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Chapter Five

“I will see your ten.” Klaus-Wilhelm von Schröder tossed six chips into the growing pool in the middle of the small, round table. “And I’ll raise you fifty.”

“Wonderful,” Peng grumped, sorting his cards. “Seems our newest commissioner has yet another hot hand.”

“He’s bluffing,” Hawke declared without looking up from his cards.

“No, he’s not.” Tyrel placed her cards facedown on the table. “I’m certain of it.”

“How can you be so sure?” Hawke asked.

“A secret of the trade.” Tyrel smiled at her fellow commissioners, all gathered in a modest Argus Station lounge reserved for their private use. “As you may recall, I’m in charge of every detective in the entire solar system.”

Peng snorted.

“And yes, Peng,” Tyrel continued pointedly. “Before you say anything, my detectives can tell their asses from holes in the ground.” She raised her nose haughtily. “It’s part of their basic training.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peng said, acting surprised. “I didn’t say anything. Did I say anything?”

“You didn’t say anything,” Hawke muttered, still scrutinizing his cards.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to,” Tyrel countered.

“Well, if you want to get technical about it.” Peng rolled his glowing eyes.

“Vesna?” Klaus-Wilhelm asked.

“I fold.” She slid her cards forward. “And I suggest you gentlemen do the same.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Peng muttered, leaning back precariously in his virtual seat, still sorting his virtual cards while the real ones sat facedown on the table in front of him. “Uhhh.”

“That bad?” Klaus-Wilhelm asked with the tiniest hint of a smile.

“You know, Klaus,” Peng griped, “we said you could pick the entertainment tonight, but I’m noticing a distinct lack of power-ups and procedurally generated loot in this so-called game of yours.”

“Sometimes the old games are the best,” Vesna defended. “There’s a simplistic elegance to the classics.”

“‘Simplistic elegance?’” Peng frowned at his hand. “Is that what the kids call boredom nowadays?”

“You here to chat or here to play?” Klaus-Wilhelm asked.

“I’m thinking.” He glanced at his depleted pile of chips and sized it up against the Gordian commissioner’s small mountain. “Can we all just accept that I suck at this game and move on?”

“Stay in it,” Hawke said. “He’s bluffing.”

“The phrase ‘pride goeth before a fall’ comes to mind,” Tyrel said.

“And Hawke would know,” Klaus-Wilhelm added.

“Oh, too soon, Klaus!” Peng crowed. “Far too soon!”

Klaus-Wilhelm glanced to Hawke, but if the Argo commissioner took any offense, he didn’t show it. The two men had butted heads during the Dynasty Crisis, leading Hawke to pull rank and marginalize then Vice-Commissioner Klaus-Wilhelm and the rest of Gordian at the moment their expertise was needed most. The result had been a disaster with one of SysPol’s Directive-class cruisers—the mightiest vessels in their arsenal—lost with all hands and another two fleeing the battle with their tails tucked firmly between their legs.

“Just for that, I’m going to stick this one out.” Peng tossed five of his abstract chips onto the pile. “I call.”

“Jamieson?” Klaus-Wilhelm asked.

“In my defense, Klaus,” Hawke began, finally looking up from his cards, “I did admit I was wrong about you. In fact, I’ve come to deeply respect the unique insight you, as someone originally pulled from 1958, bring to your post and to SysPol as a whole. Hell, I think it’s safe to say none of us would even be here if you and Gordian hadn’t pulled us out of the fire. Now that I’ve taken a second look at your record with a…let’s call it a clearer head, I see how you’ve not only adjusted, but excelled in the present. You’re a tough, adaptable leader, and I find myself thankful you’re on our side.”

“But you still think I’m bluffing.”

“You are so bluffing!” Hawke counted out five chips and placed them in a column next to the betting pool. “I call. Let’s see those cards!”

“Priority message for Commissioner Schröder,” said the Argus Station attendant.

“Oh, for the love of—” Peng threw up his hands. “Why now?”

“No such thing as off duty for us,” Tyrel said simply.

Klaus-Wilhelm opened the message header above his palm, and his eyes grew cold.

