Upgraded

by Peter Watts

  She stands up, limber, graceful, powerful, ready to hunt.

  The Watcher has identified more of the men in the pictures. He’s now in a new motel room, this one more expensive than usual because he feels like he deserves a treat after all he’s been through. Hunching over all day to edit video is hard work.

  He pans the cropping rectangle over the video to give it a sense of dynamism and movement. There’s an artistry to this.

  He’s amazed how so few people seem to know about the eye implants. There’s something about eyes, so vulnerable, so essential to the way people see the world and themselves, that makes people feel protective and reluctant to invade them. The laws regarding eye modifications are the most stringent, and after a while, people begin to mistake “not permitted” with “not possible.”

  They don’t know what they don’t want to know.

  All his life, he’s felt that he’s missed some key piece of information, some secret that everyone else seemed to know. He’s intelligent, diligent, but somehow things have not worked out.

  He never knew his father, and when he was eleven, his mother had left him one day at home with twenty dollars and never came back. A string of foster homes had followed, and nobody, nobody could tell him what he was missing, why he was always at the mercy of judges and bureaucrats, why he had so little control over his life, not where he would sleep, not when he would eat, not who would have power over him next.

  He made it his subject to study men, to watch and try to understand what made them tick. Much of what he learned had disappointed him. Men were vain, proud, ignorant. They let their desires carry them away, ignored risks that were obvious. They did not think, did not plan. They did not know what they really wanted. They let the TV tell them what they should have and hoped that working at their pathetic jobs would make those wishes come true.

  He craved control. He wanted to see them dance to his tune the way he had been made to dance to the tune of everyone else.

  So he had honed himself to be pure and purposeful, like a sharp knife in a drawer full of ridiculous, ornate, fussy kitchen gadgets. He knew what he wanted and he worked at getting it with singular purpose.

  He adjusts the colors and the dynamic range to compensate for the dim light in the video. He wants there to be no mistake in identifying the man.

  He stretches his tired arms and sore neck. For a moment he wonders if he’ll be better off if he pays to have parts of his body enhanced so he can work for longer, without pain and fatigue. But the momentary fancy passes.

  Most people don’t like medically unnecessary enhancements and would only accept them if they’re required for a job. No such sentimental considerations for bodily integrity or “naturalness” constrain the Watcher. He does not like enhancements because he views reliance on them as a sign of weakness. He would defeat his enemies by his mind, and with the aid of planning and foresight. He does not need to depend on machines.

  He had learned to steal, and then rob, and eventually how to kill for money. But the money was really secondary, just a means to an end. It was control that he desired. The only man he had killed was a lawyer, someone who lied for a living. Lying had brought him money, and that gave him power, made people bow down to him and smile at him and speak in respectful voices. The Watcher had loved that moment when the man begged him for mercy, when he would have done anything the Watcher wanted. The Watcher had taken what he wanted from the man rightfully, by superiority of intellect and strength. Yet, the Watcher had been caught and gone to jail for it. A system that rewarded liars and punished the Watcher could not in any sense be called just.

  He presses “Save.” He’s done with this video.

  Knowledge of the truth gave him power, and he would make others acknowledge it.

  Before Ruth is about to make her next move, Daniel calls, and they meet in her office again.

  “I have what you wanted.”

  He takes out his laptop and shows her an animation, like a movie.

  “They stored videos on the adaptor?”

  Daniel laughs. “No. The device can’t really ‘see’ and that would be far too much data. No, the adaptor just stored readings, numbers. I made the animation so it’s easier to understand.”

  She’s impressed. The young man knows how to give a good presentation.

  “The Wi-Fi echoes aren’t captured with enough resolution to give you much detail. But you can get a rough sense of people’s sizes and heights and their movements. This is what I got from the day and hour you specified.”

  They watch as a bigger, vaguely humanoid shape appears at Mona’s apartment door, precisely at 6:00, meeting a smaller, vaguely humanoid shape.

  “Seems they had an appointment,” Daniel says.

  They watch as the smaller shape leads the bigger shape into the bedroom, and then the two embrace. They watch the smaller shape climb into space—presumably onto the bed. They watch the bigger shape climb up after it. They watch the shooting, and then the smaller shape collapses and disappears. They watch the bigger shape lean over, and the smaller shape flickers into existence as it’s moved from time to time.

  So there was only one killer, Ruth thinks. And he was a client.

  “How tall is he?”

  “There’s a scale to the side.”

  Ruth watches the animation over and over. The man is six foot two or six foot three, maybe 180 to 200 pounds. She notices that he has a bit of a limp as he walks.

  She’s now convinced that Luo was telling the truth. Not many Chinese men are six foot two, and such a man would stick out too much to be a killer for a gang. Every witness would remember him. Mona’s killer had been a client, maybe even a regular. It wasn’t a random robbery but carefully planned.

  The man is still out there, and killers that meticulous rarely kill only once.

  “Thank you,” she says. “You might be saving another young woman’s life.”

  Ruth dials the number for the police department.

