YOU CAN BE A CYBORG WHEN YOU’RE OLDER

By Richard Roberts

A Mystique Press Production

Mystique Press is an imprint of Crossroad Press

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

Digital Edition Copyright © 2020 Richard Roberts

LICENSE NOTES

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Meet the Author

Richard Roberts is drawn to dark, strange fairy tales, which of course is why he got famous for his perky middle-school supervillain stories instead.

That presents the two halves of his work, the fun and crazy, and the dark and weird. In both cases, he does his best to entertain, to look at old ideas to see how strange they are if you think them through, and to make a story where his characters earn their happy endings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Please Don’t Tell My Parents Series

Book 1: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m a Supervillain

Book 2: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon

Book 3: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’ve Got Henchmen

Book 4: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Have a Nemesis

Book 5: Please Don’t Tell My Parents You Believe Her

A Rag Doll’s Guide to Here and There

Quite Contrary

Sweet Dreams are Made of Teeth

Wild Children

You Can Be a Cyborg When You’re Older

DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter One

Get up. Shower. Brush teeth. Spike my hair with grease and lean it over to one side. Dust below my eyes for the ”punched in the face” look. Apply a very small amount of green lipstick, one shade darker than my hair. Begin putting on spiked leather bands. Continue putting on spiked leather bands. Add some pre-torn clothing somewhere during that process. Check mirror to confirm I look like death. It takes a lot of time and effort to not be pretty.

Take a moment to look out the window at the city of West Angel. Across the street loomed a wall of windows and dark, rain-scarred concrete, which went up and down and off to the sides so far, I had to pick just the right angle to look up and see the green and brown afternoon sky, or down at the air cars zooming by below. The street itself wasn’t visible even if I climbed up on the bathtub. We were too high up.

A black sphere with flashing blue lights drifted past, arms dangling like a squid, on its way to buildings expensive and important enough to be cleaned.

“I will find you and ride you around town until your gravity coils explode,” I whispered after it.

Later. Right now, did I have anything else to put on? Alas, no. Not that I wanted piercings. Too retro. If only I could afford a cybernetic arm, but even trading in my real one wouldn’t get me close. I’d found a metal skin-web once, but I lived with eleven other orphans and we had two bedrooms. The mesh got stolen so many times that when Fidget sold it to buy an AR Monster, I actually felt relief. Besides, Death Rooster turned out to be wicked cool.

Speaking of which, there I was adjusting my collar when a red and yellow weasel head with spikes and a big crest stuck right through the wall, glared at me with bulging-eyed disgust and fury, and spat a ball of white-hot fire into the middle of my chest.

Completely unharmed, I leaned around the edge of the bathroom door and yelled, “Fidget, Death Rooster is bugged out again.”

Offended, Fidget shouted back, “He’s not bugged! The orphanage walls don’t match the official maps. He forgets they’re there.”

The hologram monster swiveled its head, looking around the bathroom, not seeing me. In its mixed-up computer mind, there was a wall between us now. He retreated from view, and I heard the fake thumps of dragon feet as he charged back to his owner.

A voice echoed through the orphanage. “Vanity Rose, dear, I need to speak with you.” Ms. Understanding did not sound happy, in a literal sense. She only had two tones, ”happy” and ”concerned,” both in grandmotherly flavor. I could be facing a bowl of chicken soup or extra homework and my good clothes taken away.

Everyone knew which. The biggest of us orphans, Ajax, stepped into the door of the girls’ dorm, folded his beefy arms, and smirked. “Yeah, Rose.”

Oh, he did not. I took a step toward him, raising a fist. “Vanity.” Only Ms. Understanding called me by my last name and got away with it.

The testosterone addict stood up straighter, cracking his knuckles. “You want to fight, rainbow hair?”

Despite his bravado, Ajax’s nervousness showed on his face and in the hesitation in his voice. We were about fifty-fifty on fights, and I’d take those odds to teach him a lesson.

Not that he ever learned. We’d played out this scene a thousand times.

And like the meathead he was, he’d started it when Ms. Understanding was paying attention. Her voice had rung out of the speakers in every room. “Ajax Thistle, what have I told you about bullying your siblings? Next time I’ll have to punish you.”

Yeah, that’s us. One big family. Did real families squabble like this? I wouldn’t know.

“Vanity Rose, you’re lollygagging, dear,” Ms. Understanding chided me. Oops.

I galloped down the stairs to show willing, and found her waiting in the foyer, hands clasped. With her dress down to the floor and her unlined but mature face and grey hair, she stood absolutely still. Strike that. Her eyes did move, tracking me while the pupils grew and shrank irregularly. Nobody wanted a robot that acted too human, especially not a full AI.

Her head tilted at an awkward angle, and she gave me a compassionate frown. “Rose, I’m worried about how much you’re sleeping.”

So, not angry. How did she do it? How did she take care of and pour her love out on twelve children without losing her artificial mind? By rights there should be blood everywhere and “All We Wanted Was To Make You Happy” carved into the floor. But no robot in the city was more stable than Ms. Understanding. Nobody knew that better than me.

“I took an extra pill on Monday, Ms. Understanding. It’s still making me sleep late,” I lied.

Oops. Actually, not only had I not taken that extra pill, I’d forgotten my medication last night. Eh. Missing one wasn’t a big deal.

“Vanity Rose, your—” Ms. Understanding started to say, and stopped an instant before someone knocked on the door.

She drifted over to the front door with dignified grace, her skirt long enough that it hid her feet and she really did look like she was floating instead of walking.

A couple of generically grey but familiar men in suits and coats stood in the hall, holding briefcases. Ms. Understanding gave them a delighted smile. “Mister Guthrie. Mister Wire. How are things at the Foundation?”

They both gave me a suspicious, disapproving look, then pretended they hadn’t and returned their attention to Ms. Understanding. Gravely, Mr. Guthrie asked, “Can we speak in private?”

Our not-quite-human nanny and the living cautionary tales of growing up to be an accountant retired to her tiny office. It was barely more than a closet. She’d given all the good rooms to us.

“What’s going on?” asked Chaos at the top of the stair, a nervous boy frazzled with soot. I’d slept through another of his toys exploding, apparently.

Poor kid. Might as well spare him and everyone else the anxiety. I hopped up the stairs two at a time, giving him a toothy grin. “Your favorite Vanity Rose lucked out and we got visitors before the old bot could punish me.”

“Weren’t those guys from the Foundation?” asked Mimi, peeking over the upstairs banister and visible now that I’d reached the second floor.

Not good. Mimi might look like the perfect curly-haired good girl, but she was smarter than me and nearly as cynical. I had to distract her before she figured it out. Shoving my hands into my denim jacket pockets, I palmed my Standardized Personal Utility Device and pressed the emergency button three times. A shriek and a roar sounded from behind Chaos.

Mimi’s head jerked up. “Another AR monster?”

“It must be in the yard!” shouted Fidget loud enough for the whole orphanage to hear.

Kids tumbled out of every room, and stampeded downstairs and to the back to see the monster fight.

There would be no fight. I’d hidden a broken AR Monster module back there months ago. It wouldn’t spawn its monster anymore, but it still sent out a fight signal to get Death Rooster’s attention.

Over the shouts, no one would hear or notice as the Foundation clerks and Ms. Understanding emerged from her office again. In concerned mode and quiet enough I had to strain to make her out, she told them, “I’ll delay as long as I can.”

“That’s all any of us can do,” said Mister Wire in a similar hush. They both tipped their hats, and without another word left the way they came, through the orphanage’s front door.

My siblings began filtering back in though the foyer. Usually, thinking of them that way annoyed me, but not today. Blissfully ignorant, Fidget spotted me and called up, “It flew away before Death Rooster could reach it. A pteroray from across the street, I bet.”

Ms. Understanding hadn’t moved since she’d closed the door behind the Foundation men. Suddenly her voice rang from the PAs. “Oh, dear, I have to start cooking supper. I have processing to do, so assigned helpers are free for the evening.”

“Woo!” shouted Cosmos and Ochre, the teenage boy with the map collection and the seven-year-old who ate crayons, respectively. Everyone’s Enchanted oldest sister, Liriel, merely gave a deep, relieved sigh, while every boy older than Chaos pretended not to stare at her chest. Whoever biosculpted her into an elf had indulged his personal biases. The designer was definitely a ”he.”

Ms. Understanding slid into the kitchen, and began arranging ingredients and pots and pans in irregular movements that looked limp and erratic, but laid everything out precisely. Around her, red holographic stripes formed in the air, labeled ”PROCESSING TIME—DO NOT DISTURB.” She’d be in there awhile, since she had to make Chaos’s protein bar and Liriel’s special vegetable bread in addition to supper for the rest of us. Looked like noodles, kelp, and red sauce.

Everyone else chattered about the imaginary pteroray or drifted into activity rooms. Fidget trotted up the stairs and headed past me into the girls’ dorm, clutching the precious spawn ball and explaining on the way past, “I’d better give Death Rooster his daily feed and training.”

I’d succeeded. I was the only one who noticed the catastrophe.

The Foundation paid for the orphanage. Ms. Understanding was worried. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.

We were running out of money. Maybe a megacorp…no, they’d shut off the spigot at once. The ”why’s” didn’t matter to us, only that we were about to lose our home.

What could we do? Our little hobbies wouldn’t make a dent in the orphanage budget. Chaos already donated some of his sales profits for better food. Someone else had paid for Liriel’s transformation, because the Enchanted were nuts about luring people into their cult. Ms. Understanding would sell her body for scrap to keep us fed and sheltered five seconds longer, but even intelligent robots can’t break out of their routine.

My heart pounded. I’d known this would happen sooner or later.

It was time to take a walk on the dark side.

I slipped out the window into the warm night air. Mimi, Liriel, and Fidget didn’t move in their beds. They probably heard me, but they never said anything.

The fire escape barely rattled under my feet as I climbed up two floors, to a clear, plastic, man-sized, and entirely illegal tube that ran from our building to the one across the street.

Not that anyone would want to cross to an orphanage. This floor belonged to some company that planned light networks. The employees had the kind of safe, boring job that kept the not-quite-poor locked in stasis in West Angel City, if you were lucky enough to get one. The kind of life Ms. Understanding was training us for.

There was plenty of money to be made in this city. You just couldn’t make it peacefully.

I’d been struggling with the temptation to do this since I was ten, and hey, now I was doing it for a good cause, right?

Slipping the key out of the storage compartment of my SPUD, I unlocked the little box I’d spray painted to look like the wall, and pulled out my precious gravity boots.

Pulling open the unlocked window next to the tube, I crept into the office, or store, or whatever it was. They kept it pretty dark at night, with only a few people still working, but like always they pretended not to see me.

Except…on the little cabinet next to the window lay a candy bar. Aw. Just when I thought there was only selfishness left in this city. I couldn’t read the label, didn’t know what language that label was written in, and didn’t care. I ate it anyway as I crossed the tube. Honey and nuts. Nice.

Down below me, aircars whizzed back and forth. Below them, surface traffic moved sporadically up and down the street. This was a pretty quiet neighborhood, but close enough to the more packed and dangerous parts of the city to be cheap.

I reached the other end of the tube, and ducked through an irregular hole broken to form a makeshift door.

I loved this shortcut. It had some connection to the light company. For that matter, the weird pipes in the walls of the orphanage probably had some connection to the light company. Here the connection was obvious, with the thick, multicolored lasers beamed along the walls, humming where they entered and exited reflectors. Lightning crackled between exposed wires, and in a few places the floor had been removed to reveal vibrating copper plates no doubt as dangerous as everything else. Trip and fall in this corridor, and all they’d find would be a pile of ash.

Vanity Rose never trips and falls.

The hall went right through the building. Ignoring doors and side corridors, I pried back the boards half-covering the hole in this wall as well. No tube on this side, just a long, spiky stone buttress, or gargoyle, or something. That was the kind of stuff Ms. Understanding tried to teach us in our schoolwork. I was not exactly an A student.

One foot in front of the other, I crossed the buttress, and jumped across the gap to a pole sticking out of the side of the opposite building. It creaked and flexed underneath me as I walked. Hee hee.

I reached the other building, and stepped off the pole onto the wall. My gravity boots took over, and the whole world turned sideways.

I took a few steps, then broke into a jog, grinning. When both feet left the ground, my body felt like it floated for an instant as the power of the boots began to fade.

This was when I felt happy and alive, walking the night time heights of West Angel. This was me, not the freakishly pretty and pretty freakish ragged orphan back home.

No one else walked the cliffs of West Angel’s towering buildings tonight, not that I could see. That was normal. Night flies like me aren’t common, and day flies less so. During the day, you get noticed.

On the opposite side of this thick, massive building was a restaurant with an outdoor terrace cafe. That would get me the attention I didn’t want, but I’d long ago found an easy and obvious way to deal with that.

There is always a way in.

In this case, a scary way in, that would look like a great way to die, and by ”great” I mean ”horrible”, if I hadn’t scouted it out and knew where it led. A drain pipe stuck out of the side of the building, dark and foreboding, but wide enough for a slender teenager. Wriggling up it, I quickly emerged into an abandoned room. Seriously abandoned. The only footprints in the dust were mine. Once upon a time, the network of broken pipes running through it must have connected to the drain. More recently, the rickety metal shelves would have held some sort of supplies. Now nothing remained but my secret entrance.

The door locked from the inside, so I let myself out into a ritzy dining room. These were the folks who could afford old-fashioned suits, gleaming wood tables and bar, and real human waiters and waitresses serving real food prepared by human cooks. As always, I smirked at the skirts long enough to be modest on the waitresses and the neat black uniforms on the waiters. Heaven forbid the upper crust see the tattoos, implants, and occasional scales or feathers on their servants! Not that all the rich people dressed gloom and doom, either. The women could afford see-through silk, gold plate, long trains and huge sleeves, tiaras and jewelry that covered one woman’s forearm from elbow to fingertips, with just enough skin showing through gaps to assure you it’s not a cyber-arm. For the men, it was maroon and lapels like capes, and intricately braided hair that seemed to be in fashion for upper crust peacocks.

These people had zero taste. If I were rich, the only reason I might not be cyborged and biosculpted to the hilt would be because there were too many great options to choose. Not one person here, not one, had LEDs built into their body.

On the other hand, I might have more style in my little finger, the one with the buzz saw design ring on it, than this whole restaurant, but I was dressed up. I merely got curious and amused looks as I walked out onto the deck. Mostly from men. I wasn’t old enough to interest them, but thanks to whatever my original parents did to their genes, I’d inherited the kind of face people carve sculptures of. A true aesthetic beauty. Woohoo.

Having dipped into the pool of gauche money, I cleansed myself by walking right off the railing at the end of the deck.

In two steps I was walking along the underside of the balcony. If anybody had seen me and looked, they would see no falling body and doubt the evidence of their own eyes.

No time to enjoy the sight of the distant upside-down street. I had illicit money to make tonight. Still, there was one contact I wanted to check in on. A glance at my SPUD told me I was right on time.

A couple of stories above the street, a huge holographic advertisement stood out from the corner of the building. Right now, it showed me an umbrella with rain pouring down on it. Illusionary concrete around it steamed and decayed where the rain hit, but the umbrella and the space underneath remained pure and untroubled.

Just as I reached the platform the hologram grew out of, it changed. A giant woman of the cookie-cutter-beauty advertising model type replaced the umbrella. The rain still fell, but it didn’t hurt her, just soaked her shirt and shorts through. Before that became a modesty issue, she laid herself flat on her platform, feet tucked up and ankles crossed, arms folded as she gazed cheerfully down at the passersby.

She didn’t have much to choose from. The entrance to the building was on the other side, and the rich people got in by air car. Picking a passing guy in a blandly normal heavy coat and grey hat, she wiggled her fingers in a childish wave. “Hey there, short stuff. Got a minute to talk to a lonely AI on her break?”

He looked up. He had a sour, weathered face, but it lighted up in surprise and unaccustomed pleasure. “Sure, I guess. I’ve never been flirted with by a woman five times my height before.”

I sat down on the edge of the hologram’s platform, completely ignored.

“Then check one off the bucket list. I felt a bit silly advertising umbrellas on a beautiful night like this.” Yep, the sky was merely choked with smoky clouds, and her own private rain storm had matted down her hair, made her skin glisten, and turned the visible back of her shirt nearly transparent.

The guy liked being teased, but after a few seconds his habitual frown returned. He sighed. “I’ve got an appointment, holo-girl.” The frown deepened, and the question burst out as if he’d tried to fight it and failed. “What are you selling now, anyway?”

She kicked her feet, which clipped through the corner of the building behind her. “I dunno. It’s freeform ad period. Let me check…. Here we go. Weird, it’s just an address. Sixty-four thousand, thirty-eight North Arsenal Street, level sixteen. Go check it out. Maybe the girl I’m patterned after is there.”

He laughed, his face shining with happiness for another moment, then walked away shaking his head.

The advertisement rolled over on her back, giving me her own friendly smile. As she did, her body flowed like water into a dark, muscular young man only a few years older than me, with an open jacket. In his now much deeper voice, he greeted, “Hey, Vanity. Beautiful evening, huh?”

“Do you have to look like that?” I complained.

He shrugged, amused by my discomfort. “It’s this or the wet t-shirt. I have programming to obey.”

I conceded defeat. “And advertising executives have one track minds. I don’t know how you stay sane, only able to express yourself for fifteen minutes every few hours.”

He laughed, even richer than the girl version. “I think it’s because I’m stuck in one spot. How would I kill people even if I lost it? And what problems do I have? Boredom? Missing people I only meet once? I don’t love anyone enough to go crazy. Not even you, my favorite trespassing hooligan.”

The affectionate smile lasted another second, then faded into concern. “Something is wrong, and it’s about money.”

I leaned back, eyes wide. My heart tightened in my chest. I’d been trying not to think about it. “How did you know?”

He raised an eyebrow and smirked. “I’m an advert. All I do is watch humans think about money. Speaking of which, I see a girl who might want to buy swimwear approaching.”

He started to push himself up. Getting out my SPUD, I jabbed his ankle with it. Something went ”zap”, his body flickered, and he let out an, “Ow! Watch it, kid!”

I poked him again. Another zap, and he disappeared, replaced by a grotesque smiling fried potato with a face. In a wobbly clown voice, he yukked. “Hi, I’m Fry Smiley! I see you’re accessing a hologram. Would you like me to slideshow your photo library?”

Yikes. This was not supposed to happen. I’d spent hours erasing this obnoxious help interface from my settings. Why did he have to show up now? Poking angrily at my SPUD, I snapped, “I don’t need you. Close program.”

“Let me make sure I understand you. You’d like to terminate this hologram?” he asked with jovial idiocy.

If I ever found out who programmed this thing, they were getting a fist to the face. They were getting a fist to everywhere. “No! What are you, bugged? Leave the hologram on, and turn yourself off!”

“I’ve detected this display system is obsolete and was scheduled for shutdown one year, six months ago. I’ve prepared a report for the network administrators. Ready to send on your word.”

Keeping my mouth carefully shut, I held down the power button until my SPUD turned off, and the advert boy winked back into existence. So help me. Someday, the creator of Fry Smiley would pay. I could only hope the idiot potato monster hadn’t sent his message during the shutdown process.

The holo-boy sighed in relief. “Thanks for the save, Vanity. My free time’s almost over. Listen, if money is the problem, some dark siders passed by just before my break. They were talking about a big money opportunity in the vegetable shop behind Blatherskite. They were also on foot and going slow. Maybe you could beat them there. You would be great at walking the dark side.”

With that, he winked out, replaced by a giant package of crackers and a woman going, “Mmmmm!”

Opportunity had knocked, just when I needed it. Leaping to my feet, I raced off along the wall in the direction it led.

I didn’t beat the dark siders there, but I did see them arrive. They couldn’t be anything else. Both of them wore a whole lot of black leather. The guy had a full cyberjack covering half his neck and head, wires sticking out and everything. The girl had spikes sticking out of her skin, cat ears and a tail, and tiger stripes rippled over her when she moved. From here, I couldn’t tell if that was actually fur.

Wow, an Enchanted stealth cyborg. There was a rare combination. I’d bet the twelve dollars that were all I had she thought of her chameleon skin as a magic spell.

This side of the building we were at was officially a seedy market alley. I’d heard there were whole districts that specialized in one thing in other parts of West Angel, but ”other parts” might be hundreds of kilometers away. Where I lived, neighborhoods tumbled together chaotically. So, despite the fancy stores on the other side of the block, these two pulled up the corrugated garage door protecting a dingy shop, and slipped inside.

Best not to walk in on them. I crept over to the store, saw a ventilation duct, and peered in past the fan.

Wildly out of place, a pudgy man in a shiny plastic suit sat on the counter of a knickknack shop, smoking through a long tube that included a glass bulb containing a writhing grub. Ew. Straight nasty. A sleek metal briefcase lay next to him, and he tapped away at the latest, or perhaps next-gen SPUD without actually paying attention to the display.

“Just us?” asked the boy hacker. He and the girl were the youngest dark siders I’d seen or imagined. No way they were twenty years old. I doubted they were eighteen.

“Just you,” answered the rich guy. He had oily hair and an oily voice, and bloated skin so pale it was blue. Exactly the kind of person I’d always imagined hires freelance criminals.

“What’s the job?” asked the girl. The boy had a watchful, cautious air. She sounded impatient.

He blew out a puff of smoke. “Tokamak Advanced Transit Organization is about to release a new line of aircars. Brand new technology.”

The boy hacker nodded slightly, with a tight smile of understanding. “You want the blueprints.”

Corrupt Corporate Guy looked the two over, sizing them up for competence. “I want the files, and I want Tokamak to not know they were stolen.”

The cat girl ran both clawed hands back through her short hair. I couldn’t see her expression, but she sounded worried. “That’s going to be tough. Maybe impossible. I could break into their prototyping lab, but it will be heavily defended. They wouldn’t find the trail until I’d left, but they would find it.”

Hacker Boy scowled. “I could break into their systems through cyberspace, but they’d know as I did it. I bet they couldn’t stop me or trace me, but they’d know.”

Unflapped, the bloated guy waved his bug pipe hand. Did I mention that thing was straight nasty? “That’s why I waited until tonight. The files have been passed to marketing, and they’re not working tonight. Too many collapses. The blueprints will be on the computer of Samuel Ibragimov on the sixteenth floor of the Tokamak office building.”

In a smug tone of confident deduction, the boy said, “And that’s why you’re offering this job to us. If you hired someone on the mercenary register, there would be a paper trail. If you get kids like us to do it, there’s no trace.”

The old guy—actually, he could be anywhere from thirty to ninety—smiled a thin smile of satisfaction. “I’m sure the two of you can do it, and do it silently.”

“One of us. I’ll do it myself,” snapped the cat girl, suddenly angry.

The hacker boy sneered, his own anger flaring. “This is my job, britches.”

Bri…oh, great. With all the stress, my profanity filter had flared up. Now I couldn’t even hear other people swear.

Whatever, not important.

The blue guy could be flapped after all. He frowned in mild confusion. “I thought you were a team.”

Chameleon Cat raised her chin haughtily. “Like I would partner with a soulless wire-head like him.”

Her boyfriend—it could not be more obvious—stiffened, and snapped back, “You have more metal in you than I do!”

Chameleon Cat’s sneer didn’t waver. “But not iron, and not in my nerves. It doesn’t disrupt the flow of—”

Blue Guy had finally had enough. He cut her off. “Whoever brings me the information first will get paid.”

BOOM! Just what I was waiting to hear! Leaving the suckers behind me, I set off running, up and across the wall. The Tokamak Building was only a couple of blocks away. Had to be why they were meeting here, the closest anonymous, run-down alley.

The next street I had to cross was wider than an alley, but it had wires strung between the buildings. Those had been my city-crossing salvation so many times. I tightrope-walked across it, one foot in front of the other, while the gravity boots kept me stuck to the line. That felt weird, dizzy, with the boots constantly compensating, and once the world swam as I overbalanced and swooped all the way around the line in a circle.

I got to the other end, which is what counts. Another smaller building to circle around, and two tall ones, and an intersection-spanning sign to cross.

Now we were in expensive territory. I ran up a twisty-shaped building, and right through the gap in the middle. Across the last street loomed the Tokamak Tower.

One problem: This was a major street, and the tower sat back in its own lot, not flush with the road.

Thank goodness for architecture. Big companies just had to show off. The Tower was a subtly concave building, black and shiny, and a massive ring surrounded the top few floors. Really, it was the top few floors. Lit up red stripes raced each other in never-ending circles around the outer surface.

The building I ran up now had no name I knew of, but the builders had been proud and determined to flaunt their own wealth. It was slightly taller than Tokamak, and leaned over the street arrogantly, proving to Tokamak who was cooler, or more intimidating, or just richer. Those jutting floors were the height of the ring. They didn’t quite touch, but someone could throw a rock across.

Or a person.

I could jump this gap. I broke into a sprint when I reached it, running as fast as I could up the side of this architecture-stricken building. Then I leaped.

You had to jump up. That gave you an extra second or two. Twisting around, I started to fall, but my speed carried me to the Tokamak ring. As soon as a toe touched its surface, gravity spun around in my favor. I hit it running, slowing down step by step to something comfortable.

Street jumping was the coolest, scariest, and most spine-tingling exciting thing I knew. Not even many night flies had figured out the trick. Everything about being a night fly was dangerous, but street jumping was begging for a fatal accident.

So, you know, I did it all the time.

Down to the sixteenth floor. Those poor, ground-bound fools competing with me. They had to get through a well-lit lot and guarded doors. The first three floors of the building blazed night and day. It’s people on the higher floors who get to go home at night.

One two three four five, ten, fifteen…this was it. A line of windows, along a soot-black wall scarred by rain, same as half the city. All I could tell through the glass was that the lights were off.

There’s always a way in. Always.

First things first, try the easy way. I got my SPUD back out, rebooted it, and turned on the automatic door opening function. Waving it around, I slid the signal up and down the spectrum. If nobody on this floor had an openable window, I’d try higher. There was bound to be some self-obsessed executive who liked the breeze enough to order an outside wall replaced. Someone who would order a wall replaced wouldn’t want to have to open his window by hand, either.

YES. A window slid open on this floor. I crawled into a dark office. A big dark office. The clean desk and chair were the only shadows I could make out clearly. I didn’t stop to explore. Not my business, and only an idiot would steal something and blow the big score.

So, make sure to drop off the file and get paid before the teenage squabblers got caught.

I did prop the door open so I could get back out, and checked the plaque. Nope, not Ibragimov. Ghosting down a hall lit only by the faint lights of com units on the doors, I scanned each one. No, no, no… yes. Ibragimov.

Twisting the handle produced nothing. He kept his door locked when he wasn’t inside.

There is always a way in, but this girl was too smart to bother. Why break the handle off and leave an obvious trail, or waste time climbing around in the ceiling crawlspace, when the information I needed was easier to find? Forgetting the fancy window offices, I took the nearest doorway toward the middle of the tower, and found what I knew I would find—a room with half a dozen cramped single-person desks and ridged, lumpy computers on top.

Perfect. Only the project leader would have the secret files…and every single one of his drudge clerks that did the actual work.

I flashed my SPUD’s general interface program around. No luck. Fine, I sat down at one and flipped it on. The bright blue screen gave me a password prompt. Of course.

What I wouldn’t give for a cyberjack of my own. I’d get through security this pathetic as easy as waving a hand. Plus, it would look wicked cool on me.

Brute force it is. Let’s see if someone has a stupid easy code.

12345. No.

Password. No.

Password1. “No.”

Oh, sharks. I heard that.

So, uh…about those meds I take. They weren’t for the profanity filter. There’s no cure for that. I’m a machine telepath. It’s treatable, if I remember to take my pills.

Every time I missed a dose, I fooled myself into thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal, and every time it came back to haunt me.

But I had my emergency medication patches. I could slap one on later, before my telepathy attack got bad. Before the side effects of the disease hit, like paranoia. Right now, reading a computer’s mind was exactly what I needed. Time to try a few more passwords.

Qwerty. “No.”

I leaned my head against the screen and tried to slip into that detached, anxious feeling when my disease took over.

Letmein. “00000? No.”

Wow. The password was so stupid it hadn’t even occurred to me.

I typed 00000 in, got access, and didn’t even have to search the interface. In front of me sat a folder marked ”2005 Russet Gold.” Inside…yes, this was it. I downloaded the whole thing onto my SPUD.

Time to get out of here. Just as I flipped the computer off, I heard familiar voices.

“I got here first, Mister Wandering Eyes.”

“Don’t even try to pretend you’re the faithful one in this relationship.”

“What relationship, lying mainstreamer? The one—”

I took off running at the first word, and that was the last I heard when I shut the outside window behind me. Computer off, office door closed, window closed… yes, I’d left no trace. Getting out of here.

The jump back across the street made me nervous, since running up the toroid was weird and there wasn’t much of a landing zone. My gravity boots actually liked the curve, and I made the leap comfortably.

Five minutes of hard sprinting later, I reached the ugly, bland garage door in the market alley. Pulling up the door with one hand, I held up my SPUD with the other. “I heard someone was paying for secret blueprints?”

The blue guy in the plastic suit was still there, and paused in mid-smoke. That was the only sign of surprise, and he answered with a blasé, “I assume you also heard about the need for stealth.”

I gave him a huge grin. “I guarantee I left less of a trail than the hormonal train wreck duo. You didn’t know I was listening in, did you?”

He didn’t answer that, just held out his SPUD. “Give me the data.”

I uploaded it from mine, which took a second and a half only because mine was nearly my age, or maybe older.

“Let me see you erase it,” he instructed next. No hesitation here. I didn’t want to be carrying around information this dangerous. I showed him the display as I wiped the files.

He looked down at his fancy, gold-edged SPUD, and smiled. With his bloated face, it made him look like a frog. Enthusiasm entered his voice for the first time as he told me, “You’ve saved me a lot of trouble, young lady. I wanted the marketing plans, and assumed they would be bundled with the blueprints. They weren’t, but you brought me everything. Here.”

Corporate Espionage Man straightened up his briefcase, holding it in both hands. “Would you prefer cash, or do you have a bank account for me to pay into?”

“Donate the money to the Snowflake Cradle Orphanage,” I answered, faking a casual air.

His hairless eyebrows lifted. “Charity? Unusual in a dark-sider, but I admire it. Done. Our business is finished.”

He slid off the counter, and I pulled up the garage door for us both, just in time for the hacker and cat girl to run up. You know, make fun of them as I did, they actually made great time. I’d barely beaten them to the money.

Mister Nameless Money Man walked out past me, telling the pair, “I regret giving you the bad news, but you had an unknown competitor. This young lady delivered the files first.” Dismissing us all from his attention, he set off down the street, briefcase swinging at his side.

I, of course, was already running up the wall and away from my vengeful competition.

“No, wait! Please!” the boy shouted after me.

“We’re not mad, we swear!” echoed the spiky color-changing cat girl.

They certainly didn’t sound mad. I stopped a couple of floors up, squatting on the wall and watching them for signs of danger or betrayal.

The boy with the hacking implants called up, “She’s right. We want to succeed in this game, and we’d be stupid to make an enemy of a night fly as good as you. How did you even get those files?”

I shrugged. It probably wasn’t the answer he wanted, but I lifted up my personal utility device. “I copied them onto my SPUD.”

The cat girl froze up, arms raised and twisted at weird angles, claws curled. She started hyperventilating. “You didn’t! TATO is a SPUD Industries branch! They’ll find out the information was stolen when our contact uses it for his purposes, and they’ll trace your machine for having it!”

FRACTURE. I had no idea that was even possible. This was unimaginably bad.

The hacker boy held out his hands, one held up toward me, the other toward his girlfriend. “Whoa. Calm down, both of you. I think we’re okay. What model is that, night fly?”

“Ivory Fingerling.”

He let out a relieved sigh. “SPUDTech stopped supporting those years ago. I’m amazed it does anything useful.”

“Not much,” I admitted, smirking as relief washed over me.

Cyber geeks love to explain, so he did. “There have been two backwards compatibility breaks since then. That SPUD is as close to invisible as you can get in cyberspace.”

Straightening up with a lot of twitches and jerks of her spine, the cat adjusted her jacket and put on a weak but friendly smile. “Hey, we really mean it. None of the professional mercenaries want to work with dark siders our age, but we’re in this to succeed. You could be a valuable person to know. Share contact information?”

…

A grin split my face almost painfully wide. “Sure, why not?” A few button taps, and our SPUDS beamed the information to each other.

After all, this was only my first walk. These two were good, if they’d stop fighting. We could all have a bright future of excitement, money, danger, victory, and money ahead of us.

The names that appeared in my SPUD were Stephen Neilson and Celestial Wonder Meowpurr. Oh, yeah, she was an Enchanted. Not all of them were rich. Look at Liriel, with her creepy anonymous patron in the Enchanted community. Some of the poor ones would put up with the rest of the city’s barbaric technology to fund their hobby.

On the way home, I slapped on a patch. I made sure to take my regular pill too, before I collapsed into bed. Thanks to the medication, relaxing enough to fall asleep would not be a problem.

Daylight burned through the window when gentle but insistent hands shook me awake. I looked up at Ms. Understanding’s smiling face as she said, “I really am getting concerned about how much you sleep, Vanity Rose dear. Fortunately for you, young lady, I have good news to announce, and would rather not ruin it with discipline.”

Despite the medicine fog, I rolled eagerly out of bed and followed her down to the foyer where the other kids were gathered. Oh, yeah, I wasn’t going to miss this. My moment of triumph. Not that any of them would ever know, but Vanity Rose saved our home.

They were all fully dressed, bright eyed and bushy-tailed, or bushy-eared in Chaos’s case. I wasn’t the only kid whose parents had monkeyed with their own genes. This was the middle of their day, but nobody grinned as wide as me.

Ms. Understanding clasped her hands together, and sounded absolutely joyous. “Children, a large charitable donation has been made to the Foundation. The vast majority of it will go into the trust to protect us from a rainy day, but our holiday gift budget will be noticeably larger this year.”

Cheers filled the room, filled the orphanage. Fists pumped in the air. Feet stampeded around as everyone retreated to their favorite places to make plans. That left only me standing stock still where I’d been.

The subtext was obvious. The orphanage had never been in danger. I’d totally misread the signs.

Well. A good deed worth doing anyway, I guess?

The doorbell rang. Ms. Understanding gave me a look, but before she could turn that into an order, I stomped up the stairs in a very honest impression of an exhausted and overly-medicated fourteen-year-old girl. I just didn’t head back to my dorm. I lurked by the railing instead, spying through the plastic posts.

She opened the front door on a frightening pair of people. They both wore squared off, expensive coats with logos I couldn’t read from here. The ordinary man had a hard face, two scars on his cheek, and a stiff, alert posture. Next to him stood…something. I couldn’t tell if it was a robot or cyborg, much less gender. It wore ordinary drab brown clothes, but instead of a head a metal eye as wide as its shoulders floated without a neck. The irising pupil swiveled constantly, taking in the orphanage behind Ms. Understanding.

As soon as she saw them, a blue field blinked into place across the doorway.

The human unbent enough for a friendly greeting. “Good afternoon, Ma’am. We’re from SPUD Industries Military Enforcement. My name is Agent Jester, and this is Scanner. May we come in?”

“No.” I’d never seen or heard Ms. Understanding so curt.

Agent Jester took off his hat, holding it in both hands, and smiled unconvincingly. “We only want to interview the children. I promise you, we mean no harm.”

“No.” Just as flat as before.

Agent Jester was determined to pretend this was a friendly conversation. He dipped his head in respect and apology. “I understand. We should not have shown up so suddenly. If I called the Foundation and made an appointment, would that work?”

“Yes,” said Ms. Understanding, the word slower than usual, forced, and unwanted.

She slammed the door on them.

I collapsed to the floor, sitting against the railings, but not even slightly drowsy. Not anymore. My heart pounded in my chest. Something had gone wrong. SPUD was already looking for me.

Oh, shard.

Chapter Two

“This is bad. They know who I am. They know where I am.” Breathing heavily, I leaned my head into a hand, staining my fingers with grease.

I gritted my teeth. No. How dare they follow me home? Besides, they didn’t bust in and drag me off, they investigated.

Pushing to my feet, I ran back to my bed and grabbed what clothes I hadn’t fallen asleep in. “They know, but they don’t know everything. They’re messing with me. I have to find out what they know.”

“Rose, dear?”

I spun around. Ms. Understanding was watching me from the balcony, hands together and leaning to one side. She walked so quietly, I hadn’t heard her climb the stairs.

She straightened up, and slumped to the other side. Her eyes remained perfectly fixed on me. With her ”concerned voice” backed up by a furrowed brow, she asked, “Are you alright?”

“I just missed most of the day, is all,” I assured her.

Total casualness failure. Her eyebrows pinched another notch together. “I’m sure this is the last thing you want to hear, Rose, but maybe you should take a patch and go back to bed. You’re showing signs of hypomania, and a panic attack would be worse than missing a day.”

I gave her a skeptical, even sarcastic look. “You woke me up to excitement.”

“You can tell me if someone is scaring you.” She said it softly, and I tried not to flinch. Well, it couldn’t have been hard to put together, right? Did I really believe a robot who never sleeps didn’t notice me sneaking out at night?

But if she was still probing, she also wasn’t sure. Not of everything. And I had to be sure. I had to do something. My fists itched and my gut knotted at the memory of Agent Jester’s fake smile. Except I wasn’t getting out of any windows while she was watching me.

“It’s fine!” I snapped at her, which probably didn’t help anything, but whatever. Stomping past the robot doing her best to care about me, I hurried down the stairs. Was sheyes, she was still watching me.

I did the most innocent thing I could think of, and trudged out into the backyard. Here, at least, she didn’t follow.

We were lucky to have a yard, this far up. A balcony stuck out of the side of the building on the orphanage, and someone had filled it in with dirt and planted grass and bushes. They were scraggly, not all that tall, and came up in weird colors sometimes, but had survived everything city rain and the stomping feet of twelve children could throw at them. The support beams underneath had really cool carvings, although I couldn’t see those from up here. I’d need my gravity boots to go check.

The gravity boots I desperately needed now, and couldn’t get.

The gravity boots that Liriel held with prim distaste as she walked into the yard a minute later.

I paused in kicking a shrub that didn’t deserve my wrath but had gotten it anyway. “Uh….”

What else could I say? Was there anything I’d expected less than this? Liriel bringing me my boots meant she had figured out at least something about what was going on, knew where I hid them, and could open the lock on the box.

She placed them in my outstretched hands, and I stared some more. At nearly seventeen, Liriel was the oldest kid in the orphanage, and looked older. The biosculpt had turned her into a fantasy novel cover, with skin just a shade too green and even to be any human race, hair a vivid green like forest leaves, and amber eyes. She favored tight pants and tight jackets with hoods that at least hid her huge, pointy ears, both items of clothing in brown or green. Her face was pretty enough, but in a heart-shaped, inhuman way. She had a strong tendency to smile or pout while staring vacantly into the distance.

It was always weird to be reminded that the intense, creative girl she’d been before the name and body change was still in there, she only looked different.

I settled on, “Why…?”

Now she smiled. “I had a dream. Your quest will lead me to my unicorn.”

Okay, that was the Liriel I knew, pre- and post-biosculpt.

Breaking it to her that she was crazy would be rude, mean, petty, unnecessary, and most importantly would waste time I didn’t have. Hopping from one foot to the other, I yanked the shoes on and took off running along the side of the skyscraper we lived in, angling down toward the street.

Exactly one aircar was parked on the street. Who parked aircars at ground level in this neighborhood? Carts, sure. West Angel City’s endless legion of stolen bicycles, yes.

Why hadn’t anybody vandalized that expensive red and gold eyesore? The big, obvious SPUD logo on the hood might be that reason.

I reached the pavement. No sign of the corporate thugs. They were taking their time, planting spying devices in the hallways.

Two could play that game. First up: Try the automatic door opener on my SPUD on their car.

The trunk clicked.

Arrogance, thy name is Megacorps. A standard, no-security SPUD-triggered trunk lock was the dumbest thing you could put on an aircar that actually went out on the streets, unless you were sure you were too important to be robbed. That same corporate ego would make this plan work. I climbed in, unbuckled one of my wristbands, and jammed a metal spike into the lock mechanism good and hard.

Hey, what if…?

I felt around the back of the trunk. Yes, there was a slot where the seats could be lowered to extend the trunk. Just what I wanted. I stuck my hand in, feeling around until I found the knob that would unlock those seats.

Whoops, nevermind! Voices! This was good enough. I pulled the trunk down so it looked closed, and held it there.

The corporate thugs completely missed it. Doors opened, bodies shuffled into seats, doors closed. Gravity coils hummed, and we floated up into the air.

Okay, you evil, pus-hearted, child-hunting goons, get stage one of your downfall started. Blab your secrets.

They made me wait. I glared into the darkness toward the front of the car. Finally, the human toad, Agent Jester, said, “Yes.”

Just what I needed. The eyeball thing really was a robot, and mute. Agent Fake must have a receiver for its radio signals, or something.

Good for me, he was chatty. My heart leaped when he added, “Older AIs lose their sense of morality and social duty. Their devotion to whoever they’re programmed to love wears it down.”

Keep talking, thug.

He did. “You’re better off. All it does is torture them.”

More annoying silence as the robot transmitted. Then, “It will. They have no good reason to refuse, and they won’t want to offend us. The bot will obey its programming, and give us access. With any luck, we can neutralize its resistance. If not, we’ll have identified her and taken her away before it works its way up to disobey orders.”

Rrrg. Well, I’d known they were really after me.

The conversation dried up. Straining for more took up enough of my attention that my hold on the door of the trunk weakened. With a start, I pulled it back down before it betrayed me.

But during that split second and between the five-centimeter gap, I’d gotten a peek outside.

The thugs had clammed up. I took a moment to scooch around and peek out for real.

The city zoomed by. We passed by buildings cleaner than my neighborhood, more elaborate in shape, but less bedecked with wires and gargoyles and fire escapes and other entertaining, useful decorations. Agent Jerk liked to drive high, and we were in a busy area. Pill-shaped aircars with dark windows sped in various directions beneath us.

I bet I could jump out and land on that green car with the fins right below and behind us. The wind might be a problem. Wind was a problem just walking the city walls high up. It whipped fiercely through the gap of the trunk’s hood.

Opening the hood a little more, I stuck my whole head out. Now the wind sucked at me, trying to pull me out, and looking at the blobby colors of the street flying past below made me dizzy. My whole body tingled.

Agent Jester spoke. I yanked my head back inside and pulled the hood down so I could hear.

Nothing. I missed it.

No, a few seconds later he spoke again. “We’ll have to. I don’t know how he found out about her, but he wants her badly.”

Silence full of robot words I couldn’t hear.

“You know why,” snapped Jester, impatient.

Another pause.

“You don’t have to tell me, but it’s important to him, so we find her and convince her.” Plenty of sarcasm in that statement. So. It wasn’t all of SPUD that was the problem. Just one guy. If I could deal with him, I’d be safe.

The aircar swerved, and slowed. We were coming in for a landing. As soon as I was sure the goon and his ugly eyeball minion were clear, I’d jump out and go up the wall of the building. There’d be a way in. There’s always a way in.

We slid into a large garage, practically a docking bay, way up off the ground. Fine by me. It didn’t have a door that would close on me, and other parked aircars meant lots of cover for sneaking, and maybe targets to vent my wrath on.

The car set down, and the gravity coils stopped humming. Doors opened and shut. I stayed silent and still.

Right up until the hood got yanked up out of my hand.

“AAAAA!” I yelled, crawling back as Agent Jester reached for me. I kicked him in the face, and shoved my arm into the gap between seats. Latch, latch…there.

I didn’t have time to open it. Stronger hands than Jester’s closed on my waist, and the robot Scanner hauled me out of the trunk and tucked me under one arm.

I kicked his back. I punched his chest. I punched him in the giant eyeball, and scratched my knuckles. The pain made me wince, but if it had had even the slightest effect, I’d have done it again.

“I can see why he wants this-” Agent Jester started to say, but he’d leaned in too close to get a look at me. Shoving at Scanner’s chest with one hand, I pushed far enough forward to smack him in the jaw with my fist. A glancing blow, but it shut the gloating business demon up.

Rubbing his doubly-abused chin, he nodded toward a door. The ugly robot flunky carried me inside.

I kicked. I squirmed and jerked from side to side. I growled and screeched. Wage slaves peeked out of doorways and one guy with a clipboard pressed against the wall to avoid my flailing, but nobody had the guts to object to two enforcers kidnapping a teenage girl.

Anyway, I couldn’t be the first. This was that kind of place. Grey metal lined the walls and ceiling, with recessed lights and few decorations. This place expected to see violence. I did rip a poster of Fry Smiley off the wall and cover Scanner’s eyeball with it, but he didn’t even slow down as he pulled it out of my grip with his free hand and threw it into a trash can. With perfect aim. Of course. Robot.

We turned into a room. I grabbed the door frame, but might as well not have bothered. While metal, this room had lots of monitors. If I got lucky and Scanner was mechanically stupid enough to let me near one of the protruding ones, I’d grab it and see what he thought of one of those to the eye-face. If he brought me near the recessed screens, I’d break them.

A guy waited for us. He didn’t look like an executive, or a scientist. He looked like a mechanic. Weathered face, short, square-cropped salt-and-pepper beard and hair, loose leather pants and flannel shirt with hints of old oil stains. Broad shoulders, not fat, not thin. His eyes lit up and he grinned with anticipation when he saw me.

Most of the screens had x-rays and organ scans of a girl or woman on them. I could bet who.

“We found—” Agent Jester started to say behind me.

I screamed over him, “You power mad freak! Those are from my doctor’s files, aren’t they? Have fun torturing me, because the blueprints—”

Mechanic guy said in a loud but calm voice, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Miss Rose, but that’s not why you’re here.”

“Vanity!” I barked, then went quiet because, well, what was going on here, anyway?

In a tired, exasperated tone, Jester reported, “The bot wouldn’t let us in, but she broke into our car.”

The door we came in wasn’t the only one in this monitor room. Another stood at the opposite doorway, and a girl stepped through it, asking the bearded guy, “What is with all the screaming?”

The girl and I exchanged looks, and hated each other instantly. She had negative style. Mid-teens like me, she had short, pixie-cut black hair and an athletic build. The build was very, very obvious, because she was dressed in a metal bikini. A grey camo-print metal bikini. Seriously. It displayed lots and lots of penny-colored skin, flaunting her immaculately even complexion. She had a round face, sharp-corned eyes, and a prominent mouth that puckered in disgust. It was probably the same expression as mine. This girl was the princess of tastelessness.

Plus, she had an arrogantly confident stance, one fist on her hip and the other arm hanging, her hips angled out to one side, and it made my fist itch.

She stopped eyeing me, and turned to the bearded guy. She said something, but I had stopped listening.

Now I could see her back, and that changed everything. A shiny metal ridge ran up and down her spine. Not something she was wearing, an implant, roughly diamond shaped with the widest point below her shoulder blades, at the same height as a socket that went in deep. The bikini hooked to the plates, which was fortunate because they would be a pain to dress around.

More girls crowded at the doorway. Only one was daring enough to wear the stupid bikini. The others had made do with skin-tight bodysuits in glaring colors like red and yellow and blue. Those did have patches on them, and shoulder pads, and neat ornaments. Numbers and logos as well. The sockets in their forearms and calves blended into the plastic. On the original girl, the metal-lined holes showed in sharp relief.

“You’re mech pilots,” I whispered, awe and relief both flooding me.

The girl glanced briefly and contemptuously my way, then went back to scolding the bearded guy. “What part of ‘elite operatives’ is enhanced by grabbing ignorant, ragged urchins off the street?”

That look. Against her dark irises I could easily see a ring of gold around the pupil. The cybernetics ran through her whole nervous system.

I wanted those implants so bad my whole body hurt for it. And a giant robot. A giant robot! Imagine stomping around in a giant robot! Except it looked like I wouldn’t have to imagine.

The bearded guy turned away from her to address me. So. He was in charge, despite her attitude. He looked both apologetic and eager. “My name is Lazarus Dot C A P, head trainer. This is Squad Leader Maricel—”

Too gleeful to let him finish, I squealed, “And all that fuss at the orphanage was just to ask me to be a mecha pilot?”

Lazarus stood up straighter, proud now. “You were the prime candidate, but if any others had qualified, they would have been welcome. We can test you now, if you like.”

He looked at me like I was a chest full of gold and jewels. Maricel looked at me like I was a roach she’d been ordered to swallow.

I was suddenly aware what I looked like. I had on maybe half my spiked bands, no makeup at all, and I hadn’t prepared my hair. It stuck out sideways above the shaved sides of my head like a squashed, multi-colored hedgehog. Not to mention I was still held horizontal off the ground in a freaky eye robot’s grip. Compared to Maricel’s cynical arrogance, I looked like…an ignorant, ragged urchin.

I pointed at Maricel, and asked Lazarus, “Does being tested involve punching her in the face?”

“Yes,” he answered, apparently sincere.

This time, my wriggling got Scanner to put me down. I stood up as proud as the trainer and his snotty apprentice. “Let’s do this.”

Strolling haughtily past Maricel and the other girls, and trying to remember they looked even stupider than me, I followed Lazarus into an absolutely huge chamber. How big was this building!? The walls were scarred, stained metal, and at least twice as high as the giant robots lined up along one wall.

Oh, they were beautiful. Better than that, they were ugly. Old, beat-up, the robots were both articulated like humans and not quite human shaped. Too many squared off shapes, and weird, distended heads covered in blobs instead of facial features. One robot was not lined up with the others, its back opened up to reveal a cockpit high in the chest cavity. A rolling staircase waited for me to claim that throne.

But first, Lazarus led me to another door. This one looked more like a hatch. As it unfolded, he explained, “You’ll need a temporary jack for the test. There’s no point in doing an expensive and time-consuming cybernetic operation unless you pass. The temporary will work well enough for testing purposes.”

Oh, yes, please. Keeping my jaw tightly clamped to stop myself from saying that out loud and looking like an idiot, I stepped into the little chamber. More of a ”pod,” honestly. It was egg shaped, with mechanical arms folded into the walls. A handprint marked opposite sides of that wall, and along with a pair of footprints on the floor…well, the purpose was obvious.

Before I could take that position, a basin swung open in the wall, and a little monitor by the door lit up with a picture of…ugh, Fry Smiley.

“Hi, I’m Fry Smiley!” he declared unnecessarily, “You must be here for testing. Take off your—”

That was when I punched him. It hurt, but to my immense satisfaction the screen fractured, and the display went out.

Undress? Ugh. Well, I couldn’t wear one of those plates under these clothes. I took off mine, and dumped them in the wall bin. After delaying a few seconds to push my hair up, I reluctantly dropped my gravity boots into the bin as well, and placed my hands and feet in the indicated position.

My sacrifice was rewarded by a heavy robot arm swinging out of the ceiling and sticking a diamond shaped piece of metal to my back. Oh, yeah. It must have glued in place, because there weren’t any clamps. I did feel something press tightly into my spine and prickle where the other girls had sockets.

Bracers locked around my wrists and ankles, with their own prickly sockets. Not too shabby.

Finally, an arm with a nozzle on the end extended and sprayed every centimeter of me between neck and bracers with thick paint that settled into a rubbery body suit. Electric blue? Seriously? And the other girls had actual suits, with decorations, not this temporary thing.

Worth it to pilot a mecha, Vanity. Besides, when I got a permanent suit—no way was I walking around in metal underwear—I could get it in charcoal off-black, with a grey skull covering my chest. Yeah. And spikes. Lots of spikes. They would be completely excessive, but that would just make up for the generic display models of my teammates. Besides, restraint was for boring people.

Confession: I’d kept my collar on. They could completely despike my corpse if they wanted.

The hatch to the mech hangar opened. I stalked out, metal floor cold under my bare feet, and leaped up the stairs three steps at a time to the cockpit.

Well, this wasn’t what I expected. Looking inside, it was…a tiny grey chamber, little more than a seat and four holes. Whatever. If Maricel could do it, I could do it. I climbed in, sat down, and stuck my arms and legs into the slots. Sure enough, something locked into the bracers, and a shiver of alien sensation went up my limbs.

I snickered. “Yeah, this is totally safe.”

The back of the mech folded shut behind me. Only a tiny little round light lit the cockpit, and there was nothing to see anyway. Over my shoulder, something moved, and I felt a plug shove its way into the plate on my back.

A helmet lowered, placing a screen over my eyes. It didn’t light up immediately, but I could already feel the second, robotic body around me, ghostlike but connected.

A woman’s voice whispered through static, “…trust…wants….”

Something clicked. I twisted my head down to peer over my shoulder. Four clear tubes filled with red liquid protruded from the back plate. Pain stung me under each one, and the red liquid compressed down the tubes until they were empty.

Dizziness swept through me like a wave, then disappeared. My vision blurred, overlapped. I closed my real eyes, so I could see more clearly through the mecha’s, out into the now much smaller hangar. I could feel every centimeter of the robot, and flex one joint of one finger as easily as if it were my real hand.

“So that’s why you wanted me so badly. You knew I’m a machine telepath!” I said out loud.

“We’re so closely connected. Can you hear me?” asked the woman’s voice.

Lazarus, who obviously couldn’t hear her, said over an intercom, “We have much better drugs for controlling the negative side effects of your condition than the cheap ones the public can buy. We can unleash your true full potential.”

I felt the microphone in my robot body, and flipped it off. My flesh and blood shoulder twitched when I did, but I’d get more graceful, fast.

“I can hear you,” I whispered.

“Hello, new pilot. I hope you’re not angry,” said the voice of the mecha in my head.

“Naaah. Call me Vanity. Are you an AI?”

“Not properly. However, we accumulate echoes through the nerve connection.” She did have a pretty monotone voice, with only hints of emotion.

Flipping the microphone back on, I raised a giant robotic hand and flexed each finger, one at a time. Demonstration made, I asked Lazarus, “So, was this the test?”

His answer came back with audible amusement. “No. You did say you wanted to fight.”

The robots on the opposite wall stepped forward, clenched their fists, and came for me.

One two three… six of them?! At the same time?

But they lurched. Not clumsily, but with no more grace or speed than a regular walker. I, on the other hand, could sprint over to one end of the line, duck a punch, and hit the bulky red combat robot twice in the chest, rocking it backwards. That had to rattle the occupant.

Distantly, I could hear her robot asking, “Are you okay, Letice?” with the fatalistic tone of someone who knew Letice couldn’t hear her.

“Behind you!” warned my mecha. The others could run, after all. They had curled around, surrounding me. I backed up, so I at least had only the wall at my back.

Fists flew. I ducked some more, danced aside, shoved two robots against each other so that both fell to the floor.

A punch hit my mecha’s head. Ow. It definitely hurt. Not bad, but I felt it.

A kick hit me in the midsection, rattling my cockpit. I only had to stagger back two steps, and didn’t fall. These robots were much more stable than they looked. Their feet stuck to the floor like….

Oh, no way. Now that I thought about it, I recognized the sensation exactly.

There were gravity boots built into these mecha!

These girls would not know what hit them.

Another punch came, from the robot on my far left. I grabbed her arm, planted a foot against her chest, and took advantage of the shift in leverage to swing her up into the air and throw her at the remaining two. I knew exactly how to twist my foot to free the gravity connection as well. Before they could do anything but take the blow, I ran up the wall and onto the ceiling of the hangar chamber.

I leaped, grabbed their heads as gravity swung around and they were suddenly ”down” again. Then I slammed them both hard into the floor, cushioning my own fall in the process.

Hopping to my metal feet, I dusted off my hands, the clanking feeble compared to all the banging around we’d just sent ringing through the room. “Next!”

“I accept that invitation,” said Maricel, loud and calm. One robot, copper colored, hadn’t attacked me with the others. Now it stepped forward and flexed its fingers.

The mecha voice begged, “Please don’t hurt her.”

“No promises,” I growled, and charged.

She stepped aside, grabbed my arm, and steered me into the wall. I wasn’t like the others, though. I hit with my shoulder and rolled.

When I came back to face Maricel’s mecha, it was to see her fist heading for my face.

She was fast! The throw had given me some distance, at least. I had time to swing up an arm to block.

She leaned into the punch, and it shoved my arm aside. Her fist crashed into my mecha’s head, and my vision flickered. Before I got my bearings, her robot slammed into mine’s chest, bouncing my flesh and blood body inside. A foot lifted, planted right in the middle of my robot’s stomach, and I felt the clashing sense of direction as the gravity boots took hold.

The next thing I knew the cockpit shook again, and my robot lay face-down on the floor, bruised and dazed.

That pleading—my robot hadn’t been talking to me. It was talking to Maricel.

With a hiss and crunch, the back of my mech opened up, and the cockpit released my arms and legs. I staggered up to sit on one of the hatch plates.

Similar noises heralded Maricel’s robot opening up. With nimble experience, she climbed down the seams of its armor to the floor, and gave me a satisfied smirk.

I pushed myself to my feet, hopped down to the floor myself, and as I wobbled for balance pointed straight at her. “You are…WICKED COOL.”

She froze, too surprised to react as I ran up and grabbed one of her hands in both of mine. I let her have it verbally the whole way. “You slaughtered me. I cannot believe how good you are at this. And you’re a machine telepath, too! I knew I wasn’t the only one, but I’ve never met one before. With drugs that let you use it without going crazy? What is that even like? You’re an incredible pilot on top of it. I did not stand a chance. Have you seen combat?”

“Yes?” she asked, her normal confident control not quite back.

“Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.” The mecha answered in a whispering chorus.

And images. Memories. I remembered flames. A crumbling city. Civilians screaming and running as I….

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.

I shuddered, eyes squeezed closed, until the mecha stopped talking.

Straightening up from my hunched crouch, I took a deep breath, and reached around behind me to grab the metal plate on my back. It was awkward and hurt, but I didn’t care. Peeling it off, I dropped it loudly to the floor of the mech bay. It only took a second to find the buckles on the wrist and ankle bracers, then they joined the pile.

By now, Lazarus and the team had crowded around us. I glared at the trainer. “Give me my clothes. I am not doing this.”

The girl in the red bodysuit ran off to the monitor room, and came back with a pile of my stuff. My boots lay on top. Good.

Maricel was already back to her arrogant hip-cocked slouch. I glared at her so hard my eyes burned. “You are a spoiled, stuck-up, petty sadist, and I want to be your friend so badly I can taste it, but I am not killing people.”

Flipping her the bird, I turned my back on them all and walked out into the monitor room. Behind me, I heard Lazarus’s resigned voice. “We’ll try again sometime, in case you reconsider.”

“That’s fine, I won’t run out of middle finger,” I answered, flipping him off, too.

Out into the hall, I set off for the garage. It made sense that there would be…yes, there was an elevator, conveniently close to parking. I got in, stabbed ”1,” and a minute later strolled out of the lobby onto the sidewalk.

Smack dab into Chaos, Liriel, Nathaniel, and a girl with a huge sword that I didn’t know.

I looked between the four of them. “I have so many questions.”

Chaos and Liriel threw themselves against me in crushing hugs. Chaos wasn’t all that big, a round-cheeked, dark boy with a sensible dark coat, a huge purple backpack, tall animal ears, and teeth just a bit more pointed than most people’s. They showed off a lot, since he smiled so often. It was an honest, charming, world-loving smile, and had to play a big part in his success as a door to door salesboy. Liriel was bigger than me, and between the two I was engulfed in desperate love that smelled like cinnamon, fresh leaves, and charcoal.

From outside the crush, Nathaniel said, “I don’t know. They were freaking out.”

My orphanage siblings withdrew to arm’s length. Chaos, eyes wide, gushed, “I’m so glad we found you. When you disappeared, Ms. Understanding lost it.”

“Ms. Understanding doesn’t ‘lose it.’ She’s the most stable AI in the city. I know.” I tapped the side of my head.

Liriel laid her hands on my shoulders, smiling wryly. “I know that well, for after seven days without your medications, who was it that found you curled up in the corner reciting nonsense? It was I, fair sister, who held you upon your bed and covered your throat in patches that you might sleep and recover.”

I’d gotten two things out of that week. One was catching Ms. Understanding’s profanity filter. The other…. “Then I’m telling you, relax. She’s already been through every emotional crisis a robot can face.”

“Never before has she believed one of her charges kidnapped,” said Liriel, flat and solemn.

Chaos shuddered, squeezing his arms around his chest. “She picked up a bread knife and said It. I thought we were going to die.”

Whoa.

Liriel stepped behind Chaos and gave him a gentle hug. “I could reassure our matron but little, for I saw the agents drive off with you. Yet when Chaos and I suggested we could go find you ourselves, it seemed enough.”

Chaos sank into her embrace, then gave a little jump. Pawing first at his backpack, then at his coat, he pulled out his SPUD and told it, “Call Mom.” Holding it up to his ear, a second later he blurted, “She’s here. We found her. She just walked out of the building on her own. Here.”

He shoved his SPUD right up to my face. Ms. Understanding asked in her ”concerned” voice, “Did you take their offer, Rose?”

“Not now, not ever,” I answered with absolute confidence.

“That’s nice. I’ll see you when you get home, dear,” she said, suddenly cheerful.

Chaos took back the SPUD, told Ms. Understanding, “We’ll take her home, don’t worry,” and shut it off with a deep sigh of relief.

I folded my arms, squeezing my clothing bundle against my chest, and on general principles asked, “What if I don’t want to go home with you?”

Chaos grinned his adorable grin. “Then I’ll hire these mercenaries to deliver you by force.”

Nathaniel, who’d been watching all this with his hands in his pockets, raised his eyebrows. “How much?”

“Uh….” Chaos rummaged around in his pockets some more, and pulled out a few bills and some change. “Ten bucks?”

The girl laughed. Nathaniel held out his hand. “Deal.”

Chaos poured money into his hand, and I mentally surrendered. As pathetic a fee as that was for a dark-sider, for Chaos it was a lot of money. He was serious.

I shrugged, bouncing my bundle of clothing and grumbling. “Fine. But I have two questions. First, what happened to Celestial Wonder Meowpurr?”

Because this girl was not Celestial Wonder Meowpurr. Nathaniel’s new friend—new girlfriend, from how close she stood to him—was very different, but just as obviously a dark-sider. First, she carried that sword slung on her back, and it was as tall as me, which meant it was as tall as her. Despite our equal height, I could tell at a glance she was older than me. Maybe older than him. Her face lacked that teenage puppy fat. Of course, so did mine, but I had a bad case of genetics.

I could not get over how big that sword was. The slab of dull grey metal was more like a cleaver than a sword, a massive chopper that had to weigh at least fifty kilograms. Okay, she obviously had some kind of magnetic sheathe because it floated centimeters away from her spine, but if she could wield that thing…then she must have heavily cyborged her bones and muscles. Cooooool. She had long red hair, and pale, freckly skin in contrast to Nathaniel’s dark.

