The light of the morning sun pierced through Maria’s eyelids and slowly made her regain consciousness. She began to shift on the bed and let out short, plosive sighs, but her eyes remain-ed closed. As they slowly fluttered open, the first thought that occurred to her was that the ceiling wasn’t that of her apart-ment.

A slight sense of panic overtook her initially, but the more conscious she became and the more she looked at her sur-roundings, the more she realized where she was. Remembered how she’d ended up here. Why she was here.

The cabin. Where her father had been killed. Devin had taken her here the night before. She’d thoroughly scanned every inch of its interior in search for clues that might bring her closer to figuring out who her father’s killer was. But her investigation turned out unsuccessful. An hour she had spent perusing the cabin – it was fairly small, about 270 square feet by Maria’s reckoning – without finding anything useful. Or anything at all, for that matter. Not even a speck of dust that looked just sus-picious enough to act as a potential lead.

The more she recalled the feeling of frustration she’d dozed off with, the more frustrated she was already beginning to feel again. And she’d just woken up. She wasn’t the type to admit defeat quite this quickly, but somehow she knew trying to look for clues out in the yard would prove equally unfruitful. So she decided to abandon the idea already.

Continuing the investigation outside also presented the risk of getting shot by a guard. A risk not worth taking, she fi-gured, especially considering the risk she’d already taken last night. She counted herself lucky that the guards hadn’t caught her in the act then. Maybe she’d accidentally picked the perfect moments to avoid whatever they had for eyes. Such incidental luck would be a lot harder to achieve out in the open.

She sat up on the bed, letting her feet dangle off its edge, and sighed heavily. What would she do now? How would she continue hunting down her father’s killer when coming here had yielded no progress? This was the one place she was sure she’d find leads, if only there had been any. And the Net was no long-er an option.

She pondered for at least five minutes, trying to come up with a contingency plan but growing more frustrated when she couldn’t.

Wait… It was suddenly coming to her. Dad had a neural interface installed, right? I wonder if there’d be anything in there. Ugh, but what are the chances the cops will let me see his body even if they still have it?

Despite her uncertainty over whether asking them to let her see Yoshiro’s neural logs would work, she decided it was worth a shot.

Then she heard a thud outside. A quick look outside the window showed her that a police hovercar had appeared, park-ed on the grass that seemed synthetic now that Maria looked at it in the sunlight. She got to her feet and dashed through the only door in the cabin out onto the terrace, simultaneously ex-cited and nervous to see who had arrived.

The officer emerged from the car at the exact same mo-ment Maria emerged from inside the cabin. She was relieved to see Devin approaching.

“Glad it’s you who came to pick me up,” she hollered to him, the sentiment coming out more genuine than sarcastic, much to her own surprise.

“Glad to be the one to pick you up,” he hollered back. Then came the fateful inquiry: “Found anything?”

Maria’s response came out carried by a sigh. “Fucking wish I had.” She paused for a moment before continuing, cross-ing her hands behind her back. “You were right. I was naive to think coming here would bring me closer to figuring out who killed Dad.”

Devin nodded. “That mean you’re done meddling?”

Maria raised an eyebrow. Did Devin confess to having brought her to the cabin just to teach her the lesson? Was that his motivation for “helping” her? The warm tingling in her chest turned colder. But the initial shock over the revelation slowly turned into a fierce, determined smirk. She muttered a response: “Oh, I’m far from done, officer.”

Now it was Devin’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Only his look was less one of shock and more of intrigue. “Do I want to know what you’re planning next?”

Maria had no trouble whatsoever explaining her next steps. “You still have his body, right?”

Devin simply stared into Maria’s eyes for a second, evi-dently deciding on how to respond. The one he finally produced came out as such: “Let’s talk in the car.”

“Can I do something else real quick?”

“Yeah. I’m in no rush.”

Maria smirked gratefully, picked up the recorder on the terrace table and pressed the Record button on it. Then she spoke into it the following words: “Maria Crahan, day one. Of-ficer Nichols is a dick.” Pressed the Stop button and placed the device back in its usual place.

Devin snorted. Then Maria walked over to the car, and he opened the back door for her. At least you’re a gentlemanly dick. Maria stepped in, followed by Devin sitting in the driver’s seat, and they drove out of the walled garden.

Once they were on the other side of the gate, Devin in-quired: “So why do you want to see your father’s body?”

“To see who killed him.”

Devin’s eyebrows shot up in the rearview mirror. Now he looked shocked. “See who killed him?” he repeated.

“Yeah.”

“How do you suppose we can help with that?”

“By digging into his neural link. Reproducing a photo-graphic snapshot of his last few seconds alive. I know you have the tech for it.”

