The rain had followed Elly back to headquarters. It streaked the windows of the spinner in silver threads and gathered in the gutters outside LAPD in oily, trembling pools. By the time she stepped beneath the overhang, the warmth of the restaurant had already begun to feel distant: spice on her tongue, salt at the corner of her mouth, the pleasant looseness of tequila still lingering behind her eyes.

For a little while, there had only been food. The three of them had sat around a table at two in the morning and eaten something that probably shouldn't have worked but somehow did, while Los Angeles carried on dying noisily outside.

It'd been almost ordinary... Elly wasn't sure what to do with ordinary...


The doors opened for her. Cool, recycled air washed over her face. She pulled the scarf down from her mouth and walked inside. Crowe and Wylde should be somewhere east of the city by now. She pictured the spinner slipping through rain and smog as they headed for the GENTEK facility, Crowe stubbornly pretending his ribs weren't cracked badly enough to matter and Wylde— Elly stopped the thought there. They could take care of themselves... Probably.

She pressed the elevator control. The doors opened. Crime Lab.

There were reasons she'd chosen this part of the investigation. Evidence didn't become defensive when you asked the wrong question, didn't decide it disliked you halfway through an interview, and didn't lie because it was afraid or loyal or ashamed.

Sure, it could be misunderstood, contaminated, destroyed... sometimes deliberately. But whatever remained was what remained.

Elly trusted that. More than she trusted people.

The elevator descended. Her reflection hovered faintly in the brushed metal opposite her. For an instant, she saw herself as someone else might: coat damp around the shoulders, hair touched by rain, face still carrying the faint signs of exhaustion that even a hospital and several hours away from the case hadn't entirely erased.

Alive. She reminded herself, letting her eyes and mind linger there a moment.
Then the doors parted and she walked out.


The Crime Lab at this hour had the same sleeplessness of the rest of Los Angeles: Machines hummed beneath fluorescent lights, half-empty cups sat beside terminals, and someone had abandoned a meal that looked as though it had been printed sometime during the Wallace administration.

Elly moved through it all toward Coco's section. She was already assembling the case again in her mind: Bolt-On, Bellefontaine, Turfan. The stolen truck. The damaged canimoids. GENTEK... And somewhere behind all of that, the older robberies Varela had been chasing. Separate things, perhaps... except separate things had an irritating habit of becoming one thing after you looked at them long enough.

That's what bothered her – not that they lacked leads, they had too many. A trail in every direction could mean they were close... or it could mean someone had scattered breadcrumbs deliberately.

Elly reached Coco's workspace and stopped just short of intruding into it. She rested one hand against the edge of the partition. "Coco." Her voice was quiet but carried easily through the lab. She waited until she had his attention. "What did you find?"

Coco looks up from his screen, rubbing his eyes and blinking like a kid woken from a nap.  "Elly, yes" he says, soft-voiced.  Shifting mental gears from whatever else he's been working on.  "They told me you were injured.  I'm glad you're... okay." 

He pulls a sheaf of papers out of a drawer.  Takes off a rusting bulldog clip and gulps down some coffee.  Regrets his mistake there but presses on after a revolted shudder.  "The little stuff first: there were two types of explosives used at your crime scene.  The warehouse door was blown open with yīng máo, or something very like it."  Seeing Elly's expression, he explains: "It's a plastic explosive made by the Chinese for the war.  Basic enough that someone who knows what they're doing can manufacture it at home, which is what's happened here judging by the impurities.  The charges in the steam tunnel were different.  Sonic clearance charges, probably specially chosen not to do any structural damage." 

He sighs and rubs the back of his head.  "There wasn't much to say about the dogs, poor things.  All just old consumer models, pets and companions.  I don't know if they could've actually hurt you."  A thump on a nearby workbench announces the arrival of Biscuits, the calico felinoid that someone let out of an evidence locker years ago and who's never been caught since.  Coco strokes her head without looking around, his tension and fatigue visibly ebbing. 

"Now, the bigger things.  Almost all the blood at the scene was definitely human - A-negative and B-positive.  But we did find some O-negative splatter and the DNA matches a surviving pre-Blackout incept record." 

