Making The Cut

by Raven Blackmane

Prologue

October 12, 1989 CR.

Abbey Preston was having nightmares again.

They came as voices in her sleep. She did not know where they came from, but she knew they were not hers. They were full of thoughts about things she had never thought about. They remembered things that she had not done. They were the voices of old women and young men, of mothers and little children. Some were so different that Abbey was not even sure they were people, though they still felt the same sorts of things that people felt. All of the voices said different things, but the feelings were mostly the same.

The feelings were the important part. Abbey was quite sure about that. She didn’t understand all the words, but she understood the feelings, and the voices all had very strong feelings about something. Sometimes they were very, very happy, because they felt good in ways that Abbey did not really understand. Those dreams were confusing, but Abbey didn’t really mind them so much. Mostly, though, the voices told her that they were afraid, or that they were hurting, or that they were so mad that they wanted to hurt somebody. Sometimes, they did, and then Abbey heard the people they hurt, too.

Abbey could not see the faces that went with the voices, so her brain made up stories about them. Abbey liked reading stories, but the stories her brain made up about the voices were not nice. Most of them did not have happy endings.

The story her brain was telling her now was about a king and queen who lived in a far-away land. They had one daughter, a princess, and they loved her very much. Abbey usually liked stories that started that way, but she knew that this was not going to be a good story. The king and queen were thinking about their daughter and how much they loved her, but they were thinking this way because something was hurting them and they could not stop it. An evil monster was inside the castle and it was hurting the king and queen. It wanted to take their daughter away, and that made them afraid and very, very sad.

The monster was getting closer, and Abbey pulled away, afraid. She did not want to hear the monster’s voice. She had heard monsters a few times, and they were always dark and angry and ugly inside. She did not want that inside her. She did not want to know.

The king and queen tried to scream, but they could not make any noise. The monster had its big ugly hands around their necks, and it was squeezing them so they could not breathe. They tried to go find the princess, but the monster held them down and they could not move. All they could do was lie there and hold each other, and think about how they loved the princess and how sad they were that they would not be there to protect her anymore.

Then the voices got quiet and went away.

Abbey woke up and almost jumped out of bed. She was cold and sweaty all over, and she was shaking. She was so scared that she couldn’t breathe, so she looked up and started counting the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling. There were lots of them, and she had to be careful or she would lose count.

One, two, three, four, five…

She made herself think about the stars. She did not try to forget the king and queen and the monster, because trying to forget about something never worked. It just made you think about it more.

…thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven…

She thought about all the different shapes and sizes of stars on her ceiling. Father said that they were all lined up like the real stars in the sky, and that if you looked close you could see pictures in them, like connect-the-dots. Abbey hadn’t seen it herself because the city had so many lights and tall buildings that you could hardly see stars at all.

…seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one … Eighty-one.

That was it. Eighty-one stars. Nine times nine. Father always said nine was a lucky number, an important number. Nine nines of stars to watch over his little princess.

Princess.

Abbey felt cold again, but she was calm enough to breathe now. She reached out for Mother and Father in the next room. They would be sleeping, but they would wake up when she touched them. Mother would hold her in her arms and tell her everything was going to be okay, and Father would make her some of the tea she liked that had the lemons in it.

They were not there.

Abbey frowned and reached out harder. Mother and Father were always there when she had the nightmares. They should be asleep in their beds. Sometimes Abbey slept in late on Saturdays, and when she woke up they would not be in their beds, but it was not Saturday and the clock said it was still the middle of the night.

She reached out through the whole apartment, looking for them, but she did not find them. Abbey wondered if maybe she just couldn’t feel people that way anymore. She hadn’t always been able to. It had started a couple of years ago, all of a sudden, so maybe it could go away like that, too. Mother and Father couldn’t do it at all, so nobody ever told her how it was supposed to work.

Abbey got up and went over to the door. She opened it and looked around with her eyes, and listened close with her ears. The apartment was very quiet. She went down the hall to the right, into her parents’ room. It was dark, but a little light from the street outside snuck in behind the curtains. She could see Mother and Father lying in bed together.

“Mother? Father?” she said, using her talking voice because her inside-voice didn’t seem to be working. “I had a bad dream.”

Mother and Father did not move.

“There was a king, and a queen, and they lived in a far-away land,” she said, using her outdoor talking voice this time so that they would wake up. “And there was a princess. But the monster came and hurt them because it wanted to take the princess away.”

Mother and Father still did not move.

Abbey walked up to the front of the bed and pulled back the covers so she could see their faces. “Mother? Father? Please wake up. The dream scared me, and I would like some tea, please.”

She looked closer with her eyes. She listened closer with her ears.

Mother and Father were not breathing.

“…oh,” she said.


Abbey sat in the corner of her parents’ room. It was still dark, but the clock said it would be morning soon. She had sat there waiting for a very long time, wondering if the monster would come back. Maybe it would not find her if she was not in her bed.

She heard a sound from the hallway outside the apartment. It was a soft sound, but the apartment was very, very quiet. She reached out toward the noise and found a man outside the apartment. The door opened itself for him and he came inside.

She sat in the corner and waited. She could not hear his inside-voice the way she could hear Mother’s or Father’s, but he seemed to know that she had touched him.

He came to the door to her parents’ room and turned on the light. He was tall and handsome, with long hair the color of straw and eyes that were gray like storm clouds. He wore a uniform, black and gray, with a little wedge-shaped hat on top of his head. He looked at Mother and Father on the bed, then came over to stand beside them. He had black gloves on, and he reached down and stroked Mother’s hair. He sighed.

“Are you the monster?” Abbey asked.

The man looked up at her. His mouth smiled, but his eyes looked sad. “No,” he said, and his voice sounded kind. “No, I’m not a monster.”

He walked around Mother and Father’s bed and came to stand over her. He reached out his hand. “My name is Victor,” he said. “I’m here to rescue you.”


Chapter One

June 5, 1990.

Daniel Sharabi surveyed the court with the keen eye of a commander viewing the battlefield. On the ground floor his team members waited, spread out into a loose attack formation as they waited for him to pass the ball in-bounds. Fiona hin’Conaill, the shooting guard, stood in a hunched posture, her arms bent before her. Her pale, freckled face was drenched in sweat and her short, red hair was matted to her head in stringy curls, but her expression was a mask of calm control. Next to her was the point guard, Kevin Darby, his own auburn hair a tangled mess but his eyes bright and eager. Further up was the center, Trace Umbara, two hundred centimeters of Irombian muscle. He grinned at Daniel, his white, even teeth brilliant against his rich brown skin. At the front was his fellow forward, Del Matthews, a theriomorph whose wolfish features did more to intimidate opponents than even Trace’s towering height. Del was panting like a dog on a hot summer day, but his amber eyes were focused and hungry. The Westfall Academy Warriors were out for blood.

The opposing team, the Metamor Central Falcons, stood waiting on the higher levels of the skyball court, their feet firmly planted to the alternate-gravity planes of the upper tiers. Most of them were bigger than his players. The guards were twin theriomorphs with gazelle blood, capable of bursts of speed that would put most players to shame. Their center was a towering senior from Arabarb who must have outweighed Trace by fifty percent. Beyond them all was the goal, a circular hoop nine decimeters across that was suspended fifteen meters above the arena floor.

Daniel bared his teeth at them with a predator’s joy. None of it would make the slightest bit of difference.

He threw the ball inbounds to Kevin, starting the clock, then ran to the front of the formation. He hit the jump pad with both feet together and soared three meters up to the first tier on the left, landing in front of the enemy forward. They were now at a 45-degree angle to the floor, but he adjusted to the new gravity field as naturally as breathing. Del hit the tier on the right side, while Trace hit the center pad and leapt a full six meters to the second tier, a thin strip of court that hung parallel to the ground.

Kevin passed the ball up to Daniel, who grinned at the lanky young man in front of him. He dribbled the ball from one hand to the other, then juked to the left. His opponent over-committed, and Daniel spun right and cut around him, passing up to Trace before hitting the next pad and leaping up to the third tier. Trace caught it in one enormous hand without looking, then turned to face the big Northlander in front of him. His opponent waved his long arms in front of Trace, trying to disrupt his vision and break his concentration, but the Irombian hardly seemed to notice. He flipped the ball up to Del one-handed, who caught it as easily as if it had been homing in on his fingertips. He growled and snapped at the guard in front of him, and the gazelle’s nerve broke for an instant as his prey instincts reasserted themselves. Del charged past him and tossed the ball to the fourth tier, where Trace and the Northlander were already waiting.

The hoop was three meters above Trace and six meters back, and the Northlander had backed off a couple of steps, clearly expecting Trace to take the shot. At that moment, however, Daniel could see Fiona racing up the court along the third tier on the right side, darting past defenders with inhuman speed. She hit the jump pad at the end of the third tier and bounced onto the fourth, behind the Northlander center, before darting toward the final jump pad and leaping into the air toward the hoop. Trace’s throw was timed perfectly and landed between her outstretched hands, high over the Northlander’s head. Fiona did a flip in mid-air and sailed through the goal feet-first, carrying the ball with her. The scoreboard ticked up three more points for the Warriors, as Fiona landed safely in the net beyond the hoop.

Daniel laughed and jogged back toward the Warriors’ end of the court, getting ready for the Falcons’ attack. The only hard part about this, he thought, is trying not to make it look too easy.


The sun was shining brightly on the grounds of the Westfall Academy campus, seated as it was atop one of Metamor City’s highest towers. Irises and lilies were blooming in the gardens as the Warriors met up with their friends and classmates, who had been watching from the stands.

“A hundred and twenty-six to ninety!” Brian crowed, giving Daniel a high-five. “If the championship game has ever seen a shellacking like that before, I’ve never heard of it.”

“Makes you feel sorry for the mundies,” Sasha said, her blonde-white ponytail swinging as she ran up to hug Fiona. The redhead received the hug with restrained but genuine affection before drawing back with a small smile.

“I don’t know why we should,” she said, her emerald green eyes glittering with pride and amusement. “They played to the best of their ability. We can hardly feel guilty for being better than they are.”

Sasha snorted. “Somehow I doubt that they took your egoist abilities into account when they wrote the rules,” she said. “Or Trace’s ESP, or Del’s teek.”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes, let us all cry for the poor mundies. They only rule the world, after all.” She ran a hand fondly down the side of Sasha’s cheek, then pinched it lightly. “You are too compassionate for your own good.”

Sasha grabbed Fiona’s hand and pulled her close, planting a kiss on her cheek. “Obviously,” she said, smiling wickedly. “I still hang around you, after all.”

Del and Trace hooted at Sasha’s retort, growing even louder when Fiona answered Sasha’s kiss with one on the lips. “Bite your tongue, wench,” she said, when they came up for air.

“You first,” Sasha purred.

“Daniel!” Daniel looked up to see Rebecca running across the quad, the sun gleaming against her golden-tan skin as her silky brown hair streamed out behind her. He caught her in his arms and spun her around, eliciting a shriek of delight. Their lips met in a kiss that rivaled Sasha and Fiona’s in the number of approving hoots and whistles.

“That was awesome!” she said, her dark eyes sparkling.

“You think that was good, wait ‘til tonight,” Daniel grinned.

Rebecca made a small sound of mock outrage and punched him in the shoulder. “Pervert,” she said, grinning right back at him. “I meant the game.”

“Oh! Oh, the game! Yes, that was pretty good too, wasn’t it?” he agreed.

“Bah,” said Trace, slapping hands with Brian. “We could have put another fifty points on the board if Fiona hadn’t been dogging it. No offense, Del.”

“Har, har,” Del said, sending out a finger of telekinetic energy to make Trace’s large gold earring smack three times against the side of his face. “Trace is right, though. This game would have been even more of a joke if we could have really cut loose with our powers.”

“Sure,” Daniel said. “And the next day they’d pass a bunch of rules to ban psis from playing skyball. Or else they’d put so many restrictions on what we could do that any egoist with a shred of talent would be accused of cheating.”

“Daniel’s right,” Brian said, adjusting his wire-rim glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Better for you guys to keep it subtle.”

“Besides,” Kevin added, “it keeps the game interesting for low-power types like Dan and me. We can’t let you wonder kids show us up all the time.”

Trace chuckled, a deep basso rumble. “Man, now you sound like a mundy.”

“All right, enough ragging on the have-nots for one day,” said Sasha. “Can we eat now? I’m starving.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Daniel. “The Headmaster promised a party for the whole crèche if we won the championship. They should be setting it up in the Great Hall right now.”


They entered the Great Hall to the raucous cheers of their classmates, and quickly set to work devouring a small mountain of fried chicken, barbecued ribs and corn on the cob. Soda drinks were brought in by the crateload – a rarity for Westfall, where juice and bottled water were the norm – and the teenaged heroes toasted each other with upraised bottles of root beer and cola.

“So much for the Falcons,” Kevin said, as they lingered at the table waiting for dessert. “Now comes the hard part.”

Rebecca, who had been idly drawing in her pocket sketch book, dropped her pencil and smacked a hand over her face in dismay. “Exit exams,” she groaned. “Holy Merai, daughter of gods, pray for we sinners…”

“Both now and in the hour of our death,” Daniel agreed morosely.

“I’m so nervous I think I’m gonna barf,” Rebecca said. She picked up her pencil again and started doodling religious icons around the corners of the page.

“That’s not nerves, Becks,” Sasha said, smirking. “It’s that third plate of ribs you had.”

“I was hungry,” Rebecca said defensively. “Just ‘cause you eat like a bird doesn’t mean everyone’s got to.” She over at Daniel. “I don’t really eat too much, do I?”

Daniel ran an appreciative look over Rebecca’s curves. “No complaints here,” he said. She was maybe twenty pounds over what some people would call “ideal” weight, but damn, she carried it in some nice places.

“Look, there is no point in getting worked up over the exams,” Fiona said. “Your abilities are what they are. You have had the last twelve years to learn how to use them. The only purpose of the exams is to attach a number to those talents so the Hive knows best how to use you. This isn’t like a history class that you can do better on with an eleventh-hour cramming session.”

“I know,” Rebecca said, her tone resigned. “But so much of our future hangs on it. What if our powers aren’t strong enough? What if they decide we aren’t good enough to qualify for the breeding cells?”

Kevin snorted. “Small chance of that,” he said. “You’re a female teep, you’re attracted to men, and you have a pulse. Of course you’ll qualify for a breeding cell.”

“ ‘Every population is limited by the number of fertile wombs available,’ ” Fiona said, in a sing-song imitation of the Academy’s sex education instructors. “ ‘For the Psi Collective to maximize its reproductive fitness and promote the survival of our people, every woman of child-bearing age must be prepared to conceive as often as the financial constraints of the local Hive will allow.’ ” She made a disgusted noise and held up the birth control amulet around her neck, a premium long-life model built around a mithril core. “Screw that,” she said.

Trace raised an eyebrow, glancing at Sasha and then back to Fiona. “And you need that thing why, exactly?”

Fiona gave him a look that was all cool, hardened steel. “I’m bisexual, Trace, not gay. The fact that I never offered any favors to you hardly means that I am completely unmoved by the male physique.”

Trace grinned and flexed one tattooed bicep. “Babe, if you aren’t moved by this physique, you may as well be on life support.”

Fiona’s eyes narrowed, and Daniel saw her muscles rippling as she channeled her psychometabolic energy into boosting her strength. Gulp. “So, hey,” he said quickly, hoping to forestall any impending violence, “is anybody planning on taking the aptitude tests for military work? I hear that the MID liaison is going to be watching the exit exams.”

Fiona turned her gaze back to Daniel, instantly calm again. She shrugged casually. “Of course,” she said. “I know my power rating will be high enough, and it is about time that someone showed the MID that egoists are just as useful as telepaths.” She smirked. “Besides, it’s my best chance to avoid being turned into a baby-making machine.”

“I’m not crazy about the idea,” Brian said, “but the Elders asked me to take the tests, so I will. Electrokinesis is pretty rare, especially in my power range.” He pushed his glasses up a little higher. “I’m hoping they’ll give me a desk job. Cryptanalysis, or something like that.”

“Fiona’s in, so I’m in,” said Sasha. “They can always use more teeps, and my range is more than decent.”

Daniel looked over at the others. “Del? Kevin? Trace?”

“No way,” said Kevin. “My pyro talent can barely heat a cup of coffee. I’m going to EUSOM – they’ve already accepted me for their Applied Kinesiology program.”

“Kinesi-whatomee?” Rebecca asked.

“Sports medicine,” Daniel said.

Kevin grimaced. “That’s an oversimplification, but basically, yes.”

“I suppose I’ll give the MID tests a try,” Del drawled, idly stacking salt shakers on top of each other with his telekinesis. “Five years of active duty doesn’t seem like a bad deal for the perks they give you.”

“And we all know how good I’ll look in a uniform,” Trace said.

Daniel nodded. “Almost everybody, then,” he said.

“What about you and Becca?” Sasha asked, frowning.

“Uh-uh,” Rebecca said, vigorously shaking her head. “I’m a lover, not a fighter. Give me a spot in a breeding cell and a bunch of art supplies and I’ll be happy.” She looked up at Daniel. “Hey, what do you think about graphic design? Empire U. has a good program for it.”

“Sounds perfect for you,” Daniel said encouragingly. He turned back to Sasha. “Becks and I are going to try to get approved as the start of a new breeding cell. As for work—“ He shrugged. “Probably just something local. Business, or maybe medicine. Senadyne always needs people, and you can do a lot worse than working for a health care giant if you plan on having a lot of kids.”

“That sounds terribly dull,” Fiona said, quirking an eyebrow at him. “Why not take the tests? You were near the top of the class in combat training, and your psychic healing is a useful talent for a soldier.”

Daniel fidgeted uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m that good at it.”

“Well, hey, let’s not worry about it now,” Brian said. “We’ll all find out one way or another tomorrow, right?” He smiled and raised his root beer. “For now, let’s celebrate! We’re graduating, we’re champions, and we’re the next crop of spookies about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public! The world is our oyster!”

“Hear, hear!” the rest of them shouted, raising their drinks in unison.

Rebecca took a long drink from her soda and then looked thoughtful. “Okay, so: ‘The world is our oyster.’ Can anyone explain that to me? ‘Cause oysters are kind of nasty.”


June 6.

“Are they taking longer with her, or is it just me?” Daniel asked, pacing back and forth in front of the entrance to Clayman Auditorium. It was the largest lecture hall on campus, and two thousand adults from the local Hive were assembled inside.

Fiona consulted her watch, then leaned back a lamp post and closed her eyes. “Seventeen minutes and counting.”

“It’s just you,” Sasha confirmed, nestling in beside her.

Daniel kept pacing. He couldn’t help it. “I hope she does all right,” he said, eyes flickering back and forth to each of their faces. “Not that she isn’t smart, but sometimes she just…” He waved a hand incoherently.

