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Butterfly | Tessellation 1 (k.mg)

PAIRING: Detective!Mingyu x f. Reader SUMMARY: In a city where technology makes it possible to shed your body as easily as changing clothes, Mingyu has built his reputation hunting criminals who disappear behind new faces. So when you become the prime suspect in a brutal string of serial murders, he should have no trouble closing the case. Except… the more he investigates you, the less he’s convinced you’re guilty. CHAPTER WC: 9,415 AU: Cyberpunk, Mystery, Crime GENRE: Strangers to Lovers, some angst, smut RATING: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging in and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately. WARNINGS: This contains vivid depiction of a dead body that has been intentionally disfigured/messed with by a serial killer - I will call this body horror simply because I want to play it on the safe side, mention of dead bodies in general, depiction of gore and blood (in the dead body scene), bodies being referenced to as ‘Skins’ because replacing the body is possible in this world, lots of commentary on wealth gap, lots of references to how humanity just doesn’t care about human livelihood the same way it did once, mentions of deep poverty, mentions of throw away Skins (bodies) being dumped in an alleyway, Mingyu is kind of emo, Mingyu is a cigarette smoker because what is a detective fic without cigarette smoking, lots of reference to a terrible justice system, reader is a stripper and there is a brief scene of her dancing on Mingyu, lots of random body modifications but nothing super weird or in detail, Mingyu in general just has a lot of general dislike for the world, explicit language, um.... I think that's it for this chapter? A/N: This is for the Cyberpunk: Reload Collab hosted by @studiosvt and I could not be more excited to be bringing this to you! This is heavily inspired by Altered Carbon, Ghost in the Shell, and Blade Runner. This fic is a bit gritty because we all know me. I do not currently have a schedule set for the second chapter, but I am going to try to write the remaining three in total and then post them on a quick schedule basis to shorten the wait between them. A/N 2: No beta we die like Jedi during order 66 BANNER CREDIT: Thank you to @joshujin for the amazing, beautiful banner!

MAIN M. LIST | ASK | CYBERPUNK: RELOAD M. LIST | TESSELLATION TWO

it has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world. - chaos theory

"THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT IS A PRINCIPLE IN CHAOS THEORY THAT STATES THAT SMALL, SEEMINGLY INSIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN INITIAL CONDITIONS CAN TRIGGER MASSIVE, UNPREDICTABLE, AND VASTLY DIFFERENT OUTCOMES IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS-"

Mingyu knows what the butterfly effect is. In fact, the exact audio recording playing on loop throughout the penthouse apartment is the same audio that's been haunting his dreams and the moments of almost sleep he's been having at his desk while filling out piles and piles of paperwork at the station.

Now, the audio is playing again at the third crime scene in as many months, and he's had it.

"Turn that shit off," he barks, walking through the flickering holograph of the caution barrier. His legs disrupt the light only for a second, shadows bounding off the walls as he enters the main living area. "I'm tired of hearing about the fucking butterfly effect."

He was tired of researching it, too. Researching why a serial killer would leave the same recording playing at each crime scene over and over again, researching what the murders could possibly have to do with one another. So far, the first five victims have no connection to one another, nothing that clues Mingyu into what's going on beyond the same audio on loop. He doesn't expect this sixth victim will have any connection to their predecessors, but he has to try.

A grisly scene paints the penthouse. It's a nicer home than anything Mingyu will ever afford with floor-to-cieling windows that overlook the neon smear of the city. Rain blurs against the glass, turning the glow beyond to a muted opaque color that clashes with the bright caution banners and the lights of the investigative unit called to the scene.

The penthouse reeks of the metallic tang of blood and the faint tang of the chemicals the collection team uses to take samples all around the apartment. The victim lies splayed across the massive obsidian coffee table in the main entertainment area, arms and legs extended at unnatural angles. It's a male body, the torso filleted open from sternum to pelvis with surgical precision, the ribs cracked outward like grotesque wings.

Mingyu has seen five of these now. Each one has been more elaborate than the last. Each one leaves him with the same hollow frustrating gnawing at his gut.

"Lee," he barks at the lead forensic tech hovering nearby. "Anything different this time? Prints? Core signature? A confession, perhaps?"

Chan shakes his head, his rain-slicked jacket shedding beads of water onto the floor. "Same as the others. No prints, and the audio rig is the same ghost job as the last. The victim owns the building, his name is Harlan Voss. He got a new Skin a few weeks ago at Sync Corp. Nice model, nothing too extreme."

Mingyu crouches beside the table, his boots squelching in the thin layer of blood that has spread across the marble. Through the windows, the city pulses below, bright signs for body rental shops and upgrade clinics flashing in the downpour. Towering buildings disappear into the clouds, connected by old elevated trains that rattle in the distance.

Mingyu looks at the body. Chan had said the Skin upgrade was nothing too extreme, but in a world where people swap bodies regularly, the word extreme has lost most of its value, especially for people like Harlan Voss who are wealthy enough to transfer the Core implanted in their brain stem to a new body anytime they want.

It makes permanent death uncommon for people of this caliber. Mingyu tilts his head to the side, examining the back of Harlan's neck where his Core is. Like the others, it's damaged, which means Harlan is dead dead. No transferring his Core to a new body after the death of this one, no regeneration.

It unsettles something deep in Mingyu like satisfaction, and he pushes it down. He has no time to be disgusted by the Skin jumping of the wealthy while the people below scrap together money to upgrade their Skins to something new or broken just for the prestige of doing it.

Mingyu pushes up to his feet, joints popping and back aching. He groans - unlike the dead victim in front of him, he can't pay to have the tiny device buried in his neck to be transferred to some upgraded flashy skin. One would assume that as law enforcement, he'd get some kind of special discount or offers to enhance his speed, strength or something, but Mingyu has quickly learned that only the wealthy benefit from anything in this city.

