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  Robins tapped a device on his desk. A buzz emanated for several seconds, then stopped. After a moment, there was a knock on the door. He got up, walked around the desk, and grasped the door handle before continuing. “You’re going to have a partner for the time being.”

  “What the fuck!” I jumped up so quickly that it knocked my chair back. Robins looked surprised by my reaction, but his expression was resigned.

  “Elias, relax.”

  “Where the hell do you get off slotting me with some pill?”

  “If it weren’t for that last ‘pill,’ you’d be dead. You’re welcome.”

  “Are you talking about Joan or Desmond? Because I don’t think ride-alongs count as partners. In any case, distracting a guy aiming a Foldgun at me hardly counts as saving my life.”

  “They took the heat for you, and both of them were found by our patrols wandering around 90th Street, where you always leave them. You can’t keep blowing this off. You’ll need someone watching your back, so this time, you’ll have an official partner, like it or not. And if any agents corner you, you can shove the new guy at them, and he’ll answer all the questions they shoot your way. Besides, I need him out of here while this investigation into Red-eyes is going on. They won’t spare any Automatic — Red, Blue, or Green.”

  I sat back down. “Speaking of partners … you interrupted me earlier. There’s something else about the killer.”

  “Other than the serial number?” Robins asked, his hand still resting on the doorknob.

  “Yeah. The Red-eye that helped shoot up the place was a Swinger model, quite a strong one to be able to throw an undercover cop across the room, and with pretty precise firearm handiwork, if I do say so myself.”

  “What are you implying?”

  “I mean … of all the Green-eyes working for the cops and all the Blue-eyes that’ve been laid off, how many are Swinger models? And how many have custom police programming good enough to pull double taps?”

  Robins looked down for a moment, sighing. “Elias, there’s no use chasing ghosts …”

  “We never recovered its body, remember? Someone could have repaired it or ripped its NI. It could be James.”

  “I sincerely doubt that … and you should have led with that information. You are really going to hate me.”

  He opened the door a crack to regard the person waiting outside, then swung it wide open.

  An Automatic walked in and sat beside me, its unblinking blue lights staring straight ahead at the desk. The tension in the air was palpable. This had to be a fucking joke.

  “Roche, I’m assigning him” (“It,” I interrupted, but he just shook his head and continued) “to be your partner, at least until this case gets resolved and the FBI crawl back up to the Plate. More inspectors from the Upper City are arriving soon, and we really don’t need information about this incident being spread around.”

  “Incident?” The Automatic’s head jerked to lock on to Robins.

  “A massacre at a speakeasy perpetrated by a couple of Automatics, which makes the precinct a dangerous place for you to be in. Detective Roche here will explain further … away from here.” I’d felt him strain to say those words again: Detective Roche. I hadn’t heard that title for nearly three years.

  The Automatic had a strange face. Not the usual egg- or box-shaped head, but one that looked much more human — though the top of its head was flatter and its cheeks were more sunken in than a human’s. Rather than the shitty latches and voice boxes the rest of them had, this Automatic had hundreds of joints and servos on its face, making its mouth move convincingly, even with small twitches. It had gleaming metal skin and steel eyebrows over its blue bulbs. The unblinking lamps still gave me chills. It was wearing a black suit, a white shirt, and a black tie, dressed all fine and proper and convincing enough for most people. It extended a hand to me and waited for me to reciprocate. I did so reluctantly.

  “Elias Roche,” I said with as much spite as I could muster.

  “My designation is Forty-One-Echo-November, Detective Roche.” Damn thing had a shrill voice. Not as monotonous as the other tin men, but with the same flanging and metallic tone they all had. I hoped it wouldn’t make a habit of calling me “Detective.” I kept an eye on the Automatic as I turned to Robins.

  “You’re hiring Blue-eyes again? That’s going to cause even more issues with the Black Hats. You forget what year it is?”