  “Captain Brennan, please.”

  She gives her name and her call is transferred, and then she hears the gruff, weary voice of her ex-husband. “What can I do for you?”

  Once again, she’s glad she has the Regulator. His voice dredges up memories of his raspy morning mumbles, his stentorian laughter, his tender whispers when they were alone, the soundtrack of twenty years of a life spent together, a life that they had both thought would last until one of them died.

  “I need a favor.”

  He doesn’t answer right away. She wonders if she’s too abrupt—a side effect of leaving the Regulator on all the time. Maybe she should have started with “How’ve you been?”

  Finally, he speaks. “What is it?” The voice is restrained, but laced with exhausted, desiccated pain.

  “I’d like to use your NCIC access.”

  Another pause. “Why?”

  “I’m working on the Mona Ding case. I think this is a man who’s killed before and will kill again. He’s got a method. I want to see if there are related cases in other cities.”

  “That’s out of the question, Ruth. You know that. Besides, there’s no point. We’ve run all the searches we can, and there’s nothing similar. This was a Chinese gang protecting their business, simple as that. Until we have the resources in the Gang Unit to deal with it, I’m sorry, this will have to go cold for a while.”

  Ruth hears the unspoken. The Chinese gangs have always preyed on their own. Until they bother the tourists, let’s just leave them alone. She’d heard similar sentiments often enough back when she was on the force. The Regulator could do nothing about certain kinds of prejudice. It’s perfectly rational. And also perfectly wrong.

  “I don’t think so. I have an informant who says that the Chinese gangs have nothing to do with it.”

  Scott snorts. “Yes, of course you can trust the word of a Chinese snakehead. But there’s also the note and the phone.”

  “The note is most likely a forgery. And do you really think this Chine
se gang member would be smart enough to realize that the phone records would give him away and then decide that the best place to hide it was around his place of business?”

  “Who knows? Criminals are stupid.”

  “The man is far too methodical for that. It’s a red herring.”

  “You have no evidence.”

  “I have a good reconstruction of the crime and a description of the suspect. He’s too tall to be the kind a Chinese gang would use.”

  This gets his attention. “From where?”

  “A neighbor had a home motion-sensing system that captured wireless echoes into Mona’s apartment. I paid someone to reconstruct it.”

  “Will that stand up in court?”

  “I doubt it. It will take expert testimony and you’ll have to get the company to admit that they capture that information. They’ll fight it tooth and nail.”

  “Then it’s not much use to me.”

  “If you give me a chance to look in the database, maybe I can turn it into something you can use.” She waits a second and presses on, hoping that he’ll be sentimental. “I’ve never asked you for much.”

  “This is the first time you’ve ever asked me for something like this.”

  “I don’t usually take on cases like this.”

  “What is it about this girl?”

  Ruth considers the question. There are two ways to answer it. She can try to explain the fee she’s being paid and why she feels she’s adding value. Or she can give what she suspects is the real reason. Sometimes the Regulator makes it hard to tell what’s true. “Sometimes people think the police don’t look as hard when the victim is a sex worker. I know your resources are constrained, but maybe I can help.”

  “It’s the mother, isn’t it? You feel bad for her.”

  Ruth does not answer. She can feel the Regulator kicking in again. Without it, perhaps she would be enraged.

  “She’s not Jess, Ruth. Finding her killer won’t make you feel better.”

  “I’m asking for a favor. You can just say no.”

  Scott does not sigh, and he does not mumble. He’s simply quiet. Then, a few seconds later: “Come to the office around 8:00. You can use the terminal in my office.”

  The Watcher thinks of himself as a good client. He makes sure he gets his money’s worth, but he leaves a generous tip. He likes the clarity of money, the way it makes the flow of power obvious. The girl he just left was certainly appreciative.

  He drives faster. He feels he’s been too self-indulgent the last few weeks, working too slowly. He needs to make sure the last round of targets have paid. If not, he needs to carry through. Action. Reaction. It’s all very simple once you understand the rules.

  He rubs the bandage around his ring finger, which allows him to maintain the pale patch of skin that girls like to see. The lingering, sickly sweet perfume from the last girl—Melody, Mandy, he’s already forgetting her name—reminds him of Tara, whom he will never forget.

  Tara may have been the only girl he’s really loved. She was blonde, petite, and very expensive. But she had liked him for some reason. Perhaps because they were both broken, and the jagged pieces happened to fit.

  She had stopped charging him and told him her real name. He was a kind of boyfriend. Because he was curious, she explained her business to him. How certain words and turns of phrase and tones on the phone were warning signs. What she looked for in a desired regular. What signs on a man probably meant he was safe. He enjoyed learning about this. It seemed to require careful watching by the girl, and he respected those who looked and studied and made the information useful.

  He had looked into her eyes as he fucked her, and then said, “Is something wrong with your right eye?”

  She had stopped moving. “What?”

  “I wasn’t sure at first. But yes, it’s like you have something behind your eye.”

