SCENE 01 – Officers Ivan Moneaux, Basher Kerrigan, Kenji Aramaki, and Piper Beaumont are on board an LAPD prisoner transport skimmer as it flies over the turbulent Pacific Ocean. The skimmer must fly close to the water’s surface to avoid building up a lethal static electricity charge from the atmosphere, choppily thrown about by the surging Pacific storm.

The skimmer’s interior is spartan; the officers are strapped into jump seats in the otherwise empty cabin, their equipment lashed to the fuselage’s exposed support beams.

Due to the noise, the officers pass the trip lost in their own thoughts. Moneaux thinks back to one week prior, his re-activation on the force.

SCENE 02 – SEVEN DAYS PRIOR – Moneaux is called in by Captain Harrison and informed that he is being re-activated. He has been specifically requested by Packard Testing to investigate a case of murder on board one of their cargo ships, the Zen Aero. Moneaux is to go to Packard Testing HQ and speak with Angela Rossum.

SCENE 03 – SIX DAYS PRIOR – Monaux meets with Rossum, a Nexus 9 Replicant, and is given some details about the murder. The cargo ship Zen Aero was forced to make an unscheduled stop en route to a mining platform due to a mechanical issue. The chief engineer, a human named Scott Duchamps, was found dead by petty engineer Zola Langford two hours after he went to the engine room to investigate the mechanical issue.

Duchamp was found with a wound to the back of his head and signs of strangulation. Packard Testing is still waiting for all camera footage to be transferred over but the data connection is extremely slow from sea. The report filed by the captain states that the cameras also experienced a malfunction during the incident and no direct record of the murder exists.

Monaux et al are to fly out to the Zen Aero and apprehend the killer before the cargo ship makes it the Los Angeles coast. Rossum produces a list of nine crew members who have had recent disciplinary infractions and tells Moneaux that the ship’s baseline test machine is also malfunctioning, possibly sabotage.

SCENE 04 – Turbulence shakes Moneaux from his reverie and back to the present. Checking his chronometer, he sees that there is still four hours left before the spinner reaches the cargo ship. Basher Kerrigan fidgets nervously in his jump seat, anxious to be back on the job after being on leave for six months. Kerrigan thinks back to his release from captivity by the Nexus 8 terrorists.

SCENE 05 – SIX MONTHS PRIOR – After being released from his kidnapping ordeal, Basher is ordered to weekly sessions with an LAPD psychologist, Doctor Sophia De Maat. He cannot bring himself to make the first appointment scheduled and a stern call from Captain Harrison gets him to De Maat’s office the next week.

Basher displays dissociative thoughts and a general lack of empathy when discussing what happened to the Packard Testing hostage that was killed, refusing to go into detail about what he saw, nervously pacing when questioned by De Maat, avoiding eye contact, and being very evasive and generally defensive. Basher also lets slip about Replicants being ‘programmed’, which De Maat thinks is a coping method of “othering” Replicants so Basher can fulfill his primary duty: executing illegal Replicants.

De Maat reminds Basher that Replicants are biological beings and that memory implantation is more akin to hypnosis than computer programming to see how Basher will react. Basher does not lash out at the doctor, however, and she notes that he is probably suffering from PTSD from his former military training combined with his experiences as a Blade Runner. De Maat also notes that Kerrigan is overtly hostile at the idea of Replicants being more than machines and views them as a threat.

SCENE 06 – DAY 1 // SHIFT 1 – Arriving at the Zen Aero, the officers disembark and a deck hand leads them into the labrynthine interior of the kilometer-long cargo ship. The Zen Aero has four decks and houses 2,000 crew members with an additional 1,000 people on board at any given time. The crew is overwhelmingly Replicant but all officers on board the ship are human. For all intents and purposes, the Zen Aero is a floating town.

The deck hand leads the Blade Runners to the officers’ mess and they meet with the ship’s captain, Captain Argossy.

Argossy welcomes them aboard and explains that the ship only has a security detail of 24. Reviewing the list proved by Rossum, Argossy explains that the demands of the job and ship discipline mean that infractions are freely handed out, often in the form of pay cuts, but there is a rudimentary brig on board, generally reserved as a drunk tank. However, of the nine names on the list, the one that stands out to her is Doctor Leonid Packard, scion of the Packard Testing family.

Dr Packard has led a troubled life and was assigned to the Zen Aero some months ago following an incident which was covered up by the family. Serving as the ships medical officer, Packard suffers from addiction issues. Unfortunately, there is nothing Argossy can do in this case or she would have had him thrown off a long time ago. She describes Packard as being short-tempered and sullen, with a strange tattoo on his wrist. Though she is unaware of any issue Packard may have had with Duchamps, she feels he is fully capable of cold-blooded murder.

Argossy tells the officers that she spent very little time with Duchamp, who was a very capable engineer but was also a workaholic who rarely showed up for mess in the officers’ cabin.

The RDU officers have three days before the Zen Aero reaches dock and the killer goes free.