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2113, Tokyo
He’s thinking of leaving Japan.
He looks at his pillbox apartment, the same bed built into the same walls and perched atop the injection-molded framework of plastic drawers as every other room in the block. Places like this didn’t usually come with the luxury of Interior Holo, and so it remains as featureless and gray as when he’d moved in. He hates the place, it reminded him of the isolation wards, but he supposes he should be thankful he’d even found a place that didn’t require a cymatic scan as a part of the rental process.
He has no AI assistant, and it’s still so, so noisy in the tiny space. Or maybe the thoughts were coming from inside his brain, where they bounce around as he tries to quiet them with whiskey and cigarettes. But whenever he closes his eyes he can’t help but see his face, looking to the sky in prayer, and he’s pulling the trigger again. And every time he pulls the trigger, he can feel her heart break somewhere in the fields behind him.
And so he lays low, stays inside, orders takeout, reads the same books over and over again, because he can’t unclog his mind and he doesn’t have the patience to dodge the scanners anymore. But maybe if he leaves Japan, they’ll be no more scanners to dodge, and he’ll be able to remember what it was like before he went down a rabbit hole and never came back. For now, he can’t stop thinking.
If I did get caught by a scanner, would she come running?
2114, Australia
There are still empty beaches in the world, he learns.
He picks up a tent, hacks deep into the bush and set up camp. Australia doesn’t have Sybil and its cymatic scanners, but like most nations it has a friend-or-foe detection system. He’s sure there’s a Most Wanted list out there somewhere with his biometric data firmly attached to it. He learns how to live without having every morsel of food handed to you. He sets traps and skins rabbits.
He has nothing but time on his hands and, as always, a mind that never quiets. So he walks a little farther day after day. The bush turns to scrub and the scrub turns to tall grasses, and suddenly there’s the sea, an untouchable blue that becomes one with the cloudless sky.
He meditates to the sound of the waves. He’s been reading about meditation lately, breathing slow and deep, falling away from his body, thoughts swirling like the eddies of water flowing in rivulets across the sand. He wonders what his Hue looks like now; if his Crime Coefficient has dropped. He wonders what would happen if she pointed a gun at him now. Maybe she’d shoot. Maybe it’d be the Lethal Eliminator.
And sometimes the thought voices itself, bubbling up from his chest and catching in his throat.
Maybe the trigger would lock.
2115, Siam Reap
He can’t find a brand of cigarettes that he likes here.
You can find the Japanese brands, here, but the markup is atrocious. He lights another cigarette, carefully guiding the flame of his lighter with a sheltering hand, and returns to looking at the horizon from his hiding place.
What was a small speck an hour ago is now a hazy smudge, growing clearer with every minute. The floating fortress that will serve as the core of Shamballa, Han’s proposed paradise built around the Sybil system. He wonders how he’ll extract himself from Sem and the others. He won’t be able to stay in SEAUn much longer with Sybil here.
He never meant to stay to begin with, but they were a helpless case and he’s a bleeding heart. At first it felt good to have comrades again. These days, he sees the hope in the new recruit’s eyes and feels nausea rise in his stomach. Don’t look at me like that, he thinks, I’m not here to save you, clamping his jaws shut as if the words might escape on their own. He doesn’t like their wide eyes.
They’re always on the move, and he keeps losing things, though he had little enough to begin with. He lost his Proust novel a week ago. His necktie went missing a few months back. At this point the only thing he still has from Japan is his lighter. So sometimes he cracks and buys the Spinels anyway.
I suppose, he muses, inhaling. That there’s one more thing I still have from Japan. The familiar scent settles over him like a cape, and he sinks into memories; ones about another pair of wide eyes. Sometimes all he can remember are her eyes. He wonders if one day he’ll lose that too.
2116, Shamballa
He doesn’t like that she’s here.
He hears of the mail shipment, of course, that is has a surprise guest. Sem has eyes and ears everywhere. He wants to ask them, did you see a small girl with short brown hair and clear eyes? He gets the answer sooner than he expects, and its not the one he’s hoping for.
When he first sees her, staring down the barrel of a shotgun, he doesn’t need a Dominator in hand to know that her Hue is as clear as ever. She’s learned how to fight in the past few years. She isn’t a small girl anymore, either, but a full-fledged woman. What was it that Gino always said? It’s sad to see them toughen up.
Despite this, they fall into old routines. He sits her down and gives her a drink without asking if she wants one. She tells him about the case that brought her here, and he tells her his suspicions. He gestures her towards the bed, taking the uneven chairs without question. You shouldn’t have to get your hands dirty. That’s what I’m here for.
And when the time comes, he puts her in a van, and tells her to come catch him again.
2021, Tibet
It’s a cold day in the mountains when she comes for him.
He’d given up smoking years ago, but days like this where his breath fogs up remind him of the feeling. He still had his lighter, though these days he used it more often to seal the ends of fraying ropes than to smoke.
He refuses to shave his head, so for now he’s treated as a guest in the monastery. With Sybil’s continued spread through all of Asia and Oceania in recent years, religion had become all but extinct in the region. The monks were a group of old men, and the monastery was dilapidated. He earns his keep by doing what repairs he can. He meditates with the monks in the evening, and waits out the nights in silence. He hasn’t worked a night case in years, but he still can’t sleep more than four hours.
He spends the morning repairing the monastery’s front gate, so he’s the first to see her coming up the mountain path, bundled up in her Public Safety Bureau coat.
“Come with me.” she says, and he does.