Page 15 of A Friend in the Glass

Inside, Cyber 44 smelled like Fuego Takis, farts, and old vinyl. The air was warm and stuffy. Kim sat behind a desknear the door. The computer monitor was angled so that Sam couldn’t see it, but judging by the number of full-sized Pokémon plushies posed against the blacked-out window behind her, he thought he had a pretty good guess of what she might be doing.

“I need to use a computer,” Sam said.

Kim glared at him. She was stitching up something that looked like a plush green radish, and the needle’s movement quickened into hard jabs. “He’s not allowed in here. He thinks this is a sex dungeon.”

“I do not,” Rufus interjected. “I said it was a phone sex hotline.”

“Twenty minutes,” Sam said, opening his wallet. He hesitated.

“Ten dollars,” Kim said. “For an hour.”

“I don’t need an hour.”

The plushie got a needle right through what was either an eye or an egg sac. “By the hour only.” She yanked the needle the rest of the way through and added, “Or you can buy forty hours for three-fifty.”

“I want twenty minutes,” Sam said. “Why the fuck would I buy forty hours?”

“It’s a better deal,” Kim said with a shrug.

He paid the ten dollars, and Kim waved them down to a machine at the end of the room. It was hotter down here, all the electronics putting off heat, the fans whirring to create an ocean of white noise. At this end of the room, only one other computer was occupied. The gamer smelled like unwashed hair and medicated powder, even at a distance, and he was playing something called REVERSE GAY HAREM - MAKE THEM DO WHAT YOU WANT. It looked like this guy was mostly pickingout underwear for cartoon men with incredibly unrealistic body types—

“Can we have a different one?” Sam shouted to Kim.

Whatever she shouted back, it was definitely a no, although it wasn’t exactly words.

Sam pulled a seat over for Rufus, sat in another chair himself, and opened a browser. He typed in Shareed Baker.

DuckDuckGo returned a lot of results on Shareef Baker, which wasn’t exactly helpful. It also offered a fair amount of suggestions aboutshared bakers, which was apparently another millennial brain-fuck trend, and Shareed Bakkar, who operated a jet ski rental in Palm Beach.

“Great,” Sam muttered. “I knew this was going to be easy.”

“Try some kind of military keyword with her name,” Rufus suggested as he shrugged out of his jean jacket and unzipped his hoodie. “Army or Benning or something.”

Shareed Baker Armyyielded even more confusing results, and nothing that seemed helpful.Shareed Baker Benningpopped up with a white-page listing that suggested that someone named Shareed Baker had, indeed, lived in Columbus, Georgia, in 2017. But that was the closest they’d gotten, so Sam triedShareed Baker Stonefish, which pointed him toward an exotic-fish-and-aquarium-supply store in Queens, andShareed Baker Conasauga, which populated his results with information about bakeries in the Lake Conasauga area.

“They pay those pencil-necks millions of dollars for this fucking algorithm.”

“I’d love a muffin right about now,” Rufus said, sort of to himself, but also sort of not. “My blood sugar’s low. I think yours is too. It’s too bad about the health code rating here, huh? Oh, see if Shareed has a Facebook profile.”

“I thought nobody over the age of six had Facebook anymore,” Sam growled, but he opened a tab and typed in the address. He had an account—barely used—but when he searched for Shareed Baker, he got only two results: one was a grandmother in Minnetonka, and the other was encouraging Sam to SEE MY LIVE VIDEO AND ALL MY PICS - CLICK HERE - I’VE BEEN SO NAUGHTY!

Rufus put a hand on the back of Sam’s neck. He kneaded a little before leaning in close to whisper, “I’d like to take this moment to point out that your judgment loses some of its intensity when you, a man older than myself, are logged into an active Facebook account. But also, I’m going to remind you, in graphic detail, that I’m not six-years-old, by talking about my flaming red pubes.”

“I know,” Sam said, but he leaned into Rufus’s touch. “I’m still picking them out of my teeth. Now stop interrupting me.”

After a moment of staring at Shareed Baker’s profile—the naughty one—Sam closed the tab and opened a new one. He pulled up Garrison.

Hand still on Sam’s neck, Rufus stopped digging into the muscles, asking, “What’s this?”

“Military version of Facebook. Fewer thongs. More guns.” He signed in, ignored the demand that he pay twenty dollars a month to upgrade to a DELTA account, and typed in Shareed Baker.

Her profile was the first hit: Shareed Baker, Fort Benning CID Battalion, Criminal Investigations Special Agent (31D). The profile picture matched the woman they had found dead in the pod. When he clicked on the profile, he got a page that had been locked down. “Request Ally?” a box asked him. He clicked it, although he knew Shareed Baker would never respond, and then sat back with a sigh.

“I don’t know what CID means, but she was involved in military investigations.” Rufus lowered his hand as he looked at Sam. “That’s like—pretty hardcore, right?”

“She investigated soldiers on their own turf, and she was a black woman doing it. Hardcore sounds about right.”

Rufus checked on the Harem Gamer before scooting his chair closer to Sam’s. He asked quietly, “Did you ever have any contact with her—or whatever CID is, I guess—when you were in the Army? At Benning?”

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