I locked eyes with the first man. We stared at one another until Emerald took my arm and motioned to two open seats just ahead of us, just off to our right. “There, darling,” she said, pulling me toward them. She took the seat nearest the window. Careful not to squash Shaq, I sat down beside her, finally diverting my attention from the men as they took two open seats just ahead of us.

  A tone signaled the doors were about to close. A second informed us of the tram’s imminent departure. The vehicle’s engines hummed as it lifted from the ground and began accelerating. Cool air blew down on me from vents in the ceiling, refreshing after being outside. Shaq shifted in my pocket, pushing it open to collect some cool air while remaining hidden between my leg and Em's.

  “I have a sudden urge to pee,” Emerald said. She stood and slipped past me, heading to the restroom at the front of the tram and vanishing inside.

  “Shaq,” I said, leaning my head down to whisper. “Two men are sitting three rows up on this side of the car. Can you eavesdrop on them without being seen?”

  “No problem,” he buzzed, quickly climbing out of my pocket and down the side of my leg to the floor. He disappeared beneath the seats.

  I kept my eyes on the back of the men’s heads as the tram reached speed, blasting smoothly along the road between South and North Lapul, the landscape passing in a blur. We would be on the other side of the city in only a few minutes.

  The man sitting in the outside seat stood up, moving into the aisle and heading for the restroom just behind Emerald. Suspicious, I started to stand, only to have a large hand come down on my shoulder.

  “Excuse me,” the Planetary Defense officer said as my eyes darted to him. He already had his blaster in his other hand, held tight to his chest, pointing right at me. “ I do believe I know you.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “I don’t think so, sir,” I replied to the PD officer, noticing the second man glancing back at the interaction. Had the son of a bitch called the cops on us after all? “You must think I’m someone dangerous to be pointing your weapon at me, officer.”

  “You’re sure about that?” the man replied, leaning in closer. “Because you look an awful lot like Benjamin Murdock to me.”

  I forced a laugh. “Oh, Murdock. Yeah, I’ve gotten that a few times lately. I’ve been worried something like this would happen. Did someone report me or something?”

  “We received an anonymous tip.”

  “Really? Now? I don’t want trouble, officer. My wife and I are on our honeymoon. We wanted to go to Oceania but couldn’t afford the fares.”

  He glanced at the empty seat beside me. “And where is your wife?”

  “She went to the restroom,” I replied. “She’ll be out any second. Maybe we can clear things up without making a fuss?”

  The first guy had reached the bathroom and was waiting outside. The second had shifted in his seat just enough to watch me talk to the officer in his peripheral vision.

  He stared at me, his eyes going blank as he compared the real me to an image of me he probably had open on an external neural link hooked over his ear. Maybe the system was running both through an AI processor to determine if he had a match.

  “Okay,” he said at last. “I don’t want to get your honeymoon off on the wrong foot.”

  I smiled. “Thank you, officer.”

  We waited together for Emerald to emerge from the bathroom. She came out less than a minute later, stepping from the small closet-size lavatory at the front of the tram.

  “There she is,” I told the officer. Emerald noticed me with him and smiled, waving to us both as she started toward us. Her foot caught on the carpet or something, sending her stumbling into the arms of the man supposedly waiting to use the facilities. He caught her cleanly, their eyes meeting for just a second before she apologized and slipped away from him. The man suddenly grabbed his stomach and stumbled into the can, the door automatically sliding closed, locking behind him.

  Emerald smoothed her dress down and skipped down the aisle toward me with a huge grin on her face. She threw herself into my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Jackson!” she squealed. “Miss me?"

  I tried to stare ravenously back at her. "I always miss you when you're gone."

  "Ah, isn't he sweet, officer?" She turned her adoring look up at him. "You know, my new hubby here is a huge supporter of Planetary Defense. He donates to support y’all every year." Her eyes returned to me. "Isn’t that right, baby?”

