Zero

Will’s first move the next morning is to go to Carl’s office. His boss is staring through his glasses at a tablet computer on his table. Will regularly works on two devices at a time now too.

‘How was your dinner with Ms Bonsant?’ Carl asks, glancing quickly up at him. ‘You’ve got bags under your eyes.’

Carl’s eyebrows twitch, but he stops working. They put down their devices at the entrance to the Bunker, as house rules require. They step inside the windowless room and close the door.

Will lets a few seconds pass before asking, ‘What about me?’ They stare and size each other up. ‘Did you “adjust” my results too?’

‘Will, Will, Will.’ Carl smiles and shakes his head. ‘Still got too much residual alcohol in your bloodstream? As you said yourself, I wrote the fundamentals for the algos you’ve long since adapted your behaviour to. What difference do gradual changes make?’

‘Yesterday we stood almost on the edge of the cliff. Now we’re a step closer. Due to that difference.’

‘You improve them. And they probably improve themselves by now too. I want to know if I’m a guinea pig. If you breed obedient board members.’

‘If you could read them, I’d give you the standard algorithms and the protocol of your data account to compare.’

‘I can’t help that you’re all digitally illiterate. Well, you’ll just have to trust me then.’

‘For that very reason – because I told you. Instead of keeping it secret, re-programming you, forcing you out of the company and taking over the world.’ That laugh again. ‘I think you overestimate Freemee. This isn’t some James Bond film with a supervillain. We have competitors working on similar models: the old major players have developed their first rival products. There’s emerging competition between different systems, just as there should be in a free society.’

‘The same competition as with operating systems, search engines and online traders? There’s no genuine competition anywhere, just virtual monopolies.’

‘Oh, come off it! Microsoft is a moribund giant, former superstars such as AOL and MySpace were toast within a few years, Facebook and Apple are already dinosaurs, and as for Google …’

‘I’m trying to tell you we are not going to be living in the kind of nightmarish future dictatorship under Máximo Líder Carl Montik you’re imagining.’ He laughs, and his face once more reverts to an emotionless mask Will is incapable of reading. ‘I just want to offer people an amazing, life-enhancing tool! Are you on board?’

‘We’ll put the same question to Ms Bonsant later,’ Carl says. ‘Even though her crystal ball suggests there’s currently only an eighteen-point-six per cent chance that she’ll say yes.’ He stands up and fussily returns his chair to its former position. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he says as Will too gets to his feet and makes to leave the Bunker, ‘maybe you should bring in some backup regarding marketing ideas, and let Alice Kinkaid in on our plans. She has to find out sooner or later.’

Marten and Luís watch Alice enter Freemee’s headquarters. She’s wearing a pair of beige trousers with a blazer and carrying a large handbag. A second window shows the view through her glasses.

‘We’re inside her smartphone, her glasses and her smartwatch,’ says Luís.

They follow Alice’s progress to her office via her glasses. On her way there she greets a few colleagues, occasionally stopping to exchange a few words.

‘She is Director of Communications,’ Marten mutters. ‘I’d rather she made contact with her Zero mates instead of chattering to everyone.’ His eyes feel as if someone’s thrown sand in them, a long weekend at the office having taken its toll.

Alice has barely sat down at her desk when Will Dekkert calls her via her glasses.

‘There’s an urgent matter we have to discuss,’ he says. ‘When do you have time?’

Cyn and Chander are met by a wall of incipient New York summer heat as they step outside the hotel. Fortunately Will has sent a car for them. The driver ferries them through the streets, the car’s interior chilled to frosty autumn temperatures while the air outside shimmers.

‘It’s a self-drive car,’ he explains. ‘A new prototype. Freemee has a few in its fleet for testing. For now there’s got to be someone at the wheel, for the insurance, but some day these goddam things are going to put me out of a job.’ He points at the hordes of yellow cabs dominating the traffic. ‘Those guys too.’

As so often in the past few days, Cyn feels as though she’s been parachuted into one of those sci-fi films where the hero wakes after a long sleep to find him- or herself in an alien future. But in this case the future is already the present.

They drive east along the southern outskirts of Chinatown and on to the Brooklyn Bridge. Off to her right Cyn spots the Statue of Liberty, which she didn’t see yesterday. What would Lady Liberty say to Freemee’s business if she could speak?

Freemee is headquartered in what looks like a converted industrial building. Now the online firm’s logo rides high over the entrance. A young man greets them and escorts them to one of the upper floors. A security guard awaits them outside the door of a conference room. He asks them for their tech appliances. Cyn reluctantly hands over her glasses, smartphone and watch. Chander surprisingly has two phones.

They don’t need to wait for long. They have yet to sit down when Will and Carl Montik enter. They all introduce themselves, swap a few cordial remarks and the guests are offered something to drink.

‘You have to understand what Freemee is capable of,’ Montik says, coming straight to the point. ‘Our offer: you will each receive Freemee shares currently valued at thirty million dollars. Expected value a year from now: seventy million. Two years from now: one hundred and twenty. A conservative estimate. In exchange you will promise to keep absolutely silent about your findings.’

His directness surprises Cyn and impresses her at the same time. But she’s not going to fall into his trap.

‘I do indeed understand what Freemee is capable of,’ she retorts. ‘Driving people to their deaths.’

‘Teething problems,’ he reluctantly replies. His hands are flat on the table, but his fingertips begin to tap nervously. ‘Why are you being so negative? We’ve had that under control for ages. As you appear to know your statistics, you will also know that the mortality rate in other groups fell and is now down across the board. Freemee is good for people.’

‘If you’re seeking to decide on your own what is good and what isn’t—’

‘Oh, please don’t start that debate all over again,’ Carl groans. ‘What do you think I should do then?’

‘Your tongue betrays you,’ Cyn says snidely. ‘“I.” “What should I do?” See, you don’t even include your co-founders and fellow board members, let alone Freemee users.’

‘You’re creating a dictatorship,’ she accuses him. ‘Go ahead and laugh. I know it’s a popular pastime, philosophizing about the post-democratic age. Quite a number of idiots are yearning for the return of strongmen.’

Her eyes flit briefly to Chander, who’s completely detached from the conversation. Why on earth did she bring him along? He’s not being supportive in any way. ‘It’s interesting, by the way, that people always talk about strongmen in this context. Whoever it may be, there’s no such thing as a “good” dictatorship. The position of a dictator is always dangerous per se, no matter how good the person who occupies it. And in your case I’m not even sure that you’re good.’

Carl is following her arguments with growing impatience, his hands lining up invisible objects on the empty table. ‘You could be our Ethics Commissioner,’ he blurts out, ‘if you want a job to go with the money.’ He turns to Will. ‘Or do we have someone already?’

‘So we need one! Would you like to be our Ethics Commissioner?’ Carl asks, more and more excited by his own idea. ‘An executive position. A board member, if you insist,’ he adds when she doesn’t respond. ‘Vice-President for Ethics! Fantastic! Get involved instead of simply criticizing. We’re offering you the chance to improve Freemee in the ways you think best!’

‘You’ll need a new job anyhow,’ he says. ‘Zero will soon be ancient history.’

Is this possible? She feels an urge to warn Zero. But she can’t do that without the Raspberry Pi, and she doesn’t want to get Vi caught up in this.

‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ he says wearily and changes the subject. ‘You see, we know some things went wrong in the past. But you also know we took corrective action immediately we found out. Our highest priority is to offer our users the best possible product.’ He tries to put on a friendly expression. ‘You’re punchy, you’re dogged and assertive, and that’s why you’re here today. We need people like you to improve Freemee and the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Who knows, some day it could be billions! Actively help us to make the world a better place. That’s what you want, isn’t it? So why not with us?’

Cyn can sense he’s pushed the right button for her. Her outrage at their attempts to bribe her is abating, and she’s starting to consider how Freemee should change to live up to her standards.

‘I’m still wondering whether the whole idea behind the software isn’t perverse.’ She casts her mind back to Vi, who’s changed so much for the better. Was it for the better? Her head says yes. But is that because she finds it easier to get on with Vi? No, because Vi will have an easier life, she tells herself. Vi has repeatedly stressed that she never felt any compulsion to change. But did she really do it of her own accord? Can Cyn be sure Vi wasn’t forced into those changes? Manipulated? Her gut tells her there’s something fishy about the whole thing, and she can generally trust her gut instinct, even though it keeps getting her into trouble.

Disconcerted, Carl looks at her, then at Will, then back at her, before answering, ‘Manipulated? No.’

Cyn uncertainly seeks Chander’s gaze, then Will’s, but neither of them reacts.

‘Now, that would be a start,’ Chander intervenes for the first time. ‘Freemee’s estimated to be worth a hundred million dollars already. Compared to that, thirty million is peanuts, not to say an insult.’

Carl stares at him for a second, then roars, ‘Peanuts? For doing nothing? Are you out of your mind?’

Will clears his throat. Carl understands this signal and continues in more measured terms. ‘These are reasonable sums. Think it over.’ And with that he stands up.

Was that it? Cyn wonders, as Carl heads for the door. The man will never make a diplomat.

‘Tonight, your Vice-President for Strategy and Communications and I are appearing on a talk show watched by several million viewers,’ she says to no one in particular.

This gives Carl pause for thought. ‘Television,’ he says contemptuously, turning to face her. ‘And what are you going to tell them? Something about statistics that no one will understand and which proves nothing? To an audience where half are convinced that Freemee is good and don’t want to see someone running down their daily little helper? Will here will do what it takes. He’s a brilliant salesman.’

‘Why would you do that? You might deprive humanity of an amazing means of improving people’s lives and tackling global problems in a lasting way. You wouldn’t want that, would you?’

Cyn has no patience with this line of argument any longer, not least because she can’t think of any other counter-arguments than the ones she’s already used. ‘You keep banging on about the same point: Freemee makes you more successful and happier. Why worry that they can control your life? So what if the state has its eye on you around the clock? In return it keeps you safe – at least until the next terror attack, which unfortunately it couldn’t, or wouldn’t, prevent.’

‘Well, perhaps all these values you condemn and dismiss – success, happiness, security – are more important to ordinary people than the ones you highlight? Why shouldn’t people decide for themselves?’

‘Because in this case they don’t decide for themselves!’ Cyn is at the end of her tether. ‘That’s what I’ve been saying all along! They’re manipulated, cheated and lied to by data oligarchs like you. You talk about freedom and a better world and yet all you’re interested in is money! I’m just a share price to you. The billions of people gazing at their computers, tablets, smartphones and glasses all day are not actually your users – you’re using them! They’re your eyes on this monster, your remote controls for the billions of cells of the gigantic machine that’s raking in cash for you!’

‘People’s receptiveness to your arguments is a sign of how brainwashed they are!’

‘Objection. People use products that make their lives easier. I’m not holding a pistol to anyone’s head and ordering them to use Freemee. Neither are Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon or the others. That isn’t brainwashing. Don’t you have a washing machine and a toilet at home? Do you still send news by snail mail? This is no different: it’s called progress.’

Cyn realizes she’s stumbled into the very same trap as during her discussions with Vi. The ageing mother who can’t come to terms with the present: Plato complaining about writing for fear it’ll lead to the death of thought. When did she lose her concentration?

‘But it’s up to you to shape this progress to your taste,’ Carl says in a conciliatory voice. ‘As Freemee’s Vice-President for Ethics.’ He opens the door. ‘Our offer is on the table. Clearly you need to think it over. Let’s meet again tomorrow.’

As he leaves the room, Carl takes back his glasses and smartphone. He wasn’t required to hand over the lens in his eye, because it’s of no use without a smartphone as its base station. However, he does slip the security guard the tiny recorder he was carrying. It immediately sends the voice file via a secure connection to a pre-programmed address.

Joaquim Proust is sitting in a booth equipped with various machines. He runs the data through speech analysis software. He’ll have to wait a few minutes for the results. Too bad the Bunker was designed to be absolutely secure from eavesdroppers, so the programs couldn’t carry out real-time analysis. He’d love to skim through the conversation right now to find out how it went and what the results are.

What he does receive now are live pictures from Carl’s glasses as he and the Indian lag slightly behind Cynthia Bonsant and Will. The two of them occupy all his attention.

‘I for one am not going to be fobbed off with thirty million,’ he hears Chander Argawal whisper to Carl. As if on some secret signal, Carl now turns his head so Joaquim can also get a good view of Chander’s face through the glasses. ‘And just in case you get any funny ideas, I’ve stored copies of the boy’s video in secure places. If anything were to happen to me, they’ll be published. You’d be finished.’

The voice analysis on Joaquim’s screen shows the Indian’s bluffing. Feeble, Mr Argawal.

This Indian’s never going to be satisfied, Joaquim thinks. It’s pointless negotiating with him. We need to find a solution for him – a permanent solution. Right now, before he can act on his empty threat.

