First Laramee, now Agent Summers. Why did absolutely every lead end with some jerkface I already knew? And did this mean Summers was the texter, covering her tracks with a fake “accent?” That my texting buddy had no clue where the Talisman was? Because Summers sure didn’t.
I felt my insides twist. “We need to talk.”
“Oh?” Summers tugged on her lapels. “I thought this was—how did you put it?—grade A bullshit?”
I pressed my fists into my hoodie’s pockets. “Are you the asshole who’s been texting me nonsense from here?”
Summers’ mouth flapped open. “You’ve been receiving texts?” She looked to Patricia behind the counter before winding her gaze back with a coy laugh. “Perhaps we should move this upstairs.”
So it wasn’t her. But did she know something? I shot Matt a questioning look.
He lifted his shoulders.
“Okay.” I turned back to Summers. “But we also need to discuss your vague promises of protection.”
“Oh, this is a little awkward.” She met my gaze. “I’ve only been authorized to talk to you.”
What? Why just me? This smelled fishy.
“Uh, ma’am,” Matt said. “Ko and I are working on this together.”
Summers nodded. “And it’s admirable. Really. But my boss would have my badge if I bring you in without authorization.” She gave a huff of exasperation. “Look, I know the two of you talk.”
I snorted. “Is this where you tell us we’re all on the same team?”
Her eyes didn’t leave Matt. “You’re too smart for that.”
He folded his arms. “I go where she goes, ma’am.”
“Ko is armed with a portable railgun that would make most enlisted men blush. I’m pretty sure she can handle herself.”
My cheeks warmed. Was the Iriguchi that obvious? She did have a point though.
Matt’s arms were like ropes. “Ma’am, we’re not going anywhere.”
Maybe she was trying to separate us, but I really had to hear what she'd say about this texter. Summers might even be the solution to our Otokotronics problem—if her protection was for real. “No,” I said. “You stay. I’ll be alright. I promise.”
“Seriously?” He was all incredulity and upturned palms.
I pushed down burgeoning guilt about doing my own thing so soon after agreeing not to. We could still make decisions together though, right? I was just gathering intel. “I’ll fill you in after, okay?”
The weight of the Iriguchi pressed into my belly as I limped into a gleaming, lemon-fresh elevator with Summers. Matt watched me go, slack-jawed.
“Crazy weather today.” Summers flashed an ID at a card reader and the doors slid shut. “Absolutely dumping earlier. Good for the fires though. Now it’s just gorgeous out.”
The lights flickered at the edge of my vision. Odd that they were on the fritz in such a fancy building. “Oh, we’re doing weather chitchat? I was hoping we could skip right to—”
Summers held a finger to her lips, pointing loosely around the ceiling.
She was worried about listening devices … in her own building? But no, judging by her leather pumps, scuffed and smoothed over with polish, she was a tourist here, same as me.
The rest of the elevator ride was brief, a stiff silence between us. We stepped into a cube farm cloaked in gloom, its fuzzy partitions empty for the weekend. Exactly the kind of place where you could put a degree to use and rake in the paychecks. Only now, I might not live long enough to see that promised land.
Summers led me into a conference room with bay views and swooping light fixtures, conferencing equipment dotting a board table like a squadron of ships. Apparently she wasn’t concerned about those listening devices.
Out the window, the bridge loomed in multi-span grandeur with cars streaming above the water in perilous harmony. On the far side of the bay, the sun cut through the few remaining clouds, spotlighting individual suburbs like God playing favorites.
The lights flickered on. “Can I get you some water?” She hovered behind a chair. “Rooibos?”
“If you’re not the asshole who’s been texting me, who is?”
Summers bounced into the seat across from me, her hands flat on the burnished table. “I’d be happy to take a look at your phone.”
No telling what she’d do with it. “Nice try. You already know who it is, don’t you?”
She fluttered her fake lashes. “I have some ideas. That’s why you’re here? You’re looking for this texter?”
“If he’s telling the truth, he’s texting from somewhere in the building. And he knows an awful lot about the dead girl. So it’s pretty weird that I find you here instead.”
“There really shouldn’t be any texts coming from this building. How about I look into this and get back to you?”
“Oh, I can wait.” It was pretty clear she knew more than she was letting on.
She looked me dead in the eye. “This is the FBI, not a Chipotle.”
Cute. “You’re just trying to get me out of your hair.”
She leaned back and put on a blazing smile. “On the contrary. I’m actually glad you’re here. I’d like to discuss the Talisman.”
