Of course, Marquis wanted his job to be simple. Sometimes it was. Stopping a simple terrorist threat. Interfering with a typical assassination attempt. Mucking up the works of an enemy spy network. Simple, normal bureau jobs.

Tomás DeSoto, though, was not in the Bureau.

At only forty-one years old, Tomás DeSoto had created and developed a huge, multinational corporation that dabbled in at least a dozen different specialties and competed against business that had thrived for half a century. Unfortunately, one of those specialties included providing Stream security for the huge independent satellite and server system that managed the central government’s connectivity. The fact had put him on the radar of Peter Donovan, and Marquis had found himself leashed by higher ups, prevented from helping his friend. Marquis would do almost anything to help rescue Tomás’s daughter, Sophie. Almost anything.

Now, though, Marquis had to question his friend. What Tomás was asking Marquis rivaled the methods of the unscrupulous Donovan. Leading an agent in a particular direction using hormonal impulses? Routine and mildly invasive, but in line with the work of an agent. Turning an agent into a roaring mass of hormones? Cruel and violating. Tomás had a complicated scheme involving Sophie’s best friend – coincidentally Peter Donovan’s close companion – and the only agent who had managed to catch onto the trail of whatever manipulations Donovan was currently engaged in, Rel Martins. Sophie’s friend, in a bedside confession, had revealed the ingenuity of Aurelius Martins, and now that fact was being used against both of them.

Tomás believed that steeling the friend’s sense of security would drive her to Peter, and then she would be available to mine for information. At best, the scheme had a small chance to work. More likely, Marquis was just messing with a really gifted agent. Manipulating the chemicals that Marquis intended to use held no guarantees. If he were honest with himself, he hoped that Rel proved as principled and competent as he seemed and pulled himself away from Hazel when the unnatural surges hit.

This sucks, Marquis complained as he sent the command through the dedicated Stream.

Sighing, he turned away from his desk and headed to the coffee machine. He wouldn’t be able to ignore it for long, but he wanted for just a minute to forget what a reptile he could sometimes be.

+++++++++++++++

When the notification flashed up on Rel’s Neurex, he just completely stopped walking. At least he had remembered his gloves this time.

Closing his eyes, he reached toward the surge of adrenaline that someone had unleashed in his system. He hated having his mind manipulated, but he could usually see past it if he tried. Centering, he opened his eyes and peered around him at the crosshatched intersection of streets. Though people who grew up in the city claimed the Queue cars didn’t give off exhaust, with his rurant acclimated senses, Rel could discern the odd ozone-like haze that always permeated the otherwise appetizing scents wafting from the nearby restaurant doors. From a bar halfway down the block, a thrum of blues guitar tugged him in the direction he wanted to go anyway. He just had to pause long enough to filter out his own wishes from the increase of the artificial chemicals that spiked through his brain.

Fortunately, the surges grew stronger – surprisingly stronger – as he wandered toward the home of Tomás DeSoto. So, of course, the leading pointed to DeSoto, but last time he had darkened the man’s door, Hazel Hops had shoved him out into the street and made his day by agreeing to meet for coffee. The AD had shut Rel down, Omar had handed him increasingly inane assignments, and Vee could find almost nothing to help him. But the strange hormone rushes – they seemed to proceed from a more benevolent hand than any he had encountered at the Bureau. One allied with more than one of Rel’s own purposes.

If the bike was parked in front of the brownstone, he would have more than one expectation to look forward to.

++++++++++++++

Peter stared at the flashing beacon that warned him of any emergency call to Hazel’s apartment or near Hazel’s handheld. A fire at her apartment? A fire that had apparently grown bigger than the automated foam system could manage by itself. For the past day, the intense kiss he had stolen as Hazel had left had played itself over and over in Peter’s mind. The compulsion to feel the heat of her lips on his, to push her farther, had grown and expanded, taking too much space in his thoughts. He had too many things to manage in the next several days.

