No time to ponder; she led Toby to the right, toward the cellblock rear exit. If the enemies trusted their gas, they might not have someone outside, or he might be careless.

The outer door was locked, of course. She had expected that. Toby’s eyes widened farther when she pulled her tools from her pocket. Picking locks both mechanical and electronic wasn’t the usual skill set of a Vatta daughter, but Stella had seen no reason not to learn from later acquaintances—or to tell her father all she’d learned.

Outside, the passage appeared to be a service corridor, set with trash containers neatly labeled with the type of trash each should contain. To the right, she saw the open back door of what, by the smell, was a café of some kind, its BIOLOGICALS trash bin overflowing. She remembered that Huntari Café had been next to the police station… probably a favorite hangout of the police, and thus not a good back door to enter. Farther down, a bakery and a greengrocer… she hurried Toby that way.

“Can we take off—?” he began.

“No,” Stella said over her shoulder. “We may not have any warning next time.”

She turned back in time to see someone glance down the passage and quickly turn away. Not good. They were opposite Murchison Books and Antiquities, whose bin contained packing materials. The door seemed ajar. Stella yanked; it came open. She pushed Toby in, slid in herself, pulled it closed, and leaned on the locking bar until it caught firmly.

They were in a cluttered back room with more packing materials and open containers piled on a cluttered desk and on the floor. A closed door in front of them suggested that the actual shop lay beyond. To the right, a narrow staircase rose toward the ceiling where another door was labeled PRIVATE. Stella heard nothing from any direction; she boosted her implant’s sensitivity and heard something from outside—footsteps, probably—and the rise and fall of voices from the other side of the closed door. Two voices? Three? She could not make out what they were saying.

From outside another set of footsteps, this time coming closer. She looked around again. No place to hide, really, but up the stairs. She motioned to Toby, finger to lips. If the owner had the private office on an alarm system, they were out of luck, but otherwise…

They were almost to the door when the pounding began on the back door. Stella tried the door of the private office—open, and no alarm sounded when she opened it and she and Toby went in. She closed it behind them as her enhanced hearing picked up the sound of the shop door opening and footsteps coming through.

“What is it?” asked the shopkeeper.

“Open up,” a voice outside said.

“The shop entrance is 3214 Scurry Lane. This entrance is secured,” the shopkeeper said.

“Open up, damn it! We think fugitives got in!”

“Not through this door. Who are you, anyway? You don’t sound like—” A scuffling noise. “You aren’t the police!” Another noise Stella couldn’t identify, a sort of metallic grumble, then a loud clang. A mutter, clear enough with the augmented hearing: “What kind of idiot do they think I am, anyway?” Then, more clearly, “Sam, it’s Rafe. Something’s happening over here; you’d better check the substation on Fourth Blue East. Some yobbos are trying to get in the back door of my shop claiming to be after fugitives but they aren’t any of yours.” Click and another click, then, “Hardy—this is Rafe. Block trouble behind me now, probably coming around front. Police not responding. Could be the bunch we’re looking for.”

Stella blinked. Yobbos? The last time she’d heard that word in a very similar voice had been two years back somewhere very far from here. Rafe? That Rafe?

“Ahh… no answer, eh? Well, I’ve got to close up shop before they come in the front. Ta.” Brisk footsteps, fading into the distance; no sound of the door closing between shop and office.

Stella looked around the office. Neater than that below, a desk with ordinary data hookups and displays, a bunk covered with a striped blanket, a small synthesizer and meal prep center, a curtain across—she glanced in—a tiny but very clean toilet–shower combo. Cabinets above and below the desk, along the walls. A secondary screen, on which movement caught her eye—the display of a security system, now showing the back of someone she assumed was the proprietor, as he pulled down louvered screens across the shop displays. The door, she noticed, was already closed and barred. The man looked to be of medium height, slender, with thinning gray hair pulled back to a braid tied with a ribbon. He had the second display covered now, and turned.

Stella caught her breath. That Rafe, indeed. He glanced up into the security system’s scan, and smiled. Winked. Well, that cinched it. He knew. Naturally he would. Naturally he would have video pickups in his inner office, as well as downstairs, and naturally he would have checked them. He walked back to the store’s service desk without looking up again. That, too, was Rafe; he had made his point. Now he would wait around for whatever help he’d called in. Stella glanced at Toby, wishing she could spirit him away somehow. He was too young for this, and she couldn’t explain; Rafe would have audio pickups everywhere.

If he knew they were there, if he knew who they were—who she was—then she might as well use his systems. Stella found the security system controls for the interior scan and re-aimed the pickup so that she could watch Rafe. He was just standing there, entering something in the computer—a list of books, she saw when she zoomed in, from the stack of books on the counter. Old books, antiques, real paper. She couldn’t quite focus on the titles, but she could, from up here, link into the computer he was using.

She did that, first returning the surveillance vid to a scan that included the shop’s front door. Under the day’s date, a list of titles sufficiently odd that Stella paused, scrolling down, and tried to think what scam he was up to now. Some historical society’s volumes thirty-two through forty-seven? Estate rolls of places she’d never heard of? Three cookbooks? A book of instructions for butlers? Surely no one actually bought these things to read…

Toby tapped her arm and pointed at the toilet cubicle. Stella shook her head. It would make a sound anyone could hear—though she suspected that Rafe had the upstairs soundproofed and scanproofed as well as he could, gurgling and whooshing in pipes was one sound that no soundproofing really damped.

Something moved on the surveillance vid, catching her peripheral vision. She glanced up. Rafe was moving toward the door, holding a weapon she didn’t recognize. She turned up the sound. A loud clang, followed by a whistle… Rafe swept an arm down, to a pocket, then to his face. Stella checked the chemscan sidebar: nothing yet, he was just being cautious. Light blossomed in the middle of the door; the attackers were trying to burn through. Then a confusion of noises from outside: voices, thumps, crackles, small explosive cracks, and the cloth-ripping sound of rapid-fire small arms loaded with station-safe frangibles. Silence.

Rafe, standing alert beside the door, said, “Block party?”

“Got ’em, Rafe,” came a voice from outside. “Ten of ’em. Pollies aren’t here yet—wait… there they come.”

“Any chem stain, Hardy?”

“No. You can open up, if your door’s not too damaged. Security screen has a hole as big as I am melted through.”

“Right.” Rafe tucked his weapon behind a display and hit the door controls. The outer louvered screen slid aside slowly, then stopped halfway, and he opened the inner door. Stella touched the controls, aiming the vidscan at the outer door. Now she could see the melted section—another sidebar gave its probable temperature on the basis of thermal radiation—and beyond it a scatter of bodies and some men holding weapons, already walking away. Others appeared in uniform: the arriving police, she presumed.