The City Within

One Commotion rumbled on the periphery of Grace Buteo’s hearing. At first, she mistook this as the standard awakening of the precinct. It was now past starting time and officers were arriving in droves, reporting to their captains for their assignments and tasks. And should their captains need something, they reported to their lieutenants. Should their lieutenants need something, only then would Grace, or her co-commander, Adams, be called upon. But this wasn’t a slow-building din flexing around her. A woman’s high voice cut through the hive’s low buzz. “I have to speak to her!” she cried. “It has to be her. I’m telling you!” Heron Jane pivoted in his seat, looking over his shoulder toward the door. Grace lowered the opacity on her lenscape until her surrounding office came into view. Her eyes first snagged on Heron, reclined in his seat. She stared at that notch on his throat for far too long before she lowered the opacity of the office wall itself and gazed out into the precinct’s reception area. It bustled. The desks lining the center walkway between the entrance and Grace’s closed door were blocked with officers interviewing waiting citizens. Small clusters of junior inspectors took instructions from their superiors and more yet issued tasks for the day. Sudden movement drew Grace’s eye. A woman in a short bamboo dress yanked her hand back. She was yelling at the officer, shrugging off his attempt to take her elbow and move her toward the waiting area. It was Lore Duchovny, and he threw a worried glance over his shoulder at Grace’s door. The look of uncertainty on Duchovny’s face, the consideration that perhaps she should be summoned, was enough to give Grace pause. She trusted his judgment. “Shall I—?” Heron began, reaching for the door. “Please,” Grace said, so close to finishing her agenda. “One moment more.” Heron closed the door behind him. Through the opacity of the office wall, she watched him approach Duchovny and the woman. At the desk, he turned up the wattage of his smile. Both relaxed at his appearance. Grace felt a twinge of envy at that. She supposed the burn scars crowding the right side of her face made such charm impossible, but the social lubricant would’ve been useful. Grace returned to her lenscape, organizing the remaining few tasks. She’d just confirmed a 16:00 appointment with the constable when Heron knocked. > Heron pinged, the message appearing in the lower side of her lenscape. “Come in,” she called, collapsing the appointment book from her vision. Heron pushed open the door, allowing a petite woman with black hair and dark eyes to step into the office. Heron closed the door behind them. “Commander Buteo,” the woman said. The name escaped her lips as an exhalation, dripping with relief. “Please hear me out. Please.” “Of course.” Grace wasn’t used to someone begging for an audience. She motioned toward the seat across from her. Rather than taking the second seat, Heron chose to stand near the wall, one ankle crossed casually over the other. Grace wasn’t fooled. Her lenscape pinged a second later, with a cache from heronjane1. Grace accepted the file and saw the woman’s collected details pour into her lenscape. Lenorie Range, 34, unmarried. One child. Deceased. Grace’s heart stuttered at that. One child, deceased. That was true for Grace as well. In her mind, she saw the auto lifting off the pavement, blown upward by the force of the blast, and her son’s widening eyes. Mom! he’d screamed, before the auto and her life were consumed by flames. Grace blinked. “Ms. Range, how can I help you?” Her eyes flicked to the lenscape, absorbing the information available from Heron’s cache as well as the woman’s profile and bio signature. “Are you reviewing my files?” the woman asked defiantly. She sat up taller in the seat. “It’s fine. I’ve nothing to hide. And I guess after what’s happened to you, you can’t be too careful.” To be of such small stature, she had quite the force behind her. Every word and movement was charged with energy. And, of course, she knew Grace was using her lenscape. Grace’s eyes would be lit blue with the soft light of the embedded lens. > Grace accepted. Would a woman with nothing to hide use such a strong face filter?>> Heron asked through the private chat. Grace’s embedded police programs meant that her lenscape removed all embellishments used by citizens. If Lenorie was using a strong face filter, Grace couldn’t see it. > she wrote back. > Heron’s mouth tightened, his indignation apparent. Grace almost smiled at that. Heron with his expensive booster ring and four processors would be upset to discover there were programs he lacked. “This is not a joke,” Lenorie cried, mistaking Grace’s sly smile. “I need your help. My brother was kidnapped.” One living relative. Brother: Tristan Range, 38. Zone 2 residency. “What makes you say that?” Grace asked, schooling her features. “Did you see him taken?” “No,” Lenorie said, pushing her sleek black hair back behind her right ear. “But he would never integrate with CyTown.” It had been a while, perhaps a year or more, since Grace had heard anyone mention the cyber city. It was a near-perfect replica of their own Zone 2, she’d been told. Though it had removed all the flaws of living: disease, aging, pain. It was called Utopia 2.0 for a reason. Husbands and sons weren’t murdered there, for starters. And their living arrangements were much more extravagant than any found in the real Zone 2, where resource management reigned supreme. “It’s illegal to force someone into CyTown residency,” Grace said. “Your brother would have had to enroll in the program and be approved by a city official before being intubated.” “I know,” the woman huffed, now tucking the other side of her hair behind her ear. “That’s why I’m here. He would never have done that. He had views on CyTown, okay?” > Heron pinged over their