Raising one hand so she could stare down at her nails, the colonel spoke calmly. “Captain Happling, draw your weapon.”

Behind me I heard the familiar sound of a gun being pulled.

“Who’s feeling fast?” Happling said cheerfully. I could tell from his voice that he was smiling.

The four cops in front of us shifted uneasily, and I got the distinct feeling that Captain Happy behind me was the big cock in the room. The second biggest, I decided, considering the freezing wind blowing from the colonel’s direction. The skinny, pale cop looked past me and didn’t seem happy. “Hap, you know this shit is fucking wrong. That piece of crap is a cop killer. He should’ve been executed upon capture. What, you’re gonna put him in the system? Fuck, Hap-the King Worm’ll snap him up and he’ll just disappear somewhere.”

The King Worm. I’d always liked that name. Dick Marin, director of Internal Affairs, the de facto leader of the whole SSF. We hated the cops, the cops hated their cops. And the universe spun on.

“I do as I’m told, fellows,” Happling responded. “In a second or two, the colonel’s going to order you to step aside. You might gain some brownie points by doing so now, of your own free will.”

It was amazing-there were four of them, each armed. The colonel remained stock-still, no weapon in sight. But the four cops blocking our way suddenly looked doubtful.

“Otherwise,” Happling continued, “I’ll be forced to kill you all, and I’ll come out clean when I file the SIRs.”

I wondered idly what the fuck an SIR was. The four cops stood there a moment longer, but I knew they’d move on. The energy had gone out of them; it was obvious none of them wanted to go up against Captain Happy or his boss. Their line broke, the three silent ones moving off, hands in pockets, sullen. The skinny one stood there a moment more, a faint layer of color coming into his face.

“This is bullshit, sir,” he said to Hense. “This is gonna come back on you.”

No, I thought. You’ll be dead in two days.

“If you have a misconduct charge,” Hense said in the same level tone of voice she’d used when telling me she was going to kill me, “file it with the Worms and see what happens. I guarantee you’ll be patrolling Chengara in hours. Hours. Continue to piss me off, Lieutenant, and you might have an accident one of these days.”

The skinny cop looked worried, as if realizing he’d made an error. From behind me Happling’s impossibly cheerful voice bubbled up and over me like laughing gas. “Now move along, you stupid prick, before she gets really annoyed.”

The skinny cop hovered a final second or two, for pride’s sake, and then turned to slink away. After a moment I was spun around and dragged out of the cab.

“Hands in pockets?” Happling said over me. “Good boy. We’re going to be friends. Right up until I put a bullet in your fucking ear, you cop-killing piece of shit.”

His cheerful tone was maybe the worst thing I’d ever heard in my life. I took some consolation from the thought that I was murdering every cop who came near me, in slow motion, by remote control. That warbly voice in Newark again, This is an assassination. Not yours.

The corridor was disappointingly similar to the last one: white, bright, spotless. As I glided along, the chair legs scraping loudly on the floor, cops glared back at me, all sorts of cops: big cops, short cops, fat cops, good-looking cops. I tried to smile but my mouth hurt, so I just stared back at them, imagining death. Then the world rotated again, and I glided backward into a lab. Glancing up, I saw level 4 tech services painted in neat black letters on the door.

A Techie, I thought. The worst kind: a cop Techie.

The door snapped shut as I cleared the threshold, and I was left sitting there. Now that I’d gone ten minutes without a fist smashing into me, everything was aching and throbbing. I was a purplish blob of bruises and bleeding nanobots. After a moment, I was spun around to face a lab cluttered with equipment. It reminded me of Pick’s old office, except with blindingly white light, white walls, and a lack of dust that was horrifying in its completeness. Otherwise it was the same narrow lanes between piles of black boxes and circuit boards, looped wires and other, less identifiable things.

We burrowed our way in deeper until I was swung around to face the inner sanctum of the lab. Techies everywhere were exactly the same: surrounded by crap, living their lives in the eye of a slow-moving storm of ruined tech. In the midst of the piles were two kids in gray SSF jumpsuits lounging on broken-down rolling chairs, wearing bizarre goggles that trailed thick cables connected to a monolithic black box. They both started and tore off the goggles, staring at us. One had a clean-shaven head that shone in the bright light, the other had a thick, dark beard and mustache blending into a dense head of hair, giving the impression of two small eyes peering out from behind a mask. The bald one leaped up, his shiny face turning red.

“What the fuck? Colonel, you know you can’t just waltz in here without a ten-eighty-nine form and a precall from the fifteenth floor,” he said in a nasally voice. “I’m going to have to-”

“Shut up,” Hense said, snapping her fingers at Happling and pointing to a spot on the floor. I was dutifully dragged there, and the big cop took up his station next to me, his piece still in his huge, ham hand at his side, so near my face I could almost smell the fucking powder. He held it casually, his finger along the side. In my pockets my hands twitched, and I kept my eyes on it.

“Colonel,” the skinny Techie continued, puffing out his chest, “I’ll remind you of protocol. You’re not my fucking boss. You’re-”

Hense suddenly reached out and took hold of his nose, and the kid started to squeal, crouching and doing a little dance under her tiny hand as she squeezed. Her empty eyes watched him for a moment-there was no joy in them, none of the usual System Pig arrogance and cruelty. They just stared down at the kid as he struggled to break free. She waited until he started to cry and then, with a snap of her wrist, she broke his nose and let him drop.

Smoothly, silently, her eyes flicked to the other kid, who was half crouched in his seat, frozen in shock. His pink tongue ran over his lips as he watched her carefully, as if he were tracking a wild animal.

I glanced at Happling’s gun.

“Mr. Marko,” Hense said in an even tone, “are you going to quote protocol at me?”

Marko shook his head so fast I imagined his beard making a whooshing sound in the still air. “No, no-never, Colonel, not me. I’m your man. What do you need?”

She hesitated as if considering the depth of his sincerity, and his face tightened as if he expected a slap. But she just gestured in my direction. “Take a blood sample and listen while I explain the situation.”

He nodded and rubbed his hands together, staring at her blankly for a moment, and then started into motion. “Right! Yes, I’ll take a blood sample… uh,” he paused, peering uncertainly at me.

I grinned, imagining my teeth nice and bloody. “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’re dead already.”

“Go on, Mr. Marko,” Hense said, sounding bored. “Mr. Cates will not molest you. Unless he wants to find out just how much pain a man can be in and still not be dead.”

I tried to shrug my eyebrows, but wasn’t sure what my face was doing, exactly, in response to my commands. I kept my eyes on the Techie, who stared back in obvious horror. “I think I already know, champ, but there’s no margin in finding out for sure, is there?”

Marko blinked and dove for his workbench, where he scrabbled through a box of junk until he located an autohypo that looked exactly like the one Terries had used on me. Hense began running it all down for him, in clipped, impressive phrases that betrayed an organized, quick mind-she gave it to him in three or four horrifying sentences. Then he approached me like I was a wild animal on a long leash. I kept my eyes off him, looking first at his partner, who was slowly pulling himself from the floor, his nose strikingly crooked and his mouth and chin covered in dark blood, then at the colonel, who stared back at me with unblinking eyes, her arms crossed under her breasts.