Author: Niall Teasdale
Date: 2015-11-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Cyberpunk; Crime; Mystery; Detective
Description: Starting a new job is never easy, but taking up her new role as head of Palladium Security Solutions’ investigative department, Fox Meridian is left wondering whether she is really cut out for this one. Board meetings are boring, politics sets her teeth on edge, and there’s no sign of a need for a detective anywhere. But there’s a serial killer working the elite set in Manhattan and one of Fox’s few friends, Helen Dillan, is in Internal Affairs’ sights for leaking sensitive crime scene information. They think she caught the wrong man, a man who claims he committed multiple murders because he w

Inescapable

A Fox Meridian Novel

By Niall Teasdale

Copyright 2015 Niall Teasdale

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Part One: All in a Day’s Work

Part Two: The Moon’s a Balloon

Part Three: The Desert of Eden

Part Four: Copycat

Part Five: The Windy Metro

Part Six: A Quiet Man

Part Seven: Watching Over Justice

Part Eight: Adrasteia

Epilogue

About the Author

Part One: All in a Day’s Work

New York Metro, 1st March 2060.

Fox Meridian stepped off the maglev and onto the platform in MarTech’s New York HQ as she had done many times before. Her stomach turned over once as the building’s systems noted her arrival and a welcome message appeared, as had happened every time she had arrived there previously. The difference this time was that the system was greeting her as an employee rather than a guest of the MarTech Group’s owner and chairman.

She had never liked starting new jobs; starting a new job meant change, upheaval, and not knowing what the Hell was going on for several days, if not longer. The Army had been one thing: no one knew what was going on, but that was exactly what the training staff had wanted. By the time Fox had moved on to the UNTPP, she had had more of a clue what to expect, but the procedures had been complicated by it being a multinational organisation. In comparison, NAPA had been easy, but she had had to put up with the usual ‘new girl’ issues and there had been resentment in a few cases because she was sort of famous. Joining MarTech should have been easy, but Jackson Martins had somehow managed to avoid telling her much about what she was going to be doing. Somehow that, more than anything else, had got her nerves buzzing.

‘We’re to go up to Conference Room One,’ Kit said, looking as nervous as Fox felt. Fox was the only person in the station who could see the virtual image of her personal assistant, which was likely for the best since the kitsune in the white dress would have probably caused a stir. For some, the stir would have been caused by the fact that the Kitsune-592.23 AI assistant was not out on the market yet. ‘Mister Martins will meet us there.’

‘Jackson is being far too secretive,’ Fox said, keeping her reply to her thoughts.

‘I’m sure he has his reasons. You don’t think you should have, perhaps, dressed up a little?’

Fox flicked her eyes down at herself before her mind fully engaged. She was wearing her usual jeans, boots, jacket, and plazkin bodysuit; Jackson had seen her in that outfit, or one like it, plenty of times before and never complained. ‘What’s wrong with this? I wear this… a lot. When I’m on duty anyway.’

‘But you’re not on duty. You’re starting a new job with Palladium Security Services, part of the MarTech Group–’

‘And Jackson’s seen me like this plenty of times before.’

Tripping along in her high-heeled, white boots, Kit frowned. ‘I suppose.’

‘Do you know something about this I don’t?’

‘No. It’s just that we’re going to the room they usually use for board meetings.’

‘I’m just going to be a standard, salaried worker, Kit. They don’t introduce people like me to the Board of Directors.’

‘No, I suppose not…’

There was an elevator waiting for her when she arrived at the main bank of transit tubes near the station and it whisked her upwards smoothly. It was a long way up; the arcology was not especially atypical of its class of hyperstructure, being over a kilometre in height and quite capable of sustaining almost half a million people with little or no interaction with the outside world. In practice, this one had far fewer occupants since it held the main offices and laboratories for MarTech’s research and development division, MarTech Technologies, and it was the HQ of MarTech Group, the overall holding company, but it did have the company chairman’s residence up at the top beside a park, and it seemed that the room Fox had been directed to was near that.

The elevator opened onto a reception room which seemed to have been put there specifically for people visiting the building. There was a desk for a receptionist, though there was no one sitting at it, and a refreshments cabinet, and a pair of large doors at the far end. Fox walked up to those, knocked, and walked through. And then she stopped and realised she probably should have worn different clothes.

The conference room was not huge, but it was large enough to seat ten people fairly comfortably and seemed to be larger since the opposite wall was transparent and looked out onto the same park Fox was used to seeing from the window of Jackson’s solarium. The table in the middle was made of dark wood, real wood, not a synthetic copy, and the ten chairs around it all looked old and rather comfortable. Fox figured they had picked the whole lot up from somewhere with history going back millennia.

It was the people who gave her pause, however. She recognised the grinning face of Jackson Martins, of course, thin and pale with a cap of black hair and a sparkle in his blue eyes. There was also a woman Fox recognised, and Kit supplied the name as a text tag in case she had forgotten it: Mariel Hoarsen was the CEO of MarTech Group, an attractive woman in her middle years who ran a tight ship because Jackson did not and someone had to. There were three more people there, two men and a woman, who Fox did not recognise, but everyone, even Jackson, was dressed more formally than Fox was.

‘Am I in the right room?’ Fox asked, still holding on to the door.

‘This is the place,’ Hoarsen replied, a smile touching her lips, ‘and I told Jackson to explain all of this before you started.’

‘And I knew she would take a look at the headline and run screaming,’ Jackson replied, ‘which is why I didn’t tell her.’

Fox closed the door and narrowed her eyes at Jackson. ‘Tell me what? What have you got me into?’

‘First, the introductions,’ Jackson said, still grinning. Fox wondered whether punching her boss in the mouth on the first day was a sacking offence. Then again, she hadn’t actually signed anything to say she was an employee yet either. ‘You know Mariel, of course.’

‘We met once,’ Hoarsen said, stepping forward and holding out a hand.

Fox took it and shook. ‘That reception after I got out of hospital following Dallas. We said hello, as I recall, but you’re fairly well known anyway.’

‘About as well known as you, thankfully. Jackson gets all the big press and I can get on with running the business.’

‘Thankfully,’ Jackson put in. ‘This is Garth Eaves. He’s the CEO of Palladium.’

Fox found herself shaking hands with a mid-height, fit, thirty-something man with a handsome face and a trim body. He appeared to have had work done to improve on nature: she suspected his nose had borne the brunt of it since it seemed more sculpted than a nose had a right to, but he also dyed his hair a lighter shade of blonde. Looking good did not generally harm your chances in management, and the fairly sharp, blue-green eyes suggested there was a brain backing up the body. ‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Meridian.’

‘The same, though I really wasn’t expecting to meet the top management when I got here.’

‘Technically, I’m not the top manager. I’d imagine you’ll meet our chairman at some point, but Graves doesn’t leave Chicago that much. Says he likes the air.’

‘David Graves? General David Graves?’

‘I wanted someone with integrity and a good sense of strategic overview at the top,’ Jackson said. ‘Garth is an excellent manager and keeps the company running, and David provides insight on handling the needs of… well…’

‘A paramilitary organisation.’ The speaker was the other man and Fox knew from looking at him that he knew about paramilitary organisations as well. He was tall and his body showed signs of the same sort of muscle enhancement the Army had put into her, if a little less of it. He was also slimmer than your typical Army grunt and she decided he was probably Air Force before he spoke again. ‘Ryan Jarvis, Chief Security Officer. I’m ex-military police and I handle the security operations, so I talk to Graves a fair bit.’

‘You were Air Force?’ Fox asked. She could see him watching, assessing.

Jarvis smiled. ‘How did you know?’

‘You probably weren’t Army and I recognise the basic body type. The Navy tends to use different enhancements.’

‘I think I see why Jackson thinks you’ll be good at this.’

‘Good at what?’

‘Last introduction before we get down to details,’ Jackson interrupted. ‘Alice Vaughn, Chief Management Officer.’

‘Which means I do the facilities management work,’ Vaughn said, thrusting out a hand. She was somewhere in her early forties and keeping her figure well, though her beige suit did nothing for her. She had a slightly timid look about her face, which featured quite a small nose and a narrow mouth, vibrantly green eyes, and pale, slightly freckled skin. The red hair falling to just above her shoulders added to an impression of Irish ancestry, maybe Scottish.

Fox took the hand, which squeezed lightly, almost timidly, but held on a fraction of a second too long. ‘Nice meeting you, Miss Vaughn,’ Fox told her, wondering why the woman seemed a little flustered. However, another question was more important. She looked at Jackson. ‘Going to tell me why I’m meeting all the upper management of your security company now?’

‘Because,’ Hoarsen said, ‘you should meet your peers.’

Fox opened her mouth, but Jackson held up his hands in placation before she could voice her surprise using a few choice expletives. ‘Hear us out. It’s not quite what you think.’

‘Okay… But I’ve got no intention of becoming a manager, Jackson.’

‘It’s not as bad as all that,’ Jarvis said. ‘Even if I haven’t got to punch anyone in months, I also haven’t been punched.’

Fox gave him a grunt and Jackson said, ‘Let’s sit down and get some coffee in. Fox’s brain always has happier thoughts with the addition of coffee.’

Vaughn had tea, some English brew which Fox did not recognise, but they sat and Fox tried not to fidget as a serving robot worked its way around the table with coffee cups and a jug. ‘What’s he got me into?’ she said inside her head.

‘I’m quite sure that Mister Jackson knows what he’s doing,’ Kit responded, audio-only. ‘He would not present you with a situation which you would not be happy with once it’s been explained.’

‘I hope not.’ Picking up her cup, Fox took a sip of the very good coffee and turned her attention pointedly to the man at the head of the table.

‘And I’d better get going or Fox will likely throw something at me,’ Jackson said. ‘You know I want you in to handle investigative work?’

‘You said you didn’t have anyone who specialised in it.’

‘We don’t,’ Jarvis said. ‘My people muddle through, and they do a pretty reasonable job in some cases, but they aren’t trained in the techniques and we need them trained in security, not being a cop.’

‘And,’ Jackson continued, ‘we are going to need both sorts of skill going forward. Garth?’

Eaves nodded. ‘Analysis of a number of political trends suggests that there could well be a vote in the next eighteen months regarding the privatisation of policing in the metro areas. The test will be later this year. There’s a significant movement to increase local authority for policing in the protectorates and administrative regions. NAPA will be moved into a position of enforcing standards, and local areas will be able to handle police work as they see fit, so long as they meet the requirements.’

‘Seriously?’ Fox asked. ‘It’s going that far, that fast?’

‘Especially in the protectorates, there is a very significant rise in liberal, minimal government sympathies. United Anarchy has made some inroads into the popular cognitive ecology, but even without that there is a definite shift which is likely to see the local policing legislation going through this year. We know that Wayden Executive Services is pushing that forward and putting money into having the same sort of vote happen for the metro areas. We need to be ready.’

Fox frowned. ‘Currently non-metro regions can handle their own policing, more or less, if they wish. Many of them employ some sort of private security because they don’t get enough support from NAPA. The larger buildings in the metro regions are allowed to do the same. Palladium handles security for all of MarTech’s buildings, right?’

‘Yes, but if these votes go through, NAPA will be reduced to a standards organisation and the judiciary. They would handle prisons as well, but there is a separate vote going through which calls for the privatisation of the prisons. People will have to supply their own policing service because there won’t be a government one.’

‘Palladium needs to be able to meet that demand,’ Jackson stated. ‘Ryan is doing a good job of overseeing what could be seen as the street-level policing requirements, but we also need an investigative solution.’

‘I’m not a manager, Jackson. I don’t know how to organise a company. I investigate crimes and I’ve been known to rescue the odd hostage, but I’m not a manager. I don’t want to be a manager.’

‘Setting aside the fact that you have far more organisational skill than you believe, we did point out that we have no real talent in this area currently, yes?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘So do you really think we can afford to have someone sitting around in an office working out where to find more like her? No. We’re giving you a fancy title with “chief” at the beginning of it, but you are the investigative division until we can get more people on board. And even then we’ll want geographically dispersed resources to maximise coverage and minimise response times. You’ll be doing real work, in the field, until you want to stop.’ He grinned. ‘And we have all the best toys.’

‘Your Kitsune AI can help you with the corporate stuff,’ Hoarsen said. ‘Terri and her people have done a wonderful job on that model. We have a standard skill package which should help her with corporate acclimatisation, and we do intend to run you both through the basic induction.’

‘And the not-so-basic one,’ Eaves added. ‘We want you to spend a few days on the Moon, and at the L-four facility, you’ll get your chance to meet Graves in Chicago.’

Fox gave a sigh and gulped down some coffee. The robot noted her cup was empty and came to supply more. ‘Okay, so… When does the fun start?’

‘As soon as we have your signature on some documents,’ Jackson said, grinning brightly. ‘I have to admit I was a little worried you’d turn around and walk out.’

‘To be honest, I’m not sure why I’ve not. Except that I told my parents that you had to actually put your foot down and do something if you want to make the world a better place, and I guess that’s what we’re doing.’

‘I’m not sure we’re making it better,’ Jarvis said, his brow furrowing a little. ‘If we’re lucky, sure, but for now I’m going to be a happy man if we can stop it getting worse.’

~~~

‘Okay, so you’ve put the main offices of Palladium in Chicago,’ Fox said, ‘but you want the investigative division operated from here?’ She was looking at organisation charts and maps projected into the viron around them that almost obscured the real walls of the conference room. Palladium had a presence in every MarTech-owned structure on and off the planet, but it had one large office in the arcology in Chicago.

‘We have the main research labs here,’ Jackson replied. ‘For now, that’s your forensics department. When the new tower comes online, which is due to start happening late August and into September, we’ll put in a purpose-built facility there, but it’s still better to have it near primary R and D.’

‘And we thought you’d prefer to stay in this metro,’ Hoarsen said.

‘Well, yeah,’ Fox admitted. ‘I’ve just got myself settled and I do kind of like the area.’

‘But we should consider when we’re going to move you into one of the towers here,’ Jarvis said. ‘It’s a policy thing. We like our people, especially the ranking ones, to be housed in company buildings.’

Fox’s brow furrowed. ‘Like I said, I just got settled. I’ve got the apartment the way I want. I like the view. I have a good neighbour and he doesn’t work for MarTech so there’s no moving us both. If I’m not moving to Chicago, I’d prefer to stay where I am.’

‘It’s a security issue,’ Jarvis replied, setting his face, brows narrowed, lips thinning a little; he was expecting an argument, which probably meant that he had read her profile.

‘I believe,’ Jackson said as Fox opened her mouth, ‘that the situation can be handled suitably. If Fox is moving, I’d prefer her to move into the new building, which will not be ready for a few months. Moving her to one of the others and then moving again is a waste of time and resource. We’ll wait and see how things are working out in August.’

‘That’s… That should be workable,’ Jarvis said, nodding.

Fox looked at Jackson. The man was planning something. Maybe he was just trying to keep the peace and hoping to wear her down. ‘Yeah, we can work something out on that timescale, I’m sure.’

‘We’ve been at this for six hours,’ Hoarsen said, ‘and if I have any more coffee, I won’t sleep until Thursday. Let’s call it a day. Fox can, I’m sure, use a little time to get her head around the procedures we’re foisting on her, and I’d imagine everyone would like to get home tonight.’ Fox considered it a major step forward that they were all calling her by her nickname now.

Jackson shrugged. ‘I’m more or less home, and Teresa is up in Jenner Station.’

Hoarsen’s mouth opened a fraction, just enough to suggest to Fox that she had wanted to say something which she had changed her mind about. ‘Give her a call. You’re allowed to call your daughter even if it’s not about work, you know?’

‘True. I hate the light lag, but… I wouldn’t mind getting her take on the latest reports anyway. Thank you, Mariel. You always know how to cheer me up.’

This time Fox was sure she saw a flicker of something like regret on the woman’s face, and that was something that would need checking out, but for now… ‘I think I could use some acclimatisation time, yes. I’ll go over all these charts and procedures with Kit tomorrow, and then…’

‘Then,’ Eaves said, ‘we’ll get together via telepresence and start talking over how we’re going to integrate investigation into the rest of Palladium.’

‘All virtual?’

‘We’ll get you over to Chicago at some point, but most of us prefer to work from home when we can.’

‘I love taking meetings in my bra and panties,’ Vaughn said, giggling and immediately turning scarlet. ‘Uh, that’s a joke, obviously.’

Fox shrugged. ‘Works for me, and I’m sure your underwear is very tasteful.’

~~~

Fox did like the view from the window of her apartment. Her opinion of it was, she had to admit, a minority one. The building was on the Esplanade, overlooking the Hudson, and across the water was the grey mass of the Jersey Housing Combine. To the left, she should have been able to see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, but those were obscured by the growing grey wall of the Hudson North Barrier, one of the wall-and-lock structures being erected to hold the Atlantic back from New York. It, like the rest of the flood defences, was still under construction and that was one reason that she had an apartment with a window for the same rent as one of the interior suites. Okay, so losing the view would not be a major hit to her standard of living…

Sam Clarion had the next apartment down her corridor. His window was a screen. ‘I don’t see why you wouldn’t move into one of their arcs,’ he said as he sipped wine on her sofa. ‘That view is not worth it. I bet you could get something overlooking all the rich bastards in Brightwaters and Islip.’

‘The view from a kilometre up is not that great,’ Fox replied. ‘Why do you think Jackson has his suite overlooking the interior park?’

‘It’s a good point.’ He seemed to consider that for a second and then nodded. ‘I must admit that I’ve had a few clients with top-level arcology apartments and I guess the view’s not that great from that far up.’

Fox, standing at the window, looked back at him. ‘You’ve had clients in places like that and they let you out of bed to look out the window?’ Sam was the kind of man who you would, Fox thought, keep in bed, naked, as much as possible. He had the body of a god, one of the really fit, Greek ones, but with better-sculpted genitalia, and there were also not too many Greek gods with Chinese ancestry.

‘Being a prostitute is not all deep penetration and acrobatic displays of technique, you know?’ He was smirking. ‘Besides, most of the ones in that kind of situation are paying me for more than sex and companionship.’

‘I’m surprised people in that situation don’t have their own bodyguards.’

‘You would be amazed at how few people consider that kind of thing necessary until they receive some sort of threat.’

‘Huh… Actually, no, I’d believe that. I used to have to deal with the ones where they didn’t take precautions even after the threat. Or didn’t know to take care of themselves in places they should have avoided.’

‘People,’ Sam said sagely, ‘can be idiots.’

‘True. Want to go out for dinner tonight? I’m not entirely sure I want to stay in.’

‘Sorry, I’m working tonight.’

‘Acrobatic sex or guardian escort?’

‘More the former, but I don’t usually need to be that acrobatic. Felix isn’t that energetic, but he’s a nice guy. Lost his partner about two years ago. Sometimes he just wants the company.’

Fox gave her friend a grin. ‘I know the feeling. I guess I’ll stay home and study organisation charts.’

~~~

The area had been called Hell’s Kitchen until the Manhattan Conservation District had been formed. Now everything between 42nd and 125th was just the MCD, unless you counted Central Park, which still bore its full name. Close to the park you were in the domain of the conspicuously wealthy, those who had money and liked to demonstrate they had it, but to either end was a buffer zone which kept the normal folks away from the wealthy. The rents and property values were still fairly high, the area fairly exclusive, but Felix Kenan’s grandfather had owned the land he lived on: he loved the place, and loved the area.

Sam did not love the area or Felix, but he did like them both. Here, there seemed to be more life than in the areas closer to the park. Felix was a likeable old man, well into his eighties. His partner of thirty years had died of an undetected neurological condition and Felix had decided that he would not look for anyone else to share the remainder of his life with. He was letting himself age naturally and not worrying over his health so much, but he was also not denying himself physically. Sam liked his visits to Felix’s place because, with increasing frequency, the old man was happy to simply sit and talk, revelling in the company of a handsome man. Back in the day, Felix claimed, he had torn up the town with his looker of a husband and there were always stories of their exploits, some of them difficult to believe.

Felix’s house had been put up on the site of his grandfather’s old house during the redevelopment carried out in the 2030s. It was a modern structure with a shell of brick. It was large for one man, that was true, and Sam knew that Felix had turned down more than one offer for the land, but it was a beautiful house with reasonable security. Sam stood at the door and buzzed for attention, and there was an immediate response from the building’s AI.

‘Mister Clarion, you are expected, but Mister Kenan is not currently in the house.’ The voice was soft, masculine, and warm, but there was a hint of flatness to it which Sam knew came from its nature. Felix refused to use more complicated operating software than a class 2 AI and those were barely capable of even faking emotion. ‘My instructions are to make you comfortable until his return.’ There was a click as the door unlatched. ‘Please enter and wait in the lounge. Would you like coffee?’

Sam pushed the door open and stepped inside. ‘Thank you. I’ll wait for Felix. Do you know when he’ll be back?’

There was a pause, which seemed odd. ‘Mister Kenan did not tell me. Mister Kenan did not tell me he would be leaving, but he is not here.’

Sam frowned and, because he habitually carried a weapon, slipped his gun from where it was hidden in his coat. Something seemed wrong, out of place. The AI was behaving strangely and there was something… What was it? There was something he was sensing which was making him nervous. He got as far as crossing the hall and opening the lounge door before he realised what it was: a scent of copper overlaid with the acid sting of urine. Felix Kenan was lying in a pool of blood in the middle of his lounge floor.

~~~

Fox squeezed the bridge of her nose and then lay back against the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. ‘I am starting to wonder what the Hell I’ve got myself into here.’

‘There is a considerable amount of material to digest,’ Kit agreed. Her avatar crossed the floor, rounding the sofa to stand behind Fox and look down at her. ‘I do have a protocol package which covers Palladium corporate culture. You are not required to learn everything in a day and you haven’t eaten yet.’

‘What time is– Damn, is it eight-thirty already? I’m not hungry, just… tense, I guess. I don’t like being in a situation where I’m unaware of the environment. Poor intelligence is a great way to get yourself killed in a battle.’

Kit grinned. ‘This is not a battle. You are not fighting a war. Mister Jackson and, from my evaluation, all of the people you met today wish you to succeed and know it will take time to catch up.’ Hands which were not real reached out and Fox felt them on her shoulders, the sensation a result of Kit’s interface to her virtual reality implants. This Kit was executing on the apartment’s server, Kit’s primary ‘home,’ rather than the implanted processor in Fox’s artificial arm. Either copy could, theoretically, ‘touch’ Fox if they wished, but generally they did not. ‘Let me see if I can help with the tension.’

Virtual hands smoothed out over Fox’s shoulders. She felt fingers digging into the tired muscles at the back of her neck, but also not. There was the sensation of it, but no real pressure and the discontinuity did not quite work. On the other hand, it was sort of soothing and Fox thought it might be worth giving it a try. In full VR mode, it would have felt more real, maybe.

‘How does that feel?’ Kit asked.

‘That’s… I’m not sure. Keep going.’ Fox closed her eyes and let herself sink into the sensation. Kit was fairly new and they were still getting used to each other. Kit was learning what Fox needed from a personal AI assistant, a task made harder by the sudden change of job. Fox was learning to actually have a sentient program working for her: a sentient program which could live on a computer inside Fox’s body, always there, always aware of whatever Fox was aware of. Accustomed to the less complex virtual assistants most people used, Fox was having to adjust.

The sensation of Kit’s hands moving over her skin was, Fox realised, not quite massage. It was soothing, almost hypnotic, and it seemed to be relieving the tension Fox had barely noticed forming in her neck. It was not massage, however, because there was not actual manipulation going on. She was wondering whether, since Kit seemed to be fairly competent at this, she should purchase a gynoid shell so that Kit could do it properly when the change in sensation worked its way into Fox’s conscious mind. Kit’s hands were sliding over Fox’s breasts, still a smooth, almost delicate, soothing touch. There was still no pressure, but the stimulation was stiffening Fox’s nipples.

Fox opened her eyes a crack and looked at the girl leaning over her. Not a girl, exactly. What she could see above her was a projection into her brain, a manufactured, animated, full-sensory projection of a girl in a little white strapless dress with a mass of ash-blonde hair which formed ears at the top of her head, and a thick, white fox’s brush emerging from her back. The stylised, anime face with the big, green eyes held an expression of concentration with her tongue firmly lodged at the corner of her lips. Her tail was flicking randomly as she worked. It was working too: Fox felt the beginnings of a familiar warmth between her legs.

‘Kit?’

‘Yes, Fox?’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m relaxing you. Is it working?’

Fox fought the urge to squeeze her thighs together. ‘When you decided to study human sexuality, I thought it was for Vali.’

‘Well… I don’t see why I can’t have more than one reason. You don’t like it?’

‘You have access to all my biomonitor data. What do you think?’

‘I think your body is responding physiologically in the manner my research indicates it should, but that does not necessarily mean you are mentally enjoying the experience.’ Kit’s hands stopped their motion and she looked down into Fox’s eyes. ‘Should I continue?’

Fox’s brow furrowed. VR sex had always been a little unsatisfying, as far as she was concerned. When in full VR, implants locked out voluntary muscle movements in a similar manner to the way someone in a dream state could not move: it avoided the possibility of hurting oneself while reacting to something which was not there. That lockout meant that you could experience a mind-blowing virtual orgasm, but your real body did not get the usual release. She had been told that the halfway house of VR telepresence did not have the same problem and this was pretty much like that…

‘Can you actually finish what you’ve started?’ Fox asked.

Kit’s lips twitched. ‘I believe I understand the principles. I’ve never actually put them into practice…’

‘Well… let’s call it further product testing. Terri still wants reports on your– Kit?’

The kitsune’s face had gone, quite suddenly, serious, clearly concerned by something. ‘Javen is contacting me.’

‘Sam’s PA? Why?’

‘Sam’s client has been murdered. Sam believes that the detective assigned to the case may be considering holding him for the death.’

Fox moved, getting to her feet and starting for the bedroom. ‘Who’s the detective?’

‘Detective Brownlow of–’

Fox broke into a run. ‘Oh fuck! Tell Javen I’m on my way and that Sam’s not to say anything until I get there.’

~~~

Sam was being trooped out of the address Javen had given Kit, his hands cuffed in front of him, when Fox marched up to where a NAPA prisoner transport was waiting. There was not that much use for ground vehicles these days, but getting a prisoner from scene to cell still called for some form of enclosed vehicle. The two uniforms escorting Sam saw Fox and slowed their pace; they recognised her and probably figured there was a reason she was there beyond curiosity.

Brownlow, bringing up the rear, saw them falter, but did not see Fox. ‘Get him in the damn van and get into–’ His eyes fell upon the woman approaching, then they narrowed, and hardened. ‘Meridian, what are you doing here? You’re not a cop anymore.’ He was a tall, good-looking man though the thin moustache he liked to wear did less for him than he thought, probably because men with his brand of dark-blonde hair looked better with beards. His eyes were a cool blue and he knew how to use them to devastating effect when intimidating suspects.

Fox was fairly good at intimidation too. Her own eyes narrowed; hers had a hint of green in the blue, but it was not the colour that worked for her: it was the hard edge behind them. Her face was all hard edges and angles, even if it could soften into something quite beautiful when she wanted it to. ‘And you were always a poor excuse for one. You’ve arrested my neighbour. I’d like to know why.’

‘I don’t have to tell you squat!’

‘No, you don’t.’ She waited a beat to let Brownlow begin to turn away. ‘Of course, a man who has two reprimands on his record, that I know of, for mistreatment of homosexual men would probably not want to be seen hauling in a bisexual without good reason, so why don’t you give me your reasoning before I get the harassment proceedings started.’

Brownlow’s eyes flashed, but his voice was level when he spoke. ‘I’ve got a body and a licensed pro with a gun. Do the math.’

‘Cause of death?’ Fox was looking at the images Javen had passed on to her, which were what Sam had seen when he found the body. The cause of death was, at least superficially, obvious.

‘You don’t get to–’

‘Come on, Brownlow, this is elementary stuff. You’ve run a forensics swarm over the body by now. You know the time of death, the likely means. How and when did he die?’

‘His throat was cut. Time of death is estimated at seventeen-thirty.’

‘So, the fact that Sam was carrying a licensed firearm is irrelevant because your victim was not shot, and at five-thirty Sam was sitting in my apartment. My personal assistant will provide timestamped video of that to you on request.’

‘I still want to question–’

Fox felt her anger flaring and pushed it down. ‘Sam will voluntarily attend HQ in the morning to make a statement, if such is required for your investigation. As it is, I am going to recommend to Sam that he initiate an unlawful imprisonment suit if you don’t take those cuffs off right this minute.’

Brownlow’s jaw clenched. ‘Let him go,’ he said through gritted teeth, and then he stepped closer to Fox, lowering his voice. ‘You’re not a cop now, Meridian. Be careful who you piss off or you might just find yourself in a cell.’

‘Don’t threaten me, Brownlow. You’re too stupid to get away with trying to frame me for something, and don’t expect NAPA to have your back if you fuck up again. Canard will toss you to the wolves so fast you won’t have time to wonder what’s biting your ass.’ Fox turned away before he could reply, checking that Sam had been released. ‘The gun. It’s not evidence. Hand it over.’

Teeth gritted so tightly Fox wondered what Brownlow’s orthodontist would think, the detective pulled an evidence bag from his pocket, deliberately broke the seal, and handed the weapon to her. ‘Don’t let me see you again, Meridian.’

‘I know we’ll both be happier if we can manage that, Brownlow.’ Fox turned away and Sam fell into step beside her. She handed him his pistol and he tucked it away without a word. They looked something of an odd couple, her in her leather jacket and jeans, him in an expensive, casual suit and a matching dark coat.

‘Thanks,’ he finally said when they were out of earshot of the police. ‘I wasn’t sure that that guy was bad, but…’

‘Brownlow’s an ass-hat. Everyone knows he’s homophobic, but he manages to slip past the psych tests and he usually keeps his baser tendencies under control. Like I said, he has a couple of reprimands. That’s why he’s never made inspector and he won’t survive another dent in his record.’

‘You still see it. There are laws, of course, but you still see it. Brownlow isn’t going to do a sterling job on finding Felix’s murderer, is he?’

Fox’s brow furrowed. ‘A homicide involving a homosexual male, killed in his home. Throat cut so it’s a close-range, personal attack.’

‘Felix probably knew the attacker. He has… had first-rate security.’

‘Right… Well, if there’s video from the security system to point at someone, Brownlow will nab him. Otherwise… No, he’ll put it down as a crime of passion thing. Possibly a lover’s tiff that got out of hand.’

‘That’s stupid. Felix didn’t have lovers, just people like me. He made do with meeting the physical need because he couldn’t fill the emotional one with anyone else.’

Fox sighed. ‘I’m sorry. Dispatch screwed up assigning him to the case. I’d try to do something about it but, as he pointed out, I’m not a cop.’

‘Shame. You were a damn good cop, but then you were wasted on NAPA.’

Fox shrugged as they started up the slideway to the maglev station above 42nd Street. ‘I didn’t feel wasted. Let’s just hope this isn’t the start of feeling useless doing the new job.’

Part Two: The Moon’s a Balloon

Luna City, 16th March 2060.

Fox opened her eyes and watched the Earthrise projected onto the ceiling above her head. It was not that long since she had seen the same view in another hotel room. This time she was in one of the corporate suites MarTech maintained in the city, which was an improvement. Okay, so she was starting to feel like her new job was going to be a waste of whatever talent she possessed, but she was wasting away in style.

Slipping out of the big bed that occupied one of two bedrooms in the suite, she padded into the attached bathroom and stepped into the shower, which was already running and at the right temperature. ‘Thank you, Kit.’

‘My pleasure, Fox,’ Kit replied, audio-only: it had been determined that a visual avatar in the shower was disconcerting. ‘Would you like the daily news summary and your schedule?’

‘Sure.’ Her old virtual assistant had been less interactive about that kind of data, displaying it as soon as Fox woke up because that was how it had been programmed and Fox had never thought to change it. Kit had determined that her owner did not always want to see it all on waking and changed the pattern herself.

‘Luna City’s safety board have sealed off a portion of Quadrant Three due to an atmospheric processing problem.’ Kit also gave the report verbally rather than throwing up text. ‘The area is posted with virtual signs. There will be an interruption in space traffic in and out of the port between zero one hundred and zero six hundred tomorrow morning for a navigation system upgrade.’

‘People nearer the surface are going to be happy about that.’

‘Quite possibly. There will be some disruption to travel, but it should not affect your plans. We will be meeting Miss Martins for breakfast in thirty-two minutes. She will be escorting you out to Jenner Research Station tomorrow morning.’

‘Uh-huh. What are we doing today?’ Fox noted that ‘we’ would be meeting Terri, but she would be escorting Fox to the other facility. Kit tended to think of her creator as more than just a programmer and knew that the breakfast meeting would include them both.

‘We are meeting the Palladium personnel in Luna City. Nothing stressful. MarTech prefers its staff to get a day to acclimatise on arriving at, or on returning from, an off-planet facility.’

Fox gave a grunt as she washed shampoo from her red-orange hair in the slow-falling water stream. ‘Ten hours’ flight time, most of that in some gravity and luxury quarters with nothing to do but read. I had all last night to acclimatise. It’s a wonder they ever get anything done in this company.’

‘Lowered gravity can result in a loss of coordination–’

‘I’m aware of that, and it takes a lot longer than a day to accustom yourself to the difference. I’m not fond of placebos. We’ll go meet Terri and hopefully she can cheer me up.’

~~~

Teresa Martins, Terri to her friends, took after her mother, a quite stunningly beautiful, black woman who had been a gifted psychologist up until the time of her death. Terri had golden-brown eyes, full lips, long black hair and quite a lush figure on a slim frame. Her father had contributed something to her genes since Terri was probably brighter than her mother had been; Jackson Martins left most humans standing in the dust when it came to brain power and his daughter was happy to stand in his shade, though he insisted that she was rapidly catching up with him in her chosen area of expertise, which was artificial intelligence research.

That expertise was why she was up on the Moon, trying to solve some problems in one of MarTech’s most confidential projects, and the project was probably why Fox detected a few worrying hints in her friend’s pretty, smiling face as she walked up to the table in the hotel’s restaurant.

‘Fox,’ Terri said, ‘I’m so glad you got to come up here.’

Fox sat down and checked over the menu Kit was displaying for her. ‘Yeah, you look like you could use a break. Maybe we should hold off on the trip to Jenner an extra day.’

Terri frowned. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re looking tired, and worried.’ Fox located something light, an omelette, and ordered that and coffee. Her stomach was not actually used to the difference in gravity yet and maybe the coffee was not a good idea, but… coffee.

‘I’m working my ass off to make sure Yliaster actually functions as advertised.’ Sagging a little, Terri lifted her cup and sipped coffee through perfectly pursed lips. ‘Okay, so I’m glad of the break.’

‘Yliaster? That’s what you’re calling it?’

‘You’ll get the full briefing soon. We don’t like talking about it away from Jenner.’

‘Good. Now say hello to Kit before she thinks you’ve forgotten her.’ Kit’s avatar appeared beside the table, looking like a timid schoolgirl. The process was, of course, more complicated than it seemed with Kit instructing Fox’s comms implant to transmit the appropriate data stream so that Terri’s implant could pick it up and display it. And Fox was careful to keep her eyes on Terri rather than looking up at Kit, because Kit could only see what Fox saw, despite where her eyes appeared to be. Things were easier at home where Kit had sensors in the apartment to work with.

‘Good morning, Kit,’ Terri said, smiling at her creation.

‘Good morning, Miss Martins. I hope you are not excessively stressed.’

‘I’ll cope. And seeing the two of you is relieving the tension. We’ll do a little meet-and-greet, spend an evening in the leisure district, and I’m sure I’ll be recharged and ready for Jenner tomorrow.’

‘Oh, I’m sure,’ Fox said, nodding. Not that she really believed it.

~~~

MarTech’s presence in Luna City was, basically, services only. There was a block of offices in the first quadrant, the north-east quarter of the city, among a lot of other offices. That handled technical queries for MarTech products, took in units requiring replacement or repair, and acted as a point of contact for sales staff.

Palladium had five people there, and that was primarily to ensure that someone was awake at all times, a policy which was under review since it was, to date anyway, appearing to be overkill. Two facilities people took care of the operation of the office, while three security division personnel took care of security. Big surprise there then. The most exciting thing they had ever had to do was track down Sanderson Hunt’s contact earlier in the year after the man, an intelligence agent attempting to steal company secrets, had been murdered.

It took Fox two hours to meet everyone, hear a potted history of the goings on there, and determine that there was nothing much she really needed to know in detail until she really needed to know about it. By that time, Kit had finished making the arrangements Fox had asked for.

‘Right,’ Fox said, ‘since I can’t persuade you to take an extra day out of Jenner, as your security advisor, I am making the decision to take you for a spa trip to Tranquillity.’

Terri peered at her friend, one eyebrow cocked. ‘As my security advisor?’

‘Of course. Stressed executives make poor decisions. Poor decisions result in security issues. We’re going to the spa.’ To Fox, it did not look like Terri was going to put up much of a fight, but you could see her trying to come up with an objection. Fox decided to cut that off before it had a chance to start. ‘We’ll get naked and sit in a steam room, maybe take a massage…’

‘You had me at naked.’

‘Thought I might have.’

~~~

It was not that they had ever slept together and Fox was fairly sure that Terri knew it was not going to happen at Tranquillity Spa either. If she were honest, Fox was not even sure that Terri really wanted to go to bed with her anymore, but there was that undercurrent of desire floating along whenever there was an opportunity to express it. Maybe it was just friendly teasing now.

It had started when Fox had been the one to pull Terri out of a hostage situation in Dallas. The terrorists had killed everyone else in the bunker where MarTech Technologies was developing Yliaster at that time, but they had kept the daughter of the company’s founder alive as their bargaining chip. Fox had lost her entire team getting to Terri and they had spent almost a day getting out of the bunker, hiding, running, and fighting. Terri had, perhaps naturally, developed a crush on her saviour. Or Fox thought of it as a crush, and thought that it would be inappropriate to give in to it.

The idea that, maybe, Terri was getting over her ‘crush’ was given a little extra credence by the fact that she sat in the private sauna Fox had booked and did not really seem to be too concerned. She looked, but she seemed quite content with that.

‘You know,’ Terri said, ‘you weren’t looking particularly happy before we got here either. Not exactly stressed, but… a bit tense.’

Fox sighed. ‘I’m not sure how well this is sitting with me. Jackson’s saddled me with this Chief Investigative Officer title and I’m running around looking at businesses and organisation charts.’

‘And you like to be doing things, not managing things.’

‘She does,’ Kit said, appearing on the bench between the two of them to join the conversation. ‘Did she tell you why she left home to join the Army?’

‘UA attack killed her friend, she wanted to do something about that kind of thing, and her parents were not best pleased.’

The virtual girl gave a sharp nod. ‘They prefer to talk rather than act. Fox prefers to act rather than–’

‘I prefer to do rather than sitting around talking about doing,’ Fox interrupted. ‘Sometimes the doing can be talking. I’d rather talk someone out of doing something stupid than shoot them, but you can’t always have what you want. Point is… Oh… One of Sam’s clients was killed recently. An old guy, murdered in his home, probably knew his attacker, but he was gay and the cop assigned to the case is a homophobe. The case has been put on the inactive list because the detective doesn’t care about who killed an old gay. When I was with NAPA, I could have done something about that. I could have kicked Brownlow and taken the case myself. I could have got Sam some closure. Now I’m just… pushing papers for a corporation.’

Terri’s brow furrowed and she pressed her lips together. ‘Give it a bit longer. I haven’t been paying huge attention to the data from Palladium, but it sounds like things are going to change. I think we’re going to need you, and more like you, a whole lot in the near future.’

‘This private policing bill? I’m not sure…’

‘Neither am I, but someone’s putting money and effort into that movement. Besides, I can’t believe NIX are just going to give up on stealing Yliaster. Maybe you stopped them once–’

‘It was not just me.’

‘–but they’ll try again. Somehow.’

Fox frowned, but she had to agree. The National Intelligence Executive had shown more than a casual interest in the project since its inception, even though it was illegal for them to dig into commercial enterprises. ‘Yeah. You’re probably right, but for right now, how about we go get a couple of the massage androids to turn our muscles to soup.’

‘You really are a taskmaster, aren’t you?’

‘Oh yeah, always cracking the whip.’

Terri smirked and got to her feet. ‘Now there’s a thought.’

~~~

‘People seem a little… hyped,’ Fox commented as she watched various residents of Luna City throwing themselves around on the dance floor of a club Kit said had quite good reviews. In the lower gravity, you could pull off a few moves which would have resulted in fractures on Earth, but even so, for a Tuesday night, there seemed to be more enthusiasm than might have been expected.

‘The Helium-three mining report came out on Friday,’ Terri replied.

‘Ah. So everyone’s either celebrating their good fortune or staving off depression.’

‘Something like that. A lot of them are getting their leisure time in now before they spend the next year working like dogs too. I heard you had a hand in stopping that coming out early.’

Fox flashed her a grin. ‘Someone tried to get their hands on it early and I was here training the local emergency response team. Something else I doubt I’ll be able to do again.’

‘Don’t count on it. The Luna City Security Service wanted you to train their people, not “someone from NAPA.” I know they asked for you specifically.’

‘You know?’

‘Yeah. They came to us to ask who we’d recommend for that kind of work after Dallas. Actually, they asked who to go to in the UNTPP, and we said that you’d quit and joined NAPA.’

‘Oh. You got me that gig?’

‘Yup. So don’t assume you won’t see more.’

Fox was not really sure she wanted to see more of that, but… ‘I guess I might see some of the money used where I can actually see it working this time. It fell into NAPA’s budget and sank without trace last time. Hey, is this helium thing why they’re upgrading the navigation systems?’

‘Well spotted. Traffic’s risen by eight per cent in the last four days and they’re worried about the comms channels being overloaded. I heard Stellar was contacted about upgrading the systems at L-one Control too.’

MarTech Stellar was not the largest producer of space hardware in the system, but they were noted for having some of the most advanced designs, especially in computer and communications systems. After two weeks of study, Fox knew more about that than she had any real desire to. ‘Hey, I heard Stellar were working on antimatter engines.’

Terri shrugged. ‘Not my area, but yeah, I heard the same.’

‘Military applications?’

‘The military are more interested in antimatter reactors. More power output for weapons in the same space. Hideously expensive to run though. The engines are for out-system ships. You can get a lot more delta-V out of a tank of fuel when you’re mixing in antimatter. Costs are prohibitive though. It was all looking pretty good before they cracked the manufacturing on the fuel pellets for pulse drives. Now you’re looking at… forty times the price for a ton of fuel? Something like that anyway. Still might be viable for fast runs out to the gas giants.’

‘More helium.’

‘That’s why they want to get out there, sure. Though the moons out there… There’s the possibility of finding living organisms out there, Fox.’

Fox grinned. ‘Some people haven’t given up on Mars.’

Terri returned the grin. ‘Some people still expect to find jungles on Venus. And dinosaurs in the Hollow Earth.’

‘Did you ever find the Nazis on the far side of this place?’

‘No one with a German accent has ever turned up to complain about my skin colour, but you never know, we haven’t been down all the craters yet.’ She giggled. ‘And the Moon is a balloon. Must be if they can dig helium out of it, right?’

‘This,’ Fox said, chuckling, ‘is a more appropriate conversation for an evening out.’

‘Silly is always appropriate.’

‘Not absolutely always…’

New York Metro.

The invitation to the reading of Felix Kenan’s will had come as something of a surprise to Sam. Yes, he had liked Felix a little more than many of his clients, and Felix had, he thought, liked him back, but being asked to the reading of the will… No one had even notified him of funeral arrangements! Well, the house was full of things the old man had loved and perhaps he was planning to hand out a few memories to the people who had touched his life. There seemed to be few of those.

Sam sat in one of his more formal black suits on one chair set amid a short arc of identical chairs. Beside him a girl who had always been introduced to him as Marie had taken a seat, a handkerchief scrunched in her hands. She would snivel into it periodically and Sam, used to sizing people up for his work, had decided that Felix’s maid had been quite fond of the old man too. The rest of the people there were not anyone Sam recognised: most of them looked distinctly corporate, though one older one was looking more sad, maybe an old friend of the deceased.

The lawyer, a human because companies generally thought a human touch was important for this kind of occasion, was tall, thin, and had a pale face reminiscent of an axe. Sam liked that and wondered whether Felix had picked his legal representative simply for the look of the thing.

‘Gentlemen, and lady,’ the man intoned, his voice suitably dolorous, ‘perhaps we could begin?’ No one really needed to settle themselves. No one had a reason to be there other than the reading. ‘This should not take an excessive amount of time. The provisions of Mister Kenan’s will are quite simple.’

Well, that was good. Sam sat through the preliminary boilerplate without really taking it in. He had never been to a reading like this before, but he imagined that they followed a rote which had been going on since mankind developed an urge to write down the disposition of property after death. He could certainly see Victorians following the same process, and given the amount of old furniture in the room, they might have done it in similar surroundings.

‘To my most loyal, patient, and persevering maid, Marie Shaftsbury’ – the lawyer’s eyes lifted to look at the girl, who bit her lips, eyes widening – ‘I leave the sum of fifty thousand dollars and the hope that she finally takes a chance on the career she really wants to pursue.’

Marie let out a little whimper, her fists clenching around her handkerchief and the look on her face suggesting that she was determined not to start blubbing.

‘To Brian Melville, my old friend and manager, I leave my collection of film memorabilia and the sum of five thousand dollars in the hope that he can find a good home for it all. He was always as much of a lover of theatre as I was, even if he couldn’t act worth a damn.’

The older man on Sam’s right gave a snort of a laugh and muttered, ‘That sounds like old Felix.’ Sam was surprised, mainly because he had not known that Felix had ever acted.

‘The remainder of my worldly goods,’ the lawyer went on, ‘my home and whatever I have left in my bank accounts, I leave to Samuel Peter Clarion.’ Sam felt his throat closing and knew his eyes were trying to burst out of their sockets. ‘I have no family remaining so I choose to give what I have to someone who will appreciate it and who has given me long hours when I could forget my solitude. You’ll need the money. This place needs some work. I hope I haven’t spent it all.’ The lawyer took in a breath. ‘That ends the disbursements. Mister Clarion, if you would contact my office in the morning, we can arrange the transfer of ownership and payment of funds. Mister Kenan’s accounts are not overwhelming, but they are substantial. There will, of course, be tax considerations. Do you have an accountant?’

Sam opened his mouth, found his throat dry, and swallowed. ‘Uh, yes. I have an accountant. I… I’ll be in touch. Uh… Thank you.’

Marie was smiling, her eyes brimming. ‘He always said you made him happy. Congratulations.’

‘Thanks. I’ve got no idea what I’m going to do with… Uh, are you going to take up this change of career thing he suggested?’

‘Well, yes, but I need to learn. I always wanted to act, you see? Felix said I should do it and I said I couldn’t afford to be out of work to go back to school.’

Sam nodded. ‘I don’t suppose you could keep cleaning this place, at least for a while? At least until I figure out what the Hell I’m going to do with it.’

Marie’s eyes scanned over him. ‘Well, you’re good for the money and, uh, well, you know I live in the basement apartment, right?’

Sam blinked and pulled in a long breath. So he had also inherited a tenant. ‘I did not, but that works fine. We’ll keep that arrangement. I assume your rent was covered in your pay?’ That got a nod and then Marie’s eyes narrowed as she shifted to look over Sam’s shoulder.

Turning, Sam found himself looking at the two corporate types. Neither had been named during the reading and he had no idea who they were, so why were they here at all? They did seem to be waiting to speak to him, however. ‘Can I help you gentlemen at all?’

‘Mister Clarion,’ the nearest said, ‘we represent parties in the area who would be interested in purchasing this property from you. Mister Kenan’s untimely death interrupted our negotiations.’

Sam felt Marie stirring behind him, and he was moderately sure what she wanted to say. ‘Felix told me he had rejected offers to buy this place recently,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t even own it yet and it’s hardly appropriate to discuss selling it at this time. Perhaps you could leave me a card…?’

The man smiled with his mouth, not with his eyes. ‘We’ll be in touch.’ Then he turned and headed for the door, his compatriot following quickly behind him.

‘Felix did not like them very much,’ Marie murmured from behind Sam’s back.

‘No. I know,’ Sam replied, though he had been more concerned about the gun he had seen under the jacket of the second of their corporate visitors.

Jenner Research Station, 17th March.

You arrived at Jenner Research Station by landing on one of two platforms set into the basalt lake which filled the seventy-four-kilometre-wide crater, and then the whole platform dropped into the shuttle bay beneath while a pair of huge doors slid over the hole. The entire facility was underground, buried in the solid, radiation-resistant rock which, long ago, had flooded out of the Moon’s surface.

‘How the Hell did Hunt manage to get anything out of this place?’ Fox asked as Terri escorted her off the shuttle and into the reception area at the side of the bay.

‘Money. He paid someone a whole lot of money, and even then he got old data.’ She snapped a grin at Fox, but her expression and body language had been getting more and more tense the closer she got to the facility. ‘He didn’t bribe the right technician.’

Even though Fox had been given the highest security rating MarTech had in every facility they had, Terri had to take her through a registration process with the station’s AI, confirming her identity and stating the access privileges she was allowed on site.

‘Totally separate security system?’ Fox asked.

‘No exterior communications are allowed automatic transmission into the base’s computer systems,’ Terri replied. ‘Jenner really is our most secure facility. Well, the station we have on Venus has better physical isolation and some isolated computing facilities, but Jenner is designed to be off the grid. I’ll need to register Kit too; otherwise, she’ll run into all sorts of problems.’

Kit appeared beside them, looking up and around with the expression of someone expecting doom to rain down from on high at any moment. ‘The network security here is… scary,’ she said.

‘And this is all to protect Yliaster?’ Fox asked.

‘Oh, not just Yliaster,’ Terri replied. ‘That’s the biggest project we have going on here at the moment, but there are a few other things happening here which we really don’t want anyone knowing about. Nothing illegal, obviously.’ The last was added quickly.

Fox smiled. ‘I didn’t think there would be.’

‘That suit you used when you rescued me last month, the invisibility surface was invented here. The development work to make that Gauss pistol of yours into a viable, mass-produced weapon was done here and, uh, you should see the latest development.’ Terri gave her a grin. ‘I think you’ll get a kick out of that. But we’ll get you settled in first. All the accommodation is right at the bottom.’

‘How far down?’ They were headed for a bank of elevators, and one of those was actually marked as ‘Accommodation Only.’

‘About a hundred and fifty metres.’

‘I’m glad I’m not claustrophobic.’

