Serah walked the strange yet familiar street and felt as if she were the only real person there. The others were ghosts in fog to her. Mist covered everything, limiting vision, obscuring detail, and turning the twilight a dull gray. A bell, low and ominous, chimed in the distance. No one paid any attention to her as she made her way through the crowd, clumsily bumping into people who failed to yield, no matter how many times she apologized and excused herself.
She continued through the crowd. She was lost, but somehow, she felt she knew where she end up. She knew she was safe, yet she could not shake the memory danger that appeared in her mind. She stumbled after colliding with a woman. One foot landed in the gutter, ankle-deep in ice-cold water. She swore as she steadied herself and stepped back up onto the sidewalk, surprised to find both her foot and shoe were still completely dry.
There was a flash, and everything changed. The fog turned to swirls of translucent numbers, like a swarm of bees. Buildings lost detail, becoming featureless rectangles and lines. People became luminescent swirling constructs of light. This also felt familiar, as if she knew where it was going. She continued through the mist of numbers, between buildings, down a dark alley that was not really dark, illuminated from below.
A man yelled in the distance. “You caused this! He’s here for you!” She turned but saw no one.
She turned back and found herself face to face with a woman she didn’t recognize. “Do it quietly. They mustn’t know.” The woman handed her a box which promptly vanished the moment she touched it.
From further down the alley, a figure ran toward and past her, headed back for the street where she first appeared. Serah recognized him instantly as the old man who was killed in her dream the previous night. “Wait,” she screamed, and considered starting after him, instead turning back to the mysterious woman who had handed her the box. The woman was watching her with a strange curiosity. Her eyes had turned to black orbs, her body shimmered as if it was a mirage, and she was suddenly surrounded by what Serah could only describe as an aura of shadow, as if light itself somehow resisted going near her. A high-pitched noise registered in her mind, but not as sound, but more like an ever-present tinnitus.
Serah took two steps back. Nothing about the woman could be interpreted as anything other than “wrong.” She started after the old man, leaving the alley and exiting back to the street, which once again appeared as it had at the beginning of her dream. There was no sign of the old man, though he didn’t move fast enough that he could have evaded her completely.
“Everything is at stake,” An urgent voice said. Serah spun to find a hooded man standing directly in front of her. He had not been there before. His face was completely featureless, like a shop mannequin in a department store window, and he held a folded piece of paper out to her. Serah gingerly took the paper, half expecting it to vanish the way the box had. Slowly she opened it. A single word in an elaborate decorative font glared back at her.
Folie
“What does it mean?” She looked up, but the faceless man had already vanished.
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Behind her, the old man ran past, headed through the crowd and up the street. “Wait!” she cried and started after him, catching up after a few dozen paces, grabbing him by the shoulders, and moving in front of him to block his path.
He looked at her, confused for a moment, then his face blanched and went expressionless. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
Next came the familiar whistle of the projectile, and the wet crack as his chest exploded in front of her, just as it had the previous night.
“You mean you seriously don’t remember going home yesterday?” Henry asked, amazed.
“No, I don’t. The last thing I remember was getting ready for the morning staff meeting.” Serah tried to keep her voice from shaking, and she paced around the kitchen, only occasionally looking up at the man on the video screen. “Or maybe I remember the meeting had started. Was Maggie the first to arrive?”
Henry nodded. “That was right before you fainted,” he offered.
“I fainted!?”
“Yes. I carried you back to your office and started to call the corporate physician, but you wouldn’t hear of it. You said you were fine, just a little tired from the bad sleep cycle. I insisted you go home and get some proper sleep. You didn’t even put up a fight.”
She struggled to remember anything between the staff meeting and waking up in her apartment but recalled nothing of what Henry was describing. It didn’t even sound like her. She wouldn’t have left work to be home alone, particularly if she were suddenly prone to fainting spells. “When did I leave?”
Henry thought for a moment. “Around 10:30, I suppose. You seemed fine at the time. A little tired, but otherwise fine.”
Aside from the dream, the prior nineteen hours were all blank, she realized.
