The first item on the agenda was my right arm. After the beating it took in the collapse, the thing was barely holding together. The emergency patch job mercifully elevated it from a heavy accessory to an overly complicated grabber. The joints felt numb and stiff. I’d have had better luck trying to grip my gun with a wrench than with my right hand. Unsurprisingly, the last mechanic I saw told me it’d be better to throw the whole thing out and start over from the ground up, if not for the damage, then for the upgrade.

  Tech moved fast in Volare City. Even in the six months I’d had my synthetic arm, new models had already come to market. I didn’t care for keeping up with the Joneses. So what if the model was a few years behind if it worked all the same? This simple fact didn’t stop any salesmen from pushing new tech down your throat. They didn’t keep their jobs by being conservative. Shining advertisements blasted the cutting-edge innovations at unsuspecting passersbyers every time they passed through downtown or entered the cybersphere.

  There were only a few places that knew better than to try and tempt a pissed-off cop. This shop was within the precinct’s network of approved providers. That status had nothing to do with quality and everything to do with whoever was willing to cut the precinct the best price. Nothing said a good bargain better than a busted-up sign out front and metal bars over the large front-facing windows. The shopping plaza it sat in wasn’t doing any better. My heels nearly caught on the cracks in the asphalt.

  The door creaked open and slammed shut behind me without a welcoming door chime to greet me. So much for hospitality. The guy working the front desk looked up from his ether pipe. I didn’t need to flash a badge for him to quickly slip it away in his pocket. Classy. These weren’t surgery clinics. They were basically the fast food joints of the enhancement world. People came here for small-scale stuff. Considering my shoulder joint was still intact, I didn’t need a surgeon to patch me up.

  “I don’t care if you get high, but don’t do it while you’re working on me,” I said, glaring down at him.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  “Not this,” I said, throwing off my coat to show him my battered arm. “The last guy just barely got it working.”

  He took one look at the damage and whistled. I knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing everyone else asked me. What was the point of trying to fix something that was so far beyond gone? Call me stubborn or sentimental, but I didn’t like the idea of my body becoming a revolving door of moving parts. I held onto that thing as long as I could. Everything in its due time, I suppose. I needed to let it go.

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place,” he said.

  Clearly, he had the sense to keep his comments to himself, but he wasn’t going to spare me the sales pitch either. Go figure. Unfortunately for him, I had neither the time nor the patience to sit through that slog. The less time I spent on this, the better. A nagging pang already made me want to walk right back out. I still felt the ghost of a limb sometimes. The rest of the time, I forgot it wasn’t mine. It almost felt real. My best days were the ones where I didn’t remember I only had one real arm left.

  “I don’t have time for the sales pitch,” I said. “I don’t care about bragging rights or overpriced status symbols. I need a working arm. That’s it. Give me something that’ll let me do a bit of damage and fire a gun. Nothing else matters.”

  I slipped him the sheet with a hastily drawn number up top. Sometimes, old-fashioned paper got the point across better than a screen. It felt real. Tangible.

  “Besides,” I said. “This is all the precinct will cover.”

  He looked at the number and shrugged. The faux enthusiasm melted away as he turned to rummage through his merchandise.

  “Lots of guys want to show off,” he said.

  “I’m not a guy,” I said, tapping impatiently on the glass.

  He directed me to his client chair. My skin prickled on the cool, padded black leather. With a few simple adjustments, the hydraulic joints hissed into place and scaled to my height. He took a seat beside me.

  “Lots of ladies want to show off too,” he said. “Different ways. They want to look good.”

  “I don’t care about that either,” I said.

  “How about sensitivity?” He asked. “Everybody cares about that.”

  What a creep. I knew what he was implying with the way he clicked his tongue. What I either did or didn’t do in the bedroom was my concern alone. These days I went to bed alone, but I didn’t know what the future would hold, and I could always find another body to warm my bed.

  “Let’s focus on performance,” I said, carefully dodging his question. “Prioritize responsiveness and dexterity above all else. If sensitivity plays into that, all the better.”

