The Neo-Metropol Heist

49: Epilogue

"So far, there has been no direct comment from Governor Castells on the matter. But both his campaign team and CastellsTech public relations have declined to comment on the matter any further than acknowledging that there was a security breach during the investor conference and something was taken."
The television mocked Jaeger from the corner of the room, the press desperately vying to break the story first but struggling with the scant details they had been given. In truth, most of them were funded by Castells anyway, so it didn't really matter in the end.
"As well as this, shares in CastellsTech Security Solutions have plummeted in the past few hours, which is massively damaging to the parent company as a whole. Investors may be predicting a fall in sales as customers ask themselves the question, if CastellsTech can't protect their own assets, why should anybody pay them for the same service?
"Meanwhile, the Neo-Metropol Patrol Force are giving little detail in response to reports that a suspect that they removed from the building after the event has escaped custody..."
Lutalo leaned forward from his desk and gestured for the screen to turn off, and the room went silent.
They were sat in his office, Jaeger slumped in the comfortable leather chair in front of his desk. Her thoughts were of Artem, her mind replaying the same scene over and over again.
"We will run damage control for now," Lutalo said, "we still haven't heard from Castells - nobody has, in fact. This is the very definition of a clusterfuck, detective."
Jaeger nodded.
"We underestimated the perp," Lutalo went on, "it happens. Right now, we take five and come back with fresh eyes. We do our job."
Jaeger didn't know what to tell him. The urge to hunt was gone - Artem was gone - even Sergei Castells was gone, and all Jaeger wanted to do was sleep.
"It's still a job you want to do, isn't it, detective?" Lutalo asked, leaning forward.
Jaeger didn't see the point in lying.
"Honestly, captain," she started, "I don't know. I don't know what I want."
Lutalo nodded. He could see it, the defeat in her eyes. Was it defeat? It could have just as easily have been relief. Or just tiredness.
"I understand," he said, "go home detective. Switch off, and forget about all of this. If you still feel the same way in the morning, then we talk about it then."
"Sir, I..." Jaeger began.
"Look, Jaeger," he said, using her name, which took her by surprise, "if there's one thing I know, it's that you were made to do this. Maybe the circumstances aren't right, I get that, and I won't make you do anything that you don't want to do, because then you wouldn't be you.
"This force is broken, detective. It's corrupt, and it's sick, like the rest of the world. But if there's one person that can fix it, Jaeger, it's you."
Jaeger didn't reply, because she couldn't find the words. What if she didn't want to fix the force?
"Just don't do anything extreme without sleeping on it?" Lutalo asked, his eyes warm. For a split second, he reminded her of her father.
She nodded and stood up.
"Thank you, sir," she said, and bid him goodnight.
Jaeger didn't even bother visiting the OC floor, Stewart had clocked off an hour earlier and gone home. He was tough, but still just human. Jaeger realised that she would need to speak to him before she made a decision, but she couldn't have cared less about what anybody else thought.
Outside, the air was cold, winter winds greeted her and threatened to freeze the tears on her face if she let them fall. Meeting Artem had inverted everything she thought she knew about her life, or maybe, he'd just forced her to acknowledge something she'd known all along.
As she found the taxi rank and went to hail a cab, she felt something vibrate in her pocket that shook her out of her thoughts.
She reached into her winter jacket and pulled out her terminal, unlocking it and checking her messages.
If it had been any other day, she would have dismissed the message as spam, the 'sender' box was filled with a string of random code that made no sense, and in the 'subject' box, two words that simply said 'something smarter'.
Jaeger stopped still and waved the cab away that slowed to pick her up, tapping the message and bringing up a video. Images began to cycle through at speed, and she recognised the video that she had seen back in the research labs.
She saw the Beach cleared, hundreds of thousands displaced, or worse.
The rest of the email was empty, but that was all Jaeger needed. Something smarter.
Lutalo had said that people like her were supposed to cure the world, because it was sick. She didn't know about that, but that confidential video could do more than bring Castells' shares down, and she held it in her hands.
The winds gusted again, but then they didn't feel so cold. Jaeger slipped the terminal back into her pocket and thought of Artem.
High above her, the traffic pumped through the city like blood through veins, and for the first time in a long time, Jaeger felt free.