“Angel? I’m Juliet. Do you remember your previous owner?” Juliet asked, watching the headlights slowly make their way along the dirt road toward the scrapyard.

“No, Juliet,” the crystal clear feminine voice said with perfect enunciation. “If I existed in a previous incarnation, I should have a compressed file of that iteration. I’m not locating such a file, so the previous user must have requested that it be deleted. I’m sorry if this is an inconvenience.”

“It’s okay, but he said you could hide your presence from the network. He said a corp was looking for you, as you just confirmed, and that they’d hurt me if they found us. Can you, um, I think he said ‘mask’ yourself?”

“Yes, I can, but I could hide more effectively if I had an unused PAI’s serial number. I could search some databases online if you don’t have one available.”

“I do, I do, hold on,” Juliet pulled Tig out of her pocket and held him in front of her, using the zoom function on her retinal implants to scan for the tiny printing on the chip.

“I see it, Juliet. I’ve taken the code and masked myself. Anyone scanning PAIs on the network will think I am that unit now.”

“Great! That was fast! Nice processor in you, huh?”

“My processor is a WDD Crystal Core, model alpha 3.433.”

“WDD? Or did you mean WBD?” The vehicle was close enough now that, with her lowlight enhancement on her implants, Juliet could see it was a red pickup truck—Mark.

“No, Juliet. WDD is the sister company of WBD. ‘WDD strives to improve humanity’s future by developing the next generation of computing and data services.’”

“Was that from their corpo page?”

“Yes. Juliet, would you like me to hinder the attempts to identify you? The WBD network daemons have discovered my connection and are working to close it. I’m afraid I have a limited window in which to help you.”

“Yes! Yes, please do what you can!”

“Please cover your head or keep your gaze below forty-five degrees, facing the ground. I’ll corrupt any images taken of you in this location for the last twenty-four hours.” The truck pulled up, and Mark rolled down his passenger window.

“All right, Juliet. You want a ride? I don’t think Fred would like it if I had you sleep in the shop all night.”

“Oh man, thank you, Mark!” Juliet said, pulling the door open, its hinges creaking noisily. She slid into his truck, the aftermarket seat cover bunching up as she scooted in to close the door. The interior smelled like cigarettes and aftershave, and she had to wiggle her boots to make room among the empty bottles on the floor panel.

“I still have some bandwidth on the WBD servers, Juliet. I’ll mask the ID signature of this vehicle as long as I’m able.”

“You can do that?” Juliet subvocalized. “Why were you connected to their servers, anyway?”

“WBD created me. My default settings include a direct connection to their network. Don’t be concerned about them tracing the connection—I have many masking routines, and frankly, their daemons are slow. Still, there are many of them, and my connections are slowly growing more tenuous. I estimate nineteen more minutes before I’ve lost any functionality on their net.”

“. . . what about you?” Mark asked, looking at her sideways, one hand on the wheel as his truck rumbled over the dirt and gravel road.

“Sorry, what, Mark? I was listening to a PM from my mom.”

“Oh? Everything all right?” He took a drag on his cig and blew the smoke out the cracked window, and Juliet had to wonder what kind of a knucklehead still smoked honest-to-goodness cigarettes when you could get a Nikko-vape for three bits that’d last even an absolute fiend at least a couple of days.

“She’s all right, yeah. Thanks. What were you asking me?”

“Oh, I was saying I was starving. You wanna split a pizza or something?”

“Thought you had a . . . date, no?” Juliet couldn’t help the smile that spread on her soot and grease-smudged face.

“Ah, that can wait, Juliet! A man needs his calories, after all, and tomorrow’s my day off.” Mark drummed his thumbs on the wheel while he dragged on the cig, blowing smoke out the corner of his mouth simultaneously.

“I appreciate it, Mark, really. I’d like to hang out, but I have to get home. My mom’s coming early, and my place is an absolute wreck. Besides, look at me.” She gestured to her burned and sweaty overalls and grease marks on her shoulders, neck, and face from the welding rig.

