“I appreciate the invite but what I saw of Miami still gives me nightmares,” Dhata said. “I don’t mind visiting, but I’m not putting down any roots. We’ll likely move north, to another city, somewhere Sigma won’t know to look. What’s my deadline on this Sigma thing? Is a week’s break out of the question?”

  “Not at all,” Robert assured him. “The three agents are staying in a hotel down in Ybor City, but if you ever need them just call and they will be there. Any problems, you can call me directly, but my men have everything they need to be self-sufficient. Any other questions?”

  “Where is Hiro now?” Lur asked, walking over to take Dhata’s arm. “Why hasn’t he called?”

  “I am not sure,” Robert admitted, though he suddenly seemed distracted. “The last I heard from him, he was coming here to stay with you two for a time.”

  “Did you know about this, Dhata?” Lur looked up at Dhata, accusingly, but he shook his head in the negative. It wasn’t like Hiroshi to show up, uninvited.

  “We’ll wait for him to figure things out,” he offered. “With our combined notes we could have some data for your cyphers to pinpoint a location where Sigma is hiding. I’ll stay put for a week, and try to contact him. Hiro’s probably afraid to be on the phone. You remember the last time we were worried he could get into our heads.”

  “That was proven false,” Robert reminded him, “but I get it. Hiroshi dealt with what must have felt like a virtual hell. Asking him to touch any technology after going through what he did would be a tall ask. When you see him, relay to him that our focus is on this new Sigma, and we do intend to destroy it.”

  Chapter 22

  Red Eye Revival

  Three days after speaking with Robert Ito of The Unsung, Dhata drove out of the city to check on the state of the cottage that his old partner Jason once owned. It had always been a refuge back when things were hot, and the criminals were too much for the police department, but after his passing, Dhata and Lur had used it as their home for a brief time.

  Why was Dhata going there? He did not know, but the city was suffocating, and since he was no longer safe anywhere, this was a place to exhale, refocus on what mattered, and think. He could bring Lur out here, and she could bring her equipment, and they could pretend that they were alone in the world for as long as it took.

  The drive was a dreary hour of dead trees, tall, gaunt, skeletal victims of the toxic rain, and long-term fallout from the war. To Dhata, it was a reminder that humanity had managed to break the world, which was easy to forget when he had technological augments everywhere to keep him distracted from the truth. Out here, however, with no music or phone calls, it was nothing but slick roads, and mist so thick that the shadowy branches seemed to reach into his soul.

  There were no other cars, and though the sun was visible through the clouds, the humidity was a beast, fogging the windows and darkening the mood.

  Dhata kept his eyes staring forward with his left wrist resting on the steering wheel, his right-hand toying with his loaded, 8 shot revolver. He cocked the hammer but left his thumb in place, depressing the trigger just a hair to urge the sear to release. With his thumb preventing it from snapping forward to fire, he removed his finger from the trigger and eased the hammer back in place. It was a dangerous habit, but a therapeutic one for the gunman. Peace wasn’t coming his way anytime soon, and knowing this, he watched the shadows, expecting something or someone to jump out.

  His mind was on an old girlfriend, Tiffany Wu, recalling her broken body mangled amidst the wreckage of her new motorcycle. He had been a detective still when his partner Jason called him to tell him about the crash, and he could still remember that feeling of helplessness, driving out there in the dark to see her, battered, broken, and gone.

  “No,” he whispered, shutting off the memory as quickly as it had come. “It happened, and it was fixed. That’s it. Leave it alone.” He cursed, then shook his head hard, as if doing so would send the thoughts back to the ether.

  He turned off onto a dirt road that led up to Jason’s old cottage. A set of empty chicken coops sat open, and Dhata recalled that when Jason was alive, he had been raising several hens, which was unheard of in their age of bio-engineered replicas. The birds died when Jason passed, having a caretaker in Dhata who hadn’t the faintest clue or desire to care for animals.