“My apologies, everyone.” He set his cards down and rose from his seat. “I need to take this.”

“Klaus, would you mind?” Hawke gestured to the downturned cards. “Before you leave?”

“Of course.” He slipped a finger underneath one card and flipped them over as a unit, revealing a full house with aces over kings.

“Oh, come on!” Peng exclaimed.

“He wasn’t bluffing,” Hawke groused.

“I told you.” Tyrel shook her head sadly. “I told you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

Klaus-Wilhelm stepped into an adjacent room and let the door seal shut behind him. He opened a communications window.

“Is this true, Günther?” he asked gruffly.

“Regrettably so, Commissioner,” replied the nonsentient program who also doubled as his secretary. “Both Doctor Andover-Chen and Chief Engineer Delacroix are confirmed dead.”

“Permanently?”

It still surprised him when he heard himself asking questions like this. Despite Hawke’s compliment, many aspects of thirtieth-century technology, society, and law remained less than clear to him, but he worked to remedy those inadequacies every chance he found. He’d never be as well immersed in this time as someone born to it, but he’d be damned if he’d let that affect his duties in the slightest.

“Fortunately, Doctor Andover-Chen possesses a connectome backup,” Günther replied, “and I have already notified the First MindBank of Norfolk of his loss. Once I have the official death certificate from Kronos Station, I will forward it to the bank’s headquarters, which will commence the legal work between the bank and SysGov. As long as the doctor did not have any additional stipulations, his revival should follow shortly thereafter.”

“Stipulations?”

“Sometimes individuals will place additional requirements on the bank before their connectome can be legally revived, such as specifications for more stringent verification of their original’s death. Beyond the government-issued certificate, of course. Other rarer cases involve conditioning revival on the living status of others, though these are outliers.”

“Give me an example,” Klaus-Wilhelm said, never looking past an opportunity to learn something new.

“A synthoid husband with a backup may not wish to be revived if his organic wife passed away in the same accident. In those cases, the connectome backup is deleted without ever being placed in a run-state, per the wishes of the individual.”

“I could see that happening,” he said, his voice softer as his mind drifted back to his beloved Yulia’s broken body. How she died in his arms with the charred remains of their three daughters nearby, the daughters he’d tricked her into believing she’d saved. He shook the morbid thought away. “If I recall, connectome saving isn’t mainstream, so couples with mixed preferences are bound to occur.”

“That is correct, Commissioner. Only about one in twenty SysGov citizens utilize the practice.”

“Does Andover-Chen have any extra requirements?”

“I cannot say for certain,” Günther replied. “These are private arrangements between the individual and the bank. We will have to wait for the First MindBank to provide us with an update. However, I consider it unlikely.”

“And once he’s revived, will they use the synthoid in storage here on Argus?”

“No, Commissioner.”

“Why not?”

“The First MindBank will print out a replica of the synthoid Doctor Andover-Chen inhabited at the time he backed up his connectome, and he will be revived in the same location the save took place. Maintaining this continuity is standard practice for connectome banks following an individual’s death.”

“I see.” Klaus-Wilhelm thought on this and nodded. “Makes sense to bring them back without a jarring change in location. How old is his backup?”

“The doctor made his most recent save six months ago.”

“Damn,” he breathed. “Gordian Division hasn’t been around for much longer. He’s going to lose a lot. What about Delacroix?”

“Regrettably, the chief engineer never made a connectome save. He is a permanent loss to us.”

“How the hell did this happen?” he demanded.

“The initial report from the Saturn State Police declares the cause of death a connectome transit accident.”

“An accident suddenly kills two of my best men?” Klaus-Wilhelm growled. “Like hell it was!”

“Sorry, Commissioner. I am only relaying the report’s contents.”

Verdammte Scheiße!” Klaus-Wilhelm paced over to the window. It wasn’t a real window but a virtual one since the room was located near the center of the Argus Station. He stared down at the round, beautiful arch of Earth below his feet.

Andover-Chen had been one of his first hires into the Gordian Division. Back then, they had been two leading chronometric physicists, Doctors Matthew Andover and Chen Wang-shu. The two hit it off so well they integrated their minds, a process Klaus-Wilhelm still wasn’t entirely clear on, resulting in a singular individual who chose the name Andover-Chen.

