“Shit.”
“So hurry up.”
Only the apartment’s kitchen had survived the renovation—marble countertop littered with dirty plates and half-eaten meals now congealed, a dark layer of mold growing across it all. JD altered his earlier assessment—not motes of dust, but mold spores drifted through the air. He felt the urge to cover his mouth and nose with his T-shirt, but squashed it. Unlike Lee’s main apartment, this kitchen had a large cold room secured behind a huge steel door—the sort you might find in an upscale restaurant. According to Soo-hyun’s notes, whatever grail JD had been sent to find rested within.
A thickly padded thermal jacket hung from a hook just beside the door, but JD left it and yanked open the cold room door. It moved slowly at first, then quicker as it gained momentum. A chill bloomed outward, covering the floor with a fine crystalline pattern. With the cold leeching heat from his fingers and toes, JD changed his mind and shrugged into the thermal parka. He walked into the fridge, breathing plumes of vapor.
Inside it smelled of ozone and the taste of batteries. The sound of discordant static grew with each step, pitched so that JD could hear it even despite the alarm, like electronic bees buzzing in his skull. His teeth chattered with the cold and vibrated in his gums at the noise, oppressive and insistent.
A machine shaped like an inverted golden pyramid hung from the ceiling and loomed large in the center of the space, like something from a seventies film imagining a brighter future than the one they got. The pyramid hung above a datacube, the two entities joined by fine gold connectors. Another pyramid like a comb of black metal rose to meet it, every point reaching to just beneath the cube, then expanding, growing wider as they met the floor. This massive heat sink thrummed as it stole warmth from the cube, and the room.
“Woah.” JD couldn’t hear himself, but he knew he spoke, felt it in the rattle of his vocal cords. Whatever enigmatic purpose the machinery held, it deserved more than that sound, but it was all JD could manage with the noise emanating from everywhere at once, rattling his bones and punishing his flesh.
There was no terminal to access the data, just the cube itself. JD exhaled a dense mist and moved closer. He reached forward slowly, waiting for a wave of heat, a laser grid, anything. He gripped the cube between thumb and forefinger, and even with the cooling apparatus it was warm to the touch, as warm as living flesh. With a click he felt rather than heard, JD pulled the cube free of the pyramid, half expecting the structure to collapse to the floor and shatter.
The buzzing died slowly as the machinery powered down with myriad whining hertz, until there was only the distant klaxon and JD’s ragged breath pouring white into the air. His whole body shivered; with effort he held the cube still enough to inspect. It looked like any other datacube—twelve millimeters a side, six connection ports on one side like the face of a die. But where a normal cube weighed so little as to be negligible, this one was oddly dense.
Hands shaking, JD took his phone from his pocket, still powered down, its battery disconnected, and slotted the datacube into the additional storage port for safekeeping. He fished around the bottom of his rucksack for a decoy to take its place. He inserted the police dog cube into Lee’s inscrutable machine and stepped back. He expected the machinery to start back up again, but it stayed dormant, the monolith of bizarre tech standing silent before him.
JD backed out of the room, eyes still fixed to the computational apparatus. It looked like the sort of altar Khoder would worship at, holy and otherworldly, a messiah sent to us from a simulated virtual heaven. He shut the door.
JD stripped out of the jacket and walked quickly back through Lee’s workspace, ambient heat like fire on his skin after the cold. Back through Lee’s bedroom, and down the hallway, closing the doors behind him, putting barriers between him and the klaxon until it was barely audible. JD’s hands felt clammy inside the latex gloves, but he didn’t dare take them off. He adjusted his baseball cap, hoping it was tight enough to keep all his hair in place, his DNA off the crime scene.
Should have shaved before the job, he thought. Then: Troy likes it shaved.
JD shook his head—this was not the time or the place to daydream about his ex.
He reached the main living area and found the guard awkwardly propped up against the wall, trying to stand. JD grabbed him and hauled him to his feet, but nearly dropped the man when a burst of static cut through the air.
A voice squawked through the walkie-talkie at his hip: “Jin-woo, report; you’re not at your post.”
JD cleared his throat, and pressed the walkie-talkie close to his lips so the sound would crackle and distort. “Thought I saw the suspects and went to investigate.” Two long seconds passed before he realized he’d forgotten something: “Over.”
Long Hair tried to yell, the sound muffled by the makeshift gag. Drool seeped out under the tape and rolled down his chin, where it hung in long, thin strands that stretched to his chest. JD held the radio away and glared at the man, holding a finger to his own lips.
“Where did you see them? Over.”
JD lifted the guard, carried him a few meters, and dropped him onto the couch while Long Hair kept trying to scream.
“Near the supermarket loading bay,” JD said. “Over.”
“Leave them and get back here. Police dogs are sweeping the area; let them deal with the vermin. Over and out.”
JD cursed again and tossed the walkie-talkie onto the couch opposite the one where Long Hair lay sprawled, still trying to yell. JD left him like that and walked out of the apartment. He shoved the cleaning cart out
