Things weren’t much different past the perimeter, though I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Past the door was another high-ceilinged bay like the one we’d left, partitioned off by warped walls of rusty metal. One end was filled with a tetanus-inducing deadfall of industrial shelving, but with one exception the rest of the floor was clear. A few half-length conex boxes sat in a row on the crumbling floor, looking a lot fresher than everything else. A legend was crookedly flash-scribed on their sides, the burnt-in letters half a foot high: PROPERTY MACOMB SECURITY A.G. L.L.C. UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS PUNISHABLE BY IMMEDIATE TERMINATION UNDER 16 S.B.C.C. § 3314(R). The far wall had a couple of man-doors at ground level and one more up a rickety flight of metal stairs.

“Not exactly the Graphic Spire, is it?” I muttered.

Alvar shook his head. “No. And d’you really think I get paid enough to stay in a six-star hotel? You think I’ve ever even been to Vitroix?”

“You’ve been closer than I have.”

“And right now we’re all very far away,” said Arc firmly. “Which way to the lab, Allie?” Me and Alvar both gave her a dubious look. “What?” she asked. “You said it first.”

“And it sounds even weirder when you say it,” her victim said with a shudder.

“I’m with him, Arc. Keep it formal.” I snickered at the way she folded her arms and glared. “Really, though, where to?”

“That top door doesn’t go anywhere,” said Alvar as he pointed, “but the one on the right’ll take us past the barracks and the chow hall, and then we can get to the lab. Ground floor or a catwalk up top, we have to go the same place either way-“

“Up top’s better. Right, Arc?” I asked, continuing when she nodded. “But do we have to go past the barracks and shit? There’s no way around? And what about- oh, fuck, what about cameras?” I’d been so worried about the kingsdamn perimeter that more mundane methods had slipped my mind.

He shook his head. “No cameras. We put them up before the scientists and the Sarevna showed up, but they had us take them down. And they said their ‘effect’ might brick them anyway.” He shrugged. “And there’s no way around. I mean, if we move fast and get a little lucky nobody’ll notice. And some of them’ll still be up on the roof. They won’t be expecting anything inside the perimeter. Right?”

“I dunno why you’re asking us, man.”

“To reassure myself?” He sighed, the breath coming a little jagged. “What the hell are you- we- going to do when we get there?”

I glanced at Arc before I answered. Her face was set, determined. “Get ourselves a ticket upstairs, just like I said.”

“And it’s that simple. You don’t need more of a plan. Despite the fact that the rest of the Masks will probably be in there.” Alvar’s tone said what he thought of that.

“That just means we won’t run into ‘em in the halls.” I sounded confident, but my hand still wandered down to the hilt of the saw, fingers dancing nervously on the grip. This level of ‘planning’ had worked in the past, sure- if you defined working as ‘barely succeeding whilst sustaining various grievous injuries.’ It was hard to make a better plan while we were still driving through a dark zone. Whatever. Winging it hadn’t quite killed me yet. Maybe this time everything would just go perfect.

Al covered his face with his hands and slowly dragged them down, staring at the ceiling like he thought something up there was going to help him. “Right. Okay. Fine,” he huffed when he was done. “I guess I had a pretty good life, all told, so-“

“That’s the spirit,” said Arc, nodding firmly. I couldn’t tell if she was fucking with him or not.

Alvar shot her a glare. “So. Let’s go, then.” He led the way once again, taking us through the right-side door. It opened smooth and silent, recently oiled. Going through it, we walked into a wide industrial corridor with cinderblock walls. It must have snaked between two of the factory’s larger areas. It was much better lit than anywhere we’d been so far, with new-looking LED banks strung through the web of pipes on the ceiling, and an effort had been made to clear the cracked floor of debris. Luckily we were the only ones around, though that might not be the case for long. I heard tinny yerroton music crackling out of a portable speaker from somewhere nearby, and more distantly chatting voices and some kind of mechanical whine.

I heard Alvar release a taut breath before he glanced back at us. “This way, quick!” He moved down the hall using the same toe-first, cross-stepping gait he would if he still had a rifle. Dude could definitely be quiet when he liked. Behind me there was the barest whisper of cloth, and I looked over my shoulder to see Arc draw a pistol in one hand and a throwing knife in the other. I pulled the Slukh myself. While I doubted the little derringer would be too useful past contact distance, at least it was quiet.

