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Shift notes the efficiency of the shooter, although trolls do make a larger target. It wonders if this was a 'hit', as the humans say, or just random gang violence. The ability of the humans to kill each other still surprised the 'droid.

Shift mutes his music completely and tries to apply an acoustic filter to better hear what the cops and paramedics are saying:

Filter: [1d6]=4

Angus is finally just too intrigued

Seeing Shift hanging about "Cleaning up" he heads over and notices the other gawpers include Clark.

Wasn't there a pushy Troll doing "certain investigations"? Any idea what he looked like?

Shift The police are questioning the trolls and the human intensely about their current addresses, absence of identification, street names, contacts, recorders in their shirt pockets while they use both hands to frisk. The arrestees are noncommittal, except that one of the trolls mutters "50 Crown Street. Can't afford no good i.d."

Shift, Angus, Clark
One officer laughs and yanks a poly zip bag from the back pocket of a troll's baggy pants: "Goofy!" he yells to the other two cops. "Smoke em up!" laughs one of them. "Ok, that's possession," says the first cop to the troll. "Where's your card?" The troll shrugs his massive shoulders.

"Right," says the "smoke em up" officer. She has a high tight red ponytail. "How do you know the shooter?"

The human she just finished frisking says "Dunno anyone."

"Yeah, I don't believe that. What's the shooter's street name? I can break you for obstructing."

"Dunno anyone," the human says again.

She grabs the back of his head and slams his face forward into the grate that covers the bodega window.

The handcuffed trolls strain at their restraints and curse her out. The other two officers struggle to retain control of them. "Damn, Crimsie," says the one who found the goofy, "take it easy, now."

"Did you threaten an officer?" the third cop belligerently asks the troll he's wrestling. He's using the cuffs to hold the troll's wrists up above his shoulders.

"He didn't threaten anyone," rumbles the troll who had the goofy. "We didn't do nothing, sir. Some local trouble rolled up on us, tried to hold us up."

"Hey!" says the first cop to Angus. "What did you see?"

Angus
Angus (carefully) shows the officer his Social Worker ID.

Two cops talking to the victims of a mugging or something - I just saw your car and the crowd and wondered if any of my students were involved. Its the kind of thing that happens to them and then I have to fill in a heap of paperwork.

Who's the rock with the holes?

And as a tip. there's a TV crew and an aspiring politician in the building behind you - so mind your backs: Its hard enough doing your jobs without publicity.


As the cops look over to check they aren't being recorded, I'll see what they are scribbling the incident down as.

The police don't have any paper out. They're running voice recorders, standard procedure Angus recognizes from cop shows. They'll fill out forms when they finish wrapping up the scene.

The other two officers are photographing the trolls and the bloody-faced human. If the cop shows are realistic, their cameras will upload the photos for facial recognition in the national law enforcement database.

"I'll file a claim," whines the human. His voice sounds like his nose has been broken.

Number one cop crosses the street to the doorway of the Lizard Lounge. "What did you see?" he asks Louis and Clark.

Shift changes his tack, trying to surrupticiously note anyone who is watching the scene but trying not to be seen by the cops

Trying to be subtle
Anonymity: [1d8]=7

Noticing anyone:
Looking around: [1d6]=3

Clark takes a deep breath, and thinks "Time for some thrilling heroics". "I saw a prominent pro-troll politician behind me and a bunch of racist cops unlawfully searching a brutalizing the VICTIMS of a shooting!" He pulls out his Govcorp ID and starts recording audio with his smartphone at the same time. "Now the question is, would you like to lose your jobs tonight or maybe change your conduct to something resembling a keeper of the peace?"

Persuasion [1d8]=8

Shift notices the shopkeeper is back in the doorway, arms crossed, face fixed in that unliving expression like a ... serene? grimace? Shift's not so good at human facial expressions, and unliving are even harder.

The cop Clark is browbeating visibly inhales and swallows. He's a bit shorter than Clark, used to be quite muscular and now a little pudgy, and as Clark enunciates his snide question, little flecks of spittle show up on the man's bald spot.

"Look," he says uncertainly, staring at Clark's ID, "I don't think this is any of your business. All these guys are gangbangers, they're probably running protection on this little store and got into a turf feud. If you didn't see the shooter, you're no help to anyone here. We're doing catch and release, these guys here are clean and no pending charges. They'll go home, you'll go home, we'll go home. Let's call it a night, ok?"

Louis, sitting inside and watching through the window as the cops back down in front of Angus and Clark, considers. Thank god for Angus and Clark. All it takes to make a small difference in real people's lives is guys like him. Louis - well, Louis had his eye on more abstract things. Freedom of information, freedom from information, from govcorp's watchful eye. These battles, fought in cyberspace, affect the grand structure of the metapolitics. That was Louis' fight. Or maybe he was just too chickenshit to risk getting concussed by burly meatsacks. At the end of the day, guys like them were what kept the individuals safe. Shit, Clark had stepped up for him just a couple months ago when he'd been interrogated for possession of weed. The cops would definitely would have found it too.

