Defragmenting Daniel: The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Jason Werbeloff

  But what caught his eye was a glowing green tub on the middle shelf. He knew that color. That deep emerald hue.

  Rejek.

  What the hells was Autumn doing with a tub of Rejek?

  He removed it from the shelf. Unscrewed the lid. It smelt fresh. But this wasn’t A-grade. The viscous fluid was flecked gray, a sure sign that it had been cut with impurities. The container was half-empty.

  “Can I make you some tea?” called Autumn.

  Daniel replaced the lid. “Yes, please.” He returned the tub to its spot in the cabinet. Rinsed his mouth, and went to Autumn on the wooden bench.

  She held out a tin cup for him. It trembled in her hand when he took it from her.

  “You’re up late,” he said. “Were you expecting someone?”

  She looked away. “You’re up late too.”

  The two sipped their tea. Their defenses hung in the air. Barbed. Black.

  He spotted a knife in the kitchen sink. He could place the cup on the floor right now. Walk over there. Grab the knife. Slice her open. Take the liver, and be done with this.

  But he couldn’t. Of course, he couldn’t.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “It’s the jaundice, isn’t it?”

  Daniel found her eyes. “I don’t understand?”

  “My skin. It’s worse than earlier. I can feel it. And you don’t like it, do you?”

  “Oh, no. No, it’s not that.” Daniel swallowed his tea. Watched her. “Why do you have Rejek in your cabinet?”

  Autumn’s yellow cheeks paled. Her lips moved, but she said nothing.

  Daniel stroked her hair. “What’s happening?”

  “Not something you need to hear about.” The words cascaded out of her now. “It’s … a dark side of the Bubble. You shouldn’t … you don’t … I …”

  Scenes from Amputating Amy flowed behind his eyelids when he blinked. Blood spray on the ceiling. Pooling on the concrete. “I know more about the underbelly of the Bubble than you might think,” he said.

  That was it. Right there. The two-pronged fork of fear and desire. He’d seen it in Daggy’s eyes when he’d sat beside her on the throne of pizza boxes. Watching that vulnerability in Autumn made Daniel feel powerful. Alive. He could walk over to the sink and pick up the knife. He wouldn’t. But he could.

  “It’s my liver. I told you about it earlier? The cancer?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “I know someone. An organ dealer. He can find me a new one. He sold me the one I have now. He’s cheaper than the … legal dealers. He said I should drink the Rejek before he did the operation.”

  Drink it? Hells. It wouldn’t kill her. But it was a nasty way to ready her for transplant.

  “When did you get this liver?” he asked, as nonchalantly as possible.

  “Almost twelve months ago to the day. Yaron said it would last a year. And, well, it has.”

  The dates matched. Gods, it was his liver. Inside her right now.

  “You could try a cybernetic replacement?” he said. “They’re unaffected by the cancer.”

  “I tried one before. Failed after a month. And they’re more expensive than Yaron’s.”

  “Yaron?”

  “The organ dealer.”

  Daniel sipped his tea. It didn’t taste of anything.

  It made sense now, why she was awake when he’d arrived. Waiting for a visitor. “You were expecting him when you opened the door for me?”

  “He’s coming tonight with another liver. He said he can do the operation right here.” She gestured to the floor.

  Daniel had seen his share of liver implants at Geppetto’s. It wasn’t an easy operation. “It’s not safe.”

  Her jaundiced eyes were hopeful. “He’s done it before.”

  Daniel’s tongue was huge in his mouth. Sluggish as he spoke. “I can help you.”

  Autumn eyed him. “How?”

  “I can find you a cybernetic liver that works.”

  “They’re too expensive.” Autumn’s words were a melancholic gray.

  Daniel held her gaze. “Mine isn’t.”

  “You have a cybernetic liver that you could sell me?”

  “I have one that I could give you.”

  Autumn took Daniel’s hand. “I don’t understand. Where is this liver?”

  Daniel pointed to his chest.

  Autumn sprung away from him. “What are you talking about? I can’t take your liver.”

  “I don’t need mine if I have yours,” he said.

