Maggie Elden wasn’t sweating, at least not visibly; her trademark pastel pink starched skirt-suit was as crisp as a bite of Granny Smith apple. Everything about her screamed “professional grandmother,” from her white Daisy Dukes to her perfect denturework. Every time she flashed that pearly smile at the audience, I could feel my approval rating drop another two points. She waved like the Queen of England and addressed every questioner as “dear.” She fought fire with marshmallows, answering every policy question with a personal anecdote. She was old enough to have seen it all, too old to worry about petty things, and wise enough to know just what was best for the 44th Congressional District.

The only part of her that didn’t look like somebody’s great-aunt were her eyes; they glittered like rock candy above her gently amused smile, and they bored into my forehead whenever the cameras turned to me. The instant I started to speak, I felt like she was just waiting for the excuse to wash my mouth out with soap on prime time television. I wasn’t normally a stutterer, but every complete sentence without a stammer was a minor success and every “um” sent a fresh rivulet of sweat down my back.

Sam Walters, KMOD’s evening anchor and one of my supporters until fifty-eight minutes ago, turned to the audience and nodded slowly, his face solemn and sincere; he wasn’t sweating either. “Well, the race for the State Senate certainly has been a campaign of opposites so far,” he intoned. “We’ve got time for one more question in this debate, this one from an online submitter.” Across the bottom of the monitor showing the live feed, text scrolled across the ticker, which he read aloud. “Have you had a Malthus Exam, and if so, what was the result?” As he spoke, he turned to face me. “Let’s start with the incumbent. Congressman White?”

Maggie Elden’s rock-candy eyes drilled into my skull as I took a deep breath to buy time while I composed my thoughts. “That’s a… well, it’s a very personal question,” I started, staring at a point just to the left of Walters’ head, while the red light of the camera glared in my peripheral vision. “It touches on issues of personal liberty and privacy, both of which I consider very important.”

Sam’s eyebrows snapped upwards, but he nodded slowly, as if I’d actually just answered the question. “So, you’re saying that you haven’t been tested, then?”

His gently rising question was a lifeline and I grabbed for it. “No,” I said too quickly. “No, not yet. I….” I started to say something else, but then I caught Maggie Elden’s uncomfortably warm smile and I snapped my mouth closed. “No.”

“I… see.” Sam sounded as convinced as I felt, but he turned to Maggie Elden to give her a chance. “Ms. Elden, have you been tested?”

“Oh, my, yes, dear,” Maggie Elden said, beaming gently as the stage lights made a halo around her face for the camera. “When poor Tom, my husband, died—God rest his soul—I made it a point to find out how I would go, so I could make sure my family was protected. My children are very important to me, you know!” She waggled a finger at the screen. “I’m going to die of lung cancer, which only makes sense since I smoke. So, I get screened every year, but there’s been no sign of it yet!” She laughed. “You know I wouldn’t run if I thought my health were something to worry about!”

Sam Walters chuckled back at his new candidate-of-choice. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.” Then, to the audience, he smiled. “I’m afraid that’s all the time we have at tonight’s debate; join us next week for Round Two.” He counted off three breaths, and said, “And… cut. Thank you all for coming.”

Even before he’d finished talking, the audience was up and filing out of the auditorium, murmuring to itself. Maggie rose from her seat and walked up to me, one white-gloved hand extended. “A pleasure, Congressman. Thank you for indulging me.”

A moment too late, I gave her hand a light squeeze, not quite a handshake. “The pleasure was mine, Ms. Elden, I’m sure.”

Maggie laughed at that. “The way you looked like you’d eaten a frog, I wouldn’t say so!” Then she immediately brushed aside the snipe. “Oh, don’t mind me, dear.” Her rock candy eyes glittered under the harsh stage lights. “I’m just saying you looked nervous, that’s all! You’re the incumbent! I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure,” I replied automatically. “Thank you. Please excuse me; I need to go.” Then, without another word, I turned and walked as calmly as I could behind the curtain, looking for a towel to wipe away all the sweat.

I let out a breath, my shoulders deflating. “Spent. How’d I do?”

She held out one hand and waggled it in front of her, then slowly tipped her thumb downward. “Details later. Coffee?”

“Love to. Let me phone Rick.” She passed me back my smartphone, and I thumbed it open, then scrolled through for my husband’s number. “Hey, hon,” I said as soon as it clicked. “I’m gonna grab coffee with Beth. Want to meet us downtown?”

Behind him, I could hear the television, probably talking heads predicting my eminent downfall. “I’ll pass, thanks; I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow. Bring me home a brownie, though?”

I closed my eyes. “Of course. Be home soon. Love you!” We made kissy noises at each other, and then I dumped the device back in my pocket. “All set.”

The cool air outside sent a welcome shiver down my spine. I stood for several seconds on the concrete walkway just letting the heat leach out of my skin. The sky was overcast, the clouds a burnt sienna reflecting the city lights downtown. A light mist drifted down from the sky, further soaking my already-damp shirt. “So,” I started as we walked towards the parking garage. “How’d I do, really?”

Beth shrugged as she pulled the car fob from her pocket. Her headlights blinked at us, and we got inside. “It wasn’t your worst showing ever,” she offered as she turned over the engine.

“Faint praise,” I retorted as I fumbled with the buckle. “Seriously, is she ex-Psyops or something?” I leaned against the door, resting my head in one hand. “I swear, she was utterly unflappable.”

“She got under your skin about halfway through the debate,” My manager observed casually as she maneuvered out of the garage. “She played every factor to her advantage, you saw her doing it, and she knew you knew it. Still, you held your own for the most part, up until the end. Mind if I ask you a personal question?”

I looked at Beth, but her eyes were strictly on the road, and her hands held the wheel lightly, no sign of white knuckles. “Go ahead.” I tried to put a shrug in my voice, but it ended up coming out like a swallow.

Beth chuckled softly to herself. “What’d your Malthus test say?”

I took another deep breath. “It’s not really—”

“Bullshit it’s not, Alan.” Her rebuke was near-instant, but her voice never changed pitch. “Everyone in the audience with one ear on the screen heard the stammer in your voice. You spent the whole night talking facts and figures while Miss Manners rambled about her grandkids, and then suddenly on that question, you went all personal-privacy.” She took her eyes off the road to look directly at me. “Margaret Elden pulled ahead of you by six points in two minutes; you have to address this.”

I grimaced, both at the statistics and the accusation. “Fine. You want to know?” I wasn’t trying to spit the words at her, but after an hour of interrogation, I was in no mood for more. “It said DRUG OVERDOSE. There.”

Beth went silent for several seconds while the drizzle turned to a proper spatter, drumming steadily off the windshield and roof of the car. “I can see why you tried to dodge,” she finally offered, pitching her voice up over the rain.

“Yeah, no kidding,” I grumped. “Never mind that I don’t even drink!”

Light from a passing streetlamp reflected Beth’s smirk in the glass. “So what are you on?”

I rolled my eyes. “Nothing.”

Beth looked at me again. “No, seriously, Alan, what is it? Is it just pot, or something worse?”

“It’s nothing, Beth.” I could feel my voice getting away from me, so I pinched the bridge of my nose and took another deep breath and held it while I tried to get the pounding of my veins under control. “No pot, no tobacco, not even beer. I’m on cimetidine as needed for acid reflux, but the worst that’s ever done to me is give me a headache. I’m guessing at some point down the line, it reacts with something else I’m taking, but I swear I’m clean.”

Beth’s frown glinted off the window. “If you say so.”

I groaned and thumped the dashboard. “You see? This is exactly why I didn’t say anything. Getting the damned Malthus Exam was a mistake in the first place. Two little words, and you’re ready to assume I’m some kind of stoner.”

Beth pulled one hand off the wheel. “Okay, you’re right, I shouldn’t jump to conclusions.” The sienna clouds flickered gold and thunder boomed in the distance. “So why did you get tested, then?”

I shrugged. “It was Rick’s idea. Remember when his mom had that heart attack, three years ago? He wanted to find out if she’d recover, and while we were there, well, he figured we should all know.” I sighed. “Poor bastard got STARVATION. He’s put on thirty pounds since then.”

“I wondered. Shit, I’m sorry.” We both fell quiet at that, but then Beth hammered on the wheel with one hand. “No, wait. That’s it.”

I tilted my head to the side as I looked at her, trying to make sense of her outburst. “What’s it?”

She gripped the wheel in both hands and sat up in her seat. “That’s how to beat Maggie Elden. First, though, I need a commitment from you. Are you ready to come clean?”

I chewed on my lip and wiped one clammy hand on my slacks. “I think that’s a bad idea, but if you think I can still win this—”

“You can,” my campaign manager asserted. “You’re great with policy, Alan; you always have been. You’re an engineer and you’re great with numbers, but narrative’s your weak suit. Last time you ran, it didn’t matter so much, but that’s where Maggie shines. So, here’s how we’re going to spin this….”

“Mr. White?” I looked up at Maggie Elden, beaming down at me and clutching her purse before her like she needed directions to the library. “I just wanted to wish you good luck, dear.”

I smiled back and nodded, not putting down my glass. “Good luck to you, Maggie.” Her eyes hardened slightly and, for a moment, her smile looked like it would slip, but she headed over to seat and folded her hands in her lap, her head bowed. I looked again at the time, then over to Sam Walters. “I’m ready when you are.”

Our host nodded and motioned to the cameraman, who held up his hand. “Places, everyone! In five, four, three….” He fell silent, ticked down the last two seconds, then dropped his arm.

“Good evening from Jefferson State University auditorium.” Sam peered into the camera as he spoke. “I’m Sam Walters of KMOD, and I’ll be your host for the evening. Welcome to the second round of congressional debates being held for the 44th District. Tonight as before, we have Margaret Elden, wife of the late Senator Tom Elden, running against incumbent congressman Alan White. We ended the last round on a question from the internet regarding the disclosure of Malthus results, so I’d like to pick up with where we left off with a question about medical testing in general.” He turned to me and gave me his best stern nod. “Congressman White, do you think that people’s Malthus results should be a matter of public record? ‘The more you know,’ and all that?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, Sam, that’s a fascinating question, and there’s a lot of ways I could take that, but before I do, I’d just like to address one holdover point from the last round, if I may?” He nodded, and I continued. “The question stuck in my craw after I left, so Monday, I went and got myself tested. Didn’t take long, just a few drops of blood. The results were interesting, to say the least.” Sam’s eyebrows shot up; he wasn’t expecting this tack. “Drug overdose, it said.” I held up one hand. “It was a shock to me, too. I don’t even drink! Believe me, I had a long talk with my pharmacy about it.”

Gliding past any chance at interruption, I quickly continued. “The first person I told was Rick, of course. That’s one of those phrases that could mean anything. I’m probably a medical malpractice suit waiting to happen, but we’ll come to that when we get there. What’s more important is that this whole process of finding out how you’re going to die….” I paused and leaned back in my chair. “Well, it puts you in a mind to wonder about how everyone is going to go, and what we’re doing to make that as painless as possible for everybody.” I turned suddenly to Maggie Elden and leaned on the arm of my chair. “Margaret, you said that you’ll get lung cancer, didn’t you?”

When the red light on the camera aimed at Maggie Elden went live, her eyes were glassy and confused. “Well, yes, but I, that is, I don’t see what—“

I put on my best sympathetic face. “Your husband, Tom… is that insurance policy of yours something special he got for you before your test?”

“Well, I… I don’t know, really.” Maggie Elden blinked, glancing quickly between me and the camera. “I’d have to go check my records. Tom took very good care of me, you see!”

“Of course he did, Maggie,” I said, nodded slowly and deliberately back at her, exaggerating for the camera. “But I have to wonder how many other families out there will never get that chance. How many people’s parents tested them at birth to try to protect them, but now can’t get coverage because that result’s a pre-existing condition? How many children go hungry because Mom and Dad both drew ‘auto accident’ but can’t take public transit to work? What happens to all the hard-working people who can’t get hired because the test said ‘workplace accident’? How many people have to suffer just because they’re not going to get a lucky throw on the last roll?”

