Foxy was at the Skim Depot. They had checked out several private shuttles around two a.m. None of the routes were tracked, but they could download the internal tracking data as long as there was a warrant. Foxy served the warrant and was shown aboard the one that had taken off last. It had recorded its flight to orbit, but then glitched and there was no further data to be saved.
“You can see here once it’s back in the Bay, it resets,” the service manager said, poring over it with Foxy together. “I’m no expert but if there’s a mindworm involved, it will have been put in via the access panel…” They went over to the plate and undid it.
Foxy took a sniff of the area. “Does this match what you’ve got, Tiggsy?” She sent over the sniffings.
“Same woman,” Tiggs said immediately.
Reception came back almost at the same moment. They had several in-use identities for the dead avatar, all being sent over. They had an ID on the woman guest. She had not left the hotel, and there was no current record of her whereabouts.
“Well, I never,” the skim service manager was saying. “Spies! Here, in the Bay. What was she doing?”
Foxy told her and thanked her, then popped her eyepatch down and went outside. Tiggs jogged towards her along the beach looking pleased with herself even as she complained, “Bloody hot it is out here.” She tiptoed around families and avoided various of their pets, snarling at a particularly barky dog and showing her gold tooth.
Foxy ordered a bucket of water and an iced tea and took them out to a table with an umbrella sunshade at the edge of the sands to wait for her. Tiggs’ snout disappeared into the water bucket as soon as she reached the umbrella, and there was a long pause.
Foxy twirled the tiny paper umbrella in the mass of fruit stuck to the side of her iced tea. “If she hasn’t left the hotel, and the skimmer was returned here…”
“Then she’s likely still here. She hasn’t swum out, I already asked Tovi and Vince. Some of the Bay rats say they’ve got traces around the shanties—food stands, especially one that serves seafood skewers. Got quite a groove there. They’re looking all around now to see if they can find her.”
“You’re so smart, Tiggs,” Foxy said, glad they were of one mind. It made life so much easier.
“I am.” Tiggs lifted her head up and then lay down on a lounger for a moment, resting her head on the table. Her eyes swivelled to look at Foxy. “I rode a shark.”
“Show me later,” Foxy said, trying not to be envious. “Ooh, here we go. Sighting in the casino. Classic.” She had a final lap of the tea and then hopped up and onto Tiggs’ helpfully low back. “Let’s ride!”
“Cowboy,” Tiggs said, unamused, and heaved to her feet. “Oh, I drank that too fast… my stomach hurts.”
“You’ll be fine, just take it slow. The casino roaches are tracking her.”
“What do you think is going on?” Tiggs asked as they paced along the walk and then turned to face the huge, glossy frontage of the seafront casino. It was a beautiful building, like a cliff of glass. To either side of it, lesser buildings provided restaurants, bars, theatres and haciendas within which all manner of spa treatments and indulgences were available. Skinshops and tattoo joints stood out here and there. Foxy saw a young woman come out entirely recoloured from head to foot as a zebra. Even her eyes were white with black rings.
They stood in the shade of one of the tall palms that helped to separate the casino from the beach. “I think…” Foxy began, questioning the sense of going in without any backup, but getting off the saddle and checking her vest anyway. “That time is of the essence. She’s got wormware. She’ll have some way of finding out she’s been spotted. We know she can bypass ordinary security. We should go arrest her. I’m heading in. You stick around here and be ready in case she makes a run for it.”
Everything was human-sized. Tiggs clearly could not be the one to go inside. “All right,” she said. “But keep me on live feed. I need to know where she goes.”
Foxy gave her a pat on the knee. “Don’t you worry, I wouldn’t feel safe if you weren’t right with me.” They synced up, and Tiggs watched as Foxy walked through the revolving doors, absurdly small for a police officer on the hunt of a ruthless criminal. A roach pinged from the gambling floor where classic card games were in play. Foxy vanished from sight and Tiggs watched her on second sight. She was so still and so absorbed with the strange view of legs and bottoms that were the majority of Foxy’s vision that it took her a while to realise that a family with toddlers had stopped next to her.
“How much is it for a ride?” asked the father, looking around Tiggs for a place he could scan his wristband, clearly under the impression that she was a mechanical child’s toy. They were day-rate guests, flown down to the beach from the cheaper accommodations on the massif.
Tiggs cocked her head to look down at the children.
“It’s so realistic!” the woman said, putting out a finger to stroke one of Tiggs’ arm feathers. “I love how they spare nothing on the technology here. Not like Procyon Paradise—you could tell all their machines straight off. Really clunky finishing.”
“I can’t find the tagger,” the man complained.
Tiggs felt her eyelid twitch. In the dim, chandelier-lit confines of the card arena, Foxy had cashed up a few chips and prowled herself to a seat at the Blackjack table, opposite the mark. Roaches were moving into position at key points to oversee all the exits.
“I wanna ride!” screeched the smaller child, holding up its arms imperiously.
“Here, just sit on it for a minute,” the woman said and lifted the boy up, setting him down with a thump on Foxy’s saddle. “Put your feet in the thingies. There you go.”
“I can’t get it to…” the man was saying when Tiggs gave a little whole-body jerk as if she had just been put to life by a very slow processor command. “Oh thank God. You walk with him, Jody, I’ll put Kimmy on when you get back. Go up to the ice cream shop and come back.”
The croupier was setting up as the bets were going down. The mark, a tall, athletic human with long black hair and mahogany-wood-style skin, was toying with her chips. At her elbow a large vodka tonic was half gone, ice cubes melting to blobs. She was wearing a fine silk jumpsuit, and something about the movements made Tiggs think she had a powersuit on underneath it. She said so to Foxy and, at the same time, began a careful and slow march towards the ice cream shop.
Foxy ordered a pina colada and made a modest wager. The cards went out. Foxy got a three and a six. “Her name is Ghabra Behdami. So it says at Reception. They think she’s the original. She’s a premier platinum passholder but bought it only two days before she got here. Everything about her checks out, but if she is wearing a powersuit, then it’s good enough to pass, and that means she doesn’t check out at all. Plus she bugged that skimmer. The roaches are in. As soon as this hand’s over, I’m taking her out.”
Tiggs was nearly at the shop. She could still see the casino out of the side of one eye. “Got a bit of a situation here. Wait, what are you doing? Doubling down on nine?”
“What does it matter?” Foxy ignored her drink and shoved more chips forward. “Oh, look at that. Look at her eyes. That’s some fancy crap in those irises and on that retina. This is military grade. Shit. What should I do now?”
“We haven’t found any accomplices. We don’t have motive, we only have association,” Tiggs said, waiting as a dripping cone was passed over her neck before slowly making a turn and starting a creep back towards the avenue of palms and the glass frontage. “Show her the photo.”