The Ghost in the Doll (Fox Meridian Book 6) (25 page)

‘I’ll look into it,’ Yuriko replied. ‘We could use the same vantage point to observe the factory as I did before, but we could not put Pythia down there.’

‘They won’t risk anyone seeing shipments of girls being taken in. They’ll run a closed vehicle into the loading dock. Unload it under cover. I don’t think we’ll see anything from the outside. See what you can arrange.’

‘I believe we need an alternate plan in case we cannot spot any of Taro’s trafficked women.’

‘I’m open to suggestions.’

Busan, Republic of Korea, 21
^st
April 2061.

‘You really think we’ll get anywhere in this chaos?’ Fox asked as she ploughed through the crowds around Cheonghakbuk-ro.

‘Just keep moving,’ Yuriko said from behind her.

‘That’s easy for you to say. You’re hiding behind me.’

‘They expect foreigners to be pushy. We are almost there.’

Fox could only consider that a good thing. Yuriko had decided that an interesting course of action might be to attempt to track the shipments of women from the other end, and one other end was Korea. Ever since China had basically annexed North Korea in the guise of ‘humanitarian aid,’ the South had become both the only Korea and the primary conduit for Chinese goods of all kinds to the outside world. That especially included illegal exports, and imports, since the border was no longer an enormous minefield and was hard to control. Many people speculated that that was on purpose.

The country was now largely divided into three regions: Seoul, the political and financial hub, the Southeast Economic Zone, which included Busan and was heavily industrialised, and everywhere else. Busan had actually done quite well out of the country’s restructuring. Seoul and Busan had become the jewels of the republic’s crown, very modern, very high-tech cities in a country which tended to be a little backward in large areas. Yeongdo Island, however, had never received the money the rest of Busan had. It remained largely a twentieth-century city occupied by the low-paid and the foreign. The Fukui-kai considered it almost part of their Japanese holdings and it had a reputation for high crime, largely ignored by the local police.

‘There,’ Yuriko said, pointing at an electronics shop selling wearables and other portable gadgets. The windows were heavily grilled and there were riot shutters mounted in front of the grills.

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘Quite sure. They have been using it for two decades.’

‘Okay…’ Fox pushed through the crowds and into the shop, Yuriko directly behind her. As soon as they were inside, Yuriko turned right, pretending to examine a display of wearables while she planted a radio jammer. Fox headed deeper into the shop and was soon intercepted by an eager-looking man who spoke rapid Korean at her. She got subtitles, but she just smiled at him until he switched to English.

‘Hello, miss. Can I help you? You want wearable? I have genuine MarTech products.’

That seemed vaguely unlikely, but… ‘Oh yes, please show me those.’

‘The jammer has activated,’ Kit said.

Fox cooed over a few out-of-date MarTech visor models while the shop owner extoled fictitious virtues and Yuriko strolled up, casually taking a place beside Fox. The shop owner never skipped a beat, including Yuriko immediately in the conversation right until his nose started to twitch.

‘Is that…’ Fox said, sniffing. ‘Is that
smoke
?!’ She turned, looking back toward the front of the shop and, sure enough, a cloud of smoke was rising from the pair of grenades Yuriko had left there. Fox let out a scream, but the shopkeeper’s was louder and more shrill. He started running around like a chicken that had just spotted a fox, and Fox and Yuriko headed straight for the back.

They drew pistols before pushing through the door they found there. There were two men guarding the rear room, and neither of them knew what was happening before two baton rounds hit each of them in the chest, dropping them to the floor.

‘Upstairs,’ Yuriko said.

Fox spotted the wooden staircase at the side of the room and headed for it. She ran up the steps, reaching the top landing in a couple of seconds where another baton round destroyed the lock on the door and she ploughed on through. Two loud bangs sounded, part of the open door exploded, and something thudded into Fox’s stomach. Ignoring the slug buried in her flesh, Fox turned her pistol and fired off three rounds. The owner of the shotgun fell, blasted back against the wall by the three impacts.

Yuriko took up position at the doorway, her pistol pointed down the stairs, while Fox went to the computer the man had been working at. A cable was produced and she plugged in. ‘Kit,’ Fox said, ‘your turn.’ Then she swapped the magazine on her pistol and turned around to keep an eye on Yuriko.