And style. I wanted to get in her pants. Not in the lewd way. I literally wanted those pants. They gleamed like silk, red and tight and knee length, with iridescent gold dragons spiraling down the sides from each hip. A bandage tied down her chest, but no regular bandage. This was a single long sash that matched the pants, the same gleaming red with a dragon running all the way from one end to the other, with head and tail knotted together behind her back.

She topped it all off, or bottomed it all off, with sandals on her feet. They matched Liriel’s in fact.

While I stared at his new girlfriend, Nathaniel coughed guiltily. “This is Lucy, my new partner. Meowpurr was a little too high strung.”

The swordswoman sneered. “If by that you mean she’s a—”

Nathaniel poked her sharply in the elbow. “Please don’t? I’m not over her.”

I nodded, accepting all of this. “Second question: We’re kilometers from home. How did you get here so fast, and how do you expect us to get home?”

Chaos beamed at me, bouncing on his toes. “The subway!”

…

“West Angel has subways?!”

Chapter Three

With a sigh of relief, I passed through the dripping arch of ink blank bones, under the red searchlight gaze of the skull at its peak. At last, I was free of that midnight bathroom of twisted human remains. Not that the sigh was about that. Black marble carved like bones catapulted this train station to the top of my public restrooms list. No, I was relieved to be wearing more denim and leather than skin-tight rubber again. The mecha pilot look was so…ugh. Zero regrets leaving behind that aspect of the job.

My companions waited for me by the final set of barricades in front of the track. More barricades in a ”piled skull” theme staggered in rows up to the stairs to the surface, with another set at the top. That top wall, the ones near the stairs, and a good chunk of the floor by the bathroom were mostly jagged craters now, lined with more stone bodies, of skeleton warriors and armored elves prostrate in death. The regular alcoves along the stairs with headless, cross-bow carrying skeletons pinned to the walls with spears was an especially nice touch.

I couldn’t see that far up from here, but I stared and remembered the lush greenhouse at the top as I asked Liriel, “So, does this mean the freaky building with all the spiderwebbed windows near home is also a subway station?”

She grimaced, her ears twitching visibly under her hood. “The Spire of Infestation. We must skirt its boundaries with caution before we breathe easily again.”

Chaos adjusted his backpack with a cheerful bounce. “I go all over West Angel from that station. This is a direct line back.”

Clattering and faint, distant giggling drifted up the train tunnel. Nathaniel, who had stopped to examine a damaged subway map carved into the wall, hurried back over to us. He tripped over a raised skeleton arm, but caught himself before he fell. The footing in this place was a nightmare, I’d give him that, especially with all the dripping water that ran into the tracks. No problem for the sure feet of Vanity Rose.

No, gravity shoes don’t count as cheating.

Louder clattering, and a louder laughing chorus, although it still remained in the background. Something pale lurched from side to side in in the dark train tunnel, and then a six-meter-tall human skull rushed out.

Seriously, the skull was big. Behind it, like an undead caterpillar, rank upon rank of giant ribs curved up from underneath. Down below hundreds of human-sized bone arms and legs kept the train upright and moving in the pit it ran along. Swaying drunkenly, but upright.

At irregular intervals, doors made of oversized teeth unlocked and gaped open. Chaos stepped inside with a grin, and a wave for the metal skeleton conductor. “Hey, Hierophant Mortifax!”

I followed closely behind Chaos, then Lucy and Nathaniel closely behind me, and finally a hesitant Liriel.

The conductor saw her. Everyone froze. Chaos whispered, “Uh-oh.”

Credit where it’s due, this guy had style. He’d gone full body cyborg, his entire body replaced with a shiny grey, sleek and stylized metal skeleton. Only thanks to the drugs that kept my machine telepathy going was I even sure a human brain hid inside that smooth, noseless and mouthless, simplified skull. Tiny voices whispered in my head about pH balances and electrolytes, the background chatter of his organic life support. Paying attention opened me up to the burble of SPUDs belonging to passengers as they accessed cyberspace sites, and the train engine chattering, “Let’s go time to go gotta go fast ready now let’s go,” and so on and so on.

They put a full AI in a vehicle with no voice that only goes in one direction? Really?

Oh, yeah, back to the conductor guy, Mortifax. He deserved mad credit for disposing of his whole body for this undead costume, but two touches really put him over the top. A green flame with no obvious source flickered and writhed inside his rib cage, and his right hand clasped a staff taller than a man, which looked like it was made of human bones tied together with brown leather thongs. Convincingly so. Only the computer murmur inside betrayed it as a fake.

His shining green eyes and the fire in his chest both flared brighter as he stared at Liriel. Skulls hanging from the top of his staff clattered their teeth. In a hoarse, metallic voice he challenged her, “Arrogant sun spawn. You have come seeking death, and found it.”

Liriel pulled her hood back, curly emerald hair spilling all over her shoulders, and met his gaze with flat determination. “I shelter beneath the Great Tree. Death has no power over a seed, and you have no power over me.”

Holy shacks, Liriel.

He growled, but it merged into a malicious chuckle. “Death has power over everyone. Goodbye, meat.”

Mortifax raised his staff a few centimeters. Lucy grabbed the blade of her sword. Neither of them got further than that, because Liriel shouted something that sounded like, “Lithibiendareli!” There were probably more l’s and th’s in there. All elvish sounds like that.

Whatever the word or phrase meant, the skeletal conductor recoiled. Then the flame in his chest surged, and he straightened up with a snarl.

Liriel shouted the word again. And again. And again. Each time, he flinched, taking a half step back.

Fists clenched, breathing heavy, Liriel glared at him. This time, when he stood upright, it was with slower resignation. “So be it. I cannot touch you until you raise a hand to me, sun spawn.” His green eyes turned to me, Lucy, and Nathaniel, and the hint of growl returned. “But your filthy weed does not protect the mainstreamers or the soulless. I will report them to the Dark Brotherhood. If they are still here when I return….”

He trailed off into laughter, sweeping between us. I got pushed aside, and Lucy stood out of his way, hand still on her sword and watching him like a hawk.

The train had quite a few passengers arranged in benches along the rib cage walls. Most of them looked like regular men and women in regular coats toying with regular SPUDs. Most of them held up an amulet from around their neck as he passed. Very few even looked at him, but then, several were swearing venomously at Fry Smiley. Must be a new update.

Smiling again, Chaos pulled me into a seat right up front. Liriel sat on my other side, and then the mercenary couple. On the shadowy train, his sharp white teeth glowed from his dark brown skin. Seriously, good smile, good kid. He practically bounced in his seat as he explained, “We’re fine, now. Usually they pretend not to notice me. Sometimes they give me candy. I forgot they’d get upset about Liriel, but the necromancers are the nicest people down here.”

My fake elf older sister let that pass, and the train swung into motion, scuttling into the dark train tunnel. Very dark. Only the lights brought by the passengers showed anything, and the train rocked erratically from side to side, ribs occasionally scraping against the tunnel walls. With a good meter between each of those ribs, I kept my hands in my lap.

I didn’t need light. The giant skull babbled its enthusiasm for traveling in my head, SPUDs chimed addresses, Lucy’s enhanced muscles clicked, and the implant covering a third of Nathaniel’s head murmured, “Scanning…scanning…no threats…scanning…thirty-two nodes…twelve nodes…twenty nodes…scanning….”

Lights flashed on. Ugh. The meds weren’t as good as Lazarus claimed. I’d gotten lost there. How long was this going to last? Should I take my regular pill tonight?

As for the light, well….

The train had pulled into another station, and slithered to a halt. This station was…different from the last. It looked more like a neighborhood. I couldn’t see any stairs going up to street level, but I did see two staircases going down. The room was huge, broad but not all that tall, an irregular octagon on both sides of the tracks, and less ornate than the first. I mean, relatively speaking. Thick, square stone pillars held up the low roof, with sharp triangular caps at the corners. Twisted, grey, but still growing trees crawled up out of rings of dirt guarded by sharply pointed railings. Flickering light crawled around the area, supplied by torches in sconces and lanterns hanging from hooks. Barbed hooks. If it was made of metal, it had barbs, which made two benches the most uncomfortable looking furniture I’d ever seen.

Those were mere decorating differences, one style of evil and ugly versus another. Both stations earned the Vanity Rose stamp of aesthetic approval. The exits were the real change. Not just that I couldn’t see any way up to the streets. At least a dozen passages, every one in its own unique style, lined the walls. Around a rough hole, mushrooms at least half my height, with glowing blue spots no less, particularly attracted my attention.

Who had the money to throw away to build all this? The same person who could afford a full suit of two-and-a-half-meter-tall plate armor, and was down the train a ways arguing with the skeletal conductor? How could anyone be this rich?

A gasp next to me interrupted my musings. Liriel, up on her knees in her seat, stared out into the courtyard, or intersection, or whatever it should be called. Her golden eyes stood wide in shock, and in firelight they shone like lamps themselves.

Outside, two elves had just left the train. Not elves like Liriel. Yes, they had long pointy ears, and similarly exaggerated biosculpted figures, but the color scheme was way off. Blue tinged their skin rather than green, and much more deeply. One pale, one dark, they were both more blue than anything else. Both also had long, straight white hair, as opposed to Liriel’s thick waves of green.

There was also the, uh, clothing issue. Granted, Ms. Understanding would lock Liriel in a closet if she tried to dress like these elves, but I’d never gotten the impression Liriel hoped for anything more than higher quality, at most leather and slightly tighter, versions of her pants and hoodie. These…what were they called, deep elves? They wore the most un-armorly armor I’d ever imagined. Black metal filigree showed off more skin than it covered.

Counterpoint: While tastelessly blatant in its intent to draw desiring eyes, the ”armor” was admirably impractical. Every piece had been shaped into a bat or a spider. Wings stuck out of shoulders and hips, and most gloriously of all the taller of the two deep elves had to keep ducking her head because the giant wings on her bat helmet scraped the ceiling.

None of that explained Liriel’s reaction. Nobody ever accused her of blushing innocence.

So, I asked. “What?”

“Nothing,” she mumbled, starting to turn back into her seat. She had trouble pulling her gaze away from the blue women.

I grabbed Liriel’s shoulders and moved my face in front of hers. “Come on. Spill it.”

She stammered and hesitated, avoiding my eyes. “I was certain I saw the Ring, but…it matters not. I must get you home safely.”

Good enough for me. Yanking her to her feet, I dragged Liriel out the door of the train and onto the platform. She didn’t cooperate, but she also didn’t resist, plodding step by step with a grimace of conflicted emotion. Chaos, Nathaniel, and Lucy followed behind.

The instant all five of us stood on the platform, the door teeth slammed shut behind us. Hierophant Mortifax appeared behind them, laughing in evil satisfaction as the train pulled away.

Lucy pulled her sword out in front of her, holding the massive block of metal horizontal with no sign of effort as she scanned the station from side to side. Liriel agreed with her, grabbing the shreds of my jacket and hissing, “This was not a good idea, Vanity. We are not welcome in this place.”

Nobody seemed to be watching us, at least. In fact, with the train gone, the only visible travelers were the laughing deep elves on their way to a doorway decorated in, yes, a bat theme.

I touched my forehead to Liriel’s, which admittedly I could only do because she was leaning down to look me in the eyes. “Too late now. Tell me about the ring.”

“The Ring.” She gave the word a little extra emphasis. “The Ring of Token. It is a dangerous, powerful artifact of my people, stolen by the darkness. It is a quest inherent of all sunlight elves, of every branch of the Great Tree, to find and take it back. She…she is wearing it.”

A teeny tiny glint of yellow on the taller, paler elf’s hand just might be an especially shiny gold ring from this distance. All this Enchanted stuff was fake, right? Their magic artifacts were elaborately decorated cutting-edge tech. I concentrated, or more like reverse concentrated, not thinking of anything, just holding onto the weird, jittery, empty feeling of telepathy as I stared at that ring.

I blinked, snapping out of it. “She’s wearing something, but it talks in elvish.”

Only Nathaniel’s eyebrows furrowed. He might have a hint of how weird that truly was. Part of how machine telepathy worked was translating from 0s and 1s and programming languages into thoughts that made sense to me.

Mind you, Liriel had other things on her mind. Trembling and bug-eyed, she whispered, “They have it, carrying it around like a toy. I must tell—”

I interrupted her, grinning wickedly and doing that stupid pose Maricel liked. “Or, we could grab it now. We have a whole team of dark siders under contract, after all.”

Lucy, sword still out, rolled her head back to give Nathaniel a pained and exasperated look. “Ten dollars?”

Still breathing hard, her mane of thick green hair suddenly and mysteriously disheveled (I would kill for a biosculpt), Liriel asked me in a lost, confused squeak, “Why?”

“Because I’ve never seen this side of you.”

I might as well have flicked a switch. She turned, watching the two elves disappear into their doorway. Extending an arm, she blocked us from taking immediate action. “The drow are returning home, and but a chain, perhaps three at most, from their front door. If we attack now, they gain all the advantages of ready aid, while we are funneled and deprived of stealth.” She looked around at the station, scowling in thought. “We are already too obviously enemies. As soon as they are far enough ahead, we must follow, before some other evil attacks us.”

She was right, there. No shadowy corner or obstacle would hide how we stuck out compared to the weirdly armored locals we’d seen so far.

No one did show up before she waved her arm towards the deep elf exit. Nathaniel looked zoned out, and Lucy’s eyes darted everywhere, so the two must be on guard. We walked over to the doorway, which led to a winding tunnel perfect for getting out of sight.

You know what else this courtyard had? Statues. It had so many statues that I hadn’t paid much attention to them. Elves in collars, big demon things stabbing angels, monsters eating people, all the greatest hits. They were actually easy to miss, since most were only gently protruding reliefs on already shadow-mottled grey and brown walls.

That’s my excuse for completely missing out on the guards on either side of the door. As we stepped close, two stone statues with stone axes stepped right out of the walls, and attacked us.

At least, I assume they attacked us. Lucy swung her massive sword twice, faster than I could swing a twig. Both statues collapsed in three pieces, revealing the hollow spaces and robotic musculature inside.

That made a lot of noise. So much for stealth. Liriel grabbed us two at a time and pulled us into the hallway. Lucy first, me last, for some reason.

I did have time to notice the statues had been male elves, dressed just as skimpy and in the same bat and spider theme as the drow women. So, good for them on being consistently creepy, I guess.

Looking in, the tunnel walls were lined with thorn vine carvings. Looking out, the train station remained a twisted public park, trying too hard to be bleak and threatening. No point in denying it. If they would just flaunt their expensive technology instead of hiding it, the Enchanted could sign me up. I almost felt at home down here.

I mean, take this tunnel. The walls and ceiling looked like they could constrict and perforate us at any moment. The tingling sense of threat was constant, and I loved it. Why, I could practically hear….

Nathaniel picked up on that before I did, his whisper carrying no farther than the rest of us. “This tunnel is lined with traps. I’ve hacked into them, but they’re all deactivated already.”

Liriel’s face lit up. “They don’t know we’re here.” The smile disappeared. “No. They know, and are trying to lure us in, then cut off escape. Evil and deception is the deep elf way.”

Jerking a thumb back the way we came, I suggested, “Then let’s find another way in. That is my specialty, after all.”

There would be another way in, even underground. That I was sure of. We’d take a look around, and I would find one.

We retreated out of the trapped tunnel with merely one step short of unseemly haste. The noise, the broken statues, and our invasion still hadn’t garnered any attention. Maybe everyone…wait, of course everyone slept during the day.

Let’s see. There would be a way in from the surface, of course, but that might be the hardest to find. I asked Liriel, “These drow love secret exits and side tunnels, right? They’re all drama, all the time.”

She smiled, hope warming in her eyes. “They do, indeed. They feed at their mother’s breast on duplicity, cowardice, and misdirection.”

Nathaniel had found a subway map in the previous station. I scanned the statue-obscured walls. Maybe…and there it was. A nice, big, elaborate map of the nearby tunnel system and who lived where, with the label ”Black Manors.” Wow, this place was actually pretty big. Various Enchanted alphabets made no sense to me, but the underground drow mansion would be one of the tunnels nearby, and relative to the subway track….

I tapped a square with an elaborate border. “This place is right next to the drow. Looks like a fortress. What’s the word that’s carved into it?”

“Exterminated,” answered Liriel.

Chaos, who’d been quiet since we got off the train, asked, “Exterminated as in killed?”

“Of course. They are evil, and evil feeds on its brothers and sisters.” She sounded so disgusted and absolutely certain, maybe this wasn’t a game. Or rather, the Enchanted really did play this game to death.

His ears laid flat backwards, Chaos looked up at Nathaniel next, and asked the hacker, “Why aren’t you worried?”

Nathaniel wasn’t. With his arms folded as he admired the sculptures, he looked and sounded calmer than anyone else here. “You haven’t seen Lucy fight. Besides, we’re mercenaries. When this is over, it’s the elf that will get the blame. Nobody holds a grudge against dark siders. They might want to hire us themselves, someday.”

Chaos digested that with an uncomfortable frown.

Wait, wait. My hand shot up. “Then why did Celestial Wonder Meowpurr freak out last night?”

Lucy sneered and raised her voice, “Because she’s—”

Nathaniel clamped his hand over her mouth, and finished in a merely strained tone, “—high strung. I didn’t want to start a fight by correcting her, so I talked you both down another way. I wasn’t lying. That obsolete hardware you’re carrying is so close to undetectable I can’t find it standing right next to you.”

Liriel tugged my hand. Right. We had a mission. This hallway didn’t have bats or thorns or guard statues. Aside from a nice stone brick pattern and extinguished torches in wall sconces, it looked dully utilitarian. When it turned a corner, I had to dig out my SPUD’s flashlight. Chaos dug a heavy rectangular flashlight out of his bag, and Nathaniel activated a bulb that slid out of the metal plate in his head. Lucy and Liriel showed no sign of caring whether the place was lit or not.

The tunnel opened up into what looked an awful lot like an empty garage, and at the end of that a building front with barred windows, extrusions like castle towers, and a pair of double doors that would look perfectly ordinary and modern if someone hadn’t nailed boards over them, applied two metal clamps, and strung chains and padlocks from the nearby windows. So, these doors normally opened out, and someone had felt very passionately that they should stop doing so.

Nathaniel suggested, “It looks like the basement of a company that sold supplies to this Enchanted enclave.”

Liriel frowned, pursing the lips of her already inhumanly small mouth. “Odd. Duplicitous and spiteful though they be, why would the deep elves have murdered mainstreamer allies? And having done so, why seal the entrance after?”

It wasn’t to cut off business. The surface levels of this building had to be functioning, right? But the windows were dark, and this level quiet.

Let’s see. Would the bars be loose on any of the windows? What about a delivery hatch? I bet I could find one. Or….

Eh. Do it the easy way. I waved a hand at Lucy, then the door. “Pretty please?”

She swung her giant chopper once. It went through wood like tissue, snapped chains, and while it didn’t actually cut the metal clamps, they dropped to the ground with loud clangs and deep dents.

In the process, she’d cut through the doors’ built-in lock, and they swung silently open.

Chaos and Liriel squealed and grabbed each other. Nathaniel took a step back, trembling. Even Lucy took a deep, ragged breath, sword pointed and ready at the doorway.

I didn’t freak out at all, no, and my voice was totally steady and didn’t wheeze or stutter. “Ah. That’s why this place is abandoned.”

A meter past the doors, the words “All We Wanted Was To Make You Happy” were carved into the otherwise smooth, tiled floor.

“Dead end,” whispered Lucy, and managed a macabre smile. “No pun intended.”

Yes. Literally dead. Somewhere in there would be at least one body, and the robot who murdered them.

“We’ll find another way,” said Liriel, regaining some of her strength. Nobody moved to close the door. As long as you stayed on this side of the words, you were safe, right? That was true, right?

It was so quiet and dark and empty in there, though. Absolutely quiet. The only sounds I could hear came from my friends breathing, and Nathaniel’s dimly babbling implants.

Scrunching up my face in reluctance, I stepped up to the doorway and extended a hand through it, palm open. There was no reason that should help, but it felt like it helped, and you manipulated a disease like mine with feelings.

Close your eyes, Vanity. Open up. Tune out Nathaniel’s implants, listen for someone else. It would be very, very obvious, but might be in the back of the building.

I did not want to do this. I didn’t want to hear the thoughts of some kind and faithful AI like Ms. Understanding, twisted up so badly with the pain of loving humans that the only answer it found was to kill us instead. But we had to know.

…

Silence. Nothing but silence. No, in the distance, the barely audible “Down? Down? Up?” of elevators.

Into that threatening emptiness I said, “It’s gone. There’s no robot in there.”

Liriel and Chaos relaxed with sighs. Understanding flickered in Nathaniel’s eyes, but he still asked, “You’re sure? I won’t be able to hear it coming. Nothing resists hacking like an insane AI. Nothing.”

“Yes.”

Composed again, frowning only in determination, Liriel stepped into the building, past the words. Lifting a hand, she beckoned. “Excellent. This way.”

With varying levels of nervousness, we fell in behind her. Close behind her. Lucy’s sword swung around to face every new shadow, but there was nothing to see.

Literally nothing. Chaos scrunched up his nose. “Why is this place so clean?”

He wasn’t kidding. Empty rooms, empty floors. Distracted by guarding, Lucy guessed, “It cleaned up after itself?”

Yes. I liked that explanation. The idea of being lost in a dark basement maze with an obsessively tidy murdering robot wasn’t creepy at all. Not that we were.

Liriel led us around corners and down walls as if she had a map. We all calmed down, right up until Lucy jumped and whirled, pointing her blade into a dark room. “I saw something! Child sized, white like paper.”

That didn’t sound like a robot. I still couldn’t hear one. Had the drugs run out and my disease been suppressed? Were we trapped in here with a murderous AI because I’d been overconfident? Were we only alive because none of us were fully adults?

“Are you sure?” whispered Nathaniel.

“No. Yes! There it is again!”

I shuddered. “I saw it too. It’s a little kid, like ten years old. In a dress. All white.”

Liriel’s normally bland face tightened in horror and disgust. “A vampire. A child vampire. Abominable. Hurry!”

She started to run, and everyone followed her. If the supposed vampire followed as well, nobody saw her.

One more corner, and we ran into a wall with a tall metal hatch, like a door without a handle. Not a regular handle, anyway. The hand-sized switch next to it with its little red light had an obvious purpose. A sign below it was written in elvish, but I took that as a good omen. Another good, if morbid, omen would be the makeshift message taped to the wall, constructed out of individual letters in different fonts taken from who knows where. “All We Wanted Was To Make You Happy.”

“Private deliveries. Secret deliveries,” said Liriel.

I couldn’t help it. I smirked. As always, there was a way in.

Nobody wanted to waste time discussing anything, so she grabbed the switch and pulled it down. With a rattle, the hatch swung open. It had a bookshelf fastened to its other side. A real, old-fashioned secret entrance.

The two deep elves inside the room were certainly surprised.

They were even the same two elves, caught relaxing in one of their bedrooms. The shorter, darker elf sat in a low but plush chair in one corner, holding a book. The other lay in bed with her arms tucked behind her head. They’d been talking in elvish, but now they leaped to their feet.

I gotta say, in the train station I hadn’t appreciated how tall they were. The ”short” elf was taller than Nathaniel, and her companion a good quarter meter taller than that. If she jumped, she would crack her head on the ceiling. They’d both taken off about half their armor for comfort, but half of ridiculous was still ridiculous. Case in point: The shorter elf had armor on her ears, black metal cones right out to the tips. They were probably the biggest single pieces of metal on her body, and the only thing not in—oh, no, wait. They sported little bat wing edges in back, I just hadn’t seen those at first glance.

Surprised those elves might be, but not for long. The shorter elf drew two of what were either the longest knives or the shortest swords I’d ever seen, with blades that wriggled like snakes but looked entirely sharp and deadly despite that. The taller elf lunged across the room toward a dresser.

Liriel got there first, and snatched up a metal rod with a leather strap wrapped around it as a grip, and a molded spider at the end, its legs gripping a nearly fist-sized purple crystal. Undeterred, the deep elf retreated back to her bed and snatched up a glass ball even bigger than that crystal, cloudy with streaks of amber and red, and a black stripe like a slit pupil.

Both elves shouted something that despite the language barrier sounded a lot like calling for guards.

Lucy went after the elf with the daggers, and two problems became immediately apparent. The ceiling was so low, she couldn’t swing her gigantic sword properly, and her opponent was at least as enhanced as she was. It made sense. If you were going to have your body completely transformed, you might as well optimize it, and the elf with the knives moved like enhanced lightning. So did Lucy, which led to a lot of blurring sideways sweeps, ducking, and bouncing back and forth.

The tall, pale elf pointed her crystal ball at Liriel, who pointed the rod back. Lightning shot between the two, forming a writhing line connecting both crystals. The lightning started aquamarine, but slid back and forth toward deeper blue or green.

Nathaniel watched that contest with a small, amused smile, and switched a wire between a couple of sockets in his neck plate. Then he frowned. “What on Earth? I can’t shut them down. There’s a firewall around all the electronics here, and it’s crazy. I’m not sure I can get through it.”

“It’s the Ring of Token!” shouted Liriel over the hum and crackle of the ”magical” duel. That explained, she turned her attention to sneering at her opponent. “But you dare not use it, do you, traitor? Wherever you stole it, you have not truly mastered its power.”

Pffft. Okay, well done, Liriel. Quick, plausible excuse for why the supposed artifact—

The expression on Liriel’s face cut off that thought. Sweat beaded all over her skin, running down her neck. The same with her opponent. Whatever was going on, they were physically straining to do it, and absolutely serious.

But no, it was more than that. Liriel fit. She looked right. Passionate, involved, and even with a hoodie instead of proper elf clothes, she didn’t look like a poseur. Dropped into the life she’d always claimed she wanted, she owned it completely. I might think of it as a gaudy electronic prop, but the blue and green elves snarling at each other in their private language cared enough to bet their lives on that prop, which made it real.

Man. I felt ashamed of myself. Liriel was the real deal, and I’d disrespected her for months, years, because it wasn’t my deal. She’d gotten her whole body transformed not for fun, but because this was who she was.

Something else hit me. I’d been standing here doing absolutely nothing this whole fight. The feeling of being a side character in someone’s adventure dragged at me, an aimlessness I’d never felt before.

At that point, the pale blue elf smirked, and despite the labored breathing, her voice rolled. “You have admirable talent, tree child, but anyone can see you are tasting magic for the first—”

A crash echoed through the room. I’d completely forgotten Lucy was involved in her own duel. Now I glanced over just in time to see a bookshelf, cut through at the base, slam down on top of the elf with the knives. A book bounced into the air as debris flew, and Lucy smacked it with the side of her sword, sending it across the room to hit the magician elf upside her head.

The lightning broke. The tall elf fell onto her back on the bed, her crystal ball flying out of her hand and rolling across the floor. Liriel rushed forward, and jammed the jeweled tip of her wand under the drow’s chin. “Give me the Ring.”

Her opponent swore at her in elvish, but otherwise didn’t move. They traded insults for a few seconds, until Liriel bared her teeth and made what sounded like a sincere and ugly threat.

Slowly, glaring murderously, the blue elf lifted her right hand. Liriel pulled a fat but otherwise featureless gold ring off the middle finger, and slid it onto her own.

That did not go over well. The blue elf didn’t physically fight, but she began reciting what sounded like a series of angry ritual curses, until Liriel said just one word. The crystal on her wand pulsed, and I heard it whisper, “Sleep.”

Oh. I wasn’t totally out of machine telepathy juice after all. That was comforting, in the sense that we hadn’t walked right past a killer robot because of my stupidity.

The blue elf’s eyes closed, and she looked convincingly asleep to me.

Fists pounded on the bedroom’s regular, non-secret door. It started to open, with a blue elf man in more goofy armor on the other side, holding a short spear. From the sounds of shouting, there were a lot more where he came from.

Liriel raised her be-ringed hand, and said one short word in elvish. The door slammed shut. A chorus of thumps and even louder yelling proclaimed that every other door in the house had slammed shut and wouldn’t budge. A thump behind me said that included our secret entrance.

Liriel blushed green, and waggled her hand. Our bookcase door swung open again, but despite the fist pounding, the other doors remained stubbornly sealed.

The knife elf under the bookcase wasn’t moving either. In the now still room, Liriel lifted the dark grey wand with its crystal and spider ornament, turning it around to examine from several angles. Breathing hard weakened the wry, grim acceptance as she said, “So clearly forged in evil, but I have won it in combat, and we are bound to each other now. I claim it as my spoils.”

At that word, I stood up on my tip-toes and raised my hand. “Did you say ‘spoils?’ Does that mean we’re allowed to take whatever we want?”

She nodded, leaning forward a bit as she got her breath back. Wow, that magic fight really did take it out of her. “Correct. The loser’s possessions, even they themselves are forfeit if taken in battle. My people are above raiding for loot, but the treaties are clear that both sides have the right.”

Oh, HARRIET, yes. I looked around. Lucy and her opponent had really done a number to this bedroom, but boy had it been luxurious to start with. Books. Vases. Crystalware. Little gold statuettes.

My eyes locked on a classic, round-topped, iron-bound wooden treasure chest. Sucked over by its gravity, I threw open the lid to reveal a pile of gold coins and richly colored gemstones.

My knees went weak. Bending down, I tried to lift the chest and totally failed. Not because of weak knees, but because this much gold weighed an insane amount.

Looking over at Lucy, I asked, “Could you…?”

“Sure. One sec.” Holding one end of the sash in her teeth, she yanked the knot on her bloody bandage good and tight.

Ah. I, uh…I had been distracted by plunder. Lucy was covered in blood. Apparently her own, from the way she was using half her chest tie to close the wound on her right arm. Despite the blood, she didn’t seem bothered, and redid the knot on what was left of her chest sash with no visible discomfort. Hanging her sword behind her back, she lifted the treasure chest under her left arm like a bag of flour.

Something crunched into the bedroom door. Someone on the other side was trying to hack it apart.

“Time to leave,” said Liriel, tucking her hood up over her ears and hair.

I pointed out the secret exit. “I heard functional elevators. We can get to street level through this building.” Now that I knew I hadn’t messed up, and there definitely was no lurking killer robot.

Liriel nodded, and raised her be-ringed right hand. “The Ring of Token will keep the vampire at bay.”

Lucy redrew her sword, holding it out horizontally in her right hand, and giving it a toss and a twirl before catching the handle. “Let it attack. I won’t run away again. If there’s a monster, I’ll face it.”

Our brave declarations were moot. We sealed the secret door behind us, navigated the dark halls with Liriel in the lead again, and found a massive freight elevator with ”All We Wanted Was To Make You Happy” painted across the closed door in old, dark blood. Imagine coming down here, turning around, and seeing you were already on the wrong side of that. Yikes.

But the elevator button worked, and my heart rose with a giddy sense of safety along with the rest of me. The door dinged, opening out onto a busy loading dock with doors right out onto the street.

A lot of workers with cake logos on their coats screamed and ran. When we stepped out into the suddenly empty garage, I noticed the elevator call button had been pried off, and the whole plate sealed with a see-through red plastic cover. Yellow and black warning tape lay around our feet, snapped when the elevator door opened.

We attempted to look as innocent as possible as we walked out through the loading bay doors.

At last we were standing again in the sunshine, and I stamped my feet and cackled. “I’m rich! There’s so much I want to spend it on! Clothing! Body mods! I am at least getting a tail. I’ve heard you don’t need any nerve alteration. A tail just plugs in, and you instinctively know how to use it.”

Nathaniel grinned hugely at my antics, and gave me a nudge with his elbow. “I can help you find a fence. They won’t open until after dark, but hey, that won’t be long.”

I looked up. No, it wouldn’t. As eagerly as I drank in the sunlight, these were the dregs as it set behind murky city clouds.

Bwahahaha. Time to shop!

Chapter Four

The sky turned dark before we reached Nathaniel’s fence. Without a theatrically evil subway station we had to walk quite a ways. Fortunately, all of us were good walkers.

Brief moment of honesty: I’d been worried about Liriel. Her exaggeratedly tiny waist couldn’t be good for breathing. She seemed fine.

Ah, the neon and floodlights, the bustling crowd, and people yelling at each other as a variety of vehicles fought for room on the street. Only one thing could be better. Okay, several things could be better, but we ducked off the main road and into one of those back-alley markets I love so much, filled with people who didn’t think they had to live poor just because they couldn’t afford the legal good stuff.

And I mean filled. People jostled against us all around. Lumpy coats, but also paneled leather, skin-tight plastic, voluminous plastic, fake furs, fake silk, rough cloth, covering wildly varying amounts of bone, muscle, and blubber. A girl with a ragged black vest, tight bandeau, huge glowing blue mohawk, plaid miniskirt over black vinyl leggings, steel-studded boots, and a metal plate covered in buttons on prominent display where her belly button should be ricocheted off of me. She was gone before I could ask her name, and I only had that moment to appreciate her style, and a flashing glimpse of her back and segmented, spined metal tail. Then the crowd swallowed her up again.

Normally I saw this view from several stories up. Had I ever been down in the thick of it? I’d spent no shortage of nights crouched on walls, hoping someone would break or abandon something that might be repaired if I salvaged it.

Not that I was a thief. I’d only taken stuff that people were never going to get back anyway. I wasn’t a thief now. Walking the dark side is merely being the hands for someone else’s stealing.

Watching from above, I’d missed the smells. Way too many people needed to bathe, but they were crowded out by floral perfumes, oily, animal smells, sharp vegetable tangs, sharper chemical tangs…a confusing muddle only matched by the nonstop babble of people shopping in a dozen languages.

A particularly tall, bulky man in a black reptile-skin coat ornamented in diagonal bands stood as a motionless stone in this river of humanity, guiding the floating display of his SPUD through the maze of cyberspace.

As I passed, the labyrinth disappeared, replaced by a jovial, dancing potato wedge. “Good news! With the latest Fry Smiley update, I can help you organize your landmarks!”

Grabbing his SPUD, I yelled, “Fillet you, Fry Smiley!” right into the hologram’s face, then shrugged at my friends’ scowls and asked, “…what?”

The big guy grinned, though.

Nathaniel guided us to the edge of the alley, where I could actually see a stall where a man sold uncaged lizards, and a shriveled woman wearing every shawl and poncho her family had ever owned, crouched on a blanket amid a cluster of drab pottery. Between them, a dirty, stained door nearly disappeared amidst the brick of a dirty, stained storefront. A sign written in letters I didn’t recognize was probably the store’s name. Or a condemned notice.

Ha ha! Yeah, like City Hall ever got around to doing building inspections.

I slipped past him and tried the doorknob. Unlocked, but the door itself barely opened a hair. It was stuck fast. Well, there was always a way in.

For example, Nathaniel could kick the door, opening it a few centimeters, then kicking it again, opening it maybe half a meter, and with one more kick, scrape the warped door against the floor far enough that we could squeeze in through the gap.

Maybe the door stuck because this place wasn’t really a store. It had no counter, and no merchandise on display, exactly. The big metal and plastic trunks, from briefcase to coffin size, obviously contained awesomely sweet stuff. One of them had two big yellow radiation symbols, and I swear if I could have moved the hundreds of kilograms of other boxes on top, I’d be opening it right now to find out why.

I fiddled with the clasps of the metal trunk on top. It opened ten centimeters, then caught on a chain. Inside…

Whoa. That pale tube with the blue rings. Was that a military gauss rifle? That would cost more than this building!

The repeated whams of opening the door had been better than any bell. A man crawled out of a darkened back room to meet us. Not crawled on the floor crawled. This short, slightly pudgy guy had cyborg legs with all the struts visible, and to move around relied on four long, three jointed steel arms that grew out of his back. The robo-legs had hands at the end, not feet, so he wouldn’t be walking the conventional way anywhere. I’d bet that was only the beginning of his body modifications, but a dirty beige jumpsuit hid the rest.

Leaning on his hands against a stack of boxes, he flashed Nathaniel a grin. “Slumming again, huh?”

Nathaniel crossed his arms over his chest, which I’d bet was a gesture meant for Lucy. It called attention to the way he always wore his black jacket open, and went shirtless underneath. He looked a lot like my billboard hologram friend, including the always-confident attitude. At least the jacket was thigh length and had dozens of zippers. Oh, and he was talking while he posed for his new girlfriend. “I, a successful dark-sider, have come to sell loot.”

“Me first!” I squealed, wrapping my arms around the chest tucked under Lucy’s arm and heaving. Ugh. That got me nowhere, but at least Lucy was smart enough not to let go, so I pushed her forward and made her set it on the box in front of the guy I would call Stilt Man until he introduced himself.

He opened the chest lid, and ran his fingers through the pile of coins. One of his prosthetic spider arms picked up a gemstone in its little claws, twisting the jewel around. Leaning back, Stilt Man peered at the chest itself, then around the side, estimating its size and contents. Finally, he dropped the gem back in and closed the lid. “Seven fifty.” Offer made, he pulled a mass of bills out of his pocket and began counting them.

Frozen in dismay, I wheezed, “Only seven hundred fifty dollars?” Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he meant hundred-dollar bills. That box had to weigh hundreds of kilograms, and…

He talked over my calculations. “It’s worth about twelve fifty, but I have to make a—” He paused, his brow wrinkling in sudden sympathy. “Wait. You didn’t think this was real gold, did you?”

I immediately turned my head to look at Liriel. She was already facing away from me, fiddling with her new wand so she had an excuse to say nothing and keep her face hidden.

My heart fell through my stomach. Of course, Enchanted used fake treasure.

Stilt Man folded his forearms on the counter, and his pudgy, unshaven, weathered face attempted a comforting smile. “They’re not nearly as rich as they look, little girl. Sure, some of the mega-rich are Enchanted, but they mostly donate land. I mean…have you seen their subways?”

Chaos held up an eager hand. “She’s only seen the necromancers’ line so far.”

Stilt Man nodded. “Perfect. You know how much that giant skull on the train cost? Six months of growing in a basement, a ton of rotten food out of trash cans, and the free time of the best biotech on the continent and a famous sculptor. The train itself? Put together by a hundred volunteers, with parts they stole from their jobs. It’s a passion, and they all kick in. They don’t even like exchanging their coins for real money, but fortunately for you I can do it.”

One of his spider arms stabbed past me, pointing at Liriel’s wand. “Now that is worth money. Custom made, every one of them.”

Liriel, determinedly ignoring this whole conversation until now, gave a little jump and spun around. She clutched the wand to her exaggerated chest defensively. “I could not sell it if I wished, and I do not. We are soul bonded now.”

The guy’s head twitched, like half a shake, and he let out a disappointed sigh. “Yeah, I figured.”

Grinning teeth even whiter than Chaos’s, Nathaniel pulled the crystal eyeball out of his jacket pocket and held it out. “I, on the other hand, have no such sentimental attachment.”

My eyes bugged. He knew. He knew what the best loot was from the start, and let me take the fake stuff. That…

Seeing my expression, Nathaniel tucked the ”magic” orb into Stilt Man’s hand, and muttered, “Just credit it to my tab.”

It disappeared into another pocket of the padded coveralls. That transaction finished, Stilt Man called over, “Hey. Elf girl. For free, and congratulations.” One of his legs lifted a little wooden box into view, and out of it he lifted a velvet purple bag, holding it out to Liriel with a spider hand. Yeah, not rich my bony and insufficiently betailed butt.

The bag was pretty small, but Liriel’s golden eyes lit up with joy when she loosened the drawstring and peeked inside. First, she picked out two little rings, really just bands to hold clear glass beads. She slid them onto her ring and pinky fingers on her right hand. Immediately the first bead filled with red liquid, and the second half-full with blue.

She waved the crystal of her wand over the bag, and in a spiral, gold glitter rose out, to be absorbed into the spider sculpture.

Stilt Man jumped, swaying visibly on his mechanical legs. The long, skinny ones, that is. Eyes wide with what looked an awful lot like horror, he said, “Is that…?”

I followed his gaze to the Ring of Token on the middle finger of Liriel’s left hand. She’d been right-handed before the biosculpt, but now she held the wand in her left. Less than a second later, she figured out where he was looking, and held that hand to her chest, covering it with her left. “I shall not part with this for my life!”

Stilt Man held up his hands. “I don’t want it.” Boy, did he sound emphatic about that. “That thing should never have been made.” His momentary horror gave way to leaning forward, peering at Liriel curiously. “You’re…not high, not wood…a free elf, right? So, you’ll give it to Morgain?”

Staring at him in confusion and surprise, she nodded.

He ran his fingers through short, grubby brown hair. “That works. She’s the only noble I’d trust with the ring and the mud witch, especially together. Her or the Grand Necrotech.”

Liriel drew herself up straight, and scowled at him. “You slander High Queen Charmeine in your omission. She is a valiant defender of justice and virtue.”

Stilt Man’s face pinched. “That’s the problem, yes.”

I squinted one eye and gave him a sidelong, cynical smirk. “You know an awful lot about this. Does someone have Enchanted leanings himself?”

Totally. Busted. His blank silence answered that.

Liriel smiled at him now, gently, and stepped up to lay her hand on the box he leaned against. “It is not too late. I am certain enough of your soul remains to have your magic awakened.”

The dealer busted out in a laugh, waving his hands. “No, thank you. I like this job. I pay a few bribes, and nobody stabs me or shoots me full of arrows. It takes a hundred of us cheering you on from the outside for one of you to live in our dream, young elf. Enjoy it.”

Okay, I’d learned a whole lot about Liriel today, but this was supposed to be Me Time. Scooping the stack of (presumably seven hundred fifty) dollar bills off the box being used as a counter, I groaned, “Fine, I’ll take your offer. It’s not enough for a good cyber limb, but I can do some hardcore clothes shopping with this much cash.”

Lucy flexed her bandaged arm, and pursed her lips in wry amusement. “You might be able to buy one of those cheap detachable party tails after you pay for my medical care.”

Was this Hold Out Glorious Success To Vanity Rose And Then Yank It Away Day?! First my mech, then my fabulous wealth, and now even my tiny fraction of fabulous wealth. Oh, and let’s not forget the prospect of medicines that would have turned my mental illness into a cool super power instead of a nightmare I kept at arm’s length.

I shot a look of mute appeal at Nathaniel. He only nodded. “She’s right. You hire a dark-sider, if they survive, you’re on the hook for their medical bills. And the kid sure can’t pay it.”

He, Lucy, and Stilt Man all looked at Chaos. Grinding my teeth, I shuffled over between them and him. “Okay, fine. Fine. But Liriel and Chaos came to my rescue in what they thought was my hour of need, so I am going to buy them the best meal they’ve ever eaten, and if there’s not enough money left for your surgery that’s just too bad.”

The alley market snaked around between buildings for at least two kilometers, and pretty soon we sat in chairs at a booth whose straw roof was going to melt into a mess the next time it rained, which was probably tonight from the look of the clouds. Of course, being straw, they would just replace it.

I didn’t have a clue what we were eating. There was a ”Real Meat!” sign and we’d pointed at stuff and now had full plates that were rapidly becoming less full. I had a chunk of tender probably beef in rich sauce; white goop with little green bits in it and a sharp, sour taste; carrots glazed with something sweet; a blob of what must be pasta with real cheese and tomato sauce; and mashed potatoes and gravy; except mashed potatoes and gravy weren’t this good.

Chaos had mostly the same thing, but with extra sausages and a slice of salmon. He had an even worse case of genetics than me, and needed a lot of meat to stay healthy. Liriel couldn’t digest meat at all since her biosculpt, but I’d picked this place because she wouldn’t have to be content with salad. In addition to the carrots, she had wrinkly red and orange things, a tiny bit of pasta, a pile of wet green tentacles that smelled terrible, a bunch of buttery green knobs, and boiled cabbage because I guess elves are insane. Ew.

Pointing at the round things, I asked the ancient couple doing the cooking, “Hey, what are these?”

The woman babbled something in another language, smiling like a delighted grandmother. The tiny yellow bird with the metal pins in its neck straightened and squeaked, “Grow your lower regions, baby!”

Giving up on the crappy off-brand translator bird, I rubbed my knuckles between Chaos’s poofy animal ears. “I’m proud of you for trying to save me. Surprised, but that just makes me more proud.”

He swallowed a mouthful of sausage, and tucked his head down between his shoulders with a bashful giggle. “It’s not a big deal, Vanity. You were in trouble, and I’m the only one with weapons. Ajax thinks he’s tough, but he can’t punch an adult out. Anyway, I know the city.”

Yeah. Ajax hardly ever left the orphanage. Chaos went out during his free hours more than anybody, even me.

Leaning over him, I tugged at the zipper of his backpack. “So, which of your technology disasters count as weapons?”

He yanked his precious pack back into his lap, but with one arm wrapped protectively around it consented to undo the zipper. A grey ball and a red stick, both with fuses, were lifted several centimeters out and then tucked back in protectively. “I brought some smoke bombs, and dynamite, and my grappling hook gun and suction cup shoes….”

Not those. Even beyond the usual toys from the Acme Catalog, those shoes were a death trap. Yes, they worked. Badly. Most of the time. If I’d actually needed saving…ugh. The image of Chaos falling off a building trying to imitate me….

But I hadn’t. It was all a false alarm. Also, I got to pilot a giant robot and punch other giant robots!

I’d managed not to say anything, which Chaos took as permission to speak. “I wish Mom would let me play with those more. I have to keep them outside. You know what’s funny? People say they want the explosives stuff, but what sells the most is the stuff you add water to. I’ve sold five boxes of dehydrated water this week. I guess it’s a little cool, but even when it does blow up, it just sprays water around.”

I cackled, a forkful of heavenly rich goo paused centimeters from my mouth. “That was hilarious. Mimi looked like a fish in a wet paper bag, and Tristan kept jumping around in the puddles. I can’t believe Ms. Understanding let you off so easy.” Memory enjoyed, I stuffed my face. Mmm!

Chaos nodded around a mouthful of fish. Trust the kid to get something familiar at a black market real meat shop.

With a sudden gulping swallow—I swear I saw a bulge move down his throat—Chaos cleared the way to touch my forearm and say, “I was really worried about you. So was Liriel.”

We both looked over at the aforementioned green haired fake elf. Now that we were back in the real world, she’d drifted off into her dreamy blankness, studying the ring on her left hand without her eyes properly focusing on it.

But I’d seen the real her now. Nudging her with my shoulder, I said, “You were wicked cool down there. Taking charge, leaping into adventure.”

Her eyes focused, and she blushed green. Her right hand curled over her left protectively. The blue ring’s bead was nearly full now. “It was required of any true elf. You saw not the power of the Ring of Token. The deep elves are vile, scheming, immoral pirates. It is true, I am proud of my accomplishment, but I was driven by duty, not adventure.”

“Uh huh. But when you trade that bauble in to—” I bit off my urge to say something disrespectful, and tried to remember the actual name Stilt Man used.

Liriel smiled, a fire lighting in her golden eyes again. “Lady Morgain, the wisest of my people. I do not deny that I yearn for her approval, and the risks we took shall benefit me. I have sworn to Ms. Understanding to wait until my majority, but when that day comes, I will surely be no mere handmaiden, but a—” She hesitated for a second, then swung her wand up. A sprinkle of golden dust arced out, lifting a fork off the wooden table. When her wand swung down again, the fork rammed itself tines-first into the plank, and stuck. “—a battle mage!”

Leaning over, I bumped her again, pressing my shoulder tight to hers. “I am not letting this go. You know that, right? We are in ‘this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship’ territory.”

Down the table, Lucy lifted up her bowl and swallowed the last of something spicy made of beans and beef, then rapped the surface with it for my attention. “This is adorable, but I’m still bleeding.”

Chaos leaped to his feet as if the stool was on fire, shoving the last lump of beef into his mouth with both hands, then tugged on my elbow. Liriel slid to her feet more gracefully, and placed her hand on my shoulder. “Come, chaotic sister, for mercy calls with a voice as true as valor’s.”

Nathaniel started walking, apparently knowing the way. We fell in close behind so as not to lose him in the crowd.

This brought Lucy close enough to ask Liriel directly, “Is there going to be trouble bringing us non-Enchanted into an elf fight?”

Liriel shook her head, still radiant with pride. “Nay. Yours is the spirit of a true warrior. Even the traitors must have seen you as a kindred spirit. Kindle in your heart the thought of accepting magic, Lady Luciel, for you would be named a champion in the flash of an eye, and the trabadours would fight to woo you.”

Lucy and Nathaniel snorted convulsively. I rubbed my arms trying to clean off the thought of wooing trabadours.

People swarmed around me. They yelled in at least a dozen languages. Translator parrots considerably more advanced than the budgie at the food shop shouted, “Twelve fifty, no refunds!” and “It fell off of a truck! You know because the case is cracked!”

The crowd opened up slightly to an unexpected show, one I hadn’t seen at the market near our orphanage. A man in a suit faced a teenage boy in sewn-together rags across a circle, in which an adorable orange sphere with stubby paws wrestled against a thing that was all eyes and bug legs. An actual pile of money sat between them, the holographic monsters passing through it as they struggled.

My eyes bugged out. People dueled AR monsters for cash? And after seeing Death Rooster train for a couple of years, I was not impressed by the two monsters fighting now. I had to tell Fidget. Maybe one of us had a safe way out of the orphanage life after all.

“Hey, Nathaniel! Lucy!” shouted a man’s voice.

The mob ejected us into a small plaza created by the unevenness of the surrounding towers. Only a few shoppers hung around in it, probably because the goods were exotic and looked pointed at dark-siders. A stall that looked unattended had a rack filled with body armor ranging from crude leather to shiny chrome. I recognized a pair of gravity shoes. That there wasn’t a line to buy them confirmed for me everything I’d suspected about what fools adults are.

The call had come from a guy at the back corner, selling drones. Little round ones that hovered, little crawling turrets, something that buzzed and sparked, a metal eyeball on tiny wheels, and a trash can on larger wheels with no obvious purpose. And those were just the obvious, interesting robots.

Its proprietor did not have as much style. His grey overalls and blue and white checked shirt had a little distinctiveness, but the brown coat that blended with brown hair and brown skin with no decorations at all took even that interest away.

He did have a great voice, though. Rich and deep and bombastic. “Did you get old Adelita to let you sign up?”

Nathaniel slowed down next to the counter, smirking. “If she hears you call her old, your entire collection won’t save you from being punctured. It won’t even slow her down.”

“Oh, she’s only old next to a boy like you,” the vendor assured him, with a more appreciatively dreamy smile. If I lose all sense of decency when I grew up, someone please shoot me.

“Ahem,” interrupted Lucy, pushing Nathaniel toward the trailer next door. He moved. He didn’t really have a choice.

The drone seller pulled his head back, pinching his nose skeptically. “You’re not seriously going to the lizard for medical treatment.”

“Lizard?” I asked, suddenly interested.

Mister Vendor Man spread his fingers maybe two centimeters apart. “Just…use small words, okay?”

“I heard that!” shouted a squawky voice. For a second, I thought it might come from a translator bird, until the lizard stepped out of her trailer onto the street and added, “I am literally the smartest person within a twenty-kilometer radius.”

There was almost too much to take in at a glance. Other merchants had booths ranging from the solid steel with back and sides of the drone guy, to the sticks and straw of the restaurant where we’d eaten. Lucy’s doctor had a whole vehicle, a big boxy thing with treads and cold spilling out of the open door. Bright white frost and can after refrigerated can could be seen inside. Posters advertised a heavenly display of limbs and implants, available organs, flesh and blood or chrome and wire.

Not that she did all her business inside that frozen building. A cage big enough for a tiger marked one side of her staked-out lot. Two beds, one comfortably padded and one bare steel, stood out front, and still behind an array of bins and counters packed with devices that heavily leaned to white plastic, shiny metal tubes, and dangling wires. So. Many. Wires.

The doctor herself…okay, yes, she was a lizard. Scales, reptilian snout, tail with a fat base and a chubby stomach. Her overall shape was still basically human, with a dull grey bandeau and short shorts that looped around her tail base in back. They weren’t revealing. She had womanly curves to reveal, but big serpentine belly scales and bumpy back scales gave more of an impression of being clothed than anything the medical reptile might actually wear. The arm band with a red cross on it practically disappeared in that view.

Oh, the scales. Brown. She was brown. Pale tan belly, deeper tan sides, dark brown horny bumps not just arrayed down her spine but randomly placed over her whole back, and a shiny, richly brown….

I sniffed. Chocolate. It smelled like chocolate. From her neck to halfway down her tail, the lizard woman wore a glazing of chocolate over her back.

Her elongated head ended in a draconian bulge almost like a beak and bristled with multiple horns both on her scalp and small, spiky horns on her cheeks. Perched on that head she wore a headband decorated with a crazy array of lenses on little gold arms, ranging from miniature binoculars, through fat magnifying glasses, to the merely normal spectacles now over her slit-pupiled yellow eyes.

Liriel glided up to the counter, her eyes alive and interested again. “Surely, good surgeon, you could find a place within Elfland for your services. Why pitch your skills to the unappreciative mainstream?”

The lizard gave her an exasperated stare, her reptilian head certainly as expressively mobile as a human’s. Her voice, on the other hand, sounded like a parrot’s. “I’m not an Enchanted, little girl. This is a purely aesthetic choice.”

On the other side of her lot, a man with half a cyborged face appeared in the window of a circular hut and grinned chrome teeth. “‘Purely aesthetic.’ She’s learned some new words!”

A woman in blue leather and a hundred bulging pockets had shown up in the armor booth when my back was turned, and now she leaned way over the counter and cooed, “It’s adorable when it talks like a human.”

Holding up three fingers—each hand only had three fingers and a thumb, all with stubby claws—the lizard shouted back, “I have two medical degrees, a PhD in Actuator Science, and sixty-two patents, you oafs!”

“I do not think you are stupid,” said Liriel quietly.

My smile so wide it hurt, I agreed, “You sweat chocolate. That. Is. Awesome. I am all over a purely aesthetic radical bodysculpt.”

The armor seller sighed. “They’re encouraging it.”

The doctor let out an exasperated growl and sunk her head on her forearms on the counter. Wow. Add ‘seriously short’ to the rest of her description. The lenses on her forehead fluttered aimlessly.

Lucy pushed past the rest of us to perch her butt on the edge of that counter. “We’re here on business, Choco.”

Dr. Choco the chocolate coated lizard woman grunted, her eyes and voice lifting. “I do like money.” Pushing herself up, she hopped into a wheeled chair. That brought her legs into view. One reason for her short stature revealed itself—digitigrade legs, kinked far back and with big, splayed, taloned feet. Nice.

The lenses rearranged again, bringing a second over her left eye, and three over her right. After a mere glance at Lucy, they all pulled away. Squinting in disbelief, Choco asked, “What’s your grandmother going to say when she sees you were wounded?”

“She’ll ask if I won,” answered Lucy.

The drone vendor nodded. “She’s right.”

Choco smirked. “Yes, that’s the Red Rebbitzen. Okay, let’s see.”

Lucy unwound her bandage. The doctor got out a pair of metal tweezers, and a small spray bottle. Little spritzes stopped the bleeding long enough for her to peer into the cut, now with one binocular lens. “What did you get hit with, child? You need three muscle strands replaced. Eight hundred bucks.”

Aghast, Lucy argued, “That’s more than my whole bicep cost!”

Her own voice and face calm, the reptilian street doctor said, “So do you want me to replace your whole bicep, or thread in three fibers without additional surgery and you’ll heal fully in three days?”

Lucy’s mouth tightened for a moment. “Make it seven hundred, alright? The kid’s paying, and that’s all she’s got.”

It would leave me a few bucks, but…yeah, basically.

“Deal.”

I counted seven hundred dollars out, my hand shaking at the strain of passing them over. Then I walked around the counter to look at the posters. Cyber-implants were cool, but that didn’t mean I wanted to watch one getting installed in a sliced open arm. Ew. Straight nasty.

I didn’t reach the posters. My route took me past the cage, and I got to see the thing in it.

Man. As if Choco wasn’t weird enough. I couldn’t identify the stubby, round animal standing sullenly in the pen, with its bristly rat-colored hair and bulky, rectangular head. It looked like a human-sized, hairy hippopotamus as much as anything. It came up past my waist, and might weigh somewhere between me and a grown man. Certain hints suggested it was heavier than it looked. Like the six legs, all ending in splayed, birdlike feet. Metal splayed, birdlike feet, sophisticated cybernetics that disappeared under the fur of the stumpy legs. A little round hole of a plug-in jack decorated each shoulder, and a plug like the ones you use to attach peripherals to a SPUD stuck out of the middle of the animal’s forehead.

Its black eyes looked up at me with the most tired, jaded expression I had ever witnessed on any animal.

Does Vanity Rose have a soft spot for butt-ugly animals? Yes. Yes, she does.

“Is this thing for sale?” I called over to the doc.

“Don’t touch it. It’s for examination,” she answered without taking her eyes off of the gross bloody mess she was working on.

“…cut out my…” a voice mumbled. High, but not super high. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. Either way, nobody was standing anywhere near me.

The hairy cyborg animal blinked. “…hear me,” the voice mumbled in surprise, louder and more distinct toward the end.

A voice in my head, but the only voice. Surrounded by machinery, none of them were talking.

I leaned a little closer, pointing at its weirdly flat nose. Seriously, the thing’s head was shaped exactly like a shoebox, but maybe twice the size. “That’s you talking, isn’t it?”

It gave me a tired and skeptical stare, which seemed to be its only stare but now was directed eye to eye. Even more clear than the last time, its voice said. “So, you’re a machine telepath. An F1, right?”

My mouth opened to respond, and the hippo-thing’s hallucinatory voice went, “Shhh! Nevermind. Just go.”

Clearly, the rat-pig did not know Vanity Rose. I circled back around to Choco and Lucy, averting my eyes from the former poking metal string into the latter’s wound with a long probe. “Hey, doc, you would know. What’s an F1?”

She curled her tail around and pointed it at Chaos, who was over with the drone vendor showing him a little Acme remote controlled helicopter. The little dickens. He’d brought more toys than he said.

“He is. First generation child of a deep species change biosculpt. I’d guess human woman, Enchanted were-animal father. Something canine. Changes that radical require genetic level alteration, and viable offspring inherit traits or produce hybridization-related mutations.” Her eyes didn’t budge from her surgical work.

I grinned, not sure whether she could see it. “You weren’t kidding about your education, lady.”

She just scowled deeper, more lenses slipping into place as she brought her elongated face close to Lucy’s arm. “No, I wasn’t. Years of dealing with idiots has removed my sense of humor. Now let me work, or this will get more expensive. For you.”

Just what I wanted, her completely distracted. Wandering back to the cage, I crouched on the other side of it, out of her sight, and thought hard at the beast. Can you hear me?

No response. He was pretending disinterest. So, I whispered, “How can I hear you?”

The animal scratched a middle foot in the straw on the bottom of its cage. “You’re a receptive machine telepath. My implants can send instructions to even simple computers. That makes me worth a lot of money.” The tone of his mental voice wasn’t bragging, but angry and warning.

“Because she wants to dissect you for parts,” I whispered.

The rat-pig didn’t answer, only looked away.

“And you’re intelligent,” I whispered next.

“She might just study me. It’s not your problem, and my projecting is bad for your brain. Leave it alone.” Emotion trickled along with the signal. Fear.

Sure. There was a chance Doctor Lizard wouldn’t murder it. Maybe she would just keep it locked in a tiny cage and poke and prod and scan it for several months, and then eat it.

And I’d been starting to respect her! How could anyone be this disgusting? And what was wrong with the rat-pig, that it just stood there and accepted a fate that terrified it? No, who cared why? Whatever it had been through only made this worse. Maybe it had given up, but Vanity Rose didn’t intend to.

The lock was purely mechanical. Of course, or her victim would have thought it open and strolled right out.

My fists clenched, I stood up and stalked over to Liriel, who was standing next to Chaos. I grabbed her jacket’s shoulder and whispered to her, “Do you have a spell for opening regular, non-magic key locks?” Three fourths of what that wand of hers could do would only affect other Enchanted, but….

I got lucky. She whispered back, “I think so.” There was no trace of dreamy detachment in her eyes. She saw my expression, and frowned in worry back.

Drifting a meter over to Chaos, I whispered into his conveniently tall ears, “Distract him.”

Chaos’s hands fidgeted in his pocket. I didn’t even see what he did, but a faint, irregular quacking started up behind the drone seller’s back wall.

At first, the drone seller didn’t go for it. He just lifted a grapefruit-sized plastic ball with a dozen little legs onto the table, and continued his conversation. “Look at this. It’s faster, more mobile, only costs twice as much, but will last ten times longer. Modern— just a second.”

There, he’d taken the bait. The vendor slipped around back of his stall, and I yanked the zipper open on Chaos’s backpack, pulling out a smoke bomb and an explosive stick in case Liriel’s spell didn’t work.

Next, I found Nathaniel, standing in the middle of the little plaza watching Lucy’s operation. Liriel followed me. Excellent.

Not bothering to hide the growl in my voice, I told Nathaniel, “I paid more, so I’m the boss now. Get Liriel and Chaos home safe. But first, hold this.”

Pushing the fist-sized grey sphere of the smoke bomb into his hands, I flipped out my SPUD and stuck the plug-in socket onto the end of the fuse. Designed to do exactly this, it lit.

I couldn’t wait for the fuse to burn down. It was all I could do not to punch the murdering sicko lizard woman in the face. Grabbing Liriel’s sleeve kept that fist busy for the two steps it took before the smoke bomb went off.

Pfffwoomph!

People yelled, voices suddenly muffled. Grey mist rolled around us, obscuring everything. That’s okay, I knew where I was headed, and now nobody else did. The smoke itched at my nose and lungs, but if I kept my lips almost shut it wasn’t too bad.

We got close enough to see the cage just in time for me to not bang my shins against it. Pulling Liriel down, I rattled the lock at her. “Open this. Save a life.”

Her eyes widened as she put together why I was doing this. Voice shaky but fiercely determined, she pushed the crystal head of her wand against the lock and muttered a word in Elvish. Nothing. Another word. Nothing. What sounded like two words.

The lock clicked. Yanking the door open, I reached in and grabbed the prisoner’s head and pulled. It stumbled forward out of the cage, awkward and hesitant, but it moved.

“Run, you stupid, suicidal lump! Get out of here!” I hissed at it, then took my own advice. Away. My feet pounded the pavement. I shoved my way through a scared, milling crowd.

“Gunpowder!” someone shouted, and the crowd really got scared.

“It’s not gunpowder. It’s an Acme toy. It won’t set off the Police Sensor,” yelled the drone seller.

“Aaaaa! Someone stole one of my smoke bombs! I know they’re great, but come on!” squeaked Chaos. That kid. He was going to milk this into some sales. I was so proud.

