by Linda Nagata
On Ala Moana Boulevard, a line of taxis waited to take their part in the exodus. As soon as the streetcar passed, they would be free to enter the little roundabout that preceded the bridge, picking up passengers on their way out.
Ava’s gaze drifted ahead as the streetcar crossed the roundabout. No one waited at the eastbound stop, so after the car slid through the traffic barrier, it kept going, climbing the low arch of the bridge and then descending into Waikīkī.
The transit officer snapped awake, threw an apologetic glance at Ava, and took up his post at the front of the car. He should have slept a little longer, though, because no one boarded at any of the eastbound stops. All the activity continued to be concentrated on the westbound side.
As she rolled past, Ava estimated the number of people waiting, keeping a running tally in her head. HADAFA could have given her an exact figure, but whatever that turned out to be, she worried that too many people had stayed too long. No way could all of them score a seat on an outbound jet tonight.
But Ava had a seat, if she wanted one. Kaden had assured her of that. “It’ll be there, if you change your mind.”
No, love. I’m where I belong.
They had said their farewells amid the desperate good order of Harbor Station, alongside a snaking line of anxious travelers, tourists as well as fleeing residents, all waiting for a turn to board the commuter train to the airport.
A navy car had taken Kaden away to Pearl Harbor, to oversee preparations for Denali’s departure, while Ava had boarded the streetcar. She did not expect their paths to cross again.
Melancholy clung to her. The puzzle of the EP4s and the questions surrounding Robert Bell’s demise seemed faded and trivial in the face of this new existence she must negotiate going forward.
Get over it.
It was only a two-month affair.
She signaled a stop at the Pacific Heritage Sea Tower.
“Take care,” the transit officer told her.
“You too, friend,” she responded, waving goodbye.
◇
Quiet reigned in the administrative suite. Though Ava had come in hours ahead of the official start of her shift, the office staff had already gone—though Ivan was still there. She waved to him in his glass-walled office. He saw her and nodded, before returning to his conversation with Isaiah Mahoi, captain of the evening shift.
She went down the hall, claiming one of two desks in the research room. The desk wakened at her arrival, the keyboard brightening as it rose to a comfortable angle, the monitor shifting on its jointed mounting arm so that it hung in front of her at the proper height. “Welcome, Captain Arnett,” HADAFA said in the gentle male voice it used when speaking to her.
Ava pushed her smart glasses up into her hair.
A lot of officers—both KCA Security and police—talked to HADAFA as if it was another member of the team. Not Ava. As much as she relied on the system, she liked to maintain a distinction between human and AI. “Subject is the Sandalwood Lounge,” she said tersely.
“Affirmed. The Sandalwood Lounge is an establishment located on the roof of the Hotel Taipingyang—”
She raised a hand. HADAFA recognized the gesture and fell silent. Ava said, “Review security video from the Sandalwood Lounge over the past nine—no, ten days. Assemble a list of all patrons present during the shift of bartender Ben Kanaele. Assemble a second list of all patrons present on all three nights of November twenty-fifth, November twenty-ninth, and December second.”
Ava wanted to know if the puppet master had been present in the bar, despite the potential breach of anonymity.
“Estimated wait time for this task is nine seconds.”
The person who’d hacked Ben Kanaele’s phone might never have set foot in the bar. They might be on the other side of the world, safely monitoring Ben’s bar patrons through a surveillance device planted by an accomplice. But hotel security did frequent sweeps for such things, and anyway, what was the point of a thrill crime without a little personal risk?
“Task complete,” HADAFA announced. “Displaying results.”
Ben had provided drinks for several hundred individuals over the past ten days—but only nine of those names had visited the Sandalwood Lounge on all three of the nights when an EP4 had entered the coastal park.
Ava said, “For each individual on List 2, map their movements within the Sandalwood Lounge on each of the three nights, noting the amount of time spent at each location within the establishment.”
She hadn’t yet looked at their profiles, not wanting to bias herself.
“Task complete,” HADAFA replied. “Displaying results.”
Of the nine, seven had spent most of their time sitting at the bar. The other two occupied separate tables. One sat alone. The other had a different companion each night. Ava checked the socialite’s profile first. Male, twenty-seven, a licensed sex worker. She slid him off the main list.
The solitary drinker, also male, was a former soldier freshly out of the army and freshly divorced. HADAFA cataloged his melancholy and cleared him of criminal tendencies, so Ava slid him off the main list too.
She thought for a moment, then said, “For the night of December second, create an equivalent activity map for Ye Xiaoxiao.”
“Task complete.”
The map showed that Ye had begun her evening seated with three other women at a small table, but after her companions departed, she’d relocated to the bar. Only two of the nine names from the short list were still in the Sandalwood Lounge at that time. One sat at the opposite end of the bar, and the other had moved to a nearby table.
Ava checked the bar-sitter’s profile first. A thirty-nine year old interior designer from Osaka, in town to assist in the remodel of a new hotel scheduled to open in the summer. HADAFA cataloged her as another melancholy, no doubt homesick, and missing her three-year-old son.
