It took three cups of coffee before Serah felt she had some semblance of control. She sat quietly in her office, staring blankly at the stream of newsfeeds and tickers around her desk. At least the rest of the world was running normally today, she thought. The holoprojector on the wall, which had shown the same image of a country field and meadow for the past two years, now cycled every thirty seconds through various stock images of pipes, ductwork, and foggy streets. It was a long shot, but she hoped it might trigger some sort of subconscious reaction. She desperately needed to talk to Halferne again.
A familiar face rezzed into the chair before her desk, relaxed and attentive. “Oh, Erik, finally,” she said. “This is all getting out of hand. I went by the station like you asked. I left the file for Sergeant Parrino, but he’s not even on the case anymore. They told me it’s all been taken over by Division 4’s European office and gave me a new guy’s credentials to contact. Division 4, Erik! This thing is out of control. I’m in real trouble.”
“Serah, calm down,” Erik said calmly but forcefully. She knew the real Erik was frantically running every alternate presence and resource he had to help her make sense of the whole thing. “I keep telling you that you’re not in trouble. You’re just a reporter getting a little too deep in an intense investigation, and it’s giving you dreams. Dreams are not a crime. You haven’t done anything.”
“Haven’t I?” Serah growled and extracted the strange gun from her bag, waving it in front of her. “What’s this for then? Self-defense?!”
Despite being a light projection, Erik recoiled reflexively at the site of the weapon. “Serah, what the hell are you thinking? You bought a gun?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t buy it. At least I don’t remember buying it. Where do you buy something like this anyway?”
Erik studied it as she turned it over in her hands. His face went blank momentarily, and then he suddenly returned to life. “Phen says it’s a Rolen flechette gun. Very rare, completely illegal on Earth.”
“Great, and I carried it into the Police precinct this morning,” Serah rolled her eyes.
“Unless activated, it’s a collection of parts and separate chemicals. It wouldn’t register as a standard armament on scans.”
Serah stopped, grabbed her temples, and squinted. “Wait, how do you know all this?”
“Phen just told me,” he shrugged.
She shook off her confusion and returned to playing nightmare scenarios in her head. “What if they did scan it? What if they think I’m involved? What if that’s why they wouldn’t give me the press release?”
“No, if they scanned it, you’d have been tackled and thrown in a cell,” Erik said calmly, leaning back in his seat. “If you were a person of interest, they would have sat you down, politely, and asked you a lot of questions.”
“How much more interesting do I have to be here?!” she yelled, waving the gun in the air. Then she caught herself and started laughing. She set the gun down on the desk and took a deep breath. “Erik, am I losing my mind?”
“Maybe you should turn that kill cannon over to the police and tell them what you know.”
“Tell them what?! ‘Hi, I just found this; it’s probably related to that crime scene I showed up at for no reason last night while you guys were investigating.’“
“At the very least, you need to tell Henry what’s going on,” Erik said.
Serah sat bolt upright in her chair, “Erik, no! We can’t involve anyone else in this, especially Henry. He’d pull me off the story, and I’d be lucky if he didn’t turn me in and trust the system to save NPNA’s reputation.”
“Henry would back you to the ends of the galaxy and give you every resource and contact at his disposal to make you successful,” Erik admonished her. “We all would.”
“We’re not involving him,” she growled, then pleaded, “You’re the only one I trust with this.”
He sat for a minute, considering her words. “Fine, we’ll play it your way … for now. So where are we with figuring it out?”
Serah took a deep breath, forced herself into ‘reporter mode,’ and pulled up the notes she had made on Halferne. “Someone, maybe me,” she smiled wryly, “went to a lot of trouble to kill a scientist who arguably has been dead and off the grid for more than twenty years.” A holovid of an exploding space station began playing on a loop. “Could the explosion have been staged? Did they fake their deaths to go undercover doing work for the military in some dark-ops lab?”
Erik shook his head. “Scientists don’t have to fake their deaths. They just go to work for the military in a dark-ops lab, and nobody notices or cares they’re gone.”
