Oloyu looks at the scar with a mixture of fascination and embarrassment.
“You can’t spend sixteen years with someone, every minute of every day, and not know if they’re capable of murder or not. I’ll do whatever it takes to clear her name.” I push my collar up and walk out. His eyes on my back make the hairs on my neck prickle.
*
Officer Oloyu follows me from the interrogation room to the hovercar, and we rise and fly along the coast of the bay toward my apartment in Inner Sunset. The last thing I want to do is see more of him, and I wonder why a senior policeman is taking the time to chauffeur me back instead of some rookie. I haven’t seen any other police officers except for the two who took Tila away—it’s almost as if they don’t want anyone else to see me.
I ignore Oloyu and stare out the window. It’s full night by now, and San Francisco glitters below us. The sight of it helps me forget my anxiety and terror, at least for a moment.
I love this city. It’s the complete opposite of Mana’s Hearth. In the Hearth, the lake is ink-black at night. In San Francisco, the algae farms make the bay glow green. To my right is Angel Island, and the ruined Alcatraz, the building too decayed by the salt and wind to visit, and the man-made islands where the rich live in their sumptuous houses. The Golden Gate and the Bay Bridge lead toward the city skyline. Billboards advertising Sudice products flash their garish colors: implant upgrades, a new Zeal lounge downtown, the virtual reality center next to Union Square Mall. The car passes between buildings: greenhouse skyscrapers with their lush, forest-like interiors, multi-level apartment towers, most of the windows lit, small silhouettes staring out the windows toward the bay.
Scattered throughout the city are revenants risen from the Earth after the Great Quake of 2055—antiquities of architecture preserved and joined with their modern counterparts in a hybrid of old and new: Coit Tower, the skyscrapers on California Street and near the Embarcadero, the old iconic Ferry Building at the base of the newly built air hangars above and the piers jutting out into the gentle waves of the bay. And there, just coming into sight, the TransAm Pyramid, twice as large as the old Transamerica Pyramid. I can’t look away from the glowing top floor, home to Club Zenith.
San Francisco.
Our new home after we’d left the Hearth. At first, we’d hated it. It was too different, too new, and we’d had to learn about its ways while struggling with our newly separated status. Eventually, we’d grown to love it. The freedom it gave us. The opportunities. Now, I fear I’ll grow to hate it again.
Officer Oloyu clears his throat. I turn to him, trying to bring something approximating a smile to my face, but it fails.
“I’ll tell you a little about the case,” he says, grudgingly. “I’ve been given the go-ahead by my superior.”
Why the change? “All right,” I say, slowly. The flashing lights of the city play across his face, catching in his eyes.
“You are not permitted to share this information with anyone. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“The victim has not been formally identified yet, but another hostess says they called him Vuk. He was tall, muscular, wore a sharp suit. Tipped very well. Spent a lot of time in the Zeal lounge. Tila was one of his favorites.”
“Vuk,” I say, tasting the name on my lips. The retinal display of my implants tells me the name means “wolf” in Serbo-Croatian. I send the text away. “Why are you telling me this?”
“We want you to come back in tomorrow,” he says. The hardness has left him again. I prefer him without it—it doesn’t suit him. Too forced.
“Why?”
“You’ll see. Please come to the station tomorrow at 0900. Take the MUNI. Come through the back entrance.”
“This is not a request?”
“No.” We’ve reached my apartment. He sets the hovercar down on the balcony. I sigh at the sight of my broken sliding glass door. At least the worst of the rain has stopped.
I get out without saying goodbye, stepping into my damp living room. I turn around, watching Oloyu lift the police car away.
“Vuk,” I say again. “Who were you?” A rich man, if he frequented the club, who liked to plug into the Zeal virtual world fantasies. I can just see a Sudice billboard for Zeal, flashing through the fog. A woman in a Chair, wires hooked up to her arms and temples, eyes closed, a smile on her face. Above her head, her dreams come to life—she’s clad in armour, and fighting a sinuous monster. The billboard blinks again. She’s flipping head over feet, wearing a skintight star-spangled uniform, an Olympic athlete. One last blink, and the tagline: Find your Zeal for life. What will you dream today?
What were Vuk’s dreams when he was plugged into that Chair, and did Tila join him in them?
I look down over the city again, wondering how I’ll find out who he was and how he entangled Tila in this mess.
THREE