Valerie Von Medvey was on every monitor in KCAL 9.

“What did it feel like?”

“Excuse me?”

“Forgive me if I’m not being tactful,” said Gloria so quickly that she didn’t give Valerie the time or opportunity to forgive her for being rude. “Your experience, if I may be so bold as to call it that, is one unique to synthetics.”

“Be thankful that it is.”

“Can you describe what your experience was like?”

Valerie broke eye contact, looking off camera to her left. For a second, she was staring at herself. On the playback monitor, the scene looked like an intimate affair between two colleagues, set in a study or library. A personal one-on-one interview where Valerie was to share her secrets with a good friend.

But that was a reality of make-believe only the cameras saw.

Swarming the set were dozens of people wired to headsets and microphones, hiding behind cameras, boom mics, and large electronic boards that controlled who knew what.

The First AD twirled a finger at Valerie, a gesture meant to encourage her to speak, but she found it patronizing.

This wasn’t what she imagined when Gloria first contacted her about the interview. Quite honestly, she hadn’t known what to expect.

Gloria sat across from her, hair teased up to perfection, makeup flawless, with a pleasant and practiced smile. Something about Gloria set her on edge. It wasn’t the overly starched pantsuit. Or her rosy cheeks and gleaming teeth. There was something about her eyes, a lifeless cold death, like those of a shark circling its next meal that made her uneasy.

Valerie took a deep breath, rubbed her hands together and placed them rigidly against her thigh. “I’m sorry. You were saying?”

“How did the attack make you feel?”

She hadn’t expected to be interrogated again.

How many times was she going to have to relive the event?

She paused, searching for words, but she already knew what she wanted to say. And it wasn’t television friendly.

On the crowded set, something caught her eye. Something familiar.

She saw the little girl she had seen at the police station the day before. Next to her was the man in the weather worn leather jacket.

We will find who did this to you.

The little girl’s confidence had bolstered her own.

Valerie closed her eyes, sighed, and found some semblance of resolve. She made eye contact with Gloria, who was posturing and nodding thoughtfully for the cameras.

“I was scared,” said Valerie.

“Tell us about it. What was it like to have your life taken from you?”

“I—uh… I don’t really think about it like that.”

“But that’s what your attacker did, did he not? He stole your life from you. He murdered you.”

“Little harsh, don’t you think?”

Startled, Cutter nearly inhaled his cigarette—smoke, butt, filter, and all. He spat out the ashy stump on the studio floor and remained partially doubled over, as he recovered from a short hacking fit.

MacDonald and RX-S7 stood inches behind him.

“Can you stop doing that?” Cutter produced a pack of American Spirit and sparked another. The cigarette danced on his lip as he spoke. “You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

MacDonald cracked a wry smile. “Would speed things up, wouldn’t it?”

On a long list of things that Cutter did not need today, MacDonald and his synthetic were the absolute last. He had enough on his mind with the Von Medvey case. With ensuring Valerie’s safety.

She had already been attacked once. And Cutter still had no idea where to begin. No idea who would wish her harm. No idea why the department was treating this case differently than the dozens of cases that came through on a daily basis.

He was hoping her husband, Christian, would show for her interview so he could keep tabs on him as well. But Mr. Billionaire, first perma-lover of synthetic sex-dolls was tending to his business empire.

Of course he was.

Instead, Cutter was left babysitting a toaster.

And, as if those concerns weren’t enough, there wasn’t one thing he liked about the setup in the studio either.

For starters, the set was far from secure. Since he arrived, dozens of people were running in and out of the soundstage, arriving and leaving at intervals that seemed arbitrary. No controls on those coming and going. And not a single person seemed to notice this as a problem, meaning it was likely typical. Just how they rolled.

And that was only the problems with ensuring those on set were supposed to be on set.

The set itself was another disaster waiting to happen. The stage spotlighted Valerie and Gloria Garner, dead center, while everyone else conveniently hid in the shadows.

Facing the stage, about eighteen feet off the ground, the recording booth provided a tactical roost for show editors and a director to take authoritative command of the goings-on below. It was a windowed rectangular box, hovering over studio seating. A deer blind, for any would-be hunters of early morning anchors and sappily sunshiny co-hosts.

Above that was a matrix grid of catwalks supporting lights and rigging. Plenty of places for someone to hide and accidentally drop a scorching light on someone they didn’t see eye to eye with.

Stacking problem upon dilemma upon catastrophe, the recording booth was only accessible from a corridor that wound around behind the building.

And now, MacDonald was yammering in his ear.

Yeah, today was going to be great. Really great.

