Before the two could say they checked the video, Nina raised her hand. “I have evidence that someone out there has found a way to falsify a K-N process. I do not trust that video. Send it to our lab so we can analyze it.”
Wilkes nodded.
Joey looked at the two men that had been working him over for the past hour. “I’ll find her. I’m good at finding things that people don’t want found.”
Nina walked him out through the Division 1 offices. The room resembled a still life in three dimensions. Her old squad mates stared, silent and motionless. Most had been glued to the video feed from the holding area. A red haired woman instrumental in the shower duct-taping incident ran out of sight before Nina could see her. Captain Farris sat motionless in his office, staring through the large window at her with a Nicohaler dangling from his lower lip. No one moved as she led Joey out of the room and on toward the garage and to her patrol craft. He fell into the passenger seat with the grace of a sack of moaning meat.
Nina sat quiet for a moment, and then looked at him.
“Someone wants you out of the picture.”
He managed a faint nod. “Yeah. I kind of had that feeling.”
he black unmarked patrol craft slipped out of the parking deck and into the sky; up through a swarm of ad-bots and into the traffic lane.
Nina looked him up and down. “Let’s get you to a hospital.”
“I’ll be okay with a few more stimpaks, no major damage. Besides, we have to find who grabbed Hayley.” Joey’s breath continued in labored gasps. “I think you’re right, they wanted to get to me.”
“That could mean she’s already dead.” Nina’s voice carried an eerie chill, but she hid her emotion well.
While Joey raided the storage compartment, pumping one stimpak after another into his side, Nina scanned the comm and listened to the Division 1 chatter as they searched. Once the full-body numbness of the stimpaks set in, he explained about his meeting with Itai, complaining about his front row seats to two ass whippings in the same day.
“We had nothing to indicate that Itai was a deck jockey.” Nina scowled.
Joey shook his head. “There’s no way that Itai did that. I haven’t gotten spanked like that since Mars; and that was a dragon.”
“Those AI’s are only used by the government. Where the hell did you go that you ran into one of those?”
“Apparently, not the shipping company that Vasek said it was. Other than that, I have no damn idea.” He chuckled.
An Ops agent appeared in Nina’s vision. “I got some good news. Hardin read our network people the riot act for being slackers. After a fourteen-hour bender, DeWinter managed to come up with a way to unmask the fake K-N. We ran his utility on the “tipster” video, and it turned out to be edited.”
Shimmering blue light spread out over the dashboard. Within it appeared a citycam view of Hayley’s apartment building. She emerged from the door, eyes downcast, and moped to the edge of the sidewalk. After standing alone for just over a minute, a PubTran car pulled up and she got into it alone. When it had driven out of sight, another piece of video showed the abduction. This time, the victim was a grown woman and the location different.
“I saw that vid…” Joey pointed. “It’s an old thriller. Someone scaled down the woman and put Hayley’s face on her.” He rubbed his head. His M3 jack hurt too much for him to think about using it yet. “Can you trace where the PT car went?”
Ten seconds later, Nina relayed an address.
“That’s Kenny’s place. She probably got lonely and went to hang out with Alyssa.” Joey took his NetMini out and called.
Alyssa answered. “Hi Joey!” When she took in his appearance, she covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God! What happened to you?”
“It’s okay; I lost an argument with a wall. Is Hayley there?”
“Yeah. Why, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. The police were concerned about her. They thought she disappeared.”
“Oh.” She looked over her shoulder and back at him. “Hey, what did you tell my dad before, he ran out of here like his nuts were on fire.”
Joey’s laugh at the mental image of that ended with a wince and a hand on his side. “It would be better if you asked him. It’s about your mother.”
She sank into a chair, biting her lip. “Really?”
“Yeah, I found some info… Look, just talk to him when you can. It’s not my place to tell you, but it may be good news.”
She stared. Her pleading eyes melted through his attempt to dodge her.
