CHAPTER THREE

I woke up feeling like shit. My body felt fine; it was the vague, unfocused anxiety that came after a night of booze or gambling. Thoughts of Jenny clung to me like a layer on my skin. It occurred to me that I hadn’t been interested in any woman since Celeste.

To brighten my mood, I forced myself up and started the day with my morning vitamins, stowed safely in a kitchen drawer. The midday and evening vitamins had already been sorted and packaged up in clear plastic bags, ready to be brought to work. Next, I grabbed a bottle of pre-made vegan latte from the fridge, but as I chugged half the drink in one swig, I felt a twinge of worry. These cost ten bucks a piece. Absent-mindedly, I ripped shreds of label off my bottle, a pile of scraps accumulating on my kitchen counter. Things used to be so great before these damned gambling debts. I pulled out my tablet and looked longingly at my old spending patterns on a typical day before my debts.

Frank Southwood—Personal Account. Room service, $122. Mabelle’s Coffee, $10. Vitamins, $497. Mabelle’s Coffee, $10. Mabelle’s Coffee, $10. Hand sanitizer, $6. Quinn’s Vegan Palace, $48. White noise download, $5. Quinn’s Vegan Palace, $73. Hand sanitizer, $6.

And that was all just in one day. Now, I kept telling myself to spend less, but my daily habits died hard—Mabelle’s coffee, Quinn’s vegan cashew bagels, the vitamins.

Despite my gambling debts, there had still been about two hundred dollars of left on my credit card last time I looked. Maybe a bit less after I bought those gloves for Jenny. A personalized ad popped up in the corner of my screen: a new grid-patterned tie. My mouse hovered over the BUY button. Click. The next ad popped up: an e-book on veganism. Yes, I definitely needed that. Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

A few purchases later, an image of a phone came up, the letters AKATO-800 written prominently on the screen. The newest model. What had Jenny thought when she’d seen my outdated, cracked old phone last night, the AKATO-300? I dreaded the thought of her seeing that.

Click.

DECLINED.

Fuck. I must have only about fifty bucks left now, not enough for the phone. I paced the apartment, leaving a trail of label shreds on the carpet. But then an idea came. I hurried over to my storage closet and rifled through old boxes until I found an obsolete paper printer. Would it even receive signals from my tablet? It did. I studied the AKATO lettering on my phone, and it didn’t take me long to find the right font on my tablet. I adjusted the sizing, then printed out an “8,” perfectly sized. Clear, invisible tape was the last step, fitting the “8” right over top of the “3.”

It looked impeccable.

Later that afternoon I dialled Yury’s extension, hoping he’d be in the office.

“Yes?” The thin, nasal voice on the line was the same one I’d spoken with last night, when I’d called in with a data request.

“Jesus, Yury,” I said, “you’re in the office on a Saturday? I thought I taught you how to have a life.”

He exhaled a long breath. “And by that you mean gambling?”

There was a pause. He made me feel so damn guilty about that. If I’d known he was so susceptible to addiction I never would’ve taken him to the Palace. I changed the subject. “I made some progress with the Donaldson case last night. I’m going to get to the bottom of this and see if I can find out more about who killed Maclean.”

“Frank, all this about Maclean—I get it, right? I know you have a hard time just letting things be. And Maclean helped you out that time you almost left the force. I get why you want to do something about what happened to her, I really do.”

“I don’t want to do something. I am doing something.”

“When horrible, meaningless shit like this happens, who wouldn’t want to feel like they can do something about it, right? But the fact is, it’s privacy fanatics. Stingsby says the Donaldson case has no relation—”

“So you want me to just do nothing? Just do nothing while whoever killed her is still out there?” I respected Yury because of his talent, but he had no spine.

“It just worries me, because these stunts you pull, off the record, half the time they’re not even safe. Just stick to the data and get Donaldson for the petty white-collar crime shit he’s been up to—don’t dig deeper than you need to, try to find conspirators, and all that.”

“Yury, are you helping me, or are you not?”

He sighed. “What did you find out last night?”

“Looks like Donaldson might be having an affair.”

“That’s your lead? It’s August Donaldson. If a guy like him wasn’t having an affair, maybe then I’d be surprised.”

