The slender man was standing, leaning back against a table with his hands on the edge of it. One hand moved, clicking the rings on his fingers against the wood. The tip of his little finger was missing. As Pita groaned, he said something in Japanese to the other man, who grunted in reply. Then he leaned toward Pita.

“You took something that didn’t belong to you,” he said in perfect, unaccented English. “A small bronze disk about so big.” He held his thumb and forefinger about three centimeters apart. “A datachip. We want it back.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pita said.

The slap across her cheek took her completely by surprise. The man had moved as fast as a striking snake. Pita’s head bounced off the bed with the force of the blow, and tears welled in her eyes. Her cheek stung.

The man leaned back against the table once more. His eyes ranged up and down Pita’s naked body. She suddenly felt horribly vulnerable.

“We can do anything we like with you,” the slender man said. “Anything at all.” He let the words hang in the air for a moment. “And don’t try to scream for help We'll kill you if you do.”

The larger man shifted in his chair. Pita looked fearfully at him, blinking back her tears.

“We know you take chip,” he said in a low voice that was devoid of all emotion. “Chip not in pockets of dead man. DocWagon not take; cops not take. Mage do sensing, say you take. But chip not in your clothes You tell us where chip is”

Pita gnawed at her lip to stop herself from sobbing.

“What if I tell you?” she asked. “Will you let me go?”

The slender man’s lips curved in a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Of course.”

Pita knew she was trapped. There was no way out of this; the best she could do was buy herself a little time. “I thought the chip was a simsense game,” she said. “I tried it in my digideck, but it didn’t work. All that came up were these weird diagrams. They looked like something maybe a mage would use. I thought maybe I could sell it for a few nuyen, so I took it to a shop on Denny Way. The guy there gave me ten nuyen for it.”

The larger man lifted his feet from the bed and sat up. “What is name of man?” he asked.

Pita tried to shrug, to look as casual as possible, but her bound wrists prevented any motion. “I only know his first name: Aziz.”

“And the name of the shop?” the slender man asked.

The Secret something-or-other,” Pita answered.

The slender man glanced at his companion and said something in Japanese. Then he turned for the door.

“Wait” Pita said. “I kept my part of the deal. I told you where the chip was. Let me go!”

“Not until we get that chip back.”

“But you could at least untie me and let me get dressed,” she pleaded. She gave a meaningful look at the larger man, who was plainly intent on staying behind to watch her. “Even with my hands free, I’m not going to get past him”

“You may dress,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “I’m sure that Tomoyuki is tired of looking at you. But afterward you will have to be tied up again. And if I find that you have lied to me about that chip, you will die. There will be no second chances.”

10

The blare of the telecom’s alarm snapped Carla awake. She groaned and wiped the sleep out of her eyes, then sat up and looked around her apartment. She’d slept in her clothes after kicking off her shoes and neatly folding her jacket over a chair. She’d only intended to take a quick nap. but she’d set the alarm for six p.m. just in case she slept too long. Now the logo and call letters of KKRU Trideo News scrolled across the screen as the newscast began.

The camera zoomed in toward Rita Lambrecht and Tim Lang, tonight’s celebrity news anchors. Carla winced. Rita was a ditsy elf who smiled even when reciting the night’s body count, and Tim was a dwarf wrestling champion who’d been chosen for his rugged good looks and deep baritone voice. It looked like Rita would give the lead-in to the top story. Carla hoped she didn’t muff her lines.

Amazingly, the lead story wasn’t on the dead mage. Instead, it was about a group of rebels who’d blown up an oil refinery in the Yucatan; killing 127 technicians in the explosion. A grim-faced Aztlan spokesman promised “swift and thorough” retribution for the attack. The footage that accompanied the piece was gruesome and graphic, but Carla still didn’t think the story deserved the three minutes KKRU had given it.

Nor was the dead mage mentioned anywhere in the international slot. Carla fumed through the first seven minutes of the newscast, debating whether or not to call the station. But then the local news segment began to roll, and Tim “Tiny Terror” Lang began to read the first story.

“In local news, a Seattle resident whose body was found in an alley two nights ago appears not to have been the victim of the thief who has been dubbed the ‘Magical Mugger.’ Instead he apparently died at the hands of a new form of magical spirit that may still be at large on the streets of our city. Here, with an eyewitness report, is Jun Masaki”

Carla sat on the edge of her seat, waiting for the report. She had to wait for the end of a ten-second infomercial between the lead-in and the news clip. Annoying, but these commercials were what kept KKRU on the air. Indirectly, they paid her salary.

The piece opened with a shot that superimposed a framed image of Pita over the footage Masaki had shot in the alley. When she pointed at the ground, describing what she’d seen, the ork girl seemed to be gesturing at the body itself, then at the mirror-like windows from which the rays of light had bounced like a ricochet. As she spoke, white rays seemed to emerge from the body while the words GRAPHIC SIMULATION scrolled across the bottom of the screen. It was a standard editing technique; the dotted lines didn’t look enough like beams of light to arouse complaints of news fabrication, while the frame around Pita told the viewers that her take was a superimposed shot. The take ended with Pita describing how the dying man had dropped a datachip he’d been holding, and how she had picked it up. Funny, how she called it a “personal chip.” Masaki should have called her on that one. It might weaken the Mitsuhama connection.

Carla was also irritated to see that Masaki had used a “Jane Doe” face to digitally mask the girl’s features. But the kid was speaking well, giving a vivid description of what she had seen.

The take dissolved into a split-screen pairing, the left half of the screen showing Aziz seated amid the clutter of his shop, while the right showed Mrs. Samji. Wayne had done a seamless job of editing; the two seemed to bounce comments off one another, livening up an otherwise boring “talking heads” take.

Aziz: “The spell on this chip is unknown in the hermetic tradition.”

Mrs. Samji: “My husband followed the Zoroastnan faith.”

Aziz: “It’s a formula for conjuring a spirit.”

Mrs. Samji: “Farazad regarded magic as a religious practice. He often used it in his sermons.”

Aziz: “The formula seems to summon a spirit I am unfamiliar with.”

Mrs. Samji: “We Zoroastrians conceive of God as light.”

Aziz: “The uniqueness of the ritual seems to indicate the spirit manifests as a blinding light.”

Mrs. Satnji: “Farazad was wrong… to… call on… the creature.”

Carla caught the slight tonal shifts that indicated Wayne’s splicing of the last comment. But it was extremely subtle, something the average viewer would never notice. The story would be getting to the point any second now, by revealing the Mitsuhama connection. She leaned forward expectantly as the right screen did a fast cut to an interview with the medical examiner who’d examined the body. The doctor reiterated that the mage had died of massive internal trauma due to heat-“cooked alive from the inside out” as she so eloquently put it. She also speculated that the burns were assumed to be magical in nature, since there had been no evidence of fire in the immediate vicinity.