"What can I do for you?" Sonya asked with a voice that combined the innocence of a child and the world weariness of a veteran of several wars. She gently stroked Cinnamon.

"Funny, now that I'm here, I'm not sure." Tony looked at Sonya for some sign. She never took her eyes off his cat. "I guess I'd say my life is over and I'm looking for a new one. An acquaintance gave me this." Tony held up his hand to show the writing across his hand by a dying woman. This drew Sonya's eyes.

"Jasmine's handwriting. She has the sight of people. I've never known her to be hasty or wrong in her judgment."

"I can't speak to that. You knew she was dying?"

"Dead, now. She died six hours ago. And yes, I knew. Her liver burned under the weight of a corporate poison. As an employee, they used her as an experimental animal without her consent. Once she learned of this, she used the fire and death in her belly against the corporate machine."

"Sounds like what happened to me. I'm not exactly waiting to die, but they've taken everything from me. My chance of fighting what they've done is effectively zero. I have no job prospects above garbage sorter. I haven't the skills nor enough cash to out-migrate. I might have to live on welfare and live in a commune or worse, a relocation camp, or even worse on ground level. No health care and recycled food to eat." Tony shuddered.

Sonya gently shook her head. "Superficial reasons to join us terrorists, or as we style ourselves, freedom fighters. You should out-migrate or get another job."

Tony sighed. "It's not just that. I'll be honest. I used to be everything you despised. I followed all the lines. 'Get it while the getting is good.' 'Do unto others before they do unto you.' 'He did what everyone else did, he just got caught.' 'If I'm quiet, maybe they won't notice what I'm doing.' All the signs of the times. They were my watchwords. They aren't what I believe in anymore."

Sitting up, Tony pressed home his point. "I don't like any of my choices if for no other reason than I don't want my old life back. For quite a long time now I've believed that something was wrong with my life, or maybe the lives of everyone everywhere. Someone once said, 'Might for right!' For some reason it lit a fire in my heart that's only just now starting to burn with a fury."

"King Arthur, I believe, Mr. Sammis."

"Uh, yeah."

"Any start is a good start, but tell me, how would you use the fire in your heart? Don't answer, just think.

"Come back now, Linc," she said with no increase in volume. The threesome appeared quickly enough to a.s.sure Tony they'd been listening. "We must process him quickly. Also, send an emergency communique through the cells that the health club is compromised.

"Until I see you again, Mr. Sammis," she concluded, taking his hand in hers. Despite her warmth of personality, her hands felt like unpowered prosthetics. She shook his hand firmly and turned to leave at an unhurried speed.

Linc directed Tony through another door that led to a loading dock, shrouded to the outside by curtains of stained plastic sheets. The back of a closed truck stood open and as one they hustled inside. Tony almost backed out, as the rear section held a hanging cage of metal straps in the shape of a human body, plus a rack full of cattle-prods and other less savory devices with sharp edges. The trio closed off his one escape route by pulling the door down. Without a beat the truck pulled away from the loading dock.

"In here," Linc said, motioning him toward the cage.

"Uh, why?" Tony balked.

"Noobs. Did you ever think your implants might just do more than they tell you? We have to neutralize them before you give all of us away."

"Uhhh..." Tony continued to hesitate.

"Freaking corpie, either get in or we boot your a.s.s out the back of the truck, and you can find out what happens when you fall two hundred meters to ground level. I don't know what'll get you first, the Nils or the bugs."

Tony eyed a cage that curved just where a person curves and wore a wig of wires dangling from strategic points. The wire-hair twisted down into a single braid that disappeared into the back of a moderate computer array.

"Will it hurt?"

"Depends on what they got inside you," Linc said, "but don't worry, we'll patch you up better than new. Now get in the bleeding cage!" He motioned with a gun for emphasis.

By wedging his arms down to his side, Tony could just squeeze into the contraption. Linc brought the cage door around, closing him in tight. The latch didn't have a lock, but was situated well away from Tony's hands.