“You really think that’s the best I can do? I’m planning to look into the woman next time I’m in the office. If she’s connected to his company, she might be helping him funnel money. I’ve seen cases like that before. I’ll need some data from you, because I’ll be busy this afternoon getting ready for tonight.”

“I’m busy with my own investigations, Frank.”

“But you know we have such a good thing going on. You remember that time I helped you out with the Tran case?”

“Sure, but—”

“I need you, buddy.” I tapped my fingers patiently on the sofa and waited for our routine to start. He’d resist me at first, but he’d cave in the end. This game never seemed to get old, even after years on the job together.

“What other preparations are you gonna be making?” Yury said. “Soon, Frank, soon I’ll be reading a eulogy at your funeral after you try a few more of these bullshit stunts, and on top of that—who knows?—you might drag me into something for helping you, too.” His words tumbled out between anxious sips of something—probably coffee.

“I need some predictive analytics. Donaldson’s whereabouts for tonight.”

“Right then. And shall I assume that Stingsby doesn’t know about this, like any of the other jackass moves you make?”

“Stingsby doesn’t notice any of the good work that I do, due to his unfortunate condition of having his head firmly up his own ass. And remember, what I’m doing is perfectly legal. It only goes against what Stingsby says.”

“That’s how you justify your own contradictions?”

I waited for Yury to cave. Traffic hummed outside my window. A few blocks in the distance, the domed roof of Shutter Gardens vaulted high into the sunlight. It hadn’t been much more than twelve hours since I stood outside that building, the street stained blue by the force field around the crime scene.

“Fine,” he said finally. “But for God’s sake, tread carefully.”

“You know I do everything carefully, Yury. That’s part of why I need to do this. I can’t bear the thought of this being done sloppily. Let me know Donaldson’s route for this evening. I owe you.”

“That’s right, you do.”

I ignored his bitter comment. I’d been hearing plenty of those lately, ever since I was bumped up to rank three while he was overlooked.

I hung up, marvelling at the joys of data. Sentrac Bank had so much information about patterns of client behaviours, it could sometimes anticipate where they would go before they even left their homes. People could complain all they wanted about the privatization of the police, but the many areas of cross-over between the corporate world and the data police had proven ­revolutionary in the fight against crime. Predictive marketing continued to hone these techniques; we put them to new uses.

Yury’s response arrived soon. Based on Donaldson’s recent behaviours and the fact that it was Saturday night, there was a sixty-eight percent chance he would go to the Core Club, one of his favourite haunts, sometime around eleven or midnight. And when he did, I’d be there, waiting.

Now my mood had improved. I looked forward to the day when data detectives would advance far enough to be at the scene of a crime before it was even committed, watching—just waiting for someone to slip.

When I swept through the streets that night, high from the data Yury had given me, the city was working the way I liked it: steel gears grinding, the city circuits moving cars, goods, and people with impossible efficiency. The orderly rhythms of the city would feel even better if I wore my uniform, which suited those rhythms and made them stronger, but tonight, I needed to blend in with the crowd.

Unseen by sensors, I joined the throng of pedestrians on Tenth Avenue. The air was heavy with the smell of fried food and the chatter of partygoers flocking to nightclubs, teetering drunkenly on high heels. Roving packs of frat boys eyed the women. A couple floated by me; they were eating meat, their jaws smacking up and down. Jesus. I could practically see the germs coming from those mouths. I edged away from them, regulating my breathing like I’d been taught. Sometimes I realized that I hadn’t always been this way, hadn’t always hated germs, carelessness, the moral filth of criminals. But now, my world had been divided into two parts: the clean and the dirty.

I lingered by a digital newspaper stand and pretended to be engrossed by the day’s events, while keeping an eye on the Core Club entrance. Discretely, I double-checked my reflection in the windshield of a parked car. The Expo-Screen was working like it should; Donaldson would never recognize me. In my reflection, the stranger’s eyes displayed on the top half of my face blinked back at me. I touched my temple to make sure the device was securely attached to my face, a clinging paper-thin layer. Having access to restricted DNA-linked police tech came in handy for these off-the-record excursions.