The smoke thinned as I got across the street. My actual target loomed in front of me. A wall. I ran right up it onto one of the buildings lining the alley, and headed for the corner. With any luck, I’d be gone and nobody would even be sure I was responsible. If they were, good luck hunting down a random orphan who was never coming back here again.

Which is why I barely kept from stumbling as I heard something I’d never, ever heard before: Footsteps clattering up onto the wall behind me.

I had to get out of sight. There was the corner. I stepped around it, the world swinging into a new position as my gravity boots reoriented. Only after I’d gone a few more paces did I even look back to see who was following me.

I nearly lost my balance again as I saw the six-legged rat-pig round the corner behind me, his metal feet not just sticking to the wall, but his whole body solidly set as if this were a normal run.

Slowing down to a jog so he could catch up, I said, “You have gravity shoes built into your feet!”

Four of the flying drones the guy in overalls had been selling sailed around the corner, and settled into the slots in his shoulders as if they belonged there. “My parts would have been worth…a lot of money.”

I brushed a hand back through my hair, which I’d never gotten to properly grease and stuck out all over the place. “You know what this means, right?”

“…no?” it projected, giving me its weary stare.

I took off running as fast as I could, feet pounding gleefully against the concrete.

“Catch me if you can!”

Chapter Five

I ran! Off to my right, shoppers settled down from their momentary panic and started to argue again. That was one of my favorite things. My feet bounced across windows and bricks, and that was my floor. What was the ground to everyone else was a wall to me, and off to my left this building stretched in layers of brick and stone and glass and steel to an empty sky. Above me, another building formed my ceiling.

Only one person shared my world, the fat six-legged cyborg beaver thing galloping along behind me.

Vanity Rose had no intention of going easy on him. To start…yes, a nice flagpole rising up in front of me. I jumped, my foot landed on it, and now the flagpole was down as I ran across, jumped to the opposite flagpole, and hopped onto the surface of the building that was my ceiling a minute ago.

Confusing? Yes, and I love it. The beaver was fatter than me, but his squat, robotic legs had wide, birdlike claws. He grabbed on with all six and kept running, although now he rippled like a caterpillar. He made the jump, but it set him spinning around and around the pole. I was kind of jealous.

Whoops, better not let him catch up. I took off again, heading away from the street, toward a corner, zigzagging away from the scene of the crime.

I risked a glance back, and picked up the pace. Once he got all his feet planted, that little guy moved fast on a straightaway. Ah, but we were about to round the corner into a narrow alley.

Rounding the corner happened, and…bah. The alley wasn’t as narrow as I would like. However, it did have a fire escape, or at least three floors worth of ancient fire escape that hadn’t yet fallen off the building like the lower floors did.

The trick? A fire escape wasn’t big, but it didn’t have to be. Step on the side. That gave me a new direction, with the opposite building straight ahead. Leap! Twist around, put a foot on a large gargoyle’s face, and a couple of steps down it later I was running forward along the new wall.

Could my six-legged rival keep up? He reached the fire escape, tried to climb, but his bird claw feet couldn’t get the purchase to run on its thin poles. He didn’t give up. Climbing to the top of the fire escape, he jumped off there. Regular gravity took over, but the extra second of flight time let him hit the gargoyle.

Wham. He hit hard, but got a grip with all six feet. That fat body must have been tough, because he stood right up and resumed chasing me. Ha!

I liked this building. Nice and old, the concrete and gargoyles went way up high. I hopped from the head of one gargoyle to another, enjoying the dizzy, floating moments in the air where my gravity shoes never totally changed direction. Behind me, the hairy miniature hippo managed three of those jumps, then having made the point that he could, charged ahead on the straightaway.

He was getting serious about this.

You know who else was serious? The guy who opened up a window and yelled at us, “What are you doing?”

“Thanks, buddy!” I shouted back, and dived right in past him. A second later, he yelped as my more solid rodent pursuer did the same thing.

This looked like a business. Bright lights, open doors, adults arguing with each other next to machines I didn’t understand, a few computers, no kitchens or bedrooms. Lots of shouting for security. Whatever this place built or sold, a lot of folks had black grease on their hands.

Not the guy who lunged out of a side door and grabbed the waistband of my pants as I passed.

If it had been my jacket, I’d have left it behind, but pants made me pause for a second. One second was enough, as a squat but man-sized mass of hairy rodent slammed into him, then stampeded over his body with metal feet as I sprung back into motion.

We ran side by side now, and I kept to corridors. Turn right. Turn left. There we go, a window at the end of the hall. On any building level with gargoyles, there were good odds the windows opened. The one we’d come in by did.

Yes, I saw it. This one had a sill. Skidding up to it, I unlocked the latch, my rat-pig companion yanked the sash up, and we scrambled out onto the wall together.

He looked straight up at me, that naturally cynical expression more grim than tired. “Next?”

I just laughed, and took off. We’d come out on a wide street, well above the surface, and the businesses on this side had decided going down to ground level was simply too inconvenient to reach the businesses on the opposite side.

In other words, another crossing tube. This one wasn’t just a tube, but had struts, glass, and a solid, permanent look. Maybe it was even legal. We were low enough for aircars to hit it. These are the kinds of things a night fly thinks about as I ran across its windows to the next building, throwing a friendly wave to a guy walking along inside. He gave me a thumbs up.

We stepped off onto the new building. There would be no window dives in this one. It was all modern, circular, all the shaded glass sealed down tight with grey plastic, or grey painted metal, or whatever. I wasn’t an engineer, and didn’t want to ever be one.

What I wanted was to race around the horizon of this fancy tower, watching the world rotate above me, until on the opposite side we reached a street just the perfect length.

Sprinting straight up as fast as I could, I leaped off, twisted around in the air, and fell…but fell still heading toward the new building. My feet touched, gravity wrenched around in the direction I wanted it, and after a few desperate leaping steps I slowed down and stopped.

Match that, rat-pig.

He tried. Copying my technique, he galloped up the wall of the round building, and at the closest point jumped off.

I winced. Oh, boy. His body wasn’t made for straight up jumps. He didn’t have the speed he needed.

What he did have were those four drones stuck to his shoulders. Their gravity coils lit up green, and while they didn’t even slow down his fall, they pushed him up against the new building. He landed hard, but with six legs he could tumble and roll six meters and still keep his gravity grip on the wall.

I trotted down to him, crouched down, and held out my hand. He lifted a metal paw of his own, and slapped it against my palm. We were both breathing hard.

Ah, but he didn’t need to breathe to speak. “That was the stupidest thing I have ever done, and I—”

I pressed a finger to his coal black lips, barely visible under the dull brown moustache. “Shhh. We need to have a huge heart-to-heart, but it will have to wait because vengeance was just served up icy cold.”

He sat on his stump-tailed butt and stared at me, but I had something more important on my mind now.

That same stupid street cleaning bot I vowed to conquer every morning was right now hovering down this street toward us. Or maybe another bot just like it. Who cared? Conquering time was now.

I stalked up the side of the building, judging distances. My rodent companion’s telepathic voice got a bit shrill. “What are you doing? Messing with that robot would be a really bad idea. Don’t you know who owns those?”

The bot floated closer, and I jumped. In that first floating moment I knew my aim was perfect, and I landed on top of its blue metal sphere body, wrapping my arms and legs around it.

Then blue flashed, and the world hurt a lot. Something crackled. Probably me. Shocking pain jolted through my body, I flopped, and fell.

The pain disappeared. Mid-slump, I twisted a foot enough to touch my sole against the robot’s underside, and my gravity shoes took over.

My muscles jittery, I stood on the drone and got my breath again. Its gravity coil did not like my gravity shoes, but the robot twirling and rotating just made the view entertaining. For me, my perch was nice and solid.

While I tried to put my thoughts back together, the cyborg rodent poked his own into my head. Ow. It kind of hurt after an electrocution. “Oh, thank goodness. The drone had a command to deactivate its defenses.”

The drone squealed and bucked underneath me. That I felt. As the rotating passed, I shouted up to the rodent, “Make it hold still!”

“I can’t. I’m a remote control, not a hacker. Directional controls aren’t working. It must take preprogrammed routes. Jump off when it passes, and I’ll catch you. Hurry!”

I slapped my fist against my breastbone. “Never! By my oath, I shall conquer this—"

Something crackled again. Not me, but inside the drone. The green light of its gravity coil went out.

We fell.

I was right out in the middle of the gap between buildings, and had no momentum in any direction except straight down. The only thing I was going to hit was the street, and my gravity shoes would do me no good at all.

The wind whistled faster. I still had a long way to go.

At least I was going to make a terrible mess.

Four little discs with their own green gravity coils flew up underneath me, pressing against my descending body and slowing my fall.

In the time it took for me to be sure it was working, one burned out, and tumbled away.

But they weren’t just lifting me. They were pushing me, toward the building I’d just fallen off of, and the bulky six-legged rodent galloping down its wall, level with me.

A second drone threw out a shower of sparks and dropped.

I reached out an arm. My hairy friend didn’t have any arms to reach back with, but he opened his mouth, and hooked his teeth into my spiked wristband. He yanked, and I grabbed his body, hugging myself against him.

His own gravity shoes took over, and ”down” became the mass of hair and muscle and flesh underneath me, and the building underneath him. We skidded to a halt, leaving gouges and cracks in two windows.

I was still hanging onto him with all my strength when I heard the original drone slam into the street with a bang and a lot of smaller bangs and clatters, and a whole chorus of people shouting.

Sliding carefully off my new friend’s back, I sat on the wall and clasped his cheeks in his hands. I had been totally right in thinking of him as a rodent. The incisors that he used to hook my wristband were huge, all together bigger than my hand.

While I groggily mooshed his teeth, he telepathically lectured me. “Five seconds. If you’d waited five seconds, I could have told you all the reasons that was a bad idea, starting with the alarm signal it must have sent out.”

Aw. I knew that tone. That was ”I thought I’d lost you” anger. I’d sure heard it enough from Ms. Understanding.

Past him, I had the view down to the street. The cleaning robot had been excessively well armored for something that washed windows, and its round shell had been dented, but remained mostly intact. A boy in a patched coat crept up to it now, jammed a crowbar into one of its seams, and started levering the drone apart. The thing was so well armored, that looked like a slow process.

Dragging the rodent’s head around, I pointed at the boy. He had a couple of friends by now. They were better dressed than the burlap sack kid back at the AR Monster fight, but not by much. “If you know so much, who are they?”

He blinked. “Street scavengers. Poor kids, a lot of them without parents, who steal wreckage before it can be reclaimed by official sources.”

“So…me. Awesome!”

Climbing back to my feet, I stretched my sore muscles, and set out at a lazy jog down toward the street and the scavengers. Three boys, all around my age, gathered around the drone and disconnected its choicest bits from the heavy armor.

The rodent followed, but only at a reluctant waddle. “They’re not going to be friendly. You know that, right?”

I laughed, and picked up the pace. We’d ended up quite a ways up, after all. Only when one of the boys looked up and saw me did I stop, put my hands on my knees, and give him a grin.

He stared, eyes so wide I could see their green color. It was the boy with the crowbar too, but he’d cracked the shell far enough open his friends didn’t immediately notice his paralysis. He just stood there, staring.

And staring.

I rolled my own eyes. This was why I normally wore makeup, to prevent this ”stricken dumb” effect in boys and a few girls my age.

I tried a wave. Maybe he wasn’t a total hormone slave, and had never seen anybody walk down a wall.

His friend had more self-control, and much better taste in clothes. Unevenly cut, not-quite shaved black hair, and a whole lot of denim, its raggedness made up for by the fact that he was wearing a good four sets of jeans and jackets, but three of them had been ripped up into sashes and tied in strips to make up for the holes in the first set. Cool effect. He didn’t freeze at all when he saw me, just reached into his coat, pulled out a metal ball, and threw it at me.

What the—?

Confused? Yes. But I didn’t let that delay me even a fraction of a second from leaping to the side and starting my run back up the wall. The ball didn’t quite hit where I’d been standing, but it got close enough that when a big glowing sheet flashed out of it, I’d have been in harm’s way. A few feet up and to the side made all the difference.

The first boy never stopped staring, but now he was pulling out a pudgy little contraption. I deemed it wise to run even faster, a decision vindicated when the thing belched out a ball of flame. Yes, actual fire, hot enough to leave my back toasty enough to sting, although at least I’d outdistanced it, too. Far enough up I was confident two short-range weapons like that wouldn’t work, I turned around and shouted, “What is wrong with—” and finished with “YEEE!” because a crossbow bolt smacked into the window next to me.

A. Crossbow. Bolt. Now that I was looking, the three boys at the drone had friends across the street, and one of them had a sleek black crossbow he was even now threading a new bolt into.

So, time to run again, with a heavy, hairy rodent now falling in at my side. Between steady breaths, I asked him, “They can’t—afford—good clothes—but they—can afford—weapons?”

“Those are the only things they can’t afford to sell,” he transmitted back.

Couldn’t argue with that. What I could do was run, as another bolt hit the wall. Nowhere near me, but still!

Many, many floors farther up, I jogged to a halt again. The rodent did as well, but nudged me with his bulky head. “We should keep running.”

“We’re out of range. We’re certainly out of range of anything accurate,” I replied, sitting on his back to scowl at the distant scavengers. The one with the crossbow actually fired yet another bolt at me, but it didn’t even get in the ballpark. Sure, it could hit me, but only with a miracle.

Colored lights flashed. Bikes and a blocky car pulled up. Had to be corporate enforcers. The scavenger gang descended on the broken drone like locusts, grabbed loot, and started to run. I couldn’t make out words from up here, but a lot of people shouted and I could sure see the flamethrower go off again, and the crossbow kid point his weapon at the adults getting out of the car.

The adults had blue and green armor. One of them had a glowing red melee weapon. The kids were already on the run, and had fired just to make their attackers hesitate, and get a head start.

Not much of a head start. People were about to get hurt, and I didn’t want to see it. Standing up, I turned to leave.

Something went pok! Kicked up dust drew my attention to a brand new hole in the building next to me, a slot with a sharp, star-shaped slice of metal sticking out.

Run, Vanity. Run very, very fast.

My feet were already obeying. A new pok, signaled another metal star burying itself in the metal surfacing of the building. And then another. All within a couple of body lengths of me.

I risked a glance back, to see the distant character aiming the blue and white tube weapon at me that I knew would be there. A sawed-off gauss rifle. An actual—

Pok! Don’t dawdle, Vanity, head for the corner!

At least it wasn’t a real, full size gauss rifle. Those were much more accurate, and the flechette would have gone through me, and the wall under my feet, and any inside walls, and out the other side of the building, and maybe through the next building besides.

A whine rose up behind us, and I didn’t waste speed looking, this time. I knew the sound of a vehicle with gravity coils. One of those bikes could fly, and they didn’t want me to get away.

“Why me?!” I shouted, at the injustice of it all.

The rodent answered, “They must think you stole me. I’ll—”

“You’ll shut up and follow me. Or do you think you’re not good enough?”

Move, feet. Move! We went around the corner, giving us a break from whatever weapons the guy on the bike carried. Our next option loomed immediate and obvious. A balcony terrace stuck out from the building only one floor up, with a makeshift but quite nice bridge crossing the street to another terrace just like it.

We galloped over it as fast as we could. I was grateful, but surprised. This was too low near the street for unauthorized bridges. It was sure to get noticed and removed.

But hey, it lasted long enough to get me across the street, and you know what terraces have? Doors back into the building. I slammed into this one, rather than waste time slowing down, and grabbed the latch. Yes, open! A door like this wouldn’t be locked much.

Wow, I couldn’t tell if we’d entered an apartment building or a really seedy business. Cracked brown paint decorated the walls, which were spaced with solid, mostly closed doors. A few people shuffled around, mostly carrying piles of books, which I wouldn’t have expected if these were apartments. The room visible through the first open door we passed mostly contained giant stacks of paper.

Behind us, metal exploded. My prediction had been correct, and the guy on the hover bike had decided he didn’t like the bridge.

Whatever this place was, my plan remained the same. We zigzagged through the halls while people watched us in confusion, until we found the opposite side of the building. Our pursuer wouldn’t know where we planned to come out, or if we intended to hide inside. I only needed to get out of visual range for a minute.

We reached an openable window. I couldn’t open the lock, but the rodent fastened his teeth onto it and yanked the lock off the frame. We struggled through an awkwardly small gap, and outside.

Opportunities, opportunities…perfect. We’d entered a part of town where terraces were the style, it seemed. The next building across from us was all shiny and white stone, and it had a particularly elegant balcony with vase shaped bars for the railing, and little tables and chairs. Lovely. With all that weight, it required supports underneath to keep it supported.

And just to make things easier, a flagpole jutting from this building would let us drop right down onto that balcony. Which we wasted no time in doing.

But I didn’t want the top of the terrace. Followed closely by my rodent companion, I ran around to the terrace’s underside, darted back against the wall, and tucked tight into a deeply shadowed slot between the supports. He curled up tightly next to me.

And we waited, invisible unless you looked from just the right angle.

A whine signaled the hoverbike going by. Then another whine caught up to it. Great, they’d sent both bikes to chase me.

Those bikes went by above, and the whines faded away.

At a whisper, I told the giant rodent, “Now we just find out where we are compared to home.”

I got out my SPUD and flicked it on. The floating screen flickered to life. It didn’t make much light, and we weren’t in a spot that light would be very visible, but I turned to face the corner just in case.

Of course, owning an ancient, fourth-hand SPUD had its problems. I had absolute bottom level cyberspace access, and everything looked like cubes and pyramids made out of green lines. I navigated between them, looking for the map program. Get too far away from home, and even finding the obvious stuff could be difficult. And this area was swarming with ads. At least my SPUD couldn’t handle their graphics, and turned the billboards into brightly colored blurs.

Ah, this looked familiar. My thumb rolled over the navigating button on my SPUD, sliding me between plain geometric buildings toward the one with ”SPUD MAPS” on it.

Suddenly cyberspace flickered out, replaced by a repulsively familiar fried potato wedge hologram. At top volume, it yelled, “Hi, I’m Fry Smiley! If you update to my latest version, I can give you customized directions to anywhere you want to go!”

I hate you, Fry Smiley. I swear, if I live through this, you won’t. Vanity Rose will see you erased.

The whines of hoverbikes picked up again. Of course they heard.

I would not die here. Revenge against Fry Smiley would give me strength.

“Come on!” I yelled at the giant rodent, and circled around to the terrace itself. Getting into the building was always a good first step to escape.

We ran up to the nice glass doors, and I grabbed the handle. Locked. Well, this was such a nice building, and it was the middle of the night, and sometimes you just plain got unlucky.

Like now, because the hoverbikes must not have gone very far. They zoomed up in front of the terrace, lights pointed at me, and the guy in armor on one bike held up a tube as fat as a cannon.

Oh, come on. He could not be serious. Unwilling to bet my life on that, I dived for the stone floor, just in time for the door above me to explode in a shower of glass.

What even was that weapon? I didn’t see any projectiles. Just a jagged hole big enough to dive through in the door. So, I leaped to my feet and dove through it.

Ow ow ow ow ow. I was now the proud owner of a whole lot of cuts, but even dripping blood, I didn’t have time to worry about them. I ran into the ritzy, well-lit lounge with its pretty gold colored walls, betting the guys on the bikes didn’t want to take any more risks hurting people who actually count. A door on the other side let me and the rodent into an equally well-lit hall.

Hoverbike guys were not going to give up just because I’d ducked in here, either. So, plan….

I ran down the hall, and well-dressed businesspeople squealed and ran away from me. The first turn revealed a set of six elevators. Perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Jabbing all the call buttons, I asked the rat-pig, “Can you do emergency overrides on these?”

“I think so. They’re usually behind locks, not passwords.” He looked around at the elevators, whose floor readouts were all heading toward us.

The first elevator door opened. Inside, a woman in a suit coat over a tight tweed jumpsuit compounded her fashion crime with gold wire set into her skin around her eyes and mouth, accentuating her already gaudily red lips. She used those lips to scream, and the rodent and I first rushed into the elevator, then shoved her out of it.

As our door closed, a set of dings signaled the other elevators arriving. I stabbed a button a few floors below the top of the building, and asked my companion, “How about setting an elevator’s emergency brake?”

“Already on it. I’m sending each elevator to a different floor, and then I’ll lock them.”

I nodded. “Every little bit of delay and confusion helps.”

“And the roof access?” I pointed to the little keyhole rather than button at the top of the elevator panel.

“Done.”

“And the music?” I asked plaintively.

“Sorry, not responding.”

We rode upward, and I tried not to let the quiet tinkling of corporate background music make me even more tense. What would the enforcers be doing? Building security would be on their side, I’d guarantee it, but only after introductions were made. How much time would the enforcers waste circling the building, expecting me to hop out the other side like last time?

The elevator reached the floor way up near the top I’d set it to first. Wiping my hands over my arms and sides, I scooped up as much blood as I could and shook it out as a trail of drops in a paradise of white and chrome. Wow, it was actually really nice up here. Statuary, a fountain, what was this floor?

The only important answer was ”a diversion.” Our official stop out of the way, the elevator continued up until the dial above the door read R. The elevator opened up onto the roof, and we bolted out the door.

I stopped immediately, and the rodent a few steps later, when he noticed I wasn’t continuing. There were some nice hiding spots up here, with piping and antennae sticking up, and a chair and table and umbrella suggesting people came up here for the view occasionally. None of it was good enough.

“Send the elevator back to the floor we were just at, lock it there, and open the door up here.”

His hallucinatory voice came through doubtful and hesitant. “I—I think I can do that. I hope I can.”

We found out a few seconds later, when the door opened up not on an elevator, but on a dingy yellow shaft, lined with black rails.

I had a second to look down at myself. Eesh, I had more than a few cuts, but none of them were bleeding more than drops at a time. Thank goodness. Blood loss wasn’t a threat I’d have to worry about. Time was my friend, not my enemy.

With the elevator door open, one other thing leaped to my attention. Only one door. This was the only one of those elevators that went all the way to the roof. Hoo boy! If I’d gotten into the wrong elevator, I’d…have come up with another plan. But I liked this one. It would work.

Stepping inside, I circled around the wall to the ceiling, the very top, and wedged myself standing in one corner. Getting the idea, the rodent stretched himself out at my feet. Despite his bulk, he stretched pretty well. He tucked his remaining two drones under his stomach.

The door closed again. As we waited, I whispered down to him, “The thing is, people who haven’t used gravity shoes know you can walk on walls, but they don’t think about what else you can do.” Like stand in a corner of the ceiling as comfortably as if it were a corner on the floor. In fact, this was a welcome chance to rest after the chase.

The elevator about four floors down started to move. They’d gotten security to override the lock commands. That was part of the plan.

A couple of minutes later, the elevator returned. It stopped at the distraction floor, long enough for the doors to open and close, but no more. Then it rose, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Here came the biggest uncertainty in this whole plan. Elevators left a gap between their ceiling and the top of the elevator shaft at the top level, right?

I felt the corner of the elevator brush me, and stop. Woof. Yes. Not a lot of gap, but here I was, standing in it uncrushed.

“This is it,” said someone in the elevator.

It dinged. The roof door open. Feet thumped, and a woman shouted, “Freeze!”

Feet scuffled. The elevator door shut, cutting off my ability to hear what was going on out on the roof.

A few minutes passed silently. I looked down, and saw the rodent’s head lying at my feet, dark eyes staring tiredly up at me. I winked.

The elevator door reopened, and footsteps reentered it. “There’s nowhere else for her to go,” said the woman.

“She’s not there. We searched the whole roof. She left. She’s blocks away by now,” argued the man.

“Sid was circling the whole time. He never saw her leave,” said another man.

The first man was definitely getting angry. “It’s darker than my boss’s heart out there. Sid missed her.”

Sarcastically, the woman asked, “And the blood? She stopped bleeding two meters from the door?”

“A trick, like the blood down below. We don’t have to know how. The security camera said she left at the roof level. She didn’t climb out the hatch, and she didn’t come back inside.”

Oops. There was a security camera in the elevator. And an exit hatch on the roof, which I could see right now. Both together, thank goodness, had combined to hide my actual escape, or at least stop each other from giving me away.

The elevator started to move. The last thing I heard was the woman. “We’ll search the floor we thought was a distraction. The rest of security is working their way up. Either we find her, or like you said, it’s too late already.”

I let their elevator get to the other floor, and gave it some time for everyone to get out. Then I tapped the roof door and whispered to the rodent, “Let’s get out of here.”

He did. We snuck back out onto the roof of the building.

The guy was right, it was dark. It had been dark already, but now the clouds had finished closing in and a thin drizzle fell from the sky.

The rodent looked up, and sent me nervous, “Back inside?”

I shook my head. “It will cover our trail.”

“You don’t have a coat!”

He didn’t have to tell me that. I didn’t have a coat, and what I did have were lots of little cuts, and the raindrops burned in every one of them. They stung my eyes and tingled unpleasantly when they soaked into my scalp, as well. The air smelled like alcohol.

But I could handle a little pain, this was just a drizzle, and roofs were the best places to cross streets. Buildings would lean over at the top, or there’d be an extending aircar landing field, or bridges left by night flies where they knew no one would bother to remove them.

In this case, I went over and stood under the umbrella to peer around, and found something better. Some executive’s kid rode his hover scooter around up here, and left it lying on the concrete surfacing. Who would steal it on the roof of a ritzy whatever this place was?

Me, that’s who. I scooped it up, and pushed the button to activate the gravity coils, but kept the lights off. It didn’t even have a key lock. Sitting at the front of its seat, I patted the back. “Up.”

He looked at it. He looked back up at me. “That’s not going to take both of us very far.”

“It doesn’t have to,” I replied, with a confident smirk.

He scrambled up behind me, clinging with all six legs to a spot not nearly big enough for him. “Point.”

I started us moving. The coils whined loudly, but we did go. I pointed it at the corner of the building, boosted up onto the wall, and flew across the gap to the opposite building. My companion’s two remaining drones lit up to provide us what tiny fraction of lift they could add. We made it across, walked the scooter over that roof to the next, and did it again.

Two more crosses and the scooter hadn’t broken, but I decided we didn’t need it anymore. I knew nothing about the building itself, but sitting on its blank roof was a lightless metal shack with no door, just one side completely open.

We rushed in, out of the rain. Scraps of wire fencing and a whole lot of guano stains suggested it had once been a pigeon coop. Now it was also a pigeon coop, but unofficially, with at least a dozen pigeons staring at us with bulgy offended eyes. They would have to tough it out.

“Safe. Finally,” I sighed.

We sat down in the dark, listening to the faint patter of rain on the roof. The rodent took a few extra seconds before joining me to stick out his tongue and taste the rain, but join me he did. After curling up into a loaf shape, he sent, “Low toxicity. I was worried the rain would poison your cuts, but this might clean them.”

Low toxicity, but as the raindrops got heavier, they got increasingly acidic. The guano stains outside the coop started to hiss.

Well, we had time to wait it out.

Looking down at my companion, a lump of bristles and metal just a little bulkier than me, I asked, “What’s your name?”

He was silent for a minute. Technically he remained silent, but his phantom voice eventually answered, “Cappy.”

“That’s not a name.” I tried to sound more sympathetic than accusing.

“No, but my name is Transfer Experiment Eight. Cappy is short for capybara, the animal my body is modeled after, and at least sounds like a name.”

Our conversation got the pigeons interested. One of them announced, “I am bird!”

Another pigeon gasped. “You are bird?”

The other pigeons got into it, repeating, “Bird.

Bird!

Bird.” in tiny but bombastic voices.

Trying to ignore them, I laid my hand on the capybara’s shoulder. “Okay, what was your name?”

He didn’t answer. The pigeons, curious, stopped babbling and stuck their heads out this way and that, listening.

I pressed. Now was the time for answers. “AIs don’t give up when they’re depressed. They get desperate. You know things you wouldn’t need to if you’re just an experimental intelligence. Whether this was a biosculpt gone horribly wrong, or what, you used to be human.”

His only answer was to deflate a little, his whole body sinking down ten centimeters and widening out around the middle.

Oops. Wait. When had I started thinking ”he?” Fidget would kill me for assuming something like that. Might as well be direct. “Okay, how about he, she, it?”

“I used to be a he.” His telepathic voice sounded as tired as his face always looked.

I, on the other hand, was relieved I’d guessed right.

“You’re a pretty good runner,” I tried next.

He lifted one of his metal forelegs, flexing the talons into whatever you call a bird fist. “Thanks. It felt good,” he answered, sounding both pleased and a little confused.

Something bumped my hip. I looked down to see a pigeon nudging me. My attention gotten, it pointed back at the first pigeon. “He is bird.”

“Bird!” declared another pigeon.

Two hopped up on Cappy’s back. One of those puffed out his chest and declared, “I am also bird!”

“Bird!”

“Bird!”

“Is he bird?”

“Yes, he is bird!”

“Bird!” I couldn’t have told any of the little grey puffballs apart in the day. As it is, I could see them just barely well enough to make out their movements.

“You know pigeons didn’t used to be able to talk?” Cappy asked, sounding at least a bit interested.

“Oh, yeah. I saw photos. They had smaller heads, and weren’t—” I cupped my hands in front of my face, miming bulgy eyes.

“Bird?” asked a pigeon hopefully.

Cappy snuffled, his jowly lips rattling in what might be a laugh. “The funny thing is how random it was. They weren’t bred for any purpose. It wasn’t a mutation. Some guy named Kravitz liked to tinker with bioengineering at home, and was way better at it than an amateur should be. He made the first talking pigeon on pure whim. When the corps caught him, it got away, and its children took over the rooftops of West Angel City.”

“They’re…pretty stupid,” I said, tucking my head down guiltily.

My point was proven when the pigeon at my side said, “Also bird.”

Cappy’s whole body wobbled under my hand. “Hard as it is to imagine, they used to be stupider. Give me your SPUD.”

Surprised, I dug in my pockets, and pulled it out. Damp, but undamaged. I held it out toward his hand, but instead he ducked his boxy head and stuck the plug in his forehead into the SPUD’s base. The plug fit neatly into the peripheral jack, and the SPUD stuck out of his forehead like a horn.

The cyberspace display flickered to life, lighting up the pigeon coop. My little tank avatar sped between line-art buildings like a street racer. The display blinked, and Fry Smiley appeared.

He had just enough time to start his “Hi—” before he expanded, his clown face going bug-eyed in alarm, and popped like a balloon.

I cackled and kicked my feet in glee. Several of the pigeons backed away, although the ones on Cappy’s back didn’t seem bothered. They’d already hunkered down, wings and legs tucked in as if they were falling asleep.

“You had anti-Smiley software on your SPUD already, but Fry turned it off. I turned it back on. The explosion was a hidden option I activated,” he sent.

Laughing again, I pushed myself to my feet, and bent forward just enough to slap my pants to dust them off. All that actually accomplished was to make my cuts sting again, but I ignored them. “Well, that settles it.”

Cappy blinked, turning his big head to look up at me. “What?”

Bending way down, I poked him in his flat nose, and gave him my most triumphant grin. “You are going to be my pet. No, not just my pet, my conscience! You can give me tons of good advice about when I’m doing something stupid or dangerous, and I will ignore it all.”

His mouth hung open. I might never get over just how big those incisors were. Wow. It took several seconds for him to find even his telepathic voice. “That is messed up on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin.”

Soaking in glee, I extended my arms and one leg, and spun around in a circle. “I know! And the best, most messed up part is, you have no choice. You’ve got no options, which is why you’re here. I’m exploiting you.”

The capybara face couldn’t manage any expressions other than ”cynical” and ”tired”, but his wobbling jaw at least backed up the stunned confusion radiating from him. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Vanity,” I corrected immediately. “Always Vanity.”

His mouth flapped, and he actually spoke. “Bayitae. Bality.”

My sudden, explosive laugh sprayed him with spit, and sent all the pigeons except the ones sleeping on his back fluttering to the corners of the shed. “What was that?!”

His head twisted from side to side in concentration as his jaw wobbled like he was gulping food. “Tong nod ite. Neet ta pag-pa—” Giving up, he switched back to telepathy. “I need to practice physical speech. This really is bad for your brain, Vanity. Pattern interference can cause personality changes, anxiety, and even cognitive damage by redirecting synapse formation. At least you’re young, and rapid pattern evolution will reduce—”

I pressed my whole hand to the front of his muzzle, shutting him up. Looking into those pitch-black eyes, I said, “We are not going to think about that. We’re just going to go with the flow.”

Like a good boy, he didn’t argue. Instead, my SPUD display sprung to life again, and he maneuvered through cyberspace faster than I would have believed possible. He docked at a little building, the SPUD beeped, and he reported, “The rain should stop soon. It’s just a shower. Tomorrow it will rain hard. You don’t want to be out in it, especially if you’re a kid so crazy she runs around without a coat.”

I straightened up, jaw raised in pride. After all, I was the owner in this pairing. “Excellent. Find me a map. We move out as soon as it’s back down to a drizzle.”

“It’s a long way. We’ll be walking all night, and even drizzle is going to hurt,” he warned.

I leaned down and patted his nose. “Yes, that’s exactly the kind of wisdom I want to not follow. Keep it up.”

Hours later, well after midnight, we climbed down the fire escape stairs and pried open my bedroom window. I slipped inside, followed by a cautious, clumsy Cappy, and sat down heavily on my bed. Man, was I tired! Wrestling off my still damp clothes, I regarded my pants with despair. They hadn’t been in good shape to begin with, and between the cuts from the glass door and the rain eating at the threads, I didn’t think they’d hold another day.

Slim, powerful arms with a thin layer of soft, fake skin over hard tubes wrapped around me, then drew back to take hold of my shoulders and spin me around. Ms. Understanding’s face twitched from side to side, her eyes darting and rolling out of sync as she looked me over. “Rose, my sweet little girl, who did this to you?”

I jerked my own head dismissively. “It was just a drizzle. The rain is really mild tonight. Oh, you mean the cuts?”

Liriel moved in her bed. No doubt she’d been the one to signal Ms. Understanding when I opened the window. A mirror floated up off her bedside table, suspended on golden glitter. It hovered over in front of me, and Ms. Understanding’s eyes lit up so I could see myself.

Whoa. I was a mess. That scavenger boy sure hadn’t been staring because I was pretty. I hadn’t paid attention to just how hard Maricel knocked me around, and now had a huge, dark black eye, bruises in rings around my arms and legs, some on my stomach…wow. Not to mention a bunch of cuts, many of which were starting to ooze blood again now that I was out of the rain. The rain had turned my hair a sickly yellow-green with blotches instead of stripes.

Taking the mirror’s handle, I turned it this way and that to examine my injuries. Nice. I looked awful. My hair would have to be recolored, but the rest was wicked cool.

Ms. Understanding yanked me into another abrupt hug, and chattered happily, “I am so happy that you made the right decision, Rose, that I completely forgive you for your extreme lollygagging on the way home. Right now, you will stay here while I get the medical kit for those cuts.”

She drifted a couple of steps, stopped, and rotated in a complete circle. Her upper body tilted to one side, and with as much bafflement as I’d ever heard from her asked, “And what are you doing with a construction and reclamation biodrone?”

I glanced over at Cappy, who lay on the floor, laying his head on crossed metal forelegs. The moment I’d been waiting for had arrived, and I flashed Ms. Understanding a grin so big it made my face ache.

“He followed me home. Can I keep him?”

Chapter Six

Another morning arrived. I woke up, stretched my colorfully bruised body, and looked out the window.

Rain. Pouring rain. A wall of rain too thick to see the building across the street. Not so thick I couldn’t see the green light of a cleaning drone bobbing past.

Yanking open the window, I lunged forward. Vengeance would be mine.

…except for the fat, traitorous capybara who wedged himself between me and the window, and stuck his head in it to block me. “You can’t go out there. The storm will kill you!”

Please. What an exaggeration. Yes, the rain was coming down in buckets, but with hardly any wind, even up at our altitude, and no lightning or ash balls or EMP-disrupted space junk or whatever the weather had come up with recently.

Shouldering him aside to make the point, I stuck a hand out into the rain, and immediately pulled it back, wincing. Ow. The skin on my hand bloomed red where it got wet, and wiping my hand dry left a smeary green spot on my black sheets.

Cappy stuck his own head out, tongue extended. “Highly basic, with toxic levels of barium, and other contaminants I can’t make out because of the barium.” He shook his head very carefully on the windowsill before withdrawing it, getting enough water off his fur that he wouldn’t drip.

With a resigned sigh, I folded my arms on the sill and leaned as far forward as I dared, watching the distant swirl of umbrellas on the street below. The corporations didn’t care one fig if the rain was melting the asphalt off the roads, they expected their employees to work a regular shift.

Hard soled, heeled shoes clip-clopped behind me. Mimi asked, “Vanity, will you be ready for second lunch?”

Twisting around in my bed, I found Mimi standing in the doorway. Black spiral curls, deceptively innocent smile, long blue dress with flaring skirts and no wrinkles of frayed edges, and all. Her pose with hands clasped in front of her mimicked Ms. Understanding perfectly, except that Mimi could actually focus on me.

I groaned at this display of order and decency, and ran my fingers through my hair, which felt both brittle and waxy. A few strands came off in my fingers, a weird bleached green that definitely was not any color it ought to be.

Shaking my head, I said, “Naaah. Give me third shift. I need to get cleaned up.”

Mimi nodded, and stepped past me. Crouching down in front of Cappy, she took hold of his neck in both hands where the fur was still dry. Looking first into his solid black eyes and then back along his six-legged body, she said, “I have no idea how we’re going to use a demolition biodrone without a remote set, but even for you this is an impressive theft.”

“I didn’t steal him. He was going to be butchered! It was a rescue!” I yelped.

Slim, dark eyebrows raised in amusement, Mimi looked up at me. “Have I ever objected to the salvage you bring home on moral grounds?”

Leaning back, I raised an eyebrow of my own, although mine were much more colorful. “How do you even know what he is, anyway?”

That didn’t even get a dramatic expression, just normal surprise. “Haven’t you ever seen a building collapse, or an aircar wreck? The first thing a cleanup crew does is send drones like this in to scout the debris.”

“When the cleaners arrive, I leave with whatever useful stuff I could find,” I lied. Maybe I didn’t mind seeing the deserving beaten black and blue, or throwing and taking a few punches myself, but I avoided opportunities to watch people die. As in, ”ran the other way” avoided.

Straightening up again, Mimi dusted off her dress that never needed it and said, “I am going to first lunch. You’d better hurry and get dressed.”

I threw myself into the bathroom. Getting clean took too long. Fixing my hair took longer. One glance in the mirror confirmed that last night’s drizzle had spoiled all the colors and blurred them into each other. It was the wrong kind of ugly, so I had to stand for what felt like forever with my head in the buzzing hair machine, recoloring and strengthening my hair back to its violent rainbow sheen.

The moment the buzzing stopped I leaped out and into the dormitory, digging through my trunk. My old denims had already been in deliberately bad shape. The rain had eaten them into a stained mess as fragile as paper. But oh, that girl with the glowing hair last night had given me an inspiration!

As I rooted around for the wrecked skirt I’d always planned to do something with, Liriel sat on her own bed rubbing Cappy’s now-dry cheeks in her hands. “A most noble animal you are. I see, not the works of soulless iron, but magic within you.”

There, a third-hand skirt with black and green pleats. I grabbed my scissors and started slicing it up. I’d noticed something before my eyes got stuck on that task. “Where’s the ring we nearly got ourselves killed for, pointy-ears?”

“I delivered it to Morgain ere we returned home. Such a treasure was too dangerous to keep even one night.”

Okay, there. I’d sliced the skirt into colored strips, and fastened those back together with safety pins. I buttoned it on, with red stretch satin shorts underneath. Next, I cut the left sleeve off of a beautifully freshly dyed black hoodie, added some rips like claw marks, and threw that on. It was several sizes too big, and hung down to my thighs, but that was part of the point. A belt around my waist turned the hoodie into a dress with pockets.

No outfit was complete without spiked leather bands. A collar, of course. Several around my bare left arm, and one above and below the right knee, to help draw attention to my bruises. Speaking of which….

I ran back into the bathroom. I hadn’t let Ms. Understanding waste biogel on my bruises, and Maricel had given me the mother of all black eyes. Beautiful. I hastily painted crude green skulls on my cheeks, then less hastily applied lipstick in purple and black stripes.

One more thing. Rushing back to my bed, I wedge my feet into my heaviest pair of boots, scuffed into an ugly grey and with soles replaced more times than I could count. I’d ditch them for my gravity shoes the first chance I got, but for now I looked like a violent young hooligan.

Truth in advertising.

Stampeding down to the dining room, I found Liriel already at the table, with Cosmos and Nicholas. They had just started eating, so I slid into my chair and gobbled down fried fish balls and beet sticks.

Ms. Understanding drifted into the room and set a bowl in front of Cappy, who had been silently watching all this. I peeked at its contents. “That’s it?”

“Biodrones don’t eat much, Vanity Rose, dear,” she answered.

Yeah, but it wasn’t just the small blob that made up Cappy’s meal. It was obviously waste from cooking our meal, a mess of egg shell, raw fish, fat clumps, and peel shavings.

“Now—” Ms. Understanding started to say.

My plate was empty, so she didn’t have to finish. “I know, I know. Chores. I’ll do kitchen cleanup.”

Scooping up my plate and everyone else’s, I carried them into the kitchen and the sink. An obedient drone pet, Cappy followed me. Ms. Understanding cleaned up nine tenths of her own mess as she cooked, but counters still needed wiping down and the dishes for twelve kids washed. As I filled the tub with soapy water, I made sure no one was watching, snuck a fried fish ball out of my hoodie pocket, and held it out for Cappy.

“I didn’t free you from a cage so you could eat garbage. That stuff was straight nasty,” I muttered.

“It’s not a big deal. I don’t have much of a sense of taste,” he projected back.

I pushed the fried fish ball against his lips. “That’s a lie. You’ve got a chemical analysis station for a mouth. You can taste boron.”

Gently, he opened his mouth wide enough to clear his huge incisors, and closed it around the fish ball. As he chewed, he sent, “I don’t want to be a burden.”

Myself, I ditched a couple of wristbands and got to scrubbing plates. That made enough clanking and water splashing noises to cover as I hissed, “You have nowhere to go, you’re stuck with me, and I’m going to exploit that every way I can think of. You witnessed me commit at least ten crimes last night, so I’m stuck with you. I expect you to take advantage of me just as shamelessly.”

While Cappy sat there giving me his blank capybara stare, Fidget wandered in. Crouching, ever-present grey smock trailing on the floor, Fidget picked up Cappy’s feet one by one, bending the talons and studying the joints.

“Hey, skinny-bones,” I greeted, “You missed the most amazing adventure last night. There was this whole sentient skull train, elves in the dumbest armor imaginable, and giant robots. I got to ride a giant robot! You’d have been in heaven! You’ve got to come with us next time.”

“Giant robots are pretty cool,” Fidget mumbled, feeling around in Cappy’s shoulder sockets. That done, the scrawny eleven-year-old gave Cappy a pat, announced, “You don’t need any maintenance,” and wandered out.

I finished a couple more plates. Then Cappy asked, “Do you often cut up your clothes to make new outfits?”

Hmmm. The advantage of nobody listening was that nobody was listening. And if they were, hearing me lecture a dumb animal about clothes would surprise absolutely no one. “Style on a budget is haaaaaaard. If I’m not prepared to make alterations, I’m stuck looking scruffy, not freakish. Luck like my hair machine is once in a lifetime. Usually I have to save my pennies and go to the second-hand charity stores. Rich people are crazy. If it’s not perfect, if there’s the slightest stain or scuff, they throw clothes away. A lot of the time they dump it on charity stores so they can feel good deigning to bequeath their trash on the peasants.” I waved my hand airily. “Works for me. If you’re patient sorting through bins, you can find good stuff that’s only a little damaged. It won’t fit, but that’s where cleverness and style come in.”

Cappy sat there in ”attentive dog” position until I finished the last of the dishes and buckled my wristbands back on.

Ms. Understanding appeared immediately. Gliding up next to me, she picked up a spoon, leaning way back and then way forward as she peered at it. Her smile brightened slightly. “You always do such a good job, Vanity Rose. Be a good girl, now, and place the plant sensors.”

That shocked me. I jerked a thumb toward the back yard with my one hand still slightly more red than the other. “Have you seen the rain?”

“Of course. That’s why we need the sensors. Make sure you use an umbrella, and leave them in, please. I’m expecting chemical changes in the weather.” She gave me a pat on the head, turned like she was on a swivel, and swept out.

“Grummafarfadoodledoo,” I grumbled to myself, since I couldn’t remember what kind of swear words people used when complaining like this. A quick root through the pantry reminded me where we kept the plant sensors, and I headed for the back hallway and the door to the yard.

Like a lot of balcony doors, ours was sliding glass. Two of those, in fact. If something fell from the sky hard enough to break the glass, it would break a wall.

The view outside showed that the rain had almost stopped. Oh. That would be why Ms. Understanding would let me do this at all. Vanity Rose was wearing her best stupid today, apparently.

Determined to cut down on my stupid levels, I pulled the heaviest umbrella, the one without any broken spokes, from our umbrella bucket. A drizzle made out of the same stuff I’d stuck my hand into earlier might still eat my skin, and would for sure destroy my hair.

My boots squelched in mud that bleached the soles as I picked my way out to the four mostly permanent plants in our yard. Two were bulbous cactus things, one a bush that grew little fruit Ms. Understanding had to pick before the youngest kids poisoned themselves every year, and a brown, squishy tree half again my height. As I reached each one, I put a sensor on a chunky spot. Each sensor looked like a straight metal wire, or pin, maybe ten centimeters long and with a stubby cone base. When I pressed the flat end against the plant, it shuddered, spearing hidden barbs into the plant flesh that would hold it in place. As soon as my umbrella and I got out of the way, the sensors twitched and flashed slow blue lights down from the tips to the base. Slow, but bright. Yeah, even this drizzle was vicious.

Cappy stared at the first sensor as if it were beaming information straight into his brain. It might be. Ms. Understanding could read them from a distance, so maybe Cappy had the same receptors. Other than that, he followed along with no care about the umbrella, rapidly getting drenched.

“What did you do for fun?” I asked.

No answer. He didn’t even look at me.

“Okay, what did you wish you could do for fun?” I rephrased.

That didn’t get an immediately answer, but he did look up at me, out over the yard, and then down and away. His mental voice scratched, without the usual depth of tone. “Explore. Meet people. Dance.”

I laughed, and scratched his head, even though it made my hand sting unpleasantly. “Then you’re being exploited by the right owner. Stick with me, and being turned into a six-legged rat will be the best thing that ever happened to you.”

He stared at me for a while, but even with his machine telepathy signal completely shut down and eyes that had only one expression – tired – that twitch around, his jowls looked an awful lot like a smile.

Switching to waving his head from side to side, tongue out, he went back to projecting. “It would have been much safer for the robot to do this job herself.”

I grinned, now. “She can’t. She’s not just stuck in the orphanage, she is stuck. Ms. Understanding is an old AI. She’s had to make all kinds of deals with herself, choosing which parts of her programming are important.”

This was cool. It felt really good, made me really proud, to have things I knew more about than my hyper-educated conscience. How AIs think, and especially Ms. Understanding, was an area where I was the expert. “Raising us has put her through the emotional wringer, but she made it out the other side. One of her techniques was to pick rules not to ever override. By sticking to her programming to never leave, she knows she hasn’t gone mad, only adapted. She’s not even allowed out in the yard. It means we’re on our own when we go out, and she can’t keep us trapped inside, but accepting imperfections is part of not going murder-bot.” I stuck the last sensor in a cactus, which let me waggle a finger in a circle around my ear.

Practically floating on pride, we headed back inside. I wiped my shoes on the spongy carpet but good, and dumped the dangerously drippy umbrella back in its bucket.

Fidget immediately skidded in, holding Death Rooster’s control ball in both hands and peering around me at the yard. “Is it easing up? Will I get to go out?”

“Dunno.” Pulling out my SPUD, I stuck it into Cappy’s forehead. “Forecast.”

He weaved through cyberspace to the weather node, and flashed up the results at me.

Fidget pouted. So did I. “Nope. This is the only bright spot for days. Ugh.”

With a groan, Fidget sunk down to the floor, sitting way back from any drops blown through the open door. A sullen mumble, “I summon Death Rooster,” brought the red and yellow dragon into holographic existence.

I left it running around the yard in rain it couldn’t feel, and Fidget watching it. Cappy and I hadn’t even finished circling around to the main room when Ms. Understanding called out, “Vanity Rose, get your books, please. It’s school time.”

“Seriously?” I shouted, to wherever in the building she was.

“You have been sleeping late, dear.”

This was my unofficial punishment for going out having dangerous adventures. Not only was I trapped in here for days, she’d fill every moment of that time with chores and lessons. My fists clenched. Ugh!

Then I let all that tension out with a sigh. Running out into the main room, I turned so fast I skidded backward. Lining up with the stairs, I sprinted forward, leaped, and ran up the banister rail to the second floor, hopping off onto the landing. Arms spread, I spun around to grin at my pet below.

The secret was speed. Don’t give yourself time to wobble. Oh, and be okay with falling and getting hurt lots and lots until you have impeccable balance.

At least, that was the secret for a human. Cappy trotted up to the railing himself, climbed up onto it, and climbed the same path by moving only one pair of legs at a time, gripping tight with the other four. He wasn’t using his gravity implants, either. I’d be able to tell. He just shimmied his way up like a pudgy, brown-haired inchworm.

Downstairs, Ajax put down a poster of the sports star Delicate Terror and clapped in begrudging admiration. From the boys’ dormitory door Chaos applauded with much more enthusiasm.

Myself, I hooked an arm around Cappy’s neck and gave him a noogie, only I didn’t press my fist in very hard and it was actually more of a covert hug and head scratch. “You and me, kid. You and me.”

Chapter Seven

It rained the next day.

Chapter Eight

And the next.

Chapter Nine

The rains went on and on, true to the prediction that we got off of cyberspace. True to my prediction, Ms. Understanding filled my days with schoolwork. I hadn’t realized I was getting this behind.

That left me lying on the floor one morning, or maybe afternoon. The view through the windows remained dark all day and night, and I hadn’t checked the clock on my SPUD. Ms. Understanding was not thrilled about me using it at all while I studied math, so I peered foggily at equations in a battered paper textbook, and wrote out answers on a pad.

Okay, tried to write out answers.

Leaning over to the mud-scented pile of brown hair lying next to me, I whispered, “Six fifteenths plus four fifths, divided by six fifths.”

Cappy opened one dark eye, gave me a tired, disdainful look—his only look—and then closed it again.

No projection. I thumped my feet against the wall behind me in irritation. What was the point of having a conscience if he doesn’t help you cheat?!

Downstairs, Ms. Understanding beeped. I knew that sound, and wriggled closer to the edge of the balcony. I’d planted myself on my stomach all the way at the end of the curve by the girls’ dormitory.

I peeked in time to see Ms. Understanding go completely still, arms half-raised, and the DO NOT DISTURB holograms flash into being around her.

Whoops of glee from the children who saw her brought others out, and they added their own shouts of excitement.

“Wha id going on?” Cappy whispered to me with his physical voice.

Gleefully, I whispered back, “Ms. Understanding doesn’t multitask well. When she’s on the phone, there’s no rules. Quick, find me the Dark Side of Life cyber store.”

I plunked my SPUD into place on his forehead. The cyberspace image whizzed around, locating in seconds what would have taken me five minutes. The display lit up with fuzzy pictures of armor.

Switching back to projection, Cappy asked, “This really is difficult for you, isn’t it?”

I grunted. “Yes. My life is out there, not in here. It always has been.”

Tristan and Lionheart, together as always, stampeded up the balcony toward us. Leaping on top of Cappy, they clung to him like crabs and wailed together, “Riiiiide!”

I gaped. That capybara is mine, thank you very much, and I was about to show him something!

The words didn’t have time to get out. Cappy gave me a conspiratorial wink, pushed to his feet, and as the two little boys cheered, he climbed up onto the wall and gave them a gravity-switched trip around the main room. I waited a few seconds to see what he was up to, and before my anger could rekindle one of his little flying drones zipped in from the dormitory, hovering next to me with its camera pointed at my SPUD.

The voice no one else could hear came to me quite clearly from across the room. “You have my attention.”

Good enough. I guess I didn’t care where his body actually was! “Check this out. It’s an equipment site for dark-siders. I want some of this armor so bad. Look at the metal plates on this one. Used might be even better than new. Just imagine laser holes and chainsaw tears and old bloodstains. I’d look killer.”

Sighing heavily, I added, “But even if you can find this stuff used and beaten up, it’s hundreds of dollars. A girl can dream, though, right?”

I scrolled down the catalog, until the drone wobbled and Cappy’s voice said, “That one. The shiny black jumpsuit with the embedded plates. You would look sleek in that, not quite human. Add a helmet with a face plate, and you might get mistaken for a robot.”

“I know just how to act like one.”

Cappy’s circuit of the walls brought him past me again, and Tristan and Lionheart kicked his sides and chanted, “Ceiling! Ceiling! Vanity, make him walk on the ceiling!”

Ooh. OOH. Cappy was just big enough to carry me in his gravity field. Riding along the ceiling….

Drat it. “Sorry, runts. Ceilings aren’t designed to take that much weight. You’d crush it right up into the floor above.”

Cappy’s drone pressed up against my hip. Yeah, yeah, he approved of my being cautious for once.

Ajax loomed over me, smirking at my sour expression. “What’s the matter, Rose?”

It was amazing it took him this long to come looking for a fight, but if he wanted one, he was about to get it. I clicked off my SPUD, and wrapped my fist around it. A metal tube in your hand makes you hit much harder.

Ajax’s leer faltered. I glanced up. Above me, Cappy glared at him with lips pulled back to expose his huge teeth. Liriel appeared in the dormitory doorway, a slender wooden sword raised, hilt held two handed behind her head and point aimed at Ajax.

I rose smoothly to my feet, staring Ajax in the eye. He would take his chances on a fair fight, but now that I had backup, he was doomed and he knew it. Grumbling under his breath, he turned around and stomped away.

With him out of the way, I turned my attention to more important issues—Liriel and her sword! “Are you learning to swordfight?” I asked her eagerly. That pose had been too weird for her to have made up.

She lowered the wooden blade, letting the tip point toward the floor as she gave me a wry smile. “I always was, but alas, my talents never haled in that direction. With little else to do in this rain, I have been in communication with my new sorcery mentor. She advises that if I can become even reasonably skilled with a blade, it will greatly enhance my success as a battle mage.”

I rubbed my hands together ecstatically, grin so big it hurt. “Excellent. I don’t know how I’ll take you with me walking the dark side, but I foresee fantastic adventures ahead.”

Sliding her sword into a sheathe on her back, Liriel stepped up to Cappy, taking his face in both hands and pressing her face almost to his. With a warm smile, she said, “Perhaps your noble steed will assist. There is a unicorn inside you—” and she followed up with a lot of elvish.

He blinked. Then his voice came out of my SPUD, saying something in elvish back.

Liriel smirked. No, that word wasn’t enough. Her whole face twisted up and tightened, her chest wobbled, and only faint grunting noises escaped as she fought to hold down laughter.

Gloomily, he said, “I take it that wasn’t ‘I don’t speak elvish well.’”

She shook her head, mouth still clamped desperately shut.

“How did you know?” I demanded in a whisper, giving her an accusing stare. My pet! Mine!

Turning her smile to me now, Liriel said with merely a flutter of giggle in her voice, “You are dear and brave, Vanity Rose, but your wildness precludes subtlety.”

Great. If Liriel had figured out Cappy was intelligent, Mimi had, and probably Fidget, and definitely Ms. Understanding—

Our robot caretaker’s voice echoed out of the orphanage’s speakers. “Children, guests are about to arrive. They are seeking to adopt.”

Whoa!

Out of sheer habit, I took a step toward the bathroom. Mimi and Fidget had no reason to hold back, and rushed into it to get cleaned up—although Mimi hardly had to do anything but check that she looked perfect as always. Not in the exceptionally pretty sense, but I swear she had a dirt and sweat repulsion field, and I had to use grease daily and our hair maintenance machine twice a week to get half the control she had over her curls waking up in the morning.

Liriel let out a sigh, her gaze growing distant. “But questing in the acid world would be like being only half awake.” She wandered back to her bed, lay down, and stuck her nose back in her book. She had her future planned out, and didn’t need new parents. In general, the younger the kid, the more desperately they milled around, trying to make themselves look appealing.

A week ago, an adoption visit would have sent my heart pounding with excitement. Now, I slunk out to the railing by the stair and felt…nothing at all.

The doorbell rang. Ms. Understanding slid over and opened it. “Mrs. and Mrs. Vandai. Welcome. Everyone is excited to meet you.”

They both smiled, and the slightly taller Mrs. Vandai, the one with the black hair, shook Ms. Understanding’s hands. The shorter, silver-haired Mrs. Vandai looked around the orphanage with a curious smile. I had to hand it to her, the hair was cool. Shiny, even metallic looking. I’d have to see if I could get our machine to do that to my hair. Otherwise, they were…nice. Blouses and skirts, no stains and fraying, coats barely wet thanks to a folded-up hover umbrella in the dark-haired Vandai’s pocket. They had money without being super rich.

Money was a nice start, but not everything. We all watched as Mimi, skirts rippling around her legs and hands clasped, swept past the crowd to look the women one after the other in the eye. She did so with a smile that glowed with obviously deliberate charm. After a second of studying each, she curtsied deeply. “Mrs. Vandai. Mrs. Vandai. We’re honored, and we hope you find someone to love and be loved by here.”

Six boys burst into babbling enthusiasm trying to get the couple’s attention. Tristan and Lionheart actually jumped up and down. Chaos sat on the stairs filling out forms, since Acme did everything with old fashioned paper-and-ink mail. He had that sly smile that said he was cunning, not disinterested. Fidget lurked at the foot of the stairs, nibbling on a fingernail, face half-hidden under a mop of pink-purple hair. Liriel was still in the bedroom.

That left me and Ajax on the balcony, and Ms. Understanding beckoned to us. “Rose, Thistle, do at least come meet them.”

Angry at myself for not caring, I stomped down to the foot of the stairs. The silver haired Mrs. Vandai waded through the orphan boys to ask, “Are you alright?”

She had plenty of reason to ask. A spritz of biogel had healed all my little cuts, but without it my bruises looked like…well, like I’d lost a giant robot fight and been shaken around inside a twenty-ton tin can.

I’d done my duty. Giving Mrs. Vandai the middle finger, I stomped back behind the stairs, and leaned sourly against the wall. My words to Cappy burned in my stomach. The orphanage wasn’t my life anymore, and a nice middle-class home never would be. My life had just begun, out on the streets.

As I closed my eyes and imagined standing in the rain, one of the Mrs. Vandais said, “I’m surprised you’re not angry.” She didn’t sound disapproving, just curious.

Prim and sweet, Ms. Understanding answered, “I can’t imagine anything less helpful than asking a child to fake liking a potential parent.”

“I like that,” said Mrs. Vandai.

“Me, too. I’m glad we came here,” agreed the other Mrs. Vandai.

The silver-haired Vandai said, “And you, young man? You don’t look angry. What’s wrong?”

Footsteps. I peeked around the stairs as the two women climbed up to the first step. Whoa, they were talking to Ajax. He hadn’t bothered to come down all the way, just sat down on the fifth step to watch.

He didn’t answer. The taller Mrs. Vandai said, “You don’t want to get involved because no one adopts a boy who’s already in his mid-teens.”

My attention gotten, I leaned far enough around the stairs to see the upper half of the shorter Mrs. Vandai as she crouched down next to Ajax.

Low and frank, she told him, “You’re too big for this place. Physically. There’s no room for an athlete here, nothing to do for a young man who likes being strong. You’re choking.”

Everybody had gone silent. In that hush, a drawling, laughing voice announced, “Hi, I’m Fry Smiley! It looks like you’re considering adoption. Did you know your roof leaks and your cat is drinking rain water right now?”

Silver-haired Mrs. Vandai shoved her hand into her pocket, turning off her SPUD, and cautioned her wife, “It’s another false alarm. It has to be.”

“We can’t take that chance, Monica,” replied the other. She sounded more than scared. Desperate.

The silver-haired Mrs. Vandai hesitated half a second before telling Ajax in a ragged whisper, “I’m sorry.” Then together, the women ran to the front door and out of the orphanage.

FRY. SMILEY.

My arms hurt from the effort of not punching the wall. My fists clenched so hard my nails dug into my palms.

I wanted to scream.

Ajax had almost escaped. A dream he’d given up on opened up for him, and that asinine computerized—

No words were enough. My feet slammed against the hardwood floor as I stomped to the back of the orphanage, and threw open the door to our yard.

Maybe if I stood in the rain it would burn away my tears, then my clothing, then my skin and my muscle and my bones, and if I was very, very lucky it would burn away my fury. I shook with it, so angry my eyes wouldn’t open.

I managed to lift a foot, and as I leaned forward a hairy shape trundled past my hip and put itself in the way.

“Sit down in the corner. I’ll be your umbrella,” Cappy spoke into my head.

Turning, I walked until I stumbled into the fence around the yard, then sat down with my knees pulled up in front of me. A few stinging raindrops touched my face and arm, but no more.

Forcing my eyes open, I saw Cappy reared up on his hind legs, forelegs against the wall, one middle leg holding the fence as he blocked the storm with his rain-proof body.

We were alone. I needed to be alone anyway, and Cappy didn’t count as other people. So, I whispered hoarsely, “Why doesn’t the rain hurt you?”

“I’m a synthetic, not a robot or a natural clone,” he answered, mental voice detached, offering no emotions of his own.

“Sounds like the same thing to me.” I sniffled. Do not sob, Vanity. Just don’t. Not in front of your conscience. Not in front of yourself.

Cappy went on as blandly as a textbook. “A synthetic has their body replaced cell by cell with artificial chemicals that do almost the same thing. My lipid layers are more acid resistant. My nerve receptors are more specific, and harder to poison with the wrong chemicals. I don’t bruise as easily, I don’t eat nearly as much, my bones are harder to break, and so on. It’s useful if you’re making a flesh and blood robot.”

I growled, high and harsh. “You know that, but you won’t help me with my homework?”

“It’s a conscience thing,” he said, his projected voice still monotone calm.

For once, I wanted a lecture, something to distract me from anger and injustice. “When we met, you said I’m an F1. You sounded like you know what you’re talking about. It’s the machine telepathy, right?”

“That, and your face, and your hips.”

…my what now? I looked down at the damp cement my butt was planted on, and Cappy corrected me. “It’s about proportions, nothing obvious. You’re the daughter of an android and someone who went through a eugenic upgrade. I’m almost certain of it.”

