“Fucking hell,” I whispered as I heard steps behind me and turned my head to find Jabali there, shutting the door carefully behind him.

“Keeps gettin’ worse,” he said. “She didn’t look this bad a few hours ago. Keeps on keeping on, whatever this shit is, even after you’re dead-no pity. Mel had us burn poor old Pick, you know? Said she didn’t want him eaten up.”

I looked back at Glee and forced myself to approach her. Her eyes were open and looked so normal, so clean and untouched, I didn’t want to look at them. Standing over her, I reached down and pushed her eyes shut, flinching a little as I touched her cold flesh. I’d killed a lot of people. I’d killed a lot of people and not lost much sleep over it, but as I stared down at the kid I realized I was trembling. I touched her red hair, which seemed darker than I remembered against her suddenly pale skin. She was starting to smell, and I looked up at the ceiling, blinking and trying to control myself.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered. I looked down at her again and startled-had her chest just… twitched? I stared down at her. I was losing my mind. I’d been hunted, crashed a hover, played dead, and now found out the only three people I could possibly have called friends were all dead, and not peacefully. I was losing my fucking mind.

I closed my eyes and ground my teeth, still trembling. “Burn her,” I said quietly. “If this shit is still… spreading, then fucking burn her. Okay? Then get your shit together. We’re heading back uptown.” I turned and pushed past him, intending to drink until my hands stopped shaking. I scratched at the wound on my neck. Newark, I thought. “Someone in the Department of Public Health wanted to talk to me. So let’s go talk.”

Watching us, the two Crushers stood with their thumbs hooked into their belt loops, their uniforms sagging and wrinkled. One was a round, moon-faced Asian whose mouth worked absently in a constant chewing motion. The other was tall, pale, and rail thin, his pants too short for his legs, a thin, wispy beard shooting off his sharp chin. They slouched at the flimsy metal gate set up across Eighth Avenue and watched me approach with what they imagined were hardassed stares. The wind was a constant moan around us, dry and dustless, all the snow held in the gelatin-like yellow slush that clung to everything, making the world look rotted.

“Avery,” the tall one said as Jabali and I stopped in front of them. I was wearing my Special Occasion suit, for when I needed to overawe my business partners with my wealth and material success. It was a little floppy in the arms and legs but close enough, and expensive looking. When going uptown to deal with civilians, it paid to look the part. I’d cleaned up Jabali as much as I could, which wasn’t saying much, but he’d pass if he kept his mouth shut.

The checkpoints had gone up in record time overnight, and they’d drawn all the Crushers from the reserves, putting everyone on active duty. New York felt strange to me, thinned. Walking up Hudson Street in the morning there’d been elbow room to spare, and the people who were out pushing through fat flakes of acidic snow and the muffled, sound-eating air all seemed to move faster, scuttling as quickly through the street as they could. Rumors were already coming fast about a sickness, and people were staying indoors. I’d seen some dead bodies, too, just slumped here and there, looking like some wild animal had torn into them, the deep blue bruises on their necks and arms burst open, bloody, and no one willing to get near enough to them to move them off the street.

“Officer Stanley,” I said to the skinny Crusher, nodding. “And Mongo.”

The moon-man didn’t react beyond a slow, deliberate blinking of his eyes. I raised an eyebrow at Officer Stanley. “The SSF isn’t sparing any expense in recruiting, huh?”

Stanley turned his head and spat on the street, just a few inches away from my feet. “Pook can move pretty light on his feet, you give him a reason. You got business uptown, Avery? There’s an Action Item about you from yesterday, you know.”

I nodded, putting on the most serious face I could summon. “I have an appointment,” I said. “You guys expecting trouble?”

There’d been a bug scare about thirteen years ago, I remembered. Turned out to be the fucking Brazilian flu, just a few thousand people dead and those mostly on their last legs to begin with, but for a few days everyone hid inside and only came out with these ridiculous masks on, keeping their distance. I remembered negotiating a job from across the fucking street, shouting at my client because he wouldn’t get any closer to me.

This felt worse. Names pushed through my head: Candida Murrow, she died in a very… unusual way, Gleason, she dead, Wa too, Pickering. Whatever this was, I was getting the feeling it had started with my people. With me, right around the time I’d been on my knees in Newark with a gun to my head and not shot. I’d done enough evil in my time, the cosmos had me on its list, no doubt. But why hadn’t I gotten sick? Why wasn’t I dead? This shit didn’t make sense.

I remembered the distorted voice: This is not an execution… this is an assassination. Not yours. But an assassination none the fucking less.

“They don’t tell us any fucking thing,” Stanley said, hitching his pants up and giving Jabali the stinkeye for a bit. “We’re just not supposed to let anyone through without a specific order from a Captain or above.”

I nodded, looking around. “I need a pass.”

He looked away from me, suddenly interested in something across the street. Jabali, who maybe wasn’t the brightest guy in the world, had the common sense to shut the hell up and pretend to be deaf and dumb. “Fuck, Avery, you just come up here in the fucking open and-I’m not selling any passes today. You got an order, fine. Otherwise you turn around and go the fuck back to your shithole. Try again tomorrow.”

My hands curled into fists and I recited my own personal Serenity Prayer. At least Stanley wasn’t dumb enough to think he could cash in on my Action Item and bring me in himself. I scanned the street, so quiet I could hear the snow dissolving our boots and Moon-man’s heavy mouth breathing. I counted eleven Crushers, not a drop of talent among them-especially Moon-man, who looked like he had to preplan every breath. I didn’t doubt I could rush the barrier and make it, but I didn’t need any manhunts up above Twenty-third Street, so I just shook my head. “I’ll pay double.”

Stanley pursed his lips.

“No bosses around,” I said quickly. “You know me, Stanley. You know you will never hear from me on the way back across. It’ll be like I was never here.”

“Shit, Avery,” he muttered, glancing at Jabali and taking a quick scan of the street again. “Double?”

I nodded. “The usual arrangement for payment. And we find our own way back.”

Stanley shook his head, turning to spit. “Nothing’s usual anymore. The fucking Worms have been up everyone’s asses. Marin sees everything. I ain’t gonna end up in some shithole like Chengara. Not for you.”

I swore to myself. Officially, Dick Marin was director of Internal Affairs for the SSF-the King Worm. Before I’d killed Squalor for him, that’s where his power had stopped, especially since he wasn’t human anymore. He was a digitized intelligence operating through who knew how many mechanical avatars. You met Dick Marin in a room and he looked human enough, but he was just a remote-control Droid, with the real Marin, if that word meant anything, in a server somewhere. As such, there was low-level programming that controlled his behavior, and he’d been allowed to terrify only the System Pigs-who were all scared shitless of him, since he was the only person empowered to fuck with them.