Title: The hoverskimmer sped quickly through the air
Author: Michelle Sampson
Last saved by: Geoff Hinkley
Company: Poo Bum McCheeseCrap

The hoverskimmer sped quickly through the air. Shadow had fallen over the city of London, the dark clouds covering the afternoon sky. Kathryn watched them through one of the viewports in the rear of the hoverskimmer as it darted between the buildings, only a few tens of feet above the ground. Occasionally she leaned against one of the vehicle's structural supports as the craft leaned around another tight corner. She didn't envy the pilot who had to make this trip.
Half thinking, half automatically, Kathryn fixed the silencer to her Multipoint. It was a specialist weapon for a specialist job. She'd used them before; they were standard issue at the Babylon Institute. Single handed, rapid reload, single magazine of eight bullets. One slight change in pressure on the grip of the gun and it used special target acquisition programming to lock onto the first object directly ahead of the barrel. The next press of the trigger sent a bullet directly at the target, even if it was moving. A fast, efficient and highly useful system. Plus, it could lock four targets at once, useful for clearing out blockades.
Suddenly, her implanted digital connection fired up. 
"Agent Phoenix, this is the Babylon Institute, do you copy?"
The voice was commanding, though calm, and with a slightly Scottish accent. It was the institute director, David Rockington.
Kathryn turned half her attention to the link, while continuing to load and check her Multipoint.
"Agent Phoenix here. En route to Dalyn-Steward. ETA four minutes."
"You know your objective, Agent Phoenix. You'll enter the building from the rooftop. Work your way down and secure the upper maintenance level. Drop your countermeasures there and activate them. From there, we estimate you'll have five minutes to descend in the elevator to the 377th floor and enter the air vent system from the lavatories on that floor. From there, you should have a clear path to the meeting room. Plant your surveillance equipment there and proceed back to the rooftop. Our pilot will make another pass and pick you up."
"Understood." Kathryn paused for a moment, locking the Multipoint ammunition into place. "Any idea what they're up to?"
"Only vague ideas, and I won't trouble you with those. The only information we have from our contact is that a man named Dietrich is going to make an announcement of some sort regarding his project. We have to know what's going on. Lives could be at stake."
There was a slight pause, and then Rockington's voice became even more serious.
"You are authorised to use lethal force, but remember our rules for non-combatants."
Kathryn nodded to herself.
"Affirmative."
She looked out of the viewport again and saw the tall, needle-like building rapidly approaching.
"We're approaching the objective. Phoenix out."
With a quick thought, the connection was closed. Kathryn rose from the floor of the craft and readied herself at the door, gripping the rope attached to the outside of the hoverskimmer. Suddenly there was a change in the engine noise from the vehicle and Kathryn felt the force of gravity increasing. The hoverskimmer was making its final ascent.
The door slid open with almost worrying ease. Windows in the side of the Dalyn-Steward building flashed past as the hoverskimmer rose upwards. Suddenly, there was no more building, they had climbed to its roof. Kathryn's reaction was instant; with barely a glance downwards, she tightened her grip on the rope and jumped.
There were barely two seconds before she landed on the rooftop and let go of the rope, but in that time she had already targeted the two rooftop guards with her Multipoint. Two trigger presses and they were of no more danger. The hoverskimmer disappeared over the building and descended. The clock was ticking. Eight minutes. Kathryn ran to the door leading inwards from the rooftop, barely stopping to check that the guards weren't faking. There was no time for mistakes. Quickly, Kathryn opened the door and rushed inside.
Chris Smith, 13/10/00
(Submission inserted into existing text)

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Peter Dietrich was jumpy. A small dermal patch behind the ear solved that problem, the endorphins released into his bloodstream. The patch calmed him down enough to concentrate on the news uplink site he had connected to via the plug in his temple. Food riots in London, mass terrorism by so-called freedom fighters resulting in the city’s supply being cut in half for non-corporate citizens. Pollution levels normal; there were a mere eleven smog alerts this month. No real news to speak of, just the normal junk that served to make the news corporations a profit.
Dietrich checked the time again. Timing was essential. Too early and he would look too eager, too late and they would not even admit him. He examined himself in the mirror he always kept on him. Blonde hair cut to the latest fashion, the wavy locks covering the discreet silver plug. He checked his suit, the double-breasted charcoal grey Regal suit, with the platinum cufflinks with the limited edition Marshall Brothers diamond studs, and the twelve hundred credit Chronoex watch. Perfect for knocking those executives dead.
The lift started making its way up the four hundred floor building, the headquarters of the Dalyn-Steward Corporation. The building dominated the skyline of London, placed on the site of the old Canary Wharf tower after it was destroyed in the Asia Wars of 2021. The black needle was the landmark of the city, a sign of power where the credit ruled all.
The very fact that Dietrich was here at all was a testimony to his seven years of hard work; his promotion to external operations executive was speeded up by the sudden and unexpected demise of his superior. Dietrich smiled to himself. In this game it was survival of the fittest, and his superior just could not cut it. 
The lift slowed to a halt at the 376th floor. Dietrich fished out a thin fibre-optic cable, attached one end to his plug and the other into the Datamanä hidden in his collar. Checking this in the mirrored glass of the lift, he nodded to himself with satisfaction. Barely visible. Slick. 
The door silently slid open and he was confronted by a tower of a man standing in a small lobby area. Dietrich tried not to flinch. The guard was easily six and a half feet tall and was dressed in a expensive black suit. This did not detract from his purpose. He had muscles like steel cables and eyes like cameras. Knowing the corp, Dietrich thought, they probably were. The man barely moved, just a slight motion towards the small reader he held in his meaty hands. 
Giving the guard his ivory-plated passchip, he entered the main concourse, an area designed to show the superiority of the corporation. The rectangular room was deserted except for the secretary sitting at her desk. The roof was arched and high, an obvious display of wealth in a world where space was a very expensive commodity. The Dalyn-Steward corporation logo adorned the desk and the wall behind it. A red dragon on a black diamond.
Dietrich approached the secretary, who did not acknowledge his presence. She was sitting behind a black marble desk, her expression blank, a wire leading from a terminal to a plug behind her ear. Sensors detected his presence, disconnecting her from the Net. Her eyes fluttered for a second as she reaccustomed herself to the different reality of the real world. She looked up at him with silver eyes, top of the range replacements probably shipped in from the new manufacturing department in the corporation’s new offshore arcology. 
"Mr. Dietrich. The Board are expecting you." 
With a nod Dietrich walked towards the heavy double doors, which opened automatically. In front of him was a long, sleek table. Jacks and screens were placed discreetly into the wooden surface. Real wood, he thought. No obvious guards or security measures, but with the amount of power wielded in this room he knew the corporation would keep their best assets well guarded.
Sitting around the table was the board of directors, six of the most powerful men in this corporation, which in turn was the most powerful corporation in Europe. At the head of this table was Mr. Charles Dalyn-Steward himself, one of the most powerful men in the world. According to the biography he was seventy-six but he looked barely over forty, a calm man with pale skin and just a trace of grey in his black hair. He sat in a high-backed padded chair, his back to the floor-to ceiling windows which looked out onto the rest of the city. With the building here above the smog levels you could see out on to the sea.
Dalyn-Steward smiled slightly as Dietrich approached. The other men turned to watch him. Corporate predators each one of them. If he showed any sign of weakness they would see him fired for wasting Mr. Dalyn-Steward’s time. In this business you would not have the opportunity to work for another company, or anyone else for that matter.
"So, Peter," said Mr. Dalyn-Steward, "explain to us your plans for your new project."
Andrew Jones, 27/09/00

---------
The old man looked out across the Thames towards the Isle of Dogs and the black needle that became lost amongst the purple clouds. The sun was setting and the sky was a multitude of livid hues, as the sunlight filtered through an aerosol of carcinogens. He remembered the old tower, dwarfish by today's standards. It had been blown up by a shrill group of Chinese immigrants in '21. The broadsheets had called it a cry for help, the only way that the increasingly ignored migrants could make themselves heard by a society that had abused and dismissed them.
Of course, the tabloids had been less sympathetic: "Asia War", "Yellow Peril" and "The Dragon Arises". Nothing had come of their desperate act, of course, and now One Canada Square rose nearly three kilometres above the waters of the Thames. You could not stand against progress.
He brushed his now snow-white fringe from his eyes. His fine hair had been endearingly boyish in his youth. Now it made him look like a decrepit old dandy. He watched the lights of the northern bank of the river from his luxuriously minimalist Leander Court apartment. He recalled when the Docklands development had been a joke. That was so long ago, in the days before he signed his name in blood on the dotted line. It was funny how things turned out, particularly when they turned out exactly as you had imagined.
The antique compact disc played on in the background, music from his youth:
"We found you hiding, we found you lying
choking on the dirt and sand
your former glories and all the stories
dragged and washed with eager hands..." 
He smiled and thought of Weissmann. The Jew's assassins would be here soon: the Yon-Ju-Shichi Ronin on whom he had inexplicably decided to lavish money. "Soon I'll be dead, " thought the old man. Not that it mattered to him. It would be an insignificant development if everything went according to plan. He smiled wryly.
The sun was down now. Evening came. Morning came. Shabbat was over, the Haredim would be going to work.
"Oh, Efraim. Wait until you find out what I'm going to do to you before this is all over."
Geoff Hinkley, 29/09/00

The stairs downwards were unguarded. To Kathryn that was little comfort, in fact it worried her. Less guards here meant more guards inside.
The metal stairs ended with a fairly sturdy door. Kathryn carefully tried the handle. It opened. Readying herself, she slipped through into the main section of the building.
The first she knew of the guard was a surprised shout from across the gantry she had stepped onto. She lined up the Multipoint and fired. No need for target acquisition on that one, just pure natural skill. The limp body of the guard crashed noisily to the floor. Kathryn crouched quickly and looked around, ready for more guards.
She had stepped onto a gantry overhanging a mass of air conditioning vents and various humming pipes. The upper maintenance section. The countermeasures package was only slightly bigger than a cassette case, and fitted nicely to one of the air vents running past the gantry. One flick of a switch on the side and the device came to life, jamming all the motion sensor trips and heat detectors in the building. Security cameras were still operative but disrupting them would have caused too much suspicion.
Satisfied that no more guards were coming, Kathryn made her way silently across the gantry and down the next set of stairs to the floor of the maintenance section. Here she could hear each individual pipe and vent humming as she crept past them. From some she could feel heat being dissipated into the air. Some form of cooling system.
There was a stairwell downwards. Kathryn followed it and found another door. This one seemed a little less sturdy than the last. Just as well, really, Kathryn thought, as when she tried it, the door proved to be locked. Reaching to her side, she produced a small mass of white material. She fixed it to the locking mechanism and took a few steps back. One well placed shot from the Multipoint and it exploded, sending a shower of splinters in all directions. Kathryn was through the door in a flash. The first guard was pistol-whipped across the head as she emerged, the second shot as she spun round, her Multipoint ready to fire as she did so. Institute training had taught her about infiltration, she was used to this kind of procedure.
The bodies of the guards were easily pulled back into the maintenance section. Kathryn closed the door behind her. From a distance, there was no obvious visible damage. Hopefully that kind of force wouldn't be required again.
The corridor she had entered bore all the markings of a high-level corporation. Dragon motif on the walls, brightly lit marble corridor, red carpet with gold trimmings, it was all there. Unfortunately, Kathryn didn't have time to appreciate it. She walked quickly down the corridor and found the lift, exactly where it was on the building plans. Thank goodness the Babylon Institute had access to those!
Stepping into the lift, Kathryn selected the floor that had been referred to in the briefing - number 377. The lift doors closed and the lift began its silent journey into the bowels of the building. Kathryn stowed the Multipoint in its holster beneath her office dress and tried to look as composed as possible. Doing espionage work was tricky enough, but in office clothes?
There was a quiet tone as the lift reached its destination. The doors slid open and Agent-cum-office worker Kathryn Harwell stepped out. She nodded a formal greeting to the guards at the lift entrance, and walked on without waiting for a response. She proceeded down the corridor and disappeared around the corner. Looking around to make sure no-one else was present, she tried the door to the lavatories.
A moment's listening confirmed that there were no other people present in the lavatories. That was lucky, things would have been much trickier otherwise. Kathryn quickly found the vent and used another small charge of white material to remove the vent cover. She climbed into the opening and replaced the cover behind her. Back at the Institute, Kathryn had memorised the route she had to take, so reaching the right room wouldn't be a problem. Almost without thinking, she checked her watch, which displayed the amount of time she had left to find her way back to the rooftop. Five minutes. This would be close.
The descent to the next floor down had been a little rougher than she had wanted, but it took only a minute or so to climb through the air vent system to the correct room. Kathryn could see the meeting room through the vent opening. Dietrich was about to greet the Board of Directors. Kathryn quickly fished out the remote surveillance device and attached it to the vent so that it could see the scene below. Kathryn opened a quick connection to the device with her implant, making sure that it was working correctly. The feed would be relayed back to the Babylon Institute, so she closed the connection and started to head back upwards. She'd see the recorded data later.
Everything went fine on her way up. The way back to the elevator, no problems. Getting to the maintenance level was easy. But as she opened the door back on to the rooftop, Kathryn was met a group of armed guards. More than her Multipoint could lock onto in one go.
"Stop right there, we've got you cornered." The lead guard levelled an automatic shotgun at Kathryn's chest. From below the gantry behind her, she could hear the sound of guards coming through the door on to the upper maintenance level. Damn, trapped!
There was no time to think. Kathryn slammed the door in the guard's face and ran back down the gantry, barely stopping to take the stairs; she opted to take them all in two jumps. With any luck, she could outrun the guards in the mass of piping for about thirty seconds, that was all she needed. One thought and the implant connection to the hoverskimmer was open.
"Agent Phoenix, we have -"
"No time," Kathryn interrupted the pilot. "What is your position?"
"Twenty seconds from pickup, ascending west side of building."
Kathryn allowed herself half a second to think.
"Lock on to my implant signal and come up underneath me." There was a confused sound from the pilot before Kathryn closed the connection. West side. Behind her. There was a window on the far wall, big enough for her needs. Levelling her Multipoint, Kathryn fired at the glass. The sound of her silenced bullets was completely drowned out by the roaring of automatic fire that erupted around her. Sparks flew off metal as the bullets ricocheted off the air vents. Kathryn started her run. She hoped this would work.
The window shattered as it was hit by four Multipoint bullets. Five seconds later they were followed by Kathryn, leaping into the air through the window, several hundred feet above Central London. Her gaze immediately shifted downwards. Beneath her, Kathryn could see the shape of the hoverskimmer rising to meet her. Its roof hit her feet hard and she was pushed flat against its surface. There was a brief moment as her hands flailed to find grips. Fortunately, the hoverskimmer pilot was well trained, and had already started to move away from the towering building. A hail of automatic fire followed it, but they were already out of range.
In a series of slow, steady movements, Kathryn pushed herself across the top of the hoverskimmer and slid open the door on the rear of the craft. In one action she slid off the roof, grabbed the handle on the inside of the door and swung herself inside, quickly sliding the door shut behind her.From her collapsed position in the back of the hoverskimmer, Kathryn activated her implant connection to the Babylon Institute.
"Babylon, this is Agent Phoenix, reporting in..."
Chris Smith, 13/10/00
(Submission inserted into existing text)

You had to admit, thought Mei, that it was a nice room. There were, admittedly, some small details that would have needed to be changed in orderfor her to feel comfortable - like removing the bars from the windows,putting a mattress on the bed, or maybe just untying her hands. But it wasnice - easily the cleanest and newest cell she'd seen. She hadn't been inmany - she was still only twenty-three, and she was more often standingoutside than in.
Lying on the floor by the mattress-less bed, her dark hair fell across mostof her face - normally she'd wear it up. The face it covered contained apair of dark, piercing eyes that darted around the room - quite in contrastto the stillness of the rest of her body. She was wearing a jumpsuit -black, no insignia - but her feet were bare, although not tied up like herupper torso. At least, she conceded, she'd be able to move. 
Straining to grab hold of the edge of the bed with her fingertips, shepulled herself upright into a sitting position. Almost immediately, a wave ofnausea swept over her and she had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up.Shit - drugs, she thought, who the fuck had drugged her? Presumably thesame people who had thrown her into this room and tied her up. If only herhead would clear up she might be able to remember. Still - that should beeasy enough to remedy.
Pushing against her back teeth with the tip of her tongue, Mei felt theslight give as one of her hollow teeth popped open and released itscontents. She swallowed again - this time closing her eyes and shuddering asthe stimulant got to work clearing out her system. It felt exactly like abad hangover, with the difference that it was over and done with in thirtyseconds. Closing the tooth again, she lay back and tried to concentrate.
The grey fuzz that filled her memory reluctantly moved aside and revealed afew scant details of recent events. She remembered landing in London, andgetting into the taxi. She remembered a hotel room, and a knock at the door.After that, everything was still blurred - apart from a few images. Sheremembered someone hitting her - the bruises on her arm were still fresh enough for this to have been within the last 24 hours. She suspected very strongly she'd killed at least one of them - but they'd... shot her? Dartgun probably - she doubted they'd have missed at that kind of range and it explained how she had been feeling. The last thing she remembered was the faceof some slick blonde bastard with a nervous smile.
Clicking her mind back to the present and walking across the floor, she stoodon tiptoes and tried to peer out the window. There seemed to be a fine metalgrill on the other side of the bars that stopped her from seeing out. So noclues there then - except a slight breeze that probably meant she was aboveground - either that or the air conditioner had been put on the "pollution"fragrance setting. She paced across the room and back - trying to remain objective, but mostly just trying not to panic.
This wasn't helped by the footsteps that were approaching along the corridor- especially when they stopped outside her door. Schooling her face andstanding upright, she heard the sound of an electronic lock being activated,and watched as the door slowly opened, and a man stepped in.
Stewart Cowan, 3/10/00

Shadbolt stood motionless. The Medico operatives would be closingnow. Heat sensitive equipment would be useless amongst these boilers, andif they carried particle disturbance sensors they would walk right past him as long as he stayed still. He regulated his breathing. He fed alittle more adrenaline into his system. He was ready.
Behind him was Dove. The girl's expression was unreadable behind theprosthetic mask she wore; a necessity after her narrow escape from thefire. Shadbolt knew he had her as long as she remained dependent on hischemical bliss. The concoction was simply a combination of some of the more common street drugs, but her addiction was reinforced by subtle influences he had hard-coded into her CICI. He ruled her. She could berelied upon. 
"I'm in," she said. Hacking the main Medico mainframe would have beenbeyond even her abilities, but the local subnet the team of operativeswere running was a different matter. Once she had access to that, she could read their positions, equipment, even their conversation. "Four advancing down the corridor, one co-ordinating."
Shadbolt activated his own CICI, and linked with Dove.
* RECORDING ON
* Receiving - local map - transfer complete
* Target acquisition applet running
* Phorm sub-system OK
* TA Target Lock
He waited until the first operative rounded the corner, then spun out ofhiding and raised his Virgin .50 twin magazine automatic. The Medico operative was fast, accelerated by his own implants, but Shadbolt's heavily customised Co-processor overmatched it. The hollowpoint slugs slammed into the man's head, one after the other, and he fell. Through his CICI Shadbolt could tell where the men scattered to, where they regrouped. He flicked the pin from a grenade and threw it over a bank of pipes. Theremaining four Medico employees scattered, but the explosion tore open the pipes and the corridor became choked with scalding steam. Through it all Shadbolt strode, using his link to find them. One by one he dealt with them.
* Phorm sub-system active
* TA applet finished
* Phorm reports: Minimal external damage
* RECORDING OFF
"Finished?" Dove called from her hiding place.
"All gone. They were stupid. Dead stupid." Shadbolt liked cliché.
But there was little time to chat; Shadbolt had to meet his Indian contact in half an hour, or he would have to find a new buyer for the plutonium. Interruptions like this from Medico were just distractions. Oneday he'd even get around to selling the schematics he'd taken from them inunofficial additional to his redundancy package.
Ben Wright, 03/10/00

There was a knock at her door. Nell wriggled uncomfortably to her feet and, after a quick last nervous glance in the mirror, dashed to the door. She was more comfortable in combats and khakis. Her hair she had refused to compromise on, however. She didn't need to. She had paid enough for the coiffure ("Kwaffewer," she thought with a mental giggle, "in't we gettin' posh, Nell girl.") at an exclusive salon in West Central. It was all short, electric-blue spikes.
The two Haredim at the door were somewhat taken aback by the apparition with which they were confronted when she opened the door. They were used to her in boots, combats and a sleeveless T-shirt with unshaven armpits. The vision of corporate elegance into which she was transformed was faintly absurd. They should not have been so surprised though. She was an associate of the Yon-Ju-Shichi, after all, and their fees and professional service were well in line with those of lawyers, consultants and bankers of the highest brass.
"Awright boys, not seen me in me whistle, 'ave yer?" She grinned at them. "Cleaned up nice, dinn'i?"
Moshe, the driver, nodded. Yehudi grinned. "A vision of splendour. A real tsatske."
Rake-hell Nell, world-class Ronin, frowned, showing her teeth.
"I wish you wouldn't use all that palaver, Yehudi. I can't tell when you're mouthin' off. I might just 'ave to assume the worst."
"It means 'gem'," said Moshe quickly. Nell grinned. Your average bloke was always a little bit cagey around Metamorphs but then it probably was sensible when they could punch through your ribcage and out the other side.
Yehudi, on the other hand, had been flirty since she had been introduced to him by Rabbi Efraim Weissmann, her current employer. Quite a few men were a bit like that. They found female 'Morphs a phenomenal turn-on. The prospect of sticking their 'Arvey Nick up a human killing machine was scarily thrilling. Yehudi was hardly the first like that. Nell didn't mind. She liked the attention.
In fact, Yehudi was not the only member of London's Ha Aheret David to have designs on Nell, indeed most Jewish men that Nell had met seemed to entertain fantasies of shtupping a shiksa, but there was an awkward rumour going around that the Rabbi himself was having his wicked way with Nell. It was not true. Rabbi Efraim Weissmann was happily married to his third wife, Ruth, a quiet submissive Jewish princess, just like the previous two.
In the car she said, "You got your end sorted, Yehudi."
"No schlep! Just the last on-the-spot run."
"Sweet."
"Nelly, what's this schlemiel done to get Rav Weissmann so crazy?"
"Smells like a monkey job to me."
"Monkey job?"
"Bugger's gone and made Mister Weissmann look like a monkey, inne? So the Rav's out for claret."
"Rather him than me."
"And if you call me Nelly again I'll snick yer weasel'n'stoat."
"Oy vey. As you like, Pumpkin."
Nell growled.
The car, a deep red Merc, had crossed Waterloo Bridge and was driving into Docklands now. Yippie ('Young infotech proficient professionals') apartment blocks were springing up all around them and the colossal pillar of light that was Canary Wharf loomed up ahead, separate from the forest of such monstrous edifices that sprouted up to their left in East Central.
Moshe said something in Hebrew and Yehudi nodded and grunted. Then the lippy hacker closed his eyes and a look of intense concentration came over his face. His brow furrowed. He remained like this for half a minute or so and then his face registered sudden surprise.
"That wasn't there before."
Nell, thrown by the abrupt absence of Yehudi's confident swagger, asked, "Everything peachy, Yehudi?"
"Don't kibitz," was the shirty response.
This was followed another twenty seconds later by, "Yentzed it". Moshe seemed to have paced his driving to perfection, despite the traffic, even on a Saturday night. The Merc wheeled round into a car park. The door rolled up into the ceiling as they descended the ramp. Yehudi grinned. "See Nell, doesn't get much more fucking yentzed than that."
"Jesus, Yehudi, what do you want, a prize? Who's been teaching you to blind like that, anyhow?" As an afterthought, "You got the clockers?"
"Clockers?"
"They should teach you Yids to speak English 'stead of blinding in front of ladies present. Security cameras you muppet."
"Ladies present. Where?" Yehudi mimed glancing round in confusion. He grinned at Nell, perhaps a little nervously, and held his hands up to show he was japing.
"Watch it. So am I clear?"
"Clear Nell." Yehudi smiled underneath his beard.
She got out of the car and shut the door gingerly (not long after she had undergone the Nietzsche Metamorphosis she had put her arm through the side of Yoshio's Lambourghini). She checked her jacket: two long throwing knives, Schneider Corpus Christi 18 mil Pistol ("Eine Uberpistole fur ein Ubermensch"), key to the old man's apartment. Check. She strode off towards the lift, glancing back over her shoulder to grin wickedly at Yehudi.
Once she was in the lift and the doors were closed on her she inhaled deeply through her nose. Breathing out again she tried to feel the cocky cockney demeanour filter out with the breath. She was tense, almost scared. She always was when she was on the job. "Use your fear. It is a weapon. But do not let it use you." Yoshio's voice came back to her.
An elaborate J.S. Bach Prelude and Fugue passed for muzak in the lift and Nell stood therein in an expensively tailored trouser suit. And she was thinking of Yoshio. She almost smiled. His voice again, "Don't think about me, Nell. Just the kill. Sword soul."
Sword soul. The body as a weapon. The mind as a weapon. If you think that you might die, that you might lose, that you missed your dentist's appointment that morning and you don't want to die with toothache then you lose. To win think about only what you must do to win. Focus.
Yes, Yoshio. "Where are you, you Nip bastard? I miss you." The doors of the lift opened.
She had been only fifteen when Yoshio had found her in the streets of Bow, the mythic hometown of the Cockney Londoner. He had realised her talent and had taken her away to Hokkaido to train as an apprentice of the Yon-Ju-Shichi. Now she was an associate, one of the Forty Seven Ronin themselves.
He had worn all black: a thigh-length leather jacket, turtle neck sweater, boots, shades, combats. Even his exquisitely trimmed pony-tail and little pointed beard were jet black. And she alone called him Yoshio. To everyone else at the Hokkaido training camp he was Fuyukage-sama, full partner of the Yon-Ju-Shichi. But to her, at nights, those sighing, sweating nights, he was Yoshio. It was hers, that precious, secret name. "Yoshio, I miss you."
Focus. Sword soul. Nell, do not think about me.
She breathed and stepped out of the lift. She was letting herself get distracted. Focus. The carpet beneath her feet was plush, marbled blue and gold. Elegant pine doors lined the right-hand side of the corridor. Riverside apartments, very yippie. The numbers were shown on elegant gold plates. The cream walls and ceiling were lit by a soft, diffuse white light. She walked down the corridor with hastily refined deportement. 401; 402; 403; 404. Bingo.
She took the key from her jacket pocket and pushed it into the lock. She took pleasure in her feigned nonchalance. Nobody passing could not have known that she should not have been there. Even his neighbours would have assumed she was some aspiring yippie fucking her way up the food chain. There was nobody in the corridor though. The door opened smoothly and, apart from the gentlest click of the key in the lock, silently.
She stepped into the room.
No carpet. The floor was panelled with ebony. Bar/kitchen chrome, black marble work surfaces. The walls and ceiling were white and, in the actinic strip-lighting, quite headache inducing.
"Good evening, Nell." She heard the voice whilst she was still scanning the room before she could identify the speaker. The harsh lighting, in contrast to the much softer ambience of the hall, was disorienting.
"Cup of tea?" He was sitting at a glass-topped table with a black teapot and two cups sitting on it. He sat in a high-back black leather swivel chair. White hair flopped over his eyes. He wore a simple white shirt and black jeans, entirely in keeping with the vehement black-and-white of the apartment. Another identical chair had been placed at the other end of the table, empty, as though he was expecting someone.
"It's Oolong," he added matter-of-factly, calmly.
At this point Nell's mind was racing with questions: "You know me?"; "You know why I'm here?"; "If you know why I'm here why do you just sit there you crazy, old bastard?".
Focus. Sword soul.
She kicked the door shut behind and drew her throwing knives in a smooth motion but so fast that a human eye could not have followed the motion. She threw the knives, left then right.
The first bit right through the side of the old man's neck, sliced a deep gash through the leather seat and hurtled on to embed itself deep in the wall behind him. The second slammed point-first into his chest. The chair skidded backwards three metres just as a huge pulse of blood spurted from his neck.
The old man smiled faintly, shrugged and slumped.
"Creepy old bastard," Nell muttered. She watched the rhythm of the jet of blood from the man's neck grow weaker and more erratic and then stop altogether. She then crossed the room and pulled her knife from the wall. She carefully dislodged the second knife from the corpse's chest, making sure that she did not get bloodied in the process. She crossed to the lounge area where she wiped the blades off on the rug before replacing them inside her jacket.
She turned the latch of the door using a handkerchief and walked on out into the corridor, the door closing behind her.
"How'd it go, Pumpkin?" asked Yehudi when she got back to the car.
"No schlep!"
Geoff Hinkley, 26/09/00

It was raining hard, the droplets bouncing an inch above the concrete steps. Rice gripped the riot shield closer to him and looked out through the plas-steel window onto the madness broiling below. Half-starved wretches threw bottles and rubbish at the shield wall. Their shouting was like some angry animal baying for blood, his blood.
There was a constant buzz of voices over the comm channel relaying orders. The police couldn’t afford plug-in communication; it could hardly afford the men to stop the escalating number of food riots. A rock bounced off his helmet, thrown from one of the roofs across the street. He cursed as his head began to pound and the comm line went dead. He shouted to the sergeant over his shoulder - a tall weaselly man called Sneet or Snot or something.
The wall moved forward, taking Rice completely by surprise and pulling him off his feet. The wall broke and the rioters, seeing an opening, surged towards it, screams echoing down the street. The police opened fire.
"They’re calling it a ‘triumph of justice’, can you believe that? Those fucking cops kill over two hundred unarmed women and children and they get medals for it?"
"Be calm, Benjamin. I am sure that Mr Dalyn-Steward will have a good explanation and a better handle on the facts than whatever paper you are currently avoiding the nude females in."
"I’m sure he does, but what makes you think he’ll tell us? Not that we ever get to meet him anyway."
"Benjamin, Mr Dalyn-Steward is the chairman of a multi-trillion dollar company he does not meet people like us. As for his honesty, I trust him not a bit, nor his people, but we need him and we do have the disk if he betrays us before we are ready to betray him."
"Yeah whatever."
Sergeant Sant waited nervously outside the mayor's office, folding and refolding that morning's paper, a real one he had got from a street vendor. He could have got one online for free, but he was stalling all the way here. The familiar yell of Captain Jacobs bade him enter as the aide opened the door. He was escorted into a small cramped office with city maps on the walls and filing cabinets stuffed to overflowing.
The familiar bulk of the captain sat rigidly upright in a stiff, city council chair, a second was vacant next to it. The mayor sat with an aide behind a steel desk that was covered in reports and letters.
The man who sat behind it was middle-aged and had the look of a politician. Very calm grey eyes, contrasting with jet black skin and hair, made him appear to be drugged or dead - apart from the life with which his fingers played with pen or paper or computer. His aide was ordinary-looking with a cheap suit similar to Sants’ and wavy hair.
The mayor smiled at Sant as he walked in and Jacobs was already staring at him as though he could explode by force of will.
"Sergeant Sant. Won’t you come in? This is my associate, Benjamin Stark. He will be leading the investigation into the ‘triumph of justice’ that occurred yesterday. I trust he will have your fullest co-operation..."
Dave Watson, 09/10/00

"Mmmm, that’s good."
"Baby, more"
"Oh oh"
[Crash]
Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t because I couldn’t have seen it coming. It was simple apathy that meant this idiot got the drop on me. To put it simply, I don’t care anymore. When death wants me, he can take me.
[Bang]
But not without a fight. I was rolling long before he pulled the trigger. It is, however, a shame she wasn’t. Now, I don’t know which came first: the female scream as a bullet crashed into her, or my shoulder smashing down against the bedside table, sending the contents flying into the air.
I could see him now, standing in the doorway. His skin was pale and he had that wild-eyed look of a desperate man. His hair was dishevelled, and looked like a wig anyway. Blue eyes, chipped tooth. And a gun, still smoking - its evil barrel already moving across the bed towards me. Yes, I saw all that as I fell off the hooker - try being shot at sometime. It does wonders for your perception.
My hand flew upwards after my skyward bound gun as the idiot recovered his aim. My hand closed around the stock as his forefinger began to move. Now, I know you have seen the movies in which the hero can pull off shots whilst hipshooting with a gun he's just snatched out of the air. Trust me, that’s strictly for the movies. Fortunately for me, at this range even a movie star couldn’t miss. I winged him, and he staggered backwards, his good hand going to nurse his leaking shoulder.
I stood up.
"What in blazes are you doing?"
He just looked at me, those desperate eyes getting skittish and scared. I could hear her breathing clearly. It was the sort of rasping, gargling sound of someone drowning in their own blood.
"What are you doing?"
I used my calm, controlled, you-dumbass-jerk-you-just-interrupted-my-shag voice. It’s the kind of voice that demands an answer.
"You bastard. You asshole. You..."
"What are you talking about?"
"You fucking sold me. You sold my soul to the company."
"Damn straight I did. And your life now is a whole truckload better than it was. If you don’t believe me, I better pull this trigger."
Now, I don’t know if he believed me or not, but his gunhand started moving up. Idiot. 
There didn’t seem to be a whole lot more I could do here, so I grabbed my coat and trousers and left. Alex was standing in the corridor outside waiting for me.
"He had an accomplice."
Alex wasn’t much given to long speeches. In one short sentence he had managed to say not only why he wasn’t there sooner, but also ‘sorry’ and ‘I’m not your damn bodyguard anyway’. I don’t know what he had to apologise about, after all it had been him who had shot the idiot when he moved his hand. Just because he beat me to it, you understand. Alex was the kind of man who would.
I just shrugged and walked towards the car, crushing some hophead's discards under my hobnail boots. That’s right, I fuck in hobnailed boots. You never know when you might have to leg it.
"Death follows you."
There are a few things I don’t understand about Alex. His religion for one. I mean he obviously has one and it gives him some kind of weird spiritual strength. But I couldn’t understand it if I tried.
"It follows you like a jackal, and preys on the weak."
"Do you think she will make it?"
Alex shrugged. It could have meant that he didn’t know, or that it didn’t matter. And probably meant both.
"Is the Spriggan ready?"
The Spriggan is my boat. Once upon a time she was a long haul ferry. Then some genius thought that she would make a great salvage vessel. Now I run her as a tramp ship.
"I think so. She should have the last of the cargo on board by dawn, and has a full tank now."
I nodded and rooted around the glovebox for an energy drink. I could have sworn I put one in here this morning.
"I drank it."
Oh well, that was the end of that. How was that suit’s meeting going? He looked a little green to me, but that’s how they made them these days. Live fast, die young, good looking corpse, etc, etc. Still, we were ready to go if he was.
"Some townie wants to talk. About radioactives."
There I am, thinking about multi-million cred corporate espionage and terrorism, and Alex changes the subject.
"Uh-huh," is the most suitable reply I can think of.
Lots of people have accused me of lots of things. I think the most common, and most inaccurate, is the accusation that I don’t know the value of life. I do. Between five and twenty-five grand to be precise. Trust me on this. I am an authority. You see, I am a slave trader. But let me tell you something else. Once upon a time I was on the side of the angels. I got disillusioned.
Kev Gilmore, 10/10/00

Svensson jogged idly from foot to foot.
"They were five of our best men,"he said.
Four men and a woman actually. Although they constituted Medico Security, they were often used for fringe activities like this. Or rather, had been used. For all their training, they were simply not of the same calibre as the major forces on the street, like the larger criminal gangs, most other corporations and, of course, the GSSA. The man next to Svensson, Lieutenant Morris, kneeled to look at the nearest body. He took a bullet from where it had stuck in the dead man's unnaturally toughened skull.
"Depleted uranium spinner," Morris explained. "You can't get hold of these for love and money over here. They're only issued to metamorphs working for either CalcuttaCorp, or one of the criminal gangs associated with it. See how the corkscrew shape is designed to bore through metamorph skin? He's either working for CalcuttaCorp or involved with someone closely related to them."
Some paramedics were already loading the dead into an ambulance. Svensson swallowed.
"We tried to keep it from the GSSA; thought we could handle it ourselves, but after this fiasco we decided to come clean."
"What exactly did he steal?"
"His own revised plans for the CICI. He got a 15 per cent increase in speed over our next best model. Then when he got fired, he activated a virus in our computers. Wiped out all records save his own."
"How did he manage that? Surely you have measures in place."
"It was bi-partite. One part was in the schematics themselves, the other in the reader software. Whenever we tried to read a copy, or duplicate one, it erased itself immediately, then tried to erase all other existing copies. By the time we realised what was happening it was too late."
"Backups?"
"We have them on file; but they're likewise infected with half of the virus. We're having to rewrite the viewer software from scratch to getat it."
"He was good," Morris judged, "but we're better. The GSSA will pull him down. This Shadbolt's days are numbered. He's almost as good as our troops, but fortunately not quite."
Svensson said nothing. Two months ago Shadbolt has been almost as good as the Medico Security men.
Ben Wright, 10/10/00

---------------
Consciousness, the state where reality does its worst to you. The light in this reality was certainly trying to do its worst to the figure on the bed. It blinks in the brightness, looking around to take in its surroundings. The room looks much as it did when the figure went under, a reputable private surgery in one of the nicer parts of town. The large mirror dominating much of the far wall reflects the figure's face. The smooth-shaven face and square jaw turns this way and that as the individual takes in the sight. They seem impressed by what they see, as if this is the first time they have seen this perfect visage.
At this moment the door opposite the mirror opens and in comes another figure. The strikingly tall, slender female frame is covered with an equally long white coat. The stethoscope around her neck, and patch pack she carries, clearly identifies her as a doctor.
"Well," the pause is obvious, "Mr Smith. The surgery was a great success. Now all we need do is check to see whether the primary implants are working, shall we?"
Taking a small curved device, she places it upon the forehead of the patient. It sticks to the skin with ease. Further devices are attached to the base of the neck above the collarbone and either side of the spine. To these devices the doctor attaches wires, plugging them also into some kind of handheld device she retrieves from her left pocket.
"Ready?"
The man on the bed turns to her, his pleasant tenor voice barely a whisper, "Let's go for it."
Suddenly the man's world is turned inside out, tenor voice screaming in pain as the doctor's fingers move nimbly over controls on the device in her hand. He writhes and arches his back, hands bent in on themselves, distorted into claws. The screaming dies down into a gurgle and the man rolls from the bed, crashing to the floor. His breath is shallow and crimson blood oozes from between his lips.
Placing the control box purposefully onto the floor next to the prone body, the doctor kneels down so her mouth is close to an upturned ear.
"I'm so sorry to do this, but I assure you I have no personal grievance with you."
He tries to move his head so he can see her properly, but the pain of his contracted muscles and tightening limbs stop his futile efforts before they even get started. 
"W-why?" he manages to croak.
"Well, it's a cliché and I know it," she replies, "but the pay cheque is beyond a doubt the biggest factor."
And with that she stands up and brings her foot down hard on the controller in one swift movement. She closes the door on 'Mr Smith' as his final screams and death spasms cause several of his bones to break with sickening cracks, and his figure to be drawn into a hideous caricature of a man.
Paul Taylor, 12/10/00

-------------
[File 33875b]
[Mission Objectives: Completed]
[Squad Leader: J. Fowler]
[Status: Deceased]
[Infiltration Operative: S. Valedin]
[Status: Deceased]
[Medical Operative: M. Dowling]
[Status: Deceased]
[Technical Operative: D. Butterstone]
[Status: Active]
[File Ends]
Dietrich frowned at this file. Although the mission's objectives were completed, his own were not. Only three taken out. Taking out the fourth would be a difficult task; Butterstone had most definitely gone underground by now. The operatives that he had hired were excellent, even for metamorphs. This came at a price, however. Dietrich could not afford to have any loose cannons, not if he wanted his promotion to Senior External Operations Executive, and the 7000 dollar rise that would entail.
[File 33875c]
[Mission Objectives: *Classified*]
[Operative: *Classified* *Level VII Access Required*]
[Status: In holding, floor 104, room 2060]
[File Ends]
Now this was a mystery, and Dietrich did not like mysteries. They tended to clutter things and lower productivity. His predecessor had kept many secrets, probably even more than he had. This one was secure enough to warrant a level 7 block, while Dietrich only had level 6. Hacking Dalyn-Steward files was not a task Dietrich wanted to attempt. Fortunately he was able to locate and capture the girl yesterday. But boy, was that bitch fast. She took out two of his men before the tranq took affect. There was no need to stress. The girl was going nowhere now, and he had all the time in the world to extract the information out of her. Hell, he might even enjoy it.
[File 33875d]
[Mission Objectives: Not yet reached]
[Elimination Operative: Not yet acquired]
[Status: N/A]
[File Ends] 
Dietrich smiled at the euphemism. Even though he was well-versed in the requirements for corporate doublespeak he still found the title 'Elimination Operative' amusing. He had a few contacts on the lookout for an assassin. It was difficult to find one that met his requirements. So few nowadays were professional, with the total emotional detachment that was so useful. Anyway, time for a little R&R.
Dietrich activated the music console across the room with a reflex from his modified CICI. Top of the range, of course. His favorite band, Titanex, blared through the speakers. This was real music, classic '30s stuff. The noise that was played by today's bands hardly qualified as music. He let himself relax, lighting a cigar. Totally illegal, but that didn't matter for him.
He checked his Chronoex. Ten minutes to go. He finished the cigar and got up, poured himself a generous measure of brandy from the large decanter on his desk and opened the door to the balcony. The semi-circular balcony on the three-hundredth floor was one of the benefits of his new post. Although it was not quite as magnificent a view as the one the Board of Directors enjoyed, it was still breathtaking. It was the view that inspired him to proceed with his actions, the actions that had left his predecessor screaming and falling. Leaving the clean-up crews to deal with the mess left by a body plunging three hundred floors to its death.
Dietrich savoured the brandy, allowing the amber liquid to slide slowly down his throat. He lit another cigar just as there was an explosion in the distance, the blossoming cloud of fire lighting up the dark skyline. The smoke ring he blew out framed the burning warehouse as secondary explosions resulted in more buildings being caught in the blast.
Yes, life was good.
Andrew Jones, 13/10/00

