according to the name badge beside her shield—led Enda past the other holding cells and their desolate residents, and up a short flight of stairs into the station’s bullpen. It was an open-plan floor lined with desks where the detectives and other officers took statements, completed arrest forms that hovered in the air over their desks, and drank cup after endless cup of department-issue ersatz coffee.
At the front desk, Ha handed Enda a tablet crowded with paragraphs of text too small to read, and a large white box waiting for her signature.
“Where’s Detective Li?” Enda asked.
“Do you want to get out of here, or not?”
Enda scribbled her signature with a finger, and the silent officer behind the counter retrieved her personal effects—her boots and coat resting atop a box of rough recycled plastic that held her bag, wallet, and keys. When she slung the bag across her chest, it felt oddly empty—her baton and riot shield were missing, along with Tiny. Now that they were police evidence, she doubted she’d ever see them again. They weren’t worth the hassle of filing the paperwork.
Enda slipped into her boots, but didn’t bother to tie the laces.
“Is that everything?” she asked.
“We’ll be in touch,” Ha said. “Don’t leave the city.”
With that, the stern woman turned and disappeared into the noisy throng—just another uniform among many.
Outside, Enda slipped into the susurrus of tires rolling over wet road and the steady hiss of rainfall. It fell in cold, heavy drops that splashed on Enda’s head and soaked through her hair. She shivered.
Readying herself to join the current of bodies on the sidewalk, Enda noticed people stealing glances at her as they passed—practically staring when taken in the context of the utterly self-involved modern city. Enda looked down at her blouse—the navy blue fabric was stained with a black-red spattering of gore, clearly visible even beneath the overcast sky.
It was one of her favorite shirts, too.
She buttoned up her coat to hide the bloodstains, flicked up the collar, and joined the crush of bodies on the sidewalk. Moving brought the sour smell of herself to her nose, but she soon lost the scent amid the sweat, soap, and perfume of the surrounding biomass. She walked three blocks lost in the writhing body of the sidewalk beast, and peeled away when she saw a clothing auto-store, its every surface pulsing with video of smiling Koreans bleached pale as a Scandinavian child, dressed in utterly forgettable clothing. Enda lost her Clarity with her phone, leaving her psyche exposed to advertisements displayed in the real.
She entered the store and paused as three cameras dropped from the ceiling, their lenses visibly shifting as they gathered images of her face and body.
There was nothing in any civilian system to tie Enda’s face to her old identity. It was one of the few benefits of working for the Agency—they scrubbed her clean off the net for operational security. Made it easier to start a new life, with or without the Agency’s permission.
“Good morning, Ms. Hyldahl,” said a disembodied voice. The cameras retracted and a hologram came to life beside Enda, providing an avatar for the voice. It was a realistic simulacrum designed to resemble the perfect salesperson for Enda—according to the store’s algorithms. She was a slender white woman an inch shorter than Enda, with ash-blond hair in a neat bun. It was entirely wrong: too much like her, unmoderated by her self-loathing. Enda was glad; she never wanted the algorithms to understand her too well.
She ignored the hologram and delved deeper into the store, walking down the left-hand aisle toward women’s fashions. She passed mannequins dressed in the store’s latest, the headless robots mindlessly going through a series of preprogrammed animations—waving, walking from one end of their small catwalk homes to the other, posing with a fleshy silicon hand pressed to their carefully sculpted hip bones. It was unnerving, but Enda preferred it to being harangued by actual salespeople. Besides, she didn’t have to explain the bloodstains to a hologram or a robot.
“Would you like help with sizing?” the holographic woman asked as Enda quickly riffled through the stacks of clothing.
She found a plain black long-sleeved T-shirt, and black leggings detailed with horizontal ridges. Enda carried the clothing to the nearest dressing room. She sat on the small bench inside the stall and removed her boots, then felt along the interior of each one until she found the micro-width tracking devices sewn into the insole.