Project Dunwell

A hard-boiled detective wakes up as the prime suspect in a locked-room murder — the victim his partner, the weapon his own gun, and the night before a blank. With the clock running and every piece of evidence pointing at him, Marcus Dunwell has to solve the case before someone else closes it.

Marcus Dunwell is a former network infrastructure engineer for the city of Sificity, laid off when the droids took over maintenance work — but careful enough to leave a backdoor into the city's systems before he went. He isn't a detective. When Dexter Clear reaches out via encrypted message, Marcus assumes it's a consultation: a few questions about his work on the city's prison rehabilitation programs. He doesn't answer the message until morning. By then, Dexter is already dead.