He looks around the room slowly, eyes scanning for anything out of place. A broken glass on the bar counter. A half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey tipped over, mixing with the blood into a pink mess. Framed pictures on the walls show vacation spots in brighter cities, the kind most people only see in ads. One frame lies smashed on the floor, exposing basic wiring behind the fancy cover. Typical rich place that looks expensive on top but cheap underneath.

"Why butterflies?" Mingyu mutters to himself. "Chaos theory. One small change leads to big results. Like a butterfly flapping its wings and starting a storm somewhere else."

The killer isn't hiding the message. Each killing has happened once a month - not on a perfect timing, but approximate. Each scene is bigger - more wing shapes, more lights, the same audio. But the victims are never the same and thus far, there's no link between them. No shared friends, no common jobs, nothing on the basic records. A nobody found in a cheap rental unit. An escort pulled from a job. Nothing ties them together except this ritual.

But Mingyu doesn't know what this ritual is.

Frustration burns in his chest. Five months of this, nights bleeding into days at the station, staring at paper files and holoscreens while rain water leaks onto his desk. His own body feels worn out - aches deep in his joints, eyes burning constantly from lack of sleep. Unlike the dead man in front of him, Mingyu can't afford a new Skin on a detective's pay.

"Detective Kim?" Chan calls, voice unsure. Mingyu spins on his heel to find Chan crouched by the body, holding a small device in his hand near the core in the victim's neck. "I think the core is damaged but not dead."

"What?"

Mingyu strides over, his long legs making it easy. Chan crouches lower, the glasses on his face sliding down his sweaty nose. Mingyu leans over, tilting his head as Chan gently nudges the victim's head to turn it more. The Core is exposed to the elements and cut, like the attacker had been cutting it out to kill it, but as it catches the light, there's a small blip of cyan along the side, flickering as it tries to regain connectivity.

"Holy shit," Mingyu whispers. "If it's still alive, can you re-gen this guy?"

"Maybe, but it's potentially damaged enough that he would come back with high-level personality disorders or other cognitive issues. We might be able to repair enough to access memory or information, though." Chan hesitates. "Legal might get involved. If he's got family or others left behind, they might demand the Core be delivered to them to figure out what to do with it or refuse access to us."

Mingyu's hums, thoughtful. The possibility of interference is higher than he'd like to admit. In the few cases that Mingyu has dealt with the elite, their spouses or family left behind have always been nearly impossible in active investigations. He's since learned that those who sit in gilded glass towers have more to hide than the criminals crawling on the ground, and they'd rather a case go cold than unearth their secrets.

"Are we required to notify them?" Mingyu asks, glancing at Chan.

"Yes?"

"What if we only found it was discovered functional later in a proper autopsy."

Chan looks uncomfortable for a moment before nodding. "Yeah. That would make sense."

"Autopsies get delayed, right?" Chan sighs and Mingyu grins, slapping him on the back as he stands again. "Glad we understand each other, Lee. Take care of this while I walk around the area, yeah?"

"Yes, Detective."

Mingyu leaves the apartment and takes the stairs instead of the elevator, his knees protesting with each step. The exercise feels good though, so he jogs down the winding stairs, mind racing. By the time he reaches the ground level, he's sore and his heart is pounding, both reminders that he's human and that he's in his natural body, two things he's grown to be proud of.

The lobby is sleek, made up of polished obsidian and soft blue recessed lighting. Mingyu strolls through the automatic doors, the air locks hissing as he lets himself out into the rain, shoes tapping wetly on the pavement.

Reaching into his pocket, he fishes out a cigarette - an ancient, old world habit in comparison to the sleek vapes most people use - and sticks it between his lips, digging around his pocket for a lighter. He finds it and flicks it, the orange flame licking upward as he lights the cigarette, taking a brief drag. The flame catches and he flicks it shut, taking a heavy drag and lets the smoke settle in his lungs before he exhales into the neon smear of rain.

The street level is quieter this time of night, most of the storefronts closed, their holographic signs still flickering anyway. The street is full of advertising and marketing for Skin modification services, Core implant repairs, temporary Skin rentals for people too poor to own one permanently but desperate enough to spend a night as someone else.

Neon bleeds across the wet pavement in streaks of magenta and cyan, reflecting off the rain to create a blurry kaleidoscope of light that makes Mingyu's eyes water as he takes another drag, flicking ash into a puddle where it melts.

He walks, letting his feet guide him around the perimeter of the building, cool raing tapping down on his head and neck like soft fingers. He doesn't bother with an umbrella, the rain sliding off his jacket as he examines the exterior, cigarette wedged between his lips.

The neighborhood is a mix of high-rises towering over strip malls, luxury boutiques selling pricey mods next to hole-in-the-wall clinics offering illegal and questionable upgrades. It's one of common liminal spaces in the city where the almost wealthy clash with the lower glass, each fighting for dominance on the ground while the megaliths of the city exist in their towers far above.

Mingyu wonders what the rest of them look like from on high. He imagines that they can't even see people like him, rotting beneath the clouds and scurrying around like ants beneath a boot that's constantly waiting to step on them. Mingyu has been stepped on plenty of times, but he hasn't died yet and he doesn't plan on it now, heading to the back alleyway behind the building.

Dumpsters filled with broken tech litter the alleyway, but Mingyu pauses when he sees a bunch of old, rotted Skins. He lifts his arm, covering his face with it to ward off the smell. Skins are still bodies - they're still organic material like any other living organism, and they break down the same way. Seeing tossed Skins isn't uncommon, especially near body-mod shops, but Mingyu is unsettled to see them just tossed, flies buzzing around them.

Pulling out his phone, he dials Chan up stairs. "Send a team down to the back alley, there's discarded Skins. None of them look fresh or functional, but maybe our killer tosses theirs."

"On it."

"Also have someone dispose of these before someone wanders around and tries to take them. They're rotted beyond use, the last thing we need is some kind of infection going around because people are re-genning bad Skins."

