“This is the third victim he’s looking at again, right?” Jo asked. After countless photos of identical monikers, similar displays of grotesque variety, detailing of event after familiar event, they all began to blend together.
“Fourth, I think.” Wayne groaned, and Jo could see him rubbing at his eyes in her periphery. “Looks like this one was front-manning a sort of android fighting ring.” Jo scanned Wayne’s face, surprised by the disgust written there. Though not for long. “Says here he . . . he made them keep their pain receptors on full? I’m not too hi-tech, but even I can tell that sounds pretty low-lid.”
She didn’t know exactly what low-lid meant, but she knew what pain receptors did, so Jo was in near instant agreement.
“We’re not getting anywhere with this, doll, let’s move on.”
“No, not yet.” Jo held him by the cuff of his sleeve. She was on the verge of something. She understood all too well how grating trying to absorb so much information in one sitting could be. But they had a job to do, and if the captain here could do it, she could too.
“Every single victim has, in some way, shape, or form been involved in android related hate crimes,” Jo started slowly, her mind coming into clarity. She leaned in to gather some more information from the papers the captain had placed to the side. “Yeah, see here? This man was the head of an Artificial Care Act protest group. And this one? An anti-android slam campaign aiming to remove their syncing capabilities unless registered to an ‘owner.’” Jo cringed, her stomach roiling at the thought of such treatment.
“We knew that it had to do with the androids and their rights already,” Wayne reminded her. “Snow said it in the initial briefing—or showed us the news reel that did.” He paused. “No, it had to do with that calling card? Or all of them. Doesn’t matter which, we knew all that.”
“The latest calling card was the coordinates for N.A.I.S., Inc.”
“That AI place . . . What was it? Prima Sangria?”
“Primus Sanguis,” Jo corrected him quietly, her voice hushed by the rampant thoughts rushing through her mind. “Mister Burrows’s bone had N.A.I.S. coordinates carved into it. Butwhy?”
“The location of his next victim?” Wayne suggested.
“No . . .” Jo wouldn’t have been surprised if Wayne could hear the audible click that just happened in her brain. “Look, here.” Jo pointed to Richard Burrows’ file. “He was a consultant.”
“So?”
“There’s a pattern here, a message,” she said, eyes scanning for any more tidbits of information she could grasp from the papers strewn about the captain’s desk. When he leaned back into his seat with a sigh, Jo took the chance to lean as far over into the literal pile of information as she could. “I think it’s more than the ACA. . . I think Primus Sanguis may be the true connecting thread.”
“The thing you hacked?”
“I didn’t hack it, I hackedinformationabout it,” she corrected. “And it was one of the hardest—never mind, it doesn’t matter. The first victim, in Pennsylvania . . . I’ve seen her name before. She was all over the notes CBM had me dredge up on Sanguis as one of their chief developers.
“The second victim was a higher up at CBM in New York—N.A.I.S.’s competitor and the people who pushed Primus Sanguis to market early once they got their competition software to market first.”
“The third was that politician involved with the Artificial Care Act, but he was also closely involved with legalizing the Sanguis system for market,” Wayne interjected. “I see where you’re going, doll, but what about the fourth here . . . The one with the android fighting ring?”
“Where do you think he sourced that many androids from?” Jo tried to find the file on the desk, but couldn’t. The captain had already sorted it away so she relied on her memory instead. “I saw he was an employee at Greenfield.”
“So?”
Wayne wouldn’t know, Jo realized. This was no longer his world, even if he had once been from New York City. “Greenfield is the largest contract manufacturer for androids. N.A.I.S. is their top customer.”
“So number four just plucked androids with Sanguis in their heads off the line?”
“Likely defectives, ones with minor issues in soft or hard design . . . but that would work for his purposes,” Jo surmised.
“How do you know all this?”
Jo allowed herself to savor the impressed tone of Wayne’s voice. “I told you, I had a job, once.” She swallowed.Had her work somehow led to the creation of the Bone Carver?
“And what about Mr. Burrows?” Wayne tapped on the man’s file.
“I’m speculating—”
“So far your speculations have been the only thing about all this that’s made any sense.”
“Given what was carved on his bone, I think he was consulting for N.A.I.S.”
“Youthink?” Wayne stressed the final word. “Stakes are kinda high for guessing here, dollface.”