  “Sure do, sweetheart,” I replied, turning my blissful expression up toward the officer. “This is my wife, Rita. We just got married yesterday." My expression sobered. "So I really hope you aren't planning to arrest me."

  "Arrest you?" Emerald blurted, her mouth rounding in an O of surprise as she looked up at the officer and then back at me. "My word, what for?"

  "This officer said someone called, saying I look like Benjamin Murdock.”

  “The fugitive? The one who killed those officers on Kasper?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “May he rot in eternal fire,” she spat, barely keeping a straight face as she looked back up at the officer. “I can understand why some fool citizen who hasn’t had his eyes repaired might think Jackson looks like Murdock, but I assure you good sir, he isn’t him. Surely your system isn’t pulling an exact match.”

  “No, ma’am,” he replied. “It isn’t. Eighty-eight percent.”

  “My daddy’s a Sheriff on Caldor. So I know you need ninety percent or above to even consider bringing someone in for questioning. You’re two percent shy, sir.”

  “You’ve got me there, ma’am. But, in any case, I’m not going to hassle you any further.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “You have a beautiful bride. Make sure you take good care of her.”

  “I will, officer. Thank you,” I replied. “You have a good day.”

  He nodded to us and headed toward the front of the tram. Emerald slid onto the seat next to me as soon as he was gone. Shaq appeared from under the seat and climbed up my leg, sliding back into my pocket and turning to stick just his head back out.

  “Ben,” he buzzed softly, indicating he wanted me to lean down. Emerald and I both got closer to him. “Catalyst. Wrist.”

  “He has a catalyst on his wrist?”

  “Mmmhmmm.”

  “Shit.”

  “Mmmhmmm.”

  “In that case,” Emerald whispered. “It’s a good thing I already killed the other one.”

  “What?” I hissed, staring at her in surprise.

  “I stabbed him with a poison-tipped microneedle and shoved him in the can.”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “Because he was a bad guy.”

  “You didn’t know that until just now.”

  She shrugged. “Call it a hunch. I was right.”

  “As soon as the other one realizes he’s not coming back, he’ll know who we are.”

  “No, he won’t,” Shaq buzzed. “I bit him.”

  “You killed the other one?”

  “Shhhh,” Emerald said, my voice having risen a bit too much. “Geez, Ben. You’d think you never assassinated anyone before.”

  “I haven’t. Neither have you.”

  “Sure have.”

  “When?”

  “On Melchior, with a chisel. It’s a similar wrist action now that you mention it.”

  I straightened and looked over the top of the seats. The archon was slumped against the window and could have passed for sleeping. My eyes shifted to the PD officer, who had reached the front of the tram. He knocked on the bathroom door and said something.

  “I don’t believe this,” I said. “We’re trying not to attract attention. Killing two people on a tram is the opposite of that.”

  “They would have killed you,” Emerald replied.

  “Mmmmhmmm,” Shaq agreed.

  “You don’t know that. The PD officer didn’t get a good enough match. Why would they be so convinced?”

  Emerald pursed her lips. “True. I guess I may have jumped the gun.”

  “Still an archon,” Shaq said.

  “My favorite alien also has a point.”

  The officer knocked on the bathroom door again, and I looked up at him. “We need to get off this tram,” I said. “Once he finds that guy dead in there, he’ll know—”

  “He won’t know anything,” Emerald replied. “I used a poison-tipped microneedle. No hole through his shirt, no blood from the puncture to his vein. We’ll be long gone by the time they run toxicology on him.”

  “Where did you even get a microneedle?”

  “Asshole made it for me.”

  “He has that in his recipe book?”

  “He does now.”

  “I assume the other guy is the same. They won’t realize he was bitten by a jagger until they figure out what poison killed him. But once they do, they’ll know it was us.”

  “Which will be way too late. We only need a few hours.”

  The tram began slowing, thankfully already approaching the North Lapul station.

