He laughed. Laughing didn't look natural on him. His lips curled awkwardly around his teeth like snarling. But she didn't seem to mind. In fact, she looked delighted. She returned his smile.

It put him off balance, and suddenly he was darkly angry. He was being played like some street rat. Somebody she thought she could manipulate into her lower-class fantasy. He took a deep breath. So she's slumming. So what? You can play along.

"You've had a hard life," she said.

"Not like you," he replied.

The woman winked. "There are different kinds of hard." Then he felt her hand under the table, between his legs. "Mmmm," she said. She fumbled briefly with his fly. He gasped as her cool, dry fingers curled around him.

She leaned in to his ear. "I've got a flivver outside."

He nodded, not trusting his voice to work properly.

16.

DONNER.

The Rolls tooled slowly along the East River docks. The area was a conglomeration of shops, bars and warehouses. We moved past Peck Slip, past ancient warehouses with gambreled roofs and dormer windows. The activity here was subdued, hidden. On the water, scows were filled with refuse. Dock-side, trucks were being loaded with merchandise and machine-shops whirred and clanked. I could smell fresh-cut wood from a lumberyard. The slip's steel pylons were covered in neon graffiti: "Re-kill the re-born!" and the ubiquitous "Maury lives!" Beyond the chipped cement barriers, gray water burbled sluggishly. Fishing was again a major industry, as anyone with a pole could tell you. Reborn fish were as tasty as normal ones. The bizarre fact that some of the carp currently in the East River might've watched battleships set off for Nazi-occupied France didn't slow the hungry poor down one little bit.

Then we were in a darker area, where the moon was a dim blue hope and the street was lit by garbage fires. The flames danced unevenly along the piers, and more often than not the huddled bundles of rags turned out to be human-shaped. Their shadowed faces all contained the same expression. Waiting to be hurt. It could have been 1854 instead of 2054. Except these weren't immigrants, and the gangs that roamed these streets weren't the Bowery Boys.

In the car, I smoked and ignored my captors' glares. The trouble I'd given them constituted unfinished business. They weren't likely to forgive and forget.

Armitage was shaking his head at my brief briefing. "You haven't turned up squat."

"I just started this morning," I replied. "Kidnap me again a couple days from now."

"Maybe we will," was the reply from next to me.

"Maybe I'll break your nose again."

"Motherfucker!"

The muscles in Broken Nose's arms quivered, barely restrained. Armitage stared at me a moment, trying to make up his mind about something. Then he nodded to Jelly Legs, who mumbled a couple colorful curses and pulled a leather valise from the floorboard.

Inside were all kinds of toys. Armitage pointed to each one as it was displayed. "This is a digital keycode generator for standard PIN key codes and access panels. Also a hackencrack program to crash the building's AI. The proximity alert, you strap on your thigh. A grapple pistol. Some other odds and ends. A flashlight, even a good, old-fashioned crowbar. Everything the modern cat burglar needs."

"And it ain't even my birthday," I quipped, but now I was really feeling trapped.

I'd assumed this crew had something to do with Crandall's disappearance. The street snatch was to keep me from digging any deeper. But these tools... What the hell was going on?

"You want to get into that lab, right?" said Armitage.

Shit.

"You're saying you don't?" he pressed. "It's the last place Crandall was seen. Gavin didn't tell you shit. If it was me, I'd want to check the place out."

"The cops already did."

Armitage chuckled. "The cops. Right."

"You sure seem to know a lot about this."

"We keep up with current events," deadpanned the Weasel.

I looked thoughtful. "So what happened? You leave behind a mess when you snatched Crandall? Something you need me to clean up?"

"Us? Grab the doc?" Nose chortled. "I thought this guy was supposed to be smart."

It was Armitage's turn to be quiet. I tried again. "Oh, I get it. You want in on the action! A couple good recipes for genetic soup."

"We're just concerned citizens."

"Yeah," sneered Jelly Legs. "We just wanna help."

"Didn't know I had friends in high places," I said quietly.

"You don't, deadhead. You don't have a choice, either."

"How's that, once I'm out of this car?" I grinned at Broken Nose. "Beautiful here gonna be my chaperone?"

Armitage exhaled long and slow. He ran a hand down his wrinkled tie. "Bartholomew Hennessey. Your old partner."

It took both Nose and Jelly Legs to hold me back. "You fucking touch one hair on that old man's head and I'll send you straight to-"

Another tap from the neuralizer. I drooled on myself for about ten seconds, then I could move enough to moan.