“She’ll be fine,” Brian assured him. “You remember when she channeled our tenth-grade manology practical a week ahead of time? She’s a natural.”

Daniel nodded. Rebecca had felt guilty for weeks that her ESP had given them an unfair advantage, until she finally confessed to the teacher. He’d laughed it off, pointing out to her that if he didn’t expect that sort of thing in a campus full of espers then he wouldn’t be smart enough to be teaching them, anyway.

“I just hope she doesn’t get too nervous,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. His collar was itching him today, for some reason, and it was driving him nuts. “That’s a lot of eyes to have on you at once.”

“It’s not that bad,” Del said casually. He was flopped on his back in the middle of a small patch of grass under a maple tree, which had been transplanted to the top of the skyscraper when the campus was built. “I mean, sure, sinking into a gestalt that big is kinda like dancing naked on the front steps of the Citadel, but then the test starts and you don’t have time to think about it.”

Daniel didn’t think that sounded all that encouraging. He felt sweat beading up on his forehead.

Sasha looked up at him, concerned. She shifted her gaze to Fiona, who opened her eyes and gave Daniel a speculative look. She sighed. “Oh, for heavens’ sake,” she said, but she got up along with Sasha and stood at the edge of the path. She joined hands with Sasha on one side and reached out to Brian on the other, who was already moving from his spot on the park bench. Del and Trace joined them a moment later, creating a ring with one open position.

Daniel stared, then shook his head. “No, come on, guys, I’m fine, really—"

“You’re going to pieces,” Sasha said gently, her hand stretched out to him. “And not just about Rebecca. Come on, you need this. Let us help.”

Daniel stopped pacing, head hung. He looked up at them in turn, their eyes sympathetic – even Fiona, who was impatient at his stubbornness but genuinely wanted to help. Sighing, he stepped forward and took Sasha and Trace’s hands. Sasha smiled at him encouragingly and sent out a tendril of thought around the circle, initiating the link.

Everyone in the circle was a telepath of one degree or another, though Sasha was by far the strongest of them. No one hesitated to grab the link as it touched their minds. In the space of two heartbeats they let down their defenses, each one pouring his or her own thoughts into the current as it rushed by. The link deepened from a trickle to a flood, until concepts like he and she and I had been swallowed up in we.

We’re afraid.

That’s nothing new. We’ve been afraid before, and we’re still here.

It’s never been this important before.

It’s just a number. It’s not who we are.

We are strong—

—powerful—

—bold—

—handsome—

—beautiful—

—the paragons of humankind. (Oh, please! Full of ourselves much?) {And why not?}

We are what’s next.

We’re not afraid of the future. We are the future.

We are united.

We look out for one another. [Always!]

We will survive. {No, thrive!} (Triumph over adversity.)

We’re a family, and nothing’s gonna change that. {(Not nobody! Not no-how!)}

The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack. ((Okay, we totally stole that)) [Yeah, but it fits!]

Here’s another one: many strands make one rope…

… and together we won’t be broken!

Okay, everybody get ready — back in your heads and let me hear you shout! One, two, three—

“Westfall!” they shouted in unison, breaking the gestalt. Daniel was back in his own head, but he’d brought with him Trace’s confidence, Fiona’s steely resolve, Del’s energy, Brian’s optimism, and Sasha’s steady faith that everything would work out as it should. He embraced it all, took it into himself, and found strength in it. He was breathing calmly now and the knot in his stomach was gone. Even his shirt collar didn’t seem to be bothering him anymore.

“Thanks, guys,” Daniel said, smiling gratefully. “I didn’t know how much I needed that.”

“Any time, man,” Trace said, giving Daniel a firm thump on the back.

“You’ll be fine,” Sasha told him, patting his hand.

The door to the auditorium opened, and Daniel turned to see Rebecca come bounding out, her face alight with joy.

“Level nine!” she squealed, triumphant. “Level nine esper, level five teep! I don’t believe it!”

Daniel caught her and picked her up. Their lips met, then he set her back down, both of them laughing. “Wow!” he said, genuinely impressed. A Power Level of nine was well above average, comparable to a first-degree master mage. Rebecca was theoretically in the top fifteen or sixteen percent of all espers, everywhere.

“They said I can go to uni if I want, too,” she said, turning her spotlight-smile toward each of them in turn. “I did well enough in my classes that they’ll give me a full scholarship.” She clasped her hands to her chest and looked skyward, as if in rapture. “Then they want me in a breeding cell, makin’ lots of little baby espers!” she added, laughing.

Fiona rolled her eyes, but she smiled and accepted a hug from Rebecca when she ran over to her. “I’m glad you are happy,” she said. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks!” Rebecca said, taking turns hugging each of them.

“Well. Looks like somebody’s pleased.”

Daniel turned around to see a man stepping out of the auditorium. He was tall and good-looking, with straw-blond hair and gray eyes, and he wore the black-and-gray uniform and black beret of the Military Intelligence Directorate. Daniel recognized him instantly.

”Kano Victor,” he said, bowing to his combat instructor. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, kano,” the others said, quickly standing to attention and bowing in unison.

“Good afternoon, cadets,” he said, bowing to them in return. “I understand that some of you are going to be taking the optional tests for MID service?”

“Yes, kano,” Fiona said. “All of us except Ms. Brower.”

“And maybe me,” Daniel added. “I haven’t had my exit exam yet.”

“Yes, I know,” Victor said mildly. “They wanted me to tell you that they’re ready for you.”

Daniel nodded. He felt a flutter of fear in his stomach, but only for a moment; the strength his friends had given him through the gestalt was still with him. “I’ll be right there,” he promised. He turned to Rebecca and took her in his arms.

“Wish me luck?” he asked her.

She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him down to her level, locking lips with him in a kiss that could have melted glass. She released him and took a step back, smiling impishly.

“Good luck,” she said, winking.

Victor coughed politely. “All right, then,” he said, giving Daniel a look that seemed to carry newfound admiration. “If the rest of you will follow me, we’ll begin your MID testing.” He strode off through the midst of them at a slow, even pace, clearly expecting the others to fall into line behind him and not even looking back to see if he was being obeyed.

“See you soon, Daniel,” Brian said, raising a hand in parting.

“Remember what we told you,” said Sasha.

Daniel nodded, waving to each of them as they said their farewells. Rebecca settled in on the park bench and smiled up at him.

“Go on,” she said. “I’ll wait for you.”

Taking a deep breath, Daniel turned and entered the auditorium, where the assembled Hive waited to judge his destiny.


The first thing that struck Daniel as he entered the auditorium was how quiet it was. A crowd of two thousand people usually made a respectable amount of noise, even when they were trying to keep their voices low, but the huge lecture hall was quieter than a classroom full of students taking a history final. Daniel looked up at rows upon rows of adults, all of them sitting eerily still. As Daniel's ears adjusted, he realized that he could hear one sound: a slow, steady murmur of air. The sound ceased for a few seconds, then resumed. A few seconds later, it paused again.

Gods, he thought, suddenly understanding the source of the noise. They're all breathing in unison.

Daniel had never seen a gestalt this large, or this perfect, in his entire life. Children weren't allowed to attend Hive meetings. He stood there staring at them, their faces all calm and detached, and he felt a new understanding for why mundanes called his people spookies.

One of the adults, a gray-haired Elder dressed in unassuming street clothes, rose and beckoned to Daniel.

Welcome, Daniel Sharabi. The Elder's telepathic voice was grave, full of a weighty solemnity that was well-suited to the occasion. Are you ready to begin your exit examination?

Daniel wasn't sure, but there wasn't much choice in the matter either way. I am, he sent back, his own telepathy sounding weak and tinny next to the resonant power that the Elder carried. They were less than four meters apart, but Daniel still suspected that his thoughts wouldn't have reached that far if the Elder had not already made the connection.

Then join the link, said the Elder, and we shall begin.

Tentatively, Daniel widened the connection between himself and the Elder, opening up more of himself to their shared communion. Then the Elder glanced toward the assembled members of the Hive, and the link suddenly came alive with a flood of thoughts and emotions. Daniel's consciousness was dragged into the collective unity of the Hive like a riptide. Two thousand minds were present, but they didn't feel like two thousand minds: it was more like one extremely powerful mind, so vast in its capabilities that it could consider hundreds of possible ideas at once. Daniel felt himself being spread out and examined by that super-consciousness like a frog on a dissection table. Every corner of that mind seemed to have a piece of him – weighing, evaluating. He was drowning in the gestalt, but he was still separate from it. They had not yet invited him to take part in the judging of his own merits.

After a while — minutes, days, centuries; Daniel wasn't sure — the psychic vivisection ceased, and he was able to pull his thoughts back into something resembling a coherent sense of self. Then the Hive "spoke," addressing him directly for the first time.

We will test your telepathic sensitivity, it said without preamble. In our mind there is a memory of a child, a dog, and a red ball. Find it. Tell us the name of the child, and the name of the dog.

The massive Hive-mind opened itself up before Daniel, inviting him past the surface and into its memories. Gathering his will, he projected a line of thought inside. Immediately he was bombarded by images, like two thousand vid screens all showing different programs. Daniel understood: the Hive-mind was unified in its overall consciousness, its senses, and its short-term memories, but the long-term memories were still stored within the heads of the individual members, like separate hard disks on a computer network. The Hive could call any of them up for consideration at any time, but for an outsider trying to locate one specific memory was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Daniel dipped into three minds in a row and rifled through them for any sign of a child, a dog, and a red ball. Nothing. This was going to take forever, he thought. This couldn't be the way they wanted him to do this.

He paused, considering. The gestalt with his fellow students was fresh in his mind, and he suddenly recalled a time when Sasha had been given a pop quiz by one of their history teachers. She hadn't known the answer and had needed to respond quickly, so she sent out mental connections to a dozen other students at once, looking for one who knew the right answer and had been holding it in the forefront of his or her mind since the moment the teacher asked the question. A telepath's mind wasn't like a computer with one central processing unit; it could handle multiple lines of investigation at once.

In theory, anyway. Daniel had never tried to send his mind in more than one direction at once, since he normally needed skin contact to initiate a link. In this case, though, the link was already firmly established, so Daniel closed his eyes and pushed, trying to send out his thoughts in as many directions as possible.

The strain was incredible. Daniel could feel a dull throbbing behind his eyes, and his body trembled with the effort of dividing his consciousness. He managed to summon five separate lines of thought, and held all of them in place for a few seconds before two of them collapsed. Frustrated, he poured his efforts into the remaining three. If he stopped and tried to reestablish all five, he might not manage any of them again.

It seemed like an eternity, but at last one of his tendrils of thought touched on the memory of a young girl throwing a red ball. The dog, an Arabarb husky, raced after the ball with relentless purpose, snatching it on the run and circling back to bring it to the girl. Daniel immersed himself in the memory, letting it become his own, then pulled back his lines of thought, taking a copy of the memory with him. He felt his whole body relax as he returned to himself, the feeling of strain slowly subsiding.

"Harriet," he said, panting. His mind was so exhausted that he had to speak aloud to even form the thoughts clearly enough to send them. "The girl's name was Harriet, and the dog was Ghost."

Correct, the Hive said. It did not sound impressed, and Daniel wondered how much worse he'd done than the other students who had been given this test.

The Hive paused, apparently considering something. You are tired, it said, sounding unexpectedly sympathetic. You may rest before we continue with your examination. Take as much time as you need, and tell us when you are ready.

"Thank you," Daniel said. Opening his eyes, he saw a chair slide out from the side of the room and position itself next to him. He collapsed into it and rested his head in his hands.

This was probably another test, he thought. It would let them see how much it took out of him to use his powers, and how quickly he would recover.

Knowing that he was probably still on the clock, Daniel only let himself rest for five minutes before standing to face the Hive again. He wasn't at one hundred percent again yet – hells, he might not be for days – but he felt well enough to go on.

All right, he said, once again projecting the words with thought alone. What's next?

In the middle of one of the upper rows, a woman in her mid-twenties rose from her seat and walked down to the front of the room. Daniel only saw her two or three times a year, but he knew her immediately: his half-sister, Stacy. Her glossy black hair and mocha-brown skin were reflections of his own, though her eyes were russet brown instead of bright blue like his. She smiled at him, but her eyes were distant: she was still part of the Hive.

Your other psionic talent is the gift of healing, the Hive said. One of us has offered herself to be the object of your examination.

"Object?" Daniel asked, frowning.

In answer, Stacy turned her palms forward and stretched out her arms, holding them nearly perpendicular to the floor. There was a whisper of wind and a flash of light off metal, and then the veins of Stacy's arms opened up in a pair of incisions about ten centimeters long. Blood seeped forth and bathed her hands, running to the floor in two thin streams. Stacy did not cry out or even move a muscle.

"Holy shit!" Daniel gasped. There was no time to hesitate. He loosened his tie, fingers fumbling with the knot, then finally pulled it free. Rushing to his sister's side, he wrapped the tie around her right elbow and knotted it tight to make a tourniquet. Hurrying to her other side, he pulled off his belt and cinched around her left arm. He couldn't tie the belt in a knot, so he held it tight around the arm with his left hand while he placed his right hand over the long, straight incision. He focused his will and clearly pictured what he wanted in his mind, imagining the vein pulling itself back together and the skin closing back up like a zipper. His hand glowed with a soft white light, and he ran it slowly over the injury, watching as the wound closed. Once the left arm was healed, he let go of the belt and went back to her right arm. It was harder the second time, and by the time the skin knitted itself together again he was covered in sweat and gasping for breath.

"Thank you, Danny," Stacy said. She had separated from the Hive-mind and was looking somewhat relieved. Her beautiful coffee-brown skin had turned a sickly gray from the blood loss. She slowly walked over to a chair in the front row and eased herself into it, as towels and a basin of water floated up to land in front of her. "Don't worry, I'll be all right."

"All right?" Daniel asked, astonished and outraged. He turned to the rest of the Hive, who still sat unmoving in their perfectly orderly rows. "Are you fucking crazy?" he demanded. "What in the Ninth are you thinking? You think you can just do that to my sister and I'm supposed to accept it?"

She volunteered for this test, the Hive said. Every psychic healer's powers must be tested to the fullest before we can know their limits. Conducting the examination with a loved one encourages the subject to give his or her very best efforts to the test.

"She could have died, you lunatics!"

There are two hundred and ninety-seven other psychic healers in this room, the Hive said mildly. Two hundred and forty-nine of them have talents stronger than yours. Stacy Sharabi was in no danger.

"But–!"

"Danny!" Stacy's voice was firm, and his eyes met hers immediately. She was looking at him with an expression that was both angry and disappointed. "Respect your elders," she said gravely.

Daniel lowered his head, ashamed. Stacy was right; their own parents were somewhere in that assembly, and Daniel would never have dreamed of speaking to them so harshly. As much as he was disgusted and horrified by the gruesome nature of the test, he had to admit it had served its purpose. And, now that he thought about it, how the hell else were you supposed to test a psychic healing talent than with an injury? It wasn't as if they could move the entire Hive into the local emergency room.

He sighed. I'm sorry, he said, and meant it. Please forgive my rudeness.

It is forgiven, the Hive said. The voice was gentle and understanding; there were, after all, two hundred and ninety-seven people in the gestalt who had once gone through the same brutal test themselves.

What else would you have me do? Daniel asked.

Your examination is completed, the Hive told him. Your telepathic talent is rated at power level two, and your psychic healing is rated at level four.

Daniel's heart sank. Level four was as far below the average as level nine was above it; eighty-four to eighty-five percent of all psychic healers were stronger than he was. As for level two – well, theoretically that put him in the bottom two percent for telepathy. There were probably a lot of low-level teeps out there whose powers stayed latent, which would change the shape of the curve if they could be accounted for — but of those teeps who were strong enough for the Collective to notice them, Daniel definitely ranked near the bottom. He didn't know why he should have been surprised. He had never even been able to start a link without touching somebody, except once in a while with Rebecca.

Rebecca…

Excuse me, he asked, but will Rebecca and I be able to start a breeding cell?

The Hive sent a wave of regret. We're afraid not, it said. Your powers aren't strong enough. We need the next generation of psis to be stronger than the current one if we are to ensure the survival of our people.

His guts felt like they had turned to water. But what about Fiona? he asked. She's only a level three teep, and you want her in a breeding cell.

Fiona hin'Conaill is also a level eleven egoist, the Hive reminded him. But even if she were not, she would still be a woman of child-bearing age, and would thus be essential. Our survival depends on the numbers of children we can produce, as well as their relative strength. One man can easily sire children with four or five women on a regular rotation; that is the entire basis of the breeding cell system. We do not need low-powered males to become fathers when we have more than enough high-level ones to serve the current population of prospective mothers.

Daniel felt a wave of indignation at the unfairness of it all. His first instinct was to shout and protest; instead, he forced himself to calm down and tried using logic.

What if my powers get stronger? he asked. It's happened before. What if I spend the next few years at university and work on practicing my talents while I'm there? Maybe I'm not as weak as it looks right now; maybe I just haven't learned to use my powers to their full ability yet.

It is possible, the Hive agreed. Rare, but not unheard of. We will allow you to attend university on Collective funds; your academic record is very respectable and we have no doubt you will put your higher education to good use. Understand, however, that you will be responsible to repay our investment in you. If, upon graduation, your powers are still too weak to qualify you as a breeding cell husband, you will be required to join a bachelor cell. You will work for the Hive until our investment is repaid; after that, if you choose to leave active participation in the Collective and begin a life of your own, you will be free to go.

Daniel shivered. If there was anything that sounded worse than being stuck in a bachelor cell with a bunch of other have-nots, it was trying to make a life without the support and protection of the Collective.

I'll do it, he said. I'll go to Empire University with Rebecca. I'll take night classes here at Westfall to practice using my powers. And by the time we graduate, I'll show you that I'm good enough for a breeding cell.

We shall see, the Hive said, then broke the link.

The Elder turned to Daniel. You may go now.

As Daniel came outside, Rebecca was putting the last touches on an intricate bit of abstract art, which she had drawn on the concrete path with five different colors of chalk. She looked up at him with a smile, but then her eyes briefly flashed yellow as she looked at him. Her face fell, and Daniel knew that she had just channeled the results of his test – or enough of them, anyway.

"Oh Eli," she whispered, tears welling up in her eyes. "Oh, no.."

"Shh," Daniel soothed, rushing to wrap her in his arms. "It's okay," he said.

"No it's not!" Rebecca protested, weeping. "They're going to send you away from me!"

"Not yet, they aren't," Daniel assured her. "We've got four years. As long as we're full-time students, they won't make you join a breeding cell. That'll give me time to get my powers in shape. We'll get through this."