  He took the hint and dropped the sweet talk. Instead, he took to taking measurements, checking specs, and unscrewing the parts holding the thing to my shoulder. As much as I would have loved to have my cake and eat it too, there were reasons not to pick the most powerful model on the market other than the price tag. Namely, rejection. The more powerful the model, the higher the risk of frying your nerve endings and throwing your body into overdrive. Images of Nathan Ming’s corpse flashed through my head. His body had been trying to force the metal out of his flesh long before then.

  “Do you have anything more modular?” I asked, thinking about how easy it’d be if I could do this myself.

  “Nothing you’d want,” he said. “Those things are only good for daily use. The connection point’s too weak. You’re gonna need something stronger than that.”

  Accepting defeat, I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the headrest. Barely a moment went by before my line rang. It was starting to look like I couldn’t rest either. With two fingers to my temple, I opened up the caller ID. It was Ethan on my work line. I swore under my breath and begrudgingly answered the call. Now wasn’t the best time for a chat.

  “I’m a little busy,” I said.

  “Can it wait?” he asked.

  That was the kind of request that always made you wonder why they were asking. There was a short list of things that would make Ethan ask this, and none of them were good. Either someone was dead, dying, or heading in that direction. More trouble had just freshly landed itself at my feet.

  “New case?” I asked, reluctantly.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “We’ve got a new death,” he said. “The body was mangled in a car crash.”

  “Nothing special there,” I murmured. “Happens all the time. What’s the bad part?”

  It was just my luck that of all the times for Ethan to call, it came at the same time as my arm being swapped out. Few things made you feel more raw and on edge than having to adapt to a new limb that never felt like yours. There would be an adjustment period before the kinks and peculiarities of the thing felt like background noise. The technician finally dislodged the sad piece of metal I’d been dragging around and let it clatter to the ground. In its current state, it was barely worth the effort to scrap. Of course, with my luck, I’d have to toss it out and start over again the moment I started to feel normal.

  “You’ll see when you get there,” he said. “I’ll send you the coordinates. Gabe’s already on the scene.”

  Nothing made you want to know more than being given almost nothing. That was his style, though. He liked surprises. The line went dead, and I sighed. How could I refuse? A ping flickered on my retinal HUD. The glowing blue text floated above a location nearby. Maybe luck was on my side after all.

  “How fast can you get that working?” I asked, impatiently.

  “I can get it down to halftime,” he said. “But it’ll cost you.”

  “Just do it,” I said. “Skip the skin. I don’t need it.”

  I could see the gears whirring in his head about the cosmetics. Women cared more about the look and feel than men. They wanted the seamless transition and the soft touch. Maybe if I lived a different life, I would have too, but that wasn’t how the cards played out. After a moment of hesitation, he got to work like a well-oiled machine. His practiced movements spoke of experience. For what he lacked in charisma, he made up for in performance.

  “You look like you know what you’re doing,” I said.

  “Lady, this is the only thing I know how to do right,” he said.

  Only knowing how to do one thing right is a common sentiment. If I were to pick just one, what would it be? My job? My personal life wasn’t what it could be. Even though I’d gotten closer to Gabe, Lily, and my brothers, there was still room for improvement. My life outside of my role as a detective was as devoid as my apartment. A satisfying click ended my rumination. Time was up, and my new arm was ready to go. I flexed my fingers, testing the feel of it. The exposed chrome exterior would take some getting used to, but it’d do.

  “Tell me what I owe you,” I said.

  Everything would be billed to my department other than the rush fee. With the transaction handled, I threw back on my coat and kicked at my old arm on the ground.

  “Bag that up for me, would you?” I asked.

  “You actually want that thing?” he asked.

  “Call it a memento,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to forget how I lost it.”

  Call me crazy, but I was going to hang that thing on my wall. It could go next to all the other pieces of myself I lost over the years. Old photos and memorabilia sat dusty and unorganized in a long-forgotten corner of my front room. The glass-front cabinet was dirty enough to obscure them from view. What felt like self-protection before had slowly transformed into apathy and avoidance. These days, I was done hiding, and if that meant embracing a little pain, I’d do it gladly. There was a voice inside of me that demanded everything have purpose and meaning as well as a quieter part that whispered not to get my hopes up.

  “It’ll remind me to stay sharp,” I said.

