Chapter One

MY FIRST DAY on the job coincided with the first day of the Haden Walkout, and I’m not going to lie, that was some awkward timing. A feed of me walking into the FBI building got a fair amount of play on the Haden news sites and forums. This was not a thing I needed on my first day.

Two things kept all of the Agora from falling down on my head in outrage. The first was that not every Haden was down with the walkout to begin with. The first day participation was spotty at best. The Agora was split into two very noisy warring camps between the walkout supporters and the Hadens who thought it was a pointless maneuver given that Abrams-Kettering had already been signed into law.

The second was that technically speaking the FBI is law enforcement, which qualified it as an essential service. So the number of Hadens calling me a scab was probably lower than it could have been.

Aside from the Agora outrage, my first day was a lot of time in HR, filling out paperwork, getting my benefits and retirement plan explained to me in mind-numbing detail. Then I was assigned my weapon, software upgrades, and badge. Then I went home early because my new partner had to testify in a court case and wasn’t going to be around for the rest of the day, and they didn’t have anything else for me to do. I went home and didn’t go into the Agora. I watched movies instead. Call me a coward if you like.

My second day on the job started with more blood than I would have expected.

I spotted my new partner as I walked up to the Watergate Hotel. She was standing a bit away from the lobby entrance, sucking on an electronic cigarette. As I got closer the chip in her badge started spilling her details into my field of vision. It was the Bureau’s way of letting its agents know who was who on the scene. My partner didn’t have her glasses on so she wouldn’t have had the same waterfall of detail on me scroll past her as I walked up. But then again, it was a pretty good chance she didn’t need it. She spotted me just fine in any event.

“Agent Shane,” said my new partner, to me. She held out her hand.

“Agent Vann,” I said, taking the hand.

And then I waited to see what the next thing out of her mouth would be. It’s always an interesting test to see what people do when they meet me, both because of who I am and because I’m Haden. One or the other usually gets commented on.

Vann didn’t say anything else. She withdrew her hand and continued sucking on her stick of nicotine.

Well, all right then. It was up to me to get the conversation started.

So I glanced over to the car that we were standing next to. Its roof had been crushed by a love seat.

“This ours?” I asked, nodding to the car, and the love seat.

“Tangentially,” she said. “You recording?”

“I can if you want me to,” I said. “Some people prefer me not to.”

“I want you to,” Vann said. “You’re on the job. You should be recording.”

“You got it,” I said, and started recording. I started walking around the car, getting the thing from every angle. The safety glass in the car windows had shattered and a few nuggets had crumbled off. The car had diplomatic plates. I glanced over and about ten yards away a man was on his phone, yelling at someone in what appeared to be Armenian. I was tempted to translate the yelling.

Vann watched me as I did it, still not saying anything.

When I was done I looked up and saw a hole in the side of the hotel, seven floors up. “That where the love seat came from?” I asked.

“That’s probably a good guess,” Vann said. She took the cigarette out of her mouth and slid it into her suit jacket.

“We going up there?”

“I was waiting on you,” Vann said.

“Sorry,” I said, and looked up again. “Metro police there already?”

Vann nodded. “Picked up the call from their network. Their alleged perp is an Integrator, which puts it into our territory.”

“Have you told that to the police yet?” I asked.

“I was waiting on you,” Vann repeated.

“Sorry,” I said again. Vann motioned with her head, toward the lobby.

We went inside and took the elevator to the seventh floor, from which the love seat had been flung. Vann pinned her FBI badge to her lapel. I slotted mine into my chest display.

The elevator doors opened up and a uniformed cop was there. She held up her hand to stop us from getting off. We both pointed to our badges. She grimaced and let us pass, whispering into her handset as she did so. We aimed for the room that had cops all around the door.

We got about halfway to it when a woman poked her head out of the room, looked around, spied us, and stomped over. I glanced at Vann, who had a smirk on her face.

“Detective Trinh,” Vann said, as the woman came up.

“No,” Trinh said. “No way. This has nothing to do with you, Les.”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” Vann said. “And wrong. Your perp is an Integrator. You know what that means.”

“‘All suspected crimes involving Personal Transports or Integrators are assumed to have an interstate component,’” I said, quoting the Bureau handbook.

Trinh looked over at me, sourly, then made a show of ignoring me to speak to Vann. I tucked away that bit of personal interaction for later. “I don’t know my perp’s an Integrator,” she said, to Vann.

“I do,” Vann said. “When your officer on scene called it in, he ID’d the perp. It’s Nicholas Bell. Bell’s an Integrator. He’s in our database. He pinged the moment your guy ran him.” I turned my head to look at Vann at the mention of the name, but she kept looking at Trinh.

“Just because he’s got the same name doesn’t make him an Integrator,” Trinh said.

“Come on, Trinh,” Vann said. “Are we really going to do this in front of the children?” It took me a second to realize Vann was talking about me and the uniformed cops. “You know it’s a pissing match you’re going to lose. Let us in, let us do our job. If it turns out everyone involved was in D.C. at the time, we’ll turn over everything we have and be out of your hair. Let’s play nice and do this all friendly. Or I could not be friendly. You remember how that goes.”

Trinh turned and stomped back to the hotel room without another word.

“I’m missing some context,” I said.

“You got about all you need,” Vann said. She headed to the room, number 714. I followed.

There was a dead body in the room, on the floor, facedown in the carpet, throat cut. The carpet was soaked in blood. There were sprays of blood on the walls, on the bed, and on the remaining seat in the room. A breeze turned in the room, provided by the gaping hole in the wall-length window that the love seat had gone through.

Vann looked at the dead body. “Do we know who he is?”

“No ID,” Trinh said. “We’re working on it.”

Vann looked around, trying to find something. “Where’s Nicholas Bell?” she...