“The company your mom used to work for did it to her; some kind of medical testing done without her knowledge. I found the details and your dad took it to the hospital.”
Alyssa sniffled. Hayley came over to find out what was going on and waved. Nina relayed the address to the search teams, informing them they were en route to verify.
Joey waited for Alyssa to compose herself. “Hey, we might stop by. Keep an eye out for anything weird.”
She shot a fearful glance off screen. “Why?”
“Um. Someone is playing with us and I just want you to be careful until we can get there.”
“Okay.” Her shaking hand reached up and ended the call.
Nina glanced over. “So, that doll you ran into?”
“Which one?” Joey bit his lip, forgetting she did not know he knew.
“Nemsky.” Nina had no reaction.
Joey grinned. “Speaking of him, I found something you may want to see.”
“Oh?” She turned the car towards Kenny’s place.
Joey put on a casual face. “I took a little trip to Russia.”
She smirked at him; the word bullshit may as well have been tattooed to her forehead.
“Virtually. I slipped through the cracks in cyberspace and went rooting around over there. I found some info on our pal.”
“You know that doll had an AI core? I think he sent a copy of himself as a decoy.”
“That would be a really neat trick.” Joey offered a smug grin. “An ACC special ops team killed Anatoly Nemsky almost three years ago. I got a file that details the whole operation complete with helmet cameras. They shot him in the damn bathtub; can you believe that? Sitting like a shaved polar bear and singing ‘till four bullets met in his head. The executives became concerned about his level of brutality and did a little internal housecleaning.”
“Dead? That has to be a set up for a deep cover operation, its classic.” She glared out the window. “Besides, when did the ACC ever care about being too brutal?”
“I got the feeling their political machine considered him a liability only because he was so public. Each time he wiped out a town square full of civilians, the resistance got hundreds of recruits. The file had enough detail for me to believe it. Of course, I’m no intelligence agent. Swing by my place and I’ll show you.”
“That makes even less sense than everything else that’s been going on.” She sighed, melting into the seat as if she just wanted to go home and go to bed.
“Does it?” Joey took a chance and put a hand on her leg. “Think about it. The dead are coming back and talking to us. Why not Nemsky too?”
Nina gripped the controls tighter. She wanted to hear Division 0’s opinion on this mess. If they were ghosts, it would explain their elusiveness. It also would let her hand the whole thing off to the psionics and not have to worry any more about it.
The car settled to a landing outside Kenny’s house. The two girls waited on the porch, Alyssa clinging to her pistol. They came running over as the car landed, Hayley diving into Joey as if he was her long-absent father. When the emotion settled, Nina put a hand on her shoulder.
“Someone sent the police a fake video that made it look like Joey kidnapped you.”
“Why?” She blinked, clinging to him.
“They wanted the cops to kill me.” Joey chuckled.
Nina’s stare flicked from Joey to the car. “I told you I’d drag your dad home. I thi
nk it’s about time he made a decision between his job and his daughter.”
“He didn’t come home again last night. He said he had to work.” She buried her face in Joey’s chest.
Alyssa rubbed her friend’s back. “I’ve been trying to cheer her up all day, but she’s…”
“Come on.” Nina took Hayley’s hand and led her back to the car. “I’ve had enough of this.”
Joey turned to follow, but Alyssa grabbed his arm, shaking with emotion. “Daddy called, he’s coming back here to pick me up. Thank you.”
“Your dad’s helped me out a lot.” He ruffled her hair. “I’m just returning the favor.”
Hayley sat with her arms crossed through her lap; silent tears fell the entire ride to the Division 2 Regional Tech Center. The reception area looked more like the office of a technology corporation than a police installation.
A thin bookish man with light brown hair sat behind the front desk, glancing up at the approaching group. His greyish-blue jumpsuit bore the insignia of a Technical Sergeant, electronics.
“Can I help you?”