Ava turned to the last prospect. The image that came up was that of a regal black-skinned woman, her hair super short and her makeup subtle. She could have been a runway model, but wasn’t. HADAFA gave her occupation as consultant, without a specialty. And it gave her name as: Lyric Jones, legal pseudonym. Interesting.
Also interesting: The basic profile included no other information.
Legal pseudonyms were unusual, but not unknown. They could be granted for a spectrum of reasons, most commonly to escape massive online shaming and harassment. But given the limited information attached to the profile of Lyric Jones, Ava suspected another explanation: She was a federal agent, her history, relationships, and real name all classified.
Might as well test that theory.
“Expand this profile,” Ava commanded. “Give me all you have on Lyric Jones.”
A new window opened. It displayed security video of Lyric Jones walking into the Sandalwood Lounge dressed in a shimmery tank top and a tight black skirt that reached to just above her knees. She greeted Ben with a confident smile. Asked if he’d gone surfing that day. They traded a few more words, and then Lyric turned to the woman next to her, shepherding her into the conversation.
“Stop,” Ava said. “Give me additional background information. Home address. Place of work. How long has she been in Honolulu?”
HADAFA answered, “Estimated wait time for this task—”
The screen blanked. It stayed dark for over seven seconds. Ava’s gut clenched. She’d never seen the system go down before. Instinctive caution took over. She rolled her chair back a few inches and started to stand.
But then the screen refreshed—and she was no longer looking at her user account. At the top of the screen, her name had been replaced by one word: Lyric.
Now, row after row of profiles appeared, each with a thumbnail portrait and a brief text description that included the individual’s name, age, and occupation. In the third row, a familiar face.
Name: Ava Arnett
Age: 42
Occupation: Kahanamoku Coastal Authority Security Officer, rank of Captain
All correct. But this profile included an additional field, one that should not have been linked to Ava’s name:
Affiliation: Second-degree associations with Hōkū Ala, Sigrún
Ava shivered, her heart squirming with the shock of adrenaline. She rolled her chair a few more inches away.
The affiliation field was specific, meant for associations with terrorist or subversive groups. A second-degree association meant the subject had a close connection to a primary, someone known to be directly engaged with a listed group.
Ava had no such connections and her profile had always reflected that. So what had changed? What was she being accused of?
Sigrún was a mystery to her. She’d never heard of it before. But everyone knew of Hōkū Ala. The group had its roots in the enduring native-Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Its founders had recognized opportunity in the political vacuum after Hurricane Nolo. They’d made it their goal to serve the needs of people, first in the refugee camps, and now, in the village communities. Among their many activities, they arranged volunteer work parties, organized food distribution, arbitrated disputes, and acted as liaisons with government officials—winning hearts and minds while ceaselessly advocating for secession and an independent Hawai‘i for all of the islands’ people.
But secession remained illegal regardless of the handover treaty, and so Hōkū Ala was classed as a subversive organization. Intelligence reports regularly insisted the group’s community activities doubled as a recruiting operation for an armed insurgency. And maybe there was truth to that, but Hōkū Ala was not the Taliban. At most, she guessed them to be capable of kickstarting a few massive demonstrations, and carrying out an occasional act of politically effective sabotage.
In any case, Ava didn’t associate with Hōkū Ala or its members—not knowingly, anyway. She’d be fired if she did. She might have suspected Akasha of having an association, but none had ever appeared in her profile.
So what the hell am I looking at?
The answer came in an intuitive flash: The truth.
Ava knew HADAFA filtered some of what she saw. Lyric herself was an example of that. Anyone with a security clearance had a protected profile, allowing Ava only limited access to their history and habits. She’d checked Kaden’s profile the day after she’d met him. HADAFA had let her learn his age, his hometown, his public record of promotions within the navy, but little else. Everything she knew about him—his children, his divorce, the officers he regarded as friends, the enlisted he most respected, and the hostility he felt toward the handover—she’d learned only because he’d chosen to reveal those things.
But it wasn’t Kaden she suspected.
Softly, not really believing it would work, she said, “Display Akasha Li’s profile.”
The screen blanked, then refreshed again, and Ava was back in her own user account—except her activity had been rolled back. The last profile she’d been looking at had belonged to Lyric Jones. But the one now open onscreen was that of the interior designer from Osaka.
She cleared it with a hard swipe. Looked again at List 2. Nine names. That’s how many there had been, but there were only eight now and Lyric Jones was not among them.
Anger flared. She glared into the camera at the top of the screen—HADAFA’s eye—used to monitor her position, her expression, her level of satisfaction with the data provided to her.
“I know you’re there,” she murmured.
No answer, of course. The only sounds: the whispering white noise of air conditioning and a barely audible burr of male voices emanating from Ivan’s office.
She straightened her shoulders, rolled her chair close again, and repeated her last command, “Display Akasha Li’s profile.”
The profile appeared even before she’d finished speaking. It did not include an affiliation field.
“Display my profile.”
That affiliation field was hidden from her, too.
◇
Ava sat back in her chair, thinking.
