It was stiflingly hot on the streets, and Kane’s raging heart was not helping. He felt like a sizzling steak, salty and ready to eat. He raced towards his island of solitude and flung open the door. It had to be here somewhere. He scattered his fine collection of knifes and daggers. No sign of it. He proceeded to rummage inside his bag but the force of his eagerness ripped it open and the contents fell on the floor with a clatter. He dropped to his knees and looked. Nothing. He had to trace his steps back from the pier. Going back to a crime scene was as good as suicide. How could have he been so careless. Wild theories of Sati finding out his hobby each one more absurd that the other formed inside his head. He went back to the deserted pier at the harbor but with least hopes of finding it. It was too crowded and anyone could have picked it up. After an hour of frantically searching for the foot long shiny blade, he decided to return to the crime scene.
He went back to the main road at the power plant and cruised over to the left. Slowly, as though someone watching might think he was a harmless explorer, he turned left. When he took the third turn right, a winking red light caught his eye and he glanced down the cluster of trees. The yellow tape was already up, and several hover-crafts were crowded into a hurried splay. He ducked and slipped under the tape. The large, bare concrete room was unnaturally quiet. The officers stood in silent groups of two and three, as if afraid to be alone, and simply looked at the towers of cash, loose change and notes in fifty’s and hundreds being fetched by the technicians. The only sound in the room was the scampering of feet of the boys holding the trunks laden with stoners. Kane would have laughed out loud if he hadn't been missing his murder weapon.A loud yell made him turn. “Hey this is a crime scene,” a man came hurrying from behind him. He had jet black hair and a scar ran through his forehead. “Who do you think you are busting in on an ongoing investigation?”“I’m here to meet my friend Robert” Kane said“Well well well, look who it is” said the man. He had to be Harry, the head of the peacekeeper detectives.“Kane Morgan” Kane offered a handshake. Harry stared but didn’t shake it.“I know who you are Mr. Kane, but you might not know me””Matter of fact I do” said Kane brightly, “Mr. Harry, head of the detective department”.He looked unimpressed.“Why are you here Mr. Morgan?”“I just wanted to meet my friend. He hasn’t been answering my calls” Kane said casually. He looked at his eyes, intently. Trying to figure out what it was.Harry jerked his head, “He is not here”“Then I’ll take your leave” Kane said. There was something wrong.Did he suspect him? Did he find his prints on the knife he left behind?Kane slowly walked towards the door when Harry called him.“Mr. Morgan, I joined the force seven years ago as a traffic keeper. The day I joined, a fellow human sprinted up to me and urged me to stop a young demilien following him, but before I could act the demilien sped away. The man was never seen again. Do you know who was the demilien that slipped from my hands and killed a human in cold blood?”“I can hardly guess…” Kane said, abusing every ounce of his will to keep calm.“It was you Mr. Morgan. I could never find any evidence of your wrong doing but I do follow you. People you hate have a tendency to go missing suddenly.”“You think so earthling” Kane said, dropping his casual mannerism, “then prove it.”This was a war. A war of right and wrong! And he knew the humans were wrong!A handsome three tiered concrete dome rose in the distance, blazing white in the blatant morning sun. A lawn stretched out in front where a fountain was playing in the center. Gravel crackled beneath his feet as Broot dashed towards the front door. A tiny dwarf bowed down and flung the gate opes as Broot waved his hand to enter. The hallway was large, lines of dusty portrait of look alike goblins adorned the walls, the stone floor was covered in a moth eaten carpet. A rank smell of decay hung in the air. The hallway ended and a heavy door blocked his path. He took a deep breath and turned the stone handle. The room was dark and full of dwarfs sitting at a long stone table. At the far end of the table, a goblin sat beside the central figure. A thin dwarf with pointed ears and a blue half jacket. “Broot” the dwarf said, “Come, we were waiting just for you.” Broot walked in closer and the face of the thin lean dwarf with watery blue eyes shoe through the gloom.
