The ride home was quiet and uneventful. Walker took a few phone calls on the way, then gave me a distracted goodbye after dropping me off in front of the stacks. I was just through the gate when my phone rang. The caller ID read "Dezhda K

I picked up as soon as I saw who it was, staying outside since the metal container walls could play hell with reception. "Dezhda? What's up?"

"Hi, Sharkie! How are you today?" She sounded just as effusive over the air as live in person.

"I can't really complain. You?"

I heard a little sigh come over the line. "I'm okay, I guess. I'm sad because, um, Qayyem died last night. They're not sure exactly when."

Qayyem? Oh yeah, her boss at Nino's. Guess that explained how he'd 'slept' through the gunfire. What were the odds? She must be a wreck. "Damn, Dezhda. I'm...I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't know him, but-"

"That's the thing!" she interrupted, suddenly distraught. "I barely knew him either! And-and because of that, it's like even though I should be sad, I'm just not that upset! But then not being upset makes me upset, because I feel bad, and-"

"Dezi! Dezi!" I broke in. I wasn't sure how to handle this but I wanted to help. I tried to channel Sawada as best as I could. "I think...I think it's okay if you aren't that sad about it. You're just one person, and you can't take every bad thing in the world personally."

"I know. I know that." she said, calming down. "I just feel so...so callous. And that's making me feel awful, like I'm being selfish because he's the one who died, not me...I don't know."

"Listen, Dezi. I'm not...I mean, I'm not any better at dealing with this kind of thing than you are. I doubt anybody's good at it." I hesitated, thinking for a couple seconds. "But it seems to me that just the fact that we're having this conversation means you're not too callous."

She definitely wasn't. After doing what I did for Walker, I think I had a pretty good baseline for hard-hearted.

"Th-thanks for saying that, Sharkie. It means a lot." She sniffled. "You're a good friend."

Wow. Was I? Was I really? Somehow she made me want to live up to that standard.

"Uh, thanks, Dezi. Glad to help," was the best I could manage in reply.

"But that's not why I called you! I thought about it, and while I don't know what exactly you and Mr. Walker do-"

Oh boy. I readied myself to answer some hard questions.

"-I can kind of guess. But I decided that maybe I don't have to know. I haven't known either of you long, but you've both treated me kindly. For the most part."

Oof. Crisis averted, but I still winced.

"So what I'm saying is, I'll take you up on your offer, if there's room for me. I'll help Mr. Walker's, um, 'business' with their books."

"Shit! That's great, Dezi! Walker's probably busy right now, but I'll drop him a line soon as I can so he can confirm things on his end. Can I give him your number? It's cool if you want to keep going through me-"

"No, you can give it to him," she said. "If it turns into a problem I'll just get a new one. I'm used to it. Dyedushka's always stealing my slab and signing up for all kinds of weird net mailings, and the only way to get it to stop is to-" I could almost hear her hand going over her mouth as she realized she was rambling. "-Well. Y-you get what I'm saying."

"Yeah. Yeah." I considered what I was going to say next and decided to go for it. "I was wondering, Dezi, if maybe you'd ever want to hang out sometime? Go get caff, or see a movie, or something?"

"Um, so, well-" she stuttered, sounding very flustered. "I-I really appreciate you asking, and I think you're a nice person, Sharkie, but, um, I actually have a boyf-"

Shit! That was all wrong! I snapped my head back and it hit the side of the container with a bong. Now I knew how Tanje felt yesterday. "As friends, Dezi! Just as friends, not a date! I should have been clearer, that's my fault. Shit..."

"Oh! Oh, Kings! I misread that completely, sorry sorry sorry-"

"It's fine, it's fine!"

"-so sorry, but the answer is yes! I'd like that!" There were other voices in the background, getting louder. Maybe she was at home.

I grinned, even though she couldn't see it. And I wasn't even very disappointed about the boyfriend. She was cute for sure, but I didn't really see her that way. "Nice! Um, I promise nobody'll get punched or shot, this time."

