The round and limited skies of Docklands had become an ocean, the Twins’ iconography engines starting their Taste Refresh Festival celebrations. Leila walked through quiet residential streets towards Inspector Holt, gazing up at the spectacle. Content micropayments ran out of her account without her conscious permission. Budgeting was no longer a concern. Shoals of fish swarmed lazily around the cylindrical city’s higher buildings. Brilliant reds and oranges clashed with softer blues and purples. Pastel subtleties were shot through with lines of electric brilliance. With every second of attention that she paid to the Twins’ display, extra details appeared. Seaweed billowed out around her, green as emeralds. Jellyfish pulsed into being, soft tentacles lazing out from round bodies shining with stained-glass brilliance. A lobster scuttled by. The voices of the Twins rose up in her ears, a single whisper twined together from male and female lips. ‘Together we provide… tasting better than it ever has…’ The air around Leila filled with soft blue, becoming water shot through with dapples of sunlight. The black O of space was invisible behind it all.
This was too much unreality. A happy memory of Dieter struck her. Touching her black pendant, she shut down the Twins’ brand experience and opened herself up to the weave’s non-human layers. The air filled with digital song, the white goods of Station singing out to each other and to the providers that supplied them. Refrigerators summoned food, cookers shared recipes, cleaning units called for detergents, wardrobes propagated the latest trends. She remembered Dieter enthusing about them: ‘They’re as much part of the weave as we are, and they share as much data on it as we do. But nobody ever thinks to listen, nobody ever thinks to look.’ His eyes sparkled. ‘And there’s so much less security around them!’ He’d been so happy, poking around in their depths, understanding yet another hidden part of Station’s infrastructure. She smiled to herself, consoled by the past.
Another few minutes, and she’d nearly reached her destination. The last time she’d been in an InSec branch she was picking Dieter up on his release from prison. She was still alive then. When she left college and he’d walked out of his job, an end-of-employment check had uncovered the changes he’d made to his medical records to avoid the Soft War draft. Falsifying personal data was a serious offence. But Ambrose had found Dieter a tribunal representative who’d successfully reframed the hack as an act of resistance to Kingdom’s corruption. So Dieter’s sentence had been short, a few months only. It had still felt like a very long time. Leila had waited in the dingy reception area until he came out of the door that led to the holding cells. She was so happy to see him. He gave her a hug the size of a planet.
‘Burger!’ he told her. ‘All I’ve been looking forward to. Apart from seeing you, of course.’
Within minutes they were seated in a Twins burger joint and he was chomping his way through a meal. ‘I can’t believe these new names,’ he told her through a mouthful of meat. She couldn’t remember if he’d ordered a Grande Prison Break with Cheese or a Double Fuck You Animal Style. The burgers were the same ones he’d always loved, but their names had modified themselves according to his latest key life event. ‘At least the chips are still just chips,’ he joked, ‘not Crispy Tunnellers or Fucking Free Me Fries.’
Arriving at the InSec branch pulled her back to the present. She caught a glimpse of another, equally dingy reception area. The duty officer sat in a secure-looking booth. Three sullen teenagers, their faces and knuckles bloody, stood next to a lightly armoured InSec street guard. Perhaps they were gun kiddies who’d got carried away. Then the Rose’s weave systems meshed with hers. All four of them disappeared as the god’s premium weave content kicked in and overlaid reality with illusion.
Leila found herself standing in a light, airy room, tastefully decorated in a range of fashionable colours. Lights that had been hard fluorescent strips now glowed softly. The wire mesh that protected the booth disappeared. The strapline above it changed from Nothing to hide, nothing to fear to Your safety first, every time. Next to it, there was a shimmering message board headed For your consideration. It listed a series of different criminal cases, each followed by numbers. For a moment, Leila assumed that the branch was boasting about its clear-up rates. Then she saw that the numbers were headed Potential Commission. She knew that the Rose was happy to sell cases to private investigation businesses, paying out on their successful resolution, but she’d never seen a list of them before.
