My head is pounding, but I'm trying to be polite to my new partner and carry my side of the conversation. Mostly small talk about the flight in as the Sergeant good-naturedly guides me through the hallway. He elbows me and points to a doorway. "Captain's a big fan of in-person briefs. He's old-school," Brent says, as an automatic door slides open to a conference room. I see Rabi was already seated, along with two other officers deep in conversation.

"Captain Gupta, nice to see you again," I say, to no response. Her eyes are unfocused, and her mouth hangs slack as I sit down. "Uh... everything green across the board?" I ask.

“Don’t worry, Rabi just decouples when she’s really plugged in," Brent says, pulling a chair out. "She usually doesn’t even show up in person,” the Sergeant says, shrugging as he claims the seat across from her.

“Well, she’s definitely got the gear for it. And I guess she’s here to make a good impression. She met me at the dock when my transport arrived,” I say, grateful to sink into the seat. My limbs still ache from the torpor, and even my nanos can’t seem to shake it. Why didn't I give myself a day before starting work? Throwing myself into my job?

Brent chuckles. “Anything new and novel, that’s her," he says. I'm trying to meet his brown eyes, but the pupils are making my skin crawl. They dilate like a cats eyes, but laterally too.

"Actually, that was hours ago... what shift does she work?" I ask, trying to focus my vision his forehead.

The Sergeant shakes his head. "No clue, she always seems to be on shift. I've never actually seen her go back to her quarters. Or sleep for that matter. But as far as I know, she's not a synth; I've seen her eat," he says, shrugging.

Well, more and more creepy. "I guess she takes her career seriously," I say, waving a hand in front of her face. No reaction.

Brent laughs. "Yeah, forensics has a lightning-fast turn-around, which is handy enough. Just don't try to draw on her face when she decouples," Brent chuckles, shaking his head. He turns to face me, tilting his head to the side. "So, El Tee, which augments did ya get?” Brent asks the question casually, but I can tell he’s interested.

Here we go. “Basic node integration, high baud processing, local storage expansion, flat visual overlay. Nothing physical,” I murmur, feeling my heart beating faster. Not that it's any of your business.

“Oooh, you like your meatsuit all natural?” Rabi leaps into the conversation, eyes suddenly focused, making Brent press his lips together and roll his unnatural eyes. Welcome back, Captain.

I shrug at that. “More that I didn’t see the point. I mean, what, am I going to be leaping off buildings or chasing dragonflies?” I tap the stim-stick I've brought in, letting a little more flood my system. “I even take my caffeine and nicotine dermally.”

Rabi leans forward. “What? That’s crazy! You could just get the receptors re-sequenced. Or have them tied to different stimulation entirely! Get that caffeine rush when you see the color blue or something.” Rabi is practically bouncing in her seat as she talks, and I have to wonder what stims she’s on.

“What can I say? I’m basic.” I turned to Brent, his cross-shaped pupils dilating as I make eye contact. “I hope that’s not a problem, Sergeant.”

He shakes his head. “Oh, no, I just don’t see why not. I got the full suite; reaction-time juicing, dexterity tweaks, coordination jump, cross-sensory synthesis, full exonet immersion, the works." He smiles and leans back, arms crossed behind his head. He doesn't understand. "I’m sitting in d-space right now, working my reports for the day. Why waste time, why deal with the limitations, ya know? Makes everything easy,” he says with a shrug.

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“Maybe some things shouldn’t be easy.” I say, thinking about my first augmentation. Five years old and terrified. And the augmentation I declined last year, even more terrified. “Just one more augment, right? Maybe one day I replace more and more of my grey matter, til I’ve Ship-of-Theseus’d myself away and my soul falls out the back,” I snap, before I can clamp down.

The Sergeant’s smile doesn’t drop, but he raises an eyebrow. “Did I touch a sore spot, El Tee?”