It was a shit joke, but she still laughed. "Good, they'd better not. Um, I actually have to go, Mama and Lyosha are yelling at each other again, but keep in touch and I hope I see you soon!"

"I will. See you later, Dezi."

"Youtoothanksbye!" The line went dead, and before I could forget I sent Walker a message saying she'd accepted. He'd read it whenever he wasn't busy. I stood there for a minute longer, thinking about Dezhda. What right did I have to give her psychiatric advice when I barely knew what I was doing myself? Maybe it didn't matter as long as I helped her. I moved on to more pressing issues: Finally taking a shower!

It might have been the happiest I've even been to see the inside of the plumbing box. I stayed under the searing water long enough to set off the frugality buzzer and piss off everyone else in there, then went into my room and changed. It was a little chilly today, so I picked out black jeans, a work shirt under a gray camo hoodie, and my spare steeltoes (my main pair would probably take a pressure washer to get clean). After loading up all my kit, I chucked my possibly-radioactive coveralls in the dumpster and called Tanje.

"Vandermaas and Associates," he answered after one ring. His accent was so precise he almost sounded like an answering machine.

"What's up, Tanje? It's Sharkie. Don't you have caller ID?"

"Good afternoon. I do, in fact, have caller ID. I simply prefer to err on the side of politeness when it comes to professional interactions." I could almost see the prim little smile he was no doubt wearing. "Now then. What can I do for you today? I hope you aren't experiencing any problems with your recent purchase."

"No, definitely not," I reassured him. "It's great. I was calling about making another, in fact."

"You're welcome anytime, so long as that time is within business hours."

I couldn't help laughing a little. "I wouldn't dream of imposing. But I am wondering: You feel like getting some caff together afterward like we talked about?

"Oh! Of course, of course." He sounded a tiny bit flustered. Like maybe one percent. Score. "I would enjoy that, yes."

"You pick somewhere out for us; you know the hood better. I'll see you in maybe half an hour?"

"It's a date. Figuratively. Ha-ha." Even his laughter was polite.

"Cool. See you soon, Tanje. And just so you know, you don't have to worry about being so formal with me."

"I'll take it under advisement, Miss Sharkie. Goodbye for now." The line clicked before I could make a comeback. At least he didn't know my full name; 'Miss Ellery of House Sawada' wasn't something I needed to hear.

Rather than walking, I decided to risk a ride on the Bussomat up to Parkside. I was tired and it would be faster anyway.

The closest stop was only ten minutes from the boxes. It was nothing but a diamond-shaped sign that, before it had felt the effects of several layers of spraybomb and a box or two of buckshot, had had a pictogram of a bus on it.

As the name implied, the Bussomat was a circuit of ancient, automated buses that ran all around D. They were all in horrific shape, of course. This was D-block: if it wasn't yours, why protect it? And if no one was gonna protect it, why not break it? Someone obviously maintained them a little bit, for they kept running, but I had no idea who.

It was only a few minutes before one screeched to a halt before me, luckily headed north. It sat on six non-pneumatic tires, its paintjob a two-tone of safety orange and graffiti. The doors shunked open, and I stepped up. This was the risky part: you never knew who you might be riding with. Sometimes rival gangsters would end up on the same bus and turned things into a who's-locked-in-with-who situation. I was luckier: the only other people standing in the dirty vehicle were a pair of manager-type guys in button-down shirts, a real far-out quarryman with filed teeth and runes burned into his cheeks, and a tiny little babushka in a colorful scarf.

It was just as bad inside these things as I remembered. The lights on the ceiling were all out, leaving the interior dark except for indirect light through the windows. Half the seats were ripped apart and the other half were wet or stained; nobody sat down on the Bussomat. The floor crunched when you took a step; it was covered in a thin gravel of cigarette butts, needles, food wrappers, glass pipes, beer cans, vials, condoms, socks, spent cans of hush, razor blades, shards of glass, shell casings, and other less mentionable things. Unidentifiable puddles sloshed in the corners. It would smell truly awful if all the windows weren't blown out, and as it was the stench was barely tolerable.

