But they needed Moxie, Ria insisted. Once the vault door opened, there’d be a good chance Otto’d issue Executive Actions to every bot in the club—unless they created a diversion. If Moxie vouched for just the right wafer—one that peaked the crowd on a countdown coordinated to the vault door—their trance-induced mania would buy just enough time for a surefire getaway.

  But Baz vectored in on a different moment. When Moxie teetered on the balcony, Ria steadied her by the waist gently. He might not have caught it had the sun not been cresting behind her at just the right moment. A delicate, subtle gesture 100 percent at odds with Ria’s caustic, cutthroat attitude. And it confirmed Baz’s gut . . .

  Ria had a compassionate soul, after all.

  Moxie came to. “You always got my back, Ria.”

  Ria smiled ’til she saw Baz staring at her and just handed Moxie a wafer—but by then it was too late. ’Cuz if he hadn’t fallen for her already? . . .

  Now he was definitely fucked.

  Holt,Moxie

  >SSS-reconfig<

  REFUGEE,PRETORIA

  They rode the maglev out to the end of the line in Napa.

  Lake Berryessa was bone dry like every reservoir in California. An arid abandoned dustbowl guarded by a few Sentry-6s.

  “The Glory Hole?” Ria glared at Baz.

  “What?”

  “I work at a sexbot parlor.”

  Baz just gave her a look. “That’s what it’s called.”

  The Morning Glory Spillway shot straight down 200 feet ’til it cornered onto a long slab of cement as smooth as a runway where Baz and Ria were now waiting.

  A dirt-biker wheeled through a checkpoint unstopped, out across the lakebed, and up a steep grade to the lip of the vertical pipe.

  “Can’t believe those Sentries let people do this.”

  “They don’t. But no one gives a shit about a machine.”

  The rider gunned the bike and kicked into a vertical—hitting terminal velocity straight down—bottoming out at 230 miles an hour, holding the impossible 8-g load to come skidding to a stop in front of Ria.

  She fully expected the helmet to come off a bot, not a striking young woman.

  “Ria, meet Devyn Dasch. The only getaway girl I trust.”

  Both of her synthetic eyes sparkled. Not the vanity mods on Moxie, but trauma-room augments. Unzipping her synth-leather jacket and gloves, the porcelain skin on her left hand was human, but most of her neck and the other hand was a cheap ER graft of burn-dermis.

  Ria chose her next words carefully. “You take that shaft in the Glory Hole often?”

  Devyn started cracking up. “Whenever I’m in the mood. It’s the only way to hit 8 g’s at 250, off-grid.”

  “Pretty mean.”

  “Thank you.”

  Devyn was born as upmarket as a CEO, and could’ve, should’ve been an astronaut. But somewhere along the way, her space race crashed. And besides, rockets were just too slow for her. She didn’t fuck with hydrocycles, she was analog through and through: she craved kick drums, Stratocasters, and internal combustion engines—especially if they were illegal. She had a half dozen bikes stashed in containers, ready to go wherever, whenever—depending on the asphalt, depending on the job.

  They’d never have time to orbitalink the loot, it would have to be full-on burgled, literally, out the back door. And with that much RAM, it’d be detectable from orbit, so it’d be up to Devyn to make it to the seawall at Fisherman’s Wharf faster than any SFPD or Wirecrime Blackhawk.

  “You got a rig with that kinda speed?” Baz asked later over beers in Sonoma.

  Devyn just snatched the wafer outta his hand and cocked a smile at Ria. “She’s fast enough for the old man.”

  Dasch,Devyn

  >SSS-reconfig<

  REFUGEE,GREECE

  * * *

  The eight of ’em gathered on the rooftop of Quinn’s Sea Cliff compound, taking in a sweeping view of the Pacific and through the Golden Gate. Everyone’s eyes marveled at the vaulted columns as they walked in. But their jaws dropped when they stepped onto the roof.

  The north side looked out across the ocean, and parked on the southern landing pad was Quinn’s own personal 2036 Sikorsky-6 Hover Quad. Painted midnight black, its tail blank and untraceable to the FAA, the 15-year-old bird might’ve been a relic to a kingpin like Otto, but to the team, its classic lines and private ticket to the skies were breathtaking.

  Quinn studied each member of the crew as they walked past, with a look to Baz and a knowing nod. ’Cuz both could tell from the glimmer in everyone’s eyes . . . this was a world none of ’em had tasted.

