When Cassandra arrived back at the station, Jared was ready to welcome her back. The man did not look too happy, likely suffering from a lack of sleep. That had become understandable. From her perspective, it was her free time. From his, he was supposed to have been asleep for a few hours now.

Getting out of the vehicle, she once again ordered the automation to take care of everything. It could park the car in the right spot just as well as her, so there was no reason to oversee it.

“You put in a lot of faith in them,” Jared commented, looking over at the automation diligently putting away all the gear. Cassandra had brought some of the specialised handcuffs for the occasion. As they were not part of the standardised vehicle cache, it was protocol to put them away after each journey. Yet another task that was best fit for those who could not complain about it. “Letting them handle the more precious equipment could fit us a hole in our budget. Steady hands are required for the handling of those things, you know.”

“They are not capable of having anything but having steady hands,” Cass pointed out with a tired smile. Cassandra would have preferred to say something else but forced herself back into the role. Even if Jared did not seem to like what she did, there was nobody who said that she needed to care about his opinion. “Their design is the best that it could possibly be, and that's why they can take care of our position.”

Jared made a noise that might have been a sign of agreement. The bags under his eyes were noted. The man clearly was not in the mood for any type of conversation, seeing as he just wandered inside the building. Cassandra followed, knowing that it was likely what was expected of her. A simple request would have worked just as fine, but she wasn't going to complain about it.

The normally quiet abode was anything but. From the call-room, Cassandra could hear a certain voice talk in quick tones. The radio they used frequently might have made it hard to point out specific people, yet this one was as clear as day. The deeper overtones were hard to ignore, after all.

“I do not care what you think about it. We have people bearing specialised equipment in our city, and we have nothing that we can… Hello? Damn it!”

If it had been a couple of decades ago, Cassandra would have likely heard a phone being forced back down on a table, the person holding it likely having suffered head trauma purely through blood pressure. And that was only what she imagined from hearing it all through the wall. Seeing the actual side was something else.

“Hey, boss. I got her, just like you asked,” Jared said, looking too tired to do anything but be civilised. Did the man seemingly forget the angry shouting heard a few seconds before? Did he just not care? Had lack of sleep caused a certain danger detector to shut down permanently?

The fingers were white as they pressed down on the table, as the man Cassandra had called her boss looked over at them. His eyes were slightly wide as if he had trouble keeping himself from shouting. The hair was a bit unkempt, and the man really needed to shave that monstrosity of a beard he had stuck on his face.

All in all, it was a better appearance than what she had been expecting. At least there weren't any weird smells permanenting the room, no weird senses tingling that would make anybody run. If the stressed look was ignored, the man did look close to average in the normal spectrum.

“... Good. Do sit down. Both of you,” the boss ordered them, pointing at the two chairs on the other side of the table. No questions were asked, Cassandra only wondering if she would be able to get another cup of tea. The last two attempts had been a failure, and since Jared was already up, there was a chance that he would brew a pot for them. Though… she would have to wait a bit before bringing up that point. Maybe later.

Sitting down firmly, Cass sat with a straight back, looking as attentive as she could possibly be. Jared looked ready to fall asleep, having positioned his elbows on the table to remain awake. It looked like a hard task.

“Going through what has been reported, it seems that my assumptions were correct,” the boss said… Cassandra did not like calling him the boss. He had a name, though she had no clue what it was. But, that was where the wonders of modern record-keeping came in. With but a thought, his whole profile came into view in her eyes. “We do have a couple of thieves in this wonderful city of ours. Any objections to this statement?”

Justin Grunwald. Not the most common of names. Most surprising was the fact that it was a family name. The man had not changed it himself. Cassandra wondered why. Few would be able to look him in the eyes while using it. Maybe that was why Jared just called him the boss.

“I thought not,” Justin said. Cassandra had hardly even noticed he said anything, trying to decide what to categorize his words as. Calling him Justin felt way too personal, and she did not want to be associated with him more than he already was. Maybe his last name instead of the word. Mr Grunwald… nope. Nope. No way. She wasn't going to be using that. Not in this or the next life. “But… it turns out that the governing bodies do have an objection to it. They refuse to even acknowledge this problem of ours.”

Huh? Cassandra listened in on that last part. No acknowledgement was one of her larger fears in life, so her ears were honed in on the word and its usage. The so-called higher-ranking people were not doing anything about it? No… that wasn't what had been said. It just meant that they weren't sure of its existence yet.

“Will they be sending out people to affirm our claims then?” Cass asked, wondering if she could get a good word put in with anybody that came. It would clearly be somebody in a higher, more specialised position than her. A ladder that could be climbed, some might call it. A nice opportunity to form a good connection with the more important people of the world. Only, just who would be-

“I don't think you understand,” officer Grunwald stated, stressing the words uttered. Officer sounded good. It put pressure on the title, showing off respect, while also letting Cassandra slide by anything personal. She had no intentions to know these people more, after all. She only called Jared by his name due to the latter option being even worse. “They refuse to acknowledge that we have a problem on our hands. The war is taking everything they have at their disposal. Or, so they say. I personally think they just refuse to move their forces a bit around.”

