Clack.

Sighing, she reached down under the glove compartment, her fingers brushing against the rubber mat on the car floor as they searched for the pen that had just slid off the dashboard. After a couple of pats, she found it wedged under the edge of the mat, and quickly grabbed it, tapping the dust off of it before returning to the newspaper her other hand was holding.

“‘Difficult to carry out’, of a task, apparently. Seven letters.”

The detective tilted his head to look at her from the driver’s seat, his lazy green eyes shaped by the slight scowl on his face. “You can’t be serious.”

“The train isn’t due for another couple minutes.”

“I’m not saying you can’t do a crossword. I just prefer to watch in peace.”

“You’re not even the one monitoring, you’re just receiving reports. But you can go in if you like.” She nodded towards the windshield. Through it, under the few stray rays peeking through the overcast afternoon clouds, stood the monumental bulk of the wholesale warehouse, its angled roof cutting a shape right across the sky behind it. The big red-and-white letters stuck to the front read clear as day: MobiusMart. To the casual eye, perhaps it could be written off as a high-end pay-to-enter supermarket with a hefty annual fee - hardly worth it for those with access to more convenient locations away from the prairie this particular branch had decided to pop up in, but Kofuku and anybody who had actually been inside of one certainly knew better.

“I don’t have a card,” the detective half-muttered, as if hoping she wouldn’t hear it.

“You can use mine.” She fished the wallet out of her blazer and flipped it open to dig out the bright red members’ card. “You actually save a lot more by paying only once a year. It’s not like they check your name unless you’re at the interior checkout.”

“Are you sure he’s even coming out this way? There’s a thousand exits from the other side.”

“Is it me or my source that you don’t trust?”

“Kind of both, if you want me to be honest.”

“Then there’s no harm in helping me with a crossword, right? He’s not coming, this is all a bust. Come on. Seven letters.”

The detective's left fingers drummed on the top of the steering wheel, and his right hovered for a moment over the radio wired into the dashboard, before he lowered it to his lap. “Arduous.”

“Nuh-uh. Second letter is an N.”

“Right.” He furrowed his brow for a moment. “Onerous.”

“Oen-ner-russ…” She carefully filled in the letters, chuckling. “See? Not so bad to lighten up a bit.”

“That’s really not how this job goes, usually.”

“When stuff starts to go wrong then you can get serious. Just rela-”

The radio crackled. “Train’s here early,” the officer on the other end said. “We’ll keep you posted.”

The detective gave her a look before pressing the button to talk. “Copy. If you don’t see him in five minutes, we’ll pull out. There’s better places to be.”

Kofuku frowned internally, but said nothing. She reached over her seat and hooked her backpack with two fingers, lifted it and placed it on her lap, hugging it to herself as she stared out at the MobiousMart entrance across the sparsely populated parking lot from them. The cold metal plating at the bottom sapped the heat from her anxiously bouncing legs, almost giving her goosebumps.

“Oh now you’re serious,” Detective Drummond said.

“What if he’s late? It’s not like he has an itinerary.”

“He could have also changed plans and gone to some other mart entirely. Or got off at the wrong stop.”

“But then it wouldn’t be like him.”

“So you do know this guy.”

“I know of him. I read about him in my…in a journal. People like that don’t change and decide to let their guard down all of a sudden.”

“And how old is this journal?”

“...pretty old actually. Okay, I get your point.” She pulled the crossword between herself and the backpack, tapping the edge of her lips with the pen. At the tail end of “onerous” there was another word crossing it. Also seven letters, S in the second spot. Made of bone.

Osseous, she thought, quickly penning it in, her handwriting wobbly from how the newspaper rested against the soft back face of the bag.

“Not seeing anything by that description,” the officer said over the radio. “Crowd’s thinning out. Everyone’s dispersing, most of them to other platforms.”

“Focus on the local exit,” Drummond replied. “Anyone with an obscuring shaw, or something covering their face or anything?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Keep watching. Wait till the train leaves.”

Kofuku’s eyes flicked between the paper and Drummond beside her. Her nails were now lightly scratching at the material of the backpack.

“Wait,” the officer said. “What about a single glowing blue eye?”

“Come again?” Drummond leaned towards the radio.

“You said he has a lot of blue optics, right?”

