I slammed the suspect against the hood of my cruiser, pinning his arm behind his back as neon lights from a nearby holo-advertisement flickered across the rain-slicked street. It was supposed to be a routine bust – a mid-level drug runner caught selling black-market implants – but the fear in his eyes told me there was more at stake. “Please,” he gasped, glancing desperately over my shoulder, “you don’t understand… he owns half Berlin.”
The execution
Before I could press him to explain, the screech of tires cut through the night. An unmarked black sedan pulled up, and out stepped Commissioner Wolff, the silver-haired head of our division, wearing a calm, cold smile. He usually wouldn’t dirty his hands with street-level work, so seeing him there set off alarm bells in my mind. The suspect’s eyes went wide in unmistakable terror at the sight of Wolff, and in the same instant he suddenly wrenched against my grip as if to run or yell – I’m not sure which – just as Wolff’s pistol flashed into his hand. A single crack of gunfire echoed down the block, and when I looked down the suspect was crumpled against the car, blood pooling beneath him. “He… had a weapon,” Wolff muttered, but I knew what I’d just witnessed was an execution.
Wolff barked orders into his radio while I eased the suspect’s limp body to the ground. In the man’s fist, something glinted – a small datachip. I slipped it into my pocket on instinct as I pretended to check his pulse. My gut told me this chip might hold the truth behind the victim’s cryptic warning, perhaps even proof of who really “owns half the city.”
I forced my face to stay neutral as Wolff walked over. “Go get some rest,” he said, placing a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Internal Affairs will handle the report from here.” His eyes bore into mine, as if probing for any sign of dissent. I nodded and mumbled a dutiful “Yes, sir,” but inside, my thoughts were racing. I had just watched my own boss execute a suspect in cold blood – and I was now holding what might be the evidence that could bring him down.
This is heavy stuff
I reached out to one of the only people I could trust: an old informant named Anton who had a knack for cracking encrypted tech. Under the flickering streetlights of a back alley, I handed him the datachip with a trembling hand. We hunched over his portable decoder as lines of code scrolled across the screen, illuminating our faces with ghostly light. It didn’t take long for Anton to whistle under his breath, muttering, “This is heavy stuff.” The chip contained bank transactions and message logs linking Wolff to a web of corruption – payoffs from crime bosses, directives to sabotage investigations, even green-lit hits on fellow officers who got too close. My blood ran cold as each new file confirmed my worst suspicions about our esteemed Commissioner.
Anton’s eyes met mine. “Do you realize what this means? If Wolff even suspects you have that data, you’re as good as dead,” he said quietly. I swallowed hard, realizing he was right – in my hands I held a potential death sentence. Without another word, Anton shoved the datachip back into my hand along with the keys to his old motorbike. “Go. Get out of here and disappear,” he urged.
I sped off on Anton’s old motorcycle, the engine snarling through empty midnight streets of Berlin as my heart pounded with a mix of fear and fury. It didn’t take long to confirm we were right about Wolff – within minutes, two black SUVs appeared in my mirrors, running dark and closing in. A burst of gunfire shattered a street sign above my head and I swerved hard, racing through the neon glow of downtown Berlin with assassins on my tail.
The escape
I weaved between late-night traffic on main roads of Berlin and darted down narrow side roads, desperate to shake them, but they were coordinated, herding me toward the river. A heavy truck roared out ahead to block the next intersection, leaving me no choice but to veer onto the Spree River bridge at full throttle. Halfway across, a lucky shot from behind blew out my back tire. The motorbike jackknifed, and I hurled myself off an instant before it exploded in a fireball – flinging me over the railing and down into the cold, black waters of the Spree.
Soaking wet and shivering, I dragged myself out of the river and into the shadows of a deserted riverside alley. Every muscle ached, but I was alive – and officially, I realized, dead. By the time I staggered away from the water, Wolff had already moved to erase me completely. My police credentials were void; when I tried to ping the central database from my wrist-link, I got nothing but an “ID Not Found” error. I tried my phone next – service denied. A creeping dread set in as I tested one thing after another. He wasn’t just trying to kill me; he was destroying any trace of my existence.
Just hours ago this flat had been my sanctuary; now it felt like a crime scene from a life that officially ended. I skirted along the back alley to avoid prying eyes and crept up to the side door. The smart-lock refused my access – my biometric ID was already invalid. A red light on the scanner blinked an unemotional denial, confirming Wolff’s purge was thorough. Jaw clenched, I pried open a ground-floor window and hauled myself up the fire escape to my balcony.
Breaking into my home
Inside, the apartment lay in darkness and silence. The police hadn’t yet been here, but it was only a matter of time before they cleared out “the deceased’s” belongings. I moved quickly, peeling off my soaked clothes and stuffing a duffel bag with whatever essentials I could: a few changes of clothes, my service pistol, a stash of emergency cash, and the fake IDs I’d stowed in a wall panel for a rainy day. Finally, I tucked the precious datachip into an inner pocket of a dry jacket. This place was no longer safe, so with one last glance at the life I was leaving behind – the unmade bed, the photos still magneted to the fridge, the shelf of dog-eared detective novels – I slipped out into the night once more.
A Ghost with no name
Dawn is still a couple of hours away as I sit by the window of this tiny borrowed room, watching the distant glow of Berlin’s skyline and feeling utterly untethered from the world I knew. In the reflection of the glass I see a gaunt, exhausted man with haunted eyes – a ghost with no official name, no past, and a very uncertain future. The datachip burns in my pocket, heavy with the weight of what it could mean. On it lies proof of Wolff’s villainy: enough to topple his empire and send shockwaves through the halls of justice. It’s the kind of truth that could either cleanse the rot or rip the city apart.
How to use this truth is all I can think about. If I turn it over to what’s left of the authorities, who can I even trust to handle it honorably? If I go public, the scandal could cripple the department and throw the city into chaos – not to mention paint a target on anyone who helps expose it. But if I choose the path of vengeance and try to take Wolff down myself, I’ll be crossing a line I swore never to cross. I became a cop to uphold the law and protect the innocent, not to be judge, jury, and executioner… yet what do you do when the law itself is rotten? Every option is a minefield of consequences – moral and real.
For now, I know one thing: I can’t walk away from this. I won’t let Wolff’s crimes vanish into the darkness. One way or another, I have to find a way to see justice done – without losing the last pieces of myself in the process.
