ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many voices that played a role in the creation of this book, and I heard them in a number of ways, and much of the time I heard only the voices, and did not see the people who accompany those voices, which can be disconcerting if it happens often enough and is not occasionally offset by conversations with people who appear before you in the flesh; disconcerting enough, as it turns out, that it can be important to acknowledge the voices you hear if only to prove to yourself and to anyone who may read your words that the voices are in fact real, and belong to real people, people who contributed great value in making this manuscript, which was the purpose of starting this acknowledgment, which means it is high time we get to the main business of acknowledging some of those people, such as: John Helfers, who not only edited this manuscript, but provided some of the early whispers in my ear that shaped its direction; Marc Tassin, who talked to me of dark deeds and corrupt people in ways that quite suited my mindset while writing this; Jason Schmetzer, whose dashing energy carried me forward when my passion for the project was lagging; Phaedra Weldon, who helped me remember that telling stories of people connecting is always worthwhile; Jason Hardy, who I enjoy talking to if only because I can feel safe in doing the opposite of whatever he says; Loren Coleman, who danced at the periphery of this book like an elusive leprechaun, always in sight yet impossible to pin down; and there are probably others, but their nature is such that I fear that putting their names down in print might confirm their insubstantiality instead of doing the opposite, so I believe I am safest stopping right here.

FOR YOU.

PROLOGUE

“The only true secret to life is knowing what people want, and how much they are willing to do to get it.”

Hearn sighed. “Conversations go a lot quicker, you know, if you could resist the urge to sink into aphorisms.”

The troll smoothed the lush brown hair that fell over his shiny horns. “I say these things because they are things that you need to learn.”

Hearn paced back and forth in the library, wishing for a window he could look out of. Spending time in this room with only a troll and several stacks of books was starting to make him feel claustrophobic. It didn’t help that the room had no trace of Matrix access. There were no devices in sight, no AROs that Hearn could call up. He patted his right cyberleg occasionally just to remind himself that it was still the twenty-first century.

“I assume this means you think you know what this Elijah Tish wants.”

The troll nodded gravely, turning his double chin triple.

“And what he’ll do to get it.”

Another nod.

“So that means …”

“You just have to follow him. Stay far enough away that he doesn’t make you, but close enough that you can take the map from him shortly after he gets it. If not sooner.”

“You understand that that’s not going to be a simple journey, right? It’s not like the map is just sitting in some library like this somewhere, waiting for him to grab it. There’s probably going to be a lot of travel on short notice. It’s not going to be cheap.”

“That’s my concern, not yours. If there comes a point where I feel things are becoming too expensive, I’ll tell you.”

Hearn nodded. His hand wiggled near his hip, instinctively looking for the gun that wasn’t there.

“Got it,” he said. “We’re on the case until you say we’re not.”

The troll, who called himself Tempest, had provided transportation to and from his home or office or wherever the hell they had just met. That meant Hearn had about forty-five minutes to himself in the back of a sedan on the way back to civilization. He’d roll down the window, let the wind run over his black-gelled helmet of hair, and enjoy breathing in the air until it got smoggy.

That sounded great in theory, but in practice he started itching to get closer to civilization. For twenty minutes of the drive, he was kicking himself for not bringing a device with satellite Matrix access. The signal from above would have been perfect, with nothing around to block it, only scrub brush and rocky hills. There was no regular Matrix access until they started to get closer to home. As soon as he got access, Hearn dove in, looking for as much information as he could find about this map the troll had talked about.

The way Hearn figured it, the troll was missing one part of the equation. It was good to know what people wanted and how much they wanted, but sometimes if you wanted to figure out what they were up to and how they were going to act, you had to find out why.

Hearn had been paid a decent chunk of money in advance, and he figured he could sacrifice some of it to help him feel better about working with a cartographically inclined troll.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

“Man, I feel as out of place here as a Humanis thug at a Red Rovers rally.”

Surveying the well-dressed crowd through her violet-tinted Evo Nightwear eyeglasses, Kyrie raised a crystal flute to her lips and sipped, her eyes widening as the champagne slid down her throat. “Bubbly’s real, though. Good, too.”

“Glad it meets with your approval—I’m sure our host would be pleased,” Elijah said. “Any security measures I should be particularly concerned about?”

Kyrie pulled at the choker around her throat. Elijah smiled. You could put the adept next to any person in the world, and she’d be confident enough to hold her own—as long as she didn’t have to dress up. But that’s what this situation required, and he didn’t mind. With his salt-and-pepper hair, muted gray Mortimer’s Berwick Noir 505 suit, and his own pair of stylish eyeglasses perched on his classically Roman nose, he blended perfectly with the rest of the nouveau chic art lovers swirling around. Holding a champagne flute that matched hers, he sipped his drink absent-mindedly. He couldn’t stop looking at the marble set of half-stairs leading to the hallway and the room beyond—and their target.

“Try not to look too eager, Elijah,” Kyrie said. “And don’t worry—I’ve got his back. When are we going?” Her kaleidoscopic sky-blue and white floor-length Zoe Moonsilver dress swirled around her, making her look fetching enough to draw the attention of a handsome, ebony-haired elf gliding by. She gave him a look that made it clear that he couldn’t handle her even if she wanted to give him a chance. Elijah was a little depressed that he didn’t have anything like that look in his repertoire, especially when he saw the dark-haired elf break eye contact with Kyrie and slink away.

“Don’t worry, I’ll let you know. I need to make sure the path is clear.”

“Fine by me—I’ll just keep playing with the magic furniture.” Kyrie drained her drink—they’d both taken alcohol inhibitors, so they could guzzle a gallon of the bubbly and remain stone-cold sober. She began to set her flute down, and as she did, the floor extruded a slender column to meet the bottom of her glass. “How the hell does it do that?”

The room had nothing that was not built in. They were surrounded by blank, silvery-gray walls that exuded their own lighting, enveloping the space and everyone in it in a soft, relaxing glow. The room needed no separate furniture because it could supply anything on demand. The entire place was constantly shifting, reconfiguring itself to meet the needs of the guests. A person only had to begin sitting down, with nothing below them, and the motion would make a section of the floor rise to meet them, fashioned into a chair that flowed seamlessly out of the rest of the room.

And it wasn’t just seating. Shelves popped out of the far wall at random intervals, each one containing trays of delectable hors d’oeuvres that waiters passed to the guests. The food was all created from real ingredients, not a hint of soy or krill anywhere. Fitting the evening’s theme, it consisted of wild game and fruit from what had once been Central America—the vast jungle area now controlled by the Aztechnology Corporation. Music drifted from the walls as well, a somber set of deep bass drums underscoring a swirl of pan flutes piping a merry melody.

A text message appeared in a window in Elijah’s vision, a small square projected by his glasses. <Pretty damn cool, huh? Probably a flexible nanotube mesh with a reactive AR host program to predict each guest’s movements and respond accordingly. I tried to peep at the program, and nearly got my mind blown out the back of my skull by the resident spider.>

That was the third member of their team, a dwarven hacker called Slycer. He was across the room, wearing a lapelless, pinstriped Laurentine de Lion Millennium 3000 suit that minimized his stockiness. He seemed to feel a little left out to not be right there with Elijah and Kyrie.

Elijah would have rather worked with a more independent, less chatty decker, but Slycer knew the man who had hired Eijah, and bringing him on had seemed like a good idea at the time. He was on the talkative side, but seemed capable enough; he had been effective in getting them closer to their destination, at least so far.

<You’re not supposed to be poking around where you don’t belong, Slycer. You’re supposed to be clearing the path to the display room, remember?> Elijah texted back. Built into their stylish Evo eyewear was a miniaturized commlink that allowed both Elijah and Kyrie to access their host’s LAN to communicate with Slycer without anyone noticing.

The glasses also allowed her to project holographic images that only she could see—like the small window showing the outside of the front of the house. As she watched, a shadow of a strange, stubby, wingless aircraft passed over the driveway, appearing only for a second before vanishing into the night.

“The possible skyline exit is still being watched,” she told Elijah. He frowned, while still scanning the whole room for threats, but somehow he kept returning to that hallway.

“Security grid down yet?” he asked.

Kyrie glanced left then right, looking at images only she could see through her augmented reality glasses. “Nope. Slycer’s still working on it—whoops, hold it, looks like he’s got it. Let’s move. Turn on the charm.”

Elijah didn’t even bother making a gesture; he simply cast a spell that made him more charismatic and persuasive than normal. He could feel the mana moving through him, making his stride more confident.

With a last casual glance around to make sure they weren’t being observed, Elijah crooked his elbow out. Kyrie deftly inserted her arm through his, and the pair strolled to the stairs, casually trotted up the flight, and strolled into the hallway.

<Uh-oh.>

Elijah lightly grabbed Kyrie’s arm. “Hold up.” <Don’t say ‘uh-oh.’ Not now. What’s the uh-oh?>

“What’s going on?” she asked. “We’re almost there.”

The message from Slycer almost left a flame trail on its way to Elijah. <Take the door on your right.>

Elijah didn’t hesitate, steering Kyrie toward a featureless panel in the wall that slid open at their approach. Glancing back down the hall, he saw the sleek head of a low-slung animal crest the top step as she stepped inside the room.

“I guess you saw that biodrone, too,” she said.

“Yes. Let Slycer take care of it—we don’t need to draw attention right now.”

“Fine, but I want visual.” She followed that up with a quick text. <Let me and Elijah see the damn thing.>

In a small augmented reality object that opened in the bottom left quadrant of her vision, Kyrie watched the guard dog stop at the doorway they’d just entered. It was a solid piece of work, a deep-chested mix of German Shepherd and pit bull—and probably twice as deadly as both too, she thought. Watching its eyes as it looked up at the security cam she was observing it through, Kyrie shivered. The dog’s gaze was cold and soulless—probably a complete cyberware refit.

<You guys just hang tight for a moment, I’m working on the situation here.>

Although her eyes were slitted and her lips tight with suppressed anger, Kyrie kept her tone calm and professional. <Easy for you to say. You’re safe out there while we’re in here with a fucking razorhound looking to shove its artificial nose up our asses.> She kept one eye on the closed bedroom door. <Just get rid of robomutt, and we can do what we came to do.>

The hacker was good enough to convey tension through font choice. <I’m safe? I’m the one who’s gotta shiv the sec systems and not trip any ice while still looking like I’m attending the party and watch our backs to boot, while you two get to snoop the shadows and look at pretty art. Shit, you’re lucky I make this all look so easy.>

<Right. Gotten rid of the damn dog yet?>

<What, you don’t wanna take it on hand-to-claw, chica? What’s the matter—didn’t sharpen your nails before you left?>

“How about you two break it off now?” Elijah said. “And perhaps focus?”

Kyrie scowled. “I’m never taking another job with a hacker we haven’t worked with before. Never fucking again!”

But that was the moment Slycer picked to come through. <Got it!> he sent. <You’re green again.>

<‘Bout damn time.> Kyrie sent. Smoothing her handsome-but-not-pretty features into a carefree party mask, she walked to the door and listened to the receding clicks of the dog’s claws as it resumed its patrol. The door reacted to her presence by sliding soundlessly into the wall, revealing an empty hallway.

While Elijah watched her carefully, Kyrie nodded toward the far end of the hallway. “Heading for the door.” Despite the upscale home’s carefully calibrated temperature, he felt a bead of sweat on his neck, creeping under his starched collar.

The door to the room that held their objective still flashed red in her AR as they approached. Kyrie fired off a terse message before Elijah had time to compose a more diplomatic text. <What’s the holdup now? We’re already behind schedule thanks to the dog show, and you are not helping.>

 <Shit, girl, first I pull robomutt off you, now you want a speed-of-light hack? I’m good, but I’m not that good.> The door flashed from red to green. <Oh wait, yes I am.>

Elijah tried not to smile at the exaggerated roll of Kyrie’s eyes. She raised her hand and placed it on the palm reader on the left side of the door. <You better have programmed Hayakawa’s prints in correctly.>

<And hacked the hallway and interior room cameras to cloak the two of you outside and in. Girl, please—this isn’t my first soft-shoe.> The door chimed softly, not loud enough to be heard over the party patter down the hall.

Elijah didn’t like working with a stranger any more than Kyrie did, but he had to admit the dwarf was getting the job done. He slipped into astral perception as the door slid open, and his eyes widened. Their host had a good sense of the value of Awakened artifacts, it seemed. But there did not seem to be anything that was an immediate threat, so he gave an okay sign to Kyrie. Cautiously, they walked forward.

Unlike the rest of the sprawling house, decorated in ultra-sleek modern, this room appeared to have been transplanted from a twentieth-century museum. Dark wood paneling covered the walls, while the floor was swathed in thick, beige carpet that reduced footfalls to silence. The lighting was recessed and indirect, with much of it coming from the dozens of glass-covered recesses in the walls, each with a single object inside, all lit to display them at their best.

Elijah was almost paralyzed. Seeing the auras was one thing, but confronted with the collection right in front of him was almost too much to take. Each item was practically calling to him, begging to tell him its story. How it had been made, who made it, who took it, then who took it after that. The hands it had passed through, the lives taken in order to obtain it. The knowledge, the pure knowledge each item had brushed by during its existence. If he could get a portion of it, the merest fraction …

But he was working. He broke out of his reverie to notice Kyrie was focused on one object in particular.

The dagger was beautiful, its double-edged blade fourteen inches long and razor sharp. It was obviously old, the hilt carved from a single piece of horn with three silver studs and two ornately etched wraps securing it to the blade. The sheath was also bound in bands of similarly decorated silver, and the entire weapon shined.

Elijah walked up behind Kyrie as she stared at the dagger. “No time for window shopping, my dear,” he whispered. “Although I commend your taste. It’s a beautiful antique—Russian kindjal, late 18th to early 19th century, probably commissioned by a minor noble house. Oh, and it’s bound as well.”

“You mean—it’s a focus?”

“Exactly—probably why you were drawn to it in the first place. But speaking of focus, let’s get back to the job at hand, yes?”

Kyrie threw a last wistful glance at the enchanted weapon, then accompanied Elijah to the main attraction in the middle of the room.

Behind thick glass, what appeared to be a very old, orange-and-tan ceramic bowl rested on a sleek wooden pedestal. It looked to have been assembled from two parts: an inverted, tapered lower portion, and above that a slightly concave ring of fired ceramic as tall as Elijah’s hand that formed the bowl’s upper part. Etched decorations—alternating blocky spirals and what looked like crude, three-leaved trees—ran in a band of beige around the upper part, while the bottom was glazed in alternating stripes of orange and tan.

Kyrie did not seem impressed. “This is what you’re supposed to authenticate?”

Elijah unconsciously reached out toward the bowl, but he kept enough control to stay clear of any alarms. “That’s it. And if it’s genuine …” He looked over at Kyrie and smiled. “If it’s genuine, our host really should be keeping a closer eye on it.”

<Hey, you guys taking the dime tour in there? Hayakawa’s moving the party to the outside landing, which means I won’t be inconspicuous for too much longer.>

<Settle down, we only need two more minutes. Accompany the rest of the party if you must. I’ll catch up. Just neutralize the pressure plate on the central pillar before you go.> Elijah sent the entire reply without breaking eye contact with the bowl.

<Done and done. I’m off to sip some more of that fine Cristal, but Kyrie, don’t you worry that pretty head of yours. I’m still on the clock, so call if there is any trouble, and I’ll do the same.>

Elijah ignored the preening hacker. A crease gathered between his eyes. “There’s something wrong. There’s mana here, but it’s … wrong.”

Kyrie kept scanning the room, particularly the door. “Wrong?”

“Mayan religious ceremonies of the period often involved human sacrifice. Supposedly, certain priests used blood magic rites to imbue these bowls with power, making them the objects of intense research interest. That gave it something, but not anything near what it’s supposed to have. But I’ll take another look, to be sure.”

Keeping his arms outstretched, Elijah fell silent as he concentrated. Inside the case, the bowl slowly rose into the air, as if held by unseen hands. It rotated in a slow circle, first horizontally, then inverting it so the bowl’s bottom was visible.

He tsk-tsked under his breath. “Just as I thought—a well-made fake. Perhaps two centuries old, but nowhere near the Late Classic period.”

Kyrie was already edging toward the door as Elijah righted the bowl again and floated it back down. “How can you tell?”

“The clay’s composition is wrong—not enough igneous base, which means it was probably made in northern Mexico, away from the volcanoes in Central America. Hayakawa has spent far too much money on an excellent fake. I knew he was a poseur.”

“Great, now that your academic feathers have been unruffled, let’s get out of here and rejoin the party, ‘kay?” Kyrie was already at the door when an urgent message appeared in her AR.

<Hold up, chica! You’ve got company!>

The door slid open, revealing a slender man pointing a sleek, matte-black pistol at Kyrie’s face.

CHAPTER TWO

Slycer took this moment to enjoy the surroundings of 16th-century Japan.

If he was going to do this right, he needed to stop dicking around with assorted devices and go on a deep dive into the mansion’s host. So he did, plunging into virtual reality and the opulent Japanese estate it used for iconography. A multi-story castle rose into the air in the distance. He thought there would be landscaped gardens and koi ponds, but instead a simple, bare field stretched out in front of him, covered with small, crushed stones that had been smoothed to a uniform layer.

Glancing down, he found the host had given him a kimono, belt, and wooden sandals. A straw hat was tilted back on his head, and the shaft of a wooden rake rested on his shoulder. It wasn’t sexy or even remotely attractive—he could override it in a heartbeat if he wanted, but it fit with his “hide in plain sight” philosophy.

Stepping onto the graveled field, he felt his shoulders tense—the deeper he went into the host, the more likely it was that he’d run into some mean intrusion countermeasures. And if he ran into IC, his evening would get bad really fast.

The only thing moving in the entire place was a small child sitting cross-legged on the castle steps. He appeared to be playing with a small, flat box of sand, sculpting various piles, then allowing some of them to collapse several seconds later.

Slycer figured that when it seems there is only one way to go, you just gotta move. He walked onto the field, cautiously approaching the boy. He remained engrossed in his task, drawing piles up into cubes or rows, letting some remain, letting others disintegrate after seconds or minutes. The box looked vaguely familiar to Slycer, but he couldn’t quite place it.

“What are you doing?” he asked. His words sounded unnaturally loud in the silence.

“I create and destroy as requested by my master.” The boy looked up, his fathomless gaze seeming to stare right through Slycer, who tried not to pull back in surprise. The avatar didn’t have the rote, scripted mannerisms of a standard program, but it also didn’t have the individuality of someone online either.

What the hell? This isn’t any standard agent or sec program I know. He squinted, his virtual eyes and his lifetime of experience trying to figure out what this kid was. Couldn’t be an AI. They wouldn’t use one of those just to do housekeeping. Would they?

As he watched, he started to understand what the kid was doing in the sand. The sandbox matched the general dimensions of the room where the party was being held. As Slycer watched, the boy created seats, tables, and shelves where they were needed. Slycer even saw his own seat in the corner and shivered again, knowing his meat and bones were sitting out there, all too vulnerable.

“Can you—leave this place?”

The boy had turned back to his work, and spoke more softly. “They would never allow it.” His hand pointed behind Slycer, who turned to see what the child was referring to.

A small, pug-faced dog, looking like it was made entirely of gleaming metal, sat on the other side of the field, facing him. Its tongue lolled out as it waited—and watched.

Of course he’s slaved the biodrone into the house security. Slycer thought about running silent but nulled the idea, figuring the biodrone’s avatar might investigate anything odd—like an icon suddenly disappearing.

Instead of hiding, Slycer cautiously made his way to the drone, then slipped one of his marks—a small, sharp knife slicing through an eyeball—onto the drone. He was smooth enough that the drone didn’t seem to care.

With the mark in place, he had some access to the drone’s functions, such as seeing what it saw. He pulled up a window in front of him to see what the biodrone was watching.

Hayakawa was there, ushering everyone into another room. As Slycer scanned the biodrone’s line of vision, he saw that the oldster and the buff chica were still inside. What the fuck?—they should have been done and gone by now.

Slycer opened a channel to the woman, asking what was taking them so long. The old man said to follow the party, but to disarm the pressure plate in the main display first—which Slycer had done before they’d even set foot in there. Dividing his attention between the departing party guests and the VR boy, he noticed one of the servants heading toward the hall that led to the display room. Jumping to the security cameras, he watched as the man climbed the stairs and stalked down the corridor, reaching inside his jacket and drawing a small pistol. Pulling a silencer from his other pocket, he screwed it onto the end of the barrel.

Oh, shit! Slycer thought, cutting back to inside the museum room, where the woman was just about to open the door.

<Hold up, chica! You’ve got company!>

CHAPTER THREE

Kyrie drew up immediately, staring past the stubby silencer affixed to the pistol’s barrel to the man holding it and standing a few feet from her. He was dressed in a crisp, white, collarless shirt and short, black suit jacket with matching pants, and looked vaguely familiar. Kyrie’s eye twitched as she tried to reply to Slycer, but the man extended his pistol an inch closer, making her focus on him again. He was good, staying just out of range of her hands and feet.

“Do not speak to your man in the other room—I’ll know, and will stop you, permanently if necessary. Do not take your eyes off me again, or I will shoot one out. With one hand, remove the glasses—slowly—and hold them at your side. Twitch wrong, and your brains will be the latest display in this room. Tell your partner not to try anything stupid either, or he’ll die right after you.”

While he spoke, Kyrie thought about trying to take him out, but dismissed the idea. Despite appearances, things hadn’t progressed to that point yet. He hadn’t shot her, which meant he wanted her alive, at least for the time being. Besides, even as good as she was, there was the small chance that he might get a shot off if she went for him, which would no doubt set off all kinds of security. She decided to go along with his demands—for now.

It would help, though, if she could remember who this guy was. Kyrie racked her brain, trying to figure out where she’d seen him before. His face wasn’t that memorable; a hint of Central American in his wide nose, dark brown eyes, and swarthy skin. And why was he on the edge of her memory, as if she had seen him—or someone like him—recently? As she took the glasses off, she was careful enough to hold them so the front of the lenses were aimed at the gunman, hoping Slycer was already reacting to this new threat.

She caught a strange odor on him—shrimp, and some kind of spicy sauce overlaying it. That’s it! “You’re a runner posing as service, aren’t you?”

He sniffed. “Took you that long to figure it out? Surprised you even made it this far.”

Kyrie didn’t bother to retort, but just let him continue to think he had the upper hand. “What do you want?”

“You and your friend are going to finish my job for me—you’re going to steal that Mayan ceremonial bowl, and I’m going to take it out of here.”

Kyrie shrugged and nodded at the pedestal behind her. “You want it, you get it.”

The pistol’s muzzle never wavered, although his voice did, just a bit. “Don’t—push—me. I won’t hesitate to kneecap you if you don’t do as I say.”

Kyrie regarded him for a long moment, then turned her head just far enough to talk to Elijah while still keeping her captor in sight. “He wants us to give him the bowl.”

Elijah nodded. “If he insists, I’ll be happy to fetch it for him.”

The man tensed as Elijah turned to retrieve the object in question. “Ah, ah! First, have your hacker disable the alarm on the case—just it, and nothing else.”

Speaking of that shithead, where the hell is he? He should’ve had the living room extend a pole up this guy’s ass by now, Kyrie thought. She raised the glasses to her mouth. “Slycer, disable the alarms on the bowl case. Flash for confirmation only.”

The runner divided his attention between both of them. “Watch for his signal. Only then will the old man get the bowl.”

“If you don’t mind, I gotta know—how’d you get the gun past security?” Kyrie asked 

“They never scan the help as well as they should.” He motioned at Kyrie to step back with his pistol. “Now shut up and get inside—I want to keep an eye on both of you.”

Her eyes never leaving the gunman, Kyrie stepped back from the doorway far enough to let him come inside just as her glasses flashed green. “Aren’t you worried about showing up on camera?”

“I’d worry about yourselves instead. All right old man, open the case, set it down, then pick up the bowl—carefully. One wrong move, and your friend here gets a third eye.”

Elijah did as ordered, his eyes staying on the gunman. “No need for threats now—you have us right where you want us.”

His tone alerted Kyrie that he was thinking about trying something to free them. She got his attention as he approached and shook her head minutely, trying to warn him not to do anything that might get either of them killed. Elijah, though, didn’t react. He walked to the runner and held out the bowl. “Here you go.”

“Neither of you move.” Keeping the pistol trained on Kyrie, the man reached for the bowl with his free hand. Elijah let him take it, then stepped back, keeping his hands in sight the entire time. “You two stay in here. Tell the police I said ‘hi.’”

Pistol still up, he backed to the door, pausing while it soundlessly slid open. He had just stepped into the hallway and was about to turn around when he was struck by a large, brown-black blur that knocked him back into the room. The pistol and bowl both flew from his hands as he was slammed to the floor.

Kyrie dashed ahead, grabbing the gun out of the air. In her peripheral vision, she saw Elijah moving, but her attention was focused on the man, who screamed in pain as the Razorhound lived up to its name.

Without a sound, its titanium claws raked his legs and chest as it lunged, its open mouth filled with gleaming teeth. Before the runner could move, the biodrone’s jaws clamped onto his throat and ripped it open with one savage tear. Blood spurted over the floor, his thrashing limbs slowing to spasmodic jerks as he died, a mute appeal for help frozen on his face.

Kyrie trained the small pistol at the dog’s head, which slowly raised to stare at her, blood dripping from its mouth, still not making a sound. “It’s past time to get out of here.”

Elijah slowly got to his feet, the bowl cradled in his hands. He quickly set it on the floor. “I agree, but we have to get by that first, and astral overwatch around here will be all over us if I summon anything. Any suggestions?”

“I’m assuming Slycer hacked the mutt and is controlling it right now, so we should be able to simply walk right past.”

“Then why are you still pointing a gun at it?”

“Just in case I’m wrong.” Kyrie brought her other hand up and put the glasses back on. <I’m here, Slycer.>

<Good, ’cause you both need to get the hell out of there! Everything in the place just locked down triple-tight, including that damn dog! I’ve got IC closing in on me, and it’s going to make life miserable if it catches up.>

“Aw, hell—” Kyrie took a step backward, pistol still aimed at the animal’s head, as the Razorhound crouched on the shadowrunner’s bloody corpse. “If you got any fancy tricks up your sleeve, now would be a good time!”

“It’s more machine than animal,” Elijah said. “I’m having trouble controlling it.”

At that moment, the dog leaped off the corpse at Kyrie. Her adept’s reflexes kicked in, and Elijah and the rest of the world slowed around her—the dog, not so much—as she prepared to meet the airborne threat.

Focusing all of her power into her right foot, Kyrie leaped straight up. She whirled around in a full circle, her foot building up momentum before slamming into the side of the biodrone’s head in a ferocious blow that sent them both careening in different directions.

Kyrie felt like she had just kicked a block of vanadium steel. Even enhanced by her magical ability, her foot still throbbed, though she didn’t think she had broken anything. The dog skidded away to crash-land in a heap on the other side of the room, its head canted at an odd angle. Breathing hard, she brought the pistol back on line and waited to see if she had taken it out. “I think—”

The dog’s hind legs twitched.

“Goddamn it!”

Its head lolling on an obviously broken neck, the biodrone scrambled to its feet and fixed Kyrie with a lopsided stare. Crouching, it leaped again, claws gleaming with a combination of steel and fresh blood as it reached out to rake her chest.

Dropping the pistol, Kyrie crouched under the animal as it sailed over her. Grabbing its right foreleg with both hands, she rolled onto her back and kicked up into its midsection with all her strength, feeling reinforced ribs flex under the blow. Its leg trapped by her tight grip, the dog flipped over and crashed to the floor, a spray of blood and other dark fluid jetting onto the carpet. Kyrie did a kip-up to regain her feet and whirled to see the dog also rising, although it was now dragging one leg.

Snatching the pistol, Kyrie lined up the tritium sights and squeezed the trigger three times. At less than two meters away, she couldn’t miss. The bullets bounced off its head, one smashing an eye and making it go dark, the other two carving bright scratches of metal where they impacted on its armored skull. The rounds made the dog pause as somewhere inside, programs evaluated the damage and adjusted accordingly.

Kyrie realized the pistol was about as useful as a flyswatter against the armored blasphemy of nature. “Screw this.” Turning, she pulled the pistol’s trigger again, shooting not at the dog, but at the reinforced plasglass barrier in front of the focus dagger. The tough material starred under the impacts but didn’t break. Kyrie was already moving toward it, knowing she’d have to time her actions perfectly.

“Watttchhh—ooout—!” she heard Elijah’s slowed, drawn-out warning, and knew the biodrone was almost on top of her. Focusing her qi again, she drove her fist—the knuckles of her index and middle finger extended in a ram’s head punch—through the weakened plasglass, then uncurled her hand and grasped the hilt of the Russian dagger. Drawing it from its silver-wrapped sheath, she spun on her heel in time to see the dog soaring through the air toward her again, its tilted head cocked to savage her.

Kyrie sidestepped and brought the dagger around, plunging the foot-long blade into the dog’s side, just behind its front leg. She felt the edge slice though skin and muscle, skitter off a rib, then penetrate the sub-muscular spider-silk armor weave and sink deep into the animal’s chest cavity.

It was like she had hit the biodrone’s off switch, turning it from 130 kilos of relentless attacker to instant dead meat. Its momentum carried it past her, almost tearing the knife from her grasp before the beast smashed into the wall and fell to the floor, a bloody mess of fur and metal.

Breathing hard, Kyrie wrenched the blade out and wiped it on the animal’s pelt. She rose, grabbed the sheath, shoving the dagger into it, and turned to Elijah. “Don’t know about you, but I’m ready to get the hell out of here.”

Elijah was right behind as she stepped to the door, but stopped as she held up her hand. “Slycer, give me a sitrep on the living room—Slycer!” There was no answer. “I think we’ve been cut off. Wait on the far side of the door.”

Once he was poised on the right side, Kyrie crept over to stand on the left, then waved her arm to activate the sensor. The door didn’t open. She tried again, with the same results. “House security seems to have trapped us in here as well.”

“Can you break through?”

Kyrie pushed experimentally at the barrier. “Hardwood, very solid, maybe with a steel core. I don’t think I could break through it easily. Let’s see…” She flicked through screens in her AR until a floor plan overlay appeared in her vision, every room now flashing bright red. “They haven’t cut off my guest view of the house yet. Since waltzing out the main entrance isn’t an option, we need to get to the back door—which is back down the hallway and to the left off the main room.” She glanced at Elijah. “Your call.”

Elijah grimaced. “While I hate having to bust our way out of here, there doesn’t seem to be much of a choice now. Stand back.” He picked up the pistol as a disembodied voice spoke in the display room.

“Unidentified intruders, this is Knight Errant Security! You have thirty seconds to surrender, or we will use all appropriate force to apprehend you! This is your only warning! You now have twenty-five seconds to lay down your weapons, switch off all cyberware, cancel any sustained spells, dismiss any summoned spirits, and come out with your hands up!”

Elijah examined the gun in his hand. “Keep clear of the door.” He stepped to one side, then fired a shot at the wood. It ricocheted off, the light slug whining away to bury itself in another wall. The response was immediate—a flurry of pistol fire punched several holes in the door immediately before loud shouts in the hallway brought it to a halt.

“Unidentified intruders, you now have fifteen seconds to drop all weapons and spells and come out with your hands in plain sight!”

Elijah took a deep breath and stepped away from the door. “You might want to make some room—my friend is going to need it.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Ever since he was a child, Elijah had been insatiably curious about everything—from where things went after they were flushed down the toilet to whether there were other worlds beyond this plane of existence. When he’d first learned of the astral plane, he’d immediately spent every waking moment learning about it and how to access it. That knowledge had served him well over the intervening years.

Like now, for instance. He had done this so often it was reflex. He imagined a spirit in his mind, and then mentally transmitted a simple request.

“I need you.”

The telepathic link took hold instantly. His mind filled with a deep, sonorous, echoing voice that sounded like it had begun speaking before the beginning of time, and would continue until after the universe ended. “Whaaaaaat dooooooo youuuuuuuu wiiiiiiisssssssshhhhhhh?”

“Remove the door to this room, conceal this woman and myself from all human and machine sight, and protect us from all who seek to do us harm until we have left this building.”

“Itttttttt willlllllll beeeeeeee donnnnnnnne.”

The air thickened as an insubstantial form appeared, floating for a moment before coalescing into a very solid, humanoid form that landed on the ground with a thump that shook the entire building. Composed of irregular rocks, smooth stones, and lots of dirt, the earth spirit regarded Elijah from a face formed of muddy features that constantly dripped and reformed as it moved. Staring at him, it pointed at the door, the question obvious.

“Yes, that one, please.”

The spirit drew back a stone-studded fist the size of Elijah’s head and let it fly. The entire wall trembled with the impact, and the door bowed out, a corner of the steel core punching through the outer layer. The spirit raised both of its arms and brought them down on the door, pushing the top half completely out of the frame.

Elijah glanced at Kyrie, who was staring at the thing as it worked. “They’re looking for a target—I thought we’d give them a rather large one.”

“Da-yamn,” was her only reply.

One more massive punch sent the door spinning into the hallway, narrowly missing a pair of body-armored, full-face-helmeted Knight Errant men approaching the entrance. The large, deadly missile made them scramble for cover.

“Holy fuck—get the mage up here ASAP!” Elijah heard one of them say just before they opened up with their Ruger Thunderbolts. Heavy slugs chunked into the spirit’s body, causing puffs of dirt and chips of rock to fly off, but otherwise not harming the entity in the least.

“Stay back!” Elijah warned Kyrie as a few bullets punched through the spirit’s body. One of them tumbled through the now empty pedestal, leaving a ragged hole in the polished wood.

Ducking under the doorframe, the spirit took one giant step into the hall and lashed out with its boulder-sized fists. Each one slammed into a sec man, sending them both flying. Their pistols clattered to the floor, followed by their unconscious bodies a moment later.

“Unidentified paranormal entity, stop all hostile actions immediately or you will be banished!”

The earth spirit took another bone-shaking step into the hallway while Elijah shared a smile with Kyrie about the futile command. “Time to go.”

“You’re sure they won’t be able to see us?”

Elijah nodded. “Next to air spirits, earth are the best at concealing other creatures—it has something to do with their connection to the planet. Stay close to the walls, though—we’re hidden, not bulletproof.”

The spirit was now halfway down the hall, forcing the rest of the Knight Errant squad to retreat. Three of them had clustered around a fourth one, who was holding a small item in his left hand while his right traced a pattern in the air. The other three guards fired as fast as they could, bullets and clouds of burned cordite filling the air.

Elijah frowned. “That’s a problem.” Before he could instruct the spirit to take out the magician trying to banish it, the earthen being raised a hand and blasted out a stream of glowing particulates—accompanied by a roar that sounded like a full-speed freight train—that scattered the entire group back into the living room. The spirit kept walking forward, its next step clearing the way for the two runners to reach the exit.

 Elijah tried not to look too satisfied at the path the spirit had cleared. “We have an opening—let’s not waste it.” He started to run, but then Kyrie held her hand up.

“Wait,” she said.

“What now?”

“Slycer. He’s been nabbed.” She met his gaze. “Do we get him?”

They could have kept going and left the smarmy dwarf to his own devices, which wouldn’t have cost either one of them too much sleep. After all, the hacker knew the risks when he took the job, and since they didn’t know him personally, there was no real reason to risk their asses to try and save him.

But that wasn’t how it worked. Whether you knew someone well or not, whether you liked them or not, once they were on your team, you owed it to them to get them out, because that’s what teams do. Some of that was because you didn’t want to leave behind a witness who could describe you, some of it was because you’d expect them to come for you if the situation were reversed, but most of it was because that was simply the way things were done in the shadows.

“He’s an arrogant prick, but he’s our arrogant prick,” Elijah said. “We have to get him.”

“I know.” With a resigned sigh, Kyrie edged to the far wall of the exit hall. “Do me a favor and clear a path, wouldja?”

Elijah peeked back into the room, where the spirit was still laying into the Knight Errant squad, sending bodies flying with each swing of its huge fists. “Spirit?”

“Yessssssssss?”

“Clear a path to the far door for my female friend.”

“Yessssssssss.”

A troll with more guts than brains was trying to restrain the ambulatory pile of earth and rocks. Having thrown its beefy arms around the creature’s chest, he strained to lift it off the ground. He might as well have tried to lift a corner of the house.

The spirit broke free simply by spreading its gigantic arms. The huge metahuman sailed across the room as if he was a 2.4-meter-tall paper airplane, smashing into the wall and leaving a large, troll-shaped imprint in the flexible material as he began sliding down, out cold. Before he reached the floor, the room formed a huge chair around him, making it seem like the Knight Errant officer had sprawled out in his sleep. The spirit strode relentlessly forward, making the other sec men scatter before it, yelling at each other.

“—Backup, we need backup right now!—”

“—Fall back—fuckin’ paranormal’s taken out the whole squad, including Ertal!—”

“—Second squad, report to our position immed—!” The last order was cut off as the spirit bounced the speaking guard’s helmeted head off the floor, knocking him unconscious.

Elijah didn’t need to say a thing. He moved past the fallen bodies, and Kyrie was right beside him. The spirit lumbered behind.

This was when their legwork paid off. They had obtained detailed floor plans of the mansion, so finding the best path to Slycer wasn’t hard. They only needed to cross two hallways and an intervening room.

Then there’d be one more trick to pull off.

“Got a way out planned?” he asked Kyrie as they ran.

“Yep. It involves a window. Ready for that?”

“No problem.”

He ran into the second hallway just ahead of bullets splintering part of the doorway. They didn’t have much of a lead. In less than a minute, Elijah would find out if it was enough.

CHAPTER FIVE

Sometimes three words were enough to ruin your day. Today, those three words were in a message from Slycer.

<Don’t touch me.>

Kyrie and the earth spirit had made a spectacular entrance into the room, the spirit spitting fist-sized rocks through the air while Kyrie danced between them, leaping sideways and then launching herself off the wall while firing a shot at the unsuspecting officers. They were ready to grab Slycer and head for the window with his message came through.

“‘Don’t touch me?’” Kyrie said. “What the hell does he mean? Why not?”

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Elijah said. At the same time he composed a reply to Slycer.

<Why not?>

Slycer’s reply was terse. <Can’t jack out. Host range limited to mansion. Take me out and I’ll be dumped.>

Kyrie read the message at the same time as Elijah.

“Holy goddamn hell,” she said.

<What do you mean you can’t jack out?> Elijah sent.

His wait for a reply was interrupted by bullets flying into the room’s black door.

“We’re out of time,” Kyrie said.

“I’m aware,” Elijah said. “Spirit, guard the door.”

Yesssssssssssssssssss. Theeennnnnnn IIII ammmmmmm donnnnnnnnnne.

Perfect, Elijah thought. Absolutely perfect.

<Slycer, NOW!> he sent, if only to prove that the hacker wasn’t the only one who could be terse.

Finally a reply came. <Fifteen seconds> it said.

Elijah took a breath. Fifteen seconds. Surely the spirit could hold for that long.

At that moment, the spirit blew apart into a rain of pebbles and dust.

“Damn,” Elijah said.

Someone out there was wielding mana. Elijah switched to astral just in time to see a spell shooting through the space where the spirit had been. He didn’t get a read on exactly what kind of spell it was, but it had an angry orange glow that he didn’t like. He dispelled it with a sweep of his arm, then switched his view to reality.

“Grab him,” he said. “We have no time left.”

Kyrie picked up the dwarf. “He’s not gonna like it.”

“Then he should have gotten out of the host faster.”

He ran toward the window Kyrie had selected, with the elf right beside him. They charged forward than leaped, feeling the glass splinter and shatter around them.

Suddenly the floor was gone and there was grass less than three meters below Elijah. It wouldn’t take much to make their landing smooth, just a gentle reshaping of the ground below to make it more forgiving. He cast the spell as he fell, then he and Kyrie rolled to a landing.

As he moved to pick himself up, he saw Slycer lying on the ground, blinking and looking confused.

“Welcome back,” Elijah said.

“We in a hurry?” the dwarf asked. Bullets fired from the window they had exited, answering Slycer’s question. All three of them stood to run.

Kyrie took off in her normal blinding sprint, with Elijah running for all he was worth but feeling like he was running in wet concrete compared to her. Slycer was even slower, though, staggering like a man at the end of a very long bender.

“Faster!” Elijah yelled.

“Trying!” Slycer replied.

There were flashing lights from all over, cop cars going onto every paved—and unpaved—part of the estate. It was somewhat disorienting for Elijah to be in a part of the sprawl where Knight Errant responded to a call, let alone rapidly and in such numbers. Hayakawa must have supported several Policeman’s Balls.

And it wasn’t just on the ground. Drones were also swarming around, a few of them peppering the ground with suppressive fire. This was one of those times that Elijah was very grateful that he always made a What If It All Goes To Hell plan. He just hoped he had enough left in him to execute it.

Ahead, Kyrie had veered right and was laying down fire in an effort to keep people off their rear. The front side was going to be a problem soon, but that was Elijah’s concern. While still running at full speed, he called a spirit out of the air. The wind rushing by his cheeks blew harder and faster, for a moment almost pushing him into a stop. The spirit he summoned did not manifest; rather it coalesced, a pocket of sentient will gathered into swirling air. It offered no words or coherent thoughts, mainly a presence waiting to be commanded.

Elijah pictured a certain spot in his mind, a small bare patch in the woods at the back of the estate.

“Make a clear path from me to there,” he said.

The spirit howled as it whipped ahead.

Following it was something like waterskiing behind a tornado. They drafted into its slipstream, running through relatively calm air while around them dirt, sticks, and rocks were swirling aloft. The Knight Errant troops behind them kept firing, but Elijah imagined it was tough to get a bead on them. At the moment, no shots were getting close enough to worry about. The stationary troops waiting ahead might have better shots, but that’s what the spirit was for.

At first the spirit was just kicking up debris, but then it got serious. Large tree limbs snapped off, then entire tree fell. Two Knight Errant troopers charging from the perimeter were blown completely off their feet, rolling after they finally landed until they hit the fence of the estate. Elijah felt a surge of mana come in, possibly from the same mage who had dispelled the earth spirit, but this time the spirit didn’t care. It shrugged the banishing attempt off and continued charging forward.

Elijah’s legs were still churning. Kyrie was ahead of him, but Slycer had fallen behind again. It was okay. In the time it would take for Elijah to get the bikes ready, the dwarf could catch up. Assuming the bikes were still there.

That was the next hitch in the plan. Had Knight Errant or the party’s hired guns had time to sweep the grounds and find the three carefully designed piles of leaves?

With the spirit blowing ahead of them, the leaves would be gone. The ARO in front of him showed they had 250 more meters to go, most of it through the trees behind the mansion. There were troopers closing in every side, bullets getting closer. It was night, but Elijah couldn’t tell thanks to the spotlights beaming from the cars and the floodlights shining from the drones. He’d have to make one small adjustment in his plans, but he could handle it.

His legs were burning by the time the bikes came in sight. The spirit had done its job—no Knight Errant officer had a clear line of sight on him at the moment. Kyrie was already astride her motorcycle, engine revving. Elijah picked up Slycer’s bike, started the engine, then went to his vehicle while looking for the dwarf.

He saw him limping through the trees, moving even slower than Elijah expected.

Wait, limping?

The closer Slycer came, the clearer it was that he was moving with difficulty. Then, about twenty meters away, he fell.

Elijah cursed, took a look at the dwarf’s aura, then cursed again. He turned to Kyrie. “Slycer’s hit!”

“How bad?”

Elijah looked back at the dwarf, who was still on the ground. “Pretty bad.”

Kyrie didn’t ask what they were going to do. She just gunned her engine and circled around toward the dwarf. Elijah ran over on foot. He got there in time to help hoist him onto the front of Kyrie’s bike. Slycer was pale, his eyes were closed, and as soon as he saw him, Elijah knew. He knew what the result was going to be. But he also knew that it didn’t change a damned thing.

“Gun it,” he said, then ran to his bike.

Kyrie was dodging through the trees by the time Elijah got his engine started. He cast out his senses for his spirit and found it loitering nearby.

Fly five kilometers north as fast as you can, he sent. Then you are free.

The spirit howled away in excitement. Elijah and Kyrie gave chase.

For thirty long seconds Elijah stared straight in front of him, looking for trees to avoid, branches to duck under, swirling rocks to dodge, and bullets to swerve away from. He gripped the handlebars so tight he thought they might crumple in his hands.

The trees thinned out, which was good for easier driving, bad for being a more exposed target. The gunfire grew more intense. Elijah made two quick castings, one to put a shield around himself, the other to do the same to Kyrie. The one-two punch of the spells nearly took his breath away, and he sagged in the seat. The handlebars bucked under his hands, and he nearly lost his grip. He let his torso fall forward, putting his weight at the front of the bike, making sure he didn’t lose control. As he did, a bullet passed over his head, brushing the back of his hair. Probably would have been buried in his face if he hadn’t almost lost his grip.

He took it as a sign that he was meant to survive this. Gunning the engine, he bumped over the rough ground, looking for the right spot in the fence. He’d recognize it by its astral glow, thanks to the glo-moss he’d placed there.

There it was. So close…

“Blow it!” he yelled, hoping Kyrie had her earbuds in.

Either she heard him or she had the same idea. Several small explosions erupted on the fence, and a good chunk of it fell away. Just like that, they had a door.

The cops saw it and knew what was happening. Cars guarding the back entrance squealed their tires to cut off the escape. But they were too slow. The two bikes shot through, evading gunfire, crossing long grass to hit the back access road and move to top speed.

Once they hit the road it was over. The cops would give chase, but Elijah and Kyrie had speed and maneuverability on their side. They would shoot to the Barrens, then hide in places Knight Errant wouldn’t dare follow.

It would’ve been perfect, except that as he rocketed into the night, Elijah noticed Slycer’s aura had become completely dark.

CHAPTER SIX

The following evening, Elijah and Kyrie walked into the foyer of The Eye of the Needle restaurant, set atop that most famous of Seattle’s tourist attractions, the Space Needle. Both were dressed in evening wear similar to what they’d used for the run into Hayakawa’s home, only these were a bit more subdued.

Elijah met the maitre’d’s neutral expression with his own blasé stare. “Mr. Tish and Ms. Elyson to see Mr. Johnson. 8:15 p.m. reservation.”

They were precisely on time.

“Right this way, sir, madam.” As the maitre’d led them through the understated, elegant resturant, Elijah saw Mr. Johnson awaiting them in a corner booth. The occult archaeologist kept his face impassive—given the long waiting list, a corner booth was very hard to come by. Their Johnson had either a skilled hacker or very lofty connections. Elijah would’ve bet on the latter.

Mr. Johnson was an elf with skin the color of Recchiuti’s dark chocolate. He had deep brown eyes that watched the pair approach with a soulful, almost innocent gaze. His hair was bound in dozens of tiny plaits, each one decorated with small silver beads spaced evenly from each end to the scalp. Everything else was straight-up elven; gracefully pointed ears, aquiline nose, a to-die-for smile, the whole package. He looked like a well-to-do executive meeting a business associate, or perhaps seeing some very lucky lady.

Elijah knew better—the man was a Johnson, therefore he was playing an angle—several at once, probably. The real trick now was to deliver their good news and hope it would mitigate their bad news.

He wasn’t the only suspicious one. Kyrie sent him a quick message. <I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something not quite right about this guy. Beside the fact he’s a Johnson, of course.>

Elijah smiled tightly at Kyrie’s words. <Well, if you figure out what’s up, let me know sooner rather than later, okay?>

Mr. Johnson didn’t say a word as they approached and sat kitty-corner from him. He simply sat there, his folded hands resting on the table as their waiter—another elf who could barely tear his gaze away from their host—ran through the evening’s specials. Elijah scanned the menu that had popped up in his AR while also keeping an eye on their employer.

“Do either of you need a moment to peruse the menu? If you enjoy sushi, I recommend the tuna, watercress, and sweet egg makizushi—you won’t find any better in the city,” Mr. Johnson said. After starting his order with mango iced tea, he surprised Elijah by ordering a braised short rib appetizer. Although the mage didn’t think he’d shown any reaction, the elf grinned. “Not all of us ‘dandelion-eaters’ are vegetarians.”

“Of course not.” Despite the events of the previous evening, Elijah had worked up enough of an appetite to order sparkling water and the Kobe burger, rare. When someone else is paying, go all out—he had found it to be a simple, effective rule. Kyrie took Mr. Johnson’s suggestion and got the sushi platter, along with a diet Ko-Cola.

After the waiter had melted into the background, Mr. Johnson spread his hands. “So, what’s the word?” His voice was melodious and smooth as silk, his tone calm and gentle as the Sound during a heat wave. Despite himself, Elijah found himself relaxing slightly, and admonished himself to remain alert.

Exchanging a quick glance with Kyrie, he laid out what went down the night before, from walking into Hayakawa’s home to their unexpectedly rushed exit out the back—all carefully couched in non-specific language, of course. “The bottom line is, the object you’d asked to have analyzed was a fake. The downside is that the assistant you’d suggested accompany us didn’t make it back.”

“Hmm, that’s interesting—I didn’t catch any mention of an intruder being killed at the scene of the break-in.”

Elijah’s face could have been set in stone. “We took care of it.” Which they had; the dwarf’s remains had been sunk in a deep part of the Sound early that morning.

The elf cocked his head ever-so-slightly. “I certainly hope there wasn’t any sort of disagreement between you all that ended—badly.”

Before Elijah could reply, Kyrie did. “He died because he was slow. He was locked into Hayakawa’s host and couldn’t get out fast enough. Because of that, he caught a bullet that made him slow. That made him catch a few more bullets. He was dead when we left the grounds.” The steel in her tone dared Mr. Johnson to even try to dispute their version of events.

The elf’s shoulder twitched, and he made what might have been a tsk noise out of the corner of his mouth. “Well, Slycer knew the risks when he took the job. I wouldn’t think his loss has upset either of you too much—after all, it simply means one less split of your completion payment.”

Elijah felt Kyrie stiffen beside him, and wondered what her reaction to his words meant, but Mr. Johnson spoke again before he could text a query to her.

“What’s important is that you accomplished the job, and—despite the obstacles placed in your way—did so without appearing on the local screamsheets, either public or law enforcement. A commendable performance overall.”

Elijah had met some ice-cold customers on either side of the table, but this guy gave all of them a run for their money. Of course, he might have sent Slycer with them in the hopes that he’d get taken out—who could tell what machinations lurked in the mind of Mr. Johnson?

The elf’s next words, delivered in his oddly deep, honeyed voice, made Elijah’s eyebrows raise. “So, if you don’t have anything planned in the immediate future, I have another job for you. This one involves a bit of travel, but I think you’ll find the compensation well worth the trip.”

Elijah kept his face impassive, although a part of him wanted to accept before he’d even heard the terms. He frowned at the sudden wave of impulsiveness washing over him. What’s going on here? The waiter arrived with their drinks, and he seized the interruption to text his partner.

<I’m getting the strangest sensation while sitting here. You got anything on this guy yet?>

<Nothing I can pin down. There’s something odd, yeah, but I can’t place what it is yet.>

Elijah took a quick peek at Mr. Johnson’s aura and got nothing. This was one exceptionally cool and controlled customer. He could get more info by actually casting a spell, but he didn’t dare risk it—the overwatch in the Eye was so sensitive that any detection of unauthorized casting would get Kyrie and him ejected from the establishment—and he’d been dying to try the Eye’s burger anyway. He sipped his water and set the glass down. “We’re listening.”

“I’m sure, Mr. Tish, that a man of your expertise is aware of the Aleph Society.”

“Yes. That’s the Chicago branch of the group—many call it a cult—that claims to be able to restore magical ability to impaired or burned-out mages.”

“Exactly. Recently it has come to my employer’s attention that they have acquired what appears to be an antique map of a remote area of Antarctica. Your task would be to travel to the Chicago area, gain access to the Aleph Society facility there, and use your skills to ascertain two things. First, whether the map is genuine, and second, whether it has any arcane properties of any kind. If it does, you are to liberate the map from the Society, depart the city, and contact me to arrange for its delivery. I can facilitate travel within forty-eight hours, as well as complete schematics of the target facility in Rolling Meadows, and the information we’ve already uncovered regarding the map itself. As for payment, I think twenty thousand nuyen—each—plus transportation should be sufficient. So, are you interested?”

His words flowed into Elijah’s ears like soothing elven jazz, and again he had to fight the nearly overwhelming urge to agree to the job. It wasn’t that the task as outlined was sending him any danger signals—and maybe that was the problem. It all sounded really good—sounded too good—

“It sounds good to—”

<Oh shit!>

Kyrie’s exclamation brought Elijah out of his slight daze and back into full alert. Coughing to cover the sudden break in his answer, he reached for his water glass and sipped from it while shooting her a quick query. <What?>

<How could I have been so stupid! This son of a bitch is a social adept! He’s doing that damn voice thing that would make you agree to walk barefoot through the Sahara just because he asked nicely.>

<No wonder he sounded so convincing. That also explains why he’s not alerting the place’s overwatch—adept abilities don’t flare up like spells do. Plus he’s masking his aura so I didn’t notice anything. He’s good.> Elijah preferred that explanation to the other alternative, which was that he had been sloppy in his scan.

<So, how you want to play this?>

<Well, assuming everything’s on the level, there’s no reason not to take the job. I’d just prefer he play straight with us.>

<Weren’t you the guy who said he’s a Johnson a few minutes ago, so our default mode should be distrust?>

<Touché>

“Are you all right, Mr. Tish?” Mr. Johnson positively oozed concern.

“Yes—just something caught in my throat,” Elijah replied. “As I was saying, we’ll accept the job, but we’ll need a 72-hour window before departure. I have—various affairs to put in order here first.”

“That can be easily arranged.”

Elijah leaned back in the booth with a smile. “Then it’s settled. Upload all pertinent files and the first half of the payment at your convenience.”

Mr. Johnson smiled, and even though Elijah knew what he was, he still had the strongest feeling that this guy could be trusted completely, that there was no way he would leave them hanging out to dry—

The entrees arrived, and Elijah drank more water while digging his nails into his thigh under the table. The brief shock of pain helped clear his mind, and he was able to focus on the matter at hand.

Mr. Johnson dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his linen napkin. “Until his unfortunate demise, I would have recommended that Slycer accompany you on this run as well. However, since he is now unavailable, there are several others I would be glad to recommend …”

Again Elijah felt that wave of suggestibility wash over him again and fought it off with an effort. “Nothing against your suggestions, but if you don’t mind, this time we’d prefer to use people we already know. I have certain contacts in the area that will prove useful in bringing us up to speed on the situation in the Midwest.”

The ghost of a frown crossed the Johnson’s features for a second, there and gone so fast Elijah thought he might have only imagined it. “Fair enough.” He lifted a forkful of short rib to his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “Everything you require will be in your accounts by tomorrow morning. When precisely would you prefer to leave?”

“That was quite a meal, even if the company left something to be desired.” Patting her stomach, Kyrie leaned against the back wall of the elevator. “I don’t think I’ll be able to look at a chocolate cake for a month.”

“It was something, wasn’t it?” Still savoring the subtle flavors of the Kobe beef and a delicate red wine horseradish lingering in his mouth, Elijah sent the elevator to the lobby. He glanced upward, almost as if he thought Mr. Johnson could eavesdrop on them from where he was still sitting in the booth—which, of course, was quite possible if the Eye’s security was sleeping on the job. “I think the sooner we hit the road, the better.”