"Understood."

Mingyu hangs up the phone and takes the final drag of his cigarette before flicking it toward the dumpster. He continues on his way, searching - for what he doesn't know. Something. Anything. He just wants to find something to help him unravel the mystery upstairs, something he's missed previously.

As always, he finds nothing except the smell of wet concrete and biological decay, the distant hum of an elevated train line cutting through the noise somewhere. He circles back to the front of the building and finds himself looking upward. The building is a vertical monument to wealth that juts up into the rain-soaked sky, but it's got nothing on the monstrosities the corporation owners and mega-rich of the city live in.

The rain grows heavier, coming down in sheets. Mingyu slips under the overhang in front of the building, watching as the world vanishes to a blur of light behind the rain. From here, he knows the city by heart - it spreads out in layers, the commercial district with aggressive neon signage, the old industrial zones still smoking from plants that are ready to collapse any minute, and beyond, the entertainment and wealthy districts.

Trains arc across the space between buildings while autonomous vehicles move through the streets in perfect formation, headlights occasionally cutting through the dark toward him as they pass by the building.

They city pulses on despite the death upstairs, the desperation and money and excess and filth all tangled together, and somewhere in it, is the person Mingyu is hunting, the butterfly that haunts his dreams and all of the hours in between.

Mingyu sighs, jaw clenched as he watches the rain, the same words on loop in his head: The butterfly effect is a principle chaos theory that states that small, seemingly insignificant changes in initial conditions can trigger massive, unpredictable, and vastly different outcomes in complex systems.

-

Mingyu stares at the six projected faces in front of him, the cyan of the holoscreen only broken up by the flicker as he switches from viewing all six of them at once to one at a time. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzes, glitching for a moment as it threatens to go out. It's been dying for three weeks now, humming like an insect trapped in a glass. No one has bothered to fix it, of course. The maintenance budget at the precinct is nonexistent, most of the funding funnelling into the new autonomous patrol units they send to patrol through the wealthy districts.

Down here in the bowels of the city, everything is falling apart. Water drips from a crack in the ceiling two desks over, landing in the metal track can with a constant metal drip that drives Mingyu nuts. The air smells like mildew and stale air undercut by the burnt coffee that tastes like battery acid every time he takes a sip. He drinks it out of a chipped mug anyway, needing the extra jolt of energy and unwilling to take any of the stimulants or quick fixes the young deputies prefer.

Mingyu's fingers drum on his mug to the rhythm of the dripping. He cannot unstick his thoughts from the six victims over six months, struggling to find the connection. He drags his finger across the holoscreen to pull up the first victim's file again, despite having read it a million times. The first victim is a male nobody, found in a cheap Skin rental unit in the lower districts, his body laid out with the same surgical precision and same butterfly effect audio playing on loop. The victim had no family, no friends, and the damaged Core had said unclaimed in evidence for two weeks unclaimed and uncared for before being incinerated per protocol.

Sighing, he swipes to the second victim, a female escort pulled from a job in the entertainment district. She'd been with a wealthy client a few hours prior, but the client had a clean alibi and had no problem letting them scan his Core for memories of the entire night. The escorts Core, like the first victim, had been damaged beyond recovery, just like the first, though the job had been done a little cleaner, a little better.

The third victim comes up as Mingyu stares. Mid-level corporate suit who worked in data analysis and had an entirely boring and normal life. No enemies, no debts, no reason for anyone to want him dead. His family had come to claim his Core two days after they'd been notified, and Mingyu was surprised to discover that in a world full of abnormal, the man had been even keel and plain with enough money to provide for himself and his family but not enough to do much else than that.

The fourth and fifth victims' only similarities were their involvement in the black market, though neither had crossed paths. The fourth had been a street vendor selling neural mods, but the fifth had been a retired surgeon who'd started performing illegal Core augmentations that had landed him with a fine and warning - not jail. Never jail.

And now Harlan Voss, the owner of an apartment complex. All of the victims had been from different parts of the city, the only thing linking them together was the ritual by which they had been left for him. Though Mingyu can't prove it, he feels like there's a joking edge to it now, like each death is meant to tease him and his inability to figure it out.

He leans back in his chair, the springs groaning under his weight. His eyes burn. He hasn't slept more than three hours in the past two days, and even that was broken up by the fragmented dreams of the butterfly effect audio bleeding into his fucking subconscious until he woke up gasping, the words echoing in his skull.

There's something he's missing. Mingyu knows he's on a timeline to figure it out now that Voss has been killed. Before, his superiors hadn't thought much of a serial killer stringing together some useless skins - people who didn't matter in the system. Though Harlan Voss doesn't matter, exactly, he's a step closer to the people up top that the city is obsessed with protecting, the people worth protecting.

Mingyu had learned a long time ago that people have become disposable. Bodies are just shells now, things you can rent or buy or discard when they stop serving you. Cores get pulled, transferred, reinstalled into something younger and prettier, and the person moves on. Humanity has been reduced to data, consciousness stripped down to the electrical impulses that can be copied, moved, and erased.

Death is so common to those at the top that it barely registers. But when real death happens - Core death - it turns heads, especially when it's a little too close to the gilded.

Mingyu's jaw tightens. His body aches, knees stiff, lower back throbbing from too many hours in this shitty chair, too many hours in the field in his original Skin. He feels every year of it, and though it makes him feel human, he can't help but be bothered how the wealthy don't age like this. They just buy new bodies by the dozen. Transfer over. Keep going. It's immortality for anyone who can afford it, cheating death over and over again.

Cracking his neck, Mingyu refocuses on the work at hand and pulls up the financial records again, cross-referencing bank accounts, transaction histories, anything that might link the victims. There's nothing, of course. Everyone has different banks and different spending patterns, different lives and different histories. The only thing they have in common is the way they died.

The butterfly effect is a principle in chaos theory…

Mingyu's phone buzzes on the desk. He picks it up to see Chan's name flash across the screen and he answers right away. "Lee, what have you got?"