I hardly breathed as we scuttled down the hall. All it would take was one merc on their way to the crapper and we’d be in a world of shit. My bruised calf ached, my ribs twinged with every breath, and the effort of keeping my gun something close to ready tugged at the wound on my chest. With my other hand I reached back and kept the stock of the slung sniper rifle steady. I was so focused on just keeping silent and following Alvar that I hardly noticed us pass the source of the music. Through a propped-open door on the left, I caught a brief glimpse of an old storeroom packed with conplas bunks. A few mercs within lounged around playing cards or looking at their slabs. I thought it was funny they were just fucking off in here instead of fighting fires or something, but maybe if no one told them to help they didn’t. None glanced up as we passed.

“Hey!” called a man from within a moment after Arc- the last in our little line- got past the door. All three of us froze. “What’s the word? They tell you anything about what’s going on? Who hit us?” Alvar turned and jammed a finger against his lips, and we waited in silence for a few seconds.

“Fine, fuck you too, then,” mumbled the guy in the barracks room. Nobody came out to accost us. I guessed he’d barely noticed someone going past but hadn’t noticed who. Alvar shook himself, and behind me Arc’s thumb moved off the safety of her pistol. I’d just lifted my foot to keep going when another phantom wave of cold buzzed through us. Alvar twitched, and I felt the PIN stir in my arm like a sleepy cat getting its ears touched. The muted conversation in the barracks quieted for a moment before resuming. I had to tap Allie’s shoulder to get him going again.

The cold dissipated as quickly as the last wave had, and from somewhere else in the building I heard shouted orders and the clatter of tools. Apparently, neither the VTOL’s strafing run or Arc and I killing the patrols outside were enough to make the scientists stop work. Our party got to the end of the hall without incident and rounded a dogleg corner.

Past it was more of the same, though the chatter was louder now. It came from another open door on the left, which I glanced into as I darted past. Must’ve been the chow hall, though in actuality it was barely any bigger than the barracks room and had even fewer people inside. The mercs, two women and a man, seemed to be arguing about the cold waves while they ate milrats picked off a pallet in the corner.

“Gotta be some kind of disintegrator ray,” one of the women loudly opined. “They wanna use it to mine, I bet, and then get rid of the fucking quarry rats.”

“Maybe,” said the man as I flattened myself against the wall beside Alvar and waited for Arc to cross. “I think it’s like, some kind of super-insulating field or antigravity or something. They’re trying for a fusion reactor.”

“Mind control,” the other woman said with finality, though her mouth sounded full. “Long-distance mass brainwashing. One day you’re gonna wake up thinking this is best damn job in the world, and nothing’ll make you happier than doing what you’re told and not bitching about it. Corporate’ll cut your pay and you’ll thank ‘em for it.”

“The I-cops’ll kick your door in if you keep watching that pirate net bullshit, J,” said the guy, exasperated like it wasn’t the first time. “Hell. Bet you believe in aliens too.” Meanwhile, Arc flickered across the doorway to join us without being noticed. Her chest rose and fell deeply when she rematerialized, though she kept her breath quiet. I decided that when this was over, I was going to get some straight answers out of her about her translation, because right now it seemed like fucking magic.

“You don’t? Who else dropped the fucking Pall on us, then? The Kings?” J was getting heated, talking over the guy’s snickers. “You know it’s not just smog, right? And that’s provable! The University’s bounced lasers off it and shit and even they say-“

“I hope it’s mind control they’re building, Jenny,” the first chick drawled as we got moving again. “You might be able to shoot worth a shit if someone else does the aiming for you. And maybe you’d quit preaching this conspiracy slag too.”

“Fuck right off, Aster! I got my marksman endorsement, same as you!”

We quickly left the argument behind as Alvar angled for a closed door on the right-hand wall. My inclination was that while their guesses weren’t straight out of the Waste- except maybe the mind control thing- none of them were right. ‘Disintegration ray’ was closest, but still off the mark. Admin had plenty of guns already, and I figured if they wanted to replace D-blockers and the Quarrymen they would have decades ago.

People in D-block often wondered why Admin hadn’t just poisoned us all and replaced us with robots. I sure wasn’t an economist, unless you counted figuring out the exchange rate of scrap copper to cases of beer, but I had a guess why. I assumed that from Admin’s view we almost were robots already- and we were cheaper on the whole than ones made of metal. You gave a robot power, electricity, and a program to follow, and it would weld vics or assemble comslabs or whatever you liked until it broke. You gave a D-blocker cheap recycled food, cheaper synthetic booze, just enough virch-ed to know which end of a wrench to hold and just enough dross on the holo to keep her tame, and it was about the same thing. We even maintained and replaced ourselves! So if Admin was was building this thing as a weapon- and I was sure they were, given what had happened to the Winnower- it was with a very special purpose in mind. I just couldn’t quite figure out what.