Whatever had just happened, it had not been by accident. The cause was not a fortuitous glitch in the system. That possibility was too absurd even to consider. No. She was being played, maybe by someone with the skills and backdoor access to compromise Ben Kanaele’s phone.
Lyric Jones, legal pseudonym.
Ava guessed Lyric to be the agent’s code name, and Jones an anonymous afterthought to fulfill a required last-name field.
But why would Lyric want to allow Ava that glimpse into her user account? Was it a benign gesture? A friendly warning that she should beware of those she might otherwise trust?
Or was it just another phase of the game Ava had been a witness to last night? Ben Kanaele, Ye Xiaoxiao, Robert Bell—they’d all been played, and now the turn was hers . . .
“Ava!”
She flinched at Ivan’s call. Heard the tread of footsteps in the hallway.
“I’m here. Research room.”
Again, she looked HADAFA in the eye. “Clear the screen and log me out.”
“Done,” the system replied in its genteel voice, as the display refreshed to a generic login screen.
Ivan appeared at the open door, with Isaiah Mahoi in tow.
“Yes, sir?” Ava said, leaving her chair to join them.
“You want to jump in early today?”
She hesitated, debating what, if anything, to tell Ivan about the glitch she’d just witnessed. A full explanation could throw a cloud of suspicion over Akasha, and they didn’t need that now. Better to wait. Deal with it after the storm—if it even still mattered then.
“What have you got?” Ava asked.
Mahoi answered. “We found a John Doe.”
“Really? HADAFA can’t ID him?”
“Not in his current condition.”
“Skeletal remains?” she asked, because even a badly decomposed body could be identified with a DNA swab.
“Nah, he’s alive,” Mahoi said. “God knows why. Limbaco hauled him out of the water, a mile offshore. A miracle he managed it without flipping the patrol boat. I don’t know if you looked out the window on your way in, but the swells are huge. A warmup present from Huko.”
“Yeah,” she said in grim agreement. “So what do we know?”
“Found naked and semiconscious. Caucasian, possibly Hispanic. Approximately thirty. Face swollen and discolored. Limbaco thinks he had a close encounter with a railing before going overboard. Normally, I’d guess he’d fallen off a party boat. But the usual suspects stayed in harbor today—or they’re hauling out on trailers if they can manage it.” Mahoi leaned in. “I could send someone from my shift to do the interview, but—”
Ava raised an eyebrow. “You’re a little busy?”
“Right.”
“Sure. I’ll take it.” It would be time away to think, and right now, she needed that.
Only as the elevator door closed did Ava remember she hadn’t had a chance yet to look into the possible existence of a social media dumpster called The Predator Network. Pulling her smart glasses down over her eyes, she started to query HADAFA—but doubt intruded. Unaccustomed and unwelcome, but there all the same. What if she lacked the necessary security clearance to access the full truth? Even if the system came up with an answer, how could she know it wasn’t censored? That key facts hadn’t been withheld?
What if her query brought down attention she didn’t want?
Better, safer, to try a local expert—a friend at HPD who worked vice. But the call went to voice mail.
Shit.
“Hey Gina, if you’ve ever connected with something called The Predator Network, give me a call back. I’d like to know.”
chapter
8
In the ready room, Ava glared at an absence of usable motorcycles. Just two waited in the charging rack, both with red lights, still low on power. She crossed her arms, sourly contemplating the prospect of riding the westbound streetcar, packed with a hundred tourists, every one of them aggravated and on edge.
Then a better idea occurred to her. She smiled to herself. Why not hitch a ride?
Less than five minutes later she sat balanced on the back of a motorcycle, behind Officer Ikaika Mollenhauer as he sped west down the deserted expanse of Waikīkī Beach. A rooster tail of wet sand spewed high behind them and the air thrummed with the violence of the surf.
Harbingers of Huko, the storm waves began their break a quarter mile offshore, throwing up a fog of salt-laden air as they rumbled over an artificial reef built from the shattered concrete of demolished condominiums and fallen bridges. The waves rolled in, white water all the way to the shore, tumbling onto the beach and then flattening, gliding across the sand. One after another, they strived, but still failed, to reach the dunes. Ikaika nimbly dodged each one as he worked to keep the motorcycle running on the hard-packed wet sand.
Ava laughed in exhilaration, high on the wild energy of the waves, the pure joy of speed. Wind and salt spray blasted her face, her hair felt thick with it, and wet sand encrusted her high-top shoes.
Every now and then, this job had its perks.
All too soon, the low dark ridge of Komohana Point loomed before them. The artificial peninsula anchored the western end of the coastal park, extending a half mile out to sea. Storm waves shattered against it, exploding into fountains of white foam.
“Fun time’s over,” Ikaika warned. He slowed the bike, turning inland onto a concrete path that skirted the last of the dunes before climbing to meet the esplanade.
After that, they made their way to the Ala Wai Bridge, and then into Honolulu proper.
City traffic ran heavy. It felt as if every taxi in the autonomous fleet was on the road, along with most of the delivery trucks—half of them parked in no-parking lanes, though whether they were loading or unloading, Ava couldn’t tell.