  Robins chewed on his bottom lip. “It’s a complicated issue, Roche. Let it slide for now. Now, with shit as tight as it currently is, I’ll need both of you off the grid for a while, which means no arrests, no deaths, no explosions. Forty-One, Detective Roche over here has already begun …”

  As Robins filled the robot in on the state of things, I peered at it beside me. I hadn’t had an Automatic partner since ’28, and I would have liked to have kept it that way. This thing was just as complacent as the Green-eyes in the station, hanging on every one of Robins’s words. I couldn’t help glaring at it. I wasn’t sure whether it knew I was doing so. These days, the only Automatic I ever exchanged more than a few syllables with was Toby. I doubted that I could get used to another one. At least Toby and I had a history. This bastard looked fresh off the production line. It looked like the same model as my old partner, which didn’t exactly help. It was as if Robins was trying to replace my old partner with this new machine. I shook my head. I’m getting to the bottom of this, and I won’t let this pill chain me down and keep me from doing my job.

  “Elias, are you listening?”

  Robins must have known that I wasn’t, not with my mind rattling around like this. I responded by standing up, and opening the door to the office. He barked at me to sit down. I looked back for several seconds before walking out.

  My body had taken matters into its own hands, removing me from the situation without my brain’s consent. Everything was a blur as I entered the main area of the precinct. I couldn’t handle this. Maybe it was the hooch or the lack thereof, maybe the metal man, maybe the dead cops. Something was fucking me up.

  The yelling from Robins’s office continued, and the station’s buzz ceased momentarily as everyone within earshot stared at me. Most of the officers were regarding me in shock and awe, astonished that I had the balls to walk away from Robins. I pushed open the front door of the station and walked to my car. Inside, I rolled up the windows all the way, isolating myself from the world.

  The relative quiet inside my Talbot was comforting; I heard nothing but the hum of electricity around me. I preferred sirens and the noise of the city to Robins’s office and its occupants right now. Would Robins chase after me? He knew why I’d left. He might try again later, but not now.

  Feeling calmer, I lit a dart and rolled the window down to let the smoke escape. There was far too much to think about now, especially with this partner bull-shit. I hadn’t thought Blue-eyes were allowed to work on the Force anymore, which meant that either something weird was going on in the Lower City, or Robins had pulled strings to make this happen. Welcome to the brave new world of 1933, I thought.

  I had only a minute to myself before the Black Hat walked up to my open window. It was Agent Masters, the lanky asshole who acted as if he had muscles bigger than my head. He bent down to look inside the cabin, stone-faced.

  “Disagreement with your boss?” Masters sounded too posh, too pristine, too entitled. Sometimes it was hard to identify FBI agents just by looking at them, but it got easier after they opened their mouths.

  “Go foreclose on someone’s home, shithead.”

  “Edgy, are we?” He moved to kneel more comfortably, like he owned me. God, he was irritating. “I could hear him yelling from out here. Anything the matter?”

  “Fuck off, G-man.”

  Masters was actually taken aback by that. But, of course, he had to get in the last word. “It’s an odd world we live in, son. You and the rest of the Humanists need to get with the program and realize there are worse things to fear than a soull
ess machine.”

  “Such as?”

  “A machine with a soul, perhaps. I haven’t seen many Blue-eyes working in the Force these days.” He placed a hand on the roof of the car and hoisted himself up. He might have a point, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing me say so. “Be seeing you, Constable.”

  I could have retorted, but then he’d have kept talking. I watched him enter the station, probably to tell Robins all about the massacre and how it was “being handled” by the FBI. As laughable as the statement was, Robins would have to keep a straight face so that the real investigation could continue away from the Black Hats’ prying eyes. After Masters had disappeared into the precinct, I kicked the Talbot to life and rolled into the street.

  FBI, Automatics, cop killings. They were usually few and far between, but when odd things did start to happen, they always piled on top of one another. The first thing I had to do was run that serial number I’d gotten, but I couldn’t do it at a police station. I’d have cuffs on me the second I walked into any other precinct besides the 5th. There was only one other place where I could run this number.

  Maybe they’d be more helpful. Or at least complacent.