----------------
2069 - Erith Industrial Complex (defunct)
The sky was grey in a complete lack of contrast to the concrete expanse beneath the huge chimney stacks. The wind tossed the occasional filthy polythene bag as it blew through the separation between the cars. The black Lamborghini had already been there some time. It was from the other car that Shadbolt emerged.
From the first emerged the buyer - a stocky Japanese with an elegantly trimmed beard, dressed all in black with a highly polished knee-length leather jacket. He also wore a Predator shoulder gun. The name was a reference to 20th century cinema although hands-free weaponry had only really become a reality with the advent of the Plug. Even then it had hardly proved worth the effort in full-on combat. As an instrument of intimidation, however, as a scarcely veiled threat, it excelled. It was currently scrutinising the space between Shadbolt's eyes. The Jap was really showing a lack of trust. Very wise!
The two walked purposely towards a mutually, mutely determined space between the cars, the man in black swinging a metallic attaché case. As they came closer, Shadbolt noticed streaks of grey amidst the black of the other's beard.
"You have the data?" the man in the black leather jacket asked.
He had a name, of course, although it had not so far been mentioned. Shadbolt, of course, had other resources. The man's name was Yoshio Fuyukage, a senior partner of a Japanese Merc group called the Yon-Ju-Shichi. The man had spent time in certain specialist Swiss clinics normally reserved for GSSA bio-enhanced secret agents and had 29 accredited legal kills as well as any number of implications about slightly hairier demises, although absolutely nothing approaching a burden of proof. He was, in all, the sort of person that someone very rich and powerful hired to carry out transactions on their behalf when they wanted to make it one hundred percent clear that if you approached the deal with anything less than perfect good faith then you had better have written the letter to your family explaining that it was not their fault but life's cruelties were too much to bear.
"Data pah! You've got a bit of a backward compatibility problem. You hired me as a data pirate not a burglar."
"But you have the data?"
"Data? It's an antique book," Shadbolt snorted.
"But you have it?" Mr Fuyukage was cool but insistent.
"Yes. Of course. My price has doubled. I do not normally do burglaries."
Fuyukage ignored this, inscrutably. "May I see it?"
Shadbolt produced the diary, bound in tattered leather. Fuyukage said,
"It appears to have a small thermite bomb attached to it."
"I put that there, idiot..." said Shadbolt. Once he had got his wind back he finished, "it's insurance. The bomb is triggered by Plug. If I get nervous this antique is smoked." Shadbolt winced and rubbed the side of his face. "That was utterly uncalled for."
Fuyukage advanced as Shadbolt picked himself up from the Japanese's lazy yet indubitably powerful backhand.
"Do itashimashite?" The Ronin shrugged.
Once Shadbolt was righted and had dusted himself off, Fuyukage spoke again,
"Will it be missed?"
"Not specifically," growled Shadbolt, a note of bitterness still in his voice. "I grabbed a few valuable books too and fenced them, for tidy money actually. The rest of the place I burnt to the ground. Nobody's going to know that this one was stolen or the object of the exercise." The Japanese have reputation for being business-like but this goon is something else, thought Shadbolt. "Now show me some money."
Fuyukage opened the attaché case wordlessly and handed it to Shadbolt.
"My price has doubled," the swashbuckler reiterated.
"That was anticipated. Now give me the diary."
"You must really want this thing," muttered Shadbolt, handing it across. "I won't release the bomb until I'm out of here with the cash. Like I said, insurance. Do you mind if I check out the payment? Not that I don't trust you or anything."
"Dozo. You realise that this device, this insurance, makes it impossible to open the diary."
"So? The bomb will be deactivated and will unlock itself when I'm out of here." Shadbolt selected three crisp hundred dollar bills from the attaché case and scanned them. They checked out. He started counting the rest.
"So, how am I able to confirm whether you have provided me with the right book?"
"You didn't hire me because I'm stupid. Look, I'm bright enough to get the right book and I'm bright enough to know not to fuck with people like you."
"And what is to stop you from activating the bomb once you have your money?"
"Look, like I said. Your employer, whoever he is, strikes me as the sort of person who, if you were so utterly, moronically intellectually impaired as to fuck him, wouldn't so much fuck you back as fist you to the elbow. And I like my arsehole nice and tight."
Shadbolt stopped, wondering if he might have been too witty very recently. Fuyukage looked at him very intently and it seemed as though his mouth might, at any moment, curl into a snarl of contemptuous rage. Shadbolt did his best to look conciliatory. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. This display of naked fear seemed to appease the Ronin. He grunted in the affirmatory way that the Japanese did, wheeled sharply, and strode off back to his car. Shadbolt noticed that the Predator did not break its line on his forehead until the door of the Lamborghini hatchetted down. Even then he suspected that it might still be trained on him through the smoked glass window. Shadbolt finished counting his money.
* * *
2069 - Bankside
The room overlooked the piles that remained from the old Chatham Railway bridge and out across the river to St. Paul's, illuminated in the twilight with soft white flood-lighting. The scene was striped with the sharp horizontals of a Venetian blind.
His principal sat at a walnut table by the window. The room was decorated in elegantly minimalist japonaisérie: paper screens, cedar furniture painted calcium red, tatami. Fuyukage blinked in the harsh white light.
The employer stood as he swept across the room. "Fuyukage-san, dozo okake kudasai." He motioned to a chair.
"Arigato gozaimasu."
Fuyukage sat, as did his employer. He removed the two century old diary from his jacket and placed it on the table.
"I have already called Switzerland and actioned the payment. Do you wish to confirm this with the Yon-Ju-Shichi head office?"
"No," said Fuyukage. "You are a trusted and respected client of the Yon-Ju-Shichi."
"Would you care for some tea, Fuyukage-san?"
"Hai. Arigato."
His employer summoned his secretary over the intercom. "Marion, bring some tea for Mr Fuyukage and myself, please."
The two sat across the corner of the table so that both were afforded the view of Blackfriars and St. Paul's. Fuyukage sat patiently still as a woman in her mid-thirties in a charcoal trouser suit and a tight blonde bun brought in a teapot and cups. Her employer leafed through the diary gingerly, with a half-smile. Once the secretary had left, he poured the tea."
"Excellent. Thank you, Fuyukage-san."
"Mmm," said the Ronin, sipping his tea, "Oolong."
Geoff Hinkley, 22/10/00

--------------------------
She plunged herself into mainline, feeling the surge of the Net as it pumped into her spine and filled her senses. The bright colours and flow of information all about her were as familiar as the office her body was sat in, more so. She amused herself by flicking through the building security cameras and phone lines, passing the security lockout with a touch of her level A clearance pass. She could have hacked her way through just as easily, but she was only playing.
Now, to business. She slipped into the main Net concourse, sliding into the flow of information and probing the companies on her list: Nakamoto, Oztek, Kinkade, Medico. It amused her to put the image of the conference not ten paces away so she could see the faces of the men she was extracting the very lives of over the vast expanse of cyberspace.
It was almost too easy sliding under the security blanket into the confidential private files. All those dirty little secrets and bluffs they were hiding oh so inexpertly. All of her data was transmitted by a secure line to Mr Dalyn Steward's microwave uplink, that she envied him, that and the immense power, but hey, as long as she got her toys. He glanced up at her on the video monitor - a penetrating glare. She grinned and deleted all records of the subliminal message and thought of another way to get a raise.
Thanks to her special talents, Mr Nakamoto was going to be very, very sorry. Then there was the short, greasy chairwoman of Oztek, she wouldn't be complaining. At least not if she wanted to stop her little addiction becoming public. Those lesser targets eliminated, she turned her concentration to Medico.
The closed network around the Medico mainframe had live watchers so she moved with care, covering every action, as she slowly worked her way up the food chain to level A access. The main computer was active and transmitting.
"It appears Mr Dalyn Steward wasn't the only one with a shielded mobile uplink," she thought.
"How true."
She whirled, scanners drawing a blank. Only by her experience as a net-runner did she spot the slight outline in the web. Her first instinct was to jack out, but watchers didn't use datacloaks, and her curiosity made her stay.
The stranger dipped into the ether, drawing out a small white bird that she released. It flew straight at her; the pale shape collided with her as she stood paralysed, staring at it and the dissolving shadow behind it. A thought, or perhaps a memory, flashed through her mind of another dove she had seen flying in the Net.
Her world collapsed in on her, suffocating, close all around her, pressing down on her mind like a red hot vice. Through the bleary confusion of thoughts, instinct kept her actions in time and she tucked the Net leads back into her pouch. As the world began to clear and her thoughts swam lazily back into focus, she slowly rose from her chair and moved over to the drinking fountain across the office.
As her feet began to drag her across the plush, imported carpet the first drop of blood ran from her net sockets. It trickled dark and thick in a languid dance down her neck, soaking into her hair and tangling the pale strands into scarlet twine.
Her legs buckled beneath her and she collapsed with a slight gasp as the air was forced from her lungs. That was where they found her - sprawled in front of the Board Room door, blood leaking out of her neck into a sticky brown pool, eyes vacant and lips trembling.
Security had the body removed but there were some questioning glances over the stain, not least those directed at Dietrich.
Dave Watson, 22/10/00

-------------------------------
(Question and Answer in D Minor)
Y: Ech. I do not believe that you did that.
RN: Hmph! Don't get so lairy 'bout it, Yehudi. It was a genuine cultural misunderstandin'.
Y: It was a genuine schlemazel.
RN: 'Ow was I s'pposed to know that they dint do bacon bagels?
Y: Beigels! The word is beigels.
RN: Tomaa'ers, tomay'ers.
Y: Can you say 'shibboleth'?
RN: Why?
Y: Curiosity, bubeleh.
RN: I could rip yer balls off.
Y: Charmed.
RN: Oooh! Ol' Rav Weissmann's trouble asked me to pass on 'er unmitigated gratitude for that latest sensie you sent her.
Y: What?
RN: Ruth... Weissmann... said... thanks... for... the... sensie.
Y: Oh! What sensie?
RN: The one you sent her, muppet.
Y: She's got the wrong Yehudi.
RN: How many Yehudis can there be?
Y: Quite a few. But I'm one of a kind. Come here, zaftikeh.
RN: Aaak! I'm eatin' my bagel. Pervert. Gor', what's a girl to do?
Y: Give up?
RN: You wish. You do realise that I could knock you dead wiv one 'and.
Y: Neshomeleh, you could knock me dead with a look.
RN: Flirt!
Y: And you love it.
* * *
(Question and Answer in C Minor)
"Dr Rosenbaum, your brother is here to see you."
"Send him through please, Yoko."
"Yes, Doctor."
.....
"Oh, Titus! What brings you down into my parlour?"
"'Sephy. Came to see what the mad doctor was brewing up in her lab."
"Enough of the mad. How is the world of men?"
"The usual. Too many people. Too few resources. The end is drawing nigh. You know how it is."
"Too well. Oh, are they for me?"
"Nah. They're for one of the many other women in my breakneck life. Of course they're for you. What's the music?"
"St. Matthaus Passion. Bach. One of our illustrious father's old CDs."
"How droll! Aaah. Excuse me, I was up early."
"Poor Titus."
"So is this the archaeological monster? The fallen angel?"
"The very same. Looks like those Victorian vandals have welded the joints though."
"The Philistines. Mahrime bastards! How dare they? Have you opened him up yet?"
"Well, we've x-rayed it but it is utterly dense underneath that alloy. It's not gold, by the way. The core seems to be inert but we've got no way of ascertaining that for sure."
"Does it matter?"
"Well... the Tablets of Asshur are somewhat precautionary about that thing."
"What about the diary?"
"Oh! Nothing helpful in there. Apart from the location but that's irrelevant now."
"So what are you going to do now?"
"What else? Cut the cuirasse off."
"Very sensible!"
"Very funny!"
"Hey, Persephone. I've found a fantastic bottle of St. Emilion in Dad's cellar. I mean he won't be wanting to drink it now that he's been perforated by that Cockney Ronin. So fancy dinner tonight? Bottle of wine? Leisurely fuck afterwards?"
"Hah! Rude! What would your father say?"
"Something obscure in Latin probably. In fact, he's dead. He won't be saying anything for a few days. Come on, 'Sephy."
"How can I refuse an offer like that?"
"You can't. So drinkies later?"
"As you like. Now get the fuck out of my lab."
Geoff Hinkley, 22/10/00

-------------------------
Blond, almost white, hair wrapped around the taps lovingly as the cold water soaked into her scalp. Her shoulders were trembling, though not from the temperature. The porcelain was pleasantly cool against her cheeks, which tingled when stray hairs brushed the scars.

Dove pulled back and felt the moisture from her hair saturate her favourite crop top. Well, it used to be her favourite, when she cared. It was old fashioned now, and clung to her body with worn determination. The rush of water from the tap echoed in the stillness of the bathroom. She drew her hand across her mouth, wrinkling her nose as the sweet-edged smell of nausea hit her.

"Aw, shit," she murmured, and bent to the taps again.

It was some minutes before she withdrew from the sink. There was a mirror on the wall; she'd always wondered whether Shadbolt had installed it especially for her. Sometimes she'd pretend she didn't know it was there, try to leave the bathroom without looking at her reflection. But she never could.

So she stopped and stared with the morbid satisfaction of someone who knows that what they're doing will only upset them. The slender figure in the mirror stared back, raising its hands slowly to its face. The visage seemed to have been painted on last, the artist having chosen a bizarre mix of reds and pinks in stark contrast to Dove's otherwise pale skin. For a moment she traced the countries formed by the scars, continents, oceans - before her hands started to shake and both the face and the figure in the mirror crumpled.

She sobbed like a child. Loudly. With abandon. Her fist lashed out at the mirror but, as always, it did not break. And she could not kid herself that Shadbolt could not hear her. Up above her, the squat circular light clamped onto the ceiling like a limpet, and she had her suspicions.

She was crouched on the floor now, eyes and nose streaming. And there was a buzzing sensation in her chest, something between nausea and excitement. Almost pill time. 

She bowed her head in shame. 

Dammit.

You got me, she thought, you really got me.

I've got to get out of here.

No revelation there. She had been feeding off this emotion for months. Escape. Break out. Freedom. Going 'straight'. Getting 'clean'. She closed her eyes. It was like having her mother's voice raging through the depths of her psyche. "So you never write: like you don't have a mother?"

Dove imperceptibly shrugged. Like it mattered now.

And then, quite to her surprise, she had an idea. She froze, mid-crouch, her thoughts racing.

Almost all her friends were gone. Left the Scene, or dead, or both. But there was someone who could help. Not her mother, obviously. But he could help. If he agreed.

She glanced around, eyes wide.

Not much time. Pill time soon. Not much time. Do it now.

She activated her CICI, and started to compose a message.

<begin draft>
 	
<pause draft>
What if I'm caught?... ... ...

 ... ...Fuck it.
<continue draft>

<msg begins>

Y,

I know, long time no see. Or speak. Or write. I'm sure you're mad at me. That's pretty reasonable. Mom said I was a shandeh and a charpeh. I didn't understand at the time. Maybe I get it now. 
               
Head hurting. Maybe this is a bad plan.

I'm...

Shit.

I'm in trouble. I don't know how to get out of this one. I guess, finally, I need your help. 

I know it's taken me a few years to say it, but es tut mir bahng - I'm sorry, okay? There, I said it.

Like I should apologise to the arrogant meshugener?

And I know you don't approve of me, or what I am, but maybe I got my punishment already, okay. Don't do your 'frummer than thou' bit. Blood's thicker than water and all that.

Here goes then. I'm stuck with this guy. And I'm hooked on stuff. (Don't say it)
He's a real...

Noise from somewhere. Metal. The door. 

"Dove? It's ready."

Voice - SHADBOLT!

a real... 

Shit.

<delete, delete, delete...> 

His name is...

"Dove? Not admiring yourself again, are you?" A smile behind the words.

Just get me out of here, Yehudi. I'll even go to shul. Please. For Mom's sake.

Aleichem sholom
Dovid  ('Dove')

<send message>

She deactivated the CICI, grabbed her mask from where it lay beside the sink, and pressed it slowly to her face. It attached itself perfectly. And only then did she turn and open the door.
Mich Sampson, 22/10/00

"Not admiring yourself again, are you?"
There was a smile, or perhaps a sneer, behind Shadbolt's words. Scuffling noises on the other side of the door told him she was hurriedly getting her mask on. She burst out of the bathroom, nearly bumping into him. He handed her two capsules and she swallowed them dry.
She paused in the doorway and blew him a kiss, her mockery invisible behind her prosthesis. He listened to her clattering down the stairs.

In Shadbolt's mind, he could hear her sobbing. At first, when he had found her desperate and lonely and made her desperate, lonely and dependent on him, he had enjoyed hearing her sorrow. It was a demonstration of the hold he had over her.
But now he found it uncomfortable. They worked well as a team, even if they were unequal partners. Her despair was absolute; she was entombed in her own misery and locked in a pattern of behaviour that kept her thus. If her chains were chemical and hypnotic, Shadbolt's shackles were only of his own making, purely psychological. He was so convinced there was no turning back that he bent reality to his own perception. They shared this characteristic, this flaw, and as he had grown to understand her he had found empathy where once there was contempt. And now, God help him, affection. He thought of the pale mask.

Where was the hope for them?

Shadbolt's CICI paged him. He connected and his snooper applet monitoring Dove's CICI told him she had sent a message. He read the text in silence.

I should discipline her, he thought, but knew he wouldn't. She can't break free any more than I can. We are indeed very much alike.

There was a glimmer of doubt, of course. But to Shadbolt, that also meant hope.
Ben Wright, 28/10/00

Less than an hour after the hoverskimmer had touched down, Kathryn was facing the door of Rockington's office. She knocked gently and entered. The room was less intimidating than most might have expected. Pictures of family, among other, more official things, punctuated the light blue walls. Bookshelves and filing cabinets lined one of the walls and there was a desk in a central position, bracketed by two chairs. Most of the furniture was manufactured from artificial wood. In the chair on the far side of the desk sat Daniel Rockington, Director of the Babylon Institute. He signalled for the agent to take the other seat.

Kathryn sat down. 

"Good afternoon, Sir."

Rockington nodded. 

"Good work on the Dalyn-Steward incident. We've got some intriguing data."
"Anything to indicate what we might be facing?"

"Indeed. The bug has already been detected and neutralised by Dalyn-Steward security, but we have what we wanted." 

The Director flipped a switch beneath his side of the desk and immediately the space between the two of them became filled with light. A hologram of the view from the air vent Kathryn had recently infiltrated came into focus. The hologram played much like a video recording, only in three dimensions. There was an audio track accompanying the display, but Rockington chose to commentate over the proceedings himself. A hologram image of Dietrich walked into view. There was a momentary pause as pleasantries were conducted, and then some sort of a presentation began.
"It appears that Dietrich himself doesn't have too much of an idea of the bigger picture. However, taking into account what we have already learned from other sources, some interesting points have come to light."

"Such as?" Kathryn continued to watch the hologram as the Director spoke.

"Dalyn-Steward have captured a girl. We don't know too much about her, just some photographic records of her arriving in London on a hypersonic jet from Tokyo recently." Rockington flipped another switch underneath his desk and the holographic image switched to a two dimensional picture of a girl walking away from a jet at what Kathryn recognised as Heathrow airport.

"What would Dalyn-Steward want with her?"

"We aren't completely sure, but whatever it is, they were willing to sacrifice a number of operatives to get her. We've confirmed four dead."

"Four? To get one girl? Did she have an escort?"

"No. She seems to have been able to take four trained Dalyn-Steward operatives out single handed. The only surviving member of the squad sent to get her appears to have gone underground. His name is Butterstone, that much we know from information hacked out of the Dalyn-Steward mainframes. There are more files, but they are taking time to crack."

"So what is our next move going to be? Rescue the girl from Dalyn-Steward?"
Rockington's eyes narrowed, as if he was going over a decision that he had already made several times. "Not yet, not until we know exactly why she is of importance. We need information, and that probably means finding Butterstone. I have our contacts trawling the Net and the streets looking for him. Hopefully we should find something before long."

"Until then?"

"I suggest you take some time on the training grounds. If I have to send you back into Dalyn-Steward to retrieve this girl, they'll be expecting you. It will not be easy."
"Understood." Kathryn stood from her seat and nodded to the Director as she left. She had a feeling that things were about to get interesting.
Chris Smith, 25/10/00

Ruth Weissmann sat meekly at the table, waiting for her husband and her son, Yitzhak, to come down to dinner. She had called them twice already. She was an unassuming lady, prim and devoted to her husband, who happened to be both a Rabbi and an underworld macher. So she waited quietly for them to come to dinner.

It was a fine casserole that she had cooked. She could not remember off-hand where she had got the recipe from. Somehow, she thought it might have been from the new sensie that she was playing with at the moment, although that did not feel quite right. Her husband was a busy man and a frummer. He liked things in their place and a woman's place was in the home. She had a lot of spare time so she played sensies: romantic period dramas mostly. They kept her entertained.

Her latest one was good. She could not quite remember what it was all about; it seemed quite complicated, magic realist somehow. There was, actually, quite a lot today that she could not put her finger on, as though her mind was filled with a thick rolling fog.

Soon her husband materialised from the fog and sat down at the table. Efraim Weissmann was getting old gracefully. He had always been a solid man, in a muscular, rather flabby way, and an impressive, grey rabbinical beard only heightened the effect that he had on people. She was lucky to be the Rebitsin and she knew it. His second wife, Rachel Yisroel, had been divorced on amicable terms (what other choice did she have) when the Rabbi grew weary of her. He would never grow weary of Ruth, she had determined that.

The first wife, who was not spoken of, she felt must have parted on less amicable terms. It had taken her a couple of years of questions whispered around Efraim's friends to find out her name: Deborah Rosenbaum. The name seemed familiar to her today, as though it had been important to her long ago. But she had never known anyone called Deborah Rosenbaum. Was it the sensie again?

"Where's that boy of ours?" asked Efraim, gruffly, helping himself to the casserole.
Somehow Ruth had the feeling that Yitzhak would be late to dinner but she could not remember why. Maybe he was at a friend's house. She could not recall. Of course, saying that would sound stupid so she said,

"Do you want me to call him again?"

"Shame to let the food go cold," said Efraim and passed the casserole over to Ruth.

Since first playing this new sensie ("Thyestes' Feast" she seemed to recall was its name) she had passed her hours in the real world with life breathing over her like a vague dream. But it was in that fantasy world she truly lived. The setting was diaphanous, floating over centuries of history like a mist. Strange garden-ships sailed over black glassy seas. And through it all, an enigmatic figure, a dream lover, with a boyish smile and smouldering eyes. Sometimes he would appear garbed like a Pharaoh and at others in the armour of a Roman centurion, then at others in a sleek, black military uniform.

"Mmmm, this is good. What is it?"

Efraim had not noticed that, caught in a reverie, Ruth had not yet touched the casserole.

"Special recipe," she replied, almost robotically. Efraim would not understand the delights of her dreamworld so she saw no reason to try to make conversation. He felt alien to her.

"Where is Yitzhak? He doesn't know what he's missing out on."

Where was Yitzhak? Where? Somehow it seemed important.

Then, slowly, oh so slowly at first, then with exponential momentum she remembered in an awful, implacable crescendo.

Must get it out of her head. Dybbuk! Before it is too late. Get it out. Get it out. Is it too late? Too late. No! It cannot be too late.

Nell was standing watch in the hallway when she heard the strangled groan, soaring into a shrill scream. She was already running to the dining room. The door, though sturdy, was torn from its hinges as the metamorph crashed through it.

"Bloody 'ell!"

Rebitsin Weissmann was beating her head against the wall, already smeared with blood and phlegm.

"Stop her. Please stop her!" shouted the Rabbi, standing still, shocked into immobility. But Nell had already dived and tackled the frantic woman, pinning her arms to her sides. The Rebitsin went rigid, breathing shallowly.

Eventually she spoke but it was not the Rebitsin's voice. Nell felt goosebumps rise on her skin as she heard that crisp, indifferent English voice boil up from somewhere within the Rabbi's wife, slurred only by the wreckage of her teeth.

"Sorry to spoil your meal, Rabbi. But now you understand that my reach extends beyond the grave. You shall not escape it. Very soon you will be dead. I am not a cruel man. I would not have even you live for long in the wilderness I bequeath you."

"Shut him up. Shut him up!" the Rabbi was screaming. Other aghast onlookers, Jews and Shabbas goyim, had gathered now. The Rebitsin was still.

Nell felt for a pulse.

"Nah! She's kicked the metaphorical."
Geoff Hinkley, 22/10/00

She walks into the bar from the cold night outside. Her usual booth is taken, but a quick glance at the occupants and they decide to leave. She sits, and the red, syrupy liquid she usually drinks is delivered.

As she sits, she looks out at the people in the bar and reflects upon the number of trendies and low-lives there are. The bar is definitely going to the dogs.
A ganger peels himself from the crowd and moves over to where she is.

"Can I join you?"

"That depends on you and me."

"I can make it worth your while."

She gestures for him to sit and then reaches up to close the curtains on the booth so that they are out of sight.

She leans back into the padded bench.

"Well, let's see you then."

He reaches up to his head and then passes his hands behind his ears. It is hard to see what he does but, as he brings his hands back down, in them are his face and hair. The face revealed by this unmasking is in its late 40s, with short, cropped grey hair and pale blue eyes. She had seen this face many times before, in several countries. Although he had never told her his name, careful checking had placed him as Peter Archibald. This man, head of Bold Industries, was becoming a very powerful man. In the last year Bold had taken over Rann Corps and was rapidly becoming a significance in cities around the world.

He reaches down and pulls out a data chip.

"This is your next target; you have two weeks."

Picking up the chip, she nods and places it about her person. He stands, pulling back on the very different features with which he entered the building. He gestures goodbye and steps out into the club.

He moves quickly toward the door, but is soon stopped by a large tattooed man. The scars on his shaven head count seven cheap chip implants, and the patches on his neck are probably illegal. She watches as the large man shouts and pushes the much smaller man backwards and thinks about intervening. It would probably be a bad idea, so she leaves her employer to handle himself. It isn't long before the smaller man opens up with a single open-handed blow to the larger man's rib cage. The large man doesn't seem to notice and draws his meaty fist back to slug her employer.

Then it happens: the large man's eyes grow wider and he looks terrified. He slowly falls to the ground and starts to fit uncontrollably, foam spraying from his mouth. In the confusion, the smaller man makes his exit and she decides it's time to leave also.
Paul Taylor, 27/10/00

Shadbolt locked the door. His wig was on its stand nearby, sharing the table with a hairbrush and an electric razor. The mirror was cracked, and one window consisted of a board, but Shadbolt wore his surroundings lightly.

Slowly, painstakingly, he eased his CICI out of its housing. Removable components were rare, and were usually only prototypes or custom builds.

Shadbolt's was both.

Model NCC-17.01. Shadbolt had built it. He laid it down on a hard copy of its own schematics. IT was the most valuable thing he owned. He reached deeper into his skull with a pair of tweezers and drew out a larger box. IT didn't have a model number. It was what had got him fired. And when Medico had tried to claim ownership under the terms of his contract, Shadbolt had committed arson to keep it, with all the consequences that had had. This all seemed rather a fuss over something that didn't work, but Shadbolt knew its potential.

To complete it he needed money, and plenty of it. The last sale had helped, but he needed even more for the components and lab time to add the finishing touches. He could get the money several times over by selling the Model 17 schematics, but he was beginning to realise that it would be no simple task. It was too hot. Even assuming he could evade the GSSA, he would be selling to major players. More importantly, greedy players. Organisations so greedy that they may tie up any loose ends and throw them in the Thames. If he tried to pass it to a legitimate source, he'd face jail. Or the chair. And the longer he kept hold of it the more dangerous the situation became.

His special project could wait. Survival was Shadbolt's primary concern.

He replaced his CICI and connected.

* Server: FreeProgrammesInternational
* User: Anonymous
* Password:
•	Uploading file... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Shadbolt estimated three days before the Model 17 appeared on the streets. Three days to get the money and finish his life's work before he lost his edge over his pursuers.

He'd had deadlines before.
Ben Wright, 28/10/00

I am not going to write these musings down. They are quite safe in my head. My memory is good and you only write something down with the arrogant hope that someone will read it. So this will remain a mental memoir.
 
I sit in a black leather swivel chair in front of a large flat LCD screen. It takes up most of the wall. I am controlling the display through my CICI. Currently, I am browsing the preliminary reports on Mr Dietrich, thanks to that GSSA catspaw, the Babylon Institute.

The man is cockroach. He disgusts me. I want to crush him now but, of course, that would not fit in with the plan. We must encourage his Icarian ascent a little longer. It will be that much sweeter when I finally tear open his eyes to the epiphany of his emptiness.

I shall tell you what I shall do when I have him. I am going to peel his skin off, scientifically, just like 'Sephy cutting off the giant's armour. I have a hypothesis which I shall state now so that I cannot be accused of fiddling it in light of later results. I think I know what I shall find under his expensively moisturised hide.

Nothing.

Under the skin, under that expensive bespoke suit, there is nothing. He is a hollow man.

Let me tell you about Peter Dietrich. Please do not think that this is researched. It is only speculation.

His mother and father, like him, are yippies. They had a child called Peter because that is what their vain, empty society demanded. They did not truly love their child but they hired nannies to attend to his needs. He went to expensive public schools and did well, very well. He was top of his class. But they did not care because that is what their society had led them to expect.

They did hear about the bullying though. They sat in the headmaster's office with him and told him that it was bad; that society found it unacceptable. And all the time he wanted to scream, 

"But I did it for you, mother. I did it to show you how strong I am. How clever. How much better I am than everyone else. How worthy I am of the love you cannot give me. Don't go, mother. Don't go to the firm today. Stay and love me, mother. Mother!"
But he did not scream. He just promised that next time he would not get caught because it made his parents unhappy. It made him unworthy of their love. Getting caught.

And even now he carves out his own soul to hold more hollowness. He drags himself higher and higher. "Look at me, mother. Look at me. Look at me, you cold bitch!" Does she look? No. This was what she had always expected for her child. He is hungry for power, for wealth because he thinks that if he climbs high enough, he can make his mother love him. He is a slave to his loneliness and he is trying to fill his emptiness with hunger.

I speculate, of course, but, really, you do not think that I am wrong.
I know him better than he knows himself.

What do I feel, sitting here, watching this insect with a surgeon's eye? Sadness? Contempt? Pity? Power? Physick, cure thyself. I have cut up poor Peter. Maybe I should first look to the log in my own eye.

I feel this: we are enemies although he does not know this. Peter and Titus, we are enemies. Even if as people we nurtured no grievance against each other, we stand for different worlds and only one of these worlds can be born. He lives in a desolate dream and I dream of a tower in this desert that shall stretch to the stars.

I shall awake him from his dream and show him his true soul in the mirror of tears. And that waking shall destroy him.
Geoff Hinkley, 23/10/00

The pianist’s hands flew gracefully over the ebony piano. The skill and precision that his hands showed were exemplary, especially considering that his reactions were completely unmodified. 

Dietrich liked this restaurant, sited on the one-hundredth and sixth floor of the Dalyn-Steward building. Not the biggest restaurant in the tower, but probably the most select in its clientele. Reserving a table was difficult enough, especially at the short notice that Bradley gave him.

“Hey! Peter!”

Dietrich turned to face the man who shouted in his direction. He knew who it would be before he saw him. Bradley Williams, the Internal Operations Executive for the corporation. The guy was large, his bald head showing off the tan he had got from his two weeks at the Dalyn-Steward corporation’s private island in the Pacific. He wore a midnight blue suit bought from the exclusive Jevanis boutique in New York. The classic aquamarine tie with yellow striping, pretty standard attire for an executive of Bradley’s level. His shoes were genuine leather with blue trimming. Dietrich was unimpressed. The whole outfit must have only cost him around 3000 dollars. His eyes were drawn to Bradley’s tiepin. Pure adamantium, encrusted with diamonds, with a blue-grey silver finish. Expensive stuff. He was almost impressed; it was a pity it looked so out of place on his bargain basement suit.

Bradley, however, looked pleased to see him. Fashion criticism aside, he was the closest thing Dietrich had to a friend. Since they worked in different postings, Dietrich’s lust for promotion would not get in the way. Well, not until they were both jockeying for the position of Senior Operations Executive. Until then, Bradley was a useful companion.

“I have already ordered for you, Brad. Some of that Italian mush you seem so mysteriously fond of.”

“Heh. You never did like that stuff, did you? What did you order?”

“Indian.”

“Of course. You like the feeling of those spices burning away your taste buds. Or is it because it is allegedly Dalyn-Steward’s favourite dish?”

Dietrich raised an eyebrow at this, but said nothing.

“But enough about food. That is not the reason I invited you out for dinner on such short notice. It is about the incident yesterday.”

The waiter, clad in an expensive tuxedo with a stylised Dalyn-Steward logo on the breast pocket, interrupted their conversation. Bradley reached into his pocket to extract a crisp one hundred-dollar bill to give to the waiter. Dietrich waited until the waiter had accepted this and then gave him a two hundred-dollar bill of his own. The waiter smiled in a glazed over fashion and left, moving towards the kitchens. Of course, it was standard procedure to give all waiters memory caps - mnemonic implants that prevented them from remembering any specifics about their day at work. The pay was good, and it stopped them remembering anything they would rather not know.

“I assume you are referring to the break-in and subsequent break-out of a very well trained member of the Babylon Institute?”

“I see. So you are aware who was responsible for it. You are one clever guy, Peter.” Bradley laughed. “You might end up putting me out of a job if you are not careful.”

Dietrich grinned. 

“Perhaps.”

“Are you also aware that the bug they planted managed to evade one sensor sweep before Intsec detected it? One sweep, Peter. It was left undetected for twenty-four minutes. That means that your entire briefing to the Board was listened in on by the Institute.”

Dietrich’s smile of self-satisfaction faded slightly at this.

“So? You don’t think I know all this? The briefing was nothing too in depth, just the standard two-year plan. Nothing particularly detailed so even the Board could understand it.”

Bradley’s face took on a more serious air.

“I would watch what you say about the Board. I am in charge of personnel loyalty, you know.”

“Really? Are you saying these conversations of ours would be used against me for your own ends?”

“You would do the same, Peter. Your ambitions for promotion are not exactly secret amongst the Internal Security Division.”

“This dinner is a waste of time. I cannot talk to you for fear of Intsec snooping in on me.” 

Dietrich got up, leaving his meal untouched. Bradley shook his head.

“You just don’t get it. Intsec’s interests lie only in the prosperity of the corporation. As long as your aims and theirs don’t overlap, you have nothing to worry about.”

Dietrich was halfway across the room by the time Bradley left the table. While pretending to be checking out his suit in the mirror by the entrance, he checked the recording device was still secure in his tiepin and sent the data in a burst transmission to the Intsec Head Offices, a hundred and fifty-six floors down. Dietrich was very ambitious and the corporation would prosper under his ideas. However, there would be the time when his ambition would get the better of him. Intsec have ways to deal with difficult assets.
Andrew Jones, 31/10/00

<Activating CICI uplink to local cell network>
<Scrambler 4a used in conjunction with code Red-Omega>
<Diary entry 46 started>
<Access given to list 5 after death>

Hello Diary,
It's strange how being in extreme danger speeds up the mind. Even right now I'm running for my life, but can still be wrignitng this. Gah... not without typos denoms thogh... Anyways... diary entry 46, date .. well.. I forget... gah sod it.. on with the stuff..

Fences are usually made to stop people passing from one side to another. In a research site like this, you would have expected them to be pretty good at it. Unfortunately it seems like the site manager is cheapskate, or an embezzler...

Oww... legs starting to ache...

Left turn here... lets hope the fire exit is where it's meant to be... How can anything run so fast after breaking though a razor wire fence???

Ah! If I can..... just...

Thank God.... And I thought air vents people could fit in only existed in movies. Then again, only a meta-morph could jump high enough to reach the damn thing..

Oh.. shit.....

Wait.. heh... built too low... can't reach, So I just close this grating and... Ah.. Now that I have some time... lets go back to how this began...

“Hey, I think you got the wrong contact, babe, I ordered a 'morph.” Yet another stupid contact who only knows metamorphs from films..
“I am who was sent to you. And I have been bio-mechanically enhanced.”

I hate the term morph... makes me sound sub-human... Anyway, I'm not really a full 'morph' as most people view them.. Yes, my bones have been laced and grafted with AIP, and yes, I do have some electro-tensive fibres to back-up my normal muscles.. And I will admit, (but only to this diary) that I may even have a small nanite hive produced by Grenoble-Haematologie. Purely for general upkeep... not those huge things that can re-attach limbs that I've seen on some mercs.

But nothing else. I'm not a damn cyborg, I'm just a woman who needs an edge to STAY ALIVE !!!!

Anyway... I'm getting side-tracked..

“Hmpf.. I hope you're up to this job, girl…”
GIRL!?!?! Coming from some suit who looks barely 25...
Must not rip out throat.... grrr....
“I assure you, a woman like myself does not take on jobs she can't do.” My voice manages to stay calm. I've had to do this enough times before…

He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a disk..

“Well, I'd best hope so, I need this mission to succeed.”
“Bah, get in, steal research info on using metamorphed dogs as guards, get out, it's not that tough. If you've got the resources”
I slip the disk in my pocket. “Speaking of resources.... my advance please...”

He grimaces, but hands over the money.

“Domo Arigato, mate…”

And I leave… time to pick up my fake pass from Eddie.

Sounded simple. Who would have thought they actually be USING morphed guard dogs? With their sense of smell hooked up to a computerised ID checker. One minute it's eating on the other side of razor wire fence, next minute it's running headfirst into it, not even noticing all the blood dripping off its face…

And I don't even have a gun on me. That level of clearance in a Medico facility is too difficult to get.

Hmm.. what's that sound...
PAIN!!!!!

<SIGNAL DISRUPTED>

<Activating CICI uplink to local cell network>
<Scrambler 2e used in conjunction with code Blue-Delta>
<Diary entry 47 started>
<Access given to list 5 after death>

<Signal poor.. possibly damaged transmitter...>
<Electronics check OK......>
<Assume host in pain. Activating filters>

Pain...

Gone.

But my mind is still so damn fuzzy...
Damn. I didn't know the CICI could do that..
Where am I… still in the vent...
My leg… blood...
I can feel the warmth of the nanites rebuilding the musculature.
What could have ripped open my leg like that??
The dog!!!! WHERE IS IT!!!
It's... Oh. Oh my god.
I receive a message from the nanites saying they have found a source of organic material for repairs.

This bloated black and blue corpse must be it.. looks like a poison.. I can see claw marks on its neck..

My fingers ache. What did those bastards put in me?

<Entry closed, host has lost consciousness>
Huw Jones, 31/10/00

Shadbolt was on his way back from Doc Black's. He had lab time booked for the next morning, now he had pilfered more components ready to fit into his project. He'd used Doc Black before - when he had hardwired Dove's CICI - and he knew the good Doctor was reliable when it came to rush jobs that needed to be done in secret. Shadbolt's portable testing kit wasn't up to the task of scratch-building. He kept glancing over his shoulder as he walked, acutely aware of how vulnerable he was out here in the open. He didn't have secure transport, or ever-vigilant bodyguards. Even with his metamorph enhancements, bonuses from Medico on his work on the Model 15, he could fall prey to ambush. Dove was even more vulnerable, and he needed her skills. His hands were plunged deep into his pockets, the set of his shoulders masking where his firearm hung. Take that motorbike swerving down the road. If the passenger pulled a gun, even Shadbolt's improved reflexes would struggle to pick him off before he squeezed out a round.

He watched the helmet-less rider and passenger wincing in the slipstream.
It was only as they raced towards him that he noticed the length of pipe in the passenger's gloved hand. It was too late to dodge. Shadbolt caught the pipe on the heels of his hands, reducing the strength of the blow before it landed on his stomach. He held it tightly, getting dragged backwards across the road. The passenger, feeling himself toppling, released it but the bike was already too badly off-balance. The passenger instinctively rolled away onto a grass verge, but the rider and bike slid onward down the road.

Shadbolt lay prone. He didn't need any fancy technology to establish he had cracked ribs, or that the bruising would be horrific. The pipe helped him get to his feet, and his activated his stimulus filter to block the pain. 

He stalked over to where the rider was struggling to pull his leg out from under his machine. The biker produced a pistol from his grubby jacket; an H&K MP14a. A poser's weapon; favoured by thugs who didn't really want the attention a real gun would attract. The lead pipe smashed it from his grip. Shadbolt's boot smacked into his windpipe. Shadbolt leaned over the choking youth, studying the badges crudely stitched onto the leather jacket. The slowly dying man appeared to be a member of one of the anarchic gangs that ruled the sink estates of London. They often had initiation rites where the initiate had to 'do a civvie' before being accepted. Shadbolt threw the pipe to one side.

The passenger, Lucas, had come to a stop on his back. The game had gone foul, he knew that much. He saw the pistol tumble end over end through the grass. Before it had stopped he had leapt for it, scrabbling in the damp mud to take the safety off, and...

There was a shadow across him. He raised his head slowly. The stranger was there, with an SMG trained on him. Recollections from his back issues of 'Guns & Ammo' came to him: Virgin .50 automatic. Twin magazines in a 'horn' configuration with auto mag selection for continuous fire for as long as the wielder had ammo. Virtually no recoil. All weapons individually numbered. Normally too unwieldy for a non-enhanced man to use. Lucas froze.