Rebecca pressed her face hard against his chest and sobbed. He felt the tears soaking through the thin fabric of the shirt.

"Shh," he said again, holding her tightly. "It's going to be okay. I'm not giving up on us. We'll come through this, and we'll do it together."

She clutched at him. "Promise?" she asked.

He stroked her long brown hair and tried to blink the tears out of his eyes. "Promise."


Chapter Two

May 2, 1995 CR. Barnhardt General Hospital, Valley North Borough, Metamor City.

Daniel pushed back his stool back from the workbench and sighed, rubbing his eyes wearily. There was no doubt about it: it was cancer, all right, and it was advanced. Another patient was about to get news she didn't want to hear, news that meant months or years of dangerous treatments with toxins or radiation or death-aspected mana. You could get as mad as you wanted, cry as much as you wanted, but the tests didn't lie.

The tests don't lie. Gods, don't I know it, he thought bitterly. He pulled the tissue sample out of the machine and threw it in the biohazard waste bin, then tapped in a few commands on the control panel to send the results of the test to his computer. Tomorrow morning he'd type up a detailed report for the patient's primary physician and have the lab technicians start culturing Mrs. Atherton's cancer cells. Given how much the disease had spread before they found it, the oncologists would probably want to start her treatment with a sympathetic curse, and for that they'd need a fairly large sample of the malignant tissue to work with. He'd need to make sure it was a pure sample, too; if they got any of her healthy cells mixed in, the curse might affect more than the cancer.

He shook his head. There's something deeply screwed up about the world, he thought, when you have to resort to death magic to try to heal someone. Psychic healing powers like his weren't worth much when you were trying to fight something that was a corruption of the person's own body.

A particularly mean-spirited corner of his mind laughed at that. Not that your powers are worth much anyway, Daniel, it said. He looked over his shoulder at the picture that sat next to his computer. After all, that was why she had to leave you.

He walked over to the desk and picked up the picture, running his fingers over the polished silver frame. It was a photo of himself and Rebecca, taken two years ago during a summer trip to Pyralis. They were standing in front of the ruins of an ancient temple of Wvelkim, built on a cliff overlooking the sea. The sun was going down and the sky had turned a spectacular shade of pink, which contrasted with the warm yellow color of the temple stones. Rebecca was wearing an outfit she had bought the previous day, a multicolored sarong and a red halter top that was open in back. She was nestled up against him in the picture, one hand on his chest as she turned to face the camera. The rays of the setting sun reflected off the golden-tan skin of her back and face, making her glow beautifully against his own darker skin.

We were so happy, he thought, setting it down and wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. I hope she still is.

Daniel had trained for four years to hone his powers, giving them as much of his attention as the classes he took for his degree in medical technology. While he had become more skillful in how he used his abilities, particularly his psychic healing, his actual power level had not improved. When they had finally graduated last year, it was obvious that Daniel would never be a stronger psi than he currently was, and the Hive insisted that Rebecca be assigned to a breeding cell. Since Daniel and Rebecca were members of the Hive now, they had taken part in the decision along with every other voice in the gestalt — and despite their feelings about it, they knew that it was the only rational choice.

The Hive's reproductive specialists had provided a lot of data for the gestalt to consider, projections about the future of the Psi Collective and its interactions with mundanes. Everyone agreed that a confrontation was coming with the mundies, probably within the next hundred years; no one wanted it, but the inherent violence of mundane society and their fear of evolutionary obsolescence made it almost inevitable. When it happened, the Psi Collective would need to be strong enough and numerous enough to win the ensuing conflict if they wanted to avoid being exterminated. Every psi had to do his or her part to get them to that point, no matter what it cost them personally. Failing to do so was not merely selfish; it was suicidal.

Daniel understood all of this, on an intellectual level. He and Rebecca had seen all of the sobering facts of their situation as part of the Hive's shared consciousness. The decision for her to join a breeding cell had been both necessary and obvious. Their parting had been full of tears, but they had accepted it as the price that each of them had to pay for the sake of the greater good.

In the privacy of his own head, though, Daniel had found that those logical arguments faded in comparison to the emotional reality of his situation. He didn't resent Rebecca for joining the breeding cell. He wasn't even angry at the cell's other members — Brian, Sasha, and Fiona — for being with her when he couldn't. They were all his friends, and he had bonded with them so closely in the crèche that he couldn't begrudge them any good thing. At the same time, though, he ached at the separation from Rebecca, and seeing her belly swollen with Brian's child instead of his filled him with a quiet and intensely personal sort of pain.

He sighed. You're wallowing, he told himself. She's not coming back. Be grateful you had as much time together as you did, and move on with your life.

If only it were that easy.


"…I just feel so useless. Maybe I could accept it if I had some sort of noble, heroic purpose to fulfill, but I'm a glorified technician. Where's the higher calling in that?"

"You going to talk me into submission," Victor asked, "or are you going to shut up and hit me?"

Daniel's lip curled in sudden anger. Leading with the right side of his body, he darted in fast and threw a jab at Victor's face with his right fist. Victor raised his left arm, easily blocking the punch. Immediately Daniel pivoted the left side of his body forward in a reverse punch, driving his fist toward Victor's torso. Victor spun to Daniel's left, trying to dodge, but he couldn't get out of the way entirely. The fist made contact with his right ribcage, instead of the more vulnerable solar plexus that Daniel had been aiming for. Victor grunted at the hit, then grabbed the arm in a lock and aimed a right kick at Daniel's knee. Daniel anticipated the attack and shifted his weight to his back leg. He drew up his left leg, evading the kick, then snapped it forward, striking Victor again in the ribs with his left heel. Victor released his arm and stepped back into a defensive posture. He let out a ragged curse, pain etched on his face from the force of Daniel's blow.

Daniel hesitated, wondering if in his anger he had broken one of Victor's ribs. In that moment of indecision, Victor gestured with one hand, and a line of invisible telekinetic force picked Daniel up, spun him head over heels and threw him to the mat, knocking the wind out of him. Victor had him in a painful submission hold within seconds, and Daniel slapped the mat twice, conceding the round.

"That was a cheap shot," he muttered.

Victor chuckled. "You're fast, Daniel," he said, offering him a hand up, "but you're soft. You don't have a killer's instincts. It doesn't matter how good you are in competition — if you hesitate like that on the Street, you're dead. Give him a second or two and a strong mage can hit you with a lightning bolt. A vamp can hit you with a domination gaze. Hells, even a mundy can pull a gun on you."

"And a teek can throw you around like a rag doll?"

"That too. Well," Victor amended with a wry smirk, "only the really good ones."

They sparred a while longer, and Daniel won five out of the next twelve rounds. By that time one of Victor's classes was coming in, and his assistants put the children through a series of warm-up exercises while he and Daniel hit the showers.

"You aren't the only one who's frustrated by some of the Hive's decisions," he said, as Daniel worked the soap over his skin and let the hot water wash away the sweat from their workout.

"I don’t see much choice about it, though," Daniel said. "I mean, I don't like it, but I understand the need."

Victor made a sound of disagreement. "The Hive is going about this all wrong," he said. "They have a long history of dangling possibilities in front of people and then snatching them away again. Did you know they promised me a breeding cell after my first tour of duty with MID? I'll be finishing my third next month, and they're still telling me that they 'haven't found the right fit' for me."

Daniel frowned. "You're still trying for a breeding cell? With your teek as strong as it is, I assumed that they put you on stud duty."

Victor laughed bitterly. "Yes and no," he said. "They've used my spunk to make a lot of kids, but only in the test tube. The only action I've gotten in the last five years was from a gods-damned sample cup."

Daniel was stunned at that. "Why? I mean, you're strong, you're in good shape, you're good-looking…"

Victor raised an eyebrow.

"…as far as I can tell, in my own limited ability to judge that sort of thing," Daniel amended, blushing. "I would have thought the ladies would be lining up."

Victor squeezed some shampoo into his hands and began working it into his long hair. "Have you ever killed anyone, Daniel?" he asked.

Daniel froze. "Um, no," he said.

"I have," Victor said, mildly. "Fifteen years with the MID, Daniel, all over the world. Espionage, infiltration, sabotage, wetworks — the military doesn't hire us to meet some kind of anti-discrimination quota. Psi ops get the really ugly jobs … the kind where you can't afford to use magic that someone might trace back and find out who was responsible." He stuck his hair under the shower and began rinsing it out. "I've had to kill quite a lot of people over the years. Now, how many of our ultra-empathic, bleeding-heart females do you think are actually comfortable with having those kinds of memories inside their heads?"

Daniel grimaced. "I can think of a couple who could handle it," he said, "but they're psi ops, too. Plus, they're kind of into each other."

Victor snorted at that. "Exactly. Active psi ops don't get pregnant, and most of the women who retire from it have this thing about not wanting to relive the experience." He shook his head. "Plus, somehow I've gotten the reputation for being too rough. I don't know where the hell that got started."

Daniel smirked. "Maybe they were thinking of your sparring matches. I know I'm going to need to use some psi-healing when I get home."

"Wuss."

The Westfall cadets had finished their warm-ups by the time Daniel and Victor came out of the locker rooms, and the teaching assistants had called a five-minute break before Victor would begin today’s lesson. The current class was Intermediate Practical Combat Arts, and the students ranged between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. Most of them were now chatting in small groups, either verbally or in gestalt, but others were meditating to focus their powers and a few were doing some light sparring with each other using moves they had already learned. Daniel smiled, remembering his own classes; the five-minute break was a test in itself. How you used your free time in the samnak was as important as what you did when the kano was actually teaching. The best students were the ones who figured that out early.

”Kano Victor!”

Daniel looked up and saw one of the students, a girl of maybe fourteen or fifteen, come running to them from across the room. She was fairly average-looking, with a heart-shaped face and slightly pudgy cheeks, but she moved with enough grace and poise that he could tell she was one of the better students. She had mousy brown hair that had been streaked with gold highlights, and her dark brown eyes looked vibrant and excited. She came within arms’ reach of Victor and then bowed deeply.

“Hello, Abbey,” Victor said, returning the bow. “How are you today?”

“Great! Come see what I learned how to do!” She took him by the hand and led him across the room, to where a group of five other teens were standing in a ragged circle. Most of them looked nervous as Victor approached, but they bowed appropriately and he returned the gesture.

“Now, watch this,” Abbey said, stretching out her hands. Immediately the other teens stopped fidgeting and moved into a triangular formation, all of them evenly spaced about twelve decimeters apart on all sides. Abbey took up the position at the head of the triangle, and together they stood at attention.

At some unspoken signal, the cadets began a warm-up drill, punching and kicking the air as they shifted through the different baepa, or forms, used to teach attack and defense. They moved quickly and fluidly, as Daniel would have expected for students of this rank – but as he looked closer, he saw something else. Not only were they performing the baepa perfectly, but they were doing so in perfect unison. Even their breathing was perfectly in sync.

Bloody hells, Daniel thought in amazement. They’re in a gestalt. She didn’t even touch them and they’re in a perfect gestalt.

The cadets finished the drill and bowed in unison to Victor. A shudder ran through them as Abbey broke the link, and then she turned and looked around at them, beaming proudly.

“Very impressive,” Victor said, approval in his voice. He turned to one of the students. “Lysa, show me the first five baepa in the drill, please.”

Lysa bowed to Victor and then ran through the baepa again, performing them flawlessly.

“Thank you,” he said. “Very impressive indeed,” he added in a lower voice, turning back to Abbey. “Lysa’s form has been sloppy for months, but you seem to have cured that.”

Abbey nodded enthusiastically. “I was thinking we could use this to help the other students get better,” she said. “I haven’t tried it with more than a few of them, but I’m pretty sure I could do the whole class at once. It’s really not that hard once you get them together.”

“I have no doubt you could,” Victor agreed. “I’ll discuss it with the Elders at our next meeting and see what they think.” He put his hands on her shoulders and smiled fondly. “Well done, Abbey.”

She blushed at the praise, reaching up to put her hands over his. Daniel saw more than respect in her eyes as she looked at him; it was adoration.

“We’ll be starting in another minute or two,” Victor said to her, “and I need to make some preparations. I’ll talk to you after class.” He gently removed his hands from hers and they bowed to each other, then Abbey turned back toward her friends.

“That was amazing,” Daniel said to Victor, as they moved back to the front of the samnak. “I’ve never seen someone that young pull together a gestalt like that without touching them.”

“It’s more than that,” Victor said. “Those children were some of my worst students in this cohort. I suspect they won’t be anymore. Abbey took her own skills and imprinted them on the others.”

“Scary. How strong do you think she is?”

“One of the strongest I’ve seen.” Victor looked back at her from across the room, a strange expression in his eyes. “She’s the brightest star in Westfall, and she’s a foundling. If that’s not irony, I don’t know what is.”

“A foundling?” Daniel said, surprised. “Power like that, and she was born to mundies?”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Victor agreed. “She’s adjusting well to life in the crèche, though. Already talking about joining a breeding cell when she graduates. Whoever gets the privilege of siring on her is going to have the strongest children in the whole damned Hive.”

Daniel’s eyes widened. He finally understood Victor’s expression. “Gods, Vic, she’s just a kid,” he whispered. “You’re her kano.”

“I won’t always be her kano,” Victor said. “And she’s growing up fast. I’m the one who found her after her parents died, Daniel. She trusts me. She hasn’t had time to be poisoned by Hive gossip. When she’s ready, I’ll be waiting for her.”

Daniel let out his breath in a low whistle. “The Elders aren’t going to like that.”

“The Elders can kiss my ass,” Victor said, his voice quiet but determined. “Listen to me, Daniel: if you spend your life trying to make other people happy, you’re going to end up getting used, stepped on, exploited, and eventually discarded. The Elders can talk all they want about the destiny and future of the psi race, but what it comes down to is that they want you to spend the rest of your life slaving away to feed somebody else’s kids. And they will feed you just enough promises and allow you just enough comfort to make sure that you keep giving them what they want from you.”

Daniel drew back in shock. “Yeesh, Vic. That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

”Fifteen years,” Victor said fiercely, pointing at himself. “Take it from someone who learned the hard way, Daniel: if you want to make something out of your life, if you ever want to amount to more than what you are right now, then sooner or later you’re going to have to go outside the lines the Hive has drawn for you.” He turned to walk away, then paused, looking over his shoulder. “When you’re ready to do that, you give me a call.”


Victor's words lingered in Daniel's head as he rode the cross-town shuttle back to his apartment. He sat at the back of the large skimmer-bus, staring out the window at the endless streams of traffic and the enormous buildings stretching out of sight both above and below him. A couple of young women on the bus had noticed him and were now whispering to each other and giggling, but he barely registered their presence. He knew he was good-looking; as the captain of the Westfall Warriors, he had been the object of women’s attention through much of high school. It hadn’t done him any good in the end. In the Psi Collective it didn’t matter how good-looking you were if you didn’t have the power level to earn people’s respect. Besides, there was only one woman whose opinion he cared about.

Sooner or later, you’re going to have to go outside the lines. What had Victor meant by that? If he was talking about an affair, then he didn’t understand Daniel’s desires at all. Daniel wasn’t about to jeopardize Rebecca’s current family life by trying to continue their sexual relationship on the side. It would be hurtful to Brian, and Rebecca wouldn’t do it in any case. The breeding cells were polyamorous by design, but there were limits to what was acceptable or appropriate.

But somehow Daniel didn’t think Victor was that clueless. Taken in context, he seemed to be talking about getting out of the bachelor cells that the Collective had established as a place to put its “surplus” males. But leaving the cells also meant leaving behind active participation in Collective society. That wasn’t something that could be done lightly.

The Psi Collective was, of course, collectivist in nature: From each according to his means, to each according to his needs. It only worked because the Hive’s telepathic communion allowed it to make decisions as a unified entity: everyone cared for his neighbor as himself because, in a very real way, his neighbor was himself. Those spookies who chose to live outside the Collective had to learn how to function in a capitalist society. For someone like Daniel, who had been born in a breeding cell and raised in the crèche, making the transition to independence wouldn’t be easy. For one thing, he’d need a lot of money to pay off what the Hive had invested in him.

Had Victor found a way to make that kind of money? He had worked for the government for fifteen years, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he had connections to people with deep pockets. But if so, why mention it to Daniel? Was it something he couldn’t do on his own?

The skimmer-bus pulled to a stop at the end of Daniel’s block, and he collected his briefcase and gym bag and got out. His bachelor cell’s apartment was in a middle-class residential neighborhood on the second level of the eastern Central borough. Row houses with fasciae of brick and mortar sat in the shadow of the super-skyscrapers behind them. Most of the houses had garden boxes and potted trees out front, and well-maintained sidewalks provided about a meter's worth of distance from the busy traffic of the skyway. Daniel turned down an alley that ran between two blocks of row houses and into the interior of the massive tower, which held shopping districts and offices in addition to residential suites like the one he shared with his cell.

Daniel opened the door to the flat and was met by the sound of aggressively cheerful girl-pop music, which drifted into the front room from one of the bedrooms off to his left. Apparently Nathan was home. Daniel turned to the smoke detector in the kitchen and waved, knowing that it contained a hidden security camera that his flatmate would be watching.

“Hey, Big D!” Nathan called.

“Hey, Nate,” Daniel said, setting down his bag and briefcase. He went past the kitchen and living room and down the short corridor to the bedrooms. Nathan’s bedroom was on the right, and David poked his head inside.

The room was a shrine to technological brilliance and atrocious musical taste. Shelves lining three walls were crammed with computers, monitors, surround-sound speakers, spelljack equipment, and dozens of bits of electronic wizardry that Daniel understood only in the most general terms, if at all. Piles of comic books and SF thrillers sat in nooks and crannies beside technical manuals, scholarly journals, and graduate-level textbooks. A narrow bed was wedged inside the walk-in closet, the covers mussed and strewn with bits of laundry. Every remaining bit of space on the walls and ceiling was covered with photographs and posters of attractive young women, most of them teenage starlets who had been given record deals more for their appearance than for any actual musical talent. A six-decimeter high bronze bust of Tiffany Angel sat in a place of honor on the desk directly opposite the door, looking for all the world like the idol of a household goddess – which, in a sense, it was. For the hundredth time Daniel wondered how long Nathan had saved his discretionary allowance to be able to afford the ridiculous thing.

Nathan spun his chair around and looked up at Daniel. He was a spindly little man, only 160 centimeters tall and 45 kilos soaking wet. His thick mop of black hair and prominent nose pointed to his Yehudi ancestry, while his thick black-rimmed glasses revealed his nearsightedness. He grinned at Daniel amiably. “So, did you beat him today?” he asked.

“A few times. Victor’s still better than me, but I can do enough to give him a workout. He still thinks I’m too soft, though.”

