She checks in, and then buys a change of clothes from the hotel store so she’ll have something to wear while she sends her other clothes to be cleaned. She settles on khaki slacks made for hiking and a gray athletic pullover.
The room is large and comfortable, furnished in the usual hotel style. Floor-to-ceiling windows look across low-rise shops and cafés to the glittering ocean.
She orders dinner in her room. A facial recognition program has sorted the images of hotel guests, staff, and visitors gathered by the beetle, appending names to many. True reviews them on her tablet but none seem meaningful. It’s comforting to remember that her own identity is protected. ReqOps paid for the privilege of anonymity—something she appreciates now more than ever.
After a shower, she settles in to wait.
She startles awake at the sound of an alarm, sure that she’s been asleep for hours. The curtains are still open. Light from a full moon and from the street below spills into the room, creating a shadowy twilight. She slides out of bed to crouch on the floor. A quick look around confirms she’s alone. The trilling continues. It’s not an alarm. It’s the ring tone of her burner phone.
She gets to her feet. Picks it up from the nightstand. The time flashes: 2300. Unknown number. It’s a new phone, of course. It doesn’t know anyone else’s number.
“Hello,” she says, believing the caller to be Dove’s mysterious agent. For a moment she wonders if this person will be a man or a woman. Then too many moments slip past, all of them silent.
Is no one there?
She has no evidence, but she believes someone is there, listening. Probably not the agent. Next best conclusion: Events have progressed faster than she anticipated. It’s Shaw Walker, reconnoitering, making a cautious approach. She speaks with that possibility in mind, with the hope that he’ll remember her voice. “This is True Brighton. We’ve met before. Diego Delgado is my son and I want to know what really happened.”
Silence.
She checks the phone’s display. The call has ended. Annoyed now, frustrated, she tosses it onto the bed and heads for the bathroom. But as soon as she comes out, she picks it up again. A text message has arrived from the same unknown number. GPS coordinates, along with a time, 2330. That’s twenty-six minutes from now. She checks a map. The coordinates correspond to a street corner several blocks from the hotel.
A rush of emotions dumps a smothering weight on her heart. There is a flash of peevishness at being called out in such a peremptory fashion. There is fear too: Anyone could have sent that message, and even if it is him? There is still fear. Strongest, though, is a sense of triumph. This is why she came.
She runs wet fingers through her hair and re-braids it. Gets dressed in her newly purchased clothes, puts her tablet and her reading glasses in a thigh pocket, works her hand into a snug data glove, and pulls on her jacket. Her new phone and her MARC visor go into the jacket’s front pockets; her daypack goes over her shoulder. The pack holds a first-aid kit and a remnant collection of robotics from the origami army—a sparrow, two beetles, two off-the-shelf tracking discs popularly known as “mother’s helpers,” and a small snake—all that’s left.
She is unarmed.
Guilt works on her as she waits for the elevator. Doubt… not over what she’s doing but doubt about her right to do it, to take this chance. She’s risking more than her own life. Alex is in her head, reminding her: We have two living children. Just because they aren’t kids anymore, that doesn’t mean they don’t need you.
But when the elevator doors open, she steps aboard. No one else there. She watches the numbers count down as she descends. She tries to imagine not going out tonight… and can’t.
She’s been drawn here by the gravity of Nungsan. No turning away now. No second chance. One way or another, she’ll see this through.
It’s cold outside, but she resists the urge to put her hands in her jacket pockets. Be ready for anything. Her pace is swift as she sets off up the block, senses alert. Listening, looking at everything around her. Feeling too visible in the bright moonlight.
At this hour traffic is light, and there aren’t many people about. Dark-haired boys lean out the windows of a passing sedan, yelling shrill invitations. She turns her head to watch them, hoping they will notice her age, hoping their friends will notice and give them hell for it.
When they’re gone, she takes out her MARC visor. It boots, linking to her anonymous profile. The optics kick in, brightening shadows and blunting the glare of headlights, making it easy to see details of the occasional passersby. A few European couples. They nod as they pass. A gray-haired businessman, identified by her visor as a city resident. He looks her over with a disapproving glower. Five dark-eyed young men, teenagers, joking with each other and smelling of cigarettes. They crowd around her, shoulders brushing, bumping. Playing at intimidation.
She murmurs in Arabic, “Tara aaraf ommak, enta we howa.” I know your mother, you and him.
They respond with shrill, nervous laughter and go their way.
Another man, ahead of her, walks in the same direction, but he disappears into a club, swallowed up by a burst of electronic music. No one else is near.
She watches the sidewalks, the street, the buildings, the night sky. Every few steps she glances back to check for interesting things that might be following behind, but she sees only a few stray cats. Nothing suspicious, nothing threatening, until the traffic lulls. Then she hears a faint hum from overhead—like a wet electrical line or a stealthy surveillance drone.
A glance up confirms there are no electrical lines. This is a new neighborhood. Utilities are underground.
She activates one of the MARC’s search programs, designed to inventory artificial objects in the sky—both those that self-identify with transponder signals, and those that don’t. Stealth objects are found by analyzing video from the MARC’s cams. She looks up, turning in a slow circle to scan the entire arc of sky visible between the eclipsing bulk of the buildings. The program can visually distinguish objects presenting at least thirty seconds of arc—but that’s in clear air. There’s a haze of dust over the city tonight. Still, the MARC picks out some low-flying drones, listing them in her visual field:
Transponder identification Aquila-East municipal monitor, serial #Z-3423AEVK
Transponder identification Kishori network booster, serial #C-67808EWJS
85% probability Sibolt RS, no transponder
87% probability Sibolt RS, no transponder
The two unidentified Sibolts concern her. They’re quiet, off-the-shelf surveillance devices, half a meter in diameter, capable of autonomous navigation, and cheap enough that almost any urban sky survey will turn up at least one. Easy to use, too. Register a target and they’ll follow it until their power reserves drain to the red line and they have to return to their charging station.
Just because there are two in the sky, it doesn’t mean they’re interested in her. But they might be.
She reaches the end of the block and turns onto the cross street. When there’s a break in traffic she trots across to the opposite curb, turns the next corner, and scans the sky again. One Sibolt is still in sight. She cuts beneath a canopy sheltering the front of a closed bakery and listens. It’s a quiet street. This time she’s sure she can hear the whispery hum of stealth propellers.
Who? she wonders.
A Sibolt is such a basic tool she can’t believe one was fielded by the same crew who flew the biomimetic hawk in the Philippines. She doubts it belongs to Shaw either. A man who can command Arkinsons would surely field more sophisticated surveillance. Another possibility occurs to her: Maybe Lincoln is behind it. Maybe Dove contacted him, told him about her visit. Or maybe he just worked out where she’d gone and hired a local company to monitor her movements.