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Incident on a Small Colony

Written by Kristine Smith

Illustrated by Lee Kuruganti

The receiving dock stank of berries.

Raspberries, I think. Jani Kilian stared at the bright pink mess that spilled across the floor in front of her. With a hint of . . . what? Battery hyperacid, judging from the bitter tang. Add to that the melted plastic odor of evaporating sealant, backed by the ever-present undercurrent of stale station air.

Dammit. Above her, the dock alarms whirled like dervishes, sending wave after wave of red light breaking across the walls and ceiling.

Red.

Jani struggled to concentrate as, around her, the very air seemed to throb with color. Six hours for the paperwork. Another day and a half to get it all signed off. All that work for one shattered fifty-kilo drum of flavor concentrate. But it's Family-licensed, and all the containers are tagged. Once you acquired a reputation for losing Family shipments, you could pretty much kiss your business good-bye.

"As if this place had any business to kiss." Pearl Way Lading of Victoria Colony—We Cover the Commonwealth. A bit of an overstatement. Judging from their records, they covered only the six worlds that made up the Pearl Way, and thanks to competition from other companies, both human and Haárin, along with general incompetence, their share of that market had been dropping steadily for years.

It's going to drop even more after word of this gets out. Trashing Family shipments—not the way to build business. Jani paused to wipe away tears with her coverall sleeve, then switched to breathing through her mouth. The muddled stench had made her eyes water, seared the inside of her nose.

"Timas?"

Red. Everywhere she looked, all red—

"Timas?"

Jani bent at the waist and stared at her black boots, their surfaces too scuffed and worn to reflect the pulsing color.

"Timas! You deaf or what!"

Shit—! The shout slammed Jani like a blow—she straightened as though someone had jammed a knee in her back. Timas was a new name—she hadn't gotten used to it yet. Andree Timas. Documents technician. She pushed a hand through her cropped hair, felt the slick sweat that coated her scalp. Sing yourself to sleep with it, moron. "Just trying to figure out the best way to clean this up."

The stevedore stepped in front of her. Royson, his name was, a baby-faced redhead of the sort who turned up at other people's accidents. "Va-cu-um. In-cin-er-ate." He waved a hand in front of her face and enunciated in a slow singsong as though speaking to a child, the cadence accentuated by his New Indies lilt. "Even a paper-pusher should be able to figure that out."

Jani ignored the insult. It was standard dock abuse, and Royson had been lobbing it at her since her arrival three days before. Given some of the things she'd heard on other docks over the past five years, it almost qualified as a compliment. "The stuff's already stained the topcoat." She pushed at the edge of the gelatinous muck with the toe of her boot, revealing the telltale darkening of the floor beneath. "And the crate was a controlled shipment, which means triple the paperwork." She pressed a hand to the back of her neck as the alarm continued to flash, felt the muscles knot. She couldn't turn off the beacon—she hadn't been coded into all of the company systems yet, so she didn't have clearance. And I can't ask Royson to do it. He'd just insult her again, and given her ramping anger, she might not be able to hold back. I hit him, I'm gone. And she'd only just settled in. I can't screw up this job. She needed the money. A place to hide.

A little peace.

"Boy, Maintenance is going to love you." Royson maneuvered between her and the spill, veering in close enough to force her to step back. "The bosses got to get informed and you get to walk upstairs and collect their signatures." He clapped his hands. "Well, better go get those fancy forms out of the drawer and start filling them out." He grinned, his teeth colored pink by the alarm light. "Most action you'll see for the whole week. You might even break a sweat ridin' up and down the lift."

Jani sighed. Three days—guess the honeymoon's over. Time to challenge the new tech, get in her face. See if and when she flinched, how much she could be pushed around. And Royson's the chosen attack dog. She wondered if he'd lost a bet or won it, glanced over her shoulder toward the office compartment in time to see three heads vanish around the corner. We even have an audience. The dispatcher and Royson's two partners on the firstshift floor team.

Turn me loose. A little voice in the back of Jani's head, sensed rather than heard. No one will ever bother you again. The berry stench seemed almost pleasant now. Softer. Less pungent.

"Let's go! Come on!" Royson clapped again, right under her nose, the sound sharp as a shooter crack. Then came the echoes, as though they stood in a cave.

Hit him. The voice whispered, softly as a lover. Make him bleed.

Jani looked into her designated tormentor's eyes. She didn't have to look up to do it—she and Royson appeared matched at about one-eight. As happened with some men, Royson's lack of height advantage seemed to bother him. She watched as he tilted up his chin, furrowed his brow. That first murmur of doubt, rearing its ugly little head. Time to push back.

"Why bother?" Jani shrugged. "I'll let it slide. What's one less accident report? One less ride up and down the lift? Maintenance will ask for their copy when they come to recoat the floor, but hey, I'll lie. Tell 'em it's stuck in sign-off." She took a step forward, then another, forcing Royson back until a wet smack announced the fact that he had stepped into the spill.

"Fuck." Royson edged sideways, dragging the edge of his boot along the floor in an effort to scrape off the pungent mess.

"That's what Maintenance will say when they realize that I lied to them about the report." Jani kept moving forward, jostling against Royson with a knee or a shoulder when he tried to hold his ground or veer to one side or the other. "After a few comport calls, which I'll ignore, and a few visits, which I'll dodge, they'll say 'hell with it' and bump it upstairs to the Transportation annex, which will send an investigator to check and see what happened. That's when they'll discover that not only didn't we file—it becomes the company's fault by that time, not just mine—not only didn't we file the accident report, but we didn't investigate the spilled drum."

"You have to investigate cargo damage." Royson spouted automatically, a point from his training module disgorged on command. "It's the law."

"Screw it." Jani moved to one side, blocking Royson as he again tried to dodge around her. "Failure to investigate is just a Class 4 violation. So what if they send out an auditor from the ministry annex on Padishah? That makes it party time—it'll take a whole station-week for them to get here."

"Wait a minute." Royson stopped in his tracks. A flush as pink as the flavor concentrate crept up his neck. "If we're under investigation—"

"—you don't get paid. Because as a documented employee of Pearl Way Lading, whose reputation would have to rebound into the stratosphere to qualify as crappy, you're part of the 'we,' and we would be under a ministry-ordered shutdown until the auditor completed their investigation." Jani glanced past Royson's shoulder, caught sight of the dock wall a bare stride away, and took one last step forward. "Hope you have another job lined up."

Royson's head jerked as he hit the wall. The flush had claimed his face now, making his cheeks as shiny and pink as candy. "Just because it needs to be done doesn't mean it isn't bullshit." He pressed against the coated concrete as though he wanted to push through the slab to the other side.

Must be my charm. Jani backed off half a step, just enough to give the man a little room to breathe. "Bullshit it may be. But it's bullshit that guarantees you a paychit, so why don't you just keep your opinion of my job to yourself and leave me to get on with it?" She turned and started to walk across the dock toward the office, then stopped as the red walls continued to spin. "And while you're at it, make yourself useful and kill that goddamned alarm."

"All you paper-pushers think you're so hot." Royson slipped past her to the control panel, palmed it open, and smacked one of the pads with his fist. "Two-bit tech, never gets her hands dirty, acts like she's a friggin' examiner." The alarm light stopped.

The red . . . ceased.

"Bitch and moan, bitch and moan." Jani resumed walking, eyes fixed on the floor at her feet. The light might have stopped, but her head—Why is everything still moving so slowly? "Is someone going to own up to this spill, or do I blame it on the redhead?" Her voice reverberated inside her skull. She glanced over at Royson, who glared back at her, his fist still pressed to the alarm pad. "I'll be going to my cube in case anyone wants to talk. Confession time starts in-"—she checked her timepiece—"fifteen minutes." She veered away from the office, heading instead for the dock exit that led to the station innards. "I'll be there with my beads and my holy water and whatever else you think might help you to unburden yourself." She needed a few minutes alone in the dark. Just had to find someplace empty. Quiet.

"Timas?"

Jani spun toward the voice. "What?" She closed her eyes when she saw who had spoken. No, you don't want to give him a reason to wonder about you. "I'll write up the incident report as soon as I get back."

"No rush." Delmen, the dock lead, started to back away from her, then stopped. "You OK?" He cocked his head, voice soft with concern.