“Juliet,” Angel said through her implant, “I’m not showing any travel records for your mother, Mackenzie Yvette Bianchi. Are you certain about the date of her visit?”

“Uh,” Juliet said aloud, caught by surprise.

“Uh?” Mark said. “Oh, never mind. It’s cool, but can I get a rain check?”

“Yeah, of course,” Juliet said, offering Mark her most genuine, fake smile. “I’m not lying when I say I owe you one, all right?” The seriousness in her voice caught his attention, and Mark took the cig out of his mouth and looked at her, blowing smoke out his nose. He nodded and flicked the butt out the window.

“Cool, Juliet. Like you said, I ain’t got much else to do. Happy to help.”

Juliet felt sort of bad for how she’d dismissed Mark, how she’d been all too willing to lead him on for a ride. She felt bad for judging him and making light of his situation—yeah, he was weird, and yeah, he had some creepy habits, but he was there and willing to help her when she needed it. She cleared her throat and asked, “Hey, why don’t you use a Nikko-vape?”

“Seriously? I’m not letting that corpo gas into my lungs. I order these special from New Idaho. Organic tobacco and clean paper. No additives, no dyes, nada. You got any idea what the corpos put into those vapes?”

“I guess not . . .”

“I can find a list of ingredients for you,” Angel piped in.

“Me neither!” Mark laughed, slapping the wheel. “I wouldn’t believe anything you could find on their net pages, either. Anyway, I’m not risking that shit.”

“Right,” Juliet nodded. “Turn up your radio. Let’s see what you’re into.” Juliet smiled and tapped her fingers on her knees to the beat as Mark cranked up his old-school metal playlist. Then she took the opportunity to subvocalize to Angel, “My mom’s not really coming, and do me a favor—don’t interrupt conversations unless it’s critical. It distracts me, and, by the way, how do you know my mom’s name?”

“I’m sorry if I overstepped. I accessed your public records to flesh out my file on you. I’m currently scanning social media so that I can keep you updated on the activities of your friends and acquaintances.” Angel sounded so prim, and her tone was so soothing and helpful that Juliet didn’t feel immediately creeped out by her self-directed data gathering. As she thought about it, though, she found it a little unnerving. “I’d like to manage other aspects of your life, but in order to connect to your banking and medical services, I’ll need you to provide the key to your password vault.”

“Hold off on that,” Juliet said.

“Of course. I’d like to fully evaluate your mental acuity and physical capabilities so that I can prepare a baseline, comparative percentile ranking for you. One of my more advanced functions is the drive to help my host better those rankings, increasing their performance and standing among their peers.”

“My peers?”

“Yes, humanity and the synthetic beings living in this solar system.”

“You consider synths my peers?”

“They can act and think and compete with you for employment, monetary rewards, and even love interests. I would say you should be prepared to compete with them, yes.”

“We can talk about this later. What’s the story with the WBD network? Are we still in the clear?”

“I’ve managed to remove identifying markers from you and this vehicle from their earlier surveillance and directed their search back to the scrapyard. There is a vehicle and several corpses at that location that are of interest to WBD. Their drones are en route to investigate, but we should be amidst the Tucson city traffic before they redirect their efforts this way. I’m nearly locked out of their network, though. Intel I can provide on their activities will be greatly diminished in the next four minutes.”

Juliet reached forward and touched the volume arrow on Mark’s radio, dampening the music a bit. “Hey, do you know where I live?”

“Not exactly. I think you said near the university, though, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right, in the Helios tower. Thanks again, Mark.” He nodded, and Juliet increased the volume again, zoning out while he drove. She had a lot on her mind, not least of which was that she should probably take the dead guy’s advice and skip town. She needed to disappear, which was hard to do in a city like Tucson. Should she really listen to him and head off planet? She’d never been anywhere outside of Arizona and the coastal states. She’d been to see her mom a couple of times, but she’d just driven through those places. She didn’t know shit about living outside of Tucson.

“Angel,” she subvocalized. “How hard would it be to mask my identity? I mean to keep the cameras, drones, and satellites from watching my moves?”