Cutter didn’t bother looking at MacDonald when he addressed him. Part stubbornness, part hopeful that maybe, just maybe, MacDonald would take the hint. “Should I bother to ask what you’re doing here?”

MacDonald shrugged. “You’re here.”

“Right. If you weren’t aware, I already have a shadow. I don’t need another.”

MacDonald blinked. Twice.

Cutter nodded at the RX-S7. “How’s the Professor doing?”

With frost in his tone, MacDonald said, “Really, Jack. You should stop.”

“I’m just getting warmed up. You and your partner a thing, now? I’d hate to keep the missus waiting. Seems you have a bit of an unhealthy attachment to your partner.”

“And you don’t?”

Cutter grunted and turned back to the interview.

How he felt about Celia was irrelevant.

No one really noticed her, making it easy to slip away and explore the soundstage.

She had seen enough.

Jack’s slackened demeanor. Towards her. Towards Valerie. The mistakes he was making, the ignorance towards protocol. The very protocols he taught her to keep a scene clear and a subject protected.

He wasn’t paying attention, not like he needed to. Not to solve a case like this. He was counting down the ticks until the case either resolved itself, or was taken away from him. Either way, Celia would lose her chance.

This case was important.

Not simply because of the significance of a synthetic being attacked, but on a more personal level.

After the things Costas had done to her—she wanted to know that there could be justice, even if she was a synthetic—plastic and wire to humanity’s flesh and bone.

From outward appearances, Jack was on the case. At the very least, he showed up. Many others in the department could not make that claim. But he wasn’t all there. She had spent enough time with him to know the difference.

Jack’s body language only stiffened when MacDonald arrived with his synthetic in tow. And they provided further distraction, rather than help. The area was not as secure as it should have been. Jack had been sloppy.

Uncharacteristically so. Others would disagree, say Jack always was a bit careless, but that wasn’t the truth. When he cared—when he was motivated—nothing escaped notice.

This time, his lackadaisical attitude towards cases he had little interest in gave Celia the chance she had been waiting for.

If Jack was not up to the task, she could pick up the slack. Prove that she was more than a partner of convenience.

Celia backed away from the two men that were testing their will in some showdown of testosterone that she would never understand. She was unclear if it was humanity or simply the male gender. Not that either outcome mattered.

She moved past video village. The director was hunched over, pointing at something on the screen. A woman holding a clipboard nodded and jotted notes in response to his cues. Another man stood silently behind them. No one gave her a moment’s notice.

She could have been invisible.

A handful of people walked back and forth, on a set path between the sound stage door and the stage. The haphazard pattern of buzzing worker bees turned out to have a confined predetermined route. Back. And forth.

No one noticed as she opened the door and left the stage.

There was a constant influx of workers entering and exiting, moving from stage to production vehicles in the parking lot with swift determination. Celia dodged two men carrying a large pane of glass between them. A blonde woman, perhaps even a teenager, nearly ran her over as she rounded a blind corner. Her only acknowledgement of the near collision was a huffy grunt.

Celia ducked down a narrow corridor between stages to stay out of the way. She paused for a moment watching the ebb and flow of behind the scenes production.

It reminded her a little bit of the police precinct. Handfuls of people attending to their own individual tasks, seemingly unaware of those around them. She may as well have been on a deserted island.

A bell rang and a red light above the door began flashing. The colony of marching workers stopped and looked somewhat frantic that they were now forced to wait patiently at the door.

Before anyone noticed, she vanished.

The corridor behind the stage was a maze of twists and turns, a test for the claustrophobic to face their fears. There wasn’t much that Celia feared. Not anymore.

She dragged a hand along the wall to her right, keeping contact at every fork. On the third bend, the corridor became a long straight-away. Her HUD popped up, mapped out the distance, just shy of two hundred yards—roughly the length of the entire building.

The walls were yellowed, faded. Or maybe it was the low wattage bulbs spread too far apart giving everything a murky orange cast that made the tunnel feel cramped and dingy. Vague smudges layered everything in grime, existing due to neglect rather than decor.

The hustle and bustle of the set was gone. The air smelled stale with a slight tinge of mildew. Echoing off the unfinished concrete floors, her footsteps were constant reminder that she was alone. On the bright side, no one could sneak up on her without telegraphing their approach.

At the halfway point was a cubby-hole nook. In it a stairwell ascended into darkness.

Celia cautiously approached the old wooden steps.

A razor of light sliced through the stairwell, dimly illuminating the upper landing. At the top, she could make out a lattice pattern of reflective metal on a door that had been left ajar.

She grasped the wooden railing to guide herself up the rickety stairs, but it splintered at her touch. Her first step creaked under her weight. She paused, listening for a reaction to her presence.

