by Zara Zenia
I gulped, nodded and refrained from any excuses. They wouldn’t help.
“Right, O’Shea, get Peri out there on the case, pronto. Chop, chop, no time to lose. We are wasting any small advantage we might have from prompt action.”
Brontsen disappeared, and David popped his head over my screen from his desk opposite me and said, “I could have told you to expect the Chief’s apoplexy if you projected a hologram of our wanted guy through the office.”
Thanks, David!
“But did you learn anything?”
Wow! I didn’t expect that from my partner.
“The guys are right, Akrawn is super fit—”
“And according to my research makes me a mental clodhopper. He’s a tech genius, computer-wizard, and spends most of his time inventing stuff.”
I moved around to David’s side and peered at his screen. “So I guess his obsession with inventing is why he isn’t seen at many San Francisco social events,” I mused. “Despite purportedly being on Earth to find a wife and make babies.”
“Sounds like my sorta guy,” mumbled David.
Hmm, and mine too, but I said, “Are you ready to let Peri digest what you’ve dug up,” I asked, “and go diving through camera e-space for sightings and net-activity for any suspicious actions which might be linked to our quarry?”
“Done it. And I’ve added a predictive app regarding how Akrawn’s genius might tackle hiding.”
“Peri? In-time reporting, please.”
“Yes, Cat. The last confirmed images come from social media videos and photos from guests at the party Prince Akrawn hosted when he entered wearing the necklace. There are no subsequent records.”
“So what do you think, David?”
“Well, the logic of stealing the— what’s it called again —the wesekhcollar, baffles me. But he is an alien and could have motives we don’t understand.”
“How about you continue to research his inventions and interests so we can profile him from that angle while I scurry up what social media has to say?”
“Done.”
I returned to my desk and kept an eye on the brief summaries Peri was sending me of its findings while I trawled through social media for anything related to the alien princes. Akrawn could be working in concert with one or more of them. Compared to his brothers, Akrawn was elusive and didn’t play social media games. But he had a sharp and sarcastic wit, which he displayed to any recipient’s disadvantage. We had scored the trickiest prince to track.
Most information concerned his inventions, but as David was prying into those to determine the prince’s agenda, I flicked through the scrapings of reports on his girlfriend, one Bella Tormundson, who was a Trilyn engineering genius and bizarrely, also a centerfold beauty.
My heart clenched with something I refused to call disappointment.
No way was I going to fall for a wanted man who had a woman and made every Earth woman he met swoon and drool.
Cat, my girl, keep a level head and don’t be stupid. You’re a clever career girl, and falling in love clearly lowers your IQ. That is not an option when dealing with this guy.
My continued prowling through social media showed that contrary to Akrawn’s oldest brother who speed-dated to marriage, or the other princes who played with a multitude of women, this prince had only dated the blond, over-endowed bombshell, who had come from Trilyn as an undefined attaché.
Yeah, you know what she attached herself to.
But, I noted, she wasn’t with Akrawn at the party where he’d turned up wearing the necklace to the uproar of the Iswan dignitaries. Still, I guess David and I had better put interrogating her on our action list. If Peri couldn’t dig up any sightings of him, we’d have to do the good old-fashioned method of interviewing close associates for info.
More digging showed me exactly how ‘in love’ the general populace was with the Princes. They were treated like the British royals were and had the same fanatical fans. Although, in stark contrast to this, the Muslim population was in an uproar and wanted blood. If the media discovered David and I were
hunting him, we’d be lynched by the devoted fans, while being cheered on by a burgeoning number of detractors. Placing ‘wanted posters’ on social media would not help one iota.
I kept reading and became more certain that this was a career-ending case. Akrawn was truly at an order of brilliance beyond Earth genius, which included David. The prince had used multiple identities to escape the paparazzi. This was disturbing, to put it mildly. Disguised, the prince could evade Peri’s facial recognition, which was good, but not on a par with the supercomputers the ILE used. Yet I doubted even the ILE could find Akrawn if he didn’t wish to be found. Chasing our tails was the most likely result here. That is, until the Chief demoted us from his sight to traffic cop status.
“Cat?”
“Yes, Peri?”
“I apologize that it is taking me so long. Gathering data on potential sightings took far longer than anticipated.”
“And?”
“There are vast amounts of potential sightings, given Akrawn’s ability with disguise.”
“Okay, pass it on to David, and he will see what programs he can run on the data to narrow our options.”
Early evening had descended before David and I had a breakthrough. I rubbed my forehead and palmed my eyes. My stomach twisted into a super unsettling knot.
“David, we’re being set-up.”
“I know. What else can we do?”
And why? Why does Akrawn want to meet with his trackers?
Chapter 3
Akrawn
My life turned into a fucking nightmare, and it took several hours to discover why.
It was a good thing the land my spaceship home rested on was forty minutes by ground transport from the population center of San Francisco. Tiburon had a small police force of a dozen who were innocuous enough, which was one reason I chose this out-of-the-way peninsula. The ILE didn’t keep their suspicions of us Trilyn to themselves and floated outrageous ideas about us to the press who disseminated these ideas to the public.