Nathan snorted. “Military types,” he said. “To the Ninth with all of ‘em. You know that this whole Psi Op program is just a way for Big Momma to inject sleeper memes into the minds of Collective personnel. One of these days she’s going to flip a switch, and bam–” he smacked a fist into an open hand “–a whole army of stone-cold psychic killers, ready to do her bidding.”

“Sure,” Daniel said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. Somehow he doubted that Majestrix Kyia was plotting to take over the Psi Collective, but this wasn’t the weirdest idea that Nathan had espoused over the years.

“I’m serious, man,” Nathan said. “Take a look at the way the Collective is set up. The whole thing is vulnerable to toxic meme infection. Why do you think the Elders are so paranoid about trying to rehabilitate psis who go crazy? You get a strong enough personality into a gestalt and the other minds will be subverted by the stronger paradigm, irrespective of whether its viewpoint is adaptive. Ask me why.”

“Why?”

”Because,” Nathan said, waving a hand for emphasis, “it doesn’t matter if something is true as long as enough of the gestalt believes it is true. That’s the ugly little reality of the Collective, Big D: they want you to think that the Hive’s decisions are all made rationally, but you can’t get a rational product from irrational components.” He gestured at one of the computers. “Garbage in, garbage out.”

Daniel crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway. “So, let me ask you this: if the Collective is so fragile and irrational, why are we still here? How did we build a society that takes better care of its people than anyone else in history?”

Nathan cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “Gee, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me, Mister My-Girlfriend-Left-Me-Because-I-Was-Too-Weak-To-Be-Useful?”

Daniel narrowed his eyes at Nathan. His hands shifted to his hips and balled up into fists.

“That’s over the line, Nathan,” he said. He tried to keep it soft and even, but the words came out harsh and half-strangled.

For a few heartbeats the tension in the air felt as heavy and dangerous as a meter of sharpened steel. Then Nathan visibly shrank in his seat, head bowing. “Sorry, D,” he said, his face reddening.

Daniel took a deep breath and let it out, forcing himself to tone down his body language. “Forget it,” he said. “Is Kevin here? After the pounding Victor gave me I could use a massage.”

Nathan gestured at one of the security monitors, which showed a closed door at the end of the corridor to the right of the entry room. “He’s with a client right now, but her hour’s almost up. Shouldn’t be more than a minute or two.”

Daniel grunted an acknowledgment and went back to the kitchen. After rooting around in the refrigerator for a minute he pulled out a beer and a carton of leftover Hanese stir-fry, which he ate cold. He was just wadding up the empty container and putting it in the trash compactor when the door to Kevin’s sanctum opened. The auburn-haired Sathmoran came out a moment later, accompanied by a beautiful and athletic-looking woman with short black hair and skin the color of teak. Kevin escorted her to the front door and held it open for her.

“Thank you again, Kevin,” she said, standing on tip-toe to kiss his cheek. “I’ll be making another appointment soon. You are amazing.”

Kevin smiled at her, his eyes gentle and kind even as he carefully avoided any show of affection in response to the kiss. “You’re too kind, Denise. Be careful with that shoulder, now, and don’t forget the exercises I showed you.”

“I won’t. Good night, Kevin.”

She left, and Kevin locked the door behind her. He let out a long sigh.

“Let me guess,” Daniel said. “Another one asked you about your ‘full-service’ plan.”

Kevin gave him a pained look. “Can someone please explain to me why the words ‘Not a licensed Sensualist’ are so difficult to understand? Do I need to use a larger font size on my advertisements?”

Daniel shrugged. “People see what they expect to see, and most massage therapists do work for the Guild. You’re good-looking and the ladies like the way you make them feel. It’s not surprising that they’d ask. Even if you aren’t licensed to do it for money, you still might do it for free.”

“The thing is, most of them know I’m gay,” Kevin grumbled, as he pulled out a beer of his own from the fridge and opened it. “I’ve never made any secret of it. Hells, I have Stephen’s picture out where they can all see it.”

Daniel smirked. “And how many men do you know who’ve interpreted ‘lesbian’ as ‘potentially bisexual under the right circumstances’?”

Kevin paused, the bottle halfway to his lips. “Okay, good point,” he said.

Daniel nodded once and smiled. “You up to doing a little heat treatment? Victor worked me over pretty hard today.”

“Not a problem. Give me a few minutes to grab some dinner and I’ll meet you in the sanctum.”

While it wasn’t as lavishly appointed as a massage sanctum in a Guild-licensed parlor, the room where Kevin met with his clients was designed to promote the same feelings of peace and security. Smooth, curved walls surrounded the room in an oval shape, and the intervening space between them and the adjacent rooms was packed with sound-absorbing insulation. The walls were painted a soft, warm yellow, and indirect light sources hidden discreetly around the room made it seem as if the entire surface of the walls were glowing. A few large potted plants stood at the far end of the room, concealing a stereo system that filled the sanctum with the sounds of rainfall, babbling streams, and the thoughtful melodies of a wooden flute. A narrow shelf ran along the wall opposite the door, holding massage oils, a box of tissues, a couple of framed photographs, and a pitcher of water next to a stack of paper cups. The center of the room was taken up by a fully-adjustable massage table, as comfortable as any you might find in a Sensualist parlor. A single wicker chair and a small chest full of more specialized tools were the only other items in the room.

Daniel drank a cup of water to cleanse his palate, then took off his clothes and lay face down on the table under two layers of sheets. Kevin knocked on the door a short time later.

“Ready,” Daniel said. He didn’t bother to look up when Kevin came in.

“So. What hurts?” Kevin asked, as he folded back the covers to expose Daniel’s back.

Daniel smirked, though he knew Kevin couldn’t see it. “What doesn’t?”

“All right,” Kevin said. He drizzled massage oil into his hands and began spreading it over Daniel’s back in a smooth, even layer. The scent of sandalwood filled the room, and Daniel closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “What hurts the most?”

“My ribs, my shoulders, and my sense of self-worth.”

Daniel had meant it as a joke, but Kevin didn’t laugh. He began working his way over the major muscle groups, applying moderate pressure and following whatever procedures the school had taught him during his training. Daniel didn’t understand much of the theory behind it, just that it worked. As he gradually increased the pressure, Kevin’s hands grew warm against Daniel’s skin, a manifestation of his mild pyrokinetic ability. The heat worked its way into the sore, tired muscles, soothing them and helping them to relax.

“It sounds like there’s a story there,” Kevin said, after a few minutes of silence.

“Mmh?” Daniel asked. Kevin’s touch was so soothing that he had nearly fallen asleep on the table.

“About your self-worth,” Kevin said.

Daniel let out a noncommittal grunt, which turned into a quiet moan as Kevin started working loose a nasty knot in his neck muscles. He lay there in silence for a couple of minutes while Kevin gently pushed and pulled at the knot, coaxing the muscle fibers into disengaging from each other. Eventually the pain and tightness eased, and Kevin worked his way down to another set of muscles in his lower back.

“I don’t know,” Daniel said at last, looking down through the hole in the head-brace to stare at the carpeting. “I guess I’m feeling conflicted. Victor said some stuff today that bothered me, and it’s been hanging over my head ever since.”

“Like what?”

Daniel normally would have shrugged, but his body was so content to just lie there that he didn’t bother to try. “That I’m soft. That the Hive is going to use me as long as it can, and it doesn’t really care about my happiness. That I’m going to be stuck here in this bachelor cell for the rest of my life unless I do something to change things.”

“Such a positive, inspiring fellow. He should have been a teacher.”

Daniel snorted, but he didn’t stay amused for long. “The thing is,” he said, after a moment, “that I’m not sure he’s wrong. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that the Hive doesn’t think I’m all that valuable.”

“Mmm.” Kevin pulled the sheets up over Daniel’s back, then folded back the lower end of the sheets on one side and began working on Daniel’s leg. Daniel fell quiet again for a while and let him work, replaying the earlier conversation with Victor in his mind.

“Can I ask you something?” he said after a while.

“Hm?”

“Why do you stay in the Collective? I mean, you don’t have any telepathy, your pyro talent’s just strong enough to help you in your job, and you’re not attracted to women. You’re probably the only person that the Hive has less use for than me.”

Kevin chuckled, a warm and gentle sound. “You may be right about that,” he said. “But
I enjoy the camaraderie. Not to mention the health care benefits and the guarantee of a roof over my head. If I wanted anything close to that kind of security on the outside, I’d probably have to join the Guild. As much as I can respect what they do, having sex for money doesn’t really appeal to me.” Daniel heard a smile creep into his voice. “I guess I’m too picky.”

“Heh, maybe.”

Kevin finished working on Daniel’s right leg and moved to his left before Daniel spoke up again. “Do you think he’s right?” he asked. “That the Hive will just keep using me, until there’s nothing left or until I get out?”

The redhead was silent for a moment, apparently weighing his words. “I think,” he said, “that you should ask yourself what you want to get out of life, and what you’re willing to do for it. For me, it wasn’t worth it to go solo, because I’m fairly happy where I am. For you, what you really want is a family, and realistically you’re not going to get that if you stay where you are now. What you need to ask yourself is what’s more important to you: starting a family of your own, or keeping the safety and security you have right now. You could work your butt off for a few years to raise some capital, work out a plan with the Elders to pay off your student loans, and then go out there and make a life for yourself. There are any number of low-powered teeps out there who wouldn’t mind marrying a guy like you and settling down. You could do it. But it would involve some risks and uncertainty and a lot of hard work. On the other hand, you could stay here, play it safe, and try to find a way to be happy with the situation you’re in.”

“Is that what you think I should do?”

“I’m not recommending one way or the other,” Kevin said. “It’s your life, Daniel. There’s no shame in deciding either way, but you have to be the one to make the choice. Ask yourself: what matters to you? What do you really want?”

“Rebecca,” Daniel said, without hesitation.

There was a long moment of silence. Kevin slowly lowered Daniel’s leg to rest on the table.

“I meant besides her,” he said softly.

Daniel let out a ragged sigh, the familiar pain harsh and burning in his chest. “Yeah, I know.” He paused. “If I did all those things you mentioned … if I built a life for myself outside the Collective … you don’t think she’d join me?”

Kevin put a gentle hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “It’s not my place to say,” he said. “I know she’s happy in the life she has now. Whether she would leave that to be with you … well. I guess that depends on what she wants most out of life.”

Daniel nodded thoughtfully.

“You feel all right now, physically?” Kevin asked.

Daniel shifted his muscles experimentally. “Yeah, I think I’m good now. Thanks, Kevin. For the massage, and for the talk.”

“Any time,” Kevin said, patting his shoulder. “I’ll go out and let you get dressed. Don’t forget to drink at least a full liter of water before bed, or you’ll be sorer than anything tomorrow.”

“Got it. Thanks again.”

Kevin shut the door behind him, and Daniel slowly gathered his clothes and put them back on. His thoughts were still a muddle, but Kevin’s advice had helped and a picture was gradually taking shape. What do I really want? he asked himself. And how badly do I want it?

He had some thinking to do. He would be meeting Victor again for sparring practice on Tuesday, and he intended to have an answer for him.


May 7.

“All right. Let’s hear it.”

Victor looked up at Daniel from behind his desk, his eyebrows raised in an innocent expression. “Hear what?”

“Whatever it is you’re planning to get out from under the Hive’s decision,” Daniel said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall of Victor’s office. “You obviously have something in mind, and you think you need me to do it. Otherwise you wouldn’t have said anything.”

Victor looked into Daniel’s eyes for a long moment, then raised a hand and gestured. The door swung shut and locked itself, and the chair in front of the desk slid back half a meter. “Have a seat,” he said.

Daniel sat, crossing his arms again as he did so. Victor sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers.

“About three weeks from now,” he said, “a skyship will be departing Algra and coming to Metamor City. On board will be a small package containing merchandise that has been purchased by my client.”

“Who’s the client?” Daniel asked.

“One of Metamor’s wealthier businessmen,” Victor said. “He’s working through a third party to keep the purchase anonymous. The contents of the package are extremely valuable, and if it came out that he was involved it’s likely that it would draw unwanted attention.”

“All right, so he’s bringing in the package. What does he want us to do, play delivery boy?”

“Essentially,” Victor agreed, either not catching the sarcasm or ignoring it. “The goods are of a sensitive nature. They won’t appear on the ship’s manifest. The client wants us to make the package disappear, before the customs agents secure the cargo, and then deliver it to a secure, private facility elsewhere in the city.”

Daniel nodded, frowning. “A smuggling job.”

Victor’s lip quirked. “Exactly.”

Daniel spread his hands. “So, what’s the catch? Why not hire professional runners for this?”

“We do have a couple of runners,” Victor said. “A face, to get us inside, and a courier, to get the package clear. But our client expects some other factions to make a play for it, and in that case things might get messier than a runner’s willing to deal with. He’s sending me as a security consultant, along with a few mercs for added muscle, just in case.”

Daniel frowned again. “And me?”

Victor shrugged. “The client is providing gear for one additional agent of my choosing. You’re a good fighter. You can do emergency healing if things turn bad. And I trust you.” He leaned forward over the table and lowered his voice. “I know you understand what it’s like to get screwed by the Elders,” he said. “I figure you’re not going to rat me out for keeping the money from this job to myself, instead of putting it into the Collective funds. But you’re also a fellow teep, and that counts for a lot.” He smirked. “These other guys the boss is hiring don’t like me. I’m a spooky, and that means they don’t trust me. It’s mutual. I need someone I can count on to watch my back.”

Daniel leaned back in the chair, nodding slowly. “How much is he offering for the job?”

“A hundred thousand marks,” Victor said evenly. “With an equal amount in hazard pay, if we see combat and still get the goods through. I’ll cut you twenty percent of that.”

Daniel’s mind spun through the possibilities. Twenty thousand marks wasn’t enough to set him for life, but it would cover most of the balance on his student loans. “Thirty percent,” he countered.

“Twenty-five, and I let you keep the gear.”

Daniel nodded and extended his arms, palms up. “Done.”

Victor clasped arms with him, then slid back his chair and stood. Daniel did likewise. “I’ll contact you a week before the op and give you the particulars on where and when,” Victor said. He looked at Daniel and narrowed his eyes. “Until then, I advise that you avoid any deep gestalts with anyone. If even a hint of this gets out, the deal’s off.”

“I know.” Daniel bowed briefly, then opened the door and walked out, passing through the samnak and onto the campus grounds.

Well, this is it, he thought. He’d agreed to take part in an illegal smuggling operation. The threat of violent opposition was considerable. He was conspiring with one of Westfall’s top instructors to withhold funds that, by the rules of Collective society, would be the rightful property of the entire Hive. He would have to spend the next three weeks deceiving the other members of his bachelor cell.

But if he pulled it off, he’d have the resources to start a life away from the Hive’s control – and maybe, just maybe, Rebecca still loved him enough to come with him.

I guess, he thought, that I know what really matters to me.


Chapter Three

May 25.

Daniel and Victor met their contacts in the back room of a small Pyralian restaurant on the third level of the Valley South borough. The place specialized in authentic cuisine, unlike most of the mainstream Pyralian chain restaurants at the lower levels; the premium grana cheeses, prosciutto hams and fine wines used here in one day's business cost more than those restaurants would earn in a week. Victor showed a business card to the capocameriere at the entrance and they were quickly ushered into the private room.

Unlike the rest of the restaurant, the meeting room was brightly lit. A long table with seating for about twenty filled most of the space, though only half its length had been set for dinner. The remaining surface area was taken up by stacks of maps, blueprints, and technical equipment, which Daniel was sure they'd be hearing about soon enough.

There were six other people in the room already, in addition to the waiters who were bringing out the food. Four of them were big, muscular men who looked out of place in their ill-fitting suits — mercs, if Daniel had to guess. One of them had green-gray skin and pointed ears that marked him as a Breed; the others were humans of varying ethnic extraction. They stood in the far corner of the room, talking to each other in low voices. One of them noticed as they came in and nodded to Victor, who returned the gesture.

An attractive, athletic-looking girl sat near the head of the table, her feet propped up on the chair next to her. She looked to be in her late teens, and seemed even more out of place than the mercs. Her hair was a wild poof that stuck out in all directions like a lion's mane, mousy brown with shocks of gold running through it. Her facial features were fine and angular, almost Elven in appearance, though her ears weren't pointed enough for her to have any measurable amount of Elf-blood in her. She was dressed in a black leather jacket and camo-green cargo pants, with a hot-pink raglan top that clung tightly to her chest and displayed her distinct lack of cleavage. As they came in she was balancing one of the table knives point-first on her finger, but upon spotting Victor and Daniel she flipped it lazily up into the air and caught it one-handed. Daniel stared, completely impressed, and the girl cocked her head at him and gave him a lopsided grin.

"Ah, Victor! Excellent." Daniel turned to the source of the voice and saw the room's last occupant. He was a handsome, slender man, with golden hair that fell around his shoulders — not merely blond, but golden, a brilliant metallic color that shimmered like liquid sunshine. Daniel had never seen hair that color before, and he figured that it must have been spellcrafted. The man wore a tan suit jacket over a collarless white shirt that showed off his abs, and he had a gold chain around his neck that matched his hair perfectly. He smiled broadly as he came up and clasped arms with Victor. "You're just in time for dinner," he said. His accent and mannerisms told Daniel that he must be a skywalker, a member of Metamor's upper class.

"Hello, Evan," Victor said, giving the other man a brief smile. "I'd like to introduce you to my business partner, Daniel Sharabi." He turned to Daniel and gestured. "Daniel, this is Evan Selindi."

Evan looked Daniel up and down. His eyes widened slightly, and Daniel could see now that they were a striking lavender color, another obvious sign of spellcrafted body modification. A slow grin spread across Evan's face, and—

Daniel blinked, startled. Evan's body and facial features shifted, changing right before his eyes. In the space of a few seconds the tall, slender man became a tall, slender and stunningly gorgeous woman. Her generous breasts strained against the white fabric of her shirt, but her suit still fit her perfectly — spellweave fabric, obviously. She smiled seductively at Daniel.

"Oh, Victor, darling, he's beautiful," she purred.

Victor smirked. "My mistake. Daniel, may I introduce Eva Selindi."

"Charmed," she said, extending her hand with the palm facing downward.

"…my lady," Daniel said, finding his voice and his manners at last. He took her hand and bowed over it, feeling somewhat numb. Growing up, he had never given much thought to the Curse of Metamor, or those who allowed themselves to be affected by it. He had known some Cursed people among the student body at Westfall, most notably Del, but most spookies wore the small subdermal implants that kept the Curse at bay. He was aware of androgynes, of course; they made up something like twenty percent of the city's population, and at Empire University the number had probably been closer to thirty. An up-close transformation like this one, though, was the sort of thing you usually only saw in movies. For one thing, self-fitting clothes were expensive.

"Please," she said, stepping closer and putting a hand on his chest. "Call me Eva."

