Brave New Girls: Stories of Girls Who Science and Scheme: Brave New Girls, #2

By Mary Fan

Dive into a universe of sci-fi wonders.

This collection of sci-fi shorts features a variety of brainy young heroines—girls who engineer, tinker, experiment, and more. Voyage to far-off galaxies with girls who use their science savvy to fix rovers, rescue friends, and protect alien critters. Visit steampunk realms where young ladies put their skills to the test building mechanical wonders and solving mysteries. Trek across sci-fi landscapes with girls who save androids and repair robots. Journey to post-apocalyptic futures where heroines use their tech know-how to bring down overlords and spread the most dangerous thing of all… knowledge. And drop in on a few near-future heroines who use their smarts to take down supervillains and bring a little more understanding into the world.

Proceeds from sales of this anthology will be donated to a scholarship fund through the Society of Women Engineers. Let's show today's girls that they, too, can be tomorrow's inventors, programmers, scientists, and more.

STORIES BY:
T. Eric Bakutis, Elisha Betts, Steph Bennion, Bryna Butler, Margaret Curelas, Paige Daniels, Kay Dominguez, Brandon Draga, George Ebey, Mary Fan, A.A. Jankiewicz, Evangeline Jennings, Jamie Krakover, Jeanne Kramer-Smyth, Stephen Landry, Karissa Laurel, Michelle Leonard, Meg Merriet, Jelani-Akin Parham, Josh Pritchett, Holly Schofield, and Lisa Toohey.

Featuring artwork by Hazel Butler, Sonya Craig, Ken Dawson, Evelinn Enoksen, Ben Falco, Kathy Ferrell, Christopher Godsoe, Evangeline Jennings, Deanna Laver, Jennifer L. Lopez, Jelani Akin Parham, Josh Pritchett, Emily Smith, and Jennifer Stolzer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brave New Girls
• Release date: Jul 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386856894

Book preview

SCINTILLATING SPACE

THE CASE OF THE MISSING SHERLOCK

by Mary Fan

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Sherlock was the one who solved mysteries, not me. She was the one who’d been designed to see every angle of a situation, who’d been equipped with the most sophisticated AI brain the geniuses at VH Labs could build. And she was the one who’d chosen to use all that brilliance to fashion herself into a private detective—just like the ancient, mythological figure after whom she was named. I could never quite figure out whether she really thought solving mysteries was her calling or whether it was all a great joke to her.

In any case, she was the one who was supposed to catch the bad guys. I was just her roommate. A sucker whose no-good bleeding heart led me to rescue that troublemaking AI from a scrap pile and then repair her. The only mysteries I was supposed to tackle were of the scientific sort.

How dare Sherlock disappear, leaving me to figure out what the hell was going on?

I took a deep breath, but it was hard to calm myself when I was staring at the blasted remains of my living room. The acrid smells of smoke and burned fibers attacked my nostrils, and I covered my nose and mouth. Well, this sucks.

Half an hour earlier, my day had been ordinary to the point of boringness. I’d woken up, tamed my tight black curls into something passably neat, and gone to my job at VH Labs, where I was a member of the Young Geniuses program that plucked engineering prodigies from school with the promise of getting paid to work on real projects sooner. My parents, who hadn’t known about the program at first, were surprised that a leading research and development firm would hire a sixteen-year-old two years shy of her university degree. They were reluctant to let me accept the opportunity, but were supportive once I’d made my decision. So I’d left their home for my new job and my new apartment—just like a grown-up.

I’d only been working at VH for a few weeks when I discovered Sherlock, who’d been built by VH to be an artificial scientist but discarded after she’d proved to be unmanageable. By the time I found her, lying deactivated in the Obsolete Equipment Storage Center, she’d already been mined for parts. I really should have left her there, but she’d been created to look completely human on the outside. Her appearance had been modeled after a nineteen-year-old actress, so despite the exposed metal skeleton and synthetic innards, all I could see when I looked at her was a girl not much older than I was. She’d been abandoned and left to rot, and I couldn’t stand it.

So I fixed her—resurrected her, really—and found myself with a roommate who regularly set things on fire just to see how they’d burn.

That was why, when the bomb first went off, I’d assumed it was another one of Sherlock’s experiments gone awry. All I’d wanted when I’d come home that day was to order some junk food and spend the evening re-watching my favorite holodrama, but instead, I found myself ducking behind the door I’d just opened as a freaking explosion went off in my home.

I guess this means Sherlock’s back, was my first thought. She’d left a few days ago to work on a new investigation. I hadn’t heard from her since, but that was hardly reason to worry. Having lived with Sherlock for a few months, I was accustomed to her disappearing, only to return a few days later with a boastful tale of how she’d cracked her latest case. But when all my yelling yielded no answers and all my searching turned up no sign of her in the apartment, I realized this wasn’t her doing.

Which meant the explosion was no accident. Someone had attacked me.