  “Why in Gods’ names would you want my liver?”

  Daniel didn’t know what to say. If he told her, would she understand?

  “My liver is failing. It’s no good to you. You’d get the cancer same as me,” said Autumn.

  “I was an Organ Scrubber for six years. I know livers. We generally threw out the cancer-ridden organs. Too difficult to scrub away all the tumors. Too time-consuming. But it’s possible. I can do it.”

  “And if you can’t, you’ll land up with a failing liver, like me.”

  “That’s a risk I’ll take.”

  Autumn shook her head. “But why, Daniel? You don’t know me. Why are you doing this?”

  It would be wrong to say that Daniel understood women. But he thought he understood Autumn. At least, he understood the words behind her words. She was right – he didn’t know her. But what she was trying to say was, she wanted him to know her.

  “Let me do this for you.”

  Autumn caved like a Gutter building. “Alright,” she said. “But how? Who would do the surgery?”

  “I know someone who can help. I’ll take you to her, in just a few minutes. But I need to do something first.”

  Daniel strode to the kitchen sink. Rinsed the knife.

  Autumn shivered. “What are you doing?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  Autumn hesitated. Nodded.

  “Do you have plastic wrap?”

  Autumn nodded again.

  “And painkillers. Strong painkillers?”

  “Yes, but why?”

  When Autumn realized Daniel wasn’t going to answer her, she hurried to the bathroom. He heard the cabinet’s rusted hinge swing open. The hollow rustle of pill bottles.

  She returned a minute later. Scrummaged in a drawer, and handed him a roll of plastic with the bottle of pills.

  Daniel dried the knife with a threadbare rag. Lifted the blade to the light. It was clean. Not sterile, but as clean as it was going to be.

  “I’ll need the Rejek too.” It was impure, but he had no alternative.

  She returned with the half-empty tub. “What are you going to do?”

  Daniel swallowed three of the pills dry (the bottle said to take no more than two per day). While he waited for the analgesics to kick in, he examined himself in the living room mirror. Traced the outlines of his face with shaky hands.

  It was an ugly face. The nose was too big. Pockmarked. But it had served him well enough these past few days.

  His fingertips searched for the flesh-colored staples on his chin. They were difficult to see unless one looked for them. But they were there.

  After a few minutes, the amniotic peace of the painkillers descended on him. His breath slowed to silky ribbons.

  Daniel lifted the knife.

  “Don’t look,” he said.

  Autumn screamed.

  The Fingernail

  “Stop!”

  Margaret stepped forward. Again. Stretched out her hands to Kage. “The Detective has good ears.”

  She was close enough for Kage to smell her. It was her fingers. Green beneath the dried blood. Blotchy. Puffy gherkins. They dripped a trail of pus on the floor tiles.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot.”

  She reeked like a bowl of decomposing fruit. Sweet. Fermented.

  The android was within reaching distance now. Kage stood with his heels on the edge of the broken windowsill. The sheer drop at h
is back scratched at his ankles. Whispered dead nothings in his ear. Step off, it said. Lean back just a little more.

  “Margaret wants ears,” she said. But before she could curl her sausaged fingers around Kage’s face, he closed his eyes.

  And pulled the trigger.

  He hadn’t fired his weapon outside of a training range, and never without ear muffs. He knew it would be loud. But he wasn’t prepared for the explosion in the confined space.

  The recoil almost shunted him backward over the ledge. He forced his feet to root to the floor. Leaned forward into the room.

  Kage opened his eyes.

  Margaret sat on the floor, further away from him than she’d been when he’d fired. Her neck was craned downwards at an impossible angle, as she inspected the hole in her chest. When she looked up, her eyes were wide. Her voice was tiny. The voice of a bewildered child.

  “Margaret wants ears.”

  The pistol in Kage’s hands wavered. “Ma’am, I need you to place your hands behind your head.”

  Margaret blinked. “Ears?”

  “No,” said Kage. He trained the barrel on the point between her eyes. “Place your hands behind your head. Do it now.”