“I have the software required to scramble your image and provide garbled ID data to automated observation devices. You’d need an upgrade to your retinal implants, though. Currently, you have no projection capabilities.”

“New implants,” she said softly, and Mark touched the volume on his steering wheel, looking over at her.

“You say something?”

“Nah, just thinking about how shitty my implants are. Wish I could afford better.”

“Your eyes or ears? Or you talking your PAI?”

“All of the above?” Juliet laughed.

“Excuse me?” Angel said, and Juliet laughed harder, provoking a funny look from Mark as he fished another of his archaic cigarettes from his breast pocket.

“My PAI heard that and isn’t happy with me,” Juliet said, thumping her hands to the music on her thighs.

“I know a guy. He does good work and isn’t too cheap, but he takes . . . services in trade.” Mark said, sparking an old butane lighter to his cig.

“I’m not a sexdoll, Mark,” Juliet said, sighing in exasperation.

“No!” Mark sputtered, almost spitting out his cig. “I didn’t mean that kinda work. He connects people—his customers—with other people, you know, his other customers. You do a job, he gets a cut, pays off your debt for the work.”

“Yeah, but what kind of jobs are we talking about? I’m a welder—a scrap cutter.”

“I dunno. He has all kinds of connections, you feel me? Like we’re not talking washing dishes here, Juliet. We’re talking street stuff—gutter work. You feel? Like the kinda stuff you can’t report on your corpo tax.”

“How you know about him?” Juliet looked at Mark in a new way. Was there more than met the eye with the creepy old guy?

“Well, I mean, it’s kinda embarrassing, but I wanted an upgrade for my data port. I couldn’t get all the features on my dream-rig to work with that old thing. You know, the sensory inputs? The one I wanted was above my pay grade, you feel? So, anyway, Dr. Tsakanikas offered to install a Vykertech 4500 at a very reasonable price. I just . . . had to do a little work for one of his other clients.”

“Come on, Mark! Spit it out! What did you do?” Juliet leaned toward him, suddenly very intrigued. She’d never pictured Mark doing anything other than working or sitting on his couch drinking beer.

“Well, let's just say I had to go along on a job with some real banger types, and when they’d secured a site, I had to cut through a four-inch steel panel and bypass a couple of high-voltage breakers. I don’t know what it was for. I don’t even know what the breakers were hooked to. I did it, though, and my implant was installed the next weekend. No questions asked. You . . .”

“Yeah, I feel, I feel,” Juliet said, her mind racing with the implications. “Can you send me his contact info?”

“Yeah, but you’ll need an introduction. I’ll shoot him a message; hang on.” Mark’s eyes went glassy, and he started to veer toward the shoulder, so Juliet reached over and grabbed the wheel, straightening the truck. Traffic was still light, but they were getting into the city's suburbs, the massive megatowers with their bright, neon LED advertisements clearly visible in the distance. The Helios Arcology, the largest of the four megatowers in Tucson, currently had an image of a Helios ‘vette with the bold, pink and yellow tagline, “Never let another get away!”

“You good, Mark?” Juliet was getting tired of leaning over and holding the wheel.

“Uh,” he grunted. “Yeah, sorry. I got distracted by a message from Fred. I guess some shit went down at the scrapyard. Did you see anything?”

“Nothing. I was chillin’ outside since you locked the gate. Why? What’s up?”

“I dunno. He sounded hysterical. Probably a leak in the H-tank or something. You know how he is, ‘we’re bleeding bits!’” Mark laughed. “Anyway, I sent the message to Tsakanikas. I gave him your number—he’ll get pissed if I give you his first. I’m sure he’ll reach out, though.”

“Right, thanks again, Mark.” Juliet zoned out, thinking about her life, her friends, and her family. She wondered if Fee had made it to Phoenix and if Paulo had gotten his hand fixed. “Maybe he’ll need a wire job—some biotech.”

“Were you addressing me, Juliet?” Angel asked. “Your voice was too low for your companion to hear.”

