It didn't take long to get settled at Renee's apartment. It was pristine beyond comprehension, like something out of a holo-ad. Caroline, Marvin, Ben, and Renee all got their own bedrooms decked out in silver silk sheets and medicinal headboards and 360 holo displays. Caroline had stayed over at Renee's place a few times, but now that she was living here, she found it almost overwhelming.
Renee's aunt and uncle had welcomed Team Sabersong with open arms. Renee didn't talk much with them, just told them a blatant lie of why they wanted to live in Sector 8 (better resources, closer to Ainsel, etcetera), and they seemed to trust everything she said. They had a main residence in another Sector, and they'd bought this place just for Renee. That had always bugged Caroline. If Renee's family had this much money, why didn't they just pay her debt to Centium? She apparently didn't want them to know about her involvement.
"You're not close to them at all?" Caroline had asked.
It's not like they're actual family, Renee had replied. They didn't raise me or anything.
Caroline started working as soon as she could. She'd retrieved Sabersong after the Manhunters had left the farm, but it was in need of repairs, not to mention Marvin himself was barely functioning with all that plasma damage. She spent much of the first day ordering parts and making preliminary patches. It was nowhere near enough; she needed to access a real workshop.
On day two, she decided that the investigation of Ainsel AI could wait no longer. Early in the morning, she asked Ben and Renee to take over the mech-fight planning, then approached Marvin at the glass dining table.
Marvin had a neck-pillow-like-contraption now that could dictate his sleep schedule, so Caroline wasn't sure why he was up this early; he had nowhere to train and was just sitting idly by the dining table. He was still in poor shape, but his hoodie, pants, and cap covered most of his burns.
"Amir's checking out the murder sites," Caroline told him. "He asked us if we wanted to tag along."
Marvin looked up and tilted his head. "Is that legal?"
"These aren't closed off anymore," Caroline said. "I have a feeling they're related to your death. Or my memories. Or both."
"Gut feeling, huh?" Marvin asked.
"Yeah." Caroline smiled. "And I don't know how else we get close to Ainsel AI. If we prove the murders were suicides and get Saeyung to help us, we'll learn a lot more about her."
"What if you…" Marvin tapped his fingers together. "Could you get your memories back from the Memory Bank?"
Caroline looked down at the marble floor. Every time she thought of the Memory Bank, she immediately forced herself to think of something else. She'd gotten by fine her whole life—the fragment that she remembered, anyway—and more knowledge of her sins would not do her any good.
"I'm scared to," she admitted.
"Is there a way to read them without remembering?"
"Yeah, but I'm not sure if reading them will trigger something worse than that first time." That day at the hospital still gave her nightmares. She could not afford to go through that again.
Marvin nodded. Caroline wasn't an expert on reading robot faces, but she thought he looked a little more skeptical than usual.
Sorry, Marvin. I'll only read my memories if we have no other choice.
-----
For their first murder scene, Amir took them to the suspension bridge that connected Sector 8 and 7. It passed over an artificial river that sparkled in the equally fake sunlight.
The victim—thirty-four-year-old John Kilgo—had been found in that river, floating by the docks. Originally, the police had thought the killer strangled him and dumped him in the river. There were signs of blunt force, but no cuts or blood. Now, as Amir, Caroline, and Marvin stood at the railing of the suspension bridge, Marvin could see why that blunt force could've been the impact from a fall. The water below him was so still it might have been a plane of glass.
Where they stood was the most probable place to jump, Amir explained. At the apex of the bridge's arc, the railing was flat and easiest to climb. Amir dropped a probe off the bridge. It disappeared into the water and its signal began to move on his tablet. It was a specially designed buoy with the same density as a human.
They returned to Sector 8 and waited for the probe to stop moving, then tracked its location to a particular pier. Sector 8's docks were more cluttered than the rest of the city as worker-bots scurried about, carrying crates and poles and canopies in preparation for this year's Rain Festival. Tourists lined the river, talking in gazebos, boarding ferries, and taking pictures. Holograms appeared at the photo spots, showing a timer that predicted how long the area would be occupied. A fun addition by Ainsel AI.