"Don't waste your time, Eva," Victor said, clearly amused. "Daniel's a teep. Get your leg over him and you'll be stuck in his head for the rest of your life."

She took a step back, alarmed. She looked at Daniel questioningly, and he nodded, blushing furiously. "Sorry," he said. It was a bitter irony he'd thought about far too often: he wasn't a strong enough teep for the Hive to want him, but he had just enough power that it was impossible for him to have sex without entering a gestalt. While that made the experience doubly intense and intimate, it also meant that he could never have sex with a mundane safely; mundies didn't have the ability to separate themselves again once their minds had merged, and it wasn't the sort of thing a teep could do for someone else.

Eva pouted. "Well, feck," she said, clearly disappointed. "I suppose I'll have to make do with the eye candy, then. I'd ask to take a full-body scan of you for a WorldNet avatar, but I suspect you'd rather not leave any records of your involvement in this."

"That would be best," Victor said dryly. "Are you ready to get started?"

Eva adjusted her suit jacket and smiled, apologetic. "Sorry. Yes. Please, have a seat, and welcome."

The four mercs had taken their seats by now and were helping themselves to the appetizers. The teenaged girl looked up at Daniel as he approached, then put her feet down and nodded toward the chair she'd been saving. He smiled at her and slid into the seat. "Thanks," he murmured. "Those guys are a little scary-looking."

She twisted the corner of her lip into a quirky half-smile. "You're not the only one who thought so," she said, her bright blue eyes sparkling with wry amusement. She put out a hand. "Name's Callie Linder."

"Daniel Sharabi," he said, clasping her hand briefly. "Nice to meet you."

"Right back at ya." She reached over to one of the appetizer plates and grabbed a piece of fried calamari. She peered curiously at the crispy bundle of tentacles before popping it into her mouth.

"You're a runner, aren't you?" Daniel asked.

She nodded. "And you're not."

He blushed, embarrassed. "Is it that obvious?"

"Kinda yeah," she said, grinning. "Don't sweat it. Everybody's gotta start somewhere."

I'm getting the kindly old veteran routine from a teenager, Daniel thought. Greeeat. "Been doing this for a while, have you?" he asked.

"Almost three years," she said.

He blinked. "How old are you?"

"Eighteen."

Daniel gaped. Callie saw his expression and snorted.

"Tuck your tongue back in," she said, grabbing another piece of calamari from the tray. "I'm a Street rat. We do what we gotta. 'Least I didn't have to turn prossie."

Daniel blushed again. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to imply … well, anything, really. You obviously must know what you're doing, or you wouldn't be here. I'm just wondering how a fifteen-year-old runner managed to avoid getting herself killed."

She shrugged. "Just lucky, I guess." She winked, as if that meant something more than the obvious, but if so Daniel didn’t get the reference.

Eva took a seat at the head of the table, and Victor sat down on her left across from Callie. He and the runner nodded to each other — obviously they'd met before — and the meal began without fanfare. Daniel talked with Callie for most of that time; the girl was chatty and likeable, and she seemed curious about telepaths in general and his own life in particular. He didn't deny the existence of the Psi Collective, which was something of an open secret, but he avoided any discussion of crèches or breeding cells, which the general public did not know about. Any mention of the telepaths' unusual personal lives would provoke questions about why they were so obsessed with having large numbers of children, and the answer wasn't likely to do anything good for teep/mundy relations.

"So why are you taking this run?" Callie asked. "It doesn't sound like you want to make a career out of this."

"I don't." Daniel paused, weighing his words. "My girlfriend's parents don't think I'm good enough for her. They want her to be with this other guy who's more talented, has more upward mobility." He shrugged. "I'm trying to get enough money for us to run off and make a new life together."

Callie grinned. "Aww, that's so romantic!" she said. "I hope it works out for you."

Daniel gave her half a smile. "Yeah, me too."

After dinner the plates were cleared away and Eva stood to face the group. "Thank you all for coming," she said. "Our mutual employer is grateful for your assistance and hopes that this will be a profitable venture for all of us. The ship bearing our intended cargo will be docking at Matthias Skyport tomorrow morning, so I want to make sure we're all clear on our respective duties before we begin. Victor?"

Victor gestured, and the maps and blueprints at the far end of the table floated up and spread themselves out over the available surface. Daniel could see now that they were diagrams of the skyport and the surrounding area.

"Evan has spent the last year infiltrating the skyport management," Eva said. "His security clearance is high enough to get us through the checkpoint and into the restricted areas of the 'port. The rest of you will be wearing doppel charms and using the ID cards of off-duty employees."

"Won't work," one of the mercs said. "A charm that strong'll set off the alarms."

"Normally it would, yes," Eva agreed. "But one of the guards at the security checkpoint tomorrow is on our employer's payroll. He'll disable the alarms and let you through."

"What about the other one?" Callie asked. "There's always two guards at every checkpoint."

Eva smiled wickedly and shifted into a seductive pose. "I'll take care of that," she said.

Callie smirked and nodded. Daniel felt pretty sure that Eva could distract just about any heterosexual male with a pulse — and on the off-chance that the guard wasn't a hetero male, there was always Evan.

Over the next half-hour Eva laid out the details of the plan. It seemed pretty straightforward to Daniel: The skyship was too big to offload its cargo directly into the bays at the skyport, so a group of deck hands would be sent up in a cargo tender to retrieve the ship's contents. Victor and Daniel would go with them, disguised as part of the group, and Victor would locate the client's parcel and guard it during the ride back down to the cargo bay, which the mercs would be responsible for securing against any outside interference. Once there, Victor would hand the parcel off to Callie, who would take it out of the skyport through the ventilation system and deliver it to its intended destination, a private security firm on the fourth level of the Central borough. Victor, Callie and the mercs asked questions about various technical aspects of the mission, most of which went over Daniel's head. The trickiest part, from his perspective, would be Callie's exit through the ventilation ducts, which were a maze of narrow tunnels that seemed like it would be dangerous and disorienting to travel through.

"Do you have a computer model of this place?" Callie asked, eying the blueprints. "I'd like some time to explore these tunnels in virtual before I do it for real."

"It's all on our server," Eva promised. "We have a terminal with a spelljack downstairs; I'll show you where it is when we're done here. Take all the time you need."

Callie nodded and leaned back in her chair. She was clearly thinking hard about the run, but she didn't look frightened. I would be if I had to go in there, Daniel thought. I wonder if that's claustrophobia or just common sense.

"Are there any other questions?" Eva asked.

"Yeah," Daniel said, raising his hand. All eyes turned to him.

"Obviously you're expecting trouble on this run," he said. "Otherwise you wouldn't be paying us this kind of money. At what point in all of this should we expect to start getting shot at?"

Eva's expression turned grave. "Our employer's rivals are intelligent and resourceful," she said. "Interference is possible at any point during the run. I can tell you that the skyship itself has been thoroughly screened both before and during the flight, so it's unlikely that there will be anyone waiting for you when you come on board. The most vulnerable point in the operation is the transfer from the ship to the cargo bay: no matter which pylon the ship docks at, there will be at least a hundred meters of empty air between the ship and the bay. Skimmer traffic is forbidden in that air space, so a drive-by attack is unlikely, but there's a good chance that they'll try something aboard the cargo tender."

"So why not send more of us up there?" Daniel asked, gesturing at the mercs.

"If we can't hold the cargo bay, it doesn't matter how many people we have on the tender," Victor said. "There's a minimum of four skyport security guards on duty at any cargo bay where a ship is coming in. We have to have enough people to replace all of them, or one of them will spot the fact that we're smuggling out one of the packages before Customs arrives."

"Or, worse yet," said Eva, "one of those additional security guards could be an enemy agent."

Daniel nodded glumly. He understood the logic, even if he didn't like it.

"Any other questions?" Eva asked, looking around the table. There were none. "All right. Ms Linder, come with me; the rest of you, try to get some sleep. Skids up in ten hours."


May 25, 1995 CR. Third level, Valley Central Borough, Metamor City.

Seven hours prior to Eva Selindi's briefing.

Brian Sommers awoke to the sound of soft, gentle breathing and the sensation of warm, bare flesh against him on all sides. He smiled, letting out a contented sigh. Waking up nestled amongst three naked women was something he still hadn't quite gotten used to, but he was more than willing to keep practicing until it became second nature.

He opened his eyes and looked left to see soft, dark hair and Rebecca's round, angelic face against his shoulder. His arm was wrapped around her, and he lovingly ran his fingers over her belly, swollen with the tiny life that had been growing inside her for the last five months. Sasha's small, light frame was draped atop him, her face against his chest and her legs entwined with his. Fiona lay nestled against his other side, her lean and muscular body pressed up close beside him, her hand resting possessively on Sasha's back.

Brian hoped that no one was going to wake up with any cramps. It was a bit of a trick getting all of them on one bed, and they didn't normally try it, but their nightly gestalt had gotten … interesting, and none of them had wanted to leave during the afterglow. Gradually they had drifted off to sleep, their minds slipping apart from one another even as their bodies remained entwined.

I'm the luckiest man in the world, Brian thought, and not for the first time.

Sasha murred happily, pressing her face to his skin and kissing him. And don't you forget it, she said, her thoughts wrapping around his own like a lover's arms.

Without disengaging from their bond, Brian reached out to Rebecca. You there, Becks?

Rebecca's thoughts spiraled lazily up into the link. There aren't any pink unicorns, don't be silly. It's just a faery trying to trick you.

Brian chuckled. No pink unicorns. Got it, he said.

Rebecca's body tensed against Brian's, a flutter of confusion running through her thoughts. She relaxed a moment later, a smile drifting onto her lips. Hey, guys. Sorry, I was dreaming.

So we gathered, Sasha said, her thoughts amused. She lifted her head, blew a wisp of blonde-white hair out of her eyes, and sent out another tendril of thought that echoed through their bond. Wake up, Frizzy, she said, her tone gentle but insistent.

Fiona groaned, and cool streams of thought reluctantly spilled forth out of the deep, dark waters of her mind, the flow carefully controlled even as it washed through each of them in turn. What time is it? And don't call me that.

Frizzy, Frizzy, Frizzy, Frizzy, Frizzy! Sasha chanted, her telepathic voice rebounding back and forth through the link like a vibration on a string.

"Gah!" The sound escaped from Fiona's lips unbidden, and a surge of thought and emotion ran through the link. She sat up and grabbed Sasha's hair. Obnoxious wench! Come here! she said, pulling the blonde woman's head up and kissing her roughly. Sasha growled hungrily and clambered over Brian to wrap herself around Fiona. She had a little too much momentum as she did so, and together they rolled off the side of the bed, letting out a shared yip of surprise as they landed on the floor.

Brian laughed. Everyone okay down there? he asked, though if there had been any serious injury he would certainly have felt it through the link.

Just fine, thanks, Sasha said, her mental voice thick with desire. Frizzy broke my fall.

There was another cry of mock outrage from Fiona. I'll show you frizzy, she said. Spread your legs, wench. By the time I'm done with you they'll think you put your finger in an electrical socket.

The two women disengaged their link to Brian and Rebecca, now fully occupied with other matters. Brian shook his head, marveling again at the difference between the placid surface that Fiona showed the world and the powerful currents of emotion that ran underneath. She'd joined the cell out of duty and simple friendship but, by Velena, she was a tigress in bed. Knowing that made her unflappable exterior and keen logical mind seem that much more remarkable, though sometimes Brian wondered why she felt the need to hold back as much as she did. The gestalt could tell you a lot about a person, but Fiona had some very old and very solid defenses in place around certain parts of herself. Sasha could have wormed her way through them if she'd really wanted to, but it would have been an invasion of privacy and a violation of trust. Fiona would open up when she was ready, and not a day sooner.

Rebecca yawned and put an arm around him. I wish we had a teek in our cell, she said, her thoughts still sounding muzzy. I'm hungry, but I don't wanna get up.

Brian reached up and stroked her hair. Sorry, hon, he said. I could run the microwave from here, but I can't put anything in it.

I know, she said, pouting. A moment later she brightened again. Hey, what about magnetism? There's a can of peaches in the cupboard.

Brian smiled. Aluminum cans are only paramagnetic, Becca. Even if I could produce a field strong enough to move one all the way from the kitchen, I'd probably pull a steel girder down on us first.

Oh. Well, darn, she said. I guess I better get up, then. This kid's not gonna feed herself.

Brian touched her cheek. Stay, he said. I'll bring you breakfast in bed.

She grinned, then leaned forward and kissed him. You're so nice to me, she said. You all are. I don't know what I'd do without you guys.

There was a shriek of delight from the floor off to Brian's right. He raised an eyebrow. Get a lot more sleep, probably, he said, then climbed out of bed and grabbed his robe. Stepping carefully around Sasha and Fiona, he made his way down the hall to the kitchen.

Sunlight was streaming in through the south-facing windows in the adjoining living room, filling the apartment with a warm golden light. Brian glanced at the clock and saw that it was already after noon. A really interesting night, he thought wryly. At least Mum can't complain anymore that I don't get enough exercise. He pulled a carton of eggs out of the fridge and began scrambling them all with a bit of milk in a large glass bowl, then set a large skillet on the stove and began heating it up.

He had just poured the eggs into the skillet and was standing by with the spatula when the front door chimed. He frowned and looked back toward the master bedroom; Fiona and Sasha were still going at it, oblivious. He turned back to the eggs, ignoring the chime when it sounded a second time. Whoever it was could come back later.

I apologize for the intrusion, Brian Sommers, said a cool grey voice in his mind, but this cannot wait.

Brian swallowed nervously. It was one of the Elders. He almost asked the Elder to just tell him whatever was so damned important from right there, but it would have been rude. Sighing, he turned the heat down to low and put a cover over the skillet, then went over to the front door and slipped outside.

The Elder was dressed as they usually were, in plain clothes of drab, inconspicuous colors. The older telepath's face was as placid as ever, but the serious grey eyes held deep concern.

Elder, Brian said, bowing. Though they were right next to each other, he kept their conversation inside the link in order to keep the neighbors from overhearing them. What can I do for you?

Your services are required for a mission of the utmost sensitivity, the Elder said.

Brian frowned. I'm not a psi-op anymore, he said. If you want me to fix your WorldNet server, or clean a virus off your terminal, fine. Otherwise, I'd thank you to find someone else.

There is no one else, the Elder said. We have few electrokineticists of your caliber, and none are available who can match your skills at infiltration.

Well, sorry, but I'm not available either, Brian said, his eyes narrowing. Five years of service and then a breeding cell. That was the deal. Didn't you tell me that being a father was a more important job for me than any single mission the Collective might need me for?

It is an important job, the Elder agreed. I do not deny it. Unfortunately, if the present situation is not dealt with, your fatherhood will not matter, because all of us may soon be dead.

Brian crossed his arms, glancing briefly at the door and then back at the Elder. Talk fast, he said.

Tomorrow morning the vampire syndicate is bringing in a shipment from a biotechnology lab overseas, the Elder said gravely. Past intelligence reports on this facility have indicated that it is involved in the manufacture of nanotech viruses.

Brian shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. Nanotech viruses, also called "nanopixies" or just "nips", were magical creatures the size of bacteria that could enter a person's body and carry out any number of possible effects. They fed off of their host's internal mana reserves, multiplied as needed, and then set to work doing whatever their designers had programmed them to do. They were extraordinary useful little things, and since their creation scientists had taught them how to perform gene therapy, high-precision body modification, toxic waste cleanup, and countless other functions. But they could also be used to cause tremendous harm, if the researcher didn't mind breaking a dozen laws and international treaties in the process.

The exact nature of the technology being imported is unknown, the Elder continued, but we know that the parcel in question was not registered on the ship's manifest, which suggests that it is contraband of such a serious nature that the vampires cannot simply pay off the customs agents to look the other way. Given the vampires' animosity toward telepaths–

And vice versa, Brian said pointedly. Don't play the oppressed minority game with me. The Hive has done plenty to interfere with the local vamps over the years.

The Elder smiled thinly. Just so. Given that, the Hive fears that this package may contain weapons components that would threaten the safety of the Collective. We want you to intercept the shipment and ensure that it does not.

Brian frowned. He wasn't liking the sound of this at all. If the vamps find out we stole something from them, my life isn't going to be worth lutin spit, he said. How am I supposed to do what you ask and still protect my family?

We will provide you with illusion charms so that you and your fellow agents can disguise your identities, the Elder assured him. A nondetection scroll will prevent you from leaving behind any incriminating traces of genetic material. As long as none of you are captured, they will not be able to identify you.

Brian put his hands on his hips and lowered his head, thinking. The Hive was obviously serious about this if they were putting forward these kinds of resources. I want an extra ten thousand marks in my cell's discretionary account, he said. Plus access to whatever funds we may need to do the mission itself.

It will be done, the Elder promised. The skyship is docking at Matthias Skyport tomorrow morning at six-thirty. Del Matthews and Trace Umbara have already offered to assist you in your mission; I suggest you contact them immediately.

"Just like old times," Brian murmured.

The Elder turned to go, then paused and looked back. Oh, yes. One more thing.

Brian raised his eyebrows and waited.

It is likely that the syndicate has hired highly talented local help to assist them in smuggling the package out of the skyport, the Elder said. You should expect intense opposition, and be prepared to meet it with force.

Brian nodded heavily. What level of force are we talking about here?

The older telepath looked regretful. Your personal identities will be secure, but it is essential that the vampires be given nothing to tie this matter back to the Collective. Their political power is too great, and they could bring great pressure to bear against the Senate if it could be shown that telepaths were responsible for the theft. The Elder's eyes turned hard. Stay unseen as much as possible, but if you are identified as telepaths, you must not let word get back to the syndicate. Shoot to kill.


Chapter Four

May 26.

“We’re going up there?”

“Uh huh.”

“And you’ve got to come back down through the ventilation system?”

“Yep.”

Daniel leaned close to the window and stared up – and up – and up – at the towers of Matthias Skyport. The complex rose four hundred meters, past all four levels of skyways, and then another hundred meters above that. From there his gaze followed the lines of the spell-hardened steel docking pylons, which ran another two hundred meters above the bodies of the towers. Apart from the Majestrix’s Citadel – which at fifteen hundred meters was closer to being geography than architecture – it was the tallest structure in Metamor City. Dozens of skyships of varying sizes were moored at the branching network of pylons, like birds perched on the ends of an old-fashioned television antenna. The largest ones were two hundred meters long and massed forty thousand tonnes, not including passengers and cargo; their featherweight enchantments and antigrav generators were the only things keeping them in the air.

He turned to Callie. “So, did you take this job because you were suicidal, or just crazy?”

She cast a sideways glance at him, smirking. “Afraid of heights, Daniel? How long have you lived in this city?”

