I found myself hesitating at the base of the steps leading up to the front door of the police station. I’d thought I’d already gotten over the worst of the butterflies, but apparently I’d been wrong. As silly as it might have sounded, it was only right at this moment, just as I was about to literally cross the threshold, that everything I’d been working so hard to achieve finally felt real.
Working my way up through the troubled Trotson school system to stand out and snag one of the few scholarships that Light City offered. Getting accepted into the notoriously selective Neighsay Academy of Law and Justice―and finding myself constantly having to justify my presence to both the students as well as the staff there. Not merely graduating with a degree at all, but doing so with honors, as well as managing to also acquire a minor in ley-network systems administration. Then getting into and completing the Light City Police Academy with some of the higher scores on record there.
Nopony could deny that I hadn’t worked my flank off for this moment, and all of my efforts were about to finally bear fruit. Today was the start of my first day as a junior investigator for the LCPD. Today I would get to start making a difference in the lives of my fellow citizens by making the city a safer place. I could help give fillies and colts a better world than the one I’d grown up in.
And it would all begin with this first real step―
“You Value?”
I balked at the sound of somepony yelling my name and glanced up to find a blue heavy-set earth pony stallion with a short-cropped mane that was more gray than black standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs. His ballistic barding emblazoned with “LCPD” patches announced him as being one of the members of the force, and the golden six-pointed stars on the lapels of his uniform indicated that he held the rank of a captain. A little surprised that somepony so high up in the command structure had been tasked to welcome me personally, I found my way stuttering through a response as I snapped to attention.
“Y-yes, sir! Junior Investigator Boolean Value, reporting for duty!” The LCPD was a professional organization, but we weren’t a military outfit, so saluting wasn’t part of the established protocol. I did make sure to project my voice much in the same way we’d been required to when responding to our instructors at the academy though.
“Hurry up and get your flank inside, Value,” the police captain barked, not quite sneering at me. “You ain’t doing me any good daydreaming down there.” He turned and disappeared through the doors to the station, leaving me to hurriedly trot up the steps while trying to suppress an embarrassed flush of my cheeks. It was one of the rarer moments when I didn’t mind my pink coat; it made it harder to tell when my cheeks were blushing.
Once I had finally passed through those large front doors―which wasn’t nearly the spiritual experience that I had always had in my head―I found myself faltering in my steps as I was forced to hop aside in order to avoid becoming collateral damage when I hobbled unicorn stallion was very nearly thrown against a wall right in front of me. The significantly more massive crimson and gold griffin tiercel wearing heavier LCPD barding than the captain had been was holding said unicorn by their throat as he pinned them up against the wall.
“―isten, scumbag! I’ve had enough of your shit for the day!” The griffon, who I identified as a sergeant by the chevrons on their sleeves, roared into the face of the bobbled stallion. He then heaved the pony back around the other way and gave them a firm shove, causing the unicorn to stumble back and fall against a bench. “Now you’re going to sit there and you’re going to shut up. Otherwise, I’m going to rip out the solenoids in your jaw so it stays shut!”
The stallion in question awkwardly rose back up onto their hooves as they struggled to get onto the bench they’d just been thrown against. While he didn’t utter a word, the baleful glare that he fixed the griffon officer with spoke volumes. Fortunately for the unicorn, the tiercel didn’t seem to have nearly the problem with sneers as he’d had with…well, whatever it was that had prompted him to get physical with the suspect in the first place. The sergeant snorted, shook out his right hand as though it stung after hitting something hard, and was about to walk off when he noticed I was gawking.
“What’chu looking at, donk?”
I only then realized I’d been staring at the unfolding situation and snapped my mouth closed. “N-nothing, sergeant.” Hesitated another moment before sticking out my hoof. “Junior Investigator Value. It’s my first day; I look forward to working with you.”
The griffon stared down at my outstretched hoof, but made no effort to either bump or shake it with his talons. Then he shifted his gaze to me. I saw his hawkish green eyes sweep over my body, as if evaluating me, before he rolled those same eyes in clear annoyance and started walking away. “Y’ain’t gonna be working with me, Snoopy.” He uttered another derisive snort and then added another comment just before leaving my sight. “Y’ain’t gonna be working long, neither…”
I cocked my head at the cryptic remark, my unshaken hoof drooping back down to the floor again. My gaze idly shifted to the nearby unicorn stallion, who currently had both of her hobble-together forehooves held in front of him as he massaged a cheek beneath an eye which I could see was already starting to swell shut. As with the griffin, he merely glared at me without saying a word. I swallowed and cleared my throat, feeling a little awkward to have witnessed what had clearly been a blatant act of excessive force take place right in front of me, and within view of at least a dozen other uniformed officers. None of which even seemed to have reacted to the display.
The policy book I’d read said I needed to report events like this to Internal Affairs. Something told me though, that any such report I might send up would just be immediately forwarded to the trash.
A good bit of the excitement I’d been feeling five minutes ago dimmed.
“Value!”
“Coming, sir!” I immediately replied in response to the irate call of the captain from earlier. I cantered down the hall in the direction the voice had come from and rounded a corner, finding myself backpedaling frantically in an effort not to collide with the earth pony who’d summoned me. “Sorry, captain.”
“Get your head on straight, colt,” the LCPD officer huffed before waving his hoof at a second pony who was standing with him that I hadn’t noticed. “This is Detective Dragnet. She’ll be your direct report while you’re on probation. She’s got ten years on the force. I know that might not sound like a whole lot compared to some of us, but she’s made quite a name for herself in that time.
