Warehouses surrounded the distribution center, all of them owned by the companies that regularly delivered freight into the city. Rather than long, flat buildings, the dearth of land had forced them to build up, giving rise to massive storage towers taller than half of the residential skyscrapers downtown. They were each almost fully automated, and as such stood as dark, windowless monoliths, with only a few additional flashing lights to warn air traffic away from their exteriors. Without the money of the super-rich and their towers infused into the area, the residential quarter surrounding the Docks was akin to Old Town, poverty-stricken, crime-ridden and generally dangerous. While triads like the Silver Dragons had an interest in the Docks themselves, they left the criminality of the Wharfs to lesser independent gangs who often expended a lot of energy and lives fighting one another for control of the area.

  “Nice choice of location,” Cassidy said as he guided the roto down toward the Docks. There weren’t many other passenger rotos in the area, which was instead dominated by larger cargo craft. “You know there are a lot of decent hotels downtown.”

  Vanessa smiled. “Mason does his best to keep a low profile. It keeps it easier to evade the UDF and agents like yourself.”

  “The UDF is active inside the Wharfs too.”

  “The agents working the Wharfs can be bought. You should know that.”

  “Yeah. My file on Garrett didn’t mention that he was slumming it near the Docks. I assume that’s where he picked up the prostitute?”

  “You mean the assassin? No. That happened after a meeting with Liao’s Deputy. It would be hard to conduct all of our business from here.”

  “You told me you and Garrett are old friends.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where did you meet?”

  “We met once when we were children, though we didn’t realize it at the time. And then again in the Marines.”

  “You were a Marine?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Did you ever train at the Dome?”

  Vanessa smiled but didn’t answer. She pointed toward the east side of the Wharfs. “There’s a roto landing zone down there. Hopefully it isn’t full.”

  “What did Garrett want from Liao?” Cassidy asked again.

  Vanessa looked at him. “You’re persistent, Hall. I’ll give you that. But you’re going to be face-to-face with Mason in less than ten minutes. I think he should answer your questions.”

  “Fair enough,” Cassidy replied. “Tell me more about yourself then. Where’d you meet up with Garrett in the Corps?”

  “The Dome,” she answered. “But I’m not telling you what happened there. That’s for Mason to describe.”

  “But something did happen.”

  “Yes. For both of us.”

  “Did you erase it from the Dome database?”

  “Who’s your hacker, Hall? Because whoever they are, they’re very, very good.”

  “I’ve been in the bureau for a long time. A lot of people owe me favors.”

  “Like Jazlin Martin.”

  “For example.”

  “I respect your resourcefulness.”

  “I respect yours. Nothing in my mission report mentioned Garrett had an accomplice. You’ve managed to stay completely invisible.”

  “It isn’t easy. There’s the landing zone up ahead.”

  “I see it.”

  The rooftop in question had seen better days. Trash was scattered across the cracked stone, most of it blown into the corners. Ten faded rings dotted the surface, eight of them occupied by an assortment of beaters and hand-me-down rotos. One of them was so old he didn’t think it had an onboard AI. He guided their roto down into the open space, landing smoothly.

  The hundreds of large spinners on the barges above were audible as the doors of the roto slid open. Cassidy and Vanessa climbed out, and she immediately took out her phone, tapping on it. The roto’s doors closed a moment later and the craft lifted off a few seconds after that, flying back the way they had come.

  “Hopefully the owner will never miss it,” she said.

  “Except it probably smells like gunpowder and sweat right about now,” Cassidy replied.

  Vanessa shrugged. They made their way to the stairs, which weren’t secured. Entering the stairwell, Cassidy was greeted by the smell of urine and vomit. Used drug paraphernalia sat scattered around the corners along with empty liquor bottles. There was no sign of any of the users.

  They took the steps down to the top floor and crossed to the elevator. Cassidy wasn’t surprised that it was out of order. Returning to the stairs, they made their way down fifty-two floors to a tiny lobby. A guard was stationed at the front desk, leaning back in his chair sound asleep. Outside, a reduced number of pedestrians moved about the Wharfs, and a couple of rusted and dented delivery robots rolled past. Cassidy didn’t see any scooters or cars, and the rotos overhead were few and far between.

  He had to admit the Wharfs were a good place to hunker down.

  They exited the building, heading east toward the Docks. Still pumped up by the enhanced stimulant, Cassidy kept a high level of alertness while they walked along the dimly lit streets, ready if need be, to fight every person they passed. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so alive. It was a dangerous reaction considering what Dorne had told him about his real body.

  And now Vanessa claimed Dorne was truly dead.

  “I saw you grab your wrist back there,” Vanessa said. “And then you seemed to get a second wind.” She pointed to his hand. “Stims?”

  Cassidy had wanted the chemicals to help him fight Garrett if it came to that. Now he was on his way to meet Garrett and the element of surprise was spent. There was nothing he could do about it. If he hadn’t used it to fight the Dragons, they might not have made it this far.

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “Extra strength.”

  “From Martin?”

  “Yes. I was going to use them against Garrett if things went sour.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Detective Hall, but even hyped up, he can still kick your ass.” She paused, noticing the other ring. “Unless you have an upper and a downer?”