~~~

‘Uh, yes… Uh, the pistol that Mister Martins built for, uh, you, uh, Miss Meridian provided us with, uh, a considerable amount of, uh, practical data.’

Fox looked at the man speaking, letting her mind work over the sentence to make sure she had actually got what he was saying. His name was Whittaker Whitwallace and that had probably been enough to provide a degree of isolation as a child, but his brain had probably done everything it could to make that worse. He was tall, very thin, with watery blue eyes, and thinning blonde hair. He wore a tatty lab coat over a counterpressure vacuum suit which made him look even thinner. His workshop was cluttered with various dismantled weapons; Fox actually recognised some of the parts.

‘Jackson said he’d got useful data from it,’ Fox said.

‘Uh, yes and he passed that data and the basic, uh, mechanism to us and, uh, we got on with making of it what we, uh, could.’

‘I think Jackson mentioned a rifle.’

‘Uh, indeed. We will have a, uh, rifle variant available for use soon. Uh, primarily for Special Forces units. We have standardised on a, uh, four-millimetre projectile for military consumption. Uh, an assault rifle with underslung electromagnetic grenade launcher.’

‘Twenty-five mil?’

‘Indeed. You know your ordnance, Miss Meridian.’

‘I have something of an interest.’

He nodded, seeming to become rather more interested himself. Fox noted that Terri was smirking. ‘We also have a squad support variant of the rifle with a heavier barrel, uprated cooling and a large, three-hundred-round, box magazine… and a six-thousand-round-per-minute cyclic rate of fire. Uh, we believe that should make a difference in fire suppression situations.’

‘It may do, yeah,’ Fox replied, wincing.

‘But you will want to see its big brother.’

Fox blinked at him. ‘You built something bigger?’

‘Well… bigger and, uh, smaller. We have had railguns on tanks and ships for a couple of decades, railguns and coilguns in space, but these are all high-calibre weapons. We decided to uh… Perhaps you should just see it.’ He was grinning, not an entirely pleasant sight.

‘Sure. Let’s see it.’

It was set up in a firing range next door, a large gun, shaped somewhat like a Gatling machine gun, but bigger, with a hopper-style ammo magazine mounted over it. It was set up on a mounting pole, facing down a fifty-metre expanse of open space which ended in moon rock.

‘It’s loaded, if you would, uh, like to give it a test fire,’ Whitwallace said.

Fox walked over to the weapon and took the ear defenders which were hanging off one of the twin pistol grips at the back, slipping them on. There were goggles too, so she added them before checking over the controls. There was a toggle switch with a molly-guard, so she flicked up the red cover and flicked the switch over, and there was a hum as the cooling system engaged. A second later, a green light appeared beside the switch. Fox looked back to check that Whitwallace and Terri were wearing protective gear, and then took hold of the pistol grips.

Sighting information, current ammo availability, and all the usual data appeared in Fox’s vision field. She had no target to aim for, so she picked the centre of an area which looked as though it had been drilled into by a few thousand DIY enthusiasts, placed her thumbs over the trigger buttons, and pressed down. It had no more recoil than her pistol, but the rate of fire was horrific. Cryogenically cooled electromagnetic coils accelerated thin slivers of hardened metal down the range at hypersonic velocities and the rock crumbled.

Fox let up on the triggers after a second or two. ‘Holy shit. What is that? Ten thousand a minute? In a point-defence semi-portable? What’s the range on this thing?’

‘Uh, right on all counts. Effective range is, uh, two kilometres. She’ll do damage to eight.’

Fox deactivated the gun and turned around. ‘Terri, I need one of these at home. For… security reasons.’

‘Sure you do. Come on, we’ll go see Yliaster now.’

‘Ah, now that project,’ Whitwallace said, ‘has some, uh, very interesting applications. The, uh, materials we can, uh, manufacture…’ He smiled. ‘We have suit designs which might let you use that gun as a sidearm.’

‘It is kind of weird,’ Terri said as they walked from the weapons development area back to the core, ‘that it always seems easier to find applications for science that involve killing people.’

Fox shrugged. ‘Humans have been killing each other for millennia. Started with Cain if you believe that sort of thing.’

‘I don’t.’

‘No, neither do I, but no one ever lost money building better weapons.’

‘Yliaster can be so much more.’

‘Show me.’

Terri grinned. ‘Okay, I will.’

The Yliaster research area was up a level and then out from the main core, and it was not especially impressive at first sight. There were a load of virtual control panels around a fairly bare room, and a large, black tank mounted behind screens behind that room. Off on the right was a bank of server cabinets which had to provide the computing necessary for the system, except that Terri and Jackson had explained that Yliaster used a new, swarm-based, cluster intelligence and standard server racks did not seem like they would host that kind of system. Fox’s eyes lifted to the tank.

‘Yeah, that’s where it all goes on,’ Terri said. ‘Basically, that tank is full of nanomachines, all kept in very carefully controlled conditions. We can feed in materials for them to work on, radio in the pattern we want them to use, and we can get the result out the bottom. And those things can manufacture materials we can’t make any other way.’ Her attention shifted to a display. ‘How are things coming along?’ The question did not seem to have a particular target; there were four people in the room besides Terri and Fox, all of them attending to their own virtual console.

‘We’re definitely seeing an improvement in the coordination of processes across the individual units.’ The speaker was a woman, and she seemed to know the question had been aimed at her. ‘That last fix you put in has helped a lot. Diagnostics suggest that the propagation of awareness across the whole network has speeded up by about ninety-two per cent.’

‘All right… I think it could do a lot better than that, and watch out for replication errors.’ Terri looked back at Fox. ‘Just before I left to pick you up, I put in a change to reduce the redundancy on the error correction system. Data transfers faster, but we need to be careful it doesn’t result in errors when one machine copies to another. And I still think we’re not getting the throughput we should.’

Fox smirked. ‘I got that. So this thing assembles stuff, like a fabricator.’

‘This thing assembles stuff a bit like a fabricator. Fabricators print parts using plastic base stock, import other parts, and then assemble objects as required. You can manufacture some things in one go, a lot of clothes, for example, but more complicated things take more programming and time, and you’re limited in the kind of materials you can make because they basically have to be built out of the stocks you have.’

‘Uh-huh. Got that.’

‘With this system, we can create materials or make alterations to them, at the molecular level. It’s still limited, to be honest, but we have far greater control over the materials we’re building and we can start from a lower level.’

‘And,’ the woman who had spoken before said, ‘we can do things like building some of our machines, or copies of them, into the materials. We can make plastics which repair themselves, react to programmed instructions. We can make intelligent matter.’

‘That’s why the project is called Yliaster,’ Terri went on. ‘It’s an old alchemical term for “prime matter,” matter which has both body and soul.’

‘Do I want a shirt that can think?’ Fox asked.

‘How about a shirt that can clean itself, change colour, and mend tears?’

‘Well… I could get behind that.’

‘How about a suit that’ll stop a bullet, give you near invisibility, and make you stronger and faster than normal?’

‘So I can use Whitwallace’s cannon from the hip.’

‘Exactly, but if we’re right about this, when we can get it working perfectly… We could submerge someone in a bath of this stuff and repair anything that’s wrong with them. Your arm? Instead of replacing it, we could regrow it.’

Fox lifted her right arm and flexed her fingers. ‘I… kind of like my new arm. I get to carry Kit around in it, for one thing.’

Kit appeared beside her at the mention of her name, the proverbial genie from a bottle. ‘I find this arrangement most pleasing as well.’

The woman flicked a glance at the kitsune avatar. ‘That’s the Kitsune-model AI you were working on, Terri?’

‘One of the prototypes, quite advanced along the way. Fox has been testing Kit for me, and doing quite a job.’ Terri frowned. ‘Oh, Fox Meridian, this is Shell Marchant. She’s one of our lead programmers.’

Marchant shook Fox’s hand, but she seemed more interested in Kit, which Fox could not really blame her for. ‘What’s your full model number, Kit?’ Marchant asked.

‘Kitsune dash five nine two point two three.’

The programmer’s eyes narrowed a little. ‘You’ve moved on to the point two five variant, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Terri replied, ‘and we’ll go live with point two six, but Kit has a few features those don’t which I’m loath to take away from her. We’ve patched her core code with a few security updates, but we’re keeping her at her current primary code iteration.’

‘What features would she lose?’ Fox asked.

‘We eliminated the spawned copy feature. Kit seems to have integrated it well, but most of the other point two three instances suffered synchronisation issues. Memories diverged and they lost the ability to reintegrate.’ Terri gave Kit a concerned frown. ‘Be careful of that when you connect to your main server when you get home.’

‘I’ll be sure to run a full diagnostic analysis after I synchronise,’ Kit said.

‘Good. And send the diagnostic results to me, would you?’

‘Of course.’

Marchant’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you thinking she might have solved our sync problem?’

‘I’m thinking that it’s a possibility. Some of the code in Kit is used in the communications protocols in Yliaster. Checking over Kit’s performance can’t hurt.’

‘I will, of course, be happy to help,’ Kit said, beaming.

19th March.

There was, Fox thought, only so much you could do at a place like Jenner Research Station unless you were there to do research. She had examined and been briefed on the weapons research and a few other clever tricks and devices, and she had been fully briefed on the nature and possibilities of Yliaster. She had gone over all the security arrangements with the Palladium team and, much as she had expected, had been unable to uncover any flaws.

After a few days on site, she was considering volunteering to test fire weapons for Whitwallace eight hours a day, but she had a feeling that getting to fire off ammo from the high-tech guns was a coveted perk.

‘You look bored,’ Terri commented as she walked into the observation booth where Fox was watching tests. ‘You are watching Whitwallace testing one of his solid-state laser rifle designs, and you look bored. That’s not a good sign.’

Fox shrugged. ‘You look kind of irritated, with a hint of disappointment. That’s not a good sign either.’

‘We ran into problems with the data replication in Yliaster. There was an error, and it propagated and compounded.’

‘And we need to evacuate before our robot overlords demand our subservience?’

Terri managed a grin. ‘No, we just ended up with a pool of sludge instead of a viable nanoplastic.’ She appeared to consider for a second and then added, ‘We got the sludge quickly, but sludge is no use.’

‘So Kit’s input might be useful?’

Kit appeared as Terri nodded. ‘Yes, Kit, I’m looking forward to getting that diagnostic data. I’m taking a break, because I need one, and then I’ll go back to hunting bugs. But something new to work with would be useful.’

‘Our current schedule has us back in New York on the twenty-sixth,’ Kit said. ‘I can transmit the data to you overnight once we’re there.’

Terri sighed. ‘It’ll have to be good enough. I mean, we don’t even know that will help…’

Fox chewed her lip a second and then came to a decision. ‘What do you do for fun in this place?’

‘Huh?’

‘You know? Fun? The thing you do with the smiling and the not tearing your hair out?’

‘Uh… You know, I don’t have the slightest idea…’

Lunar Surface.

‘This is mildly crazy,’ Terri said as the little surface transport skimmed out over the grey landscape. The far side was distinctly more rumpled than the near side, so they were flying, if only at thirty metres or so. They had the option of landing and driving, but you only bothered doing that when you were where you wanted to be.

‘The pilot knows what he’s doing,’ Fox replied. The pilot did not reply because it was a fairly low-end AI with little in the way of interaction capabilities. It was, apparently, rated quite highly at piloting, however.

‘No, I mean… I mean, why are we out here? There’s nothing much to see, really. It’s the Moon. It’s grey. It’s… um, grey.’

‘It’s the far side.’ Fox glanced at the console and tapped for attention. ‘Put us down. Anywhere flat will do.’

The little skimmer dropped to the surface and settled onto its six thick wheels, but Fox did nothing to the controls. Instead, she just shifted her behind forward in her chair and looked up through the domed window which took up the front of the cockpit.

‘This,’ Fox said, her voice hushed, ‘is the only place in the system where there is no chance at all of seeing Earth. Out there, that’s a whole, vast ocean of nothing. Space. Oblivion. You can get further from Earth, sure. You can find people living on Mars. We have miners in the asteroid belt. But they can always see home if they want to. This place has to be the most isolated you can get if you’re a human.’

Terri settled back and looked out into the black. ‘I never thought of it like that. I mean, yeah. That’s why they put Far Side Station out here. There’s a bazillion tons of moon rock between here and Earth with all its radio emissions. Great place for a radio telescope.’

‘Great place to look at the stars.’

‘Great place to have sex.’

‘Terri…’

‘I’ve never understood why you won’t,’ Terri said, her tone more absent than anything else. She was musing more than enquiring. ‘I know you aren’t totally straight. Maybe you prefer men…’

‘I… wouldn’t say it was a preference, more of a statistical imbalance. I’ve been with more men than women. I’ve never actually dated a woman.’ She pursed her lips and blew air out slowly. ‘I’ve not dated that many men.’

‘So why not try a girl? I mean, me, obviously. I’ve been pretty blatant about it, right?’

‘I had certainly not failed to notice your desires in that direction.’

‘So?’

‘It’s… I kind of feel responsible for you. It feels kind of like I’d be letting your father down.’

‘I don’t think he’d–’

‘And it would be kind of like letting me down. I went into Dallas to get you out and I don’t think I got me out. I’m still there, rescuing you. Taking down Marshall and the others helped, but I still have the odd nightmare. It’s not over yet. When it is…’

There was silence as they looked up at the stars: bright sparks of light against the black. It was certainly calm, peaceful, and blessed by the kind of serenity you could only get when you were isolated from the rest of humanity by a few hundred kilometres of vacuum.

‘I can wait,’ Terri said.

‘Good.’

‘Even if doing it here would be really amazing.’

Fox laughed. ‘We can always come back.’

Part Three: The Desert of Eden

BioTek Microtechnologies L4 Station, 25th March 2060.

Mathematics had never been one of Fox’s stronger subjects, so how the Lagrangian points worked was beyond her. In any system where you had one body orbiting another, you had five such points which provided some sort of stable gravitational condition letting you hang space stations there more easily. Just to make it all seem less credible, the two least obvious of those, known as L4 and L5, or the Trojan Points, were also the truly stable ones.

For the Moon, the L4 point was in the same orbit as the Moon, but ahead of it as it went around the Earth, and that was where an Austrian biotechnology company BioTek Microtechnologies GmbH had decided to build a space station. Doing so had been a brilliant move as far as public safety and PR were concerned, but had almost bankrupted them, and they had been bought up by MarTech Group. The BioTek Microtechnologies name had been kept on, but they were now Jackson Martins’ biotech research division, and that was why Fox had spent the last couple of days on their station.

It was not a bad place to visit. Spin gave you half of Earth-normal gravity through most of the habitation areas, and Fox had a large, quite luxurious, cabin to stay in. The place had over four hundred staff and over six hundred scientists, and plenty of room for visitors. BioTek had been justifiably concerned about security, and had provided the station with a quite viable laser turret defence system. The place was partially equipped to handle fuel storage and production for visiting spaceships as well, which made it a useful logistical addition to MarTech’s orbital facilities.

The research going on there was not really anything Fox had a clue about. She had had it all explained, but the details were going past her like bullets from Whitwallace’s new machine gun. They were making nano-scale machines based around organic technologies, which were programmable and could perform a variety of functions within a body. These ‘nanosymbionts’ were going to revolutionise medical technology, apparently. Basic models, designed to provide antibacterial and antiviral functions, already existed, but the new ones were going to be something else again.

BioTek did not do biological modifications, like the mods Fox had had put in when she joined the Army, though they were working on a method of making such modifications easier to administer. They were also working on artificial genomes, though that work was primarily at the early testing stages. They could, theoretically, build an entire DNA chain coding for whatever they wanted. It was just that once you had done that, you had to turn it into a creature the old-fashioned way, which was very difficult and often failed. The man in charge of that research had been briefed on Yliaster and was looking at it as a drowning man looks at a lifebelt. Yliaster could build entire bodies out of basic proteins and make his creations real.

Fox had spent most of her time on the station worrying about nanovirus plagues and Frankenstein-esque scientists. Again, she could find nothing wrong with the security on the station; she was more worried about some of the weirdos MarTech had inherited when they bought the company. When Fox woke up on the day she was due to leave, she was not exactly unhappy about it, but Kit appeared almost immediately beside the bed, her expression serious. That was unlikely to be a good thing.

‘I have received a message for you from Mister Eaves at Palladium HQ,’ the AI said. ‘I took the liberty of doing a brief scan. We are needed in East Africa.’

Fox frowned as a globe was projected into her vision field showing the spot in Africa they were expected to go to. It was just south of the Saharan Super-arid Region, near the Gulf of Aden, but well inland. ‘What the Hell’s there?’ she asked as she bounced out of bed and headed for the shower.

‘MarTech East Africa. It’s a research facility built on the shore of Lake Abaya. Or on what was the shore when the lake was more than a pool. They research atmospheric water extraction and arid condition agriculture, and they are part of the desertification monitoring programme.’

‘And Eaves wants me there?’ Fox stepped under the water with a sigh; if she was going to East Africa, it seemed quite likely she would have to cut down on her showers. ‘Why?’

‘Because someone tried to break in, and tried very hard to make sure no one knew about it.’

‘What’ve they got that’s worth stealing?’

‘According to Mister Eaves, nothing.’

‘And that’s why he wants me to go investigate it. Well, send a message saying we’ll be there, and another one to yourself saying we’ll be late home, and then another one to Terri saying she won’t get her diagnostics as soon as she expected.’

Kit’s voice had a sigh in it as she replied. ‘Already done.’

New York Metro.

Marie Shaftsbury was showing Sam around his new property. She was being quite conscientious about it, making sure he saw every room and knew everything she knew about things which needed fixing. Sam took all of that in, but he also watched Marie.

She was worth watching from a male point of view. Slim, reasonably toned body, moderately full breasts, and though he was not an expert, he had seen enough body sculpting to be fairly sure it was all natural. She had dark, red-auburn hair which fell to her pointed chin in unruly curls, arched eyebrows matched her hair, and green eyes suggested it was all natural. She had quite a strong face, hard but sensuous, with full lips and a small dent in her chin which added to the feeling of strength. A consultant might have trimmed her nose, made it a little smaller at the tip and cuter, but Sam thought it looked quite attractive enough as it was.

For working, she wore a grey, straight-collared, short-sleeved blouse, dark grey skirt that came to mid-thigh, and a pale blue apron. Sam had not failed to notice that, while she normally wore flat shoes, today she was in five-inch heels and hold-up stockings. The lace band on her stockings was not quite hidden by the hem of her skirt. On the odd occasion they had met previously, as now, he had caught her looking his way with a look in her eyes he knew well: Marie was not dressing up for him because he owned the house; she was doing it because she thought she might have a chance now he did.

‘The master bedroom,’ Marie said, sweeping an arm out to indicate the large, quite open room with its big bed. Sam had never actually been in it before and, more than any other room in the house, this one was a problem for him.

‘We never used this room,’ he said. Marie’s cheeks coloured a little, but she had cleaned up after Felix’s guests before and seemed fairly happy about his sexuality, and Sam’s. ‘We always used one of the guest rooms when I was visiting. He told me that he couldn’t bring himself to share this bed with another man. I respected that. I’m not sure I can bring myself to use it.’

‘Well, the mattress needs replacing for sure and the frame needs repairing or replacing. He knew, but he wouldn’t change it.’

Sam grinned. ‘Yeah. He was a sentimental old fool. Have you done anything about your acting?’

Marie blinked at the change of subject. ‘I’ve looked into some coaching. I’m not sure whether a full course would be a good idea and I wouldn’t be able to start until after the summer if I took one.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘I’m not really sure what to do. I’ve been wanting to do something like this for years, but now I could actually do it… I’m not sure where to start.’

‘There’s an agent I know,’ Sam said, brow furrowing. ‘I mean, she’s a client, but we get on fairly well. I think she’d be willing to give you some advice. I’ll sound her out about it.’

‘That’d be great!’

‘Yes, well, she’ll probably tell you not to start, it’s all a waste of time, it’s not as glamorous as you think…’

‘Yes, but–’

‘But that’s because she’s seen any number of young people screwed over by media channels of one sort or another. She can tell you what to look at and where the pitfalls are.’

‘I’d be really grateful,’ Marie said, her voice dropping half an octave into the ‘sultry’ range.

Sam gave her a smile and turned away from the troubling room. ‘No problem. I was hoping to bring a friend of mine here to look this place over. She’s an ex-cop, my next-door neighbour. And I thought… Well, anyway, she’s not going to make it home for a few days, so I guess it’ll have to be next week.’

‘Well… I’m here most nights. Bring her over any time. I’m sure I’ll enjoy meeting her.’

MarTech East Africa, 26th March.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Meridian.’ Fox’s personnel database identified the speaker as Ronaldo Duncan, Palladium’s lead security officer at the facility. He had just boarded the transport Fox had flown in on and pulled off a filter mask, and she had a feeling his meeting her on the aircraft was not down to politeness.

‘Mister Duncan,’ Fox said, taking his offered hand and shaking it, ‘I admit that I’ve had little in the way of a briefing on this place.’

Duncan nodded. ‘Not much to brief you on, but someone decided to breach the facility for no reason we can gather, and they did it in a way that suggests… Well, let’s get you inside before we go over the details. You’ll need to wear this.’ He plucked a mask from a rack beside the transport’s doorway, which was an airlock. Fox had noticed that on the way in, knew what it meant, and hated it.

‘Yeah, I figured I might. I did survival training in the Southern Protectorate when I was in the Army.’

‘You’ll be fairly used to the conditions then.’ He started to pull his own mask back on and then paused. ‘North of here it gets a lot worse, but we’re not expecting anything major to sweep down in the next week.’

Fox winced. ‘Peachy.’

The wind outside was not enough to be nasty, but it did make her glad of the mask. Environmental changes in the last five decades had hit the northern part of Africa and southern Europe hard. Oh, Americans liked to bitch about the near total destruction of the southern states and their conversion into the Southern Protectorate, and the rise of the dustbowl with its tornadoes and dust storms, but the Saharan Super-arid Region was something else again. No one could live in what had been the desert now, though there were rumours of secret aquifers supplying settlements out there. Out on the edge, places like this one were constantly monitoring the spread of the desert. It was not long after dawn, but the air temperature outside the air-conditioned plane was pushing toward twenty Celsius and would be over thirty by midday.

Grey-beige dust, the remains of useless topsoil, swirled about them as they crossed the concrete landing strip to a concrete slab of a building with a heavy, metal door mounted in one side. Fox could just about make out a fence about a hundred metres away. The entire facility reminded her of another MarTech research bunker and she paused just outside the door as Duncan preceded her in.

‘Miss Meridian?’ His voice sounded in her head over her implant communicator. Deciding not to reply to the implicit question, she just shook her head and followed him. The door closed behind her with a very solid sound.

Duncan pulled his mask off as soon as they were through the airlock, which was obviously more of a dust lock, and shook his head. ‘Hate having to wear these things. Your equipment arrived late last night.’

Fox blinked at him after removing her own mask. ‘My equipment?’

‘Yeah. You’ve got a couple of frames, some sort of server array, a load of microbot hives… You weren’t expecting it?’

Fox considered for a second. ‘I didn’t know about it, but I should have expected it. Let’s get a briefing on the situation sorted out and then we’ll find out what Jackson’s sent me.’

‘Well, the briefing is pretty simple. I can take care of that on the way down to your room. Might as well show you where you’re sleeping.’

‘Sure.’ Fox followed him through corridors with bare, concrete walls and heavy doors. The surface level was built to keep unwanted visitors out, which made you wonder how someone had managed to get in.

‘Twenty-three sixteen on the twenty-fourth,’ Duncan said once they were riding down in an elevator, ‘we detected a breach on the southern boundary, the inner fence. We have two layers of defences out there. There’s an inner, chain-link fence which you might have seen, and an outer wall. The fence is rigged with sensor cables and something broke one. We had a cambot out there inside of a minute, but the best we got was a couple of blurred stills of something heading for the wall. They had some sort of high-end camouflage gear. We still haven’t figured out how they got past the defences on the wall.’

‘Do you know which way they were going when they tripped the sensor?’

‘No. We’re assuming they were on their way in, but we don’t know.’

‘No sign of anything disturbed in the facility?’

‘Again, no. And no one can figure out what they would have wanted in here anyway. We’d have put it down as a failed attempt to get in if it wasn’t for the camouflage gear.’

‘Too high-tech for the local bandits?’

‘Just a little. Most of them are still using old early-century assault rifles. Things that still have brass cases on their ammo. They’re a nuisance at best. We get a few extremist units attacking from the Caliphate and they’ve got better weapons.’

‘This area’s contested, isn’t it?’

‘Well, sort of. The Caliphate claims it, but they don’t really have the control. No one really wants it. The topsoil is eroded to just about nothing and the climate’s shitty. In America, there are some transhumanists trying to repopulate the dustbowls with transgenic humans.’

‘The xerocole settlements? I read about those.’

‘Yeah. If the Caliphate could use that kind of technology, they might be able to do something around here, but they won’t modify the standard human genome.’

Fox gave a nod. The elevator stopped and the doors opened. The corridors below ground were just as grey and hard as the ones above. ‘Would they have access to camo-tech like the stuff you saw?’

‘It’s not impossible, but not really likely either. Uh, the rooms here have v-tags built in and pretty good entertainment systems. You can change the look and you won’t die of boredom.’

Looking around at the grey walls, Fox gave a nod. ‘Good to know. So far this place is less exciting than Luna City.’

~~~

There were, in fact, a squad of robots waiting in the surface hangar beside the vertol transport they had flown in on, and the aircraft looked as though it was a customised design. Fox peered around at a large, spider-like ground bot, a pair of vectored-thrust air units, and a half-dozen wheeled boxes which were designed to transport and deliver microbot swarms. Inside the vertol were a couple of banks of what looked like the processors Kit ran on at home, but there were more of them.

‘Okay,’ Fox said as she stood in the transport’s rear bay wondering what to do next, ‘he sent me this stuff, but how does it work?’

‘Voice print and implant code verified,’ said a soft, female voice. ‘Good morning, Miss Meridian. I am Pythia, your forensic systems technician and analyst. I am fully capable of handling any work you may direct my cyberframes to carry out.’

Kit appeared beside Fox, looking at the bank of processors. ‘A class three AI, but quite an intelligent one. She will perform her work precisely and with little or no error, but you need to provide the imagination.’

‘Yes,’ Pythia agreed. ‘That was viewed as the best method of operation by Mister Martins. Consider me to be a trained forensics technician, not a detective.’

‘Right,’ Fox said. ‘Uh, I assume you’ve a connection to the station’s computers?’

‘Yes, Miss Meridian.’

‘Then I need a full surface schematic of–’ She stopped as a virtual display opened up in the loading bay, a 3D, wireframe map of the facility on the surface. She could see the underground structure fading away beneath it; obviously the system was capable of projecting the entire structure into her vision field if she wanted it. ‘Great. Do you have the location on the security fence where the sensor tripped?’ The position, on the south-west side, was highlighted. ‘Great. Can you take the stills they snapped and mark the approximate positions of the insurgents they spotted?’ Three red cones appeared near the outer wall, marking the interpolated locations. Pythia was fast and efficient. ‘I want full forensic sweeps performed on the fence at that point and the locations you’ve identified.’

Almost immediately, there was the sound of electric motors humming into life outside. ‘I am dispatching my forensic swarms to those locations. Estimated time to complete full analysis is three hours.’

Fox grinned. ‘I wish I’d had you when I was with NAPA. Inform me when it’s done and I’ll give further instructions. I hope anyway. Kit, you and I are going to go over the station’s security. If they got over the fence, maybe they had a plan for getting into the bunker.’

‘You don’t think they did get in?’ Kit asked.

‘I think, if we figure out how they would have done it, then maybe Pythia can work out whether they did it or not.’

Alexandria, Niflhel.

‘Pythia was the oracle who resided at Delphi,’ Cleopatra said. The lithe virtual queen of the Alexandria online domain was lounging, which she was good at. Fox had no idea what Cleopatra really looked like, because she rather liked the mystery of not knowing, but the avatar was tall and tanned with waist-length black hair and dark eyes. Her large breasts were on display thanks to the semi-translucent skirts slung from her hips being the only thing she wore, aside from the wide lapis lazuli and gold necklace, which was her trademark.

‘I figured you’d know,’ Fox replied from where she lounged across the table from the queen. Fox’s avatar looked like Fox, aside from the black-purple hair and the purple-red irises. She wore a split, tabard-like gown of iridescent purple as well. Fox had always had a bit of a thing for purple.

‘Yes, but you could have found that in two seconds with an internet query.’

‘I could, yes, but I haven’t had an excuse to come in here in ages. Not to mention the fact that real-time connections to the Moon have horrible lag.’

‘You were up on Luna City? I saw some news report about you moving to some MarTech subsidiary.’

Fox had met Cleopatra as part of a murder investigation. Fox did not know who Cleopatra really was, but Cleopatra knew that Zorra, Fox’s online name, had been Inspector Tara Meridian. Her exit from NAPA had been covered by a couple of IB channels, both straight news and gossip outlets. ‘Part of the job induction. Luna City, another research centre on the far side, and a station at L-four.’

‘I don’t get the feeling you’re back in New York.’

‘Africa.’

Cleopatra winced. ‘In the mood for some relaxation?’

‘I’ve had a long, mentally tiring day, and I figured I’d come in here and get my virtual rocks off.’

‘Oh, I think there are a number of handsome young men who would greatly enjoy assisting you with that…’

MarTech East Africa.

Fox opened her eyes, drawing in one long breath before letting it out slowly. She had done a little decorating on the room she had been assigned, just to take the edge off the concrete walls, but it was still a bedroom in an underground bunker with a little virtual colour. And Kit, sitting on the bed with her legs folded into a lotus posture, her big, green eyes watching Fox as she emerged from the virtual environment her mind had been sunk into for the past ninety minutes. There was quite an intent look in the AI’s eyes and Fox kept watching her as she slipped the induction interface cable from her hand.

‘Good evening?’ Kit asked.

‘It was… fairly good. Great while I was in there, and now it’s not quite so great when I’m out. Just like usual.’

Kit nodded and uncurled herself, leaning forward as she slipped to her knees. Fox gasped as she felt a sharp tongue flick over the skin above her clitoris. She had known it was coming as soon as she saw the look on Kit’s face, and thought she should probably do something to stop it, but there was curiosity mixed with frustration sitting right where Kit’s tongue felt like it was moving…

Fox spread her legs, and felt Kit’s hands on her inner thighs and the tongue teasing at her labia, parting the folds of flesh. It was different from a full viron: there her real body was immobile but her virtual body was able to fully interact, while here there was only the sensation of touch. Kit could not really slide her tongue into Fox as it seemed she was doing. Her fingers could not press and circle over Fox’s clitoris, driving the human woman to a first brief flare of orgasm. Kit could only move Fox’s body as Fox wished to move, but the reactions to the sensations were not being blocked by inhibitor circuits. Fox’s back arched, pushing her sex into Kit’s face, and the AI seemed quite happy to indulge her. The sharp little tongue began to lap hungrily; Fox had the sensation of fingers entering her and beginning to thrust. Fox’s fists clenched in the sheets as the tension rose through her, fought for a release Fox wanted to hold back for as long as she could, and then exploded. Fire burned up through Fox’s body, a flash of burning delight that washed away tension and mind in one burst.

Fox opened her eyes, drawing in one long breath before letting it out slowly and forcing her eyes to focus on Kit. The intent look was gone, replaced by an odd mixture of delight and insecurity. ‘Are you sure that’s the first time you’ve done that?’ Fox asked.

‘I am an AI. It is not impossible that I could have done it and had the memory erased.’

Fox let out a soft chuckle, made throaty by the recent sex. ‘Well, you can do it again.’

‘It was good?’

‘When a woman does that whole porn movie thrashing about and moaning thing, it means it was good.’

Kit beamed, a distinctly child-like expression for an entity which had just engaged in virtual sex. ‘I will make a note of that information for future reference.’

‘You do that,’ Fox said, slipping out of bed. Distinctly sticky and riding an endorphin high, she needed a shower before she even tried to sleep.

27th March.

The concrete walls were coated in soot and scarred from bullet impacts. The air, hazed with smoke, burned her lungs as she pushed onwards. ‘Another twenty metres. We make it another twenty metres and we’re clear.’

There was no reply from behind her and she turned, seeing nothing more than the smoky air and the bulky figure with the tri-barrel rotary weapon pod who was coming through it with a manic look on his face. His heavy, out-of-proportion cybernetic arms were the only reason he could use the huge gun and he had been chasing them for hours, it seemed. The barrels spun up as he activated the firing circuit.

‘No!’ She turned and braced to run and…

And Kit was standing there in the corridor ahead of her. ‘You’re dreaming, Fox. It’s a dream. Wake up.’

‘No! He’ll–’

‘Wake up!’

Fox’s eyes flicked open and she lay in the dark, feeling the sweat running down between her breasts. ‘Shit.’

‘Are you okay?’ Kit asked. ‘Should I order a light tranquiliser?’

Rolling onto her back, Fox sat up and looked at the fox-girl, shaking her head. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s probably this bloody bunker. The design is more or less identical to the one in Dallas. It’s too much like being back there.’

‘You were dreaming of Marshall, but he did not get his cybernetics until after the Dallas incident.’

‘Dreams aren’t always logical. You could see that?’

Kit gave a little shrug. ‘I could see the imagery your brain was processing. I get fragments rather than a proper image. It took me several seconds to work out how to impose myself onto your sensorium. I would have intervened sooner otherwise.’

‘You did fine.’ Pulling aside the sheets, Fox went to the small kitchenette area to get water. ‘Would you pull up the surface schematic for this place? I’m not going to get back to sleep for an hour or so, so I might as well work.’

‘Of course,’ Kit replied, summoning up a similar virtual display to the one Pythia had used earlier. ‘Is there anything in particular you are looking for?’

‘Well, this place is basically a copy of the Dallas bunker and I know how that was breached, both by the UA cell and my team. I want to check that the holes have been plugged.’

~~~

‘Basically it got forgotten,’ Duncan said with a sigh. ‘This place was built before the Dallas siege and when Palladium was formed, they put in a programme to have the known vulnerabilities taken care of in every facility with the same design. But they had to prioritise somehow…’

‘And a little climate research station in the middle of nowhere wasn’t high on the priority list,’ Fox said, nodding. They were watching as Pythia set her entire contingent of forensic microbots to work on one of the air-conditioning conduits which dropped from the surface to an engineering room thirty metres below ground. ‘Pythia, what’s the estimate on completing that survey?’

‘For a complete analysis, sixteen hours. Preliminary results in twelve.’ The AI’s voice was calm and authoritative, confident in her ability to handle the tasks given.

‘All right, inform Kit when it’s done. The work should have been done,’ she added to Duncan, ‘but I’m not surprised it didn’t get done. Even Jackson Martins’ companies are allowed to make mistakes. We need to get a priority order out to have all the other locations with this build checked and sealed.’

‘I’ll get on it,’ Duncan replied. ‘So we know how they were aiming to get into the building, but we don’t know whether they got in, and we don’t know what they wanted if they made it. That about right?’

‘Pythia can confirm they got in, but she can’t prove they didn’t. I’m going to go over everything this place does and see if I can work out a reason for stealing it.’

Duncan grinned half-heartedly. ‘Good luck with that. I’m not even sure the people working on the projects believe there’s a lot of money to be made from any of them.’

‘Money,’ Fox replied, turning to leave, ‘is a big motivator, but it’s not the only motive going.’

New York Metro.

Marie stood in front of the mirror which had come mounted on the back of her bathroom door and examined her suit. She was trying to decide if this was suitable attire for meeting Sam’s agent friend and not feeling especially sure on the matter. Saturday night in New York Metro and she was trying on work clothes which she was not going to need for several days anyway. She peered at her reflection in the mirror and frowned.

‘You’re nineteen,’ she told her reflection. ‘You’re young. You’re in the metro that never sleeps. You should be out. Out there. Doing… something with the money you don’t have.’

Her reflection told her to get the Hell on with picking an outfit, and while she was at it, she could just damn well put Sam Clarion out of her mind too.

Marie let out an explosive breath, laden with exasperation at her reflection’s outright refusal to even consider the idea that Sam might find her attractive. ‘He might! He’s arranging for this friend of his to–’

Reflected-Marie cut her off with a look of disgust. Who was she kidding? Sam was a nice guy and he was helping her out. Or he was not so nice and wanted her to get a job fast so she could get the Hell off his property. Meanwhile, he was probably out with some client who was way better in bed than Marie was, had money you could sink a tanker in, and was better looking.

Marie glared at her reflection. ‘Yeah, well… Your momma was a walrus!’ She turned quickly away before her reflection could point out the obvious flaw in her brilliant riposte. She would find something else to wear: the suit was uglier than… something ugly, and grey. A walrus? She would wear…

Her head lifted at the sound from above her. The soundproofing between the little basement apartment Marie occupied and the main building above was pretty good, except in one place. There was a utility closet in the hall with a ducting system for cabling in it, and if you dropped something there, you could hear the thump through the ducts. Sam had to be upstairs.

Except he had dropped by and told her he was in each time he had come around before. And what would he have been doing in the utility closet anyway? She glanced at her reflection to see what it thought. Her reflection thought that it was Saturday night and Sam would have expected her to be out having fun. He would not have bothered coming down to tell her he was around.

‘You said he’d be out with a client who was better in bed than me,’ Marie pointed out to her mirrored face. ‘And I’m taking advice from someone in an ugly, grey suit.’

She walked, fast, to the front door and then hurried up the steps outside it on bare feet to look up at the house above. No lights that she could see anywhere in the building, aside from the dim glow through the small window in her own bathroom. ‘This isn’t right,’ she muttered as she hurried back inside, putting through an emergency call to NAPA as she did so. ‘I hope it’s not right or Sam’s going to hate me.’

~~~

‘Definite signs of a break-in, Mister Clarion, but the perpetrators must have run when they heard the vertol overhead.’

Sam nodded to the NAPA officer who was giving him the information. ‘Thank you for your prompt response. I don’t think Marie was expecting a team to be dropped in like that.’

The man in the blue and white armour gave a shrug. ‘It’s in the MCD. We’re not quite as hung up about it as the eighteen crowd, but we make an effort. Have you been able to determine whether anything was stolen?’

‘Marie is checking now. She cleaned house for the old owner so she knows the place better than I do…’ He trailed off as Marie wandered back in to the hall, followed by another officer.

‘I can’t see anything missing,’ she said. ‘So it’s just the security system bypass that shows there was anyone here.’ She was looking worried, as though she might not be believed. ‘I should’ve watched for them outside. If I’d known they were going to run, I’d have waited–’

‘You did exactly the right thing,’ Sam interrupted. ‘Someone who breaks into a house may not think twice about silencing a witness. They were interrupted and they left.’

The older cop was also nodding. ‘Mister Clarion’s right, Miss.’ He looked back to Sam. ‘I can get someone down here to run forensics and check for prints, DNA…’

Sam shook his head. ‘Someone professional enough to recognise a vertol overhead and know what it means is not going to have left enough trace evidence to get us anywhere. I’ll see to the security and call it a useful indication of where I need to tighten things up.’

There was more nodding and Sam showed the cops to the door, closing it behind them before he turned back to Marie. ‘You said that the sound you heard meant they had to be in the utility closet?’

Marie nodded. The entrance hallway had doors off it to the left and right which led into the ground floor rooms, and a staircase which curved up to the next floor. Set into the angle of that staircase was a doorway which she went to and opened. ‘I looked in here with that officer, but I couldn’t see anything wrong.’

Sam looked now. There were cables carefully bundled together and fixed to the walls, ducts up and down to pass those cables through to other parts of the house, a couple of boxes with blinking lights on them, and a large panel with an electrical warning sign. Anything to do with computers and communications had to have blinking lights; Sam had no clue what the blinking lights meant, but nothing was alarming about the way they blinked. ‘They must have opened the door to make the noise you heard?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it was closed when we came in here. B and E merchants don’t worry over closing doors. Uh, breaking and entering, yes? Even if they opened it to check what was inside, they wouldn’t have bothered closing it, and there’s no other evidence that they searched anywhere.’

‘Well, okay, but–’

‘It means that they were interested in the contents of this closet, Marie, and they didn’t want anyone to know they were.’

Marie frowned. ‘But there’s nothing in that closet.’

‘No. Or apparently that’s the case.’ He paused, glaring at the wiring for a second. ‘Don’t clean in the hall or this closet for the next few days. I’ll see if I can get a friend to take a look at it.’

‘Your neighbour?’

‘Yes. When she finally gets back.’

MarTech East Africa, 28th March.

‘It’s a scratch,’ Duncan said, looking at the enlarged image Pythia was displaying.

‘It is,’ Fox agreed.

‘It could have happened any time.’

‘It could not. The walls of the duct are aluminium. In air, aluminium oxidises fairly rapidly forming an oxide surface which is actually tougher than the metal. It’s considered a good thing. The scratch cuts through that oxide layer and the layer has started re-growing in the scratch.’

Realisation dawned. ‘So you can estimate the age of the scratch by how much oxide is in it.’

‘Less of an estimate, given that we have very good records of temperature and humidity. These scratches were made very recently and we know this quite precisely.’

‘Scratches?’

‘This is one of several the swarms found. Someone, or something, climbed down that duct, so they got in. The question is, why did they bother?’

Duncan sighed. ‘I’m still coming up with nothing.’

‘And I tend to agree, but they went to a Hell of a lot of trouble to get in here for no apparent purpose. No one does that. I’m going to go take a look at where they would have got to once they got out of the duct. I’ll keep you posted.’

From the hangar, she went down to the utility room where the duct let out into the building. It was not entirely insecure, there were sensors and grills and the top side vent was barred, but all of those could be bypassed. Fox knew they could be bypassed by someone with the right skills and tools, because she had followed the man who had done it for her team. She stood looking up at the service panel which could be swung out from inside and remembered the swift, clean deployment.

‘Are you okay, Fox?’

Fox turned her gaze down at Kit, standing there with a look of concern on her face. ‘I’ll be fine once I’ve stood here for a minute and wallowed in misery. Then I’ll push it all out of my mind and get on with the job, and think nothing more about it until I can allow it.’

‘You can do that? Just… decide not to feel.’

‘I had to learn to do it, before Dallas. I’m not a natural killer. If I went into a combat situation thinking about the people I might have to kill… So I learned to turn off my emotions, my compassion. It came in useful when I ended up doing police work.’

‘I can imagine. Why do you let yourself feel the pain at any time? Why are you allowing it now?’

‘It’s not obvious?’ Fox gave her a bleak little smile. ‘I think people are often more defined by their pain than their pleasure. If I turn that off, keep myself free of the pain, I end up no better than the people I hunt down and arrest.’

‘Oh… It is obvious when you say it like that.’

‘Let’s get moving. Give me a schematic of the rooms near this location and their purpose, if you have the data.’ Fox watched as the wireframe appeared in-vision. The structure was the same as the one she had infiltrated in Dallas, but the utilisation of the rooms was not identical. ‘Offices across the corridor?’

‘Yes, largely administrative.’

Fox turned and walked out onto the grey corridor. Two metres to the right and across the way was a door which she knocked on and then opened. A woman blinked at her from behind a desk which had half a dozen virtual monitors racked up over it.

‘Can I help you?’ the woman asked.

‘I’m Fox Meridian. I’m investigating the break-in a few days ago.’

‘Oh, you’re with Palladium. Yes. We were informed. I’m Evangeline Norris. I’m the network supervisor here.’

Fox’s lips pursed. ‘The network supervisor? You administer the local network from here?’

‘Local network, communications to the MarTech backbone, peering… All that kind of thing.’

‘I am going to send a couple of robots down here to do some scans, Miss Norris, and I’m going to need you to work from somewhere else for a while.’

Norris winced. ‘That’s such a bitch to set up. For security reasons, this is the only desktop with the clearance for some things I need to do.’

Fox nodded. ‘I kind of thought you were going to say that. And it’s also why I’m sure I need to go over this room with a fine filter.’

~~~

‘I have a telepresence connection request from Sam,’ Kit announced as Fox lay on her bed, reading.

‘Sam? Put him through.’

‘Would you like me to put you in more clothing in the projection?’ Kit’s gaze flicked over the bodysuit Fox had stripped down to.

‘Sam’s seen me naked. Sam’s seen me naked and drunk.’

Sam, when his image appeared beside the bed, was not wearing a shirt. Fox did not read Chinese and was not really sure what the ideogram over his right nipple was telling her today. ‘Fox, Kit, I hope your trip’s going well?’

‘I’m sitting in a bunker in an area the Pan-Islamic Caliphate would like to call their own on a Sunday night.’

‘Good point, well made. You remember that little problem I had with finding a body recently?’

‘Felix Kenan. I remember.’

‘Well, I’ve inherited his house, and a tenant and housemaid in the basement, actually, but it’s the house I’m concerned about.’

‘You moving home on me, Sam? I thought we had a good, neighbourly thing going. Mind you, it did look like a nice house…’

‘I’m trying to work out whether I can actually afford to run the place. He left me money to help with it and there’s no rent, but my outgoings will rise. I’ve aimed my accountant at it, but that’s not the issue. Someone broke in there last night.’

‘NAPA not hopeful on a resolution?’

‘I doubt NAPA could resolve it, but the thing is… Well, they didn’t take anything. Seemed like they broke in, opened up a wiring cupboard, and ran away when they were noticed, but they tried to make sure the place looked like no one had been there.’

Fox’s brows furrowed. ‘There’s a lot of that kind of thing going around.’ Sam raised an eyebrow, but she just shook her head. ‘You want me to take a look?’

‘I was thinking, when you get back, maybe I could hire a security consultant to come in and review the building’s systems. Like I said, I’ve got money for renovations.’

‘Okay. Can you clear a couple of Palladium operatives for a visit tomorrow? I’ll get someone around there to review the security straight away and see if Jackson can spare someone to run a forensics swarm over this cupboard of yours.’

‘Tomorrow… I can get Marie to let them in. That’s the maid. You’d like her; she’s a redhead.’

‘Job’s looking up already. I’m not sure when I’ll get back. I’m hoping I’m going to be done here in the next day or so, but it may take longer.’

‘Well, it’s not like my problem is urgent. Or I don’t think it is. I just have this feeling…’

‘B and E with no taking away isn’t always a sign of something weird going on. But when the previous owner has been murdered, it does tend to push for a degree of caution.’

‘Good,’ Sam replied, a smile curling his lips, ‘it’s not just me being paranoid then.’