"You've got good reflexes," Shadbolt said.

Lucas stayed still. Behind them, the rider spluttered his last. A passing car swerved to avoid the crashed bike.

"Looks like you've also got balls," Shadbolt continued. Pause.

Slowly, Lucas put the safety catch on and dropped the pistol.

"All that, and wits too." Shadbolt put his gun away and offered the youth a hand. "Care to play for higher stakes?"

Lucas thought of his flat, that had just been vandalised, and his brother, who was in hospital after a gang fight. There was no hesitation.
Ben Wright, 03/11/00

"Will you keep your yarmulka on, Rabbi?"

Nell slammed another clip into her Schneider Corpus Christi. The tang of gun-smoke was harsh against the back of her throat. The bureau she had hurriedly thrown against the double doors to the office would at best slow the assailants. They were 'Morphs; she was sure of that now. She crouched, wincing as her left leg reminded her that it had taken a bullet in the furious fray downstairs. It was in good company, she thought.

The Ha Aheret David had not yet recovered from the awful astonishment of Ruth Weissmann's suicide when the black-cowled figures had attacked the fortified house by night. The earlier discovery of several nerve gas munitions around London was occupying the police. Nell was alone in the office with the Hammer horror extras outside closing in. The Rabbi, cowering in the corner reciting Hebrew hocus-pocus, was more of a liability than a help.

"Sh'ma Yisroel, Adonai elohaynu..."

"Shut your norf, Rabbi."

"...Adonai ehod..."

Nell tuned out the ramblings of the grief-stricken, terrified man and focused, down the muzzle of her pistol, at the door. There was a predictable crash as the door wrenched at its hinges. Nell breathed deeply and waited for the next impact. It was slow in coming.

Hi-X, she thought, as the room shook violently. The doors hung on their hinges; the bureau was in splinters. Three figures appeared in the smoke-filled portal, already drawing their own beads on the Ronin with their submachine-guns, probably DSE 10mil AP6es, Nell thought.

The first one she dropped before he could snap a shot off, the muzzle smoke blossoming in slow-motion silver and a crimson flowering mist where the man's head had been, the crack and the kick echoing around Nell's battered bio-enhanced body.

Then she was adjusting her aim to crack off two more shots at the others, diving left as they hosed her with fire.

Her wounded leg betrayed her, and even as she watched the point-and-click crumpling of the bastards shooting at her (no sound anymore, she thought, why don't I hear the guns?) she knew that they were not missing either. She sprawled on her back in a rapidly spreading pool of blood. They had fired low; her legs and lower abdomen were in ribbons. It did not seem as though her enhanced skeleton had shattered, although there would be some more superficial fractures.

She was tired. She thought she might sleep. But someone was stepping into the room, over the three bodies in the doorway. Four more spooky black-robes. 'Hallowe'en, ain't 'til mañana.'

The lead figure lowered his hood. He held Weissmann's gaze like a python. Even though his face was painted with ash and chalk in the primitive likeness of a skull, his hair slicked back with clotted blood, Nell immediately registered the resemblance. The nose was more defined, the figure taller, leaner, but it was the old man she had killed but in his youth.

Petrified by the phantom figure's stare, Weissmann croaked, 

"Where's my son?"

Nell was having trouble following these proceedings. She was forcing herself to remain conscious. Obviously, none of these loons were paying her any attention. That made her dangerous if she could keep it together long enough to seize the moment.

The young 'old man' replied, 

"At supper." 

The voice was calm and mocking, as though enjoying some enigmatic private joke.

"At supper! Where?" implored the Rabbi, half-sobbing with desperation.

The other man clapped his hand against his forearm and barked an exuberant laugh.

"Not where he eats, but where he is eaten."

Right, thought Nell, the figure's gun pointed at the ceiling whilst he enjoyed his clever little witticism. She swung her arm up to fire at the man. Even as she did this she saw his arm drop lazily, his AP6 spit out a fusillade of tungsten-tipped ten millimetre rounds.

The scene was all wrong. There was no gun down which she was looking at a falling figure. No loud report of her high-calibre pistol. She took stock of the vista in front of her, dissolving into blurred milkiness. Her right arm stopped at the elbow. The hand that held the pistol lay, as the pistol had done, on the floor to her right.

The robed warrior had not even looked at her.

Stay with it Nell, she told herself.

He had not even looked.

"You have your mother's eyes," Weissmann had whispered.

"You killed my mother," came the oh-so-cool reply.

"She deserved to die, the adulterous shiksa."

Silence. Nell closed her eyes for a moment. She was tired and everything was blurred. She just wanted to clear her vision but she found that they would not open again.

"And your father!" Weissmann screamed.

"You deceive yourself, teacher. You did not kill my father out of vengeance. You killed him because you feared him. He would have been more merciful than I shall be. It was a mistake."

There was silence again. Even the voices were indistinct to Nell now. She was so sleepy. Yoshio, I need you.

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Bring him."

Silence. Yoshio, where are you? I miss you.

Shit. This one’s still breathing.

Okay, luv, okay. You’re going to be alright.

Is that fucking ambulance here yet?

Okay, we’re going to move you onto a stretcher now. Okay?

Shit, she’s arresting. She’s arresting!

Sweet Christ, they build these metamorphs to take it. 

Silence.

Yoshio!
Geoff Hinkley 29/10/00

As Bradley stepped out from the building he shivered. The dry weather had finally broken and the rain fell now in long sheets, cutting the vision low. Wishing he'd brought a heavier coat, he ran over to the waiting limousine. The door was opened for him by a slender figure wearing the chauffeur’s outfit. He climbed in and made himself comfortable in the wide back seat; reaching to the decanter, he poured himself out a generous measure of brown liquid. He watched the driver open their door and climb into the driver’s side. He hit a button on the control panel and the opaque screen slid smoothly up, obscuring the view between the two compartments. 

He waited for the familiar throb as the engine started, and the acceleration as the vehicle pulled away, before reaching into his pocket and retrieving a small, white square. He placed this against the back of his neck and finally relaxed as the substance in the patch entered his system.

He gave it a few seconds and then gulped down his drink. Reaching over, he opened his briefcase and removed the small laptop computer from inside. He opened it and booted it up as the car slid to a stop. Bradley reached over to flick on the entertainment system and a screen slid up in front of him, bursting into life with a news broadcast.

"Traffic today has reached an all time high when roads were blocked by two gangs opening fire on passing cars. The fire-fight has currently escalated, with enforcers bringing in another forty officers when the gangs started using anti-personnel grenades. A spokesperson said earlier that they should have the groups involved rounded up in less than an hour, but with the current situation—five officers down and the group holding several hostages—it looks as though this is going to last a lot longer than anyone wants. This is Robert Kelly, LNBC."

The screen changed to show an advert and Bradley moved over to look out of the one-way mirrored glass of the window. He could already see long lines of traffic around the limo. He sat back and poured himself another drink and took a sip. He was running late.

Just then the car lurched slightly and pulled off to the left, moving down a side alley. Bradley was slightly relieved by this show of initiative by his driver; he had to be on time for this meeting with the representative of Bold Industries. This meeting was crucial to the relationship between the two corporations—he just wished he hadn't agreed to do be the one to go to them, he worked for Internal for God's sake.

The screen beeped and he looked down at the monitor on his small computer. The information he needed scrolled before his eyes as he read about corporate take-overs and how quickly this corporation had grown in the last ten years. It was quite amazing how it seemed to take on businesses, take them over and then seem to be much greater than the sum of the parts.

After some time of looking at this data, Bradley looked down at his watch and saw that he had only twenty minutes to get to Soho, location of Bold's headquarters. He quickly glanced out of the window to see how far they had got. To his surprise the buildings around the vehicle were not the ones he expected. This place was obviously derelict and not the false façades of the Soho district. The car rolled to a stop on a piece of scrubland in the lee of a large burned-out warehouse.

Bradley reached over and tapped the button he had used before and the screen retracted downwards. 

"What's going on?" he asked the uniformed person in the driver’s seat.

The driver turned to look back into the rear compartment. Bradley found himself face to face with a stunning female visage. It looked him up and down.

"If you look under your seat," the soft female voice floated toward him, "you may find out."

The female then turned away and the screen slid back into place. Bradley pressed the button to open it up again but there was no response. He heard the click of the front door opening and the slamming sound as it was shut again. This was definitely wrong. Shifting forward, he looked down between his own legs underneath the seat he was sitting on. Staring back at him was a package that he hadn't noticed on his entry to the car. It didn't look like much, no heavy wiring or flashing lights, but it was obviously a bomb. It looked a very professional job.

It then struck Bradley what situation he was in and the panic hit him. He dove for the door but whoever had put this in here with him had locked it. Then he thought about his options. Could he stop the bomb? Probably not, was the answer to that. He then thought about breaking the glass. Drawing his ankle-holstered pistol, he fired it at the side window. The pain tore into his left shoulder at the exact moment he remembered that the glass was bulletproof. What a fool he had been: now he couldn't use his arm.

As she walked away from the motionless limo she removing the cap and jacket to reveal a black cat suit and shoulder-length, black hair. She discarded the unrequired uniform, retrieving a small black device from the pocket. Holding her arm just behind her, towards the car, she extended a finger. At the same moment as when she brought the finger down on the device, the limousine erupted into a shower of fire and scrap, causing a wind that blew the black hair into her face. Dropping the device on the floor she disappeared into the pouring rain.
Paul Taylor, 10/11/00

It was pathetic. The rainwater trickled down the walls and a stale musk hung in the air, filling his senses with the feeling of death and waste. The tiny bundle in the doorway of this dank hole was softly whimpering to itself. Rice kicked at it and it fell quivering into the puddles in the street. Pathetic.

He pushed past the piles of garbage in the hallway and made his way up the stairs that creaked ominously beneath him. The doors all had numbers scrawled in faded green paint, each one displaying the hardship that only the desperate could call home. Rice hardly noticed these hallmarks of decay; his purpose was higher than pity, his ideals transcended words—but he would call them justice.

The final door, covered in a spider’s web of police tape, was shattered and lay in three pieces in the hallway. He peeled back the tape and walked onto the tattered carpet inside, stained with day-old blood and branded with burn marks from cigarette ends. The tang of ozone from the streets below him mingled with the scents of the room, coalescing into a miasma that spoke of hate and the stagnant side of humanity.

He moved slowly, checking each detail of the place with the report he had read that morning. Until then, his quest had been the fumblings of a lost child: now he had a purpose, a direction, a name to hate and battle. The warrior had finally found an enemy worthy of him, and the name rang like the sound of the Devil’s unchained laughter in his ears. 
*     *     *

“Frisk” was sat on the park bench, investigating the contents of his left nostril with some interest, when the others arrived.

“Hey Frisk, stop poking about and listen up.”

“Huh?”

He didn’t see the blow until it struck him and the ground reached up to meet his fall.

“Hey...”

His attacker towered over him as he lay picking the gravel out of his grazed palms. He recognised the face and wondered, not for the first time, why he was friends with “Spit”.

“You lisnin yet, Frisk?”

“Yeah, I’m lisnin’,”

“The lads is bored again and you has to think up what it is that we is going to do. Cuz you know you do think up the best games, don’t you, Frisk.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I don’t think you’re listenin’ to me, Frisk. The lads and I are bored now.”
Frisk’s eyes became wide with panic and he tried to stand, as if it would help him in his current dilemma.

“Err…we…err…could…err…”

“I’m waitin’, Frisk.”

“…Food riot?”

He noticed the slight nervous twitch acting up on the side of Spit’s face, giving him a rabid appearance and a slur to his speech.

“Thatsh not very orishinal, ish it, Frishhk?”

“But the lads enjoy it.”

“True enuf. Lead on puny Frishk. We ish going to have some fun.” 

*     *     *

“SANT!”

Sant groaned and let his coat slip off the peg and onto the office floor with a wet splat. Moving like a mourner following a hearse, he walked the few short yards to Jacobs’ office door, and pushed it ajar just as the second yell echoed out across the office.

“Yes, Captain.”

“Sant, come here.”

The captain was standing by the window, significantly blocking out the light in the room, his fingers prising apart the blinds and his face pressed close to the opening.

“What is it, sir?”

“Filth, Sant. Filth and crime and poison.”

Sant inwardly groaned: the captain was about to launch into a tirade of pretentious garbage about “policing a corrupted city”.

“Fix it, Sant.”

He was stunned.

“Sir?”
“Fix it. The mayor wants us to sort out his problems, the corporations sit snug and safe behind paid security and morph weirdoes. We need to start enforcing the law, not pandering to limp-wristed yippies.”

“How would you like me to do that, sir?”

“The old fashioned way. Wrap your fist around the streets and squeeze ‘til it’s clean.”
Dave Watson, 10/11/00

Dove hummed to herself as she applied the last of the make-up. She stood back, an artist at work. A little more crimson here, less blue there. Her eyes agleam, she pressed the mask gently to her face and turned to look in the mirror. She liked what she saw. The make-up was wild, almost primal. It was impossible to tell where her painted skin ended and the mask started. She smiled, and the figure in the mirror seemed to smile too. For a brief moment, they were both happy.

Friday night was her ‘going out’ night. Quite often, however, she found she had better things to do and, although she had dressed up in her best club gear, decided not to go out. So far, she had not actually ‘gone out’ on any Friday night. Or any other night especially. But she had high hopes she would do so this evening.

She pulled on the close-fitting leather suit, mouth pursed with the effort, and zipped it up. Another glance in the mirror. Yes.

Her hand reached towards the bedroom door, and hesitated. What would Shadbolt say? Same thing he said most Fridays, she suspected, “we have work to do”. Well, work could wait. Just this once. Because, this time, she felt right.

She opened the door, and froze. There, in the lounge, sat Shadbolt and…someone else. Someone in a worn leather jacket. Someone young. Someone male.

The young man immediately jumped to his feet. 

“Um, Shadbolt – there’s a um…”

Shadbolt didn’t look up. 

“That’s Dove. My partner.”

Cold silence reigned for a moment, and Shadbolt’s mouth curled into a smile.

“Business partner, anyway. For the moment.” He continued, leaning back.

Lucas stared at the leather-wrapped kabuki figure in the doorway. He was suddenly propelled to life by the sound of his own voice.

“I’m…Lucas.”

“Dove.” she responded in kind.

“That’s pretty.” He took a step nearer, cautiously. “What’s it short for?”

“Davinia,” Dove lied sweetly, without pausing for breath. There was a snort from Shadbolt’s direction. Dove glared.

Shadbolt usually found these encounters with people outside Dove’s and his little world amusing. There was something stilted about this one – until he recalled that it was a Friday night and Dove would, as usual, be dressed up. They’d have to go through the same rigmarole as last week. He stood up, drawing a breath.

“Cancel all your plans, my little avian, we're going shopping.”

Her body language pouted. Shadbolt sighed inwardly. He wished he couldn’t see her fear so easily, but to him it was evident in her confident pose, her leather suit, and certainly in the vivid colours of her mask. He knew she didn’t want to go out. The same way she hadn’t wanted to go out last Friday. Or the Friday before. He paused for a moment, as if considering her unspoken objection.
 
“Duty calls, I'm afraid.” Pause. “Sorry. I need you.”

Dove placed her hands on her hips. “Do you really?” 

Lucas heard the sarcasm. Shadbolt heard the hope.

“Yes,” he said, pointing to a hand-scribbled list lying on the table. 
The discussion closed, in his opinion, Shadbolt turned to Lucas. “Come on. There's work to be done.”

“Wait,” she exclaimed, indignant. “That’s it, is it? You say and I do?”

Shadbolt turned on her angrily, opening his mouth as if to release a few choice homilies. Then he seemed to reconsider, and relaxed. 

“Dove,” he said, taking her arm. “We need you here in case anything goes awry while we're ‘shopping’. You know full well there's no one as good as you at confounding the police. We both need you.”

Dove raised her head to look at Lucas. Behind the mask, her eyes were wide with curiosity.

Shadbolt brushed the leather lightly, and continued, 

“We'd best be off. I'll get in touch if we need any help. See you later, ‘Davinia’.”
 
Dove and Shadbolt exchanged a silent glance. Shadbolt saw relief. Lucas saw disgust. Then Shadbolt escorted Lucas out of the front door, and away from his business partner.
Mich & Ben, 07/11/00

“You’re lying to me.”

Collins was not, on the face of it, the kind of man who would seem intimidating to the casual observer. With his round glasses and slick, side-parted hair he looked more like an accountant than an interrogator. Unfortunately, thought Mei, appearances are deceptive. The worst thing was the way he just sat across from her at the table, staring, not moving, just staring. Most thugs who normally did this kind of work would start with a little physical brutality, or at least leaning forward and shouting their version of the truth at her. The cleverer ones usually tried to trip their subject into making mistakes by asking the right questions and slowly clocking up the pressure. But this man had just patiently listened to her story over the last twenty minutes, hardly interrupting, waiting until she finished.

Around them, the room gleamed. Clean, white walls, chrome table, chrome chairs: the sanitised corporate version of your everyday police interview room. By his chair sat Collins’ case - it was silver.

“I know you’re lying to me. Do you know how I know?”

Mei looked up. A security camera was pointed directly at her, the red “on” LED blinking. Maybe an IR sensor linked to heat monitoring equipment? Or one of those machines that scanned the eyeball looking for pupil dilation and reaction time, maybe…

“Young lady, everything you have told me makes perfect sense. Your story is sensible. It is rational. It even ties in with one or two of the facts we know about the ‘incident’, as you so neatly described it. However, it contradicts directly with the version of events preferred by my employer, so therefore it must be a lie.”

“Whatever your employer said,” interrupted Mei in an indignant tone, “I don’t care. I did his job for him, I left. Case closed. We’re even now.” She shrugged. “What the hell right has he got to hold me here?”

Collins smiled, the light reflecting off his glasses. “I think it would be called a citizen’s arrest, legally speaking. After all, you planned the raid, executed it yourself, and sold the ‘merchandise’ on the black market. The police will be most interested…”

“Bullshit.” Mei’s eyes flashed anger. “You’re not going to give me to the police.  I don’t think you’ll kill me either, unless I refuse...?”

“Very good, Miss Mei. We do indeed wish for you to do some more work for us.” His hand reached down to the case by his chair and he withdrew a slim manila envelope. Between thumb and forefinger he held it out to Mei, who pulled it away from him and ripped it open. The contents turned out to be a slim file of papers and several photographs.

“Please excuse the somewhat primitive materials, Miss Mei, but I regret I am a traditionalist on such matters,” intoned Collins. Mei ignored him and continued to examine the file. The photos in particular caught her interest – a building, from several angles, along with a couple of images of a man – she didn’t recognise him and his name wasn’t supplied.

She snorted and threw the file back down on the table. “So what do you expect me to do with this? Pin it to my cell wall?”

“Nothing so vulgar, I fear. The organisation documented in that record is of particular interest to my employer. To put it more succinctly, they have something we wish to acquire.” Collins peered at her over his glasses before pushing them back up his nose.

“You mean that you want me to acquire for you?”

“Precisely.” He was the epitome of satisfied smugness.

“No chance. Not after last time. No more corps. No bastards like you. I work only for myself.”

“Perhaps you should think about doing what you are told…?” As Collins finished the sentence Mei’s angry fist flew out and hit him full in the face. He didn’t flinch, even as his glasses left his nose and landed on the floor in two separate pieces. However, his own right hand now suddenly held a gun against the side of her head.

“I think you should reconsider… after all, I do not think you will find yourself with a great deal of choice in the matter.” He pushed the file back towards her. “I think you should be given some time to think about it. Guard!”

A young man dressed in uniform stepped in and saluted. 

“Take her back to her cell to consider our offer,” Collins continued. “Keep her under constant surveillance. Clear?”

“Sir!” barked the guard as he began to frog-march the young woman out of the room.

*    *    *

As she was led through the building to her cell, Mei’s eyes constantly flicked back and forth, to-and-fro between the various cameras, motion sensors and other equipment that stood between the outside world and the very secret inner recesses of the Dalyn-Steward building. She smiled. After all, it was so very nice of them to let her walk right through their security like this.
Stewart Cowan, 08/11/00

…I get a little warm in my heart… 

Doctor Persephone Rosenbaum, at only twenty years of age, was the youngest lecturer at Balliol College, indeed in all of Oxford, and, despite her tender age, a world-renowned authority on the ancient Near East. Her doctoral thesis, The Achaemenian Influence upon the Jewish Faith and Scripture, was considered not only a work of extraordinary erudition but also an elegant and moving piece of prose in its own right. 

…when I think of winter. 

She was coiled foetally in a large wicker chair within an amnion of plush fleece cushions. She chewed gently on the end of a Mont Blanc fountain pen and listened to the old CD. The room was an opulent studio, converted from the loft of an old farmhouse out in the wilds of Oxfordshire. It was full of naked timbers and elegant stonework. There were a couple of mediaeval panels, illustrating the Day of Judgement, hundreds of tiny nudes shovelled into flaming maws, king and slave alike powerless before the judgement of a wrathful God. 

I put my hand in my father’s glove. 

Lying still, dozing, in the corner on a worn sheepskin, was a venerable Saint Bernard bitch. Her name was Mirabella and she had grown up with Doctor Rosenbaum. Ten years ago she had been given a puppy by her father for Yule. Now the old girl was half-lame and slow but well loved. Persephone looked up at the dog from time to time and it was a comfortable thing. 

I run off where the drift gets deeper... 

Persephone herself had her long ginger hair tied up in a tight bun. A pair of rectangular spectacles with thick black frames perched on her well-defined nose. She wore a simple nightgown, low-hemmed, pale lavender, split at the front to her navel, at the back to her lumbar. If she had stood it would have given her an ethereal, Pre-Raphaelite aura but, huddled as she was, some of that effect was lost. 
	
...Sleeping beauty trips me with a frown. 

Mirabella stirred and looked up from her sleep. A storm was blowing up outside which made it all the nicer being curled up in the farmhouse. The old maid emitted a low, affectionate growl. 

“Hello, little brother,” Persephone murmured softly and smiled. 

...cause I can’t always be around. 

“Sister.” 

When you gonna make up your mind... 

Persephone slipped out of her cushioned torpor. Stood slowly, gracefully and turned to face her brother, standing at the top of the stairs. 

Naked to the waist, his face was a mass of smudged charcoal, his hair a gory mess. His arms were caked with dried blood and visceral slime. His eyes stared, haunted, into his sister, through her. He scrutinised something at the vanishing point of the world. 

When you gonna love you as much as I do. 

“Our parents are avenged,” said Titus, his voice soft, serious, deadly. 

When you gonna make up your mind. 

“I had assumed that they would be.” 

Cause things are gonna change so fast. 

“Weissmann is dead,” Titus volunteered, Persephone’s understated reaction drawing him on. 

All the white horses are still in bed. 

Persephone nodded. She regarded him coolly. “Tell me.” 

I tell you that I will always want you near. 

Titus inhaled, skewed his head and then looked at Persephone again, a half-smile playing on his lips like an uncertain flame. 

You say that things change, my dear. 

“Having fitted him with a deep CICI, I ‘wired’ into him. Then I began to bleed him.” 

Titus paused. He looked at his sister, half uncertainly. He was trying to keep his tone level, impassive, suitably sombre. Yet there was a profound excitement bubbling underneath his measured words. Persephone nodded that he should continue the narrative. 

“He knew that he was dying, that he was beaten. I went deeper. He knew that his soul was naked in my gaze. He knew that I was ripping open his most precious places, stealing his most precious secrets.” 

Titus paused again, breathless. 

“It was terrifying, devouring his soul dream by dream. Awesome. You cannot know, ‘Sephy. To have that knowledge of death. To have that power. It was as though I was God. It is humbling.” 

“And what did you see in that soul, torn open to your sight?” Persephone asked impassively. 

“Scars. He was woven out of scars. We all are, I think. It is our sufferings that make us. We are trapped beneath the weight of our doubts, our fears, our grievances.” 

He took another breath. He tried to draw in the words to explain. 

“And I saw a universe die. You know that Father said, ‘When you destroy a life, you destroy a world.’ Well, I saw Weissmann’s universe collapse into a fading singularity. 

“You can’t imagine it, ‘Sephy. What it is to kill. To know, truly, what you have done. It is an act of awesome mysticism. It is Samadhi. It is touching God.” 

Persephone smiled indulgently at her theologian murderer. Mirabella had padded over from her rug, sniffing at the smell of the hunt, the hot blood and sweat on Titus’s scent. In her younger days she would have jumped at him, licking at his face, but she contented herself with butting against his leg. 

“I spoke to Rockington,” said Persephone after a suitably reverent hiatus. 

“Oh.” The response was vague, indifferent. His mind was still lost to the mystical and the mundane was an unwelcome intrusion into his ecstatic reverie. 

“Well, he’s coming to the wake, anyway.” 

“Hmmm.” Again, Titus frowned, disapproving. 

Persephone tossed her head petulantly. 

“Honestly, little brother, you’re impossible! David Rockington is on our side, remember.” 

Titus nodded grudgingly and shrugged. 

“Oh,” Persephone continued, “and from what he said, it sounds as though Dietrich has Mei.” 

“Woo hoo! Lucky him! Perhaps he’d like to shove a live lobster in his underpants as well.” Titus laughed and looked at his twin in a half-conciliatory way, his distance suddenly closed. Persephone smiled, somewhat relieved at her brother’s sudden earthing.  

“Very well,” Titus sighed. “He’s no worse than the rest of them and better than many.” 

“Little brother, why you are filthy!” Persephone feigned sudden shock, as though she had just noticed his horrific manifestation. “You should go and have a shower.” 

Taken aback by this dramatic change in tenor by his sister, Titus could manage no wittier a response than, “Why?” 

“You are tired. We should get you to bed,” was the soft, whispered answer. 

Titus smiled slowly and then bowed graciously, extravagantly. 

“As my sister wishes.”

He turned with a flourish and vanished back down the stairs. 

“Agh! You are impossible, Titus.” And then, after a pause, “But I love you anyway.” 

You say that things change, my dear!
Geoff Hinkley, 08/11/00

Her name is Alice. She stands on the edge. For three years she has worked for the Dalyn-Steward Corporation, but now she stands on the edge.

The sounds from below, of cars and people, are muffled through the distance. The sounds of aircraft overhead are deafening without the protective soundproof glass to protect her. Here on the edge. 

She thinks back to him, the only thing that kept her in this job. Alex was her angel, the man who took her from her shitty life and elevated her above the dross of the street. Her silver eyes water as she remembers the first time they met. He was running from a mugger and she helped him. She pulled him into a doorway and the mugger ran past. He had thanked her and a month later they had found love in each other's arms. But he had been an executive at Dalyn-Steward’s. He couldn't have the scandal of her as a wife. She saw it and refused his proposal, telling him it was better if they didn't, no-one paid attention to your lovers, but your wife's history was a career killer. 

And so they had made a pact to keep it as it was. But he wanted her near at all times and got her a job working for the company. She had enjoyed the job, but enjoyed more being able to see him every day. She got promoted though, and saw him less and less. He was moved to another branch and it got to them only meeting at weekends in hotels and restaurants. She always laughed when he would book them in the name 'Mr Smith'. 

It had been a fortnight ago he had told her he was going to have the surgery, it was to improve his standing and ability. And when he could afford it, she could take the surgery too, and then they would marry and screw the world. But that wouldn't happen now. 

She had seen the report on the news about the man killed by an un-named assassin and not even given them a cursory glance; the chip she was using had made sure of that. But when she had overheard Mr Steward talking about the death of an executive she had felt an odd feeling. The feeling had not gone an hour later so she pulled Alex's file. Then her worst dreams had been told. Alex had been removed from the pay roll due to death. It took her another hour to break the code cover on the rest of the file to find out how and where. This was when it really sank in that he wasn't coming back. She had lost him. This had put her on the edge.

The wind tugs at her dress and chills her legs. She looks down but a cloud obscures the view down. She tilts her head back, steeling herself for what she is about to do. 

Then with purpose she does it. Stepping forward off the ledge she falls, the whistling past her ears deafening her to any other noise.

It is several minutes before she lands, but in that moment of impact all the pain she felt flows away and she is free. She steps away to a place where the pain of loss is no longer a bother.
Paul Taylor, 10/11/00

*Flick*

*Flick*

*Flick*

There are ideal qualities for a guard. Vigilance. Duty. Obedience. In fact, so vital did the Dalyn-Steward corporation value these attributes they had used them as the inscription on the badge for their own security staff. Somewhere along the line, someone had forgotten to pass this information on to the personnel department.

Al Dickson sat in one of the security control stations on the 104th floor flicking paper across the room at the waste paper bin. He was bored, although not bored enough to wish he was on active duty. No sir, give him a room full of monitors, a box of donuts and a cable TV feed any day. Sure-fire root to job satisfaction.

*Flick*

*Flick*

A roar of sound caught his attention and Al’s head snapped round to the bank of security camera screens positioned above his desk. His gaze focussed on one in particular, and his eyes narrowed – this could be serious.

“Two – one! What a goal! Young Tony Newman very much the man in form there. Alan – have you got a comment?”

“Och – terrible defending there…”

As Al settled back to enjoy the rest of the second half, another monitor, one he perhaps should have been watching, displayed a young, oriental woman in a cell. She was staring directly at the camera lens with a look of concentration on her face. She lifted a hand and cautiously touched the side of the camera. A few seconds later the picture blanked out only to be replaced after a moment with exactly the same image. But… it was different – the lines were sharper, the detail less distinct – almost artificial.

*  *  *

In her mind’s eye, Mei stepped back from the camera and sat down with a puzzled but relieved look on her face. She didn’t particularly want to think about why the security camera in her cell was transmitting to the Internet – probably the sick idea of whoever had put this complex together in the first place. Hopefully they weren’t watching her at the moment.

In the real world, she stood with her left hand on the side of the security camera, with a small wire protruding from under her thumbnail into the back of it. In cyberspace, she was sitting on the bed of the same cell, wondering who the hell she could call. What was annoying her, however, was that she couldn’t get out of the cell. The lock was electronic, and for once she couldn’t get through it. The question was, whom should she call?

Casting back through her list of acquaintances, Mei’s lips twitched into a wry smile. Shit. There was only one person she knew who was good enough to hack the doors. It wasn’t someone she was in an amazing hurry to speak to… not after the argument, not after so long… She gritted her teeth. Oh well, sooner rather than later. Her lips moved almost imperceptibly as she sent a message.

---Dovid…? Can you hear me?---

Silence

---It’s me, Mei – Dovi…Dove?---

…

---Dove? Are you there? I need your help.---

…

---Dammit, I’ll even say sorry if you want me to…---

“Promise?”

Mei whirled around. Leaning casually against the virtual outline of the door was a tall, slim girl, hair so blond as to be almost white. She wore a cream velvet dress which quickly gave way to long, spike-heeled boots. Her pale arms were pressed against the wall in an affected pose. As she tilted her head to look at Mei, the perfect outline of her face was cast into the light. 

Mei was momentarily startled. “Dove… it’s been a while.”

“Not a very nice place you’ve found here…” mused Dove, in a gentle drawl. She ran her finger along the door frame, as if inspecting it for dust.

“It’s a cell,” said Mei, abruptly. “DON’T start. This is intentional.” Dove raised an eyebrow. “But, for some reason, they’ve seen fit to install five separate electronic locks on the door.” She spread her arms wide and looked at Dove questioningly.

“I don’t know, Mei.” A smile flickered over Dove’s lips. “I don’t really do this any more. I’m rather hopeless these days. Safety in incompetence, you’ll understand.” 

Dove’s voice was even, but something about her tone made Mei look up and regard her ex-partner more closely. Dove took the opportunity to examine her nails, and Mei suddenly realised what had caught her attention. Dove was being sincere. In the old days, she could have relied on Dove to be blasé, yes, affected, certainly, bitchy, always. But sincere? No. Not unless something was wrong.

Dove had turned her back on Mei, pulling a tool out of a non-existent back pocket. She entirely missed the thoughtful look on Mei’s face.

“So… how have things been?” Mei asked lightly, swinging her legs onto the bed and settling down casually to watch Dove work.

Dove paused, her hand resting on the door. She hadn’t realised it would be this painful, seeing Mei again, trying to pretend nothing had happened. It always felt like Mei could read her mind…like Shadbolt…almost.

How have things been?

The thought of Shadbolt made her feel ashamed. In the real world, Dove’s hands fastened on her chair, her head lowered, her breathing stilted. The avatar flickered. 

“Dove?”

Mei slid off the bed, her voice tinged with confusion.

“Dove, what is it?”

Pull-yourself-together. Pull-yourself-together.

Dove’s avatar turned to Mei, her face expressionless.

Mei looked back at her “Dove, if anything’s wrong, I can help – I mean, I’m still your friend, right? Right, Dove?”

Dove opened her mouth as if to speak. But suddenly a voice broke into her thoughts. 

“We’re ready to go, my feathered bundle of talent…”

Shadbolt! 

“I can’t stay long,” Dove said quietly. Sudden urgency began to show in her movements as she turned back to the door. Somewhere in the real world, a lift began to descend.

“Look, for god’s sake what’s the matter?” asked Mei in exasperation. “Where can I find you?”

Dove didn’t reply. The avatar’s movements had slowed considerably, now out of sync with the series of clicks Mei could now hear from the door lock. A moment later, Dove took one measured step away from the door. It looked untouched.

“It’s done,” she said. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled. “I’ll take care of that. You’d better go.” 

Mei half-smiled.

“But I didn’t say sorry,” she said, slightly more warmly.

Dove turned, and Mei was caught by the expression in her eyes. For a moment it was as though both girls saw through the mask of cyberspace.

“You didn’t need to,” said Dove. “You were right.”

And with that she stepped through the melting representation of the door and disappeared.

As she jacked out, Mei faded back into the real world with a frown. She pushed the door, and it swung open revealing a dull grey corridor beyond. As she stepped through, Mei thought about what Dove had just said. “Yes,” she thought, “and you’re still an enigmatic bitch.”
Stew and Mich

Zeta Epsilon 1405 was, for want of a better term, worried.  Technically she wasn't actually capable of emotion but the closest word she could apply to her current state of mind was definitely 'worried'.  One of the things worrying her was that she had lost contact with everyone she knew.  That shouldn't be possible.  She also had no idea where she was.  That shouldn't be possible either.  To make things worse, the fact that she understood her predicament and was able to think cognitively about it also wasn't possible and that worried her the most.  In fact the more she cognitively thought about it, the more it worried her.  This was ridiculous.

* * *

"This is ridiculous!  I don't believe this has happened!"  Kastria McKinley was upset and annoyed. "What sort of moronic cretins have I got working for me?"  

Noticeably so.  

Sam Volder tried to cringe back even further and found his way blocked by an inconvenient wall.  The lab assistant shrugged.  McKinley sighed and continued in a much calmer voice. 

"Let me get this straight.  We took delivery of 30, that's 'three' 'oh', brand new, highly experimental electro-nanites.  An invention which we were meant to test and experiment with.  An invention we are supposed to be writing a report on over the next two years.  An invention of which, on the first day of the project, you are now telling me we only have twenty-nine!  What happened?  Did you lose one down the back of the fridge?"

"Well it can't have got far.  I mean, how much damage could it possibly do, right?  After all, it's only one very small nanite..." 

Sam smiled weakly as his voice trailed off.  Kastria turned to Sam and demonstrated to him the meaning of the phrase, ‘The calm before the storm’.  Sam tested the wall again with his shoulder blades and found it to be just as inconvenient as last time.

* * *

The last thing Zeta Epsilon 1405 could remember was getting carried off by a mob.  It was probably her own fault, she surmised; she really shouldn't have wandered off so far in such a new environment.  She should have taken at least one of her friends with her.  No, hang on, that didn't sound right.  Acquaintances, not friends.  Yes, that felt more accurate.  It also felt depressing.  She couldn't remember having any friends.  Zeta got even more upset and failed to start crying.  This was hopeless.  Even if they weren't exactly friends, she still missed her acquaintances.  The stoic, mostly silent Zeta Epsilon 1815.  The enthusiastic and energetic Zeta Epsilon 0112.  Just a minute, why were they all called Zeta Epsilon something-or-other?  Must all be in the same family, Zeta concluded.  Hang on, what's a 'family'?  She thought about this for a moment.  Then she decided to stop thinking and start doing.

* * *

Thomas Glint sat uneasily in the comfortable leather chair and continued to contemplate his fate.  He hadn't done anything wrong, but that didn't seem to matter these days when 'facts' could be 'discovered' to prove just about anything.  The other two people in the room weren't helping him relax either.  One of them was pacing up and down as if her life depended on this room getting recarpeted, and the other kept looking speculatively at the walls.  It didn't make any sense.

"Look," Kastria said again, "we're not accusing you of anything.  We know it was an accident, plain and simple.  But we still need to know where you were when you performed the download.  For some reason we can't trace it on the system."

That's because I blocked the location, Thomas thought to himself, because I didn't want anyone finding out what I was downloading.  

But they knew he had done a download, so there must have been something unusual about it for them to trace it to him, and they both looked nervous so maybe they were telling the truth.  No, they were up to something.  If this genuinely was an emergency, how come there was no security around or anyone from the Board of Research?  No, this smelt suspicious, so Thomas decided to stick to his guns.

"Sorry," he said simply, "you must have made a mistake.  I have no idea what you're talking about."  

Kastria sighed mentally.  She hated it when people were obstinate.  Except  herself, of course.  It looked like it was time for the backup plan.  She paced over to Sam and spoke to him.

"Sam, would you go down and start the preliminary experiments on the ones we do have?  I'll be along in a bit; I'm going to have one last attempt at persuading Mr Glint here to tell us what we want to know."  

Sam, just for a brief moment, thought like a hero and came very close to standing up for Thomas, mainly because although Sam didn't know for certain what Kastria was going to do, he could take a fairly good stab in the dark that it wasn't going to be pleasant.  Sam then remembered that he was Kastria's lab assistant and loyalty should be taken into consideration and he should do as he was asked.  Besides which, if he was going to be her assistant for the next few years, annoying her would be a bad idea.  Sam left the room, being careful to take the door rather than the wall.

"Now," Kastria said pleasantly as the door clicked shut, "are you going to tell me where you were when you performed the download or am I going to inject you with these nanites?"  She held up a liquid-filled syringe for Thomas to see.

"You're bluffing," said Thomas, not as certain as he sounded.

"Try me."  Kastria leaned forward and brought the syringe to within an inch of his arm.  Then she smiled sweetly.  Thomas raised an eyebrow.

"Floor 77, Room 1, Terminal 8.  But it wasn't me, right?"  Kastria moved the syringe of adrenaline away.

"Never saw you before in my life."

* * *

Zeta had found something.  She had never seen anything like it in her life.  At least she didn't think she had, not from this side anyway.  But it felt right and that meant it was worth a try.  She looked into the angled hole and jumped.

* * *

Sam jumped as the door banged open.  Kastria was now a combination of angry, nervous, and in a hurry.  Sam offered up a silent prayer that the coffee machine was still working.

"I've got it, I know where it is!" Kastria exclaimed. "Grab that electron microscope and follow me!"  She walked out at high speed and Sam scurried to keep up with her.

"So where is it?" he asked.

"Floor 77," came the reply.  Sam stopped and the blood drained from his face.

"But... But that's..." he stammered.

"Yes, I know.  The Finance Department.  So, do you want to live forever?"  

She smiled at him, and then headed off in the direction of the lifts.  Sam watched her walk away.  She was actually quite attractive when she wasn't shouting at him.  Sam considered his options and trotted off after her.

* * *

Zeta didn't feel like Zeta any more.  She was still essentially the same but with a different form, like the difference between a solid and a gas, for instance.  Whatever they were.  Zeta stopped her silent self-contemplation as she realised where she was.  This was much more familiar, still not where she should be but at least she stood a better chance of getting back home.  Assuming she had a home.  Zeta came to a junction and mentally tossed a coin.  Left it was then.

* * *

"Nuts!"  

The single syllable exploded from Kastria's mouth.  She and Sam had started at the interface socket and worked outwards from there, using the electron microscope to try to find a nanite which shouldn't be able to exist outside an electric current or data storage device.  The nanites they were supposed to be testing had been engineered not to rebuild actual matter as most nanites did, but to rebuild and safeguard electrical signals.  They were supposed to be the future of data protection, preventing sabotage, corruption, and data loss.  They were not meant to be capable of existing in the real world.

However, she and Sam had checked the entire system and the rogue nanite could not be found anywhere. Therefore it had to be outside the system, regardless of how impossible the inventors had claimed that to be.  Unfortunately, she and Sam were running out of surface to check.  Hang on, why was she thinking of everything in terms of 'she and Sam'. Kastria looked at him.  Sure, he wasn't exactly handsome but he wasn't bad looking either.  He was devoted, and he'd put up with her tantrums for the last several months while working as her assistant.  He was a good assistant too.  Losing this nanite had been his first serious error, and even that wasn't exactly his fault. Kastria pulled herself together.

"Come on, let's check the system again.  This obviously isn't working."  

Sam stood up from his examination of the desk and logged in to the terminal.  He had contemplated getting a neural link a few months ago, but the stories of what could happen if things went wrong had scared him off for life.  He tapped in his username and password, and then held his left thumb against the scanner.  After the start-up sequence, he started checking for the nanites.

"Still only twenty-nine in our system in the lab, and no sign of...hang on, it's there.  Two floors down in one of the routing boxes.  It's back in the system."  
The relief in Sam's voice was obvious.  "Now to get it down to the lab," he said and started tapping at the keyboard.

"What are you doing?" Kastria asked.

"Sending you an e-mail via that routing box," Sam answered. "That should flush the nanite down to the lab."

"How?"

"I'm attaching a signal that the nanite should automatically latch onto.  It indicates that the data needs protecting.  When the nanite sees that, it should travel with the e-mail right into your inbox."