“I mean we do, but that’s not guaranteed to produce any-thing useful. The data in his neural link has had two weeks to decay. It’s probably corrupted beyond repair at this point.”

“Even if it’s corrupted, it’s worth a shot, right?” Maria’s voice was burning with determination.

Devin stared at her through the rearview mirror for a few seconds, then sighed and commented: “You’re not gonna give up, are you?”

“Nope,” Maria replied. “Not until I get something that’ll tell me who killed him.”

Then her stomach growled. She was so determined to hunt down her father’s murderer that she didn’t realize how hungry she was until now. “There a hot dog stand nearby?” she asked Devin.

“Don’t know about a hot dog stand, but we’re not far from a burger joint. If you’re fine with that.”

“Sure. Sounds good.”

With a cheeseburger in one hand and a ginger smoothie in the other, Maria walked back over to the police car, making sure to put a little extra sway to her step that’d catch Devin’s attention. To her delight, his eyes were glued to her as she approached. Good to know I still got it. Although Devin didn’t seem to look at her with much resembling lust – a true police officer, profess-ional to a fault, work before fun. Or maybe he simply wanted to respect her boundaries after the conversation about her dead husband from the night before. In a way, Maria didn’t blame him.

“Is that a ginger smoothie?” Devin hollered a question, taking note of the color of the liquid in the translucent cup when Maria had strolled close enough for him to do so.

“Yep,” Maria said bluntly. “Why? Is it bad here?”

“Never tried it, so can’t comment. Just an interesting choice of beverage with a cheeseburger.”

“It’s called balancing your diet. A girl’s gotta get her vi-tamins somehow.” Maria locked her lips around the straw stick-ing out of the cup and took a sip of the smoothie.

Devin shrugged in response.

Maria swallowed the dose of smoothie – Devin should absolutely try it, she thought – and then said to him: “Mind op-ening the door for me? My hands are a little full here.”

“Not at all.” With that, Devin climbed out of the driver’s seat and opened the backdoor for Maria, even going as far as to close it for her when she got in.

Maria unwrapped the burger and took a ravenous first bite of it, not even slowing down to appreciate every nuance of the flavor. It did taste like a cheeseburger, but that was all the detail she was able and willing to make out in her hunger.

“How is it?” Devin asked while starting the car back up.

“Not bad,” Maria replied between bites. “Don’t know if it’s quite worth 300 credits, though.”

“Three hundred?” Devin hollered and turned his head back, putting particular emphasis on the “three”. “Huh. Price has gone up since the last time I dropped by.”

“Really? Was it like 250 before?”

“270.”

“Well, it’s more worth that. Barely.” While Maria was providing her comment on what she might be willing to pay for a burger of this quality, Devin curved onto the highway.

They drove in relative silence for a few minutes, the only sounds beside the car engine coming from Maria’s food and drink as she gobbled them down. When she was finished, she asked: “Don’t suppose you have a trash can in here?”

“Nah. You can just leave ‘em on the floor. Long as you clean up after yourself.”

“Alright.” Maria popped off the lid of the cup, shoved the empty burger wrapper in it, put the lid back on and placed the cup on the floor between her feet.

“Are you sure perusing your dad’s neural link is gonna help?” Devin asked at that point, as if he’d been waiting for Maria to finish her breakfast before starting this conversation.

“Yes and no,” Maria confessed. “Honestly, I’m just im-provising. The cabin was the first real lead I had and I don’t even know how I stumbled upon it. But of course, that was a dead end.”

“But you still knew to go to the cabin.”

“Only because I remembered him mentioning it.” Maria paused in thought for a moment. “And I guess because cabins as resorts or residential buildings is a dead concept in Neo-Tokyo. No joke, I tried to look for cabins on the Net when I was doing my initial research and not a single one turned up. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

Devin shot an intrigued gaze at Maria through the rear-view mirror. “Think about what?”

“Put it this way: you’re born in this concrete jungle of a megacity. Skyscrapers tall enough to cover any and all views of nature unless you’re on the top floor. But who has the money to get that high? The power? How many others are given the luxury of making it halfway up? What can the average person realistically do to see the world outside the city walls? 98% of the country is covered in this shit. And the few spots with real trees, real flowers, smells of real nature, have been turned into either prison ground or vacation resorts that are priced out the ass. What that tells me is that the bastards running the country want us to live in depression. Suck in the fumes of industry and desperation until we suffocate. And the remedy is locked behind a gate that only opens to the ones at the extreme ends of the scale. Crime is just another way of keeping society running and nature is treated like a threat to your sanity. It’s a little bit back-wards if you ask me.”

Devin stayed quiet, evidently lost in thought, merely nodding subtly. Maria felt a sense of pride over having given him something to chew on.