An underground clinic.

Rupert Stains was in there--I was sure of it now-my missing hand growing on his arm.

The revelation coursed through me like nitro, all the tiles in the puzzle-box clicking in place in my brain: the son of a b.i.t.c.h in that silver warehouse, richer than G.o.d, taking the last vestige of sensation from me, taking my hand, my touch, taking it from me and a.s.similating it like a worm growing segments.

And now the rage was erupting in me, all the pain, all the longing, longing to feel something, longing to touch, and before I knew what was happening, I was running full bore toward that G.o.d d.a.m.ned quonset hut with my gun drawn.

Two hundred meters ahead of me the doors to the quonset burst open.

I fumbled the safety off, and I ran as fast as my lab-legs would carry me.

Zander and his men were already fanning out when they saw me approaching. Zander did a sort of comical double-take, his infra reds whirling toward me, a glint of sodium light catching his eyepiece and blossoming.

Almost fell on his big fat a.s.s.

"Glory!" His rasp filtered through the pox mask.

"What the f.u.c.k--?"

He couldn't finish his thought because things were happening very quickly now.

A hundred meters ahead of me, the shadows were disgorging three figures, and I sprinted toward them, ignoring the cops off to my right, ignoring the pain in my chest, ignoring Zanny's warning calls, ignoring everything but the three men fleeing the hot house, and I fixed my iris on the smallest of the three. The little one was dressed in leathers, jackboots, and old flying ace goggles. He had broken off from the group and was hightailing it toward the East Sprawl Bridge.

Stains.

I fixed my sights on the bridge and made a beeline, the first tracer shots popping behind me. Zander's plasma-pellets buzzing over my head, buzzing white hot making the darkness nicker and crackle. I stayed low, my gun raised, aimed straight ahead at the little millionaire racing across the bridge fifty meters away.

Stains was heading toward the far gates, toward the luminous threads of blue laser-light demarcating the outskirts, and as he approached the end of the line, he swam through a pool of chrome-yellow arc light, and I got a momentary glimpse of his right arm .. .

and the pale, pink fingers clutching the tiny vintage Walther PPK handgun.

My right hand.

I was about to shriek at the top of my lungs when I saw him skid to a halt, then spin around with the Walther raised, then the four silver norettes sparking from the barrel. I dove to the ground just as the dumb bells sizzled above my left shoulder, striking the bridge behind me, chewing through the ancient teflon span.

Behind me, pandemonium erupted, the sounds of angry cop voices, and more sirens coming from the distance, and Zander's men firing off high-V slugs, and I managed to rise to a crouch in a hail of gunfire and squeeze off half a dozen smart-slugs with my stupid left hand. The heat seekers arced out into the darkness and pinwheeled every which way, but it was too late: Stains had crossed over into the Soft City--a vast restricted area where super bacteria had broken down the cells in the concrete, metal, and gla.s.s, and now everything was literally soft and waxy--and n.o.body, I mean n.o.body, was reckless enough to chase him into that quagmire.

Except me.

I crossed the far threshold and plunged into the indigo fog, the blue terminal lasers vibrating all around me, and I descended a steep slope of ashes into the wasteland, my boots sinking ankle deep into the detritus, and I kept the gun raised in case Stains was waiting to ambush me, but I knew I was doomed.

My right hand--its natural nerves intact--was far too fast. My right hand was a killer. I could never outshoot my own right hand.

The only thing I had going for me was the searing rage pumping through my veins.

A building rose out of the mist--some sort of gothic ruin from some twentieth-century train station--and I caught a fleeting glimpse of the millionaire ducking behind a rotting rampart twenty meters away, and I started firing wildly, sapphire flames barking out of my gun, and the smart-bullets curled around the side of the building, puffing through steel girders: needles through pudding.

And then my gun was empty, and I started toward the building, awkwardly reloading a magazine with my left hand and right stump, my brain fizzing, overloading, a cognitive tape-loop parroting; Why? Why would this son of a b.i.t.c.h with more money than G.o.d risk everything for a little taste of the natural touch, a little bit of feeling?

Why?

I was approaching the building when the adjacent wall erupted in my face.

