Endless rows of towers stretched thousands of feet into the blackness above. Each was perfectly square, about fifteen meters on a side, and made of black obsidian that seemed alive with the pulsing glow of soft violet light. The towers were arranged to form a grid of corridor-like pathways, each identical to the last, stretching outward as far as the eye could see. Serah glided through the corridors. It was not the carefree kind of gliding she had done the night before around the waterfall, but instead, more like the sensation of standing on an invisible conveyor that moved her in a steady, almost rhythmic motion. There was something more than that, however. She felt as if she was somehow controlling the conveyor, able to change her direction and speed with a mere thought or wave of the hand. She simply chose not to. For the moment, one direction seemed as good as any to her.
Occasionally, brighter sparks of light appeared, seemingly inside the tower walls. The lights pulsated and hummed briefly, then shot off straight into the distance, skipping from tower to tower with a strange, disjointed “whooshing” sound. Meanwhile, the conveyor moved on, jogging left for a while, then right, left again, but always seeming to follow the sparks.
Serah rounded a corner and was surprised to find a single non-conformity in what had proven to be an endlessly uniform gridwork of passages. A bright red pipe emerged from the side of one of the towers and stretched into the distance along the corridor wall about two meters above the ground. After a hundred meters, the pipe joined another, forming a T-shaped intersection. The invisible conveyor turned at this point, following the new pipe, which was then joined by three other red pipes. After several hundred more meters, a blue pipe emerged above the red ones.
Abruptly, the conveyor changed directions again. Intersections in the maze of pipes became exponentially more frequent, and a tremendous multi-colored latticework formed above and around her. Before Serah could ascertain if the pipes followed any mathematical progression or pattern, the intersections had become too numerous to count, and the intricate, colorful web obscured the black sky above her.
She was about to will the conveyor to stop so that she could find her way back to the comfortable symmetry of the empty corridors when she noticed a dull yellow glow ahead. The light seemed even more incongruous than the pipes, but somehow, she knew, without really knowing, that this was the destination she had been seeking. The conveyor seemed to know this too, as it suddenly picked up speed with what Serah felt was almost a human-like fervor and enthusiasm.
Upon reaching the light, the conveyor glided to a smooth stop, gently depositing Serah inside a fifteen-meter square chamber whose walls seemed to form the nucleus of a spiderweb-like construct of multi-colored pipes. The floor was solid but shimmering with the consistency of fluorescent liquid and seemed strangely cold under her bare feet. Seated in the middle of the room, serenely curled into a lotus position, was the figure of an old man. The same man she had seen in the forest in her dream the night before. His eyes were closed, his arms rested gently on his knees with his palms turned upward. She approached cautiously, crouching in front of him. His breathing was slow and meticulous — too slow, it seemed, for consciousness.
She reached for his wrist, expecting a faint, thready pulse. The man suddenly jerked awake with a gasping inrush of breath. Serah fell backward in surprise as he scampered in the opposite direction and shrank into a fetal position. An expression of terror and amazement blazed across his face.
“That was very foolish!” the man scolded. “You shouldn’t have come here!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–”
“Now he knows who you are!” his voice shook at the edge of hysteria.
“Who?”
The man ignored her completely. “Wait a minute. You got in here.” He shook his finger as if trying to remember something important. “You were out there … but now you’re here.” His eyes lit up with recognition. “How did you do that? How did you get in here?!” His voice became accusatory.
“I came from right–” Serah turned around and pointed straight at a wall of pipes that looked exactly like the other three. She was trapped. “I mean, I was…”
The old man rushed to the wall behind her and began pulling on the pipes, hoping to jar one loose and reveal the secret exit. “Help me! Hurry! Before he–” He turned around to grab Serah and stopped, transfixed by something behind her. His face blanched.
Serah spun. A dark figure stood against the far wall of the room. He hadn’t been there a moment ago, she was certain. He must have followed her somehow. It was not exactly the same man she had seen in the glade. The generic gray and black uniform was now a dark blue tunic ornamented with swashes of silver and topped with a kepis-style hat that seemed familiar. Where the reflective visor had been previously, Serah now peered into the coldest, blackest eyes she had ever seen and saw an inhuman malice and hate peering back at her. No, his appearance was different, but it was unmistakably the same man. She could feel that somehow.