Next time, Louis promises himself, he'd risk the beating. Stand up for the individual.

Angus takes a look at the guys who were on the ground.

I suppose asking if you are all-right is the wrong question?

The human with the broken nose has the heel of his right hand pressed against his nostrils, trying to halt the flow of blood. He gestures irritably with his left hand, a dismissive wave. The two trolls look at each other, one of them rolls his eyes, then that one says "All good here, hoo-man." They look at each other again and laugh the kind of snarling laugh that trolls do when something's ... not really funny.

"Ok, people, let's all get on with our lives," says the cop with the high tight ponytail. She's standing where she can keep an eye on everybody, hands on her hips.

The lights of the police cars continue to dance, yellow and green, like a Spring festival dancehall.

Someone a few streets away is driving erratically and fast. The cops look at each other as you hear faintly tires squealing. Then there's an echo of a car collision. Loud. High speed to sudden stop.

"Ah, fuck," says the pudgy officer. "Not slow tonight, huh? I got that one. Esme, do the report. Geraldo, interview Mr. Morbid there." He nods toward the keeper of the bodega, whose face remains in its silent resting scowl.

The trolls and the human begin to walk away in response to Geraldo's "All done here, guys." Pony-tailed Esme goes back to her car and climbs in, maneuvers it from its catty-cornered stance in the street to a more respectable parking job next to the curb.

It seems like the scene is over.

What do you do?

Shift sensing that there isn't much left to learn, and that he'll become obvious if he hangs around much longer, the 'droid heads back inside and cleans out the mop and bucket before joining Louis.

Angus
So Clark - What do you reckon - Side show or that troll there is the keen young investigator we were discussing?

If so, a salutary lesson.

Perception [1d8]=3That shooter ran into me as he ran...and I can't picture his face at all. Could have been anyone. You can just see it - Yes officer - He ran into me - and I never saw a thing. That will be off to the station for obstruction son.

Home to crumpled clothes, empty pizza trays and electronic detritus littered about a cramped apartment. Louis flops onto his swivel chair, hits his vape, jacks in. A thick strawberry cloud heralds his exit from the corporeal world.

Once inside the walls of his safely-encrypted personal space, based (as far as the ISPs can tell) somewhere in Nanjing, Louis checks up on Vasily, Stevie's cyberpublicist from the rally.

"Hey look Vasily, sorry I was kind of curt at the rally. I'm a big fan of what you guys are doing. Stevie's really the only candidate doing anything for cybersecurity, and I'm a big fan. This elliptic monoid business is very delicate, but if you ever need any help shoring it up, I'm happy to help."

The message gets smashed into unrecognizability, zooped up into space and back down through Vasily's phone.

Now, for more pressing matters. Rent was calling, and Louis could use the credits. He checks his messages for something back from Tatev a.k.a. Trigger. Nothing yet. Damnit.

He spreads digital fingertips, relaxes his field of awareness till it lies in a thin, calm layer across a small army of spiders - they scatter across vast datasets, picking up data, parsing it, feeding it through a small homemade neuralnet. They are triangulating data about the killings, searching for information about the next one.

Louis didn't have the processing resources for the kind of vast, bruteforce datamining as govcorp. His alternative, essentially, was a mixture of several clever stochastic algorithms which read data like tarot; clever algorithms, yes, and some good old-fashioned human intuition. Let's see the govcorp goons use some of that.

At last spiders and neuralnet finish running, and the digital tarot has been laid. If Louis' incorporeal presence does the incorporeal equivalent of leaning forward and peering at it. A vague, hazy outline of things to come presents itself.

Precognition [1d8]=4

Louis
It's Tuesday.

Thursday is next.

Someone on the younger side.

Near an abandoned factory. Most of the others also were near abandoned factories, each one a different address. One was right at Crown and G, in the middle of the commercial district. Another was a few blocks east, also in a commercial area.

The addresses form four corners and four midpoints between the corners. A rectangle around several blocks of mostly industrial architecture, southwest corner at Crown and G. Where would the next one be? Louis can't decide or feel an answer.

"Ran the circuits. Next target is someone young on Thursday, near an abandoned factory."

The message zoops into space, back down to Angus, Clark, and Shift, along with the addresses of the previous murders and their nearby factories.

Louis checks again for replies by Tatev or Vasily, finds nothing. So he flips a digital killswitch and is vomited up back to his apartment. He pulls out some stale takeout from behind some moldy takeout in his fridge, eats it, and keeps an eye on his messages, waiting for replies from his murderbot collaborators, Tatev, or Vasily.

Shift replies

"It would be sensible for us all to recharge for the night and reconvene tomorrow to make a plan now we have an area and time period. Perhaps there is a link between these abandoned buldings"

Sounds a grand plan - although I'll pick up some beer before we head home.

Clark goes home to sleep. He receives the message as he's putting his pajamas on."Work tomorrow. Can help check earlier locations and guesstimate next one after 17:00. Can text until."