The End

Efficiency. That was what Mr. Bishop valued, and what Dracogenics valued him
for in return. The ability to complete a task with the minimum necessary amount
of resources and effort, in the smallest amount of time possible, while still
achieving the necessary results. That was it. Efficiency. Coupled with reliability,
it meant the world to him; he got projects completed under budget and ahead of
schedule, he wrote code more elegant and useful than anyone expected, he
secured more facilities with fewer men than any other agent near his rank, he
made every shot count, got the most out of every man who worked under him,
made the impossible into the difficult and the merely difficult into the routine.
Efficiency and reliability. Those were Mr. Bishops virtues, alongside the loyalty
that Dracogenics always insisted on, the loyalty that went unspoken. He admired
efficiency and reliability in others, also, of course. He respected those who were
good at their job, and he had to admit that these two had impressed him. Their
distraction, their clever ruse, had worked. They were trespassers, saboteurs of
some sort, and now, fleeing, they were survivors. Fast ones. He watched them
go through his Thanatos' scope, the LS19 laser rifle wasn't his favorite weapon,
but it would get the job done tonight. A pair of agents, one larger, one smaller,
both talented. The larger bore chrome-flashing cyberlegs, clear enhancements
that made him leap and vault and tumble all the more quickly, from rooftop to
rooftop, the pair of them getting ever more distant, ever more difficult to hit.
Bishops index finger eased onto the trigger, squeezing ever-so-gently, and the
motion was accompanied by a mental command via his infochip and the
electronics built into the rifle.
His Thanatos spat out a coherent beam of blue-white light, faster even than this
roof-hopping, tumbling, free-running insurgent could hope to outrun. The terrorist
was in the middle of vaulting a wall, one hand firmly atop the drab grey material,
all the rest of his body sideways, legs close together for balance, flinging himself
up and over, barely missing a beat until the Thanatos interrupted him. The blast
of energy blew through his street-rigged, second-class shields in a flash of light,
and then through both street-rigged, second-class cybernetic legs as well. There

was a spray of sparks and hydraulic fluid and the movements of the runner turned
from a graceful, loping, performance into an ugly tumble and roll, bits of legs
flying everywhere.
Efficient and reliable, Mr. Bishops headware augmentations picked up every
sound, enhanced it, filtered away background noise, analyzed it, piped it to the
supercomputer infochip in his skull. He didnt hear a cry of pain or anything but
the grunt of the runners impact on the rooftop; second-class legs, maybe, but
tweaked and customized to shut off overwhelming sensory filters. The legs might
not be made to corporate specifications, but they had a job to do, he supposed.
Theyd had to be well made to pull of some of those jumps.
It was the second runner, though, that Bishop could really admire.
The first cursing quietly in three languages at once, now, clawing at the rooftop
and trying to drag himself to safety, shouting at his partner-in-crime to go on
without him had been the flashier of the pair. The chromed-up legs poking out
from the clinging jumpsuit shorts had made him an obvious target, but so had the
way he moved. All flips and spins, unnecessary rolls, scissor kicks in midair, that
sort of show-offy nonsense. He was an artist, a performer as much as an athlete.

The other one, the smaller one, was a worker. All motion, all speed, all conserved
energy and straight lines, sharper angles. All martial, no art. If their friend was a
peacock or brightly-feathered songbird male, a riot of color, there to distract and
impress then this smaller one must have been worth the distraction, the
protection offered by standing in their shadow.
Mr. Bishop rolled his shoulder a bit, shifted his gaze through the Thanatos' scope,
and looked for that second one. Bishop wasnt nearly the best sniper in his team,
hadnt touched a marksman's weapon like this in years, in fact, but he and his rifle
were good enough, the hardwired skills and accuracy software were expensive
enough, that if he saw the second, they were in trouble. They were all that
remained of this security breach. Bishop knew one of them was carrying the
drive. The drive was all that mattered. The flashy one may have had it, but

Bishop didnt think so; no, not something that important. Something that
important you gave to the reliable one. The efficient one without any wasted
motion or energy, the one with the minimalist approach to their ridiculous freerunning nonsense. The one who thought in straight lines, not loops.
Bishops crosshairs swept the darkened rooftops, piercing the shadows, searching
for what piece of cover the terrorist might be behind, their heat signature stark
against the cool night air, for the flicker of movement that would give them away.
Hed hoped the first one, the flashy one, might have given their accomplice up.
Aside from the debilitating pain (not an issue), the desire to bleed a target out
(likewise rendered obsolete by cyberlimbs), and the immobilization factor
(thankfully accomplished, courtesy of his powerful Thanatos) that was the other
reason to cripple someone, after all, instead of killing them; to draw out
comrades-in-arms that would assist them, to give away those comrades
locations, that sort of thing.
The flashy one, for all that his inefficient fluidity of movement spoke of emotional
immaturity and a lack of discipline, wasnt giving Bishop the satisfaction, though.
His polyglot profanity wasnt directed in any one direction, his crawling was
simply in the direction of away, forward, escape. He didnt plaintively wail
towards some nearby piece of cover, didnt point and shout at a friend, didnt
make eye contact anywhere. Disappointing.
So Bishop searched, through the lens of his scope, for the second target. The
dedicated one. The efficient one. The smaller one, the more dangerous one
because of it. He commanded his headware to filter out the chatter of his security
team, still cleaning up downstairs. He silenced the radio contact from Mr. Knight,
as irritating and threatening as always. He blocked communication from incoming
reinforcements, filtered out the background noises of the city, shut off the security
team comms relay that his headware was the hub of; when he was personally
engaged in the field, they knew to operate without him. His every sense,
augmented and natural, was focused on the second runner. She bolted,
suddenly, running flat out.
And then he saw them saw her and he hesitated again, finger slipping off the

trigger to rest on the guard as he doubted. Unseen, on a monitor far away, his
heartrate increased, his breath caught in his throat, his blood pressure spiked. He
stopped. He thought very hard. He sighed and resigned himself to his duty. His
family needed him. This was the only way.
And his finger slid back onto his trigger, squeezing, taking the shot.

1.
The Beginning: Five Years Earlier
Theyd all been given two weeks notice, which was more than many employees
could say when Dracogenics decided a facility wasnt being productive enough.
For the last ten business days, they had watched the top-tier employees drift
away, skimmed from the top like cream, vanishing as they were transferred to
other facilities, some in other neighborhoods, some in other cities, some in other
countries.
The idea men at the top of the pyramid went first, the great thinkers, the great
theorists, the ones with valuable ideas were the first to be swept away elsewhere,
traded for by invisible corporate puppeteers, put onto new teams to lead new
projects. Then went some of the workhorses in the middle, the researchers and
programmers, the experienced administrative assistants, the ones with newlyminted and expensive educations, the ones who did the work through the neural
interface of their headware computers and carried out the tasks of those great
idea men; the hand-picked workers, the reliable ones, the efficient ones, got
whisked away in the wake of their team leaders. By the start of the second week,
transfers began to file in for the bottom-tier workers, the drones at the bottom,
the clerical support staff, the customer service agents, the interns, even the
janitorial staff. The ones who did the work but didnt get the pay, glory, or
attention from the nebulous corporate Upstairs. The ones without faces or names
worth remembering, just swelling the ranks and getting the job done, they, too,
drifted away.
By the closing of the offices on the ninth business day, all that was left were crucial
on-site security staff, and bewildered middle management. With no one to give
them instructions and no one to delegate vital tasks to, the managers sat in their
desks and worriedly read and re-read emails, waiting to be told how absolutely
important they were to Dracogenics, how valued their contributions were, and
what they were supposed to do next.
The security officers, meanwhile, shrugged and did their job. They screened the
few who came into the building, they screened the many who left, they walked

patrols of the facilitys exterior, manned the checkpoint at the entrance. Thered
be another facility for them, there always was. Dracogenics saw most employees
as assets, pieces of a cohesive whole, small bits of learning or work that
complimented one another in synergistic ways. It saw security officers, on the
other hand, more as pieces of a facility, extensions of a place rather than
members of a team. They were furniture or cubicle walls, lights or desks, doors or
scanners. Integral. Necessary. Not quite valued as human.
But at least it meant job security.
The security guards, though, got complacent. Comfortable. Their workload got
lighter every day while their facility got less important. It was easy to gossip as
you walked your patrol, chatter about the employees leaving, poke fun at the
baffled middle managers sitting, obsolete, in empty offices upstairs, brag about
the receptionists youd c-scanned as they were on their way into the office for the
last time. They relaxed. They got lazy. They got sloppy. The third-shifters were
the worst, there during the next-to-the-last night this facility planned to be open.
Even Stephen Barnes, the assistant security chief, whose annual reports and
psych evaluations had pegged as the very soul of efficiency and professionalism,
let his guard down a hair. He had his helmet off, dark face split with a whitetoothed smile, talking to someone who wasnt in the room. His short, curly, hair
was buzzed close to his scalp, and data ports for his infochip gleamed chromebright against his black skin. He split his infochip-boosted consciousness into two
halves, calling home to chat with his pregnant wife mid-shift. Part of his mind
continued to scan the monitors and communications between guards, but the
other checked on Pamela, back home. She wasnt sleeping well, he had
transitioned to overnights to reap the benefits of a stingy shift differential, and
they caught up talking about the daughter he missed so much of, planning for
the second on the way when his workload allowed for it. Kaitlyn, their oldest,
was going to have a full dozen years on her new baby sister, and was giving them
all of a pre-teens usual problems while trying to cope with a father that slept while
she was awake, and a pregnant, aching, mother.
And so, precisely fifty percent of his attention was on the conversation with her

when all hell broke loose.

A lit cigarette makes for a hell of a target on a dark night. Thermoptics or regular
vision, that glowing little cherry tells some son of a bitch right where your face is,
and just the act of lighting up kills your night vision if you havent got cyber eyes
of your own installed. You just cant walk around with something attacked to your
face glowing that brightly, without expecting some son of a bitch with a rifle to
maybe take advantage.
The first guard died, head exploding from a HEAP round, never getting the chance
to even hear the snipers shot that killed him. His buddy had enough time to
gawk and fumble for his standard-issue submachine gun, a boxy little UZ1-MP
before the marksman shifted his aim and a second high-explosive, armorpiercing, shot took him very nearly in the heart.
Their armor-mounted monitors, methodically and mindlessly reporting their heart
rate, blood pressure, and a half-dozen other no-longer-so-vital signs, pinged the
security office automatically. A few hundred yards away, at almost the same
time the sound of the far-off rifles shots reached the mostly empty office, a red
light flashed.
Half of Barnes reacted immediately, his infochip screaming, a top of the line
model with custom coprocessors and an assortment of upgrades. Fifty percent of
his attention flicked to the medic-monitors and their halted input, started to
transition to external security cameras, and got his mouth working and orders
given via the building speaker system.
All agents, all agents, testudo formation, Barnes calm, matter-of-fact, voice
came was simul-cast as voice and text into their headware, helmet audio system,
and implanted ear upgrades. Say again, command is testudo.
Only after the command was given Barnes finalize the send command for the
text message the other half of his mind had already typed up.

SORRY, scrolled onto his wifes chat screen, WORK EMERGENCY. LOVE YOU.
And then Barnes restructured his mind, infochip and wits re-aligning, and he threw
himself fully into his work.
The guards responded, throwing off their lackadaisical attitude with the alacrity
that only someone else dying can instill, responding to the code words simple as
they were by moving to their nearest defensive positions. Scattered throughout
the empty building, associate managers and deputy general department heads
looked up from polishing their resumes, blinking at the announcement and the
noise like confused sheep. As if on cue, Barnes kept talking in confident,
reasonable, tones.
All employees, who in fairness require a bit more finesse and detail than a welltrained paramilitary force, Please remain in your work stations or return to them
as quickly as possible. Remain calm. Remain seated. Stay out of hallways and
doorways, surrendering right-of-way to security agents.
As an afterthought, This is not a drill.
Then Barnes went off-mic again, a mental command piping through his infochip
and alerting regional management, miles away and likely sound asleep.
FACILITY ATTACK, MULTIPLE CASUALTIES, the hurried message said. FAST
RESPONSE REINFORCEMENTS REQUIRED, STANDARD DEFENSIVE PROTOCOLS
INITIATED.
The good news such as it was was that Barnes and his blue icons didnt have to
win, they just had to not lose. If they could hold out, if they could block hallways
and slow the invading assault teams at choke points, help was on the way.
Even as his brain and wetware were conspiring to transmit that emergency data,
he, personally, was following protocol and striding across the security office to the
arsenal, arming himself with a standard UZ1 subgun instead of merely his

holstered laser sidearm.

His feet and hands worked, his head and infochip workedbut a sliver of him, the
bit that the company didnt control, also worked. In his heart and deep under his
breath, he said a quiet prayer hoping to make it home to his wife and girls. He
was, after all, only human. Then, stubby subgun within arms reach on the desk
next to him, Barnes settled into the command chair and sent a mental command
via his infochip even as he leaned in for an optical scan and started up the tactical
console.
The world fell away as his consciousness went digital, linked wirelessly to the
security network of the building. The cameras became his eyes, the doors his
mouth to open and close, the racks of security drones and the pop-up automated
turrets became his angry fists, and the obedient security guards his white blood
cells, the immune system ready to repel attackers.
He watched his armored troops shuffle into position, weapons up, boots moving
quickly. Barnes exhaled and a half dozen drones were launched from rooftop
compartments, artificial intelligence dog-brains weaving them seamlessly through
a tactical sweep pattern, hover-tech fliers cutting through the air where he
commanded with a twitch of his brain. As the drones swept by overhead, he
bounced himself from camera to camera, searching for targets. Thermoptic
imaging showed him the assault force, and when he just for a second sucked
in a startled breath, the lights in the building flickered.
This wasnt some two-bit insurgent attack, vandals whod gotten frisky and
decided to take potshots at the guards, no. This was a full-scale assault, blackarmored men moving in stealth-pattern formations, matte-armor, gunblue
weapons, balaclavas revealing only cold, hard, eyes. They moved with precision
and purpose, and he counted two dozen of them before plus one or two? an
off-screen snipers bullet destroyed the sec-camera he was spying through.
Barnes flickered back over to tactical control, where his men were tagged as little
blue icons, the incoming enemy as sinister red, and he organized his guards.
Testudo formation put them in a rectangle around the remaining building

personnel, a sharp-cornered defensive perimeter formed well within the building,

shamelessly sacrificing external portals before the fight even started. He didnt
regret the decision, given the speed with which the assault force was coming;
trying to hold the doorways against snipers wouldve just lost him game pieces,
and the enemy was still he spied through his digital eyes stacking up at the
entrance, preparing to waste breaching charges and shock grenades to clear a
hallway that didnt need clearing.
They were moving by the book. Barnes smiled, and interior lights gleamed a little
brighter with him. He knew the book better than most, had studied small unit
tactics and standard corporate security procedures alongside coding and all the
other laws of the universe. Barnes knew the book. He could beat the book.
Black-armored stormtroopers grouped up in teams of eight, two groups at front
entrances and one at the back, and the lead man in each formation started
fumbling with shaped charges to open the doors. That meant they didnt have
hackers to open them, instead. Advantage:defense. Barnes sent a lethal mental
command.
His flight of drones split into two three-gunbot wings, and then swept in on the
lined-up commandos in front, strafing and blasting away. Here and there
protective shields flared to life to deflect shots, but far more hit than didnt. Red
icons flickered and died as the drone-mounted autoguns chattered, focusing fire
on the breaching soldiers. Once a group was stacked up and seeking penetration,
handling the breaching charges became a tactical priority they were exposed as
long as the doors were secure, which coupled nicely with the innate psychological
desire to see explosives handled appropriately and Barnes used that to his
advantage as he commanded his jagged little triangular flights of drones to sweep
back in for a second pass. His targets had no cover, and they didnt have the high
ground. The drones would tear them apart.
When an assault trooper lowered his weapon to fumble with the det-charges, that
man got shot in the back a half dozen times. It was a simple and ugly and brutal
game, but their rule was to prioritize the doors, and he knew the rule as well as
they did. The man at the door had to focus on the door or they were all dead, but

as long as he focused on the door, he died. Barnes might have felt sorry for them,
if theyd not been there to murder him or, at the very least, put a tremendous
black mark on his otherwise-impeccable record.
Four of them were down, one more injured, before he split his attention away and
left the drones on an automated repeat attack pattern. The rear team was
already in, and he leapt to the nearest camera a helmet-cam on the lead officer
guarding the nearest hallway to monitor that situation directly. His infochip
hummed, and part of his mind kept a watch on the surge of red icons sweeping
through the building towards his blue ones, the other watched in grainy, shaking,
first-person as they got nearer.
GOING DARK, he thought very loudly, warning each of his guards in a text
message that scrolled onto their infochip heads-up display.
Going dark, he thought a second time, this time a command to the buildings
security systems, and the lights throughout the facility shut off obediently. His
sensors picked up startled exclamations from the assault team, gasps of fear from
the few huddled employees in their cubicles.
His men dealt with the dimness better, prepared for it as they were. It bought
them a split second, as the assault troopers adjusted with thermoptics or starlight
vision mods, and a split second was all the time in the world during a gunfight.
Defensive CR12 and UZ1 autoguns barked and roared in the dark confines of
interior hallways, and half of the invading team fell in the first flurry of autofire
before both sides settled in at corners, taking cover and swapping fire. Shields
sparked to life trying to keep the invaders and defenders alive, but relentless fire
soon had icons, red and blue alike, winking out as men died.
Something blinked and caught a splinter of the deep-interfaced guards attention,
and he frowned and shifted to look at it. An error message no, two from his
drones. They were taking fire.
Barnes swept his full attention to the front of the building again, where the bulk of
the half-hearted fire from the exposed assault teams was missing into the night

sky or being shunted away by the flaring protective shields of his combat drones.
The craft were holding up as well as initial projections had suggested they would,
but then hed customized their thrusters and shield generators himself. The
problem wasnt the assault teams themselves, but their supporting fire; one
drone was down and unbroadcasting, another was limping through the air trailing
sparks and drawing fire, the third was still zipping nimbly through the air, raking
the main enemy team mercilessly, efficiently, robotically even as its crippled
flight-mate went down.
Barnes hated snipers.
That eight-man assault squad was down to five men, but even as he watched
they were breaching and sweeping into the building. A mental command alerted
the nearest of his security personnel, and they prepared to repel the attackers
face-to-face.
Flight Two continued to harass the secondary assault team, also up front, but was
also down to a single buzzing, strafing, drone. A thought-quick search dragged
the most recently destroyed machines memories out of the corporate databases,
sifted through it even as autoguns barked, bullets and lasers speared through
the air, men prayed and bled and died and he began to compute ballistics
trajectories based on where incoming fire had crippled his downed gunbots; yup, it
was their damned sniper.
He alerted his internal security to the incoming threat as he sent his only two
remaining drones soaring away. The two wings were down to just a pair of
gunbots, and they went racing away from the building, initiating defensive
maneuver patterns as they backtracked and swept to engage the enemy
marksman.
Far away, with his actual ears, Barnes heard the gunfire, the barked commands
from within his pawn-squads, the muted cries of panicking employees. Outbound
emergency calls crawled through the ether after his own proper-channels alert as
civilian employees did the only thing they could think to do complain up the
office ladder and he did his best to ignore it all, to filter away the audio input, to

focus on the digital display that existed far outside the building and,
simultaneously, only within his head.
A muzzle flash gave the sniper away, even as one of his drones, one of his flying
eyes, went abruptly, violently, off-line. It didnt matter. He had that second, that
final, gundrone. Damaged by previous fire, engine leaking fluids and battery
pack screaming warnings, but still functional enough. Barnes blinked in real life as
his vision adjusted to the single camera, the single gun-drone, that remained.
Back in the office, settled into his chair in the dark, he bared his teeth and gave a
mental command.
The drone fired. Incessantly, ignoring warning messages about overheating
barrels, overpowered recoil-buffer subsystems, flight stabilizers, dwindling
ammunition levels. Barnes didnt have the time or inclination to fly closer, to
examine the partial cover the enemy sniper had, to calculate proper flight patterns
and trajectories, to e-message corporate higher-ups to request the special
permission required to fly over extracorporate territory to emergency-engage a
distant foe. He just zoomed in the lens as best he could, found the right rooftop,
and let fly, the drone-mounted FML4.6 roaring.
The sharpshooter fell apart, as if by magic, into a sloppy mess of blood, meat, and
ruined armor. It was the last thing the drones fish-eye lens ever saw, the faint
sense of satisfaction from its handler was the last thing the drones dog-brain
programming ever felt. Its impressive ammunition had dwindled to less than
twenty rounds, and they were consumed in a fireball when the battery pack gave
its last, spilling and mixing vital fluids that burst into flame, and the final rounds of
explosive ammunition were triggered, internally. Barnes had always been a
wizard at getting the most out of the men, the machinery, under his command,
but sometimes that came with a cost.
Scratch one drone, but scratch one sniper. It was a fair trade.
Barnes gasped as he pulled himself out of the full-sync virtual reality of the
buildings security programs and into meatspace, into realtime, into the world.

His infochip and cyberoptics still displayed a heads-up melodrama for him,
blinking red attackers moving forward, blinking blue defenders laying down fire to
stop them, shivering green civilian-employees huddled near the center of the
building. Gunfire rang out through the hallways of his facility, the squads of grunts
under his command were fighting and dying, and it was time to go help them.
Barnes men were outnumbered two to one, still, and the assault teams were
wearing heavier armor and carrying bigger guns. Things werent looking good for
the home team.
He stood, blinked away brief dizziness, and snatched up his auto gun. He syncmated it wirelessly to the ballistics subroutines his infochip was running, slapped
home a magazine, and chambered a round. His shields were charged, his laserpistol sidearm had a full power pack. It was time to bring one more UZ1 subgun to
the fight, and the sharpest mind in the building along with it.
FIREFIGHT, INTERIOR, he couldnt help but text his wife as he shouldered the
stubby little carbine. I LOVE YOU. I HAVE TO GO.
Security was his job, and it was time to go to work.

2.
Boys, I tell you, Red sauntered down the rain-dark street, arms flung wide,
sleeveless leather trenchcoat flapping with the motion as his wave took in the
whole block, the whole district, maybe the whole city. Being a security guard is a
hell of a job.
Snow snickered, Outstanding shook her head, Punch and JD didnt seem to hear
they were probably synced up again, their infochips blurring the lines between
their computing clouds as surely as a tumble in the sheets blurred the lines
between their heaving bodies but Red just kept on talking like every single one
of them had answered.
Dracogenics is the best damned company in the world, and its because of hardworking, hard-partying, go-getters like us.
Red wore denim and leather, leather and denim, hints of chrome here and there,
and all of it with a kevlar weave just below the surface. He was a lot like his outfit;
looked rough-and-tumble, looked dirty and a bit dangerous, but was even nastier
than appearances gave away. He had the broad shoulders and features of a
Pacific Islander, but the tattoos dancing along his rippling muscles were from all
over the world. His hair was shaggy-long, his stubble closer to a beard, his nose
broken several times, cybereyes high-quality but low-humanity, little balls of
silver without pupils or irises. He had a big gunblued Lincoln revolver tucked
carelessly into his pants, a wicked little hatchet hanging from a scrap of leather
looped through his belt, and who-knows-how-many knives tucked here and there
and everywhere. Red Robert Kingsley was a knot of scar tissue and gristle, a
looming, tall, wall of muscle and violence, all weathered skin and a casual slouch,
dark eyes under dark hair.
He did not, in short, look anything like a Dracogenics security guard.
In his defense, perhaps, he wasnt any less pristine than any of his coworkers.
The hard-scrabble assortment of neer-do-wells that followed him down the
street were hardly a paramilitary crew in sharply dressed uniforms, themselves.

