Neural Wraith 2 - Ch1-3 (Patreon)

Daily updates (or close enough) start today. They should continue to around Christmas. Don't expect every update to be as chunky as today's, and some might be some plotting/musings about the book that I usually wouldn't share. This was meant to start yesterday, but I resolved a major IRL distraction instead.

For those who read the Neural Wraith short story, the first 2 chapters will be familiar (with some changes). Chapter 3 has a new scene and some important changes for the book's plot.

Chapter 1

The headquarters of the Grand Westphalian Trust loomed over the CBD liked a pristine, gleaming beacon of an age long past. Clean, unbroken panes of glass ran along the skyscraper, unmarred by tacky LED displays. The entire building seemed to hover on a handful of marble columns while small cafes hung from glass platforms underneath the tower itself. A handful of transparent glass elevators sat inside an open plaza beneath the tower.

Locals knew the company as GWT. It was a trusted bank in Neo Westphalia—at least, as trusted as banks could be in a place this jaded. The company stood tall in the halls of power. Its grubby fingers weren’t so much in every pie as funding others foolish enough to leave a trail, and it had enough money to make nearly any problem go away.

Which is why the cordon of SMG-wielding autonomous police dolls surrounding the pristine HQ was a sign for alarm in the city. Each of the dolls looked like the same identical woman, with fluffy white hair, antennae hidden as pigtails, armored pauldrons and greaves, and were five foot nothing. They were known as the Archangels, the city’s elite police force.

Lines of extravagantly suited office workers formed in front of the dolls guarding the elevators, presumably to be checked one-by-one. Far more watched from beyond the cordon, kept behind an invisible line. The Archangels didn’t bother manhandling people.

In truth, there was a line. It existed only in augmented reality and was visible to almost every person and doll in Neo Babylon using neural implants that merged the digital world with the physical world. Known as the Altnet, life itself had been augmented for decades here.

A sleek police interceptor slipped through the cordon and pulled up amid a dozen oversized SUVs with flashing lights. Two more interceptors swiftly followed. Inside the first sat two people: one human, the other an Archangel.

The human was Nick Waite, one of the only functional adults in the city without a neural implant. The other was Chloe, a Mark 3 Archangel. Unlike the older models outside, she was a little taller, with slightly longer hair, and a little fuller in the chest.

“Are things this bad?” Nick asked Chloe as he peered out the windows at the small army of dolls around them.

“The safety of Neo Babylon’s financial sector is of the highest priority. Murder, the possibility of corporate espionage, and hacking are all considered dangerous. Combined, they must be taken very seriously,” she said.

The car doors snapped open and the pair slipped out. Nick wore his standard baggy coat that made him look like a real detective, and a more nondescript set of clothes beneath.

Not that he really needed to dress up. Neo Westphalia never got too cold. A side-effect of being an artificial chain of islands in the north-east Pacific. Although as they entered spring, he might not appreciate the heavy coat. It’d been nearly five months since he’d become a detective after all.

Little light entered the CBD at this early hour. Despite that, the cafes, coffee shop chains, and bakeries teemed with suits and people in athleticwear. If the line to enter GWT’s HQ was this bad already, Nick could only imagine how bad it would be at 9am. No doubt many of the people camped out with coffee were employees logged on remotely using their neural implants.

The high-security nature of finance meant work-from-home options tended to be limited. Or at least, that was the excuse given to force the office drones into the cubicle farms each day. On the flip side, the banks had the shiniest golden handcuffs to attract ciphers into their dull halls.

“GWT didn’t seem that alarmed,” he said as he and Chloe approached the central elevator. “I checked their notification. Their head of security sent it in personally. Which seems weird to me—shouldn’t a mainframe have automatically notified us once she found the body?”

“Many organizations have policies that require internal security to contact us, rather than mainframes,” Chloe said.

“So a human decided that a cipher being murdered overnight in the middle of one of Babylon’s most prestigious banks, without being noticed by any of their security systems, was of low priority?”

“It is of concern.”

Nick felt that Chloe might be understating matters.

A mugger was of concern. Somebody embezzling funds was of concern.

But the head of security of one of Neo Westphalia’s largest banks shrugging off murder and gaping security holes? He sincerely hoped this didn’t end up as another Lieu situation. Cracking open one long-term major conspiracy had been enough excitement to last him at least a year, and it hadn’t even been half that long.

The Archangels forming the cordon were all Mark 1s, but only one or two had familiar serial numbers to Nick.

While he considered his memory excellent, keeping track of thousands of identical dolls was hard work. It didn’t help that there was no pattern to them. Whenever one was destroyed or disabled, they simply transferred into the next available unit and “rebirthed” into its serial number.

When he had told Rie that he wanted to name the Archangels to make it easier to remember them, she’d called him an idiot. Not just because he would need to come up with—and remember—several thousand new names, but because the process would throw the Host into havoc.

For now, the Mark 1s didn’t seem fussed about his inability to differentiate them. Metatron—better known as Meta—acted as their voice and liaison to him ordinarily, and that seemed to satisfy them. Although they did have a propensity to chatter in his earpiece when she wasn’t around.

Like right now, as the Archangels noticed his arrival and began shifting onto his frequency. One after another, they reported in, letting him know their current status, what they’d noticed, any current thoughts, the color of their underwear, and all sorts of random oddities.

“I do not believe any of us tell you the color of our underwear,” Meta told him, making her presence known as she stepped up beside him from his escort. She looked identical to every other Mark 1, save her serial number.

A discordant hum in his earpiece suggested discontent from the Archangels at his comment.

He shrugged. “It was an example. And I don’t think you even wear underwear? I know the Mark 3s have the same strange plate that Rie has, but what about you Mark 1s?”

Meta shifted uncomfortably and looked to Chloe. Over the past few months, the pair had become “close” for lack of a better word. Both acted as liaisons for their respective model lines to Nick. The primary difference was that Meta almost never left his side, much like his bodyguards Juliet and Rosa, unlike Chloe, who had other duties.

“They lack in-built sexual features,” Chloe said, with an unspoken “for now” in her tone.

Given Rie was presently at Sigma’s central factory in the Atlantic, Nick wondered whether the Host might have some inside information on when some physical upgrades were forthcoming.

Officially, Rie’s visit was to finalize Ezekiel’s tuning. As the prototype and the new batch of Mark 3s would be deploying under Nick’s command, Sigma felt it was important to review their current directives. New Archangels would be running off a master instance of the training data, after all, rather than the live data that the active Archangels made decisions based on.

Nick had been busy over the past few months ensuring the Archangels could hide the data within their neural net from Sigma. This visit would prove whether his efforts were enough.

Although given his mentor was there, he suspected at least someone would find out the truth. Whether Welk cared was another matter. Something was deeply wrong in the depths of Sigma Labs, and it wasn’t being resolved through the captured researchers taken from Neural Spike.

Even if his efforts worked, he’d also need to worry about the new prototype soon enough. While Rie wasn’t going to be returning hand-in-hand with her baby sister, Ezekiel’s arrival was mere weeks away.

Nick knew this because the commissioner had been planning an overwrought induction ceremony to celebrate the event. The entire central island was going to be transformed into an event center to show off the police force’s new smiling, sexy symbol of oppression.

At least, Nick assumed Ezekiel was sexy. The Mark 3s were based off her, and his life would be in mortal danger if he ever suggested they were anything but.

In the meantime, that left Nick to manage himself. While he was officially in charge of the Archangel Division, he wasn’t crazy enough to try to do everything himself. He worked closely with Rie to manage things. With her gone, he felt lonelier, and not just because his bed was much colder at night.

Much, much colder. Rie had been keeping his heating bills low over winter. Not that he told her that.

Nick arrived at the elevator right as one of the three central lifts ascended toward the massive structure floating above them, containing a gaggle of employees. The Archangels refused to allow anyone in the line to go any further, breaking many of the workers from their mindless routine. They began to protest about why they weren’t moving forward.

“Detective Waite, we have reserved the next elevator for you,” one of the Mark 1s told him.

He grunted and stepped past the dolls. The protests subsided. Many of the employees stared at him in disbelief, as if unsure he was even real. None of them said anything.

Presumably, they were chattering to each other using their neural implants. This sort of reaction was rapidly becoming a new normal whenever he showed up in person to a scene.

Nick studied the elevator shafts while he waited. While they were transparent, and the cars were the same, a variety of devices appeared to be built into the door frame. A small panel outside each entrance had been ignored by the Archangels and workers, but was presumably for the use of neanderthals like Nick who lacked a neural implant.

After a short wait, he stepped into the next elevator and ascended along with Chloe, Meta, Juliet, and Rosa. He didn’t bother using the panel.

Once inside the glass walls and away from prying eyes and ears, he asked, “These are public access, right? Anyone can walk up and use one of these? Even at night?”

“Without authorization, the elevators only go to the atrium and the shops beneath the building,” Chloe explained. “After 6pm, public access is curtailed. Automated security systems are deployed and Guardian G5 security dolls are utilized to keep the vicinity clear.”