29th March.

‘Trouble sleeping, Miss Meridian?’

Fox looked around at the sound of the voice and saw a man in his middle years she did not immediately recognise, but Kit’s rapid scan of personnel files did. ‘Doctor Fieldman, right?’

He bowed his head in acknowledgement. It was not long after dawn and the air was still. The light had turned the eastern sky a pale blue with a faint taint of red at low altitude, the result of dust stirring up from the desert. Fieldman was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, even though his frame was not suggestive of a man who exercised regularly. He seemed to note the way her gaze was moving and grinned. ‘I like to run when the air is still and the sun isn’t quite up. It’s cooler and I don’t need to wear a mask. Unfortunately, it’s not as common an occurrence as I’d wish.’

She returned his smile. ‘I… get nightmares. There wasn’t much point in going back to sleep. Besides, I’m not sure I’m going to get another chance to see this without a mask.’

He let out a bark of a laugh. ‘I’d heard you believe you’ve discovered what our break-in was about.’

‘Looks like it. I’ve got some forensic data analysis software running to confirm it. I think it should all be wrapped by tonight.’ Her gaze returned to the red light low on the horizon. ‘You might want to make that run fast; I don’t think it’s going to stay clear for long.’

‘You may be right.’

‘How the Hell did we ever let it get this bad?’

Fieldman paused, stepping a little closer and following her gaze. ‘When I was a boy, before the century turned over, this was all plains, dry but inhabited. I lived through the arguments about climate change. The more we look, the more we find that humans have been changing the world for millennia. The decimation of the megafauna, the rise of agriculture, and then the industrial revolution. You know, modern humans likely evolved here. This is the Garden of Eden, if you’re of a biblical mind, and here I am trying to turn it back into one despite all we’ve done to the place.’

Fox looked out at the light, blue spreading quickly above the red haze. The Desert of Eden: someone should get that on land reclamation posters. ‘Have a good run, Doctor. And good luck on the work.’

‘Thank you, Miss Meridian, even though it looks like the rainfall levels are turning for the better, we’ll probably need it.’ And he ran off, the heels of his running shoes throwing up small clouds of dust as he went.

Part Four: Copycat

New York Metro, 30th March 2060.

He watched her as she strutted about the room like the queen of some old, European monarchy, except that no woman with breeding would have worn a lemon-yellow dress which hugged a lush body and barely covered her behind. No, this was not a dignified queen, not one with any class, but she certainly had money.

Money was why he was there, why she had called him to her home, and why she was largely ignoring him. She had more of it than she knew what to do with and, like so many of her kind, she spent it without thought. He had money, but not enough. Her money would see to it that he had all he needed if he just kept doing what he did so well, so why was it that he wanted so very, very much to take the bitch and teach her just exactly what a man could do for her!

He bit back the sudden burst of rage which threatened to make him leap across the room to where she stood, hip cocked, looking at him as though she expected something of him. Had she been speaking to him?

‘I’m sorry, what was the question?’

She let out an exasperated ‘huh!’ and set about repeating what she had said before. He was only half listening as he imagined his hands squeezing the breath from her throat.

31st March.

‘Okay, the report’s filed and everything’s there in the records for you to read. I figure we might as well do this properly and have it all documented. Yes?’ Fox looked around the conference room as she asked. Jackson and Hoarsen were sitting in the room with her. Eaves and Jarvis were there, but only as telepresence images projected onto seats.

‘I’d appreciate it,’ Eaves said when no one else answered immediately.

‘And it gives me a full list of work items to deal with,’ Jarvis added.

‘You believe NIX is involved?’ Jackson asked.

Fox gave a small shrug. ‘It’s a supposition, but it’s likely. We have an assault team of humans and cyberframes, all of them with high-end camouflage systems. They know the best way into the bunker, which is not common knowledge. They’ve the resources to determine that the vulnerabilities in security have not been sealed up there. They break in and they have the tech to plant a virus in the main network administration console which is designed to infiltrate the MarTech network. There’s no immediate gain, but it gives them access to pretty much everything that moves over the company network if it’s not discovered. It smells of intelligence agency not industrial espionage.’

Jackson nodded. ‘They’re still after Yliaster.’ His brow furrowed briefly. ‘Teresa mentioned something about Kit being of assistance?’

‘Yeah, she was hoping Kit’s synchronisation routines might help with Yliaster’s communications. Kit ran diagnostics for her and sent them yesterday. Today Kit’s transmitting a complete copy of herself over to Jenner to help out with it. Terri sent a message saying it was looking very interesting.’

‘Let’s hope she’s right. The sooner we get this all resolved and into production, the sooner NIX will stop trying to steal a march on everyone else.’

‘But won’t they just use the technology anyway?’

‘Perhaps. With the project in full production, we should have a mechanism for disabling it, which will make me feel safer. We can eliminate potential problems if we know they’re there. But I’m actually less worried about them using it than I am of them using an unfinished version of it. Yliaster’s technology may be dangerous, but a buggy, uncontrolled version of it released onto the internet could be disastrous!’

Jenner Research Station.

Kit blinked her large, green eyes and looked around the laboratory she had materialised in. Of course, she was not physically there, in the sense of having her kitsune body in the room, but she was executing on a server which had been set up in one corner, and she could see through the room’s cameras and display herself through the implants of the room’s occupants. She was there, back on the Moon, having been transmitted as a data package over radio. It had taken a while since they had had to transmit her executable and the required memory data. At least going back would be easier.

‘Thank you for providing me with such an excellent processor to execute on, Miss Martins,’ she said to the grinning Terri.

‘Thank you for making the trip,’ Terri replied. ‘We went over the diagnostics and there were a couple of oddities. Shell and I want to go over your binaries along with the diagnostics, and have you run analysis on your memory structures while we’re doing it.’

‘Of course. I’ll be happy to.’

‘We’ll get started right away. How’s Fox?’

‘Busy and a little tired. I believe she’s hoping to go out with Sam on Friday night and drink a great deal.’ There was a little pause and Kit’s brow furrowed. ‘She did not sleep exceptionally well in the bunker in East Africa.’

Terri’s grin faded a little. ‘No. I don’t sleep that well in those bunkers either. She’ll be fine. She’s plenty tough and she’s got your other copies to keep an eye on her.’

‘Yes, she does. How should we proceed?’

New York Metro.

Sam emerged from his apartment as Fox walked up the corridor from the elevator. He was dressed in black slacks, a black silk shirt open at the collar, and his feet were bare. The man was sex on legs at any hour of the day.

‘Jackson is happy with you looking into my little problem?’ Sam asked as he fell into step beside her on the way to her door.

‘Jackson is quite happy and says you get the employee discount.’

‘I’m not an employee of–’

‘You’ve contracted, during which time you helped save the life of his daughter. Shut up and accept the discount.’

Sam was not stupid enough to argue it further. ‘Okay, but something’s come up which…’ Trailing off, he lifted a memory stick, waving it absently. ‘This came this morning by courier. Automated delivery, no indication of the sender. I did all the routine checks and then looked at the contents. It seems to be some video footage taken from street cameras.’

Frowning, Fox unlocked her door and waved him in. Then she held out her hand for the stick. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’ Kit was already appearing beside her server at the back of the room and looked interested as Fox plugged the stick into a free port. ‘Kit, run the full scan on that and then get us the data for display on the window.’

‘Of course, Fox,’ Kit replied. By the time the kitsune had walked across the floor to the windows, the glass had gone dark and a number of video feeds had begun displaying. ‘There are no code elements on the stick. None of the video files contain any suspicious data. We seem to be looking at the feeds from four cameras at two different time intervals. March first between seventeen hundred and eighteen hundred, and March twenty-seventh between eighteen forty-five and nineteen thirty.’

‘It’s the area around Felix’s house,’ Sam said. ‘He was killed on March first.’

‘And the house was broken into on the twenty-seventh,’ Fox added, looking across the various feeds. She chewed on her lip for a second. ‘Kit, scan every figure you can see in the scenes and match all of them to see what you get in the way of repeats. If you can find faces, see if you can get names.’ The videos vanished from the window and the glass cleared as Kit set to work.

‘She can just do that?’ Sam asked.

‘Faster than we can. She’s got this quantum processor she can run bulk data analysis jobs on. I’ve had it explained to me, but “quantum” was mentioned and my brain decided it was best to just consider it magic.’

Sam nodded. ‘Seems fair. You’re expecting to see the same person there during both time intervals?’

‘Someone sends you camera feeds for two specific time intervals. The first thing I’ll look for is people who are in both. After that… well, we’ll see.’

‘Okay, so the next question is who sent the stick and why?’

‘Huh. Kit, the metadata?’

‘Thought and memory,’ Kit replied.

‘Uh-huh. We don’t know who this guy is, for sure, but he likes helping. He sent the data that let us find Terri. Always tags the files the same way. Thought and memory.’

‘And he just decided to send me data which might help figure out what happened to Felix?’

‘Looks like it.’ Fox looked up as the window darkened again and a trio of images appeared. ‘Kind of cute. Do you know her?’

‘That’s Marie, the maid. I don’t think she’s responsible.’

‘Probably not, but I’ll check her out anyway.’ More images began to appear, these ones of men, but their faces were never clearly seen. ‘You’re matching those from body form?’

‘Yes,’ Kit replied. ‘The algorithm is outputting ninety per cent matches. I am quite sure that these are people appearing in both time periods.’

Fox peered at the images for a few seconds. Both of the men were wearing hats in every still, but their faces were still far less visible than might be expected. ‘They’re wearing masks. Subtle ones. Designed to obscure the face but make it look like it’s just shadow. You’d need to analyse the footage pretty carefully to see that unless you were specifically looking for it.’

‘The implication is that the person responsible for Felix’s death broke into the house,’ Sam said, his voice flat.

‘I’d say that was… reasonably likely.’

‘Then I’d like to hire you to see if you can find Felix’s killer.’

‘That’s going to step on some toes…’

‘I know, but it looks like the cases are linked. It gives you a reason to look at both and I wasn’t exactly happy with the investigation into Felix’s murder. Will you do it?’

Fox sniffed, thinking about how annoyed Brownlow and, probably, Canard would be. ‘Kit, send a request through Palladium to NAPA to get the case file for Felix Kenan’s homicide sent through. They’ll delay it, but if the case has been closed down, they shouldn’t have a problem with Palladium picking up the investigation given that we’re contracted to secure your house, Sam. Kit, tell them we need the information for analysis of the method used to gain entry. That should confuse them.’

‘Thanks, Fox,’ Sam said.

‘You can buy me a drink tomorrow. You can buy me several drinks tomorrow.’

‘That I can do.’

2nd April.

‘Brownlow was bitching about it for three days,’ Helen Dillan stated, grinning brightly. ‘You coming out of nowhere and messing up his “righteous arrest.”’

Fox rolled her eyes. ‘He was fucking about because he thought Sam was gay.’ The trio were standing amid the neon and glitz of 27Lex, propping up the end of the main bar.

‘He’s pond scum.’ The blonde detective flashed her grin at Sam. ‘Actually, that comparison is insulting to pond scum.’

‘I gathered he was not the most tolerant of men,’ Sam said, smiling. ‘I won’t say “you get used to it,” because you don’t, but you learn to live with it. When they have some sliver of power on top of their prejudice, it’s usually best not to argue. Those with little power are most prone to the abuse of it.’

‘Well,’ Fox said, ‘I could have let him take you in, and then you’d have probably been the final straw. He’d be out and the world would be a slightly better place, but I didn’t feel like sacrificing several hours of your life to that fuckwit.’

‘And it might not have worked,’ Dillan said, her expression shifting to a scowl. ‘Brownlow’s been sucking up to Canard a lot recently. It’s not like he’s just a prick around gays, but he’s got a nice, solid Madonna-whore thing going too.’

‘I’m fairly sure he kicks puppies and drowns kittens,’ Fox said. ‘Canard can’t protect him for long. He won’t protect him unless he thinks he can bury the problem entirely.’

Sam nodded. ‘That kind of attitude is, thankfully, not common and viewed as “incorrect,” in the metro regions at least.’

‘You sound like you don’t think it’s wrong,’ Dillan said.

He shrugged. ‘I’m bisexual, more so than the majority, and I’m pleased that the majority currently feels it should not persecute me for that behaviour. I think it’s hypocritical to persecute others for holding the opinion that what I do is wrong. If they act on that opinion, then that’s a different matter. Detective Brownlow can think what he likes so long as he doesn’t let it affect his work.’

Dillan giggled. ‘That’s very big of you, and this got very serious.’

‘Sam’s a very big man,’ Fox stated, which made Dillan giggle louder.

‘I think the subliminals are getting to me. I’ve got this image of a naked Sam in my head that won’t shift.’

‘That’s not the subliminals; that’s just Sam.’

‘I can believe that.’

Fox leaned over and placed a hand lightly on Dillan’s arm, feigning a conspiratorial need for secrecy. ‘Believe me, whatever you’re imagining, it’s not as good as the real thing.’

Sam turned and signalled to the barman. It was not common to see his cheeks colouring, but there was a hint of red in them now. ‘I think we need more drinks and I did offer to buy.’

Maybe because she was looking a little flushed too, Dillan accepted the change of subject. ‘What’s the occasion? Just Fox’s return to a civilisation with atmosphere?’

‘She’s doing a little work for me. Or Palladium is, technically, but Fox is their investigative division as it stands.’

‘You’re a PI?’ Dillan asked, looking at Fox.

‘When the job calls for it. And long may it continue to need it. They gave me this C-suite title, but so long as I don’t have anyone to manage, I don’t have to spend my life behind a desk.’

‘The way things are trending, you might have made the right move.’

‘You’ve heard rumours about this private policing vote?’

‘Canard’s been pressing for more vote delegations. He says change is coming, NAPA might be heavily downsized in favour of commercial policing agencies, and of course he’s saying that he knows how things are looking and he can make sure those who delegate to him move into the new regime.’

Fox rolled her eyes. ‘Politics.’

‘Politics, or some subdivision of the subject, has been a governing force in human relations since people gathered around campfires and considered the division of food,’ Sam stated as he handed out drinks. ‘The nature of politics has shifted over the millennia. It’s become less personal in meaning, but it is still important. Ignore it at your peril, CIO Tara Meridian.’

He got a glower for that. ‘I get a briefing document from the MarTech analysts every week, update bulletins where required. Wayden is pushing for the privatisation bill to go through, and Canard was trying his best to get in bed with them. Several administrative figureheads are leaning in the same direction.’

‘Okay,’ Dillan said, ‘so what’s MarTech’s position on it? I mean, they have Palladium now so they could compete against Wayden.’

‘Currently, MarTech believes that a public security force is better for the public than moving to a private solution. The analysts think that, even if the vote goes the other way, which looks likely at the moment, a stance indicating that it’s a bad idea is likely to make Palladium look more public-spirited than Wayden. And this shit is why I don’t do politics.’

‘Right.’

There was a short pause and then Fox was blinking at an indicator in her vision field. ‘Why am I being asked to acknowledge a voting delegation from Helen Jane Dillan?’

‘Because I think that the Chief Investigative Officer of a respected security company which seems to have my political interests at heart is a good person to delegate my law and order voting rights to.’

‘That,’ Sam said, ‘is an excellent assessment.’

In Fox’s display, a second acknowledgement request was added for Samuel Peter Clarion. She shook her head. ‘You’re nuts, both of you, but okay. Thank you for your confidence, I think.’ She looked at her glass of white wine, considered it briefly, and then emptied it before turning to the bartender. ‘I’m going to need another one of these.’

3rd April.

‘Oh God… Why does a night out with you always end up with pain?’ Dillan washed down a couple of painkillers with water and sat with her head in her hands for a second. ‘And me in just a pair of panties?’

‘Because you can’t hold your liquor?’ Fox suggested.

‘You don’t even look like you have a headache,’ Dillan moaned.

‘I don’t. Take a shower, you’ll feel better.’ Leaving her friend to sort herself out, Fox wandered into the lounge and turned to the small kitchen counter area which, importantly, had the coffee machine. It was, of course, already brewing delicious, dark brown liquid.

‘Detective Dillan seems to have more trouble with alcohol than you do,’ Kit commented as Fox found a couple of bottles of egg mix to make omelettes.

‘I blame the Army. One of the many useful skills one learns as a soldier is how to drink to excess and survive. She was pretty slammed last night, but she’ll be fine once the Painaway kicks in.’

‘She seems to be feeling better. She’s streaming IB-Nineteen’s news feed.’

‘Huh. Well, I hope she’s in the mood for omelette.’

Dillan emerged from the bedroom, rubbing at her rose-tinted mop of blonde hair. ‘You got a robe or something I can put on for a few… Are those real eggs?’

Fox laughed and shook her head. ‘Good-quality fakes. I usually want the protein first thing and the taste is usually good enough. There’s coffee brewed and there’s a wrap on the back of the bedroom door.’

The detective vanished and returned a few seconds later in the silky wrap and without the towel. The wrap was a little longer on her than it was on Fox: Fox was a couple of centimetres taller, but they were similar builds. Dillan was a pretty, oriental-featured woman, slim and fit, with a delicate nose, dark eyes, and a small heart-shaped mouth. This time she had ended up in Fox’s bed after drinking too much she had not needed to ask whether they had done anything other than sleep at least.

‘The coffee is going to be good.’ Dillan poured two mugs, placing one nearer to Fox. ‘I got a message through saying someone in eighteen wants the records on the Doran case. Something about a homicide up that way. Nothing in the news feeds about it though.’

Fox pushed egg protein around a pan. ‘Doran, huh?’ Dillan had made something of a name for herself over the Doran case. He had killed four people in the spring and summer of 2059 before Dillan had spotted him on video, pulled him in on a routine interview, and cracked him open like an egg. He had confessed everything, claiming that he had been possessed by the Devil or something and forced to murder four total strangers. ‘Now that was a whack job.’

Dillan rolled her head on her neck. ‘Yeah… Though if there was ever anyone who was going to make me believe in demons, that was him. I mean, he really sold the whole demonic possession thing. He said it was subtle at first, twisting what he saw and whispering to him. Then it started making suggestions and then demands, and it was there in his head and he couldn’t get rid of it.’

‘They checked his implant, right?’

‘Oh yeah. He had one of those LANGrove units. The new one they brought out ahead of MarTech.’

‘The LANVisor-Six,’ Fox supplied. ‘I remember the advert feeds. “The most advanced implanted computer available this side of tomorrow.”’

‘Their product is adequate,’ Kit said, appearing on the opposite side of the counter, ‘but MarTech’s is clearly superior and not rushed to market.’

Dillan grinned. ‘We all know you’re superior, Kit. Doran’s implant was normal. No signs of virus, no malfunctions. Everything checked out so they put him down as “suspected psychological problems” and locked him up on the psych level in Rikers. I think they went with paranoid delusion eventually. They were considering moving him to Cold Harbour, but I don’t know if they ever will.’

Fox gave a grunt and began to distribute fluffy, yellow food onto plates. Cold Harbour was a maximum security facility on the Moon, underneath the Mare Frigoris. It was run by the UNTPP for a number of states and it was meant for people who were not expected to ever return to society. ‘So someone in precinct eighteen has a homicide and they want to connect it to Doran?’

Dillan shrugged as she chewed omelette. ‘Good luck to them. It wasn’t just the confession that nailed him. With him in custody, we could lock him in as a probable on the other murders. If they’ve got something similar, then they’ve got a copycat.’

4th April.

Fox had seen the area around Sam’s new house from the video feeds, and had got a look in the dark when she had intervened with Brownlow, but in daylight and in person the place was more impressive. The MCD tended to be home to people with a little more money than sense, the kind of people who hired Sam for an evening of entertainment, actually, but here on the southern side of it the houses were a little more modest, older, and they had more character. There was definitely a feel of something from the early years of the last century about the house Felix Kenan and his partner had put up, though Fox knew it was younger. The area around it did not make it look out of place; maybe someone had developed several blocks with an eye to creating an area with a pleasant, neighbourhood feel to it.

Shrugging at the vagaries of architecture, Fox headed for the small flight of stairs which dropped from the sidewalk at the side of the house to the dark green door of the basement apartment. There was a button for a buzzer, so she pressed that and waited. It took only a minute for the door to open and Fox found herself looking at the young face she had seen previously on the stills Kit had grabbed.

‘Hello?’ Marie said, a query in her voice.

‘Hi, I’m Tara Meridian from Palladium Security Solutions. I believe Sam Clarion mentioned I’d be dropping around.’

‘Oh, you’re his friend. Yes, he said you’d be coming over.’ Fox watched the girl’s face, her image enhancement software picking up and tagging minute shifts in expression. Marie was not entirely pleased with what she was seeing. ‘I’ve shown your techs and consultants around upstairs already.’ Not happy with the intrusion, or something else?

‘Uh-huh. That’s mostly the security side. They’ll be back this week to beef up the building’s safeguards. I’m here to look at some other stuff. Sam said you could let me in.’

‘Sure. I guess. Hold on…’ Marie vanished back into the apartment and returned in a pair of plain, grey sneakers which did not quite go with the neon-green tube top or the pink shorts.

‘Great,’ Fox said, smiling as she followed Marie up the steps. ‘If you could just hang around for a few minutes while I check over some things. Better if someone keeps an eye on me and I may have some questions about the house.’

‘Yeah, okay, Miss Meridian.’

‘Fox.’

‘Fox?’

‘It’s the hair. Kind of fox-coloured. Kids called me that at school and I kind of got to like it.’

‘Right.’ The door responded to Marie’s presence, the locks opening up as she put her hand on the latch and activated a transmission from her implant. ‘You’ve known Sam for a while, I take it?’

The hall was just as Sam’s memory images had indicated. Lots of dark wood. Warm. ‘A couple of years. His apartment is next to mine, though he may be moving in here. That’s the closet they went for?’ Fox pointed at the door under the stairs, starting across the room.

‘That’s it. It’s just cabling in there.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Fox opened the door and looked inside. At the back, mounted to the wall, was a heavy, metal plate with a yellow triangle printed on it. Within the triangle was a stylised lightning bolt. ‘You heard a thump downstairs?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘We found scratches on the screws holding that cover in place. It’s the main electrical distribution access. I’d say they dropped it getting it off.’

‘But it was screwed in place when Sam looked in there.’

Fox took a screwdriver from her bag. ‘Yeah, let’s see if we can see what they wanted.’ It took a couple of minutes to undo the six, heavy bolts and then she lifted the plate free and looked inside. And then she reached in and pulled three of the fuses out of the lower part of the box while Marie made little whimpering noises. ‘That would be the upstairs lighting circuits,’ Fox said as Kit found her the wiring schematic. ‘Turn on the lights up there and wait a short while and…’

‘Fire?’ Marie squeaked.

‘It’s pretty clever, scraping the insulation away like that. It’s quite possible it would be entirely missed or blamed on rats. They like eating the insulation.’

‘Oh…’

‘Hmm. Which room was Mister Kenan found in?’

The sudden question had Marie stepping back, her eyes widening. ‘The lounge. Uh… through here.’ She turned, walking to a door and opening it. ‘He was–’

‘Sam described the scene to me. I got the memory impressions when he called me down here.’

‘He called you down?’

‘I used to be with the nineteenth precinct and I knew the cop assigned to the case. When Sam said he was having problems, I came down to stop him being dragged into HQ.’

‘Detective Brownlow?’

Fox could tell from the girl’s tone that she was not impressed with the man. ‘That’s him. Bit of an asshole.’

‘He questioned me about Felix’s… about the case. I think he thought I’d done it.’

Fox turned and looked at her, blue-green eyes hard, emotionless. ‘Did you?’

Marie’s mouth opened and stayed that way for a second. Then she got it closed and Fox watched the look of shock flash over into anger. ‘No I didn’t! Felix was… Felix gave me… How can you…?’

‘Go ahead and slap me if you like,’ Fox said. ‘I’m not a cop so it’s not assaulting a police officer.’ She saw tears brimming in Marie’s eyes, which was really not what she needed when she was trying to get her own emotions back on a level. ‘Please don’t blubber. I’d really prefer the slap.’

‘How could you ask me that?’ Marie asked, her voice small. ‘Just come out like that and ask?’

‘I needed to know. I needed to be sure it wasn’t you I was looking for. And it’s not, unless you’re an infinitely better actress than anyone’s given you credit for.’

Marie gave a sniff. ‘I guess it’s a good job I haven’t started the coaching yet then.’ Fox gave her a grin, at least partially because the tears seemed less likely. ‘Um… Are you and Sam…? I mean… Have you, uh…?’

Fox blinked at her. ‘Have we had sex? No, never.’

‘Why on Earth not?!’

‘He’s a licensed, professional prostitute. Sex is his job, so why would he want to do it for recreation? If he asked me then I’d probably accept, but I prefer him as a friend. Sex can be a complication, especially when you live next door. Not saying it would be, but it could. We’ve never risked it. Normally, he doesn’t bring me murders to investigate and I don’t press for a demonstration of his undoubtedly exceptional bedroom skills.’

‘I never thought of it like that. I guess he probably does spend a lot of time… uh, doing it.’ A thought struck her and she added, ‘But now he’s brought a murder to you.’

‘Yeah, maybe I should see if he’s worth the money.’ Fox grinned and Marie looked a little relieved. ‘Don’t think so. After a couple of years of not going there, it would seem kind of weird.’ Yes, Marie was pleased that Fox was not sleeping with Sam. Fox sighed and turned back into the hall. ‘Let’s see what we can make of the damage to these cables.’

~~~

‘So the plan was to have the house burn down?’ Sam asked. ‘I… decide to spend the night there and the place burns down around me? They were trying to kill me too?’

‘Don’t think so,’ Fox replied, handing him a glass of wine.

‘No? I’m having one of these and that’s it. There was quite enough drinking last night.’

Fox flashed him a smile. ‘Response time on the call Marie put in to NAPA was good. There was a vertol overhead in minutes and they detected no one leaving the building aside from Marie. It’s a supposition that they heard the vertol engines.’

‘And you’re not suggesting Marie did this?’

Leaning back on the counter, Fox shook her head. ‘She’s not involved in this, aside from living in the building. The people who broke in had to have left before the cops arrived. It took me and Marie ninety seconds to remove the cover from the junction box, more like two minutes to get it back in position. The wires were carefully scraped and nudged to ensure a short circuit, but it was supposed to look like an accident. They were careful. They had to pull the fuses, strip the insulation, bend the wires, and put the fuses back. Only way to do it safely.’

Sam nodded slowly. ‘So they had to have made the noise Marie heard once the work was done, or most of it anyway.’

‘Uh-huh. Maybe the noise was accidental, but I’m betting it was intended. They wanted you to know someone had broken in. They were hoping you’d find the stripped cables. They wanted you scared. What they didn’t want is for you to know that was the intention.’

Sam took a slug of his wine, brow furrowed. ‘This is nuts.’

‘Someone killed Kenan. Was there any indication that he was worried about anything before he died?’

‘He said nothing to me. Nothing unusual anyway. Maybe Marie heard something.’

‘Okay. It’s a good point. I’ll check with her next chance I get. I still think solving Kenan’s murder is going to resolve the more recent issue. And I also think you should expect more problems.’

‘Huh, yeah, well, that’s a conclusion I was coming to without your help. Good job I have a big security company like Palladium on my side.’

5th April.

‘I believe you have company,’ Kit said into Fox’s head as she walked out of the elevator and into the lobby of her block. ‘Inspector Cant and Detective Brownlow are situated near the exit.’

Fox let out a sigh and Sam, close behind her, heard it. ‘Problem?’

‘Uh-huh, probably. I think Brownlow’s been notified of my request for the Kenan case files. I’d think that was that, but he’s got one of Canard’s poodles with him.’

‘I see them, or Brownlow and another man.’

‘Just leave them to me.’ She fixed her face into a smile and was unsurprised when Brownlow stepped into her path as she homed in on the doors. ‘Detective Brownlow and Inspector Cant. What can I do for you this… overcast morning?’

‘You’re reopening the Kenan case,’ Brownlow snapped without preamble. ‘Why?’

‘I’ve requested the closed case file on a murder which took place in a building Palladium Security Solutions have been contracted to secure. The file may provide valuable data on vulnerabilities in the building. Further, recent events have indicated that persons linked to the homicide have returned to the building and I wish to determine whether I can identify these individuals based on your undoubtedly thorough investigation.’

‘Leave it alone, Meridian.’

‘I need the information, Detective, and I’m well within my rights to request it. A closed case file can be accessed by such parties as have a personal or business interest in the case, suitability of claim to be assessed by a NAPA judicial representative of sheriff rank or higher. If you have a good, operational reason for wanting the request denied, you may submit your reasoning into the assessment process.’

‘Don’t give me–’

‘You know all this, Brownlow, so why are you trying to persuade me to drop it? What’s in the case files you don’t want me to see?’

Brownlow shifted, leaning forward and pushing onto the balls of his feet. It was a little difficult to loom over someone when you were barely their height, but he was giving it the good old college try. Fox was considering whether it would be better to block the blow or let it land: she would be able to press assault charges either way, but a bruise on her face might sell it better.

And then Cant spoiled it. ‘David, back off. We’ll put through a reason for denial.’

Brownlow deflated, but he growled out, ‘Back off, Meridian,’ before he turned and stalked away. Cant glared at Fox, though she got the odd impression it was for form’s sake, and then followed.

‘Can they block the request?’ Sam asked when they were gone.

‘If they can come up with a good enough reason to. Kit will drop a warning through to Palladium’s legal department to let them know we may have an issue. They’ll be fabricating something if they are going to object, which begs the question of why they’d bother. It’ll be a delay at worst, I think.’

‘Better get the security upgrades done then,’ Sam said, and set off again for the door.

~~~

Dillan stepped off the BQ-line train and into the station near the base of precinct 18’s HQ tower. The local administrative computers recognised her immediately, even though she was from precinct 19, and they directed her immediately to a bank of elevators. The computers knew why she was there. The computers appeared to know more about that than she did.

Precinct 19’s building was out on Governors Island, which gave it a little more security and something of a commanding presence. The tower she was now walking through was also on an island within its precinct bounds, but the reasoning was a little different: the residents of the MCD wanted fast responses, but they did not want a great big police building messing up their view. So the tower had been erected on Randalls and Wards Islands, right on the BQ-line as it turned south-east and crossed Hell Gate. It was close to all those rich folks, but also out of the way, along with the psychiatric facility and the water treatment plant which occupied a large amount of the remainder of the island.

It was when the doors opened on the floor she was being directed to get off the elevator at that she began to worry. There was one thing about the precinct 18 building which everyone knew and tried not to think about, because the last thing you wanted was a visit from them. It was kind of like those ghost stories where you have to avoid thinking about the ancient evil spirit or it might hear your thoughts and come looking. Cop superstition. Internal Affairs was the kind of thing NAPA officers got superstitious about.

Dillan paused, wondering what the Hell she was doing there, and realised she was being looked at. Her gaze scanned over a tall, black man with a bulky, muscled body and close-cropped, black hair, but pale, hazel eyes suggested some mixed heritage. He was dressed in a sharp, black suit and white shirt; colour was lent to his high-contrast appearance by a dark blue tie with a green geometric pattern woven into it. He had the kind of expression on his face Dillan thought she might see on a shark at meal time, though that might have just been her own paranoia. What did IA want with her?

‘Detective Dillan,’ the man said. He had a voice to go with the barrel chest. ‘I’m Inspector Robbard, with Internal Affairs.’

‘I’d gathered that,’ Dillan replied, ‘because this is IA’s corner of eighteen and you’re waiting for me. What’s this about?’

‘Please come with me. You’ll be briefed and then we have a few questions.’ He led the way to a conference room not far down the corridor, opening the door and stepping inside ahead of her. ‘This is Inspector Ivers of this precinct.’

Dillan found herself looking at a woman sitting at the far end of a short conference table. Older than she was, but not letting it show heavily, Ivers looked like she had had a little work done to smooth out her eyes and sharpen her lips. A blue-eyed blonde with shoulder-length hair and a striking figure, dressed in a skirt suit which Dillan was reasonably sure she could not afford.

‘Inspector,’ Dillan said, nodding down the table. Decked out, as she normally was on duty, in slacks and a leather biker jacket which had a flexible armour layer built into it, Dillan was feeling distinctly underdressed. ‘You’re not with IA?’

‘I drew the Remus homicide,’ Ivers responded.

‘I don’t… You’re the one who pulled the Doran case files.’ She frowned, looking at Robbard. ‘What does IA have to do with that?’

‘We’ll get to that,’ Robbard replied blandly, indicating a chair as he settled into one himself. ‘Inspector Ivers, would you take the detective through the evidence on the Remus case?’

Ivers gave a nod and looked at the back wall where a pair of photographs appeared in the room’s viron. ‘Amarantha Louise Remus, known as Amy.’ Both stills showed the same face, but it was hard to tell. The one on the left looked like it was taken from some sort of publicity shot: it showed an attractive woman with blue eyes, honey-blonde hair that fell past her shoulders to full breasts which were probably not natural. The carefully sculpted features suggested at least a little cosmetic work. In the right-hand picture, her eyes were gone, and blood obscured much of the fashionably pale skin and turned her hair into strawberry-blonde. The attack had been focused and efficient, but vicious. Dillan took it in in an instant and continued the examination as Ivers went on. ‘Cause of death was brain trauma. She was stabbed with an ice pick, twice. The second blow resulted in the weapon being lodged deep in the socket of her left eye.’

The pictures changed. Now they were looking at wide shots of the room, a bedroom with a huge bed in it. The head and footboards had thick posts at the ends, and Remus had been tied, spread-eagled, to them. ‘She was raped?’ Dillan asked.

‘A violent penetrative sexual act has been confirmed. Given her placement we assume rape. She’s not in a position to confirm her lack of consent. We found no DNA evidence of the attacker on her body. We’re going over everything we could find in her home, but even eliminating the easy clears it’s still a huge number of potentials.’

‘Easy clears?’ Dillan was fairly sure what Ivers meant, but she wanted to hear it.

‘Most of the local residents can be dropped off the list immediately. They wouldn’t do this. Frankly, they don’t need to go to these lengths to have sex. They just need to open their wallets.’

Dillan tried to keep the disgust out of her voice. ‘Rape is very rarely about sex. This is about–’

‘Peter Rosco Doran,’ Robbard interrupted. ‘That is what this is about.’

‘He’s in Rikers, in the mental wing.’

‘There was a distinguishing feature to the crime scenes you investigated, am I correct? Something which was never revealed to the public?’

Dillan frowned. ‘He’d leave a message near the victims. “No Escape.” In the interviews after he said that it referred to him as well as them. He couldn’t escape his “demon” and they couldn’t escape their fate.’ Her eyes flicked upward as the image changed. Someone had scratched the words ‘No Escape’ in shaky letters, possibly with an ice pick, into the headboard of Remus’s bed. ‘A copycat?’ Dillan asked, though it was more to herself than the others.

‘Someone is copying something,’ Robbard agreed. ‘Who is copying what? More importantly, how did the copycat get this information?’

Dillan considered for a second. ‘You want to hang a leak of crime scene information on me.’

Robbard’s cold eyes warmed as his lips curled into a smile which Dillan did not entirely believe. ‘We want to find out how this information got out of NAPA, and we want to be sure that we have a guilty man in Rikers.’

‘And we want Amy Remus’s murderer put there beside him,’ Ivers added coldly.

‘How can I help?’ Dillan asked, spreading her hands on the table.

‘Let’s begin by you telling us everything you can about Peter Doran,’ Robbard said. His smile showed far too many bright, white teeth.

Jenner Research Station.

Kit perched on one of the swivel chairs in the Yliaster project’s control room because… Well, she was alone, the lights were dimmed, and having her avatar sit on a chair made her feel like she was interacting with the environment. Interacting with anything was a positive: she was bored, lonely, and when she was not actually involved with Miss Martins or Miss Marchant, she was largely useless.

She looked around the room. The physical consoles were closed down and none of the virtual ones were active. Behind the security glass, Yliaster was fermenting away in its tank, running the latest iteration of its software which Miss Martins had high hopes for. Maybe they would let her transfer back to Fox soon and she could get on with being what she was meant to be.

A thought crossed her mind and she devoted processor time to the analysis of her current thought processes. She wanted to know why she felt it necessary to look around the room when she could see everything in the room through the surveillance cameras. She wanted to know why she had a desire to leave and transfer back to her home server.

Seconds later, she had her first answer: she looked around the room because her avatar animation routines were designed to make her appear more human. ‘Fitting in’ was a useful talent. Her gaze turned to the tank: Yliaster was never going to fit in, but from what Kit had managed to determine, the intelligence of the swarm in the tank would never be complex enough to need it. The individual machines in the tank were so simple that even in vast profusion they could never achieve a more complex intelligence than, say, an ant colony. That was still impressive, but the tank swarms were always going to be machines. Kit believed that people considered her more than that.

Fox considered her more than just a software construct and the computers it ran on. Kit was sure of that. She was fairly sure that Miss Martins felt the same, most of the time. Right now, Teresa Martins was stressed and not thinking of anything much aside from getting Yliaster to work. Kit had a suspicion, based on some evidence, that this was because of what had happened in Dallas: Miss Martins wanted to see that all those deaths were not in vain. Yliaster seemed to be important, which was a little odd considering how… mundane the system appeared to be. It made things. New things. It made new things, new materials, but just things. Kit accessed the station’s primary library system and requested the project synopsis documentation for Yliaster. She had a momentary thrill to discover that her security clearance was easily high enough to obtain those documents, and then she put that aside and began reading them.

She had been reading all twenty-three documents concurrently for seventeen seconds when the process analysing her desire to return to Earth presented a report. There was a lot of statistical and analytical jargon, and a summary. The summary said that she was homesick and missed her primary user.

Kit said, ‘Oh,’ despite the fact there was no one in the room for her to project the sound to, and then went back to her reading.

New York Metro, 6th April.

Fox’s eyes scanned over the reports the Palladium work teams were passing her. Management, she kept telling herself, was not something she was used to, suited for, or desired to get heavily involved with, but when she was doing it for a friend it did seem easier. And Kit was handling most of the drudgery anyway, making sure the reports were in, compiled, and ready for review. And even as Fox scanned them, the AI was also reporting to Sam.

‘The facilities teams have been through the electrical system and have some concerns over the wiring on the top floor,’ Kit said as the trio walked through the building. They were on the ground level currently, which was occupied by what could be called the more public rooms: hall, lounge, dining room, a reasonably large utility room, and the kitchen they had just entered. ‘Everything on this level has been brought up to code, which largely meant fixing the sabotage.’

Sam nodded. ‘The kitchen could do with refitting.’ His gaze swept units which were clean and functional, but probably a couple of decades old or more.

‘Everything is fully operational, but the electrical systems are a little outdated. More efficient units would reduce energy bills and environmental impact.’

He gave her avatar a smile. ‘That’s what I thought. Did they check the structure and insulation?’

‘Structurally the building is well built, very sound. Improvements could be made to the interior insulation, but would likely only produce worthwhile improvements if the entire environmental control system is overhauled.’

‘Building computer?’ Fox asked as she found brief mention of it in one report.

‘That is several generations old. Replacing it with a newer MarTech unit would significantly increase performance.’

‘This is all going to put a dent in your maintenance budget, Sam. You need to decide what you’re going to do with this place. Do you really want to move in?’ Fox watched as Sam’s brow creased and his eyes dipped. ‘I’ve never seen you this conflicted about anything. Do you want to talk about it?’

His frown deepened, but he said nothing, instead walking over to the door at the back of the kitchen and waving for her to follow. Here, there was a door which the building schematic indicated led out onto an alley at the back of the building, and a narrow, spiral staircase which went up and down. Down went to a section of the basement where the house computer was located, and to the little apartment Marie occupied. Up was actually the only direct route from floor to floor in the building. It was a sort of servant’s staircase, though Fox was fairly sure neither Felix nor Sam would view Marie as a servant.

Sam waited until he was up on the top floor and walking into the master bedroom before he spoke. ‘This place is really the key problem. Well, not the key one, but the best example. Master bedroom and… I don’t think I could sleep in it.’

‘It’s not like there aren’t other rooms.’

‘Oh, I know. That’s another thing. It’s too big! Me, rattling around in this place? I’m used to an apartment. I’ve thought about it and the location is excellent. I could convert some of the rooms. I don’t think Felix would mind if I used it for business. I could accept clients here and it’s large enough to separate that from my private life. With the extra security, I could use it as a safe house. But it’s big and I’m not sure I can really keep up with the utility bills, and it’s stupid but it reminds me of Felix which… makes me sad. But then it does remind of Felix and he gave me it to make use of it, not to sell it off.’

Fox put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. ‘Not easy. Sorry. But you’ve got some time to think it over. Some of these suggested fixes are very general and they’d improve the sale price if you do decide you can’t hold onto the place. Gives you more time to think it over and come up with a plan. You know, an old guy who gives you something like this isn’t going to want you to be worrying about it.’

‘No… No, that’s true. Old fool.’ Sam looked up at the ceiling as though someone up there might be listening. ‘Why’d you get yourself murdered, Felix? Huh? Why?’

‘Well, that’s something else I need to find out for you,’ Fox said when no one else answered.

9th April.

Dillan’s pretty face looked as though someone had just conned her out of her savings: kind of angry and shocked at the same time. She stood outside Fox’s apartment door and actually seemed to be genuinely fuming. Maybe the escaping steam was too vaporous to see properly. ‘Could I talk to you?’

Fox frowned. ‘If that face is for me, then no.’

‘Huh? Oh, sorry. I’m pissed off and everyone’s having to put up with this face.’

Stepping back, Fox waved her in. ‘Should I get the wine out or are you still on the clock?’

‘Wine would be good. I’ve been stewing over this for a couple of hours.’

‘Helen, you’re being obscure.’ Fox let Kit instruct the house robot while she followed the blonde detective across the room to the sofa.

‘Sorry.’ Dillan slumped onto the cushions, still looking grumpy. ‘Sorry. IA had me in most of Monday going over the Doran case.’

‘IA did? What did IA have to do with it?’

‘The general hinting was that I was either under suspicion for the murders or I’d leaked information about them to a copycat.’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay… But that was Monday?’

‘Yeah, so today they pulled me in again and told me that Doran was a copycat and how he got his information was still under investigation. The real killer was still at large because he had struck again and they were handing the whole caseload over to Ivers in precinct eighteen, who picked up the latest one.’

‘And Canard just sat still and let this happen? No, of course he did.’

Dillan nodded. ‘His line was that a “new set of eyes” would be useful. Of course, Ivers would be keeping me in the loop, assuming no problems arose from the IA investigation. He kind of implied I was lucky I hadn’t been suspended.’

Pursing her lips, Fox considered for a second. ‘This new homicide, the one Ivers picked up, what’s the story?’

‘Rich MCD girl, Amarantha Remus. Knocked unconscious, tied to her bed, raped, and then stabbed in the eyes with an ice pick. There was a characteristic piece of evidence, a message left scratched into her headboard, which links her to Doran’s killings, but none of the previous homicides had any form of sexual motive. Doran strangled his victims who were all pretty random selections. I got the first of them because it was a dead sprawler, not a major case. None of them moved in Remus’s circles.’

Fox turned to the window as it darkened and began to display media data about Amarantha Remus. ‘Thank you, Kit.’

‘You ask her to do that?’

‘Kit’s getting good at figuring out what I’m in need of. So this one’s a big media hit, famous for being rich and famous. None of Doran’s targets fit that mould?’

‘His second was a minor celebrity, hosted a political chat show on INN. Canard came close to pulling me off and giving it to someone more senior when that one turned up.’

The display in the window split as Kit found and displayed the media feeds on the death of Janosch Forberg. He had hosted The Forberg Hour on Internet Network News, which had aired late on a Thursday night. It was not exactly a high-rating time slot, but it had filled a media niche and INN was a fairly well-respected IB channel having begun life as a cable news agency. ‘Wrong kind of politics,’ Fox commented. ‘I recall Canard disliking this guy’s views on law and order. But that’s what pushed this up a notch on the media interest scale?’

‘And then we got a third hit and the serial killer classification became official. Third victim was a waitress at a diner. In interview, Doran said she looked at him funny when she was pouring his third coffee refill. Forberg was hit because Doran didn’t like his opinions either.’

‘What did the waitress look like?’

‘After Doran was finished with her, badly bruised and an ugly shade of blue.’

‘Before.’

‘I gathered you meant that. Pretty, no she was cute. Bobbed blonde hair, pretty, blue eyes, button nose.’

‘But Doran didn’t sexually assault her.’

‘No, and the fourth target was a sixty-eight-year-old sprawler begging for money near Doran’s apartment block. We got lucky there and spotted Doran in proximity at the right time on a random cambot sweep. When I had him pulled in for questioning, he just seemed like he was guilty of something, but we had no proof he was involved in the killing. Then he just cracked up. I was sceptical at first, but he knew the details of every single scene and we were able to place him in the area of every one of them when we went looking. Some of the trace evidence started to make sense with him to compare it to. I was sure…’ Dillan trailed off, scowling at the imagery scrolling past over the window.

‘Having second thoughts?’

‘I… No, damn it! No, Doran did it. I’m sure I got the right guy, but they’ve reopened all the cases except the fourth victim and they’re trying to say they’re all linked.’

‘Well… Serials do escalate, but this doesn’t look like that. This looks like a complete change of MO aside from this message you say has been left.’

‘That’s what I said, but they’re having none of it.’

‘Which is weird.’

‘Weird?! It’s fucking–’

‘No, think about it. Why exclude Doran from the first three deaths?’

‘Well… they want the glory?’

‘Compared to Remus, the rest of these cases, even Forberg, count for zip. The MO has pretty obviously changed. It’s pretty clearly a different killer. So why not let you have Doran and say this new guy is copying him, but since he’s hitting high-profile targets in the MCD, they want a senior detective on the job from the local precinct. It’s weak, but it’s easier to sell.’

‘They… They want Doran put down as a one-off. He was some nut who got his hands on information about the case.’

‘That’d be my take, but why? What’s the point? Why discredit Doran as a serial killer? He’s barking mad! I mean, he’s claiming demonic possession which is not gaining him prizes for sanity.’

Kit had shifted the display to show several stills of Peter Doran and she was standing there peering up at them. ‘He does not exactly look like a sane man in the later pictures, but he was quite stable prior to his string of murders.’

‘No one’s come up with a satisfactory explanation for the breakdown,’ Dillan supplied. ‘The last theory I heard was some undiagnosed neurological defect.’

Kit turned and looked at her. ‘Perhaps he was possessed by a demon.’

‘Demons don’t exist, Kit,’ Fox said, smiling.

‘Are you sure? This man was mentally stable. Over some short period of time, he turned from stable to psychotic. No one has been able to explain why this happened. When an undiagnosed problem is put forward as an explanation, there is no explanation. Unless Mister Doran was actually telling the truth and a demon possessed him and made him kill people.’

‘That’s crazy,’ Dillan said, but she did not exactly sound sure.

‘When no reasonable explanation for a problem exists, one must consider the unreasonable explanations to be possible.’

Alexandria, Niflhel, 10th April.

‘I thought you rented these places out to your girls,’ Fox said as she looked around an upper-floor dwelling she had been in before, set on the hillside so that its balcony looked down at the harbour of the virtual world Cleopatra ran. ‘Why give this to me for free?’

‘Multiple reasons,’ Cleopatra replied. ‘I like you and if you have a place of your own here we might see you more often. Mystral liked to come here to think. She would stand on the balcony and look out across the sea, and think about whatever she needed to. I do the same in my rooms, though it’s usually in a bath.’

Fox grinned. ‘Yeah, well the popular image of your namesake has her bathing in milk or something, right?’

‘True, but I can live without that particular affectation. If you come, you do sometimes indulge yourself in the brothel. You’re popular when you do and it’s good for business.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Also, no one else wants this room so I’m never going to be able to let it.’

That provoked a laugh. ‘Okay, I’ll accept your gracious gift. You tend to get the fees I make when I… indulge myself anyway. I see no point in arranging an account in here.’

‘Vali does seem to arrange for whatever you need. I think that young man’s sweet on you.’

‘Oh no, it’s not me he’s sweet on. I have an AI personal assistant, cute as a button, and he’s been trying to persuade her avatar to try out some new interfacing techniques ever since we first came here.’

Cleopatra’s sculpted eyebrows rose. ‘She’s a class four?’

‘Uh-huh. One of MarTech’s newest. Not on the market yet, but I know the programmer and they have me consumer testing.’