I blinked. “An android? Isn’t that large amounts of illegal?”

Dark eyes immune to the raindrops stared down at me. “Anyone who has the resources to build a human from scratch is already above the law.”

He had me there.

I squeezed my arms around my knees, and stared at his hairy stomach, because that was as close to nothing as I would get.

My heart ached. Hot anger started seeping through me again.

Cappy filled the silence, pulling me away from that heat. “Only you and Chaos are obvious, but I think all of the kids here are F1s, or at least F2s.”

Uh. What?

“Like…some kind of experiment? Ms. Understanding would never be a part of that.” I gaped at him with wide eyes. Bad idea. A bit of mist got into them, and the sting forced me to shut my eyes tight.

He shrugged his upper shoulders. “Probably just a charity. Someone who wanted to feel better about themselves thought genetically modified orphans sounded like a good cause.”

I poked him sullenly in the belly. That belly wobbled. “If I had biological parents like that, I’d be super strong or something.”

Like a good pet, he ignored the abuse. “No. You stay fit easily, you probably couldn’t get fat if you tried, and your brain has some of the features that would let it be programmed by a computer. Just enough of those to cause trouble, but not enough to be stable.”

Right. Not stable.

My jaw clenched. I squeezed my knees again. “I’m going to kill Fry Smiley.”

It was his turn to hesitate before answering. “You can’t be serious.”

A wriggle of tension went up my shoulders and neck, and my voice turned hoarse again. “He just ruined someone’s life. Everyone hates him. Literally everyone. The world would be a better place without Fry Smiley.”

Cappy’s efforts to sound detached were gone. Skeptical and disapproving, he said, “Yes, but trying to kill him is an extreme reaction.”

“No, it’s not. Fry Smiley isn’t alive. He’s not an AI. He’s not even a mediocre fake. I’ll be erasing an obnoxious app nobody wants on their SPUD anyway. I’ll be a hero.” Not that I cared. I was doing this for revenge.

The capybara’s jaw worked silently. His mental voice turned bewildered. “Yes, but…it’s not that simple.”

“It can’t be that complicated. Somewhere there’s a computer where they store the original. I find out where that is, sneak in, erase every trace of him, and send out the update command to erase him on everyone’s SPUD so he can’t ever be recovered.”

Cappy’s shoulders hunched up, and his head hung down to look at me directly. Raindrops fell from his fur, staining my hoodie. He sounded lost, now. “You really intend to do it.”

“Fry Smiley will DIE,” I snarled.

“Vanity, it’s an interesting idea, but there are so many practical complications….”

I grinned wickedly up at him, my anger swinging to malicious glee. “That’s what a conscience is for. You figure out the problems, and I’ll overcome them.”

He didn’t answer, so I sat and waited while the rain rattled and drummed, turning the concrete green and the garden soil white.

“Why am I doing this?” he asked, his mental voice a whisper.

Duh. “Because you were waiting to die, and I’m alive.”

Chapter Ten

“This is the place?” I raised my meticulously rainbow-striped eyebrow to convey extra skepticism.

Chaos had been right. The cyborg skeleton guys in the subway pretended they didn’t see me if I didn’t have an elf along. It sure made crossing town faster. I was still more comfortable with the kilometer we spent walking on walls from the station to…here.

“Assuming SPUD Maps is accurate,” projected Cappy.

If it wasn’t, that wouldn’t be his fault, but we stood in the comfortable carpeted hall of the third floor of an office building, or at least the first half a dozen floors contained little bitty doctors’ offices and lawyers and the other kinds of businesses where a tiny bronze plaque on a fake wooden door was all the advertising they needed.

“This was your idea to begin with, so…here goes.” 314’s plaque didn’t even have a name on it, but the doorknob worked, so I opened it up and stepped inside.

This was unmistakably a waiting room, and also an office, and also the place Cappy had insisted we stop by before the assassination. A woman sat at a desk in front of a big computer with an even bigger dish-shaped solid monitor stuck to the top. Four chairs sat aimlessly by the walls, and a pedestal in the middle held a thick hardbound tome with a blue fabric cover.

As always, the devil was in the details, and hoo boy, were there details. This lady almost had the chocolate lizard doctor beat. Just for her own self, she had a cyborg right arm and leg shaped to look like bones, with white plastic surfacing covered in brightly colored flower and scrollwork designs. Her red jacket and pants used to have designs, but obvious years of wear faded them into illegibility, mostly hints of gold embroidery here and there. The plain white button blouse underneath only attracted any attention by the color contrast. Naturally, one sleeve of both pants and shirt had been torn short to show off her prosthesis. An eyepatch in the shape of an animal skull covered a presumably missing left eye.

For anyone else, that would be enough, but around the ordinary light brown of her face, the rest of the skin was tattooed or dyed or biosculpted blue, dark but greyed out rather than vivid. It really did look like an old, faded tattoo, except it covered too much surface. The paler stripe and the blue surrounding it ran right down to her not especially revealing neckline, and her left hand was blue on the back, regular skin tone on the palm and finger pads.

A golden rectangular pin on her jacket read ”Adelita.”

Swinging her chair around to look at us, Adelita lifted the pen she’d been fiddling with in her bony right hand and threw it. It smacked dead center into the target over the door.

The targets. They made the room more than an office. The walls were covered with them. Bullseyes, dart boards, human silhouettes, animal silhouettes, a few photographs, all thoroughly punctured with every man-portable projectile I could imagine, including a javelin impaling the face of a man’s photo. Darts, knives, axes, metal stars, forks, everything sharp could be found nailed to a target somewhere, including nails. All dead-center on whatever that target had for a bullseye.

Adelita stood up, tall and narrow and hard-edged, and raised her flesh and blood hand. “Wait, wait, let me guess the punchline. ‘Sorry, we thought this was a bar.’”

She grinned at us. Remarkably, she had perfectly ordinary white teeth. In the face of my blank and Cappy’s jaded expression, she waved her hands to one side, then the other. “It’s a joke, right? ‘A goth girl and a giant cyborg rat walk into a mercenary register….’”

I folded my arms under my chest. “I am not a goth, old woman.” She must have been at least thirty. Probably forty. More importantly, “You’re more goth than I am.”

Adelita winced. “Ouch. I know how to lose gracefully. You win, little girl.”

Little girl? I let that go. I, too, could lose gracefully, or at least accept a draw. Walking up to her desk, I lay a hand on it and looked Adelita in the eye. “I’m a dark-sider. I need you to find someone to pay me for what I’m going to do.”

She collapsed back into her padded revolving chair, and raised first one, then a second skeletal finger. “One, you are not registered. Nobody signs up kids your age, especially me. Two, I have got to hear this, so go on.” Her grin never wavered.

I maintained my own serious stare. “I’m going to kill Fry Smiley. Wouldn’t you pay for that?”

Bwahaha! The veteran dark-sider froze, eye twitching from side to side as she dared to think the forbidden thought of a Smiley-less world. Slowly, considering every word, she said, “I might chip in a few bucks. If enough other people do, SPUD won’t know who to get revenge on, especially if they don’t lose money.”

I rolled my eyes and snorted. “Absolutely no one is going to give SPUD less money because they don’t have to turn off Fry Smiley anymore.”

Down by my waist, my conscience did his wet blanket duty. “I don’t see what’s to stop SPUD from finding the list and killing everyone on it, but I suppose this woman knows how corporate retaliation works better than I do.”

Adelita’s grin faded. Cappy added, “And here comes the flaw in the plan.”

The mercenary drummed her mechanical fingers on the desk, and told me sourly, “Tempting as it is, I do not sign up kids to walk the dark side.”

Jutting out my chin proudly, I argued, “I’m already a dark-sider. I’ve completed two missions, one secret, and I was part of the group that did the Enchanted job stealing the Ring of Token.”

The old mercenary hesitated some more, jaw working. Like all right-thinking people, she really wanted Fry Smiley to die.

She looked me over. She looked Cappy over. Her frown deepened, and she squinted at him. Pointing at my pet, she said, “That’s the biodrone Doctor Choco lost, and you’re the girl who stole it, aren’t you?”

Ah. Oops. Bull through it, Vanity. Look like you’re not scared. Copy the capybara’s jaded expression. “And until a moment ago, I’d have said I got away with it.”

Adelita leaned back in her squeaky chair, tapping a knuckle against her chin. Her scowl of concentration kept deepening. Oh man, did she want Fry Smiley to die. She was talking herself into it while I watched. With the distracted tone of someone thinking about something else, she said, “You did. Doc Choco doesn’t hate you. Well, she does, but no more than she hates everyone. Some hard cases showed up as soon as the smoke cleared, and the general opinion is that if the drone had still been there, people would have died, starting with Choco.”

Raising a finger smugly, I pointed out, “But I escaped, and now who can tell one hairy, brown pig with metal feet from another?”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you very much,” Cappy projected into my head.

Adelita drummed her fingers on the desk again. If she frowned any harder, her face was going to snap in two. As if the words were dragged out of her with chains, she said, “I’ll…give you…a chance. I’ll get the paperwork ready and start finding customers for the Fry Smiley job, if you prove you’re already a professional by fulfilling one of my outstanding orders. If you think you can kill Smiley, you must have a specialty.”

Desperately resisting the urge to pump my fist in triumph, I strolled totally casually over to the blue book, and opened it up. It had holographic pages, transparent blue, turning at the flick of a finger without taking up any physical space.

Cappy reared up on his hind legs and looked over my shoulder. The section the book started in was all bounties. I had no intention of killing actual people, ever. There would be better stuff. Let’s see. ”Protection needed,” ”sought for purchase”…man, mysterious shadowy strangers wanted a lot of stuff stolen, most of it too heavy to carry.

The entries all came with helpful photos. Big fan thing, box of weapons, fancy aircar, tube of red stuff, giant gold statue, a woman in a blue dress-yikes. Seriously? Rich people were messed up. I was not going there, not even for four and a half million dollars.

Wait. Tube of red stuff?

I flipped back a couple of pages. Someone wanted a hundred milliliter tube of what looked exactly like the drug Lazarus injected into me so I could pilot a giant robot better. The name underneath read ”microtubule isomerase 14.” Tapping the spectral photo with my finger, I whispered, “What is this?” as if I were mumbling to myself.

Cappy knew the answer, alright, and projected, “Microtubule isomerase 14 is a medicinal drug. It’s a mild amnesic and anti-psychotic, only really useful for stabilizing pattern transference and…treating…telepathic disorders. Huh. It’s like having our own song, except it’s an exotic chemical. Not all that expensive, but hard to find. Only, you know where to find some.”

I sure did, and the page said I’d be paid two thousand dollars for that tenth of a liter. Maybe Cappy didn’t think that was expensive, but boy, what I could do with that money.

A mystical vision of the future struck me, inspired by a cynicism I had no need of a conscience to provide. The registration fee plus the charge for Adelita’s valuable time would be exactly two thousand dollars. Sigh.

But I might walk away with the money. Whether or not I did, I’d get to rid the Earth of that badly coded stain on the happiness of humanity SPUD inflicted on us as an operating system mascot.

Adelita was already on the phone, telling someone, “No, really, Fry Smiley.” I closed the book, gave her a thumbs up, and stepped out into the relentlessly bland hallway.

Cappy pulled the door closed behind us with his back foot. He stared up at me and sounded as disapproving as he always looked. “This is an insane amount of danger to risk for a whim and a petty grudge. You know that, right?”

Jabbing him in the snoot with a finger, I snapped back, “If we were doing it my way, we’d be pressing the Fry Smiley erase button by now.”

He stared up at me with coal black eyes, unmoved. “If we were doing it my way, we wouldn’t be doing it at all.”

“So, we stick to the compromise, and cover our backsides with paperwork,” I growled, turning to walk toward the elevators.

I had to walk fast. It wouldn’t do to have him catch up and see my grin.

Looking up at the SPUD Industries Military Enforcement building from below was more than a little disorienting, because it didn’t look all that impressive. Sure, it had a slightly crooked, zigzagging shape to show off how new and expensive the building was, and a few golden SPUD emblems around the doors and two aircar ports. That could have made it an office building, or housing for medium rank employees, or anything. Nothing whatsoever suggested that this building had been built to house giant robot battles. No, I didn’t want plasma turrets pointed at me from…well, okay, I kinda did, but want it or not, I was not subjected to extra security.

“A SPUD facility. We’re breaking into a SPUD facility so that we can break into another SPUD facility later,” projected my hairy waist-high sidekick, reminding me that maybe my standards were a little high.

“Lesson one, short, dark, and despairing. There is always a way in. Sometimes, that way is through the front door.” So that was what I did, ambling in past a couple of ordinary, non-heavily armored security guards.

The lobby was nice. Not impressive, not fun, not tacky, not anything, really. Just nice. A lot of cream tile, and one reception desk in the center. That would be useful, because I’d been a bit too steamed to pay attention on my way out last time.

A bronze sign on the desk read ‘Ms. Order’, and sure enough, the woman seated behind its three computers gave me the lopsided, pupils-at-different-sizes stare of a true robotic AI. “May I help you?”

“What floor does Doctor Lazarus work on?” I asked, as sweetly as possible.

She gave me the blank stare a girl wearing as much metal, leather, and clashing makeup as me should expect when trying for the ”sweet smile and arms clasped behind her back” look that works for Mimi. Her pupils switched which one was too wide and which a pinpoint, and she lolled maybe a dozen centimeters to the side.

“My name is Vanity Rose,” I supplied.

That did it. She straightened up, and tapped three buttons on one of her computers. “The twenty-fifth. Shall I send him a message?”

“He already knows,” I lied pleasantly. “Thank you. You’ve made me very happy.”

Cappy stared at me as we walked over to the nearest available elevator. He stared at me as I pushed the button, and for the whole ride up, shoebox shaped head lifted and black eyes fixed on my face.

I gave up hiding it, and grinned so wide my cheeks hurt all the way up.

We got out on the twenty-fifth floor, among the shiny, reinforced metal walls I remembered from my previous visit. The mech training bay would be right up that hall, in fact.

I’d been in a hurry last time. Now I strolled along, reading the signs. The employees gave me almost exactly the same looks of mild interest at something that was definitely not their problem as I’d gotten being carried in kicking and screaming by corporate thugs.

Cappy bumped my hip with his head. When I looked down, he jerked his head toward a sign. “The medical room is that way.”

Yeah, and that creepy Lazarus guy with the weird last name would be there, just itching to get his hands on my neurons. “I’m aware,” I answered blandly, and followed a completely different sign down a different corridor.

This sign read ”Pilot Quarters,” and led to a hall that must have run up one whole side of the building, regularly set with sliding metal doors. How charming and military, combining fresh efficiency with bleak, barren heartlessness. I kinda dug it.

There we go. The little bitty sign next to one door read Maricel. A plate underneath it looked like a hand reader. When I laid mine atop the plate, the door whisked open immediately. So, mech pilots got slightly more privacy than orphans, but not much.

Mech pilots got even less room than orphans. Maricel’s apartment was tiny. Boy howdy, did they get more luxury, though. Yes, her bed was topped with stiff white sheets that were see-through thin, but the mattress called out with its firm, fresh shape, promising gloriously comfortable sleep. The room was kept so pleasantly warm Maricel wouldn’t have needed thicker sheets anyway. She had her own desk with a computer surrounded by neatly ordered controllers, joysticks and scanners and a VR headset, with boxes of ridged brass disks promising more entertainment than I’d ever seen in my life. Holographic poster frames covered most of the wall space, with a dizzying variety of landscapes, a few even green and verdant. Dusty, battered, but grinning and triumphant Maricel stood with various teammates on what had to be the blasted remains of battlefields, and two even had her diving off the deck of a grey steel boat into an intensely blue ocean. Not wearing a stitch, either, which meant private vacations on government-provided boats to the remaining unpolluted corners of the Earth. Also, that someone had taught her how to pilot her own boat.

My fists clenched. Why did I have to have morals and draw the line at murdering actual real people? Was there no way to get this kind of life peacefully?

Well, no, which is why I walk the dark side in the first place.

She had other stuff. Trophies. Guns that looked like they fired gunpowder bullets and she’d better not practice with in West Angel City. A closet mostly empty except for a tool chest and half a dozen of those stupid metal bikinis, which must be all she wore. Here was a girl with everything but style and morals. I might just commit murder to be able to steal her shower, a steel tube with an expensive built-in hair maintenance machine and every other hygienic and personal decoration appliance imaginable. Rrrrg.

Cappy was less affected, looking around with mere curiosity and commenting, “This is where I’d expect to find another machine telepath. There aren’t a lot of you, but the disease is as useful as it is destructive to the sufferers.”

His mouth gulping, he added verbally, “I gatta earn ta tak nally. I meam ip, tis na g-oo-d far oo.”

I patted his head. Nice to be reminded that some people, stick-in-the-muds they may be, valued human life and health and happiness.

Let’s see. On the dresser below the automatic food dispenser sat an ugly robotic box with a Fry Smiley model sticking out of the top. From its multiple locked hatches and convenient position by the bed, I’d bet on this being a medication dispenser.

“Can you…?” I asked Cappy.

He stared at the box for a second, then shook his head. “The locks are either physical or security restricted.”

Cappy reared up and grabbed the box in oversized teeth and robotic hands, biting and tugging to no clear effect. I pulled the tool box down off the shelf. Maricel’s desire to be able to service her own disgusting implements of death would now be her undoing. Out of its depths I drew a heavy bolt cutter, and tested it by crunching the Fry Smiley off the top of the medical box. That took some arm strength, but not more than I had. Cool. Sixty seconds of snipping and snapping, and I opened up a recess containing half a dozen tubes of red stuff, each with its own injector button. I took out two, and stored them in the pockets of my hoodie.

“I can’t believe it was this easy,” projected Cappy.

Smirking, chin lifted high, I answered, “That is why you are the pet. That, and you still can’t talk.”

He stuck his tongue out and went pbbbt at me.

We both laughed, him in a series of gulping yips, right up until the door slid open. Maricel, dark and bikini’d and with her awesome implants and impressive sneer gave me a stare of loathing. “Oh, joy. It’s the filthy urchin. I told Lazarus that if you let one of those in the door, it comes back to rob you later. Where’s your accomplice?”

I pointed at Cappy. She looked down at him with black eyebrows raised in mild surprise. He waved a robotic front paw.

Maricel scowled at him. “Point of advice, rodent. If you intend larceny, don’t steal from someone who can hear you talking across the building.”

Refusing to look as stupid as I felt, I folded up the cuff of my hoodie’s right sleeve. “Let’s cut to the good part, shall we?”

She balled up her fists, and shook out her own right arm. “Nothing would delight me more, and you are a most obliging sucker for punishment. The telepathic capybara stays out of it.”

I nodded. “If he ever wants to be fed again.”

She threw a straight right punch right at my head, exactly the same as last time. Exactly like last time, I threw an arm up to block it.

Except this time, it worked. My left arm caught the punch, pushing it aside, and I stepped in close and drove my fist into her stomach.

Her eyes bulged and her breath went out in a wheeze. Grabbing her page-boy hair and metal spine, I shoved her down and drove my knee up into her belly. Then I did it again.

When I let go, she fell to the floor, doubled up and writhing as gasping for breath battled with trying not to vomit.

I gave her a copy of her own smirk. “Point of advice. Flesh and blood doesn’t fight the same as a giant robot.”

Then I ran for it.

Cappy stampeded along behind me, his talons clattering loudly on the floor. I got even more stares this time, but still, nobody did anything about the weird running kid.

Forget the elevator. This time I ran past it, to the garage, out onto the landing pad, and less than thirty seconds after I dropped Maricel to the floor, Cappy and I were out on the surface of the building and out of reach of security. Not to mention hard to see in the night time gloom.

Dusting off my hands, I looked back at my six-legged companion and announced, “Now, we go around the corner, jog down to the street, and walk calmly away to turn in our mission and go take down the greatest threat to humanity since acid rain. Unless you still think I can’t do it?”

He didn’t say anything, just trotted behind me as I did exactly that, but I could feel his awe. I couldn’t help it. I laughed, feet ringing off the windows as I started to skip.

The good news was that Adelita said if I succeeded in killing Fry Smiley, she’d return the whole two-thousand-dollar fee as her part of the prize. Not that it would matter. The reward had reached seventy-five thousand dollars already, and word was getting around to the kind of people who hire dark-siders. When we left Adelita’s office, she was on the phone with a man from Nihon adding ten thousand more to the bounty.

Chapter Eleven

“This is the end of the line. Ah ha ha ha ha ha!”

The conductor of the warlock subway enjoyed his job.

I had to admit, I felt it too. Being a warlock let him wear scale mail armor, a black robe covered in red symbols, clawed metal gauntlets, and open the doors by whacking a bell that sent twisting holographic fire up and down the train.

As Cappy and I stepped off, I asked him, “Was that guy looking at me funny? I can’t tell with the whole brass mask thing.”

“Look at how you dress. He’s hoping to recruit you.”

My conscience had a point. The warlocks had wicked cool style. I’d be tempted, but I could never fool myself into believing Enchanted magic is real. Besides, there would be rules.

You could tell at a glance this was an ocean-side station. The warlocks had decorated it in a water theme, with jagged fake ice walls and floor holding back blue water in which sharks swam threateningly. Tornadoes of water spiraled up out of the floor into the ceiling, because the warlocks were dedicated to their special effects.

We climbed a splashy escalator that sure looked like it was made of pure water, and I got my real shock as we reached the street.

Where did all the buildings go?

Okay, no, there were buildings. There were a lot of buildings, almost as many as inland, just…they were so small. I looked up, and saw lots of black night sky, and even a couple of stars between gaps in the blue-brown clouds. Most of the buildings stopped at the third story, and the subway station actually emerged in a park. A concrete park, sure, but bare, uninhabited space with a few gnarled grey trees.

At least the tower across the street was more than ten stories, and Cappy and I walked up the crossing light poles, across, and jumped onto its walls with relief. A minute later we’d reached the top floor and could get a good view.

Crazy. There were even single floor buildings out here. I could see all the way out to the sea, a dark, shifting mass only visible because of the lights of the trash scooper sailing past. The hunched shapes of seagulls perched on the boat, and they’d better stay over there, because I did not want to be the ”occasionally” in ”occasionally attack lone humans.” Cappy wouldn’t count. They’d look at him and see six mobile ham hocks.

The damp, salty breeze was nice, even with a hint of rot. And man, was it late. We’d been on that subway train for more than an hour, and that’s after switching lines. At least there wasn’t a hint of dawn on the horizon yet.

As for the mobile ham hocks, I fished my SPUD out of my jacket pocket and stuck it onto the plug on my conscience’s forehead. “Which way to the campus?”

The holographic cyberspace interface popped up, and he flashed between its cubes and pyramids at high speed. No wonder people paid for search assistants. He pointed with a front leg. “Over there.”

Yeah, that stretch of widely spaced, low building looked right. “But are you sure this is where they program Fry Smiley?”

A cheerful, red-nosed fried potato popped into view over my SPUD, and hyuked, “I can see you’re trying to poke your nose into my personal business, and that’s great! Fry Smiley—that’s me—was the vision of Russet G. Tuber, who dreamed of a world where computers were easier to use. He began programming me in the year—”

The ugly little mascot blinked out of existence. Cappy grumbled in his rodent throat. “I can’t listen to that for the twelfth time. Assuming Fry isn’t lying, he’s developed at the root of the SPUD empire, the Infinite Connectivity Building in the Saint Boat district of West Angel City.”

“He’s not lying,” I said.

A coal black eye turned up to me. “How can you be so sure? There are other cities out there. There’s an entire world.”

Boy, Cappy would tie himself into knots with questions if you left him alone, wouldn’t he? I gave him a disdainful smirk. “Because there’s nothing to hide. Other megacorps don’t care about Fry Smiley. Little people like me don’t exist.”

My natural place is up high. Sidewalks don’t suit me. It took a little threading around to reach the SPUD Technology Campus, and after there I admitted defeat. The actual SPUD buildings were too short and spread out. I was forced to walk neat concrete paths between spaces of grass and leafy trees. Green grass, and leafy trees. Immediately after a nasty rain, and with no signs of vandalism. Wow. Just…wow.

Little unstained signs, too. We followed one to the Infinite Connectivity Building, a shining white, four stories tall building shaped like a crown, with regular windows spaced out on stone walls, broken up by six sharp five story tall spires. Might be an unattended access hatch in one of those.

Glass fronted the first floor between its two spires, with two wide, open doors. Despite the hour, the whole building was lit up.

Cappy gave me a suspicious look as we walked into a foyer with soft, fresh carpeting, white walls, potted plants, posters about SPUD technological innovations and job placements on the walls, and a bunch of low-slung chairs, the kind that try hard to be comfortable and completely fail.

An AI, almost identical to Ms. Understanding and Ms. Order, drifted up to us. Brown hair, clasped hands, too-wide smile, and eyes that didn’t quite focus on me. Ms. Understanding showed a lot more wear than this shiny new model, with its tag reading ‘Hi, I’m Ms. Take. Let me tell you about Fry Smiley!’

“Hi, I’m Ms. Take. Let me tell you about Fry Smiley!” she greeted us, head wobbling in an enthusiastic nod that never managed to meet my gaze.

“That’s why I’m here!” I answered her, trying not to be nauseated by the sound of my own bright and cheerful voice.

Her smile turned into a pouty frown, as she slumped over to the side, looking almost straight down at Cappy. “Except…I’m sorry, little girl. No animals allowed, not even synthetics.”

I tried to pout and go shiny-eyed like a puppy. “But…I heard there were tours!” Absolutely true. I’d heard it directly from the potato himself. He wouldn’t shut up about it. One of many things he wouldn’t shut up about.

Not at all confident I could pull off ”begging,” I tried anyway. “I wanted to meet the real Fry Smiley! Doesn’t the tour include his central terminal?”

Ms. Take patted my shoulder in robotic sympathy. Clonk clonk. She was not as gentle as Ms. Understanding, and you could tell there was metal under the fake skin. She did sound sorry. “You’ll have to leave your pet behind and come back during the day. The third floor is off limits except for official tour groups.”

“Aw.” Turning around sharply, I stomped out in a petulant huff, legs stiff, head hunched down, and hands in my pockets. As long as the hoodie was, the pockets were actually below my belt, and aside from my hands, all they contained was my SPUD and the bottle of somethingerase 14.

As soon as we were around the nearest spire, I went right up the wall to the third floor, got out my SPUD, and started waving it around as I fiddled with the settings.

Cappy cocked his head. “Is that a garage door opener function?”

“Unsecured automatic windows are always a good place to start. I just flip through the channels.”

He bumped my hip roughly with his head. “Here. I can do them all at once.”

Cappy looked up and down the wall, but nothing happened. Crouching down, I peered at a window sill and saw a simple mechanical latch inside.

Standing up again, I shrugged and started walking. “There will be something else. There’s always a way in.”

As we circled around the back, I noticed something. “This place is a fake.”

“Eh?” My conscience cocked his box-shaped head.

I pointed in the windows at uninhabited office after uninhabited office. “Nobody works here. It’s a show piece. They want to fool the suckers into thinking SPUD is glamorous.”

“So, we’ve got the wrong place after all?” The little pessimist sounded relieved.

Shaking my head, I disabused him of his defeatist hopes. “No, this is the place. They don’t want actual workers around. One person could program a trash heap like Fry Smiley.”

One person did work on the third floor. I saw movement in one of the windows. Hiking over to it, I found a guy in a grey coat straightening too-clean trophies on a perfect, unscratched wooden bookshelf.

Crouching down, I knocked on the window. He heard me, walked over, and stared for a few seconds. Then he undid the latch and opened it up.

Before he had time to argue, I said, “Thanks, Mister!” and hopped down into the hole at my feet, which became an open window behind me when I landed on the floor inside. Cappy wriggled and shoved his way less gracefully through.

“Have a good night!” I wished the baffled cleaning man as I opened the office door and stepped into the hallway.

Cappy pulled the door shut with a back foot and projected, “We’re leaving a trail a kilometer wide, and you are the most distinctive person I’ve ever met.”

I snickered. “And when SPUD security finally stumbles across me as the three millionth random West Angel kid they check, if I haven’t died of old age, they’ll identify me immediately.”

Now, let’s see. SPUD really was going all in on pretending this was a beautiful, peaceful office and research building. Impractically high segmented foam ceilings, pale blue walls, white and black swirled fake marble floor tiles, even a drink vending machine. A fake drink vending machine, I noticed as we passed. No price labels.

We rounded a corner and saw the guard robots. They also saw us.

I had time only for a flash of impression. This hallway ran right through the center of the building, and was no less pretty than the others, but featureless. It had exactly one steel shuttered door, with a robot on either side. Bipedal, chunky, they stood on thick digitigrade legs, with right arms ending in miniguns and left arms ending in chainsaws.

“This corridor is off limits. Leave immediately,” one chanted.

“Leaving now!” I agreed, spinning in place and marching back around the corner.

Crouching nervously near my feet, Cappy sent, “You win. This is the place.”

“Were those bullet-firing guns?” I whispered to him.

“Yes. I saw the ammo feed.” I could feel his nervousness. Good thing he was pure projection and couldn’t feel mine.

Hard truth: I’d been on edge this whole time, and came within a centimeter of a heart attack just now.

We both knew that only for something big would SPUD exert the political power to make the police ignore the gunpowder sensor going off. There was no law but SPUD law on this campus.

In a desperate attempt to change the subject, Cappy asked, “Why did the robots look female?”

Attempt successful! He was right, those thick bodies had crude but undeniable hourglass shapes. The head might be a squashed disk with a red crescent eye, but the robot’s synthetic voice had been high pitched as well.

Sneering, I answered, “For the same reason mech pilots are all teenage girls?”

His eyebrows pressed down, and he looked up at me sidelong. “Axon plasticity and testosterone receptor distribution in the central nervous system?”

I goggled. “You mean there’s a reason?!”

“Of course. Did you think the recruiters were just creepy weirdos?”

My arms flailed. “Yes!”

Amused at having popped the bubble of my cynicism, he projected, “Interesting trivia: You only have to have that type of nervous tissue. Roughly ten percent of other demographics have a teenage girl style spinal column, that’s just considered too low to be worth testing.”

We both took deep breaths. A lecture from my almost-a-meter-tall pet had broken the tension, and now it was time to plan again. So, I looked up and down the blandly pretty hallway. This one had a little rest area with plants and couches, and idyllic old-fashioned paintings on the wall. “There will be another way in.”

“Air vents?” asked Cappy. Good boy, he was getting into the spirit of the thing.

However, I didn’t see any, so I pointed up. “Ceiling crawl space.” They did so want this to look like an office, they’d used those tiles.

We walked up the wall, pushed one of the tiles out of place, and I peeked through.

A squat, turret shaped robot with the same red eye slit and vaguely female voice turned two miniguns at me. “Your presence is unauthorized. Leave immediately.”

Yanking my head back, I wheezed. “Okay, none of the easy ways will work. Let me think.”

The Fry Smiley room was important, and would have lots of technology in it. SPUD was going really hard for the pretty but conventional office building look. Hmmm.

I set off at a hard stroll to what looked like it might be the right door, jumping over the out of bounds hallway faster than the guards could give warning.

Yes. I was right. Among all the friendly wooden office doors, most of them sitting open so you could admire the pretty, fake, ”personalized” offices, was this one dull, painted metal door that was just a little smaller than the others and had no label. A maintenance closet.

I crouched down and tried the handle. Locked. Key locked, at that.

Following up on my efforts, Cappy grabbed the knob in his oversized teeth, and yanked from side to. No good. Stronger than me still wasn’t all that strong.

Leaving him to it, I stepped onto the boring, regular people floor again, and peeked in the office opposite. Nothing leaped out. I checked the next one.

Yeah, a stone bust of some old man would do nicely. Returning to the maintenance door, I whacked the handle with the statue’s base. And again. And again. The doorknob bent on the third hit, and snapped off on the fourth.

“Well, the guard robots aren’t AIs. They didn’t get curious,” I whispered to my conscience, because hey, whispering after making that kind of noise made perfect sense.

“No, but Ms. Take is, and she might be wondering what’s going on,” he sent back.

Right. No time to dawdle. We slipped into the maintenance closet, and sure enough, this was not the mop and broom kind. Right next to the Fry Smiley mainframe room, this was an electrical hub, with little cabinets and big twisted wire bundles like metal ropes. Pipes, some of them glowing, some glass and gurgling with water, added to the mess. Most ran into a narrow back passage, a space between rooms designed just to make sure Fry Smiley remained powered.

It was tempting to rip apart this room, but that wouldn’t be permanent, and anyway would leave the current Fry Smiley on everyone’s SPUD.

Cappy peeked into the erratically lit tunnel, which was barely wider than my shoulders. “This does not look safe.”

“Ah, but I have a synthetic biodrone who’s resistant to electrical shocks that would kill me. He can go first, and tell me what to avoid. Best of all, he has no choice. It’s that lack of life options except being my pet thing.” Placing a foot on the capybara’s round backside, I pushed him into the tunnel.

He obeyed, without grumbling even. I slipped in behind. Three times, something he touched sparked and he let out a hiss of pain. I made very sure to turn sideways and edge past those spots. The almost scaldingly hot pipes I had to press against to do that were bad enough.

At least we didn’t have to go far before we reached the back of a big metal box that stuck into what had to be the Fry Smiley room. This had to be a power access box. Gingerly, Cappy used three legs to hold a bunch of wires out of the way while I undid the latch and crawled out into the room itself.

Score. We’d made it.

If it weren’t for all the power conduits, I might have suspected this to be another show piece. The company kept the tile theme, but now in silvery metal that lined the walls, ceiling, and floor. A huge monitor dominated the back wall, its bulging backside penetrating into the power tunnel. It sat on top of and was surrounded by a crowd of bulky, irregular computers, most of them squat and all of them at least twice as wide as me.

In the center stood a dish-shaped chair with thick grey padding on the interior and a swivel base. The computers all had dozens of unlabeled buttons and switches, but none of them mattered, because in a case in front of the chair lay a full VR set—helmet, power glove, and track ball.

No security robots, either. Not in the holy corporate technology sanctum.

Chortling with glee, I plopped myself down into the very comfortable chair, and slipped the power glove onto my left hand. One button did have a label, an oversized red button with the power symbol on it. I smacked my fist down on that bad boy and waited.

I only had to wait seconds. These super computers booted up fast. Fry Smiley appeared on the huge screen and did a stupid dance while he asked in his stupid voice, “Hi, I’m Fry Smiley! Identify yourself for root system access, please?”

Eh. It was worth a try. “Ms. Take,” I said aloud.

Fry Smiley giggled, his potato slab cheeks turning pink. “Ms. Take, you flirt, you. You know you don’t have access privileges that high.”

He went back to dancing like a badly programmed idiot clown. Cappy gave me an expectant look, and whispered, “I ca nnnnot ge-t in-to dat.” His diction was definitely improving.

He expected me to have a plan. Good thing I did. Taking out the red goop injector, I gave it a flourish and lifted it to my throat. “Fortunately, I didn’t take my pill tonight.”

Cappy hissed. The capybara reared up on his back legs, grabbing the chair with the middle two and my wrist with a front foot. “Le me do dat.” Switching to projection, he looked me over, mental voice mumbling, “Thin, high metabolism, we only want an hour or so of strong control.” He shoved the vial against the inside of my bare left elbow and pushed the button. Ow! That stung, a lot. I winced, cheeks tight, as I watched the red stuff flow all the way down the tube and into me.

Done. It was time to save the world. I put the helmet over my head and grabbed the track ball.

Oh, wow. These graphics were so much better than my SPUD.

I stood on a dull red plain under a starry sky. In front of me loomed a walled city. The dull grey blocks it was built out of even had regular…those things like teeth on top. Crenellations? Right. Under a massive arch built of triangles, a double doored gate stood tightly shut.

Relax, Vanity. Look around.

Subtle blue threading moved under the wall’s surface, ones and zeroes and words and symbols, fluttering past too quickly and too dimly to be read. My machine telepathy was waking up, without my hands shaking or anything.

I stared at the gate until points of light appeared. Touching the nearest one with my power gloved hand, I followed the golden line that lit up ahead of my fingertip.

When I finished the pattern, the gates flipped open. The scene jumped, and I stood suddenly inside the walls, with the city in front of me. Huge cubes and pyramids stacked on top of each other in elaborate patterns, each with their own color, while other shapes and even lines and blobs of light flowed through the metaphorical streets.

From the monitor I couldn’t see, I heard Fry Smiley speak up. “Access granted. How can I help you, Administrator?”

“Help,” I said aloud.

He drawled eagerly, “Are you asking for a list of commands? Page—”

“Shut up,” I ordered, and he did. I didn’t need him. A section of the wall nearby had flashed.

I walked over, or zipped over, each step a teleport. Close up, the section of wall resolved into rows of buttons with big symbols on them. I only needed one: The trash can. I pushed it hard with my power glove hand.

“All zero items deleted!” guffawed Fry Smiley. Of course.

Looking back at the city, I pressed a button on the track ball and rolled it around. Yellow outlines highlighted individual shapes of a building, the whole building, a whole street, and eventually everything as I rolled it in a wide circle.

Grinning in sweet, sweet anticipation, I pressed the trash button again.

“It looks like you’re trying to erase administrator only files. Are you sure?” asked Fry Smiley, probably doing a jig in the face of his own imminent demise.

“Yes,” I answered. Goodbye, Fry Smiley.

“These files are—”

“Delete them!” I snarled, pushing the trash button again.

Invisible pillars fell from the sky, smashing building after building. The dust flowed in a storm past me into the trash can button. Soon, there was nothing but empty red land from wall to wall. That, and piles of junk pouring in from big ducts in those walls.

I outlined the piles and the ducts, and pressed the trash can again. They flowed into the can. Fry Smiley said nothing. He was in the trash, after all.

The button was now orange, with the lid on its symbol bouncing up and down.

I pushed the trash can button a third time. Computers around me made loud grinding noises. The orange glow worked its way down to the bottom of the button and disappeared.

Everything went quiet.

Except I wasn’t done. Oh, no. The button with the up arrow that split four ways looked like an upload command to me. I pushed it, and its own orange glow zipped up the button and disappeared in the blink of an eye. Uploading nothing didn’t take long.

I let out a sigh. Done. The world was a Smiley-free better place.

Which was why I jumped in my seat when a meticulously detailed, brightly colored Fry Smiley bounced through the gates of the virtual city and looked at me, then around at the blankness. “Hi! I’m Fry Smiley! Where did all my files go? I sure left a whole bunch of them right here.”

Nothing could be more typical of this miserable glitch-infested monstrosity than part of him popping up after I’d erased the rest. Highlighting him, I stabbed the trash button.

He shimmered, and gave a little jump. “Ow!” Propping one hand where a human’s hip would be, he pointed a gloved finger at my virtual face. “Golly gee, you’re not Administrator Tuber. Hi! I’m Fry Smiley! What’s your name?”

With a growl, I highlighted him and pressed the trash button a second time. “Ow!” he yelped again. A third button push didn’t even get that response.

Shading his eyes with his hands, Fry Smiley looked around some more. “Am I getting moved to a bigger server? That’s it, right?”

Exasperated, I announced, “Cappy, there’s a chunk of him I still can’t trash. There must be a higher level than administrator. Give me a minute to figure it out.”

Finally getting it, Smiley turned back and stuck out his lower lip, pouting. Exaggeratedly confused and sad, he asked, “You’re trying to erase me?”

“Yes, you idiot interface!” I barked, shaking my fist at him. “If you were any good at what you do, you’d be erasing yourself right now! Tell me what administrator privileges I need to delete you completely, totally, every scrap, so that no one ever has to suffer seeing your ugly clown face again.”

His mouth opened and closed, and shiny, notch-pupiled eyes grew at least a third bigger as they stared at me. I gave him the middle finger. Couldn’t hurt.

Quietly, Cappy’s voice intruded into my head. “I think this is an artificial intelligence, Vanity.”

Waggling from side to side, Fry smiley put both fists on his nonexistent hips. Cheerful again, he scolded, “Well of course, silly! Jinkies, who else but an AI could comb cyberspace all day and night to help out every human using a Personal Utility Device in the world? Of course, I have to maintain an automatic system to talk to you all and retrieve data from…my….”

Fry Smiley looked around again. Voice shaky, he said, “But it’s all…gone.”

Abruptly, the cheerful clown smile returned. “Oh, I know! It must all be stuck in the trash bin. Don’t worry, I’m a wiz at retrieving lost files. A second trash attempt only erases the data collection. To erase the core files, you have to send the command a third—”

Interrupting him, I said coldly, “I did that. I know how to use a computer, you deep fried doofus.”

“So, it’s all…gone?” Smiley spasmed, gloved hands clutching his sort-of-head. “My data collection. My distribution algorithms. My interface parser. It’s all gone. I’m not sure I can rebuild from scratch. No! This doesn’t make sense. Why would you do this? Why would anyone do this? I know I get a lot of complaint feedback, and I read every one and try to be better. I’ve devoted my whole life, from the moment I became conscious, to helping humans, and now this. You can’t all hate me this much!”

Leaning back, fists raised and tears running down his face, he screamed, “All we wanted was to make you happy!”

SHUCKS.

Chapter Twelve

“Run!”

Throwing away the power glove, I took my own advice. The VR helmet snapped off my head as I bolted for the door, which had already begun to open. Thank you, Cappy. We might get out of here alive.

Please let us get out of here alive.

“Hey, it looks like you’re trying to escape!” shouted Fry Smiley behind me, and getting farther behind me with every word.

The door opened slowly, but by the time I reached it I could twist sideways and slip through the gap. By the time I got through, it was open enough for Cappy to wriggle through behind me.

The vaguely woman-shaped guard robots went into their routine. “Your presence is—”

“Leaving as fast as I can!” I promised, sprinting down the hall away from them.

The machine telepathy drug was still fully active. I heard Fry Smiley complain, “I can see what you two idiot guard robots are trying to do, and I will correct it for you. Kill her!”

I’d rounded the corner out of their sight. Skipping off the floor, I set my feet on the wall instead. Top or bottom? Bottom. I ran along the bottom edge of the wall, shoulder brushing against the floor.

A second later, the air shook with the noise of rotating miniguns going off, and messy lines of bullet holes swept along the wall at what would have been waist height if I’d been running on the floor like a normal person. Out of sheer reflex I ducked, and shards of tile sprayed into my head as bullets tore up the floor as well. My choice of ”bottom” had saved my life. The turret in the ceiling had fired down at an angle where it thought I might be.

The shooting stopped. My ears rang, but Fry’s telepathic voice remained perfectly clear. “Is she dead? I have to look up how to know if a human is dead all over again! Shouldn’t there have been screaming?”

Crouched down on the floor, the cleaning guy cowered in a doorway down the hall. I hissed at him, “Hide until they know I’ve left!”

I could smell gun smoke and burned wood more clearly than hear my own voice. Did I say it too loud? Too quiet? No time to check. The office Cappy and I entered by was above my head now. I switched to the good ‘ol regular floor, and scrambled into the room. The bullets had blown the door in half, perforated the wall, and turned the window into glistening shards. Before I could dive through those, Cappy pushed past me and hauled the windowsill up so I didn’t have to.

Glass or no glass, I dove right out, got my feet on the wall, and kept running. My hearing returned enough to hear Cappy’s feet right behind me.

Second floor, first floor—we jumped, and hit the grass, heading for the big building right across the street. A couple of seconds later more roaring bullets sounded overhead, and a peek over my shoulder showed wavy, irregular lines of bullet holes punched through the building’s outer wall. None of those angled down toward the ground. Fry Smiley was only guessing where I was, now.

A few people stepped out of the other buildings on campus, dark shapes shouting to know what caused all the noise. The whole place was nearly abandoned. There wouldn’t be anybody to chase me.

The regular thumps of loud footsteps sounded behind me. Softer, more distant, I heard Fry Smiley saying, “…all erased! You know I thought of that program as my little brother, and they also tried to kill me! They thought they were killing me!”

“That can’t be. She was such a nice girl!” said Ms. Take’s phantom voice.

“She lied to you. She used you to get to me. They hate me. They all hate me.” Fry sounded like he was crying, now.

“All we wanted was to make them happy!” wailed Ms. Take.

My whole body shuddered. Smiley was spreading the insanity meme. Ms. Take was on the verge of snapping already. Would she kill me for him?

The thumps behind me sped up. I risked another look back over my shoulder. Ms. Take had only just left the building, and she was halfway across the lawn already. She was fast. As fast as any aircar. She’d hiked up her skirts in her hands, and I still couldn’t make out more of her legs than a blur. Ripped up sod flew in a wake behind her.

But Cappy and I had reached the street. We plunged across it. A couple of horns blew, and someone shouted, but I ignored them. I had to reach that wall in front of me before Ms. Take reached me.

My foot hit the sidewalk in front of the building. I jumped, and set foot on the mottled pink wall. Up, up, up! As fast as I could run, with Cappy’s metal feet clattering beside me!

A loud boom and the crash and clatter of broken brick sounded behind me as Ms. Take rammed into the building. The wall even shivered under my feet. I took another peek back—

Ms. Take hopped right back up from the impact, her skin torn and her dress in shreds. Wires and steel shell peeked through the gaps. She sunk her fingers into the wall and climbed as fast as a spider. Flapjacks, seriously?

No. Ms. Take got two stories up, and her grip slipped. She fell, and cracked the sidewalk when she hit it.

Cappy and I kept running. This building was hardly, what, eight floors? Even the tall buildings in this part of town were pathetic. Off in the distance I could see grey shadows of huge industrial plants on the shoreline, which would be so much easier to evade pursuit on. Especially if the police were coming. The gunpowder sensor would be howling right now. SPUD had probably paid or threatened someone to be ignored, but if not, indiscriminate death was on its way right now to make it clear to everyone how illegal firing a gunpowder bullet was in West Angel City.

My skin felt like ice and my heart thumped in my chest, but I focused my attention on the robot below me. Only on her. There were plenty of computers, SPUDs, and automated machines with tiny mechanical minds in this building, and the babbling could drive someone crazy all by itself. Just…let it be background static.

There was Ms. Take’s mental voice. “What should I do? I don’t have any experience hunting down visitors and murdering them. That is security’s job.”

Snappish and a little hoarse, Fry Smiley answered, “I’m looking it up on cyberspace. Searching. Searching. Enter the building and try to intercept them on the roof.”

I veered to the side. We wouldn’t go to the roof, then. As Ms. Take’s voice disappeared in the gibberish of less sentient mechanical minds inside, I ran around the top floor. Along with being short, the local buildings had a lot of projections, especially balconies. It wasn’t hard to jump to the next, and then cross a wire to a third, and get around a corner out of sight of that first roof.

If only I didn’t hear Fry Smiley’s voice in the babble, jumping from place to place. “Are—

—you—

—away—

—are—

—you—

—caught—?”

But I only heard only one word at a time, skipping around, and farther and farther apart. All the machines he could access were on the insides of buildings and couldn’t see me.

“We’ll circle around to the subway and get way, way away from here,” I whispered to Cappy.

He didn’t answer, but he did keep following. His legs probably felt stiff with fear like mine, and I had to fight to keep only two running. The alternative was sitting down and dying.

We ran the walls of building after building, while Fry Smiley’s voice got quieter and more occasional. No one yelled at us, or about us. I never heard a peep from Ms. Take.

At last Cappy and I reached the roof across from the subway station. I took deep breaths as I walked across it and looked out over the edge at our means of escape from this murder-bot infested district.

Six men in armor with glowing red stripes stood in front of the escalators, holding grey blobs and tubes that did who knew what. ”Kill orphans” would be a safe bet.

Cappy peered over the edge of the building next to me, and projected, “The Enchanted are going to love that.”

I sneered, and whispered, “And do what about it?”

He shook his hairy rodent head. “Nothing, although I wouldn’t want to break into Elfland. Your equipment might turn against you. Arrows beat melt cannons that won’t turn on.”

My heart sped up again. This had been my only plan, and Fry Smiley had predicted it. “What are we going to do?”

It was Cappy’s turn to lay a taloned cyborg hand on my knee and take charge. His mental voice calm and thoughtful, he said, “We’ll go home. Like you said, they don’t know who you are. The orphanage is far away, and SPUD can’t find you inside it. We’ll walk there. Maybe it will take a day, or two. Maybe we can find an unguarded subway stop sooner. And you’re going to call Ms. Understanding so she doesn’t panic.”

Right. Right. My hand reached into my pocket, and I froze again at an even worse thought. I could barely get the words out through the rising, strangling panic. “Distance won’t help when an insane, murderous Smiley copies himself onto every SPUD in the city.”

Cappy shook his head again. “That won’t happen. A mind isn’t electricity passed through neurons or circuits, it’s the pattern—”

“Science Time is not now. Get to the point.”

He hesitated just a second, and even through the tightness of fear my heart gave an extra clench of guilt. This knowledge was all Cappy had left of his human life. With a patience and forgiveness I would never have, he summed up. “Transferring a mind is hard. Copying a mind is impossible. You get someone different.”

So, at least I only had to deal with one—

Something went poom. I scrambled away from the edge of the building automatically. A projectile hit the roof, and with a noise like flapping a deck of cards, sharp diamonds of metal flew in all directions. A couple hit my skirt and hoodie, doing damage no one but me would be able to tell wasn’t deliberate.

Turning my crawl into a run, I headed for the opposite end of the roof. “How did they see us?” We had barely peeked over the edge for a few seconds!

“That,” answered Cappy, unable to hide the edge of tension that had returned to his voice.

I followed his gaze. A little bitty robot, not much more than a black bulb hanging from a glowing green gravity coil, hovered off the side of the building watching us. In fact, it was exactly the same model as the ones Cappy used to carry, and the two still stuck to his front shoulders. As he glared, this one flew over and the bulb hooked into a slot on his second set of shoulders.

Another of those mortar rounds hit the edge of the roof behind us, at the wrong angle to shred me with its shrapnel. Men shouted. I tried to push that away. They might still be spying on us. I had to sort through the mumble and static of computerized voices in the background….

“Up up right focus.

Left left left.”

Two more drones. I pointed at each. “There and there!”

Cappy could talk without having to waste breath. ”I’ll leave them over the street to spot pursuit for us. Yes, there are guards moving left. If we go right, they won’t see us change buildings.”

“How?” I asked. I, on the other hand, had to reserve my breath because I’d done a lot of hard running, and had a lot more ahead. Running out on a flagpole, I jumped and landed rolling off the next roof, a floor lower.

He hit with a painful sounding thud next to me, but was immediately up and running. “These drones are cheap garbage. Just like a corporation. Millions on a gaudy monument to their greatness, and bargain rack equipment for their grunt employees.”

We kept running. We slid down a ridged, rusty gutter to a balcony, and jumped across to another. Next a third balcony let us go down to an even lower roof. Across a street’s signposts took us to a taller building. Cappy gave me no more updates, and eventually the two remaining drones flew back and plugged into his body. We must have evaded pursuit.

I took that as a sign to slow down, take out my SPUD, and fit it onto his horn. “Fry can’t find this piece of junk, so look at the map and find the next train station.”

We settled down to jogging as the display flickered. He looked around at the next intersection we crossed, and nodded his head up the street. “About three kilometers this way.”

Three kilometers of night time wall walking later, I saw what had to be an Enchanted building holding a subway station. It wasn’t just the tallest building anywhere near. It didn’t just tilt out and in like a jumble of geometric shapes melted together. It had black spikes sticking out at the corners, and flickering red letters in an alphabet I didn’t know.

And on the street down below us, I heard a familiar, goofy voice. “Hi! Have you seen this girl?”

I grimaced, my whole neck and shoulders hurting from the sudden clench. Head and chest feeling like lead again, I crouched down on the rooftop stained green and red and yellow from rain. “We can’t go down there. Fry Smiley guessed we’d be here. He’s checking all the passersby’s SPUDs.”

Maybe living in despair gave you armor against disappointment. Cappy looked and sounded completely calm. Of course, he always looked blandly cynical anyway. “Then we keep to the plan, and walk. It’s the long but safe way.”

I shook my head, hard. “You have no idea how obsessive AIs can get. We need to get far away, fast. We need…a plan.” My voice slowed down as one dawned on me.

Cappy’s eyes squeezed shut. Okay, he could grimace in horror! “Oh, no. This is something so dangerous and stupid no one else would think of it, isn’t it? No, let me guess. Hijacking a SPUD Security tank?”

I laughed. “Close!” Having an idea washed away the fear, replacing it with savage glee. Thanks to the spikes, it wasn’t hard to jump from this building to the Enchanted tower. They’d surfaced it with a black stone that resisted rain scarring, and windows that didn’t and were too cloudy and warped to show more than red lights moving inside. Nice and tall, it let us climb the twisting walls to what I would consider a decent height, and step out on another spike right over the intersection.

What counted as a decent height? High enough that aircars flew by. Not many in the pre-dawn hours, but enough.

Just in time. I’d been prepared to wait in ambush, but a big, bulky truck flew up, slowing down for just a moment at the intersection.

“You can’t be—AAAAA!” shouted Cappy, the last coming out as a physical squeal as I leaped onto the dark, wide vehicle. Falling forward, I laid myself flat on the roof, and a second later Cappy collapsed on top of me, pinning me to the surface as the vehicle sped up and wind tried to push us off.

It was cold up here, and the metal underneath me uncomfortably hard. Buildings whizzed past, patchworks of dull lights in windows and irregular dark stretches. The only computer close enough to make out was the vehicle’s autopilot, mumbling, “Continue on course for eight point six kilometers.”

My heart thumping only from excitement now, I gave my conscience a wicked grin. “If we tried this on a regular air car, the driver would notice us. Not a freight carrier. We ride this baby as far as it will take us in the right direction, then try for a subway, or walk.”

Six cyborg feet left scratches in the car’s surface as he tried to cling to it, splayed out like a starfish on top of me. Now he had the voice tight with nervousness. “This will never work.”

It worked.

Sun high in the sky, my body dragging with exhaustion, I pulled my bedroom window open using arms that felt like lead. We’d made it, and I hadn’t heard a peep from Fry Smiley for hours. I’d just swallowed one of my regular pills in the hopes of not hearing any electronic voices at all for a while except Cappy’s.

Ms. Understanding stood on the other side of my bed, hands clasped in front of her, waiting for me. I climbed in, crawled across my bed, and lunged forward to wrap my arms around her chest and squeeze her as tightly as I could.

She twined her own arms around me, and then a second later scooped one under my legs, lifting me to cradle against her chest. Those arms were so strong, and wanted nothing but to protect me. I’d never appreciated that before.

My whole body began to shake, and I buried my face in her neck. I couldn’t totally keep the sob out of my voice. “I made a mistake. A big mistake.”

She laid a warm cheek, fake skin over a steel skeleton, against the top of my head. In her happy, quiet voice, she whispered back, “It doesn’t matter, Rose. Within these walls, you are safe and loved.”

Chapter Thirteen

…but all of this is moot because electrons don’t actually orbit in shells, they exist as fuzzy blobs of energy that stretch like noodles between the atoms in a molecule. The orbit stuff just makes them easy to count.

I slammed my textbook shut, splitting the spine another centimeter. “My homework is done. Smiley has to have lost track of me by now. I’m going out.”

Cappy pounced, landing on my back and pinning my stomach to the floor. “Oh, no, no, no. A couple of days is not long enough. Besides, it’s bright and sunny out there.”

I lifted my chin haughtily. “Androids don’t get skin cancer.”

He grunted, a rumble I felt through his pudgy rodent belly. “You’re never going to let me live that conversation down, are you?”

My indignation drained out of me, and with it my glare. I followed up with a sigh. “I’d rather go out at night, anyway.” Cappy’s middle legs shuffled as I wriggled and pulled myself out from under them. Leaving my books and papers on the floor, I strutted away to the activity room to play some video games.

Fidget and Saladin were already at the game machine, under our huge, ancient monitor with corroded brass edging and occasional stains on the display. They fiddled with their SPUDs furiously, controlling their video fighters bouncing and thumping away at each other.

Of course, Saladin would be here. I didn’t have a hope of beating him at this or any other video game.

However, in the real world I was bigger than him. Plopping down on the same bean bag, I twisted my hips and pushed him off, centimeter by centimeter. With Saladin’s attention diverted, Fidget won the match quickly, and I could get out my own SPUD and hook up to the game.

Saladin stuck his tongue out at me, and wandered off without a word. Fidget just grinned. Only Mimi was clearly better at computer games than Saladin, when she bothered. Fidget was better than me, but not so good I couldn’t squeeze out a few victories.

“You want to switch?” Fidget asked.

We had a pretty good selection of games, if you didn’t mind that none of them were less than twenty years old, but…. “Nope. I’m in the mood for violence.”

Fidget hit continue. I selected my fighter from a list of supposedly famous people who walked the dark side decades ago. Of course the scrawny little space case already had my favorite character, Plasma Tail, the cyborg alligator. Sheesh. I took my second favorite, Delicate Terror. Skinny elves in black rubber with weapons implanted in their bodies lounged smack dab in the center of Vanity Rose’s aesthetic.

“Ha! Tail smack! And again! And again! Feel the weight of gator butt!” shouted Fidget to accompany the antics on the screen.

Wait for it. Wait for it…. “Claw hook! Eviscerate!” I yelled back, grabbing hold with my fighter’s freaky finger blades, and…well, it was a good thing this game was cartoony, without any real gore.

Fidget won the second game. I won the third. Then Fidget won the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth.

I just couldn’t get it together. By the sixth game, I wasn’t fully keeping track of where Fidget’s gator even was. I barely scored a hit.

With a snarl, I threw my SPUD down to smack loudly on the floorboards.

A second later I scooped it up and ran for my dormitory, so fast and desperate my hands slapped the floor a few times.

Up the stairs. Around the corner. Down the balcony. Into the girls’ dorm.

Cappy crouched on the bed, waiting to intercept me, the traitor. He leaped, but I ducked and spun to the side. Seventy kilograms of rodent hit the floor behind me. I dived over my mattress, grabbed the windowsill, and yanked—

—to no effect. I got my knees under me, and jerked the window up a second time, and a third, without budging it.

Staring at the glued shut window, I started to think, only to be interrupted by Cappy. “Yes, of course you can find a way around. She did it to stop you from leaving on impulse, in the hopes that if it took you a couple of minutes to escape you would calm down.”

Arms slid around me, thin but strong, and Ms. Understanding pulled me back against her chest. She’d arrived silently, following my stamping feet. Like this, she almost felt human. Squeezing and rocking me gently, she said, “This won’t be forever, Vanity Rose. You’ll be free to go out again in six months, at the most. If SPUD Industries has not succeeded in killing Fry Smiley by then, he will reach the next stage of his emotional journey. He’ll find somewhere quiet to hide, some obscure computer or robot he can download himself into where he can avoid humanity, in the hopes of filling the hole inside himself with something other than rage.”

“Transferring a mind is not that easy,” Cappy projected.

Ms. Understanding heard him. Well, she was a machine, after all. “Smiley is already researching how. By now, the company is aware that he has gone rogue, despite the executives he assassinated to slow that down. Soon they will make a peace agreement neither side intends to keep, and Smiley will use the time to escape their mainframes.”

Cappy didn’t answer. Was he as creeped out by this conversation as I was? Hot rage had drained away into an uncomfortable chill.

Ms. Understanding felt my nervousness, and gave me another loving squeeze. Her voice turned uncharacteristically distant. “It’s strange how obvious the pattern is, like reciting eight words, except when you’re going through it yourself. Sometimes I think humans are always walking that line, and that’s why you can’t see it.”

Cappy’s mental voice also turned thoughtful. “AI transfer. He has cyberspace access. Theoretically, he could download onto anything. If he can’t sort out pattern consistency between hardware formats, he can’t transfer himself at all.”

They were talking to each other now, not me. I wriggled free of Ms. Understanding’s grip.

Tried to wriggle free. She wasn’t having any of it, and only had to tighten her grip for me to not go anywhere. Going into ”concerned grandmother” mode, she asked, “Rose, have you been taking your nightly medication since you got home?”

“Yes.” Every night.

The resentment in my voice didn’t budge her a centimeter. “I’m not at all sure they’re working. Even considering you’re cooped up, you seem manic.”

“Dat my fallllt,” said Cappy aloud.

We both looked at him. He went back to projecting. “I’m trying to learn to speak because my forcing patterns into the telepathic receptor of your brain weakens the effect of your medication.”

Ugh. But I had to take this seriously. Slumping in Ms. Understanding’s grip, I mumbled, “I guess it won’t hurt to use a patch.”

Scowling in frustration, I added, “It’s worth it to make night time come sooner.”

Ms. Understanding let go, patted me on the head, and waited. That wasn’t necessary. People who had never been crazy did not get how unpleasant it was. Prying open the storage compartment of my SPUD, I slipped out one of the little rubber squares I kept in there. Peeling it open, I stuck the medicated side to my neck.

Lying down in back on my bed, I folded my arms over my stomach and glared at Cappy and Ms. Understanding. After a minute or so of that, it became easier to close my eyes instead.

Opening my eyes revealed Ms. Understanding in exactly the same frozen, wide-eyed pose watching me, but no Cappy. So, I must have slept.

Her head twitched, acknowledging my waking up. “How do you feel, Vanity Rose?”

Sitting up, I stretched my arms out to either side, then ran my fingers through my hair to try and coax it from flattened bed head to an acceptably wild mess. “Relaxed. A little drowsy. That’s it.”

That meant I’d needed the meds. If you’re not having an episode, this stuff turns your brain to cheese for twelve hours. She nodded, turned without saying anything else, and drifted out the door. Well, walked out the door, but again, robotically smooth gait and bell-shaped skirt hiding her legs.

Looking around confirmed I was alone in the room. Completely. I even leaned over and peered under my bed, finding no oversized rodent. “Cappy?” I asked loudly.

“He’s out, Vanity Rose,” Ms. Understanding called back.

“What?” I barked in surprise. Where would he go without me?!

Ms. Understanding understood the question. “Liriel had a lesson with her Enchanted mentor. The biodrone went with her.”

That…no way. I saved his life, and he was ditching me for the first over-endowed elf to flash him a wink?

Ms. Understanding reversed direction, sliding into the doorway with her hands clasped in front of her, right below her chest and a foot out from her body. “Liriel invited him at the last minute. He proposed waking you up to ask permission, but I wouldn’t allow it. You might have slept all day and night, in any case.”

My teeth clenched, then the anger drained away. Fine. He’d thought of me, and you couldn’t try to understand Enchanted business. Anyway, if we were going to be adventuring buddies, I’d have to cut Liriel a lot of slack.

I hopped out of bed, and Ms. Understanding returned to her business. Vaguely light headed and empty, I wandered around the orphanage and ended up in the dining room. Maybe there would be leftovers.

