Jurassic City- Chapter 2: the Assignment

CHAPTER TWO: the Assignment
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Cedric raced his magnocycle down the streets towards the address he received. It was a peculiar invention: it looked like one of those bulkier gasoline-powered motorcycles that they rode a hundred years back, but this one had no axles. It didn't need them. It ran solely on magnetic power. Without the need for a motor, it could be much thinner, sleeker, and faster. Now, he could charge at break-neck speed to wherever he needed to go. In this case, that just happened to be this mysterious place on a street he hardly went to anymore.
At length, he turned into the parking lot of where he had to go. Oddly enough, this was the police department.
Cedric glanced back at his mangocycle's dashboard, on which he had uploaded the mystery address via the crystals on his wristband. This was the right place.
Alright, no big deal. All he had to do was go in, tell them his rights, show his ID, and he'd be back at work before his shift.
Cedric parked his vehicle and unhitched the magnetic links that held Voltaire. (who, in case things didn't do over too well, would come in handy on bigger guards) He leaped playfully down and started tagging behind.
Inside, Cedric walked up to the secretary's desk and showed her his Office tag. "Hey, I'm Cedric Williams. I was told to come here, and I believe I have a right to a lawyer?"
The secretary looked up almost monotonously. "Yes, Mr. Williams. Chief Harriot wanted to see you. He'll be with you in a moment."
Cedric's intrigue deepened as he walked away. He had met the Chief of Police every so often, but mostly only on bigger cases such as assault, modding, or the rare drug lab discovery. He never followed him to his office and didn't spend too much time with him. All that he heard from sources was that he wasn't really a person to be reckoned with.

*         *         *

Saul sat in his office, all by himself. It was a fairly large office with a fairly large view of the skyline outside. Then again, he was a fairly large man, figuratively speaking.

He wasn't a handsome man, nor was he a younger man. However, he had what he needed most: dignity and a badge. Everything else really seemed to annoy him- the traffic outside, the Brachiosaurids that kept trudging by every few minutes, even those footsteps that were walking down the hallway outside.

The intercom buzzed. He pressed the button and shouted with a voice like thunder "YES, What do you want?"

"Sir," the secretary's voice quavered on the other end. "Mr. Williams is in here to see you."

Finally, Saul thought to himself. "Send him in, I'm ready." 

Six seconds later, the young man's head appeared through the doorway. Six seconds too long, Saul mumbled under his breath.

"Hello?" Cedric peered in through the door.

"Cedric!" Saul shouted, trying not to show his temper. "Thanks for coming! Please come in."

The boy stepped in through the door. Unfortunately, so did a rugged, blue feathered raptor-thing. Saul could never remember the names. A look of slight disgust came across his face.

Cedric noticed this. "Do you have something against Voltaire?"

"Oh, uh.. no. It's just... He's not going to surprise us with..."

"NO, no, no. He's been house-trained."

"Good," Saul said. Somehow, though, he wasn't deeply changed. Nevertheless, he got up to shake Cedric's hand.

"Nice to meet you again, Chief Harriot."

The man smirked to himself as he sat back in his large, cozy office chair. He detached a tablet from the inside of his desk and started flipping through its files. Cedric started to get impatient.

"So..." he started. "What happened this time. I didn't do anything, did I?"

"Actually," said the chief, "You've done quite a bit. You made it to the honor role in high school, you went through years of military training....."

"Yeah, in Romania," Cedric started a bit sheepishly. "It seemed like a good idea because of the alt..."

"I said that you were in training," the chief interrupted. "Not that you should get high on yourself."
"Right."
"Anyways. After the war you dropped out... Now you're working at monitoring? What made you go there?"
This was getting awkward for Cedric. "It was the only place to go. Violence isn't exactly something you look for in an office."
"Who said you had to go to an office?" came Chief Harriot's retort. "You have training to go through much more than this. What are you doing in that dump? Who needs that old bag stalking them all day?"
Cedric started to get tense. His crystal wristband started to glow brighter. He started to show the disc-launcher he put in his pocket earlier that morning. "You do know that I still have my concealed weapons license, right?"
"Exactly. That's why you're here."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you know where those crystals on your wrist come from?"
"Yeah, they came from some planet out in the middle of the universe. We had to mine for them, but they were able to supply us with nearly unlimited energy. Now they're everywhere."
"And where did your..." Chief Harriot glanced at Voltaire for a brief second. "Tuft of feathers come from?"
"They were created with the power of the crystals. They finally gave us enough energy to fully analyze the entire DNA sequence, so we could recreate them to their full accuracy. Doesn't everyone know this?"
"Yes, but few people know that this system is falling apart."
"What do you mean?"
"Cedric, what you are about to learn is top secret and will only come out of this room in extreme emergencies." At this point, the chief handed the tablet he was holding over into Cedric's hands. Graphics lit up and flashed across the screen as he described them in almost full detail. "As you may understand, even though the creatures here are simply over-sized GEOrgs, there are highly volatile species. We maintain control of them by placing specialized nanobots into their nervous system. Unfortunately, these are growing faulty for some reason and...."
Here, the screen played a short video. It was in somebody's apartment block and was taken from a low-quality security camera. It was short, but horribly brutal as it showed the man open his door only to be pounced upon by a waiting Dilo inside. It ended shortly after some liquid splattered from the attack area. It made Cedric a little sick to his stomach just watching.
"When was this taken? Why didn't monitoring pick this up?"
"It only happened last night, Cedric. It took US forever to track because it didn't have a signal. This was a design, Cedric. Somebody didn't want you or anybody in monitoring to see this."
"Wow. I need to get to work earlier then."
"That's not the half of it. This is the third recorded case this month. We didn't even get three last year. This threat is growing. The police can't hold something like this off on their own."

Cedric suddenly had a bad feeling that he didn't want to hear the rest of what the chief had to say.
"This is where you come in," the chief said firmly.
"Right," came the reply. "What am I supposed to do?"
"Your mission is simple: maintain the threat by either capturing or eliminating any hostiles. You will have all the weapons and resources that you'll need. Use everything you can to your advantage."
"Anything else?"
"If you can, give us any information on who is behind this. We don't want anyone else to get hurt. Do you think you're ready?"
Cedric actually felt a little conflicted. "I don't know. I have my job at monitoring, and..."
"Oh, don't worry about it!" Chief Harriot almost seemed a little desperate. "We already talked it over with your boss. You can take care of anything whenever you need to."
It took a while of thought, but Cedric finally decided that it would be better to help the people of the city out. "Fine," he said. "I'll help in any way I can."
"EXCELLENT!" came the almost frightening response. "What do you need for this? Anything at all?"
"I might need something better than just a mini-disc launcher."
"Sure, anytime. Here, speaking of which, I should probably get your SCAR ready."
"Wait, wait. A ComBot? What would I need a drone for?"
"You're going to go out and kill dinosaurs, aren't you? Follow me."
Chief Harriot got out of his chair and started walking towards the door. Cedric followed cautiously with Voltaire curiously poking behind him. To be perfectly honest, androids bothered him.
Especially ones prone to killing things.

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