Holy hell, someone tried to blow me up! I dug my fingers into my hair, questions swirling through my brain. Was it really me they were after, or was it Sherlock? Where in the galaxy was she anyway? And why hadn’t she responded to any of my communications in the last few days? Or if I was the actual target, who’d want to kill me? I wasn’t anybody—just a newbie biomedical engineer with a knack for tinkering.

Calm down, Chevonne. Panicking won’t get you anywhere. I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the incoherent screams in my head. Now, let’s look at this situation like a rational person.

When I opened my eyes again, I realized that the damage from the explosion wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d thought. All four walls were still standing, and the force from the detonation hadn’t reached the bedrooms. Even the windows were intact. The coffee table had been reduced to cinders, but then again, it had been made of a highly flammable material. Judging from the bits of machinery lying among its ashes, the bomb had been placed right on top of it. Also, none of the neighbors in my building seemed to have noticed the explosion, which meant its impact had been completely contained to my living room.

That’s why I thought it was one of Sherlock’s experiments at first, I reminded myself. It was a little bomb… No one who wanted to kill someone would use something so weak. It was probably some kind of message. But what?

Sherlock had been gone for five days, and now someone was communicating via bomb. Though there was no proof that the explosion and Sherlock’s absence were connected, a gut feeling told me that they had to be.

I pulled the slate from my pocket, unfolded it from its portable shape, and snapped it flat into its full-sized form. The touchscreen glowed as it recognized my handprint. I quickly tapped at it to open a communication to Sherlock, marking the message as urgent.

No response.

An uncomfortable feeling swirled through my stomach. Whatever’s going on, I have to find her. At least so I can yell at her if it all turns out to be nothing.

I opened another communication, this time to the police.

This is the Aryus City Police Department. The automated answering system’s female voice sounded so human, I would have assumed I was talking to a live woman if I hadn’t known better. Please state your name and your purpose.

My name’s Chevonne Watson, and I’d like to report a missing person. I probably should have led with the explosion, but for some reason, that slipped out first.

The answering system transferred me to a human officer who looked like she could have been my inverse. Silver-blond curls where mine were jet black, pale skin where mine was dark, light blue eyes where mine were dark brown. Plus, I’d always been told I had a kind face, with my wide-set eyes, round cheeks, and mildly arched brows. She looked like she could have been carved from ice, and when I told her about Sherlock’s disappearance, her demeanor became just as cold.

"This is the missing persons division. Through the screen, she met my gaze with an unsympathetic glare. Under the laws of the Interstellar Confederation, AIs are considered property."

I scowled. "She is not property!" Why’d I even mention that she’s an AI? I could have kicked myself.

She is as far as this department is concerned. Irritation crept into the woman’s voice. I’ll transfer you to—

I ended the communication, anger curling up my veins. Sherlock may not have been my favorite person at times, but I’d never doubted that she was a person. VH Labs hadn’t intended for her to gain consciousness, but they had programmed her to think. I suppose their attempt to imitate a humanlike thought process worked too well. She was far from the first sentient AI; in fact, they’d been around for about a century. But her kind was rare enough that no one could figure out why some AIs became self-aware and others remained strictly mechanical. Every time it happened, it was through some accident of programming, some unexpected combination of code that sparked an independent mind.

It seemed the law didn’t know how to deal with someone with a synthetic brain who looked and acted human. And I hated them for it. I hated that they’d refused to help me find my friend.

Well, they didn’t exactly refuse. The officer had been about to transfer me to some missing property division, and they might have assisted me. And I didn’t even tell them about the bomb yet.

I stared at the slate, wondering whether to call again. I’d have to call Sherlock property, though, and she’d never forgive me for that. And if she really is in trouble, they won’t dedicate the same resources to finding lost property as they would a missing person. I’d be better off searching for her myself.

How hard could this whole mystery-solving thing be, really? I could figure it out; I was smart. Certainly smarter than the people who’d written the law putting Sherlock in the same category as a stolen computer.

What about the bomb? I surveyed my surroundings again. Four walls intact, two giant windows unharmed, no screaming neighbors. It was a baby bomb. The police wouldn’t take it seriously, and they’d just get in my way.

I folded my slate and tucked it back into my pocket. All right. Time to play detective.

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Whenever Sherlock took on a new client, her first move was to go through their stuff and figure out as much about them as possible. That seemed like a good place to start. So I went into her bedroom hoping to find something that might indicate where she’d gone.

As usual, the place was a mess, with clothes lying all over the floor and gadgets strewn between them. The only neat thing in sight was the plain metal nightstand, which was empty but for a hologram glowing above a small, round projector. The hologram’s glow made Sherlock’s fair complexion appear almost pure white, and her black brows cut sharply across her face. Her right eye—black and almond-shaped with a slight tilt—looked startlingly dark in comparison, and the metal patch over the spot where her left should have been gleamed beneath a lock of straight black hair. She was taller than me, but not by much. Whereas I was grinning in the picture, Sherlock looked as if she’d been winning a staring contest against the camera. Considering her unwillingness to pose for that hologram, I was surprised that she’d even obtained a projector for it, let alone displayed it in a place of honor.

I smiled. Sherlock wasn’t the type to show emotions, but the picture of us was evidence that she did have feelings, whether she liked it or not.