I gathered by shouting in the reception area that I was in big trouble. What the fuss was, I didn’t know, but the frightful dim told me I needed to disappear. In the human’s confusion in how to proceed, I made it to my room and grabbed my “go” bag from my closet. With a last-minute fit of clarity, I tossed out the Trilyn clothes in the bag and stuffed in the Versace. I might need to look like an Earther, and my Trilyn clothes would not disguise me. Then I used the maintenance crawlspaces to make it to the site-to-site transport in my lab and attempted to key in my eldest brother’s spaceship address. But it wouldn’t take, and I tried the next brother with the same results. What the hell?
“AI, perform a search. Check site-to-site addresses and locate the reason for the address lock-out.”
“Searching. The ILE put a lock-out code on all transport out of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Fuckers. Messing with me once again. They thought restricting addresses would force me to choose one they would cover.
“What addresses are active?”
“The one at San Francisco Airport where you have your interstellar transport docked is open.”
Of course. “Trap. What other?”
“There are two downtown San Francisco site-to-sites.”
“More traps. What else?”
“I detect an obsolete site-to-site transport in what Earthers once called The Mission District but now refer to as the Badlands.”
“Go there.”
“Akrawn,” said the AI, and I swear it sounded concerned which was not possible. “It is a lawlessly violent place, made so by infestations of gangs, most notably the Lobos de Sangre—”
“Now.”
“Yes, your Highness.”
The trip was jarring, probably made so by a lack of calibration in what was an abandoned STS station. But as I stumbled off the pad, I gave thanks to whoever the criminal was that kept the STS
going. I was off my ship, out of Tiburon and for now in a part of San Francisco that no sane person would wander, which included law enforcement. This included the ILE who seemed intent on proving how much of an annoyance they could be.
My brushes with the ILE were minor but illustrated they did not trust us Trilyn at all. They did not believe the “we come in peace” message we sent before we came. We did not know the Earthers associated the “we come in peace” meme with Earth military organizations’ propensity to overrun a land with superior force. It was as much a part of their history as it was not a part of ours, and this bit of cultural ignorance did not smooth our relations with the Earthers.
Minor misunderstandings in my first year on Earth cemented in the ILE’s minds that I was a shady character worthy of twenty-four-hour surveillance. Only when they realized I developed our technology for Earth use did they back off. Still, they were always wary of my requests for Earth schematics and specifications to meld their backward technology to ours. They thought us thieves trying to steal secrets that we divined hundreds of centuries prior.
Arrogant humans.
The STS station had one flickering lamp that illuminated the dirty hallway in fits and spurts. The place stank of stale urine. Crushed takeout cups, crumpled wrappers, cigarette butts, empty liquor bottles, and broken glass littered the floor. In the dark recesses of the station, unseen creatures skittered across the floor. Painted images splayed on the walls depicting cheerless representations of despair and death. Symbols flowed over them that I could not parse. It was not English, but the shapes were regular enough. I suspected it was a language.
“Prince Akrawn,” spoke up my AI. This surprised me. It usually kept quiet when I did not address it directly.
“Yes?”
“The symbols on the wall issue a warning that this is the territory of the Lobos de Sangre, that is the Blood Wolves gang, and warns they will kill trespassers.”
“How do you know?”
“I utilized the back door you installed in the ILE database and found the symbols in the database labeled ‘gangs’.”
Now the AI alarmed me. Where are the protocols to keep it from acting independently? What is wrong with this AI?
“Thank you,” I said, “but do not access ILE files again without my permission. We do not know if they installed a bot to track my intrusions.”
“I checked, Prince Akrawn. There were none. But I will do what you say.”
What the hell? The thing now referred itself in personal pronouns? This was an affection that the Earthers installed in their programs, but I never did.
“You should find cover,” suggested the AI.
Where is this coming from? This is becoming more concerning. Not that I was worried about my safety. I might be the more studious of my brothers, but we all studied the battle arts under our father’s War Master. I was confident in my ability to defend myself. But this AI’s disturbing behavior was more than a glitch and needed study time that I did not have.
“I’m fine.”
“Maybe you are, but considering that in an attack, the likelihood that you will lose me increases. Gangs like the Lobos de Sangre enjoy stealing AI’s and slaving them to depraved activities.”
Depraved? Did the AI make a moral judgment?
“Be quiet. If there are lurkers, you are only alerting them to our presence.”
The AI’s fluorescent green light on my wrist computer winked off, and I shook my head. An AI concerned with its safety? Something is wrong. I didn’t have time to ponder an AI’s artificially constructed nervousness resulting from file corruption. I’d mulled my options in the STS transport and concluded my best hope was to contact one of my brothers and have them retrieve me. Now the question was how to contact them.
“AI, scan the exit and check for humans.”
“There is one laying in the hallway covered by cardboard. He is sleeping.”
“And outside?”
“The security modules on the outside of this building and several blocks around no longer operate.”