  “You want me to admit to all of my secrets?”

  She shrugged. “It wouldn’t work on him anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’d have to lay a hand on him first.”

  “I know I’m old, but I’m not as pathetic as I look.”

  “I don’t think you look pathetic. I think you’re rather handsome.”

  Cassidy raised an eyebrow. “You do?”

  She smiled back at him. “Not the reaction I expected from someone who just lost his ex-wife and son.”

  Cassidy fought to keep his cool. Damn it, he had tripped up again. He needed to be more careful. “Ex-wife,” Cassidy said. “I’m trying not to think about Nicholas. Not while I’m caught up in whatever this is.”

  “Fair enough,” Vanessa said, though her tone suggested to Cassidy that she didn’t believe him.

  “How far is Garrett from here?” Cassidy asked.

  “He’s holed up in one of the warehouses,” Vanessa said.

  “Those places have tight security.”

  “Automated security. We bypassed it.”

  “Because you’re a grade A hacker in your own right.”

  “I know enough to get by.”

  “Not exactly how I would put writing my own operating system, commandeering a roto and breaking into a warehouse on the Docks without getting caught. I don’t think the Miners could do all that.”

  “I think they could, but they’re more focused on information gathering than practical hacks.”

  They reached a ten-foot gate erected around the perimeter of the Docks. Topped with razor-wire and lined with cameras, the barrier was difficult enough to prevent any of the residents of the Wharfs from trying to get in.

  “Do you have a trick to get us through?” Cassidy asked.

  Vanessa smiled, taking out her phone and tapping on it. Cassidy watched as the infrared sensors on the cameras all went dark and a gate fifty feet away began to slide open.

  “It’ll only stay down for sixty seconds,” Vanessa said, breaking into a jog toward the gate. Cassidy joined her and they slipped through with a handful of seconds to spare.

  “You wouldn’t be able to do that if they had people watching the entrances,” Cassidy said.

  “But they don’t. Their overreliance on technology is to our benefit. This way.”

  She led him northeast, toward one of the monolithic warehouses. The company name projected from the face was DIKON.

  “Did you choose this specific warehouse for a reason?” Cassidy asked.

  “It’s the closest one to the gate,” Vanessa replied.

  “I should have guessed.”

  Since the goods stored in the warehouse were distributed primarily by roto, the base of the structure didn’t possess loading bay doors or any other large vehicle docking or parking. Instead, a single steel access door waited around the side of the tower, secured by a panel with three factors of authentication. Beyond the fingerprint and twelve character pin code, the panel also transmitted a code to an approved device.

  Watching Vanessa access the security, it was obvious she had hacked the panel some time earlier and added herself to the allowed users. The panel accepted her fingerprint and sent the auth code to her device. She typed it in to unlock the door, the thick bolts giving way with a soft thud. Vanessa put her shoulder to the door, pushing hard to move the nearly ten inch thick steel aside. They entered the warehouse and Cassidy moved in front of her to push the door closed.

  “Thank you,” Vanessa said. The door locked as soon as it had sealed again, leaving them securely inside.

  There were no lights in the warehouse. The machines that moved the palettes of goods from storage to the rotos for distribution or to the barges for transport didn’t need light. The only illumination came from Vanessa’s ClearPhone, at least until she tapped on it a few times and the maintenance lighting activated. It revealed a twenty-foot tall room filled with containers marked only by serial numbers, their contents unknown outside of the computer systems that managed the manifests and inventory. Large robots intended to pick the containers up and move them onto a vertical conveyor system rested lifelessly in the narrow aisles between the stacks, waiting for a central command to spring into action. In the corner, a small elevator enabled maintenance techs to get to the other floors in the building.

  “This way,” Vanessa said, leading Cassidy down one of the ailes. They had to squeeze around one of the picker robots to continue. The strange machine didn’t react to their presence at all.

  They turned right at one of the intersections, then left at the next. Vanessa came to a stop at one of the containers. Turning to it, she approached the panel affixed to the right side and typed in a code.

  The front of the container folded out from the center, the doors retracting into the interior of the container. Cassidy barely noticed them move aside. His eyes locked onto Mason Garrett, sitting in an old lounge chair in the back corner of the container, watching a holovid on a projector resting on the floor in front of him.

  Garrett looked up, ignoring the holovid when he saw Cassidy. He stood up, bigger in person than Cassidy had thought from the images Nevis had shown him.

  “Detective Hall,” Garrett said, walking toward him. “I’m glad you could make it.”

  Cassidy stared at Garrett, a sudden anger rising in his chest. His hands clenched, his mind becoming clouded. A siphon? His eyes shifted to the holo projector. Or was it a computer? A Unity Mobile Interface. No, it was a projector. He saw it clearly now.

  “Hall?” Garrett said, still coming toward him. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Cassidy said. His voice sounded like molasses coming out of his mouth. He had never felt like this before. What the hell was going on?

  “Hall?” Garrett repeated.

  “Mason, watch his hands,” Cassidy heard Vanessa say. “The rings.”

