Chapter 02
Adrian placed a hand on the receiver plugged in his left year, falling silent again. Deanna knew that he was probably answering through the sub-vocal unit implanted into his persocom system, and waited for him to be done, folding her arms on her chest.
“The gene-lab’s got results, boss. Shall I tell them to transfer it to your console right now?”
“Do that, please.”
Deanna turned her large office chair to face the wide screen on the wall at her right, cupping her chin in the palm of her hand as she was leaning an elbow on the armrest. A second later, she smiled for herself, knowing that the pale face displayed in the middle of the many lines of ID data was the one of the mysterious person who had run away with Norris’ cyber-deck.
“That’s not a woman, Adrian. That’s a girl.”
“Indeed.” Eberson had turned to the screen as well, and was now studying the data with narrowed eyes.
“Jen McAran, 18. Born in Hawking, lived in Hawking, still lives in Hawking. Not much diversity in there.”
“Most surprising,” he said again, perhaps at a loss regarding what she wanted him to add.
Deanna’s smile dropped all of a sudden.
“Unknown father, mother deceased six years ago, no siblings. How convenient. I bet someone’s tampered with these files. There isn’t enough information here.”
On the screen, the girl’s wide hazel eyes remained focused on an invisible point behind the two security officiers; no hint of a smile ever seemed to lighten the stern expression on her pointy face. Oddly enough, she did not sport any of the usual markings most of the punks from the Underworld tended to fancy, save for a couple of silvery earrings and two long white and blue bangs, contrasting deeply with her dark-brown hair. Deanna decided that it may not have been that surprising; her ID data listed her as a “network operator”, which meant that she was a Wizard as well, and this type of Mavericks usually spent too much time in full-dives in the Web to worry much about trivial fashion matters.
“You were right, boss. She’s on the official list, but she doesn’t seem to be involved in the real hard operations. She’s also not affiliated to any particular Cell at the moment, though she’s had contacts with Tyler and Hikari. A loner.”
“Only in the physical world, Adrian. Look at that. Our data bank also lists her as a possible intermediary for the hacker known as Tesla.”
“Tesla. My, my.”
“As you say. I’ve already heard of this one, and she’s no small player in the league, even if she hasn’t been here for long. Do you remember the Schrödinger incident, two weeks ago?”
“How couldn’t I. Well then, we can probably make the police get an official arrest order against her for association to Web-related crimes if needs be.”
“Let’s keep this under the hand. Wait a second, registered at the genetic bank in Terekhovna?” Deanna frowned. “For someone who’s born and has spent most of her life in Hawking, it’s unusual.”
“There’s no doubt she’s the one we’re looking for. The lab has extracted the data from a hair found in Norris’ room, and she was seen at the hotel’s entrance hall a quarter of an hour before Allen noticed her running away in the stairs. There were no fingerprints, though. She’s not a total beginner.”