"Core is ready," Chan says on the other side. "I've stabilized it enough for a read of the memory logs. You should come down."

"How long do we have?"

"Hard to say. It's pretty damaged. Could be an hour, could be less. If we're going to pull anything, it needs to be now."

"Heard. On my way."

Mingyu ends the call and stands. The holoscreen glows faintly in front of him, the six faces of the dead he can't seem to bring justice too staring back at him until he swipes again and they vanish. He grabs his jacket from the back of the chair and heads for the door, shrugging the leather over his shoulders.

The forensic lab is two floors down, a section of the station most detectives like to avoid. Mingyu takes the stairwell, refusing to get stuck in the elevator for a sixth time, leaping down the steps as he takes two at a time.

Bright, sterile light greets him as he pushes into the lab, making him squint. Banks of equipment link the walls, shelves full of neural readers, Core analysis stations, data extraction devices and a section for biopsy and medical analysis. The air smells faintly chemical, kind of like the inside of a machine. He prefers the smell of the burnt coffee and damp upstairs than whatever it is that permeates the forensic floor.

Chan is standing at the far end of the room, hunched over a workstation where a cylindrical containment unit glows with a faint, sickly cyan light. Voss's Core floats suspended in the translucent gel, its surface marred with dark fractures that spiderweb across the neural casing, damaged from the attack. Mingyu watches as the light flickers, pulsing in irregular intervals while Chan tinkers with it.

"Lee," Mingyu greets, crossing the room in a few long strides.

"We've got maybe thirty minutes before this thing goes dark," Chan says without looking up, his fingers tapping on a tablet next to him. A holographic interface appears over the desk, cyan numbers and date reflected in Chan's glasses. "Give me a sec."

"Can we reanimate him?" Mingyu asks, crossing his arms over his chest as Chan works.

The lab technician shakes his head. "No. The damage is too extensive. A system reboot would require full neural integration, and the Core can't support that kind of load. It would collapse the moment we tried to initialize consciousness."

He taps a section of the holographic display, pulling up a three-dimensional model of the Core's internal structure. Half of it is shaded black, dead zones where the neural pathways have been damaged beyond repair. Mingyu sighs, nodding. They're lucky they have anything at all - a damaged Core is better than no Core at all.

"We can access the memory storage," Chan says, tapping something. "It's fragmented and corrupted in places, but there's enough intact data that we can pull maybe a few minutes worth of his life from it. Maybe more if we're lucky."

"How much is a few minutes?"

"Hard to say until we're in. Could be five, could be ten. Depends on how much the Core was actively recording before it got damaged." Chan glances at Mingyu, his expression cautious. "This isn't like interrogating a living witness, Detective. We're pulling raw sensory data that will be from Voss's perception. It'll be disjointed - memory isn't linear."

Mingyu nods. "Do it."

Chan's fingers move across the interface, initiating the connection sequence. The containment unit hums, a low vibration that Mingyu feels in his chest, and the cyan light intensifies, brightening until it casts sharp shadows across the lab.

The holoscreen shifts and for a moment, there's nothing but static and a wash of grey noise that flickers and shifts. Then an image resolves, making both Mingyu and Chan lean forward as Chan tampers with the interface, sharpening the image.

A penthouse. Floor-to-cieling windows. Rain. The perspective shifts as Voss moves, walking across the floor of his apartment to his kitchen and grabs a bottle of whiskey and pours two fingers worth into a glass. Voss takes a swig and then walks back to the living room where Mingyu recognizes the space and the coffee table where Voss's body had been cracked open.

"This is from earlier in the evening," Chan says, his voice quiet. "Before the murder."

Mingyu doesn't respond. He's too focused on the screen, watching as Voss sits down on the couch, picks up a tablet and scrolls. Nothing else seems to happen, nothing that screams he's about to be murdered. Mingyu is about to complain when the perspective shifts again to show a new scene.

Marble floors reflect overhead lights. The sound of Voss's footsteps echo across his memory as he passes a doorman in a crisp uniform and a name tag that reads Martinez.

Rain hits the screen, rippling across the holo in temporary distortion as Voss gets into a car. The driver takes off and Minguy watches as the city blurs past in a mess of lights and umbrellas, the sensory feed blurring and glitching as it tries to accommodate for the sights and sounds and thoughts and feelings of Voss in that moment.

Suddenly the image blurs and shifts so that Voss is standing in front of a strip club. The entrance is unmarked except for a single neon sign that flickers in shades of magenta and violet, hearts climbing up the side as holograms of girls beckon him in. He passes through the door and strobing lights cut through the feed, blinding both Chan and Mingyu like they're seeing it in the flesh.

Heavy base pulses through the feed as Voss moves deeper into the club. A stage dominates the center of the space, and on it, multiple dancers move with practiced precision, their bodies catching the strobing lights in fragmented movements. Here, the feed breaks off into fractal images as the Core flashes - a leg extended, an arch of the back, a turn that sends hair flying.

Mingyu tries to catalogue the faces as he sees them - a woman with pink eyes, someone with a swirling tattoo, another with sharp eyes that seem to track the crowd even as her body ripples across the stage like water. It's your eyes that makes Mingyu pause, cutting him down to the bone, your gaze more present than that of the far-off look of the others.

But then you're gone as the perspective shifts and the image bleeds into Voss in the bathroom, drunk and leaning heavily against the urinal as he relieves himself. Chan makes a disgusted sound as the memory jumps again to a small ramen cart somewhere in an unknown district.

"This is jumping around," Chan says, his voice cutting through the feed. "The Core is pulling fragments non-sequentially. We're seeing his evening out of order."

Another jump. More faces. A man in a leather jacket, arguing with someone Mingyu can't see. A couple pressed against the wall, kissing. A group of young people clustered around a table, their faces illuminated by the glow of their handheld screens.