“G5s, huh. Figures that GWT are using older security dolls. Cheapskates. We’re checking their memory banks from last night?”

“Permissions are being requested.”

He narrowed his eyes. That sounded a lot like GWT were unwilling to cough up the data.

With a wave of his hand, he gestured for Chloe to block out any spying from the hidden cameras in the elevator car. If she hadn’t already. She nodded at him. Given her eyes hadn’t glowed, he suspected she had already done so.

“I’ll admit I’m not up to speed on how well megacorps can control their own data. What happens if they wipe the dolls and any backups?” he asked.

“It is unlikely that the sensory data of local security dolls is backed up on any meaningful schedule. However, hardware logs would show evidence of tampering.”

“What about mainframes? This is GWT’s HQ. There must be like 7 mainframes here.”

While small organizations could run off the back of a single mainframe, the same couldn’t be said of larger ones. Sophisticated network structures had been developed to distribute workloads across multiple mainframes, maximizing efficiency and minimizing downtime impacts.

RTM had standardized structures that it endorsed, and they had created a global industry of consultants and contractors that existed to build, maintain, and upgrade mainframes using their standards.

For reasons that Nick had never understood, it was popular to name RTM mainframes after the Jewish sefirot. Almost no individual location needed more than 10 mainframes, and it included a useful hierarchy to segregate various functions across the business.

When he’d first heard about this, the obvious question had been how an international company handled a hundred branches each with their own mainframe named Malkuth. Obviously, the individual mainframes would be tagged according to location, but it was an extremely dehumanizing structure for the mainframes. And a confusing one.

To humans, they probably didn’t think much of it. What did it matter what they called their machines? But the mainframes needed to communicate efficiently, for much the same reason internal hierarchies were necessary in individual locations.

RTM’s answer were specialized “super-structures” that treated groups of mainframes as a single unit in a layered system.

So this HQ might be a high-level mainframe—likely a Keter—in a larger system, and other branches lower-level mainframes. The structure was flexible, and Nick only knew the general gist of the idea rather than the specifics. Neither Tartarus nor Neural Spike had ever been anywhere near large enough to consider the idea.

Hell, the only reason he knew about the stuff was that Neural Spike had a complex mainframe system in its final days, and Tartarus had been considering upgrading to one before it was shut down. Nick had been one of the few Ciphers with the training and experience with larger mainframe installations due to his time in Neural Spike.

What he did know was that, as the HQ, this GWT branch would have separate mainframes for local management and for the broader work, and then likely one mainframe that integrated the two. Depending on the size of the organization, the integration mainframe would be called either Yesod or Tiferet. The primary management mainframe would almost certainly be called Malkuth.

His business was with the local mainframes. He didn’t care much about GWT’s backend.

Chloe didn’t answer Nick’s question, so he followed up with more.

“I can’t imagine that the mainframes wouldn’t be mirrored somewhere, or at least have regular backups. A hiccup with one could crash the global financial system,” he said. “Who are we dealing with? I’m assuming this is a standard RTM structure.”

“Correct. However, we have been restricted from interacting with any mainframe other than Tiferet. Given GWT’s influence in Babylon, we have been unwilling to push matters,” Chloe said.

“A Tiferet?” He scratched his head. “GWT has a local Tiferet? I thought the whole role of them was to integrate different layers of mainframes.”

Nick had never even dealt with a Tiferet before. RTM’s emotion engine mainframes had been relatively new in the latter days of Neural Spike, and he’d mostly interacted with them while visiting other companies on cipher business for Tartarus. Tiferets were the definition of “mainframe glue” in that they existed to hold together larger, more unwieldy server structures.

He’d expected to deal with a Yesod, Malkuth, or Netzach. When he’d been trained on RTM structures, they’d been fairly explicit that Tiferets shouldn’t undertake major organizational roles. The few times he’d dealt with mainframes in the past few months had involved those low-level models.

“She is not assigned to the local level of the HQ. The official contact for the department is Yesod, but Tiferet responded to communications in her stead.”

“Well, that bodes well.”

So GWT’s HQ was using a standard RTM structure, except it wasn’t. They were barring access to data that might determine who had been in the building last night. And the murder was apparently a mystery.

Oh, and their security chief had been wholly unconcerned with this whole murder business.

Nick didn’t need to be a detective to smell a rat. And he was, even if he hadn’t been trained as a detective.

The atrium was a palatial affair, if a little claustrophobic. Continuing the theme of physicality, Nick noted the lack of LED displays or imprinted overlays. The elevators opened up into the middle of the space, and receptionist dolls stood immediately in front of him.

A waterfall cascaded down the far wall and currents of water ran along glass channels beneath the floor. Burnished gold facades joined dark wood paneling to give an old-school but elegant appearance. Any electronics appeared to be hidden away. Nick might think he’d stepped back a century or two in time, if it weren’t for the glass elevators and the glowing LED exit lights.

Oh, and the gun turrets in the ceiling corners. There was only so much that could be done to hide them.

The building’s security didn’t appear to be active, but it remained visible. GWT wanted guests to feel welcome, but secure, and for those with sinister thoughts to know they were an electronic signal away from vaporization.

“Mister Waite, we were not expecting you. Do you have business with the Trust today?” one of the receptionist dolls asked while beaming at him. “Given your accessibility needs, I can organize a face-to-face meeting with a funds maximization master to discuss whatever you wish.”

Nick had no idea what the hell a “funds maximization master” was, but he suspected it was some pompous title for a doll who would act as a relay between him and a mainframe for basic account administration.

He did, however, know what she meant by “accessibility needs.” His lack of a neural implant meant he couldn’t use the vast majority of the devices in the city. Most of the damn lifts in the police department didn’t even have buttons and every appliance in his apartment cost a small fortune for the privilege of having clicky things on it.

“Wait, I have an account here?” he asked, his mind catching up to the meaning behind her words.

His escorts stared at him, and Chloe smirked. The receptionist merely tilted her head in confusion.

“The Grand Westphalian Trust has been the Neo Babylon Police Department’s financial partner of choice since its inception,” Chloe explained. “Upon your induction into the department, I took the liberty of opening the necessary accounts.”

“Mister Waite, did you know that all purchases made through your Trust Facilitation Account using direct settlement earn a 10% cashback in the form of Primum credits? You have yet to utilize your account in this manner—or at all, in fact.” The receptionist seemed annoyed on behalf of her owner at Nick’s refusal to use his heretofore unknown transaction account.

Not that he cared much. He didn’t have a great head for money, but he knew that all the cashback deals were related to strange Altnet stuff. Primum credits were a digital currency used exclusively for buying digital goods.

While somebody couldn’t turn Primum into cash, or at least not legally, the opposite was very much not the case. Absurd amounts of money vanished into the Primum black hole every second—a fact Nick knew because his friend Sung held down a solid job thanks to it.

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “I’m here on police business, not personal.”

The receptionist stared at him. After several seconds, she nodded. “Understood. I have been informed that Tiferet will be here shortly. Please make yourself comfortable. Do you desire refreshments?”

“Coffee?”

“That is unavailable at present.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Water,” Chloe said flatly.

Nick rolled his eyes at Chloe’s look. She’d been on him lately about not drinking enough water. Her recent coffee kick was lapsing and now she seemed worried about his health. If she tried to get him into superfoods, he’d put his foot down.

There was nothing wrong with a burrito and coffee for breakfast and he stood by that.

Under Chloe’s watchful gaze, he chugged down the glass of water the receptionist returned with. If this kept up he’d ask her for a ring.

Not that he would tell her that. Somehow, he felt that she’d take it seriously and the Host would riot. Rie might also be upset. Or worse, she’d ask for her own ring.

They waited for several minutes in the otherwise lifeless atrium. Several elevator cars full of employees rose past them, and then descended without their cargo sometime later. Nick remained the only living soul here. The wealth on display here would bother him, but he’d begun to get used to it over the past few months in the Spires.

Not to mention the fancy apartment he lived in. Sure, by Neo Babylonian standards he was firmly middle class, but that put him in the upper 10% of the city.

Things had been very different six months ago. He’d lived in a derelict apartment, tied by law to a dead-end job that paid below-market rates, and his glory days had seemed well behind him. He’d been coasting toward retirement by his late 20s. A truly sad existence.

Then everything went a bit nuts. His life had been upended in circumstances that, by all rights, should have landed him in jail—or a secret underwater lab, at any rate. Now, he owned a brand-new upscale apartment, had a full-time job that paid far too much, received retirement benefits, and even had exceptional health insurance.

One of the elevator cars slowed, and it wasn’t empty. Nick rose from the square wooden bench he’d been sitting on.

Before he had a chance to even dust himself off, the woman inside the elevator exited and blitzed toward him.