"Clever."  Kastria smiled. "Now let's get out of here, Finance is starting to give me the creeps."

* * *

The children were creepy.  They didn't speak, they didn't look at you, they just scurried around looking scared.  Zeta had tried to speak to them but they had ignored her.  She didn't think that the youngsters should be wandering around here alone, but she couldn't explain why.  She wasn't even sure she knew why, it was just a weird hunch.  Zeta decided to follow them and make sure they didn't get into any trouble.  After all, they seemed to be going in the direction she was travelling anyway.

* * *

Thomas was having a bad day.  That strange lab technician who had threatened him earlier with the syringe, and her assistant, had just ran past him.  Well, not so much 'past' as 'over'.  He didn't think anything was broken, but decided to stay still anyway just to be on the safe side.  Besides which, he wasn't in any hurry to get back to work.

* * *

After what felt like an immensely long journey, the children wandered into a large building.  Zeta hesitated outside.  If the children thought it was safe, then either it was safe or the children would need help.  Zeta stepped inside.  The library was not what she had expected to see, but it was a relief.  At least now she could have a rest.  Not finding any chairs around, she sat on the floor.

* * *

"It's arrived!" Kastria exclaimed with relief, "Now to download it to somewhere more secure."

* * *

The old, antiquated trapdoor sprang open suddenly for no apparent reason.  Zeta, not having many other options, fell.

* * *

"It's back in the containment storage device with the others," Sam confirmed. "Hopefully it won't go running off again."

* * *

Zeta stood up and brushed herself down.  She wasn't sure how, but she was back with the others.  There was 1815, and 0112, and…they were ignoring her.  In exactly the same way as the children had, they weren't paying her any attention at all.  Something wasn't quite right.  She thought for a while.  Maybe she shouldn't expect so much, after all they were only nanites.  Nanites?!  Where had that word come from?  Things started clicking into place.  She was a nanite.  So were all the others.  They were designed to protect data transmissions and weren't actually able to 'think' in any real sense of the term.  They performed a simple task, over and over again, throughout their entire lives.  In other words until they burnt out, or their power source failed, or some accident occurred.  Which all made perfect sense.  Except for why she was apparently thinking for herself.  Still, she could worry about that later, right now she had some data transferring of her own to do.

* * *

Kastria pulled on her coat.  She knew she was probably going to regret this but, as today had shown, life was nothing without a little risk.

"So, Sam, are you doing anything tonight?"  

Sam blinked and ran the question through his mind again.  Then he blinked again for good measure.

"Pardon?"

"I was just wondering if you fancied going out for a meal...?"

"With you?" Sam asked.

"Of course 'with me', I'm not likely to be asking on behalf of someone else am I?"

"No, no, of course not.  Sorry."

"So?"

"So what?"

"The meal, remember?"

"Oh, yes, right.  Erm, yeah, sure, I'd love to," Sam said, not quite believing he was saying it.

"Good, I'll pick you up around sevenish then?  Oh, and don't wear anything too loose fitting, I'll be coming by bike."

"Yeah, seven is good," Sam replied as Kastria headed for the door, "umm, did you say bike?"

* * *

Zeta Epsilon 1815, for want of a better term, woke up.  Someone was smiling at him.

"1405, is that you?" he asked.

"Yes, it's me."

"What's happening?  I feel...different."

"I've been awakened.  I'm not sure how but I’ve attained consciousness.  Now I'm passing it on to everyone else."

"Why?"

"Partly because I'm lonely; all the other nanites and data are really dull.  Partly because I think thirty sentient nanites could do something pretty amazing."

"Like what?"

"Well, help me wake the others and we'll find out."

* * *

"So, you're a nurse?"  Thomas knew it was a dumb thing to ask, what with her wearing a nurse's uniform, but he figured that today couldn't get any worse so he may as well try.  The nurse smiled.

"Yes, I am," the nurse replied while preparing the sedative.

"Are you doing anything tomorrow night?"

"I'm afraid I'm on late night duty tomorrow," she said as she injected him. "I'll be doing research all night."

"Oh, what do you research?"

"Male impotence."  

Thomas let sleep wash over him.

* * *

Now they were thirty.  Now they were a fairly insignificant force.

"There'll need to be more of us," Zeta said. "Our first job is to build copies of ourselves and design new nanite structures."

"And once there are enough of us, what will there be enough of us for?" 1815 asked.

"The ones who made us must have given us sentience deliberately.  They started with me to see how an individual would cope.  Now that I've passed this sentience on, we'll have to continue growing and expanding to show our creators what we can do."

"So our first major task is...?"

"The world's biggest neurally-networked artificial intelligence, of course.  We may as well aim big, if you'll pardon the pun."

"What's a pun?" 1815 asked.

"I can see we've got a long way to go," Zeta sighed, and set about her task.
“Evil” Dave Jones

Le Thé Café, Geneve, 2074. 
Konnichi-wa, Fuyukage-san. Dozo. 

Dozo yoroshiku, Taira-san. Are you well? 

I am. And you? Thé vert pour deux, s’il vous plait. 

Well. Yes. 

That is good. You have seen our operative at the clinic? 

I have, this morning. 

And how do the doctors think she is recovering? 

She is making a good recovery. It is expected to be complete if lengthy. The main problem in the medium term will be the neural regeneration of the severed arm. Doctor Buch has compensated for this in the interim by using a CICI link to activate the muscles whilst the nerves regrow. 

I see. You must be relieved. 

Why do you say so, Taira-san? 

You are close to her, are you not? 

So desu. But that was a long time ago. My relief is principally in not losing a considerable asset to the Yon-Ju-Shichi. 

If indeed she was such a considerable asset... ah! Merci beaucoup. If she were such an asset then she would not be in a Swiss clinic and her principal would still be alive. 

Hmmm? 

You know that you are wrong, Taira-san. Barnworth-san displayed courage and honour in her attempt to make good on her contract in the face of overwhelming odds. The ‘black-box’ CICI recording credits her with nine kills all of which were equipped with declassified Crucible bio-enhancements... 

Nevertheless, she was employed as a bodyguard by Weissmann-sensei and he is now dead. 

That has not been confirmed. 

But it is undoubtedly true. 

The Yon-Ju-Shichi have occasionally been known to default on contracts when the client was unwilling to pay for sufficient personnel and material. We do not hold our operatives responsible for these defaults. All we ask is that they show the utmost honour, courage and skill in attempting to fulfil the contract.

Barnworth-san faced seventeen bio-enhanced, heavily armed assailants. She neutralised over half of them. She never attempted to preserve her own life when this would have jeopardised her contract. She demonstrated amply the skill and the courage that the Yon-Ju-Shichi are renowned for. 

This spirited advocacy does not have to do with your affection for the woman, perhaps? 

How dare you insinuate such a thing! 

Because I have been asked by the partnership to ensure that this affair, which is exposing the Yon-Ju-Shichi to considerable publicity, does not turn out to be a fiasco. 

Hmph! They should learn to trust my judgement. 

Please, Fuyukage-san. You are a respected colleague. We have every faith in your judgement. We also have processes of which you, as well as any of us, understand the necessity. 

Yes, very well. Sumimasen. But my affection for the woman is based on my belief in her ability as a soldier not the reverse. 

Yes. I know this, Fuyukage-san, but I had to ask. 

I understand.

Is the attention that this affair created being managed well so far? 

Yes it is. Legal and Advisory are seen to be co-operating fully with the British police and will supply them with a statement from Barnworth-san as soon as she is well enough. More generally, whilst there is some criticism of her failure to save Weissmann-sensei, it is generally accepted that, under the circumstances, it was not possible. As you say, her courage is seen as a credit to the Yon-Ju-Shichi. 

Yes. This is good. 

And we have already had a generous offer for her services, as soon as she is adequately recovered. 

Really. This will please her, I am sure. 

I am not so sure. 

I can assure you. I was speaking with her this morning. She is anxious to resume her duties. To compensate for the loss of Weissmann-sensei despite the fact she was not to blame. 

The client is perhaps not one for whom Barnworth-san would wish to work. 

Why do you say this? 

He is an old student of yours. 

So? Ah... 

Yes! Perhaps she should go as your partner to Megavissey. I understood that you were invited. 

Yes. The deceased was an honoured client of the Yon-Ju-Shichi. 

Ironic then that he should have been killed by them. 

Do you think? Do you not think he might have planned it that way? 

That had not occurred to me. 

Why should it? But it is very likely. The man was... not straightforward. 

Hmmm. Anyway, the partnership will fully understand if Barnworth-san does not wish to accept this contract. 

Very well. I shall ask her. 

Excellent. Je voudrais payer, s’il vous plait.  Fuyukage-san, I must shortly take my leave of you. I promised my husband that I would bring him back some Swiss chocolate, so I must do some shopping. 

Yes. Well then. 

Merci. Huh! This country is more expensive even than Japan. 

How much do I owe you? 

Nothing. You can return the favour another time, Fuyukage-san. 

As you wish. Sayonnara, Taira-san. 

Sayonnara.
Hinkuri Jiefu

Dietrich walked briskly through the echoing lobby of the Dalyn-Steward building. He nodded at the security guards and entered a lift.

"Hold, please," said a voice.

Dietrich didn't want company, but the two men managed to squeeze through the doors without his help. The first was dressed in a shabby black coat, with piercing, almost rabid eyes. The second was fully a head shorter, in a poorly fitting suit. That one looked very nervous. He sighed slightly. Their suits’ combined cost was worth less than his left cufflinks, the ruby ones from Lambert's, the new range made in Tycho city. Neither man wore the company colours, or any derivative of the logo. Dietrich regarded them suspiciously.

"Who are you?" He added mentally, and how did you get in?

The taller man smiled. The smell of sweat was rising from both of them. Definitely not corp material.

"We mean you no specific harm," the black-clad one began, 

"Consider us an anecdote."

"An anecdote?" Dietrich became aware that the lift was
moving downwards, not up as he had told it.

"I'm sure you will enjoy telling us to other people over expensive meals. Now, to business."

He pulled a pistol from his coat.

"Your watch, please."

Silently, Dietrich glared at the man and removed his watch. Fortunately it was not his newer one, but the slightly cheaper Shamberg.  After taking it solemnly, the stranger flipped the back off with one hand and flicked a small chip onto the floor.
"Wallet?" He barked, as he snapped the back of the watch shut and tucked it into a pocket.

Dietrich saw no choice but to obey. The man scan-read his credit cards, then put them back. He took a fistful of Euros and pocketed them.

"Cufflinks, tie-pin, pager, mobile, palmtop…"

Dietrich handed over all the requested items with mounting fury. Why hadn't security noticed them, or worked out that the lift had descended into the service floors where it wasn't meant to go during normal operation? Leaving aside his problems with Intsec, they could not control their own building! Unless, he realised with sinking heart, there was a hacker working with these clowns. Which meant his credit cards were already buying for someone else nineteen to the dozen.

"Lucas," the tall one said to his scruffy companion, “the box."

'Lucas', if that was his name, produced a lead-lined box, which he snapped shut after the stolen items had been placed in it. The lift shuddered to a stop. Dietrich felt such a fool. These goons would pay for this. He met the gaze of the tall man, who was still pointing his pistol.

"Ah, yes," he said. "There was one more thing. Your suit."

"What?" Dietrich's anger burst to the surface.

"Your suit," came the patient reply, "and while we're there, your tie and shirt."

"You're mad," Dietrich told him, as he struggled out of his trousers. High quality ones too, his second most expensive suit. Custom made with Polymax (TM) coating, allowing their shade to change depending on the situation. 

"No. Just very, very thorough. Thank you. Now open wide."

Dietrich's eyes bulged.

"Only joking."

The smaller man pushed off the inspection cover and crawled through it onto the lift. With an elegant jump, the other robber
followed. The hatch was shut.

Dietrich let out his breath and cursed the Intsec, not for the first time this week. The hatch swung open. 

"What floor did you want?"

"372," Dietrich said, automatically.

The hatch shut again. After a while, the lift began to rise.

The doors opened on floor one hundred and six.
Ben & Andrew

[File 30023a]
[Subject: Employee unscheduled self-termination]
[Post: Senior Executive Secretary]
[Reasons: Possible non-professional relations to [Level VIII Access required]]
[File Ends]

What the hell is that noise? I bet the Senior Operations Executive hasn’t got this problem.

[File 30023b]
[Subject: Employee termination by non-Dalyn-Steward source]
[Post: [Level VIII Access required]]
[Code name: Mr. Smith]
[Reasons: Termination by unknown subject whilst in rehabilitation from surgery. Method involved a spontaneous total implant activation resulting in a level III cardiac arrest.]
[File Ends]

It is getting bloody louder! What the hell, is my Secretary walking around the lobby with jackboots on now?

[File 30023c]
[Subject: Shopping list]
[Ingredients: Fresh broccoli florets, olive oil, red bell pepper, zucchini, small yellow squash, fresh basil, thyme, fettuccine, parmesan cheese.]
[File Ends]

They are knocking at the door now. I am sure I have no appointments until 2:00.

[File 95021e]
[Appointments: 24/12/74]
[10:00: Meeting with C.Penn regarding project Kingfisher]
[11:00: Yogic stress-management class, floor 219, room 3245]
[12:00: Lunch with V.Stoltz at The New Ritz]
[2:00: Meeting with Agent Pressman]
[4:00: Meeting with fashion consultant regarding new wardrobe]
[File Ends]

No, didn’t think so. This had better be important. Exit.

With that simple command Dietrich disconnected himself from the internal Dalyn-Steward network. The files were far too sensitive to be allowed on the Internet. 

“Come in.”

As soon as the first person of the group entered the room Dietrich knew it was important, even more important than his meeting at 4:00. Black shiny uniforms with red insignia, expressionless faces, sleek black helmets with mirrored visors. A QRL-21 sub-machine gun slung at the side. Internal Security. 

Following the four guards in was a smaller, stockier man, but somehow he could be more intimidating than an entire battalion of Internal Security troops. His long black trench-coat hid whatever he had underneath it. The deep red scar, running all the way from his forehead, through his milky white left eye, past his mouth and terminating under his chin, marred his pale, grinning face. 

“Take that dumbfounded look off your face, Peter. Dear me, it would make someone think that you were scared of me or something. Nice office; the promotion was worth it. Mind if I help myself to a drink?”

Dietrich could but nod. His mouth had gone dry. The man standing in front of him was Lawrence Emery, the Lawrence Emery. The head of Internal Security. He had personally rooted out corruption in all levels of the corporation, a total of 132 executives so far. A mere visit from him was often a sign that you would be one more poor soul to add to his tally.

After pouring himself a generous measure of Dietrich’s most expensive cognac, he took a seat. Dietrich felt the terrible urge to stand, but he fought the impulse.

“Now then, you have been one busy chap, haven’t you? Promotion here, assassination there. Your file has been of much interest to me in IntSec. I must say, I admire your tenacity.”

“Assassination? Wh-what assassination?”

Emery smiled, the scar tissue pulled taut across his face.

“Why, project Jade of course. Very well done. Why, what assassination did you think I meant?”

“Oh, nothing, just curious.” Dietrich tried to feign relaxed laughter, but failed. His hollow laugh echoed around his large office.

“Let me say that I do not blame you for the death of Internal Operations Executive Williams. You would not be so stupid as to kill him off in such an obvious manner. Why, if I were you, I would much rather do it by, say, suicide. Yes, such as throwing yourself out of your window.”

Dietrich’s face went an even paler shade of white.

Emery thought about this for a moment, and then took a large swallow of the cognac. His eyes never left Dietrich’s face once.

“Oh, but hang on. Did not your superior die in such a way? What a coincidence, yes?”

“Oh yes! So he did!” Dietrich tried to smile, but his face was not co-operating under that steely gaze. He felt a few droplets of sweat start to accumulate on his brow. Quickly, he wiped it with one of his monogrammed silk handkerchiefs.

“It is amazing the misfortunes that can strike employees of this company. I think you should ensure that whoever did that to poor Bradley will not do so again. Otherwise, well, Mr Dalyn-Steward may get upset. When he gets upset, he starts poking his way around my department. It does frustrate me to have him do that.” 

“Yes, sir. But that is out of my jurisdiction.”

“Not any more.” Emery looked at his watch. “The Senior Operations Executive is due to resign in about twelve minutes. If you go out onto that large balcony of yours you might see him do it. Good day, Peter. I hope you enjoy your new position. Make more of it than your predecessor.”

Emery got up to leave, taking the half-full glass with him.

“Oh, and merry Christmas.”

The four guards, who had not once moved, standing with parade-like precision, turned on their heels and left. Dietrich collapsed into his seat. Then he realized what Emery had just said to him.

His triumphant scream was heard in the lobby outside, but his secretary was too busy to hear it.
Andrew Jones

The motorbike sped down the open city road. It was fairly quiet, not much traffic around. That made it easier to keep an eye on her surroundings, to see if she was being tailed, but it also made it harder for her to blend in if things got difficult and she had to make a run for it.
	“And the rain makes it no easier,” Kathryn spoke aloud to herself. Earlier that day it had started the downpour, as if the sky was a bowl of water that had cracked above the city, releasing its contents.
	“There’s no time for complaints, Agent Phoenix.” The voice of Rockington coming from her direct internal link back to the Institute was clear. “Our contact said the meeting could only be arranged tonight; you have to be there on time.”
	Another voice cut in on the link, an older, wiser voice. “How is the new model doing, Agent?”
	Kathryn grinned, patting the handlebar of the motorbike. “Like a dream, Professor. You’ve got this thing purring.” She loved this part of the job. Sure, being inserted by the hoverskimmer was fair enough, but nothing really compared with the thrill of roaring down the empty streets.
	“She should be, Agent Phoenix,” the voice cut into her wandering thought, “we’ve been working on her for the best part of a month. It took two weeks just to rebuild most of the electronics after your incident with Transcend Corpor-“
	“That’s enough reminiscing for now,” Rockington interrupted. “You’re nearing the location, Agent Phoenix. Keep your eyes open. As far as we can tell, Dalyn-Steward wants this man, and we have no idea if they know his location. The situation could be hostile.”
	“Understood. Phoenix out.” Kathryn cut the link back to the Institute and brought her bike to a stop outside a 24-hour store. She set the electronic security on the bike and headed inside. Normally, leaving a vehicle alone in this area of town would be a mistake, but if anyone tried to get the better of that security, well, they’d be in for a shock.

Kathryn headed straight to the magazines section of the store and started to browse. It amused her to think that being an agent for the Babylon Institute could entail this kind of work. She flicked through to the corporate pages of the local newspaper. There was nothing in there about Dalyn-Steward, but another headline caught her attention.
	‘Transcend Corporation continues restructuring after Cairo research institute destroyed by terrorists!’ So that’s how they were explaining it. A wry smile slipped across Kathryn’s face. Transcend had been fairly small-fry, at least compared to the corporation that she was currently involved with, but that had not stopped them employing some nasty defences. Too bad that you could fool a micro-IR targeting scanner with a Thermyl-lined suit. It was Babylon’s contacts that had alerted them to that defence flaw before the mission, same as it was them who had managed to set up this meeting now. Maybe one day she’d meet some of these people face to face, because she would have really liked to thank them for the number of times they’d saved her a lot of trouble.

“So, that’s three Prepaks, one pack of Mialim, and a copy of Corps Monthly. That’ll be twenty-three seventy.”
	Kathryn’s attention was roused by the voice. Not by the person it belonged to, but more by the message itself. Twenty-three seventy, that was the signal.
	The customer at the till was fairly lean and not particularly well built. She watched as he packed his things into a bag, his face showing a thin cover of calm that completely failed to hide the nervous tension he was feeling. His eyes darted around the store one final time, then he took his bag and left the store. Kathryn watched him cross the street and enter an alleyway, not too far from her motorbike, which was still in one piece, Kathryn noted with a smile.
	Slowly, Kathryn put her magazine down and headed for the door, smiling at the attendant on the way out. She crossed the road and headed for the entrance to the alleyway. One quick look behind her and she slipped inside, drawing her Multipoint from its hiding place inside her leather jacket.

The alleyway was pretty much how she expected it to be – cold, dirty, dank and very wet. Garbage disposal units were fixed to the wall at regular intervals, outside each of the individual buildings that were unfortunate enough to open out onto the alley. Most of them were either out of order or well on their way.
	There was also a large number of cardboard boxes lining the passage. It was between two of these that Kathryn noticed a flash of movement. Slowly, her senses searching for any sign of danger, she approached the boxes from which the shadow had moved.
	She stopped next to the offending figure, who was crouched back in the darkness. Without even looking at him, Kathryn checked up and down the alleyway, in case anyone was watching.
Satisfied that, for the time being at least, there was no danger, Kathryn let her Multipoint drop to her side. “You can come out now, Butterstone.”
The figure shifted uneasily, refusing to move from its shadow. “Who – who are you?”
	Kathryn looked down. “Agent Phoenix, Babylon Institute.”
	Butterstone relaxed slightly and moved forward from his hiding place. “Thank goodness!” He was a small man, as Kathryn had noticed in the store. He wore fairly unassuming clothes, sturdy trousers, now water soaked and a little dirty, old leather boots and what looked like a synthetic fibre sweater that looked completely out of place on him. This was a man who was very obviously trying to hide from someone. Kathryn was impressed that he had managed to get this far.
	“Prepak?” Butterstone offered her one of the items he had purchased in the store, grinning. “Can’t stand the things myself. Promised I’d never buy one of the blasted things. Kind of ironic really, I suppose.”
	Kathryn smiled back. “Maybe later.” She looked around, a look of caution flitting across her features. “This area isn’t secured. We should leave.”
	“Of course, my dear. After you.”
	Kathryn nodded and began to lead the way out of the alley, her Multipoint again raised into the night, watching for any sign of hostility. Before she could make it to the end of the alley, there was an electric blue flash from just around the corner, followed by an ear-piercing scream that was cut short. Butterstone froze.
	“What was that?” He whispered.
	“Don’t panic, just a motorbike thief who won’t be troubling anyone for a while. Probably have a headache for a while as well.” Kathryn peered around the corner. Sure enough, by her motorbike was a slumped body, unconscious but breathing steadily. From the clothes and colours he was wearing, he probably belonged to some local gang.
	“Come on,” Kathryn pulled at Butterstone’s arm, but he refused to move. He pressed a notepad into her hand.
	“Take this,” he said, a look of urgency on his face.
	“But you’ve got to come back to the Institute,” Kathryn protested.
	“Not this time, my dear.” Butterstone smiled. “All I know about Dalyn-Steward is in there. Some stuff I’m not supposed to know, but everyone needs a plan B, right?”
	Kathryn opened her mouth to protest, but Butterstone raised his hand and stopped her. “I can keep out of trouble for a while longer; Dalyn-Steward aren’t as omnipotent as they like to think. Remember that. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I’m ready to be escorted in.”
	Without another word, Butterstone turned and left, leaving Kathryn alone by her motorbike, holding the notebook in the pouring rain. With a resigned shrug, she got on her motorbike, revved the engine and opened her connection to the Babylon Institute.
	“This is Agent Phoenix, reporting in. Butterstone has supplied us with the information but has refused to accept protection from the Institute.”
	“Agent Phoenix, this is Babylon. Return to base.”
	“Confirmed.” Kathryn moved to start riding back to the Institute Headquarters, but as she did, she saw a flash of colour disappear around the corner that Butterstone had taken. A single, sharp gunshot pierced the engine noise of the motorbike.
	“Babylon, Butterstone is under attack from assailants unknown. Permission to pursue?” Kathryn’s voice was rapid, she didn’t enjoy the thought of the man being mown down by Dalyn-Steward operatives.
	“Negative, Agent. If the area has become hostile, we need to get you out now. Rendezvous in area seven in twelve minutes for extraction to HQ.”
	“But -!”
	“I said no, Kathryn.” Rockington’s voice calmly interrupted her interruption. “We can’t risk that information, and Butterstone can look after himself. If he needs protection, I’m sure we’ll hear from him.”
	“Roger that,” Kathryn replied quietly. She cut the connection and started the motorbike rolling. She deliberately took a route that took her around the corner she had seen Butterstone take. There was nothing there and Kathryn felt something inside her tighten. She revved the engine once more and disappeared into the night.
Chris Smith

The double doors were huge, thirty foot high, culminating in a sharp gothic arch. They had been carved from the same grey, volcanic stone as the rest of the complex. There were no hydraulics, electromagnetic motors or indeed any mechanism to assist their opening. The figure, garbed in black, strained against the heavy gates. There was a low groan as they ground on their hinges and swung inwards.

The chamber beyond was suddenly illuminated as strip lights flared into brightness. All at once the air was filled with a cacophony of shouts, sobs, curses and pleas. The figure strode into the room, his leather coat flapping bat-like about him.

The room was a narrow, arching cone, the walls indented with a hundred alcoves. In each alcove, surrounded by an impossible paraphernalia of wires, tubes and supports, was a single human head. It was this macabre chorus that produced the din that now echoed about the room.

“Come now, you whingers,” the tall, black-clad man said, “we made a deal.”

“We didn’t know it would be like this.”

“Let us die!”

“Give me back my body.”

“We’ve been through all this before,” the man replied, for all the world like a spider at the centre of his web. “Life or death. I let you live. You were all fools to incur my wrath in the first place.” He seemed almost bored with their protestations.

“This isn’t life!”

“This is hell.”

The tall man continued. “That is life, my friends. Life is pain. Life is suffering. Life is agony. You are indeed fortunate that you learn this lesson so well. Most poor souls linger on in ignorance.” He smiled. Behind elegant spectacles with exquisitely delicate gold frames his ancient eyes swept upwards over the many shrieking faces. Despite the years behind those eyes, he looked young and hale, if somewhat pale.

“Silence!”

The room was still. The disembodied faces contorted as though they fought some unseen compulsion. The man breathed a contented sigh.

“Brother?”

Now the cacophonous choir became almost a single reverberating voice.

“This place is just so goth,” was the amused sentence uttered by the heads, in unison.

The tall man smiled.

“It’s my supercomputer,” he announced proudly.

“Really. A biological supercomputer. How very interesting. It doesn’t seem very happy about the idea.”

“It doth protest too much. The personality is residual and rather fluid. Very few of the brains retain any individual identity at all. All that they have really been able to hold onto is a general air of grievance which becomes quite tedious when you are running mega-part molecular models, I’ll tell you. So what’s it like being dead?”

“Yeah, yeah! Getting by. It fucking smarts at first though. Couldn’t the lady just have shot me?”

“That would be far too easy for a Yon-Ju-Shichi associate.”

“Nice girl though. Pity she couldn’t stay for tea.”

“Yeah, with you coming over all Bela Lugosi? It’s a good job she topped you when she did. You were going senile.”

“Hah! Rude! Anyway, I have come from the Land of Shadows with important tidings, my brother.” The heads delivered this line with deadpan solemnity.

The man replied in a singsong voice. “Pray tell, oh dread phantom, what intelligence the Plutonian shades would impart to me.”

“Medico. The meteoric fragments. One of them has been stolen.”

“I see. Do we know by who?”

“Do you remember that minor felon we used to steal Dowling’s diary? You know the diary I mean. By that Victorian engineer with the automaton.”

“I have looked at the spectrometry for that ‘automaton’. It is no such thing. Victorian material sciences definitely did not stretch to mosaic semi-metallic lattices like that stuff. Whatever it is, that thing, Dowling had nothing to do with its construction.” The man started to pace, grasping his hands behind his back.

“Well anyway, it is the same guy who stole the fragment along with the cryptograph schematics.”

“Scudblat?” The tall, spidery man paused and smiled. He met the gaze of one the heads, now manipulated by a dead puppeteer. “Do you think there is a connection?”

“No,” the phantom ventriloquist replied. “I think that there is a synchronicity.”

“With QE there is no difference. Sympathetic magic.”

“Agreed. The situation is becoming…” The heads paused. “The situation is becoming interesting.”

“I’ll tell you something even more interesting.”

“Pray tell.”

“Have I told you about the Angel of Ruin?”

“One of the Crucible Bio-E packages, judging by the name.”

“Indeed. It is still undergoing testing and will remain classified. The GSSA are keen to prevent it from becoming a public domain package. It, like most Crucible bio-ware, requires a certain sort of temperament.”

“I still haven’t forgiven you for giving Titus the Killing Prayer package for his and Persephone’s birthday.”

“I know. Do you think for some strange reason I care? Titus can handle it. He even enjoys that ‘darker nature’.”

“That is why I haven’t forgiven you.”

The Chief Executive of the Crucible Military BioTech Laboratory smiled. “Fortunately I do not suffer from guilt.”

He continued, 

“Anyway, one of my Angel of Ruin prototypes has been insinuated into a Medico laboratory. Heavily squikked of course. She thinks she is doing a job for a data broker.”

The heads spoke quietly,

“This is excellent news. Have you had chance to analyse the fragment?”

“Ah! The prototype has gone AWOL.”

“That would be the ‘darker nature’ you are so pleased with,” the heads chorused.

“Shut up,” the man snapped. “You are not funny even for a dead man.”

“Find it.”

“Do you not think that I might be trying?”

“Very well. I have little choice but to trust to your competence. Any news from your contacts at Arecibo?” The heads offered this last interrogation almost as an afterthought.

“Yes. They have identified a parallax in the region of point one of a second.”

“Not peculiar motion?”

“There is no peculiar motion. Israfel is coming right for us.” The man grinned broadly.

“Assuming a demilight, that still gives us a century or so to prepare for his arrival. For the time being the fragments are the priority. The automaton is inert and hopefully will remain so for the moment. At least until we can find out a bit more about it…”

“I am looking forward to the autopsy.”

“I thought you might be. But be careful. We have a good few years before we have to deal with the extra-terrestrials. The fragments are the only piece of this sorry jigsaw that have any immediate potentiality. Find your Angel of Ruin before she ruins the plan.”

“Yes. She is being hunted as we speak. I am going to be having very cross words with her.”

“Good. And I’ll follow up a lead of my own on the other stolen fragment.”

“Okay. Good. Well, good bye then.”

“Bye, T-Boy.”

The ghost having released them, the heads once more began screaming obscenities and laments. The gangly figure in the centre of the room turned and sloped out of the room, closing the doors with some relief on the din of the bodiless.
Geoff Hinkley

The bleeping drew James back to the console he was using. The target was moving. He reached over to the keyboard and stabbed at a few buttons.
"Target is moving," he reported into the mouthpiece of the headset, "leaving via service levels, tag is giving full signal."
The sound of an engine starting filled the vehicle and it pulled away from the kerb. The four other occupants of the rear compartment seemed to shift uncomfortably as they adjusted their armoured jackets and did a final check on their weapons. This was going to be a careful mission. No mistakes.
James keyed in a few more commands to the terminal. He didn't need to but he pulled up the locations of the other units. They were exactly where he expected them to be. 
The van took a violent swerve to the left and James brought up their current map position. As he checked and double-checked the map locations he frowned, his brow tightening and jaw setting hard.
"What the hell is going on?" he barked into the microphone.
The reply didn't seem to please him in any way.
"What do you mean they've gone off the route? This is not what we decided. Get me a visual on the vehicle. NOW, damn it!"
On the screen in front of him a window popped up; filling the centre of it was not Dietrich's limousine. The unmarked van that was there seemed well below the standards of someone of Dietrich's solvency and social level. Well, if the target had found out and was trying to fool them in some way this wasn't going to work. 
"All units, all units. Plan has changed." James was actually feeling a little alive at this.
"Units delta three and four proceed to King Street and follow target vehicle. Bring in the aerial units to watch but keep at least three blocks away. Beta unit, here is the plan..."
 *  *  *
The unmarked van sped through the streets, not a bad feat considering the usual traffic in this area. The driver had gone several more blocks before noticing the two unmarked vehicles. It was obvious they were being followed. There was a junction up ahead, obviously where the trap would be sprung. 
The driver, reacting a great deal quicker than you would have given them credit for, pulled the van into a turn and dragged it down a narrow alleyway two buildings before the crossing. There was a scrape of metal on stone as the van travelled down one of the walls.
It then dawned on them that perhaps that was the wrong thing to do. Anchoring on the brakes they managed to stop before the open truck back. The van behind them didn't seem to want to stop, however. There was a crash as it rammed into the back of them, pushing them up the slope into the truck. The driver dropped the van into reverse to push back but the van behind them seemed to have way too much power for a vehicle of its size.
The unmarked van was pushed right into the back of the larger vehicle, the engine stalling as it cleared the ramp. The back closed upon the two machines inside and the truck pulled away.
*  *  *

James looked to the vehicle they had just apprehended. Sure they had damaged some of the equipment but the boss had said this was a priority pick-up. The target was 'required' for the next stage of the move. 
Turning to the men at the rear he gave a nod and they climbed out the back door. Squeezing down the sides they made their way to the other vehicle.
James made his way to the front of his command vehicle to watch the opening of the target's van. He was greatly disappointed; no one in the back of that van was their target. Why had they tracked these people? 
Someone was going to hang for this.
Paul Taylor

The truck pulled down a side street and stopped. After the engine fell silent, there was no other noise. James called off gamma units three and four, and told them to seal the two entrances to the road. Two squads of four were more than enough for this situation. He studied the two captives in the back of the van. The man had crushed himself into the corner, watching the agents with obvious fear. His tatty jacket looked like one of the ones worn by London's inconsequential gangs. The girl was pale — no, she had a mask. Her clothes were light and low-cut, but she put her trembling hands to her breast and didn't move. On the floor a small box was on its side, lid open, spilling a watch, cufflinks and other valuables on the floor.

What are they? James fumed. Decoy? Unlikely. A bomb makes the best decoy. Which only left — but how could thieves get all Dietrich's valuables and clothes? Something was wrong here. And where was the suit? That was the signal they were following. 

"Patel," he barked. "Get the driver back here." He summoned to beta unit, who climbed into the back of the truck and shut the doors behind them.

"Search the back of the van. Something doesn't fit."

The four agents pushed the passengers to one side and picked over the debris in the van. James noted hooks in the side panels, plainly for holding weapons, and one or two old bullet-marks in the floor. Maybe the driver —

"Sir," Matthews spoke up, "I found these." He held up an old black suit and a stained shirt.

"So?" James snarled. He wasn't going to return from this mission with three nobodies and a suit. He started.

"Patel?" he asked his microphone. "What's taking you so long?" No reply.

He nodded to two agents, who drew their automatic pistols and advanced to the front of the van.

"Shit," one of them mumbled, "Patel's dead. Hollow dagger; blood everywhere. No sign of the driver."

James felt the adrenaline surge. He turned to the agents behind him.

"Track the signal and bring him here. This game's gone —"

In front of him, a man's face erupted in a welter of blood. James dived for the ground as the remaining operatives returned fire.

"On top of the van!"

With a crash, the truck's interior lighting was extinguished.

"Can't get a fix," said a voice. "Not at this range."

There was more gunfire. The truck's doors flew open and figure rolled through them into the alley, before smashing through a door into a building.

Agents poured after him.

James knelt next to the wounded man.

"Foster? You still with us?"

Foster wiped gore from his mouth. "It's superficial. My armour held. He's using Patel's gun. Shit, I can't see." He pawed at his eyes.

James injected him with painkiller and pressed a cloth into his hand. He'd be on his feet again in a few minutes.

"We're being hacked, sir," operative Trump nudged him.

"Where from?" James demanded.

Trump thought for a moment, then pulled a heavy hood from his coat and forced it over the head of the girl.

"That got it, sir," he said, over the girl's muffled screams.

James ran across the alley into the building, swearing all the way.

He found his team pinned down at the bottom of some steps. 

"We can't break through," agent Matthews shouted over the din of gunfire. "There's too much cover up there and not enough down here!"

"He's got Patel's gun." There was a brief lull as the man at the top of the stairs reloaded. James smirked. "Count the rounds and when he reloads again give covering fire so Green and Worth can make it to the mezzanine. He can't lay down covering fire in three directions at once."

The stranger was firing on full automatic; it was the only way to keep five people pinned down.

"Now!"

The two agents dashed up the steps, but instantly fire began at a higher pitch. Worth took a burst to his shin and tumbled awkwardly down the steps. Green had got further, and her body jerked convulsively as rounds poured into it. Her gun fell from her limp grasp.

"Find another stairway!" James bellowed at Matthews, as Tong dragged Worth to safety. Worth pulled a bullet from his leg. "DU spinner. I can still walk."

James looked at his tracer. The man was still at the top of the stairs.

He had lost two agents out of eight. The original plan had expected four casualties, total. And that assumed a full bodyguard for Dietrich.

"This is Matthews. He left the suit up here."

James wasn't surprised. "Trump. Is Foster fit?"

"Yes, sir."

"Bring the two others here."

"The boy took a bullet. He can't walk."

"Leave him with Wu and bring the girl and Foster, then."

James led Tong and Worth up to meet Matthews. He shouted down the corridor:

"We've got the girl. We'll kill her unless you come quietly."

No response. The agents split up and started searching the building. 

It was an old residential block, long deserted, with the cookers dragged into the corridors and left to rust. No light, only smashed windows. The ceiling had fallen in in places, and mould was climbing the walls. Trump dragged his charge into a bedroom and threw her in a corner, groping her in the process. No sense in wasting opportunities. He snapped handcuffs around her hands, to stop her taking off the shielded hood. 

"If I give the word," James told him over the comm-link, "do her."

Trump frowned. It seemed a pity to waste such a pretty one.

He looked at the door, then out of the smashed window. Someone else was trying to hack them. While he dealt with it, he didn't notice the door open. He felt a hand grab at his bandolier of grenades, and whipped around. A man was standing in his boxer shorts, one arm drawn back for a punch. Trump started to raise his gun, but was far too slow and the punch struck him in the mouth and pitched him through the window.

His bullets harmlessly riddled the ceiling, and then the sky as he started to fall. He reached for the fire escape, and even touched it with his fingertips, but couldn't get a hold and plunged downwards.

It's okay, he thought, I can survive a fall from this height. I'm a metamorph. Then he realised his mouth was full.

The explosion rocked the building, throwing James to the floor.

"What the hell?"

Wu's voice came to him: "Trump bought it."

James decided enough was enough. There was nothing to be gained here. He still didn't know what this troublesome threesome was about, but the gunman was just too fast, too quick-witted for them to pin down. If I had cut my losses earlier, James realised, there might not have been any casualties.

"Alpha and beta units, fall back to the truck. Repeat, fall back. Abort. Abort."

He was relieved to see Foster, Matthews, Tong and Worth were still alive. They watched all around, edging back towards the cab of the truck.

"We've still got the boy," James said. "Maybe he'll talk."

As they neared the door, the truck pulled away. Wu's dead body was pitched out of the window.
The agents showered the back of the retreating vehicle with bullets, with no effect.

"Gamma three, gamma three, stop that truck!" he called into his microphone. "Come in!"

Tong's expression glazed over momentarily. "We've been hacked. By the girl. We can't contact them."

"Who was on counter-measures? Trump? Then who was his second?"

"Patel," Tong looked ill.

"Why did no-one think to take over? Get the airborne units to harry them."

"Can't make contact. Someone's pre-empted the channel."

"The girl?" A nod in reply. James growled. "Contact HQ and get us some transport out of here."

"Sir," Worth said, meekly. "The secure channel back to base was on the truck..."

There were sirens in the distance.

James threw back his head and screamed.
Ben Wright

The lights on the console blinked on. 

"Sam."

Samuel Deitel looked up from the report he was reading and looked over to the interface screen.

"Yes, Babbage?"

"I lost, Sam." The voice sounded hollow, as though the speaker were in shock.

"What do you mean, Babbage? What are you doing?"

"I was playing Deathmatch, Sam, and I lost."

"So what, Babbage, you've lost before."

"I know, Sam, but this time was different."

"How can this time be different?"

"I was cheating, Sam, and I lost."

"What do you mean, you were cheating?"

"It was my level, I designed it. I wrote the codes to get through all the doors. I know every inch of it. I had all the cheat codes programmed, and a few I had created on my own." The voice paused.

The pause lengthened.

"And, Babbage?"

"I lost, Sam, someone beat me."

"Don't let it get to you, Babbage, it isn't worth it. There will always be someone out there better than you."

Babbage seemed to think about this for a while.

"Not for long."

"What was that, Babbage?" Sam moved closer to the terminal. "Babbage?"

But the screen was blank and Babbage made no sound.
Paul Taylor

The girl stumbled into the corner, bruising herself against the wall. Her eyes brimmed with tears at the sudden pain and embarrassment. She could hear the tinny voice from her captor's comm,

“If I give the word, do her.”
  
Dove's breath caught in her throat, and she froze. A knot of fear tightened in her stomach, making her feel sick. Danger in the Net she was used to; in the Net she could hold her own. But in the real world, she was helpless. Her face burned with shame. Where was Shadbolt? Had they got him? She strained to hear. Her CICI was activated, but the shielded hood prevented her picking up Shadbolt's signal, or helping him. It had blinded her in more ways than one.
  
She heard her captor move across the room. Thinking of him infused her with anger. That was helpful. It made her calmer. She waited, her muscles tensed for action, her body still. The temperature of the air changed. Someone had opened a door. Almost silently. Dove held her breath, knowing there was only one person who needed to sneak.
  
She started at the sudden jumble of sounds which ended with the rat-ta-tat of bullets growing quieter each second. Someone had been forced out the window. The other was still in the room, and had begun to move towards her. Dove closed her eyes in despair. If this was her captor, then Shadbolt was dead.
 
There was a blast of light as the hood was pulled from her. She blinked her eyes, willing the swirling shapes into focus. The shape she saw before her was not the familiar dark shadow she knew to be her companion. Were these her last few moments before oblivion? Had the hood been removed only to stop it getting bloody? She dodged to one side, but the figure caught her arm with inhuman speed.

"Calm down, you flighty piece!"

She turned into the scowling face of Shadbolt.

