“Disappear.”

They did.

Twelve blocks later, puffing from their run, Pita and her friends slowed. Chen had been running with a peculiar hop-step, and now he settled into a limp.

“Fragging goons,” he panted, surreptitiously wiping the last of the tears from his cheeks.

Shaz and Mohan walked a pace behind him. They were brothers, twelve and thirteen years old. They’d only been on the streets a year, and looked to Chen, with his six years of city smarts, for leadership. They had shaved their heads, thinking it would make them look tougher, and wore matching black T-shirts emblazoned with the grinning face of the ork rocker and go-gang leader who fronted Meta Madness. The group’s logo was stitched across the T-shirts in silver wire.

“Yao gave me that headset,” Chen muttered. “He said I wouldn’t be able to talk to him once he went underground, but that I could use it to watch his broadcasts. Now I won’t even be able to see him on trideo.”

“I know.” Pita untied her black synth-leather jacket from around her waist and tugged it on over her sleeveless flannel shirt. Her threadbare sneaks, cheap like everything else that came out of the Confederated American States, scuffed the sidewalk. Knobby knees poked out of the holes in her jeans as she walked. “At least you know he cares about you. My sister never even…”

Chen jerked to a halt. He turned toward Pita. “I’m sorry.” Wrapping his massive arms around her shoulders, he hugged her close. She felt Shaz and Mohan touch her back with gentle fingers.

Bitterness gnawed at her with sharp teeth as her mind flew back to when she’d first begun to goblinize. She’d hidden it from her family for a week, mumbling into her hand to conceal her expanding canines and wearing baggy clothes to hide her sudden growth. Then her sister had caught her in the bathroom, shaving the curly brown hair that had started to sprout from her shoulders. The next day, Pita came home from school to find the front door locked and her clothes jumbled into foamboard boxes on the lawn. Her old clothes. They’d saved the good ones for her sister.

She’d wound up in downtown Seattle without a credstick. Like so many kids before her, she decided to sell the only thing she had. Herself. She hadn’t been prepared for the jeers, the mocking laughter. Fleeing down an alley, she’d run head-first into Chen, knocking him flat on his ass on a broken bottle. Later, she’d discovered the blood on the seat of his pants. And found out why he gave her the nickname Pita. From that day on she answered only to it, instead of to Patti, the name her parents had given her.

Now he lipped her head back and kissed her cheek. “Hey, there, Pain In The Ass. Null perspiration. We still got each other, don’t we? That material drek is just stuff, eh?”

“Just stuff,” Mohan echoed.

Beside him, Shaz was making a low, throaty grumble. “Fragging goons,” he growled, his voice cracking. “Why can't they leave us alone?”

Just up the Street, a patrol car was rounding the corner. Its blue light washed the buildings in rapid sweeps, chasing the shadows from the streets. A voice crackled out over a loudspeaker. “This is Lone Star Security. Freeze.”

“Leave us alone!” Shaz shouted. Suddenly stooping, he scooped up a broken piece of concrete and hurled it at the patrol car. It bounced harmlessly off the armor plating with a dull thunk. The car braked to a screeching halt, and the front port slid open. The dark tube of a gun barrel poked through.

“Frag it!” Pita yelled. “Run!”

Chen was still turning to look at the car when the first of the shots ripped the night. Pita had barely begun to run when she heard the wet meaty sound of bullets hitting flesh. Chen grunted in pain.

“Run!” Shaz screamed.

Behind her, Pita heard another burst of gunfire. Mohan groaned, and then Shaz began to scream. “Mohan, get up! Get up, frag you! Get-”

The automatic weapon opened up a third time, just as Pita reached the corner. A spray of concrete dusted her jacket as she rounded it. Gulping back sobs, she pounded down the block. Somewhere behind her, she heard an engine rev and the squeal of fires. Lone Star Security was going to make sure there weren’t any witnesses.

Pita rounded another corner, feet skidding to find purchase on the pitted sidewalk. The blue flash of the patrol car’s lights washed her shoulder as she leaped into the shadows. Feet pounding. eyes blurry with tears, she gulped in great lungfuls of air and ran as hard as she could. Around another corner. Over a parked car and across an intersection. Down a side street. And at last into an alley. Spotting a rusted fire escape ladder she leaped, caught the bottom rung. The ladder creaked in a slow descent and she scrambled up it, hand over hand. She could hear the patrol car getting closer, coming down the side street.

With a shrieking groan, the ladder gave way. Suddenly Pita found herself tumbling. She grabbed for a handhold, missed-and fell into an open dumpster. Squishy bags of garbage broke her fall and a rank smell filled her nostrils. The ladder clattered to the ground beside it. She was just about to scramble out when she saw a blue flicker on the dumpster’s open lid. Deciding to stay put, she eased bags of garbage on top of her, burrowing deeper into the pile.

A bright light swept across the alley, searching its shadows like a sniffing dog. Pita heard the thud of a car door, the footsteps of an approaching cop. She crouched rigid as death, trying not to breathe. Please, she begged whatever fates would listen. Don’t let him find me. Don’t let him see me. Her ragged breathing seemed to echo loud inside the dumpster, giving her away. She heard the footsteps approach, saw a flashlight beam linger on the open lid of the dumpster. She closed her eyes, focusing every effort of her will on becoming motionless, on becoming invisible. It was too late now to move, to worry about whether the trash covered her completely. She heard the faint rasp of the cop’s gloved hand on the lip of the dumpster, saw a flash of light sweep across her closed eyelids. Any second now, the cop would point his gun and…

No. She forced the image out of her mind. He doesn’t see me, she chanted, over and over like a mantra. He doesn’t see me.

The flashlight beam swept away, leaving her in darkness. Pita heard footsteps departing and the slam of a car door, then the soft purr of the patrol car’s engine as it motored slowly up the street. Relief flooded over her in a cold, shivering rush. She wasn’t sure who to thank for protecting her, but someone or something must have been listening.

At last she allowed herself to cry. Shaz, Mohan, Chen. She hadn’t seen them go down, but what shed heard behind her as she ran from the cops hadn’t sounded good. Instead of trying to help them, she’d run away. Turned her back on her friends and bolted, Her stomach clenched with guilt. Gnawing her lip until she tasted blood, Pita at last heaved herself out of the dumpster and jogged cautiously back in the direction of her friends.

2

Carla leaned over the shoulder of Wayne, the on-line editor, watching as the letters on the trideo monitor did a slow reveal: “H… U… M…” Gradually they spelled out Humanis Policlub, then turned from black to silver and oozed bright drops of red. Behind them, a man’s face resolved itself. His forehead was puckered into an angry frown, and his white teeth gleamed in a feral smile against his dark skin. His hair was neatly clipped, his face clean-shaven.

“Special rights for metahumans?” The man’s nose flared. “I’d sooner give special rights to a ghoul. They’re animals. Subhuman. Oh, I know, some say that metahumanity was always part of the gene pool. But that’s nonsense. It’s bad magic at work. These people have impure thought processes. That’s why they goblinize when they hit puberty.”