Crossing the room, Skater punched on the vid display so that Ariadne Silverstaff was visible to her husband. "One question." the elf said, "and that's all. Or I terminate the transmission."

Silverstaff's voice was hoarse with worry, but he wasn't about to walk into a trap. "On what day did you accept my proposal of marriage?"

Ariadne didn't hesiiate, but fresh tears filled her eyes. Her own voice cracked when she replied. "June. June tenth."

Skater switched off the vid. "Convinced?"

"Yes. What do you want?"

"For starters, I want you to sell another seven thousand shares of ReGEN stock to Saeder-Krupp," Skater said. "You'll find the offer registered in your office by the time I end this call. It's a fair price. You're being offered the market price before the bottom dropped out yesterday."

Silverstaff answered almost at once, even though he had to know that selling that much more stock was going to seriously cripple his chances of maintaining control of the company. "Done. You're working for the dragon, then?"

"Indirectly," Skater said. "I've cut a deal with him. Mainly I'm working for myself."

"You said this is the first thing,'" Silverstaff reminded.

"I'm not going to ask you to turn over that stock transfer contract until I can put your wife back in your hands."

"When?" Silverstaff asked.

"Tonight," Skater answered. "Midnight." He stared across the intervening chasm of buildings and saw the monorail gliding by in a silvery streak four stories above the streets.

"Where?"

"I'll be in touch and let you know." Skater punched off the power, then looked over at Archangel.

She stayed slumped for a few seconds more before coming back to the physical world. Reaching up, she plucked the jack from its slot in her temple. "He was being monitored," she said.

"McKenzie?" Skater asked.

"I couldn't be certain," she answered. "I had to work to trace the bug. I figured if McKenzie did have a way of keeping tabs on everything that's going on at ReGEN, he'd have a dump file. Some stepped-up smoke and mirrors utilities got me into the ReGEN system so I could locate the file, but I had to do some heavy-duty sleazing to track the source down. The number picking up the bug is an import business called the Hidalgo Republic Trading Company."

Skaler nodded. "Did they trace us?"

She shook her head. "No way. With all the relocate programs I had layered against your call, a decker would have taken hours to get through."

"McKenzie or someone else may recognize my voice if audio was made of the call," Skater said. 'That would work in our favor, actually. But they still won't know where we are." He went over to the telecom again, punching in the number for one of Kestrel's message dumps.

The fixer was back in touch in less than two minutes.

"Hidalgo Republic Trading Company," Skater said. "I need to know who owns it."

"I'll get back to you," Kestrel promised, breaking the connection with a click.

Quickly and efficiently, the team started making their preparations. Everyone knew the waiting was over and the countdown had begun.

Three hours later. Skater stood in the doorway of the room where Emma lay sleeping, quietly watching the child. Her features were so much like Larisa's it hurt. Her hair was black, like his, and so fine he could see through it, but her doe-shaped eyes were Larisa's. She slept on her back, one pink-fingered hand knuckled up to her mouth. Her pointed ears looked longer than most elves' and were plastered against her head, running toward the crown. Elvis had fed and changed her only minutes ago, then dressed her in the yellow sleeper she wore now.

She looked so small, so frail and vulnerable on the big bed.

And Jack Skater was more afraid of her than anything he'd ever faced.

"Is she sleeping?"

He glanced over his shoulder at Archangel. "Yeah."

Archangel joined him in the doorway. "She's a pretty child. Jack."

"I thought I was just prejudiced."

Archangel smiled. "No."

"What are you going to do with her?"

'Tonight?" Skater asked. "Elvis has arranged for some troll chummers to take care of her. They'll stay here. No one has a fix on this doss yet. If we make it through the meet with Silverstaff and McKenzie, we should be okay."

"I knew about that," Archangel said. "I meant what are you going to do with her once this is all over?"

"You must be feeling awfully optimistic."

"You didn't answer the question."

Skater looked at the sleeping baby. "Larisa asked me to take care of her. No one's ever asked me to take care of anyone. And I've never asked anyone to take care of me."

Archangel looked at him quietly, and he could feel her eyes on him. But he didn't know what she was thinking.

"I don't know if I can do it."

"Do you want to?"

"I don't know that either."

"Guilt's not a reason to take something on," Archangel said. "Feeling responsible is a somewhat stronger reason, but it's still not one that's going to help you through the hard times. And there will be hard times."

He nodded. "It's going to take some time to sort all this out. I wasn't expecting any of it."

"Whatever it is," she said. "You'll make the right decision."

"If everything comes off the way we've planned tonight," Skater said, "Ariadne and Silverstaff should get out of this in one piece. I could leave her with them. They've got more to offer her than I do."

"Do they?" Archangel reached out and laid cool fingers on his cheek, turning his head to face her. "Do they really?"

"He's the head of a corporation. They're a couple. They wanted a baby. They don't live in the shadows with each heartbeat dependent on how quick your next move is or whether or not you can smell a setup. Are you forgetting I'm the frag-up who got us into this jam in the first place?"

"No, I'm not forgetting. But you had no way of knowing how it would turn out."

Skater gave a shrug of hopelessness. "I'm just trying to survive.”

"That's the first and biggest adjustment anybody has to make. You've got that edge, Jack. Something inside you wants to live so fiercely that you've got the strength to do it. That's only one of the things I admire about you. Not all of us have that edge."

Skater didn't know what to say when he saw the unshed tears glimmer in her eyes.

"You're a builder," she said. "Your survival instinct is only part of that. Whatever you need, whatever Emma needs, you'll find a way to get it. You haven't lived outside your own skin because you haven't had to. But that child in there, she has the power to make you live from the best of yourself."

"Yeah. Maybe you're right."

"I am right." Archangel turned away and crossed her arms over her breasts, bringing the icy cool back to herself. The tears went away, still unshed. "As for the Silverstaffs, NuGene is no longer his. They're a couple, for now, but the secrets they're going to have to carry around, even if we're successful tonight, may be more than they can handle, no matter how much they love each other. And even though they say they wanted a baby, they never had the guts to do it on their own. A child would have been another secret they'd have had to protect; not a baby. And the shadows? The shadows can reach out and take anyone down at any time. You know that."

Skater turned her words over in his mind, his gaze fixed on Emma. There was a lot to think about. When he turned to Archangel once more, she was already gone.

Ariadne had been asked to return to her room and stay there while they finished gearing up for the run. Not once had she asked to see the baby. Skater thought about that and it hurt. He remembered the little boy who'd been left in the Council lands, waving goodbye to his own mother, abandoned to strangers. The memory brought a tightness to his chest that was overwhelming, but he knew he couldn't leave this baby. He felt the ties that bound them. What he didn't know was if giving in to those feelings was going to be good for her.