The old man frowned, defeated. “I’m trying, but I just can’t control him.”
“Who is he? Who are you?” Serah demanded. The reply, if it ever came, went unheard. As the speeding projectile entered his chest and exploded, Serah was jarred awake for the second time in as many nights.
“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.
“That’s when you fainted,” he offered.
“I did?”
“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, and 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. Indeed, 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.”
Nineteen hours. They were all blank.
“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’m just not used to sleeping that 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 encrypt 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. “Yeah, weird, isn’t it? See you in an hour.”
“Thanks, Henry,” she said and flipped off the vidscreen.
Seventeen 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, and considered briefly the possibility of having her head shaved 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 display, but she took some kind of sadistic enjoyment in the discomfort that was shown clearly on the incompetent technician’s face.
“We can’t be held liable for memory loss. Do you realize how dangerous modding the system to bypass the safeguards is? 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.
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 this for a moment before answering. “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 just 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. At least that accounted for twelve of her missing nineteen hours. She still had no memory of anything that happened between passing out in the conference room and going to bed, however, and though Henry said she was apparently going straight home, she could see herself telling him that just to placate his paternal attitudes. She shivered, wondering what her actual intentions were. Then there was the matter of three sleep cycles. That would seem to imply being awakened by three separate nightmares. She thought back but only remembered the last dream in the pipe-filled room.
“I don’t remember any of it.” She muttered.
Allen thought for a moment. “Ms. Wyles, I can’t stress enough the seriousness of unauthorized modifications …” 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 calming 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, 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–”
“I’m not interested in talking to one of your head-shrinkers!” 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 for her outburst. She was not the type to make idle threads like that. 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 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 for 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, a short, elderly 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, explaining 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 make 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 PM 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 in a closet in the machine level last night. The coroner put the time of death between noon and 1:00 yesterday. More than likely, we’re dealing with 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 were found and turned in to the Soho precinct house hours earlier.”
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. “I haven’t been there in a while.” It had been a regular haunt of hers during her university years, though when most of her old friends settled for more lucrative in-Phrame jobs, the café lost its luster, and she stopped going.
“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. The proprietor was very helpful and friendly when we interviewed him, but he was upset about losing the place. 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.” 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—a nagging feeling crept into her mind that there was something more to this, 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.
#
Once she had settled into 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 a picture of a Scottish farmhouse now replaced the usual meadow painting on the holoprojector. Erik had kept any additional billys, sales inquiries, and unannounced callers at bay again, 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. But, the crime beat? Particularly violent crime? It’s an entirely different game you don’t have the chops for, and frankly, kiddo, it’s beneath you.”
“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 with some drones 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, you could get hurt, or worse, if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“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,” 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 and 1, but at least one witness claims to have seen him alive at 12:45. Okay, so it was closer to 1.” She paused and considered the implication. “But, the body was found in Soho.”
Henry nodded, waiting for her to finish the thought.
“Either he made it from Kensington to Soho in 15 minutes, which is pretty much impossible, or…” She pictured the scene in her mind. “Moving a dead body in broad daylight? With all those witnesses? Why go through the trouble? Why take a risk like that?”
Henry finished the thought for her. “Random murder? No way. Frankly, I’m surprised the police even suggested it.” He shook his head. “It’s a smokescreen, a deliberate fabrication. This guy was targeted by someone who wanted to keep the investigation focused on Soho instead of Kensington. They know that, but they’re downplaying it, hoping we don’t get interested.”
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 how thin that story is. Either they’re just lazy or…” Her voice trailed off.
Henry smiled. “Or there’s a bigger story, and they’re hiding it.”in his eyes, and heard the needler exploding in his chest. The last thing she remembered was Henry, in the corner of her vision, darting across the room to catch her as she fell out of her chair.
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