Chapter 50

  FRAMED AND BLAMED

  NEW YORK/ 2059

  It was night in New York, and the city was being punished by howling wind and relentless rain. Hurricane Fran?ois the Third was on its way. They’d run out of standard names long ago—too many storms—so now they recycled international ones, slapping on Roman numerals like sequels to a horror film. Fran?ois III was just another in a long, violent series.

  Most New Yorkers were holed up inside, behind storm-proof shutters, flickering lanterns, and battery-powered radios. Outside, the streets shimmered like oil-slick glass under sputtering street lights. Only the police, delivery drones, and a few desperate looters prowled the soaked, wind-lashed streets.

  At the edge of the city, on a bleak industrial estate, a nondescript metal warehouse stood against the storm. Inside, Detective Tucker loomed behind NYPD Cyber Division specialist Kyle Smith.

  It had been nearly a week since the damaged robots and computers had been dredged from the harbour. Kyle had dried, cleaned, and coaxed them back to life, prising digital clues from dead machines under the cold glow of monitors. The faint hum of servers filled the space like an electronic heartbeat.

  Kyle looked immaculate—hair sharp, suit tailored—an image of precision. Especially next to Tucker, whose crumpled shirt, crooked tie, and five o’clock shadow marked him as a relic of a grittier time. He was old-school, stubbornly analogue in a digital world.

  Kyle’s eyes flicked across streams of code, fingers hovering like a conductor before a symphony of commands. Occasionally, they darted down to tap, drag, or decrypt.

  He was thirty, tech-savvy—and not the kind of man who’d typically associate with Tucker.

  But things had gotten messy.

  When Internal Cyber launched an investigation into Tucker—his accounts, his search history, his encrypted messages—it was Kyle who found something damning. Something that could have destroyed him.

  But instead of reporting it, Kyle came to him quietly.

  “I can delete it,” he said. “Call it... an off-the-books service.”

  Blackmail, technically. But Kyle didn’t see it that way. It was just business—illegal, efficient, and profitable.

  Tucker paid up. Not angrily—gratefully.

  And from there, the arrangement deepened.

  Tucker began offering Kyle more: data purges for the mob, hacks into rival gangsters’ networks, surveillance wipes from the city’s omnipresent AI cams. Dirty work. Lucrative work. And Kyle knew full well Tucker was skimming a hefty commission off the top.

  But this job was different.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  This time, Kyle was working directly. No buffer. No Tucker. Straight to the top: Viktor Romanov.

  He’d still cut Tucker in, of course—ten, maybe fifteen percent. A fair share. Not the bloated forty percent he suspected Tucker had been pocketing.

  Tucker had warned him. Paternal, tired.

  “Working for Viktor directly? Yeah, the money’s better. But so’s the danger. I’ve kept your name out of it, Kyle. Protected you. But Viktor doesn’t like ghosts. You screw up—even once—and it’s not just your career on the line.”

  He hadn’t needed to say the rest. The look in his eyes said it all.

  It could be your life.

  Kyle had dismissed it. Fear tactics, he figured. Tucker just wanted to keep his cut.

  But now, as the wind screamed outside and sirens wailed faintly in the distance, Kyle felt the pressure settle in around him—thick, electric, undeniable.

  He broke the silence, his voice low.

  “This is what I think. Whoever killed Mikal... they were a programming genius. It wasn’t about money. They didn’t touch the sacks of stolen loot. They hacked Stipe Industries’ security—firewalls, firmware, proprietary OS. That’s not just hard. That’s supposed to be impossible.”

  He paused, eyes locked on cascading code.

  “There’s a massive bug bounty prize for breaching Stipe’s systems. Whoever pulled this off... they might try to claim it in the future. We should monitor that. Failing that, my bet? It was one of the mugging victims—or someone close to one of them. Revenge-driven. Personal.”

  Tucker nodded slowly. “Yeah, makes sense. But I thought there was a hack at the station, and all victim reports and details have gone?”

  Kyle looked up, his expression unreadable.

  “Yeah, the files were erased. However, thanks to the media coverage, many of the victims refiled their reports. It’s the ones who didn’t... those are our prime suspects. Or possibly a family member of the man Mikal killed. He had a son—fourteen years old—who was genetically engineered to be exceptionally intelligent. So perhaps we should look at him first.

  "I think most of the ones who stayed silent—who didn’t come back to file new reports—did so out of fear," Kyle said. "They probably thought Mikal was behind it, not knowing he’s dead. Or perhaps they suspected that some of the police were involved. With Mikal. And let’s be honest—parts of the NYPD are compromised.”

  Tucker gave a sarcastic smile. “You don’t say.”

  Kyle looked up, his expression unreadable. “There’s one other suspect with motive... but I’m not sure he’d go that far.”

  Tucker raised an eyebrow. “Ethan Stipe? I was thinking the same thing. He might’ve found out Mikal was using his robots for muggings. That’s bad for business. And it’s Stipe’s satellite software—he’d have no trouble tracking Mikal.

  Plus, I heard the hacking of the police firewall and all the bad publicity drove a ton of businesses to switch to his system. Stipe’s stock price has gone through the roof.”

  He scoffed. “Ethan Stipe probably thinks he’s above the law just because he’s up on Mars—pardon the pun. I’d love to see that son of a gun brought down.”

  Tucker leaned in, lowering his voice.

  “You know he’s got something shady going on in those Martian caverns. A pleasure dome for rich perverts, if you ask me.”

  Kyle smirked. “You watch too much Dale ‘Two Barrels’ Harlan.”

  “Maybe,” Tucker muttered. “Anyway, we can always throw that name in the hat if Viktor starts pressuring us to name a suspect. Not that I know how the hell Viktor would even get to him—Mars ain’t exactly local.

  Also, if that fourteen-year-old kid did it because Mikal murdered his father, I wouldn’t feel right handing him over to Viktor. It doesn’t bear thinking about—what he’d do to him.”

  "I seriously doubt it's the Kid. Hacking Stipe's security is hard—really hard," Kyle responded.

  He rubbed his chin, then stopped. The colour drained from his face.

  “You think we’ve been recorded?”

  Kyle nodded slightly. “Yeah. We are. But I fed the system a fake AI overlay—looped footage of us doing and saying nothing controversial. We’re clean.”

  Tucker exhaled with relief.

  Suddenly, a thunderous crash echoed through the warehouse as the metal doors slammed open. The roar of the hurricane howled in like a predator unleashed. Wind tore across the concrete floor, and rain sprayed in sideways.

  Framed in the doorway stood Viktor Romanov.