531

The office of Chan Yi was set in one of the seedier sections of the Builds. On a good day, you could get clean rain on the windows to wash away the muck that fell from the Skylines. No rain had fallen yet today, but he had a rain jacket just in case. He might be an AI, but he was just as uncomfortable in wet clothes as the next guy.

He slumped into his office, bone tired. He needed to recharge, but more than that, he was emotionally exhausted. He’d been on a stakeout for the last 48 hours. Guy thought someone was breaking into his house. Yi caught the person, but he wasn’t after Yi’s client. They were more interested in his client’s Virtual Integrated Counterpart. He’d been breaking in and making use of the Vic. He hated the creepy cases.

Yi discarded his jacket onto the empty station across from the door. No one had ever sat at that desk, but it didn’t feel right to have an office alone; no matter how often he reminded himself his partner was gone. He turned away from the station and dropped into his chair behind the old cherry wood desk set at a diagonal in the corner.

Everyone wanted the newest tech and the latest buzzword, but Yi liked the feel of the warm wood against his skin. He ran his hand over it, appreciating the warmth and beauty of the grain before he slid over to the control panel and opened the computer and communications array. There was a message from a contact in the Piles. Two articles were flagged for him by a friend in the precinct. He deleted seven messages from a newly updated dating VR claiming they could find his one and only, and the latest advertisements from After Ebotics. A smile crossed his lips as he imagined what After Ebotics would do if he showed up and asked for an upgrade. As much as AI infiltrated their lives, there was no AI like him. If the general population knew about his creation, they’d revolt against the Skylines, no matter how high their towers were.

A knock on the door had him reaching for the pistol strapped under his desk.

“Fuck, I’m becoming too human,” he cursed as he pulled his hand away from the weapon and stood. Like he needed that gun in hand to deal with whatever was on the other side of the entrance. Besides, the ammunition was meant to take out something bigger and badder than a human. He straightened his shirt a bit and ran his hands over the fine silk.

Yeah, he had his vices like every other man. They made the skin of his hands so smooth that they were overly sensitive. He indulged himself by running his hands over things and he made sure they were the good things.

He opened the door and stepped back as a woman entered the office. She brushed against his shoulder as she passed and didn’t speak as she looked out the window on the back wall. “Come in, won’t you? No, please don’t wait for an invitation. Make yourself at home.”

The woman took note of the room before she took a seat at the leather chair across from his desk. Her back was rigid, and she settled her gloved hands confidently on her lap. “I’m here for business, not pleasantries, Mr. Chan.”

“Oh good. For a second there, I thought I opened a tea shop.”

She turned to face him, lips opened to what he was certain would be a scathing rebuttal, until she actually looked at him.

Beauty was an unexpected thing south of the Skylines. It stopped people in their tracks, and there wasn’t much in this world prettier than Chan Yi. Mariner Tech designed him that way, though he wished otherwise. A little less eye-catching would have served him better in the long run, but the designer had firmly believed that beauty opened doors that brawn couldn’t. Chan Yi was both, but only one of those was apparent at first sight.

He watched the woman’s lips tighten as she tipped her chin up higher to address him. “They say you can find anyone, and I need you to find my husband.”

“Check with his mistress,” Yi said, moving around the desk to take a seat. Murder always began with the mistress.

“I’m not looking for a stray cat gone missing. My husband hasn’t been home in three days. We’ve checked with his biolink and it says he’s still at work. When I called, they said he wasn’t there. I went to the store myself.”

She faltered, tears filling her eyes as she pressed a hand to her collarbone. It was the first sign of real emotion he’d seen from her since she entered. Everything until this had been pure bravado. He would applaud the effort, but now he had a crying woman on his hands and his programming hadn’t taught him how to deal with that. His damn emotions didn’t either. She pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her eyes as she swallowed hard.

He believed her. He’d been at this long enough to see past false tears. The human body had too many tells, most of which went unnoticed by the eye. His eyes were anything but human, though. Even in a world of augmented bodies, his was unlike any other. It gave him a unique insight into humanity, its beautiful face and its ugly nature.

He was just a PI now, but his training had been for something much more … bloody. It made him good at what he did though, part of the reason he chose this line of work. The other part … well … it sure as hell wasn’t the money or the hours.

“I was given your name specifically. That you do this,” she said. “Just name your price and I’ll get you what you need.”

That was a lie. She didn’t have that kind of money to fling around. Even if he couldn’t see the lies in her body, he could read her fortune in her dress, two seasons past the trend, and hear it in the way her augmented knee squeaked ever so slightly as she moved. She was long overdue for a check-up, if not an upgrade.

“Let me look into it, Miss?”

“Charity Fulmer.”

“Let me look into it, Ms. Fulmer. I need you to sign the disclaimer though, and the promise of payment upon completion.” He pulled the necessary documents up on this display and sent them to the transfer relays on his arm. Ms. Fulmer stood and held her hand out nervously. Her knee might be old, but the display that pulled up when she prepared to receive the documents was state-of-the-art. When she tilted the back of her hand against his, the connectors sought out the needle-thin port on her wrist and sent the information. He could see the green sheen over her eyes as she read the document. With a nod of her head, Ms. Fulmer signed the agreement. She stumbled slightly in disorientation as the document view slid away and he caught her hand to stabilize her. Her face flushed and she pulled her hand away. She turned away from him, checking in her purse for something she didn’t need.

It was the same reaction he got whenever a human touched him. His skin wasn’t the artificial synthetics they placed over augmentation, nor was it a human’s, covered in imperfections and flaws. His skin was designed to be as perfect as every other part of him. Even if humans didn’t understand why they wanted to touch him, they felt it all the same. He was designed to be beautiful, to be touched, and to be wanted.

