6.3

  Eight o’clock at night turned out to be the sweet spot: early enough that the performance hall’s repertoire was only just finding its rhythm, yet late enough that the patrons had already shuffled inside, draped in silk, with their seats claimed and their programs folded, unaware of anything beyond the stage, beyond the glamour, beyond that carefully orchestrated illusion of celebration.

  We’d been waiting in the parking lot across the street, watching them swarm through the door one by one. Rich folk with diaphanous dresses, tailored suits, and waxy pomaded slickbacks, moving with a hand-in-pocket sway, and those postures: always straight, always with their chins held high, as if the ground beneath them wasn’t worth the glance of their stingy monocles or the scuff of their spit-shined loafers. As if the world outside that grand hall simply didn’t exist—and maybe, for them, it didn’t.

  The building isn’t as massive as it had seemed in the hologram, thankfully. Just a standard performance centre, blooming into the night like a glow-in-the-dark mushroom, pulsing steadily, harder now, adrift in the black, crowning high, dripping low. The kind of building you’d expect on the rich side of the city, though not quite as polished, and not extravagant by any means. Just enough shine to keep the right kind of people coming in, and the wrong kind out. But places like this, no matter how hard they glow, always, and I mean always, cast a long shadow. I can see it next to the building. An alleyway to the right of an old movie theatre, so ancient that only the ghost of the marquee remains, letters smudged away into sooty afterprints. I can’t make out what the sign once said, but it’s clear the structure shares a body with the hall. And near the top, past layers of grated stairs and maintenance platforms: a junction node for the stage lighting controls. The power is contained inside a single service panel that’s long since given up the fight against time. Damaged, with warped casing and a mess of cables barely holding together. That’s their own damn fault for neglecting electrics. Then again, this place barely sees use more than once a year. Why waste money, right? Still, with the storms that seem to keep coming back to the city like a bad cough you’d think they’d at least check the systems before the year-end celebrations. But no. Guess Dance had a point when he said every mountain has its ‘crack.’

  I ran a quick ‘Server Locator’ scan to trace the panel’s connections, and, funnily enough, it’s linked to the underground. So, technically, there’s some plausibility to our plan. It makes sense, too. The main electrical system for not only the performance hall but also the buildings around it are all somewhat connected, or at least once were, to the same power grid. Part of the reason it’s still set that way is because they’re too damn lazy to change it, says Dance, or maybe it’s just too expensive, even for rich assholes like them.

  Don’t know. Don’t care. All I’m focused on is getting this job done, perfectly. We can’t mess up this time. If we do, we will be caught, and we will suffer the consequences.

  I’m in the back of Raze’s Lexus, though he’s off elsewhere, prepping for the convoy to roll through their so-called dedicated route. By now, they should still be skimming the outskirts, not yet breaching the city turnpike. Vander and Dance sit up front—Vander hunched over a small laptop, Dance turning a miniature echo device over in his palm. He powers it on, plucks the spike from the side, and passes it back, telling me to slot in.

  I take the spike, thinking it doesn’t look all that different from your typical USB, and press it to my neural port, tapping into the crew’s ‘holo’. A universal cloud where we can communicate and listen to each other without the signal being picked up by external scanning technology. Not that a place like this would put that much effort into their security, but still, better to play it safe and cover as many angles as we possibly can.

  The audio fizzles. At first, just static, crackling in my ear. Slowly, it sharpens, resolving into a voice on the other end of the line.

  “You hear me okay? Hello?”

  Fingers. I can see her name on the top right of my neural display, a small speaker icon pulsing blue with every word.

  I press the button embedded on the spike, unmuting myself, and say, “Loud and clear.”

  “Good,” she says. “I’ve added you to the cloud room. In a few seconds you’ll see it.”

