Opus Veda

She chose the sushi bar, and lurked in it. Of all plausible venues this was the most automated, the most private. A tray of cucumber maki slid off the conveyor belt onto her table. Kasia had only seen these rolls of rice online before - photoed by parading influencers - and couldn't even name the accompanying pink slivers and green paste.

Pressing both against her tongue, she knew she'd be trying neither again. Almost sneezing on the paste, she had to dive for a maki. One bite of seaweed, alien in taste and texture, had her spitting it out.

It wasn't necessary anyway. The food was her cover; her excuse to be here. She had a perfect view over the atrium, across the chasm of waterfalls and jinn. Her target remained on Hadayiq Babil's entryway, nattering with colleagues. Kasia burned with inferiority. All her recent struggles and successes felt ignored. Now her daughter's class had been belittled, embarrassing them both, in a shop beyond their station only for its label.

Evie. Kasia would have set the world on fire to keep her warm if she could. She couldn't, but the offending woman needed a lesson. Kasia could tell she would hate herself for not trying, haunted by another unresolved trauma into the bitter future. Her anxiety protested against her but she was firm: if knifing someone was within her abilities, so too must this be.

The risky part came first, the chaotic netherworld of deepfake, avatar, and real image. Kasia suspected the attendant would prefer the latter - the conventionally attractive could use their looks to earn a better living, or decline and be to blame for their hardships. Declining brought added stigma: you weren't meant to need an avatar if gifted with beauty, you were meant to buy anti-deepfake software. Even then, taking offence to porn based on your likeness was often dismissed as overreacting.

Kasia had to move fast. Such was the deepfake crisis that many covered their phone cameras with orange stickers, a symbolic stand against sexual harassment. Kasia's gender was, for once, her advantage. A mask of presumed innocence.

She snapped the attendants face and immediately hid her phone. Her heart thumped. She skittered off to the toilet and locked herself in a cubicle. Breathing deep, unlocking her phone, she wove her fingers through the cloud and traced the attendant's face to a profile.

It was so predictable she needn't have bothered. Perfect, to the most boring degree. Good looking to the point of being insipid. The attendant revealed her true face in cliched stock photos that, for never going out of fashion, were never ahead of it. Her bare legs stretched under the camera on sandy beaches. Her body flaunted yoga to the backdrop of famous locales. Lifetime milestones emblazoned her profile, always chalked up to hard work, and never to fortune. There was no partner, but there were parents, and they looked smug.

Kasia squeezed her phone. She could spin this profile into a deepfake with her eyes shut, turning the woman's vain photos against her, cutting her pretty face off and pasting it over disgusting scenes.

She couldn't bring herself to do it. Not that she cared for the woman's fate, but she and her family would have the money and means to trace back to Kasia. And since Kasia's landlord already loomed over her head, a second sin against the rich would tempt fate too far.

She opted to raise a complaint instead, pushing her social limits to make a phone call. She rang Hadayiq Babil, selected 'complaints', and muttered 'Mayfair Branch' into her phone with a perfect Polish accent.

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"Hello and thank you for call-"

A real person. Kasia knew it in a millisecond. She gasped and hung up. She phoned again, trying options that might send her to an AI agent. Another human scared her off.

She lost time grounding herself, searching for the confidence to manage a real phone call. The bathroom door opened. Someone sat in the cubicle next to her, still and silent, as if waiting for Kasia to leave. Kasia seethed, wanting to jump over the cubicle and screech in her neighbour's ear, thrusting with a knife she now regretted leaving at home.

She left before she could meltdown, and found her seat taken. She stomped outside, searching for somewhere to make a private call. Every inch of the Bazaar was infected with people. Too many eyes would see her emote; too many ears would hear her complain.

She descended to a floor with a club on it, and sighed in defeat. A quarter hour later she left it, ticking the box of desire with an undemanding match, distracting her for a brief and uninspired moment.

Any confidence she had mustered against her rival had gone. The department store was high above her. The cacophony of 75 floors filled her ears. She couldn't bare the idea of speaking to another human.

Kasia headed home, acknowledging that in doing so, another trauma had formed.

* * *

No wonder Ali Hogarth's residents kicked off. This supposed victim was vindictive and unhelpful during her statement, relying on idle threats and claims of importance. The police, she said, needed to deal with this case severely.

Gemma learnt her type early on - the privileged elite, fooled into seeing life as controllable. When fortune shattered this narrative, someone suffered. Presumably Ali saw the police as her enforcers, or else would take matters into her own hands later.

The footage from the house showed three guests entering and exiting, at first awkward, then hurried. She identified them instantly. Imany Eshun, the confident matriarch, and two bumbling figures that had Gemma rolling her eyes. Apparently her last chat with Kasia hadn't convinced the viral mother to protect her neck. It was Kasia who assaulted the child, though no solid proof existed.

She turned to the street cameras and zeroed in on their taxi - the one involved in a separate assault streets away. She saw two drunk girls force their way inside; the driver must have panicked and dumped them somewhere. She followed its path through Islington, hopping from camera to camera, until it swerved into a back alley. The girls tumbled out. A fist flew out of the drivers window and whacked one of them square in the face, flinging her against a wall. Gemma spluttered a laugh through her fingers and called her partner.

"Detective Alderton!"

"Assistant Detective Schulz! Are you at the desk?"

"Just been watering your plant, as promised. What you got?"

"Suspects on the case you gave me. Catch."

She shared the casefile and waited for Luis to peruse the contents. He figured the suspects out as fast as she did, laughing cruelly.

"They did well to get into Islington, if only those drunk tarts hadn't poached their lift. Why're they after their landlord?"

"After those vagrants attacks their estate, when our... when Misha and Joey Abbas were killed, a certain Ms Ali Hogarth upped their service charge to cover the damage, refusing to claim on the insurance her residents already pay for."

"...what an absolute fucking cunt. Did they convince her to drop it?"

"Apparently so. I'm also certain she's exaggerating what happened to her elder daughter Tiffany Hogarth."

"Tiffahneeh? So it seems... not a bruise on her. I see my Sermon Mkenda is with the invaders. Want me to string him out?"

"Not yet but let's watch him. Of the three he's a probable revolution lead."

"Could leave him to incubate... but how much is he likely to ever know? That Imany bird is the type to be in something deep, as for Kasia? The runt of the litter."

"I think so too but she's a dark horse, and she could radicalise quickly if tempted well. Notice that her behaviour online has cleaned up after she met Faizan Varma."

"But again: what can she offer them besides devotion? None of these guys are gonna end up in the inner circle."

"Perhaps you're right," Gemma swiped the case away and exhaled, "I'll deal with Ms Hogarth tomorrow. Do me a favour and dismiss the girls from the taxi case? Tell them to drink less next time, I don't need them hanging around. Speak soon."