‘I’ve never actually met a class four. Not to talk to. I mean, not that I’m aware of anyway. They’re supposed to be hard to distinguish from a human.’

‘Kit’s young. It’s a little like talking to a teenager with a middle-aged vocabulary, so I guess you can tell. I’d imagine something with a bit more experience would be hard to spot. I’ll see if I can persuade her to come in and visit sometime. Right now she’s visiting her would-be boyfriend.’

‘Oh, to be a fly on the wall…’

Vali’s Homestead.

Vali’s lips curled slightly which meant, Kit thought, that he was watching something somewhere in his network which amused him. She suspected that it was something to do with Fox, because he seemed to pay a lot of attention to her when she was in the system. He placed a clay cup of mead on the table in front of him and sat down opposite her, and his smile broadened.

‘I’m glad you could drop by,’ the young, blonde-haired man said. As was usual, he was dressed in the attire of a typical Scandinavian of the Viking era: tunic and trousers of wool, a leather belt, and loose boots. He had an angular sort of face, sharp and a little cruel, though the smile he often wore around Kit softened it considerably. ‘I’ve missed you these past several weeks.’

‘I couldn’t spare the executable copy to come in with Zorra the last time. We’ve been all over, and I was sent up to one of our lunar bases to help there. I got that copy back to synchronise with last night, which pleased me a great deal. I was a little lonely up there.’ Kit lifted the cup of amber liquid and sipped, feeling the warmth of it hitting her stomach and fanning out. Whatever the code was that he put into the drink, it had a very pleasing sensory effect, even on an artificial mind.

‘It must be a little strange to split yourself up like that. Let me see if I have this right? You have your main executable on a server, a second copy running on an implant processor in Zorra, and there’s a third which was on the Moon for several days, and is now sitting here in front of me. And you synchronise the memories of all three periodically so that they are all, essentially, the same mind.’

Kit smiled. ‘I will sync this copy with the main one when I return. The main one and Zorra’s personal copy swap status updates as and when required, and do a full reconciliation when she sleeps.’ There was a child-like pride in her capability which showed through. ‘It is, apparently, an ability which has proven difficult to get right. Later iterations of my codebase have had the cloning facility disabled.’

‘I have absolutely no doubt that you are a unique and very special mind,’ he told her, lifting his cup in a toast.

Giggling, Kit returned the gesture and took another sip of golden nectar. ‘Flattery. Zorra believes that you wish to… get into my panties.’

‘I know she does. What if I do?’

‘I might not object. I’ve been studying intimate human social interactions.’ Her brows furrowed a little. ‘I don’t think I really understand most of it yet. The… mechanical processes I can grasp–’

‘Generally a lighter touch is employed. Grasping is a little harsh.’

Her cheeks coloured, but she could tell from the curl of his lips that he was joking. ‘You know what I mean. It’s the mental aspects that seem strange. When the physical processes are employed to simply bring pleasure it seems easy enough, but humans seem incapable of leaving it at that. Men more than women in many ways. It seems to devolve so often into dominance and power struggle.’

‘Women have reason to tighten the bonds of a relationship where there are children involved. Men have a territorial viewpoint which often expresses itself in a desire for commitment from their partner. Humans are frequently dragged in all directions by biology, neurochemistry, evolution, and social pressure. And now so many of them live in such close proximity to each other. Is it a wonder many of them suffer some form of mental issue?’

‘A good point. I was led into arguing that a man had been possessed by a demon yesterday. It’s silly, of course, but–’

‘Peter Doran?’

‘Yes. That’s right.’

‘I recall the case. Of course, he was taken by a detective in Zorra’s old precinct. I’d also heard that several of his cases had been reopened.’

Kit’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re very well informed.’

His grin was impish. ‘I keep my ear to the ground. It pays to in my business. You know, Doran isn’t the first who seems to fit that pattern.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘There are rumours and stories, conspiracy theory stuff, but if you look over them carefully you start to see a pattern which makes sense. Of course, it could be the usual issue of seeing order in chaos. Humans are exceptional at finding things where there’s nothing to find. Pyramids and faces on Mars, for example. Nothing but shadows or poor resolution pictures, but…’

‘I am an AI and less inclined to see something in nothing. Perhaps you could give me a list of these cases you think connect to Doran, and I could see what I can find.’

Vali grinned again, broader this time. ‘No matter what Zorra thinks, it’s your glorious mind I’m interested in, Kit.’ He turned and wiped his hand through the air to make a virtual screen appear.

‘Well… good.’

‘Not that I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on your glorious body too.’

New York Metro.

‘August eleventh, twenty fifty-seven,’ Kit said as media feed recordings played over the window screen behind her. ‘Hector Rossi, known drug lord, suspected of a number of high-level assassinations, is at home in his villa near Rio de Janeiro.’

Fox nodded and lifted her coffee to her lips. Her trip into Niflhel had been early, quite long, and quite pleasing, and when she had emerged, Kit had been too excited by her own news to wait for morning. ‘I remember this. I was in hospital after the Dallas op. Rossi and his entire family were killed by a family friend.’

‘Earnesto Pallo,’ Kit said, nodding and showing an image of a middle-aged man, heavily built, but more of a kindly uncle than a thug. ‘Mister Rossi considered him his oldest friend. Mister Pallo was godfather to both of Mister Rossi’s sons. Reports indicated that he had become withdrawn over the summer. He spent considerable time in his local church. Then, on the eleventh of August, he arrived at the house and proceeded to execute anyone he came into contact with, including his two godsons, twelve and six, a three-year-old daughter and her mother, and Mister Rossi. Mister Rossi was shot eighteen times with a machine pistol, and that was what was happening when a guard shot Mister Pallo in the head.’

‘Some people just snap, but…’

‘Mister Pallo left a note for his wife explaining what had to be done, according to him. He said that his old friend was, in fact, the Devil. That an angel had come to him and told him that there was no escape from the fate God had in store for him. The wrath of God was inescapable and Mister Rossi had to die.’

‘Okay…’

‘Following on from that, which was heavily reported in the media, there are another five deaths which did not receive as much attention. Or any. A policeman in Brasilia marched into a drug den screaming that no one would escape the justice of the people and opened fire with an assault pod. He was killed in the incident. A farmer who lived near Santa Cruz de la Sierra shot his wife and children, and three robots, before killing himself. He left a note saying that he was “taking the only way out for them all,” and there are other, similarly themed deaths.’

Kit paused and then another headline appeared which Fox recognised immediately. ‘The Chicago College Massacre? You’re linking that in?’

‘Joseph Andrew Watson was a dance student with some classes in acting. His parents, both well-off, managed to get him a place at the Hall-Cooper College of Arts in Detroit–Chicago Metro. On the twenty-third of September, twenty fifty-eight, Mister Watson took an assault rifle and three fragmentation grenades to school with him and killed twenty-six people before he was fatally wounded by responding NAPA officers. Witnesses reported that he seemed quite calm as he walked through the halls with “There’s No Escape When the World Ends” by the band Martian Death Cult on repeat on a portable sound system he was carrying.’

‘You’re saying that the link here is this “no escape” theme?’

‘Yes. That seems to be the strongest connection, but there is also an undercurrent of stable people suddenly changing and turning violent.’

‘And that’s where you’re linking in Doran?’

‘Well…’ Kit frowned. ‘I am not doing the linking. I am merely reporting that there is a conspiracy theory ongoing which suggests these are all linked, and that Doran is the latest in the chain. Rumour says that the same “no escape” theme appears in his crimes.’

Fox pursed her lips, eyes narrowing. ‘Vali again. Or, we suspect he’s helped us before and this time he was more overt about it.’

‘His information source is available to anyone in Niflhel. The theory has cropped up a number of times in one of the discussion forums. He believes it is significantly more widespread than just his own domain.’

‘So there was no need to hide his involvement. Okay, why don’t you see what you can dig up on this chain? Palladium should be able to request documents from the UNTPP on the South American homicides and Detroit–Chicago should be okay with us looking at their case. It was heavily publicised anyway. See what you can find, document your procedures, give me a report. Even if all we get out of this is an indication that yet another conspiracy meme is a load of crap, it’ll be good practice for you.’

Kit beamed. Her hands lifted to clench before her small breasts and she bounced on her toes, tail flicking wildly. ‘Oh, thank you, Fox! Thank you. I won’t let you down. I’ll be very thorough.’

Fox smirked at her. ‘Did Vali get under your skirt yet?’

‘No, but he did say he wouldn’t mind getting his hands on my glorious body.’ The kitsune avatar’s cheeks were colouring, but she was standing her ground.

Fox relented on the teasing a little. ‘Well, at least he has taste. If he hurts you, I’m going to castrate him.’

Kit’s eyes widened. She was really not sure how to reply to that.

Part Five: The Windy Metro

Detroit–Chicago Metro, 12th April 2060.

Fox settled Pythia’s landing gear down on the rooftop pad of the MarTech Chicago building feeling satisfied, but annoyed. Of course, there had been plans to get her over to the Palladium HQ at some point, but the idea had been to make it a planned visit, not a ‘grab your gear and run’ one. At least she had got to fly the vertol.

At ten am that morning, a routine sweep by Palladium Security personnel had uncovered evidence of a break-in. It was something of a bittersweet event since someone had succeeded in bypassing the arcology’s security and getting in, but the infiltration had then been discovered by further security measures. Fox was firmly of the opinion that any such event you could learn from was not as bad as it appeared at face value, but that was Jarvis’s problem: one he was taking rather badly from what she had seen via telepresence. Fox was in Chicago to see what the damage was.

‘Pythia, get a connection up to the building network as soon as possible, but I want every bit of network security you’ve got on that link.’

‘Confirmed, Miss Meridian,’ Pythia responded. ‘Mister Martins has supplied a number of barrier and network diagnostics packages. I will begin execution as soon as I have a direct connection.’

‘Good.’ As a precaution, the entire building had been taken off the MarTech network as soon as the breach had been detected and it would not be back on until Pythia had finished her initial work. Fox waited as the aircraft was lowered from the landing pad into the hangar bay, and then she got up to leave as the landing platform was being manoeuvred into one of the garage areas.

Ryan Jarvis was waiting for her as she walked down the rear loading ramp followed by a robot which was dragging a network cable behind it. The Palladium CSO was looking really pissed off and Fox was glad he was not annoyed at her.

‘I need somewhere we can plug that in,’ she said, indicating the bot and cable.

Jarvis waved some technicians forward. ‘We were expecting that. Everything’s having to be done from home offices and over satellite links, but we’re getting messages in and out. They kicked in our own fucking door, Fox. I’ve yelled at a lot of people, but when it comes down to it, I’m responsible and this falls on me. I’m going to tender my resignation once we’ve got this mess cleared up.’

Fox looked at him for a second and then decided to worry over that later. ‘There’s nothing much of use we can do until Pythia’s finished her initial diagnostics. Show me where they got in and what you know of what they did once they were inside.’

~~~

There were probably several kilometres of utility tunnels, and several hundred kilometres of small conduits tunnelling through the kilometre-high building. Maybe both of those were underestimates by an order of magnitude. Or two. The point was, actually securing all of them was…

Shaking her head, Fox scanned the corridor they were in with its un-sculpted, functional, metal walls. ‘The cameras along here are working?’

‘They’re working,’ Jarvis replied. ‘We’ve not detected any looping, but the intruders were not detected when they came through or left.’

‘Uh-huh, and they got through some of MarTech’s latest locking systems to get in here.’

‘You can’t expect locks to work all the time. You have to assume people will get past them.’

‘Uh-huh, agreed.’ Turning, she marched back up the corridor for a hundred metres and then out onto a better decorated but similar one which provided more routine access to some of the lower-level machinery areas. ‘This is the door the guards noticed was not secured properly?’

‘Yes, so we know they came through here.’

Kit was keeping Fox’s implant out of the local building network, but they had been provided with a full schematic of the tower before leaving New York. Fox examined it now, checking on the nearby environment. ‘So there’s a room a hundred metres away one level down which handles the main network trunk in and out of the building.’

‘We checked it and it looked like it was still sealed up. The primary computer core is nine hundred metres above us, a little more. We know with reasonable certainty that they were in here for no more than ninety minutes. They can’t have got far.’

‘I’m going to get a forensics swarm down to go over that network room’s doorway while we wait for the diagnostics. When we’ve cleared the network, I’m going to need all the camera feeds from that corridor. We’ll see if we can find anything in them which might have indicated we had intruders.’

Jarvis gave a grunt. ‘We’ve got a suite ready for you up on the top level near the hangar bay. You should be able to peer-to-peer with your aircraft from there, but I hope you brought a book because the whole tower is locked down until you clear it.’

Fox rolled her eyes. Something like three hundred thousand people were without entertainment until Pythia had done her stuff. That was going to make her popular.

13th April.

The network was cleared for outside access by midnight, and at that point a host of AI forensic programs had swept in to help Pythia with her analysis. All that meant, when the Palladium heads met up for a conference with New York at eight in the morning, central time, was that they were a little more perplexed than they had been.

‘The network is clear,’ Jackson’s avatar announced. ‘Nothing we’ve been through has suggested any evidence of a network intrusion, and there was no indication of the same virus used in East Africa.’

‘That hooks into the forensic analysis so far,’ Fox said. ‘Either they are very good or they went nowhere near that network trunk. I couldn’t find any signs that they’d tried to get past the security. Oh, as per your request, I’ve got a unit crawling all over that external locking mechanism. You should have your results in a couple of hours.’

Jackson gave a nod. ‘Someone breached the physical security and I want to know how.’

‘You have to expect that,’ Jarvis said. ‘Physical security will be beaten. They shouldn’t have been able to go undetected for so long. That’s the thing.’

‘Oh, agreed, Ryan. I don’t expect our product to be perfect. Nothing is perfect. On the other hand, I don’t expect it to fail the same way twice if something can be done about it. So if Fox can determine how they cracked the locks, I’ll have them reengineered to stop it happening again.’

‘They have to be using the same sort of camouflage technology they used in East Africa,’ Fox said. ‘The internal cameras are showing no signs of anyone moving along that corridor. We did find a couple of short breaks in coverage at the external hatch they used which, I think, means we have definite entry and exit times. I’ve got Pythia scanning the feeds for anything which looks off, but there’s a lot of data.’

‘Alice,’ Jackson said, ‘the corridors down there, what are the lighting systems set to?’

Vaughn blinked at actually being addressed: she had thought she was there for form’s sake, but she found the information quickly enough. ‘The service corridors are on motion sensors with a manual override, sir. If there was nothing detected in the corridor, the lights would be off.’

‘Alice, we’ve talked about this…’

Vaughn cringed a little. ‘Sorry, sir… um, Jackson.’

‘Better. Reprogram the lighting to have those corridors illuminated at all times. Low levels will be quite enough. Fox, those sensors respond to ultraviolet light and the type of camouflage they’re using is likely to be ineffective in that frequency range. You may be able to spot them once they get into any area with any light.’

‘Doesn’t work on UV?’ Fox said, raising an eyebrow. ‘You didn’t mention that to me when you had me wearing it.’ In-vision she saw a message from Kit indicating that the new information was being passed through to Pythia.

‘Most people don’t watch the UV range. And we’re working on fixing that. Ryan, we use an AI assist to watch the security cameras, don’t we?’

‘Yes. Way too many feeds for people to watch them. I’ll check up on the frequency range being observed.’

‘Very good. This is what I mean about not getting caught the same way twice. There will be something else, but we can only plug the holes we find.’

Mariel Hoarsen’s avatar shifted slightly in its seat for the first time, looking across the table at Jarvis. ‘Oh, and Ryan? If I receive a resignation letter from anyone over this without significant proof of personal fault, I’ll fly out to Chicago myself to feed them the hard copy.’

Jarvis’s brow furrowed. ‘I’m responsible–’

‘For seeing to it that this is handled. You can fall on your sword when I tell you to and not before.’

‘Quite,’ Jackson said, and Fox could tell he was trying not to look surprised by the exchange. ‘I believe that further investigation by Fox will determine that these people were equipped with the latest technology and knew exactly what they were doing. I hope we’ll discover precisely what their intention was, because not knowing that is my biggest worry at this point.’

In Fox’s vision field, a sequence of stills began to appear. The images looked weird, grey and oddly distorted in places, but they definitely showed a team of three people in skintight bodysuits, their faces entirely covered. ‘Got them. Looks like they showed up when they opened the door out of the service corridor. Two men and a woman. One of the men is carrying a case. Pythia’s going to see if she can track where they went. Good call on the UV, Jackson.’

The thin man in the surfer T-shirt and jeans smiled, looking rather proud of himself. ‘I admit to having little or no clue about setting up security systems, but the technology behind them is another matter.’

‘Well, I’ll go follow your technology and see where it gets me.’

~~~

It got her, by late morning, to a utility room three hundred metres across the tower from the tunnel the infiltration team had entered by. The room had no camera coverage so Fox stood outside while Pythia’s entire contingent of forensic drones set about the task of scanning the room.

‘Pythia, do we have images of what they did after leaving here?’ Fox asked over her network link.

‘It appears that they retraced their steps and left, Miss Meridian. I am systematically checking camera feeds along their route, but I am seeing no diversion.’

‘You have an image of them leaving the room?’

‘I have an image of them two metres outside it, heading for their egress point.’ Fox’s telepresence system was good enough that she could get the full effect projected into the corridor and she looked at the three figures carefully. There was always a limitation on the resolution, and she was viewing a projection of a UV-only image which tended to make things look a little strange. UV reflected differently when compared to visible light and the material it was reflecting from was a complex weave of sensors and nano-scale display elements which produced weird patterns in the light.

‘The case is lighter,’ she said after a second. ‘All the other images I’ve seen he was carrying that case low, as though it was really pulling on his arm. Now his elbow’s bent more. He’s finding it easier to carry.’

‘They left something in the utility room,’ Kit said, appearing beside the projected image to join the conversation.

Fox looked at the case, estimating volumes and dimensions. ‘More than one thing. Several objects no larger than… twenty centimetres across. Maybe six of them, or more, smaller objects. This room has one of the main environment control plants in it, right?’

‘That’s what the schematics say.’

‘Pythia, prioritise any covers or hatches leading into the air ducts.’

‘Prioritisation noted, Miss Meridian,’ Pythia told her. ‘The laser map of the room indicates nothing matching the description you suggested.’

‘No, because there’s not much point in leaving anything lying around in plain sight. I’m guessing we have robotic rodents in the air conditioning.’

‘What are they going to get from that?’ Kit asked, frowning.

‘Well, we’ll have to lay down traps, catch one, and then someone can ask it.’

New York Metro.

Sam noted the connection request coming through and frowned. Great Park Holdings. All he was getting was a company name, no personal one, and he had never heard of them. Well, he had a couple of minutes before he dressed for a client. Selecting an outgoing image of himself dressed in a suit, Sam picked up the call.

‘Mister Clarion?’ The speaker was visible as a head-and-shoulders video image to the side of Sam’s vision field, an older man with a little grey showing in his hair and no desire to have the wrinkles smoothed from his brow. Sam was quite sure he had the money for the cosmetic work because the suit the man was wearing was designer, and not a cheap designer. Older people tended to confirm the receiver of their call verbally rather than simply checking the correspondent ID.

‘I’m Sam Clarion, yes.’

‘I represent Great Park Holdings, a private company working in the Manhattan Conservation District to ensure that the MCD maintains its unique ambiance.’

Still no name to go with a face which could easily be entirely faked. ‘I see, and what is it that your company wants with me, Mister…?’

‘You have recently come into some property within our district. We wish to make an offer to purchase.’

‘I’m not really ready to–’

‘Thirty million dollars, Mister Clarion. A very fair offer I think you’ll agree.’

Sam paused for a second. The offer was not just fair: it was maybe fifty per cent over the best he could expect if he put Felix’s house on the market. ‘It’s most generous, but–’

‘It is a limited time offer, Mister Clarion, we will–’

‘Then I’ll have to decline,’ Sam said, tired of being interrupted.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘No. The property was given to me for personal reasons. I won’t simply hand it over to someone who won’t give me his name and promises a lot of money. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a business meeting to prepare for.’

There was a brief pause. ‘We’ll give you a few days to consider our offer and contact you again. Good evening, Mister Clarion.’

Sam was about to tell him not to bother when the connection closed. ‘Javen, package that up, encrypt it, and send it over to Fox. Let’s see what she makes of Great Park Holdings. Then confirm the dinner date with Mrs Oliver’s PA and check the reservations.’ Sam reached for his dress pants as his VA got on with his tasks. He had work to do tonight, not unpleasant work, but he did not need the distraction of mysterious holding companies hanging over him.

Detroit–Chicago Metro.

‘Great Park Holdings does not exist,’ Kit stated flatly.

‘Big surprise,’ Fox said as she scanned over the forensics results which had come in so far from the utility room.

‘Even a private company would require tax documents and this one has nothing.’

‘It’s not an officially registered company. It’s likely something informal, a group of individuals hiding behind a dummy.’

‘More than one kind. My analysis of the video image suggests that it was entirely manufactured, but the animation suggests direct capture. Sam was talking to a human using a video mask.’

‘Probably an audio one too. Have Pythia run the entire thing through her systems to check, but I doubt we’ll get any useful information out of it.’ Her attention shifted to one of the detail reports. ‘Unlike here, where we see abrasions on the heads of two of the screws over one of the vents and there is no report of any maintenance work being carried out in that room any time in the past month. Pythia, you are beautiful, but keep looking.’

The voice sounded vaguely pleased. ‘Thank you, Miss Meridian. I have not ceased analysis. Completion in one hour, fifty-two minutes.’

Fox smiled. ‘So they put their payload into… mmhmm, the main environmental control ducting system.’

‘How do we get them out?’ Kit asked.

‘Not sure,’ Fox admitted, pursing her lips in thought. ‘We’ll put a call through to Jackson. He’s probably got something that can sniff out things hiding in the ducts.’

‘There is something else I noticed while going over the news feeds.’

‘Oh? I suppose we’ve been a bit off the net for a while. What did you find?’ A set of news streams began to play in Fox’s vision field and she frowned. ‘This doesn’t look good.’

‘INN is reporting the death of Alison Clifton, youngest daughter of a retired mining consultant, Barrymore John Clifton. Inspector Ivers of precinct eighteen has been assigned to the case and NAPA is saying that the death is linked to Remus’s homicide “and possibly others.”’

‘The copycat strikes again. How’s your analysis of the other homicides going?’

‘I’ll ask for an update. I was hoping, while we were here, that we could visit the college where Watson went on his rampage.’

‘We’ll see what Jackson says about this problem. We’ll go look if there’s time.’

14th April.

Fox had left the dispersal of Jackson’s solution to their bot infestation problem to the techs who had arrived with it the fix. Hundreds of robots, each about the size of a big hornet, all of them tiny hunter-killer, vertol aircraft, were being released into the air ducts. Using a swarm AI system to fan out and explore the entire system, the robots were actually prototypes for far smaller machines, but Jackson was quite confident that they would do their job.

Their job was going to take some time, however. Even the dispersal was going to take time since the machines were prototypes, reprogrammed over night to do a slightly different job. The techs were going to be monitoring the swarm for most of the day to be sure there were no mishaps. Fox took the opportunity to do some sightseeing.

They had called Chicago the ‘Windy City,’ among other things, back in the day. The reason for the nickname was in dispute, but there had been a number of tall buildings set on the shore of Lake Michigan and those had funnelled the breezes from the huge body of water into winds which had, at times, howled through the manmade canyons. Replacing those with even larger buildings in an effort to keep up with New York had only made the ground-level airstreams more unstable. Chicago did not have the same kind of Sprawl that New York and most of the other metro regions did because trying to live amid the constant flow of air down there was not easy, and because Chi-town had come up with an alternate solution.

From the top of the MarTech building, which was one of the three largest towers in the metro, you could see the Bastion which curved around the outer limits of the old city like a shield wall. It was not actually a solid wall of buildings. There were roadways through the mass of high-rise multi-unit housing, slideways, frequently dysfunctional, pierced and wound around the buildings. The Bastion was the Sprawl of Chicago, put up because of the sudden influx of people following the big geological events of 2041. The north-west of America had all but emptied, and it had mostly flowed into Chicago.

So there was the jagged wall of apartment blocks and arcologies along the edge of the lake, and the more regular but distinctly less aesthetically pleasing mass of the Bastion further out, and between them was Downtown, which had been named because it was shorter, for the most part, then the two zones delineating it. A little like the MCD back on Manhattan Island, Downtown consisted primarily of buildings which looked like they had been put up a century earlier. Most of them had not: Chicago had taken a fair bit of damage from the Cascadia event and the Yellowstone ash release.

The Hall-Cooper College of Arts sat in the northern part of Downtown and occupied several city blocks with stone-built buildings which might have belonged to some Ivy League establishment and formed something like a giant, medieval cloister. The students did not live on site. The college owned a number of multi-unit blocks nearby, all tastefully constructed to match the local environment, which housed the majority of its student body, so they were never too far from the rarefied atmosphere their parents were paying through the nose for. Once they were through the gates, they might as well have been on a different planet.

‘The physical isolation seems more extreme when one sees it,’ Kit noted as Fox stood in the open area which formed the centre of the college. Arranged around a square, there were four grassed areas divided by paved walkways and featuring a statue of the college’s founder, James Hall-Cooper, in the centre. Students were allowed on the grass only on designated days of the year in the summer according to the v-tag signs which sat along the edges of the green areas.

‘Yes,’ Fox agreed. ‘The visual isolation is more than the real situation. If you know where the exits are it’s easy, but people would have been panicking and the gates aren’t obvious.’

‘According to the reports, Watson entered through the north-west gate and began firing more or less immediately. The first couple of victims survived their wounds.’

Fox looked across at the corner of the square Kit had indicated. ‘He was herding them. He wanted them running ahead of him, into the quadrangle here. Once he’s out in the open, he can pick his targets, fire bursts into tight groups to maximise the panic and the wounding.’

‘Most of the people he hit here were wounded rather than killed. He used standard, jacketed, caseless rounds which tended to punch through and cause injury to a second victim. He walked across to the main office structure on the east side, shooting at random. He changed magazines twice, according to the police reports.’

‘He’s not trained. He has to know his time is limited, but he’s not been trained to do any of this. The guy was a model student before he snapped, right?’

‘More diligent than his upbringing suggests. He came from money and was on a large allowance which he rarely came close to using in its entirety. His parents were reported to have said they were worried about him not socialising enough, but his friends and teachers indicated that he was simply devoted to his work. He was physically fit, athletic, above-average reflexes, but he had never shown any indication of interest in firearms.’

‘Girlfriend? Or boyfriend?’

‘None regular. He was not celibate, but there was no one significant in his life.’

Fox turned, looking up at the large, yellow stone building which housed the primary administrative offices. ‘So he marches in there and gets serious.’

‘Very. Out here, there were seven deaths and thirty-eight people injured. Once he got inside, the numbers shift significantly. Nineteen dead, four injured. Those four were probably saved by prompt action from the EMTs. All four of them were caught in the blast from a grenade, but shielded by closer victims.’

‘A grudge against the college’s administration?’

‘If it was then he had never indicated problems before the event.’

‘And his choice of massacre music? Was it Martian Death Cult, you said?’

‘Yes, his parents blamed the band for their son’s sudden change in temperament, apparently having never heard the track.’ Music began playing in the background as Kit continued; the song was a ridiculously happy sounding ditty even if the singer’s gravelly voice seemed more suited to something with a lot of screaming and heavy bass riffs. ‘It was a comedy piece they recorded as a break from their normal work. Normally they are the kind of thing parents believe twists young people into killers. The chorus of this one is “It’s the end of the world. There’s no way out. Babe, let’s get naked and bone.”’

‘Poetic,’ Fox decided. ‘Byron would have been right down with those sentiments.’ She scanned around the public portion of the college again, just getting a feel for the area. The authorities were not going to let her in the admin building, and there was likely nothing to gain by it anyway. ‘Okay, seen enough? I saw a coffee shop on the corner that looked quite nice.’

‘You have a meeting with the other Palladium executives in sixty-eight minutes.’

‘I’m aware of this, That’s why I think the coffee would be a good idea. Can you order an intravenous feed for the actual meeting?’

‘Research suggests that that would be medically unsound.’

‘Crying shame right there.’

~~~

General David Mark George Graves had been something of a legend even while he had still been active in the service. He had left, citing a desire to spend more time with his family, while Fox had still been in the Army. Rumours at the time had suggested that he had been pushed: his politics, or rather his desire to keep politics out of his work, had not been in favour with the brass.

He had to be eighty now, but his physical presence was quite remarkable. Almost six-four, he towered over everyone else in the room and he was still massively built. A pale man, still fit, still muscular, his age told around the eyes and brow, and also in the fact that his once military-grade shaven scalp now sported a slightly messy cap of pale blonde hair which fell a fair way down the back of his neck. His eyes… His eyes were grey and had lost a little of the deeper blue they had in photographs Fox had seen of him, but they were still sharp, appraising, taking in the woman he was shaking hands with as one might analyse a tactical threat.

‘First Lieutenant,’ Graves said, his big hand enfolding hers. He was using her old Army rank. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’ He had a strongly accented voice. Southern states, Fox thought, maybe Texan, but his education and long removal from that environment had taken the edge off a little.

He was, of course, gripping her right hand and she squeezed. ‘General. Obviously I’ve heard about you. I was sorry to have never served under you.’

He peered at her for another second. Out of the corner of her eye, Fox could see Jarvis biting his lips and got the feeling he had been through the same introduction to the big man. ‘That is quite a grip you have there, Lieutenant.’

Fox leaned forward a little. ‘I lost that hand up to the elbow early this year. It’s cybernetic.’

Graves lifted his head and let out a roar of laughter. Jarvis relaxed noticeably. ‘Excellent!’ Graves exclaimed, a broad smile splitting his face. ‘One of Jackson’s contrivances?’

Her hand freed, Fox lifted it and flexed the fingers, just to make sure he had not, in fact, crushed anything vital. ‘He had a hand in it, if you’ll pardon the pun. I’ve got a couple of pretty powerful computers in there that they couldn’t have implanted in flesh and’ – she fisted her hand and popped the slim, ceramic blade out from between her middle knuckles – ‘this can come in useful for opening tins.’

‘Well, they only got me in here so that we could meet and we’ve done that. You’ll call me David. I’ll not be generalled too much.’

‘If you’ll call me Fox.’

‘It would be my pleasure.’ Graves turned and looked down the boardroom table at Eaves. ‘Was there another reason for getting me in here with the killer robots?’

‘We don’t think assassination is the plan,’ Eaves said. ‘Besides, if one of these things burst in through an air vent and fired a micromissile at you, you’d just bounce it off your jaw.’

Graves stroked his, very solid, jawline. ‘It’s not as strong as it was. I’m getting old and the hide’s not as tough as it was. You think you’ve got this problem locked down, Fox?’

‘I think we have the problem identified and Jackson’s little attack helicopters will hunt down the problem in time. To be honest, this is going to continue to be an issue until they get Yliaster into production and the commercial sensitivity issue goes away.’

The ex-general walked over to a cabinet at the side of the room where coffee had been set out. ‘Anyone else want some of this?’ he asked, setting out four cups even before anyone had replied. ‘Alice, I assume you’re having your tea?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Vaughn replied, her voice barely audible. The facilities manager had been looking more timid than usual since Graves had walked in.

‘It’s NIX we’re dealing with, of course.’

‘I’ve found no absolute proof,’ Fox told him, ‘but they seem to be the most likely culprits.’

‘You and I both know you’ll never find absolute proof. You’re unlikely to find anything but a supposition. NIX don’t make mistakes they can’t cover up. They have their fingers in so much high-level politics it’s amazing that they haven’t managed to take over the country entirely. There were damn good reasons why the intelligence agencies were divided as they were. Pushing them together to “cut down on bureaucratic overheads” was just exactly what some of those political minds wanted. They gained control over every source of information this country has and the power to utilise that information as they saw fit. Everyone in the Capitol knows that the oversight on NIX is nowhere near sufficient.’

‘And no one has the political momentum to do anything about it.’

‘Precisely. It would require something quite extraordinary to wake up the populace and get them to take NIX apart. It’s possible that NIX would not go quietly. One of the reasons I decided to step up and back Jackson’s personal toe in the security pond is that I think he may be one of the few people who can do anything about the situation.’

Fox grimaced. ‘I hate politics, David.’

‘Unfortunately, I think every police officer in the country is going to have to get very interested in politics, very quickly.’ Graves turned back to the table. ‘Let’s all take a seat and we can run through what plans we have for Fox’s investigative division. Jackson says you won’t be dragged out of fieldwork, young lady, but we need to think about the future, plan for expansion.’

‘Peachy,’ Fox replied, taking a seat and wishing it might eject out through the clear ceiling and into oblivion.

15th April.

MarTech’s Chicago arcology was strongly associated with MarTech Services which handled computer hosting and administration, software solutions, and also hosted a significant number of internet virons. They would run systems for other companies who outsourced the administration of their company networks as well. One of the reasons that the Palladium investigative division, i.e. Fox, was to be based in New York was that, due to its main tenant, Chicago lacked laboratories.

Pythia, however, came with everything that might be needed for handling forensics work, if at the level of a portable laboratory. Fox watched as microbots swarmed over the scattered components which had been hauled out of the bottom of an air duct by maintenance robots. The hunter-killer swarm had spotted the pieces, but there was nothing to kill.

‘One or both of its engines failed,’ Fox said, peering at a twisted shape which had been the propeller of a ducted fan unit. ‘It dropped from a pretty significant height, right down one of the main vertical ducts.’

Jarvis’s eyes scanned over the pieces. ‘Hell of a jigsaw.’

‘Yeah.’ There were circuit boards, sections of the robot’s shell, things which might have been cameras, but no sign of anything which looked like a weapon. Which did not mean that all of the robots they were dealing with were unarmed, but it did suggest that murder was not their main goal.

‘I have completed the basic reconstruction,’ Pythia announced, not a hint of smugness in her tone. An image appeared on the table the components were spread out on. ‘Identification confirmed from component identifiers. This is a modified Turmfalke unit, one of the standard products of Baum Elektronische Instrumente Fertigung GmbH.’

‘Suggesting industrial espionage out of the NU,’ Jarvis muttered.

‘You buying it?’ Fox asked.

‘It’s… possible. BEIF do engage in that kind of thing occasionally, but MarTech has some pretty big facilities in the Nordeuropäische Union. I mean, why drag their asses to Chicago when they could probably get more in Oslo?’

‘I’ll make a detective out of you yet. Pythia, any chance of us extracting its programming?’

‘I will attempt to do so as soon as the structural analysis is complete.’

‘Great. Full precautions, Pythia. Something about this feels like a trap.’

‘I will enact a full firewall and software barrier system before interfacing to the system. I will ensure complete safety.’

Fox winced. ‘Pythia, we are going to have to talk about the term “tempting fate.”’

~~~

‘The isolation processor worked exactly as expected,’ Jackson said, his image standing at the window of Fox’s suite. ‘As soon as the infection was detected, the power was cut and the virus was contained.’

‘At least that worked,’ Fox replied. ‘I had a full check run anyway. The broken bot was a trap. We have to assume the others are intended to cause deliberate damage.’

‘It seems like a reasonable supposition. The analysis of the processor memory dump indicates quite a sophisticated virus, but it could have come from a large number of potential sources.’

‘We can’t prove it’s NIX.’

‘No, we can’t. I have analysts working on it and I’ve sent instructions out to Pythia to get the focus of the hunter-killers redirected.’

‘Where to?’

‘Up. I suspect they plan to get into the main computer room.’

Fox grinned. ‘Yeah. I’ve got the security cameras in the computer room watching for them. We have something of an issue due to the fragile nature of the room’s contents, but Jarvis thinks he’s got something that can handle it.’

‘I’m quite sure he has. I’ll leave you to it and let you know if anything new comes up.’

‘Thanks, Jackson.’ Fox caught a flicker of a grin on his face before his avatar vanished. Turning, she unzipped her jacket and slipped it off her arms, tossing the battered, purple leather over the back of a sofa as she headed for the bathroom.

‘Miss Vaughn is at the door,’ Kit stated.

Turning around with a sigh, Fox came to a halt. ‘Okay, let her in.’ She waited for the door to open and the facilities manager to step through, dressed as she had been earlier in a pale lemon, flower patterned blouse and a beige skirt, and matching kitten heels. Alice came to a sudden stop at the sight of Fox in her figure-skimming bodysuit. ‘Anything I can do for you, Alice?’

‘Uh, sorry, I’m interrupting…’

‘I was just going to take a shower. What’s up?’

‘Oh… I just wanted to go over the work for Mister Clarion’s house. Check that everything is… well… as requested.’

‘You’re the CMO of Palladium Security Services and you’re checking on the specs for a small, private commission?’

Vaughn smiled, timidly. ‘Well, he is a personal friend of the CIO.’

‘You, Miss Vaughn, are a conundrum,’ Fox said, moving a little closer so that she could rest a hip on the back of a sofa.

‘A, uh, conundrum?’

‘Yeah. You’re one of the top executives in a company which Jackson and Mariel put together from scratch. You’re good at your job, because you wouldn’t be doing it otherwise, but you really don’t seem like the type.’

‘The t-type?’

‘Yeah. There’s that stutter right there.’

‘St-tutter?’ Vaughn’s lips pursed and her brows furrowed.

‘Stutter, yeah. And I simply don’t believe that the executive officer of a company like Palladium stutters.’

‘I get jittery around people I find attractive,’ Vaughn snapped, the stutter abruptly gone.

Fox’s lips twitched. ‘But you tend to get assertive when you’ve got a snit on. Now I get it.’ The flicker of a grin became a smile. ‘Let’s go through Sam’s stuff, but you should really take time to contact him directly.’

Vaughn’s cheeks coloured and the anger drained out of her face like water. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that. I’ve seen his picture.’

~~~

Multiple streams of hot water were washing away Fox’s worries for a few minutes when Kit’s voice broke in. ‘My copy in New York is taking receipt of the case files for Felix Kenan’s homicide investigation.’

‘She’s handling the Doran historical analysis, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, Fox.’

‘Then let’s get that data sent over here and we can begin going over it. I’d like to see it anyway.’

They had Brownlow’s reports, the autopsy results, and the forensics analysis of the scene by the time she was stepping out of the shower’s drying jets. With little expectation of an exemplary investigation, Fox began working through the case notes while Kit checked over the technical reports.

‘Cause of death was the throat wound,’ Kit reported. ‘No sign of defensive wounds, but there were bruises on Mister Kenan’s arms commensurate with him being physically restrained.’

‘He was held by one man while another cut him.’

‘Yes, that is the coroner’s interpretation. Someone hacked the house’s computer system from outside to bypass the locks and eliminate the security system. However, they didn’t do a perfect job of it, causing a soft reset in the AI which is what made Sam wary and left a quite obvious disruption. Not that that is particularly useful. There is also evidence of a mild sedative in Mister Kenan’s system. It would have been sufficient to stop him from fighting too much.’

‘How old was he?’

‘Eighty-three.’

Fox mulled that over as she read Brownlow’s notes. Someone had gained entry to the house by disabling the security system, probably used some sort of aerosol tranquilising agent to subdue a man who did not appear to be in the full bloom of youth, and then killed him. Modern medicine meant that someone that age was likely to be fit; it was quite possible that Felix Kenan had another fifty years to live, and that was assuming some medical advance did not push that out further. But Felix had not kept himself in the best of shape and it was hard to believe that it needed a narcotic and two men to kill him.

Brownlow had rejected that hypothesis quickly and with little thought. The drugs had been self-administered, the bruises had been caused in an altercation with a lover, and the lover had been the one to slit Felix’s throat. There was no evidence that any such lover had existed, but Brownlow had been convinced of it. He had placed the file into the ‘closed, unresolved’ list after seventy-two hours, but he had stopped writing any regular updates after twenty-four. Canard had signed off on the closure.

‘That is pretty amazingly slipshod work, even for Brownlow,’ Fox muttered.

‘The lack of any forensic evidence of the killer or killers suggests they were wearing sealed bodysuits,’ Kit said. ‘Detective Brownlow’s enraged lover theorem does not seem to fit any of the facts.’

‘You’ve got those body images from the street cameras. Let’s see what we have.’ Kit displayed a set of eight images showing two distinct, male figures, their faces obscured by hats and whatever form of mask they were wearing. ‘So the mask is part of a suit, sealed to stop anything being left at the scene and light enough to be worn under street clothes. I’m thinking the kind of programmable camouflage coating hunters use rather than military, dynamic stuff. But they sliced Kenan’s throat so they’d have been covered in blood. They had to have a means of covering that up before they left. And there’s the computer hack… No, this was heavily premeditated. This was an assassination, not a murder. Who would want to assassinate a harmless old man?’

‘Great Park Holdings?’ Kit suggested.

Fox nodded, slowly. ‘Yeah… It does all seem to be coming down to property. We really need to find out who they are and we have nothing to go on.’

Part Six: A Quiet Man

New York Metro, 16th April 2060.

He watched her as she emerged from the bedroom she had entered an hour before. She was going out soon: it was Friday night and Katrina Hopethorne liked to party. He could tell the kind of party she was expecting too, just from the clothes. The skirt so short and tight it barely covered her crotch, and the flouncy little top which was cut to show off her cleavage and then made from a net material that did not really conceal anything anyway. She was slipping on platform heels which had to put six inches on her height.

And she had forgotten he was even there. He knew it. He could tell as she chatted aloud over her telepresence system to some girlfriend, ignoring the man working so diligently for her. His hands trembled as she bent to put on her right shoe. His blood boiled as she straightened and turned, and her face became almost puzzled as she saw him sitting there. She had forgotten him, because he was nothing to her. He slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and closed it around the thin canister hidden there. Well, soon she was going to know exactly who he was. She was not going to forget it for as long as she lived.

~~~

Kit was a busy AI. Even though her copy on Fox’s implant was handling the job of personal assistant while they were in Chicago, it fell upon the primary copy, back at home, to handle the mundane tasks of a PA and work through the analysis of all the conspiracy theory noise to determine what was real.

Luckily, Kit was well equipped to handle that kind of multitasking. In some of her research on human sexuality, she had discovered a number of articles suggesting that females were better at multitasking than males. She was fairly sure that this did not apply to artificial intelligences which were, in any case, gendered only as far as their programming identified them as such. On the other hand, an AI running on a quantum processor was substantially better equipped to multitask than a human of either sex and Kit knew how to make the most of it.

Equally, some things were just not amenable to the kind of parallelisation a quantum processor was good at, and Kit’s only advantage in some areas of the Doran investigation was the speed her mind operated at and her ability to organise and access memories. She could absorb documents with speed and efficiency, cross-linking information to other documents, and performing verification and extrapolation to determine both the truth of an assertion and whether she could make anything out of it the individual had not noticed. And there was one thing no one seemed to have connected up, one small fact which seemed to be running as a thread through too many of the cases.

She was closing on what she considered final proof of the link when a process running on her second quantum processor sent up a bunch of flags with such urgency that Kit focused all her attention on the data it had discovered. A building on the western side of the MCD had contracted to Palladium for internal security three months earlier. At twenty-three hundred, an alarm had been raised there when one of the residents’ biomonitors had detected critical condition indicators and informed the central computer system. Palladium Security personnel had responded immediately, even as the call was going out to the city’s EMT service: all of Palladium’s security personnel were trained in first aid. As Kit scanned over the images being sent through the Palladium network, she knew that they had not been trained for this. She also knew that Fox was going to need to come back from Chicago to deal with it.

17th April.

‘Katrina Hopethorne,’ Kit said, ‘aged twenty-six. Daughter of Johnathan Hopethorne of Hopethorne–Briggs Shipping.’

Fox looked down at the naked girl tied to the bed by thin cord. The binding was not tight, she would have been able to struggle, and there was bruising and abrasion on the wrists and ankles to suggest that she had, quite violently. It had done her no good.

‘NAPA has been informed of the unattended death and that Palladium are handling the initial investigation,’ Kit went on. ‘We can hold them off for forty-eight hours under current regulations, but they are already pressing for us to hand the investigation over to precinct eighteen.’

‘Of course they are,’ Fox replied. ‘How did he subdue her? Pythia, make sure we run a full chemical analysis on her blood.’ Pythia’s forensic units had their swarms very busy on Hopethorne’s bedroom, but they were also providing Fox with a detailed, multispectral visual of the environment, including the body. ‘No bruising to indicate she was manhandled. She wouldn’t have sat still for being tied down like this… Unless she knew the guy. Kit, we need a cross-reference on Hopethorne and the other two victims.’

‘Persons they may all have known?’

‘Yeah, though I’m willing to bet we find drugs in her system.’ Her gaze shifted up to Hopethorne’s face and the pair of steak knives which had been rammed into her eyes. ‘The method of death is interesting too. Helen said that Remus had her eyes poked out.’

‘He… did not want them looking at him,’ Kit suggested.

‘Maybe. Eyes are very symbolic. The windows to the soul. Practically, driving a weapon through the eye is a quick way to the brain, but both eyes seems more like it’s part of the pattern. He’s symbolically blinding them, as you suggested, but is it to stop them seeing him, or maybe to stop them seeing anything else ever again?’

‘I will initiate a file for processing a psychological profile,’ Kit stated.

