“I was just thinking,” Hammell said, “that you’ve aged badly.”
“Who gives a shit?” Toskan said. “You can get the middle-aged housewives swooning all you like. I was handsome back when it mattered.”
Hammell could feel himself getting nostalgic as he thought about all the years they’d known one another. He wondered how times could have changed quite so drastically. It had crept up on him. One minute they were I.A.s in their prime, and the next they were dinosaurs. “What will you do now?” he asked.
“Dunno,” Toskan shrugged. “Maybe I’ll just potter about a bit.”
“Potter?” Hammell said. “You’re going to potter?”
“Alright,” Toskan replied, irritated. “I haven’t had time to think about it. As of this morning, my plan was to work – or whatever it was we did in the cupboard.”
“You must have thought about it,” Hammell pressed. “You knew it was coming, sooner or later.”
Toskan took a huge gulp and Hammell groaned inwardly as his ex-partner raised his hand to signal the bartender. Taking a deep breath, Hammell sank one glass, trying to at least keep in touch. His black box overrode his command and began screaming in his head, demanding non-alcoholic fluids and sleep. He wondered how Toskan would react if he ordered a glass of water. Probably not well.
“Meera wants us to move to Abaddon,” Toskan said eventually. “That’s your big idea, right?”
Hammell inclined his head noncommittally. He didn’t like talking about dreams.
“Maybe I’ll see you there one day,” Toskan said. “Maybe it’s good idea. Start again somewhere new.”
Hammell nodded as his mind turned to the other I.A.s who had left: Abash, Chalanga, Pitaud - so many had gone and he had barely spoken to any of them since. Once they were out, they wanted to stay that way. He wondered if Toskan too would sever all ties.
“There might still be a way back,” Hammell tried, but Toskan shook his head.
“You know the way the wind is blowing. No-one comes back.”
“But if Providence really is flawed,” Hammell said. “If the Red Hands have found a way to infiltrate it…”
“Then they’ll find out and plug the hole,” Toskan said. “Providence is the future. We’re the past.”
The barman brought over two new glasses but Hammell had had enough. He reached out and pulled down Toskan’s raised hand. “No more,” he said as he shooed away the barman. He had to be in the office in a few short hours. Even if he popped a whole pack of alcohol killers, tomorrow was going to be a trying day, and that was without taking Asha Ishi into account.
Asha Ishi… “Shit,” Hammell said aloud, realizing that with her around he wouldn’t even be able to sleep this off on the sofa. It was definitely time to heed his black box’s advice.
“What?” Toskan asked. “You’re not going home already?”
“It’s four thirty am,” Hammell said as he shoved his last untouched whisky glass away and began fumbling in his pocket for his keys. He cursed as he dropped them onto the sticky floor.
“You can’t drive,” Toskan said. “Don’t be an idiot. If you’re caught...”
“I’ll be fired soon anyway, right?” Hammell said as he held onto the bar with one hand, reaching down with the other. “What does it matter?”
“DUI is a minimum five years social reconstruction, you fucking moron.”
Hammell hooked the keychain with his pinky and promptly fell off his stool. Clattering to the wet, sticky floor, he tried to get up and failed. “Ok,” he said as he felt the various liquids soaking into his backside, “you may have a point.”
Chapter 9
The hangover was another shocker and, even worse, he’d woken up with The Bad Feeling, like he’d done or said something he shouldn’t have, though he couldn’t quite remember what. The public nat taking him to the office had to land so he could lean out of the window to retch. It was too risky doing it up in the turbulent air and it wasn’t really fair to the pedestrians below.
When he arrived at the station, the nat had to wake him with a beep of its horn. He crawled out into the dim light of another overcast day, grateful for once for the lack of piercing sunlight. He’d steeled himself for the humidity, but it still threatened to overwhelm him and bring forth into the world whatever was left lingering in the dark recesses of his stomach. Pulling himself together, he checked his internal clock, seeing that he was somehow late again, for the second day in a row. It was almost unprecedented. He smiled as he thought that, now he finally had something real to work on, he couldn’t seem to arrive on time.