Snow was bio-tweaked or just unhealthy enough to have skin pale as cream, hair
dyed or gene-modded to be white as an angels wing, eyes looking impossibly
blue amidst all the white, the effect only ruined because her outfit was, here and
there, spattered with a bit of blood or mud or shit, since they were Downstream.
Outstandings hair had been buzz-cut neatly once upon a time, a high-and-tight
just like proper Pacific Marines wore, but now had gone crazily shaggy here and
there, blond spikes sticking up at all angles, nothing about her but her implanted
muscles still military-spec, her chest augmented with implants to keep something
like feminine curves despite having a comic book monsters bulk. Punch and JD
were dripping with stolen Uzy Korporatsiya combat augmentations, boosted or
bought when they were kids, three, maybe four years back, big ugly military
surplus stuff that whirred a little when they moved and hit like a mack truck when
Punch smashed that big stupid arm into someones big stupid face. JD giggled
next to him, holding onto his smaller, meat, hand, almost skipping along on her
sturdy, stompy, Russian-military combat-issue cyberlegs. The half dozen new
members and tagalongs that followed along behind them didnt get any cleaner,
didnt get any neater, were uniform only in their lack of uniformity.
Red didnt look like a Dracogenics security guard, and the Wyverns, trailing along
behind him in a laughing, snorting, whistling, sneering, swaggering, mob, didnt
either.
But they were.
Against all reason, Red Robert Kingsley, apparently had a security badge right
there, carried on an official Dracogenics faux-leather dragonhide lanyard right
around his neck, tucked under his shirt with the browning blood stains. It had a
photo id badge with his full name right on it, with a seventh-level clearance bar
code on the side, and his ugly mug sneering at you in the photo and those dead,
cold, silver eyes staring down the camera and following you no matter what angle
you looked at the badge from.
And he hadnt even stolen or looted it.
The Wyverns werent quite a gang, you see. They acted like one, as often as not.

They stomped and stalked and swaggered all around Downstream, hopping over
or splashing into the puddles of sewage and acid-reeking rainwater like everyone
else. They sometimes tagged up the place, paint cans getting the old shakeshake-spray, a quick, ugly, W and a stylized, curving, almost-S-shaped winged
reptile claiming territory. They sometimes sold drugs, and very often bought
them. Punch and JD sometimes pimped and hooked. They acted and looked just
like a gang, but they werent. They were the Dracogenics security B-team. The
rejects. The wild cards.
Once upon a time thered been a girl a young woman, really who was plagued
by injuries during her corporate sec/mil boot camp, recycled through the physical
program three times, knowing that the fourth meant, on paper, rejection. Shed
boosted a squadmate up the climbing wall on the confidence course, started to
squirrel-clamber up behind him, impossibly quick and strong. Then, because she
was high and unsteady on combat drugs, shed slipped and tumbled from the
very top of the wall. Then, because of gravity being just as mean as this girl but
twice as reliable, shed hit the ground exactly like a grown woman lugging around
full combat kit could be expected to; hard. Both legs had been busted, one of
them broken with a wicked nasty compound fracture, and then shed stood there,
still high as a kite, refusing any assistance.
Doing outstanding, security instructor, shed insisted at the top of her fool lungs,
infochip display only concerned with her time on the confidence course. Then
shed snapped off a crisp salute and gone running off to try and finish with a trail
of blood behind her and her bone sticking out her shin like a dummy.
Red had snatched that file up when it slid across his e-desk, and redacted all kinds
of stuff from her ensuing toxicology test and psych eval, and used discretionary
funds to buy her a new leg she liked better, anyways. Hed called her
Outstanding to remind her of her fuck-up and her second chance, and shed
followed him ever since.
The two of them had led the Wyverns for going on four years, now, the longestlasting experiment in Dracogenics security, the unit with the highest turnover rate,
every lost employee a casualty. Theyd recruited pretty aggressively the whole

time, scraping the bottom of the corporate barrel, finding talent where others saw
flaws. Snow came along later, a mind-wiped pleasuregirl looking for a fresh start
but a little too cold to cut it, because Dracogenics corporate hierarchy pandered to
sociopaths but frowned on more impulsive types. Punch and JD, two-bit gangers
and smugglers joined at the hip just about, offered up security service in lieu of a
prison term.
Red had em working the whole time, mind you. Recruiting was what he did when
his bakers dozen of killers got too short on manpower. They never ran at the full
sixteen-strength they had on paper, always a couple bodies short and a few
screws loose, running at ten or twelve or so most of the time, so that Red got paid
three shares and Outstanding got two, with corporate none the wiser. They made
due with scrounged gear from Downstream and hitting Uzy Korporatsiya
shipments that Punch and JD heard about, they cut budgetary corners left and
right, they impressed Reds higher-ups with their ingenuity and adaptability, and
they had this was the best part they had an awful lot of fun doing it.
Hairy and greasy and bloody and muddy, bristling with jury-rigged shivs and topof-the-line combat blades, sporting a mish-mash assortment of stolen and looted
guns, the Wyverns were a mess. A horde. A pack. They were a clean-districts
nightmare, exactly; a roving band of lunatics, armed to the teeth, the barbarians
at the gate but with a completely legal citywide checkpoint pass.
Yes sirree, boys and ghouls, Red laughed and swung around as he walked,
backpedaling now, trusting in the Downstream crowd to part away from him,
facing his cheery little mob. A severed head hung loose in his hand, eyes rolled
up, tongue bulging out, a Russian tattoo the blatant facial ink of a new criminal
syndicate member, a young Russian foot soldier whod been an up-and-comer
just a few hours earlier right on the middle of its forehead.
I figure corporate securitys just about the best job in the whole wide world!

3.

Corporate securitys dangerous, but we signed up for it, right? Barnes said,
clear-eyed, voice soft but firm, staring square in the face of the night shifts
rookie. We get paid for it. They dont pay us for the quiet nights. They pay us
for nights like this. Reload. Get ready.
The calming effect was, maybe, a little bit ruined by Jenkins hollering in pain just
across the hallway, sprawled out in a growing pool of blood. The gunfire from
down the hall probably didnt help, either. Wide brown eyes blinked back at
Barnes, puppyish, in a face gone pale from blood loss and terror and sheer stupid
confusion. It was the kids first firefight Christ, how does someone grow up in
his city and never shoot anyone? but Barnes tried not to hold it against him, or at
least not to let it show. He slapped an armored hand on the boys armored
shoulder and gave him a confident nod.
Its our job. Its what we train for. Youve got this.
Jenkins wouldnt stop screaming, and Barnes couldnt keep coddling the rookie.
So cover me. Right now. Or Im gonna die. Because Im going.
And then he did; waited just a half-second according to the chrono heads-up from
his infochip, and then slung his subgun and lurched out into the hallway. Barnes
didnt think about Pamela or little Kaitlyn or so-little-she-was-only-half-real
Elizabeth. He didnt think about the wide-eyed rookie he was trusting to cover
him, or about annual performance evaluations, or about efficiency reports. He
thought about saving Jenkins, and he walked right into the line of fire to get to
him.
To make the best of any situation, Barnes dad had told him once, requires only
that you make the most of every tool youve got.

Jenkins was a broken tool. Barnes had to get to him to fix him.
He heard a CR12 assault rifle chatter on full-auto just behind him, a wordless shout
from Cash, the rookie, and he scrambled through gunfire, somehow in one piece.
Barnes dove after two upright steps and slid face-first next to Jenkins, and the
whole mad dash across the hallway was over as quickly as it had begun.
Cash had emptied his magazine just like that, and was already slapping a fresh
one home, while Barnes and his infochip ran diagnostics. Checking with the
monitors in Jenkins armor, scrambling in his suits medi-kit for the single item
they used for emergency trauma, Barnes got to work.
They called them magic wands, the medical emergency packs. They were
cylindrical, fit snug in the hand with a textured, rubberized grip, and had caps on
both ends. One end was rubberized, one interior chamber of the wand was
pressurized, and when you stuffed it into a hole and the microchip-sized
thermometer on that tip of the wand sensed body temperature, it fired; blasting
into whatever wound youd jabbed it into. A quick-seal foam, absolutely sterile
and bio-friendly, stopped the bleeding, a clear-crusting goop that expanded to
seal a wound and stabilize nearby fractures, then hardened nigh-instantly to stop
the bleeding.
Jenkins passed out when the fast-expanding concoction hit the wound,
sterilization compounds burning hard and harsh enough Barnes could almost hear
the chemical reaction. He reversed the wand, eying the fresh end with the same
trepidation he always did. Sticking his buddys gut full of fast-expanding superglue was the friendly, safe, easy part. The pointy end held a chemical cocktail
designed to get someone up and fighting before their body could realize what a
terrible idea it was.
Somewhere, Barnes said as he spat the all-in-one needle cover away, baring
the assortment of needles as he lined them up with the injection port right over
Jenkins heart, built into the armor for emergencies the same way walls had
panels for you to break the glass and grab a fire axe. Someone probably shoots
this stuff up for fun.

Jenkins couldnt hear him before the needles went in and the plunger went down,
because he was unconscious.
Jenkins couldnt hear him afterwards, because his body filled with a crazy mixture
of morphine and adrenaline, two different amphetamines and, if the rumors were
true, some sort of distilled testosterone from an apex predator, just for flavor. The
belly-shot man leapt to his feet just about like his ass was on fire, roaring
something without words inside his helmet, and Barnes did his best to ignore what
his armor-mounted health monitors were telling him hed just done to another
human being, a coworker, a squad-mate. Jenkins vitals spiked crazily, and the
inside of his helmet filled with a frothing mix of saliva, bile, and madness.
Hey! Barnes hollered, clambering up and smacking him hard on the shoulder to
get his wild-eyed attention.
He shouldered his UZ1 and used it to point Jenkins down the hall.
It was those guys!
Jenkins eyes rolled in anger and righteous indignation, and he clawed furiously at
the grip and trigger of his own UZ1 before leaning around the corner and opening
fire. Across the hallway, Cash, the rookie, gaped for a second, then went back to
firing. Barnes allowed himself a grim smile.
It was another tool repaired, however temporarily. Another soldier back in the
fight. Another blue icon on Barnes heads-up display, brought back into the shield
wall, holding off against the oncoming red icons, wearing them down in an ugly,
hallway-wide, war of attrition.

4.
The last thing we want is some stupid war of attrition, Red Robert said, giving a
matter-of-fact nod. He paced back and forth, sometimes put his hands on his
hips, did his level best to hold the attention of the motley assortment of rejects
and lunatics that made up Wyvern squad. They were back at their semipermanent HQ, the abandoned mechanics shop where they squatted and
patched up between fights.
Thats not what were all about. Thats how other schmucks work, not the
Wyverns, roger that?
Snow nodded, Outstanding grunted, Punch and JD sucked face. A couple rookies,
all paying rapt attention mostly out of fear, bobbed their heads in agreement.
One punched the air angrily, like he was at a political rally.
The severed head sat quietly on a battered holo-table in front of Red, carefully
propped up face forward, looking at the assembled Wyverns.
Uzy Korporatsiya holds a whole district, give or take, right? Glazyrin and his
boys, gone halfway-legit, theyve got a claim to a big chunk of this city. Were
not out to throw ourselves away trying to take it from them. That aint our style,
that aint our job, but most of all that aint our problem. We dont grind away at a
big dog like that, just wearing ourselves out and then dying. We arent here to
take turf, were here to take lives. Just ask Ivan.
He got a laugh, Red did, but the severed heads name wasnt, or rather hadnt
been, Ivan. It didnt matter, the joke worked well enough. The Wyverns werent
exactly Dracogenics brightest bulbs.
So Uzy Korp can keep their district. Thats fine. What they cant do is horn in on
Downstream. What they cant do is muscle into the Red Light district. Red blood,
stars, lights, nicknames. Robert dealt with a lot of red in his life. He always had,
and had the blood under his fingernails to prove it. He didnt doubt that hed be

bloody till the day he died.

Let em keep their docks. Theyre a corporation, right? They own most of that
turf all legal-like, its theirs on paper so its theirs for good. We let em keep it.
We just dont let em expand. Old rules. Old ways. They know where their turf
ends and everyone elses begins. We just gotta remind em.
A few more nods, like they knew what he was talking about. The district
boundaries werent legally binding to corporate entities, but tradition mattered.
You were allowed, legally, to purchase property and expand into another district,
sure, if you had the money. Everyday schmucks didnt, so everyday schmucks
couldnt. A mob syndicate-turned-corporation as powerful as the Uzy Korp? Diehards like that, with all that hardware and money to throw around? Sure. Sure,
they could buy property in other districts, populate new buildings, send out a
tendril of influence through the fence and into someone elses garden.
But that was just technically, that was just legally. Traditionally speaking, you
were allowed to try. But others were allowed to cut that tendril off, if they could.
Stagnation was the order of the day. Dracogenics held on to power when the city
stayed precariously balanced, when the tradition outweighed the technicality.
When all the criminals and cults countered each other out, when the rebels never
gained traction because the crazies reigned them in, when the other corporations
and the freaks were taking it out on one another, when the cops had their hands
full and Dracogenics security filled the gaps and brought stability everywhere they
went (and then passed it off as prosperity), when everything else in the city
stayed a gridlocked madhouse, Dracogenics thrived. Dracogenics had kill teams
set up just to keep the cops and the Uzy Korporatsiya hassling each other, to keep
the Eternals cult in line and scrapping with the Disconnected neo-luddites, to keep
everything just like it had always been.
Dracogenics didnt like change, and that was where the Wyverns came in.
And were gonna remind em, boys and girls, the best way we know how. Red
gave a slow grin, heard a war whoop from the back of his little warband.

Messily.
The funny part was that for all that they were a savage, murderous, band of
outcasts and cast-offs, they were actually Red Robert knew it, even if no one
else did except maybe Snow, and she was crazy agents of the status quo. That
was their job. Their purpose. Their bloody mandate. They were, for all their
bravado, corporate troubleshooters. It was their job to sow chaos in order to
preserve tradition.
He passed it off to the Wyverns below him, and that was all of them, as the rules
of the street. Some old code, some turf war thing that the punks from
Downstream and the rest of the Slums would pretend to understand. Viking
bullshit, berserker glamour, street-tough macho crap. But it worked.
No, sir. Not the brightest bulbs.
So listen up! Heres the plan!
He gave the table a good kick to get their attention, like a judge banging a gavel,
and the hacked-off head went tumbling away. The holotable booted up slowly,
because its not like it was cutting-edge gear, and Red Robert glared to hold
everyones attention. It worked, mostly.
Mostly was good enough, with this lot.
Squelching and thumping on the floor, the tattooed head of Vadim Glazyrin,
nephew of the local Uzy Korporatsiya leader Evgeny Glazyrin, rolled to a stop.
Red and his wicked little axe had been the one to take the young bravos head,
and it wasnt the last blood he and the Wyverns would be spilling tonight.

5.
The hallways were slick with spilled blood and dotted with spent shell casings, but
Barnes didnt have a spare thought to bemoan the poor day-shift janitorial crew.
Barnes did his level best to keep a reliable count of incoming assaulters, compared
to the cool blue-iconed defenders that remained. Even in the madness of combat,
or perhaps especially, it was important to keep a level head. It was vital to stay
focused on the task at hand, to line up your front sight, maintain a solid stance
and grip, to fire controlled bursts calmly, efficiently, and to keep a tactical eye on
the men around you, to maintain a collected vision of the overall situation. That
was his job. He was the shift commander, he had the upgraded infochip for a
reason.
But damn if he didnt care more, every time he saw a muzzle flash from down the
hallway, about his wife and daughter, about that second one on the way. He
knew on a rational level that by the time he really registered the muzzle flash, it
was too late to be worried anyways. Rationality had limits, though. According to
the tactical display overlay from his infochip, it really felt like the incoming red
icons didnt. He was down to three softly glowing blue arrows, himself, the
rookie, Cash, and McCall, who was probably regretting that transfer from first
shift six weeks earlier.
Jenkins had emptied his magazine into one black-armored attacker, then
smashed his gun to pieces and destroyed the helmet and skull of a second, but
even their magic wands couldnt do much when you caught a HEAP round to the
forehead, so Barnes repaired tool had broken beyond his capacity.
Three of them, against what looked like eight more incoming red icons, but felt
like a hundred or a thousand or just fucking all of them.
Barnes drones were gone, theyd done their damage and bought them all time
early on. Barnes had done the light trick two, three more times since those
opening volleys, but his men were getting slow to react, the enemy were getting
quicker to, and it was losing its sting. Barnes had gone through three more magic

wands getting his men back on their feet, darting from cover to cover they all
looked at him like he wasnt scared, which almost made him laugh until he peed
himself to get to them, patch them up, reassure them, point them in the right
direction, get them fighting again.
He got the most out of his drones, and he got the most out of the men that served
with him. He had the reviews and test scores to prove it. But this, Barnes
reflected as he dropped an enemy with a burst to the chest-plate, only to see that
there were still plenty of red tactical icons blinking away, this was ridiculous.
The one good thing was that none of the attackers had been able to go upstairs
just yet. Barnes had shut down the elevators with an angry wireless command
and a few taps on his armor-mounted hackpad, and he knew from the door
debacle that the assault teams didnt have a hacker to override that command.
He and his men were focused, as per testudo formation guidelines, near the
center of the building, guarding the stairwell. Since none of them had come
running downstairs and into the line of fire, Barnes figured the civilian employees
were still upstairs where hed ordered them, and since the red icons were
downstairs, that meant technically that Barnes and his men were winning the
fight.
But only technically.
McCall went down with a squawk somewhere behind him, and Barnes thought
BACK TO BACK as loud as he could, then spun and started firing. He and Cash had
six hostiles to go make that five, the rookie wasnt doing too bad but now their
attention was split. Pinned down on opposite sides of a hallway, each of them
leaning out from their defensive spots against the stairwell, now Barnes was
covering the south side of the building, Cash the north. Splitting their fire meant
the red icons would have gaps to advance in, because they had to reload every
all-too-soon rounds.
Like right about now.
Barnes hammered another black-clad invader to the ground, but then the slide on

his boxy little UZ1 locked back. Even as a mental command sent the empty
magazine clattering to the ground, he had to duck behind cover and scowl around
for a fresh one. The magnetic clamps did a great job of holding their reloads
secure, but their standard load-out wasnt really designed for this sort of sustained
firefight. He kicked over the corpse at his feet Sorry, McCall, you shouldve
stuck to first shift and clawed a full magazine loose.
By the time Barnes was back to his feet, leaning around the corner, subgun
angled, sights aligned, ready to fire, the nearest red icon wasnt just an icon, it
was a bulky-armored man just a few meters away, his black CR12 assault rifle
leveled at Barnes corner, waiting to fire. Barnes action beat the troopers
reaction, though, and in the split-second it took the other man to register that his
target had emerged, Barnes infochip-enhanced reflexes poured a half-dozen
rounds into him in a pair of bursts. The south side was clear. Barnes was
supposed to be happy or proud or satisfied at that, but instead all he could think of
was the smell of Pamelas hair.
Cashs blue icon blinked furiously as the rookie took a hit, vitals fluctuating wildly.
Barnes spun, finger squeezing the trigger even before his feet were set, but the
attackers ducked into side corridors and while one got tagged, none of them died.
Half his magazine was gone, and there were three of them left. He set his
subgun to semi-auto to keep from having to reload again so soon, and chewed
away, methodically firing, at the cover each of the last red icons was huddled
behind.
Help was on the way. He saw blinking message alerts from regional HQ, but hell
if he could take the time to read them right now. What mattered was their
acknowledgement. That made victory of a sort an inevitability. The cavalry
was coming.
If he could keep their heads down, these last three attackers, he might just make
it through this.

6.
And Ill take the scalps off these last three, over here, Red Robert said matterof-factly, even though no one but Outstanding and sometimes Snow ever
seemed to answer him.
Hed gone over the basic assault plan with the Wyverns less than an hour earlier,
but having eyes on the facility, watching the poor dumb schmucks on guard duty
outside the logo-emblazoned Uzy Korp warehouse, made him change it just a bit.
You said two earlier, Outstanding said, a grunt as much as an observation.
Said I got two, you got two.
Well, Im in charge, and Im pulling rank. You get one, I got three. Snow, youre
on overwatch, but dont you fucking wreck this for me. And dont shoot less you
have to, remember, quick and quiet for these first dumb bastards.
Red hadnt gotten three at once in weeks, and now that he had the chance to
score a triple, he really kind of wanted it. Outstanding sulked a little, but Snow
just shrugged because she far as Red could tell didnt really care if anyone,
anywhere, lived or died. He gave a nod like hed just won a major argument with
both of them, then peeked around the corner.
Punch and JD were applying combat stimulant adhesives on one another, a
standard pre-skirmish ritual. He wondered, sometimes, just how many drugs the
pair of them had done; how much of their pay went to replacement hearts and
livers, over the years, how surprised each of them were every time they actually
woke up instead of dying in their sleep all tangled together like they always were.
Oh well. If they kicked off some night off-duty, it wasnt his problem, it was their
damned hearts exploding mid-firefight he had to be worried about, and that
hadnt happened yet.
A pair of rookies shifted nervously from foot to foot just behind Punch, trying not
to look as JD lifted her shirt so Punch could get a drug patch just over her heart. He

was clumsy with that big Uzy Korporatsiya-surplus cyberarm of his, but wicked
lethal with it. Redd seen him punch a guys jaw clean off, once, and he was sure
the rookies had heard the stories.
The last of their rookies a whole team without any veteran supervision, but why
not keep his best and bloodiest close? was supposed to be circling around back,
and according to the chronometer in Reds infochip and his specific, faintly
threatening, orders, they were supposed to be in position any second.
Red Robert worked his fingerless-gloved hands tight around the grip of his fighting
hatchet and the broad-bladed survival knife he had in his left hand. He forced
himself to slow down, take a ten-count, waited to give the rookies time to get into
position, waited make sure Punch and JD were done giving each other their
normal good luck smooch, waited until he heard the crunch of boots on gravel, the
little four-man patrol ambling in the right direction again, bootsteps louder, louder,
then starting to fade just a bit. Done waiting.
That meant the luckless buggers backs were to Red and his Wyverns, but they
were still close.
Red hopped the wall like it werent nothing, scraping the knuckles of his knifehand and using it to vault him up and over, then darting across the gravel lot quick
as sin. He was halfway to em before one of them let out a quiet huh like an
idiot and started to turn around. All four, Red saw, had their big Kalishnikov rifles
still slung over their shoulders, more worried with comfortably carrying them than
keeping them dangerous.
Eenie, meenie, miney
Red picked one, a big farm-raised looking sumbitch with shoulders almost as
broad as Outstandings, and focused on him like a laser-guided missile. Two
more steps, three, he was almost there. He tucked into a roll going into the final
charge, and farmboy had just enough time to raise his eyebrows and feel stupid
before Red Roberts axe blew one of his knees the wrong way in a spray of blood
and bone, and Red skidded to a stop on his perfectly fine, thanks knees a half-

step behind and to one side. Robert lashed out on the backswing, wicked little axe
chopping into the big Russian right at the base of the spine.
At least his knee wont hurt any more, he tugged on the wrenched-deep axe to
haul himself upright even quicker than the farmboy could start falling, then met
him halfway with the knife. It slammed to the broad hilt into the back of his skull,
just below the big Uzy Korp-logoed helmet, and Red let the weight of the corpse
pull the blade from his hand; he was already busy moving on to the second.
Behind them, now, he looked past the remaining trio to see Outstanding just
hauling herself over the wall, to see Snow white on the red brick, stretching out
atop the wall and lining up her rifle smoothly despite the precarious perch.
A guard, caught halfway between turning around at the sounds of the charge and
turning back the way hed been going at the red blur of Red Robert, stuck his big
dumb face between Red and the oncoming Wyverns. Roberts axe whipped up
and over and around and down, caught him on the side of the neck just about
right, and sent him gurgling to the ground as throat-savaged as if a great cat had
mauled him. Red went for his triple on the backswing, but the next guards big
rifle was in the way and the axe chopped deep into the polymer furniture and sent
a chunk of the foregrip flying, but clanged off the sturdy metal barrel instead of
killing him. Red hacked again to keep the guard distracted while his off hand went
for another knife, this one a slender filleting knife hed found in some dead guys
house a few weeks after making him a dead guy.
Another hack, the AK got lifted in another desperate block, only just barely quick
enough and strong enough to hold off Red and his axe. Then one more, a good
solid overhand chop, and this time Red pulled, hard; the little beard of the axe
caught on the rifle, hauled it down and away, threw the guard off-balance, pulled
him forward helplessly. Reds tiny little knife oh, but sharp, so sharp slid up
and around, almost lazily, almost effortlessly, and opened the Russian up from
ear to ear.
He didnt bother dancing back to avoid the spray.
Gotta live up to your name, here on the streets, he readied his weapons and

turned to check on the fourth guard, but Outstanding was doing her usual fine
work. With only one kill to take responsibility for, she hadnt even gone for a
weapon. She had the last guards head in her hands, looked for all the world like
she was pulling his face in for a kiss, except for the blood. Her big shoulders
knotted and bunched, something in his head cracked, and he crumpled to the
ground.
Red let out a bark of a laugh, even as Snow slipped down from her wall-top perch
and came ghosting up towards them.
Those new musclesre really something, Outtie, he shook his head, wondering
if shed ever get over her augmentation addiction. Probly not.
Outstanding leveled a hand for a fist bump, raking her other hand through her
spiky blonde hair, like she was about to strike a pose. Red grinned and indulged
her, then looked past her to see Punch and JD cleaning up their own four-man
squad. Punchs big ugly metal arm was as bloody as Reds axe, and just as he
watched, JD was folding a guard in half sideways around a roundhouse kick to the
ribs. The pair of rookies with em had gang-tackled the last guy, looked like, but
dead was dead and it didnt matter if it came from a pro or fresh meat.
None of them had gotten a shot off. Everything was going according to plan.

