Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon

Background

Iris is among the most proficient members of her unit, but her superior Meyer warns that with fewer fugitive replicants escaping to Earth the Blade Runner unit risks "reorganization", and assigns her to recover Scrappy, a real owl and an extreme rarity. Guided by the enigmatic Vogel to the owl's dwelling in an abandoned theater, she recovers it, only for it to be stolen while a booby-trapped artificial cat overcomes her; Meyer fires her. A data-encoded ring leads her to the ruins of the Tyrell Corporation, where Vogel shows her a documentary-style recording of the events of the film and she discovers that she and Rachael are a physical match.

Captured and taken to a hidden desert facility, Iris meets the elderly Carsten, who claims Tyrell merely obtained replicant technology when rival manufacturers were shut down by the United Nations, and that he devised a way to direct a human consciousness into replicant bodies, achieving immortality; Roy Batty blinded Tyrell deliberately to prevent this, and Scrappy carries a backup of Tyrell's mind. When Carsten reveals an eyeless duplicate of Iris made for this purpose, she destroys the duplicate.

Two intruders break into the base and fatally shoot Carsten; one is Meyer, and the other turns out to be Vogel. Scrappy then alights on another man, whom Iris recognizes as Rick Deckard, with the child Rachael in tow, and Deckard points up at the sky: "Those aren't the stars you see from Earth." Published by Bantam Spectra as a paperback original, the book drew criticism for its dense, conspiratorial plot and was regarded as the weakest of Jeter's sequels, though enjoyable for fans of Dick's work.