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  Anais sat still, still reeling from the encounter. She knew she shouldn't have sworn at him, but he really was starting to wind her up. If they had the evidence that she didn't do commit the crime, why bother trying to make her confess? She absentmindedly rubbed the spot where Nox had grabbed her. She heard a raised voice, followed by someone speaking in lower, more urgent tones. Looking up, she saw that the door hadn't slid all the way shut. Anais glanced round the room, even though it was pointless considering how small and well hidden the cameras were, before getting up as quietly as she could and tiptoeing over to the door. She pressed her ear against the gap between the door and the wall and began to listen to the conversation taking place outside.

  “ - respect whatsoever. That's what happens in these deadbeat areas – both parents work all day, their children are allowed to run riot and are brought up with no respect for the law. It's disgraceful -” Nox's voice was loud and thick with contempt.

  “She's just a kid, Quentin,” Officer Hughes' voice was low and soothing. “And you weren't being entirely reasonable yourself. What was with the third degree back there?”

  Nox snorted.

  “Come on,” he said scathingly. “She's found in a pool of blood, with two men dying at her feet, and she just happened to stumble on the whole scene? Something doesn't add up there.”

  “You might be right about something not adding up, but that doesn't mean she's involved. You've seen the evidence – it was Grayson's DNA on the brick, not hers,” Officer Hughes said, a little more forcefully. Nox sniffed, unconvinced.

  “Besides,” Hughes continued. “You realise that this crime is almost exactly the same as the Anderson murder? This is the second case now where both the victim and the murderer have ended up dead. Now, I don't think that's coincidence either, but that does not mean we start threatening teenage girls – is that understood?”

  Anais felt a glow of smugness at the way Hughes' was standing up for her. Served Nox right, the arrogant, jumped up -

  “Fine,” Nox said in his sneering tones. “Whatever. Can we just let the brat go now, please?”

  Horrified, Anais heard their footsteps rapidly approaching the door. She flew across the room and sat heavily back down in her chair, just as the door slid open and the pair walked back in. She adopted a look of vague boredom, as though she'd been sat there the whole time. Nox narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously.

  “Anais,” Officer Hughes said, and Anais looked round at her. “You're free to go. I'll escort you out of the building.”

  She stood to one side, gesturing through the door. Anais stood up and walked towards them, keeping her head held high. She deliberately ignored Nox's stare, well aware of his eyes boring into her as she passed. Officer Hughes followed her out, and slid the door shut, leaving Nox alone in the interview room.

  Officer Hughes led the way down a long, brightly lit corridor. They passed pale grey doors, each with a small screen outside it, which informed passers-by of who was being held in the room and for what purpose. At this time of night, many of them were blank.

  They were almost at the end of the corridor, when Anais decided to speak.

  “So, what will happen now?” she asked, aware of how loud her voice sounded in the empty corridor. “With the case?”

  “We'll investigate every option fully,” Officer Hughes replied professionally.

  “But if the murderers are dead, does that mean that you think there's someone else involved in these attacks?” Anais pressed. Officer Hughes turned to look at her.

  “Attacks?” She raised an eyebrow. Anais realised her mistake a second too late.

  “Oh,” she said, flummoxed. “Well, I was just thinking before – this murder, it's very much like the one that was on the HV this morning – you know, the guy who was found in the river. What was his name? Anderson?”

  Officer Hughes looked at her suspiciously, and Anais did her best to look innocent. Hughes sighed.

  “You're very perceptive,” she told Anais, who immediately felt guilty at the deception. “But I'm afraid that's classified information. I can't discuss it with you.”

  They reached a set of double doors, and pushed through. On the other side was a reception area, where several people sat waiting to be seen. A woman was attempting to sign in and report a crime using the self-service station, which was bleeping at her. A pair of night securi-bots were stationed by the door, their matt black bodies hovering in the air, while their bright blue sensors scanned the nearby area every ten seconds.

  “Would you like me to arrange an escort home for you?” Officer Hughes asked, as Anais stepped through the doors.

  “Oh,” Although it was late and she was tired, she imagined the scene it would cause if she pulled up outside the flat in a police cab and decided against it. “No thanks. I'll take a train.”

  Officer Hughes nodded.

  “Thanks anyway,” Anais said, turning to go.

  “Anais.”

  Anais turned back at the sound of Officer Hughes' voice. She was looking at Anais strangely – almost with pity - though for what, Anais couldn't say.

  “Stay safe out there,” Officer Hughes said quietly. And before Anais could ask her what she meant, she flashed her a small smile, and was gone.

  *

  The wind had turned distinctly colder.

  Anais shivered and pulled her jacket tighter around herself. It was fully dark and the round moon shone brightly, illuminating everything it touched in it's frosty light. Her RetCom clock informed her it was now after half past nine. She squinted up at a road sign, which pointed her in the direction of the nearest train station. She hurried down the street and round the corner towards the station. There was no way after tonight's fiasco that she would even consider walking home. It would take her a good couple of hours from where she was, and she had no desire to be on her own again – instead what she craved was light and people rushing by; anything to distract her from the dark thoughts that were now flying around her brain. Plus, it was almost curfew.