I spent the next several minutes searching Sherlock’s room, not sure what I was looking for. Any useful information about her travel plans would have been on her slate, but she’d of course taken that with her. If I could guess her passcodes, I could try accessing her accounts online, but she’d told me once that she used randomly generated strings of letters and numbers to prevent just that kind of thing. And tracking the device was out, since she’d downloaded security software of questionable legality to make it untraceable.

This is useless. All I’d found were rumpled shirts and doodads from Sherlock’s random experiments. Well, I supposed they wouldn’t have been random to her, but really, who needed to know the exact amount of time it took a jelly dessert to dissolve in various common beverages?

I could almost hear Sherlock’s reply in my head. You never know what uncommon facts might be the key to cracking a case, she’d say. And then she’d add, just to annoy me, It’s elementary, my dear Watson.

She was the only one who called me by my surname, and I’d given up on asking her to call me anything else (her argument was that I technically called her by her surname, since VH Labs had called her Project Sherlock). Or to quit using that irritating phrase, which she’d lifted from the mythological character after whom she’d been named.

Her curiosity was to be expected, since VH had intended for her to be a science AI. But none of the whackadoo experiments in her bedroom-turned-makeshift-lab would tell me where she was.

Just as I was about to leave, I spotted a thin, silver device standing between two liquid-filled beakers on her dresser. It was a scanner—one that could detect any machine in a room. Sherlock had made a point of showing it off to me when she’d first brought it home. Though I doubted my attacker had left a second bomb in the apartment—surely it would have gone off by now—I figured it couldn’t hurt to be sure.

I grabbed the scanner and turned it on. The small screen across the top displayed green outlines of every machine it detected, with white labels for the items it recognized. Since I was in Sherlock’s room, the screen resembled a grassy plain crowded with letters. A closer look at what it detected revealed nothing abnormal. Well, nothing more abnormal than usual around here.

As I returned to the living room, the scanner showed me something I hadn’t expected: a camera on the shoe rack. What’s that doing there?

I approached. The shelves’ edges had been singed by the blast, and I’d need a new pair of running shoes, but otherwise the rack’s contents had more or less survived. Including the deerstalker hat I’d given Sherlock as a joke, though what it was doing on a shoe rack was beyond me. The scanner indicated that the camera was right above it, but all I saw was a section of wall. Then, I took a closer look and realized that the paint in that spot was a slightly brighter shade of blue than the rest. When I reached out to touch it, I felt a small, disc-shaped machine instead of a smooth wall.

I realized that the camera was projecting a hologram meant to look identical to the rest of the wall surrounding it. When I seized the device, yanking it out of its spot, the hologram flickered out.

Someone had hidden the camera so they could watch the room without anyone knowing. It had been facing the apartment’s door… Could it have been placed by the people who’d left the bomb? Maybe to ensure that it went off?

Disliking the idea of being spied on, I deactivated the camera. I turned the device over in my hand, wondering if I could trace it to its owner. Then I cursed as I realized I’d just gotten my fingerprints all over it and smudged any left by the culprit. What the hell, Chevonne! You’re smarter than this—you’re a Young Genius, for freak’s sake!

Nothing else on the camera could point me to the person who’d planted it, since it was a commonplace model without a serial number. Part of me wanted to give up and call the police again, but I resisted the urge. I’ll just look like a scared kid who got spooked by a prank bomb and is fretting over a machine. They’ll think I’m a joke.

Pursing my lips, I contemplated what I could do next. My gaze landed on the blasted mess where the coffee table should have been. Maybe the bomb residue will tell me something. I do have access to a state-of-the-art lab, after all.

My employer wouldn’t approve of me using my workstation for personal purposes, but I didn’t care. I returned to Sherlock’s room, knowing she’d have what I needed to collect the residue. Sure enough, I found a supply of evidence bags and sterilized tools. Lying in a transparent box under a pile of pants.

As I gathered the ashes and the shattered machine bits from the bomb, my eye caught the briefest of gleams. A single blond hair, no more than six inches long, lay on the floor. Sherlock and I both had black hair, and I’d run the floor-cleaning bot a few days after she’d left for her investigation. As far as I knew, no one else had been in the apartment since then.

Except whoever had planted the bomb.

That’s it! The Interstellar Confederation had DNA files on every citizen, and VH had access to the database for research purposes. All I had to do was take this hair to my lab and scan it into the computer. Then, I’d at least have a lead.

I collected the hair into an evidence bag, then headed back to the lab.

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Instead of building their headquarters in a city—like a normal company—my employer chose to construct an entire orbital habitat. In a way, they’d built their own planet. VH Labs Float, as it was called, contained not only work-related facilities, but also housing, shops, and recreational venues. You could live your entire life without ever leaving—which was what VH wanted. I was one of the few who commuted from Aryus, the planet the float orbited.