7.
Barnes plan wasn't working, so it was time to change it.
He kept firing, single shots, slowly, methodically, almost rhythmically, one here,
one there, alternating between the two corridors that the three remaining
invaders had ducked behind. He kept them pinned down, but knew it wasnt
going to last forever; so hed started advancing, too. Maybe one of them had a
good tactical readout on his infochip and knew he was coming. Maybe one of
them had a cyber-ear suite and heard him. Maybe one of them just figured it
from the changing angle of the incoming fire. Maybe one of them had a pregnant
wife at home, too, and a twelve year old that made him crazy.
It didnt matter. Barnes had a new plan, and had to stick with it. He was going to
be out of bullets in threetwoone.
The slide locked back just as he rounded the first corner, finding a black-armored
guard kneeling there, hunched low like he was trying to make himself small,
invisible, unkillable, as round after round had slammed into the wall so near him.
Barnes flicked his empty gun at him to buy him a split-second, then groped at his
waist for his sidearm.
The laser pistol, fire point-blank for maximum effectiveness, was overclocked and
custom-tweaked. It didnt matter that the weapon was precision-crafted to be
effective against shields, and that the Rapid:Light model combat-shields these
guards had been using werent that impressive. It didnt matter that it was, as a
rule, not terribly effective against armor, and that the glossy black combat suits
were pretty impressive. It didnt matter that Barnes knew the efficiency-tweaked
weapon wouldve overheated had he tried to use it for sustained, suppressive,
fire like hed been doing with his autogun. What mattered was that Barnes had
been working his infochip to project estimates of energy dispersal and protection
for their armor this whole fight, that hed already done the math before ever
going for the sidearm, and that he knew it would get the job done. In close,
powered by a fresh battery pack, the pistol more than did the job; searing bluewhite bolts speared at the guard and lanced right through him, out his back, and

charred the floor behind and below him.

He swung his head sideways even as the charred corpse began to fall, vision
shifting faster than the barrel of his sidearm. He saw them, and his infochip and
his mind worked fast so fast and calculated how quickly he could swing the
muzzle of his pistol up and around, and he almost sighed in disappointment. Hed
given it a good try, standing there, staring down the pair of their assault rifles.
Hed done his best for Pamela and the girls and the company and Cash the rookie
and all his other blue icons, but his best hadnt, for the first time in his life, been
good enough.
His infochip worked the numbers, in that split-second, and he knew they could
squeeze triggers faster than he could re-align his weapon a hundred and sixty-four
degrees away from its current aim-point.
He was about to die.
SORR he almost finished the text message to Pam when opposite hallway, the
one with the last pair of black-armored killers in it, erupted in fire and smoke.

8.
JDs breaching charge blew the door clean off the Uzy Korporatsiya warehouse in
a blast of fire and smoke, and a handful of Reds Wyverns cheered. Then came
the shooting from inside, and they shut up. Two rookies died as they stood there
laughing at the explosion, but it wasnt Red or Outstanding or any of the vets, all
tucked carefully off to one side.
JD kissed a grenade for luck, there right next to the door and the blast, before she
sent it into the darkness within, punctuated and lit only by the muzzle flashes of
the barking Russian autoguns. They stopped shooting, and if you listened real
careful and your ears werent ringing, there were a few panicked footsteps, then
came the second explosion.
His girlfriends grenade bought them a sliver of time, and Punch made the most of
it. He was first around the corner, just a step ahead of Red. Robert swung inside
with his axe in his off-hand and his big ugly wheelgun up and ready not much
point in being quiet now, huh, since theyd missed that security camera thirty
seconds ago and searched the smoke and shadow for people that needed
killing. Snows rifle chattered as she laid down suppressive fire mostly for shits
and giggles, and Outstanding had her big shotgun ready to roll. The rookies had
some stuff, too, but Red didnt much care. Hed learn their favorites when he
learned their names, and both of those only when theyd really earned it.
The best part about leading from the front, Red Robertd always figured, was that
any motherfucker you saw was a bad guy. His big Lincoln .405 tracked every
motion, then, and blasted an explosive round at it. Didnt matter who it was, it
wasnt someone Red cared about. Advancing into the darkness, axe at the highready, Lincoln .405 thundering, Red just strode right in and made himself at home,
and in the first ten seconds or so, when they were still struggling to get good cover
after the grenaded sent them all scrambling, three shots took out three guards,
neat as could be.
Then, after the fourth shot blasted a fist-sized hole into some overturned shelving
and knocked the Russian crouched behind it onto his ass, face a bleeding mess,

Red spun behind cover and got quiet as a mouse. After the roaring revolver, and
with back-to-back explosions almost still echoing, with the gunfire and screams of
pain from elsewhere in the warehouse, Red pretty much vanished off the face of
the earth as he slipped into the shadows and started playing, his dead silver
cybereyes piercing the darkness like nobodys business.
He stalked right up to one burly young Russian and just slit his throat, easy as pie,
little fileting knife slipping left to right like there wasnt anything there. The
second he caught from behind, axe thunking into the top of his skull like he was
splitting a log, the guard dying while hed been fumbling with the little electronic
panel on the side of his helmet, trying to figure out the night vision controls. Red
slipped, shadow-quiet and spider-quick, up and over the next set of cargo-heavy
shelves. He dropped down onto the third guard like a jaguar hed seen on some
nature show when he was probably too young for that sort of thing; knife and axe
tearing and ravaging before his bulk slammed into the guy, gravity and meanness
dragging them both to the ground, legs locking around his prey to hold him in
place while his blades finished him off.
He might not be crazy as Snow, Red figured, but there was no denying he still
loved this job a little moren was strictly healthy, sometimes.

9.
He loved his job, just sometimes. When the smoke cleared, Barnes could see the
Dracogenics logo on the armored trooper underbarrel grenade launcher on his
assault rifle still at the ready that approached down the hall. His tactical cloud
link, infochip humming, had been ignored momentarily as Barnes had thrown
himself into his own personal fight, but now that he pulled the process back into
focus, he saw a fresh swarm of blue icons pouring onto the building. They glowed
a steady, calming, shade of high blue, moving with impressive precision, the fastresponse team some of Dracogenics best, their maneuvers more crisp,
augmentations more sharp, than anyone Barnes had been giving orders to.
Each of the incoming hallways was swept and cleared with admirably, almost
robotic, efficiency, and he gave a sigh of relief as an oncoming guards fresh icon
hovered over the emergency-blinking light that represented Cash.
It looked like the two of them were going to make it out of this, after all.
Barnes mustered up a salute when an officer approached him, stuffing his sidearm
back into his holster and breathing out an unabashed sigh of relief.
A laser-light flickered on the side of the oncoming mans helmet, flashing over the
barcode on Barnes chestplate.
Good work, Assistant Director, the officer said, all lantern jaw and salt-andpepper hair, crows feet around his blue eyes. Status report from off-site
building-link shows only one employee killed.
Security guards didnt count, Barnes knew, but he felt pretty sure that their
widows would disagree, given the chance.
A stray bullet, according to our hacker. No one made it upstairs, log reports. You
held the line.

Barnes let himself lean against the wall, allowed himself to feel exhaustion now
that a ranking officer was on scene, now that the building was securely back in
company hands, now that even off-site tech support was set up.
We did what we could, sir, he said with a tired smile.
Good work, the officer said again. Even better than we projected.
Cashs blue light winked out. Barnes eyes opened a little wider, infochip
screaming, reflexes kicking into overdrive but not believing what was about to
happen.
Its almost a shame.
The guards assault rifle bucked and barked, and everything happened impossibly
slowly. Barnes felt the first round slam into him just above his navel, heard the
crack not just of the supersonic round but of his corp-issued shields shattering and
his armors chest plate splitting under the direct impact. The second shot punched
him a little higher, recoil dragging the muzzle skyward. The third impacted just
about in his ten-ring, solid center of mass. The fourth broke his heart. He saw the
spent shells spinning and arcing, saw how the light caught the brass, saw each
muzzle flash, felt each impact.
I LO--, he sent to Pamela.
Then he died.

10.
Jack Rabbit had pretty good seats for the fight, all things considered like all the
murder down there probably the best seats in the house. Hed just had a little
burglary planned, a simple snatch job, hanging out in the rafters until the Uzy
Korporatsiya guardsd fallen asleep, then pinching a few ammo boxes to bring
back to his buddies; then these guys had shown up, and the whole place had gone
to the dogs. The slaughter outside, then the explosions, now this. From above,
tucked away safely in the dark rafters of the warehouse, Jack watched as these
newcomers stalked through the maze of shelves, racing after one another,
chasing down Uzy Korp security like they were nothing.
A pair of them trampled anything in their path, roaring obscenities, herky-jerk
quick, sporting outsized replacement limbs and always staying within a few steps
of one another. A big blonde woman pumped her shotgun and fired as quickly as
she could work the slide, then kicked in heads with a smile instead of reloading
when the time came. A nasty bastard with shaggy-long black hair had a gun that
sounded like Thor and a wicked way of sliding from target to target that almost
made Jack shiver. A half-dozen or so other attackers, half-feral, rampaged
through the place, too. A few got tagged, but mostly they stuck close to those
mean cusses in front, and just poured on fire or fists when the time came.
Jack Rabbit knew a nasty crew when he saw one, and these men and women
were, indeed, a very nasty crew.
He hopped from rafter to rafter, cyberlegs barely flexing, quick little jumps that
only took the effort of a leg-raise, hydraulics sending him bouncing along, then
custom pads absorbing each impact, keeping him quiet. When he was on a
courier gig, he liked to light up his neons and let the world watch him move. For a
burglary, though? Nope. He was in stealth mode. Alert, wary, chromed legs
running silent, keeping an eye out for trouble, whisper-silent. He was just another
shadow, up here above the lights. He was quiet as a mouse, quick as his
namesake, above the carnage, up here in the dark, he was as stealthy as a
friggin ninja. He grinned to himself, gave his head a little toss to flip his hair out of
his eyes.

He never saw the bullet coming, just jumped a quick little panicky calf-twitch
that sent him slamming into the roof when the shot whipped past his head. That
vain little head-toss had saved his life.
Jack clambered for his balance, arms shamelessly pinwheeling, a host of blackclinic-installed augmentations working to help him recover himself, stay limber,
stay focused, heart beating rapidly but tweaked with an athletes customization
package, lungs gulping in air but modified to handle it. He had no idea where the
shooter was, so he just twitched again, leapt from one rafter to another, quick as
he could (which was, he knew, pretty damned quick). He threw himself into the
dance, and trusted in the constant motion to keep him alive.
In his mad rush he caught a glimpse some crazy woman all in white, how had he
missed her earlier?! with a big rifle, aimed right at him. He leapt and scrambled,
dove sideways after his next landing, changed his trajectory and heard another
shot but, lucky again, didnt feel any impact.
Lucky Rabbit, stupid but lucky, he grabbed onto a rafter-beam like a swinging
monkey, legs scissor-kicking to twist as he launched himself, reaching, swinging
again, then flipping up to get his feet back under him. He leapt again, hearing
shouts from below him, now, hearing more gunshots. Another leap, not sure
where he was going but falling back on his freerunner instinct to just move
whenever he was in trouble, and he looked down past the rafter to see the big,
black-haired, leader of them level that big Lincoln hand-cannon his way.
Nope, Rabbit stared the man in the eyes and saw nothing there but cold steel, as
dead and empty and dangerous in a staredown as the swinging muzzle of his
absurdly big Lincoln.
Rabbits legs twitched, hydraulics and artificial myomers springing him along in a
dive going nowhere.
His legs scissored again, he twisted in midair, bunched himself up, angle shifted;
Jack slammed through a window that barely fit him, landed a dozen meters down
in a shower of glass he ignored, and kicked up dirt as he high-tailed it out of there.

So much for a simple ammo run. His Resistance buddies would have to live
without.
These guys were fuckin crazy.

11.
He woke up to a white light. He wasnt sure if that meant he was alive or not,
truth be told.
He blinked, squinted against the harsh glare and his sensitive eyes, lifted a hand
to block against the sharp electric glow and winced. His body felt all wrong. He
hurt all over, especially his chest; no, especially his head. Especially his
everyplace. His arm fell back down to his side, weak, off-balance, clumsy.
He willed it to lift again, made himself endure the hurt just to start slowly
struggling upright. He groped around, half-blind from the harsh buzzing lights,
and forced his body to leverage itself until he was sitting instead of lying flat,
dragged his weak, awkward, legs to the edge of whatever bed he was on, where
ever he was, whatever day it was.
WHERE ARE YOU, he thought very loudly, but his infochip didnt respond to his
command. It was offline. That was bad, because he never turned his infochip
offline. But it was good, because it meant he was alive, after all.
I LOVE YOU, he thought very loudly, wanting to punch in the modified sequences
of his anniversary and Kaitlyns birthday to force an infochip reboot, wanting to
punch his fist through a wall to get someones attention. Instead he tried to lurch
to his feet and fell on his face, clumsy as a baby horse that was also a
quadriplegic.
He let out a little grunt of pain, then choked it off with a series of coughs. His
mouth felt wrong, throat felt tight and raw, like hed gargled glass and then puked
it back up. He wrestled his hands beneath him, levered himself upright with
Herculean effort, shook there for a heartbeat then fell back to the ground.
Worthless. His body was worthless after being laid up for so long, but it had
never been his strong suit, it had always been his mind and his drive that people
had valued, everyone except Pamela and Kaitlyn who loved him for every atom
of his being and every beat of his heart and everything he ever said or did
unconditionally and he loved them back to and god dammit where was a nurse or

someone what kind of shitty hospital was this.

He strained every muscle he had to lift his head, squinting, blinking back tears at
the bright lights on polished tiles, and made out a pair of shoes coming his way.
Finally. Another shadow fell over him, someone approaching from the other
side, and soon he felt two pairs of hands on him, not terribly gently considering
how sore he was, hauling him upright.
You really should stay in bed, a voice said, gruff, businesslike. The lights were
too bright, he still couldnt make out much but shadows and glare.
My wife, he croaked out.
Shes fine. So are your daughters. She was born at five pounds, seven ounces,
three days early but fine. Theyre all fine.
Waitwhat?
How longhave he sputtered, throat raw.
Its been eleven months, the man replied, matter-of-fact. There were
complications with the procedure. You were our first, though. Be proud of that.
First?
Transfer. It didnt go smoothly, but it eventually went. Weve done others,
since. Things are working much more efficiently now.
What he coughed, swallowed, willed himself to keep talking. What kind of
transplant?
Transfer, I said, Mr. Bishop.
My names not

Yes, it is. The shadow shifted. Nodded? And the second shadow moved away.
Far off, he thought he heard a door close. The gruff talker cleared his throat, then
continued.
Your name is Mr. Bishop, now. You can keep Stephen if you want, we dont
care.
They clearly didnt.
Barnes is dead. Barnes died eleven months ago. He is survived by his wife, and
two little girls.
The shadow moved around his bed, circling, looming.
Mr. Bishop, though, is a high-ranking security consultant, something like a
warrant officer, one step removed from the traditional Dracogenics chain of
command. Mr. Bishop exists in the system. Mr. Barnes doesnt. Mr. Bishop has
a comfortable life and an indulgent salary, a large fraction of which is diverted to
reimburse the company for the inflated employee casualty benefits being paid to
the widow Barnes.
Circling, circling, like a shark.
He swallowed, fought back tears from the harsh lights, looked down at his
shaking limbs. My ring is gone, he thought at first, but then, too, My skin is white.

Mr. Barnes is dead, and Mrs. Barnes is being looked after very generously. You
are Mr. Bishop. The first successful post-death transfer. Your headware could
handle it, we saw to that. Your mind was sharp enough for transfer, your will to
live strong enough, and your infochip had all the right modifications. We made
sure. We had to.
No. No.

The shadow loomed again, came into focus, and he saw a lantern jaw, salt-andpepper hair, crows feet, and cold blue eyes that were too disinterested to be cruel
on a personal level.
Mr. Dengler was very impressed with your performance, Mr. Bishop. You did
well during the assault. Better than we expected, and we expected quite a bit
from you. We know, beyond a shadow of the doubt, that youre the right man for
this project. Your wife was handsomely rewarded, in large part because you did
not disappoint us.
The man who killed him leaned in closer, blocking out the light, leaving a cold
shadow over Barnes Bishops face.
Dont disappoint us now.

12.
Its a little disappointing, Barnes-turned-Bishop said, rolling his shoulders as he
walked still just a bit off-balance, still just a bit weak, still just a bit sick to his
stomach every time he saw the wrong face in the mirror down the pristine
Dracogenics hallway.
Whats that?
You killed me. You were the first face I saw when I came back. You even sent
for me to come here, today, and seem to be in charge of my new assignment. I,
though, dont even get to know your name.
It mayve been a trick of the light, but he thought he may have seen a ghost of a
smile crack the granite of the mans face.
Call meCastle.
He got a nod in response. Bishop wasnt surprised that the older man was being
cryptic and callous, after all. Someone murdering you, right to your face, kind of
lowered your expectations of them where future civility was concerned.
Thats not the only one, you know.
Castle didnt muster up the concern to answer, just quirked one greying eyebrow.
Thats not the only disappointment. This last week, getting used to thisto my
body? Even going over the specs, I found a disturbing lack of combat augs.
You shouldnt need them, Castle grunted, leading the way past all manner of
suit-clad employees, not one of whom shrieked at Bishop and wailed about a
zombie. Youre supposed to be the brains of our little troubleshooting crew, not
the brawn.

Brawn helped last time.

Another hint of a smile on that stony face? Bishop tried to press it.
I do my best work in the field. Im a tactical thinker, not a strategist. I need to
be close to the action to get the most work done, and if Im going to be close to
the action, and if the budget can allow for it and it can, I did some digging I
should have the best body in the business.
You do. Or rather, you will. Castle stopped, turned, nodded to a featureless
door. You just wont be the one driving it.
They were in a monitoring station, not unlike the security office Barnes Bishop,
now, always Bishop had started that fateful shift in almost a year ago. The
screens blinked to life when motion sensors and infochip recognition protocols
registered their arrival.
Small status updates blinking silently in the corners of the screens told him how,
exactly, they were being piped the surveillance feeds; spybots, drones almost
impossibly small, little buzzing things that werent much more than cameras and
transmitters, and werent any larger than a bug. Bugs, of the crawling and flying
sort, didnt seem out of place where ever they were filming.
They showed someplace dark and slick with rain, full of neon glare and deep
shadows. The primary screen focused on a black-haired, hooded, figure that
reminded Bishop, deep in the back of his primate-caveman-brain, of a stalking
cat. He had an axe in his hand, and Bishop could just make out the glimmer of
white teeth within the shadows of his hood and greasy-long hair.
Whos that? They wouldnt have had chairs if he wasnt supposed to sit in
them, so he clumsily, still adjusting to his new center of balance settled into
one.
Thats our top candidate for recruitment into this program, Castle said,

remaining standing. Sitting down would be too lazy for him, too personable, too
human.
Bishop watched, eyes darting from screen to screen, then quirked an eyebrow up
at Castle as his hand so pale, not a single callous, no sign of that little scar from
the kitchen when Kaitlyn was small, no wedding band, not really his hand at all
hovered over the consoles sync-up button. There was a barely-perceptible nod in
response, and Bishop linked his infochip with the consoles cloud.
He blinked, shifted his consciousness, and began beaming information to himself
directly, creating a three-dimensional image in his head from the many cameras
scattered around the targets area; he wasnt just watching it on screens, he was
there, in a way. Synced up to the security network much like hed been to his
building, before Castle had killed him for doing such a good job of it.
He drifted, invisible and unreal, just behind the black-haired man as the brute
stalked along what looked like some docks. He had his little axe tucked a bit
behind him, tight against his leg, lost in the shadows of his long coat for a few
steps. A guard Uzy Korporatsiya, I recognize the insignia loomed out of the
darkness for a second, lifted an arm to stop him, didnt see the weapon until it
was too late. Bishop watched the man die, a single brutal chop knocking him to
the ground in a boneless heap, and he shifted his attention from one bug to
another, his camera angle, his distance and zoom.
The brute kicked in the door that had been, an instant and an axe-swing ago,
guarded. A few spy-drones zipped inside alongside him, skittered in on tiny legs,
dragged Bishops digital presence in with them.
It was, put bluntly, a slaughter. The hooded man snarled and attacked,
sidestepped this way and that whenever there was a threat, spun out of the way
of most attacks, bared his teeth and accepted the pain of a few others. Uzy Korp
guards and Uzy Korp employees scrambled to attack him or to escape him, rushed
at him or fell over themselves doing the opposite, and they all died. His coat
whipped this way and that, his axe was joined by a thick-bladed combat knife,
then thrown across the room, then replaced by a swinging chair, the heel of his

palm, a lashing elbow, a fresh knife again, the recovered axe ripped from a split
skull. From weapon to weapon, attack to attack, target to target, the blackhaired man lurched and pounced and darted. He left a red wave in his wake,
blood splashing against walls and ceilings, covering the floor, him, and twice
splashing up to disrupt a broadcast from a buzzing spybot.
There were times Bishop had to deal with tinges of lag. Instances when the
camera feed and the network and his infochip somewhere, one of them, at least
couldnt quite keep up, when moments of data were lost in the transmission.
This sort of long-distance streaming inevitably had to deal with that, but the
problem was worse than normal. Then it clicked; it wasnt just that, its that this
guy was fast. Fast. Despite his bulk, despite his obvious strength, there were
times his motions came so flicker-quick that to watch an attack clearly Bishop
would have to pause and rewind with quick mental commands, then that it felt
like he was fast-forwarding again when he resumed the real-time broadcast.
Thosethose were some combat augmentations.
He watched and tried not to think about the last time hed seen that much blood,
the last time hed smelled gunpowder and the burnt-ozone stink of a firing laser
pistol. He focused on the mans technique, the way he integrated what were
clearly trained combat moves alongside raw ferocity, the way he took corners,
used cover, slunk through shadows until it was time to attack. Bishop watched
while the black-haired man killed seventeen people, all told, all spread throughout
the facility, taken on in twos and threes and once fours. He took a slug in the
belly in one solid hit, that penetrated his sleek black armored vest deep enough to
draw blood. He caught several solid punches that never seemed to slow him
down, a backswing from a fire axe clutched in obvious panic. He was cut by a
broken bottle, some shattered glass, and a handful of the incidental scratches that
come up any time you kill someone within arms reach.
Seventeen, and they could barely slow him down.
He stood down at the center of the last room, the largest room, where in the
scuffle an assortment of cheap cubicles had been torn down, where three corpses

lay broken and in pieces as surely as the flimsy office furniture. He rolled his head
from side to side, shoulders, twisted a bit and popped his neck, like he was cooling
down from a workout.
Then he lifted his head and looked straight at the nearest spy-drone, so that
Bishop felt like the killers cold-chromed eyes were staring right at him, and the
killer cleared his throat and spat on the nearest corpse.
So, he just said, voice rough from the shouting and snarling of the last few
minutes. You like my resum?

13.
Well, Bishop said, two days later, trying not to let his voice crack even though
the sound of it still surprised him every time he opened his mouth. You put on an
impressive demonstration, Mr. Kingsley.
Leather creaked as those broad, powerful, shoulders gave a nonchalant shrug.
Meh. Just some grunts. Me an Uzy Korporatsiya, we got beef that goes back a
ways. Nothin I aint done before.
Bishop believed him, at least about the last part.
It says here, here being the hard-copy printouts Bishop had acquired, for
traditions sake, That you normally operate with extensive back-up. The
Wyverns, theyre called? A grey ops team.
They do alright, those featureless chrome eyes were shifting around the room,
like he was bored. But I dont need em. Thought youd kinda pick up on that,
the other day. I do fine solo. Didnt need Mr. Big Bad Castles fancy driver to give
me a ride, though. Rollin outta Downstream in a limo? That hurts a fellas rep.
Working solo, hmm? Your psych eval disagrees, actually. It says you show
impressive initiative and the capacity to work alone, yes, but warns against it.
Given too much leeway, you tend to gohow did they put it? Off the rails, that
was it.
You wanna keep me on a tight leash, suit? Twin chromed orbs shifted Bishops
way, settled there, looked him up and down appraisingly. I dont think you
could.
I represent more than myself, Mr. Kingsley, Im spea
Red.

