<b>Roo'd</b>

# Roo'd

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# Chapter #54

In the end they’d slept on it. The next morning they gathered together in the upstairs room of Otaku, Xing and his fellows still asleep in their warrens throughout the city. They sipped green tea and salty soup and rubbed the dark rings around their eyes. The room was still, rain streaking the windows, a dim gray light creeping slowly over them.

Eventually Cessus broke the silence. “I’m going to comm Marcus” he said. Cables came together and the projector flickered to life. Marcus’s dark face filled the far wall, bruised features resting peacefully against smooth white pillows.

“I’b here” he rumbled quietly, his deep voice rolling out of the speakers, filling the room.

Tonx coughed, examining his fingers as he laid them flat against the table. Everyone watched, waiting.

“We’re leaving” he said.

“What?” asked Cass.

“We’re going home” said Tonx. “It’s time to call this thing off.”

He looked around at them. “Sometimes you have to know when to give it up. All we’ve got is a drive with who-knows what on it and half our data. Chow holds all the cards, Marcus is in the hospital, and we’re out of options. It’s gotten too dangerous. We’re going home.”

“We could bluff them” said Fede “tell them we’ve broken the encryption.”

“And then what?” asked Tonx. “Go in with guns blazing? At some point we have to hand over the drive, and when we do we’re out of leverage.”

He shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. I’m not risking your lives an further for my half-baked idea.”

Tonx stood up and turned away, towards the stairs. “Pack it up. I’m going to order tickets. Marcus, I’ll arrange for the proper documentation so you can get a hospital ride as soon as you’re well enough. We’re all under contract and I’ll pay off expenses as I’m able.”

Tonx took a step away from them, the boards creaking under his weight.

“Bullshit” said Fede. Everyone turned. Fede’s lips were curled back, his eyes cast in shadow. “It’s too late for that, Tonx. We’ve already risked our lives. We’ve already given up everything for ‘your idea.’”

He stood up, the chair skittering backwards across the floor. His eyes shone as he stared across the long table. “I gave up a steady ride through school straight into a cubical for this, and I wouldn’t trade anything for that. I’m here because I believe in this, I believe in us. I’m going to make it happen. If you want to go home, then go. But I’m staying here and finishing this.”

Nobody spoke. The rain spit against the windowpane, a quiet, angry rattle.

“Cub geb mig” came Marcus’s voice. Everyone turned towards the screen. Marcus’s eyes were swollen almost shut, deep black lines tracing the metal plates in his skull where the excess voltage had burned the skin.

“Cub geb mig oudda here” he said again. “I’b wid Febe.”

“Me too” echoed Cessus. “I’m with him.”

“We all are” said Cass. “We all are.”

“It’s too dangerous” protested Tonx. “There’s no way to do this without putting ourselves under serious threat. We’re underpowered here, people, and if we keep pushing somebody’s going to get killed.”

“We know the risks” said Fede. He folded his arms. “But it’s not your choice anymore, Tonx. You may have pulled this thing together, but we’re all in it now.”

Tonx stood at the head of the stairs and looked at his friends.

“It’s okay, Tonx” said Cass. She pushed his chair back from the table with one long leg, pointed at it.

“Now sit down and start thinking of a way to get our data back.”

In the end they’d confided in Xing. The professed Confucian hacker had listened carefully to everything they’d said and slowly steepled his fingers.

“Confucius was known for preaching right action and respecting authority. He did not say much about rebellion” he said.

“Sorry to make it hard on you” said Tonx.

“No, no” said Xing, a shy smile crossing his face. “There is a saying; ’The roots of education are bitter, but the flower is sweet.’ It is good challenge. Besides”

His eyes closed and he smiled benevolently. “It will good to assrape Harry Chow.”

Cass let out a burst of disbelieving laughter before she could stifle herself.

“Right” said Cessus, getting back to the subject. “So how do we deal with this? He’s got the data and, we can assume, Poulpe. The half of the drive that’s encrypted is still completely unknown to us — it may be trash for all we know. Although it’s our guess that he’s going against the wishes of his superiors we’ve got to assume he’s still got government firepower available.”

“A Chinese saying is, ’If the father is a rat, the son will only know how to dig holes’” said Xing. “Let us give Chow a hole, and let him dig.”

“What do you mean?” asked Cessus.

“Chow expects treachery and lies. So, we should give him treachery. Otaku have been problem for Harry Chow for a long time now; he knows of us. He will not be surprised if I call him and offer to betray you.”

Fede started in his seat. “What?” he said.

“He’s talking about a feint” said Tonx. “We’ll call Chow and tell him we’ve cracked the data on the drive and want to swap it for Poulpe and the recombinant. Once we’re done negotiating Xing will call and suggest that the Otaku have been working with us and want to sell us out in exchange for privileges, like guaranteed government data lines. Am I right, Xing?”

“Yes yes” said Xing. “Exactly. Chow makes deals for favors all the time. He will not be surprised for us to sell you out.”

“But how does that help us?” asked Fede. “We’ve still got to meet him and exchange the data.”

“There’s no way we can count on him actually bringing the data with him” said Tonx. “We’ve got to meet him and get some kind of lasting leverage. Otherwise he’ll screw us and keep the data until he can figure out what it’s for. He has no reason not to.”

“Good point” said Xing. He sighed lightly and flexed his fingers against each other. “But Otaku are not fighters. We cannot compete for firepower with Chow.”

He sighed again, staring intently at the blank tabletop before him. He looked up; “Mencius said, ’The benevolent has no enemy.’ It is perhaps better to make this an opportunity for others.”

“You lost me” said Tonx. “Who do you mean?”

Xing smiled shyly. “You are familiar with Triads?” he asked.

“They’re the mafia in China, right?” said Tonx. He wasn’t smiling.

“That is good explanation, although they are many centuries older than mafia” said Xing. “Otaku has a... relationship with the Triads. They are very interest in Harry Chow. Maybe they will help.”

Cessus and Tonx shared a glance Fede didn’t know how to interpret.

“What kind of relationship?” Tonx asked.

Xing smiled.

Fede didn’t know what the hell was going on. A full day after their meeting with Xing the whole Otaku tribe was swarming like bees. The room downstairs resembled a spinning class, sweating Chinese boys pulling on masks and taking their turns on an extra bank of bikes, generating power from thin pale muscles. A near-constant stream of them flowed in and out of the back doors and hallways, the alley door occasionally sliding open to admit a new cadre. Nobody made eye contact and all the boys spoke in stuttering hushed tones. The whir of the bikes and the click of chords was pervasive, an orchestra of plastic crickets. They’d given Fede a mask to use so he could plug in, but he didn’t like not being able to see what was going on around him. He preferred his goggles anyway.

So he sat in one row of seats, his cable trailing upwards and away, surrounded by the stink of soy sauce and sweat and teenage testosterone, inundated by the sound of hacks being made.

The rest of the conversation with Xing had gone suddenly and steeply over his head. Tonx and Cessus and Xing had had a long talk about “relationships” and “assistance” and “interests,” all of which seemed to Fede to mean that some people owed other people favors. But none of it was very clear. All he’d gotten out of it was that Otaku occasionally wrote code and ran data for a triad called Fuk Ching, and that Fuk Ching and a bunch of the other triads all reported to a sort of uber-triad called Big Circle.

Tonx had tried to explain it to him later, after Xing had gone off to contact whoever it was he was going to contact.

“Think of Big Circle as angel investors” he’d said. “They act as arbitrators, right, because they’ve got their money in all the triads. It’s in their interest to keep everyone from killing each other. The triads all benefit from Big Circle’s money and influence, so they all keep members of Big Circle ‘on staff.’ They’re kind of like members of a huge board of directors, except it’s a crime syndicate.”

“But what do they want with us?” asked Fede.

Tonx rubbed his eyes. “That’s the hard part.” he said.

“Fuk Ching, the triad Otaku does work for, has a big presence in New York. As a result of the business laws in the US a lot of the other triads use them for money laundering, fronts, and related business shit. So Fuk Ching has its fingers in a lot of pies.”

“But what’s that have to do with us?” said Fede.

“We fucked everything up” said Tonx. “They had this nice balance going, where all the triads had minimal data lines out of the country due to governmental controls. Otaku specialized in ways to get around those restrictions, with limited success, and Fuk Ching shopped them around.”

“So?” asked Fede.

“So we launched your app and proved that the governmental controls could be circumvented. Worse, Chow picked up the app and used it for who knows what. If word gets out to the triads about this seriously bad shit will start to happen.”

Fede scratched his head. “Like what?” he said. “Who cares if the triads find out? They can write their own damn software.”

“Exactly” said Tonx. “Think, Feed. If the triads realize they can exploit the country’s network to their own ends they suddenly have a way to create an enormous advantage over the other triads. The Chinese network will be overloaded with viruses. There would be a major power struggle based on accessibility and network share dominance.”

“And the average Chinese guy wouldn’t be able to do shit” said Fede, realization slowly dawning.

“He’d be lucky if he could get his email” said Tonx. “Xing wants to empower the average Joe here. He wants to blow the lid off the network restrictions to implement free market capitalism under imperialistic socialism. But he knows they can’t do that by simply toppling the existing regime.”

“So instead he wants to get Big Circle to do it?” asked Fede.

“No, instead he wants Big Circle to negotiate with Chow on Fuk Ching’s, and subsequently Otaku’s, behalf. Chow’s gone out on a limb to try and do something with our code — we don’t know what. Xing is betting that Big Circle can threaten him into turning over our results and maybe make some slow, long-term changes towards opening up the networks a little.”

“They want to make a controlled shift” said Fede.

“Right” said Tonx. “It’s a political play, but if it works we get our data and get sent back to the U.S., and the triads get a little more in bed with the government, and the Chinese networks slowly loosen up a little.”

“And nobody knows how we did what we did” said Fede.

“Not necessarily” said Tonx. “Depending on how things play out with Chow we may want to spin it as a successful attack he countered. Who knows. Right now that’s pretty much the least of our worries.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we’re way the fuck in over our heads, Feed. The triads aren’t small players. They own most of Asia, and they’re run by Big Circle. The only reason I can see for them not just shooting us and dumping us in the river is that Otaku’s completely fucking in love with Cessus.”

“They’re what?” asked Fede.

“He showed them some sort of weird biofeedback programming training app and now they think he’s the next Bodhisattva or something. They’re all hyped on training under him.” Tonx paused, narrowing his eyes as he peered at Fede. “And they think you’re a prime example of this shit because you wrote the virus.”

“It’s good code” shrugged Fede, his eyes flickering down to the chord in his hand. “So does that mean they’ll protect us?”

“It means we have a better chance of not ending up dead. But not a great one. We’re going to have to act as the bait to get Chow to come out. Big Circle’s not willing to risk a direct confrontation, so it’s up to us and Fuk Ching to get a hold of him and arrange an ‘incidental meeting.’ Fuk Ching’s not exactly delighted to have some outsiders forcing their hand, either. So it’s not a stellar situation, no.”

“Wait a minute” said Fede. “Xing knew about the virus from when Cessus and I first got here. Why didn’t he contact Big Circle earlier?”

“He did” said Tonx. “They were just waiting to see if our app really worked. Instead we proved that Chow was abusing the Chinese network with it and that he probably has our data somewhere.”

“Xing what?”

“Xing’s been in touch with Big Circle the whole time. They’ve just been waiting and watching. I told you Feed, we’re in way over our heads. Now come on, Cessus wants to show off his prime student. And you’d better make it impressive.”

#60

Fede had done a little show, watching the data flows and even doing a little preliminary programming, sketching out the shape of a program he’d been thinking about since they got to China, then darting in here and then to start filling it in. The Otaku that were free to watch seemed impressed, but he wasn’t sure how to read them — the constant nodding and muttering was unnerving. A bunch of biofeedback equipment had been hastily assembled in the upstairs room and Cessus was busily putting people through their paces. Fede was shocked at how badly the Otaku programmers did — they couldn’t keep calm minds to save their lives. It was like they were blind people, casting their arms around wildly as they tried to code, or crawling step-by-step with no leaps at all. It reminded him of when he’d first gotten prosthetic legs, way back as a kid, and how badly he’d walked. He couldn’t keep his balance, then. He hadn’t known how.

“What’s wrong with them?” he’d asked Cessus during a quiet moment as the older hacker leaned back against a desk, watching his new students go through the games.

“Shut up, you arrogant little prick” Cessus said agreeably. “I told you you were good. Now get out of my hair. I’ve got another hour of this and then I need to learn the entire Beijing traffic system.”

Fede left. The truth was there was nothing for him to do. The Otaku were in charge of some series of hacks and political maneuvers Tonx and Xing were orchestrating, and Marcus and Cass were charged with setting up the meeting point. Cessus was helping the Otaku and running cracks against the Chinese systems, and Fede just couldn’t follow it. He was a coder, not a networks guy, and although he knew viruses he knew next to nothing about direct system break-ins. So he’d peddled on the bikes for a while, getting used to his legs, building up muscles long unused. He reviewed his code. He listened in on conversations between Tonx and Xing and Cessus, and understood none of it. It was made clear that his job would be answering any questions Chow or the Big Circle representatives had about his code and that the less he knew about the rest of it the better. So he tried to work on his pet program, and found that’d he’d improved. His code was tighter, more efficient. He was better than before, and it felt good. He slept well the second night after the decision, against all odds, his thighs burning, lines of code bright against the giant empty space inside his skull.

