Roth ran a DNA search on fragments from the scene, which identified the man as Bertrand Foster, a former professor of classic literature and music. He had attempted suicide after his wife caught him with a prostitute and took their son away. Hurling himself into traffic failed to kill him, but he required cybernetic augmentation to remain alive. Joey skimmed through medical scan data indicating he suffered damage to his frontal lobe. A duty medic took note of personality changes, and sparse subsequent updates painted a picture of a man who developed an addiction to augmentation.
Joey fixed upon the next file. For a moment, he felt as though he could not breathe. A woman stared back at him from the edge of familiarity.
Haunting. He traced his fingers over her cheek.
When he saw her name, Patrol Officer Nina Duchenne, he again heard the screams that filled Kenny’s house. The sudden sound made him jump and spin, wondering where it came from. He could not get to the next page fast enough, and stared at the face of Vincent Montoya. Red letters under the portrait spelled out ‘Killed in Action.’ Nina and Vincent―they were the voices that scared the hell out of Hayley. It was not a horror vid as Kenny thought; someone got the police comm chatter. Why would anyone stream it to his deck in the middle of the night?
The woman looked enough like Avril for him to make the connection. She lost a partner, not a husband. Had she gone to New Hope because of her loss, or did she pursue Joey? The file said little about what happened to her afterward, only that she survived. He stared into the picture’s eyes.
“What are you after? Why me?”
Another DataMole poked him in the leg and shrugged when he looked down at it. There had been no image matches to Christina’s face. If The Russian had killed her, no one found the body. Detective Roth continued to pursue the case, but had no recent leads.
Joey rifled through other data objects, skimming through notes about how Roth had zeroed in on him based on a dispersion pattern of bodies. The day after a confident comment about knowing where he would strike next, the writing broke into erratic circular reasoning.
Guess you were wrong, Jake. What, did you come unglued after you missed him?
As soon as he called him Jake, he looked up from the tile with an expression as if he had been slapped. Detective Roth was Hayley’s father.
The dark cowboy ran down the hallway to an adjacent data node where he rummaged through personnel records for Division 2. The ID photo of Detective Roth matched the man Hayley had called, only less worn out. He scrolled through the case notes, noting how they changed after that night. Detailed and organized broke into meandering postulations and circular theorems about who the next victim would be. The abrupt switch appeared as though someone else had written it. Joey whistled.
Bertrand may not be the only one with brain damage.
Joey envisioned the guilt of each new victim weighing on the mind, heavy enough to make him neglect his child.
A cactus with cartoon eyes appeared in front of him, flailing and pointing at the door. The information absorbed him too much; Division 2 net techs had detected an infiltration. Rather than risk running, he disconnected.
Since he had not copied the data, only read it, he hoped his presence masking held out.
oey wandered the terminal for some time, finding no trace of anything resembling a photo booth. Out of desperation, he stopped a passing police officer and asked. She did not even know what a photo booth was. When he asked about a Neko girl, the officer mentioned one worked at a cyberware shop along the outer concourse. It stuck in her memory due to some kind of protest over a prototype device.
After thanking her, he walked past an elaborate hub where a number of monorail lines merged. The station split in half; the left led to trams and the right held a mile-long row of small shops tucked into alcoves. They were wide open to the terminal platform and many had merchandise that spilled out from their boundaries. He followed the officer’s directions, and arrived in front of a small booth packed with high-tech gadgets and boxes of various sizes. NinTek Outlet Shop appeared in dim white-grey lettering in midair, in an endless cycle of fading out from top to bottom and then reappearing. A shawarma stand to the right delayed him long enough for a snack.
A woman in her twenties smiled at him from behind the counter. Frizzy white hair tinged with blue at the tips hung down to the middle of her back, the almost spherical outline broken by a pair of furry cat ears perking up at the sound of his approach. Her paper white skin, no doubt another product of cybernetic tweaking, was beyond Marsborn and glowed with patches of reflected light from the signs around her.