Jani hesitated, then nodded. "Just working out some ground rules with the gang." She forced a smile, her facial muscles fighting every twitch.

Delmen grinned. He was young for a lead, no more than thirty, his face unlined, brown skin ashy from the months spent working at the station, four hundred kilometers above the Victorian surface. "Yeah, I heard." His voice was gravelly, but quiet. How he got the stevedores to listen to him was anyone's guess. "So." He looked around Jani toward the spill. "Insurance?"

Jani tried to nod, stopping when the walls started to pulse. "Filed the updated applications yesterday."

"Then we're covered?"

"Maybe." Just breathe. Jani focused on the skin on the backs of her hands. Dark brown, darker than Delmen's, the darkest thing on the dock. Except for Delmen's eyes. They were brown unto black, his pupils almost invisible. But I can't stare at him. He'd think she was after him, and Royson would sniff that out like the dog he was. He'd spread the word that I was after my lead. That always did wonders for one's reputation. "You were two quarters behind with your premiums. I let the company know that it was a case of simple oversight—your last tech had ignored the cancellation notices. You've had no incidents up to this point. The company should accept my explanation, but I have the appeal forms lined up in case they don't. I just need to run up to Transportation and grab some supplemental—" She glanced up to find Delmen staring at her, his hand pressed to his forehead as though his head ached. "What?"

"How do you know all this stuff?" The man let his hand drop and shook his head. "Just wrangle it any way you have to—I'll sign off." He started to walk toward the office compartment, then stopped and turned back to her. "You've been here three station-days. I can see the tops of the desks again. The stacks of paper are disappearing. The comports aren't bleating every ten minutes with an angry somebody or other on the other end." He smiled. "I don't know how we managed without you."

"I don't—" Jani swallowed, felt the blush creep up her neck despite her disorientation. Thank Lord Ganesh for dark skin and bad lighting. "It's my job."

"Maybe." Delmen shrugged, then turned and resumed walking toward the office. "Thanks for doing your job."

Jani watched him walk. Trim build, almost wiry. Nice shoulders. He's shorter than I am. By half a head, at least. He likes my work—I can't mess that up. She felt attracted to him—she could admit that as long as it stopped there. As long as it went no further. Dark hair. She could imagine lacing her fingers through it while Delmen worked that gentle voice, telling her whatever he thought she needed to hear.

She shook herself aware. Delmen had joined Royson by the control box—he did all the talking while Royson stared past him in her direction. Their eyes met. His brow furrowed.

Dammit. Jani strode across the dock, smacked the exit doorpad with the flat of her hand, then shouldered the panel aside when it failed to open quickly enough. The door array bleated in protest. Heads emerged from doorways up and down the corridor. A voice blared from an office at the far end. "What the hell's going on!"

Jani pushed the door closed, then hurried down the hall, past the general mail drop into the women's locker room. That door opened quickly, closed quietly.

Thanks for doing your job. Jani leaned against the wall just inside the door and pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. Anyone seeing her would think she fought a headache, which was as good an excuse as any.

Get a grip. Her eyes stung. How many things had she heard over the years that should have grabbed her heart and twisted, yet hadn't?

I love you.

We're going to die here, Captain.

You're alive, Jani.

This won't hurt for long.

"Thanks." Jani opened her eyes slowly, then blinked. Despite the welling tears, they felt dry, as they often did. Gritty, as though someone had blown dust into them. I should check them, just in case. She walked to the bathroom entry and scanned the room, then checked the stalls. Empty. Not unusual. Few women worked at dock level.

Jani walked to the nearest sink and activated the tap. Savored the spill of warm water over her hands. Activated the soap, lathered, and rinsed. Counted to three, then looked in the mirror.

Her eyes stared back. Green nearly as dark as Delmen's brown, green unto black, the color of the bottom of a well.

She bent closer and examined the shiny white sclera. Still white. No gaps. No splits. Not much of anything, really. No blood vessels. No shadows. Fake white, to match the fake green. Eyes from a bottle. She reached into her pocket, held her breath as she felt for the vial of filmformer, exhaled slowly as her hand closed over it. Her shield. Her security. The one thing that allowed her to maintain a pretense of humanity.

"Hello."

Jani flinched. Straightened slowly, then turned.

The girl stood in the entry. Ten years old. Maybe twelve. Short and delicate, pale blond hair and blue eyes heightening the impression of extreme youth, as did her baggy black trousers and blue pullover.

Like she just emerged from her mother's closet. But something wasn't right. Eyes. There's something wrong with her eyes. A little too bright and opened a little too wide.

Jani could see that the girl watched her. But what does she see? Nothing in this world, if previous experience held. "Are you looking for someone?" A parent, she hoped. A guardian. Somebody responsible. "Are you lost?" She pitched her voice low, and spoke slowly.

"What's your name?" The girl cocked her head as through distracted by a distant sound. "Everyone has one."

"Ja—" Jani stopped the sound just before it emerged. "Andree Timas." She edged away from the sink, taking care to keep both hands open and visible. "I work here."

"Andy." The girl bounded forward and grabbed Jani's left hand. "Andy, are you handy?"

Jani fought the urge to pull back, and managed to remain still as the girl squeezed her hand, then shook it, two hard pumps that rattled up her arm. Is she trying to hurt me? Jani couldn't tell. She could detect pressure with her left arm and hand, but not pain. Same with her left leg. My old war wounds. They complicated her life at the damnedest times.

"I'm Annalise Couvier." The girl smiled, teeth dead white in the harsh lighting. Then she dropped Jani's hand as though it burned, wheeled, and darted out of the bathroom, through the locker area and out the door.

"Shit." Jani bolted after her, pushing through the gaps in sliding panels and triggering safety alarms. More bleating, cut off in midyap as she freed herself and broke through into the hallway.

The empty hallway.

"Where the hell—?" Jani stilled. Listened for the pound of shoes against hard flooring, a cry or a shout.

"If you don't stop playing around, I'm going to report you."

Jani spun toward the voice. It belonged to an older woman, a clerk for one of the other shippers. Sour face and a tatty coverall in clashing shades of brown. "Did you see a girl run out of the locker room a few seconds before I came out?"

"All I've seen is you making an ass of yourself." The woman looked Jani up and down and sniffed. "It's all I've heard, too." She pulled herself up straight, the top of her clipped hairdo barely reaching Jani's shoulder. "Some of us have work to do." With that, she brushed past Jani and keyed into the locker room.

Jani waited a few moments more, until a door at the far end of the corridor opened, and a pair of men emerged. She turned her back so they wouldn't see her face, walked to the dock entry, then stopped. She couldn't handle Royson yet. Her heart still beat slow and steady. Sounds still seemed to echo inside her head. And now . . .

Augmentation has its benefits, Lieutenant Kilian. You'll find that under conditions of panic, you will remain calm. Any wounds you suffer will heal more quickly. You will be able, under certain conditions, to exhibit controlled bursts of greater than average strength.

That had been the good news.

However, augments exhibiting your particular brain chemistry might hallucinate under certain conditions.

The Service doctor had made it sound so innocuous.

—extended episodes of extreme stress, for example—

What would he have considered extreme? The near occasion of death? Years spent hiding, lying, stealing?

—sensitivity to the color red—

Less said about that, the better.

—at those times, the implanted gland itself may require resetting in order to maintain proper function. I'm sure you've heard the word 'takedown' around the place. These need to be performed periodically, otherwise—

Otherwise . . .

Bless me, Doctor, for I have sinned. It's been—Jani counted on her fingers—five years since my last takedown. She walked back down the hall and reentered the locker room. Into the bathroom, and the stall two doors removed from the one currently occupied by the scolding clerk. Assuming she's in there. Assuming she wasn't another artifact of a neurochemical cascade gone haywire.

—augmentation psychosis—

Jani dragged the cubicle door closed, then slumped against the cold metal wall. Did I just hallucinate? The girl, the woman, the men at the end of the corridor? Fellow augments had always told her that if you thought you were hallucinating, you weren't hallucinating, but she had always chalked that up to wishful thinking. If you think you might be crazy, you're not crazy. No. If you thought you might be crazy, you needed to see a medico. Except that I can't. Because if she ever walked into a hospital, they'd never let her out. Except to transfer me to the nearest Service brig. Because the Service had been looking for her for a long time.

