Despite all of this, Stepson Vizare was not here and that was frustrating. I cased the room, ensuring I didn’t touch anything on his desk but noted what was scattered on the CEO’s desk were bank statements and invoices dating back the last six months. Interesting, I mused

I knelt by his desk, searching for a hidden button for a panic room because all offices such as this had one. The outer layer of the desk was smooth as I stroked my hand across the surface. “Nothing,” I said.

My neck snapped right and began eyeing the magnanimous case, and in my motion, I felt I saw a glimmer of a light pulse. Light flooded from beneath the floor of the wall. I picked myself up and approached the wall. I slipped my ear next to it and noticed the hollow sound it gave off like something was behind it.

I began applying pressure to the wall. It rocked slightly. Then, as I was about to stimulate my Cybernetic arm in overdrive, a door clicked open to my immediate right.

A cold wind rushed through the panic room door, stealing warmth from my fingertips, serving the purpose of agitating me further.

I huffed my annoyance and walked below the low archway entrance, as I went through; my head almost clipped the middle section of the archway, which I know would've flared my temper.

The room was no panic room like I suspected, but a playroom, a private entertainment lounge of some sort that I heard executives have. It was mostly dark, with lights from the city flooding into the windows providing it with little luminescence.

It wasn’t the best form of light, but it worked, as I saw a large pool table with holoballs stacked in the tray to my right and a well-stocked bar to my far left.

I took a step into the playroom and caught a whiff of the faint smell of rum, floating in the air. Damn, I wanted a quaff.

In front of me, was a lounging area with thirteen seats, six opposite each other whilst one, sat alone, as the head. A man was sitting in it

I couldn’t see his face, despite what little light fluttered in, but the silhouette showed what shirt he wore, a normal white tea, with twelve blinking colours. It didn’t take much to guess, but I knew who that was. Stepson Vizare, CEO of Lyiez Systems.

“Mr Vizare is it?” I asked calmly.

He didn’t answer, but a puff of smoke fluttered in the air, leaving a faint scent of burnt charcoal flooding into my nose.

“My name is Kaiden Cypher, EXiCON: 26-10-01003, investigating the murder of Adrianna Smith and a Jon Doe.”

“Humph…you here to arrest me?” Stepson said with a heavy drawl.

Is he drunk? I rounded the chairs, keeping a close eye on him and noticed the array of bottles he had on the coffee table, empty.

“I’m not an officer of the Law. I’m an EXiCON, I investigate, and I have a few questions for you regarding the patent you filed: Cloning DNA Coder or Marker is it?”

“What about it?” he snapped.

“One of your employees is dead.”

“what does that have to do with the patent I filed?

"Everything. I came to verify whether the DNA Coder you applied for matches that of the vic."

I couldn’t see the CEO's face, but I sensed that his lips curled into a wry smile, as if he knew something, then he sat back in his chair, cool as a synthetic cucumber. “Humph, so that’s it,” Stepson said, shaking his head. He turned to me, face still blackened from the shadows of the room. He lurched forward, and half of his face was shown. The man looked as if he lived his entire life The Waste. “I’ve been framed Mr EXiCON.” Stepson growled.

“Framed?…record the conversation, Nova,” I said, trailing into a whisper. A red dot pulsed in the top left corner of my Cybernetic eye, indicating the conversation was being recorded. “Yes. Framed.”

“Just saying you’ve been framed doesn’t help …so explain How and Why you're being framed in detail,” I said.

“The ‘Why’s easy…I found something I wasn’t supposed to. Now my ass is buried so deep in this shit I’m drowning in it,” The CEO scoffed. He eyed me from the corner of his eye, picked up another glass of what looked like rum, and guzzled it down his throat.

I took a step closer and shadowed a silhouette that covered Stepson Vizare’s retreat, as he sat back in his chair. Stepson was a fit man, based on the biceps that bulged from the white shirt he wore. He had ragged blue jeans and a pair of blue sneakers with a reverse tick stitched into the side.

The clothing he wore stood out, but not like his face. It had extreme child-like features, dimples, plump cheeks, and a rounded nose. If his eyes weren’t gaunt, they’d certainly have a child’s eyes, full of innocence. Stepson Vizare looked as if he were a child, playing a man’s game Alright…let's see how you messed up your life, Stepson.

“That’s not enough!” I snapped, letting my annoyance go. I didn’t have time for word games, so let’s apply the pressure. “…I can help. If you allow me to.”

“What could a pissant EXiCON help with?” Vizare said with a heavy drawl.

