A Hooker with a Heart of Code

[The Rake]

The call comes in during the twilight of the night shift, an anonymous, synthesized voice offering only an address and a pair of commands: clean it up, find the root cause. Two tasks that can't conceivably be dealt with to the satisfaction of the higher-ups before the shift change - but the Rake knows he has to try regardless.

It's easy to find the scene of the crime. There's humans crowding to get a look at the mess. The mass of stinking, soft bodies is being held back by a hastily erected barrier, beyond which a pop-up tent conceals the body. “Metro police coming through,” he grunts, to little effect, still forced to squeeze through the crowd. An android steps out of the tent and a little buzz of electricity fizzles beneath his right eye socket, his implant responding dimly to the presence of the ‘droid, circuitry signalling circuitry. It's blank face turns down towards him, and if it had features they would certainly be contorted in disappointment at the sight of this unshaven, sleep-deprived human.

The Rake’s eyelid twitches; no matter what people tell you, this never stops being painful. A string of commands spreads through the wires beneath his cybernetic eye, delivered wirelessly and wordlessly by the android. As the Rake stands just outside the flap of the tent, his implant struggles to unpack and process the packet of data collected by the android.

The Rake blinks, and the ‘droid’s gone, leaving him with code flowing across his field of vision and ahead, sprawled before him, the mangled body of a robotic prostitute.