And then, for just a moment, another face that belongs to a woman standing near the back of the bar, watching the crowd.

Mingyu's breath catches. He knows that face.

"Wait," he says, his hand shooting up. "Stop. Go back."

Chan's fingers freeze over the interface. "What?"

"That woman. The one in the back." Mingyu leans closer to the holoscreen, his exhaustion momentarily burned away by a spike of adrenaline. "I've seen her before. In the club footage. She was on stage."

Chan rewinds the feed, pulling up the earlier memory from the strip club. The perspective shifts back to the moment on stage. A woman with pink eyes, one with a swirling tattoo, one with sharp eyes. Mingyu points.

"Her," he murmurs. "She's in two of his memories."

"Could be coincidence," Chan says, but his tone suggests he doesn't believe it. "She could work multiple venues. Dancers do that sometimes."

"Or she was following him," Mingyu says. The implications settle over the lab like a weight. "Or she was part of it."

The perspective lingers on you for a fraction of a second longer than the others, just long enough for Mingyu to register your face clearly, and then Voss turns away and you're gone, swallowed back into the crowd.

The memory jumps again. Voss is back in his car, then in the lobby of his building, then in the elevator ascending to his floor. The doorman from earlier is talking to someone Mingyu can't see. Security personnel stand near the entrance, their faces blank and professional. A woman in a business suit walks past, her heels clicking against the marble, her face turned toward her phone.

Then Voss is in his penthouse. The perspective shifts as Voss moves, walking across the floor of his apartment to his kitchen and grabs a bottle of whiskey and pours two fingers worth into a glass. Voss takes a swig and then walks back to the living room where Mingyu recognizes the space and the coffee table where Voss's body had been cracked open.

"We're back at the beginning," Chan notes."

In the memory, the doorbell chimes. Mingyu leans forward, his pulse quickening when he realizes this must be it - this has to be the moment the killer entered the apartment. The image flickers and static washes across the holoscreen, distorting the feed. When it clears, the perspective has put Voss back in the living room again as the sound of the doorbell loops.

"It's corrupting," Chan notes, hitting a few buttons on his tablet. "Fuck, it's going to fry."

"Push it anyway. We're right there."

Chan obeys but the containment unit's hum rises to a high-pitched whine as warnings flash across the screen about the Core overheating. The holoscreen sharpens but Mingyu lets out an angry sound when he sees the memory loop back to Voss walking into the apartment building again, ignoring Martinez at the door as he heads for the elevator. The feed glitches, harsh reds and blues blooming across the screen before Voss is back at the club again, with you leaning forward, your eyes piercing even in the corrupted feed.

"No, go back to the apartment!"

"I'm trying," Chan shoots back. "I told you, this thing is damaged and we've got way more out of it than expected."

Audio fragments layer over each other, the pounding bass of the club's music mixing with the ding of the elevator, and the doorman's greeting. It's a mess of sound, too much information compressed into too little time, the Core's final desperate attempt to dump everything before it dies.

"Come on," Chan mutters to himself, trying to sharpen the feed as the containment unit whines. "Fucking come on!"

The doorbell rings again and Voss walks toward the door as Mingyu leans closer, his heart beating in his throat. Voss reaches out with one hand toward the door and the holoscreen goes dark, the containment unit's light dying as the hum cuts off sharply. An acrid smell comes from the Core where it smokes, the electrical wiring fried, filling the air with a metallic, burnt smell.

"Dammit!" Mingyu swears, punching a fist down on the lab table. The containment unit rattles and Mingyu leans on his hands, head hanging between his shoulders as Chan tries to pry the dead, smoking Core out of the unit. "Fuck. Fuck."

"Well," Chan sighs. "At least I recorded it all."

Mingy lifts his head. "What?"

"The data. I recorded it while extracting." He raises his brows. "Do you think I'm an idiot? I put it on a backup file so at least what we have - even if it's fuck all - is on a drive. I can run some facial recognition on everyone who passed through the memory."

Mingyu straightens, the tension in his shoulders easing slightly. "How long?"

"Couple hours, maybe more. Go home, Detective. Get some rest. There's nothing more we can do for a few hours and you look like shit, man."

Mingyu wants to argue, wants to stay and watch the facial recognition run in real time, but he knows Chan is right. He's been awake for thirty-six hours straight, his body running on caffeine and adrenaline, and his mind is starting to blur at the edges. He nods once, sharp, and turns toward the door.

"I'll call you when I have something," Chan says.

Mingyu doesn't respond. He walks out of the lab, through the sterile white corridor, and back up the stairwell to his floor of the precinct. It's quieter upstairs now, most of the day shift gone with only a few officers still lingering at their desks as they pour themselves over paperwork and their own cases. Mingyu grabs his jacket from the back of his chair, hits the power button on his computer, and heads for the garage.

Fluorescent lights flicker above his head as he jogs down the concrete stairwell, footsteps loud and echoing. The air gets cold and damp as he descends, the rain seeping in through the shitty insulation and clinging to the walls. By the time he reaches the garage level, he feels the moisture in his shirt and hair, clinging to him like a heavy second skin.

The garage is mostly empty, making it easy to spot his bike near the back. It's sleek and shining in the reflection of the light fixture above it, black surface gleaming. It's the single most expensive thing that Mingyu owns and his most prized possession, hours of learning how to take care of it and fix it because tune ups are out of his pay range poured into the machine.

He swings a leg over it and removes the helmet from where it hangs on the handle bars, popping it over his head where a cyan heads up display appears across the face shield. He presses the start button and the bike roars to life under him, vibrating as he nudges the footstand and rolls forward, twisting the throttle until he's coasting through the garage.

Rain hits him as soon as he hits the street level, cold and rushing off his helmet in neon rivulets. The streets are slick as glass beneath him, reflecting the towers of the city on either side of the road, ripping as he gasses it and his bike tears through the street.