Joachim Delacroix’s recruitment followed after both Andover-Chen and Raibert Kaminski, one of his top agents, recommended the chronometric engineer. Between Andover-Chen’s impeccable science and Joachim Delacroix’s meticulous engineering, the two men had proven instrumental in helping to pull Gordian Division up by their collective bootstraps.

And he was supposed to believe both had died in an accident. An accident!

Maybe it was, but that didn’t make it stink any less.

But what to do about it?

“Who was scheduled to assist them with the impeller testing?” Klaus-Wilhelm asked.

“The doctor specifically requested Agent Kaminski and his team aboard the Kleio.”

“Naturally.” He pulled up a map of the solar system and zoomed in on the TTV Kleio’s flight plan. It was puttering along at a comfortable one gee. “Send orders for Kleio to shorten its flight time to Saturn as much as possible. I need some familiar eyes on this problem.”

“Abstract agents would be able to reach Saturn faster.”

“After I just lost two good men to a transmission ‘accident’? No way in hell!”

“Understood, Commissioner. Shall I cancel Kleio’s impeller testing?”

“No. That’s important, too. We’re in desperate need of new ships, but Raibert’s team needs to look into the deaths as well.” He paused and considered the limited resources Gordian Division had out that far. Would four agents and one ship be enough? “What about the other divisions? Are any of them involved yet?”

“Not at the moment,” Günther said. “Themis Division has not taken note of the deaths since the initial report from the Saturn State Police classified them as accidents.”

“Then we need to fix that. Send a direct message to the Kronos Station commander.” Klaus-Wilhelm thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Hargreaves! Send a message straight to Hargreaves. I want the local Themis Division to dig into this, and I want them to keep digging until they hit bedrock. Or whatever the Saturn equivalent is.”

“Metallic hydrogen?”

“Yes. That. They’re to keep digging until they hit metallic hydrogen, you hear me?”

“Yes, Commissioner. I hear you, and I will include an appropriate reference in the message to Commander Hargreaves.”

“This is to be their top priority. Am I clear? Their top priority!”

* * *

Commander Charles Hargreaves sat at his glass desk positioned at the eye of the pyramid, though technically Kronos Station possessed two such locations, since its SysPol blue hull formed an octahedron, or two pyramids with their bases stuck together. The walls of his office formed a virtual panorama of the surrounding space, with Saturn and the grand sweep of its rings to his back.

“Urgent message for you, Chuck.”

Hargreaves stopped reading the latest disappointing field report on the hunt for the Apple Cypher. The broad shoulders of his synthoid body slumped a little, and he let out a tired exhale. He took a moment to compose himself, smoothed back his blond hair, and sat up in his seat.

“Maggie?” he asked.

“Yeah, Chuck?” His integrated companion materialized in his office, taking the form of a beautiful blond in a barely-there red string bikini. Water beaded on her alabaster skin, and her auburn hair clung to her neckline. A salty ocean breeze tickled his senses, and he calmed a little as her abstract form sat down on the edge of his desk.

He’d met Detail-Magnifier-Supreme eight years ago after his IC at the time left him, citing his “obsessive focus on his job” as the reason for its departure. Hargreaves didn’t think of himself as career obsessed. Maybe career minded. Or career conscious. He wouldn’t be the commander of an entire state’s worth of SysPol officers otherwise.

But obsessed? Hardly.

Back then, Maggie didn’t see him as a lost cause either. She’d been working as a civilian contractor for Argo Division at the time, analyzing their logistics processes and proposing optimizations. The two hit it off at a Kronos Station singles mixer, and it wasn’t long before she proposed a low-level integration. She even changed her avatar into something more…appealing than the literal datasheet it had been before.

One thing led to another, and before he knew it, she’d lured him into a wild night in one of her private abstractions. Their relationship grew from there, and the two had even flirted with the idea of marriage, but he didn’t feel that would work out unless either he transitioned to full abstraction or she switched into a synthoid. Neither of them wanted to make the jump, but they still both enjoyed their current arrangement.

