The hunters dressed to blend in: spats, sweater vests and bow ties, their tats and piercings hidden. Brian didn't get a weapon. That would be earned by his first bona fide kill.

Kill. Electric ferocity disrupted his thoughts. Another part of him, however, a part that was slowly growing smaller, murmured with discomfort.

They found a homeless reeb beneath a bridge support. He hummed tunelessly along with the whine of the asynchronous HDVC fuel ribbons. Empty bottles of rotgut stood sentry around him. He was in his re-twenties, but his jaundiced skin hung in elephantine folds, unable to keep pace with the accelerated alcoholic youthing. The men's faces had a predatory shine in the glow of his sterno fire.

The act itself was disappointingly inelegant. They simply dove at the poor fool, punching and stabbing. The pathetic old fuck died much too quickly. Brian managed to get a kick in to the man's groin that elicited a satisfying rasp of pain, but their frenzy didn't leave him much room. They stood, panting, faces blazing, looking down at his broken form.

La-Ron whirled to Brian. "Whaddaya think a that, eh?"

"It was okay, I guess."

Dell guffawed. "Okay? Did you hear that, Yrko?"

Yrko was the scariest of the adult Devil's Fisters. His face carried the history of some ancient conflagration. One eyebrow was missing, and the rest looked melted, the cauterized flesh twisted like putty. Yrko relished the revulsion he inspired. He had a weird Cockney accent. He'd burnt an ear off the last guy who laughed at it. He hauled Brian by his shirt up to his ugliness. "Lad's a goer, eh?" he said. "Maybe we have a job fer ya."

La-Ron bristled. "That was my job!"

Yrko ignored him, studying Brian's fearless face. He understood how dangerous a hollow man could be.

"We got us a... patron," he said. "From time to time, we do work for her. She's looking for a certain few blokes. Deep underground, hard to find. But even worms come up in the sun once in awhile, eh? Now, I got me plenty o' eyes uptown, but I need somebody down here. You up to that, me lad?"

"Right-o, guv'nah," said Brian, and everyone snickered.

Everyone except Yrko.

41.

DONNER.

My Beretta was in a docker's clutch, the strap digging into my side. I wriggled my shoulders and managed to shift the chafing to another spot. Armitage's shirt was freshly ironed. It didn't matter. He still looked rumpled.

"He'll be hostile. You killed him."

I shrugged. "Brought him back, too. Maybe it'll balance out."

We were in the old rumrunning tunnel. Storage rooms had been carved into the rock. The Cadre had reinforced them with neocrete and metal doors. Now one of them was Crandall's make-shift holding cell.

"Doesn't matter, I guess," he said. "Interrogation techniques have come a long way since your day."

"Yeah?" I said. "No more waterboarding?"

Armitage held up a pneumatic syringe. "Veracity virus."

I shook my head. More bugs.

Maggie came around the curve of the tunnel. "Crandall's got countermeasures."

"Shit."

"You mean biodefenses?" I said An appreciative smile from Maggie. "You've been studying."

"I was getting tired of being a mark."

"His system's swarming with defense nanites. Probably a standard employee injection."

I rolled up my sleeves. "Guess we'll have to do it the old-fashioned way."

"What does that mean?" asked Maggie.

"We may have to do things in there, Mag. I need to know you're not going to get in the way."

"I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

"No," I said. "You don't."

Crandall had the complexion of a slug, a creature of filthy folds in the earth. The gauntness of his face made his eyes look sunken; he stared into space, slack-jawed and unfocused. His hair was brittle and receding, a crop far past season, ready to blow away at the first strong wind. The long black toenails were better suited to a lizard than a man. Sitting in this dim room of rust and concrete, he seemed totally alien.

Jesus. Armitage and I looked at each other. Maybe this guy was toast.

Then Crandall picked up a cup from the tray beside him and sipped delicately at some tea. The demure act instantly destroyed the frankenimage.

"Mmm. Earl Gray."

He focused his watery eyes on me, amusement on his face. He'd been playacting the shock treatment routine to unnerve us.

I fished a cigarette from my shirt and set fire to it. He was into games? Good. It would spell out my approach.

He glanced at me over his Earl Grey. "Ah. My assassin."

I shrugged. "Want some slippers?"

"No thank you." He blotted his worm lips with a napkin.

Armitage looked him up and down. "Jesus, talk about the cosmetic underclass." He straddled one of the wooden chairs and crammed a piece of gum into his face. He flicked his hips, scraping the chair closer across the cement. Crandall's face screwed up.

"Senses are raw the first couple of days," I said. "Is the light okay? We could dial it down a couple degrees."

