“Ouch!” One of the light beams brushed her arm. Even through the dulling effects of the Mindease, she felt it burn. A bright red line now creased the inside of her wrist. She jerked her arm back, afraid the burning light would catch it again, but the man had already stopped flopping and lay still, his bead to one side. The beams now focused on the wall beside her, slowly charring the cement. Still giggling. Pita experimentally held the hardcopy she’d pulled from his pocket in the path of the beam and watched it burst into flame.

Suddenly, the light beams slid away from the man’s head. They merged into a single my of light that ricocheted off one wall and did a zigzag across the alley, bouncing back and forth from one tinted window to the next. The night was filled with strobing light as the light alternately broke apart into a scattering of laser-thin beams, each a different color, then melded again into a solid white flash that left Pita blinking. It was weirdly beautiful, and at the same time terrifying in its intensity. At last seeming to find its way out of the alley, the light shot up into the darkened sky like a reversed shooting star. Then the sky lit up with a flash of sheet lightning. Pita waited for the thunderclap, but none came.

The smell of burned meat was overwhelming. Pita couldn’t help but gag when she saw that the skin around the man’s lips and nostrils had blackened and was beginning to flake away. She glanced down at his wrist and saw a DocWagon wristband. A winking light indicated that it had been activated.

Dreck! The meatwagon could be here any second!

The artificial calm of the drug dampened her fear. She wanted to curl up and sleep. But instead she willed herself to rise to her feet. The last thing she needed was to be questioned about a corpse-especially one whose pockets she’d just rifled.

It took Pita a moment to orient herself. The Mind-ease was making her fuzzy, making it hard to think. With one hand on the wall, she staggered out of the alley. Dimly, she registered a man across the street fiddling with a trideo camera. A tiny red light glowed above its lens. Pita smiled and waved at it, remembering how the cat’s eyes had glowed red with reflected light.

The man’s head jerked up. He flattened against the wall, looking wary, tucking the trideo camera in against his body. Then he relaxed as Pita staggered past him.

“Fragging druggie,” he whispered under his breath.

Lulled by the Mindease, Pita let his comment slide away like oil down a gutter.

“Hey, Carla! Got a minute?”

Masaki grabbed Carla’s arm, jerking her to a halt in mid-stride. Angrily, she turned on him.

“No, I don’t have a minute, Masaki,” she snapped. “In just thirty minutes I’m doing an interview at the Chrysler Pacific showroom. It’s going to take me twenty-three minutes to get there-longer, if traffic is bad. I’m already cuffing it fine.” Tucking the coil of cable she carried under one arm, she used her free hand to pry Masaki’s fingers away.

“Spare me thirty seconds,” Masaki insisted. “I want to show you a trideo clip I shot last night.”

“Jack off, Masaki. I don’t have time to give you any editing tips.”

“Twenty seconds! That’s all it will take!”

Carla turned and strode away down the ball. Masaki trotted after her, speaking as rapidly as he could and wheezing with every word.

“I went out last night to shoot an interview. I had a tip from a junior exec at Mitsuhama Computer Technologies. He wanted to tell me about some top-secret project the corporation’s research and development lab was working on. Some radical new tech that he thought the public should know about. He was going to spill his guts, give me an exclusive. He promised the story would be the biggest one of my career. He was going to give me both hardcopy and a datachip with the project specs on it.”

Carla snorted. “Yeah, right. So why didn’t your source take it to the majors?”

“He owed me a favor. Before signing on with Mitsuhama as a wage mage, he owned a thaumaturgical supply shop down on Madison Street. I did a puff piece on the store that brought in a lot of business.” Masaki sighed. “He was murdered last night before I could conduct the interview. Burned to death.”

“So?” A murder was hardly unusual, considering Mitsuhama’s rumored yakuza connections.

“He was burned from the inside out.”

Despite herself, Carla was intrigued. “How? Magic?”

“Maybe.” Masaki shrugged. “But if so, it’s something I haven’t seen before, in all my twenty-eight years as a snoop. And I’ve seen some pretty weird things through the lens of my portacam, believe me.”

“And the hardcopy and datachip he was going to give you?”

“The hardcopy was nothing but ashes by the time I got there. And the chip was gone.”

Carla pushed the door open and focused in on her headclock. According to the glowing red numbers that appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of her field of vision, she had just twenty-six minutes to make it to her interview. “If you really had the goods on a hush-hush Mitsuhama research project, you’d have a big story-not to mention a tiger by the tail. But it sounds like you’ve got nothing, now that your source is dead and your proof has vanished. So why are you pestering me?” She jogged across the parking lot to her Americar XL, slid in behind its padded leather steering wheel, and voice-activated the ignition. She revved the engine and watched the seconds scroll by over her right eye. She’d give Masaki his thirty seconds.

He leaned in through the car’s open door, talking rapidly. “I was mucking about with my portacam just before I went to meet my source. I didn’t realize it was on. But it’s a good thing it was. There was a witness to the murder. Remember that ork kid who wanted to talk to you two days ago about the Humanis Policlub? I think it was her. She even waved at the camera. And guess what was in her hand?”

“The datachip,” Carla whispered. She smiled, realizing that Masaki had just handed her, on a silver platter, the story that would get her a slot at NABS. She laughed to herself. Had Masaki been a little smarter, a little more cutthroat, he’d have asked her for the name and address of the kid without revealing the reason he wanted it. Oh, well-his loss and her gain.

Carla cut the engine of her car. “Forget the Chrysler story,” she told Masaki. “It’s nothing more than a trideo op for the corporate execs. One of the junior reporters can cover it. We’ve got a real story to follow.”

4

“Hey, mister!” Pita held out her hand. “Spare me something for a burger?”

She stood in the shelter of an awning on Broadway Street, watching the people hurrying past. With the light drizzle of rain falling, there was little foot traffic on the sidewalks. On a sunny afternoon, this trendy street would be packed with shoppers. But today the sidewalk soykaf stands were empty, their plastic chairs and tables beaded with water. Rather than venturing out into the elements, the shoppers were sticking to the connecting network of tunnels and skywalks that laced the city’s downtown shopping core.

Normally, Pita would have been panhandling there. But after her run-in with Lone Star, she didn’t want to face anyone in uniform. Even the mallplex security guards gave her the shivers.

Rain pattered on the awning overhead as Pita tried to catch the eye of the few people venturing out onto the sidewalks. Most stared straight ahead, doing their best to act like they didn’t see her. A few pretended to be consulting their watches or electronic address pads. Others-particularly the humans-glared at her with open contempt, freezing the words in her mouth.

After nearly an hour of this, Pita was about to give up. The cashier in the trendy clothing shop whose awning Pita was sheltering under was beginning to get more serious in her efforts to wave her away. But just as Pita was turning to leave, an elderly woman in a shabby coat, her fingers curled with arthritis, pressed a crumpled bill into her hand.