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“You,” said Sadie, “can get out of my bar.”

“Not your bar, baby,” said Aldo, swinging into a seat next to Smith.
 
“How much money do we have?”

Smith leaned away from the other man.
 
“Aldo Vast?”

“You’ve heard of me?”
 
Aldo smiled, something slick and easy in it.
 
“Of course you have.”

“Yes,” said Smith.
 
He checked his watch.
 
“You’re a little bit early.”

“I’m what?”

“Early,” said Smith, reaching into his briefcase and pulling out a taser.

Aldo almost had enough time to scream before the taser dropped him to the floor.

The sergeant from yesterday walked in, taking in Aldo and Smith.
 
He tipped his hat at Sadie.
 
“Ma’am.”

“I’m sorry, sergeant.
 
He was a little early.”
 
Smith offered the taser to the officer.
 
“I hope I haven’t breached protocol.”

The sergeant smiled.
 
“This one the guy who cut up that girl?”

“I believe so,” said Smith.

“It’s fine,” said the sergeant, taking the taser.
 
He gauged the distance, then took two quick steps and slammed his foot into Aldo’s stomach.
 
The other man groaned, then raised a hand.

“Hell,” said the sergeant, “looks a lot like resisting arrest.”
 
He triggered the taser again, and Aldo convulsed.

⚔ ⚛ ⚔

On the third day, Sadie had a clean cup waiting on the bar before Smith walked in.
 
It was just on nine in the morning.

The man looked at the cup, then smiled at her.
 
“Coffee?”

“Black as sin, rich as the syndicates,” Sadie said.

Smith nodded, taking a sip.
 
“Your sister.”

“Carter,” said Sadie.
 
“Carter Freeman.”

“Yes,” said Smith.
 
“She’s paid us quite a generous sum.
 
A retainer, if you will.”

“What for?” said Sadie.

“Whatever you need,” said Smith.

“Ok,” said Sadie.

“As you say,” said Smith.

“Mr. Smith?”

“Yes, Ms. Freeman?”

“It’s just Sadie.”

“Of course, Ms. Freeman,” said the man, smiling over his cup.

“Mr. Smith, I might need help with something.”

“I’m at your service.”

“What do you know,” she said, leaning forward, “about making a startup company?”

“What kind of company?”

“Software.
 
Computers.”

“Oh,” said Smith.
 
“I can probably make some calls.”

⚔ ⚛ ⚔

Sadie wanted to play again.
 
She’d started dressing the bar in the right kind of dirty.
 
She wanted the music fans.
 
Wanted a new band.

She felt like Zacharies looked, the kid walking silent through the bar between the back and the front.
 
Sadie had set a room up for him, a place he could crash outside of the company halls.
 
A place to think, maybe.

He looked like he’d been doing a lot of thinking, but he wasn’t ready to start talking.
 
That was fine.
 
That was cool.
 
She wasn’t big on talking either.
 
She just wanted to play again.
 
But she couldn’t, not yet.

Sadie needed to learn a new music, start over.

She looked at her phone on the bar top, old and battered.
 
They didn’t make them anymore, not really, the edges of the syndicates touching down around the rest of the world.
 
Link or nothing.
 
It still worked despite all that.
 
She pulled out a pack of Treasurers, pulling the silver foil from the pack, and lit it with a long tongue of flame.

Funny.
 
Two months ago she couldn’t afford regular meals.
 
Today, silver-tipped cigarettes.
 
She wouldn’t even have known they existed, except for —

Except for Mason
.
 
She took another pull, the sweet of the tobacco around her.

She picked up the phone, finding Mike’s number.
 
He picked up on the first ring.

“Hey,” he said.
 
“You’re on the mic with Mike.”

He listened to her, then he laughed.
 
She waited for him to finish laughing, then said what she’d already said again.

“You’re crazy,” he said.
 
“I’m in.”

⚔ ⚛ ⚔

Sadie sat at the end of the bed, looking down at the fat black man and his skinny wife.
 
He was ugly, she was pretty.
 
Sadie looked across at Mike, then at Zacharies.

Family
.

The room reeked of money.
 
Real wood floors.
 
A fireplace.
 
No one burned wood anymore.
 
Not unless they had something to say.
 
It was cheaper to burn cash.

Almost.

There was even a damn Apsel falcon over the bed.
 
Sadie jerked her head at it.
 
Is this for real?
 
What kind of person would have the company logo over where they slept?
 
Sadie knew the answer, of course.
 
The head of an R&D division might.
 
The head of Synthetic Entertainment.

Mike shrugged, then hefted his weapon.

Sadie kicked the base of the bed.
 
The fat black man jerked awake, his wife starting upright next to him.
 
The woman screamed.

Mike winced.
 
“Ma’am?
 
Please don’t do that.”

“Do you know who we are?” said the fat black man.

Sadie thought he’d recovered well.
 
A life of corporate bullshit probably did that to a man.
 
“Yes,” she said, leaning forward.
 
“You’re vile.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said,” said Sadie, “that you’re vile.
 
You know.
 
Slime.
 
Scum.
 
The stuff that comes out when you—”

The skinny wife screamed again and tried to run for the door.
 
Mike sighed, lifted his taser, and shot her in the back.
 
She jerked and stumbled, crashing to the floor.

The fat black man started to get up, then found he couldn’t.
 
Zacharies held a hand out, and the bed started to lift off the ground.

“Who are you people?” said the fat black man, his eyes huge.

“Now you’re starting to ask the right questions,” said Sadie.
 
