the window, navigating around couches and a coffee table, wary of furniture edges shining ghostly gray in the darkness. In the far corner he flicked a small white switch and the blinds retracted with the quiet whir of hidden motors.
The city spread open before him, drenched in falling rain. Skyscrapers like vertical fields of light, dark streets peppered with pools of orange glowing in nonsense Morse code, and in the distance the ocean. Beyond downtown, beyond the shorefront, beyond the sovereign city of Songdo, the ocean undulated endlessly, older than god, older than death, waiting to reclaim the plastic garbage foundations and consume the city. JD backed away from the window and the expanse of black waters. His mind always went to infinities and ends when he saw the ocean—he could see himself walking into the depths and disappearing under the waves, as though he would need to walk, as though the waters wouldn’t come to him, if only he waited long enough.
With a sensation like breaking eye contact, JD turned from the window, putting the predatory ocean in his peripheral. He tore himself away and stalked further into the apartment, lit brighter now but still dark, light fading by degrees with each step he took deeper into the hallway. JD brushed his latex-gloved fingertips along the wall, feeling the subtle grain of the plaster, hearing the susurrus of his touch like an exhaling lover.
He kept moving, hand falling outward as he came to a recessed bedroom door. He turned the handle and nudged the door with his shoulder when it wouldn’t open. When it gave he saw server stacks lining the far wall, blocking the window. White, green, red, blue—a thousand tiny lights blinked and flickered, too-neat substitutes for the city lights beyond. The air had a metallic tang he could feel on the edge of his tongue, and his ears filled with the steady drone of exhaust fans clearing waste heat from the room. A single terminal sat connected to the server machines, but JD ignored it. Soo-hyun’s annotated blueprints hung across his mind’s eye, vivid as though displayed on his contex. Whatever these machines were for, they were beneath Soo-hyun’s notice.
JD pressed on, making for the master bedroom and the doorway Soo-hyun had marked with a loose red circle. His shoes were near-silent over the plush carpet; the only sound puncturing the hum of the server fans was the faint muffled yells of the guard at the apartment’s entrance.
The door to the master bedroom was ajar. JD’s breath caught in his throat as he pressed his fingers against the door and pushed it open. The light over the bed flicked on automatically. The king-size bed was precisely made with sheets patterned in gray hexagons, a bedside table was stacked high with real, dead-tree books, and photo frames sat atop an antique armoire. The room smelled musty but clean, like sanitized mold, like the smell of old people.
JD passed around the bed and paused before the armoire. It looked as though it was older than Lee, carved from polished hardwood, not chipboard—a sturdy piece of furniture that had never been flatpacked at any point in its long history. The first framed photo was of William “Zero” Lee and So-ri Kim, arms clasped loosely around each other, smiling for the camera, while in the background robotic manufacturing arms waited for orders—the founding of Zero Company. The next photo showed the two again, a few years older and better dressed, sitting at a boardroom table surrounded by suited sycophants, the view out the window behind them showing a less vertical, less cluttered Songdo-dong. They both held pens resting on a piece of paper, ready to sign—the incorporation of Zero.
The other photos were Bill alone, at various points in his life—a child, a teenager, a young man of twenty-something. Decades pass until a recent one, holding a child to his shoulder, but unsmiling, head pulling slightly back from the infant. He looked the same across his whole life: tall, skinny, well-to-do, only ever photographed wearing a suit. His hair went gray and his face collected wrinkles, but his eyes kept that spark of mischievous creation even as the skin beneath them sagged and grew sallow.
JD slipped the first photo of Lee and Kim into his rucksack for Khoder. He let his fingers touch the other photo of the two titans of tech, but he pulled his hand away with effort.
He moved past the wardrobe, past the en suite that smelled faintly