The only sound was a subtle hum, barely in the audible range. Her next step favored the edge of the stair, successfully avoiding another creak. With every upward step toward the light, the hum grew in decibel, crystalizing in clarity. Muffled noises became words, becoming sentences, and Celia realized what she was hearing.

She could hear Valerie’s voice spoked with emotion, punctuated by Ms. Garner’s occasional oohs and ahhs.

There was another sound.

A rustling.

Not coming from the interview, but from the other side of the door.

Her hand trembled, suspended in front of her, as if it had a mind of its own and was too afraid to obey her thoughts. Hesitantly, she touched the doorknob, but could not find the will to pull the door open and see what was on the other side.

Something about this was all too familiar.

“Costas…”

Her whisper was lost to silence. She shifted her weight, allowing the wooden slats beneath her feet to groan and break the silence.

“Costas?” she asked the darkness again.

And again, it did not reply.

She clenched down tight on the doorknob, it freely twisted in her hand, and she pulled, but the door would not budge.

She held her breath, her muscles drew taut, and she delicately applied force, trying to pull the door open without making a sound.

Still, the door resisted her.

She exhaled. Her breath wheezed through her nose. Shifting her stance, fighting against the silence, she tugged again.

A harsh raking sound spiked her internal audio monitor. To her, it was the sound of nails on a chalkboard, blasted through a megaphone, but her sensors assured her the sound was the soft sigh of a feather duster on wood.

The door gave an inch, but not enough for her to see inside.

Green nylon material was wedged under the door. She dropped to a knee and tugged at the material. Her previous attempts had lodged it under the door something fierce.

She stood, gripped the edge of the door with both hands, and leaned forward. She set her stance, about to heave, when something at her foot caught her eye.

Shimmering in the dim light, so dull that she had to flash to infrared to see it, was a thin line. A hair’s width rivulet, a trickle, sourced from under the door.

She did not need her internal sensors to tell her what it was. She recognized the substance on sight.

Blood.

Gloria leaned forward, a smile brimming from ear to ear. “We’re calling it the Von Medvey bill.”

“What?” Valerie stared blankly, her head listing to a side. In her mind, the words echoed. She understood their meaning, at least each word individually, but the context escaped her.

“Oh look at her,” said Gloria, playing to the cameras. “She’s ecstatic.”

Valerie drew her lips into a fine line. “I wish someone had contacted me—”

“Oh, don’t you worry. You’ve been through enough. We’re seeing that this bill is handled properly and that you get all the credit you deserve for everything you’ve been through.”

Valerie narrowed her eyes to slits. “What bill?”

Gloria’s expression finally matched her painted brows. Her mouth hung open like a doll. “You haven’t heard? The Equal Rights for Synthetics Bill. Proposition 73. They’re voting to rename it the Von Medvey Bill, as we speak.”

“Why?”

Gloria chuckled, masking her annoyance.

Valerie, on the other hand, didn’t care if Gloria was annoyed or not.

“No, really,” insisted Valerie. “Why was I not contacted?”

She didn’t want the spotlight. Didn’t want to be remembered for all of eternity as the woman who was beaten, murdered, and mutilated. Truth be told, she never had plans on being remembered at all, but her marriage to Christian changed that. Being the first at anything drew the public eye. The public scrutinized her every movement, as if she were the model for the future of human and synthetic relationships.

It was a burden she never wanted, but one she managed with dignity, grace, and poise.

But this—it was too much.

She wanted her privacy back. Her anonymity.

Things were simpler when she was just another V-Sim fresh off the assembly line.

As she surveyed the studio, all eyes were on her. There was no escaping her new role in the public eye.

Victim.

Her body temperature rose.

Just leave me alone!

Everyone was looking. Looking at her. Waiting to see her reaction. Stares quietly prying into her essence.

Gloria, chipper as ever, with a serious tone that edged on condescension, took Valerie’s hands into hers. “Aren’t you overjoyed?”

Valerie recoiled from her touch. Before she could give Gloria and the rest of the viewing public a piece of her mind, the playback monitors flickered and died, leaving a matte black screen.

Gloria hadn’t noticed. Her attentions were anywhere but on Valerie, or the stage, or anything that wasn’t Gloria-related. But Valerie felt the sudden void, the rising commotion and milling crew, as if someone had poured ice down her back.

It wasn’t until the red ON AIR sign blinked off that Gloria took notice.

She barked at the dead monitors, now aware that the show wasn’t live any more. With cameras failing to capture her every mhmm and uh-huh, her on-air persona disappeared.

With a loud crackle, a snowstorm of static erupted on every screen in the studio. Hissing fury roared.

A voice rasped through the deafening static. “Valerie Von Medvey is dead. I killed her.”