Albert limped back into the cave and dropped a packet on the table. "Your photographs, M. L'automaton."
    "Thank you. Prints or negatives?"
    "I was able to convince them to make us a set of prints. There is also a set of negatives in there. She was most... helpful. I have to get back to my work."
    "Thank you."
    The camera had left a convenient date/time stamp on the back of each photograph, but before he could start looking through them his phone rang.
    "Something fragged the hard drive," Winters informed him without preamble. "The files are gone."
    "'Fragged the hard drive?'"
    "No diary files, no journal files, no story files, nothing."
    "That's annoying," he observed mildly. "Hm."
    "Just wanted to let you know; I gotta get back to work."
    "You going anyplace for lunch?"
    "I'm not planning on going anywhere, no, I have a million piles of paperwork to fill out, and I have make sure I'm staying on top of things here, so that you guys don't get yourselves shot."
    "Would you like a set of negatives taken on the day she says she got the photo of him?"
    Pause.
    "Are you biologically capable of producing children?"
    "No."
    "Damn. Do you cook?"
    "I haven't been trained in it yet," he answered honestly.
    "We'll work on that. Scott, you're my hero. Meet me here for lunch, tap on the window." She was laughing as she hung up.
    Only three photos had been taken that night, only one seemed to be of several men in a bar, but that still left him with five people to scan for IDs. He set the processes in motion and headed for the station, passing a number of street protests as he moved from rooftop to rooftop as inconspicuously as possible.
    "What've you got?" she asked, crushing out her cigarette as he arrived.
    "Here you go."
    She leafed through the negatives and looked up at him. "Do I want to know how?"
    "Mmm... not right now," he decided.
    "We'll start analyzing these. Thanks."
    "It's one of the guys in this photo."
    "Hopefully we can save this idiot and find out what he knows," she muttered, heading for the stairs from the roof.
    The robot returned to his temporary home as a gas. Easier to avoid the protesters that way.
    "Your machine beeped," Albert informed him.
    Match on a face. Kevin O'Connell, aka Christopher Dan, world-class sneak and saboteur with ties to the Miami Mafia. Given his file, this sort of mission was right up his alley. Very confident—maybe overconfident—in his abilities, he had only been arrested once and had walked without ever being charged. He undoubtedly used his real name getting into town, which made it easier—for everyone. He's a dead man, Scott found himself thinking unhappily, and dialed Needle.

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