  His ears rang, but he heard the strength in his voice. The masculine depths. The Glock steadied in his hands.

  Margaret uncurled her legs.

  He swung the weapon to follow her movements as she stood.

  “Margaret wants ears.” Her voice was low. “Ears.”

  “This is your final warning,” said Kage. His jaw clenched. The skin over his elbows tightened. The gun was aimed true and sure.

  Margaret bent her knees. Rotated her torso to one side, reducing Kage’s shooting profile. Her left eye twitched. Her fingers played an inaudible tune in the air.

  The android sprung forward.

  Kage fired.

  This time, his eyes were wide open as the bullet ripped through the air, into Margaret’s shoulder.

  In almost every holo-movie Kage had seen, the percussive force of a bullet was enough to hurl its victim against a wall at least a couple of yards away. It may have been that bullets didn’t affect Margaret the way they affected human movie stars. Or perhaps bullets didn’t have the sort of momentum ascribed to them by film makers. One way or another, the bullet hardly slowed Margaret’s leap. But what it did do was twist the now airborne, high-velocity android just enough that she didn’t impact Kage head-on.

  With a bone-crunching thu-clunk that he would remember for the rest of his life, Margaret’s head collided with Kage’s right shoulder. Because she was slightly off target, Margaret’s momentum failed to propel the Detective out of the window and off the building. Instead, Kage spun clockwise on his feet, launching him further into the room, just as Margaret was hurled out of it.

  By the time he’d turned around, the android was nowhere to be seen. Margaret had fallen, silently, out the window to the street below.

  He peered over the side, expecting Margaret to be hanging onto the edge, like the villain does in every bad action movie. But … no trembling fingers curled over the ledge. No straining android begged for his help.

  Margaret had fallen. Thirty-four floors.

  She might survive a bullet or two. But not a fall like that.

  He squinted. Tried to make out the pavement below. But the midnight light, together with the chaotic mess of taxi headlights darting by, made it almost impossible to see the pavement.

  He’d have to call it in. Couldn’t have terminated androids on the pavement. First, though, he’d need to secure the scene.

  Kage flagged down a taxi and ordered it, despite its confusion, to deposit him on the street directly below.

  “There is a minimum charge for all fares,” said the cab.

  Kage was too busy maneuvering his shoulder out the taxi’s door to care. Red-tipped agony had skewered his joint where Margaret had impacted him. He’d deal with that later. For now, he had a crime scene to secure.

  But when Kage shut the door to the taxi and looked around, there was no crime scene. No android. And no Margaret.

  He rotated in a 360 degree circle, gaining his bearings. Had the taxi drifted off course? Dropped him somewhere other than on the sidewalk beneath Margaret’s window?

  Kage glanced up. Through the crisscrossed beams of hover taxi headlamps, he could just make out the light in her apartment. It shone out into the night sky, conspicuous among the other apartments, whose lights were either off, or whose windows had been set to opaque by their owners’ privacy settings.

  He returned his eyes to the sidewalk.

  There. A gleaming patch on the cobblestone.

  He kneeled down to –

  “Hey man, look where you’re going.”

  A woman with dreadlocks longer than she was, tripped over him.

  “Have you seen an android walking around? It would be –”

  “Fuck you, man,” Dreadlocks yelled, and spat on Kage’s moccasin.

  Kage didn’t know what to say. But when he looked into Dreadlocks’ eyes and noticed her pupils – black holes wider than her head – he thought it best to turn away. What were the legislators thinking when they’d legalized cocaine? It had caused nothing but trouble in the Promenade. The gore bars had blossomed to fulfill the needs of the unruly hoi polloi. He didn’t like to think about the killing bars.

  When she realized Kage wasn’t up for a fight, Dreadlocks skulked away.

  He knelt down again. Tapped the flashlight on his glasses. He reached into his jacket pocket, and donned his gloves.

  A dark liquid coated the sidewalk. He thumbed it. Blood. Still wet.

  Something glinted in the corner of his vision. He reached over. Held up the object to the light. A shiver snaked up his arm. It took years of experience to stomach the nausea in his gut, and not fling the damned thing as far away as possible.

