“I promise. I won’t leave without telling you,” he said, “Now go before I clear this table and lay you down on top of it.”

  “You just hold that thought,” she whispered, and touched the tip of his nose with her forefinger. Then she was off to her office to call Hiroshi.

  “Young girl’s going to give me a heart attack eventually,” he mumbled, then smiled at the absurdity of his complaint, and bent to resume his examination of the evidence.

  Dhata studied the charred remains of the vehicle and the footage from the street-cam that Ariana had sent over earlier. He wondered sometimes if she ever slept, but in this instance, he was happy she’d sent it. Playing back the video, he could see that the car maintained the speed limit, and it was at a red light that it exploded, taking out a chunk of the road.

  “The bomb wasn’t rigged to blow. It was detonated,” he whispered, playing and rewinding the footage over and over to determine the location and the radius of the blast. “Could be C4, but the detonator had to be close.” He panned out, rewinding to observe the vehicles in the vicinity. There were just too many, and he reasoned that the assassin could have been stationary, waiting for them to leave by a typical route, and then blowing them up at the stoplight.

  Where were you off to so late, Mrs. Paradise? he thought, then walked over to his rack and sat down to access the city’s database of personnel records. As a former John with equipment still connected to the Tampa police database, Dhata had the ability to look up arrest records. He saw that the woman’s name was Ida Nelson and she had been arrested with the rest of Paradise’s members, back when the FBI had swarmed their temples and shops.

  She was young compared to Paradise, but he would be a hypocrite if he raised an eyebrow to that. Still, she was significantly younger than he was, 32 now, which would have made her barely 17 when he went away the first time. Paradise’s wives were all the same make and model, young, troubled, and completely reliant on him, with an ironclad loyalty that even the toughest prosecutor couldn’t rattle. So, why kill this one? Dhata wondered, flipping through her files trying to find a clue to her fate.

  “I give up. Can’t do this with images,” he said, then reached for his steel mug and drained the cold, disgusting remnants of the coffee forgotten there.

  He got her last known address, workplace, and family members, including their pictures. Ida was a lovely dark-haired woman with an elegant jawline, piercing brown eyes, and a seemingly gentle disposition. Dhata couldn’t understand why they would have targeted her, when on the records it showed that she had perjured herself for Paradise.

  “Was it your synth friend that got you targeted?” he said, flipping through more screens of information. There was nothing on the synth, who remained a mystery due to having no arrest record.

  His body had been recovered, and it was still whole enough to be identified, but the human police hadn’t looked into him, so all Dhata had to go off of were photographs. Transferring them to his implant, Dhata grabbed his duster and pulled it on, followed by his hat. As he made for the door, he recalled Lur reminding him not to leave without saying goodbye. He made a beeline and walked to the back of the zeppelin, where she’d converted one of the cabins into her office.

  She was deep in a sea of data, surfing the global network with Hiroshi, and while her body was physically in his presence, her mind was somewhere virtual, working with the Japanese cypher. Dhata leaned down and kissed her on her cheek, even though there was a chance she wouldn’t notice it. He went out into the dawn, and Dale rolled up, sliding the doors open as if it could read his mind.

  “Dale, take me to 140 7th Ave, St. Petersburg, Florida. Remain inconspicuous when we get there, and wait for further instructions before you park,” Dhata said.

  “Will you be threatened?” the car’s A.I. said, causing Dhata to pause and wonder what it was getting at.

  “Highly unlikely but stay ready just in case. This is hostile territory that we’re rolling into, so save the charging and all that other luxury crap for later.”

  “Understood, Dhata. Please sit back and relax. We will be at your destination in approximately 45 minutes,” Dale said.

  0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0

  Once a prominent university in St. Petersburg before the war reduced it to ruins, Key Homes was the result of the blood, sweat, and tears of many good people who had renovated the abandoned university into a set of affordable apartments for the survivors of the conflict. It had been a heart project that fell victim to grift by one of its stakeholders whose crimes were not limited to embezzling funds.

