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  A grunt was the only reply she got as I lifted myself out of the bed. Pain shot through my knees and back, but faded after a few moments of adjusting to the cruel draw of gravity. I pulled another smoke out, lit it, and made my way out of the cramped bedroom; a feat requiring only a single step toward the door.

  “Hey, mister,” she said as she rose to follow me. The t-shirt swirled around her like a gown as she rolled off the bed and side-stepped between the footboard and the wall. “We’re not done.”

  “For fuck’s sake, woman,” I said over my shoulder. “Can I at least make some coffee?” I crossed the small living room to the modest kitchenette lining one wall.

  “Fine.” She plopped on the couch, which was actually the back seat of an old van but served its purpose.

  I cursed as I bent over to find the coffee pot in a lower cabinet and my ass bumped into that same ‘couch’. Retrieving the appliance, I hit a switch on the wall and a narrow section of countertop extended on whirring servos. I set the pot down, plugged it in, and searched a grid of drawers for a packet of grounds.

  “It’s in E-seventeen, where it always is,” Magdela murmured as she clicked on the holovid.

  Sure enough, there it was. A cool blue glow danced around the room behind me as I pulled a packet of grounds from the tiny drawer. The familiar, cold, detached voice of the morning news anchor—a female bot the network insisted on calling Morning Mary—filled the room.

  “After three months of review by a probate court, control of Talbot Industries—formerly owned by the late James Talbot—has officially changed hands. Talbot’s sister, Mayor Gretchen Tomlinson of New Angeles, stepped up as the chief executive officer of the company today.”

  I looked over my shoulder and scowled at the anchor’s image as it floated in the air between the wall and the couch. The blond-haired and blue-eyed holovid personality sat there behind the news desk like she always did, perfectly still and looking perfectly human; except for the fact she never blinked, smiled, frowned, or had a stray strand of hair to push back from her brow.

  “So, you ready to talk?” Magdela asked without looking back.

  “No,” I said.

  Morning Mary continued. “In related news, police are still searching for former detective Harold Jacobson. Jacobson is wanted in connection with a string of violent crimes, including the murders of his former partner Frank Jones, the aforementioned James Talbot, and the mayor’s son, Kristoff Tomlinson.”

  “How’s that coffee coming along?” Magdela asked.

  “Done,” I said as I filled two cups, stirred in some sugar, and topped mine off with a large splash of whiskey. I rounded the small, low couch and handed Magdela her cup as I sat down.

  Morning Mary droned on, but Magdela turned down the volume with a swipe of her hand through the air in front of a wall-mounted sensor. “It’s Frank again, isn’t it?”

  I nodded as I took a sip of my coffee with whiskey—or more accurately, whiskey with coffee.

  “You know, if you keep it all bottled up, you’re going to explode eventually.”

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “I’ve dealt with death before. It’ll just take time.”

  “It’s more than that.” Magdela turned to face me and tucked one bare leg under the other.

  My eyes drifted along the lines of her slender thighs. There wasn’t anything under that t-shirt.

  “Hey.” Magdela snapped her fingers. “Up here, buddy.”

  I turned my attention back to my coffee. After almost draining the cup, I set it down on an upturned bucket next to the couch and lit another cigarette.

  “So?” She would not give up.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess this was more personal. And Boris is still out there. If I could find the bastard, I know I’d feel better.”

  “You think so?”

  I shrugged and ran a hand across the stubble on my cheeks. “Seems better than nothing.”

  “Talbot was nothing?”

  I grunted and waved a hand at the holovid. “Seems that way. Tomlinson’s in charge of his company now. She’s probably working with the Bratva, like her brother was. Hell, we already know they’re still shipping out slave girls to Russia on cargo ships.”

  “Well, do something about it.”

  “I tried. We dug up dirt on Talbot, and it was all for nothing because he had the whole city in his pocket. So, I shot him. And you know what? Nothing changed.”

  “But after that, we went out and hit their operations,” Magdela said. “For a while, it seemed like we were making a difference.” Her voice turned softer. “Then, for some reason, you just gave up.”

