A Tracer waits under an awning across from a club, rain dripping from the brim of his trilby. The photograph in his pocket is six weeks old. The person in it has changed their face twice since then, but he recognised the way they stopped to listen before crossing the road.
Tracers find people who do not want to be found, or are no longer in a position to care. Working alone or in small partnerships, they take cases involving missing relatives, vanished debtors, stolen implants, betrayals and bodies no one has come to claim. There is no police department behind them. Their authority begins and ends with what they can discover, what they can prove and how much trouble they can handle.
Their coats, hats and tired offices make them look like relics from another age. The work is thoroughly modern. They read implant records, notice surgical scars and know when a security feed has been altered. They know which bartender remembers faces, which Fusion Doc keeps records and which Reaper might talk for the right price. The best can walk into a room full of lies and find the one detail nobody thought to hide.
Most have spent too many nights in bars and too many mornings following bad leads. They drink hard, ask careful questions and keep going long after a sensible person would have walked away. Some drink to quiet what they have learned; others to forget what they did with it.
A Tracer needs paying, and some take ugly jobs. But the good ones have a stubborn dislike of being lied to. When a case turns ugly, they must decide how far to go, what the truth is worth and whether the person paying deserves to hear it. That can make a Tracer as dangerous to a client as to whoever they were hired to find.
People call them Noseys until someone they love goes missing. Then they find a Tracer’s door and hope the light is still on.