  When the government stepped in to help, the effort wasn’t enough, and eventually Key Homes became a set of slums. Manton Paradise purchased the property, repaired the buildings, and moved his followers into them. Now they were ten-story, red-bricked eyesores, with a large sign spanning all four of the rooftops. “Men Created This, Our Home,” it read, which was a quote from Paradise himself to remind his followers that no synths were involved in the renovations.

  Fifteen years ago, Dhata would not have dared step onto this property without an army in tow. Though Paradise was a god to his followers, all outsiders were met with armed resistance. That had been a major obstacle with investigating the man. He lived inside forts, guarded by brainless zealots. Now these once formidable structures were freely accessible and Dhata took advantage of this by pulling into the parking lot.

  It was a drab scene, overcast weather, a light drizzle of rain coming down on a neighborhood that once was considered luxury. Now it was a shadow of its former self, grey like the skies and depressing. The corpses of trees stood in rows against a chain-link fence that separated the parking lot from the property, and above their skeletal branches loomed the buildings owned by Manton Paradise.

  Ruins of a former age stained black in areas around the numerous windows, most of them open, curtains billowing out to reveal their vacancy, while a few had lights, yellow and eerie against the depressing backdrop. The lot had cars, but not enough to account for the people that lived in the apartments. Dhata didn’t know what to think about that. Did they park somewhere else, or did they not leave the property?

  Considering the methods of cults and their choice to self-sustain away from non-believers, he settled on the thought that perhaps they walked to the nearby plaza for their supplies. Everything else could be provided locally within the building. He saw a number of transports, styled to look like buses from the gasoline age. He counted four, all in need of repair, and as he pulled up next to one, he saw how much he stuck out inside his G11.

  “Destination reached,” Dale announced.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Dhata said, coolly leaning back into the seat, surveying the buildings through the windshield. I should pull off and try again later, he thought, when I don’t stick out like a synth in a childbirth class. He exhaled slowly, angry with himself for the lack of planning. What was I thinking? That I would come here, and nothing would have changed in the last fifteen years.

  He let out a laugh. “I’m getting sloppy,” he said. “Old and sloppy, that’s me.” He touched the door handle and collected himself. “Well, I’m here. May as well make the best of it.”

  The door slid open easily, without a sound. Everything about the car was silent and Dhata was still trying to get used to it. Cini, his old Buick, would hiss and beep on just about every function, and he missed her ancient interface with the stilted speech and sycophantic flair. Dale seemed to have no flaws, and while that wasn’t something to complain about, it did make him miss having an A.I. from the former generation.

  Dhata stepped out onto the wet asphalt, his boots crunching glass from a discarded bottle. Surveying the lot that he was in, he saw how far the place had fallen into squalor. Random garbage, foul from the rain, and several discarded couches sat crisscrossed behind a car with no wheels. It was so bad he expected to find a corpse, or at the very least a tweaker dreaming, his mind too high in the clouds to care about his physical condition.

  Keep this up and the city will have to step in, then there goes all this free housing for all of you, he thought. He looked up at the tall brick structures before him and surveyed the windows with lights, trying to imagine living there, inside a commune. He reached up and wiped his face, suddenly aware of the risks of being exposed to those droplets. Annoyed, he touched the G11’s door to open it, and reached into the console for his trusty paperboy’s hat.

  Moments like this made him remember just how much he hated the constant rain. At the end of the War for Peace—before his parents were even a thought in his grandparent’s mind—chemical warfare did enough damage to the atmosphere to form deadly clouds that were still raining down. Angel’s Tears it was deemed by society, and it kept everyone inside, glued to their racks. They were a reminder to man, that in all his violence, he had forever damaged the world for humanity.

  Dhata was of the first generation born after that devastating war, to a world rebuilt by synthetic people who could withstand the rain that never ceased.