Five years. That long since she'd worn a uniform. Snapped a salute. Five years since she'd answered to the name she'd been born with. Jani Moragh Kilian. Born in the city of Ville Acadie, Acadia Colony, twenty-nine Common years before she had taken to seeing girls who weren't there and hiding in station bathrooms to assess her sanity.

From two stalls down, the stopped drain sounds of a flushing toilet. Coughing, followed by muttering about the workload.

Would I hallucinate the sound without any visuals? Jani knew augments who had, but they were rarities according to the Service doctors. Of course, it had occurred to her more than once since that time that the Service doctors had lied through their collective teeth.

The sounds of the stall door opening. The workings of the sink. Footsteps, followed by the opening and closing of the bathroom door.

Jani counted to ten, then pushed open the door to her stall. Walked to the sink, washed and dried her hands. Ignored the mirror, catching only the barest flashes of her short, black hair, her brown skin. Then one more time, out of the bathroom to the locker room, the locker room to the corridor. Sounds seemed duller now, colors less sharp. Her heart tripped, then sped into its more usual rhythm. She'd feel tired as hell in an hour or so. As soon as she got to the office, she'd make coffee strong enough to etch metal, then wait for someone to confess to the spill. After that, she'd file, clean, run errands. Anything to keep moving, keep from falling asleep. The last thing she needed was for Royson to catch her snoring at her desk. Royson, her new best friend. There always seemed to be one at every dock, an inevitability she could have happily done without.

She checked the company's slot in the mail drop, collected the thin bundle of paper missives resting within. Palmed through the dock entry, and walked out onto the floor to find Delmen supervising the spill cleanup. He'd commandeered Salay and Boudamire, the Rodent Twins, Royson's partners in crime. Royson himself was nowhere to be seen, which meant only one thing.

"Oh, hell." Jani drew alongside Delmen and watched the two stevedores shovel berry muck into a rolling trash bin. "He's in my cube, isn't he?"

Delmen grinned. "He confessed right after you left." He edged closer and lowered his voice. "I don't know if he really did it or if he drew the short straw, him being the new guy and all. I don't really care, either." He looked at her, the grin wavering. "You feeling OK?"

Jani shrugged, tried not to look him in the eye. "I just needed to get away from the stink."

Delmen sniffed. "I think my nose has gone numb." He pointed to the shoveling stevedores. "I'll take care of this. Go take confession."

"Yeah." Jani started toward the office compartment, a prefab rectangle that ran along the dock's far wall. A coffin with windows, Delmen had called it during her interview, which had proved the most perfunctory she had ever experienced. Take a good, hard look around. If you can control your laughter, your cube's in the back.

Jani walked past the leaky watercooler and pushed through the old hinged door, which had put up a valiant fight against the olfactory onslaught from without but came up short. Even so, I've worked in worse places. She walked past the shelves crammed with smashed cartons, rolled-up clothing, cups, and baseball caps.

That yellow pullover's still here. The broken receiver. The hand ratchet with the faulty stop. Lost lambs all, liberated from lockers with expired leases, breakrooms, and broken packing cases. Given that all but the most beat-up items found takers before they even made it to the shelves, the pickings were slim unto skeletal.

The yawning jag hit just as Jani passed the coffee table. She laid claim to the cold dregs from the brewer, adding a scoop of sugar to counter the bitterness. Walked to her cube, and entered just in time to see Royson close her desk drawer and start riffling through a stack of manifests. "Looking for something in particular?"

Royson barely glanced at her. "A stylus. Del gave me this form to fill out." He held up a form inscribed on old version Transportation Ministry parchment, tan with a dark green border.

"You can fill it out directly in Systems." The urge to yawn struck again, and Jani covered it by taking a swig of coffee. "It means you have to deal with questions from upstairs that much sooner, but it's what they prefer. Especially when the paper form you have is out-of-date." She swallowed more sugar-saturated swill. Her brain felt wrapped in fog, her eyelids, heavy.

Shovels.

The word dropped into Jani's head as she edged past Royson to her desk and sat down. Once there, it rattled around. Stamped its feet. Shovels—they're shoveling the muck into a bin. She tried to recall if she'd heard the low hum of the vacuum when she stopped to talk to Delmen. No, I didn't hear a damned thing. She glanced at the penitent to find him slumped in the visitor's chair, arms folded, sullen glare fixed on an image of a vase of flowers that had been clipped from a magazine and tacked to the partition by some previous occupant. "Low man acts as lookout."

Royson blinked lizard-slow. His brow creased. "What?"

"They're not vacuuming the spill, they're scooping the stuff into a bin. When they're finished, they'll hand off the bin to someone who'll portion it out and sell it downstairs." Jani pointed to the floor, which at that time of the station-day faced Victoria. "I guess the only question is, was the accident really an accident, or did a fence place an order that needed filling right away?"

If Royson felt any discomfort at having been sussed out, he buried it beneath a fair imitation of boredom. "The lift stalled just as I began to hoist the drum. When I started it up again, the whole thing went nuts"—he held up his hands, curved toward one another as though ready to close around the nearest neck, and shook them hard—"and the drum slipped out of the brace. Hit the floor. Splat." He tucked in his arms again and remained slumped. He had yet to look her in the eye.

Jani nodded. "How high was the drop?"

"Two, three meters."

"Those drums are rated at ten."

"Well, this one flunked, didn't it?" Royson brushed at dirt that smudged the knee of his coverall, then tucked in again, the very image of the sulky scapegoat.

Jani powered up her workstation and accessed the incident report template. "Tell Delmen that someone needs to fill out the vacuum log to account for the time it would have taken to suck up the junk. Incinerator time needs to be logged as well." She started inputting, at the same time watching Royson out of the corner of her eye. "It would be better if they sacrificed part of the spill. Verifiers have been known to check vac function and incinerator scans to see whether something was actually sucked up and burned during the time in question."

Royson turned slowly toward her, like a tortoise roused from slumber. "Is that what you used to do?"

Jani shook her head. "I was never a verifier." Not officially, anyway.

"Boudy thinks you are. He says you watch too much."

"Like Boudy does anything worth watching." Jani transferred data from Royson's personnel file to the incident report form. First name's James. Middle name's . . . Newark? Just the sort of tidbit one could file away for use at a later date. "You could tell him and Sal to be more careful when they sneak their girlfriends into the storage room during breaks." She tapped on the wall beside her. "Stuff's not as soundproof as they might wish." She added Royson's description of the spill, affixed her systems signature, then pushed back her chair. "It's better if I know what's going on so that I can cover with the right paper. Otherwise, loose ends start to fray during routine audits. Next thing you know, you're up to your ass in auditors general."

Royson took his cue, stretching across Jani's desk and keying in his own sig. When he sat back, he put his hands in his pockets, his shoulders sagging as the tension seeped away. "I don't know how you do that stuff all day." He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "Where are you from? You sound Felician sometimes, but it comes and goes."

"That because I've been gone a long time." Jani inserted a sheet of current Transportation parchment into her imprinter and transcribed the report, then tapped her touchboard and sent off the Systems copy to its new home in the gaping ministry maw. "Accent starts to fall by the wayside after a while." She spoke enough Felician Spanish to get by, and made the effort now to trill her r's and lisp just a little to reinforce Royson's guess.

"I passed through Felix Station once, on my way to somewhere else." Royson cocked his head. "Nice shops along the concourse."

Jani concentrated on labeling a documents slipcase with Royson's name and the incident number. He's trying to trap me. Fortunately, she'd once passed through the station on the way to somewhere else, too. "They're like anything else, nice if you can afford them." She pushed the transcribed document across her desk. "Initial this, and I'll file it." She bit out the words, a busy woman with too much to do to spend time talking about another colony's station.

Royson leaned over and scrawled his initials on the bottom of the document. Then he braced his elbows on the edge of the desk and watched Jani tuck it into its slipcase. "Guy I used to work with told me it was the idomeni's revenge. We went to their home world, got stuck in the middle of one of their stupid wars, and that's how those marble eyes paid us back. Showed us how to bury ourselves in paper." He clucked his tongue. "I'd go nuts if all I did all day was shove that stuff around."

"Then you're lucky you don't have to." Jani twisted her chair so that she faced her workstation, leaving Royson with a view of her back.

"Just tryin' to make conversation." Chair ergoworks squeaked as Royson pushed to his feet. "Bitch."