  Sure enough, it pops up—Cloud-Room 7—ghosting across my HUD. More than a chatroom, more than just comms. It’s a live data stream, an encrypted dropzone where we can dump snapshots straight from our optics. Anything we see, anything we blink-save, gets fed into the loop. Could prove useful, especially for Vander, given that’s he’s going to be monitoring the cameras as soon as we manage to jack him into the network.

  “See it?” Fingers asks.

  “I do.”

  “Good,” she says. “Raze, Cormac, you copy?”

  It takes a moment, but eventually they answer at the same time: “Yeah” and “Indeed”.

  “I’m heading up now. I’ll let you know once the bot’s in position.”

  It’s going to be a while yet before we’re at that stage of the plan, but given the time constraint, it’s definitely preferable that we get a headstart on things, especially since anything can go wrong.

  “Alright mate.” Dance pops the door open and steps outside the car. “Time to show me what you and that netrunner doooookie can do.”

  I follow him outside, both of us dressed in matching grey overalls. Dance figured it was safer to buy industry-standard fakes off the black market. No guarantee the electricians’ gear would fit us after their temporary disablement. A detail I hadn’t considered. But that’s why these people are experienced, and I’m just trying to keep up. We cross the street, careful to weave through the steady flow of northfolk spilling across the sidewalk. Normally, a night this cold would send people indoors, huddled up with family. But not tonight; the real celebrations are out here. Kiosks crowd the curb where traffic meters should be, and dancers twist, contort, spinning glowlit torches in hypnotic arcs, their bodies bending in ways that surely defy anatomy. And that music, that steady bumping with maybe the faintest trace of a vocalist.

  Once we make it to the alleyway between The Ghost in Satin and the theatre, we head up the grated stairwell, listening as the cheers of the patrons inside rumble through the metal walls. I can nearly feel the platform shake, but I’m pretty sure that’s my mind playing tricks on me, or maybe the platform’s not that well-maintained compared to all the other infrastructure.

  When we reach the closed panel at the top, the one housing the junction node, I run ‘Manual Override’, releasing the security pin with a soft click. I slide it free, and the cover groans open. Not our first time doing this. We scouted the place a couple of nights ago, mapped out every exit, every blindspot. But back then, the streets weren’t this crowded. Too many eyes. Too many oblivious, pompous people drifting past. If we’re gonna take down the electricians, we need to stay invisible.

  Inside the power box, as expected, the junction node is still a mess of wiring, dust-choked vents, and rusted connectors, a neglected system already on its last legs. No last-minute restorations, thank goodness. No need for brute force when the wear and tear is doing half the work for us.

  Dance starts by loosening a couple of corroded terminal screws, enough that the cables inside wobble just slightly out of place. Over time, heat expansion and vibration would have done this naturally; we’re just helping it along. Next, he takes a micro-tool and scores the insulation on one of the main lighting relays, just enough to cause an intermittent fault, the kind that stutters before frying itself under load. To sell it, he dabs a thin layer of oxide paste onto the damaged section. Vander's suggestion having worked with circuitry for many years.

  He leans in, shifting a loose ground wire just enough to cause an unstable connection. The next time the stagelights surge, the panel will, or at least should, register a critical fault.

  Dance steps back, tucking the tool away in his front pocket. “Give it fifteen minutes.”

  “Might this, you know, kill the show entirely if it hits too hard?” I say. “Pretty sure half their performance runs on stagelights.”

  Dance gives one of the wires a casual flick. “Nah, just a flicker here, a blackout there. Enough to get management shittin’ bricks, not enough to crash the whole show, mate.”

  “You done this before?”

  “Similar,” Dance says, rolling his shoulders like this whole thing’s just another Tuesday. “Gotta understand somethin’: I’ve been in this game for thirty years. I ain’t just a chemist, yeah? And why are you gettin’ so twitchy all of a sudden?”

  I snap the cover shut and engage ‘Manual Override’, locking it. We start making our way back down the stairs. “We’re dealin’ with some pretty serious stuff here.”