They found the probe bouncing against the metal stilts below the boardwalk.
"Same place we found him," Amir said.
"It could be a coincidence," Caroline said. "A lot of currents lead here."
Amir nodded. "This one was the most dubious. We'll try to trace an escape route at the other sites."
If there's no plausible escape route for the killer, then the death must have been a suicide. But Marvin found it hard to imagine a room with no way out.
"Have you not done that already?" Caroline asked.
"We might have missed something."
Just then, Caroline visibly tensed and looked over her shoulder. Marvin followed her gaze and found it on a distant figure wearing a gray jacket and sunglasses. Looked like a woman with dark hair.
"What?" Marvin asked.
"Is someone following us?" Caroline asked.
As far as Marvin could tell, the woman wasn't even looking in their direction. Maybe he'd missed it.
"Did Saeyung send someone?" he ventured.
"She wouldn't need to," Amir said. "She controls the entire Sector."
Marvin looked back at the woman in the gray jacket. She was sitting on a bench, watching the river. Caroline was prone to being overly careful, but unfortunately, her precautions usually ended up saving their lives. If Marvin was smart, he should believe another party was also interested in them.
-----
It took two days to cover six out of seven crime scenes. Amir described each death in gruesome detail, and Marvin tried not to imagine it happening in the place where he stood. The fact that the sites were so in line with the rest of Sector 8's cleanliness made them even more eerie. They didn't find much to support their theory. Each location had a plausible escape route, and for some of them suicide seemed less likely than a murder.
Caroline and Amir talked like they'd done this before. With every murder scene they visited, Marvin grew more certain that Caroline wasn't just a college dropout with aspiring mech-fighting dreams. Daughter of an Inspector. How much did she know? How many secrets had her father confided in her?
Marvin still trusted her and Amir to not kill him, but he decided to take everything they said with a grain of salt.
On the third day, they set out to investigate the final crime scene—the roof of the same shopping mall Marvin had walked through to get to the tram station. Marvin, Caroline, and Amir gathered under a wandering scavenger's canopy—a simple green tarp held up by four metal poles. The trams zoomed by on their right, and several chairs and tables were strewn about on their left. Below, the cyclists and walkers on the street were smaller than ants.
This death was the most suspicious, Amir had explained. The victim had been well off coming out of the psych ward and had quickly gotten a job. She'd earned a lot of money, adopted a dog, and hung out regularly with her friends. However, like the other victims, she had no spouse or close family in the megacity.
The strangest part of the death was that instead of jumping, the woman had been found on the roof with her wrists slit. There was no reason why she needed to come up here, thus hinting at a possible murder.
"But in any case, there's no way a killer could have escaped the mall without being seen," Amir said. He turned to Caroline. "If you were them, how would you leave this place?"
At first, Marvin found it comically random that Amir would ask Caroline. Then he realized that Caroline was a killer. She'd done it to protect her friends, but she'd killed Gerard without hesitation.
Almost like she's killed before.
For a split second, Marvin wondered if among Caroline's lost memories was one of her murdering an unsuspecting pilot during his debrief.
No, that's ridiculous. She's done nothing but help me.
-----
"If you were them, how would you leave this place?"
Caroline turned to Amir in surprise. Was this another test? Those nights spent studying with her father had never prepared her to solve a murder, or in this case, prove it didn't happen. And why was Amir so keen on carrying out her dad's lessons?
Whatever. We can find out more about him later.
Caroline walked to the back of the canopy to the door that led inside. No killer would reasonably have climbing gear, so this was the only way they could've gone out. She opened the door and walked down the dingy stairwell, Marvin and Amir following close behind. They went down one flight and ended up at a closed door.
Would I have gone down the whole way, or try to disappear on one of the higher floors?
First, she would need to dispose of the murder weapon. Something sharp. She wouldn't do that in the mall, though, right? So she would get to the bottom floor and leave as quickly as possible.
But racing down stairs was bound to be suspicious. In fact, going to the roof at all was very odd.
"Is there security footage of this stairwell?" Caroline asked.
"They broke the camera." Amir pointed up at a corner of the ceiling, where a small black ball stared at them.