But that’s because it’s too complicated to access her, he realized. If she were here when I felt the urge…

Even he recognized how dangerous it was to play with her the way he would with another woman. In truth, he had never considered the thrill associated with having no Wire access to her emotions or her reactions to him. It was like a game of hide and seek, and the thrill accessed some long-forgotten quarter of his soul. Some emotional part of him that had never possessed much sway in his mind but had died completely after the Crash.

Yet there it was, not resurrected, but formed into some half-functional revenant of its former self.

Certainly, there was not an emotional connection with Hazel herself. More just the thrill. Thrill had died with the Platform, thrill stripped of its power by Peter’s subsequent mastery over the internal workings of humanity, including his own.

The thrill was like a very potent drug, and he did not have any intention of weaning himself off of it just yet. Peter had read stories and watched vids about people who had literally drugged themselves to death in a blazing surge of oblivion, and he thought he understood a little bit now. Not that he would let himself go that far - he was too smart for that. Still, it was Hazel. There was very little risk. She was basically himself. Or at least his in every meaningful way - like an extension of his own mind and soul. Why not his own body and will and every other part of him?

Accessing the schematics of Hazel’s building, he unzipped the controls for the foam fire extinguishing system. He pulled up the generic schematic so he could compare the code and find the error. Not an error. A trapdoor. Someone had accessed Hazel’s fire system.

Peter’s first thought flew to Tomás DeSoto. If that were the case, Peter would need to send Tomás a much stronger message about trying to interfere. If he thought threatening Hazel would offer Peter the same type of intimidation that threatening Sophie offered Tomás, the man was a fool. Peter played on a whole other level.

Though he considered Tomás the most likely candidate, Peter should at least consider other options. There were all the usual suspects who resented Peter – foreign governments, anarchists, religious protesters, domestic government agents working to undermine Peter’s grip on power. Or maybe a domestic agent with a more personal motive? The NCB agent from the night of Hazel’s run-in with the queue car.

If the look the man leveled at Hazel that night meant anything, the hulking giant bore more interest in Hazel than Peter would like. Though his record didn’t reflect it, maybe the Martins guy had a bit of a twisted sensibility and his interest would express itself in destructive ways – like a fire. Peter could hope. He would love a reason to snuff the guy out before the Deconstruction, though Peter would definitely find a reason soon, one way or another. The man irritated Peter.

When he began to dig into the source of the code, though, it did not point to NCB. It was routed through a series of ground servers, and Pete could not trace the full path. Since he currently had full access to monitor NCB’s servers, he knew that the path led away from the government into the private sector. So, if the giant was working for anyone, it was contract. For the time being, Peter could not know, and it didn’t really matter. He had to secure Hazel just in case, and the professional consideration would align nicely with the personal one he had decided to pursue. No one would use her to manipulate him, and since he couldn’t find out the source of danger, he would remove Hazel from the possibility.

Part one of the resolution would lie in interfering with the NCB agent, whatever his purpose. When Peter pulled the man up, several interesting facts slid into view. For one, Rel Martins had recently run afoul of his higher ups, revealing an unhealthy obsession with various random and meaningless data, and the man had been sanctioned out of his analysis position to a street agent. No doubt to remove him from a place where he could pester his director.

Much more interesting to Peter, though, the monitor that kept track of the hulk of a man showed a strange spike in a cocktail of hormones, run through the man’s Neurex, that seemed poised to render him unstable. In the amounts currently utilized, they would just elevate his stress levels, maybe make the man frustrated and therefore a little more volatile. Volatile enough to start a fire in Hazel’s apartment? Peter grinned. Not a bad idea for Peter’s purposes, though perhaps a little less restraint would serve Peter better.

With a few keystrokes, Peter delved a little deeper into the programming that had set up Rel Martins. Somehow, there were triggers. A woman from Sino-Russe, a kid in Soho…and Hazel. Austen Trace. There had been an alteration in the hormone cocktail, and though it there was no explanation besides Tomás DeSoto and some ill-conceived attempt to screw with Peter through Hazel. Peter would have to make sure DeSoto didn’t interfere anymore.