Jani waited until she heard the office door open and close. Then she eased back, cold coffee in hand, and pondered the day so far.

Pearl Way Shipping sells off damaged shipments. And if nothing turned up damaged over the course of the station-day, they did the deed themselves. Oh well. The only ones inconvenienced were whichever Family members owned the shipment. Nothing wrong with that. Every one of the eight Families could be inconvenienced as much as possible, as far as she was concerned.

And I caught Royson searching my desk. Could've just been meanness on his part. She'd embarrassed him in front of his teammates. As junior member, he'd be a long time shaking that off. Maybe stealing was his flavor of retaliation.

But he gave me a geography quiz, too. Because he and the others thought she was a verifier, a Commonwealth spy. Here we go again. One of these days, she'd have to stop giving a damn about her job and give incompetence a try. In the meantime, I better watch where I walk. Accidents happened all the time on the docks.

****

"Del wants to see you."

Jani looked up from her report to find Royson standing in her cube entry. "Something happen?"

"He just sent me to get you. I don't ask questions." Royson started back down the narrow corridor. "Not like some people."

Jani walked out on the dock floor to find Delmen waiting.

"I can give you a cashcard at the end of the week." He jerked his thumb in the direction of the warehouse. "Or you can pick out something you like." A bare hint of a smile. "Within reason. Don't go trying to walk out with a sports skimmer or anything."

Which degree felony do I have to cover up to get one of those? Jani bit back the question. She would have meant it as a joke, but certain brands of funny didn't play well at times like this. I'm being gauged. Watched for any slipup, any hint that she wasn't what she claimed to be. "Thanks."

Delmen started toward the warehouse entry, then beckoned for Jani to follow. "Thanks for the tip about the incinerator." He glanced at her over his shoulder. "Not that it mattered much—we had to burn almost three-quarters of the spill. It had already skinned over and started powdering around the edges. You can't use it once it dries out."

"If it happens again, throw a tarp over it. It'll keep the moisture from evaporating, and help contain the smell." Jani stifled a cough and wondered how long it would take the ancient ventilation system to clear the air. "You could spray a little clear oil on the contact side of the tarp, too. That'll keep any skin from forming."

Delmen wrinkled his nose. "Clear oil's a machine lubricant."

"It's no worse than the stuff they used to make that flavoring. " Jani gauged the warehouse, as she did every time she entered the place. It was smaller than most. A soccer field in size, maybe, and only two floors high. No vast depths that one could be led into, never to return. Only wide rows of half-filled shelves, with plenty of gaps to allow for good visibility and clear lines of sight.

And, built against the far wall, a cage.

Jani's heart tripped, as it did every time she caught sight of the metal-link walls. She breathed deeply, concentrated on relaxing her tightened throat, on sounding interested, but not too eager. "Anything good in the cage today?"

Delmen grinned. "So, she's human after all." He cast a skeptical look at Jani's coverall. "Sure you wouldn't want some clothes?"

"I'd rather have a receiver." Jani stepped aside just in time to avoid a collision courtesy of a dour warehouseman with a hand truck. "The com system in my flat isn't very good, and the owner won't upgrade unless I kick in half the cost."

"A receiver?" Delmen shrugged. "That's easy." He led her to the cage door, pressed his palm to the pad, then stilled so the lock mech could scan his eyes and ears.

As that went on, Jani looked through the links to the cage shelves. She could see a variety of receivers, as well as a Transportation Ministry imprinter, seals still intact. Oh, the fun Pearl Way Lading could have with one of those. A few busy weeks, and they'd all have enough money to retire before the ministry realized what was happening. But then the price on our heads would prove damned attractive to somebody, and we'd be rolled up within a week. Which was as good a reason as any to stay small-time. Never steal enough to be interesting. Words to avoid getting shot by.

"We have all the latest models." Delmen dragged open the door while Dour and another warehouseman watched. "Some come with subscriptions to PearlNet special programs . . ."

While Delmen continued his spiel, Jani checked out the cluttered shelves that stretched from the floor to a gridwork ceiling an arm's length above her head. She wondered how many of the cage security systems had fallen into disrepair, if they had even been installed at all. Shelf sensors that sounded when someone removed an item from its niche. Continuous inventory. Imaging monitors. I'm sure. The last thing anyone in this place wanted was a functioning security system. She wondered what the repair logs stated, if they were kept at all.

"This might be what you're looking for." Delmen patted a palm-sized receiver that was barely visible amid the junk. "It even comes with its own stand—"

As he rattled on, Jani checked out the contents of the closest shelf, ever mindful of the warehousemen who still watched them. The box of foil packets didn't attract her at first. The box bore no markings of any kind, and the packets' labeling had been stripped. But then the format of the engraved coding along the top seam of the foil gained her attention.

She edged closer. Let her gaze flick over the packets, like a poker player gauging her cards under her opponents' eyes.

Her heart skipped.

Update 7.5.3. Not the latest scanpack update, but newer than what she had. A complete kit, with tools and everything.She saw the warehousemen turn their attention to the workings of the hand truck. Delmen began a description of another receiver.

Jani leaned on the shelf, eyes fixed on Delmen's back. Don't look at the box—don't look—Working by feel, she reached into the box, grabbed a packet, and with a light push of her fingers, tucked it up inside her sleeve. Then she bent over and tugged at her pant leg, making as though the cuff had caught on her boot. As she did, she let the packet slide into a pocket she'd long ago sewn into the seam. Brushed her hand over the opening, sealing it closed. Stood up just as Delmen turned back to her. Four seconds, tops. Possibly even three. She'd had a lot of practice.

Delmen held out his hands toward the shelf of receivers, Father Beneficent at the end of his pitch. "Well, which do you want?"

"I'll take that one." Jani pointed to the small receiver she'd seen first. "I don't have room in my flat for anything bigger."

Delmen frowned. "It doesn't come with any subscriptions," he said as he plucked it from its niche and handed it to Jani.

"Can't afford those anyway." Jani made a show of hunting down an empty carton and placing the receiver into it. Nothing in my pockets. Nothing up my sleeves. "Thanks." She walked across the warehouse to the dock to the office, sensing stares all along the way. Only after she sat down at her desk did she breathe normally. Her hands shook. A thin line of sweat trickled down her back. Her augmentation, so lately expended, had abandoned her utterly.

Coffee. She stood, braced against her desk until her legs steadied, then trudged to the coffee table. As she passed the lost lambs' shelves, she checked them for anything new. The yellow pullover had finally vanished, probably into the trash. She had tried it on herself her first day on the job—the sleeves had hit her midforearm, while the hem barely reached her waist. No go, not even for someone who didn't care about clothes.

As usual, no one had seen to the brewer since the morning, so Jani rolled up her sleeves and commenced cleaning up. She was halfway through the first purge cycle when she heard the door open and sensed someone move in behind her—she turned to find Delmen perched on the edge of a nearby desk, empty coffee cup in hand.

"Don't mind me." He smiled more brightly than usual, a flash of teeth and glint of eye that shaved years. "You know, I can't recall that last time that thing was purged."

"A fact reflected in the quality of the coffee." Jani concentrated on buttons and switches and the fine art of backflushing an ancient brewer, mindful all the while that Delmen watched her every move. Maybe he likes me. She barely caught her smile in time. Maybe he's the one who told Royson to search my desk.

"You ever have real coffee?" Delmen switched his gaze to the empty recesses of his cup, a bright blue thing adorned with a Victoria & United football sticker.

"A few times." Jani unwrapped a fresh brick of coffee infusion, broke off a larger than usual wedge, and tossed it into the basket. "You?"

Delmen sighed as softly as he spoke. "Right after I graduated prep, I worked for a landscaping company on Padishah. We spent weeks on this Family estate—one of the al-Muhammed daughters—planting a forest's worth of trees and shrubs and putting down lawn by the square kilometer." His shoulders sagged as though the mere memory of the labor drained him. "On the last day of the job, she threw us a luncheon. Little sandwiches and pastel cakes and coffee in those miniature cups." He rested his head against the wall and stared at nothing. "It was the real thing, all bitter and foamy. You could've shoveled sugar into it until you wore out your arm, and you'd still know you were drinking the real thing." His gaze slowly sharpened as he eased back to the present. "When did you have it?"

