The Cat it was who cried. The Panda Bear that died

*Interview begins*

So where do I begin: The investigation? The briefing? The raid?

We were onto the Panda, it seemed. That was the skinny being handed down from the Intelligence Processors. The Panda, whose cyber-coding had set back production at the Factory on three occasions and who was known to dance up and down the Strata without any pity for the Board's quotas, or the Shareholders' Assembly, or the Citizen populace or even the workers. That bloodless bastard who had run rings around us for the last two quarters. We had him.

You've seen the vids he puts out, right? Those stupid bloody videos of presumed-male in presumed-Factory-adjacent accommodation in a no-presumption-necessary-giant-Panda-head? I mean, where do you buy a giant panda head with voice modulator without leaving a trail a mile long? I must have had my team raid every damn costume shop, novelty bodega, fetish-club...you name it. My main goal for the past sixty days has been dragging the claws of corporate law through every nook and cranny associated with the sale of merry-making regalia in the Greater London Economic Zone. Can you imagine the drone protocols we had to write to provide robotic assistance in the search for a giant panda head? Well, can you?

We found nothing. Not one giant panda mask, no giant ursine mask of any kind. There are very few giant animal heads of any species you can buy for party purposes these days! You can imagine my upset. When I was commissioned as a lieutenant in the cybernetic arm of Efficiency-Crim, I had always hoped that I could bring the strong robotic arm of the law to bear in the hunt for novelty animal wear. But alas and alack, the bastard had wrong-footed, or wrong-pawed, us yet again.

My team, the cyberhuman ones, became fractious, inefficient. Our jokes became insular, became weird. Instead of going for a smoke, or to get a coffee, we’d ‘Chew Bamboo’. Instead of a weekend off, we had a ‘Panda nap’. Estelle’s maternity was jokingly referred to as ‘a win for Chinese zoology’…in fairness that one did result in an upheld complaint to HR, but Sergeant Winslow maintains it was only ever a thematic joke, not a barbed reference to weight-gain. In honesty, most of the jokes about it involved the word ‘panda’ in some form, including one of the admin girls setting up a fake dating profile as ‘Antonio Panderas’… but you catch my drift, we had panda brain. When I returned home after a shift and powered down my cyber systems at night, I could see pandas dancing the conga and gallumping around with their heavy, hairy bodies. I grew to fucking hate pandas. My therapeutic processors accused me of ‘black and white thinking’. If I am to be re-programmed, instead of de-commissioned, I beg you, don’t send me anywhere within a lifetime’s walk of a damned panda.

Then we got pinged the briefing note from the Intelligence Processors in Corporate. Panda was living in Tottenham, had been traced to a small house in a street about four hundred metres from the little bistro where we went to chew bamboo some evenings. I was gobsmacked. That close to us, and we had never even noticed. I hate to say it…but we had been bamboozled.

It was just a little house, but the Processors had picked it out exactly. The videos, in fact four of them, sometimes contained the noise of a train, and that, coupled with the light from a square thirty millimetres of window shown in two videos, had nailed the location. For my team, all of us now panda-sick, this called for a heavy breach; full conventional gear and six armoured drones in front and behind the house. Our orders were to pacify Panda, but if he resisted, or showed any signs of moving to inhibit the corporate productivity of the Board, we were ordered to terminate with extreme prejudice.

Please may I read from a prepared statement.

Constable Reilly breached the door, and she and Sergeant Winslow led the initial raid into the premises as Team A, proceeding to the upper floor of the dwelling. I followed with Constables Singh and Williams as Team B, securing the ground floor. We came across no resistance and after a preliminary check of the upstairs, we were re-joined by Winslow and Reilly. Breach to secured status took exactly fifty-three seconds, a Force record I would like noted.

Our target was located in the living room area of the downstairs and had offered no resistance or acknowledgment of our entry. In total there were only two occupants of the house. One humanoid panda and one domestic tabby cat, who seemed to show little awareness of our forced entry.

Aware that these terrorists often employ the use of trip wires and booby traps, I had my team train weapons on Panda as I proceeded with arrest protocol using an IR scan. There was no movement from the thug, and the scans showed no hidden ordnance.

Have I explained what he looked like? Panda? Let me check…no, no I haven’t, excuse me.

Panda looked like a large Caucasian male in underwear, perhaps in his forties, about 14 stone, with a giant felt panda head. The giant felt panda head seemed to be organically attached to his neck and throat, in what I could only assume to be a macabre instance of cosmetic surgery. A rather brilliant stroke it turns out, as the retinal scanners, and imaging software we use in the Greater London Economic Zone is calibrated to humans, and not giant felt pandas. It is the considered opinion of my team, that Panda's movements may have been aided by the judicious use of an umbrella.