With a small change in the code, Peter could deny DeSoto’s access and make sure he couldn’t alter the trigger. Peter smiled. Accessing the commands, Peter switched the admin, blocked Tomás, and amped up several of the hormone levels. Next time the seemingly compassionate agent met Hazel, he might easily turn into a monster. Peter couldn’t forget the look the man had leveled at him that night. Who does Hazel need protection from now? he mused smugly. As Hazel had done that night, she would have no choice but to seek out Peter for protection.

That accomplished, Peter turned back to the fire. He did not care to take the time to locate Hazel’s specific apartment, so he just disconnected the entire fire system. The firemen were already on their way – they could do their jobs and put the fire out the old-fashioned way. Just not before Hazel’s apartment suffered significant damage. Where else would she go? Sophie was in a coma. And Sophie couldn’t give Hazel the game speed that Peter could. It was basically a sure thing that with the one little nudge of the fire system, Pete would soon have Hazel available whenever he wanted.

With such an exciting prospect in mind, Peter did not want to sit still. Instead, he decided that he would speed up the project by showing up to comfort her at the loss of her apartment. Peter left the Bridge projection open and hurried to his car, heading out of his garage with a frenzied thrill.

There were exactly ten chess pieces he needed to move before the Deconstruction, and he would manage it all in just over a week. Conveniently, he could now insist that Hazel come stay with him, play her little Partie tournament at his apartment on his superior equipment. When then the system she relied on for her game came crashing down anyway, he could comfort her and promise to fix it. She would stay with him just for that. Of course, Peter had set up the solution long ago, so he wouldn’t actually need time. Not that he would let her know until he was ready. His own private system would maintain his Wire connection locally, and Hazel could just pick her game back up after Peter made some adjustments.

Once he had done that, he would turn his attention to the rest of the world, doling out access based on similarity of purpose and competence, not on political cronyism or some phantom moral code that gave people a false sense of security. The world was dangerous, and protecting people from reality just made them weaker when they ran up against it – everyone lost a Lex at some point. Maybe once no one had a Wire, Peter and Hazel would outlive their usefulness for each other and move on, but until he was sure he wouldn’t need her, he was going to make sure she had nowhere else to go.

Some tiny corpse of a conscience growled a weak protest at him, but Peter jabbed it with his logic and sent it back to the grave.

By the time he reached the far side of the bridge, his eye had caught the unexpected sight of a weak plume of smoke spiraling toward the low clouds. For a moment, he felt something akin to fear, but he quickly suppressed it. When he went to access Hazel’s handheld, he cursed himself.

Sophie’s, he sneered, irritated that he had wasted a trip over. Jolt her! So much for playing the hero. Hazel wouldn’t even know about the fire yet. As he approached her apartment, though, Peter had to appreciate that he had come over - her building had burned to the ground.

He should have realized it would happen. Such accidents had grown so rare that local fire departments had trouble dredging up funding, and after consolidations and volunteer decline, most calls took a good half-hour to respond. So, if the fire foam didn’t work, an entire building could theoretically go up. No one had seen it happen in twenty years, not even during the Crash. Still, in a building that old, there would at least be an explanation.

Staring at the smoking husk, Peter had to wonder why the fire had started in the first place. In his world, he could not afford to assume coincidence, and if someone had known about his relationship with Hazel, that person could theoretically use the relationship to get back at Peter. Fortunately, only one other conscious person knew much about Peter’s friendship with Hazel, and that person had good reason to wish Peter ill.

Tomás DeSoto.

Peter directed the Queue car back to his apartment. If Tomás believed hurting Hazel would cost Peter, Tomás knew very little about the Architect of the Bridge. Peter’s biggest concern by far was his goal, and Hazel his security plan in case he needed support until he could manage his ultimate plans.

Unlike Peter, however, Tomás valued something much higher than his little plan to interfere. Not that Peter could cause Sophie any serious harm, because while he felt confident that he could – after the fact - persuade Hazel to see the value of the Deconstruction, she would not forgive him if he harmed someone she loved. Still, he could send a message without causing any significant harm.