I put it out of my head as we went through the closed door and into a stairwell. Alvar peered upward but we were alone. “This’ll get us onto a catwalk in the main lab,” he whispered.

“Are there other ways off of it?” asked Arc. We didn’t want to be trapped out in the open if someone happened to look up.

He nodded rapidly. “Yeah, there’s an old- a control room, I guess. It’s a dead end but we’ll be able to hide.”

Arc frowned but I spoke up before she could. “Better than nothing. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

“I’ll take point,” she said, brushing past me and Alvar. “I’ll keep it quiet.” I let her do it. I knew it made the most sense, considering what she could do, but I couldn’t help feeling like a shirker.

The three of us crept up the stairs, rusty water dripping onto our heads from the rotting concrete ceiling. My own breath was loud in my ears and it was an effort to keep it controlled, and the rifle’s sling dug into my shoulder. I wondered if the Bones owned a spa or something I could hit up when we got back- or maybe I’d just have Walker buy me a bottle of something strong. Either way, I needed some rest, relaxation, and repair.

We climbed four flights before reaching a landing in front of a windowless metal door. Arc crouched and pressed her ear to its surface. Immediately she held up a warning hand, and a second later I heard it too: slow footsteps clunking on metal. There was a guard outside, and they were walking right past our door. We waited, weapons ready, but the steps kept going.

I glanced at Arc, shrugging. This guy’s biometrics going dead would undoubtedly sound an alert somewhere, but considering what we’d already done and seen it wouldn’t be a facility-wide one. We just had to hope that the scattered and confused state of the Macomb mercs would buy us some time. She nodded, holstering her pistol but keeping the knife out. A look of focus crossed her face and she went slightly blurry around the edges, her outline seeming to float a little like she’d been edited into the world by a substandard program. Alvar made a tiny shocked noise next to me- this was probably the first time he’d gotten a good look at her translating close up, even if she was just doing it a little.

Arc opened the door and moved in utter, ethereal silence. I had no idea exactly what she was doing- making her weight intangible so her steps made no noise? Letting just the air pass through her so she didn’t swirl it as she moved? Whatever it was it hurt my brain to watch. Some subtle, subconscious cue humans had evolved to notice was being violated here and it made her effect viscerally unsettling to be around.

I leaned out the door after she passed through, ready to help if she needed it. Luckily it was pretty loud in there. Echoing voices and mechanical noise sounded from below. She crept up behind the guard, a Macomb employee pacing lazily down the metal catwalk away from us. Her long fighting dagger was ready in one hand. Just as the merc passed by another door in the wall, she rose calmly to full height, grabbed them around the face to expose their neck, and slit their throat in a quick flash of steel. The motion was precise, rote, mechanical, not only severing the carotid arteries but separating the slit ends with an almost imperptible twist of the blade. Every ounce of blood in the guard’s head practically fell out of them. It reminded me of the butchers at the Old Ved market who could clean and gut and take apart an animal while holding a conversation, while not even looking. Keeping the merc’s mouth clamped shut with one hand, Arc angled the body so both fell through the nearby door. So much for needing help.

I waited, tensely looking back and forth down the catwalk, unable to see the room below from by crouched position. I couldn’t see any other guards on our level, but it felt like I’d be spotted any moment. A few seconds later Arc’s hand poked out of the doorway and beckoned us along.

“Come on,” I whispered to Allie, holstering the Slukh. I let him go first as we quickly scuttled along yet another rusty catwalk. It was less than ten yards we had to move, but I felt utterly exposed the whole time. Our new spot did seem like it had been some kind of process control room once. The wall that faced the main area was lined with dust-choked consoles up to waist height, the gray-painted panels covered with warning lights, buttons, gauges, switches, and dead screens. Above them was a broad rectangular window, though its glass was now blue-green gravel on the concrete floor. The back wall held some rusted filing cabinets, a few frames that now held abstract blooms of mold rather than posters or pictures, and a few chairs shoved into the corner.

The floor was empty except for Arc’s latest kill, a redheaded guy in the same uniform as Alvar- though he packed a suppressed SMG rather than a rifle. Still genelocked, though. Arc must have closed his eyes, and the spine-deep cut in his throat was so clean it had almost closed up with him laying like this. He looked rather peaceful except for the wet red curtain down his neck. Arc crouched next to him, wiping her knife on his vest. Alvar stared at them both, looking gray and sick.

“Did you know him?” I asked, immediately regretting it. Idiot.

“Mackay,” he said, barely above a whisper. “He’s Mackay. Not well, but… I know all of them, Sharkie. I know them all.”