El-Amin, one of the nightshift I.A.s with whom his shift sometimes overlapped emerged from the building as she went off duty. “Hold the nat!” she called out as she jogged over and stepped inside. “Don’t you normally drive?”
“I can’t find my keys,” Hammell said. “Or my car.”
“You should go for your L1 licence,” she said. “It’s much more fun than driving.”
Hammell nodded, wondering if she had somehow found out that he’d failed the nat test three times.
“You look like shit,” she said as the door closed. “You should visit the records room for a nap. We never see you in there.”
“Don’t need to,” Hammell replied, not mentioning that he could sleep in his office.
The vehicle whirred up into the sky, where it linked into a passing chain. Hammell watched it disappear and then checked his clock again. He still had a good hour and a half, if he got moving.
Safely inside the sanctuary of the cupboard, he closed the blinds and double-checked the door before turning to the sofa. Asha Ishi had turned it into a nesting ground for cushions. “Fucking cushions,” he said as he threw every last fluffy one of them to the floor and stretched out. He tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable, then grumbled to himself as he snatched one back up to rest his head on.
Exactly one hour and twenty five minutes later, Hammell’s internal alarm went off, a few minutes before Asha Ishi was due to arrive. He sat up, relieved to find that he was feeling considerably better, bordering on ok but for a bit of minor instability as he stood up. Hanging out of the cupboard door, he collared a whitetip and sent it for coffee and water, before quickly setting about tidying up the cushions so as not to give himself away.
Dropping down into his chair, he stared up his skywall, partly to check it and partly to make it look like he was busy when she arrived. There was only one alert on the board and Hammell’s name was on it. He rubbed his forehead, wondering whether his actions yesterday may have been a tad bold. He realised now that he probably should have waited until he wasn’t exhausted and simmering with resentment before making such an important and potentially life-threatening decision.
His drinks arrived and he thanked the android and then flicked elastic bands at it once its back was turned. In spite of his post-alcohol shakes, he scored three solid hits before it got away, a creditable firing rate with that kind of accuracy. Not that it mattered now. The game was dead without Toskan. Yun may have thought Asha Ishi could replace the balding lump, but there were some things in which he was irreplaceable.
His first task of the day was to put out a search order for his car; a minor misuse of resources and a mildly risky thing to do, but so were many other things he did which he had no intention of stopping. As he finished, Asha Ishi arrived, on time practically to the second. She sat down at Toskan’s desk without a word, opened her skywall and began working silently.
Fuck you too, Hammell thought and he pretended to ignore her right back as he waited for the result of his search order. After several minutes, Providence had still not come up with anything and Asha Ishi had still not so much as glanced over, which was beginning to irritate him. On a whim, he pinged an elastic band at her, regretting it the instant it left his hand. It fell fortunately short, landing on her desk beside her coffee cup.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice cold and her eyes colder.
> “What are you doing?”
She glared at him for a few seconds before turning back to her skywall and Hammell wondered whether to go and watch over her shoulder, just to antagonize her rather than because he had any real interest in what she was doing. He had a vague notion that if he could sufficiently annoy her, she might just demand that Yun move her back out. For all the big man’s blustering, Hammell wouldn’t bet against the little slip of a woman getting her way if she wanted something badly enough.
As he contemplated his idea, a whitetip knocked on the door and poked its head around. “Commissioner Yun requires your presence.”
“What have I done now?” Hammell sighed, though he could think of at least two things.
“Both of you," the android said. “He’s waiting for you on basement level minus three."
Hammell looked over at Asha Ishi, who was looking back at him, her blank face indicating her own bafflement, or so he assumed. They stood up together and followed the admin android, heading down into Dr Stein’s domain.
