Ultimum Carceron

Europa Colony 5

Theo was laughing as he and Juniper kissed, a daily part of their ritual when they were leaving to go to work. Having walked out of their home and into the public hallway, the door automatically closed behind them.

"I'll keep an eye open about Jim's campaign," Theo promised. He then walked down the hallway with his morning shift ahead of him.

The door opened and Theo walked in, heading straight to the elevator across the company's spacious lobby. Here at the Europan Neofuture Systems Headquarters, there were six complex divisions spread across three floors, all involving construction, engineering and drafting, among other departments involving public services. Here, the employees were responsible for most of the urban development on Europa, not just the American colony, though in light of his recent endeavors, he was reminded that it was founded on the prosperity of a mobster. Here, he worked at an office on the floor above, in the primary engineering division and next door to their labs, giving him the privacy and preferred distance away from Donald Witz.

A strange sound, like peeling of sticky band-aides off of skin, was behind him, and he only had a second to think before anything happened.

"Theodore Arkight."

He turned around to come face-to face with a tall, domino shaped drone. It rolled on six black wheels at the bottom. A pale light came out from the top that displayed fully onto his face.

"You're under arrest. Do not move or you will be pursued," the drone said.

Theo heard another drone come behind him. His arms were pinned and sealed by a plastic, yellow bond that could only be broken by a Drone Authority. The increasingly overwhelming panic and the force exerted by the drones pushed him into compliance.

There was a small prison on the Europa Colony, but police stations had few rooms to keep criminals overnight. There were, however, small rooms to temporarily contain people who misbehaved. They more like places to contain people who vandalized hallways with graffiti, and were like hotel rooms without furniture.

Theo was in one of these, a white, bare, and featureless room. The clothes he had on were the same as before, and while he was not wearing sealed bonds, he knew it was fruitless to run when there was nowhere that he would be safe.

But these walls...they felt impassive and hard. Enclosed on all sides with the exception of the guarded entrance, he was left with no freedom. Meanwhile, his mind was searching desperately for a sign, any clue for the mistake he made. Fuzzy images whizzed through his mind that failed to connect to an explanation. From loose memories of the secret bank accounts to the two Witzes to the flash drive, no answer seemed convincing. Was it evidence he neglected? Merely suspicion with minimal evidence? Or did he simply reach too far?

His fear had morphed into shame during his wait, combined with the anticipation of an unrecoverable punishment. It was only through Jim that he justified stealing from ENS. As he already committed that crime, another, in which a gangster was getting robbed, was morally feasible. Was that it? Was the thumb-drive, the extension to his greed, his downfall?

He had done wrong. He knew that. But it was worth it because ENS possessed something that Jim, a good man, deserved much more of.

He groaned just as two drones rolled inside the room with an older woman. As the drones rotated to face him, the woman spoke.

"The charges by the accuser, Rebecca Witz, are that you are responsible for fraud and attempted embezzlement. We've linked you to multiple accounts that you opened and operated discreetly. Combined, the accounts had $300 million. This is the amount Ms. Witz claims was stolen. We've seized those funds because we know for certain that you embezzled them under the pseudonym of Norman Polo, and then sent them to Senator James Kasan."