Kofuku leaned over Drummond, earning an annoyed grunt out of him. “Blue optics, glowing. Is he a cyborg?”

“Hard to tell from here. That’s a lot of armour. But he’s got just one blue eye, curved looking headpiece…and he’s going for the local gateways. Military section.”

“It’s gotta be him.” She threw the door open and stepped out into the chilly afternoon air. With one fluid motion, she threw on the backpack, and then reached over to kick a switch on the side just next to where the right strap connected to the bottom of its body. The metal bit vibrated for a moment, and the sound of moving metal parts slotted into place deep inside its construction. The tips of her fingers brushed against the slot in the monolith, identifying the narrow output gap that by now she was reasonably familiar with. For a second she thought about just running in, but-

“This is Drummond. We’re at the Northern Ringway MobiusMart, and I need backup. Suspect’s been sighted coming out from the internal rail line. Likely heavily armed, from what we know.”

There was an electronic sound, before a woman came on the radio. “Copy, detective. Launching an assault team, ETA three minutes.”

“Copy. Standing by.”

Kofuku shut the door on her side, and turned back towards the metroplex on the horizon. The multi-tiered city from the outside looked almost like a stepped pyramid, with skyscrapers and suspended constructions lining each of the stepped outer segments, surrounding what she knew to be a mess of residential and industrial districts. At the top, arranged in a jagged circle of glass and steel, now those were banks and megamalls and mansions hogging all of the natural light, as little of it there was on this day. A couple of tiers below that, she spotted a small shape eject out from between two closely-packed buildings, a little dark box that turned and headed right their way, jet engines pushing it at an incredible speed to deliver them assistance.

“I got a photo!” Drummond placed his phone on the roof of the car, angled at her.

Kofuku squinted at the image, at the one big glowing eye that was reported and the mask…

The mask. She had only seen sketches, and the shape was markedly different, but now she knew what the extra lines were. It was modeled like a stingray’s body, with two large wings on either side sans the tail, and the optical unit was smack dab in the middle of it. His body seemed to be encased in a series of high-end pieces of polymer plating, not so different from the sort of full body combat armour she’d glimpsed in free magazines distributed by some megacorporation or other. He was the real deal: heavy duty, possibly not even human, but Kofuku knew it was him. “That’s our guy.”

“Good. Anything else we need to know about?”

“Just reiterate he’s always armed. Even if he doesn’t look like it. Oh and limb shots should be perfectly fine.”

“For real?”

“No flesh there. Just blow parts off him.”

“Fucking hell…”

The flying transport roared as it arrived overhead, tilt-rotors switching to vertical configuration as it began to lower itself onto the tarmac at the empty far end of the lot, covering a bunch of vacant marked parking spaces. The ramp in the back folded down, and no less than a dozen men in black combat gear, masks and all, submachine guns slung over their shoulders. They naturally formed two curved rows in front of Drummond, who held up his phone.

“Target is a combat cyborg of unknown origin!” he shouted over the sound of the transport’s engines. “Armaments unknown, but assume heavily armed, even if he doesn’t seem that way. We need him alive, so no twitchy fingers in there. Limb shots only, centre mass as a last resort. There’ll be civilians and employees so move them! Any questions?”

The team captain shook his head. “Got it. And her?” He nodded in Kofuku’s direction.

“Division Four,” Drummond said. “She’ll be going with you.”

“Try not to make contact. Prioritise evacuation,” Kofuku said. “Have me talk to him and we might have less casualties.”

“We also have a man inside,” Drummond added. “Oscar James Mendelev, in plainclothes. Try not to put a hole in him or I’ll owe him even more money.”

The captain saluted Kofuku. “Agent. Are we going to have trouble with Mobius?”

“Not with this, and a badge.” She held up her membership card. “And it’s not like we’re going into their territory. Anything on this side of their inner tills is still UHE territory.”

“Veld, you’re watching her.”

The shortest member of the strike team held up his hand to indicate himself.

“Let’s move.” Drummond led the way, striding straight up to the automatic doors and stepping in as they parted for him. As soon as he stepped foot inside the second set of doors, a worker in a red polo was already in his way, holding a card reader out to him, only to freeze as six heavily armed men and Kofuku filed in behind him. Drummond produced his holographic badge holder instead, embossed with the department’s animated insignia. “I’d like to talk to a manager.”

