5. Blinded By Sight

BLINDED BY SIGHT
A short cyberpunk story by Peter Whitmore

I received an invitation from the mercenary musician Aaron Steel to come over to the Autumn Falls sector again. This time he was alone, the whereabouts of the rest of his band unknown, probably on some top secret mission somewhere else around Pacific City. This time, he had lead me to the Hazukaro district, a specialized part of the urban sprawl that had popped up in Nevada due to Mitashi Technologies' influence in the sector bringing new waves of Japanese immigrants to America. Similarly, the near omnipresence of Icarus Industries and Asclepius Medical were bringing a lot of American and European citizens to Asian nations, which were beginning to relax their immigration policies a bit since national borders didn't matter quite as much as corporate territories. Eastern and Western cultures were starting to blend together, and there were few better examples of this than in the Hazukaro district.

The unique thing about this corner of Nevada was that augmented reality vision was required at all times. AR glasses were handed out for free when entering, and there were severe penalties for being caught without them, or with the AR vision disabled, even for a moment. The AR overlay was such an integral part to the city that no one was allowed to not see it. As a result, there were much tighter restrictions on what citizens were allowed to display in AR, since Hazukaro was advertised as a family friendly district. And what a sight it was. AR objects lit up the streets in a veritable kaleidoscope of colors everywhere you turned, and that was in addition to the brightly colored neon signs and colorful billboards that were already there, animated words jumping out at you in both English and Japanese. The buildings towering over everyone on the streets probably didn't look too special in reality, but through the AR overlay, virtual additions were made to their architecture to make them look like Edo-era Japan, except with much taller towers than probably ever actually existed in that time period of their history. Strings of glowing paper lanterns were strung between the buildings overhead of the streets, as were the visions of various flying creatures that were inspired by Japanese folklore.

The streets themselves, similarly, were populated in AR space by Japanese cartoon characters walking alongside the civilians, many of them being mascots representing MitaTech products. One of them, an animated woman dressed as a tour guide, approached me as soon as I left the AutoBus that brought me into the district, which now resembled a giant feline-bus hybrid from the outside as it entered the region. "Greetings! Welcome to Hazukaro, Stone-san! My name is Miki, and I will be your virtual guide and companion to this wonderful city!" She bowed in my general direction as I stepped off the bus. "For the best experience, please make sure that you have your augmented reality apparatus of choice activated at all times! Mitashi Technologies cannot be held liable for any accidents or injuries that may occur as a result of your AR device being inactive. If your device is damaged or disabled, please refer to an information kiosk to receive a new one." She held up a digital map of the Hazukaro district in her hand, various red points highlighted on it to indicate the locations she mentioned. "The streets at night can be dangerous if you don't know where you're going. I was created to make sure that you don't get lost! Now, where do you want to go first, Stone-san?"

I consulted the virtual notes that I left for myself in one corner of my personal AR overlay before replying to the AI. "I'm here to see Mr. Tanaka, first name Watari."

Miki froze for a moment as her AI algorithms ran a search for my client. "Tanaka-san last checked in at the Hazukaro Police Department. Would you like me to take you there now?"

I complied, and watched the direction that she was taking me as I followed her down the sidewalks, shouldering my way past busy crowds of tourists and locals, many of them distracted by their own virtual companions. Along the way, I eventually found the other person I was looking for; or rather, they found me. A person dressed as a Sentai, a Japanese superhero in a full body costume, approached me as they carried a red guitar strapped across their back, removing their helmet to reveal Aaron underneath. He smiled at me and began walking alongside as I followed Miki to the police station.

"Glad you could make it, Joe! It was starting to get hot in this thing!" Aaron told me. He was wearing a pair of wraparound AR shades to comply with the rules of the district.

"Funny, I thought heat never bothered you, Aaron." I replied, keeping my gaze forward. "You create fire from nothing, after all."

"I don't create it from nothing, Joe! I take advantage of the air particles to--" I saw Aaron sigh and shake his head out of the corner of my eye. "Nevermind. We're here for Watari. Something's up with his story."