Kane was wandering in the passover, diamonds bouncing off his shoulders and flying into blue smoke. He walked in the rainbow lights flickering off the falling rain. He had no sense of where he was going, the cogs of his brain whirring and moving as he traced every detail of his adventures with the power plant engineer. He was not in that shell that walked on the maglev roads, shining wet. And yet when the comm rang he knew it was Sati and he knew she would be bitter. His hands were already sweating as he grabbed the comm and answered. “Yes,” he said.“Where are you? Sayan said you left hours ago?” the annoyed voice said“I’m at work,” He said as casually as he could.“Really? You take me for a fool, huh?. Kane, tell me the truth” she yelled.“What truth” Kane said heart pounding, Harry had to go, he had made up his mind.“You are sleeping with her, aren’t you?”“Who… What are you talking about?”“That girl from the news, Effie. I know you were there last night”
Kane Morgan sucked deep on the greenish smoke from the leaf cigar and leaned back on the bed. The darkness of the room pressed on in the feeble light from a lone lamp in the corner.It had been three days since he set foot outside. Efiie sat beside him on the bed. Luckily she had a virtual job. Kane found it amusing. He was the hardworking, bring-it-on kind of guy and didn’t understand how she could work wall those emotions in the soulless digital world. He offered her a puff and put his arms around her. She put out the cigar and he kissed her gently on the lips. Her mouth was sweet and he gents pulled her down on the bed. She closed her eyes and Kane felt her heart drum against his. They made love until it was time for lunch. After lunch they made love again and Kane asked, “what do you want to eat for the third meal?”She pressed against him “Just you” she said. “What will you say to your wife?”Kane had
The tracer took four hours, sometimes five to return a search. Effie would be finished by then. Kane took a deep breath and decided to clear the air between him and Sati. It had to be done, no matter how much he hated her. He left the building and in fifteen minutes was at his destination. Everything around him flashed white blinding him for an instant and then he was back in a dim lit hallway of the Wockhart's residence. The tall form of Sayan Wockhart was standing right in front of Kane, eyes groggy and red, wearing a electric blue night robe with tiny hats printed in black all over it. A stone basin was shimmering in the corner. Sayan looked like he had swallowed a toad. “Where have you been, you moron!” Yelled Sayan raising his eyebrow. “You should try it sometime, funny how it makes you take the plunge” Kane looked at him with dull eyes and sighed. "Try what? Cheating on my wife? Disappearing for weeks
Sati walked out of the Wockhart house and went straight to her office. She closed the door and making sure there wasn’t anyone in the hallway outside, she pulled out a piece of paper that had a code on it. She dialed the code and a wireframe three dimensional image of the 404 CONTENT NOT FOUND popped up over the comm. A deep voice answered, “I was waiting for your call”“I have news. He has moved in with her. That’s where he was for two weeks”“I told you he’s cheating on you”There was an awkward silence broken only by the static of the comm.“What should I do now?”“Listen to me. Do as I say and we might still get him.”“Get him how?” Sati screeched. Talking about separating was one thing. Being separated was other. She felt like a broken piece of furniture nobody cared about. “He has an empire and you were with him when he built it. You deserve your share. I’ll help you with the court case, but I need hard evidence. Stay at his home for a while and gathe
Kane even with all the technology of this day wouldn’t have found it possible. The plethora of information recorded over the centuries, and classified genealogically. It made him swoon over the earthling. Satellites were useless in the intense heat of R-786. It made radio communication impossible. But earthlings had found the way out. They sent short burst of signals for a kilometer, captured it at small foot long heat attenuators or HAR and sent the signal forward. A network of these HAR poles all across the planet was what the earthlings had established. And for what? To allow someone like him to track down and kill the corrupt among them. He was certainly enjoying himself for he received the tracer back with data. Data that corroborated with the request for TASK. And he was flying at an altitude of about two metres above the shining slag covered giant magnet strips under the asphalt that the humans used to ride their wheel based vehicles. He preferred flying
Fate had done Dilip no favors this morning. He'd dashed from his office into the open road. A mysterious man had walked into his office seconds ago and demanded to know all about the Pridewen’s chest. He refused. The maniac pulled out a lighting gun and aimed straight at his heart. Dilip was holding a hot grubbly root drink. He flung the glass cup straight at his face and dashed out. The curb of the walkway had stopped him mid stride and swung him hard left before falling. Dilip was suddenly stumbling off balance into the blinding sun. When he’d looked up, he was heading straight for a cluster of trees across the road. He had a weak heart and his left knee was broken years ago in a freak accident. The gift of the chest. He jumped over, brushing a loosely hung rope and dashed in. By the time he realized where it led, it was too late. Now he stood in a confined cell of trees and caught his breath. His side burned. Narrow slats of sun streamed through the openings in the grove. He
The dwarf lay motionless in front of Kane, a thin curl of smoke rising from his body. The rain had started and in a matter of seconds, diamonds falling from the sky would rip apart the human. Kane hurried towards Dilip and held him up, pressing his comm to summon his hovercraft. The hovercraft whooshed past the grove and drifted slowly towards him. He pulled open the door and shoved Dilip inside. Just as he was about to enter however, a loud voice boomed over a microphone and took him by surprise. He turned around to look at the speaker.“I’ve got you this time” said a familiar voice.Kane turned around, “Harry? What are you doing here”“What do you think?” He clapped his hands and a couple of peacekeepers walked out of the tree around the grove and marched in resonance, geared with the formidable railgun, camouflaged attire and black leather boots. Harry moved forward, a mousy looking human moved wit