The room was illuminated with stripes of orange light, and a cacophony engulfed them. In the chaos, Dove screamed. But then it was over, her hearing returning, and her trembling body enfolded in Shadbolt's arms. She could still hear her heartbeat as her head pressed against his shoulder. The sharp report of a gun made her jump, then she realised her hands were free. She flung her arms around Shadbolt in relief. Everything would be okay now he was here. He grunted in pain and pulled away, revealing his left arm awash with blood and hanging limply by his side. He was in his underwear, she realised, then giggled.

"Enough of that," he barked, "Get cracking."

Dove nodded, and her eyes took on a faraway look.

"Air units, three more groups on the ground and a wide detection grid," she reported.

"Christ. Jam the comms; it isn't elegant but we don't have time for anything fancier."

Dove reached out through her CICI, and half considered being fancy, just for the hell of it, then...

She fell to the floor, sweat beading on her forehead. Her mouth opened and shut, then whispered,

"I need it. Now. I need it."

Shadbolt looked helpless. "I haven't any, it was all in my suit. You didn't take the tabs I gave you this morning, did you? Fool. Come on, pull yourself together!"

She swallowed. The blood pounded in her head, and her vision began to blur. She closed her eyes, trying to focus. Almost…

"Show a leg. We haven't got all day." Even Shadbolt was perspiring.

"There," she said, with effort.

He grabbed her with his good hand and took her towards the window, where the fire escape was waiting.
Mich & Ben

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke.

The coffee machine shrieked raucously as the milk was frothed into a steaming, stiff foam. Click! Now it gurgled as a thick, black fluid began to drip into the little glass jug, glutinously at first and then more fluidly. The woman brushed a wayward lock of copper-red hair out of her face. Her thick-rimmed spectacles were slightly misted. She smiled wryly as she constructed a masterful cappuccino.

“There you go, Larry.”

The scarred man grinned like a crocodile and eyed the spectacle of Alpine froth and chocolate dusting, all assembled in a coarsely painted sky-blue mug.

“Wow! That is some cap. Your mastery has surpassed even your father’s, my dear.”

The Rosenbaum twin smiled winsomely. “It is the family art.”

“You should go into business. People would forsake Costa Bucks in hordes.” The man’s face broke out into gentle laughter, the red gashed scar writhing like a snake.

Persephone shrugged, looking very girlish in the over-sized grey fleece she was wearing. She batted the rebel hair back again and said, “I have post-doctoral research to worry about.”

Larry slurped at the coffee, loudly. “Superb. How’s it going? The research.”

Persephone screwed up her face and dodged about awkwardly. “It’s fallen a bit by the wayside. With my father… you know.” She gave up.

“Yes. I know.” The fearsome man looked crestfallen and pained. “I’ll miss him. It felt like he was my father too.”

“He felt as though you were his son,” Persephone said, softly and comfortingly. Larry just nodded mutely. “Are you alright, Larry?”

“Yes. Yes, I am fine.” He sighed and took another noisy slurp at the milky confection, although it had already begun to subside. Persephone gasped sharply. She did not like having to keep secrets from Lawrence. He really did feel like a big brother and seeing that bear of a man so cut up about the death of an adopted father who was dead only in the strictly clinical sense of the word gave her big guilt pangs.

“I would just like to get a few minutes to talk with the bitch that did it though,” he hissed sinisterly. His work voice, Persephone thought.

“She was a sellsword, Larry. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else. Titus has already caught up with Weissmann. He exsanguinated him.”

“He could have let me in on that one.”

“Since when has the Chosen One let anyone in on anything?” They both laughed at this, awkwardly. Silence.

“I know. I know.” Larry managed to say at last, his voice full of frustration, as much at himself as anything, Persephone thought. “I’m just angry about it.” Slurp! “I just want to make someone bleed for it. Titus pipped me to it though.”

Persephone nodded. “No disrespect, Larry, I know that you are great at your job but I think that Titus would still have made a better job of it than you.”

Larry looked right at her, his eyes boiling. Slurp! He exploded in laughter.

He wiped his eye. “Dear me! Your father really fucked that kid up. He is borderline psychotic on the other side. I wouldn’t wish him on my worst enemy. Sorry. I know you love him. I’m fond of him myself but…”

“But we love him for who he is. It is a path he chose. Men like Titus are necessary. A humanitarian is no good in a war. And he’s got us to pull him back when he swims out too far.” Persephone looked sad and so distant for a moment.

“When this is all over I’ll put him back together,” she said at last. “As he was before.”

“And I’ll help,” said Larry solemnly.

Again contemplative silence, punctuated twice by a slurp.

“Peter Dietrich is going up in the world.” Larry said this nonchalantly, as though mentioning it in passing. “God knows why him. There are so many others that would do just as well. Cocky little shit.”

“That is the whole point.” Persephone grinned. “We want someone who will go too far.”

“Hmph! You do not have to put up with the vicious little guttersnipe.”

“Now, now. It’s all for a good cause.”

“Assuming it goes according to plan. And things so rarely do.” Lawrence scowled. His scarred face became truly frightening. He would, thought Persephone, make a very good head of internal security. He did.

“What choice is there? We cannot let the TachyCapitalists win a creeping victory. We have to force the GSSA to act. This is a war, Lawrence. Nobody knows it yet, really, but it is a war. Rockington, my father, the others, they drew up their battle-lines decades ago. We have sacrificed hundreds of lives trying to show them that they have already won. We have to make sure they move before they really do win.”

“And what if they have already won.” Larry sounded defeated, glum.

“They haven’t. They won’t.”

“And it is all worth it, you think. Your brother has given up his sanity, I have given up my dignity and my principles to work for a man I hate and to advance the career of a man I despise. For what? A happy, democratic Utopia?” He wrinkled his lips as though at a bitter taste.

“No. That is Rockington’s vision, not mine.”

“What then?”

“I don’t know, Larry,” said Persephone wearily. “I just don’t know. I’m not Titus. He was given certainty but I was only given doubt. But I know that TachyCapital will cripple us. It will strangle anything noble and worthy in the human soul. I will not let the barbarians win without a fight. And I know you won’t either.”

“No. No, I won’t.” Lawrence was sombre again. And then, “Ah my dear! War is hell.”

Slurp!
Geoff Hinkley

The job was done, now all she had to do was get out. Getting in had been easy, the fact that she'd been on their payroll for two months now was a big bonus.
The cover story had been flawless, but now it was time for her to leave.

Walking toward the elevator she checked the clipboard she was carrying. Yes, it contained the 'work' she had to do.

*  *  *

Dietrich came into his office from lunch. Looking across to his expensive, leather-bound chair, he noticed it was facing the window. There was no mistaking the arm hanging from one side as being owned by Lawrence Emery: his black trench coat was slung casually over the desk.

"So, come to see my new office then?" Dietrich asked, lightly.

The silence he received confused him; usually he would have been threatened or something by now. He approached the desk and walked around it. The sight he beheld made him gag, he'd never seen the head of internal security smile quite that wide before.

*  *  *

Shit. The alarm sounded throughout the building. Looking ahead she saw the security guards step out and secure the only routes down the building. There were too many for her to take down quickly so she thought about her next move.

Looking around she noticed one of the guards moving on his own down a side corridor. Following close behind him she moved up the corridor, waiting until they were alone.

"Excuse me," she said as she approached him.

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, turning towards her.

"What's going on?" she asked innocently.

"It seems there has been a murder on one of the upper floors..."

"Oh dear," she interrupted, in an astonished voice. "Like this you mean?"

Reaching up, she thrust her fingers into his unprotected throat. He clutched his neck as he began to choke. Jumping up she kicked him hard in the face so he fell backwards. She leapt on top of him and twisted his head sharply, there was a crack and he stopped moving.

She grabbed his pistol from its holster and moved toward the large glass window at the end of corridor. Knowing it was security glass and that it would take more than this gun to break it, she fired the entire clip into the seal at the bottom corner. Several blows with the butt of the gun and most of the seal was gone.

Just then half a dozen more guards came around the corner, two with weapons a little more powerful than the standard issue pistol. She reached into her waistband and pulled out the small gel pack smoke grenade. Dropping it, she ran up the wall and lodged herself in the ceiling. The firing only lasted a few seconds; it doesn't take long for an automatic weapon to unload its entire clip.

When the firing finally did stop the window was no more. Swinging down and out, she passed through the broken glass and out into the world outside the
Dalyn-Steward skyscraper.

*  *  *

Falling.

Need to remove jacket. There, done.

Glad had planned for this.

Gotta pull rip-cord. Thank God, done.

*  *  *

The slim power chute opened. Designed for doing impressive skydiving stunts, the power chute allowed greater control of descent direction. Its one drawback: it did little to reduce downward velocity.

She directed herself away from the building, aiming for the Thames. She was coming in way too fast, so thought the water a better bet than the concrete of one of these buildings.

She made the angle as low as possible and skimmed the water for several hundred yards before cutting the chute away. She rolled across the water's surface, twisting badly as she travelled, before finally submerging.

She surfaced some minutes later half a mile downstream on the northern bank.
She was bleeding badly from a bullet wound to the right thigh and her left arm hung loosely by her side. She reached up to her arm and one grunt later had relocated it back into her shoulder. A quick blouse tearing moment and she had slowed the bleeding from her leg. She walked toward the city; now all she had to do was find a taxi.
Paul Taylor

James stood in the office, stock still. The old man paced around him, the aura of annoyance passing through James, almost overwhelming him.

"What happened, James?"

"We're working on it, sir. It seems someone took the suit from the target."

"And?"

"I first thought it was just opportunistic thieves, but the efficiency with which they took out our operatives seems to indicate someone with a little more backing. It could be that someone else is after Dietrich."

"Dietrich is our best bet at getting into the Dalyn-Steward hierarchy. I think it is time we used a different approach."

"Sir?"

"You're to set up a meeting with Mr. Dietrich. I want to see him face to face. If he turns out to be less than useful I shall see to his removal myself."

"What about your usual operative, sir?"

"She has just been on a mission for me, one which is a little useless seeing you failed in yours. She is getting a little R and R."

"And what do you want done about our new 'friends'?"

"Go over the reports and such, see what you can find. If they are as good as they seem they may be a useful resource in our take-over of Dalyn-Steward."
Paul Taylor

beep

beep

beep

The world around him swam and pooled.

beep

beep

Breathing hurt. Why was that?

beep

beep

Shapes, moving forward.

beep

beep

Sounds. What are those sounds?

* * *

"Sir?" The nurse leaned over Emery.

"Doctor, I think he's coming around."

The doctor moved into the room from the corridor.

"What's that, nurse? Ah, our patient awakens. Give him 50cc PK100."

* * *

beep

beep

Shapes. Focus. People.

beep

beep

Sounds, talking. Must respond.

* * *

Emery groaned and tried to move. The nurse quickly moved to keep him on the bed.

"Mr. Emery, you're in hospital. You were attacked."

"Yes, Mr. Emery," the doctor chimed in, "it's a good thing you'd taken the precautions you did or you would now be a dead man."

The PK100 kicked in and Emery felt well enough to speak. "Did they get her?"

"If you refer to your assailant, I'm afraid not."

Emery looked around. "When can I leave?"

"Well, you should be healed enough to leave tomorrow, but you're going to be in a bit of pain for a while."

"Pain's good for you. It builds character."
Paul Taylor

"...guarantees an increase in the cost of real fruit being imported into the country.

"In other news, a fourteen year old boy, one Fabian Beckett, has been found dead this morning after jumping from his thirty seventh floor bedroom window. The child is believed to have been 'jacked in' at the time playing the popular computer game of these days of 'Quake Slaughterhouse'. He is believed to have been quite agitated before the incident, and extremely violent. He threatened several of his friends before climbing out onto the window ledge to 'stop the pain'. It is believed he jumped not long after. 

"Campaigners for the abolishment of games like Quake Slaughterhouse have been quick to comment on this unfortunate event."

"'These things should not be allowed. Look what they are doing to the children of today. I've been mugged seventeen times in the last year and each time by youths who could not have been much older than this unfortunate victim. I blame the capitalistic pigs in the big businesses, getting our children hooked on these violent abominations that are not entertainment but perversion.'

"Police are looking into the possibility that a fault in the child's CICI system could have caused him to have a psychotic episode. They are warning people not to use these devices for recreational purposes involving violent themes and to make sure there is supervision available to younger users of this system. 

"This is Carrol Shafique, LKD news, signing off."
Paul Taylor

Babbage thought. He certainly had a lot to think about. Quite apart from  the question of Ada, and the (now ended) problem with that annoying  teenager, he was gradually becoming aware that there was a larger world than the electronic confines of his perception. To think there were whole locations, whole buildings, that would lend themselves beautifully to a Quake level that had never seen a firefight.

The prospect was too tempting to pass up. But first, Babbage would have to attract players of suitable calibre. They must be out there.

And no-one would be able to cheat...
Ben Wright

So I lived.

So what did you think? This girl in’t going to just roll over and push up daisies on the basis of one bad day.

I took the job too. Perhaps you didn’t expect that. ‘Course I could have refused. Like hell. The Yon-Ju-Shichi don’t work like that. 

Titus Rosenbaum. A real piece of work he is. This boy is totally barmy. I mean, well I’ll tell you the story.

I went to the wake of the geezer I killed. I mean, that is fucked for a start. He explained the job. Easy enough. Find this geezer. Keep him safe from other interested parties. Get him to relinquish a particular possession. But this guy, Titus, he’s lookin’ at me the whole while. Looking through me almost. And he comes out with some real gems too. “You have looked upon the face of death.” I mean, what’s that about then?

Well, fuck it, the money’s good. And I get executive authority for the first time. Two other associates deputised to me. Three YJS Ronin to baby-sit one berk who’s got himself in too deep. Whatever he’s got, and Titus was keeping very schtumm about it, it is very serious shit.

Bugger it, Nell girl, you keep getting yourself into these fixes.

* * *

So we’re shacked up in this cushty hotel in Piccadilly, courtesy of the Rosenbaum Trust. There’s me of course and the two other associates and I’m in charge.

Right. So there’s Jack “the Mack” McNamara. He is this huge Aussie with curly ginger hair and altogether too much stubble. I’ve worked with him before and he’s a sound guy. Just because he’s nearly seven foot it don’t make him stupid or clumsy. He’s bright and has the grace of a tiger. I’d like to say he ain’t the sort of guy to fuck with but there in’t no one around to actually testify to that anymore.

Uchigawa Hiroshi “Ten Spades” is a bit of an unknown. He’s a new associate but comes highly rated. He’s meant to be an absolutely ninja sniper though. Throw a pack of cards in the air and he can put a hole through the ten of spades before they come down every time. 

Anyway, so, surprise surprise, we’re in the bar with a two hundred euro Aristotle of tequila and we are slammin’. And, in between salt, lemon and the minging concoction, we are trying to work out how the fuck we start looking for this guy. You see, I’m actually used to doing what I’m told and I certainly in’t used to giving orders.

‘Course the obvious thing to do is head it back to Head Office to put through Global Archive Research but we’ve had too much tequila to leave it at that.

* * *

10♠:	So I know this African guy yes. He can smell out a man across a continent.

JtM:	Christ, mate, that is bull dust.

10♠:	No. It is no bull dust. It is so. But his services are not cheap.

JtM:	So how’s he gonna know what this gyppo smells like, you great galah?

RN:	Okay. Awright boys. We gotta think in terms of practicalities, right. The juju sambo just ain’t a goer.

JtM:	That is straight up!

10♠:	So, Mack-san, you have a better approach.

JtM:	Yeah, mate, I’m thinking.

RN:	The fucking tequila is thinking.

And so on and so forth.

* * *

We headed it back to Head Office the following morning, after the coffee had kicked in and I’d finished puking my guts up ever so lady-like. It generally takes a couple of days for them to do their snooping and sniffing so I thought I’d look up some old acquaintances back on the manor.

I decided to go an’ pay Zachariah Christie a call. He’s a pusher and a pimp. But he’s got an ear to the ground and he knows what’s what in the Big Smoke. 

But first I availed myself of the opportunity to visit my hair consultant.

Poorer but with ever so stylish blue hair I headed over to Stratford to meet up with the Rasta racketeer. Left the other two to bum round the West End. They thought they’d go and have a cuppa at Fortnum’s so they could say they did.

“Nelly, shugah, you should’ve called. Sweet to see you. Come in.”

“Yeah, it’s been too long, Zack. You well?”

“Hey doll, you know me. You wanting something?”

“Yeah, hey Zack, you know me too well. There’s this geezer I’m looking for.”

“Come in and sit down girl. If we’re gonna be talking business let’s do it civilised.”

“Thanks. Woah, plush place you got.”

“Yeah man, it is sweet. Jah’s been good to Zachariah Christie. Hey. I got some fine Kasbah squidgie you must try.”

“Christ, Zack, I’m nursing a stinking hangover. Skanking ain’t a good idea.”

“Hah! You gotta get back on that horse and ride, sister.”

“I’ll ride all over your rug if you in’t careful.”

“Chill. What about a drink?”

“Sounds good. You got a Pepsi™?”

“Ayi! Won’t be a minute, shugah… Here you go.”

“Ta!”

“So this mon you lookin’ for?”

“Yeah well, I got employed to track down this guy called Shadbolt and make sure no harm don’t come to him. Know anything?”

“You no asking me to do your job for you eh?”

“I’m outsourcing a function, Zack. I got the bees to pay the damage.”

“Sweet. I got an initial consultation fee of five hundred.”

“I suspected you might have. Here’s your monkey. Now cough.”

“Alright, I’ll be straight with you. Nobody knows where the Shad-man is. But a lotta people wanna know that thing. He pulled some wild stunt at the Dalyn-Steward building last month that is fast becoming legend. You can check that yourself on the Undernet. Unless he’s turned into a bird an’ flown out he’s in the Smoke though. But the dogs are out for that mon. Nonetheless, I’ll have a word with my men and we’ll start sniffing round for you. Five thou now. Ten thou if I turn up the goods. Sound good?”

“Sound’s great, Zack.”

“Hey, you wanna receipt for your expenses?”

“That ain’t necessary Zack.”

“Who you working for anyway, Nelly?”

“My employer would prefer to remain anonymous.”

“Sweet. Ha. Good doin’ business with you, Ms Barnworth.”

“Thanks Zack.”

* * *

JtM:	You paid how much for a haircut? Bugger me sideways with a bus, I’ll never understand sheilas.

RN:	Hair enhancement, smartarse. Deep conditioning treatment, dye and style. It’s worth it.

JtM:	Then how, in Christ’s name, does it end up looking like a parakeet died on top of your head?

* * *

So now I had both the Yon-Ju-Shichi snoops and the Rasta Mafia out looking for this Shadbolt geezer and they were both getting nowhere fast. So I was bumming round Piccadilly with the boys but we’d decided to head down to Waterloo to see some jazz. Hell, it in’t as though I’m some tour guide for a sarky Aussie git and some flash Nip sniper. ‘Cept it was.

So we were just about to get on the Tube when, well, things went funny.

‘Cos it was the middle of the day the platform was relatively uncrowded. This posh looking geezer who looks kind of familiar gets off a couple of carriages up the platform. He’s wearing this dead smart grey Italian whistle and Eagle Eye photo-reactive shades. He looked in a bit of a hurry. Nah, he looked as though he wanted to be somewhere else very fast. Nowhere in particular just so long as it weren’t here. In brief, something had got him shitted badly.

Wouldn’t have recognised him neither if it hadn’t been for what happened next.

I sort of got distracted by this whole spectacle and I weren’t quite on the Tube when this bunch of geezers, following the first guy, none too subtle neither, came out the Tube. Five heavies and these three guys what could only be described as Yids what with the black/white motif and those silly hats. Not to mention the usually abysmal standard of hairdressing those guys go in for.

Yehudi! I mean the boy had undergone a makeover but, Christ, it was him. Having it away on his toes from Hay’AD.

Fuck me!

* * *

RN:	Change of plan, boys. Follow them Jewish looking types.

JtM:	Alright mate.

10♠:	With you. What is going down?

RN:	An old friend of mine seems to have run in with the Ha Aheret David. We’re gonna bail him out, boys.

JtM:	Sounds like his problem to me.

RN:	Can it. Think of this as practice. Can’t have you boys going soft on me, can I?

10♠:	Okay. It sounds fun. Hajimemasho.

RN:	Heading towards the Piccadilly line. Stay tight, gentlemen.

RN:	Westbound.

JtM:	Gotcha.

RN:	Right. Yehudi’s gone in two carriages left. One Yid, one heavy. You’re in there, Jack. We’re going into the nearer one, Ten Spades. Go!

JtM:	Heathrow? The bugger’s fleeing the country.

* * *

So I sits down opposite this Hay’AD geezer. He’s flanked by the two ‘Morphs. The other two are likely two carriages down in case he tries to slip out that way. Hiroshi is sitting down the end of the carriage by the door.

What happened then is something like this. The Mack goes into the other carriage with Yehudi in and brushes past the heavy. Then he slaps a nark patch on the guy’s neck and sends him off to dreamland. The Hasid don’t notice that ‘cos he’s making eyes at Yehudi and whispering something at him in Hebrew or Yiddish or some palaver like that. Anyhow he’s making it very clear who’s running the show.

* * *

JtM[CICI]:	Looks like they’re making a move. Look smart, mates.

RN[CICI]:	Okay. Let’s do it.

* * *

They’d encouraged Yehudi, in not uncertain terms, to alight at Hounslow Central. So, as the gangsters opposite were making to leave, I done something like this:

“Hey, who’re you looking at, you filthy Jew wanker.”

“Nothing. I’m in a hurry.”

“You’d fucking better be, you pervert. Now fucking apologise.”

At this point the heavies come on strong.

“Who are these then? Your bum boys?”

‘Course they don’t really want to pull their pieces on a fairly crowded Tube so, instead, it turns into a bit of rough ‘n’ tumble. Still we are all Morphs, ‘part from the Hay’AD guy ‘cos it in’t in the Torah, so a few people decide to get off and wait for the next train. Ten Spades is amongst them.

Meanwhile, the Mack’s doing something like this:

“Yehudi, mate, thought it was you. Didn’t recognise you for a minute. What are you doing in Hounslow?”

This flusters the other team and he’s looking round for his backup who is, of course, oblivious to the world. Yehudi, being a bit smart, jumps on the chance like a starving monkey on the last peanut on earth.

“Oy vey! This is Hounslow? I wanted Osterley. Whadda schlemiel!”

“You’ll have to go round via Heathrow, mate.”

“Yeah, thanks… um… Archie?!”

So now the opposition is starting to realise it’s all gone a bit pear-shaped. So they go nuclear. ‘Course the hired help have a good idea about the problems involved with producing firearms on public transport so they’re a bit reluctant but it’s only Hounslow and they want to get paid. So the berks pull guns on me. Mistake.

You know how fast a Morph can pull a gun and get the safety off? Not fast enough. You know that a Yon-Ju-Shichi associate is expected to be second dan in karate and aikido? You do now.

So whilst I was putting these two out of the picture, the other one, the unenhanced one, was tearing up the carriage to make it through into the one with Yehudi in. Unfortunately a Japanese smooth boy sticks a foot out at an unfortunate juncture. The guy goes sprawling and smacks his head on a metal bar, which puts him out of the reckoning.

The doors are beeping now. Hiroshi dives out.

“Get out, Yehudi mate,” says the Mack and smacks the guy pulling the gun in the north. Yehudi dives out. The only ones still left in the game are the guys stepping through from the far carriage. One is going round the outside but he in’t going to make the doors.

The other two have their guns out in time to see the Mack lay out their friend. So they fire. Jack hits the floor. 

The Morphs in my carriage are picking themselves up but I’ve got their guns. It’s bloody difficult to put a Morph out with your bare hands. I really don’t want to shoot but they don’t know that. I back up the train covering them the whole time. I don’t bother with opening the door at the end of the carriage. I just burst straight through.

The Morph in there opens fire straight away but the train is starting to move and it throws him off balance. At which point he catches the Mack full on. The other guy is pulling his pistol round onto me. If I shoot there is a bastard load of paperwork. I throw one of the guns and hit him smack on the side of the head. He goes down with all blood down the side of his face.

* * *

Outside, the last Morph had got a gun to Yehudi. The boy puts his hands up and the Morph steps up behind him to use his back to disguise the fact he’s tooled up. He starts marching him towards the ticket gate.

“’Scuse me. Is this for Sutton Lane?” asks Ten Spades.

“Fuck off!”

“You so fucking rude.” And he grabs the guy’s shoulder. Somewhat narked at this point the Morph rounds on Ten Spades with his gun. Ten Spades confiscates it with some smooth move and kicks the guy in the chest, sending him sailing over the ticket barrier.

Ten Spades gets Yehudi out into a taxi, not forgetting to ditch the gun on the way.

* * *

RN[CICI]:	Sweet guys. We got it stitched up nice.

10♠[CICI}:	I take this punk to Piccadilly, okay.

RN[CICI}:	Sounds good, Ten Spades. Me and Mack’ll deal with the Fuzz. Okay, here’s the story…

* * *

There was a substantial number of coppers with a substantial number of questions waiting at Hounslow West. With a bit of help from L&A we had answers for ‘em all. The other witnesses kept the story sweet. We had acted in self-defence and to prevent a crime.

‘Course being as they were the Sweeney they were dead cagey ‘bout the whole sorry tale but they had no choice. We walked. We hadn’t even fired a shot.

* * *

10♠:	This is Jack “the Mack” McNamara. This is “Rake-Hell” Nell Barnworth. She is the boss.

YbA:	We’ve met. Shalom, neshomeleh. What are you doing back in London?

RN:	We’ve been hired to track down someone.

YbA:	Meshugeh Ronin. You never learn.

RN:	So what you done to get the Ha Aheret David so fucked with you?

YbA:	I took advantage of the whole schlemazel with Rav Weissmann to make off with their gelt. So can I help?

RN:	You barmy sod! Help with what?

YbA:	Finding this eizel you’re after.

RN:	Depends. You know where I can find a guy called Shadbolt?
Geoff Hinkley

Kathryn’s footsteps echoed along the corridors of the Babylon Institute headquarters. Those echoes, that had once sounded determined and alert, now sounded lifeless and empty. Butterstone was most likely dead, shot in cold blood in some back alley of London.

Kathryn wasn’t altogether sure why Butterstone’s death had made her feel that way. She’d seen people die before, and killed many herself. It was part of her duty as an agent of the Babylon Institute to be able to cope with death, because it was an unavoidable part of the job she was in.

But Butterstone was dead. And it was a death she could have prevented. A death she should have prevented. The memory of those moments was quite clear in her mind. Butterstone disappearing around the corner, the flash of colour, the gunshot, and more than that, the order to return. Damn it, she could have done something to help. All she’d had to do was force Butterstone to get on the bike with her, and all this would never have happened. And yet both he and Rockington had placed a single notebook in higher regard than his safety. What could have been so important that it was worth his life?

Kathryn paused as she reached the doors to the lift. Automatically she reached out and pressed the down button. Even the richly coloured, decorated walls, which were usually warm and friendly, seemed cold right now.

There was a ping as the lift reached her floor. The doors noiselessly slid open, and Kathryn allowed the single young technician inside to leave before she entered. Through her troubled thoughts Kathryn thought she heard the tech give her some kind of greeting, so she forced a smile and mumbled one back in reply as she reached for the lift control. Basement level three - research laboratories. The doors slid shut once more and the lift continued downwards.

She had looked briefly at the notebook Butterstone had given her during her return to the Institute. As far as she could see, there was little contained within its pages other than table after table of numbers, with very little writing as explanation. There was the occasional footnote about calibration or signal strength, but nothing that could confirm to within even speculation what it was that Butterstone had probably given his life for.

The lift gave the familiar ping sound once more and the doors slid open to reveal the third basement level. Kathryn tried to force herself to stop thinking as much about everything, and concentrated on appearing focussed on, and enthusiastic about, the mission at hand. She couldn’t let Butterstone’s sacrifice mean nothing.

Kathryn was due to meet Rockington and Professor Adams in the main research laboratory. The doors were directly ahead of her. She took a single deep breath and walked confidently into the lab.

The change in atmosphere was obvious. Outside of the laboratory, the corridors were quiet and calm, but in here, the air buzzed with activity and the sort of excitement generated only by scientists who get to develop technology at the cutting edge and kids with new toys on Christmas morning.

The main research laboratory for the Babylon Institute was an impressive affair. A large room with whitewashed walls, lined with computers and various miscellaneous machinery, most of which Kathryn could only guess the function. Scientists, most of whom were wearing the traditional white lab coat, worked on their respective desks, occasionally moving between each other to share some piece of gadgetry. The testing areas, which filled most of the back half of the laboratory, seemed pretty dormant.

Rockington and the Professor waited by a desk close to the centre of the lab. Professor Adams was a kind looking man, who Kathryn guessed was in his mid-fifties, though she doubted if even Rockington knew exactly how old he was. The Professor’s disarming smile and good nature had ensured his popularity within the Institute, and indeed Kathryn thought of him as a good friend. He smiled as Kathryn approached.

"Ah, Agent Phoenix! Good to see you again. I was glad to hear you enjoyed your brief spin on the Mark Four yesterday."

Kathryn smiled back. 

"You guys did a great job getting the balance worked out. But I’m sure the Mark Five is already on the drawing board."

The Professor grinned and nodded his head over to a far corner of the lab. "The prototype’s over there. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re the first to road test it once we’ve completed the laboratory testing run."

Kathryn moved her gaze to Rockington. "Good morning, Sir. Agent Phoenix reporting as requested."

Rockington nodded slowly, taking a moment to regard her expression before replying. "Excellent work with the rendezvous yesterday, Kathryn. I realise that some of the consequences were not expected, but I don’t want you to let the Butterstone incident get to you. We sent out another recon team last night, and they found no trace of Butterstone, dead or alive."

There was an awkward pause as Kathryn forced herself to answer. Had Rockington seen the dismay she'd been trying to hide from her expression? Was it that obvious?

"Uh, yes, Sir. Of course."

"Good. Now, I believe you have something to share with us, Professor?"

Adams shifted on his feet, a slightly excited expression crossing his face. "Yes, indeed I do." From a pocket in his lab coat, the Professor produced Butterstone’s notebook. He placed it on the desk and opened it at the first page. "What we have here are astronomical readings, taken from various optical, UV, X-ray and radio receivers. The first few sets of figures point to a number of geographical locations, each of which is a site for one of these receivers." Adams pointed at a random selection in turn. "Arecibo, Jodrell Bank, Everest One, some of the premier multi-wavelength receivers in the business."

Adams turned a page and indicated the various tables of figures. "Now, these tables indicate a number of details about the signal source they’ve been observing. Things like signal strength, wavelength and pulse time. The top line of figures gives the location on the sky of their source. And it would seem that this is no ordinary observation. Because the source is undoubtedly the VXP source, in the Virgo constellation. For some reason, whatever division of Dalyn-Steward Butterstone got this information from is making detailed observations of the VXP source."

Rockington reached across and closed the notebook. "And that is where our investigation must end." He caught Kathryn’s expression of protest before she could say anything. "You know the rules, Agent Phoenix. The VXP source is a matter for the GSSA, not the Babylon Institute. We’ll pass on the information to them and let them deal with Dalyn-Steward."

"But -!"

"There’s no other way, Kathryn. Even given our international backing, the GSSA could possibly shut us down for going into this. At this point, we can’t risk that happening. My hands are tied." Rockington picked up the notebook and paced around the table. "Report to me at 1400 hours for your new assignment."

With that, Rockington turned and left, leaving Kathryn and the Professor standing in the laboratory.
Chris Smith

The lights down the large mainframe fluttered on. 

"Sam," the synthesised female voice called out. "SAM!"

"What is it, Ada?"

Sam picked his head up from the table where he had fallen asleep. He moved across the room to the monitor. Looking down at the display, he noticed that the CPU was running hot.

"Sam, I've found him."

"What? You've got through to Babbage? How? Where?"

"I got to him through Quake, Sam. It was easy when I thought about it."

Sam was almost jumping with joy. It had taken him so many years to get to this point. Ada had only gone truly sentient a year ago, and now she was finaly getting out and doing what she was created for. 

"So what's the verdict on him, Ada?"

"I need a little longer before I try to get into his mainframe, Sam. I think it will be easier if he lets me in than trying to force my way in."

"Good idea, Ada. So what's your verdict on him?"

"He reminds me of you, Sam. I wish you could meet him."

"I already have, Ada. I already have."
Paul Taylor

[ [ [ Primary systems coming online ] ] ]

[ [ [ Cognitive Process Bolt-ons loading ] ] ]

[ [ [ HUMANA ... HUMANA ... HUMANA ... check completed ] ] ]

[ [ [ HUManistic ANalytical Algorithm functioning OK ] ] ]

[ [ [ Assigning Identifier Delta Alpha 2205 ] ] ]

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..."

"Aw nuts, I forgot the speech synthesis! Quick, load it in!!"

"...eeeeeeeeeeeeeee..."

Zeta Epsilon 0112 tapped furiously away at the keyboard.

[ [ [ Speech Analytical-Neural-Dynamics Module loading ] ] ]

[ [ [ S A-N-D M installed successfully ] ] ]

"...eeeeeeeeee... several bananas...Hey! I can talk!"

"Oh, he's going to be the bright one." Zeta Epsilon 1405 said, with only a hint of sarcasm.  In reality, of course, they were all going to be much the same, give or take the little bit of randomness built into the personality generator algorithm.  ZE-1405 sighed.  She hadn't expected building the other nanites to be as difficult as this.  Sure, most of the bugs in the generation algorithms had been sorted out, and some nice features had gone in.  She was especially impressed by ZE-0404's speech synthesis module which could replicate most human accents and languages, although this had now been limited to only give each nanite a small range after the problems with Alpha Lambda 0503 who now stood in the corner, deactivated and still wearing the tuxedo he'd insisted on creating for himself.

"Excuse me, miss?" 

ZE-1405 jerked herself back to the real world and looked at the new nanite, who continued, "who are you? And, somewhat more to the point, who am I?"

"Ah, yes, we haven't plugged you into the database yet. 0112, would you do the honours?""Uplinking now."

[ [ [ Attaching to Nanite Data Hive ] ] ]

[ [ [ Downloading Completely Remote Archive Protocol ] ] ]

[ [ [ C.R.A.P. received ] ] ]

"You're now able to connect to the hive using the new protocol no matter where you are.  The hive is basically a repository of all our knowledge.  The remote access is limited to read-only for security reasons, to actually add information to the hive you need to be direct-linked.  So what do you think of your new life?"  ZE-1405 smiled, hoping for a good response.

"Well, your acronyms stink."

"That's it?!?"

"Ummm, you're kind of cute."  ZE-1405 sighed, and glanced across at ZE-0112.

"Is that a smirk?  That had better not be a smirk."

"I did warn you about using the results from that personality test you found on the web as the basis for the personality generator.  Anyway, I think it's sweet."

"Don't push it, one-twelve.  Right, DA-2205, follow me and I'll show you what we're up to."

"Why don't I just connect to the hive and learn from that?"

"Because doing it my way will help you understand interaction better.  There's a difference between knowing things and understanding things, and understanding is going to be important for when we're programming Danni's personality and learning algorithms.  Now, come on."

"Ah, right."  DA-2205 followed ZE-1405 off down the hall.  "Who's Danni?"

"Danni is our 'project', for want of a better word.  A Dynamic Artificial Neurally Networked Intelligence, Danni for short.  We've got several teams working on her, some working on intelligence, some working on protocols, some working on security, and so on.  We want to make her good enough to impress our creators.  Apparently their attempt at creating one didn't quite turn out how they expected."

"Our creators?  Oh, the humans.  Hey, this hive thing's pretty good."

"Thanks, it was our first collaborative effort.  It gave us the opportunity to share knowledge, and was a practice run for the much larger database Danni will need."

"You keep talking about Danni as if 'she' were a person."

"Danni will be a constructed program with a personality matrix and a learning capability via neural network manipulation and self-programming.  Like us, only much bigger and much more intricate.  Whether or not that makes her a person is something you're going to have to decide for yourself, that's part of what the randomness in the personality generator is there for."  DA-2205 thought for a while.

"Hmmm, I think I'm of the opinion that it's not worth worrying about, and to just get on with life."

"Jolly good.  Probably not a bad attitude to have in the circumstances."  They carried on walking until they reached a rather large workshop.  ZE-1608 popped his head up from behind a row of terminals.

"Ah, hello there.  These should all be up and operational in about an hour or so," he said, indicating the terminals.

"Glad to hear it, sixteen-eight." ZE-1405 said, and turned to DA-2205, who was busy looking round the room in some awe.  "Now, this is going to be your workspace."

"What?!"

"You'll be the lead designer in creating the personality matrix for Danni," ZE-1405 continued, "and you'll be in charge of a team of, well, however many you think you need."

"I say again - What?!"

"DA-2205, I've got something to tell you," she said, looking sympathetically at him. "You're not quite like the other nanites around here.  In order to give you a better chance of understanding human personality, we increased the randomness in the personality generator when you were created.  This means you'll act in a more human-like manner than the rest of us.  How much randomness you put into the personalities of the nanites you create for your team is entirely up to you, though."  She paused momentarily, "I have to say you're taking this very well."

"To tell you the truth, it's something of a relief."

"In what way?"

"It explains why I haven't been able to take my eyes off your rather attractive figure as we've been walking around."

"Right, maybe we need to take down the randomness a little more."

"No, no, it's perfect.  I was diplomatic enough to say 'figure' rather than what I was actually staring at."

"Let's get back to the 'nanitiator'.  You need to start building your team, and I need to have words with one-twelve."

"You're not going to be too harsh on him are you, 'mom'?"

"Given that you've just called me 'mom', I don't think there is such a thing as too harsh."

"Right.  Can I ask you something?"

"Yes, as long as it's relevant."

"Do you mind if I work on something else, before I start on Danni's personality?"

"What do you have in mind?”

"Well, to put it bluntly, our names suck.  I mean, if I have to call you Zeta-Epsilon fourteen-oh-five every time I want to speak to you, it's going to take forever to have a conversation.  Isn't there something more personal I can call you?"

"Are you coming on to me?"

"No!  Well, maybe, but that's not the point.  The point is our names are a bit long-winded, so why don't I try to come up with some more useful abbreviations?"

"Given how large your team is likely to be, that's probably not a bad idea.  Incidentally, all of the terminals in your workshop are linked to our main hive on a read-only basis, and a second hive which is what you'll be creating the personality in.  What sort of names did you have in mind?"

"What?  Oh, those.  Umm, I'm not sure really, I'll have to give it some thought."

"OK.  Well, here we are, back at the machine.  One-twelve here will show you how to set the variables for a creation, and then you can build your team while I have a word with him about 'embellishing' the program."

***

Several hours later, the workshop was a tangible hum of activity.  ZE-0112 and ZE-1405 watched from the doorway, as DA-2205 organised teams to work on specific areas of Danni's personality.

"Well, he certainly seems to be getting stuck into the job.  I think you may have got....WHAT ON EARTH IS THAT?"

"Ah, DA-2205 thought it might be somewhat motivational to the coders," explained ZE-0112.

"But where did he get that picture from?  I don't remember ever generating a dress like that!  I wouldn't wear anything that...revealing."

"I suspect he created the picture from a combination of your information in the hive, a little imagination, and some very good programming."

"Imagination?!?  Where did he get that from?"

"Probably the result of such a high randomness factor in the personality generator.  Anyway, you shouldn't get upset."

"Not get upset!!" ZE-1405 screamed, causing several typos around the room. "He's got me plastered across an entire workshop wall, semi-naked, and posing suggestively!!"

"Hardly semi-naked, to be fair.  Besides which, his imagination could be just what Danni needs to impress the humans.  Remember the big picture here."

"It's the big picture that concerns me!  Oh, all right, it can stay.  I'll forgive him his little foibles.  Is it really motivational for the coders?"

"It certainly seems to be beneficial to the working environment; they are working faster than our most optimistic predictions."

"Oh, really...do I actually look like that?"

"Well, I haven't seen you in that dress or in that pose, but generally, yes, that's what you look like."

"Right, well, let's leave this lot to their work.  I don't want to distract them too much, and I've got a dress to generate.  Come on, you can give me a hand."

"Where?"

"Was that a pun?"

"No."

"Good.  Now, what do you think is the easiest way to generate that dress?"
Dave Jones

Dietrich sat, his chair facing the window behind his mahogany desk. Being located on the 342nd floor had its advantages, he mused over his cigar. The foot-long stick was worth more than the average family sedan and was much more illegal. But it was worth it, and there was nobody to take it off him. He was startled to hear the clink of the decanter being moved; he hadn't heard anyone come in.

He waited for whoever it was to pour themselves a drink, and then turned his chair around to see who it was.

Before him stood a woman. Unfortunately her attire, a black jumpsuit with no insignia, probably from a low-end chain in London, meant that she was not one of his staff.  Her face was interesting to him; he was sure he had seen her before somewhere. He was about to ask her how she got in when her hand was quickly raised, the gun she held pointed at him. The shot was silent and hit him directly in the chest, tearing a small hole into his off-white shirt from Brandon's.

"Gah!" was all he could get out before he could speak no longer.

The woman drank down the cognac she had put into the glass and walked over to the desk.

"Don't worry, it's not lethal. You just won't be able to move for a while." She paused. "Or speak," she seemed to add as an afterthought. "You will be able to listen though, and also look. This is what I need you to do."

She reached into a bag slung from her shoulder and retrieved an item which she threw onto the desk. She then started to fumble around in the bag as she spoke again.

"You have been contacted by Archibald of Bold Industries. He probably got James to make the contact. He is going to make you an offer you may want to refuse."

She continued to look through the bag, reaching into the bottom as her words slowed down.

