Cassidy considered how badly he really needed to know what caused Garrett to fail out of the program. It wasn’t just that he didn’t make the cut. He completely changed after the experience. “I need to know.”

  Brie sighed. “Okay. Just stand there and don’t say a word. I need to concentrate. As soon as I go in, their AI defenses will move against me. I’ll deploy my own countermeasures. Then it’s just a race against the clock.”

  “Whatever you need to do.”

  Cassidy remained still as Brie leaned in closer to her laptop display. Her hands moved in front of it, fingers dancing like she was playing an invisible musical instrument. He could see the colors on the display shifting and changing in the whites of her eyes.

  Ten minutes had passed before she straightened up, her hands finally falling still. A line of sweat had gathered across her brow, her breathing heavy. She pushed the laptop to the floor and stood up.

  “Well?” Cassidy asked.

  “Are you sure you had the right name?” Brie replied.

  “Mason Garrett. I’m sure.”

  “Sorry, Detective. There’s no Garrett in the Dome’s system. Either you got bad intel, or his records weren’t just deleted, they were completely erased.”

  Cassidy didn’t move. He stared at Brie while he considered the implications. Why would the Special Investigator who had left the case files lie about Garrett’s history? If he didn’t, why would the UDF erase Garrett’s history? What were they trying to hide?

  “There’s something ugly going on,” Cassidy said. “It already cost me my son. Brie, I need you to locate Leonidas. Whatever you have to do. If I need to pay you, I’ll work it out.”

  “I already told you I would do it as a favor. How do I get back to you with what I find?”

  “I’ll come back, same time tomorrow.”

  “That might not be long enough. And if you keep coming around, the other girls will start asking questions I don’t want to answer.”

  “Then come find me when you have something. I’m at the Agora Hotel. If I’m not there, leave instructions with Shell.”

  “Shell?”

  “The night manager.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Cassidy smiled. “Thank you.”

  “You saved my ass once, Hall. After this, we’re even. I’ll show you out.”

  “I can find my own way back to the ladder.”

  “I’ll call up to Kilo to unblock the door then. Good luck out there.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see you when I see you,” Cassidy said.

  Brie made a face, confused by the statement. “Not if I see you first.”

  Cassidy left the room and made his way back to the ladder. The hatch was already open when he arrived. The big kid—Kilo, he supposed—waited for him there.

  “Hey Hall,” he said, much friendlier now. “You need a rickshaw or a cab or something?”

  “No thanks,” Cassidy replied. “I’ll walk.”

  He hadn’t gotten much concrete information from Brie, but he still had a lot to think about.

  Chapter 21

  Cassidy kept his head down as he walked, doing his best to ignore the activity around him—the sounds of people talking, the advertisements, the rickshaws, scooters and cars navigating through the streets. So far in his mission, every step he had taken had only stretched that road out further ahead, adding more unknown variables into the equation. On the surface, the job was simple. Catch up to Garrett, take him down, bring him in. But then Dorne had gotten involved somehow even though she was dead. And then some hacker calling themselves Leonidas entered the picture.

  And even the waters surrounding Garrett were muddied. Cassidy had read his case file. Garrett had gone to the Dome, flunked out and then became a fugitive. He had made his way from city to city around the planet, and now he was hanging out here. But Brie couldn’t find mention of Garrett in the Dome’s database, and he had no reason to doubt that she had tried. Had Nevis or someone higher up in the Initiative made sure the records were inaccessible to him, just like they had tried to keep Hall from reminding him about Dorne?

  If so, why?

  That was the question that kept cycling through Cassidy’s mind as he walked. Not because of the questions themselves or the information he might gather from answering them. Because they felt connected. Like two pieces of an expanding plot he wasn’t close to understanding. He couldn’t help wondering if Hall had the answers already, buried deep inside his memories. He had already decided to leave that option as a last resort, but he struggled to keep himself from searching the repo. It would make everything so easy.

  Too easy.

  Self-control. Self-preservation. He didn’t want to go corrupt over this. Not after forty-nine transfers. Not when he was so close. Nevis had suggested he take a counterintuitive approach to the mission.

  That’s exactly what he was going to do.

  “Back again already?” the clerk at the pharmacy asked as Hall entered.

  He paused at the threshold for a few seconds, letting his coat slough off the remaining rain, which ran into a pre-existing puddle beneath his feet. A young couple was in the place with him, over in the corner near the legal enhancers. The clerk was a couple of rows away, straightening the shelves and keeping an eye on them from a safe distance. She was looking at him right now.

  “Jazz still in?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you let him know I’m here?”

  She sighed, glancing at the pair. Cassidy nodded, and she headed for the back room.

  The couple, noticing her retreat, looked over at him. He glared back at them defiantly. If they intended to leave without paying, they wouldn’t make it very far. Their heads swung back to the shelves in unison, and they selected a couple of products and marched them over toward the counter. They eyed Cassidy suspiciously a few more times on the way, probably trying to compute their odds of a successful steal. He didn’t move away from the doorway, further stymieing their plans.