“When is it ever not urgent?” Hargreaves asked dully.

“Fair enough.” Maggie brushed sand off her thigh. “But this one looks extra urgent.”

“Is it really urgent, though?” he pressed.

“Can’t tell. Haven’t opened it.”

“Then what makes it look so urgent?”

“It’s from Commissioner Schröder.” She brought up the message header.

“Uhh,” he groaned, shoulders slumping again.

“And it’s marked with every priority flag available.”

“Yes, that sounds like him.” Hargreaves pushed the Apple Cypher report away. “It must be so easy for the commissioners. They can shoot off orders whenever they want, and they don’t have to worry about us station commanders mouthing off to their faces because, guess what? I’m over a light-hour away.” He frowned at the unopened message. “Almost makes me want to abstract just so I can more easily transmit back to Earth and tell them what I think to their faces.”

“You totally should!” She clapped her hands together.

“But I won’t. Wouldn’t be worth the bother.”

“Oh, you tease.” She winked at him.

“All right.” He blew a breath out the side of his mouth. “Let’s see what’s so important. Don’t want to piss off Lamont’s new golden boy.”

Maggie grabbed the header and expanded it with a snap of her wrist. Her eyes flicked over the contents with inhuman speed.

“Two Gordian Division agents are dead,” she summarized. “Schröder wants it looked into.”

“Why aren’t we doing that already?”

“SSP declared the deaths accidents.”

“They would do that,” he groaned with a voice flush with a thousand frustrations. “Hence Schröder’s desire for an investigation. Seems like a reasonable next step.”

“His message also includes instructions to, and I quote, ‘keep digging until you hit metallic hydrogen,’ unquote.”

“What the hell?” Hargreaves’ face twisted as if he’d sucked on a lemon. “We have two dead officers. Does he think I’m not going to take this seriously?”

“I couldn’t say. Would you like me to ask him?”

“No.” He leaned back, and the chair conformed around him. “No need to antagonize him. Let him know we’ve received his message and we’re on it. Forward his request to Mitch.”

“Will do,” Maggie said.

“And make sure Mitch knows this one’s a priority.”

“Higher than the Apple Cypher?”

“Nah.” Hargreaves gave the notion a short, dismissive wave. “Not that high.”

* * *

Superintendent Mitch was full of opinions, and he considered it his duty to share those opinions with anyone who would listen, which was one of the reasons why he worked in a private corner of the Kronos Station infostructure.

Alone.

Pleasantly alone, in his mind.

He enjoyed the solitude. It helped him concentrate on his job.

Mitch had opinions about names. He’d once dated an AC named Serene Wind Against the Chimes of Reality, and he’d shared with her his opinion on how stupid most AC names were. The date had sped downhill from there.

“Mitch what?” people would ask.

“Just Mitch,” he’d reply. So much so he’d considered legally changing his name to “Just Mitch.” That would teach them to stop pestering him about his name.

Mitch’s vast repository of opinions extended to avatars. As the person in charge of Themis Division for the entire Saturn State, he unfortunately had to attend regular meetings with the other division superintendents, who had requested on multiple occasions that he stop showing up to the meetings without an avatar.

In response, Mitch searched for the most generic stick figure avatar he could find and arrived at the next meeting “wearing” it. His fellow superintendents, clearly lacking a sense of humor, called his attire “offensively simplistic.” After that, Mitch started showing up as a giant black monolith with the words SOUND ONLY on the front.

In response, they filed an official complaint to the station commander.

Petty little twerps.

Mitch’s opinions covered a wide range of topics, including the many advantages an abstract existence enjoyed over those repulsive walking meat suits organic citizens called bodies. Honestly, why hadn’t everyone abstracted by now? It baffled him to no end, and don’t even get him started about sex!

Just two disgusting meat sacks gyrating against each other until a spurt of revolting fluid ejaculates out of one and into the other, he thought. If he’d possessed a body, he would have shuddered at the horrible image.

Mitch didn’t see the point, and he had opinions—lots of opinions—about procreation. If he ever wanted to have kids, he and his abstract partner (a lovely Panoptics Division analyst named Mathematical Adventures Version Eighty) would obtain the appropriate licenses and write the damn code themselves. Not leave evolution to the vagaries of which sperm wins the race!