  He pulled in, past the rickety fence, locking the G11 before maneuvering it to park facing the exit. He then approached a window, peering inside to see if any squatters were occupying the building. Once he was sure it was clear, he went inside, removed his boots, and sat on the large leather couch. All his stress and anxiety seemed to push him deep down into the cushions, but he closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, willing himself to relax and calm down.

  A noise from the back of the cottage made his eyes fly open, and he was on his feet quickly, creeping towards the single bathroom. He held his revolver low, both hands on the weapon, his head on a swivel, but the tiny room showed no signs of intruders or ghosts. He slipped into the bedroom, checking every corner with the gun raised, his steps like feathers despite his bulk.

  Again, there was nothing, so he climbed over the bed and peered through the curtains at the backyard. Wild grass and brush formed a wall around the property, but the only movement he could make out was the wind whipping it to-and-fro. Dhata knelt and slowed his breathing, closing his eyes in an attempt to enhance his hearing. After a minute, he heard it, the sound of something heavy snapping weak twigs as it waded through the grass.

  Being that animals were a rarity in this postwar Tampa of 2125, Dhata dared not hope it was something innocent like a raccoon or armadillo, scrounging for food. Another sound, but this time much lighter, still audible to the former skiptracer, who stood as still as the wall he leaned on.

  He hurried out of the room and into the kitchen, then through the back door to crouch behind an empty trash bin. On hands and knees he crawled over to the shed, where he placed his back against it and stood up, listening intently. Suddenly a call came in, distracting him from hearing anything, and from a number that he didn’t recognize.

  Dhata cursed under his breath, quickly rejected it, and went back to listening. But the movement had stopped, and now he worried that the phone had thrown him off enough for whoever it was approaching.

  As he gathered his thoughts on what to do next, he nearly missed the steel pole swinging towards his head. The man wielding the weapon was a tall, dark-haired bodybuilder, tanned, tattooed and looked to be in his thirties. The blow would have crushed Dhata’s skull had it connected, but it struck the side of the shed instead, resulting in a loud crack that echoed off into the distance.

  Dhata was scrambling to his feet when the other end of the pole swung around, knocking him onto his back. Then in a split second, the other end was coming for his head again, the pole he saw was a metal staff in the hands of an expert sent to destroy him. Remembering the revolver, Dhata rolled away from his swing, aimed up at the bulk that was his attacker, and pulled the trigger three times.

  0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0

  Darkness, confusion, and a pounding headache, Dhata came to consciousness with a weight on his chest that made it hard for him to move. His eyes came open to find a man on top of him, seemingly dead, and he could smell the coppery stench of blood, though there was no pain present to make him think the injury was his.

  Summoning his strength, he pushed him off, and sat up to a bit of vertigo and a sharp pain on the side of his head. Memories flooded in from the attack as he noticed his revolver lying in the dirt. The hulk that had covered him now lay sprawled near his feet, with a hole in his abdomen, where the blood formed a jagged red aureole on his cream-colored shirt.

  Getting to his knees, Dhata checked the man’s vitals, and mouthed a curse when he confirmed that he was dead. The pipe he had used as a weapon turned out to be a metal portion of the perimeter fence around the property. This was suspicious, since pulling one of them out would have taken time, which meant that the man had been waiting.

  Was he a vagrant that happened upon the cottage and used it believing the owners were dead? Dhata wondered. While this didn’t excuse him swinging the pipe at him without the courtesy of a warning, it did make him feel unsure about taking his life in defense. Desperate for answers, Dhata went through the man’s pockets, but there was nothing in them, though the quality of his clothes created doubt about him being a vagrant or survivor down on his luck.

  Instinct kicked in and Dhata began to wonder if the man had been alone, or with a crew who would be searching for him now. Was he one of Paradise’s men, a Khan, or someone else from his past whom he’d forgotten about? He picked up his revolver and flipped out the cylinder, then dumped the empty casings to fully reload. He cleaned the dirt off as best he could, and slipped it into his left hand as he continued checking the man for evidence.