“Do what she says, learn from her, and you’ll go far.”
I turned my attention to the mare in question and did my best to rally a smile back onto my face to help make a better first impression on her than I’d apparently made on the griffin sergeant from earlier. This was really the moment I’d been looking forward to: getting assigned to my first senior investigator who’d take everything that I’d learned in the academy and help me apply it practically in the real world. My early foalhold had been spent watching crime dramas on the leynet, like Law & Harmony and Discordant Minds. Seeing the dynamics of the teams of investigators as they got to the bottom of their cases had been what first drew my interests to this field. I was very much looking forward to meeting my first partner.
Again, I found my enthusiasm getting somewhat dampened as the idealized scenarios in my head experienced a head-on collision with cruel reality.
While in many ways the ivory-white pegasus mare in front of me seemed to embody many of the aspects of a ‘seasoned investigator’ that I’d seen in those old shows while growing up: from her calm demeanor, to her cool icy stare, and even the sidearm and badge casually clipped to her withers; it was hard to ignore the fact that the mare was clearly not happy to meet me. It was obvious enough that I didn’t even bother to raise my hoof for an introductory bump.
Detective Dragnet’s icy blue eyes traveled up and down as the pegasus took a moment to evaluate me. I used the time afforded me to take her in too. The first thing I noticed was that the mare was actually more heavily augmented than I was, with visibly chromed-out wings and hind legs. Her mane stopped short much further up on her neck than it should have, suggesting that she’d had her spine reinforced as well. I noted that the ley ports just behind her jaw were a higher-grade than what I was equipped with, which was actually a little surprising.
Prior to going into the academy, I’d been in no fit financial position to afford much more than the standard arcanetic interface implants that most of Light City’s residents used. However, once I’d been accepted, I signed myself up for a few of the LCPD’s ‘Augs-For-Service’ programs. In exchange for promising to work in the LCPD for a set number of years, the city would hoof the bill for certain arcanetic implants and upgrades. Seeing as how I’d already decided that I was going to make the LCPD my career anyway, the program basically felt like I was being given a chance to score some ‘free’ kit. So I hadn’t balked for even a second at choosing some of the ‘pricier’ options, in terms of promised time working for the LCPD.
One piece of arcanetics I’d elected for was the highest caliber of leyline access ports that they offered. Given that the LCPD was a government office, they were allowed to field a grade of gear performed considerably better than what was available commercially. In theory, that meant that I should have had some of the best kit that was available in the city.
But even I could tell from here that what Dragnet had grafted in was a whole tier above what I was using. I found myself mesmerized by the prospect that somepony who wasn’t a high-ranking military official or a government minister managed to get their hooves on a shiny piece of arcanetics like that…
“He slows me down, you’re assigning him to Gumshoe,” the mare said to the captain with a tired sigh.
“His transcripts say he’s a bright colt.” Well, at least it seemed that I hadn’t managed to make a terrible impression on the captain after all, given that he appeared to be defending me. “At least take him on a test run first.”
The earth pony’s eyes started shimmering with topaz light. A moment later, I received an illusionary alert in my field of view letting me know that the captain was attempting to share some files with me. I didn’t hesitate to accept the transfer and immediately found my vision taken up with several pages of information. The mirrored orange glow of Dragnet’s eyes indicated that she was reviewing the same information. I hastily skimmed over what I was seeing even as the captain began to deliver a summary of the case.
“Aeriesaka reported a data breach last night. Won’t tell us exactly what was taken―naturally―just that it’s ‘highly sensitive information’ and they need it returned.”
“Leads?” The pegasus asked in a bored tone. This was likely nowhere near her first such case. If anything, her demeanor suggested this was actually of a rather routine nature.
“Aeriesaka Security nettrotters managed to get a general trace on where the breach originated. Somewhere out in Haywood.” An illusionary map appeared before me, focused on the borough in question. Haywood was one of Light City’s seedier districts, featuring most of the island-city’s heavily subsidized megasilos where the poorer denizens made their residence. “Signature suggests a diner or club of some sort.”
“Only about a thousand of those in Haywood; glad the griffons narrowed it down for us,” the mare quipped with a snort.
“If they already knew where to look, something tells me Aeriesaka wouldn’t be calling us in on this,” the captain pointed out, sharing a knowing look with the detective, which the pegasus acknowledged with a nod of agreement.
“Fine. Assuming we find out who spiked their network, how will we know when we found the stolen files if Aeriesaka won’t tell us what’s on them?” Dragnet asked; and somewhat fairly, I felt.
Another file flitted in front of me as the captain spoke. “Runic trace. Unique signature that can’t be faked. Part of the encryption, or whatever. It’ll let you know when you have the right file.” The earth pony stallion’s eyes dimmed once more as he ceased the conference seance we’d been having. I continued to scrutinize the files a little longer though to see if there was any additional information to be gleaned. “It goes without saying that Aeriesaka wants this dealt with both quickly and quietly. Bad corporate image if it looks like their servers aren’t as secure as advertised.”
Dragnet let out another derisive snort. “Twilight forbid they put any effort into actually making their servers as secure as advertised…” The mare muttered as the glow vanished from her own eyes as well. “I assume this is my new priority for the morning?” The captain nodded. “Of course it is. I only got a new triple-equicide on Hurricane Street last night, on top of the six other murder cases sitting in my server from this week alone. But, yeah, let’s put those all on hold so Aeriesaka’s head of IT can keep his job after dropping the ball.