"You told me that he just shot a man in broad daylight, out in the middle of these busy streets. Hundreds of witnesses. I watched the footage you sent me yourself, Aaron. I can't imagine how he wouldn't have done it."

"This place is full of illusions, man!" Aaron exclaimed, gesturing to the virtual light shows constantly going on around us. "They must be used to hide something. I've seen stuff like this happen before on some of my missions!"

I gave Aaron an affirming nod. "Well then, the only thing I haven't inspected yet is what Mr. Tanaka has to say. I thank you for going through all the trouble to set me up for an appointment with him. I hear that corporate samurai are notoriously hard to work with." Aaron was quite the playful type, but he was also very passionate about justice, much like I was back when I was still working for Cerberus, and he was never the sort to lie about things like this. Not to me, at least. He did lead more than one life, after all, but I was hardly one to pry into people's private lives without being paid to do so in advance, as a private investigator. I ended up with an address book full of people of all sorts of colors and creeds, some leading honorable lives, others not so much. Many of them were misfits and outcasts that rejected conformity, which I suppose I could admire them for, whether I agreed with their methods of rebellion or not. At least they were following the American dream of individuality, a dying practice in an era where information was procedurally sorted so as to segregate people into tribes, most notably in the form of brand loyalty to one of the Big Three these days. It's so serious, the two-party political system gave way to a three-party system where each one was endorsed by one of the different megacorps. The state of Nevada was MitaTech territory now, so I had to play by their rules.

MitaTech's private police force were often referred to as corporate samurai, and it wasn't hard to see why, seeing as how their armor appeared to resemble that which was worn in the times when Japan was controlled by a shogunate, or so I was told; I just took their word for it since I was not yet being paid to care about it enough to verify. Of course, MitaTech's take on their armor was quite a bit more advanced, being much less bulky to wear and more effective at protecting against the weapons most commonly wielded by thugs and gangs and unruly drunks. Yakuza, not so much, but then again, the police and Yakuza usually seemed to stay out of each other's way, so that was almost never an issue. While I couldn't see their faces through the interestingly shaped helmets they were wearing, I had to wonder if they were eyeing me warily as I arrived at the station and told them that I was here to see one Watari Tanaka, who they had just arrested. After they continued to remain still at their station, presumably to make sure my appointment checked out with them on their personal AR overlays, they eventually waved me through as one of them proceeded to lead me to the visiting room while Aaron stayed behind, and Miki for that matter, despite simply being an AI entity that only existed in virtual space. Perhaps she wasn't programmed for indoor locations.

Watari looked rather distraught as he was brought in, mumbling something to himself in Japanese that I couldn't make out. His black hair looked quite disheveled, and the glasses he wore sported a cracked lens. Either its AR functions were still operational, or the corporate samurai had failed to provide him with a new pair. Maybe they couldn't get one that matched his prescription, for whatever reason.

"Mr. Watari Tanaka? I'm Joseph Stone, private investigator. Aaron referred me to you. Can you speak English?" I sat down in front of the bulletproof glass window as I waited patiently for Watari to do the same.

"H-hai. E-eeto...Oh! I-I mean, yes! Yes I speak the English!" Watari's Japanese accent was a little thick, but far from incomprehensible. "I did not murder the man! I promise! It must have been accident!"

"Can I assume that you have already seen the footage that was used to arrest you?" I inquired. I would have brought up the video file in the AR overlay to share with Watari, but I felt doubtful that sharing with inmates was permitted. Too many loopholes ripe for abuse that would have opened, especially if either of the parties knew anything about GRID hacking.

"That video...it's not real!" Watari exclaimed. "I did not shoot Kuroshi-san! I shot a demon!"

I felt one of my eyebrows raise itself. "A...demon, you say, Mr. Tanaka?"

"Hai!" Watari nodded enthusiastically. "I was playing DevilBane, and I track the demon down to Shiro Street and I shoot him. Then I hear people screaming. I look for the demon that I had, but only Kuroshi-san is there with a bullet in his head!"