A cab pulled up. One long, high-heeled leg snaked out the back door, and a tall woman emerged, pulling a fur boa tighter around her neck. It was her. The woman Donaldson had leered at last night at the casino. The outlines of the city seemed to sharpen with adrenaline, the cold air crisper. Where she went, Donaldson might follow.

Twisting her neck, she scanned the sidewalk, then went to stand near the entrance to an alley. Minutes slid by as she waited, adjusted her boa, glanced in all directions. My face still buried in what I was reading, I wandered over to a bench a few feet away from her. Her jewelry clattered when she moved.

Another taxi rolled up. The door swung open to reveal the rectangular majesty of August Donaldson, sliding his narrow, boneless slug body out onto the sidewalk.

I barely needed to watch him show up. I’d seen it happen already—seen it when Yury gave me the data this afternoon, when the Optica mined deep layers of big data and found ­patterns in the nonsense. It found designs in the masses of information collected by a city of sensors. It found order in the writhing mess of human behaviour, an anarchy that seemed to obey no laws. I watched the crowd eat, bustle, and shove from far above Tenth Avenue, distanced by the lens of the Optica. There were patterns in the city tonight. Patterns in Donaldson’s behaviour. Patterns in the data.

Donaldson’s gaze skimmed over the street and my face without recognition. Flashing neon from a nearby nightclub turned his glasses into yellow globes, the bulging eyes of a dragonfly. When he saw his female companion, a broad smile wrinkled his fleshy face.

He glided right by me, flooding me with aftershave, and put his arm around her. “Sara. It’s been too long.”

She laughed and smoothed her ponytail into her scalp with a chorus of rattling bracelets. “It’s only been one day, August.”

“But you’re wearing fur. You know I wish you wouldn’t do that. You know how much I love animals, darling.”

They disappeared into the alley, his arm around her waist. I waited, then slunk a safe distance behind, sticking close to the wall where a layer of shadow concealed me. As we plunged deeper into the narrow darkness, the roar of traffic and voices faded. Only the clicks of the woman’s heels broke the quiet.

“Now tell me, dear,” Donaldson said, “did you put through your end of the authorization?”

“Yes. On Friday.”

“Good. We’ll celebrate tonight.”

I could almost see the dirty money on their skin: a blue slime, a euphoria that congealed on their flesh and dripped into a trail on the pavement. We slunk still deeper, and the farther we went, the more a moral reek filled the air, radiating from the haunt of the city’s dirtiest criminals, a hub of human filth. As we lost sight of the main road—the mouth of the alley was distant now, very faint—the city’s orderly grid receded into the distance, and a simple, soundless nothing took its place.

Her laughter pealing in the semi-dark, the woman clung to Donaldson, her fingers on the back of his neck. She said something quiet I couldn’t hear. One of his slug hands slid down her back and squeezed her ass. Smoke poured from a vent, blanketing the three of us in exhaust as I stalked behind them like a scavenger, my eyes stuck on the shape of the woman’s figure shifting under her dress. The thought crossed my mind that I hadn’t been with a woman since Celeste. But what was I doing, looking at her? These people were filth; I needed to remember that.

I stumbled—suddenly Donaldson and his companion were right in front of me—I’d almost tripped on them, I thought—but no, they were still off in the distance; they had been all along. The smog had distorted the space between us and made them seem closer than before, all of us united in the polluted haze.

As I regained my balance, my shoes scraped the pavement. The clicks of her heels fell silent.

They stood still, their twin outlines flickering in the smoke, his arm still around her waist when his head turned, swivelled until two dragonfly eyes pointed in my direction. I remained in the shadows, unmoving.

“There’s nothing there, dear,” he said.

They resumed their pace. They stopped at a back entrance to the Core Club, and I slipped into a recessed doorway behind two dumpsters. Trash, food scraps, and condom wrappers littered the ground, making me dizzy with nausea—all the filth and germs in this place, so much infectious, terrifying filth—but this hiding place would have to do. Donaldson had just led me to a hidden rear door I hadn’t known about. Time to make mental notes.