“Makes total sense to me.” The mare didn’t wait for any further word from her superior before pushing her way past the both of us and heading for the door. I blinked after her, looking between the pegasus and the earth both briefly as I tried to process whether we’d actually been dismissed to pursue the case or not. Then I heard the detective yell back over her shoulder, “Move it, newbie!”
Despite the summons, my hooves still hesitated until I received an acknowledging nod from the captain, at which point I galloped after my new mentor. As I passed the unicorn perp from earlier, I noticed that he was now nursing a freshly split lip that I hadn’t seen him sporting earlier. I suppressed a grimace and continued outside, where I found the ivory pegasus waiting for me at the bottom of the steps. She was in the midst of lighting a cigarette that was pinched between two of the delicate-looking metal pinions on her right wing.
The mare took a long first drag of her cigarette and let out a thin stream of smoke. Only then did she seem to even bother to acknowledge that I was present and start speaking to me. Though this hardly turned out to be anything like the rousing induction speech that I’d been anticipating.
“I don’t care how well you did at the academy,” she began, her lip curled in a sneer. “Your ‘high marks’ are actually a liability in my book. Because it means I have to spend a fuck-ton of time having you ‘unlearn’ all that bullshit they fill your head with in the academy so that you’ll actually live through your first day here on the real streets.
“Rule One: You do what I say; no questions or backtalk. I’ve actually been out here. I know what’s up. Whatever you think you know, you’re wrong. Don’t believe me? Fine. LCPD has death benefits for a reason. How soon you use them is your business.
“Rule Two: Everycreature out here will kill you if you give them half a chance. They’re not your friends, and you’re not theirs. That ‘protect and serve’ bullshit? It’s just that: bullshit. Don’t believe me? Fine. I refer you back to the LCPD’s death benefit package.”
I felt the color draining away from my face as I listened to the mare’s ‘advice’. This wasn’t sounding at all like how things had played out in the vids I used to watch as a colt. And while I’d always known that there would be a little ‘artistic license’ when it came to shows intended to entertain rather than educate, I wasn’t ready for this level of cynicism right out of the gate. Still, Dragnet was the voice of practical experience; so it did behoove me to take her words to heart. Though my heart did suggest that I take those words with a grain of salt. It was entirely possible that she’d just grown jaded as a result of an unfortunate personal history.
“Yes, ma’am.” I nodded my understanding.
“Good. Follow me.” The alabaster pegasus tossed away her cigarette and turned towards the garage located next to the station. I trotted after her and shortly after found myself getting into what I presumed was the detective’s assigned vehicle. It was one of the department’s unmarked cruisers, as the nature of an investigator’s typical work duties didn’t necessitate rushing towards emergency situations. Such things were for uniformed officers, or MaxTack if the situation was particularly…challenging.
“AutoNav,” the vehicle’s integrated computer issued an acknowledging chirp indicating that it was ready to receive further input, “set destination: The Shaft.” The feathered mare all but growled at the car. There was the sound of another chime from the car’s speakers and then the engine started up and the cruiser started rolling out of the parking space that it had been sitting in. Dragnet leaned back into her seat and made herself more comfortable before taking out and lighting up another cigarette. Only then did she notice my curious expression.
She shrugged and took a quick puff before deigning to explain herself to her new apprentice. “We gotta start somewhere.” Was her initial explanation, though this prompted my frown to deepen slightly. Finally the mare rolled her eyes and expanded on the reason for her choice. “I’ve cultivated a few contacts in the ward. You'll want to do the same. Creatures who have their ears to the ground and tend to know when something serious is in the works.
“Inevitably you’ll encounter a donk or two who’ve fucked up bad enough to screw up their lives, but not serious enough that the DA is going to really care if you make an arrest or not,” Dragnet said after another puff of her cigarette. “That’s when you offer to look the other way in exchange for them keeping an ear out for creatures getting up to the really serious shit.”
“You’re talking about ‘confidential informants’,” I stated, only slightly annoyed that the mare assumed I knew nothing about what was honestly a fairly standard phenomena―both in crime dramas, as well as being taught specifically in the academy.
The pegasus nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. Just understand that, on occasion, you’re going to have to let your CI actually get away with shit; otherwise they risk losing their cred, and they’ll be worthless to you. Every once in a while, they’ll push to see how much you’ll let them get away with. How much slack on the leash you give them is your business. Drugs, petty theft, a little racketeering; the more you look the other way on, the better position they’ll be in to give you the juicier ‘gossip’ about what’s going down.”
I was frowning again now. “...I don’t know how comfortable I am letting a CI get away with felonies.”
Again Dragent shrugged. “Then don’t. Keep them small-time. Just understand that if they can’t make a big name for themselves in the city’s underworld, then they’ll never be approached about serious work, and so they’ll never be able to help you get leads on serious cases.” The pegasus gestured between us. “Like, say: breaking into Aeriesaka’s network to steal corporate secrets. Ain’t no mere saddlebag-snatcher gonna know about big-mover shit like that.”
I mulled the implications over in my head. It was hard to refute the mare’s logic on that point. I hadn’t really put much thought into how much of my personal honor and integrity I was willing to compromise in the pursuit of the ‘greater good’, as it would. I’d have to do a little more introspection on that point.
A few minutes later, the car’s navigation system announced that we’d arrived at our destination and slid into a nearby available parking spot on the side of the road. The nearby meter recognized the presence of a city police vehicle and waived the required parking fee. We got out of the car and I got my first look at where it was that we’d arrived at. My earlier suspicions had been confirmed that this wasn’t, strictly speaking, just a simple ‘eating establishment’.