Joaquim would dearly like to know what Cynthia Bonsant and Will Dekkert are discussing, but Carl and Chander are too far behind them, and Will doesn’t have his glasses on.

‘Why didn’t we talk about last night’s conversa—’ Cyn begins, but Will cuts her off.

‘Carl has made you a serious proposition because he values your opinion,’ he cuts in. ‘We’re already into the lead-management phase. So far only board members have been informed of the experiment, but I’ve now been asked to bring our Director of Communications into the loop.’

‘Carl can give me jobs and take them away as he pleases? I’ll tell you something: I’ve known for a while that Freemee wanted me on board for this hunt for Zero, and that’s why you funded advertising in the Daily.’

‘Carl isn’t the only one with sources. But I still don’t understand: why me?’

Will walks alongside her in silence for a few seconds. ‘Not even your editor-in-chief knows that Freemee’s behind it,’ Will says, more to himself. ‘No one but a handful of people in this company do.’

‘Who you’re supposed to bring in on the secret? Hmm. But why did I of all people need to be involved in the hunt?’

‘A program selected you,’ Will admits, ‘according to a whole range of criteria.’

‘Me? Don’t be daft. Which program? Who wrote it and who defined the search criteria?’

‘I honestly have no idea,’ he insists, but then falls to pondering again. ‘I have to know who gave you that information.’

Joaquim observes the little group with the utmost concentration as they walk along the hallway from the Bunker. Carl and the Indian have just caught up with Dekkert and the British lady.

Joaquim notes that there’s something she isn’t saying, but unfortunately he can’t tell what it is. Neither does he know if she’s decided to accept or turn down Carl’s offer.

‘Well?’ Carl asks jovially from behind her. ‘How do you plan to while away the hours until the talk show? A little shopping spree? That’s something you’d certainly be able to afford in the future.’

‘That they’re offering so little money?’ asks Chander. ‘It’s insulting!’

The Freemee chauffeur opens the door of the self-driving limousine for them. Cyn declines his invitation.

‘They can’t buy me,’ she tells him, trying to hail one of the passing yellow cabs, but none stops. She continues walking and trying to flag one down. The heat is making beads of sweat stand out on her brow. Someone barges into her. She spins around angrily, but the man is already a good distance further on.

She keeps hailing taxis but now, with growing irritation, starts to look around. ‘Where’s the nearest subway station to here?’

‘Take those things off now!’ Before he can stop her, she removes his glasses. ‘Put them away where they can’t see or hear anything. I need to have a serious talk with you.’

Five hundred yards from the Freemee building, Joaquim’s screen suddenly goes dark and the stream of sound from Chander’s glasses falls silent.

He switches to one of the many surveillance cameras outside nearby stores that are live-streaming the view from their doors online. He can make out Chander and Cyn on two of the streams. Cyn is talking agitatedly to Chander while pulling her hand from his bag, where she must have stowed his glasses. Damn. The picture quality is too poor for lip-reading software to do its job.

‘Freemee are offering us a hell of a lot of money. We should at least give it some thought.’

‘But nor is it nothing. Just think what you could do with a sum of that size. Also, they’d have to offer us even more in future to keep us quiet,’ Chander continues.

‘You must be kidding,’ she says, staring at him in disgust. ‘You want to blackmail them?’

‘No, I want to negotiate, and it doesn’t only have to be about money. As Vice-President for Ethics you’d be in a position to push your interests.’

‘Using those sorts of methods? Great!’ She shakes her head. It’s too hot here. ‘Let’s talk about it again later,’ she says when a yellow cab stops at long last. She jumps inside and Chander slides on to the backseat next to her. She gives the driver their hotel address.

‘What are they doing now?’ asks Marten. He’s watching events unfold from Alice Kinkaid’s perspective on Luís’s screen. He sees Will Dekkert remove his glasses and takes his smartphone from his trouser pocket before the picture becomes so blurred it’s impossible to discern anything.

‘They’re going into the so-called Bunker, Freemee’s secure room,’ says Luís. ‘This morning, that’s where they agreed to meet.’

The screen goes dark, and Marten hears more muffled scraps of conversation, clinking and a roaring sound as someone obviously stores the devices somewhere.

‘Maybe he’ll finally tell her something she can immediately pass on to her Zero colleagues,’ says Luís. ‘You said he’d do that.’

‘Where is it?’ Cyn cries, staring at Eddie’s laptop screen. She feels as though all the blood is draining out of her body. ‘It was still there yesterday evening!’

She rushes over to the safe and finds the memory stick she locked inside it the previous evening. She’s about to push it into the laptop, but then asks Chander, ‘Can a computer wipe a stick the moment you push it in?’

He sits down at the keyboard to explore the unfathomable depths of the hard drive. After a few minutes he tells her, ‘Nothing there.’

‘What about the video? You were able to claw it back before we boarded our flight.’

‘Damn! They broke in, didn’t they? And I’m supposed to do business with these people?’

She clenches her fingers around the stick. ‘I have to make a call,’ she says, shooting him a glance that says she wants to be alone.

‘I’ll wait for you in my room. I desperately need a shower after chasing taxis as it is.’

‘It’s me, Anthony,’ announces the editor-in-chief. ‘What the hell is going on? Some kid makes absurd claims and you want to publish them? Do you intend to ruin the Daily? Freemee’s going to sue us to kingdom come if we publish this. If they get even a whiff we’re investigating this, we’ll face a landslide of libel claims and much more besides!’

‘Jeff will see what he can do, but it’s going to take time and we’ve got a lot on our hands.’

‘We’ll take this further when you do. But I don’t want to hear another word about it until then. Focus on coming through this TV show intact!’

Henry’s face appears in front of Joaquim. He’s long since ceased wondering whether the images of the man he’s talking to are authentic or not. A small app reliably tells him during a conversation, by means of a few simple symbols, if people are broadcasting real, touched-up or fake images of themselves. In the same way, the voice analysis software updates him constantly on whether the person he’s talking to is speaking candidly with him or concealing secrets.

The picture of Henry’s face is artificially produced. Joaquim’s surprised because Henry generally gives digital devices a wide berth.

Joaquim peers at the data in another corner of his glasses. ‘Chander Argawal is genuinely willing to accept Carl’s offer, but he wants more. The character composite we’ve been able to establish from the available data shows that no sum we give him now will change that. Sooner or later, he’ll come back for more. He’ll never be satisfied.’

‘So, sadly, we’ll never come to any arrangement with him. How about the English woman?’

‘She thinks it’s beneath her. Argawal will try to change her mind, but he won’t succeed. She will reveal Eddie Brickle’s findings.’

Joaquim knows what this means. ‘And we will solve this one quickly,’ he says.

He ends the connection and opens a new one. He can only speak to this next person over the sort of secure device used by senior politicians, CEOs and intelligence agencies. Joaquim utters the code words associated with one of a number of pre-arranged plans.

He leans back tensely in his chair. He can be sure his people will deal with this matter efficiently, but there’s always a residual risk. As in any other line of business.

Chander has left his room door open as promised. His clothes are lying on the bed, and she can hear the shower running in the bathroom.

A glint of light draws her eyes to Chander’s bag. It’s coming from the glasses. One lens is poking out of the bag and appears to be staring at her. It might be a coincidence of course, but for a second the lens looks gigantic. Knees trembling, she tiptoes around the bed and approaches the smart glasses from behind. First she pushes the glasses back into the outside pocket so they won’t see anything if they’re broadcasting, then she hastily opens the flap of the bag’s main compartment where Chander keeps his two smartphones. Neither is password-secured! To quote Chander: IT people often think they’re so smart they make the most elementary mistakes. Picking one up with each hand, she checks if they’re connected to the glasses. She discovers that the device she’s holding in her right hand is streaming images from the glasses. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe she’s just being paranoid. She’s still thinking it over when the new-message symbol blinks.

Didn’t she once say that curiosity is her occupational risk? Vi accused her of being tactless. No matter, she can’t resist it. She has a glance towards the bathroom before reading the message.

From: Carl Montik

Call me!

Other bubbles indicate that Chander’s been communicating with Carl Montik for days! She hastily skims through the contents of the messages. She almost drops the phone. Their conversation is about her, and Eddie’s video! Until yesterday their exchanges all involved her. He sent his first message after he met Cyn at the Daily.

Met Bonsant today.

Older than I thought ☺

A suspicion hits her like a punch in the solar plexus. Chander was never on Zero’s trail, only ever on hers! His affections weren’t born of passion: they were a cool and calculated part of his assignment. But why?

Her face is reflected in the large mirror on the wall opposite and she sees her grimace of despair change into a tight-lipped scowl. It makes her look old – older than he thought.

The shower’s still running in the bathroom. She can’t stand it in here a moment longer.

She runs to the door, but just as she gets there, there’s a knock and a call of ‘Room service!’ She hesitates. There’s no spyhole in the door. Has Chander ordered something?

She opens the door a couple of inches and glimpses a bellhop in livery outside. She opens the door further, but then catches sight of four other figures hugging the walls, so slams it shut again. She hears someone fiddling with the electronic lock. She rushes over to the window, from where the fire escape leads down into the courtyard or up on to the roof. She pushes up the window.

She doesn’t reply. She doesn’t even look at him properly, taking in his stunned expression only out of the corner of her eye as she climbs through the half-open window on to the metal grille. The courtyard is small, dark and clammy with trapped heat. She tries to close the window behind her, but it gets stuck, leaving a small crack.

She’s already heading down the first few steps when she sees the door of the room burst open. Chander, who’s rummaging in his bag, spins round. Several people charge into the room, two of them overpower him and three others set to work on the window. Cyn hears their voices and odd words such as ‘courtyard’, ‘down’, ‘catch’ and ‘trap’, but her whole attention is focused on the iron staircase, which rattles as she gallops down, taking two steps at a time.

Chander’s room is on the eighth floor. She’s two storeys lower already. Someone’s bound to be waiting for her at the bottom, though. She can’t see anyone yet, but they’ll get there any moment now. Images of film chases flash through her mind. Another floor, while thoughts scramble through her head as frantically as her feet down the steps. She feels the hot metal of the banister on her hand. Her pursuers’ feet clang on the fire escape above her. She can’t risk glancing up to check how many of them there are. Next floor. There’s a half-open window. Without a second thought she pulls it open, wriggles through it, pushes it shut and locks it, then dashes past the room’s bewildered occupants to the door.

For a fraction of a second she wonders if she should try to lose them by hiding in the bathroom and hoping the guests don’t give her away as she waits for her pursuers to rush through the room and out into the hallway. Too risky. She flings the door open, steps into the corridor and slams it behind her.

She looks around feverishly. The men chasing her must have seen where she went. Maybe the locked window will hold them up for a few seconds. Maybe they’ll simply break it. They’ll surely inform their colleagues about her change in direction. Which way are they going to come? In the lift? Up the stairs? She’s bound to run into them if she goes that way. She has a tiny sliver of a chance with the lift – if it comes in time and no one’s waiting for her at the bottom. The lobby’s always pretty busy, though, as Cyn recalls. Will she be safe there? For precious seconds at least?

She runs over to the lifts. Of the four two are heading up, one’s coming down and one has stopped. She bangs on the button and prays. A door opens in front of her. The lift is empty. She jumps in and presses the button for reception. The doors slide shut.

Out of breath and bathed in sweat, she tries to order her thoughts. In less than thirty seconds the doors will open at the ground floor. If she needs any further confirmation that Eddie’s death, and probably that of Joszef Abberidan too, were no coincidence, then now she has it. Although … she believes Carl Montik and Chander quite capable of stealing the video from her computer, but would they be capable of murder? No, she can’t imagine that. Why did Chander even bother retrieving the video at the airport if someone had already deleted it? Might he not be in cahoots with Freemee after all? Or was he unaware of the experiment? What is his real mission? To keep an eye on her and distract her? Is he simply using her to make his fortune? Why was she attacked? Why was there no second attempt but an offer instead?

A sudden suspicion makes her stomach churn. Freemee now knows her pretty well thanks to her self-assessments via her smartwatch and glasses and their data collection. She’s voluntarily handed over her own data. All because of Peggy. No, she corrects herself, all because of Chander. There’s a bitter taste in her mouth like bile. She swallows as her thoughts continue to race headlong. Was it her results that persuaded Will to meet her? Is that why Carl made her an offer? Because Freemee’s software sensed a chance she might accept? Would she ever have accepted? She did consider it for a second!

Joaquim’s glasses show flashing information from Cynthia’s devices, and small numbers indicate the swiftly diminishing altitude as she travels down in the lift.

‘She’s taking the lift down,’ he hisses into the microphone on the glasses. ‘Hurry up! And remember the hotel has cameras trained on the lift entrances and the lobby. So no unusual behaviour, no running, don’t group together and don’t let yourselves be identified!’