I take a deep breath, clearing my head. Fucking cool it, Mel. “Sorry Sergeant, torpor really did a number on me, and I’m still on edge. I’ll be better after a sleep cycle,” I begin, but Captain Ashton walks in before I can continue.

The Captain wastes no time, launching into the morning report. There’s a verbal component, but he’s linked in visuals through the exonet. Though there’s only six people physically in the room, I see floating tags for others officers watching. Probably linking in from their quarters. Great, my first in-person shift is a work from home day. The Captain gives a detailed, and dull, list of the system traffic, including a list of ships docking today. Only two; an ore-hauler named Chimera, and the Voidsailor I arrived on.

I put a hand under my chin, trying not to lose focus as he lists color-lined items sent from other departments for general distribution. Engineering yellow-lined repairs to the skyhook, no non-essential usage for 96 hours. Admin yellow-lined fabricators in the third quarter of the cylinder for maintenance and cleaning. Astronomy yellow-lined the Tachi space telescope for use by Systems Analytics following an anomalous data-burst. Medical red-lined two individuals with redacted names for quarantine following a biological exposure. I can barely keep from yawning. The reports on Luna were much more concise.

By the time the Captain hands out case assignments, I’ve read through half of them in advance. Mostly low-level skimming from toll stations, probably a bot-net jigging the accounts and taking fractions of credits from interest. A few others look like quick and dirty hacks to the transport system’s outdated sensor net. I smirk at that. Off-grid shuttle racers most likely, shutting down the dock sensors for their games. Not much smuggling out here. Another, someone splicing code from the entertainment network. Real big crime there, some wirehead pirating holos. Some missing assets and entities reports, mostly minor. Nothing that would have raised an eye on Luna. Thank God.

The Captain turns to me. “Lieutenant, I want your primary focus on Missing Entity Report two; a registered independent botnet reports that one of the AI’s patterned on their substrate has disappeared. Quasi-sentient, maybe human-level when overclocked.”

“What system?” I ask. I can see the identifiers of the report, but it’s not intuitively written and the jargon is hard to follow. Certainly written by an older AI.

“Astronomy; their department hires a bunch of the Indy bots as contractors to pour through all their data and flag any patterns they find. Mostly radio-telescopes, not pointed at specific phenomena.”

I snort at that. Go hunt down a missing AI? “So, it’s a snipe hunt?”

Brent elbows me, gesturing. “Well, maybe a needle in a haystack sorta thing. Astronomy gets thousands of petitions from everyone in the system hoping to log time on their ‘scopes. Someone’s gotta actually trawl through the massive data-sets these scopes pick up, and AI processing time is cheaper out this way. Temp work is how a lot of these AI’s buy out their own contracts and processors.” The Sergeant gives a grin at that. "The freedom of capitalism."

I shake my head. “Seems like sporadic work, with high turnover. Maybe the AI just took off for bluer virts.” What, is someone bent out of shape because he bailed on a contract?

Ashton flicks through the pad. “Maybe, but they didn’t collect their pay. And their contact list went dark. Someone’s noticed and filed a report.”

Someone noticed? A single AI out of the hundreds of thousands here in the Jovian? I sigh at that. “One lone AI, outside of our local network? And an Indy on top of that?”

The Captain shrugs. “It’s a simple case, Lieutenant.” I bristle at that. Simple? Then why give it to the new gal? The Captain doesn't notice and continues. “You can’t really burn down systems or red-line the exonet by sending out some pings and interviewing a few Indy bots. Call it practice for a harder case,” he says, giving me a look that’s hard to decipher.

I chew my tongue and resist the urge to make a sharp reply. He doesn’t expect me to find anything at all, and he’s not even hiding it. Fantastic. Our head of forensics is some kind of sleepless wirehead. My new partner thinks I'm either a self-loathing cyborn or a hypocritical anti-tech luddite. My captain handed me a case doesn't believe I can solve. And this headache is killing me. Good first day, Mel. “Yes Captain. HUA, I’ll kick some hardware and see what falls out.”