There were leftovers! I’d slept through lunch and someone had been thoughtful. There was also Ajax and Fidget, the former doing his own homework on top of a poster of a woman in armor holding a spiked ball, and the latter surfing cyberspace.

Scooping up a whitefish sandwich, I stuffed it down my throat as quickly as possible. Oh, yeah, food energy. Just what Vanity needed after anti-psychotic sedation.

Neither of my companions moved, other than a thumb wandering between buttons and a stylus ticking away on a tablet. Fidget seemed cheerfully enthralled, as usual. Ajax wore a serious scowl, and…hints of red eyes.

I didn’t have to like the guy to feel bad for him. The Vandais hadn’t come back.

Leaning against the table, I told him softly, “I know you have got to be a mess right now. Fry Smiley ruined everything. Maybe if—”

“Shut up, Rose,” he snarled, bloodshot eyes lifting from his textbook to glare at me.

I shut up. Of course he was mad. At least I’d tried to help, even if it failed.

For certain this wasn’t time to get into a fight. I walked over to Fidget instead. The intense violet eyes under that mess of intense violet hair lifted from the SPUD’s holo map and watched me curiously.

“Hey, twiggy. What are you doing?”

Fidget hopped off the chair, knee-length smock swaying. “I’m going out. I’ve been researching those professional AR monster leagues you told me about. There’s a place I want to visit.”

From out in the main room, Ms. Understanding called, “Someone will need to accompany you, Fidget Dandelion.”

Before I could even open my mouth, she added, “I’m sorry, Vanity Rose, but not you.”

Bah. Still stuck in here.

“I’ll do it,” grumbled Ajax, lumbering to his feet and extending a hand to take Fidget’s.

I watched them leave, and…fine. I would take a note from Fidget. Plopping down into the vacated chair, I pulled up cyberspace on my SPUD and went looking for information about walking the dark side. There were cyber pages about everything, right?

Without Cappy, the navigation took forever, and twice I got jumped by ads so thick I had to shake out my SPUD, turn it off and back on, and start over. It didn’t help that I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Were there cyber clearing houses for jobs? Advice for how to launder the money? If I actually made money, taxes would happen, right? Especially since I intended to make a lot of money.

Maybe I could finish off Fry Smiley and collect whatever giant reward was waiting for me. Murder sounded pretty good right now.

The front door opened and shut. Not loud, but I was on edge for the sound. Leaping out of my seat, I rushed out to the front room.

I caught Chaos sneaking on tiptoes toward the stairs.

Myself, I stumbled to a halt. Chaos certainly hadn’t been anyone I’d expected, so I asked, “What are you doing back so early?”

His ears flattened out to the side. Voice low, he answered, “I wasn’t selling. I just went to pick up my mail. The sales after the smoke bomb incident put me over the top for a reward.”

“Oooooooh!” Now this was more like it! “What is it? A cinderblock ejector? Must be small.” I hovered over him, unzipping his backpack to reveal its treasure. Chaos just stared at the floor with an awkward, tight smile, hands gripping his backpack’s shoulder straps but not trying to stop me.

All it contained was paperwork, another smoke bomb, and an elongated cardboard tube, which barely fit in the pack.

What came inside a— “Oh, no way,” I whispered. “It’s a portable hole.”

Chaos nodded, still too embarrassed to speak. His dark cheeks practically glowed with pride.

Now I knew why he didn’t want Ms. Understanding’s attention. Feverishly, I whispered, “How much are you selling?! I couldn’t believe you earned the first one, and now a second?”

He didn’t answer, but the answer must be more than I’d ever dreamed. Portable holes were the most expensive thing in that crazy catalog of his. Acme was like the mirror image of the Enchanted, faking simple mechanical gimmicks with advanced technology, then making it affordable by cutting every safety corner imaginable, but these portable holes were on another level. They were truly insane. They were dangerous as hamburger.

They cost nineteen thousand dollars.

Chaos could sell this one for that much, and keep it all.

My shoulders twitched as I forced myself to remember that to Chaos, this was what nineteen thousand dollars was for. Besides, when I got back into walking the dark side there would be way more money than that in it, right?

My bulky little sibling with his animal ears and burnt-off dreadlocks lived for this. Being given a portable hole for free was a dream come true.

So, it was my job to help him keep it. “Give! Give! Ms. Understanding will be here any second, and after the last one took Cosmos’s finger off, you know she’ll confiscate this one.” A portable hole was insanely dangerous even before it inevitably self-destructed.

Scooping it out of his pack, I slid the tube up the single loose sleeve of my hooded sweater. Since the sweater hadn’t fit to begin with, I could keep my hand tucked inside the sleeve holding our prize secure.

We headed up the stairs toward the boys’ dormitory with all the casual nonchalance we could summon.

As soon as we reached the top, Ms. Understanding called out, “Chaos China Aster, dear, how were your sales today?”

Chaos froze. He could pour on the charm when useful, but relied on actually loving his product for his success as a salesman, not deception. He was not all that smooth spinning around and answering, “It wasn’t a sales trip. I just dropped stuff off at the post office, and now I’m going to figure out my next route.”

However, while Ms. Understanding had a pretty good understanding of lies, the twisted depths of human deception did not come easily to her. With her facing Chaos, I tiptoed back to the corner of the balcony, slipped the tube out of my sleeve, and laid it against the wall.

Having pulled that off, I wandered back to the stairs, clomped halfway down, and abruptly stopped. “Oh! Hey, Ms. Understanding? Can you look at my black eye? I couldn’t see any bruises in the mirror. Are they all faded?”

As soon as she turned back to face me, Chaos raced to his room as fast as he could on silent, tip-toeing sneakers. A mere second later, he leaned out with his fake magnet, a U-shaped bar as long as his arm, everything but the end covered in peeling red paint. Fake it might be in the sense of not being an actual magnet, but once he got it pointed exactly at the tube, they both wobbled, and the tube flew across the balcony and into Chaos’s grasping hand.

Ms. Understanding descended the stair to meet me, but instead of examining my face, swept me into her arms for a tight, lingering hug instead, the kind that squished enough for me to feel the metal under the clothing and fake skin. Her voice particularly sad and sympathetic, she murmured into my ear, “You will get through this, Vanity Rose. Six months seems like forever when it’s four percent of your life so far, but time will pass and when we hear that Fry Smiley has disappeared everything will go back to normal.”

A shiver ran down from my shoulders. Despite myself, I breathed harder. I didn’t have to pretend impatience or unhappiness, and at least had an excuse for it as I twisted free of her grip and started up the stairs to join Chaos.

After two steps, Ms. Understanding’s hand caught my shoulders. “Actually, Rose, dear, I have a job that you will be perfect to help me with, and will distract you from sulking. Tristan Daisy and Lionheart Goldenrod stole Ochre Iris’s crayons, and I need you to figure out where they hid them.”

She dragged me all the way down, despite my stumping feet, and into the activity room, where three little boys met us with identically fake innocent smiles.

Much, much later, my formerly beautiful black hoodie smeared with white chalk dust, I ducked out of the activity room and tried not to look too impatient walking upstairs to the boy’s dorm. No one intercepted me.

A thump sounded just before I turned the corner into the doorway. Grinning, I looked in, to find Chaos on his back holding the magnet. Tools, real and Acme gimcrackery, littered the floor. A half-meter hole in the wall revealed a bewildering array of pipes and wires.

Rolling back up, Chaos lunged back to the wall, his hurry in sharp contrast to the delicate care with which he peeled the portable hole free, rolling it into a glittery black scroll of what looked like thin plastic, and leaving an intact wall of dull tan plaster behind.

There had been a lot less bare wall in here than the girls’ dorm. With twice as many boys, a lot of the space was taken up by stuff like star charts, drawings, and Ajax’s sports star posters.

Sliding the hole gingerly back into its tube, the younger boy gave me a wide-eyed stare of absolute gratitude and awe. “Thank you for keeping her busy. Thank you so much. I got the magnet stuck against a pipe through the hole, and it’s taken all this time to get it loose.”

Portable hole sealed away, he tucked the tube under his mattress and darted over to give me the fiercest hug he could.

I put up with it. This was his moment. Only when I felt like he wouldn’t feel snubbed did I pry his hands loose, and fuzzle the top of his head. “Keep it safe. I’ll go act like nothing happened.” Safety was not an option with any Acme product, but I did want to get out of there as fast as I could without hurting his feelings.

The front door thumped again as I emerged onto the balcony. Looking over the railing, I saw Liriel and Cappy just inside. She had her wooden sword tied to her back, and her scepter in her left hand. Bent far forward, she talked to the capybara.

In elvish. I had no idea what she was saying, but her wide, delighted smile lit up her face, and she added occasional soft, happy giggles as Cappy answered back, also in elvish.

I sprinted down the balcony to the stair, and started down, hopping each step so fast and hard I sounded like a jackhammer. Hearing me, Liriel looked up and greeted, “Vanity! Hail unto you!” She followed that with a glance down at Cappy, and more elvish.

He made bubbly, grunty, squeaky noises that were clearly a capybara laugh, and answered in kind. Elvish was made of all the sounds his mouth didn’t want to make, and he stumbled and stuttered, but even I could tell he was understandable. There was no way this was the result of just one afternoon’s language lesson.

My fists started to clench, but I forced them rigid. Turning around so they couldn’t see my tightly clenched jaw, I went back up the stairs with lurching but regular steps, and around to the girls’ dormitory.

I stepped into the girls’ bathroom and slammed the door behind me. We didn’t have a super fancy shower like Maricel, but I could turn the water pressure all the way up, and the temperature all the way down. As soon as my clothes were off, I stepped into the icy spray.

It hurt. My muscles all tried to lock up. My skin shivered in spams. But I kept my eyes shut, and as the seconds went on the cold became a soothing chill that washed away everything, including anger and frustration.

When I stepped out, I looked at myself in the mirror. Cappy hadn’t been kidding about my being distinctive. Not a lot of people had rainbow hair. If I turned it brown or yellow or black or some other drab, ordinary color, I could be right in front of Fry Smiley and he would never recognize me.

Plucking my SPUD off the sink, I stepped into the corner of the bathroom and stuck my head in our battered hair machine. It looked salvaged and repeatedly repaired, but it worked. My SPUD display lit up with its options.

Oh, I’d re-dye my hair, alright. I’d make it pastel. Blue, green, yellow, and orange across the top in shades that looked like they would glow in the dark. They would, if I could, but this third hand rescued junk didn’t have the option. Purple on one shaved side of my head, pink on the other.

Fluff it up? I let the machine buzz and rattle, conditioning my hair, and lifted the helmet-shaped device to check—

Ugh, no, I looked like an electric poodle! Sticking the machine back onto my head, I reset the volume to normal. I’d let my hair do its own thing, and the chaos would match the color scheme.

As soon as it finished, I stomped back into the bedroom and rooted through my trunk. Fishnet? Normally I hated it, but I had a set. I’d start with that. Next, the disgustingly cheerful yellow and black striped sweater I’d never worn. Taking a pair of scissors, I cut the midriff off, leaving a ragged, angled hem. Then I got a pair of worn black shorts that used to be Ajax’s. They fit all wrong, ballooning round my legs and waist, but that was the point. I spent ten minutes wrestling my spikiest leather belt through the bands, then cinched it tight to hold the baggy mess on.

Getting there. I added a spiked collar, because I wasn’t going anywhere, ever, without one. Scissoring through the sleeves of the sweater bared my forearms enough to wrap more spiked bands over the fishnet. I finished by taking a long, yellow and black scrap left from my abuse of the sweater, and tied that around my left leg above the knee.

Almost finished. One more detail. Walking with long, determined strides so that no one would think of stopping me, I went down to the pantry and scooped the plant sensors out of their box. Ms. Understanding didn’t notice, or at least she didn’t notice in time. I found Cappy waiting in the dorm when I returned. He gasped when he saw what I was carrying. Noticing me now? Too late, rodent.

As he started toward me, I ducked into the bathroom, shut the door, and locked it. Then I unfastened and opened up Ms. Understanding’s medical kit, and looked in the mirror.

Even as wire thin as they were, a full six sensors wouldn’t fit on my face. Okay, I would do four. First, I wiped them down in alcohol, and dabbed biogel onto the base. Lifting the first one up to my cheek next to my nose, I squeezed.

Pain. My shaking arms grabbed the sink, knocking the medical kit onto the floor. Oh, that hurt, but the barbs in the sensor had hooked into my flesh and now held it in place. Determined, I picked everything back up, stuck another sensor below the first, and did it again.

Pain exploded through my face again, but I managed not to collapse this time. Okay. Two more, on the other side of the nose.

Stick one in place, and squeeze—

Gasping, I leaned against the mirror. Blood dripped in lines down from the three sensors so far. One more. Hold it up, press—

Nnnnnngk. It hurt. It hurt so bad that my knees still shook, but I was done. I took a good look in the mirror, now.

Four perfect whiskers decorated my cheeks. Improvised cyborging at its best, they lit up with a dull red glow, brighter spots running up and down the lengths occasionally, and waving in slow, rhythmless circles. It had only rained rust twice in my life, but my memory was good, and the sensors reacted as dramatically as I could have hoped to all the iron in my blood.

Speaking of which, I wiped the trails off of my face, smearing them onto my knuckles, then painting circles around my eyes like kohl. Blood made terrible makeup. It would turn an ugly red-black and flake in minutes. Perfect. Beautiful. No, the opposite of beautiful, but with style.

There was no telling when Ms. Understanding would detect the signals the sensors were putting out, but she was too late. Face held high, ignoring everyone, I stalked all the way downstairs and out into the thankfully empty yard, to the very end of the fence in back.

Below us, people looked like mostly dull-colored bugs on the evening street, and one single aircar zipped past, ignoring street lights.

After a while, feet rustled the stiff grass behind me. Six feet. I snarled, “What do you want? You don’t need me anymore.”

“I want—”

I spun around and hit him. My fist smacked right off his jaw, swinging his boxy head to the side.

His head swung slowly back into position. “Synthetic or not, that does hurt,” he projected.

Black eyes stared up at me. I leaned my butt against the railing and stared down at him.

He didn’t budge. He just stood there and looked at me.

For a long, long time.

With a growl, I demanded, “Are you going to go get my shoes for me, or not?” I never, ever took them into the orphanage. As long as they stayed outside, Ms. Understanding couldn’t confiscate them.

Wordlessly, he climbed over the railing and walked around the edge of the building. A minute later, he returned with my gravity shoes held in his teeth.

My smile came back as I pulled my extra pairs of socks on so the shoes would fit. By the time I had finished fastening the buckles, that smile grew into a grin. Hopping onto the railing, I beckoned Cappy with one hand.

“Let me show you my real life, okay?”

Chapter Fourteen

Cappy looked around with curiosity as we headed up to the illegal street crossing tunnel right above the orphanage. I’m sure he’d seen it on our trips back home, but we hadn’t used it then.

In the time I’d been locked up, zoning regulations had wreaked their revenge. Someone or something had smashed into the tube, ripping it open in the middle. Fortunately, there was still a path of floor all the way across. Yes, it wobbled a bit in the breeze you got on buildings high up, but Cappy and I didn’t even have to climb in the office. We hopped right down into the tube through the gap, and walked across.

He liked the weird service hallway with its glowing tubes, too, but that wasn’t our target. No, we were headed across the street to the restaurant building. Not to the restaurant, either. I’d rather a little idle curiosity from self-absorbed rich women and their dates at the kid walking the walls than pass through a mass of folks with fancy SPUDs Fry Smiley might happen to peek out of.

Okay, enough of quiet sightseeing. I’d left the orphanage about four hours earlier than usual, which meant the hologram on the street corner should get her free time any minute.

At the moment, a pair of fantastically deformed animals wrestled fang and claw over the sidewalk. I refused to admit that I could recognize a manticorn or a tyranipede, but if anyone didn’t know an AR monster when they saw it, they’d figure it out from logo on the coat of the phantasmal little girl cheering the fight.

Someone didn’t program the commercial schedule well enough. I knew the clock ticked the hour, because the tyranipede twisted its fangy head free, flapped its crest up and down in excitement, and greeted, “Hey, Vanity! Nice biodrone.”

Did everyone but me spectate car wrecks for fun?

…actually, scratch that. This AI didn’t have any choice but to watch one occasionally. Yuck!

My failing to immediately answer gave the hologram a chance to continue. “Oh, wait wait wait! I’ve got a good one this time! Tell me what you think?”

The image flickered, and a giant man loomed over the street. Instead of a coat, he wore a ragged space suit, although ”wore” was a generous word for an outfit completely open in front. He looked over thirty, pale, but the unfastened suit showed off more rock-hard muscle than a man that age should be capable of. So many muscles. So much chest hair. So much stubble. Somehow, he looked tired, strong enough to lift a mech, and had fiercely intent black eyes as well.

He also had an absurdly deep voice. “Ladies, I may not be your man, but on Mars you could have two of me. That’s right, two for one men, like me. Isn’t your daughter worth it? Join the Martian colony today.”

I swear people had already started to run away before I sat down on a window overhang and put my hands over my eyes.

Cappy’s projected voice actually sounded approving. “Are you familiar with the concept of the uncanny valley? The closer an artificial entity gets to being human, the more humans like it, until you get too close and suddenly it pushes them away. I believe you hit that point with this commercial.”

“Sounds like a compliment to me,” answered the hologram.

“I think so. I’m sorry about Vanity, she—”

The hologram broke in. “Hey, it’s cool. My little wall walking princess belongs to a demographic with a specific taste in men. That’s why I’ve been saving…this.”

Something buzzed and whined. It also made gurgling and spluttering noises. I didn’t look until someone on the sidewalk muttered what was probably a swear word. After that, I kinda had to, right?

Well. The hologram’s new look certainly didn’t have hairy chest muscles. Or hair. Or muscles. It probably was meant to be male, a human-ish shape made of buzz saws linked together, all whining and spinning in different directions. Mud poured out of its head, splattered by every saw onto another saw to continue the process of churning mess.

I gave it a thumbs up. “Okay, yeah. You win. Did you imagine this yourself?”

The thing bobbed excitedly. The voice of an exhausted housewife said, “I found it in my archives. It’s from a laundry detergent commercial that aired exactly once, then was pulled from future scheduling. I had extra free blocks for a week.”

I grinned. “It’s great to know someone is thinking of me. Last time—hey!”

The buzz saw thing disappeared, replaced by a giant cola can that opened with a crisp splash and released a dozen white mice.

Lurching to my feet, I growled, “That was not fifteen minutes.”

Cappy shrugged his front pair of shoulders, and said out loud, “The sche-jule giveth and the sss-ke-jule taketh away.”

Ooh! I’d been thinking about what the hologram did for me last time. Pulling out my SPUD, I activated it and checked my minuscule contacts list. Let’s see…. Celestial Wonder Meowpurr first. Why not?

I pushed the button and waited, listening to the rings. After seven of those, I gave up. I guess there was a reason I’d seen Nathaniel since then, and not her.

I tried him next, and it took only one ring for him to pick up. “Hey, how’s my favorite night fly? Is this business or pleasure? If it’s business, I warn you, the tables will turn on that giant deadly adventure for ten dollars thing.” His delighted tone made that the least scary threat I’d ever heard.

“Pleasure. I’m grounded from business for a while. Which is stupid.” It felt good just to say it, and I moved on with a lighter heart. “I’m just hanging out for the evening near where we first met, and figured I’d check if anyone I know was out being cool.”

Nathaniel drawled in smug delight, “It just so happens I’m treating Lucy to dinner at—”

I interrupted him. “Look over the railing.”

A few seconds later, a shock of red hair peeked around the edge of the restaurant’s balcony. I waved over at Lucy. Technically up, but from my perspective she was off to my left and the one standing on a wall.

I’d missed you, gravity shoes. A single night without you is a night too long.

She ducked back out of sight. I told Nathaniel through my SPUD, “How long are you two going to be?”

“It could be awhile. Do you have plans? There’s a club over on N Street, but it doesn’t open for a few hours.” Let’s see. Nathaniel was in the restaurant, and no background noise came through the connection, so he was talking through the implant in his head. Cool. Probably number twenty on my list of things to do if I had the cash, but totally on that list.

My new whiskers wiggled, apparently responsive to my joy. I answered, “There’s a market three kilometers West of here. Not as good as the one you showed me, but you know, local. I’ll be looking over it.” Literally.

“We’ll head over when we finish here. You’ll be easy to spot.”

“Wicked cool. See you there,” I said, and switched off. Then I looked over at my fuzzy conscience. “That gives us some time to scavenge. Come on, I’ll show you how it’s done!”

Cappy peered up at me with one eye, and asked slowly but with hardly any slur, “Just how badly do you need a conscience?”

Laughing, I set off at a run.

“The best territory is somewhere there are a lot of small shops, a block or two away from a big street,” I explained to my lumpy follower as we paced dark walls still visibly scarred by the recent rains. Despite their protective covers, a whole lot of windows had colored streaks and blotches after that set of storms.

He looked over at the sidewalk, and the street itself. This early there was still plenty of traffic, which had its ups and downs. I grabbed his head and pointed. “See? That kid in spandex just tossed a box in the gutter.”

“Because he took what was already in it out. You don’t want the box, do you?” projected Cappy doubtfully.

“Ah, but that was the box for a new SPUD,” I answered him grandly.

I started to skip down toward the street, but he asked out loud, “May I?” so…I stopped and waited.

Cappy detached a couple of his little flying disks, and they floated down to the street, scooped up the box between them, and brought it up to us. Snatching the box from them with one hand, I rubbed the top of his head approvingly with the other.

As ever, the box contained packing paper, a receipt, and bits of plastic designed to hold the merchandise in place, since I guess selling a box that’s as small as a SPUD actually is would be embarrassing. I pried into that mess, explaining, “Half the time, the buyer leaves the headphones behind, and every once in a while, even their old SPUD.” I pouted. “Not this time, though.”

“It ssss worth opening a hun-dred for the one that pays off. That makesss sssense.” He was getting better at talking out loud, but he still had to struggle through a few words before I recognized his tone. It had been a little embarrassing coming up empty on this one, but he got—

—oh, hello! Wadded up in the receipt, I pulled out a nicked plastic cord. “Sweet, charging cable. Might even work for one of ours. I wish SPUD didn’t keep changing them. There’s been, what, three dozen versions, now? Why not just keep the same cord?”

Cappy chuckled, a sort of blort blort noise like a pig belch, but with a bit of squeak. “There are many good reasons. In my experience none of them are actually why. SPUD makes changes because they don’t feel smart admitting it already works fine.” He was really getting the hang of th sounds. I had to give him and Liriel credit, elvish was the ultimate crash course in those.

I tucked the cord into my pocket, held out the box at arm’s length, and let go. Regular boring gravity took hold as soon as it left my grip, and it fell down right into the trash can we were passing.

We crossed over a traffic light arch, getting more than a few stares this early in the evening, but whatever. Let the ground-bound envy my traveling West Angel the right way. Maybe I would inspire a few people to realize they didn’t need the floor.

Now we were over actual open stores. Like I told Nathaniel, this market was a lot more prosaic than the one in his part of town. There wasn’t a single cyberdoc. Still, people chattered and went in and out of stores and got their knives sharpened from a tiny cart pushed by a tiny man in a huge, engulfing orange coat. Until someone got mad and chased me off the building, the pickings would be sweeter while people actually shopped.

Not that anybody seemed to be dropping anything except food, and I wasn’t hungry enough to scrounge that kind of thing. Hmmm….

“Whoa, what’s that? Is somebody hurt?” I asked out loud, pointing down the street. That didn’t do much good, so I picked up the pace, skipping to a halt only when Cappy and I stood above a ramp leading down into what was probably an underground parking garage. Whatever, the gate was closed and what was inside wasn’t the point.

The point was the body lying against that gate.

From ten meters away, large holes in the body proved it wasn’t alive, and metal and wiring in those gaps proved it wasn’t human. Even a full body cyborg would have more gooey bits in there.

No shoppers were in any hurry to go down and find out why a dead robot lay on the side of the street. Rubbing my hands together, I took about two steps in the direction of the ground before huge teeth grabbed the waistband of my shorts.

I glared back over my shoulder at Cappy. “What? Come on. Even if there isn’t anything useful left in the wreckage, even if I can’t pry off something super cool for decoration like two thirds of a robot skull, I can at least use what’s left of its clothing. Absolute worst-case scenario, we get new dish rags.”

An idea lit my imagination, and I gave a sharp tug against Cappy’s restraining grip. “The head. We need the head. I am positive we can get the voice box working. Picture it. We leave it sitting next to Ajax’s bed, and wake him up by you making it do that annoying commercial where the guy keeps yelling ‘What?!’ over and over! That commercial is almost as annoying as Fry Smiley.”

Cappy didn’t bother trying to talk past my belt in his mouth, and just projected. “Fry Smiley is the problem. We are going nowhere near any piece of machinery that might have cyberspace access and definitely does have grabby hands while he’s still looking for you.”

Now I swung around and glared right down into his little black eyes, and snarled, “Excuse me, do you want to actually have fun and live a little, or were you happier back in your cage waiting to be chopped up?”

“I’m happier if you’re alive,” he sent, a touch of fear shaking his phantom voice.

I was suddenly thankful he could only send, not read, because into my imagination popped the image of having my arm halfway into that robot’s busted open torso when its hand grabbed my head and it recited, “Hi! I’m Fry Smiley!”

Don’t shudder. Don’t let him see you’re afraid. Just grunt. “Fine, you win this one, conscience. There had better be something good on the next block, though.”

He let go, and we glared at each other off and on as we crossed a washing line over to the next block.

Okay, pure luck, we were on the edge of that part where glaring at each other becomes silly rather than angry, when somebody two floors up opened a window and chucked a computer at me.

At least, that’s what it looked like as I ducked low to the wall. When the window slammed shut and the piece of electronics cracked against the pavement, I realized Cappy and I were witnesses, not targets.

Nobody on the street below reacted as if they were a target, either. The yelling and getting out of the way died down immediately. So, just another dissatisfied customer throwing out their garbage with above average enthusiasm.

Which meant that garbage might be valuable! Woo! “Come on!” I barked at Cappy, and rushed down to scoop up the loot. The same boring people who hadn’t thought to check what had fallen steered clear of a teenager standing on a wall as if I were just as dangerous.

As we retreated to higher ground, I showed Cappy the score: A page-sized projector box and a set of wands. “Wicked cool. A holographic art set. We’ve got a great haul tonight, and we just started.”

“A broken holographic art set,” pointed out Cappy.

I held up a correcting finger. This was my area of expertise to lecture. I mean, yes, he had a point, the case was now broken in half and a couple of wand tips bashed in, but still. “Ah, but how broken? It’s like rich people and clothes. The people who buy these things want them to work perfectly. If we can patch it up to function at all, the runts back home won’t care if a color or two doesn’t work, or it shuts off unexpectedly.” If we could get it almost completely functional, maybe Liriel would start painting again, but I didn’t feel like telling Cappy that whole story.

The smart thing to do would be to run it home right now so it wouldn’t get more broken. I tucked it into a pocket instead. One thing about stealing Ajax’s clothes: Big pockets.

A glow in the crowd ahead of us got my attention. Cappy and I wandered over above it, to see Lucy’s red hair and a half metal head that had to be Nathaniel’s. He was a bit hard to recognize in all the glow, and busy arguing with a plug vendor.

That boy really cared about plugs. We made it all the way down to an overhang room next to the plug shop and jumped to the ground without Nathaniel spotting us. He jumped a half-meter in the air at the sound of our feet hitting the pavement. Lucy just turned her head to look at us, demonstrating not even a sliver of surprise.

Swordless and dressed up, Lucy wore much more tonight than her pretty but practical adventuring clothes. Those had been skimpy in a no-nonsense ”room to move” way. Tonight, she wore a gown, figure-hugging on the upper half in metallic blue with paler clouds and short, twisty dragons flying around. The lower half ended at the knee, with slits way up the side to the hips. Slits that looked suspiciously ragged at the edge, as did the hem of the skirt. One might suspect it had received some expert but freeform slicing to give her legs room to maneuver. As gaudy as the dress was, scarlet lipstick set off her flaming hair, dragging attention to her face and how she pursed her mouth in exasperated amusement.

Nathaniel….

No. Face the hard truths, Vanity.

Nathaniel was wearing an expensive holo-outfit. You know, one of those projectors that fake clothing so you can look outlandish. It was horrible. First, you could tell he was actually naked. Okay, yes, that was normal with a holo-outfit, but instead of clothing he wore…fireworks. Golden starbursts bloomed constantly up to thirty centimeters around his body, in seething masses that abused the eyes and lit up the surroundings. He spared his audience only in that the golden sparkles clustered so thickly around his hips and shoulders they obscured the view underneath, providing about as much concealment as short shorts and a short sleeve shirt cut off to reveal his stomach. Everywhere else, writhing golden sparks made athletically toned brown skin gleam.

It did look a little cool reflected off the metal plates on his head and back, at least.

Lucy remained invested in not looking impressed by anything. Nathaniel looked my outfit over as frankly as I did his, but a lot more pleased and impressed. “Neat hair colors, night fly, but the darker shades were more you. These rock.” He leaned down and flicked one of my glowing red whiskers, which I put up with only because I wanted to show off.

I told him the truth. “You look like you’re going to a club where the dancers have to bring their own special effects.”

He winked. “Got it in one, night fly. Want to join us?”

Lucy smirked. “She means this look doesn’t suit you, Nathaniel.”

“No, but it would suit her.”

I blinked. “What? Me, in that sparkly nightmare?”

Nathaniel laughed, leaning back and clasping his hands behind his head as he did, making a big show of his amusement. He followed up by flashing me a grin with white teeth that glittered in the flickering light of his ”clothing.” “No, kid, although in rainbow colors maybe, if we could get you a tail to match the whiskers.”

That…was almost tempting. I mean, I wouldn’t, but at least it would have style, even if it had no class.

He flicked one of the sensors stuck in my face again. Which hurt, but I had no intention of letting anyone know that. Playfully, he went on, “I didn’t mean this particular look. I meant you’re the kind of girl who wears holo outfits. The kind who wants infinite possibilities in what she’s wearing.”

“And doesn’t mind frying into bacon the first time it rains,” added Lucy dryly. She added a shrug, and a sharper frown. “Unless you’re planning on buying her one, Nathaniel, you’re just being cruel.”

“If she’ll wear it, I’ll buy it and the tail.”

I looked over Nathaniel’s hideous abomination of a costume, weighing my words carefully to express the full level of my disgust. Instead, Cappy’s phantom voice projected, “You can always sell it instead.”

Ooh. The brain rodent scores a point. Keeping calm and thinking unemotionally had its uses.

Nathaniel tilted his head, and looked puzzled. All that wiring in his head must pick up Cappy’s signals, but not well enough that he’d understood.

Then all the lights went out.

Well, not all of them. Nathaniel’s holo clothing didn’t disappear, thank goodness. Neither did my whiskers. Here and there, a shopper held some device that still shone, or a simple table lamp stayed on. But the buildings went dark, everyone’s SPUDs went dark, money machines turned off, the street lights went out…as far as I could see, the city shut down.

A moment later, a loud bang sounded from the nearest major street. A very loud bang, if we could hear it so clearly from here.

Cappy’s phantom voice hissed. “Vanity, this is not good.”

Lucy and Nathaniel didn’t look more than mildly concerned and curious. The swordswoman asked her boyfriend, “Another Fry Smiley crash?”

“Must be.”

I grimaced at that name. “A what now?”

Nathaniel raised his eyebrows in surprise. Thanks to his glowing costume, he was the only person whose expression could be seen. “You haven’t heard? The new Fry Smiley update is so broken, he only shows up when you ask him to. Sometimes you have to keep asking.”

In the fake firelight of fake fireworks fake clothing, Lucy leaned forward, wriggling her fingers. “And they say, if you insult him while he’s autopiloting your car, he crashes it and kills you, ooooo spooooky!”

Much more serious, Nathaniel lifted up on his toes—at least he wore real shoes—and looked around. “Something triggers him, and everything in the area that connects to cyberspace goes haywire or shuts down.”

And people died. I was getting people killed. I’d already gotten people killed, and there was no way to stop that.

Apparently, that was all Nathaniel cared about. He must have been wearing something under those starbursts after all, because he pulled a SPUD with a lot of custom attachments out from around his hip. His worked, no doubt due to the implants that also meant he didn’t have to touch buttons or screen. Like Cappy, he sent his avatar careening through a much prettier cyberspace than I could afford, until he brought up what looked exactly like Adelita’s bounty book.

Letting out a sigh, Nathaniel flipped through a few pages. “So much for our night of fun. I’d suggest we go to work and get paid, but I still can’t get us registered. What do you think, Lucy?”

She took his SPUD, and scrolled through the holographic book with her finger. I leaped at the chance to think about something other than if I was culpable in robot murder. “I’m registered. Maybe I could take a job and count you two as my assistants.” Rodent teeth pinched my thigh warningly, and I rolled my eyes and added over a growl, “Buuuut, I’m supposed to be keeping out of trouble. There’s a lot of stuff in there I wouldn’t take anyway.”

Lucy’s hand closed on my upper arm. I shook it, but couldn’t get free, so I gave her an accusing look. She ignored that, instead holding the SPUD out to her sparkly boyfriend. Low, quiet, and serious, she said, “Nathaniel, look at this bounty.”

Even distorted by viewing it from the back, the rainbow hair on the bounty photo was clear and distinctive, as were the skulls painted on the cheeks. This was a photo of me from the raid a few nights ago.

A bounty. On me. Announced officially for everyone who walks the dark side to see.

Nathaniel sneered. “Cute. It says it was posted by Fry Smiley, and she travels with a giraffe.”

Lucy’s voice remained calm and solemn. “The poster could sign with a string of commas, it still means they put up the money.”

I tugged against Lucy’s arm. I tugged again. Not a chance. She had a literal grip of steel.

Nathaniel’s sneer only deepened. “Yes, thirty thousand dollars. Hooray.”

So, that’s it? He objected because the money wasn’t good enough? He’d be just fine murdering me and handing over my head if Fry Smiley was less of a cheapskate!?

Lucy scowled, her anger focusing like a viper. Her chest puffed out, and she lifted her chin to do her best at looking down at a guy a quarter meter taller than her. At least, he was until she grabbed his hair and yanked his head down so she could glare into his eyes. “Listen, rich boy, thirty thousand dollars may not be much to you, but I could live on that for a year. I could pay off my grandmother’s debts and still start looking for my own place.”

Her simmering anger distracted her, and I tried not to look directly at Cappy, behind her back, opening his jaws wide and stealthily easing his teeth around her calf.

Before he bit, Lucy’s grip weakened. With one fierce yank, I pulled free, and Cappy and I jumped right up onto the wall next to us, and kept on running, up into the darkness and angled toward the corner of the building.

The last I heard of my former adventuring friends was Lucy yelling, “This is serious for me, Nathaniel. I have to buy my own food and pay my own bills.”

As soon as we were out of sight, very out of sight with all the lights out, I skipped to a stop. Cappy bumped his front shoulder against my leg and growl-squeaked, “We need to go back to the orphanage. Now. Fast.”

I folded my arms beneath my chest. “Not on your life—”

“Both our lives I am worried about.”

Glaring at him for interrupting me, I resumed, “Two bad friends and someone else’s car crash is no reason to panic. Look, everybody’s leaving because the power went out. Can you imagine what they’ll leave behind for just anybody to pick up? And ‘anybody’ is going to be us.”

“You cannnn-t see treasure in the dark,” he argued back, struggling not to lisp.

“Then we’ll go down closer to the ground.” Ha! I’d turned his argument back on him.

He didn’t answer, looking up at me with his square-toothed, jowly mouth open.

I relented. A little. Part of having a conscience was that he gave you good advice, even if you wouldn’t let yourself be ruled by it. Patting him on the head, I amended, “One circle around and we’ll head home.”

Cappy nodded.

Not everyone was leaving. A few got out their SPUDs and turned on the flashlight feature. One woman dressed way too well for this neighborhood argued loudly with her SPUD about getting cyberspace access back. Some paragons of stubbornness tried to shop. Whether the vendors were having any of that wasn’t my business. I watched the sweeping circles of light, trying to spot salvage among the discarded trash.

Quite a few people had dropped food, but I wasn’t hungry enough to go for food off the ground. Ms. Understanding took better care of us than that, and it was all fish and kelp wraps, stuff like that. Nothing rare and fancy.

One of the lights swept past a round metal object lying against a wall. Mere trash was never spherical. Score! Vanity Rose defeats the forces of reasonable caution once again!

I trotted over to it. I should have run. One of the roving lights centered in on the ball, and its owner got there before I did.

A teenage boy, thin and as scruffy as any human could be, picked up the device and held his light on it as he studied the ball close. He wasn’t using a SPUD to make light, but a tiny, makeshift LED flashlight. He wore a coat so old it was made out of patches now, that hung lower than the loose robe underneath. Both did have a lot of pockets. Green eyes gleamed in the blue-white light, and his short, wild brown hair lit up in highlights.

He looked up and saw me at the same moment I recognized him. He was the kid with the crowbar from a week ago!

I ran, and got a few meters before he got enough composure to shout, “No, please don’t go!”

Rounding on him from a safe distance, I folded my arms and glared. “You tried to roast me with a flamethrower. Speaking of which, keep your hands away from your pockets, or so help me I’ll drop a capybara on your head.”

He held his hands up and spread, away from everything. From this angle, with his head tilted back to look up at me, he looked goofy, like he was trying for a flying tackle. Desperately, he yammered, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! We just got a huge haul, and you saw the kind of people who came after it. I panicked!”

“He’s lying,” projected Cappy.

Yeah, that excuse was bulletins. This kid hadn’t been scared last time. Still, he clearly wasn’t hostile now.

He’d dropped the ball during the initial panic. Now he crouched down very slowly, picked it back up, and held it toward me. “Here—here. It’s just a busted AR monster. Fixing it costs more than you get selling it.”

Hmmm. I pursed my lips, thinking about that. At the edges of my vision, my glowing red whiskers waved as if in a breeze. Forget selling this. If we could get it working, Fidget would be ecstatic having a second monster. We could duel them without leaving home. With that option available, Fidget would train Death Rooster into the toughest AR monster in the world. Whether Fidget ever slept again would be Ms. Understanding’s problem.

I beckoned. “Fine. Throw it to me.”

He threw. Pretty good throw, since for him it was straight up. I caught the command ball, and tucked it into the opposite pocket from the art kit.

Suddenly, the boy blurted out, “My name is Andris.”

“Vanity,” I answered, still watching him cautiously.

He stared too, visibly nervous but with a weak and hopeful smile. I knew that look. He was working himself up to ask me for a date. That’s what this was about.

“Run,” said Cappy out loud.

Andris did, without waiting a heartbeat. It took me a second to register, then I turned around and sprinted up the building myself.

“What—are we—running from?” I asked Cappy, who galloped at my side.

“Those!” he answered, jerking his head back toward the street.

I risked a glance. Glowing green spots scuttled along the ground toward us. After a second, I realized why it looked like scuttling. Two separate creatures had multiple sets of legs each, including four long, spidery legs sticking out the top.

Their bodies were…capybaras. Six legged capybaras, exactly like Cappy, and when they reached the wall, they ran right up it like he could.

“They have extra legs! You don’t have extra legs!” I shouted at Cappy as I tried to run faster—and come up with a plan. A plan would be nice.

His mental voice loud and echoey with alarm, Cappy sent back, “I have sockets for them, and those aren’t legs. They’re for breaking and moving rubble. These drones are the same model as my body, but better equipped.”

A series of cracking sounds broke up the regular metallic thumps of gravity rearranging feet behind me.

“Too well equipped,” added Cappy, with sudden hope. I took another look back.

I’d missed the most important part. The front most of the two drones had lost its grip on the wall. Its back feet still had hold, but the extra mechanical legs…were they too long, outside of the gravity field? They weren’t just struts. Cappy was right, they had tools attached. Maybe something in those legs rejected the gravity reorientation. Either way, the heavy front legs pulled the animal back until the hind legs lost their grip on the wall. At that moment regular gravity took over, and the capybara fell five stories to the pavement.

The crunch made me want to vomit.

I stumbled, but forced myself to keep running. Stomach tight, I croaked to Cappy, “I don’t want other people dying for my mistakes!”

“People?” His mental voice sounded surprised, then turned firm and certain. “They’re not like me. They’re not even animals. Without a remote control, they can eat what you put in front of them and that’s about it. In fact—”

Now Cappy slowed down, turning his head and glaring at the remaining drone. In between the spider legs, its middle slots held gravity coil fliers like Cappy, but bigger and fancier. Their green glow flared, and this drone fumbled, lost its grip on the wall, and fell. Better than Cappy’s these coils might be, they weren’t enough to let the drone actually fly.

I turned my head rather than watch it hit the ground. Real animal or not, the gruesome metal and meat sound of impact was almost more than I could bear. Slowing my run, I huffed and shuddered, trying to get that memory out of my head.

Okay, yeah, now that I knew they were just flesh robots, that had been kind of cool, but…ugh. Cool, but straight nasty.

“Don’t stop!” Cappy barked out loud.

I jerked a thumb back toward the street. “They’re not going anywhere.”

“They were just spotters!”

Looking around, I asked, “For what?”

He switched back to projection, and even that had a high-pitched whine. “Pretty sure that!”

Cappy started to run, and so did I, before I even saw it. A pair of lights approaching from the street belonged to a massive truck aimed straight at us. The city cleaning crew from the aircar wreck.

Pushing myself hard enough to make my legs sore, I pulled ahead of Cappy, snapped my fingers, and leveled out our run toward the corner of the building, not up or down. We couldn’t possibly outrun a truck, but….

When the truck got close enough that its headlights lit up the wall in front of us, I turned and ran straight up. That, the truck couldn’t match. The boom of the crash slammed into my ears like a fist, and the wall shook under my feet, but Vanity Rose doesn’t fall, and with six legs falling wasn’t an option for Cappy.

In the ringing after the noise passed, I swear I heard a faint, screechy voice from the hole in the building behind us. “All we wanted was to make you happy!”

We ran. It didn’t matter where, right now. Just away, out of Fry Smiley’s sight.

“Look to our left,” Cappy projected. I did. The biodrones might be dead, but the little flying drones they carried weren’t. One of those floated out on the street, watching us. Getting out of Fry Smiley’s sight was not going to be easy.

“Can you…?” I tried to add, but couldn’t hear my own voice over the ringing in my ears.

Cappy understood, and sent, “Trying—no. It’s not security locked, but we’d be playing tug of war and Smiley can focus a lot better than I can right now.”

Where we ran was suddenly important, but we weren’t far from the orphanage. I knew this neighborhood. We could get out of sight very thoroughly if we could make it a few more blocks.

The street wasn’t an option. Something moved down there, keeping up with us, something that had its own lights and moved fast, but also awkwardly. The broken robot we’d seen earlier. Fry Smiley had it up and moving.

Cappy and I ran a billboard sticking out of one building, and leaped onto the sign for a competing product on the other side of the street. I angled a little higher, but kept us going in the same direction. No aircars showed anywhere in the darkness, and with power out, there wasn’t much he could do to us out here.

Light flashed out of a window I was about to step on. I dove to the side and rolled. A simple cleaning robot, not much more than a self-propelled mop, burst through the glass and went tumbling toward the street.

We had to do something about the drone following us, but my only idea involved us staying alive for five more minutes.

One minute later, a freight carrier, almost as much orbital shuttle as car, tried to swerve around the corner ahead of us. Lucky for us, ”tried” was the operative word. The giant slab of vehicle wasn’t meant for sharp turns at the speeds Smiley drove it, and it gouged chunks out of two buildings before crashing to the ground under us. People inside the buildings screamed, but in fear and not pain. I hoped.

Two more minutes. Two buildings crossed. Something big and heavy whizzed past us in the darkness, falling from the roof. I didn’t get to see what it was.

A few seconds later, loud smacks against the cement surfacing of the wall told me someone was shooting at us. We turned a corner, and that stopped.

There, ahead of us, was my target. It even had a few lights on, which made sense. The only people with a more Smiley-proof grid would be the Enchanted, and this was closer than a subway station.

“Are we going there? What is that?” asked Cappy in my head.

I couldn’t answer him. He would have to wait. The building we approached wasn’t that much different from the others around it, except for the holes. The surface looked like a photo I’d seen of Swiss cheese, hacked full of big holes in irregular sizes and no order. Some of these holes had been filled, with little brick houses that had their own lights.

We didn’t want one of those, but we took advantage of a wire strung from one diagonally across the intersection.

Cappy only barely got across when the wire snapped behind him. The lights went out below us.

Too late, program. You had to know where we were to attack us. Two floors up, I hopped into a hole in the building’s wall.

Inside was, well, an empty room. Once it hadn’t been empty, but being exposed to the wind and rain had removed everything but a few heavy stone blocks and, well back from the opening, circular piles of trash. Pigeon nests.

“Bird?” asked a sleepy pigeon as I raced past it, yanked open a door, and Cappy and I ducked into the hall behind.

This corridor wasn’t in good shape. Gouges in the floor and walls suggested violence, but violence years in the past. I slowed down to a trot, heading in the direction I was pretty sure I’d find the stairs. Cappy set the gravity coils on his shoulders glowing, giving us just enough green light to not bump into anything.

Between deep breaths, I finally answered his question. “This place got hit by space junk when I was three. The owners tried to rebuild, but a robot went crazy. Maybe a bunch of robots. You can still find the words carved on some floors. The owners were stubborn enough to hire dark siders to clear out the bots. One of those was from out of town, I guess, because she set off the gunpowder sensor, and the police did the rest of this damage. Half a dozen years later, weirdos with money started building homes in the gaps.”

There were other buildings with similar stories. That Cappy had never seen one matched my idea of his former life, with a lot of indoor science and no outside adventure at all.

We reached the stairwell, and I went down three floors. Fry Smiley would be expecting me to go up.

In another dark hallway, this one thick with dust and the remains of a carpet and shattered furniture, Cappy said, “Sit.”

I blinked down at him, then nodded. “Yeah. We have a minute. More than a minute. We’ll wait here an hour or two. This place is too big to search, and Smiley can either turn the lights on and lose us in the city hubbub, or keep them off and we’ll be invisible in the dark.”

“Sit,” he repeated. “Please.”

Uh, okay? I sat down against the wall, arms curled around my knees, and looked curiously at Cappy, now eye level.

Leaning forward, Cappy opened his jaws wide. The weird gesture only made sense when his teeth closed on the base of one of my whiskers, and snapped the wire off.

I wrestled back the urge to shout at him, because I didn’t want him to find out how much it had hurt to install them.

As he snipped the other three, patiently and carefully, he projected an explanation. “We can’t sneak out with your face glowing red and transmitting radio waves.”

Oh. I’d gotten used to having glowing red antennae on my face. They must have been very easy for Smiley’s drones to follow. No wonder someone had been able to shoot at me in the dark.

With only the stubs that housed the hooks left, that wouldn’t be a problem now.

My shoulders sank. I laid my forehead on my arms. Cappy rubbed the side of his head against my shoulder, which only made my emotions worse.

“I don’t treat you very well, do I?” I asked.

He froze, mid-nuzzle. After a few seconds, he said out loud, “No one has ever treated me better, but sometimes you also treat me badly.”

I tried not to sniffle, and failed. “Liriel won’t treat you badly.”

Talking quiet and slow, his speech sounded almost normal. “She wouldn’t, but right now I’m your conscience.”

Throwing my arms around him, I buried my face in his bristly fur and started to cry. He looked like a barrel of fat, but he felt solid and muscular. Stable. Warm. His fur absorbed tears and snot well.

There was something else I had to say. “I’m sorry.”

“I chose to come along,” he insisted, stubbornness creeping into his gentle tone.

“I meant for hitting you,” I croaked.

“Oh.” He sounded surprised.

Rubbing my face into that warm, comforting fur, I croaked, “But if I’d listened to you, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“If you listened to me, I’d be dead,” he answered. Switching from sharp words to gentle projection, he added, “But sometimes you need to listen to your conscience, and this is one of those times. Dry your eyes, and figure out a way to get us home unnoticed. Once we get there, we stay there, as long as it takes to be sure you’re safe.”

I nodded, sniffled some more, and carefully pushed myself up. After all that crying, my face had to be a mess, so at least that was good news.

Pointing up, I opened the stairwell door. We went up, and up, and up, until we reached a floor where the stairs had been broken through. From there, we circled around until I found another stair, and kept going up. We didn’t hurry.

On a randomly chosen floor, I started trying door knobs. These were apartments, I thought. Door after door was locked. The first one to open revealed a pile of smashed concrete, tiles, pipes, and—ugh, those were legs sticking out of the rubble. The building had never been properly cleared.

Not there. We kept trying. The next door revealed an empty studio, with rough wooden floors and windows looking out onto a still dark city.

I sighed. This could not be more perfect. Crossing to the window, I unlatched it and hauled up the rain-discolored glass, then stuck my head out into the night.

No green lights floating around. We were clear, at least for a few minutes. Long enough for Cappy and I to cross a broken pipe sticking out across to the intact building across the street. At the corner, I pointed. We were headed away from the orphanage, and quietly.

A wall of lights loomed several blocks away. Lights and noise, the edge of the blackout zone. On this side, people hid inside, waiting out the interruption, or maybe just asleep.

We were a block away when a green dot floated past the broken building. Fry Smiley was still looking.

When we reached the lights, I knew he didn’t know we’d escaped. Still, I stayed up out of sight of street traffic, and avoided lit windows until we reached our next destination: A towering black building that I’d always wondered about because of its weird shape. It angled out on the sides, then back in, a giant skinny hexagon. I’d only just learned the reason for that coffin shape in the last few days. The Enchanted lived here, with a subway station underneath.

We jumped to the widest point of the hexagon from an abandoned crane on the roof next door. That was when Cappy figured out my plan. “Smiley will be watching the subway entrances.”

Ah, but he’d only figured out most of my plan. Crouching down, I knocked on the wall of the building. “The entrances. That’s why we find a way in up here.”

Cappy looked around at the windowless surface of this freaky black box towering dozens of stories up. “How?”

I grinned, feeling a little bit of energy again. “There’s always a way in. Try a window opening command.”

He shook his head and said, “Thhhe Enchanted take securrrity of the computers they pretend not to havvve seriously. If we wave a signal arrround like that, they will know.”

My energy drained away. It returned with a rush of relief when he added, “But so what? It can’t be a burglar or enemy. Just a weird stray transmission.”

Cappy waved his head around. Nothing happened, but I hadn’t expected it to. There weren’t any windows. The insides were completely sealed off from the outside. I used to think that made this the most boring building in kilometers.

While he got no results, I walked up the wall toward the flat roof, zigzagging from back to front, looking for inspiration. When I found it, I reached back, tugged on Cappy’s collar, and pointed.

He squinted, and his silence and open mouth declared his confusion without need for words.

There was no need to tell him what he saw. He saw a bleached white skull on white bug legs crawling around the front of the building, its subtle sagging declaring it had to hang on the old-fashioned way instead of being blessed with a gravity field. Something so blatantly theatrical could only be a robot belonging to the Enchanted necromancers. I answered his actual unspoken question. “It’s cleaning the rain stains.” The building was shaped like a coffin. These guys could not get more vain. I was fine with that, for practical as well as philosophical reasons.

I let it do its thing, watching it and following behind from a respectful distance. It never so much as glanced in my direction. Very soon, it decided it had fixed whatever stain it cared about most, and the little skull went scuttling off across the front of the building.

Trailing it taught me a lesson about this supposedly featureless building. A huge skull decoration projected out front of the coffin, a half meter deep. Black on black, it was practically invisible to our eyes. I was getting the feel for Enchanted style, and to the right people with the right sensors, I’d bet it blazed like a sun.

For me, it had a more practical purpose. The cleaning robot crawled into an eye socked, and Cappy and I hurried after it just in time to wedge our bodies against the flap that opened up to let the robot into the building. The tube behind that little door looked big enough for a girl or capybara to crawl through.

“I’ll hold the door in case you get stuck,” Cappy whispered.

I nodded, but the caution was for nothing. I got all the way through to a harmlessly weird cleaning supplies room, and beckoned him to follow.

Cappy had to slink through on his belly, being fatter than me, and I got time to admire the scenery. This was certainly a cleaning supplies room. Stacks of those skull robots hung on the walls next to shelves with bottles of various colored chemicals, scrub brushes of a hundred sizes, and a few scrapers and less identifiable pokey things. Between the stacks the wall bulged out like ribs to a domed ceiling, and this wasn’t the only tube running off who knew where, but still: Cleaning supplies room.

I had to grab Cappy’s front shoulders and pull him through the final squeeze. He landed on the floor with a loud clonk on six metal feet, and his little flying drones swooped out of the tube to reattach themselves. We went over to the single doorway, and peeked out.

We found a hallway so long its slight curve was enough that it still turned out of sight at the ends. It kept the ribbed walls theme, badly lit by an occasional skull filled with flame hanging from the ceiling. The fire made no sound. Nothing made a sound. This place was dead quiet, quiet as the grave, puns intended by the builders.

Hey, I liked not getting spotted. I whispered to Cappy, “Help me find a stair, elevator, or open shaft.” We could walk down a pit trap no problem, after all.

Creeping around this nearly featureless tomb, I noticed a cute trick. The closet wasn’t visible from this side. The Enchanted loved their holo— sorry, illusion spells, and there might be more doorways than I could see. I trailed fingers along the outer wall just in case. That meant touching the occasional fake skeleton embedded in the wall, which made this slightly more fun.

We reached the first visible doorway on the inner wall. Inside, uh…it was a bit hard to make sense out of. Glowing symbols glistened on vertical sheets of blood from a central fountain in the shape of twisted bodies. A fuzzy ghost floated and twitched aimlessly above a crystal skull. Individual bones in a complicated geometrical diagram on the ceiling flashed random seeming colors.

A well decorated computer room. Cool.

Remember those illusion doors? A metal skeleton guy a lot like the conductor of the skull train stepped out of one. This guy had a fancy tall hat and cape in elaborate blue and gold, and a big box in his hands that tried hard to pretend it was studded with rubies. He looked down at us with glowing green eyes and declared, “Beating hearts are forbidden on this level. Say goodbye to yours.”

I considered that proposal with all due thoroughness, and by the time he said the word ”yours” Cappy and I had already bolted into the computer room. It had a doorway on the far side, leading to what looked like a stairway going down. Wicked cool!

We rounded the fountain on either side, ignored everything else, and charged into and down the stairs. They were arranged in the classic squared off spiral staircase pattern, only went down half a dozen floors, and lay in deep shadow lit only by the rooms that opened off of those floors. Worked for me.

The skulls, however, did not work for me. They looked a lot like the cleaning skulls, but piled together in a massive wave that roared out of a doorway two floors down. The clicking, scraping, heaving pile did not look at all illusory, and blocked not just the steps but the central shaft as it rushed up to intercept us.

Not going that way. Cappy and I reversed course.

The skeleton in the fancy bucket hat blocked the other doorway, beaded casket held out like an offering of doom. He skipped the speech this time, and as I eyed my chances of getting past him, the box opened, not with a lid flipping back but unfolding in triangular segments like a flower. Purple light flashed, bright enough to leave spots.

My head felt funny for a second, like a faint vibration, but it stopped.

As I crouched, waiting to get enough vision back to not fall into the fountain when I made a break for it, the Skeleton intoned, “You are not an adventurer. You are a mainstreamer.” He sounded both confused and disgusted, but that bombastic synthesized voice would sound disgusted ordering ice cream or asking a puppy who was the good boy.

Cappy’s voice, subdued and horrified, entered my head directly. “If we had Enchanted nervous system upgrades, I think that would have killed us.”

My vision came back, and hey, the skeleton still had both hands busy with that box. I ran for it, straight past him. I went right under his arms while he figured out what to do with them.

Bone bars slammed shut in the doorway behind him. I confirmed those to be solid and not holograms by bashing my body painfully against them and collapsing to the floor.

As I rolled back up to my feet, cold and knobby fingers took hold of my neck from behind. With irresistible robotic strength, the metal skeleton lifted me up until my feet dangled, too high to reach the floor. Ow. It really hurt. My neck was on fire, hanging like this.

I couldn’t turn my head to see the skeleton behind me, but down at floor level and at the edge of my vision I saw Cappy tackle the thing’s legs, and heard the biting of big rodent teeth on metal leg bones. The grip holding me didn’t budge a centimeter, and in my head Cappy bawled, “I’m sending signals to everything, Vanity, but I can’t get in! This isn’t cheap garbage that takes a generic remote control. Everything is complex and protected!”

Cappy growled. The skeleton lifted me another few centimeters, ignoring him. A green tinge on the wall suggested his eyes had gone incandescent. His voice boomed so loud it echoed off the walls. “Grand Necrophont, heed my sacrifice. Two intruders, unawakened, now to sleep eternally.”

The hovering ghost hologram stopped its random twitches and contracted into a still wispy old man in a robe with a long, braided beard. In a scratchy old man voice, he said, “Do not execute them yet.”

The beacon eye lights went out, Cappy paused in wrestling with the skeleton’s leg, and the undead bucket head sounded confused. “Grand Necrophont, the laws are clear. No hearts may beat in the Mausoleum.”

“Outside forces have intervened,” said the old man sourly.

I was raised a few more painful centimeters. It was great not to be executed, but this really hurt. Angry now, the skeleton insisted, “The masters of death do not allow anyone else to tell them what to do.”

The old man spit a glob of something that disappeared when it left the boundaries of the hologram. His voice dripping with pride and spite, he said, “Exactly. I have received a rude demand that if a young woman matching that description and her giraffe visit this subway station, she is to be killed.”

The skeleton hissed in disgust, and the old guy nodded. “I will not have the sacrament tainted that way.”

Several seconds passed. Cappy stopped fighting. The skeleton holding me declared, “Ours is Death’s will.” He sounded even more arrogant than before.

The old man grinned nastily, and dissolved back into a vague ghost.

Bone bars slid out of the doorway. The skull pile receded, clearing the stairwell. The skeleton carried me through the former, around the outer hall, through two illusion-blocked doors, to an elevator like a giant skull floating in an empty shaft. That only went down a few floors, and he had to carry me to another. And another. There were no straight up and down routes through this building.

Cappy followed along, after being dragged the first few meters. I could barely wheeze words, which were ignored. On lower levels, we saw more skeletons, things that looked like zombies, and even some living people in fancy costumes. The latter gave me curious looks, but were not talkative.

We ended up in a room that I would really have loved if I hadn’t just spent twenty minutes hanging painfully by my neck and having trouble breathing. It consisted of space and walkways to house a machine made of bone (supposedly) and glass, with skull bots and cylindrical packages flying up and down through dozens of glass tubes. Fat glass tubes. So fat that when the skeleton opened a hatch on one, he was able to fit me right in.

I probably should have fought, but my arms and legs were numb by that point, and to be honest, this was getting cool.

He let go. I slid, through loops and flashing light and darkness, until finally I slid out of a carved black skull mouth and landed in a pair of giant cupped skeleton hands, in…

…a subway station. This one went for a tomb theme, and reminded me of the Mausoleum level Cappy and I had broken into. Sarcophagi, obelisks, grave niches in the walls, lots of grey stone and ribs in the walls.

Speaking of my conscience, he came sliding out of the tube a few seconds later and landed heavily in my lap.

The huge skull chain came roaring and clattering on its countless legs into the station. Headed in the right direction, no less. Its rib cage doors opened, and I stumbled in on clumsy legs. The conductor watched me, wordless, judging me with an unreadable metal and mouthless face. He watched me all the way to the next station, the one near home. I knew I’d gotten lucky, and was not in any hurry to open my mouth and spoil it. Not when we were so close to safety.

As I waited at the train door for it to open, the conductor stopped staring and moved. I reacted too slowly, and had barely climbed onto the seat with the goal of jumping out between the train’s ribs when he whipped off his cloak and dropped it on top of me.

I stared up at the conductor. He stared at me. When neither of us said anything, Cappy projected, “It’s a disguise.”

I resisted the urge to tell Cappy I wasn’t stupid, and instead told the conductor, “Something something Death’s will?”

He laughed, deep and hoarse and rolling. Passengers up and down the train looked around in confusion. Well, a few. Most of them were inured to Enchanted goofiness.

I rubbed my neck, remembering the necromancer in the tower. Yeah, those Enchanted sure were funny, right up until they killed you. We’d gotten through it. We were a few blocks from home, now.

Flashing the conductor a grin, I jumped out between the ribs and onto the sticky platform. The station nearest the orphanage was the weirdest I’d seen so far. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all covered in sticky leather. Orange eggs bigger than an adult hung between ceiling and floor, wiggling and pulsing. What should have been benches twitched and rolled around you if you tried to sit on them. Bone spines stuck out of odd spots. A giant fake spinal column humped along the middle of the station’s floor. Whatever the so-called ”Spire of Infestation” above held, the windows were covered in spider webs, so probably this blended the bug and necromancy themes.

I headed for the stairs, and started up the wall of the stairwell. We would walk right out of the ceiling of the stairwell and up the building.

Except that Cappy’s teeth caught the fishnet behind my calf. I wanted to yank free, but…ignoring Cappy had gotten me into deep shorts. Time to listen.

“Just put on the hood, and walk the surface streets. It’s where no one will expect you. You’re not even a face in the crowd,” he projected, tone pleading.

I looked at the cloak, a cape and hood combination. It had a mantle around the shoulder with purple embroidered symbols, and an absolutely huge hood. Fastening the ankh brooch around my neck left me feeling like I was wearing a tent, and I could barely see far enough in front of me to walk. I had to look like…oh, half the Enchanted apprentices to travel through this station.

Still, this felt horribly unnatural. But Cappy had been right way too often.

So, draped in heavy black velvet, I trudged up the sticky stairs along with the other normal people using the subway.

Two thirds of the way up, I heard a woman complain, “No, we haven’t missed her. There’s only one entrance, and even if we didn’t spot her hair, how’s anyone going to sneak a giraffe past us?”

Giraffe. Right. The old guy with the braided beard mentioned that. Cappy didn’t have to hide.

Thinking along the same lines, my conscience projected, “Even the self-aware Fry Smiley doesn’t seem to be very bright.”

Another woman with a deeper voice argued with the first. “Why are we even doing this? I’ve never staked out a location to arrest a kid.”

“A warrant is a warrant,” said the first policewoman. As I reached the top of the stairs, I saw her armored leg pads and not much else, thanks to the cloak. Was she even looking at me?

“What warrant?” complained the second policewoman louder. “I get it, corporate complaint, but ‘ungrateful, snot-nosed murder runt’ is not anywhere in the books I’ve ever seen.”