I docked my Zander—a cheap but functional little starship my parents had bought me as a congratulations on your first job gift—at my usual hatch. When I entered the float, I found myself in the docking corridor, which was lined with hatches identical to the one I’d just emerged from. Pale blue lights lined the gray walls, giving the illusion of moonlight. At the end of the corridor stood a wide elevator door, and I sped toward it, my brown satchel bouncing against my thigh.

By the time I reached my lab, I was out-of-breath and a little creeped out by the emptiness around me. Though I mostly worked alone, I wasn’t used to being totally solitary. The idea behind the Young Geniuses program was to set engineering prodigies loose in the hopes that we’d discover or invent brilliant things the company couldn’t think of itself, and so they gave each of us our own private labs. But I’d still run into fellow employees in the hallways, even when I stayed late. I guess everyone went home already.

The good thing about that was that no one would ask why I was examining a hair when the project I was working on for VH was about bones. A mini bio-scanner, shaped like a frying pan with its circular screen and long tray for samples—sat at the end of the black table against my lab’s back wall. I pulled the evidence bag containing the blond hair from my satchel and used a pair of tweezers to transfer the hair to the bio-scanner. After I closed the lid, I swiped through the icons on the screen until the one for the Interstellar Confederation’s DNA comparison routine appeared.

Since it would take the computer a few minutes to go through a database containing trillions of citizens, I decided to examine the ashes. The microscope stood on the same table as the bio-scanner, just a meter to the left. A screen lay embedded in the table beside it, and I hit a green icon to wake the device from its low-power mode. A small tray automatically popped out of the bottom of the microscope. I poured a few ashes from the evidence bag into the tray, pushed it back in, and pressed an icon to set the magnification to a thousand.

When I peered into the eyepiece, I noticed several squiggly bacteria among the ashes. That’s weird… What could survive the heat of an explosion?

The only one I could think of was a rare mutant strain that only occurred on the planet Ulpinu, one of the most toxic places in the galaxy. Even after being terraformed, Ulpinu’s atmosphere was barely habitable. When the mining companies discovered precious ores beneath its surface, they’d only made things worse. No wonder even the bacteria had to toughen up to survive there.

I typed a command onto the screen, and the microscope image popped up. Then I traced one of the bacterium with my finger, causing the computer to highlight it, and commanded the computer to compare the bacterium to the Ulpinu strain I’d thought of. The computer confirmed its identity. So the bomb was on Ulpinu at some point. That’s something.

I returned to the bio-scanner, but to my disappointment, no matches had come up. That meant the hair belonged to someone who wasn’t a citizen of the Interstellar Confederation. Ulpinu isn’t a member of the IC…

I swiped the screen to bring up the results of the automatic analysis the bio-scanner had run. It told me two things: that the hair’s owner was a man, and that he’d been exposed to a lot of toxins over his lifetime, including one unique to Ulpinu.

Fantastic. I’ve narrowed the culprit’s location down to a whole planet. Considering the size of the galaxy, with its hundreds of star systems, that was actually pretty specific. But it still left me with millions of suspects. And none of this told me anything about where Sherlock might have gone.

I drummed my fingers against the table. Maybe I was missing something… I’d only conducted a cursory analysis of the ashes, after all. Or maybe there was more evidence back at the apartment, and I’d been too impatient to notice it before.

An idea hit me. If the culprit came through Ulpinu, he would have had to pass through the spaceport. And if Sherlock is off-world, she would have had to pass through it too. I huffed, irritated with myself. Good job, Chevonne. You ran straight to your lab instead of doing the most obvious thing of all and asking if anyone had seen Sherlock around.

I could almost see Sherlock arching one unimpressed black eyebrow at me. How could you forget to do something so elementary? she’d say.

At least I could now ask about both her and the bomber. I grabbed my slate and contacted Aryus Central Spaceport. I’d just been there half an hour ago, since that was where I kept my Zander. Why hadn’t I thought of this then? If only some alarm had gone off in my head that said, Hey, Chevonne, look at all these starships! Do you think maybe Sherlock could have left on board one of them?

It took me ten minutes of arguing with the spaceport’s automated answering systems—all of which seemed convinced that I was either trying to schedule a flight or check the status of one—before I got to talk to someone who could help me. I found it kind of funny that such systems were still so primitive when it was possible to create sophisticated AIs such as Sherlock. Then again, Sherlock had resulted from years of work by the galaxy’s top engineers. And yet the company threw her away when she refused to obey them. I shook my head. I could never understand why people insisted upon lumping intelligent, independent beings who happened to be synthetic in the same category as cleaning bots and such. It was why VH Labs could deactivate Sherlock—technically killing her—with no consequences. And it was why no one would help me find her.

Keeping that in mind, I told the bearded spaceport representative that I was looking for a missing friend, leaving out the part where Sherlock wasn’t human. She’s about five-foot-seven with black hair and a metal patch over her left eye. And she goes by Sherlock. I’m really worried about her—is there any way I can find out if she passed through the spaceport within the past week?

"Her name’s Sherlock? On my slate’s screen, the representative lifted his bushy red brows. Isn’t that a man’s name?"

I rolled my eyes. "It’s just what she’s called, okay? Did you forget the part where I said she’s missing?"

