Mason checked Eloi’s map then looked to a marked location. A Master waited in the left-most target area. He switched rifles, swiveled, and fired one-handed. A three-round burst put a bullet in the chest of the Master. The man’s torso erupted in a shower of gore, bloody rain lavishing the ground.

  His overlay noted WARNING DANGER CLOSE. Mason turned back to the Seeker army. Fifty meters, closing fast. He dropped the anti-riot magazine from the rifle, slipped a fresh one in with trembling fingers, then aimed one-handed. The rifle kicked and bucked against the lattice. Seekers stumbled, dropping as rounds hit shoulders, legs, and one in the head.

  Not good enough. The mass of Seekers rolled over him like an angry wave with teeth. Mason lost sight of Athena and Minerva, their link signals flickering on the overlay. He didn’t know if they were lost. Seekers clawed at him. One knocked his knee, and Mason stumbled.

  Through a gap in the throng, Mason saw another Master in the right-most location Eloi marked. The lattice whipped up his rifle, firing, but a Seeker dived in front of the bullets, exploding as the rounds chewed the body like a wheat thresher.

  Mason’s broken arm failed, falling like dead metal to his side. Seekers on that side howled in glee. One used a rock, hammering his skull. Mason’s optics rolled, and he yelled, surging to his feet. He kicked, bionics tossing a Seeker fifteen meters away. Mason dropped his shoulder, barging a little breathing room, then savaged a Seeker with a slam from the rifle held in his good arm. He felt bone break but didn’t have time to pat himself on the back.

  Seekers slipped past him to the pyramid. They would get inside.

  Mason turned, trying to catch them. He stumbled, breathing difficult. His overlay noted IMPACT: LEFT LUNG, a paper doll outline showing the spot. Mason looked down, a bloody metal spar jutting from his chest. Huh. Armor’s not so good after all.

  He turned, taking in a bowman at a distance. The bow was as tall as the man, and he drew and nocked another arrow, loosing it. Mason’s lattice reacted, plenty of calm left inside overtime. Dropping his rifle, he grabbed the arrow from the air with his good arm, tossing it back. A lousy throw, but it made the bowman duck.

  Mason’s head rocked back as he was hit again. He glanced at a Seeker holding a rock with both hands as Mason’s optics fuzzed with static. He yanked the metal arrow from his chest, link suppressing his cough reflex. The squeal of metal on polymer sounded like a crow in the molasses of overtime. He jammed the arrow through the Seeker’s arm and it dropped the rock.

  It’s almost time, Mason. We’ll see each other soon.

  Not now, Carter.

  Mason turned, charging for the pyramid. Seekers were inside, the hard roar of autoturrets clearing the entry passage. No telling how well they’d work, or for how long. He pushed himself, overlay warning COMPROMISED OXYGEN SUPPLY — SEEK MEDICAL AID.

  Another arrow hit him from behind, then another, both center mass. Mason stumbled, hand clutching at the metal protruding from his chest. Seekers swarmed him, teeth gnashing, so many they blocked out the light. All Mason could see were the angry faces of the damned as he tried to stand.

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  Seekers fell, studded with arrows, casualties of friendly fire. But five more arrows found Mason, his chest sprouting metal. Both lungs punctured. A graze on the reactor’s housing. Stomach pierced, overlay warning of EXCESSIVE TRAUMA.

  Another Seeker hammered his head with a rock. Mason fell. He glimpsed another Master at the third visible point Eloi marked, and knew others were in the trees. The link suppressed the pain, but Mason felt his body dying. It wasn’t just fight damage. By degrees, his systems away from essential maintenance for over three months, he’d been wearing out.

  Today the seven arrows in his chest were just nails in the coffin.

  Oh, Mason. It’s almost time. I can hardly wait.

  I’m coming, Carter.

  Above Mason the sky glimmered. A tiny spark of light, expanding into a sphere, crackling with energy. A gate bloomed, blossoming into a ball of shimmering energy. His optics faded, came back, then faded again. Mason reached for the sphere. “Carter,” he croaked.

  A sonic boom tore the air, aircraft roaring through the gate. The wings of Heaven’s fury, angels from another place. They screamed overhead, the forest beyond the pyramid exploding into roiling flame. Trees cracked, bodies flying as aircraft dropped cluster bombs, a vengeance this world had never felt.

  Through the gate, figures fell. Faceless, like mannequins. Mason’s optics found them cold, with brilliant cores of nuclear fire. Constructs, like the remote Reed used, but without the face of a person. They wore black armor, the crossed sabers of Metatech red and bold on front and back.

  Mason’s link crackled to life, syncing with a world light years away as Seekers fell on him. It was okay, though. He could go now he knew someone else was here for Laia. As Mason bled out on the ground of a foreign world, he finally realized what she was to him. His daughter, not by blood or circumstance, but by choice. It was enough.

  I’m coming, Carter. I’m finally ready.

  Get the cardio assist attached. It’s slipping. Goddamnit, get the leads connected. No, not that way!

  I’ve never seen anything like this. Adrenal cortex is fried. What’s he been doing?