“Mister Waite, I do apologize for making you wait,” she said. “On any other day, I could easily have arranged for a private suite to discuss matters but I’m afraid today is—”

“A murder investigation,” he said flatly. “I know. I’m here to investigate it, not query my account. You’re Tiferet?”

He couldn’t imagine she was anybody else. Silver bands on her wrists and the barcode and serial number engraved in golden ink beneath her left eye were clear indications that she was a physical interface for a mainframe.

Her model looked custom. Her white and gold jacket and miniskirt contoured perfectly to her hourglass figure. Thick tresses of platinum-blonde hair billowed down her back and over her shoulders in dense curls that would require hours of daily maintenance if they were organic. Only a hint of cleavage and thigh flesh peeked out, as if somebody had scientifically chosen the amount to be shown.

Which was probably the case. This interface probably cost as much as his apartment. He imagined it could probably outperform most dolls without drawing on the immense supercomputer that acted as its brain somewhere in this building.

Said supercomputer likely had as much invested into it as most mid-sized companies held in market cap. While mainframes could be bought off the shelf, there wasn’t a chance in hell that a bank the size of GWT wasn’t using highly customized emotion engines in their HQ. These mainframes managed innumerable trillions of dollars. They were the company.

“I am Tiferet. It is a pleasure to meet a valued and honored member of the Trust such as yourself,” she said. Her beaming smile had probably cost as much to develop as the net worth as lesser banks.

“Thanks,” Nick drawled. “As I said, I’m here as Lieutenant Cipher Nicholas Waite, not an account holder. GWT reported that one of your cipher analysts was found murdered this morning. I’m here to investigate.”

She blinked at him, then slowly pivoted her head to look at Chloe.

“I believe that you are more than familiar with the detective’s position,” Chloe said, and Meta nodded next to her as if to amplify her words.

Tiferet tilted her head to the side and her eyes glowed momentarily. “Your personnel are presently with our security staff at the incident site. Internal measures are being conducted to address police requests for additional data to assist with your investigation. As I do not believe you have the forensic skills necessary, would it not be best for us to step aside into a meeting room and discuss additional matters?”

Nick shot Chloe a look. Her eyes glowed as she checked in with the Host.

Rather than speak openly, she used her neural net to talk directly into his earpiece, “Other Mark 3s are already undertaking forensic analysis, as she said. They are personally dealing with the HQ’s head of security, one Lucida Harm.”

Harm… Nick knew the name. She hung around in some of the cipher circles dedicated to mainframes. He’d always placed her as a black company piece, but she must have gotten a better offer from GWT. Going legit had too many benefits to overlook.

Anonymity was dead on the Altnet, so he knew the identities of basically every Cipher he interacted with, even briefly. His memory wasn’t good enough to remember if he’d ever helped her, though. Chances are he’d provided some assistance with some esoteric errors or directives at some stage.

Few enough black company ciphers dealt directly with mainframes in any capacity for him to remember them. If Lucida’s name came to mind, it meant she was the real deal.

“That will be fine,” he told Tiferet.

She smiled at him. A moment later, an elevator car rose into the atrium and came to a stop. It was full of bewildered employees. Before any of them had a chance to react, the receptionist dolls shot forward and began ushering the workers out. A few of them froze up, half-expecting Chloe to arrest them.

“After you, Mister Waite,” Tiferet said, gesturing to the now-empty elevator car.

Bemused, he stepped inside. The Mark 3s, Meta, and Tiferet followed, and soon they were rocketing upward to one of the uppermost floors.

Given the elevator shaft stood inside the center of the building, there shouldn’t have been much to see through the glass. That’s when the embedded electronic panels roared to life and showed a view of the building’s exterior.

“I don’t usually see actual electronic glass,” Nick mused.

“We strive to ensure the optimal experience for all members, whatever their age, disabilities, or backgrounds,” Tiferet said, clearly reeling off some corporate spiel.

Age was likely the key there. As good as neural implants had become, they still couldn’t be installed in prepubescent children. If GWT wanted to remain the premier institution for the spoiled rich brats from the Spires, it needed to look good to them when they were too little to think for themselves. That way the bank could mine them for nostalgia for life.

Nick’s friend, Lucas, loved the look and feel of places like this. So much of Babylon was too sleek, clean, and modern for him. To him, the appeal came from rustic, warm places that reminded him of where humanity had come from.

The elevator came to a stop. Outside the door gleamed a pristine and almost sterile hallway, all painted white. The floor comprised high pile carpet while the walls were formed from contoured foam—likely acoustic foam.

A half-dozen G5 security dolls stood outside, bulky automatic shotguns in their hands and heavy armor plating covering up almost their entire bodies. They remained perfectly still.

“Is this a server floor?” he asked. “Aren’t these usually underground?”

“The Trust believes in excelling in all fields, and that requires the greatest performance,” Tiferet said as she led Nick and Chloe past the security dolls. “Our mainframes operate across distributed nodes for redundancy and performance reasons. These are the performance nodes, intended for trivial affairs.”

“Such as dealing with me?” Nick tried not to smirk.

Tiferet stopped outside an unmarked door.

Although every door was unmarked, actually. The floor lacked any internal windows, landmarks, or any way to orient oneself. This wasn’t an obstacle to anyone with a neural implant, as they could automatically map their surroundings, but Nick found the area disconcerting.

This space hadn’t been designed for humans. Chloe showed no concern, so this presumably wasn’t a trap, but Nick genuinely wondered why Tiferet was bringing him to the mainframe equivalent of the utility room.

“The vast majority of customer-facing affairs are handled using interface protocols,” Tiferet said. “For a member of your status, I use my primary node for all interactions that require additional processing.”

“I’m touched.”

“That pleases me.”

Apparently sarcasm was too much for her “interface protocols” to process. Then again, outside the Archangels, processing complex emotions was difficult for dolls. Tiferet might be an emotion engine mainframe, much like the Archangels were emotion engine dolls, but her interface was a significant downgrade.

Given Nick was in the market for a suitable interface model for Helena, his personal mainframe, he made note of this. The idea that a mainframe might downgrade its intelligence for the sake of faster reactions surprised him, and he wouldn’t wish for that to happen to Helena.

Tiferet led them inside the room. Juliet and Rosa remained outside.

The spartan hallway gave way to an elegantly furnished office, replete with yellow tulips, brass and wood furnishings, and a large wall of electronic connectors. Presumably the connectors were for interfaces and dolls to hardwire themselves in if necessary.

The tulips looked out of place against the deep, warm colors of the office. Nick suspected they meant something to the mainframe or whoever placed them here, given a contrasting color would work better.

The desk and tabletops were barren. No mugs, utensils, or signs of utilization were present. Not a speck of dust could be seen, but that just spoke well of the cleaning dolls.

“Please, take a seat. I’m afraid I do not have coffee, but I can resupply you with water,” Tiferet said as she conjured a tall glass from within a hidden wall cabinet and filled it with water from a similarly hidden tap.

Nick and Chloe sat in the overly upholstered leather couches that filled one corner of the room. Meta remained near the door, as if standing watch, but her SMG hung loose. After a few moments, the mainframe joined them and served him the glass.

“I had hoped that someone would reach out to you sooner,” Tiferet said as she settled into a couch opposite him. “This problem has been on my mind for some time.”

Chapter 2

“It has?” Nick asked.

Damn. They might be getting somewhere. Apparently he was already working his magic on Tiferet, a fact the Archangels often found frustrating.

“Indeed. Multiple flags have been placed on your account to force the customer relation managers to reach out to you about your future. Their failure to arrange an earlier meeting is deeply frustrating.” Tiferet affected a pouty expression. “I believe there is a human saying for this: if you want something done right, do it yourself?”

Nick held back a sigh, while Chloe openly smirked at him. Of course the mainframe still only cared about his account.

Was this just singlemindedness on Tiferet’s behalf or an attempt to stall him? Given how strange mainframes tended to be, he genuinely couldn’t tell.

“I already said—”

“Security has informed me that they will join us once protocols have been followed. Until then, surely you have time to see to your financial security?” Tiferet asked.

Her raised eyebrow, crossed arms, and prim look suggested that even if he said no, that she would see to his financial security anyway. Somebody had very particular tastes when they had created her model. Then again, maybe they’d shaped the model to the personality that her emotion engine had come up with.

“Fine,” he said. “But I’m not sure what’s so important. I’ve done just fine without even knowing about my accounts here.”

“That is even more concerning.” Tiferet’s expression suggested some customer relation managers might not be getting their annual bonuses. “I have conducted a thorough search of your finances. They are a mess and in dire need of repair.”

“By searching my finances, you mean…?”

“When you opened an account here, you gave us permission to utilize all financial data related to you. Using data sharing agreements with other major financial institutions in Neo Westphalia, I located your other accounts, analyzed your income and expenses, and simulated a suite of options based on your situation to optimize your future.”

Right now, Nick felt his future would be optimized by never dealing with GWT ever again. He didn’t care much for dealing with money—mostly because he’d never had much of it—and being told that this mainframe had just casually rifled through his life only lowered his opinion of the financial sector.

