Devin and Kazuto arrived at the server hall just as a dark gray cloud drifted into view directly above them, looking like it threatened to start dropping rain. But maybe it would stay a threat. Devin hoped it would.

“Huh,” he muttered as he looked at the cloud. “Forecast didn’t say it’d rain today.”

“Chances are it won’t,” Kazuto commented while open-ing the door on the passenger’s side. “And even if it does, it’s a good thing our gear is waterproof.”

“True.” Devin opened the other door and stepped out of the car. “Alright, let’s go.”

No raindrops fell in the time it took them to walk from the car to the server hall entrance. It was covered by a little me-tallic slant of a roof, so they cloud wait out any rain under it and stay dry should it come to that. Even with the waterproof police attire, Devin hated standing in the rain while wearing it.

The entrance was locked by a keycard scanner, a system designed to keep anyone who wasn’t a government employee or a member of law enforcement out of the building. Devin tapped on his wrist comm to produce his holographic badge and show it to the scanner, to which it beeped happily and allowed the door to slide open. Devin and Kazuto entered the hall, greeted by the sight of a young Japanese man with a buzz cut and a sin-gle vertical line on his chin constituting a beard. “Good day, gentlemen,” he welcomed the officers in Jangl. “How may I be of assistance?”

Devin proceeded to introduce himself and Kazuto while the two flashed their badges. “Devin Nichols, Neo-Tokyo police. And my colleague Kazuto Yamada.” Then he stated their business. “Got sent here on account of a corrupted database re-cord. Figured you might be able to explain how that’s possible.”

The man’s eyes widened. Evidently he’d thought such a thing should be impossible if anything. He raised a finger to his chin, shaking his head subtly as he spoke. “I’m afraid I’m not. Our servers should be corruption-proof. If a record did some-how become corrupted, it should try to repair itself.”

“Well, one of the files that made it to us didn’t.”

“But how?” The sense of shock emanating from the man was unlike anything Devin had seen prior. It was equivalent to that of a child finding out that Santa isn’t real.

“I was hoping you’d be able to tell us.”

“Like I said, this… I…” The man stuttered for a good moment while he struggled with the realization that the servers weren’t as tamperproof as they were supposed to be. On some level, Devin felt bad for him. Eventually, he pleaded: “Show me the record. I have to check this.”

“See for yourself,” Devin said while tapping on his wrist comm and producing the file of Nichiho Amano. The man waved him closer and guided him to connect his wrist comm to a terminal on the end of one of the server racks, which Devin had no trouble agreeing to. The man eyed the file Devin had dug out for a moment, growing no less surprised by the fact that a population database record had made it to the police in this state, then ran a pattern match for it against the file in the servers.

The terminal spat out a 100% match.

The man froze completely for a second. Even his breath-ing stopped. He was evidently wrestling with the revelation that there was indeed a corrupted file in the database, not to mention that it hadn’t repaired itself like he’d said it should.

One of his coworkers shouted something in Japanese from the side. From the intonation, Devin figured it to translate to “What’s wrong?” or something along the same lines.

The man hollered back a panicked response, followed by something that conveyed the coworker had been sent into equal shock. The conversation continued for a few more lines from both men, then the other joined the three of them at the ter-minal. Devin decided not to spend his brain power trying to de-cipher every word they hollered between one another. He’d ask Kazuto later if he felt curious enough.

The one thing he could reliably translate without con-sulting Kazuto was what the second man whispered after staring at the terminal screen for a moment. It meant “holy shit”.

That comment was followed by another from the first man. In Japanese.

Devin was growing more aggravated by the minute for not understanding what the two were saying. “Same in Jangl, please?” he pleaded at that point.

“Yes, sorry,” the first man replied, switching language. “I was saying this implies deliberate tampering. There’s no way a file would get corrupted like this randomly.”

“Any idea who could have tampered with it?” Kazuto inquired.

“It’d have to be one of the employees here. They’re the only ones with read-write access.”

Devin turned his attention to Kazuto following that re-sponse. “Let’s gather everyone around. Interrogate them about this and see if anyone confesses.”

“On it,” Kazuto replied and began to turn around, barely missing getting hit in the head by a bullet from above.

The two officers quickly unholstered their guns and turned their gazes to where they’d heard the gunshot coming from, catching the faint shape of a figure up on a catwalk be-ginning to run away. “Freeze!” they shouted in unison in diff-erent languages, but the shooter seemed to have no intention of obeying.