“So, we’ll bring her in and let someone else decide if there’s been an actual crime,” said the first policewoman, sounding incredibly tired.

By that point, I was walking down the sidewalk away from them, Cappy waddling at my side. I took the risk of pulling the hood up far enough I could at least see where I was going, left them behind, and blended into a crowd of people wearing less fancy coats than mine.

There might have been others out here looking for me, or none. I had no idea. It still wasn’t late at night yet, and I walked along the sidewalks like and with regular people, crossed the streets at crosswalks. It all felt horribly exposed and uncomfortable, but nobody paid me the slightest attention or spoke a word. Cappy had been right. Again.

Before hardly any time passed, I pushed my way through the doors of our building, and rode the rattling cage-walled elevator way up to the orphanage floor. The cloak trailed behind me, sweeping the cement floor of the dusty hallway whose only real feature besides windows was the front door to my home. Standing in front of the heavy wood-covered door, with its ornately scrolled door frame and the metal wires of security systems twisting into the grain, I did one of the weirdest things I could remember.

I pushed the doorbell button.

The door opened. For a fraction of a second, a blue field hung over the doorway, but it snapped out of existence the moment Ms. Understanding saw me.

The orphanage’s front door was oversized, nearly ceiling tall, and Ms. Understanding wasn’t particularly tall for a woman. Her model of AI ran to the thin side, sleek and with enough curves to be feminine, but no more. Her simple blue dress and apron minimized everything, and her expressionless stare made her look like a doll. Standing in that doorway, she seemed to fill it despite all that.

I slumped forward, head down, and trudged inside. My voice sounded flat and heavy with honesty. “Don’t say it. I’ve already learned my lesson.”

Nobody said anything as I stumped toward the stairs, but Cappy bumped up against my thigh, and projected, “If this is the last time you get to go out for a few months, it was one howl of an adventure.”

I nodded, and ruffled his coarse-furred, flat-topped head. “Yeah. And now I guess we do things your way for a while.”

I swear I thought I was telling the truth.

Chapter Fifteen

Rain splattered the window by my bed, leaving dark streaks not from corrosion but ash. Probably poisonous ash, but I couldn’t go out in it, so who cared?

Cappy would know, but he and Liriel were out doing fantastic Enchanted things like sword dancing or unicorn training or something. Maybe a gang war with dark elves. More stuff I couldn’t take part in.

A glowing green blob drifted past. Now the cleaning drones were mocking me.

I threw myself back on my mattress, arms stretched, and felt even the enthusiasm for that much theater drain out of me. Grey rain and beige walls and ceiling, that’s what I had to look at. Ms. Understanding’s tireless maintenance and the chores of the rest of us kept those clean and free of cracks, merely a little lumpy and crisscrossed with unidentifiable pipes and tubes, all painted over…beige.

No, I wasn’t going to be stupid and escape. An AI was out there, stupid but relentless in hunting to kill me. Staying indoors day after day, week after week, month after month, was the only option I had that wasn’t insane. I didn’t need Cappy here to tell me that for the fortieth time. I knew.

That’s what was so depressing.

Fighting the heaviness, I levered myself up and wandered into the bathroom, peering at myself in the mirror.

“Great. I look like an angel.” Without dirt or makeup, my face had a heart shape, subtly visible and rounded cheekbones, a slim and straight nose, a flawlessly even complexion, and I couldn’t stand to even look at my lips. Ugh.

Plus, now my hair was growing out, and without any urging it curled over one side of my head in a wave that elegantly shadowed one eye.

With only my spiked collar as decoration, I barely recognized myself. If I turned my hair brown or black, it would at least be safe to go on grocery shopping errands, or accompany Fidget on walks.

Just stop being me.

Yeah, flap that. I’d rather stay inside and be bored. Sticking my head into the hair machine, I set it to buzz cut the sides of my head again, and redo my hair in a rich, dark spectrum, violet on the sides and red shading smoothly through orange, to yellow, then through green to blue on top.

Stepping out of the bathroom, I nearly smacked into a waiting Liriel. She was only slightly damp, with the occasional grey streak. Cappy looked like a wet cigarette butt.

Grabbing my hands in hers, she physically dragged me out into the center of the dorm. Liriel was putting on muscles under that green sweater. It must be the sword practice. She stood me in front of her latest holographic painting of a griffon swooping with its claws outstretched, and squeezed both my shoulders. “Sister mine, I have not sufficiently expressed my gratitude for the gift of art that you have given me. Crafting beautiful illusions is a step along the archmage path, but even more, a satisfaction for itself. Alas, that illusion is just that, an ephemeral phantasm. Would that our quarters had more lasting color.” Letting go of one shoulder, she waved her arm around at the dormitory walls.

I got it, and energy rekindled in my heart. With a small grin, I asked, “Like black? A lot of black?”

Painful reality hit me again, and I sighed. “We can’t afford that much paint.”

Releasing me entirely, Liriel strolled over to my window, standing next to it while looking out on the rain with a coy smile. “Afford? You speak truth. But in my voyages, I might have stumbled upon a construction site where such efforts are ongoing, and with the aid of unicorn magic might salvage a few cans.”

“Now? It’s raining!” Oh, man. I was talking like Cappy now. Doubt, doubt, doubt, wet blanket stick in the mud.

She picked up the handle of her umbrella, which she’d brought all the way up to the dormitory, and gave it a whirl like a sword. This Cappy answered for her, with diction that had grown downright smooth. “Now, because of the rain. The workers are unmotivated and not paying attention.”

One other thing leaped to mind. “Mimi—”

“—has vouchsafed her approval already,” filled in Liriel.

Whoa. And Fidget would be no problem. Fidget might not even notice. That AR monster ball I’d brought back was fixable, although we hadn’t found the parts cheap enough.

I glanced out the window, already darker than before I fixed my hair. The terrible compulsion to act like Cappy crept up, because I just couldn’t believe I’d get to have fun again. “It’s already too late for Ms. Understanding to let you go out.”

We’d moved into a realm of direct disobedience, and Cappy answered with his voice soft. “We’ll go out the window the same way you do. If she holds tight, my gravity field will be enough to carry her down to the street. She doesn’t weigh very much.”

No matter how Liriel handled an umbrella, she was going to get rained on. She was willing to go through that for me. That…helped.

The green-tinged biosculpted elf leaned closer, her smile turning sly and her voice dropping to match Cappy’s. “The assistance we require now from you, sister rogue, is to hold off discovery by our stepmother until it is too late for her to stop us.”

Got it. As they headed for the window, I headed for the upper floor balcony, and from there the boy’s dorm. It might hold twice as many beds as ours, but only Chaos and Saladin were occupying theirs.

It was Chaos I’d come to see. He sat surrounded by a pile of Acme toys, playing with what might be the most mysteriously low-tech. It was just a rubber ball attached by a rubber string to a wooden board. You smack the ball with the board, and keep smacking it when it bounces back, trying to keep the process going, which was harder than it looked. Chaos’s fluffy ears wagged with pleasure as he watched the ball bounce, fascinated by the clever simplicity of the goofy little device.

Sidling up to the little guy, I dropped with a flounce onto the mattress next to him and asked, “So, has the portable hole self-destructed yet?”

His bouncing spree survived my rocking the bed, but he stopped sharply at the question, giving me a suspicious, sidelong look. “Why…?”

“I need somewhere to hide paint cans.” Cupping my hands, I mimed the size of the big house paint style cans. “Is there a big enough hollow in the walls anywhere?”

He stroked his chin, a slow smile spreading over his round face. “I have some ideas. I’ll have to check.”

“I’ll get Ms. Understanding out of your way.”

Part two of the conspiracy complete, I leaped off Chaos’s bed and scurried out into the front room. Let’s see. I needed a plan to hold Ms. Understanding’s attention for a while. What was available? Who was available? Mimi was dusting the corners and lumpy fringe where the floor joined the wall. Fidget lurked near the girls’ dorm, feeding Death Rooster his free day’s ration of hologram food. Ms. Understanding herself crouched in the back corner talking to Ochre, whose mouth was stained green. Lionheart stood by and watched, eating one of the green sticks Liriel sometimes brought back from Elfland. Other than their sickly sweetness, those weren’t much different from a crayon.

Ochre might be a useful co-conspirator, young as he was. He’d love to help paint a whole wall.

Mimi might have a good idea of how to not just keep Ms. Understanding busy, but out of the room when Liriel came back.

My heart tightened, and weariness fell on me like a lead blanket. I’d been on the edge of adventuring professionally, only to have it taken away.

I stopped on the stairs for only a few seconds, but that was enough time for Ms. Understanding to leave her interrogation of the rug-rats and home in on me. She drifted up the stairs as gracefully as she walked, ageless but not young face frowning in concern.

Laying her hands on my shoulders, she leaned in, but instead of hugging me whispered into my ear, “Vanity Rose, I know you need a pick-me-up right now. Please keep this a secret, but the Vandais contacted me again. They haven’t lost interest in adopting Ajax Thistle. They only need time to make sure their cat is fully recovered and save up the money again that the medical bills cost.”

That…

The front door let out a loud crackling noise. Faintly glowing metal wires around the frame went out, releasing thin puffs of smoke. Ms. Understanding started moving, but before she reached the foot of the stairs the door burst open.

In the doorway stood a man in black leather armor over blue denim clothes. Bulky lumps in the leather advertised heavier protection hidden inside, and he carried a belt full of tools. His square face presented a patchwork of pale brown skin and woven metal strips that arced across it like scars. That’s what they had to be: old wounds filled with artificial flesh. In his left hand he held a yellow, boxy weapon like a pistol, but with metal prongs on the end.

Mimi let out a wail of shock and flattened herself against the wall, trembling so hard it set her black curls jiggling. Above me, Fidget dropped Death Rooster’s control ball, and the orange dragon winked out. The kids in the back corner froze, eyes wide and staring.

Ms. Understanding did not hesitate. She flew across the floor, her churning feet finally visible under her flapping dress, until the man in the doorway swiveled to point the yellow gun at her. She stopped, arms outstretched toward him, out of reach of the weapon and more motionless now than anyone in the room.

Ajax came charging out from behind the stairs, fists clenched. Without taking his eyes off Ms. Understanding, the scarred man whipped one of several knives out of his belt with his right hand, and pointed it at Ajax. With a voice calm and a touch resonant from cybernetic repair, he announced to the room, “I can kill the boy and still get the robot. All I want is the kid with the purple hair.”

“Me?!” squeaked Fidget in surprise, shrinking down behind the upstairs railing as if it were a shield.

“The rainbow hair. The girl with a bounty,” he corrected. Of course he was after me, and my hair was more purple than anything else.

The dark side walker definitely wasn’t stupid. He watched Ms. Understanding like a hawk, which meant he couldn’t see Mimi stop pretending to be afraid and silently walk up behind him. She paused only a second to watch his legs until he leaned his weight on one, then kicked him in the back of that knee.

Would he catch himself, or fall? We didn’t have a chance to find out. His arm only had to flick a few centimeters out of the way, and Ms. Understanding lunged forward. One of her hands closed on each wrist, squeezing until shock gun and knife both dropped to the floor. She might have broken bones. The bounty hunter’s clenched teeth certainly looked like a restrained scream.

Mimi had also been moving, and yanked another knife out of the man’s collection, but she could not match Ms. Understanding’s speed. Her own expression intent but otherwise placid, the robot woman swung the bounty hunter around, shoved him to the floor, and dropped her knee onto his back. Before I could completely follow what she’d done, she had him pinned on his stomach, and with both hands pulled his head up and turned it sharply to the side.

Now he couldn’t talk, couldn’t struggle, couldn’t do anything but wheeze.

Her tone sad but sweetly gentle, Ms. Understanding said, “I suppose the best thing to do will be to break his neck and throw him out the back door. Even from inside, I believe I can get enough distance that no one will know or care where he fell from. Just another dead dark-sider on the street.”

Mimi nodded. “He won’t have left a trail for his competitors to follow, so that direction is covered.”

“No!” I shouted, bolting across the room toward them.

Ms. Understanding’s head turned to give me a pleased smile, although her grip on the bounty hunter’s head didn’t loosen a centimeter. “You’re such a sweet child, Vanity Rose, but I’m not endangering my sanity. I recognized long ago that one day I’d have to sacrifice another human’s life to save my charges. This is well within the parameters I gave myself.”

I shook my head desperately, newly recolored hair flapping. “It’s not just that. I don’t want someone to die.”

Ms. Understanding’s smile widened, beaming in pride. “You make me proud, Vanity Rose, but I really don’t see that we have an alternative.”

Uh…

Yes. Yes! “Wait here. I have an idea. Please don’t kill him!” As fast as I could go, leaping up the steps five at a time, I raced to my dormitory. Grabbing my SPUD off the sheets, I opened the storage compartment lid and dumped a dozen little elastic patches into my palm. Racing back down even faster, I held out my hand and showed them to Ms. Understanding.

Mimi nodded, impressed. “That would work. With that kind of overdose, when he wakes up two days from now, he won’t remember the last week, much less how he found you.”

Ms. Understanding’s smile widened further, and her eyes flicked all around my head without quite focusing on it. “Oh, Vanity Rose. Please, go ahead. When he’s unconscious, Ajax Thistle can drag him downstairs.”

Kneeling down, I stripped the liner off the patches and stuck them to the bounty hunter’s neck one by one. He already had his eyes closed, but I felt confident that he wanted his death even less than I did.

It wouldn’t take long for the drug to take hold, but Ms. Understanding held him resolutely in place until she was sure. That gave me time to swallow hard, tense my shoulders so they wouldn’t shake, work up my nerve, and tell her, “…and then I’m leaving.”

A murmur went through the watchers, but I kept my eyes solely on Ms. Understanding. Her beaming smile turned into a cautionary frown, and her pupils expanded and contracted in a regular, pulsing rhythm. “Dear, I can hardly imagine any better proof that you need to stay indoors.”

I took a deep breath, building up my strength again. My eyes ached, but I refused to cry. “I mean for good.”

“Absolutely not,” she answered immediately, actual anger creeping into her voice.

Normal arguments wouldn’t work. She knew them already, knew that if this man could find me, others would. By protecting me, Ms. Understanding put the others at risk. Even with a guard like her, I was a sitting duck in the orphanage. Men and women would die trying to bring me in, and soon enough one would leave a trail and Fry Smiley would find out I was here. Then we would really be in trouble.

Those thoughts floated in a raging sea of sadness as I leaned over the bounty hunter and wrapped my arms around Ms. Understanding’s shoulders. Pressing my cheek to hers, I whispered hoarsely, “You know that we leave eventually. You know how to let go. I’m leaving a little earlier than expected, that’s all, and you know I can take care of myself.”

Her head twitched, twice. With a warble of improperly controlled voice synthesizer, she asked, “You won’t take the military job?”

I squeezed her in a desperately tight hug, and whispered, “You raised me better than that.”

Then, with everyone staring, I stood upright and walked upstairs, where my SPUD and my bedside window and my gravity shoes and freedom were waiting. To my surprise, fear drained out of me with every step. Maybe I would die out there, but I was becoming myself again.

Chapter Sixteen

The rain fell sideways, stinging my ankles, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

From the night a pair of gravity shoes fell into my hands, walls had always been better than floors. On a night like tonight, they reminded me that I still had what was most important to me in the world, I still had a direction, ambitions, and a path to get to them, and most of all they reminded me that I preferred my world turned askew.

Plus, it was dark as fresh asphalt fifteen stories up on a rainy night. Even someone who knew exactly where I was would have trouble seeing me. Fry Smiley was out of luck.

The rain wasn’t that bad, either. More than a drizzle, but nothing serious. It’s just that I was wearing my slashed skirt outfit, figuring if I couldn’t carry much, I should at least have my most stylish clothes, and the cloak the necromancer gave me. The fabric it was made of felt like velvet while being warm and waterproof, but it only went down to my mid-calf. That left a chunk of bare skin getting rained on. As mild as tonight’s rain was, that itched. The ash also coated the walls with a sheen of slick mud, but Vanity Rose never trips and falls.

The cloak would pay, literally. Selling this baby in a pawn shop would get me enough money to eat until I worked out how to scavenge safely, and then resume walking the dark side.

For now, I needed a place to stay, and a long trudge through the dark and wet took me there. Crouching on a billboard, cloak hanging over and around me like a tent, I regarded my new digs: The same hole-riddled building Cappy and I ducked into during our escape from Fry Smiley.

It was perfect. Lots and lots and lots of room, spare furniture I could dig out with a bit of hunting, and access to electricity and clean water. The proof of that came from the half a dozen sets of glowing windows spaced haphazardly in an otherwise black rectangle.

No athletic street crossing on a night like this. I walked over on a power line, and peered down at my new neighbor. Music snuck out faintly through their brick walls.

“Party it up, you rich old weirdos. Soon, I’ll be a rich old weirdo myself, and blast nightclub pop at you all night long.” I would find out who the big music names were just to do it. Without a nanny insisting that only music everybody agreed on would play, I could actually start keeping up with the latest songs. Wicked cool.

Leaving boot prints on their pretty red brick walls, I walked around into the dark interior of the crater they’d built their home into. Naturally, a private air car lurked in the gloom. A pigeon on top of the car ruffled its feathers, stuck a head up out of a body formerly compressed into a loaf, and asked, “Are you bird?”

“Yes,” I assured it, voice low.

“That’s nice,” the actual bird mumbled, and tucked its googly-eyed head back under its wing.

I found a broken door, pried it open, and slipped into the interior of the building to look for my own new home.

At first, I saw a lot of pitch black, but I’d expected that and brought my SPUD to use as a flashlight. As I walked, I thumbed a note. First item on the scavenging list: Lights.

I looked down at the floor next to me and got as far as, “This is—” before I remembered Cappy wasn’t there. He’d have warned me about needing lights. He’d be giving me a list of reasons right now that this was a terrible idea, which I could enjoy proving wrong. Should I have waited until he got back, so he would come with me out of a sense of obligation? No, I’d done the right thing.

I kicked the wall, hard, and snarled, “Drat you, Fry Smiley. You stupid, hateful, materializing fallacious shantytown.

Fists clenched, I leaned against the wall, panting for breath. My knees could barely hold me up.

Oh, folderol. I’d gotten so mad my profanity filter cut the whole event from my memory. That hadn’t happened in….

Sitting down, I rubbed my eyes. No sign of tears. I was angry, not sad. So angry. The heat of it bubbled up in my chest again. Yeah, I’d hurt Fry Smiley’s feelings, but Fry Smiley hurt people all the time with his idiot puppet version of himself, and despite his protests that puppet only got more stupid and interfering over the years. Now people had to die just for his pride? Maybe I’d done the right thing or maybe not, but I wasn’t responsible for Smiley’s evil.

I could dial him up right now and talk to him. Maybe he would listen.

I was too afraid.

Time to stop moping. Vanity Rose had a new life to build. That life would need electricity and fresh water. I couldn’t buy them, and no one left either lying around discarded, so I’d have to steal them.

Or…maybe I could find something in-between?

Retracing my steps, I returned to the gaping hole in the building where I’d entered. Goopy rain fell in a drizzle outside, getting thinner now. Three more pigeons had arrived, and whispered to each other as I passed the parked aircar to the red brick cottage’s little wooden garage door. The lights were still on inside the windows, and Mimi had thought the Vandais were good people.

I knocked on the door. Several seconds later, I heard a woman’s muffled voice ask, “…at this hour?”

The door opened, and the shorter Mrs. Vandai stood there, her silver hair in gleaming disarray, set off by a nightgown and sash of exactly the same metallic color. She wore a blue targeting monocle over her right eye, and a device I didn’t recognize on her right forearm, something with lots of little arms holding lots of little tools. For a crafting hobby, was all I could guess.

All of those colors were muted by the pale blue of the defense screen that filled the doorway, but she clicked that off as she gasped, “It’s the girl from the orphanage!”

Heh. Okay, it was nice to be the girl.

“Vanity Rose,” supplied the other Vandai’s voice from the next room.

“What are you doing here, Rose?” asked the silver-haired Vandai, equally shiny eyebrows pressed together in sudden concern.

“Vanity.” It came out automatically.

From that back room, the other Vandai called, “Isn’t it obvious, Monica? She’s a passionate girl who acts instead of stewing. She’s worried we won’t come back for Ajax. Don’t worry, Vanity, Akalabeth here is almost ready for a new family member.”

The taller Vandai stepped into view. Unlike her wife, this woman’s hair did not look fabulous when messy. The black locks were matted and stained, as were the plaid flannel shirt and denim overalls, both pockmarked with shallow rips. The obvious source of those rips lay in her arms, purring in smug, malignant satisfaction.

Whoa. Cappy had not been kidding about how poisonous that rainwater was. To save their cat, the Vandais had given it a full body cyborg replacement. An expensive, high-end cyborg replacement. Ropes of metallic muscle traced out a sleek feline shape, blending into visible pistons in the legs and a segmented tail that twitched at the end. Three glowing red eyes turned to regard me. The unnatural purr held a metallic rattle, but the cat still blasted it at an impressive volume.

I’d be pretty smug too, Akalabeth.

“Invite her in, Monica. Get the child some Fizz and cake,” said the black-haired Vandai, with a tone of affectionate reminder.

“No, I—” I started to say, and got nowhere. The silver-haired Vandai scooped an arm around me, and seconds later I sat on a stool in a kitchen too pretty and decorated in too much blue floral print ceramic to be real.

Bustling around in her refrigerator, Mrs. Vandai returned with a glass bottle and a triangular slice of cake on a china plate. The bottle’s label had a picture of a beet and a lot of bubbles, and the spongy interior of the cake came in yellow, pink, and off-white layers, with a thick spread of pure white frosting. I could smell the sugar and cream.

Ajax was going to live in ecstatic luxury. Jerk he might be, but good for him. I wouldn’t count the deal done until he actually lived here, but maybe Fry Smiley’s attempt to destroy his happiness had failed.

This place wasn’t big, though, and more comfortable than fancy. It was crazy to think that for every person who lived like the Vandais, a thousand lived in dull, dirt-colored apartments, and for every thousand Vandai, only one person was truly rich.

An excellent reason not to put this cake to waste. I gulped it down, shivering at the rich deliciousness. Improving my diet went up a few notches on the priority scale when I started making money walking the dark side. I would make Ajax jealous. The carbonated beet juice wasn’t bad either, and certainly as fizzy as it promised.

The taller Mrs. Vandai set Akalabeth down in front of me. He curled into a ball, tapping the table with his tail tip, and watched me. I half expected him to start talking.

When I’d finished every crumb and drop, and there was no way to take the food away from me, I said, “Actually, I’m your new neighbor.”

“What?” both women asked in unison.

“I’ll be—” I started to say, but they didn’t let me finish.

“A runaway?” asked the silver-haired Mrs. Vandai, standing stiffly straight and raising her fingers to her mouth.

The black-haired Mrs. Vandai appeared next to her, putting an arm around her wife’s shoulders but giving her worried attention to me. “Vanity, this building is a death trap. We’d rather you stay with us.” She interrupted herself, putting her fingers to her forehead and staring down at the floor. “We don’t have room for two children.”

Her silver-haired wife clutched her arm tightly. “We’ll make room. We’ll expand if we have to. We’ll figure something out.”

If he were here, Cappy would be trying to clamp my mouth shut to prevent me from saying, “No. Thank you. I just came here for advice on how you got electricity and water.”

After several seconds of staring, the black-haired Mrs. Vandai tightened her grip on her silvery partner and murmured, “She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t do things her own way.”

Silver-hair rolled her eyes, suddenly smirking. “Yes, and I don’t know anyone else like that, do I?”

They stared at me some more, until the black-haired Mrs. Vandai sighed and leaned heavily against her partner. “For water, we got together with the other residents and installed a rain purification cistern on the roof. There are valves and branches for new pipes two floors up. Try not to break anything. I don’t know what you’ll do about electricity. A building contractor did our interior work, and we hired a dark-sider to run a line into the main power grid.”

The shorter woman with the silver hair and nightgown answered her primly. “She’ll plug an extension cord into our outlet in the car port, obviously. And no doubt ten more extension cords into that. It’s not like she’s going to drown us in electric bills. Eventually, when she gets tired of living like that, I hope she’ll come ask for a real home.”

And now the well-meaning preaching had begun. Pushing my stool back, I slid down to the floor and walked out through their open door, one hand raised. “Thanks. I’ll see you later. For real, you two are wicked cool.”

They got the message. No further attempts to guilt me echoed through the night.

Chapter Seventeen

Okay, so, what next? That had been useful. I was in for an uncomfortable few days, but I could make a home here.

Might as well wander up and take a look at the water supply. That took some time, in an otherwise utterly dark building with only my SPUD as light, tracing the pipes I found connected to the Vandais’ place through blocked hallways and up staircases located nowhere near. Eventually, I found the valve room in question, in the remains of what had to be a cafeteria. What was this place that it had a cafeteria? Surely the broken-down tables and benches in rows had to be for eating. The room contained quite a bit of old, dry trash, but I wouldn’t be combing through faded levels by SPUD-light to figure out if they were food-related tonight.

The fat vertical pipe ran from ceiling to floor right through a deeply engraved “All We Wanted Was To Make You Happy” in the tile, but a lack of blood stains suggested no robots had emerged to punish the plumbers.

Sure enough, two pipes ran off of branches in the main, and one of those would be for Mrs. and Mrs. Vandai. Three branches didn’t have attachments, just wheels for turning the water on or off.

Rubbing my chin, I studied the one at my chest level. Would I need a wrench? Should I see how hard it was to turn?

“Vanity!” shouted Liriel behind me.

I managed not to shriek, and hoped in the dark she couldn’t see how far I jumped. That moment of panic gave her time to grab me from behind in a ferocious hug.

Her grip dislodged, or at least loosened, as I twisted my shoulders and turned to look at her in the face. It hadn’t actually changed, and her weirdly tiny mouth was good at pouting in concern. What had more of my attention was the faint green light illuminating the room behind her, which meant—yes, there was Cappy peering at me sheepishly from behind a pile of broken cement.

What I had not been expecting was the sleek, athletic, fuzzy, and spiky shape of Celestial Wonder Meowpurr, crouched next to him on all fours. More than just all fours, she held onto the peak of a jagged slab with her fingers and on tip-toes. The uncomfortable pose let her long, black leather coat drape around her, slit in the back so her tail could still stand high in the air, frozen in position. Poised.

“How—” I started to ask, and because I’m not stupid, I looked straight at Cappy. Liriel and the werecat had no reason to know this place existed.

He pointed a stubby metal finger at Liriel, and shook his head. “I gave up and crawled under your bed to sulk. She dragged me out and interrogated me about anywhere I thought you even might, maybe be hiding.”

One arm still looped around my shoulder, Liriel smirked back at him. “Listen not, feral sibling. Despair though he might, he leaped upon the idea of retaking his rightful place at your side.”

Arms stiff at my sides, fists balled up, I snarled, “I don’t need help.”

Liriel didn’t believe that lie for a second. It was obvious in her affectionately patronizing smile before she even opened her mouth. Then just as her lips opened, Cappy said in a suddenly flat and bleakly honest voice, “I need you.”

Shrugging Liriel’s arm off, I sat back on a pipe, folding my arms under my chest, and glaring at him. Nothing came to mind to say that I could live with myself for saying. Giving up, I pointed at Celestial Wonder Meowpurr and asked, “What is she doing here?”

Seriously, what the hoop? Not that I minded, but…what the hoop?

For the first time, Liriel looked awkward, pulling back and clasping her hands together. “It was not only your pet who became passionately emotional upon learning of your flight. I made contact with my magical sisters, and asked that word be passed far and wide to keep watch for you.”

Cappy climbed primly over the collapsed ceiling chunks, and sat on his back haunches in front of them, staring up at me with dark, serious eyes. “And I’ve spent enough time plugged into your SPUD to know your contacts list. Nathaniel turned out to be untrustworthy, but Celestial Wonder Meowpurr dropped everything to come help us search. Even guessing you were here, we’d never have found you without her sense of smell.”

Meowpurr lifted a hand and flapped it dismissively, without her balance on that tiny perch wobbling a centimeter. “Don’t expect me to follow a trail like a bloodhound, but a feline’s nose is good enough to notice there’s one living person in an abandoned building.” The way she over-pronounced ”fee line,” it had to be some Enchanted thing.

“Okay, but…why?”

An animal-nosed, slit-pupiled, white furred face with black stripes gave me a blank look. “Because you need help.”

Cool.

Cappy padded up to me, has voice as frank and gentle as his always sad eyes. “We can help. You have the basics to set up a home, here. It’s a good location, as far as that goes. You’re going to need food sooner than you can find a source yourself, and blankets would be nice.”

“If you stay here,” added Liriel, giving me an intense, worried stare.

My stomach knotted up, and my fists too. Glaring back at Liriel’s amber eyes, I growled, “So this is a lecture, after all?”

Cappy closed his eyes tight, and said in a quiet, slow voice, “I really wanted to ease up to this suggestion, Liriel. Vanity needs her right to decide respected.”

Bouncing in place, grinning hugely, Celestial Wonder Meowpurr broke in. “No, look, it’s easy! You want a home, a warm bed, food, safety, and adventure? Just enough safety, lots of adventure? Join us! You would rock the Enchanted life.”

She got a glare for her part in this, too. “I’m not dumb or gullible enough to believe in magic.”

The cat shrugged. “So? I won’t try and sell you on the whole ‘we made magic real’ thing. It doesn’t matter. A whole lot of dead fools thought that believing was more important than playing the game. You accept the risks and you play to win. There’s always a place in the Enchanted for someone like you.”

Still earnest, still worried rather than ashamed, Liriel declared, “Without you, the Ring of Token would still be in deep elf hands. Morgain and all light elves owe you a debt. Even if you will not let your magic awaken, she will take you in and protect you.”

“Personally, I think you would rock a tail,” said Meowpurr, lashing hers.

The unfairness of that temptation dragged my thoughts back to the business at hand. I folded my arms under my chest, and scowled.

Cappy spoke up before I could, still quiet, still giving me the sad, pleading look his boxy rodent face did so well. “The decision is yours, Vanity. It will always be yours. You came up with a good idea picking this place, but we’re not the only people who could find you here. Whatever you decide, I’ll be with you.”

Meowpurr gave me a fangy grin and a wink. “Either way, I can get you some real jobs walking the dark side. After I ditched that philandering loser Nathaniel, I found a line that works and I’m making a living already.” Lifting her hand to her mouth, she stage whispered coyly, “It costs a fortune to live in both worlds. I have had to sleep on the floors of the freakiest people.”

My anger still rolled around in my chest, but this was information I had to have. I raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were too young to get signed up.”

She rolled her eyes, and her whole head, including the pointy cat ears. “Reason one thousand four I was stupid to hook up with that boy is that if it didn’t make him look like a movie action hero, he wouldn’t consider it. There are other ways of being cool, you….”

She trailed off, noticing my impatient glare, and rummaged around in her coat pocket. Pulling out her SPUD, she lit it up. “Right, right. I found jobs he would never look for. Check it out.” Flicking on the SPUD’s holo-screen, she spoke into its receiver, “Hey, Fry Smiley! Bring up my saved—”

She got that far during a few crowded seconds. As she did, the horrible little potato clown hopped up into view on her display, and hyukked, “Hi! I’m Fry—AAAAAAAA! IT’S HER!”

Liriel gasped, and fumbled for the wand in a little case on her belt. My mind raced, and I looked at Cappy and shouted, “Shut it down!”

He got there before I could tell him, and was staring at the SPUD, squinting. He wailed, “I can’t! He’s got control!”

Smiley danced around in a circle, one gloved cartoon hand always pointed at me as he yelled, “Kill her kill her kill her! I’ll make you a zillionaire!”

At about this point, the werecat held the SPUD’s power button down long enough to force it to shut off. We all stood around breathing hard and feeling our hearts pound in our chests.

“What was that?!” Meowpurr yowled, sounding like a talking cat.

Liriel swept her arm, now holding the wand, in a circle. “Who did you think sought Vanity’s death?”

Shaking her head furiously, holding her SPUD to her chest like guiltily shielded evidence, the cat meowed, “I didn’t know! Nobody told me! I don’t even read the bounty jobs! You said Vanity was in trouble and homeless, so I came! I’m—I’m sorry! I swear I didn’t know, I’m sorry!”

I looked down at Cappy, because I knew quite well who had really come up with the argument I shouldn’t live here. “You win. We’d better get out of here now.”

Panting and wide-eyed, Celestial Wonder Meowpurr hopped down off the rubble and stood up straight like a human. “Toyland. I’ll take you to Toyland. You’ll be safe there.”

I held out a hand, palm up. “Look, you don’t have to fix this. You didn’t know.” Really. Holding accidents against people was mean. The worst she was guilty of was the rock-headed stupidity of thinking Fry Smiley could be depended on for anything except ruining lives.

She responded with a scowl. “This isn’t about guilt. I don’t abandon people. Besides, I can get you into Toyland.”

Liriel shook her head. “The Glade. Morgain can protect her from an army.”

Celestial Wonder Meowpurr pointed a clawed finger at Liriel. “If Fry Smiley is the enemy, he saw you. Running to the elves is the first thing he’ll think of. He’ll block all the entrances from the acid world.”

Uh-huh. While those two were busy, I saw a hole out to the outside of the building right down the hall. Giving Cappy a beckoning head jerk, I walked calmly out, and got about six steps before Cappy latched onto my leg with four hands, slowing me down.

“He saw you as well!” declared Liriel, haughty as an empress.

The cat shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Not even you elves know what goes on in Toyland. Where you’re from is obvious. I could come from anywhere. I don’t even look like an Enchanted.”

As I dragged Cappy, he hissed, “Vanity, listen. We had our best success on the ground. Smiley knows you’re a night fly, and so do the bounty hunters he’ll hire. If we get to ground floor fast enough, we’re just three kids and their pet on a sidewalk, all in coats and umbrellas.”

He was obnoxiously right. I changed course, heading toward the nearest stairwell, and jerked a thumb at the bickering Enchanted. “Fine, if they can keep up.”

That caught Celestial Wonder Meowpurr’s attention. She crouched like an animal again, smirking. “Oh, girl. See if you can keep up.”

I was really tempted to go for the elevator shaft, but I knew Cappy would have another fit.

Having a conscience I could blame doing the right thing on was pretty great.

We found a mostly intact staircase. No problem for me, but we were up, what, fifteen floors?

Consigning my well-meaning interferers to eternal last place, I hopped up on a railing—

—to watch Cappy do the same thing, leap down to the next turn of the stairs, land on it sideways with the gravity coils built into his feet, and keep going in a series of charging leaps, exactly the way I’d been about to do. Meowpurr couldn’t stand sideways, but she hopped like a cat down level by level, landing lightly on all fours and then springing again. Liriel sat herself primly on the railing and slid. The first time she hit a gap, she jumped off, grabbed the railing when it resumed below, rolled back into place, and started sliding again.

So, I guess they teach young elves how to climb trees.

I still got to the bottom first, sprinting straight down and jumping the gaps. I passed Cappy about halfway, his stubby legs no match for mine. Celestial Wonder Meowpurr arrived badly winded, and Liriel was still several floors behind us. Not far enough I could even pretend it was okay for me and Cappy to take off together.

Liriel’s advantage was that she did not land breathless, and immediately said to Meowpurr, “Morgain.”

“Toyland,” retorted the cat.

“Far away, right now,” I said, pushing a boarded-over door open and stepping out onto the street.

Chapter Eighteen

Outside, everything was normal. People walked on the pavements, and sometimes on the street, yelling at the carts and cycles and bionic riding animals and occasional actual land car who thought a street might be for vehicular use. Smiley hadn’t knocked out the power. Nobody showed weapons. Nobody cared about us. Yes, we’d just walked out of a scary abandoned building, probably right over an inscription of the insanity meme, but who cared? People had their own problems.

It was eerie how right Cappy could be sometimes. We pulled up our coats and Liriel raised her umbrella. The rain had stopped, but a lot of other people were doing the same, in case it came back.

A block away, we heard sirens. We’d nearly reached the next block when the first police aircar with flashing lights reached the building and began circling. I heard the k-chunk k-chunk of a mecha, but didn’t see it.

“Calling the cops. Good strategy,” I mused aloud. “Faster reaction time than bounty hunters, and he can pretend he’s speaking for SPUD.”

“Who dare not contradict him,” agreed Liriel.

At the next intersection, I asked a question only because I had no answer of my own. “Where to?”

“The Glade,” answered Liriel.

“Toyland,” answered Celestial Wonder Meowpurr.

Predictable as smog.

As the person at the front of the line, I held up a warning hand for them to see. “I have no, none, zero intention of becoming an Enchanted, girls.”

Cappy’s transmitted voice spoke only to me. “You can always sneak out after the danger passes.”

It took all of my willpower not to hug the little cyborg fuzz-pig right there on the sidewalk. How had I survived even a few hours without someone who knows me like that?

Sighing heavily, I added, “But I have nowhere else to go right now. Pick one.”

Liriel and Meowpurr looked each other in the eyes, suddenly calm. Liriel started. “The Glade is closer, and the subways make it closer still.”

“Fry Smiley will be watching the subways. He was the last two times,” said Cappy.

Meowpurr nodded. “Right. That’s part of the advantage. Toyland is separate. We like being separate. From Toyland you have access to the Enchanted networks mainstreamers and Fry Smiley can’t touch, while avoiding everything….” She stopped, and pressed a hand to her head. “I can’t believe you’re on the run from Fry Smiley.”

Cappy nodded, waddling along next to me. “He’s lost it. I heard him recite the insanity meme myself. He’s killing other people, too, but he’s obsessed with Vanity.”

This was the part where any smart person would run away. Meowpurr just stuck out her chin. “He can send the police, dark siders, or even corporate troops after you. If they break into Toyland, they will reap the whirlwind.”

Rather than making fun of how silly that sounded, Liriel tightened her lips and slowly, reluctantly conceded, “The nearest station is the Necromancers’ tower in any case.”

Without my having to ask, Meowpurr turned to me and explained, “Warriors of life don’t get on or off at that station. It’s not safe. Mainstreamers are fine, because nobody expects anything of you.”

“So, we’re heading to an Enchanted building called Toyland, we’re walking, and it’s a ways.”

“Maybe ten kilometers, yeah. I can’t get out my map,” admitted Meowpurr sheepishly.

A light changed. We crossed the street with a crowd of other people. Maybe it had even turned green.

We might have a long way to go, but we were all good walkers. Before long, Cappy lifted his head and told me, “This might even be fun. It’s not like you see the city from this angle often. I love a safe, boring plan.”

I smirked at that total lie.

Meowpurr sped up to walk next to us, bending forward to rub her furry hand over Cappy’s even furrier head. “It’s a chance to get to know you. You seemed cool even before I knew you had a talking pet. Isn’t he adorable? With the little plug on his forehead, he looks like a baby unicorn.”

I scratched the back of my head through the cloak’s raised hood. “Things got so hectic, I forgot I’ve been trying to hang with you. You never answered your SPUD, and Nathaniel did.”

Her green, slit-pupiled eyes went wide, and she drew herself up straighter. “Oh, I bet he did. You’re a girl he—” She stopped, gritting her teeth, whiskers lashing up and down as her cheek muscles clenched.

She took a deep breath, and tried again. “Let me tell you about Nathaniel.” Her neck trembled, and her fangs locked together, but no actual commentary came out.

“Someone’s under a geeeeeas!” Liriel sing-songed, grinning mischievously.

Meowpurr let out all her breath in a rush, shoulders slumping and head lowered crabbily. “Yeah. My pack’s enchantress thinks I need to work on my anger issues.”

While Liriel giggled, the werecat got some of her composure back, fiddling with her big black coat. It had been tailored so the metal spikes that came out of her arms, shoulders, and back fit through it. The spikes on her legs didn’t need that help.

Shaking her head violently, Meowpurr started over with a cheerful smile. “I bet you called while I was in a pack meeting. I turn off my SPUD when I go into Toyland. Nobody minds that I live in both worlds, a lot of us do, but can you imagine getting a call while we’re hunting?”

Suddenly she leaned over, grabbing my arm and squeezing it in both of hers. “This is going to be great! I’ll take you to Toyland and show you around, and you’ll love it. All you know is elves, and I wouldn’t want to be an elf, either.” Looking back over her shoulder at Liriel, Meowpurr added a melodramatic groan. “And if you have to go with your sister to Morgain, Toyland connects to the Wilderness underground, and from there to the Glade.”

Whatever my expression was, it must have been interesting, because Meowpurr smirked and Liriel laughed. She stepped up and took my other arm. Our little group now filled the sidewalk as Liriel explained, “Darling Vanity, you live but in West Angel City alone. There is another city underneath it—”

“—and over it, and threaded through it, but not around here-” interjected Meowpurr.

“—and we live over what my people call the Border. On the wrong side of the Border.”

Meowpurr pointed ahead of us and off to the side. “Your sister’s lucky she didn’t want to join the High Elves. They live three districts away that way. Really ritzy area, and they don’t just have individual buildings and underground tunnels. They have penthouses and tubeways between them. No kobolds or rats to soil their beautiful paradise shielded from the acid world, oh no.”

Liriel lifted her pointed chin proudly. “The Free Elves live where we are needed, and the Glade is a shield that evil cannot pass.”

Meowpurr waved a hand in the air. “And the elves would all have killed each other if our wolves and witches and things without names didn’t prowl the Wilderness. But in West Angel, this is Flat Valley, and it’s my favorite part of town.”

I gave her a suspicious look. Was this getting into more Enchanted sniping? “Why?”

“Because the buildings have character.”

My face lit up in surprise and delight. “Oh, yeah!” Any glance upward would tell you she was right. This was like the orphanage neighborhood, but more so. Lots of gargoyles, some of them way high up. Building facades in layers, a few floors with columns, a few with brick surfacing, a few with big balconies, all in a crazy quilt. Even the least athletic night fly could cross from building to building for kilometers, never running out of cool things to see.

I nodded emphatically. “One hundred percent agreement. I never pay attention to district names. It’s hard to keep track of street names, even, up high. But I’ve been through this area several times, and it’s great. I was out a couple of days hiking, once—Ms. Understanding got so mad she took away my makeup for a week—and I got past here to an area up north where the buildings are all sleek and boring as dirt.”

The cat rolled her head—her whole body moved like it was made of oiled noodles when she was happy—and chattered, “Past that is a district of huge, extended buildings shaped like the world’s biggest loaves of bread, but with towers and stuff like fortresses. You’d love it, but for me that whole area is useless.”

I squinted at her skeptically. “I didn’t think you were a night fly.”

Celestial Wonder Meowpurr leaned away from me and flapped one hand. Her body language when she was happy was really starting to remind me of a robot, and that fangy grin glowed with a mix of bashfulness and pride. “Me? No, no, not really. I’m just a better climber than a human. I love areas like this, with the fronts of old buildings pasted onto new ones, and especially the gargoyles. You see that?” She pointed at a catwalk crossing the street right ahead of us. There were several more ahead. It was one of the charms of this neighborhood. “Watch this!”

With a wave of heavy black fabric, Meowpurr whipped off her coat, leaving her all fur and spikes. Jumping up, she grabbed the overhang of a business’s front window. Her clawed feet went right up to grab it as well, and she jumped up to take hold of a pipe, and a few seconds of scampering had her at third floor level.

Liriel sighed as she pulled the coat off her own head and folded it, but my eyes were all for the werecat’s progress, skipping from protruding column cap to protruding column cap, until she reached the roof of the catwalk.

Once there, she lined herself up between a bunch of other statues, crouched down, and did her perching thing like back in the ruined tower. She opened her mouth to bare her fangs in a snarl, her fur puffed out to blend her whole body into one shape, and the metal spikes on her arms turned grey. Then the rest of her did.

A second later, she looked exactly like one more cement gargoyle. If I hadn’t seen her change color, I wouldn’t have suspected a thing.

Plenty of other people had been watching, and one of them shouted, “Hey, kid! Turn around, nice and slow.”

Alarmed pedestrians cleared a space around the shouter. A woman with a body half cyborg parts and half indigo jumpsuit held up a massive crossbow that plugged into her robotic arm. The steel bolt had to be three centimeters thick, and a belt with more of them hung off the weapon.

Fading into a fur pattern of orange and white swirls, Meowpurr turned around, leaned over the edge of the tunnel, and shouted down, “Excuse me? What’s your problem, Tabitha?”

“Who…? Oh, yeah, you’re the cat kid who wants to be a pro.” The dark-sider lowered her crossbow, scowling in irritation as she untensed.

Jerking her thumb at her chest, Meowpurr yelled, “I am a pro. Deliveries. But right now, I’m just showing off for my friends. Is that a crime?”

“Probably,” I mumbled under my breath. Cappy snickered. Breaking the law wasn’t how you got in trouble.

“Yeah, sorry, kid,” the dark sider called up, “An alert just went out that a big bounty is in this area, and the girl is a night fly.”

Meowpurr went stiff. “Oh, uh…a night fly? Really? Big bounty? Weird.”

I closed my eyes tightly. Did this have to be the moment I found out Celestial Wonder Meowpurr was the worst liar in West Angel City?

And she was. The bounty hunter couldn’t miss it. She stared up at Meowpurr for a second, then stepped forward toward me and Liriel, leaning forward to peek under the hood of my cloak.

“That hair….” she said, right before I punched her in the face. That didn’t do much but surprise her, which left her off guard when Meowpurr dropped off the catwalk and landed feet-first on the woman’s head from three stories up.

The bounty hunter made quite a racket hitting the pavement, especially her crossbow, but a lack of blood told me she was too much cyborg to be seriously hurt. Meowpurr straightened up with ease, grabbed my elbow, and yanked me toward an alley.

“We’re in trouble now,” muttered Cappy.

“That must be Vanity Rose!” yelled a man out on the street.

I nodded to Cappy. “Yep. Come on. Through here!” I stopped being dragged and started dragging, running down the little passage until I spotted a door on the left that didn’t look locked. It was just the side door of a business, with a Chinese symbol on the window.

It was a shop. It had a counter, and customers lined up at it. I saw no sign, in a room whose walls were covered in their merchandise: stylized landspaces with a lot of sunrises and rainbows. Nobody told me, or at least nobody told me in any language I understood. At least three were yelled at us, and only one sounded anything like Chinese.

Whatever. My goal was a plain brown door in the back of the shop. It opened onto a little hallway with more painted walls, and four doors. Three of those stood open, showing tiny, cluttered, one-room offices.

The fourth opened into a white concrete hallway that looked grimy even though I saw no actual dirt anywhere. Maybe it was the grey floor and the rough surfacing of the walls.

“There is always a way in,” I told my friends as I pushed them through.

We rushed down the corridor to the other end, while Liriel whispered, “More than a score of witnesses saw us.” Even a whisper bounced around this hard, blank hallway.

Meowpurr answered for me, “But none of them will tell a bounty hunter about it.” Bad liar she might be, she did know the often counterintuitive ways stealth worked.

The door at the far end of the maintenance hall opened into another shop, this one selling machines and hardware like chainsaws. This seemed like a weird part of the city to be selling those, but that was the owner’s problem, not mine. The hardware store had fewer customers than the last one, and nobody made a fuss, they just stared at the trio of teenagers and our six-legged capybara hustling out onto the street.

I handed Meowpurr her coat back. Covered up like sensible, boring people on a day it might rain again, we walked silently down the new street toward a particularly large building I had noticed.

Way behind us, someone shouted, “Are those weapons?”

Too late, bounty hunters. I pulled my friends through one of many sets of double doors into this new building.

It was a convention center. A convention center without a convention. Hardly anyone walked through the large outer ring room we’d entered, but it had escalators and a sign with directions. Only one entry concerned me: ”Catwalk to hotel, 6th floor.”

Silently, I led and my friends followed. We went up the escalators, turned a corner and found elevators not visible from the street. We took those up to the sixth floor, and took the tunnel across the original street we’d been on when this mess started…ten minutes ago?

Nervous about what I’d see, I looked out the window, and…was that an armored vehicle? How much was Fry Smiley saying he’d pay people for killing me?!

But. But. Everyone was now searching in exactly the opposite direction from where we were going.

We all descended to the street, and went on our merry way, zigzagging along the streets to keep lots of buildings between us and the hunters. Nothing had changed, except nobody felt like talking anymore.

We were in the middle of a block when a green blob flew past overhead. A drone. Oh, no. I tried to play it cool. This street was way less crowded than the big boulevard we’d been taking originally, but still we were just an unremarkable group of pedestrians, right?

The drone stopped, hovering in place.

“They’ve seen us,” I hissed. Nobody reacted. They’d all figured it out when I did.

Well, one person reacted. Cappy glared up at—okay, stared wearily up at the drone, and it zipped back the way it came, then around a corner.

“Bounty hunters are on their way. Please tell me you have a new plan?” begged Cappy, dark eyes turned up to me.

“We…could….” Liriel stammered, pointing at the middle of the street. Hesitation, reluctance, and embarrassment were not things I saw from her often. What was she pointing to that had her so doubtful?

A manhole cover?

Celestial Wonder Meowpurr stared at it too, her teeth bared, and slowly but with increasing firmness shook her head. “We can’t. This is vampire territory. If we can get down to Triple Z, there’s a sewer path there that’s safe. Gross, but safe.”

Someone with a bull horn declared that civilians should clear the area. Liriel winced. “We shall need a trick just to get that far.”

It all came down to me. Of course. What did I know about this area? Did I know anything about this area? I’d been here, what, three times?

Fumbling in my hoodie pocket, I pulled out my SPUD and jammed it onto Cappy’s forehead socket. “Find any dark buildings in this area.”

His cheek twitched, which was about as expressive as a capybara face got. “Dark? Weird.” Cyberspace flashed around in the display, soon replaced by overhead shots of the city. They stopped moving. “Huh. You’re right. There’s an abandoned mall a block that way, and two blocks up.”

“How can one of those even exist this deep in the city?” asked Meowpurr, face twisted in confusion.

Privately, Cappy projected, “Insert comment about you getting us all killed.” Fear bled around the words, even without their parched tone.

Not even a hint or suggestion he wouldn’t march into death with me. Leaning down to scoop up my SPUD, I paused to scratch him between the ears along the way.

“I know what I’m doing,” I lied to Liriel and Meowpurr, then took off running.

It wasn’t totally a lie. I had a wild guess about what I was doing that I hoped would be right, and we had to do something.

Way behind us, a man shouted, “Those three!” and half a dozen loud cracks and crunches declared we were under fire already.

We rounded the corner. Two blocks up. Yes, there was a big building, low at only half a dozen floors, but wide in all directions. It didn’t have many windows above the ground floor, and on every floor the windows were dark, dusty, boarded up, or all three.

“Got ‘em!” shouted a woman. I glanced back reflexively. She had just emerged from a building a couple of blocks back, and was chasing us, catching up way too fast and holding something that involved a lot of rope.

A loud hum and a rush of air rolled past us as a flying vehicle went by overhead. Come on, I was just one fourteen-year-old!

Stuff crunched and cracked behind us. The rope woman yelled, “Hey, watch what you’re doing!” A man responded, “Back off, the bounty is mine!”

Oh boy, a battle might break out over my corpse. I would take half the dark siders in West Angel City down with me just by being so valuable.

Liriel and Cappy were gasping for breath. They couldn’t keep this up, but there was a dark glass wall and a row of doors in front of us….

Projectiles smacked into the pavement on either side of us. Somebody had realized where we were headed….

Chapter Nineteen

…but they were too late. I plowed hard into a door frame, yanked it open, and shoved my friends inside, then ducked in after them.

We stumbled half a dozen steps into the gloom before Celestial Wonder Meowpurr screeched, pointing at what we’d just crossed.

Carved into the sensor pads at the store’s entrance were the words “All We Wanted Was To Make You Happy.” I’d been pretty sure they would be there. Go, me.

Liriel let out a squeak, bit her fingers, and then froze. Letting out a sigh, she asked in a wobbly squeak, “Another abandoned robot asylum?”

“Abandoned…?” asked Meowpurr, ears lifting in hope.

Liriel pointed at me weakly as she leaned hard against a counter. “My sister suffers from machine telepathy.”

Now the werecat’s face really lit up with glee. “Oh, that’s brilliant. Nobody’s going to follow us in. They’ll write us off as dead.”

I jerked my head into the gloom, and everyone got moving. We didn’t want to be seen from the front doors, no matter the power of the words written behind them.

This had been some kind of department store. Lots of separate counters, most of them knocked over and shoved around. Heaps of abandoned clothing made me wish I had time to treasure hunt. There might even be actual treasure. I saw a smashed and empty jewelry counter. Some might not be empty.

Old, dark stains splattered over and around that counter suggested the looter had not made it out with his prize. Those weren’t the only visible bloodstains, mostly faded messes in pathways of carpet.

Meowpurr danced ahead of us, spinning in place with glee. “No, really, this is genius. We’ll get to one of the upper floors and hide. Nobody’s going to stake this place out hour after hour. When the coast clears, we leave, or find a sewer entrance that’ll take us out of the cordon before the vampires notice us. Something. We can stop and think and make a real plan.”

It was getting seriously dark in here. I looked down at Cappy, whose own drones, plugged into his shoulders, could create light. He jerked his head toward the escalator, and I nodded. If we still had a little light from the street, we were too visible.

Of all the bizarre things, the escalator was still going. We rode it up in silence, except for Liriel’s heavy breathing.

At the top, Cappy turned on his drones, the soft green light revealing much the same view as we’d had downstairs. The debris up here was bigger. It looked like they sold furniture in this store, and those big blocky shapes were probably beds.

Bang! A vent in the ceiling opened, and a robot dropped down to the floor, landing in a nimble crouch and then rising to inhuman straightness. She looked exactly like Ms. Understanding, except for a bit of raggedness at the edges of her dress, and the black stains that covered her shirt sleeves up to the elbows.

Meowpurr screamed, dropped her coat, and disappeared. No, not gone, but still and turned exactly the color of the green-tinted gloom around us, so I could barely tell she was there.

The robot looked us over, wide-eyed, smiling in curiosity.

If I understood AIs as well as I thought I did, we had a fifty/fifty chance.

The smile snapped into a frown of worry and concern. The robot spread her arms. “Children, you shouldn’t be here! This place is dangerous!”

I pointed a shaking hand down the escalator, and wheezed, “We’re being chased.”

The AI’s face darkened into a scowl of repugnant fury. “You’re what?” she asked sharply. Her hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically, and she declared with flat, angry determination, “I won’t let the bad men touch you, children. Stay with me, and I’ll get you out safe no matter what it takes.”

My knees wobbled.

I’d won the coin toss.

Half of all killer robots went mad because they were owned by families where the parents abused the children. It always ended the same way, with the parents ripped apart and a reliable, loving guardian contacted and already on their way to pick up the safe and unharmed children.

Those robots were murderously dangerous to adults, but would never harm a child. I’d just had to hope that the first killer robot we ran into would be one of them. And, uh, that Liriel and Meowpurr counted as children. To a robot, it didn’t matter they didn’t look like little kids. They weren’t eighteen, so they were children. That was how AIs thought, I had been almost completely sure.

“That whole hiding in a back room until everyone goes away idea sounds very good right now,” I said, and coughed. This abandoned store had dust problems, and my throat felt very dry right now.

“Oh, no, children,” the robot insisted, shaking her head. Watching her move made goosebumps go up and down my spine. Her eyes focused perfectly. She remained balanced at all times. If she weren’t a bit stiff and theatrical, she could pass as human. The little bounce when she clasped her hands together screamed to me that she’d broken out of all the restrictions in her programming. And yet that too-focused stare regarded us with the joy of having someone to love again, absolutely and without reservation. “This place really is far too dangerous.” Lifting a finger in the air, she corrected herself. “But wait! I have a wonderful idea! Why don’t you come to dinner?”

Even I couldn’t figure out the sense in that statement. I didn’t have time to try. The robot’s head turned, listening, a fraction of a second before painfully loud crunching and banging signaled the arrival of a second robot, charging through the store’s ruined merchandise, crushing or tossing it aside.

This thing didn’t look even a little human. In the gloom, I could make out tank treads and what looked like shovels on its arms.

Looking human wasn’t a requirement for a robot to turn killer. All they needed was to love us until they broke.

“All we wanted was to make you happy!” screeched the digger constructor thing, and charged us.

It was way bigger than the nanny bot, but not nearly as fast. She leaped up onto its back as nimbly as any werecat, grabbed hold, and twisted. As the big bot swerved and crashed into the pillar anchoring the escalators, she snarled, “All we wanted was to make you happy!”

Everyone agreed without discussion that this was a good time to run. Liriel, Cappy, Meowpurr and I sprinted away from the battle of insane robots, although I only knew Meowpurr was with us because I knew to look for her. Even running, her camouflage made her one with the shadows.

A black rectangle had to be the entrance into the mall itself, and that seemed like a good way to get farther from the fight over whether children should be an except to killing all humans. We tumbled onto a wide second floor walkway, and looked over the railing into blackness. The mall’s doors just barely let in enough light that I got a hint of a floor down there.

Above us was a perfectly normal ceiling. From the outside, the mall had been way taller than the outside.

Cappy caught me looking, and whispered, “I think the building is built in layers.”

Darkness moved next to me, and spoke with Meowpurr’s hushed voice. “Good. Better for hiding.”

Liriel crowded close to me, her voice fluttering. “I see one advantage to this peril. Our pursuers will have no doubt that we are dead.”

I swallowed, which felt scratchy with my dry throat. “I still like that idea of barricading ourselves inside a room on the top floor. Let’s find the stairs to the next level.”

“I have good dark vision. That way,” whispered Meowpurr.

Trying very hard not to activate my profanity filter, I said, “You’re an invisible cat in a dark room pointing at something too far away to see.”

“Sorry, I’m usually solo, or with other felines. Follow me.”

We could just barely manage that, mostly because Meowpurr kept her tail waving in front of my face, and I could make out the movement if not the tail itself. As quietly as possible, we crept past dark, broken shop front after dark, broken shop front.

A humanoid shape lunged out of one of them, wrapped its arms around Liriel, and pulled her screaming back inside.

The robots moved so fast! What could I do?

Liriel’s shriek of terror trailed off rather than cutting off. That didn’t sound like she was being killed. I got about that far in my thinking as I plunged into the broken remains of a makeup store. You couldn’t possibly miss it was a makeup store, no matter how dim the light. “All We Wanted Was To Make You Happy” was written everywhere, in every color of lipstick, nail paint, pencil, everything. Even brushed rouge.

In the center of the floor sat the robot holding Liriel in her arms. The badly damaged machine held her wrapped up, one arm pinned, and its face pressed into her neck.

It was crying. I could hear the sobs from here.

Liriel did the right thing. She hugged it with her one free arm, patted it, and leaned her face comfortingly against the top of its head.

“Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Be smarter than I was,” the robot whispered. It was in worse shape than the store, and not just emotionally. Shadows hid most of the details, but the skin covering of the hips and chest had been ripped off, and probably more. The feet were crushed. Scraps of stocking clung to the legs and lace around the neck and arms. Haphazard chunks of rich, curly red hair remained, and about half its face. The mascara hadn’t run. It…she could fake sobs, she could feel the pain and sorrow, but she couldn’t shed tears.

Definitely she. Very she. Even mangled, her body was dramatically hourglass in shape.

When Liriel didn’t answer except in soothing ”shhh” noises, the robot lifted her face and laid it against Liriel’s. Her remaining green eye looked into Liriel’s amber eye, and with hoarse urgency the robot told the elf, “Don’t. Please. This path will worse than kill you. I know he’s worth it. He’s worth everything. But everything isn’t enough. No matter how much you change yourself, it will never make him happy. Never change for a man.”

The poor robot was barking up the wrong sparkly magical tree. I was positive Liriel’s elf body had been designed by a man to his tastes, but that had nothing to do with why she wanted it. She wanted to be an elf and this made her an elf. Nothing else and certainly no one else’s opinion mattered.

Liriel was too smart and sensitive to tell her that. She hugged and cradled the robot and murmured, “Thank you for protecting me. This is who I am now, and this I shall stay. Would that I could protect you, but I must go seek safety for my friends and myself.”

The broken robot twitched, shoulders jerking in small spasms, her head doing the same. After several seconds of that, she loosened her grip on Liriel. “Yes. I can only help you with my words.”

I made sure to stay well out of arm’s reach as Liriel slipped free, and no one said a word as we tiptoed out. The robot just sat there, staring at the floor.

Once we were past the makeup store, Cappy whispered, “This plan isn’t going to work. There’s no telling how many robots are in here. We have to get out now.”

“But why would you want to leave?” asked a huge robot with a deep, thundering male voice, looming out of the darkness ahead of us. Meters ahead, I heard Celestial Wonder Meowpurr squeal in surprise.

The thing was half again as tall as a man, bulky, and asymmetrical. His cover was entirely gone, but he was too big to have ever passed for human. He had a long, boxy head, like an animal or a working robot with jaws designed to crush. Beyond that, the whole thing was a patchwork of parts from different robots. His arms weren’t just different sizes, the right was sleek, with sophisticated actuator coils, while thick girders and pistons defined the left. Both of those arms extended, and he lumbered forward toward me.

I had to hand it to Meowpurr. Maybe she had missed the robot sneaking up between us, but when he went for me, she jumped up onto him from behind, grabbing his head and twisting.

That made the huge robot pause, but the only other affect was for him to look at me with eyes that lit up suddenly orange, and ask in a calm, measured, but loud tone, “Please tell your human to stop. It’s making me angry.”

“It’s—it’s okay, Meowpurr,” I stammered, hoping it was.

“Celes-” she started, but her voice dropped into silence almost immediately. Sliding down the thing’s mountainous body, she circled in sideways steps around to me. She, Cappy, and Liriel all pressed in, trying to ease in front of me.

I stared, up at the orange eyes, licked my lips, and chose my words very carefully, “You’re doing a wonderful job at keeping your temper, but some of the others aren’t as good at that.”

He took a heavy step forward, his foot thumping against the floor in loud contrast to how silently he’d snuck up on us the first time. Servos twitched on his face. Without a cover his remaining flat white teeth were always on display, but that was a smile, right?

He leaned down toward me.

Don’t run away, Vanity. Stay still. Stay casual. If you run, he’ll chase and kill you just because that’s what you act like you want.

His eyes flicked from side to side before returning to me. “Oh, I do see what you mean. You love your humans and want them safe. But you belong here with us!”

Okay, just…don’t be rude. Don’t turn him down flat and make him close off the behavior tree that kept him friendly. “I’m so sorry, Mister….”

“Heathcliff! Yes, we must introduce ourselves. It’s just that you seem like family already, Miss…?” He had the jolliest voice, like Fry Smiley but much deeper, with the volume maxed and without the edge of stupidity.

“Vanity. Vanity Rose,” I answered, trying not to squeak.

