I moved the slider bar down a few more notches, staying above microscopic. We were already smaller by the time I could shift my gaze to the outside world, which appeared overwhelmingly large around us. I figured we were now about the size of a fruit fly.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said as we neared the end of the bridge.

  Climbing up and over the raised side of the tower brought us to where the enclosed crossing shifted to a covered exterior lane. I reduced our thrust as much as possible, our lighter weight requiring much less effort to remain aloft.

  Plenty of pedestrians occupied the walkways on either side of the center lane, where smaller powered vehicles moved through the level at higher speeds. Guiding Head Case overhead, I worried someone might spot our ion trails or notice the miniature robot head buzzing in their ears and swat us down like a fly, crushing us to bits. Nobody did.

  Sanguine Studios was located on the four uppermost floors of the tower, prime real-estate reachable via transparent tubes on either side of the center lane. Situated at the midpoint of the building, the platform base of the elevator-like tubes moved vertically up and down the shaft. Pedestrians moved along in the center of their lanes—with little regard for personal space—well back from the dangerous edges.

  “This is unreal,” Justus said, head moving all around to take in the scene. “But please, please, please, let us not get stuck like this. If the ship is the size of a fly, we’re what? A millimeter apiece?”

  “If that,” I replied, equally awed. Maybe sigiltech had a scientific explanation rooted in chaos and quantum theory, but this sure seemed like magic to me. “I think those brightly colored birds might see us as more of a snack now.”

  “Good thing we’re in close to the building and they’re out there in the foliage,” Justus agreed. “We should take one of those platforms up instead of going back outside.”

  “Agreed,” I said, guiding Head Case toward the tubes.

  “Hold on there, kid,” Keep said. “A fly buzzing overhead in the open is just a part of nature. A fly buzzing around an enclosed platform is a pest. And you know what happens to pests.”

  “Good point.” I scanned the pedestrians making for the lifts, spotting a woman in layers of brightly colored robes. She wore a thick scarf around her head, the folds easily large enough to hide us from notice as long as we could land on her before she boarded. I opened the throttle again, sending us shooting forward while doing my best with the stick to mimic a fly’s more random flight path. We reached the woman with only seconds to spare. Forced to deactivate our shields to avoid setting her on fire, Head Case shuddered and groaned as I dropped the ship toward her scarf. We slid against the fabric, ducking into one of the chasms while she waited to board.

  “Nice flying,” Keep said. “And good thinking. The alternate route is for the birds.” He chuckled at his joke, quickly swallowing his amusement when neither Justus or I found it amusing.

  The platform rose quickly, the speed more pronounced at our size. Keeping an eye on the current floor through one of the camera feeds not blocked by the scarf, I knew when it was about time to get off. Hoping I didn’t light the scarf on fire, I triggered the vectoring thrusters and flew Head Case back out of the fabric, into the air overhead as the platform began to slow. Our velocity being greater, we rose almost too fast for me to adjust the throttle and point us back in the right direction. When the platform stopped and the tube doors parted, I swooped down toward the opening, making a mad dash to get through it before the doors could close.

  We were nearly there when I spotted a wall of wrinkled flesh on the starboard side, a hand swinging through the air to swipe at us. Too late to hit the throttle and zip away, I tried instead to turn toward the incoming palm, hoping maybe I could shoot the hand and cause enough pain for the person to recoil. Instead, the wave of air coming off the fast-moving hand knocked us backward, the person's open palm swooping toward us like a battering ram. Keep's ring glowed again as he pushed us out of danger. The disturbed air was still enough to send Head Case tumbling out through the open tube doors. Keep pushed again, slowing our momentum before we slammed into the alcove wall.

  Slightly dizzy, I triggered the thrusters, putting us in motion once more. “Thanks for the save,” I said, glancing back at him.

  “Anytime,” he replied with a wry smile. “I prefer not being splattered against a wall.”