Pardon me?
I havent been called Kingsley in a long time. Redll do.
Im speaking to you, Mr. Kingsley, with the authority of Dracogenics behind me.
Your employer. Half the citys employer. Someday, half the worlds employer.
Another shrug. Bishop allowed a petty little corporate smile that straight-laced
Barnes wouldnt have ever shown.
I also speak with the authority of the security turrets I know you noticed the
hidden mounts for, there in the corners.
Kingsley Red, apparently? almost returned the smile. Almost.
Fine, suit. Relax. You want to talk, company man, talk. What else does it say in
that file of yours?
It was as good a time as any to start the pitch, and go on the offensive.
That youre very good at your job. It says the same thing about me, in mine. A
Vice President of Security is putting a team together. A very small team, with a
very large budget. You and I will be, quite simply, just about the whole program.
Well operate outside of officially sanctioned channels, much like you grew
accustomed to with your little Wyvern team, but with the full authority of
Dracogenics, and a budget several times what you grew accustomed to during
your Downstream posting.
Red didnt get up and leave, and Bishop picked up on the way he carefully
masked his features, trying to smother his interest and keep it from showing. He
kept going, because a leader has to know when to press the attack.
Well troubleshoot. Well be able to pull rank on almost any Dracogenics scene
we assign ourselves to, to lead any squad we come across in the field, or to ignore

orders from almost any other officer. You and I will handle the assignments the
rest of Dracogenics cant. Well be the knights errant, the commandos, the small,
flexible, unorthodox team that kills what armies cant touch. I handle logistics,
tactics, and orders. You handle getting your hands dirty.
Bishop tried not to do a double-take like he sometimes did, as he watched his own
hand but still not really his, was it? move to tap on the paper file.
Never mind the demonstration from the other day. This tells me you can do it.
Your confirmed kills, your moral flexibility, your tactical initiative.
Your bloodthirstiness, your antisocial tendencies, your insubordination sounds
much less polite.
No rules but a very, very, few, Mr. Kingsley, and almost whatever budget we
want. Its your dream job, and I think you know that.
Who we going after?
Whoever we want.
That seemed to be the right answer. Kingsley spat in his already-dirty palm and
held it out across the table. Before he could lift his hand how much can it be
mine if Ive touched this killer with it, but never played pattycake with my
daughters? to return the shake, Bishop got a message piped to his infochip.
Only Castle had the authority and capability to message him. Castle, or Dengler
himself. The barest handful of Dracogenics senior executives outranked Bishop,
knew of Bishops very existence.
KILL HIM, it said.
SHOW US YOURE ON BOARD. END HIS OLD LIFE. SECURE HIS NEW POSITION
WITHIN THE COMPANY.

Bishop blinked, mind and infochip racing, trying to wrap his head around this new,
impossible, order. Red Robert Kingsley stood there, eyebrow, split by a vicious
scar, lifting quizzically.
Excuse me, Bishop lifted his hand a hand thats never touched my wifes hair
in a little wave, tilted his head. Infochip call.
Red grunted, Bishop focused on the transmission.
CANT DO THAT FOR NO REASON, he replied furiously.
GOOD REASONS. THREE OF THEM. DEPENDING ON YOU. PAMELA COUNTS
ON YOUR CHECKS. SHE HAS A NEW APARTMENT FOR THEM, YOU KNOW.
Bishop swallowed. He couldnt think of how to reply to that.
SECURE HIS PLACE IN THIS UNIT, AND REAFFIRM YOUR PLACE IN THIS
COMPANY. KEEP THE BENEFITS PACKAGE COMING. KAITLYN JUST STARTED
GYMNASTICS AND ADVANCED PLACEMENT INTRO TO PROGRAMMING. THOSE
ARENT CHEAP.
Castle was relentless.
Red swung his arm idly by his side, seemed to be sucking some stray bit of meat
out of his teeth. Bishop gave a tiny little nod.
HOW? WHEN? He tried to think about Pamela and the girls, tried to think about
how ruthless Kingsley was, how proud of the blood on his hands. Bishop tried to
think about how he, how his family, was better, worth more, than one life that
wouldnt not really end anyways.
NOW.
Red finished sucking whatever-it-was out of his yellow teeth, spat that bit of lunch

onto the stainless table that sat between them, lifted his eyebrows expectantly.
Bishop sent a mental command. Fast as he was, by the time Kingsley noticed the
sound of the turrets deploying, all he could do was reach for the table before the
blue-white laser beams cut into him. Bishop wasnt sure if hed been about to flip
the table over for cover, or use it like a weapon, but either way, one broad,
scarred-knuckled, hand was gripped to the edge of the stainless steel, left
hanging there neatly as the rest of Kingsleys body fell in laser-scalpeled pieces to
the floor.
Bishop swallowed bile as the stink of burnt meat filled the room, and told himself
his wife needed him. He did his best not to glance over his shoulder at the slicedup pieces of Red Robert Kingsley.

14.
This whole damned Resistance is just falling to pieces, Jack Rabbit thought to
himself, But they still manage to pay on time, Ill give em that.
It had been a rough season. Year. Year and a half. Hell, it was just a rough
Resistance. Trying to topple corporate tyranny and government corruption, in a
city where the corrupt government was unabashedly ruled by corporate tyranny?
It was a tall order. Might as well complain waters wet, it felt. Jack and the
Resistance went back a ways, though, and he was still the right side of thirty,
mind you! turning into something of a wise old man in the outfit as a whole.
Hed scavenged more than most, led his fair share of ambushes, made a name
for himself as that best kind of survivor; the lucky. Hed been able to upgrade his
legs three times thanks to the Resistances generosity, been able to swagger
down the street a bit more than he had as a humble courier-turned-smuggler,
been able to look himself in the mirror again.
But it had been a rough year and a half.
Theyd had a few ups, mind you, to go with the downs. A few lucky scores, a few
jackpots. The biggest had been the sporting goods store haul, stupidly enough.
Theyd all made the most of kneepads and helmets and good sturdy gloves,
sure, but it was the camping equipment that had really helped keep recruitment
alive. Some of the boys loved their ice axes and baseball bats, but it was the
dehydrated food that had kept half the Slums fed when the city had closed down
imports/exports as part of the great checkpoint overhaul plan. It had been
emergency blankets and heat-giving chem-packs that had kept the Slums going
through last winter, when even the slow-flowing sludge and waste water of
Downstream had frozen over as often as not. It had been the climbing rope and
rappelling harnesses that let Jack share the rooftops with the rest of his rebels, the
grapple guns and spider-climbing rigs that had opened up three dimensions to
their ambushes.
And then, of course, there was the hijacked truck full of construction-grade
Semtex-X. That had been a nice windfall, too, naturally. It meant less gunfights

and more explosions, less ambushes and more sabotage. They were sending
messages, now, not just swapping bullets and laser beams with guys that had
more of both. They were doing some real damage. Jack was doing more
damage.
But then damn it all then there were also days like this.
So you guys are it, huh?
Rabbit stood with his hands on his hips, rocking up and down a little on his
cyberlegs, calf raises accompanied by the soft hiss of top-end hydraulics. Jack
was still the right side of thirty, twenty-seven by his Slum-raised best guess, but
this lot made him feel downright ancient. The oldest and his scraggly wish-it-wasa-beard couldnt have been eighteen. The youngest, two girls, one with coffeedark skin and tightly-curled black hair, the other a blond with her hair slash-cut
high on both sides, were maybe half Jacks age. Maybe.
Kids. Thats what the Resistance was coming to, thats what they were sending
him, thats what they were down to. After the Seventh Street Shootout, the New
Years Massacre, the Crackdown at Archer Park, the Fire. Dracogenics and Uzy
Korp had hit back at them, hard, with the city cops being paid billions, probably
to look the other way and handle clean-up. It had been a rough year and a half,
but Jack wasnt dead, and neither was the Resistance.
But mankids. Four of them, with Jack making five for tonights op.
Good! He forced a cocky grin, the one theyd all come to expect. Small group,
moving fast. No one to slow us down, right? The less of us go, the smaller the
chance we get spotted.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Jack unslung his messenger back, top flap flung wide, already groping inside. He
reminded himself theyd been trained, done the conditioning courses, had the

basic weapon skills even if growing up Slumside hadnt taught them better.
Heres the drill, then. You girls, he gave the youngest-looking ones nods, then
an underhand toss apiece; polymer pistols, all gray plastic and large caliber, so
common they were practically disposable. Are gonna cover the rest of us. You
know how to use em, make sure you remember when to use em. Theyre
untraceable and thats good, but theyre loud as hell and thats bad. Stay sharp.
Only shoot if one of us is gonna get pinched.
He didnt like arming the older ones they were the ones most likely to pop off a
shot for no reason so he did the opposite. They were all, deep down, scared
kids, but scared kids liked to run and hide instead of shoot someone for no reason
and give away their position. So, yeah. Give the guns to the youngest girls, the
ones least likely to use them until they were cornered. Both of them looked a little
surprised at being armed. Good.
You two, Jack looked to the older pair, Thin Beard and an acne-faced punk with
pale skin and a long scar down one cheek, Are going to deliver the payload.
Another pair of tosses, another pair of catches though Beard almost missed his
and another pair of surprised faces. In fairness, a 1500 gram brick of explosives
caught a lot of people off guard.
Semtex-X. I know this is your first time using it, but dont worry. Its stable as
hell. Drop it, throw it, chew on it, hell, light it on fire, if you want to youre fine.
Its only these that can make it go loud, he reached into a side pocket of his
satchel, held up one of the small detonators, So keep the boom-brick in one
pocket, and the detonator in another, yeah?
He grinned, and they all returned it, believing him, believing in him. Their trust
almost made him feel dirty.
So you know the drill. Its just like a hijinks gig, but we blow something up.
Youve done it before sneak in, paint something or break something or both,

sneak out so its the same old thing, only we leave those presents behind,
okay? Ive got the det-code, and Ill blow it after were clear. Easy-peasy,
alright?
Dont call them kids, dont call them kids, dont call them kids.
Once they nodded back, he just flashed another sunny grin they needed it and
took off running with a half-laughed, Race you there cast over his shoulder.
They kept pace as best they could, but Jack out-danced them all. Their youth
served them well, their idealistic zeal, their enthusiasm, their adrenaline; it was
the adrenaline he was after, wanting to burn some of that shaky energy off,
wanting to dull them a bit, get them breathing heavy and burning clean. They
were quick. Theyd passed confidence courses, theyd all been runners for a bit
prior to getting bumped up the thinning ladder. The kid with the scar stayed quiet
and smiled a little less than the others, maybe thinking about whoeverd cut him,
maybe thinking about the block of Semtex-X he had in his snug little backpack.
Thinbeard kept pace with Scarface, a few steps away, big cargo pants pocket
flapping with a brick of explosive in it. Mohawk-girl took up the rear, breathing
heavier than the rest, a little shorter, running a little harder, not at all sure what to
do with the big-framed disposable pistol shed been given; couldnt tuck it into
her pants like in the movies, couldnt wedge it into a pocket without slowing
down, kept it awkwardly in one hand but was scared of it going off.
The youngest one, smaller and darker, kept up with Jack the best. Maybe she
was more limber, maybe she ran track or something, but she hurdled rooftop
obstacles the smoothest, vaulted and landed without missing a beat, breathing
hard but steady, dark eyes grimmer than they should be in a thirteen or fourteen
year old. Her gun was stowed, she focused on the race, running towards or away
from something, but Jack knew it wasnt him.
He was in the lead, of course. Not because of his head start, and not because he
was the only one that knew where they were going; just because he was Jack
Rabbit. Augmented lungs, augmented heart, whole system tweaked for this sort
of exertion, and chromed legs gleaming as they vaulted him effortlessly from

rooftop to rooftop. There wasnt a soul in the city that could keep up with Jack at
this rooftop dance.
He didnt run them straight there. They clambered down fire escapes just this side
of the Slums-Docks wall, caught their breath and reminded themselves this was
dangerous as they slipped through a basement tunnel and beneath the
checkpoint proper. They stuck close, speaking in whispers if at all, and the
claustrophobia and quiet helped get them serious again.
Rabbit led them out of the warren of smugglers tunnels, then it was a half-block
trot and they were just a corner away from the barracks. Precinct House
Whatever-The-Hell, down to a skeleton crew and according to Jacks infochip
message with all hands on deck responding to a Resistance demonstration two
klicks northside.
Jack planted his left foot real good and took the door clean off with a solid front
kick there wasnt much his legs couldnt do and led the two girls in, their guns
looking huge in too-little hands. Thinbeard and Scarface came hurrying in as soon
as no gunshots welcomed them, and they got to work, chop-chop.
Rabbit pointed and one charge was planted next to some important-looking
computer terminals, another very symbolically on the front gate of their empty
holding cells. His own charge he put on what looked like an important power
station. One, two, three, easy. Its not like you had to be super accurate to send
a message with Semtex, and its not like Jack, much less any of the rest of them,
really knew how to use the stuff.
When he scrambled back upstairs, the blond girl was standing with his gun
covering the front door, and the darker one Jack fought a grin had already
pulled a few paint cans from her own little messenger back, and was putting the
finishing touches on a big stylized R right there inside their office. It was a simple
two-tone hackjob, but it was recognizable as the Resistances simple logo. Shed
topped it off with a stylized bunny head a half-meter away, and Rabbit figured the
publicity wouldnt hurt his prices.

Nice work, Tag, Jack flashed her a bright smile and a thumbs up.
He hustled them outside, then, guns stowed once more, hands feeling empty and
pockets and bags light without the immeasurable weight of plastic explosives
being carried around. They moved fast, adrenaline back, a pack of kids up to
mischief and freedom fighters sticking it to The Man; how couldnt you get
jazzed, from that?
They grouped up near the tunnel entrance again, Rabbit halting them.
Three, two, one, he said, not trying to fight his grin. They spun, listening.
Boom, Jack said, and his infochip relayed the transmission.
Boom, the world said in response. The ground shook, but the corner hid the
explosion itself. After a few seconds, they could see the plume of smoke.
Jack nodded them back into the smugglers tunnels, eyes bright. It was about
time. It had been a rough year and a half. He figured a lucky roll of the dice was
pretty much owed him, eventually.

15.
Its all just a roll of the dice, Red Knight said conversationally, wiping his bloody
hands. Even with the new medicine and such, they say smokingll kill you. It
kind of did, but funny it wasnt the cancer, huh?
He swiped his red-streaked knife on a red-streaked pants leg, flashing his teeth at
Mr. Bishop in a feral grin. The pair of guards hadnt known what hit them; one
had been distracted leaning towards his buddy, cigarette dangling between hips
lips, the other had been distracted fishing in a pocket for a lighter. A little
distraction was all it took. Knights new blade, a laser-etched, flawlessly crafted,
mono-edged piece of work, had seen to both of them. In fairness, the pair a
sniper and a spotter, at least in theory hadnt expected their corporate rooftop to
be attacked in broad daylight.
Keep moving, Knight, Bishops voice wasnt jovial, conversational, light.
Weve got a brief window to make it inside.
Knight rolled his eyes, top-end new cyberoptics gleaming, and waved for the
other agent to lead the way. Bishop hesitated for a second before stepping in
front of him Knights knife was still out but only for a second. He did his best to
ignore the pinpricks and shivers having Knight at his back gave him, and focused
on the task at hand. The two guards hadnt been the only thing keeping the
Dracogenics agents out of the facility, there was a door with a high quality lock
there, too. Knight had done for one obstacle, not it was up to Bishop to handle the
second.
A wireless connection was established effortlessly, and Bishop was good enough
that the hack was hardly impossible. He dove in at the lock like a falcon swooping
at a mouse, headware infochip running hot, crashing on it from impossible high,
impossibly fast. Brute force hacks werent normally his favorites, Bishop favored
a more subtle touch, but time was of the essence. The brief window hed
mentioned to Knight hadnt been a lie, Bishop had already done some hacking,
but the cameras wouldnt stay offline forever.

His mind moved fast, his hardware worked to keep up. A hundred passwords, a
thousand, ten thousand, all got flung at the keypad in flicker-quick waves. Social
engineering and basic profiling had given them a few head starts, and the
algorithm started with the combinations statistically most likely to work;
passwords based on the security heads birthday, anniversary, his childrens
birthdays dont think about Pamela and the girls, dont think about Pamela and
the girls, stay focused, do the job, dont think about Pamela and the girls and all
the other basic numerical combinations. The keypad required an eight-digit
combination, rotated monthly, but Bishop knew it was only a matter of time.
Hed get it. Any second now, any second, hed
Bishop heard a chirp and the door unlatching, and blinked his eyes away from the
virtual reality that engulfed him when he hacked. Knight stood there with one of
the dead guards severed heads in his blood-slick hands, his big fighting knife
having made rough work of the mans neck.
Got it, Knight said with a cheery grin, the green laser-lights of the security
station blinking and scanning the guards retina. Knight gave the head a casual
toss, like a discarded soda can, over one shoulder. It bounced once, then went
falling one-hundred and seventeen floors to the street below.
Bishops infochip did the math, whether he wanted it to or not. His head was so
wired up he knew things, now, he never wanted to know. He knew the velocity,
the weight of the average human skull, and what the wayward cranium would do
to anyone it happened to hit down there, five hundred and twenty-seven meters
below them. Bishop wanted to gape and gawk, wanted to throw up, wanted to
pull out his gun and kill the psychopath that was his new partner, wanted to run
home to Pamela and the girls and wake up from the corporate nightmare his life
had become.
Instead, he gave Knight a curt nod professional, businesslike, focused on the
task at hand and waved the killer into the hallway, letting the commando lead
the way in.
Efficient, Bishop muttered out, the closest thing to a compliment he could

manage. He set up a subroutine in his infochip with an errant thought, a flicker of

consciousness broke away and began to monitor localized media outlets and law
enforcement calls, so hed at least be alerted if Knights nonchalance drew
attention.
Knight and his combat magnum swept into the hallway, and Bishop and his laser
followed. Knights footfalls were quiet, impossibly quiet for someone so big, and
Bishops infochip didnt make a sound as he sent out mental commands to loop
the security cameras they came across. The building was mostly deserted, the
cameras werent as extensive as they should have been, and the target wasnt
far.
Grey Industries wasnt much of a rival to Dracogenics, but who was? Grey
specialized in bio-electronic modifications, a small-scale company that had
pioneered some early cybernetics years decades earlier, and faded mostly
into obscurity once everyone else followed suit. This wasnt even one of their
research labs, just an administrative facility for the aging corporation, so the
security was second rate. Word on the net was a Grey researcher hadnt gotten
the memo about their company being a laughingstock, though, and had actually
shaken up the corporate structure by coming across something new. Infochip
upgrades, Bishop had heard, a few percentage points faster response time
between the electronic and the natural, a more body-friendly implantation or
something. It wasnt really Bishops field, but with the recent augmentations to
his own infochip, he sometimes felt like everything was his field.
The researcher a nobody named Pritchett had caused a fuss at Grey
headquarters with his big breakthrough, and was scheduled for a meeting with
some corporate bigwigs. Mid-afternoon. This wasnt a night op, wasnt
something Dracogenics, or at least Castle, trusted to a standard bag-and-tag
team. This was a two-man operation, and something it seemed Dracogenics, or,
again, at least Castle, was eager to assign to his new hounds.
Knight crouched low, quiet as death, and slipped past an open window in this welllit penthouse hallway. It was a secondary security detail, a half-dozen corporate
soldiers in predictably gray armor, emblazoned head to toe in Grey Industries

logos, sharply dressed and impressively armed, but oblivious that two of their
number were already dead. Knight ghosted past them, and Bishop and his body
augmented for combat, but not nearly as extensively, nor as experienced
followed.
Then it was a turn to the left, a hallway on the right, and all expensive real-wood
paneling and brass accents on the light fixtures as they got closer to their target.
Before them stood a pair of gleaming wooden double doors, the sort that made
every entrance a grand one, made every opening and closing a statement of
desperate corporate respectability. The sort with rich grains and gold doorknobs.
The sort that Knight could kick in without missing a beat. The sort that, just past
them, housed the corporate bigwigs of Grey Industries, sitting around a similarly
rich, polished, wooden table, listening to a no-name researcher prattle on about
an accidental breakthrough.
Even as Knights combat boot splintered the ancient oak around the hinges and
took the doors off the wall, even as they burst in and Knights big black revolver
began firing, Bishops infochip couldnt help but count. Eleven people in suits and
one in a lab coat. Four security guards, rounding out the standard twelve-man
executive protection detachment. No, three. Two. Knight was almost as quick at
killing them as Bishops infochip was at counting them.
Bishops laser sent a beam of light through the last guard, as Knights combat
magnum bucked and roared, and the CEO of Grey Industries head exploded. A
torso next, on a severe-faced woman with her hair in a bun. The next civilian had
time to look surprised, not annoyed, before the explosive shell destroyed them.
Bishop hurried across the room, shaken by the thunderous roar of Knights
oversized wheelgun, and grabbed Pritchetts arm. The lab coat wasnt pristine
and white any more, but speckled with red.
Youre coming with us, Bishop said in his coldest, hardest, most matter-of-fact
voice. There wasnt time for kindness. Or youre going with them them.
Punctuating it, Knights Lincoln rocked the room with another blast, then the killer
let out a whoop of joy, holstered the empty sidearm, and went to work with his

big fighting knife. Corporate executives didnt have a chance against him.
Bishop suppressed a shudder. No one has a chance against him.
Pritchett nodded, eyes wide, in the time it took Knight to kill three of Prichetts
bosses former bosses, that is, he was a Dracogenics employee now, not Grey
Industries across the room.
One of the executive board members, younger and quicker than the rest, maybe
a racquetball or rugby player in his recent youth, scrambled for the door. Knight
vaulted over the table, effortlessly as some might step up onto a curb, and cut
him down. The killer turned to Bishop and the visibly trembling Pritchett, and
flashed a manic, white-toothed, grin.
Companys coming, he hollered as he ducked out of the doorway just before a
spray of bullets. From out in the hallway, Bishop heard the bark and chatter of the
primary weapons hed logged during the brief glance at the Grey Industries secteam.
Bishop pulled Pritchett down behind the cover of the old wooden table, gave him a
long, hard, look to freeze him there, and then threw his consciousness into the
hack. He flew into the nearby security cameras, took them over, targeted Grey
Industries security guards through them, flagged them for Knights slaughter as
he prioritized targets. Wirelessly, effortlessly, he reached out and began to
sabotage weapons, all eyeblink-quick, stacking the deck in Knights favor even as
he hopped from camera to camera, never quite focusing on the carnage.
Knight waded in, reloaded revolver in one hand and broad-bladed knife in the
other. He was still a blunt instrument, Bishop knew, but whereas before hed
been a board with a rusty nail in it wicked, brutal, simple now he was a finelycrafted weapon. A well-balanced mace, in comparison, with an unbreakable
polymer shaft and a titanium-forged head. Still blunt. Still brutal. But the best.
Knights .405 barked and bucked, his combat blade flashed and swept, and Grey

Industries armor and shields flared and died and broke and couldnt protect the
bags of meat and blood they were wrapped around. Here and there a Grey
Industries gun jammed, or a magazine was ejected mid-burst, or a helmets
communications system overloaded in a burst of distracting static or ear-splitting
claxons. Bishop ran interference, Knight ran rampant. The hacker bounced from
camera to camera, and watched Knight dance and leap from foe to foe, leaving
blood spatters and severed limbs or helmets to bounce from point of view to point
of view.
I just wanted you to know, Knight growled out, shooting a glance upwards at
the nearest camera. Bishops eyes met his through the hacked security suite
for an instant, even as Knight disemboweled a Grey guard.
We work together okay. Knight lunged, just two guards left, angling his body
impossibly-fast so that a shotgun blast missed him, closing the distance, pressing
the muzzle of his big Lincoln revolver against the guards belly and blowing a hole
through him.
And I get that, and appreciate a little teamwork now and then. Bishop heard
Knight continue, even as he sent a mental command to blind the last Grey
Industries security man, triggering the light-sensitive night optics in his helmet.
He didnt get to see Knight coming, just grunted out a strangled little sound as the
big knife sank into his belly, then cut up, up, up.
So this aint business. Its personal. Even Steven, is all. Knight twisted and
pulled the knife free, not bothering to sidestep the wave of slick redness that
poured out of that last, dead, guard.
Bishop saw him lift the big revolver and point it at something off-screen. He
blinked from camera to camera, saw Pritchett falling over backwards to scramble
away from something, and his sensors heard the gun go off.
His infochip was fast. One of the best in the world. Through his hijacked camera,
he was able to see, just for a tiny fraction of a second, his own body start to move
from Knights big explosive round impacting with his own head.

