That spooked me pretty good, but I keep it together. I decide that I’d better give Mandy a call and tell her what exactly happened with her brother. She’s not gonna like this.

I uplink to my private Interweb voice-communications directory and hit Mandy Collins in the “phone book.” It doesn’t even get through one full ring before Mandy answers with a frantic “Jack?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” I reply. “I almost found your brother –“

“I heard he was sighted, I’m on my way now! Two minutes!”

“Mandy, don’t, it could still be very dangerous around here!” But there’s a squeal of tires and the line goes dead before I can even finish my sentence. Stupid broad is gonna get us both killed.

True to her word, less than two minutes later, Mandy’s shiny red Volkswagen rounds the turn like a tornado and screeches to a halt in the middle of the parking lot. She’s out and yelling her pretty head off before I’ve taken a step.

“What the hell happened? Where is he? You found him, didn’t you?” Questions fly from her mouth like a stream of bullets.

“Well, see, that’s the thing. I didn’t really. More like . . . he found me.” I tell her about the message on the computer in the store.

“Goddammit!” She pounds the hood of her car. She’s surprisingly forceful, for a broad. “What do we do now?”

“Well. Now that I think about it, that message came from a Prostheticore address. Their headquarters is –“

“That’s it! I’m going to find out what those bastards did to my brother!” She runs back to her car and peels off towards the Prostheticore building across the street.

I don’t get paid enough for this shit.

Follow her