“Enemy agents staged their deaths to cover up a kidnapping, then?”
“So, Halferne escapes, flees to Earth, and stays off the grid in a busy metroplex with ubiquitous surveillance instead of going straight to a police station on the planet he was on or hiding out on a remote colony. It’s equally unlikely.”
Serah grunted in frustration. “So, he had a reason to be here.”
Erik considered that and nodded. “Keep going.”
“It couldn’t have been easy to hop interstellar and end up in the metroplex without being spotted.”
“I know a dozen or so ways you could do that. Stow away as cargo, bribe a security officer, mechanical prosthetics to change appearance, contract smugglers to use unlicensed gates, escape pod over the north sea to rendezvous with a private boat that drops you offshore before returning to port—”
Serah laughed. “Okay, fine, I don’t want to know how you know all that.”
“You still assume I’m just a pretty face at a receptionist’s desk,” Erik said.
“That is one thing I never assumed about you.” She smiled, beginning to feel better. It helped to do something familiar like this. It also helped more to have a friend in her corner. Maybe she should involve Henry after all. No, she thought, at the very least, she had to prove to him she could crack a story like this on her own. Whether she was really this confident in her journalistic abilities or just making the whole thing up to subconsciously cover up her paranoia, she didn’t care.
Erik regarded her for a moment. “It doesn’t matter how he did it. Halferne had to be in London, in the Root Realm. Not virtual. Not in-Phrame. Why?”
“Something physical … a location, a thing, a person … in the Root Realm though. So, the only place we know he was for sure was that construction site where he was killed. Why?”
“It could have been a random hiding place, or it may have a specific purpose. No, stay on track,” Eric said. “What was he doing there?”
Serah pulled up one of the scan images. “Who can say? All he had was an old model skullcap, a smashed-up datapad, and some hard currency.”
Eric thought for a moment. “So, assume he smashed the datapad. That means there was probably something important on there that he didn’t want to be found by his killer. Why the skullcap, though? That’s old tech.”
“What’s wrong with old tech? I have one.”
The image flipped back to Halferne’s and zoomed in on his neck. “He had a universal data jack direct to his CNS, though. That would be faster and so much more efficient.”
Serah shook her head. “The detective said that jack was off-world tech.”
“Shouldn’t matter. They’re made to standards from the same basic design.”
“Maybe the jack was defective,” she offered. “If he’d been off-grid for twenty years, could he keep maintenance up on it? Is there any other significant difference between CNS and skullcap connections?”
Erik nodded. “Several. The way they work is completely different. A CNS jack reads and stimulates activity passing through the pons and brain stem. A skullcap uses hundreds of thousands of nanoprobes to trace and stimulate neurons between different portions of the cerebrum.”
“So a neural jack tricks your brain into thinking it has just done something and lets it fill in the gaps, and a skullcap really just gives your conscious mind a fake memory that it just did something, so it’s more precise but not as complete, unless you have really detailed data.”
Erik thought for a moment, “Well, that’s a hugely oversimplified explanation of—”
“Is it, though? As far as the human mind is concerned, consciousness is just the interaction between multiple networks within the brain communicating through neural oscillatory activity,” Serah blurted out, condescension dripping from her voice.
Erik stopped and stared at her, amazed. “Whoa, didn’t realize you were a neuroscience expert there.”
“I don’t even know what I just said.” Serah thought back over the words and finally shook her head. “Did any of that actually make sense?”
“Yeah,” Erik said, flipping through Halferne’s profile. “Are you sure you’ve never read Halferne’s papers on neurotopography before?”
“I can’t think when I would have?”
“Not for research on a story? A paper at university, maybe? This might be why you recognized him.”
“No, I’m certain I haven’t.” She thought about it momentarily, then added, “Okay, I’m almost certain?”
“Well, you seem to know an awful lot about skullcaps suddenly, and that’s the best lead we have.”