++++++++++++++++

As he crossed the final street to the DeSoto home, Rel noticed the spiraling smoke a few blocks away, and of course, it caught his attention. The last time any significant fires had occurred was at the Crash, when towers of smoke had scattered throughout the city and created a general haze that hung like a blanket over all of NAmdam for days.

A lone fire, though, did not raise any significant alarms. If the system had failed again, there would be much more havoc. Rel hadn’t grown up in the city – wasn’t there for the Crash – but he had seen vids and pictures.

When he approached a familiar building, he was rewarded with a double pump of adrenaline, one from his Neurex and a genuine one from his excitement. He crossed the street in front of the home of Tomás DeSoto. Just for kicks, he linked up his Neurex to search out handheld signals and smiled as Hazel’s handheld registered at his destination. As soon as he recognized his pleasure, though, he pulled himself up short in the middle of the road. Why had the hormone influx not faded once he had reached his target, as it usually did? Instead, the intensity of sensation compelled him forward – it was almost painful to resist.

He had learned to recognize the different surges during his weeks of training for the NCB – adrenaline, serotonin, dopamine, testosterone – and usually he just suppressed them by engaging his mind, a process that righted the chemical balance in his body quite efficiently. Not this time, though. This time took everything within him to contain his intensity. Not only had someone flushed his system with several unnecessary hormones, the sheer concentration evoked memories of the recreational drugs he had studied in training, drugs that, once tasted, would ruin people for sensation the rest of their lives.

Who was doing this to him? Up until his current trip, adrenaline had served well enough to lead him where he needed to go. Why would anyone possibly need to spike his other hormones? They had to be the reason.

Rel had talked to Hazel a few times. He had thought she was pretty. He had admired her intelligence. He had considered asking her out. None of which should have created in him such a strong urge to rush up the stairs, grab her, and kiss her until she passed out.

With a steeling breath, he raised his hand and tapped much more gently on the door than his body told him to. Just as the diminutive housekeeper responded to his notification and smiled him into the foyer, chaos seemed to erupt inside the door. Alarms rang out from the top of the stairs, and Mr. DeSoto dashed out of a room to Rel’s left, taking the stairs four at a time. Although Rel wanted to satisfy his own curiosity, civility required him to stay put. On the plus side, the natural stimulation of hormones from the shock set off his negative feedback loop, and his body began to release regulating hormones to calm his artificial ones. He sucked in a sigh of relief as he felt himself regain control.

He could see a doctor and some nurses dashing around at the top of the stairs, and though he had assumed the emergency involved an occupant of the home, his sudden remembrance that Hazel was there sent him part way up the stairs to see if he could discern who was in trouble. He chastised himself for his relief when he saw Hazel standing, hugging herself, and staring at a hospital bed as the medical personnel dashed around it. As he crept back down the stairs, he accessed the Stream and did a quick search on Tomás DeSoto.

Tomás DeSoto, head of Dragnet, multinational corporation which, among other things managed security for the Central Government. Daughter, Sophie DeSoto. Wife, deceased – the date indicated it was likely from the Crash. That was all he had. The uber-wealthy had ways of obfuscating their net worth, but the company itself held as much value as a medium-sized nation.

Though it hadn’t registered the last time he had visited the DeSoto residence, a new thought hit Rel on his second visit. How had Hazel Hops – or Austen Trace, since she hadn’t denied it – managed to link herself up with two of the most powerful people on the planet?

And no one even knew who she was.

Well, Rel knew. Hazel was a smart, funny, unassuming woman. She likely didn’t care two credits who Peter Donovan or Sophie DeSoto were. In fact, her friendship with Peter had started long before he had become a household name. Maybe it said something about Peter and Sophie that they recognized Hazel’s value; or maybe it just meant they collected valuable things.

