The St. Lazarus 4th Precinct was less of a police station and more of a DDoS attack on Caleb's brain.
If the penthouse had been a quiet room with a single buffering video, the precinct was a browser with five thousand tabs open. Every officer who walked by had a floating status bar. Every computer monitor leaked data streams into the air. The Wi-Fi was so thick Caleb could practically taste it—it tasted like stale coffee and paperwork.
[LOCATION: THE PIG PEN (4th Precinct)]
[THREAT LEVEL: LOW]
[ANNOYANCE LEVEL: CRITICAL]
Caleb sat in the interrogation observation room, pressing an ice pack to his forehead. He kept his sunglasses on. Without them, the neon glare of the holding cells and the scrolling criminal records hovering over the arrestees would induce a seizure.
"You're vibrating," Maya said. She sat across from him at the metal table, typing furiously on her holographic terminal. She looked furious.
"I'm buffering," Caleb corrected. "There's too much data in here. Tell Officer Miller at the front desk to stop streaming 4K cat videos. It's eating the bandwidth."
Maya didn't look up. She slammed a finger onto the 'Submit' key.
"Do you know how hard it is to write a report that doesn't get us both fired?" she hissed, turning on him. "I just filed the preliminary on Sterling."
"Did you mention the Stone Serpent technique? I feel like that needs to be canonized."
"I wrote that you identified the gas canister using 'visual trajectory analysis based on dust displacement,'" she said, her voice tight. "I had to lie, Caleb. Because if I wrote 'Consultant Vane smashed a priceless antique next to a corpse's head and then hallucinated a magnetic field,' Captain Vance would have me stripped of my badge and you committed to a psych ward."
She pointed a stylus at him.
"I didn't do it for you. I did it because I'm not losing my promotion over your insanity. But if Vance asks? You saw the dust standing up. Stick to the lie. If you mention 'glitches' or 'purple stains,' I swear I will let him throw you in a holding cell."
"Understood," Caleb grinned, though the pain behind his eyes was blinding. "We are sticking to the boring, logical lie. I can do boring."
The door slammed open.
Captain Silas Vance didn't walk; he encroached. He was a mountain of a man with a buzz cut and a neck thick enough to stop small caliber bullets. To Caleb's Overlay, Vance appeared as a high-level Boss Monster.
[ENTITY: CAPTAIN VANCE]
[LEVEL: 50]
[SPECIAL ABILITY: INTIMIDATION SHOUT]
Vance threw a black evidence bag onto the table. It slid across the metal and hit Caleb's elbow. Inside was the canister from the penthouse.
"Explain," Vance grunted. He didn't sit. He just loomed.
"We found it in the vent, sir," Maya said, jumping to her feet, her posture instantly rigid. "It's a dispersion unit. Remote activated. It released a neurotoxin that mimics—"
"I know what it does, Corwin," Vance interrupted. "Lab boys say the gas inside is unknown. Not on any database. But that's not what I'm asking."
Vance turned his gaze to Caleb. The red reticle over his eye zoomed in.
"I want to know how a civilian consultant found a military-grade stealth device that my sweep team missed. And why the hell Arthur Sterling is currently in St. Jude's Hospital screaming about 'blue demons' instead of being in the morgue."
Caleb leaned back, putting his feet up on the chair next to him. "Maybe your sweep team needs glasses. Or better funding."
"Caleb," Maya warned.
"And as for Sterling," Caleb continued, ignoring her, "you should be thanking me. I saved a taxpayer. That's good PR, right?"
Vance leaned down, placing two massive hands on the table. The table groaned.
"You're on thin ice, Vane. I hired you because you know the darknet. I didn't hire you to destroy crime scenes. Tech Support has been trying to crack this canister for an hour. It's bricked. Bio-locked. If we force it open, the remaining gas vents and kills everyone in the lab."
He poked a finger at Caleb's chest.
"You're a 'hacker,' right? A social engineer? Make it talk. Or I terminate your contract and send you back to finish your sentence for the Union Bank fraud."
[QUEST ALERT: BYPASS SECURITY]
[REWARD: NOT GOING TO JAIL]
Caleb sighed and picked up the bag. He pulled the canister out.