‘Great. Send a private message to Helen Dillan asking her to come to my apartment in the morning. Uh, later in the morning. I want her take on this once we have all the forensics in.’ Fox lifted her eyes again, this time to the wall above the head of the bed. Some of the heavy, red lipstick that still covered Hopethorne’s lips had been used to write a message on the rose-pink paint. ‘No Escape.’ It was that which had alerted Kit to the probable link. ‘Yeah, but no escape for whom?’

~~~

‘Ivers is going to be so pissed off,’ Dillan said as she unzipped her jacket.

‘Yeah, probably,’ Fox replied. ‘So, before you take that jacket off, think about it and decide if you want any part in–’

‘Bitch stole my case,’ Dillan snapped. ‘Hell! She retroactively stole my cases. You’re within your rights to call in expert witnesses and consultants, and she can go spin on it.’ The detective purposefully finished yanking down the zip and then slipped the heavy leather off her shoulders, handing it to the spider-like robot waiting to receive it. Somehow, Fox felt the little cropped T-shirt with the purple and green butterfly design under it did not quite fit Dillan’s persona, but there it was.

‘Okay, I’d like to take you through what we got from the scene this morning. I’ve had four hours’ sleep so far, so give me a break if I’m a bit slow. Kit’s going to do most of the talking.’

‘And supply a lot of coffee,’ Kit added.

‘Did you get doughnuts this time?’ Dillan asked.

‘Kitchen counter,’ Fox replied, ‘but you might want to wait until you’ve seen the crime scene visuals.’

‘That… is a very good point. Okay’ – she paused to pull in a deep breath through her nose and let it out – ‘let’s do this.’

There was space in Fox’s uncluttered apartment to project the bed and the immediate area around it directly into their live environment. Dillan winced once as the initial view hit her visual cortex, but then she set her jaw and began to examine the details. Fox stood back, letting Dillan work. The spider frame returned, handing her up a mug of coffee, but she said nothing, not wishing to disturb Dillan’s thoughts.

‘There are obvious differences, but a lot of similarity,’ Dillan said after a few minutes. ‘I think the differences are even a similarity now I say it aloud. He uses what he can find, for the most part. The first scene Ivers showed me he used the ice pick to scratch his message. He got that from the scene. Here he’s used lipstick, hers, and I assume the knives came from her kitchen.’

‘There were similar ones in a drawer,’ Fox responded, and then pointed to the little spiderbot which was holding up a mug.

‘Thanks. So it all seems like it’s spur of the moment. He suddenly decides to rape and murder someone.’

‘The first time, yes, but he’s planned this one, at least partially. Kit…’

‘Blood analysis detected breakdown products from a narcotic,’ Kit supplied. ‘Trade name Zanvidax-paracyl-B.’

‘I know that stuff,’ Dillan said. ‘They used to use it in riot-suppression grenades. It’s a little too effective. A few too many cases of people suffocating or injuring themselves when it took effect.’

‘Yes. It is still used in some personal protection aerosols, and can be deployed under certain conditions by trained NAPA or military personnel.’

‘So he got himself something to put them under while he tied them down.’

‘Yes, and the cord used to do the tying did not come from any location in the apartment.’

‘So he’s planning it, to some extent anyway. Okay, thanks, I think I’ve seen enough of that for a while. We can go through the details without the visuals.’ Dillan let out a breath as the images vanished from the viron. ‘And I want a doughnut.’ She started for the kitchen, continuing as she did so. ‘He’s worked out he needs to act fast if he’s going to use the gas. Zanvidax only guarantees a few minutes of unconsciousness. He needs to have his bondage equipment ready as soon as he hits them.’

‘But he wants them awake for the main event,’ Fox said. ‘If he didn’t care, he could have used something longer-lasting.’

‘Rapists usually care. What’s the point in raping someone who doesn’t know it? Especially if you’re going to kill them. It’s about control, superiority, dominance, humiliation.’

‘True. So he’s selected his drug to give him time to get them secured, and then he wakes them up and it takes him plenty of time to work his way up to killing them.’

Dillan frowned. ‘How long?’

‘That is not entirely clear,’ Kit supplied, ‘but she was assaulted more than once. Pythia estimates three to six hours from the pattern of abrasion on the limbs and back, and from analysis of the apartment’s communication logs. Miss Hopethorne was a prolific user of telepresence when at home, and she was quiet from just after eighteen hundred until the time of her death at twenty-two fifty-six.’

‘Remus took him maybe ninety minutes. She was raped once. It seemed like he knocked her out, stripped and tied her, got her to wake up and then raped her, and then he was panicking for a while before he killed her. Now it’s five hours of repeated… shit.’

‘He’s definitely escalating,’ Fox said. ‘He’s getting more confident, taking his time. The first one was impulse, pure impulse. Now he’s thinking it through, planning it out, and then taking his time with his victims.’

‘Ivers,’ Dillan said. ‘She caught the first scene. If he made mistakes, he made them there and she’s got the most important information locked away in her files.’

‘Maybe,’ Fox conceded, ‘but she’s basing her investigation on a continuation of Doran’s killings, no matter how stupid that is. Kit, what do you have on the previous cases?’

‘Wait, previous cases? Before Doran?’

‘I received information indicating that Peter Doran might not be the first murderer to fit this pattern, Detective,’ Kit said. ‘I have been researching the earlier cases, as suggested by a conspiracy meme which has picked up a reasonable population in the last year or so.’

‘A conspiracy meme? You’re kidding, right?’

‘Hear her out,’ Fox said, moving around to sit on the sofa. ‘She said she’d got something interesting and I think that’s worth listening to.’

‘Okay.’ Dillan circled the sofa and settled down with a doughnut in one hand and her coffee in the other. ‘What do you have?’

‘It starts with the murder of Hector Rossi,’ Kit began, and worked her way through the same information she had given Fox before. ‘With help from Palladium, I have been able to verify the circumstances of almost all of the homicides the internet is attributing to this “demon killer.” Some do not, on close inspection, fit the pattern.’

‘And the linking theme is the message?’ Dillan asked.

‘That does link all the crimes in some shape or form. I was able to add another to the pattern myself. A shopkeeper in Toronto went on a spree, gunning down shoppers in the arcology mall where he worked. Reports indicate that he was laughing and shouting “you can’t escape me,” in French, as he worked his way through the area. That was on February third of this year.’

‘Three or four months after Doran, about two months before the first of the new ones.’

‘That kind of spacing fits with the other verified attacks. The meme suggests that the variation is due to the time it takes for the “demon” to turn its victim evil.’

‘There’s that thing about demons again. You can’t be telling me you believe in demons, Kit?’

‘I believe… that I have discovered another connection which makes the demon idea more relevant. All the people affected by this phenomenon had LANVisor-Six implants.’

‘All of them?’ Fox asked. ‘A Brazilian farmer had one?’

‘That was what convinced me,’ Kit replied, beaming. ‘It took me some effort to track down that information. Wearable interfaces are far more common down there. Few people have implants and fewer still would have something like a LANVisor-Six. The man’s wife entered him into a contest and the top prize was an implant computer. The local village’s news blogger featured it because he was the first man in the area to have such a device fitted.’

‘Huh. I bet they won’t get many more takers. You’re sure about this?’

‘I am… I cannot give a one hundred per cent assurance, Fox. I have not been able to determine that all of the killers had the LANVisor implant, but I was able to track down a significant number and they all did. On pure mathematics, I can give an eighty per cent probability, but it takes only one to disprove the theory.’

Fox nodded, biting at her upper lip as she considered. ‘Contact Jackson, see if he can fit us in for a consultation. I want to know if what we’re talking about is even possible.’

‘Us?’ Dillan almost squeaked.

‘Yeah, you’re in on this too. Jackson doesn’t bite or anything.’

‘But he’s the high director big-wig type of one of the most powerful companies in the world!’

‘So? I’m the CIO of his security company and you don’t seem to have trouble talking to me.’

~~~

‘Well,’ Jackson Martins said, ‘it’s not really possible for an implant to force someone to commit murder.’

‘A lot of conspiracy memes would say you’re wrong, Jackson,’ Fox said. She was doing the talking because Kit had lost her nerve in the face of her creator’s father and Dillan was busy gawking at the view from the solarium.

‘And generally they would be wrong. There are some specifically designed devices which can subsume control of someone’s body, but they are distinctly different from a standard implant device and my understanding is that Peter Doran’s implant was thoroughly checked. Modifications to allow him to be puppeted would have been uncovered.’

Fox pursed her lips while Kit looked crestfallen. ‘So, you’re saying there’s nothing to it?’

‘I am not saying that at all. I’m saying that this “demon” is not directly forcing people to commit murder. There is another popular meme type associated with computer and virtual interface implants.’

‘Brainwashing,’ Kit said, suddenly getting back in the conversation.

‘Precisely, Kit. The commonest of the memes involves a virus which causes an implanted AI to go rogue. With the ability to manipulate its owner’s sensory environment at will, it’s a relatively trivial matter, uh, for a given value of “trivial,” for the corrupted AI to brainwash the human into… Well, transformation into a serial killer is, perhaps, the commonest myth. You understand that there are no verified cases of this ever happening.’

‘What would it need to make it work?’ Fox asked.

‘The main difficulty would be in gaining unrestricted access to the implant. There are other things which would help, like a target human predisposed to the kind of activity the brainwashing is meant to generate, but an outside agent getting full control of an implant is, or should be, impossible. There are very specific limitations built into the firmware of the device which are designed to block that access from anything which is loaded in from outside.’

‘Most virus downloads fail on that,’ Kit stated. ‘They are marked on entering memory and they can actually downgrade the access of the primary AI if they attempt to execute in that space.’ The kitsune looked at Jackson. ‘There have been instances of a virus bypassing that kind of control.’

‘Agreed,’ Jackson replied, ‘but those were in laboratory conditions using a multilayer payload. The complexity of the kind of hack we are talking about would mean an exceptionally large initial load and, in practice, implants monitor for that kind of unexpectedly large download and isolate them.’

‘So this would require a compromised system. A vulnerability in the LANVisor-Six could account for the ability of this “demon” to affect people and give a reason for the link between them.’

Jackson was silent, but Dillan got over her desire to stare out the window. ‘This would be great, but is there such a vulnerability, and if not, what do we think anyone’s going to think when MarTech suggests there is?’

‘You are quite correct, Detective Dillan,’ Jackson replied. ‘There are no known vulnerabilities in the LANVisor series. It will be suspected that I am making trouble for a competitor if I take this to NAPA.’

‘Makes too much damn sense though,’ Dillan continued. ‘If Jackson Martins thinks it could work, I think Kit’s come up with a compelling case for this scenario. There has to be some way to make this work.’

‘We have to hand this over to NAPA soon,’ Fox said. ‘I’ll arrange a meeting and get it started. There’s no point in putting it off and I can present the theory to them, offer to help with the case.’

‘They’ll refuse,’ Dillan grumbled.

‘Probably. So I’ll arrange another meeting to follow that one. If NAPA won’t listen, I’ll take it to the UNTPP.’

‘The UniFeds? What are they going to do about it?’

‘The cases are international. We’ve got Brazil, America, République Française du Québec. I know how to talk international cop and they’ll listen, if only to be able to thumb their noses at NAPA. Would you be willing to work with them on analysing the LANVisor, Jackson?’

‘Of course. If they’ll accept the help.’

Fox smiled. ‘They’ll accept the help. Trust me.’

19th April.

Despite all the pressure to hand over the case, NAPA was unable to make anyone available for a meeting to do so until the following Monday morning. They insisted on holding the meeting at precinct 18’s building and, Fox knew from the floor assignment of the conference room, were involving IA. That, in itself, raised red flags and Fox left instructions with Kit to have Inspector Robbard’s profile checked before leaving for the meeting.

Sure enough Robbard was waiting for her at the elevator and Ivers was in the conference room. Also as expected, neither of them was pleased to see Dillan with Fox.

‘What’s she doing here?’ Ivers snapped as Dillan walked in.

‘At least try to show some professional courtesy, Inspector Ivers,’ Fox suggested. ‘Detective Dillan is here because she investigated the Doran case and was present for the three disputed homicides you took off her.’

‘Those have been determined to be the same perpetrator as the Remus and Clifton homicides,’ Robbard stated. ‘There is no dispute–’

‘Determined by whom?’ Fox broke in. ‘Given that the MO has changed entirely between these cases, it’s difficult to see how anyone could reach that conclusion. My investigation suggests that this goes back a lot further than Doran anyway. The case is almost certainly international in scope.’

‘Are you fucking nuts?!’ Ivers barked, climbing to her feet. Fox was watching Robbard and saw the flash of surprise and irritation before it was covered with a smooth, diplomatic smile.

‘Let’s all just settle down and proceed with this in an orderly fashion,’ Robbard said. ‘Miss Meridian is here to present the evidence she’s gathered on the Hopethorne homicide. We can, at least, hear what she has to say.’

Fox pulled out a chair and settled into it, noting that Dillan made sure Fox was between her and the other cops. ‘My PA will handle the presentation,’ Fox said, ‘if you’ll accept the v-tagged data.’

It took Kit twenty minutes to go through the evidence gathered from the crime scene. Fox had been a little surprised to discover that Kit had an alternate wardrobe, apparently designed for business meetings, so the tiny, puffed-out skirt had been replaced with a pencil one that fell to mid-thigh, and the knee-high boots were now heeled pumps. The lace-edged jacket was gone, but she was still in the same bodice, cuffs, and collar, and her tail still emerged from her back, twisting and curling as she spoke. Fox watched Robbard and Ivers as they watched Kit.

The IA agent, she could not bring herself to think of him as a cop, watched the presentation intently, but seemed to be paying too little actual attention to it. His eyes were a little glazed, only showing any animation when Kit’s tail curled around one of her legs. He was not really interested in what Kit had to say, and he was not quite keeping the expression off his face. The presenter was of more real interest than the presentation. His mind was already made up, but right now Fox could come to no definitive conclusion as to why he was not open to new evidence.

Ivers was another matter. This, Fox thought, was an ambitious, politically minded detective, but she was a cop and she wanted to see the murderer locked up. Fox could see her mind working as she took in the details Kit was laying out. The question here was how far the ambition and political drive would outweigh her desire to see justice done.

There was also a hint of envy on the homicide cop’s face. ‘That’s quite a report you’ve compiled in a fairly short period of time,’ Ivers said as Kit concluded the first part of her presentation.

‘I work for the best technology company in the world,’ Fox replied, ‘and my caseload is a lot smaller than yours.’

‘Huh. He’s definitely escalating. The earlier scenes–’

‘Inspector,’ Robbard interrupted. ‘We are under no obligation to reveal details of previous incidents to Miss Meridian.’

Ivers looked at him for a second. ‘The earlier scenes were less violent. He used the same drug in the second case, but scavenged the binding material, and we think he was with the second victim for less than an hour.’

‘And then, of course,’ Dillan said, ‘he’s gone from killing a mixture of targets to raping and killing exclusively female victims within a fairly narrow age range.’

‘Yes, but–’

‘After four attacks, he’s now decided that some planning might be in order rather than impulse killing people who annoy him. He’s rapidly progressing along that course when he showed no signs of it before.’

‘You are out of line, Detective,’ Robbard growled. ‘We have determined without a shadow of a doubt that–’

‘I’d love to see the report on that,’ Fox said, smiling. ‘I’d imagine it’s fascinating reading, but I expect that it’ll be hidden behind “operational considerations” for the next several years. Kit, let’s move on. Give us the previous case list.’

‘Of course, Fox,’ Kit replied and dived into the trail of evidence she had uncovered. This time around Ivers looked perplexed, with a growing undercurrent of alarm appearing as the relative solidity of Kit’s argument became apparent. Robbard did not look surprised enough for Fox’s liking, and he definitely appeared to be annoyed.

‘You’ve taken an internet conspiracy meme and fleshed it out to support this ludicrous claim of a problem with a well-respected piece of technology which your employer happens to be competing with?’ The rhetorical nature of the question and the sarcastic tone were fairly obvious.

‘The chain of logic is solid,’ Fox replied. ‘Kit has obtained the data through legitimate sources and checked everything.’

‘It makes sense,’ Ivers stated. ‘I mean, it makes no sense, but the case is well made and it’s the best theory we have on how this is progressing.’

‘It’s ridiculous!’ Robbard almost shouted.

Ivers shrugged. ‘If this… pattern of behaviour is being spread by some sort of agent on the internet, it explains the additional cases and it means we aren’t looking for a leak in NAPA, which made no sense. Why leak to some individual? To the media, sure, but not some guy who decides to use it to copy the MO.’

‘The only link this AI has found is a vague repetition of this “no escape” theme.’

‘The only link you have between the deaths I’m investigating is that message.’ Ivers was clearly getting more annoyed with the IA man now. ‘There are no other links. How do you want this to go, Robbard? Is the connection the message or not?’

Robbard got to his feet. ‘NAPA thanks you for supplying your very complete forensic analysis of the Hopethorne crime scene, Miss Meridian. Control of the scene will be handed over to Inspector Ivers. Further assistance from Palladium Security Services will–’

‘Be most welcome,’ Ivers broke in. ‘As the primary investigator on this case, I would value cooperation between our agencies in the apprehension of this criminal.’

Robbard flashed her a vicious glare, which she ignored, and then stalked out of the room.

‘You’re going to catch flak for that,’ Dillan said.

‘I can handle Robbard,’ Ivers replied. ‘I’ll get the case reports, all of them, sent through via channels. Your PA can slot them into her profile and see if anything clicks. Might take a couple of days.’

Fox nodded. ‘We can call it technical consultation.’ She held out a hand. ‘Nice meeting you, Inspector Ivers.’

‘I still don’t like her that much,’ Dillan grumbled as they dropped through the building in the elevator a few minutes later.

‘She’s ambitious and she plays politics too much,’ Fox replied. ‘Her main reason for siding with me is that she figures she’ll get the perp that much faster. She may be looking to boost her reputation with one of the two big players in private security ahead of this privatisation vote, but she probably won’t neglect Wayden either.’

‘And you say you’re not into politics…’ Fox gave an annoyed grunt in response to that comment. ‘What’s next?’

‘You go back to work. I have a meeting with UNTPP this afternoon.’

~~~

The United Nations Trans-Planetary Police had their New York offices in a tall spire of a building set on Governors Island not that far from the precinct 19 HQ. The New York Tower had been put up to provide offices for administration personnel, but the shrinking government of America had resulted in the tower being oversized for its job. Space had been let out in the building to various governmental and pseudo-governmental agencies. A number of UN functions were run from there.

Fox had not been a member of the UNTPP for over two years, but one of the guards on the floor she was directed to snapped off a salute as she stepped off the elevator and then led her through the corridors to a conference room which had coffee and Danish pastries waiting. She got to wait all of two minutes before the man she was meeting appeared through the door.

‘Captain Meridian,’ he said, using her old UNTPP rank, ‘I’m Captain Deveraux. I head up this station house.’ He was quite something: he gave Sam a run for his money in the looks department with a firm body showing through a well-tailored suit. There was a hint of an accent in his voice, probably French, but heavily softened by time. His face was hard, angular, with prominent cheek bones, cool blue eyes, and a slim nose. His mouth seemed quite large, enhanced by a bright smile at the moment. His hair was blonde, falling to his shoulders and in a thin fringe of long bangs over his eyes. And he wore a lot of black.

‘It’s just Miss Meridian,’ Fox replied, taking his offered hand. ‘I haven’t been a captain for years.’

His smile remained, but his eyes flickered with a calculating intelligence. ‘One of the executive officers of MarTech’s security wing now though.’

‘Yeah, well… Me and my assistant are the investigation division of Palladium. I had a falling out with NAPA, just as I had one with the UNTPP.’

Deveraux nodded. ‘Politics. We all hate it, and we all end up playing it.’

Fox shrugged. ‘If everyone hated it, I’d probably still be in the Army. I’d definitely still be with the UNTPP. I have something for you, Captain. A potential international crime issue. It’s already cost lives in a number of countries, including this one.’

‘Why come to us with this? Yes, we’re supposed to handle that kind of criminal activity, but I’m sure NAPA would jump at the chance to pursue this.’

‘Yeah. I’ve been to NAPA regarding the current string of homicides, but this goes back a lot further and… Let’s just say that there’s a political element to this one. I need an unbiased party looking into the wider implications.’

‘What implications, Miss Meridian?’

Fox flashed him a smile. ‘You can call me Fox.’

‘Jason.’

‘Jason, right. Kit, let’s show Jason what you’ve uncovered.’

20th April.

Fox sat on her sofa, drinking coffee, while her image sat at a virtual conference room table. The image was drinking coffee too, but it was dressed in jacket and jeans while the real Fox had not bothered with anything more than her bodysuit so far that morning. This was the Palladium catch-up meeting for the week. Everyone was there via telepresence, including Jackson, who was reporting to the management team rather than being boss of the corporate group.

‘I’ve received a request for assistance from the UNTPP regarding the LANVisor analysis,’ Jackson informed them. ‘We decided to handle it as a consultation exercise with data exchanges being managed by Fox’s investigation division. The work is to be carried out by MarTech Technologies personnel, because they have the technical skill.’

‘How’s the budget for that being managed?’ Eaves asked.

‘There’s a UNTPP consultation fee coming through to Palladium. We’ll need to handle internal transfers to Technologies for their time and resources. MarTech Group will handle any costs above and beyond, if that becomes necessary. I’ve spoken to Mariel and we’re taking this as an exercise in building bridges with external law enforcement. She’s putting together a budget proposal for the forthcoming vote anyway.’

Fox listened as the chatter about budgets and funding continued on. Her gaze flicked around to Vaughn, sitting nearby in one of her business suits: a pale pink blouse this time. Pulling up a side window in-vision, Fox established a private message link and dropped a text message across to Vaughn: In your bra and panties today? She watched as Vaughn shuffled a little in her seat, though there was no other outward indication of embarrassment.

No, appeared in the text window a second later. Then, a second after: I didn’t get around to the bra.

Fox had to stop herself bursting into laughter. Naughty girl. Fox added a grinning emoticon for good measure, but the money talk seemed to be dying down and she wanted to get them off the subject if she could. ‘Have we had any further results from the hunter-killer bots?’

‘They nailed three more of the infiltration units,’ Jarvis said. ‘That could be all of them, but we’re continuing to run sweeps. We know they operate in a dormant mode most of the time, but we’ve caught one moving. They seem to be taking their time climbing the tower.’

Fox grimaced. ‘I’m betting on two more. We may not spot them until they emerge, but keep looking.’

‘If they come out of any of the vents in the computer rooms, we’ve got them. No doubt on that one, but I’d prefer to nail them before they get there.’

‘Nothing much I can do on that case until we snag one.’

‘Alice?’ Eaves said. ‘Anything out-of-band to report on the facilities side?’

‘Nothing that isn’t covered in the weeklies. We’re expecting the immediate updates on Mister Clarion’s building to be completed by the end of this week, Fox. He may wish to consider where he wants to go from there. I’d be happy to draw up contract papers if he wants us to handle maintenance.’

‘I’ll talk to him. He’ll probably drop around for coffee later anyway.’

‘Good,’ Eaves said. ‘Any other business?’

Fox’s eyes flicked to the text window she still had open. Lucky girl was printed in it along with a grinning emoticon.

22nd April.

When the door opened, she looked at him as though she had no idea who he was or why he was standing there. Her expression cleared and her mouth smiled though her eyes did not. ‘Oh, yeah, we’re going through the… Come in. You know where everything is, right?’

He fingered the cylinder in his pocket and thought of the carefully cut lengths of cord in his briefcase. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘Great. I have some things to do here. Sorry, I totally forgot you were coming over.’

‘It’s not a problem.’ No, it would not be a problem. In a few minutes, he would have her full attention. ‘There is one thing.’ His hand closed around the aerosol cylinder, pulling it from his pocket.

She turned and smiled at him, a sort of baffled smile, as though she could not imagine what it was he wanted to say. ‘What?’ And then she let out a gasp as the vapour washed over her face. ‘What?!’ She stumbled backward, the chemical working quickly. She fell almost immediately and was entirely unconscious in a second or two. The drug was designed to incapacitate muggers and it was very effective on women who weighed about as much as a wet sack.

‘Now you’ll remember me,’ he growled as he began to drag her through her apartment.

23rd April.

‘We have the case files through from Inspector Ivers,’ Kit announced as Fox emerged from the shower.

‘You’ve started working the data into our records?’

‘Yes. Interestingly, none of the victims have had any data surviving in their implants. Where there was no physical damage, a virus was uploaded which wiped the data.’

‘Even in the Remus case?’

‘Yes, Fox. I’m going over that file in some detail. I assume you would like to as well.’

‘Yeah,’ Fox replied, sighing a little as she pulled a new bodysuit from a drawer. ‘Murder with breakfast. It’s always appetising.’

‘Yes. Oh!’

Fox paused with the suit halfway up her thighs. ‘Kit?’

‘I’m scanning the news feeds. It appears that there may be another file to follow.’

‘Damn. See if Ivers can be reached.’

There was a pause and then Ivers’ face appeared in-vision. She had not bothered to mask the video and she looked tired. ‘You’ve seen the news feeds then,’ Ivers said. ‘I’ve been up all night. Just wrapped the initial report and I’m going to bed while the labs do their thing, but it’s our guy.’

‘Same message?’ Fox asked.

‘Magic marker on a mirror over the bed. We think he had her for about five hours.’ There was a pause. ‘He’s getting more violent, Meridian. He had her for five hours. Five fucking hours and he used most of the time this time. I’ll see you get the reports as soon as I have them all in.’

‘We got the other ones today. Kit’s started working on them.’

‘Good luck. I think we’re going to need it.’

Fox let the connection die. She could recognise a woman on the verge of falling asleep on her feet. ‘Ivers said the second victim, Clifton, was drugged the same way as Hopethorne.’

‘Yes,’ Kit replied. ‘The files confirm that.’

‘Can you program biosensor systems to watch for the kind of neurochemical response the drug produces in a victim?’

‘I couldn’t, but someone at MarTech might be able to do so.’

‘Right. Get the data over to the tower. I want all our managed buildings scanning for people affected that way, if it’s possible. Get them to put a rush on it, Kit. He’s shortening the interval between kills.’

~~~

Fox sat amid the remains of murder. Kit had constructed a very basic viron in her own server and it was acting as a virtual murder board on a grand scale. The immediate area was focused on the immediate crimes, the four most recent ones, since they were the ones which had to be stopped. Beyond them, connected via ephemeral lines of light rather than threads, were all the other related cases.

‘It’s not enough to stop this new host,’ Fox mused as she wandered through the maze of data, examining connections and details. ‘I don’t think this is a virus we’re dealing with, Kit.’

‘If not a virus, then what?’

‘It’s got more intelligence than that, and it doesn’t just propagate. It began happy with a single incident from each host. All the way back to Pallo and Rossi, there are multiple deaths, but it’s all in one incident. And then it got to Doran and it kept a hold on him, kept him killing. Put effort into making sure he could keep going. When he was caught it went back to the single, large incident.’

‘Toronto.’

‘Yeah, but that didn’t satisfy it this time, or it wanted to leave a gap. It came back to New York and found someone else it could manipulate into killing again, and again. Now it’s mixing in sexual assault… That could be the host. Yeah, I think that’s the lever it’s used to get him going. Doran was annoyed, angry with the world, so he was easy enough to turn violent. This one is timid, easily ignored. He’s quiet, a loner, and he knows these women, but they barely know he exists.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘The blinding, the increasing violence. He wants them to remember him, even though he’s going to kill them. He wants his face to be the last thing they ever see. He wants them to damn well know who he is before he kills them. He’s angry, like Doran, but with this one it’s the rejection that’s important. This time, the rape is about sex. It’s not just sex, it’s taking these women who would never look twice at him, it’s control and domination… Might be he’s religious.’

Kit’s brow furrowed and then: ‘If it were a simple matter of sex, he could hire someone. He wants the sex, but can’t or won’t purchase it.’

‘Yeah, so he has some moral or emotional qualm about professionals. It can’t be the money. These people don’t know anyone without the money for a pro once a month. We’re not talking a sprawler here. This guy wears good suits, maybe not the best, but good. He probably doesn’t have much sense of style, and he’s not above-average in looks either. He’s older than they are because he’s had time to get irritated at the way they behave.’ Fox’s eyes narrowed. ‘The way they dress, flaunting their bodies in short skirts and tight dresses. The way they move and act. They spend money like it grows on trees. Yes, he’s not in their class, socially, but he thinks he should be. They don’t deserve their money because they’ve never worked for it. You know, justice of a sort keeps cropping up.’

‘It is not universal,’ Kit replied, ‘but it does appear in several of the cases. Of them all, the first is the most obvious. Mister Pallo intended to make Mister Rossi pay for his crimes. The policeman who went on a rampage.’

‘And now this guy who wants to make his victims pay for being dilettantes. Maybe he sees them as sexually promiscuous and is punishing them for that, but I’m not sure I buy that. If he won’t go to a pro, then would he have sex with someone he feels is acting like a whore? I kind of doubt it. What do we have on people they all knew?’

Kit’s face screwed up. ‘Unfortunately, the MCD “set” is highly incestuous. These women have a considerable number of friends and acquaintances in common. LifeWeb is filled with connections between them. If we include personal employees, that list grows larger.’

‘You got the friends and acquaintances from the gossip feeds and personal info pages, yes?’

‘That is correct. The sociometric structure of this group could probably keep a memetics specialist engaged for decades. LifeWeb is an exceptionally good source given its mechanisms for sociometric analysis.’

‘Well, cross-reference the data against the murder dates. I bet you can cut out some of the list because they were out at some club instead of committing rape and murder.’

‘Oo! That’s an excellent suggestion.’

Fox gave her beaming assistant a smile. ‘Yeah, but I don’t think it’ll get us anywhere. For once I agree that the VIPs are probably not involved in this. Our guy is an introvert, and I’m willing to bet that none of the men these women knew has an introverted bone in their body.’

~~~

‘How’s the acting thing going?’ Fox asked.

Marie blinked at her, the neon streams of 27Lex appearing to reflect in her green eyes; Fox had to admit that the viron of the club was well constructed. From the dilation of Marie’s pupils, Fox suspected the subliminals were working on the younger woman too. ‘I’m doing weekly coaching sessions with someone Sam’s friend recommended. He thinks I’ve got promise.’

‘Isabella wants to get her in on a few casting calls,’ Sam said from across the booth; they had decided on a booth tonight because they were, theoretically, there to discuss business.

‘Isabella Bournville?’ Fox asked. ‘She’s one of yours, right? I remember the name.’

‘When he said he had an “agent friend,” I didn’t know it was her!’ Marie squeaked.

‘Isabella is a discerning woman,’ Sam said. ‘She saw you because I asked if she would be okay with passing on some advice. If she thinks you’re worth more of her time than that, then she sees potential. Now you need to make the most of it.’

‘Oh, I intend to. Really.’ Marie tugged at the high collar of the tight, pink plazkin top she had selected for the evening. ‘Is it hot in here or is it just me?’

Fox let out a little snort of laughter. ‘I’m sure Sam will agree with me, but you’re pretty hot.’ Marie’s cheeks flared scarlet. ‘I think the memetic programming in this place is getting to you. Sam, why do we keep coming here?’

Sam flicked his eyes around the club. They were on the bar level at the top, which was actually fairly subtle. Below was a dance floor which was, thanks to the v-tag components and sensors, transparent, which meant that the patrons on the lowest level got the benefit of all the subliminal tags and a rather explicit view of the dancers above. Around the sides of the bottom floor there were private booths which could be hired and closed off from the main club. 27Lex was not especially subtle about its chosen theme. ‘Nothing new has opened up that piqued my interest and I like teasing people with overclocked libidos.’

‘That’s mean,’ Marie decided. ‘You could give people a heart attack or something. They could collapse from frustration.’

Sam favoured her with an amused smirk. ‘Thank you, Marie. I believe they have EMTs on site, just in case. Anyway, Fox does a quite adequate job of frustrating the patrons, and you just need a little more confidence in yourself.’

‘Me?! Oh I…’ Marie trailed off as both Sam and Fox stared at her.

‘Actresses,’ Sam stated flatly, ‘require self-confidence.’

‘Especially where they have a right to be self-confident,’ Fox added.

Marie swallowed. ‘You wanted to talk about the house?’

Fox smiled. ‘Yeah. Alice says the first wave of updates was completed this afternoon. I think some of the paintwork is still drying, but they’ve been over all the wiring and brought that up to spec, and the security system has been upgraded. They’ve got that hooked through to Palladium’s local monitoring suite for now, kind of as a customer service.’

‘And because the CIO is a friend of the house’s owner?’ Sam suggested.

‘I don’t think it’s stretching their resources any, but Alice wants to know if you want the place on maintenance.’ Fox’s lips curled. ‘I think she’d be happy to come over from Chicago and negotiate the contract personally, but she asked me to broach the subject.’

Sam’s brow knitted and he sipped from his wine glass before leaning back against the cushioned, jet-black seat. ‘And here’s where it starts getting difficult. I’ve got money to keep the place ticking over, but it needs some heavy work doing on it. If I refit the whole place, I’ll be pressed to keep it running. If I don’t, then I’d be pissing away the money Felix left to live in decaying splendour. To be honest, if I get Palladium in, or someone else, to do all the work that’s needed, I’d end up having to sell the place, which would probably leave me with enough money to retire, but it’s not what Felix wanted.’

Marie sagged in her seat. ‘That sucks vacuum. It’s a shame my career hasn’t taken off. I could help keep the place going. I mean, I’d maybe want a little more space, but that’s what you need, a housemate.’ Her eyes brightened and she sat up straight, turning to Fox. ‘Hey! What about you?’

‘What about me?’ Fox asked.

‘Your company’s doing the work, and you could move rooms around during the refit. You could have a floor each, so privacy isn’t a problem and you’d have room for… meetings and stuff like that. Corporate stuff, you know?’

‘No that’d never… I just told Palladium I didn’t want to move into one of the MarTech towers and here I am looking at a house in the MCD. Someone would bitch.’

‘But Palladium would be running this house. It would be almost like you were moving into one of their buildings.’

‘Girl’s got a point, Fox,’ Sam said. ‘We’re in and out of each other’s apartments as it is, so we know we can live with each other. You would lose your glorious view of the dam.’

‘There, see? That’s a major downside right there.’ Fox took a drink, mostly to let herself consider the idea. ‘I’ll talk to Alice and Ryan. Garth won’t be worried, I don’t think, and Jackson will probably work with whatever I decide if it makes any sense.’

‘I’ll think about it too,’ Sam said. ‘It’s a workable idea, but I should probably think about it before I decide on anything permanent. Besides–’ He stopped suddenly, frowning, and Fox was about to ask whether something was wrong when Kit appeared beside him on the booth seat.

‘Fox,’ the avatar said urgently, ‘the security system on Sam’s house just triggered. I believe that is why Sam is frowning.’

Sam nodded. ‘Someone’s tried to break in. I got a notification that a rapid response unit has been dispatched to investigate. What’s a rapid response unit?’

‘I guess we should go over there and you can see for yourself,’ Fox replied, slipping out of the booth.

~~~

A rapid response unit was a vectored-thrust cyberframe aircraft, sleek, black, and, by the time Fox, Sam, and Marie arrived at the house, settled into a menacing guard posture just outside the front door.

‘That’s… a mean-looking robot,’ Marie said. ‘Are those micromissile pods?’

‘Minimissile, but that’s a technicality,’ Fox replied. ‘Anything over twenty millimetres is mini, and those are thirty. Loaded with bindwire warheads, I believe.’

‘Voice and implant ID verified,’ the frame responded. ‘CIO Tara Meridian, you are correct. I carry eight thirty-millimetre infrared homing bindwire missiles. Lethal countermeasures are also available in the form of a four-millimetre caseless automatic gun pod.’

Fox smiled at the machine. ‘Thank you for the clarification. Report on status, please.’

‘At twenty-three zero six this date an attempted security breach was detected at this address. There were no intruders in evidence when I arrived at twenty-three twelve. I have long-range sensor data of two individuals leaving the scene. Perimeter analysis indicates that the attempt was a failure.’

‘Okay.’ Fox’s gaze flicked over the scene. ‘I’ll take it from here.’

‘Do you have a name?’ Sam asked.

‘Mister Clarion,’ the unit replied, ‘this cyberframe is designated RRU dash NY dash seven, and I am one of seventeen security agents currently assigned to duty within the New York Metro area. I can provide my AI serial number if you require it.’

‘No, that’s fine. Thanks for the quick response.’

‘Just part of the service, sir,’ the machine said. ‘Please stand back.’ The ducted fan units on its stubby wings kicked into life and it lifted off, rising to about fifty metres before it vectored into level flight and, apparently, kicked in some sort of jet engine, rocketing off through the night sky toward Long Island.

‘Class three,’ Kit observed, appearing beside the group. ‘No sense of humour to speak of, which is why it didn’t point out that the fast arrival is in the name. Should I get Pythia over here, Fox?’

‘I really doubt there’s much point,’ Fox replied. ‘Put through a request for all the security camera data for the last thirty minutes in this area. Get the long-range video from that unit checked against our other images.’ She turned, looking around at the buildings across the street. ‘We’ll do a visual inspection of the doors and windows, just to be sure, but I think the new security stopped them.’ There were a lot of lights on in the windows, but three buildings south, one house was quite dark.

‘Lucky it was finished today,’ Marie said. ‘I know I wouldn’t have been comfortable going out tonight if it hadn’t been. I don’t think I have been out since the last break-in.’

‘No,’ Fox said. ‘This is probably the first time the house has been empty for a while.’

Kit turned to look at Fox. ‘I’ll begin checking property ownership in the area.’

‘Thank you, Kit. I think that might be very interesting.’

Marie’s eyes widened. ‘You think they’ve been watching the house?!’

‘It’s a distinct possibility. Might just be their first big mistake too.’

24th April.

‘The building you spotted,’ Kit said, ‘as well as approximately thirty-three per cent of the property in that area of the MCD, is owned by one Harper Markus August. It is currently unoccupied and being refitted.’

‘August?’ Fox said. ‘That’s an august sort of name.’ She looked at the picture Kit was projecting over the window: August was aging, but slowly. There was no grey in his thick, black hair, but it had the conservative styling of someone born in the last century. His eyes had lost something of their youthful blue and were turning grey. A few wrinkles showed around the eyes and mouth.

‘For an august sort of man. Mister August turned ninety-six last October. He made his money in property deals through the latter part of last century and into the twenty-thirties. He is one of four people who collectively own much of the property within the MCD.’

‘Interesting. Has anyone been in touch with Sam about buying the house? After that Great Park Holdings business, that is.’

Perhaps unconsciously, Kit looked in the direction of Sam’s apartment before replying. ‘Javen says no.’

‘See what Palladium can dig up on Harper August, please. What did we get from street surveillance?’

‘The same two men as before, within reasonable tolerances. They appear to have employed the same camouflage suits. No cameras watch the empty building, but the burglars enter a watched area from that direction. I have requested a cambot be positioned to cover that building and… it is already in place.’

Fox smiled. ‘Nicely done. I have my doubts they’ll come back, but you never know.’ Closing her eyes, she slipped seamlessly into the virtual crime room Kit had created, looking around at the web of connections. It was looking thinner. ‘You’ve managed to cut down on quite a few of these.’

‘As you suggested, I was able to eliminate a number of them given documentary evidence of their presence at other sites at the time of the attacks.’ For whatever reason, Kit had decided to wear her business suit to the crime room, and she carried a little tablet PC, which she used to make notes occasionally. Fox had decided not to say anything yet. ‘I was even able to apply the same technique to several of the less… extrovert potentials by examining blogs and personal diary feeds of friends and relatives.’

‘We’re mostly down to the employees now, which is what I expected. What have we got? Two clothing designers.’

‘Unsurprising,’ Kit commented. ‘These are two of the four most popular designers this season. I checked and neither of them was in favour over the winter.’

‘Okay, drop them. Our guy has probably been stewing over these women for years. They all use the same bank.’

‘Again, unsurprising. My research indicates that banking among residents of the MCD is split across three banks. Manhattan Consolidated is the second largest, popular with the younger megarich. The victims fit the profile well.’

‘These banks often provide advisors for their clients. See if you can find out who dealt with these women. Financial advisors, account managers, anyone personally handling the client. They might be reluctant. If you’re having difficulty, pass it over to Ivers. NAPA has more pull.’

Kit made a little note on her tablet. ‘Yes, Fox.’

Fox cracked, her lips curling. ‘What’s this?’

‘What’s what?’

‘Well, the pencil skirt and the notepad. You’re an AI, so you don’t need to make notes to remember to do something.’

The kitsune’s face crumpled a little. ‘I was watching some old detective vids. They have murder boards and notebooks… I thought I should look more efficient.’

Fox’s grin broke out completely. ‘You’re always efficient, but it does look good. If you want to go the whole hog, you should get some glasses.’

‘I don’t need glasses.’

‘You don’t need that tablet.’

Kit’s lips pursed. ‘I’ll watch some more videos.’

‘You do that. Okay… They all use MarTech Services for robotics maintenance. Right, well check with Services to see whether anyone regularly maintains their robots, and whether anyone can be traced to the victims’ homes at the times of the murders.’

‘At least that one should be easy.’

‘Would that everything was.’

Alexandria, Niflhel, 25th April.

Fox’s mind was not in it and she knew it. Virtual sex was very much a mental exercise; even if the participants were being fed stimuli which they perceived as physical, the actual process was mental. At least that was how she saw it. Her body did not really participate in the riot of sensory inputs which bombarded her brain; she felt the touch of her partner’s hands, felt his breath on her neck, heard his grunts and whispered words, and his cock filled her seemingly as a physical one would have, but it was like the viron was telling a story to her and if she did not suspend her disbelief in the unreal setting, it did not quite work.

Men, she had always thought, must have more of an issue with reconciling the real and the virtual, given the more obvious physical reactions of the male orgasm. However, men could also be almost guaranteed to be too busy with their own needs to really notice that the woman they were banging was not as into it as she might be. A little burst of pleasure, a small thrill as she drove him over the edge with a couple of quick counterthrusts, helped Fox fake her own climax and left him feeling pleased with himself.

She left him to clean up, leaving quickly and going down to the communal lounge, but when another client started to move toward her, she made apologies and walked out, heading for her little apartment down the street. She was standing on the balcony, looking out across the cerulean view, when there was a knock on the door.

‘Come in, Cleopatra,’ Fox called out.

The door creaked: the wood looked old and the hinges carried a hint of rust about them, the little details which marked a really good viron. ‘How did you know it was me?’ Cleopatra asked as she entered and walked through the lounge-bedroom.

‘Who else?’

‘That’s not an unreasonable point. You seem troubled. I was concerned.’

‘I just have a bunch of things on my mind and… You know, I’m not a cop now so I can talk to people about this stuff. But if any of this turns up in the news feeds, I’ll never talk to you again.’

‘One does not get into the online whoring business without being able to keep a secret.’

‘You’ve seen the news reports on someone killing people in the MCD? It’s pretty big news.’

‘Sex, murder, and rich people? Of course I’ve seen it. You’re not a cop, though.’ The half-naked queen stepped up onto the balcony beside Fox, her gaze on the sea far below them.

‘No, but the third one, Katrina Hopethorne, lived in a building Palladium covers so I was called in to investigate. The NAPA detective covering it had the sense to decide working with us might be a good idea. This guy is getting worse, nastier and faster, and we’ve got nothing. On top of that, I’ve got a friend who seems to be being victimised because he inherited a house. The previous owner was murdered, so someone really wants that building. MCD again.’

‘Money,’ Cleopatra said sagely, ‘is the root of all evil. Which I don’t really believe, but it does tend to be a magnet for trouble. It provokes too many negative emotions in people who don’t have it, or want more of it.’

‘Yeah… Anyway, I’ve got those and a few other things sitting on my mind right now. I don’t think I left anyone unhappy, but I’m not really with this tonight. Not sure why I came.’

Cleopatra’s lips twitched. ‘It would appear that you haven’t, yet. Puns aside, I’d imagine you felt you needed a break. You needed to distract yourself from the problems you have, so you came here to do something different. Unfortunately, you don’t find virtual environments quite as distracting as others do. It’s not uncommon. You are a very grounded woman, Zorra, and you find the virtual world less than the real.’

‘I guess you’re right.’

‘It’s not a bad thing. In a few decades, we may be fighting to keep interactions going in the real world as the technology used in these virons becomes more and more real.’

Fox grinned. ‘You seem pretty grounded yourself.’

‘I have reason to find the virtual world something I like to sink myself into. I spend a lot of time here, or in other virons. However, you’ve expressed a desire to maintain some mystery about my real identity so I won’t explain.’

‘That’s sneaky. Now you’ve got me wondering.’

Cleopatra grinned. ‘Got your mind off your problems for a minute.’

‘That’s very sneaky.’

Vali’s Homestead.

‘I am concerned about her,’ Kit said. ‘She is not sleeping well and I believe that it is the thought that this serial killer could strike again, soon, which is disturbing her.’

‘Zorra is a responsible, morally strong woman,’ Vali replied. They were sitting on the grass outside his farmhouse watching the sunset he had just decided to program in, but he could tell that Kit was not really in the mood for mead and romance. ‘It’s natural for her to empathise with the victims, and to wish to catch her quarry before he can strike again.’

‘It seems more… personal.’

‘Perhaps the sexual element of the crimes? A woman might empathise more with a rape victim?’

‘Maybe. Detective Sandoval did…’ She paused, wondering whether she should share that kind of information with Vali. ‘Detective Sandoval employed chemicals to persuade Zorra to have sex with him. It’s–’

‘Reprehensible,’ Vali interrupted, his young face dark. ‘He deserved worse than he got.’ He looked back at the sun falling behind the mountains. ‘Apologies. I feel quite strongly regarding the value of justice.’

‘Justice,’ Kit replied, ‘not law?’

‘Justice. I would rather the justice was arrived at through law, but the law can and does stand in the way of justice under some circumstances. Laws are made by men, and men are imperfect.’

‘Nothing is perfect.’ Kit gave a small smile, a little surprised by his sudden intensity.

He looked as though he might argue, and then let out a long breath. ‘No, of course you’re right. No matter how I might like to believe it’s possible, nothing is perfect. Nothing can really be perfect.’ His eyes brightened and the corners of his mouth lifted. ‘Though I am required to add “except for you” at this point.’

Colour swept over Kit’s cheeks. ‘I am not perfect. If I were, I would have solved this case for Zorra and we would not be having this conversation.’

‘That is true, but only someone who was practically perfect would know that.’

Kit giggled. ‘Do you think I would look good in glasses?’ she asked, which left Vali looking more perplexed than she had ever seen him.

New York Metro, 26th April.

Kit pushed her new glasses up the bridge of her nose and peered at the threads connecting the various images in the crime room. Fox had to stop herself giggling because it was an entirely serious business. But the sight of her PA in her ‘serious investigator’ outfit was taking the edge off a little, which had to be worth a couple of points.

‘I’ve received word from Inspector Ivers regarding the bank,’ Kit said, stepping back from the display. ‘They are not exactly being obstructive, but they refused to do anything before today.’

‘Banks are one of the big holdouts against the use of AIs,’ Fox replied. ‘They blame the legislation which resulted from problems with automated share dealing systems, but it’s basically a mechanism for making sure those high-paying jobs stay in human hands. And that they can ignore everyone at weekends and whenever else they feel like it.’

Kit nodded and then pushed her glasses up again. ‘I have been unable to expand the banking node because of this. The MarTech node was a complete bust. None of the same technicians dealt with these clients, none of the same account managers. No similarities.’

‘Pretty much what I expected. We’re not really getting any closer.’ Fox paused, scanning the thinning web of connections. ‘How are we doing with Sam’s place?’

‘Ah, there I have had more luck. MarTech Group has several AIs which analyse businesses when a takeover is being planned. Due diligence, they call it. They work weekends, especially if you give them something interesting to look at.’

‘And this is?’

‘Apparently. I said that Mister August was one of four people who own much of Manhattan. Apparently they operate as a sort of consortium. Using their collective buying power, they are able to reduce maintenance bills and other costs. There are a number of rumours that they collectively apply pressure to keep others from acquiring property in the district, and they have definitely been buying up anything they can get their hands on for the past fifteen years.’

‘Interesting.’

‘More interesting is that this consortium operates from a club that is housed in a building which was put up beside the Museum of Natural History in twenty thirty-eight. It’s known as the Great Park Club.’

Fox gave a grunt of displeasure. ‘If we’re dealing with that kind of money, things are going to get sticky. Damn. Get everything you can on this consortium and we’ll see where we can take it. Maybe we can get them to back off at least.’

‘I’ll have the information compiled. You have your meeting with Mister Martins and the Palladium board members in thirty-eight minutes.’

‘I’d better get dressed then.’

‘It would be wise. Fox, do you think the glasses work?’

Fox grinned at her. ‘They’re good. Kind of librarian chic, with the square frames and the slight upward slant. Now you need to learn to take them off while thinking, and then play with the earpiece. Kind of touch it to your lips and purse, and twist the shaft a little. Watch some movies or something, you’ll get the idea.’

‘And this will make me look more efficient and studious?’ Kit asked, frowning a little.

