"You're quite possibly insane," Kari said from the other side of the table, "but I think you know that already."

Chris Allman was doing his best not to even look her, but it was difficult. One thing he knew for certain was that if he looked at Kari, then he would end up talking to Kari and after that, there was no way the detectives were ever going to let him go.

Despite the fact that Kari seemed to be there at the moment, ten seconds ago, she hadn't been there at all, so either he was losing track of huge blocks of time or he was losing his mind. Just like Kari said.

"Of course I'm not here," Kari whispered conspiratorially. "You've gone through a significant amount of trauma, so I'm just your coping mechanism. Watching the love of your life die in front of you is a horrible experience. It's okay to go a little bit mad you know. Nobody would blame you."

Chris glanced towards the mirror on the right side of the room, knowing that at least one of the detectives was watching him at that moment, trying to figure out how to break him and make him confess. Of course, Kari wasn't visible in the mirror. Even his momentary insanity wasn't willing to go that far.

He looked back to the table, trying hard to focus on writing. He had an idea, but it was hard to put into words—

"I know the words," Kari said. "Write this down: 'Kari can help me', got it?" She rapped on the table. "There's got to be a reason you're imagining me after all. I can help you. Well at least the real me. I've got to be the smartest person you know, I mean, I'm the smartest person I know, so that's got to count for something, right?"

Chris considered for a moment and tried to focus—

"Focus!" Kari yelled at him and he tried not to react. He scribbled on the post-it notes instead. Kari continued. "You want to save Sara, you have to focus, but you can't focus on the present and you have to stop looking at the past cuz that's all messed up right now. I mean like totally messed up, so let's not even go there, okay? What you need to do is focus on the next five minutes and fifty-five seconds. The next time your implant syncs, don't fight it and it will all become clear. You'll know what you need to do next."

Chris closed his eyes and breathed out slowly.

"What's happening to me?" he asked quietly, daring to raise his eyes to the impossible girl.

She grinned devilishly.

"Dude, I'm just a figment of your imagination. I only know what you know. All I'm doing right now is helping you figure it out. Stop fighting it and focus. Maybe once you do that, you can accept that no matter how crazy it sounds, no matter how much it doesn't make sense and can't possibly be happening to you, you already know what's going to happen next."

Chris stared at the woman who was not actually in front of him and it finally all began to make sense. She was right and he knew it, could feel it, the memories that weren't memories, telling him everything that he needed to know. If he focused hard enough, he could see the shape of it—

There was still that pulse in the back of his head, that distant thrum, thrum, thrum that was part of him now, but it no longer seemed as all-consuming as it once had. In between the pulses were fragments of memory that hadn't happened yet, snatches of time that existed in potential—

"Kari can fix me," Chris said and he knew exactly how. "Kari can fix me."

Chris looked down at the paper on the table and he began to write, slowly at first, but slowly gaining speed.

***

Detective Andre Duvel had been watching Chris Allman for a long time. He had started timing the flashes on the back of Allman's neck and had observed the differences in the man's concentration levels. At times, he seemed focused, sharp as a tack, but then the flash would come and it was like Allman was a completely different person. Even his body language was different, or as different as it could be, considering that he was chained to the desk.

"Five minutes and fifty-five seconds," Duvel noted to himself. He frowned and pulled out his phone and texted a message to Morrow.

Duvel: We got anything new on Sosumi yet? I'd like to know what that implant is doing to Allman.

Morrow: You still in there? There's a stack of paperwork with your name on it you know.

Duvel: Still waiting for Leaver to show up. Something is bothering me about Allman. Can't put my finger on it.

The door opened and Morrow entered quickly, holding his phone. He looked flustered and annoyed.

"You know how much I hate typing on that thing," he said, noticing Duvel's amusement. "Face to face is better."

"You're showing your age Morrow," Duvel said, not resisting the urge to poke fun.

"Yeah, yeah," Morrow groused and nodded to Allman. "What's going on with him? Something new?"

"We might want to talk to Sosumi. Every five minutes and fifty-five seconds, that thing in his neck glows. I think it's connecting to the cloud or something."

"Calling the mothership?"

"They might be tracking him you know," Duvel persisted.

"If that's even what it's doing."

"Yeah, if that's what it's even doing," Duvel admitted. "For all we know it's just saving data or something, but my bet is on the cloud."

Morrow thought about it for a moment, swivelling his tongue around the inside of his mouth in that curious way he had when trying to make up his mind. Duvel wasn't even sure if the man was even aware he was doing it anymore.

"Leaver might be able to get us a warrant."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I'll make the ask and see what he thinks, but you know how it is with him. He likes things straightforward: no strange shit."

Duvel nodded as his partner exited from the darkened room.

No strange shit.

That was easy enough to say, but strange shit was part of the nature of being a police officer.