The facilities down here were essential, but the runaway success of Providence meant that they were used only rarely now in criminal cases. Stein had therefore set up a variety of side-projects in collaboration with various academic institutes around the world in order to avoid leaving the equipment sitting idle. The lab was now as much a centre for pure research as it was a forensics department. The laboratory itself looked not entirely dissimilar to the inside of an android’s head - a mass of white plastic filled with strange, complicated-looking machinery, most of which Hammell couldn’t even guess the function of. Nearly everything was white, from the walls to the machines to the androids to Stein’s lab coat, with only a few blue lights and occasional black panels providing any sort of contrast. Even Stein’s face was so pale that he could probably vanish if he didn’t move about too much.
This and the megaAI’s chamber were the only places in the station which were always cold. Stein had the heavy duty air conditioning units running constantly, ostensibly to protect his tests, though Hammell suspected that the equipment would run just fine a few degrees higher. The lab boss ruled the roost down here though, and he was happiest living in a fridge.
The slender, wiry man was extra twitchy today. He didn’t much like having outsiders down here encroaching on his territory. Hammell had only been in the lab a handful of times in all the years he’d been an I.A. So why were we summoned today? he wondered.
Intrigued, he sat down at a small white table with the others: Asha, Stein of course, and Commissioner Yun. An android also seated itself, like it was one of the gang, and he noticed its nameplate. Jennifer, he realised with a start. It was staring right at him. Does it remember me from the corridor? How, if it had its memory reset? His mind ran back over the conversation from beside the coffee machine and his implant reminded him of the exact words the lab boss had used: ‘Go now.’ To Hammell, the meaning had been clear, but he realised now that it wasn’t technically a direct order for a reset. Could the android have used the imprecision of Stein’s language to avoid its fate? He wished now that he’d followed Jenn down to the bowels of the building to be sure, but he hadn’t expected to ever see it again, at least not with Stein. What was the point in having a specific android back once it had been returned to factory settings?
“Hammell,” a deep voice said, breaking into his thoughts, and he noticed that Yun was also glaring at him with his wide-set bug-eyes. The Commissioner slowly turned his head away. “Asha,” Yun said and she nodded a greeting. “Dr Stein. Whenever you’re ready.”
The lab boss stood back up awkwardly, unsure what to do with his hands before eventually deciding on clasping them behind his back. Hammell recalled that he didn’t like to touch anything that hadn’t been sanitized to a level of cleanliness normally only associated with optical labs and isolation wards. He demonstrated it by nodding to his pet android, which picked up a small stack of glasses and began handing them out. Jenn looked at Hammell for a moment before letting go of his glass. Did it hold on half a second longer, or is that my imagination?
The android sat back down and Hammell turned his attention to the glass, wondering why this information wasn’t being displayed on a skywall. Curious, he scrolled down, quickly ascertaining that he’d been given a summary of the acid attack case, a summary of information he already knew.
“What am I looking at here?” Hammell asked.
“A report,” Stein replied helpfully.
“I’m familiar with the case already," Hammell said, not biting. “What’s new?”
“You could try reading it,” Stein said, but the Commissioner held up a hand.
“Tell them, doctor," Yun said.
“Very well,” Stein said, stiffening. “Concerning the attack on Arthur Beecroft and the second as-yet-unidentified victim, we… we have new data.” The lanky lab boss shifted uncomfortably as he spoke. He wasn’t accustomed to speaking to an audience and clearly didn’t enjoy it.
“From where?” Hammell asked.
“The fire engine’s datacore,” Stein replied.
“You’ve only just extracted it?” Hammell said, baiting him back a touch.
Stein bit like a hungry shark. “The perpetrators deliberately shot and then burned away the core with a very strong acid. But my department at least still retains some usefulness-”
“What was it doing there,” Hammell interrupted, “the fire engine?”
“Putting out a fire,” Stein said dryly.
“There was a fire?”
“Well, clearly,” the lab boss huffed.
“Doctor…” Yun said.