Words to make the ears of any Blade Runner on the force prick up, 'pre-Blackout'.  Means Nexus-8, the Sixes all having died off long ago.  Tough, but not built like a Nexus-9.  More to the point, still outlaws on Earth.  Persona non grata.  Retire on confirmation with a nice bonus in your paycheck.  Coco turns on an old monitor and Elly gets to look at the guy who just became her prey.  Voto Jergic.  Nexus-8 combat model, incept date 23 August 2021. 

Woe unto Voto Jergic, who slipped up and came to RDU's attention.

Coco's still talking.  "... there were components for twenty-five individuals, but the perps left the musculo-skeletal systems, skin and brains.  Everything they took was fully internal.  Or eyes.  They took all the eyes, too.  Now, here's the really big thing.  None of it was Tyrell stock.  Records from back then are incomplete, obviously, but the telomere signatures don't match what's recorded on the packaging, which is all the same.  There's no sign of the degradation you'd see over at least fifteen years of even proper storage, either.  These were brand new." 

Brand new.  You heard of people out on DNA row bootlegging replicant models for sale offworld and marketing them as old Tyrell stock.  The name still carries a reputation for product reliability despite everything that happened to the actual company.  First time anyone's seen proof of it for a good while, though.

For a moment, Elly said nothing. The monitor threw Voto Jergic's face into the dim space between them, the grainy image and flat institutional lighting revealing a man who, until a few minutes ago, had apparently succeeded in staying invisible.

Nexus-8. The designation settled into place with terrible efficiency. Elly knew what happened next... Everybody in RDU did. A surviving Eight wasn't a suspect in the ordinary sense. There would be no warrant application, no argument over probable cause, no careful distinction between what the blood proved and what it merely suggested. His name had surfaced, his DNA had matched, and, somewhere, in the machinery of the department, Voto Jergic had already begun the transformation from person into assignment. Find. Confirm. Retire.

Elly looked at his face another second before looking away. "Where was the blood?"

Coco blinked. "What?"

"Jergic's. Where did you find it?" She stepped closer to the workbench, resting her fingertips lightly against its edge. Biscuits watched her from beside Coco's elbow with suspicion, as if it knew when people were behaving badly.

"Not just which room," Elly continued. "Where in relation to the entrance, the inventory, the tunnel. How much of it was there? Spray, drops, transfer?"

Coco shuffled through the papers. Elly's eyes returned to the screen despite herself. Blood... That was all it had taken. A few millilitres left behind on concrete and now the LAPD knew Voto Jergic was alive.

Whatever remained was what remained. She had believed that when she came downstairs... She still did. The problem was that evidence didn't tell you what to feel about it.

"Because we know he bled there," she said quietly. "We just don't know why." Her eyes flicked back toward Coco. "At least, not yet."

That mattered... maybe only for the next few minutes, maybe only until Coco showed her a blood trail leading from a breached door with Jergic's fingerprints all over the detonator. But it still mattered.

Elly drew the papers toward herself enough to see them without taking them from Coco. "And the other blood? A-negative and B-positive. Anything in the system?" Bolt-On. Bellefontaine. Turfan. Three names orbiting a robbery that had just become something else entirely.

It was Coco's last words that kept pulling Elly's attention away from Jergic's photograph. Brand new. She glanced toward the evidence laid out beyond the partition. "And you're sure those components were brand new?" It wasn't disbelief. Coco would know that. "Not recently thawed. Not unusually well preserved." Her brow tightened slightly. "New."

The word felt wrong in her mouth. Replicant organs did not simply become new. Someone made them. She looked back at Coco. "Can you tell how new?" The hum of the lab seemed louder while she waited.

"And can you tell whether they all came from the same place?"

Twenty-five bodies. No... Twenty-five sets of components. Elly straightened as she asked her next question, "You said components for twenty-five individuals. Does that mean twenty-five complete replicants except for what was stolen? Or twenty-five lots of compatible parts?"

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she reconstructed the inventory. "Skin. Brains. Musculoskeletal systems left behind. Internal organs taken. Eyes taken." Every eye. She turned back to Coco. "Why the eyes?" It came out more sharply than the rest. Not because eyes were strange things to steal in Los Angeles... almost nothing was strange anymore... but because taking all of them sounded like intent. "Are they more valuable? Easier to trace? Is there identifying information in them that isn't present in the other tissue?"