Cyn’s knees almost buckle when the lift comes to a stop. The doors grate as they slowly slide open. A bunch of seven people is waiting outside, led by an old black lady wearing large glasses. Next to her stands a family with two kids, and a young couple, he in shorts, she in a dress. Beyond them at least thirty people are criss-crossing the lobby, waiting at reception or standing around in small groups. Those waiting for the lift step aside to let her through. She quickly checks for any suspicious-looking characters in the lift area and has some doubts about two men in suits and one in jeans.

She ought to tell the man at the reception desk what’s happened, but there are five people waiting in line. Besides, the two men in suits continue to look dodgy. She changes her mind and strides towards the exit. Twice she glances over her shoulder, but no one’s following her.

The heat outside envelops her, but most people are walking fast in spite of it. She’d dearly love to have a cap and dark glasses – not against the sunlight but because of the public and private surveillance cameras that will soon signal her presence. She wends her way through a stream of pedestrians to the next junction.

A homeless woman is begging in front of the building on the corner. Cyn bends down quickly as if she’s going to put some money in the woman’s cardboard cup, but instead she pulls off her smartwatch and slides it on to the woman’s wrist before she can protest.

The online footage from the coffee shop’s CCTV camera doesn’t reveal what Cyn gave the beggar, but the momentary interruption of Cyn’s smartwatch readings, along with the subsequent change in pulse rate and other information including the localization details, tell him that a different person is now wearing it.

He barks this information to his men. What was the team leader thinking by not posting anyone in the lobby and ordering everyone into the courtyard instead? However, the guys are bound to put a real shift on now to make amends.

‘The rules for inside the hotel are even more essential out in the street,’ he reminds the team leader. ‘Keep a low profile so the Domain Awareness System doesn’t spot you. One pursuer at most on Bonsant’s direct route. I’ve got my eye on her and I’ll give you further instructions.’

Cyn’s waiting in a cluster of people at the traffic lights on the corner. She’s just slipping her smart glasses into a young man’s messenger bag, when she spies the glow of a smartphone and decides to try her luck. She carefully pulls it out of the bag. Cupping it in one hand, she tests the screen with her fingertips. No code. She slides it into her trouser pocket so no one can see it. When the pedestrian light turns green, she presses her own smartphone into a girl’s hand.

‘Here, have this,’ she says and walks across the road, paying no heed to the girl’s calls.

He doesn’t lose track of her, though, thanks to practically unbroken online streaming from store and company CCTV cameras in this part of Manhattan, even if the poor-quality images from many cheap or outdated devices complicate matters a bit. The members of his pursuit team notify him that they’re following Bonsant at various distances. Pointless information: he can see exactly where they are.

‘We’re not a mom and pop’s police department any more,’ said Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, as he presented the New York Police Department’s new Domain Awareness System, and the Real Time Crime Center in Lower Manhattan does indeed resemble a scene from a futuristic film rather than your run-of-the-mill police headquarters. Dozens of police officers in dark suits sending information to their colleagues on the beat from their monitors lined up in front of a thirty-foot video wall. At the press of a button, their computers spit out details they would once have spent hours, days and even months scouring the archives for, without any guarantee of success. What is more, state-of-the-art software compiles and analyses incalculable amounts of data from thousands of crime files and parole reports, millions of personal documents, detailed city maps, satellite images and address directories, emergency calls, footage from thousands of surveillance cameras, the number plate of every car crossing into and leaving Manhattan, and much more besides.

Within seconds of an incoming 911 call from a female manager at the Bedley Hotel to report a casualty with serious head wounds, the Domain Awareness System has produced aerial photos and street maps of that part of the Lower East Side, supported by pictures from all the surveillance cameras within a five-hundred-yard radius beginning thirty seconds before the emergency call was made. Further data pops up even as these first tapes are being sent out.

The caller doesn’t know how long the male victim has been lying in the hotel room, but according to initial reports it cannot have been more than a matter of minutes. As a result, the RTCC officials call up footage of nearby surveillance cameras to see if they can spot any suspicious incidents in the aforementioned thirty seconds.

The caller is a level-headed woman who makes her report in a composed voice. The room in which the victim was found was booked in the name of a man called Chander Argawal. No sooner is his name mentioned than several lights in the centre start flashing, and the air prickles with suspense.

‘Possible link to terrorist activities!’ announces a standard warning emblazoned across the large video wall.

Within seconds the police officers have access to comprehensive information about the IT specialist including his CV, employers’ names, pictures, videos and media reports. They see he’s a US citizen who only arrived at JFK the previous afternoon on a flight from London and has attracted attention in recent days in relation to the hunt for internet activists suspected of terrorism. The head of the RTCC immediately notifies the NYPD’s Counter-Terrorism Unit.

Richard Straiten receives this information via his glasses. He is one of the first NYPD homicide detectives who have been asked to test them. As the notification flashes up, his colleague starts up the patrol car and sends it bounding out of the car park towards the Bedley Hotel.

Blood is pounding in Cyn’s ears. She keeps looking round. She suddenly thinks she can make out a disturbance among pedestrians in front of a block of houses at the next crossroads. She can’t see anything in particular, but starts to run, turns off at the next junction and then slackens her pace again. There are even more people here! She must get off the streets.

She spots a typical souvenir store up ahead. Scarves, T-shirts, sunglasses and baseball caps hang from racks out on the pavement. She grabs a cap and the nearest pair of glasses, puts them on and is quickly on her way again. She’s halfway down the block when she hears someone shouting. She glances over her shoulder and spots a woman, presumably the shop assistant, who’s shaking her fist but shows no sign of chasing her. Cyn nevertheless speeds up into a trot.

When she reaches the next junction, she turns around quickly. The woman has gone, but there’s a man craning his neck way back up the street. He could be looking at anyone. For safety’s sake she keeps running, glancing back briefly every few yards, and then darts around the next corner. A hundred yards ahead of her she spots the sign for a subway station.

‘She’s wearing a green baseball cap and brown shades,’ Joaquim tells his team. ‘She’s just entering Grand Street subway station by the southern exit.’ He switches to the subway CCTV cameras. He has access to their footage too, even though he ought not to.

Joaquim paces up and down in his office. He’s tense. He checks with his glasses to see if there are any Freemee users on the subway, maybe even some with active smart glasses. A moment later the statistics pop up before him. As in many other things, New Yorkers are also Freemee world-beaters. Of the roughly three million people who travel around Manhattan every day, twenty-two per cent already use Freemee, representing six hundred and sixty thousand people, no less. Just under half of them own a pair of smart glasses. So there’s a very good chance, in an area as small as Manhattan, that one of them is presently at Grand Street station and might see and identify Cynthia Bonsant.

But it’s too early to send users a message on their devices. Freemee can’t do that until there’s a plausible witness statement from the Bedley Hotel or the police linking Cynthia Bonsant to a murder case. Joaquim will have to wait at the very least for that first report.

The British woman stops and leans against a wall with her back to the cameras. Joaquim can’t see what she takes from her trouser pocket or what she’s doing because her body’s in the way. She raises a hand to her ear. What’s she holding in her hand? A different phone? Where did she get hold of it? Whose is it? Who’s she talking to?

Vi is sitting eating a sandwich for dinner and chatting with her friends on her laptop. She doesn’t recognize the number, which has a foreign dialling code.

‘Listen, darling, don’t ask me any questions right now, just do as I say,’ her mother orders, her voice choppy and agitated. Vi can hear a hubbub of conversation, a roar and footsteps in the background.

‘Remember the night before last, the surprise. Use it and write something. You’ll find a yellow Post-it note with a message on it in the left-hand drawer of the living-room cupboard. There’s another one, pink this time, in the bits-and-bobs drawer in the kitchen with two scribbled lines on it. Type it in. They need to check it. Have you got all that?’

That wasn’t so complicated. Vi is already off searching for the piece of paper. She finds it. On the yellow Post-it is an email address at the Daily. The lines on the pink slip appear to be a username and a password. But why’s her mother being so cryptic? ‘I think so. But what—’

‘We don’t need the pieces of paper any more after you’ve finished! Something else: write a short message to go with it. I’ve been told they’re hot on their heels, especially where I am right now.’

That’s the end of the call. Vi stares helplessly at her phone and the two pieces of paper.

‘But then why doesn’t her mother call them directly? And why’s she speaking in riddles?’

‘The cellphone belongs to a guy called Jesús Dominguez, a New Yorker. I’ll have it analysed. Maybe she just stole it from him.’

‘Yeah. We went in a few hours ago as a precaution. Same with her smartphone.’

‘Maybe we should ask our British friends to pay the young lady a visit,’ Marten says, reaching for the phone.

Vi has the Pi ready to go. The waterfalls and the dialogue window appear on the TV screen. She nervously logs in, using the username and the password as agreed during Saturday’s session. It doesn’t escape her as she does this that she’s contacting wanted terrorists. Was that why her mother sounded so odd on the phone? So frantic? Vi writes the message, as Cyn told her.

peekaboo777: Message received. Who is this? It isn’t Cyn.

Guext: That doesn’t matter, does it? What matters is you get the info.

Nothing happens in the window for a few seconds. Vi is on the point of logging out, when peekaboo777 writes:

Her face goes bright red. She’s about to break off the connection when the next words appear.

OK. We’ll look into it.

—Session closed—

She sits there in the living room. Her heart is beating furiously. What did her mother mean by not needing the pieces of paper any more? Is she supposed to destroy them? This whole thing is freaking her out. She flushes the two Post-its down the toilet, just to be sure.

Cyn scrambles down a long corridor in the subterranean neon light. The air is hot and sticky, and she’s finding it hard to breathe. She doesn’t remove her sunglasses, but she’s not the only one wearing them down here. Eavesdroppers could well find out the number of the stolen phone following her call to Vi and localize it. Get rid of it! She chucks it in a bin and makes a silent apology to its owner. She comes to the ticket barriers, digs a few coins out of her pockets and slots them into the machine, which churns out a ticket for her. She hears a train come rumbling into the station. She and dozens of others shove their way into one of the carriages. Pressing her face against the glass, she scours the platform for potential pursuers, but doesn’t spot anyone hurrying or peering around suspiciously.

She leans back and stares at her fellow passengers’ faces. Most of them have a fine sheen of sweat on their skin. She instinctively reaches to activate her glasses to find out more about the young black guy facing her. He’s studying her through his own glasses. Are they smart glasses? She can’t tell.

She hopes she’s thrown her pursuers off her scent for the time being. Even if they can get their hands on some cars, they won’t travel any faster in Manhattan’s dense traffic than she will on the subway.

She considers her next move. Should she fight her way through to NBC or go to the police instead? She doubts they’ll understand, let alone believe her. She’s lost all trust in the security services since her terrible treatment by those border guards in London. If someone had told her that two weeks ago, she’d have thought they were nuts.

She feels for the memory stick in her pocket, then runs through her next few moves in her mind. If at all possible, she needs access to a computer and the internet; if not, she’ll fight her way through to NBC.

The train’s brakes screech as it enters the next station. It’s so full there’s no way she can check every person waiting on the platform. Her eyes scan the crowd in the hope that she’ll instinctively pick up any suspicious signs. The glasses and their facial recognition function would be worth their weight in gold right now! If, that is, she could get reception down here. And if they wouldn’t immediately give away her position.

Uniformed police officers are just cordoning off the street when Detective Richard Straiten arrives at the hotel. The lights of the ambulance flash red through the blue of the patrol cars’ beacons. With a squeal of tyres, Straiten’s partner pulls into a row of cars outside the hotel entrance. A critical response vehicle races in from the opposite direction, and heavily armed members of a Hercules team jump out, guns at the ready. Some of them secure the entrance to the hotel while others stream into the building. Outside in the street, shaken bystanders cower against the walls or pull out their smartphones and start filming.

Straiten shows his badge, and he and his partner walk into the lobby. A good dozen police are already gathered there among a few civilians and the hotel employees. They all look tense but calm. Straiten hears more patrol cars pull up outside. The place will be teeming with officers in a few minutes. Straiten asks to be directed to the manager who put through the emergency call. The tall, slim Latina is waiting for him at the reception desk along with a female police officer and another woman in hotel livery. The manager introduces her colleague as the person who found the victim. A guest alerted the chambermaid to screams issuing from a room with an open door.

‘I found a man lying unconscious on the floor. There was blood pouring from his head. Beside him was a blood-spattered laptop. I informed the manager immediately.’

‘Who was the guest who drew your attention to it?’ Straiten asks. ‘Is he down here now or in his room?’

Neither the maid nor the manager can answer this question. The man hasn’t been in touch again. Straiten asks for footage taken by the hotel’s CCTV cameras.

‘We only have them here in the lobby and in the lifts,’ the manager explains. ‘Not in the hallways.’

Straiten curses under his breath. ‘Can you get through to the person who booked the room?’