I got an iguana stare. "Such concern for my comfort, when I'm about to be interrogated."

"We won't insult your intelligence with clumsy tactics."

"Flattery is a tactic, is it not?"

I looked at Armitage, smiling: "Didn't I tell you?"

Armitage blew a bubble. I didn't know how he was doing it, but there was this masterful vibe of working class resentment simmering below his surface. He'd picked up on Crandall's "my IQ is bigger than your IQ" thing and adopted the heavy-limbed roll of a lowbrow.

"So he's brainy," he said. "Big deal."

"Hardly helpful at the moment. I am in the dark here, quite literally, am I not?"

Armitage snapped his gum.

"Oh, the doctor's figured out plenty already, haven't you?" I said.

I hid from his gingivitis smile in a lungful of tobacco smoke. "I am reborn," he said. "You used the Retrozine. That much is obvious. Now, as to the meeting I glimpsed when I awoke craving sustenance-"

"'Craving sustenance'?" Armitage snorted.

"You can't expect the doctor to talk like street trash," I said.

"I expect him to make himself understood."

"Forgive my erudition." A smile. Taunting.

Armitage snarled, his neck reddening. Crandall looked as if he'd just won a round. Good. Let him build his high tower.

"I suppose he figured out we're Cadre, too," Armitage said.

Crandall's eyes lit up. I bit off an expletive like Armitage had just sold the farm.

"I wasn't sure," Crandall said. "What with that gaggle of misfits up there you could have been anyone. Thank you for clearing that up."

Armitage left his chair murderously. I pushed the wall away and laid a hand on his shoulder. Armitage deflated, glowering, and reinstalled himself in his chair. I continued to the ashtray and ground out my filter. Crandall didn't try to hide his delight. Stupid. We let the silence condense a bit while I lit a fresh one.

"You don't have to be the enemy, Morris," I said.

"Save the bonding routine. And the good-cop-bad cop. It was ancient when you were alive."

"Okay," I said. "Here's what I really think: I think you should join us."

Armitage exploded, "What??"

Crandall's newest smile masked puzzlement. "Why would I do that?"

"Surazal's got the completed formulas now. What do they need you for?"

That got a rise out of him. "Retrozine A and B are only the beginning."

"Not any more. They've announced your death in the media. Called you a traitor. Said you stole secrets."

He paled. "You're lying!"

"C'mon, you know how Nicole works. Once you got dead, you became the perfect scapegoat. Your death covers everything. A deranged, missing scientist. Now believed to have killed his own team members. Turns up hiding in the wall like a rat. Stealing vital Shift research. He gets violent when security confronts him, and voila."

I watched it make sense in his eyes. Watched the "after all I've done for them" program run in his head.

Armitage grinned. "You're a fugitive, same as us, pal."

The man twitched at the word. "I only have your word-"

I put a smartscreen in front of him and ran the press highlights. He watched in growing fury as he was portrayed as a greedy, murderous turncoat, trying to sell vital secrets to the highest bidder.

"You'll have to go underground," I said.

"I have friends-"

"Not anymore. Your funds have been frozen. Your body's missing. Nicole's not stupid, Morris. She knows you've revived."

He whitened a little more.

"Oh yeah," said Armitage, his jaw savoring the gum and Crandall's shock in equal measure. "You haven't seen the recent changes in our lovely city. Checkpoints, searches. You're all over the Conch. Enemy of the state."

Crandall's poise had gone the way of the dinosaurs.

"Then there's the wasps," I added. "Thousands of these little walnut-sized things, buzzing the streets doing resonance biometrics of everybody. And they're armed. Three Cadre members were vaporized right on 6th Avenue yesterday."

"In front of their families," spat Armitage.

"Even in this city of a million back rooms and alleys, it's getting damned hard to hide. And let's face it, doc. On the street, the smarts you got? They ain't the kinda smarts you need."

I could almost hear Crandall's processors spinning into overdrive.

"We'll put you in one of our safe houses," I continued. "A basement somewhere, with blacked-out casement windows. Someone will bring you food, clothes, the necessities. It won't be fun, but you'll survive."

"And in exchange for this assistance?"

"Everything you know. Starting with Struldbrug."

"Which Struldbrug, Mr. Donner?"

"The brother and sister are working together, aren't they?"

The smirk was back. "My information is more valuable than you suspect."

Armitage and I traded eyebrows.

Crandall's eyes clouded in longing for a vanished life. "My work is everything. Can you find me another lab, funding for my experiments? If what you've shown me is true, nothing can bring that back." He raked skeletal fingers across his face. "I do not desire some mole-like existence in this nightmare city. Therefore, I want to leave Necropolis."