RAVENDALE – DETROIT – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

It was almost possible to believe that the Aug Incident hadn’t taken place here. On the surface, everything in this neighborhood seemed in order – no homeless and dispossessed crowding every shadowed alleyway, no darkened buildings without life or power. As Jensen walked quickly, his collar turned up, he allowed himself a moment to look around and take it in.

Ravendale had been the site of massive urban renewal in the 2020s, and the corporations that had taken control of it then had never let go. Jensen saw bright holographic signage promising safety and prosperity beneath the company banners. Tai Yong Medical’s abstract logo was everywhere, and he wondered if there was any part of this protected enclave that the Chinese conglomerate didn’t own to some degree. He grimaced, wondering how David Sarif would have felt seeing his old business rivals with such a foothold in ‘his city’. For his part, Jensen knew that whatever sense of security Tai Yong projected was false. Beyond the edges of the Ravendale district and the other protected zones, the rest of Detroit was barely hanging on. The city was on the verge of turning feral, and if that happened there would be no stopping its self-destruction.

He shook off the thought as he approached the apartment block where Wilder’s bolt hole was located. A sculpted rectangle of glass and steel, it climbed twelve floors into the night sky, glowing with soft amber illumination.

Pritchard had already scouted the location via cyberspace, conducting a virtual recon of the building that didn’t show up any good methods of entry. Jensen resolved to tackle the security quickly and directly. It was imperative for him to reach Wilder’s apartment on the eighth floor without triggering any alarms – Jensen knew that the man would have an escape plan, and that he would flee at the first sign of danger. The element of surprise was Jensen’s only advantage.

A pair of ubiquitous Big Bro security cameras were set in the ceiling of the lobby, constantly scanning back and forth across the room for any signs of intruders. Jensen hesitated behind a low planter and watched the sweep patterns for a few moments, waiting for the brief moment when the cameras slipped out of synch with one another. Chancing the use of his cloaking aug would be too risky – the lobby was long and he’d need to be fast, risking disruption of the invisibility effect. Timing was the key.

Jensen blink-set a countdown clock in the corner of his optic display, and when the numbers began falling, he bolted from his cover. Without missing a step, he ran to a spot beneath the first of the cameras just as it swept back toward him. Another count of three more seconds before it moved away again, and Jensen sprinted the rest of the distance, barely making it into the corridor beyond as the second monitor looked his way. The camera caught a glimpse of black coat-tail, but he was in.

“What was that?” A voice, tired and bored, issued out from a security room across the hall. Jensen heard the sound of a chair scraping on the floor as someone stood up, and he was at the door as it opened inward.

He saw a thickset man in a rumpled security uniform through the widening gap, but didn’t give him time to react. Jensen slammed the heel of his hand on the door, forcing it back to hit the unwitting guard in the face.

The man stumbled back, shouting out. “Hey, you can’t be in here…” Belatedly, he caught up to what he was looking at and his hand dove at a holstered stun gun.

But Jensen was ready and he was faster. He pushed in, snaking his arm around the guard’s throat, tightening the hold in a matter of heartbeats. The man tried to say more, but all that emerged from his lips was a dry gasp.

Jensen carefully applied more pressure to the sleeper hold, feeling the resistance ebb out of the guard. Too tight for too long, and he could kill this guy; too loose and he risked him breaking free. “Don’t fight it,” Jensen told him.

The stun gun clattered to the floor and at last the guard went slack. Jensen lowered the unconscious man into a chair, kicking the door closed as he did so.

Next to a TV running the Picus News channel, a bank of monitors showed points of view from all the Big Bro cameras on every floor of the apartment block, and Jensen spotted the shadows of small, drum-shaped security bots rolling back and forth on trike wheels. Acting quickly, he brought up a systems display and a brief smile crossed his lips. The guard had left the console logged on to the security mainframe, immediately getting Jensen past the first line of digital resistance.

He cast a wary eye over the network display, and set to work running a quick-and-dirty intrusion of the system. Jensen wasn’t in the same league as career hackers like Frank Pritchard, but he knew enough to brute-force his way through a data net. Bouncing an intercept from the input/output port, he guided a cursor to an API node, then through a redundant directory, edging closer to the vital registry he was targeting with every step.

He was two nodes away when the system’s diagnostic subroutine triggered, redlining the intrusion. The computer began a rapid back-trace, closing the gate on Jensen as he swiftly ran out of room to maneuver. Failure would mean every alarm in the building going off, and the end of his clandestine entry.

Jensen pushed on, taking the risk. At last, he connected to the registry and triggered a capture function. As the program co-opted the command data, the seeker trace enveloped it – one percentage climbing, another falling, with success going to whichever executed first. Jensen’s hands left the keyboard and he got ready to run; but then the registry flashed green and the network warning fell silent. In the next second he was looking at command authorities for the cameras and the patrolling robots, and with a few deft keystrokes he ordered the systems to ignore him.

Jensen blew out a breath and leaned back. On the Picus News feed, he saw the permanently friendly smile of anchorwoman Eliza Cassan as she covered the day’s headlines. She looked the same as she had when he confronted her in Montreal, only to learn that Cassan was no more human than the intelligent network running this apartment building. Was she the same Eliza he had spoken to, the secret AI with all its questions and uncertainties? Or was that just another model, a freshly rebooted upload of the same software forced back into the same patterns as its original? The thought came too close for comfort to Jensen’s own circumstances, and he dismissed the question, returning to the mission of the moment.

He found a resident index and discovered Wilder’s ex-wife listed there as a current owner-occupier, despite the fact she had been killed in the Aug Incident over eighteen months ago.

Apartment 8-12, noted Jensen. One of the Executive Suites. Where does an out-of-work security guard get the cash for a place like that?

* * *

He rode the elevator to the seventh floor. The apartment directly below Wilder’s was locked and vacant, but a high air vent allowed Jensen to gain entry without forcing the door. He crossed the echoing, empty room, noting that the apartment could easily have swallowed the entire footprint of his old place in the Chiron Building.

Jensen slipped out on to the balcony, and leapt up from a standing start to grab the edge of the floor above him. Working slowly and in near silence, he swung his body up, his augmented arms taking the weight, until he could hook his leg over the other balcony and pull himself up. Jensen heard the micro-motors in his damaged shoulder complain, and ignored it.

A conversation was taking place inside Apartment 8-12 – or, to be more accurate, an argument. Don Wilder’s raised voice cut across another reply filtered through the buzz of a video feed.

“For cryin’ out loud! You’re such a tough guy but you got nothing but excuses to give!” Jensen crouched on the balcony, peering into the sullen lighting of the room beyond. Wilder was pacing back and forth in front of a wall screen, gesturing with a shiny black cyberarm that he hadn’t possessed during his time at Sarif Industries. In his other hand he had a stranglehold on a half-empty bottle of Red Bear stout.

On the screen, Jensen could make out the broad, dark face of the leader of the Motor City Bangers. Magnet was sneering. “Man, who the fuck you think you are? Don’t talk to me like you is in charge here.”

“You think you are?” Wilder shot back. “Your chumps have a simple job to do and they can’t even handle that. Kill a man or two. It’s not that hard to understand.”

“MCB don’t work for you, asshole,” said Magnet. “This? It’s a whatever, a courtesy call. I got her the computer like she wanted, so that’s all good. As for you? Out.” He gave Wilder the finger and cut the line.

The other man swore violently and took a long, angry swig of beer. “I am having the worst goddamn day!” he said to the air.

“You’re just getting started,” said Jensen, stepping into the room with a pistol in his hand.

NINE

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