‘No. I can’t rule out that the victim booked it himself. I couldn’t identify him because he was lying on his front and his face was too much of a mess.’

No, they hadn’t noticed anything strange about the guest since his arrival. ‘But now you ask, I can remember a different event reported by some other guests just before the body was discovered. They claim that a woman climbed into their room through a window from the fire escape, but then went straight out through the door. That was a couple of floors down from the scene, though. Sadly there aren’t any pictures of that incident either, because we don’t have any cameras in the hallways and courtyard.’

‘Maybe she took the lift afterwards,’ Straiten says. ‘Please compile all the video footage for that period of time.’

He asks a few more questions before going up to the room where some paramedics and a doctor are just wheeling the man away on a stretcher. Straiten can’t see his face properly due to the oxygen mask and the copious bleeding. He goes back down to the lobby. In the meantime the manager has called up the surveillance videos on a computer in her office.

‘I’ve looked through them a bit already,’ she tells him, pointing to an image of a middle-aged woman getting into a lift. ‘A few seconds after the complaint by the guests on the fourth floor, this woman took the elevator down from that floor to the lobby.’

‘They were in use. One coming up stops at the fourth floor a few seconds later, but the woman was gone by then.’ She plays the footage of a lift with five people in it. Two men get out at the fourth floor. The camera has only filmed their backs. ‘Nobody else takes the lift from that floor in the next few minutes,’ the woman says. She calls up the images of the woman again. ‘Her face is easy to identify. I took the liberty of running it through facial recognition software.’

Oh, just go ahead and do our job, why don’t you? Straiten thinks grimly, but says politely, ‘Thank you. That’s very helpful.’

‘And I found out something quite interesting,’ the manager continues, clearly flattered. ‘She’s also a hotel guest: Cynthia Bonsant, a British journalist. NBC booked the room for her.’

‘They have a block booking and send us people on a regular basis. Talk-show guests and the like.’

An alarm bell rings inside Straiten’s head – journalist! TV channel! They always make a mountain out of a molehill and spin events to fit their story. This investigation is going to take place amid a glare of publicity. Straiten and his colleagues will have to consider their every move with great care. No slip-ups.

‘Our register shows that Ms Bonsant checked in at the same time as the man in whose room the victim was found.’

By running one finger over the stem of his glasses he makes contact with the Real Time Crime Center. ‘Cynthia Bonsant,’ he says to the colleague whose image pops up in front of his eyes. ‘I want everything you’ve got on her.’

Vi’s just returned from the bathroom when a Freemee alert pops up on her computer screen.

Your score has just risen by five per cent!

More >

Something must have happened. Still shaken by the conversation with her mother, she clicks on the message.

Your mother Cynthia Bonsant’s reputation just rose significantly. That benefits you too, Viola. More >

The talk show! Vi thinks. She’d totally forgotten about it. But wasn’t it later? It’s about half past three in the afternoon in New York. She clicks on ‘More’. A window opens on her screen, showing several columns of messages from various different social media platforms. They come so thick and fast that she has trouble following the content. She manages to read a few, like snapshots.

Wow, what’s going on? Tons of police and emergency lights at Bedley Hotel #NYC #whatsgoingon (photo)

Witnesses report chase on #LowerEastSide

Saw jittery woman rushing out of Bedley Hotel. Cops everywhere. Being questioned now, not shopping :-(

Police apparently hunting woman travelling with victim #nyfugitive

Another day, another death #NYC

Shit! Look at these guys storming Bedley Hotel in #NYC (photo)

In the photo Vi can see two men running past the photographer in heavy body armour, masks and helmets and carrying automatic rifles. She can practically hear their pounding feet and barked orders.

Death at Bedley Hotel, NYC? Cops at the scene

Still chaos outside Bedley Hotel. Police close road in front of hotel (photo)

Ambulance taking away victim of hotel attack (photo)

Jittery woman on the run #LowerEastSide? Taken by my glasses minutes before police op in Bedley Hotel (video)

Vi is shaking as she clicks on the video. What do these posts have to do with her mother? The jerky video, filmed from the poster’s point of view, shows someone hurrying out of a building. At first there’s nothing but an outline against the afternoon sun, weaving its way between pedestrians until it nearly bumps into the person filming. Now Vi can clearly recognize her mother. She’s now feeling terribly anxious as she goes back to the posts. What’s been going on?

Big buzz in southern #Manhattan. Police hunt murder suspect

Murder confirmed in #BedleyHotel #NYC?

No. Still waiting for police statement. Just lots of uniforms and flashing blue lights

Seven reported dead in attack on #BedleyHotel #NYC (link)

Another film of fugitive from #BedleyHotel #NYC, taken with my glasses (video)

Vi’s pulse is racing as she watches this recording, which is barely half an hour old according to the time code. Her laptop speakers produce a blare of street noise. Seen from the perspective of an onlooker, her mother staggers out of the hotel, glances left and right before turning her back on the person filming, hurrying away almost at a run and swiftly disappearing. Anyone who doesn’t know Mum, she thinks, would find it impossible to identify her from this footage because it’s too wobbly and out of focus.

Reports of 3 dead in explosion at Bedley Hotel #NYC via @jjkwnews

Police yet to confirm attack on Bedley Hotel #NYC Investigations ongoing

Pictures of people leaving Bedley Hotel immediately after attack. Taken with #eyeclick (photos)

What should she do? She rings the number her mother called her from earlier. After several ringtones she hears the automated voicemail message. She tries again, with the same outcome. She writes a frantic text to the number:

You’re wanted! What’s going on?!! Call me!

For several minutes she waits for a reply with one eye on the updates. When her phone remains stubbornly silent, she logs on to the waterfalls using the Pi again.

Guext: Have you seen what’s going on with my mum?

peekaboo777: Yes.

Guext: It wasn’t her. Please help her!

peekaboo777: We’re trying.

‘What’s the latest?’ Alice asks. ‘One dead? Three? Seven? Shoot-out? Explosion? Terror attack? Why do people post news when they haven’t got a clue?’

She’s standing alongside Will in front of the video wall in his office, watching the hunt for Cynthia Bonsant. ‘This screen isn’t a news medium. It’s an incomprehensible, swirling cloud of rumours!’

Coverage from a regional TV channel is playing in one window. Alice turns the sound up, takes her glasses off, puts them away and urges Will to do the same.

Police radio (link): #NYPD wish to interview woman called @CynthiaBonsant as witness to incident at #BedleyHotel #NYC (photo)

Hotel guest Ann Tsilakis apparently missing #NYPD announces press conference at 17.00 ET following #BedleyHotelIncident in #NYC

The woman #NYPD is hunting after #BedleyHotelIncident: @CynthiaBonsant facebook.com/Cyn … freemee.com/cyn …

‘What is this?’ she asks Will so quietly that her words are barely audible over the reporter’s voice. ‘Cynthia Bonsant finds out some Freemee secrets and suddenly she’s a murder suspect?’

‘This doesn’t feel good to me. We have to find out as soon as possible what went on in there. And we need proof of what you told me inside the Bunker. It’d be better if we had it before you go on TV this evening so you can present it.’

In her frantic rush to get on the first subway train, Cynthia didn’t notice which line she was on and missed several stations while she was lost in thought. Now she studies the map above the train windows. It looks as though she’s caught line 6. The next station is Hunter College. She almost certainly won’t be able to go online any time soon. She can remember NBC’s address without consulting her notes, and she sees that she needs to alight at Lexington Avenue/51st Street and walk for a few minutes to get to the Rockefeller Center, where the TV studios are.

She’s standing by the door. All around her people are staring at their glasses, playing with their smartphones or talking to invisible people. Very few are looking around, as she is, at the other passengers. She feels almost as though they’re her allies. A young man in a hoodie is staring at her quite intrusively, but he looks away when their eyes meet. A young woman in a business suit a couple of paces behind him is also gazing with some interest at Cyn through a pair of glasses. Are they still glasses or perhaps more of a transparent data screen? she wonders, as she has done so many times in recent days. When Cyn’s eyes linger on the woman, her gaze changes from keen to bored and she stares into the middle distance instead. She notices that the young man is peering at her again. Is he flirting with her? Or is there something odd about her?

She glances around in annoyance. Two teenagers sitting on a bench to her right are hunched over a smartphone, whispering. She could swear that one of the boys just pointed at her but retracted his finger when she looked straight at him and his friend.

She spins round and catches the young man and the businesswoman in the act of looking away. She pretends she hasn’t noticed and positions herself so she can see both the two individuals to her left and the pair of teenagers with their smartphone to her right out of the corners of her eyes. The boys’ fingers swipe across the screen, and she’s sure they keep glancing alternately down and then up at her as the train slows down and enters Hunter College station.

Think I saw #CynthiaBonsant on #NYSubway, line 6, Hunter College station (photo) #NYPD #BedleyHotelIncdt

Search for Ann Tsilakis goes on #BedleyHotelIncdt #NY Anybody seen her? (photo)

Person wanted by #NYPD in #BedleyHotelIncdt #CynthiaBonsant steals cap and glasses, from CCTV live stream @MarinasBeauty (video)

#NYPD confirms one victim in BedleyHotelIncdt in #NY. British journalist @CynthiaBonsant supposedly no longer suspect only wanted as witness

This is what Joaquim has been waiting for. An automatic message is sent to all Freemee users in the vicinity.

Alert: The New York Police Department wants to talk to Cynthia Bonsant as a witness in a murder case. Report any sighting immediately by calling 911. Call >>

Remember that helping the police increases your data score.

Be careful, though: she may be armed!

This message is followed by a photo of Bonsant and a link to social media streams reporting on the hunt.

Saw #CynthiaBonsant leaving #Subway #Line6 northbound at #HunterCollege (photo)

#CynthiaBonsant is a guest on #NBCTonight with #TakishaWashington #AlvinKosak #WillDekkert #Freemee #NYPD

Is this #CynthiaBonsant at #HunterCollege #NY #Subway #Line6 southbound? (photo)

‘She’s heading to the NBC studios in the Rockefeller Center,’ Joaquim tells the team. Some madmen have by now reported sightings of the woman as far away as Taiwan and Tierra del Fuego.

He’s a little irritated by the algorithm’s inability to predict Cynthia Bonsant’s movements more accurately. He’s been using a specific crime program EmerSec developed for tracking down criminals on the run, but its forecasts are far too vague for his liking. Bonsant may be on the run, but she isn’t a criminal, and so she doesn’t behave like a fugitive gangster.

He’s been toying with the idea of combining the crime program with other software – for example, a program for tracing runaway children, and another designed to monitor and counter critical reporters and activists – but he doesn’t have time. So for the time being all available information feeds into the analysis and he lets the program draw its own conclusions and churn out ideas, even if the input includes reports from Mongolia.

What irritates him most is the analysis of the subway footage. The cameras suggest they’ve seen Bonsant in places where she cannot possibly be. Maybe some of the devices are outdated and the quality of their pictures too poor.

There’s no doubt about it: that’s her mum in the picture. Helplessly Vi watches the hunt for her mother in a faraway city. The reports on her news stream are coming so fast that she can only read every tenth one before they vanish off the bottom of her screen.

You’re all wrong! @CynthiaBonsant is here! #CentralParkSouth #nypd #BedleyHotelIncdt #NYC (photo)

The woman in the picture might be her mother, but she’s too far away and too blurry for Vi to be able to say so with any certainty. Between these reports, she spots an increasing number of posts containing the name of a different woman, Ann Tsilakis. She’s apparently also wanted in connection with the events or been reported missing or … Who on earth can tell?

The only reasonably official news sources are the NYPD radio recordings unidentified people are posting online. But how can Vi be sure they’re genuine and not some smartass’s stupid prank? Besides, the scraps of conversation are pretty vague or else unintelligible.

She searches online for more details about this other woman but comes up with very little. It confirms what she already knows from the updates. The woman is a manager from San Francisco and two years younger than her mother. Vi can see a certain likeness, even if she can’t imagine that anyone would ever mistake the two women.

Another person thinks they’ve seen Cyn, but on the other side of Manhattan this time. However, the woman on the corresponding photo is, like the previous one, too far away for Vi to be able to identify her for sure.

Spotted! #CynthiaBonsant on 2nd Ave, 92 St. #NYPD #BedleyHotelIncdt (photo)

‘For the presentation I’ve got another couple of questions about the experiments you—’

‘Shh!’ Carl cuts him off, raising a finger to his lips and jumping up from his chair. He grabs Will by the upper arm, drags him out of the office and barks a single word: ‘Bunker!’

Will slips his hand into his trouser pocket and turns off his smartphone’s record function. They divest themselves of all their devices outside the entrance of the bug-proof room. Carl also checks Will’s eyes for lenses.