  She wriggled under him. He was annoyed and thought about holding her down. But he decided not to. She seemed about to tell him something important. He rolled off of her.

  “You’re very observant.”

  “I try. What is it?”

  She told him about the implant.

  “You’ve been recording your clients having sex with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to see the ones you have of us.”

  She laughed. “I’ll have to go under the knife for that. Not going to happen until I retire. Having your skull opened up once was enough.”

  She explained how the recordings made her feel safe, gave her a sense of power, like having bank accounts whose balances only she knew and kept growing. If she were ever threatened, she would be able to call on the powerful men she knew for aid. And after retirement, if things didn’t work out and she got desperate, perhaps she could use them to get her regulars to help her out a little.

  He had liked the way she thought. So devious. So like him.

  He had been sorry when he killed her. Removing her head was more difficult and messy than he had imagined. Figuring out what to do with the little silver half-sphere had taken months. He would learn to do better over time.

  But Tara had been blind to the implications of what she had done. What she had wasn’t just insurance, wasn’t just a rainy-day fund. She had revealed to him that she had what it took to make his dream come true, and he had to take it from her.

  He pulls into the parking lot of the hotel and finds himself seized by an unfamiliar sensation: sorrow. He misses Tara, like missing a mirror you’ve broken.

  Ruth is working with the assumption that the man she’s looking for targets independent prostitutes. There’s an efficiency and a method to the way Mona was killed that suggested practice.

  She begins by searching the NCIC database for prostitutes who had been killed by a suspect matching the EchoSense description. As she expects, she comes up with nothing that seems remotely similar. The man hadn’t left obvious trails.

  The focus on Mona’s eyes may be a clue. Maybe the killer has a fetish for Asian women. Ruth changes her search to concentrate on body mutilations of Asian prostitutes similar to what Mona had suffered. Again, nothing.

  Ruth sits back and thinks over the situation. It’s common for serial killers to concentrate on victims of a specific ethnicity. But that may be a red herring here.

  She expands her search to include all independent prostitutes who had been killed in the last year or so, and now there are too many hits. Dozens and dozens of killings of prostitutes of every description pop up. Most were sexually assaulted. Some were tortured. Many had their bodies mutilated. Almost all were robbed. Gangs were suspected in several cases. She sifts through them, looking for similarities. Nothing jumps out at her.

  She needs more information.

  She logs onto the escort sites in the various cities and looks up the ads of the murdered women. Not all of them remain online, as some sites deactivate ads when enough patrons complain about unavailability. She prints out what she can, laying them out side by side to compare.

  Then she sees it. It’s in the ads.

  A subset of the ads triggers a sense of familiarity in Ruth’s mind. They were all carefully written, free of spelling and grammar mistakes. They were frank but not explicit, seductive without verging on parody. The johns who posted reviews described them as “classy.”

  It’s a signal, Ruth realizes. The ads are written to give off the air of being careful, selective, discreet. There is in them, for lack of a better word, a sense of taste.

  All of the women in these ads were extraordinarily beautiful, with smooth skin and thick, long flowing hair. All of them were between twenty-two and thirty, not so young as to be careless or supporting themselves through school, and not old enough to lose the ability to pass for younger. All of them were independent, with no pimp or evidence of being on drugs.

  Luo’s words come back to her: The men who go to massage parlors for sixty dollars an hour and a happy ending are not the kind who’d pay for a girl like this.r />
  There’s a certain kind of client who would be attracted to the signs given out by these girls, Ruth thinks: men who care very much about the risk of discovery and who believe that they deserve something special, suitable for their distinguished tastes.

  She prints out the NCIC entries for the women.

  All the women she’s identified were killed in their homes. No sign of struggle—possibly because they were meeting a client. One was strangled, the others shot through the heart in the back, like Mona. In all the cases except one—the woman who was strangled—the police had found record of a suspicious call on the day of the murder from a prepaid phone that was later found somewhere in the city. The killer had taken all the women’s money.

  Ruth knows she’s on the right track. Now she needs to examine the case reports in more detail to see if she can find more patterns to identify the killer.

  The door to the office opens. It’s Scott.

  “Still here?” The scowl on his face shows that he does not have his Regulator on. “It’s after midnight.”

  She notes, not for the first time, how the men in the department have often resisted the Regulator unless absolutely necessary, claiming that it dulled their instincts and hunches. But they had also asked her whether she had hers on whenever she dared to disagree with them. They would laugh when they asked.

  “I think I’m onto something,” she says, calmly.

  “You working with the goddamned Feds now?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You haven’t seen the news?”

  “I’ve been here all evening.”

  He takes out his tablet, opens a bookmark, and hands it to her. It’s an article in the international section of the Globe, which she rarely reads. “Scandal Unseats Chinese Transport Minister,” says the headline.

  She scans the article quickly. A video has surfaced on the Chinese microblogs showing an important official in the Transport Ministry having sex with a prostitute. Moreover, it seems that he had been paying her out of public funds. He’s already been removed from his post due to the public outcry.