“Feed, wake up.” It was Cass’s voice. “Wake up, we’re starting.”

Fede fumbled out of sleep, the tiny cave under the desk he’d staked out as his own suddenly claustrophobic. Dim lights illuminated the empty room beyond, one of the multitudes of cubical-warrens the extra Otaku space was riddled with. His own cube, Fede realized, his eyes adjusting to the light. Cass had a tiny headlamp pulled up against her forehead, her eyes red-lined with exhaustion and nerves.

“It’s time?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’s time” she said. “Come on. You need some food in you before we head out.”

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“The warehouse. We already went over this” she said.

Fede’s brain slowly reeled in the memories. They were going to send in substitutes to fake out Chow and then redirect them to a new location for the actual meeting. They’d come to the warehouse where Fede and Tonx and the others were, hopefully unprepared. Tonx had made plan B’s, but Fede didn’t know what they were, shouldn’t know. He’d asked Tonx about it the night before, late, before he’d crawled under the desk in the cubical.

“The less you can give away, the better” Tonx had told him. “You’re our bluff card, Feed. You’ve got to convince Chow he won’t be able to replicate your code. Not easily, anyway.”

“But anybody could do it” Fede had said.

“No” said Tonx. “Not everybody could. You’ve got to believe that. Trust me. Chow will know, he’ll know when he talks to you, he’ll know what it would take and how hard it would be.”

“Why won’t you tell me what’s going to happen? What about our auxiliary plans?” Fede pleaded.

“Onions” said Tonx, his face in his hands. He reeked of stale sweat and green tea, fatigue pouring off him in an invisible cloud.

“Layers within layers” he muttered.

“What?”

“You plan and plan, Fede, and eventually you just have to go with it. I’ve tried to anticipate everything, but I’m... It doesn’t matter. You need to stay safe. If the unexpected happens we just have to hope things work out. Knowing about everything else won’t help you. You have to trust me.”

Fede hadn’t said anything.

“Feed?” Cass asked.

He was staring at his hands, his fingertips resting lightly on the polished metal rims of his legs, the smooth puckered line where the plastic and rubber socketing pressed against his skin.

“Yeah” he said. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

They’d eaten some kind of tofu rolls, Otaku members coming in and out, in and out as they sat. Cessus joined them, a long thin spliff resting casually between two trembling fingers. Marcus was in a makeshift bed, some sort of huge lazy-boy / smart chair hybrid with oversized metal flanges supporting his legs and arms on white temperfoam slabs. His gray skin looked pale in the dim LED light, but he smiled when he saw Fede. They’d hardly spoken since he’d gotten out of the hospital.

“Goob to ’ee you” he said, his deep voice fainter than Fede remembered.

“‘Goob to ee you,’ too” Fede joked.

Xing appeared then, surrounded by a phalanx of Otaku wearing headsets and wielding display tablets. He was an unperturbed as ever, glancing at data thrust at him from all angles, nodding slightly at this suggestion or turning his head at that idea. He reminded Fede of the proverbial eye of the storm, the calm space around which cyclones spun.

Then Tonx came into the room. He had his hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and was wearing a heavily detailed motorcycle jacket, thick layers of armor aggregating around his joints, tiny scales of carefully stitched leather over padded plastic. The thick ridges over his spine cascaded down like a tail, covering the back of his pinstripe wool suit pants like an alien tuxedo coat.

“We’re ready” he said as he slumped down across from them. “I’ve spoken with Chow and we’re on. He should be at the dummy site in half an hour. That gives us a little over forty minutes to get into position. You all know what you’re supposed to do. We’ve prepared all we can- now it’s just a matter of hoping.”

“It’ll work out” said Cessus, a thick cloud escaping his lips and obscuring his eyes as he spoke. “We’re the good guys, remember?”

“Right” said Tonx, a rare smile drifting across his lips.

“Listen” he said. “Listen, whatever happens, I just...”

Marcus’s huge hand gently crushed the can of Pokari Sweat he’d been drinking and let it fall, tinkling, to the table.

“We know” the big man said. “We know. It’s going to work out fine. We’ve done our homework. We’ve planned. We’re prepared. Now’s the time to think of success, Tonx.”

“’The time to worry about failure is after you’ve failed’” said Cass. “You taught me that, Tonx.”

Tonx smiled again, fully this time. “You’re right” he said. He rooted through the pile of take-out and wires before him and fished out an unopened tube of green tea. He popped the lid with his thumb and held it aloft.

“To our success” he said, his smile wide, full of confidence. The Tonx they knew.

“To success” they echoed.

They were in a tiny car, an ancient metal-framed electrical affair, humming across the tarmac between giant dark buildings. They’d gone by subway and then bus, separating and rejoining, pretending not to know each other. The rain had kicked up again as Fede had gotten out of the last bus, waiting at the nearly empty stop for the car. Cass had gotten out of a taxi a block down and walked up to join him once it had left, her eyes deeply roughed in black circles, her hair a cascade of loose dirty spikes.

She pulled out a packet of cigarettes as she stopped next to him under the shelter.

“Smoke?” she asked him, the pack sprouting a single cigarette as she did something sudden with her fingers.

“You don’t seem like the type” he said, shaking his head. It disappeared into her oversized woolen overcoat, the tips of her military boots peeking out dimly from the hem. She produced a cheap blue plastic bic. They waited.

Eventually the car had glided slowly out of the gloom and the door kicked open. A plume of smoke came from inside and they smelled weed. Fede smiled despite himself as it was followed with Cessus’ beaming face.

“Come on, we got to hurry” he said. “Your friend here drives like a granny.”

Tonx drove. Everyone had goggles on, and every few minutes Cessus would drum his fingers against the cheap plastic paneling on the inside of the car and they’d see a skip in their data as he switched secure channels. The wind gusted and the car rocked, and Tonx suddenly turned them down a loading ramp into a basement. They got out into the dark.

Fede had borrowed some canvas shorts from Xing and tied them off just over his stumps. He was glad he had; he could feel the chill in the metal of his legs, an invisible draft leaking up into his kneecaps. The leather jacket he’d bought had busted its zipper while he was on the bus, and the yuppie vest they’d gotten at the airport underneath did nothing to keep him warm.

“Anybody have a hat?” he asked.

“Shhh” hissed Tonx. Fluorescent lights flickered on in a low ceiling overhead, revealing a wide empty room. A hallway led off to the left, and stairs led up ahead. He waved them forward.

As they came up the steps a dim red light came on high above them, tiny LEDs lining the support struts in the warehouse ceiling. It filtered down in a kind of bloody twilight, revealing a few hazy shadows dancing around the perimeter, tiny manlike figures shadowboxing with themselves. In the middle of the room a table sat on a stage with two chairs. In the distance Fede could see a giant door in the wall opposite them, sensor arrays blinking yellow lights around its edge.

“Who are they?” Fede whispered.

“Fuk Ching” said Xing from behind them.

Tonx had gun out and lined up at Xing’s forehead before Fede had even turned around. He wondered, over the rapid thump of his heart, how long Tonx had had it.

“Don’t fucking do that, Xing” Tonx said. Xing smiled.

“My sorry. It’s an habit” Xing said. “To answer Feed’s question those men are Fuk Ching combat specialists. You would like to meet them?”

“Sure” said Cessus. His lenses were out and tiny bits of light danced across his eyebrows and over the bridge of his nose, an avalanche of data.

Xing turned to the dark corner of the building to their right and raised a hand. A figure separated from the shadows there and sped toward them at a dead sprint, hands smoothly pumping up and down, legs raised. Suddenly the man was in front of them, standing quietly two paces from Xing.

In school Fede had had to study physiology as an alternative to taking classes in floor hokey or gymnastics. He’d been fascinated at the way the muscles connected over the structure of the skeleton, the way the model of the human musculature was so efficient. This man looked like that model had, his jawbones razor sharp and his muscles etched so tight it seemed as though there were cracks in his skin where they met. His eyes were set deep in his skull, his pale yellowed skin thin and papery-looking. As he stood there Fede could see that he was breathing fast, the rims of his nostrils flaring slightly in and out, in and out. But otherwise he stood stock-still. He seemed, somehow, like he was listening for something they couldn’t hear.

Xing said something in Chinese that Fede couldn’t follow and gestured at Cass. She’s bowed deeply at him, avoiding his eyes, and the man nodded back. He wore loose black cotton cargo pants and thick black rubber boots, and had a dirty gray muscle tee. A wife-beater, they used to call them, sleeveless deep-necked undershirts. That was it.

The man turned and nodded at all of them in turn, his thin lips held tightly together, and then turned quickly and darted away.

“What kind of mods?” asked Cessus, his eyes far away, looking at data.

“You could guess” said Xing, glancing at Tonx.

“Dangerous work” Tonx said. “Full body muscle blending? Fast twitch weave, enhanced metabolism? Drug implants and oversized heart?”

Xing shrugged. “I don’t honestly know. But I assume you’re right on at least some of it. I do know they eat sticks of butter mixed with nutrient supplements every half hour or so, and have had a lot of meditation training in order to obtain enough REM sleep. From what I’ve seen they sit very still for one half hour out of every four, but I don’t think they have to. I think it’s part of the program.”

“It doesn’t look comfortable” said Tonx, staring after the deep shadow of the corner the man had disappeared back in to.

“I don’t think that is a concern” said Xing. He gestured at the small stage with the table in the middle of the room. “Would you sit? They should be here soon, and the rest of us should be away by then.”

Tonx nodded and started forward. Fede moved to follow.

“Go with Cass, Feed” said Cessus.

“What?” asked Fede, bewildered.

“You’re too valuable” said Tonx without turning around. Xing continued walking ahead of them, away toward the stage. “We need you safe.”

“But I’m supposed to talk to Chow” said Fede.

“You will. Through me. We have an infrared connection they shouldn’t be able to trace, and you can feed me answers as he asks them. We’ll all be tied in” said Cessus. “Chow demanded that the virus author be at the meeting. I’m your stand-in.”

“Fuck that” Fede spat. “You can’t force me out like this!”

“What’s Chow doing with your program?” asked Cass from next to him. She’d pulled out another cigarette and was slowly tapping the filter end against her lip.

“What’s that got to do with it?” asked Fede.

“We don’t know what he’s doing with it” answered Tonx, finally turning around. “But it could be anything. He could be devising an incurable disease that only works on his enemies — it’s not unrealistic. He could be making a new AIDS.”

Cessus nodded, his dreads bouncing jauntily in the red light.

“If we don’t make it out of here, Feed, we need you to figure out a way to stop him.”

Feed blinked, felt himself stranded, captured in the cold logic.

“You wrote it, little man” said Cessus, his eyes focused on his, through the data. “You wrote it. It’s your responsibility.”

Then they were gone, walking away towards the table.

“Come on, Feed” said Cass, lighting her cigarette with a flick of her bic. “There isn’t much time.”

#61

Fede had allowed himself to be led away, back past the stairs and down the long hallway. Their car was gone when they went through the big underground room. Several of the Fuk Ching darted around, quick hands setting what looked like clay bricks around the entrance door. One of them glanced up at Fede as they passed through and their eyes met. Fede didn’t recognize the look he saw there, shiny eyes like black marbles.

“You planned this” said Fede.

“No shit” said Cass. “Do you disagree? You’re the only one who”

“I know” interrupted Fede. The smooth lift of his legs made him bounce lightly as he followed her, afloat. “I know.”

They came to another staircase, a short one, metal plates welded into place over their exit. Next to the stairs the concrete pooled in a stone imitation of melted butter across the floor, revealing a crack leading to a small hollow space beyond.

“We put in a fake wall across the back of the warehouse overhead. It’s metal, so it should resist their scans” said Cass. She slid sideways through the gap in the wall and he heard the rattle of aluminum beyond.

“We welded a ladder in here. A few of them.” Her voice grew faint. “They should hold, though.”

He slid inside the gap, his goggles amplifying the dim light within. Someone had put strips of glow tape across every third rung of the cheap aluminum ladders that stretched upwards and out of sight in the thin high passageway.

“Why this?” asked Fede.

“We have to communicate with Cessus through IR. They’ll trace anything else” she said from above him.

“So we have to be line of sight” he muttered.

“So we have to be line of sight” her voice echoed. “Hurry up.”

It was slow going, and Fede was seized with panic every few steps as his new feet rocketed him forward, or slipped as the traction pads found new purchase. The passageway was only about as deep as he could reach, and he kept scraping the small of his back as he bounced upwards. After what seemed like an eternity Cessus’ voice crackled into his ear;

“Five minutes and counting” he said. “They’ve taken the bait and are on their way in. T-bird and Funky Daddy in position. Big Mac in position. Slim kitty, you in position?”

“In position” said Cass, her voice a faint echo. “But Smart Boy isn’t here yet.”

“Feed, get your ass up there” Cessus’s voice said.

“Cut the code name bullshit” Tonx said across the comm. “If they can decrypt our channels they’ll be able to triangulate anyway. Switch to true private. See you on the other side, people.”