Rel didn’t mistrust people because they were rich; he just mistrusted people in general. He had seen as much evil in the power games of the poor as in the power games of the rich. Since Rel himself had grown up so far removed from “culture,” out in an agricultural sector, he had come to the nuances of culture late in the game. Others had their preconceived notions firmly set. Rel had created some immediate and simplistic categories of people, but they were fluctuating. There were certain behaviors common among the wealthy, one of which was collecting things. Looking around the DeSoto home, that did not seem to be the case. For sure, Peter Donovan held a thoroughly different character from the head of Dragnet, though Rel hadn’t yet made out in what way.

As he came to himself again, Rel realized that the noise upstairs had increased, and he decided that propriety could take a back seat for a minute. He hurdled the stairs and tried to contact Vee as he did. Just when he cleared the top stair, Vee’s voice sounded in his ear.

“What’s going on, Rel?” she demanded before he could say anything. “I’m hearing all sorts of alarms where you are.”

“I need you to pull up Tomás and Sophie DeSoto, specifically Sophie. See if you can figure out what is going on with her. She’s in some kind of cardiac arrest. I promise it has to do with a case.”

“Shit!” Vee cursed uncharacteristically. “I can’t just pull up personal info on the head of Dragnet and dig around in his daughter’s medical condition without permission from the higher ups!”

“You mean you’re not supposed to,” Rel corrected. “I know you can, and I promise that if you help out Mr. DeSoto, he will be incredibly grateful.”

The Neurex went silent for several minutes, and Rel wondered if Vee had cut him off. Finally, a report popped into Rel’s vision, and he cursed under his breath. “Can you reboot it?” Rel wondered.

“Wow,” Vee sucked in some air. “Um, maybe? That is just about the biggest breach of protocol –”

“You hear what is going on here!”

From near the hospital bed, Mr. DeSoto was almost wailing at the doctor, and Hazel stood crying, her back pressed against the wall in the corner of the room, trying to stay out of everyone’s way. Alarms continued to blare, the medical staff yelled commands at each other…”

“This isn’t like tracing someone’s location. I have to access the Wire’s kernel. I don’t know how fast it will be…” Vee murmured, and Rel could hear the occasional whisper as Vee seemed to be reading instructions from somewhere. If she was not instantly fired, it would be a miracle. Rel knew what he was asking, and so did Vee. But neither hesitated when the life of a young woman was on the line.

“What if you had the key?” he prompted.

“I mean, yeah. I guess. That would basically make it instantaneous.”

Rel sprinted up the last few steps and yelled into the chaos.

“Sophie’s key!” he screeched at Tomás DeSoto. “Give me Sophie’s key, and I’ll fix this!”

For a moment, Mr. DeSoto stared at Rel, distrust leaking through his desperation, but the desperation won out quickly, and as he turned back to stare at his daughter, a notification popped up on Rel’s Neurex.

“Got it, Vee. Linking you in. Do you have it?”

After a moment of silence, Vee confirmed, “I’m in! This should be quick.”

Suddenly, amid the alarms and the yells and the wails, a shriek rang out, followed by the thud of Sophie’s body on the bed. Something had happened.

From the corner, Hazel watched in shock as Sophie, abruptly different, fell back to the bed, her eyes open. The comatose girl spoke the words, “Where am I?” before lapsing immediately back into slumber with steady breaths and the consistent beeping of her monitors.

The room breathed a collective sigh of relief.

For the first time, Hazel grew aware of Rel’s presence, and her face morphed through several expressions; first relief, then confusion, and finally landing on resentment. She glanced at Mr. DeSoto, who was whimpering and hovering over his daughter, then trudged to the top of the stairs and motioned to Rel to follow her to the foyer.

Once there, she hissed at him with obvious fury. Despite her irritation, she noted the flush of color on his cheeks, as if he had just finished a workout, and the intensity of the look he gave her. He cooled his gaze, an act of will as she watched. The effect gave her chills.

“What is your deal?” She forced anger into her tone. “I cannot believe you are following me again, and if you’re not following me, you’re harassing the DeSotos! You have the nerve to stand here during a family emergency. You need to leave right now before Mr. DeSoto realizes you crashed his house.” Maybe she protested too much, but her internal conflict every time she saw the agent disturbed her, and she had enough to feel disturbed about at the moment.

