“Inspector, I’m sorry, the power is out.” Xio is by the door within a minute, peering in. Her hair is slightly disarrayed. Nonsiu looks at O’Neil; saved by divine intervention, maybe.

“We have generators. Our power supply is completely separate from the city.” Nonsiu’s forehead creases.

“That’s it, sir. It isn’t the city’s power that’s out. It’s ours. Heavy acid rain showers. There’s a leakage into the nuclear reactor room.”

“What?” Nonsiu’s eyes widen in alarm. I see O’Neil pressing the nail of his thumb into his hand. “Get someone down there – we’ll all…”

“The engineers are already in the chamber.” Xio hesitates, looking between the four of us.

Midhurst stands up. “I’d like to investigate the leakage and see if I can offer some help, if I may?”

Somehow, it still doesn’t feel like Midhurst is asking for permission. Maybe it is his age. I don’t even know his age. Nonsiu nods, but Midhurst has already made his move out of the door. Xio bites her lip, moving aside but still lingering in the doorway.

“Is there something else?” Nonsiu addresses Xio, but his are eyes trained back on O’Neil. I shiver on his behalf.

“Yes, sir.” Xio takes a deep breath. “The crime scene, sir. It’s…gone.”

“Gone?”

“Acid rain,” Xio offers, looking meek. “It’s rather hydrogenated.”

Because it could blow a nuclear reactor without being hydrogenated.

O’Neil stands straight, with a sigh caught in the heave of his chest. “That’s my signal to go.” He shoots Nonsiu a ‘stop me if you dare’ look. “Maybe I’ll be able to salvage some inkling of what I would have gotten ten minutes ago.”

Nonsiu pushes to his feet again; he must get a lot of exercise like that. O’Neil has barely taken a step. “You can’t take Led. His actions need to be taken under advisement.”

You can see that it is a power struggle between these two men. O’Neil has worked in Homicide for years, he is respected, he is known and he is dedicated. Nonsiu is newly appointed, still teetering on the edge of mistrust. Controlling O’Neil could be a sign of authority. I have never seen O’Neil controlled. I should go. I don’t know what Nonsiu’s mood will be like after O’Neil leaves – and I know he will. It would be an interesting battle to bear witness to, but not one worth being the casualty of.

“That’s fine.” O’Neil speaks before I can excuse myself appropriately. “Aylah?”

I almost step back. “Sorry?”

“O’Neil, you can’t take –”

“How many cases have you been on, Aylah?” O’Neil’s greenish-brown eyes are levelled onto me. My skin feels itchy.

“Thirty,” I say. I do not say that I can not remember a single one of them. I cannot remember their names, though I never knew that; I do not remember their hands doing whatever they did before they died; I do not remember the faces that stared back at them when they passed a mirror or some other reflective surface in their last moments; I cannot even remember their killer – not the face or the name or the words that were said. I would have better luck trying to see the atoms of a daisy, or the pockets in a bee’s knee.

“And you’ve solved every one of them?”

I don’t like where this is going. “Yes.”

O’Neil swivels to face Nonsiu. “That’s more cases than any officer down there. That’s more cases than some Investigators have had.” He dares Nonsiu to oppose him by broadening his stance.

Nonsiu relents: “Fine.” He sits down on his chair and sighs. “She’s an employee of the Precinct. Go.”

O’Neil flashes me a triumphant smile. “Come on,” he says and he makes headway for the door, not looking back to see if I am following. That’s the thing about O’Neil, you know, he never looks back.

It is only when we are good feet away, down the stairs and across the Division, that I muster the courage to speak. I push down the apprehension building in my chest, exhale deeply and: “How are we going to go anywhere with the…” I wave my hands at the ceiling.

“Acid rain?” O’Neil faces me. There is a nasty glint in his eyes. A lock of his hair trickles down over his forehead. A restlessness in my stomach tickles.

“What are you going to do.” It isn’t a question; I know him well enough. A three-year working relationship will do that to you.

He breaks out into a smile, and slips between the closing doors of the lift. “Come on, then,” he says, and fishes out his key card. He flashes it to the scanner, and the lift lets out a creaking groan and ascends at a tortoise-like pace.

“Really,” I clutch the steel bar on the wall for good measure. “This isn’t the time for games or suspense.” I watch the lift tick up another floor. Lifts tend to disorientate me; the movement feels slow, but the fast flickering numbers at the corner of my Specs remind me that it isn’t. “Or going up to the rooftop in the middle of an acidic storm. Just a suggestion.”

“Wait for it,” he taps his foot impatiently, eyes glued to the heightening number on the blue screen above the doors. Its existence is redundant, since everyone who works in the Precinct is connected to the mainframe – I’d guess it would be for the benefit of visitors, but Precincts don’t get that many. If you need the police, they come to you. The reflective steel doors part and step into a small glass room. Rain pummels the skylight ceiling in heavy, patterned thuds!

“This is…pleasant,” I take tentative steps forward. The lift dings! from behind me. O’Neil and I pivot around on the offensive.