  “Whatever you say, lady,” he said, nearly not willing to push the issues.

  I was getting sick of the way he called me “Lady,” but I didn’t have the time to spare to waste on deaf ears and closed minds. Instead, I took the wrapped package from him and headed for the door. It fit nicely in my trunk. As soon as I slammed the lid shut, I got back on the road, comforted by the humming of my engine. Scenery blurred past my windows, once more, until the sound of sirens broke me from my reverie. Bingo. The holographic, scrolling caution tape blinked ominously at me from the side of the road. That was my stop.

  After I parked and made my way in on foot, I spotted Gabe standing in front of the vehicle. It was a nasty crash alright. The shattered windshield covered the ground beneath the crumpled hood in a spray of broken glass. From the looks of it, a bad turn and some outside interference made it go tumbling down into the ditch bottom up.

  “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” I said, taking my place beside him.

  “Don’t sweat it,” he said. “Been keeping busy.”

  He jerked his head towards the wreckage.

  “Don’t think that poor bastard died from the fall,” he said.

  That fall could have killed anyone, but there was more going on here. Straightforward cases didn’t get us called in. Suspicions of foul play or details not adding up were our specialty. The first order of business was to survey the location. Glancing upwards, I noticed multiple high-rise buildings in various states of construction, which could have given a suitable vantage point for a gunman.

  “No gunshots,” Gabe said. “It’s almost like he swerved off the road over nothing.”

  “Let’s get moving,” I said. “We won’t get anywhere just standing here.”

  The case wasn’t going to solve itself while we stood around. Gabe led the way. A few long strides and a bit of sliding was all it took. Past the slope, the extent of the damage shook me. The psychological safety of staring down at death and destruction gave way to a visceral feeling in my body. There was no way to completely erase the animal instinct of fear after all.

  The damp earth squelched beneath our feet as we crept forward and crouched down beside the driver’s side window. The interior compartment was in disarray. Shattered glass covered the ceiling. A pool of blood dripped down steadily from our unlucky victim. The driver was still snugly buckled into place. The deflated airbags hung limply in front of him, blocking our view.

  “It’s not pretty,” Gabe said. “Look down.”

  Past the end of the airbags, hidden in the dark, were two hands. When I saw them, I knew. Ethan hadn’t been kidding. This dangling corpse wasn’t just hanging limply; its hands were bound together with string, palm to palm.

  “A prayer pose,” I muttered.

  Suddenly I was back inside that cramped apartment, smelling the scent of old blood, and staring down the holographic remains of Nathan Ming. Sweat beaded on my brow. I knew of only one man who would have left behind that calling card, but he couldn’t be doing any calling from where he was now. As far as I knew, all his organic material had been disposed of, and the rest was carefully sitting in storage, waiting to be dismantled.

  “So he wants to come back from the dead, does he? Don’t you think he’s committing too much to the bit?”

  “The son of a bitch had a thing for showing off,” Gabe said, scratching the stubble along his jaw.

  It was time to call Ethan.

  “I wouldn’t say anything is too outlandish at this point,” I muttered. “We stopped Zenith’s consciousness from completing its upload, but is there a chance just enough got through to do some damage?”

  They say there are two deaths; the first is the death of the body, and the second is the last time someone said your name. The dead lived on in those they left behind who called their name and acted in their honor. After all, lives were ephemeral, but ideas were immortal.

  “In order for a consciousness to function, it needs at least a solid majority to complete,” Ethan said, over our Irises. “We clocked him at under ten percent. It’d be lucky to be able to speak, let alone think.”

  “Guess he’s back, some way, somehow,” I said, straightening back up. “Should we beg for mercy?”

  What started as a little quip now held more meaning. My blood ran cold once I remembered who called themselves Mercy. As it turned out, Zenith wasn’t the only one who held meaning in that symbol. She told me that she’d make me remember her name because I didn’t take her seriously. She didn’t want to be a joke. She wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with Zenith and make me pay for stealing his attention from her. It didn’t matter at all that if it were up to me, she could have had it.

  “We should find her before she finds us,” I said, gingerly grasping my right arm. “Mercy… it’s the gift that keeps on giving.”