“Couldn’t agree with you more—a road trip sounds pretty good right now. By the way, who do you know out in Chicago? I wasn’t aware you had any connections there.”

Elijah smiled. “I haven’t yet told you everything I’ve done. Besides, I wasn’t exactly talking about Chicago. I know a human hacker based in Detroit—he’s good at what he does and should be happy for the work. Since he’s in the area, I can even get him to head over to Chicago and start poking around, easing our way in and getting the lay of the land.”

He frowned, and Kyrie caught it. “Yeah, I’m worried, too.”

“Come again?”

“I think we said yes too fast. The surroundings, his charisma, the food, the money he was offering—I wasn’t on my A game. If someone wants to send us someplace like Chicago, there are a few more questions we should be asking. We let him off easy.”

Elijah realized she was probably right, but he hated to admit he’d been slacking in his negotiations. “It wasn’t that.”

“All right, so what gives?”

“It’s just—Chicago doesn’t hold many fond memories for me. In fact, the last time I was there, I promised myself I wouldn’t go back—ever.”

“Ah. But the target changed your mind, I take it.”

“Something like that.” Elijah’s expression made it clear he wasn’t going to discuss the subject any further.

Kyrie rolled a shoulder and moved on. “Well, since we’re heading to Chicago, feral city extraordinaire, and we may be crossing nano-blades with the Aleph Society, I think we’re gonna need a bit more muscle on this job than usual.”

Elijah raised an eyebrow. “I suppose you have someone in mind?”

 Kyrie grinned. “As a matter of fact, I do. He’s a troll named Pineapple, and if he’s available, he’ll be the perfect mountain of street samurai to have with us on the run.”

The elevator chimed to announce their arrival at the lobby, and Elijah was already walking forward as the doors slid open. “Works for me. You contact your guy, I’ll contact mine, take care of any other necessary business, and meet at Sea-Tac to fly Mr. Johnson Airlines in three days.”

“Yeah—their slogan would be ‘fly the suspicious skies.’ See you then.”

Hearn had eavesdropped on people being tortured before, had been forced to listen to the sick, wet twisting and snapping sounds followed by screams that choked off into sobs. And he would rather do that again a hundred times than have to eavesdrop on people eating at a luxury restaurant. He could hear their lips smack, the quiet sounds of pleasure they didn’t realize they were making when they swallowed. He heard the clink of glasses, the contact of metal flatware on ceramic plates, even the sound of serrated blades gently cutting through tender meat. And he heard it all while sitting in the back of a dingy van with nothing but a bag of sunflower seeds. It was horrible.

But, he’d learned what he needed to. This pair, Elijah and Kyrie, had passed the audition. It was time for the real fireworks to begin, and it looked like they were set to head to Chicago. Hearn figured he could chisel a few thousand extra nuyen out of his employers for the annoyance of having to visit one of the worst hellholes in North America.

He pulled away from the curb. He didn’t need to worry about cleaning anything up—the drones he used were already self-destructing, disintegrating into small clouds of undetectable dust. His work for the night was done. He was going to get some food, dammit, while he thought of a way to make sure the many threats of Chicago kept their hands, claws, and other assorted grasping limbs off of him.

PART TWO

CHAPTER SEVEN

Seventy-six hours later, Elijah, Kyrie, and Pineapple stepped out of O’Hare International Aerospaceport. A cold wind blew across the airfield out of the east, hitting Elijah’s face like a wet gym sock—clammy, unpleasant, and full of smells he would have been happy never to know about. There were hints of woodsmoke, and maybe even a touch of the lake, but he didn’t want to concentrate on it enough to tease out all its subtle elements.

At least they were in the relatively civilized confines of O’Hare. This was corp territory, and while they didn’t always have a great eye for aesthetics, they at least knew how to keep things running. The glittering high-rises visible nearby were intact, their windows unbroken. Streets outside the airport were full of newer-model cars, and the crowd walking around contained a very low percentage of wild-eyed individuals driven mad by the horrors they had seen.

In short, it was everything that the legendary Containment Zone of Chicago was not.

“Where’s our ride?” Kyrie asked.

Elijah scanned the line of waiting cars, spotting a few private rides mixed with the cabs. About ten cars away was a vehicle that had probably been a Bulldog Step-Van in a previous life, but over the years had been transformed into something quite different. Its patchwork body consisted of scrap metal punctuated by various spikes, bars, and sharpened fins. Elijah even spotted a couple of old highway signs that had been reshaped into the rear fender. A man stood by it, wrapped almost entirely in filthy rags and wearing an ancient, full-face gas mask.

“That’s him,” Elijah said, raising a hand in acknowledgement.

“Damn,” rumbled Pineapple. “That is one ugly truck.”

“You’re one to talk,” said Kyrie, grinning at the enormous troll.

Pineapple grinned back. The light was dimming, but the troll’s gold-capped tusks glowed warmly as they protruded over his upper lip. Kyrie and Pineapple had a history, which meant Elijah spent most of the flight listening to them swap war stories. It had set him at ease—somewhat. Pineapple was easily the largest and most frightening troll Elijah had ever met, and his first reaction on seeing him was to pull away. If Kyrie trusted him, though, Elijah figured he could too.

Elijah turned to the approaching figure. “Leung?” he called.

The man stepped up and pulled his gas mask off to reveal a stunningly handsome man of Chinese descent. The smile he flashed warmed the chilly March air.

“Have I ever let you down?” Leung reached out to embrace Elijah.

“It’s good to see you again.” Elijah slapped the hacker on the back. “What’s with the outfit? The air that bad?”

Leung raised his nose and sniffed. “Depends on the day.” Then he looked back at Elijah. “I thought you said you were never coming back here? Must be a pretty good payday to bring you in.”

“It is,” Elijah replied. “Besides, I think it’s been long enough. I’d like to just put that whole thing behind me.” He hoped he sounded convincing to Leung. “It’s ancient history, and we’ve got enough to do here and now. Here’s the rest of the team you’ll be working with. This is Kyrie, who’s been an able teammate on several missions, and the rather large fellow here is named Pineapple.”

Leung looked up at the troll. “For the fruit?”

Pineapple shook his head. “For the grenade.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, what’s with the … ?” Leung finished his question by pointing to the top of his own head.

“The horns?” Pineapple grunted. He rubbed the pair of stumps where most trolls’ horns would be. “Sawed ’em off,” he said. “Got sick of folks grabbin’ ’em while I was tryin’ to kill ’em. Felt like a goddamn jungle gym sometimes.”

Leung nodded. “Quite reasonable.” He turned to Kyrie and extended his hand. “Very pleased to meet you. Any friend of Elijah’s is a friend of mine, especially when they understand what they’ve been missing by spending so much time with him.”

“Mm-hmm. I hope you’re as good as you are pretty,” she said.

“Better.” He smiled that smile again.

“We’ll see.” Kyrie nudged the troll. “C’mon, Pineapple, let’s load up. We can all get to know each other on the road.”

As Kyrie and Pineapple retreated back into the LAV, the door on the side of the step van slid open with a loud scrape. The woman standing in the opening was not quite four feet tall. She wore gray sweat pants, sneakers, and an oversized, hooded sweatshirt with the hood up.

“We gotta get rolling, Leung,” she called before retreating back into the van.

“Our rigger?” said Elijah.

Leung nodded. “Name’s Cao. From Amazonia originally—Metropôle , I think—but she’s been doing her thing in Chicago for the past couple of years. I’ve worked with her before. She’s very good.”

“Dwarf?”

“Not exactly.”

Elijah frowned. “Meaning …?”

“She’s a goblin.”

Elijah narrowed his eyes at Leung. He knew a few people infected with the HMHVV virus, but he typically kept those relationships casual and at a distance. Even the need for HMHVV victims to eat metahuman flesh was something he could live with if the victim handled their dietary restriction legally, but in a trade where blood spraying was all too common, the threat of infection made them dangerous teammates. Not to mention the fact that few metahumans emerged from the transformation of infection with their psyche wholly intact.

Leung held up his hands. “I know what you’re thinking, and don’t worry. She’s sane and she’s non-infectious. I wouldn’t have hired her otherwise. I know your feelings about that after what happened in Miami.”

“I just wish you’d checked with me first,” said Elijah.

Leung smiled again. “You said you wanted fast, cheap, and good. I told you to pick two. You chose fast and good ’cause you know what cheap really gets you in this game. Nothing was ever said about race.”

Elijah held back a sigh and shook his head. “Fair enough.”

Pineapple and Kyrie exited the LAV with the gear. Kyrie carried a trio of bulging black duffle bags, while Pineapple had two larger bags balanced on his broad shoulders and a man-sized metal equipment crate under each arm.

“Hope you’re not jet-lagged, because we have a meeting in about an hour,” Leung said. “You want to go artifact hunting in Chicago, there’s one guy to talk to. His name Marick. I managed to get a meeting with him on relatively short notice. Bad news is, we have to go to his place.”

“And his place is …?” Elijah asked.

“It’s kind of in the Containment Zone.”

“And by ‘kind of’ you mean …”

“Totally.”

Elijah sighed. “Guess we’re diving right into the deep end of the pool—lovely. All right, let’s go.”

Cao’s van bounced and jumped as it rattled over streets that hadn’t seen a repair crew in decades. The crumbling buildings seemed to be the only thing holding the thick air in the sky; without them, the miasma would have fallen on the streets like a heavy, stifling curtain. And the buildings didn’t seem like they would be up to the task much longer, almost buckling under the strain of holding the thick, humid pollution at bay.

It was dark, darker than in a deep woods at night with no moon. Starlight couldn’t find its way through the opaque air, and most of the buildings had no lights. The few that were working glowed dimly, making the surrounding darkness seem even thicker by contrast.

“So, a morning meeting was out of the question?” Pineapple asked.

“Marick likes the night,” Leung said.

The troll grunted, shifted on the wooden crate that served as his seat, then he poked absent-mindedly at piece of exposed electronics slotted into one of the many racks on the van’s walls.

“Hey, Cao,” he said. “If you’re such a hot-shit rigger, why you drivin’ such a piece of junk?”

Elijah winced. He had wondered the same thing but resisted asking; partly to avoid insulting the rigger, but partly in fear of the answer.

Cao glanced over her shoulder, glaring at Pineapple through narrowed, yellow eyes, and giving Elijah a better view under the sweatshirt hood. Her face was gaunt, nearly skeletal, with no visible hair, and glossy skin the color of cartilage.

“Upgrades.” Cao turned back to the road. “The kind that’ll keep you alive if things go south. In fact, you see that box with the red light on it, about halfway down the third rack? You wanna give that one a push for me?”

“Yeah, sure.” Pineapple reached out and pushed the button. A flash of electric blue light filled the van accompanied by the smell of ozone and a loud zap. Sparks flew from the box as Pineapple jerked his hand back with a shout.

“That’s an IR scanner,” Cao said. “But you’ll wanna watch it. Got a short that gives a nasty shock when it’s turned on.”

Still shaking his zapped hand, Pineapple stared at the rigger, his face darkening. Thinking the troll might be considering tearing the van apart in response to the trick played on him, Elijah readied a stunbolt, just in case. Kyrie, lounging on two of the bags in the back, didn’t even glance in the troll’s direction.

Pineapple threw back his head and let out a rumbling guffaw. “I like this girl already,” he said, showing off his tusks with a huge smile.

 Exhaling, Elijah released his gathered spell energy. “How much farther, Leung?”

“Well, at the moment Marick’s holed up in a rented room over a bar called the Crash Pad. It’s in Wicker Park. We’ll just head down Milwaukee, which is in pretty good shape. At least as far as CZ streets go. Assuming we don’t run into trouble, we’ll be there in about twenty min—”

“Crap,” interrupted Cao. “We’ve got trouble.”

Elijah leaned forward and looked out the front windshield. The van’s high beams illuminated a cracked and pothole-riddled road running between two rows of collapsing commercial buildings. About a hundred meters ahead, two three-meter-high piles of rubble blocked the road except for one section, which was barricaded by a pair of trucks. “What is it?”

“Toll booth.” Cao slowed the van as they approached the barricade. People crawled out over the trucks, and for a moment Elijah thought they were going up against some bugs, right here, right now. But then he relaxed—though only slightly. They were people, but they weren’t welcoming. They were gaunt, wiry, and outrageously scarred. A man standing on top of the truck on the right wore a tank top that showed a good chunk of his left shoulder was missing, and what was left was covered by a jagged scar with clear evidence of tooth marks. A woman hanging off the front of the left van was missing half of her lower jaw. Their clothing was more metal than fabric, covered with spikes and hooks and chains. They had clubs and blades, and a few of them held guns. Some of the blades were chipped and rusty, but the guns, each and every one of them, were polished, well-oiled, and gleaming. People tended to become fond of the only thing they trust. They all had dark, haunted expressions on their faces, and Elijah knew all too well what had made them that way.

“Hot damn,” Pineapple said, unzipping one of the duffle bags and reaching into it. “Looks like I get to have some fun.”

“Cool it, big guy,” Cao called back. “There’s an easier way to handle this.”

Elijah’s gaze flicked into the cargo area, where he saw Kyrie poised for action—and that Pineapple hadn’t taken his hand out of the bag yet. Nodding in approval, he turned back to the front.

Cao brought the van to a stop about twenty yards from the barricade, and then turned around to face Elijah and the others. “Let me take care of this.”

Cao stopped the van, turned off the lights, and rolled down her window. A man with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder slid over toward the van, dragging his right leg behind him. Somehow, his bad leg made him seem more dangerous. He had a long, thin face, a hooked nose, and stains on his chin that looked like he had just been chewing on something bloody. When he spoke, Elijah barely recognized the distorted English behind the gravelly rumble.

“Crav off, ya fuckin’ skin-chewing canbo. Nuthin’ for ya here.”

“I’m not staying,” Cao said. “Not doing anything in your territory. Just passing through.”

“Not that ever.”

“I think you have me wrong. I’m not a scavenger. I’m not here to take things. I’m bringing things.”

“What?”

“Supplies. Clinic needs ’em.”

The eyes of the man outside the van gleamed. “Clinic?”

Cao looked down. “Drek. Shouldn’t have said that. But yeah, a clinic.”

“Could talk. Could clout it out.”

“What did you have in mind?”

The man jerked his head toward the back of the van. “Some for us.”

“No. Come on, are you kidding me? Do you know how they are about this stuff? They count every damn pill. Every one. I come up short, they’ll think I stole them for myself. Do you know what they’ll do to me?”

The man grinned, licked his lips, then moved his assault rifle into his hands. “Ya. I know.”

“You’re killing me here.”

“Mebbe.”

Cao shook her head. “Fine.” She turned and looked at Kyrie. “Hand me the box by your feet.”

Kyrie gingerly lifted the box and gave it to Elijah, who passed it forward to Cao.

Elijah looked into the box as it moved forward. It contained a jumble of pill bottles of varying sizes. He read a couple of labels, spotting antibiotics, painkillers, and vitamin supplements, both brand name and generic.

Cao showed the box to the man outside. “All right, look, most of this isn’t going to be interesting to you. Like this.” She held up a brown pill. “Just a vitamin. You don’t care about that, I figure.”

The man only sniggered.

“This is an antibiotic, not really fun,” Cao said, sorting through the box. Then she held up a green pill. “Ah, but this one. Corinol. Pain killer. Not an opiate, but simulates their effect. Good stuff. We could … dig around for a few more of those.”

The man grunted his assent. Then he reached in and started digging himself, pulling out all the green ones he could find. Then he found a small, blue, oval pill. He held it out, showing it to the woman with the missing jaw, sniggering. She rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, fine, keep that one too. Have fun, knock yourselves out. But hey, hey, come on, leave me some of the Corinol, will you? If the clinic doesn’t get any of those—”

She was interrupted by the muzzle of the assault rifle moving into her face. She leaned away from it, still talking.

“All right, all right, fine. Cool it, okay? Drek, fine, take what you need.”

It took about ten minutes. In the end, the man backed away with about sixty assorted pills in his pocket. He motioned toward the trucks, which pulled back, leaving an opening for them.

“Luck,” the man said over his shoulder as he walked away.

Cao scowled as she started her engine and passed through the blockade. She managed to keep the scowl on her face for four whole blocks. Then she shook her head and chuckled lightly.

“There’s no clinic, is there?” Elijah asked.

“Sure there is,” Cao said. “I lifted the pills from ’em this morning. You drive the roads around here, you gotta be ready to pay the tolls.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Fifteen minutes later, the van pulled up in front of a dilapidated, two-story brick building. Once part of a whole row of businesses, the old tavern was the only thing on the street still standing. Its former brothers and sisters lay in shattered piles of brick and steel on either side, and every structure across the street had been bulldozed. The air over the lot was positively thick. Elijah didn’t inhale between the van and the door of the building, just like when he was a child walking by a graveyard.

There was power in the bar—it didn’t take much effort to see that. It leaked in thin but bright strands through the cracks in the boards covering the windows. A buzzing neon sign over the door read -rash P-d, and somewhere in the distance Elijah heard the steady thump of a gas-powered generator.

“Marick is a bit skittish.” Leung glanced at Pineapple. “I don’t think we should all go in.”

The troll had just stepped out of the vehicle. The reflection of red neon outlined the massive gun on his back. The bony deposits on his arm made his muscles look like massive sea urchins.

The troll curled his upper lip. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I get it. Big scary troll’s gotta stay in the car. Whatever.” The van’s shocks groaned as he climbed back in.

Cao, still in the driver’s seat, ran a hand lovingly over the dash. “I wouldn’t mind having someone else out here anyhow. Not many running cars in these parts. Makes my baby a pretty tempting target.”

Pineapple laughed as he shut the door. “Just like piss looks tempting to a man dying of thirst.”

Elijah turned to Leung. Leung still wore his full protective suit, and his gas mask was on. Elijah couldn’t blame him.

“Have you set up a local network?” Elijah asked. “I want to be able to call Pineapple and Cao in if we need them, and I figure we can’t rely on the local Matrix infrastructure.”

“Yes, but I wound it in pretty tight—passive broadcast is only a couple of meters. It’ll let the three of us talk without sending up a flare to anyone running a network scanner. Cao or I can bump it up if we need to.”

Kyrie stepped up next to them. “Works for me. Otherwise I gotta listen to Pineapple complain every couple minutes about how long it’s been since he got to shoot something.”

She wore the black, form-fitting body armor she preferred when she didn’t need to be subtle. She’d been holding a pistol a moment ago, but now it was nowhere to be seen. Elijah wondered where it was for a moment, then hoped he didn’t see it—if it came out, it would mean something had gone wrong.

He smoothed out his own black combat fatigues, trying not to look like some weekend warrior. The clothes were lightly armored and had a few custom add-ons. He’d picked them up a while ago for just this sort of situation. He also verified that his Hammerli 620s light pistol was snug in its shoulder holster. It was mostly for show—he’d never been very good with firearms, depending on magic or well-chosen companions to handle any violent interactions.

Here, though, he might need it. Magic and Chicago didn’t always mix, something he’d learned the hard way. One of the chemicals you sometimes found in the mushy air was FAB III, the mana-eating bacteria Ares had employed to fight the bug spirits that overran Chicago in the ’50’s. In a relatively short period of time, a FAB III infection could destroy a mage’s ability to use magic. He’d have to keep an eye on the astral and watch for any suspicious spots of emptiness, then stay far away from those locations.

Then there was Chicago’s background count, which was a non-chemical element that made the air what it was. In parts of the city, psychic residue from decades of emotional horrors had warped astral space so hideously that magic became almost unusable. The queasiness, the uneasiness, and the occasional outright terror these spots inspired drove away all reasonable people—and attracted a host of unpleasant beings. Toxic shamans, dark spirits, and twisted beings with claws and tentacles and multi-orbed eyes in places where they just didn’t belong. Back in Seattle, the money Mr. Johnson had been offering—combined with the heat of Knight Errant looking for the people behind the Hayakawa break-in—made this trip seem like a no-brainer. Being on the ground in Chicago, though, was a great way to inspire second thoughts.

“Ready?” Kyrie asked.

Balling his hands into fists, Elijah nodded, and then led them inside.

A potent wall of stench hit him as he entered. The thick mix of sweat, smoke, vomit, and stale beer almost stopped him in his tracks. As the door closed, his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. Here and there, people huddled around tables, speaking in low voices. Off in the corner a jukebox, missing most of its exterior lights, churned out a clunky, decade-old dance number.

Leung placed his hand on Elijah’s shoulder and said, “Be right back. I need to go talk to the owner.”

As Leung walked to the bar, one of the patrons stumbled up from his seat and swayed over to Kyrie and Elijah.

“Hey darlin’,” the man slurred as he slid up next to Kyrie.

Even through the room’s funk, Elijah could smell the alcohol on him. There was a good chance that Cao and Pineapple, way out in the van, could smell it too. It wasn’t whiskey, gin, or any other sort of civilized spirits, but rather the brain frying, blindness-causing grain alcohol distilled in the basements and abandoned warehouses of the zone.

“You look like you could use some comp’ny.” The drunk reached a filthy hand toward Kyrie’s chest.

Almost faster than Elijah’s eyes could register, Kyrie popped the man in the throat with a two-fingered jab. No other part of her moved, and the gesture seemed light and casual. The drunk stumbled back, fell, and rolled under a nearby table, making thick, choking noises as he reached for his neck. One or two of the other patrons glanced over their shoulders, then returned to their drinks with a shrug.

Leung glanced at the fallen man as he returned from the bar. “Rejected suitor?”

“Yeah,” Kyrie said. “Not my type.”

“Well, I’ve got good news,” Leung said. “Our man is waiting upstairs. Just follow me.”

He led them to a narrow staircase at the back of the room. Filthy, wooden steps creaked and groaned as they climbed to a hallway lit by a bare, flickering bulb. At the far end, Leung stopped before a door with an upside-down four hanging on it. Elijah stood to one side of the hallway, careful not to touch the dingy walls. Kyrie stood on the other side, occasionally glancing back down the hallway—just in case this was a set-up.

He rapped three times, paused, and rapped twice more. They could hear someone approach on the other side, and after a pause they heard a number of locks disengaging. The door opened to reveal a small room. Its one window had a black plastic garbage bag tacked over it, and a bare, stained mattress with a crumpled blanket sagged in one corner. A table lamp with a mismatched shade, the room’s only source of light, sat on the floor in the other corner. An old, rusty radiator clunked and hissed against the far wall, although from the chill in here, Elijah guessed noise was all it could produce.

The lone occupant, standing in the shadows near the door, beckoned them inside, glancing out into the hall. The trio walked in and the man snapped the door shut and fired the four locks home, his shaking hands making it difficult.

Elijah got his first real look at their contact as he turned to face them. Thick stubble dotted his chin and cheeks, and his dark, clumpy hair glistened in the dim light. His blue eyes, however, were what really caught Elijah, for they seemed to have sunken into his skull until they were little more than pinpoints of dull light staring out of darkness. His white, button-down shirt was stained grey, sometimes brown, and over it he wore a ripped but otherwise intact teamster’s jacket. Torn jeans and a pair of ratty sneakers, held together with frayed strips of duct tape, completed the ensemble.

“Marick,” Leung said. “This is Elijah and Kyrie. They’re the people I told you about.”

Marick nodded shakily and stretched out a hand to them.

Elijah reached out to shake the man’s hand, but caught sight of a tattoo on Marick’s forearm above the wrist. He stepped back, whipping out his pistol at the same time. Pointing it at the man’s forehead, Elijah backed up to the door.

“Whoa! Hold it! What are you doing?” Leung cried.

Kyrie pulled her pistol as well and aimed it at Marick. <What the hell, Elijah?>

“Show me your arm! The tattoo!” Elijah demanded.

The man, shaking even more violently, turned his arm over and pulled up his sleeve, revealing a small tattoo of a black moon.

“Damn it, Leung,” Elijah spat. “Don’t you know what this guy is?”

“Of course,” Leung said. “Marick used to be a high-ranking member in the Aleph Society before he quit. It’s the reason I wanted us to talk to him.”

Elijah glared at the hacker. “This man wasn’t just ‘high ranking.’ That tattoo on his arm says that he’s a Society Initiate!”

He took a step closer to Marick, keeping the gun muzzle steady on his face.

“And no Initiate has ever left the Aleph Society and lived.”

CHAPTER NINE

Kyrie kept her pistol trained on Marick. Elijah was the last person she knew who’d draw a gun to solve a problem, so it was pretty clear that whatever the tattoo meant, it fell into the “very bad” category.

“Leung,” Elijah said. “Get to the van. Tell Cao and Pineapple we need to evac. We’ve walked into a trap.”

“This isn’t a trap,” Leung insisted. “I’m telling you, the guy is clean.”

“Not a trap?” Elijah said. “That tattoo marks your buddy here as a full Initiate of the Aleph Society. When you become an Initiate, you swear a magical blood oath to Gaf, the Black Moon. It isn’t something you can just break if you get tired of paying dues. We’ve been compromised.”

“Damn it, Elijah!” Leung shouted. “This guy is clean. You think I didn’t check him out? I put every ’bot I have on him, ran every standard search, even ran a deep scour. I’ve got references and cross-references. I’m telling you, Elijah, he’s legit. I don’t know how he did it, I don’t care how he did it, but this guy is ex-Aleph.”

Elijah didn’t lower his weapon. He just glared at Marick, his mouth drawn tight and eyes narrowed. It was the look he got whenever he faced a particularly challenging problem while on a run, as if he were attempting to will it out of existence.

A message from Leung popped up in Kyrie’s AR, directed toward the whole group. <This isn’t like last time, Elijah. It’s not the same thing.>

<It’s a blood oath. You don’t break a blood oath.>

<But he did. I knew about the oath. I asked him about it. He can prove it.>

Kyrie noticed Elijah’s shoulders relax slightly, but he still kept his pistol raised. Marick, meanwhile, hadn’t moved. In fact, beyond the twitching, he hadn’t even reacted to the pistol shoved in his face. It was the sort of thing Kyrie had seen in people down in the barrens, people who had seen so much horror that at some point the mind’s usual reactions to shock just ceased to function.

<You’re willing to bet your life on this?>

<If I must to persuade you.>

Elijah hesitated, frowned, then lowered his pistol and took a slow step back. Kyrie brought her pistol down as well, but didn’t take it completely off Marick. If Elijah didn’t like the proof the guy provided, she figured things would get bad again real quick.

“I’ll go with this … for now,” Elijah said to Leung, and then looked back at Marick, “but you’d better have an extremely convincing explanation. Initiates don’t just quit.”

“I can give you the proof you need,” Marick said.

“And no magic,” Elijah added. “You so much as twitch a finger or mutter anything that sounds like an incantation and she shoots. Got it?”

Kyrie kept her face impassive, but shot a message to Elijah. <I do?>

Elijah kept his glare on Marick as he replied to Kyrie. <Work with me here.>

“You don’t have to worry,” Marick said. “I can’t use magic any longer.”

Confusion crossed Elijah’s face. “What do you mean you can’t use magic? The entire point of the Society is to imbue their members with the ability to use magic. The Initiates are the poster boys for this.”

Marick shook his head slowly. “When I broke my bond to Gaf, the magic was taken from me. Again.”

Marick swallowed hard, his eyes glistening. Kyrie understood his reaction. For a mage to lose his magic was life shattering. Suicide rates among burnouts were something like seventy percent. But to get the magic back and then give it up a second time? It was almost incomprehensible. If Marick was legit, whatever he was running from wasn’t just bad. It was gouge-out-your-eyes-with-your-fingers bad.

<I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this run,> she sent.

<Feeling’s mutual,> Elijah replied. <Watch our backs, and be ready for anything.>

“Fine,” Elijah said. “Then explain how you broke the bond?”

Marick removed his jacket and dropped it on the mattress, then unbuttoned his shirt.

Kyrie’s eyes widened at what he revealed. “What the hell—?”

A blood-red crystal the size of a bullet hole was embedded in the man’s sternum. Bulging, red-black veins radiated out from it about six inches in every direction, and the skin around them was violently inflamed. Like snakes under a blanket, the veins pulsed beneath the skin in a strange, asynchronous rhythm.

“Jesus,” whispered Leung.

“This is how I did it,” Marick said. “The gem broke the bond and also hides me from Gaf. It’s the only reason I’m still alive.”

Elijah stared in amazement. “May I?” Before the other man could answer, he extended his left hand and stepped forward.

Marick nodded. Elijah gently touched the gem, watching both it and its host for a reaction. “It’s warm. Some sort of blood fetish, I assume?”

“Similar, but significantly more potent,” Marick said. “It’s powered by blood, but is bound to my soul. It displaced the binding between me and Gaf while clouding my aura. As long as I’m bound to it, I am free from Gaf’s power and his control over me … but at the cost of my magic.”

Elijah leaned in closer to look at the thing. Kyrie huffed. A minute ago he’d been ready to shoot Marick. One of these days, Elijah’s curiosity was going to get him killed. She just hoped she wasn’t around him when that day came.

“It looks old.” He ran a finger along the gem’s edge. “Very old. And these markings along the edge—they look like an archaic incarnation of cuneiform. Where did you get it?”

“From the Society vaults,” Marick said. “I was charged with cataloging a number of new acquisitions, and came across it in one of the deep vaults.”

Elijah stepped back and shook his head.

“So why help us? Why risk revealing yourself by talking to us?”

“Because your friend promised to get me out of the city,” Marick said.

Elijah looked over at Leung. <Oh, really?>

<Relax. Just some fake IDs, a plane ticket, and a few hundred nuyen. More than worth it for what he’s giving us.>

“And the reason you left the Society?” Elijah asked.

The blood drained from Marick’s face and he started to shake. “I won’t talk about that.” He turned to Leung. “You said I wouldn’t have to talk about that.”

“It’s fine,” Leung said. “There’s no change to the deal.”

Kyrie felt a cold tingle run up her spine. More and more she felt like maybe she should have skipped this job.

“Okay,” Elijah said at last. “Tell us about the map.”

“I don’t know too many details,” Marick said. “But it’s old. Real old. Library of Alexandria old. Probably spent some time there, just before the whole thing went ash. Supposed to show stuff there’s no way the cartographers could have known at the time. Supposed to light up the astral plane like burning phosphorous.”

Eijah cocked his head slightly at that.

<What?> Kyrie sent.

<Nothing. I’ll tell you later.>

“The Society’s all excited about the map. They’ve got it, other people want it. People keep coming, people like you, keep trying to take it. They don’t know what it is that’s got everybody all worked up, but they know they care. And they know that when people care about something, it’s worth money. They’re trying to figure it out, study it, before they lose it.”

“Because they’re going to lose it,” Elijah said.

Marick nodded vigorously. “Oh, yeah. Yeah. Aleph is good, they’ve got powers, but if the big boys come calling? Forget it. Draco Foundation, Atlantean Foundation, Lofwyr’s boys, Aztechnology, Mitsuhama—pick one. They’ll get wind of it, they’ll come after it, and Aleph won’t be able to hold them off. They’ll lose the map. So they gotta learn from it, figure out its worth before that happens.”

“All right. Where is it?”

“They took it Southside. Got it away from Rolling Meadows, which they figured would be the first place people look. Place is at 75th and Cumberland.”

Kyrie had no idea what the sprawl was like down at that area, but she figured—or hoped—it wouldn’t be worse than here.

“Tell me everything you know about the facility,” Elijah said. “Floor plans, security, astral overwatch—everything.”

Marick’s head bobbed, though Kyrie couldn’t tell if he was nodding or just nervous.

“Show me the SIN. Show me some cash. The more I like what I see, the more you get.”

Ten minutes later, they were headed west. The shortest route, Cao told them, was neither the fastest nor the safest. They’d spent enough time in the CZ as it was.

Looking out the window, Kyrie was inclined to agree. In a place like Chicago, what you saw—the dilapidated buildings, the crushing poverty, the miasmic air—was bad enough. What you didn’t see, though, was worse. The way shadows shifted in the corner of your eye, but then held perfectly still when you looked at them. The rumbles and creaks and weird flashes of purple light coming from buildings that looked like they should be abandoned. The people backing away from apparently empty alleys, pointing at the lurking darkness and then running away with a scream that could shatter bulletproof glass. Things like that tended to put one’s nerves on end.

It was a relief, then, when the landscape turned from horrific to merely dilapidated. The month-old-trash smell of the air didn’t change, but the feel of imminent danger did. People still occasionally ran for their lives, but generally it was from identifiable metahuman threats. This was the world Kyrie knew.

“So are you ready to be more specific about where we’re headed?” Cao called back from the driver’s seat. “Like an address or something?”

Kyrie shared a look with Elijah and Leung before answering. She sure wasn’t going to break the news to Cao and Pineapple—she wasn’t getting paid nearly enough for that.

“We’ll get to it in a second,” Elijah answered. “Leung. You want to do the honors?”

“Sure,” the hacker said. “Last month the Aleph Society moved the map from their Rolling Meadows headquarters to a facility in the Southside. Apparently, if an artifact starts drawing too much attention from the outside, they move it to this location. I can’t tell if what they’re worried about stems from previous attempts by our Johnson to get it, or if another group is trying for it as well, but either way they wanted it somewhere more secure.”

“If it’s another group, that could mean competition,” Kyrie said.

“True,” Elijah agreed. “But if there is another group, the odds of us running into each other are pretty slim. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to be ready for interference.”

“Marick provided us with a map of the Southside facility.” Leung fired off a copy via their LAN. It popped up immediately in Kyrie’s AR. “It’s the original construction plan from the ’50s, but at least it gives us the basics. It’s not like we can pop down to the assessor’s office to request this stuff. The good news is that this site is smaller and less populated than Rolling Meadows. We won’t have to worry about a couple hundred brainwashed cultists and Society wage slaves getting in our way. The bad news is that the Southside site has more security personnel, and it’s going to be harder to create a distraction when it’s time to leave. We can’t count on creating a mob scene to cover our escape like we planned.”

“What street runs along the north edge?” Cao asked.

Leung hesitated, but Elijah nodded. “That’s 79th. The street on the west side is Harlem.”

“79th and Harlem?” Cao frowned. “I know that area. Isn’t that…” She looked over her shoulder, eyes wide. The van swerved and bumped over some debris, forcing the rigger to snap her head back front and correct the van’s course. “That’s fucking Human Brigade territory!”

“It’s the edge of their territory,” Leung said. “Just the edge. If we play our cards right, I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

“You don’t think it’ll be a problem?” Cao’s tone was beyond incredulous. “They string up metahumans on Sunday nights for fucking entertainment. They aren’t just going to let Pineapple and me waltz in there. They’re the most vicious bunch of psychos in the fucking city. And there’s some pretty stiff competition out there.”

The goblin glanced at something on the dash. Following her gaze, Kyrie saw a printed photo taped there. Although the van was dark, it looked like a picture of Cao and four other people, all smiling with arms around one another, each with clear signs of HMHVV infection.

“Look,” Elijah said. “As long as we keep our heads down and don’t draw unnecessary attention, we should be able to get in and out before the Brigade even knows we’re there.”

“And if they do notice us,” Pineapple said, “then I get to start shooting. Sounds like a win-win to me.”

“Says you, chummer,” the goblin snapped. “You get to blow up whatever you please and waltz outta here afterward. I—” she jabbed a thumb at her chest. “—still gotta make a living here after you—all of you—are long gone.”

“We’re going to do our best to make sure it doesn’t come to that,” Elijah said. “As much as Pineapple would like to make a ruckus, it’s my hope that we can, as Leung said, be in and out before anyone notices us.”

“Here’s what I don’t get.” The troll leaned forward on the equipment crate he was using as a seat. “Maybe I ain’t an expert on all the political crap in Chicago, but why the hell would the Human Brigade agree to an Aleph compound in their territory? Last I heard, these groups don’t exactly get along.”

“From what Marick told us,” Leung replied, “the Human Brigade doesn’t know it’s there. It’s a stroke of genius, really. What better place to hide your valuables than in the home of your enemy? It’s quite literally the last place anyone would look.”

“It’s completely crazy,” Cao grumbled. “Then again, crazy is what those Aleph nutjobs do best. Doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

“Here’s what I got on the place. I used the van’s satellite uplink to access aerials for the site. Unless I’m totally off, I think our Rolling Meadows plan should work with a few adaptations. We’ve got an abandoned apartment building over here—” Leung pointed out the features in AR. “—that Kyrie, Elijah, and I can use to run our zip line to the main building. Considering the security we’re expecting on the ground and the general state of Chicago’s sewers, entering through the roof still makes sense.”

Leung zoomed back from the map to show more of the surrounding area. “As for the streets, the Human Brigade keeps them pretty clear—of course, it helps that this particular area is sparsely populated. Most of the buildings in this neighborhood are either ruined or abandoned. Pineapple and Cao should be able to find suitable cover while waiting for us.”

“What about Matrix security?” Elijah asked. “Similar to Rolling Meadows?”

“Probably, but unlike Rolling Meadows, I can’t get in remotely to make sure. There won’t be any reliable grid I can count on. I think they’re using a direct satellite connection, and while I’m pretty amazing, hacking a commsat will take a lot more time than we have. I’ll need to set up a local bypass when we get there.”

The more Leung talked, the more Kyrie realized that the plan was changing significantly. She held up a hand to interrupt him. “When you say ‘more time than we have,’ it sounds like we’re not just going there to do recon tonight. Are you suggesting we go in cold?”

Leung looked to Elijah for the answer.

“I think we have to,” the mage said. “Besides the fact that I don’t want to stay in Chicago any longer than necessary, if the map is hot enough that they moved it once, they might move it again at any moment. We know where it is right now—I don’t want to lose that advantage. If they move it again, who knows how long we’ll be here trying to track it down?”

“Screw that,” Pineapple growled. “I don’t mind roughing it, but if I go more’n three days without a cold beer and a shower, I get crabby.”

“We can do this,” Elijah said. “The gear we have will work, and we know where the target is. I wish we had more up-to-date intel on the physical site, but the advantages we do have should offset that.”

Kyrie kept mulling everything over. Although it looked like the original plan would work, something about it kept nagging at her. Finally, it clicked. “Here’s a minor detail—what about getting out? Triggering an evac of the site, like we’d planned for Rolling Meadows, isn’t going to work here. Even if we pull it off, the place is too small. They won’t have enough people for us to blend in with the crowd.”

“If you need a distraction, I can definitely handle that,” Pineapple offered, picking his teeth with one long, yellow fingernail.

“I don’t doubt that,” Elijah said. “But the security team Marick described isn’t going to get drawn off by a single trouble point. We need something bigger, more widespread. We need a distraction that pulls them in enough directions at once that we can slip out under the radar.”

“What we need,” Kyrie mused, “are about a hundred Pineapples.”

“You know,” Leung said. “That might be possible.”

Cao’s brow furrowed. “Is there some secret troll enclave hidden in Brigade territory I haven’t heard of? If not, I don’t see where you’ll get the manpower.”

“No, not trolls,” Leung replied. “But I know of a well-armed organization with a large membership that has no love for the Aleph Society. I’m pretty sure if we let them know about this place, they’d be more than happy to help.”

Kyrie saw where Leung was going. It’d be like playing with matches in a sandbox full of gunpowder, but it might be just the thing they needed.

“So you’re suggesting—” Kyrie began.

“—that we work with the Human Brigade,” Leung finished, beaming. “We tell them about the site and let them create our distraction. It’s the perfect solution!”

The van squealed to a halt. Elijah and Leung flew out of their seats while crates, boxes, and duffels slid toward the front of the vehicle.

“That’s it!” shouted Cao. “A run in Human Brigade territory is one thing, but working with those fuckers is something else!”

She slammed the van into park, climbed out of her seat, and threw open the side door. “Everybody get the hell out! Find yourself another driver!”

CHAPTER TEN

For a long moment, neither Elijah nor anyone else in the van moved or spoke. The only sound was the low rumble of the van’s idling diesel engine.

“Look, Cao,” Leung said at last. “It’s just a one-time thing.”

“You think I’m thrilled by the idea either?” Pineapple said. “But come on, sweetheart. A job’s a job. You do what you gotta do.”

Cao took another step toward them, her hood flying back, and glowered. Now Elijah clearly saw the horrors HMHVV had inflicted on the dwarf woman. Her head was smooth and hairless, with yellow-white skin pulled taut over the bones of her skull, and lips so thin and drawn that they were little more than a pinkish line over her pointed teeth.

“It’s not ‘just a job’ when you talk about working with the Human Brigade,” Cao said through gritted teeth. “They have camps, did you know that? They drive around in these big trucks, snatching any metas they see right off the street. They take them back and they—they—” Cao’s nostrils flared and her eyes grew wide. “They do things to them. No. It’s never ‘just a job’ when you talk about working with the Human Brigade.”

Elijah tried to find an argument to convince her otherwise, but hearing the pain in Cao’s voice, seeing the look in her eyes, everything he thought of came up short.

For a long moment no one spoke. At last, Elijah broke the silence. “That’s fine. We’ll find another way.”

“Hold up a sec,” Pineapple said from the back. The troll pushed his way past the others to the front of the van and knelt in front of Cao. Even then, he was more than a head taller than her.

“How many?” he asked.

“How many what?” she asked with a frown.

“How many of your friends went into that place with you?”

She took a ragged breath before answering. “Ten—Ten of us were picked up that night.”

Pineapple nodded. There was something in the troll’s eyes that made Elijah shiver. “And how many made it out?”

Cao set her jaw and blinked hard before answering. “Just—me.”

Pineapple looked at the rest of the team. “Step outside,” he said. “I need a minute alone with Cao.”

Too stunned to say no, Elijah left the van, followed by Leung and Kyrie. They were parked along the side of the road in the ruins of a neighborhood business district. Empty windows stared down at them, and in the distance he heard what sounded like the clatter of falling stone. They walked a few yards away from the van and stopped.

“Anyone think to grab a gun?” Leung asked, looking over his shoulder. Elijah patted his pistol in its shoulder holster.

“Let’s just hope he makes this quick,” Kyrie said.

Less than a minute later, Pineapple called them back. When they got in, they found Cao back in the driver’s seat, staring out the windshield. The troll was seated back on the equipment crate. He nodded to everyone. “We’re good. Let’s find those Brigade goons and get this job done.”

As they got moving again, Elijah opened a private line to Pineapple. <Are you planning to fill us in on what just happened?>

The street samurai just stared at him. <You sure you wanna know?>

It was just a simple LAN message, but it caused Elijah to pause. He didn’t know much about Pineapple, but what he knew definitely left him doubting whether he did want to pursue this conversation much farther.

<Not entirely, but I think I’d better know what promises were made, so I know what to expect.>

<I told her that for every one of her friends that died in that camp, I’d shoot two Human Brigade members before we leave.>

Elijah straightened in his seat and stared at the huge troll. There was no grin, no deep bass chuckle.

<You’re serious.>

<Deadly.>

Elijah leaned on his knees and rubbed his forehead. The mission was back underway, and he should be happy about that. And the stories about the Human Brigade, backed up by what Cao had said, painted a picture of the darkest recesses of man’s depravity. They probably deserved whatever they got. But to shoot, what—eighteen people?

Elijah wasn’t without sin. He’d killed in self-defense more than once. But this was putting him where he wasn’t comfortable.

Kyrie leaned over and put her arm around Elijah’s shoulder. “You okay?”

“I hate Chicago,” he replied. And once he talked to Pineapple about what he had in mind to pull off their mission, it was only going to get worse.

Despite Cao’s protestations, Leung drove the van. They agreed that it wouldn’t do any good to stick her right out in front. No doubt the Brigade would discover Cao and Pineapple at some point, but there was no need to hurry the process.

They hit the first Human Brigade checkpoint near Hickory Hills. A massive iron-and-sheet-metal gate blocked the road, next to a thirty-foot-high tower. Eight heavily armed men in matching gray uniforms guarded the access point.

Leung brought the van to a stop just short of the gate. The headlights illuminated the words Humans Only Beyond This Point spray-painted in crooked red letters across it. The guards eyed the van with suspicion, and one of them broke off to approach the vehicle. Like at the toll booth, he came up and tapped on the driver side window. Leung rolled it halfway down.

“Good evening!” he said cheerfully. “Lovely night, isn’t it?”

“Gates are closed,” the guard growled. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“I understand,” Leung said. “Unfortunately our business is time sensitive. Coming back tomorrow really isn’t an option.”

<Are you picking up anything? Are they carrying comms?> Elijah messaged.

<Nothing. It’s like living back in the 20th century. Really, how do they cope?> Leung posted.

“I said the gates are closed!” the man shouted. “Now turn this piece of shit around or I tell my men to open fire.”

“Fine.” Leung shrugged. “If you want to explain to General Rijkard that we came here with info about the Aleph Society performing operations within your borders even as we speak, but you turned us away, that’s fine by me.”

The guard squinted at Leung, as if he could squeeze the truth out by concentrating hard enough. “You got proof of this?”

“Will an audio recording from someone who’s been to the site do?” said Leung.

The man thought about it for a moment, then pointed at Leung. “Don’t move.”

He walked over to one of the other guards, who pulled a bright yellow walkie-talkie out of his jacket pocket.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Leung said. “What are these guys? A twentieth-century re-enactment troop? Where’d he even find that thing?”

Elijah rose to a crouch and looked over Leung’s shoulder. “Any chance you can scan for that signal? Listen in on it?”

Leung frowned back at him like he was a five-year-old. “Sorry, I left my tin can and string at home.”

There was a burst of static from the back of the van, a squawk, and then a tinny voice that made everyone’s heads turn.

“Got it,” Cao sat in front of one of the many incomprehensible pieces of kit-bashed electronics mounted along the van’s walls, twiddling with a pair of dials.

“Well, damn,” said Pineapple. “You weren’t kiddin’ ‘bout this ride having a little bit of everything.”

“Like I said—upgrades,” Cao said, smiling at the troll’s praise.

“Shh,” Elijah demanded.

“…No, we don’t know who they are,” a voice crackled from the speaker. “But they claim to have proof that those Society freaks are operating inside our borders.”

A woman’s voice responded. “How many are there?”

“The van’s shielded,” the man replied. “We saw two people through the window, both humans, but we couldn’t see more. Should we search it?”

“Hold on,” the woman’s voice replied.

“Sensor counter-measures?” Pineapple grinned at Cao. “I knew there was something I liked about you. If you tell me you’ve got a rocket launcher mounted somewhere on this beast, I might be in love.”

“Sorry.” Cao shook her head. “I’m a peaceful woman by nature. Defensive systems only.”

“Aw, now see? You’ve gone and ruined it for me.”

“There’s a hatch on the roof. You can always climb out and stand on top with a gun.”

“That might be fun. I’ll keep it in mind.”

Another squawk and the woman’s voice returned saying, “Rijkard is sending an escort to bring them in.”

“You want us to search the van?”

“It’s already been handled. Just tell them to wait.”

Through the windshield, Elijah could see the two men shake their heads and shrug. “Yes, ma’am. If you say so.”

The guard returned to the window, and Leung rolled it partway down again. “They’re sending up an escort. You will follow the escort. If you deviate from the route the escort takes, severe measures will be taken. Understand?”

“Yes sir!” Leung said, giving a mock salute.

The guard glared at him, then returned to the other men.

Leung looked back over his shoulder and winked. “The old Leung charm comes through again!”

The escort was a pair of fully outfitted Ares Humvees, one in front and one in back. Both vehicles sported heavy machine guns and armor plates everywhere they could be fitted, held on with any fasteners the Brigade mechanics could find. They looked like robots designed by twelve-year-olds, but they also looked like they would be tough to completely blow apart.

“If we need to make a break for it, does your van have enough armor to make it past those guns?” Leung asked.

“If by ‘make it past’ you mean they’d cut us in half, then sure,” Cao said. “Otherwise, no. We’d all die.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” said Leung.

The route the Humvees led them on twisted and turned through the streets. Barricades blocked off roads all through the neighborhoods. Most were camouflaged from above to make them difficult to spot from the air.

Kyrie kept staring out the thick window. “It’s going to be real tough to get out of here in a hurry without getting trapped.”

Soon they reached a neighborhood with a smattering of working streetlights. Here and there, the houses along the road had soft light shining out of the windows. Elijah spotted a tricycle lying on its side in one driveway, a UCAS flag flying on a pole in front of another house, and a covered barbecue grill in one of the house’s back yards.

“You could almost forget you’re in Chicago,” Leung said.

“Sure,” Cao replied. “Until you go inside and see the dwarf head mounted over the fireplace next to the shotgun.”

After a few more blocks, they arrived at an old-fashioned looking town square. Elijah recognized it as a product of the failed Building New Neighborhoods program. A couple decades before everything went to hell, the city government dreamed it up in an attempt to revitalize downtown living by recapturing the feel of a mythical “better time.” The stores around the square were closed, but looked occupied and well-tended. In the center stood a large brick courthouse. A well-lit UCAS flag, with a Human Brigade flag flying underneath, hung on the courthouse’s flagpole.

The Humvees pulled up in front of the courthouse and stopped, positioning Cao’s van directly in front of the sidewalk leading to the courthouse steps.

“Looks like we’re here,” Leung said.

More armed men in grey uniforms stepped out of the Humvees. One came over and banged on the van’s side door.

Elijah pulled the sliding door open and stepped out, followed by Kyrie and Leung. When Cao got out, the men all raised their weapons.

“Your dogs stay here,” the man growled.

The rigger glowered, but a nod and a wink from Pineapple kept her from saying anything.

A guard slipped behind Elijah and then pushed him with the butt of his rifle. “Move it.”

“Take it easy, asshole,” Kyrie snapped.

Elijah placed a hand on her arm. “It’s okay. Let’s just get this done.”

They took one step toward the courthouse when the guards stopped Kyrie.

“Not her,” the guard said. “She just lost her privileges.”

Kyrie rolled her eyes, but apparently decided this wasn’t worth fighting.

<What do you want me to do?>

<Just stay here and don’t antagonize them any further. If this is a trap, having you in there won’t make it any better. We’ll have a better chance of getting out if you’re out here.>

<If you say so.>

Kyrie climbed back into the van and shut the door. The guards escorted Elijah and Leung into the courthouse. The place was clean, warm, and well lit. Classical music played quietly in the background, and the smell of fresh coffee—actual coffee!—floated in the air.

Leung glanced around, his expression incredulous. “This is nuts—ten klicks away people are fighting bug spirits and eating each other. How the hell do they pull this off?”

Elijah kept looking straight ahead. “I have a feeling they don’t have a lot of patience for anyone who disturbs the peace.”

The guards took them down a long hall and through a pair of six-paneled oak doors that led into a large, open room. Hanging on the walls between tall windows were pictures of the founding fathers, interspersed with ten-foot-long red banners bearing the crossed swords and helix symbol of the Brigade. Once Elijah and Leung were inside, the guards backed out of the room and closed the doors.

Standing at the front of the room with his back to them was a tall, well-built man. He wore a light-gray dress military uniform, clean and pressed, the pants tucked into a pair of brightly polished riding boots. His iron-grey hair was cropped short, and he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking up at a large portrait of Washington mounted on the wall.

“Did you know,” the man said in a powerful, bass voice that filled the room, “that some of the founding fathers wanted to close the borders of the United States after they declared independence? Stop all immigration. Ensure that the breeding stock of the nation remained clean. Pure.”

The man turned to face them in the calm, precise way Elijah recognized as the mark of a career military man. The uniform’s perfectly fitted shell jacket bore no medals. The only decoration was the three silver stars on each of its shoulder boards. Hands still behind his back, the man walked across the room to stand before them. He had hard, angular features; clean, if not handsome. A long scar ran down the left side of his face from forehead to chin, crossing the eye socket, and cutting deep into his cheek.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “those visionary men were outvoted.”

He stood there for a moment, sizing them up. Elijah took the opportunity to do the same, noting the Colt 2066 heavy pistol in a holster at his right side and the knife tucked into a sheath on his right boot.

“I’m sorry,” the man said at last, smiling like an old friend. “Where are my manners? My name is General Dean Rijkard. Welcome to Bridgeview. Come, have some coffee.”

Rijkard moved over to a table and chairs set up under one of the courtroom’s tall windows, where a silver coffeepot and cups were set out. Rijkard sat in one of the chairs and motioned for Elijah and Leung to do the same. “I don’t believe I got your names.”

“My name is Elijah and this is Leung,” Elijah said as he sat down.

As he settled into his seat, Elijah tried to message Leung to check for local networks. In response he received a piercing squeal that tore through his head, making him grimace and put a hand to his ear.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Elijah,” Rijkard said. “Were you trying to contact someone? I’m afraid we have a strict policy about comm use in the courthouse. So much more civilized to just talk the old-fashioned way—it avoids so many unpleasant misunderstandings. We’ve found that scrambling all comm signals is the easiest way to deal with it.” He even sounded fairly earnest about it.

Elijah gave Leung a quick look, but the general saw it. “Your friend here is a hacker, yes? Well, I wouldn’t bother. I doubt our conversation will take long, and the IC we have in our host will probably prove a bit of a challenge. Why not just sit back and enjoy some good old-fashioned, face-to-face conversation?”

Rijkard reached out, poured coffee into each of the cups, and then lifted his own to take a sip. “Ah, now that’s good stuff.” He set his cup back down. “So, what brings you to our little town?”

“We have information that the Aleph Society has established a storage facility inside your territory,” Elijah said.

“You don’t say?” Rijkard raised his eyebrows and leaned back in his chair. “Well, if that’s true, it sounds like I’ll need to have a little talk with our security teams. Having those corruptors operating inside our borders won’t do at all.” The general leaned forward, staring hard at Elijah. “I assume you have proof? A location, perhaps?”

“Yes,” Elijah said. “We do. And we’re willing to share this information with you, but we’d like something in exchange.”

“Ah,” Rijkard said. “A businessman. Very well. What do you want in return? And do try the coffee. Fresh brewed! Beans shipped up from Aztlán. Who says those southern bastards aren’t good for anything, eh?”

“Yes, well,” Elijah said, not taking the offered coffee. “We need to get into the Society facility and we need a little uninterrupted time inside. Even more importantly, we need someone to distract the security when it’s time to get out.”

“And you want me to send some of my men up there to serve as this ‘distraction’ for you, am I right?”

“That’s right.”

“And I assume you’ll want us to coordinate this strike with the little operation you have planned.”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, we’d like to do this tonight.”

Rijkard leaned back again and rubbed his chin. “I’ve got to be honest, Elijah. It sounds as if you need us more than we need you. I mean, now that I know those Society pigs have a compound somewhere within my borders, it’s just a matter of going building-to-building until I flush them out. No real need to work with you at all, is there?”

Elijah had been afraid of this. He’d hoped that the information would be enough to convince Rijkard. If the Brigade didn’t take the bait, the whole mission might be over before it even began.

Rijkard suddenly flashed that dangerously disarming smile again. “But don’t worry—I believe you and I can come to an agreement. After all, we’re both civilized people, aren’t we?”

Elijah shifted uncomfortably. “Of course. However, I’m not sure what else we can offer you.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem.” Rijkard got up from his chair, walked over to the window and pulled aside the curtain. He peered out into the darkness, and then turned back to face the two men.

“I believe my men reported that you gentlemen are traveling with two … distinct specimens.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Kyrie stood alone on the tenth floor balcony of the abandoned apartment building. The only sounds she heard were Leung and Elijah checking over the gear in the apartment behind her. A cool breath of spring air whispered across her skin. It smelled smoky, with acrid, chemical overtones she had grown accustomed to in Seattle. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, the odors pulling memories out of her brain until she could almost smell the burning flesh and hear the screams echoing in the basement of a distant pyramid.