‘Hacking modules initiated,’ Kit announced.

‘Any sign of trouble?’ Fox asked aloud.

‘Not yet,’ Yuriko replied. ‘With their communications down, it will take them several minutes to obtain reinforcements from one of the other offices. If they summon assistance for the “fire,” it will take considerable time to arrive.’

‘Good.’

‘Their security is laughable,’ Kit commented. ‘I have breached the basic access layers.’

‘Though,’ Fox added, ‘it doesn’t sound like we’re going to need much time.’

‘Data access achieved. I am downloading everything I can find.’

‘Careful of viruses,’ Fox said internally.

‘I am
always
careful of viruses.’

‘Sorry. New infomorph here. Bit paranoid about that kind of thing.’

‘Welcome to my natural state. Estimated time to complete is seven seconds. I have broken the administrative controls.’

‘Great, trash the entire system when you’ve got it all.’ Aloud, Fox said, ‘Is there a back door on this place or do we need to go out the front?’

‘There is a fire escape at the back of this floor,’ Yuriko replied.

Fox looked around, spotting the door at the back. She nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘Initiating full system re-initialisation,’ Kit said.

‘And we’re leaving.’ Fox pulled the cable out of her neck and the machine and waited for Yuriko to go past her to the exit. Then she followed while the Fukui-kai’s main database of financial records in the area dissolved behind her.

~~~

‘Do we have anything interesting, Kit?’ Fox asked.

Kit’s reply was delayed a little by the emergence of Yuriko from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and rubbing at her hair. The Japanese girl made a gagging sound and then continued to watch in horror as Fox dug the shotgun slug out of her stomach with a pair of pliers.

Fox looked up. ‘What? If I don’t get it out soon, the skin’ll grow over it and leave a lump.’

‘I am not doubting the need for your… impromptu surgery,’ Yuriko replied. ‘I just wish I had been a few minutes longer in the shower.’

‘Ah, well… I’m not going to be wearing any cropped tops before tomorrow. Still, first field test of my impact resistance is going well enough so far.’

‘You were shot with a shotgun and did not appear to notice?’

‘Oh, I noticed. It didn’t slow me down and there’s no permanent damage. Can we expect any reprisals?’

‘Here? Unlikely. When word gets back to Japan, Taro will be very displeased.’

‘I am working on that, Yuriko,’ Kit said. ‘My home copy has already found some interesting leads which may help and I have an external resource searching for information too.’

‘She came up with that on her own,’ Fox said. ‘I didn’t send her looking.’

‘Thank you, Kit-san,’ Yuriko said, giving Kit’s avatar a short bow.

‘My pleasure. As to the data we recovered from that unpleasant little office, I have isolated a number of transactions which
could
indicate shipments of humans. However, the records are obfuscated. They do not refer to people in them. Determining which, if any, are relevant is difficult.’

‘Please display the inventory which is causing difficulty.’ Kit lifted a hand and a virtual screen appeared beside her to stream a list of export records. ‘Ah,’ Yuriko went on. ‘The first three are all drugs. Natural opiates. The next is smuggled electronics and then–’

‘It’s the kabosu,’ Fox said.

‘Ah, yes,’ Yuriko agreed. ‘You read quickly.’

‘Yes, she does,’ Kit agreed, ‘even if she complains she could be faster. But how do you know, Fox?’

‘Who makes a shipment of sixteen fruit? And then it’s sixteen fruit the size of a lemon that apparently weighs eight hundred and seventy kilos. That is some pretty special kabosu.’

‘And rarely imported,’ Yuriko added. ‘Japan has been growing them since the Edo period.’

Kit collapsed the list down to just the entries for kabosu fruit. The weights varied a little, but there were always between fourteen and twenty listed in the quantity fields, normally sixteen or eighteen, and there was another interesting factor. ‘All these entries list the destination port as Fukuoka until June last year. Then they began shipping into Ichihara at an increasing rate. You were right, Fox. They
are
moving people in through the port at Ichihara.’

‘Chinese and Korean girls anyway,’ Fox agreed.

‘They sent a shipment to Ichihara early this morning. Eighteen kabosu, nine hundred and eighty-six kilos.’

‘Can you link the shipment to a vessel?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘Okay, get on to Palladium and see if we can get satellite imagery for this area sent through when it becomes available. Maybe we can track the ship.’

