Trigger: Day 3

Word Count: 18,040

Summary of Events:

The State and Federal Statistics bureaus publicised information they had on just how bad Kynaston was, including that it had a murder rate twice as high as that of the second-ranked city. Spencer, although unsurprised by the statistics for the most part, was prompted to ponder the state of crime in Kynaston, and whether or not the media-named Billionaire Queen was part of a gang . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Her appearance said no; even her sensual dancing counted against her being an actual gang member, but yet her remorseless handling of the weapon, her lack of hesitancy with the brochure — much less her near-effortless success in splitting it — and her chillingly heartless threats suggested she was.

Could a citizen really go that rogue?

This was Kynaston.

He looked at the moon, now clear of the trees by some distance. His clock chimed the last quarter hour of the day.

Turning away from the window, he headed out of his study, silently down the hall, and through the house to the back kitchen door, where he pressed in the security code to disarm the system before stepping outside into the clear, refreshingly cool early summer night.

Above him the sky was resplendent with stars like fine glitter scattered across the dome. It was like a snow globe that was frozen, in a way.

The moon, approaching its orbital zenith for the night, hung bright and shining, illuminating the landscape with pale light that didn’t really show anything’s colour, but instead made it all a white-blue colour.

Inhaling the cooler air, he felt already like his mind was clearer by being in the outdoors.

He wandered toward the white wicker two-person swing that hung from the thick, straight-out branch of the bigger of the yard’s two oaks; the swing, being white, looked almost as if it were glowing in the moonlight.

If the Billionaire Queen were merely a female gangster she was just proof that Kynaston had an out-of-control problem.

However, if she were a citizen gone rogue there were more and graver implications.

If the citizens of Kynaston were deciding that crime paid more than honest work it showed there to be a fundamentally deeper-rooted problem in Kynaston than met the eye, namely that the whole city was corrupt and deserved to be dissolved like that neighbouring state newspaper had suggested.

As a citizen gone rogue she proved that crime in Kynaston was not just out-of-control, but that it had advanced beyond the point of no return, that law and order had hopelessly lost the war in Kynaston and things were descending, really, into some sort of anarchic state.

If she were a gangster there was still hope that Kynaston could address their crime problem and even get it under control. If she were a citizen gone rogue then the cancer of crime that was crippling Kynaston had become terminal.

Crime was as evil as cancer, as deadly as cancer even, and every city had it, but many had it under control and it didn’t bother them. Kynaston’s was an aggressive cancer that wasn’t responding well to the treatment, if not — were the Billionaire Queen a citizen gone rogue — terminal.

As a gangster, the Billionaire Queen showed that there was still hope for Kynaston, but it was a frightfully slim hope. As a civilian, she showed that Kynaston was beyond hope and it was only a matter of time before death occurred.