He snaked a cable out of the device and attached it to a diode that he stuck over the wrist of my organic arm, “Do you, Adrian Shetler submit to a line of questions about your business below level eleven?”
I knew if I refused to submit, he would turn me away on grounds of suspicious activity. I didn't have a choice, “I do.”
On the tablet screen my vitals remained level, indicating my honesty.
“Can you give an accurate account of your movements since you last passed through this checkpoint?” The Agent spoke in an enunciated monotone, all the while looking at the readings on the screen.
“I can,” I felt my breath coming in slowly and I tried to remember how I'd dealt with these tests when I had been a Marine. I had shot the interviewer. I doubted that strategy would help me now.
The screen chimed an even series of repetitive tones like an alarm clock. My heartbeat was holding steady.
“Were you aware of an active crime scene in that sector?” The Agent tapped something on his screen and his eyes shifted behind the glare of the visor.
“I was aware of that,” I could feel my pulse in my throat and my skin felt tight, “A woman fell through my window last night.”
My vitals indicated a change in blood pressure but not enough to indicate a false response.
“Why did you enter level—” Before he could finish the question, another armed Agent stepped through the gate and made a rolling gesture with his gloved hand. The interviewer took the diode back and closed the screen, “That's all for now.”
I passed through the scanning gate without setting it off and made my way back to the street level.
Cars gliding through the clean paved streets made a backdrop of streaking colored lights and shining glares, visible through the crowd of pedestrians for a few fleeting moments. On the corner, two men faced each other, one looking over his shoulder as he passed a cred stick to the other.
Tara had been planning on blackmailing her new boyfriend, Devin had told me that much earlier. Now I knew how she would have done it. She would have used her implant to secretly record their sessions and produce the footage later, telling him she would give it to the LEA if he didn't pay. She could have been recording him the night she died, an image of her murderer could still be on the micro data core.
I needed to see her body.
06
I walked for another block or two, thinking it was a good idea to get some distance from the checkpoint. I had stepped onto some street I didn't know, passing under a flashing purple neon of an octopus with a bandana, its tentacle holding chopsticks that dipped into a bowl. I was suddenly aware of a dull ache in my stomach. I hadn't eaten since morning.
I stepped inside and a woman behind the counter gave me a bow, a long flow of braided black hair falling over the lapel of her floral print kimono. I didn't have to order since the only thing the little bistro made were octopus balls. I watched as the woman put the chopped octopus and veggie mixture into the round cooking molds, pouring egg batter over them. Looking out the window at the row of neons flashing in the long night, I drank steaming tea and ate octopus balls that I dipped into a spicy red sauce.
It took me another block before I found a bank that didn't have anyone at the ATM. I entered the alley between the bank and a store that had a projected screen in its window, the image showing a bright children's cartoon. Characters dressed like ninja jumped and dashed with speed lines in the background, subtitles beneath in English and Hindi. I drew my mobile and ran out the cable from its base turning my face away from the ATM's camera. I took a cred stick out of my coat and broke the plastic case near the back, revealing an auxiliary port that showed from a circuit board. I plugged my mobile into the cred stick, then plugged the stick into the data port on the ATM. I tapped into my mobile's grid, opening a script that would generate numeric passwords and feed them into the ATM until one granted me access. At that point, I told the script to transfer a balance of zero credits to the stick. When it finished, I pulled all my gear from the ATM and stuffed it into my coat.
I used my cybernetic arm to crank the sealed lid from the nearby dumpster, crawled inside and bent the lid back down. Something squished beneath me and smelt like old cabbage and fish sauce. I left a narrow crack that I could see the alley through and waited.
The cam drone came first, hovering over the ATM and focusing its lens. After it covered the length of the alley, it ascended out of sight. Next came an Agent patrol car, gliding into the opening of the alley and coming to a halt. The slanted nose of the vehicle settled as the door swung open. A Law Enforcement Agent stepped out of the car, a ribbon of colored light lancing along the length of his visor, the reflected glare of the ATM.