Human culture had evolved until true skin-on-skin contact was the ultimate in intimacy. Even a hand held was enough to turn cheeks flushed and people to look away in public. To them, his skin was the touch of decadence. He had only met one other with the same perfection.

He schooled his face to remain expressionless at the loneliness he felt when someone else touched him. He looked away as Ms. Fulmer took control of herself.

“Yes, I’ll be waiting for your call then,” she said as she abruptly left the office.

He closed his eyes and thought of someone else’s touch, someone else’s smile, to calm his turmoil. He wasn’t supposed to get worked up by the emotions they’d given him, but once they wrote it into his programming it was too integral to his system to remove. He’d learned over the years to work with it, around it, when he had to. He was much like a human in that aspect.

He turned his hand over and looked at his palm, but instead, he saw a warm smile. He heard the gentle tease about the flush that had covered his face as his hand was held so preciously in another.

He pushed it out of his mind then and returned to what he had to do. There was a human to find. This was his life now. Even if there was a small portion of his processing unit that always — always — looked outward. To him.

###

The rain repeller that was set into the tip of his ball cap did the job of keeping the downpour off him, but the filth that collected as it fell through layers and layers of high-rises and sky-walks above left the streets a splattered, never-ceasing cesspool. Chan Yi owned an apartment in the upper levels of the Skyline for security and maintenance. He held office in the Builds and made his bed there, where you could feel a breeze, but never see the sun. He lived in the Piles though.

The Piles were the skeletal remains of the first cities They had died long ago and left nothing but the rusted husks as the city continued to grow up and around them. The lower levels had once been great buildings, but time and looting had destroyed them. They were rebuilt and demolished over and over until their ruins sheltered the tents and build-outs that they now knew as the Piles.

Yi loved the neon of the advertisements, flashing for attention from all sides. He loved the shouts of the peddlers trying to sell their wares, or food, or whatever black-market tech they’d managed to get their hands on. Everyone wore layer upon layer, but down here they brushed shoulder to shoulder in the crowded streets and alleys. He felt human among them. Sometimes, it almost felt like memories.

“Hey, Yi!”

“The usual, Xian.” He smiled at the man behind the restaurant bar, then took a seat in a booth at the end of the counter. It was his favorite place to grab a bite. Two streets down was his best information broker. If he went three stories up and across two sky-walks, he was with the best augmentation surgeon on any level. Yi didn’t care that Mariner Tech had tossed the woman to the Piles. She’d worked on Yi before he ran, and after years of being on the outside, she was one of the few people Yi trusted.

A glass soda bottle was set on the table and Yi ran his fingers over the coolness of it. The drink was too sweet for his tastes, but he loved the feel of the smooth glass and the condensation running down the sides. He watched people enter and exit the small restaurant, more shack than anything else.

A cheeseburger and fries were set in front of him. “I’ll sit with you when I get a minute.”

“No rush. I’ve got the time.” Yi dragged a fry through the puddle of ketchup on his plate and smiled when he took a bite. He didn’t need to eat, but Yi enjoyed it. Like so many other things in his life. They designed him to be the perfect infiltration model and he was. The perfect imitation of humanity. Including, they realized too late, free will.

In his line of work, he’d learned to eat quickly, so he finished the burger off and enjoyed watching people go about their lives. The tech dealer across the street was empty. It made the walkway a little quieter, sales a little less also, but Xian’s business wasn’t in danger of folding, so Yi was content to sit with his few remaining fries.

Ads for Mariner Tech dominated the neons in the Piles, offering everything from instant face-changing augmentation tech to body part replacements. The news splashed into one feed, with a story about the promise of eternal life in the making. Human brains, not just implanted with augmented tech, but relocated entirely into cybernetic bodies. The ultimate tool in the fight against death. Research that sparked debates and protests across the Builds and Skylines. Another story flashed beside it of a police raid in the mid-districts. There had been more of those on the news lately.

“Still looking for whatever they can’t catch,” Xian said as he settled in the booth across from Yi. He pointed at the neon just as it switched to an ad for in-home cyber partners, the best in companionship without the human frivolity. “They’ve been stirring up a lot of trouble. People don’t like the raids, especially when no one knows if they might be next.”

“You have an honest trade, Xian,” Yi said as he took a long pull of cola from the bottle. “No reason to think anyone would show up here.”

“Maybe. But the tech dealer across the street was raided two days ago. They might have had some black-market items in the back, but Darcy wasn’t known for that. He sold cheap tech, but not stolen.”

Yi looked over at the empty storefront, looking for anything that seemed out of place. “Did you find out what they were looking for over there?”

“No,” Xian said. “They took Darcy in. He was in a bad way by the time they got him in the car, but he was fighting every step of the way. I think whatever this is, it’s a lot darker than stolen goods.” Xian stood up but edged a little closer to Yi. “Some people might want to cover up their pretty faces if they don’t want to draw the wrong type of attention down here.”

Xian left the booth and went back to the counter as a new customer came in. Yi didn’t need another hint. He dragged the last fry through the ketchup and finished his meal. He rolled the soda bottle between his palms for a moment before finishing off the sweet drink, then pressed the dispatcher at the back of his ear. A fashionable black mask folded out to cover the lower half of his face, leaving only his eyes for the world to see. Under the brim of his hat, he was as hidden as he could be in public. Unless he went full face mask and those things creeped him the fuck out.

He tipped his hat to Xian in farewell and made his way back out into the streets. It was time to meet one of his informants and see just what sort of business Mr. Fulmer was involved in.