Rachel sat at the bar of that dirty establishment in old New York, the “Fitz.” Outside, the rain threatened to flood the neighborhood, and cold gusts seeped through the door’s cracks. Still, she had left her signature purple jacket in the coatroom with Zena. She had spent too much on her leather corset and new boots not to show off her figure that night. However, she kept the fedora—her long blonde hair was always a mess, and the hat helped conceal the unruly strands. Plus, it gave her style. After all, she wasn’t there just to work. Maybe she’d get lucky. God knew she needed it. Things had been slow since the incident with Patrick—she felt a little foolish admitting that what bothered her most was their growing distance rather than receiving that bullet wound.

  She downed her cherry Nalyvka in one gulp—it was the strongest drink she would allow herself, despite the temptation. She loved that bar, run by four generations of Ukrainians, because it had something for all her facets: the hopeless drunk, the responsible detective, and that peculiar mix of both she was tonight.

  “Thanks for the drink, Alexander,” she told the blonde young man behind the bar. “Almost as delicious as that ass of yours.” No, impossible—a shame he didn’t like women. At that moment, she could overlook that detail if he offered another round.

  “I’ll put it on your tab, sweetheart.” Very funny. Money had disappeared decades ago, but they loved pretending it still existed, like in those old movies from the last century that could still be watched on their holox for a few bits. Speaking of bits, the drink would cost her about fifteen.

  Rachel got up from the bar and got to work. A few more drinks and her tab would be wiped clean.

  At one of those purposely dimly lit tables sat three well-dressed gentlemen, their eyes locked onto their holoxes—meaning they stared blankly ahead, like zombies, while their implants projected images onto their retinas and transmitted sounds through their bones into their eardrums. They were probably chatting via text over a local network. They couldn’t be more suspicious, but her real target wasn’t any of them. It was the big guy—wearing an undershirt, jeans, and a baseball cap—standing before them, completing the stereotypical mafioso scene. Damn, the grandparents of these amateurs had made Eastern European crime families famous for their discretion. In books and movies thirty years ago, victims never saw the hit coming until it was too late. Now, these kids spent their lives lurking in the slums of the old city, showing off to the poorest, instead of aspiring to live in the new city among snobs who used nanotechnology for everything.

  “Stop right there, you can’t approach the gentlemen.”

  ‘Nice tough-guy act.’

  “Aww, but I thought they might want some company.” The sleazy seductress act was simple but effective. These bodyguards were like orangutans. “Look at them—they seem so lonely.”

  “Second warning, keep your distance, baby.”

  ‘And first strike for you, tough guy.’ Act or not, she didn’t like that nickname.

  “And you? Don’t you need some company? Please, they don’t need you. Give me five minutes at the next table, and for five hundred bits, I promise I’ll make it worth your while.” Rachel took pride in how convincing she could be with her soft, slightly condescending tone. She didn’t even have to touch the guy—just running her hand along the curve of her waist made him follow her finger like he was hypnotized.

  No need to insist. The man sat at the adjacent table and gestured for her to do the same. He rested his muscular, tattooed arm on the chair’s back to signal that was her spot.

  Once he was seated and his head was at chest level, Rachel, in a well-practiced motion, pulled from her tall boot an expandable baton—a brilliant piece of engineering. With an agile swing, she struck him, leaving the brute unconscious with its powerful electric discharge. He barely felt the impact—it was well worth the nearly two thousand bits spent on the purchase and license. Besides, ever since she left the police force, conventional weapons were off-limits. This wasn’t just practical, safe, and non-lethal—it was very, very fun.

  No one in the bar seemed to notice—same as always. Those not completely absorbed in a chance encounter were, like the men at the table, immersed in the ocean of information and entertainment their holox provided. Those tiny devices, implanted beside the eyes, offered an entire new world in augmented reality. Rachel had hers in standby mode—but of course, she had one. How else would she investigate her targets’ financial transactions or forum posts? She had no clue how detectives ever found people before the network. It was ridiculously easy these days—unless, of course, you were a cop and tied down by the Citizen Protection Act of 2076. Ridiculous—the information was out there, accessible to anyone. Only the police were forbidden from using it.

  She had a few minutes to search the idiot before he woke up. No need to bother with his pockets—anything incriminating was always in the cliché hiding spots. Luckily, he wasn’t very imaginative, and soon she found what she was looking for in a fold of his cap: a tiny authorization chip.

  With it, she accessed the owner’s online records via her holox. Normally, things like this were stored in secret, secure locations, but criminals always felt the need to keep them close—whether out of control-freak tendencies or sheer cowardice. Better for her—now she had proof this bastard was indeed the one extorting the neighborhood’s families, especially the Boikos, whose apartment he had torched. They had spent a chunk of their remaining savings to make sure she brought him to justice.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  It was always the same with the cops in Old New York. The good ones were either dead or like her; the rest simply enjoyed getting paid to sit back and keep their mouths shut.

  Thankfully, once she uploaded the evidence to the system, the artificial intelligence would carry out an automatic trial, and the precinct fifty-four bastards would have no choice but to pick up the big guy—whether they wanted to or not.

  Done. Undeclared bit transactions in traceable amounts, metadata from the extortion notes—and a little bonus: the guy owed alimony to three different women. How did they keep falling for these idiots? Well, decent men were scarce in the old city. But this kind of guy? Whatever. If she tracked them down, one of them might be interested in meeting the other two, and she’d make a few extra bits.