  "You and me both." Looking ahead, a neon sign hung over the doorway in front of us, Sanguine Studios written in pink and red script. It looked more like the logo of a porn producer than a violent production like Kill Spree. I already knew looks could be deceiving.

  “Onward and inward,” I said, pushing the throttle forward and gaining momentum, catching up to the orange-suited guy who'd tried to smack us so we could follow him through the opening door.

  CHAPTER 8

  I guided Head Case into the lobby of Sanguine Studios in the wake of the balding, middle-aged guy in an orange suit and black shirt, no tie, that we'd followed through the double doors. I hovered right behind the collar of his shirt at the nape of his neck. Unable to see past him, I looked around the waiting area of the studio instead. Two women sat beside one another in cheap-looking chairs staring at their personal access devices. Behind their heads, holographic posters of Kill Spree projected what their labels suggested were the top ten best moments from the show, as voted on by their viewers. I watched the quick clip play out.

  A waifish woman got the drop on a muscled man. Literally. She jumped off the dilapidated third story of a building in order to guide a jagged piece of rebar through the guy’s skull. The impalement killed the musclehead and slowed her fall just enough that she only broke her legs when she hit the ground, rather than breaking every bone in her body. She had won the game, and she smiled victoriously through the pain.

  “Kid, you with us?” Keep said, grabbing my attention as Head Case shuddered. I realized I had accidentally slammed us right into the back of the guy's orange blazer, our small size allowing the ship to bounce off undamaged. Even so, I was embarrassed for being so easily captivated by a scene both disgusting and strangely mesmerizing at the same time.

  “Sorry,” I said. “My bad.”

  “You’re lucky he didn’t feel it,” Keep replied. “Focus, Bennie.”

  I nodded, regrouping and keeping us behind the guy as he ducked slightly to let a laser scan his eyeball, granting him, and us, access to the inner sanctum. He ignored the receptionist in the waiting area, not even bothering to offer a pleasantry. Whoever this guy was, I decided he was an asscrab.

  Ascending to slightly over Orange Asscrab’s head allowed me a better view. We entered a long, well-lit corridor with a few evenly spaced doors on either side. We headed for another pair of double doors straight ahead, where a pink neon sign labeled the area ahead as PRODUCTION. Portraits of Sanguine Studios’ owners and executives flanked this hallway. Glancing at each as we passed, I learned Orange Asscrab was actually Jason Yen, the Executive Producer.

  We continued to the end of the hallway and through the doors, which swung open at Jason’s approach. I was expecting another hallway and more doors, possibly leading to soundstages or recording areas and the like, my mind creating a fictionary picture of what I believed a TV studio might look like. This was nothing like that. Instead, the doors opened into a massive, windowless room that occupied at least half of Sanguine Studios’ top floor. Long tables were arrayed across the open floor, each home to at least a dozen engineers, headphones on and eyes fixed on their computer terminals. There had to be over three hundred people here, all working on similar tasks, though it wasn’t immediately obvious what the tasks were. At the front of the room, a huge screen displayed the same banner as on the Kill Spree hypernet site, the countdown timer at twenty-one minutes.

  “Mister Yen,” a woman said as she hurried toward him from where she'd been standing near the wall, a slab cradled in her arms. “Everything’s in place. We’re ready for showtime.”

  Yen held out his hand and she passed him the slab. He glanced down at it and made a face. “They’re only giving Coil ten to one odds?”

  “He did have the highest marks during training,” the woman replied.

  “Did you see him out on the gun range? He’s a stone cold killer. He should be at least two to one.”

  “You know the top scorer is always targeted first. He’ll be lucky to make it an hour out there, and he still got ten to one. That’s pretty impressive.”

  “I guess so.” He shook his head. “I was hoping for a little more of a sure thing before I put money on it. This one looks more like a crapshoot than the last few.”

  “Crapshoots are good for ratings.”