Mitch was not a popular AC on Kronos Station, except with a select few who understood him, like Charles Hargreaves. Hargreaves didn’t like Mitch on a personal level—few people did—but he respected the Themis superintendent’s dedication to his job.

Because crime was one of the few things Mitch found more repulsive than sex. It sickened him through and through, made the insides of his mind churn and gurgle until all he wanted to do was find a quiet corner and vomit up all his ones and zeros. SysGov was an advanced, prosperous, peaceful society the likes of which the solar system had never seen, and brain-damaged idiots still insisted on mucking up the works!

Mitch didn’t want a promotion. Ever. He didn’t want a transfer. Ever. All he desired out of life was to stay right where he was and keep kicking crime in the figurative ass.

A priority message arrived from Hargreaves’ office, and Mitch opened it immediately. He then pulled up the SSP report from the Ballast Heights transceiver tower.

“An accident,” he scoffed, though no one could hear him. “Yeah, right. I mean, what are the odds?”

He threw together a quick mathematical simulation. The odds were really low.

He dispatched an order to the SSP team who’d filed the report to return to the tower and remain on site until the SysPol detective arrived. They wouldn’t like that, and the detective would get an earful, but he didn’t care. If these state troopers would just do their damned jobs and not shrug off the potential homicide of two Gordian agents as “insert most convenient excuse here,” then maybe he’d be more inclined to play nice.

But they hadn’t and he wasn’t.

“Now to pick a detective.”

He already knew the kind of mind to look for, and he chuckled when he thought of Commissioner Schröder’s words in the attached original message. Yes, if the SSP saw enough excuses to classify it as an accident, then this case might indeed require some digging, and he searched through his detectives on or near Janus for the desired tenacity.

Technically, Mitch wasn’t the one who assigned individual detectives to cases; he, as superintendent, assigned a case to a specific department, and the department’s chief inspector then chose the detective for the job.

Technically.

Realistically, he knew how to manipulate the system to get the results he wanted.

A young detective by the name of Isaac Cho caught his eye for two reasons. First, his track record during his probationary years showed all the hallmarks of a stubborn persistence, of someone who would keep tugging at the threads of a case until he’d solved it or his superior yanked him off the case, and even then, he’d leave with the mournful words, “But the job isn’t done yet, Chief.”

That’s the impression Cho’s record gave him. The kid was green, no doubt about that, and he’d yet to prove he possessed the instincts and intuition that could elevate him from a good detective to a great one, but Mitch saw potential in him.

The second reason Cho stood out was because he belonged to Chief Inspector Omar Raviv’s department.

Themis departments were positioned dynamically based on their case load. One month, Raviv’s detectives might be on Titan, the next they could be in the Atlas Shoal or any number of other locals in the Saturn State. Right now, Raviv’s whole department was spread all over Janus-Epimetheus, stretched thin by their hunt for the Apple Cypher.

That meant Cho, who was currently approaching Saturn in a civilian transport, was the only unallotted resource Raviv had. Therefore, if Mitch sent him another case, Raviv would almost assuredly assign it to the only free hand available.

Perfect.

Mitch finalized the orders and transmitted them to Raviv.

* * *

Chief Inspector Omar Raviv was not having a good day.

He stood in the middle of an SSP situation room located near the top of the First Precinct Tower in Ballast Heights, his head hunched forward slightly, eyes glowering at the virtual wall display. The rest of the situation room was quiet as the dozen senior detectives and analysts all watched the same news feed with him.

“Oh, God! It was horrible!” cried a woman with a hideous blue-and-red scarf. “Hiroki-chan only wanted to print a cookie for dessert, but the p-p-printer! The printer!”

“What happened next?” asked a tall and handsome reporter in a black suit with a golden scarf and a wide-brimmed hat.

“It p-printed out an apple!” The woman put her face in her hands and began sobbing.

The reporter placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“And did your son take a bite?” he asked.

The mother sniffled, composed herself a little, then nodded with solemn intensity.