Donaldson entered a code, the door opened, and a bouncer let them in. With my back pressed against a steel door behind me, I watched the traffic moving through this entrance, fixing an image in my mind of everything I saw. I should probably leave here soon, but greed compelled me to stay—greed for more information. Any additional knowledge about who went in and out of this back door might be useful.

A van pulled up. A blonde woman headed from Core Club’s back door towards the vehicle, her legs bare, a tight dress cut just below the curves of her ass. More women came and went, ­wearing almost nothing. My eyes lingered on their exposed skin shining in the half-light.

Minutes crawled by in silence. The door opened again, and Donaldson emerged with a wide smile stretching his cheeks, his lady at his side. “Just a smoke, Dave,” he told the bouncer.

My eyes went to the drinks each of them held as they smoked. Small, gulp-sized bottles with a familiar orange stripe and bolded letters reading: IRON ENERGY DRINK. Those bottles of toxic waste were all the rage right now—so pumped full of caffeine you’d be up for days if you drank one. But wouldn’t Donaldson want something heavier than an energy drink for a night on the town?

After a few minutes he and the woman disappeared again, and more time passed. A man in a gray suit burst outside, stumbled a few steps and stopped, doubled over. Within the next minute he’d sprayed the pavement with vomit. When he continued on his way, I saw his face and recognized him. It was the familiar haggard face of Jules Mercier, a petty white-collar criminal I’d investigated in the past.

More traffic came and went, traffic of all kinds. One drunk after another stumbled out and vanished into the alley, the artery that pumped blood in and out of a sick heart. If only the Core Club had a rear window, and not just a rear door, then I could see into that sick heart—see, without ever going inside.

A thud sounded behind me. When it happened it was very fast. The door at my back swung open and I was leaning against empty air, when hands grabbed me from behind and I was airborne, slammed forward into one of the steel dumpsters. I smashed into the metal and crumpled into a heap on the pavement.

Cement scraped my face and I tasted dirt. I flickered in and out of consciousness. I couldn’t breathe.

Rough hands flipped me over. A stranger towered over me, his eyes two circles glittering above thick facial hair. I realized I was being searched but he had a gun so I did nothing to stop him. A door creaked open. Footsteps followed, and a voice floated from somewhere: “Who the hell is that?”

“Nobody worth worrying about. Skinny little fucker, looks a bit like a rat.”

As I struggled to force air back into my lungs, a new face appeared far above me: the blurry features of the bouncer from inside the Core Club. “What the fuck’s he nosing around here for?”

“Probably trying to steal a look at the whores.” The first man laughed and smashed his foot into my ribs.

Pain pounded beyond the thresholds of my experience. The alley took on an underwater aspect, blue-green and pulsing with pressure.

“I’ve seen one of his kind before,” the first man said. “I caught a guy last month in this very place, dick in hand, hiding and watching the whores come in and out. Too broke even for the strip club. So he came to do his thing out here behind the dumpster.”

Laughter resounded in the small doorway.

The first man hauled me to my feet and held me while the bouncer rolled up his sleeves. “You have any clue what you’re fucking around with, snooping here?” he said.

I did now.

He drove a fist into my jaw. My neck snapped sideways. I sagged in the man’s grip while red fell to the concrete and the drops became a cluster, then a pool. The blow had struck me low on the face and hadn’t dislodged the Screen.

“Don’t come back here again.”

They left me lying there behind the dumpster while the blood welled into puddles, trickled over the food and plastic strewn on the ground. There were lines etched in the cement, straight lines like a grid, but the red streams ignored them, dribbled over them. The blood ran where it wanted.

After slinking home, grateful I was in disguise, I passed out. The next morning, as I crawled into consciousness, the awareness of pain swelled in my broken body.

No one could see me like this.

The thought came urgently. Images flashed in my mind of people laughing at the sight of me like this: Stingsby, Yury, Jenny. I struggled out of bed, my head pounding, and quickly closed the curtains. No one could see into my windows anyway, this high up on the twenty-eighth floor, but it still felt better.