Jani dawdled over the brewer, repositioning the chunk of infusion in the basket, then tweaking the water flow and temperature. "Someone I . . . worked with once used to make it." She glanced at Delmen to find him eyeing her expectantly. He'd opened up a little. Now it's my turn. She activated the brewer and the contraption gurgled to life, expelling the first whiffs of synthetic coffee to do battle with the stubborn remains of synthetic berries. "He used to make a ceremony out of it. He had a special pot with gold-coated fittings. A special grinder. First he'd grind the beans to a particular particle size, spread them out just so. Then he'd heat the water to just the right temperature and pour it over the grounds at a carefully calculated rate." Jani mimed a careful decantation. "Cream, he'd allow grudgingly, but if you tried to add sugar, you'd get an earful." She closed her eyes for a moment as sense memories surfaced. A deep voice murmuring in her ear. Long-fingered hands moving over every part of her. "He was a scientist. Very precise. Everything had to be just so."

"You liked him. I can tell." Delmen patted his cheek. "Your face is all mushy, all . . ." He feigned examination of the ceiling, shit-eating grin firmly in place. "Never mind."

Jani flexed her left hand, watched the fake joints work beneath the fake skin. "He meant well."

"That's a strange thing to say."

"He was a strange man." Jani let her hand fall. "But he knew how to brew coffee." She grabbed a cup from the shaky pyramid someone had constructed to pass a few dull minutes and filled it to the brim. "So how did the cleanup shake out?"

"Nice way to change the subject." Delmen pushed off the desk and stepped up to the brewer. "It wasn't a bad haul. Payroll's covered for the next two weeks." He plucked a couple of sugar packets from a bowl and waved them in front of Jani's nose before decapitating them and dumping the contents into his cup. "Would've been nice if we could've sold the whole spill, though. That would've carried us for three, maybe four months." He sloshed a few fingers of coffee atop the sugar, swirled his cup, sniffed the steam, and frowned. "Oh well. Better than nothing."

"Thanks a lot." Jani took a sip and reached for the sugar as well. "Have you talked to the owner about working it so this shipping company could meet the payroll by actually, you know, shipping cargo?"

"Our dutiful owner?" Delmen laughed, a harsh, low bark that didn't match his voice. "Some woman on Padishah. Met her once. I stopped bugging her about finances long ago. I think she's letting the place go to hell so she can write off the loss."

Or she's using it as a means to ship personal properties as commercial goods and avoid higher cartage taxes. Jani swallowed that item along with her coffee. No sense letting anyone in on the fact she knew her Commonwealth tax laws as well as she knew insurance forms.

"Not sure if this place is worth the fight anymore, to tell you the truth." Delmen dug through the community cooler and liberated a couple of mummified doughnuts. "Rumor has it that Haárin are expanding their presence in Padishah Station. Instead of two docks, they're going to ten. Marble-eyed bastards are taking over. They'll be here before you know it." He tore a chunk off a glazed ring and dunked it into his coffee.

Jani blinked. Her films felt tight, as usual. Grainy. She'd freshen them in the evening, just to make sure. "I'm surprised Shèrá is letting them work outside the worldskein."

"Worldskeins. Idomeni. Born-sects. Haárin. Who can keep all that shit straight? I thought the reason Haárin were Haárin was because they didn't listen to their born-sects? Outcasts, aren't they? Criminals and apostates? The bad seeds?" Delmen walked to the door and stared out the window toward the dock, where Royson and his buddies raced forklifts across the length of the floor. "Yeah, they'll be building a whole separate wing with shiny new docks and altar rooms and special kitchens and all that other crap they need. And Chicago will stand aside and let 'em do it because they can't be bothered to give a damn about their own colonists. Well, let 'em have the last dregs of the business around here. See how far it takes them." He dunked, bit, chewed. "Don't mind me. Bad day." He jerked his chin in the direction of his three stevedores. "Slow afternoon."

Jani looped her finger through the other doughnut, biting back a comment about clear oil and the composition of cheap sugar glaze. "It'll give me a chance to work on the backlog."

"Better make it last. May be all you see for a while." Delmen set down his cup with a bang. Stuffed the last piece of pastry into his mouth, then keyed open the door and headed toward his gang of forklift racers, clapping his hands along the way. "Knock it off—unless you want to pay the goddamned charge station rental—!"

Jani topped off her coffee, then walked back to her cube. Set her coffee on the desk, set the doughnut atop the cup to soften in the steam, then headed to the locker room to divest herself of her new hardware.

The women's locker area proved empty. No angry clerks. No hallucinated blondes. Jani maneuvered around trash receptacles, uniform hampers, and benches to her locker, a corner unit chosen because it allowed her a clear view of the door. She opened the finger lock and removed the sole contents, a small, battered duffel that contained all she owned. She tried to keep it close as possible at all times, either on her person or in the locker. If spooked, she could bolt and not worry whether she had left anything important behind.

She set the bag atop the bench in front of the locker, popped the fasteners, then removed just enough clothing to expose the semirigid bottom panel. Working one finger between the edge of the panel and the side of the bag, she pushed down, then pulled upward. The false bottom, scanproof and damage-resistant, gave way with a soft ripping sound, revealing an array of objects wrapped in a thinner, more flexible version of the shielding material. Her old Service shooter, its case the dull blue of an uncut gem. Her scanpack. Finger-sized scanners and sniffers.

Jani hitched the bag over her shoulder. Adjourned to the bathroom, and closed herself into a stall.

Always look a gift horse in the mouth. She dug into her bag and pulled out one of the sniffers. Ran the device over the receiver in a sweeping motion. Front first, then back, then sides, top, and bottom, in search of tracer elements. Then she checked the accessory carton. Pulled the update packet from her hidden pocket and scanned that. Finally, she checked her hair, the soles of her boots. Satisfied that Delmen hadn't stuck her with anything intrusive, she tucked everything back into their appropriate compartments.

I don't think these guys are hard-core. Suspicious as hell, maybe, but not organized professionals. Professionals would have known how to handle spilled flavor concentrate. They'd have had someone in place in Utilities to jazz the vacuum and incinerator settings and readouts. Hell, they wouldn't have even bothered staging a spill. They'd have simply diverted the sealed drum as soon as they unloaded it. Only problem at that level was that they'd need a crooked document examiner in place to alter the bill of lading and other documents.

I haven't had to stoop to that yet. Her hands were still clean with regard to her former profession, however grimy they'd become in every other. She still had some standards left.

Jani shouldered her bag and slipped out of the stall. Washed her hands, then turned to leave—

—and collided with an hallucination.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry!" Annalise backpedaled until she struck the wall. She clutched a candy wrapper in one hand.

"It's OK." Jani massaged her right shin, which had suffered a head-on assault by an adolescent kneecap. So I wasn't seeing things after all. Which the nasty bruise she could feel developing would no doubt confirm within a minute or two.

"Wasn't watching where I was going." Annalise edged away from the wall. "I need to stop that." She straightened out the wrapper as she sidled up to the trash receptacle, giving the inside a quick lick before tossing it. "I'm Annalise."

"I know." Jani gave her shin one last rub. "We met here a few hours ago."

"No, we didn't, did—?" Annalise's eyes widened. Then came a smile, forced and fleeting. "So many people around here. I can't remember them all."

Jani watched her walk along the wall, one hand pressed to the tile as though she feared losing contact. "What are you doing here?"

"My mom works here. A company down that way." Annalise waved in the direction of the hallway. "I come in with her sometimes and help her out." She reversed direction, backing along the wall until she came to the opening to the locker room. "I have to go." She wheeled, then slipped through the door. "I think she's looking for me."

"Wait a minute—" Jani passed through to the locker room in time to see the door to the hallway close. She stared at the door for a time, then stashed her duffel back in her locker, all the while fighting a growing disquiet. She didn't remember me. Did that matter? I'm on the run, right? Not being remembered is a good thing.

Jani reentered the dock office to find it still empty, her coworkers nowhere to be seen. She sat at her desk, activated her workstation, and reached for her cof—

"What the hell?" She stared at the place where her cup had rested. Pressed her hand to the polywood surface, and felt the residual warmth. "Some son of a—" She stood and held her breath, listening for muffled laughter. "Is anyone in here?"

The office door swung open, and Royson walked in, his face reddened and slick with sweat. "Who you talkin' to?"

"Did you see anyone come in here in the last few minutes?"