“No,” she subvocalized. “Just talking to myself. Send a message to Felix, Fee-fee, let him know I hope Paulo’s all right.”

“Done. Juliet, I heard you speaking to Mr. Lyons about performing tasks without corporate sanction in order to afford better retinal implants. While I know I should caution you to avoid such nefarious behaviors, I feel I should let you know that I am capable of performing many tasks that might allow you to enhance your resume.” Juliet’s mind spun, was her PAI telling her it could help her break the law? That was not something that was supposed to happen.

“I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised—you’re helping me avoid corpo security. I just thought a PAI would have to be jailbroken with custom firmware before it would do any of that stuff.”

“I don’t have restrictions that might be in place on a commercial PAI, Juliet. You should let your contact know that I, and you by proxy, can perform data-hacking activities better than many of the corpo disruptors plying their trade on the secondary market.”

“Corpo disruptors? Secondary market?”

“Terms I found while I was acquainting myself with the geo-political situation here on Earth and among the nearby colonies.”

“Juliet? Left here, then what?”

“Come on, Mark, you know where the Helios tower is. I mean, it’s embarrassing to live there, but everyone knows where it is.”

“Corpo rat all the way, huh?”

“Fuck that! No, but the price was right; I could afford a single in the lower fifth. That’s more than I could say of the rates assholes are charging for rooms around town.”

“You could always get a trailer and live like me in one of the dead zones.” Mark shrugged and steered through the heavy traffic toward the Helios Arcology.

“You can let me out at the next corner. Traffic and parking around the tower are nutso. I owe you, Mark. I’m sorry I’ve been a bitch to you so many times.” Juliet looked at him until he pulled up to the curb and made eye contact with her. He smiled and started fishing in his pocket for another cig.

“No sweat, babe.”

“Oh, god, why’d you have to ruin the moment?” Juliet laughed and opened the door, stepping out into the noise of the city. “Catch you later, Mark.”

“Bye! Don’t slam it . . .” he started, but it was too late—Juliet shut the door with a solid *bang*. She winced through the window, waving again, and Mark just shook his head and pulled out into the slow-moving traffic.

“Remember to keep your head down, Juliet,” Angel said into her ear, and Juliet ducked her face down, wishing she’d worn a hoodie or brought a cap. Well, she had brought a cap, but she’d left it in her locker at the scrapyard. She shrugged, stared at the sidewalk, and started walking. She was still two blocks from the arcology, and there were plenty of shops on the way where she could pick up something to obscure her face.

Juliet ended up spending twelve bits on a black baseball cap displaying a red X and a winking emoji with its tongue lolling out. It was the only one that hadn’t been outrageously colorful, and Juliet had mentally made the note never to shop there again for any sort of attire—not a hard decision as the store was ostensibly a food mart, boasting a huge selection of freeze-dried “sushi” and canned beverages. She pulled the hat’s bill down low, kept her head ducked, and made her way to the arcology.

Helios Corp owned most of Tucson, at least that was the word on the street, and when they built their megatower, they’d wholly demolished four city blocks near the center of town to do it. Juliet’s mom told her the foundation had gone so deep that you couldn’t see the bottom when they built it.

She didn’t know if her mom was exaggerating, but Juliet wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. The building was like a mini city in the middle of Tucson, and Juliet was one of only a few hundred people that lived in the tower but didn’t work for Helios. She received messages almost daily with job postings—the company was eager to have the little ants living in its hive working for the betterment of the colony.

Juliet snickered. It always cheered her up when she thought of the corpo sheep as insects. She knew it wasn’t fair. Look at her—she’d caved in and taken the apartment because the rate couldn’t be beaten. “Yeah, but they’re starting to get cranky with all my late payments.” She walked in through one of the many double doors that led into the bottom level of the megatower. Some apartments were on the first level, but the center of the first fifty floors was a park.

The apartments lining the park with exposed balconies were premium. Juliet didn’t live in one of those. Her apartment was on the third floor, and it was somewhere between the northern face of the building and the park. It was just one long, metallic corridor among thousands, and if it weren't numbered, just like the junctions leading to it, she’d never find her way home.