She opened her eyes and shook her head. That was not a memory she wanted to have on her mind right now. She was happy to see Elijah approaching, as it would give her the chance to think of something else.

“You ready?” he asked when he reached her.

“Are Pineapple and Cao in position?” She didn’t look at him, but instead gazed over the darkened grid of streets below. The only light came from the fenced Aleph Society compound. Somewhere out there, their other teammates were sitting in Cao’s van, hidden from Aleph’s security people—she hoped—and waiting to pull them out of the compound when the time came.

“Yes,” Elijah said. “They’re in an alley just over a block from the compound.”

Kyrie just nodded before stepping back into the apartment. The ruined furniture here had collapsed in on itself, and the scattered detritus of daily life that covered the floor was slowly fading into a lumpy mass of plastic, metal, and dust. She looked again at the faded pictures hanging crooked on the wall; smiling faces engaged in weddings, posing for school photos, or just standing with arms around one another.

“Hey, Kyrie.” Leung didn’t look up from making the final adjustments to the grapnel launcher. He’d finally abandoned his rags for a suit of light combat armor. “Hand me that second spool, will you?”

Kyrie shook out her arms and hands, trying to drive away stray thoughts. She bent down, grabbed the spool of microwire, and carried it to Leung.

“Thanks, beautiful.” Leung took the spool and shoved it onto the grapnel launcher’s secondary spindle with a grunt. He leaned back on his heels and slapped his hands together. “That should do it. We’re ready.”

Elijah approached and surveyed the gear. “And you definitely can’t do any more with the Matrix security? You don’t think Cao’s spider drone tapped the wrong line?”

“It’s the right line, but there’s nothing there except basic infrastructure controls,” Leung said. “If there happens to be something else hidden there, I’ll find it.”

Elijah shook his head as he bent down to grab a pair of zipriders. “I don’t like it.”

Leung shrugged. “Hey, I’m not the only one running blind here. It would be awfully nice if you could scope the place out in the astral. Maybe get one of your spirit buddies to check it out before we go?”

Elijah shook his head. “Sorry, but there’s something wrong with the mana here. I don’t think playing in the astral around here would be healthy, and I definitely don’t want to submit one of my spirits to it.”

Kyrie picked up her own ziprider while Leung hefted the grapnel launcher. “Not much we can do now,” she said. “Just run the plan and be ready for whatever gets thrown at us.”

Leung carried the launcher over to the balcony and unfolded its tripod legs. Kyrie helped him bolt it to the floor, then hooked the backup cables to the anchors they’d set into the wall.

“Want to do the honors?” he asked.

“Why not?” Stepping behind the launcher, she popped the control panel open. She heard the high-pitched whine of the display warming up and saw the soft glow as the targeting reticle appeared on the screen in front of her. Grasping the handles on either side, she lined up the shot, then opened a channel to Cao.

<You guys ready?>

<We’re good.>

<Okay. We’re going in.>

Kyrie squeezed the triggers. With a pop of compressed air, the folded grapnel exploded from its housing and sailed into the night. The cable spools spun furiously, squealing as the line played out. Abruptly, the spinning stopped and the spools wound back, tightening the line. Kyrie gave the control panel a cursory check, hopped up, and slapped her ziprider onto the cable, hearing the comforting snap of the resistors locking.

“See you down there, boys.” Grabbing the ziprider’s handles, she hopped off the balcony. A heartbeat later she was whisking down through the night air. The only sounds were the wind whipping past her and the hiss of the ziprider racing along the line.

The trip took less than five seconds. She flew past the compound’s outer fence and then over the well-lit space surrounding the main building. A second later, she was over the roof of the five-story main building.

The auto-control on the ziprider was already slowing her descent, but Kyrie let go of the grips and arced into a dive. As the roof rushed up, the adept cushioned her fall with outstretched hands and artfully curled into a ball. She rolled across the roof, then pushed off with her feet, flipped through the air, and landed gracefully upright.

<Show off,> Elijah sent.

Grinning, Kyrie scanned the roof. <We’re clear.>

<On my way.>

A moment later Elijah arrived, but unlike Kyrie, he waited until the ziprider stopped before dropping the couple feet to the roof. Leung followed, and soon they were gathered in the shadows of a huge cooling unit next to a roof access hatch.

Leung stared at the hatch for a moment. “It’s an off-the-shelf lock. No network connection. Give me a second.”

Kyrie had pulled her Ingram Smartgun and held it ready, scanning the roof as Leung’s eyes took on the far-off stare of a person whose attention was focused on something in AR rather than the real world.

<A couple guys just showed up down here. They’re just hanging around on the corner.> Cao sent.

Elijah and Kyrie exchanged concerned glances. <Brigade?> he asked.

<Well, they’re not wearing white hoods or anything, but I dunno who else’d be out here this time of night.>

<Keep an eye on them. Let us know if anything changes.>

<Will do.>

“Hope they don’t get impatient,” Kyrie said. “We don’t want this place going on alert before we reach the vault.”

“Rijkard said he’d wait for my signal,” Elijah said. “That was the deal.”

Leung sat up straight and grinned. “We’re in.” He flipped the latch and pulled the hatch it open. “And I’m not picking up any sec systems in the hall.”

“That doesn’t sound right.” Kyrie leaned over and looked down through the hatch. “There’s no ladder here. That’s screwed up.”

The space below opened onto a long, darkened hallway with doors at regular intervals along the way. At the far end, an exit sign glowed in the darkness.

“Looks clear.” She dropped inside.

The hallway was silent and there was no sign of life—in fact, it didn’t seem like anyone had been here recently. Kyrie reached down and swept her gloved finger along the floor. It came up coated with a layer of dust.

<This is bad. You picking up any sort of a network, Leung?>

<Nothing. Just low-level building systems, and crappy ones at that.>

<Shit. This is not good at all.>

Kyrie took a couple of slow steps down the hall. Approaching the nearest door, she gave it a push and it swung open with a creak. The room behind it was empty except for a few loose papers scattered on the floor. Kyrie picked up one as Elijah, whom she’d heard drop into the hall with Leung a moment earlier, came into the room.

“What is it?” he asked.

She handed him the glossy document. “Aleph Society flyer. At least we know they were here once.”

Elijah turned the flyer over before tossing it back onto the floor.

“You do realize that if they’re not here any more, we’re screwed,” Kyrie said. “Rijkard won’t be too thrilled if we turn over an empty office building.”

“We need to find the vault and see if Marick lied to us,” Elijah said. “Let’s go.”

<We’ve got a truck, a big one, pulling into the compound. The gate opened and closed automatically. No sign of guards.>

<Just keep watching. What about the Brigade?>

<More guys showing up. They’re staying out of sight, but there have to be at least twenty of them near us. And more farther away.>

<Eye-in-the-sky shows groupings at a dozen locations within a block of the compound.>

“Dammit,” Elijah cursed. “They’re moving in too soon. We need to speed this up.”

Leung held up a hand. “Hold up. Power surge down in the loading dock. Doors opening and closing. Lights going on.”

Kyrie glanced at Elijah. “Go there first?”

He shook his head. “No. We stick with the plan.”

Kyrie led the way as they jogged down the hall to the door under the exit sign. After Leung verified that it wasn’t alarmed, Kyrie pushed it open, checked the stairwell, then headed down the stairs, Ingram in front of her with every step. They made it all the way to the basement without encountering a single sign of life. Again, Leung checked the door. Again, there were no alarms. Kyrie reached for it when a message from Pineapple popped up.

<You’re gonna love this. A couple of morons just drove up in an old rustbucket packed full of good ol’ boys. They pulled up alongside the compound an’ are sittin’ there in plain sight. Want me to herd ’em back?>

<No. I don’t think they’d take too kindly to a troll giving them orders. Just stay where you are.>

“We need to keep moving,” Elijah said.

“Got it,” Kyrie replied. She pushed through the door, gun ready. Another darkened hallway lined with more doors. She moved quickly down the passage, checking the doorways as she passed and finding empty office after empty office. She finally came to another hall with a single door at the end. “This is it. That is, assuming anything Marick told us was true.”

“Only one way to find out,” Leung said.

Kyrie jogged toward the door, Leung and Elijah close behind. When they arrived Leung checked it. “Locked—give me a minute.”

The seconds ticked by until he finally stood back and exhaled with relief. “I got it, but that was a very good lock. Or skill. Point is, it took some tricky little hacks to get in.”

Kyrie grabbed the handle and swung the door open. On the other side was a large room lined with row upon row of shelves. All the shelves were empty except for a few lone boxes.

Elijah approached the nearest box and swatted it to the floor. “Empty. Let’s get to the vault.”

<Three more cars coming up from the south. Two others from the east.>

<We’re going as fast as we can.>

They raced between the shelves to the far end of the room and the enormous steel door set into the wall. A datapad was set into the concrete beside it, the buttons glowing green.

“Think you can handle this?” Elijah asked.

“A Luster 356-A,” Leung said. “It’s a beast, but I can do it. I might need a couple minutes.”

“I’ll let Cao and Pineapple know,” Elijah said.

“Hold on.” Reaching out, Kyrie grabbed the door and yanked. It swung slowly outward.

“Damn,” Leung said. “That takes all the fun out of it.”

They stepped into the vault and looked around. Elijah said what was on all their minds.

“Empty.”

Leung looked crestfallen. “I’m sorry, Elijah. I swear Marick checked out.”

Elijah kicked a box lying on the floor and sent it rattling off into the corner. “I don’t think it was Marick. They knew someone was coming for it and they moved it again.”

“You think they closed this entire place down because of the map?” Kyrie said.

Elijah stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the bare walls. “Let’s go ask.”

<Cao. Did you see where the truck that entered the compound went?>

<It pulled into an enclosed loading dock of some kind. The door closed behind it.>

Elijah sprinted out of the vault, with Kyrie and Leung close behind.

CHAPTER TWELVE

General Dean Rijkard sat in the passenger seat of his heavily armored Watcher SUV, tracking his men’s movements. The overlay map hung in the air in front of him, its multitude of little red dots flitting around in the AR display produced by his cybernetic eyes. Next to him, the young girl he’d selected as his personal driver sat quietly, hands on the wheel and ready to do anything he commanded.

Sometimes things just fell into place. He’d already known about the Aleph Society compound, of course. In fact, he marveled that these shadowrunners had assumed he hadn’t known. This was his home, after all. A man knows what is going on under his own roof. But to have these five show up and give him the excuse he’d been needing to mount the operation was truly a gift from God.

And driving that wonderful vehicle, loaded with valuable and hard-to-find electronics. And the guns, oh, those beautiful guns, all delivered right to his doorstep. Yes, truly his was a blessed endeavor.

A murmur rose from the backseat. He turned to glance at the elven woman slumped there, her face lit only by the little green light on the shock collar around her neck. Her eyes were rolled back in her shaved head, her mouth hanging open slightly to reveal her two remaining teeth. Drool dripped from a corner of her thin lips.

Filthy things, he thought.

“They are—moving toward the loading dock,” she muttered.

“Good,” he said. “And is there anyone else in the building outside of the dock?”

The woman twitched and a spasm jerked her leg. “No—No one else. Please…master—may I return? It burns—it burns to leave my body in this place.”

“No,” he commanded, turning to face front. “You’ll stay until I tell you to return.”

Picking up a walkie-talkie, he depressed the talk button. “Captain Whitmore, it’s time to tighten the noose.”

Kyrie smashed open the door to the loading dock and burst inside. It was a big space with enough room for three semi trucks, although there was only one there at the moment. Five guards wearing light armor and armed with AK-97s stood chatting while four men in blue jumpsuits stacked piles of boxes on pallets and wrapped them in clear shipping wrap. A fifth jumpsuited man drove a forklift, placing the loaded pallets onto the truck.

Before the men could do more than gape at her noisy arrival, Kyrie squeezed off two short bursts. The first struck a guard in the chest, sending him falling backward into a pile of boxes. The second burst caught another guard in the shoulder, spinning him around before he fell to the floor.

She kept running and dashed behind a concrete pillar. A hail of gunfire erupted from the remaining guards’ weapons, pounding her cover and filling the air with dust.

<Dammit, Leung! You said you’d kill the lights.>

<I did—I have no idea why they’re still on. Hang on a second.>

Another rain of gunfire blasted the concrete. A heartbeat pause followed, and Kyrie used the opportunity to dash over to a pallet stacked with desks. She squeezed off two more bursts along the way, missing with the first, but clipping another guard with the second. The workers had already scattered, and the forklift operator had abandoned his vehicle halfway up the ramp onto the truck.

<You gonna help me out here Elijah, or just watch the show?>

<Yep. Close your eyes.>

Kyrie squeezed her eyes shut and opened her mouth. She heard a familiar clink, followed by a loud pop and screams. Opening her eyes, Kyrie popped out, still approaching the guards. Two of them, including the one she’d hit in the shoulder, still had their hands up over their eyes. The third had his rifle up and ready. He opened fire.

Time slowed as her adept reflexes kicked in. Kyrie leaped off the ground, flipping through the air in a no-handed cartwheel. She felt the swish as the bullets cut past her, one coming close enough to brush her ankle, but none striking home. She hit the ground in a crouch and squeezed the trigger of her gun. The shooting guard fell.

“Drop your weapons if you want to live!” she shouted.

For a second there was only silence, then the clatter of weapons hitting the floor.

“Everyone into the corner now!” Kyrie shouted.

A scurry of activity followed as guards and workers alike hurried to the corner of the dock. Kyrie scanned the room once more, clearing the areas she couldn’t see when she’d first entered, then waved Elijah and Leung in.

Elijah trotted to the prisoners and pointed at a worker.

The man walked over, Elijah keeping him at a safe distance with the muzzle of his pistol.

<Keep the others covered. I’m going to try something.> Elijah closed his eyes and held out his left hand. The man started to step back, but stopped when he saw Kyrie raise her gun a little higher.

<You sure using magic in here is a good idea?>

<It’ll be fine. It’s just a small spell.>

 As Elijah concentrated, Kyrie swore she saw a faint ripple in the air between the mage and the man. Elijah looked up, his gaze distant and unfocused. “Who do you work for?” he asked.

“Kourous Allied Shipping,” the man said. “W…w…we were hired by the Aleph Society to move this stuff.”

“Where did they tell you to take it?”

“It’s going to a warehouse at the Rolling Meadows facility.”

“When did they start the move?”

“I—I don’t know. A couple weeks ago, maybe? This was the last of it.”

Elijah lowered his hand and his shoulders slumped. Taking a deep breath, he turned to Kyrie.

“He was telling the truth,” Elijah said. “There’s nothing here.”

“Actually,” Leung called from one of the loaded pallets, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

Elijah walked unsteadily over, and Kyrie, keeping her weapon trained on the prisoners, backed over to them as well. “What’d you find?” he asked, supporting himself on the boxes.

Leung had torn back a bit of the packing wrap off, revealing stacks of computers.

“You don’t seriously think they’d leave computers with valuable data on them just sitting here on a pallet?” Kyrie asked.

“Not on purpose,” Leung said, “but I powered this one up and did a quick scan. They used an off-the-shelf data wipe program. More importantly, it’s an off-the-shelf data wipe with a well-known security flaw. It may take me a little while, but I can probably recover a fair amount of data from these.”

“Maybe something’s finally going our way,” Kyrie said.

<Heads up. Most of those Human Brigade goons are coming your way. They started slow, but they’re picking up the pace.>

Elijah cursed, but didn’t immediately reply. Kyrie realized he’d missed the important detail in Pineapple’s report.

<Most of them? What are the rest of them doing?>

A message from Cao popped up in reply.

<They’re heading toward us.>

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Cao watched the mob approach. Despite the vehicle’s many upgrades, she knew Pineapple’s and her safety was a fragile thing. There was no way the thugs could get through the armored glass or the reinforced body, but with enough effort, a determined mob could roll a vehicle, even one this big. After that they’d probably set it on fire, turning the troll and her into the main course of a car-b-cue.

Pineapple crouched beside her, one massive hand resting on the back of the passenger seat, the other one holding his assault rifle. “I say we give the Professor three more seconds. After that, we go in whether he’s ready for us or not.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Cao said.

As if in answer, Elijah’s reply popped up.

<Get in here now. Full speed.>

Pineapple grinned. “’Bout damn time. Let’s hit it!”

Cao jammed down the accelerator. The van’s tires squealed, causing the nearest Human Brigade goons to dive for cover. They roared out of the alley, scattering more of the thugs, but Cao could see even more red dots on her AR display heading toward their position. A couple of the blips were moving at high speed—those people weren’t on foot.

Cao knew she needed to jump into full VR if she was going to pull this off, but she hesitated. Pineapple was right beside her. There was no way she’d hide it from him.

“Truck!” yelled the troll.

Cao whipped the wheel to one side just in time to dodge a rusty, old truck that roared out of the ruins of parking garage and nearly sideswiped them.

“Dammit!” she said. “I’m going to jump in, but do me a favor?”

“Yeah, sure,” Pineapple said, bracing himself as Cao whipped the vehicle back onto a straight course. “What is it?”

“Don’t look at me.” Without waiting for a response, she plunged her mind into the van’s systems.

Cao became the van. She felt the heat radiating through the rear tires, a memory of her sudden acceleration out of the alley. She breathed deep of the air pumping through the intake manifold, relished the feel of it flowing into the piston chamber, savored the delicious mist of diesel fuel mingling with it, and shuddered with the percussive explosion as the spark plug triggered, plunging the piston back down and filling her with power.

<Any chance of you getting that gate open soon, Leung?>

<I’ll see what I can do!>

Cao slid around a corner, cutting precariously close to the concrete base of a street light, but accelerated at the last moment to transform the momentum into even stronger forward motion. One of her wheels slammed into a pothole, and Cao winced with pain as the jolt was transformed into a physical impact on her body.

A new blip appeared in her AR and swung behind them to follow.

<Pineapple! Someone’s following us!>

<Already on it!>

Cao felt Pineapple slide open the rear door’s gun port. A wash of heat whispered through her systems at his touch, and then again as he grasped one of the support posts to steady himself as she dodged a knot of Brigade thugs on foot.

Dammit, girl, she thought. Now’s not the time.

As if to drive the point home, a rain of cinder blocks poured down from the upper floors of the building she was passing. She avoided most of them, but one slammed hard into her hood, nearly knocking the wind out of her. With regret, she bumped the sensory dampers up a couple levels. She had to risk a certain amount of negative bio-feedback to gain the advantages of being jumped in, but she tended to keep the feedback protocols set to maximum sensitivity—it was usually just more fun that way, except when running through shit like this.

Cao checked the AR map again as she tore down the road, wondering why, amid all the activity, one blip was standing conspicuously still.

General Rijkard watched his AR as the operation commenced. A voice crackled over his walkie talkie.

“General! The trogs broke free and are heading for the compound. We need more men to stop them.”

“Keep the pressure on, but don’t worry about stopping them,” he replied. “We’ll trap them inside, and deal with all of them there.”

“Yes, sir.”

General Rijkard smiled with satisfaction as he watched the AR blips converge on the compound.

Elijah glanced at the AR overlay map to check Cao and Pineapple’s progress. It would take them another minute or two to reach the compound. Leung was already working on the gate, so he turned to Kyrie.

“Herd the prisoners into the trailer and lock them inside.”

“You sure? I think these guys just work for the shipping company. At least if they’re out here they can run when the Brigade shows up.”

Elijah considered it, but shook his head. “We can’t risk them getting in our way. They knew the risks when they took their job.”

Kyrie nodded, then ran over and started shouting orders at the prisoners. Elijah kept cutting computers loose from the packing wrap. Leung wanted as many as they could get. There was no telling which one would have the intel they were looking for, or how many they’d need to piece together something useful. The hacker ran up beside him and started ripping the wrap away as well.

“Gate open?” Elijah said.

“Working on it,” Leung said as he hefted one of the larger boxes loose from the stack. “It’s slow, but it should be open in time.”

“Goddammit!” Pineapple shouted. “That gate’s not gonna open in time.”

They were still a block away, but through his cybereyes’ telescopic vision, he saw the gate barely inching along.

<Any chance you could focus on the guys shooting at us?>

A spray of bullets raked the back of the van. Pineapple shoved the muzzle of his Ares Alpha out the rear gun port and squeezed off three short bursts at the men in the back of the pickup. Every round hit its target.

As the three dead gunmen tumbled off the back of the pickup truck, Pineapple shoved his fist through the gun port and raised his middle finger at their pursuers. “Ha! Not so eager to follow us now, eh?” A sudden swerve forced him to pull his arm in and grab the roof to avoid falling over. “Hey, you’re ruining the moment.”

<Doing my best here. These idiots keep throwing stuff in front of me.>

Pineapple smiled. He liked giving Cao a hard time, but in truth he marveled at how well she handled the vehicle. She was as good as any rigger he’d worked with. Checking that no one else was following them, he worked his way to the front.

In the heat of the moment, Pineapple forgot Cao’s request and looked down at the rigger. Jacked into the machine, her eyes were closed and her mouth hung open. Thick, ropes of drool dripped from the corners of her mouth, dribbling down her neck and pooling at the hem of her shirt. He remembered something a friend had told him about goblins, that one of the side effects of their transformation was heavy drooling. Pineapple shrugged, wondering why she cared. She and he were what they were. No sense trying to hide it—or hiding from it.

<You might want to hang on to something.>

Glancing up, Pineapple saw that the gate was definitely not open enough for them to get through.

<Hey, Leung. Remind me to stick my foot up your ass when we arrive.> The troll gripped the roll bars as the partially opened gate loomed in the windshield.

Inside the loading dock, Kyrie heard the screech of metal on metal from outside. She winced, picturing what the noise meant for Cao’s van. Checking to make sure all the prisoners were inside the trailer, she slammed the door closed, and shot the lock home. She jogged over to where Leung and Elijah were still pulling computers from the pallet.

“Thought you were working on that gate?” she asked.

“I keep telling you guys.” Leung grabbed a computer from Elijah and placed it on a nearby pile. “These systems are positively ancient. I can only work with the tools I’m given.”

The roar of an engine, the squeal of tires, and the blast of an air horn announced Cao and Pineapple’s arrival.

“Grab a computer and start loading.” Elijah picked one up and ran for the door. Kyrie followed his lead. Before they reached the door, it opened and Pineapple ducked through.

“Gimme those.” He grabbed the pair of computers and ducked back out the door.

“Hey,” Leung yelled, chasing the troll out the door with another computer under his arm. “Be careful. Smash the drives and I won’t be able to recover anything!”

Half a dozen trips later, they’d filled most of the available space in Cao’s van. Each time Kyrie took a computer out, she saw more Brigade thugs entering the compound. Most were on foot, but several rode in old, battered cars or rust-riddled trucks. So far, they were keeping their distance. “This is not good.”

Elijah trotted up behind her. “Just get those computers loaded. If we don’t get the info we need from them, we might end up here another week or more.”

“Good point.” She set another computer in the van.

When they were down to the last load, Pineapple stayed with Cao while Kyrie went back in with Elijah and Leung. As they each grabbed another computer, she could hear the voices of the growing mob outside. It was a dull, angry rumble, the sound of at least several dozen people itching for a fight. She frowned. “What are they waiting for? Why aren’t they charging in here to rip this place down?”

Leung glanced at Elijah as he walked to the door. Kyrie narrowed her eyes and locked them on the mage as well. “What the hell is going on?”

“Let’s just get these in the van, okay?”

Kyrie cut him off in three quick steps. “No way. I know that look. What aren’t you telling us?”

Elijah shouldered past her. “I had to do some fast talking, all right? But it will work out.”

The noise from outside suddenly dropped off.

“That can’t be good.” Kyrie looked toward the door.

There was an electric pop, a quick squelch of feedback, and then a voice spoke, amplified through the tinny speaker of an old-fashioned bullhorn.

“Attention Elijah and company. This is General Rijkard. I would like to thank you for your cooperation in securing this location for us.”

“We should probably get in the van,” Leung said. “Now.”

The three rushed out to the waiting van, careful to keep it between them and the mob. Peering around a corner of the vehicle, Kyrie saw the Human Brigade thugs in a semi-circle about fifty yards out from the loading dock. Between the human wall and a barrier of carefully positioned cars, the motley army had them completely blocked in. In the middle of the curve of cars stood Rijkard, standing unprotected in front of a heavily-armored SUV. He raised the bullhorn again.

“We have, as one would expect from men of honor, fulfilled our end of the bargain.”

“Kyrie,” Pineapple called from the van’s open door. “Computer.”

She handed it to the troll, then climbed inside where Leung and Elijah were waiting. Cao was sitting in the driver’s seat, hands gripping the wheel.

“Shit,” she said, shaking her head. “This is really bad.”

“And so,” Rijkard’s voice echoed around them through the van’s speakers, “I now request that you fulfill your part of our agreement. We’ll give you one minute.” Another squeal of feedback and a loud click as the bullhorn shut off.

“What the hell’s he talking about?” Cao turned to look at Elijah, puzzlement obvious on her face. “You didn’t say there was anything else to this deal.”

“There wasn’t. Not at first. I had to make a deal, but I want to be clear that this wasn’t my idea.”

“What?” Kyrie said. “What wasn’t your idea?”

Elijah inhaled. “I want you all to understand; no matter how bad this sounds, I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think we’d make it out. And I mean all of us, okay? Remember that.”

Kyrie felt a twinge of sympathy for Elijah, because she could tell that whatever he was talking about was twisting his insides pretty thoroughly. But she wasn’t about to express it until she found out just what he had done.

“Just say it,” she said. “Say what it is.”

“What the hell did you promise them?” Cao asked.

Elijah looked at all of them and swallowed hard.

“Pineapple.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Rijkard looked down at his watch. The second hand ticked slowly around the face and at last, the minute hand clicked forward.

He raised the bullhorn. “Time’s up. Send out the troll and the rest of you can leave. Refuse and you die.”

The side door of the van slid open and the troll stumbled out, as if pushed. Rijkard smiled. He’d lived in Chicago long enough to know how desperate the sprawl made people feel. And he knew how to take advantage of it.

“Step forward,” he ordered through the bullhorn.

The troll raised himself to his full height, but didn’t move a muscle. “You sure about this, asshole?”

A few of Rijkard’s more zealous followers started forward as if to avenge the slight, but the general raised his left hand and the men stopped. He raised the bull horn again. “I said step forward, dog,” he repeated. “Cooperate, and I’ll place you in the arena instead of killing you outright.”

The troll glanced into the van, the turned back toward Rijkard. “Fine! You want me? You got me!”

Something large, almost as tall as a man, was tossed out of the van. The troll caught it with one hand and instantly pointed it at Rijkard and his men, moving with a speed that could only come from a powerful set of wired reflexes.

Rijkard’s combat instincts kicked in, and he dove for cover a second before the barrel of the weapon flashed. There was a thump, a brief whistle, and Rijkard’s armored SUV exploded. It leaped into the air like a toy on springs before crashing down a few yards away in a ball of fire. Another boom, and then a third as two more cars went up in thundering balls of flame.

Amid the mounting chaos, Rijkard climbed to his feet, refusing the assistance of men who tried to assist him. His eyes locked on the burning body of his young driver, lying on the ground near the SUV’s hulk.

“KILL THEM ALL!” he screamed.

Cao slammed her foot down on the gas. The engine roared and the van charged forward.

“Get in! Get in!” Kyrie shouted, offering her hand to Pineapple, who was running alongside the open van, his Panther Assault Cannon gripped in one hand.

The mob was in chaos. Some people ran, others hid behind cars. A few were shooting back, while still others stood frozen, staring in shock. Fortunately, with Rijkard’s SUV lying upside down and burning several yards from where it had been parked, there was a nice, big hole in the enemy line. Cao headed straight for it.

The van rocked as Pineapple jumped in, followed by the scrape of metal on metal as the side door closed. Just in time, too, Cao thought. Already some of the Brigade thugs were recovering, and a hail of small-arms fire rattled against the van’s armor.

“Sorry I didn’t explain the details, everyone,” Elijah said. “I had … trouble coming up with the right words for it. But I assured you I cleared  it with Pineapple.”

“And it helped me fulfill my promise,” the troll said. “Though I’m still behind, so someone needs to get that roof hatch open for me.”

Cao grinned and pushed the van to go faster. She smiled even wider when she heard the clank of the hatch sliding open. A second later a streak of light shot out into another car, making it erupt into a ball of fire. Burning Human Brigade thugs, their arms and legs flailing, flew through the air. They landed hard, skidding across the ground before sliding to a stop and falling still. A private message popped up in Cao’s AR.

>That’s eight.

Cao glanced at the picture taped to the dash. The smiling ghosts of the only family she’d ever known stared out at her from the wrinkled photo. No matter what else had gone wrong, at least one thing would be made right tonight.

Rijkard shielded his eyes from the blast as a third car exploded, but he reacted in no other way. It wouldn’t do to show weakness in front of his men. It undermined morale.

He watched as the van tore out through the gate, with three vehicles in pursuit. Rijkard grimaced as the lead vehicle exploded, and the other two narrowly avoided colliding with the burning wreckage.

His men wouldn’t catch the shadowrunners, he had already accepted that. He had underestimated these trespassers. By morning, they would be out of Chicago and beyond his reach. Still, there was one thing Rijkard could do. He turned to one of his lieutenants.

“Between our meeting at the courthouse and the drones, I assume we have decent images of those people?”

“Yes sir.”

Rijkard nodded. “Good. Go find a messenger. I need someone to go to Rolling Meadows and set up a meeting with the Aleph Society.”

“The Aleph Society?” The lieutenant’s eyes widened.

“Yes.” Rijkard watched through slitted eyes as the speeding van disappeared around a corner. “Tell them I have information I believe they will find very useful.”

“They moved it. Twice.”

Mr. Johnson’s icon in the Matrix café looked exactly like he did in real life. Apparently he was happy enough with his appearance that he didn’t feel the need to change it. It made Elijah feel a little guilty about the wrinkle smoothing he did on his own icon. But he didn’t worry about it long, because there were larger things at stake. Like trying to make failure sound like a step on the way to success.

“Not surprising, considering its value. Do you know where they have taken it?”

“The information we obtained says they have gone south. Rather far south.”

Mr. Johnson sipped his drink. Elijah didn’t know if this correlated with some real-world drinking, or if he just made his icon do it for effect. “How far south?” he asked.

“Amazonia.”

Mr. Johnson sighed. “Not a very convenient location.”

“No, not at all. So why go there?”

“Shall I go to the trouble of pretending I have no idea, or just go ahead and say that I’m not going to share that information with you?”

“Knowing why they’re going there might help me track it down. I’d have a better chance of figuring out who they’re going to contact.”

“Mmmm… No, you can leave that to me. But I do appreciate you already acting as if you’re going.”

Elijah stopped. Damn it, he thought. Mr. Johnson was right; once he was on the scent of something both magical and valuable, it was hard to let it go. It didn’t pay, though, to let that show. Maybe I should start bringing Leung along on these chats, he thought.

“I assume you want us to.”

“It would be useful, as the job is not yet done.”

“Of course. But given that this is beyond the parameters we discussed, there will have to be some … enhancements to the agreement. Amazonia is not the easiest place to get into. Or run in.”

“No, it isn’t,” Mr. Johnson said has he ran his fingertips soundlessly on the café’s white tablecloth. “And unfortunately, there are some limits as to what I can do to help you there. Which means niceties such as a direct flight are out of the question.”

“So how do we go about getting one?”

Mr. Johnson smiled, though thinly. “Let’s talk about that, shall we?”

“I don’t want their name on me. I don’t want any logos, any symbols, anything,” Kyrie said. “I’m not going to turn myself into an Aztechnology billboard.”

“That’s the plan he set up,” Elijah said. He thought this might be a tough sell, but he hadn’t anticipated just how mad Kyrie would get.

They stood on the balcony of their room in the Gary Marriott as the sun crept up over the horizon. Cao was sleeping in the back bedroom, and Leung was still playing with the computers, because that’s what he did. Pineapple was also in the living room, doing whatever it was he did when he wasn’t breaking things or blowing them up.

“Disguising ourselves as Aztechnology people to get into Amazonia has to be the most backward plan ever,” Kyrie said.

“We’re not doing it to get into Amazonia. We’re doing it to get to Argentina. Then we ditch the Aztechnology trappings.”

Kyrie had prowled back and forth on the balcony like a hungry tiger throughout the conversation, and Elijah’s words did nothing to slow her down. “One hour, one second wearing Aztechnology shit is too much.”

“I had no idea you had this much of a problem with them.”

Kyrie stopped in her tracks. She stared directly at Elijah, so intensely that he finally had to drop his gaze. “There’s an awful lot about me that you don’t know.”

When he was able to look back up at her, he just nodded. Kyrie returned to her prowling.

“The hell of it is, if Mr. Johnson can hook us up with Aztech identities, doesn’t that make it seem like the Big A could be behind the whole thing?”

Eijah shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Giving us Aztechnology trappings could be too obvious if they actually were Aztechnology people. This could be a misdirection.”

“I hope so. Because if it’s not …” Kyrie’s threat was left hanging, and Elijah wished he had an idea—any idea—of how she might finish it.

“I understand,” he said. “Let’s see how many of the others are on board.”

Kyrie nodded curtly and led him back into the room. Pineapple looked up as they entered, and Kyrie didn’t waste any time getting to the point. “So, are you coming with us?”

Pineapple stared at her for a moment, then turned his gaze on Elijah long enough for him to wonder if he’d somehow insulted the street samurai. “I signed on for this job. I’m gonna see it through.”

The mage nodded, then took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened back there. I didn’t want to make you a target—”

The troll waved a hand as big as Elijah’s head at him. “Whatever. I agreed to it. They got some shots at me, but I got to take my shots, too.”

“I just … I don’t like to have to place any member of my team in the line of fire,” Elijah said. That part was true.

“Good to hear,” Pineapple said. “That’ll make this next part easier.”

“What next part?”

Pineapple folded his arms across his huge chest. “I want Cao.”

Elijah stared at the troll. “I’m sorry—you want what?”

“Cao.” Pineapple leaned forward, bringing his face closer to Elijah’s. “If we leave her behind, she’s screwed. The Human Brigade will hunt her down. There’s nothin’ left for her here. I want you to hire her as a full member of the team.”

Elijah shook his head. “Look, Pineapple, she knew the risks just like the rest of us. She got her money and a little extra for the damage to her van—”

Pineapple bent down suddenly, his tusked face an inch away from the human. “You leave her, you’re putting her in the line of fire. Thought you just said you didn’t like doing that.” Elijah could feel the rumble of the troll’s voice in the base of his spine. His hot breath was also none too reassuring.

He blinked. “Okay,” he said. “She’s on the team.”

“Great. Guess she can expect to be treated as well as the rest of us.”

Pineapple straightened up, his head nearly brushing the ceiling, while Elijah did a double take, wondering how much sarcasm had been in his voice.

When he looked back at Kyrie, she wasn’t pacing any more, and had an odd kind of smile on her face.

“What?” he asked.

She shook her head slowly. “I know you think you’re a good teammate. You made sure we got Slycer out, after all. But I know you, Elijah. I’ve run with you enough. Just because you don’t like to put someone in the line of fire doesn’t mean you won’t do it. You’re willing to ask an awful lot of us to get what you want.”

“It’s not what I want, it’s the job. It’s for the team …” He trailed off under her stare.

Kyrie leaned toward him, looking intently. “Yeah, I guess you really believe that. You really think you’re that guy.”

“What—you’re saying I’m not?”

“Just watch yourself,” she replied with a shrug. “Watch how people around you act. Then you’ll figure out what kind of guy you really are.”

Kyrie left him and headed back out onto the balcony after that, because there really wasn’t anyplace else for the conversation to go. The sun rose higher in the sky, and the wind from the west blew in odors of sulfur and decomposed garbage. Elijah decided it would be wise to leave her alone.

Her description of him, however, he found harder to dismiss.

It was good brandy. Quite good, really—smooth flavor, with hints of apricot, almond, and vanilla. He kept his generous snifter moving so he could enjoy the exquisite bouquet.

The drawback, of course, was that anything this good didn’t come for free.

“It’s the problem that comes when you deal with the other races,” Hearn said after his latest sip. “Their natures are crude, violent. Each second you spend with them increases the likelihood that they will lose control and bullets will fly.”

Rijkard nodded gravely. “Quite right. It’s my own fault, I suppose. I knew what they were, but thought I could handle them anyway. I paid—we paid—a grave price for my carelessness.”

“Then let me extract some revenge for you.”

“I can’t say that wouldn’t bring me pleasure, but it would be a long journey.”

This was the delicate part—Hearn had to get information without looking like he needed to know anything. He worked to keep his tone casual. “Of course. And it may not be worth the effort to chase them around the globe.” He sipped his brandy, then paused, as if thinking of something. “Then again, that distance could work in your favor.”

The hook was baited—now the general just had to take it. Rijkard didn’t move, but his gaze stayed laser-focused on the other man. “Go on.”

“If done right, this could actually enhance your reputation,” Hearn continued. “Once word gets around that you tracked down someone who left the country to avoid you, the other inferior races will think twice before daring to cross you again.”

Rijkard stood silent for a moment. Hearn held his breath.

“You’re right,” the general finally said. “This is about more than revenge. This is about staying true to our principles, and making sure this nation—no, the entire world—knows how committed we are.”

He stood. “I’ll get you the information you need.”

Hearn exhaled, then sipped his brandy. The chase would continue. He’d dealt with Rijkard—and unlike Elijah, he hadn’t had to fire a shot.

He’s just like everyone else, he thought with a smile. You have to know how to play his game. Give him what he wants.

And he’ll fall over himself giving you everything you need in return.

PART THREE

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Pineapple was the first out of the sleek business jet when it rolled to a stop in Argentina. He ducked his cropped-horned head out of the entryway, took the six steps down to the tarmac in three, and set his great fists on his hips.

“This place is a shithole,” he pronounced.

Kyrie elbowed past him. “It was your girl’s call.”

“My girl?”

“‘Cao is coming with us’ you said,” Elijah put in. He descended the stairs without watching where he was going. “‘Or else.’”

“But—”

“But nothing.” Kyrie spun in place, ducking to look beneath the plane’s fuselage. None of the pilots—if there even were any—had come rearward during the flight, and simultaneous pings from the plane’s AR told them to debark as soon as the plane stopped. “Shut up.”

“It’s not a bad city.” Cao stood at the top of the stairway, pulling her hoodie forward so it covered her face. She grasped the rail—it was shoulder-high on her—and stepped carefully down the stairs.

“It’s—”

Cao slapped Pineapple on the stomach. “Shut it. We’re here.”

Pineapple closed his mouth and shrugged. Seams groaned in his armor as the massive muscles flexed. The shrug turned into a full shoulder-roll, which led to a grimace. “And it’s hot.”

“Only in temperature,” Cao muttered. Behind them, a bot lowered their luggage, including several sealed, charcoal-gray cases. There were still no signs of live pilots or attendants for the plane.

“Can’t say much for the gate service,” Leung said. The hacker stood apart from the others, one hand shading his eyes, the other stuck casually into his trouser pocket. He looked every inch the debonair junior playboy who might appear in the ass end of South America on a corporate jet.

“What?” he’d asked when he stepped out of the plane’s in-flight lavatory in the new outfit. “They’ll expect someone not nine feet tall and smelly on this bird, won’t they?”

Now he looked a bit put out that no one was there to greet his eminence.

Cao’s voice was grinning, even if her face was hidden. “Welcome to Posadas.” She spread her hands. “There was a reason I suggested we come here.”

Posadas sat on the southern edge of a spur of Argentina that thrust northward like a knife against the underbelly of Amazonia. To the west, across the river, was the quiet bulk of Paraguay. To the east, the fortified border of Amazonia. It wasn’t quite a demilitarized zone, but only because that kind of zone was solely classified as such by countries that were openly hostile to each other. Argentina and Amazonia were not openly hostile—which meant the heavy border patrols, deadly wards, and swarms of biodrones were there to stop the drug traffickers. It said so right on the brochures…

“Our wheels?” Cao asked.

Elijah half-closed his eyes. “Coming, I’m told.” He turned to face the plane when the stairway retracted and the cargo door slithered shut. “We should move the gear back.” He gestured. “Pineapple?”

“What’s this ‘we,’ white man?” Pineapple asked, but he walked with the others toward the stack of gear. Kyrie and Elijah gripped the steel handles on the end of one of the gray cases, but Kyrie picked her end up and dropped it. Elijah flinched at the thud.

“I’ll get a different one,” she said. Cao stepped in and gripped the handle she’d released. Elijah watched the adept walk away, then turned to the goblin.

<What’s her deal?>

<Look down.>

Elijah did so. The Aztechnology logo was embossed on the case. He tried not to show any exasperation—he didn’t pretend to understand what Kyrie’s problem with Aztechnology was, but he also didn’t expect her to go off every time it came up. He just hoped her antipathy wouldn’t get in the way of the job.

The plane spun up its engines as soon as there was sufficient space for it to turn around and head back toward the runway. The runners blocked the windblown grit and dust, heavy with the sickly-cloying scent of jet exhaust, with their hands as the jet accelerated away from them.

And then it was quiet.

“Shithole,” Pineapple muttered.

“You’re talking about my first home, you know. And you haven’t even seen it yet,” Cao protested.

Pineapple chuckled and patted the goblin on the head like she was a child. “Shit. Hole.”

“Once the vehicle arrives,” Elijah said, “how are we getting across the border?”

“That way?” Leung asked, pointing across the flatland around the airport toward a city across the river.

“No.” Cao pointed the other direction. “That way. Across the river is Paraguay. We’re not going there, and especially not across the river.” Her voice was level, despite her tone and her junior status. “Not. Going.”

“Can’t swim?” Pineapple asked.

“You might like to swim with Awakened crocodiles, big boy,” Cao shot back, “but I prefer my bones unchewed, thanks.”

“We could get a hover,” Leung surmised. “So far the network is low, but it’s present. Not like that Dark Age we just left.”

“Christ, I hope not,” Cao blurted.

“You can’t drive a blower?” Pineapple asked.

“I can drive one just fine. But you don’t want a hover in the jungle.”

“Why not?” Elijah’s tone was interested, but interested in a way that said, “I want to know, but moreso I don’t want you two going at it just now.”

“The rainforest doesn’t like them.”

“The rainfor—”

Cao cut the troll off. “Listen, thick-skull. The rainforest is active in ways you can’t imagine. The roads between here and Metropôle are heavily patrolled and burned weekly. Sometimes more often. They don’t stay clear. And even when they do, things have a way of jumping out in front of you.”

“Guerillas?” Kyrie asked.

“Trees,” Cao said.

No one spoke for a moment.

“What?”

Cao put both her hands beneath her hood and rubbed her face. “Listen. The jungle is living, breathing, concentrated mana. It fights back. We’re not talking a meter a year. We’re talking some parts’ll grab your ass like a Detroit sexbot.” Her hands came down, fingertips flicking toward the ground. “You want your fans torn out by a stump that wasn’t there an hour ago, you take the hover. Me, I’ll rig something with big, leaf-crushing wheels.”

Pineapple laughed. Everyone else just eyed each other.

“Company coming,” Leung said a moment later. “The gate just passed a vehicle headed for this bit of tarmac.” He took his hand out of his pocket. “Time to play the jilted wage-slave.”

“Let’s see how it comes out,” Elijah said. “Mr. Johnson said he’d do the groundwork.”

Leung made a face. “But I got all dressed up.”

“God forbid he not get to show off,” Kyrie muttered. Leung just grinned and slicked his hair back. He knew his own habits well enough to laugh about them.

The vehicle that approached might have started life fifty or sixty years ago as an armored personnel carrier, but its only remaining nod to that era was the blunt, bullet-shaped prow. The gunmetal-gray steel was dented and streaked with rust, along with dust in odd-shaped patches. The driver’s compartment was sealed—had doors, anyway—and had black reflective windows, but the back had been cut away with a torch to give it a pickup-like bed. It rode on six big, solid-rubber tires. Black diesel exhaust belched as it accelerated toward them.

“Guess who’s not riding in the cab,” Cao said. Her gray-skinned chin appeared briefly as she leered up at Pineapple.

“Funny.” The massive troll inhaled sharply. It sounded like the intake of a small jet engine. “Just means I can shoot things easier.”

“I’d really prefer to get in and out without causing a ruckus,” Elijah said. He was watching the truck approach, but his voice was pitched to carry to the entire group.

“Depends on the circumstances,” Pineapple said.

“I mean it—”

“He’s right,” Kyrie put in. “It depends.” She shifted the strap of the duffel bag she’d slung behind her. “First of all, who’s driving that rig?”

“No one,” Leung said.

“How can you tell from here?” Pineapple asked.

“Because the gate signed it through as a drone.” He glanced at Kyrie and paused. “The chop on the authorization was Aztech.” Because he was watching, he saw her fingers tighten infinitesimally on the strap.

“If it drove itself here, I can drive it out,” Cao said.

“Will we all fit?” Elijah asked. “It’s a long way to Rio, and if the jungle is as dangerous as you say…” He glanced up at the troll. “I wouldn’t care to ride that far in an open-topped vehicle.”

<I’d guess we three will fit in the cab.> Elijah looked at Leung, but the hacker was watching the truck.

<And you just decided you get a front seat?>

<Pineapple won’t fit.> Elijah might have seen a smirk flit across the hacker’s face, but he wasn’t sure. <And surely Kyrie will want to shoot something along the way.>

The truck rumbled to a stop, bringing with it a wind full of heat and humid exhaust. Elijah frowned at the smell.

Leung started toward the right-side door of the truck, carrying only a salaryman’s briefcase. <Makes sense. Besides, I do my best work sitting down.>

By stacking the cases and making judicious use of the tie-downs piled haphazardly in the truck’s bed, the team managed to stack their gear into two sidewalls that offered some protection for Kyrie and Pineapple in the back, but it still gave them room to stand and shoot in all directions if necessary.

Elijah sat against the right-side door in the driver’s compartment. Leung rode half on Elijah’s seat, half on the console between the two seats. Cao sat in the driver’s seat, hood pulled forward like a cowl. She was driving with her hands, but Elijah could tell from the way her gray fingers flinched when the truck jounced that she was half dialed in. The roads in Posadas weren’t the best.

They got worse closer to the Amazonia border.

<You’ve been here before,> he sent to her. <What do you think?>

<I’ve been to Manaus. Not Posadas.>

<Amazonia. I should have said, you’ve been to Amazonia before.>

<Not close to the border. I didn’t get out of Metropôle much.>

“Ideas?” he said aloud.

“We’re in the queue,” Cao pointed out. “If wonder boy here can’t get us passes, this is gonna be a real short trip.”

Leung didn’t reply, but Elijah saw the ghost of a smirk again. The hacker was on the job. Maybe he’ll even get some face time. I guess we’ll see if he’s as good as he says. He’d mentioned how backward the Argentine Matrix was.

Minutes ticked by as the vehicle moved up in the queue. Elijah stared at the cars and the checkpoint, waiting for inspiration to strike. There wasn’t much time to come up with something.

<We have a plan?> Pineapple sent.

<Working on it,> he sent back.

<I’m not the bait this time, am I?>

Without hearing the troll’s tone, Elijah couldn’t be sure if the words were resentful or teasing. He decided to take it as the latter.

<Only if you want to be,> he sent.

He didn’t receive a reply that might let him know if Pineapple had taken it the right way.

<Time to cut back on messages,> Leung sent. <Don’t want their spiders to notice excess traffic here.> Leung’s text was bright and slugged to everyone’s overlay.

“Progress?” Elijah asked.

<Doesn’t look good.>

“You said not to ping.”

<I know. You stop, leaves space for me.>

“Do we need to back off?”

“We can’t,” Cao said. “We’re in the queue. If we break out now, we’ll have the sec guards coming after us.”

“What about overland?”

“Drones and wards.”

“Leung?”

<I can get the drones. Wards are your department.>

Elijah had already peeked at the magical wards along the border. There was a fair army of spirits parked on the astral along the border, and he’d seen telltale signs for any number of magical booby traps. A magical minefield, he’d thought at the time.

<Get the drones,> Kyrie sent.

“What?”

There was a clatter along the roof over Elijah’s head, and then an insistent tapping on his window. He dialed it down and found Kyrie hanging beside it. Her hair had come loose and was dangling toward the ground. Elijah craned his neck. “How…?”

“Pineapple.” She jerked her chin up—down, whatever—toward the truck bed. The troll held her by her leg and belt, dangling the adept alongside the truck like a slung piece of luggage. “Get the drones. Have them attack the convoy behind us. When we’re the second car in the queue.”

“They’ll just lock—”

“Not when Pineapple starts blowing them away, and Leung takes the gate controls, and I do my best oh-my-god-I’m-going-to-die scream.”

Elijah regarded her. “Your what?”

“I’m louder than you. Higher-pitched and piercing, too.”

“I can scream, too,” Cao muttered.

“I can sound scared,” Kyrie said. She frowned at Elijah’s raised eyebrow. “I can.” She looked at Cao. “You just get us across.”

“They’re going to open the gate because we start shooting?”

“No. They’re going to open the gate because the cars behind us are going to start exploding.”

“What?” Elijah’s mouth was dry. “The people—”

“—take their chances.”

“We can’t just kill them.”

“Good to know you still have qualms. So get them out.”

“You’re talking summoning, casting—I’ll light up the astral.”

“You’ll look like you’re trying to save people. Which you will, in fact, be doing.”

Elijah shook his head, but that somehow did not shake loose a better plan.

“In a bit, I’ll go for a walk,” Kyrie said. “Cao’s got some fruit back here. I’ll trade it for some stuff. And if I happen to leave a little extra behind, well, it’ll make a nice distraction if we need it.”

Elijah had a whole host of objections coming to mind. But the only one he voiced was tactical. “And the Amazonia side?”

<Got that covered.> Leung stirred and opened his eyes. “Entrance requirements, assuming they even stop us fleeing from a firefight, are met. We just need to get through the Argentine side.” He shrugged. “This should work.”

“We’re moving,” Cao said. The truck inched a few centimeters forward as the vehicle in front of them, a commuter bus with four colors of chickens cooped on top, flashed its taillights as it changed gears.

Kyrie disappeared from Elijah’s window, and he cycled it closed. “You ready?” he asked Leung.

“As far as the Argentine drones are concerned, that van behind us is full of—” he frowned. “Well, it’s full of whatever they want it to be. I didn’t bother to look.”

Elijah closed his eyes. He needed to be ready to summon, and summon fast. And hope the spirits on guard didn’t swarm him as soon as he did.

“Do it,” he murmured.

Cao touched the accelerator. Leung grinned.

Kyrie palmed a half-dozen pocket charges from a case Pineapple held open and slid them into her pockets. She was wearing black leather boots with black denim jeans tucked into the knee-high tops. A rose-colored half-blanket wrap concealed the body armor plates in her vest and the holster of her Ingram beneath her left armpit. Pineapple offered her a knife. She shook her head.

“Got six already,” she said.

The troll smiled.

“Be right back,” Kyrie said. She picked up a sack of oranges and slung it over her shoulders, then lifted her hips over the tailgate and started walking backward.

“Hola,” she said to a thirtyish woman sitting on the front panel of a dilapidated panel van. The woman was leaning forward, grey-streaked black hair obscuring her face, while she played with a mangy chow dog. The dog yipped and licked at Kyrie’s hand when she held it out.

“This isn’t Mexico,” the woman said. “We speak Portuguese here.”

“And English, evidently.”

“Your accent is horrible in Spanish.”

“Ah.” Kyrie smiled and straightened from where she had been playing with the dog. In the jungle across the way a large cat yowled. The dog’s ears flattened against its skull, and it pattered back beneath the woman’s knees, under the truck bumper.

“Do you like oranges?” Kyrie held the bag open so the woman could look. The look was short; the snort was not.

“Not that crap they sell tourists in Posadas,” she said.

Kyrie smiled her smarmiest smile and slipped the sack close. Then she wiped her hand across her jeans, just near her pocket, and bent down to offer her other hand to the dog. It sniffed her fingers and offered a single furtive lick. She gripped the underside of the bumper to lift herself back up.

“Perhaps someone else is less discerning.” She dipped her head and stepped back.

“There may be someone stupider than you in the queue, yes,” the woman agreed. Kyrie held her smile by sheer force of will and stepped around the van.

She’s first, Kyrie thought.

Kyrie returned a half-hour later, carrying fewer half-rotten oranges and with emptier pockets. She raised her hands for Pineapple to lift her into the truck bed, and the entire truck shifted on its torsion bars as he stepped across the bed. Elijah considered watching from the astral, but decided against it. He opened his eyes.

The border, as far as the eye could see in either direction, was a double row of razor-wire-topped fence. A narrow strip of cleared land in between showed recent signs of being chewed up—cracked stumps surrounded by the boughs of fresh growth. Cao said they used both magic and chemicals to burn the jungle down.

Truly, it fought back quickly.

Away from the fences for at least one hundred meters was a more or less cleared zone where the biodrones hunted, alongside armored vehicles and the odd, shifting patterns of spirits that only Elijah could see. It was like that on both sides of the border, and he knew from experience at more border crossings in more countries than he could name that there’d be bored human and metahuman guards nearby, anxious to get out and shoot at faulty alarms just for the practice.

“I think it’s time,” Leung said.

“I don—”

<He’s right.>

Elijah bit his lip. Then he nodded.

Leung grinned. <Should I…?>

It happened in seconds. Elijah had already been working to mask his aura so what he was doing wouldn’t set off the spirits keeping an eye on things. Then he cast two quick spells. One conjured an invisible hand that opened the woman’s truck door; the other lifted her off her seat and moved her out of the vehicle. He rushed it, casting two spells in the time it would normally take to cast one, knowing it would leave him drained, but also knowing the woman’s life depended on it.

As the woman was carried out, the truck exploded. The concussion rocked it on its axles. If it worked right, the woman should look like she was blown clear of the explosion—blown clear and miraculously unharmed.

“We’re next,” Cao said.

The truck in front of them lurched into motion—it had been halfway through the gate when the explosion sounded. Cao stayed close to its bumper until the guardrail came down and blocked the blunt prow of their truck. A pair of border guards in computer-patterned camouflage ran past Elijah’s window.

“Here they come,” Leung muttered. Elijah dialed the window down and craned out to look. Any tourist would’ve. Looking calm in the face of disruption would make them stand out. He considered climbing out to check for damage. And be outside when the razors arrive?

Blue-black streaks leaped among the long line of vehicles—cyber-augmented panthers turned into biodrones. A shiver shook his shoulders and upper arms as his mind flashed back to the razorhound Kyrie had dealt with in the house. He wanted to scent them, to see if there was a magical component as well, but stealth was more important than his curiosity.

Not that it didn’t itch.

“Get us moving!” Pineapple shouted for the guards’ benefit.

“IDs!” a slender, sweat-soaked guard commanded Cao. She handed over a chip. In Seattle it’d have been a simple RFID ping on the AR, but in Posadas it was a chipreader.

Cao made her voice sound younger than it was. “Are you kidding? Someone’s shooting at us, officer!”

“Sergeant,” the guard corrected. “And it might have been an accident. It happens.” Inserting the chip into a reader, he squinted at the small screen. His brow furrowed.

“It happens?” Cao half-leaned out of the cab. Her hood fell halfway back—Elijah could see it in the mirror. The guard flinched away.

A credible scream of terror erupted from the back. “They’re going to kill us!” Kyrie yowled.

Now it was time for summoning. One, two, three spirits. The spirits watching the area would sure as hell notice them, but they wouldn’t know who called them. With any luck, they’d quickly realize the spirits were there to help. He quickly gave them their instructions and hoped they would be fast enough.