  I took a long draw off the coffee so I wouldn’t have to reply and turned the volume back up on the holovid.

  Morning Mary’s voice once again filled the small apartment. “The sanitation strike shows no sign of ending. But there’s hope on the horizon. The city recently acquired a large order of drones designed for military applications from Talbot Industries. These firebots, as the mayor is calling them, will be marching through the streets to incinerate the piles of garbage where they lie. Officials are warning citizens not to interfere with the firebots, as they are not AI-equipped and have limited operational parameters. Any disruption may result in unintended consequences. Citizen interference last night led to several accidents, one of which resulted in an apartment building in Sanrita catching fire.”

  “That’s awful,” Magdela gasped.

  “As of this broadcast,” Mary concluded, “city officials have not released a count of how many casualties resulted from the fire.”

  “See!” Magdela jabbed a finger at the holovid. “This is exactly the sort of thing we were going to stop. After Talbot, you talked about all these grand plans for fixing the city. For two months, we went out almost every night with the gangs and hit these rich bastards right where it hurts.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “So, what changed? Why did you give up?”

  “That’s just it,” I said as I stamped out the butt of a cigarette on the couch-side bucket and added it to a pile of its brethren on the concrete floor. “Nothing. No matter what we did, nothing changed.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  My heart raced and my legs burned by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, pushed the door open, and stepped out into the main hallway. Perhaps the only good thing about our shitty little apartment was that it was only on the tenth floor, so I could avoid the elevators for trips down—but no way was I climbing back up. That, and the fact it was a no questions asked sort of deal. Still, the building was the worst I’d lived in, and that was saying a lot. It was one of four identical structures sitting in a neat square, surrounded by broad streets and separated by narrow alleys. The Quad—as people called it—was the most notorious tenement in The Glen.

  Coming out of the stairwell, I had to step over a body lying on the floor. That didn’t even surprise me. Loud snoring revealed the body was still warm, and an empty bottle of liquor nearby told the tale of the owner’s pursuit of oblivion. Seemed I wasn’t the only one looking for an escape this evening.

  The front doors of the apartment building rattled as they sensed my approach and slid apart. Outside, the sun had already set, and night engulfed the city of New Angeles. I stepped out into the darkness and sensory input instantly overwhelmed me.

  Flickering fluorescents lined the curbs and building facades, casting an unnatural, strobing glow across the streets. Garish neon advertising everything from noodle carts to brothels hummed and glowed in a rainbow of colors. Music laden with heavy bass and punctuated by metallic screeching and electronic white noise thumped from nearby windows.

  I pulled my coat tighter against the chill as I crossed the road and hopped back onto the sidewalk. Despite the late hour, humanity choked the footpaths. People with questionable motivations made their way hurriedly along, not even willing to sacrifice the time to make eye contact with their fellow citizens or nod in greeting. In contrast to this, others languished along the edges of the throng; homeless crying out for help and junkies so doped up on chems they probably didn’t even see or hear the city around them anymore.

  I kept my eyes down, my hat low, and my hand close to the pistol holstered under my left arm. There was nothing new about any of this, but after a few blocks, a commotion drew my attention. The sidewalk emptied as people filled the street. They were all yelling at something beyond the press of bodies. I stopped and leaned against a wall as I took in the scene, taking advantage of the break to light up a smoke.

  It wasn’t a massive crowd; probably only about a hundred people. Most likely, those nearby had all reacted to something, rather than assembling here for any premeditated reason. When the sudden glow of fire lit up the buildings across the street, I knew exactly what was agitating them. Coils of black smoke rose above the flickering flames. An assortment of nauseating odors wafted through the air. The crowd drew back and parted, then a half dozen skeletal, metallic figures marched through the gap.