  “Nice wheels. They yours?” said a young, dark-skinned man, with locks thick enough to protect his scalp from the rain, and eyes tinted yellow, the telltale signs of a stim habit that had gone on too long. He was dressed neatly, but his clothes had seen better days, which gave him an air of mystery that piqued Dhata’s interest.

  “It’s mine,” he said, stepping away from the door, which was Dale’s signal to lock up into security mode.

  “You a John?” The man hobbled closer, and Dhata studied his face and decided that he wasn’t sinister.

  He thrust out his hand towards the stranger. “I’m Dhata.”

  The young man looked down at his hand and then took Dhata’s, shaking it with much more vigor than was expected. “I’m Tony, Tony Miller. Mister, you look like someone important. How can I help you?”

  “That depends. What’s the going rate on help nowadays to men like me pulling up in a G11?” Dhata said, stepping back to lean against the vehicle.

  The man laughed and held his hands up in surrender. “Just enough to set me right for the night, and I’ll give up anybody you’re looking for,” he said. “You a John or some sort of bounty hunter?”

  “Hell no. Would a John talk to you?” Dhata said, and Tony laughed as if he accepted that this was true. “I’m not a sucker either, so if this a con you had better run on, but if it’s UCC you’re after, I tell you what. I’ll slide you a fin if you can escort me into this hellhole. Take me to where Ida Nelson lives. Do it without any drama, and you’ll get another 45 UCCs, released when my business is done.”

  “Five UCCs, man? You serious?” he said, his face contorting to something vicious, the mask of innocence now gone.

  “You aren’t listening,” Dhata said. “I’m giving you fifty to be my vouch, but I’m withholding 45 for a time, just in case you try to play me.”

  “Do I look dumb, brother? You’ll just pull off in your fancy car and cancel the 45 extra as soon as I get what you want,” he said. Dhata noticed, however, that there was an air of desperation to his voice.

  “You’re boring me bro. Make a choice,” he said, wanting desperately to be out of the rain. “It was you who approached me looking to score. It won’t make me any difference. I can just waltz in with my guns out when all I’m looking to do is talk. You live here, don’t you? What do you want? The big bad wolf, or a quiet guest paying you for a leisurely walk?”

  The man’s face drooped in defeat, and he held out his hand and sighed. Dhata pulled out a data-streaming card, which showed the corpse of Ida Nelson and the android twisted in the crash.

  “Shit, that’s Miss Ida, one of the first ladies,” he said, looking as if he would cry. “Oh man, she’s dead? Damn. She lives up on C, at the top floor. Wait. I thought you said you weren’t a John. You here investigating us or something?”

  “I’m not a John, I won’t say it again, and I’m not a bounty hunter, so calm down. They couldn’t care less about you squatters, and if I was one of them, I wouldn’t come here alone. As to the lady, she had something that belonged to me, and I need to collect it, since she’s obviously dead. Where’s her apartment?”

  “You’re fucking cold, bro. But I’ll show you. Damn, I’m going to really need to get high after that image,” Tony said.

  “Help me out and stay straight, and you can fly high for a week, alright? Keep jerking me around and I might just break my foot off in your ass,” Dhata said. He fanned back his duster for Tony to see that he was armed with an outlawed .357 magnum revolver, which unlike an electroshock tube, wouldn’t merely stun the victim of his wrath.

  “You say you’re not a John, but you got a gun the size of a tank on your hip,” he said flatly. “Whatever you are, I don’t want to piss you off. I will take you through to where Miss Ida lived. Shit is just sad, bro. She looked out for us kids here in the wreck.”

  “Are you a Child of Paradise?” Dhata said, falling in step with him as he casually adjusted his duster to make sure that it and his right hand remained concealed.

  “Nah,” Tony said, dismissively, “But they own the wrecks. Hell, they own the whole neighborhood. That’s one of their temples right there. We stay in Building D, but we ain’t members; not like that, anyway. My daddy worked for the prophet, so he gave us free housing. Get what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, I get it. Paradise takes care of his own. So, I take it your family is loyal to the prophet,” Dhata said.

