Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,25

period… more challenging, though. Of course, I wasn’t about to tell Chan to suck it up and move on. For me, the coil was only a shell, but not everyone felt the same. Besides, whatever flesh she wore, she was still her underneath and would probably kick my ass for saying something like that.

Instead, I said, “It gets easier. But it takes time.”

“Yeah,” Chan growled, the rough baritone strange on ears expecting her contralto. “Well, we may not have much time.”

“What?” If there was one thing that modern technology had given to mankind, it was plenty of time.

“Miller’s gone,” Chan said.

“He hasn’t been put back into a new coil?”

“There’s nothing to put back.”

For a moment, I just stared at her. “What do you mean, ‘there’s nothing to put back’?” Shock and a sudden surge of panic made the words come out as a disbelieving and almost angry shout.

She took a long draw from her beer and slapped the bottle back to the table with more force than necessary. “I mean he’s gone. He died on the Persephone just like the rest of us. And his backups are gone. Just… gone. He backed up with same outfit I did, here on Daedalus. I know, because we went there together, right before the last trip.” She gave a slight headshake. “You know that. You would have been with us if you hadn’t been out toward Prospect looking for more work.” I had to nod at that. Sometimes work came to the Persephone and sometimes we had to go out and find it. We’d been in a dry spell, and I’d volunteered to chase down some leads away from Daedalus. I’d been meeting with some of the miners—even with the best technology, it was still easier to close a deal face to face—near Prospect when the call came in that Harper had found a job. I backed up at Prospect and set out to meet the Persephone en route.

“So,” Shay continued, “when I woke up, I started asking where Miller was, if he’d been re-coiled. And the staff looked at me like I was crazy. They claimed they’d never heard of him. No records of anyone by that name. Nothing. I had Bit do a general search. He came up empty. There are no records of Arnold Miller ever having existed. No birth certificate. No graduation records. No security reports. Nothing. I couldn’t even find him as a registered owner of the Persephone. Everything is gone.”

There were tears forming at the corners of her eyes, and her voice had risen—as much as her new baritone could rise—filling with notes of pain and panic. I reached across the table, placing my hand on top of hers. “Shay. We’ll figure it out,” I said.

“How?” she demanded. “How can we figure it out? Miller isn’t just dead. He’s gone. I don’t know what happened to Harper, though there are still records of them out there, so I don’t think they’ve been erased. I didn’t know what had happened to you until you showed up on station. None of us have any memories of what happened. And I swear someone’s been following me on the Net, tracing me. Trying to track me. And to make matters worse, I’m stuck in this stupid bio-male coil.”

That caught my attention. I felt my hand tightening on hers. “Have they traced you?” I asked, my voice harsh. “Can they find you in the physical world?”

She grimaced in pain and twisted her hand away. “Christ, Langston. Of course not. They might have stuffed me into this ungainly, graceless body, but my brain is the same as always. No one finds me on the Net; not unless I want them to. Certainly not some HabSec wannabes.”

Her words surprised me. Chan had been the tech and software specialist aboard the Persephone and I knew she was good at her job. But the contempt she showed for the cyber cops was surprising to say the least. I was reminded that I’d never really gotten to know the crew outside of the performance of our duties. Or anyone else for that matter. I’d always struggled with building deep friendships. Even on Daedalus, where I’d lived for years, I had a few acquaintances, but no real friends. “HabSec’s after us?”

“Well, maybe not. Maybe corporate. Maybe someone else. Whoever they are, they aren’t freelance hackers. Their approach is too… structured. Strange, unique almost, but structured. Organized.” I let that sink in. I hadn’t really expected any of the