  She placed the chip back and walked away as if nothing had happened. The holox were her best friends—she had been operating in the bar for months, and only Zena and Alexander recognized her. Everyone else was too absorbed in virtual conversations, cyber drugs, or mindless entertainment.

  She grabbed her coat and stepped out into the rain. She didn’t want to be there when the cops arrived and the chaos began. Plus, she needed to see the Boikos—to check on them and deliver the good news in person. Sure, she could send a message they’d see on their holox as if she were right there, but despite how realistic it was, nothing beat the real thing. She liked sharing good news face-to-face.

  The rain had reasonably emptied the streets; only a few, like her, walked under the downpour. Many said that in New New York, all streets had automated retractable roofs. To Rachel, that sounded like an absurd expense, but who was she to say? No one went there unless it was for work in the outer districts—cleaning or maintaining automatons. Almost the entire damned city was isolated from the undesirables of the old town.

  Luckily, her coat and hat protected her well from the weather—artificial leather with excellent insulation and entirely hydrophobic. Rachel rarely paid rent on time and had spent weeks barely eating, but she invested in her clothing almost as much as in her work tools. At least eating little had helped her maintain her figure without resorting to enhancers—unlicensed doctors performing surgeries that, thirty years ago, had been highly advanced but now left everything to their tools and artificial intelligence. Scammers. The red-light district was overflowing with poor women led astray simply trying to pay for fixing the deformities those bastards had inflicted upon them.

  She unwillingly took the street to her right—she would have to pass by her old police precinct on the way to the Boikos' home. It always infuriated her to remember her days as a cop, being belittled just for wanting to take action instead of waiting to execute a virtual judge’s arrest order. And the incident that had cost her the badge…

  She arrived. It was a medium-sized apartment with a street-facing entrance—a luxury in the old city. She knocked with her hand, so they would know it was her. Almost everyone else announced themselves with a message through the network—if they ever went out at all. In those neighborhoods, sometimes it was better to stay indoors.

  “Liliya! It’s me!” The poor woman was not only half-deaf but distrustful. Could anyone blame her, given what had happened to her family just weeks ago? The family’s eldest daughter had gotten involved with that scumbag from the bar. A little over a year ago, the girl had vanished. Since then, they had received hundreds of extortion demands. And even though they had been paying, the bastard simply walked in one day and set the apartment on fire—at least he had made sure everyone was out first. She couldn’t prove that he had taken Priscilla, but for the extortion and arson, he would be locked up long enough for something truly bad to happen to him in prison.

  The one who opened the door was Grygoriy Boiko, Liliya’s husband—a kind man, though perhaps too silent. Rachel suspected his English wasn’t very good, either that or he simply didn’t like her much. Then again, maybe it was something else—the man was already past sixty years old. Maybe he didn’t approve of her bold outfit or her casual way of speaking. Old folks could be like that sometimes.

  “Mr. Boiko, I came to report that the man extorting you should be in custody right now.” She turned on her holox with a seductive wink—the signal she had chosen. “According to the digital justice prosecutor network, his file has been updated to sentencing. He’ll get at least ten years.”

  “Rachel, dear,” Liliya’s voice called from inside the worn-down apartment, “Come in, come in, please. Gregory—” Liliya always Americanized both her husband’s name and her own when speaking with strangers. Apparently, Rachel still counted as one, despite knowing the family for years. “Let her in, man—it’s pouring out there. Would you like a cup of coffee, sweetheart?”

  “Thank you, Lilia.” Better to humor her—she was truly nervous. She sat on the couch that had survived the fire, only slightly scorched. The worst damage had been in the bedrooms. “Black and strong, if possible. I came to tell you that I was able to identify and get the man extorting you arrested.”

  “Oh, God, what wonderful news. I hope we can now get a lead on my poor granddaughter.”

  Priscilla’s parents and sister had had their children very young. Who knew where they had run off to after leaving them with their grandparents?

  “I can’t promise you that, unfortunately. I’m really sorry. You know she was my friend—this year searching for her has been tough for me too.”

  If I hadn’t been shot on the same day she disappeared…

  Rachel was haunted by the thought that if she hadn’t been so reckless during that raid, she would still be a cop and her friend wouldn’t have vanished. Patrick had been no help, and she had never been able to forgive him for that.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Priscilla’s ex until now?”

  “He seemed like such a nice boy. We never suspected him.”

  “Really, Liliya? With how nervous you are?”

  “What can I say, dear? If I hadn’t seen his cap in the remains of the fire, I would’ve never thought of it. But it had to be his—I helped Priscilla pick it out when he gave it to her.”

  “There’s… something else, miss.” The old Grygoriy finally spoke up. “When I was cleaning out the remains of my granddaughter’s old room, I found that the fire had consumed her desk. I discovered this—it must have been hidden there, maybe in a false bottom or something.”

  He extended his hand, offering what looked like a glass egg or bulb. Inside, an extremely fine silver powder was visible. Engraved on the glass, on one side, was the NaNo logo—one of the best-known producers of nanotechnology. The wealthy in New City consumed nothing that didn’t bear that logo or the prefix “NaNo.”

  “This,” Rachel said, “is nanomachinery—the expensive kind. ‘I own your neighborhood’ level. Why would Priscilla have something like this?”