It was heavier than it looked. Matte black, cold to the touch. The LED light was dead. To the naked eye, it was a smooth cylinder with no ports, no screws, and no keypad.
"It's air-gapped," Maya said. "No wireless signal. You can't hack it remotely."
Caleb lowered his sunglasses just a fraction.
The world shifted. The grey interrogation room was overlaid with the blue wireframe of the System. He focused on the canister.
It wasn't just metal. Floating around it were rings of glowing red code, spinning like a gyroscope. It was a digital lock, but in Caleb's hallucination, it looked like a puzzle from a children's game.
[OBJECT: CRYPTO-CONTAINER]
[SECURITY: LEVEL 5 (HARD)]
[PUZZLE TYPE: ALIGN THE RINGS]
Caleb suppressed a laugh. It's literally a matching game.
"I don't need a computer," Caleb said softly. "It's not digital. It's... haptic."
"Haptic?" Vance frowned.
"It responds to touch patterns. Like a safe dial, but based on pressure." Caleb made this up on the spot. In reality, he was watching the spinning red rings in the air. He needed to turn the bottom of the canister until the red rings turned green.
He gripped the base of the cylinder.
Left... Left... Stop.
In his vision, the outer ring clicked into place and turned green.
Right... more right...
"What is he doing?" Vance asked Maya. "He's fondling the evidence."
"He has a process, sir," Maya said, though she sounded unconvinced.
Caleb bit his lip. The final ring was spinning fast. He had to time it perfectly.
Wait for it... wait for the lag spike to clear... NOW.
He twisted the cap sharply to the left.
CLICK.
A mechanical hiss echoed in the room. The smooth metal casing of the canister split open like a blooming flower.
Vance took a step back, hand reaching for his sidearm. "Is it venting?"
"No," Caleb said, peering into the open device. "It's empty. The gas is gone."
But the canister wasn't empty. Nestled in the center of the mechanism, where the gas vial should have been, was a small, glowing chip. And a scrap of paper.
Caleb picked up the paper. It wasn't printed. It was handwritten in elegant, cursive ink.
"What does it say?" Maya asked, leaning over his shoulder.
Caleb read it. His blood ran cold.
The note read:
Admin Access Required for Patch 1.2. Please wait for the download.
Caleb looked at the chip. His Overlay instantly scanned it.
[ITEM: MEMORY SHARD]
[CONTENTS: 1 TERABYTE OF ENCRYPTED VIDEO]
[METADATA TAG: "THE_ADMIN"]
"It's a message," Caleb whispered.
"From who?" Vance barked.
Caleb looked up, his sunglasses reflecting the harsh overhead lights. He couldn't tell them about the 'Patch' note. That sounded too much like his own insanity.
"From the manufacturer," Caleb lied smoothly. "It's a prototype. And whoever made it left a calling card."
He tossed the chip to Maya.
"Plug that in. But do it on an isolated machine. Unless you want the precinct's cat videos to get replaced with something much, much worse."
Maya caught the chip. She looked at Caleb with a new expression. It wasn't trust, exactly. But it was respect. She had watched him open a military-grade lock by twisting it like a jar of pickles.
"Good work," Vance grunted, straightening up. "Corwin, get that to Cyber Crimes. Vane... get out of my sight. Go get some coffee. You look like you're about to crash."
Vance stormed out.
Caleb slumped in his chair. He was about to crash. The "puzzle" had drained his stamina bar.
[STAMINA: 15%]
[WARNING: SYSTEM UPDATE PENDING]
Maya paused at the door. "Caleb."
He looked up.
"You opened that thing in ten seconds. Tech spent an hour and couldn't scratch it."
"I have firm hands," Caleb said weakly.
"No," Maya shook her head. "You saw something they didn't. Just like with the body."
She opened the door, letting the noise of the precinct flood back in.
"I don't believe in magic, Caleb. But I do believe in secrets. And you have a lot of them."
She left.
Caleb sat alone in the silence of the observation room. He looked down at the handwritten note he had palmed—the one he hadn't given to Vance.
Patch 1.2.
He closed his eyes, but the Overlay was still there, burning against his eyelids.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[NEW PLAYER HAS JOINED THE SERVER]