  Last maintenance was … this can’t be right. Says he hasn’t been in the shop for near on four months. Is the reactor stable?

  Let me check. Yeah, containment’s holding, but the field could use a tune. We can deal with that later. If there’s a later.

  Overtime unit has seen more action than a two-dollar hooker. These guys know better, don’t they?

  There’s knowing, then there’s knowing.

  Preach. It explains the damage to his cortex. Nervous system feedback loop is compromised. We’ll need to scrap the whole thing. Start again.

  That’s expensive. Is he on a plan?

  Says here he’s paid up.

  Christ. Who’s picking up the tab on this one? He must have wealthy friends.

  Ah. See, this is irony. Ticket’s held by Afterlife.

  Who are they?

  Guardian angels, baby.

  Even angels can’t save you from poor life choices. He’s been running in the red for too long. No way he comes out of this okay, and what the hell is up with his lattice?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sadie watched a man close to death through glass walls. Readouts embedded in the transparent material showed a whole bunch of things she didn’t understand. One might be a heart rate monitor, but the rest were hieroglyphs. Everything except the EEG, because her father had one of those back in the day. They weren’t supposed to be a straight line.

  A small hand found hers. Laia’s grip was urgent. “Will he be okay?”

  “Yes,” Sadie lied. “He’ll be fine.”

  “The oracles said he would die.”

  “Those are the weird kids eating all my food?” Sadie cast a glance at Laia, took in her nod, then turned back to the glass wall. Beyond it surgeons worked on Mason, who lay on an operating table. It looked more like a chop shop than medicine to her eye. Arms and legs removed. Chest cavity open. Cables snaking inside, along with lines carrying fluids too clear to be blood. Hell, maybe the company man runs on antifreeze.

  “They can see the future.” Laia hunched.

  Sadie put a hand on the wall of the theater. “Were they specific about a date?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s not today. C’mon, kid. We’ve got shit to do.” Sadie wanted to watch doctors and techs try to paste a man back together, but it wouldn’t help. What would help was the next step in the plan. For that, Laia needed to know everything. Sadie wasn’t looking forward to telling her about Zacharies.

  The upper floors of Metatech’s tower were about what Sadie expected. A bunch of smug assholes walked about, doing smug asshole things like looking at Sadie and Laia as if they were vermin. She found one of the company’s bars and headed inside. Bartenders weren’t known to be judgmental.

  A man with slicked-back hair and neon tattoos nodded as they entered. He had the grace to ignore Laia’s underage status. There weren’t any cops in Metatech. What happened in here was invisible to the world. Blessing and a curse wrapped in one. Sadie slipped into a booth, punching an order into the table’s touch panel. It acknowledged her before fading away, the surface changing to a smooth black gloss.

  “Where is my brother?”

  “Gone.” Sadie leaned back on the padded luxury of her seat. “He’s at Human Energetics, who are a huge tornado of unwashed dicks.”

  Laia tried to process that. “What?”

  “Mind control, kid. The Masters of your world could make you do things, but the power didn’t scale. Here, HumanE packaged it into a neat little hack for the link.” She tapped the back of her head. “You and me, we’re fine. Can’t jack what doesn’t exist. But Zach? He’s got a link, and when he went to buy a little revenge, they shortchanged him.”

  “We’re getting him back.” A statement, not a question.

  Sadie nodded. “We are.” She paused as the waiter arrived with their order. A dirty martini for Sadie, a plate of olives, and an ashtray. For Laia, a jumbo burger, thick shake, and extra fries, because the kid looked about as thin as a piece of laminate. Malnourished, like even her soul was hungry. The waiter drifted off, and Sadie thought about how much she could say in a place like this. The walls had ears. If the waiter wasn’t listening with augmented hearing, someone else was. Omar might not be a lying sack of shit, but he had an obligation to his shareholders, and they both knew Sadie wasn’t on Team Metatech. “I’m going to be as honest as I can.” Sadie sipped her martini. It was good, like the bartender hadn’t shorted her on the liquor. She chewed an olive, buying a little more time. “Carter’s alive. We’ve got a plan. The first part of the plan was finding you.”

  “Finding me, or Mason?”

  “Both.” Sadie remembered a kiss three months back, her lips tingling with the memory. Did something like that matter to a company man? Would he know her when he woke? Would he even care? “For different reasons. I made a promise.”

  Laia ate like a cyclone, half the burger already gone. She spoke with her mouth full, like manners could wait for her to finish her damn meal. “I know what that means.”

  “I bet you do. Human Energetics took over the syndicate top-shelf, won all the prizes, then took their bat and ball and went home. They’re turning the world into slaves.” Sadie shrugged. “Most people look happy, because their brand of slavery makes people feel that way. I guess it’s the full-lube experience. Metatech have Reed’s construct tech, and Carter’s freed their people from thrall, so I guess they owe us and what they’re paying with is an army.”

  “You can’t kill Seekers. They didn’t choose this war.” Laia sucked on her straw like it was the first milkshake she’d ever had.

  “Not planning to. There’s a BSD in charge of HumanE—”

  “BSD?”

