Hollow Point Happiness

Case 5: A Life Threating Love Letter

Chris brushed his hand through Ash's hair, she lay on a hospital bed. The doctors had managed to successfully re-implant the Node and regenerate her body. Chris had the past 24 hours of memory wiped from her Node and had contemplated doing it to his own but had decided against it, the anger would drive him and he knew it. As he thought and mulled over things the little girl woke up and groggily looked at him.

"Dad... what happened?"
"Nothing baby, you just had a nasty fall on the stairs. You're fine now."
"Oh... ok." She smiled and sat up to hug Chris.

Chris walked into the Police headquarters again. Chuck was waiting in the lobby and started to make his way to Chris. He placed an arm around his shoulder and guided him to a secluded office with no windows.

"Chris, I've got some stuff you'll want to hear. It's about the girl that attacked you."
"I'd hope so."
"We have reason to believe that the women that attacked you is part of the assassin group you're investigating. We looked into all the phone and network signals that were being sent during the break-in and we managed to decrypt some, most of the signals were from the 'Mystic' account being sent to an off-world satellite via a local re-router. The very same satellite that was used to hack the armored car from the other day. Further, we managed to get the ID for it, it was 1336-8DFRG9-3HR7, nicknamed 'Defrag'. Just like the name for the robot you mentioned being with the women, right?"
"Defrag. Are you sure?"
"Yep, we also kept tabs on the account for a while after she left and managed to scrape out that the satellite received some coordinates from another account that it then re-routed to the 'Mystic' account. They were for somewhere on Pluto along with multiple mentions of the name 'Millie Witword'." Chris's ears perked at the name but he said nothing, "We looked into the name and found out somethings you might find useful. This woman, Millie, has a normal record expect for a 7-year span that was wiped basically complete from all records. During the span, she was working as a scientist for Warmage with a man Robert Brighten."

"Ok, why are you telling me all this backstory?"
"Because we think we know who the girl that attacked you is, or at least one of the girls from the group. The satellite I mentioned, Defrag, is a private satellite that only 2 people have access to. Robert Brighten and his adopted daughter." Chuck gave a long look at Chris, "And Robert Brighten has been dead... for 12 years, and his daughter, get this, doesn't have a record at all, plus her name doesn't appear with any of the tracking nanites. I think we found our ghost."

"So one of the assassins is the daughter of this dead scientist? You said you checked her name? What is it?"
"Much like Millie, Warmage kept most of Robert's life hidden but we managed to get a few documents out of them. We suspect the daughter's name is Mana Brighten."
Chris nodded and started towards the door, "I've got to get to Millie before she does. Chuck keep me updated."
Chuck grabbed his arm, "Hey now, be careful you could be walking into a hive of very dangerous people."
"I know I am but if I can capture her we can get info out of her about the group and their motives then it will be worth it. I have to do this Chuck." he pulled his arm from Chuck's grip.

Chris stepped out of his car 28 hours later, he had received a message from Chuck a few hours prior with information regarding Millie's whereabouts. He stood in the nearest land pad from the biodomes airlock. Looking out onto the small suburb-like city of Allizia. He looked at his phone to see a picture of Millie before putting in an address for her residence, walking the streets of the city he noticed how extremely different it was from Earth. Everything was small, no bigger than 2 stories, there were barely any cars and people talked and interacted on the streets and in open-air restaurants that lined the road. And the air was clean it felt light and easy to breathe. It was freeing, Chris wondered what it would be like to live in a place like it before he was interrupted by a beeping sound as he reached his destination. Chris stood in front of a crafts store, he walked inside.

From across the room, a woman's voice called to him, "Hello! Welcome to Millie's Craft store, let me know if you need any help."
Chris walked to the counter where the woman stood, "Hi, I'm Agent Cartwin, with the Interplanetary Police, are you Millie Witword?"
She drew back, "Oh my Police, I don't believe we've done anything illegal."
"You haven't but I do need to know, are you Millie? It urgent."
She shook her head, "No, Millie's the owner, she stepped out a while ago. She had a visitor come to see her. They went upstairs to her apartment maybe 30 minutes ago."
Chris nodded, "Thank you."

He walked over to a staircase along the wall of the building and started to make his way up it. Reaching the floor, he knocked on the door, it slightly creaked open.