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“You’re not giving up on me.
 
Tell me you’re not giving up on me.”
 
Mason coughed over the smoke, kicking the body of an Apsel man over.
 
The heat scoring on what was left of his armor made it look like he’d been through a wood chipper made of fire.

“How many clips you got left for that thing?”

Mason eyed the Tenko-Senshin.
 
The little weapon’s muzzle was glowing a soft cherry red.
 
“I dunno.
 
A couple.”

“You’ve got one left.
 
The one in the damn thing.
 
I can see you, Floyd.
 
That camera up in the corner?
 
I can actually see you through that.
 
It’s a form of technology.
 
I don’t know if you know how it works.”

Mason felt a smile tug at his mouth.
 
“Carter.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s ok to be scared.”
 
He was walking through an open room, some kind of cafeteria or break room.
 
They’d come at him from two doors the last time, a small team of men with white armor and hard faces.

“I’m going to die, Mason,” she said.
 
“You can’t fix it.”

“Then we’re going to die together,” he said.
 
“Don’t need to fix it.”

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want you to die.”
 
She sighed.
 
“The whole damn point, Floyd, is that you get to live.
 
For me.”

“Can I tell you a story, Carter?”

“Sure.
 
We got about ten minutes before we’re both dead.”

“Gotcha.”
 
Mason swapped the case to his right hand, hefting the Tenko-Senshin in his left.
 
The lattice shrugged inside him, nudging around his right-handedness.
 
“This story is about a, I don’t know, call him a thief.”

“Ok.
 
I don’t know if I like him very much.”

“Me neither,” he said.
 
“One day, this thief — he’s just a kid — sees some guy in a market.
 
Street samurai.”

“I know the type.”
 
He could hear the smile in her voice.

“Yeah, you know the type.
 
He had all kinds of shit on him.
 
Big sword.
 
Some kind of energy field around it.
 
Rifle.
 
And he had this tiny little gun, small for a pistol.”

“The Tenko-Senshin,” she said.

“A bunch of guys jumped the samurai.
 
There were guns, there were knives.
 
That man pulled that blade between his attackers like he was
dancing
, Carter.
 
He used this sword in one hand and that little pistol in the other.
 
He wasn’t just a samurai, Carter.
 
He was a real
kensei
.
 
Miyamoto Musashi?
 
Amateur hour compared to this guy.”
 
Mason arrived at a stairwell leading down, poked his head out into the dark beyond.
 
Empty
.
 
He continued down.
 
“But he was outnumbered.
 
There’s some parallels here, if you know what I’m saying.”

“I get it,” she said.
 
“What happened?”

“That thief didn’t know what it was, when he first saw it,” he said.
 
“He just knew he wanted it.
 
Figure, he’s maybe ten or twelve years old, and he sees a gun that makes the air catch on fire. He figures if he pockets the little gun, he could eat tomorrow.
 
Sell it on, you know?
 
He sees that the samurai, he could move like water.
 
Got between all the gaps, then crashed like a wave against his enemies.
 
The thief, he couldn’t use a sword, but he figured any idiot could use a gun.
 
And if he couldn’t sell it, he could
use
it.”

“Use it against who?”
 
Carter paused.
 
“Use it when?”

“Doesn’t matter.
 
The samurai dropped like a box of rocks in the end.
 
No problem you can’t solve with a big enough gun and enough guys, right?
 
The mercs trying to take down the samurai, they all started arguing about the split, who’s dick was bigger, I don’t know, and the thief scampered out and grabbed the pistol.”
 
Mason paused.
 
“The way the story goes, he was just going to take the pistol, do a runner.
 
Scamper off, night drops around him, and — bang — job’s done.
 
Free and clear.
 
But when he’s there, the gun in front of him, he gets to thinking.”

“A thinking thief?”

“Everyone thinks, Carter,” he said.
 
“It just depends on what.
 
Anyway, what’s bugging the kid is just how
unfair
it is.
 
Shit situation, right?
 
Samurai’s a hard kind of person, skilled, decked in weapons and armor and tech and God knows what.
 
Fought the good fight, went down anyway.
 
And the thief — the kid — thinks, ‘Fuck this, maybe I can shoot some of these fools as I get away.’
 
A little parting gift.”

“It wasn’t given to him?”
 
She paused.
 
“How…
 
Why didn’t it kill him?
 
Tenko’s weapons guard their owners.”

Mason wasn’t listening, his eyes looking off into the dark.
 
He wasn’t seeing the walls around him, the concrete and steel.
 
“So this samurai, he’s on the ground.
 
He’s got blood coming everywhere, it’s coming out his
eyes
, for Christ’s sake.
 
He drops his sword, grabs the thief’s arm.
 
Dude’s there, bleeding out, and I felt like he put my hand in a bench vice.”
 
Mason rounded another corner, dim lighting marking the
SUB BASEMENT 12
in big letters over the top of the Apsel falcon crest.
 
His overlay chattered with static, a warning about authorized personnel only.
 
He cleared the error.
 
“Jesus, Carter.
 
How far down is your office?”

“Keep going,” she said.
 
“I’m buried deep.
 
All our monsters are locked away.”

Mason paused, frowning.
 
What the hell?
 
“Ok, fine.
 
You’re getting morbid, you know that?”

“They’re almost here, Mason.
 