He cuts through the lower districts and side streets, avoiding the elevated highways where there's always traffic and road closures because some rich asshole has paid a heavy fee for an expedited drive somewhere. Down here, the world is just like Mingyu likes it, all cracked pavement and burnt out street lights, the flickering holographic advertisements advertising very illegal clinics that he ignores because so long as they're not murdering anyone, he doesn't have time to care.

Mingyu doesn't go straight home, too wired to do anything but pace the walls of his tiny apartment in silence. Instead, he cuts into a mixed commercial district a few blocks from his apartment, heading for a stretch of storefronts and vendors that stay open late.

Above, the rain has softened to a drizzle, misting the air as he kills the engine and walks the bike forward to the curb before setting it on the kickstand. He pops the helmet off and takes it with him this time, not stupid enough to leave it unguarded downtown like he might in the garage of a police precinct.

He walks past a pawn shop with bars on the windows, the display cluttered with outdated neutral interfaces, cracked holoscreen displays and retro computers. The shop is closed, but he can see the security bot inside, patrolling as it tips back and forth while driving over uneven flooring.

Next to the pawn shop is a laundromat he's intimately familiar with from the apartment he lived in just two blocks away. In his earlier days on the job, he'd sit here on Sundays and listen to the machines hum, thankful for the warmth in the winter from the exhaust vents while he poured over cases and bitch work given to him until he could earn his keep.

Mingyu keeps walking, passing a convenience store with flickering signs and people that move with hunched shoulders against the drizzle. No one pays him much mind, everyone too preoccupied with their own lives as they scuttle along like beetles.

The automatic door of the 24-hour market hisses when Mingyu ducks in. Bright lights make him squint as he walks the aisle filled with bright neon prices and advertisements calling to him, products ranging from everything to instant meals, cigarettes and cheap liquor to disposable razors and batteries. A clerk sits behind the counter, scrolling through a tablet, ignoring Mingyu entirely.

Mingyu doesn't mind. He picks up a pack of ramen, a bottle of cold coffee from the refrigerated section, a pack of cigarettes, and a pack of caffeine gum in cherry flavor that he likes to chew late at night on the job for an extra kick of energy. The clerk rings him up without comment and Mingyu pays with his phone before scooping his things and heading back outside into the drizzle.

Pausing, he tears open the new pack of cigarettes with his teeth, rolling the plastic and tossing it into the trash. Fishing one out, he sticks it between his lips and searches for a lighter for a few seconds before lighting it and taking a deep drag, feeling his lungs expand as they feel with acrid smoke.

Mingyu can't help but think about you in Voss's memory, the dancer with the sharp gaze who appeared twice. It isn't much, but it can't be a coincidence - coincidences don't exist in Mingyu's line of work. He knows the city is full of people moving through the same spaces and crossing paths without meaning, but seeing you multiple times in Voss's memory is something.

The butterfly effect is a principle chaos theory that states that small, seemingly insignificant changes in initial conditions can trigger massive, unpredictable, and vastly different outcomes in complex systems.

Mingyu sucks in another drag and blows the smoke out in a sigh. As much as he hates for his killer to be right about anything, Mingyu feels instinctually that you are, that something about you has caused a ripple effect. He just needs to figure out how and why.

He finishes the cigarette and drops it, grinding it out under his heel while the smoke lingers in his lungs for a minute. Shuffling the bag in his arms, he heads back toward where he parked his bike, passing by a noddle stand on the corner with steam rising and the smell of frying garlic and chili oil cutting through the damp air. Mingyu considers stopping, but he's not hungry. He just needed to be somewhere that wasn't the station or his apartment.

Back at the bike, he opens the seat and dumps his belongings in the compartment before swinging back on and pulling his helmet on. The drive to his apartment is slow and winding, cutting through back alleys and misting rain until he's parking in the cracked-concrete garage and taking the stairs up to the fourth floor.

Mingyu shoulders into the apartment after unlocking the door, immediately toeing off his boots while he locks the door behind him. It's not much - just one room, a kitchenette, a bathroom with a shower that barely works and has no hot water, and one large window that overlooks the street, the view mostly obscured by the constant rain.

He sets the bag on the counter and pulls out the ramen before going through the motions, boiling water and tearing into the sauce packet with his teeth, mind far away from his little corner of the world while he thinks about you again, a thread among the chaos - a beat of a butterfly's wings, maybe.

- Mingyu jolts awake in the dim glow of his apartment, his heart hammering against his ribs. The ringing that cuts through the haze is distorted and confusing until he realizes there's a small green hologram lighting up over his phone. He fumbles for it, hand knocking over his reading glasses, his pistol, and the tablet he'd been using to research the stupid butterfly effect again.

Chan's name displays as the phone continues ringing, lighting up the world as Mingyu fumbles to answer. "Hello?

"You sound like hell," Chan replies, the sound of a keyboard in the background. "Facial rec pulled a hit on that woman from Voss's memory. Cross-referenced with club surveillance feeds from the entertainment district, looks like she's a performer at the club Wings. High end joint."

Mingyu leans against his headboard, running a hand over his face. The single window in his unit lets in the never-ending neon glow from outside, casting dull patterns across his bedroom. He hears the rain tapping against the glass, a constant companion.

"Wings. Got it. Send me the address."

"On it. It's in the mid-tier entertainment strip near the old elevated line. I recommend caution. It's on the mid-tier strip but it leans high end - the entertainment there aren't standard rentals."

"Name?"

"Looks like the stage name might be Psyche."

Mingyu frowns as he gets out of bed and grabs a dirty pair of jeans off the floor to shove one leg in, jamming the phone between his face and his shoulder.

"Like the wife of Cupid?"

"Seems that way."

"Anything else?

"Clean on the surface. No priors, no traffic tickets. Nothing."

"Well his memory showed her twice. Can't be random."

Chan sighs. "I'm inclined to agree. Like I said, be careful. Security at these places crack skulls first and ask questions later. You don't have money for a new Skin."