  Dance lets out a dry chuckle. “Then don’t fuck up.” He doesn’t even look at me when he says it, just keeps moving like none of this is worth breaking a sweat over. “Listen, you gotta get somethin’ through your head about the north: they’re rich, not smart. Blokes like this never had to use their brains to get what they want, just had it tossed in their lap. Most of ’em, anyway. And this?” He jerks a thumb back towards the hall as we reach the bottom of the alleyway. “It’s an entertainment venue, not a fortress. Might look pricey from the outside, but trust me, this joint’s got about as much investment as—”

  “I get it,” I say, following him into a smaller side-alley behind the movie theatre, dark enough for us to remain in the shadows but with enough of a view to spot anyone on the way up the maintenance stairs. We stay hidden behind an old dumpster, keeping our eyes forward, watching for anyone to come out and inspect the area. “It’s expensive to us, not to them. To be honest, it seems most of these northsiders think they’re too good for tight security. I mean, look at the cargo ships. Funded by northsiders and yet they didn’t have any armed gunmen.”

  “It’s no coincidence.” Dance pulls out a small, rectangular device and presses a button. The screen hums to life, casting a dim glow over his fingers. A miniature outline of the performance hall’s interior flashes up, traced in sharp blue lines against a grey backdrop. Thin, ghostly tubes map out every hallway, every stairwell, every exit. Security nodes pulse like dying stars, and our bodies are highlighted as red dots near the side, small, insignificant. Really puts things in perspective. “How do you think I got the layout?” Dance scoffs. “No security. Blokes who used to work these tunnels dumped the whole map on the darknet years ago.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  He shoots me one of those looks, somewhere between annoyance and curiosity, like he can’t decide if I’m slow or just amusing. “Because information is power.” He flicks a bit of dust off the mini-map screen. “You might think it’s money that separates the north from the south—fancy shoes, big houses, cushy jobs. Might think it’s status. But you’d be wrong. The only thing that really separates us is this. Information. And people will pay anything to get it. Hell, they’ll kill for it.”

  It’s a solid point. I remember Fingers once mentioned something along those lines, about how intelligence inevitably outwits technology, and I’ve come to learn that there’s some truth to that. You can give someone the most advanced cyberware in the world but if they’re too dumb to account for any mishaps then they’re as good as dead.

  I’m probably a good example of that.

  Soon, just after Fingers confirms she’s on the roof of the apartment complex with the spider-bot on standby—took her barely any time at all—we hear footsteps echoing down the alley, drawing closer, then the heavy clank of boots on metal as someone ascends the grated stairway. I ease around the corner of the dumpster, careful not to stick out too far, and spot one of the employees approaching the service panel, a key-card dangling from a lanyard around his neck. He steps up, presses the card to the scanner lock. Beep. Pulls the panel open. It’s hard to get a good view on him, but he looks to be of Asian descent, and his hair is smooth and shiny. He wears a pair of basic glasses, and he holds a device up to the panel. The same device that employee used on the crane head trolley on the cargo ship. It must be a fault detector of some sort.

  I run a quick-scan: Kenzo Chowdhury, assistant operating manager of Orchid. I’m guessing that’s the company behind the show. No special chrome, just a basic joe-schmo with a little bit of a belly and a pair of suspenders. Probably the kind of guy who spends more time buried in logistics than on the floor. He’s got that tired, overworked look, the kind that says he’s here to keep the gears turning, not to watch flashy lights.

  I take a snapshot using my optics and upload the image into the cloud room. Just in case we need to refer back to it.

  For a couple of minutes, he scans, adjusts, fiddles with the connections, his expression growing increasingly strained until, finally, he exhales sharply, shakes his head, and taps a finger to his temple, his holo activating with a flicker of golden-orange light in his eyes as he leans against the railing, tense, looking down (not too far down, thankfully) while I ease back behind the dumpster, knowing that even in dim lighting my visor is fairly bright, and it doesn’t take special optics to spot something like that.