I plunked into a skeletal office chair near the head of the table. Maybe we could make a little deal. “We almost just got ended by a bearded robot. That protection you offered? We need it now if we’re going to live long enough to find you any Talisman.”
“I think I can assist you there.”
“Like you did earlier, outside the warehouse? I totally recall you getting out of your silver boat of a car to assist us with Otokotronics.”
Her smile faltered, her gaze skimming the bandages on my forehead. “I was only authorized for surveillance. We have limited resources in this world.” She caught my doubtful look. “I’m renting a couple offices here on a temporary basis. And only because LYPD used to have an administrative office here, so the entrance is relatively secure.”
How very nice for her. “So, protection?”
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She rubbed at a non-existent smudge on the table. “I need your help tracking down the Talisman. I need you to agree.”
“Is that so?”
The lights cut out, leaving us in the glare of the long window. Summers waved impatiently at a motion sensor near the door until the overheads flicked back on. “How about a bot?”
“What?”
“Didn’t the gentleman with the beard destroy yours? A replacement would help with protection, right?”
“What about Matt? We’re down two bots.”
“We only have budget for one. Even then, I’ll need to pull some strings. Best I can do.” She spread her hands. “So what do you say? A fresh bot as soon as I can free one up, and we partner to stop Otokotronics. You work on tracking down the Talisman. And I’ll look into those texts as soon as we’re done here.” She put on an easy smile.
My boots were afloat in the carpet, a swirling pattern like churning water. A bot would give us a fighting chance—as long as we could do something about Athleisure tracking the consoles. Plus it seemed like I’d hit a wall with this texter. “What makes you so sure I’m the one who can find the Talisman?”
Her smile softened. “Oh, honey, don’t flatter yourself. You’re not the only iron I have in the fire.”
“You could be blowing smoke up my butt. Just trying to get that promotion so you can escape your boss.”
She laughed, giving me an eye roll. “And you could be tracked down by Otokotronics or our bearded friend if you don’t cooperate.” She cringed at her own words.
I’d been thinking about finding the Talisman for Summers anyway, right? Still, my tummy turned leaden at the prospect of taking her at her word. “I also need you to make my mom’s extradition go away. Assuming you didn’t just make that up to scare me into helping.”
“Unfortunately, the order itself is classified.” Her gaze bounced around as if sharing my assumed exasperation. “This whole multiple worlds thing is pretty hush-hush. But yes, I can squash your mother’s extradition order when we take delivery of the Talisman. Deal?”
“First I wanna hear what you know about Otokotronics and this Talisman. I’m talking everything. So I know what we’re up against.”
Summers laced her fingers, one thumb stroking the other.
I leaned in. “Do you want me to find the Talisman or not?” The other world’s FBI probably just wanted it for themselves.
She nodded, her lips pursed. “Did your mother tell you why Otokotronics wants it back?”
It felt like a lifetime since that conversation at the pub. “She mentioned experiments with human-bot control. Something about migrating to this world.”
“Okay, what I’m about to tell you … I haven’t received authorization for, and frankly we don’t have time to get it. I’m telling you this in strict confidence.”
I threw my hands behind my head. Classic law enforcement move, at least if Mom’s cop shows were any guide. Pretend to trust me, probably with something she had been authorized to reveal, so I’d feel the need to reciprocate. “Uh huh. What’s the big secret?”
She lowered her voice and glanced around the room as if gossiping in the school cafeteria. “The Talisman can copy humans too.”
I sat up straight. “Wait, what?”
“I don’t pretend to understand the tech, but the device performs human-to-bot transfers using off-the-shelf components, consuming enormous amounts of energy. You scan a human brain and blast it into a compatible bot—a physical clone—so the mind doesn’t reject the new body. They discovered that bit in clinical trials on burn victims, moving their minds to synthetic bodies to cheat death. But it’s never been approved for widespread use. The end result is the scanned human is piloting from inside the bot. Crazy, right?”
Crazy didn’t begin to describe it. There were so many possibilities with tech like that. “What happens to the human after the copy? Are there two of them, one human and one bot?” Maybe this was how Ko Prime was created.
Summers shook her head. “It’s a destructive process, a one-way trip. The source human is toast after the scan.” She sliced a flat hand across her throat. “Otokotronics does have experimental tech to avoid destroying the human during the process—but at the cost of scan fidelity.”
That sounded ominous. “What does that mean?”
“The resulting bot ends up, well, off—temperament drift, degenerative personality disorder. Like our bearded friend. The one you want protection from.”
