“No taking work home, Dr. Hua.”
“Yes, ma'am.” Kuai hung her lab coat on the peg and freed her lustrous dark hair from the braid straining her temples. She collected her HCD, a collapsible notebook computer, and the rest of her gear and piled it into her bag, changed her shoes for sneakers, threw her coat on, and stopped with her hand on the door. The smell of coffee overrode chemical scents as Sally fussed in the break room. Voices in the hallway told her the rest of the day shift was arriving.
Cursing herself for a fool, Kuai turned back to her desk and grabbed a data carrier marked Case # 835613417, Case # 835613418, Case # 835613419: September 2062 triple homicide Park River Hartford South: Casey, Barbara; Kozlowski, Michael T.; Baobao, Yin.
She stuffed it into the pocket of her scratchy black wool overcoat, first checking to see if Sally was looking through the glass.
Evening
Tuesday 7 November, 2062
St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario
Razorface leaned back in the driver's seat of Maker's battered dark blue Bradford Tempest, grateful for the tinted windows. He'd have to change vehicles soon anyway. The old pickup was unobtrusive, but it wasn't good to take chances.
He'd parked in the shade of a yellowing pine tree, across a lawn and behind a row of shrubs through which he was watching his target: a cluster of one-story gray brick buildings with wide, semimirrored windows. Shadows of people moved inside, odd disconnected horizontal segments that told him there were venetian blinds across the inside of the glass. Keeping his gaze trained past the discreet green-and-tan sign that he couldn't read, he wondered which office belonged to Dr. Alberta Holmes.
Her image had been easy to find: a formal head shot of a gray-haired, stern-looking woman in power red appeared several times on the Unitek corporate sites. Simon had told him where the research facility was: almost on the main University of Toronto campus. Now it was just a matter of getting his hands on Dr. Alberta Holmes.
Except he hadn't seen her yet. He shifted his shoulders and stretched his legs, cramped despite the truck's spacious cab. Good thing Maker doesn't drive a compact car. He drank iced tea out of a disposable and waited.
Lunchtime came and went, dragged down into twilight. He zipped his jacket another three inches, wondering how late Holmes could possibly work. He had three pricey cars in the parking lot picked out as possibly hers, but all three were gone by the time the streetlamps kicked on. A few teenagers and twenty-odd kids he'd seen go inside at around three-thirty walked back out: all boys except one girl about fourteen with long blond hair peering from under her knit cap.
Bored, hungry, Razorface leaned forward and thumbed the ignition on. He must have missed Holmes, or maybe she just hadn't come to work today. That movement — and his position across the street from the research center — were the only reasons he noticed a young couple apparently out for a chilly late autumn stroll across the campus pause in the shadow of a great, dying oak. One of them… something familiar about the way she moved caught his eye. He couldn't quite see what they were up to, so he killed the Bradford's electric engine, snaked a hand into the glove box, and came up with a pair of slimline night-sight goggles. The kids were fussing with some kind of equipment when he looked back.
Taking pictures.
Of the Unitek office.
In the dark.
Acting on old instinct — instinct that had kept him alive and in control of a midsize city's underworld until he was pushing forty — Razorface reached up and made sure the dome light was disabled. He slid across the front seat and opened the passenger-side door, letting himself out into the darkness on the far side of the Bradford.
Cold air caressed his shaved scalp. He set big feet carefully between the scattered leaves and walked away from the office building, away from the not-so-mashing couple. Razorface could still move quietly when he wanted to. They never heard him change course and come up behind them, close enough to tug the girl's glossy black braid.
Never heard him at all, until he cleared his throat and quoted from an audio site. “Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and plot.”
The boy was quick. Quick enough that Razorface had to put him on the ground or risk having to hurt him pretty badly. The girl didn't say a word, but grinned when she recognized him. “How's your head?” she said, touching her hat.
“It only hurts when I laugh,” Razorface answered, taking his foot off the boy's chest.
The kid grunted and got up, shooting him a dirty look through the darkness before bending down to feel around for the digital camera. “You two know each other?”
Razorface pushed his goggles up on his forehead. They pressed bruised flesh and he snapped them off, grimacing. “We met,” he said. “Didn't catch your name, though.”
She extended her hand, smiling. “Indigo.”
He took it. Her hair was so black it shone blue in the streetlight. He could see how she got the handle, if it was a handle and not her name. “Razorface. You blow up many buildings?”
“A few,” she answered. “If it might do some good. You following me?”
“Sheer chance,” he answered, and skinned back his lips in a grin. He jerked a thumb at the unassuming Unitek research building. “You need any help?”
She stared into the disco glitter of his teeth and smiled.
Night
Tuesday 7 November, 2062
Wellesley Street East
Toronto, Ontario
Indigo Xu closed a warped panel door silently and leaned against the wall of another scabby apartment, this one reeking of grease from the fried chicken place across the street. Crumbling Sheetrock flaked under the ridge of her shoulder blade. For comfort, she shifted her weight into the indentation and watched Farley Whitney and the big American — Razorface — bent forward on the couch, playing hologames. She thought the American had heard her come in; something about the ripple of tension across mastiff shoulders as he half turned his head let her know.
“I'm back,” she said quietly, crinkling the take-out bag in her hand. “Let's talk.”
Razorface tapped the console off, and Major Patterson's Roughnecks vanished in a shiver of pixels. “Smells good.” He got up without looking at Farley and took the bag from her hand. The floorboards creaked as he crossed the glue-and water-marked floor to the kitchenette. “Lights.”
The overheads didn't click on. Farley slapped an old-fashioned wall switch and bare fluorescents buzzed to life. “High tech,” he said.
Razorface grunted. Insulating poly crinkled when he opened the bag and lifted thermal take-home boxes onto the breakfast bar. Indigo watched Farley get plates down. In the tiny kitchen, the two men circled one another. She visualized them sniffing warily, and smiled.
Razorface waited while she piled curry and bread on her plate. A little slick of oil pooled and smeared, turmeric yellow, and the sharpness filled the room. Indigo tucked an iced tea into the crook of her elbow and nudged a stool against the wall with her toe. She hooked her heels over the rail and scooped up curry with a torn scrap of doughy bread, scent of capsaicin already stinging her eyes. The American gangster held his plate flat on a huge palm and watched her as she licked grease from her thumbnail.
Eventually, she looked up, twitching her braid over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“Just wondering.” He pushed bread through the curry but didn't taste it. “You say you wanna talk. Drag my ass up here and keep me cooling my heels for an hour. So talk.” Level gaze, scowl as he rubbed the meaty side of a knuckle against the bruise over his eye. “Whatcha doing hanging around Unitek?”