  “Let’s just get off this thing and disappear into the crowd,” I said, my eyes still locked on the officer. He had turned to the tram’s cockpit door and knocked on it, getting the driver's attention. Likely to ask him to open the bathroom door. I jumped to my feet, already moving toward the rear exit.

  Emerald followed behind me. “If there are archons here," she whispered, sliding in close to my side, "that means they’re expecting us. There are probably more of them lurking around.”

  “All the more reason to get this done quickly,” I replied.

  The tram pulled into the station, stopping at the same time the PD officer finally opened the bathroom door. The archon tumbled out onto the aisleway floor. A woman up front screamed, and a few of the other nearby passengers gasped in shock.

  “What’s going on up there?” Druck asked, he and Quasar meeting us at the exit.

  “I don’t know,” Emerald replied. “Maybe he had a heart attack or something.”

  The doors to the tram opened and we hurried out.

  CHAPTER 17

  The traffic around the tram station immediately proved that North Lapul was more popular than South. Thousands of individuals and hundreds of vehicles of all kinds crowded the grid-like streets and meandering pedestrian pathways that cut through the colorful landscape. Plenty of restaurants lined the paths, their outdoor tables on clover and grass-covered lawns occupied by plenty of tourists and residents alike. Adorned in colorful silk like the shirt Emerald had given me or modern suits with all types of cuts and collars, they spoke in hushed, happy tones, adding to an air of calm joy that permeated the environment.

  And didn’t match up at all with the nervous pressure I felt, especially after what had just happened on the tram.

  We didn’t stick around long enough to see the aftermath. We had only made it a short distance from the station when a PD ambulance flew overhead, announcing over its PA system for the pedestrians on the ground to clear space for it to land. I pictured the scene in my head. The passengers all departing the tram, leaving the two archons behind. The PD officer I had spoken with calling for help after checking their pulses and finding them dead. The medics doing the same before loading the corpses up and delivering them for autopsies.

  The officer had seen Emerald come out of the bathroom and bump into one of the archons. Did he suspect she was involved? Or had her acting as my newlywed bride convinced him she was innocent? Even if he did want to bring her in for questioning, it would take time to track us down. We didn’t plan to be planetside for more than a few hours at most. While I wasn’t quite sure I agreed with Emerald and Shaq’s decisions to take the two archons out of the equation, nothing could be done now. It was better to keep looking forward, continue forging ahead, and not worry about what couldn’t be changed.

  I pulled out my phone and opened a map of the city I had already pulled from the hypernet. A red dot showed our location, and a couple of taps mapped the route to Eternal Memory Designs. After already fast-walking a couple of pedestrian walkways between the residential and business towers, we were less than half a mile away.

  “We need to turn east toward the waterfront,” I said to the others, looking ahead to where our current path forked. A small coffee stand sat at the split, surrounded by large red flowers and vines that crawled along the stand’s metal shell. The smell of coffee and fried dough wafted across the open air to us, making my mouth water. A quick snack would help rebuild some of the chaos energy I had spent getting us here. “After I grab whatever it is that smells so good.”

  Again, I expected an argument from Druck, but he kept his mouth shut. “I’ll keep an eye on our rear,” he said, pulling off the path to stand under the shade of a short tree with thick orange leaves.

  Emerald and Quasar also found locations to keep watch while I approached the coffee stand. The smell was a local delicacy called quish, a type of sea urchin wrapped in batter, fried and dusted with sugar. I ordered two dozen of them, which arrived in a tissue-paper-like bag where the cooking oil pooled at the bottom, visible through it, and returned to the path to eat while we walked.

  “Is that quish?” Emerald asked as the others regrouped around me. “I love quish!”

  “You’ve had it before?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah. My husband loved it.” The comment stunned me. After dozens of conversations with her, this was the first time she had ever mentioned her ex. “The quish drenched in the oil are the best,” she went on.

  “Really?” I asked, looking at the balls submerged in the bag. “They look kind of gross.”

  “That’s because you’ve never had quish before. The cooking oil is naturally sweet and tangy, and the urchin melts like butter. It’s amazing.”