"Now we're getting somewhere, Mr. Tanaka." I commented as I leaned forward. Where, exactly, we were getting ourselves, I had no clue, but I was certainly determined to find out. "DevilBane, huh? You will have to fill me in on what that is."

"You not play DevilBane, Stone-san? Is augmented reality game! Why do you not come to Hazukaro District to play augmented reality games? Hazukaro is augmented reality capital of Autumn Falls!" Watari was now staring at me, perplexed, as if I was from some other world entirely.

"I'm not doubting that, Mr. Tanaka. But what is it that you do in DevilBane, specifically?"

"DevilBane is demon hunting game. Demons will appear on overlay. You use toy gun to shoot them."

"A toy gun?"

"Hai. Is peripheral toy required to play game, Stone-san."

"According to the police reports, you shot Mr. Kuroshi with a gun matching the description of a toy laser gun."

"Is complete bullshit, I tell you!" Watari slammed his fists against the bulletproof glass that divided us. "There is no way I could shoot Kuroshi-san with toy gun! Is not a real gun! No bullets!"

"Where did you acquire this gun, Mr. Tanaka?"

"I buy the gun from a MitaTech game store in Reno. Same as every other DevilBane gun in every other store."

"So it didn't even come from the Hazukaro district or anywhere unusual? You don't even live in this district, do you, Mr. Tanaka?"

"No, I live in Reno, where I get the toy gun."

"Then why come all the way to the Hazukaro district just to play a game?"

"Stone-san, augmented reality games like DevilBane are location based. Special demons can be hunted at special locations in the world. A powerful demon was located in the Hazukaro district, so I go to find and kill it. Powerful demons seem to appear in the district all the time."

And probably because Hazukaro prided itself on its augmented reality attractions, is what I figured. There had to be something to this whole tourist trap. "This gun of yours...do you still have it with you?"

"No, I do not, Stone-san. It has been confiscated by the MitaTech police." Watari shook his head. "But I assure you it was just like all the other toy guns. It doesn't fire bullets."

I turned my attention back to my AR overlay, watching the surveillance footage again. "So why were you arrested, then, Mr. Tanaka? What was the evidence the police were able to use against you?"

"They showed me security camera footage of me shooting Kuroshi-san, but I tell you, it is not true!" I was examining the evidence in question right as Watari was telling me this. It did certainly look like Watari was shooting Kuroshi, despite the fact that he had been holding a toy gun. Or at least, that's what he had told me. It looked like a real conventional handgun in the footage. "The video is a lie, Stone-san!" I heard Watari insist. "It must be some kind of trick!"

"I looked at the evidence myself earlier, when I was waiting to visit you. It clearly showed an actual firearm that you were using. The case files said nothing about you having a toy gun." I said, now thinking about getting a second look at the gun. I would later go to ask the MitaTech police officers about it, but they had forbidden it, saying something about the evidence being processed. I would have to try again later, it seemed. "Oh, and one last question, Mr. Tanaka. Did you know Mr. Kuroshi?"

"No, Stone-san! I have never met him before!"

I looked through the case notes section on the victim and his circumstances. "You had no idea that Mr. Kuroshi was another player of DevilBane, one that you had been competing with on the GRID leaderboards?"

Watari looked quite shocked at this. "Stone-san, I...I had been hunting down the demon in Hazukaro so that I could overtake Kuroshi's position on the leaderboards, but I had never met Kuroshi-san in person before, nor had I ever contacted him! I didn't even know what he looked like! If you are implying that I killed Kuroshi-san so that I could win a game, well, that's just complete bullshit!"

"I believe you, Mr. Tanaka." I assured him as I stood up from my seat. "Thank you for your time. I will get back to you as soon as I can."

