A bad feeling slipped up my tailbone, lodged itself in the center of my chest and then twisted.
Had we been followed tonight? I thought I’d seen that guy earlier in the evening, outside the museum. He had turned around, watched Angelique when we got in the taxi and headed for the jazz club. And then in the cemetery, a flash of eyes watched me, between the crypts.
Was my imagination working overtime just because my Newbie collapsed and went off-line? Or—this one was even worse—was somebody after the Newbie?
Her identity was a secret: even she didn’t know for sure who she had been in her previous life yet. That was all part of the deal. Fresh Start. Nobody knew who you were or what you’d done. Even the mugs couldn’t come after you for a past crime, as long as you hadn’t committed a capital. It was a little bit like redemption. I know that sounds corny, but it was true. Sign on the dotted line and then when the time comes, everything gets washed away. Your family can’t find you, your creditors can’t find you, even your best friend won’t know where you went. A brand-new beginning. And if you planned everything right, there should be a nice little sum of money waiting, investments accrued over lifetimes.
Still, people have cracked the system before.
We pretend to be this omnipotent organization, but we’ve got our weak points.
“Run a track on marker number”—I paused and checked my log—“sixteen-point-four-three-eight-eight. Check to see where it’s been tonight.”
I tried my best to settle back and relax while the Grid ran a search on the gen freak I’d tagged a few hours ago. I knew he wouldn’t keep the marker long. Within a few days he’d find somebody in a back alley with barely enough techno-skills to take it out. I just hoped that they would accidentally yank out some muscle and nerve at the same time. Our markers have tentacles that lace for at least five inches on either side of the insertion point. Not many black-market geeks have the talent to remove one. Or the guts.
The search paused and skittered, jammed to a stop sooner than I expected.
“Parameters?” a silver voice asked.
“Where and when. Give it to me on a satellite map, include street names. Make it ‘up close and personal.’”
It flashed across the VR screen. Shorter than it should have been, both in distance and time. Either the jerk went home and fell asleep, or he had already found someone to remove the marker.
“Closer. Zoom in on the street names.”
The map sizzled, then jumped, razor-sharp exact. I immediately recognized the beginning of the glowing yellow trail. I smiled. The brute must have taken a while to catch his breath. He didn’t leave the alley behind the club for about half an hour, long after the Newbie and I left. Nice. I wish I could have put him down for longer. It’s illegal, but with some of these Mongoloid jerks, I feel like the limits need to be stretched.
Nobody tells me yes or no. Nobody but me. And that little voice, almost too quiet to hear sometimes.
I stood up and walked closer to the screen. Read the street names out loud as I followed the trail with my finger. Something strange about the way he traveled. Stop and go. Almost made me think he wasn’t alone, like he was with somebody else.
“You got any real satellite shots of this?”
A duplicate map, sans the yellow tracking line, shot up on the far wall. I walked over, examined it. I was right, there were four goons down there.
I went back to the first map, continued the trail. Stopped. That bad feeling was back. His trail led to the City of the Dead. The same time the Newbie and I were there.
He had followed us.
And as far as I could tell, there was only one way he could have found us.
That was as much evidence as I needed, but for some reason I continued to follow his trail. He didn’t track us after the cemetery, didn’t come here. I paused. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was a one-in-a-million fluke, like winning a lottery ticket. Maybe he hadn’t followed us.
I took his trail to the end.
It had to be wrong.
“Is this data corrupted? Any chance somebody tampered with the marker?”
A long, reflective whirring pause. “No. The data is correct.”
That Neanderthal’s trail ended at Fresh Start, at our main headquarters.