The worker nodded quickly, and ducked behind the reception desk next to the door to use an internal phone.

“Go on ahead, I’ll see if they have cameras. Keep the same channel.” Drummond went to accompany the worker.

Kofuku went up to the barrier and tapped her card, opening it for the whole team and herself to slip in without rousing suspicion.

The first section of the supermarket was designed to seem completely inconspicuous to the untrained eye, and as far as anyone could tell, was the size of the warehouse visible from outside. They jogged past the fresh produce, the lines of chilled products with suspiciously broad variation even for a core planet like Corinth Prime, and the entire battalion of freezers full of ice creams in the very back, next to where the fresh seafood was being displayed. In between the two sections there was a simple keycard door, unlabeled, against which Kofuku tapped her member’s card.

The warehouse, against all conventional logic, extended several more times its initial length, stretching into the far distance even expanding out wider than the outside had been, and with the ceiling lifted all the way up.

Kofuku spotted Veld staring up towards the “ceiling”, knowing full well that while he might have been briefed on such a thing, he had certainly never properly set foot in the Multiplex. She tapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s focus on the suspect, yes?”

The captain knelt down and pressed a hand to his helmet. “Drummond? Yeah, we’re in the back. Top left corner, okay. How many civvies? Uhuh. Yes. Uhuh. Okay.” He turned back to his team. “Loud and clear?”

Each of the assault team members took turns giving their affirmatives. Kofuku just gave a thumbs-up, unable to hear the radio chatter herself. She put a hand on Veld’s shoulder, as did the others to each other as a chain. She reached back, and the device in her backpack spat out six rectangular pieces of paper, with peelable adhesive on one face and arcane characters printed on the other, plus some red stamps. She passed them up the chain. “Stick this on the shelves near the far end. I’ll flag him if he passes and I’ll know.” After a bit of shuffling the talismans around, a series of taps went up from the back, and then they were off, first moving perpendicular to the various aisles before a member split off into each, skipping any vacant aisles, leaving Veld and Kofuku by themselves in the empty canned goods aisle.

In the middle, Veld held up a hand and stopped for a moment, listening to something in the earpiece inside his helmet, and turned to her. “Mendelev isn’t responding.”

“Shit.”

“We’re moving up.” He continued on their way.

Kofuku turned to peer through the pallets and large packages of canned soup to her right, watching civilians flee towards the connector door and to the safety of the first zone of the supermarket. Between some racks of pickled bell peppers, she saw one of the team members shushing another anxious shopper before directing them back where they had come.

Veld stopped in front of her, and she almost bowled into him, grabbing onto the shelf to steady herself. Veld peeled off the sticker on the back of his talisman and flattened it out on the shelf next to some jars containing a vegetable Kofuku failed to recognise; likely a succulent of sorts from a faraway reality, and more than likely, some planet unknown to her.

She stood up slightly, and peered over to the gun section. The target was just out of view, but she recognised Oscar prone on the ground, bleeding from a head wound, and quickly ducked back down. Unconscious…or dead. She shook off the idea. “What’s he- what’s the target doing?”

Veld listened for a moment. “Unclear.” He tilted his posture to peek between more crates. “Looks like he’s got a gun on a worker. Pistol, plasma, maybe?” He listened a little longer. “He’s getting something strapped to his body.”

“A bomb?”

“Looks like a parachute thing.”

Kofuku sucked in a breath. “I’m going out there.”

Veld looked at her. “That’s a stupid idea.”

“If you take a shot now there’s no guarantee it'll disable him. I’ll distract him, you find a better line of sight.” She took her hand off his shoulder and started moving forwards, faster than he could take a hand of his gun and grab her.

“Wait, shit!” he hissed, and started talking into his radio.

Kofuku tapped a button on her watch, and reached back to receive another talisman. This one she pushed into her shirt sleeve, before raising both hands and slowly stepping out of the end of the aisle.

The cyborg, holding a pistol to an employee’s side, immediately shifted his aim to her. There was no readable expression, only a single, glowing eye. Whatever she was about to say was cut short, because he spoke first, in a strangely chipper, modulated voice. “Ah, princess,” he began. For some reason, she could tell he was smiling underneath the mask. “Long time no see.”