“Yes.”

Pakow disconnected, and then stood. He jacked into the system quickly, and delivered the program he’d put together just that morning. If things went well, it would give anyone snooping security the impression that all was as it should be here in the operating room. He jacked out again. As he looked down at the vat, which still remained unsealed, he saw movement.

Surprised, Pakow leaned forward, his face only millimeters from the thick safety glass.

Sure enough, the young man was moving. Slowly, sluggishly, trying to return to consciousness. Pakow was amazed. He would have thought this kind of activity impossible for at least another couple of hours.

Pakow watched in complete fascination as the man pulled himself up over the lip of the vat, and then fell to the floor, hitting his head.

Pakow winced at that, but there was nothing he could do. His program was running, and he had a five-second window to get himself out of the room before any anomalies in the trid would become obvious.

Pakow checked the clock again. Almost time. He turned and without looking back, binned up the carpeted steps, and out of the theater.

Deep in his underground office, Oslo Wake watched Pakow on the touchscreen monitor. As the other man hurried from the operating theater, Wake smiled. With the stroke of his finger, Oslo changed the view to bring up the stasis wing. The display showed him Number Two, just then placing the body of a young man with infinite care into a vat identical to the one Pakow had just left behind.

Oslo nodded to himself. Pakow, Pakow, Pakow. A valiant effort, but I just can allow your delicate sensibilities to jeopardize my plan.

He spoke into the small microphone next to the monitor. “Number Two, begin the restart process.”

With that, he touched the screen again, and the view faded to black.

18

This work brings me to the verge of a technological, magical breakthrough such as the world has never seen. The mating of magical creatures with cyberware is a feat most scientists don’t even dream of.

– 

Oslo Wake, laboratory notes. test series OV13652, 02 November 2053

Julius D’imato sat in the corner of the warehouse, fitting the boot straps of his heavy armor in place. He cinched the last strap, and pulled his helmet from the bench next to him.

The activity in the warehouse had become quieter, but also more intense. His men knew that D-hour was fast approaching, and there was a crackle of nervous energy underlying their every action.

Weapons were loaded, checked, broken down, then reassembled and loaded again. All the men were in heavy armor now, their bodies faintly resembling beetles scurrying about.

Julius took a deep breath and let it out. It had been a long time since he’d seen real action. Fratellanza, inc. had been plenty busy providing security during the recent mob war, but Julius hadn’t taken any part in the street fighting. His role, for many years now, had been more that of general than foot soldier. Like any corp. Fratellanza did have its own combat section, though Julius knew those soldiers would be stretched to the limit by this operation.

They were professional enough. That wasn’t the problem. Some had served in the Desert Wars, some in the Eurowar and almost all had been corporate military at one time other. But there were only fifty of them.

Julius had thought about pulling up some of the reserves from different places, but had decided against it. Pulling employees like that would have caused a stir, and if they were going to get through this without alerting people like Knight Errant and Lone Star, they were going to have to move like cats until the actual moment to strike.

He smiled to himself as he thought about the big two. His deckers had found no registered security provider on record in the compound’s files, which, of course, meant two things. One. Julius wouldn’t have to deal with interference from Lone Star or Knight Errant, because his people had simply changed the record to show Fratellanza, Inc. as the compound’s Sec provider. That way, when Julius started to roll the signal would automatically go out that Fratellanza was responding to a legitimate emergency. Unfortunately, the other, ramification of having no sec provider of record usually signified that the place must have internal defenses of a very high caliber.

Julius hoped he was up to this. He would hate to let Warren down again. Just the thought of his son strengthened his resolve. If Warren could be saved, he would do it. If Warren was already gone, then whoever was responsible would pay big and hard. Julius would make certain of that.

“Biggs!” he bellowed.

Biggs snapped to at the telecom, where he’d been taking notes. His curly red hair and little boy freckles made the fangs in his mouth look completely out of place. “Boss?”

“Status report? We can’t wait all night”

The big ork ripped a sheet of paper off the pad on which he’d been writing, and disconnected from the telecom. lie strode over to Julius with the confident walk of one who knows himself, who knows exactly what he is capable of doing.

“Things ain’t right and they ain’t normal,” Biggs said. “And if it weren’t for what you told us earlier, I’da thought every contact I had in Hell’s Kitchen had started chippin’.”

Julius nodded. “Spill it.”

Biggs looked down at the paper and scratched his head, as if he were having trouble deciphering his own writing. “Okay, but this is gonna sound a bit strange.”

He cleared his throat. “First contact I talked to is a guy who’s usually reliable. He didn’t know that much, only that somebody bought up a former Fuchi processing plant in Hell’s Kitchen about three years ago. A month or so later, whoever bought it turned it into a soup kitchen. Free food, and no forced sermons like they have at the mission, So they was pretty popular.

“My contact said he never went there, but he’d heard that anyone who was down and out could show up and get a hot meal and a blanket. In winter, the Hell’s Kitchen folk put up a little encampment out there. He says that’s about the time people started disappearin’.”

Julius looked up. “Disappearing? Did he say why?”

Biggs shook his head. “Naw, he just says that after that, everybody was afraid of the place. In fact, some of the folk won’t even go back there to get their stuff from the camp. And when yer talkin’ about people who got little or nothin’ to start with, they gotta be pretty damn scared to leave anything behind.”

Julius nodded. “That it?”

Biggs paused, and Julius could tell he was weighing his answer. “Well, no. That’s only the start of it.”

Julius nodded again. “Go on.”

“The next guy I talked to swore up and down it was a secret ghoul… enclave? Is that right? I think that means that a bunch of ghouls are holed up there. He says that’s why people are disappearing, ‘cause the ghouls are eating them. But I figure that’s just paranoia, ‘cause nobody’s seen any of the usual signs, and if ghouls are out there, they’ve been keepin’ to themselves for the last coupla months. I dealt with ghouls before. No matter how many people they mighta snagged a few months ago, they’d be getting pretty hungry by now.”

Julius nodded. “It’s not ghouls, so skip the rest of that.”

Biggs licked his lips and glanced again at his notes. “The next one’s somebody I used to trust, but she’s been known to go benders the last couple of years, so take this with a big rock of salt. She’s not sure, but her guess is that the place is a chop shop for body parts. She says that in the first month, before they opened the soup kitchen, there was lots of medical supplies delivered in unmarked vans, She knows, ‘cause she got the registration number off one of the trucks and decked into the DMV. The truck was registered to Zulu BioGen, a small, but very high-tech firm out of Atlanta, but with branches all over the world.”