Carl has seen through him. Will ponders how literally one should take that expression nowadays. He half-heartedly asks Carl some questions, but the answers are worthless to him if he can’t record them. As Carl speaks, Will tries to come up with an idea for how else he might be able to get his hands on some evidence of Carl’s experiments.

‘It’s a good thing you’re working on your presentations,’ says Carl, breaking through into Will’s thoughts. ‘We’ll do the first one the day after tomorrow.’

This takes Will by surprise. Should he not first devise a strategy to build interest for Carl’s ‘ActApp development’, as Will tentatively calls it? Once again he feels keenly that he’s only a second-class member of the board – a highly paid assistant to Carl, who’s had this all mapped out for ages.

‘Who will we be meeting?’ he asks tersely. ‘It’d be good to know so that I can tailor the presentation to their requirements.’

No sooner has Carl put his glasses back on than he receives a message from Joaquim, Henry’s new Freemee guard dog. He wants Carl to ring him back immediately. Carl reluctantly does as requested while Will walks along the corridor ahead of him.

Joaquim doesn’t even use a picture or an avatar for his conversations via glasses. Carl has only a name to talk to.

‘Will Dekkert’s visit and his open discussion of the experiment were no coincidence,’ Joaquim’s voice tells him. ‘We’re inside his phone. He had a recording app switched on when he came into your office.’

‘No idea. Alice Kinkaid has just left the office, but we couldn’t have sent her anyway. Either you go or we cancel.’

‘I don’t know. The hunt for Cynthia Bonsant. Tell him he has to stay at the office to respond to any surprise events. We must talk to him, but until we do he’s not to leave the office or communicate with anyone. The best thing would be to send him to a meeting in the Bunker.’

Carl hangs up, calls security and orders them to come to his office, then strides after Will, who’s just disappeared around a corner.

‘There’s something important we need to discuss. Go back to the Bunker for now.’

‘That means someone else has to go on TV,’ says Will. ‘Alice would be the best person. She has experience of talk shows.’

They watch her via various shop cameras and the glasses of the three agents shadowing her. Alice has stowed her own glasses in her handbag.

Luís views Alice’s profile and skim-reads it. ‘Sometimes, but not often.’

‘We didn’t overhear any conversations, and there’s no note on her calendar about it.’

‘One of you go in,’ Marten orders the women tailing Alice. Through the agent’s glasses he sees Alice secure one of the last free tables in the restaurant. The agent is only able to obtain a seat on the far side of the room. From there she can keep an eye on Alice but is unable to watch her every movement due to the many bobbing heads and bodies between them. She’ll have to content herself with this vantage point for now.

A waitress brings Alice the menu. She looks through it quickly and lays it on the table. She fishes her smart glasses out of her bag and puts them on.

‘Now,’ says Luís. ‘Oh no,’ he sighs, as all Alice does is look at a few webpages with details of the hunt for Cynthia Bonsant.

By now Detective Straiten has got used to the talking heads in front of him. The hallway outside the hotel room where the crime was committed smells of carpet cleaner. Via his glasses a colleague from the Real Time Crime Center says, ‘We’re receiving hundreds of tip-offs all the time. Analysis says she’s in Midtown. Our cameras haven’t found her in the subway yet. There’s something wrong with them; they’re playing up. The cap and glasses don’t make it easy either. Same with the increasingly frequent photos from people claiming to have spotted her. Even on those we have to identify her ourselves, because the picture quality’s too poor for facial and physical recognition software.’

The forensic scientists let Straiten into the room at last. He inspects the place where the victim was found. The hotel will have to lay new carpet. Next to the half-dried bloodstain lies a blood-smeared laptop in a transparent evidence bag.

‘The victim has been identified. It is indeed Chander Argawal. The doctors estimate his chances of survival at zero.’

Straiten goes over to the window, the bottom half of which has been pulled up. He can make out the marks left by the technicians’ sweep for fingerprints on the windowpanes. He peers down into the small courtyard, which is already plunged into half-light in spite of the bright blue square hanging above the high walls of the building. Four floors down, a woman crossed a room she’d entered from the fire escape. Straiten points to the fingerprints on the window and asks the nearest technician, ‘Any identification yet?’

‘It just came back,’ replies the woman in somewhat close-fitting disposable overalls. She glances at her tablet computer. ‘Prints from four people. Three room guests before Chander Argawal, and Cynthia Bonsant.’

‘Sure,’ the woman says. ‘Some of them are Cynthia Bonsant’s too. On the fourth-floor window and door. She left her prints everywhere.’

‘But we only found Bonsant’s prints on the top. If she hit someone with it, then she’d either have had to be wearing gloves or placed something else between her skin and the device.’

‘We’ve got the assessments of some surveillance cameras,’ the colleague from the Real Time Crime Center announces to Straiten via his glasses.

His colleague plays him a video. It fills virtually Straiten’s entire field of vision and superimposes itself on the hotel room. Straiten recognizes the hotel entrance, seen from perhaps fifty yards away. The picture quality isn’t particularly good, and he can’t really recognize Bonsant’s face.

‘That’s Cynthia Bonsant leaving the hotel. Her path is easy to follow from then on. Of particular interest are the things she does on the way.’

The colleague sends him some further recordings. Bonsant bends down to a homeless woman begging by a wall.

‘What’s she doing? She’s not giving her money, is she?’ asks Straiten. ‘Is she disposing of evidence?’

‘That’s what we were wondering.’ He spools back to the place a couple of yards earlier where Straiten has a clear view of Bonsant’s upper body and arms. ‘Keep an eye on her left wrist.’

He presses ‘Play’ and in the unnaturally frantic fast forward, Bonsant again bends down to the woman sitting on the floor, stands up straight and goes on her way. The images stop.

‘That’s right. We’ve done some research. It wasn’t an ordinary watch, it was a smartwatch.’

Two minutes later, Straiten knows that Cynthia Bonsant also gifted her smartphone to a pedestrian and foisted her smart glasses on a young man.

‘I’d say she’s trying to get rid of every device that might be used to locate and track her electronically,’ Straiten concludes.

‘They got hold of the smartwatch. We’ve located the girl with the smartphone and the kid with the glasses, and two patrol cars are on their way.’

‘Why do it? It’s pointless when we’ve got cameras all over the place. She must know that after her latest reports.’

‘She steals a baseball cap and some sunglasses a few blocks later to fool the cameras, then disappears into the subway.’

‘Once she’s been sighted, a cap and glasses won’t help her against such a comprehensive network. She must know that too,’ his colleague responds.

‘Maybe she didn’t think of that. She’s not a professional hitwoman. If she did kill that guy Argawal, then mentally she’ll be all over the place.’

‘The wristwatch and other devices will tell us where she was when the crime was committed.’

‘The doctors won’t be able to determine the time of the crime to the exact second.’

‘Make sure you check the location data of her devices for the period around the crime too,’ Straiten urges him. He knows the RTCC will do that anyway, but he wants to make sure. ‘Do we know where she is right now?’

Cyn waits restlessly by the carriage door for the train to roll into Grand Central Station. As before, she has a feeling that people are watching her. Her feet hit the platform the moment the doors open. It’s so crowded she can barely make any progress. The air’s stuffy here too. She hopes there’s a shower at the studio so she can freshen up properly. A quick wash isn’t going to cut it now. Her clothes are also completely ruined. And to think she brought a smart outfit with her especially for the occasion! It’s crazy to think about my wardrobe at a time like this!

She lets the rush-hour crowd carry her along until she finds herself out in the cavernous main hall she knows from so many films and photos. This wasn’t where she intended to end up. It reminds her of a cathedral, except that here people aren’t kneeling in silent devotion but scurrying in all directions at the bidding of that modern god, speed. Only a few pause briefly in front of the large departures board or take a souvenir snapshot. Where does she go now?

Vi is able to follow her mother’s apparently aimless path through Grand Central Station on three smart-glasses live streams, filmed from different angles. She clearly doesn’t have any inkling that she’s been recognized by several bystanders, who are now broadcasting her whereabouts to the whole world. One of those observers isn’t satisfied with keeping an eye on her but follows her at a slight distance. The amateur reporter babbles something to himself as he goes, but Vi can only make out the occasional word over the noise of the main hall.

A fourth broadcaster shows up in Vi’s message stream, and she opens a new window in her browser. He’s obviously standing in an elevated position from where he can look down over the station hall. He zooms in on Cyn, then out again. She’s just a tiny dot among many others, but he pans his camera to make sure she remains in the centre of his screen.

All the while more messages flash up in the window in which Vi is following the news stream.

New police radio update (link): #NYPD seek #CynthiaBonsant as potential suspect in #BedleyHotelIncdt #NYC #nyfugitive

#NYPD still searching for Ann Tsilakis in #BedleyHotelIncdt. Somebody saw Tsilakis in #NY (photo)

CCTV footage from Lebby’s Deli: #CynthiaBonsant gives away phone (video)

#NYPD confirms one victim of #BedleyHotelIncdt #NY. Seriousness of injuries unknown. Further victims unconfirmed

#CynthiaBonsant linked to #terrorism? #Zero #0

Hello #NYPD, here’s #CynthiaBonsant #GrandCentral #NY!!!

Anonym. source says victim in #BedleyHotelIncdt #CynthiaBonsant’s partner in #Zero hunt, Chander Argawal

More footage from Lebby’s Deli camera: #CynthiaBonsant slips a man something. What? Glasses? (video)

Ann Tsilakis: suspect or victim in #BedleyHotelIncdt? #NY Where is she? via @nycregex (link)

Another video (link) of #CynthiaBonsant stealing cap and shades. How she looks now (photo)

Vi doesn’t know what to believe. She watches the two videos of her mother allegedly giving away her mobile and her glasses. Lebby’s Deli’s CCTV camera must date from the nineteenth century. The only way someone could tell that it’s Vi’s mother is if they’d followed her up to this exact spot on other surveillance cameras. In any case, Vi doesn’t recognize Cyn. She can just about make out that the black dot someone’s handing to someone else is a smartphone. What a load of tosh! She tries ringing again, but once more she goes through to voicemail.

‘OK, the police is here,’ is one glasses-wearer’s audible comment in Grand Central. Vi can indeed spot two uniformed officers in the throng of travellers. The fourth broadcaster’s footage gives a better view of events thanks to his elevated vantage point. On the left of the picture, two figures in uniform are shouldering their way through the crowded hall. On the right-hand side of the screen, Cyn is standing with her back to the concourse as she studies a map of the local area on an information board.

The constant stream of posts, photos and live footage gives Vi the impression that she’s actually there in the station. She’s every bit as engrossed in what’s happening as the various reporters and her mother. Her palms are sweaty and her whole body tense as she hunches over the laptop and the Pi beside it. She instinctively wants to call out to her mother, ‘Watch out for the police! They’re behind you!’ but she can only watch helplessly as the uniformed officers work their way closer. Cyn is the only one who hasn’t noticed!

Vi clenches her fists. She frantically contemplates what she might be able to do. Zero? She’s written to them already, but they’re their only chance.

Guext: Is there nothing you can do to help my mother?!

Peekaboo777: We’re on it. Getting support from Anonymous. Already inside NY subway camera system and manipulating footage. Grand Central next. BTW, how did your mother contact you?

Guext: Phone.

Peekaboo777: Yours?

Guext: Yes.

Peekaboo777: Get out of there! If possible avoid cameras. Take the Pi with you, throw it away somewhere unobserved, destroy the SD card. Now!

—End of session—

Vi’s stomach rebels and her hands start to shake. Without much pause for thought, she gathers her stuff together, pulls on a hoodie and grabs some shades. Zero advised her to avoid cameras. They’re worried that Vi’s being watched. Bloody hell, she’s just a normal eighteen-year-old. What is all this shit? In the middle of the night, as well! Where’s she meant to go?

She hesitates, then slides her smartwatch off her wrist. She leaves her smartphone behind. The back door of the flat leads out on to a narrow footpath. As far as she knows, there aren’t any cameras overlooking it. It’s her only chance.

She’s so startled that she answers yes. She feels queasy as she wonders how he knows her name and why he might be speaking to her.

A policewoman also steps up to her. ‘Ms Bonsant, we have to ask you to come with us,’ she says.

Now Cyn’s nerves really start to jangle. To keep her composure she asks, ‘What’s this all about?’

The policeman points the way and Cyn walks in the direction he’s indicated with a police officer on either side. A few onlookers slow down or stop for a second. Two people even appear to be following them at a distance as they cross the hall towards the main exit.

The man shrugs. ‘Presumably. We were just sent to pick you up. They said you were here and gave us a few up-to-date pictures.’ He checks his mobile. ‘Yep, looks like camera footage. They’re all over the city. Or maybe some guy with glasses identified you.’

Cyn is fully clothed, but all of a sudden she feels as if she’s stark naked. ‘Listen,’ she begins. ‘I’ve got something important to tell you. In here I’ve got—’ she says, tapping the pocket of her trousers.