I don’t have much time.”

He looked down at his gun, then further into the stairwell below him.
 
Mason stepped over a body, white Apsel armor grey in the dark.
 
“You kill this guy?”

“Yeah.
 
There’s four more on the next level.”

“Right.”
 
Mason moved to the next landing, found the bodies.
 
They looked like they were sleeping.
 
“How?”

“Overloaded their link,” she said.

“How—”

“Finish the damn story already.”

“Fine.
 
Anyway, the samurai says to me, ‘Make it count.
 
Save a life worth saving.’
 
And then he dies.”

“You…
 
You’re the thief?
 
You’re telling me you
stole
a Tenko-Senshin?
 
What happened?”

“I shot those ass clowns dead.
 
Guess there were six, seven guys, I don’t know.
 
They were surprised as hell that this little kid opens up on them.
 
The pile of bodies in that market square was epic.
 
It was so
loud
, Carter, I remember the noise as the gun pulled me back and forth.
 
It was really tearing a path.”

“The Tenko-Senshin.”

“The Tenko-Senshin.”
 
Mason stopped in front of a door, checking around it.
 
“That samurai was Tenko.
 
I met Imaburi Tenko, and he died in front of me.”

“Jesus, Mason.
 
Tenko gave you his own gun?”

“You believe the story?”

“I believe you, Mason.”
 
She coughed.
 
“What…
 
What did you do?”

“For a while, I tried to do what he said.
 
I was looking for a life to save.
 
Me and the gun both.
 
Got a job with the company.
 
Worked my way up.”
 
Mason stopped walking, standing still in the darkness of the stairwell.
 
“I lost my way, Carter.
 
I forgot why he let me take it.
 
Why he gave it to me.”

“You’ve remembered now?”

“No.
 
I didn’t do that on my own.
 
You reminded me.”

“I don’t think he gave you the gun, Mason.
 
I think he gave you
to
the gun.”
 
When she spoke again, her voice was soft.
 
“Imaburi wasn’t telling you to save a life worth saving.
 
He’d already found that.
 
He wanted his last creation — that gun you’ve got — to hold you steady, prop you up, keep you strong in the night.
 
He gave you a guard.”

“What?”

“I know how he feels,” she said.
 
“I saw it in you.
 
At the beginning.”

“What?”
 
Mason had stopped.
 
“What are you talking about?”

“There’s so few of you…
 
There’s so few people who have a soul, Mason.”
 
She stopped, and when she spoke again, Mason could hear tears in her voice.
 
“I’m happy I got to know you, Mason Floyd.
 
You made it all worthwhile.
 
It’s almost over.
 
You’re not going to make it to me.
 
I’ve run the numbers.
 
But I’d like to know.
 
What’s in the case, Mason?
 
We’re here at the end, you and I.
 
I don’t have much time.
 
I want to know.”

The walls had been pulled out, tossed aside, leaving squares of carpet edging against tiles, no symmetry or order left.
 
The wind pulled through the floor, tugging at her hair, tossing and teasing it.
 
It was really two floors, she thought, they’d pulled out the ceiling — or floor — between two levels to make a big open area.

Laia felt the touch of the demon, and felt fear.
 
She stopped.

Julian’s hand was on her arm.
 
“Come on.”

She swallowed, then kept walking.
 
“What’s coming won’t be good.”

“Good for who?”
 
Julian was pulling her along now, and she stumbled.
 
“It’s going to be great for my stock.”

They approached a platform, the flat metal surface held up on the shoulders of men and women, white eyes staring without seeing.
 
They were kneeling, naked bodies hunched under the weight.
 
Behind the platform, a collection of machines, things of metal and energy chattering to each other.

Her master looked down at her.
 
“Oh, sweet Laia.
 
It has been far too long.”
 
She felt the touch of his mind, wet and pulsating.

She pulled harder at Julian’s hand, then stopped.
 
To the master’s right was a woman.
 
“Ha…
 
Haraway?
 
Is that you?”

The doctor’s eyes were glassy but not white.
 
The master controlled her directly — she was no easy demons’ thrall.
 
Her stare turned to Laia.
 
“He’s given Marlene back to me.”

Laia looked around.
 
There was no one else in the room that she could see — unless this Marlene was under the platform.
 
No.
 
There is no Marlene.
 
“Marlene’s dead, Haraway.
 
I know what you see, I know you think it’s real—”

“Yes,” said the master.
 
“You know better than anyone.
 
But it suffices, this small trick.
 
I’ve reunited her with her dead sister, stolen by this very empire I stand on.
 
Do you know what they did with her sister?”

Laia stayed silent.

“I want you to know, so you understand how this Heaven sees family.
 
They made a…
 
A
deal
,” said the master, his lips curling at the word.
 
“I don’t understand their use of the word.
 
This machine they’ve put in my head says it means one thing, but it’s not what they did.
 
They lied.
 
They took the girl, found her of no value, and recycled her into a product and a…
 
Julian?”

“A profit, master.”
 
Julian hadn’t let go of her arm.
 
“We made the unprofitable, profitable.
 
It’s about the bottom line, the—”

“Yes, yes,” said the master, his hand waving.
 
Julian twitched, swallowed.
 
“Do you know the most amazing thing?
 
This woman here commands the stars.
 
She has power over the universe, and all she wants is to see her sister.”