---

I made sure to reserve myself a room at one of the hotels in the Hazukaro district. They were one of the very few places where you were afforded a significant measure of privacy, in addition to being allowed to deactivate your AR devices there. I retired there to examine more of the evidence I had gathered, such as Watari's testimony and a copy of the toy gun he had used, which I had bought from one of the many electronics stores in the district. I knew a few things about firearms, having to take care of my revolver Goldhart for the past few years after it had lost its original owner, and spent an hour with my inspection toolbox disassembling the entire toy gun and then putting it back together. The computerized components I found within it, I assumed, were to interact with the GRID, but I asked Vykarius about it just to make sure, since hardware and software was more of his area of expertise. Aside from this, the toy gun had no mechanisms that would be required of traditional firearms. No firing chamber, no clip slot, no firing pin, no place to put in a bullet and no way to fire it. Pulling the trigger only activated the computerized components. Assuming that the gun Watari had used was exactly the same, I had to consider the possibility that it was this component that might have something to do with the way Kuroshi was killed.

The flat television screen in my hotel room had automatically switched itself on when I had arrived. Two dimensional TV on flat screens used to be considered a luxury around the turn of the 21st century, but nowadays they were so cheap and antiquated that even the lousiest of hotel rooms would have them. At least they were trying to keep up with the times by detecting your GRID presence and flipping themselves on to a channel that they think would interest you, based on the results of their prying into your personal GRID usage. As a result, this TV in particular tuned itself to the local news station, which was already discussing Kuroshi being shot, and the report quickly gave way to a discussion on the alleged dangers  of augmented reality and whether it was dangerous, claiming it had blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. It was the same tired narrative that I had already heard about the GRID when it had first come around, and how generations past had always irrationally feared and demonized the newest medium of expression to come down the pipeline of societal evolution. These sorts of dishonest fearmongers would have been book burners in a previous era.

Normally I was content or at least complacent to leave the screen running while I worked in the room, but it was the level of ignorance that the news casters presented that made me get up and shut off the television in disgust, leaving me in complete silence, or at least, what I expected to be complete silence in my room, only for me to hear the sound of my hotel room door opening, and when I spun around to face it, I would only see my door closing itself. This had me worried. I nearly leapt out of my seat as I bolted for my door, pushing it open and frantically looking down the hallway just in time to see a figure disappearing around a corner. I reached for my gun under my coat as I dashed around that corner to see that figure, dressed in black, trying to lose me through the oncoming crowd of people approaching.

I tried to muscle my way past the crowd, only to find that one of them was a security guard, who held out a club to bar my way. "Sir, we require your AR overlay to be active at all times outside of your room." He said, pulling a remote device out of his pocket, pointing it at me and pressing a button on its panel. The AR overlay in my electronic eye booted up again, and the figure of the fleeing person in black seemed to vanish into thin air.

"Someone was in my room!" I exclaimed, pointing in the direction where I had last seen the intruder. I made sure to keep my gun tucked back into my coat, despite my efforts to draw it just a moment ago. I didn't need to give the guard a reason to contribute to the longstanding history of police brutality.

The guard calmly looked over in the general direction where I was pointing, shrugged his shoulders, then looked back to me. "There ain't anybody there, son. Are you alright? Have you been drinking?"

"Turn off your overlay! There's some kind of glitch..." I said, trying to deactivate my own, but the guard raised his club and remote as he noticed me trying to do so.

"Can't do that. There's nothing wrong with my overlay. If you believe that you are having technical difficulties with yours, I can take you to the nearest cybernetics repair shop."

Reluctantly, I began to turn and walk the other way when I then received a notice from Aaron on my AR feed, beckoning me to a street near the hotel with a virtual beacon he placed just for me, one that only I could see. Or at least, I hoped so, since private messages might no longer be all that private when the megacorps took over.  I also hoped that I wasn't too late as I slipped outside through the hotel's back entrance, following the path to this beacon.

When I got there, Aaron was just pacing back and forth with his guitar, looking quite nonchalant, or at least he was trying to. He kept glancing over at an alleyway once in a while; an empty alleyway, as it turned out once I followed his gaze. Made sense, since it was blocked off by an old chain link fence.

"What is it, Aaron?" I would ask him once I arrived. He took one more glance at the fenced off alley, then to me, continuing to glance at the alleyway all the while.