I turned back to Sam and steepled my fingers in front of my face. “We like to believe in the American Dream, that if you work hard you’ll get ahead. Senator White, God rest his soul, was a prime example of that, but not everybody gets to be in the right place at the right time with the right skills like he was, and that’s nobody’s fault. If we don’t build a government that understands and accounts for that, then what message are we sending? How can anybody feel good about getting ahead at the expense of everybody else?” I couldn’t hold the grin in any longer. “To answer your question, Sam, I think that until we have that kind of government, that kind of society… well, it’s guilty until proven innocent. That’s not the American way.”

Sam smiled at me and shifted in his seat. “Well, I don’t think I can ask anything more, Congressman. Ms. Elden, anything to add?” As the camera shifted off of me and back to Maggie, I lifted my glass and stole a glance at her. She blinked, caught in the stage lights like a deer. As I watched, a bead of sweat dripped down her temple.

She wanted to keep going, but she’d been roleplaying these kinds of scenes long enough to spot a natural break. Plus, if she didn’t stop there, she was pretty sure she’d have some explaining to do to the cleaning staff. That’s probably a good place to leave those two, I think. The keyboard clattered under her fingers as she typed blindly. I’m really glad I jumped online, though! Thanks, Jenn. I really needed that.

A blinking window from her supervisor stole Rachel’s focus as soon as she opened her eyes again. Your lunch break ended six minutes ago. Are you coming back on-shift?

Rachel’s breath caught in her throat. Logging in now, she sent back to her boss. Sorry about the delay. The next seven minutes were a blur of headset cables and application splash screens as she set back up her workstation. I’m in queue.

I see you. Rachel could hear the disapproving glare in her boss’s text. Don’t take your lunch at your desk in the future, please.

Fine. Rachel closed the window without waiting for a response, then tabbed back over to her terminal client. Jennifer had left her a message in the meantime. Well, Kassita could probably come get Gem, maybe, but it’s not exactly in zir nature to go saving people. She’d followed up the comment with a few clearly out-of-character pokes and one explicit Rachel, you there?

It’s not in Kassita’s nature to do anything anybody wants zim to do! Rachel concurred hastily. Sorry about the delay; I had to log back in after lunch.

A chime sounded in her ear, and her arm snapped automatically over to the answer button on her desk, tabbing over to her customer management window as she did so. “Thank you for calling Prismatic Media. My name is Rachel. Could I please have your subscriber ID number?” The words came out in a practiced block, her voice rising and falling in the same preset pattern as the last thousand times she’d said it. It wasn’t a question, but an autonomic response, an output of the brain stem and thorax triggered by the answering click of her headset.

As Rachel’s fingers mechanically drummed in the digits that the disembodied voice recited in her ear, her terminal window flashed at her. That’s kind of the point! If zie did what people wanted, the first thing zie’d do would be cure zirself! Then how much fun would zie be?

“One moment, ma’am, while I call up your records.” Rachel clicked the search button, then tabbed back over to her terminal window. The non-contagious kind? The kind that doesn’t leave you worrying if you’ve become a nanoplague carrier?

Like I said, what fun is that? Several emoticons followed the rejoinder. I hope you enjoyed it, at least.

Rachel squirmed in her seat again. Immensely. She held her breath and closed her eyes for a moment, imagining the sensations she’d just been describing for Gemini. One day, Jenn, I swear. One day. Maybe. She knew she didn’t need to explain; her roleplaying partner had to be thinking the same thing about her own character.

“Hello?” The voice in her ear spoke. “Are you still there?”

The question snapped Rachel out of her reverie. “Ah, yes, sorry. The computer’s being slow today, you know how it is.” The excuse was as practiced as the rest of her speech, even if she had to be interrupted into it. “How may I help you today, Mrs. Reynolds?”

While Mrs. Reynolds nattered in her ear, Rachel pulled up a text window and started typing keywords into it, plucked from the flow of her customer’s speech. Maybe! Jennifer agreed in her terminal window. We could get a vacbed for the house, and I could play with the tube. What do you think?

“I think—” Rachel cut the flow of words off with a blush. Text-stream fail, she chastized herself as she cleared her throat. I think it might be fun. I’ve tried things like that before, but it’s never as good in real life, you know?

Mrs. Reynolds was silent, startled by the unexpected interruption. “You think what?”

“Oh, that was for my supervisor, ma’am, and I forgot to mute,” Rachel lied into her microphone, glancing over the keywords her hindbrain had pulled out of Mrs. Reynolds’ rambling. “So, it sounds like you’re having some connection problems. When’s the last time you power-cycled your cable router?” Mrs. Reynolds launched into another miniature tirade about the frustrations of technology, and Rachel caught herself nodding supportively at her computer. “I know it’s frustrating, but I do have to ask you to please go find it and unplug it for thirty seconds, then plug it back in. Of course, I’ll wait.”

Saudade. The word was waiting for her when she got back to the window. Longing for what never was or could be.

The chat window from her boss popped up again. Please come see me after your call.

The vice-grip around Rachel’s chest tightened again, but without any of the warm tingling that accompanied it before. Sure, she sent back, before flipping over to the terminal window where Jenn was waiting. Exactly. I should go, but I have a side question for you first. Who or what is Jakob Voynovich?

Another long silence passed. You know, I’m not sure! It made sense when I said it. I think it did, at least.

I’m not complaining! Rachel banged out the reassurance. I was just a little surprised by it. New character idea, maybe?

Maybe! Jenn’s reply was faster this time. With an introduction like that, he sounds like he could be some kind of crime lord. That might be fun to play!

“Hello?” The voice in Rachel’s ear startled her. “It’s plugged back in.”

Rachel’s snicker died in her throat as she shifted her vocal track back to operator-mode. “Okay, I’m going to try to connect to your router. This will only take a few moments. Please hold.” Her fingers bounced over her keyboard, cranking out diagnostic commands. While they ran, she tabbed back to her terminal window. That’s all you need: another excuse for a creepy backstage manipulator. Too much narrative intrigue, not enough sexy time!

To each zir own, love, Jenn chided. You want more sexy time, you have to give me more high-concept weirdness. That’s how it works!

I’m not complaining, just amused. Rachel’s fingers bounced on her keyboard as she typed. Anyway, I should get going. Is there enough of a dinner plan for me to worry about leftovers?

The chat window stayed silent for a few moments. Maybe. I’ll talk with the others and try to work something out.

Rachel sighed. Just let me know, okay? I’d rather stop and get a burger than come home and cook if you guys don’t do anything.

“Is something wrong?” Mrs. Reynolds asked.

I’ll let you know if a plan comes together, okay? Jenn sent back.

No, nothing’s wrong. Rachel stared at her terminal window, then drew in a deep breath. “No, nothing’s wrong. The computers are just slow today. I don’t see anything wrong from here. It looks like power-cycling your router seems to have taken care of the problem.”

What’s wrong? Jenn asked. Was it something I said?

Never mind. I have to go. See you tonight. Rachel closed the terminal window, then leaned back in her chair and stared emptily at the ceiling tiles. “You’re very welcome, Mrs. Reynolds. Thank you for calling Prismatic Media, and have a wonderful afternoon.” Her finger tapped the answer button again, but her mind was already drifting ahead to the meeting with her supervisor. She glanced towards the clock, hoping for a reprieve, but the hands only pointed out how far from her next break she was. She slumped forward, elbows against her desk, and sighed. I wonder if anyone will notice if I take a nap in the bathroom?

I broke the gaze and looked down at my computer, which was busily installing update four of fifteen. I shrugged. “Sure. What’s up?”

Steven didn’t move, and the smile on his face tightened slightly. “In my office?”

I shrugged again. “Sure.” I dragged out the vowel, trying to project nonchalance, but the timing of the request sent a shiver down my spine. He turned, and I followed behind, running down the litany of possible gaps in my performance. No matter how many times he pulled me aside to deliver an attagirl or just ask my opinion on something, I could never shake the sense that this time, we were going to have the Big Talk.

Steven’s office looked more like a nest than an office. His whiteboard was an intricate multi-colored disaster, an attempt to drag some amount of order out of chaos, and that theme seemed to carry across the rest of his space. Every available flat surface had something on it, from notepads to magnetic paperclip sculptures to printouts of presentations. As I stepped across the threshold into Steven’s office, he nodded at me. “Close the door?” Despite the rise in his voice, it wasn’t a request.

I bit back the resigned sigh as I did so. “Did you need my help with something?”

He dropped into his chair and leaned back, then waved towards one of the cheap lobby chairs opposite his desk. “Have a seat?”

I grimaced. “I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind.” My chair had been uncomfortable enough; the lumbar support jammed into my spine and the memory foam cushion seemed to have developed amnesia. Those rigid metal-and-plastic frames looked downright torturous. “I’m about to head to the doctor’s office anyway. I e-mailed you about that this morning.”

He nodded again. “I saw, which is why I wanted to catch you. I wanted to ask if the visit had anything to do with your meeting this morning.”

I held very still, gazing into my manager’s eyes, trying unsuccessfully to measure his mood. “This morning?”

He sat upright and tapped on his keyboard, exposing the desktop completely covered in icons. “Amanda emailed me afterwards, asking if you were okay. She said you took her roles-and-responsibilities meeting and tried to turn it into a turf war.”

The sigh forced itself out of me, along with the breath I’d been holding. “I’ll apologize to Amanda later; I’m really not feeling well.”

“You don’t look well, I’ll give you that,” Steven agreed, brushing his mustache away from his mouth with his fingers. “I’ve noticed you’ve had a lot more sick days the last few months.” He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his desk on top of a stack of color printouts. “I just wanted to find out if everything’s alright.”

Honesty warred with caution behind the scenes inside my head. “I think everything’s going to be alright,” I replied cautiously, carefully measuring the stress in my words. “I’ve been having some medical problems, but they’re nothing that ought to hurt my job performance.”

Steven chuckled grimly. “I think ‘ought’ and ‘is’ are pretty far apart here.” He held up a hand, palm outstretched, and shook his head. “I’m not trying to scare you, but I wanted you to hear it from me before you heard it from anybody else. Amanda’s not happy, and she’s not being quiet about it. I’ve already told her you’re sick, and that’s taken some of the heat off of things, but whatever it is, try to get it sorted out quickly if you can, okay?”

My gut twisted in response, but I inhaled sharply and swallowed my snarl. “Sometimes these things can take time to sort out, but I’ll do the best I can.”

Steven stood up and held out a hand. “I don’t want to lose you, Rhee. You’re one of my best people. Are you sure you can’t tell me what’s going on?”

I took his hand in my own, fighting down the grimace at my own clammy touch. “I wish I could, but it’s really nothing you ought to worry about. I’ll be back after my appointment, but I have to head down south, so I’ll be in late.”

My manager pumped once, then let go and waved me off. “Go ahead and take the rest of the day. I got your reports from this morning. Try to get things fixed, okay?”

I closed my eyes and nodded, my chest tight. “I will.” Then I was out the door, grabbing my laptop and scurrying for the exit like I was dodging a runaway train.

I turned my head so I didn’t have to watch the needle going into my arm. “That’d be pretty accurate. I bit somebody’s head off in a meeting today. Figuratively,” I added after a moment’s pause.

“Just checking,” my doctor quipped. “You never can be sure. Ready?” I nodded and held my breath. The needle burned as it entered, a bright spark of pain just inside my elbow that always made me grit my teeth. “There. Hold still.”

I nodded again. “Holding,” I grimaced through clenched teeth. It was ludicrous, I knew, being afraid of something so tiny, but fears didn’t have to be rational to have power, and were usually stronger when they weren’t. Seconds ticked past while I focused on the padded table under my butt and the itch at the base of my spine. I wanted to think of anything but the needle jammed into my arm and that burning, stinging sensation around the puncture wound and vial after vial of blood pumping out through the hole and—

“Done!” he exclaimed, sliding the tiny butterfly needle out of the hole. A whimper escaped me, but Dr. Bernardi just clucked his tongue in response. “I’ve been doing this every three months for four years.” A wad of gauze and a strip of vet wrap later, he was holding my elbow bent to stop the bleeding. “You’re going to get used to it eventually.”

