Montreal, april 2027
A voice calls out from a distance.
“Hey, Jan!”
“Hey, big guy!” with more force and venom. He stopped and turned. He spots Labo, the head of the patrol unit, grinning widely. This wart of a cop, a control freak par excellence, had always campaigned for his dismissal but never succeeded. This time, he thinks he’s got him on the hook.
“It’s over for you, old man,” he says with vehemence. While his left arm is raised in a gesture of victory, his right hand ventures toward his Glock 17, holstered at his side. He pretends to draw it and aim it at him. Beaudry and Simard, witnessing the scene, smile nervously without meeting his gaze. Seeing that Jan remains silent, the two rabbits scamper toward the exit. Labo’s stare, however, is fixed and has turned serious. “You’ve hit your Waterloo, old man, finally!” Jan slowly advances toward Labo, who remains impassive. In turn, he brushes his Glock 17 with his index finger as he inches closer to Labo.
It’s worth noting that Jan is quite a specimen. The 35 year old was broad-shouldered, with thick hands and a barrel chest, his towering presence—over 1.86 meters—stands in stark contrast to the diminutive pipsqueak who keeps backing away. Labo swallows hard and retreats slowly toward the closed door behind him. Jan pushes him to the limit. Labo’s face turns pale, his eyes anxious. Suddenly, he slithers away like a snake and vanishes into the maze of the precinct.
By April 2027, Montreal’s police force—once a pillar of community trust—had deteriorated into a corrupt institution, blindly enforcing the dystopian mandates of an increasingly authoritarian government. For Jan, one of the few officers still clinging to integrity, doing his job with honor had become nearly impossible.
The force was now overrun with officers compelled to implement invasive facial recognition scans and biometric ID checks, all under the watchful eye of a surveillance state that valued obedience over justice. Promotions were bought with bribes or secured through favoritism, while whistleblowers like Jan faced isolation, demotion—or worse.
As she struggled to uphold his principles in a department where blind compliance had become the norm, Jan found himself walking a moral tightrope. With each passing day, his faith in the system crumbled, replaced by a growing sense of despair as he watched the soul of the city slowly erode under the weight of fear and control.