As the cage faced the wrong way, he couldn't see anything except a wall with dubious stains and markings.

"Everyone clear. Fire one!" Linc cried out. A very mild electric shock wandered across Tony's body, feeling more like a tickle than anything painful. "I have three implants. Start with the scalp." Some metal device poked into his hair, scratching his scalp above his right ear. "Seven centimeters back and two down." The probe moved accordingly. "Right there. Clear! Fire two!"

Expecting the tickle once again, Tony remained calm. Instead, his brain revolted at a sensation like acid filling his skull. His body convulsed uncontrollably within the constraining chamber. He must've blacked out because next thing he knew he only felt something wet and viscous slowly dripping down both of his cheeks. One of the wet trails fell into his mouth and he tasted the salt of his own tears. He felt nothing else at all. No sensation of limb or self.

"Help," he barely managed to croak out.

"Shut up," Linc snapped.

"Next. Right shoulder, front." This time he saw the probe as Suet positioned a 2 meter-long pike with a blunted metal tip against his flesh, bracing it on the floor. "Six centimeters down. Perfect. Clear! Fire three!" The shoulder he couldn't feel now flew into a rage of hot, stabbing pains. With force he didn't know he had, his arm tried to break free of the cage. Tony experienced, not quite heard, the sound of his humerus breaking beneath his bicep. The agony muted the other pains spread through his body. The cry he let out wasn't conscious.

"Left wrist." Tears rolled freely as he watched the sharp pole move down to the other side. Tony could barely feel it press against the flesh. "Good enough. Clear! Fire four!" Unlike the pain from the previous two attempts, his hand went completely numb from mid-forearm down. "No reaction. Increasing charge. Fire five!" Again, Tony thankfully felt nothing.

"OK, it's gotta come off. All of it."

Tony took one look at the saws-all in Carl's thick hands and fainted.

With only one door and no windows in the cell, Tony paced around the eight-by-eight cell in boredom. He once again touched his new hand just to rea.s.sure himself it still existed. He never missed the old one, and the new one seemed identical in every way. He'd lost consciousness before its removal and awoke after its replacement. No discomfort from either shoulder or head lingered. Linc had been as good as his word.

"Hey! I didn't agree to go through all this just to be locked up," he shouted at the door. When no one offered him even a word he plopped onto the only piece of furniture in the room, a fabric-covered metal bunk bolted to the floor. "How long are you going to keep me in here?" he questioned the silent walls for the eightieth time. He would've done more than yell, but he found banging on the plastisteel brought only a bruised palm. "I want my cat back!"

He'd awakened in this room some unknown amount of time after his trucking ordeal. Since then, eight inst.i.tutional-style meals had appeared through a slot in the door. At least they'd given him some clothes, even if he did look like a deliveryman in a utilitarian green jumpsuit. "I guess we didn't have a meeting of the minds after all," Tony muttered. For about the four hundredth time he went over it again. "OK. Reasons they might keep me: security, my intentions, a show of faith."

"Not a bad deduction," said a m.u.f.fled voice from the other side of the door. Old fashioned keys rattled in the lock. "Actually, we waited only to include you in the mission we have planned." Linc's bald head popped through the door. From the look of the stains on his orange smock, he looked like he'd just left work, but obviously not at the same health club if the embroidery "Sunrise Athletics" were any indication.

"OK. What are we going to do?"

"Not we, Mr. Sammis, you."

"Me? Why me?"

"Look, if I had my way, corpie, you'd already be ground up and sluicing your way down a recycle chute." Tony decided not to react, visibly anyway. "But Sonya has her own mind about these things. She wants to see how dedicated you are. If you succeed, then she may trust you further. If not, well let's just say the police don't take kindly to Greenies."

"I'll ignore the implied threat. With that in mind, what's my mission?"

"You'll find that out shortly. Follow me close, but don't say nothing." Linc's ma.s.sive paw, fingers stubby but thick, handed him a small penlight.

