Several days passed allowing Arron and Kix to grow accustomed to having Spike and Chewy with them every second of the day.
Their relationship grew more friendly with the prototype robo-dogs. Even though they knew they were just robotic AIs, they felt far different from any robot or drone that they had interacted with before. Their close attachment to the two was far from what they had expected at the beginning of the project.
Sector 7, Zone 1.
Arron and Kix stood on the main street that was now blocked off by large opaque holo-screens.
The automated AI traffic control rerouted the morning’s heavy traffic down a smaller side street causing even worse congestion than normal for both vehicles and foot traffic.
Arron watched as Chewy continued to sniff the area around the burnt-out hovercar that lay in the middle of the road.
The usual investigation drones were not present at the crime scene as Arron and Kix had been put on the case and ordered to take the two prototypes with them to test their capability in gathering information and tracking down the troubled suspect.
“Are you still having problems with Chewy waking up at night?” asked Kix as he watched Spike sniffing the burnt-out hovercar.
“It is not as bad as the first few days. I found out that if I feed her some synth energy jelly she is less likely to keep waking up. But…she does not like the pickled pickle flavor,” said Arron as he remembered the mess made after feeding her the sour food.
“Weird, Spike doesn’t eat anything. He only charges up each night and that’s it.”
“Chewy likes treats I guess. It’s the only way to get her to calm down.”
“How many fires does this one make?” asked Kix pointing to the burnt-out hover car.
“The 9th or 10th one. What I’m interested in is how it ended up here,” said Arron.
“From what I’ve gathered from the local surveillance system and security drones, the vehicle was on fire while driving on autopilot down several streets. The last bit of information that was uploaded before the hovercar’s black box was melted, found nothing wrong and also stated that there were no occupants inside,” said Tooth who was speaking in the corner of their helmets’ visor.
“So someone hacked into the hovercar’s AI and messed with the software functions,” said Kix.
“With such an out-in-the-open crime happening how come we have no leads yet?” asked Arron.
“The firebug has not slipped up to reveal themselves on any surveillance systems or leave behind any damning evidence to trace them. They have only gotten more extreme as time has gone on, the first few cases linked to them were small trash fires that had been put out by passing people or drones. Now the fires are getting closer to buildings and stores. So far no one has been harmed as far as we can tell. But at this rate, it is only a matter of when, not if someone will die. Let’s hope you can take care of everything before that happens,” said Toothbrush.
Arron looked at the stream of data flowing by on the left of his helmet’s visor. It was the detailed information from the scans that Chewy was doing. There was data on all the scents that could be traced as well as visual scans of the remains. All of this was used to try and find what chemical or chemicals had been used.
A large list of chemicals were showing up with a percentage next to their name giving them a probability of how likely it was the cause of the fire. All the information was being streamed back to Tooth as well in the M1 HQ’s information office.
With the new information gathered from this crime scene, Chewy and Spike could use it to compare to any past or future information. If they were lucky it could be used to sniff out a culprit if they showed up at or near the location of the crime.
“I spoke too soon. This just got really bad. Turn on the news!” said Toothbrush.
Arron and Kix rushed back to the APC to check on the muted news that was playing above the dashboard.
Spike and Chewy noticed the high tension in both Arron and Kix, so they stopped nosing around in the wreckage and darted over to their partner full of energy and ready for action.
“… the 69th floor has completely caught on fire. What you are seeing right now is tens of security drones flying to the building to try and limit the fire spreading to other floors and nearby buildings. They will do this until the firefighters arrive and can put it out,” said Fela.
“If I am not mistaken this is one of the ten Mega-partments that mother and father pledged to build in less than a year to help with the housing shortage in sector 10. We reported on this great feat just a few …” Kommy paused as he looked to the side toward someone off-screen.
“Excuse me, I misspoke. Mother and Father did not build this one, they only funded the project allowing a contractor to build just this one,” his face as expressionless as before.
“I see. That explains why such cheap material was used allowing for a fire to easily burn through the entire floor,” said Fela.
“Right,” said Kommy, nodding his head. “Mother and Father would never try to cut corners as they care too much for everyone no matter what level of the Megacity they live on!”
“From what we can see right now, the 68th to 70th floor have both caught fire and are now completely burned out. Currently, the death toll is estimated around the low number of 1200 dead give or take 100 or more. ”
“Overall that is quite a small number if I have to say so myself.”
Ping!
“Kix, Arron, you are to head to the new M&F Mega-partments in sector 10 zone 1 and help the firefighter investigations. We need you to see if you can match this with the other firebug crimes,” said Lexa as she popped up on their visors with a pinging notification ringing in their ears.
“Got it, Spike in,” said Kix.