“How is it a lead at all?”
“It’s old Earth tech, so he probably bought it here.”
“Sure, but how many shops in the London metroplex sell antique skullcaps—”
“Officially, eight,” Erik said, finishing her sentence, “and I just verified none of them have sold one in the past week. That leaves only one likely place to check in the metroplex.”
“One?” Serah asked, confused.
“If he didn’t buy it legit, he bought it on the black market. He’s an off-worlder with no cred account, so if his jack is working, he brokered it in-Phrame and picked it up from a courier. If not, he got lucky and bought it straight from the source. Either way, someone had to physically get it to him.”
Serah threw the gun in her bag and stood up, triumphant. “Spitalfields street market,” she said with more enthusiasm and confidence than she’d felt in two days.
Erik read her energy instantly. “Why don’t you get down there, do your reporter thing, and poke around. I’ll keep working on your dreamspinner telemetry.”
“Thank you, Erik. You’re a good friend,” she said, and she meant it.
Erik smiled. “Contact me as soon as you learn anything. I’ll do the same.”
Spitalfields street market was less seedy than it felt. One could buy anything, legal or otherwise, without anyone batting an eye. In three hours, Serah had seen a plethora of homemade clothing, art, starship parts — both vintage and new — and various pills and potions that claimed to do everything from cure the common cold to regrow lost limbs. This was just what could be openly sold. She knew every stall, every storefront, and every wandering merchant had a second, separate inventory filled with a treasure trove of illegal arms, rogue simulated personalities, military databases, narcotics, and probably even flesh and blood people if you knew how to ask for one. She tried not to think about that. Skullcaps were not only perfectly legal, but it was also charmingly eccentric to be looking for one.
A street performer of some variety graced nearly every corner. Some were simply buskers playing original or traditional songs. Others were elaborate magic shows where conjurers performed tricks in the old world’s sleight-of-hand style and the more modern style using forcefields, holograms, and nanotechnology. Then there were the crazies, who proselytized everything from the coming end of the universe due to vacuum decay from the collapse of the Higgs field to extradimensional aliens massing on the other side of wormholes and preparing to invade our world to the centuries-old Beysian argument that mathematically proves one’s own existence statistically means humans are about to go extinct. She’d never pretended to understand that last one, though for a minute, she morbidly thought that, should any of them be correct, it would make her own issues with multiple murders and potential criminal insanity irrelevant at least.
The one thing she wasn’t finding, after visiting four promising shops, was an antique skullcap salesman. She had just stopped off at a particularly fragrant stand and satiated her sweet tooth with a selection of off-world confectionaries when she spotted a fifth shop across the courtyard. She went through the crowd and up to the front door, which opened with an audible creek and the charming sound of an ancient electronic chime. Perhaps it was desperation to catch any break in the story, but she was suddenly more encouraged than she had been all afternoon.
A wiry, middle-aged man walked out from a back room. He was shorter than Serah, dressed in a greasy work tunic and wiping old-stained hands on an even more oil-stained rag. “May I help you, Miss?”
Serah went with the tactic she had used on the previous shop proprietors. “Yes, I hope so, she said, casually flipping her hair back to reveal her lack of an embedded data jack. I was hoping to buy a neural skullcap for temporary use while I’m in town, and I was thinking of something vintage. You know, with a bit of character behind it.”
The man regarded her neck and lack of augmentation, nodded for a moment, and pretended to think it over. “Well, it’s the funniest thing, actually. Normally, I’d be able to help you instantly, but I just sold the only one I keep in inventory a couple of days back and haven’t gotten around to replacing it. There’s not much urgency to keep them stocked, you understand.”
Serah faked a laugh. “Seriously? I would have thought it was a unique request. Who bought it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He was an older fellow. I’m pretty sure he was an off-worlder. He really didn’t say.”
“Interesting,” Serah said, then turned on the charm and tried to press her luck a bit. “Did he buy anything else?”