  Unfortunately, it turned out that this particular station closed at half past nine on the dot. Being so close to the city centre meant that it closed earlier than the stations further out in the suburbs. She swore under her breath and began to call for an auto-cab, suddenly realising that her RetCom was now fully functional again. The auto-cab symbol flashed in her vision, informing her that she'd been connected.

  “Auto-cab service,” came the smooth voice in her head.

  “Requesting pick up from...” she squinted up at the station sign. “...Hammond station. One passenger.”

  “Destination?” came the detached voice.

  “Newhaven,” said Anais, shivering as a gust of wind blew past.

  “Thank you,” the voice was silent for a few seconds. “Your estimated pick up time is two minutes. Have a good night.”

  The call disconnected and Anais' vision cleared.

  She sat down on the station steps to wait, wondering whether to message her parent, Dalla or Xander about her ordeal. But she decided against it – it wasn't the kind of thing she felt she could say over a simple message, and her parents and Xander would freak out if they knew what had happened. She decided she'd tell them all in the morning.

  A minute later, the auto-cab glided up to the station. It's bright lights flashed over Anais as it pulled to a stop, reminding her uncomfortably of the police hovercraft searchlight. As she climbed in, she thought she sensed the tiniest tingle over her ID chip, as the cab's scanner read her ID information, which would inform it whereabouts in Newhaven to drop her off. It would also use her ID to deduct the right amount of credits for the ride from her bank account.

  Anais leant back in her seat, staring out at the lit-up city as the cab glided along. She could see the Civitas building in the
distance, illuminated from the bottom up. A little further along the river, the Golden Dome shimmered silver in the moonlight and as they passed over the bridge, Anais could just make out the floodlit mass that made up the People's Outdoor Stadium. She tried to concentrate on the soft light that seemed to come from every building and every street, but even the gentle nighttime scenery couldn't take her mind off what had happened.

  She blinked, and all she could see was blood dripping in slow motion from the brick that was held aloft, hear the sickening, awful sound of brick hitting bone that had already been hit far too many times. The man's last terrible gargling noise. The way his eyes had bulged open, terrified, before going dim.

  With a jolt, she snapped her eyes open, unaware that she'd closed them. Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it, she intoned to herself, trying hard to keep her breathing even. But it was no use – her thoughts kept returning to the scene of the crime; only this time, she remembered the attacker's (Grayson, did Officer Hughes call him?) eyes. Why were they so blank? What could you do to a person so that they were unaware of their own surroundings? Drugs? Somehow, Anais didn't think so – his movements had been too calculated, too precise for him to have been drugged. Alcohol? Again – although he'd been committing murder, it was too controlled to have been the result of one too many whiskies. Mind control? But how, Anais mused, how could you just take over someone's thoughts and actions like that? Or, she realised with a sick feeling in her stomach, it was also entirely likely the man had simply been a psychopath, and he had just collapsed at the opportune moment. It wasn't the worst explanation she could think of, and yet, Anais didn't think it likely.

  The cab came to a smooth stop, right outside Anais' block of flats. She got out and walked quickly up to the front door, wanting to get inside to the safety of her own bedroom as soon as possible. As she hurried up the path, she felt a certain sense of relief to see that all of the lights were already off. Her father would've left for the night shift hours ago, and her mother always went to bed early.

  She punched in the code for the front door. It clicked open and she crept inside the dark living room, closing the door quickly behind her. She froze for a long moment, waiting for some sign that her mother was going to come rushing out and berate her for cutting it so close to curfew. When there was no movement, Anais tiptoed down the hallway. Her parent's bedroom door was ajar, and she could hear her mother's snoring coming from within. She carried on down the hall until she got to her own bedroom, and she slipped inside, shutting the door gently behind her.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. She was home. She was safe. No one could get to her here.

  Anais switched on her bedside light and began to undress, wincing as she felt the dampness on the lower half of her jeans, and trying not to think too hard about what it was. She pulled off the rest of her clothes as quickly as she could and got into her pyjamas. She stared blankly at the pile of dirty, bloodied clothes on the floor and made a snap decision. She scooped them all up, minus her leather jacket, crept back out of her bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen. She grabbed a recycling bag from the cupboard and stuffed the clothes in, before tying up the top as tightly as she could.

  Anais opened up the front door once more, and went back outside into the cold. Wanting to spend as little time as possible out in the dark, she ran barefooted down to the large recycling containers that serviced the whole block of flats. She threw the bag into the nearest one, listening to the mechanical grinding noise as it began to take apart the different components and sending them off to the right compartments beneath the city streets to be recycled. At that moment, something made Anais glance up at the moon, bathing the city in it's cold, ghostly light. And, for reasons that had nothing to do with the wind, Anais shivered.

  He knew they were stupid. He just never realised exactly how stupid they could be.

  It was a brilliantly simple plan, and all it depended on was these despicable creatures thirst for technology, their insatiable appetite for the latest trends. If anyone actually stopped and used their pretty little head to actually think for a moment, the game would be over in a heartbeat. But so far, so good. And he was glad. He was having far too much fun to stop playing this particular game anytime soon.