Linc lead Tony from his dry cell down two flights of stairs and into a twisting maze of mold-covered, masonry pa.s.sages that oozed moisture. Linc's broad shoulders marked his way through halls covered ankle deep in putrid liquid the consistency of custard. The Greenies clothing proved competent, as the work boots held the fluid at bay. The smells, on the other hand, ranged from bad to worse including at the base of them all the bitter tang of excrement, urine, and eau de rotting garbage.

Conduits, steam pipes, and random corroded and broken wiring wove in and about their path. Even had he stooged for the police, he couldn't have found his way back through the spider webs and rusted equipment without an inertial locator. Only his light on Linc's broad back kept him from losing the rest of his way.

Thinking about it, he knew little of the GAM that he could possibly use against them, even if he wanted to. He didn't know whether to feel heartened by this or depressed. Instead, he decided he should just do the job they asked.

He dearly wanted to ask questions, but the first time he heard voices above his head through the ceramcrete ceiling, it muted his desire. He shut off that train of thought and quietly picked his way through the muck, avoiding the worst of the sewage and smells.

For over an hour Linc never slowed. Tony began to wonder if they were lost together when Linc pointed to a nearly rusted-out metal door. "Go in there and you find your instructions," Linc whispered.

"How do I get back?" he softly murmured into Linc's ear.

"All your information is in there. Don't mess up. We'll be watching." Linc turned and sloshed off back through the drains.

Tony watched until he disappeared from sight and then even longer until the light of Linc's torch faded around a distant corner. With a shrug Tony went up to the door and pushed it. Instead of opening, the door fell inward to land with a combined cacophony of metal on stone and a loud splash. Tony froze.

A brief flurry of sound above him startled him, but settled down as quickly as it began.

His torch lit up a small room with a white plastic table high and dry atop a rust-stained ceramic landing. Perched on the table sat the incongruous sight of dozen brightly-colored, floating balloons bearing the proclamation "Get Well Soon" tied to a gaily wrapped package and a vase full of flowers. Next to this absurd group sat a solido tablet and an archaic ring comm, still used as a disposable method for making nearly untraceable calls.

The solido tablet read, "Take the package, flowers and balloons to Mercy Hospital. They are a delivery for Janice Gordon. There is a map through the underground to Mercy in the memory [press here].

"The chemical components of the bomb are inert and thus undetectable until activated by water. You have until the flowers are watered to get away. From a safe place call 555-1215 after it is reported on the net."

"A hospital?" Tony said aloud. Without hesitating he picked up the ring comm. "Five, five, five, one, two, one, five."

In the background of the standard bone conduction he heard a very faint countdown. "One minute to detection. Fifty-seven. Fifty-six..."

"You can't have even gotten there yet."

"It's a hospital with sick people-"

"Don't be a pizda! It's an executive hospital for those with full medical," came a harsh male voice. The line went dead to the sound of "Forty-two. Forty-three."

"Can I really do this?" His own words mocked him as they echoed in the underground. "It's a big stretch from thinking things are wrong to killing people." Three times he reached out to collect the deadly delivery and three times he pulled back. He walked deliberately around the table. "At least now the clothes make sense." Tony wiped the sweat from his hands on his pants before picking up the flowers in one hand and the balloon-adorned package in the other.

"Listen, candy-striper, I've been delivering here for two years and n.o.body's ever scanned my packages before," Tony barked with as much vinegar as he could muster. The young redhead's pale skin blanched even whiter. Tony wondered if she could possibly be more nervous than the TriMet air-show racing through his stomach.

"I'm sorry, but that's what they told me I was supposed to do."

Tony could only wonder if the GAM used this to get rid of him. He imagined Linc over his shoulder with a remote detonator going for a twofer, getting rid of an interloper and another strike against the megacorps. "Whatever," he replied after a moment, rolling his eyes. "Don't worry about it, sweetie. I just don't wanna be late for my next delivery."