Right… Sorry. The man cleared his throat. Have you tried calling the police?

Yes, but they’re not convinced there’s a case. I kept my answer vague, since I wasn’t the best of liars. "I know something’s wrong, though."

The man scratched his beard. We have security footage, of course, but we can’t release it to just anyone. You’ll need a court order.

My stomach sank. I didn’t know anything about dealing with the courts. Okay… Um… Have any ships arrived from or headed to Ulpinu in the past week? Flight records are public information, right?

They sure are. Let me check. The man looked down and started tapping at something I couldn’t see.

As I waited, it occurred to me that a criminal wouldn’t use a registered transport, and so the spaceport wouldn’t have any record of them. I also recalled that my building had security cameras, but I’d probably need a court order to see that footage as well. I sighed.

Just then, the man looked up. You’re in luck, kid! I think I found your friend!

"What?" I stared at him through my slate’s camera. No way… My luck’s never this good.

"Only one ship has flown to or from Ulpinu in the past week: A Moray transport called the Hegira, which left five days ago," The man tapped something on his side, and the Hegira’s flight record appeared in a rectangle beside his face. One passenger’s handprint failed to turn up in the Interstellar Confederation’s database. Of course, plenty of non-IC citizens travel through here all the time, but the computer flagged her because her handprint turned up as blank.

Sherlock doesn’t have handprints! I gasped in excitement. If you were to look at Sherlock’s palms, you’d see little lines there like with everyone else, but her synthetic skin didn’t secrete oils like a human’s would.

The man tapped something else, and another rectangle popped up on my slate, this time showing a girl with a straight black ponytail and a metal eye patch heading through the entryway of a starship. That’s from the spaceport’s security cam.

It’s her! I brightened. It looked like starting with the lab stuff had been the right call. Now I knew where Sherlock had been headed. And if she’d gone to Ulpinu, then it couldn’t have been a coincidence that the bomb had come from there. Unfortunately, I still didn’t know anything about the bomber. Since the Hegira was the only ship going to or coming from Ulpinu that the spaceport had a record of, it seemed my hunch about him not using a registered starship was right. Still, I was getting somewhere. "Can you send me the Hegira’s contact info?"

Sure thing. The man typed something, and the information popped up along the bottom of my slate’s screen. It’s an independent vessel belonging to Captain Erin Proteus-Sharda.

Thank you so much.

Glad to be of service, Miss… He glanced down, and I guessed that he was reading the information the automated answering system had requested of me earlier. "Wait… Your last name’s Watson? And your friend’s Sherlock?"

I narrowed my eyes. Shut. Up.

He barked out a laugh. Annoyed, I thanked him again—though he was too busy guffawing to hear—and ended the communication.

I glanced at the time. It was getting late, and I had work the next day. Since I doubted I’d be able to find both Sherlock and the bomber by morning, I opened another communication window and dashed off a quick note to the supervisor of the Young Geniuses program, saying I wasn’t feeling well and needed a sick day. I couldn’t concentrate on work if I was worried about my roommate and a psycho bomber.

Despite the time, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try contacting the Hegira to see if anyone there knew something that might help my investigation. Unlike Aryus, Ulpinu was not a centralized planet and had multiple spaceports. If the Hegira’s crew could tell me which one Sherlock had gotten off at, I could narrow my search to a single city.

To my surprise, the captain herself answered my communication. I told her why I was calling, and she confirmed that she’d dropped Sherlock off on Ulpinu five days ago. At Magira Spaceport, she said, sweeping her brown bangs out of her eyes. She was the only one who got off there.

Did you notice anything unusual about her?

Captain Proteus-Sharda shook her head. It was a quiet trip. Nothing out of the ordinary.

So if she’s in trouble, she probably didn’t get into it until after she got there. I thanked the captain and then ended the transmission. Now what?

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My next move was not my wisest. But what else could I do but head to Ulpinu that very night? I wanted answers immediately.

The flight was just long enough for me to get a decent night’s sleep after I set my Zander’s autopilot. The sound of the ship’s landing gear clunking against pavement woke me, and I blinked at the brightness of the viewscreen. It was already mid-afternoon in Magira City.

Stretching, I wondered what to do next. I’d hoped that a plan would materialize during the hours spent getting here. Since my dreams had yielded nothing useful, I was left to mull in the cockpit while munching on one of the imperishable nutrition bars I always kept on board.

Magira City was a crowded place, home to hundreds of thousands of people. Though its name suggested a grand metropolis, it was an impoverished area full of rundown buildings and sick inhabitants. Most of them worked in the mines, but even those who didn’t were poisoned by Ulpinu’s toxic atmosphere. Those who owned the mines—the corporate executives and their families—lived in small, domed communities where fresh air was manufactured. The whole situation struck me as unfair, and I wondered which side of Ulpinu had drawn Sherlock to that dismal place.

I considered using the ship’s safety mask—meant for emergencies where oxygen ran low—to avoid breathing in the pollution, but decided against it. I wouldn’t be staying long enough for the exposure to hurt me. Sherlock, of course, wouldn’t have had to worry about something like that. Though her body mimicked the movements of breathing—a design element meant to make her more appealing to humans—she didn’t need air to survive.