Caroline pursed her lips. A homemade airgun could have done the trick, if the killer didn't have more advanced tech. If that was the case, then she would keep heading down the stairs.
She'd only taken two steps when she froze. She turned around and stared at the black camera, taking note of the gleam of its seamless surface.
"How do you know they broke it?"
"There's about a day's worth of footage missing," Amir said.
"Is there a work order?"
"Work order?"
"For its replacement." Caroline pointed at the camera.
Amir tilted his head and a smile crept onto his face. "We never checked."
Caroline couldn't help but feel a surge of pride. She felt even better when Marvin asked what she meant, and she explained that if the camera had not been replaced, the killer had to have gone to the security room and manually erased the footage. That room was smack dab in the middle of the mall, meaning there was no way no one could have noticed.
"If that camera didn't get repaired, then I bet the security guard and whoever they're working for erased the footage to cover up the suicide," Caroline said.
-----
It took a day to get the mall's history of work orders. It would've taken weeks if Amir hadn't been a police chief. In the meantime, Caroline and Marvin waited at Renee's apartment, where Ben and Renee gave them a few updates: they had scheduled a duel in the same batch as Legionnaire, hoping to catch Saeyung and Sunwoo for more questioning. Unfortunately, the only slot left in that batch was against the fifth-highest ranked mech of the season, KOL.
"KOL?" Caroline murmured. She'd never heard of the mech. "Who's the pilot?"
"Kol," Ben said. "In lowercase."
Caroline furrowed her eyebrows. "Did one of the top-tens rebrand?"
"Not that I know of."
"So we're gonna be fighting this random guy called Cole."
"Kol," Ben corrected.
"That's what I said."
Ben ignored her and continued, "This is hella exciting, honestly. No one knows anything about Kol. No one's even seen their face. They literally just jumped to the top five last week after winning a bunch of back-to-back duels."
Caroline let out an involuntary laugh. Leave it to Ben to make Mecha Realm seem like a fever dream.
Renee tapped Ben's shoulder and motioned to Caroline and Marvin, who were sitting on the opposite sofa.
"Oh, right," Ben said. He leaned forward. "Another thing. We were going shopping earlier and saw this lady following us." He pulled up a picture on his tablet. "Have you seen her?"
"You took a picture of her?!" Caroline exclaimed.
Renee raised her hand proudly.
Caroline analyzed the photo. Gray jacket, sunglasses, and brown hair. It was the same person she'd spotted on the docks. Goosebumps rose on her arms.
"She was following us as well," Caroline said. "No idea who she is."
The others exchanged glances. Previously, Caroline had thought the woman was after Amir. Now, it seemed like their team was the target.
"Stay inside as much as possible," Caroline said. "But if you do see her, try to get a better picture of her face."
Renee nodded.
The next morning, Caroline and Marvin flew to Amir's office in Sector 58. He had received the work orders and needed their help finding the right one—or in this case, not finding it. They sat in the small room, flipping through papers for half an hour until finally, Marvin came across a particular security camera that had been replaced a day after the death on the roof.
Replaced a day after. Caroline's heart sank. So the files hadn't been scrubbed. Someone really had taken out the camera to cover their tracks.
"What now?" she asked Amir.
Amir sat back in his chair defeatedly. "I'll look through everything again. Look into the psych ward, too."
"Are you allowed to investigate the psych ward?" Caroline asked.
Amir shook his head. "I'll have to do it undercover." He held up a finger before Caroline could speak. "And you two are not helping."
"We've done nothing but follow you around," Caroline argued. But she knew that looking into the psych ward was a whole nother level of dangerous. Who knew how many memories would be triggered if she tagged along.
"I'll update you. Focus on your mech stuff," Amir said.
Caroline sighed and nodded. It was a little hard to do that when they didn't have a workshop anymore.
"Dean Kary."
Caroline turned around. That was Marvin's voice.
"What?" Amir said.
"The guy who issued this work order is different," Marvin said, holding up the sheet of paper. It was the one for the broken security camera.
Amir opened his tablet and typed in the name. He widened his eyes. "Dean Kary," he read. "Former employee of Ainsel AI."