  The mayor’s new firebots weren’t like the pseudo-human robots used for newscasts and brothels. These weren’t hiding the fact they were robots under a synthflesh façade. Thin appendages supported a narrow torso, all covered in armored plating appropriate for a military design. Instead of a head, a bank of glowing sensors peered out from a small hump at the top of the torso. Instead of hands, each arm ended with a flamethrower fueled by tanks mounted to their backs. One of them stumbled and swayed as a bottle smashed against its shoulder, but it righted itself and continued its march as if nothing had happened. It didn’t even turn to determine where the attack came from.

  Limited operational parameters. The warning from the morning’s newscast rose to the fore of my mind. There were international laws aga
inst using AI in the military, but these things could have at least been given some common sense. Although, the crowd was probably suffering from the same deficiency. So much for not interfering with the firebots.

  The mob morphed and flowed behind the robots even as flames grew in the alley between two buildings. Neon signs on the corners sizzled and exploded in showers of sparks from the heat. Angry shouts pursued the firebots as they made their way to the next mountain of trash that needed burned.

  I tossed my cigarette butt on the ground and stamped it out. It seemed like a futile gesture in the face of the blaze across the street, but it was habit. I turned my back to the roving bots and growing crowd of humans. All the ruckus was bound to draw in the cops.

  That kind of heat, I definitely didn’t need. That, and I had somewhere to be.

  “You know what this place needs?”

  “You to shut up?”

  “No, dancing girls.”

  “It’s not that kind of bar.”

  I rubbed a hand across my weary face as I watched the conversation from a shadowy booth in the corner of the smoke-filled bar. I wasn’t sure why I still bothered. It would be easier to get drunk at home. Maybe part of me wanted to keep up on what was happening in the streets. Or maybe I just had to get away from Magdela’s constant worrying. Since she nagged me not to drink so much, it was probably the latter.

  “Still, we need something to look at in here other than your ugly mug.”

  I turned my glass up against my lips to drain it, but the expected burn of whiskey was suspiciously absent. I lowered the glass, blinked, and peered into it. Empty.

  “You’d think you’d have more respect for the man letting you run a tab.”

  This idiot at the bar was getting annoying. Ned’s was normally a quiet place; he didn’t even play music. This was a holy refuge for those seeking to lose themselves at the bottom of a bottle, and this kid was disturbing the peace. Something instinctual triggered deep within me. Something from my days as a beat cop so long ago. I slid out of the booth and rose to my feet.

  “Yeah, well, you’d think you’d want to liven the place up a bit.”

  I took a step toward the commotion, banged my hip on a table, and stumbled the last few feet. I caught myself on the bar with one hand and slapped the other on the kid’s shoulder. “Okay, buddy. You’ve had enough,” I said.

  “Whoa, old-timer,” the younger man said as he shrugged my hand off his shoulder. “Smells like you’ve had a bath in the stuff.”

  I gathered my feet under myself and stood up straight. “Time to stop bothering Ned and pay up on your tab.”

  “Jasper, really,” Ned argued, “it’s okay. The kid’s no bother.”

  “I’m not a kid,” the kid said as he shoved me. “Now go fuck off, old man.”

  I struggled to regain my balance and rubbed a hand on the stubble lining my chin. Was the gray showing that much? Well, if the kid would not listen to reason...

  “Well, what are you waiting for? You want me to take you out back and teach you a lesson?”

  I pulled the sidearm from under my jacket and leveled it at the kid. “That’s it, you’re under—” I stopped as bile burned in my throat. I swallowed it down and continued, “...arrest.”

  “Oh, shit!” The kid backed away with his hands held aloft. “Okay, man. No hard feelings. I’ll just leave.” And with that, the young man turned and ran from the bar.

  “Put that thing away,” Ned said as he cleared glasses from the bar. “You’re not even a cop, Jasper.”

  Jasper? I put the sidearm back in its holster and squeezed the bridge of my nose. Stars floated in my vision. I slumped onto a barstool and leaned against the steady, reassuring edifice of oak and brass.

  “Now, who’s going to pay his tab?” Ned asked.

  I looked down at my wrist. The barcode there held everything; my identity, my bank account... even my name. Faint lines around the edges of it betrayed tiny scars, and the tone of the flesh inside them was slightly off—too pale against my otherwise ruddy complexion.