Or, if it was, then it was one with some of the more provocatively-dressed waiters that I’d ever seen. The ‘host’ who greeted us just as we passed through the door was wearing little else than a selection of leather straps and a faux bit and bridle that didn’t actually possess a metal bar across the back of his mouth, allowing him to speak unimpeded. The same could not be said of a few of the ‘servers’ I saw who were carrying trays of drinks around to the tables.
The, erm…rather blessed zebra stallion who greeted us at the door grinned, his attention immediately locking on to Dragnet. “Detective! A pleasure to see you again!” His eyes very briefly flickered with topaz light before his gaze focused once again on the mare. “The Mountain just got off the stage a few minutes ago. I can have him swing by your usual booth, if you’d like?” The host’s gaze then shifted to me briefly before he looked back at my supervisor with an inquisitive rise of his brow. “Should he bring a friend too?”
“Sorry, Zanzibar; I’m here on business. Maybe later.” Her eyes scanned the dimly-lit interior of the strip club, only briefly lingering on some of the employed stallions littered about the room or presently gyrating on the stage to the cheers of mares and stallions alike. “Is Noir in today?”
The host’s expression soured slightly at the question but nodded nonetheless. “He’s in his usual booth, yes,” the zebra answered with a noticeable amount of reluctance. Dragnet started to walk past him and the striped stallion winced. While he was wise enough to know that putting hooves on the detective would be a categorically ‘bad idea’, he did gingerly move to interpose himself mostly in the pegasus mare’s path in order to make it clear he would prefer she not proceed further, without actually blocking her way if she was determined to ignore him. Much to his obvious relief, the mare did at least hesitate mid-step.
“Detective, please; you know that Saffron hates it when you bother our patrons here. She wants The Shaft to have a reputation as a safe place anycreature can come to relax without having to worry about being bothered by creatures with certain…” his gaze briefly darted to the LCPD badge visible on her stifle. "...affiliations." He wasn’t quite begging, but it was a near thing.
The pegasus flicked out her wing and casually brushed the zebra out of her way, favoring the stallion with a piercing glare. “I bet she’d hate it a lot more if I suddenly ‘remembered’ that she’s running Glitter out of the basement.” She jerked her head in the direction of a nearby door which, based on the context of her words, I presumed led down to said basement and the narcotics operation contained within.
Despite my best efforts, I found my eyes widening in surprise at the revelation that Dragnet apparently knew about a Glitter operation in the city and wasn’t reporting it. Bearing in mind what she’d talked about earlier in the car on the way here about confidential informants and making a personal decision regarding how much a detective should be willing to let their sources get away with…Glitter was no laughing matter. It was, hooves down, one of the most dangerous narcotics that one could find in Light City. Having even a few grams on you was a felony. Producing and distributing it? That was potentially decades in prison, if convicted.
And Dragnet was looking the other way on it? To my mind, Dragnet was walking a fine line between exercising her discretionary powers of arrest in furtherance of cultivating a worthwhile CI...and outright aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise.
Was the chief aware of this?
The zebra stallion swallowed and nodded, taking another step back from the detective. She let out a satisfied snort and resumed her trot deeper into the club. She flicked her head in my direction when she noticed that I'd hesitated to ollow in her, my attention still focused on the basement door. “Get a move on, newbie.”
“Yes, ma’am!” I cast a parting nod at the host and followed after the detective. She appeared to know exactly where she was going, because the pegasus made a perfect bee line for a booth on the far side of the room. As we neared, I could see that it was occupied by a rather well-dressed batpony stallion with a slate-gray coat and a well-oiled purple mane. His silver eyes noticed the movement heading in his direction and locked onto us. Much to my surprise, rather than looking annoyed at having a pair of LCPD detectives bothering him in the strip club, the stallion actually looked rather amused.
Without a word, Dragnet slipped herself onto the bench that placed her directly across from the stallion. I elected to remain standing, positioning myself so that it wouldn’t take much effort to intercept the subject of our questioning if he decided to try and bolt for the exit. Not that he seemed all that nervous about our visit. If anything, I got the impression that he’d been expecting it. A notion that was further reinforced when a server trotted up only a couple of seconds later and deposited two very different drinks on the table. One in front of the batpony stallion, and another in front of Dragnet.
Curiously, to my own mind, at least―and in strict defiance of my personal biases, I supposed―the batpony was the recipient of a colorful fruity-looking drink while the pegasus mare got the straight double-shot of whiskey. A coarse drink which the mare wasted no time in downing in a single gulp before slamming the now empty glass back down on the table. Her eyes never even left the stallion across from her.
“Good morning, detective,” the snappy-dressed batpony greeted, a warm smile never wavering from his lips as he took a small careful sip of his own drink. His gaze flickered briefly to me as though merely to acknowledge that I existed, before his full attention was on the pegasus once again. “You’re being your usual, punctual, self. I appreciate that.”
“Just hoof over the shard, Noir,” Dragent said with an annoyed sigh. “I’ve been saddled with foal-sitting duty and I’m not in the mood for our usual routine,” she flicked a pinion in my direction and it was all I could do not to grimace at the implication that I needed to be watched over like a child. It did help that I was presently preoccupied trying to figure out how it was that Dragnet had managed to already deduce that this batpony was responsible for the data breach we’d been assigned to investigate. Unless she was merely trying to threaten him with arrest in order to get him to reveal any leads he might have…?
