Repo Virtual by Corey White (young adult books to read txt) 📕

underside of the shelf to touch the machined steel of her Sig Sauer P320 Nitron Compact. She slid the gun from its hidden holster and clasped the grip loosely. The cool metal slowly warmed to match her body heat. Compared to the 3D-printed assault rifle she’d briefly held at the VR café, the pistol was dense, like a star had collapsed to form the matte black machinery of death.

Enda grabbed two spare clips of ammo and her black leather shoulder holster, and closed the safe before stacking everything on her bedside table. She placed the phone on the charging panel embedded in the wood, and within a few seconds the phone switched itself on. She entered her account details and left it to sync with her personal data while she showered.

Enda returned from the bathroom minutes later, the wailing guitar of “Outside My Door” surging through her veins. She was wrapped in a towel, her hair still wet and dripping down her back, lemongrass soap offering welcome respite from the stale smell of herself that had clogged her nose for entirely too long. The phone vibrated noisily against the charging pad with an incoming call from a number she didn’t recognize. She answered it.

“Hello?”

“Good day, Ms. Hyldahl. I hope your internment at the police station was not entirely uncomfortable.”

Enda rolled her eyes, glad the executive couldn’t see her. “Sure, Yeun, I bet you were worried sick.”

“I must know, Enda: what did you tell the police?”

“As little as I could.”

“I do not mean to question your professionalism, I simply wish to ensure that they will not interfere again before you have completed the job for which you were contracted.”

Listening to his formal speech made Enda grind her teeth. She forced herself to relax her jaw. “Let me do my job, Yeun. I can debrief you in detail once this is over.”

There was a brief pause. “I look forward to your detailed debriefing almost as much as I look forward to the retrieval of the data. How close would you say you are to recovering it?”

Enda pressed her eyes with thumb and forefinger. Honestly, she didn’t know. She had been out of the loop for twenty-four hours, trapped and bored in that holding cell. “I’m chasing a new lead,” she said. “I should know within a day if it’s going to pan out.”

“Thank you, Enda. I trust that you will keep me informed.”

Yeun hung up and Enda stared at her phone, cursing him. The music had stopped sometime during their chat—silence filled the room like a strangled breath.

The phone buzzed in Enda’s hand and she answered it without looking: “What is it now?”

“Is this a bad time?” Natalya asked.

“Not at all,” Enda said. “Sorry, Natalya.”

“That’s perfectly alright. Using your credentials as a Zero contractor, I was able to access the databases of the medical insurance companies under the Zero corporate umbrella. I searched for a person matching the physical description of the Tyson suspect, with the initials ‘JD’ and an injury that could result in the limp displayed in the security footage, restricted by geographic locale. I may have a match.”

“Who is it?”

“Julius Dax. He was hospitalized following the Sinsong Riots with shrapnel in his knee.”

“Have you got a photo?”

“Just sent it to you.”

Enda brought the image up on her contex: it was a photo taken for some form of ID—Dax stern-faced, staring straight at the camera. He had a shaved head, dark eyes, sharp jawline, and a wide mouth. His skin was dark enough that Enda supposed a security guard more interested in football than in doing their job might confuse him for the cleaner he had impersonated.

“Looks promising,” Enda said. “Do you have an address?”

“I have the address given at the time of Dax’s injury, though it may no longer be correct.”

“It’ll have to do,” Enda said.

“Transmitting the address now.”

“Thank you, Natalya. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Probably a lot of boring database searches,” Natalya said, then she hung up.

Enda parked her 1999 Subaru WRX on the street outside the Dax address. It was a generic apartment building—a tower of gray cement and small windows, balconies reserved for clothes horses and the odd smoker. Enda switched off the engine and listened to the patter of rain against the car’s roof. It lashed down then eased off, oscillating with the gale force winds coming in from the ocean. Water gathered on the windscreen then rolled down the glass in long rivulets, the view through the glass like being underwater.

The car was a classic piece of street racing hardware. Often, driving in the city irritated Enda, but after twenty-four hours at the police station she needed to feel in control. She needed to get back out ahead of the pack, ahead of the police, ahead of the thugs who beat Osman to death. She needed noise, and she needed speed—if only in short bursts between traffic lights. The WRX was also old enough to lack the digital accoutrements that the city could use to track her movements. She hoped that fact, coupled with the license plates she’d “borrowed” from a neighbor, would buy her some time before Detective Li caught up to her again.

Enda got out of the car, ducked across the sidewalk, and delved in through the building’s entrance. She took the stairs two at a time, feeling the familiar, welcome burn in her thighs and calves. With her favorite coat abandoned, Enda wore a long, asymmetric jacket with a visor hood, made of Japanese wool—the fabric firm enough to conceal her pistol in its shoulder holster. Beneath the coat she wore a basic black blouse, and high-waisted neoprene trousers, their construction more reminiscent of architecture than fashion design.

The clothing may not have matched Yang-Yang’s vision of a detective, but Enda thought she looked vaguely authoritarian, an amalgam of a hundred TV detectives with the serial numbers filed off.

She reached the apartment listed as Dax’s last place of residence and hammered on the door. She stood beside the door frame