I stood in front of my bedroom mirror. My ribs ached, but I could breathe without pain, so they didn’t feel broken. There was a long gash on my jaw, sticky with clumps of dried blood, the skin around it purple. Looking at my haggard reflection, it seemed like every day the hours I spent in front of the Optica took more of a toll on my body. The curse of the data police was stamped all over me: the ghostly pale skin from being inside all day, that sagging posture from all the sitting, the red eyes from looking at the screen—“data eyes,” I called them. I wasn’t even wearing my uniform to distract onlookers from the tired eyes. Dark stubble grew in uneven patches, dotted with blood and pus oozing from the wound. That bald spot on my right cheek where no hair grew. This must be someone else rather than me, a comedian maybe, someone’s idea of a joke. Looking at the person standing there gave me that horrible feeling I used to have whenever one of my dates dragged me to a musical. I loathed musicals: all those singing idiots, so openly pouring out their emotions, oblivious to how ridiculous they looked—and the feeling I got when I watched them was a creeping sense of embarrassment, shame. That was what I felt now. I glanced over my shoulder to double check that I’d closed the curtains firmly.

My phone began to beep, announcing a visitor in the lobby.

“Fuck off,” I told the phone hoarsely. No way anybody would be coming in here today.

The beeping stopped.

But in a moment, sounds chimed from the phone with renewed vigor. “Jesus,” I said. “Open a line to the intercom.”

“Frank?” a voice said from the phone’s speaker. “Jesus, are you there? It’s Yury.”

“Not now, Yury. I have a guest here.” I coughed to clear the hoarseness from my voice and tried to speak clearly, ignoring the pain in my ribs. “She’s still sleeping, so I don’t want to wake her up.”

“You don’t sound right.”

I strained to make my voice as normal as possible. “I’m fine. Just tired—stayed up with the guest last night.”

I hung up. But a minute later my doorknob turned and Yury swept through the front door. I must’ve forgotten to lock it.

“I knew you were lying on the phone,” he said, the words tumbling out quickly. “You sounded wrong. This morning, I was about to call Stingsby. I’ve been texting and calling you—last night, this morning—to see what happened at the Core Club, and I got no answer. I thought you got shot. These off-the-record missions might kill you, and plus they might get me into shit for helping—”

“Yury, you fucking jackass, get out!”

But it was too late. He’d already seen me, wincing when he noticed my face. I turned around and went into the kitchen to cool off. While I was in there, I took my morning vitamins.

“Hey, I was just worried, right? What happened?” Yury called from the other room.

“Just a dust-up. I beat the shit out of the first guy, but there were five of them.”

When the vitamins had been carefully swallowed one after another, I recovered my composure and returned to the living room, sitting down on the couch across from Yury. I told him the beginning of what happened last night. “But after I’d been in that alley a little while, one of the bouncers snuck up from behind. He said I couldn’t snoop around there, and he grabbed me, thinking he was some kind of tough guy, but I shoved him off and laid him flat with one in the face. Another guy came out, but he got the same treatment. Problem was, there were five of them.”

“You’re planning to press charges?” he asked.

“Those guys are going to be begging for forgiveness when they’re looking at jail time.”

Yury twisted his fingers together, knuckles stretching under the strain. When he spoke again, the words came out fast. “But look, Frank—you remember Detective Hernandez, a few years back? He wanted to make that big Hertz bust. Went beyond the data. Behind Stingsby’s back. You remember what happened to him, how quickly he was gone? You know Stingsby, Frank, you know him, right? He comes down hard when his detectives ignore protocol, and he caught you doing it once already.”

I sank back to the couch and rubbed my temples. Time for some painkillers, or some gin. Those bouncers needed to get what they deserved, but even worse was the thought of losing this Donaldson case, which might be a chance to find out what happened to Maclean.

Yury shook his head. “No. No, don’t tell Stingsby. Get some synth-skin to cover up that wound, then start doing things properly. You can still lock up Donaldson, but follow the protocol. Do it with data.”

He stood up to leave.

I sighed. “Anyways, Yury, thanks for helping me with the data. I’ll get you back next time you need help, alright?” I meant it. Yury had helped me out enough times.

“Damn right you will.”

