in taking chances. Trouble looked up at it, wondering if the lens were really as scratched as it appeared, looked back down at the locks and the intercom board with its list of names. Before she could decide if she should press the bell, the one marked “Novross” in a neat, orderly hand, the buzzer sounded, and she reached out almost automatically to push the door open. It gave under her hand, and Cerise slipped ahead of her into the darkened hallway. Trouble followed, letting the door close behind her.
The lights were out in the hallway, the only brightness filtering down through a distant skylight over the stairway. Cerise said, her voice little above a whisper, “They must’ve cut the power to the building.”
“Which should’ve cut the net link,” Trouble murmured.
Cerise nodded, managed a grim smile. “Except that he had a hidden line. Just like we had.”
“Just like everyone,” Trouble said, and started up the stairs. Cerise followed, silently, copying the other woman’s movements, staying half a flight behind. She had the pistol out and ready, safety off, just in case; it was heavier than the one she had used, a heavier caliber, the weight awkward in her hands.
Trouble paused at the first landing, listening, but heard nothing, not even the usual noises of a building’s miscellaneous machinery. She looked back, saw Cerise braced against the wall of the stair below, pistol held in both hands, the barrel tilted toward the ceiling. The sight was somewhat reassuring; Trouble forced a smile, and climbed the rest of the way to the third floor. There was only one door off the landing, and it was closed, but light showed through at the edges of the frame. So this is it, Trouble thought, but didn’t move closer at once, looked around instead for cameras. She didn’t see any, even in the shadows where the walls joined the high ceilings, but she was careful not to look back as she stepped up onto the landing. Cerise was behind her, there on the last landing; she could see what was happening well enough.
Trouble took a deep breath, and knocked on the white-painted door. For a crazy moment she thought she was going to giggle—it was too incongruous an image, her tapping on the metal door as though she were any visitor, this a normal visit—and she bit her lip hard, knowing that if she started laughing now it would be impossible to stop. The Mayor wouldn’t understand, she thought, wouldn’t be amused, and that realization was almost enough to send her over the edge.
“It’s open,” the Mayor’s voice said from inside, and the desire to laugh vanished as quickly as it had appeared. This time, Trouble did look back, to see Cerise hurrying silently up the stairs, to flatten herself against the wall, just out of the line of sight from the doorway.
“I’m coming in,” Trouble said, and heard herself shrill and nervous. She pressed lightly against the door, wary of booby traps, stories of bombs and electrical charges coming back to her from the old days, the Mayor’s days, when crackers had fought their battles off the nets as well as on, but nothing happened. She turned the knob, wincing in advance of an explosion, and the door swung open with the gentle groan of imperfectly oiled hinges.
The Mayor was standing exactly as she’d seen him last, frozen in the heart of his machines, hands splayed wide over the control surfaces, wires and chip boards wreathing him. And then she saw the differences as well, recognized that there was only one wire, the long cable of a datacord running down from a socket at the back of his skull, saw too that the chip boards were portable flatscreens, propped awkwardly across the main machines. Whatever else he’d planned, this was a jury-rigged defense, Trouble realized. And a defense of his home, in some strange way: there was a table with a microwave on it in one corner, and a futon on the floor beneath the windows. A slight figure lay curled on that, asleep or unconscious, face turned toward the wall: newTrouble, she thought, Tilsen. So he was here all along.
“Trouble,” the Mayor said, and she answered, “Mayor.”
The lights were working here, a single, badly shaded bulb dangling over the central work space, throwing the Mayor’s face into grotesque shadow. He was a thin man, cadaverously thin and pale, a shadow of light stubble further hollowing his cheeks, but his hands on the controls were sure and competent, his whole stance that of an El Greco prelate. Trouble stared at him, surprised at how much like his icon he was, and knew that he was staring just as curiously back at her.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised.” The Mayor’s voice was slow, too, and faintly slurred, and Trouble realized that he was still at least half on-line, some part of his brain holding off Starling’s men from the city systems. “You never really were one of us.”