  It helped, of course, that the software erased itself from the victim's ID picochip when they died so it couldn't be traced back to him. He wasn't going to deny it, it was a stroke of brilliance.

  He hummed to himself as he checked the latest diagnostics. But his fingers froze above the keyboard, as his eyes skimmed the text on screen. He refreshed the screen, but it stayed resolutely the same. According to this information, no new SLPs had gone online in the last twenty four hours.

  White hot fury flared up inside him. His contact had promised – he'd promised – that he'd have no issues in selling the stock. And yet, according to this data, he'd only sold three. Three SLPs in three fucking days. It wasn't good enough. It fell woefully below the expected target that he'd been set. And if there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was inadequacy.

  Daylight was filtering through the thin curtains that were drawn across the grimy windows, but he didn't know how long it had been daylight for; he'd been too absorbed in fine tuning some of his other technology. He didn't care what time it was. Denzel owed him an explanation. He stood up abruptly, upsetting his desk chair, but his eye was caught by the glint of silver. He stopped and grabbed the small box of altered picochips, snapping the lid shut. He pulled his mask up around the lower half of his face and, clutching the precious box tightly, headed out of the door.

  Five

  Her RetCom bleeped for the tenth time that morning.

  Anais rolled over on her bed and wearily opened yet another message from Dalla, asking if she still wanted to meet up that afternoon. With an effort, Anais remembered their idea to go and check out the pirated SLPs Marcus had told them about. She really didn't want to go, not after last night. Her eyes stung and itched yet, although physically she was exhausted, her mind was still wide awake. All she had to do was close her eyes and she could see the brick being raised, the sickening crack as it connected with bone - and the blood. So much blood. She didn't know anyone could bleed that much, just from their head. These were the thoughts that had kept her company all though the night, causing her to jerk back to consciousness whenever her eyelids closed of their own accord.

  But despite the images that seemed as though they would be forever printed onto her mind, she still couldn't bring herself to tell Dalla and Xander the details about what had happened. It would make the whole sickening episode seem utterly and irrevocably real. Strangely though, as awful as the murder had been, it wasn't the attack that scared her the most; it was the horrible idea that Grayson clearly had no idea what he'd be doing. What if there were more people like that in the city? People with no remorse, and no control of their own actions? What would she do if she ran into someone like that again, only this time, they didn't faint? It was this thought that had kept her awake most of the night, buzzing around her brain and refusing to let her sleep.

  Eventually, Anais thought she was going to go completely mad if she stayed shut up in her room a moment longer. She got up and made her way to the kitchen. She opened the FDU but the sight of a pre-prepared strawberry smoothie, complete with seeds and red pulp, was enough to make her change her mind. It was almost as if the FDU knew what had happened and had decided to mock her. She turned away feeling slightly queasy.

  She flopped down on the sofa, gazing at the morning light streaming in through the blinds. It was utterly quiet both inside and outside the flat. The morning commuters had already departed some time ago for work, so there was no thundering footsteps coming down the stairs in their building and her father would be fast asleep by now, having come back from w
ork at six thirty. She knew this because she'd been lying wide awake at the time, staring at the ceiling and trying hard not to break out into hysterical sobs.

  But she didn't want quiet. She didn't want to be alone.

  “HV on,” she said into the silence. Then, remembering her dad was trying to sleep, she added, “Volume down.”

  The HV set flickered into life, projecting a reality program where six contestants attempted to do each other's hair and make-up without the help of any tech whatsoever. One girl was brandishing a pair of scissors as she talked, and she accidentally swiped them through the air, hacking off a large chunk of hair from her model. The model burst into hysterical shrieks as she disappeared under a pile of crew members, who all desperately tried to put her right. Anais flicked through the rest of the channels idly. She was about to put the reality show back on, when her attention was suddenly caught by the news broadcast.

  “HV back one,” she said, sitting up straight. “Volume up.”

  “ - shows Donald Pearson walking home from WireX Industries, when he was brutally attacked by Peter Grayson. Mr Pearson died on the way to the hospital, while Mr Grayson was pronounced dead at the scene. The police are not looking for anyone else in connection with the attack, although questions have been raised as to how similar this case is to the Anderson murder. This is the second murder to happen in three days, an almost unheard of statistic -”

  Anais sat, riveted by the security camera footage that depicted Donald Pearson's last moments. Their file photos flashed up on the other side of the hologram as the newsreader continued. One of them showed Grayson, unmistakable with his creepy yellow eyes, while the other was of Donald Pearson. Anais could barely connect the file image of this man, with his wavy maroon hair and crisp shirt, to the bloody mess she'd tried to help on the street. How was it possible that this time yesterday he was on his way to work, alive and breathing, and in just a matter of hours...he was dead. Not just dead, but murdered for no reason. Officer Hughes had said she suspected that the two murders were related, but how, Anais didn't know. Unless it was simply because both murderer and victim had ended up dead in both cases. Anais hadn't noticed anything particularly out of place last night, despite the fact that one man had killed another in cold blood.