I will be honest, I am intimidated to jump into this story thus far! 

My knowledge of Blade Runner, beyond the first movie, is weak to say the best. I am reading through the book you gave us Paul to familiarize myself with the world.

Quote from: Posterboy on May 21, 2026, 02:55 PMThe floodlights made the room too bright in the way crime scenes often were, as if enough light could some how turn confusion into evidence.

Also, can I just say how much I'm already enjoying the writing you guys are putting out?  Dashiell Hammett himself would've taken the rest of the day off if he'd written a line like this.

"Yeah yeah, a'rif kayf csináld a kibaszott munkámat."  Varela turns away a fraction, shouts over his shoulder.  "Iris!  You heard the man - run the proklyatyy numbers!" 

"Yes, dear" Iris shoots back, and Elly almost raises an eyebrow.  Can't decide whether this is the hologram being intentionally snarky or if she's preset to be subservient.  Wonders whether there's any amount of abuse that'd break that programming.  Then Iris is talking to her, voice low.  "I actually started a while ago.  It's alright, Detective.  These people know their jobs.  Full coverage of the scene as it was is already uploaded and on the Mainframe - you can pull it up whenever you need it."  Pointing to Elle's KIA.  "So are the scene reports from Detective Varela's other cases.  Between you and me," she says with an affected glance at her clipboard, "it's a good thing I'm around to do them for him.  He can be... less than thorough.  We're working on cataloguing what's still here." 

Satisfied for now, Elly turns her attention to the scene.  Tries to piece a story together from signs on the floor.  Can't read much - it's like trying to follow the story of a half-burned book.  But still.  Experimentally, she hefts the kicked crate.  Finds it easy enough to lift, but suspects a human wouldn't. 

So...  Heavy crates.  No visible drag marks on the floor, and enough twisted metal left around the base of the door that they would've had to step over it to get in or out, so they didn't use skids.  One of them was either a replicant or just crazy stupid strong.  Probably more than one, to find what they were looking for and get it out in the time they had.  Then where do they go once they're out the door?

She breaks from her thoughts to ask Varela about his cases, all business.  Professional as only a N-9 on the clock can be.  Crowe watches as he takes the question with less indignation than he expects.  Happy to be talking shop rather than in a sectional pissing contest, most likely.  Still talking to Crowe when he answers, though.  "Nah, I woulda been megszabadulni ettol long ago if that name'd come up before now.  Of the others like this, I got two corp prototypes that no-one wants to tell me what they were, a shipment of guns fresh in from Yogyakarta, a vault full 'a jewels and nick-nacks that some offworld gwijogdeul hadn't gotten around to taking with them and two deeply sketchy clinics that I'd bet money were drug factories.  Now this.  No pattern I can see, and nothing's made its way to Hawker's Circle that anyone's saying.." 

He scratches under his coat.  Slow, not chasing a real itch.  Probably doesn't realise he's doing it.  "Näen sen, someone's stealing to order.  Fucked if I know who, or who's hiring them." 

Love it.  Keep it coming.

Just a little more art for fun.

Thanks guys.  Just wanted to make sure I wasn't blindly poking around at anyone's hot buttons. 

Doug, I know you're neck-deep in organising/enjoying your time in Ca'lahnuh.  Just let me know when you're ready to jump in and I'll find an excuse. 

Elly didn't look away when Varela called her skinjob. She didn't blink faster or shift her weight, didnt reach for the weapon at her hip or turn the insult back on him, and didn't give Crowe the satisfaction of seeing whether the word had found anything inside her to bruise. It was a word, nothing more than air shaped by this man's contempt, useful only because it told her something about the man using it.

Her eyes moved from Varela to the DiJi making notes on nothing, while Crowe made introduction, before she looked back to Varela. "Detective Varela." Just his name, placed exactly where it belonged.

Then Crowe spoke, talking about his department. She logged that too without changing her expression. Crowe wasn't trying to wound her... probably. Sometimes, with him, it was difficult to distinguish his conviction from his carelessness.

When he nodded for her to continue, Elly's movement was interrupted by Varela's outburst as she watched the container skid across the wet floor and pass through the DiJi's holographic legs. The flood lamps highlighted the label: Tyrell Corporation. Old stock. Organic. Pre-Blackout, possibly. Improperly stored, disturbed, exposed to moisture, now additionally contaminated by Detective Mateo Varela, RSS.

She did not say all of that. More replicant slurs pour out from the detective's mouth. Elly let the words and the container register, her gaze steady on the crate. "Detective Varela," Elly said, voice level, "I am looking at a crime scene you just kicked."

She let that sit for exactly as long as it needed to. Then she moved – not toward him, not away from him, but around him, as if he were another obstacle in the room to be recorded and accounted for.

She gave Crowe a slight nod as he issued his instructions. "Acknowledged."

