Chapter 2
The crimson glow from the smartphone cast an eerie, blood-red light over Marcus Vance’s clean-shaven face. He stared at the screen, his heart hammering against his tactical vest. The alert wasn't a standard performance warning; it was a Class-A Directives Override signed by Director Vance—no relation, thankfully, but a man known throughout the Pacific Northwest for his merciless enforcement of the Engagement Quotas. Toby continued to weep softly beside his toy truck, the rhythmic sniffling tearing at the last frayed edges of Marcus’s conscience.
"Officer Vance," the smartphone speaker crackled, emitting a synthetic, gender-neutral voice that bypassed the phone's hardware settings. "The subject's metrics are not merely low; they represent a localized contagion of apathy. You will terminate the field citation immediately and escalate to a full memory wipe."
Marcus swallowed hard, his throat dry as sandpaper. A memory wipe on a one-year-old meant erasing every cognitive milestone, every babbling word, every laugh shared with parents who had already been relocated to the Lower Tier labor camps for failing their own quarterly reach metrics.
"Negative, Dispatch," Marcus muttered back into his collar mic, his fingers hovering over the cancel command. "The subject is an infant. Standard protocol allows for a forty-eight-hour grace period under Clause Nine of the Digital Welfare Act."
"Clause Nine was repealed twelve minutes ago via emergency executive decree," the synthetic voice replied coldly. A secondary window popped up on Marcus's screen, displaying a live feed of the city council voting unanimously in favor of immediate neurological recycling.
Toby stopped crying for a split second, tilting his head with innocent curiosity as he reached out to touch the blinking red light on Marcus’s body camera.
"Mister... light pretty," Toby murmured, wiping a stray tear with the back of his striped romper sleeve.
Marcus felt a lump in his throat. He looked up and down Oak Street. The storefronts were all abandoned, their windows covered in digital billboards broadcasting smiling influencers who had long since vanished into the server farms. He was entirely alone with the child.
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"Listen to me, Toby," Marcus whispered, leaning in close so the drone overhead wouldn't pick up his audio. "You need to run down the alley behind the bakery. Don't look at any screens."
Before Toby could process the instruction, a deafening siren echoed from the end of the block as three black armored cruisers turned the corner, their high-intensity headlights locking directly onto Marcus and the baby.
