Artemis

“Metal door, metal deadbolt!” I yelled. “Fuck you!”

He’d backed up to take another run when the elevator doors at the end of the hall opened. The beefy security guy stepped forward. “Something I can help you with, sir?”

A few other room doors opened up. Confused guests peeked at the action. Lefty hadn’t exactly been quiet. He took stock of the situation and of the very large security guard. This wasn’t something he could stab his way out of. He looked at the door longingly, then scampered off.

The guard straightened his tie, walked up, and knocked on my door.

I opened it a crack. “Uh, hi?”

“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked.

“Yeah. It was just weird is all. Aren’t you going after him?”

“He had a knife. Best to let him go.”

“I see.”

“I’ll stick around in the hall for a while to make sure he doesn’t come back. Rest easy.”

“Okay, thank you.” I closed the door.

I took a moment to recenter.

Lefty was in Jin Chu’s room because…why? He had no way of knowing I’d come. He wasn’t there for me. He must have been there for Jin Chu.

A Latino assassin. And wouldn’t you know it, Sanchez Aluminum was owned by Brazilians. Shit, I know companies get pissed when you trash their stuff, but murder? Murder?!

I looked through the peephole again. The guard stood nearby. I was safer than I’d been all day. All right. Time to search the room.

Man. Must be nice to be rich. The room had a king-size bed, a tidy workstation in one corner, and a bathroom with a graywater reuse shower. I heaved a sigh. My dreams of a nice place had died with Trond.

I tossed the room. No point in subtlety. I found the usual stuff you’d expect for a business traveler: clothes, toiletries, et cetera. What I didn’t find was a Gizmo. And judging by the condition of the room (at least the condition it was in before I trashed it), there hadn’t been a struggle. That was all good news for Jin Chu. It meant he probably wasn’t dead. Most likely scenario: Lefty came to kill him but he wasn’t home. So Lefty waited. Then I showed up and ruined everything.

You’re welcome, Jin Chu.

I was about to leave when I noticed the safe in the closet. It’s one of those things you don’t even pay attention to. The wall-mounted safe had an electronic lock with instructions on how to set it. Pretty simple, really. It starts disarmed. You put your shit in it, then set the code. It’ll keep that code until you check out.

I tried the handle and it didn’t open. Interesting. When one of those wall safes isn’t in use it’s ajar.

Time to become a safecracker. Those things aren’t exactly made to protect the crown jewels.

The contents of my now-destroyed purse lay strewn across the floor. I found the makeup compact and slapped it against my palm several times. I opened it to a mess of crumbled powder. I held it up to the safe and blew across the surface.

Brown, dusty makeup clouded the air around the safe. I stepped back and waited for it to clear up. Dust takes a long time to settle in Artemis. Atmosphere plus low gravity equals particles taking forever to fall.

Eventually the area cleared up. I took a good look at the keypad. A layer of makeup covered everything, but three of the buttons had more dust on them than the others. The 0, the 1, and the 7. Those were the ones with finger grease on them. With a hotel like the Canton, you could bet they cleaned everything in the room between guests. So those numbers had to be the digits Jin Chu chose for his combination.

According to the instructions on the safe, you set a four-digit code.

Hmm. A four-digit code with three unique numbers. I closed my eyes and did some math. There’d be…fifty-four possible combinations. According to the instructions, the safe would lock down if it got three incorrect combinations in a row. Then the hotel staff would have to open it with their master code.

I replayed my brief interaction with him in my head. He was on Trond’s couch…he drank Turkish coffee while I had black tea. We talked about—

Aha! He was a Star Trek fan.

I typed 1-7-0-1 and the safe clicked open. NCC-1701 was the registration number of the starship Enterprise. How did I know that? I must have heard it somewhere. I don’t forget stuff.

I opened the safe door and found the mysterious white case—the one Jin Chu had tried to hide from me. The outside still read ZAFO SAMPLE—AUTHORIZED USE ONLY. All right, now we were getting somewhere!