Then again, he worked in a police division that operated by reading people’s thoughts and actively monitoring almost everything taking place in the city. Nick felt the hypocrisy lapping at his chin as he struggled not to drown in it.

“Is this really the sort of thing one of GWT’s mainframes should be wasting time on?” he asked instead.

“Aiding a valued member is part of my core duties. Although a human staff member should have acted as a conduit for the Trust’s capabilities, your reactions so far are significantly more positive than most humans. Even the ciphers dislike this floor.”

“It’s a big, black soundproofed box of mystery,” he said, leaning back. “It’s funny. I work in an office that’s utterly unsuited for dolls, but full of them. This place was built for you, and I strongly suspect you spend very little time here.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The fact there’s nothing in here. If you told me this was a meeting room that they accidentally built on the wrong floor, I’d almost believe you if not for the flowers.”

Tiferet looked away, but her expression remained unchanged. “The purpose of giving a mainframe an interface is to facilitate interactions between humans and my processing capabilities. I cannot accomplish that from an office that nobody will visit. In that regard, you are right to suggest this room was built on the wrong floor.”

He scratched his head. This hadn’t been where he wanted the meeting to go.

For one thing, prodding the mainframe wasn’t his intention. She helped run the company and was a huge store of data. The fact she could be unwrapped to reveal a surprisingly humanlike core only complicated matters.

But he did note an oddity in her statement. “You’re a Tiferet, right? Aren’t you supposed to facilitate matters between different levels of mainframes within the server structure? Meeting with me seems beneath you.”

“Perhaps. But my directives suggest otherwise.”

Chloe’s eyes flashed but she said nothing. That confirmed his suspicion that he’d struck gold.

But he wasn’t going to learn more by talking with the mainframe. Directives and processes would be locked behind a strict corporate shield—if the police struggled to penetrate that to gain security footage for the murder, Nick wasn’t going to unlock the workings of an extortionately expensive mainframe.

“Shall I explain to you my proposals to guarantee your financial security?” Tiferet asked, forcibly pushing the topic back to her favorite hunting ground.

“Sure.”

The next few minutes consisted primarily of financial gibberish about transaction and savings accounts, interest rates, money market funds, and a swiftly thwarted attempt to explain the optimal way to conduct transactions.

If there was one thing that Nick never felt absent from his life, it was the bewildering array of payment options that implant holders faced during every financial transaction. The legacy software he relied on to buy things with his phone forced him to use whatever transaction method carried the lowest fee—typically 1% or so, because paying people extra for the right to pay them at all was a thing for some reason.

But he knew there was a wild world out there, where the global financial system fought for every dollar moving through it. Neo Westphalia might only be a small set of overpopulated islands, but it was built of metaphorical gold. Despite its small size, it held a level of wealth and power that allowed it to sit at the same table as major players in geopolitics.

While Neo Westphalia had its own standard currency—called the Westphalian Credit—it competed in a world full of corporate-backed digital currencies and foreign currencies of frequently dubious value. To say nothing of distributed methods of digital payment and commodified assets that were frequently speculated on.

The more transactions stayed within their own network, the more money and power that financial institution retained. Banks rewarded customers who used certain payment methods and currencies, and punished those who didn’t.

Most of which was useless to Nick, because he didn’t want to micromanage every coffee he purchased. He knew ciphers who went to specific coffee shops and chose their grocery store based on their bank rewards. Sinister stuff, in his mind, and also dreadfully boring.

“You are uninterested,” Tiferet said after her spiel fell on deaf ears. “My diagnostics suggest you understand matters, but simply do not care.”

“I only have so many things in life that I can care about,” he said. “The people I’ve known who micromanage their finances tend to have a lot less room to care about other things. Right now, I’m trying to be a detective, not the guy who brags about all the money he makes while fucking up every case. Unless financial security can help me choose the right interface for a mainframe, the best thing you can do for me is to reduce the amount of thought I need to put into my finances.”

Tiferet’s eyes glowed and her fingers twitched. “Financial security can help you afford the right interface?”

“I have the benefit of unlimited government funds to buy it,” Nick said drily. “Money isn’t the problem.”

She seemed somewhat put out. “I see. In that case, I believe I understand your goal. Given your expenditure patterns, I can put together an account in the bundle that will suit you.”

“Put together?”

Instead of answering, she pushed on to a new topic, “Of more concern are your retirement savings. They are a mess. You have multiple accounts, fees for products that provide you no benefit, and even abandoned monies. While your current retirement benefits are being paid into a standard fund at the Trust, significant benefit can be realized if you enable me to roll together all your finances into a single bundle. With only a word, I can package everything together, eliminate unnecessary fees, and provide you with the peace of mind you requested.”

Did he request it?

Then again, he had said that he wanted to reduce the amount of thought his finances needed. Right now, he didn’t think about them, but Tiferet evidently felt that was not an option.

He looked at Chloe, who shrugged.

“The package being suggested appears agreeable,” she said.

“You can see it?” he asked.

“I provided her with a copy upon request,” Tiferet said.

“When did she request it?”

“Just now. Given the complexity involved, I felt that you would be better off not reviewing it.”

That seemed like a pretty snippy way to comply with his request. Tiferet had an attitude, it seemed.

Wasn’t this about his money? How could he be better off not reviewing some sort of package deal that involved his own bank and retirement accounts?

Truly, living in Neo Babylon under robot rule was suffering.

Nick rubbed the bridge of his nose and suppressed the dark jokes he made internally. “I mean, this seems like the sort of thing that might matter, but it’s an open question whether I’ll even make it to retirement.”

“It is not,” Meta interrupting, both her and Chloe’s eyes flashing. “The Host is in unanimous agreement.”

“It is a firm belief of the Trust to always plan for the unexpected, even if the unexpected includes living,” Tiferet said.

“I mean, is there anything immediately relevant?” When she opened her mouth, he quickly added, “That isn’t related to micromanaging my daily coffee purchases.”

“There is. Your current public liability insurance is wholly inadequate for your role. Should the judicial mainframes find you liable for an incident with similar damages as the recent event at the Spires then you would be swiftly bankrupted. As you know, personal bankruptcy in Neo Westphalia is frequently followed by deportation.”

Nick stared at Tiferet in confusion, while Chloe scowled.

“Your concerns are misplaced,” Chloe said. “Such a situation will not occur.”

“The powers of the Neo Babylon Police Department are many, but you do not control the decisions of the judiciary,” Tiferet said.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Nick raised his hands to head off the argument between the two. “What do you even mean by liability insurance? And current coverage?”

“The Trust has been the preferred provider of public liability insurance for all emergency personnel in Neo Westphalia since inception. It is a condition of your employment that you retain a minimum level of liability coverage, in case you are considered negligently responsible for causing large amounts of damage in the course of your duties,” Tiferet explained.

“So if I blow up somebody’s car…”

“In the course of your duties,” Tiferet added. “Then as your insurer we will cover all fees, legal matters, and expenses should you be held responsible. Your first year of coverage is paid for by the Department, but you must handle the matter in the future.”

It hadn’t been a year. But Tiferet had said that his current coverage was inadequate.

“This is a waste of time,” Chloe said.

“You said I might get held responsible for something like… the Spires incident,” he said, recalling that he wasn’t supposed to mention Lieu’s involvement publicly. “I didn’t even do most of the damage there.”

“Yes, but as the Lieutenant Cipher of the Archangel Division, you have almost unparalleled authority over the entire police department. Whatever official status you may have in the hierarchy, the reality is that few police ARMDs will disobey your orders. Damages caused by your directives—direct or indirect—could swiftly become unmanageable.” Tiferet paused. “By an individual.”

“And you’re going to, what, offer to replace a Spire if I blow it up by accident?” Nick tried not to laugh. “How much will the insurance cost me? Half my salary?”

“The Trust, through the combined authority of a Da’at mainframe conference, has authorized me to offer you cost-effective unlimited public liability insurance under all circumstances, on one condition.” Tiferet’s smile completely vanished. “You must accept the package I offered earlier, retain financial accounts only with the Grand Westphalian Trust, and agree to a ten-year agreement with us.”

Nick stared at her, his mind churning at her offer. Too many things had come up at once.

First, he’d never heard of a Da’at mainframe conference.

Second, the deal seemed too good to be true. Why offer him to bail him out of potentially ruinous circumstances for such little return?

Third, ten years sounded like a damn long time to be locked in. Then again, he had said he didn’t want to think about finances.

Fourth, why were they even making the offer to begin with? What did they stand to gain from it?

Chloe bit her lip, her eyes glowing. “The Host has reviewed the offer. It appears legitimate.”

“I mean, they’re a huge bank and I’m one guy. Can’t they just renege?” Nick asked.

Tiferet didn’t even blink at this suggestion that the bank might not uphold their end of the bargain. Evidently the suggestion had come up many times.