“Hazel,” Rel leveled, reaching for her shoulders and pinning her to look at him. He reined in a desire to take her in his arms – what was wrong with him? “You need to know what just happened. You need to know what was wrong with Sophie. I stopped whatever was happening to her. It was her Wire. Her Wire was keeping her in a coma!”

Hazel finally stopped squirming and huffing angrily, instead finding herself completely unable to breathe.

“What are you saying?” She peered up at him.

“I’m saying that someone used her Wire to put her in a coma…My Neurex sent me a rush of adrenaline…” among other things… “as I came by this house, and someone has been using those nudges anonymously to direct me to the right people. People who hold pivotal positions, and whose kids have mysteriously fallen into comas. I’m up to three, but I’m betting I’m going to find more.”

Hazel held her hands on either side of her face, as if she were holding herself upright by the head.

“But Mr. DeSoto?” she wondered.

“He runs Dragnet. It manages all the security for the central government. He might be the reason my entire investigation has been sidelined.”

“Young man,” came the deep voice from above, “you need to be very careful before you throw around accusations like that.”

Mr. DeSoto, heading for the stairs, held up a finger below the level that his own eyes could see. Unlike Rel, who just had a basic Wire with slightly more intrusive bodily connections, Mr. DeSoto no doubt used the top-of-the-line Wire, complete with visual connection so that, with permission, someone could see what Mr. DeSoto saw. If someone had enough pull on the Wire to put Sophie in a coma, that person would also have the ability to view what Mr. DeSoto viewed even without permission.

Using hand signals, Mr. DeSoto directed his visitors to his study, beginning a tirade on how spurious accusations could crash companies and create civil unrest. With his hands and body, he slid around to the back of his desk, felt for a notepad and pen, and scrawled a very messy note since he couldn’t look down to see what he wrote. His eyes stayed focused on Rel’s and Hazel’s faces.

He leaned on the desk as if lecturing Hazel and Rel, and they knew enough not to notice the notepad until after Tomás left the room.

“You can stay, Hazel, of course, but you need to leave...” he gestured to Rel, “…whoever you are.”

Immediately, Rel moved toward the exit, and Mr. DeSoto followed him for a moment before turning up the stairs. As soon as he did, Hazel rushed to the desk and grabbed the notepad.

He’s right, Mr. DeSoto had written. It’s the Wire. It’s causing the comas.

Instead of following Rel, Hazel dropped into Mr. DeSoto’s chair, and a moment later, Rel reappeared in the doorway. He grabbed the notepad and pen and wrote Hazel a message.

Too many eyes in here. Let’s get coffee.

Hazel took the notepad back. Can they see what you see or hear what you hear? Of course, if they could, writing the note would accomplish nothing, but Rel quickly shook his head before gesturing outside. One minute, Hazel insisted before heading back upstairs.

It killed her that she couldn’t ask Mr. DeSoto any important questions because his information was monitored. So she asked the most important question.

“Is she okay?” When Hazel reached the top of the stairs, she quickly noticed Sophie on the bed, her monitors beeping not quite as steadily as they had for the past few weeks.

Mr. DeSoto looked shellshocked – desperate – and Hazel recognized how painful it would be to hold in all the relevant information that could save so many when you wanted to unload a burden. If Hazel read Mr. DeSoto right, the burden had shifted.

“She’s out of the coma,” his haunted voice intoned, a shadow of his usual ringing baritone. “It’s hard to find much cause for celebration, though, since she could lapse back any time, or worse...”

“Still,” Hazel sighed, “maybe we will get to hear her voice again soon.”

With tears in his eyes, Tomás DeSoto - desperate and miserable and hopeful - turned and looked at Hazel. Hazel could offer him nothing but to go talk to the agent downstairs. Apparently, Mr. DeSoto had decided to include Rel Martins in the knowledge of Sophie’s problem, and Hazel had to find out why.

She rose and gave Mr. DeSoto’s hand a reassuring squeeze before making her way downstairs to cross with Rel to the coffee shop facing the DeSoto place.