  As the door to the back room started to open, the man reached toward his hip beneath his raincoat. The woman turned toward Cassidy, beginning a similar motion and revealing a pistol on her hip. It was a shit weapon, the kind of gun anyone could pick up on the street for a minimum of coin. Cassidy almost felt bad for her.

  He moved to pull his needlegun, turning his body so his coat would catch any slugs the woman fired. A gun like that couldn’t produce enough force to defeat the bulletproof material.

  He didn’t need to bother.

  The clerk didn’t come through the door.

  Jazz did.

  Cassidy barely kept pace with what happened next. The man had barely gotten his gun free of his hip holster when Jazz rushed him, his hard punch slamming the guy in the throat. The man’s head snapped back, knocking him off-balance and into the shelves behind him. He crumpled to the floor at the foot of the shelves, over-the-counter products raining down around him. Jazz grabbed the woman’s arm from behind, a quick squeeze breaking it and forcing her to drop her gun. He pushed her back too, not as forcefully, but she still collapsed to her knees beside her man.

  Cassidy reversed his movements, dropping his hand and straightening toward Jazz, who glanced over to him with a slight nod and smile before returning his attention to the pair.

  “You two aren’t from around here,” he said, crouching down in front of them. “Want to know how I know? Because the people who live in this part of town know not to screw with Jazz if they want to keep breathing.” The man had his mouth open, gasping for air. “Like you probably want to keep breathing. Don’t you?”

  The man nodded.

  Jazz produced a small knife from his pocket. “I crushed your windpipe. I can fix it well enough for you to breathe, but it’s going to hurt. Do you want me to fix it?”

  “Please,” the woman said, clutching her broken wrist. “We’re sorry.”

  “You should be,” Jazz said. “I’m just trying to run an honest business here. My prices are fair.”

  Cassidy almost laughed at the honest business part of the statement.

  “We’re sorry,” the woman repeated. “Please help him.”

  Jazz looked at the man still struggling for air, the raise of his eyebrow asking the guy if he was agreeable. He nodded and Jazz put the knife low against his throat between his Adam's Apple and the cartilage there, jabbed it in, and yanked it back out. Blood ran down the man’s neck, soaking into his shirt. The man’s face changed immediately, the emergency tracheotomy allowing him to exchange oxygen again.

  “Now get out of here,” Jazz said. “I recommend a hospital.”

  “Thank you,” the woman said. She helped the man up and they pushed past Cassidy in their rush to get out of the pharmacy.

  “Idiots,” Jazz said, looking at Cassidy. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

  “I didn’t expect to be back so soon,” he replied, tipping his head and looking curiously at him. “Mods?”

  Jazz smiled. “Type two muscle fiber replacement with three hundred percent enhanced delivery.” He tapped under his eye. “Plus the latest Sliver tech.”

  Cassidy looked at Jazz’s eye. It didn’t have the slight clouding typical of a Sliver. “I can’t even see it.”

  “It’s the latest tech; that’s why. And not entirely legal. No way is the UDF paying what I paid for this to outfit their Marines. I saw those assholes were packing from behind the door. And I saw them make their move to ambush me. They’re lucky I didn’t kill them outright.”

  “Feeling generous today?”

  He laughed. “Maybe. I noticed you were ready to assist. I appreciate that.”

  “Just doing my job.”

  “Whatever job that is.” He laughed harder. “Come on back to my office, my friend. Ollie, can you clean that mess up?” he motioned to the spilled shelf.

  “Of course, sir,” the clerk replied.

  Cassidy followed Jazz back to his office, sitting opposite the desk. “You mentioned earlier that you might be able to set up a meeting between me and Garrett,” he said as soon as Jazz sat down.

  “I did say that,” Jazz answered.

  “I gave it a little more thought. If you can make it happen, I want to meet with him.”

  “You’re sure? I know you have your own set of connections in this town, but I can’t vouch for what might happen.”

  “Understood. I need to talk to him. Tell him I want to come to him directly because I know he can see through the bullshit.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You don’t need to know. That’s the message.”

  “It might take me a little time to get things sorted out. Where can I contact you?”

  “The Agora.”

  “Staying close by, then? Don’t you have a home?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  The statement confused Jazz. “Okay. Consider it done. I’ll be in touch as soon as I have something finalized.”

  Cassidy stood up. “I appreciate it.”

  “You might not. How’s the piss treating you?” He glanced down at Cassidy’s knees.

  “Everything you said about it was accurate.”

  Jazz laughed. “Yup. Take care out there, my friend.”

  “Thanks. See you when I see you.”

  He left the office, and then the pharmacy, headed back toward the hotel. After forty-nine transfers, going straight to the target was the riskiest and possibly dumbest thing he had ever done.

  But damn if it wasn’t counterintuitive.

  Chapter 22

  “Hey, Hall,” Shell said when Cassidy entered the tiny lobby of the Agora. “Any luck?”

  “Any luck with what?” he replied.

  “With whatever you were doing out there.”

  Cassidy shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. How about you?”

  “I’ve got something to show you.”