  CHAPTER 4

  MY DESTINATION WASN’T TOO FAR AWAY, though it took longer than it should have to drive there, what with the traffic that congested the streets day in and day out. You could see it from anywhere in the Lower City. Hell, you could see it from the mainland on some days.

  To call the monstrosity that was the GE a “building” almost seemed disrespectful of the engineering that had been required to build it. The square footage of the building encompassed more city blocks than many believed necessary. But it had to be big, since it was the central Control Point for the entire Plate and, therefore, for the Upper City. Looking upward, I could see the massive slab of metal moving downward several dozen meters. Small mechanical spokes acted like fingers as the Plate crawled down the building. The snowfall was late this season, and so the Plate had only now started moving to prepare for the onslaught of snow. If the Plate stayed up as high as it was usually, the sheer weight of the snow would cause mechanical issues. Some regarded this building as a lighthouse for those of less desirable status, bringing money back down to the workers and taxpayers who dwelt alongside me. However, others said it was a wall that blocked them from the sun and from the rich spaces and luscious opportunities of the Upper City, and that corroded the thin line of tolerance drawn between man and machine. After all, GE was the heart of the Automatic market, eclipsing even Detroit.

  Beside the main building was a tall structure about half its height: a parkade, one of the largest ever built, for all the people who came to work for GE each day. Parking in there would be inconvenient, though, so I decided to use the executive parking lot, a small gated lot at street level. Both the size and security of the lot could be explained by the fact that not many executives wanted to be caught dead in the Lower City — and I had to agree. This wasn’t a place for bigwigs. I opened my glovebox and removed a large aluminum plate that gave me the right to commandeer a spot, placed it on the dash, and exited my car to approach the building on foot. Hopefully if any guards came by to check up on the cars in the lot, they wouldn’t look too closely at the numbers on the aluminum plate. One of the security guards patrolling the area spotted me. I flashed my badge, and he gave a nod and let me be. The guard’s head was encased in a thick helmet designed to deflect rifle rounds and a similarly thick coating of Kevlar and body armour. I just hoped that the guard was human. GE was the last company in the Lower City that still employed Blue-eyes, so it was possible it could be a bulletproof machine under all that armour.

  The lawn in front of the main door of the factory was a dozen meters from the street, with grass that was green and luscious despite the lack of direct sunlight. With the money the company made, it seemed they could afford honest-to-God UV. Night-shift workers were exiting through the main door in the opposite direction to me, going off to scrounge up some street meat during their ten-minute break before returning to their twelve-hour day. GE always touted their dedication to the working class, even going so far as to allow the assembly-line workers to use the building’s main entrance, which made them feel more human. And those underpaid slaves needed all the respect they could get.

  I crossed under the massive arch of the doorway, whose rustic stonework was peeling away, and a silver and white gleam from the interior shone onto my face. In this area, the old-fashioned and modern architecture of wood and stone had been pushed aside to make way for the steel and white of the Upper City. The foyer of GE felt like the interior of a spaceship from one of those outrageous movies and was a marvel to look at, let alone stand in.

  The reception centre sat under a triplet of magnificent statues each more than thirty feet high. The first figure was the CEO of GE, great leader of the Automatic industry and owner of the Upper City J.D. Rockefeller. To the right of his statue was one of a Grifter model Automatic. It looked finer than most Grifters on the street did, with square shoulders, thick limbs, and a Great War rifle in hand. To Rockefeller’s left was a figure representing the company’s past: the Manual, a war on two legs, father of the Automatic, and now obsolete. It was significantly scaled down; most Manuals had been far larger than the statue and bristling with enough firepower to take down a trench single-handed. The Manual had been the saviour of Europe back in the War, with Henry Ford taking the reins mass producing the war machine for the Allies. Of course, when the money-hungry bastard had wanted to keep the War going for his own benefit, Rockefeller stepped in, and so one era was pushed aside for another — Manual for Automatic.

  Underneath the statues was a monstrous plaque that read, From past to future, blood and metal, science and spirit.