"Heard. Talk later."

Mingyu finishes getting dressed, his heart hammering the entire time. This is the thread - the butterfly's wingbeat. He can feel it in his gut, something sharpening into something purposeful, an instinct that has led him on every hunt for a killer he's been on.

He moves quickly, pulling on a long-sleeved shirt that smells like sweat and cologne, pulling on boots with loose laces, and tucking his gun in the back of his pants before hiding it with the hem of his shirt. He tucks a badge in his pocket, and heads out of the room, knocking his shin against the corner of the bed and cursing loudly.

At the door, he grabs his helmet and heads out into the hall, nearly jogging as he takes the steps down to street level two at a time. Rain greets him outside, making his shirt cling to his frame as he straddles his bike. The engine roars to life, HUD on his helmet flickering alive with the address overlay. He twists the throttle and tears into the night, tires slicing through puddles.

The ride blurs into a streak of neon and the lower streets give way to the mid-level sprawl, where wealth brushes against grit. Autonomous cabs hum past, their passengers hidden behind tinted fields. Elevated tracks arc overhead, sparks occasionally flying from aging mag-rails. Mingyu leans into turns, the bike's vibration thrumming through his bones, chasing away the last dregs of fatigue.

By the time he pulls up to the curb outside Wings, the rain eases to a misty veil, but the air hangs heavy with the smell of gas and rusting metal, a permanent smell that never really seems to leave.

He parks the bike on a side street and heads toward the front door of the club, uncaring that he's a bit damp and messy. The club is impossible to miss, the facade bright with iridescent panels that shift colors under a massive holographic marque that reads: WELCOME TO WINGS, WHERE FANTASIES TAKE FLIGHT.

Security drones hover discreetly at the entrance, red scanner lights sweeping patrons as they stand in line. The line is mostly men who look better dressed than Mingyu, umbrellas in hand to keep the rain off their backs as a security guard stands at the door checking IDs and taking money.

Mingyu gets in line and ignores the way the others look at him, tucking his helmet under his arm. He's bouncing with energy now, craning his neck to look up at the holograms above, dancers in all manner of fantasy writhing and twisting in shades of fuchsia and red and lavender.

It takes about ten minutes to reach the door where a security guard with one augmented eye looks at him, his lens turning cyan as he scans Mingyu. He holds out his hand for an ID, which Mingyu hands over immediately.

"Cover is two hundred creds. If you want a private room, see the bar. Private rooms start at five hundred."

"Two hundred?" He asks, feeling himself stall out. "Fucking hell."

"Pay or get out."

Grumbling, Mingyu takes out his phone and transfers over the credits, swallowing thickly when he sees how close it brings him to the negatives. He's not sure this qualifies for reimbursement at the station, but he's going to file it anyway.

"Head in. Any trouble and you're out."

Mingyu steps by as the door hisses open. Inside, the air is thick with the scent of engineered pheromones being pumped in through the vents with the smell of liquor. Bass pumps through the room, vibrating through the floor and up his spine. The main floor sprawls under a vaulted ceiling alive with projected constellations that shift in real-time, stars turning as though the club is spinning in time with the world's real rotation.

Dancers move with unnatural grace, and it takes Mingyu a moment to realize that all of them have wings. He spots one with dragonfly wings that glitter as she spends, refracting light. Another has raven wings, inky black even as she twists around a pole under cyan light.

He hadn't expected the theme to be so literal, but he's glad that the wings are wearables and not uncanny body mods. He slinks through the room between patrons, noting the privacy feels that shimmer in the distance to hide the VIP booths from prying eyes. The private rooms are further back, a neon sign above a shadow hall with fly away above it.

Mingyu's eyes scan methodically, cutting through the sensory overload. He clocks exits, security nodes embedded in the walls, the faint hum of surveillance drones disguised as decorative moths fluttering near the ceiling. No sign of you yet, though, so he drifts toward the bar, ordering a cheap synth-whiskey to blend in, the glass cool against his callused fingers. The liquid burns familiarly as he sips, eyes never still.

Then he sees you and the world slows down a little.

You emerge from a side alcove onto one of the elevated platforms framed by gossamer curtains that part around you, moved by some sort of air effect. You're wearing delicate butterfly wings, spans of translucent fabric that looks like real membrane catching the light. You're dressed in minimal strips of iridescent material, accentuating each one of your curves while leaving the wings unobstructed.

Just like in Voss's memories, it's your eyes that make Mingyu freeze. It carries the same piercing quality as you dance, cutting through the room. It's not the same hazy allure of the other dancers, but something more focused like a predator among pretty things.

Butterfly wings. It makes him go cold, the butterfly effect audio recycling through his head over and over as he watches you dance, your wings fluttering. Despite being fake, they look real, catching the light as you shimmer, more beautiful than anything else he's ever seen.

Mingyu finishes his drink and sets it down harshly as he turns to the bar and hails down a bartender to ask for a private room. The bartender slides over a tablet and Mingyu scrolls until he finds your stage name - Psyche - and nearly vomits the whiskey back up when he sees the price.

"Eight hundred credits for thirty minutes?" He growls. He curses under his breath and charges it to his credit card, knowing he's never going to pay it off before it gains sixty percent interest. "Better be fucking worth it."

A room number flashes on the screen and he memorizes it before stalking off toward the hallway of private rooms, glancing at your platform as he does. You tilt your head, hand going briefly to your ear before turning to get off the platform. It's then that he realizes you have an ear piece in. He files that piece of information away.

The private room is small and blessedly clean, the seats plush with a low table in front of them. He throws himself down and shivers, the room unnaturally cold. He glances around but sees no clock or anything else in the room except a private bar which he knows will cost extra, so he doesn't dare, instead staring at the door until it opens.

Mingyu's heart starts to hammer as you slide into the room, sitting up straighter. It doesn't occur to him that up until this morning, he's never done this before. The realization makes him nervous, palms sweaty as you slink toward him, smiling and tilting your head.