He said that every time, and the familiarity was comforting, even if the reason for it wasn’t. I held my injured elbow in my good hand, smiling despite the lingering pain. “Not if it hurts worse every time you do it!”

Dr. Bernardi put his free hand on his chest over his silk tie and raised his eyebrows in mock-surprise. “You wound me, Mrs. List. I am a professional.”

I grinned at that. “A professional what, though?”

Dr. Bernardi set down the vials on his counter, then waggled his hand, turning towards his desk. “Oh, a little of this, a little of that, very little of that.” He pulled out a full syringe, then stuck it through the rubber stopper on one of the vials. “Speaking of, are you going to be at the gathering two weekends from now? My oldest’s going to be presenting himself.” He pulled a testing strip from a jar, then set it on the counter beside the sink. “I’d like a few supporting voices to be there.”

“I’d love to,” I replied. “We can talk politics later, though. What’s the word?”

My doctor clucked his tongue again as he let a drop of blood fall onto the testing strip. “I don’t have to send these off to the lab to tell you what’s going on, but I will just so I have exact numbers.” He kept his head down over the desk, watching the paper change color. “At a minimum, your expressin is low, and I can guess that your serum teratonase levels are off the scale.” He turned around and looked down the length of his nose at me. “Let me guess; you’re not taking your pills over the weekend.”

I sighed. “I was hoping I could get by without doing so. If I skip Friday morning, by Friday night I’m able to change again, and then I start taking them Sunday morning and by Monday I’m fine for work.”

Jerome Bernardi, MD, DVM, scowled and walked over to the exam table, putting one hand on my knee. “Did you remember to take your pills on Sunday?”

I nodded urgently. “I swear, I did. Morning and evening dose, both.”

He patted my leg lightly. “And I bet I’m not going to be able to talk you into taking your pills every day like a good little bear, am I?”

I sighed. “I really don’t want to lose that. It’s the one chance I have to feel sane during the week.”

Dr. Bernardi rubbed his chin with his free hand, then squeezed my knee. “You know, we can try putting you back on the adhominol.”

I shook my head quickly. “The last time I tried it, I broke out in hives all over.”

Dr. Bernardi clucked his tongue, then took a seat at his desk, two fingers flying over his keyboard. “Fine. I’m upping your expressin to two-hundred grams, twice a day, but that’s as high as I can safely push it. Take half a pill every morning and night over the weekend, then double up on Sunday night to try to get your serum levels back where they should be. If you feel the least bit off next Monday, call me, okay?”

I let out a chuff of relief and nodded slowly. “I can do that. Thanks, doc.”

My doctor shook his head and grinned lopsidedly at me. “Don’t thank me until it works, Rhee. Which… who knows? It’s worth a shot.” He stabbed the keyboard with one fingertip. “Sent. Take care, and I’ll see you a week from Saturday.”

Passing through a Confederacy immigration control point in the Transponder line, even in full human form, is going to set off somebody’s private alarm somewhere. Sure, there’re metal detectors and stripsearches and ten kinds of security to keep weapons out of transit areas, but there are ways around those sorts of things, not limited to bribery and nepotism. Most authorities report catching high numbers of smugglers into and out of secured areas, but never as a percentage of the total number of people suspected of bringing contraband goods through a restricted-access point. The fact is, a person as high-profile as I am is going to get recognised by somebody almost anywhere he goes, whether it’s by sight, voice or ID code. Being partly responsible for the system that allows such easy recognition, it’s little wonder I had someone waiting to greet me with open arms and a double-barrel welcome mat. Not everybody appreciates becoming just another number in an international database.

I don’t even think I was tailed; my senses were jacked up high enough that the only good means of following me would’ve been using the ever-present security cameras that come as a natural function of life inside a technopolis. The best that a physical being could have hoped was to duplicate what the electronics already knew, and in so doing they’d almost certainly have set off my paranoia and whatever advantage they could’ve gained by knowing where I was would’ve been lost by my awareness that I was being traced.

My best reconstruction of the event goes something like this: I walked through the Transponder gate at the inbound immigration checkpoint. A complex series of interactions between the transceiver in the archway, the Universal Identity Transponder implanted at the base of my neck, and the nearest International Identification Registry system led to the conclusion that I was, in fact, listed in the IIR database. The computer back-ending the transceiver proudly displayed the results of its queries about my country of citizenship (Cascadia), legal adult status (yes), outstanding criminal warrants (none in any IIR member nation or Interpol database) and permission to travel within the Confederacy (seven-day transit pass, work permitted within Confederate borders). Nothing suggesting anything out of the ordinary came up, so the green light flashed and a small bell toned to pass me through the gate. At that same instant, a second signal, most likely from a trojan wired up by the gunman’s accomplice in the Monitor booth, caused the gunman’s beeper to buzz, alerting him that the target had just passed through immigration and would be clear of customs momentarily. Assuming he was stationed near the exit gate, this would’ve given him ample time to set up for the shot.

Travelling as a full human, with no visibly abnormal traits, I had carelessly assumed that I would go unrecognised by the vast majority. Purists strike me as being such luddites when it comes to certain aspects of technology that I forget how sophisticated they can really be when not dealing with areas of modern science that they think violate their religious beliefs. So, my guard was down. That gave the gunman all the opportunity he needed to fire off three connecting shots. One went straight through my abdomen, missing my spine but removing a large chunk of my liver. The second connected with my upper chest, probably rupturing both lungs and doing unpleasant things to my cardiac rhythm. The third took out my right shoulder and probably disconnected my arm from the rest of my body.

I didn’t even have time to scream before I went into shock. The part of my brain responsible for processing pain went into overdrive, then got deactivated two milliseconds later by an override circuit designed for just such an occasion; with the crosscurrent flooding out all the meaningful signals, I was literally incapable of feeling the aftereffects of the shots. Call me old-fashioned but drugs designed to prevent a patient from waking up scare the hell out of me, as does the idea of any chemical that stops me from being able to remember anything that happened under its influence. I’d rather rely on a few microamps cutting off access to the synapses and be wide awake when somebody tampers with my body than trust any surgeon, no matter how skilled, to do what I want without me being right there to point out corrections while zie works. It activates itself automatically when it detects an excessive rate of signal is coming through that area of the brain; this means I can still feel minor injuries, but anything more serious than a bad sunburn or a papercut and I’ll only notice a quick twinge and then numbness.

Falling back onto the tile in shock and confusion, I was dimly aware of difficulty breathing, more gunshots, screams and general confusion. One unfortunate side effect of the override circuit is that it tends to throw my other sensory perceptions out of whack. I saw sparkles in front of my eyes, the overhead lights started humming loudly in my ears and then hundreds of hands lifted me and started carrying me along the corridor. I felt a deep pressure in my left arm, one that I had long ago learned to identify as the prick of a needle while under the influence, and then everything faded to a uniform grey static and white noise in my ears.

When I came around, more recognizable by the fact that I knew when I blinked than anything else, I was flat on my back staring up at the ceiling. Fluorescent white strips overhead stared down at me. I saw tiny rainbows around the edges of the lights, telling me the pain inhibitor was still active.

A voice startled me out of complacent comptemplation. “Awake, I see.”

I tried to turn my head but found I had all the muscle-tone of a wet tea towel. My brain put together the commands to string together a sentence but rather than words coming out of my mouth, a synthesiser near the bed picked up on the signals approaching my vocal cords and intercepted them, translating them into speech, albeit much less emotional and flatter than my own: “Doc, is that you?”

Doctor Richard Sanford, the man who had overseen every one of my major Transitions and most of my minor ones, chuckled and leaned over into my field of vision. Light reflected off the top of his balding head and into my eyes. “Don’t bother trying to move anything below your lips; you’re on a motor-control inhibitor to stop you from pulling apart any of the innumerable stitches currently holding you together. That includes your vocal cords.”

A mechanical laugh echoed out of the speechbox. “Your mother would be proud; all those sewing lessons paid off.”

Sanford smiled, showing his almost-perfect even white teeth. “We had to grow you a liver, two lungs, several meters of small intestine, a stomach and several kilos of muscle, bone, nerve and skin to put you back the way you were when you left. You want to tell me how my handiwork got so badly damaged?”

After a moment of pondering and two false starts, I managed to get the synthesizer to say, “A man with a shotgun wanted more than a few words with me. Where am I?” The last was a question but, as usual, the confounded mechanical contraption delivered it all in a flat monologue. I might as well have been reading a grocery list.

The doctor clucked his tongue and then leaned back out of my field of vision. “Pity,” he said, ignoring my question. “I was so hoping that for once, you’d manage to not damage my artwork while showing it off to the world.”

I swore to myself that one day I was going to figure out how to tell from his voice when Sanford was being funny and when he was being serious. However, it wasn’t going to be today. “Couldn’t let that happen. Besides, human is boring.”

He laughed. “It’s familiar, though. I’ll stick to my form for now. I can embrace some areas of new technology and support others without practicing them all on myself. What were you doing in the Confederacy, anyway?”

I tried to sigh but it came out as a quiet hum on the speaker. “Private installation. Details classified.”

Sanford clucked his tongue again. “Well, I’ll leave you to recover, then. Try to stay comfortable; you’ll have plenty of time to mull over what to do from here.” I closed my eyes, reducing the world to blackness. I heard footsteps and then the quiet click of a doorlatch falling into place. Unable to do anything else, I lay back and listened to the sound of my own heartbeat and the silent hum of machines as they lulled me into oblivion.

After a week of being turned this way and that by a rotating schedule of nurses who showed all the personal interest of a blind date, Doc Sanford came in, looked me over, pronounced me fit to move under my own power and removed the motor inhibitor. It took an hour for everyone to pull out the lengths of tubing that had kept me tied into the machines that acted as life-support. The first thing I did under my own manpower was walk to the toilet; it was probably my most rewarding physical experience to date. Solid food followed closely behind, if you can call warm oatmeal solid. I was still dazed and lightheaded from the override circuit being active constantly, but ignoring that, I felt as good as I did before the “incident.”

The incident. After attending to all my relevant bodily functions, I found a terminal and started scanning for news reports from the Confederacy. It wasn’t hard. The network returned several reports published over a span of hours, from two minutes after the first shot to morning-after, all accompanied by high-quality full-color-and-stereo security camera feeds of three solid impacts slamming into my chest, picking me up and flinging me gracefully in a close-to-parabolic arc, coming to rest splayed out on the tile floor, the shotgun-wielder standing over me for all of two seconds, savoring the moment.

Ignoring the bulk of the story for the moment, I focused my attention first on the video footage. Several full-speed passes through the graphic display of violence made the hair on the back of my neck rise; I felt as if I were attending my own funeral. I halted the flow of images and pulled a close-up of my assailant’s face. Smoke curling away from the barrels gave him a halo effect. He was bald but probably hadn’t shaved his head in a few days. His eyes were sunken, as were the rest of his features to some degree; he looked like someone had punched a bowl of bread dough, stuck the man’s face on the indented surface and then let it rise. He was overweight but not fat, or at least not disproportionately so. His lips were curled back in an animal’s snarl, but his eyes gleamed with sadistic pleasure. Studying him, I couldn’t help but think that he was getting some kind of twisted kick out of doing his deity’s dirty work. Zooming back out, I got a look at his clothes. His jacket and pants were an unbleached off-white and around his neck I caught the flash of polished metal, the golden stylized flame-and-world pendant showing membership in, or at least some affiliation with, the Purist movement.

I sighed and saved a few images extracted from the datastream for my personal files, then called up the associated texts. Thomas Elijah Westborough, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, was in custody eleven minutes and twenty-two seconds after shooting “Kolya Jensen, self-appointed architect of the Brave New World”. A few reports from more conservative news services went into wild speculation behind the reason for the co-inventor of the so-called Identity Chip to be in a place so opposed to his very existence, with claims ranging from conversion to several different One True Ways to secret meetings with subversives in government planning to make the Confederacy a puppet-signatory to the Reunified Northam talks. Those that chose not to guess why I was there did go so far as to wonder openly about it.

