Page 78 of Neon Flux

The terminal, of course.

It called to me with alpha-level clearance to POM’s internal network. I kept my eyes on the screen.

“There you go, full access. Maybe you can use that cunt to knock me out and steal my credentials too?”

I ignored him and walked up to the desk. Multiple screens floated in front of me, each displaying different sets of data.

“What exactly am I looking at here?” I asked.

“You’ve heard the news of our dearly departed CTO, I’m sure.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke.

I crossed my arms. “Yeah, should I shed a tear for the loss of one of our beloved trillionaires?”

He chuckled at that. “I wouldn’t waste the water, personally. But it might interest you to know that he was brutally murdered.”

He was right—thatwasinteresting. I shouldn’t have been surprised that POM managed to keep that out of the press. I had to wonder why.

“How was he murdered?”

Cy’s face split into another wicked grin. “Want the details, huh? I do love my women bloodthirsty.” He pulled up a picture on his terminal screen. “Poor yatsu was blown to bits.”

I leaned across the desk and looked at the images. The whole apartment was covered in blood, which I assumed belonged to Renard, but nothing else seemed damaged. I swiped across the screen and zoomed in on the images. That couldn’t be right.

“This doing it for you, doll? Gory enough? Should’ve known you’d be into some freaky shit.” He got his body right up next to mine—muchtoo close. He placed his arm over me, his hand resting beside mine on the desk, and I felt him lean in toward my neck. I hip-checked him.

Before he could protest, I asked, “Why did you bring me in on this? I’m not a detective—I’m a whore, remember?”

At that, I saw anger cross his face. “And I’m a gangbanger, but here we fucking are. You’re not asking the right questions.”

I didn’t dare look away from him, back at the screen—every one of my survival instincts flaring. “How the hell did he explode? There were no residuals.”

“Ah, now that’s the right question.” He pushed passed me—rougher than necessary—and swiped the screen. “Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Absolutely nothing in the apartment. And yet this guy was as splattered as a strip club VIP floor. Now how do you think that happened?”

He swiped again, and a new set of data appeared.

I leaned in closer. “That’s EM field data, from the city’s monitoring system.” I swiped through the layers, watching the data spike and then die out completely—just as the timestamp read 2:34:58. “This is the data from the Green explosion.”

“Ding ding ding. But it also happens to be exactly when our beloved CTO departed this world.” As he said it, his eyes hardened.

“You don’t thinkIhad something to do with this murder?”

“Do you?” He was crowding my space again, pinning me against the desk. I shoved at his bare chest.

“I told you before, I wasn’t in on the explosion, I don’t know—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He backed off. “But you’re going to help me figure out what the connection is.”

“You think there’s a connection?”

“Oh, Iknowthere is. But I need someone with data reconstruction expertise to figure out what it is.”

“Not much to go off here,” I muttered, turning back to the screens.

“I thought you said you were good.”

“I am.”

“Then prove it.” He walked away from me then, rooting around in a drawer and finally putting on some pants.