The little rich man was bursting through the softened mortar like a toy through a vacuform.

Gunfire exploded all around me as I dove for cover behind a fossilized train engine, and I felt the heat on the top of my skull as the fireworks display swirled over my head, piercing the softened iron of the Sky Chief and I opened my mouth and wailed through my mask, my voice drowned in a hurricane of fire, and I finally managed to look up.

Stains was running away across an old decaying trestle.

Then I saw the world go haywire.

It happened so quickly I barely had time to focus, my eyes flash-blind and blurry, and I blinked and blinked because I couldn't believe what I was seeing: The ancient iron of the trestle turning all rubbery under Stains like a Salvador Dali nightmare.

Then the walkway dipped and flexed and stretched down into the darkness of the gorge like taffy, and Stains went with it, screaming all the way, his voice drowned by the sound of a gargantuan metal spring uncoiling.

The bridge finally snapped, and Stains landed hard on a slag heap.

I made my way over to the edge of the gorge and looked down. I could see Stains lying semiconscious down there, half buried in the metal mush, and I saw something else that pressed down on my heart, made my blood vibrate in my veins, and made my phantom fingers tingle, and even as the sounds of Zander and his men were approaching behind me on the poison winds, I kept staring at that horrible still-life down in the rotting shadows.

My right hand was down there, all pale and pink, still attached to Stains' arm, still gripping the Walther

PPK.

It took three days for the boys and girls in the fifth precinct to sort out the whole mess. I was on Zander's s.h.i.t-list for meddling; but considering my personal interests, I don't think he really blamed me.

At the end of the week, they moved Stains to the federal clinic in Eastminster for the transplant.

I showed up early on Friday morning for the big show, and they ran me through the pre-op procedures.

They propped my stump, got me dressed in surgical robes, started drips, and made me wait forever in a sterile green-tiled room in the bowels of the building.

It was well into the afternoon when I finally buzzed for the nurse. Her face flickered across the screen above me, and I told her I was tired of waiting and I wanted to know just where the h.e.l.l they were keeping my hand.

She told me the other patient was still with the clinic psychologist, and there would be a slight delay.

"What delay?" I asked.

"I'm not sure, sir. Would you like me to call the psychologist?"

"What the h.e.l.l's going on?" I felt a strange twinge, something feathery on my phantom fingers.

"Sir, it'll just be a few more minutes--" "This guy's a G.o.dd.a.m.n thief, he stole my hand, and you've got him seeing a shrink?"

"Sir, if you'd just--" "I want to know what the h.e.l.l's going on!"

She sighed, her image flickering for a moment, and then she said, "Look, I'm not supposed to do this, but I think under the circ.u.mstances .. .".

She reached down and flipped a switch, and the picture on the screen changed.

The new image was of another room, a stark little lounge in another wing of the building. A table in the center, a couple of chairs, the Venetian blinds drawn.

Stains was sitting at the table, dressed in hospital robes. Standing behind him were the shrink and a couple of armed guards.

Across the table sat a little girl in a cotton jumper and pigtails. She was Stains' little girl; I had seen pictures of her on the Web-news.

She couldn't have been more than six years old, and she was clutching a little stuffed turtle with one hand, holding her daddy's hand with the other.

Her daddy's hot hand.

My hand.

I gazed at the screen, my throat drying up, filling with sawdust, my eyes welling, elephants standing on my chest. It was as though I was a ghost caught in some other dimension watching my shadow-self, and I felt the moist warmth of the child's touch on my phantom fingers, and I watched the screen, transfixed, as the millionaire held his daughter's delicate little hand one last time.

And then it occurred to me: This was why Stains had gone to all the trouble.

To hold his little girl's hand just once.

To feel her touch.

I stared at the screen for as long as I could tolerate the intimacy, memorizing every movement, every gesture, every quiet exchange between the child and the man, and I realized it was my hand that was doing the holding, my hand. G.o.d help me, it was my own flesh and blood in there.

When I finally looked away, I was fighting the tears.

"Nurse!" My voice was like metal tearing apart.

"Nurse! Nurse!"

The screen nickered, and the nurse's placid face came back on.

"What is it?"