I had to laugh at the title bestowed upon me. It wasn’t my fault that religion couldn’t keep pace with technology; that particular race had been lost so many times on so many tracks over the years that it hardly seemed worth the effort to run it again. The right to die, the origin of life, the rising of the sun, and the shape of the earth—to pick a select few choice contests—had all come under attack as being against the whims or wishes of some Invisible Pink Unicorn or Magical Sky-Daddy over the years. All of them had eventually forced the devout and the devoted to come to grips with the fact that, a few glitches in quantum physics aside, the universe didn’t really care what they wanted to be true.

It also wasn’t my fault that Transponder technology had had become so ubiquitous. Transition technology had made almost every form of physical identification useless; given a month and enough money, you could become anyone or anything, within certain limits. Want to be an elephant for your kid’s jungle-themed birthday this fall? Two months and fifty-grand, give or take two weeks of physical therapy. Want to look like Chartreuse or Rocco Carboni? Twenty-thousand and two weeks. Sure, people have died in the tanks, but have died on surgical tables for as long as we’ve been lifting people out of the dirt to keep their incision sites clean, and I don’t hear a lot of clamoring for going back to the leeches-and-emetics theory of medicine. So, even if most people still operate under the very comforting delusion that they still look like their old Northam Identicards, the truth is that you couldn’t trust them to match, assuming they were still valid.

It wasn’t even my fault that Transponder technology existed. Officially, the Cascadia government owned all rights to the technology when it was developed, and they chose to release the technical specs into the field. I happened to be on the team that developed it, and yes I was the geek that put forward the technical design that became the framework for the UIT network, but I wasn’t any of the hundreds of people who recognized the need for identity confirmation that existed outside of physical constraints, allocated resources to solve the problem, hired my company as a research partner, and then pushed for results. I certainly wasn’t the millions of people who voted those politicians into office because of a facejacking operation that exposed three celebrities as criminals and put seven people in jail for conspiracy to commit murder. I was one person who happened to be at the right place at the right time to serve as a capstone on a much larger effort.

Getting in front of a camera at the Portland Techxpo and bragging about having made possible the Mark of the Beast… okay, yes, that was my fault. It certainly didn’t endear me to a bunch of religious psychotics like Brother William Washburn’s Purist Movement, but it was so hard to take them seriously. Their press releases read like half a dozen holy books and a double fistful of dollar bills with kook rants written on them passed through a Markov chain generator, and their policy statements showed they collectively had a creative—to be generous—understanding of both religious scripture and the scientific method. They had some two-dozen “official” factions, all split from the main group based on some minor nitpick involving just how many angels could dance on what sized pin, but on peeling back all the social niceties and hairsplitting, they were a bunch of people who’d decided that the best way to deal with the pace of technology was to ban anything that made them feel icky inside. They couldn’t get most of their members elected in either Tejas or the Confederacy because they were too conservative, and if that didn’t put them squarely beyond the realm of reason, nothing would.

I shut down the newsfeed and stared blankly at the terminal for about a minute, putting my thoughts in some semblance of order. Then I shook my head and punched in the callcode for my office. Three buzzes later, the speaker popped, heralding the audio pickup on the other side. “Identicorp Portland.”

I recognised the voice. Breathing a sigh of relief, I punched a request for video. “Trace, it’s Kolya.”

I counted off three seconds subvocally before Trace Morgan, my nominal vice-president and one of my closest friends, sent back a denial for my video request and a request for authentication. “Identify on secure channel, please.”

“Oh, for the love of…” I bit my tongue, then chuckled at my response. The override circuit must be affecting me, I thought. The terminal was an Astra 320, not exactly cutting-edge but still equipped with a UIT transceiver as part of its stardard peripheral list. I put my hand over the receiver and waited for the thing to beep at me and tell me it had read my transponder. When it did, I spoke back into the terminal. “Authentification on its way. And send your own while you’re at it.”

“Already in progress. Stand by.” I fidgeted in my chair while my terminal and his talked to each other, then the IIR database, finally transmitting a little message backing my claims to Trace. A request for video pickup came through on my end, which I quickly accepted. A few seconds later, a window on the terminal opened up, Trace’s muzzle staring out of it at me. He’d Transitioned shortly after I did, partially to help prove that the UIT could replace any conventional form of identification, partially to indulge himself. He looked like a labrat, a six-foot-two white rat, right down to the tip of his pink tail. His figure was still mostly human-proportioned, but the fur and skull
were unmistakabily rodentine.

His black eyes blinked at the screen. “Kolya?” His voice registered surprise.

I grimaced. “Hi.”

“You look…” He paused, not directly look into the pickup.

“The word is ‘bad’, Trace.”

“I’ll go with that,” he agreed quickly, trying to fill the previous gap. “I heard the news. Sanford putting you back together alright?”

I made a face at the screen. “I itch.”

Trace chuckled, a high-pitched chitter that sounded like it should be coming from a cartoon chipmunk. “Just don’t gouge yourself this time.” I rolled my eyes at his comment. I’d had the override circuit installed at the same time as my first major Transition: leopard, with a heavy emphasis on the animal traits. When I woke up, of course I didn’t feel any pain because of the neural block, but I did itch from all the fur. I wasn’t used to my body and I’d forgotten about my claws, so I managed to carve four good-sized slices in my chest before the slick feel of blood on my pawpads made me hit the panic button. It took nearly twice as long to recover as it should have. Needless to say, most of the office found this hilarious.

I rolled my shoulders in a shrug. “Have I missed anything important?”

Trace gave a non-committal shrug. “We’ve had Confederacy officials on the phone off and on for the past nine days alternatively demanding to know if we want to press charges and meekly asking if you’re alive and wanting to know if-slash-when someone will be coming back. There’ve also been roughly half a dozen messages left, all in different synthesised voices, taking credit for your death and proclaiming you to be the first to fall. There’ve been over two-dozen additional calls we presume from the same sources, but they’ve been hang-ups, possibly automated. Tracking the calls led to public phone booths in Cascadia, Tejas and the Confederacy. All calls were purchased with anonymous cashcards. Cascadia police and Interpol have both been notified.” He paused a moment, looked around the edge of the pickup. “That seems to be everything.”

I nodded. “Sounds like the shop’s under control, then. I should be out of here in a week and on my way back to Atlanta in ten days.”

Trace stared into the video pickup, tapping his front teeth with a claw; it was a nervous gesture me made when he was thinking. Then he leaned back and shook his head once. “This place can run for a month without you in a pinch and the Confederates can wait. I’d suggest Transitioning. Something new and different.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Maybe I missed something somewhere. I thought we were out to prove to them that Transponders could defeat any conventional disguise tactic. Perhaps I’m mistaken somewhere?”

The rat clicked his tongue and let out a high-pitched squeaking sigh. “The Confederacy has assured me that no report of your survival has yet hit their news wire, and also that they found their security leak and have patched it. Going back in the same body you took last time is just going to tell the Purists to try harder next time. Thus, I think it’s a dangerous idea, but going in another form should be safer, especially if you take along a bodyguard.” The like-I-told-you-to-do-last-time was implicit.

I thought, scratched my ear—carefully—and finally shrugged in mock defeat. “Alright, you win. I Transition before I go back.”

“And you take a bodyguard.” His pink eyes glittered with determination.

I sighed. “Alright, and I take a bodyguard. Call Dom and have her meet me here in a week; I should be coherent by then.”

Trace smirked, a feat I still found amazing giving his facial structure. “I already paged her; she should be there in the next half hour.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re a real piece of work.”

Trace’s muzzle split a little further. “That’s what Sanford said when he finished with me. Now get back in bed; Dom will be there soon and you’ll need your strength to deal with her.”

I waved a hand dismissively, even though my vision was getting blurry. “Fine, fine. See you in a month, give or take.”

Trace waved a paw at the video pickup and then the window shut itself down, the speaker crackling once to signify the end of the conversation. I hauled myself off the terminal and just about fell over my own feet getting back into bed. I sighed, realising I’d pushed myself too far for my first day under my own power. From the comfort of the mattress, I requested some classical music and lay back, eyes open but unfocused. I lost track of the time staring at the rainbows flickering around the fluorescent lights in time to Holst and Dvorak. I cut back into reality, though, when the music cut out and a voice came through the terminal speakers. “Kolya?”

It was Sanford’s receptionist, Terry Moreno, one of the only people on the staff with more skill at rebuilding computers than organics. I tilted my head and called out towards the terminal, “Yes?”

I had trouble telling if the distortions in Terry’s voice were the result of the transmission medium or just the override circuit messing with my senses again. “You’ve got a visitor.. Dom Herschell?”

I sighed and struggled to sit up in bed, regretting it as soon as I was semi-vertical. “I’m awake. Send her in.”

“On her way.” The music snapped back to life, picking up where it had been interrupted.

I canned the playback and waited. Around a minute later, the door opened and Dominique Herschell strolled into the room. She wore a tan fitted jumpsuit, far too crisp for it to have seen any real use. She was clearly between jobs; she’d obviously recently shaved her head, and the black tribal tribal tattoos on her head stood out sharply against her brown skin. She kicked the door shut with the heel of one foot, detoured by the terminal to grab the chair and dragged it over next to the bed. Rather than say anything, though, she just spun it around backward and sat facing me, her arms folded over the back.

I held her gaze for all of about thirty seconds before sighing. “What?”

Dom smirked. “I was just thinking of all the times you told me you didn’t like my line of work. Now Trace calls me and says you want to hire me. I’m just enjoying the moment.”

I snorted. “I still don’t like your line of work. Gun-for-hire never struck me as a career with good retirement options.”

Her smirk slipped into a playfully mocking sneer. “I’m a courier, not a mercenary. My combat training is for self-defense and the protection of valuables, which occasionally means people like you. And with that kind of crack, maybe I won’t take your job.”

It was my turn to grin. “Yes you will. You’ll have time to rub my nose in it all the way to the Confederacy and back.”

Dom gave me a look somewhere between incredulous and patronizing, then pulled a piece of gum out of one of her many pockets. “Confederacy?” She popped the stick in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

I sighed. “Yes, Confederacy. Okay, jokes aside, Dom. You’re the best person I know for this sort of business and one of the only ones I can probably trust to tag along. I got shot the last time I went and I have a vested interest in seeing that that doesn’t happen again. I’m a thinker, not a fighter. I had skywired senses and I still took three shotgun slugs from someone I should’ve seen five miles away.” I paused and shrugged, ignoring the discomfort from my right shoulderblade. “I need your help.”

I ran out of steam there and left the silence hanging while Dom blew bubbles. After a minute or so of consideration, she snapped her gum and nodded. “Alright. Two ground rules.”

Time to negotiate. “Number one?”

She held up a finger. “If the bullets start flying, I get hazard pay.”

I sighed but didn’t bother arguing that one. “Done. Number two?”

She grinned and raised a second. “If I say ‘duck’, you duck. When I say it, not after asking me why.”

I rolled my eyes. “Contrary to Trace’s claims, I am not the most inquisitive person on the planet and I do not have a problem with authority figures.”

She only snapped another bubble in response. When I said nothing further, she shrugged and stood, walking towards the door. “I’ll get the travel details from Trace. When do we leave?”

That reminded me. “Five weeks.”

Dom gave me that look again from the doorway. “Any reason for the delay?”

I nodded. “Trace wants me to Transition before I go. Bring a pocket scanner with you to the tube station.”

She grinned; I could just make out the wad of gum between her teeth. “What’re you going to be?”

I shrugged again, this time wincing at my shoulder. “I don’t know. I’ll have something figured out by the time Sanford starts cutting. Trace suggested ‘new and different’ so it’ll probably be anthropomorphic.”

Dom paused, one hand on the doorjamb. “Try female.”

I snickered. “That’d certainly be new and different.”

“It’ll also be something the Purists won’t consider,” she said pointedly, tapping a finger on the frame.

My eyes narrowed. “You read the news?”

Dom’s grin broadened. “I didn’t have to.”

I raised an eyebrow in puzzlement. “I don’t get it.”