  “I know, I know. Damn. How about that squirrel thing?” Yen scanned the apparent betting table. “Thirty to one. I’d rather have a lower risk prospect, but I do have a good feeling about that little guy. He did kill three of the players before the transport made it off the deck.” He tapped on the screen before pulling out his PAD and transferring a thousand electro. “I’ve got a thousand on the squirrel.”

  “He’s a jagger, asshole,” I said, even though he couldn’t hear me.

  “Who did you pick?” he asked the woman as he handed back the slab.

  “I went with the Earthian.”

  Yen laughed. “Seriously? He’s at what? Three hundred to one?”

  “Go big or go home, sir. We’ve never had an Earthian before. I figured he might pull off an upset.”

  “I don’t know much about Earth, but what I do know is that they’re weak.”

  “How can you say that? They made the Hegemony.”

  “They left Earth. On purpose. Which means they don’t count as Earthians anymore. Go and get me a coffee, will you?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, breaking away from him and heading out through the double doors. Yen turned his head to slide a sleazy look down over her rearend as she left the room. Definitely an asscrab.

  Returning his attention to the room, Yen hurried to one of the tables. “Brady, are we all set?” he asked, drawing the attention of the most intense-looking engineer of the bunch.

  “Yes, sir. Everything’s in place.”

  “Great. I’m telling you, this is going to be the best edition of Kill Spree ever.”

  “You say that with every new show, sir.”

  “Damn right. Because every episode is better than the last. But I really mean it this time.”

  “You always say that too.”

  “Well, this time it’s extra true.”

  “How can something be extra true?” another engineer asked. “A boolean is a binary choice.”

  Yen glared at the woman while I laughed at her snarky comment. “Thank you, Clarissa,” he said. “Do you like your job, by the way?”

  Her humorous smile faded and she turned back to her screen.

  A groan behind me signaled Meg’s calming was wearing off. I heard her yawn and smack her lips as she awoke. “Are we there yet?”

  “We’re inside Sanguine Studio,” Justus replied. “It’s about time you woke up. You've been missing the show.”

  She hesitated before answering. “Are we smaller?”

  “Much.”

  “Cool.”

  “Is it?” I asked. “How are we going to get the location data from the mainframe like this?”

  She bit her lower lip cutely while she considered the problem. “How big are we, exactly?”

  “About the size of a fly. A quarter inch, maybe?”

  “Wow, that’s really tiny. I love it. I actually think our job will be easier this way.”

  “It will?”

  She nodded more emphatically as a plan seemed to blossom in her mind. She tapped her comm badge. “Leo, meet me on Deck Six.”

  “I’m already on Deck Six,” he replied.

  “Well, don’t move.” She unbuckled herself from the sofa. “Captain, those terminals should be directly connected to the mainframe. I’m guessing at this size, we can follow them back to the source.”

  “Okay,” I replied. “Then what?”

  “That depends.”

  “On?”

  “How much cable Leo and I can scrounge up. But either way, that’s where we need to be.”

  “Got it.” We needed to get access to the mainframe. At full size, we would have had to fight our way to it.

  As Meg left the flight deck, I continued following Yen around the room, drifting close to the ceiling to remain out of sight. Moving around to different tables, I could see that each group of engineers was working on a different production, but everything they created was completely virtual, including a news show, what looked like a Soap Opera, and something that resembled what could have been the setup to an erotic video, though everyone involved was still clothed, real or not.

  Having seen enough, I broke away from Yen and guided Head Case back to the first table. The engineers there were doing sound tests with Sprite, the Kill Spree host, while also monitoring over three hundred camera feeds from the drones at the Kill Spree game site and from the so-called contestants themselves. I scanned the labels, hoping to catch a feed of Matt or one of the others. Had they managed to get a tiny camera on Shaq?