A panel of blue cloth clung to her front, held to her body by nanobot-sized hooks. It almost covered her chest and hung down like a loincloth. Her white-furred feline tail was all that covered her from behind, though it hid more than many thongs he had seen. It swished with such natural movement he guessed it synthetic rather than robotic.
The tip swished about her ankles with anticipation as she leaned forward over the counter and rested her chin on her palm. Long blue fingernails tapped against her cheek one after the other; each glowing when pressed. NanoLED cybertattoos ran down the outside of her arms and legs in the shape of scintillating azure tiger stripes, and the vertical slit pupils of her cobalt blue cybereyes widened. She emitted a realistic purr from a vox unit. Small fangs peeked through her smile.
Joey had never found the Neko thing appealing, but the sight of an almost-dressed woman still had certain effects on him, and he adjusted his posture to maintain politeness.
Guess she enjoys the employee discount. Probably has claws too if she’s here alone with all this shit.
What looked like an old bloodstain on the ground lent some weight to that thought.
“Why hello, cutie!” She winked. “Can I help you find something?”
Most that had the Neko-cyberware fetish liked eyes on them, and he did not disappoint. She edged closer as he leaned on the counter, almost to the point of touching cheeks. She turned and licked the side of his neck. Her sandpapery tongue sent a shiver through his spine and whitened his knuckles upon the glass. No wonder the owner of the store hired her; Joey was ready to spend all his money right at that moment just to have her do it again.
She distracted him away from the photo unit into a conversation about a Janus multitasker chip; something he had craved for a while that would allow him to handle two simple activities at once; he wanted it so he could watch the outside world while hacking.
Turning her back, she climbed onto a chair and stood on her tiptoes to reach a tiny box on an upper shelf. She could have retrieved it much faster, but put on a show. Leaping to the ground with feral grace, her body draped once more over the counter as she slid a white box in front of him. Joey stared at her royal blue nails, imagining the blades of Scratchers extending out through the tips of her fingers. Katya had them, and they were usually one of the first parts a Neko got―right after ears and tail.
Joey shifted his gaze between her hands, at a square of black hidden beneath several layers of dense plastic. Forty thousand credits in a space two millimeters square. The tits dangling over it made the news easier to take, but he still winced. He did have that much, but without sure income, he wanted to save all he had for a better deck. The Teradyne silver would only go so far, making money with a deck that weak was as much luck as it was skill. In order to make any real credits, he needed to upgrade.
“I got a job or two lined up that I’m looking good for. When that’s in the bank, I’ll come back for it.”
“Want me to hold it?” Her eyes narrowed to alluring slits as she picked the box back up.
Joey’s knees wobbled. “Sure.”
“Okay.” She made a dance out of putting it back on the shelf.
“I heard you have some kind of prototype camera here?”
She turned on her toes and smiled. “You’re not one of those activists are you?”
Joey showed her the picture. “Naa, just looking for some
answers to some strange questions.”
“Oh I remember this guy… something really weird about him.” She sashayed down to the end of the counter and stooped toward a mound of stuff.
Joey rose onto his tiptoes, praying that her tail would move just a little to the side. Her feline ears swiveled back so she could continue to chat as she dug through a pile of boxes. In a minute, she held up a shiny grey cube about the size of a fist with several M3 interface ports on its rounded corners. At the center of each face, a stylized N embossed inside a circle.
“This thing… Nishihama put it out a couple of months back. They called it the Trance Cube―or would have if it actually launched. It records images from the thoughts of anyone with a M3 jack; even vids.”
“Damn.” Joey turned the device over in his hand, mesmerized by the gleam.
She wrinkled her nose. “You were just near him? His scent is all over you. He came in a few weeks ago. I had this thing set up in a demo display and he thought it was a deck… plugged into it before I could explain. The printer spat out that picture and he thought it was a camera.”