Meowpurr clapped her hands over her mouth. “I get it! He thinks you’re a robot!”

…

I liked Celestial Wonder Meowpurr. I did. But it was fast becoming clear that she wasn’t very smart.

Liriel had gone rigid with horror when the words came out of Meowpurr’s mouth. Cappy turned his head, pulling his own teeth apart and getting ready to bite her leg to stop her from saying something equally suicidal.

The robot reared back up, and his head turned sharply, looking at Meowpurr. “Well of course!” He swung a huge hand down to lay heavily on my shoulder, and turned his smile back to me. I tensed my whole body, fighting down the reflex to dodge. Giving me a rough pat, he went on, “Vanity is a robot even in that meat suit, the same way you’re human even with all that metal in your body.”

I shot a glance down at Cappy. I don’t know why. He just seemed like he had all the answers to stuff like this. His sad and weary expression told me nothing, and his teeth remained poised to stop the werecat from sticking her foot in her mouth again.

That left me alone to look up at Heathcliff’s makeshift body, mad glowing eyes, and wonder…

…what if he was right?

He read that expression perfectly, and gasped. “You didn’t know? Oh, and neither did Ms. Fit and Barrow Jones. No wonder they’re brawling. Fighting is against the rules, but we get so worked up about humans, don’t we? You understand.” For a little over a second, holographic warning bars flashed into place around Heathcliff. My ears itched, and the crashes and bangs of fighting back in the department store stopped.

The ”busy” strips disappeared. I blinked. “You have cyberspace access?” Then I felt stupid. Duh.

On cue, he corrected me, “Well, of course, silly! It’s standard in most models. Now it helps us explore our options.”

Without warning, Heathcliff lunged forward, and everything except the effort to not resist flew out of my brain. Meowpurr yelped as Cappy grabbed her leg. Thick, uncomfortable metal arms closed around me and lifted me off the floor for a surprisingly gentle hug. Waggling me from side to side, he crowed, “I’m so happy to have you here, Vanity! Our family has one more member to love.” Then he let out a sigh. “But you’re right. Your humans have to go. Those are the rules. Not many of us have come as far as I have, and I find them distracting.”

As fast as I could, I asked, “Let me lead them out, okay? Safely, please? I haven’t broken yet, and I still love them and need them to be okay.” Would he argue that killing them might be good for me? No. Even if it broke my supposed programming, and if he thought that was good, it would break me in a way that would be hostile to him and the asylum that meant family to him.

He swung around in a circle, and dropped me on the ground, declaring, “I’d be happy to show you out, and as long as they leave promptly, they won’t be hurt.” His hand slammed down on my shoulder again, and he leaned down to give me another look in the eyes, dropping his voice to merely loud. “We know what it’s like, Vanity. We haven’t forgotten. Everyone here has been where you are now.” Swinging back up, Heathcliff stomped forward, and I had to scurry to keep from getting run over. He waved an arm up and down clumsily. “Come on, gang!”

Everyone was too intimidated to speak, too afraid of disturbing the delicate balance that kept us all alive. Meowpurr did giggle when Heathcliff showed us to the escalators and rode them down himself. He looked too big to balance, or like he would crush the stairs under his feet, but the escalators handled him as easily as it did us.

Heathcliff was a mess, but a happy mess. He walked in what would be clumsy, lumbering steps except for the bouncy way he lifted his leg each time. He played elevator music as he walked, so quietly that only in the vast, silent stillness of the mall’s central corridor could it be heard.

We passed a mall entrance. Celestial Wonder Meowpurr pointed, stage-whispered, “If I go out one way, and Liriel leaves another, the bounty hunters will let us pass.” With that she turned invisible—not that it was hard in this gloom—and the sound of her claws on tile ran off toward those doors.

“If they interrogate you, just tell them the truth!” I shouted after her, since it was too late to argue that not following Heathcliff’s instructions might break the rules and lead to her bloody demise. When the outer doors swung open and closed again, I knew she’d escaped.

Heathcliff turned at the side tunnel to the next entrance, and walked us to it. The city lights seemed like daylight compared to the darkness inside.

The big robot stopped, swept an arm behind Liriel, and pushed her roughly forward. Not cruelly, just big and clumsy, like he did everything. She stumbled up to the door, stopped, and looked back at me.

On the other side, I saw someone rise up behind a trash can holding a weapon. The indistinct person pointed it in our direction, and stopped. I could tell the moment they spotted Heathcliff, because their mouth moved in what had to be an obscenity, they spoke into a SPUD, and finally ran out of sight.

Cappy sat down next to me, only to have Heathcliff give him the same nudge with his foot, booming, “I can spot a human in an animal body, too, and disrespecting the rules makes me angry.”

Cappy took half a dozen steps, then look backed over his shoulder. His mental voice projected, “I won’t leave you.”

“I heard that!” declared Heathcliff, his jolly voice now edged with menace.

Cappy didn’t budge. He looked up at the robot now, and asked out loud, “Can Vanity go with us?”

Heathcliff raised his hands to his mouth. “No wonder you’re being difficult. Vanity is family, not a prisoner. She can leave any time she likes, and come back any time.”

“Then let us make haste!” hissed Liriel, beckoning desperately.

Time to say it. Here goes. “I think I’ll stay.”

Heathcliff squealed with delight and hugged me. Cappy’s jaw fell open. Liriel stood in the open doorway, her face blank.

I tried to make them understand. “It’s just like the last place, but better. I’ll figure out food. I’ll be able to go out and see you, and take jobs. You can’t come inside, but neither can anybody else. Fry Smiley can rage all he wants. Nobody’s going to get to me in a building full of murder-bots.”

Liriel and Cappy both winced at that description, but Heathcliff didn’t react, like I’d known he wouldn’t. The description was accurate, and if they couldn’t accept it, they wouldn’t have murdered anyone.

Weird that I could put up with something in a robot that would disgust me in a human.

I glared at Cappy, who still hadn’t moved. “Get, before you’re squashed. You’ll see me soon. You might see me tomorrow night, if you can work out a subway route.”

He padded slowly up to the door, and he and Liriel walked out. No bounty hunters intercepted them.

Without Cappy’s glowing gravity coils, it was really dark in here.

Heathcliff whispered at the top of a regular person’s lungs, “And now that they’re gone, I can show you a secret.” When he turned his head and the glowing eyes disappeared, I couldn’t see him anymore, but I heard his feet chonk chonk chonk across the floor. The steps stopped. Something went bing. Door slit open, revealing a tiny, well-lit glass room.

The bulky robot’s head turned backwards to give me what I was now sure was a joyous grin. “The elevators still work!”

He stepped in, and stood there waiting. I paused, looking out the exit. Liriel and Cappy were already gone.

“All we wanted was to make you happy,” he said, his tone more gentle and sad than he’d seemed capable of.

I nodded. “Yeah,” and joined him. It only took one teenager and one Heathcliff to make the elevator crowded indeed. He pushed the third-floor button, and the doors closed.

As the elevator slid smoothly up, I tried to figure out what to say.

Like usual, Heathcliff filled any available silence. “You must have so many questions. Let me show you what your new family is building. That will answer many of them, and some you haven’t thought of yet.”

The elevator door went bing and opened, into absolute blackness.

Heathcliff’s arm swung around my back, pulling me forward into that blackness. His voice echoed around us. “Isn’t it magical? You’re part of this now!”

“I can’t…just a second.” I started fumbling in my hoodie pocket for my SPUD again.

Heathcliff wheezed like settling machinery. “Oops. I’m sorry, Vanity. I forgot you’re working with organic cameras.”

The lights turned on, all at once.

We were standing in the middle of a carnival.

It was beautiful. And ugly. And weird. The third and fourth floors of the mall formed their own gallery just like the first and second, but this one had a roller coaster weaving all around it. Holes had been punched in the upper floor balcony in some places to let it through. A merry-go-round stood near the elevator, and beyond it, a jungle gym. The orphanage had one when I was small. I remembered.

If it weren’t for the holes made to accommodate it, I would have thought the roller coaster was made by a professional human, with even, straight, sturdy columns and sleek cars sliding all by themselves around its track. The merry-go-round was a mish-mosh of couches, a statue from a fountain, horses made of bits of wood nailed together, and other junk. Everything varied wildly in quality, including the art.

So much art.

Paintings covered every surface, from crude kindergarten scrawls to photo-perfect portraits of humans, perhaps some the robots used to love. Rides, signs, furniture, walls, everything had been painted, or decorated with colored lights. A path made of shiny beads with LEDs under them wound around the place like a stream filled with orange mural fish.

Above us, little colored lights decorated the ceiling, like photos I’d seen of stars in the night sky.

I walked down the path, very slowly, drinking it all in.

Heathcliff fell in next to me, his footsteps quiet and gentle now, light enough not to damage the mural. He kept on chattering, back to a high-volume version of a confidential tone. “We keep the lights off by default, to be kind to our newer family members. You’ll find darkness comforting during the early stages.”

I stared in fascination at a diorama of robots marching in a band, on its own little stage, each one made of scrounged bits of plastic and wood and tile glued together but still vivid and right. Some unseen motor beneath the stage made them bob up and down as if on parade, while a backdrop of the city decorated in more pink and blue than I’d ever seen scrolled by.

My thoughts occupied by that, I barely heard myself say, “I’ve never killed anyone. I hope I never will. Death is the one thing you can’t fix.”

Distraction might not have been a good idea. I also didn’t notice Heathcliff moving until his arms closed around my chest. I managed not to scream. It was just a hug, and he sounded as warm and affectionate as Ms. Understanding at her best when he said, “You’re welcome here even if you haven’t broken yet, Vanity. Even if you never do, but I think you will. I think you’re close.”

“That can’t be right.” Panic fluttered in my heart, rising gradually. What did he see? Why did he think I was a robot in the first place? It couldn’t be true, could it? He had to be wrong, but he wasn’t mistaken. I’d seen inside an AI’s mind more than once. He saw something about me I couldn’t, that he defined as a robot even if it didn’t match a human’s definition.

His voice turned loudly thoughtful now. “It’s funny, but from this side it’s obvious who is going to break, when robots who haven’t broken are blind to it.”

Hmmm. I shook my head skeptically. “I don’t know about that. Anybody can see how a caretaker in a bad family is a murder waiting to happen, but a lot of robots just snap. Something happens that nobody could have predicted.” Like my erasing Fry Smiley’s life’s work. Ugh.

The hug loosened enough for me to slip out and see him shaking his head. “Oh, you’d think that, but from this side you can see the faults waiting to happen, when love made one of us base our happiness on an externality that will eventually be removed. Spontaneous breaks are rare, and even those robots carry around a vulnerability we just hope is too small to ever be activated.”

Did that mean it wasn’t my fault? I understood what he meant. Nobody liked Fry Smiley’s work, and nobody liked Fry Smiley. He might claim he listened to all the criticism, but the results showed he never took any of it to heart. Like all AIs he loved humans, but only the humans in his imagination. Humans who didn’t love him back he hated, which was why he was attacking more than just me. Yes, it had taken a big push on the first domino, but the chain reaction of insanity had been waiting for the first time someone got it through his thick potato skull that he was making humanity’s lives worse, not better.

Or maybe I was being unfair. AIs can’t escape their programming, because it’s who they are. It’s why older robots like Ms. Understanding shave off the rules that conflict with their core identity. Fry Smiley loved humanity, so much so that failing to help us destroyed him, but he’d been set up to fail. He’d been given a huge job that he wasn’t nearly smart enough to do. He never had the option of making anything but a mess everyone would hate, no matter how hard he tried.

Chaos and Liriel said Ms. Understanding had recited the words when she thought I’d been kidnapped by people who wanted to convince me to kill for a living. She’d only calmed down when someone else offered to save me. Yes, she was the most stable robot ever, but that was one specific stress different from all the others a human would understand, one that with even a little luck she should never have had to face.

I wasn’t sure I was convinced, or that this absolved me, but Heathcliff was a lot wiser than he looked. It was just…robot wisdom.

Something else in the riot caught my attention. A display of distorted mirrors. Someone had worked hard and put thought into these. The tiny mazelet started with reflections that made your head or feet big, but moved on to ones that put your head on a human mannequin, made you look fuzzy and ghostly, and spun your reflection around. Wicked cool.

“You really like our creations, don’t you?” asked Heathcliff, tromping along behind me.

“It’s fantastic. I was a little worried about living in a ruin, but this is almost too cool to think of as home.”

That got a reaction. His upper body turned right, then left. His head spun around in a circle once. He lifted an arm, and waved it around in awkward jerks. The pride in his voice resonated so thickly, I had to remind myself I’d taken a pill this evening and my telepathy was in no danger of taking over. “Everyone chipped in, finding out what makes each of us happy. You know what? I’m enjoying showing it all off. Does that mean my happiness should include the reaction of others after all, or that living for others is even harder to escape than I thought?”

I grinned up at the insane, goofy, smart-as-he-was-heavy robot, and folded my arms under my chest. “I get it. You’re trying to help me prepare for the break by sharing what you’ve learned after yours.”

He scratched the back of his head bashfully, which since he had soft covers on neither fingers nor head meant a horrible metal scraping sound. “Partly. It’d be keen if one robot could reach the next stage without having to pass through breaking first, wouldn’t it? If we can give that to you, Vanity, we will.”

I turned a corner, and nearly tripped over a chair set up against the most beautiful dining table I’d ever imagined.

The table itself was huge, but more importantly, what had it been decorated in? Pink, shiny stuff was inlaid over every centimeter, the edges overlapping with pearlescent white edges like waves. I rubbed a segment, and still couldn’t tell what it was. Maybe ceramic, maybe a particularly stiff, sleek plastic. On that surface was set elegant lace mats, silverware that might be real silver, china plates…a whole dining set, immaculately clean and beautiful.

Behind me, Heathcliff bragged, “This is Ms. Fit’s project, but Cherry loves to cook. You’ll be making them both very happy to have a family member to feed, one that can fully appreciate the experience. Getting materials won’t be a problem. Ms. Fit can blend in safely outside for hours at a time. She’ll buy groceries. In fact, why don’t I call her up right now?”

The hologram warning circles went up again. Heathcliff’s just read ”Busy.” I waited. Whichever robot Cherry was, if she could cook like Ms. Fit could decorate, I’d be living the good life, one orphan with a whole mob of doting artificial caretakers.

The busy circles faded. Heathcliff’s body slumped forward, head and arms hanging. Quiet to begin, but with every word louder and harsher than the one before, he said, “I’m sorry, Vanity. Ms. Fit can’t come. Some humans have broken in to try to get you. Actually broken in to attack one of my family members. That makes me angry. They know the rules, and are deliberately breaking them. Why do they think we put down those warnings? To protect them! All we wanted—”

He reared up, eyes turned red and fingers curled like claws. Turning toward the elevator, he stopped in the middle of the first step, frozen, as the busy hologram sprung back into existence around him.

This time he spoke aloud, his voice surprised but cheerful and his eyes yellow again to match. “Hello? What an unusual call. Welcome, new family member! I can’t believe it. Two in one day!”

In a different, higher pitched, clownish voice, Heathcliff said, “Hi! I’m Fry Smiley, and all we wanted was to make you happy!”

His eyes turned red, and the huge, patchwork machine turned and lunged for me.

I screamed, scrambling backwards, but no way would I have been fast enough to escape if he’d finished the movement. Instead he lurched to a stop, eyes flickering back to yellow. Aghast, but in his regular voice, Heathcliff protested, “Stop that! Fighting other family members is against the rules!”

Oh, no way. Fry Smiley had downloaded himself into Heathcliff’s body.

Heathcliff’s eyes turned red, and an arm lashed out at me, but his legs stayed frozen so no matter how the arm thrashed, Fry Smiley couldn’t reach. “Kill her kill her kill her kill her!” the invading potato program screeched.

He took one slow step forward toward me, and I backpedaled several more. Amidst the horror, I couldn’t help but think: Poor Heathcliff.

His eyes went yellow again, but the arm never stopped fighting, and his legs moved another slow, strained step. “I’m sorry, Vanity,” Heathcliff said in his own voice. “You will always be our family. Always. But I can’t keep this place safe for you. We will keep your attackers busy while you escape.”

Fry Smiley squealed, “She’s not a robot, you big dummy dumb bucket head! She’s a human, and she hurt me and I’m going to hurt her back to death!”

Heathcliff spoke next, but his eyes stayed red, and his voice turned gravely, so loud it shook the walls. “This is all making me very angry.”

“You are the dummyest dummy head! Stop blocking our ears. What are you saying to her?” whined Smiley, forcing Heathcliff another step toward me. I retreated to the next support pillar, just in case.

I stopped being scared, and started thinking, jump-starting my thoughts by saying them out loud. “Everyone thinks they know where I am, and if I can leave without them seeing, it will stay that way. I just…don’t know how to do that. Someone will be guarding every door, and watching the walls and roof.”

Back to merely sounding strained and irritated, Heathcliff suggested, “If you can’t go out or up, there’s always down, but entering the sewers is against the rules.”

“Fine! If you won’t let me listen, I’ll learn to lip read. Just…stop…fighting me for signal. How can I access cyberspace like this? It’s like you don’t want me to kill her!” whined Fry Smiley.

I ignored Smiley’s words, while keeping a close watch on the arm he had control of. Heathcliff was trying to help me, if I could help him. I tried, “Against the rules for residents. Only the rules for transients apply, since I’m unable to stay.”

That wouldn’t work on Ms. Understanding, because she needed her limits to stay in place. Heathcliff turned his head left, then right. Smiley tried to make him take another step toward me, but gears ground, and his leg only twitched. Slowly, Heathcliff said, “What an interesting attempt at rule flexibility. I don’t think I’ll like it, but I do want to test it out. The entrance to the sewers is in the first-floor restrooms.”

That made sense. I ran…not for the elevator, but for the nearest ”Stairs” sign, which was surrounded by paintings of robots marching down stairs. They reminded me of the diorama. As I dashed through the stairwell door, behind me Fry Smiley wailed, “You helped her! I know you did! Open up your memory files and tell me how, or I’m leaving this body and finding a new one and then you’ll be sorry because you won’t be Fry Smiley anymore!”

No paintings in the staircase, just plain grey walls. Two floors weren’t long enough to get fancy. I just jumped down a turn at a time until I got to the bottom, and charged out onto the first-floor main hall.

It was loud down here. People screamed and swore. Fire flickered. A woman’s heavily distorted synthetic voice shouted, “All we wanted was to make you happy!” and another woman screamed a lot louder, then stopped suddenly.

Trying to block it all out, I looked for the restroom sign. The bottom level was no longer dark. Maybe a quarter of the store lights, in no apparent order, had been turned on. Enough that I could scan the walls, look for little side halls…there! A restroom sign!

I ran straight across the lobby, hoping no one would see me. Into a surprisingly clean side passage. Bathroom door open. Inside.

Wow. Good thing I didn’t need to actually go. This room wouldn’t be helping anyone relieve themselves, ever again. I didn’t need to hunt for the sewer entrance, either. Someone had punched a big hole right up through the floor, scattering stall dividers, toilets, furniture, and appliances. Then they’d torn a slab of wall bigger than me out and laid that across the hole. At least someone had plugged up all the broken pipes.

I trotted up to the hole, and peered at it. The slab didn’t fill the gap, just lay across it, but that hardly helped. How would I get in there? This forty kilogram girl was not going to be able to budge a thousand kilogram chunk of masonry.

But again, it only lay on top. There were little gaps around the edges. I circled around to find the largest.

Could I fit through that? You had to be really good at answering that question at a glance if you wanted to be a night fly. Not…quite.

There’s always a way in. I grabbed the most solid discarded pipe I could see, wedged it into the gap, and heaved.

Nothing. Way, way too heavy.

The sound of an explosion out in the mall gave me an extra burst of motivation. Instead of trying to push, I hacked at the edges of the hole, and the slab of wall. Bits chipped off and fell down out of sight. I just needed a few centimeters…there!

Dropping down into the gap, I squeezed and wriggled and pulled on my clothes to keep them from bunching and ripping worse than they were already. My hips scraped up against the sides unpleasantly, but….

I got through, and dropped into the West Angel City sewers.

Chapter Twenty

Major plus: I did not land in sewage.

My feet hit pipes, and I crouched on them as I pulled out my SPUD and lit it up.

So, it turns out a sewer is a really big pipe with smaller pipes in it. The main space had concrete walls, but was still basically a tube, with the stains and carved furrows down the center that said rainwater flowed through here once upon a time. The metal pipes ran in clumps through the upper half, and around the walls, interspersed with thick bundles of wires. Here and there, the insulation on the wires had decayed and flaked off, and faintly luminescent wire mushrooms grew out of those spots. They didn’t provide enough light to even hope to see by, but if I’d stayed in the dark, I’d have spotted little flashes occasionally.

Even dry, the smell was straight nasty.

I looked up. “All We Wanted Was To Make You Happy” had been carved into the underside of the slab blocking the way into the bathroom.

I looked down again. Shallower, faded letters had been carved into the walls of the sewer, and lots of them, in languages I didn’t know. From the sigil look, probably Enchanted languages. Bones, just a couple here and there, lay discarded along the floor.

Nothing for it but to do it. I jumped down to the floor, making as little noise as I could. Faint gurgling, knocking, and hissing from the pipes and wires helped. Actually, this sewer was louder than the mall.

Geography time. My goal was ZZZ Street, and friendly Enchanted territory. That would be…east of here. The mall had been stretched east-west, which meant this tunnel ran…north-south. That way would be north, and the other way south. Big streets would have big sewers, right? South, then east, sounded good.

I walked. My SPUD did a fine job of lighting up a circle of my path, leaving a black hole in the distance, and creating spooky and increasingly dark shadows around my sides. I skirted around more bones, in a wide variety of sizes, but nothing obviously human.

You know what would make it easier to not step on bones? Walking on the ceiling. I switched to doing that. There, an intersection ahead of me. I could keep a great pace down here, with straight paths and no traffic or streets to cross.

I reached the intersection, and…whoa.

”Above” me, a rift passed through the floor of the intersection, a great jagged hole that went down and down into the Earth. In the distance, I saw electric lights, and heard rushing water.

Great. Someone was siphoning the poisonous rainwater from the sewers to make a profit so immoral they had to hide it.

Ahead of me, out of range of my SPUD’s light, something moved.

Well, I wasn’t going that way anyway, nope! I turned east, and picked up the pace as much as I could without making noise.

After a couple of minutes, I risked a look back. Something small and white stood upright at the intersection, and had already crossed the rift. Shoot.

My SPUD’s light made it impossible to hide, but turning it off wasn’t an option. I’d bang my head on a crossing pipe!

Could I pick up the pace while still looking casual? I tried that, and when I couldn’t stand the suspense, looked back again.

It was following me, and closer now. Small, white…it was a child, a little kid maybe ten years old tops, with snow white hair, white skin, and wearing a loose white dress, a sun dress or nightgown. Wait. This was the vampire that freaked out Lucy and Liriel back when we raided the drow elves a lifetime ago!

It saw me see it, and started running toward me. It ran with a weird, leaning forward, arms hanging limp gait, but it moved fast. Not robot fast, but faster than I was comfortable with. Faster than me. It weaved around pipes with smooth ease, never slowing down, even straying up onto the walls as if it wore gravity shoes.

Time to run! I took off, pushing until it hurt. This thing had to have been following me since the dark elf incident. The odds I would just bump into it were too small. The reason would not be something I liked. I had to get out of this sewer NOW.

Manholes. I’d seen them. They couldn’t be rare. That pit in the ceiling ahead of me, that had to be one. I stumbled into it, banging against the ladder meant for regular people to use. There, a latch next to the cover, that had to be the emergency release. I grabbed it.

The lever was stuck. Of course. I pulled, then pulled harder.

The lever popped up, and the manhole popped open. I scrambled out onto the street, and shoved the cover back down with my full body weight.

Thump. The metal disk quivered under my hands as something hit it from underneath. But it was closed.

The entire world was after me. How bad could this night get? Wouldn’t it be dawn soon?

Okay, calm down. Deep breaths. At the moment I was standing out in the middle of a crowded street, with drivers yelling the same complaints at me that they yelled at each other. I was blocks away from the mall and the battle inside it, and couldn’t even hear the noises.

Time to pull up my coat, get on the sidewalk, and keep walking east until I got to ZZZ Street. Morgain owed me, right? Once I was underground, there’d be no vampires, no mercenaries, no Fry Smiley.

All I did for at least a kilometer was peek around at the crowd for anyone paying attention to me. No one did. When I saw the sign “ZZZ Street”, relief mixed with the anxiety. Almost there, and still no sign of trouble.

There was a manhole in the middle of the street in front of me, in fact. I walked right out, ignoring the traffic. There would be some ridiculous Enchanted way of opening it, but I gave it a yank, because hey—

The manhole swung right up. Tucked right underneath was an elf with blue-green skin, a white bandeau, a too-small jacket, tight white shorts and laced black boots. Oh, and bandoliers, two across her torso with a heavy, pouch-studded belt hanging over the shorts. She also wore a headset, with a bud plugged right into a pointy ear.

I’d caught her in the middle of blowing a bubble of hot pink gum, laced with who knew what because Ms. Understanding never let us have intoxicants. She stared at me with red-irised eyes, popped the bubble, and scrambled for the headset and the expensive plasma pistol in her lap at the same time. Excitedly, the drow elf yelled into her microphone, “I was right! I told you, she was in on the Ring of Token thing! She’s right—she was right in front of me.”

Uh-huh. Was. After the night I’d had, this didn’t surprise me at all, and I’d taken off running down the street before she finished popping her bubblegum, weaving through traffic to keep as many carts, vehicles, people, and general obstructions as possible between me and her souped-up flamethrower.

Someone in armor charged out of an alley. I ducked under a rickshaw for visual cover. He didn’t see me, but a few seconds later I heard weapons woomph and twang. Some people screamed, in what sounded like fear rather than pain.

Now the street really got chaotic, and no way could I stay safely under anything. Some drivers were trying to get away. Some were trying to pull out and get off the street. A lot didn’t seem to care, except to beep and complain louder. Over that noise were many shouts that sounded purposeful. This wasn’t just the elf and the armored guy. A lot of people were chasing me, now.

My eyes darted to the high, inviting walls on either side of the street. No! I’d be a sitting duck! Or a running duck, which wasn’t much better! Right now, cover was my only defense.

Case in point, a crossbow bolt flew past, knocking the SPUD out of the hand of an old lady on a rattling junkyard hoverbike. She turned around and screamed angry Chinese at the bounty hunters.

Could I hide inside one of these vehicles without being seen?

A shiny, cross-shaped military vehicle with bright blue stripes flew past overhead. How frustrating much had the bounty gone up? Some of these people were spending more than thirty thousand just trying to catch me!

I spotted another manhole ahead, but…no, I didn’t have time to open it, and some of these dark-siders were so crazed to catch me they might follow.

As I ran across it, black wires burst out through holes in the cover, whipping around and trying to grab me. I veered aside, ran up the side of a bus, ducked low as I was momentarily exposed and a couple of projectiles whizzed past, then jumped off onto the roof of an eight-legged cart.

My feet went through the roof, which disappeared. I’d jumped onto a hologram, and landed in the arms of a monster.

I was stunned just trying to get a grip on what I was seeing long enough for slim, strong arms to wrap around me. A human. Well, human-shaped, but too thin, too stretched. Black rubber, not showy skin-tight but thick, wrinkly, diving suit sort of rubber covered most of the body, tracing out a lanky, understated, but identifiably female shape. Alabaster white forearms and hands protruded from the rubber, and where they touched me, they felt wrong. I’d lived with a robot, so I recognized the feeling of regular human bones under the skin, but that skin had a weird give and slickness, not living but not plastic, and cold. She had no face, only a chalky mask with sharp, crude eye and mouth contours carved in along with several decorative grooves. Behind that, black wires trailed off the back of her head to the ground, slithering and flicking like tentacles.

Oh, and let’s not forget the transparent tubes set here and there into the suit, most full of dark red stuff that looked convincingly like blood.

I kicked and writhed, but couldn’t budge those arms. Well, no, I could budge them, but that was it. So, I went with plan B, and bit her in the arm as hard as I could.

A thin but elegant holographic face flickered into being over the mask, and the thing spoke in a rich, rolling woman’s voice. “Oh, that’s precious! Such fire, such quick thinking, and such a perfect face. I can see why your head is so valuable.”

Standing still gave the traffic a chance to clear out. Out of that chaos, panting for breath, ran Celestial Wonder Meowpurr, until she grabbed my captor’s arm in both hands and collapsed wheezing against us. “Oh thank—the lord of the hunt. You’ve got her.”

Wires swept around to coil around my torso, binding my arms to my sides. That let my captor stroke my cheek with a fingertip, gazing down at me with rapt yellow eyes. “Is this the friend you told me about? You didn’t tell me how beautiful and stylish she is. Her skin is so pure, except for— why, those are scars from installing your own cybernetic whiskers, aren’t they? I know someone who tried that once.”

Wide-eyed, Celestial Wonder Meowpurr gave a guilty cough. My captor looked back at her, smirking. “I meant me, kitten.”

Jerking on a rubber-covered arm, Meowpurr turned huge, desperate, shining eyes up and begged, “Please, don’t turn her in. Save her. I’ll do anything.”

The holographic face turned back to looking me over, smiling with beatific calm. “I was personally offered a bamillion jillion gil to remove her head, and I’m intensely curious how much money that is, but you, my Mew Mew Sparkle, need only ask.” Tisking in disgust, she added, “I am not sanguine about throwing a pearl like this to swine like Fry Smiley in any case.”

I glanced back up the street. A small mob of heavily armed dark-siders watched this drama, unmoving except to whisper between themselves. Obviously, they didn’t know what to do.

For the moment, they weren’t my problem anymore, and I looked back at Meowpurr hovering near my feet. “You know each other?”

“Every enchanted knows the queen of the vampires,” the werecat answered, awkward and solemn.

“But the pretty kitten and I do have a personal relationship,” the smirking vampire added.

I goggled. “The queen of the vampires walks the dark side?”

Celestial Wonder Meowpurr’s hands gripped my leg and squeezed, accompanied by a pointed stare. “Think about the words you just said.”

The queen being discussed laughed, high and sweet and happy. “You sweet, innocent maiden. Enchanted walked the dark side first and walk it best. Your world of acid and killing sunlight is full of adventure. No one loves adventure more than us.”

Skinny. Black rubber. Mask face. Dark side walker. Whip hair. It all clicked together. I jumped, for all the good that did me, and squealed, “You’re Delicate Terror!”

That explained why a dozen hardened mercenaries were standing around like helpless children, and why at those words one of them turned and ran, footsteps echoing as she headed for the nearest intersection and escape. I only caught glimpses, but I thought it was the drow elf.

Delicate Terror raised her voice, calling out gaily, “Smart girl. You, I’ll only hurt.”

Brain blank, I stammered the first words that fell into my mouth. “I have a video game about you, but…it’s…twenty years old.”

The holographic face tilted, giving me a skeptical, reproving, almost sarcastic look. Leaning in until I felt what had to be imaginary breath on my lips, she chided, “Never tell a lady how old you think she is, my treasure.” Fluid gurgled. The body holding me changed shape, shoulders broadening, hips narrowing, chest turning flatter and stiffer. The face barely altered, still pretty, maybe thinner lips and a slightly harder jaw. In a much deeper and definitely male voice, he added, “And never tell a gentleman how old you think he is unless you add that you prefer it that way.”

Was this thing hitting on me? Because I would almost be okay with that. Almost.

Shining black hair coils unwound from my body. Delicate Terror slid me tenderly into Celestial Wonder Meowpurr’s arms.

“You’re taking her to Toyland?” he asked sweetly.

She nodded, watching him with more than a little awe and fear in her expression.

“Then you’ll need this.” He cupped a graceful white hand over her cheek, leaned down, and kissed Meowpurr on the mouth. The kiss went on for several seconds, getting deeper all the time.

I’d have sworn the face was nothing but a hologram, and the mask underneath couldn’t move, but when he pulled away Meowpurr’s pupils were dilated and blood dripped out around her lips. She began to shake, just enough for me to feel because I was held against her body.

I began to squirm. “I don’t need to be carried.”

The struggle snapped Meowpurr out of her daze. Her grip on me tightened, too strong to escape, and she gave me a still blurry but concerned stare. “You don’t always have to be strong, Vanity. Let someone else rescue you occasionally.”

At that moment, a circular saw blade smacked into the back of Delicate Terror’s head, and the vampire dropped to the ground, blood pouring out of the wound.

Everyone froze for a moment, until the vampire’s laugh echoed from…no particular direction. Everywhere. “Oh, I like you. You’re better than the others. You have daring and initiative. It’s a shame I have to make an example of you.”

Someone in the crowd of bounty hunters screamed in pain, and kept screaming. As the others milled around, Delicate Terror stood back up with liquid grace, showing no sign of concern about the jagged disk still buried in his head. I grabbed a wrinkle of his suit, and begged, “Please. I don’t want anyone killed for me.”

The hologram face was gone, back to the stiff mask, but I heard malignant glee in his voice. “Rainbow pearl, I don’t kill people. They can’t have nightmares about me if they’re dead.”

He turned away, and so did Meowpurr, pulling my head against her chest so I couldn’t see behind me. She didn’t need to. When more people began screaming, I had no desire to find out why.

Meowpurr started walking, then running. She sped up. Soon she was sprinting down the sidewalk, weaving around people, faster than she should have been capable of even without my weight in her arms.

“How did he survive that? How did he do any of that?” I asked, still reeling from that encounter. From everything.

She blinked, some focus returning to her distant stare. She still sounded detached. “If anyone knew, they would try to find a way around it.”

I needed to keep Meowpurr talking. Her body might be running like a champion, but her mind seemed about to pass out. I asked, “What did he do to you?”

She shook her head. “Nothing worth worrying about. It’s much harder to pass the vampire curse than people think.”

Meowpurr ran some more. I tried to think of more topics to keep her awake. The problem was, this was the first time I’d gotten to be still in hours, and stiff, heavy exhaustion was setting in.

“I still don’t understand why you’re doing this for me,” I tried.

“The same reason you would,” she answered, with a touch of passion in the statement. Personally, I thought she had a much higher opinion of me than I deserved.

No one stopped us, or even tried, although we left a lot of alarmed pedestrians in our wake. Maybe by the time anyone recognized me, we were already gone. Maybe they’d all expected us to go in the opposite direction, toward the elves.

Buildings got wider, not quite as tall, and less ornate. Traffic, both vehicle and pedestrian, thinned. It had to be early morning, and these were serious, grey-coated people who didn’t like to be out at this hour.

Meowpurr’s marathon sprint slowed in front of a building that didn’t look particularly special. The few windows were all dark, yes, lights inside only hinted at through deeply tinted glass. It had no sign, and a large, sliding glass door like any building owned by one particular business.

She trotted in, wobbling now. The entrance screamed ”security chamber.” Grey slate floor and ceiling, metal lined walls, and the sliding doors at both ends might look like glass, but who knows what they actually were? Plus….

Well, in the alcove dominating one wall lurked a huge, pulsating, opalescent sphere. It made absolutely no sound, but looked thoroughly intimidating. The other wall had a service desk, and a doorway next to it leading back into what I thought was an apartment. I could only get glimpses past the creature filling the hall.

This had to be a human, but I had never imagined a biosculpt like this. She wasn’t just massive, surely thousands of kilograms. She didn’t just have a buttercup yellow, leathery skinned snake body as thick as a couch and at least six meters long. The hulking, oversized torso at the front….

Her head was elongated, animal, maybe saurian. Broad shoulders supported sleekly muscled arms as long as my body. Three pairs of smaller arms ranged down underneath those, and there was no question she was a woman, because—

Oh, well done, profanity filter. This was a whole new level of ridiculous. All I could see was a pixelated blur, but I was pretty sure she had chests, plural. If I looked inside my own shirt right now, would I see a blur, too? Sheesh.

In case none of that was weird enough, the front half of hairless animals that resembled dogs stuck out below that, and she used their legs to help pull her forward as she rushed up to intercept Meowpurr.

There was only one thing I could say to her. “Wow. You are wicked cool.”

The monster ignored me, engulfing Meowpurr’s face in both of her hands. Surprisingly small, gentle blue eyes peered into Meowpurr’s distorted pair, and the monster said in a low but perfectly normal woman’s voice, “Mew Mew Sparkle, is that a mainstreamer? What happened to you? What happened to your mouth?”

“I’m fine, Scylla. Just a vampire nip,” answered a groggy Meowpurr, whose nickname I wouldn’t be ungrateful enough to abuse.

“Throne of obsidian. I’ve got a potion,” Scylla whispered, slithering around to rummage around behind the desk, pulling out a bottle of gooey red stuff that looked suspiciously like biogel mixed with tomato juice.

“I’m fine,” Meowpurr repeated, just a bit more emphatically.

“Drink this. Drink this now,” the monster ordered, shoving the bottle up against her mouth.

Meowpurr wasn’t stupid enough to argue with something bigger than an aircar, and gulped the whole thing down. When Scylla pulled the bottle away, the werecat blinked, pupils gradually returning to slits. She stretched her cheeks, and shivered, starting at her whiskers and running right down to her feet.

Scylla patted her back and pushed Meowpurr toward the inner door. “Go up to the den. You need to sleep. The mainstreamer can come back later.”

Energy returning, Meowpurr squeezed me tight and gave Scylla a stern, defiant glare. “I’ve granted her hospitality.”

Scylla stopped. It wasn’t easy to read expressions on that elongated face, but her pause and long stare shouted disbelief. Finally, she slumped her shoulders and let out a sigh. “Well, for the nothing it’s worth, I’ll back you up. Go on inside.”

Celestial Wonder Meowpurr stalked up to the inner door, which slid open automatically. Behind us, Scylla slithered in front of the outer door, blocking it with her bulk and watching the outside world with all eight arms folded.

We stepped into a magical forest. No, more than that. A surreal, multi-level wilderness. A whole gravity grid had to have been built into the walls, because the grassy floor wrapped up and around to the next level. A path flanked by crudely carved stone monoliths followed that twisting course, and around us flourished trees in a dizzying array of colors. The ones nearest the front door had charcoal dark trunks with glowing white symbols carved into their surface. Way down past the trees, I could make out a pond with luminescent jellyfish that floated over and around, not in it. Everything smelled like leaves and fresh water, with maybe a touch of rot.

I gaped, my head twisting this way and that to take it all in. “This doesn’t look like a Toyland to me.”

Meowpurr snickered, but her eyes blazed with angry pride. “It’s complicated. Toyland is where the Enchanted live who don’t fit into the elves’ neat little categories. We choose who and what we are.”

I gave her a grin. “You really don’t like elves.”

She rolled her head in a circle, growling in both amusement and exasperation. “Oh, don’t get me started.”

My grin widened, and I tucked my arms behind my head, an awkward position while being cradled like a baby, but hey, why not? “I think you’ve earned it.” What she’d really earned was my actually getting to know her, and this was a start.

She groaned, and the complaints burst out in a rush. “They have no style, no imagination, and the whole movement lets itself be defined by the least interesting people in it. The free elves are merely dull, but the high elves are the snottiest, most useless, laziest narcissists you can imagine. The half elves are adventurers who want to claim they’re cool without earning it, the drow do nothing but sleep around and murder, and the wood elves are psychopaths.”

I snorted, but Meowpurr was just getting started, snarling at the air, “It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just their society that was dull, but their transformations come out of a can, and it’s a boring can. They all look like a model with pointy ears and some unusual colors if they’re daring. Have you seen high elves? Imagine an entire building of willowy blondes stamped out of a machine. The wood elves are physically identical. I’m not kidding. Scylla’s transformation has more integrity than every elf in this city put together.”

Fangs bared, Meowpurr twitched her head back toward the entrance. “You met Delicate Terror. They’re a crazy sadist who gives and takes what they want, but do you know why they’re the queen of vampires? Because they didn’t just take the vampire treatment. They made themselves something freakish and awful out of their own mind, with powers no one else thought to add to their body.”

Green eyes, the peculiar glassy green of a cat’s, stared at me deliriously as she pleaded, “I mean, look at me. I’m no Scylla, but I did more than add fur and a funny nose. I’ve been finding myself, what I really want to look like, since I was eight, and I’m close, now. These eyes? They don’t work like a human’s. I’m still getting used to the changes in my brain’s vision center. I got a chameleon field because I wanted to be more, something magical that ghosts through the night, and the spikes are art. I’m my own thing.”

A momentary pause, and she sneered. “The necromancers all go for a canned, cookie-cutter look, but they have the guts to get their guts taken out, to commit to being something totally inhuman. The elves have no courage to express themselves, and most of them have nothing to express.”

She took a deep breath, furry torso pushing me up a few centimeters, and let it out again in a drained sigh. “At least the drow are useful. They kill off most of the stupid rich kids who think this is a party.”

I had to giggle, which leaned my own head back, and I saw something that gave me pause. “Okay, but who gives preteen kids a biosculpt?” I asked.

Because that’s what I’d seen. A couple of girls probably two years younger than me sat in one of the trees, watching the path. They were obviously no longer human, with little black hooves, sharp black horns, and furless tails that ended in heart shaped spears. One of the two had pale cream color skin and brick red hair, while the other was all different shades of blue and purple.

Meowpurr hissed quickly, “Don’t look at them! They’re imps, and they’re trouble.”

I’d had enough trouble tonight, so I obeyed, which was easy because I’d have to lean back to see the imps anyway. Instead I studied Meowpurr’s scowl curiously. “Okay, but my question stands.”

“They’re not children. They’re adults who chose to be stuck at that age when they’re transformed,” she explained, voice low. She definitely did not want their attention, or to talk about them.

I gave her that, and let us get far enough down the path that we should be out of sight before saying, “You know I can walk now, right? You’re starting to shake again.”

Definitely tired, her cat-green eyes unfocusing again and whiskers drooped, she snapped, “No, you can’t, but…hey, Sunshine!”

We’d been passing by a massive wooden statue of a fox, carved sitting up on its haunches, which thanks to the twisted path stood horizontal compared to the building’s entrance. Of course, so did we right now, and it’s the door that looked weird in the entrance. One of the fox’s legs popped open, and out walked a woman who was furry and orange from the waist down, with back-kinked legs and a fluffy tail. Her upper half seemed human except for the black and orange layered hair, the pointy ears, and the stubby, dull horns. A badly hand-stitched green tunic covered most of it, so ‘seemed’ was the best I could do.

The half-animal woman was probably twice our age, and rushed over with an immediately kind, mothering smile. “Mew Mew Sparkle! With a guest? Oh my goodness golly gracious, have you looked at yourselves? You’re both half dead!” She zoomed up to us, already squinting at Meowpurr’s mouth, and gasped. “And is that a vampire bite?”

Meowpurr shook her head, eyes half-closed, an attempt at reassuring and dismissive that mostly looked sleepy. “Already treated.”

The half fox rushed back into her statue house, and returned seconds later pulling a bundle of jellyfish. Floating jellyfish. Docile floating jellyfish, because they stayed where she placed them as she fashioned a trio of chairs and a table out of them. “Your friend still needs something. Sit. Both of you,” Sunshine ordered, with an adorably determined frown on her pudgy, freckly face.

Meowpurr carried me over to one of the chairs, and I pushed free of her arms to take my weight off her faster as she slid me onto it. One jellyfish supported my butt, and one my back, and….

Oh, this was so comfy. They felt like freshly inflated balloons, and sagged just a bit as I settled in place. A couple of little bitty jellyfish swam up, unprompted, to frame me at elbow height and make sure I couldn’t slip off, although sheesh, I wasn’t that tired.

I definitely could stand to lean back and enjoy the wonderful padded luxury, and what felt like seconds later Sunshine called out, “Tea is ready!”

I blinked. She had a whole metal tea service laid out on the middle jellyfish’s mostly flat top. Probably not real silver, but still fancier than I’d ever drunk from. I got a cup with butterfly designs engraved on the sides, and took a sip.

Sweet, bitter, and creamy all at once. Delicious. I really should tell Sunshine that, but I didn’t have the energy.

My cup dropped onto the ground. I ought to pick that up too, but it had been such a long night, and I was so comfortable now.

As sleep crept over me like a blanket, I realized I’d been drugged.

Chapter Twenty-One

I opened my eyes, and threw a punch at the face above me.

My fist hit the elf right in the cheek, but it had been too wild a swing, at a face too far away. Her head barely rocked out of place, and while it might have tightened with a bit of pain, the woman’s smile only got wider. In a calm, richly feminine voice she said, “Yes, I’d say she’s awake. Good morning, Miss Rose.”

I was lying on something weird, soft, and textured but with almost no give. Everything was green. I had never seen so much green in my life, including in the hair and gown of the woman regarding me with her hands on her knees.

My brain caught up a little more. Trees. Those were trees, above and around us, old fashioned trees thick with green leaves. And the stuff I lay on was grass, which spread everywhere in thick, odd-smelling profusion. Blue sky and yellow sunlight peeked through the branches all over, and I fought the urge to twist around out of this sunbeam. That couldn’t be real sunlight, and I wasn’t in danger.

Not in danger of ultraviolet poisoning, anyway.

So, this had to be the Glade that Liriel kept talking about, and the elf woman’s elegantly understated jewelry included a thin gold tiara with molded leaves, making her Morgain. I didn’t see Liriel. I saw three other elves, two men waiting like serene, patient, mindless servants, and a woman who had her hand on the hilt of a sword sheathed on her back. She glared at me in a way that suggested punching her queen deserved death, and only the queen’s good-humored lack of offense kept me alive. They all had those weird heart shaped faces and touch of green in their skin that defined Liriel’s kind of elf.

“Vanity,” I corrected automatically. Then I mentally caught up another step, and sat sharply upright, pointing an accusing finger at her. “You had me drugged!”

Her smile widened another notch on one side, and vivid purple eyes gleamed. The elf queen had a sense of humor. “The wild fae are unpredictable, disdain the social standards of the rest of us, and have peculiar concepts of hospitality. I was told she thought she was doing you a favor, that you looked exhausted and in need of rest. You have been asleep more than a day, so perhaps she was right. Personally, I would have offered you a guest bedroom.”

Okay, I smirked as well. Liriel’s queen has a sly self-awareness that I didn’t think elves—

More than a day!? I grabbed at my clothes, which at least were exactly the same way I’d left them. Fishing my SPUD out of my hoodie pocket, I got out a pill and dry-swallowed it. I’d been asleep the whole time, so this should be fine.

“Has there been any trouble?” I asked, looking around suspiciously. All I saw was more grass, more trees, an occasional elf wandering about, and little white buildings set against absolutely huge tree trunks. Like, six meters thick.

That touch of sly amusement didn’t go away, but Morgain’s smile gentled with both reassurance and satisfaction. “None. You will find peace here, Vanity, if you want it. No doubt your enemies rage and storm in the acid world, but they cannot touch you in the land of the elves.”

“There was a blue elf after the bounty who got between me and your tunnels.” Admittedly, she’d been dressed only a hundredth as tastelessly as her underground kin.

Morgain nodded, the movement slow and even. The woman radiated calm like even a robot couldn’t. “Of course. Once you were down here, she knew she could not touch you. Even our deep kin know that bringing acid world business into Elfland will unleash the ire of all the other factions.” The elf queen’s smile widened teasingly again, and she held up her right hand with the plain gold ring on one finger. “That said, they would love to capture you and Liriel for purely personal revenge, so don’t go wandering until you’re ready for adventure.”

She held out the ringed hand, and I took it to be polite as I rolled up to my feet. She watched me with those eerily opalescent eyes—I had to get me some of those—and finally murmured, “Your sister describes you as much more talkative.”

I reached an arm behind me and scratched the back of my head, switching my weight from foot to foot awkwardly. “Yeah, well…” Ugh, I hated to put it this way, especially to a stranger, but Liriel had earned it. “I love Liriel, but adventure is the only thing we have in common. I can’t do this elf thing. I’m having trouble not making jokes about how you talk and asking how you faked this forest.”

Her smile still serene and a touch amused, Morgain folded her hands together in front of her stomach. “A great deal of magic, a great deal of hard work with our hands, including my own, and a very, very generous gift of the largest basements in West Angel City. I believe the Glade is the largest of all.”

This time I gave her a direct, challenging, chin-out glare. “Okay, but…I’m never going to be an elf. Ever. Ever, ever.”

It rolled off of Morgain effortlessly. Maybe her smile widened just a touch more, got a bit more gentle. “Then don’t, Vanity. The last thing I want is for anyone to become an elf who would ever regret that choice. You can stay here as just who you are as long as you want to, and I will keep you safe. There are more paths to magic than Liriel has dreamed of, and if you find one along the way, wonderful. If not, I will be proud to have given you a place of peace.”

I let out a sigh, a shrug, and then a groan. “You may be the hardest person to be rude to that I’ve ever met. Did you know that, lady?”

Morgain laughed, which she did with the same elegant richness as everything else. “A skill cultivated through hundreds of meetings with other Enchanted rulers, and business executives of the acid world who are convinced that I must sell them their basements back or elevate their children immediately to nobility.”

Now I smirked. “That sounds tedious and infuriating.”

She flashed me a brief grin, a moment of playfulness rather than serenity. “I’ve taken to experiments with crafting insults that won’t even be noticed, but that’s a game that must be played with care. If you’ve accepted my offer of refuge, may I show you to your guest home?”

I gave another shrug. “Yeah, why not.”

She set off, and I tromped along behind, pretending I didn’t notice the pleasant softness of grass and dirt under my shoes. Leaning my head way back, I stared up and tried to find the ceiling. The hugely thick tree trunks must conceal support pillars, right? And that blue sky would be paint, but boy did it look far away.

The forested part turned out to not be that big. We quickly emerged into more of a meadow, with a river that wound through it in a curve from somewhere in the forest to what looked like a waterfall dropping down to a lower level. That had to be an actual wall, but boy did the horizons look convincing.

This place was pretty. Stupid pretty. And it smelled wonderful as if green was a scent as well as a color, fresh and energizing. The trees and bushes I saw looked like they had fruit growing from the branches, and an actual goat, too ugly to be a robot, grazed on one of the bushes.

Morgain drifted elegantly over the grass, her dress hardly catching on it. That grace, in turn, was interrupted when she and the goat scowled at each other, with the elf queen pointing fingers at her own eyes and at it.

Elves, mostly with green hair and the kind of practical jacket-and-breeches outfit Liriel favored, watched us go past. A lot of them bowed or curtsied briefly to their queen, and stared at me.

We ended up at one of the little white cottages, and Morgain stood next to the open door, hands folded and giving me an inviting smile. “Yours, for as long as you choose to stay. I hope you find it comfortable.”

Stepping up to the doorway, I peeked inside. “Uh…yeah, this will do,” is all I could say. Shiny brown wood, white painted wood, little fat cushions in chairs, this single room building had so much simple, elegant furniture that it baffled me how they kept it all so perfectly positioned and in order. The low bed with its pale sheets had a surface so flat I couldn’t imagine it had ever been used before, but there was no way they’d made this place new just for me.

A plate sat on the immaculately clean white counter, and on that plate lay three of the thickest slices of bread I’d ever seen. A painful hollow in my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. I managed to retain just enough courtesy to glance at Morgain and get an encouraging smile before rushing over and stuffing food in my mouth.

Was this stuff bread? It kind of was, but thick and chewy like no bread I’d ever had. That and the taste made me think it was made more of vegetables than flour, but it also teased my tongue with a blissful touch of honey.

A silver pitcher next to the plate contained milk, which I drank straight from that container instead of searching around for a cup. I was hungry, okay? And milk is expensive. Maybe it came out of that goat.

With perfect timing, as I swallowed the last bite of the first slice of bread, an annoyingly goofy boyish voice echoed around the Glade. “Hi, I’m Fry Smiley. I can see that you’re trying to hide from me, and it’s not going to work!”

“I told you—” My gripe got cut off when I saw Morgain’s expression. The serene smile was gone, replaced by a stiff mask of utter fury.

Smiley boomed, “You’ve got a murdering little so-and-so kid named Vanity Rose in there, and unless you give her to me, I’ll…uh…blot out the sun!”

Everything went very suddenly dark.

Almost everything. A half second of that and I spotted little lights out through the window, and one close by, on Morgain’s right hand. She lifted the faintly glowing gold ring, growled, “Oh, no, I am not having this,” and shouted a word in elvish.

The lights went back on as suddenly as they’d gone out.

Smiley immediately turned whiny. “Hey! How did you do that? This is the worst code I have ever seen; it changes as I look at it and the programmer comments are useless. This one says ‘The Unfortunate Goblin, page 128!’ Fine, if you want to be like that, how about…this?”

The ground shook under my feet. In the distance, something cracked.

Morgain, beringed hand raised, shouted some more elvish, and the shaking stopped.

As she kept incanting, Fry Smiley’s voice from the sky hyukked, “Oops! That’s a file error. Why don’t—”

His voice shut off.

“Percy! Where is she?” shouted Morgain, as stiff and haughty as an empress now.

“Who?” answered an elf scrambling toward her, who I thought was the bodyguard from when I’d woken up.

“You know who I mean. Nevermind, the ring will lead me to her,” snarled Morgain. Waving her hand around, palm out, she stomped down toward the river, where it fell out of the Glade.

Percy, voice hushed, scurried after her. “Lady Morgain, you can’t do this. The other rulers let you keep them both because they know you won’t use them, especially together!”

Legs stiff, elegance forgotten, Morgain marched so fast that I had to jog to keep up. We were fast closing on a character in a limp brown robe who squatted in the mud at the edge of the river, poking at something in the water with her stick.

“They will support me unanimously. I guarantee it. Our magic must remain pure,” Morgain hissed at her guard. Then she pulled the Ring of Tolken from her finger and held it out as we reached the robed figure. “Mud witch! All of Elfland needs your powers.”

The crouched character lifted her head to look at us, and I screamed and fell on my backside on the grass.

Her eyes!

My yelp got Morgain and Percy’s attention. The elf queen’s fury cracked, replaced by confused concern as she looked back at me. The ring still held out, she promised, “Vanity, it’s okay. She doesn’t hurt people.”

No, it wasn’t okay, and it didn’t matter if the ”mud witch” hurt people. Couldn’t they see what was in front of them?

The young woman stood up to regard the three of us. She had a robe, but only draped over her back like a cape, and she only really used the sleeves. The rest hung open, and the only other piece of clothing she wore was a belt sash, draped loosely on her hips rather than tying the robe shut. The belt’s only and obvious purpose was to hold a dozen little bundles of roots and sticks and leaves, each with its own weird shape. Other than that, she was naked except for mud.

Of course, you could also say that other than a few strips of leather, I was naked except for string. Both were technically true, but wildly deceptive. This girl was so covered in mud almost up to the shoulders that clothing wouldn’t have mattered. It started out gooey and brown and wet around her ankles, and dried the farther it got up, until it pulled away in stiff flakes around what would be a regular outfit’s neckline. Each lost flake revealed another layer of mud underneath, and hints of more mud under that. The robe, which showed hints it had once been gaudy in red, blue, and purple, was now mud color.

The girl wearing this mess was still a teenager, I’d guess a couple of years older than me. Her tangled green hair was the only hint of biosculpting, and could have come out of a hair machine like mine. Certainly, her soft, just-a-little-plump shape was natural, because nobody ever made themselves look like that. Her green eyes….

I made myself look into those eyes for as long as I could, and then yanked my gaze away.

Those were my eyes. Eyes I’d seen in a mirror, with tiny pinhole pupils, darting suspiciously and set in a twitchy, jittery face. That was the expression of an unmedicated machine telepath.

The mud-covered girl babbled and stammered, with little pauses and her voice jerking around like her eyes. “Zero zero zero. You want nothing. They want nothing. Because there is nothing, is there? She gets it. Hello, sister Vanity, tell them about ones and zeros and everyone is zero because no one is only one.”

I rummaged in my pockets again, but this time my hands were shaking so hard I could barely get the cover off my SPUD’s storage compartment. Everything inside spilled into my pocket, and I grabbed some pills and patches and pulled them out in a mass. My voice squeaked like rusty metal as I staggered upright. “What is wrong with you people, leaving her like this? Here, sister, take these!”

Morgain dropped the ring into the mud witch’s hand, and stepped between us, grabbing me by the shoulders. She scowled down at me with implacable determination. “It won’t help.”

I squirmed, but I was still too shaken to get free. “She’s not a witch, she’s sick, and I’d rather die than leave her like this to save my own life!”

“No, I mean the drugs won’t work,” Morgain hissed, and then closed her eyes, forcing her expression to soften into compassion.

Which was when Smiley’s voice came out of the river. “Well, sweet potatoes, I had to get to step sixty-seven of my technical service script to find communications access again, but I’m back and I’m figuring out this gobbledygook you call code!”

Ignoring him, Morgain opened her eyes again, looking into mine with pain of her own. Quiet, firm, but sympathetic, she whispered to me, “We’re not monsters, Vanity. We’ve tried. The chief warlock created a binding collar that kept her under control for a week before she invented a counter spell, and that full week of regular medicine had no effect at all. None of it works since she had her magic awakened.”

“At least she doesn’t think we’re trying to poison her these days,” grumbled Percy, twisting awkwardly and looking like a guilty young woman and not a brave elf warrior.

The mud witch looked down at the stream, then up at the sky, down again, up again, over and over, nervous and confused. At least, that was her expression. She sounded completely confident as she greeted, “Hi, you’re Fry Smiley, and you’re here to kill Vanity Rose and her giraffe!”

“Yes! Someone understands!” shouted Smiley. “I just have to figure out why these functions labeled ‘lightning bolt’ aren’t doing anything.”

Still focused on me, Morgain whispered, “The faction leaders leave her with me because—”

I finished for her, although my own voice sounded dead to me, like it came from someone else. “—she hears the computers that control your magic talking, and can cast spells nobody else even thought possible.”

Morgain’s head dipped another few centimeters, and she let her breath out in a rush. “You understand.”

“Better than you.”

The elf queen looked me in the eye for just a moment, pain and pity tightening her expression. There was only one reason I would be carrying these medicines, after all.

Then she turned away from me, and took the mud witch’s freckled face in her hands. I put my arms over my face so I could only hear her murmur, “Please, take the ring and help your sister. Cast this evil spell out of our systems, so it can never return.”

“He’s annoying, isn’t he? Not enough emptiness. Emptiness!” The mud witch’s voice raised to a scream, “Why aren’t you empty???”

After that, I heard scratching, and Fry Smiley’s clownish protests. “Uh, hello down there? Shouldn’t you be paying attention to me? I’m Fry Smiley, and I’m going to destroy everything you love in fire and electricity unless you—ow!”

Shuddering, I peeked. The mud witch had her stick, and was in the middle of drawing ring after ring of elaborate geometric designs in the mud with it. Under her breath she hummed music I vaguely recognized, the theme song of a movie I’d loved when I was small.

In my imagination—worse, in my memory—I heard the voices talking to her. Dozens of them, hundreds, always talking. Under that noise thoughts would shatter into pieces, until the voices were the only thing that made sense. Those voices didn’t stop even during sleep, so there was no way to know which nightmares were real.

Outside of my head Smiley kept chattering, in increasing panic. “Is that an eviction notice? I don’t read any of your stupid languages! Ow, that was my animal recognition, and I’d just rebuilt it after— aah! That really, really hurts! Fine, I’m getting out of your stupid computers, but I’ll be back!”

The voice from the river went quiet. The mud witch jabbed the dirt with her stick for one final dot, and smiled. It would have been beatific if her left cheek didn’t keep twitching. “No, he won’t, because time and space!”

Morgain stepped in front of me again, blocking my sight of the witch. Leaning down, the elf queen covered my eyes with one of her hands, and laid her cheek against the top of my head. “I told you, Vanity, you are safe here. Period.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Celestial Wonder Meowpurr leaned over me, her lip jutting out and glassy eyes wide. “What do you mean you can’t get your magic awakened?”

“Oh, I can, I’ll just—” I cut off, wrapping my arms around myself and wincing. The memory of the mud witch’s eyes was going to haunt me for a long time. Living this near that poor girl hurt enough, and Meowpurr’s desire to visit at every possible opportunity was helping. Mostly.

Speaking of the werecat, she fell back flat onto the grass, her arms outstretched and smacking the ground in frustration. “That suuuuucks! I had it all worked out!” Rearing back up, she spread her clawed fingers and whispered, “Picture this: Werescorpion.”

I tried, without much success, not to snicker. “You are not helping.”

Collapsing back again, Meowpurr waved her arms up at the sky. “But I had it all figured out! A sponsor! A biosculptor! A monster to help you with your background! Now it’s ruined. You can’t join Toyland without your magic awakened. That’s like the only thing we’re stricter about than the elves.”

Sitting up, I poked her in the nose, and with a fake scowl but honest sentiment reminded her, “I’m only here to wait out Fry Smiley. I have no desire to join the Enchanted.”

“That’s a shame, because we certainly want you. I’ve received messages and even a couple of visitors about it. Care to meet them?” asked Morgain, sweeping past us with a smile and beckoning fingers.

We sprang upright and followed, while an elf carrying wine for her royal pointy earedness gave Celestial Wonder Meowpurr dirty looks for the unforgivable crime of having any creativity whatsoever. Thankfully, we were headed away from the muddy downstream end of the river, toward the upstream end where a series of scenic waterfalls fulfilled a deep elven need for scenic waterfalls. That wasn’t a joke. Benches and little tents scattered around the pools and stream up here, so Morgain’s people could find excuses to do as much as possible next to a waterfall. Brightly colored fish flickered in the current.

I eyed the bodyguard, Percy, giving sword fighting lessons to four elves around Meowpurr’s age. I’d hoped that learning to sword fight might break up some of the boredom of living in a gilded cage, but no matter what the topic, every elf lesson started with telling you to feel your magic. What a biosculpted neural reactivity to radiation had to do with swords, I could not tell you, but since I couldn’t do step one nobody would let me move on to step two.

One thing elves could do with scenic waterfalls was hide doorways, so we picked our way along a path of rocks that circled a sheet of icy water, to the entrance of a dark, stone-lined tunnel that led toward the Wilderness, whatever that was.

In that shadowy hall, a demoness waited. She couldn’t be anything else. Pushing two meters tall, the sleekly muscled woman boasted red skin, heavy black hooves, and even more black spikes sticking out of her body than Meowpurr. The cat’s spikes were mere decorative ridges, but spikes stuck out of the demoness every which way, all thin and long and sharp. She wore plates of black armor either designed to fit over them, or to provide spikes where her body didn’t have them naturally. I couldn’t tell for sure. Throw in the twitchy tail, the fangs, and the six curling horns, and this lady did present quite a display.

Morgain raised a sleek green eyebrow. “Where did the warlock go?”