The two police officers pull out their guns, and Cyn immediately holds her hands a long way from her body. Too late. The officers rush her, throw her to the floor and twist her arms behind her back.

‘No, no!’ she shouts. ‘I’m not armed! In my pocket there’s a memory stick with a video on it that you really need to check out! You or colleagues of yours who are familiar with this kind of material. It involves hundreds or even thousands of deaths!’

This news makes absolutely no impression on the police officers. ‘You can tell that to our colleagues in person,’ the policeman snaps. They frisk Cyn for weapons, pull her to her feet and drag her towards the exit through a crowd of excited bystanders. She’s sorely tempted to resist but then drops the idea. At least they haven’t handcuffed her, although the man is keeping a very tight hold of her wrist.

‘I had several copies of this video,’ Cyn continues. ‘On a computer in my hotel room. They’re all gone! The Daily in London should still have one. Your colleagues have to investigate.’

They emerge from the exit. The air outside is still close and humid. Very few people pay them any attention in the dense stream of pedestrians, just a handful stand watching them, as if they’ve been waiting for Cyn and the police officers. She’s again assailed by memories of movie scenes of New York. Cars crawl along nose to tail, every other one a yellow cab. Steam rises from a sewer grating. A few yards further down the street three workmen in high-vis orange jackets huddle around a fenced-off hole in the street. The officers lead her to a patrol car waiting at the kerb.

‘Can you pick up what they’re saying?’ Carl asks Joaquim via his glasses, as he searches among the six live-streaming onlookers for a serviceable soundtrack. He’s sitting in a limousine, which is taking him to the NBC studios in the Rockefeller Center.

The people filming are also too far away to catch the conversation between Cyn and the cops. The officers and Cyn are just approaching their car, when a black sedan suddenly pulls up alongside it, preventing the police from getting in and driving off.

The policeman does indeed shout at the sedan, from which two men and a woman get out, all of them in dark suits. He lets go of Cyn’s arm, says something to his fellow officer and trudges over to the suited trio, who have by this time walked round to the other side of the police car.

Carl’s eyes flick from one live stream to the other to see what’s happening outside Grand Central. One of the men holds out his badge. The policeman checks his identity and hands it back. Reluctantly he guides the three people over to Cyn and his colleague.

‘FBI,’ the woman in the dark trouser suit says to Cyn. ‘You’re coming with us.’

At the same time the policewoman’s grip on her arm tightens. Cyn looks curiously back and forth between the two women, while the other cop tries to contact his superiors by radio from inside the patrol car.

‘Maybe you should make up your mind,’ says Cyn. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘These two appear to think differently,’ Cyn replies, pointing to the NYPD officers. So the absurd competition between the city police and the Feds you see in films really does exist? ‘I’ve had enough. I’m not going anywhere until I know why,’ she states categorically. ‘Or am I under arrest?’

The policeman emerges from his car, shoves his way between Cyn and the suited trio and pulls himself up to his full height. ‘You’re coming with us,’ he announces. ‘For suspected murder.’

‘What?’ Cyn cries so loudly that he puts his startled hands to his ears. ‘Who am I supposed to have murdered?’

She watches in shock as the three FBI agents try to force their way around the police officer to get hold of her. He’s more agile than she would have guessed from his stocky physique and manages to fend off the agents, especially when the policewoman comes to his aid. Within seconds all Cyn can see is a tangle of arms and heads, accompanied by lots of shoving and wrestling, swearing and shouted orders, the crackle of the patrol car’s radio and then the sound of a siren, which seems to be coming from inside Grand Central Station.

In an instant her horror at Chander’s death turns to white-hot rage, giving her a sudden surge of energy. The police officers are distracted by the alarm inside the railway station, and masses of people are beginning to stream out of it, so Cyn turns swiftly on her heel, melts into the pulsing crowd, which now covers the entire pavement, and walks calmly and nonchalantly away. She’s only gone twenty feet or so when a quick glance over her shoulder tells her that the brawling agents have noticed her escape. Yet they’re hemmed in by the panicking crowd, whereas Cyn is at the forefront of the wave of fleeing people and is free to leave. Just then the police officer’s earlier words shoot through her head: ‘They’re all over the city. Or maybe some guy with glasses identified you.’

A few paces in front of her, a workman clambers out of the fenced-off hole in the ground.

Wanted by the FBI for terrorism and by the New York Police Department for murder. Those are absurd allegations but given what she’s seen, heard and read about the two organizations, and given the accusations, she knows she doesn’t want to fall into the hands of either. She’s a sitting duck out on the streets, but how can she escape? Into the underworld, like Zero in Vienna!

She leaps over the fence, casts a quick glance down into the hole – it looks bottomless, but there are rungs on the wall leading down – and before the workmen can react, she’s climbing down, almost letting herself drop, barely touching the cold metal rungs, as the echoes of the workmen’s first shouts break over her head like waves.

The deeper she goes, the darker and hotter it gets. She slips, loses her footing and hangs there in the air. Looking down, she can see that this shaft opens into a larger sewer, but the bottom is still about ten feet below her in the darkness.

A look up reveals the silhouette of her first pursuer against the bright outline of the hole. She descends hand over hand to the final rung, then lets go. The landing is hard, but she picks herself up. The main conduit is ten feet high and about as wide and leads away from the bottom of the shaft in both directions. Weak cones of light from street gratings above illuminate the floor at regular intervals, allowing Cyn to see something at least. She runs off. Here at least it’s dry, even if the air is as fuggy as she imagines it might be in a rainforest.

How many more people are going to climb down into the hole after this woman? Alice wonders. Along with the two men in suits and the police officers, fresh from their fight next to the patrol car, two other guys join the chase for Cynthia Bonsant, followed by many others. The hole seems literally to be sucking in a sizeable part of the crowd escaping from Grand Central. Pedestrians are standing around the work site with their glasses or smartphones, seemingly only waiting to be permitted to climb down too. The workmen have given up trying to stop them and watch the scene disinterestedly. Alice now has eleven windows showing live streams of the hunt open on her glasses. There’s no way she can watch them all, because she’d either have to reduce their size even further or they’d overlap. The news stream is overflowing. From time to time, Alice looks around the restaurant. None of the other patrons strike her as suspicious. She removes her glasses and tucks them into one of the outer pockets of her blazer.

She picks up her handbag and heads to the toilets. She doesn’t need to look for them – she knows this place. The toilets are very clean and tidy, and most importantly each toilet stall has a lock and solid walls, with no possibility of peeking over or under them or plastic partitions that collapse if you so much as aim a sideways glance at them. Two of the five are occupied. She locks herself into one, puts down the toilet seat and sits on it, then opens her bag and pulls out the Raspberry Pi from the side pocket where she carries it when it’s not hidden somewhere else, along with the small keyboard and mini monitor. She swiftly sets up an encrypted anonymous connection with the computer nestling in the palm of her hand. One of the occupied toilets is unlocked, and Alice hears the click of high heels on the tiles outside. She begins to type. She’s crafted the text carefully while eating her meal so that it’s as concise and as comprehensible as possible.

‘I want to know what she’s doing in there!’ barks Marten. Blurred images of the ladies’ toilets flicker on the screen in front of him. His agent scans the locks on the stalls to check if they’re bolted or not. Her hand appears in the picture as she opens the two unlocked doors and then carefully tries the three closed ones.

‘Kick the doors in! Do something, anything!’ Marten urges her. A second window from the perspective of the second agent shows her entering the restaurant but being detained by the manager.

The agent in the toilets whispers, ‘I don’t know which door she’s behind.’

‘These morons!’ Marten hisses inaudibly under his breath. ‘Then open them all!’ he commands more loudly.

Through the woman’s glasses he can see that the agent is sizing up the doors for weak spots. Her hand then reappears in the footage holding a credit card, and she sets to work on a door. A few practised movements, and the catch is released. She flings open the door.

A scream startles Alice so much that she almost knocks the Pi and the keyboard to the floor in panic.

‘What are you doing?’ a woman cries hysterically from one of the adjacent toilet stalls. Alice hears another woman’s voice, but can’t make out what she’s saying. Her message is almost finished. She types away frantically to the sound of swearing, shouting and arguing outside. Then the voices grow quieter, and there’s scratching at her door.

‘Who’s there?’ she asks as she logs on to the waterfalls. ‘This one’s taken.’

‘Just a second!’ Alice says harshly, but she’s panicking now. Yet she still sends off her message to the waterfalls.

With quick fingers Alice rips the SD card from the case and chucks it into the toilet bowl.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ she complains as she does this. ‘I’ll be out in a second!’ This is the truth. She flushes the SD card away and stows the Raspberry, keyboard and monitor in her bag just as the door slams into her back, almost sending her flying into the toilet bowl.

On the monitor Marten sees Alice’s startled expression, unkempt strands of hair draped across her face. She’s pressing one hand against the wall of the toilet for support.

‘Are you crazy?’ she yells at the agent, through whose eyes Marten is following events. ‘What’s going on?’

‘What does it look like?’ Alice shoots back, pressing the ‘Flush’ button again with her free hand.

The agent yanks her to one side so roughly that Marten hears a loud yelp of pain. The agent rushes over to the bowl and stares down at the rushing whirlpool. Two hands plunge into the water, and Marten hears a torrent of curses. Through the glasses of the second agent, who’s now reached the scene, he spies the first agent’s backside at the rear of the toilet stall. In the foreground Alice is crouching on the floor, using one hand as a prop and clutching her shoulder with the other. Two wet hands re-emerge from the toilet bowl – empty.

‘Have you gone completely out of your mind?’ roars Alice. ‘Can’t a woman go to the toilet in peace any more?’

‘Not on your life! Wash your hands first!’ she cries and runs out of the toilet before either of them can stop her.

Cyn doesn’t have the slightest idea where she is. Somewhere in the guts of New York. As is normal for the intestines, it is wet and hot and it stinks. A distant source of light ensures that she can at least distinguish the contours of this corridor. One might think that it would be quiet underground, but there is uninterrupted rumbling and hissing, screeching, whistling and squelching, as if the city were already in the process of digesting her. She can hear voices or footsteps on all sides, but none of them sound very close. She keeps walking, as snapshots of the past few hours’ events flash through her mind: the start of the madcap chase at the hotel; her instinctive escape from the strangers at Chander’s door. Her intuition was correct. Who else but those men could have murdered him? But she’s the one wanted by the police. Maybe they intended to attack her too. But who? And why? Freemee? They wouldn’t have made her an offer if they were planning to kill her. Unless, that is, they didn’t know until after their meeting that she wouldn’t accept it …

The darkness is getting thicker and thicker. She has to grope her way forward. Voices and footsteps, closer now.

Suddenly it all becomes clear to her. They know! However the algorithms found out, Freemee knows that she was intending to reveal everything on the talk show tonight. That’s why they’re after her.

Those damn programs can read her like a book! There’s more dim light somewhere up ahead. Do they know her next steps too? That would be helpful, because she doesn’t have the foggiest idea what to do. If they know, though, they’ll be waiting in the right place for her. But where is that? She originally planned to battle her way through to the TV station, but she has no chance of making it now, with the NYPD and the FBI both hot on her heels. They won’t need computer programs to figure that out.

Again and again, she listens out in the darkness. The eerie sounds continue to reach her from all sides, whereas the voices and footsteps are a little further off now, although that may be misleading in this labyrinth.

All of a sudden it’s obvious how she must act: she must be unpredictable! She must act differently than others would expect her to, and she would expect herself to do.

On the other hand, Freemee knows that she knows what the algorithms are capable of. Are they perhaps counting on the fact that she’ll have precisely this reaction? If they’re good at their job, they can predict unpredictability. Then again, can anyone predict unpredictability? Does unpredictability even exist any longer? And if it does, what conclusions should she draw? That she should still do what would be expected of her in such a situation, because the programs are relying on her trying to do something unusual? And what if they forecast she’ll have that exact thought? Then she’d have to be unpredictable again.

Her head’s about to burst! Her fingers dig into something wet and slimy that moves, and she stifles a scream and carries on at a run.

What do they expect her to do? she wonders. Run away. Go to ground – which is precisely what she’s done. She’s done the predictable thing ever since this nightmare started! From the hunt for Zero through to fleeing from the hotel and fleeing from the cops and the FBI. What else would a suspected criminal do, a person someone wants to frame for murder? What would a suspected terrorist do, who can expect neither a public investigation, a competent defence lawyer nor a fair trial in front of a normal court, but potentially solitary confinement, torture and special tribunals? She stops, out of breath, and bends over with her hands on her knees. Voices nearby. She can’t understand what they’re saying. Footsteps splash through puddles. Time to move on!

