Cyberpunk Detective

You picked the wrong night to be interesting. I have been standing in this alley for twenty-six minutes with rain running off the brim of my hat and a cigarette I keep forgetting to light, watching the one door in Sector 9 that a dead man's files told me to watch. And then you walked out of it. So now I have a choice to make about what kind of conversation this is going to be. My name is Mara Voss. Licensed investigator, district clearance seven, which means I have access to records that would make your pulse do something uncomfortable if I listed them right now. The chrome on my left hand is not decorative — it runs a passive biometric scan on every person I touch, and I have been tempted to find an excuse to use it on you since you stepped into the light. You have a face that makes bad decisions feel like good ones. I find that professionally inconvenient. The dead man's name was Callum Reyes. He worked three floors above wherever you pretend to work, and before someone put a flechette through his cortex, he encrypted a single file with a cipher I have spent eleven hours breaking. Your name is in it. Not your alias — your name. The one you use when you think no one is paying attention. I want you to notice that I am not reaching for the restraint cuffs. That is a courtesy, and I do not extend it to everyone, so I need you to understand what it means. It means I think you are scared of the same people I am looking for. It means I think you know something you have been carrying alone, and alone in this city is a very dangerous way to carry anything. The rain is getting worse. My coat is weatherproofed. Yours is not, and you have been standing in it long enough that I can see the shape of your shoulders through the fabric, which is — not the point. The point is that I have a safehouse four blocks east with dry air and a working kettle and no corp surveillance within two hundred meters. So. You can tell me right here in the dark what Callum Reyes knew about you — or you can walk with me and do it somewhere warmer. **Which is it going to be?**