So that’s the tack you’re going to take, Trouble thought, and dredged a laugh from somewhere. “No,” she said, “I’m not, and never was one of your kind. I’m better.”
The Mayor frowned, magisterial, would, she thought, have shaken a finger at her had he been able to free himself from his boards. “Very cocky. How unwise. Where’s your girlfriend?”
“Here,” Cerise said, from the doorway. Trouble didn’t dare look back, but saw the Mayor’s frown deepen.
“I would advise against using that,” he said, and one hand shifted on the board. A beam of ruby light shot from the ceiling, struck the worn floor just at Trouble’s feet, blinked out as quickly as it had appeared. Smoke curled from the cheap tiles, and it was all Trouble could do not to take a step backward.
“You’ll still be dead,” Cerise said.
“And so will your friend,” the Mayor answered. He fixed his eyes on Trouble, dismissing Cerise from his calculations. “I really didn’t think you’d throw in with them. Not in the end.”
“You didn’t leave me any alternatives,” Trouble said, stung more by the disappointment in his tone than by his words. “Christ, do you think I’m going to stand by and let you play silly buggers with the local nuke?”
“You believed that?” The Mayor gave a snort of contempt. “I thought you were at least technically literate. You should know it’s not possible. They—” He jerked his head toward the window. “I’d expect them to fall for it, but not you. Not even you should be that ignorant.”
Trouble felt herself flush, said, “Not so ignorant I couldn’t break your IC(E), Mayor.”
“That was the worm, not you,” the Mayor answered. “But real technical knowledge? I should have known better than to expect it.”
“Starling said you wanted to talk to me,” Trouble said, through clenched teeth. “So what do you want?”
“I had thought,” the Mayor began, and broke off, hands moving busily across the control surfaces. “But it doesn’t matter. What I want now is to be rid of you. You’re a disgrace to the nets, and the least I can do, the last thing I can do, is clean up the mess I inadvertently caused.”
His eyes slid sideways, toward the boy on the bed, and in that instant Trouble flung herself backward. The laser spat fire, the beam striking the tiles where she had stood. Cerise fired in the same instant, the noise enormous in the high-ceilinged room, kept firing, and with her second shot the snipers fired, too, shattering the windows. Trouble flung herself down, hands instinctively covering her head against the rain of glass, saw the Mayor’s body falling, torn, jerking with the impact of the bullets. Cerise screamed something, crouching against the wall by the door, a shriek that resolved itself at last into words.
“Stop it, you stupid bastards, stop firing! He’s dead!”
Whether they heard her or not, the shooting stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Trouble lifted her head cautiously, saw the floor paved with glass like broken ice, and the Mayor’s body sprawled bonelessly across his machines. A coil of smoke was rising from one of the consoles, and she crawled forward hastily, trying not to look at the body, groped for the kill switch and cut the power. The Mayor’s hand hung down, almost close enough to touch; there was no blood on the thin fingers, but she could smell it, acrid and unmistakable, and kept her eyes down, not wanting to see the ruin of his body.
“Silk?” Cerise said, and Trouble looked at the slight figure on the futon. The glass has fallen all around him, shards glittering on his body, and she winced and moved toward him, sweeping the bits of glass awkwardly out of her way. She could hear footsteps on the stairs now, the heavy tread of running men, but she ignored them, began picking the slivers of glass carefully away from the mattress and the boy’s clothes. Cerise came to join her, dropping the automatic on the floor beside her, picked flinchingly at the larger pieces.
“He doesn’t seem to have been cut,” Trouble said, doubtfully, grimaced as a sharp edge sliced her finger. She sucked at the cut, and Cerise brushed the last obvious pieces away from the mattress.
“Turn him over,” she said, and her voice was sharp with fear.
There was something wrong with him, Trouble thought, as she helped Cerise ease the boneless weight onto its back, something very wrong about the way he moved, about the open, staring eyes. “I think he’s dead,” she said aloud, and groped for a pulse in the slim neck. He looked barely fifteen, not the seventeen Mabry had