"Thanks. I'm really sorry," she said putting the packages into a huge door in the wall and pushing a large red b.u.t.ton.

"So does that hair come with a fire extinguisher?" Tony flirted to cover the shakes in his hands.

"Blarney."

"No, really, you don't see many true redheads these days. Want to get some dinner?"

"No. Sorry, my husband wouldn't approve. I've already got one boyfriend. He wouldn't stand for two."

Tony sighed in relief when the indicator behind her showed green. "Well, can't blame a guy for trying," he covered up. "Maybe next time."

Leaving his package for delivery within the hospital, Tony turned and tried hard not to sprint for the front door. He breathed rapidly, sweat trickling down and soaking into his shirt, but not yet showing through. He got in line for the TriMet. He kept himself from fidgeting only by making false notations on his solido pad. He pushed his way on the first TriMet that showed up to the platform, not caring where it went. The TriMet bus clock above his head counted off the seconds between success and failure. He knew if the bomb went off before he got off the bus, he would be caught. The bus would instantly home to a police holding s.p.a.ce.

"Those Spiders sure are coming back," said a man in the seat next to him, gazing off into s.p.a.ce where his paper was displayed on his retinas for him alone.

"Huh?"

"The Aussie Spiders?"

"Sorry, I don't follow sports."

"If you say so."

Tony visibly cringed when the TriMet pulled up in front of Portland Metro Police department, only three blocks from the hospital. "Can my luck get any worse," he muttered. Swearing under his breath, he climbed out of the car, one of two people brave enough to do so.

"Audit?" asked the other courageous traveler.

"Naw. I'm here to pick up a delivery," he dissembled uncomfortably. His eyes darted over the imposing black monolith and the one place he didn't want to be any closer to.

"Oh. Metros say I made a seven figure bonus last year. It wasn't even high six and I have the receipts to prove it."

"Good luck to you. Those police auditors can be vicious."

"Yeah, I know. I've been losing sleep for the last two weeks."

Tony shortened his stride. The lie he offered provided him with the best option. If he turned around and caught another bus, he'd be advertising his guilt. No one changed TriMets at Metro-no one. Whipping out his solido pad, he programmed frantically, finishing just as the audit victim pa.s.sed through the door, waving in irritation. Tony didn't understand, but had to act as if he'd been everywhere as a courier, as though being here meant nothing in particular. He fearlessly pushed through the whispery nano-curtain, barely feeling the full body scan it performed.

Inside the foyer stood a smiling twenty-meter propaganda solido of a Metro in familiar blue body armor without his helmet. Gentle music, spiked with subliminal messages of respect, floated down. "We keep you and yours safe!" The imposing solido bent down and gave a young girl back her purple teddy bear. The adrenaline running through Tony's system shed the subliminals like rain off a Burberry.

Turning to the right he found a brutally ugly Metro sergeant sitting atop a five-meter-high obsidian desk obviously designed to intimidate anyone who hadn't already been cowed by the display in the immense foyer.

"I'm here for an a-a-audit," the man stammered.

"Show me your chit," the sergeant barked.

"Chit? The m-mail said to show up today or be forfeit."

"You have to have a chit to get back to the auditors."

"You didn't send me a chit!"

"Read the law, civ. It clearly reads that you're required to show up one week before your audit to get a chit. Without it we can't do a background check on you."

"So what do I do now?"

"Not much, civ. Pay the tax and the fine."

"But it's wrong!" he said turning purple with rage.

"Civ, I'm going to give you just one chance to turn around and walk out. If you don't you'll be doing five months harvesting yeast in the Antarctic Sea, and that's after I break all your teeth."

The man blanched and backed away slowly. Tony caught a foul whiff as the man turned and ran out the front door.

"Stupid ghit," Tony said in fake derision, handing his solido pad to the desk sergeant. "I'm here for a pickup from Officer Nguyen."

"Pickups are in the service entrance on the level ten pad."