Arc sheathed her dagger and looked at him, her dark blue eyes like spilled ink. “I’m sorry I killed your friend, Alvar.”

We both looked at her in surprise. She looked a little troubled and sounded entirely sincere.

Alvar blinked several times, unsure how to react. “…Okay,” he finally said. “But…but did you have to be so cruel about it?”

Now Arc looked taken aback. “He’s wearing a vest. I couldn’t get to the heart or the subclavian artery, so the carotids were the best target. There was no cleaner way to kill him with a knife. Unless, mm, if I’d translated more…”

“You have to save all you can, just in case.” I said. “Sucks, but…” I didn’t have a good way to end that sentence. “Let’s see what the fuck we’re dealing with.” After setting the sniper rifle on the floor, I sidled up to the control consoles and peeked out through the window.

We were maybe thirty feet up from the floor, and the rust-raftered ceiling was a similar height above us. Below, though…below was the money shot. The former factory floor was a huge echoing space of cracked concrete, more than a hundred yards to a side. In the more distant parts I saw massive, gaping cracks in the floor, where the quake and collapse had shattered the structure down through its foundation. Luckily only the nearest part of it was in current use. It had been cleared of lathes and milling machines, nothing left of them but rusty bloodstains on the floor. In their place the centerpiece of the lab was a sort of derrick of carbon-fiber tubes held together with printed metal gussets at the corners. It had a good bit of height, its top only a few feet below us. Neatly bundled leads trailed up its supports, held in purpose-built clips. They led to various sensors and detectors mounted up and down the structure, each and every one aimed inward. In the tower’s center was an empty metal jig, threaded with power and data cables and suspended on several thin black cords. Graphene weave, if I had to guess. Just below the jig was a small tray of white conplas, which hung from its own cords. Resting on the tray was a circular puck of blue-gray metal. There was a sensor aimed right at it, and though I was no scientist it looked a lot like the detector end of a geiger counter.

“That’s what they’ve been messing with the whole time?” I whispered to Alvar.

He briefly poked his head up to look and nodded. “Mm-hm. Just sticking different cages or whatever you’d call them in the middle there.”

The truss-tower was what caught my eye first, but there were plenty of other things- and people- down there too. The sensor leads from the tower led down to a set of portable computer banks, which looked like heavy-duty ruggedized suitcases complete with wheels. Cables led in turn from the computers to a bank of monitors and instruments, which sat on a trio of folding tables maybe ten yards from the tower. In a corner behind them, a couple of metal printers hummed and clicked to themselves as they worked. The polarized glass in their inspection windows was too dark for me to see what they were making. Shoved up against the far wall was a bulky armored pressure vessel held in a conex-sized frame. Connected to it were several arm-thick cables that trailed across the floor and towards the tower. A tooth-buzzing hum orginated from its direction, and a variety of warnings and radiation decals striped its sides- a portable reactor, maybe? A Mask stood still as a ballistic-composite statue next to it. I almost ducked back down, but I figured if their targeting systems hadn’t nailed me already I was fine for a little longer.

Five or six people milled around the monitor tables, arguing with each other. Two of them, a man and a woman, looked like scientist characters in a holo: both with mousy hair pulled back into tight buns, wearing glasses and thigh-length green academic’s smocks over their outfits. Two more of the men wore somewhat unstylish street clothes, though they were of far higher quality than anything I’d seen even in K-block. The last two wore orange rubber hazmat suits, even the hoods. I couldn’t tell what they looked like, though I could detect the buzz of their voice repeaters in the hubbub below.

One more scientist- ‘cause what else could these chalkheads be?- stood apart from the others, reading a monitor with single-minded intent. She wore a hazmat suit but had the hood thrown back, revealing a freckled face and a high-and-tight blonde buzzcut, almost military. Next to her sat a matte-gray composite box and a metal-web cylinder like those Arc and I found piled up in the warehouse. This one wasn’t disintegrated in the middle, though- rather it spiralled down to a set of thin tines at the very center, ready to recieve…something.

“Well, Doctor?” called a young woman’s voice over the general din. “Are you ready to try again?” She sounded mocking but only faintly, like she didn’t give enough of a damn actually try being mean. The accent reminded me of the Montesquieu’s.

“Of course, ma’am. Just a few moments.” It was the woman at the monitor who answered. At the time her face had been covered, but she sounded like the same person who’d been at the old temple in the Park. If I remembered right, Hesypha was her name. She kept reading the screen as she spoke.

Still peeking over the sill of the window, I looked left, where the voice’s owner sat sighing loudly in an ergonomic recliner. This must be the sarevna.