“You’ve already made it past who-the-fuck-you-are and into who-the-fuck-we-are.
 
Names aren’t important.
 
Do you want to know why I think you’re vile?”

“What?”

“Ok,” said Sadie, “I’ll tell you.
 
It started with the business case.”

“The what?”

“Business case,” said Sadie.
 
“I’ve never had to write one before, did you know that?”

“She’s really bad at it,” said Mike.

Sadie shot him a look.
 
“The thing is,” she said, “in order to violate the Syndicate Compact, there needs to be…
 
What’s it called?”

“A reason,” said Mike

“You called it something else,” she said.

“Oh,” said Mike, “that’s right.
 
Incentive.
 
We need the right incentive.”

“That’s it,” she said, “‘incentive.’
 
Do you want to know what the incentive is here?”

The fat black man was looking between them, then he made a rush for the side of the bed.
 
The bed slipped away from the wall, and he floundered, tipping from it.
 
He landed on the floor, face first, then came up holding his nose.

“It wouldn’t help,” said Sadie.
 
“We cut the alarm system.
 
You can push all the buttons you like.
 
No one’s coming.”

“No one?” he said.
 
“What about…
 
The people.
 
Outside.”

“Yeah,” said Sadie.

“They’re dead?”

“Some of them.”
 
She shrugged.

“You’re crazy,” said the fat black man.

“I said that,” said Mike.
 
“Didn’t I say that?
 
I said you were crazy.”

“Yeah,” said Sadie.
 
“You’re very clever.
 
Here’s the thing.
 
We know that your shitty Apsel fusion reactors aren’t reactors.”

“They’re not?” said the fat black man.

“No,” said Sadie.
 
Then she thought about it.
 
“That’s probably above your pay grade.”

“Above my—”

She held up a hand.
 
“Doesn’t matter.
 
The thing is, we need someone who knows the math.”

“Math?”
 
The fat black man looked between the three of them.

“The math,” said Zacharies.
 
“And the co-ordinates.”

“See,” said Mike, “the business case to bust your balls was based on the incentive.
 
Getting the math, and the tech, for your precious Apsel tech.”

“But the real thing we want,” said Zacharies, “is my…
 
We want our people back.”

“Our family,” said Sadie.
 
“It’s what you’d call a win-win.
 
And there’s just one person we can think of.
 
One person who knows the math.
 
Who knows the co-ordinates.
 
Can you think of who we’re talking about?”

The fat black man looked between the three of them.

“No,” he said.

“I’ll give you a hint,” said Sadie.
 
“It’s why I think you’re vile.”

“What?”

“You’re vile,” she said, “because you make
slaves
.
 
You made a friend of mine, and you made her a fucking slave.
 
She was born under your shackles and—”

“Easy, tiger,” said Mike.
 
“It’s wasted on him.”

Sadie smoothed her hands down the front of her body armor.
 
“Sorry.”

“It’s ok,” said Mike.
 
“I think he’s slime too.”

“I—” said the fat black man.
 
He looked confused for a moment, then understanding dawned.
 
“You’re talking about Carter.
 
She’s not a person.
 
She’s not a she.
 
She’s…
 
It’s—”
 

Sadie held up a hand.
 
“I’ve got one question for you,” she said.
 
“You need to answer it very, very carefully.
 
If you don’t, I will execute you and everyone you love.
 
I’ll start right here.
 
I’ll put a bullet in the back of Miss Washington over there first.”

The fat black man nodded, jowls wobbling.

“Do you know how a computer works?” she said.

The fat black man blinked at her.
 
“Is that the question?”

“Don’t be retarded,” she said.
 
“Carter was a person, but she was a person made inside a computer.
 
A computer is bits, slices of data.
 
All that data sits there.
 
In the computer.”

“In memory,” said the fat black man.

“In memory,” agreed Sadie.
 
“And we all know what you do with useful data.”

“We do?”

“We do,” she said.
 
“You back it up.”

“You back it up,” said the fat black man.

“So,” said Sadie, leaning forward.
 
“Where’s the fucking backup?”

Acknowledgements

This last year’s been quite the exciting one.
 
I started a new job.
 
I went to — and returned from, more’s the pity — Italy.
 
My treasured laptop caught fire.
 
I jousted with the IRS, which is like sailing down a river made of lava without a boat.
 
I feel cleansed, pure, after that experience.

I got married.
 
That’s awesome, in a truly biblical sense.
 
I recommend it to you.

Nestled in there was this new book I’ve been working on, the one you’ve just (with some luck) finished.
 
I couldn’t have written it without a lot of help.

Writing sometimes feels like it’s fueled 50% by teenage angst and 50% by caffeine.
 
Jen is my barista — without her, this book wouldn’t exist (or it’d be really, really short).
 
She has a haven where she makes a perfect cup.

I mentioned jousting with the IRS, but that was all Marcia.
 
She removed a tremendous volume of stress from the process.
 
It might be fair to say the reason why I’m able to write this from outside of a Homeland Security extradition facility is because of her.
 
If you need good a good tax representative, get a hold of her at Lutz and Carr.

As always, my friends and family are the pillars on which this work rests.
 
My beta readers, always willing to suffer through horrible drafts — Amber, Anthony, Arran, Cheryl, Erin, Gerard, Jane, Julia, Lynda, Paula, Raelene, and Zeke (who’s always going to be mentioned last because that’s how alphabetic order works).
 
If you like the book it’s largely thanks to them, because big or small every one of them contributed a change to make the final version better.