“Look, we’re clean,” Cao whined. “We’re not staying here while your rebels or criminals or whoever shoot us up!”

Snap-boom! Another car behind them exploded. Elijah wondered briefly how many vehicles Kyrie had rigged.

“Dios!”

Elijah listened with half an ear, but his eyes never left the tableau behind them. The chaos was growing, which meant the guards were going to be feeling more pressure. That’s all they needed to do now—keep pushing it until they cracked.

—crack-whoosh!—

A rocket ripped past Elijah’s window close enough that the acrid exhaust warmed his skin and burned his sinuses. He dropped back into his seat, eyes watering. He hoped he didn’t crack before the border guards did.

 “D-don’t move,” the guard told Cao, looking back behind them. Angry yowls were audible now, the razorcat beginning to react less by programming and more by feral instinct.

“They’re shooting at us!” As if punctuating Cao’s words, a burst of light-caliber automatic rifle fire pattered against the armored tailgate of the truck. The sound was short and sudden, as if a blower had shot gravel against a steel roof.

Cao gunned the engine. “Gods damn it, man, I ain’t dying sitting in line!” Her voice was even higher, as if she were getting younger and more terrified.

<Leung?>

<I’ve got control of three of the trucks behind us.>

Elijah swallowed. <Crash them. But be gentle.>

Engines, both the deep growl of big diesels and the high-pitched whine of hydrogen turbines, flared behind them. A crunchy metal-squeal whispered through the door seal and cut into Elijah’s eardrums. He cringed.

<A little more.>

The truck lurched as the next truck back in line exploded. The crack of more rockets going past was almost buried. Elijah stopped concentrating on how well his spirits were doing behind them and looked ahead.

How much more pressure could the guards take?

 Pineapple shouted down at the guard. 

The guard dithered, looking back at the flames and smoke, then across at the Amazonia gate. The bus that had been in front of them was sliding beneath the raised gate. Elijah saw the indecision on his face.

<Kyrie.>

Another car exploded.

“Go!” the guard shouted, slapping the sidewall of the truck. “Get out of here.” He tossed Cao’s chip through the window. It landed in Leung’s lap. Cao gunned the truck’s engine and dialed her window up. The truck lurched forward, shaking as Pineapple fell down at the sudden motion.

The Amazonian guards waved them through. In ten minutes they were on the road to Metropôle. Leung twisted to put his hands behind his head. “That was easy.”

Elijah watched out the window as black smoke climbed into the sky above the jungle canopy. In a moment, that same canopy would swallow them like a velvet bag swallows a jewel.

He hoped the spirits had done their job back there. He hoped nothing vital had been lost.

And he hoped he could avoid making eye contact with Kyrie for a while, because she kept nodding at him. As if she were glad that he also had some regrets about what he’d been forced to do on this mission.

He tried to think of the road ahead and of Rio. But it was hard not to look back.

The opening door was a welcome diversion from staring at the maggot inching its way across the floor. The operative named Douglas poked his head in and waited until the seated man looked up.

“They’re across the border,” he said.

“Intact?”

“Our reports say yes.”

“And we don’t have anyone in the jungle?”

“There wasn’t time.”

Hearn sighed. The maggot had gotten perhaps a millimeter farther. It was moving toward the map case on the table by the wall. He made a small gesture. The maggot spasmed, then sizzled and popped like spittle on a hot iron.

“I’ll move ahead with the ork—what’s her name, Bizet?—and attempt to keep an eye on them. When they get close, we’ll move. We should only have to wait a day or two more.”

Douglas ducked his chin. He glanced at the map. “More security?”

“We’d only stand out.” Hearn spread his arms. “We’re safe in the bosom of the Rocinha.” The motion pulled his sleeves up, revealing the black shape of a dark moon tattooed on the inside of his forearm.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The jungle swallowed all of the sky and most of the sounds. The road toward Rio was more or less a tunnel through trees and vines and fronds large enough to hide the entire truck. Kyrie watched the foliage above and around them from the crate-built cupola in the back.

“That was fun,” Pineapple said.

“Fun?”

“Blowin’ them cars up.” The troll grinned, showing yellowed teeth the size of small rocks. “I was hoping we’d get some action on the Amazonian side, too.”

“Mr. Johnson came through.” Kyrie looked away from the troll at the endless green jungle blurring past. She checked the Ingram beneath her armpit and felt for the small grenades in her thigh pockets. A big Colt Manhunter was holstered on her right thigh, just in case. There were situations where one big bullet was better than a swarm of smaller ones from her Ingram. The Smartgun was an old and dear friend—but they saw other people.

“Mr. Johnson,” Pineapple said. “The man with the unlimited travel budget. I wonder how far he’s gonna send us.”

“This isn’t far enough?”

Pineapple shrugged. “It’s a nice vacation.” The truck shifted as he beckoned with one giant arm. “Saw some interesting people, blew shit up. Might get a postcard, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“But …”

“But what?”

“He’s an Aztech, ain’t he?”

“Probably. It was his jet.” Kyrie tapped the holstered Manhunter. “The serial number on this one is near the sequence Colt ran specially for Aztech’s security forces.”

“You know those numbers by heart?”

Kyrie’s hand brushed the gun’s holster. She couldn’t reach the scar beneath it. “Some things leave their mark,” she whispered. Then she looked around. Seeing nothing, she keyed her AR.

<Elijah: step outside for a minute?>

<For?>

<Need to talk.>

<Can’t do it like this?>

<No.>

The passenger door groaned on rusty hinges as it opened. Elijah reached out and grasped the upper edge of the roof. Wind blew his hair around, and he squinted against the gusts. Pineapple grunted and stepped past Kyrie to grab the mage’s hand and haul him into the truck bed.

Elijah dusted himself off and looked around. His mouth curled into the briefest of moues before he selected a crate and sat down. He crossed his legs and his hands across his knees and regarded Kyrie.

“The meeting is in session?”

“Very funny.”

“Pineapple?”

Kyrie looked at the troll. He grinned. “I don’t fit in the front, kids. You want to pretend I’m not here, I’ll pretend I don’t hear anything. Fair?”

“It’ll have to be.” Elijah’s voice was tight.

“Mr. Johnson.” Kyrie spoke without inflection.

“Is most likely working for Aztechnology,” Elijah replied with a similar lack of inflection.

“That doesn’t worry you?”

“You would prefer Ares? Evo?” Elijah shrugged. “A job is a job, Kyrie.”

Something screamed in the jungle behind Elijah. Pineapple presented a long-barreled combat shotgun almost before the sound passed. Kyrie didn’t draw, but her hand was on the butt of the Manhunter. Her eyes were unfocused, trying to watch everywhere at once for any movement that seemed out of place.

“Don’t see nothin’,” Pineapple said after a moment.

“It’s a jungle,” Elijah said. He picked at his nails. “It will make lots of noise. And more, if Cao is to be believed.”

“How long we on this road?” Pineapple twisted at his turret-like waist toward the rear, still presenting the shotgun.

“Hours.”

“Shithole.”

Kyrie watched Elijah. “You know Aztech beat Amazonia pretty soundly in their little war.” Her hand—her left hand—gestured at the jungle around them. “Hualpa isn’t going to like us poking around his back yard on Aztechnology’s coin.”

“Hualpa. The dragon.”

“Yes.”

“Hiding behind that tree, is he?”

Kyrie frowned. “It’s best not to underestimate those kinds of creatures.”

“True, though I doubt he even knows we’re here.”

“I’ll bet everyone he’s ever had taken out thought the exact same thing.”

Elijah looked away from his nails and met Kyrie’s eyes. “You agreed to come. You’ve been here before—in the Amazon.”

“Yes.”

“You got on the plane. They didn’t hide the tail art. They didn’t hide the clearances that got us into Argentina, or the passes that got us into Amazonia.”

“It’s easy to forge passes,” Kyrie protested. “That doesn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t matter!” Elijah brushed a leaf off his sleeve, then picked at the sap it left there. “We’re here. We’ll get the map, and we’ll get out.”

“If Mr. Johnson even wants us out—” Kyrie muttered.

“I took his contract,” Elijah interrupted softly. “I didn’t say I trusted him.”

The first attack came an hour later, as they rolled through a serpentine valley with high mountains on either side. The canopy cleared enough that they could see the mist-shrouded tips of the mountains in the distance. The humidity was high enough that Kyrie felt like she was breathing through a wet towel.

“People live here?” Pineapple asked.

An arrow thudded into the packing crate between them. Elijah, still leaning against the bulkhead in the front of the bed, eyed the shaft and then looked to his left. “Perhaps you can ask them,” he said.

Kyrie stood. Her hand dipped the Manhunter out of its holster as she rose, but she kept it at her side. Pineapple already had the black-anodized barrel of his shotgun presented, and Elijah’s eyes closed as he conjured a spell.

More arrows flew out of the jungle, spanging off the sides of the truck or thunking into the crates. The truck lurched as one shattered against the driver-side window.

<What the hell?>

<Natives.>

<Well, deal with them.>

<Leung? Anything?>

<You’re joking, right? They’re using arrows. I can’t hack a smoke signal.>

“It’s just arrows,” Elijah said a moment later. “Ignore them.”

Pineapple grunted as an arrowhead broke against his body armor. His shotgun barked once. The cloud of flechettes scythed through the leaf fronds like they weren’t there. A small, brown-skinned man holding a bow longer than he was tall yelped and leapt away. He’d been wearing nothing more substantial than a loincloth. More arrows replied.

<Do I stop?>

<No.>

The engine growled as Cao accelerated away. Pineapple fired again, then brushed at the stone chips caught in his body armor. After a minute, he twisted back to glare at Kyrie. “I could have handled that.”

“No need,” she told him. “They can’t keep up, and they’re no threat.”

“Would’ve been some fun.”

“It’s a long way to Rio.”

“Yeah,” the troll grunted. “A long, boring way.”

Pineapple’s shotgun boomed again, but the shot didn’t hit anything but leaves. He threw back his head and howled in frustration. Kyrie grinned. The last two hours had been composed of long stretches of quiet, punctuated by several crude ambushes launched from the unbroken forest around them.

“Why won’t they stand still?” he shouted while searching for a target.

“Would you?”

“I’m not a pygmy.”

Kyrie shook her head. “Relax. They can’t hurt us.”

Red-black blood pooled on the truck’s bed. Pineapple stood over Kyrie, one hand clamped over the tear in his sleeve where his body armor hinged at the elbow. Blood seeped between his fingers, dripping. He glared down at her.

“They can’t hurt us?”

“Guess you’re not bored any more, huh?” Kyrie said, ignoring his glare. “Besides, it’s just a cut.”

“What if it’s poisoned?”

“Elijah?”

The mage closed his eyes.

“It’s not poisoned,” he said a moment later.

“Still hurts.”

Kyrie laughed. “Here, I’ll wrap it up, tough guy.” She reached into the case she’d been sitting on and drew out a medpack.

“How long until Rio?” Pineapple eyed the forest around them.

“Hours. Still.”

“Shit. Hole.”

“I’m shooting the next one. See if I don’t.”

Elijah looked up at the troll. “They’re harmless, Pineapple.”

The troll held up his bandaged arm. “An arrow can still kill you, smart man.”

“They’re just defending their homes.”

“Then they should leave me alone, seein’ as I’m just passin’ through.” Pineapple had stopped shooting every time one of the tribes attacked. Arrows stuck out from both sides of the truck bed, embedded in the wooden crates or wedged between hard black plastic and bright green tie-downs. They covered the floor of the truck bed like a broken rattan mat. Pineapple’s huge combat boots crushed them into ever-smaller pieces every time he took a step.

“I don’t—”

Whatever Elijah didn’t was interrupted by a yowling, catlike yell from in front of the truck. All three of them turned in time to see a small, brown-skinned man swing on a vine and land on the truck’s cab. He rocked with the truck’s motion as if he’d been born there.

Incredibly, the three shadowrunners could only stare.

The man eyed them, his face twisted into a sneer. His hair was black as night and cut shaggy, with bits of grass and other greenery woven into its braids. His cheeks were smeared with what Kyrie took to be mud, and he wore one of the locals’ longbows across his shoulders. He shrugged it off in a fluid motion and nocked an arrow, aiming at Pineapple’s chest.

“Um—”

The local drew and released in a single, lightning fast motion. The arrowhead shattered, but the shaft caught in a tear in the fabric covering the troll’s body armor. The arrow stood out like it had gone inches into the troll’s chest. He looked down at it, then up at the local.

The troll’s face split into a huge grin.

Elijah’s stunball blew the man off the cab and to the side. He flew into a stand of palm-style fronds that seemed to cushion his fall, but he didn’t get back up.

“Just defending their homes?” Kyrie asked, staring at Elijah.

“What?” He glanced from Kyrie to Pineapple. “He shot him.”

“I know,” Pineapple said. “Ballsy little fucker, wasn’t he?” He wrapped a giant hand around the arrow shaft and tugged it free. Then he tossed it over the truck’s side. The engine labored as Cao downshifted to start up a hill.

Kyrie eyed the troll. “Didn’t you just want to shoot them a minute ago?”

“I know.”

“And now…?”

“Ballsy,” he said with a shrug of one massive shoulder. “I like ballsy.”

Pineapple reached out a large hand and shoved the little man off the side of the truck. He flopped the ground and rolled, carried by the truck’s momentum, before jumping to his feet and shaking his fist at Pineapple. The troll shook his great head and looked back at Kyrie.

“Okay. Ballsy only goes so far. Now this is just annoying.”

“Kill a couple of them. Maybe they’ll get the point.”

“Naw.” The troll ducked as another volley of arrows whistled overhead. “No reason to shoot ’em. They don’t know we’d wipe them out in about four seconds flat.”

“School ’em?”

Pineapple just grinned. “It’s only a couple more hours.”

Kyrie opened her mouth, then thought about it.

Then she closed her mouth and huddled a little deeper between the crates she was hiding behind. Yells announced more locals swinging—literally swinging, on vines—into action.

“A couple more hours…”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The sigh Pineapple let out was audible even in the truck’s cab. Kyrie shifted her weight off the door armrest she’d been leaning against and ducked forward to look out the thick windshield. The canopy of the jungle gave way like a tunnel’s exit, and sunlight streamed through high cirrus clouds. The land between them and the end of the valley was thick with small tilled plots and shanties.

“Lovely,” Leung muttered.

“At least the trees aren’t trying to kill us,” Cao grunted. She stepped on the accelerator, gunning the truck along the dirt path that led toward the edges of the city that were just becoming visible. The canyon opened into the plains where Metropôle began.

Leung sat up. “Oh sweet Jesus, I can almost taste it.”

“The food?” Cao took her eyes off the road long enough to raise an eyebrow at him.

“The net.” Leung’s eyes sparkled. “Can’t you see the glow? Wireless nodes, hidden processors.” He breathed in deeply. “Oh god, I missed civilization.”

Leung projected a rough map. It showed the three icons for Rio, Metropôle, and São Paulo. They were connected by an ocean of blue. Kyrie checked the legend; blue was the urban area called Metropôle.

“You’re joking,” she whispered.

“Welcome to one of the most incestuous sprawls in the world,” Cao said. She rolled her shoulders, drawing back her cowl enough to let Kyrie see the goblin’s chin and cheeks. She was smiling, exposing yellowed and near-sharp teeth. “Welcome to my first home.”

Kyrie reached for the door handle. “I’m getting in the back.”

Traffic quickly bogged down. The truck pulled into a narrow street overrun with foot traffic edging around the near-stalled vehicles that were trying to edge past endless decrepit, thrown-together buildings. Shanties, really. Everything looked jury-rigged. Kyrie had been in slums before, but this was different. This was bigger. It went on forever.

<Welcome to the favela,> Cao sent.

<The what?> Pineapple replied.

“It’s a slum.” Kyrie’s hands were on her weapons, but she held both of them beneath the level of the crates in the back of the truck. If there was trouble, she’d be ready for it—but there was no profit to advertising. Not until it paid, like when they’d shot their way through one shakedown, and it paid for word of their coming to shoot through the local nets and warn the next gang to stay the hell out of their way. “It’s been here for a century or more.”

“Surprised the buildings stood that long.” Pineapple was watching behind them.

“The rich bastards who live around here depend on the favelas for labor and cheap manufacture. Most of the low-level commerce that takes place in cities down here is done here.” She watched a shaved-headed man who watched her back. He carried a machete in one hand and made no attempt to hide it. The people around him offered a wide berth.

“And they don’t move out?”

“They don’t get paid that well.” If machete man made the wrong move … she clicked the safety off the Manhunter. It would be safer than spraying the crowd with the Ingram. “And it’s home to most of them. They don’t want to leave. It’s not like they’ve got Renraku next door, shining the arcology in their faces.”

“That’s crazy.”

“And flying thousands of miles to skip across a border, deal with a thousand fools with bows and arrows, all for a stupid map isn’t?” She risked a glance at the troll’s back. “Crazy only looks that way from the outside.”

“That’s different,” Pineapple said. “This is business.”

“So’s this.”

“Elijah.”

The mage looked up from the leaf he’d been examining. The truck had been idling for ten minutes, and the big diesel vibrated him to his joints. The leaf was from the jungle, but he’d have sworn he’d seen it vibrate out of frequency with the rest of the truck. It looked odd in the astral …

“Elijah—wake up!”

He blinked and looked up at Kyrie. She gestured with her chin. “We got trouble.”

He stood and looked where she’d indicated. His fingers and lips moved silently as he did, working the first charms of the stunball spell. There was nothing to see, just the throngs of itinerant humanity filling the smelly reaches of the São Paulo-Metropôle favela.

“What am I looking at?”

“The guy with the machete.”

Elijah found the man she’d indicated. He was staring at them, tapping the mud-covered—at least I hope it’s mud—blade against the side of his knee. He wore dingy brown dungarees and, unless he was different from everyone else, sandals. His homespun shirt was off-white, as if it’d been white to begin with, but suffered from months of sweat and dribbled food and never being washed. His hair was shaved, but the shadow of his scalp told Elijah he was balding regardless.

“I don’t think we need to worry about him.” Releasing his spell, Elijah touched the small pistol beneath his armpit. “I think we’ll see him coming, yes?”

“It’s not him I’m worried about,” Kyrie muttered. “It’s who he works for.”

“You’re not going all ‘Hualpa-is-out-to-get-us’ again, are you?”

“No, I’m going ‘he’s-probably-the-point-man-for-a-drug-cartel-or-kidnap-syndicate.’” She glared at him. “And I’d rather not have Pineapple unload on the whole market, you know?”

The troll laughed. “I hit what I aim at,” he said. “No worries.”

“And the people behind what you aim at?” Kyrie ducked her chin toward the crate containing his Panther assault cannon. “There’s a lot of people out there just trying to get through their day.”

Elijah let go of his pistol. “As we’re just trying to get through ours.” He blinked his mesh active. <Cao?>

<We’re blocked.>

<I can feel that. Any idea for how long?>

<You haven’t looked around recently, have you?>

Elijah frowned and stepped onto a crate to look forward, over the truck’s cab. The street in front of them was awash with metahumanity, orks and trolls and humans all in various states of dress and, to his eyes at least, undress. They clutched crates and boxes and bicycles, and a few ganger-types ran the throttles of their motorcycles up to scream over the hum of the crowd, sending wavy rooster tails of blue exhaust into the air.

<Ah.>

<I’m looking for a map. Everything I’m finding is out of date.>

Pineapple rumbled low in his throat. “Maybe I should get off and clear the way, hey?”

Elijah sucked air through his teeth. “No.” He turned back around. “We have time. We can wait it out.”

Another one of the favela scum brushed against her shoulder, and Christiana Bizet bit back her snarl. The sound that escaped between her tusks was more of a sigh than a snarl, but Hearn looked back at her nonetheless.

“How much longer?” she asked.

“That’s them.” Hearn pointed to the solid-looking truck. “They look like a handful, don’t they? I don’t like the look in that troll’s eyes.” He shrugged. “It’ll be someone else’s problem for now.”

Bizet leaned around the human’s shoulder, breathing between her tusks. Hearn didn’t blame her—the smell would get to anyone who hadn’t lived here for a decade or so.

The truck was stopped in the crowd. Any lesser vehicle would have been swarmed by now, but the people were obviously afraid of the troll perched in the back. Hearn looked down the boulevard. Then he smiled. Two blinks called up an ARO, and he picked a number from the list that appeared on his AR.

“Closing in,” he said. “You sure you want the interception now?”

Tempest nodded gravely. “They’re getting close. Time to stop them before they get ahead of us.”

“All right. Sending it in now.” He blinked again, then waved a finger. With that, the call was over, and the order for the intercept was given.

He shook his head. He hadn’t imagined he would have come out of Chicago with an alliance with the Alephs, but that’s where the troll had maneuvered things. Strange bedfellows and all.

It helped that the Alephs seemed to have no idea what Tempest intended to do once he was certain where the map was.

“Let’s get a drink and wait,” he said, and started walking.

Bizet followed. “For what?”

“For the next step in getting us home.”

<He’s moving.>

Elijah blinked the text off his AR and set the leaf down again. Kyrie stood alongside the stack of crates, her Manhunter drawn and held down along her leg. He sighed and levered himself upright.

Machete-man was coming toward the truck, and Elijah had to admit it looked intentional. He’s staring at Pineapple. Maybe I should—he looked at the troll and saw him already grinning at the approaching man—or maybe not. The man with the machete grinned back, showing no fear whatsoever. Uh-oh.

<Somebody’s probing my portals.>

Elijah twisted and looked down at the truck’s cab. Leung was safely inside with Cao, but it was beneath probability that someone knew what they were doing. It had to be a local, just trying to get into the new folks’ mesh and see what there was to steal.

<I’ve got guns on this side.>

Elijah spun around. Kyrie was watching the rear of the truck, looking back the way they’d come. Her Manhunter was tapping gently against her thigh. He didn’t see what she was watching, but there were hundreds of people back there…

“Come on, baby…” Pineapple murmured. His voice sounded like rocks rubbing together.

Elijah rubbed his fingers against each other, surprised to find his palms were sweaty. Not the oh-my-god-it’s-hot-here sweaty he’d been dealing with all along, but the surprise-here’s-something-you-didn’t-expect sweaty. He sat down, centered himself, and went for a walk on the astral.

And came right back.

<Trouble.>

Bizet and Hearn sat in rust-stained, rickety chairs with bad thatch seats, sipping bottled beer they’d been careful to ensure was sealed when they bought it. Hearn had his back to the truck. He was watching Bizet, who was watching the truck while she ran her fingertip around the lip of her bottle. Condensation ran down the sides.

“Anything?” Hearn asked. Bizet looked at him.

He was sunburned. He spent most of his time in Seattle, and he did most of his work at night. Sunlight wasn’t something he saw frequently. What skin of his was showing was red except where his clothes pulled to the side. There it was pasty-white. His blond hair was cut short on the sides and hung long on the top, and he wore mirrored sunglasses because the brightness of Metropôle blinded him every time he took them off.

 “It’s starting,” she said.

The first gunshot—a pistol—sent everyone scurrying for cover.

It was followed by more.

<It’s an attack.>

“You think?” Pineapple asked.

<We need to get out of here, Cao.>

The truck’s engine revved. No one moved. The horn, a big foghorn-sounding job, honked. A man in his twenties, wearing a faded Hawaiian shirt, turned around and gave the armored windscreen the finger.

<Not happening.>

“Watch what you shoot at,” Kyrie said. “No one will bother us if we don’t shoot up the crowd.”

“And if they shoot up the crowd?”

“We’ll get attention.”

<We don’t want attention.> Elijah looked around. The astral had shown him the gangers coming in, all intent and hostility and backed with a black tint of something stronger. If they have a mage, and he brings spirits… Elijah concentrated. He closed his eyes. <Don’t shoot yet.>

Kyrie’s pistol cracked.

Elijah’s eyes opened.

“All right!” Pineapple yelled. His hand came up, filled with submachine gun.

“Damn it,” Elijah whispered.

The Manhunter’s round flew true, taking the lead ork between the eyes. Her face registered the first hint of shock before she fell. The black-bodied shotgun fell to the street next to her body as the crowd erupted in the high-pitched screaming of civilians who didn’t want to be shot next.

The Manhunter chambered its next round, and Kyrie’s eyes tracked back and forth while her AR communed with the smartgun circuitry and she pondered engaging her adept’s reflexes. Not yet …

Pineapple opened up with his submachine gun. More screams.

<Cao, go!>

The truck jerked forward a centimeter. The people in front of it yelped again, more afraid of being crushed by the thick, solid-rubber tires than of being shot. The first bullets of the bad guys’ return fire sparked off the truck’s armored side.

Kyrie tracked right, aiming at a dwarf half-crouched behind a tabletop, rifle leveled. It was an old surplus assault rifle, and he was squeezing off rounds like a metronome in single-shot. His head was shaved, except for a jagged path of dirty black hair along the left side of his head.

Her second bullet took him in the shoulder, spinning him back and out of sight.

More bullets hit the truck. Pineapple laughed, his guffaws suddenly louder as his gun ran dry and he dropped it, the whole gun instead of just the empty magazine, and pulled his shotgun from near his knees. He raised it—

—Kyrie looked—

No! No no no the people not the people he’s got ten people around him the shot will spread—

—BOOM—

The man with the machete flew backward, his chest a welter of gore. Pineapple racked the slide and chambered another slug. The people who’d been crouched around the dead man were covered in blood, but they weren’t injured.

—BOOM—

Kyrie looked back toward the rear. Another man, this one a dingy human with impossibly scrawny arms, had picked up the dwarf’s rifle and was firing at the truck like hitting it would mean his salvation. She raised her pistol, focusing the smartgun’s aim in her AR—

—the truck lurched into motion as Cao found a path—

—she fired—

—the bullet took him in the arm instead of the head. He screamed—silent at that distance with so much noise already but she saw his mouth gape—and shot him through the tonsils.

More bullets clanged off their armor as Cao accelerated. The people in the way, who’d been happy to block a stopped truck’s passage a minute ago, scurried to clear the way now that a multi-ton crushing machine was rolling toward them.

Pineapple came back next to her, his massive hip smashing her into a crate hard enough that she wondered if she was bleeding over her hip. His shotgun banged out two more slugs before it clicked empty.

Cao made a turn and they were out of the line of fire.

<Are they following?>

<No cameras—I can’t see.>

<None visible. Kyrie watched the way they’d come. Someone see what we’re driving into!>

<Got it.> Elijah rocked with the truck’s motion, as if he were sleeping. He was gone, walking the astral. Kyrie shook her head and looked again toward the rear.

They weren’t following.

<Somebody want to tell me what the fuck just happened?>

Bizet had twisted around in her chair to watch. Hearn looked past her, watching the professional way the woman in the samurai outfit fired. He heard the boom of the troll’s big shotgun, but the lack of screaming meant he was using slugs instead of flechettes.

“There they go,” Bizet said as the truck rumbled into motion. People scurried on their hands and knees out of its way. She looked back at Hearn. “Should we …”

“We should not.” Hearn was leaning back in his chair, hands clasped across his stomach, watching. His AR was recording it all, but he liked to watch it in realtime, too.

“But—”

“Shut up.”

Bizet shut up.

The truck made a turn and disappeared around the corner. The massive, solid-rubber tires crushed a vendor’s stand into a rattan throw rug before it went. The squat dwarf vendor cowered against the side of the building, but he retained enough presence of mind to shake his fist at the truck.

Hearn toggled a message window open on his AR and entered an address. He keyed a few words and hit send.

<They got through. Get ready.>

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Bullets spanging off the side of the thin sheet-metal building beside them sent Kyrie ducking down between the crates, but Pineapple bellowed a curse and dug in his pocket. Pulling a small flash-bang from his cargo pocket, he thumbed it active. His massive arm shot out, launching it back the way they’d come just before Cao made the turn. The crack and star-white light strobed against the far wall.

“Okay,” he said, turning and squatting to face Kyrie, “I admit it. They’re organized. No one—not even this shithole—can hate us this much.” He glanced both ways, looking up at the rooftops. An ambusher could line the rooftops with men with assault rifles and piss a whole lot of bad day down on them. She watched the same potential situation behind them. It would only take one anti-vehicle rocket up their ass.

Twenty hours. Twenty hours since they’d traded the pygmies’ jungle for the urban one. São Paulo was behind them. They’d moved as best they could, using the former APC’s bulk to shove themselves through the slums and streets of the sprawl. It seemed like there was a gang of thugs waiting for them every time traffic slowed. Waiting to try to claim Kyrie for the “transit tax.” Waiting to claim that Pineapple insulted them. Waiting to claim they needed some stupid toll.

Elijah had paid the first couple gangs off, but by the fourth group Leung put his foot down. “I don’t have the access to steal all this cred back,” he’d told the mage. “Stop spending our pay.”

Most of them had backed down when Pineapple waved his Panther at them. Some of them hadn’t tried to barter first—like the last group, six orks on motorcycles. They’d just rode up alongside and sprayed the armored windows with machine pistol rounds. As if an APC wouldn’t have plex thick enough to stop little pistol bullets. Kyrie had taken two on her side down with her Ingram—leather didn’t stop submachine gun bullets—but Pineapple had just leaned over with arms longer than most people expected, picked one of the gangers up by the neck, and tossed him under the wheels of the motorcycle behind. The ensuing pileup had been a thing of beauty.

“Needed a stretch,” he’d said.

<We’re here.>

Kyrie looked around. <How can you tell? And where is ‘here’?>

<Rio. The Rocinha.>

The truck crested a small rise and started down a hill. For a second they were at the high point, and Kyrie risked standing up to take a look around. The terrain was hilly, with mountains up the side and in the distance. In the jungle, if they’d been able to see that far, those hills would have been covered with trees and fronds and a thousand other varieties of flora more beautiful than could be described.

Here the hills were covered with color, but it was the rust-stained mix of blues, oranges, and yellows of industrial steel. Converted cargo containers—sheet metals of different provenances—whatever materials that could be scrounged, sold, or stolen had been combined to make a solid sea of shanty-style housing. She’d thought the shanties had gone on forever in Manaus.

Manaus was nothing.

The Rocinha was large beyond belief, almost beyond description. It covered the land as far as she could see, shadowed by clouds on one side and shining in the sun on the other.

Pineapple surged upward behind her. “I was wrong about Posadas.”

Kyrie sent a question mark on his AR.

“This is a shithole.”

The truck shuddered into a turn down an alley and stopped. The driver side door slid open and Cao dropped out, her cowl falling back as she put her hands far over her head and stretched. Kyrie heard the sinews in her shoulders and neck pop and crackle. Her gray skin was sheened with sweat, but the tiniest of grins dimpled her cheeks.

“Home?” Kyrie asked.

“Hell no,” Cao said. She grinned up at the adept. Kyrie felt her cheeks cool, tried to fight it—I don’t want her to think—but it was too late. Cao must have seen her face pale, because she drew her cowl back up and walked toward the rear of the truck. “We need to gas up, and the spooks are in the cab planning our next move.”

A small, recessed release slid open to reveal a concealed, armored cargo hatch. Cao opened it and dragged a thirty-liter fuel can out and toward the rear of the truck. The truck lurched and then popped a few centimeters in the air as Pineapple jumped down.

“Here, let me.” He reached for the can.

Cao held it away. “It’d have been easier while you were in there, lardass. Now it’s higher.” She grunted and jerked the can onto her knee, leaning against the truck while she removed the fuel cap. “My ride, my rules, got it?”

Pineapple held up his hands. “Just trying to help, little one.”

Cao’s hood jerked toward him. “Don’t call me that!”

“Honey,” Pineapple said, far more gently than Kyrie would have imagined, “everyone is little to me. Don’t get your mesh in a twist, all right?” He put his hands over his head and stretched himself.

Kyrie triggered her mesh. <Got a plan yet?>

Leung’s reply was instantaneous. <Come on down.>

Kyrie slid over the side of the truck and landed lightly on her feet. She let herself fall into a crouch, relishing the stretching sensation in her thighs and calves. When she straightened, she adjusted the holster of her Manhunter and the Ingram at her back. The walls were close, all sheet-steel and extruded plastics. The windows were all boarded up, but she knew there were people just on the other side.

That was what bothered her the most: there were always people around. Always. No matter where they went, they were surrounded by the truly unimaginable mass of metahumanity squatting nearby. The cloying closeness was just as oppressive here as it had been in the jungle.

Leung had opened the passenger-side door, letting the already-humid air move through the cab. With Cao outside, he’d slid over behind the steering column. He looked at her when she stepped into the shadow of the open door, but didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. His face showed the quiet luxuriance of space after so many hours in the cab. He’d never once climbed in the back.

Kyrie stepped onto the running board. “So, what’s the plan?”

Leung held a finger to his lips. “Shh. The Great One is communing.” The finger at his lips pointed to Elijah. The mage was sitting, head back on the headrest, eyes closed. His muscles were relaxed, like he was sleeping.

“Oh.” Kyrie looked around. “Did he say anything before he went walkabout?”

“He said he was sending some spirits to sniff out the map.” Leung aped Elijah’s posture—head back, muscles slack—and closed his eyes, too. “I’ve already sent some agents through what passes for the Matrix around her.” He blinked his eyes open and glared at Kyrie. “I swear to whatever gods you want, there’s a guy not three hundred meters from here using an honest-to-god cyberdeck. And not a new one—one with the keyboard strapped on his arm!”

Kyrie smiled. She leaned back to look forward past the door, then back the way they’d come. They hadn’t gotten far enough away from the last ambush for her taste, but she still heard the sounds of the predator that was the Rocinha claiming their leftovers.

People may run from gunmen when they start shooting, but as soon as they stop shooting, a gunman’s just a man with some valuable hardware. An assault rifle would sell for a pretty peso. Penny. Whatever they used for currency. And if the ork holding it had to be helped along with a little judicious knifery, so what? Whoever said life was fair?

“I don’t know how he expects to locate the Alephs in all this,” Leung said a moment later. “Me, I think we should move toward the port. Catch them on the way out, when we know where they’re going.”

“You know where they’re going?”

Eyes still closed, the faceman shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. They’re not going out through the jungle. No reason to drive out if you went to the trouble to fly in. Absolutely no reason to come to this barrio if you’re not hiding out until something—a ship, maybe?—is ready. Where else are they going?”

“If they’re still here at all.” Kyrie regarded Elijah’s slack face. “If they’re here, he’ll find them. It’s what he does.”

“Sneaks around the astral?”

“Finds things.”

“Ah.”

The clang of the fuel hatch closing made Leung flinch. He opened his eyes and looked at the steering wheel. Then he looked over at the hump that had been his seat for far longer than his backside had agreed too. His nice clothes from the airport were probably ruined—covered in sweat stains and grease from rubbing against parts of the old truck. As if reading her mind, Leung picked at his shirt.

“Is a shower so much to ask?” he mumbled.

“Scootch,” Cao said, appearing at the driver-side door. “You’re in my seat.”

“I do know how to drive,” Leung protested.

“Uh-huh.” Cao reached up and drew her hood back. “Move.”

Leung scooted.

Cao climbed in and closed her door. Then she slid her cowl back up and glanced at Kyrie. “What’s the word?”

Kyrie gestured. “Waiting on the man,” she said.

“We need to get moving,” Pineapple called from the truck bed. The sounds of weapons being reloaded click-clacked from his area. “They’ll be coming for us.”

“We need to know how they’re tracking us,” Leung said.

“The truck.” Kyrie met Cao’s angry stare.

“Bullshit,” Cao said. “I’ve been over it. So has Leung. There’s no trackers, nothing transmitting. They’re not watching my ride.”

“It doesn’t have to be transmitting,” Kyrie said. “It’s a tank moving through crowded territory. They could be hacking traffic-cams. They could be shadowing us on bikes. Hell, they could just be texting people to ask if they’ve seen us.” She reached out and slapped the slab-sided truck. The thick metal barely made a sound when she rapped it.

“That’s a point,” Leung said.

“It’s also correct,” Elijah said. He drew in a deep breath and blinked several times rapidly. Then he sat up. His eyes took in the cab and Kyrie standing outside, then flicked out the windscreen. “We’re being tracked. The Alephs have people nearby, and they’ve been sending the locals after us.”

“Shit.” Cao squeezed the steering wheel. “Do we need new wheels?”

“No.” Elijah reached past Kyrie to grasp the door handle. “We need to move. We’re out of time.”

“Care to share?” Kyrie put her hand on the door, keeping it open.

“The map is here. The Alephs are on the other side of the Rocinha, getting ready to move toward the port. There are sixteen of them, and a convoy of four vehicles to move them.”

“Some download,” Leung said. “How’d I miss it?”

“Spirits have good eyes.” Elijah raised his eyebrows at Kyrie. “We. Need. To. Go.”

Kyrie stepped back. “Pineapple,” she called, raising an arm. “Fill me in on the way.” The troll grabbed her hand and lifted her into the bed with one of his. The other was full of shotgun.

<It’s easy,> Elijah sent. <It’s a race, and we don’t have time to be polite.>

<You mean—>

<If it tries to stop us, shoot it.>

Pineapple’s laughter was like gravel shifting.

Fifty meters back, four motorcycles rode their wake through traffic, swerving and leaning to close the distance. Each rider wore brown leathers, with reflective-faced helmets that covered their entire heads. The telltale butts of Ingram-style smartguns protruded from sidesaddle holsters on the bikes.

Kyrie glanced back. They were coming to a curve, where the road twisted to the left and climbed upward. From the way the buildings rose around them, the entire hillside must rise there.

“Take them,” she said.

Pineapple knelt to set down his shotgun. For an instant, Kyrie thought he’d come back up with that damn Panther, but instead he picked an Ares-made assault rifle from the pile of guns at his feet. The trigger guard had been cut away to allow his thick finger to fit.

The truck shuddered as Cao downshifted. Behind them, traffic tried to reorganize itself after the whale of the truck had passed. Electric tricycles pulled back off the sidewalks where they’d fled to avoid being crushed. Braver drivers shook fists or middle fingers at the truck’s rear end. Pedicabs started moving again.

The four motorcycles, engines screaming, closed the distance, shoving other vehicles off the road not with mass, as Cao’s truck had, but by the shock of their passage. The lead rider dropped his hand to the holstered gun.

Pineapple’s rifle barked three times. All three rounds took the lead rider in the chest. Both his hands came up and the bike, freed of its control, immediately slashed to the left and went down. Each of the three riders behind swerved out of the way in a masterful display of control. The dead man became a tangle of body and motorcycle before the bike slammed itself—and him—through a wall.

The other three brought their pistols up and fired. Bullets slapped against the truck’s rear and the cases around Kyrie as Pineapple fired again, taking another motorcycle down. Kyrie tapped her two firearms together absently, watching.

<Stupid.> Pineapple fired again, but the biker swerved to the side, nearly laying the bike down. Return fire tore into the crates next to Pineapple’s head. He ducked, swearing and brushing at polymer splinters that had scratched his cheek.

Kyrie leaned past him and extended her right hand. The Ingram bucked against the strong muscles of her wrist, but most of the burst hit the front end of the bike and, hopefully, the rider as well. In either case, it jerked to the side and shot down an alley.

The other biker cut in the opposite direction and disappeared.

Hearn tossed away two AROs with a quick swipe of his hand. The camera feeds were not showing him what he wanted to see. He didn’t want to have to call up the reserves on this one, mainly because one of the reserves was him. But it was a better alternative than letting them go.

He turned to the ork. “All right, Bizet. We’d better saddle up. Things aren’t proceeding as smoothly as I’d like.”

Bizet sighed as she stood and walked toward her SUV. “Do you think the others at least slowed them down a little? I don’t think I want to face that group at full speed.”

“What kind of attitude is that?”

Ahead of them, a new explosion billowed smoke into the air while a dozen people ran away from the path of their target, their screams heard faintly over the engine noises and gunfire.

“Rational,” Bizet said.

“Maybe,” Hearn said. “But the cavalry will be going in with us.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Pineapple grinned. “Well, that was easy—”

An explosion smashed both of them to the floor. Kyrie felt the truck lurch as Cao dodged whatever had exploded, but the air was thick with cloying dust and smoke. The shock of the truck slamming into something immovable shoved Kyrie across the bed and into the bulkhead. Pineapple crashed to the floor, half on top of her. His bulk crushed the air out of her.

She shoved him off, wheezing. <What the fuck?> It was all she could do to text. Her lungs burned, and a serious coughing fit was coming.

The answer came from Leung. <Ambush.>

<Close or far?>

Kyrie rolled to her knees. Her pistols were gone. Fingers searched and found her Ingram and her Manhunter still in their holsters. The Ares rifle Pineapple had been using was lying near her knees. She grabbed it.

<What do you mean? The building exploded, is what I saw.>

Kyrie sighed. <No one’s shooting at us?>

<Not yet.>

<Far, then.>

<What the hell are you talking about?>

“Amateurs,” Pineapple wheezed. Gripping one of the fallen crates, he pushed himself upright. He looked behind them, then forward, but if he saw anything besides the dust and smoke that filled Kyrie’s view, he didn’t say. “We need to move, girl.”

Kyrie finally sucked in a breath that stuck. “I know.” She ejected the rifle’s magazine, checked it, and slammed it home. Then she stood and looked at the crates. They needed what was in them, but they needed to be away from here more. “Let’s go.”

Elijah had climbed out of the truck by the time they got down. He was squatting, his back against the front massive wheel. His eyes were closed. Leung leaned out of the door, holding his forehead. “What’s this about close and far?”

“There’s two kinds of ambushes,” Kyrie said. “Close and far.”

“And that means….”

“If it’s close—meaning they’re right there, shooting at you, you charge.”

“What—toward the people shooting at you?”

“It doesn’t pay to stand around or run away. They don’t expect you to come at them—not unless they’re pros, in which case you’re dead anyway.” Kyrie looked past the hacker. “Cao. We need to go.”

“I can’t get it started—”

“On foot.”

“No! I can get her moving again—”

Pineapple racked the slide of his shotgun. “Come on, little one.”

“I told you—”

“Now!” Kyrie didn’t stamp her foot or do anything so immature, but she was out of patience. The smoke was starting to settle, but the space opened was being filled by the screams of the injured. If the bad guys were coming, they’d be coming now.

“What about him?” Pineapple dipped the shotgun’s butt toward Elijah.

“He’ll be right back.” Kyrie tucked the butt of her rifle into her shoulder and tried to listen through the smoke. “Or else.”

Elijah jerked to the side and fell. Kyrie turned back, watching him. He pointed into the smoke. “She’s here—the Aleph.” Kyrie looked where he was pointing, but didn’t see. “Stall them.”

“Them?”

“Shooters coming,” he said. “I need time to summon.”

Kyrie nodded. “Pineapple—with me. Cao and Leung, stay here and watch Elijah. Anyone comes around, you shoot them.” Just then a single pistol shot barked at her. She dropped to one knee, listening. No footsteps. No nothing, except the sound of debris settling and people moaning and crying.

Pineapple grinned. He slung the shotgun over his shoulder—the sling was long enough to be Cao’s jump rope—and drew a long-bladed knife in each hand. “We won’t want to make too much noise, will we?”

Kyrie grinned back. “Not quite yet.” She looked down at Elijah. “When you’re ready, blip me and get rid of the smoke.” He nodded.

She stepped away from them. Four steps later she was alone.

<Right behind you.>

Not quite alone.

Juan and his brother Rico crept forward along the crumpled sidewalk. Juan was twenty, Rico nineteen. Both were experienced gunmen by the standards of the Rocinha—which meant they owned their own guns, and sometimes hit what they shot at. Rico was tying a bandana across his nose and mouth. Juan already felt like he was chewing sand, there was so much dust in the air.

“Let’s go,” he prodded. Rico flipped him the bird. Then he picked up his decrepit Chinese Ares knock-off and beckoned his brother forward. They stepped carefully over the debris—shattered brick and mortar, crushed and exploded furniture. And bodies.

“Dios,” Juan muttered, as his foot slipped in the puddle of blood next to half of a woman’s body.

A deep voice answered him. “Not god, buddy,” a giant said. There was a flicker of movement, and suddenly Juan’s mouth felt wet. He blinked—dust in my eyes—as the giant shadow moved toward Rico. Juan reached up and touched his lips. They were wet. There was a gurgle from Rico.

“Two down,” the giant murmured. Juan looked at his fingers. Blood?

He fell down, his own blood mixing with the innocent woman’s. He thought he heard Rico whimper. He tried to get up, to help his brother, but his arms were so heavy …

“Whatever you’re doing, old man, speed it up.” Cao dug behind the passenger seat. There was a recessed cargo compartment there, and there might be something useful inside it. A gun. A knife. A ticket back to the World.

Leung crouched next to Elijah’s still body. The hacker held a pistol negligently in his left hand, as if he were only holding it because one was expected to hold a gun at times like these. He was glancing back and forth between Elijah and the street.

Cao stopped picking at the lock and looked down at him. “You got nothing?”

Leung shook his head. “Too many nodes, and none of them useful.” He looked down at the pistol. “What do you think you’re supposed to do if the ambush is far?”

“Huh?”

“Kyrie said if it’s a close ambush, you charge. But Pineapple said this was a far ambush. She didn’t say what to do then.”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“I dunno. You’re from here. I figured you knew things.”

“Listen—”

Elijah stirred. He sat up, blinking. His face was coated with the dust that permeated everything. It cracked like a thin plaster around his eyes. “Get ready,” he said.

“For what?” Leung stood.

“It’s time to get past this. We need to get moving. The Alephs have already left their compound. “ Elijah stood. He brushed his sleeves off, then his chest. Then he looked at his hands and shrugged. “At the other end of the street is a man and woman. The woman is an Aleph—she has a black moon tattoo on her forearm. I felt its power on the astral.”

“We’re not on the astral,” Cao pointed out.

“Yes—but if we can get to her tattoo, I can use it to draw us toward the rest of the Alephs.”

Leung gestured with his pistol. “So there’s just the matter of all this to deal with?” He indicated the wrecked truck, the dust, everything.

Elijah sighed. “Kyrie and Pineapple will have dealt with the worst of it by now.”

“How can they see anything?” Cao asked.

“And what about the part they haven’t dealt with?” Leung put in.

“I don’t think Kyrie always needs her eyes to kill people,” Elijah said. If he knew his mouth curled in distaste, he didn’t show it. “Pineapple, either.” He drew in a deep breath and raised his hands. “And as for the rest…”

The air crackled with summoning.

<Five seconds,> he sent.

<Five seconds.>

Kyrie took two steps back and grabbed Pineapple’s elbow. The troll was cleaning his knife on the vest of an idiot who’d tried to sneak through a dust cloud wearing four kilos of jangling jewelry. She pulled the troll back against the wall and let the rifle drop to its sling. The butt was covered with blood and bits of hair.

“Get ready,” she said, and drew her Manhunter.

There was a rush of air.

Bizet was chewing her lower lip, something that her tusks made far more interesting than when the average human did it. She stood alongside the driver’s-side door of the SUV with her hand on the handle.

There hadn’t been any more shots after the first one, and no one had pinged Hearn’s AR. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? 

Maybe it could. Maybe he could still stay out of the line of fire and still make the rendezvous.

Grit and dust and smoke blew into his face, as if a typhoon had appeared at the end of the street. He threw up his hand to cover his eyes and leaned back. His other hand opened the SUV’s door halfway—and stopped.

The smoke was gone. He blinked grit out of his eyes. It was in his nose, he knew. His mouth—

What the hell?

The street was covered with bodies. Hearn had expected that, of course. There’d been people in the buildings when Tempest’s people mined them. Some of them hadn’t wanted to run away. They’d been dead when the bombs went off, but they were still there. Most of them were pulped by the overpressure wave. Some were torn apart.

These bodies were fresh. A couple of them still writhed out their last seconds as they bled from slashed necks or crushed temples.

They were his men, the guns she’d sent in after the runner team.

A pistol barked. Bizet grunted. He looked over at her—

—she was bleeding from the shoulder—

—But something at the far end of the road made him look up. He saw the crashed truck. His lips curled back into the beginnings of a grin, but something was moving in the dirt track in front of it. Hearn saw a trio of people cowering behind the half-open door. Some of them lived—

A thing rose from the street.

It started toward him.

It was faster than he’d ever imagined dirt could move.

He knew what spirits were, knew how they were summoned. His cold, rational brain told him that it was an earth spirit coming toward him, gravel-filled hand outstretched like a child chasing after its parent. He knew all of that, intellectually.

But intelligence didn’t prepare Hearn for the sight of a man-shaped mountain of dirt charging toward him. He clutched at the car door, yanking, wrenching, forgetting it was already open—

—so fast!—

The pistol fired again. The bullet sparked off the pavement in front of the SUV. Hearn ducked down, looking. Two people—a troll and a woman—were crouched three-quarters of the way down the street toward her. Just two of them, and they killed all of my people?

The ground shook beneath the earth spirit’s gait.

Get in the car!

He stood. Bizet looked at him drunkenly, half-sprawled across the front bench seat. She was bleeding all over the interior—blood puddled on the floorboard, stained the fabric seat covers. I’m not dying here! Hearn leaned across, shoved at her shoulders. She slid out of the SUV like a sandbag.

Hearn climbed into the driver’s side—or tried to. His left foot wouldn’t move. He looked down, saw his ankle covered in swirling dirt and dust. It wouldn’t come loose, as if it were embedded in rock.

He looked out the windshield—the elemental spirit was at the front of the car.

Hearn reached for his pistol in its holster beneath his armpit.

The dirt on his foot yanked.

He had just enough time to see the frayed seam on the fabric cover of the door before his head struck it.

He saw stars. He could feel consciousness sliding away, but he knew what would happen if he let it. The door of the SUV had opened at some point, so he fell out of it like a small avalanche.

The spirit no longer had his ankle. Hearn couldn’t see anything but bright pinpricks, but he could move. He crawled, and hoped it was in the right direction.

Kyrie put her Manhunter away as Elijah’s spirit tore through the SUV. She straightened up out of her firing crouch and looked over her shoulder at Pineapple.

“What’s he need us for, with that thing?”

Kyrie smiled. “Finesse.”

That made the troll laugh.

Elijah was walking quickly down the street toward the spirit. The monster had stopped moving. It stood, rocky shoulders hunched, like a toddler waiting to be paddled. Or like a golem. Elijah walked right past them, stepping over bodies and bits of debris without looking down. His entire focus was on the spirit.

“Come on,” Kyrie said. She started to follow the mage, but pain in her leg made her look down. There was a gash in her pants, limned with blood. She frowned. I didn’t even feel it. She probed the wound with her fingertip, but the blood had already clotted. A shallow slash, probably. A limp would slow her down, so she didn’t allow her leg to hesitate.

Elijah had reached the SUV and the spirit. He looked up at it and said some words Kyrie didn’t understand. Words she hadn’t heard him use before, any of the times he’d summoned an earth spirit. Then he gestured past the beast.

The spirit dissolved into a cloud of dust and blew away.

Elijah stalked toward the SUV. He went around the driver’s side and stuck his head in, then turned and beckoned toward Leung and Cao, who were still huddled near their truck.

<Come on.>

The duo started moving. Not running, but not walking slowly, either.

<Pineapple, go get as much of our equipment as you can carry, or as much as you think will fit in the back of this vehicle.>

“I don’t fit in that thing,” Pineapple muttered. But he turned back toward their wrecked vehicle.

Kyrie was walking around the front of the SUV when Elijah brushed past her. She turned to watch him, leaning against the hood for support. The mage went to one of the bodies and crouched beside it. First he checked her throat. Then he pushed her sleeve up to show her forearm. Kyrie heard him suck in his breath from where she stood.

<I need your help.>

Kyrie walked over. He looked up at her when she reached him. “See that?” He pointed to a tattoo of a black moon on her forearm. “She’s an Aleph. I mean, one of the mages. Untrained, I think. She didn’t put up much of a fight.”

“How’re we going to find her friends?”

“With that.” He pointed to her arm again.

“Her tattoo.”

“Yes.” Elijah’s patrician face was distinctly green. Kyrie stifled a chuckle. The man could hem and haw, then send a damned earth spirit tearing through obstacles, but ask him to get his own hands dirty …

“I’m not dragging a body along with us.” Kyrie crossed her arms. “You want to peel that sucker off, be my guest.”

Elijah chewed his lip. “Couldn’t you …?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

This time Kyrie did chuckle. “Because I don’t get off on chopping people up.”

“Do you get off on getting paid? Because they’re getting away.”

“I just kill things, remember?” She knew her smile was false—felt her lips drawn back into thin, bloodless lines across her teeth, and that her eyes were flashing. Right then she didn’t care. “You want it, you do it.”

“I—” He looked down. She watched his head move back and forth, between her face and her arm. Elijah looked at her, stared at her. She met his stare. Held it. Didn’t back down.

He sighed. “Fine.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The troll in the soft leather seat turned from the window when Douglas quietly cleared his throat. He’d been watching a young woman, a local selling dyed t-shirts from a cart on the other side of the road. She couldn’t be more than eighteen or twenty. Tempest was entranced; if she wasn’t an elf, one of her parents might have been…

“What?”

“I haven’t heard from Hearn or Bizet,” Douglas said. He was meshed with the car’s AR, which was tied into the nearest node they could reach. “I’ve got reports of heavy fighting along the ambush route.”

“So, at least they hit them.” Tempest turned back to the window.

“Or got hit.” Douglas spoke quietly, evenly. Tempest heard the hesitation in his voice.

The girl held up a yellow-green dyed shirt for a man in chinos and a safari hat. His hat barely concealed the gentle points to his ears. I wonder if he sees it, too. The troll didn’t have the angle to see, but it didn’t look like Chino was paying much attention to the shirt.

“Send someone to check,” he said, distracted.

“Who?”

“A local, I don’t care. Somebody expendable.”

“And if Bizet and Hearn are dead?”

Tempest looked forward. Traffic had stalled, but they were close to their destination. As soon as the cars and tricycles began to clear out ahead, they’d be there in fifteen minutes or so. “We’re almost out of here.” He looked back out of the window.

A gust of wind blew brown dust and grit across the small square. The girl covered her face with the shirt she’d been holding up, while the tall man just turned his back to the wind and ducked his chin. It passed in seconds.

There was complete and total chaos out there. Tempest, though, was calm. It was all part of the process. Different people wanted different things, and that put them on crash courses. He believed, though, that the people he had aligned himself with wanted it more, and that would make them come out on top in the end.

The SUV hopped the curb and cut the corner. Pineapple swore and kicked the back of the seat. The troll was curled up in half of the rear cargo area. The rest was piled high with small cases and weapons and everything else he’d thought to grab from the truck.

Cao drove, with Leung sitting in the bucket seat behind her and Kyrie next to him. Elijah sat on the other side of the front bench seat, a cloth-wrapped bundle nestled between his knees. He was very careful not to touch it. His eyes were half-closed, his head cocked to the side. As if he were listening to something faint.

“That way,” he whispered, pointing.

Cao made the turn. Thumps announced pedestrians’ displeasure with her usurpation of the sidewalk as they threw drinks, rocks, shopping bags—whatever was in reach—at the hood. The goblin jerked the wheel back as the right fender screamed against brick for half-a-second.

“Sorry,” she said. “Not used to doing this the old-fashioned way.”

“They’re close,” Elijah whispered.

“I swear to god, I’m never leaving civilization again—” Leung’s complaint stopped in mid-rant. “Wait—I’ve got something—it’s them.”

Kyrie leaned over, looking out his window. “Where?”

“Four blocks ahead. There’s a square. Four black armored SUVs.”

