Solo Assignment

Part III

Hammond's Hotel was located several blocks from downtown Venice, a bland brick building with cheap blue trim that had bleached in the sun. It was long and thin, a two-story structure whose rooms opened to the outside where walkways circled the perimeter. It was newer but that didn't mean it was good.

The late afternoon shadows cast most of the building in dark blue, and curtains in the opened windows blew in the breeze, giving it the impression that it was abandoned. Short grass sprouted from cracks in the asphalt, and tiny grasshoppers jumped from tuft to tuft as Melissa walked through the parking lot. There were very few cars in the lot and Melissa suddenly felt very alone.

She approached Room 1 and knocked on the door. Her plan was to gain entry and subdue the suspect. She would have preferred trying to find out more information about them first, but she was running out of time and wanted to avoid interacting with as many people as possible, including hotel attendants who might get too nosey with a pretty lady asking questions about one of their guests.

Melissa knocked again and checked the window to make sure no one was watching her, but the blinds in the room were drawn completely closed. This was the only door in and out of the room and there was no peephole in the door. She was relying on her disguise to fool her suspect as much as it had the locals if anyone inside took a look through the room's window.

She looked around, checking to see if anyone was around to see what she was about to do next. It was possible whoever she was after wasn't home, but that didn't mean they didn't leave something behind that might help her figure out who they were.

In her handbag was a tool designed to open standard doors and she fished it out. It looked like a small flat gunmetal key, without any teeth, and she put it into the lock on the room's door. Immediately it came to life, gently vibrating until it chirped confirmation that it was successful. Melissa turned the key and the door swung open, revealing a dark hotel room.

She pulled the lock pick out, still in the custom generated shape of the door's lock, and returned it to her handbag. Then she stepped over the threshold and into the dark.

Light from outside filled the room dimly once her eyes adjusted, revealing a modest space with two beds (both messy), a chair (flipped over), a dresser (its shelves opened or removed altogether; one lying on the edge of a bed), a dressing table and mirror near a door at the back of the room (surely leading to a bathroom that was just as messy), and a human leg sticking out from behind the furthest bed (not moving).

Stepping inside and closing the door behind her, Melissa turned on the light on the shared nightstand and reached for her mobile under her skirt.

Hal's screen lit up her face in the dim room and she spoke quickly into it, "Hal, display nearby distresses."

The mobile vibrated, confirming the request, and its screen immediately brought up a map with Melissa's location and, only feet away, a red blip that was flashing. Melissa raised a hand to her forehead in disbelief.

"Oh, no, no, no, no," she said quietly. This was her suspect, dead for 33 minutes. The screen displayed the name of the victim: Arthur Ellison. Age 26. Born in Santa Barbara. His internal nanites were broadcasting a distress that had come too late to save him without anyone looking, and with Melissa's mobile in silent mode, she hadn't been notified of the nearby distress.

She suddenly realized the danger she was potentially in. Ellison might have been murdered and it was possible the murderer was still here. She dropped to a knee and slid the mobile into her purse, withdrawing her pistol from the bag in the one fluid motion.

Rounding the edge of the bed, she was able to get a better look at Ellison's corpse. He was completely naked from the waist up and his face was purple and bruised, but there was no blood beyond a trickle that fell from his nose after he had landed where he lay. His arms were contorted in uncomfortable angles, also showing bruises. Indications of a struggle.

Melissa took cover near the door to the bathroom, trying to get a better look inside. It was dark.

From her purse she withdrew a small flashlight. Calming her breathing, she counted to three slowly and then whipped around into the bathroom, turning on the flashlight and bracing her arms against each other, both the light and gun pointed in the same direction. She swept over the room quickly once, then slowly a second and third time. It was a spartan design and appeared to be empty. She reached behind her and turned on the light and the tiny bathroom came to life in the light. A single toilet occupied one half of the room while a shower occupied the other. There was no wall between them and the floor was at an angle toward a single drain in the center. On the tiled wall across from her was a message written in dark pen.

To whoever finds me: My name is Arthur Ellison. I came here to leave my life behind with my friend, Ro Lee. Ro attacked me and injected something into my shoulder – I think it was hacked bots – and then he took my mobile and our money and left me here to die. I can already feel them inside of me, shutting things down. I don't have much time. I know you will come eventually because I forgot to turn off my mobile before we jumped. Ro knows it, too. Please find him.

The last few words were written with haste, the letters dragging down the wall. A pen lay on the ground between the tile and the wall's molding. It's curious what could make one friend turn on another. Perhaps Lee had this planned before they left, possibly using Ellison to acquire a jumping device and then intending to get rid of him. Melissa could only speculate. And hacked nanites were no joke; difficult to come by and an extremely unpleasant way to go, they invaded your internal system and destroyed your regular nanites there to protect you and keep you healthy. Then they destroyed your vitals.

There wasn't anything she could do about the message on the wall, but it wouldn't make a lot of sense to the local authorities anyway. Likely it would seem the insane ramblings of a man about to die from what they would attribute to as poison. Melissa left the message alone and stepped back into the main room, stepping over a book on digital computer engineers of the 1950s.

She opened Hal again, saying, "Hal, search for other mobile devices within five kilometers of my location."

Hal vibrated and displayed a new map, this time with Melissa at the center and another green dot just a little over two kilometers away, on the outskirts of town. She touched it and the message displayed that it was last active four minutes ago but there were no other signals.

"I can't believe that worked," Melissa muttered to herself.

Her mobile vibrated once in affirmation, also surprised. Her suspect must have turned his mobile on momentarily to check something, or more sinisterly, turned it on to bait her to come after him.

"Hal, location information."

Hal's screen dissolved and reappeared with an entry on the location that the signal was detected at: A dairy farm still under construction that would eventually go on to win several state ecology awards a few decades from now before becoming a leading hydroponics farm.

There's no time like the present, Melissa thought as she closed the mobile and put her gun away.