  “Yeah, seems to be a faulty ground connection,” the employee says. “Looks like corrosion’s been eatin’ at it for a while. Could be moisture buildup, maybe heat stress from the system cycling too hard. Wires are loose, too. Probably been shortin’ on and off for weeks, just never bad enough to trip a full failure till now.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Some silence.

  “Yeah, especially for the twelve-o’clock,” he mutters, then trails off again. “Yeah.”

  This goes on for a while: a string of “yeahs” and “uh-huhs”. A pause. A sigh. Another “hmm”.

  Then finally, “I’ll call the nearest tech crew. See who’s got a unit free.”

  I suck in cool air. So far, so good.

  “Alright,” he says. “I’ll check on the computer. See ya.... Yeah.... Buh-bye.” His orange-crossed irises rotate and turn back to their original dark colour. He steps away from the railing, makes his way down again, and heads around to the front, into the building.

  It’s satisfying to see a plan come to fruition, I must admit, but this was really a no-brainer; the difficult part would be immobilising the electricians without anyone noticing. Our best bet would be to wait until they’re at the top of the stairway, where it’ll be too high for anyone to see, a blindspot in a sense. From there, Dance will inject them with the serum. Gone. Out. Ten seconds. Then Vander can drive over, back the car up, and we’ll stash the unconscious bodies in the trunk. He’ll drive far, but not too far; he’ll still want to be close enough to have a strong enough signal to access the camera network.

  And so we wait, listening to the hum of the streets: the steady drum of music, the murmur of passing voices, the occasional burst of laughter, and every once in a while The Ghost in Satin would erupt in cheers, loud, rattling. The electrics might be acting up, but it doesn’t stop them from basking in their pompous indulgence, swaying in velvet booths, I bet, swirling expensive drinks, wrapped up in the illusion that nothing outside their little world could ever go wrong. I suppose I shouldn’t be so angry about the state of this city. After all, it’s not like I’ve spent my whole life living here. But Lord help me, I still am. Doesn’t matter that my memory’s been shot to hell, that all I have left are the engraved dictates pushing my limbs forward, the unseen gears that send my emotions spiralling down paths I don’t fully understand; sometimes there’s no neat explanation for these things, no quiet moment of clarity where you sit back, connect the dots, and say, that’s why I feel this way; sometimes it simply is and that’s that. Maybe it’s in my nature to despise greed, to loathe the stink of unchecked power and the smugness of those who never had to crawl to survive, to feel that simmering, ugly rage coil tight in my chest every time I see the way they carry themselves: heads high, hands clean, never touching the filth beneath their feet because people like me, people like us, were always meant to sink in it.

  I suppose it’s only human to feel that way. There is absolutely no excuse that one side of the city has poor children relying on one man’s kindness, while another drowns in excess, where dinner scraps could feed families, where chandeliers glow brighter than streetlamps, where a single night’s entertainment costs more than a lifetime’s wages for someone scraping by in the gutters. People like that employee in the cargo ship. People like Raze supporting his terminally ill sister.

  And yet, that’s how it is. One side hoards, the other starves, and the ones in power call it balance.

  Just look at this place. Are those marble inlays on the alley floor? And this is a poorly invested sector? Don’t make me laugh. No wonder gangs exist. They’re not just trying to survive; they’re trying to fight. Fingers, Raze, Cormac....

  Everyone in the south is fighting. I can feel it, and one day, the north will feel it, too.

  Twenty-five minutes pass before a black work van rolls up to the parking lot, bearing the company name GridOne Services in plain white characters. Smooth, minimalistic. That must be them. Has to be. But as the van reverses into a bay, I zoom in with my optics, ready to scan the people behind the wheel, only to realise something: both seats are empty. No driver. No passenger.

  I mention this, confused.