She leaned back. “You’re jacked in.”

“If you can call it that. It’s like logging into a fax machine.”

“A what?”

“Never mind.” He blinked and shook his head, then leaned forward with his hand on the seat near Cao’s head. “Keep going. Traffic has them stopped, but it’s flowing around the square. We can get in behind them.”

“Then what?” Cao asked.

“Elijah?”

“He’s right.” Sweat beaded on the mage’s forehead. Whatever communing he was doing with his spirits or the astral or whatever was taking a lot out of him. Kyrie couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him look this haggard. He sighed abruptly and his whole body went slack, as if he’d been holding on to something for a long time and let it go.

“No plan?” Cao maneuvered around a sidewalk cafe full of tables, but she still managed to glare into the rear-view mirror. “This is it? ‘Go get ’em’?”

“I like it,” Pineapple called from the back.

“Four trucks,” Elijah whispered. Kyrie leaned forward to listen. “The map is in the third truck. In the back.”

“How can you know that?” Cao demanded.

“It glows, on the astral,” Elijah said.

“We can’t just drive up on four trucks of goons.” Leung was right. Kyrie looked around, watching the buildings flash past. This wasn’t her kind of operation—she needed time, time to plan, time to snoop. Time to see what the opposition had.

But they were out of time.

“It’s going to be rough.” She tapped Elijah on the shoulder. He turned to look at her. “I mean it.”

“We cannot damage the map.” He looked at her, then past her toward the cargo compartment. “I mean it—we blow up the map, and we came down here for nothing.”

“It’s in the third truck.” She raised her eyebrows. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. Can you hack it?”

“Depends on how much attention you want me to pay to driving.”

“All of it. Good point. We’ll try something else.”

Kyrie twisted around in her seat. “Third truck?”

Pineapple grinned. His head was half-twisted to the side by the low ceiling. It almost—almost—gave him a comical look. “We don’t care about the other trucks?”

“You didn’t notice all the people trying to kill us since we got here?”

He let out the gravel laugh again.

Douglas concentrated. The nodes around the square were a mishmash of old and new, secure and open, and many were outright dissonant. Every time he hacked a camera it was pointing the wrong way; every ARO he co-opted did something other than it was tagged for. He was getting frustrated.

A blip.

He looked—it was a city mapping subroutine, pinging vehicle transponders as they passed sensor posts. He almost ignored it—how could this rat-hole have any working sensor posts?—but then his agent fed him the ID. He dove for his body. The shivering, icy-hot transition shook him, and he came awake.

“It’s them,” he blurted.

“What?”

“Hearn and Bizet—I got a hit on their truck. It’s coming up behind us.”

“So they got the runners.”

“It looks like it.”

The glare he got was both penetrating and foreboding. Douglas didn’t enjoy being the object of that attention. “‘Looks like’?”

“They haven’t called.”

A sigh. “Did you try calling them?”

He almost blurted, “No, I didn’t think of using the fucking comm,” but his control held. A deep breath let him speak with more unction. “Yes. They’re not answering.”

Another sigh.

“How long?”

“Any minute now.”

Tempest looked away from Douglas. His left hand was caressing his right forearm through the sleeve of his charcoal-gray jacket. Douglas knew what that meant, and he didn’t want to be in the man’s awareness when his magery finally came out.

“Get out and watch for them,” the troll said.

“Me?”

“Tell them to fall in behind us. I want this finished.”

Douglas reached for the door latch. I’m not getting enough money for this.

“There they are.”

Kyrie looked where Leung pointed. Four black armored SUVs, just like he’d said. They were midway through the queue of vehicles waiting to get out of the square. The parade or whatever was blocking them was nearly done. A few more minutes, and they’d have missed them.

She touched her weapons. The Manhunter was in its thigh holster; the Ingram at her back. She wore a wraparound sheath on her leg opposite the pistol, with four balanced knives. Pineapple touched her shoulder and handed her two small grenades.

“Thanks.”

The troll shrugged, as much as he was able. “Better to have and not need, right?” Kyrie grinned at him.

Cao slowed down, edging around the queue to creep toward the trucks. Kyrie looked at her. She didn’t know how the goblin would react to combat without being wired to the truck. Rigging a drone was like being the truck—she’d spoken to enough riggers to know that. It wasn’t like driving one.

Cao’s fingers, gray-skinned and veiny, tightened on the steering wheel. “Someone’s getting out.”

Elijah closed his eyes and touched the bundle wrapped between his knees.

“Bizet is alive,” Douglas said.

“Wonderful. Did she call in?”

“No. But another member of her group said she attempted to signal him in, ah, an arcane manner.”

Tempest nodded. He wasn’t clear exactly how the signal worked, but it had something to do with the members’ tattoos. His knowledge of qi foci was limited, but it seemed risky to use them. The mage with the runners might notice, and of course there were always the prying eyes of the dragon that might be drawn to this particular affair. It seemed like too big of a risk. Foolishness, really.

Unless …

“Douglas,” he said. “We have a problem.”

Elijah said one word, a vile word, and he said it like a man trying to vomit poison from his own mouth. The cloth-wrapped bundle between his knees began to smoke. He grunted and flung his hands toward the third truck.

Kyrie yanked the door latch and put her shoulder into it.

“Now!”

There was an armored SUV a half-kilometer away from Elijah, tearing heedlessly through the favela streets, rocking dangerously on its axles. It was a sturdy-looking thing—if it rolled over, it probably wouldn’t be hurt in the least, though it would take about a dozen strong trolls to set it right again. It was not built to look good, it was not built to move fast. It was built to be solid.

But despite that, when Elijah spoke, something tore through the vehicle’s armored floor like it wasn’t there. It screamed like Death and turned on the two men sitting in the front of the SUV. It ripped their spines out through the seat-backs. Blood and gore splashed against the inside of the window. The back of the van was filled with sudden muttering and hand waving as a half-dozen spells were cast. The voices of everyone in the back had the same three notes: surprise, desperation, and fear.

The spirit moved back. Gunshots ripped the air. The SUV was taking it on all sides.

Kyrie let herself roll away from the still-moving truck, concentrating on keeping her arms in and holding the shotgun she’d grabbed on the way out. By the time she rose to her knees she’d already fired twice, starring the armored glass of the rearmost truck. The doors were already opening.

It was time to move.

The guards were so slow.

Pineapple’s first thought when he popped the rear door was thankfulness for finally being freed from the back of the damn truck. His heels caught in the dusty street and tugged him right out of the SUV, and he rolled with the fall like a ball cast into a net. He heard Kyrie shoot twice with the big shotgun, and looked that way. She was on her knees, and then she wasn’t.

“Damn,” he whispered.

He’d seen her in action before. But never like this. He’d never seen an adept move that fast, that lethally. She was through the first guy out of the last truck before he even had the door all the way open. Her lithe body dove into the interior of the truck like a mongoose into a cobra’s nest.

Pineapple reached over his shoulder and brought his weapon around. “She’ll be fine,” he muttered.

Cao had cut away from the column of trucks as soon as Kyrie and Pineapple had exited. She was burning toward an alley, toward cover. If the other trucks got emptied and they had anything large enough, they’d take the SUV in the ass and all three people still inside would be toast.

Which meant he had a plan.

His hands clamped around the familiar grips of his Panther assault cannon and he strode to the side, trying to see past the third truck. That one was rocking on its axles like there was a hurricane inside—not a threat. He looked farther forward, where men in black body armor poured out of the second truck. One of them saw him and raised a machine pistol.

Pineapple laughed as he fired. The Panther’s awesome recoil knocked him back a step, but the concussion from the truck’s explosion was far stronger. He let it push him back a few steps, turning to give his shoulder to the blast. When he looked again, the second truck was in two pieces, both lying on their side and smoking. The black-armored men were all lying on the ground.

“Oh, thank you,” he whispered. “I’ve so been waiting to blow something up.”

“Dammit!” Tempest yelled. “What kind of magical defense is that?”

The SUV, the vaunted armored SUV with its magical guard, was crumbling under the pressure. Tish and his crew were not only still alive, but they were closing in on the prize. Douglas couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

 “We have to get there before them!” Tempest yelled.

The SUV was in front of them, and it was a sight. Whatever was inside had splashed blood across all the windows and was punching huge dents in the doors and roof. It was only a matter of time before it found a window and broke out. By then it would be too late.

Douglas got out, weapons ready, looking for a threat. It didn’t take him long to find it.

When he was near an alley about fifty meters from the SUV, an explosion crushed him against the wall and blew dust and grit into his nose and mouth. He blinked sand out of his eyes and looked around.

A woman slithered out of the window of the last truck. She was covered in blood and had knives in both hands. She wasn’t one of the Alephs. Douglas would have noticed that woman before. She stood still for half-an-instant, breathing. Then she saw him. Douglas stiffened.

Her hand flicked.

Something hit him in the shoulder. He looked down, saw the wire-wrapped hilt of some kind of knife sticking out of his shoulder. Pain hit as he saw it. He sat down, falling back off his feet against the wall. I have to get it out—

—more pain than he’d ever imagined—

—or I can leave it there.

He looked up, trying to find Tempest, hoping he would help him. Tempest, though, was still in the car. He wanted the map, but he also was too smart to expose himself to all this.

Douglas rolled back toward the woman. She looked past him, toward the man. Her eyes locked on him. Douglas watched her hand drop the knife it held on its way to her thigh. Saw her draw the big-ass pistol she carried there. Saw it rise, saw the bright light of the muzzle flash. Saw nothing else.

Pineapple stalked toward the wreck of the second truck. Bullets were cooking off in the fire. He heard them popping, then spanging in ricochets as they hit metal or sand. He worked the Panther’s action, cycling his last shell into the chamber. Smoke curled into the sky.

The lead truck was spinning its tires, all four of them, as it tried to shove the vehicles in front of it out of its way. Three tricycles and a ninety-year-old pickup were crushed into a narrow point of the street. They made a more effective barricade than anything Pineapple could have thought of, especially with the truck behind them, shoving them more tightly into the space.

The back window of the truck shattered as gunfire from the inside of the truck searched for him when he poked his head around the corner of one side of the hulk. He ducked back, swearing. Two or three rounds had hit his chest armor, and even little pistol bullets stung. If the bastards’ had aimed a little higher…

Well, that didn’t rate thinking about. They hadn’t. If they had, Pineapple told himself, I wouldn’t be having this thought.

He stepped out from behind the truck, Panther leveled.

“No!”

Elijah broke into a run as Pineapple stepped around the broken truck and fired. He’d never bothered to find out exactly what the myrmidon’s massive cannon fired, but whatever it was it was enough to blow the lead truck off its axles and flip it end for end to fall atop the vehicles it had been trying to shove aside.

Elijah stopped.

It was over.

The third truck was the only one still moving, and that only because Elijah knew his summoned spirit was trapped inside, trying to get out. He began the spell of banishment as he walked. By the time he reached the truck it was still.

“Wait for us, damn it,” Leung gasped. The hacker appeared at his side, a compact automatic pistol held down at his side. Elijah looked back. Cao stood beside their stolen SUV, arms crossed, watching.

“Us?”

“Wait for me, then.” The hacker looked around, at the two burning trucks. He pointed at the fourth truck. “What about that one?”

Elijah gestured. “Look closer.”

Leung squinted. Then he retched. “Ugh.”

Blood ran like water from the floorboards of the open door.

Pineapple came walking back, picking at several small, smoking dents in his body armor. He smiled broadly at Elijah, then spread his hands.

“Well?”

“Very flashy,” the mage said. “If you’ve damaged the map…”

Pineapple crossed his arms. “Hey. It was your beastie in that truck, pal.”

Kyrie came around from behind the third truck. She was half-staggering. She looked exhausted, but Elijah recognized the after-effects of her adept’s abilities. She’d be all right in a bit. Her mind was still acclimating to normal time and normal senses.

She gestured behind her. “One more back there. Might have been someone important.”

“Might have?”

“Didn’t stop to ask.”

Elijah licked his lips. “Quite.” He turned. “Pineapple? Would you do the honors?” He gestured toward the third truck.

The troll ambled over and reached for the rear passenger door. He stopped. “You’re sure it’s gone?”

“Yes.”

“Because if I get bit—”

“We don’t have time for this.”

Pineapple shrugged and wrenched the door open. He jerked back at the smell that rolled out, but quickly ducked his head and shoulders inside. A moment later he came back out with an armored briefcase. “This it?”

“Set it down.”

After the troll had complied Elijah knelt in front of it and held his hands over it. Eyes closed, he murmured. A second later his eyes jolted open. He was shocked for an instant, that he couldn’t see any of the things he’d felt.

“This is it,” he said, reaching gingerly for the handle. “We’ve got it.”

Sirens cut the air behind them. Two engines revved. One was Cao; the other was a vehicle that had been on the chase, coming to life. Kyrie drew her guns, but the car was already moving away.

“It’s all right,” Elijah said. “We have what we came for.”

He turned toward their van, where Cao was waving from the driver’s window.

Kyrie leaned down and snatched the briefcase up. “Let’s go.”

Elijah half-reached for it, but the adept was already walking toward the waiting truck. He rose to follow. Leung waited for him, then fell into step beside him.

“That’s it?” the hacker asked.

“This is it.”

“What is it?”

Elijah looked around at the wreckage of the square. Faces looked down at him from every window, from around every corner. The people had mostly scurried out of the way when the gunfire began. Mostly.

The sirens were getting closer.

“Let’s get out of here,” Elijah said. “Then, hopefully, we’ll find out.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When Cao was around, passers-by somehow managed to be both oblivious to her presence and horrified by it at the same time. It was quite a trick. They wouldn’t make eye contact; they’d pass her while holding a fixed stare at a point usually about a half-meter above her head, and often they would not change their course even if they were bearing right down on her, because moving out of the way meant acknowledging she was there.

She had gone through a period, maybe a year or so after she had turned, where she was determined to make people acknowledge her presence. If they wouldn’t move out of her way, she’d walk right into them.

That’s when she discovered that their aloofness was a thin veil over their horror. When she made contact with them, they would jump back, they would scowl, and often they would swat, swinging a wild blow in the direction of her head. Then they would say something she didn’t want to hear.

An old woman with two thin, sagging wattles shook her finger at her. “The virus should have killed you, instead of leaving you like that.” A tanned young man who looked like a bronze statue come to life sneered and said, “Nah, nah, nah, you ain’t getting no pieces of any of my meat.” And a young girl, a girl Cao’s age, with whom she had once made the trek out of the slums, across the traffic-filled streets of the rich and to the beach with the never-ending sand and the cool water, this girl had screamed and then run off, saying, “How dare you. How dare you!” over and over.

That was years ago. The way the favela worked, odds were at least one of the three, if not all three, were dead. But that didn’t matter. There were millions of people still alive here, people everywhere, but to Cao it was just the same three people, repeated over and over.

If she’d had a big truck back then, maybe she would’ve run a few of them over, just for fun. Maybe she could track them down and do it now. But until Cao found a safer place, the truck was the group’s base, and now that the map was in Elijah’s hands, he was pretty adamant about not running all over town if he could avoid it.

“Carrying this map all over town would be as bad as driving around with a big flag, saying ‘My parents have millions! Kidnap me!’” he had said. “If you try something like that in a place like this, it won’t be too long before someone took you up on it, no matter how tough you looked. Well, this thing lights up the astral. Anyone who has ever even tried to cast a spell would see it, and they’d know what it’s worth. Eventually, someone would go for it.”

“It’s the favela,” Cao had pointed out. “Not even one person out of every twenty thousand is Awakened.”

“That’s still about 100 poor, desperate wizards too many,” Elijah had said. So he and his map stayed in the truck, with Kyrie and a very reluctant Pineapple there to keep him company. Leung and Cao each got a jeepney so they could find a place where Elijah could do what he wanted to do. He hadn’t even looked at the item yet. He was going to spend as much energy as possible masking the damn thing and watching out for anyone who might want to take it from him until he thought it was safe to drop its disguise. That was smart—Cao didn’t know Elijah well, but she knew him well enough to know that once that map was open in front of him, everything else around him would disappear. They might need to be ready to give him mouth-to-mouth, just in case he forgot to breathe while he was looking at it.

So, she was driving around streets that turned, twisted, and ended where and when they felt like it, and she was supposed to be able to find a good place for Elijah to do his thing because she was from here. Except that the favela reinvented itself each week, each day, so that if you’re gone for years, the maps you carry in your head about narrow side streets and shortened and hidden alleys are completely obsolete. Cao was now as bad as a tourist on these streets—worse, in fact, because a tourist was not continuously distracted by things that were not where they were supposed to be.

She had one thing, though, that a tourist did not have. Something that did not change as frequently as the buildings did. She had names.

She knew better than to just grab someone off the street and ask where she could find the guy who called himself Kobold. That approach would only get her a knife in the belly, either from one of Kobold’s friends who didn’t like people being so public about seeking him out, or from one of his enemies who just plain didn’t like hearing his name. She couldn’t reach out over the Matrix, either—Kobold didn’t carry a commlink. With Matrix access in the favela being what it was, Cao couldn’t say she blamed him.

Despite his general isolationist stance, Kobold knew there would be times when people would want to contact him. So he left a way open for that to happen. You just had to know where the entry point was.

Cao must have driven back and forth over the same patch of dusty road five times before she figured out where she needed to go. The last time she’d been here, it had been a corner store, painted bright orange, with a wordless sign in front showing a picture of a macaw in flight. Now, the sign was gone, the paint was mostly chipped away, and a building had popped up immediately adjacent to the store. Eventually Cao recognized the store by its door, wrought iron bars with the spaces in between filled with filagree. How the owners had kept the door from being stolen, broken down, and turned into several dozen shivs spread across the favela was a minor miracle.

Cao exited the jeepney and engaged the best security system the piece-of-shit vehicle possessed—she licked the door handles. No one who saw her did that would touch it now, and they’d tell anyone who got near it what she had done. There was pretty much no chance in hell they’d catch the virus from touching the metal, but one thing she’d learned was how to use people’s ignorance against them.

The exterior of the former corner store had changed, but the interior, sadly, had not. The shopkeeper sat on a stool in the corner, right next to a rusted shotgun whose barrel would probably shatter when it was fired. It wasn’t much of a deterrent, but then there wasn’t much inside to steal. There were two wire rack shelving units in the store, and between them they held two cans of Faygo, a dented can of lima beans, and a package of Rinky Dinks that looked to be testing theories about the snack cake’s immortal shelf life.

The shopkeeper didn’t look at Cao when she entered. He didn’t look at anything. His eyes were closed, and his chest moved slowly and ponderously up and down.

Cao sighed. This didn’t exactly seem like the kind of place where one would stand on protocol, but the simple fact was that if she didn’t, she wouldn’t get anywhere. There was a proper way to do things, an etiquette to be respected.

Cao grabbed the top of one of the shelves and yanked. A wire rack, along with the two cans of Faygo and a now-even-more-dented can of beans, clattered to the floor.

The shopkeeper didn’t flinch, but his eyes opened slightly. Cao couldn’t tell if those slits were trained on her.

“You’re paying for that.” His voice came out like a bubbling tar pit.

“Of course. Just give me your account info.”

The shopkeeper’s chest heaved twice in something that might have been sneezes, or might have been laughs. “No fancy shit. Cash.”

“Cash? I don’t have cash. What century do you think this is?”

The shopkeeper reached for his gun, moving so slowly and fumbling so much that Cao could have left the store, run around the block a few times, then come back in just as the keeper was getting it pointed at her chest. She stayed patient, held her ground, and waited. Finally, the gun was aimed in her general direction.

“You’re paying,” the shopkeeper said.

Cao nodded. “Of course. But since I don’t have cash, we’ll have to make an arrangement.”

The shopkeeper grunted.

“So, you don’t have a bank account. Do you know someone who does? Send me to them and I’ll pay him double.”

The shopkeeper’s eyes somehow got narrower. “Double.”

“Yeah. Twice what it’s worth.” Cao looked at the rubble on the ground. “Half a nuyen.”

The shopkeeper slowly, slowly pulled the hammer back on his shotgun. “Funny,” he said. “Funny dog.”

Cao went right to the heart of the matter. “I estimate your goods there are worth twenty-five nuyen. Send me to someone with a bank account, he’ll get fifty.”

The keeper was silent for a moment. Then spoke. “If I send you out the door, I’ll never see you or your money again.”

“Then come with me. Or send someone with me.”

There was a heavy thud on the ceiling above Cao, then the sound of footsteps.

The keeper grinned. “Okay. Someone is coming.”

That “someone” turned out to be a tired-looking man with a sunken chest visible under a loose grey tank top. He ran thin fingers through his short hair, switching it from one pattern of disarray to another.

“Is this her?” he said in Portuguese.

The shopkeeper responded in English. “Yes. She will be paying sixty nuyen.”

Cao knew better than to argue about the price. She only smiled and nodded.

The tired man nodded too. “Okay.” Then he looked at the keeper. “Am I allowed to kill her if I need to?”

“Yes.” The keeper then grinned, exposing mostly discolored gums. “But I wouldn’t recommend touching her.”

In the end, the process wasn’t too bad. Cao made her payment, got escorted to another place, was thoroughly searched (though not as thoroughly as someone without the virus would have been), then led into one of the few buildings in the favela with a basement. The walls were wood-paneled, the light was dim, and the air was cool—or cooler than the air outside, at any rate. And there, standing in the room with her, was Kobold, along with a few people tasked with the job of keeping him alive.

Kobold wasn’t meta. He didn’t have the virus. He was human, plain and simple. He didn’t look particularly monstrous, either—no implanted horns, no artificial fangs, nothing like that. Not on his face, at least. He had cold, metal eyes that he usually covered with sunglasses, a square face, and tattoos that memorialized each person he’d had to kill in the course of his work. By this point, his body didn’t seem like it had much room left, which gave Cao an odd kind of hope. So she decided to mention it, by way of greeting.

“Looks like you’re running out of space for your tributes.”

Kobold smacked his ass, hidden at the moment by olive drab pants. “There’s still some left. Special real estate I’ve been saving for some truly special memorials.”

“Good to know.”

“So.” Kobold stood a little straighter. “What can you do for me?”

“Don’t you want to know what I want from you first?”

“No. Everybody wants something from me. They are all alike. The only thing that makes them different is what they can do for me. Before we talk about anything else, I need to know that.”

“I can give you a glimpse at something so rare that only a few people have seen it. And most of them would kill for it.”

Kobold shrugged. “And I can give you a sharp stick in the eye. Doesn’t mean you’d like it, though. Or find it useful. No. What else?”

“I can give you money.”

Kobold’s rigid pose relaxed again. He took a few steps here, then there, then started pacing the basement in a loping, wandering fashion. Occasionally he raised and arm and brushed his fingertips against the wood walls.

“I have money. But I can always have more. To make it interesting, though, you should give me enough that I can do something that currently I cannot do. And with my money, right now, there are few things I cannot do.”

“Is there something you would like to do?”

Kobold stopped walking and looked at the room’s one window, high up on the wall opposite him. It had red curtains that were parted enough to provide a view of the dirty street outside.

“I would like an island. A place where I could get away from it all, be on my own, be at peace.”

“Yeah, that sounds nice. Look, whatever I might offer you, it’s not going to be island money.”

Kobold still faced the window, though his eyes were unfocused. “That is a shame.”

“But if it’s peace you want, well, maybe we can talk about that.”

Kobold’s eyes now were focused—focused right on Cao.

“You think you can offer me peace?”

It was a wild, spur-of-the-moment idea, but it was all she had. “Maybe a little bit. Yeah, I think so.”

“Then you may talk some more.”

It took about half an hour, and Cao grew more confident with each passing minute. The hook had gone in, firm and deep. Kobold had resisted being landed, like any good fish would, but there was no way he was going to dislodge the hook. He had been caught.

But then again, so had been Cao. She realized this when she told Kyrie about the bargain she had struck, and even though she didn’t have a visual on the elf, the sound of the woman breathing as Cao related the bargain she had struck told her all she needed to know about the incredulity and anger building at the other end of the call.

Had there been any doubt, Kyrie’s first words would have removed them.

“You said we would do what?”

“Oh, relax. It’s not as bad as all that.”

“Right. We’ll see if you still say that when it’s done.” Kyrie broke the connection.

Cao thought Kyrie was being overly dramatic. It might be nice, bringing peace to someone for a change. Sure, that “someone” was a gang leader and drug lord who once killed a twelve-year-old boy because the boy had been distracted by a street futbol game and had been slow in delivering a packet of novacoke to its intended destination, but if you only worked for virtuous people, then you’d never work at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The next day, the shadow of a dragon appeared over the favela.

This was the cause of much discussion and dispute in the slums. As soon as people started talking about seeing the shadow of a dragon, contrary voices emerged. It was not a dragon, these voices said. Dragons just do not go flying openly here and there. Maybe the witnesses were imagining things. Or maybe—likely—they were mistaken. A bird, if it was flying high enough, would cast a long shadow, and though Metropôle was a vast sprawl, the nation’s ecological efforts meant that there were now significant numbers of animals and critters mixed in with the metahumanity. Some of the birds that lived in the sprawl had fantastic plumage, including glorious tailfeathers that could cast long shadows behind the bird’s body. Something, the skeptics suggested, like a dragon’s tail.

Most of the witnesses would have none of this explanation. There was an old woman named Isobel who sat on her porch every day (what she called her “porch” was, in truth, two square meters of packed dirt in front of the door of a shack that leaned precariously to the left), and she knew what she had seen. She put her teeth in when she told people about it, because she knew that made her easier to understand.

“Who will tell me I didn’t see what I saw?” she asked to anyone in earshot. “Do you think, after sitting here day after day, that I do not know what the shadow of a bird looks like? I know birds! And let me ask you this: When birds fly far overhead, do they come with a sudden hard gust of wind? Is there a roaring in the air as they pass by? Of course not! When I tell you that I saw the shadow of a dragon, it is because what I saw was the shadow of a dragon!”

Talk of this sort then led to conversation as to which dragon it might have been. The name that came up most frequently was Hualpa, of course, but each mention of this theory was greeted with heavy skepticism.

“It was not Hualpa,” Isobel said. “Hualpa is brilliant and cunning and knowledgeable, in the way of all dragons, but he cares little for us, in the way of all rulers. I doubt he could find his way to the favela, vast as it is, without a map. And the favela has no maps.”

There were occasional muted suggestions that perhaps it might have been Sirrurg, but there were few who wanted to mention the Destroyer’s name, and fewer still who wanted to entertain the thought that he might be among them, so that theory gained little traction.

The speculation was not helped by the fact that, while many people had seen the shadow, no one seemed to have gotten a good look at the dragon itself. They could say nothing about its color, its facial features, or any other identifying characteristics. In fact, there was so little direct visual contact with the dragon that some began to speculate that maybe that shadow was all there had been—no substance, only shade. But then they found the claw mark.

It was long, deep, and narrow, and it passed directly over the door of one of the most sturdily built structures in the favela. That was a good thing—had any other building in the area been hit by the swipe of a passing dragon, it likely would have collapsed in a heap, and there would still be no physical evidence of the dragon’s passing. Now they had this furrow, and Isobel proclaimed it was far more than evidence.

“It’s a warning, that’s what that is. The dragon has marked the building, and whoever is inside should be scared. Very scared. Because the mark means the dragon knows who they are, and he has come looking for them. And it’s never good to draw the attention of a dragon. I don’t know what this dragon intends, but I’ll tell you this—he don’t intend to drop off his hoard there!” After she said this, she cackled loud and long.

Isobel was not alone in this belief. True, there were some who claimed there was no way of knowing that the furrow had been caused by a dragon’s claw, but the shadow had been seen passing directly over that building, so it seemed like both a reasonable assumption and a more interesting story than any of the alternatives floating around.

So belief in the dragon’s mark became accepted fact, and that soon had a number of effects. Many people knew the building was one of the headquarters of a drug lord named Kobold. Some of the people who knew this were Kobold’s rivals, and they snickered to themselves about their rival’s looming fate. Kobold had become too big, too grandiose, and the string of addicts he left in his wake had finally got the attention of those at the top. Since these competitors had no desire to step on the toes of a dragon, they withdrew any plans they might have had to hit Kobold’s operations. The dragon had claimed him, so the dragon could have him.

The men and women of Metropôle security felt much the same way. It was never hard for them to come up with an excuse to stay out of the favela, and this seemed like a particularly good one. Not only was it a good idea to stay out of a dragon’s way, but if the dragon in question was Hualpa, then his knowledge of Kobold could very well have come from DISA, and no one wanted to go anywhere near a DISA operation, if only because their operatives were sometimes terrible tight-asses when it came to cherished traditions like police bribery. It was best to stay far, far away from the whole thing.

Even the locals who knew of Kobold and his riches, and who were thus always petitioning him for some favor or another, stayed away. The claw mark was something everyone, literate and illiterate alike, could read, and though its precise meaning was debated, no one took it as an invitation to come closer.

Fortunately for Kobold, one thing did not change. None of his sales actually took place at this building, so no customers were scared off. Most of them, in fact, didn’t know that Kobold was their ultimate supplier, and if they had, it wouldn’t matter. Their need for what he sold was too great to allow something like the slight chance of being devoured by a dragon to change their habits.

All this meant that when the small, dog-like woman came to call on Kobold again, he was in a most receptive mood.

Kobold had been much easier to find this time, mainly because Elijah now had a spirit watching him. Finding him, though, was only the first trick. The second trick was getting him to allow admittance to someone he didn’t expect. Cao wasn’t about to just walk unannounced into the club where he was holed up, since that would be a very good way to get shot. She’d have to start with the underlings and hope for the best.

She knocked on the club’s exterior door. The furrow above the door gleamed, as if it had been freshly polished. An ork with one broken, jagged tusk opened the door, glaring over Cao’s head. Once he had adjusted to her height and had seen who she was, his expression brightened.

“You’re back,” he said. “The boss is happy with you. Good dog.”

Ah, the comforts of home, Cao thought. Where compliments always come with a slap.

The ork turned and walked into the building, and Cao assumed she should follow. So she did.

Soon she was back in the basement, with a surprisingly serious-looking Kobold, who spoke without a word of greeting or small talk. He was on his feet, pacing, a sweaty glass full of ice and rum in his right hand.

“There will come a time when I will miss it.”

Cao didn’t reply, mainly because she had no idea what he was talking about. She hadn’t been invited to sit down, but she took a place at an empty table anyway.

“Perhaps I am nothing more than an addict,” Kobold continued. “Maybe I was an addict when I started in the business. Maybe it was the business that made me an addict. Who knows? But I will go back into it, because the chaos, the rush of it all. I’ll miss it if I don’t.”

He waved his glass toward the exterior door.

“It wouldn’t last forever, anyway. Your little trick. If threats aren’t acted on promptly, they lose their power. People forget.” He sipped at his rum. “I learned that early.”

Then he smiled, a big, toothy grin, and some of the bright tattoos on his chest shook in an unnervingly jolly fashion. “But it worked for now. God above and devil below, it worked for now. I have to thank you.”

“You’re welcome. But I sincerely hope that you’re prepared to give me more than just words.”

Kobold’s non-drinking hand fluttered in the air. “Of course, of course. We will talk. But one question first.” He placed his drink down near Cao, then leaned forward, both palms resting on the dark plastic tabletop. “The old woman. Isobel. She was tremendous for you. She will be taken care of, yes?”

“Already happened,” Cao said. “She has a credstick with more money than she’s made in her entire life.”

Kobold smiled. “What, all of fifty nuyen?” He laughed, then his face became serious. “She is old, and has lived all of her life in the favela. I hope she will buy herself a place to live out her remaining years.” He tilted his head. “Or perhaps I should talk to her. I could introduce her to pleasures in her late years that she never felt in her whole life.”

Cao managed to keep her hand from reaching for her gun. She might be able to get a shot off at Kobold before anyone reacted, but she would surely die in the aftermath, and she was not willing to give the world the gift of one less cockroach if the price of that was one less Cao.

She managed not to try to kill him, but she couldn’t bring herself to smile when she spoke. “I believe we were going to talk about how you will express your gratitude.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It was like Christmas, except that instead of walking downstairs to open presents, you had to drive by a bunch of dilapidated buildings full of people who wouldn’t mind killing you. But Elijah had sweaty palms and a twitching urgency in his stomach that kept him from being able to focus on anything but their destination. He restrained himself from asking “Are we almost there?” at least half a dozen times.

They actually appeared to be leaving the favela. Elijah had spent so much time there recently that he had forgotten there were other parts of the sprawl. But he was passing buildings that had actual foundations, and some of them had concrete or even brick walls. There were even people walking about who did not appear to be armed.

He tried to distract himself with thoughts of the spirits he would summon once they arrived, and of the meticulously worded instructions he would give them. But he was not in the mood for meticulousness, which was odd for him. He was in the mood for rushing, for chaos, and for the surging thrill of discovery. He was so excited by all this that he was not at all worried about the enthusiasm, or lack thereof, of the rest of his group for the day’s activities.

Cao finally stopped in front of a warehouse. The crew got out and started doing the jobs they were supposed to do. They divided into two groups, Pineapple leading one, Kyrie leading the other, both of them looking carefully at the building and noting all the possible entry points, both intentional (doors) and unintentional (windows, gaps in masonry, etc.). Leung was with Pineapple, Cao was with Kyrie, and they scanned the area for any interesting nodes that they maybe should pay attention to. That left Elijah, walking with Kyrie, to scan the astral for anything notable. This job he could concentrate on, since he knew that without good security, he wouldn’t have the time and privacy he needed to open his present.

When they met back, they quickly compared notes.

“No wall holes,” Pineapple said. “A few small windows, but only someone rat-sized, like Cao, could get through them.”

Then Leung. “Matrix doesn’t suck here like it does in the favela, but not much is happening here either. We’ll put up a shield, I’ll erect a firewall, we’ll be free to talk with each other all we need.”

That meant Elijah likely wouldn’t have access to Matrix resources for any research he might want to perform, but it was no big loss. Most of the Matrix was noise anyway, and those sources he trusted were regularly downloaded and copied onto his personal storage. When you were in the wild as much as he was, it was foolish to depend on reliable Matrix connections in order to do your work.

Elijah’s report came last. “There are four people I can detect inside. From what I’m seeing, they’re Kobold’s people. I’m confident that we can at least trust them not to turn on us while we’re in there.”

There were a few brief nods, then the team went inside.

The saw a guard immediately in the short hall on the other side of the door, a grunt who wore a mirrored visor, even though he was indoors. He didn’t acknowledge them, but he didn’t stop them, so they walked by.

They went through another set of doors into a vast room that was two stories high and about a hundred meters long on all sides. The floor was concrete that had been swept clean of any traces of what had been stored here, and light poured in through ceiling skylights. There was a stack of crates in one corner, and it was difficult to get a good look at them because they exerted a powerful compulsion telling any passers-by to look away. Elijah assensed them enough to see the aura of the spell sitting on top of the crates, and once he saw that aura he left the stack alone. He couldn’t exactly say that it was part of the magician’s creed to respect one another’s spells and leave them alone when possible, but he thought that’s the way things should work, so he often behaved as if such a creed did, in fact, exist.

He looked at Kyrie and Pineapple. “Did either of you note the skylights?”

“Couldn’t see ’em from the ground, could we?” Pineapple said. “But we know they’re there now, so we’ll keep an eye on ’em.”

In the middle of the room was a small structure that looked like a concrete bunker with a window. The group walked to it. Kyrie and Pineapple peeled off to take up positions on either side of the building, and the others walked inside.

There was a table, some metal folding chairs, and dust bunnies in the corners. It was homely and bare bones, but it was also, for Elijah’s purposes, perfect. It was isolated, it was securable, and there were no distractions. He could get to work, so he did.

Elijah had talked to plenty of people in his career that envied the globetrotting exploration part of his job, but said the research would drive them crazy. He couldn’t understand that at all. Research was where he made his livelihood into an art, where he took an object that was just sitting there, was just being a thing, and made it something alive, something worth having. Something that others would covet and, not at all incidentally, pay lots of money to get.

Research, when he did it, was not just a matter of looking facts up in an encyclopedia. It was digging through the secrets buried in manuscripts written by madmen, pulling a hint here and a clue there into something that resembled a fact, it was staring at an aura and analyzing it down to the minutest flickers of color around the edges, it was listening to the whispers of spirits in his ear as they returned from some errand or another. It was all of these at once, and most of all, it was the moments when it all came together, and a spirit’s words echoed the fact he had just discovered, and the item’s aura put a small twist on that information. Those moments when Elijah, standing alone with his object, had learned some truth, or created that truth out of whole cloth, a truth that maybe a handful of people living knew, or maybe no one knew it, maybe Elijah was resurrecting a truth that had once been known, but now was forgotten, and he was alone with himself, his object, and that wonderful, fledgling truth.

In actual fact, he was not alone, as the others were nearby, but their physical presence didn’t matter. He didn’t notice them. They could have indulged in an orgy so grandiose as to put a Roman emperor to shame while he was working, and he would not have noticed. And would not have cared.

When it was over (for the moment, at least—the work of discovery was endless, and never really over), he sat back with an exhausted smile on his face. Leung sat near him, gesturing silently at AR windows only he could see, probably hacking into any devices he could get a signal from. An unfiltered cigarette in his mouth had burned down so far it looked like his lips were in danger of catching fire. Cao was stretched across two chairs, pretending to be asleep. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was even, but one look at her aura told him that she was mentally quite awake. He wasn’t sure if the act was intended to make the other members of the team leave her alone, or if she genuinely was trying to force herself to sleep.

He didn’t see Kyrie or Pineapple around; he figured they were still outside keeping watch. They would likely want to hear what he had to say. He only had to poke his head out of the door and give a quick wave, and they were in. Cao sat up as soon as the big troll tromped by her, and soon all five runners were seated around the table, expectant and ready to listen.

Elijah launched into his findings.

“It’s a map.”

Pineapple slapped the table and made his eyes bug out. “Holy shit! Get the hell out of here! What a discovery!”

Elijah ignored him. “It’s trying to be something called the Piri Reis Map, but it’s not. It’s not magic enough, and it’s not complete enough. But it still has some pretty good enchanting in it. It’s like someone wanted to make a copy of the map to take around with them without putting the original at risk.”

Kyrie sighed. “Okay, I know this is the kind of question I should never ask you, but it seems important. So: what’s the Piri Reis Map?”

“Good question!” Elijah’s eyes lit up in a way that drew the interest of the others—except Kyrie. She recognized the light in his eyes, and she knew it was trouble.

“Piri Reis lived in Gallipoli in the sixteenth century. He was a sailor, and a good one—moved his way right up in the Turkish navy. Like most sailors back then, he had a particular obsession for maps, for charting places the Europeans had only just found out about. There were a lot of maps flying around back them, and most of them showed only part of the world—a coastline here, part of a continent there—and they were, on the whole, wildly inaccurate.

“They also weren’t consistent. When they were wrong, it wasn’t like they were all wrong in the same ways. They differed greatly, and there were many long arguments about which maps were worthwhile and which were not. But Reis had that certain arrogance that comes from spending many years watching people skitter to obey when you give voice to whatever idle idea pops into your head. He thought he could resolve all the controversies, and he could do it without having to engage in tedious debate. He would make a map, a world map, and it would be right, because he would make it be right. Some of it would be based on his own travels, but not most of it—he simply hadn’t traveled and mapped enough. So he’d take sources—the best sources, as he judged them—and he’d pull info from them to make his map.

“It took some time, but he did it. By 1515, he had a map. And most of the people who took a look at it figured either he was a genius or insane.”

“Why?” Cao said.

“Because he’d gone beyond anything most of them had seen. While most of Europe was still adjusting to the islands Columbus had discovered, which they figured were not that far from India, Reis went beyond those and showed a whole new continent, a vast coastline stretching nearly the length of the globe. The age of exploration was just revving up, but there, before DeSoto, before Pizarro, Piri Reis had just plopped the American coastline down on his map.

“But he did more than that. He also dropped a continent down on the bottom of the map, a continent covering the South Pole. And he did it three centuries before Antarctica was officially discovered.”

Pineapple sighed. “That’s great for people like you. Can you give me a reason why people like me should care?”

“Yes,” Elijah said. “Ice.”

“Now you’re just being enigmatic on purpose.”

“No. Look at this. This down here. That’s the Antarctic coastline.”

“Neat.”

Elijah shook his head. “No, you’re not seeing it. That’s the coastline.”

Nothing about Pineapple’s expression—or the expression of anyone else in the group—indicated dawning comprehension.

“That coastline is land. Land. Not ice.”

It was starting to register. Kyrie was leaning farther forward, staring more intently at the map.

“When this map was made, Antarctica was buried in ice, just like it is now. Just as it had been for thousands of years. There was no way Reis could have known the shape of the coastline, even if he somehow knew about Antarctica. And they had no science, no technology that would have let them look under the ice. So how did they map it?”

“There’s some math he could have used,” Leung said.

“No, there wasn’t. There wouldn’t be for a few centuries.”

Without thinking about it, Elijah had started bouncing his leg. Sometimes the bounce was so high that he hit the underside of the table in front of him. He didn’t care, and neither did anyone else around him.

“Where did Reis say he was getting his info from?”

“Older maps, was all he said. Including, maybe, some maps that had been in the Library of Alexandria before it burned. But if he’s right, if he’s telling the truth, then these older maps were made by people who not only knew that the world was round, but who also somehow knew how big the globe was. Almost exactly.”

Leung shrugged. “Fine. Maybe that makes for fun mental puzzle, but I’m not seeing—”

“The map shows a bit more than the coastline in places,” Elijah interrupted. “Look here. That’s a mountain range.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Now look closer. At the edge of the range. This mountain at the edge of them all. Look at it carefully.”

Kyrie saw it first. “That’s not a mountain.”

“No it’s not.”

“The sides are vertical and it’s got a flat top. It’s too regular.” Kyrie looked up. “It’s man-made.”

“Right. I’d say it’s some kind of tower.”

Now he had their attention. “A tower?” Cao said. “On Antarctica?”

“Right there. And look where it is. Not all that far from the southern tip of South America, is it?”

Kyrie stepped back. “Oh no. No no no.”

Elijah quickly waved his hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not saying we should go there. But we should at least put two and two together. We have a map showing something impossible on the world’s southern continent, and we have a group of people who had been in possession of the map heading far south.”

“This isn’t so much about the map, then,” Kyrie said. “It’s about what’s down there.”

“That would be my guess. And here’s my next guess. We recovered this well over halfway between home to Antarctica. Once we report in, Mr. Johnson is going to see if we have any interest in extending our trip.”

“Aw, hell, no,” Pineapple said. “I packed for Amazonia. I brought a thong, not no damn parka.”

Elijah spoke quickly so he would not have time to draw a mental image of the troll in a thong. “All I’m saying is that there is a good chance we’ll be asked to go farther, so it would be a good idea to know what we think about that before they ask.”

“You don’t know they’ll ask,” Kyrie said. “You didn’t know about the tower being there until just now, so maybe they don’t know about it either. They may just want us to bring it to them, so we will, then they’ll need time to look at it, and by the time they do we can be so far away that it wouldn’t make sense to call on us.”

“So, you don’t want to go?”

“I don’t have any great desire to go to the coldest place on Earth, no.”

Elijah tilted his head. He hadn’t ever known Kyrie to be scared off by the cold—or by anything else. “I could keep us pretty warm.”

“I’m sure you could.”

“And that doesn’t change your mind?”

“We don’t have any offer. Just your guess. So there’s really nothing for me to change my mind about.”

“Kyrie’s right,” Leung said. “We have no offer, and we might not get one. Who says Mr. Johnson really cares about the tower?”

“Why else would they want the map?”

Leung smiled, then spit off the final remnants of his cigarette, which disintegrated into ash in mid-air. “You think it’s a treasure map, so they must be seeking the treasure.”

“That seems like the logical thing to do.”

“The hell it does. Did your research tell you what this little piece of paper is worth?”

Elijah opened his mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again. “That wasn’t ... That wasn’t what I was looking for. That information. I suppose, if I had to make an estimate, based on what I have seen ... It would be in the six figures, at least.”

“There you go,” Leung continued. “Let’s make a deal here. You could take what’s in the briefcase, which is right in front of you and worth hundreds of thousands of nuyen, or you could take what’s behind door number one. Behind door number one could, maybe, be something more valuable than what you have. But it could also be something that kills you. Or it could be nothing. Oh, and to get it you have to travel through the most vicious wasteland on the planet, with the possible exception of some toxic spirit hangouts. So—who wants what’s behind door number one?”

Elijah immediately raised his hand. No one else did. He looked carefully at each of them, but their extremities refused to budge.

“That’s the way it is, omae. You may think that they will obviously want to go to the tower, but what we see is that not everyone thinks like you. You think the map leads to treasure, but the map could be the treasure. At least, treasure enough. No more hunting needed.”

Pineapple had been blankly staring at nothing for most of the meeting, but now his eyes finally focused and looked at Leung. “If it’s worth that much, why are we just handing it over?”

“Because we’re being paid well to do just that!” Elijah snapped.

Leung’s reply came in a milder tone. “Because people that have the resources to send us nation-hopping after a precious map are also people who have the resources to ensure they are not fucked with. And if we steal the map, they’ll put out words that will make it very difficult to fence.”

That seemed to satisfy Pineapple, and his eyes once again lost focus. Everyone else seemed pretty satisfied with where the conversation had rested. Everyone but Elijah.

“But let’s say they ask us. To go to Antarctica. Would you all be willing?”

“I’m guessing that the fact that you won’t let this go means you are,” Leung said.

“Of course I am! Are any of you looking at this? Are you seeing what it is? It’s a tower! On Antarctica! It may not be there any more, or it may be entirely buried under ice, but if it’s there—if even a trace of it is there—it’s something, it’s the kind of thing you never see in your life. I’d call it a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but most people, billions of them, go their whole lives without seeing anything like this!”

Leung looked at Kyrie. “He wasn’t anywhere near this animated back when people were shooting at us.”

She shrugged. “We all have our triggers.”

“That’s true,” the hacker replied. “I have my own. Want to know what one of them is? When someone wants to drop me into some frozen hell just to satisfy their own little exploration fetish.”

There was a pause, interrupted when Cao grinned. “So that’s you angry, huh?”

Leung’s expression didn’t change. “I’ve never felt it was necessary to be dramatic in order to be passionate.”

Those few moments of conversation gave Elijah time to collect himself. When he spoke, his voice was level. “If I go to Antarctica—if we’re asked to go—no one would be forced to come along. You should only go if you think there’s something in the trip for you. I’m telling you what I see in it for me. If we get the offer, you can make up your own minds.”

“Thanks,” Leung said, his inflection making it impossible to read if he was being sarcastic or not.

Elijah looked down at the map and regretted ever having looked up from it. He thought about making up some reason to look at it further, to pull out some nuance he may have missed, but he didn’t. There likely wasn’t much more to find right now, and even if there was, his heart was no longer in it. He started packing up the map, though he did it slowly, knowing this might be the last time he saw it. It would stay secure, rolled up in a tube and surrounded by as drab a mana barrier as Elijah could construct, until it was handed off—there was no way he would risk broadcasting that beautiful, unusual, attention-grabbing aura to anyone who might be looking.

He looked up briefly and saw that everyone was impatiently waiting for him to finish. Or maybe they were just waiting, and the impatient part was his imagination. Whatever the case, he finished quickly so they could leave their warehouse bunker.

It would have been nice to relax for a night, to celebrate their accomplishments in one of Metropôle’s nicer hotels, but nothing draws attention more than a runner on a bender. Most runners are smart enough to confine their celebrations to times when they are not carrying incredibly valuable objects.

Metropôle offered a seemingly infinite supply of flophouses, so Elijah took the group to a different one than the rat trap they’d been staying in while waiting for the Kobold gambit to play out, springing for one that charged a little extra. This particular flophouse was run by an eternally tanned old woman who had developed her small portion of magic talent enough that she could keep the place clear of bugs. The interesting thing was, she had no idea she had any magical ability at all. She just hated bugs and had made it her life’s mission to eradicate them from her house, and her small grain of magic ability had attuned itself to this aspect of her, so that wherever she went she radiated an aura of loathing for insects that sent them instinctually scurrying away. There were more expensive places than this flophouse that were not bug-free; had the woman been aware of what she was doing and how she was doing it, she likely would have tripled her rates. But her sun-addled memory kept her from grasping the true success of her anti-bug campaign, so her rates remained low, and she stayed in a state of perpetual surprise at the steady traffic coming to her door.

The lack of insects was pleasant, but it was virtually the building’s only amenity. So when Elijah and Kyrie wanted to unwind a little away from the humid, motionless air of their room, the only available option was retiring to the building’s tar-papered roof. The heat made the surface soft, so that Elijah felt like he was continually sinking, on the verge of dropping right through the roof into the room of some unsuspecting guest.

There were no ledges or chimneys or anything similar to sit on, so they stood. Elijah had a canteen, Kyrie had a flask.

They didn’t speak much for a while. Elijah strolled around the roof, looking for a view he enjoyed, but at nights the brightly painted buildings of the favelas faded into solid lumps of darkness, with scattered lights here and there that struggled to be seen, like stars in the smog. Odors occasionally drifted up from the streets that made Elijah glad that the tar smell here generally overwhelmed everything else. He picked a spot that was relatively odor free and attempted to get lost in his thoughts, but weariness kept his mind in a simmering, unfocused muddle.

He finally received something to focus on when Kyrie spoke.

“What could be there to make it worth all this? What possibly could there be?”

Caught wondering whether Kyrie was asking a specific question or indulging in deeper existential musings, Elijah was unable to craft a coherent response. She saved him by being more specific.

“This tower you think could be in Antarctica. What could it have that would make people chase all over the globe for a chance to find it?”

Elijah exhaled. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? That’s it? That’s all you got?”

Just like that, Elijah had energy, and he spoke with a vehemence that surprised even him. “What do you mean, ‘That’s it?’ That’s more than enough! That’s everything! The map tells us about a mystery buried under the ice, and then tells us how to solve it! A building standing in a place where no one, according to all we know, has ever lived! Who built it? Why? What’s inside it? Do you know how many times the world gives you the chance for pure, unadulterated discovery?”

Kyrie drained maybe a third of her flask in one swig. “I can’t put ‘discovery’ into my bank account.”

“There are things worth more than money.”

“That’s not what my landlord keeps telling me.”

Elijah’s mouth opened and closed several times as he tried to put the thoughts rushing around his head into some sort of order, but he couldn’t find the right words. He felt like a child trying to explain why he liked sugar. How do you explain that? You like sugar because sugar is good, that’s all. That’s something everyone who’s tasted sugar should understand, automatically, no explanation needed.

But maybe, he thought, that’s just what Kyrie needs. More of a taste.

“If we get a chance to go there, let me show you. I’ll show you why we’re chasing it.”

She didn’t respond for a while. Elijah hoped she was thinking it over. When she finally spoke, though, it didn’t give him much reason for optimism.

“When we meet with Mr. Johnson, control yourself. Let Leung and me do most of the talking.”

“Why shouldn’t I—”

“I’m not saying you can’t say anything. Just stay in control.”

Elijah, knowing how easy promises made over nighttime drinks faded in the light of day, just nodded.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Leung had long thought that the most important qualification for the job of being a Johnson was an absolute refusal to be out-cooled. No matter what circumstances came up, a good Johnson reacted like he had seen that sort of thing a hundred times before, and he knew exactly how to deal with it. A knife-wielding, drooling, HMHVV-infected lunatic could come crashing into the middle of a meeting, and a good Johnson would dispatch him with a quick kick in the ass while neither raising an eyebrow nor spilling a drink.

By that measure, the Johnson they were dealing with was excellent at his job. The surroundings weren’t as luxurious as their previous meeting. They were in one of those restaurants where tourists pay extra for a shiny AR interface and English-speaking staff, where they feel like they’re getting an “Authentic Amazonian Experience” without ever having to leave their comfort zone. The staff was skilled at keeping out anyone who didn’t look like they could pay their way, but higher-class grifters flocked to the place like toxic spirits to sludge. Leung had already spotted at least three pickpockets working the crowd, and he had an ARO open that was keeping track of the number of attempted hacks into his PAN since he had arrived. By the time the meeting was done, he thought that number would be at least a dozen.

He knew that whatever was happening to him would be happening to Mr. Johnson more, due to the simple fact that Mr. Johnson looked rich. He wore a dark suit with the reflective sheen of silk, a burgundy cravat, and, of all things, a big, shiny, gold wristwatch. It was a ridiculous bit of ostentation for a man who could immediately check the time on any one of the AROs likely hovering in his field of vision. But that was the point. The watch was a dare, and the fact that Mr. Johnson made that dare wherever he went would do a lot to convince people that they probably shouldn’t take him up on it.

Ever since they had arrived, Mr. Johnson had been putting on a little show, being expansively hospitable, making a point of not talking business until everyone had something to drink and had ordered their food, and acting like he was so excited by what the runners had done that he couldn’t keep himself from jumping on a plane and flying down to Metropôle to hear of their success as soon as possible.

It was all bullshit, of course. Leung knew that Johnsons weren’t his friends, and they never flew thousands of kilometers—or did anything else—just because they wanted to see you. There was another motive that inevitably would come out, and Leung had a good guess what it was.

Now, there was a chance, he admitted to himself, that Mr. Johnson just wanted to get the map in his possession as soon as possible without making the runners take the risk of getting it across international borders. Maybe he just wanted it in his hands before the runners discovered its true value. Maybe that’s all this was.

But Leung doubted it. There was a game being played here, he was pretty certain of that, but he didn’t quite understand the nature of the game, and he didn’t know how he could call Mr. Johnson on it.

In the end, though, he didn’t need to worry about it. Elijah beat him to it.

It happened late in the main course. Mr. Johnson leaned back from his lobster, slowly playing with the remaining pieces with his fork, clearly enjoying what he had left.

“So,” he said. “I understand you had some time to look at the map. What did you discover?”

Elijah snorted. Loudly. It was such an odd, uncouth sound from him that everyone fell silent and stared at him. Leung caught a flash of anger in Mr. Johnson’s eyes, but he quickly put a lid on it, and when he spoke, his voice was level.

“Something wrong, Elijah?”

Elijah harrumphed. “Nothing serious. Just got a bit of your bullshit caught in my throat.”

“Excuse me?”

“That question you asked. It was, pardon my continued coarse language, bullshit. Asking us casually what we found out about the item, as if you didn’t know what it was and needed us to fill you in. But you know what it is. Of course you know. You don’t have a team just up and run to Amazonia on a hunch that they might be after something valuable. No, you send them out because you know what they’re after, and you know how valuable it is, and you know that whatever you spend in recovering it will be worth it. So don’t play games with us. You don’t need us to tell you what we learned.”

“Then, pray tell me, why did I ask the question?”

Leung would have dearly loved to tell Elijah to not answer. Or to slap him in the face once he started talking. But sometimes the need of presenting a unified front was greater than the need of keeping your cards close to your vest, so all he did was glare at Elijah, subtly, in hopes that he would look his way and take the hint.

But Elijah’s focus stayed on Mr. Johnson.

“Two reasons, as I see it. First, so that you could play your role of someone who doesn’t really know what we’ve been after. Because let’s face it, this is a fairly specialized item, and there is a small group of people who are as interested in it as you are. If you don’t know what it is, you could be tied into a number of different groups, including a few dozen relic hunters I’ve encountered. You’d be doing this on a gamble, knowing there was something good out there but not sure what. On the other hand, if you do know—well, that narrows the field a bit, when it comes to determining who is ultimately behind this mission. Which is something most Johnsons work to conceal.”