I raised my head, looked around the room and then centred my gaze on the CEO. “Look around, Vizare…is anyone else here?”

The CEO sneered at me, then, picked a bottle of rum from the twelve that laid on the table that sat before him. He clanked the bottle against a glass, pouring a snapshot, picked it up and spun it slowly.

At least he knew how to pour a glass, I thought ruefully.

At that moment, I knew, knew that the gears in his mind were turning, evaluating me on whether he should speak any further. A sneer though was better than a scoff…in a moment such as this.

“Fine…” he slurred gruffly. “Three years ago, during one of our annual data purges, we stumbled across a DATA cache with an A-Class Encryption.”

“A-Class Encryption? That's government-level encryption.”

“Exactly.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Find it? I said ‘stumbled across’. It was part of a data packet that Ryef Incorporated wanted us to data-mine for them.”

“Ryef…? Why does that sound…”

“Familiar? It was an upcoming Social Media platform. It was kicking TweetFace’s ass, then all-of-a-sudden their CEO, Kraiga Hiox got slapped with embezzlement charges for defrauding the board.”

“Sounds…”

“The man was legit, I mined that data myself, EXiCON. Don’t sully his name.”

“Sully?”

“The man was a friend to Lyiez in many ways. Half of our revenue came from Ryef Incorporated when we first started.”

“I see…so what happened?”

“Like what? The charges were brought forth, he was kicked out of his own company. TweetFace bought the company out and integrated their database with theirs and added a trillion more dollars to their value.”

“Corporate Warfare.”

“Right…do you know what I lost when Ryef went down?”

“A few million Creds?”

“Forty-Fucking-Million Credits…annually, to be precise”

“A pretty penny.”

“Very much so…” He snarled, taking another quaff of rum.

“What about the Ryef data, though?” I asked, bringing the conversation back in line. “You said you found an A-Class Encryption.”

“Right…during a scheduled data purge, we found a data cache behind an A-Class Encryption cipher.”

“You broke it?”

“After a few months. It took me a few specialists to break it, but it was worth it.”

“A few specialists?”

“A few S-Class Cyberweavers…It was ten levels of encryption with keys that had to be deciphered.”

“Aren’t those random?”

“They are,” He snapped, annoyed. “But once the Cyberweaver figured out the pattern of encryption, he forces fed the pattern highlights to his Artificial Assistant. It didn’t take long, but they cracked it.”

“I see.”

“Right. Anyways. We cracked the Encryption and stumbled across a petabyte of data.”

“A petabyte?”

“Yes…with thousands of DNA 3D models, which we eventually transcribed into DNA Coders over the past three years.”

“…you started your own clone farm?”

“No…but we did test.”

“Why? It’s fucking illegal and government-run.”

“I needed the cash flow! With Ryef gone I had no choice but to make that Data Cache work…for me.”

“So with Ryef’s cash flow gone…you took their data and made it your own.”

“…but why was the Data Cache there?” I asked.

“Who knew, I surely didn’t, nor did I care. It, being A-Class, was enough for me!”

“So you invested in switching your company from Data Analyst Company to Clone Poultry.”

“Yes.” He snarled.

“…but the data came from somewhere.”

“RYEF WAS UNDER THEY HAD NO NEED FOR IT!” The CEO growled.

“…did you find out where the cache came from? Who made it, and why it was there?”

“Of course not…that doesn’t matter. What mattered was saving Lyiez and that information, was worth it!”

“I see.”

“You think I’m mad…” The CEO scoffed.

“Passionate…yes, mad? No,.” I answered, not wanting to entertain Stepson’s drunkenness, I switched and re-directed the conversation “…were you able to successfully graft a clone?”

“We were, but not till after two years. It was a lot of trial and error. The majority of DNA 3D Models were dead ends, and dwindling funds acquiring raw materials would’ve made it even more suspicious.”

“Black market?”

“Yes…”

“Wouldn’t the prices there quadruple?”

“Normally, but we wiggled our way through that for half price.”

“Defective?”

“Yep…”

“No wonder you took two years.”

“Doesn’t matter, with a successful clone made. I applied for a patent.”

“…which brings us to what really happens now…Adrianna Smith?” I said, trying my best to keep my tone cool.

“What happens NOW? Cypher…it’s as I’ve told you. I’ve been framed, my entire BOARD has been murdered within the last hour and everything points to me!”

“What?”

“You heard me. My boards of directors…are dead.”

I watched as Stepson raised his shirt, showing the modular board with blinking lights ingrained into his stomach. He tapped a sequence into the lights and a hiss of compressed air groaned from behind his neck.