I settled in near the old lady as the bus pulled away in a cloud of greasy exhaust. It rolled uphill and north, passing out of Central Ward and through Bankstown on its way to Parkside. Nothing much happened except for a weird exchange started by a cybird that fluttered in through the window and landed on my shoulder bold as you please. It was the tiniest variety, a little tangle of articulated metal and composite barely larger than my thumb. Its head twitched back and forth in that bird-like way as it hopped a few times, staring at me with little blue-green gimlet eyes. Its beak opened and it peeped a few times, sounding like a BIOS error tone.

"Move, bitch," I muttered, poking at it. It hopped aside like a little ninja and peeped again.

"Why you call that bird bitch?" said a crackly voice from below. Its was the babushka, squinting up at me like she thought I was trying to pull a fast one on her. "You don't know him."

It was a very weird question, and also one I had no answer for. "I honestly don't know," I replied, rather nonplussed.

The old woman snorted. "Youths today. So rude. City is going to roaches, I say." She shook her head at me and said no more.

I didn't have anything to say to that, nor did the bird. I left him alone, though, and he rode on my shoulder all the way to Parkside and up to Tanje's doorstep. I hit the button on the intercom and Tanje answered quickly.

"Hello again, Sharkie. Before I let you in, my scanners are picking up some stray electronics somewhere on your upper body-"

"It's just a cybird, Tanje. Can I come in?" I said, glancing over my shoulder. I didn't want to be rude, but the park was just across the street and having its brooding vegetable mess at my back set me on edge.

"Regardless of what it is," he said, sounding a tiny bit miffed," could you kindly remove it? I prefer to minimize any potential security risks."

I tried to sweep the bird off my shoulder again. "Come on, man!" I hissed at it. "Get outta here." It hopped over everything like its skinny little legs were spring-loaded. They probably were. I paused for a second and it peeped at me again. "Taunt me, will you? Tiny little-"

What followed was about thirty seconds of a grown woman having her ass handed to her by a ten-gram robot bird. If Tanje had a camera aimed at his porch he was getting a show. The stupid little thing just flew around me or hopped from shoulder to shoulder before I could even get close. Finally I gave up, panting. The bird peeped, still staring at me.

"Yeah, yeah. Beep fucking beep." I was actually a little out of breath as I hit the intercom again. "It won't leave, Tanje. Can I please just come in?"

A pause. "Fine. But should I find any bugs on it, you will both be banned from the premises."

I suspected I cared about that more than the bird did, but whatever. It was no surprise one of them was acting weird. The cybirds were another failed public-works project like the park. They were supposed to be imitation birds, with artificial feathers over robotic skeletons and all networked into one big flock. Only the feathers had been rotted off by acid rain in about a month, and the networking software was so shoddily written that they mostly ended up sending out junk code and interfering with phone signals. They were bad enough for electronics that sometimes Dag had put me out in the yard with a sintergun to blast them off the top of the fence.

The magbolts clunked and I pulled through the door. I thought the prospect of going inside might defeat the mighty bird where I could not, but he was brave as he was fast. Dude didn't even twitch as I stepped over the threshold and into the bright-white hallway. Tanje met me in the same room as last time. He was dressed just like yesterday: black vest, white shirt, dark hair in a bun. He stared into the bird's green eyes, the bird stared into his black ones. And peeped.

"Eugh!" Tanje exclaimed, jumping backwards in surprise. It was an odd look on his pale, collected features. He brushed imaginary dirt off the front of his vest and turned to me. "Apologies. It's good to see you again so soon, Sharkie. Even with an uninvited guest along." From the counter, he picked up a palm-size device with a screen on the front and a case of thick gray plastic. "May I?"

"Ask him, not me," I said, jerking a thumb at the bird, who pecked at it a little.

Tanje leaned forward and aimed the scanner at the bird for a few seconds. "Nothing untoward, it seems. He stays-for now." The last part was directed at the bird. What was going on? I felt like I was going crazy.