One of many differences between her and the rest of the populace. I took a swig from my water bottle. I’ll bet she’s the only AI in Magira City—assuming she’s still here. There must be something about her artificial nature that I could use to track her.

I grabbed my slate and swiped through the notes I’d taken back when I’d repaired Sherlock. It had been a frustrating process. Mechanical engineering was not my area of expertise, and Sherlock was a unique being, so it wasn’t as if I could order replacement parts. I’d documented every detail about her that I could, since I hadn’t known what information might be useful. Now, I was very glad that I had.

I paused when I came to the notes about her AI brain. As with humans, her brain controlled the rest of her body. Except humans had a physical network of nerve cells and fibers that sent signals to different parts of the body. Sherlock was wireless; her brain also sent signals, but they were of the electromagnetic sort. And they had a specific frequency. That’s it!

My slate didn’t have the right hardware to track a frequency, but my Zander did. And there were plenty of programs on the Net for doing just that. I downloaded one onto my ship’s central computer, then commanded it to detect Sherlock’s frequency. If she was anywhere in Magira City or its surrounding sectors, it would come up.

After a moment, a bright green message window popped up on the control screen, telling me that the frequency had been detected and its source located. I pumped my fist. I found her! Now, what’s she doing here?

After uploading her location’s coordinates onto my slate, I grabbed my satchel and called a taxi. A few minutes later, a beat-up vehicle arrived, hovering about a meter off the ground. With its busted brown exterior and clunking engine, I feared it might drop out of the air halfway to my destination. And when I climbed on board, the mechanical voice that greeted me sputtered so badly, I could barely understand it.

Luckily, I made it there in one piece, despite my concerns that the vehicle’s central computer might be suffering from dementia. Several times, it forgot the coordinates I’d given it, and I had to re-enter them. When it paused in a narrow alley between two abandoned warehouses, I initially thought it had erred again. But then I realized that the coordinates were actually for a spot within one of the buildings, and the computer had automatically routed the taxi to the closest spot on the road.

A chill ran through me as I stepped outside. The languid yellow sun, mostly hidden by thick, brownish-gray clouds, was sinking fast, and the buildings cast eerie shadows on the street. Both warehouses looked ready to collapse, with their broken windows and faltering concrete walls, which were covered in webs of cracks. Something that smelled like rust and gasoline filled the air. Broken pieces of defunct machines littered the ground—ripped wires and busted engines and shattered computers. I felt as if I’d just stepped onto the galaxy’s largest scrap pile.

No one else seemed to be around. The only sounds I could hear were the clunking whir of the taxi as it flew away and wind’s howl as it blew my curls into my eyes. What’s Sherlock doing in a place like this?

According to the map on my slate, her coordinates were about a kilometer from where I stood. Apparently, the warehouse led to a much larger building complex—one larger than most city blocks—but I couldn’t see any way to access it. All the doors and windows had been sealed over with metal bars.

I walked along the building’s wall, searching for any opening I could use. I kept tripping over the various pieces of machine junk in the streets, and after the fourth time, I kicked a metal tube in frustration. I was usually so prepared for everything—why hadn’t I thought ahead before coming here?

Then, I noticed a rectangular hole above one of the ground floor windows. Judging from the wires sticking out of its edges, it had once been home to some kind of machine—probably an air filtration unit that someone had ripped out. The opening wasn’t large, but neither was I… if I could find a way to reach it, then surely my diminutive frame could fit.

With all the junk around me, there had to be something I could use. After wandering about for a bit, I came across a broken crate. Its yellow sides looked flimsy, but it was large enough to give me the boost I needed. I dragged it to the spot under the opening.

The moment I stepped onto it, I heard it crack. I jumped up and grabbed the edge of the opening, then pulled myself into a dusty metal conduit. Darkness stretched before me; all I could see was the tunnel ahead, barely illuminated by the light from the opening. The space was just wide enough for me to crawl through, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and for all I knew, the conduit could lead to a dead end.

I can’t turn back now. With a sigh, I looked at my map. Sherlock’s location was straight ahead—assuming the conduit reached that far. Only one way to find out.

I felt ridiculous as I crawled forward, like a rodent in a tube. After a few minutes, I came across an intersection. A dim light poured through a grate in the floor, and, curious, I peered through. The warehouse below was largely empty, but judging from the metal scraps on the floor, it had once been used to store machinery. That would also explain all the junk outside. Whoever shut this place down clearly didn’t bother with cleanup.

Seeing nothing of interest, I continued on. The conduit ended well before I reached the coordinates, but branched off in two directions. I picked one and hoped it would eventually take me back toward Sherlock’s location. It took several twists and a few wrong turns, but I eventually found myself facing a conduit that seemed to lead straight to my target.

A man’s gruff voice wafted toward me from the conduit ahead. What’s taking so long? Thought you were supposed to be brilliant.