  “The cameras?”

  She vanished through a side door, and then unlocked the steel door leading into the lobby, pushing it open and sticking her face out. “Come on back.”

  “You trust me that much?”

  It was her turn to shrug. “I figure you could have killed me up in your room if that’s what you were after.” Cassidy entered the small hallway. Shell closed and locked the door behind him. “Just leave your coat out here. I don’t need you dripping water everywhere.”

  “Sure,” Cassidy said. He removed the raincoat and dropped it on the floor. “What did you find?”

  “Through here.”

  There was a door opposite the entrance to the reception counter. She pushed it open, revealing a small security room with a chair positioned in front of a computer and a handful of video streams projecting into the air ahead of it. The hotel had more cameras set up than he had thought, though none of them seemed to be active inside the guest-occupied part of the facility, except for the lobby.

  “That’s the rooftop right now,” she said, pointing to the view of the top of the building. With no roto pads, there was nothing but HVAC machinery, rain collection units and purifiers, and a small, cordoned off tower where third-party network equipment had been installed. “You can see, there’s nowhere to drop someone in from above.”

  “No,” Cassidy agreed.

  “Here’s the basement,” Shell said, pointing to another camera. “Well, these six are all different parts of the basement. There’s an emergency access door there.” She shifted her finger to a different camera, which showed the inside of the door.

  “Do you have a feed of the alley?” Cassidy asked.

  “No. I don’t need that kind of trouble.”

  “Understood. This is live. What about in the past?”

  “The system keeps six months of footage,” Shell said. “I didn’t go through it all manually, but it’s supposed to set a breakpoint whenever a camera picks up anything over the size of a cat. If it didn’t, I’d have hundreds of hours of rat videos.” She laughed.

  “What did you get?” Cassidy asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing? That’s what you wanted to show me?”

  “Yeah. I figured you’d want to see it for yourself so you’d know I wasn’t lying. Otherwise you might think I’m part of whatever was going on with that little drone. That could be bad for business, and like I said, as much as I hate this job, I need it.”

  “And you’re telling me the cameras didn’t capture anything.”

  “Yup. Take a seat, you can look for yourself.”

  Cassidy shook his head. “That isn’t necessary. I believe you.”

  “You do? Why?”

  “You have a lot more to lose than I do. If there’s nothing from the cameras, that would mean whoever sent it is staying here.”

  “I thought about that too, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Shell made a face. “I’m not supposed to talk about other guests. That’s part of what keeps people coming back to the Agora.”

  “Tell me.”

  She hesitated while Cassidy stared at her. Then she exhaled sharply. “Okay. Truth is, we only have three rooms booked right now. One of them is another loner type like you, a dealer or something I think. Another is an old guy who came here to die. And a couple that came for a little fun.”

  “So it could be the loner,” Cassidy said. It wasn’t that uncommon for old folks with no family to rent a hotel room, overdose on something illegal they got outside and wait for the staff to find them the next morning. In some ways, it was a service because it meant their death would be discovered that much sooner. Otherwise they could be rotting away in their apartments for months when the space was badly needed.

  “That’s what I thought too, except his room is on the other side of the building which is routed through a different ventilation system leading to the main boiler. I don’t think that drone’s wings would have survived passing through the heating element.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Cassidy agreed. “What if he used a different room?”

  “All the doors have sensors. I would have a record if a door to an unoccupied room were opened.”

  Cassidy’s eyes traced the different cameras while he considered the problem. The drone had to come from somewhere. “And there’s no access to ventilation from outside?”

  “There’s exhaust on the roof, but again, the drone would have to pass through the heating element to get to your room.”

  “A dead end, then. At least for now.”

  “Sorry,” Shell said.

  “It’s not your fault. Thanks for looking into it.”

  “I wish I could have been more helpful.” She paused. “We have our shift change in a couple of hours. Maybe we can go get a coffee together? It’s tough for me to make friends working the night shift in a place like this.”

  “Maybe some other time,” Cassidy said.

  Shell nodded, clearly disappointed. “Sure. Well, let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with.”

  “I will,” Cassidy said, eyes still locked on the feeds.

  “Let me show you back out.”

  Cassidy didn’t move right away. He didn’t see anything suspicious in the streams, but looking at them was triggering something in Hall. Find out what happened to Dorne. That’s what Nicholas had told him that Hall had told him to say.

  He creased his eyebrows and reached into his pocket, pulling out his ClearPhone.

  “Is something wrong?” Shell asked.

  “No,” Cassidy replied. He activated the device. “Just a thought.”

  “What’s the thought?”

  “What if the drone didn’t come from outside the room? The streets are crowded. Maybe someone stuck it to my coat. It’s definitely small enough.”

  “You think someone was following you? That’s hard to do.”

  “I know. But let’s say they did. What if the drone wasn’t trying to take something from my phone? What if it was leaving something? A message, maybe.”

  He turned away from her to enter the Unity OS. A notification flashed on his screen. Damn it, sometimes he hated when he was right. That the message was inside the Unity OS was a massive clue of its own.