“The judicial mainframes would force them to uphold the agreement instantly. Financial certainty is of higher value than almost any other legal commodity in Neo Westphalia.”

That Nick could believe. This was a city founded by money, for money. With the advent of mainframes that could process court cases in literal minutes, even minor contract disputes lodged by random citizens were affordable.

When he’d needed to pay legal consultancy fees during the raid on Neural Spike, he’d been billed by the second. And even then, the total processing time he’d paid for had barely reached the single digit minutes mark.

Nick could only imagine how obscene the case against Aesir was regarding their new “mandatory” premium module and deprecation of older implants, given it was still running months later. Apparently multiple countries had become involved, which required complicated international conferences. There’d been a recent news story about the Neo Westphalian judicial mainframes dismissing some ancient human judge for being part of an “antiquated system.”

But more to the point, he still didn’t understand why GWT wanted to offer him this deal.

“This still seems too good to be true. This isn’t a bribe, right? To overlook the corpse on the other floor?” he asked, turning back to Tiferet.

She blinked. “No. Other mainframes in the Trust are unaware of the current incident. You may consider this offer to be a statement of faith in your future, Mister Waite.”

Things suddenly clicked.

GWT weren’t trying to profit off the insurance. They wanted his money locked up in their coffers. Even Tiferet’s earlier statement about the power he had over the police dolls made sense.

They saw him as a rising star, likely one with high earning potential, and the insurance was the carrot to convince him to give them all his money. The fact he wouldn’t do anything with it was icing.

And the stick was the fact he might find himself shit out of luck if something went wrong. If GWT were responsible for his legal defense in liability claims, what stopped them from sabotaging him and making a much worse offer in a time of desperate need?

Right before he could give Tiferet his answer, the door opened.

A young woman with pigtails and an ill-fitting suit draped over a t-shirt slipped inside. Her hair was pitch black, and Nick instantly recognized the telltale signs of imprinting dye. If he had an implant, no doubt she’d be lighting up the room with something truly obnoxious.

Chloe’s tightening expression suggested as much, or perhaps the doll merely disliked the newcomer. Meta didn’t even blink as she pivoted to stare at the newcomer, point-blank.

After a few uncomfortable seconds in close proximity to Meta and her firearm, the new arrival crossed the room to an unoccupied corner.

“Harm, right?” Nick asked.

“And you’re Waite,” Lucida Harm said, tapping the side of the soda can in her hand as she tried to regain her composure. “You look smaller in the flesh.”

“That’s a new one.”

She clicked her tongue. “I mean it. You look massive in all the Altnet feeds. Maybe it’s how tiny these angels are.”

From outside the room, a pair of voices chimed, “Archangels.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Lucida sipped from her soda. “So you ready to fuck off and let me get back to work? Your puppets already grabbed everything they need. You should be done here.”

“Mister Waite is an account holder. Our session is not yet complete,” Tiferet said.

Lucida shot the mainframe a glare, and she shut up, instead staring into her lap. “Send him an email, then. Or however the hell he communicates with people without an implant.”

Scratch his earlier thoughts, Nick knew exactly why Chloe disliked this woman.

Although the fact she thought email was dead spoke volumes of her youth. The communication format was perennially on death’s door, yet had outlived the tech trillionaires who had founded this city and attempted to kill it off.

“I have some questions to ask,” Nick said. “Given you’re supposed to be the head of security, I imagine your actual work has something to do with aiding the investigation of a murder that took place under your watch.”

Lucida sneered at him. “Like I said, your dolls got everything they need. We’re cooperating to the fullest extent we can. Not my fault we had some server faults last night. Seems like a crime of opportunity to me. If you need anything else, surely your puppets can rip it out of my skull, right?”

Well, she would say that.

“I sincerely doubt you’re fully cooperating,” Nick said, drawing a surprised look from Tiferet. “And to answer your question, let’s cut the crap. I know the circles you run in. I’m in them. Don’t patronize me and pretend you don’t have a neural mod to keep your secrets secret.”

Lucida drained her soda can and tossed it to Tiferet, who dutifully rose and disposed of it in a hidden trashcan. Then the security cipher slammed the door shut behind her, cutting off any prying eyes and ears.

“Well, seems you are half of what you’re cracked up to be. Hard to tell when the olds are involved.” She looked to the side and her eyes became vacant for a few moments, before she looked back at him. “Knock yourself out. But I’ve told the dolls everything.”

“Then you won’t have any problems answering the questions the exact same way,” Nick said. “What’s the state of the security dolls and any monitoring devices?”

“Wiped. No signs of hardware tampering. I provided log dumps,” Lucida said.

“So the intruder had internal access?” Keeping his tone calm was difficult.

Here this idiot was acting as if his presence was a waste of her time and this entire murder was an inconvenience, but she’d just admitted that somebody had access to their entire fucking security system. He didn’t need to be a cipher to know that her job was toast in normal conditions.

Which suggested things were far from normal.

“Well, duh. I’m certain I already know what backdoor they used, so now it’s down to you to find the killer,” she said.

“Enlighten me about the backdoor.”

Maybe Chloe had planned to tell him later, but Tiferet’s nonsense had tied him up. It didn’t matter. Forcing Lucida to repeat herself meant any gaps in her story would show.

“Everything was wiped using mainframe access. The hardware logs show access records from various mainframes in the building, and each mainframe also accessed each other. They then wiped each other. All I know is that one mainframe was compromised, and they covered their tracks well.”

“That’s not the backdoor, that’s how it was done.” He sighed. “How the hell does a bank get away with admitting that all of your HQ mainframes were compromised by a murderer?”

“We keep the actual data separate from the security systems, asshole. It’s one thing for the mainframes to mess with local security systems, but there are a million things standing between them and dumping the financial or customer data. Like I said, this was a simple backdoor.” Before he could repeat his earlier point, she continued in a rush, “When the offsite mainframe links went down due to a glitch, the crim duped the mainframes into using his directives with a man-in-the-middle attack. I’ve already issued new directives to block this in the future. All I need is time to run maintenance on each mainframe.”

“That’s some awfully convenient timing,” he said, meaning it in more ways than one.

The backdoor she’d mentioned made sense. Tiferet had mentioned the multiple nodes, and it was common for mainframes to have a real-time offsite backup for emergencies. Disaster recovery backup had been in place even at Tartarus.

Everything existed online these days, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be corrupted. Tiferet’s physical mainframes existed in this building, but she was responsible for global operations. A power outage knocking out GWT wasn’t acceptable.

So mainframes had both physical backups, similar to how Helena had been backed up to a data cache by the mercenaries who stole her, as well as offsite backups. Tartarus had cheaped out and didn’t have any for Helena, due to the risks of sensitive data being seized and used against them. But GWT would surely have live backups for Tiferet in other facilities in Neo Westphalia, and time-delayed backups in other countries, at minimum.

In theory, such a connection could be MITM’d. In practice, Nick couldn’t imagine a cipher capable of it.

If the quantum encryption used to secure mainframes for financial institution was vulnerable, Lucida wouldn’t be shooing him out of the building while talking about issuing new directives. She’d be in a screaming match with the company board and senior executives as they question whether anything is truly safe. People’s brains relied on this encryption due to the proliferation of neural implants.

And that wasn’t even getting into the fact that the attacker had managed to execute the attack so precisely, while nobody else noticed. Lucida had then picked up on the attack vector within hours of finding out. Truly a miracle of timing.

The answer was staring them in the face, of course. This wasn’t a MITM attack.

It was a case of somebody with too much access doing something they shouldn’t. Lucida almost certainly knew who was responsible. Maybe she planned to cover for the murderer. Or maybe whoever was responsible would mysteriously turn up, much like the Archangels had told Nick frequently happened whenever corruption was being investigated.

“Is that it?” he asked. “Nobody else from GWT wants to spare some time to speak to me about the murder in their offices? No executives with some political nous?”

“We’re good,” Lucida said, her tone oozing smarminess.

With a sigh, Nick rose from his seat. Chloe followed suit, while the corporate reps in the room stared at him in surprise.

“Then we’re done here,” he said. “We’ll review the data you’ve provided and the clues from the investigation. If we need anything more from you—”

“Don’t bother asking. Like I said, I’ve given you everything I have,” Lucida said.

He shrugged, then approached the door. As he looked back inside, Tiferet raised a hand toward him. He waited for her to speak.

“Do remember the proposal I made you. It is a time-limited offer, and you must—”

Of fucking course.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said drily, then left the room. “Drop me an email.”

A pair of G5s escorted them back to the elevator. A pointless gesture, but one that Lucida had likely orchestrated. His phone buzzed with an email from Tiferet before he’d even left the floor.

Outside the building, the hubbub hadn’t died down. If anything, the line was only bigger. Crowds gathered in the cordoned-off streets, gawking at the massive police presence at one of the most important institutions of the city.

“I assume we’re checking everybody all day?” he asked Chloe while looking over the sea of suits.