If I may read from my statement again.

The reported weapons homicide occurred exactly three minutes and seventeen seconds following the breach. As I approached Panda, his right hand came down upon a remote control, and following the Board’s security protocols, Sergeants Winslow and Constable Singh discharged roughly eighty six bullets into Panda’s body and head. The kitchen area of the property was all but destroyed and the passing 18:17 Greater Anglia service behind the house sustained some light damage, with the loss of four workers. No injuries to Human-class citizen or above was sustained.

When he activated the remote control, which spurred Winslow and Singh to gallantly protect their colleagues by firing eighty six bullets in his body, Panda had initiated the playing of the song ‘Pandaemonium’ by the banned music group ‘The Pet Shop Boys’. The effect of this disgusting song was to completely incapacitate my team. My supposition is that the song included coded interlays which affected the balance and stabilising cybernetic implants of the officers present. Unable to maintain vertical integrity, and losing all power of grip, my team were subject to the additional humiliation of witnessing the corpse of Panda rise from his seat, perform a dance called the ‘Bus Driver’ then remove his giant felt panda head and collapse in front of the bookcase.

At this point it became apparent that the terrorist know as Panda was not human, and an immediate report was processed following the cessation of my incapacitation. Following his ‘final performance’, I am happy to say that the Panda is now fully deactivated.

Following a scan of ‘Panda’s’ corpse, we awaited further instructions from Intelligence Processing. The effects of the audio-terrorist attack we had suffered had rendered my entire team exhausted, injured and demoralised and we were happy to chew bamboo until such times as further orders could be given.

The resident cat, who remained the only living witness apart from myself and my team, proved to be a tabby male named Siegfried, or ‘Ziggy’, and who, apart from a golden, heart-shaped locket inscribed with his name, was not in possession of any weaponry or contraband material that we could process at that time. He proved to be a rather disruptive witness, in that he maintained an aggressive stare at myself and my fellow officers from his perch on the settee, and would not react to Constable Reilly’s friendly overtures. I am grieved to say that Reilly was very ps-ps-pissed off at this. The only relevant note with regards to this resident is an attempt to bat, or paw, at the sound system and activate a song by the banned artist David Bowie entitled 'Cat People (Putting out fire)'. Fortunately though, this song produced no ill effects, apart from a mild dizziness.

Pursuant to further orders from the Intelligence Processors that the sound system had to be catalogued, and with a consideration for the meridian radiation levels approaching, we attempted to apprehend Ziggy without force of arms, which in the confines of the small living room, and with reference to the size and bulk of our body armour, proved to be a fruitless task. The witness Ziggy exited the property through the sizeable hole in the brick-work caused by Winslow and Singh’s gallant efforts, and he was last witnessed escaping onto the train tracks. His final statement was a piercing miaow, or meow, which three members of my team can attest to having contained a clearly defined anti-corporate sentiment which should warrant further investigation of this Cat-of-Interest.

I think that’s everything. Yes, that is. Is there anything else I may help with?

Further symptoms? No, no further symptoms I’m glad to note, or rather very few. Well very few. Well, a few. Yes, I have noticed symptoms.

In recent days I, and my team, have noticed a severe lethargy and propensity and drift sleepily, a feeling of cat-atonia you could say, followed by an increased activity and spontaneity of movement at night. I find that my reflex protocols have been somewhat aggravated, as sudden movements, such as a flapping curtain, a moth, or the sheen from a piece of jewellery causes my attention to fully focus and activates a sudden urge to attack. My romantic partner has noticed that I prevaricate from an intense tactile neediness, where I ask her to pat and stroke me, to sudden unexplained aggression, where I might engage in light nibbling and swift kicks to her shins. She feels that this might be stress-related. I have begun to eat in sporadic bursts, and my colleagues have noticed that, once sated, and bored, I have begun to gently swipe any cups and glasses which I feel do not belong on the table onto the floor.

On a further note, I draw attention to Sergeant Winslow’s latest HR disciplinary complaint, in which he is reported having hissed at a Deputy Commissioner for sitting in a chair that he feels he rightfully claimed, by excreting a tiny amount of urine onto, and ‘decorating’ with several of his remaining hairs.

We may never know who or what Panda was, or the extent of the complicity of Ziggy. The feline amongst my investigative team is that further inquiries begin, with a greater resource allocation, without undue paws.

Meow.

*Interview ends.*