Shards and Ashes

Faxing hurt like—well, like dying. There was nothing visual; the sensation came from within, like being microwaved, like every cell in your body was burst and flooding out, and you were being burned alive—

And then, I was somewhere else. Someone else.

I opened my eyes in a dark, cool, silent tunnel. I sank down on my haunches, my back against the rough stone wall, and gasped for breath as I tried to get used to the new, rubbery flesh around me, the difference in weight, balance, size. Everything was wrong, and for a few seconds I teetered on the edge of screaming crazy.

But it passed.

It was icy cold down here, because the fax process had drawn a hell of a lot of energy from all the surrounding area; luckily, they’d included executive clothing on a rack right beside the vat. For the first time, I was wearing full Corporate colors and an executive lapel pin.

There were handhelds racked on the wall; I took one and entered my employee code, and data poured in from Virtue’s console, giving me everything I needed to know, including the code for the weapons locker next to me. I loaded up fast.

The bill for this fax would be outright staggering, the price of a year’s output of an entire level. The energy- conversion charge was truly enormous. Oh, and the life span of people who were faxed tended to be about twenty years shorter, but then, I didn’t expect to see another day anyway. Twenty years of future time was effectively meaningless to me, today.

I calmed myself down with slow, deep breaths, lurched to my feet, and checked position and maps. Virtue had faxed me to a spot right outside of the alarm field, less than fifty feet from where I needed to be. No access panels here, of course; this was serious security, ironclad. You didn’t get in if you weren’t supposed to get in.

Theoretically.

How Virtue had managed to hack her way into this, the most protected database on the planet, I had no way of knowing. The intricacy of it was staggering. This was her one and only chance to use the information she’d planted. She’d never have another shot.

I strode forward, waiting for the alarms to engage, the kill field to come on and reduce me to bones and ash. Like I said—serious security.

Nothing happened. I walked down the length of the dimly lit tunnel, and it changed gradually to look more finished. The floor started out concrete, then became shiny. Locked, unmarked doors appeared on either side, without handles or access panels. Once again, you had to be meant to enter, or you simply didn’t. Nobody in the halls. Nobody guarding it.

And then, up ahead, a dogsbody stepped into my path and said, “Who are you?”

I gave him my handheld. He took it, looked at the orders, checked them against the central computer, and gave the device back to me, granting me the next-level access.

For which I killed him, quickly and efficiently, with a knife to the heart. It wouldn’t bleed much at all. I left him in the hallway, because trying to find a place to hide him was a useless waste of time.

Then I set off at a jog to the next door, which had an access panel. I was cleared for this one. I stepped through it, keyed it shut, and faced the next obstacle.

It went this way for three stops. They cleared me. I killed them. By the time I reached the third stop, some bright spark had found the first guard dead, and the game was up.

Didn’t matter. I was already through the last door.

I faced the Senior Administrative Assistant for Leo Pannizer, CEO. According to the nameplate on her desk, she was Naia Wade Lymon. She was good, too; every bit as pretty as Miss Pozynski had been, even better dressed, and a hell of a great shot because she drilled me right in the chest, two taps, before I’d even gotten my own gun trained on her.

Virtue had given me a personal code for the built-in shield on the lapel pin I was wearing; it had been her own, because there was nothing executives guarded more closely than their personal shield codes. The first bullet bounced and put a hole in the expensive wooden paneling nearby. But Virtue’s shield, like Miss Pozynski’s, was single use.

The second bullet hit, tumbled, and took out part of my lung. I felt it, but I was too busy to hurt, because I was unleashing a precise, murderous stream of fire at Miss Wade Lymon, whose shield was a hell of a lot better than Virtue’s, but still not CEO quality. She took five bullets before it failed. Five more after. I ended up with another round in the shoulder, and had to change gun hands. A nuisance, but not critical.

I grabbed Miss Wade Lymon by the collar of her very expensive suit and towed her to the wall, and the access panel, which was virtually identical to the one in Tarrant Clark’s outer office. She wasn’t dead. Not quite. Which meant that I could enter the code for her, and her DNA would still work the lock, if I moved fast to do it before her pulse failed.

It took Virtue twenty long seconds to send me the final code. We couldn’t get it ahead of time; it cycled every three minutes. But I had it, punched it in, and pressed Miss Wade Lymon’s shaking, barely living hand to the keypad, then dumped her off to the side as the door slid open.

Leo Pannizer rose from behind his desk. There was a virtual display open in front of him, and I saw Tarrant Clark standing there, looking relaxed and formal and quiet. As if he wasn’t under the final act of a death sentence.

Unlike Clark, this man was not ready to die. He held up both hands. I could read the shaking terror in his face. “No,” he said. “No, please, I’ll offer you a place on my own household staff, a generous raise—you can name your own salary. . . .”

I shot Pannizer in the face until the clip was empty, then dropped the gun because it had done no good at all. The CEO’s personal shield was better than anyone else’s. There were dogsbodies coming, of course, but they’d have to navigate security to make it. I had seconds to live, but those seconds still counted.

I went with the knife. The shield wasn’t designed to guard against low-velocity attacks; that was what Miss Wade Lymon had been for, and the dogsbodies, and all the security measures.

Mr. Pannizer surprised me by producing a gun from virtually nowhere, but he never got a chance to shoot. I kicked it out of his hand; slammed him backward to the lush, beautiful carpet; and slid the knife into his chest. I watched his eyes flicker wildly, then start to dilate.

“That’s for the kids who died on the Cup Train,” I said. I twisted the knife. “That’s for the ones who got off.”

Then I sat down, knife left in Pannizer’s chest, and relaxed, because I’d done my job, and there had never been a way out of this, anyway. It only took about ten seconds for someone to trigger my choke collar. I expected them to throttle me with it, but instead they just choked me gray and left me there, gasping and helpless.

The dogsbodies arrived. So did additional Administrative Assistants. Nobody killed me, probably waiting for orders from the Board, who had to quickly convene to appoint a new CEO. Not to mention deal with the inevitable hostile takeover attempts by competitors, although that really wasn’t my problem, or ever would be. Big politics.

No, all I had to do was sit, bleed, and wait for someone to finish me off. And watch the body of Leo Pannizer, the man who’d designed the Cup Train plan, attain room temperature.

That part was kind of a pleasure.

I must have dozed off at some point, because someone touched my face to wake me up. I blinked. My eyes had trouble focusing.

Virtue. Virtue was kneeling next to me, getting her knees all bloody in the sodden carpet. Her hand felt warm and very good.

“You did well,” she said, and her voice was trembling. “Zay. You did it. You made him pay the fare.”

I wanted to nod, but instead, I found myself smiling. “You’re welcome,” I said. I felt distant, somehow. All but gone. I wondered if this was how Miss Naia Wade Lymon had felt as I was using her to get access to Mr. Pannizer. “Did it work?”

She swallowed, and tears bled down her cheeks. “Yes, it worked. Mr. Clark is the new CEO. You just stay still. Medical will be here soon. It’s not as bad as that. I’ll make sure you get fixed up just fine. He’s promised you a promotion, Zay, you won’t be a dogsbody anymore. . . .”

There was a commotion across the office, and a wave of people entered—black-coated drones, some higher- level Admins and executives, and in the center, Tarrant Clark, the new CEO. There wasn’t a speck of dirt or blood