  “Understood,” Garrett replied.

  Cassidy couldn’t think straight. It felt like the more his head didn’t want to fight, the more his instinct did. Why did Hall want to kill Garrett so badly? Why was he having so much trouble controlling the siphon? Before he knew what he was doing, he lunged at Garrett, trying to get the tranq ring against his wrist.

  He moved fast. Garrett was faster. He stepped aside, smacking Cassidy’s hand away. The block didn’t stop the attack. Cassidy rounded on him, pressing forward, throwing a series of jabs and punches that Garrett stopped with ease before putting a hand on his chest and shoving him back.

  “Hall, I thought we were going to talk,” Garrett said.

  “You’re coming with me,” Cassidy replied.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Cassidy pulled his needlegun, in his anger forgetting it was dry. It didn’t matter, anyway. Garrett grabbed his wrist, turned him and shoved him back into the wall of the container. He smashed Cassidy’s arm over and over against it until he dropped the gun.

  “Jessie, is it him?” Garrett asked.

  Jessie? Cassidy’s head whipped toward Vanessa. It couldn’t be.

  “Cassidy,” Jessica said. “It’s you in there, isn’t it?”

  “Jessica? How? What?”

  “It’s them,” Jessica said to Garrett. Her eyes shifted back to Cassidy. “Cassidy, this next part isn’t going to be pleasant for you at all. But it’s going to be okay.”

  Cassidy didn’t know what she meant. Then something warm and wet pressed against the base of his neck and the only thing he knew after that was pain.

  Chapter 32

  “Bring him,” Cassidy heard Jessica say.

  The pain was so intense it blinded him, leaving nothing but waves of color and light. Every nerve ending felt like it was on fire. Every muscle clenched tight. He had no idea what they had done to him. No idea what they were planning to do. She had asked him to trust her. How could he? He barely knew her. He wasn’t even sure who she was.

  He felt his body leave the ground, lifted easily by Garrett, who had turned out to be more formidable than he had ever guessed. An impossible mission from the start, rendered even more so because Vanessa had judged correctly. He hadn’t been quick enough to get a hand on the former Marine. Maybe if he were in a younger, stronger body, not imprinted to Hall.

  “Where?” he managed to spit out softly in spite of the pain. He was on fire, burning from the inside out. His mind was already reaching its breaking point, threatening to shut down completely and leave him drifting. He didn’t know what happened to an imprint if the repo had a breakdown. He didn’t want to find out.

  He heard another container door opening, and then Garrett dropped him onto a hard, flat surface. When Garrett put his hand on Cassidy’s chest to push him down, the touch felt like an anvil on his chest, and he struggled to breathe beneath it.

  “Strap him in,” Jessica said. “It’s going to be harder without Marcos. Where’s Leiana?”

  “I’m here,” a new female voice said. “Is that really him?”

  “He slipped his cover a couple of times,” Vanessa said. “He fought the Dragons like the devil, and he recognized my name. I’m as sure as I can be.”

  “Jessica?” Cassidy managed to hiss out.

  “I know it hurts, Cass,” Jessica said. “It’ll feel better soon. Lei, help Mason strap him in.”

  Cassidy felt the straps go around his ankles, knees, hips and upper torso, pinning him tightly to the flat surface. He still couldn’t see anything, his vision obscured by the colors flashing in front of his eyes.

  “I’m starting the sequence,” Jessica said. “Leiana, Mason, you can’t let him move.”

  “We’ve got him,” Garrett said.

  Cassidy wanted so much to see what was happening. Sequence? He heard someone tapping on a keyboard. The sound was followed by a familiar hum behind his head. But that couldn’t be possible.

  “Move him back,” Jessica ordered.

  Squeaky wheels suggested he was on a rolling table as it shifted six inches back. Cassidy didn’t need his sight anymore to guess what might be happening. He recognized the color-shifting patterns behind his eyes now.

  They were the same patterns he had seen forty-nine times before, designed to calm him during extraction.

  But this wasn’t the Underworld. It was a shipping container in a warehouse at the Docks. These people weren’t UDF; they were criminals. It didn’t matter if the Jessica giving the orders was the same Jessica he had shadowed twenty years earlier. That didn’t automatically make her trustworthy.

  He struggled against the bindings, even though he knew there was no chance to get free. His body was too weak, his muscles too sore, his mind too clouded. They were going to try to extract him? Without Hades, there was no way it was going to work. They were going to kill him.

  “Jessica, stop,” he whispered, barely able to speak.

  “I can’t, Cass,” she replied. “This is too important. Try to relax. It’ll make the process go smoother and reduce the risk of corruption.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. Since there was no chance of getting free, no chance of stopping it, the next best thing he could do was try not to die during the extraction. That was a tall order when his whole body felt like it was being crumpled like a piece of paper. “Hurts.”

  “Relief is coming in three. Two. One.”

  The wet heat on the back of his neck was replaced with ice, and within an instant the pain faded as if it had never existed. Cassidy relaxed into it, the colors in front of his eyes fading until he was back in the Underworld with Mensah standing over him. Only the scrubber tech didn’t move. Nothing did.