“No.”

“Damn.”

The rumble got louder as a man turned the corner. He wore a cloth over his face and seemed to be shouting something, but the words came out too muffled for the guards to hear. He pushed a metal garbage can in front of him, the source of the rumble.

“Tell me he’s not coming toward us.”

“He’s coming toward us.”

The guards emerged from their kiosk, watching the protestor’s approach. They kept their weapons holstered, but their hands hovered, ready to grab.

As he approached, the man’s shouts grew clearer. “Garbage! Garbage! Garbage!”

The guards exchanged glances.

The man approached until he was within three meters of the guards. “Garbage!”

“All right, sir, that’s far enough.”

“Garbage! Garbage! That’s all this government is! Garbage!”

“I think your protest is probably over, sir.”

The man’s eyes blazed above the cloth covering the lower half of his face. “Over? It’s just beginning! You’re garbage! You’re all garbage!”

“Yes, sir. Fine. Now move along.”

“Ha! You’d like that, wouldn’t you! No, I’m going to tell you what you are! You’re garbage!”

“Sir, there are curfew laws…”

“Curfew? I’ll show you what I think of your curfew! Garbage!” He gave his can a shove. It rolled down the slight hill toward the guards, gaining speed. They easily dodged it, watching it as it picked up speed, heading toward a crowd of identical cans scattered among giant Dumpsters.

“Garbage! Ha!”

The guards turned back to the protestor. “Sir, you just assaulted government security officers. We could place you under arrest.”

“You’re garbage!” the man shouted, and the trash can ran into the others like a bowling ball, sending up a tremendous clatter. The protestor launched into a drunken dance.

The noise faded, and the guards approached the protestor. “All right, sir, that’s it. We’ll find a good place for you to dry out.” They reached for the protestor’s arms.

With surprisingly good reflexes, he yanked them away. “Don’t touch me! You filth!” He jumped backward and made a gesture frequently seen in Geneva highway traffic jams.

The guards exchanged glances and then lunged forward. But the protestor was too quick, turning nimbly and running ahead of them down the street.

He kept glancing at his pursuers, checking to see if they were gaining. They weren’t.

After a block of pursuit, the guards slowed. They couldn’t wander any farther out.

“Go home!” one of them shouted at the fleeing figure.

They trudged back to their position in their small kiosk. They arrived too late to see an extremely dizzy man emerge from the rolled garbage can, press his hand against a biometric lock, and enter the Hall of Government.

Jonah had to resist the urge to walk like a sneak thief, hunched over with wide strides. Nothing would draw the attention of the machines and guards monitoring the cameras faster than suspicious behavior. He had to walk like he was supposed to be there, which was difficult, considering his recent tumble in a metal can. Walking in a straight line was hard enough.

The hallways buzzed with power, some of it used for the all-too-dim lighting that would make it easy for Jonah to accidentally stumble into a guard on patrol. Most of the electricity supplied the wide array of alarms set throughout the building, guarding offices, computers and whatever other valuables Senators felt like keeping here. The low-level noise was a constant reminder to walk carefully.

Jonah felt a tug of longing as he walked by an elevator bank. He had to get to the twenty-third floor, and the elevators would be the best mode of transportation. But standing still for fifteen full seconds in the range of security cameras would not be a wise move. The stairwells had cameras, too, but he could move by them quickly. The only trick there was avoiding the question of why someone was walking up twenty-two flights of stairs at four in the morning.

He found a stairwell, walked up two flights, and exited. Strolling to the other side of the building, he found more stairs and went up another two flights.

Altogether, the building had ten stairwells. Jonah spent ten minutes wandering from one to another, moving up in small chunks of flights. Hopefully, if anyone noticed him on one set of stairs, they didn’t see him on the other. Hopefully there were entirely different sets of guards watching each stairwell, or each floor. Hopefully.

Finally, he reached floor twenty-three. The carpeting here was steel gray, the walls brown squares on a tan background, just like every other floor. There was a single guard stationed at the north end, another at the south. Jonah shouldn’t get close enough for either to see him.

He found the door he was looking for—Suite 2312, the offices of Senator Lina Derius. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small metal cylinder. Just below the sign announcing the Senator’s name was an almost invisible pinhole, and behind that hole was a microphone. Jonah held the cylinder in front of the hole and pressed a button on top. The cylinder played a recording that had been transmitted by Horn, a single word spoken by Henrik Morten.

“Rebirth.”

A computer on the other side of the microphone analyzed the voiceprint and found it belonged to an authorized individual. The door’s lock clicked, and Jonah pushed it open, jumped through, and closed it behind him.

He exhaled. He had some degree of safety now, since common areas were monitored much more closely than the individual offices. Office security was left up to each individual Senator’s alarm system of preference.

He walked past the receptionist’s desk. He needed a computer with access to everything Lina Derius knew, and there was only one computer that fit that category. He walked directly to her office. A keycode supplied by Morten got him in.

He retrieved another item from a large side pocket, a small power generator. He plugged Senator Derius’ equipment into it, so that no one monitoring power usage would see anything unusual.

He activated the computer and put Morten’s passwords to work. Not surprisingly, there were a few areas, such as the Senator’s personal journal, that Morten’s codes could not crack. Still, he had access to a majority of the data kept by the Senator. It would be enough.

He knew vaguely what he wanted, but couldn’t know exactly what form it would be in, or where it would be kept, and he didn’t have the luxury of conducting a global search through the massive files the Senator kept on her drive, or transferring them all to his own files. He had to operate on instinct. It was like walking through the woods, guessing which trees were innocent and which protected an enemy trooper with a flamethrower.

The clock ticked. By four-thirty, Jonah had transferred exactly one file that proved little more than Senator Derius’ political leanings. At five, someone arrived to empty the trash. Jonah turned off the computer screen, grabbed his power supply, hid under the desk, and watched the feet of the custodian while imagining the headlines he’d see the next day if the custodian heard him breathe.

By five after five, he was searching through files again.

The clock kept moving. He wanted to be out by six, to disappear before the building got any more populated, but this was his only shot at this. If he left with nothing, he’d end up walking into tomorrow’s election with nothing.

Six o’clock came. Sunrise was about two hours away, but even here, buried deep in the Senate building, Jonah could feel the change. The city was starting to wake up, and a significant percentage of its citizens were going to make their way here fairly rapidly.

At best he had an hour. He pushed himself, flying through records, scanning through tens of thousands of words, looking for one of the key words he needed to see. It started to come. Pieces of the puzzle broke through the fog, and he grabbed a few more files.