Nina flashed her ID. His already pale face got whiter. He stared in mute silence, unable to think of anything to say.
“I need to see Detective Jacob Roth, right away.”
The man looked at the holo-panel floating in space to his right. “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
Hayley muttered to her father via NetMini behind them. She tried to get him to say when he could come home for a bit and he eluded the question as always. Joey typed on his NetMini and showed her the text: “Don’t tell him we are here.” She nodded.
Nina leaned toward the tech. “Why is it impossible?”
“Detective Roth was killed in action about fourteen months ago.” No emotion came with the statement; as if he told her she wore black. “We found him in a couple of pieces; some cyberganger he’d been tracking got a hold of him. It was a real horror show, hamburger everywhere.”
“What!” Haley’s glance shot up, she clutched the mini to her chest with tears streaming out of her eyes. Her voice reduced to a squeak. “No. I don’t believe you.”
“You have to believe me, honey. I have so much work.” Jacob Roth’s voice on the NetMini mumbled through her shirt.
Between the expression on Hayley’s face and the clerk’s blasé attitude, Joey wanted to slug him. He made a fist but did nothing with it. The guy might be a nerd, but he was still a police officer. Joey’s mind raced as he thought about the change of writing on that date in Roth’s notes. He had been pursuing the man who would become The Russian, even before Nina’s bad night. The encounter with Div 5 that saved her life gave him a new street name. The same cyberganger responsible for her mauling had killed Roth a few months before. Joey looked at the middle-aged face floating over Hayley’s NetMini.
“Nina,” he whispered, “something really stinks here. If Roth was killed by this guy before you were attacked, that means a dead detective got assigned the case.”
She squinted.
The child shuddered, mouth agape and clinging to the device with a white-knuckled grip―unable to speak.
Nina took the NetMini from her and held it up. Jacob Roth, in a shirt and tie, sat behind a desk loaded with holodisks and evidence boxes. Hardcopy photos of dead women amidst piles of gore covered the walls.
“Where is his office?” Nina stared gloom at the Tech Sergeant, who pointed at a hallway.
Joey picked Hayley up, holding her as she sobbed into his shoulder.
Detective Roth glanced up, realizing a different face floated in front of him. “Who is this? Why do you have my daughter’s NetMini?”
“Lieutenant Nina Duchenne, Division 9. I am doing a wellness check on Hayley, Detective. I’m curious what hours you spend with her at home.”
“I don’t see how it’s any of your business, but I make time when I can.”
Nina crept down the corridor until she arrived at a door with a lighter spot on the paint where a nameplate had once been. Joey’s eyes narrowed; he had a feeling what awaited them on the other side.
She held the NetMini up and nudged the door open with her boot. On the screen, the cluttered office had stuff all over the walls; in reality, only a desk, one chair, and a disused bookshelf sat in an otherwise empty room. The pattern of paint blotches and a gouge in the wall matched the hologram.
Hayley looked from the image to the doorway. Joey set her back on her feet and crouched, wrapping his arms around her from behind. She screamed at the top of her lungs and flailed, shrieking for her Daddy. Before long, the strength left her. He held on, trying as best he could to offer comfort while she bawled out of control, wailing “no” over and over.
Her outburst attracted a handful of people, including the Tech Sergeant and two Division 1 officers on security detail. After a minute of futile struggling to get out of Joey’s grip, she squirmed around to face him and sobbed into his shoulder.
“What is all that noise? Hayley?” Jacob Roth shouted out of the NetMini. “What are you doing to my daughter?”
Nina turned it in her hand to show the caller the empty office. “It’s over, whoever you are; we know Jacob Roth is dead.”
Silence.
Soft sniveling echoed down the corridor. When Nina turned the device around, the screen had gone dark.
he ride to his apartment was a somber one. Both Nina and Joey’s sympathetic grief at watching Hayley learn her father had been dead for over a year kept them quiet. The child found little consolation in learning the way he had treated her over the past year was not due to a lack of care or love. Nina doubted the Division 2 explanation a glitch in the system was responsible for her father’s pay continuing. When the clerk had insinuated that the daughter would have to pay the department back, Nina had gone off on him.
