Officer Aaron Brent pulled into the parking lot of Newcastle police station at nine am. sharp that Tuesday morning. As he walked in he gave a weary “good morning” to Marli at reception and another to Charlie at the desk next to him. On his desk was his instructions for the morning, review the security camera footage from a petrol station robbery the previous night. Grumbling to himself about why on earth this job couldn’t have been done by the security company, Officer Brent opened the file that had been sent to him and began watching. The recording began at 7:30pm and showed nothing different for the first half hour, just a teenage clerk standing at the counter, obviously bored out of his mind. A couple minutes after eight o’clock a girl, around fourteen, walks in, wearing an absurd amount of pink “she looks like some hello kitty obsessed five year old”. The girl goes straight up to the counter and buys a kitkat from the display. Just as she begins making small talk with the cashier, the screen goes black and letters start appearing, in all the colours of the rainbow, coming together to form the word ALPHABET and dispersing, over and over again. A couple of seconds later there is a crack of static and a voice, obviously a teenager but no discernable gender,
“Is it working? Yes! I think it’s working!” another voice joins the first one
“Ash, I told you not to do the thing with the name.” The first voice, the one that must be Ash, replies
“but the thing with the name is cool, Alex, look it’s rainbow, like us”
“but you should be focusing on stopping the cameras, not doing whatever this is” Alex sighs, seemingly used to Ash being off-task.
“What’s happening?” the voice of a young boy speaks and obviously shocks the other two.
“God Ben, has Malala been teaching you stealth?” Ash laughs “Alex is saying that this isn’t cool”
“What I’m saying is that Ash needs to focus on the task at hand and not be playing around with cool visuals” Alex explains.
“So you’re saying that it is cool!” Ash exclaims, triumphant
“Yes, yes you are good at graphic design, now come on Ben, let’s get you back to bed”
“Can you read me another chapter?” Ben asks
“Yeah sure, are you ready for some dragons?” Alex laughs and their voices get quieter until they can’t be heard at all. Officer Brent thought that that was the end but Ash speaks one more time.
“Can you see why we have to do this? That kid doesn’t know what we do to keep him fed, doesn’t know what would’ve happened if we hadn’t found him on the street, doesn’t know how cruel this world is, so just let us have this one.” Static again. The cameras turn back on. The girl in pink leaves the store. A couple hours later the cashier packs up. The recording ends.
Officer Brent contemplates the video for a couple minutes, thinking about his own kids at home and how much they could benefit from more money, Andrew could do soccer like he’s always wanted, Ava could go on that school trip to Sydney, even his wife Liz could afford to start the small business she had the idea for years ago. But, he couldn’t be a criminal, even if he wasn’t a policeman, he couldn’t risk it, if his family lost him, no, he couldn't-
“Officer Brent” the sharp voice of his boss, Sergeant White made him immediately attentive,
“Yes Sergeant?”
“Officer Brent” the Sergeant repeated “I have a case for you.”
“A-a case, but I-I’m not a detective”
“All of our detectives are busy at the moment, but if you solve this case I may consider a promotion.” This was perfect, if he could solve this case his family could do all the things they wanted.
“I accept the case sergeant”
“Well it wasn’t really a choice but okay, come with me to my office so I can give you a briefing.”
Sergeant White laid a file on the desk in his office.
“There has been a gang stealing money from large businesses in the city and surrounding areas. We do not know much about them as the ones we’ve seen have been wearing masks. We do know however, that they have a skilled hacker, a forgery expert, a well-trained martial artist, a stealth master, who we have seen wearing a hijab, and a leader. They are all extremely good at what they do and we are thus unable to track them down as of yet, but we will use all the resources we can to bring them to justice. Do you believe you can do this, Officer Brent?”
“I will do all I can for this case” Officer Brent hoped he could hide the scared look on his face, this gang must be made up of seasoned criminals who had been doing this for decades. No he couldn’t think like that. He could do this.
“You will begin this investigation next Monday. But first, we have a suspected trespassing that we would like you to act upon.”
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