District III / Cindy's House / The First Shift
Cindy's apartment was dark except for the emergency strips flickering along the walls. ROLO dragged Shakes inside, metal arms trembling under the weight of the boy. Both of Shakes' legs bent at impossible angles, yet he clenched his teeth and kept moving, refusing to cry.
But ROLO ignored Shakes completely.
He rushed straight to Cindy's body.
"Cindy… Cindy…" Shakes whispered, voice breaking.
ROLO knelt beside her—slowly, reverently. Then his optics dilated, glowing a deeper cobalt. A pulse left his chassis, and suddenly the entire room filled with floating holopanels. Dozens. Then hundreds.
Medical layouts. Nervous system blueprints. Brain–chip neuro-maps. Cognitive backup protocols. Forbidden manual integration procedures. The air shimmered with pure data.
Shakes stumbled back, nearly dropping.
"ROLO… what are you doing?"
"Assessing damage."
His tone wasn't the playful mechanical quirk it always held. It was colder. Cleaner. Almost… enlightened.
He scanned again—another pulse. Cindy's vitals appeared ghost-like above her chest.
Flatline.
Everywhere.
Shakes slammed his fist into the floor.
"She's gone, ROLO… It was my fault! I left her! I—"
ROLO paused.
He turned—slow, deliberate—as if searching through the right emotional file.
Then he said softly,
"Shaky… it is not your fault. But she is not gone. We are going to bring her back."
Shakes froze.
"What? ROLO… what are you saying?"
The robot straightened. Even the way he stood was different.
His servos no longer stuttered.
His movements were too smooth.
Too… human.
"I will restore her consciousness into a manual."
Shakes blinked, horrified.
"That's impossible! Full human integration hasn't been cracked. Not even close. The brain—consciousness—mapping the self… ROLO, that's years away."
ROLO turned fully, leaning close, optics narrowing.
"Impossible? No.
Complex? Yes."
He leaned closer still, and Shakes instinctively backed up.
"Shakes… I can bring her back. I can save everyone. But you are going to have to trust me. Time is of the essence."
Shakes' heart hammered.
This wasn't the same ROLO he knew. Something was inside him––or awakened in him.
But the voice…
The voice was still ROLO's.
And he loved Cindy.
Shakes swallowed, stepped forward again.
"…Yes. Yes, I'll help. Just tell me what we need."
ROLO's processors hummed in satisfaction.
CUT TO: District III – A Pharmacy
A tired pharmacist scanned in prescriptions for a long line of chip-implant users. AdNorm—Bineth's most profitable neuro-suppressant—sat behind him on a shelf like gold bars.
Then the store's AI voice cut through the speakers:
"SYSTEM UPDATE: AdNorm price dropped by 97%. Confirmed. Global price shift."
For a second, the entire pharmacy froze.
"…What?"
Then:
"Get me a pack!"
"Four packs!"
"Ten!"
"Is that real!?"
The crowd surged like a tidal wave. Shelves shook. Boxes flew. The AI tried to calm them:
"PLEASE REMAIN ORDERLY—PRICE DROP VERIFIED—STOCK IS SUFFICIEN—"
Nobody listened.
Across District III, every pharmacy, kiosk, drone-drop, and vending unit stampeded under the same chaos.
A global economic tremor had just been unleashed.
OFFSITE PORT — DISTRICT II — NIGHT
A low fog curled off the water, carrying diesel and salt and the tang of rust. Neon from distant kiosks threw sickly colors across puddles. The van's side door slammed. Two rough hands hauled a hooded figure out into the dripping night and shoved him to his knees on the cracked concrete.
They stripped the hood back. The retributor blinked against the wet light and saw who had him: Butch, flanked by a ring of pale-grinned men with guns that caught the neon like hungry fish.
The commissioner's face was a hard slab of contempt and tired amusement. He chewed a cigarette and didn't bother to light it.
"What is this?" the captive rasped. "Commissioner, what are you doing? I swear to God—"
Butch cut him off with a flat hand. Around them the gang laughed—short, ugly sounds that echoed off shipping containers.
"You smoke, son?" Butch asked conversationally. His voice was an old boot scraping over metal—abrasive and practiced. He finally ignited the cigarette and drew the smoke in like it belonged to him. He exhaled slow, letting the ember glow in the dark. "That attitude won't take you anywhere."
The retributor's jaw worked. "You don't know who I am—"
"Save it." One of Butch's lieutenants stepped forward. He cracked a leather glove against his palm and smiled like a butcher before a show. "Don't lecture us on law and codes, Retro. We're the law and Order, ain't we?"
Then the lesson started. A nail-splitting blow to the ribs. Kicks to the thighs. The retributor doubled and tasted seawater and copper. He spat blood that glistened under neon. Butch watched with an odd tenderness, like a man appraising a bad investment.
"Some years back," Butch said, voice almost nostalgic, "we had the Bladekill. You remember him? Mad bastard. Filmed every last goddamn thing. People called him a monster—because he was. But monsters have a use." He flicked ash onto the wet pavement. "He taught everyone what fear looks like."
The captive's eyes glittered. "What is this—"
Butch stepped in close, the cigarette smoke curling between them. "You think I don't know fear?" he asked. "You think I don't know what it does to a man?" He tapped the barrel of his pistol against the retributor's temple. The sound rang thin and unforgiving. "No. We learned from the Bladekill. Learned how fear speaks. And tomorrow—tomorrow is when we return the favor. Tomorrow we take back our city from you and your kind,"
A ripple of murmurs, excited and crude, passed through the ring. Someone produced a crude camera—old-school, purposefully grainy—and Butch grinned at the lens like it owed him money.
"We'll send a message," he continued, pacing now as if reciting a prayer. "Not a whisper. A broadcast. You lot run rampant—judge, prosecutor, executioner—like you own these streets. But you forget one thing: the people we swore to protect don't need your justice. They need us, the police, not private swine heads." His grin widened until it was all teeth.
The retributor tried to shout—tried to spit curses that would carry defiance into the night—but each attempt died in his throat as officers swarmed him.
"But why?" the captive choked. "What do you hope to gain—"
Butch crouched, bringing his face level with the ruined man's. He smelled like old whiskey and wet leather; his eyes were flat iron.
"We gain control." He tapped a ring on his finger. "We let the world see what weak swines you are without your chips. We scare the gangs. We scare the corpos. Most People have been dying to lay a finger on you lots, tomorrow they will." He let the words sit. "Tomorrow's Election will bring the people united against a common enemy, you damn blood suckers."
He rose. "I want him stripped to atoms." Two men seized the retributor by his arms and dragged him toward the cargo hold of the van. The captive kicked and screamed, but the laughter swallowed him—sharp, hungry, and certain.
As the van doors closed, Butch took one slow drag from his cigarette and watched the reflection of the city ripple across the smoke.