Mr. Johnson nodded. “I can’t argue with that.” He was still smooth, still not about to let himself be out-cooled.

“More importantly, though, is your second reason,” Elijah said. “You’re fishing. You want to know what we know, and you don’t want to tell us any more than we already know. Because if we knew too much—if we knew how much this thing might actually be worth—maybe we’d forget about the now-paltry sums you’re offering us and go after something bigger.”

“Selling the map to the highest bidder?”

Elijah leaned forward. “Or going after what you want and getting it first. Because we have the map and you don’t.”

By this point in the conversation, Leung saw that everyone looked a little alarmed—except Pineapple, who only seemed to be alarmed when things were overly calm and tranquil. Leung figured he’d abdicated his role long enough, so he forced his way into the conversation.

“My associate is, of course, not suggesting that we’d go behind your back like that. We are, after all, professionals. You can trust us, just as we trust you to tell us what we need to know.”

Mr. Johnson cocked his head as he looked at Leung. “You trust me? Really?”

Leung gave his most charming grin. “Of course not. But it’s good business to act like we do.”

That seemed to work. Kyrie took a bite of beans, Mr. Johnson smiled, and some of the tension flowed away. Leung relaxed a little, too.

Which was a mistake, because Elijah leapt right into the silence.

“But we can’t just pretend everything is going normally, can we? You hired us to get the map, and we got the map. But instead of flying us back so we could give it to you, or instead of flying down here and arranging a simple meeting to pass it over, you set up a dinner and start playing games. Why?”

The good humor that Leung had worked to bring back to Mr. Johnson’s face vanished. “You seem to know so much about why I’m doing what I’m doing, perhaps you should answer your own question.”

“Okay. You know that if we looked at the map, we might be curious, especially if we saw the tower. Especially if I saw the tower. And you knew that maybe we could help you find what’s there, or maybe we’d become your competition. We’d see the tower, know it’s what you’re after, and we’d understand that if we got there first, we’d get a whole hell of a lot more than you’re offering. You set this up to know if we were friends or competition—and if we were competition, you’d take care of us.”

Leung sat up straight. With a quick thought, an ARO opened on the table in front of him. It was full of lines and squiggles, mostly green and red, but some blue. It was Leung’s custom design, a way to get an abstract visual on the nature of the various wireless signals in the area. There were lots of circles, nice orderly collection of signals, and a few more jagged shapes—commlinks with a loose wire, or jury-rigged pieces of equipment, most likely. Then there was the random noise of the universe, spikes and flashes appearing here and there, surrounding the bits of order with chaos. And then there was, and then ...

There.

Lower right section of the ARO. One second he saw a curve, then two curves, two pieces of two separate arcs, very close together. Then those curves disappeared and were replaced by random noise for a second, then he could make out two more curves, two new pieces of what he suspected were the same two arcs.

If he didn’t miss his guess, there were two people about 150 meters away who were doing a very good job of keeping their PANs running silent. Now, there were a million reasons why someone in Metropôle might want to keep themselves hidden, but finding these two, so nearby, right after Elijah delivered his theory, was unnerving.

He sent a quick message to Kyrie.

<Did he know something he wasn’t telling? There are two guys nearby who might be an ambush. Or might not, I don’t know. But did Elijah know they were there?>

Kyrie’s reply came quickly.

<He didn’t tell me shit. Not about what he might have known, not about what he was going to do.>

In the meantime, Mr. Johnson was walking a delicate balance, where he pretended that Elijah’s assumptions were wrong and hurtful while making it clear with his relaxed body language and bland tones that, in truth, he didn’t really care about much that Elijah was saying.

“I’m sorry if you believed this meeting to be something other than what it is. I’m buying you dinner to congratulate you on a job well done, and to see if there are any more work opportunities that might come from your current success. Any other assumptions you have about what’s going on are unwarranted, I’m sure.”

Elijah opened his mouth, but Leung was quicker.

“What are you offering?”

Mr. Johnson smiled. “To pick up the tab. I thought I had made that clear.”

No one else at the table so much as twitched a corner of their mouth.

Mr. Johnson continued, unfazed. “The next step is quite obvious, of course. What other reason would one have for recovering a map except to go to whatever it reveals? Now, as you of course know, Antarctic explorations cannot be undertaken lightly. This is more than a small team like yours could accomplish. But while you could not do it on your own, you could be part of the larger effort. There are roles for you to play down there, where that tower is, if you’re willing to go.”

Leung again spoke before Elijah could. “How much?”

“How much? Are you implying that your current rate is no longer satisfactory?”

Again, everyone around the table remained expressionless.

And that was the last Leung saw of Mr. Johnson’s casual, easy demeanor. The only wrinkles on his face had been smile lines near the eyes. Those were now gone. He leaned forward, putting him more directly under the lighting fixture above the table, which meant that most of the lower half of his face fell into shadow. His eyes glowed out as two yellow pinpoints.

“Fine. No more messing around. Here it is—go to Antarctica, and I’ll double your pay rate per day. Turn me down, and then make any single move that looks like you’re going to be my competition down there—and I’d probably consider any move, any move at all, that took you out of this country to be a first step in that direction—and I’ll take you out.”

“Or we could just take you out right here.” Kyrie didn’t draw a weapon when she said that, but her voice sure sounded like she had.

“You certainly could. But your gearhead knows I’ve got people watching.”

“Only two,” Leung said, hoping he had read the signals correctly. “Not enough to take us down.”

“They wouldn’t even try. They’d just make sure the right people knew that you’d killed me. Then you’d be nothing more than the walking dead.”

In a small ARO, Leung saw a flurry of messages, going back and forth between Kyrie and Elijah. They thought they were private messages, but Leung had never been fond of other people in his group keeping secrets from him, so he made it a point to monitor things like that.

He could see two things in conversation—one, that Kyrie was not happy with the way things had gone and with the situation they were now in; and two, no matter how unhappy she or anyone else was about it, the group would soon be heading south. No runners like being strong-armed, but the nuyen Mr. Johnson was offering would make that easier to swallow.

Then Elijah spoke and made it official.

“We’ll go. And we appreciate your generous offer.”

Mr. Johnson leaned back, but he still didn’t smile.

“Good. Fine. I’ll fly you down to Argentina, you can get some supplies, then take a boat most of the rest of the way. You’ll have a full itinerary tonight.” He stood. “I’ve paid for everything ordered so far. Ask for anything else, and you’re on your own.” He then stalked out.

The group knew better than to discuss anything then and there. Leung didn’t need to look at his abstract squiggles to know the two hidden blue circles were probably still there. The rest of the meal was silent, aside from Pineapple’s lip smacking.

Leung managed to wait until they were back at their bug-free flophouse before he laid into Elijah. He didn’t bother to pull Elijah aside into a private conversation, and he launched right into a rant that had been building in his head ever since they had left the restaurant.

“You see, that’s why some people shouldn’t talk at a meet. When you’re talking about what you know, Elijah, I’m sure you’re great and knowledgeable. But this is what I do. One of the things I do. Do you have any idea what you did back there?”

Elijah looked oddly focused. He wasn’t distracted, or looking off at something interesting to the side of him, as he often was—but he didn’t say anything, so Leung continued.

“I know it feels good to call someone on their bullshit, but if you get too aggressive—well, look what happened. You backed him into a corner, so he came out swinging. He had to go with a show of force. So you thought you were being clever, but in the end you left us no choice. Mr. Johnson got what he wanted, and we were stuck. We had to take his offer, we had to go to Antarctica. You left us—”

The words died in his mouth. Now he understood. Elijah still was looking right at him, eyes steady, no hint of a smile or anything else in his mouth or eyes.

Leung managed to finish his sentence. “—no choice.” He sat for a moment, then grabbed one of his AROs, crumpled it into a virtual paper ball, and threw it, because he felt like it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Getting out of a country like Amazonia is easier than getting in for the same reason that escaping from a house you’ve broken into is easier than the initial entry. As with a house, the vast majority of Amazonian security focused on keeping the wrong people out. If some of the undesirables somehow make it past your initial security, and then decide they want to leave, well, why should you stop them, seeing as how having them on the outside was what you wanted in the first place?

Still, this was a major, paranoid nation, and Elijah was trying to smuggle out something incredibly valuable. There were plenty of things that could go wrong. He busied himself listing them in his head as his group walked through the airport.

Amazonia was a wealthy enough nation that the Southern Metropôle Airport didn’t have the clucking-chickens-and-free-range-pickpockets vibe of airports in more feral cities. It was an orderly place—people stood in line when they were told to stand in line, they seldom yelled, and if they were carrying a weapon, they were subtle about it.

None of Elijah’s group had any weapons showing. Pineapple walked in front of the group, a long brown coat waving behind him, and his size and glaring eyes the only weapons he needed. People got out of his way as soon as they saw him. Some didn’t even need to look at him—they just felt something as he walked along (possibly the impact of his heavy treads on the stone-tile floor) and instinctively moved out of the way.

But then they came to a group of people that the troll couldn’t intimidate—the ones waiting in line at the security checkpoint. In the airport’s corridors, people would move out of Pineapple’s way because all they were giving up was a small amount of real estate they didn’t really care about. The line was a different matter. Everyone in line ahead of them felt they had earned the space they currently possessed, and they would fight for that space as if it were one of their children. In fact, Elijah suspected that there were a few people there who would give up a child if it meant they wouldn’t have to move farther back in line.

The identities the Johnson had given them had the team posing as tourists returning from a wedding—the kind of tourists security is all too happy to see go away, as they typically are too jovial and/or intoxicated to be endured. Right now, they all looked like people who had partied too hard and were leaving with plenty of suppressed regrets. The five of them looked in five different directions, and none of those directions intersected the eyes of another team member. None of them had said anything to each other beyond the basic talk needed to coordinate their departure.

Elijah felt some guilt over the state of affairs, as he knew much of it was his fault. Cao’s silence wasn’t new—she was shy to begin with, and she had seemed even more withdrawn ever since their brief time with Humanis people in Chicago—but Leung and Kyrie’s distance was definitely tied to his actions with Mr. Johnson. As far as Pineapple went, well, Elijah and Pineapple wouldn’t have much to talk about even in the best of circumstances.

Elijah was confident that they would all come around in time. He compared their present situation to the people who had discovered King Tut’s tomb. Mummy’s curse or not, that discovery was clearly the greatest moment in the lives of all those involved in it, something they could talk about for all their lives, something they would be remembered for. Even if they died early, they would die as legends, with a wonderful memory of a singular accomplishment that would surely make any death worthwhile. Similarly, Elijah was confident that the rest of his group would be thankful to be involved in this journey, right up to their dying breath, no matter how it was they died. They were on the verge of making history, and who didn’t want to do that?

He thought about trying to explain all this to them. Then he thought a bit more, and decided to remain silent. Even so, Kyrie’s words to him, both in Chicago and last night, kept running through his mind. He tried not thinking about them, but they kept buzzing irritably around in his head, refusing to go away. With a frown, he concentrated on getting through the line, more sure than ever that he wasn’t the kind of person the adept had been talking about.

The next moments served as a fine proof of the theory of relativity, though not in the way Einstein intended it. Everyone in the security line moved at exactly the same speed, but time nevertheless traveled at different speeds for all of them. There was a sarariman in a Vashon suit clearly on a business trip, maybe his first one (if he’d done this more often, he might have learned a frequent flier’s tricks to avoiding this line), and for him time was clearly moving slowly. He was working, his hands swiping back and forth to move AROs only he could see, his voice occasionally muttering instructions or bits of conversation into a subvocal mic. Though he was working, there was only so much he could do in his current location, and every moment he stood in this line limited his productivity, which would make the wait seem like an eternity to him.

Just behind him was a couple, a young boy and a young girl kept leaning against each other and rubbing their faces together in ways that made Elijah fear that their various studs and piercings would snag on each other and do terrible things to the flesh in which they were set. They kissed with hungry abandon, they tried to spend their time in line lost in each other, but they had to move when the line moved. Elijah saw each of them occasionally open their eyes to glance at how the line was moving ahead of them, and he saw the dismay and surprise in their expressions telling him that for them, the line was moving far too fast. The girl carried a bag, the boy didn’t, and Elijah assumed that when they reached the checkpoint, the girl would go through, and the boy would have to stand and watch her go.

There were plenty of other people in the line, but no matter what else people were going through, no matter what their situation was, no one was experiencing slower time than Elijah and his crew. Not even the woman with the two screaming children and the facial expression that clearly indicated a full-blown migraine. The runners had to spend the whole time in line being watchful without looking watchful, tensing up when security guards walked by, wondering with each crackle of the public address if the words about to emerge from the speaker would be the ones indicating that the game was up, their fake SINs had been blown, and they had to get out of there fast. Or worse, they would discover on their own that Mr. Johnson had set them up and given them worthless IDs, then dropped them in the middle of a nest of Amazonian security and left them alone and stranded to find their way out. Each step forward was a minor victory, each halting moment was excruciating. The fact that you couldn’t see this on any of the others’ faces just meant that they were pros.

The line moved forward, the guards came closer, stony faces glaring at an array of sensor results only they could see. Elijah was playing it safe and had stowed all his weapons in luggage that had already been checked, and the others claimed they had done the same. Though he wouldn’t be surprised if Pineapple had some supposedly scanner-proof item hidden on him somewhere.

He was close enough to the checkpoint that he could hear grunted instructions from a member of the security team. “Step ahead. Stop. Take two steps. Stop again. Wait. Okay, go ahead. Next. Step ahead. Stop. No, no, stop. Stay there. Please move to your left, the officer will tell you what to do. Next! Step ahead. Stop ...”

A few people needed a more detailed scan, but they, like everyone else, were soon moving toward their gate. There were no incidents, which was too bad. After one incident, guards were usually reluctant to have another, and were more likely to let something questionable pass.

It took some time, but eventually Elijah was three people away from the checkpoint, then two, then one, then there.

“Next. Step ahead. Stop. Take two steps. Stop again. Wait. Okay, go ahead next.”

And like that, he was through. Then the others. The SINs held up, and if anyone was carrying a weapon, it either didn’t show up or the guards didn’t care. Their gate was B34. Elijah started walking quickly.

It seemed like the gate was a kilometer away. Just as it finally came in sight, Elijah saw a sign announcing the Ambassador Club, and he briefly considered asking Leung to do a quick hack and get them all admitted, but that seemed like an unnecessary risk. When the door opened as he passed by, he thought about grabbing it and doing an old-fashioned sneak-in, enjoying the comfortable chairs until someone kicked him out. But then the man who had just emerged from the club spoke and put all those thoughts to flight.

“Mr. Henderson. May I invite you to have a drink with me?”

Elijah smiled, fully prepared to inhabit his cover identity.

“That’s an offer I’m always happy to hear, but I’m afraid I’ve got a plane to catch.”

The man who had emerged from the Ambassador Club, a bronzed man with a salt-and-pepper beard, returned Elijah’s smile. “Nonsense. Your flight won’t board for a good forty-five minutes. I’m certain you have time to enjoy a drink with me.”

It was an old trick—reveal that you know more about the subject than you’d be expected to in order to get them off balance. But Elijah had been in the shadows too long for it to work.

“I’d be happy to have a drink with you—except I don’t know who you are.”

The man pushed the door of the club open wider to reveal an interior that was mostly empty except for a pair of Amazonian soldiers standing spread-legged, rifles resting comfortably in their hands.

“Come inside, and I’ll happily tell you who I am.”

A message from Leung appeared as an ARO in front of Elijah.

<Stay calm. Go inside. Then SHUT UP!>

Elijah complied, since that was exactly what he’d planned to do anyway.

Leung had to say this for the Amazonian who had them in a state of semi-captivity—he had actually bought the team the drinks he had promised. In the hacker’s book, that was worth something.

They all sat in the club, comfortable in faux-leather chairs, enjoying their drinks, with a pair of uniformed soldiers serving as the only reminder that things were not normal. The drink in front of Leung, a rum and Coke, was tasty, and the condensation running down the side of the glass made him unconsciously lick his lips every time it caught his eye, but he stayed disciplined and only sipped.

He wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of why they were there, but he didn’t need to worry about it. The man who had invited them in took control of the conversation, using the same warm tones he had used when he first spoke to them.

“My friends, I want to be honest with you, because I find that when you are honest, you can have conversations that are direct and do not waste time on things of no importance. So the first thing I should tell you is that none of you is in any trouble whatsoever. No matter what you say in this meeting, at the end of it you will be free to go and board your plane, if that is what you wish.”

Leung was pretty sure the man wouldn’t buy his innocent act, but he tried it anyway, if only to be irritating. “Why wouldn’t we be free to go? And why would we choose not to? I don’t understand.”

The man shrugged off Leung’s words like a duck shrugging off water. “I only brought you in here to make you an offer. An offer similar to the one you recently received from the person who provided you with these very convincing cover identities.”

“Cover identities?”

“Mr. Leung,” the man said with a tone full of reproach. “These are just the kind of dishonesties I was talking about. The kind that waste all of our time. I have given you drinks and spoken forthrightly. Perhaps you could return my courtesy with some honesty of your own.”

Leung checked the time. The man had this much right—they really didn’t have time to waste.

“Okay. What’s the job?”

The man smiled. “It’s essentially the same one you have already accepted. The only difference is, before you report anything to your employer, you will first report to us. I should mention that when you report to us, we might have suggestions on ways to amend the information you give to your other employer.”

“You said ‘us.’ Who’s ‘us’?”

“Amazonian officials.”

Leung cocked his head. “‘Amazonian officials’? Really? That’s you being honest?”

The man sighed. “Sadly, the habits of others sometimes limit the full amount of honesty I would like to display. Let’s just say that your activities have attracted the interest of a certain high-level national official…” The man smiled. “With scales.”

Elijah moved quicker than Leung had ever seen. He jumped to his feet so fast that the heavy chair he was sitting in shot back over a meter.

“No. No way.”

His sudden movement startled the guards, who cocked and readied their weapons. This brought an immediate response from Pineapple, who drew a weapon, a matte-dull gray, plastic gun, from who knows where and leveled at the Amazonian official’s head. Kyrie hadn’t moved, but her gaze was laser-focused on the guard nearest to her, and it was obvious she was ready if the shit they were already in got any deeper. Leung tensed, ready to tip a table and duck behind it if necessary.

But the man held up his hand, and the guards lowered their weapons. “There is no need for histrionics. I told you that you could walk out of here without restriction if you rejected the offer, and I am a man of my word. I think you are being premature, however, as you have heard nothing of the terms.”

“Terms don’t matter,” Elijah said. “There are rules about this kind of thing.”

The man shrugged—it seemed to be his preferred expressive gesture. “I was given to understand that people such as you are not overly preoccupied with rules.”

“We’re overly preoccupied with breathing,” Leung said. “Getting caught up in a dragon’s affairs tends to interrupt that habit.”

“If that is your decision, then so be it. Your flight will board in about fifteen minutes. I will send you all my contact information. Use the time you have to consider what I said. Think particularly about who it is you are working for. There are conflicts coming, and many people will be forced to choose sides. They should do so wisely.”

Then, true to his word, the man let Leung and the others go free. As they walked out of the Ambassador Club, all of them received contact information they could use if they wanted to get ahold of the man they’d just met.

Most of them deleted the request immediately.

Tempest remained in the Ambassador Club for a while, because he found it comfortable, and he liked watching the planes come and go. Every departure, every arrival meant change, and with change came possibility.

The two guards near him continued to stand at attention the whole time, and he did not allow them to relax in the slightest, even though he had no reason to believe there was any kind of imminent threat. They didn’t even react when he dropped the illusion making him look human—a disguise he hated, no matter how practical it was. Only the clumsy used their power haltingly, calling on it only when they thought they needed it. The wise used their power like a cloak, or a crown, keeping it on at all times as a reminder to others and to themselves of who they are and what they can do. Two security guards was not an army by any means, but being able to employ them as personal bodyguards at his whim meant something to Tempest, and he did not intend to let himself or anyone near him, including the guards, forget what kind of discretion he had over such things.

He watched as the plane carrying the runners he had just spoken to taxied away from the gate and moved toward the runway. He watched as it rose into the sky. He refused to feel even a moment’s worth of apprehension.

It took fifteen minutes. The message had probably been sent much earlier than that, but it had traveled a winding path to make it back to the airport. It was a simple message, containing an expression of interest and a channel through which messages could be sent securely. It would not be the most rapid exchange, but it would happen.

Tempest smiled, flexed his fingers, and prepared to negotiate. This was so much easier than what he had gone through on the streets. Too bad circumstances hadn’t allowed it sooner.

PART FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

To give a bit of legitimacy to their new identities, none of the team sat near the other on the plane to Buenos Aires. Elijah’s window seat afforded him a place to stare other than the back of the headrest in front of him. His mind raced ahead by days, then fired back to retrace their steps as he attempted to pinpoint where and when they’d caught the notice of Hualpa. How long had the dragon been watching?

The man at the airport allowing them to leave Amazonia smacked of having the other shoe drop. Something wasn’t right. Dragons didn’t just let a target go, and officials weren’t in the habit of releasing a shadowrunner team once their identities were revealed. He didn’t think any of them really rated detention anywhere. But in countries like Amazonia, his opinion meant nothing.

Being under a dragon’s surveillance terrified him in ways he couldn’t relate to anyone on his team. Not even Kyrie. Her past never afforded her the unfortunate luxury of being involved in a dragon’s affairs, and he hoped she never would be. As for himself, he planned on keeping as much distance as he could from the beast.

Once on the ground in Argentina, a man in an expensive suit met Elijah at the gate. The suited man handed the mage a sealed, padded envelope with instructions not to open it until they reached their final destination of Antarctica.

Kyrie found him first and stretched as she approached. “That was a nice nap. Though I think we could have rated First Class.” She arched a brow at him. “You weren’t in First Class, were you?”

“No.”

“You’re paler than usual.”

“I have a lot on my mind.”

She pursed her lips as Pineapple lumbered up, followed by Cao. “That stuff back at the airport really unnerved you, huh?”

Elijah made a gesture that was supposed to be noncommittal, but mainly felt awkward. He looked to the astral so he didn’t have to look at her. A quick scan didn’t reveal Leung. “Where’s—”

Leung’s texted message broadcasted out on everyone’s AR. <Hey, we’ve got another plane to catch. Next stop is Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego.>

Elijah checked his AR and found a virtual ticket waiting. A nod from the others confirmed tickets with new identities. <Where are you?>

<At the gate. Screw coach, I’m getting an upgrade.>

Elijah passed Leung when he boarded the second plane. The decker seemed happily ensconced in first class with a flute of champagne in his hand. He winked as Elijah passed by. Elijah made his way back to his seat, and soon Kyrie was there next to him. They kept their conversation private.

<So, what’s the big deal? The dragon went fishing, and no one took him up on the offer.>

Elijah looked out the window. <You really think that’s going to deter him? He’s not dropping this. There’s no rule that says he won’t contact someone else. Another team, perhaps.>

Kyrie shrugged. <Maybe. But we’ll get there first. So lighten up. You still get to look for your treasure.>

He smiled. A little. But it was the smile of someone with a shadow of doubt clouding the edges.

By the time they reached Tierra del Fuego, Elijah was ready for a shower, clean clothes, and a good, long rest. Preferably somewhere safe and out of the public eye. They grouped outside the airport in a huddle against the cold. None of them had the appropriate clothing.

A large hotel van pulled up in front of them. The driver, a well-dressed dwarf with braids in his beard, loaded their luggage before anyone had a chance to question.

“Hey,” Cao wouldn’t let her bag go when he tried to take it. “Get your hands off my stuff.” She shifted her head a bit and her hood slipped back.

The dwarf stepped back quickly as Elijah spoke in perfect Spanish. “Sir … how do you know this is the hotel for us?”

The dwarf rattled off Elijah’s spoofed identity in English. “You’re here with four guests.” He counted each of them, stopping when he finally saw Pineapple. “Uh … I need to call ahead. Excuse me.”

Kyrie glanced at Pineapple. “I don’t think they have a Jacuzzi to fit you.”

“‘So ka. They got a fountain in the lobby, I’m in.” He shivered. “Fuck, it’s cold here.”

“It’s going to get a lot colder,” Elijah said as they boarded the van. “We’ll need to buy some supplies before we leave.”

The vehicle tilted at a dangerous angle to the right as Pineapple stepped onboard. He nodded to the driver before he took up a position in the middle of the aisle, carefully distributing his weight.

As the door closed, the dwarf leaned back in his chair and strapped himself in. His eyes unfocused and his body relaxed, his mouth dropping open as the van signaled before pulling out into port traffic.

The city of Tierra del Fuego was picturesque, nearly untouched by the decimation of urban sprawl. Elijah watched the towering, snow-capped mountains looming behind the city as the dwarf took them to their hotel.

Elijah’s AR lit up as they pulled into the circular drive. Five star accommodations, reservations in the restaurant at six, five rooms booked on the fifth floor. In less than ten minutes, Elijah found himself in a room overlooking the bay. He stepped out on the balcony and instantly regretted it the moment the bitter cold struck his face. To his right, he could see the leading edge of the snow-covered mountains bordering the city, while in front of him lay open water and an evening sky.

He looked to the south, thinking about what was waiting for him under the Antarctic snow and ice. It was going to be wondrous, it was going to be impossible, and it damn sure was going to be dangerous.

Remembering the package he’d received at the airport, he retrieved it from his bag. With the balcony door closed, warmth quickly returned. Sitting at the mahogany desk, he spread everything out on the surface and took stock.

There were ten certified credsticks, along with several packs of documents—hard copy, nothing traceable on the Matrix. One stack was a list of supplies they’d need to take with them. Another smaller packet contained their itinerary for the day after tomorrow, starting with a pick-up outside the hotel at 0500. The third packet contained five dossiers. Elijah opened the first one, scanned through the information, then picked up the second and scanned it, too.

An uneasy feeling crept up his back and settled on his shoulders. These were files on a second shadow team.

<Kyrie?>

<I’m in the bathtub.>

Elijah stared at the dossiers. <Remember what I said about another team? This will be one of those times I hate that I was right.>

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Mr. Johnson said there would be others on his payroll?” Kyrie asked between bites of butter-soaked lobster. “If he sent you the package—and who else could it be, since it’s got our tickets in it?—then I say he was giving you a heads up.”

“I know,” Elijah replied as he picked at his plate of asados, or barbecued beef short ribs. “We all know that Johnsons never tell the whole story. The big question on my mind now is, how different will their mission be from ours?”

“Maybe they’re part of that larger effort he talked about.” Pineapple picked up a lobster, broke it in half, and shoved one piece into his mouth, shell and all. Elijah winced. It sounded like he was chewing rocks.

Leung laughed. “I didn’t think you were paying attention.” The hacker had ordered a simple meal of linguini and steak. As usual, he ate carefully, to avoid getting any Alfredo sauce on his shirt.

“Oh, I’m always paying attention.” The troll spoke around the lobster in his mouth. One of the crustacean’s claws caught on his tusk, and he picked it off with a flip of a finger. “But seriously, professor. I don’t think you gett’n them dossiers is all that bad. This is good. Now we know who we’re working with.”

“Not really.” Elijah ate a tender bite of beef as he handed them out. “Names yes, education if applicable, former employment if applicable, and race.”

Leung nodded slowly as he looked over the one he had. “Eyetooth. Really? No real name? She’s twenty-two, got a good face.” He frowned. “And some mad hacking skills, it looks like.”

“Whoa …” Pineapple said as he opened his folder. “Hubba hubba … this piece of nice is all that and a bag of chips. Ho! And her name’s Cake!” He looked up and grinned, bits of lobster shell and meat studding his teeth. “Pineapple and Cake…that’s right…”

Leung snorted. “Good luck, omae.”

Kyrie held her folder close. “Tango … elf … coordinator,” She narrowed her eyes. “I know that face. I just can’t put a handle on where.”

“Gauntlet looks nice.” Cao looked up from her folder, then ducked her head back down.

Pineapple leaned over to look. “Bah. This face is nicer. See?” He grinned again.

Cao ducked her head even deeper into her hood.

Kyrie closed her folder and picked up the last one. “Nikolai Minovski, Turkestan. Sorry Pineapple, we got a much nicer-looking troll right here.” She held up the folder for everyone to see.

“Wow … he is better looking.” Leung reached out to steady the photo in her hand. “Why does he have smaller tusks and horns?” He looked at Pineapple. “Even his face isn’t as …”

Pineapple glared at him. “What?”

Leung shrugged. “He looks more … human than you do.”

“His loss,” Pineapple grunted.

Kyrie handed the folder to Cao when she wanted to see it. <Elijah, you think any of these could be working for our airport friend?>

<Could be. If Hualpa tried to buy us, he might have tried to buy them. We need to be careful.>

Leung spoke up. “0500. Shit, that’s five in the morning.”

“Yes.” Elijah sipped his wine.

“I’m assuming we’re flying to Antarctica? Otherwise a boat trip could take eight days if you go through the Drake Passage.”

“Flying sounds good. Just as long as we’re not trudging through a jungle again,” Cao said, still perusing the troll’s dossier in front of her.

“There’s nothing in there about where the plane’s taking us?” Kyrie pressed.

Elijah looked down at the instructions attached to the list of supplies. “No. According to this, we’re going to have a lot of gear. Plus…there’s no indication of where we’re going.” He looked up at her. “Our destination is a mystery right now.”

“So, this is Mr. Johnson’s way of keeping us under his thumb,” Kyrie said with a frown.

“It would appear so, though we still haven’t established what spot on the ice is represented by the place on the map.” Elijah looked past her and frowned. “Leung? What is it?”

Everyone turned to look at the hacker. The dossier he’d been looking through was still on his plate of food, his hands on the table. It was his expression that had caught Elijah’s eyes. Leung’s eyes were unfocused, and his facial muscles were slack. Physical signs he was in the Matrix or riding both sides.

<Leung?> Elijah texted.

There was a pause before he answered. <Yeah?>

<What’s going on?>

He blinked and sat up as he closed the folder and added it to the pile. Grease stains from his meal dotted the cover. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to tune out.”

“Something interesting?” Elijah watched him closely, noticing that Kyrie was also paying close attention to his response. Leung was usually much more confident than this.

He shook his head, “No … no … it’s nothing. Just monitoring our PAN link. Watching for any possible threats.”

<Elijah, his words aren’t matching his expression.> she messaged.

<I noticed. Don’t worry. If there’s a danger, he’ll tell us.>

Kyrie looked sharply at Elijah. <But what if he’s the danger?>

Elijah kept his expression neutral as he replied. <If he is—and we have proof of it—then we’ll deal with it when the time comes.>

After a day of shopping and packing, the group was more than happy to eat an early dinner and call it a day. Elijah was still too giddy to sleep, so he took a walk around the hotel, keeping indoors as it started snowing outside.

Pineapple was in the lounge by the fire, his massive feet propped up on the trunk of an old oak. He patted it as Elijah came near. “Ain’t it great? That sweet thing behind the desk got it for me. Said her uncle was a troll, and had all his stuff remade from wood. Might have to look into doing this myself.” He leaned back in the large wooden chair and crossed his ankles. “So, what brings you down here, professor? Figured you’d be asleep just so you could wake us up bright and early tomorrow morning.”

“That’s just it. My mind won’t rest.” He sat on one of the smaller chairs and propped his feet on a small, matching ottoman. “This place is very nice, if not a bit rustic.”

“It’s all right by me.” The two sat quiet for a few minutes before Pineapple sighed. “You thinking Hualpa might have made the same offer to this other team?”

“I’m counting on it.” Elijah turned his head to look at the troll. “He wouldn’t be a proper dragon if he didn’t.”

“You don’t like ’em, do ya?”

“Dragons? Not particularly.”

“Personal experience?”

“Not my own. Other runners I’ve known over the years. Dragons can’t be trusted. Ever. Anyone who makes a deal—”

“Winds up dead.”

“Or worse. And trust me, Pineapple, there are much, much worse things out there than being dead.”

Pineapple looked over at him. “I know. But you want to know when really bad things happen? It’s not when you run into something really nasty. It’s when someone who’s supposed to have your back doesn’t.”

“If this is about Chicago, I had spirits ready to—”

“No, it’s not about Chicago. Lighten up, wilya? No, it’s this other crew. This whole bunch of people we don’t know.”

“Everyone said they had nice faces.”

“Which is worth exactly dick to me. Look, we’re gonna be in one of the most hostile spots on Earth. If we can’t trust these people, we’re screwed.”

“Any reason not to trust them?”

“Well, beside the fact that they were hired by our own employer, with the implication that they’re there to do the same job we are…” Pineapple leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “They’re people. And people tend to screw you over.”

Elijah thought about arguing the point, then decided not to.

“We’ll just have to be careful. That’s what we do.”

“And hope that’s enough.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Elijah’s first glimpse of the base camp came from the air. The size and number of buildings was a clear indicator that Mr. Johnson’s backers—Elijah decided to cave and just mentally refer to them as Aztechnology—clearly had been planning this dig for quite some time. He counted three large, silver domes in a triangle, connected by linking tubes.

Kyrie leaned over his shoulder to share the view. “Elijah …”

“I believe this is more of that ‘something greater’ Mr. Johnson spoke of.”

Sixteen smaller, silver structures ringed the three larger ones. They looked like fallen tin cans, each connected by the same tube system. As the carrier landed, the enormity of the situation pressed down on Elijah’s shoulders.

They stepped out into light snow as a man in a gray parka, black goggles, and white gloves approached them, holding his hand out to Elijah. He had Aztlán markings on his uniform, confirming that Elijah’s decision to cave was quite justified. “Sergeant Danvers, senior military projects advisor. I’m here to escort you inside.”

Elijah nodded, and the five of them followed the man over a packed-snow path to a regular size door in one of the smaller structures. Once inside, the door was closed and the dim light brightened. Elijah felt a slight bit of pressure against his ears, and the sergeant gave him a thumbs up. “Use this space to stow your coats, gloves, and goggles.” He said this as he removed his own outer gear, revealing a gray set of fatigues underneath. Once everyone was stripped down to warm clothing, he opened a side panel and pulled out a handful of lanyards and badges. He handed them to Elijah. “You’ve all been cleared to be here, and you have free access to most of the base.”

Elijah pulled his badge out and handed the rest to Kyrie, who did the same. “Are you the leader of the excavation?”

Danvers laughed. “No sir. That would be you and Miss Tango. She and her people are doing inventory in Dome Two. My men and I are here for support and labor. You guys get to do the brain work.” He leaned out to make sure everyone had their badge on. “Good. Now if you’ll follow me, bring your bags, and I’ll show you to your quarters.”

The facility Danvers lead them into was nothing like the mudroom they’d left. The hallway was smooth white with a luminescent quality. Lights glowed in soft relief along the base, illuminating the floor. Elijah was surprised the walls were warm. This was one of the connecting tubes he’d seen from the carrier.

They stepped through two more buildings, each with an entrance and exit that opened and closed with a swipe of a badge.

<Each badge use will be recorded by the local host,> Leung texted. <Just so you know.>

Elijah agreed, but didn’t respond. The first building was obviously a cafeteria of some sort. The smells of onions and beef followed them through the door and into the next connecting tube. The second building had a lot of closed doors on one side and windows on the other. The windows looked at the three domes. Up close, it was obvious the domes were made of some sort of transparent material.

“What the hell are those?” Cao broke out from behind Kyrie and put her hands to one of the windows.

Everyone moved closer and peered outside. “What’re you lookn’n at?” Pineapple had to duck to look outside.

“There!”

It took a few minutes but Elijah finally saw it. It was hard to make out because it looked like part of the domes structures, but it wasn’t.

Sergeant Danvers stepped up. “Those are Airdox drills. Tango’s rigger tested them yesterday to see how they handled ice.”

Elijah stood back and looked at Danvers. “And? 

“I don’t think drilling will be a problem.” Everyone stepped back and looked at the Sergeant. “We just need to find it first.”

They continued to the next building, where another set of doors on the left greeted them. Only these were open. Five rooms, each with a bed, desk, light, cabinet for clothing, and thick carpet for cold feet. “Pick your rooms and settle in. We’ll need a briefing from you, Mr. Tish, around seventeen hundred. If you finish here before then, I suggest introducing yourself to Miss Tango in Dome Two. Maps are on the desk. Passwords for the base host are also provided, which will provide satellite connections to the Matrix.” He shook Elijah’s hand again. “Nice to meet all of you. See you this afternoon.” He turned and headed back the way they came.

Elijah turned and looked through the window at the domes and the monolith drills parked outside.

“There are locks on either end of this thing.” Kyrie stepped up close to him. “I don’t like it. These buildings are all modular. They can be picked up and set down anywhere.”

“That’s what the base is supposed to be, right? Mobile?”

She turned to look at him, her voice low. “I mean, we can be locked in here, picked up and just plopped down in the middle of nowhere. And we either go along—or freeze.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Even inside the base, his toes were cold.

Leung followed everyone as they made their way to Dome Two, the base map grid visible on his AR. He was getting his bearings with the base host, and it was faster than he’d thought it would be. A lot of times hacking through satellite connections felt like wading through cold mud, but this one was surprisingly responsive. The host was bare-bones—simple architecture, limited programs, primitive user interface—but it had what he needed. He could provide the bells and whistles if it provided the speed.

There was also a log of soldiers and other workers with devices that would be easy to hack in his downtime. Just to give him something to do.

His focus on the host stopped when the five of them stepped through the door to Dome Two.

“Have mercy!” he said.

The structure was completely transparent, made up of thousands of five by five transparent triangles. The blue sky overhead glanced off the glass, or whatever it was, and cast a strata of rainbows down onto the staging area below. The middle of the dome was open to the snow and ice beneath it. And in the center of that was a ten-meter-wide hole.

All five of them approached the gaping crater and peered over the edge.

“Hey Pineapple, why don’t you jump down and see how far it goes?”

“Leung,” Pineapple turned his head to look around Elijah. “Why don’t I—”

 “Hoi, chummers!” boomed a voice to their right. All eyes focused on the approaching ork. He was dressed in gray fatigue pants, black boots, and a black t-shirt. His tusks thrust up even with the lobes of his ears, and his white hair was pulled into a braid that slipped down his back. He skirted the edge of the crater and zeroed in on Elijah. “Professor, nice to meet you. I’m Gauntlet, Tango’s rigger.”

The two shook hands, and Elijah introduced the rest. Gauntlet faced the hole. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

“Did the Airdox drill do this?” Cao asked.

Gauntlet peered over at her. “Yes ma’am, it did. We did a few test runs yesterday. Brought the thing in and managed a good hundred meters—but we have to hang it from a crane to drill straight down. There’s no telling how deep this tower is, but the drills can do it.” He turned and pointed to an impressive pile of crates, pallets, machinery, and what appeared to be an all-terrain vehicle. “That’s my rig there. Can’t leave home without it.”

“Of course not, so we drag it from place to place and never use it,” a thick, heavily-accented voice said to their left. “It’s a boat anchor.”

Leung instantly recognized the troll from the dossier. Nikolai Monivski. He wasn’t as tall as Pineapple, evident when they stood side-by-side. And he was even less troll-like in person. To Leung, it looked as if someone had taken a human head, stuck pointed ears and a pair of tusks on it, and called it done. He approached the troll. “Leung.”

The troll’s hand was twice the size of his, but the grip was firm without crushing bone. He shook everyone’s hand equally. “Nice to meet all of you. Nikolai Monivski. Just call me Niko. I see you’ve already met our prima donna.”

Gauntlet scowled, but in a friendly way. Which is not easy for an ork.

Elijah held out his hand. “This … is quite an achievement. How much ice can the Airdox penetrate, and at what speed?”

Leung tuned the two of them out as Cao stepped up beside him. “I’m guessing you wanna drive one of those?”

“Oh … you have no idea. Just imagine the power …”

Gauntlet stepped away from Elijah and Kyrie and turned to Cao. “What was your name again?”

Cao stepped back, pulling her hood down to completely cover her face. “Cao.”

“Cao,” Gauntlet repeated the name. “That is a very interesting name. I like it. Cao … would you like to take a look inside the Airdox you will pilot?”

The goblin jerked her head up, pushing her hood back. Leung was used to the way she looked now, having worked with her. He cringed inwardly when he looked at Gauntlet to see his reaction to what the HMHVV had done to her—

Only the ork didn’t react at all. He had his elbow out, and still had it out when her hood fell back. Cao noticed this, and quickly pulled her hood up.

“You can’t see their majesty with that over your eyes.” Gauntlet extended his elbow to her again. “Take my arm, and I’ll take you on a tour. And if you keep that hood down, you might get to jack in …”

Pineapple took a step toward them as Gauntlet led Cao away. Leung glanced up at the big guy, marveling at how protective he’d become.

“Easy, now.” Kyrie said as she pushed at him rather ineffectually. “I think Cao’s in good hands.”

“The best,” Niko said. “Come on, and I’ll introduce you to the others.”

They followed the troll around the crater to the crates, and then behind them.

Standing behind the larger of the boxes was a tall, brunette woman. Her ears pegged her immediately, as did the slits in the center of her gray eyes. Her hooded shirt and jacket clung to her in all the right places. “Hey Niko, what’d you drag in now?”

“Tango, this is Elijah …” Niko paused, as if he’d forgotten Elijah’s last name.

“Tish,” Tango finished for him. “Glad to meet you. I’m Tango.” She held out her hand and shook his. “I’m pretty sure you’re nearly as excited as I am to be looking for something like the tower.”

“I assume you received dossiers on our team,” Elijah said.

“As I imagine you did for ours. I guess Mr. Johnson didn’t want us to be surprised by each other. And this must be Leung, your hacker.” She smiled, mainly with her eyes. “Your hardware-based hacker.”

As she said that, something flitted into Leung’s AR view. He stepped back as a pink and brown stuffed bear came nose to nose with him. He batted at it. “What the hell?”

“What is he looking at?” Kyrie stepped toward Leung, but Elijah held her back with a hand on her upper arm.

“Don’t you be mess’n with mah Sprite, chummah. Martin’s jus’ sayin’ hello.”

Leung turned toward the southern-accented voice. A dark-skinned woman in a hooded, light blue shirt, black vest, and nice-fitting pants stood by Tango. He recognized her from the dossiers, even with the hood shadowing her face. “Eyetooth.”

“That’s me.” She smirked.

Leung knew immediately what he was facing, since the woman had no gear whatsoever on her. “Great. Well, variety is the spice of life.”

“Right,” Kyrie said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Leung pointed at Eyetooth. “No gear. And she sent a sprite in my face. They have the misfortune of having a technomancer for a hacker.”

“Misfortune?”

“No offense,” Leung said. “I’m sure you’re good and all, but if you don’t know the gear, if you don’t own the gear, than it’s tough for you to understand the gear. You know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, except I don’t have to own the gear. I am the gear.”

Leung worked very hard not to laugh at that. He had to admit Eyetooth was quick, and had attitude to spare.

Eyetooth turned to Tango. “Speaking of irrational prejudices, has Cake met these folks yet? He should be thrilled to have another troll around.”

“Cake have a problem with metas?”

“Cake has a problem with anything. She’s an equal-opportunity misanthrope mostly, but sometimes she rags on trolls because, as she says, there’s just more of them to hate.”

“Sounds awesome,” Pineapple said.

Leung figured it would be too much to ask that both teams got along. And why should they? They were in the coldest place on Earth, and a feud or two might be nice to heat things up—just as long as things didn’t get too hot to handle.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Hearn needed a week or two on the beach, not time spent floating next to a frozen wasteland. But after the failure to prevent Elijah and his team from getting the map, Tempest had told them they were going south, and Hearn didn’t see any room to object. And to be honest, he’d seen a lot worse punishments for failure in his lifetime than a trip to Antarctica.

The boat had an exceedingly low profile, almost like a nineteenth-century ironclad. It was better appointed, thankfully, with plenty of heaters to keep out the chill of the surrounding water. There were trideo screens and other entertainment offerings, but Hearn had to make do with the library of discs on the boat—Tempest had forbidden using the craft’s satellite linkup.

“We’d be blindingly, glaringly obvious to anyone who cared to look,” he said. “I will only be using it for select communications. That is all.”

Hearn would have asked what “select communications” meant if he thought there was any chance he would get an answer. Instead, he tried to pass time through the horrible indignity of playing Lakota Code against the less-than-capable artificial intelligences.

Dinner each night was taken in a small galley, and Hearn had the pleasure of Tempest’s presence. Sometimes that meant he was allowed to listen to discourses on criminal psychology, international economics, and twentieth-century wines; other times he was expected to sit in silence with the mage. At no time was he expected to initiate conversation. Or contribute ideas. Or, by and large, say anything at all.

But one night, during dessert, he did anyway.

“So, we’re here. Off the coast of Antarctica. What’s next?”

Tempest swirled brandy in a large snifter, and did not look up or react in any fashion. Two minutes passed, and Hearn assumed he wasn’t going to get an answer. But then Tempest spoke.

“Like any good vintner, we are waiting for the right time.”

“I thought the right time was before Elijah got the map. He has it. Why are we okay with that now?”

“Because there are many more moving parts to this besides Elijah and the map. They lined up once in a way that provided an opportunity that we failed to seize. They will line up again, and this time we will be ready to act.”

After another pause, Hearn said “I guess that’s as many details as I’m going to get.”

Tempest stood and drained his entire snifter in one gulp. Hearn imagined he could hear the editors of Wine Spectator having multiple coronaries.

“Both of us should consider ourselves fortunate not to have bullets in our skulls. That should be enough to keep us content. Information is a luxury we don’t need at the moment. We’ll know what we need to know when we need to know it.”

He walked off. Hearn sat for a while and listened to the icy water bend the boat’s hull.

It didn’t take long for people to go their separate ways. Leung and Eyetooth walked off trading insults, Cao was checking out gear with Gauntlet, and Pineapple and Kyrie had gone back to the tent. That meant Elijah could spend a few minutes along with Tango, which was probably a good thing.

She apparently had the same thought, and spoke before he could say anything. “I was wondering if I might have a word with you. Privately?”

Elijah frowned. Everyone in the area appeared busy, packing crates and fastening them onto large pallets in the Dome. “I don’t believe we will be bothered here.”

Tango bowed slightly. “As you wish. I think we need to talk about chain of command.”

“In what sense?”

“I’ll be direct. I don’t like being second in command.”

“Who said you were?”

“I get the feeling that you like being in control.”

“I suppose I lead the team, but I’m hardly in control of it. And for the most part, that’s fine with me.”

“But you’re the one with the knowledge of the map. You’re the one Mr. Johnson wants me to defer to. And I don’t like it.”

Ah … Elijah kept his facial features schooled into something close to blank. He was listening to her, yes, but he was also watching her move. Much of her body language reminded him of Kyrie. It wasn’t something he believed anyone would notice of an acquaintance, but after years as working as partners on jobs, he had learned to read her physical cues.

And this elf had many of the same cues. From that, he drew the conclusion that Tango was a physical adept, much like Kyrie, though he had no way of pinpointing her specialty. He was pretty sure that, like Kyrie, she would be formidable in a fight.

Tango had gone silent, watching him watching her. He decided he’d better say something.

“I can assure you, Tango, that I am not in charge of anything save the welfare of the people of my team. I want to keep Mr. Johnson happy, and I want to keep everyone on our side alive. I assume that matches your own goals.”

Tango regarded him for another few seconds. Then, “Bullshit. Those aren’t your main goals. You’re here to see that tower. You’re here to satisfy your curiosity.”

Elijah considered her statements, and then nodded. “Yes. You’re right.”

“Then you’ll understand that I will put a bullet in your brain if I find you putting myself or any of my people in danger.”

“Big talk from such a small girl,” Pineapple said as he held his Manhunter less than a meter away from the back of the elf’s head. “Care to rephrase that?”

Elijah was just as surprised as Tango. He hadn’t sensed the troll coming back. The adept’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t move.

“Hey!” Gauntlet and Cao ran toward them. They were both dressed in their outside clothes and dusted with snow. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Tango said. “I was having a nice little talk with the professor. Just setting some ground rules.”

Gauntlet looked at the Manhunter. “Uh-huh. She being all giddy again?”

Elijah and Pineapple both gave the ork a confused look. Tango was many things, but the arcanoarcheologist did not consider her to be giddy.

“Pineapple, put the gun down.” Cao had her hood pushed all the way back, her entire face visible.

Pineapple shrugged and lowered it. “She threatened Elijah.”

“If she did, it’s only because she wants first crack at that tower.” Gauntlet put his hands on his hips. “Don’t let her fool you. Tango’s a nutcase when it comes to artifacts.”

The elf’s demeanor changed abruptly. The cool, calculating, tall elf became what Elijah could only define as, well, a giddy schoolgirl. She lowered her shoulders and her head before punching Gauntlet in the shoulder.

“Stop …” she smiled at Elijah. “Okay, it’s true. I’m just … I’m so excited to be digging here in Antarctica for a lost piece of history. And … you intimidate me, a little. I mean, I’ve heard of you—who hasn’t? I just wanted to show you I’m tough enough to be here, and I want to see what’s in that tower even more than you!”

The quick change was giving Elijah a headache. He took a step back, as did Pineapple. The troll’s face was a perfect representation of the mixture of distrust and pure shock the mage felt on the inside. Gauntlet asked if Tango could be excused, because they needed to go over some things. She waved at them before turning away. “We’ll see you at five.”

Elijah watched the two of them walk to the excavator, their heads together in conversation.

“What’s going on?” Cao said as she looked from Elijah to Pineapple.

“I have no fuckin’ clue.” Pineapple pointed his weapon barrel up on his shoulder. “But that is one scary dandelion eater.”

Elijah nodded slowly. “Couldn’t agree with you more.”

Dome One was where they hid the hi-tech. Trideo displays floated over several manned stations, showing orbital trajectories of satellites as well as aircraft paths and world broadcast stations. Elijah led the group into a glass enclosed office. The other team had already gathered inside, as well as a few official representatives of their employer. Elijah half-expected to see Mr. Johnson show up, but so far there was no sign of him.

The entire meeting was visible to anyone outside.

<We’re sitting ducks in here.> Kryie sat in a chair next to Pineapple.

<Ssshhh.>

Elijah and Tango stood up front and introduced themselves, officially. Elijah gave them an abbreviated version of what he had seen on the map. Afterward, Tango gave quick list of the equipment packed and ready to go.

“Where, exactly, are we going?” a stern voice asked.

Elijah knew her the second he saw her. She held herself like a fighter, arms at her sides, her hands unclenched. A katana hilt stood at the ready behind her shoulder, and bands of leather sheathed two short swords on her thighs. She wore only a black tank top, black fatigue pants, and combat boots. Her hair had been completely shaved off, except for a yin and yang pattern grown on the back of her head. Her skin was deep bronze, and he pegged her as hailing from near Abu Dhabi.

“That’s a great question, Cake.” Tango pointed at Eyetooth. “Our investigator will be tasked to go over the data gleaned from the Matrix—”

“Both of our hackers—” Elijah emphasized the first word as he spoke over Tango “—will be going over whatever information we can get about who else has been looking for the map and what they intend to do with it. Tango and I will oversee this process, and we’ll also make plans for what happens once we reach the tower. The rest of you—” he looked around. “Make sure you’re all packed and ready to go on a moment’s notice.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Leung sat on the edge of the saucer-shaped part of the Space Needle, his legs dangling over the side. He closed his eyes as the evening breeze caressed his face and brushed his hair from his forehead. It was an impressive build. A lot of time and care had been put into this replica of Seattle. He’d hacked this node because his agent had picked up something map-related on it. And after three days of mindless, endless scouring of the Matrix, he was ready to follow any lead, no matter how tenuous.

At first, it felt as if his own purpose for being there was moot. Eyetooth had found several references to the tower on the first day, and proudly handed them over to Tango. After learning the documents referencing the tower could have ties to the Atlanteans, he’d tuned it all out. Elijah looked as if he would wet his pants, but that was about as far as it went once they realized the information didn’t bring them any closer to the tower’s location.

Leung stayed up writing programs for map searches on the first two nights. After a fitful nap on the second night, the idea came to him to tweak the algorithm a bit. Instead of searching for references to “Piri Reis” or “map,” he started looking for Atlantean keywords. He’s also added in a few scans of the Antarctic coastline.

Within the day, his AR woke him when the agent pinged back with something from a site in Argentina. Gaining access to the host in question was easy—maybe too easy. Could be bait to lure him in, then snatch him? The Grid Overwatch Division loved shit like that.

But this host felt different.

Physically, he was in Dome One, monitored by ops with their machines that kept an eye on his heart rate, brain waves, and location in the Matrix. Part of the deal was he and Eyetooth did all Matrix dives under observation. But Leung didn’t know if that was to protect the two hackers, or everyone else.

He followed the agent’s signal to the needle after stepping in, and realized he was in a replica city. His Matrix persona was a ninja, complete with black pajama costume and a katana that also acted as his connection to his deck for downloads. He didn’t look much like himself, more of a stereotype of what a ninja should look like. He still looked Asian, but it wasn’t his face.

After an hour on top of the needle with no movement below, not even another persona on the host, he slipped off the side, fell the entire way down, and landed on his feet. The agent appeared to his left and led him down a side street. He launched a defense program and moved carefully. But the host was like a ghost town. Seattle, but devoid of life.

Every now and then he walked past a spot in the road that looked a bit fuzzy or pixellated. A storefront would blur, as if the texture applied to it wasn’t loading, and Leung feared his commlink’s firmware might overload the host. Checking the agent map, he made another turn and faced a dead-end street. On the right was a liquor store with a wooden Indian outside. On the left was a toy store. Beside it was an electronic repair front, and across the street was a massage parlor.

He backed up to the toy store.

One of these things is not like the other.

One of these things … does not belong … 

He checked the map again. The item was in the toy store. He couldn’t begin to guess why, but that’s where it was.

Drawing his sword, he approached the store and pushed the door open. It creaked appropriately as he stood in the entrance way, looking inside.

The interior was lit from the sun streaming through the dirty front windows. Dolls, trucks, trains, doll houses, whistles, hula-hoops—every variety and brand of toy he could remember from his childhood surrounded him on shelves lining the walls and in the large center isle. The entire shop was covered in a few centimeters worth of dust. A baby doll on the store’s counter looked as if it were wearing a grey dress, but when he brushed at the fabric, it turned pink.

Something caught his eye to the right, and he flicked the sword around and pointed it at a bin of teddy bears. They were all the same. Brown, maybe a hand span tall, with blue bow ties around their necks.

No—not all the same. One of them wasn’t as dusty, and didn’t have a—

Leung yelled out when the damn thing jumped up and ran behind the counter.

Damn it.

DAMN IT!

“Eyetooth! Get out here, now!”

The technomancer’s persona, a little Asian girl in a pink dress and bare feet, stepped out from behind the counter, holding the squirming bear by its arm. “I’m sorry, Leung. I tol’ him not to tease you.”

The frustrated hacker re-sheathed his katana and moved toward the store’s door. “Him? It’s a piece of code, not a him.”

“You don’t know nothin’ ’bout sprites, Leung. So don’t go judgin’.”

“Get out. I don’t want you around.”

“We’re supposed to work together, hun.”

“Really?” He turned and watched her come toward him. “Is that what you did that first day? You found those entries about the Atlanteans, so you took off out of that node and left me behind. What if something had happened? What if that place had IC?”

Eyetooth stopped in the middle of the isle and rolled her eyes. “I’ve been divin’ all over the Matrix for years, pretty boy. Never seen an IC I couldn’t beat.”

