“This snatch was well planned and executed,” Yuri said. “We’re dealing with some serious professionals here. So given Horatio was one very fit, good-looking adolescent, I’d say we need to think absolute worst case.”
“Shit. You’re talking a body snatch? For…? What? Ransom?”
“A dark market brain transplant. What we’ve seen so far certainly seems to fit the idea.”
She closed her eyes and shuddered. “Thanks. I wanted to go on believing that is urban myth. You got any evidence other than you watch too many Hong Kong drama games?”
“A myth has to start somewhere,” he said. “And it did only start after the Olyix arrived.”
“The Olyix are behind it?” she asked incredulously. “That’s crazy.”
“Not behind it, no; but their Kcells make it possible.” Yuri flinched from her skeptical stare. “Supposedly.” He sighed, wishing it to be untrue. But the possibility of dark market brain transplants had become an insidious rumor, whispered between law enforcement agencies for several years now. The perfect explanation that case officers offered up to their directors whenever a major-league criminal suspect eluded them: They were walking around in a whole new body.
Hong Kong drama game production houses loved the concept and pushed it eagerly into their mainstream crime series. The alien science of Kcells made it sound deliciously plausible.
Until the Olyix arrived, cloning organs or using stem cell replacement tissue was expensive. But the Olyix were eager to trade, enabling them to buy the energy they needed so their arkship
The versatility of Kcells was the root of the whole brain transplant story. Kcells, so the theory went, could be used to form a neural bridge between brain and spine—an ability still far beyond human medical science. And as it involved Kcells, Yuri’s office had a dedicated team to investigate and analyze possible cases to see if there was any truth in the claims. So far their conclusion was: We don’t know.
“Let’s just see where this leads,” Yuri temporized. The idea that this might be the case that proved the dark market for brain transplants existed was thrilling. “Boris, how are we doing with those surveillance files?”
“The memory files for the public surveillance camera on Eleanor Road were altered,” Boris said. “The hours between six and nine were replaced by a synthesized image.”
“This is not an amateur operation,” Yuri said. “Not if they can do that. So we’re now time critical.” He closed his eyes and told Boris to spray a map of the area across his tarsus lenses. “We know the Wilton Way camera files are good. Boris, get the G7Turing to run a search on all the surrounding roads, extending out for a kilometer. Tie it in with the local traffic net records. I want to know every vehicle that drove down Eleanor Road between six and nine on Wednesday morning. No, make that five and nine.”
“How long do you think we’ve got?” Jessika asked.
“They’ve had Horatio at least twenty-four hours, so not much longer.”
“There were two vehicles using Eleanor Road during the time frame you designated,” Boris told him. “A civic contractor cleaning truckez, with six ancillary brush wagons, and a builder’s merchant van.”
“What was the builder’s merchant?”
“Tarazzi Metropolitan Supplies. They are based in Croydon.”
“Get into their network, find the delivery address.”
“There is no delivery address. Error. That van is not licensed to them.”
“Well, who is it licensed to?”
“Tarazzi Metropolitan Supplies ADL. That is a company registered on the New Hamburg asteroid. The company was formed on Tuesday, twelve o’clock GMT, and dissolved at five o’clock GMT this morning.”
“Smart,” Yuri conceded. “Any ownership records?”
“There was one share issued, registered to Horton Accounting. That is also a New Hamburg company, a Turing virtual that is now inactive.”
“Horton?” Yuri glanced out of the window again at the backs of the neat row of houses that made up Horton Road. “Someone’s having us on. Okay, what time was the van here?”
“It turned in to Eleanor Road at six twenty-two. It left, traveling along Wilton Way, at six forty-eight.”
“Where did it go?”
“At six fifty-seven it entered the Hackney Commercial and Government Services Transport Hub on Amhurst Road.”