Oh, why did she even ask? If she had to listen to the man rant about the war for even a minute, she would have to do something drastic. There were already too many points given to her by the inhabitants of the city. No way would she willingly listen to another one during her off-time.

“What does that mean for us?” Jared asked, putting his hands over his stomach and lying back in his chair slightly. The man was not looking happy about the development. Had he already assumed what would be happening? Cassandra had a few guesses herself, but she held off making any larger assumptions. Information still needed to be cleared before she could make any real decisions. “We just have to take the official stance, and ignore it like before?”

“Of course, we aren't ignoring it,” Officer Grunwald positively shouted, a small bit of spit landing on the table. How utterly disgusting a sight. The man needed some lessons in controlling his temper. At least, he should have controlled it in front of her. There was no desire to look at that sight for more than she needed. “If we followed those orders, we would have paid no attention to the crimes from the start!”

Wait. They… had not been allowed to investigate? Cassandra could very vividly remember getting clear on that front. Had she been lied to? If she had, there was trouble brewing for everybody involved.

“If we are not allowed to investigate, will there not be problems about our use of the alarms?” Cass asked, getting a tiny bit worried. Setting up connections with house-alarms was not strictly legal normally, but was allowed during long-term investigations. Papers had been signed on those grounds. More people than she could remember had signed those papers in goodwill. If it turned out that they had cheated so many out of their privacy… there would definitely be talking about getting fired, if not getting a chance of jail time.

The boss of the room seemed to sense the change in atmosphere, putting his hands up to shift the attention to something more physical. Lowering them again, he continued to talk.

“If it was the normal authorities we had been listening to from the start, then we would have been in some deep shit now, yes. Luckily, those are not the ones that we have been in contact with for too long. Instead, I have been keeping up a connection with some of the more… powerful ranks of our country,” Officier Grunwald stated calmly. That… was not encouraging. Cassandra was beginning to grow a tad nervous. Just what was going on? Nevertheless, the officer continued, no time left to spare for unnecessary pauses. No dramatics were thought of at all..

“Throughout the past few months, I have been getting continuous warnings about a group of… I think they were called traitors. It's a group of three, maybe more, bearing technology that could prove useful in war. This has been stolen crudely. It is believed that they are trying to sell it to the country that resides on the other side of the border. The state wants us to stop that from happening. Therefore, every city near the border has been tasked to watch out for anything… unusual. As you both know, we have had unusual activities by the handful.”

Things were starting to make sense just a bit more. The constant look-outs, investigations continued without ever finding anything abnormal. He was fulfilling orders from higher-up. They did not care about the crimes done. Only the people who were doing them.

“You think these people are the ones doing this?” Jared asked, reminding Cassandra he still existed. There was no presence to the man. His breathing had begun to grow soft. Maybe another shout would help wake him up a little more… no, she wasn't evil. The boss would do it for her.

“We are not too sure on that front,” was the response given, before the officer turned his eyes onto Cassandra. “Cass, your initial report showed off that you were unable to see any facial features, that it was all an artificially made blur. It's obvious that the thieves are in possession of some cloaking. It's obviously not something available anywhere in the country, which was what initially made me report it in. As it turns out, this was not the technology being looked for.”

“But it's still more advanced than anything a civilian should have been able to get,” Cass objected, once again trying to find reason in the man’s words. With what was said, it should have been clear that the targets had been found. “If the normal sides are not sending in reinforcements, this… higher rank of people should be!”

“It's not as easy as that,” Officer Grunwald continued, not pausing for too long after her words. He had likely had the same objections not too long ago. “Looters have been starting to show up at the border-cities as of late. Some have matching if not more advanced technology than we have seen ourselves. They can't send everybody reinforcements.”

Great. More trouble heading their way soon. And it had just begun to die down with crime. Soon enough, it would do a reverse nose-dive. Cassandra could hardly wait. The forces were strained as it were, and they were expected to work more soon enough. She could only hope that she would be paid extra in overtime.

“So… what? Are we expected to just continue as we are now?” Jared asked. That caused a small glance to come from the officer. Was the mildly negative attitude starting to wear off? Curious.

“I expect that we will be patrolling semi-permanently. Calls will now be taken care of by automatic systems and distributed evenly during each of our work times. Less serious calls will be forwarded to neighbours, and we can expect to only take force with serious emergencies.”

That was fine. An okay development overall.

“Also, we will be installing personal frameworks into automations. Expect to call them by their names, starting from… your next shift.”

That was not fine.