Ryuukaku is face-up, out cold on the kitchenette’s dated linoleum floor. Manny kneels beside him, grunts as he rolls him over. He can feel the perspiration on the other man when he does. It’s all suffocating humidity outside, but the climate-controlled hotel room is freezing. Manny takes the sweat as evidence of the fear he inflicted by coming here. With this holiday invasion.

 

He wipes his hands on the shitty Hawaiian shirt he snagged at the airport that morning. Then he ejects the perpetuated memory drive from the hardware in the back of Ryuukaku’s neck. He’s pleased to find the little chrome brick looks undamaged. He throws it in his shirt pocket. Stands.

 

He unloads his gun into Ryuukaku’s back next, mostly around the neck. The bullets destroy the implant and the sinew that surrounds it. The life of the man goes with it.

 

Then Manny’s kneeling again, holding a knife from the kitchenette. He digs into the flesh ridges his pistol tore through the other man, searching for the couplings that still bind the tech to the person.

 

Once every connection’s severed, Manny shucks the hardware from him like an oyster from the shell. He tosses the sleek bit of bloodied biotech into the garbage disposal. Flips it on for a bit. It makes a heinous racket but gets the job done.

 

He checks a mirror for any evidence of what he's done. If there’s blood on him, it’s blended in nicely with the hibiscus flower patterns stitched in his vacationer’s top.

 

“Sorry,” Manny mutters as he shuts the door. He leaves a ‘Privacy Please’ placard on the knob, pitying the housekeeper who will eventually discover what he did.

 

He finds Nwakego down at the resort’s infinity pool a few minutes later. She’s in the water, he realizes. By its edge. Her braids are carefully tied atop her head, keeping dry. Reflective golden shades mask her eyes, and he’s not sure she sees him.

 

“Hey, K-Go,” Manny says as he approaches the water. “I got the slate.”

 

Without a word, she holds out her right hand toward him. Takes a sip from the Mai Tai in her left. He thinks it’s crazy she went for a dip and a drink while he was working upstairs. But he’s not too surprised.

 

“Don’t you think we should get out of here?” he says, looking around at the unsuspecting guests. Modelesque twenty-somethings in bikinis. A balding dad splashing water at his kids.

 

Nwakego lowers her sunglasses, says, “Let me verify it’s good before we dip. Is it MindR or TojoCo?”

 

Manny forgot to check. A TojoCo model would require conversion equipment. Fortunately, he quickly finds the severe angles of an R on the drive. Lucky them.

 

“MindR make for sure. An EvermindR 3.0 looks like.”

 

“Thank Christ,” Nwakego breathes.

 

She gestures impatiently for him to hand it over. He drops the tiny silver brick in her palm.

 

He watches Nwakego push her braids up a little higher, off the part of her neck where she has a slate processor installed herself. She slides the drive into an empty port back there, like a flash drive in a PC.

 

Her brows twitch behind her shades as she lives someone else’s life in an instant, sifting through memories of a man she never met. Manny stoops down, wipes a trickling blood drop from her nose with his thumb. A bead rolls off, turns into crimson swirls in the chlorinated pool water between them.

 

Nwakego is the one in a billion who can ingest a whole drive of memories at once without going schizo. That’s why the agency pays her twice Manny’s share. He’s only good for the dirty work. Easy to replace.

 

“Okay, found it,” she declares, suddenly snapped out of her dive into Ryuukaku’s past. “We just need evidence of him with the ambassador, right?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Good. I don’t understand a lick of Japanese, but they definitely talked.” She slips out the drive, tosses it back at him. He catches it, drops it back in his shirt.

 

“Let’s roll then.”

 

“Gimme a beat, will you?” She grabs her Mai Tai and turns away. She dips deeper in the water, rests the back of her head on its edge.

 

As eager as he is to leave, Manny knows she needs to recoup. That’s routine. Which leaves him chilling in a poolside lounge chair, alone with his thoughts. They’re nothing new.

 

Maybe it’s the tropical sun getting to him, but he can’t seem to keep them in this time. Not like he usually does.

 

“K-Go.”

 

“What is it?” He senses her irritation at killing her zen.

 

“Does it ever get to you? You know. What we do?”

 

“What is it we do, Manny?”

 

“You know. Steal memories.”

 

“Is that so bad?”

 

“No…” He stares off at the toasted sun setting on the horizon beyond the pool. “The way we get them though…”

 

When he made it through their first bounty emotionally intact, he thought he always would be. But it was adding up. All those lives taken for a slice of an experience in their heads. Was it worth it?

 

Nwakego shocks him with her take.

 

“We’re not killing anyone, if that’s what you mean.”

 

“What?”

 

“They’re all here, Manny.” She points at her slate, sparkling like an opalescent jewel in her dark skin. “They’re living in me. Safe and sound.”

 

“Memories aren’t lives, K.”

 

“They are, though. Aren’t they?”

 

“You really think that?” he asks. “You think they’re alive ‘cause they’re on your slate?”

 

“Yes. I do.”

 

Manny stares blankly, stunned. He fears her for the first time since they paired up two years back.

 

Nwakego doesn’t notice any shift in the mood. She just slurps down the rest of her drink. Feeling a little recovered from the memory ingestion, she finally turns around to get out, get going.

 

“Hand me a towel, will you?”

 

But Manny’s long gone.