Cognitive Deviance

23. House of Pleasure

Three days after Dottie and Penny were reunited with their families, Psychwatch made a few more enemies.

Shortly after Dottie's departure from Psychwatch, Arthur Cohen caught up to her and her parents, three individuals so disconnected it was hard to believe they shared the same bloodline. Her story poured out like tea from a pot, but Arthur could care less about showing this girl sympathy. The poor bastard was still having trouble comprehending the massacre of his coworkers weeks ago. Plus, he was really annoyed by her motormouth.

Eventually, her story, along with her distorted views of the murderous psychopath who'd stolen her heart, were released to the public through Arthur's online journal, the Perceiver. She had painted Psychwatch as a mob of violent meddlers getting in the way of the real rescuers, the masked men whom she never learned were all sentenced to death by the P3S. Those masked men killed the half-human monstrosities that kept her locked away from the world for too long. That's all that mattered to her. The doctor-cops were just taking all the credit.

Soon these masked men would gain scores of fans, probably enough to take on Psychwatch in the anarchic streets of the Psycho Slums. The parasites would try to unveil them as political heroes like any other degenerate they managed to shove into the spotlight. It would only make it that much harder for the System's expansion to initiate.

Unfortunately for them, Psychwatch was the higher power, the men and women with the guns and the money, and they still had advocates of their own. In just the span of a week, SanityScans had been installed in thirty neighborhoods originally deemed offline. And soon began the cleansing process. Hundreds of people were taking part in Psychwatch's services, many of them by force through the System's authority. Some found themselves on the path to recovery, others saw no change. Plenty more had to be snuffed out like candles, tiny flames not too far from become raging wildfires. Secrets in the dark started coming into the light.

It was on April 17, 2045, at 6:45 PM that Psychwatch had finally discovered the true location of the House of Pleasure.

Rising above a street so neglected and murky it looked like the ruins of the post-apocalypse, the House was a four-story building made of pure cement, not a single window in sight. It was surrounded by an entire complex of dilapidated brick buildings, its hiding place exposed by two, newly-installed SanityScans. A swarm of Psychwatch's drones floated around the building's exterior like bees around a hive, and the rest of the Neutralizers were on the way, their vehicles finally free to traverse the streets under the protection of the Scans.

Margo, Carl, Royce, and Mason herself rode along in the back of one vehicle. A dozen other of their own trailed behind them. Each officer was fully decked out in body armor, each one armed with an infamous Assault Fatemaker. Able to stun or kill dozens of targets in seconds, they were only used in the most urgent situations. And they were almost always fired only to kill.

"They hate us, y'know," Margo muttered, still trapped in her disheartened state that had kept her restrained since the day she met Dottie. "We're supposed to be the next step in the evolution of law enforcement and human psychology. Yet why did we barely only discover this place?"

"Nobody's perfect, Sandoval," Royce replied. "Don't be so hard on yourself."

"But we've got SanityScans and ThoughtControls and other things that people could only dream of back in the past. We're supposed to be the future!"

"The future isn't always a welcoming place, Margo," Carl replied. "We've got SanityScans, but not everyone wants them around. We've got ThoughtControls, but not everyone can afford them. We're like the pills we distribute. We can only help if people are willing to accept our help."