The lights were off, but K could feel life inside the domicile. He'd always been right about this feeling. He drew his blaster and kicked down the door.

"LAPD!" K announced, an introduction, a warning; an absolute jurisdiction. The door clattered onto the floor.

The door wasn't real wood, anyway. Composite. Doesn't splinter the same. K lead with his weapon forward, into the dark. This house was manufactured to look like it could have been built by a team of humans about a hundred years ago: wall paper, a grandfather clock (not functional), "wooden" banisters. Nothing stirred.

Upstairs there was a locked room. K found it. The room was disheveled, but a woman lived in this room recently. The only window was large enough for a class B replicant to fit through, but it was closed from the inside. K opened it and peaked out: a climbable ledge beneath it.

K listened, and pointed his gun at the shallow darkness of the closet. "Come out with your hands up," K ordered.

A shaky voice started, "Don't shoot…" two pale hands emerged from the shadows.

"Come all the way out."

The inhabitant held K's eyes as she stepped forward, no weapons or jacket on her.

"Where is he?" K began.

"You're never going to get to all of them before the dam breaks," By the last word Aya's voice stopped shaking.

"You'd risk your life for a replicant?"

"Are you going to kill me?" Aya tried to read K's face, and was sure she would be shot. "Would another dead human make your job easier?" It would not, in fact. He is not to arrest humans on this assignment. But she didn't know that.

"It might help me get out of here alive, I'm sure you have a way of altering your neighbors to my presence." Before K got his last word out, Aya lunged for a keypad on the wall behind K, but he caught her midair. K held her up by the waist from behind, a mane of brunette hair whipping his face and hazing his vision. She trashed wildly, throwing sharp elbows at K's sides and face.

This annoyed K enough for him to press the muzzle of the blaster hard against the back of her head. "Feel this?" He pulls her hair back hard against the blaster. She stills herself. K has orders not to kill any humans, but he needs to buy enough time to get out of dodge before whatever shitkicker cavalry is called by that keypad.

K looked around the room. Things were either temporarily fixed but never replaced. "Where do you keep cord?" She pointed to a drawer. By the hair he led her to it. He opened the drawer to a mess of nothing useful. He pulled her hair harder, arching her neck back, a yelp of pain escaped her. "If you're too much trouble to spare…"

"In the closet," she relented. K found loops of rope hanging inside the closet. He tied her wrists together behind her back looping around her torso. His hands worked efficiently and without pause. She did not fight against him again. With her arms tied to her back, K had two loose ends left in front of her body. These he slid down her front, under her crotch and back behind her, pulling hard enough up into her she rose to her toes. Finally he finished the ends back on her wrists. "Standard practice?" K did not answer.

K pushed her face down on the bed and brought her ankles together. She tested the bonds, found them sturdy. Pulling her wrists towards her head tightened the cords between her legs in the right places, the friction hot and tight. When K was done he stood, looking down at her. "Are you going to make noise?"

Her eyes were defiant, she shook her head 'no'. K found duct tape and tore a length off for her mouth, pressing hard into her lips, connecting every centimeter of sticky surface to her. Then two more. She pulled up on her wrists constantly now, tape the only thing suppressing her moans. She flexed her hogtied torso into the cords, making more pressure into her pubis. K looked down at her before leaving her writhing body on the bed. He walked in no hurry out the door; he'd bought himself quite a few minutes.