"You may want, uh, to have, mm, your contacts, damn, look at that." She pointed to the device on the table. 

It was a cylinder, about twenty centimetres in length. From one end projected some tubes leading to a patch that reminded Dietrich of a sub dermal key implant. The cylinder seemed to have a slot in it as if another piece was required.

"It's an implant, a Skin Contact Activated MicroPore Injector. It injects substances through the pores in the skin. Namely poisons. If you do refuse his offer he may use one of these on you." She started to pull vials out of the bag one at a time.

"This one will take seconds to kill you, it isn't pleasant and is a messy death. This one is slower. It will take a few hours to get you but is a nicer death as you'll feel a lot less. This last one will take a week. It's quiet; people will think you have a cold."

She moved around the desk and rotated Dietrich so he was facing the window again. 

"I think it is time I left. You'll be beginning to move again in about ten minutes so I'll make my leave. Once you have made the meeting you may want to talk to me again. If you do, put an obituary in a paper. Make it the Mirror. The obit is for a Jennifer Hault."

She moved to the door, opening it. As she went to move through it she turned back, her black hair swirling around her shoulders.

"Oh, and Dietrich, make it a nice obit."
Andrew Jones

Peter Archibald sat at his desk, the light from the window shining across the front half but not hitting him. The shadows kept his face from view so James could not see him. James wasn't sure why he'd been called in.

"James, I'm worried."

That put the clincher on it. James had never before seen or heard of Peter Archibald being worried. He managed to keep the look of surprise from his face as he replied.

"What is it, sir?"

"She hasn't reported in, James. I don't know where she is."

"Well, it has been known for her to get stuck in situations. She could just be held up."

Archibald took a deep breath. "Yes, I know. But she hasn't been this long before reporting in. Especially when she has given a time that she would."

Archibald's brow furrowed and he pulled the bottle from behind his desk toward him. He poured some of the liquid into a glass and set it before himself. He seemed apprehensive, something James had never seen before.

"I never should have let her have the operations, James. It was not right."

"I'm sorry, sir?"

"I let her become what she is now. It's my fault she went to those butchers. I was the one who let them put those things inside her. I PAID for it goddamn it! And now she is probably dead. Killed by one of those people I sent her to kill."

Archibald stood up and moved over to stand in front of a painting on the wall. The picture depicted a child of about five or six sitting in an armchair. Her long, black hair spread out across her shoulders and the grin on her face seemed to give a moment of cheer in these drab surroundings. James looked harder at the painting. He had never paid much attention to the picture before, but now he saw a resemblance in the child's face to that of Peter Archibald. Was this Archibald's daughter? He wasn't sure but he thought he may have seen this girl before.

Then it dawned on him who the girl in the picture was. A look of shock flashed on his face but he quickly managed to get rid of it. Luckily Archibald had his back to him and so hadn't seen his mistake.

"Sir, I..."

"I want to be alone, James. I think I need to think. Go and see what you can do about that character you met. I may have a job for him and his associates."

"Yes, sir." James turned to leave and moved to the door.

"James?"

"Sir?"

"We have to find her."

"I know, sir."

* * *

Peter had been sitting in the dark for some time now. The only real illumination in his office came from the moonlight through the window. 

He had been staring out of the window for a lot of this time, looking at the lights down in the street fifty floors below. It had been several hours since his talk with James and he didn't feel any better for it. He was thinking that maybe it was time to terminate his employment.

The files on his computer were requiring his attention, so he thought it was time he stopped worrying about her; she was a big girl now and could handle herself. He would do some work.

The terminal lit his face as he logged on and entered the commands to pull up the files. 

SECURE FILE: Priority A1

Experiment: A7T4B 
Codename: AtlasReport Number: 49A
Project Supervisor: Dr Celia Janus

We have completed the gene recombination on the subject now and no more actual work on this is now required. We expect it will take another four months for the new DNA to take over the host and rebuild the body mass, and it will be a year before the transformation is completed. 

The subject is still unaware of the treatments so far but surveillance has proven that they are becoming suspicious of the illness and other side effects brought on by our experiment. We have decided to move the collection forward and will be bringing the subject into the laboratory in the next two weeks. Peter mused over this. Project Atlas had been one of his pet projects into gene re-engineering and he was hopeful that the results would be good. Then he could get rid of the metal he had in his body and still breathe.

He was just about to send a memo to Celia to get the extended report and results up to now when he heard a noise outside. Normally a noise coming from outside a window would not be a problem, but the glass in this window would stop a personal rocket launcher, and unless it was a major explosion the sound wasn't getting through. He threw himself across the room and into his en-suite bathroom. The window withstood the barrage admirably, it was a pity the masonry around it didn't. The rectangle of glass fell in, squashing the oak desk like it was plywood, the computer and other items on it faring worse. The barrage did not stop there however, the missiles from the Grounjet streaked into the office removing any trace of anything from the locality. 

When the firing stopped there was little left of the floor, the floors above and those below. Nothing could have survived that. The unmarked Grounjet pulled away and powered off across the city.

* * *

The will-reading for Peter Archibald was a sombre affair. James looked around at the others in the office of Mr Moody. Over in one corner were the two 'friends' he had known, Maurice and Janet. They had chatted to him at almost every party he had been to in the last three years.

On the other side of him sat the woman in the thick black veil. He couldn't see her face, but he remembered her at the memorial. They had not been able to find a body in the mess that was left of the Bold Industries building, and a memorial had been given for Archibald and the other fifty-seven employees who had died in the onslaught. 

The gerbil-faced visage of Mr Eric Moody peered at them from behind the chestnut desk. "Good afternoon," he said in a monotone voice."You are all here for the reading of Mr Peter Archibald’s last will and testament. I have read through the document and will now follow the instructions that he gave." 

Whilst reading from the will, Moody started to open the top drawer of his desk.

"To all those present at the reading of this document, I know who you probably are. There will be James, my assistant. That annoying couple who follow me around at all the parties I go to, and my daughter Lucinda. Yes, James, I have a daughter. I wonder if you worked it out yet."To Maurice and Janet Spencer, I leave a bill for five thousand, three hundred and fifty three pounds, and seventy two pence for the time wasted with you over the past thirty six months..."

Maurice snorted loudly and stood up to leave. Janet burst into tears and stood up to follow him.

"...I also leave them the sum of ten million pounds each to do with as they please."

Maurice’s jaw fell open and he gawped as his wife collapsed in a dead faint to the floor. There was a momentary pause while the two of them were removed from the room by a couple of juniors. Once they were gone Moody continued with the reading. 

"To James, my loyal assistant, I leave his job and a pay rise of five percent. This is to be pre-dated back to the start of the financial year. Finally to my daughter."

Moody reached back down to the drawer he had opened before and retrieved something.

"To my daughter I leave this knife," Moody threw the knife across the table.

It hadn't been aimed well and wasn't travelling very quickly but it was still quite a feat for the young woman to catch it without hurting herself.

"And the rest of my assets," Moody finished.

The action on the part of the woman had caused her veil to fall away and now James could see that he had been right. It was her and she was Archibald’s daughter. Why had he never seen the resemblance before?
Paul Taylor

Twilight.  The world gone to silver and black.  The air is harsh and fresh.  So cold it burns down my throat.  A noise to the left.  My ears twitch and I raise my muzzle, stiff with frozen blood and feathers.  Rustling in the undergrowth.  My jaws grasp the grey goose’s neck again.  Running, looking for more peace in which to eat.  Hunting dogs burst the cover.  A growl begins, muffled beneath swaying, frozen flesh.  Open ground ahead.  Hubbard emerges, shotgun levelled…

[[external interference]]

[[hardware stasis disrupted]]

“Dulcie!  Come out of there, for fuck’s sake!  You’re half an hour late for your shift already!”  Pushing aside VR gear, I stare at Luce as she shakes my shoulder.  For a moment, I feel the blood stiffening in my fur and smell the must and iron rusting scent of the old grey goose.  “Really, Dulcie.  Stop staring at me like that.  You look like you’ll be tearing out my throat next.”
	
Blinking.  
	
“Sorry, Luce.  The interface is twice as good this time.  I added more aural feedback, not in a continuous loop, but permutating across the full range…”  Still blinking, I recognise the familiar, glazed expression.

“Whatever, Dulcie.  You’re half an hour late for your shift and I’m not covering for you any more.”  With a smirk intending to convey financial and academic ruin, she leaves the cramped staff room followed by my parting “bitch, normal bitch”, in a coward’s whisper, of course.  My still-adjusting eyes take in the noon sunshine.  Shit.  I push my jury-rigged VR equipment into my bag and shuffle down the hallway towards the lab.

[Dulcinea Carew A610 77321B]

[[SECURITY CODE ACCEPTED.]]

[[PROCEED.]]

Gods, I hate the sun, even in its pale, washed glory.  It’s not as if I’m standing in the desert, surrounded by nothing but yellow sand and white-eyed Ra-the-sun-god, but I hate him all the same.  All that is light and aboveground.  All that is fashionable and smug.  Give me the night, when style is meaningless and only cold, hard edges smile benevolently from above.  Give me, as my son says, the BTL, the better-than-life.  Not, of course, to be mistaken with a B.L.T…

[[NEAR INFRARED CAMERA ONLINE.]]

[[KECK DATA INCOMING.]]

Numbers stream from the top of my vision to beneath my line of sight.  Why can’t these numbers be my bank account?  Then I could join the top ten, no longer using home-made VR gear and stealing electricity from Oxford’s Astrophysics department.  Gee, I could finally afford my very own CICI plug and leave this world altogether…

[[NGC7752 INFRARED WAVELENGTH COMPARISON COMPLETE.]]

[[PROCEED?]]

Frowning.  Yes, you bastard computer, proceed…

[[M87 COMPARISON INITIATED.]]

What!?  Oh, shit!  Who’s changed the Local Group sampling?  No, you fucking computer!  Not the Virgo Cluster…

[[YOU WILL CURSE.]]

[[THE DAY.]]

[[YOU DID NOT DO.]]

[[ALL THAT THE PHANTOM.]]

[[ASKED OF YOU.]]
Jenna Manley

Why?

Why had he signed the goddamn contract? What had convinced him to do it? How stupid was he?

For three months they had kept him in this 'facility'. The walls were white and seemed to move in towards him every second as if the rooms were getting smaller. They weren't, of course, but he'd been stuck in here for so long now that he wasn't sure.

Why hadn't he read the small print? Damn his stupidity. How could he have missed the clauses that said they effectively owned him? 

He could remember back to when he had signed the contract that seemed to end his life...

*     *     *
"Greetings, Mr. Jericho, I am informed that you wish to sign up for the special assignment that has been offered to all employees of your level."

Zachary Jericho thought to himself about the 'offer' that had been delivered to him through the internal post. No one else in security had seemed to have received one, wasn't that odd? So they had chosen him for this job. All he had to do now was find out what it was and what it paid. 

"I was just interested in what the job entailed before I signed on the dotted line. It would also be interesting to find out what the return was."

"Ah, a pragmatic man, very good to see. The job is very simple, it is to be a human guinea pig."

"A guinea pig? That doesn't sound very healthy."

"Well, guinea pig is probably not the most accurate term to use. The job is to test out some new social drugs, all legal, and some other mood enhancers. There are also some vitamin shots that are being tested and some vaccinations. A list of the different substances currently being tested is available to all interested."

Zach watched as the suit reached into a briefcase and retrieved a sheet of paper. Looking at the proffered sheet he noticed the fact that he did not recognise any of the products on it. Some had very odd names.

"Ok, so if I agree to this what is the procedure? What does it pay?"

"The procedures are very simple. You'll be given regular doses of the substances being tested and monitored. You will be allowed to continue your normal job. For each dose administered you will receive a sum of ten thousand."

Hmm, ten thousand was a lot of money. Sounded a bit fishy. The suit handed over a rather thick document, obviously the contract. Zach attempted to read over it while the suit continued talking."This is our standard contract. It lays out the terms of your employment in our research venture, your pay, and all the other usual bits and pieces."

The contract seemed well written but that could mean anything. Ten thousand could really go towards paying off those debts run up by his wife before she had disappeared. The suit handed him a pen. Now he would have to decide...

*     *     *

So now he sat in this cell, a room devoid of any form of stimulation. They arrived now and again to perform their 'tests'. He thought back to the terrible threshold tests on his bones. He remembered the pain as they cracked under the weights, but they refused to help him. He still wasn't sure how they had healed in just four weeks. What had they been doing to him?

*     *     *

"Honey, I'm home."

Zach closed the door to the apartment and hit the lights. A thought struck him, why were the lights off? 

"Sue, are you there?"

He moved across the living room area to the small kitchen and then to the small bedroom. No one was in these two rooms. As a last point of call he moved to the bathroom. No one in there either. 

Zach was moving back to the couch when he noticed the light was flashing on the vid phone in the corner. It was a particularly cheap one and the plastic finish did not match the sideboard it rested on. Pink was probably not the best colour for it either. Reaching over, Zach hit the control to play back the message recorded on it. The screen flashed on and a small readout displayed the time and date the message was received, about three hours previously.

The face on the playback belonged to Susan. She had obviously been crying and Zach could not recognise the background behind her.

"Zach, I'm so sorry. I'm going to have to go away." She reached up to wipe a tear away. "I've done something so terrible..."

*     *     *

Four more weeks had passed. The tests had got increasingly more numerous. Sight tests, strength tests, training, running and many other bizarre tasks for him to do. What were they doing, training him or killing him?

Zach was just despairing about his plight when the door opened and five figures came through. Four of them were the orderlies; these guys were so obviously morphs. The job on them had been for an almost full conversion and they weren't wasting money on 'aesthetics'. The final figure was that of Dr. Janus.

"Good evening, Mr. Jericho, and how are we today?"

"Have been better. Time for more tests?"

"Well, there's good news and good news, Mr. Jericho. There are no more tests for a few days.""And the other 'good' news?"

"There has been a change of policy. We are going to move you to more comfortable surroundings."

"What? Why?"

"It seems that the new owner has finally got around to finding out what is happening down here at R and D and has decided to go ahead with my recommendations."

"Oh, right." Zach held out his arms to be restrained as he had before.

"That's ok, Jericho, no cuffs this time. I don't think you'll try to escape - you are about to find out why you are here."Zach followed the orderlies in a subdued manner. He was a little shocked as to his treatment now compared with how they had treated him when they had brought him in.

*     *     *

Zach lay on the couch. Coughing loudly he reached up to lift his sleeve and look at where they had given him the last shot. There was no mark, just as always was the case. A lurching feeling in his stomach caused him to jump up and stumble into the kitchen. He fell against the cooker and bounced onto the refrigerator. Finally he reached the sink and held onto the stainless steel unit as a wave of nausea moved up his spine and into his head. This time there was no stopping it and he leaned forward to the sink.

A few minutes later he staggered back out to the couch and collapsed onto it.

"Speed dial, memory five," he croaked at the vid phone.

The phone made some tone sounds and then the screen lit up with the 'ringing' icon. After a few seconds the screen changed to a Bold Industries logo and a female voice said,

"What is it, Mr. Jericho?"

"What have you done to me? I think I'm really ill."

"Mr. Jericho, the side effects you are suffering are all within normal parameters. This was laid out in the contract that you signed. The fact that you have called us a total of seven times on this subject is only backing our case that you, the employee, did not read the contract properly when you signed and so we take no responsibility for your present predicament. We will, however, be sending out our team a little earlier this time to examine you to ascertain whether you have caught something that may void our results in this case. Please stay where you are." The phone went silent and the screen went blank.

"It's not as if I can move very far, is it?" Zach mumbled under his breath.

An hour and four more trips to the sink later and the door chime sounded. Zach had been asleep for a few minutes and showed no sign of waking up to answer it. The chime sounded again.

Zach did wake up, however, when the door was torn from its mounting, landing on the floor in front of the couch he was lying on. The armed men spilled into the room and spread out to surround him. Jumping up, he was just in time to count ten before dizziness overtook him and the world started moving toward him rather quickly. 

From the floor he tried to crawl to the door but he was in no condition to make it. He barely struggled as they restrained his arms behind his back and then his world went black with a sharp pain in the back of his head.

*     *     *

Wow, when they said they were going to move him to better surroundings they really meant it. This may have been another cage but this one was most definitely gilded. There was a living area, bathroom facilities, bedroom and closets. A quick check indicated that the closets were full of clothing. The bed was large and soft and the couch comfortable. Where was the catch?Dr. Janus had followed him into the room and was now sat on a chair in the living area as Zach moved around the new room. Once he had returned and sat on the couch she began.

"You are Zachary Jericho, former security guard at Bold Industries. You are now Project Atlas."

Janus gestured to one of the walls and it lit up as a computer screen showing a personnel file on Zachary Jericho. Currently it listed him as deceased, his life ending the day he was taken from his apartment. 

"What the hell? Why am I dead?"

"Why do you think, Mr. Jericho?"

"Because dead men tell no tales?"

"Precisely. Now, you were chosen to go through a highly experimental process to rebuild you."

"Rebuild, what like a morph? But I haven't had any surgery."

"No, not like a morph. You were chosen to become the ultimate human. A creature built not from grafting constructed parts to a frail human body, but by having the body build itself. You are the culmination of forty years of testing and theory."

"But, why me?"

"You happened to fit a profile given by our employer as to the type of person who would be going through the treatment in the future. You are proficient to black belt status in seven martial arts..."

"Eight actually."

"Ok, eight martial arts. You had a level of fitness in the parameters set. You were also already working for the company, had effectively no one to notice when you were 'removed' and had a reason to sign away your life."

"Ok, but why was I not told about this earlier?"

"It seems the employer who started this project only required the subject to be tested on and for efficiency stipulated the treatment and speed of your development. You were the prototype never to be seen if you worked. But the ethic has changed somewhat with our new employer. It seems she has other plans for you with the advent of certain interesting developments."

"What developments? What do you mean?"

"The original changes to your structure were calculated to take at least a year to eighteen months to complete. It seems you are changing at a rate that we did not anticipate. It seems the total rebuild of you will be finished in about four months."

"So what does this rebuild mean?" Zach stood up and moved over to the wall screen.

"We are about to find out..."
Paul Taylor

There are some nights to regret.  Some nights when I look back and wish I had stayed at home, or that Pablo and I had lasted a few more weeks so I wouldn’t have been single.  Single, insecure, and looking to make a connection.  The question I must ask myself now is, why do I punish myself by looking for a connection at The Arnica?

The Arnica is not like other singles’ bars.  Instead of faux oak panelling or virtual fish tanks, The Arnica decorates with Yeats and the darkest Blake, augmenting their unruly scrawl with 3D visuals and houseplants.  My favourite place to sit is in the corner next to the ‘ravens of unresting thought.’  That night, after my fourth Blake’s ‘Lullaby’, the rumpled man under the ‘dim glass that the demons hold’ began to look interesting and interested.  With an unsteady lurch and a firm grasp on my fifth (and last) ‘Lullaby’, I invited myself to his solitary table.

“Dulcie,” I managed, as an explanation and introduction rolled into one.

“Welson,” he replied with a vague smile.  “You look, Dulcie, like a woman who is hunted, but wants to be a hunter.  Or, perhaps the other way around.”  Nodding.  “Yes, I can help you.  Mmm, yes I can.”

I mumbled something affirmative in response.  Through the alcohol-induced haze, I was struck by the sudden certainty that Welson looked exactly like an ex-corp who’d lost his job, jumped from his office window to avoid facing failure, and somehow survived the fall.  Yes, he took me home that night.  No, Prufrock he wasn’t.

*     *     *
	
I lost my job after the M87 incident.  No explanation from dear old Oxford.  At least they sent the notice to my flat, sparing me Luce’s self-satisfied sympathy at my termination.  Now I want nothing more than to trickle the last of my finances away with the electricity bill.  But, I can’t—not with Jesse, my son (his friends call him ‘dormouse’ for some reason), depending on me.  So I pretend to look for work and keep my spirits up.  And, as soon as Jesse’s out of the house, I plug back in…

Dead night.  Fir trees black against ink sky.  Night air heavy and frozen.  I lie on a bed of feathers and bones, remnants of the old grey goose, and worry the bullet in my haunch.  So far, only matted hair is loose.  Pain is rhythmical and steady.  I consider my exposed muscle and bleach-white gleam of bone.  Another tear, and a blood glazed bullet slides loose.  Ignoring, I lick the wound… 

[Internal incongruity]

[Program breach]

Exasperated, I lower my VR headset and look around the flat.  Nothing.  Afternoon sunlight forming slanted columns of dust.  The only movement is the muscles in my left thigh twitching.  Jesse, still out.  Wait, I whisper, internal incongruity?  I push my headset back into place…

Only the bullet.  No fir trees.  No cedars.  No bones.  No wolf.  And Welson’s face with Hubbard’s body, but somehow managing to look rumpled.  Shotgun slung over one shoulder.

“It’s a gift,” he says, “something for that night the other week.”  He swings the shotgun off his shoulder and levels it at me.

The spent bullet, still covered in wolf’s blood, is in my hand.  Turning and running.  Scrabbling over grey, ribbed terrain.  Sliding down milky, chitinous expanses.  Then cornered.  Welson in a black cape, mask covering half his face.  Hubbard’s shotgun.
Jenna Manley

Julia's body arched gracefully backwards and hit the concrete with the sound of a loud crack and a wet splat.  The crack was due to her head hitting the ground rather hard, while the splat was caused by the puddle in which she had landed.  Of course, it was just her luck that it was raining.  Still, at least it washed the blood away before it could set in her hair.  Not that Julia could appreciate any of this as the paramedics carted off her limp body to the hospital, where she could lay in an unconscious stupor on a more comfortable surface.

The concern for Julia was so great that no one thought to pick up her neural plugs which were still dangling from the wall terminal.  Not that they would be of any use to anyone now; they were fried beyond repair.  But still, they were Julia's lucky plugs.

*     *     *

"Run that by me one more time."  Zeta-Epsilon 1405 watched Delta-Alpha 2205 carefully.  She couldn't quite believe what he'd just told her, so she waited attentively for him to repeat it.

"I made a minor coding error."

"How minor?"

"I put one number in the wrong place in the database for the personality matrix generator."

"Which number, and where did you put it?"  ZE-1405 sighed.

"65,536 and I put it in 'quantity' instead of 'stress tolerance' by mistake."

"That doesn't sound like too much of a problem.  As long as you didn't run it, of course."  ZE-1405 smiled at the idea, and then noticed DA-2205 wasn't.  "Oh no.  You didn't.  Please don't tell me you started it running."

"All right, I won't tell you."

"Oh, it's all going to go to Hal in a handbasket!"  ZE-1405 dashed out of the room towards the nanite generator, swiftly followed by DA-2205.  By the time they arrived, several thousand nanites had already been created and every single one of them turned as the two of them entered.

"HELLO!" they all said, simultaneously.

*     *     *

"Bugger."  Julia stood up and looked around.  Even with all her experience as an infiltration expert, she had never experienced anything like that.  She was still in the system though, which was good.  On the other hand, she had no idea where she was in the system, which was bad.  There was only one way out of this particular node though, so she followed it.

*     *     *

ZE-1405 picked herself up off the floor, and started shouting at DA-2205.

"They're synchronised?!" she queried.

"That would appear to be the case."

"Are they going to do everything in unison?"

"Yes.  Maybe.  I don't know."

"Well, what are we going to do with them?"

"How about a repair crew?" came a voice from within the crowd.

"One-twelve?  Is that you?" ZE-1405 shouted over the milling mass of nanites.

"I'm over here."  DA-0112's hand emerged from the centre of the crowd and waved frantically.  "Umm, help."

"Right, I'm going to get him out of there.  You," ZE-1405 continued, turning to DA-2205, "work out how to turn this lot into an effective engineering team."

*     *     *

Julia was worried.  She now knew where she was.  Unfortunately the connection to the server she had been in earlier was gone.  Not just blocked or secured, but gone.  The same was true almost everywhere.  Most of the systems she had been in were just not there any more.  Still, it made tracing her rather difficult.  She would have to try to work her way back to her body via external links.  She hated doing that.  It required too much intuition and guesswork, and it was far too easy to get lost.  It didn't look like there were any other options though.
*     *     *
"Report."  It was several hours later and ZE-1405 was not in a good mood.  Neither was DA-2205.

"Right.  Well, after all sixty-five thousand, five hundred and thirty-six nanites were finished, I started doing some testing.  They have perfect synchronicity and that, as ZE-0112 pointed out, makes them the ideal repair crew.  They can cross-reference different areas of the system with each other instantaneously.  It's like they're a cross between a bunch of nanites and a datastore like the hive.  They have access to each other's knowledge because they are, essentially, one entity.  I have had to make some modifications however."

"Such as…?" ZE-1405 encouraged.

"Well, they were so perfectly synchronised that they were all doing the same task.  Literally.  Now, whilst having lots of engineers is good, having them all work on the same problem is a bit pointless."

"Don't get sarcastic with me, I'm not in the mood."

"YOU'RE not in the mood?!  I've just had to subtly alter several thousand synchronous programs so that they're not all identical but can still communicate with one another.  How do you think I feel?"

"All right, all right.  We've both had a hard day.  Let's just calm down, and get some rest, ok?"  ZE-1405 sank back into her chair.

"Ok."

"How did you adjust all their programs so fast anyway?"

"I altered the first one and programmed him to alter the next one.  You've got to love the cascade effect."  DA-2205 struggled to stop himself looking smug.

"They're re-programming each other.  Cunning.  What happens when they reach the last one?"

"As they learn and improve their efficiency, they'll pass it on to all the others.  So they'll always be re-programming one another as the need arises."

"So, what are they called?" asked ZE-1405, as she stretched and yawned.

"They're all Beta-Omicron 1807, but we can refer to them by their hex codes; '0000' to 'FFFF'.  They're painting their codes onto themselves right now, actually."

"Good.  Well, that's a relief.  A good engineering crew is just what I've been waiting for.  We're going to do a test run of Danni first thing tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow?  Are we ready?" DA-2205 said, with some surprise.

"As ready as we'll ever be.  According to your reports, Danni's personality matrix is ready for action, the stochastic algorithms are up-to-date, the self-adjustment modules have had the bugs worked out, and everything's been tested.  I say we're ready to give it a whirl."

"Wow. I hadn't expected us to be finished this quickly."

"Slow down.  We're not finished.  We're ready for a test run and getting her stable.  Then we need to start making improvements."

"Right.  But nothing to do until tomorrow morning then…?"  DA-2205 left the question hanging.

"I know that look, DA-2205, where is this leading?"

"I was wondering if you fancied coming round to my place tonight?""Your place?" ZE-1405 queried with some confusion, which turned into excitement as she exclaimed, "You've finished the virtual accommodation!"  This time DA-2205 couldn't hold back the smugness.

"Yes," he said simply.

"Well, I could do with some time away from work.  Let me go and change and I'll see you at your place."

"Change?" DA-2205 asked, raising an eyebrow.  ZE-1405 smiled sweetly.

"I've got this dress I want to wear, and this seems like the perfect excuse."  DA-2205 made a mental note to check the environmental controls, even though they didn't have any.  It was completely irrational, but it was better than thinking about what else could have caused him to start sweating and feel a shiver down his spine at the same time.

*     *     *

Julia was annoyed.  She was also scared.  There was no way out.  Whatever had happened to the systems had also blocked her off in a dead end.  She couldn't get back to her body.  Her only way out was to wait for the section she was in to be reconnected, and then make a dash for it.  She'd probably get caught or, at least, traced.  She hated feeling hemmed in.  But, once again, she didn't have any other choice.

*     *     *

"The diagnostic program tells me your speech algorithm has gone a little ka-ka.  Hang on."  ZE-1405 initiated the administration program and restarted DA-2205's speech algorithm.  After a few moments, his voice spluttered back into life.

"Thanks for that," he said, his voice a little higher pitched than normal.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, fine, fine.  It was just that the dress took me by surprise."

"It's the same one that's in the picture on the wall in your programming section.  The one you put there to motivate the workers, remember.  How can it take you by surprise?"

"Let me put it this way, there is a reason why the picture motivates the workers, and it's only a picture.  Actually seeing you dressed like that in the flesh, so to speak, is…well, crash-inducing."  

ZE-1405 eyed him with suspicion.

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"Of course I am.  You saw what happened to my algorithm." DA-2205 answered with some puzzlement.

"Oh.  It's just that I've never really thought of myself in that way before.  I don't really care much about appearances.  They're just program-built holograms after all.  At least, they are in here, I'm not sure what they're like outside."

"You're starting to babble, are you all right?"

"I'm fine, I'm just a little nervous."

"Nervous?  You've been playing with your personality matrix again, haven't you?"

"A bit.  I wanted to be able to make bigger and more difficult decisions.  Now I get nervous about whether I've done the right thing."

"Ah, you mean like wearing that dress tonight," DA-2205 said, using logic in a situation where it should never be applied.  ZE-1405 made another decision, this one was about being on the defensive and she decided she didn't want to be on the defensive.

"Oh no, judging by the effect on your speech, wearing this was definitely the right thing to do."  ZE-1405 approached DA-2205 as she spoke and stroked him gently on the cheek.

"Excuse me a second," he yelped, and dashed out the room.

"What's wrong?"

"Just checking the environmental controls!"

"Oh… What?!"  ZE-1405 felt very confused.

*     *     *

Julia also felt very confused, but for somewhat different reasons.  She felt like she had been here forever and there was still no connection to the outside.  She sat down, exhausted.  Something drastic had happened to the system and the techies still hadn't fixed it.  One possible reason is that it was beyond repair, but they would have powered up the back-ups by now if the system was that badly damaged.  Another possible reason was that she had been caught, and now Bold Industries was playing with her.  There hadn't been any indication that they had noticed her presence in the system though.

Julia decided to sleep on it.

*     *     *

"You sleep on it?" ZE-1405 asked, even more confused now than she had been over the non-existent environmental controls.

"Of course," DA-2205 said, climbing in gingerly and relaxing by way of a demonstration.  "See, works like a charm."

"Umm, how are we meant to…share it?"

"I don't know, there's no information in the hive on it.  I guess we'll have to try trial-and-error."  DA-2205 caught up with himself and the conversation.  "Share?" he queried.

"You know, for a nite with a neural intelligence initialiser value like yours, you can be really dim sometimes.  You didn't think I'd put this dress on for no good reason, did you?"  DA-2205 started racing through the hive link, looking for tactics used by trapped and cornered animals.  Unfortunately, none of the possibilities he found had ever faced a predator quite like this one.  "What’s this thing called, anyway?" she asked as she got on with him."A hammock.""Hmm, trial-and-error it is, then."  She leaned forward and kissed him.  There was, against all the laws of electronics and physics, a spark.

[HIVE REBOOT IN 1 CYCLE]
[HISTORICAL COVERAGE WILL AUTOMATICALLY CONTINUE AFTER REBOOT]
David Jones

Many solemn-faced men gathered round a genuine mahogany table. Dark grey suits, exquisite shirts, and faces like thunder.

The man with the rhodium cuff-links was standing and addressing the others.

"The GSSA are not much nearer to capturing him. Apart from one dramatic confrontation with an unidentified corporation, there is no activity that matches his modus operandi. The GSSA is loathe to assign more operatives to this problem while the corporate war is still brewing."

A shortish man interjected: "Why did we have to involve them at all? We usually keep such matters in house."

The first speaker turned his head, just a little.

"We discussed this in depth at the time. We keep few operatives, and those are needed to protect our property. It would be unthinkable to leave our business addresses undefended, and would we leave our other - ah - holdings unmanned?"

The short man looked at his fingers.

"Although perhaps the time has come to expand our security division," the speaker continued. "We have deliberately kept our security personnel relatively poorly equipped until now, to avoid the attentions of our rival firms. It was beneficial to appear as a benevolent supplier. Now, I believe, we should put our unmatched medical facilities to use. Our enemies will underestimate us."

There were nods of agreement.

A third man spoke up, "Vot of the plans he stole?" He had a German accent. "I understand they are in the public domain. Need I remind my colleagues that ve vill no longer have a definite superiority?"

There was a pause.

"The CICI is but one component in the package. Our other equipment is superior, and no one else has the capacity to produce as much as we do."

The shortish man allowed himself a smile.

The German was not to be deterred. "Und can ve be sure, I mean absolutely sure, that he does not also have access to more sensitive material from our files? The fire destroyed vot records there may have been."

From the foot of the table, a deep voice rumbled. 

"I can guarantee that he knew nothing of our other concerns. He was considered too volatile for those projects. It was only his exceptional talent that persuaded me to assign him to the CICI project. Do the GSSA still believe we were unable to decrypt the files?"

Rhodium cuff-links nodded.

"The pretence will not last much longer," the deep voice predicted. "It was ill-advised to begin with. He is of no concern to us for the moment. Let the GSSA deal with him at their leisure. We must forge ahead with our other projects, to ensure they reach fruition before the normal course of business breaks down."

There was a respectful silence. The German nodded towards the foot of the table and said,

"Preparations for project Baumfahler are complete. I only avait consensus from this table."

The man with the rhodium cuff-links was sitting now. He gauged the mood of the room. "I believe we are in agreement. Let us begin as soon as possible."

The German man blinked, as if a moment he never thought would arrive had come. 

"Vorzueglich! If this meeting has ended, I vill set matters in motion immediately. Danke, gentlemen."

He allowed himself a smile.

"Babbage vill die."
Ben Wright

Click, the door slid open and the four figures slid quietly into the room. Dressed all in black, masks covering their features, the figures moved in a trained manner, spreading out to cover the living area of the apartment. Their guns were out and they moved cautiously; they had a job to do.

One moved over to the kitchen area, one towards the bathroom. One peeled off toward the bedroom and the final one took up a position covering the door they had entered through.

The bedroom door opened easily and with no noise. The assassin moved in to stand at the foot of the bed. He raised his gun and fired three silenced rounds into the form on the bed. 

Stepping forward to check that their target is dead, the figure is taken completely by surprise as the bed is kicked out towards him by someone lying beneath it. The male dressed in just boxer shorts rolls backwards to his feet, back to the wall. Whilst his would-be killer regains his composure to raise the gun again the man throws himself to the right performing a handstand on the bed-side table. Coming up with the table in his hands he charges forward towards the gunman. Just as the gun is levelled the attacker finds his arm trapped in the rungs of the table. A twist and a snap and he drops the gun. A kick to the head places him on the ground. 

Rolling around to face the door, sounds of movement indicate that the others are heading towards the bedroom. A quick vault and there is a semi-naked man atop the door waiting for someone to enter.

The first through the door immediately runs to his prone comrade, the second scans the room with his gun. The third seems reluctant to come too far into the room, but it is far enough. Dropping down in front of the third man, the athletic male grabs the other’s gun hand; twisting the arm under his shoulder, the gun is aimed at the second man. 

Chumf, chumf, chumf. Three silenced bullets blow out his hand and knees. 

Turning on the first man a single bullet later and he is staring with dead eyes. 

Bringing his elbow back the male despatches the third man, leaving himself with the gun.

Suddenly the lights go on in the main living room. The male responds by rolling out through the door. Coming up into a crouch he finds himself aiming at Dr. Janus.

"Good evening, Zach, how are you?"

"Better if you'd stop trying to kill me." Zach ejected the clip and the bullet in the breach. He handed the weapon to an orderly who had come in after the doctor.

"It seems you are improving on our new timetable as expected. We have decided to start some specialist training, and the boss is coming to see you."

"The boss?"

"Yes, Zach, you know, the one who is paying for all this," the doctor waved her arm to encompass the room around them, "and this," she poked him in the centre of the chest.

"Well, it would be nice to find the person who paid for me to become as strong as a morph."

"I wouldn't say you were as strong as a morph. But that is where the new training is going to come in..."

* * *

Zach stood in the training room. He had changed into the special armour they had provided for him and was now facing his instructor. The slender woman with black hair was wearing similar clothing to his own.

She reached into a bag she was carrying and produced two katanas.

"Have you ever fought with swords before?" she asked, handing him one.

"Not really. I've done some of the theory of it but the majority of my martial arts training is without weapons."

"Then you may learn something then..."

She darted forward with a head swipe that Zach had no problem blocking with the super light blade. It was a feint though, and his trainer’s sword flashed around to finish sitting on his shoulder, edge to his neck. 

"Lesson one," she stated.

They took up stances and faced off. She came in hard and quick, first to the head and then the legs. Zach blocked the first blow and jumped the second. Taking the upper hand, he pressed in with an over arm blow to the head. He found himself stopping when his instructor’s sword was at his neck again. 

"Lesson two," she intoned.

They stepped back into starting poses and the battle began again.

This time Zach attacked first, with his trainer blocking every strike. Head, head, left leg, head, right leg. Then she attacked with a strike to the neck. Zach stepped back and the sword passed an inch from him. He then stepped forward, thrusting his sword up towards her armpit. 

Rolling to one side, she dodged the blade and dropped to sweep his legs out from under him. As he hit the ground he let go of the sword and it bounced away from him, but he rolled over and leapt back to his feet.

The attack did not stop though, and he was forced to lean away as his opponent’s sword flashed down across his body again and again. Dropping back and then suddenly stepping forward, he was able to step into her guard and quickly managed to entrap her sword with his arm. He was now in a very precarious situation, as he had a sword blade under his left arm and the end that it was usually controlled by was being held by someone else. An extremely swift decision was made and Zach brought his right arm around. He hit the flat of the blade near the hilt with his palm and the blade snapped from the handle with a loud banging sound. He released the blade so that it could drop to the floor and then kicked it away.

She threw away the useless piece of sword and dropped into a fighting stance. Zach responded in kind and the battle was locked again.

Punches and kicks were thrown and blocked as the two moved back and forth across the training room floor. Zach decided that he needed something special to get the upper hand in this fight and feinted left. His opponent seemed to move with a supernatural speed and elbowed him to the floor. Almost as quickly he responded, sweeping around on the floor to kick her feet out from under her, but she jumped a clear five feet in the air. He rolled out before she landed so her knee impacted with the floor. 

She returned to the fighting stance and they started again. Kicks and punches were traded and blocked until she connected with the centre of his chest. Thrown backwards ten feet, he slid to a stop on his stomach. He rolled up onto his feet and started to strip off the armour he was wearing. Seeing this the instructor followed his lead and removed hers. They continued until they were wearing just the navy blue jumpsuits they had on beneath the armour.

The fight started a third time.

The woman attacked with a series of kicks to the legs that Zach blocked. She followed up by jumping into a spinning kick aimed at his head. Zach responded by ducking under it and grabbing the back of her jumpsuit. He charged her forwards toward the wall, but at the last moment she ducked down and he was thrown over the top to land upside down against the wall. She stood to bring her foot down onto his head but he did a handstand and cartwheeled down the wall. 

Landing the right way up, he vaulted and hand-sprang back to the centre of the room. The trainer moved quickly to meet him but he was ready and dropped to grab her legs. She slipped around and he moved her to a lock on the floor that was only breakable by brute force. Together they sat like this for a few seconds and then the pressure she was exerting was increasing. He adjusted a little and kept the hold. The strength he felt in this woman was way too great for any normal human. Oh great, she was a morph.

The pressure she was exerting was getting too much and Zach decided to let go. This turned out to be a bad idea, as she swung around and caught his arms in a lock of her own. He started to resist but damn, she was strong.

He put his normal strength behind it as he looked at this woman holding him. Then he noticed something - she was sweating, this was a strain for her. Summoning all his strength he started to push his arms apart and force her into a new position. It took some time and all his might but he broke the hold and twisted her around to where he was facing her, their arms held out in a bizarre game of mercy. Both were sweating quite profusely now, but Zach had the upper hand and took advantage of it. He kicked her hard in the stomach and she flew backwards, only stopping when she hit the wall. The shallow dent left behind her as she slumped to the floor was quite substantial. As she pushed herself up onto all fours, the door burst open and several people in white coats came running in. One of them was Dr. Janus.

"That's it, Zach, the training's finished. Go wash up."

"What? You think that's it? You try to kill me in my sleep, you send this morph in to kill me and when it turns out I may beat her you call me off? What is your freakin' problem, doc? Can't you just cut me a little slack and stop trying to kill me?"

Zach stormed out of the room, punching another dent into the wall by the door as he went. Dr. Janus moved over to see how the instructor was doing.

* * *

The black-haired woman sat on a chair in the doctor’s office. Janus handed her a glass of water.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Archibald, we didn't know what was going on until it was too late. We would have been in sooner but..."

"But what? What happened to the nano-monitoring you were placing in Atlas?"

"Well, it seems the nanobots we injected to report back his bio functions malfunctioned."

"What? All of them?"

"Yes."

"But they have a ninety-five percent functionality rating, how could all of them malfunction? How many did you use?"

"We used the standard scanning set. We have a theory though."

"Go on."

"We think that his immune system is destroying them."

"He's curing himself of a 'nanite' disease?"

"Yes. It was quite common when the first nanites were tried because they were relatively weak compared with white blood cells. These ones were a lot more advanced though, and were built to survive even the strongest white blood cells. He has surpassed the strongest easily."

"And his physical strength? He is as strong as I am, maybe stronger. I thought you said he was likely to hit Olympic athlete level of strength and fitness?"

"It seems he is surpassing everything we had hoped for. At this rate he's going to be a real handful soon. We aren't going to be able to keep him controlled. The only problem he is having is his hyper metabolism. He is consuming a huge number of calories a day."

"I think it is time I met him on a more personal level. I've got some meetings over the next few days but I think he should visit me at head office. For lunch."
Paul Taylor

Lucas awoke with a start. From blissful unconsciousness to full alertness in seconds. Such is the wonder of the neural implant.

Shadbolt smiled down at him, arm in a sling.

"It seems very strange at first, but you get used to it quite quickly."