A look of consternation passed over Dominique’s face, then she sighed. “Trace said he’d have my head if I told you, but he had me follow you from a discreet distance on your last trip. I couldn’t get to you in time to keep you from getting shot, but I did get you evacked back to Angeles. Trace covered the slingshot fare and I paid Medifast to keep your lungs attached to your neck while Sanford prepped an emergency suite for your arrival.” She grinned, leaning against the doorway. “Doc complained about their stitchwork.”

I sat, shocked, for what may very well have been the first time in my life. I honestly didn’t know whether to be angry or pleased that my ex-girlfriend and my best friend for the past twenty years had simultaneously conspired behind my back and saved my hide. I slumped against the head of the bed and looked back into Dom’s eyes. “Thanks.”

She brightened somewhat, a ghost of her smirk echoing on her face. “See you in five weeks. Try not to be late.” Then she exited the door while I slid back down into bed and let the Beethoven swell as I tried to decide on my next face.

“So you’ve said,” I sighed. “Look, wasn’t there anyone else you could call to watch the server? Someone closer?”

He shook his head. “I’ve called Infinicom; they’ve got extra monitoring on the box, but they say they can’t physically stash somebody in front of it. John or I could; we’re both cleared for access to the hardware and the box belongs to him, but John’s not exactly capable these days. So, guess who? Right turn.”

“I heard you, Jules,” I said, signalling and then weaving back across to the left lane. “So, they’ll let you sit in front of the hardware but then what? You could stop them from pulling the server off of the shelf, but you can’t stop them from pulling the shelves down. They could cut the power. Hell, Jules, if you really want to explore these paranoid ideas, why not imagine that they’ve changed all the clocks? It wouldn’t even take that; they could have just lied about the time. Even if they didn’t, all it would take is one nervous operator hitting a switch too soon and—”

Jules’ right fist slammed into the window, making it rattle. “Damnit, Adam, I know you’re the voice of reason and logic and John and I are a pair of emotional freaks, but right now you’re not helping! I’m worrying about John’s survival and you’re telling me all the ways in which he might already be dead. Not cool.”

“As far as medical science is concerned, he died on the operating table three weeks ago.” The words were out of me before I really thought about them. “If whatever passes for Johnathan is still running in there, then….” My voice trailed off when I glanced over and got a look at Jules’ expression. “I’m… sure he’ll be fine.”

Jules didn’t respond to that; he just looked back down at his palmtop. “Parking garage on the right. We’ve got two minutes.” His seatbelt was off as soon as he heard the parking brake engage, and before I had the car locked he was jogging towards the front of the Infinicom building. I had to sprint to catch up with him as he grabbed the door handle. Just as I approached, he jerked the door open, took two steps forward, and then froze. “Shit.”

Inside, four people in dark suits and visitors’ badges stood in the lobby, conversing and checking their watches. As the door swung wide, all four turned to look, staring directly at Jules and at me. They glanced back at each other, then turned to face us. The first, an older woman, took a step towards the door, her hand outstretched. “Miss Penrose? I’m Sarah Bellwether, Tadashiissei Security. Would you—”

That was all the prompting Jules needed. He started forward, his head down and his shoulders squared, trying to barrel past four security guards. “Ninety seconds, Adam.”

“Excuse me,” I said to Ms. Bellwether, stepping forward to run interference while Jules continued walking. “I’m Adam Watson, a friend of Jules’. He’s a little busy; can I—” One of the guards moved to cut Jules off as he went around me, and I jumped to interpose. “Can I help you? Excuse me, but—”

Tadashiissei Security immediately started flanking, voices jumbling as everyone started trying to have the last word. “—don’t know who you are but—can’t let you—with us, please—out of the way!” Someone’s hand landed on my shoulder. Like Johnathan tried to show me, I grabbed it and stepped back, tugging the guard off-balance, then shoved forward. Instantly two more hands were on my elbows, wrenching them behind me, and one of them called out, “Grab her!”

“Jules!” I shouted, trying to wrest an arm free. “Run!”

Jules’ rapid footfalls were his only response, followed by another set as the last guard broke after him. I heard the beep of the door, and then the snap of the latch. A hinge creaked, and then Jules burst out swearing as the door slammed closed. “—get your… damnit… let go! Adam!”

Ms. Bellwether tried again, firm but patient. “Miss Penrose, would you—”

“No, you fuckers!” Jules’ outburst was instant and unrestrained; something had finally snapped inside of him. “And it’s Mister; now let go—” I heard a slam, and then a muffled curse. “—no right to hold me, I’m trying to—” A deep artificial chime resonated in the air, followed by another a few moments later. “Ow, watch the—Damnit! Adam!” He jerked his right arm free, then tried to elbow the guard holding him in the ribs. The security agent grabbed for him again, and the two ended up tumbling to the ground.

“Oh, c’mon!” I shouted, my words echoing off of the walls. “You can’t do this! You’ve got no right to hold us! Where’s Infinicom security?”

“They issued us the badges when we arrived,” Ms. Bellwether said, her voice tightening. “They were quite eager to help us, given our long-standing business relationship. We had probable cause to suspect both interference with contract and fraudulent conveyance. Don’t prove those assumptions correct; you’re smarter than that, Mr. Penrose.”

“Now you get it right,” Jules grumbled, barely more than a grunt. “I get it. You win, okay? I give up. Just… let me go check on the server, please. I’ve got some people I really care about in there.”

Ms. Bellwether’s expression didn’t change, but at least her tone softened. “Of that there’s no doubt, but my orders are clear. I’m to escort you to a conference room on the eighteenth floor if you’re interested, or out of the building if you’re not. Those were the options given to me, and I’m afraid that’s all I can offer to you. It’s your choice.”

“Conference room?” I asked, straightening. I tugged once, and the guards holding my arms let go. “But why?”

Jules followed suit, pulling himself free. “Does it matter? The rollback’s started.”

“Jules, I’m about fed up with your attitude,” I sighed, throwing my hands up in the air. “You don’t know the server’s status right now.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled up his palmtop. “Memory’s at a hundred percent, swap’s at ninety-eight, and disk operations are pushing the limits of the hardware. There’s nothing more I can turn off or disable that doesn’t put the box at risk. Somebody getting bored and trying to load a sparkler in there could bring down the whole damn box, and I hope nobody tries to see who else is online. I need to hot-swap some RAM into it so that doesn’t happen, and some more disk would be really nice, too. That enough status for you, Adam?”

My eyes went wide. “Okay, so… that might have been good to know before.”

Jules smirked. “Why? They’re all just simulations, aren’t they? They’re not real.”

“Excuse me,” Ms. Bellwether interrupted. “We should either take this conversation up to the eighteenth floor or out to your vehicle. Our security staff is monitoring the health of the server as well, Mr. Penrose. Now please, either follow me or have a nice day.” With that, she turned and started walking towards the bank of elevators. The other guards withdrew as well, one standing by the elevators and the other two taking up position near the badge-coded door.

I walked over to Jules and offered him a hand. “We might as well follow her.”

“Why?” Jules glared up at me but took my hand in his good one, then hauled himself to his feet. “What’s the point? They won. We lost.”

I threw my hands up in exasperation. “Jules, will you stop being so bloody digital? Look, is the server down?”

He pulled out his palmtop. “Ninety-nine percent. If it hasn’t gone yet, it will soon.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Jules!” I grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him forcefully towards the elevators. “It’s still running; that means you can do something. You don’t know what they want; if they wanted us gone, they’d have escorted us out by now!” I shoved him towards the open doors. “You’re just running on blind faith again! I swear, you and bloody Johnathan, both of you.” As I pushed Jules into the elevator, I turned to Ms. Bellwether and forced a smile. “He’s not normally this stupid, I assure you. He’s just angry.”

Ms. Bellwether didn’t respond; she just pushed the button for the eighteenth floor. The elevator filled with awkward silence; Jules either glared at the floor or the security guard, who stood gazing impassively forward, ignoring both of us. I watched the light display as the numbers counted upwards, then glanced to the guard. As the door opened, she motioned to the hall. “This way. Hurry; you’re late.” Then she was walking quickly down the corridor, leaving me to half-urge, half-drag Jules behind me.

The conference room looked like any of the ones on campus, with a large table in the center and wheeled chairs around it. A wide display hung on the wall at one end of the table, with a camera mounted above it. A laptop sat on the desk, to one side of the monitor. As I guided Jules into a chair, Ms. Bellwether punched something into the computer, then quietly excused herself from the room and pulled the door closed behind her. The screen flickered once, then came to life, dominated by an animated Tadashiissei logo. The color-panels winked in and out in sequence for a few seconds, and then they faded, replaced by a remote signal from some other office. The window in that room was dark, and sitting too close to the camera was an elderly Asian man. He’d long since gone gray, his hair cut short in a Western part. A faint mustache sat on his upper lip, and he wore a soul patch beneath it. His glasses were thick, and a faint reflection of the camera glinted off of them. He wore a severe grey suit, with a dark green tie. As the camera focused on his face, he smiled warmly and raised one hand in a wave.

“Good evening,” the elderly man said. His smile was unnervingly broad. “I believe you wanted access to one of my servers.”

Jules shook his head wearily. “I don’t have time for this shit. Who are you and what do you want?”

It took a moment for Jules’ words to get to him, but once they did, his face darkened considerably. He sat upright, adjusted his tie. “My name is Kajō Kūsō. I own Tadashiissei, and by extension Irokai. You and your friends have been quite the nuisance.”

“Nuisance?” My voice rose, incredulous. “I can’t believe this! You let a major security breach put thousands of people at risk, you’re threatening our friend with deletion if he doesn’t pay your extortion fees, you’re threatening to wipe everything that’s happened just to stop the revolt your own policies started, and you’re calling us the nuisances?”

Mr. Kajō was visibly unimpressed. “I have no need to justify my reasoning to you, but you may rest assured that I hold the future value of my company above all else. That means doing what I think is best for Irokai. We found a number of collaborators within Tadashiissei who are being dealt with at the highest levels, and after extensive review from our database and maintenance teams, the rollback was seen as the best way to protect overall system integrity. Your friend is presently obstructing our ability to protect our creation.”

“He’s too busy trying to protect his memories!” Jules burst out, jumping to his feet, his chair skittering backwards across the floor. “Everything he’s done since he uploaded himself… you’re talking about wiping it all out!”

“We must be sure there are no residual effects,” Mr. Kajō riposted. “Any one of them could be harboring viruses or malicious code.”

“So you’re saying you want to force them all to lose three weeks or more off their lives, just because they might have some kind of virus? You can’t just scan them or something?” I shrugged helplessly. “Is this really the only way to do this?”

Mr. Kajō made a faint shrug. “It’s the fastest, and the one that will get the system back up and running the fastest with the least number of long-term side effects.”

I smirked. “It won’t stop the protests; it’ll only make those worse.”

The smile that Mr. Kajō wore in response sent a chill down my spine. “With no-one inside who remembers, who will protest? Irokai will be on new software immune to the old attacks. Security has already been increased. For the residents, it will be as if none of this had happened.”

I folded my arms. “Mitsuko will remember, when Johnathan’s account gets suspended for non-payment of debts he won’t remember owing.”

Mr. Kajō’s smile faded slightly. “We are prepared to remove those debts from the record.”

Jules grinned. “Giri will remember, when he goes to work and finds he’s been fired.”

“His position will be reinstated,” Mr. Kajō replied. His eyes were narrowed again, and the smile was gone from his face.

I shook my head in response. “We’ll remember, because we’re not in the system having our minds wiped alongside the residents.” Mr. Kajō’s mouth opened, then closed again. “Not looking like the cleverest answer now, is it? Do what you want with your ones and zeros, but you can’t touch us.”

Jules’ eyes darkened as he pulled his palmtop out of his pocket, looking down at it. “Adam, the box is screaming. We don’t have time for this.”