Daniel grimaced. “All my life. But there’s a point where common sense tells you to run away screaming, and it’s a good three hundred meters before you reach the top of that thing.”

Callie shrugged. “Meh, it’s not that scary. Just don’t look down, that’s all.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “How can you get through the vent shafts if you don’t look down?”

She grinned. “I can’t, but I’m not the one afraid of falling.”

“It’s not the fall that worries me, it’s—"

“—the sudden stop at the end of it!” They finished the old joke in unison, and Daniel chuckled, feeling some of the tension ease out of his belly. He’d never been on a run like this before, but he’d done plenty of reckless and stupid things during his years at Westfall and had come through all right. He could do this. One job, he told himself. One job, and I’ll never have to do anything this stupid again.

There was a rush of air, and a maglev subway train glided out of the tube behind them and pulled up to the boarding platform. There were only a few dozen people waiting for it – not many people were up this early on Sunday, unless they were Ecclesiasts going to church – and they quickly filed into the mostly-empty cars.

“Let’s go,” Evan said, and they did.

Daniel sat next to Callie near the front of the car, with Evan and Victor across from them. The four mercs had spaced themselves out along the length of the car, their movements restless and wary. Eva had introduced them to Daniel last night, but they all used code-names to remain anonymous and he hadn’t worked very hard to remember them. It wasn’t as if he intended to work with any of them again.

Other than Evan, none of the members of their party looked anything like their real selves; the doppel charms their employer had provided made each of them look like a skyport employee whose absence from work was guaranteed. Daniel didn’t want to think too much about how those absences might have been guaranteed, or how their ID cards had ended up in Evan’s hands. Maybe they all won free weekend vacations out of town, he thought. Yeah, that’s how I’d do it.

In any event, Daniel and Victor were dressed in drab green coveralls and looked like a couple of run-of-the-mill deck monkeys on their way to work. Victor looked like a bald-headed Irombian with skin as black as coal, while Daniel was now a blond-haired, blue-eyed Kitchlander – a role reversal that Daniel had found amusing when they first slipped on the charms. Callie looked like a thirtysomething maintenance worker, her eyes sunken and bloodshot and her skin prematurely weathered by too much tanning in her younger years. Even her voice had been tweaked by the charm; it was hoarse and gravelly, like she’d spent too many years sucking down smoke from cigs or cabs.

They sat in silence during the ten-minute ride from the subway station to the skyport. Daniel spent the time running through the plan in his mind, trying to envision the maps they’d studied last night and the routes they would follow for getting in and out. Assuming nothing goes wrong, the cynical part of his brain noted. Riiight. And after that we’ll go skiing in the Sixth Hell.

There was a soft thump as they passed through one of the spell-fields that kept the subway tubes down to one-third of normal atmospheric pressure, and the sound of air resistance against the body of the maglev train increased substantially. The train began to slow, and the passengers gathered their belongings and got to their feet.

“Matthias Skyport, south entrance,” a pleasant female voice said from the loudspeakers. “Please watch your step when exiting the train.”

The skyport’s subway terminal was a major interchange point for four of the city’s subway lines, and it was much fancier than the small local station where they had boarded the train. Many of the floors and supporting pillars were marble, and the walls were covered with mosaics of skyships and famous Metamor City landmarks. Figment generators projected three-dimensional illusions hawking merchandise or advertising exotic destinations, accompanied by recorded audio tracks that enthusiastically described what the illusions were trying to sell you. Here and there street musicians sat with their instrument cases open in front of them, playing guitars or flutes or tribal drums or bouzoukis for anyone who would stop to listen to them. On the upper levels there were food vendors and shops set into the walls of the terminal — a full-blown shopping mall ready and willing to help separate passing travelers from their money, even if they were just here to catch a connecting train. Even early on a Sunday morning, this terminal was a beehive of activity, and Daniel and the rest of his team moved unnoticed through the crowds.

The employees’ entrance was located at the end of an unmarked hallway near the main entrance, where hundreds of people waited in line to pass through the security checkpoints from the subway station to the skyport proper. Security was tight, and long lines of bored and irritated people waited to have their luggage and selves inspected for threats both magical and mundane. The Empire had been having a problem lately with terrorist attacks from Sidhe partisans, who held the Prophet Merai hin’Dana responsible for the devastation of their home plane of the Dreamlands. The faery lords had targeted the Empire as an outlet for their frustration because the ageless Merai lived at the Citadel with the Majestrix; their demands were that either Kyia must exile her from Metamor, at which point she would certainly be targeted for assassination, or she must do something about the armies of celestials and fiends who had turned the Dreamlands into an eternal battleground for their Great War. Majestrix Kyia had refused to back down on her support of the Prophet, and thus far no good solution to the Dreamlands problem had presented itself. Imperial negotiators had been trying for years to compromise with the Sidhe by offering them land on the Material Plane, but thus far the two sides had been unable to agree on what was acceptable compensation for the loss of the infinite Dreamlands. The last that Daniel had heard was that the Sidhe were demanding all of Sathmore west of the mountains, and the odds of that happening were only slightly better than the odds of him getting through the upcoming run without being shot at.

In contrast to the public lines, there were only a few people ahead of them at the security checkpoint for the employee entrance. Evan took the lead here, walking well ahead of the others and greeting the guards amiably as he approached. The guard on the near side of the checkpoint scanned his ID card, which caused the light on his terminal to flash green. He then waved Evan through a series of arches that housed the checkpoint’s array of metal detectors and spell sensors, which gave all-clear indicators as Evan passed under them. Another guard waited on the far side of the checkpoint with a sensor wand, though he showed no intention of using it on Evan since he had passed through the machines without incident. At this point Evan shifted to Eva, who leaned in close to the guard and began chatting with him in a distinctly friendly manner. Within seconds he was so thoroughly wrapped around her finger that Daniel doubted he could remember his own name.

While Eva was doing her best to persuade the second guard that he might have to strip-search her in the interests of national security, the first guard reached behind his computer terminal and flipped a small hidden switch. He winked at Daniel and the others, scanning each of their cards in turn and sending them through the now-disabled detectors. The second guard never took his eyes off of Eva for even a moment.

Daniel, Victor, Callie and the mercs continued down the hallway and up a short flight of steps to a small lobby with four lifts. They took the first empty one on the express side and began the long journey up to the main cargo bays.

“We’re not waiting for Eva?” Daniel asked.

Victor smirked. “Don’t worry about her,” he said. “Once she finishes with that guard she’ll go to her post and start running interference for us. The only way you’ll see her again today is if something goes wrong.”

“Oh.” Daniel looked up at the LED display above the lift doors. As he watched the numbers slowly tick their way upward, he hoped that Eva was as good at getting them out of trouble as she was at getting them into it.


“Any sign of them yet?”

Fiona scanned the crowd in the skyport’s subway terminal, her cool green eyes taking in everything. “Negative on visual,” she said.

Sasha touched Brian’s hand lightly. “They’re here,” she said softly. “I just made contact with Del. He and Trace found each other in one of the shops. They’ll meet us by the security checkpoint.”

Brian nodded, then reached up and readjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. His duffel bag slid off his shoulder as he did so, and he hiked it back up with an irritated grunt. There wasn’t much in there that he really needed for the mission, but a group of passengers without any luggage would have looked suspicious. Granted, the disguise charms, fake ID cards and nondetection scroll inside the bag would cause them trouble enough if anyone searched it, but at least this way Brian only had to get one bag through the checkpoint unnoticed. It would have been worse if they’d had the equipment spread between all of them.

“There they are,” Fiona said.

Brian looked up to see Del and Trace loitering near the entrance to the queue for the security checkpoint, looking dapper and respectable in their tailored suits. Brian was dressed like a tourist heading out for a summer vacation, and he felt almost shabby by comparison in his shorts, t-shirt and sandals. The wolf-man and the Irombian didn’t make eye contact with them as they joined the line for the checkpoint, but Brian felt their happiness and excitement as Sasha patched them into a shared link.

Brian! Del called, his telepathic voice carrying the psychic equivalent of a joyful hug. Long time no see, man!

You’re telling me! Brian said, grinning. How are you and Josephine doing?

Fantastic, thanks for asking. We have a daughter now – Elizabeth Yanlin.

No way! How old is she?

Four months, Del said, his pride obvious. You should see her, B – gorgeous white and silver coat, just like her mom. She’s going to be a heartbreaker when she grows up.

Four months! Damn, it’s been too long.

I’ll second that, Trace said. I hear you and the girls have got one of your own on the way.

Yep! Sasha said. Becca’s got eighteen weeks to go. Sometime in the next month we have to decide whether the next one is going to be Fiona’s or mine.

Fiona unconsciously reached up and fingered her birth control amulet.

I think we all know which way that’s going to go, Trace said, amused.

Fiona cleared her throat and stood up a bit straighter, bringing her hand abruptly back down to her side. So, what about you, Trace? she asked coolly, the line of her thoughts so clear and direct as to override any further conversation on the subject. I imagine they must have assigned you to stud service. How many other men’s wives have you impregnated in the last year?

“Fiona!” Sasha whispered, her eyes wide.

But Trace was just shaking his head and chuckling, a basso rumble of amusement. You’ve got me all wrong, Fi, he said. I’ve settled down. Got a nice little cell going with four smart, beautiful ladies up in Soulshore. Our second son’s due in a month or so. I couldn’t be happier.

Fiona blinked, a ripple of complex emotions running through the link. Well, she said. You can consider me suitably surprised, Trace Umbara. She paused. And impressed, she added, her tone softening. I never took you for a family man.

Hey, that’s all right, girl, he said easily. It took me by surprise, too. But I wouldn’t trade it.

They continued their silent chat as the security line moved forward at glacial speed, catching up on a year’s worth of gossip. As they drew close to the end of the line Brian shifted past the others to the front of the group, bringing the big duffel bag along with him. While he wrestled it onto the conveyor belt that would take it through the x-ray machine and spell detectors, he reached out with his electrokinesis. He found a power line near his foot and nudged an exposed toe against the side of the machine, riding the current through the line and into the spell detector. The layout of the circuits was clean and well-designed, and he quickly found the logic pathways that led to the alarm system. With a tiny effort of will he shut down that circuit, as well as the one that was designed to notify the user if the detector went off-line. No matter what the sensors detected, the machine wouldn’t tell its operators about it. The entire process had taken only a few seconds.

The guard took his ID card and scanned it. The light turned green, and he looked at the display. His eyes went up, and he turned to Brian, looking impressed.

“Here you are, Captain,” he said respectfully, giving a little bow as he handed the card back to Brian. “Enjoy your vacation, sir.”

Brian nodded his thanks and walked through the arches to the other side. The other members of their group likewise passed through without incident. All of them were military veterans with honorable discharges, and that meant that no one would give them any hassle unless there was a damned good reason to do so.
Brian waited for Fiona and Sasha, then continued down the hallway. Trace and Del followed a few paces behind them. When they were out of sight of the security checkpoint Brian stopped at a public access information terminal, where he quickly rode the circuits back to the security checkpoint and turned the magic sensors back on. The last thing they needed was to inadvertently help some faery terrorist set off a curse in the middle of the skyport.

Before pulling out of the system, Brian checked the skyport maps and found the loading bay where the Syndicate’s skyship was scheduled to deliver its cargo for inspection. He turned back to the others, who were looking at him expectantly. He wondered again how he had been the one who ended up as the leader of this group during their years with MID. He’d never particularly thought of himself as leadership material, but he had sort of fallen into the role and now was apparently stuck with it.

Cargo’s coming to bay ninety-four, he said. That whole area is restricted, so we’ll have to get past a guard station on the eighty-seventh floor.

They all sent back waves of assent through the link, and together they rode an express lift up to the correct floor. It was one of the highest floors that was open to the public, and the area was full of restless travelers crowded near their respective gates. Shuttles or crane-like boarding arms would connect to those gates to ferry the passengers to their intended vessels, but it didn’t look like any of this morning's flights were ready for departure yet. Brian led his team past the gates and over to a pair of restrooms that stood beside a door reading Authorized Personnel Only. The security door was warded by an electronic keypad with an integrated ID card reader.

“You’re up, Sasha,” Brian murmured. The slight woman nodded and went inside the women's restroom, which was closer to the security door. About a minute later a skyport employee came up to the door and swiped his ID card in the reader, then punched in a code on the keypad. The door beeped and the employee went inside. Sasha came out of the bathroom a few seconds later, looking pleased.

Got it, she said through the link. Today’s passcode is nine-five-zero-six-four-S-C. There are four armed guards in the security station on the far side of the door.

Brian turned to Fiona, who nodded. Not a problem, she said. Just persuade the door to accept my identification. I will take care of the rest.

Will do. Sasha, Del, Trace, keep a look-out.

Brian pulled two disguise amulets out of the duffel bag — each was clipped to a fake ID with a photograph and embedded personal data that matched the persona crafted in the amulet. He handed Fiona's to her and placed his own in his pocket. They went into their respective restrooms, and Brian went inside a stall before he slipped the amulet over his head. He felt a tingling sensation as the magic took hold, watching as his body changed into that of a pale-skinned Sathmoran man in his early fifties. His clothes changed, too, to mimic the uniforms worn by the skyport security personnel.

It was only a glamour — pure illusion. Underneath the weave of light and mana fields, he still felt like himself. Normally he would have worried about mages seeing through the glamour, but the Elder assured him that the magic was subtle and tightly woven. Under mage sight it would look like a minor cosmetic charm, unless a wizard got suspicious enough to do a deep examination of the spell. Fortunately, most travelers in the middle of a long trip would be too tired, cranky or excited to notice anything that didn't directly affect them.

Brian waited until anyone who had seen him enter the restroom had already left or gone into one of the stalls. He came back out and saw a uniformed woman waiting for him near the entrance to the ladies' room. Fiona looked like a twenty-something Yamatoan woman, with straight black hair, olive skin, a round face and a gymnast's build. She had a distinct scar across her left eyebrow, the thin white line of an old knife wound or claw mark. It was a nice touch; people who tried to remember her later would fixate on that distinctive feature. The more solid the picture of you that a witness had in his mind, the less likely it was that he would even consider you might be wearing a glamour.

Fiona smirked, her Oriental eyes narrowing almost to slits with the wry expression. "You look like you could be my father," she said softly, as they walked over to the security door.

He chuckled. "Obviously you haven't looked in a mirror lately," he said, placing a hand on the security pad. Fiona reached over and swiped her fake ID while Brian sent a finger of thought down into the circuitry. A moment of persuasion convinced the computer that the card was valid, and it flashed the message ENTER PASS CODE. Brian punched in the code that Sasha had pulled out of the employee's mind. The door beeped obediently and unlocked, and Fiona slipped inside.

Brian moved as if to go in after her, then paused and went over to a nearby garbage can. He pulled a couple of used tissues out of his pocket and discarded them — another bit of pantomime, in case anyone watching wondered why he didn’t go through the door. He smoothed the sides of his pants to banish a few imaginary wrinkles.

That ought to be enough time, he thought. He went back to the door, scanned his card, punched in the pass code, and went through. On the other side was a narrow corridor, which ran straight for about seven meters before disappearing around a corner. To his left was the wall shared with the women's bathroom. To the right was a security station, with large bulletproof windows along its entire length and only a single door in or out. The four guards inside were lying on the floor, all unconscious. None had even had time to draw their weapons, and Fiona had bound their hands behind them with their own handcuffs. Now she stood in the midst of her handiwork, her hands on her hips. She had a light sheen of sweat on her forehead, but she wasn't breathing hard.

"What kept you?" she asked.

Brian snorted. "Show-off." He pulled one of the rolling chairs up to a terminal and sat down, looking up at the array of monitors and closed-circuit vid screens that surrounded him. There was an open data port for a spelljack mounted next to the keyboard, but Brian didn't need technomagical hardware to interface with a computer network. Sticking his finger into the data port, he sent his will out into the system's active memory. The software was there waiting for him.

His work with the MID had taken Brian into some of the most secure computer networks in the world. Any network of more than a few machines was equipped with some kind of security system to prevent intrusion; the ones that Brian had faced were often capable of sending defensive magic back into the invader's spelljack, shutting down his connection or painting him with a magical signature that would allow him to be found and arrested. Some of the nastier systems actually carried lethal countermeasures, though these were generally frowned upon by civilized nations — officially, anyway. Unofficially, intelligence agencies spared no expense — and no mercy — in dealing with those who might steal their secrets.

Since joining the Westfall crèche full-time at age 10, Brian had never met a defensive system that could stop him for long. Any security system smart enough to react to an intrusion had to live in the software, and Brian's power extended to the physical circuits and storage media on which the software depended. He could see everything a program was doing simultaneously, both in the virtual world of the software and in the physical world of the hardware. If he decided that a program would not access a given circuit, or store a key piece of data, it simply did not happen. He'd been doing it for so long that he didn't even have to think about the mechanics of it anymore. It was as natural and instinctive as breathing.

The skyport's security system was good, by civilian standards, but it didn't hold a candle to the programs Brian had done battle with on his psi op missions. In less than a minute he had administrator-level control over all of the network's systems.

Okay, it's clear, he told Sasha through the link. Get changed and come on in.

Sasha and the others joined them a minute later, all of them wearing their disguise amulets and looking like skyport employees. Del's fur was a glossy black, with a white patch at his throat, while Trace's skin had gone from dark brown to a pale green color. He did not look happy.

"All right," he said, crossing his arms, "who's the son of a bitch who decided to make me a gods-damned ogre?"

Sasha covered her mouth and tried to suppress a laugh. Fiona just quirked an eyebrow at him.

"You are overreacting, Trace," she said evenly. "And that is a Breed, not an ogre."

Trace scowled. His new form gave him a good face for scowling. "Whatever," he said. He turned to Del, gesturing toward Fiona. "Look at her. Pug-nosed, pasty-faced white chick gets turned into Miss Yamato, and they make me a lutin with a growth disorder."

Fiona clenched her fists and took a step toward Trace, her muscles rippling.

"Stow it, both of you!" Brian snapped.

Fiona turned to him. Her eyes were as hard as iron, but her body abruptly shifted from a combat stance to a neutral posture. "My apologies, Captain," she said, her voice eerily calm. "As the cell husband, of course it is your responsibility to take the lead in defending the honor of your wives."

"He wasn't questioning your honor, he was ragging on you," Brian said, irritated. "You've been doing it to each other for ten years. Gods, what's gotten into you, Fi?"

Fiona looked away, blushing slightly. "Rebecca and the baby are home alone," she said quietly. "This mission is likely to be dangerous. I am worried for them." She looked up at Trace. "It expressed itself as inappropriate anger. I apologize."

"No problem, Fi," Trace said, his expression sober. "Believe me, I know how it is."

"Me too," Del murmured. His eyes had gone distant, and images of his wife and daughter reverberated through their shared link.