“Define weird.” Joey’s eyes continued their battle with the cloth rectangle.
“He kept talking like he had someone with him. He said he was married but I didn’t smell anyone else on him.” She winked. “And he wasn’t staring at me like you are.”
Joey let out a nervous laugh. After being teased with Amber, he had been feeling pent up; and this girl did not help at all. Neko girls, and boys, loved to push the boundaries of decency. The ones with real mental issues thought they were cats and walked around naked, knowing the cops had better things to do. Despite that, Joey was afraid to try anything. Few were as promiscuous as they acted; they just wanted attention.
Just like a cat, loves to tease its food.
“Well, I guess the guy was committed to his wife.”
“He should be committed.” She stretched, a shimmer cascaded through her stripes. “He came back the other day asking if I’d seen some girl, raving about some bitch with red eyes stalking him.”
“So I hear.” The sharp cheer of a small child made him look out over the concourse. “Where is All Saint’s Hospital from here?”
She curled around the wall that separated her shop from a stall where a boring man sold plain briefcases, pointing. Joey’s eyes ran down her back as he snuck a quick image cap of her for later use.
“Four blocks that way, a big white building.” She winked. “Come back when you’re ready for that part… or if you need anything else.”
He offered a weak smile.
All Saint’s Hospital may once have been white, but calling it that now stretched the truth. This hospital was one of the few that continued to operate in areas loaded with the poor and forgotten. Modern medical technology could fix most things after a few hours of floating in a tube. The size of this place said it predated modern technology. Hospital beds saw little use these days, mostly for recovery after invasive cyberware implantation or for those too old or too sick to live without constant care.
Only one of the entrances had light, and it drew Joey like a moth. In contrast to the exterior, the air smelled of disinfectant and looked well maintained. The only person in the room, a dark-skinned man at the counter, looked up at him. The words ‘Dr. Emil Farouk’ were embroidered on his lab coat.
Joey sidled up to the counter. “Doctor?”
“Yes. You seem surprised.”
“I expected a clerk at the desk, not a doc.” Joey leaned on the edge of the front desk.
“Our staff is a bit thin at the moment.” The man put on a pleasant smile. “What can I do for you?”
“I just wanted to ask about a nurse here. She may be missing and her husband is looking for her.” Joey showed him the picture of Christina.
“Oh, so she does exist.” Doctor Farouk leaned on the counter. “That man came here a few days ago asking the same thing. He thought she worked here.”
Joey furrowed his brow. “So you don’t recognize her?”
“Not at all, but that man is convinced she is a nurse here. Mark was it?”
“Mitch.” Joey held up a finger. “He thinks she was killed and that there’s another woman spying on him.”
The doctor stood up straight, folding his arms. “The man isn’t my patient, so I can tell you this. I had to get security to remove him from the hospital because he refused to leave until this woman came out to talk to him. He balked when I told him that she did not work here, and based on his mannerisms I have to say that I think he may be suffering from schizophrenia.”
“Hallucinations, right?” Joey frowned. “Think this girl might be a figment of his imagination? Mitch is going to New Hope to help deal with her loss. Why didn’t the doctor there pick up on that?”
“Bear in mind that she is not meeting these people in the real world. A clinician can do only so much through cyberspace. It makes it easy for people to conceal things. Every thought and gesture, our body language, little things we do with our eyes or lips―not a lot of that makes it into the net. I think she’s taking a dangerous risk by attempting to counsel people virtually.” Dr. Farouk rubbed his chin. “Then again, I don’t imagine she expected a clinical schizophrenic to show up for grief counseling.”
“I talked to the guy for twenty minutes and I had a feeling that some of the canaries were missing.” Joey smirked.
“Well, it is possible that this ‘wife’ was a figment of his condition, constructed by his mind as a way to give his life something to anchor to. Perhaps it enabled him to fake his way along for a short time. From what you are telling me, I have a feeling that this ‘wife’ he sees has changed into something else. Without the stabilizing influence of the ideal female companion, he has gravitated toward the paranoid ideation.”