  It was a fingernail. Yellow, with brown ridges. Pus on its underside.

  Margaret.

  Either someone had taken her body away before he’d had time to get down here, or Margaret was made of tougher stuff than he’d thought. Androids were notoriously robust, especially service bots. Asteroid mining operations, spacewalks in deep vacuum, undersea welding at crushing depths – service bots were designed to do just about anything.

  Kage looked up at Margaret’s window again – he ignored the tendrils of pain this sent through his shoulder. It wasn’t impossible Margaret was a modified service bot. But a thirty-four story drop? Could anything survive that kind of fall?

  He tapped his glasses. Brought up the tracking map Una had sent him. According to the map, Margaret was in her apartment.

  He flagged down another taxi, which elevated him back up to Margaret’s floor. It only took a few seconds to locate the android’s glasses. They lay on a nightstand, beside a bed whose sheets were caked with an undisturbed layer of dust.

  He could put out an alert for Margaret, and he would, but it wouldn’t be easy to find her if she wasn’t wearing her glasses. Una might be able to track the movement of her parts if she knew their MAC addresses, but Kage had a feeling that Margaret had long ago altered her identifiers.

  Kage walked back into the living room. He was about to bring up the footage recorded by his glasses app, to snag screenshots of Daniel and Margaret, when something stopped him.

  What the fuck was that?

  He walked over to the couch closest to the broken window. Behind it, on a polycarbonate side table, was a sealed glass jar. And inside the jar … Kage almost allowed the glass to slide from his grasp, but forced his trembling fingers to hold fast.

  Inside the jar was a face.

  It was difficult to tell just whose it was with only slits for eyes and lips, and without bones to give it shape. But Kage knew.

  “Daniel,” he whispered.

  Kage gripped the container. He could almost feel the slick touch of Daniel’s cheek through the glass.

  Standing in Margaret’s apartment, Kage felt th
e hard-edged walls of a dilemma descend around him.

  He could call Una right now. Send her screenshots of the faces of Margaret and Daniel. Get her to send out an alert. Una’s facial recog algorithms would probably find them in minutes.

  But if Bubble PD found the two of them, Kage’s role in the theft of Ben Stanton’s organs might come to light. They might deny stealing Ben’s penis and arms, even if they admitted to stealing the rest of the Stantons’ missing organs. And Margaret was an android. He’d heard that the recent memories of service bots were stored in their memory core. Which meant her memories could be read if Bubble PD wanted to corroborate their story.

  If Bubble PD examined those memories, they’d see that when Margaret and Daniel had left the Stantons’ trailer, Ben had had his arms and penis intact. And who was the only person to spend time alone with the bodies before Forensics arrived?

  Kage.

  Suspicion would fall to the weird black man who was forever in search of his manhood. It wouldn’t be a leap to imagine that Kage was the penis thief.

  Fuck.

  He couldn’t send out the alert. He’d have to catch Margaret and Daniel himself. And when he did, he’d obliterate Margaret, so that her memory core could no longer be accessed. As for Daniel … dead men don’t talk.

  He was going to catch the Organ Thief, one way or another.

  Kage recalled the other name on the list he’d gathered from Hooplah. The other organ recipient – Autumn Beckett. Daniel would get to her sooner or later. Kage could ambush him at her apartment.

  Although …

  Autumn wasn’t the last person on Daniel’s list. The final person was Kage. And Daniel could very well be lying in wait at Autumn’s, ready to rip out Kage’s amygdala.

  Kage’s day had included more than enough hand-to-hand combat. His shoulder throbbed something horrific, and he was tired. He hadn’t slept the last two nights, nor taken Anti-Sleeps. He’d swing by Phil’s Pharma after this, but for now he decided that another showdown with Daniel tonight wasn’t a good idea.

  His glasses rang in the center of his skull. It was Yaron, the organ dealer who’d sourced his previous penis.

  What a mess that man had created. Really, this was all his fault. If he’d just given Kage a working penis the first time he’d bought one, he wouldn’t have had to remove Ben’s.