light flared up as smoke blew through the seams of a computer chassis.
“Get an extinguisher over there, goddamn it!”
Down a side hall, hotel room doors were hanging open as SWAT cleared the rooms. Through one of the doorways I saw an overweight, middle-aged man standing naked with his hands up. A revivor was bound on the floor next to the bed, gagged and handcuffed.
In the next room down was the only guy who hadn’t gotten caught with his pants down. He was an Asian man, dressed to the nines, with an expensive watch and long, thick hair. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, unconcerned. There was no revivor with him.
When I scanned his face, I found him in the system. His name was Hiro Takanawa, and he was as rich as he looked. It looked like it wasn’t the first time he’d been caught paying for time with a revivor.
“Where’d the revivor go?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I don’t see one here,” he said. “Do you?”
I didn’t. I shoved open the bathroom door and looked in, but it was empty.
I checked the remaining signatures. There were six more beneath the floor somewhere, down on the basement level. Six up here, and six below. One was already defunct when I got there, so that put the node count at eleven. That was all of them.
“Which one was with you?” I said to Takanawa. He just shrugged.
“Understood,” Vesco said into his radio. He turned to Takanawa. “All right, you. Get out of here. Sorry, Wachalowski, that comes straight from the top. Let him go.”
Takanawa stood up and walked calmly toward the door. He gave me a wave over his shoulder as he headed out the door.
Takanawa headed down the hallway, hands in his pockets and a cigarette already in his mouth. He left a thin trail of smoke as he turned the corner.
In spite of whatever else he might be into, I trusted Sean; I’d known him too long and watched him put his life on the line too many times not to. He’d earned a certain amount of faith from me, but he knew more than he was saying. He knew who Takanawa was, and he knew why he’d been released. I suspected he might know Takanawa personally.
On a hunch, I followed him. Moving away from the crowd, I hung back and followed the heat traces left behind by his footsteps. They led down a dark corridor to an emergency stairwell.
A metal door slammed down below, and I eased the door open and slipped through after Takanawa. The stairs took me down a dark, musty corridor. More rats scrambled as I came through, and I pushed the light filter up until everything turned black and white. The sounds of the raid faded behind me, then were gone altogether. Up ahead there was a stairwell door. His handprint was cooling on the handle.
I pushed open the door and started down the stairwell. It was pitch-black, but on the landing below I could see the other side of the door was lit. Just then, the audio spiked as someone shouted on the other side. Six revivor signatures glowed on the scanner.
I cut the connection. As I went through the door, I heard voices from down the long, cinderblock corridor. The far end opened into a storage area that was lit with floodlights. Chain-link enclosures were assembled there, each one with a naked revivor sitting in it. Each revivor was shackled with a collar that was chained to the fence.
“…want to think about getting out of here,” I heard Takanawa say.
A woman’s voice answered, “I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
“They’re here.”
The thermal footprints I was following skipped for a second. A few steps later, the glitch happened again as more rats scurried down the hall.
“Leave them alone,” the woman said up ahead.
Around the corner, I saw Takanawa standing in front of a good-looking woman in an expensive suit. There was a metal briefcase on a desk next to her, lying open. Inside I saw a series of boxes, each the size of a brick, nestled in a bed of black packing foam. One of the slots was empty, and Takanawa held the box in his hand.
“Hard to believe they’re so small,” he said.
“Put it back, and get out of here already.”
He slipped the box in his jacket pocket instead. She made a face and reached over, slamming the case shut.
“What about you?” he asked. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Shortly. Go.”
He shrugged and stepped out of view. A service door began to grind open.
Keeping low, I moved in as the door began rattling shut again. When I looked around the corner, I saw Takanawa’s expensive shoes just before the door came down. A green light on the wall turned red as the lock engaged.
“There you are,” a man said from somewhere off to my right, his voice echoing in the open space. Three sets of footsteps were approaching the woman. She crossed her arms and leaned back on the desk, waiting.
“Yes, here I am.”
Two men in suits came into view, tailed by a big revivor.
“The fucking Feds are here,” one of them said. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
She drew a pistol from inside her jacket fast enough to surprise both men. The first shot caught the man who’d just spoken in the face, and his head jerked back. The next hit the other man in the side. He staggered, and managed to draw his gun as she shot him a second time.
I crossed in front of the chain-link cages, my weapon drawn.
“Federal agent!”
“What the fuck are you doing?” the bleeding man grunted to the revivor that was with him. “Kill her!”
He went down on the floor next to his friend. The big revivor stepped over them, toward the woman. It reached out and grabbed a fistful of her shirt as she shot it three times in the chest. Her heels came up off the floor as it hauled her forward, then slammed her back down on the desk.
It grabbed her head in its hands and leaned in, baring its teeth. I fired a shot into its temple and it jumped back, letting her go. It swung one arm at the open air, black blood squirting from the hole as I put a second shot through its open mouth.
It gagged, black specks spraying from between its teeth, then fell onto its back. Its signature warbled, then blinked out.
The woman sat on the edge of the desk, wincing as she looked over at me. She still held her gun in one hand, pointed down at the floor.