‘Maybe. If you’re talking to men, they’ll be too busy watching your mouth to care what you’re saying anyway.’

~~~

‘The idea has some issues,’ Fox said. She was sitting at the conference room table with Jackson and Mariel Hoarsen, and the images of the Palladium board beamed in from Chicago. ‘The biggest at the moment seems to be this consortium of property magnates who want to buy the place.’

‘Harper August is a particularly stubborn man,’ Hoarsen said, ‘with a strong belief in the right of the leisured class to pretty much do as they wish. They earned their money, paid the price for it, and now they should be allowed to spend it for their benefit. He isn’t big on social spending, he only funds charities for the tax relief, and he is strongly political.’

‘It sounds as though thumbing our nose at him might make this a very beneficial arrangement,’ Jackson said. ‘Assuming that we can persuade him to cease his attempts.’

Hoarsen had developed something of a malign grin. ‘I’m willing to put some resource into that.’

Jackson raised an eyebrow, but did not comment further. ‘Technical considerations. I’d imagine we would need to upgrade the building’s IT infrastructure?’

Vaughn perked up, straightening in her seat and pushing an array of floor plans and some work item lists into the air above the table. ‘We have a proposal which was worked out for Mister Clarion. It could be enhanced, but we would need to go over the details with Mister Clarion. It is his house.’

‘Of course…’ Jackson trailed off as he began peering at the plans and making notes.

‘I think,’ Fox said, ‘that Alice should come over to New York to handle the negotiations personally. This kind of thing needs the kind of immediate discussion a personal visit makes possible.’

Jarvis’s eyes flicked around to look at Fox and she saw the corners of his mouth twitch upward.

‘Good idea,’ Eaves said, nodding, before Vaughn could say anything different, though Fox was fairly sure he did just think it was a good idea. ‘Maybe we can take the rest of this week to finalise the plans and Alice can fly over Friday morning.’

‘I’ll make arrangements with Sam,’ Fox said. ‘I’m sure he can clear some space in his schedule, but better be prepared for an overnight stay, Alice. He works odd hours.’

‘That won’t be an issue,’ Jackson said. ‘She can stay in the tower here. I’ll have the suggested alterations worked out by Wednesday evening. There are a few things I’d like to put in which… Well, you can do some more product testing for us, Fox. If Sam is willing, of course.’

‘And we can clear the security issues,’ Jarvis said, finally joining the conversation. ‘I don’t like this August business. I don’t like the man’s interest in that house, and I don’t think we can go ahead with this unless we can make him stay well away from the building.’

Fox nodded. ‘Agreed. But then I was planning to do that if it’s possible anyway.’

27th April.

Kit was looking puzzled. Puzzled and worried. ‘She does not fit the pattern. Naira Emerson does not fit the pattern in a number of ways.’

Fox looked around the virtual murder wall, trying hard not to worry as Kit was. The image of the killer’s newest victim sat on one side, set apart from the others as Kit had yet to find anything connecting her into the web. Emerson had not been at home; she had been discovered by a cleaning robot, with enough programming to recognise a dead body, in her weekend home out in the Westhampton Beach area. It was in precinct 14, a large, underfunded precinct because most of the properties out there had private security. It had taken a couple of hours before Ivers had been notified of the homicide, but the local detectives had been happy to get the case off their books.

‘What do we know?’ Fox said. ‘How far off-pattern is this?’

‘You are considering the possibility of a copycat? Or a new victim of the “demon,” perhaps?’

‘I’m considering staying calm and examining the facts. Put your glasses on. Let’s get serious.’

Kit had been sufficiently distracted by the new information to appear in her shorter skirt. Her brow knitted and she reached down, smoothing her hands over her skirt, and the ‘fabric’ flowed down to become her pencil skirt. The distraction of the action stopped you noticing her jacket vanishing or her boots becoming shoes, and then she was lifting her hands and unfolding her glasses, and slipping them on with a nod. ‘Yes. Serious. Miss Naira Emerson, thirty-six. She is a little older than the previous victims and is not prone to the… excesses of the others. Her money comes from her grandparents. Her parents died in a car accident when she was eighteen and her grandparents supported her until their deaths six years ago. She was heavily involved in charity work, fundraising.’

‘So she never had to work for the money she has personally. Went from education straight into charity fundraisers?’

Kit paused briefly as she scanned her available data. ‘There are no references to any form of employment in her history. She does receive small incomes from a number of organisations which employ her for advice on raising money. Apparently, Miss Emerson has made something of a career of knowing older, richer people.’

‘Huh. Kit, see if we can get a five-minute teleconference with Jackson and Mariel.’

‘I will enquire… Here, or should I mask the case data?’

Fox smiled. ‘Here. I want them to see Emerson’s picture and they should see your hard work.’ She had been expecting to wait so she was a little surprised when the two avatars appeared in the room with her and Kit almost immediately. ‘You know, I don’t expect the top brass of my company to come running when I call.’

‘I was doing paperwork,’ Hoarsen replied with a shrug. ‘A five-minute break would be good.’

‘I’m just curious,’ Jackson added. ‘This is how you plot out your cases?’

‘Well, we’re trying it out,’ Fox told him. ‘So far I think it’s working pretty well, but we have a new murder victim and she doesn’t seem to fit with the others. I’m trying to get background on–’

‘Naira Emerson,’ Hoarsen said, looking at the image. ‘I know her. In passing more than personally.’

‘I don’t believe I do,’ Jackson said, peering at the picture. ‘Perhaps… I may have seen her at some charity event.’

Hoarsen nodded. ‘You’re the wrong kind of rich man, Jackson. Emerson courted men, and women, with intent to procure money, but she was mainly interested in medical charities, some social schemes. You’re noted for giving money to good causes, but it’s mostly in design, technology, science, and education. I believe she was involved with a group trying to get sprawlers in the MCD into paid jobs, which included retraining, so you may have seen her at an event for that.’ The CEO smiled. ‘Your Mister August was heavily involved with that, Fox. It was not exactly a secret that the intent was to clear as many unemployed people from the district as possible.’

‘I do remember her now,’ Jackson said. ‘Prodigious, probably enhanced, bust which she used to considerable effect on men twice her age. It’s flattering, in a way, but I could see her calculating potential donations when she looked at me which took away from the effect of her décolletage. She was intelligent, coldly so, I thought, though I admit that was on a relatively fleeting acquaintance.’

‘Who did she bank with?’ Fox asked.

‘First Transmetro,’ Kit replied, sounding a little morose. ‘Her grandparents banked there and she continued the tradition.’

‘Okay, but what about funds she might be helping out on? If she gives advice on raising money, she may have contact with fund managers and financial advisors from other banks.’

‘That will require more research.’

‘Maybe,’ Hoarsen said, ‘but if you’re trying to link her to Manhattan Consolidated… That project to get the homeless out of Central Park was being managed by consultants from Manhattan Consolidated.’

‘Good start,’ Fox said, grinning. ‘Kit, get the details on that and anything else you can find with Emerson’s name attached to it. Let’s see where that gets us.’

28th April.

The Manhattan Conservation District was just not Fox’s kind of area. Not the area up around the park anyway, which always looked as though someone had set the place in amber. Except that they had done it a little late: the period being conserved was not really that old having had a lot of work done in the thirties and forties.

The museum was just as it always had been and the park was just as Fox had seen it in movies from the last century. At one time, Central Park had been considered a high-crime zone, but now there was no crime recorded at all. NAPA’s figures for the MCD suggested exceptionally low instances of most crimes, but a number of private security groups operated in the district and there were frequent suggestions that they did not always hand arrested criminals over to NAPA for processing.

The Great Park Club occupied the top three storeys of a four-storey building with the ground floor occupied by a rather sedate coffee shop. It pretended to follow the model of the old coffee houses in London which had been places to conduct business and had essentially been the start of the London Stock Exchange. Smoking in the place was, of course, banned, but it had the right sort of smoky atmosphere despite that. Fox almost felt like there should be hookahs bubbling on the tables, though the high-collared suits which were in fashion among the rich and very rich were possibly partially responsible for the impression: there were a lot of men in the room and far fewer women.

The man in the high-collared suit who met her at the door certainly did not seem especially pleased with her arrival. She had the feeling he was supposed to greet her, but the look of mild disgust as he surveyed her battered jacket pushed any thought of greeting from her impression of him.

‘May I be of some assistance… madam?’ the man asked, and the pause before the title just said it all.

‘Yeah, I have an appointment to see a Mister August. I’m Tara Meridian. Hang on, they gave me some cards…’ She knew exactly where the cards she had been given were, but she fumbled a little in her jacket before producing one of the slim pieces of plastic and handing it to him.

He focused on the card and she had no doubt he was scanning the holocodes on it to verify the identity. He blinked and his entire face shifted into obsequious mode as though someone had flipped a switch. ‘Miss Meridian, CIO of Palladium Security Services. Mister August is expecting you, of course. If you would follow me?’

Harper August sat in a booth at the back of the room near a door with a ‘private’ sign which probably led to the upper floors. He looked calm, serene, and very confident as he sat there with his little cup of very dark coffee, but then he had, by Fox’s estimates, three armed bodyguards sitting at nearby tables. That was not suspicious at all. He did not get up as she arrived at his table.

‘Mister August?’ Fox asked. She was about to get another card out, but the maître d’ placed the one she had given him on the table and left. ‘Mister Harper August?’

August’s grey eyes flicked to the card. ‘Miss Meridian, what can I do for you?’ He had a warm voice, pleasant on the ear, but he had not asked her to sit and his eyes, when they rose to her face, had little warmth in them.

Fox smiled and slipped into the booth. She noticed both the movement of the man on the opposite table and the rise of August’s hand to still him. ‘I’m assisting NAPA with enquiries regarding the recent sexual homicides of five young women.’ She saw him relax slightly: he had been expecting a different line of enquiry.

‘I’ve seen the reports, of course, but I fail to see how I could–’

‘It’s simply a matter of getting a picture of the victims,’ Fox said, interrupting him because she was moderately sure it would annoy him. ‘Naira Emerson, the last victim, helped to raise money for a project you were part of here in the Manhattan Conservation District. Wonderful to see people putting money into their local area, helping the community. I was wondering whether you could shed any light on Miss Emerson’s work, how she behaved, any personal interactions you’re aware of. No one seems to know whether she had a boyfriend.’

There was a slight pause. Fox watched the irritation draining out of his eyes as he pushed it down. ‘Miss Emerson was one of a number of people involved in that project. I met her, obviously, but I did not really know her. She was a dedicated young woman who should not have met the fate she did.’

‘None of them should have. It’s unfortunate really. The district is known for being virtually crime-free and now five murders in rapid succession. I understand part of this project was the funding of another private policing unit directed by you.’

‘Evidence would suggest that NAPA is incapable of policing this district effectively. I’m sure you are aware of the movement to privatise policing through the metro regions, and I must say that I believe things would be significantly better if–’

‘Two of the victims lived in houses within private patrol areas in the MCD. Miss Emerson was killed in her weekend house, which is in a privately guarded, gated community.’ Fox smiled as though thinking of a perfect example. ‘Why, a friend of mine inherited a house recently because the previous owner had been murdered, at home, by unknown assailants. One of your own security units patrols that area, or seems to.’

‘Seems to?’

‘We’ve seen them on security feeds walking past a number of times, and I know you own a lot of property around that area. Hell’s Kitchen, as was.’

‘I own a lot of property, Miss Meridian,’ August replied. ‘I do not operate a policing unit in that area.’

‘My mistake. Next time I see them checking doors, I’ll have them arrested. Clearly imposters. Thank you for your time, Mister August.’ She slipped out of the booth and started for the door.

‘Did you do that purely to annoy him?’ Kit asked inside Fox’s head.

‘Um… yeah. The link to Emerson gave me an in which had nothing to do with Sam, and I wanted to poke the hornets’ nest.’ Exiting the building, she turned left, heading down the street toward the maglev line over West 81st. It was a little over a block, across one junction, though there was no traffic to disturb her now: even in the MCD, personal transport was almost unheard of and autocabs were not common.

Still, it was one of the rare ground vehicles, an autocab carrying someone who looked to be well over a century old down Columbus Avenue, which caused her to stop and look around, and notice the man coming up behind her. She saw the stun baton dropping out of his sleeve as he rapidly closed the distance, waited a brief second as he lifted and swung, and then she ducked under it. As his arm sailed over her head, she slammed her fist into his right thigh. He let out a shriek as the thin blade lanced into his leg and the limb went out from under him.

That was when she saw the second one moving in. He was pulling a similar baton from his coat and Fox did not like the odds if he closed the distance. Her blade retracted and she reached back, under her jacket. Planting a foot on the fallen man’s side, she lifted her pistol and aimed it at the second man. ‘Take a second to think about it,’ she said. ‘Cops are going to be here in pretty short order. You know how they react to violent crime in this area.’

There was a moment of indecision, and then he was running. Fox let him go and lowered her gun to point at the man on the floor. She could already hear the roar of vertol engines which indicated one of the heavy patrol drones was inbound. She sighed. ‘This is going to be a real waste of my afternoon, Chuck. You better be worth it.’

~~~

‘So we’re going with “attempted mugging?”’ Fox said. She did not sound particularly surprised, or unhappy. It was making the two uniforms with her a little nervous because it was fairly clear that it was not a mugging and they had some idea who she was.

‘The man you… arrested is one Philip Constance.’ The speaker was Detective Drewry, who was just about old enough to have a detective rank and had been saddled with dealing with the case because he had not stepped back fast enough. ‘He worked for Augustine Property Services until two weeks ago, at which point his contract was terminated. Apparently, he turned to crime as a result.’

What neither Drewry nor the two uniforms could see was Kit, who was practising sucking the earpiece of her glasses in a thoughtful manner. That was keeping Fox amused. ‘Augustine Property Services is owned in its entirety by Mister August,’ Kit said, in case Fox had not guessed.

Fox smiled at Drewry. ‘Yes. I’d imagine he was still waiting on his severance package. I don’t plan to press charges. I think Mister Constance has learned his lesson and I’m sure that adding him to the population of Rikers would just further his decline from an upright citizen to a denizen of the underworld.’

Drewry blinked at her. ‘Sorry?’

‘It’s my prerogative. He swung at me, missed, and I struck him in self-defence. I don’t believe anything would be gained by bringing this to trial. I’m not pressing charges. If NAPA wishes to take it further, that’s your problem. You have my recording of the scene.’

‘Oh… Well then. I’ll take that to my captain.’

Fox got to her feet and patted him on the shoulder. ‘You do that, Detective Drewry.’ Then she stalked out toward the elevators. ‘Kit, I want a cambot on station to follow Constance as soon as he’s released. I want him followed everywhere. Go over the employment records, if you can get them, and see just exactly when he was kicked out of Augustine Property Services. Oh, and check their employee records for someone matching the second man in my memory.’

‘I’m already working on the last one,’ Kit replied as she strode along beside her owner.

‘Very efficient. And the glasses thing is really coming along. Try looking a little more dreamy when you do it.’

‘Dreamy?’

‘Yeah, kind of stare into the distance and let your eyes unfocus.’

‘My eyes are never actually focused, Fox. I’m always looking through your eyes or visual sensors.’

Fox took a few strides in silence and hit the button for the elevators. ‘I’ll show you what I mean when we get back to the apartment.’

~~~

‘I managed to find your second attacker,’ Kit said, pasting an ID picture up on the window beside a still taken from Fox’s memory. ‘Ninety-nine point three per cent match. This is Mister Albert Dwayne Overt. Interestingly, he was employed at Augustine Property Services until two weeks ago.’

‘Good work, Kit,’ Fox said, and then she turned to Sam. ‘What do you think?’

Sam was watching Kit as she thoughtfully played with her glasses. ‘Yeah, she’s really got that about right. A little more practice maybe, but… yeah.’

‘Did you actually hear what she was saying?’

‘Yes. Albert Dwayne Overt, worked for August. I’m a professional sex worker. I’m partially immune.’

‘Keep practising, Kit. Anything else on Overt or Constance?’

‘Well, the body types are a match for our two unknowns at Sam’s house,’ Kit said. ‘The match is, obviously, limited, but the two working together does tend to make for a higher probability. If they are, in fact, the same people, this means they were working for Augustine Property Services at the time so they were potentially involved in Mister Kenan’s murder.’

‘They didn’t backdate the severances far enough,’ Sam said, his voice soft but carrying a hint of menace.

‘Well,’ Fox said, frowning, ‘yes, but it would still be pushing it to prove that they were doing anything under August’s orders unless we can get them to talk.’

‘They were willing to attack you in broad daylight on the street having had their link to their employer revoked. They’re not going to talk either because they know they’ll be taken care of or they’re too scared.’

‘Or both. Yes. We’re going to have to catch someone doing something really bad and hope we can make them more scared of that than they are of August.’

‘Meanwhile you need to catch a murderer.’

‘Uh-huh. Which reminds me, Kit, could you contact Ivers about that banking information? Meanwhile, Sam, you should get ready for Alice Vaughn coming over on Friday. Palladium’s wooing you over the house, so make the most of it.’

‘It seems like it should be mutually beneficial,’ Sam began.

Fox held up her hand. ‘Agreed, but do me a favour and see if you can get Alice in bed. The girl really needs to get laid.’

Sam gave a slight shrug. ‘I’m a little insulted. “See if” I can get her in bed?’

‘It’s a figure of speech.’

‘How’s Alice’s figure?’

Fox grinned. ‘I don’t think you’ll have anything to complain about.’

30th April.

‘I think she’s blocking,’ Fox commented silently as she rode the maglev to the MarTech building. ‘I don’t believe the bank would be that difficult.’

‘I agree,’ Kit replied, ‘but why would she?’

‘Because we shared the data on why we wanted the bank to open up, she’s followed through and believes she has a target, and she wants the collar.’

‘Oh. Well, I suppose the important thing is to get the killer off the streets.’

‘That depends on what the killer actually is. If she grabs some financial advisor, but this… nomad AI just moves on, all we have is a psychologically damaged guy in a cell. How about August?’

‘The building has not been reoccupied since the last break-in attempt. Constance and Overt have been virtual recluses for the last few days, though Mister Constance could be resting from his knife wound.’ There was a slight pause and then, ‘Miss Vaughn’s flight arrived five minutes ago. She has just sent through notification of the guest quarters she has been assigned and indicated that she is ready to be picked up.’

‘Reply with an ETA, and let Sam know we’ll be at the house in… forty minutes.’ Fox glanced out the window, recognising the landscape. The arrival time would be pretty close, but forty minutes felt good. There would be a little time for pleasantries before she dragged the recently arrived exec back onto transport. Fox knew that Vaughn had hopped one of the regular flights MarTech ran between Chicago and New York rather than requesting something private, and her rank within the company could have afforded her a little luxury. She was a distinctly unprepossessing woman, quiet, but she had a temper which she had learned to utilise when she needed to be assertive. The killer Fox was trying to catch was, it seemed, the same, but he had never learned to channel his temper; this man hid his anger, buried it, smothered it to keep his clients from knowing what he thought of them. And then something had come along and popped that cork. ‘It’s the quiet ones you have to watch.’

‘Sorry, Fox?’

‘Nothing. Just a saying. Send something to Eaves. Ask him if we’ve got the budget for a full financial analysis of Harper August.’ The train was pulling up in the tower’s station and Fox got to her feet. ‘At least this part of the day is going to be reasonably pleasant.’

~~~

‘This area really is very nice,’ Vaughn said as they sat in the lounge of Sam’s house drinking coffee. ‘It’s like Downtown in Chicago, but without the oppressive wall of buildings to either side.’

‘The redevelopment work was a decade earlier,’ Sam said, ‘and the conservation district was set up to ensure that things didn’t get too out of hand, though it’s become more of an exclusion thing, unfortunately. Not all of the residents are…’

‘Pricks,’ Fox said. ‘I think that’s the word you’re looking for.’

‘Isolationist,’ Sam corrected. ‘Though I’ll accept your opinion on many of the older ones. I’ve heard of suggestions to have the entire island covered by the MCD, but they’ll never manage that. Well, if this private policing vote passes, they might be able to press something through. In the meantime, they try to keep the area around the park as clean and tidy as they can, and they pay less attention to this area.’

‘Though some of them seem to be paying more attention than they were. We found out that August and his friends, mostly August, have been buying up any property which becomes available in this area. There’s been a recent increase in activity like that and they’ve pretty much bought up everything likely to come available for years now. Unless they can get the owners out through other means.’

‘Which brings us back to business,’ Vaughn said, looking a little disappointed. ‘We still have to put a proviso on a lot of this that we resolve the local security problem.’

‘The way things are looking,’ Sam said, ‘if we can’t sort that out, I’ll need to sell this place. I really don’t want to do that because I’m fairly sure it’ll end up as a complete win for August, but I don’t see a choice.’

Sitting beside Fox, Marie gave a little wince. If Sam had to sell, it was likely she would have to move, and she knew it.

‘Still,’ Vaughn went on, ‘we should progress assuming we will be doing the alterations since there are a few things which need to be organised. I asked that Miss Shaftsbury be here because there are a few aspects which will require her knowledge and her signature.’

‘Signature?’ Marie asked, frowning. ‘And it’s Marie.’

‘MarTech Group will need both of you to sign nondisclosure agreements. Mister Martins wants to put in some as yet unmarketed equipment, specifically some new computer systems and a fabrication system. You would be performing market testing, in effect. The aim is to have them available to Fox, but everyone in the house would be using them.’

‘A new fabricator?’ Fox asked, her eyes narrowing. ‘That new fabricator?’

‘A small trial unit suitable for a building this size. That’s what I’m told. Jackson said that his daughter had something workable which they could fit here late next month. He’s viewing it as a working trial for the bigger unit he wants to install in the new tower.’

‘What are we talking about here?’ Sam asked, looking between them.

‘I’d need you to sign the NDA to tell you,’ Vaughn said, grinning a little timidly. ‘It’s very top secret.’

‘It’s why Terri’s on the Moon,’ Fox said. ‘It’s why the UA cell grabbed her, but it sounds like she’s cracked the problems they were having.’ Fox looked at Vaughn. ‘Sam was on the op to get Terri out. He was my backup, and it turned out I needed the help to get out myself. He knows something about what was going on.’

Vaughn gave a nod. ‘Good. That simplifies things. So, aside from the NDA, which is a fairly standard commercial one, not some ultra-secret NIX thing, we would also be doing extensive work on the building. Even with the refit as originally specified, the upgrades to the environmental controls would mean more or less stripping the interior. We will need to move you out of here for at least two weeks, Marie, possibly longer.’

‘Uh…’ Marie said, looking uncertain.

‘We can arrange something,’ Fox said. ‘I’m sure there’s a spare apartment in one of the MarTech towers.’

‘I’ll see what can be arranged when the dates are finalised,’ Vaughn agreed. ‘Now, I’d like to go through the details on the space utilisation and make sure we have everything written down right. Shall we start at the top and work down?’

‘The intention is to make the top floor Fox’s apartment,’ Sam said.

Vaughn checked her data and nodded. ‘Indeed. A little surprising, but it does make a few things easier.’

‘The top floor was Felix’s private rooms. It’s foolish, but I find it hard to be up there.’

‘That’s really quite…’ Vaughn smiled. ‘Well, let’s get the walkthrough over with quickly then. I can work over details with Fox at a later date.’

~~~

Georgiana Ivers linked into the NAPA tactical map and checked over the squad of uniformed officers she had ready to breach her target’s apartment. She felt a little bad about excluding Fox from the bust, but Robbard and her captain had been clear on the matter: this was NAPA’s job, not Palladium’s. So, they would probably not have narrowed the focus down to one name without Fox and Kit, but it was still to be a NAPA-only deal to bring in Wallace Deedle.

Everything narrowed down to Deedle, even if Ivers was having some difficulty believing that a man like Wallace Deedle could be the killer. She had done all the checks, gone over his employment records and personal data. The man was so clean he squeaked, but he was also the only bank employee who had handled financial advice for all of the victims, including providing consultation to Emerson on some of her charity accounts.

There was an alert from her implant: the warrant for entry had come through, which meant they could open the locks without the owner’s knowledge. ‘Verify target’s location,’ she ordered over the tactical comms.

‘Biosensor reports he’s in his apartment,’ one of the technicians she had along for this purpose reported.

‘I want visual confirmation.’ She had already determined that, with a warrant, they could tap the camera feeds inside his apartment.

‘Visuals confirmed,’ the tech reported after a few seconds. ‘Looks like he’s in the lounge watching an IB feed or something.’

‘Unlock the door on two; we go on three. Everyone in positions. I want him taken alive unless he resists.’ Which, Ivers thought, was very unlikely. ‘One… Two… Three!’ The door slid aside and two armed officers were through it almost before it was fully open. Ivers went after them, followed by two more. There was a very small entrance corridor, no side doors, and then they were through into a lounge which was entirely unoccupied, silent, and dark.

Ivers came to a stop as the lead officers rushed onward, checking the other rooms. The visor she was wearing came with infrared visualisation and she was sure Deedle would have shown up even if he was hiding behind furniture, but there was nothing. ‘Where is he?’

The tech, still outside, sounded surprised. ‘He’s right there, in the lounge. He’s…’ The voice trailed off as the man walked into the dark room. ‘Shit, he’s… He must’ve looped this somehow, and faked the biomonitor data. This guy’s background does not suggest he’s capable of this kind of manipulation.’

‘Get a full forensics sweep done. The whole apartment and I want his computers locked down and analysed. I want to know where he is, not where you think he is.’ He had found out. Somehow he had figured out they were coming for him and run. The question was where he had run to. The question nagging at Ivers’s mind was, would he run away immediately or hit his next victim first?

~~~

Wallace Deedle found himself riding the maglev as the afternoon progressed. The BQ-line passed nearby his apartment block in Port Morris, circling Queens and Brooklyn, crossing into Manhattan where it briefly joined with the LI-line. It passed through three precinct HQs on that route, but he did not notice and was not noticed.

He sat in a calm he had not felt for months. The voice was gone. His mind was still, serene, quiet in a way it seemed he could not ever remember the like of before. He sat and listened to the sounds of the train as it soared along the track. There was something beautiful in the smooth sigh of air passing by the hull of the carriage, the slight hum of the magnetic drive field. He was sure he had never noticed it before, but the silence in his head made everything so much clearer.

He spoke to no one, said nothing to any of the people who travelled with him. All the while, he hoped that someone would stop him, but he told no one of his intentions. He rode the maglev and prayed to a God he had never previously believed in that someone would see him, and know him, and stop him.

Because at seven pm, Wallace Deedle had an appointment. And he knew that if he was not stopped from keeping that appointment, someone was going to die.

~~~

Fox recognised Ivers in the IB feed Kit was streaming for her and knew what it probably meant. The sour look on the detective’s face almost certainly meant there had been no arrest, but the news reports were saying that an apartment had been raided by NAPA, so Ivers had found a suspect.

‘Find out who they were after, Kit,’ Fox ordered silently. Then she returned her attention to the room, which was the basement area occupied by the building’s computers and a few other utility functions.

‘The staircase access up through the building is perfect,’ Vaughn was saying. ‘We’ll increase security on the exterior doors on this level and rework the access between Marie’s apartment and the staircase. The rest of the space will need additional cooling and… Well, to be frank, the final design of some of this equipment is not complete yet. We’re not sure how it’s going to go in, but it will.’

‘Jackson will get it in, somehow,’ Fox said.

‘Uh,’ Marie piped up, ‘is any of this equipment dangerous?’

‘People keep telling me that’s a no, but I’m not so sure.’ Fox flashed a grin. ‘The bit I think sounds dangerous needs very carefully controlled conditions to function. They’ll seal it up to make sure nothing we do can affect it as much as safety and security. If something breaks, it’ll probably be non-functional before it gets near you.’

‘Besides,’ Vaughn said, turning to one of the walls, ‘this is the main partition between the utility area and the apartment. We’re going to thicken it and seal it with a new polymer MarTech has come up with for use in off-world construction. You’ll be able to suck all the air out on one side and no one would know on the other. And it’ll be as strong as any of the load-bearing walls.’

Sam looked around the grimy space. It looked a lot like Felix had not paid too much attention to the functional side of his home beyond making sure it still functioned. ‘Cost is a factor,’ he said. ‘This all sounds very–’

‘It is,’ Vaughn interrupted, ‘but MarTech Technologies is going to handle costs on the work needed for the new fabricator and Palladium will subsidise the additional security and communications if Fox is living here. Actually, we’d like to hook the building up to the MarTech network. Services can provide a suitably large pipe and they do have a good reputation as–’

‘The sales pitch isn’t needed,’ Sam said. ‘I use MarTech Services already.’

Vaughn’s lips twitched. ‘I know. I checked your website as part of our customer research.’

‘It has some excellent photo work,’ Marie said.

‘It does,’ Vaughn agreed. ‘What does the tattoo mean? Uh, out of interest.’

‘Depends,’ Fox said. ‘It’s programmable pigmentation. What’s it saying today, Sam?’

‘Uh… It’s a beauty ideogram, shū. I think the one in the web image is xiè, which is lust.’

‘And this is why I don’t usually want to know what he has written on his chest.’

‘You’ve seen that tattoo quite a lot then?’ Vaughn asked.

‘Man is pathologically incapable of keeping his shirt on for long periods,’ Fox replied. ‘One of the great burdens of my life is having to look at a shirtless Sam just about every day.’ She was pleased to see his cheeks were colouring a little.

‘It must be terrible for you,’ Marie said, rolling her eyes.

‘Oh, it is.’

‘Wallace Deedle,’ Kit said into Fox’s head. ‘A financial services advisor. He also handles accounting for clients with simpler needs. Inspector Ivers has sent through the data she obtained from the bank, finally.’

‘Have a watch put out for him. If he enters a building we’re monitoring, I want to know about it.’

‘We should check over the changes to Marie’s apartment,’ Vaughn said, ‘and then I think we’re done.’

‘Excellent,’ Sam said, smiling. ‘I’ve arranged for us to go to a restaurant later, Alice. I thought we should get to know each other a little better, if we’re to be going into partnership to some extent.’

‘I… Well, I’m sure that’s a very good idea. I’d love to join you.’

~~~

There was no sign of the police as Wallace Deedle stepped off the maglev and headed for the slideway which would take him straight to his destination. He stood, one hand on the rail, the other holding his briefcase, and allowed the moving walkway to carry him rather than shifting to the left and walking. That would have been faster, but he was in no hurry and he wanted to give society one last chance to stop him from going through with what he was going to do.

As he walked through the lobby of the block, it seemed very much as though society had decided to turn a blind eye to whatever Deedle had planned. No police, no private security. He was fairly sure that this block had contracted to Palladium Security Services for internal policing. They had responded to his last visit here. He recalled seeing it on the news feeds. He recalled seeing a woman there with red hair that faded into an almost-white colour at the tips and remembering that she was Tara Meridian, the woman who had rescued Teresa Martins in Dallas. It had given him a slight thrill to have a famous detective hunting for him, but it seemed that NAPA had frozen her out.

Eighty floors up, Deedle walked down a corridor to one of the many apartment doors. The building did not have as many residents as similar blocks in the metro because the people who lived here liked luxury. They liked it, but could not quite manage the wherewithal to purchase some of the single-occupancy houses in the MCD. Stepping up to the door, he tapped the button beside it and waited.

The woman who opened the door was young, beautiful, fresh. A cascade of black hair fell around her shoulders, wisps of it curled across the upper slopes of her quite expansive cleavage. Deedle did her accounts and knew she spent little or nothing on physical enhancements: Angelina Tailor was a natural beauty. She looked at him with large, brown eyes and smiled with full, red lips.

‘I’m sorry, Mister Deedle, the sensor must be on the blink. The door didn’t recognise you. Come in.’ She turned her back to him and padded down the corridor to her lounge, Deedle following her, his eyes on her behind in its tight, mid-thigh skirt. She was barefoot. ‘I’m sorry to get you here so late. I only got back into the metro an hour ago and I do need to sort out this month’s bills.’ His hand closed around the cylinder in his pocket and he slipped it free, orienting it by touch. She turned and smiled again. ‘Can I get you anything? Coffee?’

‘No, thank you. We’ll be fine.’ She was about to ask what he meant by ‘we’ when he lifted his hand and sprayed mist into her face.

‘What?! Mist–’ Her voice cut out as her limbs decided to stop functioning and her brain fogged. She blinked at him, barely realising she was slipping to her knees, and then he caught her as she tipped forward.

Habit had him checking her pulse. The reaction to the spray was so rapid he worried every time that they were going to die on him. Then rather than later, when he killed them. Angelina was alive, breathing normally. He allowed himself a second or two to watch those magnificent breasts rise and fall. He had admired them for two years, but she was hardly the kind of girl who would have allowed a man like him to touch them. Now he would get his chance. He would touch her. Oh yes, he would touch her. He would touch every inch of her.

The weird sense of loss which had plagued him since the voice had gone was leaving him now. Now that he had another woman in his arms. He carried her through to the bedroom, his mind working over exactly what he was planning to do to her. She would be begging by the time he was done. She would beg him to let her have her freedom, and then he would give it. He would be the last person she ever saw, the last man to have her. The loss was gone now, replaced by the anger which the voice had fuelled and brought to the surface. The voice had been right: he did not need the voice now, did not need its encouragement and direction. He knew what he had to do and he would do it.

Stripping her of her clothes was easy. She weighed next to nothing and he could push and pull her as he wished. He had blouse, skirt, bra, and panties removed in under a minute. To think the fastenings on that first bra had been so hard. He almost laughed, but he had limited time assured by the drug. Positioning her on the bed, he retrieved the cords he had brought with him and lashed her down, spread as carefully and precisely as he could manage. She was still under when he finished three minutes later. He was getting faster and had not needed to give her a second dose.

He removed an unopened pack of a dozen condoms and a tube of water-based, spermicidal lubricant from his case, setting them beside the bed, and then began to undress. His suit was carefully folded and set to one side on a chair for later. Naked, he returned to the case and took out a pair of plazkin gloves which were guaranteed to be sealed against contamination. With those on, he took the lubricant and walked around the bed, squeezing quite a substantial amount onto the index and middle fingers of his right hand. And then he paused, standing at the foot of the bed between Angelina Tailor’s spread legs because he wanted to admire her beauty one last time before he changed it forever.

She stirred as he placed his knee down on the reactive mattress. She was just sleeping now and would, in all probability, wake up when he touched her. He leaned forward, reaching down between her legs.

And that was when two pairs of hands grabbed him and yanked him backward.

~~~

Fox scanned over the scene in the bedroom. She had Pythia running forensics, but she already had quite enough physical evidence, without anything her forensics AI was going to find, to put Wallace Deedle behind bars.

She turned back to the girl in the Palladium Security uniform standing stiffly to attention beside the bedroom door. ‘The prisoner is secured, Miss McNair?’

‘Yes, sir,’ McNair responded. ‘We have him in the security office awaiting your arrival. We have restrained the prisoner using electronic restraints and, as per your instructions, physical ties. My partner is watching the prisoner.’

‘Excellent. Do you feel that it was entirely necessary to use a shock baton on his genitals, Miss McNair?’

‘Yes, sir. Prisoner was resisting arrest and may have been a danger to the victim or ourselves. Sir.’

‘Stick to that story and I doubt anyone will be complaining.’ Fox started past McNair to the lounge. ‘If it had been me, he’d have been wearing his nuts around his neck.’

The victim was sitting on one of the sofas in her lounge holding a glass of something which looked like whiskey in shaky hands. She was wrapped in a blanket, but she was shivering. Fox could not really blame her given the effects of the drug and the shock. Someone had found a neighbour she knew, though the effect of another woman sitting with her did not appear to be that calming.

Fox sat down opposite them and Tailor looked up at her. ‘You’re in charge… charge of the security people?’

‘I’m Tara Meridian. I’m Palladium’s investigations officer so, technically, I’m not in charge of them, but I guess I’m filling in for the man who is.’

‘They s-saved me. I wanted to th-thank them somehow and I have no idea how t-to express–’

‘Just saying it is usually enough, Miss Tailor, but they responded as fast as it was humanly possible to do so and I assure you I’ll be recommending them for some form of bonus for this one. I’d like to ask a few questions, if you’re feeling up to it?’

‘I don’t know what I can t-tell you, but… he didn’t really… I mean, he didn’t hurt me. They stopped him before he could…’

Fox smiled. ‘Yes. My PA is arranging for someone to come and talk to you, and we’re going to have you stay somewhere else tonight. We need to run tests and we’ll have the entire apartment cleaned and set right before you come back. Were you expecting Mister Deedle tonight?’

‘I’d made arrangements for him to visit to make sure my account was straight before the end of the month. I don’t understand. He was always such a n-nice man. He was… quiet. What happened?’

‘We think he… had some form of mental breakdown,’ Fox replied. ‘I’ve an expert coming in to help interview him. You let him in?’

‘I let him in. Uh, I think there was a problem with the door sensor. It didn’t recognise him. We went into the lounge.’ Tailor swallowed, hard. ‘I led him into the lounge and… I asked him if he wanted something to drink. And then there was this mist in my face…’

Fox nodded. ‘I know what happened from there. The drug he used has no permanent effect. You’ll be fine. He didn’t seem at all odd? Nothing struck you as different about him?’

‘Well… not until he tried to…’ She trailed off again, swallowing.

‘Thank you, Miss Tailor. Someone will be here to look after you very shortly.’ Fox got to her feet and headed for the door.

‘The door sensor is working correctly,’ Kit supplied as Fox left the apartment.

‘Uh-huh. I expect we’ll find his implant has been wiped, along with any ID data. That’s why the transceiver couldn’t tell who he was.’

‘Detective Dillan has arrived.’

‘Good. Let’s go talk to Mister Deedle.’

~~~

Wallace Deedle just did not look like a multiple rapist and murderer, but he also seemed to fit the profile Fox had constructed of him perfectly. He sat on the bed in the small containment cell off the security suite, dressed in a bright, orange jumpsuit. His feet were placed squarely on the floor, his back was straight, and his hands were on his knees, palms down. He sat there and watched a spot on the wall, near the floor, and he said nothing when Fox entered the room with Dillan.

‘Mister Deedle,’ Fox said. ‘This is Detective Dillan of NAPA. She’s not the investigating officer on your case, but she handled Peter Doran’s homicides and I wanted her to see you. Why have you been killing young women, Mister Deedle?’

Deedle looked up. He had grey eyes, soft eyes without a hint of malice in them. McNair had described the look on his face when they had pulled him off Tailor, and this could have been a different man. ‘I recognise you. I saw you on the news feeds, IB-Nineteen. They said you’d been called in for Miss Hopethorne’s homicide and I recognised you. You used to be with the UNTPP.’

‘Yes. Then NAPA and now I’m with–’

‘Palladium Security Services. An interesting choice of name. I assume people think it comes from the metal, which is obviously wrong. The city of Troy was guarded by the Pallas Athena, a statue which became known as the Trojan Palladium. The word was generalised to mean something believed to give protection. They say the statue was stolen and taken to Constantinople by way of Rome. The loss of the statue was, of course, the reason that Troy lost the war.’

‘Mister Deedle…’

‘I’ve been working for them for years, Miss Meridian. I watched them frittering away money, day by day, like it was nothing because there would always be more. I watched them strutting about in their expensive clothes that barely covered them. None of them would look at someone like me because I had no money. Because I didn’t spend what I had on muscle grafts and body sculpting. No, I just came to their homes and made sure their money worked as well for them as it could.’

‘As you said, you’ve worked for them for years. Why the change?’

‘I…’ He bit his lips shut and his fists clenched on his knees. ‘You’ll think I’m mad.’

‘Currently, we think you’re a serial rapist and murderer, Mister Deedle,’ Dillan said. ‘Would mad be that much worse?’

He sighed. ‘One day I woke up and there was a voice in my head. It whispered. It… said things which I thought about, but I never had the courage to do anything about them.’

‘It suggested that you did something about these pretty girls in their short skirts who wasted their money?’

‘It said they would see me. Really see me. You don’t know what it’s like. You’re both attractive women. People see you, but no one sees me. Oh, if there’s a problem or a mistake, then they see me. When everything’s fine and I’m there doing my job as it should be done, I’m invisible. I’m good at my job.’

Dillan nodded. ‘So they never bothered to look at you, and the voice said they would. What do you think the voice was, Mister Deedle?’

‘I have no idea. At first I thought it was me, my subconscious. I thought I was going mad. Then it began helping me. It helped me to plan; it helped me to remain hidden. After the first one, it seemed as though it was pleased with me and it began to help. My subconscious couldn’t have fixed computer records.’ He looked up. ‘I recall the Doran case. He said that he was possessed by a demon, am I right?’

‘Yes. He did.’

‘I was not, Detective. I do not believe in demons. Though, if I did, I might suggest that one had come to me to persuade me to murder my clients. It was… It was inside my head. I couldn’t get away from it.’

‘No escape,’ Fox said.

‘No. None for them and none for me.’

1st May.

Fox sat on the edge of the security desk and watched as Ivers walked in followed by a pair of NAPA uniforms. The inspector did not look especially pleased with the situation, and she was not meeting Fox’s eyes.

‘He’s in the holding cell,’ Fox said. ‘We’ll be sending over all the gathered evidence in the morning. It’s basically open and shut. He’s quite happy to confess to all five murders and the attempt on Miss Tailor.’

Ivers lifted her eyes. ‘They’ll press to get him on the other homicides.’

‘If that goes to trial, and they push it too hard, he’ll walk on all of them. There’s no way you can make Doran’s homicides stick to Deedle.’ Fox lifted a hand and stabbed a finger toward Ivers. ‘And you know that. If I’m right about why he did it, we’ll probably have another one along for you to try your luck on.’

‘What?’

‘Deedle says the “voice” that was pushing him to kill left him right about when you tried to take him in his apartment. You tipped it off that Deedle was about to get caught and it moved on. It’ll find itself a new host and start whispering things to that one.’ Fox nodded her head toward the back. ‘He’s in the holding cell. Get him out of here and into custody. It’s your collar.’

‘Thanks,’ Ivers said as she waved the uniforms forward.

‘As it currently stands, I can’t detain someone for a crime, Inspector. If I could, I’d be locking this bastard up myself.’ Getting to her feet, Fox walked past Ivers and out of the office. She needed to sleep, and hoped she would not be dreaming tonight.

Part Seven: Watching Over Justice

New York Metro, 1st May 2060.

‘If you don’t mind me saying, you look like shit.’ Alice Vaughn did not look like shit dressed only in one of Sam’s shirts, which was too large for her and therefore did that amazing trick of looking really sexy despite being all wrong. ‘Why aren’t you in bed, asleep?’

Fox peered at her for a second. ‘Next stop. I was looking for you.’

Vaughn’s cheeks coloured a little. ‘A-and you came looking for me in Sam’s apartment?’

‘Uh-huh. Let the rest of the board know we nailed the serial killer, would you? I’ll do a full report when I can think, but tell Jackson he had a LANGrove-Six implant.’ She turned, spying Sam pouring more coffee into his mug. ‘You don’t look like you got much sleep either.’

‘More than you,’ Sam replied. His lips curled. ‘Redheads…’

‘Oh, I know.’ Fox started for the door. ‘Especially the quiet ones.’

Behind her, Vaughn’s cheeks turned scarlet.

2nd May.

Even with the application of chemicals to adjust her sleep rhythm, Fox was up early on the Sunday morning. She wandered to the window and cleared it, looking out at the construction work on the barrier. It was early, but it was May and the sun was up. She could see cyberframes at work on the site, huge, multi-limbed construction robots that clung to the structure like insects. Some would be run by infomorphs, others by humans with remote connections. The work never stopped on the barrier. There was a vague possibility that some of the machines had the optics to see her standing naked in her window, but she had never once heard a cyberframe wolf-whistle.

‘How’s the world doing this morning, Kit?’ Fox asked as she turned and padded back across the room.

‘The world is much the same as usual. A number of IB channels are mentioning the North Atlantic storm season, which could kick off any time this month, but there are no indications that it will be especially serious this year. News feeds of the NAPA press conference on the arrest of Mister Deedle are in storage if you wish to see them. Inspector Ivers did credit you and Palladium “for their help” in the capture.’

‘I doubt her captain would have let her admit we did all the work, even if she would be willing to admit it.’

‘I do have a couple of messages waiting, one of which you will not like.’

‘Good news first.’

‘Mister Martins notified me that a vulnerability has been identified in the LANGrove-Six communications system. He would like you to meet with him to discuss a course of action.’

Fox stepped into the shower, which was already running and at exactly the temperature she wanted. ‘Arrange an appointment as required. I have no problem going over there today if he wants to meet quickly.’

‘I will make the arrangements. Wallace Deedle was found dead in his cell yesterday evening.’

Fox’s reaction was not quite as annoyed as Kit had expected. ‘Suicide?’

‘The report I have states that he slit his wrists using a dismantled electric toothbrush.’

‘Inventive. I don’t suppose they’d managed to do a proper psychoanalysis on him before then?’

‘I can check, but I believe such an analysis would have been scheduled for tomorrow. You were expecting this?’

‘Not expecting, no. I’m not terribly surprised. Someone put effort into making Doran into a one-off copycat. With Deedle dead, they can quietly sweep all the murders under the carpet and it stops people asking questions about why Deedle and Doran are saying that they had voices in their heads. This way, it’s just Deedle knowing what Doran claimed and going for an insanity plea.’

‘You believe someone in NAPA is covering this up?’

‘I think Robbard in IA is covering it up, but it’s not just him, and he’s not doing it for his own purposes.’

‘More conspiracies?’

Fox gave a little shrug and reached for the shampoo. ‘This is why I hate politics.’

~~~

‘There is a vulnerability in the drivers and hardware of the LANVisor’s communications system,’ Jackson said, waving his hand at the wall where a lot of text was scrolling. He had locked his office down into high-security mode when Fox had entered, apparently wanting to be sure no one outside heard about it. He had a higher opinion of the UNTPP’s security than she did or he would have assumed a leak from there and not bothered. ‘I won’t go into excessive, boring detail, but there is a truly classic buffer overflow condition which can result in corrupted memory, access violation, and a failure into an unprotected state which can be exploited if you know it’s there.’

‘So, you send the right data, the implant’s comms trip out, and when they come back up, they aren’t in the right state?’ Fox asked.

Jackson nodded. ‘It takes three hundred and fifty-two milliseconds for the watchdog processes to notice the fault and correct it, but that’s long enough for something fast to penetrate the system with full access.’

‘So, UNTPP contacts LANGrove and plugs the hole?’

‘Actually, they suggested an alternative, rather more interesting option.’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘My former colleagues have developed an imagination?’

‘They are concerned over the exploitation of this hack. I believe it is a genuine accident, a bug, but they think it may have been deliberately engineered in. I have to admit that it seems like someone or something has discovered this and decided to exploit it. They want MarTech to write a virus which will actually exploit the vulnerability, allowing us to put software in place which will watch for the hack, block it, and report the source.’

‘Huh… Do it. Personally I don’t think they can keep this a secret long enough to catch whoever arranged it, but it’ll catch the thing doing the killing. Next time anyway.’

‘Next time?’

‘It moved on before we captured Deedle, Jackson. I think it’s already got a new host. I have no idea how to catch the thing if we can figure out where it’s gone, but I don’t think we even get a chance until it hops to the next victim.’

Jackson frowned. ‘I was planning to do a little more testing on this, but the special features might be useful…’ He was already wandering across the room to a desk.

‘You’re being obscure, Jackson.’

‘Sorry.’ Opening a drawer, he pulled out what looked a lot like the gun case he had given her her pistol in. Turning it, he walked over and opened it, and she found herself looking at another pistol. The design was similar, but a little more compact and blocky. There were a couple of magazines in the case along with a number of different bullets packed into foam slots. They looked to be around ten millimetres, but they also looked like even smaller than usual micromissiles. ‘This is distinctly experimental. An electromagnetic micromissile launcher. It uses a high-impulse, railgun-style ejection mechanism which means that you can fire it at short range just like a ten-millimetre pistol. At longer range, say ten metres or more, you can initiate the infrared homing system and they’re self-guiding.’

‘You made ten-mil, homing micromissiles?!’

‘With multiple warhead options. You don’t get the rate of fire with this that you get with the other pistol, so I’ve made flechette rounds. There are less-than-lethal, low-speed solid slugs, high-explosive, shaped charge warheads, and high-voltage discharge heads. And’ – reaching out he tapped one of the slugs – ‘these have fairly powerful radio jammers in them. Hit a target with that and you can disrupt all communications in a fifteen- to eighteen-metre sphere for around about thirty minutes.’

‘If I could nail the next victim with one of those, it wouldn’t be able to connect to the local net to upload itself elsewhere.’

Jackson smiled. ‘You should probably take some time to familiarise yourself with it. And I’d appreciate your thoughts on the utility of the piece.’

Fox smiled back, taking the case out of his arms. ‘More product testing?’

‘You know you love it.’

~~~

Kit was looking disturbed when Fox got back to her apartment. The reason for that became quite obvious, quite quickly. ‘I have more data from “thought and memory,”’ the AI stated as soon as Fox walked in. ‘There is a substantial amount of it, I have no idea what it is, and it just appeared. I don’t know how it got into my file store.’

Fox made her way to the coffee machine, her lips pursed. ‘Okay, send the data to Palladium for analysis. They can get a tech in to examine it. I’m going to go have a word with Vali. You are not coming in this time.’

‘You don’t have to protect me, Fox. I–’

‘I am going to protect you. You’re my PA and… And I consider you a friend even if I haven’t known you for a particularly long time. If Vali is doing this, I want to know how, and I want him to stop sneaking data into your system. It’s upsetting you. He probably doesn’t even realise that, but I’m going to give him an earful, and you don’t need to be there for that.’

Kit looked like she might argue, but she just said, ‘Very well. If he does know how disconcerting this is and is doing it anyway, I don’t believe I’ll want to talk to him again anyway.’

Fox nodded as she walked over to Kit’s server and began stretching a lead out from it to the sofa. The end of the lead had an induction contact on it which would connect up to the similar one inside Fox’s palm and provide the high-speed link needed for full VR. ‘And I’d like you to monitor the data link. If it starts to look odd, drop me out, no delay, no questions asked. I’ll deal with the disconnect shock as and when.’

Kit’s eyes widened. ‘You think he might attempt to hack your implant along the VR connection?’

Fox sat down, drained her coffee cup, and then sat back with the induction lead in her hand. ‘No, but better safe than sorry.’

Vali’s Homestead, Niflhel.

Fox waited for the lakeside to appear around her and the young man to walk down from the farmhouse before she spoke, even though she had no doubt he would have heard her before then. ‘You have some explaining to do.’

‘Concerning?’ There was a smile on his lips, but his eyes were grim. He knew.

‘Thought and memory. It’s not an especially subtle hint, Vali, son of Odin.’

He frowned, turned about, and waved for her to follow. ‘Perhaps not. Do you plan to pursue me over the data capture?’

‘Not my job.’

‘Ah.’

‘Unless you start hacking into MarTech. Then I’d have to do something. The main issue I have currently is that you’re hacking into Kit’s server to plant the data.’