The floodlights made the room too bright in the way crime scenes often were, as if enough light could some how turn confusion into evidence. Elly stepped carefully past the scattered containers, placing her boots only where the floor had already been marked by uniforms or where the moisture showed no clean impression left to preserve. Uniforms moved in small clusters, too many bodies crossing too many lines, and too many hands near too many things. "Scene contamination is already significant," she said, not loudly, but clearly enough for the nearest uniforms to hear. "No one else enters this compartment without logging their name, badge number, time, and purpose." She looked toward the closest officer. "Who was first through the door?"

She turned her attention to the floor beyond: the drag marks, boot traffic, places where water had pooled and been disturbed, and places where it had not. She crouched near the kicked container, but did not touch it.

Tyrell Corporation. There was a kind of cruelty in seeing the name still intact when the thing inside had been reduced to inventory. Eyelashes to assholes, Varela had said. Crude, but not imprecise. A whole body broken into categories small enough to fit inside a box and old enough that everyone in the room could pretend it was only property.

Elly looked at the container for another second. Not remains. Not victims. Not evidence of persons. Parts.

She stood. "Don't move any more containers unless evidence collection has cleared them," she said to the officers near her, still not looking at Varela. "If these are from the same series of raids, then the scatter may tell us whether the suspects searched randomly, followed a manifest, or knew exactly where to go."

Then she look to the DiJi. "Map current container positions. Mark the kicked item separately as displaced by scene personnel. Cross-reference visible labels, lot numbers, and Tyrell stock identifiers against theft reports, insurance claims, archived manifests, and known post-Blackout recovery seizures."

Her eyes shifted to the blown doors. "And add known raids involving ESPER disruption, milspec explosive entry, and selective removal of pre-Blackout biomedical or Replicant material."

She moved toward the breach. The doors hadn't simply been opened; they had been defeated – quickly, professionally, and with enough force to enter, but not enough to collapse the surrounding structure.

"Inspector Crowe," she said, "this wasn't a smash entry. The charge was controlled enough so that the door failed without structural compromise. They wanted fast access with limited damage." She looked across the floor again, following the possible movement of bodies through the room. Her gaze passed over the containers again. "And if they ignored all of this, they knew what they were looking for. The value was not in Replicant parts generally. It was in a specific part."

Only then did she turn her attention fully back to Varela, not to answer the slur... at least, not directly. "Detective Varela, your other break-ins. Were the scenes searched like this, or were they selective from the moment of entry?"

A moment to let her words land... before, "And did any of them involve Tyrell stock?"

Crowe looked around the area.

"Well, looks like someone was using this as a spare parts depot. Maybe some kind of repair yard or visual identity replicant disguise kit."

"Tyrell labeling says it's pre-black out. Old stock, maybe scavenged or fell off a truck. The question is what was here that required a precision raid?"

"Let's get an inventory list together of what is here and see what should be but isnt anymore. Also, you mentioned other break ins. Any other jobs using this kind of tech or entry?"

He called out to Detective LE-1.

"Detective LE-1, please check to see if you notice any signs of exit method, equipment use, or how they carried out what they took. Whether it was a small thing, a large thing, or bulk."

"This all looks like standard packaging for parts, so we may be able to tell if this is old stock, or collected. Let's run some of the packaging through the system to see if we get any hits on stock numbers, manufacture date and cross reference the list through old theft files and insurance claims. If it was reported stolen or claimed for insurance we may find something."

"Detective, I assume your assistant is connected to the uplink. Please send that request along. It will help flush out your burglary report."

Detective Crowe stared at him. He had achieved a level of compliance from him, now he had to see whether they would be able to work together on this or not.

"I'd rather not run this through my KIA and it looks like a normal request coming through burglary and theft. I actually try to keep the damn thing off and in the spinner."

 

Lol, yeah he has an issue too! I messed around a little with the possessive pronouns to convey that effect. He thinks replicants are tools, not quite can admit they may be people, but he follows the rules and believes in law and order. The department says she is a detective so she is one.

He also recognizes she has senses and abilities he does not so using her to see the crime scene while he deals with the people, who also dont like her, he figured was the best approach.

"Yeah well..." Varela clearly wants to spit but he's just professional enough not to do it at a crime scene.  "Plenty of skinjobs up in all this!  These crates?"  He kicks one along the moisture-slick floor, sending it skidding through the DiJi's shoes, holographic light making the label fluoresce  and lighting up the name 'Tyrell Corporation'. 

"Every one of them got a skinjob part in it.  You got everything from eyelashes to assholes stored away here."  He aims a long-suffering look at Crowe.  "Man, I dunno what kinda furcsa dolgok this is and I don't much care, but no way this wasn't a professional raid-and-run.  We got esper surveillance taken down, doors blown open with what I'll say right now is milspec explosives, the works.  Just like a half-dozen others I got on my desk right now.  Only thing I wanna know is whether it's the same charming people.  And I guess, now, whether they're minyet replicants.  Ya iilhi, that'd be the perfect ending to today!"