He got to see himself die.

16.
Most people never get to see this sort of thing, Jackrabbit said with a smile for
Tag. They just look at the world in, I dunno, two dimensions. They walk around
on the street, they think about cars and other pedestrians, and they forget theres
anything to see if they look up, and theres anything but feet to look at if they
look down.
Im glad I dont live like that, Tag said, a sad little smile on her dark face. At
least, not any more.
The two of them were perched up high, leaning over the edge of a housing
project, twelve apartments up from the street below. Twelve levels of people,
each floor housing maybe a hundred desperate, hungry, citizens. Twelve floors of
people wronged by Dracogenics every day of their life, just in this one building, on
this one street, in this one district. Jack and Tag were above them, though.
Looking out for them. Watching over them.
The Resistance was growing.
Tag was, too. Shed added inches and pounds these last months, hit a growth
spurt and put on muscle, both. She was getting stronger and faster, and stayed
plenty bright. She talked about missing her dad sometimes, about her mom,
missing her family, that sort of thing, every now and then. But she also talked
tactics, talked plans, talked about the best targets of opportunity, the best use of
resources, the best new recruits for the movement. She knew guns and civilianavailable explosives, she knew hardware and software, she knew the city like the
back of her hand. She wasnt a girl any more, or at least was a lot closer to a
woman than shed been on that first op, all those nights ago. The other kids had
grown, too, picked up street names of their own, a few combat augs, a few new
scars, lots of experience.
Jack stood a little taller, too. Hed stopped taking Resistance money for every gig,
though he joked with them that he was keeping a tab. Hed bought into Tags
passion, her reason, her infectious drive to improve things. The two of them were

freelancers, technically, but were willing to work for favors from the Resistance
instead of always collecting a check. His training had made her a better runner,
but her friendship had made him a better man.
They spent most of their times of the roofs, now. Both of them. Running,
jumping, throwing themselves headfirst into what Rabbit sometimes called the
dance, just letting rooftops blur past you until all the world turned into was an
obstacle course no one else could finish, feet and heart beating to a rhythm no
one else could hear. Its how they stayed ahead of Dracogenics and the
Hammerheads, both, by just being faster and cleverer and more nimble than
them, trusting in his luck and his speed and his legs and guts.
Jacks legs had been upgraded lately riding that razors edge to stay sharp but
were still flashy, still stylized, he was still outgunning gravity through the bulky,
obvious, cyberlegs that were his trademark. Tags augs more subtle, though.
Enhancements to muscle and skeletal structure and ligaments and cardiovascular
capacity, but more flesh than metal, more meat than chrome. She didnt have his
raw power or speed. She kept up when they raced by playing it smart, by
keeping her eyes open and using the terrain, by finding the best path, the most
natural rooftop road, flowing from obstacle to obstacle with an efficiency Rabbit
disdained. He was all flash and spin, brute speed and impossible strength.
They complemented one another well, and between them shouldered a lot of
responsibility for the Resistances growth. More and more, Tag took the lead,
handling the logistics, putting plans together, even picking targets. She had a
good head on her shoulders. A better one than Jack, he wasnt afraid to admit to
himself.
Tag left her calling card graffiti everywhere, it seemed, and that, too, was
infectious. Graffiti was everywhere. Every kid with a little swagger in him toted a
can of paint or a pocket of holo-stickers, every angry worker who couldnt take it
any more scratched a slogan into a wall, every member of the Resistance knew
the way to win people over was to seem to be everywhere, to leave a mark on
the city itself.

They did recon, now, the two of them. On a rooftop, watching the people of the
city walk by like ants, far below them, none of them ever glancing upwards to
spot the freedom fighters that risked so much on their behalf.
Security/comms relay, Tag said under her breath. Every district. They pin us
down with these things, likelike castles. I read about em.
Jack quirked an eyebrow. He wasnt a big reader.
Back in the old days. Knights and kings and stuff? Theyd spread castles out all
over a country, all over a place they invaded, and thats where their people in
authority would stay. Hand-picked warriors, protecting the nobleman and his tax
collectors. Riders in and out, running messages, stuff like that. They werent just
military, they weresymbolic.
Her faced turned a little grim, frowning down at the clean lines of the corporate
facility across the street. He could hear the hatred in her voice. The certainty that
this security station was a bad thing, a bad place, a thing to be marred.
Symbols of authority, demanding obedience.
Jack hopped up down, just using the hydraulics that replaced his calves, bouncing
with energy. He had to loosen up, maybe run a diagnostics routine on his legs,
maybe check the ammo in his pistol.
It sure sounded to him like shed picked their new target.

17.
Youve got to pick your targets, Bishy-boy, Knight growled it into his ear, breath
hot and foul, Bishops face wedged against the side of a black security transport,
the bulk of Knights combat-augmented body tight against him, one of Bishops
arms wrenched behind his back. He tasted blood.
Youre mad. I get it. I shot you, or whatever. Knight gave Bishops arm a little
twist, a little push. Bishop felt his shoulder strain, socket screaming. But youve
got to remember, buddy, that I owed you one.
Then there was another wrench, just enough to hurt, not enough to cripple. It was
almost enough to break bone, almost enough to distract him from the hack-job he
was running deep inside his infochip, almost enough to push him to wirelessly
detonate the white phosphorous micro-grenade Knight kept clipped to his belt at
the small of his back, or one of the other handful of explosives he kept on him at
any given moment.
Almost.
Knight shoved off from Bishop, grinding the hackers face against the bloodsmeared tactical van, and darted back, with impossible smoothness, a few steps.
They were in a parking lot, neon-soaked and with the nearby cameras
compromised, a small group of corporate commandos nearby, and Knight opened
his arms in a half-welcoming semicircle. Bishop turned, face flushed hot from the
shame of his nigh-effortless defeat and the desire to incinerate the killer with a
mental command. He lifted a hand and wiped at the blood from his split lip,
knowing hed gotten off lucky. It had been stupid to take a swing, hoping a
sucker punch would make him feel better; Knight had killed people for less.
Many, many, people.
They glared at each other, the tension palpable, while the rest of their kill-team
eight trained and seasoned professionals, each in matte armor, toting suppressed
weapons studiously ignored the whole affair and finished a last weapons-check.
The commando squad had been told that a pair of special liaisons were with them

on the mission, and to obey them. They didnt care about the pecking order
between the two, they didnt care about anything but getting orders from them.
In the Dracogenics hierarchy, you didnt pick sides if you could help it. Office
politics were murder.
Gentlemen.
The voice was as rough and sharp as an obsidian blade. The six-man team
glanced toward the speaker and then ghosted away, leaving just the pair of
special agents in their staredown. Knight looked away first feigning disinterest
in Bishop, not interest in the speaker and Bishop dragged his gaze away a tick
later, turning and looking into cold blue eyes.
I understand this is the first time you two have seen each other since the
incident, that was what Castle had decided to call Bishops murder, But I want to
make something clear to you. To both of you.
Castles voice went softer, and somehow that made it more serious, more
intimidating, rather than less.
This nonsense ends. No more ridiculous feud. No more wasting company
resources. No more cutting into my divisions profits by making me grow you new
clones or otherwise procure you new host bodies. No more jeopardizing
objectives with your petty feelings. If Mr. Knight hadnt gotten your target out of
there in one piece despite the incident, gentlemen, I promise you, both of you
would be dead. Forever. Gone. Your files deleted, your families traced and
burned, your entire existence erased from this planet.
Bishop thought about spitting blood at him; he didnt like threats to his family.
Pamela and the girls were everything to himwerent they? But spitting blood
was something Knight would do. Instead, he swallowed and nodded.
Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Bishops eyes new eyes, cyberoptics again but not the
shark-flashing chrome orbs like Knight preferred stayed locked on Castles cold,

hard, gaze. It wont happen again.

Excellent, Mr. Bishop. And Mr. Knight?
Whatever. The brutes impossibly broad shoulders shrugged in as nonchalant a
gesture of agreement as humanity has yet discovered.
Bishop figured a sort of invulnerability came from not caring about anyone,
including yourself.
Castle gave each of them another glare, his blue eyes slashing into them like
knives, then a curt little nod.
Good. No more, or I salt the earth, you hear me? I wont have my division
compromised by your petulance. He cleared his throat, Bishop caught an
outbound transmission from Castles infochip, and inside a few heartbeats Bishop
saw and heard the rest of their team come back over, drifting into the neon-cast
shadow of their tactical transport.
Bishop didnt doubt him. He and Knight werent as special as theyd been a few
years ago. Theyd made real improvements in the shift process, the re-sleeving
that cast their consciousness from one flash-cloned body to another. Dracogenics
didnt require clones any more, Bishop had read in their files. Their new bodies
could would be people. Volunteers, maybe, debtors maybe, prisoners
maybe. He didnt want to think about it. He didnt have time to think about it, he
had a job to do.
They were here for the Russians. A hostile takeover, the old and bloody way. A
Dracogenics subsidiary had attempted a lawful purchase of some a known Uzy
Korporatsiya facility, a TMU Heavy Industries manufacturing plant; the
paperwork had been a sign of intent, an opportunity for the Russians to back
down and handle the loss of turf bloodlessly. They hadnt, of course. Security
had doubled, instead. Dracogenics didnt care. Dracogenics didnt blink.
Dracogenics just sent in their new favorite kill-team.

Knight couldve handled it with a regular ops crew, but there was sensitive data
on-site, and that was Bishops specialty. Hed handle one tac-team, Knight would
handle the other, and the plan was for them to meet somewhere in the middle.
Bishop focused on the job. He paid attention to the briefing, he cross-referenced
Castles gruff instructions with data from his infochip, checked it against building
layout files, kept an eye on the hacked security cameras the back of his mind had
on tight leashes. It was all just information, just data, just numbers. He could
handle numbers. He ignored Knight. He had a job to do. He had to focus on the
task at hand. Be efficient. Be better than Knight. Do his job.
Bishop breathed, then blinked, then realized the briefing was over. He gave a
nod, same as the other killers did without Knights playful wink and then did a
last-minute weapons check. His laser carbine was hot, battery packs fully
charged, armor prepped, magic wand emergency medi-kits loaded, infochip
razor sharp.
He cast a glance skyward, taking in the red-soaked light of a nearby Top Notch
Cherries, and he reminded himself about his wife and girls; why he had to do this,
why his life wasnt entirely his own.
READY CHECK, he sent to his four-man squad, receiving back affirmatives in just
seconds. He wanted to ignore the cool blue icons that marked Knight and his half
of the team, but mission parameters and Bishops own obsession with success
kept him from fully doing so.
They moved through the neon-and-darkness quickly, the lot of them in their
combat armor, crossing parking lots and rounding a corner. Then it was a quick
scramble across open ground, a few suppressed shots to take out the first guards,
and the assault began. Bishop shared a tactical overlay with the full squad, a
realtime map of the battlefield projected through their infochips, assault patterns
and fields of fire broadcast straight to their brains and heads-up displays. They
were good. They moved well as a team. Knights crew moved the same way, all
diamond formations and overlapping fields of fire, even as Knights own icon
ignored that sort of thing, moving after them at his own pace, off the line, turning

the whole operation ragged with his sloppiness.

Bishop sighed.
CHARGES READY. BREACH IN TEN. Infochip chronometers counted down, synced
by Bishops more powerful central processor, and a pair of muffled explosions split
the night, right on cue. Front and back, Bishops team hit one side while Knights
did the other. Bishops squad swept in, clean and smooth, using standard tactics
to cover one another, move as a cohesive whole, and clear the lobby. Opposite
them, Knights icon burst through the doorway ahead of his four-man team,
disrupting their standard clear-and-kill order, charging in like a world-class sprinter
nearing a finish line. It didnt matter, for all that it irritated Bishop; in seconds his
infochip map clear of hostiles, some to Bishops efficient team, others to Knights
unique talents.
They moved through the facility from end to end. Corporate security agents
rushed around corners and held strategic chokepoints all marked on Bishops
tactical map, all predicted by Bishops security algorithms and knowledge and
were swiftly cut down. Most died to tandem autofire, each four-man team
working in pairs, suppressed UZ1s and CR12s paired up with combat lasers,
concentrating fire to neutralize shields and tear through armor to get to the men
beneath. Others died to Knight, carving his way from the far end of the complex,
all high-caliber ballistic weapons and mono-edged blades, his favorite toys used to
play his favorite game. Bishop had to grudgingly admire his ability, if not his
finesse.
A blast of buckshot slapped against Bishops shields, harmless but loud enough to
force his attention to the assault proper and away from the overlay, the tacprograms that he was piping to the team in a stream of data that gave them the
edge, the calculations that constantly updated each shooter on his accuracy
ratings, kill counts, and ammunition levels. The subroutines kept running and the
Dracogenics team didnt suffer so much as a hiccup in their datastream, but
Bishop, personally, was irritated by the distraction. His tac-data was swept to a
secondary pop-up display on his cyberoptics, and he brought his sidearm to bear.
His overclocked Kumasaka laser pistol was leveled, a Uzy Korporatsiya guard

stood square behind Bishops aligned sights, infochip-projected targeting pip, and
ire. A cerulean beam lanced out, steady, unwavering, and as precise as a
surgeons las-scalpel. The precision-crafted weapon bored through shields and
armor like they werent there, left a bloodless, flash-cauterized, wound that cut
through Russian and scarred the wall behind him.
Bishop shook his head at the waste of a battery charge, then his four-man team
advanced, laying down fire and pushing the fight well past him again. He rededicated his attention and his infochips processing power to directing, rather
than taking part in, the conflict.
Things went as Bishop enjoyed almost flawlessly according to plan. The two
teams converged, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake, and were, in fact,
twenty-six seconds ahead of Bishops projected timetable when they made visual
contact, mid-base. They were at the decontamination/purification relay station
that led to the facilitys prototype testing area, a small decontamination station
that had, prior to this fateful night, only ever hosted small groups of quiet
researchers changing into sterile clothes. Instead, black-armored commandos
swept into it, one wing led by Bishop, the other Knight.
EYES ON, Bishop broadcast to them through his infochip, receiving a series of
affirmative blinks from the other squad, Knight notwithstanding. The bulk of their
kill-team spread out in defensive positions, moving to their Bishop-allocated
regions to cover nearby hallways around this central lab facility. Hed given them
positions that provided cover, that maximized their line of sight, that created a
series of chokepoints that would slow down any sort of security counter-attack.
Only Knight and himself werent assigned; the pair of them converged on the
reinforced door to the sterile work area, their final barrier to the industrial lab they
were here to raid.
I could blow it, Knight said, casually, conversationally, as though he werent
covered in blood nearly to his elbows, as though he hadnt been a hairs breadth
away from killing Bishop again just minutes earlier.
No, Bishops head gave a barely perceptible shake as his infochip spun to

renewed life. Processors and coprocessors screamed, attention splitting again,

tactical overlay adjusted and manipulated, broadcast tight-beam to Knight,
showing him the schematics on the other side of the secure door.
Their data processing stations too close to the doorway itself. The blast might
damage it. Assist in securing the perimeter, Ill han
You dont order me, Knight said with a shake of his head.
Fine. Ill get the door, Bishop reached out with his infochip, plucking at strands
of data that spiderwebbed inexorably towards the security panel. I dont care
what you do.
Just dont kill me while Im busy, he didnt broadcast. He heard distant shooting
start as he threw his infochip into the datastream like he was merging on a
highway, relieved in the back of his mind, the emotional part he had to ignore
when he worked and certain that Knight would be drawn to the fresh violence
like an addict to his drug of choice.
Bishop kept part of his headware dedicated to updating the tactical overlay to help
the team as they kept him secure, but paid it little mind; he smashed his
breaching routines against the lock, instead, tuning out the autofire and laser
discharges around him back in the fully meat-world. He watched his assault team
cover their positions, observed them hold their ground against the Uzy
Korporatsiya counter-assault, recorded it all through hacked security cameras for
later Dracogenics after-action reports and tactical appraisals. Mostly, though, he
paid attention to the hacking.
Until the EMP grenade rolled down from a far hallway, bounced and clattered to a
stop just against one combat boot, and went off.
Bishops world exploded in a blast of static, then darkness. His cyberoptics
rebooted almost instantly, but his head spun and he couldnt decide couldnt be
sure, within himself if he was watching the fight real-time or on a delayed

viewing schedule, playing back recent footage of the fight that raged around him.

He reeled from the banshees wail, the just-within-hearing whine of his

cyberaudio suite, and leaned against a wall. His tac-overlay was gone, his stream
of updates vanished, his instant uplink with the rest of the squad and their guncams, helmet-cams, and cybereye datafloods. His routine assortment of pop-up
windows were a row of error messages, instead, his optics still going through
start-up protocols.
A Russian sec-agent followed a bone-rattling wave of plasma fire into the labs
antechamber, even as a Dracogenics man fell, head simply gone from where the
beam had passed. Bishop saw double as his cyberoptics struggled to accurately
recalibrate, but simply fired his customized Kumasaka at the blurry, identical,
targets that presented himself to him. The beam seared through both Russians
one real, one a glitch quite neatly, but the lasers charge display made Bishop
frown instead of smile.
He knew, the brilliant part of him that wasnt infochip and programming, that was
talent instead of implant, that hed just wasted a substantial part of his weapons
battery pack on a targeting error. That was the moment he knew he was in
shock, that more than an EMP grenade had gone off near him; because it didnt
make sense to try and make sense of it, he reasoned he must be concussed, at
the very least, as well as dealing with the backlash of his headware electronics
being disrupted.
I can think my way out of this, he said to himself, or maybe just thought, or maybe
shouted out loud, or maybe tried to broadcast through his recharging infochip.
Another sec-guard with a brilliant Uzy Korp logo on his armor emerged, and he
lifted his laser pistol to cut them down. I just have to focus on whats real. Think
aboutaboutwhat was her name, again?
He advanced to the dead Dracogenics soldiers allocated defensive position, took
cover, and fired. His infochip was slow to recover from the electromagnetic blast,
but his movements were more robotic, more routine, than ever. His mind raced.

He couldnt remember his wifes face.

Another cerulean blast from his Kumasaka ended a life or did it, can anyone
really die any more? and all he could think about was his wife, and his girls, and
how their names and faces couldnt come to him. When his headware was
operational, he could recall, or research, almost anything he wanted. With his
clearance levels and hacking skills, the sum total of the citys datasphere lay wide
open to him any time he wanted it. He could find out anything about anyone. His
infochip and Dracogenics data access meant he could store almost unlimited data
almost eternally.
What was her name?
Waitwas?
He blinked, head fuzzy, everything moving slowly as his combat reflex boosters
were still struggling to re-sync to the rest of his system, as his body and mind still
coped from simple combat trauma shock.
He remembered waking up in a vat. He remembered Castles cold, hard, eyes
right before the man Bishop used to be died. He remembered fighting and
hacking and killing, he remembered darkness and fear. He remembered Knight.
Red Robert Kingsley, the bastard he hated. He remembered killing him, he
remembered dying to him. He remembered having a wife, and loving her, and
looking after her and their children, and he was sure that if the firefight would just
stop for a minute and let him clear his head and reboot his infochip properly, he
could find something about her in a file somewhere and then suddenly his whole
life would make sense again and
The plasma blast tore through his cover and exploded the section of wall hed
been crouched behind, hurling him backwards, smoldering. A pair of sec-agents
followed the heavy weapon operator in his rush, his oversized cannon still
smoking, their logos blurring in Bishops sight as blood leaked into one cybereye.
He raised his Kumasaka and knew it wouldnt help, resigned himself to dying
sort of, I cant die any more, the machines wont let me and waited for the

heavy weapon to recharge and ruin his body.

Instead, Bishop saw Knight fall onto them, savage, like an animal.
He leapt at them from somewhere Bishop couldnt see, broad-bladed fighting
knife leading the way. The plasma gunner died first, the butt of Knights knife
smashing him in his helmet, then a leg-sweep that knocked him down, then
sawing and hacking for three mad, herky-jerk, motions until that helmet and the
head it was perversely still attached to rolled away. The other two Russians and
their boxy little autoguns responded by then, but Knight was moving between
them, making one hesitate out of concern for blasting his squad-mate, making
the other miss with a bloody hand that grabbed his stubby gun near the muzzle
and wrenched it off-target. Bishop smelled Knights palm frying on the hot barrel,
but Knight didnt seem to feel any pain.
The killer smiled.
Bishops optics struggled with another blast of static for just a second, and when
he could see again another Russian was dead, Knights tactical knife stuck in his
chest, wedged in either ribs or logo-emblazoned breastplate. Knight went after
the last one the one whod hesitated for just a second, who, wide-eyed,
regretted it now with his bare hands. He had his big Lincoln fresh on his hip,
could have grabbed any of a half-dozen dropped guns lying near corpses, could
have, perhaps, even shouted for Bishop to throw him his pistol, but he didnt. He
acted like guns didn't even exist, using simpler methods. He lunged, hands going
high, and got one near the young Russians chin, the other higher.
Bishop clambered to his feet while Knights whole body gave an impossibly quick
lurch and twist, all shoulders and technique. Bishops ears still werent quite right,
so he didnt hear the guards neck snap, but he got the general idea from the way
the Russian fell like a puppet with cut strings, Knight looming over him.
In theory, Bishop tried to tell himself he was completely lucid, not in shock at all,
not broken from being killed and uploaded and downloaded, that he was
reasonable and thoughtful and not a corrupted file, Knights penchant for melee

combat is actually quite admirable. He saves Dracogenics ever so much

ammunition.
I got this, partner, Knight was next to him, suddenly, crossing distances to close
to arms reach that uncanny way he did. One blood-soaked hand slapped Bishop
on the arm, a friendly gesture, pushing him gently to one side as Knight moved
past, towards the door, all like everything was fine and normal, like the two of
them hadnt murdered one another, like a gunfight wasnt raging all around them
right that very second.
You dont look in much shape thack it, I figure, Knight was conversational,
chatty, almost. Killing cheered him up, Bishop figured. But thats alright. I
always keep a little demo-foam on-hand, justincase.
He talked while he sprayed, a canister pulled from his tac-harness was shaken,
then wielded. The blast-foam hardened shortly after contact, the chemical
mixture adhering soundly to the door, Knights rough circle was sloppy, but he
looped it a second time, making up for his lackadaisical work with simple
enthusiasm and a generous charge.
Bishop tried to focus on it clearly and found he couldnt; was it the sloppy work,
the EMP, or the head wound?
Knights blood-sticky hand was back on his shoulder, half holding him up, half
guiding him away from the door.
Montague, Knights bellow cut through the din of the ongoing combat, the bark
of drone-mounted guns, an explosion from somewhere down a side hallway.
Hey, Monty! Bishops out. Youre on deck. Put on those big girl pants and get
your chip ready. Youre up for data retrieval.
Bishop slumped against a wall, looking at Trooper Montague as she came over,
unspooling a slender cable to plug it into a chrome socket on one temple. She was
an old-school hacker, then, preferring a direct interface with some external

hardware, eking extra speed out of the landline instead of relying on wireless.
Does she look like my wife?
Knights revolver roared, then, as he started taking potshots to keep heads down,
buying them all time to brace for the explosion.
The blast would have sent Bishops ears to ringing if they werent already.
Knight slapped him on the arm with a grin. His teeth were yellow. No matter
what body they put them in, he never seemed to take good care of it except for
staying fast and strong.
Ha haaaah! Not a bad job, huh? The killer laughed as debris rained down near
them. Bishop wondered because he felt he ought to if the general democharge had wrecked the delicate equipment they were after, had made this whole
mission a wash.
Knight didnt seem to care, nattered on like his blast-foam was the only thing in
the world.
That fireball was a work of art, if I do say so myself.