“Chewy, come on,” said Arron.
***
get to the building.
Kix was forced to park the car a block away as the whole block around the burning building was shut down due to the danger of falling debris, some of it still burning.
Several dozen news drones were flying in the air capturing every angle they could of the now huge gaping hole in the building where the three floors had been burnt out with a large black plume of smoke rolling out of the gap. All that was left was the main skeleton structure of the building that was still holding firm even with the weight of several hundred floors above the empty gap.
A hover-copter that held a huge water tank underneath nudged its way in past the buzzing news drones as it continued to spray the last of its water on the smoldering fire sending up large plumes of steam into the air blocking the view of the large gap for a few seconds until the fire was put out.
“Look at all that water going to waste,” said Kix as they watched the steam disappear.
The hover-copter descended from the 69th floor and landed near a waterspout that was manned by firefighters who began to fill up the tank once more for one last pass of the entire building to make sure the fire was out for good.
Arron and Kix took this moment to walk over to the firefighters as they worked the pump and wrangled the squirming water hose.
“What’s M1 doing here?” asked one of the firefighters when they saw Arron and Kix show up.
“Orders to help investigate the fire, it may be related to another case,” said Kix.
“My name’s Fiah, we’re more than happy to allow you to do the grunt work. But you’ll have to wait here while we make sure the fire is out and the building is not going to collapse. If everything is fine I can take you up to the 68th floor in the hover-copter,” said Fiah as he held out his hand for Kix to shake.
Kix shook it with a firm grip while Arron spoke up, “Why do you need to take us up by hover-copter?”
“The stairs for several of the floors have been completely burned out. No way to access many of the floors. The only way to investigate is by entering through the side of the large burnt-out gap.”
“What’s going to happen to all the people on floors 72 to 300?”
“I’m sure they’ll figure out something.”
Arron and Kix were once again forced to watch as the Hover-copter ascended to the gaping hole and sent up a smaller plume of mist for a few seconds as the area was completely cooled down.
When the hover-copter landed once again the water tank was detached from underneath its belly and the pilot inside waved Arron and Kix toward the doors that had just been opened by the co-pilot.
They rushed forward and hopped inside along with Spike and Chewy.
“Interesting companions you have there,” shouted the Co-pilot trying to be heard over the whirring of the engines as he slammed the side door shut.
The loud noise was muffled allowing Arron to only have to speak a little louder than normal.
“Classified Office of Reason prototypes,” was all Arron said.
“I see,” said the co-pilot, nodding his head, not saying or asking anything more lest he get himself in trouble.
As the Hover-copter rose from the ground Arron had to frantically pull on Chewy’s collar stopping her from biting several importation-looking metal parts attached to the inside of the Hover-copter
“Chewy no biting! That’s dangerous!”
The hover-copter smooth ascent stopped as soon as it reached the 68th floor where it hovered a few feet away from the large gap.
The co-pilot opened the door for them allowing smoke and steam to enter the cabin, with a silent motion of one hand chopping forward the co-pilot gave them the okay to exit.
Arron gulped as he looked out although they were hovering almost right next to the building there was still a gap of a few feet of empty air between them and the burnt floor of the building.
The news drones sensing something new was happening swooped in to get a better view and managed to capture both Kix and Arron jumping from the Hover-copter and landing on the burned-out 68th floor.
Both Spike and Chewy jumped out after them landing gracefully next to their human handlers who were still trying to catch their balance in all the rubble.
“What’s this? Tell them to Zoom in a bit more,” said Kommy. “It appears… that the firefighters are not the ones inspecting the damage but instead… M1 has arrived with some new toys.”
“Odd, what are they doing playing around here? This is no place for that,” said Fela.
Arron and Kix were not connected to the news stream right now so they could not hear the comments and jabs being made at them as they did an initial scan of the burned-out floors with their helmets cameras. Their helmets filtered out the worst of the smoke smell allowing them to concentrate on their investigation.
Just by looking up, they could see through several floors all the way up to the bottom of the scorched 72nd floor.
“Chewy scan the area for any matches from the other cases.”
Spike also joined Chewy in the search for evidence.
Arron made sure to stay close to Chewy as he was constantly having to pull her away from melted chunks of Para-steel that she wanted to eat.
The data was flowing in and several beeps started to appear as several of the chemical names were highlighted on their visor as a match.
“Arf!” said chewy notifying Arron of an important scent match! She was pawing at a burnt item that did not look like It belonged to the building.
Arron looked at the streaming data and found that there was still a faint human scent on the item that matched several of the random scents from the other cases.
“Kix, we got something over here,” said Arron as he squatted down and scanned the item more thoroughly with his helmet’s camera.
