The Chrome Rat kept her hands deep in her pockets as she walked. She glanced sideways at the Laputan trooper on the corner, noticed how his finger never left the trigger of his sonic pulse gun. Every major crossing was patrolled by soldiers nowadays, ever since the attack on the Fifteen. Of course they were only formality, a bit of street theatre for the benefit of the locals. Robots and automatic cameras...

     “Gina?” came a voice from very far away. Hands shook her by the shoulders, and she blinked out of the vision, out of Rat’s head. She was back in the City, her eyes rolling through the corners of the grungy pub where she’d stopped for a drink. They all used it sometimes; it was the only half-decent bar in the neighbourhood.      “You okay? You looked kinda...

     Hurrying to keep up with the others, Rat scrambled down a set of slippery metal rungs deep into the bowels of Two-Gamma Arcology. Fear-sweat made her palms even slicker. She pressed on with a white-knuckled grip, cursing and brushing spider-webs off her arms once she finally touched solid ground again.      She’d frozen up once on a ladder like this, unable to move up or down. She...

     Sipping cold coffee and stretching the kinks out of her back, Gina tried to enjoy the break she’d imposed, for Bomber’s sake as well as her own. She felt the strain of a long session tugging at the base of her skull, which meant he felt twice as bad. Still he kept it all hidden and pushed down deep.      He was driving himself too hard. Nobody could convince him of it,...

     The idea of taking Banshee out of the picture obsessed Rat for hours. Her mind wandered every time she had to wait for another dull round of decryption, running over all the possible scenarios. So far they had more in common with idle fantasy than planning, since all her ideas depended on a lot of random chance and convenience, but they helped her figure out a few things. Chiefly, she needed three things to...

     What little Gina had in the way of belongings fit into a single rucksack, slung over one shoulder while she waited for the dinghy to hit the beach. Its little engine buzzed like an angry wasp. A sea bird rasped out a few calls in the distance, then gave up on everything like the rest of the local wildlife.      Dirty white sand, the same colour as the leaden sky, sucked at her shoes...