An uncomfortable silence hung in the air for a few heartbeats. At last Brian cleared his throat.

"Well, let's finish this job so we can get back to them," he said. He stood and folded his hands over his slight paunch of a stomach. "There's a network of ventilation ducts that runs through the entire skyport, and they're big enough to fit a small person. Our best chance of getting the package out of here is for Fiona to use the ducts to carry it past the security checkpoints. Once you get to an entry level, you can just pop out of a storage room or something and carry it right out the front door." He shrugged. "It's not like anybody's going to be looking for you."

Fiona nodded. "Sasha should stay with you. She can watch the maps of the skyport and tell me where I need to go."

"Agreed," Brian said. "Del, Trace, get the duct tape from the bag and truss up these guards. Then I want you to take their guns and get up to bay ninety-four. There's a cargo tender waiting to unload the skyship. Be on it."

"No sweat," Del said, already in the process of tying up the guards.

It was an obvious set-up line for a joke about wolves and their lack of sweat glands, but not even Sasha was in the mood to take it. She had pulled out the silver yew-tree crucifix that she wore around her neck and was holding it lightly between her fingers. She rubbed her thumb back and forth over the surface of the talisman, a sure sign of stress. Sasha still maintained a deep and personal faith in Eli, but she wasn't much of an Ecclesiast anymore; she had left the church at the age of thirteen, largely because its teachings about sex ran contrary to the Psi Collective's polyamorous social structure. Still, the trappings of faith were important to her, and she clung to the crucifix as a good-luck charm. Old habits died hard, Brian supposed.

"All right," he said quietly. "The tender's our best shot for getting that thing out of here. Do what you can to get it before the tender comes back here, but don't take any stupid risks. The Elder gave us a whole lot of maybes on this mission, and as far as I'm concerned that means it's not worth dying for. If we can't get it on the tender, we'll pull back and play it by ear. Any questions?"

There was a moment's silence.

"What about the Elder's instructions to shoot to kill?" Del asked.

Brian grimaced. "Only if you have to. I trust your judgment on that. After five years of doing the Empire's dirty work, I think our hands have enough blood on them."

Sasha and Del nodded soberly at that. They all looked around at each other, but no one voiced any other questions.

"Let's do it," Brian said.


Chapter Five

Daniel tugged distractedly at the collar of his coveralls, watching as the cargo tender glided into the docking bay and came to rest on its landing skids. It was little more than a broad, squat box with engines attached, four meters high by eighteen meters long by nine meters wide. A rounded two-man cockpit was mounted in front and blended smoothly into the body of the vehicle. It looked like a big, gray bug crouching in the middle of the cargo bay, and Daniel wondered how big its drive turbines must be to allow it to fly.

There was a loud hiss and a whir of motors, and a loading ramp extended from the back of the tender. The crew chief began barking out orders, and Daniel, Victor and the rest of the deck monkeys hustled up the ramp and into the shuttle. Fold-down seats with restraint harnesses lined the port and starboard sides of the cargo bay, and they quickly strapped themselves in for take-off. Mid-air collisions and turbine failures were rare, but you didn't want to be unsecured in the event that something bad happened: the shuttle's back end was open to the sky, with only a meter-high folding tailgate to keep parcels from sliding out during flight. A fully closed back end with retractable doors would have added weight and complexity to the design, and for the low speeds and short distances its job required that simply wasn't a cost-effective tradeoff. Though he knew it was reasonably safe, Daniel still found himself sitting down as close to the front of the tender as possible

Victor had a strange expression on his face as he strapped in next to Daniel. His eyes were distant, but there was a tightness in his jaws and forehead that suggested deep concentration. Daniel wanted to take his hand and open a link, but physical contact of that sort was rare among mundane males, especially in a job like this one. The last thing either of them wanted to do was arouse suspicion.

Daniel waited until the loading ramp retracted and drive turbines spun up, filling the entire shuttle with a loud hum. He leaned over and spoke directly into Victor's ear.

"Trouble?"

Victor shifted and blinked, then turned to look at him. "Not yet," he said. "Keep your walls up until I say otherwise. Lock your thoughts down tight."

Daniel frowned, puzzled. It wasn't that what Victor asked was difficult. Every teep in the Collective learned how to shut up, telepathically speaking, to avoid broadcasting his thoughts to those around them. Daniel's mental shields weren't strong enough to block a serious, concerted probe from a powerful teep, but he could block out casual intrusions and reduce his psychic signature until it was smaller and less noticeable than a mundane's. That, in turn, would make it unlikely for other teeps to hear his thoughts unless they were specifically searching for him. But why would that matter now?

Victor saw the question in his eyes before he could ask it. "Mages can read minds if they know the right spells," he said, keeping his voice as low as possible over the engine noise. "Vamps can influence you if your walls aren't up. We don't know who else is coming after this thing, so don't chance it."

Daniel nodded, then closed his eyes. Reluctantly, he raised his mental shields, walling up what little telepathic ability he had behind screens of focused thought. It wasn't something he liked doing if he could avoid it. He enjoyed the touch of another mind against his, even if he was too weak to initiate it on his own. By the time he opened his eyes the familiar, cotton-in-the-ears sensation of the psi-shield had settled into place. He could still use his psychic healing, if need be, but telepathically he was as mind-blind as a mundy.

A few minutes later the cargo tender slowed to a halt, the deceleration creating a familiar lurch in Daniel's stomach. He looked out and saw that they were right under the skyship's belly, their back end pointed toward an airlock that hung down below the ventral cargo bay. After they had hovered there for a moment, the engines whined again, and the shuttle began moving slowly backwards. Daniel knew that the cargo tender sat flush against the underside of the skyship when it was in flight, its back end sealed against the airlock. The image of a remora hanging on to a shark flitted briefly through his mind.

There was a soft thump as the shuttle made contact with the airlock, followed by the whine of motors and the clank of bolts as the tender locked into place. Then there was another soft hiss as the pressure equalized between the two vessels, and the rear hatch slid open to reveal a smooth incline sweeping up into the cargo bay.

Daniel followed Victor out of the tender and up into the skyship, trying not to gawk at the huge open space stacked floor to ceiling with boxes and shipping crates. The thing was a bloody flying warehouse. No wonder the supermarkets could afford to ship in fresh tropical produce to Metamor City; the economy of scale on a ship like this had to be amazing.

"All right, you grunts, let's get to work!" the crew chief bellowed. He focused his attention on three young and scared-looking employees who must have been fresh recruits. "Listen up, runts: I want the heaviest crates lined up down the middle of the tender, smaller boxes on either side, fragiles in one layer on top." He lifted a scanner gun that hung in a holster at his belt, identical to the ones that each of them had been given when they reported for duty. "Scan each package as it goes on board, and for Prophet's sake make sure you balance the load! If that boat starts listing on the way back down, I swear somebody's ass is gonna be in a sling tonight. Now move it, move it, move it!"

Daniel hurried to join the others, loading crates onto rolling carts and moving them down into the cargo tender. He pulled out his scanner gun and ran it over the shipping labels as he unloaded each of the crates. It beeped and flashed a green light when the scan was confirmed. The gun would then transmit a message to the customs office at the skyport, notifying them of who had sent the package, where it was coming from, and what it contained. The customs agents would then use that list when examining the contents of the cargo bay, ensuring that nothing would be misplaced or left un-inspected.

The cargo bay was large enough that the tender had to make several trips. While they were unloading after the second trip, Daniel spotted Victor talking to the crew chief in hushed tones. The chief nodded and went over to the cargo bay's entrance, where he addressed two of the security guards — Evan's mercs in disguise.

"What did you say to him?" Daniel asked, as they wrestled another crate onto one of the rolling carts.

"I told him that one of the packages up there has an MID seal on it," Victor said. "He's going to pull a couple of guards to escort it down and make sure that nothing happens to it."

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "And is there an MID seal on it?"

"There is now."

Now, that didn't make sense. Victor might have the resources to forge an MID seal, but that would be sure to draw attention to the package, and that was exactly what their employer didn't want. Word would get out about the Ministry's secret parcel, and every eye in the crew would be on—

Daniel blinked, abruptly getting it. "You marked some other package, didn't you?" he asked quietly. "Misdirection for whoever's watching us."

Victor smirked and nodded, new respect for Daniel showing in his eyes. "And it puts two guns on our side aboard the tender," he said. "I've located the client's parcel. We'll bring it down with the next load."

Daniel felt that slight queasy feeling rising up in his stomach again, a mixture of worry and adrenaline. "You think they'll make their move?"

"If they don't, they're idiots," Victor said. "You guard the package when we come back down. I'll keep an eye out for unwanted guests." He thumped Daniel's shoulder encouragingly. "Stay with me, Daniel. The hard part's nearly done."


What do you think?

Trace peered out from around the stack of crates and scowled. Guards taking the trip upstairs? Yeah, looks likely. He directed his thoughts back through the link to Sasha. Hey, Blondie. Tell Brian we need a diversion to get on that overgrown ferry boat.

He's working on it, Sasha assured them. Show me what you're looking at.

Trace opened up his mind a little further, allowing Sasha to slip in behind his eyes and share his senses. About ten meters of open space separated them from the front hatch of the cargo tender. It wouldn't be hard for them to get inside and replace the two men flying the vessel. The trick was doing it without being seen by any of the four guards or twenty-odd deck workers. More importantly, the diversion would need to be something that was merely annoying, not overly dramatic or dangerous. If things went too wrong, the unloading operation would be stopped entirely until the problem was investigated. The vamps would reschedule the smuggling operation, and next time the Hive might not find out about it before it happened.

Something subtle, then, Brian mused, echoing Trace's line of thought. I can do that. Give me a second here to uplink to the cargo tender's computer…

Less than a minute later a warning chime began to sound from inside the tender's cargo bay. "Warning!" it said, in a placid female synth-voice. "Drive turbines are misaligned. Please recalibrate before liftoff." The message looped, playing again every few seconds.

The crew chief cursed vehemently and began shouting at his employees, berating them for their failure to properly balance the cargo. His words drove them into action, and within a minute's time the deck workers were rushing about for tools, opening up the access panels along the sides of the tender and adjusting the alignment on the huge, heavy turbines that would keep the vessel in the air. The front hatch opened and the pilot and co-pilot climbed out of the cockpit, looking exasperated.

"How long, chief?" the pilot asked.

The chief visibly bit back his first reaction. Trace knew a guy like that didn't have the rank to snap at a flyboy, even one who only flew overgrown skimmer trucks for a living. "Ten, maybe fifteen minutes," he said, his voice tight with anger.

The pilot sighed and gestured to his companion. "Fine. We're going on break. See you in ten."

The chief nodded to them curtly, then turned back to managing his crew. The pilot and co-pilot left the cargo bay and headed down the hall to the right.

Trace and Del caught up with them in the pilots' break room and quickly incapacitated the two civilian flyers, leaving them bound and gagged in the nearby locker room. Neither of them were wearing flight suits that were the right size or shape for a couple of ex-skyball players, especially not when one of them was half wolf. Fortunately, the skyport's shuttle crews were as diverse as the rest of Metamor City, and Trace used his clairvoyance talent to locate two suits that would fit them perfectly. They made it back to the cargo bay in just over twelve minutes.

The crew chief glowered at them suspiciously as they approached. "Where'd those other flyboys go?" he asked.

"We'h coverin' for 'em, ain't we?" Del said. His accent was brazenly careless, mimicking the speech of the Street rats of the Valley South borough. He showed the chief a lascivious grin. "Foun' a nice brace o' hens, 'ey did — two stews just come ta ground afta six weeks, an' pure ganting for it. Seize the day, I says."

Trace snorted loudly. "They were seizin' more 'n the day, I think," he said, chuckling to himself. Playing a Breed was a balancing act; he couldn't sound stupid, or the chief would never buy that he was a pilot — but he also couldn't use his usual accent, with its upper-middle class diction and Irombian undertones. He settled for a lower-middle class, blue-collar sound, and the chief seemed to accept it without question. The older man let out a rueful chuckle, his anger temporarily defused.

"Won't blame a man for taking pussy where he can find it," the chief said, smirking. "Not if he's got someone to fill in for him, anyway. Go on and get set, we're just finishing the recal."

Trace and Del climbed the rungs to the front hatch and took their seats in the cockpit. Del was the better flyer of the two of them, so he took the pilot's chair while Trace slid into the co-pilot's position. The controls were based on the older, more tamper-proof system of yoke, throttle and thrust pedals, as opposed to the "fly by mind" spelljack system used in most civilian skimmers. In addition to the normal skimmer head-up displays showing attitude, fuel, and speed, there were multifunction touch-screens that displayed information on weight distribution, proximity detectors, rear and side camera views, docking clamp status and turbine strain. Despite the added complexity, Trace felt confident he could control the bulky craft if he needed to — as long as he didn't have to actually dock with the skyship.

The intercom crackled. "All set back here," the chief's voice said.

"Copy that," Del said. "Spinning up now." He pushed the throttle forward, and the sound of the drive turbines built from a low hum to a high-pitched whine. The enchanted, rune-carved disks interspersed along the length of the turbines began weaving their mana fields around the shuttle. A second later it rose off of the deck of the cargo bay, its gravity opposed by the drive turbines' repulsor field, and Del pushed up the lever that would retract the landing skids. Keeping an eye on the shuttle's rear-view camera, Del smoothly and expertly backed the vessel out of the mouth of the cargo bay and into open air.

"Clear?" Del asked.

Trace checked the proximity detectors. "Clear, all sides."

Del angled the thrust pedals in opposite directions, rocking the left one back while tilting the right one forward. This caused the drive turbines to angle to the left with respect to the nose of the shuttle, and the nose began to yaw to the right in response to the uneven repulsor field. Del held the pedals in that position until they had made a neat 180-degree turn, then angled the left thrust pedal forward into the same position as the right. The cargo tender began moving forward, and he pulled back slightly on the yoke to angle their nose upward. He pushed the throttle a little further forward, and Trace felt the slight drop in apparent gravity as they accelerated toward the ship above them.

"Ba'al's balls," Del muttered. "I've flown troop transports that maneuvered faster than this."

That may be deliberate, Fiona said into the link. Given the sort of cargo the skyships usually carry, it would be in their best interests to prevent the pilots from doing anything too hasty.

"See, that's the problem with the Empire today," Del said. "Too many safety nets. No faith in the common man. If you can't trust your own pilots, who can you trust?"

Says the pilot in the process of committing grand larceny, Sasha said, her wry amusement obvious.

"Exactly," Del agreed, grinning. "The skyport officials should rest secure in the knowledge that, if I'm going to swipe something, I'll work to the best of my ability to make sure it lands in one piece."

Cut the chatter, Brian said, his telepathic voice sounding tense. You don't know who might be listening.

Trace frowned. You picking up any other thought traffic, Sash?

Nothing I can pick out, she said. I can hear some background echoes that seem familiar, but I can't make a positive ID. Probably just a couple of Hive members somewhere in the skyport. I could probably track them down, but I'd have to break the link to you and Del.

Negative, Brian said. You shut the link down at this distance and it'll take five minutes to get it solid again. We can't afford it.

Not like it matters, anyway, Del said. Even if there are other teeps somewhere around here, it's not like they'll be working for the vamps, right?


As Daniel had predicted, the package with the MID seal caused a stir among the deck monkeys as the two mercs carried it aboard the cargo tender. The workers leaned in close to try to catch a glimpse of its shipping label, but there was little in the way of human-readable information. All of the details about the cargo were contained in the scanner code, and the reader-guns didn’t share their secrets with the person actually scanning the package. Victor’s accomplices kept the dock workers at arm’s length for the sake of “national security”, so the men had to be content with loud speculations about what the crate contained.

In all of this commotion the small parcel sitting at Daniel’s feet went entirely unnoticed. He had strapped in quickly when they finished loading the tender, watching from the stern of the vessel while the mercs guarded their decoy near the front end of the cargo bay. Eventually the crew chief came in and yelled at his men to get into their seats so they could take off. Reluctantly they tore their eyes off of the mysterious crate and went to strap themselves in. Victor sat down next to Daniel, his expression grim. Daniel gestured toward the decoy package and nodded encouragingly. Victor smirked, but his eyes still looked distant and troubled.

The airlock snapped shut behind them, the docking clamps released, and the shuttle began moving slowly back down toward the skyport. After a few seconds Daniel noticed something odd: the wind noise wasn’t as loud as it had been on their two previous descents.

“We’re going slower this time,” he murmured to Victor.

The small muscles around Victor’s eyes tightened. “Keep an eye on the box,” he said, unstrapping himself and climbing carefully to his feet. “I’m going to check up front.”


Okay, everything looks good here, Del said. Brian, take remote control, please.

A red light lit up on the instrument panel and the words REMOTE GUIDANCE appeared on the head-up displays. Set for descent, Brian said. Just don’t ask me to land it like this.

Relax, Cap, this won’t take long. Del turned to Trace. “Can you get a scan on what’s in that crate? I want to have some idea of what it weighs before I try moving it.”

Trace leaned back and closed his eyes. “Just a sec,” he said. He stretched out his clairvoyance toward the cargo bay, past the two guards and into the crate sitting in front of them. He felt past the layers of packing material, watching as the shadowy, indistinct forms of the crate’s contents appeared before his eyes. He dialed his focus in more tightly, and suddenly the forms sharpened—

He laughed. “Fruit,” he said, opening his eyes and grinning. “There’s nothing in there but fruit.”

Del raised an eyebrow. “Decoy?”

“Decoy.” Trace closed his eyes and scanned the cargo bay again, looking for anything unusual.

He found two things that caught his attention. First, one of the deck monkeys sat apart from the others, back near the tailgate of the cargo tender on the port side. He was tall, blond and pale – not vampire-pale, but he still had the look of a man who hadn’t gotten enough sun lately. A ghoul, perhaps? He was fidgeting, and very carefully looking everywhere except at the small package that was wedged between his boots.

The second thing he noticed was the tall black man coming toward the cockpit. He had a combat knife tucked up his sleeve, a small pistol in his pocket and death in his eyes.

Look sharp, Trace said, pulling out his own gun and climbing out of his seat. Trouble’s coming.

Brian sent a ripple of acknowledgment. You in position, Fiona?

Affirmative.

Ready when you are, Del said.

Trace gripped the handle of the door that led from the cockpit to the narrow corridor beyond. The black crewman had been delayed by the crew chief, who looked upset that he was up and moving around, but now he was out of the cargo bay and in the corridor. As soon as the door to the cargo bay swung shut behind the man, Trace turned the handle on his own door, pushed it open, aimed, and fired.

The other man was quick; Trace had to give him that much. He ducked and rolled as soon as Trace began to open the door, and the first shot went over his head. He came out of the roll and into a crouch, his gun in his hand and tracking toward Trace. He squeezed off a shot, but Trace’s precog showed him where the shot was coming; by the time the crewman fired, he simply wasn’t there anymore.