"Oh hey, what are you doing here?" Aaron asked, looking surprised.

"You called me here, that's why."

"Did I now? Is that what happened?" I had a feeling that Aaron was acting. His other, non-mercenary job was all about putting on a performance, after all. The way he kept looking at the empty alleyway, however, I was quite certain that he was being genuine about it. Why this was so, I would only find out in the following moment.

The chain link fence suddenly began to rattle, as if in a stiff breeze, yet there was hardly any wind. That was the moment when Aaron held up his guitar, looking down its neck as he gripped a trigger hidden in the body, pulling to release a hail of bullets through the barrel that went through the headstock. He fired at the fence, then paused as the two of us heard a loud thud. On my AR overlay, I saw a mess of corrupted scrambles of shapes and colors fall from the fence to the ground, eventually forming the shape of a person dressed in black, now riddled with bullet holes. Like the intruder I had just seen earlier. Now loaded with bullet holes.

Aaron looked quite delighted to see this, and immediately rushed over to the body, turning it over. "Looks like I killed myself a ninja!" He exclaimed as I slowly approached for a better look. The figure certainly was dressed in the black garb traditional of the way the ninja of old were depicted, though much more so. The fabric was not just black, but vantablack, reflecting almost no light whatsoever. It was like gazing into a light eating abyss. A silhouette that could never be illuminated.

Needless to say, Aaron initially had a bit of difficulty finding the outfit's pockets, but once he did, he was able to pull out a small pistol, or at least I was sure it was a pistol; it was coated in the same vantablack as the rest of the outfit. "I knew it! I knew it!" Aaron was ecstatic. "This was one of MitaTech's enforcement ninjas! Since AR gear is required around these parts, the district administrators could just set vantablack to not render, and then they could hide in plain sight all day!"

Owning property in the physical world meant that you were given special administrative access to the properties of your place's corresponding AR and VR space. One such option you were granted was the ability to render a very specific color as invisible, or project another texture onto it in the AR overlay, similar to chroma key in the early days of film and television. Since vantablack was a difficult color for any object to become due to the nature of the material required, almost no one could be expected to have it. No one, that is, except for the corporations. The person that Aaron had shot up was wearing a vantablack body suit, and since everyone was required to view the district through their AR overlay at all times, such a person would become completely invisible to everyone, going wherever they pleased. And if this person was a MitaTech official...

"Oh shit..." I heard Aaron mutter as he started coming to the same realization. "They could be anywhere...everywhere!" His hands trembled as he reached for his wraparound AR shades, tempted to remove them. "No! They'll shoot me...!" He immediately took off running. I tried to keep up.

I did my best to follow Aaron as he dashed into a nearby Japanese restaurant, and into the restroom, one of the few places where no one was monitored. I had considered offering my hotel room instead, but after what I had seen, I feared that location may have been compromised as well. "Joe, ring up Vyke! See if he's done with his little project yet!" Aaron barked as he held the gun barrel of his guitar rifle up, pointing it at the door as I had entered.

"Since when did you do any work with Vykarius?" I inquired.

"Since longer than you think, Joe. It's a long story, now open up call with him already!"

Curious, I sent out a call to Vykarius, watching as he appeared in the overlay. He almost looked as if he were expecting me now. The call was opened to Aaron too, as the two of them turned to face each other as well.

"Well, how did the hunt go, Mr. Steel? Did you catch anything good?" Vykarius's digital avatar now looked like that of a huntsman, complete with rifle and forest camouflage outfit.

Aaron gave him an affirming nod. "The software hack worked, Vyke. Got ourselves a ninja. There's probably more out there, and they're probably looking for us now!"

"Software hack?" I inquired.

"Oh, right!" Vykarius piped up, turning his attention over to me. "I was testing out my new project with Aaron since he was the first to arrive at the Hazukaro district. Here, I'm sending it over to you now." As soon as he finished telling me this, I was given a notification that I had received a strange file of some description. "And...done. You should be able to see vantablack things in this district now. They will no longer be invisible to you. At least...not completely invisible!"