The batpony chuckled, took another small sip of his drink, and then used one of his own leathery wingtips to extract a sliver of sapphire crystal from one of the receptacle slots in the side of his neck. Dragnet’s own wing reached out to snatch the shard, but the batpony teased it just out of her reach, much to the mare’s visible annoyance. “Okay, but just this once,” he chided her in a playful tone. “Next time I expect you to be a little more personable; okay, detective?” He then extended the wing and presented the sapphire stone to the mare, who snatched it with her own pinions.
“Yeah, yeah…” She snorted and used her other wing to appropriate the batpony’s own drink, downing it in much the same way that she’d done with the whiskey that he’d ostensibly ordered for her earlier. For his part, the dark-coated stallion merely propped his chin up on folded hooves and watched the display with a warm smile. Dragnet responded by extending her wing towards him and curling all but one of her pinions. When she’d emptied the glass, she put it back down on the table and scooted out of her seat, making to head for the club’s exit.
I started to turn and follow the mare when I heard the batpony address me. “So, you’re Wendy’s new partner, hm?” I looked over and found that the stallion was extending his well-manicured hoof toward me in an invitation to a polite bump. “Lupe Noir.”
A little taken aback but the first instance of civility I’d seen from anycreature today, I hesitantly touched my hoof to his own. “Boolean Value.” Then I cocked my head in confusion as I finished processing the batpony's words. “Wendy?”
The stallion chuckled briefly before nodding his head in the direction of the departing ivory mare. “Detective Dragnet. ‘The Wendigo’. That’s what everycreature calls her―at least, when she's out of earshot,” he explained, the soft smile never leaving his lips as he looked after her. “Because she’s one ice-cold bitch,” he said before chuckling again. Then he looked back at me and I saw a shift in his expression. It was significantly less jovial now. “And whoever gets close to her ends up one of two ways: they either turn out as cold and dead inside as she is…
“…or they just turn up dead.”
The finality of the batpony’s last statement actually chilled my blood a bit. Then the stallion turned his attention back to a nearby stage featuring a stallion who was enthusiastically thrusting in our direction. “I hope to see you again sometime, Junior Investigator Value.”
I found myself hesitating briefly as I digested the stallion’s words. The Wendigo? That seemed like the kind of ominous street name that would typically be bestowed upon some sort of hitpony, or maybe a crime boss. At least, that was along the lines of how such characters would be referred to in the show’s I grew up on. It sure didn’t sound like how an officer of the law would want to be referred. Though, I did sense that when Noir had said: ‘everycreature’, what he’d meant was that the creatures who operated outside of the law that Dragnet might interact with. I very much doubted anycreature at the department called her that.
It made a certain amount of sense that criminals would come up with the same sort of nicknames for law enforcement types that we did for our own adversaries. As a result, I wasn’t inclined to put too much stock into the implication behind that name. It wasn’t like I should trust a criminal to give me worthwhile advice about one of my fellow officers.
...Right?
“Newbie!”
I winced and cantered after the detective. As I caught up to her, I heard the mare muttering under her breath about putting me on a leash so that I didn’t manage to get myself lost. I grimaced but chose to remain silent as we walked back out to the car and got inside.
Dragnet didn’t take us back to the station immediately. Instead, she took the shard that she’d obtained from Lupe Noir and slotted it into one of the receptacles in her own neck. Her eyes glazed over and began to glow as she accessed the contents of the sliver of gemstone and reviewed what was on it. “...Yup, this is what we’re after,” she confirmed only a short few seconds later. Then there was another pause before she muttered: “wiping the access logs…clearing the metadata…done.” There was a soft click audible and the sapphire crystal ejected itself from the slot. The mare took it and slipped it into a pocket in her jacket.
Meanwhile, all I could do was gape at her in shock. “Did you just…? You polished the shard?!”
I hadn’t mean for the outburst to sound quite as incredulous as it had come out. However, there’d been a lot working against me on that front. First and foremost was the fact that what I’d just watched the detective do was anathema to everything that the two of us were supposed to stand for: she’d destroyed evidence. Just about every file was designed to retain meticulous and detailed logs about every creature and system that accessed or changed it. It represented something of a ‘chain of custody’ that helped to track a file’s integrity and viability. Without that metadata, it would have been impossible to establish the difference between, say, an original authentic digital contract, and an edited forgery.
This access log information would also have allowed us to show who’d violated Aeriesaka's system servers and make the applicable arrests. By wiping that data from the shard―‘polishing’ it―Dragnet had effectively made it impossible for the DA to indict anycreature responsible.
However, what was perhaps even more shocking than the fact that the pegasus had done such a thing, was the revelation that she was even capable of doing so. At all! Because of how important that sort of metadata was to evaluating the integrity of important files and systems, it was understandably made extremely difficult to tamper with that information in any way. To the point where it should have been outright impossible for a mare of Dragnet’s position and available resources. Unless the mare had system administrative rights that I was pretty sure even the inventor of the ley-net didn’t have at their disposal, then what I’d just seen Dragnet do should have taken weeks of dedicated work by a team of renowned nettrotters using the most sophisticated decryption algorithms ever devised.
For her part, the pegasus mare seemed more annoyed that I was stating the obvious. “Of course I did,” she stated matter-of-factly. “Noir’s a high-level executive with GlimTech. Their corporate lawyers make him basically untouchable for stuff like this. Giving Aeriesaka his name would just kick off all kinds of corpo legal bullshit that would drag on for years and make headlines all over the city. And the captain did say they wanted this to be ‘quiet’,” She stressed. Then the mare addressed the car. “AutoNav, set destination: Hitch’s Post.” The cruiser chimed its acknowledgement and the car began to move again.