‘I will get right on that.’

‘Great.’ Fox got up from the corner of the bed she was sitting on and began to strip off her jeans. ‘I am going to take a shower and then… What is there to do in Busan after you’ve raided a yakuza hideout?’

‘Uh…’ Yuriko frowned in contemplation. ‘I honestly have no idea.’

22
^nd
April.

The city was reduced to a sea of lights from the seventy-eighth floor of the Busan International. Fox looked out through the hotel room window, her vision a wash of colour, some of it beyond the normal human spectrum. She was naked, but who was going to see her that high up? The nearest building tall enough was a quarter of a mile away and the room was dark.

From here, Korea looked a lot like Japan, which looked a lot like America. When you got close up to the features, the homogeneity was dispelled by quirks of local architecture, but in the broad view, the world seemed to have turned into one, big, global sameness.

‘I’m sure that has been happening for some time,’ Kit commented.

‘Probably.’

‘You should run your sleep cycle.’

‘Probably. I’ve got some time to stare out the window. Maybe I should take up photography.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Photography. You said I should get a hobby. I go interesting places. I could take pictures. I could obsess about lenses and start claiming that nothing’s been the same since digital imagery took over from film stock.’

‘Your personality does not lend itself to “nerdy,” Fox.’

‘I could be nerdy if I wanted.’ There was a slight creak from behind Fox and she spoke aloud. ‘You are supposed to be sleeping.’

Yuriko walked up to stand beside Fox and, for form’s sake, Kit appeared on the other side. All of them were now looking out at the brilliantly lit city. ‘The bed is a little soft for my tastes,’ Yuriko said. ‘I’ll try again in a few minutes. What are we looking at?’

‘The homogenisation of human society.’

‘That seems a little deep for two in the morning.’

‘Best time for it.’

‘Fox was considering taking up photography,’ Kit said. ‘She needs a hobby.’

‘I don’t
need
a hobby. I just have more time in my day to do stuff.’

‘I wish I did,’ Yuriko said.

‘Get yourself turned into an infomorph and you too can have twenty-hour days.’

‘Where do I sign up?’

‘Perhaps,’ Kit said, ‘you should try doing that doctorate in criminology. You said you wanted to keep up with Terri.’

‘Education is always a good thing,’ Yuriko said. ‘I am sure that you could bring something new and interesting to the subject.’

‘That’s the thing,’ Fox countered. ‘I have no idea what to do it on.’

‘Criminal behaviour in infomorphs. You have encountered a number of different infomorphs with different kinds of behavioural patterns, have you not? Some concentrated thought on the matter might produce useful insights.’

Fox gave a grunt. ‘Well, maybe. I’ll think about it.’ There was silence for a few seconds and then, ‘So a human, a gynoid, and an infomorph were looking out at Busan… There’s gotta be a joke in there somewhere.’

‘I thought it was traditional for them to walk into a bar,’ Kit replied.

‘Yeah, but we decided to skip the bars.’ A flicker of ultraviolet scintillation caught Fox’s attention, followed by another. ‘And it may be a good thing since it’s starting to rain.’ A second or two later, the window was blurring from the rush of water flowing over it.

‘If that is not a metaphor for the homogeneity of human civilisation, I do not know what is,’ Yuriko commented.

‘Hmm… Good, but as a punchline I think it lacks something.’

‘Humour?’

‘That’s probably it.’

Tokyo.

‘The vessel carrying the Fukui-kai fruit basket has been located,’ Kit said, appearing between Fox and Yuriko as they rode an elevator down from the hangar level of the MarTech Tokyo arcology.

‘That would be hilarious if we weren’t discussing eighteen scared young women,’ Fox said. ‘Where is it?’

‘Off the coast of Wakayama Prefecture, heading north-east. It seems to be making slower headway than I would have expected.’

‘It is possible,’ Yuriko said, ‘even likely, that they have changed the timing of the delivery.’

‘Because we hit the Korean office?’ Fox said. ‘Yeah, possible. We’ll refocus Pythia’s drones and maybe take a flight out to get a closer look at that ship.’

‘Is that wise?’

‘Air traffic around here isn’t uncommon. We should be fine.’

‘Oh… I do hope those do not qualify as famous last words.’