Marvin thought it was a strange coincidence at best, but Amir jumped on the correlation like his life depended on it.
"I'm going to send you every file from the case, everything about the victims," Amir said. "Look for any association of them to Ainsel AI—doesn't matter how small, how contrived it seems. Anything."
Marvin wasn't so convinced that it had to be Ainsel AI, but he had to admit, this was exciting. Even if it had nothing to do with his own death, which he doubted, he would be doing some good for Megacity 14.
However, the actual investigation of the case's files was anything but exciting. Hours on end of sitting in various regions of Renee's apartment, reading and taking notes. They couldn't even use AI to get a summary of the files, since all AIs were biased towards Ainsel. One day in, and Ben and Renee had begun procrastinating. Two days, and they'd lost Caroline. They decided to recruit Ella and Ishaan to comb through the files, too. Ella came over to their apartment while Ishaan worked remotely. It only took one hour for Ella to get sidetracked.
After a week, Marvin finally couldn't take it anymore. Not even his inhuman nature could save him from the throes of boredom. As far as he could tell, they had taken hundreds of megabytes of notes and were making absolutely no progress.
They took breaks in shifts. Marvin's first break was with Renee—they left the apartment for a walk while the others stayed and labored away. While they were mainly walking to wind down, they were also hoping to catch their stalker in the gray jacket.
The streets of Sector 8 were as pristine as they looked from the shuttle streams. Drones sometimes emerged from the sidewalk to pick up litter, and either taking it to a lost and found or disposing of it depending on if they deemed it valuable. Everyone Marvin and Renee passed dressed uniquely, yet there was a hivemind nature about them as Ainsel's AI herded them with light-up signs and soothing sound bites.
If not for the company's suspicious activity, Marvin would have loved to live here. There was the perfect density of people on the street, not too much to make him uncomfortable but not too few to seem eerie. Every noise seemed deliberate and never got overbearing. Every store Marvin looked into was cozy but not packed. Neon signs and landmarks were easily visible from most places, while many structural gems were left hidden. Saeyung and her team had very nearly succeeded in creating a perfect city.
"How are you feeling about KOL?" Renee asked. She used her voice box this time, as writing and walking was quite inconvenient.
"It might be rough," Marvin said. He'd seen clips of the mysterious fifth-place mech and thought it had a standard fighting style. However, it had switched to an unorthodox design recently and had used that surprise factor to win a series of high-point duels. Marvin wasn't sure how to counter it.
"Who do you think Kol is?" Renee said.
"Probably Amir," Marvin joked.
Renee giggled silently.
They reached a 4D supermarket, which wasn't really four-dimensional. Rather, the ground floor was split into different stands, each for a different category of food. Spacewarpers and invisible treadmills made it so that once you stepped into a stand, that particular sector of food would expand to become its own mini-market. In reality, the whole supermarket still took up a huge amount of room, but appeared at first as though it was barely a hundred square feet.
Renee embarked on a fruit-buying quest and Marvin was swept along for the ride. He enjoyed it. Since Renee didn't like talking through her voice box, there was no pressure to socialize around her.
After thirty minutes, they exited the building. As Marvin stepped onto the sidewalk, he caught a gray jacket out of the corner of his eye. The woman with the sunglasses was standing not more than twelve feet away, leaning against a wall, gazing across the street.
Marvin and Renee turned and began walking away. Marvin activated a camera in the back of his head and nudged Renee. The woman pushed off against the wall and began following.
They'd made a simple plan beforehand: lead the stalker around the corner to their apartment, then Marvin would stay behind the wall while Renee kept walking. When the stalker got to them, Marvin would trap her and demand answers. If the situation got out of control, they could escape to their apartment and get backup.
Marvin and Renee turned into a narrower street. In Marvin's split vision, he saw the woman take the same turn a few seconds later. Was she picking up her pace?
Marvin and Renee started to walk faster. Behind them, the woman broke into a jog.
Okay, so she just wants us dead?
Marvin didn't care to deliberate. It was time to change plans. He spun around and put his fists up. The woman saw all of it and did not stop running.
"Stop!" Marvin shouted.