She paused. "Or something else?" Elly watched Coco's face carefully.

Twenty-five sets of biological components, supposedly Tyrell, actually fresh... a warehouse full of counterfeit history. Someone had gone to considerable effort to make new things look old. She hated that kind of lie, not because it was dishonest (well, to be honest, she did hate that too), but because it meant someone expected people to ask questions... and had prepared answers in advance.

Her gaze drifted to Jergic's image again. August 23, 2021. Combat model. Elly studied the photograph. There was something disturbingly ordinary about him. No warning stamped across his forehead, no visible boundary between man and replicant, between someone the LAPD would question and someone the LAPD would kill. Just a face. And a drop of blood had been enough to tell them which kind of face it was.

Elly became conscious of her own pulse, the small pressure beneath the skin of her wrist, blood moving through vessels grown for her and belonging entirely to her. She tucked the thought away before it could become anything larger.

"One more thing." Her attention returned fully to Coco. "The explosive." She tapped the report with one finger. "The yīng máo. Homemade, you said. Impurities." A thought was already taking shape. "Can you fingerprint the recipe?"

Coco's expression shifted slightly, enough to tell her the question wasn't entirely stupid.
"Not literally," she clarified. "But if someone keeps making the same compound with the same process, same contaminants, same ratios..." She tilted her head. "Would it leave enough of a signature to compare against another scene?"

Elly had Varela's robberies in mind. She could feel the separate leads begin inching toward one another again. "Detective Varela investigated similar thefts. If evidence was retained, I want to know whether this explosive—or those sonic charges—appear anywhere in his cases. Can you look into that for me?"

She exhaled slowly through her nose. GENTEK. Turfan. Animoid Row. Jergic. Bootleg replicant tissue. Five roads leading away from the same crime scene. Maybe... Or... five roads someone wanted them to follow.

Elly finally reached for the stack of papers and lifted it from Coco's desk. "Send me everything you've got on Jergic. Incept records, known identifiers, old photographs, whatever survived the Blackout. And flag the DNA match to Crowe and Wylde."

A slight pause. "With the words blood at scene rather than suspect, please." She looked again at the man on the monitor. Woe unto Voto Jergic... Maybe. But evidence first. Always evidence.

Elly turned back toward Coco before leaving. "And Coco?" She waited until he looked at her. "If those organs were grown recently..." Her eyes moved briefly toward the evidence lockers and then back. "...I need to know what kind of facility could make them." Because someone had... and somewhere in Los Angeles, perhaps not very far away, twenty-five bodies had begun their existence in pieces.

Well before she finishes her last questions, Coco is holding his hands up.  Fending off her inquiry - fending off her - lest she drag him too deep into something he clearly likes to keep at arm's length.  "Uh," he starts to answer, checking whether she's actually finished.  "Well, last things first: you'd need some specialised equipment to make these.  Like... forced growth vats, protein synthesisers and a proper nutrient support system.  But if you're willing to start small, you could set all that up in a single room."  He looks at her shyly.  "I did that, for my doctorate." 

In the manner of a true obsessive, he presses on, getting more excited as he goes.  "The harder part would be finding someone who knows enough about the whole system to produce viable organs.  Most designers and producers specialise in one, or one system at most.  Probably whoever produced these had a team working on them, which means a bigger space and more equipment for everyone to work without getting in each other's way.  So, my guess would be something like an empty shop, or maybe a small warehouse?  They were definitely all produced within the last six months.  The muscles still have traces of the biopolymer supports that they were grown on.  As for whether it was all done in the same place..." he gives an eloquent shrug. 

He blinks, trying to recapture his forensic detachment.  "As for the explosives, we'd certainly be able to match explosives made in the same batch, or in the same place if there was a distinctive contaminant.  The old case files should already have that information for you to compare, assuming that the other detective had samples sent to us."  Or bothered to take them properly, Elly thinks, but doesn't say. 

Coco finishes stroking Biscuits, who looks authentically aghast at this impoliteness and begins to bat at the edge of his sleeve.  Looking at Elly with tired eyes, he asks "What else was there?"

