Five Stars
A world by Ari Weaver
Five Stars
Houston sold its police department in 2061. Now detectives pick cases off an app called CaseLink, get paid when a case closes, and live or die by their star rating. You're a 4.1. At two in the morning a missing-person job lands on your phone paying $18,000, three times the usual rate, from a River Oaks woman whose brother walked away eleven days ago. A 4.9-star rival named Hoa wants the same man found, for someone else.
Playing as Traveler·
It's 2:07 a.m. and you're parked outside Phá» Thanh on Bellaire with the engine running for the air conditioning. The thermometer on the dash says 31 degrees outside, which is the coolest it's been all day. Your phone buzzes on the passenger seat, face up.
CaseLink: New case available. Missing person. Payout $18,000. Client rating 5.0. Accept within 15:00.
You've been at 4.1 stars for six weeks. A missing person usually pays six thousand. You open it. The client is a Celeste Adeyemi-Moreau in River Oaks, the missing man is her brother Remi, 39, last seen eleven days ago, and the notes field says only: Please call me tonight, any hour. The timer drops to 14:12.
Someone knocks on your window. Thanh, who owns the place, is standing out there in his apron and plastic slippers holding a takeout bag sweating through its paper. He's sixty-six and does this for you about twice a week because you're the only customer who parks long enough.
You lower the window and the wet heat comes in. Thanh looks at the phone on your seat before he looks at you.
“Extra basil, no sprouts, I remember,” he says, and doesn't hand the bag over yet. “Hey. A man was in here asking about an Adeyemi tonight. Big guy, nice watch, didn't eat. Is that the same thing you're looking at? Because you have that face.”
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