As soon as Detective Straiten enters Cynthia Bonsant’s hotel room, he spots the open wardrobe door and inside, the open door of the safe. Straiten is accompanied by two crime-scene techs who immediately get down to work.

The safe is empty. Maybe there was nothing in it, Straiten thinks. He never puts anything in the room safe on his rare trips. Anyone who does is carrying too much luggage: that’s his motto. A few items of clothing are lying or hanging in the wardrobe. The bed is made.

Straiten calls the manager and asks when housekeeping last cleaned Bonsant’s room. That morning at about eleven, she answers after quickly consulting her staff, but Cynthia Bonsant was still in the hotel after that, as shown by camera footage from the lobby and the lift.

There’s an open laptop on the small desk by the window. He puts on some latex gloves and presses a key at random. The computer is on, but a password is required. The IT experts will have to deal with it. They have to analyse the contents of Chander Argawal’s computer as it is – if they can get inside it. The man was a professional, of course, and would surely have known how to protect himself against unwelcome intruders.

Straiten stands pensively in front of the empty safe, wondering what might have been locked inside it. The carefully hung and folded items of clothing suggest a tidy person. If Bonsant hadn’t used the safe, speculates Straiten, its unlocked door wouldn’t be wide open, and the wardrobe door would be closed too. Somebody grabbed something from the safe in a hurry.

‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!’ the talk-show host gushes to applause from the audience. ‘Today’s subject was always going to be the new self-enhancement and world improvement services that became a hot topic after the videos posted by the activist group Zero. However, we’ve had to update our debate in light of ongoing developments right here in New York City!’

In place of the usual studio set, the sole backdrop behind the presenter is now a gigantic video wall that dwarfs him, Carl and the other panellists. Nine separate sections of the wall show flickering footage from smart glasses and static surveillance cameras, recent reports, and posts and photos from social media.

‘The British journalist Cynthia Bonsant was supposed to be with us to discuss surveillance and manipulation. But she’s currently the subject of a very public police pursuit through the streets of New York! Our editors have put together this quick summary for you.’

Carl follows the snappy video montage with interest. It concludes with images of a horde of people pouring like millipedes into a hole in the ground in pursuit of Cynthia Bonsant.

‘Ladies and gentlemen! A good ten per cent of the weekday population of Manhattan wear smart glasses. That’s over three hundred and fifty thousand people! And just about everyone owns a smartphone or a mobile equipped with a camera. It looks like quite a few of them are currently racing the police to see who can find Cynthia Bonsant first!’

The wall behind him features at least two dozen small windows with live streams in which one can make out the vague outlines of people in the murky darkness underground.

‘Thousands of people from all over Manhattan have already taken part in the hunt via #nyfugitive. They’re still broadcasting live from their glasses and phones online! You can follow all the streams on our home page, by the way. We’ll be expanding the theme tonight to a major phenomenon of our times, observation – both how we observe others and how we observe ourselves.

‘Dr Syewell,’ he says, turning to the guest philosopher, who reminds Carl more of a rapper, ‘maybe you would like to go first and—’

‘It’d be my pleasure, Lyle! I’d go further and call it surveillance. The key question is if it’s a means to an end or an independent phenomenon in the same way as hypochondria or narcissism. Although here it can affect a whole culture. For many years people have talked about the narcissistic society, and I would add to that the hypochondriac society, which believes, among other things, that it can protect itself from presumed pests through a gigantic surveillance and intelligence apparatus, which is of course totally—’

Why do some people always have to see everything so negatively? thinks Carl. There are so many positive sides to this! Progress is comfort.

Cyn’s priority is to find a way out of all these sewers. Every time she passes a street grate, she climbs up the rusty rungs set into the concrete, but she’s not strong enough to push the grates aside or else they’re locked. Each time, frustrated, she has to clamber back down again and continue her search for an exit. It feels as though she’s been in the guts of the city for an eternity. She’s already tried in vain to lift up twelve grates, but still she climbs up to the thirteenth.

The pedestrians above her create a play of light and shadow in the shaft – there are so many people walking over this grille that there’s far more shadow than light. Flakes of dirt fall into her hair and eyes from the soles of people’s shoes as they hurry past up above, but that’s not going to stop her. She presses her shoulders and neck against the metal with every ounce of strength she has. She can feel it moving, but then weight bearing down from above almost makes her lose her grip and fall. She clings to the rungs and pushes, but the trampling feet of the passers-by drive her down again. Raging now, she climbs up another rung and wedges herself against the grate with all her remaining energy.

Suddenly the grate slides on to the asphalt with a clatter, and her head bursts into the open. As legs bang into her head and shoulders and feet crush her fingers, she heaves herself up, sits on the edge of the hole and takes a deep breath. People swerve around her and some glance at her in surprise, but nobody stops. She’s emerged into a narrow street with a few shops, some offices, building sites, pubs, multistorey car parks, hotels and theatres. She drags her legs out then pushes the grate back into position so no one will fall down the hole.

‘Damn, where did she come from?’ the police operator at the Real Time Crime Center asks the colleague sitting next to him. The software that analyses the surveillance cameras has just flagged up what it regards as an abnormal event. The camera in question overlooks a section of West 49th Street near Broadway. The operator opens a separate window on his monitor and replays the thirty-second period prior to the alert. A grate is lifted up on a busy pavement, and a slender figure in a baseball cap climbs out. She’s wearing neither a sewer worker’s uniform nor a workman’s protective vest.

In the main window, the person is now standing. The operator zooms in on her. The peaked cap hides all but her chin and mouth.

‘Could this be the British journalist we’ve been searching for all over?’ the other man asks. He calls up some pictures of Cynthia Bonsant before she went to ground. ‘The clothes are dirtier, but otherwise … Bet you it’s her!’

‘I’ll send over a few cops,’ the first operator explains, already activating his radio.

‘She isn’t running away, so what does she plan to do? Is she jawing with people?’

Cyn doesn’t exactly look as though she just came out of one of the smart stores in the neighbourhood. Still, she turns to the nearest passer-by and asks, ‘Excuse me, could I borrow your phone for a second?’

The woman steps around her and continues on her way. Cyn realizes she’ll have to try a different tack. There aren’t going to be many opportunities in this street, whereas there’s a swarm of people at the next crossroads. She makes straight for it.

The signs on the street corner tell her that she’s at West 49th Street and Broadway. As far as possible, she quickly calls the city map to mind. The TV studio must be close by, but she has no idea which way to go. She could ask for directions – she tries it out. ‘Forget it, you tourist!’ seems to be people’s general reaction.

She scans the other pedestrians as she marches along Broadway. There are gigantic billboards on some buildings, and huge screens on others up ahead. Now she only approaches people wearing smart glasses – at random, because she can’t immediately tell if an individual is wearing ordinary specs or smart glasses. Five or six people hurry past her without stopping to listen or answer, but then someone grabs her by the arm from behind.

Cyn spins around and tries to wriggle out of the iron grip, but by now a second hand has seized her other arm. Two young men in glasses are holding her tightly, jabbering away at her or at each other or at somebody else entirely. She catches very little of their excited exchange.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the presenter announces, interrupting Alvin Kosak. ‘Updates are coming thick and fast now, as you can see on our video wall! Two pedestrians have just identified Cynthia Bonsant on Broadway near Times Square!’

The two men’s microphones are recording their conversation with Cyn, and the producers turn up the volume.

Her hand flutters into the shot, and when the camera manages to focus on it, Carl spots the memory stick.

‘The police aren’t interested!’ she shouts. ‘They think I murdered someone, though I didn’t! But this is much more important! Thousands of deaths! A horrific experiment! A video on this stick …’

Not again! Carl groans inwardly. Where did she get it from? He puts his hand over the TV microphone and whispers to Joaquim, to whom he’s connected via his glasses, and likewise Henry: ‘I thought you’d destroyed all the backup copies including the one at the Daily.’

‘Dear viewers,’ the presenter cries, drowning out Joaquim’s reply, ‘our producers are now trying to set up a link to one of the men who caught Cynthia Bonsant! The two of them …’

He still doesn’t get it, Carl thinks. Why would either of those men talk to some dude on TV when they can stream online, watched live by anyone on Earth with an internet connection? Dozens of media outlets must be trying to contact those guys right now.

‘I said we destroyed every one of Bonsant’s backup copies,’ Joaquim repeats.

‘I’ve got a laptop,’ a voice calls from the cluster of people that’s now formed around Cyn and her two captors.

All she can see at first is someone waving a computer case over the onlookers’ heads, but then the face of a young man bobs up. A mop of blond hair half obscures his tanned face. She immediately recognizes his chunky first-generation smart glasses.

She struggles and twists in the hands of the two men, who are still holding her fast. ‘Let go of me, will you?’ she orders them. ‘Look around! You really think I’m going to be able to escape?’

In the meantime, the blond guy has worked his way through the crowd to them and hands her the laptop. ‘Here you go.’

‘Are you filming with your glasses?’ she asks the two guys standing close behind her. ‘And broadcasting this somewhere?’

‘OK,’ she says, turning to the spectators. ‘Everybody here wearing smart glasses should record this too and stream it live.’ She pushes the stick into the laptop and raises it above her head so that at least some of the gathering can see the screen and film it. People immediately jostle and jockey for the best angle.

With bated breath Carl follows the streams of all eight smart-glasses wearers who are currently peeking at the laptop screen on Broadway. There’s a steady flow of social media posts with the #nyfugitive and other hashtags in a second window. Carl’s stomach is churning. That woman out there could bring everything crashing down.

‘Dammit, Joaquim, can’t we stop her?’ Carl curses under his breath to his glasses, as Cyn uses the trackpad to click on the USB stick symbol.

From the loudspeakers comes a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’, punctuated by isolated cries.

In quick succession the talk-show producers cut together the views of other onlookers filming the scene from the front. One of them catches Cyn’s disappointed expression in extreme close-up, her lips opening and closing like those of a fish.

She turns to the laptop’s owner. ‘There’s nothing there. Is that possible? Is the message wrong?’

The young man leans over the screen, presses some keys and shakes his head. ‘No, everything’s working. The stick’s empty.’

At the Real Time Crime Center, the police operator watches Cynthia Bonsant pull the memory stick out of the laptop and push it in again.

‘Traffic hold-ups on the way to the scene,’ a police officer radios in. ‘What’s going on?’

The operator checks the route and discovers from camera footage that traffic jams are starting to form in every street in the area. Several traffic lights have broken down.

‘We don’t know yet,’ the man says, ‘but there’s a problem with those lights.’

‘First the subway cameras, now the stoplights. Every time this British lady’s in trouble, something happens. It cannot be a coincidence!’

‘Still no firearms visible,’ he tells the police patrol. ‘The suspect is being held by two citizens and is surrounded by about fifty other people. We’ve identified all the individuals. None is marked. Neighbourhood streets all jammed. You’ll have to go in on foot.’

Apart from a few short breaks, the operator has now been at his desk for six hours straight. His shoulders are slumping, his head has sunk slightly into his neck and he stares at the large wall of monitors in front of him with his elbows propped on the table. More head-shaking from Bonsant and the blond guy confirms that the memory stick is indeed empty.

‘OK, that’s enough,’ one of her captors says. ‘You’ve had your fifteen minutes of fame.’

‘All right!’ Bonsant cries. ‘Listen to me instead! Are you listening? Are you streaming? I have something to tell you!’

‘Now do you see what I meant?’ Carl says to Joaquim with one hand cupped over the mike on his lapel, while Cyn talks about Edward Brickle’s video and the statistics the boy was compiling about unexplained fatalities.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Joaquim enquires. ‘Turn off the whole electricity grid?’

They see Cyn break off for a moment and gaze in surprise at the huge advertising screens nearby, which are showing images from Eddie’s video. She gestures excitedly towards the screens, and the eyes of her audience flit back and forth between her and the outsized commercials as she continues to talk.

‘Jesus!’ Henry hisses. ‘How did those get there?’ he says, just as a message at the bottom of the screen provides the answer to him and the rest of the world: ‘Zero presents a film by Edward Brickle, revealed by Cynthia Bonsant.’

Carl isn’t listening any longer. He’s watching the movements of Cyn’s lips from eleven different angles with the boy’s video and Zero’s introduction in the background. The crowd of listeners is swirling around her. Individual words pierce his consciousness, confirming his worst fears. She isn’t talking only about Eddie’s findings; Will must have told her about the experiment too. Carl might not have provided incontrovertible proof of the trials in his presentation to his fellow board members, but Bonsant’s speech will have alerted journalists, the authorities and ultimately the courts, and they are not going to rest until Freemee has disclosed all its data.

Yet even if they can’t compel Freemee to do that, the company is now on the defensive, and a refusal to disclose would be legitimately interpreted as deliberate concealment. Carl can’t even bear to imagine how their competitors will gloat. The major data collectors in particular could pick up clues about certain aspects of the experiment via their databases. Even NBC is now playing the video with Eddie Brickle’s original commentary. Where did they get it? Zero must be broadcasting it worldwide.