chat. > No, she thought. But then again, months ago she hadn’t believed many things were possible—things that were now very much her reality. > Grace replied. She softened her features. “I’m sorry, Ms. Range. Perhaps you should start at the beginning for us. Walk us through what happened.” The woman squirmed in the seat, adjusting her posture. “My brother, Tristan, was kidnapped a week ago. That’s the last time his building manager saw him.” “Who’s his building manager?” “Elinabeth Dose. She saw him coming home with his weekly library books last Monday. He always went to the library after work on Mondays and got new books. She saw him come home around nineteen hundred.” “Alone?” “Yes, just him and the books.” “You haven’t seen him since?” “No, I came by his place Tuesday morning to bring him breakfast before he went to work. This would’ve been around six thirty, but he wasn’t there. I opened his apartment with my key and called his name. No answer. The library books were on the bedside table, and his bed was rumpled like someone had dragged him out of it.” Speculation, Grace thought, but continued to record the details on the notepad along the right side of her lenscape. “My brother always makes the bed, Commander. I’m the messy one. He would have never left his apartment with his bed unmade unless something was very, very wrong. I can promise you that.” > Heron pinged. Grace ignored this. Heron’s body was at ease, his shoulders softly rounded against the wall. But his eyes were sharp and assessing. At least he looked like an inspector when he tried. Grace wondered what details he was absorbing that she wasn’t. “Did anyone see him leave?” he asked. “No. He usually wakes up around six so that he can be at work by eight. We always breakfast together on Tuesday mornings when I’m in his part of town.” “And what do you do?” Grace asked. “I’m a home carer, and it takes me all over the zone, depending on who I am scheduled to visit,” Lenorie said, fidgeting in her seat again. “That’s…that’s how I know about you. Your mother told me I had to come see you.” Grace kept her eyes on Lenorie, trying to maintain an impassive face. “You are a home carer for my mother?” “I am. I visit her and Henry twice a week.” Heron visibly reddened at this, a laugh pressing against his lips like it might erupt from him. Grace threw him a cold glance. > Her mother didn’t need a carer. Her mother might be ninety-two, but she was perfectly fit. She was often mistaken for a woman in her fifties, and when she used filters, even younger. But it was Zone 2’s policy that all residents above eighty receive support from the home care network. And Grace was sure her mother liked the company. Caroline hadn’t met a stranger in her life. If Grace was honest with herself, her mother had been the most recent caretaker in their relationship. While Grace lay in the hospital healing burns all over her body and mourning the loss of her husband and son, it had been her mother who’d supported her. Her mother who’d gotten her home, who’d cleaned out Kaiden’s room, and had packed Davion’s things away. Her mother who programmed her ChefMate to feed her ridiculous amounts of food so she wouldn’t lose any more weight. Grace felt a swell of affection for the woman. “Henry?” Heron asked, smiling. “It’s Kitty’s—” Lenorie stopped herself. “Miss Caroline’s companion.” “Robot companion,” Grace amended, and rushed on before her face turned any redder. “Why did my mother send you?” Lenorie sat up straighter in her seat. “Because you exposed that corporation. They were doing terrible, terrible things and getting away with it! No one else had the gumption to take them on, but you did! And you destroyed them.” Grace thought of Viscosity, Inc.’s dark practice of deleting employees from their register, nulling their Zone 2 citizenship. This act alone had driven thousands to live beneath a shipping warehouse. The company had broken hundreds of economic, citizenship, and human rights laws. Of course Grace had challenged them. Honestly, she didn’t understand. They were willing to ruin the lives of families and children for something as simple as a bottom line? All that suffering so they could expand their profit margin and avoid paying the petty environmental tax? Disgusting. She’d been frustrated that she’d only been able to prove Viscosity’s guilt, when undoubtedly other corporations had done the same. She hoped that the threat of accountability would make them think twice. “If CyTown is kidnapping people and forcing them to live in cyber space, you’re the one who can bring them down,” Lenorie went on, her chin set hard with determination. She has a point,>> Heron agreed. It wasn’t just me,>> Grace said. > He perked up at this. > So humble, she thought. “You think your brother…” Grace wasn’t sure how to finish. “He was forced into it. I swear. It was because of his pamphlets. He pissed off the wrong person and they took him.” “Back up,” Grace said, leaning her elbows on her desk. “He was an activist?” “Yes, I told you. Tristan has views against cyber living. He published his rants in the Daily Gazette every week. Someone must’ve wanted to shut him up. His following was large. He was causing quite the uprising.” More speculation, Grace thought. It would take time to separate Lenorie’s emotions from the facts. “Are you going to help or not?” the woman demanded. “I’m not sure there’s a case here,” Grace said. “It would be very difficult to prove someone was forced into cyber living when there are airtight protocols in place for their protection. Forms have to be signed and medical examinations completed to ensure that the body can be integrated.” That doesn’t mean someone isn’t scamming the system, a voice said. Davion’s voice. Even the most rule-book organizations exploit people when they can. Her heart clenched. Even four months after his death, his voice was enough to wind her.