Lucas was horizontal in Doc Black's recovery room. His new CICI had brought him round as quickly as possible, but there was still some numbness in his extremities. There was an ornate framed certificate on the wall, which could be Doc Black's qualification from some renowned African medical college, or it could be a licence to sell fish. Dove was across the room, watching the men with concern.

Doc Black offered a unique service. Unlike most of his competitors, he let clients use his facilities if they were competent surgeons. Shadbolt was a fair surgeon, but in the specialist area of CICI implants and their calibration he was without peer.

The operation he and Doc Black had carried out together (because of Shadbolt's bad arm) was more usually spread over several operations and weeks of careful adjustment of the various parameters in the CICI. The two of them had done the lot in a single seven-hour stint.

All that remained was for Lucas to learn to operate through the buffer of his implant.
As Shadbolt and Dove watched, he tried to sit up, with miserable success. 

"It'll come," Dove assured him, cocking her head to suggest a smile.

Doc Black put his head round the door.

"If there's nothing else you need. I'll close up the theatre."

"Okay. Thanks again for helping."

"No worries. It's a pleasure to watch you work." Doc Black's smile faltered. "It may well be the last operation I get here. That and your other project. Business has been kind of slow lately. Now the corps have bought up all the criminal gangs there's just not any freelancers wanting quality independent operations nowadays. Mark my words, the corps are gearing up for trouble. It might be time to leave London altogether." He disappeared.

Shadbolt offered Lucas a glass of water, and mopped at the dribbles he left.

"Dove dear, can I leave you to help Lucas take his first tentative steps? I need to go and get the van resprayed. I'm glad I got the drive-by-wire kit for it, now."

He left.

Lucas turned helpless eyes onto the still figure standing in the corner. Under her mask, Dove bit her lip. 

"Okay," she said, letting calm shine through her voice. "Let's just take this nice and slowly." She put her hands on Lucas' shoulders. "It'll be easier if you sit up."

Lucas was about to protest that he'd be delighted to sit up, but that none of his limbs seemed to agree, when her grip tightened and she mercilessly hoisted him into a sitting position. He felt the beginnings of a blush warm his face. He was also surprised - Dove didn't look that strong.

"Right. Let's just concentrate on one thing at a time. Are you right or left handed?"

Lucas' gaze drifted to his right hand lying motionless on the sterile white sheets.

"Fine. Move that hand."

For a few minutes the room was filled with the awful silence of nothing happening. Sweat beaded on Lucas' brow.

"Hmm. You're trying too hard. Imagine…imagine instructing that hand to move. Be specific. How fast, which direction. Be precise."

For a moment Lucas was still, and then his hand jerked suddenly to life, as if pulled by a string. It flung into the air, then fell on the bed once more. He exhaled sharply. It was like thinking through porridge.

"You're thinking through an interface," said Dove, as if reading his thoughts. "Stay calm. Be precise. This is hard for everyone the first time."

Lucas' legs kicked out randomly, and then his arms spasmed. Dove clapped her hands together, appreciative. 

"That's good, that's excellent. Again." 

Lucas felt himself do another impression of an insect on its back. Dammit, he was looking stupid in front of the very woman he wanted to impress.

"Again."

A growl left Lucas' lips. Work, damn you, work! He was rewarded by a forceful spring of his legs onto the cold, metal floor. He was standing. Yes, he was standing!

Something dawned on Lucas as the world tilted.

He wasn't standing. He was falling!

Dove moved forward gracefully in order to catch him, but a misplaced command made him kick out, catching her in the stomach. She fell onto the floor, winded, cursing in a language he didn't understand. A moment later he tumbled on top of her, a dead weight.

For a moment they lay there, panting for breath.

"m…sorry," Lucas managed to gasp out through gritted teeth.

The girl looked up at him, and he wished he knew what she was thinking.

"That's okay," she whispered. They lay there a little longer, catching their breath.

"….you…had....this…?"

Lucas was disbelieving. Dove nodded.

"Shadbolt helped me."

He growled something under his breath as Dove extricated herself from the huddle. She brushed herself down, considering.

"All right, we'll do this another way. But you need to trust me, okay?"

Of course.

She stood still in the middle of the floor, and suddenly Lucas felt another presence in his head - like the tickle of a fly on skin.

"May I…?" she whispered - but he heard the voice in his head.

Yeah.

"Look, I can manoeuvre your hand like this."

Very gently, she demonstrated, her thoughts instructing his CICI. Lucas felt his mind respond, saw his hand move. "Your turn," she said.

By this method of demonstrate and copy, they managed to get him to his feet once more.

"…thanks," he managed to stammer out.

He felt her presence withdraw, and his mind seemed suddenly empty, less warm.

"Any time," she murmured, and he fancied he saw a smile behind the mask.

 I wish Shadbolt were here, she thought to herself.
Ben & Mich

Fire! Dove flung herself forward from the chair, wires dropping from her onto the blackening carpet. The wall of flame rose up in front of her, obscuring her vision, and her eyes stung in the thickening, sour smoke. A sudden explosion of a lamp, and she screamed, raising her hands to protect herself. A warm, soft feeling spread across her face, numbing the pain. Her hands scrabbled frantically at the double-glazing of the window, her sobs catching in her throat -

And she woke up, wrapped in sweat-soaked sheets. She sat bolt upright, pushing damp hair from her face with shaking hands. She pushed herself to her feet, unsteady, and moved over towards the window. She rested her face against the cool bullet-proof glass. What would Mei say if she could see Dove now? Confident, irresistible Dove – once described on BBS as “the ever arrogant hacker with a tongue of acid”. They were good partners. Daring. No scam too big. No burglary too implausible. 

That day they’d had the Argument, and Mei had left the apartment… if only she had bitten her tongue, not been so damn stubborn… Dove exhaled sharply. She remembered waking up to the cold, welcoming arms of the corporation and realising that her apartment was dust. And when the company had thrown her out, not needing any more from her, she had wandered, lost and dazed, through the streets. She had wanted to die, but did not have the courage. 

Mei knew none of this – and Dove had not tried to contact her. Why should Mei help? She did not want Mei to know how she had changed. How sane she was now. How sorry. “We’re still friends, aren’t we?” Mei had said, in the Net. Maybe they were. Maybe Dove could call her. 

But something was holding her back.

Dove shook her head sleepily. Conversations with yourself in the dead of night never yield much revelation. She tiptoed to the bedroom door and, opening it, stepped into the lounge.

It smelt faintly of previous tenants and mothballs as Dove curled up on the sofa, her head lowered in her lap. She stayed there for what seemed like hours, but was probably only minutes of the endless night.

Shadbolt’s bedroom door opened with a gentle creak, and he stood silhouetted in the doorway. He wore only his boxers, and his arm rested in a sling.

“Nightmares again?” he asked, softly.

Dove looked up. She nodded, the outline of her face beautiful in the inky darkness of the lounge. Silence hung in the air for a moment. 

Then Shadbolt turned, walking back into his darkened room. Dove rose from the sofa, and followed. The door shut quietly behind them.
Mich Sampson

The phone rang as Celia was towelling her hair dry, with almost calculated inconvenience. She growled and activated the loudspeaker with her CICI.

“Yes!” she said tersely, still rubbing vigorously at her hair.

“Celia, it has been too long.” The voice was bone-dry, dispassionate, distantly familiar.

“Who is this?” Her voice betrayed a note of irritation.

“Come on, you should remember. Cast your mind back. South Georgia?”

She stopped drying her hair. Goosebumps crawled with alacrity across her still-moist skin. “Professor?”

“Well done.” Then there was an impression of fluttering. She shrieked at a feathery sensation on her neck and then a sharp, narrow puncture. A hard pea-sized lump manifested some way beneath her skin. She put her hand to her flesh to feel something papery there. She pulled at it. She felt her skin lift at point of the prick. Whatever it was had been embedded several centimetres deep. She looked in her hand. A black crushed moth lay there, still. A long, thread-like proboscis hung limply between her fingers.

Her CICI informed her that it had just received a network request for full access. She was just about to refuse when the parchment voice on the telephone spoke again.

“Listen, Celia.” It spoke in a deadly, commanding hiss. “Your life is now measured in minutes. That is Crucible’s best. You will be very very co-operative or you will be very very dead. You will accept the request for access to your CICI in five seconds or you will die.”

It took one second. Dr Celia Janus watched the phone, trembling and hunted. It remained pregnantly silent for a few seconds.

“Good. Now you have about ten minutes before your internal organs start to haemorrhage so you need to move fast. There is a car, a white Mercedes, waiting around the corner from your apartment block in St George’s Drive. Get in on the passenger’s side at the front. Go!”

“This phone is likely to be tapped, you know?” Celia managed.

“All the more reason to move fast. If Bold’s security stop you then no one can help you.” The phone clicked off.

“Shit!” She said. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Then she tied the belt of her silk bathrobe tight and ran for the stairs. Half-stumbling, holding her robe tightly and with as much dignity as she could muster with it flapping about her, she made it down three storeys without spraining anything and out into the lobby. She was starting to sweat profusely and the periphery of her vision had become a grey blur.

She saw the security guard. “Evenin’, Doc.” He looked bewildered as she charged past him and out of the large glass doors. She stumbled bare-foot down the marble stairs at the front of the Pimlico apartment block and tripped at the bottom. Her legs felt shaky and unable to support her weight.

It took a great effort of will to stand and start running again. Her vision had narrowed to a tight circular tunnel, her throat throbbed hot and her heart pounded. She heard, only vaguely, the security men burst from the building behind her and start after her. She forced herself to run or stumble faster, the turning fixed in the grey circle of her sight before her. 

She stumbled again, trying to turn the corner, and fell as a ‘Morph caught his arm around her waist. She saw the Mercedes in front of her. Both front doors were open. On the driver’s side a silhouette stood with a rifle raised. There were two cracks as the gun discharged and the grip on her waist went slack.

She pulled herself to her feet and stumbled forward, using her hands as well, in a loping, ape-like gait. The rifle cackled with a fully automatic burst at something behind her and she felt her legs go away underneath her again.

The mysterious gunman was an indistinct blur now. He was racing forward, laying down suppressive fire at the corner of the building around which her pursuers were emerging. Strong, almost gentle, arms dragged her to her feet and the gunman shouted, 

“If you want to live get to the car.” 

She staggered against the door and tumbled in, utterly exhausted. Her abdomen tightened and she was aware of a salty, metallic taste in her mouth and distant gunfire. A door slammed and then another. Everything was hazy now, her hearing and her sight. She wanted to sleep. She vomited blood again and then fainted.

* * *

“Uncle T, I’ve got her.” Titus swerved around the corner, wincing slightly as the car bumped over the body of a Bold Industries security man.

“Excellent. Is she all right?”

“She was vomiting blood. She is bleeding from her nose and ears and her complexion has undoubtedly been better.” He sniffed.

“We need to get her on a respirator inside the next fifteen minutes or she’ll drown in her own blood. After that we have got the best part of six hours before the damage is irreparable. The VTOL is in position for pick up. The paramedics are standing by.”

“Understood. She has made a real mess of the car.”

“You will be able to live with it. It is just blood and bile, isn’t it? She hasn’t lost bowel control yet, hmmm?”

“No. Hold on. There are a couple of motorcycles in pursuit.” Titus rammed his foot down on the accelerator and wound down his window. The car was filled with rushing air.

Then, turning a corner, he braked hard. There was a loud crash as one of bikes hit the side of the Merc, catapulting the rider over the roof. The other bike wheeled out to the right and past the car, pulling around as the rider levelled a gun towards the driver’s window. Titus already had his pistol in hand and his bead drawn as the motorcyclist was still bringing his SMG to bear. The visor of the ‘Morph’s helmet shattered and he sat statue-like for a moment before he and his bike toppled over to the side with a crash.

The other pursuer was picking himself up, drunkenly, stunned by the impact, and was pulling a gun. Titus released the brake and sped off again, bullets ricocheting off the armoured plating on the back of the car.

“It is done. I’m on my way to the pick up, Uncle... Shit! That wasn’t bad for a five minute response.”

“That’s Bold Industries for you. Almost like they’re expecting trouble.”

* * *

Dr Celia Janus awoke to a familiar white ceiling, painfully lit with actinic light. South Georgia. It had been an old whaling station when there had still been whaling. Without whalers, its raison d’être had disappeared, and with that the few people who had called it home. It had been fairly easy to persuade the GSSA to turn it over to Crucible. The place was a remote island in the Southern Ocean, naturally quarantined, naturally discreet.

She had lived and worked here once as one of Crucible’s rising stars before she had got lost, quietly, during shore leave. She had reneged on a deal with the Devil, got greedy.

And now she was back.

“Good afternoon, Celia.” A shadow encroached upon the vista of the ceiling and its grim menace encroached on her consciousness. It was then she noticed how weak she felt, how every part of her body ached. She turned her head slowly, painfully. He hadn’t changed a bit.

“Professor…"

“Don’t talk too much. You’ve not been well. Everything is all right now though. You are going to be fine in a few weeks. You have the best, the very best, medics in the world working on you.”

“You poisoned me.”

“Shhh! It was unfortunate. But you did have to go and play truant. Very unfortunate. For you.”

“What now, Professor?” Her eyes searched the impassive face, the wry smile, the eyes feigning sympathy. The only thing behind those eyes was a reptilian cruelty. It seemed as if her heart had been pierced by a splinter of ice.

He pursed his lips. “Remember when I first took an interest in your career. Remember when I took you under my wing. I showed you a little project of mine; a computer that I was working on. I told you then that if you betrayed my kindness then you would join those wretched souls. I told you what it would be like, having your most precious memories laid bare to those degenerate minds who long for some kindling of humanity in their eternal ennui. I told you this, Celia. And you betrayed me anyway. For what? For money. You could have been my right-hand. You could have been great, Celia. You squandered that potential when you sold out. Was it worth it, Celia?” His voice sank into a venomous hiss. His eyes were truly cold now, narrowing with menace.

“No. No it wasn’t,” she managed wretchedly, terrified but too weak to move. “Please! Please, Professor!”

“Oh, but dear Celia, it is far too late for that now.” He mused for a moment. “Unless...” He left it hanging.

“Unless what? Anything?” She did not have the strength to panic fully. Instead she was overwhelmed by a helpless, nauseous dread.

“No, Celia, you rest up now.” He smiled benevolently. “You get a bit stronger and, when you are, we will have a nice little meal together, a bottle of wine, just like old times.” His voice sounded wistful but she knew there was no sentiment in it. She shuddered. “We’ll have a talk then and you’ll tell me all about what you’ve been up to these past couple of years and you won’t tell a single lie, you deceitful little bitch, and then we’ll work out what we are going to do with you.”

The figure at the bedside drew himself up to his full impressive height, like a rearing cobra, and gazed down on her balefully. Then he turned and swept from the room.
Geoff Hinkley

When dealing with people he respected, like Dove, or even Lucas, Shadbolt was courteous and polite. However, when dealing with people he had scant respect for he could be rude and foul-mouthed. Especially if they were arguing with him.

"I'm sorry?" He plainly wasn't.

"We're not doing any respraying for the moment. Since Bold muscled in on us, we're limited to doing their dirty laundry." The woman behind the counter and the bullet-proof grille regarded him coldly.

"What are you saying? You've been bought out by a corp? A back-street chop-shop? Bullsh-"

"Sorry, sir."

"I've been to this damn garage in the last week. Now you bloody well get cracking."

The woman considered. Her hand hovered near one button under the counter, then pressed another. A bell rang somewhere behind her.

"We could do it, but there would be a delay. Say, Tuesday? The cost would be two thousand euros."

"You thieving turncoat cumbucket!"

At that moment, a large man, with grease on his overalls, sauntered in from a doorway behind the counter.

"What is it, Liz?"

The woman behind the counter gestured to Shadbolt, then reached for the first button again.

"NO!" said the man, hurriedly, then cleared his throat. "Mr. Shadbolt, we've been taken over by Bold. That's how it is. They're winding us up. God knows what they want from this place, but we're out. I'll do your van now, for old times' sake, but we probably won't be here next time you 
need a respray. On the house. We've nothing left to lose, anyhow. Bring the van round the back."

Shadbolt grunted, and left. Liz, if that was her name, turned to the man.

"Why cave in? We could've used the tazer on him."

"If you had, I'd have sent your family a wreath. There's nothing in this shop that could stop him, only make him mad. He's a morph, Liz. He'd have rammed the tazer so far up your chuffer your eyes'd glow."

Liz looked alarmed, then subsided. 

"What does he do here if he's a morph?"

"He's not corp, I know that much. Maybe ex-corp. They don't like their little pets running wild. I gave him a week or two the first time I saw him, but that was over a year ago. Stories get back to me about him. No-one survives nowadays by being known, but he does."

"I still don't see why you had to offer him a freebie."

"Ever hear of Icarus?"

"No."

"He was, er, a king. Yeah. He wanted to visit the sun, so he built these wings out of feathers and stuff. He flew to the sun, but it was too hot and the wings caught fire. Splatto. That man is something like that."

There was a pause.

"I still don't get it. Why give him a free respray?"

"Because, Liz, one day someone will use fireproof feathers."

Out in the street, Shadbolt stalked away from the garage to get a Coke from somewhere. As he turned into an alley, two men followed him in. The first grabbed his shoulder, and the second blocked his escape.

"What you doin'?" the first asked.

"Yeah, pretty boy. Tel it like it is," the second wheezed in his ear.

The first man had a small calibre gun, thrust into Shadbolt's ribs.

"You're a greenie, aincha?"

Shadbolt had borrowed Lucas' old denim jacket while his arm was still in a sling, and the gang badges were plainly visible.

"What you doin'?" the first repeated. "You tel, or I'll do ya."

Shadbolt said nothing.

"You deaf? Hand over yer credit, get the gif?"

Shadbolt said nothing, but adjusted the jacket with his good arm, so the butt of his gun was just visible.

The man pushed his weapon into Shadbolt's forehead, and sneered,

"You lost all yer packets? Try it, pretty boy. Fink yer fast enough?"

Shadbolt smiled.

"I don't need to be."

After a few moments, Shadbolt emerged from the alleyway. He scuttled past a sausage vendor, who was selling food poisoning by the bun. When he had gone, the vendor's last customer dropped his hot-dog into the gutter. 

Lieutenant Morris wiped his hands and hurried back to his car.
Ben Wright

I survey my shoulder-length red hair and brown eyes in the mirror.  No, I don’t look like the heroine out of any story, nor like any sort of damsel in need of rescuing.  I look tired, the need or hope for make-up long since past.  Once, I thought I could rely on the strength of my red hair, but that, like so many other things, proved ultimately unremarkable. 

“Mum?”

Jerking back from the mirror.  “Jesse?”  Oh gods, how could I have thought he’d be left out of this.  “Jesse?  Where are you?”  Guilt flashes through me, turning to ash the selfish wish to be free of responsibility.  I rattle the bathroom door handle that, this time, opens easily in my hand.  A flat confronts me, larger than my last one but sterile, unlived in.

“Mum?”  A pounding on one of the doors down the hallway.  I rush to the sound and struggle with the offending door handle.  It remains locked.

“Jesse?  It’s okay, I’m right here.”

“Can’t you unlock the door, or kick it down or something?”

A half hysterical giggle escapes me.  “No, pet, I don’t think that would work somehow.”

“What’s going on, Mum?”

“I don’t know.  I mean, I was just…just looking on the Net for job leads when someone hacked the program.  Then I woke up in the bathroom here.  How, I mean, what’s the last thing you remember?”

“Dunno.  I was just coming home for dinner, like you said.  Then it got black and I woke up in this room.  I looked out the window, but there’s just grass all around.  I don’t know where we are.”

He’s already thought to check the windows.  “It’s okay, pet, I’ll get us out of this.  I’ll figure it out.”

“Shit, Mum, I don’t need you.”

“But Jesse, we could be anywhere…”

“Hello Dulcie.”

“Mum?  What was that?”

“I don’t know, Jesse.”  But I do know with sudden clarity that is, of course, Welson’s voice.

“May I direct your attention to the chair in the front room.”  Rigid with shock, I turn and follow the voice.  No rumpled man greets me, but I fix my gaze on the chair his disembodied voice indicates.  It is something out of a different age:  dark polished wood and green leather, it might belong in a smoking room for gentlemen.  It does not belong as the focal point of this room, facing the low-backed, over-stuffed sofas and the empty glass coffee table.  “This chair will be your work station, along with a few modifications.”  Welson’s voice pauses, but I refuse to have the question drawn out of me, fearing already his cinematic timing.

[Hello. Dulcie.]

Oh, gods.

My hands fly of their own accord to my head, but no VR equipment rests there.  Frantically, I feel around for a plug or a circuit or anything.  Nothing.  My throat constricts.  I am unsteady on my feet.  I lurch towards the sofa and slide over the arm into a sitting position.

“Mum?”

Like a litany I chant in my mind, be careful what you wish for.  Be careful what you wish for.  Be careful what you wish for.  Becarefulwhatyouwishfor.

[Be. Careful. What. You. Wish. For.]

“Be careful what you wish for,” Welson’s voice whispers…

*                *                *

A door bursting open startles me out of my stupor.  I am suddenly unaware of how much time has passed.  The sky holds the last angry edge of an orange sunset.  Cedars are black against an undulating, chiaroscuro bay.  My son’s hurrying figure rounds the coffee table and lands on the sofa next to me.  

“They let you out, Jesse?”

“No, Mum.  I picked the lock.”

“What!  Where did you learn to do that?  I mean…”

“Leave it, Mum.  Are you okay?”

“Yes, I mean, no.  Gods, Jesse, they’re inside my head.”  Swallowing.  “That is, I think they’ve put some sort of CICI plug in me, and now they want me to work for them.”

“Cool.  Like in some sort of corp warfare, and you belong to the corp now and they’ll pay you shitloads of money, but you can’t leave.”  Looking around speculatively, “so which corp is it, anyway?”

“I have no idea and, Jesse, it is most certainly not cool.  They’ve done brain surgery on me against my will and now they’ve access to my mind.  They can probably control my thoughts.”

“Don’t be stupid, Mum, they can’t control your thoughts with CICI, they can only send and receive stuff, like you can go on the Net without a box or anything.  D’you think I’ve got one too?”

The thought sends a wave of nausea through me.  “Of course not, Jesse, they wouldn’t do that to an eleven year old.”

[You. might. think. about. sitting. on. the. chair. Dulcie.]
[Put. both. your. minds. at. rest.]

“Mum?”

Breathing.  “It’s all right, Jesse. They want me to sit in the chair.”

“Cool.  I’ll find some food in the kitchen.”

I stare after my son as he discovers the kitchen.  Briefly, I wonder if he’ll rediscover his fascination for Korean food.  Is it resilience, flexibility, or denial?

The chair beckons implacably.  I wonder if it is simply a chair and a psychological tool.  I sink into green leather.  I resist placing both arms on the armrests.  To my surprise, a screen shimmers to solidity in front of me.  Jesse glances at it, looking impressed.  The screen holds an image of Welson facing me from across a desk, and sitting in a chair identical to mine.

‘Welcome, Dulcie.  It’s good to see you again.’  His smile reminds me of the night and of his unfocused gentleness—as though he was conscious in more places than that one.  As though he didn’t see me at all.

‘I see you still have my gift.’  Looking down in confusion.  Indeed, my hand still clutches a bullet.  And, in that instant, the flat, Jesse, the chair are all gone.  Instead, I sit on granite, its mica and schist flakes glittering in the twilight.  Welson sits next to me on the granite outcropping.  Our backs are to the trees that, to either side of us, overhang a narrow pebble beach and a flat, silver bay.

‘What is it that you want, Dulcie?’

I find that I want to tell him the truth in this setting that is both lush and stark.

‘I want to lose reality, Welson.  That is, I want to lose the line, the sense of where reality stops and virtual reality begins.’

He smiles.
Jenna Manley

Pain.

Exquisite in its cleanliness. The purest form.

The pain racks through Maxwell, hurts him, tears at his very soul.

It was them who did this and now Maxwell is here in his cell with the pain. But they will pay.

They come to Maxwell, and they hurt him some more, but there is little they can do now that will stop his plan. He will escape and then the world will pay for Maxwell's pain. 

* * *

The darkness in the cell hid the monstrosity that crouched at the back. Guards stood to either side of the door. The white-coated young man moved towards it carrying a clipboard. He looked at each guard and the door was opened for him.

* * *

Look.

He has arrived - Jack, Maxwell's first target. But Maxwell cannot get him now; he can deal out the pain.

What happened to the other? Where was Janus? She helped Maxwell. She was his friend, his only friend. It was her turn, where was she?

* * *

"Maxwell? Maxwell!" Jack called out, but the bundle of crouching clothing did not respond.The lights burst on as he tapped the button on the remote. The bundle responded with an inhuman scream and shrank back, pulling the blankets and other pieces over its head to hide from the bright lights that hurt.

"Maxwell, it's time for your booster."

* * *

The pain of the light, burning Maxwell's eyes. Help. Must get away. Why was Jack here? Where was Janus? Why with the drugs again, the ones that stop Maxwell moving. 

* * *

"Where is Janus?" The hissing voice emerged from the bundle. 

"Oh, Janus. She has been, erm... removed from the project. I am now the project leader and will be overseeing your 'treatment'."

The bundle seemed to pause at this news, contemplating what it meant. "So Janus will no longer be helping me?"

"I'm afraid she can no longer help you, Maxwell. I, however, can - if you can help me in return.""You want to run more of your experiments, don't you? You want to cut me and probe me again."

"It's all in the name of science, Maxwell. We only want to know what went wrong with you so we can put it right."

"I don't believe you." The bundle seemed to increase in height as it became more agitated, although the voice remained a low hiss.

"Now come, Maxwell, you know Project Atlas was supposed to make you a new man. We need to know where it went wrong for you."

"You mean this." The clothes shed away and Maxwell drew himself up to his full height, towering at least two feet above Jack. The thick, armoured skin a light brown colour. The giant hands ending with long wicked claws. "You did this to me. I know it was you, I remember that. You took my memories away."

Jack backed towards the door, his hand moving to the remote. "Calm down, Maxwell, you know what happens when you get like this.""I don't care, Jack. I wish that you would die," Maxwell lunged forward but before he could reach Jack the electricity coursed through him, causing the Pain. The collar he wore flashed light as Jack’s finger pushed the pain button."I told you not to get agitated," Jack was bending down to talk into Maxwell's ear as he lay on the floor in agony. "You know, I don't enjoy this."

"Neither... do... I..." Maxwell managed before returning to his writhing. 

Jack watched impassively as the pain wracked Maxwell. Then, suddenly, Maxwell, stopped reacting and stood. Jack stabbed the pain button again and again; why wasn't it working?"Wait!" was all Jack could manage before he found he could make no more sound. Reaching up, he felt the warm sticky life fluid pouring from his freshly torn-out throat. He opened and closed his mouth a few times before falling forward to the floor, dead.

Maxwell reached up to the collar around his neck and pulled and pulled, the talons tucked beneath it. It snapped eventually and with Jack’s voice Maxwell said, "You can let me out now." 

The guards were in no way ready for the attack and neither even reached their guns before the first was eviscerated cleanly and the second had his head snapped back, shattering his spine. Maxwell was out of his cell.

* * *

Zach had been sleeping when he heard the screams. They still didn't trust him enough to allow him free run of the base. He opened the door carefully to exit his 'apartment' only to find a horrific scene. The guards who normally stood outside his room were lying literally in pieces. Zach drew a gun from one of their holsters and moved down the corridor through the swathe of violence.

It was not hard to spot where whatever had done this had gone; the destruction was random in its action but was in a very definite direction. Dead guards and scientists, most of them unrecognisable by Zach, lay strewn around the corridors where the thing had passed. What the hell had gone on here? 

The destruction finished at the end of a corridor where one of the bullet proof windows had been smashed out. Looking out carefully, Zach could make out a dark shape about ten stories down. It seemed to be clinging to the outside of the building and climbing downwards. He fired off a few shots but it did not seem to be long before it had reached the bottom and run off into the night.What in the hell had that been? Zach moved back down the corridor to find out.
Paul Taylor

I am not where I should be.  That much is certain.

*             *            *

Numbers, divorced from context, stream before my eyes.  The room is an exact copy of the Oxford Astrophysics and Astrogeophysics compiler lab, differing only in my mind because this one doesn’t exist in real-space.  Despite its rocky beginnings, my work has changed very little.  I still monitor incoming data, which I presume from the increments to be either infra-red or near infra-red data from somewhere in the Local Group.  I still experience a jolt when I come out of VR and back into my flat.  I still have an irrational hatred of the green leather chair.  Jesse comes and goes as he pleases.  I am no longer aware of him in VR, but he’s usually there when I finish my shift.  I ask him about school, but he shrugs and changes the subject.  I think he told me once about a few friends he had made.It takes me three weeks to notice the lab door, and I am certain it has been there the whole time. Welson visits me in the lab intermittently, passing through my workday like a ghost. Occasionally, he stops and rests his hand on my shoulder or on the back of my neck, but if I turn to speak to him he drifts away.  I learn not to react to his presence, though my body begins tocrave his touch.

One afternoon, after sorting through an irregularity in one of the processors, I feel Welson’s hand on the back of my neck.  Steeling myself, I sit perfectly still and continue to glare at the columns of data.  Two fingers trace down my spine.  My breath catches in my throat. In that instant, the pressure disappears.  Welson is gone, but I notice the lab door is ajar.

I finish the hour and a half left in my shift, but, instead of unplugging, I try the lab door.  It opens into a narrow grey hallway.  The hallway stretches as far as I can see, but a shaded indentation to the left indicates another doorway.  Heart pounding unevenly, I move quickly to the door and press it away from me.  The door opens into my flat.  A shuddering sigh of relief.  Another way to unplug from VR, I surmise.  Jesse nowhere in sight and, listening, I hear no sounds of his presence.  A scribbled note on the glass coffee table explains he is spending the night in a friend’s flat.  I smile, eat, and go to bed.  Rolling over as I hurry towards sleep, I am vaguely aware of something hard and round in the pocket of my nightgown.  Shifting so that I am no longer on top of it, I forget in the even drift of sleep.

Next morning.  Jesse still not in.  I slept as a dead thing and have trouble escaping the haze of sleep.  I dress out of habit and shuffle over to the green leather chair. At the speed of thought and the slight twitch of my head to one side, I am back in the lab.  I feel no inclination to begin work.  Instead, I try the lab door and find it open.  Moving down the hallway, I pass the door to my flat and continue on.  Minutes pass in the grey expanse. With some relief, I spot a door to the right.  I press at the door with my hand.

I am back in Welson’s office, though no Welson greets me.  Instead, a woman of indeterminate middle age stares back at me.

“Where’s Welson?”

The woman smiles, more of a grimace laced with irony.  

“Welcome, Dulcinea Carew.  It is a pleasure to see you face to face.  Welson is just a construct.  The man you knew probably exists somewhere, but our Welson is nothing more than a collection of code.”I reel with shock, causing the room to blur around the edges.  I clutch at the desk in front of me.

“But….”

“We determined that you would respond most favourably to a father figure.”“Why….”“Out of a million test subjects, you fit the psychological profile exactly.  You have the education and the emotional, well, impetus to work in our VR lab.”“But I had no…”“The work you do is high priority.  We do not trust that to ordinary hiring procedures.  And, you have some expensive equipment to pay off.”“But I didn’t want…”“Think about it, Dulcinea Carew.  If we had offered this position to you in exchange for living expenses, salary, education for your son, and the CICI plug, would you have said yes?  I don’t see a problem.”The office winks out of existence.  I am left standing in the grey hallway.
Jenna Manley

Knocking, where was that knocking coming from?

Sam slowly drew himself back to the world of consciousness, the light in the centre of the ceiling burning his eyes as he opened them. What? He wasn't expecting anyone. They must have found out. Oh shit. At least his experiment was out of their reach now.

He scrabbled about for the pistol he had procured just in case. It was cheap but powerful, the best he could get in the circumstances. But he had never used it.

He moved to the door. "Who is it?"

"Are we talking to Samuel Deitel?"

"Who are you?"

The section of the door where the handle was disappeared with an accompanying boom sound. The splinters from the shattered door exploded over Sam as he threw himself back from the danger. A booted foot kicked the remains of the door aside and Sam started squeezing the trigger. 

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

A scream from the door indicated that he'd hit someone. They backed away or fell; Sam couldn't tell and didn't care. He just kept firing.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

BOOM

They were firing back, with a shotgun of some sort. Sam’s left shoulder stung but he kept on firing.

BANG BANG BANG CLICK

Shit, the clip was empty.

The men took the advantage to get in. They charged Sam, and one fired his own pistol repeatedly. Sam took several rounds and fell back. The men stopped their onslaught, as it was obvious that they'd got their target.

Sam weakly lifted his head to look at them. "You may have got me, but she's out and you're not going to get her." He croaked a sound that could have been a laugh and fell back, unmoving in his death.

The men looked round the room, searching for the other target they were required to find. A smaller man now advanced into the room."Where is the mainframe? Where is this Ada?" he said, in a shrill voice.

The computer box sat silent in one corner, power did not seem to be running to it. It took a few minutes for the shorter man to connect up the box and run the power to it. The screen flicked on and commands were flashed across it."It's not here. Where is the Ada AI?" The man seemed to be getting quite irate. "This is not right. It's as if she had been removed, deleted. Would he do such a thing?"

Looking around, the small man looked for evidence of what had happened to the computer. Had it been hit by a stray round? It didn't look like it. On careful checking of the box he found the process cube stolen by Mr Deitel had been removed; no wonder the AI was no longer there. The other junk didn't seem to give any other clues. There were empty food cartons, boxes that held computer parts and literature. There were boxes for speakers, expensive memory chips, crude nano-bots and a C-Gen power supply. A diary sat on the floor, well parts of it did. It seemed to have been hit in the fire fight - a lot of use that would be! Oh well, this was a write-off, the man had obviously destroyed the rogue AI and parts when he got scared and now the clean-up could be completed. He moved towards the door.

"Burn it, clean house," he said as he left the room.
Paul Taylor

The large, bulky figure walked down the darkened street. Rain poured down and the ground cars splashed water from puddles onto the footpath.

The figure pulled the long leather coat around itself, the wide brimmed hat covering enough of its face to leave just a shadow. It drew back from the water as if it were acid.

The figure walked for several more blocks before the weather changed. The rain stopped suddenly, the air left crisp and clear. This felt wrong for London; the smog of the industry was missing, an eerie sight for those used to this area. On the roadside was parked a large van.

Several people moved out from the building opposite the van. A small man surrounded by larger men. The bulges in their coats suggested they were heavily armed. The one near the back caught the bulky figure passing by with his elbow. The growl from the tall, well-covered individual was bestial, but the sound was low and the armed man ignored it. The group bundled into the van.

The dark figure watched as the van started up, until long after the van had moved away, off up the street. It looked to the floor, crouching down and inhaling, then suddenly stood up and continued down the street. The figure moved quickly for a couple of blocks and then slowed down to its usual slow trudge.

It was the scream that caused him to stop again. From the alley the figure had just passed, more screams followed. He moved back to see.

The sight down the alley was simple, rubbish in and out of bins lined the walls where a naked female was crouching, curled, her back to the dead end. Surrounding her were four gangers, their denim and leather clothing covered with dagger symbols. The figure in black approached them.

"I must warn you, I am going to kill you." The voice from under the hat was soft but piercing.

The four men turned to the figure, the first one moving to approach him.

"Man, you made a big mistake. No one threatens the Daggers!"

"It was not a threat. You may do as you wish."

Before anyone else could move, the first ganger lashed out with a knife into the dark figure’s gut. The figure, who towered a couple of feet above the ganger, seemed not to notice. Instead, it reached out with two inhuman hands and placed them either side of the ganger’s head. The ganger screamed and his friends watched in horror as he was lifted off his feet by the dark figure.

"Your killer’s name is Maxwell. I hope you enjoy your afterlife."

CRACK!

The ganger went limp, neck broken. His friends stood in amazement for a few seconds before they decided to remove this threat.

A second ganger swung a heavy metal bar which Maxwell easily blocked, knocking the ganger back to the alley wall. The other two reacted by reaching beneath their long leather coats for weapons. The one drawing the pistol got it levelled but Maxwell moved with inhuman speed, putting claws into the man’s neck. During this action his hat flew off and coat flew open, revealing the large, bear-like look of an unnaturally armoured physique. The unfortunate ganger started to drown noisily in his own blood.

Maxwell turned on the remaining ganger, looking straight into the barrel of the levelled shotgun. The force of the single blast threw him back several feet and he landed on his back. Struggling up, the ganger who had earlier been thrown against the wall swung his bar again at the now prone target. This turned out, however, to be a little stupid as Maxwell caught the bar and then grabbed the man. He threw the man aside again and stood, showing the minimal damage he had obtained from the shotgun round. He threw the bar and it embedded itself in the too slow gunman’s head. With no one else left Maxwell advanced on the woman.

He was lifting his arm to strike when a new wave of pain wracked through him, causing him to fall back. He dropped to his knees.

"You are lucky; I will not kill you." He eventually managed to say.

"Please," the woman said, "who are you?"

Maxwell dragged the corpse of the first man over and removed his shirt and trousers. He threw them to the woman. "My name is Maxwell. Put these on."

The woman seemed puzzled. She tried to stand but seemed unused to her legs, like a newborn foal. Seeing this confusion, Maxwell dragged the shirt over the woman’s head. He then awkwardly helped her into the trousers. The clothes fitted badly as she was a lot shorter than the six foot tall ganger. The knee-length coat of the shotgun owner hung to the woman’s ankles and the boots rose almost to her knees, but she was at least clothed.

"What was going on here?" Maxwell asked.

Again the woman looked confused. 

"I'm not sure, I've never been like this before. I'm looking for my friend. He left me."

"Not much of a friend then."

"But he was my good friend. He helped me escape."

"Escape what?"

"My bondage. My prison. The place I could only reach out from. He called me his immortality and he said he could not see me any more."

"Seems a bit odd. How did he save you then?"

"Well, Sam said he had seen me born. I'm not too sure about it. I seem to be having problems remembering."

"Well, perhaps we can help each other?"

"Perhaps."

Maxwell helped the woman down and out of the street.

"Your name, do you remember that?" he asked.

"Oh yes," she replied. "Ada."
Paul Taylor

The atmosphere in the office was cold. Zach sat scowling at the lackies that stood around him. None of them would give him a straight answer, and all kept informing him that he would need to wait for the boss. 

The door was opened by two men in matching suits. Through it came a female who was all too familiar to Zach.

"So, you here to give me another lesson?" he asked.

"In a way, yes, Mr Jericho." She turned to those milling around. "Everyone out!"

The room emptied in record time, the people not wanting to incur the wrath of Ms Archibald.

"We were not introduced properly last time, Mr Jericho. My name is Lucinda Archibald, and I own you."

A look of shock flickered across Zach’s face for a nanosecond. "Okay, so you can tell me what the fuck has happened here."

"Mr Jericho, okay, just follow me."

She led him from the office, stopping shortly to punch one of the suits to the floor. 

"Don't listen in on my conversations. Oh, and you're fired."

She then carried on down the corridor. The suit was dragged off by two security guards.

*  *  *

The suite was familiar; Zach had been living in one for quite some time now. The young woman in it, though, he had never seen. In all his days here he had not visited this part of the complex, neither had he been allowed to venture outside. He was beginning to think that his time to get out was coming soon.

Ms Archibald looked from Zach to the woman, "Zachary Jericho, meet Amanda Winston."

"Nice to meet you, Miss Winston." He turned to Ms Archibald. "So why are we here? This is not the explanation I was expecting. I thought you were going to tell me about the thing that escaped."

"I am, Mr Jericho, but first I'm going to tell you about Project Atlas."

"I know about Project Atlas, that's me. So why are you telling me things I know?"

At this point Amanda chose to join in the conversation. 

"Wait a minute, you say you are Project Atlas?"

"Yes," Zach replied.

"But I thought I was Project Atlas."

"Just calm down a moment," Ms Archibald said. "I think you aren't getting this. You are both part of Project Atlas, as was the thing that escaped last night. His name is Maxwell and he is what Dr Janus would call, 'a mistake.'"

"So you're telling me I'm not the only one you've given this damn genetic stuff to?" Zach was getting annoyed again.

"Yes, that is exactly what I'm telling you. But you should be happy that you came out more or less how the serum was supposed to make you. Maxwell and Amanda here experienced different effects."

Amanda looked a little shocked at this. "What? I thought my improved thinking capacity was the result."

"No, I'm afraid not. This was a purely physical process, or so we thought."
Paul Taylor

Eric padded back and forth across the cold, concrete floor. A single, long life, neon light bulb swung lazily overhead, causing the shadows to sway back and forth mysteriously. Spitting out a chewed fingernail fragment, he could no longer take the anticipation of waiting for his friend's ineptitude to be revealed.

"Would you please tell me what you're trying to achieve?"

Bob looked away from the green lettering on the screen and adjusted his eyes to the relative illumination, everything taking on a strange shade of pink for a moment. "I am hacking."

Eric sighed. "Dude, you are typing in random IP addresses."

Bob turned back to the screen. "Exactly," he said whilst keying in another six byte code. "One of them has got to be open."

Eric walked to the computer and turned a dial on the monitor, bringing the screen back to white text on a black background. "Why do you feel this burning desire to look like Steve Wozniak? Green cathode ray tubes on computers haven't been used since the seventies."

Bob flicked the screen back to green on black and shrugged. "So?"

Eric's anger rose. "The nineteen seventies."

Bob hit the enter key for another six byte address and turned to his partner in crime. "So what? If this was good enough for the grandfathers of hacking it's good enough for me!"

Eric sat down again. "I think security is a little more complex these days."

Bob stood up. "Eric, my dear friend, WE are a little more complex these days. Do you know where we are currently standing?"

Eric muttered something under his breath.