  “Must be usin’ self-drivin’ AI like the convoy,” Dance says, letting out a suppressed laugh. “Lazy cunts couldn’t even be bothered drivin’ themselves. Told you they’d be northsiders. Feel a little better ’bout killin’ ’em now, mate?”

  Of course not. My morals may not be the greatest, but they sure as hell will never sink that low.

  I notice something else.

  The electricians step out of the van, toolboxes in hand, moving with that same pristine posture, heads held high like they own the pavement. But it’s not just the way they walk; it’s their eyes. Red visors. No… not visors. A glow. A faint, unnatural glow. Oh.... Oh no....

  “Dance,” I murmur.

  “Yeah?”

  Before I can say it, a sharp crack cuts through the holo-feed, and a name flashes in the top-right of my neural display:

  Vander.

  “Androids,” Vander says.

  Dance presses a finger to his spike, ducks lower behind the dumpster, eyes locked on the pair as they stride towards the crosswalk. One of them raises a precise, pinpointed claw and presses the traffic-stop button.

  “They’re runnin’ androids out to job sites now?” His voice is low, sharp, and no longer has that hint of humour. “The hell is this shit?”

  It’s a good question. But I remember hearing about shifts in the workforce, news reports on increased android production thanks to better hardware. I didn’t think they’d already made their way into something as delicate as electrics.

  This isn’t good. Not good at all.

  I scan them as they cross the junction, the flashing yellow walk-lines casting golden shimmers across their featureless faces. Activating ‘Server Locator’, I trace their connections, a pair of red lines linking them, stretching far into the distance, maybe to a control tower or mast. No chance in hell we’re disabling that. But maybe... just maybe....

  “Short-circuit ’em,” Dance says.

  I shake my head, thinking. “Trust me. You don’t want that. But...”

  The androids move down the alleyway and ascend the stairway, silent, too perfect for chatter. On the second landing, I activate ‘Data Blocker’, then use ‘Delete’, severing the signal. One freezes in place, just for a few seconds, then resumes its climb, unfazed.

  So that won’t work. Taking Dance’s suggestion and short-circuiting them will only lead to them going haywire. There’s also a chance the company might get notified if they’re damaged, so we really ought to be tactical about this. But how? What can I possibly...?

  Their signatures.

  I use the spoofer to flesh out a comprehensive review of their spec:

  MODEL: Techstrum S-107 “Vigilant”

  CORPORATION: Techstrum Systems International LLC.

  AI: Seraph-1 (Limited Autonomy – Tier 3)

  CONNECTION STATUS: Remote-linked via Encrypted Relay (Control Tower: 07)

  TASK ID: EL-923285A: Routine Power Grid Diagnostics – Subsector 17

  STATUS: In Progress

  PRIORITY LEVEL: Moderate

  NEXT ACTION: ... Assess transformer relay stability ...

  I get an idea. As the androids set down their toolboxes and I can just about see them through the grates, I activate ‘Data Blocker’, select ‘Alter’, and change the Task ID by one digit.

  Suddenly, the android freezes again, and this time, it doesn’t resume its duties. It stays in a crouched position while the other continues scanning the power box, sliding the pin free. Then it just stands there, doing nothing. Maybe it’s waiting for verification: redundancy protocol, ensuring one unit confirms the other’s work before moving on. Either way, it’s stuck.

  But just to be safe, I use ‘Alter’ on the second bot and change the Task ID by a single digit.

  “What did you do?” asks Dance.

  “Don’t worry about it.” I step out from behind the dumpster and press the spike on my temple. “Can you come over, Vander? We’ve got ’em immobilised.”

  “Comin’,” Vander says.

  We head up to the top of the grated stairway, grab the androids, and begin dragging them down by the neck of their overalls. By the time we make it down to the alleyway tiles, Vander’s already reversed inside with the boot wide open. He comes over and helps us carry their bodies into the back one by one. Then he shuts it and dusts off his hands, sparing the chat. No time for it.

