Lumen
I sat there, watching for the detective across from me for reactions. They were surprised, which was expected, but strangely their eyes had some glow behind them. It was almost as if he had the exact opposite mind-set compared to normal people. It’s easy, after all, to argue that robots have no feelings and shouldn’t have rights. Those sentiments were also placed, unfortunately, on automatons. One was built with science, the other with magic. And while both were fundamentally different, people were quick to toss them into the same bag and call it a day, summarizing magic as ‘science we don’t understand yet’. The truth that was unnerving to those people was that we did, in fact understand magic. It just broke the rules science was so desperate to keep.
But I digress. Kaihi, or as I will call him now, Kai looked at my face and head, stroking his chin with a sigh.
“I can see why you were working so hard to keep your secret, and I’d love to hear your story too. Typically you don’t see automatons without a master nearby to sustain them.” He said, calmly taking a sip of tea. His composed response gave me a better impression of this detective. Sure, their place of living was not the neatest, but they didn’t rudely overreact to me being, quite literally, a doll.
“It’s a long story, do you want all the details or just-“
“Everything, if you please.”
Kai had interrupted me with his fingers locked, resting his chin atop them and resting his elbows on his knees, keeping a focused look at me.
“I work best when I have all the info available. Even info you think is useless can potentially lead to a breakthrough.”
I was still not comfortable talking about this. I honestly wasn’t quite sure who I was myself. I did have one lead, however; and I used all the money left to hire Kai to help her trace this lead all the way to completion.
“Unfortunately I can’t tell you much. I woke up at the foot of a bloody bed, surrounded by the corpses of men in black suits and a single man in a white button up shirt and black pants. They all looked to be middle aged. The apartment was messy, showing clear signs of a struggle. The information I received was given not trough a note, but it was magically implanted in my mind. I snuck out of the apartment after finding some obscuring clothes, used a credit card and paid you with it. Before you ask; No, I did not loot his corpse; the card was slotted inside my original outfit with a code. And now, here we are.”
Kai’s eyes were closed, his expression showing he was clearly lost in thought.
Lumen had plenty of time to think about her own origins, and she’d come up with a fair number of theories, but all of them had glaring issues. One theory was that the man in the white button up was her benefactor, but with him having died, why would the clearly superior in number suits just leave her there? Was she not their goal? Was she simply a casualty of conflict? And why did she have amnesia? How was she sustaining herself?
Too many questions, and she could only rely one person who was professionally involved with finding answers.
“We can probably assume that you were not the attacker’s target. If there were many men in black suits dead in the apartment, it would be fair to assume that you would be overwhelmed, and they got what they wanted. And as for the Button Up shirt guy, he may have been your master, and they want you to avenge them now. They probably gave you the last of their magic and their credit card so you could do that.”
Kai leaned back and cracked his neck with a hand.
“Or that’s at least one of many theories. We won’t have any concrete ideas until we do some actual digging. How long ago did you wake up?”
Lumen tilted her head ever so slightly, making a silent creaking noise.
“I believe it was about 1 month and 13 days to be precise.”
Kai clicked his tongue in slight frustration.
“So we can’t go check out the bodies of those suits, huh? That makes things difficult. I suppose we have to start cold unless you have any other info you’d like to share?”
“I was planning on bringing it up regardless, but in fact I do have one lead.”
Lumen looked down at the cold cup of tea. She felt a feeling of loss at not being able to enjoy it like the man before her.
“We must look into the power hungry gangs in the city.”
Kai raised an eyebrow; they may not have interpreted her correctly.
“What I mean to say is we must look into the ‘power’ hungry gangs in the city; Emphasis on power. “
At that moment, Kai looked like the gears in his head began turning all at once.
“Well, that makes my job a whole lot easier on the investigation side, but you also just put us in some real danger. You realize these guys will either kill us (If we’re lucky) or make examples of us with slow torture, right?”
“I have no concept of pain. I’m not human, remember?”
Kai took another swig of his tea, emptying his cup.
“Well, as long as you’re ok, I’m ok. I’m something of a loveable rebel in the underworld community. Crime lords may want me dead, but they’ll usually invite me for dinner so we can chat before that.”
That implied that Kai had not only been caught on multiple occasions, but he’d also escaped each and every time.
“Hey, I can see your hidden expression over there. I’ll have you know humans aren’t born experts at things. We get better by failing.”
Lumen lowered her gaze to the tea before her again, before sliding it over to Kai, and replacing it with Kai’s empty cup.
“Thank you for the tea. I suppose we can get started?”
Kai couldn’t help but smile sheepishly at what she had just done, realizing only then that she could not drink any of it.
“Uh, yeah, sure; I just need to call in a few favors, and we can get started. No need to worry, I only ask for help from really good friends. And even then I have backup plans.”
With that Kai, pulled a phone to his ear, and walked out onto his balcony. ‘This is going to be a quick job after all.’
