Good ol’ infirmary room 265. Coming back here felt like some sort of punishment to Jenn at this point. But in a way, she felt it her duty to still keep an eye on Enez. She may have broken her trust, but that didn’t mean Jenn had suddenly become less con-cerned over Enez. And the neural glitch she’d been hit with back in Josh’s office was of concern to Jenn as much as every-one else in the room. She hoped Enez wouldn’t hold the grudge for too long.

She cast her eyes over Enez’s sleeping form, Josh on the other side of the bed, while the nurse danced her fingers across the keyboard of a holocomp, perusing Enez’s neural logs. It didn’t take long for the nurse to produce a raspy hum, one that carried intrigue and frustration in equal amounts, a sign that she had come across something. What that something was, Jenn was also curious to find out.

“What did you find?” Jenn asked the nurse while turning her head.

The nurse pointed at two peculiar error messages being displayed on the screen. Jenn leaned in closer, curiosity grow-ing, almost laying her chin on the nurse’s shoulder. A sense of disbelief came to her at first, but the more she looked at the error messages, the more that disbelief turned into intrigue. In-stead of clear error messages saying exactly what had gone wrong, the entries the nurse had dug up were long strings of zeroes. And the most curious thing of all was the timestamps – the first error was logged at the time the hacker attacked Enez, the other when the neural glitch happened.

And now the logs were effectively unreadable. As if they had been corrupted. Which did happen sometimes – the kinks of neural links were well-known, and the one company remaining in the cybernetics business was still working on ironing them out – but the likelihood of these two exact entries getting cor-rupted out of thousands was so low that there was no chance it was random. Like it usually was.

Josh joined Jenn and the nurse in pondering the corrupt-ed neural logs a few seconds later. “Interesting discovery you made there,” he muttered a comment to the nurse.

“Believe me, I’m at least as intrigued as you are,” she responded.

“What are the chances the hack caused the neural glitch?” Jenn inquired.

“I’d say 99%,” the nurse said. “Granted, most neural glitches happen randomly, but I’m confident this one didn’t. The way I see it, the timestamps on the corrupted log entries are kind of a dead giveaway.”

“What about the corruption?” came a question from Josh. “Doesn’t seem random, does it?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“One other thing,” Jenn said, taking note of something no one else had so far. “Look at the timestamps.”

Josh and the nurse obliged. Their eyes widened when they realized what Jenn had. The errors were logged exactly twelve hours apart, down to the millisecond. And to Jenn, that if anything was indisputable evidence that the hack had caused the neural glitch. And the corruption.

“I think you’re on the right track,” Josh said, addressing both the nurse and Jenn. “No chance the neural glitch wasn’t caused by the hack.”

Jenn turned her gaze to Josh. “Think it’s safe to let these stick around?”

“Something tells me it isn’t. Best to delete ‘em just in case.”

“To prevent another neural glitch from happening?”

“Yeah.” Then Josh asked the nurse: “Can you do that?”

“Long as I can dig out the ID’s, yeah. Should be do-able.”

“Great. Keep us posted. Last thing I want is for Miss Harady to die of an especially violent glitch.”

The nurse nodded. “Likewise. I’ll get to it right away.”

Jenn and Josh produced grateful nods in unison and left the room, headed back to the police department floor.

“I’m thinking another visit to DanariTek is in order,” Josh sur-mised as he and Jenn were walking down the hallway on the in-firmary floor towards the main elevator.

“To get an expert’s opinion on what happened to Miss Harady?” Jenn guessed.

“Exactly. If anyone’s bound to have knowledge about the chances of something like this happening, it’s the people working the production line.”

Jenn nodded in agreement. “Want me to tag along?”

“Sure. You found the crucial detail. Can’t think of any-one else I’d rather go with. I gotta do something real quick be-fore we leave, though.”

The two stepped into the elevator, rode it up to the police department floor and went their separate ways for the time being. Jenn told Josh she needed to pee. Josh went looking for Devin in the meantime.

“Hey, Koji,” he hollered to his fellow veteran officer, who happened to be walking down the hallway in the opposite direction at the same time. “Seen Devin?”

“Cafeteria,” Koji spoke a hurried response, throwing an arm up and pointing a finger behind him. Not that Josh needed directions to the cafeteria. He produced a thankful nod, unsure if Koji caught the motion in his peripheral vision, and continued on his way.

To his surprise and delight, Devin was the first thing he saw when he turned the corner to the cafeteria entrance. He was evidently just preparing to leave, having finished his lunch and standing up from his seat. Josh called his name and waved him over, and Devin wasted no time obliging.

“What’s up?” Devin inquired once he was stood right in front of Josh. The look he gave him conveyed something that Josh didn’t quite take as forgiveness, even if they both knew Josh had simply followed protocol with the way he had decided to punish Devin.

“You’re going to see some government people,” Josh informed him. “Got a corrupted record in the population data-base. Your job is to go to the government’s server hall and talk to the guys running maintenance. Interrogate them about how it might have happened.”

“Can’t send anyone else?”

“No. Already got enough work for the four of us. Need to outsource.”

Devin nodded. “Who’s my partner for the job?”

“Haven’t assigned one. Take whoever you want with you.” Josh paused, remembering the one important thing he’d neglected to say so far. “And report your findings to me. Do this gig well and you’re back on the team.”

A subtle, grateful smile stretched across Devin’s face. “Roger,” he muttered with a playful salute. “When do you want me to go?”

“Soon as you can. You got any loose ends, take your time tying them up first.”

“Well, I don’t have much in the way of loose ends to tie up, so…” Devin turned his gaze back towards the cafeteria, as if scanning it for any colleagues that were about to leave and didn’t look busy. It didn’t take long for one to walk by. “Hey, Kaz,” Devin said to Kazuto Yamada in Jangl as he was about to exit the cafeteria, stopping him in his tracks. “You busy?”

“No,” Kazuto replied. “Why?”

“Got a gig at the government server hall. You down to join me?”

“Sure. What sort of gig?”

“Going to interrogate the server maintainers. Apparently there’s a corrupted record in the population database.”

“A corrupted record?! How’s that possible?”

“That’s what we’re supposed to find out. Good to go right away?”

“Yeah.”

“Awesome. Let’s move.” And Devin and Kazuto set foot towards the garage.

In that same moment, Jenn rejoined Josh. “So, when are we leaving?” she asked.

“Give me one more minute,” Josh replied. “Need a coffee for the road.”

“I’m actually gonna grab one too, I think.” With that, the two of them walked up to the coffee dispenser sitting in a nearby corner and took turns dispensing doses of the black poi-son into cardboard cups and covering their tops with plastic lids. The DanariTek factory was nearly an hour’s drive away, so Josh felt the coffee necessary to keep him sharp for the trip. Then they too headed for the garage.