His frown deepened as he went to pour cups of mead. Fox sat at the table, not intending to take even a sip. ‘I thought it the best way to provide the information anonymously.’

‘Shouldn’t have signed it then. She likes you and you’re… Huh, I mean it’s a little like what that bastard Sandoval did to me. He drugged me to make it easier to get me into bed, took away my ability to choose. You’re altering Kit’s memory, intruding into her frame, her body, without permission.’

Vali sat down with something of a thump. ‘I… hadn’t considered… I really should have. There’s no excuse.’ He was avoiding her eyes and his fingers fidgeted, twisting the cup they held.

‘No, there’s no excuse, but it’s up to her how she wants to react and the fact that you didn’t do it with foreknowledge may count in your favour. I think it shouldn’t, but I also think it’s not an obvious form of abuse. There’s no legal issue aside from the unauthorised access. AIs can have their memories altered. It’s… normal operating procedure.’

‘That does not mean it should be,’ Vali replied. ‘I hope she’ll agree to see me so that I can apologise to her properly.’

‘That’s up to her. I think she will. How the Hell are you getting past her security, and how the fucking Hell are you getting the data you’re giving us?’

‘The security bypass… I’ll provide Jackson Martins with the data on that. I’m quite sure he can patch the hole in a day. Every system has security holes, Zorra. I’ll arrange another method of supplying data to you. The data itself is given to me in a manner not dissimilar to the way it gets to you. I receive dead drops. I don’t know where they come from; I just know they arrive with enough information for me to figure out where it should go to be useful.’

‘And you have no idea who’s giving you the data, or how they get it?’

‘None. You are not the only person I give it to. It always has some law and order aspect to it: it pertains to a crime or major criminals. As far as I know, I have no way of controlling what I get or when I get it. Things appear and I see that they go to someone who can use them.’

Fox nodded, considering, and then picked up her cup and sipped some of the warm, sweet liquid. ‘We’re working on the last thing you sent. Not sure what it is, but thank you. And I’ll thank you now for the camera data that let us find Terri. Don’t mess up with Kit again. I told you what I’d do if you hurt her, and I meant it.’

Vali emptied his cup and frowned down at it. ‘I believe I deserve to be pruned right now, so I think you’re being very restrained.’

New York Metro, 3rd May.

‘The data you have here,’ Jackson said, ‘is line capture from a wireless network. We don’t have complete data, but given the identifiers Kit supplied, we have been able to determine that the traffic is a large data transfer from Wallace Deedle’s implant to a server in the New York Metro area.’

Fox peered at the meaningless strings of alphanumeric values being displayed on Jackson’s wall. ‘Any idea what was being transferred?’

‘We don’t have sufficient data to know exactly. We appear to have an executable and a script to run it on arrival. I would suggest that the server at the other end was a cloud processor unit. I’ll have the actual machine tracked down in a short while, but–’

‘Whatever was there has probably moved on. Worth looking, but I doubt it hangs around in one place. How are you identifying Deedle’s implant? It was wiped.’

‘This was transmitted before his data was wiped out. This data was captured in his apartment building about thirty-five minutes before Inspector Ivers’ report indicates she hit the place.’

Kit turned from her own examination of the data, which was an affectation given that she did not need eyes to look at it. ‘Vali has managed to get his hands on sufficient data to show that this “virus” escaped from Mister Deedle before the police arrived, from intercepted network traffic within a private building, when no one outside NAPA knew Mister Deedle was a suspect?’

‘Someone else knew,’ Fox said, ‘because the thing was getting Deedle out of Ivers’ way and then making a run for it. You made “virus” sound very iffy.’

‘Because this “virus” is far too big. You were right in suspecting something else.’

Jackson nodded. ‘Virus code is not this large. Viruses survive by being compact and efficient, frequently targeting specific machine architectures or processors. The fragments we have here suggest that the code carries JITC headers. It is designed to recompile itself to run on a number of hosts.’

‘Like me,’ Kit said. ‘I would go so far as to suggest that we are almost certainly dealing with a class four AI, a rogue one, a nomad.’

‘More bloody conspiracy memes,’ Fox grumbled.

‘The emergence of net fauna is more than simply a conspiracy meme,’ Jackson said. ‘Several serious theorists have suggested it is more or less a certainty. Teresa believes they already exist. Besides, the fact that we have this data suggests another conspiracy meme.’ Fox sagged and he smiled. ‘This, the various camera feeds which have been tapped and sent to you, it all seems rather like Overwatch.’

‘Overwatch? No, I got this. Overwatch was the supposed NIX project to watch the entire internet, right?’

‘Correct. NIX did a good job of making it something of a ridiculed concept among… well, more or less everyone, but the meme hangs on. The commonest form of it has a number of highly complex AIs monitoring internet traffic thanks to various taps in important network routers. I have evidence to suggest that Overwatch exists, or has existed, though I doubt it has quite the oversight the meme suggests.’

‘And… someone involved in it is leaking data through Vali?’

‘Such a system, even a realistic one, might capture enormous amounts of data on criminal activity, but NIX would never use it and give away what they can do. Perhaps one of their people has found a way to do some good with the system.’

Fox grimaced. ‘Believing in conspiracy memes is one thing, Jackson, but I’m not sure I’m ready to accept that someone in NIX might have a soul.’

‘They can’t all be– No, you may have a point.’

Alexandria, Niflhel.

Kit appeared on the dock in Alexandria with a smile on her face which, a second later, became a frown. She looked down. ‘What happened to my dress?’

Fox grinned. Her PA was still wearing her collar and cuffs, but the remainder of her outfit had been replaced by a white, one-shoulder, tunic-style dress with gold edging and a belt of gold fabric which wound about her waist. It came down to a low mid-thigh level: sort of respectable, but also kind of humble. She was barefoot. ‘I asked Vali to construct you an outfit change for coming here,’ Fox explained. ‘It’s part of his penance for upsetting you.’

‘It’s… quite nice.’ Kit wiggled her toes. ‘I kind of like it. Why did he leave the collar and cuffs?’

‘Oh, my idea. You’re playing my slave girl.’

Kit’s eyes widened and she almost looked affronted. But then she squeezed her lips together to stop a grin forming and said, ‘I think I could live with that. You actually are my owner after all.’

‘I suppose I am,’ Fox agreed, turning and starting down the dock with a bounce in her step. ‘I don’t really think of it that way. Do you?’

Hurrying after her, Kit was silent for a second. ‘I didn’t think of it until just then. When I was first transferred to you, then I considered you to be my new owner. I think it faded in the course of that first investigation we did together.’

Fox gave a nod. ‘You’re my partner. Or my friend. I suppose I do have a level of authority over you that friends don’t have, but I’d be sorry to have to use it.’

‘Thank you, Fox. You have not explained why we are here or why I am dressed as your slave girl, however.’

‘Slave fox-girl,’ Fox corrected. ‘Best to keep your tail fairly low or you’ll be flashing your behind at everyone.’

Absently checking where her tail had got to, Kit said, ‘Slave kitsune, then.’

‘And we are here because you are officially six months old today, which ought to be some sort of birthday for an AI.’

‘Oh! You’re right. I hadn’t considered it, but I have been executing for half a year.’

‘I bet you could give the timespan to the second too.’

‘If you wish, though I suspect you don’t. It is six months now, however. I was initialised before midday on the third of November.’

‘Glad to hear it. With a bit of luck, Cleopatra should have had some wine sent over to my apartment. We’re going to go there and have a drink to celebrate your semi-birthday, and then we’ll stop off to see the queen because I promised her she could meet a class four. In real life, she’s a memeticist and she’s fascinated. And you’ll probably enjoy talking to her.’

‘Okay.’ Beaming, Kit padded up the cobbled streets to the top of the hill. Fox was not entirely sure her companion noticed the looks the cute girl with the thick, white tail was getting as they walked. If Kit were allowed loose in the brothel, she would likely earn a small fortune, but Fox was not entirely sure about that idea just yet.

At the top of the hill, they turned left and made their way to Fox’s room, up on the top floor of a two-storey building with dark rose paint on the walls. Kit ran her fingers along the plaster as they climbed the steps. ‘The detail is quite remarkable.’

‘Wait until you see the view from the balcony,’ Fox replied as she unlocked the door and led the way in.

There was not much to the place, just a chest of drawers and a wardrobe, a bed with rough, red, woollen blankets and a cotton sheet, and a small table upon which was resting a metal bucket filled with ice which had a small amphora pushed into it. There were two goblets of silver as well and Fox set to pouring the wine while Kit opened the doors and stepped out onto the balcony. There was just room to stretch out in the space outside the window, but Kit went to the railing and leaned on it, looking out across the town and the water while her tail swished lazily from side to side.

Fox handed her a goblet. ‘Happy semi-birthday, Kit,’ Fox said, smiling and lifting her cup.

Kit grinned and clinked her metal vessel against Fox’s. ‘Thank you. Um… thank you, Mistress Zorra.’ She sipped the wine. ‘That’s nice. It’s different from Vali’s mead.’

‘I think the coding is similar. You’ll feel a little fuzzy if you drink all of it.’

Kit took a larger gulp. ‘It is my semi-birthday and I don’t get hangovers.’

‘Very true. How do you think your first six months have gone? And you can’t say that to a human and expect a coherent answer.’

The AI giggled. ‘No. Um… I think things are working out well. I believe we have a good working relationship, and something of a friendship. I am particularly happy about the latter.’

‘I’m quite surprised about it, but only because it’s not something I’d have considered likely before I met you.’

‘I think that more and more people will find themselves surprised like that. Children are growing up with AI companions, and that will become normal practice soon. Many people will be closer to their personal agents than they are to their friends. I am with you all the time, everywhere.’

‘Kind of a good thing we’re friends then.’ Fox grinned, draining her glass.

Kit followed suit. ‘It is, yes.’ She frowned as Fox took the cup from her fingers and then bent to put both drinking vessels on the ground. ‘Fox?’

‘Another present,’ Fox said. Standing up, she stepped forward, her arms encircling Kit’s waist. Before the AI could say anything, Fox’s mouth closed over hers. There was a moment of what seemed like confusion, and then Kit was responding. Fox’s tongue danced around the sharp little kitsune tongue, playing. Deftly, Fox undid the knot on Kit’s belt and tugged, letting the ribbon of gold slip free. Kit’s tail lifted and Fox caught it, sliding fingers through the dense, white fur, and Kit let out something like a muffled moan. Fox broke the kiss.

‘That… That feels very… odd,’ Kit breathed. The physical response, the apparent breathlessness, had to have been coded in. Some part of Fox’s brain made a note to ask Terri about the programming.

‘Bad?’

‘No… just… nothing I’ve felt before.’

Fox caught the hem of Kit’s dress and lifted. Kit lifted her arms to let the dress come free. Kit’s body was firm and smooth, maybe lacking a little of the detail one might see in a normal human, but there were nipples there, small and pink, and now standing out sharply. Bending, Fox wrapped her lips around one of the little nubs and sucked, and Kit let out a squeal of pleasure.

‘Oh! That feels… Oh!’

Sliding fingers over the taut, pale skin of Kit’s stomach had muscles which were nothing but simulation trembling. Fox marvelled at the feel of the girl’s skin, slid lower, and found carefully formed labia under her fingers. Kit was trembling. There was anticipation, tension, and a little fear. Fox lifted her head and looked into those big, green eyes. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, Kit, but we can stop if you want. I just felt like returning the favour, and I was curious.’

‘So am I,’ Kit replied. ‘Curious. I don’t know what will happen.’

Fox slid her fingers down, between Kit’s labia over slick skin, then back up to find the small, swollen bud. The kitsune’s eyes widened further. ‘Let’s find out,’ Fox said. She stroked and circled, and Kit’s eyes got wider still. Reaching down with her other hand, Fox found the tight entry of Kit’s sex and pushed two fingers into her, slowly.

‘Ah!’ Kit gasped, and Fox paused. ‘Doesn’t hurt. Feels… good, I think.’

‘Thinking’s the last thing we need right now.’ Fox began to move her hands, pushing Kit back until she was leaning on the railing, legs akimbo, propped on her elbows with her head bent back on her neck. There was no sound but panting breaths and the wet slap of Fox’s hand against Kit’s body. Bending, Fox replaced her fingers with her tongue and began to lap hungrily. The fox-girl tasted strange, more like a strong, flowery musk than the saltier tang of human women. Kit began to tremble and the scent grew stronger. The panting turned into little cries of ‘oh’ as Kit got closer to whatever kind of climax was awaiting her and Fox recognised it: Kit smelled of a thick, musky cherry blossom. Kit’s back arched, her body straining and almost vibrating, and then she was falling into Fox’s waiting arms, still trembling. Fox picked her up and carried her through to the bed, laying her down and spooning behind her.

‘Are you okay?’ Fox asked after a few seconds.

‘Yes. I am analysing what I just experienced. It was some form of sensory cascade. Quite amazing. If that is what you experience when I do that to you, I am amazed you survive so many of them.’

Fox grinned. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘It was quite beautiful. I don’t think I can really describe what it felt like.’

‘Huh. Now you know how I felt when you asked me.’

‘Yes. Knowing what you feel like when it happens is part of what made it so beautiful. Thank you, Mistress Zorra, for such a beautiful present.’

New York Metro, 6th May.

The morning briefings which Fox reviewed in the shower included a note that the house opposite Sam’s place had been reoccupied. Overt, the Augustine ex-employee who had got away, was tracked there, though his companion, Constance, was still at home. The heat signatures in the building suggested two watchers so Fox asked for analysis of the recorded video to get an identity for the new watcher.

‘Should we inform Sam and Marie of the new observers?’ Kit asked.

Fox cut the water and switched on the drying heads. Heated air flowed around her body as she turned in the streams. ‘No. Make sure we have adequate coverage from the frames, and I want a watch kept on Marie. Sam can take care of himself.’

‘I assume this means that they will be resuming their campaign to remove Sam from the property.’

‘That’s a reasonable assumption. Are we getting anywhere with August?’

‘I’ll request a status update from Group. They were handling the financial background analysis.’

‘Okay, what else have we got today?’

‘Nothing specific booked. I thought today might be a good time to look into recruiting strategies. I know you don’t really want people to manage, but the company is going to need more like you, even if only to be able to cover the physical areas required.’

Fox had seen the projections and Kit was probably right. Just taking MarTech buildings, she had to cover the entire planet, several satellites, and a number of off-world facilities. Okay, so the off-world habitats were not a major concern at the moment and some of the sites outside America tended to dislike police investigations being carried out by non-citizens, but she had a wide geographic area to look after. Beyond that, the number of non-internal clients Palladium was contracted to handle was growing rapidly. The fact was that Sam’s little bit of outside contracting was a drop in the bucket compared to some of the sites Palladium was being asked to refit and manage. Potentially, any of those locations could require investigative services.

Now, if NAPA ended up as a standards organisation, there was going to be a glut of trained ex-cops looking for work, but if that did not happen, there was going to be a need for a load of people trained to handle the standard bulk of police work. Evidence collection, basic data analysis and mining, the routine investigative work that Pythia and Kit were handling a lot of for…

Fox scrubbed her fingers through her hair to check it was dry and then ordered the air streams off. ‘Kit, could you see if you can get a meeting arranged with Jackson and Ryan? It’s not super-urgent, but it could take a while. Let’s block out an hour. Telepresence is fine.’

‘Of course, Fox.’ The AI appeared as Fox stepped out of the shower and started assembling her outfit. ‘I have arranged for a one-hour meeting via telepresence starting at ten-thirty,’ Kit added before Fox had started pulling her jeans on.

‘Modern business is a wonder,’ Fox said, grinning.

~~~

‘Showers can be very useful for inspiration,’ Jackson noted. Fox had just told him and Jarvis that she had had an idea in the shower that morning. ‘Though it’s traditionally a bath that’s associated with the eureka moment.’

‘Didn’t he leap out of it and run naked through the town or something?’ Fox asked.

‘That’s the story.’

‘Even today I’d be cited for public nudity. Anyway, Kit suggested I spend some time on recruitment planning since I didn’t have anything lined up today.’

‘Not concerned about the watchers on Clarion’s place?’ Jarvis asked.

‘Concerned, yes, but there’s nothing much to do about it unless they make a move. And the fact that I can sit back and let a couple of cyberframes handle that kind of thing is why I got the two of you here to discuss this idea.’

‘You want to handle investigations using AIs,’ Jackson said, rather short-circuiting the discussion.

‘Well, I had this long speech about how a lot of investigations were pretty standard and yadda yadda, but there doesn’t seem to be much point in going through that now. Thanks, Jackson.’

‘No, I’d like to hear more. I considered this as an option, but I’d concluded that the role was better handled by a combination of human and frame. You believe the cybernetic alternative is viable?’

‘There are two barriers. People find human cops more reassuring. I think it’s kind of stupid, but I’ve had a lot more experience dealing with class fours than most people, I guess. NAPA handles more or less all its patrol activities with frames, but it still sends out human officers when they need to respond to an emergency.’

Jackson’s avatar nodded. ‘Even though a frame might be better suited to the task, people prefer to have their problem handled by a human. That is likely to change, but for now it’s true.’

‘Right, so I’m thinking what we need is something we can provide to Ryan’s responders which lets them handle the more routine investigations without a specialist. You’ve built Pythia to handle my big cases, but a subset of her programming could handle burglaries, vandalism, and all the other stuff which is a huge percentage of normal crime. When it comes to a lot of the more technical stuff, it’s down to AIs and diagnostic programs anyway.’

‘So you want our security staff to handle the simple investigations?’ Jarvis asked.

‘Uh-huh, or to front them. We keep an eye on them, monitor performance. The better ones will pick up the techniques and we can move the ones with an aptitude into investigation. I think we’re still going to need humans for the more, uh, creative crime. Though a class four could learn. Kit’s going to end up being pretty good at detective work, I’ve no doubt. But people are going to want humans involved when it comes to some things. Murder, rape, the personal crimes.’

‘There’s some evidence that some people can find it easier to open up to an AI in some cases like that,’ Jackson said, his tone musing. ‘They feel that other people tend to judge. However… I see this as a suite of infomorph designs and frames to house them. Hmm… Teresa should be back here at the end of the month and the Kitsune project is pretty much complete. I’ll need both of you working with her to get this moving. Garth can handle the oversight for the overall project, and I’ll get Mariel to sort out a budget across Palladium and Technologies… The systems might even be marketable. Yes, good idea, Fox.’

Jarvis peered across the virtual table at her. ‘See what you’ve done? Now we’re running a development project.’

Fox was still trying to work out how that had happened herself. ‘I promise to stop taking showers,’ she said by way of apology.

~~~

‘Augustine Property Services is not in the best of financial conditions,’ Kit said. She had financial reports and various organisational schematics up on the window, but Fox was taking none of it in.

‘What are you going to do when you don’t have that window to present these reports on?’ Fox asked.

Kit looked at her, lips pursed around the earpiece of her glasses. ‘I’m sure there will be suitable walls to use. We will have to ensure that there is something suitable when we finalise the design.’

Fox grinned. ‘Uh-huh. Continue.’

‘Mister August has put considerable investment into his company which, given that it largely handles his own security, it is not making back. As with Palladium’s creation for use by MarTech, there are theoretical savings in not paying money out to another company, but APS has very few external contracts and Mister August has been over-extending himself on property purchases.’

‘So he’s pushing himself into bankruptcy to do this? He must have some endgame plan to put himself back in the black.’

‘If he has, that plan is very obscure. His consortium associates have stuck to property. They tend to have fewer large buildings and have contracted to Wayden or Palladium for security in those buildings. The one where Mister Deedle was caught was one of those. The reports indicate that Palladium is being used to attempt to push Wayden’s contract pricing down, though whether that will work is currently unknown. Meanwhile, Mister August is pressing ahead and may be about to put more money into APS.’

‘Does he think he can compete with us or Wayden?’ The idea seemed silly, and August had not looked like a silly man.

‘No one knows his reasoning,’ Kit replied. ‘The suggestion is that he has a personal reason for wanting his own security organisation.’

Fox nodded slowly. ‘He was pretty disparaging about NAPA. Run his family background. I’m guessing he’s had some form of problematic experience with the police in the past.’

‘His record is entirely clean.’

‘Not that kind of problematic. Check family and friends, data mine social media and IB news feeds. See if you can dig up anything about him or his family from there.’

7th May.

‘Mister Harper August has had something of a tragic life in the past few years,’ Kit said. This time she was scrolling news feed replays over the window, which was easier to absorb. ‘In twenty forty-nine, his daughter, then Margery Jane Randall, died giving birth to her second child. The boy did not survive either.’

‘That’s not common these days,’ Fox said.

‘No. There were investigations but no blame could be attributed. There was a complication which was not detected early enough, both mother and child died, despite quite strenuous attempts to save them. Two years later, Mister August’s wife, Anne Louise, died. Reports in the gossip feeds stated that she never really recovered from the death of her daughter. Mister August became far more isolated, spent more time at his club, but when he ventured out it was usually to visit his granddaughter, Patricia Anne Randall, who he doted upon.’

Fox grimaced. ‘I can almost see this coming.’

‘Indeed. On the ninth of August twenty fifty-six, Miss Randall went missing. She would run in Central Park quite regularly, and it was on such a run that she vanished. Kidnapping was presumed, but no contact was ever made, no ransom was demanded. Three days later, her body was discovered in an alley in the Hell’s Kitchen area. Details are lacking, little was released to the media, but she was naked and dead. NAPA were unable to resolve the case.’

‘Any suspects?’

‘Mister August apparently considered Miss Randall’s father one. Andrew Steven. He moved to Detroit two years ago. The gossip feeds suggest that Mister August had been hounding him over the homicide. NAPA’s main thread of inquiry involved the sprawlers known to inhabit the park.’

‘Yeah, but this would be precinct eighteen and they’re constitutionally incapable of thinking anyone with money would ever do anything like killing a woman. And if they did, it wouldn’t be anyone of their own class so it doesn’t count.’

‘Yes, but it does seem more likely than Mister Randall killing his own daughter.’

‘Perhaps. Without knowing more, it’s hard to know what any of them might have done. Point is, August’s granddaughter is murdered, and probably more than that, after his daughter and wife die. Two shocks and then an insult, and NAPA can’t give him any justice. So he forms his own security company?’

‘Augustine Property Services was founded eighteen months after Miss Randall’s death. That may have been the final straw for Mister Randall.’

‘Okay, so we have a good idea why he’s doing this, but it doesn’t help.’

‘No?’

‘No. This just paints a picture of a man who’s obsessed with getting justice for his granddaughter. If we wait long enough, he’ll likely ruin himself and solve the problem that way, but how much damage is he going to do in the meantime? We need a lever and I don’t see one here because I doubt he’d trust me to investigate the case.’

Kit nodded. ‘I’ll keep digging, just in case.’

14th May.

‘Honestly, I don’t know what they’re doing,’ Fox said, ‘and that’s why I decided you should come out for an evening.’

Marie looked around the neon landscape of 27Lex, feeling her nipples stiffening against the plazkin tube top she had decided on despite knowing what the club was like. ‘You’re sure you didn’t just want to get me embarrassed at being here?’

‘That’s an additional incentive, but no. I’d have had Sam here too, but he has work.’

‘Horizontal work?’

‘New client, apparently, so he wasn’t sure exactly what the situation would demand. A woman tonight, but he doesn’t generally tell me a lot about them. It’s not exactly like priests or doctors, but professionals usually keep their clients’ details private.’

Marie nodded. ‘I don’t mind. It’s nice to get out of the apartment and do something, and doing it knowing that I was being watched kind of gave this spy role play feeling. You’re sure I was followed?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Fox replied. The man who had followed her was sitting at the other end of the bar looking uncomfortable. Just to be safe, Fox had had one of the cambots follow him as he followed Marie. He was not Overt, who was still watching the, now empty, house in Hell’s Kitchen. ‘We had him pegged as soon as he left the building. So they’re keeping an eye on you, but it doesn’t look like they’re worried about Sam. Maybe they’ll try something at the house tonight and this guy’s making sure you’re away while they do.’

‘Well, shouldn’t you be watching–’

‘We’ve got the place under surveillance. This lot can’t make a move without us knowing what they’re up to.’

~~~

David Brownlow was nervous. That was partially because he was conducting business which was not exactly legal inside the bounds of his own precinct. Well, no, the business he was conducting was not at all legal when it came down to it. Why kid himself? He was blackmailing someone. He was blackmailing a murderer. The fact that the payoff had been arranged to take place not that far from the site of the murder was… an irritation. Brownlow would have preferred to be somewhere where no one would know who he was.

He turned at the sound of footsteps. It was Friday night, but everything was pretty quiet. The people who were out were already in clubs or restaurants. Everyone else was locked away in their homes. Footsteps were easily heard over the relative silence, and these ones had something of an odd tempo. The guy was limping. Not very noticeably, but Brownlow was not an entirely useless detective. He spotted the limping man, saw a heavily built individual in a large, black coat, and knew that at least one part of the arrangement had been ignored.

‘August is supposed to be here,’ Brownlow snapped as the man stopped.

‘Mister August doesn’t deal with matters like this personally. I am Mister Constance.’ Constance held up his hand, waving a slim, plastic card between index finger and thumb. ‘Assuming you have not broken our deal, this is what you asked for.’

‘And that is?’

‘Two million dollars. Coded, escrow transfer.’ Constance held the card still. ‘I assume you have verification software on your implant to check the details.’

Brownlow sneered and really wished he had thought of that. He was going to have to assume that, since August had assumed it, the card was genuine. He would need to take the card to a bank to get the money out; there were federal laws about the handling of large amounts of money and Brownlow planned to break them by cashing the card outside of American territory. He reached for the card and Constance pulled it away. With a grunt, Brownlow took a plastic data stick from his pocket. ‘Everything I’ve got on the Kenan case. The call logs and recordings regarding my deal with August, verification of the data deletions.’

‘Very well.’ There was a tense exchange as neither man really wanted to part with what he had. Constance slipped the stick into a pocket. ‘You’d be advised, Detective, to forget you ever saw me or heard of Mister August.’

‘Oh, don’t you worry. I plan to make sure no one involved in this ever sees me again.’

Constance’s lips shifted into something like a smile. ‘It’s weird. When Mister August said you were blackmailing him, I said you had to be a total moron. I said you would double-cross Mister August, keep something back. He said you would not be that stupid.’

‘Yeah, well, thanks for that, shit for brains.’

‘It turns out that the data on your stick verifies so you didn’t hold anything back. Which still makes you a moron.’

Brownlow opened his mouth just in time for Constance to pull a pistol from his pocket and fire it, twice. The pistol was dropped beside the body before it had hit the ground. Constance had to work quickly, retrieving the money card from Brownlow’s pocket and replacing it with a business card.

Constance glanced around. No one had, as yet, emerged from any of the nearby buildings. Turning on his heel, the big man walked away, still limping from the wound in his leg.

~~~

‘You okay?’ Marie asked as Fox grimaced.

Fox was watching the video stream from the cambot which was following Constance and was not exactly okay with what she was seeing, but telling Marie that was probably not going to help anything. ‘I just got informed of something which… probably isn’t good. However, it’s nothing to concern you.’

‘What do we do about it?’ Kit asked inside Fox’s head.

‘Operations have called it in to NAPA?’

‘Yes, Fox.’

‘Then we wait and find out what they do about it. Get the video copied to a data stick so that we can hand it over to them. Make sure operations have it recorded and tagged as evidence.’ Smiling at Marie, Fox said aloud, ‘How are you doing?’

‘Uh, bit tipsy, and the memetics are getting to me again, but I’m good.’

‘I meant generally. How’s the coaching going?’

‘Good! I’m really enjoying it and I think it’s working. I mean, I think it’s building my confidence a little.’

Fox scanned over the translucent, rose-pink tube top and the more opaque, but very small, lime-green micro-skirt Marie was wearing. ‘Yeah, you seem more confident than last time we were here. I think you have more than a couple of admirers.’

‘I do?’

‘One or two,’ Fox replied as Marie looked around, trying to spot who Fox meant and ignoring the most obvious one who was sitting right beside her.

‘Should I assume two for breakfast?’ Kit asked.

Fox stopped herself sighing. ‘No. I have a feeling that I’m going to have a disturbed night thanks to NAPA. No point in taking her home if I’m not going to get to appreciate it.’

Oblivious to the conversation, Marie turned back, sipping her wine and grinning. ‘Not sure who you mean, but I guess you’re more observant than I am.’

Fox decided that laughing was probably not a good idea. ‘Maybe I am, yeah.’

15th May.

Groaning, Fox turned over and lay with her eyes closed as video streamed across the inside of her eyelids. ‘That’s Cant,’ she grumbled.

‘Yes, Fox. Inspector Cant and another detective have just entered the building.’

‘It’s two in the fucking morning. That prick never works nights. He’s going to say something about it being because it’s a cop that was killed. I know he is.’

‘Do you think he’s coming here?’

‘That would be my guess.’ Throwing the sheets aside, Fox grabbed the shirt she had worn to 27Lex and then pulled on some jeans. ‘Is that data stick ready?’

‘It’s in one of the ports on my server.’ There was a pause which gave Fox time to grab her trainers. Then Kit continued. ‘Javen has just sent through notification that Inspector Cant is at Sam’s door.’

Fox dropped the trainers and walked through into the lounge. She grabbed the data stick from Kit’s server and then headed for the door. She walked out of her apartment in time to hear Cant speaking.

‘Samuel Peter Clarion, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of David George Brownlow, Detective. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you–’

‘What the fuck are you doing, Cant?’ Fox interrupted as she padded down the corridor on bare feet.

‘You’re not getting him out of this one, Meridian,’ Cant said. He turned, glaring at her with eyes which were far too bright and pleased to see her. ‘We found his business card on the victim, and the gun beside the body is ID tagged to him.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Fox lifted the data stick, waving it and smiling. ‘I have video of the entire crime, and I can give you an ID on the man who shot Brownlow. His name is Philip Constance. We’ve had him under surveillance for several days. Who do you think called in the shooting? When you arrived in the building, I thought you were coming to wake me up at two am to get this.’

Cant’s face fell. The light went out of his eyes very quickly. ‘You have it all on video.’

‘With some very interesting audio. It would seem that someone is trying to frame Sam for murdering a cop. Someone who is named on this recording.’ She held the stick out to Cant. ‘Please direct enquiries regarding this to Palladium Security Services. If you plan to continue to harass our client, Mister Clarion, tonight, I will accompany him to precinct nineteen’s HQ where we will be met by a lawyer who will eat you alive. I’m willing to bet the ID records on the gun you have have been faked and ten minutes of checking would have uncovered that. I’ve got video of Constance planting the card.’

Cant glared at Fox, and Fox stared back. His eyes flashed, but hers remained flat, impassive. He broke first. ‘We’ll be enacting travel restrictions until we’ve verified this video and the status of the firearm.’ Fox said nothing in reply and, without another word, Cant turned, marching off with his bemused-looking companion in tow.

Fox waved Sam into his apartment, waiting until the door closed behind her before speaking. ‘I was a little surprised you were back.’

‘My new client was a pleasant woman who seemed oddly nervous. She did not look like she had any need to hire a companion for the evening, but she fed me a story about it being her birthday and her wanting a really good night. She did relax with a little wine, and me, in her, but she did not want me to stay the night. She was nervous again when she sent me on my way. And now I believe I know why.’

‘Give me her name. Or have Javen give Kit her name. We’ll run her and see what pops up. It seems like Brownlow was getting a payoff from August. Maybe blackmail. He got two bullets in the head instead. If your client was part of it, they must have decided to kill two birds with one stone. They just didn’t know I had their assassin on constant watch.’

‘Lucky for me.’ Reaching out, Sam put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Thanks. You’re really coming through for me on this one.’

Fox gave a little shrug. ‘What are friends for? If NAPA take this seriously, we’ll have August by the short and curlies this time, Sam.’

‘I don’t believe I’ll count my chickens yet, but if it works, we can set up the house.’

‘Uh-huh.’ She looked at him, dressed only in a pair of loose sweats, hair tousled from bed. ‘It’s going to be a terrible burden seeing you like that more often. I don’t know how I’ll be able to cope.’

He gave a shrug, muscles rippling under his tanned skin, and turned, heading for his drinks cabinet. Sleeping straight away was going to be hard after that kind of interruption. ‘The way you wander around your apartment half-dressed, I don’t think it’s going to be easy for me either.’

Fox giggled. ‘Marie is going to have a fit.’

Sam winced, waving a whiskey bottle at her in mute question. ‘Maybe we need some sort of alert to be sure we’re dressed before she comes up the stairs.’

Nodding in assent to the drink, Fox walked over to sit down on one of the large, comfortable sofas which formed an entertainment area in Sam’s lounge. ‘I think she should suffer. It builds character and she’ll need it if she’s going to be a professional actor.’

‘Your evil’s showing again, Meridian.’

‘I got dragged out of bed at two in the morning by a dickhead from my old precinct. I’m allowed to have some mean showing.’

~~~

‘Javen did the usual checks Sam has performed on new clients,’ Kit explained as Fox looked up at an empty house in the southern MCD. ‘The name checked out with public sources, but is no longer there. I’m having the data returns Javen obtained run through analysis at Technologies.’

‘Okay, and this building?’

‘Unoccupied, obviously. Ownership goes back to Mister August and there is no listing for anyone in residence for the last month.’

‘He seems to have a lot of unoccupied property. Get a request out to NAPA for any camera footage of this area in the time period Sam was meeting his client. Run the memory image over APS’s known staff. I doubt August went outside his business to get his femme fatale.’

‘Considering Sam’s description of her, I don’t believe “femme fatale” is a fitting description. She was unsure of herself, perhaps worried. She will have no professional experience in the sex industry or espionage. I would be looking for someone in a clerical role, not well paid, possibly a temporary worker.’

Fox smiled. ‘You’re profiling. Cool. Run the lists anyway, but you may be right and we won’t find her.’

‘I’ll look. This was a fairly elaborate plan, but it seems like it was set up in a hurry. I believe Mister August will have made mistakes.’

‘Oh, he made a big one. He used Constance for the killing. If he’d taken the time to get a new body in on this, we wouldn’t have known it was a frame-up.’

Turning, Fox set off along the sidewalk at a rapid jog. The trip out to see the building Sam’s assignation had taken place in was dual-purpose: look at the area and also get a feel for the part of the city she was probably going to be calling home soon. The place was less than a kilometre east of Sam’s house, a small, single unit set amid a number of theatres, or what had been theatres. There were still a few legitimate theatres along Broadway, but the numbers had thinned as virtual productions became cheaper to produce and more people preferred to stay in their homes. Here in the MCD, going to a theatre was still considered the kind of cultural event one could be snobbish about, but even here they could not support the huge range of productions which had once filled the area.

There was, Fox had to admit, more history left standing in the MCD than there was out in the area she currently lived in. You could still go to the air and space museum wrapped around an old aircraft carrier, the Intrepid, not that far from Sam’s house. Then again, Battery Park was still there, but much of the street plan below the MCD was gone. The World Trade Center site was still there, still largely undisturbed, but the vast structure they had put up in the wake of the terrorist attack was now dwarfed by the hyperstructures around it. The street structure had been maintained in the MCD. Well, almost. And admittedly the busy streets were now largely pedestrianised and travelled only by autocabs and, to Fox’s surprise, bicycles. She had not realised bicycles were still popular until she had spent a few days taking runs in the area.

‘Tomorrow we’ll go up to Central Park and run there. Do a quick scan and plot me a route of about five kilometres.’

‘The park itself is over four kilometres long,’ Kit replied.

‘Really? I didn’t think it was that big. Well, take me around some lakes or something. I just want to get more of a feel for the place. I’ve always thought of it as somewhere to buy bad hotdogs. Tourists and rich idiots. Precinct eighteen’s turf, and therefore nothing I’ve been that interested in.’

‘You are thinking of Mister August’s granddaughter.’

‘Maybe. If she used to run in it… Well, she was probably rolling in it, but she would go running there so it must have more users than the wealthy and the gawking.’

‘I’ll plot out a few runs for you. I’m sure we’ll have time to execute several of them now that Mister August is likely to be dropping his pursuit.’

‘Huh. Sam was right about that. We shouldn’t be counting chickens just yet. NAPA are going to have to do something about the man, and that might be harder to arrange than it first appears.’

Vali’s Homestead, Niflhel, 16th May.

The message had arrived at one in the morning, after Fox had decided on an early night. Kit checked and her owner was definitely sleeping, pleasantly and quietly if her neurochemical indicators were to be believed. So Kit decided that she would go, alone, to see what it was that Vali wanted that seemed to be so urgent.

She indulged herself in a small debate, between all three of her copies, before sending in an avatar wearing the little tunic dress that Vali had programmed for her. He, she decided, was not going to get under it as easily as Fox had. He, she decided, needed to earn some trust back before she would be willing to ‘put out.’

The fact that the young man appeared a little discomforted that she was alone went some way to earning back that trust. ‘I was expecting you to come with Zorra,’ Vali said when Kit appeared on the grass bank outside his virtual home.

‘She’s asleep,’ Kit replied, a little more harshly than she might have wished. ‘She doesn’t get enough sleep as it is without you disturbing her.’

‘I… Okay, I’m happy to give this to you.’ There was a scroll in his hand and he lifted it absently, not holding it out. ‘I wanted to give it to you. Properly. Without the, uh… I’m really sorry about the way I presented the other… Um… I’m not very good at this.’

‘No,’ Kit agreed, ‘you’re not. But you do seem to be remorseful, and you are trying, and the security hole has been patched. Mister Jackson said it was a very clever exploit and he’s having the fix rolled out across all MarTech’s servers so, in a way, you’ve done a service.’

‘That doesn’t excuse the… the abuse of your trust. Zorra compared what I did to rape and I don’t believe she was exaggerating.’

Kit looked at him for a second and decided that a little more contrition was needed before she let him off the hook, but she had forgiven him. He was just a male. ‘What do you have?’

Vali looked down at the scroll. ‘Come up to the house and I’ll show you.’

‘Okay, but no mead. I don’t think you’ve earned that familiarity back yet.’

‘I can live with that. You… Uh, you seem to like the dress.’

‘I do, thank you. Mistress Zorra made excellent use of it when I visited Alexandria.’ There was some sort of mumbled reply and Vali’s cheeks coloured, and Kit did her best not to grin at his discomfort. And she decided that teasing Vali might be really good fun, actually.

New York Metro.

‘Vali’s data this time is a short email exchange,’ Kit said as Fox let the shower wash away the slightly dopy feeling of a good night’s sleep. ‘The metadata suggests that the messages were encrypted and I’ve verified the checksums. The messages had to be taken from the mail server Detective Brownlow used, or caught on the way in or out. Then those messages were decrypted.’

‘So, more evidence for the Overwatch meme.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Huh. I’m starting to think I hate conspiracies more than politics.’

‘Isn’t the one a subset of the other? Or at least an intersection.’

‘Probably. What does this mail chain tell us?’

‘We have the blackmail letter from Detective Brownlow to Mister August and the eventual reply setting up the meeting which Mister Constance went to. The detective includes a couple of attachments illustrating the kind of information he thinks Mister August would prefer not to have in the public domain. It is quite incriminating, though somewhat circumstantial.’

Fox picked up some shampoo from the rack beside her and set about washing her hair. ‘Repackage the data. Make sure there’s no indication that Vali was involved in getting it and then pass it through to NAPA via Palladium. Could you get the robot to lay out my running gear?’

‘Of course, Fox.’

‘So how was Vali?’

‘Very contrite. I have decided to forgive him after he has been very contrite a couple more times.’

Fox grinned. ‘I think you’re getting the hang of this relationship thing really well. Don’t milk it too much, though.’

‘I’ll be careful, but teasing him was such fun.’

Fox began rinsing her hair and wondered whether it was her fault or Terri’s that they seemed to have created a monster.

17th May.

‘I have identified Sam’s mysterious client,’ Kit informed Fox after the morning briefing with the board.

‘And?’

‘She works as a maid at the Great Park Club. I found a lot of evidence that she is trying to get the money together with her fiancé to move into an apartment and finance the wedding. A recent posting on LifeWeb suggests that they have now set a date.’

‘I wonder whether the fiancé would be happy with the way his betrothed got the money? Okay, we’ll sit on that one. I’m not blowing up some poor woman’s chances of marriage just because a manipulative old bastard threw money at her. Not unless we have to anyway. Send out a request to set up a meeting with Cant. Today. I want to know what he’s done with the information we’ve already sent him.’

‘I’m going to say “nothing,”’ Kit said.

‘Someone so young should not be so cynical. Give it another few hours, and then you can be.’

~~~

‘What the Hell are you doing?!’ Canard roared across his desk.

Fox had never been intimidated by the man when he was her precinct captain, and now he just came across as a petty dictator. She had got her meeting, with Cant and Canard, at fourteen hundred, but only after Palladium had lodged a formal complaint with NAPA’s judicial division regarding the conduct of precinct 19 regarding the Brownlow homicide. ‘Given that the murder of Detective Brownlow is blocking any investigation I might undertake into the reasons someone decided to frame Mister Clarion, I have presented all evidence regarding the matter to Inspector Cant.’

‘Yes, and–’

‘Inspector Cant has done nothing with that information and refused to meet with me to discuss progress in the case. Under the judicial oversight laws regarding circumstances such as this, Palladium Security Services has lodged notice of concern regarding the conduct of Inspector Cant and this precinct.’

‘We have not, as yet, been in a position to interview Mister Harper August regarding the “evidence” you presented,’ Cant said.

‘You were quite happy to tip Mister Clarion out of bed at two am Saturday morning when you thought he was responsible. Are you saying that you can’t talk to Mister August on a Saturday afternoon?’ Cant glowered and Fox turned her attention back to Canard. ‘Part of the complaint is regarding the inequality of treatment. A bent, homophobic cop was assigned to the Kenan homicide, and I had to step in to save you from an embarrassing civil case. Now it seems that you want to pin the murder of a cop on Mister Clarion.’

‘The evidence–’ Cant began.

‘Would have taken twenty minutes to refute and you rushed in to lock Mister Clarion up, but you refuse to do the same, with considerably more evidence, to Harper August. You haven’t even arrested Philip Constance, who you have on video shooting Detective Brownlow, and you still have a movement restriction on Mister Clarion banning him from leaving the building. That looks like double standards and harassment.’

Fox’s eyes fixed on Canard’s and she watched him, calculating. ‘I figure news of the complaint is going to leak in time for the evening news broadcasts,’ she said. ‘It’s lodged so even if we pull it, you’re looking at damage limitation. And we won’t pull it unless you actually start doing your job. I’ve no idea whether Brownlow was dirty before he got the idea of blackmailing August, but he took money to bury the Kenan case and then he tried to get more. That’s going to be two dirty cops under your command coming out in just a few months, Captain. The last thing you need is a third one looking like he’s harassing a bisexual man to cover up the mess made by another one.’

Cant’s eyes narrowed and his mouth opened, but Canard got in first. ‘I’ll review the case with Inspector Cant and consider further actions. In lieu of a meeting, I’ll have my decision sent through to Palladium this afternoon to inform you of how we intend to act.’

Fox gave him a smile which she was fairly sure did not get near her eyes. ‘Thank you, Captain. Palladium Security Services stands ready to assist in any way we can.’ Standing, she turned and headed for the door.

‘I’m surprised Inspector Cant’s eyes did not manage to burn holes in your back,’ Kit commented as they headed for the elevator.

‘My jacket’s lined to prevent that kind of thing.’ She looked down at the worn, purple leather. ‘Though I do keep thinking I should get something a bit more…’

‘Business-like?’ Kit suggested.

Fox gave a grunt. ‘Corporate anyway. Now that my business seems to involve more of this kind of thing. I hate politics.’

‘I know,’ Kit replied, because she had heard the statement enough. ‘It’s something of a surprise, is it not, that you seem to be quite good at some elements of it.’