“Listen,” he continued, “why don’t you stay home today, and I’ll send the corporate physician over to–”
She whipped around. “No, don’t be silly, I’m fine. It’s all coming back to me,” she lied. “I guess I’m just not used to sleeping this long in one stretch. It disoriented me a little.” She moved toward the wall to keep the automated vidcam from picking up the commotion in the next room. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
Henry frowned and started to protest. Serah countered him with a stern look that said he could not possibly win the argument. He didn’t press further. “Well, as long as you’re okay, then.” She was sure Henry didn’t believe that for a moment, and no doubt the corporate physician would meet her in the lobby when she arrived. “By the way,” he added, “would you mind stopping off at the Tower Police precinct house by the train station? They have a homicide report for us, but it’s been so long since the last one, our decrypt pass has lapsed, so they need physical verification to reestablish.”
In her confusion, the words took a moment to register. “Homicide? In the Soho Tower precinct? Yeah, when was the last time we saw one of those?”
Henry nodded. “Right at our front door? At least a decade. That’s why we can’t afford to lose a step on this one. See you in an hour.”
“Thanks, Henry,” she said and flipped off the vidscreen.
Nineteen hours. She kept rolling the concept over in her mind. How could she not remember any of it?
Allen’s avatar walked across the living room toward the edge of the field closest to the kitchen. “I’m sorry, Ms. Wyles,” he said in a tone that bordered on condescending. According to our diagnostic, there’s nothing wrong with your dreamspinner.”
“What do you mean: ‘nothing wrong’? Your infernal machine has jarred me awake with nightmares two nights in a row, and now I’m experiencing short-term memory loss. You think that’s normal?” Serah’s face flushed with both fear and frustration, wondering for a moment if she was losing her mind. She placed the cup of mint tea in the sink. She had never been particularly fond of tea and wondered why she hadn’t disposed of the beverage as soon as she accidentally selected it. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling the loose strands away from her face, briefly considering shaving it to end the constant irritation. It was a strange thought, and she had no idea why it had just popped into her head like that. She was convinced that stress and exhaustion were beginning to wear on her nerves. Politeness dictated that she apologize for the verbal outburst, but she took some sadistic pleasure in the discomfort clearly visible on the incompetent technician’s face.
“We can’t be held liable for memory loss. Do you realize how dangerous it is to bypass the safeguards and mod the system? You’re lucky you didn’t –”
“I did what to what?” Serah asked, more annoyed than confused.
He gestured with his hand, and row after row of seemingly random letters and numbers scrolled between them. “You see, the telemetry is all in order, but last night, you bypassed the safety protocols and ran your sleep program three times in a row. Surely you understand that without the system to monitor and adjust to your mental responses, the program can’t be balanced for –”
“I did no such thing!” Serah protested, stunned that he would attempt to blame everything on her.
The technician pointed to a section of code that highlighted itself in red. “It’s right here.”
“Allen,” she said, defeated, “Do you really think I have the technical knowledge to modify a system like this?”
Allen seemed to consider her argument. “I have no reason to doubt you, but are you sure you didn’t patch in some third-party dream customization program that might have had malicious code attached?”
“You’ve been watching and programming my dreams for years. You have detailed scans of my neurology and my personality. Does anything you know about me indicate I’m the type of person who endangers herself to have more thrilling dreams?”
“Well, no, but given the fact that your mental state is erratic enough that your dreamspinner shut itself down last night, and you’re currently suffering short-term memory loss from running a programmed sleep cycle redundantly and without proper safeguards, can you really say for certain that you didn’t do it?”
Serah considered the implications. “You said I ran my sleep program three times in a row?”
“Yes,” Allen said, pulling up three blocks of numbers and floating them in the air between them. “One after the other, right here: 17:30 hours, 21:15 hours, and 01:00 hours.”
Three times.
She tried to make sense of it all. Though it did seem to account for twelve of the missing nineteen hours, she had no memory in that time, waking or dream state, aside from the last one. Had she really been so coherent that she argued about medical treatment with Henri? Had she really planned to go home, or had she just said that to end the argument? She shivered. Then there was the matter of three sleep cycles. Did all three end in nightmares, or just the last one?
“I don’t remember any of it.” She muttered.
Allen thought for a moment. “Ms. Wyles, I can’t stress the seriousness of unauthorized modifications enough…” He stopped, obviously not wanting to alarm her.
“Look, can you remove the modifications and turn the safety protocols on or not?” She snapped, then took a slow breath. “I don’t know what’s going on, but if the machine is misconfigured, it’s because of something you people did. If it’s dangerous to use, then it’s your job to fix it.”