"Blood, and eyes."

"Oh yes.  I think we got DNA matches on the human blood.  They'll be noted in your KIA.  The Nexus-8 blood was from one small set of droplets found near the door to the steam tunnel.  Maybe a minor head injury that mister Jergic didn't notice at the time?"

"Right, okay," Elly says, already checking her KIA for blood matches.  Sure enough, Bolt-On and Bellefontaine's mugshots are there.  "And the eyes?  Why would people take them specifically?"

"Well," Coco begins rather hesitantly, "It's a little outside my expertise, so you understand that I'm speculating here."  And I'm not really supposed to do that, runs the unspoken coda.  "It could be that they just need replacements for damaged organs.  But the obvious thing is that all Nexus-8 and -9 replicants have their serial number printed on their left eyeball.  Based on what I've seen in the other materials here, it wouldn't surprise me if the eyes taken from the warehouse didn't have them." 

CRIME LAB

QuoteHe looks at her shyly.  "I did that, for my doctorate."

Elly stared at him for a second. "You grew replicant organs for your doctorate?" Coco's shy look answered the question before he said a word. "I'm beginning to understand why they keep you downstairs."

Elly looked back down at the reports. Six months. That was recent.

Somewhere in Los Angeles, people with very specialised knowledge had been growing replicant organs recently enough that traces of the scaffolding used to make them still remained. And if Coco was right, probably not one obsessive genius working alone, but several specialists sharing equipment and space. An empty shop or a small warehouse. Los Angeles only possessed approximately a million places answering either description.

Still... It was something.

"And if the eyes didn't have serial numbers..." Elly looked up again. "Is there anything in the tissue they left behind that does the same job?" Coco gave her a questioning look. "Something that identifies what they are? Nexus-8. Nexus-9. Manufacturer. Batch. Anything somebody can't just decide not to print on an eyeball."

Because that was the thing about serial numbers – someone had decided they needed to be visible, put on an eye where another person could find them. But if someone had learned to make the rest without leaving a name behind... Elly let the thought go for the moment.

"And the equipment." She tapped one finger lightly against the edge of the papers. "Forced-growth vats. Protein synthesisers. Nutrient systems. Is there anything those people would have to keep buying?" She counted possibilities off on her fingers. "Growth media. Biopolymers. Nutrients. Something specialised enough that we could actually trace who is ordering it."

Then, before Coco could visibly disappear into another dissertation, she lifted a hand.
"Not now... Just send me a list if anything obvious comes to mind."

She gathered the reports together and tucked them beneath one arm. "And if Varela sent anything down here from those earlier robberies, I'll compare it against what you've got on the explosives."

Elly hesitated. Coco looked exhausted – not the kind of exhaustion of people who wanted you to notice how hard they'd been working – but the real kind, punctuated by red eyes and stale coffee. "Thank you, Coco." She meant it enough that the words came without decoration. "For all of this."

Her eyes flicked toward the monitor. Voto Jergic was still there, an ordinary face carrying an extraordinary sentence. Elly reached over and switched the screen off. "Get some sleep sometime."

She left him with Biscuits.


RDU

The RDU floor was quieter than the Crime Lab. Not empty... it never really was. But at this hour, voices carried farther, most of the KIA terminals were dark, and the desks belonging to people currently somewhere out in Los Angeles sat waiting for their owners to come back.

Crowe's and Wylde's chairs was empty. The fourth desk in their little work-pod empty too. (That one usually was... few voluntarily worked with IA or replicants.)

Elly shrugged out of her damp coat and hung it over the back of her chair before sitting down at her own workstation, setting a fresh coffee beside the terminal. Varela's reports opened across her KIA one after another, every robbery he'd marked as potentially related – dates, locations, property taken, means of entry, witnesses, forensics...

She arranged them chronologically. She had considered opening Carela's summary first, but discarded the thought nearly as quickly. Whatever he'd thought connected these crimes, she didn't want his conclusion teaching her what evidence she was supposed to notice... Not yet.

She opened the oldest report. If there was a pattern here, she wanted to see it forming.
Elly took a drink of coffee, leaned closer to the screen, and began to read.