  As the sky darkened, Baz rallied the crew inside. Except Devyn and Ria, who stood on the edge of the roof looking down onto 27th Ave. and a monster of a speedbike.

  The most torque any Japanese engineer’s ever been crazy enough to throw on two wheels landed on the 2028 Suzuki Hayabusa, with a turbocharged 1400cc nightmare under the tank. And only nutjobs like Devyn were crazy enough to bore out both cylinders and crank that beast up to 1610 cc’s, a half g in horsepower, and 288 down the line. Among real-deal speed junkies like her and Ria . . .

  It was called the ’Busa.

  Ria turned to Devyn, who she considered now a kindred spirit. “Baz says you went into a guard rail at 100 miles an hour.”

  “125.”

  “Didn’t say how much of you is synthetic.” Ria had no doubt it was over the magic number.

  “42 point 3 percent.” According to the Anti-Augmentation Act, Devyn was no longer human. “I came out of a coma reclassed as an android.”

  “Stripped of your human rights?”

  Devyn just shrugged. “Voting’s overrated.”

  Ria nodded.

  “But they’ll give any robot that can read, a driver’s license.”—a death wish twinkling in her eye—“And that’s all . . . I . . . need.”

  Ria figured it was more a blessing than a curse on this job, so she leaned in close. “Get inside? And your days of second-class citizenry are over.”

  Devyn cracked a sly grin and headed in.

  But Ria lingered, taking one last look at the bike, ’cuz it said everything about this crew.

  Moxie the junkie. Carlo the schizo. Eddie the convict. Quinn was a whale. While Marilyn wasn’t even human for chrissakes. And Devyn rode a demon. All of ’em trailed a full-blood outlaw downstairs, Cool Hand Baz.

  Ria couldn’t help but smile.

  They were a crew of misfits for sure.

  The SCORE

  Baz knew they were all off-grid, so he briefed ’em the ole-fashioned way: on Quinn’s VR-deck. It was the intel he’d consumed in Data Space weeks ago on Ria’s wafer. The Fang sat on the site of two classic establishments, Quinn’s original strip bar, the Flamingo.

  And the Bank of San Francisco.

  Contrary to popular belief, the vault under the bank did not cave in during the 8.2 Quake of 2032. It was intact sixty feet below the main stage, fully functioning, with more security than a fusion reactor: a case-hardened steel chamber surrounded by seismics, thermal monitors, heart regulators, holo-capture, acoustic sensors . . . and as many miles of fiber optics as the FASTER cable under the Pacific.

  Quinn smiled, watching every member of the crew stir once they understood the score being pitched. Baz cycled through the Fang’s three pairs of security and the virtual and IRL layer to each: Ria would get them onto the Outer Ring, so they could hack the Inner Circle through Otto’s Bottom Bot, Marilyn. But it was up to Baz and Carlo to crack the most secure layer, the Central Core—the actual safe itself and the toxic antiviral software guarding it—so Devyn could haul ass outta the Loin with the goods.

  Eventually everyone agreed with Baz: there was, indeed, a way to pull off what might be considered the Heist of the Century. ’Til Quinn added the part about Otto lining the Flamingo’s rooftop and main dance floor with two tons of Semtex—which meant the chances were slim, at best, on escaping without getting incinerated. And so a single question lingered . . .

  Why bother?

  So Baz showed ’em what was in the vault.

  That ribbon of intricate computer code danced above the holo-display, sparkling in everyone’s eyes. A few quiet sighs . . .

  “Jesus, that’s it, isn’t it?” Carlo spoke for all of them.

  “Just one . . .” Ria confirmed they were staring at a strain of Otto’s legendary Narcsoft. “. . . of hundreds.”

  “Pristine. Pre-encryption.” Eddie added.

  Baz spelled it out so there was no confusion. “Inside Otto’s vault, on a brick of glass, are the digital masters to every Narcsoft flavor Otto Rex has ever sold.”

  And it all became crystal clear. The Score to End All Scores for every criminal in that room.

  “Priceless code . . .” Eddie marveled.

  “In a Fort Knox vault.”

  “How much is it worth?” Devyn asked.

  The question everyone was asking themselves.

  Baz looked to Ria.

  “Two billion. If we sell it on the street.”

  “But . . .” Baz interjected as rehearsed. “It’s worth twice that to the hacker cartels down South and in Kiev.”

  Jesus fucking Christ, everyone thought.

  On a Popsicle stick.

