I wasn’t comfortable with this level of surveillance, hence my preference for legacy technology. Old-school tech was virtually untraceable and had a sort of vintage and classy feel to it. Old-school communication devices run on obsolete retired networks that were now privately operated by the crime syndicates that required them. The high demand for such technology made it expensive, illegal, and hard to come by. My organization owned a number of these old devices as well as the networks that they were connected to. We used the old tech to exchange dialogue or data that we didn’t want to fall into the wrong hands.
Judge Davidson was in the third year of his term as high judge; he had attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated law school in 2022, shortly before the UNEA merger. In those days, Penn Law offered top-notch legal training that other leading law schools didn’t. Shortly after finishing law school, Davidson worked in the US attorney’s office as an assistant prosecutor and then worked his way up to US prosecutor. This meant that he had jurisdiction in the United States only.
After seven years in the US attorney’s office, he became a US judge in September of 2029, and by 2038 he was sworn into the NHC as Nation’s high judge. My lawyer had done his research and yeah, this guy was cut from different cloth. One could tell by the way he carried himself. Nonetheless, he was still shady—one doesn’t make it up the ranks in the short space of time he did without bending the rules or stepping on a few toes along the way. There had been rumours of bribes, and although no one could prove this or even had the guts to do so, the truth was obvious. Aside from his salary, there were all the other sources of income, the main one being regular dividends from Zhang Heng stocks. Zhang Heng Motor Industries was responsible for all the automobiles that were exported out of the United Orient Nations.
The judge also owned holiday homes across the African Union (AU) as well as log cabins in the Independent Swiss Territory (IST). These exclusive, luxurious properties were rented out to VIPs. I stayed at one of his log cabins during my visit to the IST. At the time, I didn’t think they were anything to write home about.
It was difficult to ascertain all the sources of Davidson’s wealth, and the fact that he was from a wealthy family made it even more difficult to find the cracks in his finances.
The judge was quite ambitious; he was planning on running for office as a member of the UNEA Council. This office ran parallel to the executive office, the office of the UNEA president. His plan was to climb up another level of his already illustrious career ladder, using my trial to boost his political popularity and media presence. I am the number one bad guy in the Nations, and my case is high profile, perhaps one of the highest that the Nations court had seen in a while. My trial is the best way to gain the global exposure he needs for his election.
After the bailiff announced his entrance, his honour Judge Davidson took his seat and gave me a look of disgust. One would think that I ran away with his wife, sent his three kids to boarding school, and had his dog put down. This guy did not like me. He glances down at his interactive desk and taps in the secure code that gives him access to a digital file containing my case documents. After flicking through a few of the digi-docs, his Honour looks up at me—again with disgust—before proceeding to read the charges.
“Edward Dominguez, you have been charged with cyber-crimes that include record tampering, identity cultivation, and online racketeering. You have also been charged with distribution of narcotics, distribution of military-grade firearms, kidnapping, conspiracy to assassinate a government official, and murder in the first degree. How do you plead to these charges?” the good old judge asks in what he probably feels is his sternest and most intimidating voice. Hell yeah, I pleaded not guilty. I have a ten-thousand-UNEA-credit-per-hour lawyer who is more than capable of handling everything that the prosecution team was planning to dish out. The way I see it though, I will be lucky if I didn’t do at least twenty years in prison for all this. It seemed like they had been building cases against me for a while, and now this bunch of shadies wanted to lock me up for life and throw away the key. The best outcome here is maybe fifteen years—there was no way I was going to beat all these charges.
Persuading any of the jury members to deliver a not-guilty vote was out of the question—the NHC had them on twenty-four-hour lockdown. All twelve jury members were assigned a team of enforcers for security for the duration of the trial. Enforcers weren’t like the cops I knew when I was coming up. Policing had evolved significantly since the Great Merger. It wasn’t officially called that, but people often referred to the unification of Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and all of South America as the Great Merger. After the Brexit catastrophe in 2016, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland had no choice but to be a part of the new union.
The merger took place in December 2022, and it was decided at that point that there was to