The AI would be nearly useless in this section of the city that had been gutted by its inhabitants. Hoisting my go-bag on my shoulder, I crept into the STS station. No lights spilled on the dark and forsaken street, and my stomach clenched. I am not afraid, but this place looks more desolate than described by the first Trilyn scouting party.
The unfortunate under the cardboard stirred with a moan as I passed by him, but he did not hinder me. I climbed the stairs to the street. They added this STS station when they still put them in the subway stations thinking it would facilitate transportation. But once people got used to the STS’s, it just became more convenient to put them in major foot traffic centers.
The puny, pale moon cast an ethereal light on the broken street before me. The buildings here weren’t taller than three stories, a holdover from their past when earthquakes shook the San Francisco Bay Area. That was before we installed the geologic stabilizers that quieted the sliding plates that caused so much damage. It was a supreme irony that the humans viewed us with such distrust. Anyone with eyes could see we intended to shelter and care for these people who were our only hope to rebuild our race. We came in peace, and we paid for that peace with our technology. Eventually, when our numbers grew stronger on this planet, we would rebuild these wrecked places. For now, my brothers had to fulfill their part of the mission.
Me? I do what I can to get out of it.
Heartsick.
I shook off this perfidious thought because I was not heartsick. I wanted to live life as I always had and if the Goddesses had a love for me then I’d take her gladly. But until then, I would not accept any pale imitation of love.
Shattered windows made wide-toothed ugly grins while other buildings sported gaping holes exposing their abandoned innards to the elements. Others barely stood with giant sections ripped from them ending in a jagged column where upper floors ceased to exist.
In this section of the city, the humans used to paint any swatch of the wall with vibrant colors and bold paintings. It was a fascinating practice usually seen in the warmer parts of this planet. But now the painting flaked and was painted over by the rude graffiti of local gangs. It was ugly to witness this art’s destruction. On Trilyn, we revered art and artists for the emotions they stir in us. Again, I wondered how we could mate with a people that had such an ugly side to them. As I picked through the jumbled streets, it made me shudder to think of what traits we were incorporating into our people.
Parked cars smashed, flipped, and many stripped to the frames lay strewn in the apocalyptic landscape. Cracks in the sidewalks and roadways left roads and walkways a jumbled mess. Far away, an animal howled a lonely cry. Though I was buried in the city, I felt lost in a vast wilderness. I wondered how people could live here at all.
The AI flashed on my wrist.
“Yes,” I said.
“Turn left here, and your path will lead you toward a more civilized area.
I didn’t want to reach a more civilized area. Both the San Francisco police and the ILE were searching for me, and I had yet to arrange my escape. Nor did it evade me that my AI was leading me north in the general direction of Tiburon, toward its home base. This placed me within a more likely search radius for law enforcement in which to find me. I thought about ditching the AI who had been most likely corrupted by whoever worked to make my life miserable on this wretched planet. But it might prove useful yet. I had to keep outside the net of connected communication services so that no law enforcement could find me.
But the AI was correct that the broken cityscape became less wild and desolate, and bright signs in flickering neon colors populated some windows.
“AI, which signs on this street show eating or drinking establishments?”
It took a full quarter second to answer which was an eternity to an AI, but finally it blurted its answer.
“Three doors to the right.”
A neon sign in lurid blue and yellow anno
unced the name of the establishment, the Zeitgeist. And even as I entered the place, I saw it was a bar with disreputable characters sitting at the tables or standing at the bar. I walked into it anyway.
“Are you the manager?” I asked.
The man, wearing a faded armless shirt and sporting a thick beard, grunted.
“Owner.”
“Can I speak to you in private?”
His eyes flicked up and down my clothing, and his eyes gleamed with a feral light.
“Sure,” he said. The barman jerked his hand in the direction to a waitress on the floor. She scurried to take his place as he lifted a panel at the side of the bar.
“This way,” he grunted again.
I followed and heard rather than saw the three men who followed us down a narrow hallway. I should have expected this. After scouting the hallway, the barman’s bulky form cut off an escape in that direction. The three men prevented escape behind me. My nose wrinkled at the nasty smell of human waste, and I gathered the doorway to the left was what they termed a bathroom.
“Excuse me,” I said cheerily.
The barman grunted, and I entered and tossed my bag behind the door. The room held two stained and rusty sinks and two urinals at the far end of the wall. On my right were two stainless steel stalls that had seen better days two centuries ago. It was disgusting, but tactically a place with this many hard surfaces was an excellent place to do damage.
I took up a position behind the door and waited. Soon enough, the three men spilled into the room, and when they saw me behind the door laughed and then smiled.
“Come get me, boys,” I said. “Lately, life here has bored, and I’m looking for some fun.”
Confusion washed over their education-deprived faces until one smirked back.
“Oh, yeah?” he said, misapprehending my meaning as a sexual come-on.
“What you think, guys? A little fun before we get down to business?”
“Do what you want, you perv,” said another.
“Yeah,” said the other. “Soften him up, and we’ll finish it.”