She gathered herself and moved towards the booth, trying to look comfortable in this strange new world. She told the attractive young receptionist that she had an appointment with Inspector Holt. Of course there was no question of waiting in a public area. Leila was ushered straight into a meeting room, offered a seat on a comfortable sofa and asked if she wanted a drink. She turned down the offer and sat waiting for Holt. She thought through her strategy. The box should catch his attention straight away. She wondered about playing up the pressure men, but decided not to. Elusive stalkers with unusual fashion taste wouldn’t engage him in the way that precursor tech would.
After a few minutes, he arrived. He was younger than Leila thought he would be, barely even in his late twenties. His skin had a grey tint to it and his glazed eyes spoke numbingly of stress and exhaustion. It took him a moment to register her presence. ‘Holt,’ he said. ‘Please, call me Avram.’
They both stood there for a moment. The inspector had buttoned the front of his shirt all the way up. It gave him a very prim look.
The silence started to become awkward. ‘Shall we sit down?’ asked Leila.
He started. ‘Oh. Of course. I’m sorry.’ He moved to the opposite end of the couch and stiffly took a seat. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’ he asked, pulling a stylus and notepad into existence.
It didn’t take long to explain the situation to him. Leila described her brother’s infection, the surprise of his true death, her meeting with Cassiel and her conversation with Ambrose.
‘Oh, Ambrose. Good of him to recommend me,’ Holt said. But he sounded nervous rather than pleased.
‘He thought you’d be the right person to talk to. To get the ball rolling. To find out what killed Dieter and where Deodatus has taken his weaveself.’
‘You do know that this Cassiel has already been in touch with us? I’m afraid that very little she had to say stood up to scrutiny. I’m not sure if there’s anything for us to look into here.’
‘I don’t understand. We’ve got a potentially psychoactive artefact and a possible financial fraud.’ She nerved herself. ‘And Dieter’s weaveself might already be damaged or lost.’
‘Let’s start with the fraud.’ Holt tried to sound soothing, but Leila sensed a jagged tension in him. ‘The Totality are facing serious financial issues. They’ve grown too fast. As a result, they dislike making major resource transfers to Pantheon citizens. They always try and throw a spanner in the works. Cassiel’s investigation into the pay-outs to you and the beneficiaries of the two other insurance policies is one of those spanners.’
‘So there definitely were two other Deodatus pay-outs? That means two other deaths, doesn’t it? She was pretty well-informed about that. And that still leaves the device that killed Dieter. Doesn’t that need looking into?’
Holt shifted nervously and fiddled with his collar. ‘It was a piece of junk, left behind from another time. Your brother had a known interest in this kind of illegal technology. His luck just ran out.’
‘It came from an unknown source, who impersonated a friend of his to make him drop his guard. In its original form it was decorated with symbols linked to psychoactive technology. You have an obligation to check it out. And what if the other two were killed by something similar?’
‘They were both terminally ill,’ Holt replied. ‘Nothing suspicious at all. And I repeat, there is no evidence of fraud. Do remember that the Totality want to stop these payments. If they have to, they’ll bend the truth.’
That made Leila pause for a moment. Perhaps Cassiel had lied to her. But her questions were making Holt very nervous. She felt that she was on to something. Remembering the commission list in reception, she decided to change tack.
‘The two other pay-outs,’ she said. ‘They’re real enough, aren’t they?’
‘Not as substantial as your brother’s, but yes.’ Holt nodded cautiously. ‘We confirmed them all.’
‘And if someone proved that all three were part of some sort of crime, then solved that crime – I’d imagine the Rose would offer a pretty substantial commission?’
‘In cases like this – that’s standard,’ he said carefully.
‘And anyone who invested in the case would get a share of it?’
‘Ms Fenech, what are you trying to say?’
‘Are you advertising the case? What if I tried to buy a stake in it? Bring in my own investigators?’
‘We’re not advertising it because we closed the case. And we closed it because there’s no crime here.’ He stood. ‘I don’t want to waste any more time on this.’