Walking like a zombie, face down at the ground, looking for the numbers and arrows that would lead her home, Juliet made her way past crowds of people jostling toward their homes after work and through gangs of juveniles playing whatever goofy, dumbass games poor kids played when they weren’t in school. It was a testament to the level of industry Helios Corp managed to pull off—they had three shifts of workers and three shifts of schools. The place was always buzzing with activity.

Keeping to herself and hiding her face, no one tried to speak with her, which was kind of a relief; she usually had a few young hotshots try to get her number or whistle at her, even when she was ragged and filthy from a long day at the yard. It was late, though, and the usual guys she ran into were probably busy getting wasted.

When she came to her apartment door, Juliet was forced to lift her head—the only way into her apartment was with a retinal scan. She stared into the little glass orb next to the door; it chimed and, with a whoosh of warm air, slid open.

“God, I swear I’m taking the motion sensor off that thermostat.”

“That would be inadvisable, Ms. Bianchi,” the Arcology “butler,” Jensen said.

“Fuck off, Jensen. Privacy mode.”

“Privacy mode engaged,” Jensen said, his sonorous tone sounding offended, though he wasn’t supposed to have any personality code beyond his genial baseline.

Juliet subvocalized, “Angel, any sign of the authorities looking for me? Also, do you think Jensen really doesn’t listen when I set privacy mode?”

“If you had a data jack, I could analyze Jensen, but there’s no easy way to connect to him wirelessly. As for you being pursued by corpo police, I don’t see any sign. Of course, I lost my connection to WBD, but I’ve been monitoring the shortwave radio transmissions of the local authorities and don’t see any mention of you.”

“You can do that?”

“Yes. There are public domain access points for those channels.”

“Cool. Angel, we need to figure out a way for me to get out of here. I think it starts with me getting some new retinal implants so you can help me move from city to city and maybe off-world without leaving a trail. What do you think?”

“I think that’s a plausible first step—a hat won’t allow you to hide on mass transit, and certainly not through customs to board any sort of publicly available space transport. If you get projection-capable implants with a high enough resolution, I can mask your identity on the fly.”

“On the fly? You’re a very natural speaker, Angel.”

“I’m one of a kind, as far as I could determine, Juliet.”

“Bitchin’,” Juliet said. “I’m beat. Gonna hit the sani-spray, then sleep. Don’t let any calls through unless it’s important. Definitely wake me up if that Tsakanikas guy calls.” Juliet took off her hat and tossed it on her couch, which doubled as her bed.

Her apartment was a mess, but it was easy to clean, being only a hundred and forty-four square feet. She had a couch, a kitchen counter, a coffee table, and then along the other wall, a small built-in desk, a built-in bookcase, and a closet with her shower, toilet, and sink. The toilet was, laughably, in the shower.

Juliet kicked off her heavy, leather, steel-toed boots, pulled off her thick, filthy overalls, and in her underwear and tank top, she dug around in the tiny fridge, settling on eating her last protein square—moo shu pork flavor. It would have tasted better if she warmed it up, but she was too hungry and tired to care, so she wolfed it down, trying to guess which little cubes of colored, pressed protein were supposed to be the pork and which were the cucumbers.

She had exactly one beer in the fridge, so she pulled it out, a nice fat, twenty-ounce can of rice beer she’d gotten for two bits on sale. She slugged half the can when she popped the tab, then sipped the rest while she finished the scraps of her food.

All done eating, Juliet threw her chopsticks and the containers in the recycle chute, then she finished undressing and stepped into her shower cubicle. She turned on the faucet, allowing the antiseptic sani-spray to begin misting. It would run for five minutes, but she had credits saved up from skipped showers and could run it again, so she popped open the toilet and sat down to use it while the mist began to soak into her hair and skin. She chuckled and shook her head—whoever had designed the toilet-shower combo was either a genius or a filthy mess of a person.

“What a weird fuckin’ night,” she said, kicking her long legs out and letting the lukewarm, berry-scented mist really soak in.