18.
Im sure its a work of art, Rabbit grunted from somewhere behind Tag and her
hissing spray cans. A masterpiece, in fact. No two ways about it.
She shook her can of green, head tilted a bit to one side, and swept her arm out,
bolding a line on her latest graffiti. The long-eared symbol had long since spread,
been refined, since her first sloppy scrawl. It was a symbol, now, something
bigger than her or Jack; a v for victory, a peace sign, a sign of those who hid in
warrens and tunnels to try and survive against those more violent.
Almost, she murmured, to herself and the wall as much as Jack, shaking her
can. She reached out again, adjusting the rabbits smile, quirking up one corner in
a jaunty little smirk.
Voila, she grinned. How are we on time?
Everythings on track. Well move in as soon as they move out, Rabbit said,
after a glance at his old-fashioned sports watch. Flip and the decoy teamre
down-district, starting a fuss, and weve got a few allies calling in the disturbance.
Hammerheads should be responding any second.
It had, like so many of their recent plans, been Tags idea. She didnt lead the
Resistance in any formal way no one did, or could but she herded the cats as
much as anybody. Shed turned into their figurehead in the years since that first
cartoony rabbit graffiti. The Resistance needed her more than she needed it,
now. Shed plundered her corp-school education for gymnastics, track and field,
poli-sci, and a pre-college advanced computers track, then, after graduating last
spring, gone Resistance full time. Her mocha-brown skin was marred here and
there with scars, but shed gotten as tough as she was smart, stayed as fit as
Jack, had continued with her subtle, meat-friendly, upgrades. His legs were more
powerful, but her cardio system meant shed started winning their longer races,
lately.

The two didnt have a long run ahead of them tonight, at least not to reach their
target. They were perched on a rooftop just across the street from it, he crouched
low and watched the district security office, she decorated the roof access door
theyd used to get here, on the far side and out of sight. Shed gotten new chempaint canisters donated lately they fell of a truck, no doubt a hodge-podge of
reactive mixtures that changed color based on temperature, that glowed in the
dark, or that crawled and pulsed with subtle lighting effects over time.
Thered been a scoop just the day before, a block party that the authorities had
decided to suddenly call civil disobedience; it had been that sweep-raid that had
prompted their attack, that had gotten their buddies on-board with running a
distraction and all the rest. Flip, one of Tags rivals if she really had any, had
barely been able to get out of it in one piece. Dozens of people were missing,
swept away in transports, held at gunpoint, beaten for the crime of being in the
wrong street at the wrong time. Six had died resisting arrest.
Tag had tapped their datastream after the attack, had tracked the locations of the
prisoners, their holding sites, checked staff records for the facilities in question.
There were thirty-four of their friends over there, and the pair of them were
waiting for their chance to go bust them out.
Eyes up, Tag, Jack said, crouching just a little lower, eyes narrowing. Theyre
on the move.
A couple klicks away, Flip and a handful of Resistance fighters were causing a fuss
while other Resistance sympathizers were calling it in; inaccurately, mind, each of
them giving a different address, inflating the severity of the problem, describing
the vandals in conflicting ways. The desired result was to whip a rock at the
hornets nest of this regional corp-sec facility and distract them, but to do so in a
way that would also leave them confused and sloppy, enabling the distraction
team to escape.
The first part of the job, at least, was going smoothly. Jack and Tag watched as a
foursome of Hammerhead security vehicles, a veritable swarm of drones circling
them like raptors, pulled out of the secure parking garage and tore off down the

neon-soaked streets.
We good?
Tag checked the ammo on her big Castigo 7 plasma pistol, and nodded.
They stayed crouched and hidden for a half-minute, giving the Hammerheads
time to pull away, then the pair of them vaulted the low wall and leapt to the
street below. Jacks hydraulics absorbed the three-story landing with a pneumatic
whine and a bend at the knees, Tag tumbled into a roll that bled most of the force
away, and heartbeats later they were starting across the street.
Just like we practiced, Jack grunted.
He pulled on a domino-style mask his disguise wasnt really heartfelt, since his
legs were such giveaways and Tag opted for a bandana pulled high and a
hoodie pulled low. They knew there were cameras, but knew sometimes the old
ways were the best for that sort of thing.
The pair picked up speed from mid-street, moving from a loping jog into a sprint,
then Jack into a shoulder-first dive right at the front door. He blasted it open with
all the strength of his leap, dove and tumbled into the small lobby. The sectrooper next to the door fumbled for his autogun and tried to track Jack as he
rolled along the floor, cyberlegs scraping, only for Tag to slip through the open
door just next to him, her big plasmagun in her hands. Hammerhead armor
wasnt bad, but it wasnt good enough. A point-blank double-tap did the job,
leaving his stark white armor and the wall behind him a charred, bloody, ruin.
Tag kicked the troopers carbine across the floor for Jack to snatch up with a nod.
A fresh trio of Hammerheads burst in from the back a second later, and the pair of
them started moving. Really moving.
Standard tactical doctrine for corporate security on the defensive was to grab
cover, fire enough to keep your opponent pinned down, too, and wait for backup

and/or gun-drones to handle flanking and otherwise outmaneuvering your

targets. All of that made sense when you were a cog in a corporate machine,
when manpower and firepower were your bywords, when the simpler the book
was, the better, and when creative thinking wasnt just a weak point, but
something that could actively lead to the termination of your career. It made
perfect sense, corp on corp. Against Jack and Tag, though, it did less than
nothing.
The pair of them flowed into motion, leaping over the check-in counter,
overturning a polymer bench, vaulting a desk, running four steps straight up a
wall only to turn it into a backflip, kick-sliding low, springing high, darting left and
right and middle seemingly all at the same time. To the white-armored corporate
thugs they faced, they were a riot of motion and color, all dark skin and day-glo
decorated jacket, chrome-flashing legs with neon strips implanted, laughing and
cursing and doing everything except standing still to take a proper firing position.
Dozens of rounds cut through the air and slammed into everything except the pair
of free-runners, tearing apart walls, furniture, doors, windows. Tags trusty
Castigo fired a few times to keep them on their toes, Jacks stolen gun returned a
long chattering burst, but mostly the pair of them just kept moving, not really
shooting back; they were closing the distance, changing firing angles, leading one
Hammerheads fire sideways enough he had to check his shots to not hit the man
next to him, using corp-secs book against them by thumbing their noses at it.
Now, Tag hollered as the din of autofire petered away, as her alley-modded
infochip told her the three shooters autoguns were piping them reload warnings.
Empty magazines were only just released when the pair of rebels changed their
angles with impossible quickness, pivoting and changing direction in a single pace,
and both ran straight at the Hammerheads.
Tag went low just as the magazines were clattering to the ground, sliding in for a
kick like a dirty baseball player, feet leading the way and one Hammerheads
knee buckling the wrong way from the impact. As he fell to the ground, leg
crumpling, she put a point-blank Castigo blast into his armored torso. Rabbit went
high instead, one planted foot and set of hydraulics launching him forward, the

other polymer-and-metal foot reaching out, extending in a kick that smashed

helmet and skull in one brutal blow. The last guards fresh magazine was slapped
home with an unmistakably ominous click, but Tag tangled her ankles between
his to buy a split second, and Rabbit launched himself skyward with a Muy Thai
knee-strike, ending the fight almost as quickly as it had started.
Clear? Tag scrambled to her feet while Jack aligned his stolen autogun, sighting
it down the hallway the Hammerheads had just left.
Clear, he nodded back, half-surprised, as always, that theyd survived another
one.
Tag sprayed over the cameras with her new purple, then got to work on a few
flawlessly-white walls with a pair of different spray-cans. Jack went to work
rolling the Hammerheads, stealing ammo, guns, grenades. Everything worth
taking got stuffed into his courier satchel, strapped tight and cinched hard against
his back so it would throw off his center of balance as little as possible. Hed
finished looting just as she was backing away from a wall, head tilted again,
critiquing her graffiti.
A masterpiece, Jack said with a grin, nodding towards the rabbit logo the
Resistance had long since co-opted. But clocks ticking.
Tag stowed her cans in baggy cargo-pants pockets, then grabbed her Castigo 7
again. They started down the secure hallway towards the holding cells. The
skeleton crew had been taken care of, now they had friends to liberate.
The pair rounded the corner, muzzles leading the way just in case theyd
miscalculated, but the cells were empty and dark.
Where Jacks gun lowered. Where is everybody?
I dont know, Tag said, lowering her gun, biting her lip.

She saw an administrative data-terminal, though, and found her resolve with it.
Her infochip was a solid academic-level model, shed had it up-gunned with
Resistance help, and had used it for her fair share of hacking jobs already. Crossreferencing arrest records as they were piped through a district datahub was one
thing, skimming emails and other half-secure files, just siphoning off a little data
here and there. Going right into one of their data terminals was a different sort of
game, and would have a different sort of security.
I dont know, she said again, But Im going to find out.
She tugged out a spool of cord, went for the direct tap into their terminal. Jack
was going to have to watch over her, here, in the basement of a police station
with four dead cops upstairs. She forced a smile for him, trying to seem more
confident than she felt. Her hand wavered over the port.
Cover me.

19.
Youre covered for that, yes sir, the data-display reassured Bishop.
Dental, too?
The entire program, for the entire family, yes sir.
She needed braces, they said, a while ago. The The younger one. What was
her name? Why didnt he remember? Why did he have to tap into his infochip,
pull up the deceased security agents records, and check to remember his own
daughters name?
Sally, yes sir. Dental was covered. Her braces have been off for four months,
sir.
Bishop didnt bother with politeness, just sent a TERMINATE CONNECTION
command with an irritated sigh. Off for four months? How could it have been so
long?
His recently-upgraded perpetually upgraded infochip helpfully reacted to
subconscious cues instead of just direct orders, and a pop-up calendar display
invaded his field of vision. The Barnes familys medical, employment, and
academic records were marked on it, shoving aside Bishop and Knights
operations schedule. A mental twitch sent it scrolling backwards, months fading
as he flicked his attention from side to side, scanning.
Four years, he sighed, then scowled as his infochip began to backtrack just that
far. I cant believe its been four years since I died. Died the first time, at least.
There had been others, of course. Knights murder, for starters. The next had
been not long after that Uzy Korporatsiya operation with the EMP, that bodys
infochip and cyberoptics never quite synced right with his neuro-reflex upgrades
after that, and it had gotten him killed on a job less than a month later. Hed been

re-hosted, then, the bugs worked out, experimental EMP shielding installed. The
constant backups and redundant coprocessors for the shielding had slowed down
his hacking, though, and that had gotten him killed another host body left
behind, this crudely immolated by one of Knights grenades to prevent the
prototypes from falling into enemy hands not long afterwards, that time fully in
the datastream, his consciousness attacked by security subroutines. Then had
been the Downstream raid that ended with a booby-trap that got both of them, a
solid six-month run in a combat-specced host that lasted until the Luddite
incendiary attack, early last year, thethe
He couldnt remember them all, and told his infochip not to try and recover the
data. It had been a busy four years, he supposed. A lot of deaths, he knew, but a
lot more kills. With them came a ninety-two percent mission completion rate,
with five percent of the failures flagged as Knights fault instead of his own.
Knight cared less than Bishop did, but Castle knew they both cared enough for the
rivalry to still spur them on.
Four years, he shook his head and leaned back in his office chair, sighing softly.
This was his place, now. When he wasnt training, on an operation, or under a
las-scalpel somewhere, he was here, linked into the Dracogenics data cloud,
revising tactical procedures, examining security protocols, refining
countermeasures, or filing reports.
His numbers were phenomenal. Dracogenics kept improving on his infochip,
began copying some of his procedures and making them city-wide, constantly
tapped him for covert projects. Castle had been pleased, of course, taking the
credit as the one whod recruited him however unorthodox those methods had
been into the program.
Bishop knew he and Knight were resounding successes, knew that the world was
changing, had to be changing, because of the track record established by the
many successful upload and re-integrations. The program had been expanded
during these last four years, of course, based on those successes. He and Knight
were hardly unique simply for the uploading, but maintained a certain special
status within Dracogenics for being pioneers, no matter how unwilling initially.

Their stars were on the rise, of course, and Castles even moreso.
Bishop steepled his fingers, swept aside his ruminations along with the half-dozen
datafeeds hed been idly scanning the headlines for. Nothing satisfied him any
more. Nothing felt like it really mattered. He checked up on his old family when
he could, he made sure they were receiving their stipends, that scholarships were
still arranged for his girls, that his widow was living comfortably.
They were what matteredright? They were why he did this, why he let
Dracogenics put him through this, why he worked so hardwerent they? Wasnt
it all for them? All the blood, all the pain, the sacrifices hed made, the bodies
hed taken to be shuttled from one to the other, all the days he looked in the
mirror and didnt know what face to expecthe had a reason for it, didnt he?
My wifes name is Pamela. She and my family are depending on me. This is just a
job. Fighting, killing, its just work. I do it well. I do it as cleanly as I can.
Im not like him. Im not like Knight.

20.
I tell ya, boys. Aint nobody like me.
Red Knight rolled his head from side to side, working a kink out of his neck. He
didnt much care for sniper overwatch, and he liked scientists even less, but the
eggheads back at the officed given him a new RS01 Lance to try out, and if he
wanted the paychecks and the liberties to keep pouring in, he had to indulge
them.
Oh, Knight, youre so perfect for it, his voice took on a sing-song quality, piped
through his headware microphone warbly and comical. No one else has your
hand-eye coordination upgrades, Mr. Knight! No one else has your combat
accuracy record, Mr. Knight! No one else has your field experience, Mr. Knight!
Please, Mr. Knight, please field test the combat calibrations of our new Lance!
He groused, high-pitched and ridiculous, batting his eyelashes even as he kept the
padded butt of the big Lance snug against his shoulder.
You candy asses are lucky I aint down there, his voice was his usual growl as he
rolled the guns Trak-Site crosshairs across his team, finger easing towards the
trigger just to remind himself he could shoot if he wanted to; the crosshairs slid
past them, up towards their target building. Some of yall might rack up a few
kills, with me not down in the thick of it.
None of them sassed back. None of them dared. You had to be a pretty reckless
cowboy motherfucker to get assigned to Red Knights detail, but every one of
them soon got it beaten into em that Knight ran this outfit, no questions asked.
He liked cocky and bloody and crazy hell, why wouldnt he? but that didnt
mean he tolerated anyone questioning his status as the big dog on the porch.
Thirty meters out, he drawled into his headware, receiving a few affirmative
beeps. He dragged his crosshairs higher, scanning the windows for threats. There
were a few heat signatures near windows, but none of them seemed to notice his

squad hustling towards them. They wouldnt. Stupid cavemen barely trusted a
light switch, much less night vision goggles or motion detectors. His team was
gonna eat these dummies alive.
Wham, bam, thank you maam, he said as his assault team crossed the gap
and stacked up by the door.
Wham, the biggest man in the squad besides Knight, mind, who didnt bother
learning their names connected right near the doorknob with a black-booted
foot, augmented muscles smashing the rickety door from its hinges.
Bam, the agent behind him threw a pair of flash-bang grenades tumbling in, fuses
primed and triggered via infochip-sent wireless command. The rest of Knights
team ducked back out of the doorway for a split-second before the little house
shook with the explosion, Knight winking an eye to keep the flash from even
bothering him.
And thank you, maam, boys, he grinned as he nestled his cheek snug against
his rifles stock, his peripheral vision watching his four black-armored commandos
as they burst inside, guns ready.
Knights thermal blobs moved, shifted against windows and huddled against
doors; the upstairs targets were responding, one moving to lean out the window
and start firing, the other turning to charge the stairwell. Knights Lance bucked
against his shoulder as he sent a mental kill command, rifle doing admirable work.
The one moving away from the wall gotta kill runners first, right, catch em
while you can! went down in a heap, and Knight immediately shifted, leaned,
aligned his Trak-Sites with the second heat signature. The targets clunky
autogun was already barking wildly, muzzle flashes stark against the cool blues
and greens of the building, but Knight didnt really care. Any member of his team
that wasnt already inside and out of the line of fire, he figured, deserved to eat a
few rounds for their tardiness.
It aint like dead means dead no more, he said as his marksman rifle shoved
against his shoulder again, the targets head vanishing like magic.

Whats that, sir?! One of his assault palookas hollered into a subdermal mic,
voice a roar against the chatter of autoguns and the echoing report of Knights
rifle, far enough off it had just reached them.
Philosophical monologue, Knight grunted as he lifted his crosshairs again,
scanning windows for heat signatures.
One little, two little, three little Lu-dditeshe kept his thoughts to himself after the
mic-broadcast slip-up, taking down his third neo-primitive as they scrambled
towards the stairwell to assault his team. The big Lance felt good against his
shoulder, recoil was manageable, sights were dead on. The auto-rangefinder was
a nice touch. Maybe theyd let him
Hel-lo, he lifted his head, scanning peripherally, then lowered it, scope
dropping, sweeping the street. Hostiles at your six!
Sir?
Hostiles at your fucks sake!
Five, six, maybe ten, rag-wrapped and roaring, neo-Luddite ravagers roared from
a nearby hovel and at his team. Knight snapped off a quick shot to the middle of
the mob, dropping one and maiming another, but they were quick high on
something, like my Wyverns in the old days and his follow-up shot just took the
knee of the last one in the pack. The mass of heat signatures swept into the
target building and vanished from sight.
Seven, maybe either, in there with ya, boys.
He shouldered the rifle again, scanning the street, scowling as he didnt find
anything worth killing.
Boys?

His mic didnt relay anything, and his frown deepened. He didnt like being out of
the fight and ignored. His Trak-Site swept from window to window, clawing at the
darkness for a target. A heat signature, all red and yellow, rushed into view. Just
before Knights kill command put a high-velocity explosive round into it, Knights
infochip chirped a friendly recognition. A second followed a split-second later.
Two of his men were up to the second floor, one turning to empty a laser-rifle
power charge down into the darkness behind him. The front man made it to the
broken window one of Knights kills still hanging halfway out of it and started
signaling.
Knight didnt remember diddly-fuck from all that fancy by-the-book commando
crap some of the Dracogenics fellas were so crazy about, but he made it up as he
went along. A helmet tap probably meant comms were out. Five fingers, then
one, probably meant a half-dozen or so were still in there, trying to kill em. An
upwards point likely meant they were going for the third-floor roof exit.
Oops, Knight quipped to no one in particular as his second-to-last trooper
stopped firing his laser, instead did a little dance and sprawled bonelessly out of
Knights line of sight, a hail of bullets ending him.
He lined up a shot as his last trooper stopped trying sign language from blocks
away and scrambled for the next set of stairs. A heat blob came rushing up from
the first floor, and Knights Lance picked up the mental kill command. They
tumbled like a puppet with cut strings, slowed down the mass of rebels
Terrorists, were supposed to call them terrorists now rushing up with them. The
rest of them ducked low and moved fast, almost on all fours, animalistic, as they
huddled-scrambled past his window.
Knight knocked off another one on the next floor, but that left four or so, all out of
his line of sight again, and just his one lone heat-blob of a Dracogenics sec-trooper
on the roof. Knight saw his boy do something to the door, rifle-butt smashing an
old electronic lock panel, maybe, and then start panicking.
Welp. Guess its up to me.

Knight lifted himself to a low squat, then just vaulted forward off his rooftop
marksman perch, twisting as he fell to land on all fours, catlike, augmentations
absorbing the fall easily. He started down the block at a predatory lope, eager to
be a little closer to the action and finally having an excuse. A cornered comrade in
arms needed rescuing, and his sniper rifle was useless without a better angle.
Who could blame him for taking off, enhancements pouring on the speed, to
save the day?
Ol Mr. Knight, big friggin hero, he chuckled to himself as his inhumanly-long
strides, inhumanly-powerful legs, ate the first block and started on the second. A
skyward glance showed his last, lonely, trooper waving from the rooftop, like a
big dummy.
Should be watchin the door, ya big dummy, Knight barked, maybe close
enough to be heard, maybe not. He didnt much care.
Knight pulled his lucky fighting knife as he dove into the relative darkness of the
inside of the insurgency hovel, slipping to one side immediately, cloaking himself
in darkness like the born killer the city had made him. He didnt catch a bullet
while backlit at the doorway, and he figured that was a good sign. The interior
was his kind of charnel house, a mixture of Dracogenics kill-team members and
rag-wrapped Luddite loonies. Some of the bodies were blasted apart by shortrange ballistics, some bored through and flash-cauterized by combat lasers, a few
hacked apart by simple cutting weapons; the neo-primitivesd had a few fire axes
or cleavers, he was pretty sure hed seen. That was their style. Big, basic,
ballistics and big, basic, blades.
He could relate.
Knight was just making his way past that second-floor chokepoint, crouched low
for balance and quiet, knife in one hand, the other planted on a corpse, when the
first of the roof-bound terrorists doubled back right towards him.
The mans eyes went all white round the edges with surprise, and he sucked in a
mouthful of air to shout a warning.

Last mistake, Knight pounced, feline and predatory, his mono-edged knife driving
through one startled eye and into the brain. Kill. Dont shout.
He lowered the corpse to the ground quietly, almost gently, eyes already
scanning the bend in the stairwell, looking out for anyone whod seen or heard.
No one did, so he picked up his pace. This close to that barricaded door, theyd
be distracted.
His knife led the way as he burst to the top floor, taking one of them in the
sternum, cross-guard of the big combat blade catching on his chest, the force of
Knights rush taking the terrorist off his feet. That one managed a death-spasm
chest shots sometimes gave em that kind of time and his clunky autogun
chattered and roared, but Knight was already gone, already moving, closing the
distance to his next kill.
The terrorists bloody fire axe came down at him in a solid two-handed swing,
more a lumberjack than a fighter, but plenty lethal. Knight sidestepped it, waited
for the wielder to struggle against momentum, check speed, and start a
backswing, then he reached out and stomped on the haft. The axe slipped out of
the primitives hands and snapped straight to the floor. Knight fed him an elbow
right to the nose, sending him stumbling back, eyes watering, nose bleeding,
arms pinwheeling for balance. Knight used the toe of his boot to hook the axe
handle, gave a little kick to toss it up to his hands, and then returned the chop with
significantly more success. The head wedged deep in the neo-Luddites
collarbone, then chest, then organs, and they fell under the weight of the blow.
Yoohoo, Knight gave the axe a twist and a wrench to haul it free, one foot
casually on the new corpse at his feet, trying to get the last primitives attention
away from his beleaguered trooper. It worked a little too well.
The shotgun blast tore through his armor, a dozen pellets savaging his side even
as Knight tried to twist away from the leveled double-barrel. It was an old sideby-side, like a coach gun from a Western, and Knight had just caught both barrels
from entirely too close. His infochip calculated probable reload speeds but Knight
ignored it and went with his gut the part of his gut not shredded by buckshot just

then and figured hed make the sonovabitch pay. His arm went up and over in a
powerful throw, his whole body behind it, and the fire axe spun once in the air
then stuck square in the shooters head. The girl tumbled over backwards, long
blond hair spilling out from her hooded cloak, gold mixing with crimson as she flew
off the roof and to the cracked pavement of the street below.
Well.
Knight grunted and struggled to keep his feet under him.
That fuckin stings. His combat augs helped some, of course. Endorphins
flooded his system, combat-tailored cocktails to dull pain and encourage
adrenaline, keeping him going, even if unsteadily. His dermal plating had eaten a
good share of the blast, but both barrels, that close, hadnt done him any favors.
His infochip popped up helpful medical displays, alerting him to the trauma.
He reached down to help up his last agent, then talked to keep breathing on his
way down the stairs.
Itll be all right, man, he said, hands sticky with blood. Just gotta figure out
where these assholes have their comms-blocker. They hate this shit, yknow? So
theyre not so good at it.
The drugs were doing their job, each step hurt a little less than the last, and soon
he was on the ground floor again.
See, Bishop you remember Bishop? Bishop said somethin about these pricks
refusing to use Dracogenics tech, hating on Dengler, and blah blah blah. I dont
always listen when that nerd talks, but the long and short of it is that these guys
only use older tech. Off-brand. Last gen, not latest gen, yknow?
Knight kicked at corpses as he talked, holding up the last trooper effortlessly,
boots swinging out to batter aside terrorist and Dracogenics commando alike. The
floor was sticky. They both bled onto it even more.

Shame about your boys, here. You all werent half bad. I mean, not half good,
either, mind. Cant hold a candle to my old crew, too by-the-book, you guys. But
against those kinda numbers, you didnt do too bad, I guess.
Squelch, squelch, squelch went his boots.
Damn, this place looks like a friggin shark hit it, yeah? Just meat everywhere.
One of your boys got off a frag grenade, I bet. A fella can never have too many
frag grenades. What a mess, though. Not even like bodies any more, just a
bunch of chum-err? Ah-hah!
He kicked aside one of the rag-wrapped gangers, squinted down at a blockylooking unit that mightve been an old fashioned walkie-talkie, a big square made
of dull green plastic, ugly and primitive.
Got it!
Knight stomped, then again, then again. Once more, to grow on, then his
headware microphone filled with signals and a fresh row of info-blips lit up his
optics display.
again Lance One, I say again, what is your status, over? Lance One, can you
hear me?
I hear ya, Knight groused back, And cut it. Got a headache you wouldnt
believe.
Knights glare swept out onto the street, and he saw that last terrorist, axe buried
in her skull.
Well, maybe not as bad as some.
What was that Lance One? Your comms are back online, is backup requested?