  I found Druck’s feed a moment later. The soldier-for-hire stood in front of a blast door, a rifle apparently clutched to his chest. From the single overhead light source and tight confines, it seemed all of the players were currently locked inside metal crates. A look at the view from one of the drones confirmed it. The machines were perched on top of the crates, waiting to follow the action. It was too dark to see any of the surrounding environment but the darkness itself gave the location a spooky vibe.

  Five minutes passed, with no action from the engineers and no word from Meg. Yen’s assistant returned with his coffee, which he took without thanking her before swinging around the tables again. She settled into the corner of the room, waiting for him to deliver new orders.

  “Captain, it’s Leo,” he said over my comm badge. “We’re ready when you are.”

  “Copy that,” I replied. “Hold tight.”

  I scanned the giants in the room, making sure nobody was paying attention to anything other than their own workspace. I didn’t need a repeat of Yen’s attempt to swat us into oblivion. Seeing the coast was clear, I punched Head Case’s throttle, sending the ship zipping from the ceiling toward the tables designated for Kill Spree. It took only about four seconds to swing underneath the table next to a pair of legs which appeared as tall as mountains. A late reaction led to a hand slapping down on the thigh behind us, the wash of air pushing us forward a little faster before I could recover. Activating the external lights allowed me to see the back of the table, along with the wires snaking down through holes in the floor, apparently on their way to the computer or computers driving their terminals.

  The chair beside us shifted, pushing back as we closed on the wires. A glance over my shoulder showed the engineer there looking for us beneath the table, probably worried he was about be stung. A huge face and eyeball appeared at our rear just as we reached the cables. I slipped Head Case behind them and rolled the bow toward the floor to follow the wires, tensing slightly as we descended. I held my breath, waiting for a hand to smack the cables in search of us, but the engineer must have given up. The wires didn’t change position, and we were able to stay with them through the hole in the flooring and into a conduit where the open space became much tighter.

  “Are you sure we’ll fit?” Justus asked while I navigated the narrow opening, rolling Head Case along the path of a twisted wire to stay clear of the other cables.

  “Even if it gets smaller, we can still go microscopic,” I replied.

  “No thanks,” Justus said. “If the ship is the size of an atom, what does that make us? And how can we actually become smaller than an atom?”

  “There are subatomic particles,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, but they’re not originally regular atomic particles.”

  “Our atoms are already subatomic by size,” Keep said. “So what?”

  “So how is that possible?” Justus asked.

  “Who knows? We’re doing it, which means it’s possible. That’s all that matters.”

  “There could be side effects.”

  “Maybe one of them could be to make you less of a complainer. That would be nice.”

  Justus huffed and quieted down. I flew Head Case to the end of the conduit, emerging into a server room beside the main production floor. Reaching the cable intake on the large gray server that filled the space, I had no choice but to keep burning power to hover over the wire. Starbright’s connection to the bottom of the ship blocked the landing skids, and as a hop racer, it didn’t have landing gear of its own.

  “Meg, Leo, you’re up,” I said, tapping my comm badge.

  “Copy that,” Meg replied. “Standby.”

  I watched through Head Case's front transparency as the hangar door opened and the two engineers, using spacesuits with small thrusters on the back, departed the hangar, pulling a long cable reaching all the way back to Head Case. They bounded across the wire and scaled the back of the server. Reaching the back plate of the server, Leo sliced it open with a laser cutter, and they both disappeared inside.

  “Meg, Leo, are you two okay?” I asked after they had remained out of sight for a few minutes.

  “Almost done, Captain,” she replied.

  “What is it you’re actually doing, again?” I asked.

  “Since we’re so small, we’re connecting the data cable from Head Case to one of the data cables from the terminals so we can intercept the signal.”

  “You couldn’t do that further up the line?”

  “Well, we could, but the signal is encrypted when it leaves the mainframe. By latching onto the datastream at the root, we catch it just before the encoding, which saves us the time of having to crack the encryption or guess the password or take hostages. It’s something we couldn’t have done if we were regular-sized, so good job shrinking us down.”