“So what are we going to do?” I asked. “Just give Aeriesaka a polished shard and tell them there’s no way to track down who did it?”
Dragnet snorted again. “They won’t buy that, and you know it. A polished shard would just raise even more questions.” She leaned back in her seat and sighed. The mare wasn't wrong there, as it had certainly raised quite a few with me. “Nope. We’re going to give them some closure so everycreature can get on with their lives.”
I gave the mare a confused look, silently prompting her to elaborate further, but it was clear that the pegasus was not going to. Instead she merely lit up another cigarette as the car took us to our second destination of the day.
The establishment that the car delivered us to gave the appearance of a seedy bar on the bad side of town. The presence of a nearby car that was entirely devoid of wheels bore this assumption out. I briefly debated how likely it was that our own vehicle would be messed with while we were inside. It might have been unmarked, but that didn’t mean that it wasn;t obvious upon close inspection that it was a car owned and operated by the city’s police department. Dragnet didn’t seem to be particularly concerned though, so I elected not to be.
Inside, the atmosphere was pretty much what I might have expected: the lighting was low, the smell was overwhelming, and the look of the patrons made me wonder if this was the sort of bar which required a two-misdemeanor minimum to qualify for service. A few creatures looked in our direction and immediately hushed their conversations as they watched us make our way to a booth in the back of the bar. My attention was so focused on scanning the interior for potential threats that I nearly missed the sound of something small clattering on the surface of a table that we walked by. I glanced down and felt my eyes widen as I spied the sapphire shard we’d obtained from the batpony executive apparently ‘fall’ out of Dragnet’s possession.
I opened my mouth and was about to point this out to the pegasus when her tail slapped me across the side of the face to silence me. I caught the mare’s subtle glare in my direction even as her tail looped around the back of my neck and encouraged me to continue walking after all. I cleared my throat to hide the fact that I’d been about to speak up and then focused on not thinking too deeply into what would have been considered to be a very ‘familiar’ gesture on Dragnet’s part just now under most circumstances. My pink coat kept the flush of my cheek hidden as the two of us sat ourselves down at the table she’d brought us too.
No servers approached us, nor did I spy any working the interior of the bar. This was clearly a place that revolved around ‘self service’ up at the bar. However, the pegasus made no indication that she intended to secure any drinks, nor did she direct me to do so. Which was something of a relief, as I was of the opinion that the pegasus had done plenty of drinking already that morning. I certainly wasn’t feeling particularly thirsty.
Though I did feel my mouth grow dry the moment Dragnet’s tail swished under the table and started to playfully bat at my flank, in full view of the other patrons looking in our direction. The mare propped her forelegs on the table and coyly folded her hooves in front of her muzzle even as she leaned forward, locking a pair of very convincing ‘bedroom eyes' on me. I swallowed.
“Look like you’re flirting with me, you fucking donk,” she whispered under her breath at a volume that even I could barely hear.
Her outward appearance notwithstanding, Dragnet’s words were laced with audible venom which did a thoroughly effective job at relieving me of any notion that the mare might actually have been flirting with me. I hastily cleared my throat again and leaned back in my own seat, flashing the mare my best ‘you know I’m the stallion of your dreams’ smile.
“...seriously? That’s a ‘flirt’ to you?” It was genuinely impressive to me that Dragnet could sound so condescending without the ‘come hither’ expression in her eyes so much as flickering in the slightest. I was not nearly so accomplished a thespian and felt my smile immediately melt away. Her tail flicked me far harder than was typically expected of a ‘flirty slap’ and I did my best to reconstitute it. “Whatever, they’ll just have to assume I’m a hooker you’re paying for the ‘marefriend experience’,” she said dryly just before she let out a genuinely delightful-sounding little laugh, her hoof coming away to idly twirl her mane while she favored me with a subtle bite of her lower lip.
…She was damn good at this.
I elected to lean in now too, doing my best to smile in a way I’d seen characters do in scenes like this. It also helped me to keep my own voice low. “Who will have to assume? Why did you drop the shard on that table?”
There was an almost imperceptible shift of the mare’s eyes as she took note of a couple of young stallions who just stepped into the bar, then her attention was back on me again. “Anypony who didn’t see us come in,” she responded. “And I’m tying up a loose end.”
“Loose end―? Mmph!” I was about to ask for further clarification when the pegasus mare reached out and took me by the cheek, drawing me in close before latching onto my lips with her own. Mindful that we were attempting to not draw attention to ourselves―or so I assumed―I worked quite hard not to fight the mare on her impromptu kiss. I was also being extremely careful not to reciprocate too enthusiastically, lest it appear I was trying to take advantage of the situation. Not that such a thought lasted more than a second anyway.
If anything, I was very much looking forward to Dragnet breaking the embrace, as I felt like I was able to taste every individual cigarette that the mare had burned her way through that day. Maybe even that week. A great deal of my focus went into trying not to throw up, if I was being honest.
My ear flicked behind me as I heard two young stallions speaking in hushed tones that sounded like they were somewhere by the table that Dragnet had dropped the shard on. I heard the sound of a hoof brushing the surface of a table, followed by two sets of hooves heading away from us. A merciful second later, the pegasus finally released me and got up from her seat. “We got a bite.”
I spared a moment to silently gag before getting up myself. My eyes darted in the direction of the bar as I briefly entertained the notion of ordering something to wash the mare’s taste off my tongue with. Maybe later. Right now we couldn’t afford to let that shard get too far away. It still had the data that we’d been sent to recover, after all.