"Yeah, the Transportation Minister. She resigned and asked you to take over."

"Go to hell." Jani edged up the walkway, checked the interior of each cube. Then she stood in front of the lost lambs' shelf, and studied the spot where the yellow pullover had lain. Too small for me. It would fit a young girl just fine, though. As long as they weren't too fussy.

My mom . . .a company down that way . . .

Or if they were in trouble, and didn't have a choice.

Andy, are you handy?

Yes, I am. Jani touched the place where the sweater had rested. And I'm apparently not the only one here who can make that claim.

****

Jani expected to be followed home that evening, and she wasn't disappointed.

The tail proved to be the dour warehouseman, whom she'd christened Mopey. He didn't bother to hide. Jani saw his reflection in every shop window as he tracked her along the pedestrian walkway, never straying more than ten or fifteen meters behind. When she boarded the tram, he did as well, standing in the rear of the car and watching her with the sullen dullness of a beaten animal. By the time she reached her flat block, she still hadn't decided whether he had revealed himself on purpose in order to intimidate her, or if he really was that inept.

Probably a little of both. Jani keyed into her flat just as he appeared at the end of the hallway. She could sense his dead eyes on her as she closed the door.

"So now they know where I live." Which meant that she would need to move after payday, even if it meant forfeiting half a week's rent.

"Do they welcome all newcomers like this, or am I special?" Jani set her new receiver atop the wall-mounted polywood board that served as both desk and dining room table in the one-room flat. Next to it sat the unit that came with the room, a battered cube from which a Mozart sonata emerged in a weedy stream of sound that reminded Jani of chattering rats.

Yes, it still doesn't work. And yes, the building owner had told her that she'd have to pay half the cost of an upgrade or repair. I bet that Mopey is in the building office now, following up on just that issue. On Delmen's orders, of course. Jani doubted that he had the smarts to think of doing so himself. "I don't lie if I don't have to." She spoke aloud, as she sometimes did, a ploy to fill the solitary silence. "Especially about anything that can be checked. Makes it easier to keep my story straight." One of life's lessons, learned the hard way, as most of her lessons had been.

Jani activated the new receiver. Within moments a high, thin trumpet filled the room. She fiddled with the volume until she felt sure the strains of the Vivaldi concerto wouldn't disturb her neighbors and lead to any visits by the manager. She had work to do. She needed to avoid the near occasion of interruption.

First, she lowered the room lighting. Then she flipped up the climate control panel next to the table and reset the temperature to the lowest setting. Ten degrees—not great, but the best she could manage. She jacked up the circulator to move the air more quickly, then dragged her duffel over to the table and sat down. Once again dug through clothes and other gear and cracked the scanproof barrier, this time removing a rolled length of antistatic fabric, the stolen update packet, and, finally, her scanpack.

She unrolled the antistat first, revealing an array of instruments nestled in separate slots. Her initials, JMK, had once been etched in metallic scrollwork in the lower right corner of the cloth, but she had burned them away years before, a faint crosshatch of scorch marks the only reminder of their existence.

Your toolkit, their first idomeni instructor had told them, her attempts at English garbled by her Laumrau accent and her agitation at having to address humanish in one of their own languages. It is your connection to your reader and should be treated as such. Reader. The idomeni term for scanpack. As was usual, the idomeni called the device what it was. Humans, again as usual, dressed up the name and snuck in the manufacturer's appellation to boot. SCAN, the acronym for four of the Commonwealth's eight ruling Families, which combined with NUVA to make the complete set. Neumann, Ulanova, Van Reuter, Abascal, Scriabin, Cao, al-Muhammed, Nawar. Every citizen knew those names as they knew their own. But unlike other citizens, the Families know my name as well. Which was why she currently lived in a weekly rental under an assumed name.

Jani plucked an antiseptic pen from its slot and activated it. The beam shone purple in the dim light, reflected strange pale blue off the surfaces of dust motes. Someday I'll do surgery in a clean room again, and my 'pack will go into shock. She stuck the other end of the pen in her mouth to free her hands, then removed a small bottle of nerve solder from its slot, opened it, and poured a few drops into a heat cup she'd freed from another recess. The solder looked like molasses and smelled like nothing until it hit the surface of the cup. It thinned immediately, its characteristic meaty aroma tickling her nose and making her mouth water. I should've eaten something first. Unfortunately, nothing she had in her cooler smelled as good as the solder.

Heart thumping, Jani removed her timepiece and set it down on the table so that she could see the face. As the nerve solder warmed, Jani cracked the fasteners of the scuffed black case and removed her scanpack. The surface of the oval document-reading device had once shone like a black mirror, but hard use and age had rendered it as tired-looking as its owner.

Jani set the scanpack on the table in front of the timepiece and pressed her hands against the sides. The cover ID'd her prints and sprang open to reveal a fist-sized mass, its grey color discernible beneath the pink membrane that sheathed it. The brain of her scanpack, grown from her own farmed brain tissue, wrapped in a protective layer of fibrous dura mater.

Jani shone the antiseptic light on the brain as soon as she removed the cover. The tissue shuddered as the room air brushed over it, a gelatin ripple that slowed as she reached beneath the device for the master touchswitch and set it to "chill." With that, the battery that pumped nutrient through the brain shut down. The pink color of the dura mater remained, but the brain's trembling slowed, almost stopped.

Jani tore open the update packet and shook out the contents onto a corner of the antistat. One . . . two . . . three . . . four chips is all, standard updates for your average documents examiner with midlevel security clearances, each encased in a stiff poly envelope on which its insertion instructions had been printed. She sorted through the envelopes, lining them up according to placement and difficulty of insertion. In a real clean room, she could have taken her time and installed them individually, but here, with the antiseptic pen the only defense against the unseen impurities and infective agents that filled the air, speed was her only recourse. Hack, slash, and sew. Battlefield surgery on the microlevel.

In a saner world, Jani would have clamped only the oxy feed line to whichever octant region of the brain she chose to work on first. Now, however, she shut down the feed system at the source, cutting off oxygenated infusion to the entire brain. She then disabled the nutrient web and watched as the brain's movement slowed to irregular spasming, then ceased completely.

Four minutes. Like a human brain, that of the scanpack could survive without oxygen for four minutes. After that time, the cell death began. Within eight minutes, the device would be damaged beyond hope of salvage.

Jani took a scalpel and set of microforceps from the toolkit. Heart still tripping, she slit the dura mater from top to bottom. Peeled back one side, then the other, and anchored them to the sides of the scanpack with butterfly clamps.

She glanced at her timepiece. Seven seconds. A new Jani Kilian pack-hacking record. Three minutes fifty-three to go.

Before her, the surface of the scanpack brain glistened pearl grey, eight raised frecklings of nerve bundles and old chips marking the octant sites.

Two-eighths, seven to two—three-eighths, six to three—six-eighths, five to one, and six-eighths, two to four. One chip to insert in the second and third octants respectively, and two in the sixth, each linked up to a series of nerves that would provide power to the chips and relay the information contained to the brain for processing.

Three minutes forty seconds.

Jani pulled the laser knife from the toolkit and activated it. With a series of wrist flicks, she excised the four old chips, then plucked them out with the tweezers.

Three minutes twenty seconds.

She drew nerve solder into a syringelike threader, then focused on the second octant region. Working the threader like a fine paintbrush, she ejected a filament of solder, attached the end to the seventh nerve bundle, then drew up to the second nerve bundle and closed the circuit that would power the chip. Using the knife, she etched a square pattern of microholes in the tissue near the second nerve bundle, sending minuscule streams of smoke emanating from each new hole. She held her breath to avoid inhaling the grilled-meat smell of the solder as she picked up the chip and tweezered it into place, slipping the hair-thin anchors that radiated from the underside into the etched holes. She then drew another solder line, melding one end to the line that connected the nerves and the other to the chip, baking them into place with touches of the knife.

Two minutes thirty seconds.

She then moved on to the second chip. Thread. Loop. Etch. Drop and connect.

One minute forty-five seconds.

The third chip.

One minute five seconds.

The fourth.

Thirty-seven seconds.

Jani reactivated the nutrient lines. The grey color of the tissue took on a faint pinkish cast as life-giving carrier spread through the circulatory system. She then touched the laser knife to each chip in turn, breaking their seals—they flashed green as they activated, then faded into the tissue surrounding them.