Nah, too late for that. Need a med-extract, though. He ordered, his infochip
obeyed, and his comms link went dead again. Those eggheads and their rules
just made him crabby.
Knight dropped onto the rickety little porch of the rickety little hovel, a trickle of
blood already leaking this way from the crooked floors leaning. He didnt mind a
little blood. Never had.
So anyways, shame about your squad, bro. But dont be too hard on yourself.
Well get em back. Aint nothing forever any more, am I right? Its only a
matter of time before res-tech spreads to you workin stiffs.
Knight reached out and set down the raggedly separated head of his last trooper,
helmet and all, on the little porch next to him. The fire axe had been bloody when
hed grabbed it, alright.
Dracogenicsll get you boys right as rain. A little upload, a little download, a little
flash-clone or street meat for a body, and voila! Problem solved. Dyin aint no
big deal, really. Killin, neither. Its my secret, me an Bishie-boys. Theyll
probably let you fellas in on it, too, eventually.
He gave the helmet an affectionate thump.
Youll be back in the game, youll see. Knight almost sighed. Same as me.
Same as Bishop. Same as everybody. The price is right, yknow? Dracogenicsll
let most anyone sign up, nowadays. Corruption this, bribes that, blah blah blah.
They got a product, folks got a need, so Dengler and his guys upstairs, they sell.
Anyone who wants, they just save, they transfer, everythings fine.
Everything but me. I gotta tell ya, buddy, Im a little bored, yknow? Do this, do
that, kill them, save that. Who cares?! None of it matters. These knuckleheads,
here? Theyre the only assholes stay good and dead any more. Anyone with an
infochip and a credit card, brother, they can come back. Its almost depressing.
Nothing I do matters any more. My work, man, my work dont count, yknow? I

got these nice suits, sure, and cars, and girls, and whatever else I want. But
man
He let out a deep sigh.
Sometimes I wish somethingd shake this joint up, is all.
Sirens split the night, flashing bright against Knights headache. He hauled
himself to his feet, one hand hauling up his decapitated conversation partner by
the chin-strap, the other holding in his own belly.
Hoi, fellas, he waved with the severed head, casually.
We got four for upload, check the tech. Missions a success, though, I figure.
We got em all, locations secure, all that kind of crap.
Location? Castle stepped out of the med-evac, crisp black suit starkly out of
place here in the rust and mud and shades of gray of shanty-town, down-city.
Knight, you had three target sites. Three. This is Delta. Did you not attack Alpha
and Beta?
Those cold blue eyes of his swept from hovel to hovel, pointing out nearby
houses. Knight was pretty sure they mightve been where the surprise force of
primitives had come rushing from.
Nah, he shrugged, holding out the severed head for a nearby med-tech to gawk
at. Rookies.
You know me, boss. I just start killin and see what happens. Never been one
for reading files and stuff.

21.
Cmon, Tag. Whatd you read in the files?
Not until were all together, she said for maybe the dozenth, maybe the
hundredth, time. Its an announcement, Flip. You gotta wait for me to
announce it.
The other courier-queen gave a scowl, and Tag fought a smile. Everyoned been
up her and Jacks butts to find out what theyd found out, but they and a few other
long-timers what passed as a Resistance leadership council had agreed to let
everyone know all at once, instead of letting it trickle out a few runners and
scrappers at a time. They hoped that breaking the news to them as a group
would mean keeping an eye on them as a group; no one running off half-cocked
to get themselves killed or give up secrets.
Rabbit hopped, effortlessly, up onto the countertop at the abandoned coffee-shop
theyd taken over, all exposed brick walls, dust, and cobwebs. The stillness of a
once-bustling place gave it a sort of pregnant silence, like the room itself was
happy to be full of people again. Tag saw maybe three dozen of them gathered
around, all sporting scars on the inside or the out, all hurt by Dracogenics, all
missing limbs or family or friends. Most of them had killed. All of them had
contributed somehow, running messages, recruiting, hiding weapons, letting
someone heal up, carrying the sort of secrets that got your head cracked open by
Dracogenics shrinks, sec-troopers clubs, or both. Each one jostled and elbowed,
muttered, questioned, worried about them all being together, wanted answers
now, now, now.
Jack Rabbit hushed them with a stomp that cracked the bar. His up-gunned legs
werent gavels, but they got the job done. In the stillness that came with the gunsharp crack of the long wooden countertop splitting, he just held out a hand
towards Tag.
We know where they are, she said, hopping up next to him almost as easily.
Our friends. Our neighbors. The missing rebels, and everyone who got

snatched up with them.

She held out a little datapad, thumbed it to life, and aimed the projector panel
through the dust and the fear towards one wall. It was a news screen, a ticker
rolling by the bottom full of stock values and arcane financial runes, a flawless,
nigh-plastic face chattering away at the camera behind dozens of cosmetic
surgeries. Resurrection technology, the plastic head cheerily announced. The
death of death. Immortality for those most deserving. A reboot for those who
can afford it. Dracogenics. Dracogenics. Dracogenics.
Its this. Its them. Its this program of theirs. Dracogenics sells immortality to
the highest bidder. They save someones memories, dump them into a new
body, and let them live again. Dengler and his liars, they say the new bodies are
clones. Some of them are, or some of them were. But not all.
The recorded newscast kept going, muted, but with the scrolling headline talking
about them; rebels, insurgents, terrorists. Thered been a scuffle the night
before, a week since the mass arrests but violence and protests still flaring up.
Just as the wave of the rioters hit the wall of the Hammerheads, the news-drone
flying high to get a battlefield angle and help coordinate, Tag stabbed a button to
pause and zoom.
What the hell, Tag?
Flip glared at the broadcast image of herself. The courier sat, now, with her hands
on her hip, half her face an ugly blue-purple bruise. In the broadcast she wore a
yellow handkerchief around her face, a backwards ballcap, and righteous fury.
Tag let the image blink to the next frame, slow-mo, and they all watched as Flip
caught a guards riot baton square on the side of the head.
Tag, seriously, why are you showi
There.

Another tap, another nudge of the data, another scroll and zoom. Tag dragged
the image away from Flips abused face, along the Hammerhead officers whitearmored arm, up to his head. His helmet had been knocked off maybe a brick,
maybe a bat, maybe a kick, maybe just him swinging too hard and fastening his
chin strap too loose and his eyes were focused solely on Flip and his followthrough backhand, but there was no denying it.
Thats Kid.
Spiders voice came out a squeak, for all his bulk and usual baritone. The big,
black, bruiser was Flips partner in crime, as strong as she was quick, voice
normally as deep as hers was harsh.
Is not, Flip crossed her arms.
You couldnt see. He had that fuckin stick in your eye. Look at it, Flip. Thats
Kids fuckin face, man. Thats Kids body.
The pregnant silence filled the room again.
So theyrewhat? Brainwashing em? Brainwashing us?
No, Tag shook her head, already unspooling her slender direct-connect cord.
She plugged one end into her dataslot, the other into the connection port on the
little handheld datapad.
The screen blurred away, replaced by clinical, flawless, columns of names,
numbers, and Dracogenics-held medical facilities.
Theyre taking them. Filling them up with dead Dracogenics employees high
ranking ones, at least and politicians, whoever can pay Dengler enough to live
forever. Replacing them. They wipe the infochip, upload the new the old
person, the new life, and send them back out to live again. This is it. This is a list
of casualties they suffered, a list of arrests they made, dates and times of some of

those agents returning to the field, dates and times when some of our people go
missing from custody.
Tag forced her voice to stay calm, stay level, stay angry instead of letting her
mouth fill with vomit.
Theyre deleting us, and putting their people in our bodies. Or their managers, or
their clients. Whoever they need, whenever they need them, depending on the
body they snatch. Theyre over-writing us, and people like us. The poor. The
troublemakers. The Downstreamers. The ones the media wont ever miss.
She swallowed, eyes dark as her hair while the numbers and names scrolled by
against the rough brick wall.
Theyre harvesting us. Theyre not going to stop, unless we stop them.

22.
These Eternals guys, they aint gonna stop less we stop em, are they?
Bishop hated the sound of Knights voice, but he just kept yammering on.
I mean, Im all for a little crazy. Yknow? Mixing things up, like, keeping it
interesting. But these guys, theyre a straight-up cult. Like the opposite of those
Luddite knackers, right? Just, straight worshiping tech? Thats weird, buddy.
Im not your buddy. I hate you. I remember why. You killed me.
But ol Castle, he says he wants to turn em. Knows we cant do that with
thRussians, knows we can never turn those neo-primitive kooks, knows we want
more numbers on the streets, more folks keeping the city in hand for us, free of
charge, right?
Did you listen for once? Did you pay attention in a debriefing for once in your silly,
stupid, brutish life? Lives?
So Im thinking hey, Bishop, you listening to me? so Im thinking, why dont
we, like, kill their bosses? And make sure they worship the right tech, like. Make
sure theyre grateful for it, but only to us. Twist em around. Get the baa-baa
sheepy-weepy followers to, well, follow us.
Bishop, finally, blinked away his wireless connection, shutting down his infochips
link-up to the prototypes hed been scanning, critiquing, improving upon.
Efficiency, not combat applications, where increasingly becoming his area of
expertise. He had, while listening, seen to it an upcoming laser pistol retained
some level of modular compatibility with a carbine model, so that troopers could
carry the same battery packs for their primary weapons and their sidearms. If
Knight had stopped nattering away at him like a chatty three year old, he might
have taken a longer look at the interiors and arranged for Dracogenics to keep
several key internal components interchangeable, as well, for ease of

maintenance and production.

If.
Instead, something Knight said had caught his attention, so Bishop simply held up
a finger, letting the brute know he was thinking, computing, researching.
Bishops infochip purred, streams of data filling his augmented field of vision,
scrolling, scanning, searching. He took his data, nonchalantly called Castle on a
text-drop message screen, copied Knight in so the idiot would feel like part of the
conversation, and began filesharing.
ETERNALS LEADERSHIP IN FLUX, he thought, WEAK TO STRATEGIC TARGETING
HERE, HERE, HERE.
Names and faces were tagged to almost each word, highlighting potential targets,
tactical subroutines running in the background of Bishops consciousness, starting
to compile available tac-squads and suggest assassination protocols.
END RESULT: ASCENDANCE OF CELL LEADER NATHANIEL MICHAELSON OR
CHARISMATIC SUBORDINATES. MICHAELSONS FACTION FAVORS
DRACOGENICS PRODUCTS, ENCOURAGES PRO-DENGLER FERVOR. VISIONARY,
NOT RATIONAL. ROUGHLY 63% LIKELY TO STEER SURVIVING ORGANIZATION
FURTHER TO DRACOGENICS SIDE IN STREET VIOLENCE, TRIBUTE.
Knight might not have even had his infochip accessed, judging from the killers
blank stare. Bishop was sure there was no soul in there. He was like a rabid dog,
able to focus only when it was time to fuck, or eat, or kill, and even then only
momentarily. Knight was a murderous engine, nothing more. He didnt do all this
for his family, the way Bishop did. He didnt do all this for any reason but that he
liked to do it. He didnt contribute to the conversation, of course. Bishop waited
for Castles cursor to do something besides blink and display a small pending
message alert.
PROCEED.

Bishop smiled, then saw Knights cracked, yellow, teeth flash in a feral grin of his
own. Castles message continued.
TOGETHER.

23.
Look at how these assholes work together, Rabbit threw a dirty sock against the
wall, like the wadded-up bundle of stinkage would disrupt the projectors display.
How we gonna take these guys in a fight, huh?
Tag wanted to ignore him, but she knew everyone else was looking to her for an
answer. Frame by frame, they were watching the latest Eternals raid Lord
knows why, but Dracogenics had started culling the cultists last month, hitting
them in the middle of high rituals with major leadership present and none of
them liked what they saw.
There were combat drones flying in perfect little patterns, all overlapping fields of
fire and tight formations. A burly psycho with a knife a knife mowed down
cultists left and right, leading the charge, flanked by Dracogenics kill-team
members with alternating laser, plasma, and ballistic weapons. The Eternals had
tech, the Eternals loved tech, but the Dracogenics shooters, much like the drones
that buzzed near them, carefully combined their fire, meticulously, mercilessly,
gunning them down like a well-coordinated machine. The berserker was the tip of
their spear, but was almost a distraction despite the impressive personal killcounts he put up; the drones and the troopers, marching and firing in lock-step
with each other, were the real threats.
Tag tried to figure them out, tried to break the code, to put the puzzle together.
She tried to figure out how to beat this top-tier Dracogenics team, but at the same
time she was trying her very, very, best not to imagine the faces of her friends
beneath each helmet, or her long-missing father, or her neighbors, or someday
Jack or Flip or any of the rest of them. No one knew how many of these
Dracogenics guys had been resurrected, nobody knew if their numbers were,
really, infinite now. How restrictive was Dengler being with who he let get reset?
How expensive was the process, how common, how popular?
Frame by frame, the assembled Resistance leadership watched the kill-team,
slowly, eviscerate an entire Eternals cell house.

We dont, Tag said, finally, in the silence. We dont beat that. We cant. We
dont havewe dont have enough guns, or lasers, or anything.
We dont have enough people. Theyre taking them. The Resistance isnt strong
enough any more.
So we dont beat that. We distract that. We go old school. Simple. Easy. Same
as always, right? We do what we do. Distract on one side, pierce security on
another, get in and get out.
Distract that?
Flip was right to sound incredulous, even afraid. She was almost always the one
doing the distracting.
Got to, Spider said, huge shoulders rolling in a shrug. You got a better plan?
Fucking move outta this city, Flip grumbled to herself, fading back into dour
quiet.
We start with a flash mob, escalate to incendiaries. Weve got to make it big
and loud, but escalate fast enough they dont want to call on the Hammerheads.
We make them hit us with those guys. Their best. Top tier. Personal security,
the ones they only deploy from this particular facility. We spook em, make em
show their hand. While thats going on, me and Jack go in the back.
Yeah, Flip rather quickly broke her vow of silence, You two just waltz in, sure.
And then what? If we dont get killed in ten seconds, and if were able to get
away, and if youre able to get in, and if youre able to get back out cause we
buy you the timeso what?
So I hack em.
Bitch, are you high? Flip went a little shriek-ish.

Easy, Flip, Spider put one big hand on her shoulder.

I can do it, Tag said, voice low, certain. Rabbits got a gal. Works data
processing there, basic stuff, glorified secretary, right? But shes got codes. We
pay her enough, we get em. I get her access clearance, I data-dump to my
infochip, we bounce.
Pay her? How much is enough, exactly? Flip wasnt the only one grumbling
about trusting one of Jack Rabbits contacts with their money or the future of the
Resistance. Jackd been getting a little mercenary on them again, lately, and it
wasnt lost on them. The more desperate the situation got, the more Rabbit had
started charging again, saving up for some future only he could see.
Tag knew Jacks plans, had plans of her own, but couldnt deny that, this time, it
would be worth it.
Jack spoke up.
We pay her enough for her to fade. Shes not happy there, but she needs to be
taken care of, gotta go underground, maybe Downstream, maybe Red Light.
Maybe out of town. It wont be cheap.
Tag cut in before Flip could grouch some more.
But itll be worth it, youll see. We get in there, get this data, figure out how to
tostop it, or mass-produce it, even? If we shut this down, sell it to the rest of the
world, Dracogenics loses. If we pull this off, we win. Finally. Itll be worth it.

24.
This had better be worth it, Mr. Knight.
Oh, it will be.
Castle stepped out of his limousine, leaving who-knows-how-many security
troopers concealed behind the tinted, bullet-proof, windows. His driver glared out
at Knight from the front seat, crisp suit, snazzy hat, the only one of Castles
entourage Knight was allowed to see. He didnt really remember why, but he
thought maybe hed always hated that guy.
Knight stood there in ripped denim and scuffed leathers, free to wear whatever he
pleased on his rare days off. He wasnt an ape in a fancy suit tonight, wasnt
wearing clean Dracogenics colors, walking clean Dracogenics hallways, spooking
clean Dracogenics employees. He was in his old turf. Downstream, near the Red
Light District. Fresh from a little fun and a lot of drugs, ready for a little more of
the former before the high faded from the latter.
And why was it you couldnt simply message me?
Castle didnt really like leaving uptown a whole lot. Hell, lately he barely left
Dracogenics. Hed only come along to check on Knights clean-up of that rabble
house months ago cause the med-evac van had a signal booster on it, Knight was
pretty sure.
Knight had a theory to test.
Didnt wanna message you around the pencil-neck, Knight grunted. Never
mind that Bishops bodies were plenty athletic, that the administrator had more
than proven himself in the field to everyone but Knight. Old rivalries died hard.
Never know when hes gonna go snoopin, is all. Stealing data, stealing ideas,
stealing credit for stuff.

Castles ice cold eyes rolled, and he let out a sigh that misted in the Downstream
air.
This again, Mr. Knight? You carried out the Eternals raids with your usual
aptitude and eagerness. Why must you harp so about Mr. Bishop receiving the
rightful credit for the planning of them, when it was your execution that
mattered?
He didnt plan em! Knights nostrils flared, hands waved. Castles driver
shifted in his seat just a little bit, but Knight ignored him. Thats what Im saying!
It was my idea! Mine! I can think, too, dammit!
Yes, yes. Youre a genius, Mr. Knight. Is that what you want to hear? Castle
took a half-step forward, getting irate, himself. Getting a little loud. Showing how
he hated it whenever anyone questioned him, disagreed with him, didnt just bow
before him.
Do you want me to tell you how smart you are, Mr. Knight? Tell you how it was
Red Robert Kingsleys scintillating wit and boundless intellect that got him hired?
Hmm? Is that what you tell yourself? Is that what you want me to say about
you, instead of him, even after all this time, all these years? Do you just not want
to feel like the hired muscle, you brute? You lout? You crude, blunt, instrument?
Do you want me to tell you what a bright boy you are, Mr. Knight, the way your
father never did? Is that what you want to hea
Knight had given top-of-the-line plasma launchers to Punch and JD, so he wasnt
sure which of the psychos it was thatd done in Castles driver. One of em,
though, or maybe both, had just blasted him pretty fucking proper. The limos
armor might as well not have been there, the blast of concentrated plasma had
torn through the bulletproof glass like tissue paper, hit something inside or
underneath the body or maybe a grenade on some hidden corp-trooper? that
made it go up like a fireworks display.
Nope, Knight said as he closed his big hands over Castles head. He jerked,
suddenly, a hard wrenching of his arms and shoulders and whole augmented

body. Castles neck broke with a wet snap. I wanted to hear that.
Snow and Outstanding raked the wreckage of the limo with minigun fire, laughing
their fool heads off from their perches opposite JD and Punch, just rattling off a
hundred or a thousand or whatever rounds, strafing back and forth like kids
writing their names in the snow. Knight gave Castles body a shake, like a dog
with a rat, then threw him by the neck back into the wreckage. Another
plasma bolt slashed into the mess, and another. Knight had to cover his eyes
against the glare, but he grinned, wide and feral.
He spun a finger in the air for them to wrap it up, and before too long they did. His
old crew sauntered up to him, toting their big new guns, and big new grins, and
Punch probly had a big chubbie to go with it. Knight figured it was a miracle him
an JD were still alive, much less together, but loves funny that way.
Thats a wrap, gang. Each of them produced a top-end signal blocker, a comms
disruptor sleeker, smaller, lighter, and quite a bit more advanced than the one
Knight had stomped those months ago on the butcher-shop floor of that ugly little
shanty.
Now yall split. Take that cash, them guns, those toys, whatever. But get outta
the city, or at least go deep, deep, Downstream for a while. Signal blocker
shoulda kept the old man from uploading proper, along with torching his infochip,
so I think hes gone for good.
JD looked pleased with herself at that, plasma cannon still smoking.
If the blockers did the trick an my theorys right, itll shake things up and any
heatll blow over. Hell be gone for good, file corrupted, dead as deads supposed
to be. Then yall come back, get the Wyverns back together, make a lot of
money, whatever. Your call. Point is, fuck that guy, and fuck his rules, and fuck
his secret protocols. He aint tellin me what to do again.
Knight spat towards the wreckage.

An fuck his driver.

Snow and Outstanding nodded like they knew what Knight was talking about, so
he kept talking.
Anyways, if my theorys wrong, well, Castles gonna be right pissed. Probably
come after me hard, and I know yall dont want to be there when that happens.
Wasnt the deal. So just bounce, come back whenever.
He held out a hand. Outstanding reached to shake it.
Thanks for the toys, boss man. You need us, you call. Well come running.
Well, maybe. Outstanding was, at least, honest.
Fifty-fifty, Id say.

25.
Fifty-fifty. Really? Jack didnt sound pleased.
Yes, really. Tag didnt quite roll her eyes as she answered.
You really think weve got even odds of this working?
What, is that good or bad?
The two of them knifed through the crowd of protesters, a near-mob of people
chanting, waving signs, shaking fists, a single living being the way a crowd could
sometimes be, circling the Dracogenics facility like a bear hug.
Is it bad that youre risking all our lives on a coin toss, or is it bad that I think
youre crazy for thinking weve got a coin tosss chance? Bad. Both of those are
bad. You say fifty-fifty like its a good thing, I say its maybe a snowballs chance
in Hell. Theres no good there, Rabbit shook his head, wondering how hed
gotten here and how much longer he was going to keep it up. The Resistance is a
sinking ship, Tag-a-roonie. We gotta jump and start paddling while we can.
Bad odds, Tag nodded to the mass of people all around them, hundreds, easily,
maybe a thousand. Maybe more. All angry at the system, angry at Dracogenics,
angry at the unfairness. The city, come to life, shouting. But theres good here.
Weve got the people, Jack. Itll work. Youll see.
Tag thought about their last, best, chance. She thought about how much the
Resistance demanded of her, she thought with a pang of jealousy about Jacks
inside woman, the office drone who was going to be able to leave the city, start a
new life, get a fresh start from this payday.
Itll work, Tag said again, It has to.
Jack shrugged down deeper into his poncho, muttering about following crazy girls

to certain death for too-small a pay check, and she did her best to tune him out.
She kept her hood up high, shoulders hunched, and worked on navigating them
through the mass of people towards the opposite street. Rabbits informant had
given them a rough layout, along with the passcodes and a wish for luck. They
knew where they wanted to go, and it was closer to the top of the building than
the bottom. Autograpnels from a nearby rooftop looked like their best way in,
ziplining from building to building, old-school. Running like hell looked like their
best way out.
Tag saw Spider in the crowd. He stood out more than Flip, looming, shavenheaded, grim, but Tag was sure the other courier was there too; Flip was almost
as old as Tag, but twice as angry at the world, and Tag couldnt help but wonder
who shed lost that left her so mad, so ready to kill and die. She knew Flip was
out there, and she knew Flip would, for all her complaining, go through with the
mission. Picking a fight with Dracogenics was what she seemed to live for, so
there was no question of trust. Tag just hoped Flip and the rest of the Resistance
would survive the backlash, hoped theyd stay a viable force for change in the
city.
Minutes later, Tag looked out at the crowd again, from several floors up. It was a
writhing sea of colors, a glowing serpent made up of datapads held high, the soft
glow of neon-charged clothes, the pulse of people chanting and shoving in rhythm
with one another.
Jack gave her climbing harness a tug, made sure it was still secure, snapped Tag
out of her aimless gaze.
Were good for the next hop, he said, tossing his head towards the next building
they were out to scale, the next peak for them to reach. Itd be a higher game
than they were used to, tonight. It didnt normally take them climb after climb to
reach rooftops, but they didnt normally try this sort of thing uptown.
Lets get going, Tag said, giving a confident nod and prepping her grapple line.
Thingsll kick off soon.