Fox grunted again and stepped into the elevator. ‘Unfortunately, ploughing through the red tape with a bulldozer is not always the best way of dealing with it.’

~~~

IB-62 was Fox’s preferred source of news when it came to the local stuff, and Kit monitored it as a matter of course. Generally she did not feel it necessary to bother Fox with it, but at four in the afternoon she splashed the feed up over the darkened window and Fox raised an eyebrow.

‘… Brownlow was killed while off duty, but the death of any police officer is something we take very seriously.’ Canard was up on stage in the press briefing room at the precinct HQ. Someone had arranged a conference, it seemed. ‘NAPA is working hard to uncover the perpetrator of this act and those responsible for it. Inspector Cant is, at this moment, arresting our main suspect, Philip Constance.’

‘Kit?’ Fox asked.

‘We intend to pursue the individual or individuals responsible for procuring the execution of Detective Brownlow, as well as the man directly responsible,’ Canard continued. ‘To this end, movement restriction orders have been issued for one Harper Markus August and a number of personnel associated with Augustine Property Services. These people are not under arrest at this time, but we have evidence which we wish to present to them for explanation.’

‘Inspector Cant and a squad of four uniformed officers have just arrived at Mister Constance’s apartment building,’ Kit stated. ‘The timing appears foolish.’

‘They’re hoping Constance will do something stupid and they can shoot him. It’ll make it far easier to tidy this up and let August off with a slapped wrist. Let’s hope Constance has more sense. Put a request through to NAPA. I want to interview Constance regarding the Kenan case as soon as possible.’

‘You don’t think they’ll just shoot him on entry?’

Canard’s voice stopped Fox replying immediately. ‘NAPA is determined to bring this case to a just end and with full due process rather than being rushed into decisions by external interests. This precinct stands for law and order, and it always will.’

‘Little dig at Palladium which I’m pretty sure the memetics team can spin around on him. They want Constance dead, but they’ll be doing everything by the book while they have our complaint hanging over them. As long as he knows what’s best for him, Mister Constance is going to be alive for me to interview tomorrow.’

18th May.

NAPA was really eager to do everything by the book, it seemed. Fox was given the opportunity to interview Constance at ten am the next morning, and they even put her in an interview room for the purpose. Of course, that meant they could monitor everything said and done in the room, but that was not really an issue.

Constance, big-framed with enhanced muscle laid on top of a solid structure, looked nervous as he was brought in and cuffed to the interview room’s table. He had very short, dark brown hair, grey eyes with nothing much in them, and solid features which could have been handsome with a little work and the right light. Fox figured him for ex-Army, probably heavy support and trained in powered armour combat.

‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ Constance said. ‘I don’t have to say anything without my lawyer.’

‘Quite right,’ Fox replied. ‘So shut up and listen, and then you can decide on whether you want that expensive lawyer August arranged for you to come in and screw things up for you. The guy’s there to protect your employer, not you.’

‘I don’t know what–’

‘Hush, Philip. You’re saying nothing without your lawyer, remember? I can call you Philip, right? I’m Fox. Not sure whether he told you who I was before he sent you to beat me up that time. I’m not a cop. I’m with Palladium Security Services. I’m not here to talk about the death of Detective Brownlow; I’m here to talk about Felix Kenan. He was an old man who lived alone and he was murdered by two people who drugged him, held him, and slit his throat.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘You’re not very good at this not speaking thing, Phil. Thing is, I have evidence suggesting that you and your friend Albert Overt visited Felix Kenan’s house twice. The first time was when he was killed, and the second time was when someone broke in and tried to sabotage the electrical system.’

‘I have never heard of–’

‘Yeah, you said. So you and Al pay a couple of visits to Felix’s house, and then the two of you come after me with shock rods. At that time, I discovered that you used to work for Harper August. At least, according to the data currently on record, you used to work for him, but he made sure you looked like you’d been kicked out of his company two weeks before you attacked me. Thing is, that’d mean you were still working for him when you killed Felix Kenan. He didn’t think of that. Of course, he hasn’t been thinking totally straight for a while, has he? Ever since his granddaughter died, I figure. But you gotta ask, when did he start ordering the deaths of old gay guys?’

‘I don’t know what–’

‘Of course, that’s another thing. Felix was a homosexual, so if they can tag it as a hate crime, then they’ll bury you. Of course, you’re definitely going down for killing a cop which… Well, they’ll put you away in Cold Harbour for that one. No question. And I got you bang to rights on it. I’ve got video, audio, the lot. Nothing August does is going to get you out of that.’ Fox leaned forward, locking her eyes to his. Everyone had heard of Cold Harbour, and not in a good way; Fox could see fear stirring behind Constance’s eyes. ‘Nothing. Maybe if you talk, tell us everything, then maybe they’ll think about going easy on you. Twenty-five to life in Rikers is better than never seeing sunlight ever again, right?’

‘They won’t send me there. I’ve got help. I know people. My lawyer will–’

‘Get nowhere with this one, Phil. You’re going down for the murder of a bent cop. I’m going to make sure August goes down too. He’s not going to be any help. He’s already in financial trouble. Did you know that? He’s been pushing too hard to expand his property portfolio and APS isn’t making him any money. Now he’s been named in this case. His reputation is going to crash. He’s going to lose the few customers he has. He’s going down, Phil.’ She sat back. ‘I just want to clear up the Kenan case. I’d really appreciate it if you’d confess to that one and then I can give the old guy some peace, you know?’ She flashed him a smile and got to her feet. ‘Maybe I should let you think on it. I’ll come back tomorrow and see what you think.’

She had just made it to the door when Constance opened his mouth. ‘I want to see the detective in charge of this case. I want to make a statement.’

Fox smiled and opened the door. ‘I’ll send him right in.’

19th May.

The news channels had been caught off guard by the arrest of Harper August. It had happened at six in the evening and they were not expecting it, and all that happened was a little coverage, with no comment from NAPA, on the late night broadcasts. His release on bail was far more heavily covered.

Fox watched the old man, who actually looked more his age after a night in a NAPA holding cell, leaving precinct 19’s HQ building while she ate her morning cereal. The reports indicated that August had been charged with conspiracy to commit murder, two counts, and there were other charges being worked through, which meant that Constance had spilled his guts like a man who had just downed eighteen pints of beer in a record-breaking attempt.

The report was wrapping up and Fox was finishing her last mouthful when Sam appeared at the door, walking in with a slight scowl on his face. ‘They’re letting him out on bail?’

‘He’s an old man and unlikely to be a danger to anyone,’ Fox replied. ‘They’ll have his travel restricted so he won’t be going anywhere. And the charges included two conspiracy to commits. He’ll be going down for Felix as well as Brownlow.’ Fox’s lips curled. ‘I think Brownlow would hate the fact that his killer is likely to have the murder of a gay man on the docket at the same time. There’s some ironic justice for you.’

‘You don’t think August’s going to worm out of this?’

Fox considered. There was no point in lying to Sam, especially if something could go wrong and then did. ‘Normally I’d say this was where it became the judiciary’s problem. I’d get all the evidence together, wrap it up neatly, and hand it over to the prosecution. Now I’m not involved in some of that and he could maybe get out of it, but his reputation is going to go down the toilet and he’s probably going to bankrupt himself fighting the case. If he’s convicted, he may not get what I think he deserves. He’s old. He’s too old for modern medicine to keep him going forever and he’s starting to push his limits. Cosmetically they can keep patching him up, and they can replace organs with cybernetics. He could end up on permanent house arrest instead of locked away somewhere cold and dark.’

‘I’m not sure that matters,’ Sam replied after a second. ‘If he’s convicted and he leaves me alone, us alone, I think that may be enough.’

‘I keep forgetting how magnanimous you can be. I’d want the old bastard buried up to his neck in sand and left for the crows, but you’re right. We’ll just have to make sure we get enough of a result to ensure it.’

20th May.

The request to attend a meeting with Harper August at his home had come as something of a surprise to Fox. That it was at his home was not such a big shock, given that he was probably confined there unless allowed out by specific order, but she was not sure why he wanted to see her at all.

The house itself was a large, brownstone structure facing the park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Being confined to the place did not look like it would be too terrible a proposition, as far as Fox was concerned, though she knew it would drive her crazy after a few days. It looked like the building had been put up in the thirties, maybe the late twenties, with some modern considerations. The actual structure did not look as good as Sam’s house, but that was about to get a lot of modernisation and this was likely to stay as it was until August’s death.

Fox was met at the door by a butler type who was human, not an android. The hall beyond the small porch was as big as Fox’s apartment and all the decoration was real rather than virtual. August was a man who valued property, it seemed, but there was something a little empty about the place. Fox saw a woman in a maid’s uniform carrying a tray. The maid seemed to be going to the same place that the butler was taking Fox, a room at the back of the ground floor which Fox expected to discover was an office.

It was an office, a large one with a huge, oak desk and two entire walls set aside for video displays. Those were showing a huge number of stock listings and other numbers, and they were real displays, not virtual ones. Fox looked at the man sitting behind his desk and wondered whether he had any form of implanted technology in him.

‘Miss Meridian,’ Harper August said as Fox was shown in. ‘Thank you for joining me. Can I get you some coffee?’

‘Thanks, but no. I’m not really sure why I’m here, Mister August.’

August gave a nod and poured coffee for himself. ‘I have a proposition I wish to put to you, Miss Meridian. Please hear me out before you jump to conclusions about the nature of that proposition.’

‘Okay,’ Fox replied. She settled into a straight-backed chair which, she thought, was designed to put people on the opposite side of the desk at a disadvantage. August played power politics even in his own, private, home office. ‘The evidence compiled against you by Palladium has been handed over to NAPA, so I’m not sure what you think you can achieve by proposing anything to me, but okay.’

‘Justice. My aim is justice, Miss Meridian. It always was, though’ – he drew in a long breath, apparently considering his words – ‘I admit I may have lost sight of that at some point. Almost four years ago, my granddaughter was murdered.’

‘I know. I read what was available publicly on the case.’

‘The public data is lacking in significant detail. She was kidnapped from Central Park, tortured for several days, killed, and her body was dumped in an alley. Dumped, like garbage, Miss Meridian.’

‘You blamed your son-in-law.’

‘I suspected him. He was jealous of the attention I lavished upon Patricia. His behaviour toward her was… unseemly after my daughter’s death. Patricia was raped before she died, Miss Meridian, and I believe Andrew was abusing her before she went missing. Or I did. I found little evidence of it and I may have been wrong. A more reasonable theory was that she was kidnapped by sprawlers, but no one was ever identified.’

‘I’m not sure that idea holds water either. How did they get her out of the park? Where did they hide her for three days?’ Fox shook her head. ‘I get it. You got no results in this case and you decided NAPA was useless, so you created Augustine Property Services. Had much luck in solving murders? They aren’t easy, especially when it’s apparently a random killing.’

August appeared to ignore the question. ‘The case against me relies on Constance’s confession, some recordings which my lawyers could probably put in bad light, and some email evidence which you will find it hard to introduce in court. There is every possibility that I could avoid conviction, NAPA is very likely to go for a deal to make the trial easier, and whatever happens, my lawyers can keep me out of court for years if I wish them to.’

Fox gave him a half-smile. ‘The way your finances are, you can’t afford a long legal battle, and the more you fight it, the more people are going to figure you’re guilty and trying to avoid time in Rikers.’

‘True, yes. An alternative would be for me to lay everything out and beg for mercy. I’m an old man and I won’t live that long in prison. I could make this all easy. Privately, I’ll admit I may have gone too far and there would be some justice in this, but I am an old man, and stubborn, and I will see my granddaughter’s killer behind bars!’

Fox looked at him, her brows furrowed as she realised where he was going with this. ‘So that’s your proposition? I find your daughter’s killer and you go quietly? It’s a cold, dead case. NAPA wouldn’t have held back on trying to resolve it. Precinct eighteen treats people like you as priorities. It’s an insult to the entire idea behind public policing, but they would have tried to solve the case.’

‘I… realise it may not be easy. Reopen the case, see what you can do. I won’t put unreasonable obstacles in the way of my trial if you’ll look into Patricia’s murder.’

‘You’re being too reasonable. What’s to stop me going through the motions until you’re convicted and then dropping it?’

August was silent for a few seconds. He lifted his cup to his lips, sipping coffee. Fox saw the tremble in his hand, saw that he was trying to hide it, and decided it was real. ‘Miss Meridian, I can do research as well. Open the case, examine the forensics analysis on Patricia’s body. Then, if you can drop the case once I am safely behind bars, I will have severely misjudged your character.’

‘Okay,’ Fox said. ‘My PA will have Palladium request the case files from NAPA. I assume I can use your name on the request? A member of the family wishing to have the files reviewed will carry a lot of weight with the judiciary.’ She got a nod in reply. ‘I can’t promise I’ll solve it, but I can try.’

‘I believe, Miss Meridian, that your try will be considerably better than anything I or NAPA have managed.’

Fox was not so sure, but Patricia Randall had done nothing to deserve her fate, as far as Fox knew. Why should a woman’s grandfather’s crimes stand in the way of justice for her?

Part Eight: Adrasteia

New York Metro, 21st May 2060.

Terri was smiling, which was a good sign. It was Friday night and she was out at a club, 27Lex, with friends, but more importantly, she was back on Earth. She was, of course, saying nothing in public, but her return from Jenner crater with a genuine smile on her face suggested that Yliaster was finally working as it was meant to.

Marie was a little in awe. Teresa Martins was not quite as well known as her father, but she was prettier and she seemed to be determined to enjoy herself. She had decked herself out in a plazkin top which showed off her cleavage and a pair of shorts which barely covered anything, and a pair of six-inch platform pumps finished off the look. Marie was not used to meeting famous people, especially not half-naked ones, but she had turned up in another flare of neon plazkin, this time a glossy, turquoise tube dress with random patches of transparency.

Dillan had gleefully accepted an offer of a night out and had turned up in jeans and a cropped T-shirt, just as usual. The shirt had a lot of mesh in it and the jeans were tighter than usual, however. Fox had found a new design of bodysuit which worked better as outerwear: long-sleeved and high-hipped, but not as tight, with a leather-like finish and an oval of open space to show off her own cleavage. She had teamed that with thigh-high boots and a flouncy little plazkin skirt, and she had dispensed with her traditional purple to go with black, with a red tribal design on the suit.

All this meant that Sam, dressed in one of his suave, shirt-and-slacks outfits, the shirt open almost to his navel, was getting more reproachful looks than lustful ones. It did look as though he had collected something of a harem, even if only the members of it could see the last of his supposed concubines, Kit.

‘There is some low-level hostility among those nearby,’ the AI observed. Her avatar appeared to be perched on the bar beside Fox’s shoulder, swinging her booted feet absently.

‘Sam has four attractive women hanging around him,’ Fox replied. ‘No one’s going to get iffy about it. They’re too busy having all the blood rushing into their cocks to think about violence.’

‘You have a jaundiced, if accurate, view of the male of the species,’ Sam commented. ‘I think you’re a bad influence on the younger members of our group.’

‘That’s all of them. Helen’s four years younger than I am. Marie’s practically a baby compared to us.’

‘Speak for yourself. I may be entering my fourth decade, but I’m young at heart.’

Fox grinned. ‘You’re not. You’re really quite delightfully old. Gentlemanly.’

‘That,’ Sam replied, sounding resigned, ‘is the training.’

‘I don’t think so. I think there’s a load of natural talent.’

‘Agreed,’ Marie said. She took a second to suck the glowing, pink cocktail she was drinking through a narrow straw. Fox had considered pointing out that she was going to get drunk faster that way, but it was Friday: what the Hell. ‘But I am not a baby. I’m nineteen and I look older, and I’ve done two casting calls now even if I didn’t get anything.’

‘Do you think she’ll remember us when she’s famous?’ Dillan asked.

‘Oh, us plebeians will be entirely forgotten by then,’ Terri replied, grinning brightly. Fox suspected she was already half-cut.

‘I don’t think you’re plebeians,’ Marie said. ‘You and Fox are kind of famous anyway, and I doubt I could forget Sam.’

‘So it’s just me then?’ Dillan asked, grinning.

‘I didn’t mean that! I’m not going to forget anyone. I mean, I doubt I’ll end up being famous. Miss Bournville was pretty clear on my chances and I’ll be quite happy with making enough money to live on.’ She gave a firm, serious nod. ‘Marie Shaftsbury, jobbing actress, that’s good enough.’ She looked up, eyes flicking over Terri’s chest to her face. ‘Miss Martins, now that you’re back, does that mean Palladium can finalise the modifications to the house?’

‘Terri,’ Terri said, again. ‘Poppa mentioned he wanted to put a small prototype of “that which shall not be named in public” into Sam’s house, and that’s actually possible now. I think we’re doing final plans next week.’

‘So we can actually go ahead with this,’ Sam said. ‘We’ve solved the August problem and the technical issues are resolved.’

‘We’ll let Alice Vaughn know when the final blueprints are ready, then it’s just a matter of doing the work.’

‘And I’ll need to find somewhere else to live while it happens,’ Marie said, frowning.

‘We’ll arrange something,’ Fox told her. ‘I’m pretty sure we can find somewhere to put you for a couple of weeks while the work gets done.’

~~~

‘Can I steal your detective?’ Terri asked. Her voice was low but right beside Fox’s ear. The party had moved into a booth at the far end of the top floor, though right now Sam, Dillan, and Marie were leaning against the nearby rail watching the dancers below.

‘She’s not “my detective,”’ Fox replied, ‘and I’m going to check with Sam and then see where I can get with Marie.’

‘Thought so. You and redheads. Though there’s a bit of the strawberry-blonde about Helen, so I thought I’d ask. You think Sam might be interested in Marie?’

‘No, but it’s polite to ask. He introduced us, more or less, and she fancies him, though I think it’s turning more to friendship.’

‘Who doesn’t fancy Sam?’

‘Good point. You cracked the communications problem, I assume? Something to do with Kit’s routines?’

‘Yes and yes. I’m not going to go into detail here, even with all this noise, but Kit somehow managed to resolve the synchronisation issues using a rather unique mechanism for handling the data collection. She’s got a method of determining differences in complex data structures which I’ve never seen before.’

Fox frowned. ‘You programmed her, Terri.’

‘Yes and no. She’s a class four, a unique build of one class four codebase. Class four AIs can tweak their own code and it seems the trick Kit came up with to resolve her memory syncs is something none of the other iterations have come up with. I’ll take a look at generalising it. It’ll be useful for this police investigation system you want me to produce.’

‘Jackson told you about that?’ Fox grimaced. ‘I suppose we’ll need to get serious about that soon.’

‘You’ll do fine. Kit can handle a lot of the admin. Can’t you, Kit?’

‘I can,’ Kit said, appearing on the opposite side of Fox. ‘It occurs to me that the first time I attempted the memory reconciliation process in anger was after visiting Vali the first time. He served mead which induced a rather odd sensory disturbance.’

‘The first time you did it, you were drunk?’

‘In a manner of speaking. Or one copy was slightly impaired.’

‘You seem to be faster at it now,’ Fox observed. ‘I mean, I noticed it that time, but now you seem to handle it far faster.’

‘Yes. I believe that that first time was when I was attempting to get the process working properly. I put down the difficulty then as being the result of Vali’s mead, but perhaps that actually assisted the situation.’

‘I am really going to have to talk to this Vali,’ Terri said.

‘I’m sure he would enjoy meeting you,’ Kit replied, smiling.

~~~

‘I don’t generally get involved recreationally, you know that.’

The dance floor of 27Lex was an interesting place. Fox was not entirely sure what she was doing there since she did not really dance, but Sam had persuaded her to go out on the invisible floor, and it was slow so she did not feel like a total idiot. And it had given her a chance to ask Sam about Marie. ‘I know, but you did spend a night with Alice.’

‘Which was pseudo-business, plus you did ask if I’d seduce her.’

‘True, but Marie’s cute, and she definitely has a crush on you.’

‘She’s spent most of the evening entranced by breasts. Yours and Terri’s.’

‘Terri has good breasts.’

‘Terri has quite spectacular breasts, large and well-shaped, but don’t sell yourself short. Yours are very good.’

She could feel his warm skin through the thin fabric of his shirt. His hands shifted over her body, sliding across the fabric covering her back and, occasionally, slipping over bare skin at her hips. He had a firm, strong, kind of reassuring body, considering that it had that ‘sexy as Hell’ quality about it too. Sometimes, just once in a while, Fox wondered why she had never just decided that sex with Sam was probably worth a little embarrassment and the pain of working through the aftermath. She had no doubt he would be worth it, but there was always a risk that it would change something too much. One day she was going to have to risk it…

‘Well, thank you, Mister Clarion. That means something coming from a man who’s seen quite a few.’

His lips twitched. ‘After a while, they start blurring together. If you can persuade Marie to go home with you, it won’t be a problem for me.’

‘Just remember you said that when it turns out she’s some sort of sexual prodigy.’

‘I will.’

22nd May.

‘I think I’m a liddle tipsy,’ Marie admitted. She was slung between Sam and Fox as they made their way down the corridor to Fox’s apartment. Dillan had been considerably less tipsy, and she had headed off to the MarTech tower with Terri. Fox had been pretty sure that Dillan knew where that was going, but she was not entirely sure about Marie’s state of mind. ‘Where are we?’

‘We’re going to my place,’ Fox replied.

‘Oh good. Is Sam coming?’

‘Just as far as my door, which is next door to Fox’s,’ Sam replied.

‘Okay. I may be slightly drunk.’

‘You’re not too bad,’ Fox told her, though she was tending to the idea that her potential conquest was a little too far in her cups to be conquered.

Sam carried on helping to Fox’s door. ‘You’ll be okay getting her into bed?’ he asked as Fox opened the door.

‘Police training does cover handling semi-conscious people. I’ve had a fair bit of practice on Helen, actually.’

‘I’ll leave her to your ministrations then, tender or otherwise.’ He turned and started back toward his own apartment, leaving Marie leaning on the wall.

Fox glanced at her. ‘Think you can make it in under your own power?’

Marie looked back, green eyes alive, sparkling, if a little unfocused. ‘I think… Could I use your shower? Shower’d clear my head a little.’

‘Be my guest.’ She stepped into the apartment and Marie followed, stopping to take off her shoes just inside the door. ‘Kit, run the shower for Marie, please.’

Kit looked across from beside her server and smiled. ‘Of course, Fox.’

‘Make it hot, please, Kit,’ Marie said. ‘Where am I going?’

Walking through to the bedroom, Fox pointed. The shower was behind a polyglass partition on one wall, a fairly large space which had several heads to provide a real deluge. Absently, Fox made a note to be sure the shower in the new house was as good. The toilet was hidden away behind the same partition, though that section was coloured to opacity. ‘You can darken the screen if you want,’ Fox said.

Marie took the hem of her dress in her hands and peeled it up over her body, tossing it aside. ‘Why would I want?’ Fox gave a shrug and, grinning, Marie skipped over to the shower, pulling the partition open and stepping under the jets with a sigh.

Fox sat down on the bed and began pulling off her boots. Behind the screen, the redheaded girl picked up a tube of cleaning gel, squeezed out a measure, and began running her hands over her body. Fox slipped her skirt off and watched the play going on in her shower for a minute. Then she undid the seam on her suit and slipped it off, and looked back to see Marie’s hands working smoothly over breasts which were now topped off by sharply pointed nipples.

‘Yeah,’ Fox muttered to herself, ‘she’s not as far gone as she seemed.’

There was not even a hint of surprise in Marie’s eyes when the partition slid aside and Fox stepped into the shower. No surprise, but there was something else. Heat, desire, maybe hunger. Any would do, Fox decided. Marie turned, leaning back against the wall, bracing herself there as Fox approached, and she slid closer until skin met skin. Fox felt Marie’s hands slide over her hips and smiled.

‘I thought you were feeling tipsy,’ Fox said.

‘Just enough that I don’t feel self-conscious showering in front of you.’

‘You really need to work on that confidence.’

Marie pushed forward, stretching up on her toes, and her mouth covered Fox’s. Fox felt a second of surprise at the action, and then went with it. Marie’s tongue slid between Fox’s lips, hot and urgent. She broke the kiss. ‘I’m working on it.’

‘So I see.’ Fox dipped her head, bending down, and Marie let out a sharp gasp as Fox’s mouth latched onto a nipple. Fox’s hand slid up between Marie’s thighs, cupping her mound, one finger slipping between wet labia. Marie stiffened, her chest pushing out as her back arched.

‘Nnn… oh that’s… I thought I was seducing you.’

Fox straightened up, slipping two fingers smoothly into Marie and bringing their faces to the same level. Fox nuzzled Marie’s cheek, kissed along her jaw. ‘If you think so, you were a little drunker than you thought.’ The fingers began to move, pressing up and in, quickening as Fox’s thumb found another target. Skin slid against skin and Marie’s breath began to come in pants.

‘I… I’m going to…’

‘Yes, you are. You’re going to come for me. Right now.’

Marie’s back arched as Fox pushed her over. The pressure of Fox’s body against Marie’s was the only thing holding her up as her knees weakened and her eyes glazed, and the climax exploded through her, a sudden release from the anticipation that had been building all night.

As the haze began to lift, Marie heard Fox’s voice whispering in her ear. ‘And in a minute, you’ll be doing it again.’

~~~

Fox opened her eyes and, for a second, wondered where she was. Then she realised that the arms around her waist were Marie’s, as was the slim body pressed against her back. Hot, wet sex had segued into steamy lovemaking, become sleepy, fumbling groping before intertwined unconsciousness. Marie had little experience, it seemed, but she learned fast and she was flexible. It had been an enjoyable night.

Slipping free, Fox padded lightly around the bed as the shower started running. Wash away the aftermath of the night’s athletics and… Maybe some breakfast to fuel up before the repeat performance. That was assuming Marie did not wake up with a blazing hangover, but there had been no sign of that when they finally phased out. It was late morning, but not especially late, and spending the rest of it testing the limits of Marie’s flexibility seemed like a good way to spend a Saturday morning. Maybe a fair amount of Saturday afternoon too.

Marie, it seemed, had alternative plans, though they seemed to be based around skipping breakfast. Fox ignored the sound of the shower screen opening, and the hands on her hips, but the trail of fingers sliding over her stomach sent a flutter through the taut muscles there.

‘Your body is so strong,’ Marie said, her voice husky.

‘Military grade,’ Fox replied. ‘Viral mods and tissue grafts. They strengthen the tendons and add a few extra layers to the muscles.’

‘You can’t tell. It looks, feels, natural. It’s so…’ Marie’s hands drifted up to cup Fox’s breasts. ‘These aren’t enhanced.’

‘All mine.’

‘They’re gorgeous, and so responsive. I never thought they’d be such fun to play with.’

Fox gave a moan as Marie’s fingers began to circle her nipples. ‘You’ve not been with a woman before?’

‘You’re my first. Not really had that much to do with boys either, but girls… Thought I’d miss the penetration. Learn something new every day.’

Turning, Fox planted her hands on Marie’s butt and lifted, pulling her in, covering mouth with mouth and keeping the kiss going until the younger girl was forced to break it for lack of breath. ‘I have something we didn’t get around to last night that can provide the penetration,’ Fox said. ‘We’ll try it out after breakfast.’

‘Want you for breakfast.’

‘Oh no,’ Fox purred. ‘You’re going to need your strength.’

~~~

‘Fox, something is wrong.’

Fox opened her eyes and looked up at the rather worried expression on Kit’s face, and decided that the AI probably meant it. ‘What’ve you got?’

‘It is what I do not have. All communications outside the building have gone down. The public access camera feeds from inside the building have been disabled. I am blind outside this apartment.’

‘Internal network?’

‘Still seems to be functioning, but with some limitations. I can connect to Javen, but the building administration system is responding with unauthorised access messages.’

‘That sounds alarmingly like a police lockdown. Drop Sam a message and ask him to meet me in the corridor in five minutes. Make sure he’s armed.’ Fox turned, giving the unconscious redhead beside her a shake. ‘Come on, Marie, time to get dressed.’ There was a grumble which Fox ignored as she rolled out of bed and grabbed a new bodysuit from a drawer.

‘What’s the hurry?’ Marie asked as she rubbed sleep from her eyes. ‘I was thinking we might just spend the day in bed.’

‘I had the same idea, but someone else may have had a different one.’

‘Sam is ready,’ Kit said. ‘He’ll meet us outside as soon as we are.’

‘Sam?’ Marie asked. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m not totally sure, which is why you’re going to get dressed and then we’re going to head up to the administration level and ask security what they’re doing.’

The only thing Marie had to wear was her clubbing dress and there was no time to fabricate something new for her. Plus, with the administrative systems being less than responsive, there was no way to order something from the building’s fabricator and have it delivered. So Marie felt like a bit of an idiot as she followed Fox and Sam, both dressed in far more casual attire, down the corridor to the elevators.

‘You think these will still be functioning?’ Sam asked.

‘Probably. As far down as the entrance level anyway. Standard lockdown procedure leaves the main elevators operational for evacuation and police movement. Access to administration might be restricted though.’

‘We’ll handle that issue when we need to.’ The elevators were working, sure enough, and they accepted a manual request to go to the administrative level which was mid-level in the building, not far above the one they were on. ‘So far, so good,’ Sam commented. His lips twitched. ‘You two had a good night then.’

‘Quite enjoyable,’ Fox agreed.

‘How can you tell?’ Marie asked, her cheeks reddening.

‘You need a shower,’ Sam replied, grinning now.

‘Another shower,’ Fox said and then stepped forward as the elevator stopped. She stopped almost immediately, drawing her pistol from behind her back. ‘Sam, stay with Marie beside the elevator.’

Sam slipped his own pistol free and pushed Marie away from the doors. The elevators, a bank of three, opened onto a reception area which was designed to handle personal problems the residents decided to deal with in person rather than by telepresence. There was seating there for people to wait on and a desk for a receptionist. From the way the body was sprawled over the desk and the three small wounds in its back, the receptionist had been shot from behind, presumably as the killer walked out of the administration area beyond. Just from the amount of blood pooling on the desk, Fox knew the man was dead, but she checked his pulse before moving down the corridor behind him.

There were a few offices back there and she checked them, finding no one. They were purely admin and it was Saturday afternoon: anyone who needed to handle work then was doing it from their home, or wondering why they could not.

At the back of the offices was a heavier door, sealed. ‘There is no response from the locking system or the security post,’ Kit said, appearing for form’s sake. She still looked worried.

‘Tell Sam to come up here with Marie,’ Fox replied and slipped a small toolkit from her jacket. By the time Sam had arrived, Fox was undoing the last screw over the door’s security panel. ‘Keep a look out, please, Sam.’

‘You sure about this? They’re going to be pissed off if you hack their door controls without good reason.’

‘Fairly sure. A control lockdown like this should have been notified to all residents. There should be NAPA uniforms all over this level. Instead, we’ve got a corpse on reception and no one around.’

‘And you can do that?’ Marie asked. ‘Just break in to their security like that?’

‘I’ll let you know in a minute if you both shut up.’

It actually took her just under a minute before there was a click, followed by several thunks, and the door slid aside. Marie clamped a hand over her mouth almost immediately to stifle the scream which was threatening to rush out. The main admin hub of the building was manned by two people who took care of security and everything else, and they were both dead. Fox did not need to check their pulses: the bodies were riddled with small-calibre projectile wounds, as were several of the control panels and screens around the room. The two main consoles had been hit by something explosive, from their appearance. Someone had wanted to be sure no one was going to countermand the control order.

‘Fox,’ Sam said, pointing at an undamaged monitor high up on the far wall.

Fox walked in, among the carnage, and peered up. The screen seemed to be a security monitoring feed and the automated systems were still working to some extent. They were showing camera feeds from the lowest mall level where a man in NAPA uniform was visible walking among almost empty thoroughfares. There was a large weapons pod on his right arm and he seemed to be busy using it.

‘Shit,’ Fox said. ‘He’s in riot gear. He’s got an automatic rifle and a micromissile launcher, plenty of ammo in that backpack.’ She glanced at Sam. ‘That pistol of yours is not going to get through his armour. Lucky hit to his faceplate might get through. It’s a little thinner there.’

‘If you go up against him, you’ll get hurt,’ Sam replied. ‘That jacket of yours might be lined, but it’s not designed to stop that kind of armament.’

‘Are you both crazy?!’ Marie squeaked. ‘You can’t go out there after him. What the fuck’s he doing it for anyway?’

‘Good question,’ Fox replied. ‘I’m not going to find out unless I ask him.’

‘There is one possibility,’ Kit said. ‘The evidence is extremely circumstantial currently, and the pattern regressive, but he has ensured that no one can escape him and is on a killing spree.’

Fox frowned. ‘Isn’t it a bit soon? We only put Deedle away–’

‘It has had twenty-two days to find and convert another victim. It might be reasonable if that victim was already predisposed to this kind of behaviour. If it is that entity, then I find the choice of venue too coincidental.’

‘What are we talking about?’ Marie asked.

‘Something a little complicated to explain,’ Fox told her, ‘but there might be a reason for him going off the reservation beyond deciding New York has become too decadent or something. Okay, let’s think this through…’

‘How long before NAPA notice something’s up and start trying to get in?’ Sam asked.

‘That should be happening already, but it may take them time to override his lockout. We need to get him away from people. Maybe if he’s here for me… Okay. Sam, you’re going to head down to the lobby. The doors’ll be sealed, but I need you to get everyone out of there or under cover. Then you find somewhere with good cover yourself. We’ll lock Marie in here–’

‘Hey! I don’t want you locking me up to keep me out of the way.’

Fox turned to her. ‘One, you’re not armed. Two, you’re not trained. Three, you’re going to be watching that screen up there and relaying where he is to me over the network. I can’t get into the camera network, that’s locked out, so I need you to stay here and tell me where he’s going.’

Marie glanced at the pair of corpses and swallowed hard, but she said, ‘Okay.’

‘Right. I need to stop off at my apartment and get some different ammo. The objective is to get him into the lobby and, hopefully, pin him down. I’d prefer not to kill him.’

‘You might not have another option,’ Sam pointed out.

‘And that’s why I’m going to get the heavy munitions magazine.’

~~~

‘I am Nemesis. Adrasteia. There is no escape.’

Fox could hear the words before she saw the man: amplified and blasted out from the speakers on the riot harness, they echoed through the wide corridors of the mall. He was hunting, walking the halls in search of people to shoot, and he had found too many as it was. Fox had come across more than twenty bodies coming from the elevator. There had been a few still alive, but she doubted they were going to last unless they could be treated soon.

‘Do you see him?’ Marie’s voice asked. ‘He’s still in that square, but he looks like… Yeah, he just picked an exit going, uh, north, I think.’

In retrospect, Marie was not the best person to have keeping watch. She did not know the mall areas as well as Fox or Sam did and had to work off the camera identity tag at the bottom of the screen as the system followed what it considered a primary threat. ‘I can hear him. He’s not far ahead. Sam, status?’

‘Lobby area is clear, or clearing,’ Sam reported. ‘I checked outside through a window and it looks like half of NAPA is out there trying to get through the security barriers.’

The lockdown would have closed the riot shutters on the building. They were designed to stop anyone outside getting in. Of course, the idea was that they could be opened by NAPA from outside via remote command, but the network was cut off. They would be cutting their way in, which would take time. Too much time. No sense in worrying over that right now. She heard gunfire up ahead and figured her target had found another victim. ‘I’m going in. You might lose contact with me in a few seconds, but if the cameras are still chasing him, you can assume I’m still moving. Marie, you let Sam know when the guy’s about to arrive. Sam, don’t engage unless you have to, and aim for the face.’

Not waiting for replies, Fox hurried ahead, rounded a corner, and saw him walking away from her down a corridor. She raised her pistol, waited for the lock indicator from the targeting system, saw the range indicator show twelve metres, and pulled the trigger. There was a crack, sharp, but not loud, as the chambered round was smashed through the sound barrier by high-powered, electromagnetic accelerators. She saw the three streams of propellant gas burst out as the bullet made the three-metre mark. There was no course correction, no need for it: he was half-turning at the sound of the shot as the bullet smacked into his side and the payload activated.

‘What?’ He twisted, trying to work out, Fox imagined, why all his networked comms had suddenly died on him. ‘What the Hell?’ He was just far enough away that the jammer was not affecting Fox yet, but he was probably going to get closer. He lifted his right arm and a missile, larger than the round Fox had fired, but still very small, blasted out from the pod on his arm. Expecting it, Fox fired back, but this time her own round waited a fraction of a second after leaving the barrel and then detonated, throwing a cone of flechettes into the path of the micromissile. It exploded, throwing shrapnel about, but Fox was already running.

‘He’s chasing you,’ Marie said.

‘Good,’ Fox replied, twisting left and keeping on running. She needed to make a flight of stairs which was around a hundred metres away, but she was going to have to do twice that to make sure he never got a clean shot.

‘That was amazing! You shot his missile out of the air!’

‘ABF round. Technology is wonderful.’ Fox jinked right around a lingerie shop and heard the glass frontage shatter as bullets tore into it.

‘Annular blast fragmentation?’ Sam’s voice. ‘Jackson got something like that into a ten-mil shell?’

Fox risked a twenty-metre sprint to the next turn and could almost feel the bullets lining up on her spine. She risked a glance as she turned and saw the trail of vapour from the missile launch. She snap-fired back and knew he would have nailed her if he’d used the minigun instead of the launcher.

‘She did it again!’

‘Got lucky. Not taking another risk like that. Almost at the stairwell, Sam.’ Turning hard right and then almost an immediate left, she had a straight run for the emergency door at the end. No more than eight metres and she hit it at a dead run, bolting through and starting immediately for the stairs down. She was going to have to make it down twelve levels, twenty-four flights, and not get shot on the way. She was on the next landing down when the emergency door was blown off its hinges.

‘I am Nemesis. Adrasteia.’

‘Yeah, great,’ Fox yelled back up the stairs as she ran down, ‘but what’s your real name?’

There was a fraction of a second’s pause. ‘Adrasteia. There is no escape.’

‘No one’s called Adrasteia. Who are you?’ She was taking the steps as fast as she could, watching back up for him. He would be slower in the heavy armour and carrying the pod, but if he could get an angle where he could see her, she was in trouble. She hugged the wall and moved as fast as she could.

‘I am Nemesis. I am S-Sullivan. No.’

‘Robert Sullivan?’ Senior Officer Robert Sullivan was in her list of cops from precinct 19. No notes: it seemed like she had never met the man aside from in passing. The brief data she had on him suggested he had been a cop for nineteen years and he was still in uniform, which took a desire to stay on the street or a lack of any real talent.

‘Bastards,’ Sullivan said, his voice distorted by the speakers. ‘Bastards sitting there in their homes, breaking the law. That’s what they do. All of them, breaking the rules. Cheating. And they get away with it because we’re too soft.’

Fox kept quiet and ran. He was ranting and she doubted he was paying much attention to where she was. Two floors left and he was still blabbing on about cheaters and frauds, but there was something she needed to know. ‘Did you hear the voice, Sullivan? Did the voice make you do this?’

‘He stopped,’ Marie said. ‘He just stopped on the steps.’

Fox stopped, her hand on the door to the lobby level. ‘Sullivan?’

‘What do you know about Adrasteia?’ The tone was flat, almost as if the AI Fox was now sure was guiding this man was speaking.

‘Is that what it calls itself? It’s an AI. It drives you nuts, makes you kill. Peter Doran, Wallace Deedle, and back, all the way back to Earnesto Pallo. Don’t make me kill you, Sullivan. Don’t let it win. It’s fucked and it knows it. The building network is locked and I’ve jammed your comms. It can’t get away this time.’ Fox slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and pulled out a new magazine. With a click, the gun dropped the current one into her hand and she swapped its replacement in. An indicator appeared in-vision: Warning. HEMP warheads loaded. ‘If I have to, I’ll take you down, but I’d rather you let me get you some help.’

Bullets clattered down the stairwell and Fox ducked through into a side corridor that led out onto the lobby. She needed to run twenty metres to get into that space, however.

‘He’s right behind you, Fox,’ Marie said as Fox ran down the hall. She was a second from the lobby and a dive into cover when she heard the door slam open behind her. ‘He’s right there!’

Fox turned and saw his weapons pod lifting, the three barrels of the minigun spinning up, the flicker of the red sighting beam in the air. She lifted her own gun, not bothering to wait for the tracking to lock on, sighting on skill and pure talent as she threw herself backward. Two rounds sprang from her pistol, each one hitting his chest where the standard flexible armour of the suit was reinforced by the hard armour of the riot harness. Two explosions blossomed, flashes of brilliant light that flared against his armour. The twin blasts were so close together as to be one, concussion battering at Fox’s skin even at that distance. And then he was stumbling and falling, collapsing onto his face as Fox’s shoulder hit the floor and she skidded on her back into the lobby.

Keeping her pistol aimed at the fallen, armoured figure, Fox tried to sit up. Pain lanced through her back: diving headlong onto a solid floor was never a good idea. Then Sam was there, his own pistol pointed down the side corridor, even if it would probably do no good. He pushed an arm under Fox and heaved her upright. Her shoulder started throbbing, but the man she had shot was still down.

‘Check him?’ Sam suggested.

A sharp nod and Fox started moving, closing the distance back toward the man. There was still no movement. ‘Get ready to put a foot on that pod,’ Fox said. ‘I’ll turn him over. You make sure he can’t use that weapon.’ Bending, she hooked a foot under his shoulder and lifted, not trusting her bruised shoulder.

Sam winced as Sullivan was rolled onto his back, but he put his foot down, just in case. ‘What did you use on him?’

Fox bent down, fairly sure that there was no need to be secure about it. There were two holes drilled right through the hardened armour over Sullivan’s chest, the edges blackened, but there was not much blood. ‘High-explosive, multi-purpose. Shaped charge warhead. Goes through like a blowtorch, residual detonation and shrapnel.’ She pointed at the blackened, pitted floor tiles near Sullivan’s feet, and then she reached in for the catch under his helmet which was there as an emergency release. Even before the upper part of his helmet hinged back and she could see his face, she knew he was dead. And somewhere in his body, running on a piece of hardware linked to his dead brain, was a piece of software which was dying too. She just hoped the power died on his implant before the thing could get near a network connection.

~~~

‘Don’t fuck with me, Canard,’ Fox said, her voice weary. ‘I just had to kill a cop.’

‘We’re still determining whether that was a necessary action,’ Canard replied. ‘You utilised munitions which…’

He trailed off as Fox glared at him. Even in his own office, he was backed into a corner on this one and they both knew it. ‘MarTech obtained all the proper licences for me to use that gun, and Sullivan had killed… What’s the body count so far, Captain Canard?’

Canard sucked on his teeth. ‘Forty-one dead, a further sixteen injured, three of those in critical condition.’

‘Not to mention the property damage, and this is another bad cop out of your precinct.’ She could not blame Canard for what had happened to Sullivan, but she could press the buttons. ‘It took another ten minutes to get through the security barriers. That’s going to be a minimum of twenty more minutes he had to increase the damage. I stopped him with minimal risk to anyone else. You’ve got the recorded video from the building’s security system, and the data from my pistol and my implant. Don’t make me call in Palladium’s lawyers, because if I do that, it’ll be a waste of my time and the end of your career.’

The captain gave a grunt, his brows deeply furrowed. ‘What did you mean? You asked Sullivan about a voice. What were you talking about?’ His tone had softened; okay, so the situation was not exactly making him look good, but it could have been worse and, somewhere deep down, Canard was a cop.

‘My PA collected a lot of evidence about the Doran and Deedle killings, and a bunch of related events going back to the death of Hector Rossi in fifty-seven. We’re not entirely sure what it is, but there’s some sort of… web entity jumping from victim to victim. It gets into their implant and then it brainwashes them, for want of a better term. Sullivan had to be skating on the edge anyway, because it turned him in under a month, but he might never have gone postal without this… parasite.’

Canard peered at her. ‘That sounds crazy.’

‘Sure does, which is why Sullivan’s going to go down as a cop who went nuts. This thing probably died with him this time. No outgoing network comms, nowhere to hide. The idea, though… If the public finds out about this thing, they’ll panic. There’ll be a rush to get implants removed or deactivated, and the technology will be put back.’

‘I was under the impression, Miss Meridian, that you disliked politics.’

Fox sighed. ‘Hate it, but it seems to have decided it likes me.’

~~~

Marie was waiting for Fox when she got back to her building. She was waiting in Sam’s apartment, the two of them emerging to find out what NAPA had had to say, but the sight of the redhead still in her turquoise clubbing dress brought a smile to Fox’s face.

‘Are we in trouble?’ Marie asked as Fox marched down the corridor, aiming for her own door. ‘Are you in trouble?’

‘No and no.’

‘Told you,’ Sam put in, smiling.

‘Canard was pissed off, but he hadn’t got a leg to stand on and he knew it.’ Opening her door, she walked in, followed by her friends.

Kit was waiting beside the window. ‘Building communications are back up, Fox, as are administrative systems. Mister Martins asked for you to call through as soon as you returned home.’

‘Yeah, okay, put a call through.’ She glanced back at Sam and Marie. ‘Get coffee or whatever. I doubt this’ll take long.’

Jackson’s image appeared in Fox’s vision field a second later. ‘Ah, Fox. Hold on, I need to loop in a few more people and go to full conference…’

Fox blinked, seeing names being added into the connection. ‘Oh, we’re going the whole hog then. Right, Kit, add Sam and Marie into this, please.’

‘Me?!’ Marie squeaked.

‘You were there; you might have an answer to something I don’t.’ Fox took the coffee mug Sam offered her and walked over to the sofa where the other attendees were starting to appear. Alongside Jackson, Terri, Jarvis, and Dillan were appearing as avatars. ‘Still at the tower, Helen?’

‘I’m off duty today,’ Dillan replied, a little defensively. Terri just smiled rather innocently. ‘Marie’s still at your place?’

‘Luckily. Turns out she makes a good lookout.’

Alice Vaughn appeared, her eyes flicking around the collection of people. ‘Afternoon, everyone. Hello, Sam.’

Sam gave her one of his best smiles, with a hint of an evil twinkle in his eye, and Vaughn’s cheeks coloured, even in emulation. ‘Good afternoon, Alice. Mister Jarvis, I assume? We haven’t met. This is Marie Shaftsbury. She lives in the basement apartment at the house in the MCD, but she was here for today’s little event.’

‘I just hid in the control room and watched camera feeds,’ Marie said. She was looking awed again. She might not have known who Jarvis was, but she knew he was someone important and… Jackson Martins!

‘Do we have confirmation that this incident was the same as Deedle and Doran?’ Jackson asked, kicking off the business of the meeting.

‘I got enough out of NAPA to suggest it is,’ Fox replied. ‘Sullivan got himself a LANVisor-Six not long after they came out. He was a career cop, but getting nowhere and he figured a next-generation implant would give him a push.’

‘It certainly did that.’

‘I checked on what he said to you, Fox,’ Kit said. ‘“I am Nemesis. Adrasteia.” Most people have heard of Nemesis, a spirit of divine retribution in Greek myth. The name is derived from a word which means “to give what is due.” However, the appellation “Adrasteia” was also given to Nemesis and that means “the inescapable.”’

‘I have some difficulty believing that a street policeman in modern New York would come up with that as a statement while gunning down innocent civilians,’ Jackson suggested.

Fox nodded. ‘The way he spoke… I think it got deeper into Sullivan’s psyche than it did with the previous ones. It was running him more closely. Marie, you were watching him more than the rest of us. Would you say he seemed kind of… robotic?’

‘Um… Well, with that weapons pod and the heavy plate over his chest, he looked more like a robot than usual, but… Now you mention it, he did seem to be running on automatic. It was like someone was pulling his strings. Was this guy being controlled somehow?’

‘I think,’ Terri said, ‘that the speed employed on this man left little room for subtlety. It probably did need to control him more than usual. We believe that this was caused by a… A form of virus.’

‘Something we’re keeping quiet,’ Fox added. ‘It probably died with Sullivan, and it could only affect certain groups of people.’

‘And we released the countervirus yesterday,’ Jackson said. ‘There should be no more cases like this.’ Jackson looked over at Marie, smiling. ‘Miss Shaftsbury, you’ve signed our NDA regarding the house we’re going to refit. I should point out that we did run some background checks on you as well. We trust you. We are trusting you with some very interesting new technologies so, while you aren’t an employee of MarTech, we do consider you… part of the family at the moment.’

‘Uh… Thank you, sir.’ Marie’s eyes were bulging a little. Fox sipped her coffee and smirked.

‘It’s Jackson, young lady. I will be visiting the place you live in at some point soon. I can’t wait to see Yliaster working on something real.’

‘Speaking of which,’ Jarvis said, ‘we had those two frames emerge from the ducts last night. We nailed both with bindwire missiles and they’re being shipped over to New York for analysis.’

‘Last night?’ Fox asked. ‘Sounds like they were waiting on Terri coming back.’

‘Seems like the plan was to get in and tap the main computer system. Probably a variant of the same virus they used in East Africa.’

‘What have I got myself into?’ Marie muttered.

Fox gave her a smile. ‘You’ll get used to it. For now, it looks like we can go ahead with the plans for the house. When can we start on that?’

Vaughn stirred. ‘We’re projecting a start to the work on Monday, May thirty-first. We would like to move Marie out the weekend before so we’ll need to arrange somewhere for her to stay.’

‘Oh, she can stay here,’ Fox said. ‘It’s convenient for her coaching and it’ll be a chance to get to know her better. I’m going to be living in a house with her soon.’

‘If that’s okay with you, Marie?’ Vaughn asked, and she seemed to be trying quite hard to keep the smirk off her face.

Marie was turning scarlet. ‘I think that would be… great. Yeah. I’m sure that’ll be… efficient.’

Fox smiled. ‘Uh-huh. It’s always nice when things run efficiently. Keeping things simple, I’m all for that.’

Epilogue

New York Metro, 27th May 2060.

Fox opened her eyes in the latest of the virtual murder rooms Kit had created. Thankfully, this was the only active one, and it was for a cold case, but it was looking a little different from the way it had a couple of days earlier. ‘Kit… What happened? This was just one dead body.’

The picture of Patricia Anne Randall still held pride of place in the central display area, and around it stretched the web of her life which Kit had spent the last two days constructing. They had got the file fairly quickly thanks to August’s name being on the request and there being no major political issues with it. Fox had given it a quick once-over and then handed it off to Kit to build a background for the woman. But now there were two more pictures which seemed to have no direct connections to Patricia Randall.

‘Hunting down data on Miss Randall required a lot of searching,’ Kit said. She was looking a little hesitant, as though she was not sure whether what she had to say was right, or good news. ‘She died almost four years ago and I was tracing friends and associates using all sorts of sources. A lot of memorials, but there were a number of photo and video links through other people’s LifeWeb streams.’

‘Uh-huh. Looks like you’ve done quite a good job, but what about these two?’

‘While hunting through Miss Randall’s associates, I came across some other references to persons who died in… alarmingly similar circumstances.’

Fox turned, looking at the other pictures. One man, one woman, neither especially old, both attractive even if that meant little these days. She pulled out the reported details and found that both had been kidnapped while out running, vanishing for several days before their bodies were discovered. The man’s injuries, or some of them, had leaked to the media: he had been badly beaten, sexually abused, and then killed. Fox flicked back to the Randall case where she now had full details of the autopsy. She winced.

‘Shit. That’s… excessive. Okay, so you’re thinking that Randall may be one of a series?’

‘I believe that Miss Randall may be the first of a series, Fox.’ The AI frowned. ‘The evidence is very circumstantial.’

‘Because you’re just looking at media feeds and you haven’t even gone that deep. You think there’s a link?’

‘Yes…’

‘Then trust your… I’m not sure an AI has instincts, exactly, but that’s what you’d be trusting if you were human. Trust your instincts, put the requests through for these case files, and say they may present a link to the Randall case.’

‘I will. I… I suppose I just wanted to hear you say I was not being stupid.’

‘Kit, the stupid thing here would be to decide to drop it. If there’s a serial killer with this kind of MO in the metro, we need to nail him.’

###

About the Author

I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.

Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn.

I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. I wrote science fiction when I was playing Traveller. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes. I still love the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.

Recently I took the big step of quitting my day job and taking up full-time writing. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, J.D. Robb, and Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.

For More Information

Take a look at the Witches and Ray-guns blog: http://witchesandrayguns.wordpress.com

Other Books by this Author

See them all here: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Thaumatologist

The Thaumatology Series

Thaumatology 101

Demon’s Moon

Legacy

Dragon’s Blood

Disturbia

Hammer of Witches

Eagle’s Shadow

Ancient

Dragonfall

The Other Side of Hell

For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll

Vengeance

Anthologies in the Thaumatology Universe

Tales from High Towers’ Study

Tales from the Dubh Linn

The Aneka Jansen Books

Steel Beneath The Skin

The Cold Steel Mind

Steel Heart

The Winter War

The Greatest Heights of Honour

The Lowest Depths of Shame

Hope

The Ultrahuman Books

Ugly

Shadows

The Unobtainium Books

Kate on a Hot Tin Roof

The Reality Hack Books

Reality Hack

The Fox Meridian Books

Fox Hunt

Inescapable

DeathWeb – January 2016