Memory Lane

Chapter 24: Truth

(Mentioned/written out songs: Never gonna give you up by Rick Astley)

"Rachel's parents died in a freak accident, and then sometime later you get access. In the GoPro footage you said you wanted the access to Rachel's parents' stuff. Seems a little suspicious, huh?"

Jared stared at Falcon and Rex as they presented their own argument against the defense.

"Are you insinuating that my client murdered Rachel's parents?"

"Not insinuating, sir Defense Attorney. I'm telling you." Falcon waggled her finger as if teaching a class. "You're guilty of child abuse, but there's a mystery and undone justice that needs to be solved too."

Falcon grinned. "Where were you on 15 July that fateful year?"

"I was... I..."

It was becoming more not like a courtroom case, but something far more like a battlefield. And there was a one man army there.

"Falcon!" Violet hissed. "What are you doing?"

"Doing what I can," Falcon shrugged. "I'm going to reap the consequences of my actions anyways."

"You're an idiot!" Violet snapped. "You could be in contempt of court! None of us can help you. You'll be alone!"

"That's where you stand corrected," Falcon smiled, and for a moment, Violet could see Emily standing next to Falcon, holding her hand. "I'm never alone."

But the judge was too flabbergasted to stop the case. "Continue. The earlier evidence suggested it come down to this sort of conclusion."

"Indeed. There is something much larger afoot here... and me and my associates have found it," Falcon said, nodding at Rex. He pulled up bank records, Violet recognizing the ins and outs of large amounts of money from Rachel's father's account. All dated after July 15. "Sir, what did you work as?"

"A mechanic..."

"Mechanic! Wow! Didja earn a lot of money? Because, whew, giving out billions and billions of money while getting trillions back is rather first rate for a mechanic, hm?" Falcon grinned, before Violet spoke out, giving a side-eye to Falcon about shit-talking the entire court.

"Mechanics earn a few thousand dollars per month. The evidence shows that you worked as a mechanic for sixteen months. Unless you have saved every penny, sir, you can't have this much money."

"I had a loan."

"Ooh! A loan! Right! This one..." Falcon made a weird hand gesture and the screen changed. "You did make a loan, sir. However it was called off and you didn't have to pay back. A few months later that loaning business kinda collapsed like dominos."

Violet was reading all the evidences, pieces clicking together. "Oh... the owner of the business died while on a trip to Hawaii."

Falcon made a small humming noise. "Yep. The case went cold. It was ruled as murder, clear as day. But nobody coughed up any answers. So it was closed."

"What did this have to do with me?"

"The pattern repeats itself!" Falcon said cheerfully. "Loaning businesses shut down and down and down and down... until you met Rachel's parents and got a whiff of what they were working on. By then you had a lot of money, and quite a few contacts. You wanted that power... and you got it."

"The project they were working on was a system that interconnected everybody's data. Everything about them, all in one web. It self evolves, updating itself as it goes, storing everything from search histories to criminal records. It can also be used to access top secret files, bank accounts, so on and so forth. Of course, that was illegal. Especially peeking at criminal records."