The hallway of interrogation rooms was busy with officers in uniforms and suits pushing passed Ezra and Luna as they stood close together and stared at the screen of her phone. They were watching footage of a young woman with long, dark hair, and she glared at the camera with her sultry brown eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. She sat at a table with empty seats on either side of her.

“So, this is Brooklyn Sanchez, former co-founder of CyberShell,” Luna said. “When I spoke to her on the phone, I thought for sure she would be the type to come with her lawyers who would demand that we stop treating her like a criminal before they’ve even given us any information.”

“And why did you think that, Lieutenant?” Ezra asked.

Luna put the screen of her phone to sleep, and she dropped her hands to her side.

“She just has this self-important attitude, and she has plenty of money to spare. She had apparently put almost one hundred thousand dollars into CyberShell before she finally sold her part of the company, and she did not even ask for half that from them.”

“She seems rather generous.”

“Yeah, I guess I misjudged her.”

“Are you going to go talk to her, Lieutenant? We’ve already kept her waiting for an hour.”

“Soon. I like to see what people say when they’ve lost their patience.”

“Whatever you think is best, Lieutenant,” Ezra said, but his voice was breathy like he thought it was unnecessary.

Luna raised an eyebrow at his tone, but she otherwise ignored it.

“How are all of your scans going?” she asked.

“I have scanned the archived CCTV footage of hundreds of places in the region, but there isn’t much that is pertinent to this investigation. There are lots of police reports of people breaking into electronic recycling plants, but none of them point toward former employees of CyberShell, their relatives, Aeryn Amah, or even the foster sister Amethyst Shuri.”

“Interesting. It seems those two girls have managed to stay well hidden over the last two years.”

“I wonder where they are now and why exactly she needed to break into a recycling plant.”

“That last part is easy enough to guess: robots can get you lot of money, especially when you know how to get the parts for free. Although, it is odd that she came all the up here for some metal casings. She must have some kind of reason for needing security unit parts.”

“Perhaps it was simply to make even more money.”

Luna nodded, but she had the feeling that there was something more to it than that.

“Are you still trying to make Miss Sanchez wait, Lieutenant?” Ezra asked.

“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t. I mean, I don’t have anything better to do while I wait for Haskel Cook or his family to call me back.”

“The other CyberShell partner?”

“Yeah, he’s got a lot of experience in programming androids, so he’s our prime suspect.”

“Ah, because of the blank hard drive.”

“Exactly. I talked to all of their former employees, but for some reason, I haven’t had any luck with him. His family said they would try to get a hold of him, too, but I haven’t heard anything back from them.”

“Perhaps, after we speak to Miss Sanchez we can go to his home or his current place of work.”

Luna nodded, and she strode to the door of the interrogation room where Brooklyn Sanchez was waiting.

“Ah, Lieutenant,” Ezra said before she turned the doorknob, “remember, Colonel Adler said that we need to keep it out of the public that we had found blood on one of the androids.”

Tryhard had come to their desks while they had been making phone calls, and he had told them about the multiple phone calls he had gotten from Hollywood Android and Hoosier Robotics. They were afraid that people would think that robotics were rising against humans, and it would cause a huge financial blow to the company.

HA’s concerns made sense to Luna, but it still annoyed her that the company was more worried about sales than they were about a dead employee.

“Yeah, I remember,” Luna said, waving a dismissive hand. “You can see into the room through the camera, right? Just keep an eye on us and be sure to make sure things don’t go horribly wrong in there.”

“I have no doubts that you would be able to hold your own against Miss Sanchez, Lieutenant, but I will certainly come and help you if things get out of control.”

Luna smirked at him.

“I’m not just talking about anything Miss Sanchez does,” she said. “Make sure I don’t do anything stupid.”

“Right. Of course, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, Ezra.”

Luna stepped into the interrogation room.