I nodded at Jules’ comment, but I kept my focus on Mr. Kajō. He tried again to speak, then caught himself. He let out a tight chuckle, then smiled once more. “You realize that, by locking themselves off from the main system during the upgrade, they will be unable to return to Irokai. Their authentication codes will fail. Their accounts will be rejected as fraudulent. Until they accept the database rollback, they will be unable to leave that tiny, tiny box. How close is it to dying? The drives are over capacity, the memory is running out. Soon it will come down very gracelessly, and if the backup system is offline….”

“You’re a damned monster!” Jules shouted at the screen, slamming both hands down on the table with a grimace. “You’re a lunatic and you’re playing god with people’s lives! Tadashiissei’s done for at this point! If they don’t go down this time, they’ll go next time, or the time after! You can’t keep Irokai forever! One day it’ll—”

“One day Irokai will go offline, and not return,” Mr. Kajō interrupted, his voice sharp. “It is the way of all corporate services, is it not? Those who wish to build alternatives have nothing stopping them from doing so. Now, if you have nothing further to say, I should check on the rollback.” His hand started reaching for the camera.

“Wait!” I burst out, waving at the camera. Mr. Kajō paused, looking at me, silent. I was stunned by my own outburst, but then I swallowed heavily. This is it. Make or break time. “Look, you could let that server go down. You could’ve let the hacks do their work. You could’ve let it all be wiped out, but you didn’t. You and Tadashiissei didn’t. You tried to save it, and now you’re trying to save it again, but you’re not asking the people you’re trying to save. They deserve a say in their own lives.”

“You forget,” Mr. Kajō faintly sneered. “I own Irokai.”

“Yes,” I admitted, “but you don’t own them. The residents. I’m not a lawyer; I can’t argue for the digitals. I know, though, that Imogen Franklin’s been ruled alive and well in there, and isn’t she one of your big celebrities? You’d hate to see something happen to her, wouldn’t you? Especially after all those efforts to promote her as a successful test case.” Mr. Kajō’s eyes remained dark and impenetrable, and I continued. “Please, this… this is real to her, to all of them, even if it isn’t to you. They’ve all got to be scared out of their minds in there. If that box goes down… if what you did to Johnathan three months ago wasn’t murder, then letting that server fail surely will be.”

For several seconds, Mr. Kajō was silent, then leaned briefly off-camera, exchanging words in Japanese with someone I couldn’t see. When he came back into focus, his eyes were still narrowed, but he seemed eerily calm. “I have received word that the rollback has completed, and I have some things to consider. I will speak with my legal team. In the meantime, I recommend that you go to the server room and install whatever upgrades will stabilize that development server. I will meet you within Irokai in an hour.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not going in there until I have some—”

Jules was already heading for the door. “Then you can be the one to guard the box; my hand’s still shot for now. For now, though, I need you to hold parts for me. We’re running out of borrowed time.”

I frowned, then checked through my contacts list; I had several entries for Julia already, mostly e-mail or some messaging service or other that she’d used once or twice, then forgotten. I hit reply, then thumbed, Julia? What account is this?

Long story, came the quick response. Please answer. A few seconds later, the palmtop began to buzz once more, showing an incoming call.

I snapped the cover closed and held it to my ear, looking at it curiously. “Julia?”

“Close enough,” an unfamiliar voice—quite distinctly male, deep and rumbling—replied. “Listen, Adam—”

“Who is this?” I demanded.

“Adam, this is…” The voice suddenly dropped to a whisper. In the background I could hear some kind of muffled commotion. “This is Julia. I’m stuck in Irokai. I need your help.”

“Irokai?” I pulled the palmtop away from my ear, looking at it dubiously, then brought it back. “That’s very funny. Who are you and what do you want?”

Whoever was on the other end of the phone growled menacingly. “Damnit, Adam! I need your help!” The caller’s voice started rushing. “I’m running a hacked account on a grey-market rig, I’ve got an IV jammed in my arm, I can’t wake myself up, and I need to be at the Infinicom building in half an hour! I don’t have time for guessing games! What do you want? You’re allergic to uncooked tomatoes, you hate mayo, and you’ve got a birthmark on your left shoulder. If you want a detailed list of your eleventh-grade teachers, I can do that, too, but I don’t have the time.”

I looked at my handset again, then said more quietly, “It’s on my right shoulder, and who did I have for physics?”

“You didn’t take physics in eleventh grade,” Julia snarled. “You had Reidel for Chemistry II. Are you happy now? Twenty-nine minutes.”

“That’s cutting it close,” I said as I rose, motioning to the waiter for my bill. “What is it you need me to do? Come and unplug you?”

“Yes, thank you.” Julia’s voice sounded infinitely relieved. “Call me when you get to the front door of the building. I’ll walk you through it from there. Use this contact.” Then the phone went dead.

I exchanged my phone for my wallet, then shifted impatiently from one foot to the other as the waiter took his time in returning my credit card for me. My eyes kept snapping to the clock on the wall, but the numbers didn’t change that quickly. I had twenty-seven minutes to save her from herself on the way to whatever errand was so vital. The drive to her apartment building wasn’t any slower than normal, but my breath caught in my throat every time I tapped on the brake. Julia’s building had visitor parking, but of course today of all days the lot would be full; another three minutes vanished as I searched for a place to leave the car, then jogged back to the front door.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit redial, then tapped my foot as I waited for the answer. “You’re late,” Julia replied as soon as she answered. “The code is 22361.” I punched in the numbers, then tugged open the door when it beeped at me. The elevator took its time getting to the lobby, disgorging a gaggle of housewives on their way to lunch. The ride to Julia’s apartment was an uncomfortable silence, punctuated only by the occasional noise in the background of the call.

“Julia, what’s going on in there?” I asked as I watched the light at the top of the car tick slowly upwards.

“I’ll explain when I’m out,” she replied. “My front door code’s 161803; mind the table in the dining room.”

When I entered her door code, the deadbolt clicked open. “Lights, on,” I said, and the room lit with LED lamps. Discarded clothing lay strewn across the floor, and an unsorted pile of mail sat on the corner of the table on my left, directly past a kitchenette. To the right sat a glass sliding door out to a thin balcony. Directly in front of me lay the bathroom, but next to it on the right was a closed door. “Is that the bedroom?” I asked as I walked to it.

Julia grunted. “Yeah. Come on in, but don’t yell at me.”

“Julia, why would—” I stopped dead as the door opened. Behind a giant mahogany desk that seemed impossibly large for the space, Julia’s body sprawled, nude and corpse-like, in a leather executive chair that had been locked in a recline. Her head was at least supported by a thin pillow, but her right arm and legs hung over the arm rests and the end of the seat. Her left arm, she’d secured with cloth tape at the wrist and elbow, and a strip of gauze covered the back of her hand where she’d inserted a needle. A length of clear plastic tubing pinched with a garden clamp ran from Julia’s hand to a hot water bottle hung from a coathanger on a portable clothes rack. A plastic mesh covered her head, sending a rainbow of wires slithering under her desk. Her eyes twitched rapidly, and she was breathing, but a thin sheen of sweat covered her skin, giving her a ghastly pallor.

“What the hell were you thinking?” The words burst out of me as I stormed over to her body.

“I wasn’t,” she replied, “and I told you not to yell. It was a fuck-up. John’s already screamed at me, and double jeopardy’s against the law.” She’d gone into pedant mode, artificially calm and reasonable. “Are you going to help me or what?”

“Yes, but not because of you; this is a travesty of medicine.” I switched my phone to speaker and set it on the desk, then started loosening the tape on the back of her hand. “Where did you get all this?”

I could just hear Julia ticking off the words on her fingers as she spoke. “Sixteen-gauge needles online, along with instructions for the solution. Tubing for a tank aerator at a pet supply store, enema bottle at the pharmacist’s. Hangers and the rack at the boxmart. Stop messing with the meat and look at the screen. I need you to shut down the induction rig.”

“One moment; first, I—hell! You’ve blown the vein! Where’s the rest of this gauze roll?” I pressed on the back of her hand as the puncture site began to ooze, grimacing at the way the swollen flesh dented under my touch. “Did you sterilize any of this before you embarked on this little escapade?”

“Boiled everything but the gauze and tape,” she replied, her voice even more distorted over the palmtop’s speakers. “I’m no tyro, but it’s been years since I had any reason to practice. Now look at the screen. Just jiggle the mouse; it’ll light up.”

“Spare me,” I grumbled as I worked the tape from around her elbow. “Don’t tell me you used to do more than smoke.”

“Back off, Adam,” she snarled in reply. “Now, will you please—”

I’d had enough. Not bothering to look at her computer, I snapped the chinstrap loose with my other hand and yanked off the nylon skullcap. Instantly, Julia’s eyes snapped open and her body spasmed, sending her and the chair crashing to the floor. Her right arm flew up to her head as she started to swear, her left trying to follow but jerking tight against the tape I hadn’t yet removed. That set off a fresh round of curses, interrupted sharply by a gagging noise, and then Julia’s stomach inverting itself.

I put one foot on the casters and hauled Julia back upright, just in time for her to send another batch of vomit down her front. Then her eyes blearily met mine. “Don’t… ever… do that… again,” she managed to cough out around a mouthful of sick.

“I paid your body as much respect as you did,” I sneered. “Besides, aren’t you in a hurry?”

That stunned Julia into silence for a few seconds. “Okay, I deserved that,” she mumbled. “And yes, I am. Oh, man, what a stink. Here, almost done.” We finished extracting her from the chair, and then she was scrabbling for clothes, mopping the mess from her face and chest with a discarded towel. “Damnit, I can’t make a fist; help me dress?”

I put my hands on my hips, struggling to keep my voice level. “That’s because of the swelling. Julia, would you kindly tell me what the hell is happening?”

She stopped, took a deep breath, and sighed. “Irokai got hacked; you heard about that. John helped out from the inside, but his account got botched in the process. They gave him until tonight to pay his identity bill, and he organized a protest instead. When things got out of control, they announced a global rollback, no exceptions. John’s moving everyone onto his dev system so they’re not stored on Irokai’s database when the shutdown hits, but that box isn’t sized for that many people and I’m worried about hardware failures with that kind of load, plus he’s exposed since he’s now on an isolated server. I know where it is, but I have to get to it before Tadashiissei does so they don’t pull his plug. Again. And for the last fucking time, Adam, it’s Jules, not….” She looked down and raised an arm, gesturing downwards at herself. “Not this. Now hurry up and help me dress, damnit; we don’t have time for this!”

I crossed my arms, standing stock still. “When you actually come out to me, it’ll be Jules. Until then, it’s Julia. I dislike diminutives, and I hate taking things on faith, two things that you and Johnathan seem to enjoy far more than I find comfortable.”

Julia’s eyes went wide, thrown visibly off-balance by my remarks. She stared in open-mouthed shock. “But I… you knew?”

I scowled and grabbed one of the shirts that looked vaguely presentable off of the floor. “No, I didn’t know, because you never told me. I guessed, certainly; I’d have had to be an idiot not to see the signs, and you wouldn’t have suffered an idiot this long. Like Johnathan, though, you just assumed I would run with the guess and hope it all worked out. You hinted, prevaricated, and threatened, but not once did you actually tell me why it was so important to you that I use Jules instead of your legal name. Arms up.” As she complied, I pulled it on over her head. “Damnit, how can you both be so smart and still be so bloody stupid?”

Julia turned towards her dresser and pulled out a pair of y-fronts; her voice was very quiet when she next spoke. “After all your crap about not having proof for things, I didn’t think you’d listen.”

I sighed. “Yes, well… mea culpa.” I nodded as I took the underwear and held them out for him. “Sometimes there isn’t any proof to be had, and you have to go with your best evidence. In Johnathan’s case, that would have been research on others who’d been uploaded before him, which still hasn’t been done, mind you. In yours, you could have just said something, instead of all this bloody hint-dropping.”

“There has been research,” Jules snapped. “Imogen Franklin’s been studied intensely since her conversion, and nobody’s reported anything broken yet. As far as anyone cares, she’s alive and well, just living inside a computer. As for the rest, well….” He gestured towards the ground with his injured hand. “Maybe it’s not so easy to just say, ‘I’m a guy.” It’s not something that comes up in casual conversation, you know?” Jules admitted. Then he grinned weakly. “Besides, I was going to upload instead of transition. The surgical options still suck, and I don’t get the fur or the tail if I stay out here.”