“Fuck,” he shakes his head. “I’m going to be honest, I half expected Nonsiu to chase us up here.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Does he have a reason to?”

O’Neil grins. “He will soon.”

He moves across the floor with ease and familiarity; his eyes don’t wonder around, taking in the new…precarious surroundings – there is a confidence; he has been here before. He taps at one of the glass walls. Bright blue pixels spring to life. There is a shine to O’Neil’s eyes as he throws me another one of his trademark grins. His fingers run across the glass panelling. Outside of the glass room, the rooftop of the Precinct is littered with black trams. Silver lines snake over their ebony exterior – defensive metal shells melted onto the body of the tram. O’Neil looks back at me. “Pretty soon these won’t be the only ones in the city. I guess not even acid can stop us, hey?”

I shrug. “They thought we couldn’t touch the sun either.”

“Do you think life will continue as normal when the protective casing is mass produced? That people will commute despite the acid showers?”

I hesitate before replying. One of the trams glides into low flight, and comes to a stop right next to the longer end of the rectangular shaped room. “It still wouldn’t be safe.”

“Some things,” O’Neil says, “are more important than safety.”

The glass wall on the furthest end slides open synchronously with the black door of the tram lifting up. Yellow drops sprinkle onto the thick concrete of the flooring. A protest builds in my throat. “You want us to walk out there, in the middle of a shower with no protective gear whatsoever?” My gaze flashes rapidly between the acid burning into the concrete and the reckless look in O’Neil’s eyes.

“No.” O’Neil scoffs. “I’m not insane. I want us to run out there.”

I stare. “How is that any better?”

“If we run fast enough,” O’Neil sets up for a sprint. “We might not even get caught.”

He runs. “O’Neil!” I shout. I look back at the lift standing complacently behind me. Then ahead at O’Neil. He is already standing in the tram, sheltered.

“Come on!”

I don’t think.

Trust.

I run.

Acid rains burns. More than you would expect. “Ow!”

O’Neil yanks me into the tram. My backside makes contact with the leather seat. “Did it hit you?” he bends down and pulls out a white case. The door of the tram slides shut with no prompting.

I glare at him, and his perfectly tousled hair and his cheeks flushed from the sprint. “No, I ran out into the rain and not a drop hit me.” I nurse my arm with resentment. It throbs, and on the back of my forearm, there is a discoloured circle that sears with pain.

“Not a drop hit me.” Was that a hint of glumness in his tone? I clench my jaw to stifle the outrage.

“Forgive me, O’Neil. It seems I’ve to practise not getting hit by falling rain.”

He ignores me, uncaps a white tube and dabs a bit of the transparent goo onto my arm. It’s cool and soothes the burn instantly.

Tossing the tube back into the kit, he drops it into my lap. “Do you think you can throw this into the cockpit?”

I glare at him. How stupid does he think I am? “There are no cockpits in trams; they’re autopiloted, and I know it.” And despite knowing it, I still feel stupid saying it. I fight the blush that burns my cheeks.

O’Neil settles in beside me. “Okay, fine. I kind of just wanted to see you scour the tram for a cockpit, confused.”

“You wanted me to pace five feet up and down?”

“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds like a bad idea.”

I blink. “All of your ideas are bad,” I gesture to the tram.

He reaches for the belts on either side. “Strap in, we’re taking off.”

“There aren’t seatbelts on the public tram,” I mumble.

“The public trams don’t move as fast as these.”

The tram slowly lifts off. Nausea builds somewhere in my stomach. Suddenly, the tram isn’t slow anymore. It shoots through the air like an arrow and I am pushed back in my seat. I grit my teeth. “What’s Nonsiu going to do when he finds out?”

The crow’s feet at the edges of O’Neil’s eyes are pronounced as he smiles. “Whatever it is, I look forward to it.”

I roll my eyes. Pressure builds in my ears. “You’re too childish for a man your age.”

“Thirty isn’t that old.”

“You’re middle aged.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

I take deeper breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. “The truth isn’t an exaggeration.”

O’Neil faces me with a completely serious expression. “The truth is always an exaggeration, Aylah.”

Well, fuck.

I look away first.

“We’re touching ground in five.” O’Neil’s fingers slide over the skin of his arm.

“Minutes?”

“Seconds.”

Clang!

The tram lands, metal hitting metal. I jolt forward, but the seatbelt snaps me back; maybe they should have them on public transport. “That was…fun.”

O’Neil shoots me a nasty look. He pulls up two spare police issue rebreathers from beneath the seats and hands one to me. The door slides up automatically.

I press the button on my chest to unclasp my belt before strapping on the rebreather. “How are you doing that?”

“Optics Display,” O’Neil taps the side of his eye. “You can tap in with your Specs too.”

“What? Seriously? I thought this thing was only good for identifying people every three seco –”

Orange gears circle around O’Neil’s face. Green.

C. O’Neil. Investigator = Precinct: Loscester. Partner = Off. L. Whitson. Born 2742, 8 LC.

I resist the urge to smash them into the wall.