Twenty-five seconds.

Jani removed the clamps and sealed the incision in the dura mater with a thin line of solder. Eased open the oxy lines, then reached beneath the scanpack and reset the touchswitch to "normal."

Ten seconds.

Jani held her breath until a shiver rippled through the brain. In her mind's ear, she heard her old surgical dominant screaming mixed English and Laumrau at her as she worked. Too fast—damned humanish—too fast—the solder has not set!

So many memories.

Fastest hands in the Academy, Jan. The Laumrau don't like it that you're showing up the home team.

Where's the fire, Lieutenant?

How long will you be, Captain? The Consul General needs you in there now.

Jani reseated the cover and snapped it into place. Took the antiseptic pen from her mouth and clicked it off. Pressed a hand to the back of her neck and dug in with her fingertips, working away the knots that always formed whenever she performed surgery.

After allowing a few minutes for her scanpack to stabilize, she once more reached beneath it and activated it. The indicator light shimmered green, then flickered as the unit ran through its self-check sequence.

As the scanpack ran through its paces, Jani stashed her tools. Dumped the leftover solder down the sink, then ran lots of cold water to prevent the stuff from coagulating in the drains. Grabbed a juice dispo from the cooler and savored the cold sweetness.

A Tilani piece played now. A newer composer, his music too jangly and atonal. Jani switched to a news program, then sat down on the daybed, the only other piece of furniture in the room. Listened for any noise in the hallway outside her door, and pondered whether Delmen distrusted her enough to kill her. Wondered which out-of-the-way hole her young doughnut-swiping scavenger had found to hunker down. Drank juice and wished for bourbon, and waited for post-augie fatigue to lull her into some semblance of sleep.

****

The next afternoon, Jani ran into Annalise again.

Jani was just entering the locker room when she saw the small figure dart out of one of the offices and across the hall into the vend alcove. She crept along the wall and peeked around the alcove entry to find the girl crouched in front of the sandwich machine. She wore the yellow pullover. The same black trousers, rolled up at the ankles.

Jani watched her insert a vend token into the machine's reader slot. The token must have been empty or corrupted—the girl ran it through the slot over and over, slapped at all the buttons in turn, then checked the delivery chute. Her strikes grew more agitated with each failed attempt until finally she kicked the machine, which squealed in protest.

"Your token's empty," Jani said.

Annalise wheeled. "I found it on the floor." Yesterday's calm had shattered, leaving narrow-eyed edge and the stench of desperation. "Out there, on the floor." She pointed toward the corridor. "It was just lying there."

You stole it from the office you just ran out of, but ask me if I care. Jani took a step closer, hands raised and open so Annalise could see them. "May I try?" She remained still, letting the girl make the decision to walk over and hand her the plastic card, which she eventually did.

"See?" Jani pointed to the grooved region along one edge. "It's so scratched up that the reader can't scan it." She slipped it through the slot quickly, slowly, backward and forward. "It's shot."

Annalise crossed her arms over her stomach. "I'm really hungry."

Jani took in the girl's dull skin, the dark circles under her eyes, then reached into her duffel and dug around before she remembered that she was just as broke. "Don't go anywhere. Stay right here." She walked out into the corridor just in time to spot Royson emerge from the men's locker room. Oh well. Beggars and choosers. "Mister Royson? Do you have a spare token?"

Royson stopped, mouthed "Mister," then rolled his eyes. "Yeah." He made no move toward his pockets. "Why?"

Jani held out her hand. "You'll get it back on payday."

"Like I can say no." Royson glared at her as she drew close. "Like you wouldn't accidentally erase my file from the system or redirect my pay to the Outer Circle or something." He pulled a token from his pocket with the grudging slowness that inspired nicknames like "Fishhooks." "Payday—that's the day after tomorrow."

"You are kindness itself." Jani plucked the token from his fingers and headed back to the alcove.

"Day after tomorrow." Royson fell in behind her. "Maybe you should fill out a form or something. Add a note about how eager I am to help my wonderful doc tech."

Oh, spare me. "I won't forget." Jani tossed over her shoulder. "Newark."

Royson slid to a stop, the flush moving up his neck like the tide. "You stink, you know that?" He shot her one last look of disgust, then turned with a grumble and trudged back to the dock.

Jani watched him, waiting until he palmed through the dock entry and the door closed after him before reentering the alcove. "Here." She handed Annalise the token. "There's enough left on it for a decent lunch."

"Thanks." The girl squeezed the plastic card as though she feared she might drop it. "Be nice when payday finally gets here, won't it?"

"Always is." Jani followed Annalise to the sandwich machine, then watched over her shoulder to make sure she bought something decent. Fake tuna fish. At least it was better than the fake chicken salad. "Where does your mom work?"

"Across the hall."

"Doing what?"

"You want her name? Don't you trust me?" Annalise stiffened. "I said I'll pay you back."

"With what?" Jani leaned against a nearby table, setting herself so that she could block Annalise if she tried to bolt.

The girl's small hand hovered above the drink selector. "I told you. My mom—" She flexed her fingers, then slapped the selector pad.

"Does anyone know you're here?"

Annalise shivered. "I hope not."

****

The utilities chase that ran between the commercial and passenger concourses had the same pieced-together look as the rest of Victoria Station. Conduits in mismatched colors snaked along both sides of the narrow corridor like patchwork veins. Storage cages cropped up every ten meters or so, some empty and gaping, others filled and alarmed. The ceiling was low, the lighting emergency-level, thin and purplish and as cheering as a funeral.

Jani closed the gate to an empty cage. The lock snapped into place with a sound like a blade being pulled from a sheath. "How long have you been here?"

"I've lost track." Annalise sat on the floor between the cage and a utilities-switching terminal. The place was her base camp, such as it was. A rumpled blanket, with yesterday's pullover folded into pillow. A plastic sack that contained whatever else she owned. "A few weeks Common. A month." Her voice emerged soft, lost amid the darkness and the metal. "Ricky got money out of one of their desks, and we split it up."

OK. Like most stories, this one would emerge piecemeal and scattered. My job is to fit it all together. Jani let her duffel slide to the floor, then lowered next to it. Sniffed the air, and winced. All chases seemed to stink of poor ventilation and slowly aging junk. "Who's Ricky?"

"He was my foster . . ." Annalise leaned to the side and rested her head against the terminal. "My foster fellow. Fellow foster. Refugee from hell house." The cave light greyed her skin, added a strange, dark gleam to her eyes. "My best friend." She sat up and set out the sandwich packet, a juice dispo, a packet of chocolate crackers. Took a bite of the sandwich, and stopped in midchew. "This is really bad."

"That's the best thing they sell, too." Jani's mouth watered. Even crappy food would have tasted good just then. "Eat it. At least it's calories." She waited until Annalise finished most of the sandwich and started on the juice. "So why were you in foster?"

Thin shoulders jerked. "My mom disappeared again. Usually she'd come back after a few days, but not this time. The flat manager figured something happened when the rent fell behind. I'm eleven, so he called Colonial Services, and they picked me up. Tried to contact relatives, but I guess I don't have any."

Jani watched as Annalise examined the juice dispo, pulled out the straw, and reinserted it over and over. Complete focus on the task at hand because it gave the brain something else to do. Because it kept you from thinking too much. "I'm sorry about your mom." She waited for a response, even though she knew she wouldn't get one. "So. They made you a Ward of the Colony and fostered you to hell house?"

"They said we were expensive and had to start paying back." Annalise flinched as her voice echoed down the corridor. "Ricky yelled at them one day," she continued, more quietly. "He said that he had read the law, and Padishah paid them to provide us room and board and the money we earned was ours and we were supposed to go to school." Another shrug. "Two days later, they took us to the place. They said it was a hospital, but it was too small. Like a clinic, but it wasn't busy." She tore open the cracker packet and removed one, but instead of eating it she broke it into pieces. "Medical checkups, they said." Another cracker. More breaking. "I never saw them again."

"How long were you at the clinic?"

Annalise shook her head. "He told me we'd be happier. The doctor. He said that we'd never want to argue, and we wouldn't worry so much. Ricky told him that we weren't worried, we just wanted to keep the money we earned and go back to school." She brushed crumbs from her fingers, then picked up one of the cracker pieces, dunked it into the juice, and ate it. "They separated us after that." She looked across the narrow space at Jani. "We weren't there as long as I've been here. Two weeks Common, maybe." She pressed a hand to the back of her neck. "They did something to my head. They locked it in a cage."