"I was able to see the ninja that Aaron shot." I mentioned to the hacker. "How was that possible?"

Vykarius shrugged. "That does seem a little strange. I suppose it might have had something to do with the bullets damaging the material? Maybe the ninjas will become visible if their ninja suits are damaged!"

"These ninjas...they were carrying vantablack guns as well..." I began, "Watari said that he didn't kill Kuroshi...you don't suppose a ninja did it and framed him for the act? Vykarius...what was the victim and the client's relationships with Mitashi Technologies?"

"Oh boy, do I have some hot juicy details regarding those people, coming right at you!" Vykarius proclaimed this as he took aim at me with his virtual hunting rifle and pulled the trigger, and instead of virtual buckshot, decrypted documents were spat out at me on the overlay. "I found these while poking around in the digital archives of the Hazukaro police station. Turns out that one of the MitaTech employees involved in the development of the vantablack ninja project was, wait for it, Mr. Kuroshi! I collected a bunch of GRIDMail messages sent between the team members." Among the documents shown to me were a series of virtual letters, which I assumed that my GRID software had automatically translated from Japanese. "Towards the end of the development process, Mr. Kuroshi was expressing his doubts about the whole thing, citing ethical concerns about how these ninjas would be used. The higher ups eventually fired him for insubordination, and while he was cleaning out his desk, he stole at least one of the prototypes, presumably to sell on the black market. Happens with disgruntled corporate employees all the time. Apparently, Mr. Kuroshi wasn't careful enough in covering his tracks, since MitaTech eventually found this out, and they needed to protect their bottom line by ensuring Mr. Kuroshi never gave away any company secrets. They had one of their undercover officers contact him, posing as a black market dealer, lured him into the Hazukaro district, and, well, the rest is history, as is Mr. Kuroshi!"

"And you were able to put this entire story together from the police documents you hacked?" I inquired further.

"Of course! MitaTech's private police samurai have to work closely with their parent company, after all!"

"Then what about Watari? Why frame him?"

"Mr. Tanaka? That was the ingenious part, I must say!" Vykarius looked as if he was having too much fun explaining this. "Watari Tanaka is one of the most devoted players of DevilBane, one of MitaTech's own most popular augmented reality games. By gathering metrics from everything their players did, they deduced that Mr. Tanaka was the most likely agent for their little stunt, so they re-orchestrated the game's events to lure Watari in to the Hazukaro district at the exact same time as Kuroshi, then had one of their ninjas off him while making it look like Watari did it! He was to be the perfect scapegoat for their plans!"

"But the media..." Aaron chimed in. "They're all talking about how the game made Watari do it. Wouldn't a controversy like this hurt MitaTech's image and profits?"

Vykarius would laugh quite heartily at this, shaking his head and wagging a finger at Aaron. "Aaron, my boy, I'm disappointed. I would think that you, a performer, would know, of all people, that there is NEVER such a thing as bad publicity! MitaTech is using this incident as an opportunity to promote their game! Now, more people are hearing about it than ever before! The controversy involving it has given it a new layer of mystique to draw in more players!"

"They murdered one of their own former employees to promote a game?"

"I'm frankly just amazed at how well they were able to turn their misfortune into, well, fortune!" Vykarius laughed. "Besides, MitaTech has gotten away with far worse in the past!"

Aaron suddenly turned his attention to the door, leading me to do the same. "Wait! Did... did you hear that?" He asked, his voice now just above a whisper. Slowly, he approached the door and used the barrel of his rifle (or the headstock of his guitar) to nudge it open. I went to follow behind him as we exited back into the restaurant proper.