The sounds in his ear went dark; no data at all. Fede’s goggles showed his feeds trailing off and shrinking to single points, tiny blinking cursers an array around the edges of his vision. Cessus had cut them off.

He scrambled up and felt a hand reach out of the dark to grab his shoulder.

“Come here” Cass’s voice whispered, pulling him away from the ladder. His stomach fell as he groped his way towards her, out onto a foot-wide platform jutting towards the ladder. His foot slipped from it as he went and he almost fell, his hand banging against the wall behind him as he steadied himself.

“Quiet” hissed Cass’s voice in his ear. She moved sideways and pulled him farther from the ladder, and suddenly Fede was looking out a ping-pong ball-sized hole out at the warehouse below.

“Fiber-optic cable” Cass said. “Gives us a view out. Here. Plug in.” She handed him a data cable and he fumbled it into his headset.

“..is what Xing said” said Cessus. “Okay, hold tight folks, here we go.”

Through the tiny portal in front of him Fede could see the stage far below, Tonx sitting on the chair, the metal drive on the table in front of him. Cessus stood to his left, his hands folded behind him. Even from here Fede could see his head bobbing slightly in tune to some unheard music.

The giant door ahead of them slowly began to lift, and Fede realized his view was image-enhanced for light. The edges of his view curdled as headlights poured halogen brilliance through the widening crack. The Fuk Ching were nowhere to be seen. Slowly the door lifted to about waist-height, and stopped.

A huge figure crouched to fill the space beneath the gap, then stood up inside. Another figure appeared and slipped in, and another. Nearly a dozen of them filed in, and then a small one, a tiny man in a suit, his movements awkward as he shuffle-stepped under the door. The large figures surrounded him and they moved forward in a tight phalanx.

As they approached the table the large figures resolved into men in full-combat gear, semiautomatics on hydraulic struts mounted to mottled green exoskeletons, pistons whirring behind their ankles with each step. Giant backpacks full of ammo and fuel and intelligence gear straddled their backs, long broad featherlike antenna waving gently from behind where their ears would be, if they had ears under their full-face helmets.

“It was rude of you to not show up at the appointed place” said Chow as he stood in front of the table, his hands tucked carefully in his beige suit coat’s pockets. He hadn’t stepped onto the stage yet.

“We do what we can” said Tonx. Their voices sounded dull over the IR connection. “You seem to have adapted.”

Chow nodded. “You have brought the drive?” he asked.

“Yes” said Tonx. He gestured at the seat across the table from him. “Feel free to inspect it. You had some very interesting encryption there.”

Chow grinned. He glanced at one of the armored soldiers next to him.

“Yes, thank you” he said. “You enjoyed the contents?”

Tonx shrugged. “Did you bring our data?”

“That is an interesting thing” said Chow. His suit wrinkled tightly around his belly as he moved.

“You know I have been using your program” he said. He watched Tonx out of one eye as he said it, his round head cocked to one side. Tonx said nothing.

“I know you know this. I have made arrangements with your friends, the Otaku. They have told me about your exit strategy, about the cars hidden in the back of the building.”

Chow began to slowly pace to one side. “Furthermore, I know you have not cracked that drive. There is nothing to crack. I filled it with garbage and encrypted it using three different systems to give an impression of regularity. You have been wasting time.”

Fede could hear Cessus’ breathing through the data line, a thin rasping in and out.

“Finally” Chow said, “I told you to bring the programmer. He has done some brilliant work and” Chow waved his hands in a flourish, “I was excited to meet him.” He pointed at Cessus. “This is not the author of the virus.”

“How do you know that?” said Tonx. “Otaku don’t know that.”

Chow positively beamed. “I know.”

“How?” demanded Tonx. Fede could hear Cessus’s breath quicken.

The soldier to Chow’s right slowly let his arms drop from the tight ready position he had held, his legs slowly easing upwards and into an easy slouch. The long barrel of the automatic flipped upwards as he fumbled at the helmet, slowly pulling it away to reveal Poulpe’s head ensconced in taped-on sensors and carefully placed pieces of rubber padding. Thickly gloved fingers clumsily peeled away the tape and pulled back his hair.

“Surprise, Tonx” he said. “It is so very good to see you again.”

“Poulpe” said Tonx, his voice flat. “You betrayed us.”

“‘This is just business’” mocked Poulpe. “Isn’t that right? We may say that I found a better partner. Mr. Chow has made a very generous offer in exchange for my help with your brother’s software. We stand to make substantial profit.”

“Doing what?” asked Tonx.

Poulpe grinned and pushed the tip of his tongue against his lower lip as he glanced at Chow. “That doesn’t matter, does it Tonx?”

“Where is Feed?” asked Chow, all traces of courtesy suddenly gone.

“Plan B” said Cessus urgently over the comm. “Plan B Goddammnit Plan fucking B do it do it now.”

Cessus and Tonx suddenly disappeared through a gaping hole in the platform beneath them, the entire stage collapsing upon itself and over them like an obscene plywood origami. Something heavy shook the wall in front of Fede and one of the soldiers flew backwards to skid across the floor. The others began to the fire, gouts of yellowed light flinging thousands of tiny bullets around the perimeter of the room. Garbage-can sized cylinders rolled under the edge of the giant door and sprang into two wheeled halves, their middle a solid armored block, gridded baskets on their tops casting green laser light in scanning patterns across the room.

“Plan B!” screamed Cessus across the line. He was panting now, running somewhere. “Get out of here!”

He was interrupted by a roaring scream as the cylinders began to fire as they fanned out from underneath the door, bright white tracer rounds flying away from them like stars from gyroscopically spinning turrets in their tops. The soldiers followed the brightest clusters, charging ahead through the bullets.

There was a burst of flame as one of the robots exploded and Fede saw a Fuk Ching out on the floor for the first time. He was flying upwards and outwards like superman, driven through the air by the explosion, the metal plating of a robot’s underbelly slowly falling away from his feet. He spread his arms as he rose, his legs slowly unfolding from the compressive shock, tiny globular pistols spitting dark clouds of some sort of grit towards the solider underneath him. The arc of his flight peaked and he fell, gently tucking his feet back beneath him and collapsing into a roll that threw him past Fede’s line of view. He saw another of them, a giant soldier spinning nimbly on his hydraulic exoskeleton to avoid the thick black gloves the Fuk Ching wore on his hands. They danced, the soldier sewing strips of lead across the floor and through the air, tracking the Fuk Ching as he leapt and spun around him. He didn’t seem to be trying to hit the big soldier, didn’t have a gun or a knife or anything. He just leaned in past the bend of the soldier’s arm and put his hand against the joint — there, then flung himself back and under the line of fire before kicking himself forward and slapping his hand against the joint of the soldier’s knee.

“Feed!” shouted Cass from below him. “Feed!”

Fede saw the solider suddenly stumble and fall, his weapon sputtering inexplicably out. His arm flew out and Fede saw the man inside bend backward as he struggled to undo the armor. He was screaming. The Fuk Ching leapt forward towards him and as he did so a tracer round buried itself into the base of his skull, the force of the shot turning his leap into a dive, the burning metal shot expulsing his brains as steam behind him as he flew.

“Feed!” yelled Cass again. “Come on!”

Just below him on the warehouse floor by where the table had stood Fede saw Poulpe. The Frenchman was bent over and waving his hands over his head in a bizarre bid for protection from the bullets filing the air around him. Another boom shook the room and the rifle attached to his arm shattered, tiny bits of shrapnel tearing the air over Poulpe’s head. He looked at his arm for a moment, bewildered, before Chow appeared at his feet, clambering up out of the hole.

Cass was next to him then, on the platform.

“Feed, we need to go now. Pull it together. Come on.”

Her voice was steady and solid, a real thing. Fede reached out and felt her strong hands grip his. She pulled him over to the ladder and got him heading down besides her. His goggles adjusted and he saw she was holding herself in place with her arms and legs propped out against each wall, her feet spread wide beneath the overcoat.

“Go” she said “Go and don’t stop. I’ll meet you at the bottom.”

She disappeared, falling. Fede started to descend as fast as he could, a series of explosions rocking the wall the ladder was wielded to.

His comm crackled to life, his vision suddenly blooming as his data feeds reconnected.

“...fucked” came Cessus’s voice. “The passage collapsed, probably explosives. We can’t get out. Xing! Xing!”

There was a suddenly hiss and a distant rattle from the comm line as Fede continued to descend.

“..dammit oh god” came Tonx’s voice.

“What’s going on?” asked Fede. Nothing. Fede repeated the question, panic biting into him, his hands slippery on the ladder as he tried to descend.

“Feed? You okay?” Tonx asked. He sounded strange, almost drunk.

“Yeah, I’m”

“This is going to hurt a little” interrupted Cessus’s voice. Tonx screamed

“Where’s Cass?” Cessus asked, then, “stop moving, I can’t tie this thing off.”

“She went down before me” said Fede. “What happened to Tonx?”

“Nothing” said Tonx, his voice suddenly firm. “Fede, listen. Xing’s line was traced. He’s cut off from communicating directly. We need to get Chow to the train. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, but”

“Just listen. Cessus is dumping the data to you now. You need to get Chow to follow you and then head out towards the northeast corner, the one the first Fuk Ching came from earlier, you remember? There’s a secret exit there. Get to it and you’ll find transport. Follow the map as fast as you can and get on that train!”

“How am I supposed to make Chow follow me?” asked Fede.

“You’re the one that he wants, Feed. He needs you to alter the program. Poulpe’s told him everything. It was a ruse. They only want you, Feed!”

“Stop moving!” said Cessus. “Tonx, this is a lot of blood, we need”

Their voices cut out. A tiny cursor in the corner of Fede’s vision showed a successful download. Data expanded, a three dimensional map of the building, a thin dotted line curving out from his current location, down the ladder and the hallway and up the stairs and towards the northeast corner. The image rotated, went 2D, the line repeating itself before turning to half opacity. Fede’s foot hit the ground, rocking him as his legs took up the shock.

#62

As he wriggled out of the hole and into the hallway leading out to the main underground room he saw Cass standing silent next to the edge of the wall, a pistol in each hand. As he approached she glanced over at him and waved him back. She followed, grabbing his head with one gloved hand and holding his ear close to her face.

“There’s two of them. They just finished off a set of Fuk Ching and are deciding what to do with them.”

“Tonx said I need to get Chow to follow me” said Fede.

“I heard” she whispered. “I’ll cover you.”

“How?” he asked.

“Trust me” she said, her lips brushing his ear. “I’m a professional. Now get ready to run.”

She stepped back towards the edge of the wall and bent down to something Fede couldn’t see. Then she stood and glanced at him over her shoulder. She winked, a wry smile on her lips, the spiked strands of her black hair only lightly covering her eyes.

Then she stepped out into the room, her hands throwing back the edges of her coat in a wide sweep. Even from where he was standing Fede could read the confidence in her stride, the cocky power, the absolute certainty as she raised her pistols level in front of her.

“Hey, boys” she said.

A crack like the sound of a gatling gun going off filled the room, bang after bang as colored smoke suddenly flew up from something on the floor beyond. Cass’s guns went off and she dived, out of Fede’s vision, into the room. He ran forward.

The edge of Cass’s coat flickered out of view and into a cloud of blue, sheets of smoke billowing up in green and red and yellow. The smoke glittered, metal powder flickering through it, jammer for the soldier’s sensors. He caught sight of one of the soldiers as he ran towards the stairs, saw the long rifle stop in its slide away from him, reverse its motion.

Then he was up, on the stairs, his heart in his throat. He flew, bounding up the steps two, then four, then six at a time, leaping up and out of the stairway and into the room beyond.

He landed on the warehouse floor and almost fell, stopping dead into a tight crouch. The floor before him was littered with bodies and smoldering chunks of metal, a thick acrid smoke hovering a few feet off the ground. A flash of light caught his eye and he dove, a set of tracer rounds streaking through the air where he had stood. He slid to a stop and looked up, saw Poulpe carrying Chow in his arms almost at the far door.

“Chow” Fede screamed, but it did no good. The robots were firing more intensely now, tracer round cover split between him and a couple other spots in the room. Fede saw two of the soldiers move from the far wall towards him.

He stood up and waved his arms in the air. “It’s me! I’m the programmer!” he yelled, running parallel to them towards Chow.

More tracer rounds filled the air and something cut into his arm, his leather coat suddenly smoking.

“It’s me” he screamed, running faster now. One of the Fuk Ching, a corpse on the floor, inexplicably leapt up before him and rolled towards the soldiers, one arm trailing twisted and bloody behind him. Fede heard gunfire, but kept loping forward, uncertain, his head low.

“Chow” he screamed again, this time looking up to see Poulpe turned, Chow in his arms like a child, arguing as they looked back towards him. Poulpe let Chow fall as he recognized Fede, bringing one arm up to aim at him before he realized his weapon was gone. Chow landed on his ass in a heap, howling, and Poulpe sprang towards him into a dead run, letting the machine wrapped around his body choose the most efficient motions as it hurled him through space at Fede.

Fede felt blind terror strangle him, saw the spittle curl out in thick drops from Poulpe’s wide sneer, felt time slow so there was nothing but the Frenchman’s face and his own painful death rising up at him. Then he was twisting, running, his back almost horizontal in a tight curve over his pumping thighs, the bend in his legs getting deeper and deeper, each step pushing him father and faster as the sensors in his legs adjusted their tension, their give, to meet his need. Fede ran, and the faster he ran the further he flew.