"I am brilliant. Considering the complexity of the project, I’m actually working at an extremely fast pace." The second voice belonged to a girl, and I recognized the dry tone and arrogant attitude at once.

Sherlock! I exhaled in relief. Sounded like she was okay after all—and apparently in the midst of a project.

I was about to call out her name, but the next thing I heard stopped me cold.

"You’d better finish that design tonight, or the next bomb will be real, and you’ll be scraping Chevonne off the walls."

Holy. Crap.

So I had been the bomb’s target, and it had been a warning—to Sherlock. The bomber had been holding me hostage to force her into designing something, and he’d set it off to prove that he could get to me. My mind raced. That would also explain the camera—he’d wanted her to see the blast go off with me just meters away.

"Technically, your first bomb was real. It was just weak. Though Sherlock spoke in her usual nonchalant tone, I detected a hint of fear. Also, you should know better than to kill your only hostage. You’d be out of incentives, and then there’d be nothing to keep me from stopping you." Anger simmered beneath the coolness in her voice.

You won’t let it come to that. The man’s voice was dangerously low. She’s your only friend in the whole galaxy… you’d do anything to keep her safe, wouldn’t you?

This time, Sherlock didn’t respond.

The man made a derisive noise. That’s what I thought. Finish the design.

I shuddered. What the hell has she gotten into?

A dim light glowed from the tunnel ahead. That meant there was another grate… If I could get closer, I could see what was going on.

I inched forward as silently as possible. My nose itched from all the dust, and I rubbed it hard to keep from sneezing. When I reached the grate, I lay flat on my stomach and peered down.

The first thing I saw was a blond man with a black laser gun strapped to his belt. I would have bet my ship that he was the same man whose hair I’d found in the apartment. He had a rough, square-jawed face and a powerful build, yet despite his apparent strength, I could tell from the sores on his skin and his thinning hair that his health was failing. Probably from living on a toxic planet.

He was far from alone. Several others—men and women, all similarly tough-looking despite the signs of illness marring their bodies—lounged around the wide room, playing cards or tapping at old slates with cracked screens. All were armed.

Sherlock looked completely out-of-place as she used a stylus to scribble calculations onto a slate. I’d never thought she looked synthetic before, but her smooth skin and shiny hair appeared almost plastic compared to the sickly people around her. Then again, I’d probably look artificial next to them as well.

I noticed she was wearing the same outfit I’d last seen her in—a black t-shirt and gray pants—and realized she’d been here the entire time. She told me she was leaving to work on a case… They must have lured her to Ulpinu by pretending to be clients, then kidnapped her. But why? What do they want her to design for them?

I turned my attention to the slate she was writing on. Whatever it was, it involved chemical reactions. They must’ve known that she’s a science AI. I guess it was pretty clever of them to kidnap her instead of a human scientist. The police would actually search for her if she were human.

I clenched my jaw and reminded myself that I didn’t have time to be angry. Since the ceiling was pretty high, I had a hard time seeing some of the smaller figures on Sherlock’s slate. I quietly slipped out my own, turned down its brightness, and aimed its camera through one of the holes in the grate. After opening an app that would magnify the image, I focused on what she was working on.

After several minutes of watching her write calculations, sketch out designs, and go through her notes, I realized what it was. And it made me sick.

The design was for a deadly bioweapon—one that could wipe out thousands. It would target people without certain toxins in their bodies… such as the Ulpinu elite who lived in insulated domed communities. If it were to go off right then, everyone in the room below would be fine, but I’d die a horrible death, choking on my own blood, because I hadn’t spent a lifetime exposed to Ulpinu’s toxic atmosphere.

It hit me that I was spying on a terrorist organization that was plotting a mass murder. Even though I knew Sherlock was only helping them to save me, I wanted to yell, Stop! I’m not worth killing thousands of people for!

These people were clearly angry at Ulpinu’s unequal society, but their plan was nothing short of evil. I had to stop it.

Just then, Sherlock glanced up from her slate and looked me straight in the eye. Terror filled her expression… I’d never seen her so afraid before. Gone was any trace of the arrogance she usually used to mask her emotions. I could almost hear her plea: Help me, Chevonne.

It hit me that her senses were sharper than any human’s… She’d heard my approach through the conduit. It was no accident she’d flipped to the pages in her notes that would tell me what was going on… she’d known I was watching. But what can I do?

Her gaze flicked back down to her slate as the blond man marched up to her. When can you start building it?

When I have the materials. The mask was back; Sherlock lifted her chin and gave the man an unimpressed look. You didn’t think I could make a bioweapon from the scraps outside, did you? She pulled up a list of chemicals and bacteria, then handed him her slate. You can get these from VH Labs. A hardened criminal organization such as yourselves should have no problem breaking into their facilities.

I brightened. I could warn VH ahead of the attempted robbery, and they could work with the police to catch the would-be thieves. Sherlock must have thought of this too. Good plan!

The man rubbed his chin, contemplating. You know what would be easier? Getting an insider to do it. A nasty grin spread across his face. I know just the girl.