“Yes, he bit into the apple,” she said at last. “Poor thing. We’d talked about the Apple Cypher at home a few times, but it felt like someone else’s problem. There’s no way it could happen here, but then Hiroki-chan…Hiroki-chan.” The mother began to tear up again. “It wasn’t a regular apple! There were all these weird glyphs inside! Oh, God. Is it going to make him sick? Is he going to be okay?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t answer that, ma’am.”

“Why isn’t SysPol doing anything? Why haven’t they stopped this maniac? We’re living in terror here!”

“We’re asking the same questions you are, ma’am. I can assure you.” The reporter turned toward the camera. “This is Dimitri Mazurek, reporting for the Saturn Herald from the Third Engine Block. Back to you, Stacy.”

The display faded to a view of the Saturn Herald newsroom with Stacy O’Neil, one of the Herald’s star anchors, seated across from Omar Raviv. He watched the prerecorded interview of himself, and his eyes narrowed as he took in the caption.

It read: POLICE BAFFLED. APPLE CYPHER HUNT AT A STANDSTILL.

“Thank you, Dimitri.” O’Neil leaned toward Raviv, immaculate in her white business suit. She adjusted her long scarf, full of the golds and reds of falling leaves. “Chief Inspector Raviv, is there anything you’d like say to the audience to start us off?”

“Well, Stacy, yes, a few things. First, I can assure your viewers we are doing everything—everything—within our power to catch the Apple Cypher. Apprehending this criminal is our main focus here on Janus, and we’ve mobilized all available Themis departments to bring a swift resolution to the crisis.

“Second, I would like to remind your viewers that our forensic specialists have performed extensive tests on these so-called glyph apples. They’re perfectly edible. The glyphs are formed from a simple and harmless coloration available in any food printer, and every printer we’ve examined has been free of malicious changes. Beyond the obvious replacement of ingredients with apple parts, that is.”

He chuckled, but when O’Neil didn’t join in, he turned it into an awkward cough.

“Chief Inspector, are you saying people can eat these apples without fear of microtech infections?”

“Yes, Stacy. That’s exactly right. I’ve tried them myself. They’re actually quite delicious.”

A new caption appeared below the first: SYSPOL MAKES DUBIOUS CLAIM. GLYPH APPLES SAFE TO EAT?

“That’s very interesting, Chief Inspector. However, I’m sure our audience is most interested in your efforts to catch the mastermind behind all this. What can you tell us about the lack of progress on the case?”

“Well, Stacy, that’s simply not true. We’ve made considerable progress.”

“But every lead so far has turned out to be a dead end.”

“True, true, but that’s just detective work for you.” Raviv put on a brave smile. “You know, I like to think of my detectives as sort of modern-day Thomas Edisons. To quote the inventor, ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.’ That’s what we’re doing here, except we’re tracing down leads instead of trying to invent the light bulb.”

Another new line appeared: CHIEF INSPECTOR COMPARES DETECTIVES TO FAMOUS SCIENTIST. DO YOU AGREE? CLICK THE LINK TO TAKE OUR SURVEY!

“Mute,” the real Raviv grunted, and his recording fell silent.

The situation room was eerily quiet as his interview continued to play without sound, almost as if his subordinates wanted to hear from him first, to gauge how sour his mood had turned before they said anything. He rubbed his aching stomach and contemplated how the universe had conspired to torture him this way.

A month ago, he’d been the happiest man in the entire solar system, newly promoted to chief inspector and fresh back from a honeymoon in the Oort Cloud Citizenry with Elise, the love of his life. He’d married the woman of his dreams and had finally risen to the post he’d long coveted. Everything was going right for him; his horizon glowed with bright possibilities, both large and small.

And then the Apple Cypher had turned his reality into a living hell. He pictured the criminal as a black-cloaked figure with a ridiculous curled mustache, skulking from one Janus city to the next, sprinkling viruses into the infostructure as he traveled.

The image was pure fantasy. They didn’t even know if the Apple Cypher was a man, woman, AC, or a group of individuals. They didn’t know anything, despite the widespread chaos inflicted upon food printers all across Janus-Epimetheus.