“He got fired a few weeks ago, absenteeism I think.”
“That fits the theory that his world crumbled to pieces around him. Once this woman vanished, his mind replaced her with that other apparition. If you know this man, I suggest you get him help before he deteriorates any further. If he gets desperate, he could be a danger to himself or others. More than likely he’ll need medication.”
Joey nodded. “Commit him?”
The doctor made a distancing gesture. “That would depend on how dangerous he is, but only a doctor that’s conducted a face to face could make that determination; he may be treatable without taking that step. Can you get him to seek professional help?”
Joey smiled. “I think I can handle that.” An anonymous email to Dr. Khan should do the trick. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. By the way, what happened to your cheek?”
“Railgun.”
Dr. Farouk raised an eyebrow.
“It missed.”
The doctor smirked. “Obviously. I could clean that scar up for you. Since I’m betting you don’t have insurance, I could do it for a thousand.”
“Sure, why not.”
Joey’s bike shot through streets long abandoned by ground traffic. He batted around thoughts of the ghosts that had been plaguing those who had been to New Hope. Several things bothered him. His father had spoken to him before he had ever even heard of the place. Mitch’s grief was real; he was incapable of understanding the girl he loved had been a fragment of his own mind. Her loss had hit him as hard as if she had been real. If the hacker wanted to target grieving individuals, Mitch made a perfect mark. He was the most upset of everyone at New Hope, but why had he been left alone?
As much as he did not want to admit it, his NetMini had been off when his dad spoke through it that night. The idea clashed with his entire worldview, but if the supernatural was real, then Christina never having existed at all would be a good reason for her not to have a ghost.
large beige chair sat with its back to the corner of a hotel room. Katya curled up, tucking her feet under herself as she gazed into the stillness that enveloped everything. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the balcony and the m
ain door as her dread wrestled with her body’s want for rest. Every drip from the bathroom, every shadow across the window, and every passerby in the hallway slapped her mind away from the edge of sleep.
Trails of wet tickled down the back of her neck from her hair. She had gone right from the shower to that chair, skipping the dry cycle, and engaged in battle of wills with some of the complimentary liquor that the hotel provided. It tempted her with its promise of forgetful repose, but she already felt vulnerable enough. A pair of black panties and a white terrycloth robe emblazoned with the logo of the Vanier Hotel all that stood between her and the world.
She had slipped in unnoticed and hacked a false name into their system to flag the room taken. The hotel would play home for a couple of days at most before she moved on. Faint glowing smears danced across her lap as moonlight reflected through the tiny bottle of clear liquid that called to her. The odds of them finding her here were in truth quite slim, and that sliver of comfort had soon emptied the bottle of synthesized vodka.
For a little more than one brief day in the twenty-eight years of her life, she had felt a connection to someone else. Forces outside of her control stole that girl’s childhood. At least Ido had corrected the particular cruelty of keeping her a child forever, and she could now enjoy the reality of growing up. Katya knew all about being corporation property and doubted the kid would ever really get over it; but at least no one chased her.
The white-haired girl’s face hung in her memory at the point where she thought the child had started to trust her; she could still see the wide-eyed desperation of having no other option and no reason to doubt. Katya fumed at her former owners; if not for their pursuit, she would have taken the girl under her wing. If she ever got out from under that burden, perhaps she would. Giving her up at the police station had been harder than she expected. Even the girl seemed sad about it.
Anger and paranoia danced a waltz through her mind until the feel of the sunlight on her back told her the vodka had done its job. She lifted her head from the carpet with one eye open. Like a turtle trapped in its shell, the only part of her she could move was her head. The bathrobe hung off the chair and she sprawled face down on the rug like a crime victim. She rarely allowed alcohol past her toxin filter, and it had hit her hard.
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