This totally explained Athleisure’s winning personality. “What do you know about him?”
“Best we can tell, he’s an escaped bot from Otokotronics Executive Guard—an autonomous AI with extensive field experience.” Her voice fell. “But with stability issues stemming from the copying process—personality, visual processing, facial recognition.”
Visual processing issues? Like how Athleisure didn’t seem to recognize me or even notice Matt in the laundry room. If Athleisure was a clone of some human … Huh. I’d never seen Stanton’s pilot in person, and the two of them seemed pretty chummy outside my apartment. “You’re telling me Otokotronics let a mentally unstable robot go rogue?”
She levered forward. “And, get this—that’s not even the scary part.”
Jesus Christ. How much worse could this get? “What’s the scary part?”
Her gaze settled onto a sailboat carving a path through the sun-kissed waters outside. “So right before Otokotronics lost track of the Talisman years ago, they had a project to set up bots—doubles—for their executives and the global elite willing to pay. Bunch o’ rich white men who saw the writing on the wall with climate instability. They knew they wouldn’t last long when things got bad.”
I gulped. “Got bad?”
She waved a hand as if this should be clear. “The other world’s climate situation was—is—even worse than here. I’m talking line of sight to climate collapse and the unrest that follows. Poor folk taking to the streets with proverbial pitchforks, tossing the rich from the balconies of their penthouses.” She shrugged.
Jesus. That world sounded pretty messed up.
“Otokotronics was terrified,” she continued, “so they sent AI-powered bots to this world, set them up with fake lives. Then, when shit really hit the fan, they would quietly transfer the minds of the superrich and their families into the bots here. Total overwrite, data transmitted from the other world via portal, a permanent escape. The bots were insurance.”
Like capitalists fleeing a sinking ship. If this was true, Mom and Laramee were wrong. Otokotronics execs weren’t coming through a portal themselves to escape the DOJ. They were putting their brains into bots to flee their overheated planet.
I pressed my knuckles into the chair’s mesh just to feel something solid. “Why bother with AIs at all though? Why not just send the rich folks in bots to begin with?”
“Just like humans, bots don’t always survive the transit. Otokotronics execs weren’t inclined to risk themselves—but were perfectly willing to gamble with AIs. Plus they wanted to establish airtight fake identities before they sent real people over. Multiple years of history. The AI bots have real lives here, full-fledged personalities. Only they’re unaware of their purpose.”
I slumped back. Mass overwriting self-aware AIs was … pretty dark. They must have thoughts and feelings, right? “But the bots are useless without the Talisman. Otokotronics needs that microchip to unlock them, transfer into them.”
She nodded grimly. “And so their plans stalled without it, conditions in their world only worsening since. Now they’re desperate for a way out—and don’t have time to build and transit new bots.”
“If they’re so desperate, why don’t they risk coming through in person even without the Talisman?” Some chance of survival was better than certain defenestration by angry mob, right?
Summers pushed to her feet, pacing alongside the table. “The Talisman is their key to a stealth migration. Without the bots’ false identities, they’d be sitting ducks for law enforcement from both sides. Which is why we need to find the Talisman first, before they bring it back to their world. Dia Bosko may be dead, but she was only the tip of the spear. And because the portal cycle peaks tomorrow, world transits will be the safest they’ve been in fifteen years. Otokotronics is doing everything in their power to find the Talisman before then.”
“And if they do?”
She clapped her hands onto a chairback. “They’ll gain control of thousands of bots in this world and use their vast cryptocurrency reserves to hunt down everyone connected to the former union. Anyone who could reveal their plan—including you, your family, and your friends.” Summers’ eyes clouded. “And if your mama’s anything like mine—if she’s ever pulled a double shift or went without so her baby girl could have a full belly—she will not forgive you for going and getting murdered.”
I shivered, drawing my hoodie close. Even if Summers was saying this to influence me, she was right. I owed it to Mom to keep both of us safe.
“Okay. I’ve told you what I know.” She smoothed her lapels. “So we have an agreement? You’ll look for the Talisman, bring it to me if you find it?”
That was the trick though—finding it. Summers clearly didn’t know where Ko Prime unloaded the Talisman after Mission Pizza, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But maybe I could work backward. “Do you know what happened to the girl in the dumpster? Where she was killed?”
Her smile fizzled, replaced by a somber stare. “We have the footage. Is that something you’re interested in?”
I pressed my lips together. A chill tiptoed along my neck.
Agent Summers raised her eyebrows, her hands clasped behind her.
She knew she had me.