"New face," you greet, sliding onto the seat next to him. You lean against the seat, facing him as you cross one leg over the other. "Pretty face."

Up close, the details on your face come into sharp focus: faint iridescence on your skin like starlight, the scent of jasmine and amber, pretty eyes that swallow him whole.

"Looking to forget the rain outside?" You ask him, voice sweet and soft. "I can fix that."

Mingyu leans back, forcing a lazy smirk that does not reach his eyes. He plays the part - client with creds to burn, interest piqued by the exotic. "Something like that."

A small smile tugs your lips. "What do you want tonight? Escape? Or just a pretty distraction?"

"Distraction sounds good. Start with a dance, yeah?"

If you sense his confidence is feigned, you don't show it. You stand, the wings spreading wide behind you, catching the low light and refracting it into soft gradients of color. The music shifts to something slower and heavier, the bass making Mingyu's skin itch. You move with practiced precision, hips swaying as you step closer, one hand trailing along the back of the couch.

Mingyu's breath catches. He reminds himself it's the job and that he's here for information, not this. But his body doesn't listen as he becomes hyper aware of you, his fingers twitching as he fights not to jump out of the booth and away from you. It's not that he's bad with women - he's not - but this is new to him, never having paid for a moment of attention this intimate and sensual.

You turn your back to him now, the wings folding slightly as you lower yourself onto his lap. The weight of you is real and solid, warm through the thin fabric of his clothes. You roll your hips slowly and Mingyu's hands grip the edge of the couch to keep from reaching for you or pushing you off - he's not entirely sure which.

Your hair brushes his jaw as you lean back, your head tilting to rest near his shoulder, and he feels the heat of your breath against his neck. He can't help but shiver, the smell of your jasmine and amber so overwhelming he feels his lashes flutter.

"You're tense," you murmur. "Relax."

He can't. His mind is racing, cataloging details like the way you move, the control in every gesture, the sharpness in your eyes when you glanced at him earlier. This isn't just a performance. There's something calculated about it, something that doesn't match the soft, breathy voice you're using now.

You turn again, straddling him now, your knees pressing into the couch on either side of his hips. Your hands rest on his shoulders, fingers light, and you lean in close enough that he can see the faint shimmer of makeup on your eyelids, the way your pupils dilate in the low light.

"Better?" you ask, smiling.

Mingyu swallows. "Yeah."

You laugh, soft and knowing, and shift your weight, grinding down just enough to make his pulse spike. The wings flutter behind you, a distraction, a spectacle, and he realizes that's the point. You're good at this and he doesn't know why but he hates that it works on him, even if it's your job to do this, to pull focus, to keep the client's attention where you want it.

He clears his throat, forcing himself to focus. "You're good at what you do."

"I know," you whisper, tilting your head so that your breath fans against his ear. "Don't you want to touch me?

"Actually, I uh - want to ask you something."

You pull away from him and though your smile doesn't falter, your eyes shift. "That's expensive."

"No," Mingyu protests quickly, grabbing you and pushing you back a little. You flinch when he touches you and he lets go immediately. "Sorry, I don't want to like - that."

"Okay. Then what do you want?"

"You know Harlan Voss?"

It's the wrong question to ask. Your entire body goes rigid and your eyes lock onto his as your delicate persona shatters immediately. What's left is sharp, cold, and predatory. Mingyu's pulse spikes as you get off of him and put space between you, your eyes icy.

"Who the fuck are you?" you ask. Your real voice is a little deeper than the breathy rasp you'd used moments ago. "And what the fuck do you want?"

Mingyu holds up his hands. "I just need to ask you a few questions-"

"Get the fuck out."

"Listen, I'm not here to cause trouble-"

You hit a button he didn't see near the door and the door opens immediately. Mingyu makes a sound of protest when he sees a security guard appear at the door, his eyes glancing between the two of you.

"Problem?" He asks.

"He needs to leave. Now."

Mingyu stands slowly, adrenaline cutting through the tension in his body. His pulse is still elevated from the dance, from the heat of your body on his lap. He pulls the badge from his pocket and the security guard stiffens further. So do you, taking a step away from him again.

"You need a warrant, buddy."

"Detective Kim. Homicide. I'm investigating a murder, and I need to ask her some questions."

"I don't give a fuck who you are," you seethe. "Get out."

He sighs. "Can we just-"

"Get a warrant," you snarl, barring your teeth at him like something feral.

Mingyu realizes you're afraid of him. Not like someone caught in a lie or someone caught with their hand on the gun, but like someone who is cowering, like he might strike. He thinks it's odd, watching as you shake, eyes wide and trembling.

He could push. He could insist, make this official, drag you down to the station for questioning. But something in him softens, and he pockets the badge, raising his hands. "I'll leave. No trouble."

The security guard steps aside and Mingyu walks toward the door as he looks at you one last time. Your wings are still spread wide, trembling slightly, and your eyes are locked on him. There's fear there, yes, but something else too. Recognition. Guilt. Something. Before he can decide what, the security guard steps between you and cuts off Mngyu's line of sight, ushering him into the hallway.

With a loud shout that's lost to the pound of music, you slam the door. Mingyu sighs, staring at the door for a few minutes before he turns and walks back through the club, the music vibrating through the walls as he winds past the stages and the strobing lights. His mind is stuck on you, of course. The terror. The gaze. The butterfly wings.

The butterfly effect is a principle chaos theory that states that small, seemingly insignificant changes in initial conditions can trigger massive, unpredictable, and vastly different outcomes in complex systems.

He pushes through the front door and into the rain, the cold hitting him sharply. Mingyu shivers but stands outside the door, letting the rain cut through him, washing away the smell of jasmine and amber, clearing his mind a little.

You know something. Mingyu doesn't know what, but he's sure of it. You're the butterfly at the root of it all, and now he just needs to know the cause of the effect.

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