26.
Soon, Bishop said. Weve got to find him soon.
Or what, exactly?
Frankly sir, we dont know. We dont have a solid degradation rate, we dont
know how long an upload will last in the wild. Weve always done a near-instant
transfer, especially of a repeat res-tech like Mr. Castle.
Or me, or Mr. Knight, or I dont know who else.
Find him, then, Mr. Bishop. For all his rank, Bishop had only heard this
particular voice on the phone, had only heard even that a handful of times. Five
years in the company was long enough to climb the ladder pretty far with a special
assignment like this, to accrue great personal wealth, to see to the comfort of a
far-off family with negligible financial impact, to gather a reasonable deal of
corporate rank. But it was long enough with the company to speak, at least not
very often, with Dengler himself.
Find him, Mr. Bishop. And soon. Or your time as acting coordinator on this
project wont last very long.
And neither will you, Bishop shivered as the line went dead. Dengler didnt make
threats. Dengler didnt have to. The CEO of Dracogenics didnt bother with things
like threats, didnt stoop so low. If someone like Bishop bothered him, Dengler
would just hit a button somewhere, will something into his infochip, and Bishop
would cease to exist.
Along with my family, Bishop told himself, ignoring a brief, cold, sweat. I have to
figure this out. Have to find Castle, or find out what happened to him, or replace
him. For my family.
He went back to work. He dove headlong into the datastream, backtracking calls,

checking appointments, coordinating with a dozen Dracogenics sec-agents at

once, messaging with them simultaneously as his consciousness split, then again,
then again. He watched the teeming mob outside through ten different gundrones and ten security cameras, pushed the flood of images aside to focus on
Castles comms records, pushed those aside to backtrack where his implants were
last spotted on GPS, pushed those aside to cross-reference with file after file of
known threats, then drive after drive of suspected threats, then the entire
database of the entire city.
Not many infochips could handle it. Bishop wasnt certain his could, he only knew
he had to try.
Security microphones flooded his ears with the idiot mob outside roaring about
freedom, and truth, and security, and liberty, and safety, and choice, and on and
on and on. They werent even cohesive. There wasnt a set pattern to their
movements, a sense of solidarity with their chanting. Some of them complained
about one thing, some about another, some about something else. Idiots. Idiots.
Didnt they know what kind of work he was doing? Didnt they know how
important this was? He needed to find Castle, needed to see what had happened
to him, needed to save his family.
He swept away half of his live feeds of the flock of irritants at their very doorstep
and focused on running numbers. How many communications did Castle receive
every day, after all? How many did he reply to? How vital was he, really, in the
grand scheme of things? How many crises did he handle at this stage in the restech game, honestly, and how lucrative was the military contractor aspect his
brain child versus the more commercial applications? How much political weight
had Dracogenics gained via his contracts and security successes, compared to the
influence theyd received for their reloading program aimed at simple longevity
for the wealthy and powerful?
How much did Dracogenics really need Castle, specifically, to keep the special
operations wing of their security structure running?
If a computer could keep running with one or two missing files, certainly special

operations could keep running with, at heart, one or two missing files, couldnt it?
If Bishop could just prove, mathematically, that the overall efficiency of the
program wouldnt be hurt by Castles disappearance, surely he could focus his
attentions elsewhere, and the investigation could wait, couldnt it?

27.
Couldnt it wait? Jesus, Jack.
Nope. When Ive gotta go, Ive gotta go. Rabbit stood at the edge of the
building, fly open, relieving himself. You mark your territory one way, chica, let
me mark it mine.
Tag paced, scowled, paced, shook her head, paced, stared down at the throbbing
crowd. Rabbit finished up, then headed her way to share in the view.
Dont pee on them, too.
What?! Tag, cmon. Thats hurtful. I wouldnt pee on my own people. Thats
all city-folk down there, baby. All Resistance. Family! Id never stoop to hey, is
that Flip?
She hid a smile as he pretended to reach for his fly again.
Keep it tucked away, gunslinger. Flips not so bad, and youll need those running
shorts soon enough. She nodded, and over at the far end of the crowd, Jack saw
things getting louder, the movements getting more violent.
Its almost time.
Jack adjusted himself, then got to work making sure their climbing rigs were tight
enough, again. Itd be a hell of a zipline move, across all that, from this high up.
But it wasnt like they had a better plan.

28.
What, you got a better plan? Knight grunted, reaching over to smack his driver
in the arm. Back in his suit, headed back to his post since his leave was up, he
didnt want to be late.
Dont be a wuss. Floor it, buddy. Theyll move, youll see.
The Dracogenics man swallowed, paused, then nodded. His passenger seemed
to be in a scarily good mood, but everyone who worked around the program
knew who Knight was, and how that could change.
He hit the gas and the horn in equal measure. Knight had one hand on the wheel,
grip like a vise, arm like a stone, holding it steady, forcing the car straight ahead.
The people didnt move.

29.
Move! Rabbit gave Tag a shove, sending her hurtling out into space, her
frictionless gloves and strong grip sliding her along the line.
Jack gave a two-step start and then leapt after her, anti-fric gloves sliding along
the zipline, buzzing like a hornets nest as he sliced through the night. Below them
dont look down, dont look down, dont look down Tag saw everything start
up, saw the proper riot kick off.
A car was in the middle of it, a big black thing cutting through the people like a
shark. A Molotov hit it, then another, but she saw the tiny little specs of
protestors running around on fire, too. Flip and Spider were staying busy, but
violence had a way of spreading whether you wanted it to or not. More Molotovs
flew, towards the compound this time, according to plan.

30.
RESPOND ACCORDINGLY. PLANS ARE IN PLACE. DEFENSE PATTERN THETA.
Bishop kept his thoughts focused, even though his attentions were scattered.
One part of his mind controlled a wing of gun-drones, sending them on an attack
run against the seething mass of savages at their very door. Another coordinated
security responses, shuffling men like the pawns they were, moving them to
reinforce the main gate even while a secondary unit was sent, just in case the
attacks matched known Resistance patterns, to reinforce the rear gate. A sliver of
his attention continued to crunch the numbers on Castles disappearance. Yet
another navigated with a trio of spy drones high above the city, creating his
triangulated tactical overlay, ignoring a strange striation across his field of view,
focusing on the mob, and the sec-trooper response, and the projected actions of
both.
And that crazy Knight with his crazy driver.

31.
Hahah, youre crazy, man! Knight was determined to hold onto his chipper
mood, despite the obvious damage to his latest set of wheels. The windshield
was on fire but an external cam linked to company GPS showed he was still
pointed at the compounds main entrance, so he just covered his face against the
heat and kept the wheel locked.
He reached out with his free hand to give his driver man, this guy was a hoot!
a friendly nudge, only to notice the blood everywhere, his shove leaning the
corpse over, hole in his head and all, to slump against his bullet-shattered drivers
side window.
Huh.
Knight figured stopping was worse than not, so he shrugged and just stooped,
reached, twisted down awkwardly, palming the gas pedal and going all-out. He
squinted through smoke to watch the GPS display, to keep the nose pointed in the
right direction despite the bumps and the rocky road laid out before him as he
mowed down terrorist after terrorist.
KNIGHT TO BASE, KNIGHT TO BASE. COMING IN HOT. GET READY TO WATCH
THIS, FELLAS. IM GONNA STICK THE LANDING.

32.
Tag stuck to the narrow landing like glue, turned sideways, hugging the wall as
she and Jack crept along the slender ledge. It was hard to ignore the fires below,
the staccato gunfire starting up, the swooping, strafing, drones. She tried not to
listen for the screams. She focused on the climb, on the run, on the motion that
meant they were moving closer to their objective, their ultimate goal, the thing
that would make all this worth it. She wondered what Jack focused on in
moments like this; increasingly, she felt certain it was a pay check, not pride.
His shifting goals worried her, but there was no other way. It killed her that they
had to go slowly, but there was no other way. It hurt that Flip and Spider had to
risk fire and bullets so far below, but there was no other way.
Shuffle, sidestep, creep along; just move, go forward, go. Do something. Fight
against the tyrants, break down the system, combat injustice, act. Act.
Finally, she lunged to open rooftop, cursing the architects and engineers that had
designed the artful but erratic building profile. Jack hopped alongside her a
heartbeat later, but they didnt stop to take a rest, to joke with one another about
the climb, to congratulate each other on their success so far.
The rooftop access door was waiting. Tag didnt have codes for it, shed have to
hack it open or Jack would kick it or, if they had to, theyd pull out the det-foam.
Either way, it wasnt going to stop them. They moved forward.

33.
Knight was slammed forward on impact, the burning sedan slammed into the
burning gateway, terrorist-flung fire bottles responsible for both. Blood filled his
mouth and eyes as he hit the dash, but he ignored it. The windshield gave way
partially, and a storm of glass and fire fell down all around him, a rain of
inconvenience and drug-numbed pain. Endorphins did their job, then his powerful
legs, and he up through the wreckage of the windshield, launched like from a
catapult, to get clear of the burning car.
A dozen security guns stayed trained on the mob nearby, firing controlled bursts
from ballistic weapons, short beams from energy rifles. Theyd been alerted he
was coming, after all, and not just by him, but by Bishop.
No one knew where Castle was, but Bishop was the acting man upstairs, and that
was good enough for them. Loyal Dracogenics employees never died. Ones who
second-guessed management? Not so much.
Castle or no Castle, they had their orders. Theyd follow them.

34.
Follow me, Tag emerged from her spot-hack, door opening. She hadnt tripped
any alarms, she was pretty sure, and the thing had unlocked; that was a win.
She and her big plasmagun led the way, Jacks hydraulic-hissing legs just behind
her, his own limbs his best weapon. He was a lousy shot but mean with a kick,
and they were here to move fast, not to get into gunfights, anyways. She made
their way through the facility, a crude overlay projected to the pair of them from
her infochip, and they followed the plotted course. They had to get to the main
lab. They had to get the drive. That drive was everything. They needed the
drive.

35.
Howd you boys like my driving? Knight snatched an agents rifle from him as
casually as taking candy from a baby. The guard's Thanatos sniper rifle was
unwieldy for this sort of crowd control, and Knight didn't much care for sniper rifles
and energy weapons to begin with, but oh well. A long gun beat a short gun, and
that's that. A careless swipe of his arm swept glass and blood from his face, and a
nearby sec-trooper gave him a fast-clot spray before he even had to ask.
Knight glowered and held his hand out for a whole magic wand fuck, why not,
right? and the trooper paused, but handed one over. Knight shot it up, trusting
in his augmented body, his augmented organs, his augmented thresholds, to
stomach the potent med-cocktail. He rode the adrenaline high as he mentally
switched his borrowed Thanatos over to a steady beam, then sent a killkillkill
command, sending a nonstop spear of coherent light wholesale into the crowd,
sweeping them with it.
The nearby troopers exchanged glances, then shrugged. They followed suit;
spraying became the order of the day. They stopped picking off just the
troublemakers that got the closest, began just hosing into the crowd to drive them
back, bodily.
Hahah, woo! Knight dropped his empty battery pack and pulled a fresh one
from the magnetic clamps of the trooper next to him. He gave the guy, whatever
his name was, a friendly slap on the shoulder.
That was somethin, fellas! Keep it up, youve got things in hand here. Im
gonna go see what our new Mr. Man Upstairs has to say!
No one was stupid enough to stand in Knights way. He made his way towards
the elevators, whistling a jaunty little tune as he swiped his ID badge and
thumbed the button.
Going up!

36.
Everything was going down quickly, so quickly, almost too quickly for Bishop to
keep up. He zoomed his attention from one crisis to the next, giving specific
commands to section leaders, sending agents to reinforce a breach in the wall
where Knights car had endangered the structural integrity, strafing with drones
where Molotovs flared to life on thermal scans, trying to gun down terrorists
before the incendiaries could be thrown. Too many arced up and over the wall,
too many splashed and burned among his meticulously-placed troopers, too
many terrorists roared and lashed out for too few drones to handle.
He needed leverage. He needed efficiency. He needed an elegant solution to this
ridiculous mob, needed someone the opposite of Knight and his fully automatic
answer to all lifes problems. He needed Castle, damn it, needed Castle doing this
organizing and coordinating, needed Castle looking at the big picture to free him
up, to let Bishop do what he did best and manage just one problem at a time.
But there were too many problems. He couldnt focus, couldnt dedicate his
extraordinary processing power to any one crisis. There were fire alarms going
off, emergency messages from fire control services complaining about blocked
roads, incoming calls from Hammerheads offering assistance, calls from on-site
Dracogenics security requesting rules of engagement and resupply and
reinforcements, calls from Knight saying HELLO, HOW ARE YOU like the building
wasnt on fire, calls from one of Denglers Vice Presidents wanting a status update
on Castles disappearance, another from another VP wanting to know what was
going on at the facility, another from another checking on some routine data
reports that needed to be compiled and turned in like another day at work,
another from an alarm system ontheroof?
His curiosity piqued, Bishop sent a sliver of his attention to top-floor cameras, then
physically blinked in disorientation as screen after screen came up dark. Not off,
just dark. He blinked from camera to camera, leapt through the building that he
was a part of and was part of him, until there! he saw a pair of figures, just for
a second, one small and one larger, the smaller barely in the field of view just
below the camera, reaching up with a can of spraypaint and

The indignity!
The insult!
Their crude hacking ability no better than a schoolchild should have given
them away, but to assault a facility of this technological level with so crude a
method, and to see so crude a method actually succeed in inconveniencing him,
beggared belief. He hopped to another camera, then another, but all he could
make out of them were their relative sizes, that the larger had colorfully obvious
cybernetic legs, than the smaller had a poncho on and her (?) hood up tight.
Another spraying, then another. He was flustered. He was distracted. He misaligned a strafing run dozens of floors below, ignored a call from a frantic security
agent asking for back-up, let the call from a Vice President ring and ring,
unanswered.
He ran projections, instead. Marking in his infochip the compromised cameras,
marking their trail, plotting their course from their access point to one abused
camera after another, then projecting beyond it, figuring out where they were
going before they eve
No.
Oh, no.

37.
Oh, no you dont!
As Bishop lurched out of the datastream and to his feet, herky-jerk standing up
from Castles plush leather chair, Knights gruff voice and big, bloody, hand
smacked him back down.
What the hell is going on out there, Bishie-Boy? Thingsre going to hell, and
youre up here getting ready to take a piss or something? Get back in there,
egghead. Work your magic. Do your computer tricks, and tell us real killers
where to go to really kill.
Knight was, as cocky, drugged, and distracted as he was, absolutely unprepared
for Bishops flawlessly executed, technically perfect, Judo hip-throw. Likewise,
the entirely inelegant soccer-kick that followed it, Bishops subtly polymer-toed
wingtip connecting just so with Knights jaw, knocking him cold.
Bishop grabbed Knights Thanatos from his comatose form, checked the laser
charge, and started off at a trot. He hadn't used a precision rifle like a Thanatos in
a long time, but he had augs that would make sure he was, at the very least,
competent. He unbuttoned his suit coat and cast it aside, rolled up his sleeves as
he ran.
Hed plotted their course in his head a dozen times, and knew where they were
going. He also knew he wouldnt beat them there, not from here, not from this
room. But he could meet them at the rooftop, their only possible point of egress.
He could wait for them, and stop them there, despite that idiot Knights slowing
him down.

38.
Oh, dont you slow down on me now, Tag whined at her paintcan. It sputtered
and coughed in response, but dutifully blacked out one last camera. She cast it
aside and drew another one, Jack Rabbit already halfway down the hall by the
time her empty clattered to the floor, reaching up to smother the next camera
with his own well-shaken can.
Were here, he said, eyes lighting up like hed found a pirates treasure chest.
She trotted to join him, then jogged right past. Her infochip had the schematics,
her head had the technical know-how. She passed him her gun for luck as much
as anything else as he quick-stepped next to her, then she flashed through the
data files to orient herself in this awe-inspiring, but terrible, lab.
She didnt focus on the tanks full of clones, or the medi-gel stored prisoners, that
lined the walls. She didnt look at the surgery, or maybe torture, devices near
chrome-polished beds with restraints and no padding. She didnt think about
what happened here, to how many, for how long. She focused, like a laser, she
focused. She had a job to do. She had to do it.
She had to find the drive. Not scream at this house of horrors, not worry about her
friends, not worry about her mom, or even Jack Rabbit. She had to get the drive.
She had to find the mainframe, find the right access panel, find the hardware, pull
it out. She had to be fast about it, and precise. Time was running out. She just
had a hard-scrabble assortment of random tools to work with, and her gut, and
the rough schematics and data codes. It had to be enough. She had to be
enough. She had to make due.
She had to be efficient.

39.
Efficiency. That was what Mr. Bishop valued, and what Dracogenics valued him
for in return. Efficiency and reliability.
Mr. Bishop was perched on the rooftop, just over the rooftop exit the two terrorists
had first entered through. Hed watched them progress through the top floor,
marked their course on his overlay map as theyd gone from camera to camera,
marring each, pettily dirtying them, painting the lenses one at a time. They
werent leaving the way theyd come hed only pegged it at a 62% chance of
that, according to his projections while they were messing about in the lab but
were heading to the secondary roof access.
Hed known as soon as they hadnt backtracked, of course, but he also knew he
had a fine line of sight from here. Thats why hed chosen this stand, this spot,
this impromptu little snipers nest. From the other rooftop access, he couldve
only covered one. From this one, both.
Knight would never have thought of that. Knight would have just run at them, run
after them, been left bumbling in their wake. He was fast, yes, but not
specialized in it like these too. Knight growled threats in Bishops ear from
somewhere below him, infochip full of that ridiculous brutes yelling, full of
security breach concerns from downstairs its all just a decoy, why cant you
idiots just run one simple security detail without me?! full of of visibility loss
reports from smoke-addled drones. None of it mattered.
It was efficiency that mattered. Reliability.
He watched the pair of terrorists running, leaping, vaulting, escaping, through his
Thanatos' magnifying scope. The bigger one put on a better show, all loops and
spins, almost as concerned with being flashy as with being fast. The smaller one,
then, worried Mr. Bishop more. The female. The one with the poncho streaming
behind her, always straight behind her, because she was always moving forward.
That one was driven. That one had the drive.

40.
Keep moving forward. Keep the drive. Keep moving forward.
Tag ran, like shed seldom run before. She was in the moment, focused, motions
tight, controlled, no wasted energy, all speed, no show. Jack ran like Jack always
ran, Jack always danced like the world was watching. She thought maybe she
knew why, now. She thought back to when shed first met him, those years ago,
when shed worshipped him. They all had. They all had because of how he ran,
how he wanted to be seen, how he wanted to show he wasnt ever afraid of
tripping and falling.
She wanted to be like that.
Jack Rabbit ran like he was flying, like the neon strips on his legs were jet
thrusters, like he was going to take off at any second, vault right to the skies like a
rocket ship. He spun and whirled like he was putting on a show, like he was
holding back, like it was effortless, like gravity didnt count. He leapt things like
he was fast as light. Light itself.
A blue-white laser beam flashed out of nowhere and cut off Jacks legs. Just.
Like. That.
He rolled and skittered, stumps near his knees sparking as they scraped on
rooftop, bottoms of his legs pinwheeling away in a spray of sparks.
Tag dove for cover, curled herself in a ball, tight-close, smaller than Jack and a
smaller target.
Get outta here, kid, Jack said, hauling himself across the rooftop without her,
not even turning to look at her, studiously just plowing forward.
As he grabbed handfuls to pull himself, writhing along like a beautiful thing made
ugly, made un-whole, like a bird with broken wings, he cursed under his breath,

quietly, out of fear and anger more than pain. When he could, he sucked in a big
lungful of air, shouting at her like she was still a scared little girl, like he was still in
charge of her. So this what being a hero got you.
Run! Just go! You have to!

41.
She had to.
Bishops sights nestled onto the girl as he broke, as she stood from her cover and
rabbited. She couldnt stay there. It wasnt a battle of wills, it was a battle of
resources. If she stayed put and hidden, hed get a hundred security guards up
here, or just a single drone, and it would be all over. Once the smoke cleared and
he reallocated resources and his eyes in the sky could see again, or even just once
that idiot Knight stopped threatening Bishop and got up here to help, shed be
dead. Flanked. Finished. Lost.
So she broke and ran, because she had to.
She hurled herself from behind a clunky air conditioning unit and started running,
as tightly focused as his laser. Her poncho fluttered in the breeze tossed away
from her as a distraction, or just let fly so it wouldnt slow her down? and as it
blew away from him, Bishop got a clear line of sight at last.
My God, he thought, finger slipping from the trigger. Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn Barnes. My
daughter.
She ran and he froze. He didnt need his infochip to look her up, he remembered
her. Her age, her hobbies, her athleticism. The shape of her nose, her tightly
curled hair, her smile like her mothers. He remembered his big girl, his firstborn.
The girl that had made his marriage into a family.
His infochip screamed at him, images of Pamela his wife who needed him, of little
Elizabeth whod grown so big while hed been gone. He knew what would
happen if he didnt shoot. He knew what Dracogenics, what Dengler, would do to
them. It was in him, now, in his head, in his infochip. Who she was. When her
performed his next routine data-dump, got his next patch, sent his next update,
theyd see it, even if he didnt shoot. If he didnt shoot, shed die. All of them.
All three of his beautiful women, and him, too. Dengler had the hooks in too

deep, his res-tech had cost Bishop-Barnes too much. If he didnt pull the trigger,
his whole family was dead.
Or he could shoot. And it would be just her, maybe.
If she died, maybe he could hack her. Upload her. Download her. Reboot her. If
he got the drive back from her the drive, the drive, you need to secure the drive
or everything falls apart he could fix this, somehow. Death wasnt real, right?
Death was temporary, unless Dracogenics wanted it to be forever.
His finger slipped back inside the trigger guard.
He just had to stop her. He wouldnt really be killing her, hed be protecting her.
Hed be securing the drive, saving his wife, saving his baby girl, maybe saving
both his baby girls. He had to do it. He had to shoot.
He resigned himself to his duty. His finger began to tighten, taking the shot.
Surprise, motherfucker!
Bishops own silk tie was swung up and over his head, around his neck, jerked
past where his cheek was tight against the sniper rifles stock, and he was swung
against a strong hip and thrown. Throat straining, neck wrenched, head reeling,
he skidded on the rooftop, tumbling to a stop as his infochip tried to orient him.
He came up with the tie in his hands, not looped around his neck, and that was
better than nothing.
Knight stood there, missing teeth, face full of blood, pupils a hot mess. High on
something, drunk on hatred, full of pain or maybe just no longer able to feel
anything.
That drive gets away, Bishie-boy, and maybe things change around here!
Knight came at him, knife leading, mono-edged blade swiping, cutting one of

Bishops shirt buttons neatly in half.

Maybe we can really die again. Maybe we can really kill again. Maybe
Dracogenics goes down a peg. Maybe something we do matters again.
He lunged, Bishop twisted aside, darted back, tried to out-think the killer because
he wasnt sure how to out-fight him. The evasion almost worked, or maybe
Knight was just toying with him; Bishop felt the tip of the knife, just the first inch,
part his ribs smoothly, slide between them, pull away leaving a terrible spike of
heat and pain only a heartbeat or two after the intrusion.
It was so sharp it was silly.
Bishop ducked, he kicked, he feinted. He managed to snarl one of Knights wrists
with the tie, to loop it and pull, to haul the bigger man off balance, to buy himself
time. Time to think. Time to think hard. Time to use the raw power of his
infochip, to in a second think things over in a way that would take a normal
man a minute or ten or an hour or a lifetime.
Bishop had his move, had figured on a way out.
The datadump would kill him, kill his whole family, if it happened. The data dump
that would happen if either of them survived, if either of them went through
standard special ops debriefing, if Knight or Bishop made it out of the night alive.
But only if they were in one piece. If they were rebooted, the emergency upload
wouldnt do the same job; signal partially blocked by smoke, processing retarded
by damage to the labs, data drives overflowing because there was only so often
you could save a human mind; dead, theyd revert to an earlier version, a save
file created during their last datadump. The nights happenings would be lost, the
new data would be gone forever.
He could save her save Pamela, and Kaitlyn, and little Elizabeth if hed just die.
No; he had to die and kill Knight.

Knight saw it, maybe about the same time Bishop figured it out. The killer didnt
know much, but he knew fighting. He saw the shift in Bishops stance, saw the
hint of a smile, saw the way his weight changed. Knight stabbed, but it was too
late to stop the strike. Bishop stepped into it, leaned into it, welcomed it. The
knife slid in Bishop didnt feel a thing as his lung was sliced through, never mind
the bones that shouldve protected it but Bishop trapped the hilt against his
chest, reached up with his free hand to hold tight to the strong silk tie.
Then he threw himself backwards. Knight held tight, tie held tight, umbilical cord
tangling them together in yet another birth-death.
They fell.
Bishop didnt know if she made it away. He didnt know if shed stopped for her
partner being a better partner than her dad was or if shed just run. He didnt
know if a dog-brained drone shot her down, or if a lucky security guard stumbled
across her route, or if she just tripped and fell and split her head open. He didnt
know if she was okay, or if she was dead, if her partner was dead, if everything
fell apart after all. He didnt know what happened to the drive, and to the restech files.
He never would. He would stop existing when he hit, when he died. He would
never know who had been behind the theft, he would die with that secret dying
with him, he would never even remember seeing her or caring or almost
shooting her.
As he fell, though, towards the fire and the uncaring, unforgiving, ground, he
knew that he hadnt killed her.
And that was enough.
Reboot.