“Sure,” Alik said. “The Manila police lost her cabez, of course; she scrambled the city’s logs good and hard. Langley assigned a dark team, but even they couldn’t catch the scent. The bitch vanished like she always does. We’ll catch her one day. And when we do, I’ll be having a long conversation with her before we dump her naked ass on Zagreus.”
“No, you won’t,” Kandara said.
Alik bridled at what he took to be a challenge. “Yeah, how do you figure that?”
“Because she’s dead.”
“No fucking way. I’d have heard.”
“You didn’t hear.”
Alik gave her a suspicious look. “How do you know this?”
“Because ten years ago, I watched her die.”
THE DEATH OF CANCER
RIO, AD 2194
Early morning on Copacabana beach, before the gold-skinned body gods began strutting their glistening physiques for the tourists and lovelorn to envy, the horizontal rays of the sun were playing across the water to create a dazzling shimmer. Not even Kandara’s category-four sunglasses seemed to offer much protection from the glare. She pounded barefoot along the sand, careful to keep out of the long tire furrows. Every day, the city’s heavy-duty sand rake servez came out in the hour before dawn, restoring Copacabana to an implausible level of purity in readiness for the daily crowds. In doing so, the wheels often left sharp ruts behind, which could trip the unwary before fresh tides and ten thousand playful feet trampled them flat again.
Just before reaching the southern end she turned around and ran back. Zapata, her altme, monitored her heart rate and oxygen consumption, splashing the data across her tarsus lenses. She used it to keep her pace steady, the optimal cardio routine she’d followed faithfully since leaving Heroico Colegio Militar twenty-four years ago. Proper diet, some simple telomere treatments, disciplined exercise, and her body had retained the stamina and speed of that twenty-one-year-old cadet.
Eleven minutes later she was closing on the other end of the beach, and more people were venturing out onto the sands. Stalls along the promenade were opening, the time-honored volleyball nets going up. Kandara slowed and walked over the Avenida Atlantica, her soles slapping the old wave-pattern mosaic as she made her way across to her apartment.
The high-rise hotels bordering Copacabana for close on a century had suffered the same economic fate as all hotels post–quantum spatial entanglement and had long since been redeveloped into blocks of luxury apartments above the street-level clubs and restaurants. Kandara had bought her own relatively modest apartment seven years ago. It was only on the third floor of the twenty-story building, but it did have a balcony that looked out over the beach.
When she opened the front door, King Jaspar, her elegant Burmese cat, was in the hallway, protesting loudly, as usual. Before she got him, she’d never heard a cat as loud. Mr. Parker-Dawson, her neighbor, wasn’t talking to her anymore because of the “infernal racket”; he’d also lodged several complaints with the residents’ board.
“All right,” she told King Jaspar. “Calm down, I’ll get your breakfast.”
In response he just mewled even louder.
“Shut up. It’s coming.”
Another penetrating cry.
“Shut it!” Her bare foot shoved at the cat’s silky fur. Not too hard, but enough that he’d get the message. She received a sulky look for her troubles.
“You little—” A hiss of exasperation escaped from her lips, and she made an effort to calm down.
Kandara glared at the fraying strands he’d tugged from the tight black fabric, now more annoyed with herself for the anger. The whole incident was like a feedback loop.
Standing in the middle of the long living room with its tall houseplants and Mexican rug wall hangings. Hands on hips. Impatient for the scan results. Sweat from the run glinting on legs and torso as the sun began to shine sharp gold rays through the big balcony windows.
“Neurochemistry stable,” Zapata announced. “Gland functionality one hundred percent.”
She snarled. It would have been easy to blame the little gland. It was a complex, delicate piece of medical bioware, secreting a carefully regulated dose of dopamine antagonist, helping keep the schizophrenia locked away in the darkness at the bottom of her thoughts like a slumbering beast. So she couldn’t blame her frustration on that. Maybe it was the run, pumping her up. Or the lack of work—over two months now. And it was no good calling around to her contacts. Work came to her, not the other way around.