Something sparked on the floor in front of him and he leapt, his speed turning his jump into a sudden free fall, his body curving forward as his center of gravity revealed itself. His legs were almost weightless and his torso spun, his head heading towards the ground. Feed saw the floor rise up beneath him, the horizon to his rear lifting until he saw Poulpe, upside down, charging towards him. Then he landed, his shoulder taking the impact as he rolled across the floor in a clattering heap and was up again, his feet finding purchase on the bloodstained floor as he danced past one half of a Fuk Ching, over entrails spilled across the floor.

Fede didn’t have time to notice. He ran, his angle of approach changed now, ducking and weaving. Another set of tracer rounds flew past his legs. They were trying to cripple him; they weren’t shooting for his body, Fede thought.

As he got closer his goggles adjusted for the shadow, the tracer rounds blanking everything out in half-second flashes. There was nothing there. The two corrugated metal walls met over the solid cement floor, metal studs in a line six inches from their junction on both sides. Fede tried to stutter to a stop and failed, tipping over and rolling again, his head battering against the concrete before his feet fell into place in front of him just before the wall, leveraging him up and sideways. He saw Poulpe reaching for him as his head rose and twisted, the force of his motion pulling him standing and then over himself, backwards into the wall.

And through it. He felt the metal give way like sheets of plastic and he fell, a foot or more, onto his elbows on the tarmac in a dark place. His goggles cranked up the light enhancement as he scrambled to his feet, a sudden pounding as he heard Poulpe hit the wall in front of him. A tiny light on his leg blinked in time with a similar LED, lonely in the darkness on the corner of the wall. Some sort of ID recognition Cass must have installed. Fede hugged his knees for a moment, gasping desperately for breath, and then stood and turned.

In the dim monochrome of his goggles the motorcycle in front of him looked like some sort of animal, a sleek solid carbon-fiber monstrosity of overdeveloped torque-producing machinery. Most of the fairing had been removed except for a tiny wind guard, the shiny metal and black carbon-fiber pieces glimmering like scales in Fede’s vision. A helmet sat on the seat, a nearly vertical affair meant more for mounting than sitting on. The wall behind him clanged again, and several loud bangs were followed by giant dents appearing in its surface.

Fede reached for the helmet, pulling his goggles down around his neck and plunging himself into darkness as he did so.

#62

“Tonx?”

“Yeah, Cessus?”

“Why you smell so bad?”

“Shut up Cessus.”

It was quiet, a stillness broken only by Cessus shuffling around in their tiny space, struggling to get comfortable next to where Tonx lay in the darkness.

“It’s only your legs, Tonx.”

“I know. That’s why I need you to shut up.”

“They got surgeries for this, you know. I heard about these Icelanders, they done some crazy shit.”

“I know, Cessus. I know. That’s why I need you to shut up. I need to figure a way to get out of here.”

There was a long silence then, the only sound an occasional vibration as the soldiers above jogged nearby their location. What they were doing they couldn’t tell.

“Tonx?”

“Yeah, Cessus?”

“You mind if I smoke?”

Somewhere in Beijing a traffic controller, seated in front of thirty monitors flickering different views of each traffic intersection in the city, was in the process of losing his job. He was crouched over the control board, both hands tracing quick circles in the air, his mouth flapping wetly and silently. He had just called his boss and told him that the AI in control of the traffic system wasn’t responding anymore. His boss, who had been trying to enjoy a very expensive exotic massage with a disappointingly overweight Korean call girl, had run into his office and opened a terminal to discover that things were working fine. He even called his administrative assistant to verify against recent satellite imagery.

“There’s hardly any traffic at all, you idiot!” he said.

“I know sir! That’s the problem, sir!” said the traffic controller. “It’s early Saturday morning, sir! There should be a LOT of traffic!”

“You’re fired!” his boss said, terminating the connection.

It was a bad decision.

The Beijing West Railway Station was an enormous complex, thousands of trains running like clockwork. At one time it had been renowned for its efficiency and security, police saluting smartly in every hallway.

Not now. A man, large for China, wearing a pink shirt and baby-blue pants sporting cleverly interwoven Domino Pizza icons strode quickly toward track #12. The conductors’ lounge was near there and despite meager attendance on the long-range lines in recent years the maglev trains still ran regularly, even early in the morning. The man held a stack of six pizzas in one hand, his other hand lingering near his face, massaging the thick black moustache there.

He came to the conductor’s lounge door and knocked three times sharply, doing his best to straighten his back and remember his lines.

The door opened and Mr. Bei Ke opened the door.

The man recited eighteen words in Chinese as one long word, sung slightly out of tune and decidedly not the way any Chinese person would.

Mr. Bei Ke blinked. He had been a conductor for nearly two years now, mostly taking night shifts because he could get away with smoking in the cab of the train. He peered out at the strange foreigner holding the pizzas and didn’t like what he saw.

“Mei you” he said, pushing at the man’s arm. He pointed towards the center of the station, towards the administrative offices. The man’s arm didn’t move, and neither did the man.

“Uh, ah, um... it’s free!” said the man, breaking into a big smile. Mr. Bei Kei’s coworker, also named Bei Kei, got up from the lounge where they had been watching a cooking show and approached the door. Mr. Bei Kei 2 was much larger than Mr. Bei Kei 1, and fancied himself to be a bit of a roughabout. He puffed out his chest and stepped in-between the two.

“Mei you!” he said, authoritatively. As he did he noticed that the pizza boxes seemed to all be full, which was unusual. Normally when the bigwigs in the main offices ordered food they got drugs included, which made the pizza boxes sag.

“Hanyu zenme yang? How do you say?” said the man, pointing at the pizzas.

“Hanyu zenme yang” chuckled Mr. Bei Kei 2. He said something rude about foreigners, still eyeing the pizza. A moment of decision came and he leaned forward and snatched the pizza boxes. Mr. Bei Kei #1 immediately made a fuss, tossing his hands about and rushing to the doorway to peer out and down the hallway.

“Hanyu zenme yang?” the man said again. Mr. Bei Kei #1 turned towards him, now seriously wondering if foreigners all had mental deficiencies that made them deliver pizzas to the wrong address in the middle of the night while trying to improve their bad Chinese.

The man grabbed the back of Mr. Bei Kei’s head and shoved the muzzle of a gun so deep down his throat his Adam’s apple bulged like some sort of bizarre scrotum. Mr. Bei Kei 2 dropped the piece of pizza he had been hastily shoving down his own throat, his eyes beading in sudden tears.

“Hanyu zenme yang, motherfuckers” said the man.

#63

As soon as Fede had put on the helmet he discovered the same sort of map layout superimposed over his view as the one that Cessus had forwarded to his goggles. Stats on the bike ran along the left hand side of the helmet’s faceplate, the right hand side framed in one long thin pale column. He’d found thick motorcycle gloves inside the helmet, felt them auto adjust to a snug fit as soon as he pulled them on. As he crawled up onto the bike it started itself, a tiny red bar flaring to life along the column, darting upwards in time to the throaty growl. Feed found himself laying across the bike’s tank, and as he sat he felt the seat slowly reach up and wrap itself against his ass. He couldn’t touch the floor, and didn’t know how he was going to kick off the kickstand. Fede sat in the dark, the monster bike underneath him growling and shaking, unable to see or hear. He looked around, trying to make out the features of the room as he sat in the dark, trying to shuffle the bike forward or find some lever or switch that would release him.

Fede saw a tiny white countdown in the corner of his vision, noticed it as it went from 3 to 2. He scrabbled for the handlebars.

The doors blew off the front of the tiny shack built into the fake rear wall of the warehouse accompanied by carefully aimed smoke bombs and a magnetic charge designed to throw off any electrical sensors. The bike tore out of the hole and past the spinning smoke bombs so fast Fede felt his tongue mash down against his Adam’s apple, felt his individual vertebrae compress. Tiny glyphs in the left of his field of vision showed the bike auto shift from second to third to fourth gear faster than he could read. The map flashed, a sharp bend in the white dotted line indicating that he was supposed to turn.

Fede gently leaned on the left handlebar and the bike dove for the ground, the tires licking up pavement like it was candy. Fede’s field of view flashed red and then clear again in a rapid staccato and he bounced against the auto control, pulling out of the curve just before his kneecap was spread like liver pate across eighteen meters of cement. The bike, sensing a straightaway, pushed forward again, flicking through gears in quick, heady surges. Fede realized he was roaring between warehouses, saw the map showing a vast empty space ahead of him. As he drew closer the map expanded, showing a label on the wide blank spot: Lake Beihai.

He realized he had the throttle pulled wide open, knuckles clenched, and gently eased off the accelerator, peering ahead for the turn he was supposed to take in the dim light ahead. Sparks flew up from the ground ahead of him. Someone was shooting at him.

Jerking his head around he saw a humvee bearing down on him, Poulpe leaning out of its roof still wrapped in the mechanical carapace, a tiny pistol held with both of his thickly gloved hands. Fede had let the bike almost idle out as he tried to figure where he was going and now he cranked it, tossing the front tire up before the bike’s frame bent itself and realigned to the torque, shooting him forward. He saw the turn now and leaned into it, setting the angle and sliding along it like he was on a rail. The adrenaline overload in his brain finally pierced the fog of panic and everything clicked into sudden, painfully bright crystal clarity and he drove, hauling back on the throttle as he wove through another two turns, tight alleys in the maze of warehouses. The bright lights of the humvee behind him winked out as he left them behind, the bike flying ahead like a rocket.

Fede entered a straightaway, a long run the map said should take him past four or five separate warehouses before he came to a broad road. He pulled back on the throttle again just as he noticed a bright light descending from the sky. Two hundred meters ahead and above him a matte black military helicopter bristling with weaponry and antenna was falling slow-mo through the sky. It was bright because it was on fire, big gouts of flame pouring from the armored panels on its flank. Fede slowed to a stop, blinking stupidly as he saw it sink and crumple against the ground.

There was a boom. Fede’s helmet covered his face but he felt the heat against his chest, through his open jacket. His kneecaps felt suddenly burnt.

A giant insect flew in then and tried to convince him to get moving. Fede realized he was in shock, that he was hallucinating. The insect was nearly three feet long and looked like a giant pink penis. It had a propeller, too, a couple of them. The thing spun lengthwise a few times before stopping in a horizontal line level with the ground, gaudy red lights along its length running in series to Fede’s left. Fede shook his head and reached for his helmet, trying to ignore the thing’s frantic spinning around as he did so.

Then it stopped spinning and turned towards him and a little green rocket flew out of its tip, leaving behind a tiny trail of propellant, and Fede realized he wasn’t hallucinating. The rocket went right over his left shoulder and as he jerked his head to see where it was going he accidentally pulled on the throttle and jerked forward again, almost falling over as he wove left. The explosion behind him pushed him up and he was moving again, parallel to the water between two warehouses.

The big bug appeared floating ahead of him, spinning counter-clockwise and then clockwise twice in quick succession before he picked up speed. It aligned itself with him and the red lights flashed along its length, pointing forward. Fede rode, and it popped out of sight heading upwards.

The warehouses gave way to a broad field and a tiny service road. Fede slowed slightly as he came onto it, curving right. As he rounded the side of it he saw the bug ahead of him, further down the road and parallel to the warehouse he was passing. He picked up speed, noticing as he did so that they were heading further away from the main road and the route marked on the map.

As he approached the bug it spun a couple times towards his left, stopping briefly as it bobbed gently in the air to flash its lights to go left.

“I hope you know where we’re going” muttered Fede to himself, easing off the road and into the dirt. The tall weeds there made it impossible to see, and as he bounced and rattled across the ruts he began to wonder about the miracles of irrigation, about how far they’d taken the use of ditches here in China.

Then the bug was in front of him again, its strip of red lights flashing in unison, hovering steadily in place. He slowed, then stopped.

Far away down to his right he saw the familiar yellow lights that marked the top of a freightliner. It was good to see, although the driver was apparently having some sort of trouble. The top of the cab was shuddering and shaking every few seconds, waving even. As it came closer Fede heard a crunching sound, followed by a tremendous roar and the squeal of tires. The bug blinked again and floated off ahead of him.

Fede edged forward and up a sharp rise, the bike hunching over to move his center of gravity as it climbed. Then he was up and onto a four-lane highway littered with dark, motionless cars.

Fede stopped and looked to his right, noticing as he did so the lights of the city rising up against the clouds, giant towers glittering in a rising spike. He looked to his left, nodded dumbly at the giant freighter laid neatly across the entire length of the road. People were slowly coming out of their cars, punching comm buttons as they called their security system providers to threaten lawsuits for their cars suddenly turning off “as a deterrent against theft.”

“You crazy-ass motherfuckers” breathed Fede against the inside of his helmet. A little motor whirred to life, whisking his hot breath away. In front of him the bug spun and bobbed, point towards the city.

Fede turned, noticing that as he did so the cars nearby and for a few hundred meters ahead had started flashing their lights, their internal speakers blaring some sort of emergency warning. The people who had been swarming onto the road vanished, darting for their cars, and Fede slowly leaned on the throttle, eating up the empty road.

