“You guessed right. I’m looking for a DIE. I think he’s young, and I think he’s a he.”
“I assume this isn’t a simple sexist presumption?”
Enda nodded. “They left a lot of porn on the infiltrated system—heteronormative and interracial.”
“A classic mix,” Crystal said with a smile. She pushed her glass away from her keyboard and opened up the same database search software Enda had seen Marc use in the past. “You’re not headhunting, then?”
“Yes, but not in the way you mean. Looking for some thieves, mean to retrieve the property they stole.” Enda paused for a moment, then added: “It was Zero they burned, so could be someone reckless, desperate, or just dense.”
Crystal leaned back in her chair and touched her lips with her hand. “That’s a tough one. Any other corporation and you’d have a list a mile long, but burning Zero? That’s shitting in your own cereal.”
“Could be a teenager,” Enda said, picturing the youths tossing Molotov cocktails.
Crystal frowned and nodded. “Wired for reckless behavior, and probably not thinking too hard about future career prospects.” Crystal talked to herself as she entered data with rapid strikes across the keyboard: “Young, male, not currently incarcerated. Local?”
“Yes, living in Songdo, maybe Incheon.”
Crystal hummed, tiny white rectangle of the screen reflected in her eyes. More fast clacks of fingers on the keyboard.
“Anyone on your payroll a likely suspect?” Enda asked.
Crystal stopped typing. “This hacker any good?”
“Not subtle, but I’d say they’re skilled.”
“Probably not, then. We don’t pay well enough to keep anyone with actual talent. Sooner or later, most of them end up at Zero.”
Crystal rolled her wrist with a flourish, and hit the Enter key.
“I’ve got four names—handles, obviously—that could match. Two thousand euro.”
Enda retrieved her phone and passed it to Crystal. “Zero expense account. Just charge it.”
“How do you like working for Zero?”
“I don’t,” Enda said.
Crystal placed the phone against a pay scanner beside her keyboard, processed the payment, and handed it back to Enda. “Do you want to give me your number?” Crystal asked.
Enda smiled. “That’s a little forward.”
Crystal blushed. “For the data.”
“Of course,” Enda said, and she recited her digits.
Crystal tapped them into the computer. “The DIE that work freelance for the corporations usually wind up on contract or mysteriously disappeared, but these four are proper criminals.”
Enda’s phone buzzed in her hand. She opened the encrypted message and found four names, each with a contact email address: Monica Moniker, Jay Bones, San Doze, and Doktor Slur.
“Monica?”
“Database shows her dumping porn on penetrated systems as a calling card. Doesn’t say if it was interracial or not.”
“They’ll have to start storing that information,” Enda joked. She flicked the names to the Mechanic with a note providing context.
“Did you see Marc a lot for this sort of thing?” Crystal asked.
“Few times a year at most. Why?”
“You’re the first client of his who’s come by since he passed,” Crystal said. “I make most of my deals on the darknet.”
“You’ll have to give me the address for next time,” Enda said.
Crystal looked at Enda, let her eyes linger a moment too long. “I think it’s better if we continue to do business in person. You’re a legacy customer, after all.”
Enda grinned. Crystal was likely twenty years her junior, but Enda supposed she was due a midlife crisis fling.
Crystal poured more whiskey into the two glasses and slid Enda’s across the table. “Marc’s notes say you’re a ‘gumshoe’?” she asked, the question seemingly at the meaning of the word itself.
Enda sipped her drink. “Private investigator,” she said.
“Been at it long?”
“Five years.”
“How did you get into that?”
“Needed freelance work doing something interesting.”
“Is it?” Crystal asked.
Enda held Crystal’s gaze. “Sometimes.”
“What did you do before?”
“Rather not say.”
“My da was NCSC,” Crystal said. “You know it?”
“I’m familiar,” Enda said.
“Intelligence, then,” Crystal said. She lifted her hand to stop Enda from protesting. “Nobody outside Ireland knows the NCSC unless they were in the community.”
“You grew up there,” Enda said. It wasn’t a question.
Crystal nodded. “Didn’t know a word of Korean when I moved here, despite Mom’s efforts. I think she was glad I chose to live here. Missed me terribly, she said, but I know she thought I was missing half my heritage living in Dublin. I got into intrusions as a fuck you to the old man.”
“A story as old as parents,” Enda said.
“Sounds like you speak from experience.”
“You’re going to have to feed me a lot more booze before you get that story out of me.”
Crystal grinned and refilled their glasses. “I can drink to that.”
It was night by the time they left Crystal’s office, the whiskey bottle half-empty, the young workers all gone apart from a dozen or so who sat in darkness, illuminated by the blue-white light of their screens.
They walked outside, a sloppy drunk grin stretched across Crystal’s lips as she stepped out onto the rain-slick sidewalk. She stared up at the sky.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“VOIDWAR?” Enda guessed, though the game’s fake constellations were another sight filtered out by her Clarity. “It’s just a video game.”
Crystal kept staring. “It’s beautiful,” she said, firmer this time. “It’s raining, but I can still see the stars. That’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” Enda said, before she realized, before she could stop herself.
Crystal lowered her gaze. She stepped close to Enda, rested a hand on her waist. They kissed—Crystal’s nose pressing cold, her lips tasting like vanilla lip balm and whiskey, sweet but with bite.
A voice in the back of Enda’s mind told her it was a bad idea, but she quashed it and kissed Crystal a second time.
“I’m taking you home with me, Enda.”
Enda lay on her side facing Crystal, glowing with a sheen of sweat, the woman’s long black hair flowing like a river between them. Enda rolled onto her back, and Crystal rested her head on Enda’s chest, her hair gently tickling Enda’s side as it fell across the soft skin.
Crystal’s chest rose and fell, expanding against Enda’s side.
“Are you okay?” Enda asked.
Crystal nodded,
