For a split second, I tensed, thinking, Shit, the SSF calls in the big shots to put a bullet in your head.

But it was just a tube of leather that twisted open to reveal a skinny, shiny metal flask and a metal disc.

“Drink, Mr. Cates?” Hense said, her blank eyes on me as her hands set about twisting and turning the pieces into an ersatz bar. “Gin. Real gin.”

This was unexpected, and all my alarm bells sounded for a second. I doubted the Pigs routinely poisoned people in their Blank Rooms, and I reminded myself that I had nothing to lose anyway, so I forced myself to relax. “Got a straw?”

She’d twisted the disc into a cup and unscrewed the cap from the flask, and now she stared at me again for a moment. “Cut ’im loose,” she said.

Happling visibly stuttered, his arms twitching and one foot shooting out before he stopped himself. He looked at her. “What?”

“Cut Mr. Cates loose,” she said slowly, biting off each syllable, “so we can have a fucking drink like civilized people.”

Happling hesitated for a second more, his big hands clenched and his throat working within the tight, painful-looking circle of his collar. Then he launched himself at me, a thin blade suddenly flashing out from one hand with a snap. He disappeared behind me and with a jerk my hands were free. My arms were completely numb, and my feet were still bound to the chair. I willed my arms to move, and they did, in a creepy way that seemed completely separate from me. Hense leaned forward and held the shiny cup out to me and I saw my alien hand reach up and take it. I held it in front of me, the smell of liquor very strong. I stared back at her, the cup shaking slightly in my grasp. I was aware of her smell: natural, a good, woman’s smell.

She held up the flask, nodded, and tilted back a deep swallow. I shrugged inwardly and did my best, dashing the cup against my broken lips and getting most of the liquid inside my mouth. There was a moment of searing pain, and then the liquor made its way down my throat, where it bloomed in sudden warmth, the first good feeling I’d had in… hours? Days? Who the fuck knew.

Hense held out her hand and I returned the cup. She carefully crushed it back into its original form and replaced everything inside the leather case, fastidious and precise. I watched her through my one squinted eye, waiting. In my experience, when System Pigs were nice to me it was a very bad sign of things to come. The last time one had offered me a drink, he’d almost cut off both my thumbs a few minutes later.

“We had an interesting conversation with DPH director Terries about an hour ago,” she said suddenly, her eyes fixed on the flask, her voice level. “When he came to in the hospital. He’s concerned that he’s going to die very soon, and his doctors seem to agree. He told us to find you, that you were the key to the sickness that’s stirring up downtown. It took me a long time to locate you, however, as several officers had taken you into custody and not logged you in.”

Happling stood at attention, his eyes aimed up at the ceiling.

She let that marinate for a moment and then finished tying up her flask. “I have not passed this information on yet, for Captain Happling’s sake. Tell me what’s going on, Mr. Cates.”

I cleared my throat and spat blood onto the floor. “I tried telling Tweedledum and Tweedledummer,” I said, my throat burning as if I were exhaling gravel. “Twice.”

For a second or two, we all contemplated Purple Suit.

“Tell me again,” she suggested.

I told her again. I had it boiled down to a tight two-minute pitch by now. “As for you, take a look at Tweedledum. You get more than a few feet from me for any period of time, you’re on a countdown to that.” I raised my head, trying to blow some of the scabby mess out of my nose and clear the airway. A sudden crazy hope flared in me, and the word survive popped into my head again. “Look, take it to Marin. Tell Marin who you’ve got here. Tell him why I’m here.” Dick Marin wouldn’t pass up a chance to personally execute me, I didn’t doubt, but he’d also take this shit seriously.

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do,” she said in a lazy, unconcerned tone. She looked at Happling and he looked at her, shrugging his eyebrows. Then she looked back at me. “A few feet away from you, huh? Terries didn’t mention that. He just insisted you be brought to him for lab work. How fast?”

I shrugged. “Seems like it varies. I don’t know why.”

She nodded, taking a deep breath. “Captain Happling, take charge of Mr. Cates.”

Happling nodded and strode around behind me. The chair tilted backward until I was looking up at his pale face. He grinned down at me and said in a bizarrely warm, friendly tone, “Hands in your pockets, buddy, okay?” and then, incredibly, he winked down at me. “If I see your hands, I break them.”

He spun me around so he could drag me behind him, and I heard the door flash open again. “Mr. Cates,” Hense said briskly, “you are now my property. You will be within ten feet of me and Captain Happling at all times. If you try anything, we will shoot you dead and find out if you need to be alive to have this miraculous preserving effect on people.”

“Colonel, sir,” Happling said in a tentative, unhappy voice. “New directives on POIs state we’re supposed-”

“Fuck the directive on Persons of Interest, Captain,” Hense said coolly. “This man doesn’t get more than ten feet away from me under any circumstances, understood?”

There were two or three beats of silence. “Understood, sir.” Happling finally said.

When she spoke again, the harshness was gone for a second. “If what Terries and this piece of shit say is true, Nathan, we’re dead if he gets more than a few feet away from us. Dead like your asshole partner back there. What do you think happens if we log Cates in? Do you think the fucking King Worm is going to let us tag along?”

Happling grunted. “I said understood.”

The corridor beyond the Blank Room was empty and clinically white: clean and monochrome, the bright lights hurting my eyes. I counted fifteen lighting fixtures as I was dragged backward, and then the world tilted and I was pulled into an elevator. In the second before the doors snapped shut, I saw three fat drops of blood on the nice clean floor. This cheered me up for some unknown reason.

We rode in silence, the floors dropping away in a blur, until we had to be underground. None of us said anything. There was something wonderful about being securely bound, buried under endless tons of cops-I didn’t have to make any decisions. Everything just flowed over me in an incomprehensible wave, keeping my head under.

When the elevator doors popped open, no one moved. Four System Cops blocked our way, all young men, jackets off, the sleeves of their uniformly white shirts rolled up even with their holsters, a cloud of cigarette smoke around them.

“Colonel Hense, sir,” said one in the middle, a pale, sweating man whose black hair was plastered to his forehead, his frame too slim and girlish to be a fucking cop. “With all due respect, why in fuck is Avery Cates still alive?”