Trace crouched low and sent a shot toward the man’s legs. The man leapt out of his crouch, rising too high and far too fast for it to be natural, and fired a bullet at Trace’s head. He ducked behind the door as the shot went off, letting it ricochet off of the heavy steel.

Too fast, he thought. Stretching out his senses, he opened up his precog, took a deep breath, and leapt into the corridor, lashing out with the butt of his pistol on raw instinct.

The gun connected squarely with the crewman’s jaw – he had been rushing toward the door as Trace opened it, and his enhanced combat senses timed the blow perfectly. There was a loud crack of steel on bone and the man staggered backward, stunned. Not sparing a second to think, Trace aimed the gun and fired, hitting the man in the gut. The crewman collapsed to the floor, gasping in pain. Trace fired a second round into a kneecap, and the man let out a sound like a tortured animal.

“Mother fucker!” the man gasped, curling up around his wounds. He coughed and spat up blood.

Trace callously retrieved the man’s knife and gun. “Stay put and I might let you live,” he growled.

Del came out of the cockpit a second later, his gun drawn and his eyes on the door to the cargo bay. They’ll have heard that! he said, not slowing for a moment as he passed Trace.

He was right. Before he could reach the door, it opened from the other side and one of the guards spilled through, his gun tracking. Trace felt a momentary stab of fear: Del had telekinesis, but not ESP, so he couldn’t sense the air molecules around him well enough to harden them into a bulletproof shield like some teeks could. They were in the middle of a narrow corridor with no cover.

He needn’t have worried; Del might not be able to form a PK shield, but his power was considerable. He stretched out his free hand forcefully toward the attacking thug as the gun was brought to bear against him. There was a ripple of air distortion, and the guard was thrown backward by a blast of force that drove him through the doorway and into a stack of crates behind him. One of them struck the back of the neck, making a sickening crack. The guard fell and lay still, unconscious or dead. At the same time, Trace darted forward and fired as he came around the corner, his precog putting the bullet squarely in the middle of the second guard’s forehead. The big man joined his counterpart on the deck, and Trace turned his attention to the rest of the room.

The deck monkeys had all unstrapped themselves and taken cover behind the crates and boxes. The crew chief was closest to Del and Trace, and he held up his hands, his face white and his eyes wide with terror.

“P-please,” he said, his voice shaking. “I got a family…”

“Listen up!” Trace bellowed, silencing the man. “My partner and I are here for just one thing.” He nodded at the two crumpled guards. “There’s a stolen package on board that these bruisers were trying to smuggle in to their boss in the City.” He grinned fiercely at the chief. “We’re here to take it back. Cooperate, and we won’t hurt any of you.”

Trace’s danger sense tingled in warning, and he spun out of the way a split second before a fist would have connected with his head.


Daniel cursed as the Breed thug dodged out of the way, spinning around into a defensive posture. He couldn’t understand it: he’d approached quietly, hiding behind the stacked boxes, and he’d come at the guy from his blind side while he was distracted – and still the guard had dodged the attack. It was like he had eyes in the back of his head!

“Murderer!” he shouted, ducking in fast under the man’s guard and landing a jab-jab-reverse punch combo. The Breed countered with a knee strike and a right cross, which Daniel blocked and answered with a sweeping kick that knocked the bigger man to the ground. Daniel dodged past him and hit the wolf-man with a bull rush, driving him into the wall and knocking the wind out of him. The theriomorph snapped at his throat, but Daniel had spent years sparring against his friend Del and knew how to deal with wolf-morphs. He grabbed the man’s whiskers and yanked on them hard, making the sensitive nerves at their roots scream with pain. He followed up with a hard punch to the tip of the wolf-man’s nose, which elicited a yipe. A wolf’s nasal bones weren’t as vulnerable as a human’s, but a fist there would still give him five hell’s worth of pain.

Daniel pulled the man’s gun out of his hand and pressed it against the underside of his jaw. “You aren’t taking anything today, you son of a bitch,” he spat.

There was a sharp click-clack! of a gun being cocked behind him.

“Don’t get stupid, kid,” the Breed said. Judging from voice, Daniel estimated that he was a good two meters away. Too far away to be disarmed from Daniel’s current position, but still so close that there was no way he could miss – especially given the accuracy he’d shown when he shot the guard a minute ago.

“Don’t you dare move!” Daniel said, his voice raw with anger. “I’ll do it! I’ll kill him, I swear!”

“And then what?” the Breed asked, his voice deep and serious. It sounded familiar, and Daniel wondered if he might have met the guy somewhere before. “Look, kid, we didn’t ask for this. Your buddies were trying to kill us. Now two of 'em are down, and another one’s in that hallway with a bullet in his gut. Put down the gun, let us take what we came for, and we’ll let you go. Your friend’s in a lot of pain, but if you work with us you should have time to save him. Otherwise, I put a bullet in your head right now – and believe me when I tell you that I can pull the trigger faster than you.”

Daniel gritted his teeth, blinking back hot, angry tears and trying to swallow the taste of ashes in his mouth. They had him bagged and tagged, and he knew it. Sure, he might be able to kill the wolf-man before the Breed shot him, but what in the nine hells would that accomplish? He couldn’t stop them, but he still had a chance to save Victor.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll do it. But I want you to let me take care of my friend.”

“Sure, kid,” the Breed said, his voice softening. “Just put down the gun, nice and slow, okay?”

Daniel nodded once, then took his finger off the trigger and pulled the gun slowly away from the wolf-man, setting it on the deck behind him. He didn’t look at the Breed as he got to his feet. “Package is over there,” he said, nodding in the direction of the rear port side of the cargo bay. “It’s just a little thing, about twenty centimeters square. It has a shipping label, but it hasn’t been scanned in.”

“I see it,” the Breed said. He moved toward the back of the cargo bay, but his slow, wary steps told Daniel that he was still covering him with the gun.

Like I care anymore. He ignored the wolf-man, who was now getting to his feet and retrieving his gun, and went into the corridor, where Victor lay huddled around a slowly-growing blood stain.

“Prophet save us,” Daniel murmured, rushing to Victor’s side. “Stay with me, Victor.”

Victor didn’t respond as Daniel turned him over on his back. Daniel quickly unzipped the coveralls down to the waist and pulled them open, exposing Victor’s bloody abdomen. Daniel put his hand over the gunshot wound and focused his healing power, channeling as much energy as he could into repairing the damage. Slowly, gradually, the flesh knit itself back together, pushing the bullet outward and upward as the tissues mended. The flow of blood diminished, then ceased altogether. Daniel sat back on his heels, closed his eyes and took a few long, heavy breaths.

After a minute he opened his eyes again and turned his attention to Victor’s mangled knee. He felt dizzy and winded, but he forced himself to focus his power again. This was why Victor had brought him along, and he wasn’t going to let him down. He placed his hands around the knee and poured out all the energy he had left. Through sheer force of will he commanded the broken fragments of bone and tattered cartilage to fuse back together, the torn muscles and ligaments to reattach themselves, the shredded skin to grow back whole and unblemished.

After two minutes the last of Victor’s injuries were finally healed. Daniel fell over on his side and sprawled on the floor, limp and exhausted. His head was throbbing. He could feel blood trickling from his nose. He couldn’t have moved if he had wanted to. Instead he lay there, watching, as Victor slowly sat up, blinking. The older man looked down at himself and ran his hands over his bloody but intact torso. His doppel charm was still in place, and his dark skin had turned a sickly gray from the blood loss, but he seemed to be coming around quickly. He looked at Daniel with an expression of amazement and respect.

Daniel smiled weakly. He was going to be lucky to stay awake for another five minutes; he had nothing left to give. “You’re welcome,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

A muscle in Victor’s jaw twitched, and he shook himself. He looked around himself on all sides, then reached down and picked something up. He looked over at a hole in the adjacent bulkhead and put his hand over it. There was a soft grinding noise of metal on metal, followed by a pop as something came loose and smacked into his open palm. He clasped his fingers around it, balling his hand into a tight fist.

He turned back to Daniel and opened his fist, showing him two bloody and deformed bullets. There was a cold fire in his eyes like nothing Daniel had ever seen before, a barely-restrained fury that promised bloody death to anyone who got in his way.

“No, wait,” Daniel slurred, trying to fight off the black haze that was even now creeping in around the edges of his vision. “I made a deal…”

Victor rose to his feet and headed for the door to the cargo bay, not sparing him another glance. “I didn’t,” he said.


Such a little thing, and so much trouble, Trace thought as he picked up the package the vamps had been trying to smuggle in. He used his clairvoyance to peer inside, but all he saw was a stack of data cards and a small metal box. The latter must have been lead-lined as a precaution against scrying, because it was completely opaque to his second sight.

Why go to all this hassle for data? Sasha wondered. Why not use the WorldNet?

Obviously it’s something so sensitive that they don’t want to risk someone intercepting it, Brian said. We’ll find out what it is soon enough. Del, get that thing down to Fiona and get back to the cockpit. I might be able to land it without you, but I don’t think you’d enjoy the ride.

Copy that, Del said, already at Trace’s side. Trace handed him the package. After testing its weight for a moment, Del carried it to the mouth of the cargo bay, which was still facing in the direction of the skyport. Trace joined him and looked down over the tailgate. He wasn’t worried about turning his back on the bay full of cowering deck monkeys; he trusted his precog to warn him of any danger before it happened, and none of them seemed to have the desire to put themselves in harm’s way.

A hundred meters below them, and about another hundred away on the horizontal, Fiona was perched in a small access hatch near bay ninety-four. She saw them as they came into view and signaled them with a small pocket mirror. Del focused on the package in his hands, sending it aloft with no apparent effort. Gesturing with one outstretched hand, he guided it swiftly and smoothly down to Fiona. She caught it easily, nodded to them in parting, and disappeared down the hatch.

Capture confirmed, Fiona said into the link. Returning to staging area and awaiting guidance to extraction point.

Be right with you, Sasha promised. Del, Trace, I’m going to pull back my focus so I can help Fiona get out of there. I’ll leave a thread open to you, though, so just give it a tug if you need me.

Trace sent her the telepathic equivalent of a confident grin. No problem, Sash. We’ll be fine up here. See you back at the rendezvous point.

The sense of Sasha’s presence faded from the telepathic bond, leaving only a slender line of subconscious thought connecting Del and Trace to the others. Trace missed her touch as soon as it was absent — damn, it had been too long since he’d shared head-space with her — but he didn’t begrudge her leaving. Fiona would need Brian’s detailed knowledge of the building’s schematics to navigate safely through the ventilation ducts, and channeling that information between them would require almost all of Sasha’s attention. None of the rest of them were strong enough teeps to maintain a full link at this range, so something had to give.

“All right,” Del said, turning away from the tailgate and heading back toward the front of the ship. “Let’s finish this.”

Trace cast his gaze around the cargo bay, seeing the frightened men peering out at them from behind boxes and crates. “Thank you for your cooperation, gentlemen,” he said, smiling at them. He didn’t brandish any of the guns he was carrying; better not to do anything overtly threatening now that the job was done. “We’ll be parking this bug momentarily, so you can all relax. Sit back, enjoy the flight, don’t try anything stupid, and you’ll all walk away with a story to tell your grandkids about.”

Del reached the door first and pushed it open, then paused at the threshold. He frowned, a wave of uncertainty coming off of him. Trace was beside him a moment later and saw why: the Irombian crewman that he’d shot earlier was missing. In his place was the blonde-haired Kitchlander, now lying on his side and looking like someone had drugged him. His eyelids were fluttering, and the fingers of one hand twitched. His lips moved as if he were trying to form words, but no sound came out.

“What in the hells happened to him?” Del asked.

Suddenly Trace’s danger sense screamed, his subconscious mind spotting something in his extrasensory awareness that it labeled as a threat. Adrenaline surged through his body, and in a flash of terrible insight he saw the choice before him. He hesitated for only an instant; when it came down to it, there was only one choice he could make.

“Del, get down!”

Trace threw himself on top of Del, trying to tackle him. He had just come between Del and the cargo bay and was starting to bear him to the deck when the bullet struck him in the back, just below his left shoulder blade. Pain flooded his senses as the ball of lead tore through his lung and rattled to a stop against the inside of his rib cage. The lung collapsed almost instantaneously, and Trace gasped for air as he hit the floor. He already felt like he was drowning.

How had this happened? He knew that he and Del had collected all the guns. There had been no gunshot. Only…

He turned over on his side, looking up as the Irombian crewman stepped into view. He was covered in blood, but otherwise looked to be fully healed. He was holding something in his hand: a bloody, misshapen bullet. The man gestured with his other hand, and the guns that Trace had collected flew through the air and landed in the cargo bay behind him.

By this time Del had recovered from his surprise and pulled out his own gun. He rolled over on his back and squeezed off three shots at the crewman. The bullets were aimed well, a tight cluster aimed straight at the man’s chest. All three hit an invisible wall a few centimeters before impact, deflected wide and buried themselves in the bulkheads.

Holy shit, Trace thought. //PK shield. But that means—

The Irombian bared his teeth at Del and gestured, pulling the gun from the wolf-man’s slackened grip. Del saw it leave his fingers and summoned his own telekinesis, stopping the gun in mid-air.

Trace could do nothing but watch; he was losing strength fast, and he felt tired, so damned tired. The bullet must have hit a major blood vessel; he was getting dizzy, and it was getting harder to breathe. He coughed and tasted iron in the back of his throat. Oh, gods, I’m drowning in my own blood. He reached out and tugged at the thought-thread to Sasha, but he was already so weak he couldn’t send her much more than the excruciating pain and soul-sick fear that had overtaken him.

Sasha, can you hear this? he thought desperately. It’s a rogue teek. Somehow he healed himself … bastard’s throwing our own bullets back at us…

The gun trembled in midair, suspended between Del and the rogue. Del clawed at it desperately with his outstretched hand, obviously using all the power he could summon. He gasped, and the gun crept a couple of decimeters closer to the rogue before Del stopped it once more. The rogue was sweating now, his brow furrowed in intense concentration, but his breathing remained steady and his hold on the gun was implacable.

Gods damn it, Trace, you have to do something, he told himself. Hit him, get in his way, bite his ankles for gods’ sake, but do something!

Trace struggled to his knees. He crawled toward the rogue teek, one decimeter at a time. His body was in agony, his remaining lung slowly filling with blood, but he pulled himself forward toward the enemy psi, determined to save Del if he could.

He nearly made it. As he came almost within reach of the rogue’s legs, his body was wracked by a spasm of fresh pain. He doubled up in a fit of coughing, spitting up blood on the deck beneath him. He felt Del’s shock as he realized how badly Trace was hurt, suddenly seeing the shot that Trace had willingly taken for him—

“Trace!”

In that instant, Del’s concentration faltered.

The pistol flew into the rogue’s hand in an eye-blink, and with no hesitation the man took aim and emptied it into Del. Trace didn’t see it happen with his eyes, but his clairvoyance was all too clear. The bullets struck Del in the chest, the throat, the face, the abdomen, the 10-millimeter high velocity rounds tearing him apart like a dragon’s teeth through cattle. Del couldn’t summon a PK shield, as this man had; he had no way to defend himself against something as small and fast-moving as a bullet. He died before he even had time to scream.

The empty gun clattered to the deck. A boot struck out at Trace’s jaw, knocking him over onto his back. He coughed and retched, gagging on the blood that filled his throat. He looked up to see the rogue standing over him, still holding that damned bullet between his fingers.

“I believe this was yours,” the man said, holding it out. His eyes were wild with rage and bloodlust. “Perhaps I should give it back.”

“Y-you…” Trace gasped for air, then forced the words out as best he could. “Fucking … moron. You’re k-killing … your own … people.” He shook his head weakly. “They’re gonna … t-tear you … ap-part.”

The man grinned savagely at him. “Not if they don’t find out,” he said.

Trace’s precog showed him the bullet being driven through his eye and into his brain an instant before it happened.

He was somewhat relieved that he didn’t have time to feel it.


Daniel could do nothing but lay there, powerless and impotent, as Victor telekinetically propelled the bullet into the man’s skull. The Breed twitched once and went limp. Like the wolf-man, whose mangled body was less than a meter away from Daniel, he was far beyond any hope of saving.

He murdered them, Daniel thought, his exhausted brain still having trouble wrapping itself around the concept. They were psis, and he murdered them.

Daniel hadn’t been sure who the men were or why they had wanted the package, but the battle between Victor and the wolf-man over control of the gun had made it obvious. Mages could move things around with magic, but they needed reagents and words of power to make it happen. What he had witnessed was pure telekinesis – and given the way the Breed had taken the bullet for his friend, Daniel figured he must have been an esper. Victor had been hiding among the crates behind them and waited until their backs were turned to him before he struck. No mundy could have seen that coming and reacted in time.

And now they were dead. Two psis, identities unknown, murdered by Victor. If it had just been one, Daniel might have told himself it was a rogue psi, just a bit of hired muscle that their employer’s enemies had brought in to steal the package. With two of them working together, though, that told Daniel that the Psi Collective had taken an interest in this parcel and wanted it badly. Gods, no wonder Victor didn’t trust anyone else in the Collective to help him. I was the only one stupid enough to go along with him. Iluvatar have mercy, what have I gotten myself into?

Victor pulled out his communicator and put it to his ear. “Ferret, you there?”

Callie’s voice came back over the speaker. “I copy, Valiant. You’re behind schedule. Any trouble?”

“Two hostiles. They got Tusk and Quarrel and handed off the package before I could put them down.”

Callie swore colorfully. “Who’s got the rock now?” she asked.

“Best guess is Agent Alpha-Niner,” Victor said, his voice grim. “She’ll probably use the same ventilation ducts you’re in to escape.”

“Understood,” Callie said. “Moving to intercept.”

“I’ll join you as soon as I can get us on the ground. Valiant out.”

Victor put the communicator away and headed toward the cockpit.

“V-vic…” Daniel mumbled.

Victor paused and looked over his shoulder. “Go ahead and rest, Daniel,” he said. “You did your job; you saved my ass. Don’t worry, Callie and I will get the package back. Get some sleep and Eva will pull you out before things get too ugly.”

He entered the cockpit and shut the door behind him.

Before it gets too ugly? Daniel thought bitterly. You killed two fellow spookies, you fucking psychopath. It doesn’t get any uglier than that.

In the distance, Daniel could hear the sound of police sirens slowly approaching. Soon there would be MCPD gunboats swarming the docking bay and detectives asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions. Victor, no doubt, would be somewhere far away by then.

I helped Victor kill two of my own people. If anyone in the Collective finds out I was involved, I’m a dead man. Dear gods, what have I done?

Part 2

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