"It's called a stereotaxic restraint." The hissing click of the cage mech sounded in Jani's memory, and she balled her hand into a fist. "You have to remain immobile during the injection process, or there's a risk of brain injury."

"My head hurt."

"Yeah." Jani worked a finger through her hair at the base of her skull. Felt her own tiny scar, the place where the cannula had penetrated into her ventricular system and pumped in the components that migrated to the area near her amygdala, took root, and grew. They told me later that I shouldn't have been augmented. A borderline case at best, who would require frequent monitoring.

"I knew something had gone wrong. A couple of days after, I knew." Annalise shook her head. The juice had been set aside, the crackers forgotten. "I'd be in my room, in bed. Then I'd wake up, and I'd be someplace else—the bathroom, an examining room, wandering the hallway. Once—" She looked down at her hands. "One time, I didn't have any clothes on." She remained still for a time, then wiped a sleeve across her eyes. "A week or so after that, I snuck out of my room and down a hallway they told me to stay away from. Found Ricky in one of the rooms." Her voice flattened. "They'd tied him down. He didn't know who I was. He'd done things. To his face."

Jani leaned her head against the wall and banged it lightly. Oh, you bastards—you never learn, do you? "He didn't recognize himself in the mirror?"

"He said that it wasn't his face, and he didn't know why it should be stuck to his skull. So, he'd tried to cut it—" Annalise sniffed, wiped her nose. "I went back to my room and pretended to be a good girl for a few days so they wouldn't watch me as close. When I went back to Ricky's room, he was better. He knew who I was. He said we had to get out of there. I untied him because even though he stopped trying to hurt himself, they still had him tied. He said he knew where there was money, and he told me to stay put while he went to get it." She pushed up her sleeves, then fussed with the rolled pant cuffs. "He came back with the money. Said he got it out of a desk, like I told you before." Her head came up, and she glared at Jani, as though daring her to question, to disapprove. "And we left."

Jani met her eyes. "They just let you walk out?"

"We didn't see anybody. Usually there was someone at the nurses' station, and a guard at the entry, but we didn't see anybody." Annalise stopped worrying her clothing and hugged her knees up to her chin. "We still ran—as soon as we were out the door, we ran all the way to the tram stop."

"No one noticed Ricky's face?"

"It was all scabby by then." Annalise mimed picking at her cheek. "We told people he fell off a skimcycle." A shadowed smile, that faded quickly. "We took the tram to the shuttleport. Ricky said we should split up, so at least one of us would get away. I bought a billet for the farthest place I could afford." She looked around. "I should have studied the schedule a little harder."

"No one's tracked you here. You did all right." Jani laid her head back and studied the ceiling, unpainted concrete the color of dirty ice. "Now we need to find you—"

"Andy! Hi!"

Jani's heart skipped. She slowly raised her head, tried to keep her expression calm.

"Andy, are you handy?" The brittle brightness had returned to Annalise's face, her eyes glistening as though from fever. "Hello. We met . . . somewhere." She pushed to her feet and walked to Jani. "I remember you. I scared you at the mirror."

Jani held out her right hand, and this time felt the squeeze, the light grind of bone. "Yes, you did." Looked at the fingers, and saw the bitten nails, cuticles reddened from picking.

Annalise's smile ebbed. "Where am I now?" She dropped Jani's hand as though it burned. "I was in a hallway with lots of lights, and now I'm here. The mirror's gone. It's gone. The mirror's gone. It's—" She let loose the scream with her next breath, a high-pitched shriek that seemed to ramp in intensity as it ricocheted off every hard surface.

Shit. Jani scrambled to her feet, dodged around the panicked girl, and grabbed the blanket from the floor. Shaking it open, she cast it like a net so that it enveloped Annalise. Then she closed in from behind, securing the blanket around the girl's shoulders and pulling her close, talking gently all the while even as the screams continued and she wondered how long it would be before station security found them. "Paix. Paix." Hush. Hush. Acadian French unspoken for so long emerged as she worked her way atop the switching box and pulled Annalise onto her lap. Brought her legs up and crossed them over the girl's so that she kept her still. "Paix. Paix. Paix." She rocked back and forth, keeping her voice low and soft as the screaming lowered, then stopped, and the small body sagged against her and shook with something that might have been crying but could just have been fear.

Jani waited. The rough blanket made the exposed skin of her right arm itch, but she didn't dare release Annalise so she could scratch. Instead, she continued to sit, and rock, and listen for the echoing of footsteps that would signal the approach of trouble.

After a few quiet minutes, Annalise stirred.

"My mom used to sing me songs." She sighed. "She said they were Hortensian songs. German. I didn't understand any of the words.

Jani shook her head. "You don't want to hear me sing."

Annalise sat still for a time, then started to squirm. "I feel like an idiot sitting in your lap like this." Her voice lowered. "Did something happen?"

"Yes."

A pause. "What?"

Jani hesitated. So many tiny changes, each one nothing in and of itself. Put them all together, and you have a different person. "Your eyes brighten. Your voice pitches higher, and you act twitchy. You call me Andy, and you shake my hand."

"That's all?" Hesitation. "I didn't try to take my clothes off?"

"You didn't touch your clothes." Jani listened for any remnant of the manic edge in Annalise's voice. When she didn't hear it, she loosened her grip and let her slide off her lap. "They come and go that quickly? The episodes?"

"Yeah." Annalise slipped off the blanket and started to fold it. "The doctor told me they'd ease up after a few days. He lied."

Jani counted to three, to four, to ten, then asked the question she didn't want to ask. "The doctor. What was his name?"

"I don't know."

"Did he wear a medcoat with a name tag?"

"No."

Are you sure he was a doctor? Oh, that it were as simple as fraud. "Did he have white hair?"

Annalise rolled the folded blanket against the wall and sat on it. "He wasn't old."

Jani held up her hands side by side and spread her fingers. They looked identical in the dim light. Length of fingers. Color of skin. "He would have been younger. My age. Late twenties."

"His hair was dark." Annalise dragged her bag onto her lap and started picking through it.

"Did you hear anyone say the name 'John Shroud'?" Jani paused. It had been years since she'd said that name aloud. "Did you read it anywhere?"

Annalise nodded. "I heard it." She looked up from her explorations of the bag. "I heard my doctor talking to one of the nurses, and he said that if Shroud found out what they were doing, he'd kill them."

Jani managed a smile. Well, well, John. She flexed her hands one last time, then let them fall. Maybe I taught you something after all.

"So." Annalise tied the top of the bag into a knot but kept it on her lap. "Now what?"

Jani stood and paced the corridor. I knew the other shoe would drop. Only this time, it turned out to be a hip boot. "The implant you have. It needs to be removed."

"Can you do it?"

Jani shook her head. "No. You need to go to a certain type of doctor."

"No. I'm not going back—"

"Not to Padishah. You don't have to go back there." Jani waited, watching Annalise until she felt sure the bright eyes wouldn't return. "You need to see someone who knows what they're doing." Unfortunately, I know just who that someone is.

"I don't see why I just can't stay here." Annalise tossed her sack aside and boosted to her feet. "You can bring me food, or"—she stared down at her shoes—"or I could stay with you."

Oh shit. "No, you can't."

"Why not?"

"Because you can't." Jani checked her timepiece. Had Delmen noticed her absence yet? Or, God forbid, Royson? "I need to get back to work." She held up her hand as the girl started after her. "Don't try to follow me, because—" Because someone's already doing that. "—because I don't work in a very safe area." She tried not to look around the chase, which offered all the coziness of a tomb. "I'll bring you some food later."

"Why can't I go with you?" Annalise's voice was sharp with panic. Only the lower pitch indicated that her other self hadn't emerged again. "I can work—"

"Right now, you need to stay put. Get some sleep—you probably could use some." Jani looked at her boots, the walls, anything but the girl's face. "Stay away from the offices. Someone could see you."

"No one has yet."

"It's called pushing your luck." Jani picked up her duffel and shouldered it. "Look, I'm sorry, but you can't stay with me." She started up the corridor toward the entry, walking softly to dampen the sound of her boots.

"Andy?"

Jani slid to a