  I smiled as I opened the bag and pushed the top layer of quish out of the way to get to the ones on the bottom. I handed the first one out to her, and she grinned widely as she brought it to her nose to smell it.

  “Ummm, it’s been so long,” she said, her smile suddenly fading as her eyes dropped to stare at her lap. “I miss them so much."

  "Them?"

  "I had a son too. Kasey. I’ve lost so much.”

  “Is your husband still alive? Do you know?"

  “I don’t,” she replied, her voice sullen. “I looked for them on the hypernet, but I couldn’t find them. They might have changed their names to escape my supposed crime.”

  “If they’re out there, we’ll find them when this is all over. I can’t speak for your ex-husband, but if your son learns you’re innocent, why wouldn’t he want to see his mom again?”

  A tear ran down her cheek as her smile slowly returned. “You’re right, Ben." She looked up at me. "If anyone can find them, you and Gia can. I really want to see Kasey again, at least. He was only two when I went to trial. He’d be nine now. Almost ten.”

  “Almost the same age as Hiro,” Quasar commented.

  “I hope we can find him," Emerald said. “He’s the only one who can end this nightmare for me.”

  It was the most open, honest, and sane statement I had ever heard from her. It seemed to vanish in a flash, though, her defenses coming back online. Her mind vanished, and she laughed hysterically for a moment before shoving the quish in her mouth. “Mmmmmm,” she moaned as she chewed. “This is so good.”

  It saddened me to see the shifts in her personality. Despite everything, I believed a good person was hiding in there. I pulled out another oil-dipped quish and offered it to Druck and Quasar.

  “No thanks, Boss,” Druck said. “I’m not big on sweets.”

  “I don’t want to get my hands greasy,” Quasar said.

  I understood why. She needed to handle the neural link, and we couldn’t afford to damage it with cooking grease that not even the napkins that came with the fried food could blot entirely from her fingers.

  "Here." Emerald snatched the ball from my hand and shoved it into Quasar’s mouth. Quasar flinched in surprise before letting Emerald shove the quish all the way in with the back of her wrist.

  “Oh, gosh that is good,” she said after swallowing it.

  I picked out another ball and popped it into my mouth. It was sweet and spongy on the outside, and as Emerald had said like butter on the inside. A slight fishy taste mingled with the tang and sweetness, a bit of umami working along my taste buds as I chewed and swallowed.

  “Well?” Emerald asked.

  “Delicious,” I replied, grabbing another one and enjoying it just as much as the first one. "We need to program these things into Asshole.”

  My stomach was full, the quish bag empty, by the time we reached the waterfront. The area was alive with action, from performers standing on designated circles off the sides of the many pedestrian walkways to hundreds of shops and eateries bustling with business, all of it set against the backdrop of the glistening sea. Still using my phone as a guide, we pressed through the crowds toward the tattoo parlor, stopping and changing course a couple of times when I spotted law enforcement moving along with the pedestrians. After a few minutes, a handful of small drones appeared overhead, marked as Planetary Defense.

  “I think they’re looking for us,” Quasar said.

  “We’re almost there,” I replied, scanning a row of nearby shops. They all had signs mounted over their open faces, big enough to combat the brightness of the daytime sun. I found Eternal Memory Designs in the middle of the row, the text surrounded by an infinity symbol. “I see it. Come on.”

  We switched paths, keeping our heads down as we continued toward the parlor. I heard the buzzing of a drone as it passed overhead, but I didn’t think it saw us. Even so, the net was tightening quickly. The hours I had hoped it would take for PD to organize hadn’t materialized.

  A pair of officers appeared out of the throng on our right, approaching us. I picked up the pace, walking briskly but staying short of a run, trying not to draw their attention. Another drone passed overhead. Eyes forward, we were still fifty feet shy of the tattoo parlor, the noose continuing to tighten. It seemed my streak of good luck was coming to an end.