  I wasn’t too fond of coming here. As I approached the desk, the receptionist peered up at me, irritated at being made to look up from her paperwork.

  “Yes?” She had a thick Brooklyn accent, sounded like a showgirl from one of the theatres around town. Maybe this was a part-time job to help her pay rent or for other amenities. There was no uniform required at GE, and I knew the suit she was wearing was far too expensive for her to have purchased on her own dime.

  “Detective Roche.” I flashed her the badge. She had no way of knowing it wasn’t my number on the front. “I need access to your Automatic database. Official police business.”

  “Sorry, no can do.” She turned to the terminal next to her and started clicking on the metal keyboard until I cleared my throat to get her attention again. She looked back to me with annoyance — a look I knew well.

  “This is official police business, and I’m demanding access.”

  “You can have all the access you want … down here. But unless you know how to go through that database — which you don’t — or unless there’s someone on duty who can — which there isn’t — you ain’t getting in and you ain’t doin’ your job until tomorrow.”

  She turned away before I could respond, so I placed the badge back in my pocket and retreated from the desk. Away from her gaze, I circled the desk and found a small directory on the wall, which I scanned until I found what I needed: Depository and Database Access, floor fifty-three. The only way to get up there was for me to be an assembly-line worker or a Tinkerman. Thankfully, both types of employees used the same elevators. I definitely couldn’t pass for a Tinkerman, but I sure fit the bill as a worker. Thank Rockefeller for saving costs by not allotting separate elevators.

  I leaned against one of the walls in the main foyer, taking my time scanning for workers. While I waited, I examined the strip of metal bearing a serial number that I’d removed from the dead Automatic. It was remarkably intact, as though it had already begun to peel away before I’d torn it off. What sort of idiot Mob Tinkerman would have left it on? Maybe they’d just forgotten. But something about that idea didn’t sit right with me.

  I planned my route carefully. I had to slip into the stream of returni
ng workers nonchalantly, lest the receptionist catch a glimpse of me gaining “access.” As the train of dirty men approached, I began walking forward and grabbed one aside as we slowed down, making sure he saw the glimmer of my badge before he called for assistance. The man had a gaunt face, thin arms, and dirty overalls. Poor bastard could have been in his thirties or his fifties — I wasn’t sure.

  The only way into the elevator was with a temporary access card workers received every morning at roll call. I slipped a twenty into his hand and he passed me his card, as I’d known he would. I joined the line of workers funnelling into the main elevator, flashing my card in front of the blue light just outside the doors. A high-pitched chime confirmed that it had been successfully scanned. I entered and asked the elevator operator — he looked slightly less dishevelled than everyone else — to press the button for level fifty-three as the elevator shot upward with intense speed.

  GE had tech the world wouldn’t see for years. Though their cameras were rudimentary, anyone running security would know something was up if they saw someone looking like me on a technician-only floor. Once I got up there, I’d have little time to try getting in and out unscathed.

  I felt like a bullet shaken in a barrel as the elevator stopped intermittently to let workers exit at various floors to get to their stations. Whenever the silver door slid open, I could see presses, assembly lines, power tools, Tesla Batteries — the works. The air that seeped inside the elevator as it stopped at each floor was rank and smelled of oil, making me choke. I got a suspicious look from the elevator operator. Probably most everyone who worked here was accustomed to the air by now. But before long, the doors slid apart at my destination. I exited as though I knew where I was going, trying to look confident for the benefit of anyone who might be spying on me. In truth, I had no clue where I was going.

  The sound of typing emanated from most of the small offices that lined the many corridors sprouting away from the elevator doors. Most of the people there looked to be catalogue workers, who made sure that every metal man pushed out or brought in was accounted for. Directly across from the elevator was a solid glass wall and a set of double doors leading to a mainframe. I could have walked right in and used that main terminal, but someone accessing it at this time of night might arouse suspicion. Instead, I found my way into an empty office. Tinkerman offices were often the largest on a floor, so didn’t take much effort to find one.