She was a tall and well-built woman with dark skin and hair that was black with an odd purple sheen where it hit the light. She wore it jaw-length and unbound exept for a pair of braids tied in a complex arrangement at the back of her head. Her oval face was so smooth-skinned and symmetrical and, honestly, perfect in its beauty that it wrapped back around to weird. Arc was just as good-looking, but was far more human about it. This Cromwell almost looked computer-generated, like an imported asset that just shouldn’t exist in this industrial charnel pit. Her only visible bits of augmentation were interface traces that made a red-gold filigree below her deep green eyes before arcing up towards her temples.

Her clothes, too, were so blindie they were almost hard to look at, having the weave of real organic textile. She wore a loose-sleeved tunic and baggy pants of soft gray, the tunic tied with a broad sash of orange patterned with green and yellow- Cromwell-brand, all right. That articulated chair she lounged back in had leather cushions and the wood trim looked real, meaning it probably cost more than a nice vic. Most surprising at all, though, was her apparent age. When Alvar told me she was a Cromwell heiress- Ilyes, he’d called her- I’d imagined a tough, iron-haired harridan complete with dueling scars, a veteran of battles both real and in the boardroom. A holo-drama character, essentially. This woman, though? She looked my age or even younger. Of course we were talking about Admin here. For all I knew she could be a hundred and forty, but I got a feeling she was exactly as young as she looked.

“Who’s she?” Arc murmured from next to me, making me twitch with her sudden appearance. She stared intently at the aristocrat below. “Our sarevna, I presume?”

“Must be. Look at what she’s wearing. And look who’s with her.” Ilyes Cromwell herself seemed unarmed, but behind her chair stood two power-armored Masks, impassive and still. One held a stubby combat shotgun, the other a chunky something that looked like an overgrown kalash. Even worse, a cat-eared varangian in a sharp gray-green suit stood beside her. They looked a lot like Ravelay- the one from the bank- with an olive complexion and jaw-length auburn hair. This time I’d have to get rid of them without the benefit of power armor. They stood unnaturally still, but their eyes roved enough to make me duck down behind the sill. Somehow they were more intimidating than the Masks.

“The one with the cat ears is the most dangerous,” I told Arc. I doubted she’d seen a varangian before.

“Dangerous how?” she muttered to herself, looking a second longer before joining me.

“I mean, the normal way? We need a plan. Alvar, you said the scientists can turn on the elevator, right?”

He didn’t look very confident when he answered. “I think they can. The one in charge, by the computer, definitely. I saw her turn it on last week.”

“I imagine it would be easier to convince one of them to cooperate than his lieutenant,” said Arc. There was also the fact that a scientist could tell us exactly what they were trying to do down here. We didn’t have time to learn by observation.

“Yeah. So. We need to capture Hesypha- that’s her name,” I told Arc. The two of us quickly hashed out a plan while Alvar listened. The disbelief on his face melted into horror and then resignation as he listened. I didn’t like it much better.

“Why did I have to be the one in the corner?” muttered Allie. “I wish I would have just gotten my throat slit.”

Arc eyeballed him. “If it makes you feel any better, you’d be just as likely to die if you were down there with them.”

“It doesn’t, Arc.”

She shrugged and turned to me. “Ready?”

I picked up the sniper rifle, but peered over the windowsill instead if through the scope. Hesypha carried the metal-webbed cylinder over to the tower, where the testing jig had been lowered on its cords. I could see a dark speck sitting in the cylinder’s tines. Just an iron-gray pebble. It didn’t look like much. Over to the side, Ilyes Cromwell watched with the vaguest hint of interest on her eerie face.

As Hesypha got her cylinder hooked up, I turned back to Arc.

“Fuck it. Let’s go.”

“How reassuring.” She flashed that off-kilter smile, so odd on her regal face, and fell straight through the floor. While Alvar gaped at that I backed up from the window and grabbed the sniper rifle and an old chair to brace myself on. A huge spire-pointed round winked from the chamber when I slid the bolt back. I rechambered it, made sure the muzzle wouldn’t stick out the window, and shouldered the gun.

My world shrank down to a blur around the lens of the scope. The safety clicked off under my thumb, and I felt a faint hum of electricity through my cheek as I pressed the accelerator button on the grip. I didn’t touch the trigger until I found my target- it was probably light enough thinking about it would set it off.

I centered the crosshair and slowly let out a breath. Arc should be in position by now. I didn’t let a smile disrupt my aim, but this was kind of funny. Looked at one way, a sniper ambush was just about the opposite of my usual style. Looked at another way? This plan was about as subtle as hitting someone with a burning garbage can- and I was holding the lighter.