  As he made to stand up, Dhata stopped. As a detective, he would always scan a corpse’s eyes to see whether they had in ICLs or augments. Gently, he popped open one of the man’s eyes and jerked up suddenly, finding his feet. The eyes had moved, though everything about the body signaled dead, and they weren’t augments or ICLs, they were synthetic.

  But even synths when killed were effectively dead, with no means of revival. A lifetime of being intimately close with them had taught him this, and much else, but this man with his synthetic eyes had looked up at him with what felt like an intense, burning hate.

  Walking over to the shed, Dhata looked for a rope but could only find some steel wire wrapped about a wheel. He used it to tie up the man, binding his ankles and wrists, before dragging him to the cottage, where he secured him to the weather shutters bolted to the window.

  He hadn’t noticed that it was a beautiful day, with sunlight breaking through the smog. It was a welcome convenience for him to make his way around the property as he checked for telltale signs of more intruders. Tapping the side of his head with the heel of his hand, he tried in vain to clear the clouds from his mind. His ICLs were still a bit blurry, and his implant was firing, making it impossible to use its functions to aid his tracking efforts.

  Still, his attacker had made enough impressions in the damp soil and grass for him to retrace his path onto the property. He had cut through the brush that surrounded it, avoiding the dirt path that Jason had cleared to allow entrance from the road. Crouched low, revolver at the ready and focused on the footprints that he followed, Dhata traced them all the way back to a burned-out clearing that was roughly 70 yards from the cottage.

  Here, all signals ended, as if the man had simply materialized. Standing up to his full height, Dhata surveyed the area, accepting that he was as much alone now as he had expected to be when he’d come out there initially. The implications, however, were extremely troubling. Either someone had known he was headed this way, and had set up a drop to take him out, or he’d been tracked and targeted by an assassin with the means to parachute in from the skies.

  A flood of déjà vu washed over him, and he recalled that when he was a detective investigating Manton Paradise, he had run into a similar dead-end out in the badlands. Back then it was because Paradise’s goons would fly out to murder synths via hover that couldn’t be tracked from the ground. The evidence here was similar, but Dhata had a hunch that this wasn’t about Paradise or anything dealing with his cult.

  The assassin had somehow flown in and waited for him to approach the house. This meant that either his vehicle was compromised, or the zeppelin itself, since he refused to think it was Lur. A feeling of revulsion came over him at the thought that in all the time he’d been inside his home, someone had been listening in and recording their activities. If not the zeppelin then his implant had been invaded by a cypher, and this would mean that nothing he did could conceal his motives.

  Squatting down, he thought long and hard on the events of the past week, from the time he first visited Larry’s Auto Depot. He hadn’t drunk or eaten anything there, and couldn’t recall if he’d touched anything that would have given an outside cypher access to the chip inside his head. The assumption at the time had been that the bounty hunters were tipped off by someone at Larry’s, but with Sigma being involved, it could have been anything.

  He had discussed with Lur places for them to relocate where she could still have access to the grid. This drive out to the cottage, however, had been spontaneous, which removed the theory of his home being bugged, or Lur’s involvement—if he allowed himself to consider it. Ariana didn’t know where he was going, and he hadn’t yet spoken to Hiro. This left only two potentials: it was either his personal implant or his car.

  “Dale,” he whispered, and grew angry, since he really loved that car, but now he wanted nothing more than to drive it into the sea. He had assumed that the defenses built into it would keep it secure, but hadn’t considered that the software powering its A.I. could have a backdoor that was accessible to a cypher.

  Before the G11, Dhata had a Buick with a custom-built A.I. that had been modified by Lur. Since defeating Sigma, he had wanted to upgrade to something more modern, and in doing so compromised his operation, which he now kicked himself mentally for not having known.