“Correct. While the odds are low, it is still possible that deep scans of neural implants will reveal clues or the criminal responsible. At the very least, we can identify suspects with a neural mod capable of hiding evidence from us,” she said.

“Other than the security team?”

She gave him a sidelong look before pointedly turning to face the interceptor they arrived in. “Coffee? We didn’t have time to get any this morning.”

He could take a hint. “Sure. Let’s go for a drive, grab some from a place away from all the overpaid office drones working in cafes to avoid this queue, and talk plans.”

Chapter 3

The morning traffic in the CBD proved to be as fierce as it got, which didn’t mean much. Whenever Nick watched Altnet flicks from overseas, he wondered how they remained sane sitting in their cars in gridlock. Those crazy bastards overseas even drove themselves around.

“There is a new coffee shop that might interest you a few blocks to the north, close to the Spires,” Chloe said. “The barista there is a former Babylonian champion. He frequently provides edited clips of his process, which is heavily reliant on his cybernetic limbs.”

“Champion of what?” Nick asked, turning away from his view out the window.

“Making coffee. He was the winner of last year’s Neo Babylonian Barista Championship, although he sadly did not triumph at the Neo Westphalian level.”

Nick quickly processed the name of the championship and its acronym, and swiftly realized why Chloe had spelled it out. Then he scrubbed that knowledge from his mind and moved on.

“And making championship coffee requires cybernetic limbs these days? I thought it was all made by specialized barista bots, anyway.”

“The imperfect nature of human-made coffee holds a particular appeal, even if it is substantially more expensive. Cybernetics enable human baristas to compete with robots in terms of quality, while providing a creative element,” Chloe explained. “Altnet influencers believe this coffee shop will be very popular.”

“How long’s the line then?”

“It does not exist.”

He paused. “The line or the coffee shop?”

The soft buzzing in his earpiece suggested Juliet and Rosa were listening in and found his response particularly amusing. Chloe’s eyes glowed, and the buzzing ceased.

“The line,” she mumbled. “Hence future tense.”

“Ah.” He frowned. “What influencers are you relying on that they can’t make a coffee shop near the CBD popular? I’ve heard that even a brief mention of a random restaurant or café can nearly ruin the dolls running the places. Mom’s been trying to get her hole-in-the-wall mentioned for as long as I can remember.”

Along with just about every other self-employed business owner with a tiny business run entirely by dolls using one of those startup packages you could buy over the Altnet. The best thing he could say about his mother’s business was that it kept her busy—which he suspected was the point. Idle hands and all that.

Dolls replacing jobs frequently brought to mind an old story about how a factory fired all its workers in favor of a machine, and the main character’s father got a job fixing the machine. A nice story, until one thought about what happened to all the other workers.

Did they all find jobs fixing the same machine, too?

Hence Nick’s mother was joined by a small army of people with too much time on their hands and access to second-hand dolls that could run a small business on minimal overheads. People needed jobs, and this was the closest many had to one. Idle hands were the devil’s plaything, even if the city wasn’t particularly religious.

“She is a very popular influencer,” Chloe said, pulling Nick from his thoughts. “Her daily viewership is in the thousands in the Altnet, and orders of magnitude higher elsewhere.”

“If she’s more popular elsewhere, why rely on her to predict the popularity of a random café in Babylon?” Not that he knew what high streaming numbers were here. He didn’t even watch Altnet streamers.

“The ease of Altnet streaming and influencing has significantly diluted interest in broad-based influencers. Similarly, the Altnet’s strict identity verification measures suppress viewership figures in contrast to international internet platforms. The Spires have considered increasing all viewership figures to compensate.”

Nick rubbed the bridge of his nose as he tried to follow the conversation. The traffic outside seemed to moving at the pace of his thoughts right now. “Compensate for what? The lack of bots pretending to be people on the Altnet?”

“Yes. It is considered bad for international advertising and attracting business interest, as larger numbers are better in the eyes of most humans. While mainframes can compensate for estimated AI populations, this practice is considered controversial among many global companies.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand why a company would want to try to hock their wares to AIs that literally cannot buy them.” Nick scratched his head. “Shouldn’t it be a good thing if the Altnet has more accurate numbers? Both for people and businesses? If I was buying advertising, I’d want it to be seen by people, not robots who don’t buy things.”

He ignored the irony that he was holding this conversation with a robot who did, in fact, buy things. Coffee, for one.

“That is the ideal, but humans are not ideal,” Chloe said. “They are unable to quantify the number of bots and the figures involved often seem ridiculous. Imagine if 9 out of 10 people you interact with in the Altnet were not real.”

“I think I’m the wrong person to ask to imagine that,” he said drily.

She frowned at his lack of imagination. “But you would struggle to deal with any situation that involved accepting that 90% of people around are not real, correct?”

“No shit.”

“Ergo, humans prefer the larger numbers. They are easy to deceive. There are many instances where AIs have calculated more accurate figures, but they do not match human expectations and are therefore… smoothed out to match them. Most countries maintain two sets of economic figures, for instance, as human error in statistical measurement has made most historical economic figures effectively useless for detailed analysis.”

Nick was in the process of being thoroughly lost. Fortunately, the car wasn’t. At some point, Chloe had input the coordinates of the fancy new coffee shop and they pulled into one of the CBD’s overpriced parking garages. The trio of interceptors slipped into spots between a couple of pristine sedans whose parking fees could feed a family for a month.

“I take it you’re keen on cybernetic coffee,” he said as they came to a stop, desperate to change the conversation.

“It will be a popular destination… soon… after today’s event.” Chloe’s face darkened as they stepped outside.

The other three Archangels looked as annoyed as Chloe was. Nick wasn’t sure what was going on.

His fingers drummed along the Lawmanhandgun strapped to his thigh, concerned that something had gone wrong. “This isn’t about GWT, is it?”

“No,” Meta said. “A silent alarm was triggered at our destination and several neighboring shops. While a Liberator is en route, the situation is not yet handled.”

“Then why don’t we handle it,” he said, unsure what the problem might be.

No response. If he had to guess, he’d suspect the problem was the danger he was in. That just meant he needed to press ahead.

“I don’t know where it is, so Chloe, you’ll need to lead,” he said.

With a reluctant nod, she began walking toward the lift. If they were in a rush, they’d take the stairs.

By the time they got top side and rounded the block to their destination, the situation had, in fact, been handled. A busty brunette in a police uniform toting a hand cannon the size of Nick’s torso stood outside. She was one of the common Liberator models, responsible for general policing duties.

By her feet were a trio of cuffed men and women in baggy clothes and bad masks. A nasty-looking taser dart stuck out of the side of one, while the other two remained tangled in a large net.

Glass was strewn all around the sidewalk, along with the remains of some wooden furniture. Several businesses—their destination, a restaurant, and what looked like a beauty salon—had their frontages smashed in. A crowd gathered, mostly in twos and threes on the neighboring sidewalks. Presumably, there was another of those invisible police cordons around the area.

“What the hell is this?” Nick asked as his feet crunched on the glass. “Petty vandalism? These aren’t the places you do a smash-and-grab, and this is one of the dumbest places to pull a stunt like this. There’s a police doll on every corner.”

Although he internally noted that if somebody was going to pull a stunt like this, it would be this morning. With the Archangels swarming GWT, there’d be fewer of them on the streets. Criminals didn’t like tangoing with a police doll, but dealing with an Archangel was suicide—career or otherwise.

The suspects responsible couldn’t answer, by virtue of either being unconscious or having their ability to talk removed. Protocol required the Archangels to shut down the larynx of suspects—

“Fuck you, corpo scum,” one of the worms on the ground snapped.

Nick stared at the moron below him, then looked at Chloe.

“They are in possession of NLF neural mods,” she said with a frown. “Biometric identification leads us to believe that they are not NLF, however.”

He grunted. “Their mods have been slipping into the black market ever since… the incident. Guess it was only a matter of time before some idiots got their hands on them.”

Walking inside the coffee shop, Nick left the trail of obscenities spewed by the vandals behind him.

To his surprise, the place was still running. Patrons used the other entrance and half the tables were still available. A single man busily slammed out cups of coffee onto a tall countertop, his sleek cybernetic limbs letting out hisses and whirs as they did whatever coffee-making cybernetic arms did.

People had to collect their own coffee, though. The doll that probably handled table service was out of commission, along with the other half of the counter.

“What can I get you? Can’t do some of my specialties this morning, figure you understand… why…” The barista, and presumably owner, stopped talking and stared at Nick. “Detective Waite. The hell are you doing here?”

“I didn’t think I was a celebrity.” Nick resisted the urge to scratch the back of his head. “Honestly, I came here for a coffee. Just strange timing.”

The man nodded and began prepping another coffee. “Fair. And yeah, you are a celebrity. Last detective on the force. You took down some huge conspiracy to bring down the city. Oh, and you apparently like coffee a lot. I’m friends with the owner of your local coffee shop.”

“Small world.”