#64

The rooftop of an unusually tall low-income apartment building somewhere between the warehouse district and downtown Beijing was inexplicably closed. Several lovebirds had been very distraught to discover their usual meeting place locked so tight, but the cinch bars latched onto the door’s outer side kept them out.

On the wide plane of the rooftop a jungle gym of antenna and satellite dishes sprouted from one central mount, blossoming upwards like the flowers of some huge plant. Nestled among them was a giant beach umbrella spray-painted the same gray color as the satellite dishes, and under it sat a comfortable-looking lawn chair and a folding card table. Sandwiched between the two was a slightly overweight Hispanic-looking gentleman, a large, colorful headset obscuring most of his face. He was sipping from a big plastic container with a transparent domed lid, the thick straw showing a steady stream of tiny pea-sized lumps ascending through the milky liquid. It was bubble tea, and Baby had discovered that he loved it within fifteen minutes of touching down in China.

“Okayyy...” he mumbled, both hands slowly fluttering over the two joysticks on the table in front of him. His field of view had maps over maps, tiny matching readouts next to each showing temperature, fuel, speed, latitude and the like. In the middle of them all was a window replaying the bug’s view of Fede as he pulled the throttle and roared off towards the field, the flanges of his mechanical legs finding the tiny foot posts on the bike like he’d been born riding it.

“Boy’s a fucking natural” chuckled Baby, canceling the video feed. He studied the maps again more carefully, noted the tiny red dot moving swiftly down the highway. Far to its right three green dots were navigating a series of local roads, moving to intercept him. As Baby watched a similar set of dots suddenly appeared on the highway close behind Fede. Baby clucked his tongue and pattered his fingers against the two joysticks, slowly wiping his hands before bending over the side of the table. He sat up holding an oversized, no-nonsense, matte-gray joystick. It was an expensive item, stolen by certain key people under Big Circle’s employ, and Baby was very pleased to be able to use it. He jacked in and watched a grid unfold, aligning itself with the maps he already had open. Baby chuckled again and took another pull on his bubble tea before slowly wrapping his fingers around the joystick in front of him. He breathed deeply, slowly, and began to caress it.

A visual appeared in a window in front of him, a top-down image of the highway, the city at its edge. He touched the joystick and it zoomed in, slowly resolving on a tiny motorcycle and three humvees racing down an aisle of motionless cars. At the center of the image was a transparent red circle almost the width of the middle two lanes. The herk-jerk of the image slowly settled, steadily tracking the three cars. The red circle hovered over them, wavering slightly left and right to encompass the passenger cars to either side, cars full of innocent Chinese wondering why they were locked in and who was driving by.

Baby exhaled slowly and his thumb flickered against the base of the joystick. The red circle got a little darker, then lightened again, and the three green dots suddenly slowed.

Somewhere behind Fede an obscenely powerful burst of microwave radiation lanced out of the sky and charred the three humvees behind him into melted slag, hot pools of metal spilling forward into otherworldly sculptures all over the road.

Feed didn’t notice.

He was not having a good time. His back was cramping up being hunched over the bike and he hadn’t seen any sign of Chow’s military since he’d gotten on the road. It was too long on one track, and the white line just kept scrolling forward.

Eventually he got cold enough to try to zip up his jacket again, riding one handed as he glanced behind him. He didn’t manage to get the stuck zipper moving, but he did discover that the gloves had chords built in. As he tugged at the zipper a tiny set of Chinese characters appeared, scrolling down the right-hand side of the helmet’s HUD alongside the accelerometer. It ended in a question, followed by a “yes/no.” He keyed in “yes” and chorded the usual “hello world.” Sure enough, the words appeared along the bottom of the screen.

It was tricky, chording and driving at the same time, but before long Fede had discovered a whole host of feeds streaming into his helmet, all encrypted. Each was formatted differently, and it took him a while to figure out that he was looking at a toolset Cessus must have built on top of a series of Xing’s boy’s hacks. The bike’s gyroscopic force kept it level as Fede raced onward toward the city. Fede’s eyes grew hard under the helmet as he correlated the data, backtracked through apps, dissected command sets. He was looking at Plan B.

Fifteen minutes later he pulled off the main road, roughly thirty blocks away from the train station, and slowed to a stop behind a corn syrup tanker refilling its tanks. The bike shimmied and grumbled as it idled, a low grind that almost matched the sound of helicopters coming in from the south, back the way he had come. but Fede was temporarily away.

Baby had fed the bright red cord through the unusually thick antenna main some hours before, and lowering it to a near horizontal was easy. He connected the mains to it and carefully disconnected everything else except for his joystick and comm. They ran on battery power and were tied into the same geosynchronous satellites he’d used to fry Fede’s pursuers. A squat square block with four accordioned legs was slowly waddling away from him, pincers mounted on its top holding the twelve-meter metal-ceramic amalgam tube. Baby hustled back under the gray canopy and settled himself into the lawn chair, pulling on his headset and fiddling with the joystick as the horizon bobbed back and forth with the motion of the robot. He chuckled to himself and rubbed his hands together gleefully before finishing the last of the bubble tea and tossing the container on the rooftop next to him. This was the part he’d been hoping for the whole trip.

Suddenly the horizon spun, the distant cityscape spinning by. His hands clenched and hammered on the joystick with no result, and he scrambled up in his seat, tearing at the headset.

Down past his feet, at the end of the long tube, the robot was double-timing to the left, away from Baby.

“What the hell are you doing” he screamed, his hands still flying over the joystick. He pulled the headset down again and saw the view suddenly resolve, then zoom in faster than his eyes could follow. The visual snapped to and Baby was suddenly looking at a set of tanks rolling down the road towards him in the distance.

“Urk” said Baby. There weren’t supposed to be tanks there. He was going to use the gun on the helicopters that were coming in from the south.

Overlaid against his view of the tanks came a series of red and green lines, and as he watched code spun out in a column on the right-hand side. A google page flew up, jumped to a page about high-speed magnetic physics, and a formula flew from the page and dropping into the code. The visual turned to wire frame, the lead tank suddenly plucked out and pasted against a visual recognition window, statistical data spilling from the google window and also snapped up into the code. The red and green lines shuffled themselves, once, then twice, then aligned themselves in a gentle arc along the event horizon of the tank treads. The visual zoomed in until all Baby could see were the treads, and the red and green lines began to blink. Behind the visual warning notices suddenly began to pop up, bright red warning notices in several languages, most of the English ones including terms like “extremely dangerous,” and “Fatal.” One very prominent window read “Overload.”

Baby yelped and slapped the headset to transparent, leaping up and entangling the top of the headset in the canopy. He struggled free and danced around the giant capacitor mounted against the bottom of the tube, his hands grasping at nothing, his mouth making a little “O” over and over again. He turned and ran alongside the tube towards the robot, his hands in the air, not noticing when the cable to the joystick on the table behind him reached its limit and pulled out of his headset with a little “ping.” He hopped over the tube as the robot made a minute, last-minute adjustment, then straddled it and waddled forward as fast as he could as he came close and prepared to grab it.

There was a loud “zot” and a dopplered “zing” as the air around the tube vibrated out of the magnetic spectrum. A second later a thundercrack sounded as the metal rod that had previously been housed inside the tube split the air at several times the speed of sound. It left a tracer in the air, tiny waves of split hydrogen atoms flickering back together, creating a track from the tip of the rail gun forward and down the long road away from Baby. He slapped the headset again, little bits of glitter descending from the Mary painted on its front, and slowly let his jaw descend. The row of tanks now had only one set of treads apiece, smoking bits of metal littering the road where the wheels on their right-hand side had been. A blank space in Baby’s field of visual suddenly sprouted data, shouted commands and screams in Chinese coming through a previously dead channel. They’d been on radio silence, operating outside of the visual spectrum. A moment later Baby’s headset faded to black, the sounds fading to a dull distant whine.

“Fatalities: 0” scrolled across his headset. Then, “Distractions: 1.”

Baby heard the sound of helicopters approaching.

His headset scrolled another message, and this time Baby listened. It read, simply, “Run.”

Feed shoved off the side of the syrup tanker and pulled out of the lot, turning to head back the way he had come. Chow was approaching, but more slowly now, and the attack on the tanks weren’t going to encourage him any. Feed didn’t have to go far; only a few blocks down the road he could see sirens atop the military humvees. He waited until they were almost directly in sight before waddling forward onto the road atop the bike, making a show of trying to get the thing started. There was a loud crunch as one of the humvees swiped a car getting past it and Fede leapt forward, tearing ahead and towards the train station, trying hard not to think about the weapons pointed at his back.

He made it moments ahead of them and came to a stop right outside the station. It was deserted, the parking lot almost empty, florescent lights flickering in and out across the vast empty plane in front of the giant complex. Feed didn’t know how to shut the bike off so he let it slow to neutral and then jumped off. The bike wobbled and flicked out its kickstand, the engine clicking off behind him.

Feed pulled off the helmet and snapped his goggles up and into place. He’d re-routed the data feeds to his own comm, and now he slapped the helmet into shutdown as he strode purposefully into the station, following a map only he could see.

He took two turns down a short and a long corridor, then stopped in front of an unmarked service door. He knocked, twice, and stared up with hard eyes as it was opened.

Marcus caught the helmet and stared in surprise at the man standing in front of him.

“You got a gun I could use?” asked Feed.

Marcus nodded, surrendering a tiny brown pistol.

“You know how to use it?” he asked.

Feed’s fingers fluttered against the inside of the motorcycle gloves as he sucked down data about the pistol.

“I do now” he said, slapping out the cartridge and checking the bullet count before slamming it shut again and sticking it in the hem of his pants, against the small of his back. He nodded briefly at Marcus before spinning on his heel and leaving the way he had come.

Marcus closed the door behind him and carefully misted the inside of the helmet with bleach, wiping down the headset and changing the air filter. He took out a small plastic bag of gray powder and dusted the helmet with it. He checked the tiny headset he’d brought with him to make sure the corridor was empty and pulled himself up onto his crutches before slowly hobbling out of the room.

Marcus made his way to the end of the same corridor Fede had left by before unlocking and squeezing into a tiny broom closet. He leaned back on his crutches and watched the data through the headset. He waited a while, watching information stream by, trying to figure out what had happened to Cessus and Cass and Xing and Feed. There was no sign of them; the lines were silenced, which meant that either they’d been cracked by Chow’s men or that everyone was dead. He eventually gave up worrying; there was nothing he could do about it except to fulfill his part of the plan. He’d seen the look in Feed’s eyes — he would have to take care of the rest. He was the only one who could.

#65

The cameras throughout the train station fed into a semi-public feed, terminals mounted at each hallway junction flipping through different views. The most prominent, frequently seen image was of the main entrance, of the doors through which Feed had marched only a few minutes before. Now that view was filled with an increasing expanse of angry-looking Chinese youth. Three or four dozen punks of varying flavors hopped around and punched at each other to the tune of antique Brit-Punk. “Anarchy in the UK” was chorused with no “r"s or “l"s, blaring from a cheap local broadcast through the trashy scooters parked haphazardly in clusters around the lot. They were loitering, biding time, building up their courage. Hands sought pockets with lengths of chain hidden within them, fingered kitchen knives wrapped in antiseptic towelettes carefully placed to remove any DNA in case they were used.

Chow watched from the end of the street leading to the station and silently ground his teeth. He needed the programmer, needed him to rework the virus so Chow could re-use it on his own, so his rogue French geneticist could fulfill his remaining promises. Instead he waited, watching the punks in the parking lot, the empty stalls without cars, the silent street they were parked on.

“Why are we waiting?” hissed Poulpe. He had little bits of white fluff sticking to the back of his arms and legs, tiny cotton strands from where his exoskeleton had torn up the car seat as he wormed around like an anxious child. “We just saw him go in there!”

“Why are these young people here?” asked Chow, more to himself than Poulpe. The two soldiers in the back of the car kept quiet, eyes watching the slowly waning charge on their suits’ battery indicators.

“Does it matter?” asked Poulpe. “We can take care of them, yes?” Poulpe was becoming increasingly difficult to handle. He was drunk on the power of the suit and knew neither how to handle it nor its limitations.

Somebody came out of the train station and the crowd leapt up. A familiar-looking motorcycle helmet was waved in the air and the punks streamed in through the front doors, disappearing within.

Chow cursed and pressed one of his cufflinks, subvocalizing a command in Chinese. The other humvee pulled out and plowed up the stairs and to the front doors of the station, four soldiers leaping out as they powered on their suits. They disappeared inside.

The rest of them waited. The cameras aimed at the parking lot showed the scooters, tiny LEDs and day-glo stickers vibrating slightly to the tune of the music blaring from their tinny speakers. The empty humvee idled, tracer lining sparking blue lances of electricity around the handles and windows. An old newspaper appeared at the far end of the lot and slowly traversed it, carried by an untraceable wind.

One of the soldier’s voices crackled across the radio. Chow asked a question, got the same answer: “Fatchan.”

Chow cursed again, louder this time, and threw the humvee into drive. He leaned across Poulpe as he pulled the car out into the street and towards the station, took a pistol from the glove compartment.

“Fatchan?” asked Poulpe.

“Triads” hissed Chow. “The Triads are after him.”