There had been several patrons and staff in the restaurant when we first arrived, but when we came back out, the entire place was conspicuously empty. Not a soul to be seen. Many of the tables were still full of half-eaten dishes, however. Did the staff just order all the patrons to leave? Or perhaps the patrons themselves were--

I caught the flicker of a human figure standing on the other side of a table was inspecting. As if by reflex, I grabbed the side of the table with my mechanical arm and flipped it forward, sending a vantablack-clad ninja reeling back. This bought me just enough time to draw my revolver Goldhart and put a round through his torso, but immediately afterward I heard a series of gunshots that weren't mine. Seeing bullets ricochet off the restaurant tables and shatter the plates on top, I instinctively dove beneath one of the nearby tables that wasn't upturned or being shot at, trying to pin down the shooter's location when I spotted Aaron stepping forward and snapping his fingers. Right at the sound of that snap, something burst into flames out of the corner of my electronic eye. Or rather, someone. I turned to see another ninja dropping his gun as his body was engulfed in fire.

"Aaron, we need to get the hell out of here!" I called out as I continued to crawl beneath the tables for cover. The fire that Aaron had started was now starting to fill the restaurant with smoke, and I soon began to see odd movements of the smoke being displaced. I took aim and fire off another revolver round at one such spot and witnessed another ninja falling to the ground, his movement having been the cause of displacing the smoke. I noticed Aaron was starting to do the same, holding his guitar rifle in both hands and spraying an entire clip of hot lead across the restaurant, putting down at least three or for more of the ninjas.

Eventually I was able to crawl my way over to the front door, keeping my head low as I dashed the rest of the remaining distance, shoving the door open with my pneumatic arm. Aaron was quick to follow, running backwards as he fired off another clip of rifle rounds behind him into the restaurant, presumably as suppressing fire while I ran out onto the streets, trying to lose any more ninjas that might have been in pursuit by trying to get lost amongst the crowd on the sidewalks. Everything outside the restaurant seemed normal,  as the regular hustle and bustle of the city streets was loud enough to drown out the gunfire in the restaurant.

---

Aaron caught up with me later as I walked the remaining distance to the police station where Watari was being held, but as the two of us climbed the steps to the entrance, two corporate samurai stepped out the front door and blocked our way, pointing rifles at us. "Visiting hours are over, gentlemen." one of them announced.

"I have evidence that proves Mr. Watari Tanaka's innocence." I said, going back through the footage recorded through my own cybereye to find the parts pertaining to the ninjas, but as I was preparing to send the video files to the samurai, one of them lifted a hand, shaking his head.

"There is no such thing. Watari Tanaka is guilty of second degree murder. He has been tried by the corporate courts of Mitashi Technologies, and his sentence is to be carried out immediately."

"Bullshit!" Aaron exclaimed, raising his fists. "You bastards had ninjas in AR camouflage kill Kuroshi and frame Watari for it! You lying fucks!" I could quite literally feel his anger; whenever Aaron got mad enough, the temperature of the air around him would always rise by a few degrees.

The samurai, on the other hand, retained his calm. "It has also come to our attention that you two have been found to be guilty of the unlawful killing of seven MitaTech employees."

"What, you mean those ninjas that have been spying on everyone? The ones that have been silently MURDERING everyone in the district that you dislike!?" Aaron snapped back. "Fuck 'em! Fuck 'em all! You corporate fascists think you can get away with everything, huh?" In a fit of anger, he took off his AR glasses, tossing them at the officers. And no sooner had we done so when Aaron's anger disappeared from his face, replaced by shock and fear.

"A mistake." Was all that the officer said as he calmly approached us. I was about to resist this, but the effects from Vykarius's new software was finally starting to work properly. I looked over to where Aaron was now looking, and noticed that we were far from alone. More than a dozen vantablack ninjas had surrounded us, every one of them training their guns on us.

"Fucking hell..." Aaron muttered as he raised his hands. I proceeded to do the same as the samurai approached and cuffed us. "What did you sentence Watari to, huh? Are you gonna execute him? Is that what you're gonna do to us as well?"

The samurai shook his head as he cuffed us up, then shoved us forward towards the station. "That remains to be seen. It will be up to my superiors, but if it were up to me, I would make you two into stars."

Stars, huh? That could only mean one thing, I thought as the corporate police took us away. Private law enforcement was good at making their prisoners more profitable, especially through the entertainment industry...