Solar Storm

Chapter 4

4

Miller studied Smoke through a one-way mirror as the police brought him into the interview room and latched his hands to the table.

The room was small and white, with a table and two chairs.

Ryan gasped at the sight of Smoke.

The man was tall. Very tall. Ripped. His arms were double the size of a normal man’s. He had white hair, like an albino, gray eyes that seemed as if they would vanish at any moment, and red pupils. The handkerchief around his neck was red and dusty.

And his skin. It was burned. Badly. It looked as if someone had grafted it back onto his face—it was a ghastly pink and orange and brown.

“No idea who he is,” Lieutenant Fisher said. “He's not answering any questions.”

“So he's one of those guys, eh?” Miller asked.

Smoke sat at the table quietly. He sat upright, and he didn't move. If he didn't blink, Miller would have mistaken him for a statue.

“What did you find on him?” he asked.

“Two keys, some change, and a bunch of bullets.”

“Same ones?”

“From what we can tell, yeah. He also wore some sort of visor—”

“Like an accountant?”

“No, like a robot.”

“Jesus.”

“We would hook into it, but we had to run it by you first,” Fisher said.

“Leave it alone for now.”

Miller sighed.

“So he's not giving his name, I hear,” he said. “What about fingerprints?”

“That's the problem,” Fisher said, referring to a tablet. Smoke’s face was on the screen in a dossier, but all of the data fields were blank.

“We can't do prints,” Fisher said. “He must have been some sort of burn victim. His prints are so weird we can't even be sure they're anybody’s.”

Fisher showed him ten fingerprints. They were black and charred, and Miller could barely make out the lines.

Miller pulled out his phone and dialed.

A woman answered on the other end.

“Hi, Ryan.”

“Hey, Beatrice,” he said, “I've got some prints for you to look at.”

He cupped the mic on the phone and gave Fisher an email address. Fisher quickly complied and sent a copy of the prints to Beatrice.

“Take a look and call me back, will you?” Miller asked.

“Okay.”

He hung up.

“What do you think?” Fisher asked.

Miller stared at Smoke. Still, the man sat emotionless.

“The bastard really does look like a robot right now, doesn't he?” Miller asked. “Looks like those mentally disturbed guys who shoot someone and then sit on the sidewalk and read a Bible until we nab him.”

“No Bible for this one,” Fisher said. “He's lucky he didn't burn in the fire. Would have escaped if he could.”

Miller’s phone rang.

“Hey, Bea.”

“No matches, Ryan. I did a three-galaxy search and there's nothing in any of our known databases. No wonder the local police were stumped.”

“All right. Oh, hey, they found some sort of visor on the guy. They think it might have a cyber interface.”

Miller c****d his head to hold the phone, and he squinted through the glass at Smoke.

He noticed something on the man’s head.

Just next to the temple.

Miller squinted closer.

“You're looking at the hole in his head?” Fisher whispered. “We can't explain that, either.”

“s**t,” Miller said. “This guy is a robot.”

“I'm sorry?” Bea asked.

“Bea, get me the closest engineer. I need someone here immediately.”

“We've got someone on Coppice on the northern continent. They can be there in an hour.”

“Make it forty-five minutes if you can.”

He hung up. And cursed.

“What's wrong?” Fisher asked. “Aren't you going to talk to he guy?”

“I don't like interrogating brick walls,” Miller said.

He turned to Fisher. “Besides, he's not a guy.”

“Then what is he, a woman?” Fisher asked.

“No,” Miller said, tapping the glass with his knuckle, “Looks like we've got a cyborg on our hands.”