I grinned and snagged a pair of his jeans. “That’s close enough. No time to bind, I’m afraid; you’ve got seventeen minutes to get to Infinicom and I’m parked three blocks away.”

Jules shook his head. “I don’t bind; hurts too damned much and I can’t breathe when I do it. Gets in the way of my smokes.”

“Filthy habit,” I muttered as I pulled two pairs of socks from his dresser, tossing one to him and knelt to help him step into the other. “I don’t even want to think about what else you’ve put in your body.”

Jules rolled his eyes and tossed the socks over my shoulder, back into the drawer. “I don’t bother. Anyway, when you hate your body, it doesn’t really matter what you do to it. Now c’mon. We’ve got to move.”

Alex smiled. “Nope. I failed, and you can confirm that with Watcher.”

The man stood, trying to shrug off Alex’s paw, but the bear kept a vice-grip on his shoulder. “I said you were on his side.”

Alex’s grin threatened to split his head. “Nope,” he repeated. “I’m on both your sides.”

At that, Watcher barked a short, painful laugh. “Ridiculous. That man is a Shepherd, intent on killing every last one of us.”

“Maybe,” Alex admitted. “I got his side of the story earlier. Watcher, tell me about Mirror’s Smile.”

The Child of Wolf froze, tail and muzzle dropping. “I fail to see what—”

Alex held out a paw. “Indulge me, Watcher. Tell me again what happened to her.”

The wolf sagged, nodding. “Very well, Mr. Demont, if you insist.” He turned and walked over to the riverbank, looking down. He hesitated as he approached Mirror’s body, kneeling next to the fallen Child of Wolf but visibly afraid to touch her. “She had Pledged herself to a small tributary of the Mississippi river. Someone poisoned the water, and—”

“Someone,” Alex interrupted. “You mean AllChem.”

Watcher nodded. “Yes, but I would not learn that until later. I tried for months to help her, when I could. Every remedy I knew, every possible cure I could divine, every prayer I could remember and some I invented just for her.” He reached down to Mirror’s body, fingers hesitantly brushing against her dull fur, tracing one visible rib on her skeletal frame. “Nothing worked. Little by little, the life went out of her, until in the end she begged me to end her pain.” His voice broke. “So I did.”

“You killed her,” Walker sneered, grunting as Alex dug his claws into his shoulder. “Put all the fancy words you like on it; you murdered her.”

Watcher’s head spun back towards Alex and Walker. “No! I… I did everything I could think to do! I was so young, then. I had only just realized my nature. She…” He turned back to his fallen mate. “She was the one to show me the truth of what I was.”

Alex nodded. “Sounds right.” He looked at Walker. “How does that sound to you?”

Walker glared over his shoulder. “How does what sound?”

Alex rolled his eyes, dragging the man over to where Walker knelt next to the fallen body. “For being so smart, you two sure are dumb.” He grabbed Watcher’s arm in his other paw, hauling the Child of Wolf to his feet. “Get a good look at each other. Look down, at her. Who do you see? What’s her name?”

“Mirror’s—” “Lisa—” Both man and wolf spoke, then stopped, staring at each other.

The bear let that sink in for a few seconds before continuing. “Walker, you said you buried everything for your job, until you met Lisa. Watcher, you said you had only just come into your nature when you met Mirror’s Smile. Both of you say the woman you love took sick for an unknown cause. Walker, the wolf tried to heal your girlfriend. Watcher, you did everything you could for Mirror.” As the two stared at each other in growing horror, Alex drove his point further home with every statement. “Walker, the wolf killed Lisa. Watcher, you put down your mate. You found out that AllChem had a chemical spill upstream, the company Walker worked for.”

He let go of their shoulders, walking away from both, while they stood in shock, eyes turning from each other to Alex and back. “You—either, both, whatever—threw away your dreams for your job, then met a woman who could help you have both again. She died when you used your newfound knowledge to try to save her, turning your back on the other half of your past. When you found out it was your company, the people for whom you had given up those visions in the first place, that cost you the love of your life, you cracked.” He threw his paws up in the air, turning to face the other two. “Come on, guys, don’t make me say this out loud.”

Walker and Watcher turned to each other; the man’s face twisted in disgust, the wolf’s in shame. “Right,” Alex said into the uncomfortable silence. “You two have a lot to discuss. I’m not asking you to kiss and make up, but do you two think you can resolve your differences without resorting to name-calling?”

“Don’t count on it,” Walker muttered, his eyes boring into the top of Watcher’s head.

Alex shrugged. “If you can’t, you’re going to die. Your only path to victory is suicide, Walker. It’s your choice. Find some way to live with Watcher, or quit living. Do you see a third option?” He waited several seconds for Walker’s indignant sputters to settle back into that angry stare. “Neither could I.”

Alex turned in his seat, putting one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the Child of Wolf’s shoulder. “Hey, Watcher… it’s going to be okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Watcher sobbed, slumping in his chair. “What have I done? What have I done what have I done oh Dancer and Tundra and Nighteyes and… I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry….” His head bent, his ears pinned against his skull. “Lisa… Lisa, I’m sorry, I… I failed….” His voice descended from there into wordless sobbing.

“Watcher, listen,” Alex said gently, trying to calm the wolf. “I can’t possibly say I understand what you’re going through right now, because I don’t. What I can say is that you’re not alone, and we’re here to help. All of us. Briar and Dancer and I, at least. We’ll get through this. You need healing.”

Watcher swallowed heavily, struggling for control. “No, Mr. Demont, I… I don’t think there’s any healing for me, not after what I’ve done. I don’t think there’s penance big enough.” He closed his eyes, tensing. “I’d like… please, Alex, I… I don’t think I can live with the shame of killing my own kind.”

At that, Alex grinned. He drew in a deep breath, and as he let it out, his face stretched, mouth and nose fusing into a short blunt muzzle tipped by a black leathery nosepad. Fur blossomed along his cheeks, spreading over his scalp and down his neck to disappear beneath his disintegrating shirt. Claws burst from the ends of his fingers, digging into the steering wheel and poking into the wolf’s shoulder. He grunted, squirming against the seat and then tugging at his jeans to free the stubby tail trapped beneath at the end of his spine. Then, after a few moments of struggling, the remains of a pair of shoes flew into the truck bed.

The Child of Bear caught Watcher’s open-jawed stare and chuckled. “If you can’t deal with it, what makes you think I’d handle it any better?”

“But….” For once, the wolf seemed at an absolute loss for words. He swallowed heavily, blinking rapidly as if trying to dispel an illusion. “How?”

The bear shrugged. “Before, I only thought I believed. Now I actually do.”

Watcher leaned back in his seat, gaping. “I really have no idea what to say to that, or to anything else. I’m at a loss as to what to do.”

The Child of Bear gestured to the steering wheel. “We go back to Shadowdance’s Protectorate. We help him rebuild. We help you and Tom rebuild. The rest will take care of itself.”

The wolf shook his head. “It’s not that easy. I’ve… killed people. I’m afraid I may try to do so again.”

“Killing you won’t bring them back,” the bear said, turning to face out the front window. “Alive, at least you can do penance. I don’t think you’re a risk, but if you do try something, there will be others around to catch you before you do anything drastic. It’ll be a long time before you’re well, and it won’t be easy, but you’ll have others around you to help. Besides, Briar and Shadowdance already know.”

Watcher looked up at that, ears drooping. “They do?”

The bear nodded. “Yeah, we caught Tom, I followed up on a hunch, they saw him change. Now, we should get going. We’ve got a lot of healing ahead, for all of us.”

The wolf shook his head slowly. “This… this is too much. I’m in your debt, Mr. Demont.”

“Please,” the Child of Bear said as he started the truck. “Call me Mountain.”

Walker knelt nearby, his shoulders hunched, his head bowed. His body shook as he sobbed softly, his arms extended. In front of him, a woman lay on a familiar leather sheet. Her sallow skin clung to her frame, her joints swollen. Dirt smudges and grass stains covered her chest and legs, while flecks of blood clung to her lips and chin. One arm lay extended out beside her, while the other Walker held in his own, his fingers entwined with hers. Her hair lay in a spill around her head, listless and dull. Her mucous eyes were vacant, staring at nothing.

Slowly, Alex approached, kneeling reverently on the other side of Lisa’s body. “I’m sorry, Walker,” he said quietly, keeping his hands on his knees.

The man lifted his head, his eyes red with tears and rage. “Sorry?” His voice was a harsh whisper. “I had to watch the woman I loved wither and die over the span of a year and you’re sorry? I had to put up with the sniveling, whining shaman who promised her health and delivered only pain and you’re sorry.” Walker spat the words through clenched teeth, fighting back more tears. “I had thrown everything into my job, until I met her. I turned my back on my dreams, devoted myself to my work. I gave up everything I ever wanted. Then I met Lisa.” He turned his eyes back to the woman in front of him, his bottom lip trembling. “She… she made it okay. She made all that sacrifice seem worthwhile. I spent every minute I could with her. When she got sick, that bastard wolf promised to take care of her. He promised to help her. And everything he did, everything he tried, only made it worse. I begged her to get help. I begged him to find a real doctor. She was so taken with him, and he was so sure of himself, and all I could do was watch as she died in front of me.”

Walker looked up once more, glaring across at Alex. “I can’t bring her back, but I can take from the wolf the thing he valued, the way I valued her. I can rob him of his dreams, destroy his precious vision, and then watch his heart shrivel up and blow away the way mine did.”

Alex put his hand back on his leg. “You’re killing people, Walker. You’re killing people who had nothing to do with Watcher, or Lisa.”

“No.” Walker’s insistence was final, his eyes cold. “I’m not killing anyone; I’m just culling the herd. If you all want to live like animals, then you can die like animals for all I care.”

Alex was silent for a moment as he stroked his beard in comptemplation. “What about Watcher?”

Walker grinned smugly. “Watcher’s gone. I caged him and sent him away.”

Alex rose carefully, keeping his hands at his side. “If he’s gone, he can’t see your revenge, can he? If you want him to suffer, doesn’t he need to be here to see it?”

“No!” The outburst was even stronger than the last. “If he’s here, you might let him go.”

“If he’s not here, how’s he going to see what you’re doing?” Alex spoke patiently, calmly. “How’s he going to know that you won?”

Walker’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t trust you. You’re on his side.”

Alex shrugged. “Why should I be? I’m not one of them. I failed his little test. You can ask Watcher yourself about that one.”

“You did?” At Alex’s nod, Walker stood and brushed the grime from his knees. “I wish I’d known that earlier. Sorry about your apartment.” He gestured behind Alex, then stepped over Lisa’s body to the cage under one of the trees. Inside it, a tan-furred wolf lay on his side, curled up like a pup, shaking. “So, the infallible Watcher fails again. How does that make you feel?” The wolf tried to look away, but Walker’s fist slammed into the cage, rattling the bars and making its occupant’s tail bristle. “Don’t turn your back on me, you hypocritical fraud. You thought you knew everything, but really, you’re just a dumb animal. Admit it!” Walker’s face distorted in a mask or rage. “Admit it!”

The wolf turned back, his ears flat against his skull. He hung his head, then nodded slowly, hunkering down on himself, his tail tucking itself between his legs.

Walker smirked, putting his hands on his hips. “So, the old wise wolf finally admits his folly. You’ve lost, Watcher.” He bent down, gloating into the cage. “There’s nothing you can do, this time. Your little friends might have gotten Parson, but they haven’t gotten me, and they won’t—”

A heavy, brown-furred paw slammed into the back of his head, knocking him into the trap; his forehead clanged off of the bars as he dropped to the ground. “He was never going to shut up,” Alex grumbled as he stepped forward. He peered through the bars at the wolf within. “I don’t suppose, with him out of the way, you can just whisk yourself out of there, can you?” Without waiting for an answer, he squatted, grabbing the bottom edge of the heavy iron cage and lifting. Once the gap was wide enough for the wolf, he grunted. “You better squeeze out while you can.”