  “Jasper?”

  Harold, dammit, I thought. But, no, not to Ned. Not to anybody except Magdela and a few others. That barcode: It wasn’t mine. It was Jasper Rogan’s. But it was on my arm. Did that mean I was Jasper Rogan? Was Harold Jacobson just a scrap of rotting flesh, abandoned the bottom of a trash can in a basement skin shop?

  “Are you okay?” Ned asked.

  I gestured toward the scanner docked nearby, and Ned picked it up. “Add another bottle,” I said as I held my arm out. He pulled up my tab on the hand-held device’s touchscreen and scanned the barcode. With a beep, my tab was paid off. “The kid’s, too,” I said. Ned tapped the glass again, and with another beep, my bank account shrank a little more.

  I shuffled down the sidewalk toward home, my head down and my eyes focused on my feet. I didn’t even realize I was almost to The Quad when I heard the first screams.

  I looked up, and the flames filling my vision immediately burned away the haze of intoxication. A massive crowd gathered around The Quad, some struggling to get away as more still rushed to the scene. Beyond the throng, the flickering orange glow of fires danced along the sides of all four buildings. In the alleys between them—alleys that were choked with garbage piled up three-stories tall, a raging inferno burned. Smoke poured from shattered windows. Yet more flames licked at the walls from within some of these. Tiny figures leaned out from the higher floors, two dozen stories above the blaze. Even as smoke and ash drifted skyward on updrafts, a few figures fell from above as they chose a quick death over a slow one.

  I dropped the bottle of whiskey I was carrying, and it shattered on the pavement below me, sending its contents running along the gutter. Suddenly laser focused, I bolted forward. I wasn’t even thinking as my feet pounded on the sidewalk. I leaped into the street, sprinted across, and dove into the crowd. “Move!” I yelled as I pushed bodies aside in a frantic effort to reach the buildings. Some pushed back. As I neared my home, others must have realized my intent, because hands grabbed at me, trying to stop me. I shrugged them off and pushed them aside as I continued my single-minded dash toward the slice of hell that raged before me.

  Finally free of the crowd, fueled by desperation, I dashed toward the front doors of our building. They stood open; the glass broken out from the inside. I jumped through the frames, raced down the hallway to the stairwells, and yanked the door open to the one that would take me nearest our apartment.

  I don’t know how long I was climbing before I ran headfirst into a man racing down the stairs. “Hey!” he shouted as he grabbed my shoulders. “Where are you going? We have to get out of here.”

  “No,” I said as I jerked free of his grasp. “I have to save her.”

  Realization flashed in his eyes as they met mine. “I’m sorry, buddy, but there’s nobody up there. It’s all on fire.”

  I jerked him to the side and slammed him against the wall. “No! I won’t let another one die. Not again.”

  The man shook his head, and this time it was his turn to jerk free of my grasp. “Fine. Whatever. Go get yourself killed.” With that, he bounded down the steps without a second glance.

  I was almost there. Two more floors and I was at the tenth landing. I shoved open the door and bounded into the hallway, only to shrink back as the oppressive heat assaulted me. I pulled my coat up and held it over my face like a shield, then ran down the hallway. Smoke burned my eyes. Between the occluding vapors and the burning tears, I could barely see an arm’s length ahead of me. My lungs burned as fits of coughing overwhelmed me.

  I finally reached our apartment. The ceiling had collapsed in front of the door. It was part-way open, but stuck behind a mass of debris. “Magdela!” I cried out in desperation. “Magdela, are you in there?”

  I heard a muffled cry from the other side of the burning wall. I took a step back and peered through the smoke. The surface was black with ash and tiny flames ran across it like a spider’s web, licking at the edges of fissures running through the plaster and boards. I pulled my coat over my head, bent down, and surged forward. My shoulder crashed through the fire-eaten wall and it collapsed beneath me, sending me tumbling into the room beyond. I fell over something both soft and hard, metal framework with fabric padding. The van seat. Smoke surrounded me. I couldn’t see anything.