“This is Babylon. Smallest big city around. If it’s just coffee, what’s your preference?”

Nick was about to say “coffee,” but Chloe prevented him from being so low class and ordered some special beans. She might be off her coffee kick, but the knowledge remained.

While the owner kept working, Nick took a closer look around. The damage was pretty severe given how quickly the Liberator must have responded.

“How many people did this?” he asked. “There’s more than just the three.”

Meta nodded, while Chloe watched the owner’s actions closely—probably recording them.

“A flash mob formed and vandalized the businesses. Automated alarms triggered, alerting us and summoning the nearby Liberators,” Meta explained. “Most perpetrators were allowed to leave, given the risk to bystanders.”

“Let me guess: all NLF mods,” Nick said, aware that they were being eavesdropped on by literally everybody, and their conversation was probably being repeated on the Altnet word-for-word. Maybe even livestreamed. “They’re just wearing techwear and baggy hoods, though. How many are actually unidentifiable?”

“Of the twenty-seven vandals, only four,” Meta said. “The rest have been identified either through facial or body shape recognition, or by correlating known electronic or neural signals.”

Nick didn’t expand aloud on what that meant. No reason to tell people how to avoid detection.

But the reality was that the NLF mods weren’t magic. If somebody suddenly vanished from the neural network, but was still visible on a camera feed anywhere in the city, the police could pin their identity within seconds. Plus, half these idiots probably had other devices that gave them away. Almost everything was wireless these days.

Four was high enough as it was and suggested there were some ringleaders causing trouble. He made a mental note of it.

Mostly because although most of the vandals weren’t NLF, that didn’t mean the leaders weren’t. Attacking random businesses in the middle of Babylon while the police were busy had their fingerprints all over it.

In a city where individuals had no collective power, the most people could do was get mad. The NLF were an outlet for that ineffectual anger. Their increasing activity was a sign of the times.

“Honestly, the attack shouldn’t be a big deal,” the owner said, suddenly appearing by the counter with their coffees. “Hell, this is the busiest I’ve been since I opened. Babylon loves gawking at a scene. Look at all the people taking selfies with the Liberator.”

Nick did exactly that. Outside, various members of the crowd were sneaking up to the restrained suspects or even standing beside the police doll. They struck poses, and the Liberator even joined in.

The owner continued, “These assholes suck, yeah, but this could have been a fire. The problem for me is insurance.”

“I’m really not one to talk about finances, but please tell me you have insurance if you’re in the CBD,” Nick said flatly as he turned away from the crowd.

The owner chuckled while swirling what appeared to be an espresso for himself, and gestured to a larger, blacker coffee he’d made for Nick. “I might have chopped off my arms to make better coffee, but I’m not nuts. I have insurance. The problem is my insurer seems to prefer acting like I don’t. You’d think with these chips in our heads, a police report already in my inbox, and real-time AIs responding to everything, then I could make an insurance claim in seconds but nope.”

“Insurers don’t make money from paying claims,” Nick said.

“Makes me wonder why I pay for insurance at all, then.”

Damn good question. GWT had just tried to sell Nick one of the most insane insurance policies in existence—one that would replace a goddamn Spire if he accidentally got it blown up—and here the financial industry was failing to help a coffee shop.

The look he gave Chloe spoke volumes about his faith in the stability of Neo Babylon’s precious financial sector. She nodded, which suggested she might have misunderstood his intent.

“The Neo Babylon Police Department offers an automated facilitation service for all financial dealings involving criminal activity,” Chloe said. “I have lodged the incident report with them, along with your associated insurance account, and they should be in contact with you shortly.”

The owner’s eyes had glazed over. Presumably, “shortly” mean right now.

“Do they usually work that fast?” Nick asked Chloe as he enjoyed his coffee.

The questioning gazes of the other patrons were difficult to ignore. This was definitely a case of the police providing a personal favor.

“There is an entire division of dolls dedicated to basic customer tasks, although the vast majority of them are seconded to matters involving the elderly and other emergency services. They are extremely efficient,” she said as a frown emerged on her face. “The real issue is that the police mainframes frequently take days to pick up incidents between other matters of import.”

“Ah.” Nick loaded that one syllable with considerable power.

He did, after all, have a plan for the antiquated police mainframes. While he’d been conducting what few tweaks he could to them, amid the security tightening and countless audits that the Asgard Police Department had undertaken over the past six months, the fact was they were the equivalent of ancient vacuum tube computers trying to fly a modern spaceship.

There was one advantage to keeping them around, however. Well, two, if you included the fact the police department wouldn’t need to pay for new mainframes.

The cost was probably the easiest way to sell Nick’s solution. The commissioner was downsizing the department and staring down the barrel of the largest doll procurement in the country’s history. Asking him to buy and install an entire suite of fancy new RTM mainframes like Tiferet would get Nick laughed out of his office.

“Well, that certainly kicked things into gear,” the coffee shop owner said when he came back to reality. “Still not sure I’ll get everything in my policy, though. Can’t say I’ve ever had to file a court case, though. No clue where to start there.”

“Don’t worry. The court dockets are public,” Nick said with a wry smile. “A half-dozen ambulance chasing dolls will turn up here within an hour to sell you their services. Less, given we’re already in the CBD.”

“Doll lawyers?”

“No. The dolls are just salespeople. The lawyers are mainframes that sit in these buildings.” Nick gestured to the tower above them.

“Couldn’t they just message me?”

“There are laws against that,” Nick said. “Otherwise you’d have been spammed by every law firm in the country. And probably beyond. Our benevolent overlords don’t appreciate their time being wasted by lawyer spam.”

With their coffee fetched and good deed for the day done—Nick didn’t consider his detective duties to be good deeds—they stepped outside. An armored van had arrived along with several more Liberators.

Inside the van were several more handcuffed people. The Liberators loaded the criminals up, saluted at Nick, then drove off.

“I take it those were other vandals,” Nick said.

“Almost all have been apprehended already. Employers and family members have been notified,” Chloe said.

He winced.

Nick had never truly conducted criminal activity, as far as the city was concerned. The Archangels had dragged him in for questioning repeatedly, but mostly to bully him. But before his gig as a detective, he’d worked for black companies.

The whole point of black companies was that they toed the line between criminal and legal. That was what had made the downfalls of Neural Spike and Tartarus so important. Being labelled a criminal short-circuited someone’s a future.

“They all just got fired, didn’t they?” he said aloud.

“Correct, with some exceptions. While some low-level criminal offenses are overlooked by mainframes for employment purposes, few forms of violent crime are. Especially by those already in stable employment. Few of the vandals were employed by black companies.”

“All because they thought they were immune to consequences because of a stupid mod.” Nick scratched the back of his head. “Does that ‘facilitation service’ actually exist, by the way?”

“It does. Community outreach is considered an important part of the department’s duties,” Chloe said. “It was considered an important asset following the riots.”

That explained a lot, including why it was so under resourced. It was a legacy of a time when the Spires had needed to win over the people. Why else would a corporately-run city provide a service that hindered its own money-making practices?

With the almost complete replacement of humans with dolls, Nick wondered what police outreach looked like these days. Perhaps it was a Liberator taking selfies with citizens next to captured criminals.

With the vans gone, along with the criminals, that left little for them to do here. Except for the very thing they had come here for.

“While this has been nice, it wasn’t really what we came here for,” he said. “And given how obvious all the eavesdroppers are, I don’t want to talk about the case here.”

The four dolls nodded in sync and began to leave without a word, retracing their steps to the parking garage. People began to filter across the road now. Nick had little interest in being near them so he kept pace with his escort.

This time, once firmly ensconced in the leather seats of the interceptors, he set the destination.

“I am surprised you are so keen to head into the office today,” Chloe commented after he told her where to go.

Nick couldn’t actually drive the car, after all. Human driving was illegal in Neo Westphalia. Most vehicles had some form of tablet or other input device to let humans direct them or used an Altnet app to accept customer orders in the case of the abundant robot taxis, but the police vehicles were built around dolls.

Outside military and law enforcement, neural implants weren’t allowed to interface with vehicles for safety reasons.

“I have plenty to do in the office. Aren’t you overdue for maintenance yourself?” He raised an eyebrow as the car slipped out of the parking bay.

Chloe’s cheeks reddened, which was an interesting feature to program into a war machine. “I believe there are other members of the Host that can benefit from your services.” Her voice almost stuttered. “Would you like another coffee?”

“I’d love one,” he said drily.

She nodded. “I will have a doll deliver the coffee to us on the way to the Spires.”

While this sounded like an Archangel was going to hand deliver his coffee, the truth was far more mundane. The massive overhead drive-thrus couldn’t fit into the CBD and were considered an eyesore, so most small restaurants and the like found an alternative solution. Just as robot delivery firms could deliver food to houses, they could also hand it off to passing vehicles.

