by Ada Redmond
I turned back, walking along the old boards they'd placed over the top of the once electrified tracks. "Nah," I said. "They knocked me out first."
I left them to blink after me as I began a slow trek down the tunnel. Brightly lit and full of noise, it was hard to imagine what the place was like before the trains stopped. The old lines themselves were mostly filled with stalls set up by traders, people who made a living dealing with black market links above ground to bring goods to those below.
The foot tunnels around the platforms were where most people chose to make a home down here, building shelters out of recycled sheets of metal and donated brick. It was London's less attractive sister city, a hidden metropolis beneath the one the rest of the world now knew.
The contrast between me and the people who scooted out of my way warily couldn't have been more stark. I was fitted with some of the latest implants. The very heart that beat inside my chest was a mechanical one now. These people had cast the idea of augmentation aside. In their search for freedom from the Big Brother they insisted was always looking over our shoulders, they had renounced a lot more than just IdentChips.
I stopped again halfway between Earl's Court and Gloucester Road, offering an antique dealer a couple of cigs for more info. He was all too happy to tell me that one of the old service catwalks had been claimed by someone with the name not too long ago. And that they'd brought so much hardware with them that it was making the locals nervous.
It didn't take me long to find the walkway in question after that, what with the mass of cables that everyone else carefully avoided leaving me with a very literal trail. I rounded an old maintenance hatch and kept following the cables until the noise of the crowds below started to fade away. The catwalk I emerged onto was a narrow, dimly lit space. I listened to the echo of my boots vibrating the metal as I walked, ducking my head to avoid the overhead lamps.
"You got my delivery?" A voice called, light and piercing and a hell of a lot closer than I expected it to be.
I stopped, peering down the hallway. Up ahead was a wider space filled with piles of burnt out tech and propped up monitors with a small bedroll in the midst of it all. Worn through cotton curtains, which were attached to the power cables that were snaking along the walls, formed something resembling a door.
"If you ain't, then you made a wrong turn somewhere, mate, so get lost."
I don't know why, but I had expected a guy. Some old slummer with a chip on his shoulder, tapping away in the dark, unable to leave the Net on the surface where most of these people insisted it belonged. Something about the reputations of the people who chose to live down here just sort of implied it, I guess.
"If you're Terminal, then yeah, I have what you're expecting."
A head popped out from between the curtains as I approached. She was dark-haired and narrow in the face, but her eyes were such a bright shade of green that it almost made up for the scowl. "Huh."
I pulled the drive out of my pocket and held it up. "You waiting on this?"
She was staring at my retinal implant, watching the metal shutter focus on her as I stared right back. "That's not NHS issue," she said after a moment, slipping out onto the catwalk and stepping in close, with apparently no consideration for my personal space. It was hard to use my height to my advantage, seeing as how I'd hit my head on the ceiling if I did so. I settled for shifting backwards, instead.
"Looks custom. It Russian?"
"I'm here to see Terminal," I said, ignoring her question. "You the person I'm looking for or not?"
She smirked then turned back and disappeared again. "Come on in, Little Miss Dark and Dangerous. Let's see what you got for me."
Beyond her substitute for a door I could see the old maintenance room more clearly, along with all the crap she apparently lived alongside. An old generator, presumably part of the network that kept the power running, whirled away in the corner, still attached to the national grid. There'd been threats to shut the whole thing down over the years, but human rights groups had always intervened, and thanks to them, the tunnels still had power.
The place wasn't that much smaller than mine, really, and about as messy. Portable hard drives and routers that had seen better days were stacked up all over the place. It reminded me of Danny's lab back at Kova, just a few decades out of date. There was a half constructed analogue clock perched on top of a stack of textbooks. I smirked, thinking of the antique one on Danny's desk.
Terminal settled on top of a pipe which jutted out from the wall, setting a tablet across her knees and holding out a hand. I handed the drive over and watched her connect it to an adapter and set it down beside her.
"My friend says you've worked together before," I murmured, leaning back against a wall. "Known each other long?"
Terminal shrugged. "Nah, don't really seem to get along well with topsiders." She glanced up at me. "We swap ideas now and then on the Net. Always fun getting glimpses of the new systems being designed up there. Was kinda surprised when she said she needed my help, but whatever, I'm getting paid."
I spent a few minutes watching her mess about with whatever was on the screen in front of her before figuring my job was done. Then she spoke again.
"So are you, like, a Praetorian or something?"
I was just about to turn and leave, hands in my pockets. "No. This was a favour for a friend, that's all."
She looked up at me, an eyebrow raised. "So… you sneaked past the guard post and made your way through the perilous depths of the tunnels out of the goodness of your heart? Girl, your logic array must be outta whack."
I bit at the inside of my bottom lip to keep from snapping back and shook my head. Terminal's fingers were dancing over the tablet's surface, though she wasn't looking at it. "I didn't need to sneak anywhere."
"You a cop?"
I sighed. "P.I."
"Huh," she mumbled. "Takes all sorts, I guess."