Uniformed officers tended to be the first on the scene for a lot of crazy situations, most of it the more physical and violent aspects of people that nobody ever saw or even thought possible. You heard a lot of descriptions that started "He always seemed like such a nice man..." or how someone couldn't hurt a fly... until the day they did and the cops were on scene to handle the aftermath. The clean up.

Duvel's time in uniform had taken him through lots of strange sights and some of them had left him shaking and sometimes waking himself up crying in the middle of the night, even now.

In his two years of being a detective, he had at first thought that maybe he would be able to get some answers to some of the fucked up shit he had seen as a uniform. He had always seen the detectives as gruff and inscrutable men who would be able to tie even the most obscure clue to the right solution. They could see a crime scene in a way that he couldn't even begin to process, and he had wanted so badly to be one of them. Maybe then he would at least have some answers and know why people were able to do such fucked up shit to each other.

Then he had become a detective and there were no real answers, no sudden switch in his head that allowed him to see a crime scene like he was in a Sherlock Holmes tv show. There was no moment where he saw the one clue that would break the case wide open and lead to some thrilling rooftop chase. The one rooftop chase he had been on, the suspect had slipped and fallen on the first jump, breaking both legs and suffering a concussion. Duvel had ended up out of breath on the rooftop wondering what the hell had just happened and listening to the perp scream in pain from the alley below.

Instead of rooftop chases, there was a lot of paperwork, a ton of unsolved cases and more of each coming in every day because people just couldn't stop doing fucked up shit to each other. And that was the plain truth of it.

There were no answers, no magic clues, just people like Chris Allman who had shot his girlfriend in the head.

The door opened again and Crown Prosecutor Paul Leaver entered with Morrow close behind. Leaver was a man of average height, maybe 5'9" on a good day, but Duvel always seemed to remember him as being taller. Since Duvel was 6'3" himself, it was always a strange thing for him to realize that the man with the grey specks in his beards, the steely blue eyes and lightly thinning brown hair, was not as tall as he always thought he was.

"Detective Duvel," Leaver greeted him. "What do you have for me?"

"You see that glow at the back of his head?"

Leaver glanced in at Allman, frowned and squinted as if to see better.

"Yeah..." Leaver sniffed. "What the hell is that?"

"A medical implant."

"From Sosumi," Morrow supplied helpfully. Leaver did a double-take at him and realized he was serious.

"How do you know that?"

Morrow pulled out his phone. There was a photo of a silvery piece of technology from a marketing campaign. Curatio from Sosumi was emblazoned across the photo.

"Look familiar?"

"What does it have to do with him? He murdered his girlfriend. Unless he is claiming Sosumi hired him to kill her, I don't see any connection."

"It's a bit of a reach, I know, but you see what it's doing right now?"

Leaver gave him a flat look.

"It's glowing."

Morrow interjected hurriedly before Leaver could say anything else, or before Duvel said something he regretted.

"Duvel here thinks it's syncing to the cloud."

"And if it is," Duvel said quickly, "then it's got to be sending location information. We may have a complete record of everywhere Allman has been in the past twenty-four hours."

"We can already place him at the scene of the crime," Morrow hammered the point home, "but it's still circumstantial. We still don't have a witness or a murder weapon—"

"Or a motive," Duvel finished and ignored the look that Morrow shot at him. Morrow may not have liked motive as much, but for Duvel, it helped to make sense of even the most perplexing of cases. When you knew why someone did something, the world made sense again.

Chris Allman killing his girlfriend didn't make sense.

"Maybe he was having a bad day, detective," Leaver snapped. "Maybe she was cheating on him. All that matters is that he did it."

"Think you can get us a warrant?" Morrow said slyly and glared at Duvel to back down.

Leaver thought about it and then sighed, clearly conflicted. "It's going to be tough. Sosumi's board members are some of the most influential men in the city. Finding a judge who doesn't golf with one of those guys is going to be tough enough, but getting a warrant for their tech?"

"I'll make a deal with you," Morrow offered and Duvel bristled, knowing what was coming. "You work on getting a warrant and we'll take another shot at him. Maybe we can get a confession out of him this time."

Leaver thought about it nodded thoughtfully.

"I'll make some calls."

***

Chris Allman wrote steadily on the notes in front of him. If anyone had asked him at that moment what he was doing, he might have ignored them and kept on writing. He might also have looked at them, dazed, his mind in some faraway place and admitted that he didn't actually know. But if any of the detectives had been able to see what he was writing at that moment, it might have disturbed them.

Paul Leaver, Crown Prosecutor, Chris wrote in his steady handwriting.

Judge Warner can help with the Warrant, was the next note.

Jason Brasier, Sosumi Lawyer. He is not to be trusted.  A pause and then: He's coming.