“I can fix this system, Ms. Wyles, but maybe the nightmares and memory loss are a manifestation of some repressed stress or trauma. If you like, I can arrange to have a qualified–”
“No, none of your corporate head-shrinkers or psycho engineers!” She said abruptly, confusion and frustration turning to anger. “Recalibrate the damned thing, re-balance my program, or whatever you call it, but if you people cause me so much as an uncomfortable chill tomorrow night, I’ll personally rip the thing out of the wall and contact my attorney.” She walked straight through the avatar, gesturing for him to leave as she moved toward the bedroom.
“Yes, ma’am,” Allen said calmly as he hastily winked out of existence.
She instantly felt ashamed of the outburst. She was not the type to make idle threats. Allen was only doing his job and was being nothing but polite and helpful. Maybe he was right, and she should see a psychiatrist. She crossed the bedroom and pressed the controls to activate the shower, hoping that would make her feel better, assuming she didn’t faint again and crack her skull open. She knew she would feel better once she got back out and among physical people again.
Serah walked through the large automatic doors into the lobby of the Soho Tower Police precinct house. The large room was cold and unfriendly. A tall counter ran the length of the far wall. Clerks and officers, primarily holos, she guessed, peered down from the top of the counter onto an assembly of people who had formed themselves into a half-dozen single-file lines.
“May I help you?” a voice asked from behind her. She turned, stifled a startled yelp, and almost leaped out of her skin. A large lion, or at least a good quality holo of one, stood behind her. It was nearly two meters tall, standing on its hind legs, and had features vaguely personified to look slightly more cartoonish than a real lion.
“I’m sorry,” the lion said in a booming baritone voice. “I thought you’d seen me. The boys in the PR office really didn’t think this idea through when they commissioned the avatar. For some reason, it’s endearing to children, but if I’m not careful, I can startle adults — especially if they don’t watch children’s vids and know the character.”
Still bug-eyed with shock, Serah nodded in emphatic agreement and swallowed hard. “My fault …” she whispered, half gasping. “No kids,” she explained, shrugging with a sheepish smile.
The lion smiled. “What can we do for you?”
“I’m with Neward and Provident. They sent me to personally authenticate the transmission of a homicide report.”
The lion smiled. It seemed a bit unnatural, though disarming. “Certainly. Would you like to speak with a press liaison as well?”
It had been a while since Serah had done anything like this. She was grateful that the lion was more versed in routine press relations. “Yes, that would be fine,” she said.
“Credentials, please.”
“Hmmm?” She gaped momentarily, still not used to talking to two-meter-tall lions, even charming ones that smiled. “Oh, sorry.” She reached into her pocket, removed her identicard, and held it up before her.
The lion closed his eyes momentarily as his operator made the arrangements. “Thank you, Miss Wyles. If you would care to step over to queue number four.” He pointed a giant paw toward what was, mercifully, one of the shorter lines. She walked over and stood behind another avatar, this one of a young, pretty woman dressed in what appeared to be swimwear. The woman examined Serah from head to toe, scowling disapprovingly.
It took only ten minutes for her to get through the line. She showed her credentials to the clerk above her. A few seconds later, an older, short man, this time not an avatar, stepped out from behind the counter and approached her. “Hello, Miss Wyles,” he said with a broad grin. “I’m Sergeant Conners.” He extended a hand, which Serah shook. Conners gently led her out of line into a small surveillance-proof meeting room adjacent to the lobby. Once inside, he verified her credentials again and explained some new privacy protection initiatives. “Some district qubit-brain has it in his head that justice is moving too swiftly, and we need a few more levels of bureaucracy to slow things down,” he said with disgust. “Says we’ll make too many mistakes without all the extra checks and balances.”
Serah smirked and raised one eyebrow as a gesture of understanding. Conners pulled out a datapad and began pulling up a series of files. “Not sure what kind of mistakes we can make here. We don’t see it too often, but this guy’s pretty obviously been murdered.” He tapped the transmit button, and the files instantly copied onto Serah’s display. “Now that we’ve reestablished authentication, these have also been uploaded to the N&P submission server. If you like, I’ll save you the reading: One dead billy, name of Galloway. Local resident.”