"You're a tough guy," said Armitage. "I appreciate that. But this town ain't yours anymore. You don't know the landmarks, you can't spot the moves, you got no backup. I would've had more trouble snatching a preschooler than you gave me. So shut the fuck up and listen. You're going into that lab for us. I don't need to give you a fucking reason. All you need to know is that if you don't do it soon, people are going to start dying."

"Do I look like a B&E man to you? I'll set off every alarm in town."

"There's a spot in the courtyard, southwest corner. Approach it from 23rd. At twelve-fourteen AM every night, the morphinium shell will move to a point where a two meter space contracts inside the range of the digital eyes. It's a blind spot, an oversight. But it only lasts a couple minutes. That's your way in. You hear me? Twelve-fourteen."

The car pulled to a stop. I went to move out, but Armitage put a hand on my shoulder. When I turned to look at him, his face maybe softened a fraction. "Look. Our interests converge. We both have questions need answered. Do this, and maybe we both come out ahead."

"Who the hell are you, Armitage? What's going on?"

The Nose shoved opened the door. I didn't need to be asked twice. I stepped onto the curb, genuinely shocked to still be in one piece. Armitage leaned out his window. He looked me up and down one more time, but the verdict was a mystery.

"I like the wisecracks," he said. "Very Raymond Chandler-"

"You should talk."

"-But it'll take a lot more next time to impress me."

He disappeared back into front seat gloom. The three goons flipped me off in unison and slid away on a cushion of electric air.

17.

GIORDI.

Giordi's head fell back against the seat, and a groan escaped his lips. Shit, I won the lottery, he thought deliriously.

Loretta's hand snaked up his chest. She played with his nipple through his shirt, pinching hard. Then he felt a sharp sting. He looked down. There was some kind of pointed tip on a ring she was wearing. Had she... what did she do?

What the fu...

Then all sensation, and all thought, swirled away.

Giordi wouldn't regain consciousness for another two hours. When he did, all thoughts of winning the lottery would be gone.

18.

DONNER.

I walk through the trees, lost. The trunks are gnarled like they've been frozen in some ancient, unholy dance. Wind lashes my skin. Why didn't I wear a jacket? I shudder. This place is too cold. Hypothermia will claim me quickly if I don't find shelter. But it's so dark. Leaves crackle under my feet as I stumble toward the quivers of moonlight that pierce the foliage.

I'm not alone. Sounds come on the wind, too faint to identify. There! A shape gliding behind a tree. Then a little laugh, a rustle, vanishing again when I whirl.

I can't hesitate. I have to move. This ground is unhallowed. Malevolence issues from the very earth. It reeks from the bark of the trees. I know without a doubt that I will die if I stay.

Paul!

No. I can't hear, I don't want to believe. I stagger forward, the wind thwarting my flight, biting at me, sucking my life's warmth. More motion behind the trees, a flash of copper hair.

It's not fair, the voice says. I was the better of us two.

It's not my fault! I moan.

Yes, she says. It is all your fault. For your sins, Donner. This is all for your sins.

And then she's in front of me, and I scream, because half her face is gone, and her beautiful hair is caked in blood, and worms twist out through the jelly of her eyes.

Her hands wrap around me in a lover's embrace.

And she is cold, so very cold.

The telephone woke me. It was Bart.

"Meet me at Amsterdam and 79th."

"Jesus... what time is it?"

"Eleven-thirty. You got a Roscoe?"

"Yeah." Nicole's .25. Amazingly, Armitage had returned it.

"Bring it."

"Bart, what's going on?"

"Just get here."

The filaments of the Blister glistened under the moon like dew-dappled spider webbing. I tugged the lapels of my pea coat tighter as I joined Bart on the corner. The Upper West Side street was almost deserted. It always amazed me how a city this big could get so empty at night.

"Took you long enough."

"Haven't got the hang of socks with garters yet," I replied. "What's up?"

Bart rasped his palms together. "I told you we had the rest of Dr. Crandall's team under surveillance, right?"

I nodded.

"Mikiko Hakuri didn't show for work today."

"Dr. Hakuri? Oh no."

"As far as we can tell, she hasn't left her brownstone."

He pointed to a private residence across the street. It was a five-story row house crammed between two hi-rise apartment complexes. Pre-war flanked by post-Shift.