Full Citizen (10)

Mornings at Magitera City Hall's Public Safety Services Building were usually much the same.

People who shoved their way up to the counters without taking a queue number were a given.

There were citizens insisting their fines were unjust, or low-level corporate employees asking, “Do you know who I am?”

There were also elderly people who brought in unregistered cyberware and argued, “Isn't this much just a toy?”

The counter clerks had to deal with all of them dozens of times a day.

Iven Locke, the clerk assigned to Counter 3, was one of them.

He flipped through the documents displayed on his screen, doing his best to keep smiling.

“Sir, as I said, a bounty can only be paid if you have evidence that allows us to verify the wanted criminal's identity.”

When the man tapped the floating photograph with his finger, the back of someone walking through an alley appeared.

It was such a blurry, shaky image that it was impossible to tell whether it was even a person...