  “How the fuck is some Street Meat pimp sittin’ on four billion ¢rypto?” Devyn asked.

  Quinn corrected her quick: “Rex ain’t some pimp. He’s on a whole ’nother lev—”

  “So we plan on just waltzin’ in and robbin’ him?” Carlo challenged Baz, glaring. “Tell me you got some angle, ’cuz it’s been a long time since you pulled anything even close to this.”

  Everyone looked at Baz, who again turned to Ria.

  “The ‘Seven Year Itch.’ Five Saturdays from today is the seventh anniversary of the Fang, and the only night of the year that Otto will venture outta his penthouse. It’s when his grid and that vault will be most vulnerable.”

  “How’re you sure he’ll be there?” Carlo stared at her.

  “He’s emceeing it.”

  Something about her tone—and the authority of being Otto’s go-to for years—sealed the deal in everyone’s minds.

  So Baz dropped the kicker: “Split eight ways . . . you’re looking at 500 million ¢rypto. Each.”

  There was officially zero oxygen in the room.

  “You have a decision to make . . . right now.” Baz could see the greed and fear burning in everyone’s eyes.

  “Are you in, or are you out?”

  The first dumb question of the night.

  CASING

  Baz was right, everyone in the crew needed sumthin’.

  Starting with Devyn.

  Sparks sailed off the welding torch, and Ria wondered if they were technically underwater. She’d heard of the Carbon Crypts in the Port of Oakland, and figured they were either a myth or hidden beneath the warehouses that stored off-loaded cargo coming in from Shenzhen’s container ships. But she never figured they’d be on board one of the boats themselves, ’til Devyn walked her onto her favorite, the Pangu.

  “Gimme the forks.” Devyn pulled the blast-mask off and Ria passed ’em to her.

  ’Cuz the ’Busa needed some work.

  Saving the planet from climate collapse came with a few sacrifices, and combustion was one of them. All carbon emissions were illegal without a licensing waiver, which Eddie could hack from the DMV and pirate fairly easily—after the work on the ’Busa was done. But it was those sparks that were the problem.

  “And the supercharger?” Ria had it ready and waiting.

  The asphalt between the Fang and Fisherman’s Wharf required titanium forks to hold stripe outta the nightclub, a layer of Smart Tread to corner onto Broadway, and an in-line supercharger for the long stretch of Columbus straight to the Bay. Which all needed to be welded or plasma-fused onto the ’Busa, and with federal Carbon Drones patrolling the Bay Area 24/7 for unlicensed emitters, Devyn insisted on two things: They do the work under the cover of the Pangu. And she would do the welding herself.

  “Here.” She traded the welding torch for a cauterizing iron.

  Ria eyed the carbon-scrubbing slakers and calciners fixed to the cargo hold’s ceiling hundreds of feet up, then to the dozens of other machinists and grease monkeys who’d also paid the Oakland Triads for access to this off-grid smoke shop. As big as these ships looked grazing the bottom of the Golden Gate Bridge before descending the seawall’s central lock . . . from the floor of an empty hold, they were beyond enormous.

  “You could park a Colonial 5 rocket in this thing.”

  Devyn turned and stared at her.

  “Sorry.”

  Trading war stories over the Glitch, Ria knew how Devyn’s parents were fending off a divorce when a Therapy Bot went Haywire and iced ’em both. Took two off-grid courier gigs just to stay in flight school at SpaceX. And the irony that her second job’s last delivery was when a Tesla truck jackknifed and forced Devyn to choose between death or the guardrail was not lost on Ria.

  “You know my marks went up,” Devyn said, cinching a timing chain.

  Ria could tell she’d touched a nerve.

  “Physiology, Zero-G, even Orbital Mechanics—I was just a better pilot after the accident. But once you-know-who pushed the Anti-Augment Act through . . . He wouldn’t dare let a Plus-40 go up.”

  Ria wished there was some way she could assure Devyn: it ain’t over yet, gurl. Instead, she just voiced what the whole world muttered every day.

  “Fuck Sir Musk.”

  Devyn nodded, forced a smile, and eyed the ’Busa. The bike was good to go, save one last piece of gear. They probly could’ve risked a carbon drone catching ’em with the rest of the items, but this thing was so illegal they needed the Pangu to weld it to the ’Busa, ’cuz it thwarted the underlying principle to the very world they lived in . . .

  The Surveillance State of America.