  Vander hops into the driver’s seat, eases out onto the street, and turns right. He’ll travel a couple of blocks, find a quiet spot near a defunct parking meter, and set up with his laptop. I’ll tap him into the feed. I just need a minute.

  Dance heads up to grab the toolboxes while I activate ‘Gossamer Sig’. A blue cube appears in my neural display, prompting me to edit my identity details. I recall the name, Juno Harlyn, and enter it at the top. By the time Dance returns, a toolbox in each hand, he hands me one, and I ask about the rest of Juno's details. He lists everything: date of birth, occupation title, company, race, sex, so on. When he gets to the company, he tells me to put GridOne Services, even though Juno’s never worked there. Given the van outside, it might sell the illusion. After that, I change his details to match up with Reeve Calder.

  “You want me to wear the visor?” I ask.

  “You have no choice,” Dance says. “There’s always an electrician with scannin’ technology to run diagnostics and locate servers, technical problems.” He shows me the small hand-held device with the map of the underground tunnels, and this time the screen shifts over to that blank area, the substation, and something square blinks red. “Internal fault. Cool, right? Thanks for finding it, Juno.” He winks.

  I let out a shy laugh, nothing more than a breath, and follow him around the front, stepping through the doors and into a foyer so chalky it feels almost sterile, the kind of place designed to impress but not to comfort, all cold white panels and glossy floors that reflect the overhead lights in perfect symmetry, as if afraid to let a single shadow linger for too long. The space is wider than it is deep, stretching out like an open jaw, the reception desk running almost the full length of the room in a seamless curve of dark composite, unbroken save for the occasional embedded screen flowing with corporate branding. Behind it, perched on a high stool with perfect posture, a man in a crisp black business suit types away at a computer with the slump of someone who has done this a thousand times and will continue to do it a thousand more, barely sparing us a glance as we step inside, as if we’re just another fleeting entry in the endless stream of faces passing through this place.

  “Name?” he says as we approach, still not looking up.

  “GridOne Services, mate,” Dance replies, casual but firm.

  The man stops typing, peeks over the monitor, an eyebrow cocked. “You know the box is outside, right?”

  “Yeah.” Dance tilts the hand-held device towards him, the screen displaying a red-blinking object. “Internal fault in relay node A-32. You’ve got a circuit inconsistency flagged in the main junction log, probably a voltage fluctuation between the external grid and your in-house backup.”

  The man’s frown deepens, but Dance doesn’t give him a chance to argue.

  “Now, that usually means one of two things: either a surge dampener’s tripped, in which case, no big deal, or…” He pauses. “…your internal load distributor’s been compensating for hours, which means if we don’t clear it, your systems could go into automatic phase isolation. And trust me, mate, you do not want automatic phase isolation happening mid-performance.”

  The man exhales sharply, tapping his fingers against the desk, glancing between Dance, the device, and the foyer. “Nobody said anything about a flagged relay,” he says, sounding bored.

  “’Course they didn’t.” Dance shrugs. “Because if they had, you’d have had us in here an hour ago instead of wasting time asking questions while your load balancer gets ready to shit itself.”

  The man hesitates, then huffs. “Fine. But I’ll need to run a quick scan.”

  “’Course, mate,” Dance says.

  The man steps up from the stool, and it turns out he’s fairly short, five-foot-nothing, before bending down to grab something. We eye him curiously. Eventually, he hauls up a large, bulky cube, setting it on the desk with a solid thunk. The device is jet-black, roughly the size of a small safe, the surface broken only by a recessed panel on top and a thin strip of pulsing cyan running along the perimeter. The front-facing side bears an insignia, Sentek Omniscan 2074, stamped above a biometric interface. Near the base, two thin, retractable ports slide open, exposing twin neural jack connectors. A small status interface scrolls through system checks:

  Integrity Sweep: Ready

  Quantum Trace: Ready

  AI Protocol: Oscal-7 Active

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Deep imprint scanner,” the man says. “Bit old, so this might take a couple minutes. It’s just to make sure neither of you have any unauthorised tech under the hood. Not that we don’t trust your company. It’s just procedure. Can’t let anyone into the underbuilding without a deep scan.”