Crap, he means me! I bit my lip. This could be a good thing… I could sabotage the materials and prevent the weapon from working. But that wouldn’t have gotten Sherlock out of there… and they would probably kill her for failing. I should really call the police.

A weak bomb was one thing. A terrorist group aiming to commit mass murder was another.

As I crawled back through the conduit, I realized that if the police busted into the criminals’ lair, they’d find Sherlock among them. And they wouldn’t care that she’d been coerced into helping them—all they’d see was an AI working on a bioweapon.

Horror flooded me as I realized what they’d do to her. They’ll do more than deactivate her this time… They’ll make sure no one can ever use her again. Which means they’ll take her apart and destroy the pieces so no one can ever fix her.

The thought made me sick. I couldn’t let anyone do that to my friend… I’d come all this way to save her, not to doom her.

I needed to get Sherlock out, then report the criminals. And I needed to get back to Aryus as quickly as possible, since surely the blond man would look for me soon. I couldn’t let him or anyone else know that I was onto them.

SceneBreak.jpg

I’d just landed on Aryus when the threat came. The blond man hacked my slate, forcing it to display a video communication window even though I’d never accepted the call.

Who—Who are you? I stammered.

The Ulpinu Freedom Front. The man’s steely gray gaze cut right through the screen. We’re the ones who put that bomb in your apartment, and unless you do as I tell you, the next one won’t be so small.

Nervous tingles ran down my spine. I’d seen this coming, but that didn’t make it any less frightening. What do you want?

I need you to get us some things from VH Labs.

A document popped up at the top of the screen, listing several chemicals and bacteria samples. I scrolled through it. Many could only be found at VH—proprietary chemicals they’d synthesized or unique strains of bacteria they’d developed. Sherlock must have asked for them with a purpose. She’d wanted the bad guys to come to me… She must have known that was the only way I could help her.

Ideas swirled through my head… I could deliver harmless liquids instead, but label them to look like the supplies listed. I could even plant bugs in the containers. Or better yet… I could fill one of the containers with some kind of gas that would knock out the criminals when they opened it. It wouldn’t affect Sherlock, so she’d have a chance to escape.

You have twenty-four hours to deliver the supplies to Ulpinu, the man growled. A drone will meet you at Magira City Spaceport. Don’t be late.

I swallowed hard. Um… yes, sir.

And keep the slate on and near you. The man glowered. We’ll be watching.

Oh… Okay. I pinched my lips. There go my plans for sabotage. Um… people are still at work right now. They’ll notice if I take the supplies and ask what I’m doing… I have to wait until later tonight.

The man grunted. Just get it done.

At least that buys me some time. As I made my way back to my apartment, keeping my slate in my hand so the people threatening me would have no reason to think I was up to anything, I pondered my situation. On the bright side, the bad guys wouldn’t try to kidnap me. Probably because I was an IC citizen, and a search might lead the authorities to their hiding spot. That would also explain the drone—they didn’t want me knowing either. Too late, jerks.

Since the living room was still a blasted disaster zone, I settled down on my bed and opened an app for a cleaning bot service.

What are you doing? A man—one with brown hair this time—glared at me from my slate’s screen.

I’m ordering a bot to clean the mess you guys left in my home! Irritation bubbled through me. You want me to act normal so no one suspects anything’s wrong, right?

The man scowled but didn’t reply.

A thought struck me: They can’t see what I’m doing on my slate. They could only see through its camera. If I wanted to, I could type out a message to someone. But that seemed too risky… if they caught me, then it’d be goodbye, Chevonne.

Still, it gave me options. I glanced over the list of supplies again. Sherlock had known I would see it… had she embedded a secret message?

Opening a notepad app, I began trying to work it out. I considered anagrams and alphanumeric codes. I pondered the order of the list, wondering if there was some significance to it. I even looked at the elements in the chemicals to see if they’d rearrange into words. But no matter which way I looked, I couldn’t decode anything.

Guess there’s no message after all. Either that or it’s too complicated. I huffed. I’d wasted hours, and I was still no closer to an answer. And time was running short. It was already evening, and if I didn’t leave for VH soon, those watching me would get suspicious.

Still, there had to be something I could do. I looked over my notes to see if I’d missed something, then realized that I’d been going about this all wrong.

Sherlock hadn’t sent me a message, but she had given me tools. The Ulpinu Freedom Front would know if I tried swapping out the supplies, but perhaps there was some way I could use them. Two of the chemicals on Sherlock’s list contained elements that also occurred in certain anesthetics used to put hospital patients to sleep…

I scribbled at my slate, experimenting with equations to see if there were some way to combine the chemicals on the list into a knockout agent.

Another What are you doing? floated up from the slate.

Playing a game, I replied. Even hostages need to fill time.

The man seemed to buy it, since he didn’t ask for details.

I went back to my calculations, considering how various chemicals on the list would react with each other. When I found a promising combination, I used an app on my slate that simulated chemical reactions to test my theory.

It turned out, I was right. Combining three of the chemicals, exposing the mixture to oxygen, and heating it would result in a gas similar to a powerful anesthetic.

It took all my willpower not to grin at my triumph. I doubted the