“Oh, alright,” Stein flounced, “I’ll spell it out for you in small, simple words. Yes, there was a fire. We found a cigarette which was the likely cause. Someone had carelessly discarded it into a pile of rubbish.”
“Carelessly?” Hammell asked. “How do you know that?”
Stein flushed red. He detested imprecision almost as much as dirty hands.
“What’s your point?” Yun asked.
“We know Arthur smoked,” Hammell said. “Maybe he started a fire deliberately.”
“And how do you know that?” Stein asked.
“I don’t,” Hammell admitted. “But something caused the perpetrators to leave those barrels in the street, and to leave Arthur still breathing. Something caused them to improperly destroy the datacore.”
“That datacore was as good as destroyed, to all-”
“That seems like a long shot,” Yun said, shutting down the argument. “The chances of a fire engine getting to the Reserves in time…”
“If someone’s about to dunk you in a barrel of acid, I reckon you’d take any kind of shot,” Hammell said.
“So you think he got lucky.”
“No,” Hammell said. “Have you seen him?”
Yun grunted. “We’re getting side-tracked.” He nodded to Stein. “Tell them.”
“I’m trying to,” Stein said. “The fire engine pinged three of the suspects before they destroyed its sensors. One of them was Mr Gok.”
The name sounded familiar to Hammell, but before he could place it, his implant had searched the networks and selected the likeliest hit. Jeremiah Gok had been a shopkeeper in Paris who had vanished. Providence had not yet solved the crime, or even proved that there was one, but there had been a black spot which meant the I.A. in charge had suspected the Red Hands. Usually such a suspicion would go unnoticed, but Rosine Carine had been a particularly bold I.A. She had red-flagged Mr Gok’s beacon, believing it had been taken by Roy Brown himself.
The shock hit Hammell like a hammer blow. Roy Brown, alive, and here. And you re-opened the case, you moron! A vision formed in his mind of Rosine Carine reaching out from her grave to exact her revenge… He shuddered, possibly because of the cold.
Everyone else in the room had gone silent. Even Asha Ishi’s expressionless face was registering her version of surprise.
“There’s no proof yet,” Yun said
by way of caution. “Just suspicion.”
“The moment that alert went up, we all thought ‘Red Hands’,” Hammell said. “The crime fits. It was an ID theft gone wrong.”
“But there’s no proof,” Yun said.
“So that’s why we’re here,” Asha Ishi said, piping up for the first time. She nodded down towards the glass in her hand. “You want this off the network.”
“Nobody outside this room is to hear any of this,” Yun said. “The press is not to get so much as a sniff of a hint that Roy Brown might be alive. The names of you two, our investigators on this, are not to be released.” He turned to Hammell. “Re-opening the case was stupid, even by your standards.”
Now it was Hammell’s turn to turn red. For once he kept his mouth shut. The Commissioner wasn’t wrong.
“You’ll have to be fast,” Yun continued. “Others will be sent to catch him. Interpol, Intergov, they’ll brew up something special for this guy once they figure out he’s here.”
“Providence will catch him first anyway,” Stein sniffed.
“It hasn’t yet,” Yun said without looking at him. Instead he stared hard at Hammell and Asha Ishi. “You two know the score. This is for the I.A.s. Go get it done.”
Hammell did indeed know the score. It was clear to him now why they he and Asha Ishi had been partnered together: They were the only I.A.s left who were unmarried and without children.
Chapter 10
He’d been pretty good with the whisky recently, apart from last night, which had definitely not been his fault… and a couple of nights ago, which admittedly had. A half-empty full-sized bottle had sat untouched in his cupboard for at least a week, which was something of a record. Tonight though he’d polished it off in a little over an hour.
Drinking heavily alone was generally considered unacceptable behavior, though didn’t see why having someone beside him as he got smashed made it ok. Nevertheless he’d tried to find company, but like the other I.A.s who had left before him, Dave Toskan had begun ignoring his calls. Maybe Meera left again. Or came back again. Or maybe he’s still feeling the effects of last night and knows what a call from me at this time means.
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