Printer vandalism barely broke the threshold between prank and crime, or at least crimes SysPol dealt with, but the local media and politicians had stirred everyone into a frenzy over a couple million apples no one ordered, and so SysPol had to respond.

And they’d responded by pushing Raviv forward as their sacrificial lamb for when the public inevitably demanded someone’s head roll over Themis Division’s “incompetence.”

I’ll be lucky to get out of this with just a demotion, he thought.

He winced as his stomach acted up again, and he fished a bottle of medibot capsules out of his pocket. He pressed the side tab twice and dropped two capsules into his hand.

“Here, Chief.”

Senior Detective Grace Damphart (pronounced Damp-Heart) offered him his refreshed cup of coffee. Black, of course. Coffee didn’t need to be a pleasurable experience. It was fuel, pure and simple.

“Thank you, Grace.” Raviv took the SysPol-blue mug, a gift from his wife with the golden words CRIMINAL TEARS on the side. He tossed the capsules into his mouth and washed them down with a gulp of coffee. In his gut, the capsule walls broke apart and legions of medibots spread out, resuming their struggle to shore up the walls of his besieged stomach.

“I thought you made a good analogy there, Chief,” Damphart added, then glanced around at the other officers. “We really appreciate you sticking up for us. Feels good to know you have our backs.”

As one, the room nodded in agreement.

“Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it,” he grunted, rubbing his stomach.

“Still, Chief…” Damphart trailed off. She was a small, nervous-looking woman who normally handled sexual assault cases, but like everyone else in his department, she’d been sucked into the black hole of the hunt for the elusive Apple Cypher.

She may have looked shy and easily cowed, but underneath that tiny, anxious exterior resided a heart of gold—a heart that truly cared for the victims—and a spine of reinforced programmable-steel. Quite literally, in the second case; she’d transitioned to a synthoid after her hundredth birthday, and more than a few criminals had been caught off guard by her enhanced strength and speed.

Raviv had seen the fire in her soul once on Kronos when one of the probationary detectives insisted on calling her Damn-Fart instead of pronouncing her name correctly as Damp-Heart. He’d been surprised by her enhancements too, given how fast he’d ended up on his back staring at the ceiling.

One of the incoming feeds dinged, and Damphart glanced to her side.

“We’ve got an urgent message from Kronos,” she reported. “It’s from the super.”

“Let me see.” He pulled the message to his palm and opened it. He read it once, twice, then a third time, all the while the veins pulsed in his neck, and his face grew ever redder. “What. The Actual. Fuck.”

“Chief?”

“What the fuck is this?” Raviv blurted, and the whole situation room winced.

“What is what?” Damphart asked.

“Is Mitch trying to get me fired?” he shouted, tossing the message onto a wall for all to see. “I don’t have enough detectives as it is, and he’s giving us another case!”

“Oh my.”

“How the fuck are we supposed to handle another case at a time like this?”

“Chief, please try to calm down.”

“I need to talk to Mitch about this! We can’t take it! No one’s free! What does he want me to do, start pulling detectives off the case with the big media spotlight on it?”

“Umm, Chief?”

“The media will see that, and they’ll tear me to shreds! They’ll say I’m retreating in the face of failure or some other nonsense!”

“Chief?”

What?

“Actually, we do have one available detective.” Damphart offered him a profile, and Raviv regarded it with a dubious frown.

“You mean Isaac?”

“He’s almost back to Kronos.”

“I need him on the Apple Cypher case, same as everyone else.”

“But he’s not on the case officially. He’s still a free asset.”

“Hmm.” Raviv looked at the profile as he massaged his stomach. “I don’t know,” he muttered as he considered the options before him. None of them were good, but perhaps one was less disastrous than the others. “Though, when I think about it, Isaac’s not up to speed on the Apple Cypher, so giving him the new case will hurt less than pulling someone else.”

“That’s my reasoning as well.”

“Uh huh.” Raviv rubbed his chin. “Fine. We’ll give it to Isaac. Just let him know he’s alone on this one. I can’t spare anyone else.”

“Not to worry, Chief.” Damphart gave him a curt nod. “I’ll get the order ready for you.”


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