As Yury stood there, the light caught on the bursts of silver at his temples. His eyes had sunken into pits, two watery blue ­circles blinking behind his thick glasses, his strings of blond hair tangled and disorderly. One spidery line extended across his forehead, deepening daily. As usual, there was a heaviness in the tired line of his shoulders, in the wrinkles on his shirt, the shadows below his eyes. The weight of perpetual disappointment clung to him. He was still a rank four detective at thirty-four. I recalled our recent trips to the casino together: one minute he was beside me at the Gemini table, and the next he was gone, the back of his shirt drenched in blue as he merged into a blinking nirvana of slot machines. And he was losing. Running up debts like mine. A few weeks ago, he’d been forced to sell his wife’s investments, property she’d owned since before they were married. He didn’t speak to anyone for days afterwards, didn’t eat, didn’t look away from his screen. I wanted to help him, but I didn’t know how. I’d tried talking to him, and even begging him to quit gambling, but it was no good. The moralists were right when they complained about the prevalence of gambling among the data police—“speculative bankers,” they called us. There was something about Gemini that was similar to our work, and that ­similarity drew us there.

Yury threw on his jacket. “Listen, Frank, what about everything that’s happened with Maclean? Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I feel sick thinking about it. How are you taking it?”

“Don’t worry about me. I know you two worked together once on that Gura case, and I know she helped you out sometimes.”

I avoided Yury’s eye contact. If I stayed busy with Donaldson, I wouldn’t have to think about her lying on the pavement.

“It’s Stingsby you need to worry about the most,” I said. “He and Maclean were inseparable. I wonder how he’s taking it.”

“Guess we’ll find out on Monday.”

On his way out, Yury paused, his eyes falling on my phone. “Seriously, Frank? That’s not a real AKATO-800. Get a life, man.”

*

Yury and I had a history of helping one another out. It started one night when I was at the office late, toiling like the rookie I was back then over a petty tax evasion case. As I hunched in front of my Optica in my cubicle, the elevator chimed and familiar footsteps came down the hallway. You could hear Yury ­coming from a mile away. His footsteps clicked on the floor about twice as fast as anyone else’s; he was always in a rush, late for something, forgetting things, and wherever he went, a chorus of rustling and shuffling followed, the sounds from all the junk he always carried. Sure enough, there was Yury hurrying towards me, arms overflowing with bags, one from the liquor store in one hand, one stuffed with groceries in the other.

“I just realized the one thing I’ve been missing in my Tran case,” he told me breathlessly. “I was in the middle of running errands and it hit me.” He stopped in front of his desk, and when he shifted one bag to the other hand to pick up his phone, he lost his grip. Thuds sounded through the office as cans of beer hit the floor, rolling in all directions.

“Fuck,” he said, racing around after the cans.

I picked up a beer that had rolled towards my feet and handed it to him.

“Thanks,” he said. “This is going to be it, the key to the Tran case—I know it is, right? I know what I need to look for now.”

Yury’s legendary Tran case. He’d been struggling with it for weeks. It was high stakes, and Stingsby had given it to him as his one chance to break out of rank five and move up—it was his chance to see if he could handle the big stuff. But so far, no luck. I’d seen him hunched all day and night in front of the screen, his lips drawn into a tight line. He was probably sleeping less than four hours a night.

Yury sat down at his interface and furiously typed in some commands. A second went by.

“Fuck!” he said.

Guess that new search hadn’t helped him after all.

A door opened down the hallway, and the familiar click of Stingsby’s shoes came closer. He must’ve stayed late tonight too.

“Sokolov,” Stingsby’s voice said. At the angle he was standing at, I couldn’t see him from behind my cubicle, and he wouldn’t be able to see me, or know I was in the room. “Any progress on the Tran case?”

“Well, I followed up on a few more leads, and nothing yet, but I ruled out a few—”

“That’s enough. This is a time-sensitive case. I’ll give you until Monday. Then it’s getting transferred to Liu.”

Stingsby’s heels clicked again as he left the office. Yury put his face in his hands.

The poor guy. That must have been humiliating.

“Hey,” I said, coming over to his screen, “let me run me some predictive analytics on Tran and find out where he’s going to be tonight.”