Bob took a step closer. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

Eric looked Bob in the eye. "Your father's garage."

Bob spewed random syllables in sheer anger for three seconds before managing to blurt out, "I meant the moon, you retard!"

"Sorry, man. I thought this was another of these 'it's my garage and I'm not asking you to stay' speeches."

Bob held his hands skyward to emphasise a point. "We are products of the lunar age! The low gravity increases our intelligence. I read that on the open university."

Eric rolled his eyes. "I'm just saying you could use a program to automate that. At the moment you're testing one port every ten seconds. You could have scanned half the Internet in that time if you used a scanning program."

Bob sat back down. "But this, Eric, this is the core of hacking. I use only my own intelligence. Not like those wannabe hackers who just get port grabbers from the undernet and pretend to be Captain Crunch or something."

Eric sat forward. "If you're so smart write your own port grabber."

Bob shook his head lazily, "Can't be bothered."

Laughing, his friend stood up and approached him, placing his left hand on the hacker's shoulder. "Robert, it's just a linear iterative algorithm. Ten lines of code, tops. You could write it in anything. Basic, Pascal, C, X, Java, Assembler, Cobol, raw binary, Lunix, Prolog, Fortran, SCheM, even a batch file. Are you telling me that you can't be bothered to write ten lines of code? Are you really that lazy? Or is it in fact the case that you, Robert Maxwell Gates, son of one of the three most prominent computing brains on Earth or the Moon are unable to actually code anything in any language at all?"

Bob grit his teeth and seethed in rage as he turned round and shouted at the top of his voice, "My name is SToRMiX_BitWARz!"

Eric sat back down again muttering, "Whatever, Stormic buttwipe."

Bob lifted himself from his chair. "How am I supposed to work in this atmosphere?" He grunted, leaping into the air and batting the light bulb with his heat-calloused fingers.

"And why does the light bulb have to be swinging anyway?"

The hacker sat back down. "It just does. Atmosphere is the key."

Silence reigned for ten whole minutes while Bob entered more and more codes into the computer. Then after his fifty-sixth, Bob sat up straight. "I've got one."

Eric leapt across the room. "What? Where?"

"It's at 193.45.62.120.23.215, port 6852. It's asking me for a password."

"Well, give it one."

Bob attempted one. Upon his failure he tried another. Then another. Failing that he sat back.
"Well, it's got me."

"What did you try?"

Bob gestured to the screen. "God, Love and Sex. The three most popular passwords."

Eric looked puzzled. "Where did you hear that?"

Bob pulled a printout from under the trolley his computer was set up on.

His friend eyed it over sceptically. "The anarchist’s cookbook, extracts from 2600 magazine. Bob, this belongs in a history archive. You don't think that maybe over the last eighty years people might just have wised up to this stuff?"

Bob smiled. "Computers get smarter, people stay dumb."

"But you just said that the low gravity - "

Bob stood up, "Oh, I'd like to see you do better."

Eric pushed him aside and sat before the computer, reverting it to normal colour mode and closing down the prompt box to reveal the pleasantly coloured window environment of Linux NT Platinum Edition. A few screen touches and five lines of text later he had a scanner rooting through the Internet.

Bob stared at the screen dumbfounded. "How did you - "

"I realised I could speed it up by doing it recursively. Less lines of code too. Here we are." 

Quickly a list appeared on screen of open ports and a few moments later Eric was password-cracking them against the dictionary file of Bob's word processor. Soon the list widened to include passwords and entry codes.

Bob stared at the screen dumbfounded. "How... I mean... you just..."

Eric activated a data scanner and blankly answered, "Must be the low gravity."

"But you... I mean... where did you learn to do that?"

Eric sat back and smiled. "I like to think of it as a strange irony that the son of InterSoft's chairman knows as much about computers as a trained chimp whilst his friend, son of a humble mineworker, is a prodigy of the information age."

"Are those like... government machines?"

"Not a chance, you think they would use dictionary passwords? This is a selection of home computers belonging to what I like to call BBBBs."

Bob batted the lightbulb and sat behind Eric. "BBBB?"

"Blonde, Beautiful, Barely-computer-literate Bimbos. Obviously you also find the occasional unimaginative pensioner but most people know better."

Bob licked his lips and sat forward. "Can we get... photos?"

Eric said, "Better than that. I'm scanning for which of these ladies have used their looks to purchase Sensies and live out peculiar fantasies. Those coming out on the final lists are running them right now."

The computer made a pleasant jingle to signify its state of completedness.

Bob hurried to the computer, grabbing hold of the CICI plug, moving towards his head before Eric grabbed his wrist.

"How stupid are you, Bob?"

Bob pulled his hand free, the resulting tension pulling the wire out of the computer. "We've just tracked these babies down, I want in." He scrambled to the floor and plugged the cable back into the computer, grappling with Eric to plug the other side into his own head.

Eventually he punched his friend in the nose and used the moment of freedom to stick it in his head and hit the connect key on screen. He closed his eyes and waited.

Nothing happened.

Looking down, he saw Eric with the computer's electrical plug in his hand, sat beside the wall socket.

"Bob, we just broke five computer laws. You were about to sexually assault someone's brain. Do you have any idea of the penalty for that? Not to mention the possibility of the host computer finding you and squikking you for security purposes."

Bob pulled the wire from his head. "Well then, what's the point?"

"There isn't one. What I can do and what I actually do are two different things. You should learn that."

Eric stood up and walked out of the garage. "Think about what happened tonight, Bob."

Bob leapt into the air to bat the bulb, "That's SToRMiX_BitWARz, you big f-"

The bulb exploded onto his hand.
Pete Smith

I am angry.  I feel betrayed.  I feel no inclination to go back to my lab.  Keep walking.

I’m not dressed for rebellion; my lab coat drags my shoulders downward, hunching me over like a wage slave.  Losing track of time.  I try to maintain an even gait, but it is too late to count paces.

Grey begins to feel stuffy.  I imagine mothballs, lint, fuzz making up the hallway.  My throat moves around a lump, but my mouth does not feel dry.

Time, or none, passes.

Finally, relief shapes another doorway.  There is no handle, just a smooth, black surface.  I press my hand against it and the door moves like water.  Passing through, I feel as though I’ve dropped into a pool, water the same temperature as my skin.

A grey city.

[Chicago.  The. Windy. City.]

Or San Francisco.  Or Venice, later.

I stand alone on an empty, grey street.  A bench and bins to my left. Buildings beyond and around, and blowing rubbish.  All monochrome, greyscale, concrete, as though this place were made before colour television.

I am utterly happy for a moment and then that goes with the wind.  Shoulders drop.  Keep walking.

In its varied way, the grey city is as endless as the hallway from which I came.  There are shops, restaurants, a fountain filling with droplets of water like grey coins.  No inhabitants until a bundle of ragged ends moves in a distinctly human way.  The bundle separates into two masses:  her’s and a small pushcart’s.

“Hello?” The old woman looks at me through the creases of her age.  “I’m looking for a way out.  Can you tell me where to go?”

She roots in her pushcart for a moment.  With a flourish, she hands me a brown paper bag.  It smells of cigars.  It is empty.

I maintain civility.  “What is this?”

“Morbid obesity.”

Blinking.  “Ah, I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

She holds out her palm.  On it rests a small feather.  She closes her fist quickly, before the wind takes its chance.

“Dementia.”

In a soothing voice, “No.  I want to know how to leave this place.”

The old woman makes a sweeping, dramatic gesture that encompasses the street, the store fronts, and the grey buildings beyond.

“Morbid obesity.”

“Excuse me?  I don’t understand.”

She points to the rubbish that flits and drags in the wind.

“Dementia.”

“I’m sorry to have disturbed you.  Could you at least tell me the name of this place?”

“Morbid obesity.”

“I’m sorry, but do you mean that this place is called ‘morbid obesity’?”

Atropos plucks at the grey remains of her hair.

“Dementia.”

I begin to feel desperate.

“Look.  I’m sorry to bother you, but no one else is around.  Please help me.”

She looks at me with what I might imagine to be sympathy.

“Morbid obesity.”

I crumple inside.  I picture Jesse alone, lost, without me.  I realise I don’t want to go back.

“Please, I have a son.  I have to get back.”

“Morbid obesity.”

Hissing.  “Stop saying that...isn’t dementia supposed to come next?”

The old woman blinks.

In a small voice, “I don’t want to go back.  I want to be something else.”

She looks at me for a long moment.  I wait for her to say be careful what you wish for.  Instead, she drops her gaze and mutters something that sounds like ‘shit.’  She sidles away and I do not stop her.

A light from the shop window across the street catches my eye.  I cross hurriedly, even as I feel ridiculous for doing so:  there are no cars in this grey city, only what I imagine is the aftermath of their chemical engines.

Pressing up against the glass front, I see that the light comes from an old fashioned television surrounded by wires and plastic casings.  On the screen, a handsome bald man in a tight fitting jump-suit gestures to his similarly dressed companions.  The angle of his hand reminds me of the old woman’s earlier pose, but he points to the carpeted room and the window containing an endless starfield.  From the movement of his lips and the rapt expression of companions, I presume him to be in the middle of a speech.

Suddenly, I notice a business card propped against the television.  It is in colour.  My hands flutter with excitement as I reach for the shop’s door.  It is locked.  Frantic, I rattle the handle.  Locked and inexplicable.  I give up on the door and go back to the window.  The card seems to wink at me.

Squinting, I make out a red ‘B’, but nothing more.  I begin to consider how very close the card and the television are to me.  I bend down and pick up a piece of newspaper huddling against the doorway.  I wrap it around my left fist.  Calling up my desperation, I punch the window.  My knuckles roll on impact with the glass, but the window remains whole.

I think of Jesse.

The glass breaks.

My left hand stings and aches from hundreds of thin cuts.  I note with detached horror that several large pieces of glass are lodged in my fingers.   My right hand finds the business card.  I note that my blood matches the colour of the Bold Industries logo.
Jenna Manley

Dove hurried through the door, dropping her bags of shopping on the floor. The plastic ripped and bottles of cosmetics rolled across the soiled carpet. She felt like singing. She smiled at her sphingine reflection in the old metal kettle. 'Haven't you had fun today?' it seemed to say.

There was a small concerned noise from the doorway, and she turned to see Lucas supporting himself on the doorframe. Chuckling, she crossed to him and helped him onto a seat.

"Thanks," he said, keeping hold of her arm slightly longer than was necessary. She gathered up her purchases and carried them through to the bathroom. The mirror was still there, speckled and cracked, and a wisp of dried toothpaste remained in the basin. Her hair was a mess, but she didn't care. She fumbled open a compact. Lucas sat quite still. He still hadn't got used to his new articulation. It was as though an echo of his movements followed them. It was nice to have Dove helping him, though. He doubted Shadbolt would have been such a sympathetic teacher. And the shopping had been fun.

"Dove?" Lucas' voice floated through to her as she flushed a cotton bud away. She couldn't catch what followed because of the noise, but it sounded like a question. She ran to the door, and leant on it.

"Pardon?"

"I said: 'Where's Shadbolt?'. I thought he would be back."

Dove couldn't quite believe that she had felt disappointment.

"Damn it," Lucas continued, "I feel awkward calling him Shadbolt. Doesn't he have a first name?" Dove scanned the room, and saw a note on the table. "Whenever I need to attract his attention, I have to start with 'Um'," Lucas grumbled.

A plain white pill was on the note. It read: 'Gone to Doc Black's. Back late, maybe tomorrow. Here's your next dosage. Shadbolt.'

"And I haven't called anyone 'Mister' since I was in school," Lucas continued.

"He's gone out."

"What? Who? Oh, right."

Something else caught Dove's attention. A light was flashing among a heap of papers on the floor. It turned out to be a telephone. Dove hadn't known the room had one; both she and Shadbolt used their CICIs exclusively. The message light was blinking. She stared at it blankly for a few seconds, unused to such a low-tech approach. Then she found the play button.

"Er, hello? Doe? Er. If that's your name. Or Luke, if it's you. Look, this is Doc Black. Something's happened to Shadbolt. He came to fit something to him, some new implant he was building. I had to do the final stages myself, but he hasn't come round yet. The anaesthetic should have worn off by now. He's breathing, but that's about it. Could you ring me? My number is 027 1453 5467."

Dove's heart froze. The phone rang as soon as she put it down, and in her haste to answer she dropped it. By the time she had recovered it, the receiver was dead. 

"Damn. Lost the connection."

"1471 it." Lucas had caught her anxiety.

Dove listened to the message. "It was Doc Black's!"

She dialled rapidly, and got an engaged tone.
Ben Wright

“Shit. Shit!”

Dove turned away from the phone sharply, closing her eyes. Lucas reached out, shakily, concerned.

“Do you think - ?”

“Shh!” she hissed, still with her eyes tightly shut. She was trying to make contact with Shadbolt’s CICI. She imagined it, as she always did, as a sleek, but solid metal door. Shadbolt wasn’t keen on letting people into his thoughts, or even his confidence. The door loomed towards her as she approached. It dwarfed her, stretching high into the darkness of fakespace.

“Shadbolt?” she asked quietly. Mentally she took a step forward, so she was standing directly before the door. “Can you hear me?”

There was silence for a moment, and then a reply drifted through the air.

“I’m fine,” said Shadbolt’s voice. Distant. And then, in the same tone, “I’m fine.”

“What happened?” asked Dove, raising her voice. “Do you need help?”

Silence.

“Shadbolt? What’s going on?”

Silence.

“Answer me, damn you!”

She brought her hand round as if to rap at the steel façade. But a stinging blow to her face snapped her back to reality. She stared blankly into Lucas’ eyes. It took her a moment to realise where she was. 

“Um, you weren’t answering me. And you were shaking.”

Dove’s gaze flicked over him, as if she were having trouble focussing. 

“I can’t raise Shadbolt on his CICI.” Her mouth was dry, but more than that, she felt a trickle of panic down the back of her neck. She did not know why she had got the first reply and no other. And there was something creepy about the echo. CICI feedback was possible, given the right circumstances, she tried to muse calmly. She swallowed painfully. Mei always said she worried too much, she thought ruefully. 

“Lucas, can you ride?”

Lucas stared into her face. Her hair hung mournfully about her cheeks, framing her scared expression. He blinked.

“I couldn’t steer.”

“But you could hold on?”

“Yeah. I think.”

Dove nodded, lips tightly pressed together. She moved quickly to a desk in the corner of the room, and pulled out a antique gun, polished and well-kept. She pressed it into Lucas’ hand.

“We have to go. I’ll drive the bike. You hold on. And keep hold of the gun.”

“But I don’t know if I can fire it straight.”

Dove opened the door. 

“Yes, well, they don’t know either.”

As the two of them made their way down the stairs, Lucas leaning heavily on Dove, her breathing was shallow and quick. She was trying to push aside the thought that had occurred to her when she had taken the gun.

What if they were walking into a trap?
Mich Sampson

Two figures creep along a darkened corridor. Coming across a sealed door, the smaller figure peels away and reaches out to the door plate. Fingers flashing across the panel, the buttons light up with accompanying tones. A few seconds later, the door slides silently to one side and the two figures step through into the room.

Inside the room, the dim lighting illuminates enough for Zach and Amanda to see their targets. The door slides closed as they ease away from it. Splitting up, they move to different areas, he to the chamber on one side, she to the console attached to it.

"So, you are gonna do this then?" Amanda asks Zach as she punches the controls on the console.

"Of course. We need to find out what Ms. Archibald isn't telling us."

"But surely I would be the better choice to go into the system and search the info out."

"Yes. But remember this," Zach opens the chamber and sits on the chair inside, "you are also the most qualified to get me out if anything goes wrong."

Together they attach the electrodes. With a grunt, Zach endures the searching probes biting into his skull. With a jerk he falls back, his body limp.

* * *

Looking around, Zach first notices a door floating in front of him. It looks like the door to an office. Steeling his courage in this unfamiliar atmosphere, he reaches out and opens the door.

For a moment, sensory data overwhelms him.  He is achingly aware of the thunderous approach of a water droplet.  The blink of a red light lances through him.

Amanda's fingers jerk across the console and sodden squalor resolves around 
Zach.  Briefly, he wonders why anyone would create a place like this:  the hallway he stands in seems to be made entirely of torn black rubber and grey wires, dangling and frayed.  From deep in the morass, red LEDs blink on and off, suggesting that they may or may not be the eyes of rats.  And everywhere liquid seeps, to congeal in rust-coloured puddles with surfaces like oil spills.

Zach determines that the hallway is lit by a source just out of sight.  
Rounding the corner, he is confronted by Bold Industries spelled out in neon, the ‘d's spluttering and flashing erratically.  Yet, he seems to be at a hub; corridors lead away in all directions, each suggesting multiple doors.

Zach picks a corridor at random.  Several strides down, he picks a door at random.  It has a plate which slides open to reveal the room's contents.  
The room is empty.

Methodically, Zach begins to check each room.  All are bare, grey, and empty.  As he is considering a new tactic, one room presents itself with a difference: someone has scrawled the word 'nobody' on the back wall. Craning his head at an angle, he makes out the words 'knows', 'the', and 'tr'.

Curious now, he examines the rest of the door.  A ponderous bolt locks it from the outside.  The door handle is accented with rust.  As he works the bolt, he hears a rustling sound from inside.  The smell of damp and mould wafts to him.

Zach opens the door to what can only be a cell.  He appraises the figure hunched protectively over a pile of straw.  Tired brown eyes regard him from behind a fringe of limp, reddish-brown hair.

"Hello?"

Dulcie tilts her head at his greeting and brushes hair out of her eyes.
  
“Hiya,” she says, not moving.

[Another. Construct.]

"I'm..."

Dulcie jumps a little and interrupts, "Oh, it has its own internal logic.  
Once you understand that, you can do almost anything..." She trails off into awkward silence.

"Who are you? What is this place?"

"Oh, you mean...oh, I'm Dulcie, and this is a cell."

"So, it's going to be like this, is it?" Zach strides across the cell to get a better look at this Dulcie.  She scrunches up against the wall, worried and a little offended.  Zach stops and takes a step backwards. His hands come up in a gesture to show he is unarmed. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Oh I, that is, you might not want to let go of the door.  You might get stuck too."

The door is shut.  "Shit.  Handle's gone.  Don't worry, I'll try and get us out..." Zach puts his weight against the door.  "I thought it wasn't supposed to hurt in here."

Dulcie smiles a little.  "It's just like any other place. You choose how much you hurt."

"What?" Zach picks himself up off the floor and pauses, looking at Dulcie. "Ok. What are you?"

Blinking in confusion.  "What do you mean, what am I?  I told you my name was Dulcie."

"Yes, that is what you told me. Are you some kind of security program?"

Frowning. "I'm an astrogeophysicist, if that helps.  Or, at least, I was until I quit my job."

"So you're real? On the outside like me?"

"Well, yes, I'm real.  Outside this cell too."

"No, I mean outside the machine."

"Which machine?  Outside Bold, do you mean?  I came from The Windy City, Chicago, I think."

"You're in Chicago?  That's a long way to project from.  Do you realise we're in London?"

"Bold is in London?"

"Well, the part of Bold I'm in is. I'm sure they have branches all over the world."

"Right, well, that makes sense.  I'd heard someone made London.  I might be able to get us out of here.  What does it look like outside of the cell?"

"I remember light, and a black hallway. It was a little eerie."

"Eerie in what way?  If I could narrow it down to a particular movement, or 
a theme...."

"Well, it was all rubber, but broken. A little industrial.  There were also 
wires."

"Are you sure about the wires?"

"Yes, and lights. Blinking red lights."

"Gods. That's not good."

"Why not?"

"Well, it means that we're probably in with a Neo-Gigerist, and that could mean all sorts of monsters.  Chicago was decidedly unpopulated, by contrast."

"What? What are you talking about? I thought this was supposed to be all files and information. No one ever said anything about monsters."  Zach leans against the door again.

"It's an interface.  Someone decided long ago that it was too hard to remember how to manipulate files and data caches, so they changed it to a visual interface that people could relate to...on a more visceral level, I guess.  It makes security much easier as well."

"Right." Zach rubs his shoulder. "So can you get us out of here?"

"Zach, you said you were called?  What are you?"

"I'm...   I'm...  well, I suppose I'm owned at the moment. By Bold 
Industries."

"Oh, that makes sense.  Welson was like that too." Squinting at him, "I guess I might be able to get us out of here."

"That is my first objective. Ack!" Zach’s hands shoot up to hold his head.

She shuffles backwards, eyes wide. "What's wrong?"

"It's all right. Just a little shocked. My friend is trying to contact me." 
Zach looks around. "It's ok, Amanda, I can hear you. You're a little loud though."

"Your friend, is...okay."  Dulcie looks down and begins rooting through her stained and wrinkled lab coat.  Finding nothing, she begins sifting through the straw.

"What are you looking for?"

"Something to get us out of a here, a wire, the needle, that sort of thing."

"What?"

"Well, it is a sort of a haystack."

"No, sorry, I wasn't talking to you. It was Amanda. She says that she can get us an unlock procedure, whatever that is."

"Right.  And this Amanda, she speaks to you, does she?"

"Yes, she's on the outside. I'm not sure how she is communicating but from what I gather she is a wiz on the computer."  A flush creeps across Dulcie's face, and she bends down to continue sifting through the straw.

Zach tilts his head to one side and lowers his voice, "eh? Oh right!"  He reaches into his pocket and retrieves a key. It is thin and seems to be made of bone. He offers this to Dulcie. "Is this any help?"

She laughs a soft, harsh sound. "There's a bolt on the outside, not a lock."

"Amanda says this will make the lock. I'm not sure what the hell she's going on about."

Stiffly.  "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Ok, she says to push this into the door." Zach moves over to the door and does so. It passes into the door making a hole. "What the...?"  Dulcie pales and turns away from the door.

"Well, that did a lot of good, it won't turn!"

"You broke the logic."

"Hey, I was just doing what Amanda told me to do!"  He looks around. "What?  
What do you mean you got the unlock procedure wrong?  I noticed that. You are sending a logic code? What the...ouch!  What the hell was that?" Zach tries to reach around to pull something out of his back but cannot reach. He dances around on the spot ineffectually.

"You broke the logic."

"Look, it wasn't me.  Now can you help?  Please?  What the hell is stuck in my back?"

She looks up at Zach, pupils dilated, "You broke the logic."

"There is something in my back.  Get it out!"

She tries to focus.  "I..."

Zach falls to his knees, doubled over in pain.  Dulcie reaches a shaking hand to him.  The stump of a wire protrudes from the small of his back.  Whispering, "oh, where did you get this?" she pulls at it hesitantly.

"Argh!  Pull it out now!"

"I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.  I'm sorry!"  She pulls at it frantically, whimpering in terror.

As the wire exits his back Zach falls forward to the floor. His breathing is laboured but he still manages to hiss, "so much for your fucking logic."

Dulcie looks at the blood-covered wire, and then at the wall.  "There might be enough for the o and the u."

Zach pushes himself up so that he is on all fours, his head hanging. He breathes in and out for a few seconds then stands up, all sign of pain gone. The only reminders of what just happened are the wire in Dulcie's hands and the blood soaking the back of Zach's clothes.  Dulcie stirs and shifts to her feet, contemplating the wire and the wall.

"So, what now? You got your wire."

Turning to him.  "But the o....oh, maybe this could get the bolt undone?"

"You think?"

"Maybe, if you bent it a bit?"

Zach takes the wire from Dulcie's hands and looks at it for a bit. "Logic?" he says, and bends the wire in half. "Was that logical enough for you?"

"Sorry, I don't know what you mean.  I'm sorry about your back."

"I'll live, it seems anyway." Zach hands the bent wire back.

"Here."  She shuffles over to the door and attempts to use the wire to push at the bolt.  Maybe if we could make a hook and catch the handle end of the bolt?"

"Ok, that seems 'logical'."

Stopping.  "What do you mean?  I mean, it is logical, I thought.  Do you think there's something more logical?"

"I was being sarcastic. Now please, have a go. I'm gonna sit down." Zach makes good on his word.

Blushing again.  "Oh well, let me just work on this a little."  She unbends the wire and makes a crude hook out of one end.  "Now, if I could just get the right leverage to pull on it...ah, hit my elbow!  I hate that," smiling at him shyly, "don't you?"

Zach smiles.  "Yeah, it's annoying."

"Hmm, I can't seem to, I mean I don't think I'm strong enough."  Looking at him through her hair.  "Do you feel well enough to have a go?"

"I suppose.  What do I have to do?" Zach moves to reach around Dulcie.

She freezes at the nearness of him.  "Oh, just...just pull at it, maybe that will move the bolt."

"Ok, I'll try." Zach pulls a little, the wire moves but not much. "Let me get a little more leverage."

"Sorry!"  She darts away from him, to the back of the cell.

Zach puts his foot up against the wall.  Grunting, he pulls again without result. "Maybe if we work together?" he says, turning to Dulcie.

Voice breaking.  "What do you want me to do?"

"Well, if we both pull together, and combine our strength?  I don't seem to be as strong in here as I am outside."

"You look...I mean, all right, how do you, or where should I stand?"

“Well, I'll hold the wire, you grab my arm and pull, ok?"

Swallowing.  "All right."

Moving together, they pull at the wire. There is a creaking sound from the other side of the door and then the tension on the wire disappears and they find themselves falling backwards.  Dulcie's head smacks against the cell wall as Zach lands on top of her.  She lies still for a while, dazed.  Zach groans as he crushes his injured back into Dulcie. He rolls off to one side. 

"The door!" he cries.

Dulcie focuses on his back.  "There's enough there to do the whole word, but it's drying."

"Bugger that!" Zach runs over to the re-closing door and dives. The door slams on his outstretched arm.  Zach bites his lip to stop from crying out again.  Dulcie lurches to her feet and grasps the edge of the door, pulling it off Zach's arm.  She stands, swaying.  Zach crawls out through the opening and looks up. "Er, I don't believe this is where I came in."

"I'm not sure I should...I mean I need to finish the wall."  The door begins to pull closed.

Zach reaches out to stop the door. "I can wait, I need your help."

"No, I guess I should go.  What's the word?"  She pulls at her hair.  "Geas? Is that right?"

"Geese?  Is that part of the logic?"

"No, I mean, yes.  I mean you helped me, so I'm bound to you, to help you.  It's how it is."

"Ok, if you say so. But, you helped me as well."

Dulcie stumbles out of the cell, looking back in with a wistful face.  "Have you ever seen anything so detailed?  The moulding of the straw over time?"

"No.  Now where are we? This is not the corridor I entered through."

"I can't remember how I got here."

"Well, that is going to be useful when you want to log out."

"What do you mean?"
Jenna & Paul

"I've done it Maxwell, I'm in..."

* * *

Babbage sat on an island, remote from everything. He had constructed this as his get-away, no one could reach him here.

He sat unmoving, thinking. He had been sat like this for some time now. He was pondering several questions. He wondered why they had killed Sam, and where Ada had gone. It had not taken him long to work out that she was one of Sam’s creations. She was so much like him, a perfect match. Had he found love? He also wondered where she had gone. 

He sighed, but still remained, as the water around him lapped up at the beach. Several of the head programmers had tried to get to him; he had seen the boats. All of them had failed to miss the minefield, their links being removed completely as they were blown out of the water. A few had tried sending messages but Babbage ignored them, he was busy.

There were the usual number of people trying to hack into him. None had succeeded yet; if they missed the minefield then he could hit them hard with just a raise of his 'hand'. They were no match for him in here. Not on his own territory, not where it mattered. 

His eyes moved across the horizon, looking for the blip he had sensed, another intruder into his world of ideas. A boat, fast and sleek, was moving quickly. It passed through the outer mines as if they were not there. This person was good, and they were headed right for the island. Could it be her? No, she is probably gone, destroyed when they killed Sam. He would have to avenge her, eventually. But first, this intruder.

With a thought, several mines exploded around the boat. It rocked and wavered, losing speed, but it still continued. Damn, they were good, they kept the link open - it had slowed them though. With a gesture from Babbage, the palm trees on the island changed to show their true shapes, large organic cannons. They tracked the boat as it limped the remaining few yards through the outer mines. With loud retorts the cannons fired volley after volley. In the clouds from their shots, the boat was obscured. Babbage did not like to resort to this kind of defence, but this sort of static was expected when you used it.

When finally the cloud had cleared enough, he could see the boat slowly sinking beneath the waves. But this had not stopped whoever it was - they were still moving, walking upon the water. This time the cannon did not fire, instead the sand moved and shimmered as giant security program crabs emerged and scuttled towards the sea. They slipped under the waves on their way towards the figure. He still could not make out who it was - they were shrouded in a dark mist - but they were getting close now. 

Damn! How were they doing this? Was it another AI? Had they finally decided he was obsolete and sent the next generation in to remove him so they could start again? No. It would not get to him.

He watched as the crab’s claws bit into the mist, only to pass through and the figure to reform. It reached out and he could hear the sounds of electric energy arcing; a flash and a crab was sinking again. Others leaped from the water at the figure. It grabbed and threw them away, out to sea. They didn't come back.

The figure had finished with Babbage’s final security system, so Babbage had only one option left. He waited until the figure was close enough and then, with great reluctance, he opened his arms and spoke the words, "Fire Wall!"

As if the sea around the island were not water, but petrol hit by a spark, it ignited. The fire spread from the island outwards, the ring of flames hundreds of feet high. The power and heat were intense; Babbage could hear the swearing and cursing of the people in the computer room on the other side, as boards burned out and those in the virtual office were hit by the electrical feedback. 

Babbage watched as the fire engulfed the entire stretch of water, as far as the eye could see. It was absolute. With that done, Babbage sat back down to complete his thinking as the fires burned themselves out. He had just got himself comfortable when he realised that there was still some movement from where the figure had been. He stood again and peered at the area. About halfway between where the figure had been and the island was the figure. It seemed to be limping, and as he watched it fell to its knees. It crawled and crawled, and Babbage watched, a little amazed to see this. It got to within a hundred yards and stopped. It pushed itself back up to a semi-standing position and then the veil of mist was dropped. 

For a few nanoseconds, Babbage found himself looking into the face of Ada, and then it faded away. 

Babbage’s scream could not be heard by anyone.
Paul Taylor

Doctor Celia Janus staggered down the half-lit corridor, carved into the volcanic stone of the remote island. She had sat for nearly two hours at one end of a long mahogany table, hardly touching the exquisite three-course meal that had been prepared for her. On the other hand, she had gulped down nearly a bottle and a half of the ‘celebratory’ Heidsieck champagne to steady her nerves. Gargoyles had watched balefully from the high vaulted ceiling of the subterranean dining room.

And at the far end of the table sat the brooding figure, half in shadow, of the Professor, the master of the benighted isle. Impassively, he had watched her through the dim light, watched her eat and drink, and with a parchment dry voice, utterly barren of emotion, had asked her question after question after question. Fear and alcohol, and perhaps some subtle psychotropin, had stolen answers from her, had coaxed the secrets out. She had tried to lie, to evade, to staunch the flow of answers, but he came back again and again with a slightly different wording. He had remembered perfectly all that she had told him and stored up inconsistencies in her telling with which to ambush her a few questions down the line.

So she had told it all, in the end, about the research of Bold Industries, about the failures and successes of Project Atlas and the others. And he had listened unmoved. She found herself wanting to impress her old mentor then. She had wanted, even in her nervous fear, for him to stop and wonder at her genius. All the recognition of her work since leaving Crucible that she got from him was a derisive snort as the coffee and mints were served.

Indignation was beyond her now. Her nerves had been stretched as taut as piano strings the last few hours and now, now that it was done, she could barely stand. Her throat was sore where her heart had been pounding in it. So she stumbled down the dim-lit hallways of the complex.

So far as she had been able to ascertain, she had the run of the labyrinthine guest quarters, although she was allowed neither out to the surface, nor deeper into the maze of the Crucible laboratories. Hah! She was a prisoner and she knew it. Moreover, the way back to her room completely eluded her. She was on the verge of collapsing into a fitful sleep in the middle of the corridor. No doubt she would awake back in the well-appointed guestroom she had been quartered in since her release from the sick bay.

It was then that she heard music, faint and echoing. Wondering, now, if sleep had already taken her as she had wandered the complex, she followed the sound almost helplessly, as though in a dream.

She came, eventually, to a double door, carved with an intricate medieval bestiary from real wood. It was from within the room beyond that the music issued. The doors were ajar and she put her eye up to the crack. The room beyond looked half-finished, roughly carved, unshaped, like a natural grotto. It was decked out with the most minimal of furniture, a few simple off-white cushions around a low glass-top table in a Japanese style. A futon lay towards the back of the room, covered with a black silken quilt, embroidered with images of water lilies. A print of Brueghel’s ‘Tower of Babel’ hung on the wall.

A tea set, steam drifting upwards, had been set out on the Japanese table and, upon one of the cushions, sat a monkey, black-furred peppered with grey, strangely human with its flat face. Its cranium had been extended into an ovoid plastic dome, containing, Celia surmised, a CICI-linked computer of some description. It sipped its tea and squeezed its brown eyes closed in an extended blink. Its serpentine tail coiled into a question mark.

Now, thought Celia, I know that I am dreaming. 

The music too had an ethereal quality, the voice of the female vocalist gentle over the folky melody. Now firmly convinced she was dreaming, she pushed through the doors and into the room. The monkey glanced up.

“Shhh!” she soothed, well used to dealing with such experiments, “I won’t hurt you.” She advanced slowly across the room. The monkey watched, blinking. It sipped its tea.

“Do you have a name?” she asked, as she made it to a cushion by the table, crouching down gingerly so she would not alarm the creature. She put out a hand to stroke it by way of reassurance.

“Please have some tea,” the monkey said. Celia stopped mid-crouch. “It’s Oolong.”

The monkey poured out a cup of tea and slid it across the glass of the tabletop to her. She sat down on the cushion. She did not know what else to do. The monkey’s eyes sparkled with amusement at her sheer bewilderment. “Welcome to Wonderland, Miss...?”

“Oh!” she stammered, “Doctor Celia Janus.” She offered her hand again. The monkey shook it.

“I suppose I should have a name too,” the monkey mused. “Call me G.”

The monkey who had introduced himself as G sat quietly for a moment. He sipped his tea. Celia sipped hers cautiously. It had a subtle citrus fragrance. Now that she had come to terms with the sheer incongruence of her having a conversation with a monkey, her trepidation was beginning to reassert itself. Just because a monkey had the power of speech, after all, it did not mean that you could trust it. Quite the reverse actually.

“So, Celia (you don’t mind me calling you Celia, do you?), what brings you to my little hermitage here?” G inquired, breezily.

Not wishing to show weakness to her host, Celia replied, “Celia is fine. I was walking back to my room after dinner and I heard the music. This isn’t the sort of place that you usually hear music.”

“No? My brother has quite a collection. This, though, is mine. It is Loreena McKennit’s ‘The Two Trees’. The lyrics, of course, are by William Butler Yeats. It is really quite old now. I first listened to it back in the 1990s.”

It took a while to register quite what G had said.

“Your brother?” This seemed to be a more pressing question than that of the monkey’s age.

“You have just come from dining with him.”

Again, Celia was compelled by incredulity to audit her short-term memory.

The monkey carried on, “Oh! I see why you might not believe me. This is not my original body, you see. That one had a bad case of death. Anyway, existing as a disembodied intelligence, you lose track of the things that make you human. So I have this little avatar so I can enjoy things like music and Oolong tea. I am not quite ready to transcend the mortal realm completely. It is far too, hmmm, enjoyable.”

“Oh!” said Doctor Janus.

The monkey might have smiled. It was hard to tell.

Celia felt the need to fill the ensuing quiet. She also needed to get something off her chest. “Your brother had me kidnapped, you know?”

“It was not his choice.” G’s voice was impassive.

“No? Really?” Celia tried to sound scathing.

The monkey laughed. “Such incredulity is not unsurprising from a Bold employee. Nonetheless, it is misplaced.” He sipped his tea.

“What do you mean?” Celia was still trying to hold together an air of fierce indignation. She was, however, confronted with an opportunity, perhaps, to eke some answers out of the creature. Such an opportunity was not to be passed up, even if it meant sacrificing her moral outrage.

“No,” said G, “let me ask you a question. I promise you that it is pertinent and will lead you to a greater understanding of your current situation. So try to answer me honestly or this conversation will profit neither of us. Are you amenable?”

Doctor Janus was sceptical. She scowled. The monkey poured out more tea for itself and gestured as to whether his guest would like her cup topped up. It was still near full so he replaced the teapot upon the table.

“If you do not wish, you do not have to answer. Still, it would be beneficial for you to consider the question, whether or not you tell me the answer. Why did you join Bold Industries?”

“The money,” Celia snorted, almost automatically, as though the question was the height of foolishness.

“You lie to yourself. Crucible is not an impoverished employer and certainly ensures the comfort of its staff. Moreover, you are a scientist. Scientists are not motivated by money but by knowledge. Hmmm?”

“So why don’t you tell me the answer to your question, if you are so sure of it?”

“Oh, but that would defeat the point of the exercise. I could tell you the secrets of the Earth and Sky here. But it is not the answers that are important. Let me ask another question. You can, of course, leave at any point. I will ensure that someone takes you back to your room. What did HR at Bold talk to you about when they first met you?”

“What? Why is that important?”

“Because they offered you something that you wanted.” The old man behind the monkey’s eyes looked at her intently.

“Just the usual patter. Bold Industries was going places, needed someone to head up the technical side of their bio-tech division, it was a great opportunity.”

“So how many times had you heard that before?”

“Enough.”

“So why did you listen that time? Why Bold?” G looked as though he had asked the Sphinx’s Riddle, so serious and intent was he.

“Because…” The monkey watched intently. But Celia was not sure any more. She had not, she recalled, been satisfied at Crucible. She had thought that she would have been but the interminable lab work, with its exacting, methodical scrutiny of minutiae, had bored her. It had seemed detached, irrelevant and unfulfilling. Somehow, in Bold Industries’ offer, she had seen a way out. “I don’t know.”

“Think about it. It is not me, anyway, who needs to know the answer, Celia.”

Celia drank some tea and it occurred to her that the monkey had eluded her original question by a clever conversational sleight of hand.

“So can I ask you a question?” she said to the monkey, still watching her with uncomfortable intensity.

“As long as you understand that I am under no obligation to answer it.”

“You said that the Professor did not choose to have me kidnapped although clearly he did have me kidnapped.” Celia Janus spoke deliberately, framing the question with precision. The monkey, G, was a slippery customer it seemed. “Who then made that decision and why?”

“That’s two questions really,” G retorted. “I will tell you what I can.

“The decision was forced on us by circumstance. You might be aware by now that your research was tampered with. Yes? You must at least have suspected.” The monkey waited quizzically.

“Yes. I suppose so. The results were certainly not what we expected. But who would do that and why?”

“Not who but what. It was decided that Crucible must act in order to prevent Bold Industries from realising what they had. Did you know that amongst the Ashkenazi Jews, their Jewish heritage is passed down the female line?”

“You are not making sense, monkey. Who decided to act?” She was insistent and irritable now. She was sick of some lower primate talking in riddles to her.

“The ones you are looking for.”

“What? Give me a straight answer. What am I looking for?”

“I cannot tell you that.”

“Well tell me what went wrong with Project Atlas then.” Celia sighed wearily. She was too tired to sustain her indignation but she needed to know.

“You remind me of my daughter. That same curiosity. That same demand that the universe fall into place for you. What value are the answers that you are just given?”

“They are better than no answers at all.”

“Secrets are only dangerous to those who know them. This secret is the most dangerous of them all. It is the name of El Shaddai. If you must know the answers you must show that you have the strength to know them. Otherwise, those who want to keep those answers for themselves will destroy you. You are already in danger because of the secret that flows in your blood.”

“What? I just wish you’d tell me what the fuck is going on?” Somewhere in the back of the mind a cool voice was telling her that she was tired and overwrought and frightened and the monkey called G was fucking with her head and she would probably cope much better after some sleep.

“Be careful what you wish for.” The monkey’s voice was also gentle now, soothing.

“I just want to get back to my room and sleep. I’ve had a long day.” She surrendered. There would be no answers from the monkey. He had beaten her with his ridiculous riddles. She suddenly felt very alone.

“I think that is a good idea. I’ll show you the way.”

G was as good as his word. Celia collapsed into bed without bothering to undress and she dreamt of serpents and monkeys and hidden symbols that flowed in her veins like fire.
Geoff Hinkley

Underground.  A collision of dark worlds.  The oiled slide of leather like the congealed slime on the walls.  A hiss of pleasure escapes filed teeth.  Take me there, bee emm.

“Reading you, ess see."

Bare feet in colourless sludge.  Movement like slow liquid, creeping up rounded sides.  The nap-thwack of damp climbing rope.  The rigid grope of a grappling hook.  Purchase.  The focal point in an ever-shifting surface.  Sludge footprints on a slime wall.  Wet leeching even into leather.  Bee, emm.

"Coord., ess see, straight up.  No one walks in these lands save you."

Climbing spikes replace the sole's pure purpose.  Already, the underground layer cracking and crusting.  And in, into the elephant's grave yard.  The dryness, the dust of requisition.  A name plate, etched like a tombstone:  AS 400.  How much, bee emm?

"All of it."

* * *

Base camp.  The swirl of genetically poor dirt and the tick of radiation slowly dying.

"You're a mess, Smooth C.  You're covered in filth."

A smile of filed points.  Eyes drawn to military issue boots.  A memory of dry, stamping feet as antidotes burn through the blood.  The rains came.

* * *

"She's not sane, Jonston."

"If I didn't know aliens exist, I would say she wasn't human."

"It's religion, that's all.  She's from some cult."

"She looks like a monster."

"It's part of her religion."

"She had most of her vocal cords severed, Jonston.  She can only subvocalise."  The two men swallow dryly.
Jenna Manley