"Um, sure. Thanks, Tanje. So. I came by to see about getting another gun."

He didn't look surprised. "Most people I sell to don't stop at just one," he said with a knowing smile. "What do you have in mind this time?"

"Another pistol, but more practical. Something with a bit more kick to it." I'd been lucky so far, but Walker was right. When stealth failed, the Slukh just wasn't going to get the job done.

He rubbed his hands together, smiling. "Nothing more specific than that? Just a duty pistol?"

"I guess not? Do you need something more?" I frowned, racking my brain for half-remembered magazine articles. "UZ's are pretty nice, I hear-"

"Oh, no," Tanje interrupted. "In fact, the more vague you are, the better. It gives me a chance to demonstrate what really sets my business apart. Anyone with the right connections can sell you a gun, but when given the chance, I can offer a fully curated experience, you see?"

He leaned in, eyes glinting with mercantile enthusiasm, and I decided it was a good idea to let him have his lead. "S-sure. Curate away."

"Gladly. One moment." He disappeared through the door behind the counter, just like before. I glanced at the bird, which was still on my shoulder, watching. Ever watching.

"I don't know about you, but I have no idea where he's going with this," I muttered to it.

It peeped.

"Yeah, you and me both. I-" I realized what I was doing and shut up. Maybe it was time to start getting more sleep.

Tanje was back in less than a minute. No clearing bucket this time, just a brushed-metal case and a grin. "You're going to love this, I think." The box clunked down on the counter and he presented it with a flourish. "Go on, open it."

I obliged him, hitting the latches. The lid flipped open with a whmp of equalizing pressure. Within, fit snugly into a gelfoam cutout, was a large cement-gray pistol. The whole thing was made of polymer and was kind of bulky, with a large grip and some extra mass to the frame ahead of the trigger guard. It looked like...a gun.

"Looks cool, man, but what is it?" I asked.

He looked only a tiny bit put out. "It is a SiKaHae AG Electromagnetic Weapon System." The look on my face at that must have said a lot. "A coilgun," he added helpfully. "It accelerates projectiles using electromagnetism, not gunpowder. Its muzzle energy is tremendous compared to similar chemically-driven weapons."

I'd seen stuff like this in books, but in real life? This was the cutting-edge.

"Sounds cool, man, but does it work?"

"It's Admin Enforcement standard issue," he replied smugly.

"Oh. Wow." The Masks weren't known for messing around. This thing was the real deal. "What's it shoot? Flechettes?"

"Of a sort." He reached behind the counter, pulled out a couple of boxes, and popped the tops. "It accepts two kinds of projectiles: variable-spread microflechettes and simplex penetrators. Both of a ferromagnetic depleted uranium alloy, of course." The first looked like bundles of tiny little needles, just over an inch long, the second a sharp-tipped cylindrical slug. "But the best part is the dual feed system: you can switch between the two on the fly. It's a shotgun and an anti-materiel rifle all in one, and it fits in your pocket to boot."

He gave me one of his patented obvious winks. "Please note that I may be exaggerating slightly, for marketing purposes. Oh, and the power cell is mounted here, below the barrel. It's meant to be replaced every thousand shots, though it ought to go at least twice that without much degradation in performance. Just, ah, don't microwave it. It explodes quite violently if you do."

Taken aback, I raised an eyebrow. The bird did not seem impressed either. "I don't know as much about this stuff as you do, Tanje, but I know enough not to cook my guns."

"I had thought so, but they spend a whole page in the manual on that warning. So..." He shrugged. "I thought perhaps it bore repeating."

"Well, thank you for looking out for me. You think I could test-fire this thing?" Microwave-safe or not, this was awesome.

He looked reluctant for just a moment, then grinned. "Let's go."

Turned out it was an absolute beast. The flechette rounds could be adjusted in power, starting at barely more kick than the Slukh and stopping at 'sore hands after five shots' strength. The sound was weird considering there was no gunpowder blast, just a reedy sonic crack and the buzz of the needle-like minidarts slicing the air.