“Move! Move! Move!” screamed Feed, waving his pistol in the air. He had found the right train and gotten on the first car, his pistol and goggles and oversized gloves driving the pair of occupants there through the doors like rabbits. He ran through to the next car, found no one, then onward. There were thirty cars in all, and he only found a handful of occupants. In the seventh car he had to kick a drunk awake, screaming death-threats the man would never understand. He finally got to the end, pulled open the door and crossed to the final car.

This car terminated in a solid silver wall at the far end, no handle visible. Its seats were the same as all the rest of the train, plain hard green plastic tilted in 90-degree angles, booth seating only. Feed was startled to see a slightly balding head in the last seat, and jogged up to it, gun extended, one hand chording up access to the station camera system through a hack the Otaku and Cessus had put in place earlier that week.

“Get out” he said, breathing hard now. “Get the fuck out of here.”

The man in front of him did nothing. He was in his fifties, yet another worn and wearied salary man, deep wrinkles around his mouth and bags around his eyes. He seemed tired, his dark suit seemed tired, his plain, carefully cut fingernails at the end of his old hands, resting on his knees, seemed tired.

When Feed pointed the gun at his forehead the man no longer seemed tired anymore. He straightened, slightly, and gently cocked his head to one side. One corner of his mouth twitched up and he shook his head no.

“Get out!” screamed Feed. He was starting to shake a little, now, the adrenaline eating away at his nerves. “Get out of the fucking train!”

The man slowly bent over and covered his head with his hands.

“Get out! Get out get out get out!” screamed Feed. He reached over and shoved the man.

Something didn’t feel right, when he did that, and he backed up. Cursors in the corner of his vision showed alarms tripping, showed the helmet leaving the building, coming back in again. Feed moved to the far seat opposite the man and sat down.

“Just don’t fucking move” he said, carefully switching on the gun’s safety and tabbing up the visuals on his goggles. “Just don’t move.”

The first four soldiers had caught up to a large group of punks and slaughtered the lot of them, their cries of “Barbarian” as they peeked through doorways turning to screams of fear, then the silence of death. They were deep in the warren of tunnels and pathways now, their headsets painting an ordered path for them to follow. They had thought they had a lead on where the punks were going, or at least where a lot of them were going, but now they weren’t sure. They were chording inputs to each other, trying to come to a decision when the lead soldier flashed a hand up for silence. The mics on their exoskeletons picked up a shuffling tap-tap-slide, tap-tap-slide. Their rifles snapped to and they fell into standard position, two against the wall, one bent in front, one standing behind. Marcus turned the corner ahead of them, hobbling forward on his crutches.

“Ting” announced one of the soldiers, his rifle aimed at Marcus’s forehead. Marcus stopped and slowly spread his feet, letting his crutches fall to the ground on either side of him. He balled his huge fists and raised them in front of him, his bloodshot eyes deep-set and glittering.

“You know what’s so great about being big?” he asked. The two soldiers on either side of the corridor exchanged smiles, their guns dipping as they watched the lead man walk forward and raise the butt of his rifle to knock Marcus aside. Their exoskeletons gave them strength and speed, power this crippled foreigner couldn’t match no matter how big he was.

“It’s because everyone thinks you’re stupid” Marcus said. The lead soldier slowed as he approached, a look of fear spreading over his face as the regulated oxygen supply to his helmet suddenly sputtered out. At the same time his suit stopped moving, its weight no longer a support. The soldiers were in peak physical condition, but as Marcus watched they slowly let their arms drop and their backs bend, their knees giving way one by one as the weight of their battery packs drove them to the ground like old men. Their curses turned to huffing for breath and then, slowly, to tired whimpers. Marcus bent over, wheezing, and picked up his crutches.

“I know how you feel” he said, blowing out his cheeks as he held his breath, easing himself back to standing. He leaned over and slapped a panel on the wall. Tiny spigots in the ceiling stopped spitting out the bacterial mist that had been showering the soldiers, bacteria designed to eat through the rubber housing sealing the conduits from the battery packs to the exoskeletons they wore, to dissolve the junction cables there that powered the suits.

“Clever shit” said Marcus, looking down at the soldiers. “My friend Tonx designed it.”

The soldier said something in Chinese, heaving for breath, his face turning red through the thick glass of his helmet. Marcus didn’t understand, didn’t care to understand. He nodded solemnly at the soldier.

He held up the headset and peered through it again. “You better hope he’s okay” he said quietly.

Chow made Poulpe stay behind the two soldiers in the lead, had to keep telling him to keep back, to cover their rear.

“I am not here for covering rear” said Poulpe. He had found the bayonet that attached to the end of his suit’s arm and was waving it around like a mechanical grim reaper. The first thing he had done upon entering the station was to punch a hole in one wall and puncture a water line, tripping an alarm and flooding the main room with water. Now they sloshed out and to higher ground, stopping at a set of terminals showing groups of punks running down hallways, civilians cowering in doorways and being left behind, the first group of four soldiers running down a long corridor in standard point formation.

“There” said Poulpe. “Next to that statue of a boy.” He pointed and they caught a glimpse of a slight, mechanical-legged figure slipping behind it and out of view. One of the soldiers consulted a map on his HUD and said something to Chow.

“Follow me” said Chow to Poulpe. Chow’s pants legs were soaking wet, but he still commanded the soldiers with authority, an authority Poulpe found both distracting and annoying. He had been enjoying himself a great deal since he had met Chow, had made use of the resources Chow allowed him to explore several pharmaceuticals he had not allowed himself in a long time.

They strode down the hallway, their hydraulic legs sending them gliding past and around Chow, his shiny Italian leather shoes double-timing to their every step. Poulpe found himself in the rear, and took the opportunity to relax himself a bit with a tiny aerosol spray can. It hissed lightly, coating the inside of his palate with a minty flavored combination of several carefully selected drugs. Time slowed, the hallway stretched out in front of him, and Poulpe became delightfully aware of the interplay of light on the shiny portions of his fellow soldier’s exoskeletons.

Chow heard the hiss and grimaced, but did not turn around.

They entered the main hall and saw eight of the punks disappear around the same statue they had seen Feed by.

“Hurry!” said Chow, breaking into a trot. The two soldiers overtook him, looking down at him in pained anxiety.

“Go!” said Chow, then breaking into Chinese he gave them open license to do what was necessary to take Feed alive and to prevent his capture by the Triads. They broke into fluid trots, then a flat-out run as they rounded the corner and out of sight.

“Carry me” said Chow to Poulpe. “And don’t drop me this time.”

Poulpe was tired of this. He was the mastermind behind this coup, had arranged everything since he’d first met Feed and sensed the potential there. He was not destined to answer to little, arrogant, public officials.

“To hell with you” said Poulpe, wetting his lips slightly with the tip of his tongue as he savored the taste of the words.

“Do it or I send you back to Disney” said Chow. He was through with being nice; it was time the Frenchman knew who was in charge and what the consequences for failure were. Poulpe didn’t smile. His dreamy eyes narrowed. Chow had been doing his homework, he was disappointed to discover. He had learned somehow about the training Poulpe had received, about the conditioning he himself had designed for Disney to use with its top engineers. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny tin.

“What are you doing? Pick me up! We are falling behind!” said Chow.

“I need focus, Monsieur” said Poulpe. He was having a difficult time making himself do this. He could feel from the distant clench in his chest that as soon as he did he wouldn’t be having any fun anymore. He was having a lot of fun right now, was really, really enjoying the slightly orgasmic chills running across the hairs of his arms, the tender pull of his calves under the support straps of the suit. He pulled out a plain white pill from the tin and gently set it on his tongue. Chow watched as he closed his mouth, chewed once, and swallowed. His pupils abruptly tightened to pinheads, as sharply as if he’d walked out of a cave and looked at the sun.

“As you ordered, sir” he said, scooping Chow up off his feet. He broke into an awkward run, the suit picking up the pace and turning it into a rapid glide as they went. Chow hung on, startled, his arms around Poulpe’s neck. The stale antiseptic smell of the Frenchman’s sweat swirled around them and they hurried down the corridor, the other two soldiers turning and running out of view at the other end. There were screams and an explosion. The comm on Poulpe’s shoulder hissed to life, a gurgle of Chinese followed by several words that were sharply cut off. The sound of machine-gun fire rattled against the walls and down the hall towards them.

The room beyond was another antechamber, a huge sculpture of a man in traditional bamboo armor standing on a dais at its center. Bodies littered the room, punks splayed out in bloody repose. The body of one of the soldiers was prone on the floor, a long filet knife somehow woven between the protective plates of his suit and buried in his neck. The remaining soldier was firing at an archway extending off to their left, and he nodded quickly at Chow as they stepped into the room. He pointed once at the comm mounted to his chest, drawing attention to the single bullet hole there.

“Nice shooting” gasped Poulpe, the drugs making him heave for breath despite the suit. The soldier waved at them and held up one finger before pointing at the archway. He jogged up to the wall next to it and waited, watching Chow for orders. Next to and over his head a row of terminals showed a set of three trains pulled up next to their platforms in the room beyond, the empty lot in front of the train station, the water-filled front room. The sound of shouting came from the room beyond, then a tearing metal sound. The shouting dimmed.

“Go!” barked Chow, pointing at the doorway. The soldier stepped out and around the corner, pressing his back up against the other side of the wall. Poulpe stepped forward before they saw the center of the man’s torso explode, the wall blowing back towards them, splattering the floor with gore.

“Merde” shouted Poulpe, scrambling backwards, reaching to scoop the blood from his eyes. He started to hop up and down, his adrenal gland in overdrive, unable to hear in the echo of the explosion.

“Let me go! Let me go!” screamed Chow. He produced a gun from somewhere and snapped the butt hard against the side of Poulpe’s nose, breaking it cleanly. The Frenchman released the Chinaman, dropping him to his feet as he struggled to see.

“Now. Go!” said Chow, pointing at the archway.

“To hell with you” said Poulpe, his fingers feeling the light grind of broken bone that he’d certainly feel most keenly later. He spat bloody phlegm at the smaller man’s feet.

Chow bared his teeth and glared up at the Frenchman. He didn’t need this right now. He needed obedience, he needed service. The sound of breaking glass rang out from the train tracks and they could hear the punk’s whooping yells echoing from inside somewhere.

“You will cover me” Chow said. “And we will discuss later.” He turned and checked his pistol before peering once, quickly, around the corner. Poulpe paused long enough to pull the semiautomatic rifle from the first soldier’s belt, then jogged up behind Chow.

There was no one to see. The door to the first car on the second train had been ripped open with a crowbar, the windows along its near side shattered. As they watched they heard more windows breaking further down the train, out of sight.

“There!” said Chow, his pistol flashing as he shot down the near platform.

“What?” asked Poulpe. “What are you shooting at?” The dark gap between the near train and the wall was barely three feet wide, lined with electrified cables and rails and razor wire to prevent the homeless from sleeping there.

“I saw a someone” said Chow. He was jerking his gun straight-armed in front of him, left-right, left-right.

“You are nervous, Mr. Chow” said Poulpe. He flipped the safety off his own gun, considering his options. He wondered if Chow had reestablished contact with his data center, if his death would trigger a recording of audio or visual data.

Chow quieted, taking in their position, the lines of fire.

“What now?” asked Poulpe.

“The Fatchan are pursuing Feed now. They will not kill him” said Chow. “We have superior firepower, and additional assistance should be arriving shortly. We will wait for them to capture him and bring him out, then kill them and take him with us.”

Poulpe grinned.

#66

The sound of breaking windows was getting closer. The man across from Feed had unfolded his head from between his knees and was staring out the window and the dark tunnel beyond, the very picture of ennui. Feed pulled out of the data streams, listening.

“What the hell are they saying” he muttered to himself, the punk’s chants getting louder. The door to the car they were in suddenly shuttered.

“Barbarian” said the man, his hands folded demurely in his lap. “They are chanting for the head of the barbarian.”

Feed stared at him for one long second before the door to the car was pulled open, a red-eyed Chinese youth with a row of three green mowhawk stripes leading the charge. He had Feed’s helmet in one hand, the top scuffed and speckled with green paint from the walls and doors he’d been bashing with it.

They only glanced briefly at the man in the suit, grabbing Feed and pocketing his gun, cries of venomous joy as they pulled his hands behind his back. The lead punk pushed Feed’s head back against the wall, grabbing his jaw and forcing his mouth open by jabbing his fingers against Feed’s cheeks. He stabbed a long flexible swab down Feed’s throat and the punks fell silent.

The green-striped punk lowered the swab into a silvery tube connected to a tiny display. Everyone held their breath. The tube chirped and he shook his head, sadly eyeing Feed. They all sighed, issuing sad moans as they dropped him roughly back into his seat.

The man in the suit politely asked a question and the lead punk replied in kind. He said a few words, gesturing excitedly towards the track outside, and the punks immediately perked up. Nodded excitedly at the man in the suit they took up their hollering again, running out the exit door and back down the platform towards the main building. The train grew quiet behind them.

“What did you say?” asked Feed, breathless.

“I told them the foreigner they were looking for was black” said the man, nodding happily at Feed. Feed stared at him again, then grinned out of one corner of his mouth.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Li” said the man in the suit. “Please call me Li.”

Feed’s fingers fluttered against his thighs, data streams flowing again.