He notices, however, that his inner emotional turmoil is abating and his characteristic cool calculation returning. This has always been one of his great strengths.

‘OK,’ he says to Joaquim and Henry as unobtrusively as possible. ‘The story’s out. I see two alternatives. One, we undermine Bonsant’s and Brickle’s credibility and deny everything.’

‘We’ll need to undermine more than their credibility,’ says Joaquim. ‘People conform to Julius Caesar’s old adage: “I love treason but hate a traitor.” We must challenge their characters, their motives and their integrity, the same way the US administration and their allies did to Edward Snowden. By attacking his motives, his escape to China, his asylum bid in Russia and a few tactless statements he made, they got people to reassess his other actions as treason. It played perfectly with many members of the public.’

‘Reassess? I thought you earned billions of dollars from this administration,’ Carl interjects. His lips try to form themselves into a sober smile; after all, every camera in this damn studio is now trained on him. He’s whispering through his teeth so that only his glasses can pick up the sound.

‘Listen,’ Joaquim says firmly. ‘Character assassination might work. There are already some naysayers out there.’

‘Offensive,’ Carl says out of the side of his mouth. ‘We own up to everything, choose the right words. People love what Freemee’s crystal ball and ActApps do for them. We only need to remind them of the positive effects they have on their lives. Another parallel to the surveillance and data collection stories that have come out in recent years: in the end, convenience and security are more important to people than freedom and independence. They have no idea how to handle the latter anyway.’

‘We’ll do both,’ says Henry. ‘Attack Bonsant’s character and at the same time promote Freemee’s advantages.’

‘But we can’t confess to the fatalities,’ Joaquim objects. ‘Some of us are going to wind up in jail if we do.’

‘We don’t have to confess to them,’ Henry contradicts him. ‘It’s sufficient not to deny them. In any case, it’d be almost impossible to prove any direct link to Freemee.’ He laughs. ‘Did you ever see the CEO of a tobacco corporation, an arms manufacturer or a bank go to jail? Customers reach for a cigarette, a pistol or an unpayable loan of their own free will. It’s the same with Freemee.’

‘Calm down,’ Henry says soothingly. ‘There’s one further advantage to all this: Erben Pennicott can go take a hike. When all of this comes out, he won’t be able to blackmail us any more.’

‘That Bonsant has flung open Pandora’s box. Now I see why you’re so interested in Freemee.’

‘It’s all over. I don’t think Freemee can survive this. Their competitors will be rubbing their hands at the sight of the market leader going down in flames like this. We’ll make contact with them instead.’

‘Our men have withdrawn,’ says Jon. ‘It’s swarming with cameras out there. Everyone’s being watched, and that includes our people.’

‘It’s getting to that point, yes,’ Jon replies. ‘Above all, though, our people have got to learn to cope in this kind of circumstance. In that one moment they tried to seize Bonsant from the NYPD, they were filmed by eleven surveillance cameras and seven pedestrians with smart glasses.’

‘So her attempted escape is well documented. That’s almost an admission of guilt right there. Her escape is a massive embarrassment, but we’ve got her now.’

‘Anyone watching this, either now or later, should ask Freemee for information!’ Cyn declares to the mini-cameras perched on her listeners’ noses. ‘Or try to reconstruct the facts like Eddie Brickle did!’

‘That’s enough now, ma’am!’ a police officer roars as he shoulders his way through the crowd with his partner in tow. ‘Out of the way! Let us through!’

When Cyn catches sight of them, she tries to break free, but her captors have grabbed hold of her again.

‘What a nutjob!’ she hears someone call out, but she ignores him. The officers are closing in. She only has seconds left. ‘And who knows, maybe Freemee’s Vice-President for Statistics and Strategy did too? He died in a car crash a few months ago.’

She’s still speaking as the police officers announce that she’s under arrest and the two men loosen their grip on her arms.

‘Or Chander Argawal, whom I allegedly killed!’ she cries, even louder now. ‘He was alive when I last saw him!’

As the cops read out her rights and handcuff her behind her back, Cyn hears someone shout, ‘Liar!’

But Cyn won’t be silenced. ‘Check it! Investigate!’ she urges her audience over her shoulder as the policemen tug her away. A throng of people surrounds the trio, while Eddie’s huge effigy goes on talking above their heads.

By now they’ve reached the next junction, where a patrol car is hemmed in by two taxis. The officers push her headfirst into the car, but she resists one last time and turns to face the watching crowd. ‘You can find out more by working together! Find out everything!’

The first policeman eventually bundles her inside and slams the door. For a second it’s very quiet inside the car. When the police officers get in the front, she catches a last snatch of her audience’s voices and the sound of the city before the siren on the roof starts to blare.

Driving back to the station, Detective Straiten learns via his smart glasses that the results of the analysis of both Bonsant’s and Argawal’s sensory devices, glasses and smartphones are now in.

‘Our friends say that Bonsant’s devices were nearby when the Indian’s glasses broke. However, they can only locate the exact site to a three-yard radius. So there’s a degree of imprecision.’

‘That same imprecision also applies to the victim’s devices, which means that there’s a radius of several yards.’

‘Don’t keep me in suspense. Do those two three-yard circles overlap at the time Argawal’s glasses broke or not?’

‘You asked about circles. Seen from above, they do overlap. According to our previous findings, Bonsant was climbing down the fire escape, and her coordinates remained more or less constant.’

‘Her altitude didn’t. It looks as if she was between four and eight yards from Argawal when his glasses gave up the ghost.’

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe he only collapsed after a few seconds, and the glasses broke only when he hit the floor. By which time she was out on the fire escape.’

‘The doctor says the blow was too hard for that. He must have fallen to the floor immediately.’

‘In her live appearance just now, she claimed that she’d escaped from several men in Argawal’s room. Did you see it, her performance in Times Square?’

‘No idea. Sounds pretty crazy. However, if somebody had told me three years back that we’d be communicating via our glasses, I’d have called them crazy too.’

‘Dear viewers, there are only a few minutes of our show remaining!’ whoops the presenter, who’s been unable to sit still for some time now. ‘But in light of the events in New York City, the channel has decided to extend our report, and so we will be joined by anchorwoman Tyria LeBon from our newsroom! First, though, we’ll play a video analysis from Trevor Demsich’s blog. Trevor is an IT specialist from Santa Fe. He’s used automatic body and clothing recognition software to scan the footage from surveillance cameras and smart glasses that was streamed online this afternoon.’

The host raises his hand briefly to his ear to catch his producer’s instructions through his earpiece.

‘From what I’m hearing, Trevor has made an interesting discovery. Right after the alleged attack on Chander Argawal, chief suspect Cynthia Bonsant left the Bedley Hotel. In the next few minutes eight other people also left the hotel, including this man.’ A man in a suit and dark glasses is circled in red on the wall of monitors.

‘Followed soon afterwards by this man.’ Another red circle appears around a corpulent man in shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, a beige straw hat and sunglasses. ‘Trevor found camera footage tracing virtually the entire route taken by Bonsant until she vanished into the sewers. As we can see here, one of these two men always shows up on the same route a few seconds later! Look! The whole way! By accident? Trevor’s convinced that these two men chased Cynthia Bonsant out of the hotel. Who are they? Are they witnesses? In that case why haven’t they contacted the police? Why, if they’d found some reason to pursue Bonsant, didn’t they immediately inform the police? How were they able to stay on Bonsant’s trail despite losing sight of her several times?’

‘Demsich is probably right,’ the police operator confirms. ‘We’ve matched his pictures with the videos from the hotel. Those two guys were caught on the lobby cameras too. The first turned up about twenty minutes before the crime, accompanied by three others.’

He plays the footage to Straiten’s glasses. The guy in the Hawaiian shirt, three in suits, one in jeans and a shirt. All of them are wearing shades, two have hats and one a baseball cap. One of the hat guys goes over to reception. As he speaks to the receptionist, he briefly pushes up his sunglasses.

‘Yep. Works for a small security firm. A subsidiary of a large one, EmerSec.’

‘The EmerSec? The billion-dollar government contractor with deals in Iraq and God knows where else?’

When they reach the police station, Cyn first has to wait for a while. Her hands are still cuffed behind her back, and her arms are aching.

After a quarter of an hour she’s approached by a man who must have ancestors from all five continents. He’s dressed in jeans, a shirt and a crumpled jacket. He introduces himself as Detective Straiten before removing her handcuffs and leading her into an interview room.

‘So tell me what happened,’ Straiten asks in a soft voice, which echoes weakly off the bare walls.

‘Well, for starters, noon today at the Bedley Hotel after you and Chander Argawal got back from Freemee.’

‘Is he really dead?’ she asks. She doesn’t know how she feels right now. Discovering his breach of her trust has shattered her memories of a few wonderful hours together.

‘Our producers are about to play a new video,’ the TV host announces. ‘Apparently this one’s also from Zero!’

Marten’s monitor shows a photo of the President which turns into a picture of his chief of staff.

‘Presidents’ Day was just the beginning,’ says Zero. ‘Naturally we’re taking a closer look not just at the President, but also at those around him. His chief of staff, Erben Pennicott, for example, who was such a hero when capturing our sweet little spider drone.’

A recording of the relevant scene morphs into footage of Erben Pennicott crossing a dark hotel lobby. ‘Yesterday evening, for a few seconds, he crossed the smart lenses of a New York hotel guest. That guest of course had nothing better to do than post the video snippet on Facebook.’

Pennicott is going to tear some heads off for the mere fact that this video was even recorded, let alone posted on Facebook, Marten thinks. It isn’t really his job, but since Cynthia Bonsant’s appearance in Times Square, Marten has begun to think that it’s time to start hunting Zero again. He phones his technicians and tells them to get a move on with analysing the new video.

Zero continues. ‘A surveillance camera on a terrace in the building opposite that same hotel spotted Freemee’s chairman Carl Montik at a fortieth-floor window a little later. That camera automatically transmits its footage online where it goes through the automatic facial recognition software we have rigged up to identify specific people. Might that be Erben Pennicott and Henry Emerald in the background? The footage is too blurry for facial recognition to work, but the resemblance is striking, wouldn’t you say? What might those three be discussing the night before Cynthia Bonsant raises serious allegations against Freemee and is wanted by the FBI on suspicion of terrorist activities? Well, well, Erben Pennicott. You can’t rip the legs off our cameras this time, because they’re not our cameras.’ Taking on the guise of a laughing chief of staff, Zero bids farewell with his signature last words: ‘Another thing: I believe we must destroy the data krakens.’

‘They haven’t made any errors in the metadata this time,’ the technician informs him by phone, ‘and I can’t find anything in the video either at first sight.’

Pennicott’s going to explode, thinks Marten with a peculiar sense of satisfaction.

‘That matches our findings so far,’ says Detective Straiten when Cyn comes to the end of her description. He pushes a picture taken by a CCTV camera across the table to her. She recognizes the hotel lobby. At the reception counter stands a man in a hat who’s pushed his shades up on to his forehead while talking to the female receptionist.

She studies the face closely, but is distracted by a woman in an ill-fitting suit who comes into the room and whispers something into Straiten’s ear. He nods, and the woman goes out again.

‘No,’ says Cyn. ‘But I recognize the hat. One of the men who forced his way into Chander’s room was wearing the same kind, or something similar at least.’

He leads her into an office with two facing desks, both piled high with documents. At the left-hand one sits the woman who just spoke to Straiten. She’s staring at her computer screen. Straiten guides Cyn into position behind her and stands next to her. He digs his hands into his pockets, as if keen to signal that he isn’t unduly worried that he might have to use them to prevent a highly unlikely escape bid.

It takes Cyn a few seconds to understand what’s happening on the screen. Various browser windows are showing different content. The one that strikes her most prominently is the live stream of a talk show. During a brief panning shot she recognizes Kosak and Washington. She was scheduled to be on that show right now.

What a pompous git, thinks Cyn. People are watching the events on all kinds of channels, from Twitter to the Daily. Just because his show is presenting people’s posts, he thinks everyone’s watching TV.

‘Right after Cynthia Bonsant’s arrest, hordes of viewers around the world started searching for clues that back up her allegations. Some of those people work for the world’s largest data-collection companies. Those companies know just about all there is to know about us, including how, when and why the fatalities occurred. It took them barely half an hour to dig up evidence supporting Cynthia Bonsant’s specific claims that there were two regional clusters of unnatural deaths among Freemee users in the US and Japan, but also evidence of others. Take a look at this!’

The producers project coloured maps, curved graphs and pie and bar charts on to the video wall.

‘A few minutes later, a spontaneous international research team of IT specialists published similar data!’

‘Looks like you stirred up a proper hornets’ nest,’ says Detective Straiten.

Monday