“Got company?”

“Glad to see you got those viewfinder upgrades at last.”

“Shut up.” She flicked idly at the other woman’s hair with hard-lacquered fingernails, grinning when the tresses crackled and shifted away from the touch.

“Who is this? Bit late for shore-leave romances, isn’t it?”

“This is Micky. Micky, meet Jadwiga.” The slight woman winced at the full name, mouthed the single syllable Jad. “And Jad. We are not fucking. He’s just crashing here.”

Jadwiga nodded and turned away, instantly disinterested. From the back, the kanji on her skull readjust don’t fucking miss. “We got any shiver left?”

“Think you and Las dropped it all last night.”

“All of it?”

“Jesus, Jad. It wasn’t my party. Try the box on the window.”

Jadwiga walked spring-heeled dancer’s steps across to the window and upended the box in question. A tiny vial fell out into her hand. She held it up to the light and shook it so the pale red liquid at the bottom quivered back and forth.

“Well,” she said meditatively. “Enough for a couple of blinks. Ordinarily I’d offer it round, but—”

“But instead you’re going to hog the whole lot yourself,” predicted Sylvie. “That old Newpest hospitality thing. Just gets me right there every time.”

“Oh look who’s talking, bitch,” said Jadwiga without heat. “How often, outside of mission time, you ever agree to hook us up to that mane of yours?”

“It isn’t the sa—”

“No, it’s better. You know for a Renouncer kid, you’re pretty fucking stingy with your capacity. Kiyoka says—”

“Kiyoka doesn’t—”

“Guys, guys.” I gestured for attention, broke the tightening cable of confrontation that was cranking Jadwiga back across the room towards Sylvie a couple of flexed steps at a time. “It’s okay. I’m not up for any recreational chemicals right now.”

Jad brightened. “See,” she told Sylvie.

“Although if I could beg some of Orr’s endorphins when he gets up here, I’d be grateful.”

Sylvie nodded, not looking away from her standing companion. She was clearly still miffed, either over the breach of host etiquette or the mention of her Renouncer background. I couldn’t work out which.

“Orr’s got endorphins?” Jadwiga wanted to know loudly.

“Yes,” said Sylvie. “He’s downstairs. Getting cut.”

Jad sneered. “Fucking fashion victim. He’s never going to learn.” She slipped a hand inside her unseamed suit and produced an eye-hypo.

Fingers programmed by obvious habit screwed the mechanism onto the end of the vial, then she tipped her head back and with the same automatic deftness spread the eyelids of one eye and fired the hypo into it. Her tight-cabled stance slackened, and the drug’s signature shudder dropped through her from the shoulders.

Shiver is pretty innocuous stuff—it’s about six-tenths betathanatine analogue, cut with a couple of take extracts that make everyday household objects dreamily fascinating and perfectly innocent conversational gambits sniggeringly hilarious. Fun if everyone in the room is dropping it, irritating for anyone left out. Mostly, it just slows you down, which I imagine was what Jad, in common with most deComs, was after.

“You’re from Newpest,” I asked her.

“Mm-mm.”

“What’s it like these days?”

“Oh. Beautiful.” A badly controlled smirk. “Best-looking swamp town in the southern hemisphere. Well worth a visit.”

Sylvie sat forward. “You from there, Micky?”

“Yeah. Long time ago.”

The apartment door chimed and then unfolded to reveal Orr, still stripped to the waist, right shoulder and neck liberally smeared with orange tissue weld. He grinned as he saw Jadwiga.

“So you’re up, are you?” Advancing into the room, dumping a fistful of clothing into the lounger beside Sylvie, who wrinkled her nose.

Jad shook her head and waved the empty vial at the giant. “Down. Definitely down. Chilled to flatline.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a drug problem, Jad?”

The slight woman dribbled sniggering, as poorly suppressed as the earlier smirk. Orr’s grin broadened. He mimed junkie trembling, a twitching, idiot face. Jadwiga erupted into laughter. It was infectious. I saw the smile on Sylvie’s face and caught myself chuckling.

“So where’s Kiyoka?” asked Orr.

Jad nodded back at the room she’d come out of. “Sleep.”

“And Lazlo’s still chasing that weapons chick with the cleavage, right?”

Sylvie looked up. “What’s that?”

Orr blinked. “You know. Tamsin, Tamita, whatever her name was. The one from that bar on Muko.” He pouted and squeezed his pectorals hard towards each other with the palms of both hands, then winced and stopped as the pressure touched his recent surgery. “Just before you pissed off on your own. Christ, you were there, Sylvie. I wouldn’t have thought anyone could forget that rack.”

“She’s not equipped to register that kind of armament,” grinned Jadwiga.

“No consumer interest. Now I—”

“Any of you guys hear about the citadel?” I asked casually.

Orr grunted. “Yeah, caught the newscast downstairs. Some psycho offed half the head Beards in Tekitomura by the sound of it. They say there are stacks missing. Guy just carved them out of the spines like he’d been doing it all his life, apparently.”

I saw Sylvie’s gaze track down and across to the pocket of my coat, then up to meet my eyes.

“Pretty savage stuff,” said Jad.

“Yeah, but pretty pointless.” Orr acquired the bottle from where it stood on the kitchen bar worksurface. “Those guys can’t re-sleeve anyway. It’s an article of faith for them.”

“Fucking freaks.” Jadwiga shrugged and lost interest. “Sylvie says you scored some ‘dorphs downstairs.”

“Yes, I did.” The giant poured himself a glass of whisky with exaggerated care. “Thanks.”

“Ahhh, Orr. Come on.”

Later, with the lights powered down and the atmosphere in the apartment mellowed almost to comatose proportions, Sylvie shoved Jadwiga’s slumped form out of the way on the lounger and leaned across to where I sat enjoying the lack of pain in my side. Orr had long ago slipped away to another room.

“You did that?” she asked quietly. “That stuff up at the citadel?”

I nodded.

“Any particular reason?”

“Yeah.”

A small silence.

“So.” she said finally. “It wasn’t quite the Micky Nozawa rescue it looked like, huh? You were already cranked up.”

I smiled, slightly stoned on the endorphin. “Call it serendipity.”

“Alright. Micky Serendipity, that’s got a ring to it.” She frowned owlishly into the depths of her glass, which, like the bottle, had been empty for a while. “Got to say, Micky, I like you. Can’t put my finger on it. But I do. I like you.”

“I like you too.”

She wagged a finger, maybe the one she couldn’t quite put on my likeable qualities. “This is not. Sex. You know?”

“I know. Have you seen the size of the hole in my ribs?” I shook my head muzzily. “Of course you have. Spectrochem vision chip, right?”

She nodded complacently.

“You really from a Renouncer family?”

A sour grimace. “Yeah. From being the operative word.”

“They’re not proud of you?” I gestured at her hair. “I’d have thought that qualifies as a pretty solid step on the road to Upload. Logically—”

“Yeah, logically. This is a religion you’re talking about. Renouncers make no more fucking sense than the Beards when it comes down to it.”

“So they’re not in favour?”

“Opinion,” she said with mock delicacy, “is divided on the matter. The aspirant hardliners don’t like it, they don’t like anything that roots construct systems firmly to physical being. The preparant wing of the faith just want to play nice with everyone. They say any virtuality interface is, as you say, a step on the road. They don’t expect Upload to come in their lifetime anyway, we’re all just handmaidens to the process.”