"Wait!" The woman stopped after a few more steps. She took off her sunglasses and suddenly lost all of her mystique; she was probably in her late twenties, but her eyes shone with childish excitement, and her face honestly reminded Marvin of a squirrel's. "You two, you're with Amir, right?"
Marvin's cameras contracted skeptically. "Who are you?"
"I'm sorry for following you," the woman said. "I needed to make sure you were friends with Amir. I thought there was a chance you were looking into Ainsel AI—is that true?"
Marvin shrugged. Tell me who you are first.
"I want to help. You've heard of Hallowshard, right?"
The AI startup. Hallowshard was Ainsel AI's main competition in the megacity, and they'd competed at last year's Mecha Realm. They were also a suspect in Marvin's murder, but they were far less shady than Ainsel.
"We've done some digging into Ainsel as well. We don't think they have the best intentions," the woman continued. "We've found some things. We can't share them with Amir and the police directly because Hosaka will call that unfair competition—you know how much they love Ainsel—but if you two could bring—"
"Can you tell us your name?" Renee snapped.
The woman blinked. "Oh, sorry." She stuck out her hand. "Grace Alvarez. I'm the founder of Hallowshard."
Marvin raised his imaginary eyebrows. She couldn't have hired someone to track them?
Renee shook Grace's hand and replied, "I'm Renee, this is Steve."
"Are you a cyborg?" Grace asked.
Marvin nodded.
"Interesting. Our company studied cyborgs from before the Ethics Revolution, you know? Ancient things, those guys. Anyways, where was I?"
"Digging," Renee said.
"Right, we did some digging into Ainsel." Grace extracted a hard drive from her pocket. "This stuff you can't get anywhere else."
"More files?" Renee said in dismay.
"Give them to Amir. He'll know what to do."
Marvin and Renee exchanged a look. With this, they might be able to find a correlation between Ainsel AI and the suicide victims. Or they would blow up their tablets.
"How do we know this isn't a virus?" Renee asked.
"Well don't be stupid when you download it," Grace said. "I'll let you in on a secret: we've just launched an antivirus VPN—the only one that can fully protect your privacy in this city. You can try it out if you want. Free thirty-day trial."
Renee rubbed the back of her neck and looked inquisitively at Marvin. Marvin shook his head in disbelief. No, they were not trying this random woman's VPN.
"Um, maybe another time. How do you know that we are trustworthy?" Renee asked.
"I've followed you for three weeks," Grace replied. "I have no doubt you and Amir are close."
"That's not possible," Renee said. "No offense, but you're really bad at being inconspicuous. I even managed to get a picture of you."
"That's the point," Grace said. "I had to slowly ease into your lives. Make myself known."
Renee's mouth fell open. Marvin felt rather cold.
So she could've stalked us indefinitely if she wanted to. If this random CEO could do it, who knew how many other spies were monitoring them.
"I've got to run. I have a meeting in five minutes," Grace continued. She pressed the hard drive into Renee's palm and Renee jumped as if she expected the thing to blow up. "Good luck."
-----
Having more files to investigate was good, but that meant even more sitting around and taking notes. Inevitably, Caroline found herself losing focus and thinking more about Mecha Realm. Marvin's cyborg body was in decent condition now, but Sabersong still needed to be repaired, and even then it wouldn't be enough. It was still too simple of a mech; its tech couldn't match up to the top fifty, much less the top ten.
More and more often Caroline began to eye Ella. They two of them had gotten somewhat friendly with each other, and now Caroline wondered if the younger pilot would allow her to use Luyan's workshop. That place was abandoned as far as she knew, with some of the megacity's best technology.
Caroline asked two days after getting the idea. She approached Ella from behind, who was slumped on the couch, typing notes on her tablet.
"Hi," Caroline said. "I have a weird request."
Ella looked up at her, meaning she tilted her neck nearly ninety degrees backwards.
"I was wondering…" Caroline tapped her fingers together. "Is Luyan's workshop still open?"
A look of distress flashed across Ella's face. "Yeah."
"Would it be alright if…" Caroline sucked in a breath. "Would you mind if we used some of the equipment?"
Ella looked away and shrugged. "Sure."
Great. What am I supposed to make of that?
"If you don't want us to—"
"I said sure." Ella stood up and fought to form a smile. "I can fly you over right now if you want."
