There was a rushing in my ears as Agent Summers pulled up the video on her phone, rotating it toward me on the board table. This was it. This was how Ko Prime was murdered.
The video opened with a grainy shot of the area below the bridge approach, right where the concrete slanted up. Ko Prime was sitting there, her arms around her knees, just staring at the lights on the bay. She must have wandered down to the waterfront when she couldn’t find my mom at our old house.
Sorrow was written in the droop of her shoulders. Defeat, even. Honestly I just wanted to give her a hug. There was a tragic finality to seeing her in this last video, that heady feeling of watching a car wreck in slow motion, like there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“How’d you even get this footage?”
“It was just down the street from here,” Summers said. “A dock camera picked her up. He must not have noticed—or cared.”
He. That was ominous.
It was hard to tell from the video, but I swore Ko Prime was pulling petals off a flower now, her head bowed. She looked so alone, so fragile.
Then Athleisure waltzed into frame. He stopped, hovering. Like he was mulling something over.
I stiffened. Of course it was him.
“He was likely tailing her for quite a while,” Summers said grimly.
Shit, could I even watch this? I guess I was going to, because my eyes stayed glued to the screen.
Athleisure must have made a decision, because he crept forward with a giant knife gripped behind him.
A rock settled in my gut.
Ko Prime spun around, bouncing to her feet. But then … What the hell? She was smiling. Laughing even, like she fucking recognized him.
He wavered again, rocking back on his heels like he was caught off guard.
A strange false relief washed over me, like it was all a big misunderstanding, that maybe she wasn't actually dead.
But then he shook his head and darted in close, pushing in the blade.
A swell of nausea crashed through me. I clutched my side like it’d been me under that bridge.
Athleisure stepped clear of the blood like he’d done this before. Then, she went still. He caught her in his arms to let her down slow.
Stomach acid burned my throat.
“I can stop it here,” Summers said gently. “If you want.”
My fingernails dug into my chair. “No.” I felt like I somehow owed it to Ko Prime to see this through. It was the least I could do for her.
Athleisure patted her down, no doubt looking for the Talisman. Hands, pockets, flashlight in her mouth. Then he sat back on his haunches, assessing I guess—before raising the knife again.
Revulsion swept through me. Oh Jesus.
He started cutting on her. Mouth, legs, everywhere. Neat, deft cuts, like he was carving up a Thanksgiving Butterball. And then … he pulled things out of her. Things that caught the fucking light. Things you wouldn’t find inside a person.
The conference room tilted around me. Ohhh fuck. She was a bot. When Mom had told me about Otokotronics’ genetics program, is this what they had been doing? Making human-like bots? At least an actual flesh-and-blood girl hadn’t been made to suffer, right? But if she was a flesh-and-blood bot—and Garrett had been wrong about bots not bleeding—was carving her up really any better?
When Athleisure finished, he stood slowly, wiping off the blade and shaking his head. Finally he strode out of frame like he had somewhere important to be. The final image before the video ended was just Ko Prime, splayed on the concrete, the flower resting beside her limp hand.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Summers reached over the table to retrieve her phone. “He returned later to take the body to the dumpster portal.” She fixed me with a stony look. “Now you see why you wouldn’t want to tangle with him—without a mechanical bot.”
I pulled up my legs and hugged them to my chest, aching with a cold emptiness. It was like I’d been hollowed out with an ice cream scoop. Summers’ offer did make sense. Mom wouldn’t get extradited. We’d get protection from the likes of Athleisure and Otokotronics. And I wouldn’t end up bleeding out under a bridge.
There was only one problem.
I had no Talisman—and no idea where to find it.
#
When I got back to the lobby, I collapsed into a chair, filling in Matt about my discussion with Summers—including the grisly video. Patricia still lurked behind her expanse of counter in the corner, ignoring us.
After I finished, Matt just sat back, quiet and broody.
