“Option one.” Hanna’s profile became transparent as Anna’s vanished. It solidified across the display, all the photos and numbers and maps hanging and shimmering in Hwa’s vision. She squinted. “Dimmer.”
Hanna’s profile dimmed slightly, and Hwa could finally get a real look at it. Like Hwa, Hanna lived in Tower One. She’d been picked up once on a shoplifting charge, two years ago. Hwa raised her hands and gestured through all the points at which facial identification had identified Hanna in the last forty-eight hours. Deeper than that, and she’d need archival access.
“Prefect, show me this person’s network.”
Other faces bloomed around Hanna’s. They orbited her face slowly, like satellites. Hwa scrolled through them with two fingers. She recognized most of them from school.
“Any on the hot list?”
It took a moment for Prefect’s algorithms to find the likely violent offenders around Hanna. But Hanna’s dad popped up immediately. That made sense. Mollie hadn’t left him; she enjoyed their times together so much. They lived in different towers, now, which helped.
There was another name on the list. Jared Pullman. He was twenty-three. He’d been busted for boosters; there was also a pending assault charge at the offtrack-betting arcade where he worked. In his photo, his eyes were very, very red. “Goddamn it,” Hwa muttered.
But before pursuing him, she needed to call Skipper’s. Rule them out. “Hi, is Hanna there?”
“Hanna doesn’t work here anymore.” Hwa heard beeping. The sounds of fryer alarms going off. Music. “Hello?”
Hwa ended the call.
There was Hanna on the Acoutsina Causeway, walking toward Tower One. The image was time-stamped after volleyball practise. Speed-trap checked her entering a ride in the driverless lane at 18:30. Five minutes later, she was gone. Wherever she was now, there were no cameras.
“Prefect, search this vehicle and this face together.”
A long pause. “Archive access required.”
For a fleeting moment, Hwa regretted the fact that Prefect was not a human being she could intimidate. “Is there a record in the archives?”
“Archive access required.”
Hwa growled a little to herself. She popped up off the floor and began to pace. She walked through the projections of Hanna’s face, sliding the ribbon of stills and clips until she hit the top of the list. Today was Monday. If Hanna had sustained her injury on Friday night, then Hwa was out of luck. But Mollie had said she worked all weekend. Maybe that meant—
“What are you doing?”
Hwa startled. “Jesus Christ, stop doing that!”
“Doing what?” Síofra was trying to sound innocent. It wasn’t working.
“You know exactly what,” she said. “Why can’t you just text, like a normal person? How do you know I wasn’t having a natter with somebody?”
“Your receiver would have told me,” he said.
Hwa frowned. “Can you…?” She wished she had an image of him she could focus her fury on. “Can you listen in on my conversations, through my receiver?”
“Only during your working hours.”
“And you can just … tune in? All day? While I’m at school with Joel?”
“Of course I can. I thought you had some excellent points to make about Jane Eyre in Mr. Bartel’s class.”
Hwa plunged the heels of her hands into the sockets of her eyes. She had known this was possible, of course. She just assumed Síofra actually had other work to do, and wasn’t constantly spying on her instead of accomplishing it.
“Are you bored?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Are you bored? At work? Is your job that boring? That you need to be tuned into my day like that?”
There was a long pause. She wondered for a moment if he’d cut out. “You watch Joel and I watch you,” he said. “That is my job.”
Hwa sighed. He had her, there. It was all right there in the Lynch employee handbook. She’d signed on for this level of intrusion when she’d taken their money. He was paying, so he got to watch. She’d stood guard at enough peep shows to learn that particular lesson. Maybe she wasn’t so different from her mother, after all.
“You aren’t supposed to be prying into your fellow classmates’ lives unless they pose a credible threat to Joel.” So he’d been spying on her searches, too. Of course. “I know what you’re thinking, and—”
“How come I can’t do this to you?” Hwa blurted. “That’s what I’m thinking. I’m wondering how come I can’t watch you all the time the way you watch me. Why doesn’t this go both ways? Why don’t I get to know when you’re watching me?”
Another long pause. “Is there something about me that you would like to know?”
Oh, just everything, she thought. The answer came unbidden, and she shut her eyes and clenched her jaw and squashed it like a bug crawling across her consciousness.
“Are you coming running tomorrow?”
“Of course I am.”
*