"Um, let me ask Marvin."
Caroline hurried away. She figured if Ella really didn't want to go, she would've said so.
Marvin didn't have much to say; he would only go in case he needed to be attached to his mech body, which Caroline would bring.
However, after looking at Ella one more time, Caroline felt a pang of sympathy. She was not close to Immortal Ignition's pilot, nor had she been very fond of her since their first interaction, but she was their friend now.
"Let's get everyone else," Caroline told Marvin, gesturing to Renee, Ben, and Ishaan. It seemed reasonable: with more people, Ella wouldn't feel as burdened going back to the workshop, to such a traumatic place. Plus, they were long overdue for a change in scenery.
-----
Caroline had only been to Luyan's workshop once, and very briefly, when she was overseeing Sabersong's repair after Immortal Ignition had dismembered him. But even then, it had felt like a place she could spend the rest of her life in. The colors, the equipment, the luxury of the living space upstairs… it was a dream incarnate.
Now, the workshop was cold. Most lights were off, dulling the colors and shrouding alien objects in darkness.
Ella trudged ahead and stopped at a light switch. She hesitated, then flipped it. Caroline expected the workshop to transform into the utopia she remembered it to be, but it still felt just as eerie.
Upgrades first. Caroline headed to the storage—the silver section of the workshop, where all of Immortal Ignition's unused parts were. The others set Sabersong onto a worktable, then went upstairs to comb through more files.
It didn't take long for Caroline to get lost in her work. There were so many items here she'd only seen in advertisements; she felt like she'd won the lottery. First off, she would replace Sabersong's exposed vents with foldable ones. She'd install cooling tubes, too. Replace the motors with more powerful ones and get rid of the gearing. In addition, she wanted to design new rockets.
Caroline collected her parts and wheeled them into the blue section. She began to change Sabersong's vents, then realized she was missing screws. She circled back to the silver section.
This time, though, she went the other way and passed by Ella. The younger pilot was standing impassively beside an empty coffin-like container, as if reminiscing about something.
Caroline was tempted to walk past her without saying a word, but she paused at the last second. I can at least try to be nice.
"Hey." Caroline walked up beside Ella and peered down at the coffin. There was nothing but foam padding past the glass panel. "Are you okay?"
Ella kept staring at the coffin. "It's weird. I'm used to seeing my mech right here."
"What is this?" Caroline asked, tapping the coffin.
"Cooler."
"Ah. Makes sense."
"What are you building?" Ella asked.
"Rockets." Caroline smiled. "You know a lot about those, I assume." Ella's current Immortal Ignition, the one from last year, was practically coated in mini rockets.
"Heh. Wanna see?" Ella asked. Caroline nodded, and Ella took her back to the silver section. She pulled open a drawer that contained her mech's old parts and pulled out a strip of armor lined with five thrusters. It looked like a sheet of scales.
"Damn," Caroline murmured. She couldn't begin to fathom how this was built.
"Mhm." Ella turned to leave, but then spun around again and shut the drawer. Then she awkwardly looked up at Caroline. "How'd you get so good at engineering anyway?"
"Hmm?"
"You built all of Sabersong and Marvin's normal body, right?"
"Yeah."
"And you did that at my age. That's insane!"
I'm a year older, Caroline wanted to correct. But she smiled. "I've always liked engineering. It's kind of all I did." It was her greatest passion. Her only passion. Or maybe the only one she remembered.
"I have a kind of random question, if you don't mind," Ella said.
"Sure."
"Can you teach me how to build some stuff? Not right now. Just sometime if I stop by."
Caroline raised her eyebrows in surprise, then felt a sudden urge to give the younger girl a hug. Maybe there was an old version of Ella she hadn't liked, but the one standing here now had lost everything.
"Of course," Caroline said. She grinned. "But you also have to teach me how to fight."
Ella frowned. "I thought you knew."
"Barely." Caroline knew the basics of piloting, but she couldn't beat even a below-average pilot in a fight. Plus, this year, she'd been too busy with engineering Sabersong to train.
"Alright," Ella said. "It's good that you sought me out instead of Marvin. He wouldn't have taught you shit."
Caroline laughed, and the two of them walked back around the workshop.