Devin quickly signed a set of instructions to Kazuto, and the two of them dashed in opposite directions in the hopes of surrounding the assailant and preventing their escape. Kazuto ran to the far end of the hall while Devin took the nearest ladder up to the catwalk. He climbed it and just caught the figure turn-ing a corner to the right as his head peeked out at the top. With a swift motion, he pulled himself all the way up and ran after the figure, turning the same corner and coming into a room that looked like a combination of kitchen and office, with various electronic devices strewn about the tables therein and the stench of stale coffee filling it with its bitterness.

Importantly, it seemed like a dead end. The only way out next to the doorway that led to this room was a single window with a very complex-looking opening mechanism. The shooter had to be here somewhere. Maybe crouched behind a couch.

Devin kept the barrel of his gun pointed ahead. Kazuto joined him only a few seconds later. “He’s somewhere in here?” he asked as he stepped through the doorway.

“Has to be. Only other way out is the window.”

Another gunshot echoed from the left. A warning shot. Devin and Kazuto turned the barrels of their guns to the direct-ion before their eyes. The shooter stood behind what looked like a kitchen counter, their gun pointed in the general direction of the officers. A young Japanese-looking man, barely in his 20s by Devin’s reckoning, with his head shaven bald and eyes that twinkled with fear more than hostility. Clothing that signified he was an employee at the server hall. No visible cybernetics.

Kazuto fired a shot at the young man’s shoulder, causing him to drop the weapon. “Mind telling us what gave you the idea to come to work carrying a weapon?” he growled inter-rogatively in Jangl.

“I’m guessing you’re the file tamperer?” Devin added his own inquiry.

“I’m not telling you guys shit,” the man muttered, doing his best to sound defiant despite knowing he’d already lost.

“Don’t need to,” Devin replied, keeping his gun pointed at him. “We could just arrest you. Got enough grounds to sus-pect you’re our culprit.”

The man laughed. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“What don’t we get?”

He crouched down, picked up the gun with his other hand, pressed it against his head…

“Shit,” Devin whispered.

Then the man pulled the trigger.

Devin and Kazuto simply stood there, watching the man’s body fall to the floor, blood and pieces of his brain crawl-ing down the wall. “Well,” Kazuto commented, “that’s one way to avoid going to jail.”

The two men from earlier appeared at the doorway, no doubt alerted to the room by the sound of gunfire. “What happened here?” one of them inquired.

“We caught the shooter,” Devin explained. “One of your coworkers. Took his own life.”

“Who?”

Devin gestured for the gentlemen to hold their position as he moved behind the counter, crouching down and standing back up a few seconds later with his ID projected on his wrist comm. “Daisuke Ito,” he recited. “Was apparently celebrating his twentieth today.” Then he sighed repentantly and looked back to the fresh corpse, cursing the timing of the incident. “Hell of a birthday gift.”

The server hall workers nodded mournfully. “Shame,” said the one that hadn’t spoken yet. “He was a bright kid.”

“Our morgue crew will be here to pick up the body with-in the hour,” Kazuto informed the men. They nodded and bowed, then Devin and Kazuto returned to their car.

Devin dialed Josh as soon as they made it back.

“How’d it go?” Josh inquired when he picked up, as to-the-point as ever.

“Could’ve gone better,” Devin replied with a mournful tone. “We ran into a shooter. Young native guy, barely in his 20s. Was probably behind the corrupted record.”

“So the file was deliberately tampered with?”

“Yeah. Guys we talked to confirmed as much. Only hands capable of modifying the files are those of the server hall employees.”

“What about the shooter? Got anything out of him?”

“No. He took his own life before we had the chance.”

Josh’s hologram nodded, a tangible heaviness to the mo-tion that carried as much regret as Devin did. Yeah. I hate it too, man.

“Great work,” Josh said after a moment of silence. “Send me the shooter’s ID. Even if he’s unavailable for testi-mony, we can still get something to work with.”

“On it,” Devin replied while tapping on his wrist comm, already complying to Josh’s request. Then he asked: “How are things on your end?” A question Josh technically didn’t have to answer, but Devin was curious what he was doing.

“Jenn and I are on our way to DanariTek to ask about neural glitches. Still on our way. We’ll see you back at the station.”

“Yeah. See ya.” Then Devin hit the End Call button.