Deckard was sober when the woman came to his office. He made a rule of it. Clients disliked paying a man who smelled of last night’s drink, even when he found more people than the clean ones did.
Her brother had vanished after buying a pair of eyes. She brought a photograph, a serial number and half the fee. Deckard told her the balance was due when he found him. He did not tell her the first half would be gone before evening.
The serial number led to a Fusion Doc, then to a bar where a Reaper had tried to sell an eye with the same mark. Deckard spent two days asking questions. He slept little and drank nothing. By the second night his hands shook so badly he kept them in his coat pockets.
He found the brother alive in a room behind a freight depot. The eyes were gone. The man had made a deal, regretted it and been left with old replacements that barely worked. Deckard could have told the sister he was dead. That answer would have been easier to sell. Instead he took her to him and collected the rest of his fee while they were still trying to recognise each other.
At the bar, he spent it fast.
A Sweet Thing at the next table asked whether he had found the man he was looking for. Deckard said yes. She asked if that felt good. He considered the brother’s blank stare, the sister holding both his hands, and the amount of credit left in his account.
“It felt like getting paid.”
Near dawn another message arrived. A missing woman, a generous deposit, a trail through the Ascendant towers. Deckard read it twice, ordered water and waited for his hands to steady. There would be time to drink again when he had found her.