The old man suddenly tensed, which told her she’d found her man. “I’m afraid I don’t recall. Is there anything else I might help you with,” he said, starting to sound a bit nervous.
Serah pulled up the image of Halferne’s headshot on her datapad and showed it to the man. “Was this, by any chance, the man who made the purchase.”
She saw instantly in the man’s eyes that it was. “Are you with the police? Look, I run a respectable business here. There was nothing illegal about that sale–”
“Did he say why he needed a skullcap when he already had a data jack installed?” Serah asked politely, leaving the question about her occupation hanging unanswered. He was nervous about something, and nervous people tended to talk more.
“He didn’t say anything other than ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye.’ Honestly, it was just a pickup. He made the purchase through an in-Phrame broker. All I did was pack and hold it for him.”
Serah nodded. That was a fairly common arrangement in small shops such as this. One could hardly be expected to run the physical counter, purchase and repair stock, and still be an in-Phrame salesman. “What else did you hold for him, Mr…”
“Lain,” he blurted out frantically. “Thamo Lain. Look, I’m a legitimate dealer here. I only supplied the skullcap. Other items were in his order, but those vendors just came in and dropped stuff off. I don’t know who any of those guys were. I don’t peek, and I don’t ask questions, so that’s why they use me as the pick-up spot. I have no idea what else he bought. This is a clean business.”
Serah did her best to sound intimidating. Secretly, she was enjoying having the upper hand for once. She was in her element now. “So, you’re saying an off-worlder goes to some broker in-Phrame with a list of things he needs — legal or otherwise. Then this broker calls a bunch of people who either have, or can make, these items, and they all drop them off here to you for the customer to pick up … simply because you don’t ask questions or poke your nose into what they’re doing. Right?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Exactly!”
In Serah’s experience interviewing people and studying human behavior, the man was completely honest with her. “In that case, Mr. Lain,” she said in her most charming tone, “I only need one piece of information from you, and I’ll leave you in peace.”
“Yeah? What? Anything.”
“Who was the in-Phrame broker?”
Serah congratulated herself briefly on the way she had handled Tahmo Lain. For a while at least, being a reporter, the one thing she was good at, had provided some relief. Unfortunately, she was now back in her cold, dark, quiet apartment. She checked for messages from Erik, but nothing came up. She sent him a message telling him she had the name of Halferne’s in-Phrame tech runner, Vir. Liam Fiscer. She said she would wait until Erik could run it through his network of contacts to get background information. Though the indicator showed that Erik had received and read the message, there was no response. Either something had happened to Erik, or he was deep into pursuing a lead and couldn’t take time to send a response.
She tried to get back into her regular routine to calm her nerves: a quick shower, her favorite silk robe, a cup of coffee, and an hour of scanning the newsfeeds. It didn’t help as much as she thought it might. Finally, she decided that being an investigative journalist was the only thing keeping her sane, so she might as well be doing that whenever possible. She connected to her research console at NPNA and started querying.
Liam Fiscer was, by all appearances, simply a guy who got things done and was generally paid handsomely for it. His network was vast and extended to at least a dozen off-world systems. He was loosely tied to importing foodstuffs, which were mostly legal but heavily regulated products. He had been arrested by corporate warrant from Locke Industries two days ago and confined to the Phrame while he awaited trial. There were allegations, but no actual proof, that he might have ties to one of the larger syndicates and half a dozen smuggling rings, but a corporate warrant for accessory to murder was all they currently had on him.
Fiscer, confined to the Phrame, seemed harmless compared to what awaited her in the Root Realm. Serah was resolute. She knew she was onto something. She had two options: wait for Erik, which would only fuel her anxiety and leave her with a multitude of unanswered questions, or trust her journalistic instincts and confront this Fiscer herself. The choice was clear.
As the tension mounted, Serah downed two more cups of coffee, and her mind raced. Finally, she grabbed the skullcap off the nightstand, her hands trembling slightly, and set her terminal to connect her consciousness into the Phrame. The time for action had come.
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