Serah skimmed through the first several pages of the report. She stopped on a standard ID photo of the victim. A chill worked its way through her body. “Michael…” she said softly.
“No.” The sergeant yawned, rechecking the summary page. “Robert. Age 24. Employed by Stewart Labs. No next of kin. He was last seen alive at approximately 12:45 at a café in Kensington.”
Of course, “Michael” was the name of her best friend from primary school. No doubt, Robert Galloway had usurped it to engender trust on some subconscious level. Billys had no shame. She remembered the smugness on the man’s face. “Just a job,” he had said. She flipped through a few more pages, coming eventually to the crime scene report. Guilt suddenly overtook her. Billy or not, someone had murdered him. There was no apparent motive, but it seemed extreme to think somebody appreciated his invasive tactics even less than she. He might have been involved in some shady underground dealings that had gone wrong. On the other hand, he may just have been a victim of random, senseless violence.
“Body found stabbed to death in a closet in the machine level at 17:00 when first shift went off duty yesterday evening. Blood spatter and the condition of the body put the time of death between 12:00 and 13:00 yesterday. More than likely, a robbery gone wrong.”
“How can you tell that?” she asked.
Conners pressed a couple of buttons on the pad, then turned the display around for her to see. It was a tactical scan of the crime scene. “There were no possessions on the body when we found it. His identicard and credentials had been found and turned into the Soho precinct house hours earlier that afternoon.”
She returned to the datapad and skimmed a few more pages. Her eyes fell on the name of the Kensington café where he was last seen. “Nine Stones,” she read aloud and smiled at the memory. “Wow, I haven’t been there in a while.” It had been a regular haunt of hers during her university years. It lost its luster when the majority of her old friends took jobs in-Phrame and the familiar faces grew fewer.
“Better get there quick. They’re tearing it down next month.”
“Tearing it down?”
The sergeant sniffed and scratched his nose. “Yeah, making way for that new arcology tower and all. Anyway, that’s about all we can give you for now. If you want updates later, there’s a case number on the main page. If you turn up any leads, Detective Hawthorne’s contact information is on the last page.” He turned and started toward the door.
A strange sensation poked at the back of Serah’s mind. Even though there was no tangible reason—at least, none that she could quickly identify in the information she had in front of her—she suddenly felt there was something more to this story; something important.
“Now, wait a minute,” Serah protested. “I’m not clear on some things.”
Conners stopped, rolled his eyes in annoyance, and stared at Serah.
“Do you have any leads? Any suspects?” she asked.
“Now, Miss Wyles,” the sergeant said in a well-rehearsed tone, “under the free-press statutes, we are obligated to release all of the information you currently have. It is not department policy to discuss leads, suspects, or the details of ongoing investigations, and obviously, you people know the rules about publishing speculation or conjecture. We would appreciate it, of course, if you could add the standard tagline encouraging anyone to contact us if they have additional information–”
“But who would want to kill a billy?”
Conners rolled his eyes. “You want a list?” he muttered under his breath. “Those guys are a menace to the public if you ask me. Half of them are scam artists, and the other half are so pathetic that harassing people seems to be their only marketable skill. I’ll be surprised if we find anybody who sheds a tear for this one.” He opened the door to the lobby and bowed exaggeratedly, “Now, unless you require anything else, I’ve got a work file filled with reports to get back to. Hell, I’m surprised District hasn’t required criminals to fill out applications before they’re allowed to commit crimes.”
Serah ignored the joke. The feeling of ominous portent still nagged at the back of her mind. Frustrated that she could not place its source, she switched off the datapad, thanked the sergeant politely for his time, and made her way up to the Neward and Provident offices.
Back at her desk, Serah began to feel more at ease. The display of market data, news updates, and myriad projects swirling above her desk felt familiar and comfortable. The only marked difference was that she had replaced the meadow painting on the holoprojector with a North Yorkshire farmhouse. Erik had again kept any additional billys, sales inquiries, and unannounced callers at bay, remarking that the onslaught had subsided considerably since the previous day.
There were two soft taps at the doorway. Henry Whittaker poked his head around the corner. “You wanted to see me, kiddo?”
“Close the door,” Serah whispered.
Henry grimaced, stepped into the room, and pressed the close button on the door panel. “This can’t be good.”