“Then you’ve never seen IC.” He turned toward the door.

She smiled and spread her hands out, her sprite still clutched in the right one. “Awright, sugah. Awright, Awright. That was rude of me, and I am sorry. But you can’t tell me—” She glanced to her right, where the side of the store blurred and flickered. She backed away from it. “—you can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the exact same thing?”

He noticed her reaction to the software failure, but ignored it. “I would not have left you behind.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Now who’s slingin’ some bull? You deckers don’t care nothin’ ’bout us.” She looked at the blurred area again, and walked to the far side of the store. Her teddy bear wriggled out of her hand and climbed up to sit on her shoulder.

“I’ve got nothing against technomancers,” Leung replied. “I’ve met some good ones. But what I’ve seen with my own eyes that pertains to you is that you can’t be trusted. I haven’t followed you, or put a tracer on you—”

“I didn’t do that to you!”

“Then how the hell did you find me here?” He put his hands on his hips.

She cocked her head, as if the answer should have been obvious. “Ops told me where you were.”

A cold, thin icy line moved down Leung’s spine. “They can trace me in the Matrix?” He’d worked most of the night to make sure no one could track where he was going. And now she was telling him they could do it anyway?

She looked away. “Well, no. They knew where you were up to a point.”

He glared at her.

Eyetooth huffed. “Fine. Yeah. I put a tracer on you.”

“Get. The fuck. Away. From me.” He started to the door again, but before he reached out to turn the handle, the texture blurred and pixelized. He’d seen this sort of thing over the years, but not so much in one place before.

“Don’t touch that!” Eyetooth shot over to him and grabbed his elbow. Her persona might have been small, but its Matrix ability was strong. She nearly yanked him off his feet and knocked over a shelf in her scramble to pull him away from the door.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Leung pulled his arm back, then stopped when he saw her face. She really was scared. He looked back at the door. “It’s just a glitch. This is an old host—”

“That’s not what that is.” She pointed to the door. “That’s dissonance—messed up resonance. It’ll fry you where your meat body stands.”

“Okay. Thanks. You saved me. Now you can log out and leave me alone.”

Eyetooth shook her head. “No. This host is all wrong. It’s bad. Really bad. You need to come with me.”

“Right. You leave me alone day before yesterday, but now you’re worried?”

“That host didn’t have shit growing in it. Come on. Come with me.”

He pulled back. “I can’t.”

“What’s keeping you—” her eyes widened. “You found something.”

Of all the … He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I found something. Now go.”

“Nope, I’m here now, so we’re going together. Unless you want to put in the effort to try and knock me off.”

Leung rolled his meat eyes while keeping his persona expressionless. “Fine. Try not to break anything.”

He glanced at the icon of the agent he’d sent to track the payload. It remained still. The object of his quest was less than ten meters away. He looked past it to a dusty counter and beyond to the low-res door Eyetooth had stepped out of. “What was back there?”

“Nothing much. Just another office—and a lot of wooden benches.”

“Did you log into the host there?”

“Oh no, sugah. I came in the same way you did, and followed your trail.”

Ignoring her as best he could—because he was pretty sure she wasn’t going anywhere—he moved to the door and leaned his back against the frame as he pushed the door inward.

“I told you there was nothing in there.”

Leung’s gaze moved through the area. The intel still burned hot as a pulsing beacon in the next room, but every hair on his persona stood on end. “Eye—do you have anything you can use to deep scan this room?”

“Well yeah. But I don’t need one to tell you something’s wrong here. Why don’t you just show me where this thing is, and we’ll get it and get the hell out of here.” She glanced twice at the fuzzy door before looking back up at Leung.

His hackles were up and singing as well, so he was inclined to agree with the technomancer. He slapped on a program that let him lay the host’s original structure over what he was seeing. It didn’t fit. In fact, if he pulled the grid back and looked at the full picture— damn. He told Eyetooth to do the same thing.

She made a surprised noise. “What the hell is that?”

“I’m guessing that’s the room’s original sculpt. Someone’s changed it. I don’t know who, and I do not care.” He drew his sword slowly as he took a few hesitant steps into the room.

Eyetooth was right that it looked like a workroom. A toy-making room, to be precise. Two wooden tables jutted out from the wall on the right. Hammers, vintage sewing machines, nails, pieces of wood, dried paint cans and faded measuring tape littered the tables. The back of the room had a door with broken glass. A desk covered in books and boxes sat to the left, and in back of the desk was another door.

Checking the position of the item he was looking for, he pinpointed it in an old safe next to that back door, under one of the tables.

“You see it?”

“Yeah. Can you scan the safe?”

She narrowed her eyes at it. “No. I can’t see inside, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well…I was hoping…”

She gave him an exasperated sigh. “I can’t see through stuff like that. I’m not Super Girl.”

He smirked. “Now you admit it. When no one else can hear.” With his sword in front of him, Leung knelt in front of the safe and stared at it, observing its structure.

Eyetooth interrupted his concentration. “I can open it—”

“Just back off. I’ve been doing this a long—”

But she was already reaching out and moving the dial to the right, then the left, and then the right.

“Damn it, I said—”

A click echoed in the room and the door opened. “See?”

Unfortunately, Leung couldn’t see anything as a large doll with big, razor-sharp teeth leaped out of the safe and into his face. He yelled as he fell backward, his katana dropping to the floor. The room was bathed in flashing red light. The host was on alert—and they were being attacked by killer dolls.

“I got it!”

Leung had his hands on the thing’s chest, but it was tearing at him with bear-like claws and trying its damnedest to bite his face off with its wide shark-like mouth. He leaned into it, focusing with everything he had, and was able to pull the thing apart. Stuffing flew everywhere as he threw the body in two different directions.

But he was pretty damn sure it wasn’t over.

Leung pushed himself back up, grabbed his katana and took another look in the safe.

It was empty.

“I got it!”

Leung spun and stood to see Eyetooth by the door leading into the storefront. She held a small jewelry box up for him to see. “This was inside!”

The thing glowed red, and a small block of text in front of him pointed to it being the tracer’s target. He didn’t know just what was stored in that icon, but he damn sure was going to find out.

Two seconds after she held it up, Leung saw the host’s next attack run up behind her. At first, it looked like the biggest, ugliest bear he’d ever seen. A monster standing close to two meters tall, spraying dust everywhere. In the next half-second, he realized it wasn’t a single bear—but the mass conglomerate of every bear in the store. And it was using the glass from the broken front window as teeth. And it was about to bite Eyetooth’s head off.

“Move!” he shouted as he ran at the giant bear, jumping off the closest workbench.

Eyetooth turned, yelled, and did exactly what he told her to.

The bear monster roared.

Leung roared back as he whipped the katana from the right to left, slashing the blade across the thing’s neck. He landed in front of it and took a good hit to his chest seconds before the head came off. It rolled behind the bear as Leung flew back into the bench he’d jumped off. Ow…

“Come on!” Eyetooth was at his side, her own little bear taking the jewelry box from her. Martin and she exchanged looks before the sprite disappeared, taking the box with it. “We’ve got to get out of here. Martin says there’s more on the way!”

The bear’s swat had knocked the wind out of him, but the threat of more IC pulled him to his feet. He followed her out the back. A glance behind him as he stumbled and gasped for air revealed the damn thing was re-assembling as the bears jumped on top of one another to form another head.

Leung lost sight of it all as he jacked out.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Elijah watched and worried as Leung’s and Eyetooth’s heart rates increased. The two docs in charge of overseeing the dive assured him that they were fine with a glance.

“Sir—” one of the ops techs called to Sgt. Danvers. “We got a package.”

Mr. Lucas, standing beside the sergeant, strode to the tech immediately and gestured for him to show this package.

A minute later Eyetooth sat straight up. She scrambled off her couch and immediately ran to Leung’s. His body jumped once, and she put a hand on his chest. “Get out … get out now!”

“What the hell’s happening?” Elijah said with a frayed edge to his voice. He didn’t want to lose Leung any more than he ever wanted to consider life without Kyrie.

Eyetooth ignored him just as Leung’s eyes flew open and he gasped for breath. His arms flailed wildly as he tried to grab for something, and the doc and an assistant pushed him back down on the couch. The doc placed an oxygen mask on his face while the assistant readied an IV.

“He’s got a collapsed lung,” the doc said when Elijah stepped forward. “Everything else looks fine. Just let us work on him.”

Pineapple ran in, followed by Tango and Cake. They stopped just outside the couch area, all staring at Leung and then Eyetooth.

“What’s going on?” Pineapple asked. The others crowded around as Tango headed over to answer Lucas’ summons.

Elijah watched her, and felt torn between hearing Eyetooth’s story and learning what Lucas was looking at.

The technomancer put a hand on his arm. “Go take a look. Martin delivered what Leung found.”

“Martin?”

“Her sprite.” Cake said, hands on her hips, weapons fully visible.

“What happened to Leung?” he asked.

“He saved me. I—I wasn’t payin’ attention. I didn’t think the host was that dangerous—I mean, it had dissonance all over it, and looked abandoned—”

“Take a deep breath.” Pineapple gestured for her to breathe. “So, you two were attacked?”

“Yeah … one of ’em came at him right outta the safe. The other one snuck up behind me …” She put her hands to her face. “He coulda been killed ’cause of me.”

Elijah put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s fine. The doc said he’ll be all right. I know he looks like a playboy most of the time, but he’s tougher than that. Maybe you need to get some rest?”

“I’ll take her back to her room.” Cake stepped in and placed an arm around Eyetooth’s shoulders. The tall street samurai glanced back at him and nodded. “Thank you.”

Pineapple scratched his chin. “Leung okay?”

As Cake and Eyetooth exited the Dome, Kyrie ran in. She paused at the entrance, looked at Tango with Lucas, then the docs hovering around Leung, and bee-lined for Elijah. “What’s going on?”

The mage looked from Pineapple to Kyrie. “How’d you know to come here? Who told you something had happened?”

“I got a message on my AR. I was monitoring the channels. There was a general call for medical personnel.” she replied.

“I was just following Tango. She got a similar message.” Pineapple shrugged. “Leung’s okay?”

“Yes. But I’d like his account of what happened. Eyetooth’s too upset.” He excused himself and walked fast to where Tango and Danvers were talking.

“Professor,” the Aztechnology liaison smiled. “Sorry about your man—”

“He’s all right.” Elijah turned to Tango. “What did they find?”

“Coordinates with a few hand-drawn maps and more references to the Piri Reis map.” Tango smiled. Excitement lit her face. “Danvers is decrypting the other documents, but it looks like they found a nice payload. I’m not surprised they hit serious security.”

“Yes, but where was this thing?”

Danvers shook his head from where he stood by a holo-vid. “The host they were on went offline, and hasn’t booted back up yet. And there’s always the possibility it won’t. Sometimes security will just take everything offline if it believes it’s been compromised. We’ll have to get the full story from them. I’ll call you the second we have everything ready.” He nodded to each of them and left with Mr. Lucas.

Elijah looked back at Leung. He was still on the couch, the mask covering half his face, and his shirt was open with wires attached to his chest. What could have gone wrong? Leung was usually too careful to run into this kind of danger. Unless Eyetooth had been a distraction. From what little she’d said, that might have been the case. And if it was, he was going to request that if Leung was up to diving again, he do it alone.

“That’s a very serious look.”

He jerked his head back to Tango. He forgot she was there. “Sorry. Worried about Leung.”

“He’s more than just a member of your team?”

“He’s an old friend. And he gets results.” Elijah took in a deep breath, then released it. “Now we just wait for the Aztláners to let us see the data.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Tango tilted her head to the side. “To have them calling the shots?”

“Not when the prize at the other end is that tower.” He gave her a stiff smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I want to check on my friend.”

The day progressed. Leung seemed to be recovering, Danvers seemed convinced that the discovery of the tower’s precise location was not far off now. He told everyone to plan for movement tomorrow. On his way to pack his stuff, Elijah dropped by Leung’s room. He was sitting up with electronic gear strewn over his bed. His door was open, so Elijah knocked on the frame. The hacker looked up from his work and smiled. “Hey, omae.”

“You better?”

Leung made a face. “I was fine. Just had the wind knocked out of me. Their doc overreacted. Knocked me out with some kind of sedative. Woke up in my bed drooling.” He pointed a small, silver tool at Elijah. “Don’t let them do that to me again.” He looked back at his mess. “I swear I’ve seen that man in a chop shop in Seattle.”

“So how’s your deck holding up after the attack?” Elijah stepped into the small room and sat in the chair.

Leung wore a shirt, a pair of sweats, and thick black socks. His hair was all over the place, and he looked pale. The hacker might believe he was fine on the surface, but the fact he was willing to let someone see him in this non-fashionable state spoke volumes to Elijah.

“It’s okay. I was just working on upgrading it a bit.” He picked up a piece of it. “Figured it could stand to be a little stronger.” He tossed the small tool on the bed and leaned back against the headrest. Dark circles hung under his eyes, and he stared at something in front of him. “Eyetooth tell you what happened?”

“Yes. And the whole thing would be laughable, if it hadn’t been so dangerous.”

“Yeah … toys. A toy shop. Down a dark alley. Exactly the kind of thing every parent warns their kid about.” He took in a deep breath, winced, and then released it. “Doc said to do that periodically so my lung can heal.” He put his hand on his chest and pressed.

“Leung…where was the gear holding the host?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t get a good read on where it was broadcasting from. Like it kept—moving, or something.” He closed his eyes for a second before opening them and sighing. “All I can say is it was old. It’d been re-sculpted long after it was left to its own corruption. It was too easy to subscribe, you know?”

“But it had security.”

“Just the basics for the toy store.”

“IC?”

Leung turned his head to look at Elijah. “Oh, that wasn’t IC. That was just a basic attack with some serious power behind it.”

“How do you know it wasn’t? Eyetooth said it was.”

“I honestly don’t think Eyetooth’s ever seen a righteous case of IC. If she had, I doubt she’d even be here.” He shifted on the bed to get comfortable. “There’s some IC that, when it’s activated, there’s no way to log off. It traps you in the node, and the only way to get out is to jack out, hard, and get wiped with dumpshock. Like I did. “ He licked his lips. “But … something odd happened when I jacked out. I didn’t go straight back—I went to the entry point first, then went out.”

Elijah shook his head. “Is this not normal?”

“Unless it’s some safety measure they’ve got that brings you back before you leave, no.” He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it.

“What?”

“Eh … nothing right now.” He shrugged.

“Is this the same hesitation you had in Argentina at the hotel?” Elijah studied his face. “Something unnerved you during dinner.”

Leung finally looked Elijah in the eye. “I’m not sure yet … and I don’t want to say anything until I have some confirmation about what I think I’m seeing.”

Elijah hesitated, then stood and put a hand on Leung’s shoulder. “As soon as you feel certain, talk to me. No matter when.”

Leung nodded, but didn’t say anything until Elijah moved to the door. “This tower—if it’s buried under ice and a dragon’s interested in it, doesn’t that just hold up signs that say ‘Go Away’ in triplicate?”

It was a very good question. Elijah leaned against the doorframe. “Yes. I believe it does. But does that mean we should abandon it? Or leave it so the dragon or others can take it?”

“I don’t think they’re going to pick it up like yesterday’s soykaf, Elijah. I mean—what if it’s dangerous? What if it does something we don’t want it to do?”

“Same answer, Leung. If it is dangerous—do we want it to fall into the wrong hands?”

“Yeah, but are we the right hands? Since we’re on the Aztechnology payroll?”

Elijah stepped forward. “Get some sleep, Leung. Danvers and his team will leave soon, if they haven’t already. And if they find what I hope they will, we’ll be leaving also.”

Carefully, Leung stood and cleared off his bed, setting what was left of his deck on his desk. “After this, I want a vacation, Elijah. A real one.”

Elijah nodded as he watched him crawl into bed before he shut the door. He paused outside Leung’s door, his own room just a few feet away. Leung’s questions weren’t far from his own. He had wondered if this entire endeavor hadn’t been some colossal mistake the moment they’d been detained in the Metropôle airport. Or maybe the moment they left Chicago. Or left Seattle…

But the tower was out there. The tower that powerful people—including a dragon—were looking for. And tomorrow, Elijah had the chance to get there first.

That thought helped quiet any doubts in his mind.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Eleven hours later, Danvers sent the word. <Move out.>

Two carriers came in to move the two Airdox. Pineapple watched from the Dome, along with Kyrie and Eyetooth, as the mighty machines were hoisted into the air. They would arrive before the teams, and Danvers’ men would be responsible for having them ready for operation. Gauntlet would run one of them, while Cao, in a flurry of excitement, had joined him on the carrier to run the other one. The two had become inseparable since they arrived at the base, and Pineapple’s disdain was apparent—besides the fact that he couldn’t seem to shut up about it.

“I just think it’s too big for her, that’s all.” The troll had his hands on his hips, looking up at the disappearing dots.

“Didn’t you see the hole she dug next to Gauntlet’s?” Kyrie jerked a thumb at the two capped areas behind them in Dome Two. “She’s good, and she’ll be fine. You saw the way Gauntlet treats her—it’s like he doesn’t even see the Infection. Not even a blink.”

“So that makes him a good man?”

Eyetooth reached out and patted the troll’s massive forearm. “Good enough.” She winked at him, then looked around. “Where’s Leung?”

Kyrie shrugged. “Still in his room I think, working on something last minute. He wouldn’t let me in.”

The technomancer’s face cracked with a wide grin. “Bet he’ll let me. What time we leaving?”

Pineapple checked the chronometer on his AR. “In about half an hour. If you see him, tell him to be ready.”

“Oh, I will, sugah.” She waved and half-ran back to the door to the connector tunnel.

With a half-smile, the troll watched her go. “I like her.”

“Yeah, well I’m glad you do. She’s paying just a little too much attention to Leung. And even he’s acting odd.”

The troll leaned over and frowned at her. “Leung is odd—didn’t you notice?”

“Yeah, yeah. I dunno … it’s something about their relationship. They seem to be becoming awfully close, awfully fast. You know what I mean?”

“I guess. But we are out here in the middle of nowhere. A man’s gotta find something to occupy his time when he’s not workin’.”

“I just hope she’s not a distraction. We don’t need that.”

Pineapple just stared at her steadily waiting for her to say the rest of what was on her mind.

“Look, just … keep an eye on the both of them, okay?” she finally asked. “Make sure she’s not influencing him in some way. Leading him down the wrong path. For all we know she—or all of Tango’s team, for that matter—could be working for our Amazonian friend.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I’ll do that.”

“I’m heading in,” she said, then turned for the door.

Even after she walked away, Pineapple felt her apprehension about their situation settle over him. Kyrie had made some good points; they weren’t in control of the situation, and they were working for Aztechnology, a corporation he knew she loathed.

But that last bit didn’t matter to him. Pineapple just wanted his fair share, and when it was over, he planned on getting as far away from this godforsaken place as he could.

And for what he was being paid, that would be a very far distance indeed.

Transportation for the remaining team members and assorted staff turned out to be a wagon train of Scania VM42s. At least she now knew what was stored in Dome Three. Most of Elijah’s team was familiar with the shipping trucks, but had never seen that many in one place, or that many upgraded to move over snow and ice. They’d replaced the chassis and installed snow treads supported by four tire mounts. Two in front and two in back. One of the techs reassured her the interiors were warm and easy to drive, and were all outfitted with rigger capability.

Pineapple jumped at the chance to drive one, and Kyrie volunteered to ride shotgun with him. Leung and Elijah stored their stuff in the back in the living quarters as Niko climbed into the back of their chosen VM, and Tango rode up front with him.

Six hours after the carriers took the Airdox, the train of five VMs began the two-day travel to the new site.

Leung and Elijah sat facing each other on the couch in the back compartment. The place looked like a standard UCAS hotel—one that happened to have everything bolted down. Coffee table, two chairs, couch, small table and four chairs, and an all-in-one kitchen.

The two men had both removed their gloves, goggles, and parkas. Leung’s deck sat on the coffee table. With a sigh, he shot Elijah an instant chat request. He acknowledged it, answered a very basic question and raised an eyebrow as the accompanying text that assured him they were now on a secured channel. <What’s with this?>

Leung frowned. <I just want to make sure Tango’s group doesn’t listen in.>

<What about Pineapple and Kyrie?>

Leung blinked. <This is just between me and you for now. I’ve been monitoring some strange communications between our location and in the general vicinity of Amazonia.>

<What?> Elijah stared at him, eyes wide. <Someone’s communicating with Amazonia?>

<Yeah. My first clue was during dinner that night in Tierra del Fuego. I sensed it then. The second was right before I logged off VR after the teddy bear run. I spoke with one of the techs in their op-center, and Dome One has a safety on it—sort of a return home feature. Eyetooth knew about it, which is why she sent her sprite with the information out of the host because she knew it would automatically go back to the Dome One node. When I landed there for an instant—just before I logged out—I saw a seagull headed north.>

The arcano-archaeologist frowned. <I’m not following.>

<The Dome’s host operates on the in-package VR overlay that comes with the software. It looks just like it does at the location, which means it looks like the Dome in the Antarctic. So I asked to see the basic sculpt and looked at the code.> He licked his lips. <No seagulls. So I re-rigged my deck and did a little hack into the Dome’s host.>

If Elijah’s eyes had gotten any wider, they would have fallen right out of his head. <You hacked the Dome’s security?>

<Of course. It’s what I do. It’s no big deal—I wasn’t after any secure information. I was simply looking for more gulls. And I found them. I’ve sniffed seven in all since I saw the first one. I traced their origin and their destination. All of them went to the same place.>

<Where?>

<That’s the sticky part. I haven’t been able to pinpoint the origin. All I can identity is that the messages are coming from either one of us, or one of Tango’s team.>

<So, right now you have no other clue about the mole’s identity?>

Leung shook his head. <Given enough time, I’ll find out who’s doing it, but whether it’ll be in time to prevent this mission from getting cluster-fucked …> He spread his hands in uncertainty.

Elijah glanced toward the driver’s compartment, where Kyrie was chatting with Pineapple. <She warned me this kind of thing could happen. I was so sure the Amazonian offer was turned down—but what if someone took them up on it?>

<Or, what if they got to someone on Tango’s team?> The hacker pointed out. <They’re a whole bunch of unknown factors right in the middle of this.>

<No matter who’s behind it, this isn’t good for us. This run’s got enough snags and potential negative outcomes as it is. If we really do have a traitor in our midst, we could end up abandoned in the middle of nowhere.>

<Got it in one.> Leung replied. <Here’s my suggestion. We need to stay focused on the mission, but we also need to pay attention to what’s happening around us even more usual. We need to survive.>

<I’ll agree to that.>

<If we see things are going bad, we’ll need to pull out quick, so we need contingencies for that.> Leung pointed at Elijah. <And we’ll need you to not get so involved in the tower so as to ignore the lives of everybody else around you. You’ve got to put our safety above your own curiosity.>

Elijah gave him a sad smile. <All the knowledge in the world is useless if it’s in a dead brain, my friend. You know I’m not entirely lacking in self control.>

Leung snorted. <Just remember you said that. I assume you want me to keep monitoring the messages?>

<Absolutely.> Elijah stared at the hacker. <Keep saving everything you find. Encrypt it in a file for me, understand? And keep your own in case something happens that separates us. And Leung—do not take any chances. I know Eyetooth may seem unassuming, but right now I trust you.>

Leung nodded, and the two men fell quiet for a minute. Then Pineapple started singing, sounding like a washing machine full of rocks.

Even under the circumstances, Elijah and Leung couldn’t help laughing at that. When they had sobered up, Leung asked, <Is there anyone else you want to bring in on this?>

Elijah thought for a moment, then nodded. <I’m pretty sure Kyrie wouldn’t flip on us. Why don’t you invite her back here for a chat?>

<Will do.> Leung sent the invite. <You do know she will not be happy about this news, right?>

Elijah nodded. <Of course—but then, she hasn’t been happy about this run ever since we got here.>

Then Kyrie entered the compartment, and Leung took a breath as Elijah prepared to break the news about the traitor in their midst.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Pineapple surveyed the new drilling site with a skeptical eye. The whole operation had gone from fifty people in a nice, comfy, warm environment to twenty people in a single structure and a lot of portable tents.

The main ops area was set up in the structure, which, as far as he could tell, was one of those cylinder tubes their rooms had been in at the main base. The tents, with two people per, were okay, but they didn’t keep out all the wind. A single heater filled the center of each tent, with cots and waterproof cabinets for storage.

Given the sour reactions from Eyetooth and Leung, the Matrix connection was spotty and, once again, tightly monitored. Danvers met with everyone in the main shelter over a spread of weird pictures and diagrams spread out on a table. Pineapple stood at the opposite end of the table and noticed, once again, that Cao was missing. “Where’s Cao?”

“She’s preparing the Airdox drills with Gauntlet.” Danvers looked at each of them. “If you’ll note on the pictures near Pineapple, we’ve detected a large mass two hundred and fifty meters deep—and when I give that number, I mean that’s the tip of whatever this thing is. So far, we haven’t been able to measure its depth or width. It’s too far under the ice at this point.”

Elijah’s eyes widened. Pineapple snickered, pretty sure the guy had a hard-on at the mention of something that big.

“The Airdox must have their monowire spools replaced daily, which is why we brought two. While one is drilling, the other will be under maintenance. This will make it possible to drill twenty-four hours a day with small breaks.”

“How long do you think it’ll take to reach the tip?” Elijah asked.

“Normally the Airdox can cut three centimeters a minute, guided by hydraulic legs. Since we’re not drilling sideways, but straight down, we’ve rigged them on a crane that will lower them at roughly the same speed. However, given that this is ice and not solid rock, we’re estimating two days, maybe less. But we’re all going to have to pitch in when we can. Your riggers can’t run the machines in twenty-four hour stretches, so some of you are going to have to learn to run them manually. We’re each putting in four-hour shifts.”

Pineapple raised his hand. “I’ll do it.”

“So will I,” Niko said.

“I will.” Cake stepped forward .

All eyes turned to Elijah, Eyetooth, and Leung.

Leung was the first to hold up his hands. “I am so not a day laborer.”

“Why don’t we jus’ set up sprites to do this?” Eyetooth looked at everyone. “I’m sure Leung and I can whip up whatever y’all need to keep the machines runnin’.”

Danvers pursed his lips. “Let me discuss it with Lucas—see if they’re up to it.”

“Don’t those Airdox belong to your team?” Leung asked.

“Oh, naw. Those belong to Danvers’ people. We brought all the other equipment. Gauntlet has a whole cache of stuff.”

Sergeant Danvers looked at Leung. “Why don’t the two of you get started on that? It wouldn’t hurt to have the program ready, just in case it’s a go. We’d like to start digging as soon as the Airdox are in position and ready. Now, a word of warning. They are loud. We’re issuing protective head gear for everyone. You’ll be able to communicate through the gear. If the machine’s running, do not take those suckers off if you want to keep your hearing.”

Pineapple watched Leung and Eyetooth as they headed to a small sitting area by one of the large heaters nearby. He still didn’t know what to make of Eyetooth. Their little dive had been dangerous, but at least it seemed like it changed their relationship—at least they weren’t sniping at each other any more.

His attention drifted back to the conversation with Danvers, but he wasn’t really listening. Danvers was a stiff, and breaking ice wasn’t his kind of fun. So, his attention moved on.

He focused on Kyrie, standing beside Elijah. The physical adept was paying attention, but she was also looking at her AR. He could tell from the way her eyes moved.

<Taking notes?>

She was so smooth. Didn’t even flinch while standing there. <Yeah, I am, actually. You aren’t even paying attention, are you?>

<Nope. This isn’t really my thing.>

He waited a few beats to see if she had a response. When it looked like she didn’t, he sent another message. <So … care to fill me in on the little secret?>

<What secret?>

<The one you three were so intense about in the MV on the way over here. You know I don’t like secrets, Kyrie.>

This time she did glance over at him before answering.  <I promised Elijah I wouldn’t talk about it.>

<Hey, it’s me, remember?> He gave her a wide toothy grin.

That got her. She smiled and looked away. <Fine. Leung thinks we have a traitor. That someone took up Amazonia’s offer.>

It was Pineapple’s’ turn to try to not look flummoxed. <You serious?>

<They’re not sure, but yeah, that’s what they think. But Leung’s got evidence that someone’s communicating with someone back in Amazonia.>

The troll thought of a few good words, but decided not to burn Kyrie’s ears with them. <And they thought it was me, so they kept me out?>

<Pineapple, you’re the first person Leung cleared. And Elijah agreed. He knows you better than you think.>

<How’s that?>

<Because he said subterfuge isn’t your way. If you wanted to betray us, you’d do it in the open—and in a much more violent way.>

Pineapple grinned. <Aww…he does know me.>

“Mr. Pineapple?” Danvers pinned him with a look from across the table. “Do you have something to add?”

“No, I’m good. I’m damn good.”

Everyone smiled or snickered before Danvers continued.

Six hours later, the okay came through. Leung helped Eyetooth get her sprite in place, everyone donned their gear, and Gauntlet gave the all clear as he started up the machine.

Pineapple winced. That thing was loud. He could still hear it through his gear, and stepped as far back as he could. They were all little dots of color in the white snow and ice. Once Gauntlet gave the clear signal, everyone filed back into the shelter. Except Cao. She stood to the side and watched the drill work.

She turned as Pineapple came up behind her. “You look like a big, walking teddy bear.”

He laughed. “Don’t tell that to Leung. I think he’s over stuffed animals for a while.” Pineapple nudged her back. “You okay? You look a little down.”

“I really wanted to run the Airdox.” Cao’s tone had just a hint of whine in it.

“I thought you were going to help Gauntlet do the watch on them?”

“I am. But my shift doesn’t start for another three hours.”

He could have sworn he saw her gray bottom lip stick out from under her large, fur-lined hood. He wanted to talk to her, but not through the gear. He wanted to talk to her one on one. “Is there a time when either of the machines aren’t running?”

Cao lifted her hand to move windows around in her AR. “Yeah, in about eight hours. There’s a two-hour period as they exchange machines—take one off, put the other on. Niko wants to help with that since I’ll be coming off my shift.”

“Meet me behind the shelter then.”

She looked up at him, braver now, and showed no fear or embarrassment when her hood fell back just a little to reveal her eyes. “Why?”

“Got something I need to talk to you about. Won’t take a minute, but I think it’s something you should know.”

Cao frowned but she nodded. “Hopefully not too long. They’re going to do a meal then and talk about the progress.”

“Just meet me. I’ll be there.” Pineapple stepped away and saw Leung leaving the shelter. The hacker was on his way back to his tent when he stopped. Leung froze in place a few seconds before he raised his arms and began tapping and moving AR images visible only to him. He looked back at the shelter, spotted Pineapple and waved. Pineapple waved back.

“You okay, Leung? Any more giant bears?” he asked.

“No. Just you.” The young man looked worried. “Is Cao online?”

“Not really. She’s got her AR up while she watches Gauntlet.” He guessed they were at a safe enough distance from the drill, and removed his ear protection before switching to text. <But I’d vouch for her, Leung. The girl’s been so involved in these drills, I don’t think she even remembers the meet back at the airport.>

That set the hacker back. He removed his own gear and took a step back and pointed. <How’d you know? Were you listening in the truck?>

<No. And relax. It’s not me. Kyrie told me about you finding something. And she’s right. I’m not into that kind of shit. I’ll take a full-on fight over a backstab any day of the week.> He waved for the hacker to follow him a small distance farther away. <Here’s the thing—I agree with Kyrie about Eyetooth. Be careful around her. If one of their team is contacting Hualpa’s people, and they find out you’re monitoring it, that puts a target on your back.>

Leung scrunched his face in the shadow of his parka hood, his dark hair blending with the black fur trim. <That’s exactly why I haven’t tried to hack into the information—because it might alert them that someone’s watching.>

<Maybe you should. Get things out in the open.>

<But Elijah said—>

<Screw Elijah. Let’s ferret the sumbitch out that’s doing this and have at ’em.> He grinned. <And don’t worry. If something goes down, I gotcha covered.>

Leung looked less than enthused. <Yippie.>

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Leung needed air—even if it was freezing cold.

Nearly smothered in a parka, gloves, goggles, boots, and thermal pants, he stepped out from the shelter and walked as far away from the roaring Airdox as he could. Over a day of drilling, and they were already more than two hundred meters down. Danvers reported they were making good progress, and Elijah’s and Tango’s excitement was reaching a fevered pitch.

Pineapple’s suggestion that he catch one of the traitor’s missives and hack into it kept rolling around in his mind. He was sure if he did that, he’d know the source. Part of him wasn’t sure he wanted to, and the other half just wanted to go home. He didn’t like it here, and he couldn’t care less about the tower. He wanted to be paid, warm, and safe. In that order, more or less.

<Hoi, omae.>

He turned to see Kyrie approaching. Her parka was easy to spot, since she’d chosen red. Her reasoning was she didn’t want anyone failing to spot her if she fell into a crevice. They spoke through comm systems built into the suits to avoid exposing mouth and ears to the elements.

“You skipping off?” she asked

“Just needed some air. Wanna walk? It won’t be far—gotta stay in wireless range …”

“Sure.”

They continued for a few meters before the question came. He’d been waiting for it. “You find anything else new on whoever’s sending the information?”

“No.” He liked Kyrie, and he knew Elijah trusted her as much as he trusted him. “They’re still sending them. I suggested to Elijah that we tell Danvers and let them see about tracing them or shutting them down completely—”

“No!”

He stopped and looked at Kyrie. “Why?”

“Leung, what if someone in Danvers’ crew is doing it?”

“An Aztech crew working for Amazonia? Not likely. Besides …” His voice trailed off as an ARO flashed in his vision. He extended the image out and reached out to touch the icon.

“What?” Kyrie watched him moving his gloved hand, but she couldn’t see his AR.

“Whoever it is just sent another one. But I’m not letting this one go.” He made a copy of the file without delaying it in the least, snagging a duplicate smooth and clean. He couldn’t help grinning in satisfaction.

“What did you just do?”

He pushed his AR away and focused on Kyrie. “What?”

“Leung, you’re grinning like a Cheshire cat. What did you do?” Her eyes lit up. “Did you catch them?”

“No. But I think by the time I analyze what I’ve got I’ll be able to give Elijah a clearer picture.” He held up a hand. “Don’t worry. Soon as he knows, I’m sure he’ll fill you in.”

“But you won’t.”

“No. If I’m wrong, I don’t want you guys falsely accusing someone.” He started to head back to the shelter when another ARO popped up on his AR. He stopped and examined the information it was relaying. He stared, then stared some more.

It was a new host. With no ID. In the middle of nowhere.

“Leung?”

Quickly tracking the signal’s location, he started trotting toward it.

“Leung … what’s wrong? What’re you doing?”

“Something just popped up out of nowhere. A host. It shouldn’t be here.”

“Maybe something someone just turned on?”

“Maybe.” But he didn’t think so. No one was around to turn something on. Whatever this something might be, it was sitting out in the middle of the ice.

After trudging through the thick snow and nearly slipping and falling on his ass over a patch of ice, he and Kyrie found the transmitting device under a glacial overhang that looked like a wave off the coast, frozen in time. Standing beneath it, Kyrie pointed up at a hole in the ice. The host, unlike most, seemed to be held in a single device, and that device was directly beneath it, half-buried in the small pile of shards that had broken free with it.

“You think it was frozen in there and fell out?” Kyrie stood over it, but she didn’t touch it.

“Maybe … Danvers said the drill was causing a bit of seismic activity. A few crevices have caved in nearby. This thing might be heavier than the ice, and the vibrations kicked it loose.” He knelt beside it, his AR kicking back all sorts of readings on the thing. Not one of them useful.

“So, maybe that’s why it just showed up.” She looked up at the hole in the wave of ice over them, then down at the device. “It came loose, and the fall turned it on.”

Leung pursed his lips as he reached for it. It looked like a thin black box. Six inches long, two inches thick, and four inches wide. A green light flickered on one end—some sort of power indicator. Beside the light were two plugs. He didn’t recognize the type, but on the opposite side he did.

“It looks old, but the signal it’s sending works with the current Matrix protocols. The latest, just-barely-revised Matrix protocols. Weirdest damn thing.”

He stepped closer. “Signal’s dying. But check it—I can jack in.”

“But you won’t.”

“I won’t?”

“You’re just going to jack into a strange device? After what happened in the last host?”

Leung smiled his million-nuyen smile. “This is what I do. Elijah has his tower, I have completely bizarre Matrix devices.”

He chipped at the small pile carefully and dug out the device, along with a good chunk of surrounding ice. “But I’m not totally without caution. Let’s get this baby inside.”

Elijah was more than interested in the device. With the three of them crowded in his tent, the mage did a series of complex tests on it and declared it clean. No astral signature. Though while he did this, the light went to red and then the machine shut off. When it did, it disappeared from Leung’s AR.

“I think you just sucked the power out,” Leung said.

“Think this could have something to do with the messages going to Amazonia?” Elijah asked.

“No. I haven’t seen it pop up before. And it was buried in the ice, so it’s been there a while. Or someone worked hard to bury it and ice it over.”

Elijah sat back in his chair. “So, someone else was here. And left this.”

“It didn’t just grow there,” the hacker said.

“How long has it been there?”

Leung shrugged. “I don’t know, just looking at it. I could jack in and see, maybe even find a serial number so we can tell who made it.”

“No.”

Kyrie stepped forward. “Elijah, we need to know what this is.”

“Leung is not going to jack into anything we can’t identify. I’m not risking him.”

“Then why not let me take a crack at it, sugah?”

Everyone turned to see Eyetooth at the door of the tent.

“How the hell—” Kyrie was instantly in front of Leung and Elijah, her knife ready.

“Whoa …!” Eyetooth put up a hand. “Don’t get your panties all wound up, darlin’. I saw that little machine the instant it turned on. Martin was all over it, and told me Leung had it.”

Leung moved closer to her. “When this thing was powered up, did you notice anything significant about it?”

“I noticed I didn’t have access to it. Neither did Martin. It showed up as a device carrying a host, but it looked like just the shell of one. Not filled in. And I couldn’t get past that.” She touched Leung’s upper arm as she moved further in and looked at it sitting on the desk beside Elijah. “I can tell you it’s wrong. Very wrong.”

“What do you mean by that?” Elijah asked.

She looked at him. “When it was active, Martin sensed dissonance. It’s not from a good place. I think you need to put it back where you found it and don’t touch it again.”

Leung, Kyrie, and Elijah looked at each other, but it was Elijah that spoke. “I’m afraid we can’t do that. I think we should alert Danvers and Lucas that we found it, and that it might belong to another group we don’t know about.”

“What if it’s part of Hualpa’s group?” Leung asked.

“It’s probably not the Aleph Society.” Kyrie said. “Mystery tech doesn’t seem to be their thing.”

“A third party?” Leung ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, that’s unnerving.”

“Which is why I think we should let him know.” Elijah stood and picked the device up. “Let them worry about it.”

Leung stood in front of him. “If you give that to him, we can pretty much kiss it goodbye. We won’t see it again. Aren’t you the least bit curious as to what it’s for?”

“Leung, you’re not using it.”

“I’m the only one here qualified to.” He pointed at Eyetooth. “She can’t jack into it, and it obviously needs a physical connection in its present state. I say we take a quick look before we hand it over.” He searched the mage’s face and knew he nearly had him hooked.

“I vote we don’t tell anyone else about it all.” Kyrie looked at Eyetooth. “Tango included.”

The technomancer shrugged. “Keeping Tango in the dark is a bad idea. She’s a runner first. We don’t belong to Aztech any more than y’all do.”

“I agree.” Elijah nodded to Eyetooth. “Bring Tango here, and we’ll discuss this.”

Tango had no desire to give anything up to the Azzies, and sided with Leung.

“Go nuts,” she said. “See what you can see.”

Elijah hadn’t said anything after that, just looked thoughtful for a minute. Leung didn’t say another word; he just waited. Finally, the arcano-archaeologist nodded. “All right, a quick peek, nothing more.”

Leung had a mysterious host to explore behind the backs of his corporate employers. He was thrilled.

He got set up in his tent. Elijah insisted on hooking him up to some health monitors and making sure two people were watching him. Eyetooth insisted on being one of them.

Leung plugged in. For a moment he saw nothing. Then his vision started to focus, and he saw the host around him start to materialize as thin white lines. He concentrated, and it began to resolve itself. To become solid, to turn into something instead of nothing.

Martin, Eyetooth’s Sprite, appeared in front of him thanks to Eyetooth’s wireless connection to his deck. He threw a handful of sparkling hearts all over his desktop. A message in large script appeared. BE CAREFUL!

I’ll do my best, he thought as he glanced at Elijah one last time through his AR. “When I come back, I’ll buy you a dozen mysterious towers.”

Elijah’s expression didn’t change. “Just come back.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Eyetooth was a bit surprised at the elaborate measures taken to ensure Leung’s safety. The fact that others thought they were necessary made her worry. She stood by Tango, who draped an arm around her shoulders as her eyes traced the connections sticking out of Leung’s jacks. The cables ran down the couch, under it, and then along the floor to the opposite side and out the door. Eyetooth wasn’t sure how that was supposed to protect anyone, since Leung was going to be putting himself into the device.

She watched Elijah’s face, studying his expression. She’d gathered from Leung that he and the professor were friends. Probably closer than anyone else on this dig. The prof’s concern was definitely visible on his face. Next to him was that tough chick, the one that stuck close to the professor. Kyrie. Eyetooth wasn’t sure what she thought of her yet. She was always guarded and on guard. She reminded her of Cake … only not as nice.

“Do we have a visual yet?” Elijah asked.

“Not yet,” Tango said as he moved holo-vid screens around. “Once he’s fully into the host we should notice.”

“And we’ll see what he’s sees?”

“That’s the plan.”

Eyetooth frowned. How was that possible? To see what a hacker could see inside the Matrix? Unless they planned on taking a look at the host’s sculpt. That was possible—the computer rendering a 3-D image of what Leung would see. That is, if he got in.

“We have activity on the box.” Tango moved two screens and pointed to the one on the right. “He’s hacking—”

All at once the screens disappeared.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. The device is still online. Leung is still in there, we just don’t know where.”

Elijah leaned on the station’s cabinet. “What?”

Tango faced him. “He just … disappeared.”

The lines of the host had solidified into a door, and that’s what Leung was trying to open. Hacking in was a little bit more complex than he thought it’d be. He applied a variety of maneuvers he’d learned over his career, and what finally gave him access was an ID he took from the documents he’d found in that toy store. The door opened, and he stepped through.

The host, disappointingly, was blank. A black-and-white grid stretched out in front of Leung on all sides. Either being left in the cold had damaged the sculpt used, or none had ever been applied. He immediately copied information from the device onto his deck. The icon itself wasn’t anything he recognized. He did a quick double check to make sure he had everything in place before he tapped the ARO.

At first nothing happened.

Then two field screens came up on AR. One requiring a name, the other a password.

How old school is this?

Since he logged in with the ID he’d spoofed, he typed in that name and then ran through a complex set of passwords based on the sequence that gave him entry to the commlink. He was equally surprised when the password was the same one he’d used to gain access to the device. Maybe this thing was owned by someone for a special use? Only home users or Matrix Security illiterates used the same login and passwords with more than one entry.

He had little time to think as a second doorway appeared in front of him. It looked like a regular door, but his diagnostics told him it was a link to a host. He immediately checked to see where this host was located, and felt his jaw drop.

<Elijah, do you see this? It’s ridiculous. It’s like this thing has a code in it that reveals a hidden host. It’s brilliant. Who would ever think to look for a host on that device?>

There was no answer.

<Hello? Hey, moon base alpha, anyone there?>

Still no response.

Every nerve in his body told him to go back right now. Take what he already had and log out. But like Elijah was obsessed with chasing knowledge, Leung was equally obsessed with the Matrix. Especially with mysteries in the Matrix.

His curiosity won out as he encoded the information and added it to the packet for Elijah. When it was finished, he stepped in front of the door and pushed it inward.

A persona in the Matrix isn’t always sure what a new environment will look like, or what the experience will be like. Hosts, like nodes, are sculpted at the owner’s whim, and can look as realistic as the creator wants, or as crazy.

This creator went for realistic.

In fact, for a second Leung thought he’d somehow logged out of the Matrix and stepped outside the shelter. The sculpt was exactly where their dig was taking place. But it wasn’t exact. There wasn’t a shelter, or a row of tents. No carrier for the drills—and there wasn’t a hole in the ice. But other than that …

As he stepped forward, symbols appeared in front of him, overlaid to match the ice formations around him. He didn’t recognize them. He made a complete three hundred and sixty-degree turn, making captures of the images as he went, and saved them to the folder. Leung stopped when a tower-like symbol appeared over the smooth ice where a hole now sat in reality.

He started in that direction and saw glyphs pop up along the symbols. If it was a language, it wasn’t one he recognized. He saw numbers displayed, but they were deeper than the eighty meters Danvers was digging.

Leung surveyed the landscape, trying to make sense of it. The only reason someone would create a host like this would be for education, maybe training, or study. And to make it, someone would have had to have visited this area of the Antarctic before they did.

But why? And who?

He knew he was going to have to hack into the host’s software, and he was pretty sure even attempting such a thing would alert security, if it hadn’t already. But his scans hadn’t detected that he’d tripped anything yet, and nothing seemed out of place.

Yeah, if I don’t count a host that looks exactly like our dig site, on a device that shouldn’t be here. I agree with Eyetooth—this is all wrong.

He decided to at least attempt to find the host’s owner, or at least ID whatever company had funded this. He went back to where he’d stepped through, and discovered it wasn’t far from the wave of ice where he and Kyrie found the device. Remembering that conversation, he was pretty sure this thing wasn’t dropped by anyone on either team, and it sure as hell didn’t belong to Aztechnology.

No … this was something new. And whoever made it was interested in the tower. They knew about it already.

Leung started moving in deeper. It was a weird place, but seemed pretty benign. As long as he didn’t trip an IC along the way, it should all work out.

Pineapple left the shelter and headed toward the hole. He’d heard the drill stop some time ago and was curious. Both Airdox were grounded nearby, their maintenance teams busy rethreading them, but the small drill was missing. Cao sat in front of the monitors, her parka hood pulled as far down as it would go. He made sure to make a lot of noise behind her so as not to frighten her.

She turned her head slightly. “You don’t have to do that. I’ve got great hearing. One of the perks of my condition.”

Pineapple didn’t answer. He knelt beside her and glanced at the holo-vids. “You guys found the tip?”

“Gauntlet’s taking the small drill down. We’re within a few centimeters of the top of the thing, but now he wants to rout out the ice around it.” She stopped and her eyes unfocused.

Pineapple knew Gauntlet was talking to her, so he waited. After a few seconds she blinked and looked at him. “He says it’s damn cold down there, but it looks like he got the width right. Should be able to excavate around the tower without hitting it.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“Leung still checking out that device he found?”

“Yeah…” Pineapple glanced back at the shelter. “I don’t like it. We got enough going on as it is to be monkeyin’ around with someone’s missing commlink.”

“That what it is?”

“Sort of. But sort of not. Whatever it is, it’s nuts.”

“You’re just worried, that’s all.”

“Maybe …” he straightened. “I’m gonna go take a look around where he found it. Just to give myself some peace of mind.”

“Okay … just be careful,” she replied. “We’re going to reach the tower soon. Can’t wait to see Elijah’s face.”

Pineapple patted the top of her hear parka and lumbered away. He replaced his goggles and zipped up his giant parka before headed back toward the shelter. He wanted to check not only on Leung, but Kyrie and Elijah as well.

Eyetooth didn’t remember pacing, but the moment Elijah moved from where he’d been studying screens, she came back to herself. She watched his eyes unfocus and figured he had some kind of incoming message or communication. She wanted to know if it was from Leung, but didn’t ask. She didn’t have access to his PAN and didn’t want to bother him. He looked as worried as she was, though.

“Heart rate’s up. Whatever he’s experiencing, he’s tense,” Tango said.

“You think he’s being chased?” Kyrie looked at Elijah. When he didn’t acknowledge her, she reached out and waved at him. “Hey.”

He blinked and refocused on her. “Yes?”

“Leung’s heart’s up. You think he’s being chased?”

“He knows to send a message out if he gets in too deep.”

But we’ve lost contact, Eyetooth thought. She didn’t say it out loud, though, because she figured it would make no difference to Elijah.

“Get out of there soon,” she whispered. “I still have to make you dinner.”

Leung approached a wave formation as his agent returned with some interesting information off the host’s activity log. Most all of the communications with it originated in Antarctica, but not from either shadow team or the Azzies.

A handful of the communiques came from outside of the Antarctic, but the agent wasn’t able to pinpoint where. Of the seven, two groups had the same ID numbers—neither of which he recognized. Usually an ID would have a variant of a sending or receiving node’s location, but these were blank. The whole thing spoke of Matrix technology years ahead of what he knew, or new tech developed by deep pockets.

This kind of detail wasn’t set up as a hobby, much less an accident. This host was here for a reason.

It was time to log out.

Nothing happened.

Leung frowned and tried the logout sequence again. The door didn’t show up. He reached, stretched, twisted, and pulled. Still nothing happened. Leung opened all channels. <Hello? Is anybody listening? I need a little help here. I can’t log out and don’t have any warnings—>

Abruptly a warning appeared in large orange letters. INTRUSION COUNTERMEASURES DETECTED.

Damn! 

He’d waited too long to back out and somehow tripped an alarm. He drew his katana from his back and looked around. His persona didn’t feel the cold of the sculpted Antarctic, so he wasn’t encumbered by the thick padding of a parka. He kept his perimeter icon view up and loaded to the right of his periphery, much like a HUD for combat. So far nothing moved or showed up on the view, but he kept his guard up while pulling out everything he had to try to crash the IC.

He was sure the others noticed his body reacting to panic in the waking world. So he knew they would do what they could to get him out. But Leung knew the risks. Once IC had your number, it wasn’t going to treat you nice.

He worked at a furious pace to hack deeper into the host. It was a maze suddenly, a thicket where he needed to place mark after mark to carve his way through. He felt growing pressure as he continued to look around, expecting some kind of yeti or snow monster to appear out of nowhere and take his head off.

The shivering started after he broke through the third level of encryption. He wasn’t supposed to shiver. He was in cold sim, so he shouldn’t have sensory input. But his lightly clad feet now felt like ice and when he looked down, he wasn’t standing on ice anymore—

He was calf deep in the ice.

Black ice.

Checking his health monitor, he felt his heart drop into his knees. Leung wasn’t running cold sim anymore.

He was totally and utterly fucked.

“We need to pull him out.”

Kyrie looked at Tango and Elijah. She heard the alarms on Leung’s monitors, saw the man twitch on the couch.

“He has a back door. He’ll use it if he needs it.”

“I don’t know—” Elijah said.

“Yanking him out could kill him,” Eyetooth said.

More alarms sounded.

“So could leaving him in,” Kyrie said. For a moment, everyone in the room was paralyzed by indecision, but then the monitors connected to Leung’s heart moved wildly up and down. Everyone moved, and quickly. Leung’s body jerked twice as Kyrie and Elijah held his shoulders down and Tango jammed a needle into his chest.

Leung realized he had seconds—maybe. The ice was climbing up his legs too fast and would soon reach his hips. As his programs ate away at the IC, Leung encrypted the packet of information again, and this time he slipped it into a message, duplicated it, and gave each one a different ID, all of them from those the agent found in the activity logs. If he was lucky, one of them would get through and find Elijah.

Dear god … he hoped one of them would. He had to tell the mage there was another player. And this one didn’t fight fair …

“Leung!”

Eyetooth’s anguished cry pulled at Elijah’s chest as he stayed outside the range of the working team. Elijah had decided that keeping this secret wasn’t helping any more, so he sent out an alarm for medical care. A crew of Aztechnology medical personnel was now in the shelter, working to keep Leung alive. No one dared remove the cables from his jack. But Elijah already recognized the symptoms. He remembered what Leung had said the other night. If IC had been activated, he wouldn’t be able to log out. And given the first sign of trouble—Leung should have already been out of there.

But he wasn’t.

And he wouldn’t have voluntarily flipped to hot sim. The countermeasures used wherever he was were brutal, and rigged to kill whatever curious mind dared take a look.

Leung sent the last of the packets through the small hole he’d created just as the ice crushed his chest and wrapped around his throat. He gasped for air, unable to feel the rest of his body. He didn’t know if his physical self was still alive or dead, he only knew this was his last run. He cursed silently, filled his thoughts with anger and regret. He’d used everything in his arsenal against it, but he hadn’t been prepared—he’d let it get hold of his persona program at the roots and once it was in, there was no way to escape.

Leung hoped Elijah finally found whatever it was he was searching for, that Kyrie got that payout she dreamed so much about. He wished Pineapple the best, and regretted not getting to know him better. Cao he knew would carry on, and he hoped this run had instilled the confidence she needed.

As the ice moved over his face, filled his mouth and lungs and sealed him inside of it forever, his final thought was of Eyetooth, and the regret of never tasting her fried chicken.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Eyetooth stood next to Leung’s body as Pineapple helped the doc load it into the body bag. She made sure he had his commlink and deck with him, along with his things from his bag. Tears fell like tiny diamonds when she reached out and touched his cold cheeks. His eyes were closed. His face didn’t show any of the pain she was sure he suffered wherever he’d been. No one really knew what happened. No one knew what he’d seen. What he’d experienced.

The docs said it was a heart attack. That’s what IC could do to you. Wherever he’d been, something had taken him and killed him. She wondered if she ever found the place where he died, would she see him? Would his persona still be there?

When the doc pronounced him dead, she thought the professor was going to pass out. He’d grabbed the nearest chair, and Kyrie had grabbed his arm. Leung had told Eyetooth that he and Elijah went back a long ways. They had worked on a lot of jobs together. Staring down at the hacker’s beautiful face, it seemed senseless that he would die like this—killed by a strange device somehow unearthed from the Antarctic ice.

Irritation still seethed through at how Elijah had dismissed the tragedy the moment Gauntlet appeared at the door and announced they’d reached the tower. She watched Gauntlet’s face fall when he realized what must have happened and saw the dead hacker on the couch. At least her teammate had come inside with some kind of reverence, but the professor?

He’d shoved his old friend’s memory aside, grabbed up his parka and ran out of the shelter like he couldn’t wait to leave. Eyetooth watched Kyrie, who seemed less enthused about leaving Leung. Eventually she followed the professor, as did Gauntlet and Niko. Pineapple was the one that stayed behind and helped. They’d wanted to put Leung in the snow in the back and let the ice preserve his body. But Pineapple put the kibosh on that pretty damn fast. He insisted they put him in his tent.

Her breath caught when Pineapple pulled the zipper over Leung’s face. She put her hands to her cheeks, and was a bit surprised but grateful when the troll pulled her to him and gently held her. He didn’t say a word as she cried and eventually she felt another presence in the shelter.

Her sprite told her it was Cao. She was crying, too. Eyetooth pulled away from Pineapple and looked at the goblin. “Would … would you like to see him?”

“No,” Cao said quickly. “No. I want to remember him alive … not dead.” After she put her hand on the bag, she ran out of the shelter.

“She’ll be all right. I hope.” Pineapple wiped at his own face. “You really liked the conceited little fucker, didn’t you?”

 “Yeah. I did.”

There didn’t seem to be much else to say. Pineapple turned and lifted the body bag. He didn’t just throw it over his shoulder, but held it as if he were holding something very special. “I’m gonna put him on my pallet. Elijah’s probably already down the hole, and I think Kyrie, Tango, and Niko are there as well.”

