They paraded through me in an endless loop, including the four people scattered and torn up around me. I wasn’t completely sure that Shockley and his pal were dead, but it was a good bet, and if I hadn’t stepped behind them in a dark room and put a bullet in their ear for yen, I’d killed them just the same. I saw every person I’d ever killed for money, picturing them at the moment my contract had been fulfilled: blown pupils, jagged flaps of skin with bone and yellowish fat clinging to them, piss and shit, and hands stretched out, pleading, hanging upside down from a fire escape. And then I saw myself with a hunk of glass jutting out of one side of my head, hanging from a strap. And then the slide show started again.

With a jerk the blade sliced the safety strap, my legs took my weight, and I was free. I carefully moved until I was out of the shard’s path, and climbed down through the cockpit windshield, wriggling through glass and dirt up and out. Gasping, I crawled out of the shallow crater the hover had created and rolled onto my back, gasping, the snow burning my face. When I’d caught my breath, I sat up and looked around. I could see the city a few miles south of me, and on my right was the goddamn Hudson, flowing black and evil as always. Inwood, the desolate nothing north of Manhattan, had been part of the city before Unification and the Riots, but as far as I could remember it had been overgrown fields, broken pavement, and rubble. I struggled to my feet, head pounding with each movement. My arms were numb. After a moment, I found my cigarettes, crushed and damp, picked out the best of the bunch and lit it, sucking in harsh, tasteless smoke.

Coughing a glob of phlegm into the snow, I turned back to the hover. It was remarkably preserved, sticking up out of the ground in more or less one piece. The safety cage might even have saved everyone’s life if I hadn’t done my best to fuck them all up first. Flicking my cigarette away into the sloppy air, I climbed back up into the cockpit. Pushing the pilot’s torso out of the way and getting blood all over my hands, I searched the bank of instruments in front of me and located the beacon unit, beaming our location and status back home every half second or so. Pulling myself up by the safety straps dangling down from the rear of the cockpit, I balanced myself and aimed a solid kick at the beacon unit, smashing it with the steel tip of my boot and sending a spark and whiff of ozone into the air. No need to make it easier for more fucking psionics to come by and toss me around.

Still hanging, I turned my head and glanced up into the cabin. All I could see was blood, and one remarkably shiny shoe jutting up into the air.

Carefully I set my feet on the control panel and put my weight on them, letting go of the safety straps. I located the satellite feed and tuned it to the low-frequency bands we used, frequencies that the cops and the government had abandoned. They were monitored, of course, so we didn’t use them much and switched frequencies on an hourly basis. I searched my memory for the right frequency and dialed it up, getting the hollow sound of an open connection for my trouble.

“I need a ride,” I said, sounding flat and hollow to myself. The silence absorbed my voice as if it had never been there.

“Who this?”

I didn’t recognize the voice or its thick, muddy accent. “Where’s Gleason?”

“Who this?”

I cursed softly, closing my eyes and praying for inner peace. “This is your fucking boss. You want to keep eating solid foods, put Gleason on the damn wire.”

I waited. The hollow sound filled the cabin, which began to creak worryingly again. I started to get nervous; every moment I sat out here in the middle of goddamn nowhere was dangerous, and my people were usually too scared of me to jerk me off like this. Heads were going to have to roll, and the thought made me tired. I preferred to just coast on the stories of past atrocities.

The voice came back with a dry, shuffling sound. “Glee not here.”

I blinked. “Where the fuck is she?”

There was another pause. “Glee dead. She dead.”

I stared down at the console. For no apparent reason, the voice repeated itself. “She dead.”

I felt nothing. For a moment I just squatted there, the hollow sound of the open connection around me, static and someone breathing. Gleason had come into Pick’s just a kid, a fucking kid, and even as she developed into a dangerous woman I’d never stopped thinking of her as a kid. Dead. It was impossible.

My eyes watered and I clenched them shut. I would not cry. I saw her, twelve years old, caught red-handed with one grimy paw in my coat pocket. I’d lifted her up by the wrist until her round little face was level with mine.

“Ooh, you’re fucking scary,” she’d spat at me. “I’m terrified.”

And then she’d jammed a small sharp blade into my belly, an inch deep, her whole little body quivering with the effort. She let out a cute, tiny grunt. Her eyes had flashed up to mine, eager. Behind her, I remembered Belling bursting into laughter, roaring at me.

I’d pulled her close as hot blood dripped down my belly, and I remembered her face going from savage triumph to wide-eyed terror with comical speed.

“I’m s-s-sorry,” she sputtered. “I’m sorry!”

I remembered smiling. “You’re sorry your knife is too small,” I’d said, and she’d smiled back, her whole face transforming into something beautiful. And now she was gone. Opening my eyes, I silently added her to my total.

“Give me,” I said, clearing my throat, “give me Belling.”

There was another pause, the dim sound of voices conferring, and then: “He, too.”

I blinked. I had the sudden urge to tear the feed out of the console, to rip up my fingers as I destroyed the whole goddamn cockpit. It was fucking impossible. I’d seen them both hours ago. They’d been breathing, talking. It was fucking impossible. Then I remembered Gleason at the restaurant, pink and sweating, looking terrible.

“What?” I managed to say evenly, making fists.

“He, too,” the voice said. “He not here, the old man.”

I punched my hand into the console, shooting pain up my arm. Knuckles aching, I did it again, smashing shards of plastic into the air. Fucking Belling? Belling was immortal.

“What do you mean,” I gritted out, each word a separate effort, “he fucking not here?”

More conferring, and I wanted to reach through the feed and strangle whatever moron I had working for me. “Forget it,” I said. “Repeat what I’m about to say or I will make a fucking note of you and I guarantee you will regret it. I need-”

I paused and cocked my head. A shiver of anxiety rippled through me, and I reached out and disconnected the connection. In the silence, there was no mistaking it: hover displacement, getting nearer.

Cops, I thought. “Fuck me,” I muttered. “Looks like my ride is here.”