I turned to leave again. It would probably be best if I got out before she had the opportunity to say something else I might find offensive. Like 'robot'. The way she was looking me over like I was something to be studied set my teeth on edge. And brought back more than one painful memory. "Pleasure doing business with you," I said, throwing the words back over my shoulder as I left.
As far as I know, she didn't answer.
I was back on the tramway and heading over Whitechapel by ten, stepping off and making my way through the back alleys until I hit my office. The building was an out of the way, beaten up townhouse that had been gutted and sectioned off just like the rest of the city in the early fifties. And thanks to a reasonably generous severance package, I'd been able to rent out the third floor office space for the past six months.
I stood in front of the narrow door and waited for the indent module above my head to sense my chip and grant me access, a process that took a lot longer than it should've, thanks to a decade-old scanner. I made my way up the stairs and wasn't entirely surprised to find Danny waiting for me.
She smiled, nodding to the sign printed in glossy lettering on the door. "Allyn Morgan, Private Investigator," she said. "Very official sounding."
I opened the door and waved her in ahead of me, watching her take her first look around the sparse surroundings. I'd spent a hell of a lot of cash making the place look respectable, from the whitewashed walls and matching plush carpet to the glossy table and high back leather chairs settled in the centre of the room. But the richness of the surroundings was nothing compared to the tech I'd had installed.
Behind my desk was a five-by-five square of transparent monitors attached to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Two of them were running current crime reports snatched from the net, while others ran mock searches and up-to-date traffic, weather and news announcements. It was a shame the view behind them was a brick wall, but I hadn't had the cash to spare for a penthouse.
Danny made her way over to the dispenser in the corner while I sat behind my desk, frowning when it only gave her two beverage
choices. "Even the one in your cube is better than this," she scolded, settling for a black coffee with a pitiful look on her face.
"You'd be surprised how few people wanna stay for a cuppa when they stop by to see me," I said, sitting down. "You didn't need to bother checking in."
"The drop go off okay?"
"In and out. Interesting choice of contact, by the way. Where'd you find her?"
Her eyes widened briefly. "Huh, figured it for a guy," she said after a moment.
"Yeah, well, whatever else she is, she's got a hell of an attitude for a slummer."
Danny tutted. "That's hardly PC of you, dear," she scolded. "But thank you, I know you must have had to pull a few strings to get down there." She walked over and perched on the edge of my desk, watching the news scroll across the lower right-hand screen behind me. "Here," she said, handing me another square drive. "Something for your time."
As much as I'd have loved to refuse the money, I couldn't really afford to. Work was slower than I'd thought possible after the initial burst from right after Kova had canned me. The notoriety had worked in my favour in the beginning. I'd got a lot of one night bodyguard gigs, what with a noticeable chunk of me suddenly being metal. The cases people didn't want going through official channels had started flowing in shortly after that.
Problem was, the better you did a job like mine, the less well known you were. I faded back into the pages along with all the other freelancers. The last few months had been mostly quiet; cold cases seemed to be the theme. Missing persons was a common subject, but hardly well paid, since the number one cause of someone going off the grid was that they didn't want to be found.
Danny watched me connect the drive to a tablet and set it to auto transfer the payment. "It's not as though it's a handout," she told me, taking the device from my hands and putting it to one side. "You did a job; now you're getting paid."
I shrugged, looking up at her. "It's been awhile," I said at last. "You doing okay?"
"The office isn't the same without you," she admitted softly, "but we're getting used to it. The boss misses you, you know. I don't think he's ever gonna forgive himself for what happened."
I couldn't help but scoff. "Yeah, well let's hope your new Chief is up on current events," I said, kicking my feet up and leaning back. "Hell of a job to take blind."
We sat there in silence for a long time before she eventually pushed off the desk and turned to go. "I have a lunch date," she said, almost managing to sound sorry about it. "Keep in touch, okay?"
I hummed in response, not watching her leave with one last "thank you." I stood staring into the whiteness of the wall opposite for a long time before turning my chair and clearing the window monitors. I brought up my neighbour's case and flicked through the background info until I got to the last known image of him above ground.
It was heavily censored, a black and white rendering taken just as the reality of the riots had really sunk in. I'd managed to nab it from a local press station archive, after hours of trawling through auto reports from news drones. It was hard to pick out where the press had altered the scene until you looked close enough. But it was easy when you knew what was missing: smoothed over pixels where there should have dark pools of blood on the cobble stones.
The Victoria Memorial stood surrounded, hundreds of thousands all gathered together looking not to the wounds they had caused themselves but to the palace beyond. And in the midst of it all had been twenty-two-year-old David Miller. He'd been born and raised here, surrounded by everything the city had to offer and, for some reason, right as this shot had been taken, he'd decided he didn't want to be a part of any of it.
From this angle it was impossible to see his eyes; his face was turned to Buckingham along with the rest. But the way his fingers were curled around a pen knife made it obvious what he'd done. The actual cut across his wrist had been wiped away, but his chip was in the palm of his other hand when it should have been under his skin. Just like everyone else in the image.