“You want to go for a train ride, Mr. Li?”

Chow wasn’t getting any response from his comm, not even from the encrypted military lines. Something was jamming him, but he couldn’t leave the building to find out who or how. He didn’t have time to ponder the issue as the punks came bouncing jauntily down the platform towards them, their loud whoops echoing ahead of them.

“Please prepare, Mr. Poulpe” said Chow. Poulpe raised an eyebrow. He was positively bored stiff. Wearing military armor and all was certainly exciting, but it wasn’t much use if all you did was stand around. The suit was made for close-quarters killing, something he had yet to do.

The punks rounded the end of the near train and stopped as they saw Chow and Poulpe. The lead punk had Feed’s helmet slung over his shoulder and dropped his arm as he saw them, the helmet now held in front of his crotch in awkward unease. He said a few words to Chow, nodding and bobbing. The rest took up the gesture, blinking back sudden tears towards the barrel of Poulpe’s gun.

“What are they saying?” asked Poulpe.

Chow said several words forcibly in Chinese and the boys looked even more distraught, glancing at each other with comical frowns. The lead boy turned back to Chow and shook his head, saying a few words before Chow interrupted him with more demands. This time the boys looked the very picture of desperation, clutching their heads and glancing back and forth at each other in mutual agony.

“What?” demanded Poulpe. “What’s going on?”

“They said the barbarian wasn’t in there, that the foreigner they were looking for is black” said Chow. “Feed tricked them. But this okay good, we can use them...”

Poulpe interrupted him by firing the gun’s entire clip into the crowd of young men, the jerking bodies bouncing under the impact, laying silent and smoking when he was done.

“What..?” gaped Chow. “What did you do that for?”

“They were stupid” said Poulpe. “You said so yourself.” He felt better now. He’d been wanting to do that for a long time, and had found it rather gratifying.

The train began to pull out.

“The train! The train!” called Chow. “Quickly!”

Poulpe nodded and calmly followed Mr. Chow in stepping through the sea of bodies and across the platform. He had to break into a slight jog to catch up with the last car, then stepped in and casually tossed the semiautomatic out behind him. It was empty anyway, and he didn’t have any more clips. Things were looking up.

“I think your friend is getting upset” said Li, pointing out the window at the door to the engine cab ahead of them.

“I know” said Fede, looking out the other window through his goggles. “He’ll get over it.”

Outside Esco had been tapping at the keypad lock for a good five minutes, trying to stealthily get into the train so he could drive off with it. Cessus hadn’t been able to access the controls remotely and neither had any of the Otaku, so it was a big surprise to him when the train suddenly began to lift and then slide forward.

He was surprised, but not stupid. Despite operating in radio silence Esco knew more than to try to cling to the outside of an accelerating maglev as it was heading out of the station. Instead he let go and carefully shuffled back and out of the tunnel entrance, leaning low as the cars silently swam past. It disappeared down the tunnel and out of sight.

Esco sighed and pulled himself up onto the platform. He was wearing a black combat suit, nylon webbing holding an assortment of gear, his face blacked out with charcoal.

“Very pretty” said a deep voice from the end of the platform. “You dress up just for me?”

Esco nodded a greeting to Marcus and stepped over the steaming bodies at the end of the platform. He slumped down on the passenger side of the golf cart Marcus was driving, avoiding the crutches slung between the seats.

“Nice ride” he commented wearily. “Damn fool locked me out.”

“He’s just like his brother” said Marcus as he drove the cart down a corridor and towards a service entrance in the back of the building. “Always doing shit his own way.”

They drove in silence for a few hundred yards, Esco wiping the stain from his face and accounting for his gear.

“Got two of them” he said. “Pulled off a twenty-yard shot on one of them, took out his comm with my pistol until they were all together, then lured him out in front of a wall mine. Idiots did it exactly by the book, just like Tonx said they would.”

Marcus nodded. “Lucky for you. Those boys got good intel, if nothing else.”

Esco grunted agreement. “You heard from them? I’ve had radio silence since just after they first saw Chow.”

“Nothing” said Marcus. “I haven’t heard anything from anyone.”

Esco looked at Marcus out of the corner of his eye, then looked the other way, watching the tiles slowly slip by under the tire’s thick tread. “They’ll be okay” he said.

Marcus grunted, a meaningless sound. “Listen, you ready to relax?”

“Hell yes” said Esco. “Been in China almost a week already and haven’t seen anything but train stations and shipyards.”

“Good. I know this nice private club, members-only kind of place. Normally it’s women only, though.”

Esco pursed his lips, nodding solemnly. “I think I can deal with that” he said.

Marcus returned the nod. “All right, then. You like that style, the one where they dress up like Chinese school girls?”

Esco turned and gave Marcus a broad wolfish grin before the two men broke into deep, howling laughter.

#67

The maglev picked up speed, the tunnel giving way to the pre-dawn city, high cement walls cradling the train interspersed with plexiglassed view ports as they made their way out towards the country. The air howled dimly in the car behind them, a high-pitched whine as the wind tore through the ragged glass of the broken windows.

Eventually Chow’s balding head appeared, thin black hair swimming in a bolus around his brow. Even then he managed to appear calm and in control, stepping through the doorway holding his pistol in front of him as though it were a tobacco pipe, and him just wandering into his study. Poulpe came behind him, little bits of white cotton fluff sprinkled across his arms and legs, splattered brown stains from dried blood slicked over the clothing beneath his military exoskeleton. He saw Feed and reached up one long, metal-wrapped arm to pull back his hair as he bowed, slightly, in Feed’s direction.

“We meet at last, Mr. Feed” said Chow, glancing briefly at the man in the suit who sat slumped, motionless, against the window opposite them. “Who is he?”

“Some salary man with a death wish” said Fede. He stuck out his little finger and put his thumb towards his mouth, miming drinking from a bottle.

Mr. Chow shrugged. “No matter.” He gently lowered himself across from Feed. “We will speak English. You are coming with us, Mr. Feed. It is my hope that you will do so willingly. It has been very expensive, finding you.”

Feed watched Chow for a moment, trying to get some information from the smooth blank gaze the Chinaman gave him. He turned to Poulpe.

“What are you getting out of this, Poulpe?” Feed asked the Frenchman.

“Oh, the usual” said Poulpe, smiling. “Defection privileges; diplomatic immunity, political asylum, protection and safe passage. I have a new employer now, you see, one of the few who can protect me from the old one.”

“Traitor” said Fede flatly.

“Yes I am” said Poulpe. “And if you’re a clever boy you will be too.”

There was a sudden hissing sound as the car behind them released from theirs and slowed, trailing away behind as they picked up speed.

Feed turned back to Chow. “You are Harry Chow?”

Chow bowed slightly. “Yes. You have written a very impressive virus, Feed. It took me a long time to figure out how to use it once we’d seen it start.”

“You have the recombinant genome from its first run. Seeing it complete its results must have helped.”

Chow smiled then, a broad grin that revealed unnaturally even teeth.

“I was surprised when you did not determine this immediately” he said.

“In the heat of the moment one misses the simplest things” said Fede.

“I would like to learn more about this code” said Chow. He was warming to his subject now, his hands spread wide in front of him in a gesture of generosity. “We have used it a little, but I think there must be a way to limit its use of its hosts. If we could throttle its resource load it may be possible to keep it deployed publicly. China is a big place, and it seems only correct to use its resources as effectively as possible.”

“You would like to use your country’s computers as a giant distributed network” said Fede.

“Yes” said Chow. “But the people will not stand for this without price cuts. They are already very frustrated with the filtering and controls. Your virus was very stealthy, and I must believe it can be made to alter itself according to the abilities of the host.”

Fede nodded. “Sure. But it would take a long time to change it. And I won’t help you.”

Chow’s smile disappeared. Poulpe coughed.

“Please reconsider, Feed” Poulpe said. “The Chinese use strong motivational tactics. It would be a shame for your friends to suffer because of your obstinance.”

Fede cocked his head, staring at Poulpe in sudden realization.

“You relaunched the code, didn’t you?” he asked.

Poulpe glanced at Chow, back at Feed. “We have found other uses for it, yes” he said. “But that is not your concern...”

“You must have left the original code intact, or else you wouldn’t need me to alter it for you” said Fede. “If you could have changed the code by yourself you would have.”

Poulpe began to speak but Chow raised a small hand. Poulpe tried again and Chow turned towards him, frowning.

“Be quiet now, Poulpe” he said. Poulpe sat back into his chair, a pout spreading on his lips.

“Go on, Feed” Chow said.

“The only thing you could have changed was the input data” said Fede. He could feel his heartbeat, now, a steady rapid pulse, and it filled the quiet in his head as his understanding unfolded. “You play by the rules presented to you, Poulpe. Like in the Paris Hotel, with the sake. You’ve always worked on biologicals, on weapons. You must have done that now.”

Chow was watching Feed now, observing the wheels turn, the connections grow as he plucked the truth from the scattered evidence in front of him.

“The code I wrote finds a way to match endomorphic tissue from the sample genome map you provided with the human brain, to intersect with the stem cells in the human body to replace the damaged tissue.”

Poulpe had stopped frowning now, was watching Feed. His lips were slightly ajar, a surprised grimace. The two men sat still, listening.

“You couldn’t change the code to make the genome map match with something else, or to intersect with some other kind of cell. I’m assuming you didn’t think to defect until you got here and realized what kind of opportunity you had.”

Chow barked a short laugh and clapped his hands once, delighted.

“The simplest thing would be to replace the genome map you provided for the octopus with one of the human brain” said Fede. “You already had access to the site in Hawaii, and the human genome is easily accessible from anywhere. You had a copy on your comm when we were at Xing’s so you could verify our results in case we got them off the disk we stole.”

“That’s right” said Poulpe, his eyes emotionless disks. “I got one from your brother as soon as we landed.”

He shrugged. “And so? What would be the use of it, Feed?”

Chow smiled, watching him.

“If you could get a cancer that took its signature from the hosts’ stem cells it would be undetectable” said Fede. He was staring into the distance now, finding the answer. “And if it was mapped to replace human brain tissue instead of implanted endomorphic tissue it would attack the host’s brain. It would convert the existing brain tissue to scar tissue, or muscle, or whatever the stem cell it found was designed to heal.”

Chow laughed again.

“Very good, Feed!” he said. “I am very impressed! What is the best part is that the result would look like any of a number of neurological diseases. Enemies of the state will simply suffer from brain disfunction, the cause unknown, potentially hereditary. And as a virus it is safe to handle as it has no natural vectors for spreading. A perfect weapon.”

Feed nodded. “We wanted to enable the world, and you found a way to cripple it.”

“That is not entirely true; we simply wanted to empower the most appropriate parties” said Chow. “But this is unfortunately not enough; if everyone suffers from the same sort of attack it will seem rather obvious, don’t you think?”

Feed didn’t say anything, just watched the small man in front of him.

“It would be even better if we could modify your code to find similar, less obtuse attacks. Perhaps find ways to affect only certain gene lines? Certain families, for example, or only people of particularly troublesome bloodlines. Over time you could select survivors for individual traits and create an ideal state. A kind of utopian Darwinism, you see?”

Feed shook his head and drummed his fingers on his thighs.

“Give me the recombinant, Chow” he said. He wasn’t asking; his voice was cold. He’d tried to imagine what Poulpe would come up with, what the worst-case scenario for the misuse of his code could be, and had been unpleasantly surprised.

“Certainly, Feed. It would be my pleasure; I am very curious to learn more about your code.” Chow gestured widely with his hands, the pistol held out gently in the air. “Simply tell me you would be willing to work with me and we will share it all with you. We’ll even let your friends go.”

“You’re already doing that” said Fede. Chow put his hands back at his sides and frowned lightly at Feed.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“The Otaku collected enough voice samples from you during their ‘negotiations’ to make an audio model of your speech patterns. Once you got on this train and into its faraday cage a preprogrammed recording was sent to your officers. My friends are already receiving medical attention.”

Chow’s hand flew to his cuff and he tapped, persistently, listening to nothing. Feed was right; the train was built from titanium and steel, even the windows netted with thin metal wires. Normally an internal antenna ran down the center of the train and re-broadcast any signals from inside — but Feed had obviously turned it off. They were in complete radio silence.

“Very nice” said Chow. “But it won’t do you any good. They may be provided with medical care, but your friends are still captured as enemies of the state. I cannot ensure their release without being physically present and verifiable.”

“I know” said Fede. “Mr. Li?”

The man in the suit straightened, stretching out his arms and back before turning towards them and giving a little bow. He smiled sheepishly, hands raised, and shuffled over to sit next to Feed.

“Who is this?” asked Chow, his pistol quietly trained on Li until he had stopped moving. “Your lawyer?”

“Something like that” said Fede.

“Please” said Li. “It’s terribly embarrassing that I am here at all. It is a very unfortunate coincidence.”

“What the hell are you talking about” snarled Chow. “Who are you?”

“Please excuse me” Li said to Feed. “There isn’t an appropriate way to say this in English.” Then he turned and murmured several short words to Chow.

Chow turned white. Not just pale, but completely white. The blood seemed to have entirely emptied from his body. He didn’t blink or move, or even seem to breathe.

“It is you?” he murmured.