  Ria’d been standing on Broadway and Columbus when Devyn nodded to the virt-cams positioned all the way down both blocks. “Those are the real problem.”

  Ria saw the SFPD emblem beside every capture-lens and remembered Quinn’s warning as Devyn explained further: “Otto’s got SFPD on payroll. When I open up, those cams’ll get rerouted to an orbital AI that’ll figure out where I’m going before I do.”

  Ria thought about it for a second. “So palm multiple ID’s into the ’Busa. Scan me, Baz, Eddie, even Moxie, and every virt-cam will read you as a different ghost.”

  “No one gets palmed into that bike but me.” Scanning a palm-print into the ’Busa’s ignition grip was like handing over the keys to Devyn’s livelihood. Could Ria blame her for refusing?

  “So? . . .” She wondered if the wheelman had a solve.

  “A Ghost Cloak.”

  Ria did a bad job at hiding her shock.

  “I know they aren’t cheap. But they’re invisible. I’ll barely even anomalize.”

  Meaning Devyn, the ’Busa, and the data-drives of stolen Narcsoft would read like a digital artifact, an anomaly, the tiniest little glitch on each virt-cam down Columbus. It weighed ten kilos and needed a power supply as beefy as the ’Busa, but a Ghost Cloak was exactly what Devyn promised: invisible.

  Ria stared at her on Broadway, wondering the same thing then that she was sure of now as she handed over the ¢25 million Ghost Cloak.

  Devyn was sliced open on an operating table from her gullet to her gut, and close to half of what ticked or flexed inside her came from a factory. She lived and died on the back of a steel stallion that clocked over 200 knots.

  Maybe Ria should just trust her.

  * * *

  Eddie found himself in a similar sitch with Moxie.

  To call Quinn’s now heavily bleached steam room “sterile” was a stretch. But Dr. Marcus, the neurosurgeon eyeing Moxie on the Irishman’s massage table, was short on time and charging more per hour than a US senator, so he just looked at Eddie through surgical scrubs and a fully cracked jack and gave him a nod—

  ’Cuz Moxie was goin’ under the knife.

  Eddie’d hacked and modified the pre-encrypted Thrilz baseline to trigger remotely from inside the Grid Room at the Fang. The mutated high would lose some elegance and all its self-deletion, but as they were testing the transmitter down the block from the club, Moxie dropped the real wrinkle in the plan:

  “Otto’s rolling out two new flavors for the Seven Year Itch. So if I’m gonna move product and upsell Thrilz? . . . I need a third slot.”

  Eddie stared at her. He figured Moxie would just yank the modified Thrilz before its mania kicked in, so he struggled to wrap his head around what she wanted.

  She touched the I/O behind her right ear. “One.”

  Behind her left. “Two.”

  Then she lifted her tongue—where there was no slot. (yet) “Three.”

  The hardest of hardcore Narcheads loved to triple-slot—usually an up, down, and a psychedelic all at once—which Eddie figured was like slamming the accelerator, brake, and ejection seat at the same time. You could put your third slot anywhere, but as a badge of honor and a nod to the days of candy-flipping windowpane, those in the know went sublingual.

  “You’re gonna trust an augment kiosk at Dolores—”

  “Are you outta your gourd?” Moxie laughed. “Just ’cuz it’s going under the tongue doesn’t make it easy as transplanting one.”

  Eddie watched Dr. Marcus—a client of his with a penchant for nocturnal affairs—access Moxie’s wetwire, scroll through its neuronal array and activate her GABA and NMDA receptors, replicating what general anesthetic once did, 25 medieval years ago. As Moxie’s eyelids grew heavy and she failed to finish a back-count from ten to zero, Eddie remembered being impressed by her acute understanding of the procedure.

  “I need all five senses spliced off my cortex and a seven-fiber run through the larynx and into an optical I/O—there’s no fucking way I’m letting some Dolores Park hack do that.”

  “Then how’re you gonna get the implant?”

  “You’re the CrackerJack. Figure it out.”

  Eddie thought back to Quinn’s warning about Slingers sellin’ you out, and he wondered if he could really trust Moxie? But then again, Moxie was third-generation dealer. From Gram’s first pot dispensary in the Castro, to her parents’ fleet of shroom-shops when legalization hit in ’28, she’d been born and raised on the motto Stitches for Snitches. So she’d probably adhere to it, since she’d heard it every day of her life, until three years ago when Ma and Pa slotted some bootleg Pixie Dust from Otto’s rival.