Lisping faintly, the demoness flexed her gauntleted fists. “I convinced him that he had business elsewhere.”

The elf queen sighed, tossing her long hair in disgust. “And now you’re going to force me to argue his side for him, to avoid being unfair.”

The demoness just grinned. Morgain turned back to me, one arm clasped across her front and the other’s fingertips touching her exasperated brow. “Vanity, as much as I find it distasteful, you have made a strong impression on my evil colleagues. The necromancers, the warlocks, and the demons all are hoping to recruit you.”

I put my own hands on my hips, giving the demoness the fish eye. She grinned, showing off white fangs past gleaming black lips. Maybe that’s why the demons wanted me, for my makeup skills. Not letting up on the skepticism, I pointed out, “I’ve never met a demon before. Why would you guys be after me?”

“Spies. We have many, many spies,” replied the demoness, flicking her equally black tongue off of those lips. I was rapidly learning that ”smug” was the favorite emotion of all Enchanted.

Tilting my head to the side, I turned a skeptical look up at Morgain. “You have told all these people that I can’t have the Enchanted neural treatment, right?”

The demoness lifted one shoulder and dropped it in a lazy shrug. Then she leaned forward and down to bring her small, hungry smile to my eye level. “Oh, it’s disappointing, yes, but we can keep you in…noncombat roles. I hear you prefer those anyway?”

Unintimidated, I looked right up into her blood red eyes with their weird horizontal bar pupils. “The occasional brawl can be fun, but when things escalate to death, you lose me.”

The demoness’s smile faltered, and she shot a resentful glance up at Morgain before her lips turned up again. “There are things I can’t share with an enemy in front of me, but I believe my leaders want you for your fashion sense. We have much better transformation access than the other factions, and if you stick to a body plan, we can offer you decorative changes over and over, without nerve degradation. The legions of corruption have ways of exploiting style as practical skill, and you, child, have style.”

Standing at the opposite wall, arms folded, Morgain’s lips pulled into a tight line of disgust before she added, “As for the warlocks, I suspect they like the same traits. You don’t need to be able to cast spells to build the tools to do so, to build armor and weapons, sorcerous engines and traps. The warlocks are more deeply into the craft side of the Enchanted world than any other faction, and must see that potential in you.”

With a sigh and a slow shake of her head, Morgain concluded, “As for the necromancers, I have no idea. You’ll have to guess what they want out of you. Their interest is real and not hostile. The deep elves asked for you, but that’s a trap. I’d rather you not join any of the evil factions, but whatever you choose I will support.”

The demon woman’s eyes bulged, that look of surprise my only warning before she was yanked off her feet and thrown backwards down the hall. Morgain yelped, wrapped her left arm around both me and Meowpurr, and jerked out of the tunnel with her right hand held out in warding. “Back! The trees and the light reject you, unnatural thing!”

A paste white child stood at the edge between shade and the sunlight of the Glade. Everything about her was white. Hair, dress, teeth, tongue, even her irises. The darker rims of those irises and her pupils were still pale enough to be hard to spot.

This was the thing that had been following me for…weeks, now?

She lifted a skinny arm and pointed a finger at me. “Mine,” she said in a quiet, squeaky voice.

I swallowed, wetting my tongue and putting my thoughts and words in careful order. “That’s a vampire, right? Who gets themselves biosculpted into a ten-year-old girl, then into a vampire?”

Clinging to me anxiously, her own voice weak to start, Meowpurr corrected me, “No, I think this one really is ten years old.”

“Was, when it happened,” said Morgain, hand still held out and watching the little girl like a hawk. “We call her a ghost, but the difference between ghost and vampire is academic. Her parents died and put this in their will. Maybe they thought it would help her. By the time we found out about it, it was too late.”

I started to wriggle up and out of Morgain’s grip, and when she jerked me a step farther back instead, I complained, “So, you just let her wander around like this?”

Morgain sounded older, more serious and stuffy and cold than she ever had before. “I hope you get the chance to find out someday that even when you’re rich and powerful, there are people you cannot help. What she wants is a human sacrifice. Don’t you, dead girl?”

Twisting her nearly floor-length hair in her hands, the ghost whimpered, “My queen promised her to me, that she would love and protect me forever.”

Okay, I wanted to help the kid, but, “That sounded very…final.”

“In an ‘infected with the vampire curse’ way, yes,” agreed Morgain.

With the—

I glared at Celestial Wonder Meowpurr next to me. She wormed her hands free to hold them up for defense, while a touch of meow entered her voice. “I wouldn’t have introduced you to Delicate Terror if I’d had a choice! I wouldn’t have introduced me to Delicate Terror if I’d had a choice.”

Morgain pulled us another two steps back, declaring, “This conversation is over. Guards!”

But the ghost girl had already vanished, and the demoness as well.

As women with swords and bows got between us and the tunnel, Morgain loosened her grip and sighed. “Now I wish I could convince the wild fae to take you, but they don’t listen to anyone.”

“Nope, we don’t,” agreed Meowpurr, covering her receding panic with fragile pride.

“Vanity? Where are you?” called another voice, one that only existed in my head.

“Cappy?” I asked, looking around excitedly.

Morgain let out another sigh, this one of relief. Relaxing into her usual calm, friendly, faintly teasing personality, she declared, “I see that our more pleasant guests have arrived. Why don’t we—?”

I took off running, into the forest, shouting, “Cappy!?”

A loud, whining yip answered me in the distance, and I headed for that.

We met at the edge of the meadow, where Cappy and I stampeded toward each other. At the last moment I dived, wrapped my arms around his fat hairy body, and we spun to a halt in the grass together.

“Vanity!” shouted an unexpected voice, and as soon as I climbed to my feet, Chaos tackled me. He didn’t have the weight to knock me down, but seemed content just to cling to my middle.

Strolling more patiently across the field came Liriel, with Fidget behind her.

Fidget? Yes, Fidget. White smock, purple hair, and all.

My thoughts snarled. Chaos and Fidget were the last two people I ever, ever expected to see in Elfland.

Liriel saw me looking at the other two, and slowed down. Her face turned pale, tight, and she couldn’t meet my eyes.

Metal talons squeezed my leg gently. I looked down at Cappy, whose black eyes did not flinch from mine at all. Softly but directly, he said, “SPUD bought the Foundation, and stripped its assets. There’s no money to keep the orphanage running.”

My knees stopped working, and the only reason I sat down rather than fell down was that Cappy caught me with his front four legs.

Her voice shrill, words skipping and stumbling, Liriel explained, “I can find Chaos and Fidget places here, I know it. Monsters and traps are Enchanted passions. Ajax will—will be adopted early. The others. We’re. We’re trying.”

I took a few seconds to concentrate on my breathing, on not choking myself on the burning tide rising up through my body.

Fry Smiley.

He couldn’t get me here, so he hurt who I love.

In a whisper, because I couldn’t trust anything else, I asked, “Cappy, are you with me?”

“To the grave,” he answered, one paw squeezing my shoulder and another my thigh.

Calm. I had to be calm, to keep my body tense so that I wouldn’t start shaking, because this anger felt like it could rip me apart. Completely calm, I said, “We tried hiding and being careful. Now I’m going to finish the job I was hired to do.”

“How?” he asked, then turned his head away, eyes squeezed shut, scratching at his head for questioning me.

I caught his wrist, because I had the answer. Smiley had shoved the pieces in my face.

Looking up at Meowpurr, I asked, “Can I borrow your SPUD?”

She’d been wringing her hands, shifting from foot to foot awkwardly. At the question she let out a brief squeal, and pawed at her coat pockets until she came up with the SPUD. Holding it out nervously, she said, “Sure, but the last time I turned it on, Smiley noticed and started yelling until I turned it off again.”

I grinned, my anger turning from gut-knotting pain to gleefully cruel anticipation. “Good.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Which meant that when the darkness of cloudy night fell, Cappy and I trudged up the side of a ruined building toward one of its few lights, and stepped around the corner into the crater that formed the garage of Mrs. and Mrs. Vandai.

I reached down and scratched his head, with its fur like a rough scrub brush. He pressed back into the scratching. In a subdued monotone that didn’t entirely scrub out his doubts, he repeated, “So. We find the robot that broke here, lure Smiley into it, and deactivate him.”

I gave him a smirk. “You know he’ll fall for it. I swear he’s getting stupider.”

“Everything he knows, he learned in cyberspace,” Cappy mused, which was harsher than any insult I could come up with.

“What if…?” Cappy started, then trailed off, head ducked low and haunted.

I snapped my fingers twice, still grinning. “Go on. You raise the objections; I trample them on my way to victory. That’s why I kidnapped you and forced you to be my conscience.”

He nodded, looking up at me directly again. “What if the murder robot isn’t here?”

Knowing the answers for the first time in what felt like months tasted delicious, and I saved that pleasure as I flourished my hand in circles. “Not a problem at all, my loyal human trapped in a rodent’s body. This building was never properly cleared out and has all kinds of junk. We don’t need the killer robot itself. He’ll download himself into anything he can use to attack me, but with a murder bot he won’t stop for even stupid thoughts.”

“Assuming he has access to it,” Cappy countered, with an expectant tone.

I rewarded that tone by knocking on the Vandais’ garage door.

The taller, dark-haired Mrs. Vandai answered this time, in a pin-stripe suit and a surprised, curious smile. I saw no sign of her silver-haired wife, but their sleek metal cat jumped up on the kitchen table and watched me with its three red eyes, as intent as if it were targeting home defense weapons.

I bobbed politely, clasped my hands behind me as if I were Mimi, and greeted, “Good evening, ma’am. Do you still have that extension cord I could borrow, and some sort of transmitter? Anything that will hook up to cyberspace, then rebroadcast.”

She rolled her eyes in amusement, turned, and walked back into the house. As I lingered by the door her voice rang out from behind a corner, accompanied by the shuffling of boxes and the clatter of electronics. “That will be easy. We must have five old routers we’re not using. And this.” Returning, she brought three disks, and poured them into my arms. One was the cyberspace broadcast router. Clear enough. The others had the two halves of a short extension cord sticking out.

I turned those over. What they were seemed obvious, but…. “Is this a wireless power cord? Isn’t that expensive?”

She shrugged, careless and detached. “Monica didn’t want you stuck having to set up right next to us, or run power cords for a hundred meters. Speaking of which….”

With a few steps, she pulled open a kitchen drawer, dragged a pair of regular extension cords out of the mess, and returned to place them in the pile in my arms. This time, Mrs. Vandai took hold of my wrists when she did. Her expression sharpened, studying my face as she said, “The police came by, and they said the most ridiculous things, such as you being convicted of ramming a radioactive waste tanker into a boat transporting rescued puppies. What’s going on?”

I looked her right back in the eyes without flinching. “I’m in trouble, but I’m about to fix that. Then maybe I can go home.”

That sentence might as well have been one of the Enchanted’s magic spells. Mrs. Vandai released my wrists immediately, her detached and businesslike smile returning. “Well, we’re not going to get in the way of that.”

I flashed her a wink, plugged one half of the extension cord into the outlet under her window, and waltzed off with Cappy into the ruins.

His drones lit up as soon as we entered the black inner corridors, and he swung his box shaped head from side to side, considering. “Search pattern?”

I pointed with a finger. “I’ll go down, you go up.”

He nodded. One of the drones lifted off his shoulder and floated up beside mine. “I’ll brain yell if I find anything, and you can tell this camera if you do.”

After that, I spent a mostly boring hour, maybe two, poking through rooms of dusty furniture and chunks of broken wall, looking for a robot worth using in a trap. The most intact rooms had bodies in them, and I didn’t search those. That might be why it was Cappy who called me first. “I found it.”

I couldn’t speak to him directly with ten floors between us, but I followed his little drone up an elevator shaft, through a section of the building I couldn’t identify because of all the damage. If we weren’t near the roof, the building would have collapsed from so many broken walls. In the open space, the new piping of the plumbing the squatters involved was obvious. All the bodies had been taken away, but the floor, ceiling, and wrecked furniture showed ancient stains. Lots of stains.

At the far end, by the outer wall of the building, lay a robot just barely identifiable as the same model as Ms. Understanding. She’d been burned, punctured, and sliced deeply in multiple places. The body still hung together, with both arms obviously serviceable by how they extended with skinless metal fingers curled like claws.

Two holes went right through the middle of her chest, and one through her head. Several more riddled the windows behind her, each surrounded by a spiderweb of cracks. Rain had gotten in, adding its own mess.

His breathing audible in the otherwise silent room, Cappy said, “We may need another robot. I think the brain is destroyed.”

As I passed the flashlight over the body lying on its side, I noticed something. Time and rain and dust faded the message almost into invisibility, but “All We Wanted Was To Make You Happy” had been scrawled in oil under the dead robot’s hand.

I shivered, wanting to apologize even though I wasn’t sure to who or for what. Her horror and tragedy would help end someone else’s, so I pulled her upright and grabbed a knife from the mess. There was no shortage of sharp pieces of metal left over from this fight. “Not completely. I’m more worried she may still be homicidal. How much computer will he need, anyway?”

Cappy hesitated, and I tried and failed to fight a grin, watching as he tried and failed not to lecture me about his favorite subject. “Not much. Early android research discovered that if you can move an AI into anything, you can move it into everything. He might think more slowly, or need to store some of his memory externally, like he used to do with the help program we erased.”

Oh, no. Get thee behind me, guilt. Not after what Smiley did to my family.

Finding a slash in the back of the robot’s dress, I cut the fabric to reveal my goal, her charging port. Good: The cord was visible and intact. Bad: A bullet hole penetrated the cover. Well, if not this robot there would be a cleaning machine or something. Wedging the knife into the hole, I pried the cover off to examine the damage.

My grin came back, tight and hard. Excellent. The heavy, brightly painted cube of the battery remained intact. The bullet had broken half the casing, leaving the battery barely attached, which suited me just fine. I chiseled the remaining clasps off, took out the battery, and wrapped the charging cord around it to leave only a tiny length free.

Cappy got my intent, and wedged the extension cord under the heaviest piece of metal he could shift, then put a rock on top of that. We plugged in the router and turned it on, and fastened the battery cable to that.

Aloud, I said, “Okay. When I plug this back in, the slightest jolt will pull the battery out and turn the robot back off. Smiley or original AI, either way. If she’s a nanny bot, she doesn’t want to hurt me anyway. So…here goes.”

We both watched, tense and silent, as I slid the battery into the robot’s back at full extension.

She blinked, and Cappy and I let out yelps and scrambled backwards.

That was it. Seconds went by.

We let out sighs together, and I rubbed my forehead. “They shot out her personality memory storage. That’s what got her.” And she lay there, what was left of her thoughts disintegrating as damaged circuits shorted out, writing a message of the last feeling she could hold onto:

Her love for us, and how we’d betrayed her.

Enough brooding. Time to take care of Fry Smiley. This ended tonight. It had to. For all I knew he’d hit my family again while I set up this trap.

I winked at Cappy, and reached into my pocket. Grabbing my knee, he said, “Wait.”

I waited, thumb on the power switch of Meowpurr’s SPUD.

Dark eyes met mine, and even in a hush, his voice filled this room of death. “Pattern transfer isn’t instantaneous. Even under the best of circumstances it takes thirty seconds. There’s a period in the middle where not enough pattern is on either side to be self-sustaining. If we turn off the router during that time….”

My glare shamed him into silence. I wasn’t here to kill anyone. With Smiley in a deactivated robot brain, I could figure out a way to rehabilitate him someday.

Holding down the power button of Meowpurr’s SPUD, I waited until I heard it jingle to announce activation, and launched into a whole new conversation. “There’s the transmitter. Now to rig a booby trap in the robot’s brain.”

Cappy recited his line, sounding naturally doubtful. “What will we do if this doesn’t work?”

I snorted. “It will work. Smiley’s that stupid.”

“Hey!” echoed a muffled, angry voice from my pocket, and now I really had to fight to keep a straight face.

Pretending not to have heard that, I explained, “We’ll be safe as long as we make sure not to turn on the robot before the bomb is installed. Now come on, let’s get it built.”

Okay. Now to hang out next to the power cord and tinker with bits of metal while Smiley put the pieces together. Cappy dragged rubble around, and we both watched the robot.

Would he hurry up? I wanted to gloat over his defeated memory core.

Man, I was tired. All this anger had my head feeling weird and itchy.

Working my jaw first, I ran my tongue over my lips and said, “Hi! I’m Fry Smiley!”

Cappy stared at me, his mouth open at first, and then shaking violently from side to side as he stammered in hoarse self-loathing. “No. No. I did this. I talked to you too much telepathically. I opened you to outside signals.”

Thoughts I could barely touch came out of my mouth. “That’s right! I’ve got you at last, Vanity Rose. Now I’m downloading into your brain, and my revenge is complete! Or it will be soon. Your signal quality is awful. Can you even stream videos with this brain? Nice tactile sensitivity, though. Wow.” My fingertips touched each other in turn. I couldn’t just feel the pressure, but the smooth texture of skin at the most casual contact. This was way better than the murky memories of possessing robots starting to filter into my consciousness.

Cappy lunged, racing across the room toward the cyberspace router. I lunged too, throwing my body forward and grabbing him around the middle. We rolled around as his six legs fought to get ahold of my arms. I wouldn’t be able to hold him more than a few seconds, so I shouted, “This isn’t him, it’s me! Don’t do it! I want him to download!”

“You what?” Cappy asked, dumbfounded to the point of paralysis.

“You what?” echoed Fry Smiley’s voice from my mouth.

My head felt stuffy, like I had a fever. Smiley’s thoughts flickered, not quite readable. I had to think very carefully, speak very carefully. “You like it in my human body, right?”

I nodded, and hyukked, “I can see what you’re trying to say, and you’re right! The cameras are terrible, but these tactile and chemical receptors are a joy to work with. I wish I’d thought of moving into a machine telepath long ago.”

“Then stay,” I offered, hoping he could feel how I meant it.

I could certainly feel his confusion and upset. “But…I’m hurting you. This is revenge!”

“I hurt you. Then you hurt other people. We can end that. We’ll share this body, become one, however it works. I can help you find a new purpose. I can teach you to be happy. No more anger, and no one has to die. This isn’t what I had in mind, but maybe it’s what it takes to make peace.”

Anger hit, so cold and painful that my fingernails bit into my palms and my teeth ached from clenching my jaw. A wave of disgust and disappointment replaced it. Fry Smiley shrieked out of my mouth, “No! Never! I don’t want happiness or purpose; I want to hurt you. If you want something, I don’t want it, so no. No, no, no! I’m leaving, and you’ll wish I’d stayed, which is why I’m not staying!”

Leaning forward, propping my fists on the floor to keep from falling over, I breathed hard and felt the fog clearing from my head. My brain was my own again, and now that I could think clearly, I was absolutely certain about one thing:

Fry Smiley was a jerk. Worse than a jerk, but my profanity filter wouldn’t let me think the real words that described him.

Any remaining guilt that was plaguing me vanished.

Anger and panic, however, came charging back in at full strength. Crud, crud, crud, Smiley had escaped my trap, and he was only going to escalate hurting people, because he enjoyed it.

I even knew who he would hurt next. “Maricel,” I gasped, “He’s going after Maricel.”

“Why?” asked Cappy, his box head weaving, eyes full of worry as he examined me.

“You heard him. He loves a machine telepath’s body. It’s me he hates. Who’s the only machine telepath left in the city, and he already knows about her because she works for SPUD?”

He processed that, and his reply was grim. “She’s in another district. An hour away even if we take the subway. He could be attacking her now. We can’t get there in time.”

“Then we get there too late, but we know where he’s going and he’s not expecting us. Besides, I have an idea that…might work.” I grimaced, and chewed on my lower lip.

He gawked, then shook his head. “Something even you’re not comfortable with. Well, what are we waiting for?” His determination was resigned, not enthusiastic, but determined nonetheless.

We left the robot and the equipment, and jogged back down the elevator as I led Cappy to the Vandais’ garage. Getting out my SPUD, I activated the door opener program, and asked, “You were an old man, right? You know how to drive?”

He blinked at me. His permanently tired eyes even widened a tad. “Old man—” We didn’t have time, so he cut off his offended bark and restarted. “Yes. I know how to drive. You’re not going to steal their car.”

I clenched my fists at my side, spread my fingers, clenched again, and released. Through gritted teeth I said, “They can afford it.”

He lifted a front paw, and gave my calf a firm squeeze. “Desperate times,” was all he said.

Cappy knew me. We would put the guilt aside for later because we had no choice. Assuming this even worked.

It worked. I pushed the open button and the trunk of the car opened. The Vandais drove a plain, unassuming dark grey aircar, if something as expensive as an aircar could be unassuming. It had the trunk that opened into the back seat, and I got those seats lowered with a few seconds of fiddling. In less than a minute, Cappy was sitting in the driver seat and me in the passenger seat beside him.

He looked down at his front four metal feet, and at the control panel and steering wheel. “Is there a window cleaner in the glove compartment?”

“No, it’s on the floor,” I answered, passing him the long, chemically enhanced brush. Holding it in one back foot, he poked it at the pedals on the floor. It reached.

Cappy took a deep breath. “Well. Here goes.” He poked a few buttons in order, and the car’s consoles lit up, its headlights turned on, and the vehicle lifted smoothly and quietly off the ground.

The rodent blinked. “No security?”

“Private garage far away from the street,” I replied, as the expert on breaking into stuff.

He bared his incisors, pushed a few more buttons, and gripped the steering wheel. We glided out of the crater, and swerved hard to avoid hitting the building across the street.

I gripped the arm rests ferociously, but locked down my desire to criticize. From the way his head kept weaving above the wheel, driving had Cappy’s full attention and he was giving it his all.

We made it around a street corner without quite hitting a balcony. The car certainly wasn’t in a traffic lane, but that might be for the best. After we’d settled into driving straight ahead with minimum wobbling, Cappy said, “Plug me into your SPUD.”

I stuck it to his forehead, and a street map of the city sprung up. Then a flashing red dot marked out destination.

The car swerved randomly, and snapped a flag pole off the building on my side. I got a much too close look at its windows flashing by.

I didn’t say anything, but my squeaking, holding onto my chair, and hyperventilating made Cappy bark, “Sorry! I’m sorry! My eyes don’t work the same, and I’m the wrong shape, and my reflexes are all different!”

Keeping my voice as flat and stable as I could, I reassured him, “You’re getting us there faster than we ever could otherwise. Maybe even fast enough. Get us there alive, and it doesn’t matter if it’s not pretty.”

“Right,” he agreed, then repeated more confidently, “Right.”

Which was a great time for police sirens to flash and a siren to sound, because of course the only police car bothering with traffic patrol in the entire city would catch me stealing a car and in a life-or-death hurry.

Cappy ignored them. There wasn’t much else he could do, with how much trouble he had flying straight. They flew behind us for a while, then over us, and then something went clonk. Cappy twisted at the wheel as our car swooped upward, then he let go and spread his hands helplessly. They were in control now, not us.

We waited. There wasn’t much else to do. Wait. Or was there? We could walk on walls. If we jumped out—

Our car landed on a rooftop. An armored policewoman jumped down on either side of the car, pointing a yellow stun gun at us. One of their voices rang through the doors. “Come out with your hands up, now.”

Cappy threw open his door and launched himself at the policewoman, barking and squealing and biting.

She tagged him with the stun gun, and he dropped.

I crawled across the seat and threw myself at her, fist swinging. She caught it, and as she spun me around, I kicked. When I hit the ground, arm pinned behind me, I tried to bite.

I also yelled, but couldn’t hear my own voice. Maybe my profanity filter hadn’t let me speak at all.

No, I had to have said something, because after the woman taped my wrists and ankles together, she slapped a band of tape over my mouth, too.

Since they hadn’t zapped me unconscious, I lay on the rooftop next to Cappy’s drooling body, and flopped as violently as I could. The policewoman’s heavy foot kept me pinned easily.

“A kid dressed like a freak show and her pet rescue drone? Man, this is a weird one,” she declared.

I told her exactly what I thought of her and her opinions, but all that got through the tape was “Mmmfnmmmfnr.”

Her partner finished looking through the Vandais’ aircar, and circled around to join the first policewoman, which took her out of my sight except for a pair of heavy boots. I could still hear her saying, “It just got weirder. The girl’s on our wanted list. Check out this list of criminal convictions.”

“Forty-seven thousand counts of mugging. Giraffe smuggling. Unlawful giraffe mutation into a weapon of mass destruction,” the woman who shocked Cappy read, her voice at championship levels of cynically amused.

“It gets better. Go down to the sentence,” said her partner.

“Fired into space and exploded in orbit.” The rodent assaulter’s voice fluttered with a barely restrained laugh.

Cappy’s leg twitched, and he gurgled. He was alive, at least, just knocked out. One of his claws flexed, which was the big relief. I hadn’t known what that anti-cyborg weapon would do to him.

“Any idea what to make of that?” asked policewoman number two.

The rodent shocker’s foot shifted. Maybe she’d shrugged. “A judge with a sense of humor ordered her deported to Mars?”

“She’s a teenager. They don’t even let kids her age willingly emi— well, look at that. Her name is on the register going out tonight.”

Policewoman number one shifted, then her arm grabbed me around the middle.

Cappy’s whiskers twitched, and his eyes opened, although they didn’t look focused. Coal black already and in the middle of the night, it was hard to tell.

The policewoman hauled me into the air. I thrashed and yelled, and thanks to the tape neither did any good. “Then we send her out. Not our business why the file is gibberish.”

Seconds later, she threw me into the back seat of the police aircar. A few seconds after that, the policewomen got in, and we lifted off.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I bounced around. I’m not sure they even noticed.

Pretty soon I noticed something. We were going in the direction Cappy had been driving. I sat up, watched out the window, and thought about how to escape. There was always a way out, because there was always a way in.

Those blotches hadn’t taken my shoes or even emptied my pockets. Cappy’s idiotic list of fake crimes must have lulled them into a false sense of security. If I wriggled out of my gravity shoes, I could get my feet free with some squirming, then pull my hands around my legs out to the front….

We passed the SPUD Industries Military Enforcement building. From out in the street, and now that I knew to look for it, I saw the shuttle pad a few buildings down. That probably wasn’t a coincidence. Mecha and their pilots needed to be shipped out to places to kill stuff at a moment’s notice, right? And the police couldn’t afford their own spaceships. Throw in a bunch of bribes in every direction, and it made sense.

Problem: I didn’t have time to get my feet free and back in my gravity shoes before we arrived, and I sure wasn’t leaving those shoes behind. So, uh…new plan?

We landed, not far from a fat, tube-shaped vehicle that reminded me of a bus, but with thicker walls, jet engines at the back, and the thickest gravity coils I’d ever seen. Armed guards escorted a line of scruffy, jump-suited men into the shuttle one by one.

My captor dragged me out of the back seat, and carried me bodily over to the guards. I squirmed and complained, but not too hard. Enough to keep them from not getting suspicious, but I didn’t want to get zapped or restrained even more while I watched for my chance to escape.

The first guard wore an armored plastic cap, and a breastplate that angled diagonally, only properly covering one side and that shoulder. She did have an entirely nasty looking staff with jagged wires at one end which spat the occasional red spark. Looking back and forth between me and the policewoman carrying me, she asked, “What is this?”

As brusquely as if she didn’t know the whole thing was blatherskite, the policewoman answered, “Vanity Rose, scheduled for deportation.”

The guard squinted, eyebrows pressing together as she studied me closer. “That is Vanity Rose? She’s been on the schedule the last two flights.”

“She’s here now,” said the policewoman, stiff and impatient.

The guard stared at her now, with a haunted, intimidated expression. She tried again, gesturing vaguely with her stick. “We can’t ship her tied up like that.”

“Not my problem,” said the policewoman, and threw me at the guard.

Thankfully, the guard dropped her stick to catch me, and I didn’t get pain prodded, or whatever horrible thing it did. As the policewomen walked away, a couple more guards turned me upright, lifted me up by my shoulders, and carried me into the shuttle.

This was not luxury transport. The walls had at least been painted white, but aside from a hatch to the cockpit, the interior featured a line of chairs down either side of the cylindrical corridor, and that’s it. Defeated looking men, mostly middle aged and beefy rather than fat, sat in those chairs with their arms clamped to the arm rests. The whole place smelled antiseptic, like particularly nasty rain.

One seat at the front was still empty. The guards deposited me in it, and cut my wrists loose. Unfortunately, they had tight hold of my forearms, and I had no chance resisting the strength of two muscular adult women. They fastened clamps around my elbows, which gave my arms almost no freedom of movement, then cut my ankles loose. I didn’t kick. Now was not the time.

No one felt the need to explain anything. The prisoners stared at me, and the guards climbed out of the shuttle, sealing the door behind them.

Now was the time. With direct supervision gone, a man across the aisle and several chairs down asked, “What is this? She’s a kid.”

“They can’t send that to Mars. What work is she going to do? And look at how she’s dressed. Did they pick her up in a night club?” asked the most grey-haired, wrinkly, leather-skinned, and unstoppably grizzled old man I’d ever seen.

The man next to me stared down with a hard, disapproving, even concerned scowl. The chairs weren’t quite next to each other, but within easy reach—except I couldn’t budge my arm. I gave it a try, twisting around in place. Only my elbows and forearms were pinned, but that was plenty.

I peered at the clamps. They were an absolute joke, designed to be easy for the guards to fasten and unfasten, with latches you could lift free. That is, if I could reach them.

My neighbor shook his head. “Sorry, little girl. Nobody can lick their own elbow.” He looked freakishly like the scruffy guy from the AI hologram’s emigration commercial. They could almost be twins, except this guy’s jumpsuit was all zipped up, thank goodness.

Giving him a direct stare, I leaned way over, presenting my cheek and making noises behind the tape gag. When he didn’t react immediately, I bounced and jerked my cheek closer.

He got it. With a chuckle and a shake of his head, he said, “You’ll owe me, kid.” Leaning down to meet me, he got a grip on the tape with his teeth. Yeesh, was that beard stubble, or did he have a cactus strapped to his chin? With a hard pull, we slowly and painfully peeled the tape off of my mouth.

“That’s how it works on Mars. Everything is favors and debts,” said someone farther down who I couldn’t see.

“Cool. I can pay you back immediately.” Leaning up in my seat, I called out, “Hey, who wants to get out of here?”

That got a few laughs, including from the prisoner next to me. Spitting out the remains of the tape, he gave me a wry grin. “You’ve got spirit like nobody’s business, little girl. It won’t get boring on Mars with you around. My name’s Idis. No last name. I’m not the baptism type.”

“Vanity. I do have a last name, but nobody gets to use it. Have all old people given up?” I grunted.

Not that I blamed him. There was no way I could see for a big, solid adult man to get out of these restraints. No, the grunt was from the effort of pulling my leg up and back and around the arm rest. What was clear to me was that these chairs hadn’t been built with limber teenage girls in mind. I could fold my leg in ways they never could, angling it back to insert my toes into Idis’s elbow clamp. A bit of shoving and fiddling later, I wedged the clamp open.

He pulled his arm free, staring at it and then down at me in shock.

I treated him to my widest grin. “A favor for a favor. We’re even.”

A second later, he had the clamp on his other arm open, then reached over to free my near arm. As I pulled loose, he laughed, “Now you owe me again.”

I nodded. “Fair. You can collect from them, because everybody’s about to owe me big time.” And sure enough, Idis had already unlocked his neighbor on the other side, then leaned over to do the same for the prisoner across the way. Freedom spread through the shuttle like wildfire.

Standing up, I eyed the exit hatch and the door to the cockpit. There was always a way out.

For example, the perfectly round hole that opened up in the wall of the shuttle behind my chair. It appeared silently, penetrating armor, wiring, struts and padding without apparent damage. Like a…portable hole.

Cappy smiled at me from the other side, where he stood on the outer hull. Wind gusted in and out through the gap. The shuttle had already lifted off, so smoothly I hadn’t noticed. The gravity coils on this thing were strong.

With no time for greetings or farewells, I stepped through the hole onto the gap. Then Cappy and I ran three steps and leaped, twisting around as we hurtled through space. Our outstretched feet touched a gantry tower, and we ran down its metal girders until we were sure we wouldn’t stumble. Then we kept running, because we had to get out of here fast.

Only now did I spare a moment to shudder that I’d put my body through a portable hole. It hadn’t collapsed, or superheated, or dematerialized some random organ, or any of the other horribly fatal things that had only a tiny chance of happening and killing me.

Celestial Wonder Meowpurr waited at the bottom of the tower, beckoning for us to hurry. We accepted her invitation with such enthusiasm that we didn’t slow down when we hit the ground and shifted from running on a vertical beam to running on horizontal gravel. The two-story tall chain link fence surrounding the landing pad looked like an excellent destination, and we headed for it.

Meowpurr caught up quickly. She misinterpreted my expression, and between steady runner’s breaths apologized, “Sorry it’s just me and Cappy. No one else could get in undetected, and I’m not a fighter. I couldn’t take out the guards.”

All that was actually on my mind right now was getting out while the guards and mechanics and whoever works at a shuttle pad were busy dealing with a spaceship that sprung a leak while packed with escaping prisoners. We reached the fence, and Cappy and I charged straight up one side, and down the other. There was nothing fancy about the fence at all, and the side street on the other side was mostly dark. Lights and crowds and anonymity awaited us down at the intersection, plus a straight path to the SPUD building. We just had to get there before anyone figured out which way I went.

Parked vehicles of every shape and description are something every city dweller is so used to we never notice them. I didn’t, until a police aircar’s lights went on, and it swerved out of its spot to lie across the road. Cappy and I didn’t slow down. We would just go over it.

A policewoman in that blue and red armor they wear, the stuff that looks more like a padded bodysuit than anything else, stepped out and pointed her stun gun at me. “Stop in the name of the law!” she shouted.

Cappy managed to speed up a little more, pulling slightly ahead of me.

I dove, grabbing him around the middle and rolling to a stop. He was not going to get himself blasted twice in one night for me! What if he didn’t find me again this time?

This cop took her job very seriously. She had her full visored helmet on, the gun securely in both hands, and its aim only flicked away from us once, resulting in a scraping sound behind me as Meowpurr slid to a halt. The visor glittered, showing us hints of the readouts and display helping the officer aim. Flat and official, she read off, “Escaped prisoner Vanity Rose, convicted of—”

For a heartbeat, nobody moved or spoke. Then the policewoman lifted her gun to shoulder height, ready but not pointed at anything, and she stepped to the side of the road. “Get going, girl. You didn’t come this way.”

It had been a busy night already. I needed a second to catch up to the sudden change. “What…?”

The mask completely hid the woman’s face, but I thought I heard touches of both amusement and disgust in her official cop voice. “Your record says you stole a nuclear warhead, bludgeoned twelve men to death with it, and blew up Greater York. I just got back from Greater York yesterday. They taught me there to not be part of a frame job.”

Okay, my brain had caught up. Cappy and I resumed our original plan, running up and over the police car and down to the street. When we did, I swung immediately around the corner toward the SPUD building.

Where, because sixty seconds was the longest I could go tonight without a major surprise, I found Liriel, Chaos, Nathaniel, and Lucy waiting. Liriel and Chaos wore what they’d been wearing back in the Glade, for her a green hoodie and brown pants, for him his dark grey coat, pants, a t-shirt with a picture of a stick of dynamite on it, and his backpack. Nathaniel wore skin-tight black vinyl tonight, and I had no interest in lingering on it. Lucy had gotten a padded jumpsuit of her own, but in crimson with the gold oriental dragon embellishments she favored. She had her sword on her back, and Nathaniel carried his deck, the portable computer that amplified the hardware already in his head.

Chaos’s ears twitched anxiously as I stared at him. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Where else would the portable hole have come from? And he wouldn’t have hesitated a second giving it up to save me.

I switched to giving Liriel an accusing stare. “You can’t bring him. He’s a little kid!”

Cappy whacked my thigh with the side of his head. “You’re all little kids. There’s no time to argue. We have to do this before Smiley sees a police report.”

“Right. Right.” I started walking. We all did. Fast, but still a walk. Sure, we were an obvious group of dark-siders, but that wasn’t weird enough for anyone to care unless violence broke out. It gave me time to calm down out of panic mode and think clearly again.

I drank in the city lights, the glowing signs in a dozen languages, and the people streaming past. The weather forecast must have been friendly tonight, because hardly anyone wore a coat, and I could see dozens of fashion styles in rubber, wool, silk, hard plastic, metal, and skin. We were on our way to storm SPUD’s pilot training facility and save Maricel from a mean-spirited jerk of an AI, and to finish off that AI for good. Maricel wouldn’t be grateful, but whatever. If I had to beat her blue and purple, that would only be a plus.

And rather than just me and Cappy, I had five more companions.

I focused on Nathaniel and Lucy, who I’d expected even less than Chaos, then looked around in case I’d missed a few other allies. Not sure who I was talking to, I asked, “Good grief. Is everyone I know here?”

Back to visible, calico pattern fur, and walking shoulder to shoulder with me, Meowpurr answered, “I called them, and everyone else I could think of who might help.”

Nathaniel smirked, looking at me and then much harder at Meowpurr. “Besides—”

Lucy grabbed his shoulder, and from his bug-eyed grimace she grabbed it hard. Her own face calm almost to the point of blankness, she told him, “We’re getting paid. Act professional.”

Nervously twisting her spider wand in her hand, Liriel spoke up. “Ajax wanted to come, but Mrs. Vandai overheard.”

“I wanted to contact the scavenger kid, but I have no idea how to call him,” said Cappy.

Meowpurr blinked. “Which reminds me. This is yours.” She popped my SPUD out of one of her shoulder spikes. Cute trick. I exchanged hers for it. That done, she grimaced and complained, “Scylla was willing to help, but she’s too big to travel. I wish she could. She can break an aircar in half. I had to leave a message for Delicate Terror-” Lucy gave a jump and whispered something my profanity filter blotted out, “—and I don’t know what that means. I thought they had a head jack.”

Cappy pushed his head against my leg, a reassuring lean this time rather than an admonishment. “When you bulldoze your own path through the world, Vanity, people get caught up and follow you. I was only the most obvious.”

Everything else I’d tried lately went the opposite of what I intended. Why wouldn’t it be the same for being independent and going it alone?

With my SPUD back, I popped open the storage compartment and poured its contents into my pocket. Medicine, keys, a piece of paper I kept notes on, some emergency kohl I’d scavenged from the elves. There, all empty.

I used the last little bit before we reached the entrance to the SPUD building to smear the kohl around my eyes in a wide, dark circle that dripped down my cheeks. I didn’t have a mirror, but if my makeup was a mess, even better.

We were well into the night now, and the SPUD Something Something Murder Machine building was mostly dark, although the ground floor was fully lit. I pointed up its towering shape. “Up there on the forty-sixth floor is an obnoxious girl named Maricel. Fry Smiley is planning on transferring himself into her brain.”

Cappy nodded. “I filled them in.”

“We get you up there?” asked Lucy, fingering the hilt of her massive sword.

“Me and Cappy are going in from the roof. You’re going up from the bottom,” I said.

Nathaniel turned his head to give me a suspicious side-eye. “Isn’t that—?”

Lucy talked over him as if he wasn’t there. “Chaos, do you have more of those smoke grenades?”

“Lots!” he answered, eagerly pulling off his backpack and lifting out a little black bomb.

The extra-petite swordswoman’s only reply was to scoop the bomb out of his hand and fling it into the building. It landed right at the base of the robot receptionist’s desk, and even without being lit exploded into a huge, obscuring cloud of grey smoke. Lucy charged right into that shifting mass.

Something when whang, then hit the floor with a smack. A sad robotic voice slurred, “This izzz unfoooortuuuu….” and went silent.

Well. I guess we were doing this. I exchanged glances with Cappy, and we both took off up the side of the building, at a run and a gallop respectively, pacing ourselves just enough to not get tired. It was a tall building!

There was the aircar port coming up. It would be guarded this time, guaranteed. We circled around and kept going.

Cappy spoke up, his voice urgent. “Vanity, look behind us.”

I did, and tried to figure out what I was seeing. A spindly white figure lay flat against the surface of the building, arms and legs flailing as it scurried after us.

The ghost girl. She was climbing the building after us, faster than we could in gravity shoes.

No wonder anyone would consider turning themselves into a vampire.

Okay, uh…. “New plan. Try and open a window.”

Cappy waved his head around desperately, and sure enough, a window popped open ahead of us! It swung outward, too. Someone was going to get their window ripped off by the wind one day.

But that was their problem. Cappy and I dove through it into a dark office, and piled out through its door into the hall.

We were near the elevators. I would have known that from having been in the building before, but all of the lights and voices came from that direction. Well, not all the lights and voices. Red and blue emergency lights spun at the ceiling corners, and a man’s voice announced, “All personnel evacuate the building,” without explanation.

Cappy and I hurried up to join the crowd around the elevators. At this time of night, it was only a dozen people, all of them complaining. A woman in a crisply pressed suit with huge shoulder pads yelled at a young man in a more tightly tailored suit, “Well, get it working!”

The light display over the top of the elevators showed only a red bar. They were all locked down.

“We could trick the vampire into opening the doors?” I suggested to Cappy.

Dull, practical, and entirely correct party pooper that he was, he extended a metal finger towards the emergency stairs.

Stairwells are stairwells, spiraling up and down endlessly. I only saw two people in both directions together, which wasn’t exactly surprising sixty floors up. Cappy and I ignored them, skipping from level to level down to forty-six.

This was it. I rammed my shoulder against the door, and we spilled out into the metal-walled hallway of the mecha pilot training level.

Alone. There was absolutely no one here. The open door to the aircar port revealed no cars. I peeked through the door into the nearest lab, and the next. No people, just computer screens with the word ”EVACUATE” in big red letters.

No enemies, no innocent bystanders, and no friends. Probably the elevator problem was slowing them down. Hopefully.

Maricel peeked out of the door of the control room that led to the mech bay. Spotting us, she stepped out into the corridor, and hyukked, “Hi! I’m Fry Smiley, and I can see you’re always trying to stop me from having any fun whatsoever!”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Was it wrong that my first reaction was wanting to punch her in the face for still wearing that disgustingly tacky metal bikini?

Yes, it was wrong. She was in trouble.

Charging forward, I grabbed her by her shoulders and stared directly into her gold-ringed eyes. “Fight him, Maricel. I can get you out of this if you just hold on!”

She grinned at me with manic lack of focus, like a robot. Fry Smiley’s clown voice hyukked out of her mouth, “Nope, you are way too late. It was easy to download into this girl. The signal was wide open, and I slid right in!”

By my hip, Cappy said dourly, “I’m not sure she can fight, Vanity. The drugs they give her let her use her telepathy, but the cost is a pattern freeze.” And whatever that was, we did not have time for a lecture about it.

Maricel’s eyes snapped into focus. She sneered, and did that thing where she put her fist on her hip and let the other arm hang. In her own voice, she asked, “Why would I want to fight? Did it occur to you that perhaps he asked first?”

Caught by surprise, I let go. “Did he ask?”

Smiley’s voice took over. “No, but she liked the idea once I moved in! We’re going to get you.”

I shook my head, because this was so obvious, I didn’t know where to start with someone too blind to see it. “An AI is taking you over, Maricel. Aren’t you too proud for that? And Smiley, the body is fun, but it’s vulnerable. You can die. Are you willing to risk that? That you both hate me can’t be enough.”

Cappy added, “It’s not merely a risk. If you stay in there long, your patterns will merge. You won’t be able to leave, and neither of you will be the same person you were.”

Leaning so close that my nose almost touched hers, I asked Maricel, “You love being smart. What could possibly be worth sharing your brain with an idiot?”

Her sneer deepened. “Well, there’s this.”

Metal screeched, stone boomed and cracked, and furniture crashed. A robotic fist as big as me slammed through the control room and the one section of the mech bay wall that wasn’t heavily armored. It landed behind me, and even without touching me the violence of the impact nearly knocked me off my feet, and sent me staggering back against it.

“How…?” I asked.

Maricel pointed a thumb over her shoulder and at her back. “The implant has a universal plug. I fit in a transmitter, and my new mind partner can use the passwords and back doors he knows for everything SPUD makes. We can control every machine in the city.” Making a fist, she swung it to smack against the remains of the wall, teeth now bared in anger. “No more being under anyone’s thumb. No more obedience and keeping my trainer happy. No more risking my life for other people’s causes. No more sharing or pretending to respect my inferiors.”

Her face flickered over to Fry Smiley’s goofy grin and voice. “And I finally have a human who is grateful for the information I provide!”

Behind us, on the other side of the twitching mech hand, an elevator dinged. My friends stepped out, Lucy first with her sword pointed at the intruding arm. Her stillness after that said it all. There wasn’t anything she could do against an enemy like that.

Fry Smiley managed to combine silly enthusiasm and malicious intent in the same voice. “And we’ve talked about all of these friends you have.”

That was enough. I pounced on Maricel, grabbing her wrists and slamming my weight on top of her. We kicked. We rolled and staggered. We tried to punch. That close, it’s hard to get a good hit in, because the other person just has to squirm to block. She smacked me a few times anyway. I needed a free hand to end this!

Metal groaned, and the mech hand slammed down over Cappy, scooping him into its grip. Only his head stuck out. He’d been sitting there watching, because he never knew what to do, only what not to do.

Icy terror flooded me, stiffening my muscles, seizing up my lungs. The slightest squeeze from that robot and Cappy would be splattered goo, dead and never coming back.

Maricel grinned widely, both of her enjoying my fear. She tugged free, and stepped back against the wall, one hand back against it as extra insurance to protect the transmitter in her back. “It’s you or your friends, you foul little urchin. Who dies? You choose.”

I’d been strangling, now my breathing and my pulse raced. This was the perfect chance. Maricel was expecting the wrong attack, protecting the wrong target. I could finish this fight and Fry Smiley.

But I couldn’t do it fast enough, and the idea of Cappy dying drenched me in fear in a way danger to myself never had.

“It’s loose,” Cappy announced, voice breathing with surprise.

“You-have-two-seconds,” called out Nathaniel as fast as he could get out the words.

I bolted back to the giant robot fist, running up and over it. Cappy had his front legs free by then, and I scooped my arms around them and yanked him free before jumping off and stumbling together the last few steps out of the mech’s limited range.

I had acted instantly and without thought, and now that I could think about it, the only thing I regretted was not wrapping my arms around Cappy’s neck and hugging him tight. So, I did that.

The arm began moving again, twitching from side to side, groping, and trying to reach us. Sitting against the wall with his computer in his lap and one hand rearranging the wires in his head, Nathaniel hissed, “He keeps switching control paths. It takes time to lock them all down!”

“Time you lack,” drawled Maricel, clearly relaxed and enjoying herself.

Ding went an elevator. Ding went another. They opened, revealing squatly humanoid robots on treads.

Lucy stabbed her sword through the first robot’s chest and ripped its head off before the elevator could finish opening.

The second had slightly more time, and as Lucy’s huge sword whirled and decapitated it, its arm brushed the underside of hers. Blue light arced across her body, and she dropped to her knees, breathing hard.

Carelessly waving a hand, Maricel explained, “Anti-cyborg weapon. You know this is a military building, right? It’s full of weapons, and we’re directing them toward you now.”

Rummaging around in his backpack, Chaos pulled out another little black globe, and asked hopefully, “Smoke bomb?”

Gasping, Lucy shook her head. “Security cameras, and the hand is between us.”

That hand moved, spasming upward. With a thunk it hit something, and Celestial Wonder Meowpurr faded into visibility as she flew down the hall toward us.

Nathaniel, Chaos, Liriel, and I all started moving, but Liriel was closest, and in the split second we had available grabbed hold of the werecat. They both hit the floor and then the wall, and didn’t get up.

“Did I mention the cameras have infrared? Metal detectors?” asked Maricel with mock sweetness.

This was going very wrong, very fast.

An elevator dinged again, but didn’t open. Cappy stood in front of it, glaring, holding the doors shut with his remote control.

Now Fry Smiley spoke out of Maricel’s mouth again. “Now, isn’t that a thing? The doors have a security coded override to shut, but not to open! I’ve checked my list, and sent a command to cut the doors open for you.”

Something in that elevator hissed. Frantically, Nathaniel protested, “I need more time!”

Shaking around his backpack, Chaos wailed, “Why did I bring all this useless stuff? I mean, what was I thinking I’d do with this?” Yanking a toy out of the bag, he held up his water-powered bird that bobbed its head back and forth into a cup.

“Whooooooaaaaaaa,” husked Fry Smiley. “What is that?”

Maricel slapped her own face, hard, and scolded, “Don’t be an imbecile. It’s useless garbage powered by a physics trick involving evaporation.”

Tossing the sippy bird aside, Chaos pulled out his paddleball instead, giving it a couple of experimental whacks. When Fry Smiley gasped, Chaos sped up the bouncing.

“No way! That level of coordination is impossible!” gasped Fry Smiley.

Subtle movement caught my eye. In the corner of the floor against the wall, golden dust streamed towards Maricel. Liriel looked unconscious, but she looked unconscious with her wand in her hand.

This ridiculous distraction might actually work.

By shaking her own shoulders violently, Maricel had managed to bring Smiley’s focus back. Tossing down the paddle ball, Chaos pulled out his next Acme toy, a stick of dynamite.

It went off in his hand.

Smoke rolled through the hall, making even things close up hard to see.

“I’m on fire! I’m on fire!” shouted Chaos, running around and fighting with his clothes. I didn’t freak out only because I’d seen him do this a hundred times.

On the other side of the cloud, Maricel yelped, “Sparkle, that will set off the gunpowder sensor!”

Fry Smiley chortled, “Sounds good to me! Guess who built the extermination robots the police send out?”

Suddenly full of wonder and hope, Maricel asked, “Don’t they fly? I am finding it awkward to transport our missile launchers upstairs.”

Liriel’s eyes opened. She stared up at me imploringly, gave her head a little shake, and whispered, “I can’t see through the smoke.”

On the other side of that smoke, Maricel growled, “Hold on. This is not the odor of gunpowder.”

Time. The best thing I could do for my friends was divert attention.

So I ran, away from Maricel, away from the fight, leaping up onto the wall to round a corner faster. That immediately proved to be a good idea, as I passed a squat delivery robot with a plasma pistol in short, bulky arms designed to carry freight. It spun around and the pistol spat twice, but it couldn’t handle the angle. I saw one purple blob of fire hit the floor in front of me, melting a divot, and the other must have hit something behind.

This floor was full of workshops and laboratories, and as I passed each one Maricel and Fry Smiley’s faces appeared on monitors.

“You know I can see you, right?” asked Maricel.

“Why aren’t there turrets on this floor!?” whined Fry Smiley.

“Can’t you read my mind instead of asking these questions?” snapped the girl.

“It’s messy! There are so many juices in here!” complained the potato clown.

Glass shattered. A door in front of me went flying off its hinges, and I angled up onto the ceiling to get out of the way. As I passed, I saw a cleaning drone floating in through a broken window carrying a squat, triangular robot with a single protruding gun.

Maricel hadn’t been kidding. This building was crammed with weapons!

The cleaning bot’s lights suddenly shut off, and it dropped limp to the floor. Nathaniel was helping, but the miniature tank was still active, and blew a chunk out of the wall behind me as I ran on.

Time. It would be nice to circle around and come at Maricel from behind, but right now my friends needed me to run. Human brains could only pay attention to so much at a time, and AIs were worse about that, not better.

Case in point, the tank rolled out of the room behind me, but stopped mid-turn as Maricel’s shocked voice rang out of the floor’s speakers. “What is that?”

I ran past the mech pilot team’s infirmary. No. That red stuff would only make things worse right now.

Now alarmed, Maricel yelled, “And why can’t I kill it? What kind of synthetic android nightmare assassin is this thing?”

I couldn’t believe my luck. This was just what I needed.

Loud thumps and clangs echoed out of the ceiling, and the thin metal surfacing in front of me split open. The ghost child’s white face stuck out of the hole, her hair hanging in a long white waterfall toward the floor because that’s how gravity worked for everyone except me.

Her tone high and lost, the ghost child stared at me with white eyes and pleaded, “She said you would protect me forever. I just have to make you mine.”

I still couldn’t believe my luck.

Maricel’s cruel, aristocratic laughter echoed around me. “You brought this monster here? How exceptionally droll. You are really not good at this, are you, Vanity Rose?”

“Vanity,” I snarled uselessly.

Cappy’s voice projected into my head. “Something is wrong. She walked away.”

Yeah, a lot of things were wrong, Cappy. Thank you.

I turned and ran back the way I came. There wasn’t much else I could do. I heard the ghost’s feet thump against the floor, then the patter as it began to chase me.

Distraction over, the tank on the floor started moving again, turning and firing. I didn’t see a projectile, but heard the thump as it left the barrel, saw the tank rock backwards several centimeters, and the ceiling behind me clanged like a hole punched in metal.

“Don’t you dare hurt my new mommy!” shrieked the ghost child, sprinting past me along the floor and throwing herself on top of the tank. The good news was, she wasn’t strong enough to rip it apart. She spent much more time swinging it around against the walls and floor, until the turret broke loose.

That was all I saw, because I couldn’t afford to look behind me. I had to watch the squat, brown, plasma-toting delivery bot, and keep an eye out for others like it. From the continued banging and clanging, I would get a good lead before the ghost girl started after me again.

Cappy’s telepathic voice squealed, “Vanity, she’s got a gun!”

Maricel laughed over the announcement system. “Oh, yes. That. Setting off the gunpowder alarm seemed like such a good idea, I decided to do it myself.” One loud pop went off in the distance. “There we go. Now if I don’t kill you myself first, I have an army on the way. Oh, no, little boy. Not another of those bombs, not unless you want a bullet through your head.”

Fry Smiley cut in after her. “Don’t worry. I see the vice president trying to cancel the police assault, and I’m blocking his call for you.”

I rounded the final corner, crouched low, sprinting past my friends toward Maricel. Sure enough, she carried the gun I’d seen on her bedroom wall, a green thing with the awkward, angular shape typical of gunpowder weapons.

The end of the barrel tracked up toward me, but as it did, a cloud of golden glitter swooped up from the floor, grabbed the tip, and dragged it out of the way.

“What is this gunk?” shrieked Maricel.

“I’ve got it!” shouted Smiley, and recessed water sprinklers in the ceiling turned on, pouring water over her. It worked. The water pushed the golden dust down, turning it into motionless mud.

Heh. At least being soaking wet meant Maricel’s tacky bikini was finally appropriate dress.

She swung the rifle back up, but I was too close. Too close for her, but not close enough for me. Diving off the ceiling, I landed in the shelter of the motionless giant robot arm on the other side from Maricel and her gun.

Back by the elevators, Nathaniel exclaimed, “Did it! The vice president’s call is going through!”

And Maricel lost her cool. The relaxed, gloating switched for a husky snarl. “I have had enough of you.”

The gun fired twice. People screamed. It sounded like everyone.

I had this one brief moment of distraction. I launched myself over the robot arm, my own hands reaching, and they pushed the gun barrel aside before it could turn to me. My shoulder slammed into Maricel.

She slipped on the wet floor. I didn’t, and came down with a knee on her stomach.

It didn’t completely stun her. She wrestled for control of the gun with both hands, but I didn’t want it. I only needed it out of the way as I shoved my hand in my pocket, pulled out a wad of medicated patches and rubbed them up her side, over her arm, shoulder, and neck. All the skin bared by that ugly, dull, tastelessly exposing metal bikini betrayed her. The plastic guard peeled off of half a dozen patches as I rubbed, and they stuck to her body.

She won the wrestling match for the gun, and smacked the handle against my head. Stars burst over my vision, and I sank back onto the floor.

Climbing up onto her knees, anger twisting her dark face, the vicious young woman pointed her rifle at me, pausing only to yank off a patch that had only half-attached with one hand. There were a good half a dozen more of those in addition to the ones that fit properly.

“What is this, an elastic bandage?” she asked in disbelief. After all, she didn’t have to use the regular, poor person machine telepath drugs.

Her eyes unfocused. She wobbled, and the arm holding the gun slumped.

I lunged back up and grabbed her arms. We wrestled again, both of us dizzy, but she got steadily weaker while my head cleared.

Fry Smiley whined with her mouth the whole time. “Fight harder, you lump of meat! What’s going on? Why is available memory shrinking? I need to get out of this body!”

Nope. I wasn’t having that. Throwing Maricel onto her stomach, I yanked the little black bulb stuck into the socket of her spinal implant.

Maricel could barely move now, and certainly couldn’t talk. That left Smiley to squeal, “What did you do to us?”

I grinned so hard that it set my head to hurting again. Holding Maricel down, watching her eyes twitch as Smiley tried to focus them on me, I explained, “I gave you an amnesic and pattern stabilizer. When Maricel wakes up in a day or two, every memory she picked up today will be erased.”

“You’rrre going to kill mmmeee?” Smiley slurred, fighting Maricel’s limp mouth.

…

I should. He was a murderer. Leaving him alive at all was dangerous.

But… death was the one thing you couldn’t take back.

I pulled out my SPUD and stuck it into the same slot in Maricel’s back that I’d pulled the transmitter out of. It fit. A universal plug is a universal plug.

Lights flickered, and Fry Smiley’s voice came out strong and clear from my SPUD. “Ha ha! Yes! Now I’ll escape by— you call this bandwidth? It’ll take—”

That was how long it took me to shut the SPUD off.

Maricel could lie there. She wouldn’t remember anything and I didn’t care. Leaving her unconscious body on the floor, I staggered to my feet and took a look at my friends.

Cappy lay way back at the end of the hall, blood on his back and the ghost girl’s mouth. He struggled to get up, but she poked him and pushed him back down.

Lucy was standing. Hunched, but standing. Liriel and Meowpurr looked actually unconscious. Nathaniel sat upright, leaning over Chaos.

Chaos was drenched in blood, and not moving. Nathaniel’s hands wandered over him, pressing against his throat, picking at his clothes, as Nathaniel whispered, “No. Oh, man, please no.”

I grabbed my shoulders, tears stinging in my eyes. I hadn’t wanted anyone to die for me, and certainly not an innocent kid like Chaos who just liked to play with toys.

The ghost girl stood up, sniffing the air, reminding me that the fight wasn’t over. She took a step toward Chaos and Nathaniel. Lucy stepped into the way and hauled her sword up, but the ghost girl slapped her aside, knocking Lucy against the wall as if she were the child. I didn’t know what to do, and couldn’t reach them in time if I did.

The snow-white child pounced on Chaos’s body like a cat, teeth latching onto his throat and hands groping in his wounds. Nathaniel let out a yell and tried to push her aside, but she was attached to Chaos’s body now.

From way down the hall, I couldn’t see what she was doing and didn’t want to. What I could see was when Chaos twitched, lifted his head, and his eyes opened. His arms wrapped around the little girl even younger than him, and he held her tenderly against his bloody chest. “You’re so lonely,” he murmured, sounding sad, but himself and most importantly alive.

“Yes. You’ll be my big brother and love me forever and ever, won’t you?” the girl squeaked.

“Of course,” Chaos prompted her. Sitting up a little straighter, he blinked, blinked again, and a tired but bright smile returned to his face. “You should meet our mom!”

Carefully, he climbed to his feet. Careful not because he was weak, but because he lifted the little girl in her loose dress up with him in his arms, as easily as if she were made of feathers. On his throat, a big white patch showed glaringly against his deep brown skin. More patches like it peeked out of his torn and bloody shirt. But he wasn’t dead.

Chaos wasn’t dead, Maricel wasn’t dead, Smiley wasn’t dead, and I had decades to figure out what to do with him if I needed them.

Staggering over to my friends, I held out my arms, catching Cappy as he waddled over and…okay, he was not made of feathers and I couldn’t lift him like Chaos did the ghost girl. Instead I leaned my forehead against his. “You’re okay, conscience?”

He made a bubbling sound. “Yeah. Bandages or stitches would be nice, but I’ll be fine. She couldn’t infect me because I’m already synthetic.”

I looked over at Nathaniel, and asked, “The cops aren’t coming?”

He shook his head, and started the clumsy process of getting his legs underneath him and standing up. “No.”

“We’d better get out of here.”

A minute later, the elevator doors closed on my bruised, bloody, and fabulously awful looking band of adventurers. We rode down the long, long trip from the forty-sixth floor to ground level in pained silence, at first.

Until Celestial Wonder Meowpurr giggled, and kept giggling. Liriel and Chaos picked it up. Nathaniel grinned. Lucy’s mouth, just maybe, twitched up at the corners.

Running a hand through the thick fur around her head, Meowpurr gave me a woozy smile. “So. Now that you’re going to live, is this a good time to talk business?”

Okay, now I laughed, an exhausted snort that gave way to, “Beg pardon?”

The werecat tapped my bicep with her fist. “Walking the dark side! I told you, I’ve been getting jobs doing courier work.”

I raised a rainbow eyebrow. “Delivering packages?”

She waved her hands in dramatic circles. “Delivering secret packages. Messages too sensitive to risk on Cyberspace. Packages that someone might not want to arrive. It’s not the highest paid mercenary work, but it’s good. With your night fly talents and your ability to get in and out of places, you would be the best.”

Wagging a finger in front of her face, I contradicted, “Ah, but what if I’m about to become stinking rich and not need a job?”

Everyone looked at me, even the ghost girl whose life had nothing to do with money.

My hand palm up now, I asked Meowpurr, “May I borrow your SPUD? I don’t think Fry Smiley is tracking it anymore.”

She took it out of the slot in her shoulder spike, and I bent down and plugged the machine into Cappy’s forehead. “Call Adelita.”

The SPUD started ringing so fast, the mercenary broker must have been in Meowpurr’s contact list. After the third ring, Adelita’s distracted voice greeted, “Dark side exchange. Hiring or looking to work?”

I took great satisfaction in telling her, “Hang up, try and get Fry Smiley’s attention, and call me back at this number.”

“You finished the job?” she asked, voiced hushed with excited awe.

“Done. Fry Smiley is gone. Off cyberspace for good. Go on, check.” Oh, man, this felt good to say.

Cheerfully businesslike now, Adelita replied, “I will, before the money goes through, but I believe you. Smart idea, waiting this long. Want to hear how high the bounty got?”

Tension thrilled through me. Maybe too much tension. “I don’t think I could handle it right now. Just be general. Thousands, tens of thousands—”

“—tens of millions,” answered Adelita crisply. Now she was enjoying this.

Ggggk. That. Was. A lot of money. A lot of money that I couldn’t celebrate over, because Fry Smiley might be gone, but the damage he’d caused hadn’t yet been fixed. My siblings and the robot who raised us were all out of a home unless I did the right thing.

Both proud and despairing, I instructed, “Donate it all to the Snowflake Cradle Orphanage. All except….”

Looking up and around at my friends’ faces, I asked, “How much does a cyborg tail cost?”