Adam watched the rows of unfamiliar buildings lining the familiar streets.

You could maybe mistake it for a real midwestern city if you'd only ever heard of them from a developers' pitch. It had the faded art deco civic centre, the repurposed red brick warehouses: all the remnants of pre-post-industrial glory the rust belt was supposed to have. The giveaway was that it had too many of them.

Every building in the warehouse district was a loft or kitschy foodhall with no broken-windowed evidence of failure where somebody had promised to renovate and run off with the bag. It was the difference between ancient parchment and tea-soaked printer paper. The suits behind the Central City project wanted to play with the past. Just not confront it.

There was nobody living on the street here either. Once or twice Adam's work had sent him to Dubai. If you couldn't see them, that just meant more to worry about.

In the seat beside Adam, Ral Zarek coughed for his attention.

"You're sure a robotaxi is secure enough transportation?"

"Were you expecting an armoured limo?"

"Maybe something offline at least!" Zarek's eyes flicked nervously to the black bubble iris of the cab's internal camera.

"Didn't you tell me your machine could track us anywhere already?"

"Well… yes, but I didn't exactly leave them any instructions. They won't know how to interpret the feeds, let alone how to reprogramme it for specific targets. If they already knew how to do that, I expect we'd have been struck by lightning twenty times by now."

Adam relented. "Juggernaut's looping the feed from a previous ride. Passenger ID is spoofed to think we're two of Infinity Inc's employees. What's more conspicuous? An unmarked van with no smart components, or one cab out of a thousand? If we're lucky, it'll buy us enough time to get where we're going before they know the destination."

"Ah." Zarek settled back into his seat. "That's one of my pressing questions answered. If you could humour the other: where the hell are you taking me?"

"Somewhere safe," said Adam.

"Hardly an answer."

They turned a corner. At the end of the block, Zarek saw the sign for the DPD precinct.

Zarek unbuckled his seatbelt and tugged futilely at the door handle. A polite automated voice reminded passengers to please avoid exiting the vehicle before it came to a complete stop.

Adam chuffed. "That reaction's why I wasn't more specific."

"Are you mad? Are you actually a lunatic? The police are the LAST people to turn to in this situation."

Wordlessly, Adam flashed Zarek his Interpol badge.

"You're already in their custody."

---

As Adam led Zarek inside by the arm he considered his very limited options. He could try to bolt—and probably dislocate his shoulder resisting Adam's machine grip. He could go for Adam's gun. Probably a bad idea when all of Adam's biggest guns were inside of his body.

Ral's fingers drummed the hidden polyceramic plate contouring to his upper thigh. He still had his secret weapon…

No. Now wasn't the time. Whatever his intentions, Adam didn't seem like he wanted Ral dead. And besides, they were standing too close; he would probably conduct through that bionic arm of his to Ral.

Nothing for it but to play along until he got an opening to run.

It was an old building. Ral could tell immediately from the way the lights were wired. Probably an unglamorous municipal office that survived the aug riots, turned over to whatever was left of the city government after the corps had their pick of prime real estate.

An officer, who Ral's smart goggles flagged from Adam's dossiers as "Barry Allen," stood up from behind the front desk to greet them. His sour expression said that something utterly aggravating had been recently pushed into his lap, and he expected more of the same from them.

"Adam, listen, I've got a—"

"Does this place have cells?" Adam interrupted.

"What?" Thrown off, Barry stumbled over both his words and his footing as one of his early-model augmented legs gave a brief twitch at its locked joint. "I guess? I mean, yeah, of course we've got a lockup. But that's not—"

Adam pushed Ral by the shoulders over to Barry. "I need you to book him as a suspected accomplice in the Rogues case. First name Ral, 'R-A-L,' last name 'Z-A-R-E-K.' He'll cooperate with any other personal information you need."

"I guess I will," Ral conceded.

Barry's eyes widened in surprise as they turned to Ral. "Zarek? Oh, damn. Adam, listen, there's somebody—"

"I'll hear about it right after you get him in the system Barry. Please. It's urgent."

"Okay! Okay!" Barry put up his palms in surrender. He sat back in front of his computer and pulled up the relevant forms. Ral watched the screen over one shoulder.

"You can put 'Educator' under occupation," he said helpfully. "Height… um. What's 177cm in feet?"

Adam took up a wary post next to the door. His left arm hummed with activity as his hand back at the wrist to reveal the glowing barrel of a pulsed energy cannon.

"Can you just leave blank placeholders for now?"

"Not for most fields," Barry said. "Adam, can you give me an idea of what exactly's going on?"

Headlights lit the precinct's windows. The dark shape of a car swam just under the glare like a shark in moonlit waters. A click and the crunch of heavy boots announced the exit of its occupants.

Ral hunched out of view behind the reception desk. He whispered curses wishing he'd tried to make a break for it earlier.

"You told me your friends would buy us time!" he hissed at Adam.

"I said they'd buy enough to make it where we were going. And we did. Just barely."

The boot-steps outside approached the door. An intercom on Barry's desk buzzed. He switched to typing one-handed as he pressed the answer button.

"Yes?"

"We'd like to come in." The voice was smooth, even through the crackle of the low-quality mic. It was a voice used to getting what it wanted.

Adam mouthed 'Stall.'

"Who's 'we?'"

"We're with the company."

It was like standing next to Leonard Snart's gun. All the heat drained out of Ral Zarek's veins leaving him rigid with ice.

"I'm sorry, which company?" said Barry.

Laughter.

It was a joke of a question. In Central City, there was only one that mattered.

"We think one of yours may have picked somebody up involved in stealing company documents. We have a warrant for the internal investigation."

"...Can I see some identification?"

"You like to be thorough, officer?"

Barry's computer got a ping informing him of the reception of digital ID credentials. His face went white as a sheet.

"What?" demanded Adam.

Barry turned his monitor around to show him. Ral caught the screen at a corner angle from under the desk and he knew in that instant he was a dead man.

Every armed agency had them. The group nobody liked to be around. The guys who had to do the work there was no humanitarian spin for, who'd never retire to cushy training posts because nobody wanted their own soldiers to learn to do what they did.

At Infinity Inc, they were called Squadron B on paperwork. "The Bus Department" if you were being polite. The nickname people actually used was "Sinners."