Outside of the bar, I found Dragnet casually stalking behind the pair of stallions who’d apparently snatched up the shard that she’d left out. At a glance, I judged them to not be particularly notable. They looked to be just a couple of young ponies intent to go about living their lives. The only crimes they looked to be particularly guilty of were crimes against fashion, as both possessed an inordinate number of piercings in the ears and jaws, and the declarations emblazoned on their clothing suggested they were not particularly amenable to authority figures. Pretty much standard fare for young creatures in this part of the city, honestly.
These weren’t hardened thugs or lowlifes. And I was finding myself wondering why Dragnet was so interested in them.
We followed them at distance for a couple of blocks until the pair elected to divert into an alleyway. It was then that Dragnet’s pace picked up into a brisk canter. I saw her arcanetic wing divert to the pistol on her withers and draw the firearm, making it ready for use with a pinion laying across the trigger. While I hadn’t seen any sign that the pair had been armed, I deferred to the more experienced detective’s sense of caution and gripped my own sidearm with my telekinesis.
The pegasus paused at the corner of the alley and briefly ducked her head into it for a heartbeat, in order to confirm that our quarry was there. She then looked over at me, noted that I was prepared to confront them, and nodded. She held up her free wing and began to fold down its pinions one after another. I immediately recognized the obvious signs of a countdown and prepared myself for the impending confrontation. The moment all were curled in, her wing gave a brief pump and the pair of us bolted around the corner.
“LCPD!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Freeze! Hooves where we can―!”
The rest of my warning was drowned out but a hail of gunfire.
For a fraction of a second, my brain had trouble comprehending where the sound could possibly be coming from. Because it certainly wasn’t coming from the pair of obviously shocked stallions who only had time enough to turn their heads in response to the sound of my voice before their bodies were perforated by bullets. Bullets that were coming from Dragnet’s gun.
Unlike myself, who’d been following established procedure when making contact with ponies of interest in a criminal investigation during a high-risk encounter, and issuing clear and loud verbal warnings and commands, the pegasus mare had remained completely silent. Nor had she hesitated for even a moment before firing upon the two ponies we’d been following. She shot each of them three times: twice in their chests, and then a third shot in their head.
The first stallion to fall probably hadn’t even had time to process that we were LCPD. Her second victim had only time enough to realize that their companion was dead before rounds struck and killed him as well. I could only stand in stunned silence as I watched the pair get gunned down before my eyes. Seemingly ignoring me, Dragnet stepped over to the bodies and used her hoof to inspect each’s neck until she found the shard that she’d left on the table. She retrieved the tiny sliver of storage crystal, a satisfied smirk on her lips as she slipped it back into her jacket pocket.
“There; no longer ‘polished’,” she declared. “The griffons have a couple of names to attach to their breach to appease Aeriesaka’s shareholders. It’ll also look like it wasn’t even copied.”
I only barely registered what the pegasus was saying, my eyes still locked on the bodies which were slowly being surrounded by expanding pools of blood. “...They weren’t armed,” I noted in a voice that sounded far too distant to have been my own. I wasn’t even aware I’d said anything at first.
“Good point,” Dragnet acknowledged.
I didn’t see her right cross coming. I fell to the ground, the shock of the hit disrupting my control over my telekinesis and letting my gun clatter to the ground. The pegasus stepped over and deftly kicked the pistol back towards the pair of dead stallions. “That’ll do,” she said with a satisfied nod. “We confronted them, they sucker-punched you, took your gun, and I defended my trainee.
“Nice. Neat. Tidy.”
I massage my cheek where the mare had hit me, glaring up at the pegasus. “That’s not what happened!”
“Oh, relax,” Dragnet chided me. “Nopony back at the station’s going to ride you too hard for getting dropped during your first outing. You’re still ‘green’ with only that piss-ass academy hoof-to-hoof training. Don’t worry; in a few months I’ll let you be the one that ‘saves’ me. The rest of the station will cheer, they'll take you out for drinks, and the captain will take you off probations early let you work solo. Your training will be complete and I'll finally be off the hook,” she assured me, apparently having completely misread the reason for my objection.
“You killed them! Why?!”
“Um, because otherwise they’d have insisted they didn’t crack into Aeriesaka’s systems? Duh?” The ivory mare pointed out as she slowly wandered back over to the pair of bodies, apparently intent on further surveying her handiwork. “This was the only way to close the case.”
I was shaking my head even as I staggered my way back up onto my hooves. “Or, we could have, you know: arrested the pony who actually did it!” I retorted acidly. “Who cares if he was some big-shot corpo with fancy lawyers? That’s not our problem; it’s the DA’s! We’re just supposed to find the evidence that'll let them close the case. No matter what it is, or where that evidence leads,” I insisted.
“You really don’t want to make a big deal out of this, newbie,” the mare warned me in an even tone that I failed to truly register in the moment. I was too distracted by the fact that my 'mentor' had just murdered two innocent ponies in front of me. “I refer you back to Rule One: ‘no backtalk’. I told you how this is going to be reported, and that’s the end of it.
“Now, are you going to play ball?” She turned her icy blue stare on me. “Or are the two of us going to have a problem?”
I was already shaking my head. I was still having trouble understanding what was happening. It didn’t make any sense. So what if Noir didn’t end up doing time for the theft? As mere investigators, that wasn’t our business. All we were supposed to care about was collecting evidence and obtaining the facts of the matter, and then passing that all off to the courts to do with our findings as they will. Framing innocent ponies to protect guilty ones didn’t benefit us, so it didn’t make any logical sense to do it!