“You didn’t want to go down?”

“Nah. Only four can take the cage down at a time. And I take up three spots as it is.” He paused at the door as Eyetooth zipped up her parka, then opened the door for her. “Wanna give me a hand? Make him comfortable?”

Eyetooth nodded. She sniffed and held the door, but held up a finger before she stepped out. “Just a minute.” She wanted that damn device. She wanted to kill it herself. Take it apart piece by piece and bury it all over the Antarctic.

But when she ran out the back door to check the tent, the small device was gone.

The further down the cage traveled in that ten-meter wide shaft, the lower the temperature plunged. Elijah appreciated the thick parka, the wicking layers beneath, the pants, and the heavy boots. But most of all, he appreciated the glasses he wore because they hid his emotions.

Leung’s death was an icicle in his chest. His inner self warred with the need to discover why and how the hacker died and the desire—no—the obsession of seeing the tower for himself. He wanted to touch it.

To see it with his eyes.

Kyrie stood beside him, but a little apart. She’d grown quiet after the doc pronounced Leung dead, her face a blank mask. The physical adept had been less animated at Slycer’s death on the run before this one. But then, the two of them hadn’t known Slycer very well, or shared much time with him.

Tango had apologized several times, as if she wasn’t sure what else to say, and Niko’s expression gave his own sadness away. Elijah wasn’t fooled—these two weren’t sad for themselves as much as they were afraid. No one knew why that device had been there. No one knew where it came from. What if it were related to the tower? What if the tower presented more deadly mysteries?

Elijah already knew these questions because he’d asked them himself. They rattled around in his head as the cage descended and for a time, the shaft grew darker. He could make out tiny robotic lights moving with them, taking up positions along the shaft wall to illuminate it as they descended.

When they reached the bottom, his jaw hung open as the cage door opened and he nearly ran toward it.

Sticking up from the hollowed out ice was a conical-shaped monolith. Bits of ice still clung to its surface, which gleamed when the light hit it. Elijah could make out specks of gold and azure in the light as he walked around it and Kyrie tracked him with their hand light.

“What the hell is it made of?”

Elijah shook his head. “I’m not sure. Niko, was Gauntlet able to analyze it?”

“No.” The shorter troll moved in the opposite direction as they all circled the twenty-foot tall pike. “But Danvers’ techs agree that the tower itself goes much deeper and becomes much wider. If he’d cleared more of it, he would have run out of ice for the floor.”

“What’s it for?” Tango asked as she approached it, and then, with just a hint of hesitation, touched it with her gloved hand.

Elijah actually flinched. He expected a light, or maybe a glyph—but nothing came of it. He started removing his glove to touch the surface with his bare hand.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Niko warned. “The temperature down here is fifty degrees below what it is on the surface. Just removing your glove could be far more dangerous than touching the tower.”

The mage nodded, and touched it with his gloved hand. The surface was smooth, with ice crystals that seemed to form right before his eyes. “Is there any way to warm it up down here?”

“No—adding heat could sacrifice the integrity of the shaft.” Niko said. “If you melt the ice at the bottom—”

“The top collapses on top of it,” Elijah finished. “I see. So, what are the plans for getting inside?”

When the troll shrugged, Kyrie spoke up. “I guess we start drilling into it?”

“We have the tools,” Tango said as she turned and headed for the cage. “But we’re not going to be able to stay down here too long. My fingers and toes are already getting numb. We’ll have to work in teams.”

Kyrie and Niko joined her in the cage, but Elijah hesitated. He’d noticed the discomfort of the cold, but his curiosity …

“Elijah, either you get in this cage, or I put you in it.” Kyrie started toward him.

But he came to her instead. Once the cage was secured, Niko signaled Gauntlet, and the crane lifted them to the top.

Elijah watched the spiral become a dot in the darkness until it faded away. The further away from it he got, the more Leung’s death re-emerged. When they were back on the surface, he started toward the shelter and the tent behind it.

He intended to get some answers. Even if he had to take that damn box apart himself.

An hour later, Elijah sat at the back table, his hands moving in the air in front of him. He was still furious at discovering that the device that had killed Leung was missing. Then Danvers didn’t clear him to work a drill. Then his volunteering to use magic to keep the workers warm was summarily quashed by Lucas. The Aztechnology man didn’t want to waste any mage’s powers on that when they didn’t know what they might find in the tower once it was open.

So, with nothing else to do, he’d set himself in the corner to use VR and go over what Leung had gathered.

The door opened, and Kyrie stepped into the shelter while removing her gloves and goggles. She looked pale and stressed, but that was to be expected—the mystery device, as well as Leung’s suspicious death, had her on edge.

Had them all on edge.

“Done already?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light, despite recent events.

Kyrie headed to a table set up for hot beverages and poured a soykaf. “Half an hour’s all I can take working in that hole.” She sipped the bitter, black brew and grimaced. “I swear, trolls really are crazy. Those two nuts Pineapple and Niko are having a contest to see which one can stay down there the longest. So far, Pineapple’s winning.”

“Of course he is—he’s almost as stubborn as you are.” Elijah grinned briefly, and was pleased to see a small smile from her in return. “How’s it going overall?” 

“Slow but steady,” Kyrie replied. “In another four, maybe six hours, we’ll have a nice opening in the tower.”

She walked over to the table and sat down across from him. “How’re you doing? You don’t exactly sound like you’ve calmed down yet.”

“No, I haven’t.” He waved his hands again, as if moving papers around. “I will give Leung credit on his organization. He was good at it. The problem is I haven’t been able to make heads or tails of some of it.”

She leaned forward, hands curled around her steaming cup. “Anything useful?”

“Actually, there’s some things here on our friends that didn’t show up in their dossiers.”

“Oh?”

“Did you know that Gauntlet is a former Amazonian?”

Kyrie blinked. “Really?”

“Yes. And Leung noticed, as did I, that he’s spending a lot of time with Cao.”

Now she frowned. “Elijah … you don’t mistrust Cao?”

“She’s from Brazil. And I know both she and Pineapple weren’t happy that we had to deal with Humanis.”

“I thought you and Leung had already agreed that Pineapple wasn’t a risk.”

“I still believe that. But I didn’t know that Cao’s visited Amazonia several times. She was born in Brazil, but never formally lived there. So there might be hidden loyalties to Hualpa.”

Kyrie sipped her soykaf and winced again. “That’s ridiculous. Cao’s not like that.”

“Maybe not, but either way, I want you to keep an eye on Gauntlet and Cao. Especially Gauntlet. He seems like the natural choice, and I plan to speak with Tango about this as well. Just watch him. I think he could influence Cao easily.”

Kyrie nodded. “Okay … but I’m more worried about where that device went.”

Elijah refocused on her. “Danvers, Tango, Niko, the techs—they all insist they didn’t take it. But it’s missing. And I’m going to find it—one way or another.”

Kyrie leaned back at the very controlled, but very powerful venom in his voice just as the shelter door burst open.

They both turned to see Gauntlet step in. “Professor! We’re in!”

PART FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Elijah was at the cage, ready to go down, in practically a heartbeat. Below, Pineapple and Niko were waiting; Niko was going to head back up to get warm, while Pineapple kept an eye on Elijah to make sure he didn’t get too wrapped up in the tower. Anxiety pulled at Elijah’s stomach, turned it over several times before he reached the bottom. Pineapple told him to relax as he opened the cage door and stepped out of his way.

The teams had done a great job of cutting a tall, rectangular hole in the side of the structure. Elijah paused outside of it—unsure of whether to proceed or wait.

<We went inside just to set up lights, but we didn’t disturb nothing.> Pineapple texted. <I’m staying down here, but Niko has frozen toes. Behave yourself when you get down here.>

Elijah nodded, and waited for the cage to start its ascent. He was so focused on what he was about to see, whatever it was, that he didn’t notice the troll hulking behind him. Out of habit, he pulled enough energy to ready a stunball and refocused on the astral as he took a deep breath and stepped through.

If he looked at the small space of what felt like the loft of a large building, the interior was unremarkable. It wasn’t made of the same shiny substance as the surface. It was dull and full of dirt and ice. Given the fact that he was now over eighty percent enclosed and away from the sides of the ice shaft, Elijah used a bit of magic to warm the inside. The heat immediately started melting the ice coating the beams and rafters overhead.

His boots echoed on the solid surface as he moved to the center of the space and looked at it astrally.

Things changed, and his eyes widened as a grin pulled at the corners of his mouth.

The dull walls held a luminance all their own, pulsing with a pattern of color. Blue, green, white, yellow, orange, red, and the sequence started again. The hues were subtle, and it took a bit of concentration to see them. Within the patterns, if he moved close enough to reach out and touch them, he thought he saw faces as they moved through the pulsing lights. When he reached for them, they disappeared, and the light moved away from his touch. When he took off his gloves, the wall felt … warm. But was it from his magic, or was it the tower itself?

Further examination revealed some kind of square set in the floor. He moved a few of the lights closer to see it was a door, but it didn’t have a handle. He knelt down and pressed on it, pulled, jumped on it, but it didn’t move. A closer examination showed it was frozen shut. He fired up another burst of magic and ran his heated hand along the seam, melting the ice away. When he completed the circuit, the door popped up enough for him to get his finger under the lip and pull it open.

He expected to peer into a dark cavern. Instead an eerie, fluid light, much like what he’d seen before, illuminated his way. A quick switch to his mundane senses showed him that whatever was lighting the room below wasn’t just on the astral.

With a sense of urgency, some unknown fear that someone was going to come and take this marvel away from him, Elijah dropped down to the next floor without even thinking of how high the ceiling would be or if he might sustain a serious injury. There was no need, because he didn’t drop as much as eased down to the next floor.

Pineapple said something as he dropped down. Elijah made some vague answer that he hoped was adequate and continued on.

He landed with little or no impact—as if he’d just jumped off the floor into the air—in a round room. Unlike what he referred to as the attic, this room filled the entire circumference of the tower. The floor looked to be made of the same stuff as the attic, but the walls moved and swirled. Their patterns reminded him of clouds filmed over a period of time and then sped up. But the sequence never repeated, and the clouds always changed.

As he stared, fascinated with this display, something behind him grew brighter, casting a shadow of his silhouette against the wall.

When he turned, he staggered back and pressed against the same wall he’d been ogling because now, what had once been an empty room held a large, glowing ball in the center of it. It floated in the center, between the ceiling and the floor.

At first it didn’t move, just pulsed in the same sequence of colors. It took a few more seconds before Elijah realized it was moving in the order of a rainbow. The colors of a prism were always the same. As he watched it, the ball expanded until it came close to filling the room and Elijah pressed himself against the wall. It shrunk enough to allow him room to walk around it, and as he did, he saw shapes forming on the outside of it. At first they didn’t make any sense, until he took a few more steps and noticed a shape that looked a lot like Australia—

Elijah stopped and watched the globe begin a rotation. And as it moved, he saw the edge of the UCAS, but the outline wasn’t like was now. It was something a lot younger. He’d seen maps of the world from the 1920s, as well as the 1820s, and none of them matched the shape of the land masses he was looking at. He watched as South America appeared, and between it and the westernmost tip of Africa, he saw a small grouping of islands, land masses he’d never seen before.

He watched again as Asia moved by, and the Italian peninsula looked odd. Australia appeared again, and it was different, too. The tips of Asia and what had been North America touched—not just as a strait, but as a solid mass. Elijah moved in the opposite direction to get a better look. The Arctic landscape looked different—bigger. So when the tilt of the world brought Antarctica into view, he saw nearly the same outline of land Piri Reis had drawn centuries ago. Land with no snow, and now ice.

Land that had existed before his time—and long before Elijah’s.

The mage stepped back and watched the world as it turned and pulsed. Clouds moved and swirled as time passed. He watched rain become hurricanes and saw tidal waves carry the oceans onto shores. He was seeing time—decades? centuries? millennia?—pass in the blink of an eye and he put his hand to his face. What sort of map was this? Was it the future, or the past? Would it go beyond what they knew?

Or was it so old that now was already so far past what it knew? If he stood there long enough and watched the endless turning, would he see the Earth as he knew it today, and then see it as it would be tomorrow?

An ARO appeared in front of him, with a symbol he hadn’t seen before. Was it from the tower? He felt a lift of excitement as he opened the link.

It wasn’t something from the tower, but it had Leung’s signature. A package from the grave. He saved it to his commlink, feeling anything but cheerful anymore. Was it possible Leung had gotten something through, something important? His attention was now torn between the wonders of the tower, and the possibilities of what had taken his friend from him.

Unfortunately he wasn’t going to get the chance to delve into either. His AR lit up again, but with Pineapple’s call request.

“Pineapple! Elijah! Whoever that spy was contacting—they’re here! We’re under attack!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The first things Elijah noticed when he emerged were the spirits, because how could he not? They were legion, and they rolled toward the tents with the sound of muffled thunder and howling wind. He knew several of them, maybe dozens, had materialized, not because he could see them, but because he saw the snow they kicked up as they passed, the rocks they hurled as they ran, and the dents they pounded into the snow as they closed on the small group of tents. When he caught glimpses of their form, he saw shambling earth mounds, darting wisps of frost, and solidified shapes of mist surging forward. He watched, stunned; Pineapple, of course, charged ahead, yelling.

As the spirits charged forward, the land around them erupted. Rocks spiked through the several-meter-thick snow cover, holes emerged and ice crumbled into them, and the entire face of the landscape became pockmarked with seemingly random destruction. Elijah could see no rhyme or reason to it, other than maybe to cause fear and panic.

In that, it was successful.

The camp was in total disarray, with people running in all directions, leaping onto what vehicles they could find, and trying to avoid the bullets flying from the metahumans closing in behind the spirit phalanx. These were professionals—it wouldn’t take too long for them to get their shit together and figure out how to respond—but there were few people indeed who would not be a little thrown off their stride by howling spirits descending on you in the coldest place on Earth.

Small pieces of ice clattered off Elijah’s visor, from the outer edge of a giant chunk of ice hurtling toward the hole he had just vacated. He looked around, and then dropped flat to avoid another chunk heading straight for his head.

That was bad. He was down on the ice, an immobile target. If the spirits wanted to, they could lay the hurt on him right now. He scrambled back up, knee pads and gloves scraping the ice as he rose, looking ahead, ready to dive to one side or the other if more ice was closing on him.

None was. The two chunks that had flown his way weren’t followed by any more. If one or more of the spirits had been trying to draw a bead on him, for some reason they had given up on the effort. Elijah made a mental note to think about that more at another time—like when he wasn’t directly in the line of a charging mass of spirits.

His next move was clear. He sent his senses out into the air, pulling at the planes next to his reality in a way he still didn’t quite understand, but had learned to do instinctually. He sent a pulse out, a strong command, a lure that would pull a being to him whether it wanted to be there or not.

As it turned out, it didn’t. The spirit of air that appeared before him glared with narrow eyes full of disdain—at least, Elijah thought they were eyes. It was never easy to tell with air spirits.

Elijah didn’t bother to wait for it to say anything.

“Carry me where I tell you to,” he said. “First, thirty meters straight up.”

This was a risk—a hovering human might be an even more inviting target than a prone one—but Elijah didn’t like the way the ground was heaving and shaking. He hoped the elevation would give him a better view of things.

It did. He saw the spirits closing in, the team behind them, and the people scurrying around, and the pattern became clear.

“Pineapple, Kyrie, Cao, anyone—who’s out there?”

Pineapple responded first. “It’s finally warming up down here! What’s going on with you, professor?”

“Getting an aerial view. Luckily they’re keeping mostly to the ground, so it’s clear up here.”

“Whaddya got?”

“They’re keeping tight, staying together. They’re not chasing anyone who moves away. They’re after something, not someone.”

“The tower?”

Elijah checked the destination of the rumbling spirits, but the path ahead wasn’t easy to make out with all the land crumbling and heaving.

“Maybe,” he replied. “Tough to say. Maybe the camp.”

“Why would they care about the camp?”

Two small explosions went off in rapid succession. Elijah couldn’t be sure, but he thought one was a generator, and the other was a snowmobile. Spirits descended on both pieces of machinery after they exploded, twisting the metal and plastic beyond usability.

Then he understood.

“Have you gotten in contact with anyone else?”

“Just raised Tango on the comm. She’s working on her group. I saw Cao a few seconds ago, but now I lost her. Haven’t seen or heard from Kyrie.”

“Find her, fast. We’re going to have to move. I have to switch channels, I’ll contact you in five.”

He switched his comm to the channel Danvers and the Azzies were using.

Nothing. Not even static.

“Danvers, do you read? Danvers, are you out there?”

Still nothing.

Elijah glanced at the battlefield underneath him. The pattern he had discerned was holding—the spirits and the forces behind them were targeting the camp, destroying tents and generators, and anything that used power.

Anything that could be used to keep them alive.

There was one safe spot, at least for now. A spot not being targeted, and with a thick layer or armor to keep him safe.

He pointed to the tower. “Take me there,” he said, and the spirit immediately darted forward. Elijah was very grateful he could not feel the wind against his face.

He summoned another spirit as he descended, a simple being with a simple job. Check on the main base.

Every second, a new way to die reared up in front of Pineapple. And every second he said, “Not now, bitch,” and stayed alive.

Spirits blasted icy needles in his face. Dark-visored men on snowmobiles peppered the ground with bullets. The earth shook and heaved, holes opening up and attempting to swallow the troll. And every dive, every roll threatened to rip his clothing, letting the cold into one of his vital pockets of heat, sending him into a fatal downward temperature spiral.

But he avoided them all. He blasted the shooters off their snowmobiles with grenades shot from his launcher. Any spirit foolish enough to materialize near him got a large fist punched into its icy head. And the loose boulders shaking out of the ground just gave him something to throw at people who annoyed him.

It was entirely delightful.

He wanted to move faster, though. The spirits had the speed of the wind, and there was no way he could outpace a snowmobile, especially on this icy surface. He’d been close to jumping on one of his own vehicles, but a missile from the invaders blew it up right in front of him. All the other vehicles he came across were broken hulks.

So he decided to get one he knew was functional.

Two spirits were coming his way, a misty creature of snow and air darting around in front of a lumbering pile of rocks. The rockpile had the remains of a tent in one of the things that looked like maybe an arm. An Azzie trooper got too close to it, and a glancing blow from its other arm sent him flying backward twenty meters.

Pineapple decided the rockpile needed some softening up. He let loose one grenade, then two, then three, the dull thoomps of their launch followed by glorious, splintered explosions and all-too-brief waves of heat.

The grenades didn’t stop the rockpile, but it at least seemed annoyed. The air spirit in front of it howled toward Pineapple, all icy teeth and freezing breath.

Pineapple was really glad Elijah wasn’t here to banish these things so he could take care of them his way. This wasn’t the first air spirit he’d faced. He knew how they liked to work. He just needed to find the right piece of ground.

Ahead and to the left, there was a sudden slope down. Perfect. He veered in that direction.

The spirit darted this way and that, but Pineapple could tell they were mere feints, just attempts to set up what the spirit wanted to do. Pineapple took a few swipes at it, and let himself get a little off balance, because he knew that’s what the spirit would be looking for.

Sure enough, the spirit dashed forward, broadening its form, looking to wrap him up.

That was when Pineapple fell.

He let his left foot go out from under him, and slid down the short slope. The spirit was already trying to collapse on him when suddenly the troll wasn’t there. The spirit was now a ball holding nothing.

Pineapple’s had already gotten his feet back under him, his knees bending into a crouch. He exploded upward, and as he jumped, he punched both arms above his head into the concentrated mass of the spirit.

His fists hit it’s outer edge, and he felt some resistance, but he pushed through with all his strength. There was a sharp crack, and a howl, and the spirit flew apart, snow and ice flying into dust and then into nothing.

One down. The rockpile would be a different story, as there was no way in hell he could just punch it apart. That was okay, though—he had a whole different surprise planned for that one.

He lobbed another grenade at the rockpile to make sure it was still paying attention, and then he sprayed a burst of about twenty rounds to the right of the pile. The enemy snowmobiles heading in that direction either stopped or veered to their left to avoid the bullets. Pineapple started running toward the rockpile. As he approached, he could have sworn the vacant spots serving as a poor imitation of eyes glowed a dim red in anticipation of the charge.

Pineapple had done the move he was planning at least a dozen times before. He just hoped he could still pull it off in the snow. His feet pounded down, crunching into the ice as he gathered speed. He felt the ground shake as the rockpile lumbered forward, arms ready to swing.

Ten meters away from the pile, Pineapple tucked his launcher to his chest and dove into a somersault. He had plenty of layers on, but he could still feel shards of ice poking into him, making his roll less than graceful. He finished a full rotation and saw the pile leaning forward, raised arms ready to swing at its crouched prey.

But Pineapple was already heading up. He used the momentum of his roll and a quick leg extension to turn the somersault into a jump, flying almost straight up into the air. The rockpile couldn’t adjust and swung low. Pineapple’s right leg landed on the pile’s right arm, then he leaped again. Hs left foot landed cleanly on the rockpile’s head, and he leaped again. Abruptly he was nearly four meters in the air, behind the rockpile, and falling fast.

He landed in a crouch and rolled, collecting a pile of bruises he’d feel into next week. But he was where he wanted to be. The rockpile, enraged at the chance of losing its prey, pivoted and lashed backward with a rock-studded arm. The fact that it was leaning forward meant it had some upswing on the blow. The fact that a snowmobile had veered left to avoid Pineapple meant the driver suddenly found himself in a bad spot.

Pineapple was low and rolling, but the snowmobile driver couldn’t duck far enough or fast enough. The rockpile’s arm caught him in the shoulder and head, sending him sprawling. The snowmobile read that its driver had been thrown, so its engine cut out. It continued on for a few more meters, and stopped.

The rockpile was off balance, but was attempting to lumber back toward Pineapple. He had mere seconds. He fired a message to Eyetooth.

<SNOWMOBILE NEAR ME ACTIVATE NOW!>

Then he had to act on faith. He dashed forward, leaped, and landed cleanly on the snowmobile’s seat. The vehicle shuddered under his weight, but held.

He grabbed the throttle, but got nothing. The engine coughed and sputtered without giving the vehicle forward motion. He heard a crunching thump, then another. He looked back and saw the rockpile, fully engaged on him and only a step away. Its left arm was swinging. And its eyes were definitely glowing red.

Pineapple thought about sending another message, but knew it wouldn’t do anything. Either it was going to happen, or it wasn’t. He closed his eyes, and hit the throttle.

The snowmobile’s engine revved up and he surged forward.

There was a rush of air, then a heavy crunch and a very local tremor. It was the arm of the rockpile, and it had just missed him.

Pineapple made a sound somewhere between a scream and a laugh as he sped forward. The rockpile was no concern now, because it would never catch him. Of course, it could start throwing things at him, but he was too happy to think about that.

He was mobile. He could cover more ground, which meant he could cause more havoc. He unslung his rifle, held it with one hand, and got ready to make it rain lead as he darted ahead.

Elijah made it to the exterior of the tower at the same time his spirit returned from the base camp. Its report came telepathically.

Under attack, it sent. Small force, plenty of firepower. All sorts of buildings are burning.

And the people? Elijah asked.

Retreating, trying to get somewhere safe. You meat creatures and your sensitivity to temperature—makes you so vulnerable.

Elijah though about telling the spirit to keep the editorials to itself, but just dismissed it instead. He had no time to waste on an argument. The attack wouldn’t be coming here immediately—chasing people away seemed to be the top priority—but he figured they wouldn’t stay away for long. One way or another, it was all about this. So he needed to know what this was.

He went back inside and faced the same sight as before; the continent of Antarctica in all its ice-free glory. He wanted to stare at it in detail, to see if he could make out plant life or even animals, to explore if this projection came with any sort of zoom function, but that would not tell him what he needed to know. So he pushed through the real and went right to the astral.

And what an aura this thing had! It was alive, or at least doing a passable imitation of life. The colors swirled and changed every second, and many of them were tints Elijah could not name. They moved even more than the water and clouds, and if there was any sort of pattern to the movement, Elijah could not find it. This was magic he had never seen—different, older maybe, than anything he’d run into on the other continents of the world. He wanted to understand, but it was like trying to read a language where not only did you not know the words, but the very letters themselves were completely foreign and strange.

The movement was so fast that it was hypnotic, and Elijah caught himself actually leaning toward the swirling aura. He didn’t know what would happen if his aura came in contact with the otherworldly glow in front of him, but he didn’t think it would be wise to find out just yet.

He leaned back to make sure he wasn’t overwhelmed, then stepped back again. Then he hit the wall of the tower, the cold of the stone penetrating right through his suit. He wasn’t going to get any more separation between the object and himself, so he’d mostly have to rely on his will to keep him from reaching out to it.

That worried him.

The wall behind him shook from some distant explosion, and a piece of the ceiling fell through the hovering map. But it never hit the floor. It was gone.

Elijah’s eyes widened at that, and he was suddenly quite glad he’d resisted the temptation to touch the map. He figured he had maybe five more minutes to study it, so whatever he was going to learn, he needed to learn it fast.

He faced the map and let his eyes unfocus. He couldn’t try to analyze this—it was too fast moving, too vivid, too foreign to his experience. Instead of trying to impose his understanding on it, he had to let it talk to him. To let it teach him its language.

But he couldn’t. There was nothing there, no pattern. Only randomness. It was wild, primal. Full of life in one of the most lifeless places on Earth.

And just like that, he had it. The answer, or at least a possible one. He knew what he was looking at, and he knew what had happened to the piece of ceiling.

Most of all, he knew why the people above were attacking. Unfortunately, he had no idea what he should do about it.

CHAPTER FORTY

Stupid dog, Cao thought as her feet crunched in the snow. Stupid, slow dog!

She’d lost three vehicles. Three! True, two of them had only became hers when she’d hacked into them, but still, they’d been hers, and they had been crushed by the spirits flying all over the place. She had lost all three, forcefully pushed out of them in a way that wrung out her brain like a wet rag in the hands of a vengeful troll washerwoman, before she figured it out. All she had to do was go back to the mantra that had guided her through so much of her life.

Small is good.

No more snowmobiles, no more anything that could pick her up or transport her in any way. Small aerial drones were better. Especially ones with plenty of onboard ammo.

She had three under her control now, which kept her from diving into any one of them. Plus, there was plenty going on around her physical self right now, so pulling her consciousness from her body was a good way to get perforated.

She didn’t stay in one place any longer than three minutes. In the first minute, she’d scope out the area, looking for a spot that could serve as cover. In the third minute, she’d check the position of the attackers and find the best path to her next position.

The second minute was where she did her damage.

Cao had a lot of friends who hated fighting spirits, preferring to take on flesh-and-blood opponents. Cao didn’t mind spirits at all. It was like going against an autopiloted drone, really—both spirits and drones were governed by the instructions they were given. Figure out the instructions and you can predict what they’ll do, which puts you one step ahead of your opponents.

The first part of their instructions were clear—destroy any vehicles that could carry anyone. That was useful, but she needed more.

She skidded into a slide that unfortunately turned into a rough tumble, so she hit the rock she was running toward instead of landing gracefully behind it. The impact didn’t feel too hard, but she immediately checked her suit. Any rip or tear out here was definitely not good.

Bullets and rocks whizzed overhead as Cao found she was pretty much intact. That much was right. Then she scanned the landscape.

The south was no good—that was where the spirits were rampaging. She’d just come from the west, and didn’t want to go back there. It had seemed like the rampaging horde had been drawing a bead on the spot she had just fled.

That left east and north. A quick look showed desolate, icy waste to the east, and more of the same to the north. Big surprise. A more detailed scan, though, revealed a spot to the east where a large chunk of earth had been ripped off, leaving a hole about a half-meter deep. That would be fine cover—she just had to make sure she could get out of it before she dove in.

Now that she had a destination, it was time to do some damage. She had three AROs up, showing her the views of the drones she was controlling. They were hovering above the spirits, possibly a little too close for comfort, but the spirits had their instructions. Instructions that left the smaller drones ignored.

Now it was time to see if the spirits had any responsibility to defend the humans behind them.

She spread her three drones out so they could strafe the ground without interfering with each other. Once they were about fifteen meters apart, she opened fire, 

The beautiful thing about airborne drones was how quickly they could shift targets. A mere three degrees rotation could make a difference of dozens of meters in where the bullets landed.

Cao was about to make good use of that knowledge.

The first rounds she fired stopped a squad of six attackers in their tracks. Their feet scrambled to gain traction on the icy ground, the spikes on their soles dug in as the squad wheeled to their right to avoid becoming sitting ducks.

But Cao was ahead of them. One drone had moved a touch to its right, another to its left, while the third kept fire on the original spot. She was ready for them no matter which way they went, so moving to their right put the squad right in the path of a few rounds cutting through the icy sky. Two of them caught bullets. One of them went down.

Then the ARO with the view of that drone filled with swirling white, then went black. Simple orange words appeared in the window: <No signal>. That drone was lost.

But Cao had more information. When the soldiers were threatened, the spirits would respond.

She moved a little faster while her drones split up in the sky. They had a new purpose—not to kill or even wound, just to harass. To push the players where they needed to go to keep a path open for her.

She’d hated this cold wasteland the moment she’d set foot on it, hated seeing the blank white and grey each time she looked out a window. But now, abruptly, it was beautiful. Sun dodged in and out of clouds, occasionally making kicked-up clouds of ice dust glitter. Red and yellow explosions were reflected in a thousand facets wedged in unexpected locations. Her senses had become attuned to the land; she saw a patch of smooth ice where her foot would slide, and loose sections where she might be able to dig in a little. Or maybe it wasn’t sight, because she knew where to move on instinct.

She ran forward fifteen meters, then took three leaping strides to her right. One of her drones laid down fire thirty meters away, and she stretched out into a dive that carried her across a slick patch while a half-dozen bullets flew over her. The ground dropped, letting her change her slide into a forward somersault. Then she was back on her feet, the second drone tracing a line of fire that she ran parallel to for a while.

And it kept on and on like that. Her drones were far too fast and agile to be knocked out of the sky. At one point, someone somewhere was foolish enough to try and fight fire with fire, sending a drone her way to knock down her friends. She opened a new ARO, swiped here, stabbed there, and soon she had another drone under her control.

She didn’t have to think about where the drones were in relationship to her, didn’t have to stare at their displays to understand how what they were seeing meshed with the landscape she saw with her physical eyes. She just knew.

She kept the fire up, chasing away humans, sending spirits back in defense of their metahuman companions, keeping her path clear.

They sent a number of things her way, and she avoided them all. Except when it was a drone—then she tried to hack it and add it to her force, giving her another ARO of input, another data stream added to the river flowing into her. She absorbed it all, used it all. Her path stayed clear, and she kept running.

It wasn’t until about a half-hour later that she thought it would be good to figure out a destination.

“Pineapple, are you out there?” she asked.

The troll replied almost instantly. “Holy hell in a hand grenade, girl, where you been?”

“Out. You know. Dodging spirits and bullets and stuff.”

“I’ve been trying to call you for like forty-five minutes!”

“Really?” Cao checked an ARO and saw that there were indeed several messages from Pineapple, and she guessed he’d tried to raise her by voice, too. “Sorry. I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

“Roger that. Where are you?”

She had her drones fire a a trio of grenades into a charging group of troopers.

“Did you see that explosion?”

“Be more specific.”

“The one that was actually three explosions, one after another?”

“Oh, that one. Yeah.”

“I’m about forty meters north of there.”

“Gotcha. Guess you got some firepower.”

“Of course.”

“Well, hold in tight and I’ll join you. We’ll blow a few things up and find everybody else.”

That sounded like the best plan Cao had heard in weeks.

It would be a stretch to say that things were going according to plan. Hearn was satisfied, though, that the plan hadn’t been shredded to ribbons yet.

This much was right: Tish had seemingly abandoned the rest of his group to go back into the tower, pulled by whatever was in there. His group was scattered, not able to work together, and offering only fractious defenses.

The part that was going wrong was that the fractious defenses being offered were better than Hearn had expected. The troll, Pineapple, took a sheer joy in destruction that seemed to make him impervious to injury or fatigue. And the goblin rigger was surprisingly resourceful, commanding a small handful of drones like it was a squadron of elite troopers. They were two particular annoyances in the resistance they had met.

Annoying as they had been, though, they had done little to stop the main objective of the attack. Generators had been destroyed. Vehicles were blasted beyond repair. The troops sent by Hualpa hadn’t killed everyone, but they weren’t supposed to. They were in perhaps the deadliest place on Earth—the soldiers’ assignment was simply to make sure the landscape had a chance to do its job. And then get to the tower.

He wished he understood what was going on with the tower. Tempest had become increasingly agitated the more time they had spent waiting on the boat, and even more when they got into the snow rover to head out. For more than one hundred kilometers, he’d been twitchy, looking back and forth with whiplash speed, bouncing in his seat like an impatient child. Then they had crested a ridge, the vehicle pointed down toward a valley with an immense excavation in the middle, and he had abruptly become still. The looking back and forth stopped, and he stared only ahead.

Hearn wished he knew what Tempest was seeing, if only so he could have some relief from the blank whiteness that was everywhere. There were occasional explosions, true, but they were scattered, flaring quickly and gone in seconds. Tempest was staring at something infinitely more fascinating, it seemed, but it was nothing to Hearn.

Then the troll lurched and shuddered, and Hearn realized that what he had thought was fascination was instead the look of a body without a soul.

“Tish is in there,” Tempest said. “Not surprising. He would be hard pressed to abandon something he has never seen before, and might never see again. Tell the elf to get him out of there—messing around with him by that thing is too dangerous, so he needs to leave. I want him gone by the time we get there.”

Hearn tapped out a message. <Elijah’s in the tower. He needs to be out of the tower in ten minutes.>

He did not expect a reply.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

While chaos raged far above him, Elijah was busy trying to keep his soul from being sucked out of him.

It would have been safer, of course, to summon a spirit and have it experiment for him. He’d probably lose one or two in the course of figuring things out, but that wasn’t anything new.

But he’d hesitated. He didn’t know why, but sending a spirit in to possibly get torn apart didn’t feel right. He decided to talk to Kyrie about it, assuming both of them survived this. Maybe it was a sign of progress.

So he was left to do it himself, to reach out toward the churning aura enough to feel its pull, but not enough to be carried away by it. And it was strong, viciously strong, a steady tug that felt something like his intestines were being pulled through a button-sized hole in his gut. His legs were trembling after only fifteen minutes of resisting it, but he couldn’t give in. He was pretty sure it would tear his soul out of his body and take him somewhere where a reunion would be impossible.

Or maybe not. The more he looked at it, the more he saw that energy flowed back and forth here, from one plane to another.

Because that’s what he was looking at, two planes. There was some kind of alchera in the tower, and through it he saw glimpses of a different plane. He saw a tower there, like the tower he was in, but with windows. Through the windows he could see a valley, mostly green, but with spots of snow. There were mountains in the distance, and they had more snow. He looked at the line of the mountains, and he knew what it was, because he saw the same line outside his tent at the campsite. The other tower was in Antarctica, like his, but an Antarctica that was warmer and not covered with ice.

Like the Antarctica displayed on the Piri Reis map.

So now he knew—or at least, was pretty sure—what the Piri Reis map was, and why it didn’t quite match up with known reality. Because it wasn’t this known reality. It was another plane, one that was just a slight left turn from the one Elijah knew. And here, in this tower, the two realities intersected with each other.

In fact, from Elijah’s observations, they did more than cross. They bled. Mana from one flowed into the other, and vice versa. And pulled. That’s what Elijah was feeling as he stood there, the pull of the current of mana dragging him forward. He experimented by pulling back a bit, and had to abruptly let go of the mana flow when he felt how easily it worked.

It didn’t take long for the possibilities to run through his mind. If you could study this connection long enough, you could have a do-it-yourself power site right here. Maybe not the most useful location of course, but a controlled mana power site had its uses. Beyond that, though, studying it might help you in making other connections. Especially if you had a map showing where other connections might be.

Suddenly all the furor over the Piri Reis map made a whole lot more sense.

Elijah wasn’t sure he’d trust himself with a site like this, and he damn sure didn’t trust Aztechnology—or Amazonia, for that matter—to be playing with this or anything like it. It was pretty clear from what was going on outside that he wasn’t going to be able to keep the spot for his own study. All that was left for him to do was keep anyone else from having it.

Then his thoughts were interrupted by a piercing tone pitched so high it was almost out of the range of human hearing, but was so sharp and loud he felt his brain starting to melt.

“What the hell is that?” he yelled, thinking he’d said it aloud, but the ringing in his ears made it hard to tell. But as quickly as it appeared, the tone silenced.

“Dammit, Elijah, you don’t blank out on us in the middle of a firefight!” It was Kyrie, and she was not at all pleased. “I would have thought you were dead except your commlink kept telling me you were active. Not that you could reply, you asshole. Where are you? What are you doing?”

“Research.”

“Are you out of your goddamned mind?”

“It’s necessary research.”

“What’s necessary is that we get the hell out of here! Most of the vehicles are destroyed—if we wait any longer, we’ll have no way out of here!”

“Did Pineapple get hold of you?”

“Haven’t heard from him.”

“Really? He said he’d been trying to call you.”

“Elijah, communications aren’t exactly good out here. I’m lucky the signal is getting through the damn tower walls. But can we just get out of here and talk about it later? I can be there in ninety seconds.”

Elijah’s heart stopped, then stuttered back to life. He felt a wave of dizziness, which was not good for where he was. He shook his head.

“Yeah. Ninety seconds.”

“Roger. You better be ready.”

I’ll sure as hell try to be, he thought.

He pulled himself away from the mana spiral in front of him. He knew what he had to do, but he dreaded doing it. The fact that he only had ninety seconds—eighty-five now—meant he couldn’t wait any longer.

He opened an ARO, made a few gestures, and pulled up the data Leung had sent him before he died. There was a lot of technical data, showing routes and re-routes and tracking information, and he was sure if he analyzed it, it would back up the contention on the first line, but that contention by itself was enough to send his head spinning since it confirmed what he’d started suspecting seconds ago.

The first line said, simply: Kyrie has been sending messages to Amazonia.

He’d work to figure this out more when he had time to think, but there was one thought that struck him immediately, one he should have thought about when he saw how she looked boarding an Aztlán plane.

I pushed her too far.

He knew he needed to move, but he felt almost paralyzed, stunned motionless. He didn’t want to believe what the message said, but he knew Leung wouldn’t have made the claim without good evidence. Which he had thoughtfully included. When he combined that with the fact that Kyrie knew where he was before he said anything about it, it was enough to make him worry that what he wished was unthinkable was in fact true.

He found himself really wishing he could ask Kyrie what to do about this. Then he shook his head and got down to business. He wasn’t the first shadowrunner ever to get crossed by a team member. And if he didn’t pull himself together, he’d join a long line of dead runners who forgot to keep their emotions out of their work. If there was one time Elijah wasn’t going to die, it was while he was staring at one of the most significant magical discoveries of his career.

He’d wasted all but sixty seconds. He had a really short time to prepare.

Kyrie dismounted from a stupid snowmobile in a stupidly cold place of the world so she could go inside a stupid tower and talk to a stupid, stupid man.

He was in the tower, ignoring calls and messages. Of course he was. It was his precious research. It was something that was not people. It was what he had always done, it was what he would always do. Which left Kyrie once again in the position of having to go in and get him to move his ass. This time, so he didn’t blow up everything around them.

Another message appeared in front of her. <How much longer?>

<Two minutes,> she fired back.

The reply was quick and to the point. <No more.>

She thought about taking a moment before she went in to make sure she looked cold, tired, and harried, but she was pretty sure she already looked the part. So she just walked inside the tower.

He looked tired. There was a lot of that going around lately. For a long-abandoned tower in a frozen wasteland, it was oddly warm inside. Elijah’s goggles were slung loosely around his neck, his hood was pushed back, and his hairline looked like it had receded three centimeters in the past week. He did not smile when he saw her, or show any other signs of being pleased at her presence.

Kyrie had been briefed enough about the tower to have some idea what she’d see if she went astral, and she didn’t need any distractions now, so she kept her focus in the real. She saw Elijah’s eyes darting around, so she knew he was enraptured. She was not surprised.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” she said. “We have to get moving.”

His eyes briefly met hers. “No.”

“What do you mean, no? There are spirits crashing around out there! We’ve barely got any snowmobiles left! If we want to make it out safe, we have to get out now!”

His eyes then stopped moving and settled, staring right at her. “I’m pretty sure there will be a vehicle for you whenever you want it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know, Kyrie. Leung found out, and he sent me the evidence. I know who has been in contact with Amazonia.”

Kyrie was not about to get caught up in any undignified denials or ridiculous charades. She had nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of.

“Fine. You know.”

“The device Leung found. That was you?”

“Yes. At least, I planted it for him to find. It was made by others.”

“You killed Leung.”

“Not on purpose. Part of the job.”

“And you’re willing to kill all the rest of us. Cao, Pineapple. Me.”

“If you leave with me, you could live.”

He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure I can’t trust you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re working for them!”

“Ah.” Kyrie had imagined this confrontation, and she had pictured herself getting angry, her face growing red while she screamed at Elijah to make him understand. But now it was here, and she only felt the cold all around settling into her core. No heat at all. “So, the problem’s that you don’t like my bosses? You can’t trust who I’m working for? Good thing your own employer is so fucking noble.”

Despite the cold, sweat was beading in Elijah’s suddenly red forehead. “It’s not about that. You’re taking money from the other side. You killed one of us.”

“Part of the job, like I said.” She stepped closer. “Isn’t that what you always said? That the job needs to get done? Whatever it takes. Leave Slycer alone while he’s attacked. Tell Cao and Pineapple to work with the Human Nation, then throw Pineapple to the dogs. Put me on an Aztlán plane, make me do their bidding, even though you know—you know—how I feel about them. And why. But you did it anyway, because you wanted to. You had to find out what was at the end of the map.” She stretched both arms out in a wide, sweeping motion. “Well, here. Here’s what was waiting for you. Enjoy.”

Sometimes, when mana was flowing through him, Elijah could look imposing and strong, like he was more than two meters tall. Other times, like now, he looked tired, beaten, and extraordinarily small.

“I had to find out,” he said. “I had to know.”

“Great. So now you know. Time to go.”

He shook his head. “I can’t leave. You don’t know what this is, or what it can do.”

“I don’t care. I never have.”

“I know. But I’m not leaving.”

“Suit yourself. But other people are coming. I’m giving you a chance to get out alive before they get here. They didn’t want you dead here. But I imagine they’ll settle for it if they think it’s the best alternative.”

“They can do whatever they need to.”

She turned away from him, took three quick angry strides, then stopped, inhaled slowly, and turned around.

“Elijah. Come out with me. After all we’ve been through. I’m giving you a chance.”

“I wish I could take it.”

She glared at him, then turned and walked out without another word.

When she returned in three minutes, Tempest and Hearn came back with her.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Tempest had a deceptive stride. He looked like he was moving in slow motion, but his strides were so long he was actually difficult to keep up with. The effect was like watching an avalanche—something that seemed rumbling and slow right up until the moment it reaches you and overwhelms you. He walked into the room before Kyrie and Hearn.

“Mr. Tish,” he said. “Thank you for staying. In some ways it’s an inconvenience, I’ll admit, but in other ways it’s a pleasure, as this setting provides so many interesting ways for you to die.”

“Just be careful,” Elijah said. “This thing doesn’t appear stable. Any magic you try in here might not have the intended effect.”

“That’s the only reason you’re still alive. I suppose that leaves us with the classic simplicity of bullets. Mr. Hearn, you may do the honors.”

Kyrie was relieved not to be asked. There was a small part of her that wanted to stop Hearn, in recognition of her long partnership with Elijah. But business was business. She wasn’t going to work for Aztechnology, she wasn’t going to help them in any way. In the ledger of her life, the Big A was deep in the red. She had made her choice, and this was no time to get sentimental. She kept her eyes on Elijah as Hearn raised his gun. She felt she owed him that much—but nothing more.

The floor of the tower lurched, a sudden shake to the left, followed by a settling motion back to the right. Hearn, Kyrie, and Tempest stumbled over the unstable ground, Hearn’s aim was ruined before he could shoot.

Elijah, though, didn’t waver an inch.

Hearn raised his gun again as Kyrie stared. She saw it now. His feet were two or three centimeters off the ground. He was levitating now, might have been levitating the whole time.

“What the hell—”

And then her stomach lurched as the floor fell, and she fell with it. The walls of the tower and everyone inside was falling—everyone but one.

Kyrie saw Elijah’s feet zoom past her eyes as she plunged downward, while he stayed right where he was.

The hard part was coming up. Specifically, the hard part that was the roof. Casting the levitate spell had been stressful enough with the weird mana flow pulling and pushing at him, but the next spell was more complicated. He hoped the extra few meters he’d get from the planar gate would help.

The roof was rushing at him, and he instinctively raised his arms. Mana flowed through him—he could feel an extra surge traveling from the gate—and it left his hands and entered the roof, turning solid rock into gravel. It hurt to go through, even with Elijah’s polar clothing. The rocks peppered him everywhere, but it was far better than smashing into a solid ceiling. He endured the brief stoning, then he was clear.

Below him, the tower fell. Five meters, ten, fifteen, twenty. That was the other tricky task he’d pulled off by the gate, summoning an impressive spirit of earth and setting it to digging. The progress it had made in such a short time boggled his mind. It had finished its job with enviable timing.

Far below, the tower crashed to a halt, settling in its new home. The walls cracked, but it was in a cylinder that was not much wider than it, so it stayed upright. Through the hole in the roof he had made, Elijah could see the gate and its swirling mana.

That had been his biggest concern—that the gate would be attached to a specific point related to the earth, not tied to the tower, so that when the tower fell, it would have stayed in place. He had analyzed the gate, tried to understand its relationship to the tower, but in the end he couldn’t be sure. He could only carry out his plan and hope.

And now, here he was, hovering above the fallen tower and sunken gate. He had no doubt that Hearn and Tempest were both crumpled inside the tower. If the fall hadn’t killed them, the spirit would. Those were its orders.

Outside, the sudden collapse of the tower panicked the attackers, and the abrupt lack of leadership didn’t help. Some were retreating, others were killed by the newly emboldened defenders. Elijah caught sight of Pineapple riding around and spreading destruction with delight. Already, though, things were settling down, especially here, above the tower. Elijah felt it was safe to drift down to the ground.

He landed next to the prone form of Kyrie. The spirit of air that had carried her out had her in its grasp, invisibly holding her lying on her back in the snow. Elijah thanked the spirit before dismissing it and stood next to Kyrie, who was already standing.

“That was one of yours that brought me out?”

Elijah nodded.

“Thanks. Doesn’t mean we’re good, though.”

“You were about to stand by and let them kill me. You killed Leung. I wasn’t about to suggest that we were.”

Kyrie nodded.

“Still,” Elijah said, “I thought about it and decided it would be better—for me, for you, for the world, whatever—for you to be alive. Or at least for me to not kill you. So here we are. You can finish what Tempest wanted, or we can go our separate ways.”

“He didn’t order me to do it, so it’s not my job.” She looked at the retreating Amazonian forces. “Guess I’ll be on my way.”

She didn’t move. Neither did he.

“You’re not going to shoot me in the back as I walk away, are you?” Kyrie asked.

“No! I know—I know we’ve had our differences—not just that, I know some of the things I did didn’t—weren’t the kind of things that inspired trust, I guess, or maybe weren’t the best, but you couldn’t think …”

Elijah hated the way he sounded trying to come up with the right words, but Kyrie saved him with a wave of her hand. “It was a joke, Elijah. Relax.”

She still didn’t move.

“Guess we won’t be working together again anytime soon,” he said.

She guffawed. “Guess not.”

“But for a while there, we were pretty damn good.”

She watched the horizon, not turning to him. But finally she nodded. “For a while.”

“Okay.”

Finally she turned to him. “Did you check your messages?”

Feeling sheepish, he called up an ARO and found a few messages from Pineapple and Cao.

“Whoops. They’re wondering where I am.”

“Do they have rides?”

“Looks like it.”

“Good. They can take you somewhere safe.”

Elijah glowered a little, then a misty spirit appeared behind him. He gave it a mental command and it lifted him off the ground.

“I’m not without resources of my own,” he said.

Kyrie flashed something that was a distant relation of a smile. “Fair enough. Get out of here, then.”

“You too,” he said.

That was the last thing they said to each other.

Elijah had the spirit carry him, but not far. He had work to do. He spent a good while summoning spirits, then resting from the exertion between summonings. Cao and Pineapple found him, told him that Danvers was dead. Tango had also bought it in the fight around the tower, but Niko, Eyetooth, and Gauntlet had made it out. They’d all connect later, mourn over their dead, and find a way to enjoy the fact that they were still alive.

Elijah had a spirit of fire grow large and surround all of them, moderating its heat so they were warm but not burning. At their feet, water rolled off the snow and ice, stopping and re-freezing when it moved more than three meters from them.

The rest of the spirits Elijah summoned were working, moving earth and ice. First they piled it on top of the tower, burying it even deeper than it had been hidden before. Then they destroyed rock crests here, ridges there, and dug new furrows, changing the landscape, hopefully making it more difficult to recognize. He watched them work for eight hours, until the sun set and they left. Then he started the summoning process again so more work could be done.

Morning came, and he was starving. The ground was not nearly as transformed or smooth as he hoped it would be, but he could endure one more round of summoning. One more work shift to keep the tower out of reach, at least for a little while longer. It would be even harder to find without the map fragment, which was currently sitting in the top room of the buried tower. He hoped it would be enough, though he knew that if anyone came by in the next few days, the astral signature alone of the spirits’ activities in the area would be a dead giveaway. But for now, he had done all he could. And the rumblings from Pineapple’s stomach were becoming deafening.

Pineapple and Cao had let him work, but they were clearly curious about what had happened. He answered them as best as he could, explaining what had happened, and what Kyrie had done. And making halting guesses as to why.

“Look, professor,” Pineapple said finally. “She made her choices. People all make their own choices. You can’t blame yourself for it. It’s just what she did.” It sounded nice. But the look Cao gave him, one she’d been occasionally giving him since Chicago, and his own conscience didn’t allow him to believe it.

Eventually, they headed off in the only direction they could—north. One of the many tasks Elijah had set spirits to was finding the other Aztlán survivors, so they were able to make a direct path, and wait for the helicopters that were due to arrive.

They would go home and get paid. And then Elijah would spend at least a month somewhere where the temperature never dipped below fifteen degrees.

Celsius, that is.

EPILOGUE

Two months later

The ork with the long, flowing grey hair shook his head gently. “Reports from Antarctica are still spotty, and often contradictory,” he said. “The Aztlán expedition seems to have found something, but no one knows what it is.”

The elf on the other side of the desk from him lightly tapped her fingers on the mahogany surface. “We need one of the items. Or more than one, ideally.”

“Perhaps. But be cautious—the relics seem to actively desire to not be brought together. Remember what happened in D.C..”

The elf let out a short, choppy laugh. “I remember everything that happens in D.C.”

“The question is, which relic to go after now? The map seems to be the obvious choice, since it’s what led the expedition there in the first place. But some researchers are saying that the sextant might be the better choice for this location, and possible other sites.”

“But which one can be found first? We can’t fall behind on this, not to anyone.”

“The sextant,” the ork replied promptly. “People these days barely know how use regular sextants, and this thing has them baffled. And the chaos in Denver has made the keepers not look after it too carefully.”

The elf nodded. Then her eyes grew unfocused. Her hands made a few swift motions in the air, and then she stood.

“Good news,” she said. “Our man’s been found. Time to do some recruiting.”

“Personally?”

“Yes. He should know what the stakes are, and just how much we care about this.”

Elijah had wanted to go someplace warm, but he really was not a beach resort type of person. He settled on Casablanca. It was warm, filled with casinos and food, and enough relics flowing in from the desert to give him something to look at when he felt like it. And there were beaches available in case he decided that’s what he wanted. There were rumblings about war to the south, which was perhaps a little unnerving, but what would Casablanca be without rumblings of war? It was part of the atmosphere.

He’d been spending many nights at the Blue Parrot. He’d bought two white dinner jackets to wear in rotation, since he liked the look. He usually played baccarat, switching to blackjack when he felt like dealing with longer odds. On hot nights, he’d play over at the Mabrook, which had a more westernized, fully air-conditioned feel, but when he could stand it, he liked the more open-air feeling of the Blue Parrot. Why come to the desert if you weren’t going to enjoy the desert air?

He’d been on a good run lately, so he decided to put it at risk playing blackjack. Starling, the dwarf antiques dealer he’d chatted with a lot since he’d been there, was out meeting prospective sellers, but a retired gunrunner named Stoli was there. Elijah liked playing with Stoli—he usually had good stories to tell, and he bought a round for the table every time he won something. The stories and the alcohol both kept him from spending too much time in his own head, which was good. He didn’t think of the past, he stayed away from the Matrix, and when old friends or runner acquaintances called him, he didn’t answer.

Stoli nodded as he approached, his short, steel-grey hair bobbing as he did. “Professor,” he said.

“Evening,” Elijah said. He’d never introduced himself to anyone in Casablanca as any sort of teacher, and he never talked about teaching or working at a university, but somehow, inevitably, the nickname stuck. “How are the cards tonight?”

“Elusive. I think Nabila decided to use one of those decks with no aces.”

The dealer smiled politely at Stoli’s remark, then dealt cards to Elijah at his nod.

Ace-five. Stoli snorted.

“There’s an ace,” he said. “Right where you don’t want it.”

Elijah shrugged and didn’t hesitate to ask for a hit when the time came. He got an eight. Stoli snorted again.

“Did I tell you about the time in Osaka when we unloaded a crate of missile launchers away from the docks, only to find we were in a cove that a detachment of Red Samurai was fond of keeping an eye on?”

“Your point?”

“Sometimes trying to avoid trouble just finds you more.”

Elijah smiled. Then he hit again. Another five, for a total of nineteen. Which turned out to be good enough for a win when the dealer settled on eighteen.

“Those Red Samurai didn’t end up stopping you, did they?” Elijah said.

“Nope. We just ended up having to sell a few of those missile launchers as used instead of new.”

Grinning, Elijah played a few more hands, and pretty much broke even when he felt the atmosphere around him change. At first he thought it was because someone was pulling together some serious mana, but then he reconsidered, especially when he saw Stoli’s face. Someone, it seemed, had just walked into the room, and that someone was right behind Elijah.

He turned to see a tall, sharp-featured elf in a business suit taking off her sunglasses. He knew that face, especially those intense, electric eyes, immediately. He had no idea what she was doing here.

“Elijah Tish. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said. “Starling says to tell you hello.”

Elijah had guessed the dwarf had Draco Foundation connections. He should have been more careful. “The pleasure’s mine, Ms. Daviar.”

“May I?”

He nodded, and she sat next to him. Cards flew from the dealer’s hand. Daviar had a smooth queen-king. Elijah had a five-six, while the dealer had a six showing.

“I’ll be direct,” Daviar said. “I understand you’ve been on vacation for the past two months. Are you ready to start working again?”

“That’s direct, all right. What do you want?”

“I want to give you a chance to continue the work you started in Antarctica.”

Elijah looked at his cards, then at the dealer’s cards.

“Double down,” he said.

He’d play this hand, then retire somewhere to hash out the details of what Nadja Daviar was asking him to do. He’d worry about the implications of getting caught up in something so high level that Daviar herself would reach out to him. He’d wonder if maybe he should stay out of this entirely, given the way things had gone in Antarctica.

But he still knew exactly what he’d choose to do in the end.

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