“Data isn’t supposed to be used to spy on people by following them around. That’s part of our code of ethics.”

My fingers flew over the touch screen on his interface. When I was done I said, “Meet me back at the office tomorrow afternoon.”

Sure enough, he was waiting there for me the next day, white-faced and wringing his hands together. I gave him what I’d found last night. He darted into his chair, and his fingers flew across the touchscreen. Slowly, his fidgeting stopped; his awkwardness melted away as his face—younger and less worn back then, stained blue by the Optica’s afterglow—became a mask of focus, his eyes locked on the data. He transformed the moment he saw data in front of him, his skinny, knife-like figure held taut with energy.

Hours later, he said, “Oh my God. Frank, thank you. Thank you, thank you.” I’d never seen the guy look so happy. It made me laugh seeing that cartoon grin on his face, but I felt pretty good about having helped him.

When he’d finished working, I said, “Come on, Yury, let’s go celebrate.”

“You mean go out?”

“That’s right, out. It’s Saturday night.” I eyed his rumpled plaid shirt and running shoes. Was that really what he wore on the weekends? “You’re killing me with that outfit.”

He looked down at his clothes, as though he’d never thought about them.

Within a few minutes, we’d stepped outside and I was leading us swiftly through the crowded sidewalks, Yury trailing a few steps behind.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked. “No strip clubs. My girlfriend won’t like it.”

“You think I spend my spare time in strip joints? Jesus. I’m taking you somewhere much better than that.”

We turned onto a street lit by the red and black light of an electronic roulette wheel, turning in its endless circles on the front of the Indigo Palace. I almost never went to the casino back in those days, but this was a special occasion, and it seemed like a good place to take Yury to celebrate.

Inside at the bar, I grabbed a double gin and tonic with two limes, shoved a second drink into Yury’s hand, and led the way to the Gemini tables.

“I’ll just watch you play,” Yury said. As he squeezed a lime into his drink, a few errant drops of lime juice exploded from the crushed lime and splattered onto his cheek.

“This one’s on me,” I said as I swiped my fingerprint on the transfer scanner to buy some credit.

“I guess,” he said. Soft chimes sounded from the Gemini interface. A flash of red neon, and the game began. Yury’s eyes sharpened, focused on the screen. The first batch of numbers ­cascaded onto the interface, and a hint of panic showed in his eyes—that was how it was, when the data first flooded the screen and looked impossible to understand, impossible to calculate all the probabilities; there were just too many numbers and the chaos was overwhelming; but then that moment of fear subsided, wiped away by the slow, rising elation when you began to see the patterns and realize your own power. Yury didn’t look away from his screen. At the end of the first round, he bet half the credit I’d given him.

There was a pause.

“That’s a win for you,” said the soft voice from the screen. Green light flashed, the reflected brightness dancing in Yury’s glasses. I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. He didn’t notice. He was already starting the next round.

“Hey, take it easy, alright?” I told him later that night. “You’re betting a month’s paycheque on one game?”

He didn’t pay any attention to me. And that wasn’t his last trip to the Indigo Palace.

I never quite forgave myself for that. As the months went on, a schism broke open inside him, and he became two different people: the Yury who went home after work to see his girlfriend, who came to the office every morning at 8:00 eager to work—and the other Yury, who snapped at me if I interrupted his Gemini game, who told his girlfriend he was going to my place and went to the casino. On the rare occasions when I showed up at the Palace I saw him there. He gambled and drank, but he wouldn’t go anywhere near the women. They flocked to him back then, when they saw his data cop uniform or his bets flashing across the Gemini tables, all the money he threw away. But he barely noticed them. He gambled with his phone beside him, and the screen flashed constantly with the letters: NEW MESSAGE—AKSHARA CHAWLA. The guy was hopelessly smitten.

After that, Yury and I fell into a routine of helping one another out. The truth was, I liked having him around. It wasn’t just his talent that I admired; there was something else too. Yury, he was what you might call “wholesome.” He cared about other people, worshipped his girlfriend, helped the old man in his building carry groceries every Sunday.

Things hadn’t changed much, years later. On a Friday night, you were still likely to find Yury at the Gemini tables, all but melting into his screen.