Leila remembered the Totality lawyer. He’d told her that, now she was wealthy, she would find that she’d entered a new world. The new InSec branding she’d just experienced was one sign of it, the ability to put significant pressure on Holt without being threatened with a fine or arrest another. She decided to fully embrace it.
‘I have to find Dieter. I’m going to buy the investigation from you.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘You know how much I’m worth. I don’t care what it costs.’
Holt blanched. ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘It’s really not for sale.’
‘Bullshit. Everything is, these days. How much?’
‘I couldn’t…’
‘One million? Two million?’
‘No.’ He was trying to be firm. Numbers shimmered in the air, not quite falling into existence. Holt waved and they vanished.
Leila gasped. ‘The room wanted to make me an offer for it. And you stopped it.’
‘No,’ replied Holt. ‘Not at all. That was just an ad.’ His voice shook. ‘For personal security systems.’ It was clear that he was lying.
Leila stood up. ‘You’re stopping me from buying it.’ She advanced on him. ‘Cassiel’s right. You’re blocking the investigation.’ Leila felt a strange, hard confidence possess her. ‘I’ll go over your head if I have to.’
‘There’s nothing to investigate!’ His voice was tense with fear.
‘Should I talk to your boss? How about her boss? Or shall I just go straight to the Rose?’ Leila was almost ashamed of herself for pushing Holt so hard. She told herself that he deserved it. ‘We all know how the gods favour the wealthy. I’ll tell her how you stood in my way. Do you want that kind of attention?’
Holt crumpled into a chair. He waved his hand again. Text shivered into being before her. It showed a case number, cost of investment and potential commission. A woman walked out of nowhere to stand next to it. She was dressed in a cream trouser suit with thorned green piping run across it. Her skin was petal white, her eyes and hair a deep, flaming scarlet. She held a tablet in one hand and a rose in the other, and radiated secure, controlling competence.
For a moment, Leila gaped. She’d run into Rose avatars many times, but never one like this. The past flared inside her. She remembered an InSec playground crime swoop. Some of the older kids might have been dealing drugs. She was barely ten. Operatives threatened her and her friends with tasers. The goddess prowled behind them as they patted the children down. Her hair, eyes and lips were an angry crimson, a sharp, punitive brilliance flaring out of pale white skin. Her body armour was crimson too, wrapped around with thorned green wire. Green spikes grew out of her clenched fists. Her voice was a low, thunderous rumble.
‘Obey the law or I will crush you. Do you understand?’
Leila had asked herself what Dieter would do. She bit her lip hard, refusing to whimper like all the others. When the operatives withdrew and the older kids fled Leila huddled her friends together and talked to them in a low, calm, reassuring voice until the tears stopped and they could return home without creating too much parental angst. That night, she’d given Dieter the hardest hug she could. Their mother had still been alive then, but Leila couldn’t remember her being around. She’d either have been lost in one of East’s virtual soaps or passed out in her room.
This new version of the Rose was very different, a presence focused on commerce rather than punishment. ‘Thank you for your interest in this case, Ms Fenech,’ she said. There was little passion in her voice. Despite her appearance she was still a low-level avatar, representing only a small part of the god’s attention. ‘We closed it because we felt that there was no crime to investigate. Reopening it for purchase will generate overheads. The cost will be high compared to any possible commission.’
‘I told you,’ Holt cut in. ‘There’s nothing for you here. You’re wasting your money.’
‘I’ll pay whatever I need to,’ Leila told the Rose.
‘Then I will share the terms and conditions,’ replied the Rose. She chanted legalities. Holt sat hunched at the table, looking defeated. At last the god reached the end of her litany. ‘What level of responsibility would you like to take on?’
That was a question Leila hadn’t anticipated. Without really thinking, she told the Rose: ‘Full. One hundred per cent.’
The avatar flickered as it accessed a new script. ‘That makes you entirely responsible for resolving the case. InSec will provide no support of any kind, and will refer all queries about it to you or your nominated representative. Do you understand?’
She didn’t really take it in. ‘Yes.’ She’d worry about the details later, once she’d got things moving.
The Rose handed the flower she was carrying to Leila. ‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘The investigation into Deodatus is yours.’