Mr. Li held up both hands in front of him. “Yes, but please, as I said, this is just an unfortunate coincidence! I was riding this train to see my granddaughter when this nice young man defended me from some misinstructed youth.”

“They were Fatchan” said Chow wanly.

“I know” chuckled Mr. Li. “Entertaining, isn’t it, the amount of confusion which can come from within one single organization. You can see why I am such a busy man.”

“What is this?” asked Poulpe. “Who is this stupid person?”

Mr. Chow nodded at Feed. “You have all this recorded, don’t you?” he asked.

“Audio, visual, plus heat and pulse. It’s all been streaming real-time to Otaku servers” said Fede.

“I see” said Chow. He coughed, then pulled himself up straight. “It seems that there has indeed been a misunderstanding.”

“What’s going on?” asked Poulpe. “You must tell me now; why are we talking with this person?”

Chow bowed towards Mr. Li, ignoring Poulpe. “I am sure we can reach an agreement. The virus I mentioned earlier is still a source of untapped potential revenue. Perhaps together we can find a way to share it.”

“What?” coughed Poulpe. “You can’t do that! I have a percentage in that!”

“There is no more virus” said Fede. The three men turned to look at him.

“I said there is no more virus” said Fede. “I designed a counter virus and launched it once you told me what you had planned for it. The Otaku have already published their analysis on the threat, and the world hacker community is sure to launch similar exploits shortly. Your government would seem grossly negligent if it didn’t launch defenses against that sort of attack now, and without a distributed dataset there’s no way you’ll reverse engineer what was already in place.”

“But it’s still on everyone’s computers...” protested Chow.

“Not anymore it’s not” said Fede. “I wrote it, Mr. Chow. Don’t you think I would know how to get rid of it?”

The four men sat quietly for a long moment before Mr. Li raised a hand and began to laugh demurely behind it. “You are a very enterprising young man, Feed” he said. “It is my pleasure to have met you.”

“Me too” said Fede, softly. He was tired. The train began to slow. “This is our stop.”

Outside the landscape had slowly turned from a blur to a long mountainscape. Over the fields surrounding the train and before the mountains stood one of the oldest and most impressive of man’s attempts to defend himself from invasion; the Great Wall of China.

“It was antiquated by the time it was built” said Mr. Li. They stood and walked to the doorway side of the train, looking out at the incredible landscape before them.

“I think you will have to reconsider this” said Poulpe from behind them. “You don’t know who you are dealing with; I have important connections, Mr. Chow, and you, Mr. Li, cannot just”

“Don’t be a dick, Poulpe” interrupted Feed. “You bet on the wrong team and now you’re done.”

“To hell with you” spat Poulpe. “You think you can just erase all our work, take it as your own and walk away? I have worked hard to make this... power. I will own it, Feed. And you will help me.”

Poulpe shoved Mr. Li and Mr. Chow aside as he reached out and grabbed Feed by the neck. His exoskeleton whined slightly as it picked him up, rocking only slightly as the train came to a stop.

“Fuck you, Poulpe” hissed Feed through clenched teeth. His hands were wrapped around the Frenchman’s armored wrist. The train stopped completely. “We rescued you, and you sold us out.”

The train sighed as it decompressed, the air in the car filling with the smell of cut grass. The door behind him slid open and he got one long look at Poulpe’s face, at the look of shock and fear there as he stared past Feed and out at the platform beyond. Tiny metal splinters had sprouted from his nech; tranq darts, Feed assumed. Poulpe began to shake a little, sweat sprouting on his forehead, and a voice came over a loudspeaker behind Feed.

“Customer 587B3S1 you are being reclaimed by the state of Disney by and for services owed there. You will come quietly. You know your rights pursuant to Article B of the Disney sovereignty agreement and are free to enjoy those services as defined in our agreement. You will have a nice day.”

Feed realized Poulpe was whispering; “please Feed please you do not understand what they will do to me it is not right Feed please oh please do not leave me with them it will hurt Feed so much please help me...”

Feed slowly lowered himself from Poulpe’s shaking arm, his trembling amplified by the suit. The stench of urine rose from the Frenchman as he let him go.

“Poulpe” said Feed. “Fuck you.”

Poulpe began to cry — real, frightened tears as he slumped forward and into the arms of the mechanized suits of the Disney guards. He was broken, Feed realized, a broken person returning to a broken state.

“Please sign here” said one of the Disney men as he boarded the train, his face hidden behind the wide white eyes of the mouse. He held out a tablet to Feed along with a little pen with Mickey’s head on the end in molded plastic. Donald Duck slow-mo’d a disco in the background behind Feed’s name as he wrote it in careful strokes.

“What will you do with him?” Feed asked. The man didn’t answer, just stood there a moment, faceless behind the mask. A long minute passed before he straightened, nodding at Feed.

“We will reintegrate him back into a happy, productive member of the Disney team” the man said. It sounded sad, the way he said it.

The disney troopers had plugged a handheld unit into Poulpe’s exoskeleton and had let it carry him to a huge truck pulled up in the parking lot next to the platform. The doors shut behind them, the remaining Mickey Mouse men marching off the platform and down to their convey. Mr. Li stepped out of the train, nodding slightly to Mr. Chow who returned the gesture with a deep bow. The train slid out of the station and disappeared into the distance, leaving behind a silence broken only by the sound the chirping of crickets in the rice fields in front of them.

“The next train will be a couple hours” said Fede. “I had to shut all of them down. Sorry.”

“That’s no problem” said Mr. Li. “It’s been a long time since I last came out here.”

They stood quietly, breathing the warming air of dawn.

A small car appeared, trundling up the road toward the station. As it got closer they could see a tiny figure waving from the front passenger window. Feed raised an eyebrow at Mr. Li.

“My granddaughter” Li said. He looked at Feed in mock surprise. “What, did you think I was on the train just for you?”

Feed slowly pulled his gloves off, sunlight breaking over the wall to warm his chest, the sweat on his face evaporating as the day arrived. The car pulled up in front of the platform and Mr. Li began to walk towards the steps.

“I’ve taken the liberty of negotiating with Chow on your friend’s behalf” said Mr. Li. “They should be released and given the best medical care available.”

“Thank you” said Feed. The weight of the last few days had begun to descend on him, a giddy joy at realizing he was alive and was likely to stay that way, if only for a while.

“My pleasure” said Mr. Li. A little girl in a pink fairy costume jumped out of the car and ran up the steps and into his arms. He called out to her in Chinese, waving brightly at the young woman getting out of the driver’s side. They exchanged a few words, the woman looking curiously at Feed over her father’s shoulder and nodding.

“Would you care to come for tea, Feed?” asked Mr. Li. “I don’t get to meet people like you often enough.”

Feed looked out over the rice fields, past the gently smiling Triad leader and his smiling granddaughter and off towards the Great Wall. He sighed and peeled his goggles backwards off his head, dropped them lightly onto the cement of the platform.

“I think” he said, stopping to take a deep breath, “I think I’d like that.”

#Prologue

When Tonx opened his eyes again the first thing he saw was Feed sitting next to him. He was wrapped in a thick wool robe but his eyes were twinkling, waiting for Tonx to say the first word.

“Where am I?” asked Tonx.

“Don’t remember a thing, do you?” Feed smiled, obviously enjoying himself. “They warned me that might happen. You’re in a hospital, Tonx.”

“Hospital?”

“Yep. Do you remember leaving China?”

Tonx heaved a sigh and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “I remember being trapped in the tunnel with Cessus and smoking some vicious big joints. Thought I was going to die down there.”

Feed grinned wide. “Uh-huh.”

“But I didn’t, huh?”

“Nope” said Feed. “You didn’t. Neither did I, or anybody else.”

Tonx started; “Where are they? Where’s my girlfriend? Is Cessus okay?”

“Calm down” said Fede. “It’s not good for you to get worked up just yet.”

He checked the monitors over Tonx’s bed before pulling the blankets up around his brother’s chest.

“Everyone’s okay. Cass took out one of the soldiers and kept the other one busy while I got away. They conked her on the head and threw her in a prison truck, but that’s it. Turns out she’s a good shot with a pistol, you know that?”

Tonx grinned a little as he settled back into the bed. “Yeah, I knew that.”

“Cessus stuck with you until you passed out, kept you from bleeding out” Fede said. “Eventually the soldiers dug you up and he handled it from there. Gave them instructions and everything, kept things working until you got to the hospital.”

“What about Marcus?” asked Tonx.

“He’s fine. He and Esco ‘disappeared’ for a day or so after the main event, won’t tell me where they went” said Fede. “That was a hell of a trick, Tonx, calling Esco and Baby in like that.”

Tonx shrugged. “We needed backup, needed an ace up our sleeve. And I was worried that Poulpe would do exactly what he did. Having them run a second cover nobody knew about meant we had a fallback plan.”

“Good thing” said Feed, sighing. “I’m glad you did it, I just wish I could have known about it earlier.”

“It was too much risk” said Tonx, staring out the window at the bright blue sky over the snowy mountains in the distance. “If they’d have captured you there wouldn’t have been any angles for us to use to get you back...”

“I know. It was a good plan. But next time I want in, all right?” said Fede.

“Sure” said Tonx. He swallowed, closed his eyes for a second. “Baby and Esco made it okay?”

“Yeah. I scared Baby half to death by hijacking his rail gun just before he shot down the ’copters, but he didn’t know there were tanks sneaking up on his rear. He swears he almost gave up being a pilot.”

“You hijacked his gun? There were tanks?” asked Tonx.

“Yeah. The network Cessus had tied the Otaku hacks through was a public access network’s sub layer” said Fede. “’The best place to hide something is out in the open,’ you know? When the Otaku slammed gridlock on the city it only left one route open, for Chow. The Tanks could force the lights to change in their favor, of course, so I could see them coming by the network traffic they caused in resetting the system’s changes. Baby was too intent on reading the data in front of him to try to interpret the noise, so I had to help him out a little.”

“And you hijacked his gun” said Tonx flatly.

“Yeah. Scared him pretty good, but he was going to ice the ’copters and there was no reason for it. So I crippled the tanks and used the explosion as a distraction” said Fede. “I invited him here with us but he insisted on going back home to Puerto Rico for a vacation. Said he’d had enough crazy foreigners to last him a while.”

“Heh” chuckled Tonx. “So everything worked out with Chow?”

“Uh-huh” said Fede. “Mr. Li handled everything. Otaku now works directly for Big Circle, and Chow’s got a new job acting as a proponent for opening up the Chinese networks. We got the recombinant from him and I deleted the virus from the networks, so there’s no evidence of how we got it, which is just the way they want it.”

“We got the recombinant?” asked Tonx, trying to sit up a little in bed. A look of panic crossed his face. “Shit, I need to get up. I need to call Pharoe...”

“Relax” said Feed. “Chill. I took the liberty of hiring a friend of yours to handle the business side of things until you recovered — I got him under retainer and everything.”

“A friend?” asked Tonx suspiciously.

“John Tucker” said Feed. “He said that Texas was getting too hot for him anyway. I already ran it by Cessus and Cass and they thought he was a good candidate, and so far he’s done a great job. Sold preliminary patent rights to Du Pont with a substantial percentage on the first few derivative products, and plenty of room for co-authorship after that.” Fede glanced up at Tonx, for a moment the little brother again. “Is that okay?”

Tonx looked at Feed in surprise. “Yeah, that’s great. That’s better than I had hoped for — I’d figured they’d just want to buy it outright. And John’s here?”

“John’s actually in California, so there’s an eight hour time difference. But he made me promise to conference him in once you were on your new feet.”

Tonx didn’t move. He stared at Feed with heavy lidded eyes and slowly pulled a strand of hair behind one ear. Something moved under the sheets at the far end of the bed.

“That’s my toe” said Tonx. Somewhere far away the air conditioning kicked in. Feed smiled.

“Yes, that’s your toe. And you’d better take care of it because you’ve only got four of them now, and they were damned expensive.”

Tonx lunged forward and threw back the bed sheets, gasping like a schoolgirl as he caught sight of what protruded from the bottom of his hospital gown. Each of his legs were nearly five feet long from hip to toe, the scar tissue fading to a gentle tan around his thighs. The toes were split into two thick digits, the nails blackened from recent surgery. The sole of his foot stretched back to a large pink joint before doubling back up towards his kneecap, and as they watched Tonx struggled himself into a sort of half-lotus, running his hands lightly over the extra joint.

“No shit” he whispered.

“No shit” agreed Feed. “John included some special research he’d found as part of his deal with us, some crazy shit the tribals were doing out in the desert. You were pretty out of it in the hospital in Beijing, so we took a vote and decided to fly you to Iceland. You’d been wanting to get Rood since forever, and since your legs were all smashed up and a bunch of folks owed us favors it kind of made sense...”

Tonx’s eyes glittered, his crooked smile spread wide. He held his hands on his new kneecaps as though they were rare sculptures, beaming with excitement.

“You little fucker” he said, his voice trembling a little. “You little fucker, Fede.”

Feed smiled. “It’s Feed” he said to his brother. “I’m Feed now. And you’re welcome. Just get well soon.”

He got up and flipped on a wall screen, flexing his fingers as he keyed in to the display and the lights in the room dimmed.

“I have this idea, see, and I need my business partner to work out the details.”

Dedicated to Hulda, for getting me there.

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