While Akira and Kix were both looking at the data several voices reached their ears from above.
“Cough.. cough… Hello!? Cough… Can you hear me?”
Arron looked up toward where he heard the voice and saw there were several people gathered around a hole where the 72nd-floor stairs had once been connected to the floors below.
“Cough… we need help! There are too many to count dying up here from smoke inhalation and severe steam burns! We need medical help!”
Arron stood up as he scratched his neck unsure how to handle this. They were not equipped to handle such a major problem.
After a brief discussion with Kix, they decided on a solution.
The two took out their rope wire that was connected to a heavy-duty hook and loaded it into their service weapons barrel.
“Stand clear!” shouted Kix.
The heads of the people staring at them quickly disappeared frightened at the hooks being pointed at them.
Poof! Poof! The two hooks shot up through the air and flew through the hole In the 72nd floor embedding themselves deep into the 73rd floor which was relatively undamaged.
Just to be sure that it was safe enough they used stakes to secure the rope into the 68th floor making it taunt and with no possibility of swaying around. There was still plenty of rope hanging down into the next floor below.
They quickly attached a belaying system with a few straps to the ropes and pressed the option for them to rise following the rope line.
“You guys will have to use this to get down from there! Don’t panic and stay calm!” shouted Arron.
“Only two people can safely come down at once! If there really are people in trouble you should go gather them and let the others know that if they want to escape to come down here in an orderly manner,” shouted Kix.
A female’s head popped back into view and looked at Arron and Kix below them.
“What? That’s it?” shouted a female who was in a hysteric panic.
“Tooth how long until the rescue team arrives to help the trapped people?” asked Arron.
Tooth popped back up on his visor and answered, “Uhh… just a sec let me check. The notes I have say they are gathering right now. They are still in the process of gathering all the equipment they need. Should be there within the hour.”
Arron looked back at the lady and said, “This is the best we can do right now. We were only sent here to investigate! We don’t have the means to do anything else,” said Arron.
“We have people dying up here!”
“Look lady, we have done all we can, what else do you expect the two of us to do? You can stay up there and wait for the rescue team that may be here in an hour or you can use the ropes to get to the stairs below and exit the building yourselves,” said Kix.
Several curses were sent toward Arron and Kix. Even though they had no control over the situation they found themselves in, they became the target of the enraged survivors as they lashed out in anger.
“Hey! You two! Are you finished?” shouted the co-pilot over the hover-copters external speakers.
“Just a second!” shouted Arron.
He waited to see what the people would do not wanting to leave just yet.
It didn’t take long before two of the civilians attached the straps to their legs and grabbed the belaying device.
When they reached the 68th floor Arron could see that their exposed skin was all puffy pink and red from steam burns.
They looked like they had been half-cooked inside a steamer.
Even with the helmet’s filtration set to low, they were able to catch a whiff of cooked flesh which was not a pleasant smell but not unfamiliar due to the nature of their line of work.
After making sure that the rope was able to handle what it needed to, Arron and Kix along with Spike and Chewy jumped through the air into the waiting hover-copter.
***
Chewy and Spike were hot on the tail of the troubled suspect whose scent they had gathered at several of the crime scenes.
Arron and Kix followed them as they ran toward an industrial building.
They were able to see someone escape inside the building.
Slam! The sound of a large door could be heard from inside the building.
When Arron and Kix arrived inside they found that there was only a large vault that was now shut. Red alarm lights were flashing above the vault door.
“This vault, is it what I think it is?” asked Arron.
“It is,” said Kix.
Several running footsteps were heard behind them.
“Hey, you criminals get away from the vault! This area is restricted due to the sensitive material we store here!”
Arron and Kix turned around and silently tapped on their badges which projected their identification.
“M1? What are you doing here?”
“We don’t have time for useless chatter. Are you the manager?” asked Kix.
“Yes.”
“Then open the vault, a troubled suspect entered and closed the door,” said Kix.
“In there?” asked the manager pointing to the vault.
“Yes. Now hurry and open it up!”
“…”
“Why are you stalling? Are you in league with the person?”
“I’m not, I’m not!” said the manager.
After going through the many security locks, the thick vault door opened once again.
Kix sighed and shook his head.
The troubled target lay on the ground clutching his neck with his face blue from lack of oxygen.
“Chewy, is this the troubled suspect?” asked Arron.
“Arf!” said chewy after taking a quick sniff of the dead man.
“Looks like we have our target,” said Arron as he looked at the flowing data.
“Separatist?” asked Kix.
Shook his head. “His records are clean, no address.”
“So he’s just some homeless person. You would be surprised at how many cases end like this,” said Kix.