  “Oh,” Dance says, and I hear a bit of nervousness in his voice—and rightfully so. This will pick up on the Gossamer Sig easily. Unless...

  “That’s okay,” I say, nodding at Dance. “You hired us. Guess we have to play by your rules.”

  He taps the side of the device, tracing a slow circle around the left port before pointing at me. “You jack in here.” He points at Dance. “And you jack in here.” Then at the port opposite the cube, circling it again. He pulls a cable from down the middle and plugs it into the computer.

  We insert our neural wires into the side-ports of the device, watching the interface change to show a comprehensive list of quick-scans: Identity Verification, Quick-Hack Detection, Memory Integrity Check, System Logs, Neural Latency Report. Not even a second later, the scan begins, and a progress bar slowly creeps forward. I activate my spoofer, eyes scanning for potential vulnerabilities, searching for entry points in the system architecture: delays, redundancies, anything exploitable. And then I see it.

  Each scan result isn’t processed all at once; it’s analysed in sequence, logged in real time as it moves through different data layers. I can see it on my neural display, the entire scan. The final report isn’t static, technically; it’s being actively constructed, updated line by line as new information is retrieved. If the results were precompiled, tampering would be a nightmare. But here? Here, I might just be able to... Yeah. I can. I key into the ‘Data Blocker’ protocol and deploy ‘Alter’, overlaying the scan’s output with a carefully engineered patch on my HUD. The trick isn’t just replacing the data; it’s making sure my edits at least blend, that the altered lines look organic, as if they were always part of the system’s expected results. No sudden overrides, no glaring discrepancies, just a natural flow of information.

  Steady now. Breathe.

  It’s a tight window; every time a new line appears, it flags my netrunning software, and I have to overwrite the result before it sticks. Just a quick spoof. Precise, but subtle.

  For Dance, it’s okay, because he technically doesn’t have any netrunning software. I hacked him with the Gossamer Sig, so he’s showing up as clear.

  But I’m careful. I let it flag for ‘Server Locator’, because that’s exactly what an electrician with a visor should have.

  Eventually, the scans for the quick-hacks are over, and it moves on to some of the hardware in my body. I play on the safe side and alter the line reading my left arm to exclude the fact that I have a mantisblade, just in case that poses a problem. I know he didn’t mention hardware specifically, but he might not like the fact that I’m technically carrying.

  After two minutes, the scan completes, and to my relief, it comes up as clear.

  He observes the results on his monitor, and then tells us to jack out. “Looks good... Reeve and... Juno,” he says, squinting at the screen. “Sorry about that. Like I said, just procedure.”

  “No problem, mate,” Dance says, unlinking the neural wire and picking up the toolbox again. “As long as we get paid, couldn’t give a donkey’s ass. We’ll have this fixed within the hour, hour and a half max.”

  The employee chuckles. “Good luck.”

  I unlink my wire and pick up the toolbox. “Thanks.”

  We turn and step away, toolboxes in hand, and as we pass through the security gate, I let out a deep breath. That was close, closer than I’d like, closer than I’d let Dance know, because if I’d lagged even a second, if I’d hesitated or slipped up or mistimed just one edit, we’d be flagged, locked down, maybe even detained. And this was just an entry scan, just the first layer of the hall’s ‘security’. If that alone almost caught us, what the hell else is waiting deeper in?

  Then, as we push through the next set of doors, I hear it: soft at first, just a melody drifting from the performance hall, a voice high and easy, lilting, oh lilting:

  “And when she moves, the blades will follow, silver whispers in the dark… Do not fray the ribbon’s edge…”

  And applause. But who, or what, are they applauding?