The penetrators, though? They were deafening even through double earpro, and after three my hands were shaking so bad I couldn't hit shit even with the coilgun's little holo sight. The bird nipping at my collar between shots didn't help.

"I think that's enough of those for now, Sharkie," said Tanje, covering his mouth with a hand as he tried not to laugh at me. "The neighbors will be upset if you put a hole in their wall."

"I can't blame them," I muttered, flexing my fingers. "These things aren't incendiary, are they? I saw a flash when that last one hit the wall."

"Missed the backstop, you mean." he smirked. "But to answer your question, they technically aren't. However, depleted uranium is pyrophoric. Hit something hard enough, and the slug will send a shower of hot vapor and sparks through it as it penetrates-in other words, exactly what you don't want bouncing around the interior of an armored vehicle. In the industry, we call it 'behind-target effectiveness.' A rather quaint euphemism, don't you think?"

"Um, sure. Very twee." So on top of being toxic and radioactive, it was also a fire hazard. Depleted uranium was some 'keep out of reach of children' type shit.

"Quite. But what do you think?"

Remembering what happened last time with the ammo, I decided to be careful. "I'll tell you what I think if you tell me what it costs."

He gave me a number that would've knocked me to the floor if I hadn't been ready for it.

"That's, uh..." I muttered. "That's not a small amount of deng, Tanje. I don't know."

His lips quirked in that prim little smile. He knew he had me. "Perhaps I could include a few boxes of ammunition and a holster."

My poor wallet was quaking in fear. "I mean, I'd still have to think about it-"

Smile turned to a full-on catlike grin. "You know, I think I forgot to mention something."

"What...what's that?

"It's also select-fire."

---

A few minutes later, my pockets were significantly lighter and I'd made one of my free boxes of ammo disappear in about seven seconds. Well, it's not like I had to pay rent anymore.

"That's pretty fucking fun," I said to Tanje as I belted on my new piece. With the holster set up to ride high, my hoodie covered the gun completely.

"Quite," he said, inspecting the fit with a critical eye. "In the future, though, it's better kept to an outdoor range. Studies have shown that breathing uranium dust is not, in fact, healthy."

I suddenly had to cough. "Thanks for letting me know after I-"

"Oh, blow your nose a few times and you'll be fine. Now draw for me." I did so, repeating the motion a few times. "Good. Do that several thousand more times, and you'll look like a professional."

"I will," I replied with all seriousness. I didn't feel like getting caught flat-footed like I had the other night at Nino's. If Walker hadn't been on the ball I'd be in pieces.

"Now then." He clapped his hands together. "Shall we get some caff?"

"Sure. Your treat." I wasn't really kidding.

Tanje had the audacity to laugh, a clear, high sound. "Of course. You're buying for your friend, though."

I threw the bird a dirty look. I was gonna get a crick in my neck if I had to keep looking sideways like this. "He can find his own food. Ready to go?"

He led the way out of his building, pausing at the door to lock it and program a scary-looking alarm system. "One cannot be too careful around here," he explained. He was just turning around when I heard the shout.

"There! Go! Fuckin' get 'im!" I whirled and saw two men sprinting at us from the direction of the park. Filthy clothes, milky hush-addict eyes, limbs thin and rickety for lack of lifelight. Burnouts, but not same kind as Northmarch. These were just men with nowhere else to go, a step below even the homeless. Any charitable feelings I might have had for them, though, were tempered by the weapons they held.

The one with a kitchen knife was coming at me, the other barreling at Tanje with claw hammer raised. "Tanje" I yelled. "Watch o-"

"I see them," came the calm reply, and then the guy was on me, slashing wildly. I gave ground for a moment, watching his feet, watching the knife. Finally he overextended with a huge crossbody swing. He was leaned too far forward, subconsciously trying to keep out of my reach. He didn't succeed. Before he could pull his weapon arm back, I grabbed his wrist and squeezed. Brittle bones broke and crumbled in my grip like drywall, driving a thin steamwhistle shriek from his throat.