I sighed, waving a hand and returning the monitors to their usual tasks. This was by far my longest standing case, and it looked as though that wouldn't change. I hadn't even asked after him when I'd known there were movers along the line I'd found Terminal in. But the sad fact was that all I had were the long lost impressions of a life that had barely started. If he was still alive, it was doubtful he went by the same name, and just so much time had passed...
I really should stop taking that old lady's money. Wherever her son had ended up after that day, she'd never see him again.
I spent the rest of the day following up on a couple of vague leads from another case—a widower with an axe to grind against a former brother-in-law who'd made off with money that apparently he had no right to, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach.
I headed out again as the sun began to dip and the trees began to shimmer into life, the bioluminescence lighting up the streets the way old street lamps had only a decade or so before. I stopped off at a café, grabbed whatever was on special for dinner and was halfway through a mustard chicken-filled panini and almost home when I saw the flashing lights.
I don't know what it was that made me slow down, pull up the hood on my jacket and blend in with the crowd that had gathered outside my building. There had to be over a dozen police vehicles set up in the courtyard outside the front entrance, and probably more around the back. They hadn't gone in yet; maybe they were waiting on intel? Or more orders? For all the chatter in the group I'd squeezed into, there was very little information about what was actually going on. All I heard was the same as everyone else, that the building was off limits until further notice.
"So, on the off chance that you're not aware of this yet, the cops are after you," came a static laced, pissed off voice in my ear.
I pressed a finger to my comm's link, activating the mic. "Terminal? How'd you get this number?"
There was a noise that sounded like a hacking cough and a dull, distant thud as something heavy hit the floor. "You're kidding, right? You're a cyborg chick with Praetorian connections. How hard did you think you'd be to find?"
My fists clenched at her word choice, but I was too busy backing away from the crowd to snap back.
"I mean," she continued, "even if I wasn't really bloody good at this? Your face was all over the news in January. A child with a homemade modem could find your info."
"But not this number," I muttered. "It's supposed to be blocked."
"Okay. Well, I guess reactivating the frequency was a little bit more difficult."
No kidding. The signal tagged to my communications implant was Kova tech, and after leaving the company, I'd expected it would be dead forever. So now I had two rather troubling pieces of information. First, the police were apparently surrounding my building because they expected me to be inside it, and second, some slummer in the tunnels had access to my implants. Brilliant.
I threw the rest of my panini in a nearby bin and made for the park across the road. "You wanna tell me why you bothered?" I asked, unable to help looking back to check if I was being followed. Fortunately, most people's eyes were still glued to the drama at the front of my building. No one spared me a glance as I walked through the wrought iron gates, leaving the show behind.
"See, I've ended up quite the busy bee today," Terminal said. "But not in the way I was expecting. That drop you made for your buddy? Turns out it was designed to incriminate me in one of the more hardcore examples of corporate espionage in recent history."
I frowned, making for a bench and settling on it. "Danny said it was a programme meant to gather evidence on another employee."
"No, not really. It's a virus that transferred a shit tonne of confidential research reports onto every single piece of kit connected to my personal network, and that's not even the best part."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that your little friend set me the hell up!" she all but shouted in my ear. The sounds of heavy thuds and static
were growing louder as she continued. "And now it's acting like a fucking beacon, lighting up my systems like they're trying to contact outer space! I'll have the entire fucking guard collective on my arse inside half an hour."
The loud crashing sounds suddenly made sense, as I imagined her packing up everything important she could lay her hands on. "You're running."
"Damn right I'm running, and you should too. According to the alert I managed to snatch, you've been accused of accepting a massive payoff in return for the files that apparently I hacked Kova's systems for. Congratulations on your newfound wealth."
"The hell?" I pulled out my tablet and swiped across until it came up with my credit score. I blinked, reading a number with about five more zeros on the end of it than there had been that morning. "Holy crap."
"Yeah, and the rest," Terminal spat. "So hey, if you ever see that friend again, how about you use that amped up arm of yours to give her a message from me? Have a fabulous fucking evening."
The relief I felt at the line going dead was short-lived. I was punching in Danny's number before I really thought about what I was doing.
The image of her watching me set up the auto transfer right before she took the tablet from my hands came to me unbidden, making me pause.
You did a job; now you're getting paid for it.
I swore under my breath, not really understanding what was happening, but knowing damn sure I was angry about it. Maybe it was all just one big, ridiculous misunderstanding, somehow? But it couldn't have been a coincidence that she'd handed off two drives that morning, and by the evening both recipients had warrants out on them.
I rubbed a hand across my face. No, she'd taken advantage of our… unconventional relationship today, and she'd lied. Certainly about what was on the drive Terminal had received, if her half-screamed accusations were anything to go by. As for me, the sinking feeling that had been bothering me all afternoon was starting to make sense. I cleared the tablet screen and punched in another number, slipping the device back into my pocket as a dial tone pulsed in my ear. I pushed myself up again and headed in the opposite direction from home.