Jenn wasn’t quite sure how to feel about Josh. About his ability to keep handling the Harashima case. She’d spent the majority of the workday wrestling with what Josh had told her between other duties she’d been assigned to handle – or rather, the duties she’d volunteered to handle, seeing as Josh hadn’t bothered to even assign tasks between the members of the Harashima team for nearly a week. “Pick and choose among yourselves” had been his order as to who was doing what. Not that it was much of a problem – the team was more than capable of self-assigning investigative tasks, her included – it was just different from how Josh usually operated.

Then there was the question of whatever information he held that was so sensitive he couldn’t let anyone else know about it. Josh wasn’t the type to withhold intel, let alone at the expense of progress. Jenn had been working with Josh on many a case for close to a decade, and in that time, he had never acted like this.

Maybe the case really was getting to him on a level even Jenn didn’t fully understand. But if it was, why wouldn’t he step down and hand the case over to someone better-equipped to lead it? Obviously it had something to do with whatever had happened the week before, the night the Office’s main elevator broke down. What had happened that night, though? And why was Josh so secretive about it?

The number of questions running through her mind was so overwhelming that she had trouble focusing on what she was currently supposed to be doing. Enez’s files were open on her holocomp, ready to be scanned for any inconsistencies, but Jenn’s attempts at doing so in the past two hours had amounted to merely eyeing the text on the screen, her brain in a mode that wasn’t conducive to being a productive investigator.

Jenn didn’t usually decide to stay at the office this late into the night – she valued a healthy work-life balance – but an undetermined impulse had guided her to do so today. Maybe she’d felt the need to make up for her lack of productivity ear-lier in the day by working overtime. But clearly it wasn’t work-ing.

She sighed in resignation and turned off the holocomp.

Then she got up and walked up to Josh’s office door – poor man had also decided to stay in late – this time remember-ing to ring the doorbell. “State your name and business,” sound-ed his voice from the speaker attached to it.

“It’s Jenn,” she responded. “Just letting you know I’m calling it a day.”

“Right. Was thinking the same.”

“Uh-huh. Want a ride home?” Jenn offered. She’d al-ways found it a little odd that Josh had a driver’s license but not his own car. With how far he lived from the Office of Legal and Military Operations, she would have thought he’d prefer to have his own ride instead of relying on public transport to get to and from work. Or maybe he liked using public transit.

“Nah, I’ll hop on a bus.”

“Suit yourself. Good night.”

“Night.”

With that, Jenn strolled over to the main elevator and rode it down to ground floor, then turned a few corners to get to the parking lot. The colorful night lights of Neo-Tokyo greeted her as ceilings stopped blocking the view. She wasn’t much of a nocturnal creature, but something about the visuals of the city at this hour spoke to her on a spiritual level.

Jenn thought she caught the shadow of something be-hind her as she walked up to her car and reached for the lever of its door.

She threw her gaze backwards in an attempt to deter-mine what it was. Nothing. Not even the faintest hint of anyone or anything having been behind her a second ago, even though she could swear she wasn’t alone. And she knew it wasn’t Josh.

Her neck remained craned in ‘look behind’ position for an unusually long time by her standards. But she had to make sure she hadn’t hallucinated the shadow. She wasn’t usually the paranoid type, but in this moment, she felt like she was. And that feeling only grew by the second, as the shadow didn’t ap-pear again.

Something struck her in the back of her head. She fell to her knees and bent over, doing her best to maintain conscious-ness. Her breathing became heavier. She tried to turn her head and look behind her again, see who had attacked her, but a hand clasped around her scalp with a firm grip, preventing it from moving. She struggled against the force, concluding it was no use as her muscles began to weaken gradually.

An oddly gentle female voice said to her in a half-whisper: “Sorry, honey. You’ll be fine.”

Then she felt something akin to a needle embedding to the side of her head, and her vision and mind went blank.

Josh’s wrist comm chirped just as he was about to walk out of his office. He looked at it and felt a slight sense of concern looking at the name on the screen. Jenn never called him out-side office hours unless it was an emergency, let alone on the police force’s internal frequencies.

He answered the call. Something felt off as soon as Jenn’s holographic projection came up in the air. Her expression felt… empty. Devoid of any emotion. Josh simply stared at the projection in shock, unable to utter so much as a grunt of con-cern.

“Don’t fret,” the holographic “Jenn” spoke. Quotes very much warranted, as even her inflection didn’t carry Jenn’s usual mannerisms. No, this was someone else speaking through Jenn. How and why? Josh was determined to find out.

“Who is this and what have you done with Jenn?” he growled.

“It’s your inside person. As for your coworker, you don’t need to worry. I just hijacked her brain momentarily.”

Josh felt a sensation that was wholly unfamiliar to him, like his heart was sinking. His breathing paused for a second. This merc was resourceful, he had to hand it to her. But above every other emotion he felt in the moment, concern for Jenn’s safety was at the top of the pyramid. “Why would you do that?!” he demanded.

“Safest way to get in touch with you. I have something you’ll want to know.”

“Hacking my colleague’s neural link is the safest way to get in touch with me?” Josh couldn’t believe what he was hear-ing. But at the same time, he was sure the killer had her reasons for having to resort to such an extreme measure.

Evidently she did. “Yes, if I want to stay untraceable. I’m doing this out of necessity, not malice.” Her tone – for what Josh could decipher of it, with her speaking through Jenn – was colored with slight agitation but mostly calm.

Josh sighed. Then he proceeded to ask: “Well, what did you wanna tell me? I’m assuming something related to the in-vestigation.”

“Yes and no.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“A group of my colleagues is set to walk into DanariTek and kidnap the boss tomorrow. Guy by the name of Martin Stokes. Operation’s scheduled for noon. There’ll probably be bodies. Unless you feel like making an appearance. I know you have a reputation in the force for an itchy trigger finger. Here’s an opportunity to actually put it into good use.”

Josh was quiet for a moment. He hadn’t been aware his reputation preceded him beyond the police force. But the offer was tempting. “So you want me to eliminate the goons and pre-vent the kidnapping? Is that it?”

“Wow, you are as sharp as you look,” the woman com-mented sarcastically.

Josh was thoroughly unamused by the “compliment”. A follow-up question came to his mind. “You want me to go there alone or should I bring backup?”

“Bring at least three bodies with you. One group to lead evacuation efforts, the other to gun down the infiltrators.”

Josh nodded. “Can I expect to see you there?”

“No. I’ll be busy elsewhere. Besides, I said you needed me out in the field.”

“I know. Was just curious.”

The woman snorted, as if she wasn’t entirely convinced. “Anyway, sayonara.”

“Wait,” Josh hollered, hoping he wasn’t too late. To his delight, the woman didn’t end the call just as he said the word. “Jenn’s gonna need medical attention. Where can I send some?”

“Parking lot. Propped up against what I assume to be her car.”

“Great. Thanks.” The holographic “Jenn” nodded, then disintegrated. Josh immediately dialed in another number – one of the head nurses – and had to wait no more than a few seconds for Rina Matsumoto to pick up. “Ah, Officer Heynes, how can I help you?” she chirped.

“Send a team to the parking lot. Jenn’s passed out by her car in there.”

“Right away, sir,” Rina replied and promptly ended the call.

“Hang on, Jenn,” Josh muttered to himself while head-ing for the main elevator. “Help’s on the way.” He almost want-ed to head to the parking lot and look over Jenn himself, but he was so spent from everything that had happened today that he simply wanted to go home.