He freaked out, slugged me right in the eye with his free hand, but it was a bad punch and came too late anyway. I used the arm to yank him to the ground, stomped hard on the back of his neck. Was that a twitch? My boot cracked into the side of his head to make sure it didn't matter. Immediately, I spun to help Tanje-

Only to see him standing there, nonchalantly poking the hammer artist in the eye with one bionic index finger. Huh? The burnout was twitching weirdly, joints all loose, and then Tanje withdrew his hand and the dude collapsed. I saw that Tanje's finger had elongated into a fine, wicked spike, long enough to have given hammer guy a very radical lobotomy. As I watched it flowed like liquid, resuming its usual seamless shape. "How utterly irritating..." he murmured, wiping his hand off with his hankie. "Are you alright, Sh-Oh my, your face!"

"That bad, huh?" I felt at where I'd been punched and while it was a little tender, I'd had worse scrapping with rival street kids when I was younger. "It feels better than it looks," I reassured him.

"I see. Good." He'd dropped the soiled handkerchief atop hammer guy's corpse and was now spraying down his hand with a tiny can of harsh-smelling aerosol disinfectant. "I swear upon the Martyred Kings, Sharkie. Had I known why this building was so cheap, I never would have signed the lease."

I glanced back at the labyrinthine tangle of the park. "You, uh, didn't realize?"

"I did not. I was born in a different part of the city." He inspected his hand, which was by now pristine and shiny as white glass. "And I would greatly appreciate it if we could leave it at that."

"Of course. Fine with me," I said, trying not to let my burning curiosity leak into my tone.

The way he rolled his eyes told me I hadn't succeeded, but he let it lie. "This has been a most regretful interruption, but also a brief one. Shall we?"

"Sure. Oh, but wait a minute, Tanje! Maybe this wasn't such a bad thing!" I had realized something important just now.

"Elaborate."

"The bird is gone!"

I'd expected an erudite nod of agreement. Instead, his face crinkled up into a weird shape that took me a few seconds to parse as 'barely-suppressed laughter.'

"What," I said, tone flat."

"Check-pf!-please check your cap."

I couldn't see on top of my own head, of course. But the tiny metallic peck my hand received when I felt around up there was all I needed to figure out what was so funny.

"Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up while you can." I jabbed a finger at him. "But just you wait! I'll have him sic his buddies on you, and then-well, then you'll-" And then he'd have a bunch of tiny birds to mildly annoy him? I didn't know where I was going with that. "What I meant to say is shut up."

It took Tanje a few seconds to get himself under control while I fixed him with the schoolteacher stare. "Ap-apologies. Let's go."

"Yeah-but wait a sec. Should we do anything about the bodies?" Maybe where I was from you could just leave a corpse in an alleyway, but I'd always thought Parkside was a little classier.

Maybe not. Tanje looked pointedly at the park. "There are scavengers of all sorts around here, Sharkie. They'll be gone the instant we walk away."

My good humor retreated a bit. I didn't want to think too hard about the implications of that statement. But I did think about this homeless derelict I'd killed, my latest victim. It had been self defense, sure. But had that last kick, the one that sealed the deal, really been necessary? He stopped being a threat the moment he hit the ground. I told myself he'd deserved it. I told myself that, had I used something other than my fists, he'd be dead anyway. Maybe I even believed me.

I shook my head. We were here to have a good time, not to mope. Tanje was already walking away and I jogged to catch up, the bird peeping as it got jostled.

"You acquitted yourself well back there, Sharkie," Tanje said as I came up alongside him. "That's no surprise. But I cannot help asking a question about your technique."

Had he not seen Sistema-4 before? I supposed as an old Sov discipline, it wasn't too common. "Fire away," I said.

Tanje stopped and looked me in the eye. "Why didn't you just shoot him?"

My own palm hit my face harder than the burnout had.