  “Momma got a picture of him in the living room and everything, if that answers your question,” Tony said.

  They walked past several people milling about with their umbrellas, decked out in their robes, all of them smiling as if they had taken the most euphoric of drugs. The sign near the buildings read “Humanity Gardens,” which caused Dhata to laugh inwardly at Paradise’s ego. Once he had scanned his ICL at the fence for entry, Tony took him onto a walkway that bridged a sea of patchy grass, littered with bottles and all manner of refuse.

  When they got closer to the first building, which was labeled A, the walkway became bordered by tall rose bushes, immaculately manicured—a sign that they were plastic replicas and not grown—but the grounds turned out to be a lot cleaner than they had appeared from the parking lot. Real brick walls without technological advancements was a rare thing to witness. Manton Paradise was all for humanity destroying the machines, so naturally, everything he and his followers adopted was human-developed or dated back to the 21st century.

  Tony led him through several tough-looking hools, posted up as if they were guards, to the third building, which was more rundown than the former two. They found an elevator that squeaked so loud that Dhata was sure they would come crashing to their deaths. When it dinged and they stepped out on the fifteenth floor, he counted his blessings and followed Tony down a filthy hallway, full of graffiti, and wide-open doors revealing vacant rooms.

  “Little punks fucked up this floor,” Tony said, as if he could read Dhata’s thoughts. “It used to be nice, but some of the tenants moved on once the prophet was put into the system.”

  Strange palace for a ‘first lady,’ Dhata thought, gripping the handle of his pistol as they pressed on. “If you’re leading me into a trap, it’s not going to end well for you and yours.”

  “Man, you have a kill-cannon on your hip. You think I’m suicidal or something?” Tony said. “Here we go. This her, right here. Miss Ida’s house, but I’ll be square with you, man. I haven’t seen her here in a couple of months.”

  “What?” Dhata said, suddenly irritated. “You couldn’t tell me that before taking me up inside that janky-ass elevator?”

  “You didn’t say you needed to see her, you said you needed to collect something from her house,” Tony said, looking frightened. “Come on brother, I made good on my end, so how about them credits you promised me, huh?”

  “Open the door and I’ll pay you if this place is really hers,” Dhata said.

  Tony grinned his awful grin, then reached into his pocket and produced an old flathead screwdriver. He jammed it into the door’s locking panel and rocked it back and forth until the red light turned blue. Reaching for the handle of the door, he twisted it once and pushed it open.

  The smell of mildew struck Dhata’s nose, and he could hear the wind blowing from a window that had been busted out. The apartment looked to have been tossed, but the furniture remained, along with the hanging photographs, one showing Ida Nelson standing next to Manton Paradise. Dhata reached into his pocket and grabbed a UCC chip, charged it with fifty credits, and freed up five to be immediately accessed.

  “Now remember what I said, Tony. If I get ambushed by those hools, the UCCs stay frozen. Enjoy your ride, and don’t say a word to anyone about Ida’s death, you hear?” He tossed the man the chip, and he caught it deftly, before reading the amount.

  “Righteous, brother, don’t you worry,” he said. “I’m a man of my word. Pleasure doing business.”

  “Likewise,” Dhata said.

  Chapter 5

  First Lady of Rust

  What stood spread out before Dhata as he stood in front of the door was a studio apartment, with a bed in one corner and the kitchen in another. Although the furniture had been turned over and the carpet was wet and stank, Dhata could tell that at one time, this had been quite the cozy home. The only other door led to a bathroom, which he promptly checked with his pistol out.

  Considering the state of the apartment, he expected it to be disgusting, but was surprised to find it clean and together, though the water from the tap was still on. Turning it off, he started through the cupboard and checked the shower by pulling back the curtain, but there were no dead bodies or synthetic body parts. After a long career of tracking down synth hunters, this wouldn’t have surprised him had he seen it,

 

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