Unless…
My eyes widened with comprehension as pieces began to fall into place. Dragnet had made a stink about not having any useful leads back at the station, and yet she’d apparently already known exactly who’d be in possession of the data we'd been tasked to retrieve. She'd even asked for him by name. Now, whether Lupe Noir had been the one who hacked the Aeriesaka server personally, or merely the individual who'd contracted the theft, I couldn't say. But, either way, he'd clearly been an 'involved party', and Dragnet had known that ahead of time. Then there’d been the fact that the batpony had apparently been expecting Dragnet to show up, and he also hadn’t hesitated to turn over the data in question when she'd asked him for it.
In hindsight, that struck me as exceptionally odd. Why even bother to steal the information if you were just going to hoof it over to the authorities immediately the next morning? That being said, I suppose that passing along the shard didn’t really matter when it came to digital information. Noir had probably already copied the files. Aeriesaka would have learned that when they got the shard back and reviewed the―
Dragnet had polished the shard!
There wouldn’t be any record of a duplicate being made by Lupe Noir, I realized. He’d get away clean, without Aeriesaka being any the wiser. All that they would see on the file’s log now was that it had been accessed by one of the dead stallions nearby, and that nothing about the contents had been altered. They’d assume the information’s integrity had been maintained. All thanks to Dragnet’s apparent ability to wipe such activity history. Something that she shouldn’t have been able to do. Except she obviously had.
My eyes went to her arcanetics again. The ones that were a whole league above and beyond the capabilities of even my own top-tier implants. Dragnet hadn't received hers from the LCPD. I knew that much, since I knew I had the best the department offered. So, either the pegasus was a genius arcanetics engineer who'd come up with her own hardware that outshone every other rig on the market...or she had ties to an organization who did. An organization which wasn't the LCPD.
At least I was proving to be a competent investigator, I mused ruefully. “...You’re working for GlimTech,” I said.
The pegasus mare chuckled, wagging a pinion at me. “No, I work for the LCPD,” she corrected chidingly. “I take kickbacks from GlimTech.”
While Dragnet clearly derived amusement from making the distinction, the humor was lost on me. “Why?”
“Because while the LCPD has decent enough death benefits, they don’t have a lot of great ‘life benefits’,” her tone was more derisive now as her features visibly soured. “If I’m a good little filly and work my flank off―risking my life nearly every day dealing with the worst dregs of equinity this city has to offer―I’ll be given a middling little pension when I’m an old nag too worn out to actually enjoy my ‘golden years’.
“However, GlimTech was kind enough to step in and offer me a deal: I help cover their tracks on a few matters every once in a while and, in exchange, they'll ‘hire’ me as a ‘security consultant’. Paying me a tidy sum every month to do the odd bit of ‘consulting’.” She flashed a toothy grin in my direction.
“They’ll make you the same offer,” the mare assured me. “Do a little cleaning up after their messes,” she gestured to the dead ponies nearby, “and they’ll hook you up with top-of-the line arcanetics and pay you more in a month than the LCPD will give you in a year.
“It’s the best offer ponies like us will get in this city,” she insisted.
I was visibly gawking at the pegasus, I knew. I just simply couldn’t believe that this mare was genuinely trying to convince me to join in on her little scheme where she apparently routinely murdered ponies so that she could frame them in exchange for money. She was basically a hit-mare, except that she wasn’t even being given specific targets to take out. She was just killing whatever innocent creatures just happened to fall into the traps she set. Actual serial killers were more discerning than she was!
It made me sick.
'Ice-cold bitch' indeed...
My head was shaking again. “I’m not doing that―any of that,” I insisted. “I can’t. It’s murder, and it’s wrong.” My throat was dry again as I said the next words. “I’m going to report you.”
Dragnet frowned at me, clearly disappointed by my response. The mare let out a deep sigh. “You really will, won’t you?” I nodded. The mare’s expression grew sadder now and she looked down at the pair of bodies at her hooves. My own gaze barely wavered from the pistol still grasped in her pinions. I saw her wing move and felt my breath catch in my throat as I expected her to shoot me. When the weapon was slipped into its holster at her side, I felt immense relief wash through me.
Maybe she drew the line at killing fellow officers? It was bitterly heartening to find that the pegasus actually had a line she wouldn't cross.
I turned away from the grizzly scene of death and began to make a call into the station to report the incident, but stopped up short when I heard Dragnet’s own announcement going out over the same frequency I'd been about to use. “This is Detective Dragnet. Officer down at Hind and Fifty-Fourth. Requesting medical assistance.”
I balked, spinning around. My eyes widened as they locked on to the pistol being held in her pinions. My pistol. The mare’s pale blue eyes bore into me, a mirthless smile spreading across her lips. “...I tried to defend my trainee," she said, as though rehearsing her lines for an upcoming performance, "...but it was already too late.”
I felt my gut tighten into a knot as I realized the implications of her words.
“I warned you about the consequences for breaking my rules, newbie,” Dragnet reminded me with a shrug. There wasn't even a hint of regret visible in her icy sapphire stare. "How soon you made use of those 'generous' LCPD death benefits...was your business."
She pulled the trigger.
…
//WARNING: FATAL ERROR HAS OCCURRED.
//USER FLATLINED.
//CONNECTION LOST…
Author's Note
Thank you so much for reading! As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated
I've set up a Cover Art Fund if you're interested and have any bits lying around!