“The Galloway murder,” she said. “I want it.”
Henry appeared confused. “The what, who?”
“That homicide file you had me authenticate for this morning. I want to do a story on it.”
“Why?” he prompted.
“A robbery and murder? How often does that happen anymore, especially at noon in the city’s most boring, least-crime-ridden neighborhood?”
“Tragic coincidence, but it isn’t worthy of my best correspondent, my dear. If you want it, you have to sell me on it.”
“Dammit, Henry, there’s something to this. I don’t know what it is yet, but I know it’s there.”
Henry nodded, conceding the point—a bit too easily, Serah thought. He had already read the file and had seen something important. Something she had missed. “Fine, maybe there is, but you’re not an investigative reporter; you’re a foreign correspondent.”
Serah threw up her arms in disgust and leaned back in her chair. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Henry sat on the couch, looked at Serah, and sighed heavily. “Listen,” he said paternally, “It’s no discredit to you or your abilities. You speak seven languages. You know the local customs and cultures; places I’ve even heard of. You’re one of the best political analysts I’ve ever seen. You’re better than average at reading people and dragging a story out of them. The crime beat, however? Violent crime in particular? It’s an entirely different game you don’t have the chops for, and frankly, kiddo, it’s beneath you.”
“No! That’s not it,” Serah accused. “You’re sheltering me. You think I’m too timid. You think I can’t go out there, get aggressive, and play rough to get the story.”
“I’m saying it’s dangerous and not worth wasting one of my best writers on.”
“So, you did read the file. You know there’s a story here, then.” Serah squinted at him defiantly. “Stop shining me on. I don’t need you to protect me.”
“I’m not protecting you. I’m simply concerned for the most efficient use of Neward and Provident personnel.”
“Oh, so what were you planning to do? Send out Jafet or Geoffrey in slacs to dig around in trash cans to dig up clues? I’m your only qualified physical asset in Soho, Henry.”
He shook his head. “We’re talking about messy, down-and-dirty, investigative journalism. It’s an entirely different set of instincts from what you have. Frankly, if you slip up even the slightest bit, you could get hurt, or worse.”
“Then help me,” she pleaded. Coach me, guide me, mentor me like the good old days, but you have to give me this story.”
There was a long pause as Henry studied her, reading the passion in her face. Finally, he nodded. “I know that look. You’ll do it with or without me, and you’ll get into trouble without me.”
“Thank you, Henri,” she said.
Slowly, the old man stood up and walked toward the door. “Don’t thank me yet. Just watch your back. This is a different world. Like Diego Garcia without the security.”
Serah shuddered, taking the warning in the intended spirit. “So, are you going to tell me?” she asked. Henry cocked an eyebrow at her but said nothing. “Obviously, you saw something in there that made you believe the story was dangerous. What did I miss?”
Henry frowned. “Okay, I assume you’d have figured it out eventually, so the first one’s free.” He looked her straight in the eyes. “Run the timeline the police gave you in your head,” he said calmly.
Serah nodded, understanding what Henry was leading her toward. “He was killed sometime between 12:00 and 13:00, but at least one witness claims to have seen him alive at 12:45 in Kensington. Okay, so let’s say between 12:45 and 13:00.” She paused and considered the implication. “They found the body in Soho at 17:00, and they immediately knew who it was because someone had already turned in the ID earlier that afternoon.”
Henry nodded, waiting for her to finish the thought.
“Either he somehow got from a café in Kensington to Soho in 15 minutes, which is pretty much impossible, or…” She pictured the scene in her mind. “Somebody transported his dead body to Soho to hide it.”
Henry finished the thought for her. “Random? No way. Frankly, I’m surprised the police even suggested it.” He shook his head. “Robbery doesn’t explain that. Either somebody screwed up badly, or somebody wants us looking in Soho instead of Kensington.”
She was embarrassed that she didn’t immediately figure out such a blatantly obvious deception. Maybe Henry was right. Maybe she wasn’t up to the task. She glanced back at the datapad containing the police report, hoping another such clue might jump out at her. So far, nothing about this story made any sense. “The official report is robbery, and they made a point of restating that to me, but they should have known we’d see through it eventually. Either they’re just lazy or…” Her voice trailed off.
Henry smiled. “Go get ‘em.”
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