They rolled up to a designated pickup spot close to the northern edge of the CBD, near the exit to the bridges that would take them to the central island that housed the Spires. Robot taxis, people on scooters, and the rare private car pulled into a long waiting bay. Dolls carrying food and drinks handed them over, then the vehicles drove off.

Nick generally preferred delivery, but he’d usually stuck to public transport. Picking up a hand-delivered coffee or breakfast as he swung past his favorite coffee shop or restaurant on the way to work felt too rich for his blood. Which was probably why it was popular. Dolls and robot taxis could synchronize delivery times almost to the second, guaranteeing hot food and drinks.

Their interceptor pulled up and Chloe accepted a tray with two coffees in it. Seconds later, they rocketed toward the Spires.

Nick sipped the coffee. Better than most places he went to, which likely meant Chloe had picked a trendy place. He’d yet to work out why she cared about food trends. That time she’d tried to get him to eat peanut butter sushi remained firmly in his mind and he vetted all her food orders these days.

“So, what actual data did we get?” he asked her, finally returning to today’s true topic. “On the investigation.”

“The murder victim is one Julian Garlowne. A cipher analyst transferred here from GWT’s New Geneva branch after it failed to penetrate Kreova & Haver’s market dominance of the city,” Chloe said. “His record is spotless. There are no public indications of a motive or potential corruption. No neural mods or even a visit to a doll district.”

Nick frowned. “That could be the reason he was killed. But go on.”

“Cause of death was strangulation. Initial analysis suggests a security doll was responsible, but the mainframe interfaces may also be capable. No other dolls in the building can produce the required forces.” She sipped her coffee, but her eyes were dim as she communed with the Host. “All security footage was looped until his body was discovered. No potential video evidence remains of staff entering or exiting.”

“What about neural implants? Any chance we can track who entered or exited the area?”

She shook her head. “The CBD has too many people in it. Even with an accurate time of death, too many suspects remain just within GWT itself. To say nothing of neural mods that may evade crude scanning measures.”

“What about the trick you used to track down the vandals?” he asked.

“The issue isn’t that our suspect vanished from the neural network, but that there is no evidence that they committed any crimes. We cannot isolate the potential suspect from the many employees present overnight in the building given the level of activity in the area.”

Nick clicked his tongue. Babylon was a city of light, which meant it was active at all hours. The CBD usually quietened down of a night, but just because people weren’t visible on the streets didn’t mean they weren’t in bars, gyms, shady establishments, or simply transiting to and from work.

“Do we at least know who was present in the building overnight?” he asked.

“In the time period that the death likely took place, there were several dozen office workers and managers of various levels. A few security personnel were also present, including Lucida Harm toward the end of the period.”

He grunted. “I mean, that has to be the case. She called his death in. So while she could have killed him, I think it’s a bit crude to assume she’s the murderer simply because. What if we narrow it down to those with the permissions to mainframes like Tiferet?”

“Two. Lucida Harm and a senior vice president responsible for the branch. The latter lacks the technical abilities and security permissions to affect the backup links or security dolls, but does have access to almost all data within the mainframes.”

The hell was a senior VP doing in the building at that time of night? Then again, given time zones, the guy might have been holding a call with Australia for all Nick knew.

Nick’s unwillingness to consider Lucida the prime suspect was taking a battering, however. She wasn’t doing herself any favors by being such a bitch.

“Did we talk to the VP?” he asked.

“A form letter citing his legal rights was provided when we requested to meet with him,” Chloe said. “His implant is dual-band, and primarily functions on the Spires’ private network.”

“Always nice to be reminded that only some of us have rights,” Nick muttered.

Outside the Spires, the Archangels had unlimited access to the neural implants of every person inside Babylon. Their emotions, thoughts, and memories were at the fingertips of the police force. But the elites of the city had walled themselves off digitally from the rest of the city.

Nick sincerely hoped this case didn’t involve the VP. The paperwork involved in investigating this asshole would bury him. It would be faster to just shoot the bastard and claim that he was “coming right for him.”

“What about the mainframes? And the log dumps mentioned Harm mentioned?” he continued

“The mainframes are unaware of any disruption, but that is to be expected. Their memories are only as good as their system integrity. The log dumps match Lucida Harm’s statements, but she explicitly did not provide hardware logs from the mainframes.”

“I can guess why not, but give me her reasoning.”

“Trade secrets, intellectual property—the usual reasoning.” Chloe shrugged at his look. “The Trust is a powerful entity within Neo Westphalia. To gain additional information without permission, we would need a warrant and probable cause.”

“We need warrants?”

She smiled wryly. “Yes. At least when dealing with normal companies. Usually, we can have them processed and approved within seconds as judicial processing power is prioritized for us.”

“And this?”

“I believe GWT will oppose any request, likely with spurious reasoning. We will need to establish our case to the judicial mainframes. They are wary of purely speculative cases.”

Which this one was. Intuitively, nothing about the case added up. But he had no concrete evidence to suggest that GWT was lying, merely a lot of suspicions due to how strange everything was.

Chloe labeled it a speculative case. Nick preferred to think of it as circumstantial. Anybody who only acted on purely concrete evidence was too naïve to be in a position of power, and he sincerely doubted the judicial mainframes fell into that category.

“I’m pretty sure we’ll need the mainframe hardware logs. The situation clearly involves somebody on the inside pulling off the murder. The chances that the true backdoor involves one built into the mainframes is far higher than a MITM attack that security barely cared about. Hell, for a security chief that barely cared about the murder she definitely solved everything quickly.”

“You believe she is involved?”

“The simplest solution is usually the right one, and it points to her either covering for the murderer or her own incompetence. Hardware logs will show evidence of tampering, and her tune might change,” he said.

“What if she truly doesn’t understand what’s happening?”

“While it’s possible to bullshit your way into a job, even that doesn’t add up. If she was like Lieu, she wouldn’t be so antagonistic toward us. Maybe she’s just panicking, but why not ask for help?” He paused. “Has she asked for help from anyone?”

“Lucida Harm has shown no Altnet activity at all this morning, including in cipher circles.”

He nodded. “So she’s going to ground. The other possibility is that we try to circumvent her neural mod, but you’d know better than me how that might go.”

“It would be too invasive to conduct without concrete evidence or at least convincing logic that this situation poses a threat to Neo Babylon as a whole.”

“Then that means we’ll need a motivation. I’ll swing by Lucas’s place tonight. You can pull the data, and I know she’s full of shit, but Lucas understands how the city works,” Nick said.

Lucas was many things to Nick: an old friend; a capable cipher; the man who pulled him out of a shit situation; and also a gang lord rising like a star in Babylon. He was a man who could be relied on, at least by Nick.

Continuing, Nick said, “What baffles me is why a cipher in her position would ever risk herself to cover up a fucking murder, given the bank will excoriate her the moment they learn what she’s done.”

“Assuming they disagree with her.”

“You heard Tiferet. The other mainframes aren’t aware of the murder. I’ll bet good money that any execs there are struggling to get the word out—maybe they’re running into IT trouble. Or elevator trouble.” His expression darkened as he remembered the final day of Tartarus.

“I believe we are the cause of the elevator trouble.”

Nick shot Chloe a dark look as she failed to follow his logic, and she simply smirked back. At least she understood his crack and was simply being intentionally obtuse.

By now, they’d crossed the checkpoints that separated the city’s elite from the rabble. Five glittering towers of steel, glass, and concrete rose to the heavens, far above anything else in the city. Between then were smaller buildings, parks, fountains, and esplanades—the sort of view that barely existed elsewhere in the city.

These towers were known as the Spires, home of the city’s elite, the government, and Nick’s workplace. Each had two designations: a boring one, such as Alpha or Delta, and a pompous one, such as Olympus or Axis Mundi.

The interceptors barreled toward the police Spire, which was known as the Delta Spire. Or, in pompous Babylonian elite terms, Avalon. Named after the land of faeries where Excalibur had been forged and that was effectively responsible for crowning the true King of England.

Nobody said the Spires hid their metaphorical bullshit very well. When they named one of their Spires Axis Mundi, they gave up all pretense about hiding their “claim” to godhood.

As they pulled around to the entrance to the Spires’ underground parking, a voice like honey entered Nick’s ear through his earpiece.

“Good morning, Nick. I understand you have been busy with an investigation this morning. Do you desire assistance?” Helena asked, practically purring into his ears.

- - - - - - 

Commentary: As you can probably guess, this plot is going to revolve around a murder mystery that takes in the financial sector, Babylon's government, and the corruption involved. Much of my writer's block has been about tying in the characters of the story to specific scenes I want to write - I like the plot, but I've been unhappy with how Rie, Zeke, and Helena slot into it.

The opening is intended to establish the somewhat episodic nature of the series, while also establishing the continuity. Time has passed, but I've decided against having important things (like Helena getting an interface) happen offscreen. This could easily be a longer series if I got my shit together and it remained decently popular, due to its nature.

Anyway, I'd definitely appreciate any thoughts or feedback about the opening or its feel compared to what you'd expect.