was a female Guard clone, one of the "Jills" as everyone but me called them. Her official designation was FV23-D-Zero-Twenty, optimised for Civilian Engagement and Surveillance.

In the barracks her Squad name was simply D-Twenty, but I was damned if I could call my partner that. So I had given her the nickname of Bingo. I have no idea why, it just came to me in a flash of half-hearted inspiration. She seemed to like it and it stuck, even if it was only me and my other partner who called her that name.

As our feet slammed down onto the rain soaked asphalt, Bingo caught up to our man. He must have sensed her coming and dodged her first grab for his collar, jinking to her left while she flew past. With balletic grace, she skidded her boots across the cracked alley tarmac, sending up a shower of muddy water, and changed direction.

The perp had slid into a narrow gap between two buildings, warehouses of some kind, his small body vanishing into the darkness. Bingo went in after him, her larger frame making it a tight fit so she had to move crablike in the narrow gap.

I reached the opening seconds after and with the low-light enhancement on the Smart-Goggles I wore could see my partner scrabbling along.

"Clancy!" I said into my throat mike, "Bingo is behind the perp. Have you got her location?"

"Copy that" came the response from Clancy, my other partner. "I am moving on an intercept now" he affirmed.

"Good boy" I replied and started squeezing myself into the gap, following the retreating bulk of Bingo. The gap was barely wide enough for my own shoulders to squeeze through and I am way shorter than Bingo. In fact I am barely tall enough to be in the Police Auxiliary, just squeaking past the height requirements at five foot six and a quarter inches. I always count that extra quarter inch, as it legitimately makes me over five and a half feet tall.

My boots stomped over trash, a few dead rats that were rotting peacefully in the dark, and the odd hypo-injector. Why the users would take their hits in such a cramped space I had no idea, but those things could be found discarded all over the Spit.

I burst into the open space of a service road, birthed from the concrete lips of the warehouse walls like a newborn. Bingo was already some distance ahead, hot on the heels of her prey.

"Clancy" I signalled, "How close are you?"

"In position now" he responded in my ear piece.

I set off after Bingo, calling up a street map overlay on my smart goggles. Bingo and Clancy showed up as green dots, with myself as a central blue dot. The green dots were converging nicely, my two partners synching their actions perfectly as expected.