Joey leaned back with a smile, replaying in his head how Nina screamed. She sounded like a stereotypical drill sergeant dressing down a junior member of her own team for screwing up. The topic dropped when she threatened to initiate a full investigation into how the cyberspace squad of the police had failed to notice payments made to a dead man or left a then eleven-year-old girl on her own for so long. All of that notwithstanding a case assignment assigned to a dead detective, effectively killing the investigation.
Hayley had gone with an agent from social services. Both of them felt lousy for what had happened, and Joey almost thought he would miss her. As they neared his place, he looked over to Nina.
“Hey… Do you think you could maybe pull a string or two?”
“What for?”
“Can you get Hayley placed with a specific foster family?”
“What are you getting at?” Nina eased back on the throttle as she prepared to land. “You like her, don’t you?”
Joey smiled, typing on his NetMini. “She got along well with Alyssa. I was thinking maybe Kenny could take her in?” He texted the question to Kenny as soon as he brought it up. “He’s better with kids; I’m more like the crazy older brother no one talks about.”
“Provided your friend is open to the idea, I suppose I could. The psychologist might even consider it a good idea. There are more orphans than they can find homes for, and he is certainly financially capable.”
“Don’t rub it in.”
She landed in the street by Joey’s apartment. As they walked inside, he fell into the chair by his table and made a high-pitched noise that sounded like meep.
“What?” Nina approached, looking away from her virtual conversation.
He made the noise again, indicating his smoking deck with a wave of his arm. The look on his face was the same look a normal person would have if they had just found their dog dead. The device, toasted from his virtual beating, still exuded charcoal-hued vapor. He would have to replace parts and it would take a few hours.
“I have one you can use for the time being.” Nina moved toward the door.
Joey took the burned out thing with him anyway, cradling it like a wounde
d pet. It not only felt wrong to leave it there, but the data about Nemsky remained in its memory core.
Nina’s apartment was larger than Joey thought it would be. He whistled as he gave it a glance around. She pointed him at a small desk where a glossy black deck hid under a pile of holodisk cases. Joey gawked at the Netwraith, lowering himself into the chair with a reverent slowness. He leaned forward, fluttering his fingers over it as if afraid to touch it. He had never seen one in person before, Division 9 produced them in-house for their agents’ use. Nina threw her coat over a chair and came back with some instant tea. Now he understood why Avril left no trace; these decks operated outside of normal net protocols.
“While you do that I’m going to clean up a bit.” She wandered deeper into the apartment. “Oh, and try not to get drool on it.”
He connected the two units together and plugged in to hers. His brain throbbed, but soon a sensation like a plant being moved to a larger flowerpot permeated his thoughts, and chased away the pain of the burnout. With no clear idea where to begin, he went to his old hacker haunts and asked about Proscion. He got the same thing in every virtual nightclub or bar that he went to; numerous avatars told him Proscion was either dead or in jail.
No one knew a thing.
After visiting eight nodes as well as sniffing around areas rumored to be Proscion’s old hangouts, Joey took a moment to search for Zen. At least he had little worry about Itai finding him while using a Netwraith. He daydreamed about the things he could do with it, but stopped when he got a vision of Nina slamming him into a wall.
“Is everything alright, Joseph?” The sudden sound of his dad’s voice made him jump.
Joey swiveled around, slouched. “What?”
The old man rubbed his chin. “You just look sad, that’s all. Such a shame about that little girl of yours.”
“Hayley’s not mine.”
“She trusts you. It was good what you did for her. Having people around is the best thing for her, not rotting alone in that apartment.”
“Yeah.” He knew the apparition could not be his father, but it came close enough to make him not mind talking.
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