A sunburst of pain radiated across Myrtle’s right temple. There was a sound like an announcement maybe barking overhead but her ears were too clogged to make out the words she cracked one eyelid open and the dark world spun. Then she heard the voice again.

“Wake up whore. You have 90 seconds to run and hide. I find you, you die,” the voice from up above said.

Drawing a deep steadying breath, Myrtle closed her eyes. The voice had been digitally altered like something from a bad horror movie. The unsub was attempting to racthet up her fear but he was also hiding himself. The profiler said the suspect was insecure. Good, she thought, let him suffer.

Starting from the top of her head and moving to the cold soles of her feet, she checked her body for injuries. There was a hematoma on her right temple but no broken skin. Her nose had bled heavily and the trail of snot and blood on her right cheek was still tacky. Her sluggish brain did some quick calculations. The weapon was as they had predicted from the previous three cases was a bolt gun at low speed, hard enough to render a victim unconscious but not fatal. She had only been on her right side for twenty minutes. but there was some blood in her hair so she had been carried as well. So carried, placed in a hover, dumped here. But where?

The last thing she remembered was walking up Rooster. Most sex work was regulated and the workers, mostly Androids owned by their brothels, procured in licensed heavily taxed sex shops in the Eros District. But there were always freaks who wanted a cheap good time or something outside the law. Barn work, the illegal human prostitution, flourished on the edges of Eros and most recently so did a serial killer. It started when one of the night duty cops changed her monitor wake screen to a missing person flyer image as a joke. The victim, Tabitha Dominga, was my dead ringer. She didn’t laugh and it really didn’t sit well with my partner Benj.

During his charging hours he started investigating missing person cases and complaints of physical attacks in the red light district. The attacks, shots from a bolt gun and thrown rocks, were on dark-skinned brunettes. After hacking into Universal Health, Benj found an uptick in visits to urgent care facilities near St. Jude’s Mission in Eros. He must have done something because a few days later Det. Charles Chalmers of Vice showed up in Robbery/Homicide asking to borrow Myrtle for hooker bait. Myrtle insisted on adding Benj to the team.

“I said get up whore. You have 90 seconds to run or else!”

The voice was closer now and unaltered. Creep was hiding nearby. Myrtle did a languid stretch. Bright and green, blades of grass scratched her arms. She was laying on hard packed soil and grass, real grass. Think stupid brain, she thought. There was no real grass in all of West Martian City. She had to be kilometers from Eros. Slowly Myrtle sat up. Her ribs screamed in pain. Bastard must have kicked her. From the corner of her eye she spyed a suspicious shadow among the synth-trees. Myrtle wiggled her toes into the dirt. Damn fucker lost my stilettos.

A shadow disentangled from the plastic forest. Clad in hunter garb with chameleon face paint, the unsub walked towards her holding an old school boxcutter. He was approximately 170 centimeters tall and soft in the middle with large outraged blue eyes. He reminded Myrtle of a kid playing soldier or cowboy, a twisted kid at dressup. Sucking her teeth in disgust, Myrtle her back on him to scan the forest. The killer waved his blade at her. She could feel Benj’s eyes on her. The suspect stepped closer. The air moved from the flailing blade. A furious grey blur, Benj crashing out of the trees to get to her, broke the tree line to her left. Spinning despite the pain, Myrtle kicked the killer in his chest. He tumbled backwards and Benj was on him. There was a crunch of bone and the killer’s scream.

“Or else, asshole."