The lid of the dumpster was almost silent as I swung my leg out and onto the pavement. The Agent was looking at a mobile that he plugged into the ATM, probably searching the camera for photos. The back of the patrol car was locked and I knew an alarm would sound if I tore it open. Instead, I went through the open front door, pressing a button on the touchscreen dashboard to release the hatch in the back. I found a folded jumpsuit and a helmet, complete with a set of the large reinforced gloves and boots paneled with shiny black plastic. I took the whole set under my arm and closed the car's hatch before crawling back into the dumpster.
As the Agent turned and walked back to his car, he stopped in front of the dumpster and tapped a disk on the helmet where his ear would be, “This is Agent Marcus, the ATM is a code seven. It didn't get any pictures of the suspect either."
Agent Marcus entered the patrol car and pulled the door shut. The engine came on with a whir and the car left, becoming a shadow on the street. I didn't have much time before the uniform would be reported missing. I stripped naked inside the dumpster and bundled my gun inside my trench coat, tucking the whole thing neatly in the corner under a pile of shredded papers. It was tricky getting the Agent uniform on in the dark confined space, but somehow I managed it. From my things, I took only my mobile and clipped it into place on the jumpsuit's belt.
Crawling out of the dumpster, I scraped what had stuck to my boots onto the pavement, some sticky yellow paste with bits of green. The helmet wedged over my head and I smoothed my shaggy black hair from my eyes, pulling the visor into place. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window of the nearby shop. The matte black jumpsuit with the reinforced gray patches made me an anonymous shadow on the city streets, a ghost that could pass through checkpoints and cameras without question or suspicion. Impersonating an Agent was a class ten offense and if I was caught, I would be facing a maximum detainment sentence. That would be if I made it to my hearing alive. I'd heard stories of perpetrators of high-class offenses walking past malfunctioning airlocks on the way to their trials.
I used my mobile to call for a taxi and when it arrived a few moments later, the squat yellow vehicle stopped next to me, the side panel pivoting up and open on its hinge. The driver was an older thick-faced man with dark skin. He asked my destination and I told him the sector precinct would be fine.
He stopped in front of the building with the tinted black windows and the asymmetrical slanted roof. He let me out and drove away without asking for payment, the red LED brake lights trailing down the shadowed street.
My mobile showed a schematic for the precinct on the network. The morgue was on the bottom floor near the storage lockers. I passed through the swinging glass doors and waved at an Agent behind the desk that I didn't know. He waved back.
I stepped into a lift and jabbed the button for the basement, riding next to a man in a lab coat who was arguing with someone over his mobile. He got out the floor before I did, finally ending the call and stuffing the handset into his pocket. The bottom floor was empty, a stoic corridor of brushed steel and tile the color of clean linen. The door to the morgue was a stainless steel double door with a handle like a lever. The light from a clearance lock shone crimson against its black plastic casing.
If I slid my hacked clearance card it would show my identity—there would be evidence that I'd broken in. If I hacked it with a cable, the device would send an alert down the network, the precinct would enter lock down. As strong as the cybernetic arm was, the steel hinges would prove to be stronger. Even if I could tear them out of the wall, it would take several minutes—minutes I couldn't afford.
A length of cable attached to the wall with metal ties led me from the clearance lock and into the next room. The cables ended at a circuit box mounted on the wall. The access panel was bolted shut with a lock for some kind of maintenance key. I seized the bolt between the fingertips of my left hand, twisting it until the metal stripped the threads in the panel—then it swung open. I found the circuit labeled for the morgue door and disconnected it, attaching it instead to the ground wire. I returned to the door and found the light on the clearance lock was out. The lever opened when I tested it and I stepped though into the morgue.
I found Tara's body on a slab without a labeled name, just a time stamp and a sector code. I pulled the drawer out of the wall, steam rolling from the refrigerated cabinet. Tara lay on her back with her hands at her side. There was no Y-shaped incision over her sternum; I
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