The weight of everything suddenly pressed in on me, pushing the air from my lungs. I wanted to be in bed at home, for us never to have gone to that alley for my stupid Chemistry notebook. But at the rate things were going, my apartment might never be safe again.
I jolted upright. My apartment. “Oh my God. Garrett! I totally forgot about him. He was heading to my place. But what if Athleisure—”
“Garrett’s on his way here,” Matt said evenly. “We’ve been texting. I had some … time to kill.”
Relief washed through me, despite the edge to Matt’s voice. At least someone was keeping the gang together. “Can we walk? I could use some air.”
“I hella have to pee. Assuming that’s okay with you.”
I buried my fingers in my hair. Matt was clearly pissed about me going off with Summers. “I’m … sorry about leaving you here. I thought we needed the intel. To make decisions.”
He grunted noncommittally.
We got the super secret bathroom code from Patricia at the front desk—as if anyone could waltz in off the street for an unauthorized piss—and I waited against a marble wall across from the elevators, questions tumbling around in my head like shoes in a dryer.
If Ko Prime was a bot … Shit, maybe she was in Executive Guard, that Otototronics division with robot clones of humans. She recognized Athleisure from somewhere, right? I could have been raised to be her pilot, which would totally explain why Mom fled to this world. Maybe to take me away from all that. And yet, here we were, knee-deep in Otokotronics business anyway. Summers’ “protection,” a single bot who knows when, might be too little, too late. But if we left town to outrun the threat, the FBI still had an extradition order hanging over Mom and would probably hunt us down anyway—assuming Otokotronics didn’t find us first.
If there was ever a time to lie down under a bush … Ugh. Maybe though I could take one last shot at finding the Talisman. I pushed off the wall to pace the elevator bay, palming my phone to try our cryptic texter again. But, shit, my last text hadn’t gone through at all. No reception.
My throat clenched. I wanted to check in with Mom, to get her take. She had yelled at me to stay inside, and I’d ignored her. For what? To come here and find this texter, only to accomplish nothing while Summers “looked into it?” This was a pretty clear dead end.
But then a door near the elevators gave a soft click, like the lock mechanism had triggered. And then it did it again. And again.
My skin tingled. First the lights, now this. What was going on? I craned back toward the lobby. Patricia was on her phone, lost in a Wordle game or something. The door kept clicking, like every few seconds.
I crept forward and tugged on the handle, opening the door a couple inches. It really was unlocked. Inside was the gloom of a parking garage, the scent of exhaust and stale heat wafting out. Something was really wrong with security if doors were randomly clicking open.
Matt emerged from the bathroom, wiping his hands on his polo. “What, ah, is going on here?”
“This is gonna sound weird, but the door unlocked itself.”
Before Matt could respond, a familiar ringtone—throbbing beats from a terrible house song—echoed faintly through the garage.
I inclined my head. “That sounds kind of like your phone.”
“I don’t have a phone anymore, remember? Stuffed it into that dumpster before the alley gunfight. I mean, I have the secondhand Samsung I got my dad for Christmas, the one he keeps in a drawer cuz it’s too scratched up. Never even had service.”
A chill walked my spine both ways. This was just too coincidental. I pulled open the door, motioning toward the garage with my eyes.
Matt leaned in, lowering his voice. “You wanna trespass in an FBI-owned building?”
“They’re leasing.” I crept into the garage, concrete pillars sprouting between empty parking spots like columns in some forgotten ruin. To Matt’s point though, getting caught wouldn’t save anyone.
The ringtone sounded again, closer now.
Matt’s jaw slackened as he followed me in. Then he whirled and ambled toward a fenced-off area near the vehicle exit.
“What the hell?” I trotted to catch up, barreling into him as he rounded a pillar and stopped in his tracks. “Don’t just …” But I trailed off as I craned to look past him.
There, chained to a pillar behind the fence, stood the same rusty dumpster where I’d found Ko Prime’s body—the dumpster Agent Summers would need to extradite Mom.