Lock in

“Like when you looked over to me today in Davidson’s office,” I said.

“When you were going to contradict Davidson about threeps and Integrators being more or less the same thing,” Va

“He was right, though. Schwartz, I mean.”

Va

“Are you saying I should just shut up every time someone says something stupid or factually wrong about Hadens?” I asked. “I just want to be clear what you’re asking.”

“I’m saying pay attention to when it makes sense to say something,” Va

“Come on,” I said.

Va

“I’ll try,” I said. “I’m not always good at shutting up.”

“That’s why you have a partner,” Va

“Where to now?”

“I want to get a better look at that hotel room,” Va

Chapter Four

“THIS DOESN’T LOOK like the Watergate,” I said, as we entered the third subbasement of the FBI building.

“We’re not going to the Watergate,” Va

“I thought you wanted to take another look at the room,” I said.

“I do,” Va

I read the placard next to the door. “Imaging Suite,” I said.

“Come on,” Va

Inside was a room roughly six meters to a side, white walls, bare except for projectors in each corner and a space where a technician stood behind a bank of monitors. He looked over at us and smiled. “Agent Va

“I’m back,” Va

The technician waved. “Ramon Diaz,” he said.

“Hi,” I said.

“Are we ready?” Va

“Just finishing diagnostics on the projectors,” Diaz said. “One of them’s been wonky for the past couple of days. But I have all the data that came over from Metro.”

Va

“I did that before we left the room,” I said.

Va

“Got it,” Diaz said. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“Fire it up,” Va

The hotel room popped into being. The scan wasn’t a live video feed of the room but instead a mass of still photos knitted together to create a static, information-dense re-creation of the room.

I took a look at it and smiled. The whole room was there. I had done a good job of pa

“Shane.” Va

“Headset,” I said. “Over-the-head sca

“Looking to borrow Bell’s body,” Va

“Yeah,” I said. I knelt and got a better look at the headset. Like all these sorts of headsets, it was a one-of-a-kind affair. Technically speaking, the only people cleared to use Integrators were Hadens. But wherever there’s a less-than-legal demand, there’s a black market.

The headset was jammed-together medical equipment designed for early-stage Haden’s diagnosis and communication. It was a kludge, but a clever one. It wouldn’t give the tourist anything close to the actual, full Integrator experience—you needed a network implanted inside your head for that sort of thing—but it would offer something like high-definition 3-D with additional faint but real sensory perception. It was more real than the movies, anyway.

“This one looks pretty high-end,” I said to Va

“Serial numbers?”

“I don’t see any,” I said. “Do we have the real thing in evidence?”

Va

“If you don’t find anything on the exterior, see if you can scan the inside of it,” I said. “The processing chips probably have serial numbers on them. We can see when the batches were sent off, and from there piece together who’s supposed to be owning the sca

“Worth a shot,” Va

I stood up and looked over to the corpse, facedown in the carpet. “What about him?” I asked.

Va

“How does that happen?” I asked Diaz. “You have to get fingerprinted to get a driver’s license.”

“Our examiners only just got him,” Diaz said. “Metro took fingerprints and did a face scan. But sometimes they take their time sharing information, if you know what I mean. So we’re doing our own and ru

“Let me see the face scan,” Va

“You want just the face, or the wide-angle shot when they turned him over?”

“Wide-angle shot,” Va

The man on the floor instantly flipped. He was olive-ski

“What do you think?” Va

“I think we’ve got an explanation for the arterial spurts,” I said. “That’s a hell of a cut.”

Va

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m thinking,” Va

While she was thinking I looked at the corpse’s face. “Is he Hispanic?” I asked. Va

“Maybe,” he said, after a minute. “Maybe Mexican or Central American, not Puerto Rican or Cuban, I’d guess. He looks like he might have a lot of Mestizo in him. Or he might be Native American.”

“What tribe?”

“No clue,” Diaz said. “Ethnic typing’s not actually my gig.”

By this time Va

“Yes,” Diaz said, after checking.

“Shane got an image of it from under the bed. Pull it up for me, please.”

The image of the room spun wildly as Diaz yanked it around, pulling us all under the bed and looming the image of the shattered, bloody glass over us.

“Fingerprints,” Va

“Nothing yet,” Diaz said.

“What are you thinking?” I asked Va

She ignored me again. “You have the feed from Officer Timmons?” she asked Diaz.

“Yeah, but it’s pretty crappy and low res,” Diaz said.

“Goddamn it, I told Trinh I wanted everything,” Va

“She might not be holding out on you,” Diaz said. “Metro cops these days let their feeds run their whole shift sometimes. If they do that they use a low-res setting because it lets them record longer.”