Watcher needed no further encouragement and slunk under the cage, rising back onto his hind legs once free. “I am afraid I underestimated you, Mr. Demont,” he said softly once he was free. “Now, if you do me the courtesy of helping get Mr. Kinney here underneath—”

Alex dropped the cage, letting it slam into the ground. “No.”

Watcher’s ears flattened against his head. “But, Mr. Demont, you are quite aware that that man is one of the Shepherds. If he awakens—”

Alex turned around. “I’m quite aware of what he is, Watcher. And who he is.” He tapped the side of his head. “Every time you showed up around me, I could feel something… wrong. Like a spider crawling around inside my brain. I figured it was more of your spiritual association, but it wasn’t.” He looked down at his paws, then back up at the Child of Wolf. “It was mine.”

The wolf took a step backwards, away from the bear staring intently at him. “Mr. Demont, I… am afraid I am unsure what you mean.”

“Oh, I think you know exactly what I mean,” Alex replied, kneeling down and putting a paw on Walker’s shoulder, gently shaking him awake. “This ends, though. Now.”

Parson was late. That alone wouldn’t have worried Walker; they’d all been on difficult assignments in the past, and he knew the hunter could handle himself in the wilderness. He knew Parson wouldn’t have his phone on him if he was actually in the field, either, which made the lack of contact all the more reasonable. Thinking about it, Walker could easily come up with half a dozen other reasons why Parson might not have called yet, from his battery dying to his car getting towed with the phone inside. None of those stopped him from hitting redial for the sixth time and then hanging up in frustration as he crossed the street.

It was, Kinney admitted to himself, the nature of the assignment that bothered him. Werewolves and the like were solitary creatures, which was both a blessing and a curse. It made them harder to find, but when they could be found, it made them easy targets. The ones that claimed some kind of territory were even simpler; he and his associates didn’t even have to go after those. One industrial accident and their beliefs would kill them, their damned devotion to the land driving them insane from an easily-managed chemical spill. That trick worked like no other; he’d seen what it had done to Watcher’s mate.

This time, though, the one he’d found in that park had managed to survive the first strike long enough to get that damned wolf, Watcher, involved. He, in turn, had gotten others involved to help clean up the mess. That was a bad sign. Solitary hunters they could eliminate at their leisure; an organized group would take more visible means to resolve, and that kind of publicity neither of them wanted. He’d tried to finish the job himself, using some of the wolf’s own tricks to mask his scent, but the rabbit had let out a scream the like of which he had never heard as soon as he’d touched her, sending him running to try to outrun the rest of their little ragtag “pack.”

Parson had a reputation for efficiency and stealth, which is why Walker had called him in to finish the job he’d started. However, each minute of silence past when the hunter had said he would call made Kinney that much more irritable, that much more certain that something had gone horribly wrong. He had no proof, but the longer he waited for the confirmation call, or even an admission of failure, the more sure he was that the time had come to take more drastic measures.

As he rounded the corner into the parking garage, something thick and heavy impacted the side of his head, sending him staggering and stars shooting across his vision. His hands went to cover his face as he fell, sprawling on the pavement, his phone smashing on the concrete. As he struggled to sit upright, he blinked frantically to clear his head, squinting to focus his eyes despite the pain. Standing just beside where he had fallen was a mountain of a man, his face hidden in a tangle of grey-brown beard and lanky hair, roughly tied back with a leather strap. His button-down shirt was ragged at the hem and half the buttons were missing, and his jeans were almost shiny with caked-on grime.

The figure squatted over his heels and held up a small object. “Tom’s not available to take your call.”

The voice was unfamiliar, but at the words Kinney froze. “Who?”

Walker’s assailant shook his head. “Try again.” His voice carried anger and amusement in equal measure. “Maybe you just know him as Parson.”

That got Walker’s attention, but his head was still swimming from pain. “Stalking. Assault. Kidnapping.”

“Arson. Conspiracy. Attempted murder.” The figure rose and approached, looming over him. “I think we’re even. Get up.” A massive hand grabbed Walker’s arm under the shoulder, hauling him to his feet.

Walker tried to jerk his arm away, but the man’s grip might as well have been a bear trap. “Let go. I swear, I’ll call the police.”

The man grinned. “You do that. I’ll be glad to tell them I caught the guy who planted the bomb in my apartment three weeks ago. Your move.”

The two men stared at each other in stony silence. “How did you find me?” Walker finally asked, his voice a low growl.

At that, the man tapped his nose with his free hand. “Not literally, of course, but I knew AllChem was involved, I had a rough sense for what you looked like, and I had a pretty good sense how I’d feel when you got close. Given that, it wasn’t hard to track you.”

Walker nodded, keeping his face carefully neutral. “So what do you want?”

The other man responded by tugging him forward, marching him further into the garage. “I want to hear about your girlfriend.”

That brought a snarl to Walker’s face. “You bastard. How dare you talk to me about Lisa. You and the rest of your—”

The man’s other meaty paw slammed into the back of his head, kicking off a fresh flood of stars. “I didn’t ask you about your religion. I told you I wanted to hear about your girlfriend.” He kept walking, leading Walker towards the back of the garage and a weatherbeaten truck. “You said Lisa was her name?”

Walker scowled. “Lisa Ginney. She died… five years ago.” Despite his anger, he couldn’t keep the nostalgia out of his voice, the desperate yearning that he still felt, even after all this time. “She was my life.”

The man nodded, opening the passenger door to the truck and helping Walker, almost cautiously, into the seat. Walker squirmed against seatbelt as his kidnapper buckled it around his arms, pinning them to his sides, then wrapped the nylon around him before shutting the door and running around to the driver’s side, hopping in before Walker could work an arm free. The locks dropped and the engine started, but the truck remained parked. “Tell me about her,” the man said, wrapping one hand around the claw hanging from his neck.

“I’m not about to sully her memory by sharing her with the likes of you,” Walker spit in a sudden burst of defiance. “We’ll win in the end, you know. You’re outnumbered and outclassed. Your days are numbered. You may have gotten Parson, but you can’t get all of us.”

“Maybe,” the man agreed, nodding, “but I’m not interested in all of them. I’m interested in you, and in Lisa. Tell me, Walker. Do you dream about her?”

The use of his name and the question startled him into a slip. “All the time,” he admitted. “Ever since that bastard wolf stole her from me.”

The man nodded again. “Tell me about those dreams, Walker. Where are you? Where’s she?”

Walker leaned back against the passenger’s seat, trying to shift an arm free, but the nylon wrap held fast. “She’s dead, or dying,” he said, his voice wavering as the memory came back to him. “She’s stretched out on a leather blanket on a riverbank. Pus oozes from her eyes. Her joints are swollen, but the rest of her’s just… just skin and bones. Her hair’s flat and matted.” His voice sank to a whisper. “She looks like a mummy. She can’t stand, can barely crawl. She can’t even keep down water.” Tears seeped from his eyes, but he refused to acknowledge them, forcing himself to keep talking despite them. “She’s thirsty… so thirsty.”

The man nodded, then put a hand on Walker’s shoulder, looking into his eyes. “Tell me about the area, Walker. Winter or summer?”

Walker’s eyes were distant, looking not at his kidnapper but five years into the past as he spoke, his body slumping against the seat. “Late spring. There’s a warm, wet breeze, but it’s carrying a sick stench, something cloyingly sweet and moldy, and it feels like it’s clinging to everything. The plants on the shore have died, and the grasses are brown and withered.” His eyes half-lidded, his voice starting to slur. He glanced at his assailant, whose eyes were similarly drifting. “All around, the trees to either side of the river look like they’re drooping, their new-grown leaves falling from the branches….”

Alex didn’t lift his head. “I didn’t.” His voice was implacable, inscrutable. “I hoped I’d been wrong.”

Briar nodded, then closed her eyes. “So what does it mean?”

Alex looked up at that. “It means exactly what you think it does. I should’ve realized it a lot sooner.” He lowered his gaze to the water. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

The Child of Rabbit wrapped her arms around her knees. “You’re thinking too much about the future. You know what needs to happen. You just have to go do it.”

“I know,” Alex sighed. “It may not work out that cleanly, but you’re right.” He looked back towards the tent. “Shadowdance is pretty much recovered. His Protectorate… that will take years, but the worst is over. From here, there’s just rebuilding.” His eyes turned back to Briar’s. “You going to be okay with everything?”

Briar nodded in response. “I’m more worried about Dancer. This has been hard on him.”

Alex chuckled. “This has been hard on all of us. The knot on the back of my neck still hurts.” He shoved himself to his feet with a groan, then helped the Child of Rabbit stand as well. “No point in putting it off any longer.”

Briar took Alex’s hand in her paw, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I should go forage.” Then with that, she was gone, dashing off into the trees, barely a rustle marking her departure.

Alex stood, staring at the spot at which the Child of Rabbit vanished, then turned back towards the leather tent the the plume of white, healing smoke rising from its top. Inside, a mountain lion lay curled on his side, mewling quietly. His fingers were clenched, claws sliding in and out of their sheathes as he dreamed. From time to time, a shudder would pass through his tan fur, or his thick tail would lash against the ground. On the far side of the sweat lodge, Shadowdance crouched over his hind paws, his arms folded and his elbows on his knees. His tail brushed the ground in slow sweeps as he watched the Child of Cat struggle through his nightmare. As Alex walked in, he lifted his gaze, then rose and motioned the man back outside, following and letting the flap drop to hold the vapors within.

The Child of Wolf looked back to the tent, then to Alex with a scowl, tail pinning to his back. “I still don’t like this.”

Alex nodded and clapped the wolf on the shoulder. “I know, Shadowdance. I know. Unfortunately, I can’t think of a better way to help him figure out what he’s been missing. Your Protectorate needs you, you’ll have him to help you heal it, and you’ll have Briar to help you watch him.” He glanced towards the lodge, then back to the Child of Wolf with a smile. “Besides, at worst, I’ll have his car and his phone, and his guns are long gone. What’s he going to do, rant at you?”

Shadowdance barked a short laugh at that. “Fine. Yes, I want the help. Just….” He looked past Alex, towards the highway. The fires had been extinguished, but soot still hung in the air. “I’m not used to thinking about the future, and I don’t like it very much, but I think that we’re all going to have to learn how.”

Alex nodded in response, giving the wolf’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’m afraid we’ve all lost that luxury, but that doesn’t mean we should give up on what we are, any of us.” He chuckled. “For now, finish recovering and help Tom. If I’m not back in a few days, then you can worry about what comes next. I know you can’t leave, but this place won’t be safe any more.”

Silence hung in the air between wolf and man for a few moments, until Shadowdance focused back on the man’s face. His ears lifted and his tail waved behind him. “I’ll have a deer waiting for you when you get here.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “As long as you don’t tear your arm out of the socket to catch it. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” With that, he held out his hand to the Child of Wolf. “Shake.”

Shadowdance mock-growled, then ducked his head and licked Alex’s fingers, making him jerk his hand back and wipe it on his filthy jeans. Then the wolf gave a final wave and ducked back into the sweat lodge, letting it close behind him.

All that remained between Alex and the World of Man, then, was the long walk to Parson’s truck. The hike back to the road felt longer than the one taking him to the sweat lodge just outside Shadowdance’s Protectorate. I don’t want to leave, he realized with a quiet chuckle. Still, this will all be over, one way or another. Then, I can return, or find my own place… or it won’t matter. That last, he considered, then shrugged and set it aside as unimportant. What will happen will happen, he reminded himself. Do what you need to do, and let the rest take care of itself.

The bear-mind woke from its slumber and smiled, then drifted to sleep again.

Parson had parked his truck where his own vehicle had been; as the once-hunter had said, his own was gone. The key he’d taken from Tom’s jacket slid into the lock easily enough, and the engine started smoothly on the first try. The fact that he was about to drive a borrowed vehicle without permission after being gone for several days in the wake of an explosion in his apartment briefly reared itself in his head, but he brushed it aside, pulling out onto the interstate. He was doing what he needed to do. Everything else would take care of itself.