  Whoever wants me dead has been setting this up for some time, he thought. They rigged the G11, and who knows what else, then waited until I was out here in the boonies to spring a trap. This is too elaborate and coordinated to be the Khans, and Devin is dead, so who is it?

  He thought of the man he’d killed, his strength, and the movement of his eyes even after he was a corpse. “No,” he whispered, remembering now where last he’d seen a man as tough as the one he’d just put down. “No,” he repeated as a wave of panic struck him, causing him to sprint back towards the house. Rushing to the back of the cottage where the bound corpse lay slumped against the wall, he knelt in front of it and once again popped open an eye.

  Exhaling slowly, he focused his ICLs on the man’s bloodshot eyeball, switching it to night vision even though the sun was still out. The corpse’s iris flashed red, causing Dhata to stand and back up. Variant! He mouthed the words, his eyes growing wide. A million thoughts followed the first one, thoughts of Lur being alone inside that zeppelin, vulnerable to any form of attack from either the outside or through the Virtual Village.

  Sigma being alive had been a hunch Robert posited, and despite Hiroshi being targeted as well, Dhata had convinced himself that it was all fear and conjecture. They all feared the return of so strong a threat, but even Paradise being a variant hadn’t meant that there was still a puppet master tugging at his strings. Dhata had allowed himself to doubt, but here was the evidence in the form of an assassin.

  He stepped forward and kicked the variant square in the face, the reinforced speed from his cybernetic thigh aiding the damage, which was significant. Those lifelike eyes went black, and he slumped further down to appear positively lifeless, but that did not stop the stomping that came from the unhinged former detective. All security, safety, and confidence had vanished with this new revelation that Sigma was indeed alive and wanted him dead.

  His mind went to Hiroshi, and he stopped, backing off as he surveyed the bloody figure on the ground. He tried to call Lur, praying, wishing, and hoping that she would pick up, though a part of him was sure that he was too late. For two minutes, which felt like an eternity, he stood waiting, unwilling to let in any doubts as to whether or not she was in trouble.

  Come on, Lurita, pick up, please, he thought, his right foot tapping impatiently as he glanced up at the dark clouds moving to conceal the sun.

  “Dhata?” came a reply, and all the energy within him seemed to deplete quickly, as he dropped to his knees on top of the bloodstained grass. “Are you alright? Where are you calling from? Do you need me? Can you talk?”

  “Lurita,” he managed. “It isn’t safe. I need you to leave the zeppelin. Don’t take your car, use the Buick. Drive out to Jason’s old cottage. That’s where I am. I’ll explain later.”

  “I don’t like how you sound, Dhata. You’re not telling me anything and it’s making me worried,” she said.

  “It will be okay, Lurita, but I can’t say much on the phone, if you know what I am saying.”

  “Oh,” she said loudly, understanding. “Mierda! Dhata, are you sure that you are alright? I am coming. Should I call the men?”

  “Hold off on calling them for now,” he said. “Now, get moving, princesa, and pack us some clothes. Bring your rack and our guns, including the ones we brought back from Japan.”

  “The ones from Japan,” she repeated, quizzically. “You mean the ones we used on the variants? Dhata, did they come for you out there?” she said, causing him to sigh. She was just too sharp for her own good, and was saying too much despite his warning.

  “It’s just too much to explain, but yes. Time isn’t on our side, so come on. I love you,” he said, and then clicked off. He was still fearful that his implant had somehow been compromised, so the last thing he wanted was to have an open chat over the phone.

  Collecting himself, he took a breath, then walked over to the shed and grabbed the shovel leaning against its side. He looked for a nice patch of open area, and found one on the far side of the coop. He couldn’t remember the last time he had to dig a grave, which was a good thing, considering the downward spiral his life had taken since turning in his badge.

  Chapter 23

  Concussion Protocol

  After reaching out to Lur and Ariana about the afternoon’s excitement, Dhata waited by the variant’s corpse, his mind and senses numb to everything but the rare sunlight beaming down to toast his throbbing head wound.

 

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