  “Big swinging dick. Austin Ainley needs to go.” Sadie should have said die, but you should never say something aloud you might need to repeat in a deposition. She thought of Sam and Mike. “Aside from your brother, the cost is already too high. And the people paying are never the assholes at the top.”

  Laia nodded, but slowly like she was processing rather than agreeing. “Can we trust them?” Meaning, Metatech.

  “Yes,” said Sadie, meaning, not even a little bit. Laia turned her attention to her burger. “They’ve played a straight game this far, but they want you and your brother. They also want Human Energetics’ tech. It’s the rosy cherry on the bowl of shit that’ll make all this profitable.”

  “They want warriors who have no choice. Not warriors of light.”

  “You got it.”

  “What do we do?” Laia stopped eating. Her face said the burger was good, but there was no point in eating when the future contained despair.

  Time to turn that frown upside down. The kid had been lost on a death planet for three months with a syndicate agent for company, returning here to find her brother taken by the devil himself. “We play music. We dance. We rage against the coming dawn. But first, we get Mason back upright.”

  “You said he wasn’t an angel. You were right.”

  Sadie nodded, offering a smile, slightly crooked, more than a little careworn. “He’s no angel.”

  “But he still wants to do what’s right.” Laia chose a fry carefully, like it was the golden ticket. “Is that enough?”

  “It’s everything, kid.” Sadie leaned back. The company man finally gets it, and all it took was a camping trip with a kid. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Standing guard was just another term for waiting around for the action to come to you. It wasn’t how Delilah liked to spend her afternoons, but someone needed to do it.

  Sure, there were plenty of others who could sit in Afterlife nursing a beer. But Sadie had given her A Look™, the one that said I’m running low on options, and I don’t know you, but I need you. Delilah dusted off a smile, plastered it on, and watched her leave Afterlife. Headed to Metatech, and the incursion to another world.

  That was hours ago. Harry waited in a corner, looking like he wanted something to do, the chassis twitching and whining every so often. Lace was never far from him, and if Delilah was any judge the woman was so lost, she couldn’t find her way north with a compass.

  Delilah cast an eye at a cam sitting on the table. “Where’s Mike?”

  “In his room.” Carter sounded faint, like she was far away, Delilah dragging her back from somewhere she’d rather be. “It’s the one that sounds like it’s got a syndicate agent sobbing inside.” The speaker below the cam clicked off. Delilah sighed, left her half-finished beer on the table, and went looking for Mike.

  Delilah’s overlay said the club had been a set of offices at one time, a certain irony heavy in that. A change of hands saw it converted to a brothel, serving all types of clients, nothing choosy in how it was run. Then it became a warehouse for drug smuggling, and after a police raid turned bad, it kept the warehouse label but held black market harvested bionics.

  She couldn’t find the thread of ownership for a while, but suspected a gang used it for barracking their muscle. It explained many of the secure rooms mixed between ordinary ones. The plain rooms converted easily enough to bedrooms or dressing rooms when it switched back to a bar-slash-whatever-you-need, a Mr. Eckers holding title before selling to Sadie Freeman via government auction.

  Delilah’s lips quirked in a smile. She suspected Sadie had a hand in the events leading to the sale. Delilah would find out for sure one day. Maybe you could just ask her. Sadie isn’t like the other people in this gig. The calluses on her fingers say she’s in this for the music.

  Audio gain turned up, Delilah found Mike without too much trouble. She knocked on his door, and when he said go away, she opened the door like he’d invited her in with open arms. Red-rimmed eyes glared at her above a face unused to them. Mike sat on the bed, slumped forward. He had pants on but no shirt. A pattern of scar tissue seamed his shoulders where the bionics joined. They were new. He’d been in better condition last time she’d seen him shirtless. “I said, go away.”

  “I heard you.” Delilah took in the rumpled bed, the spilled liquor, and the sidearm on the bedside table waiting for someone to hold it. A chair worked double shifts as a drying rack. She made her way to it, dumped the clothes on the floor, and set herself down with the practiced air of someone used to dealing with Mike’s shit. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Mike’s glare amped up a few lumens. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “It’s not about being in the mood.” She leaned forward, bracing her hands on her knees. Delilah felt the soft hum of her bionics through her palms. You’ll need to hit a clinic. This patchwork maintenance won’t keep you going for long. “It’s about payback.”

  He snorted. “Like you care about anything except the paycheck.”

  That was fair for how she used to run. Ollie gaining his rims unsettled her, and when Delilah met Samson she was ready to put a bullet in him. She felt different now, a new set of codes changing her priorities. The first was, be fucking sure. Sure of who you would kill, and why. She brought up her link, accessing the files she’d downloaded. “Samantha Meisner.”

  Mike’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t do this.”

  “Sam, twenty-nine years old. Brilliant, top of her class.”

  “Dee. Not her.” Mike’s spine stiffened, face going hard.

  “We haven’t got to the good parts.” Delilah smiled, no malice in it. She could find out stuff about anybody. The dirty, nasty secrets they wanted no one to know. Where they hid the bodies, and how many there were. It helped tracking targets. Come at ‘em from an angle they don’t expect. “See, you didn’t know Sam. You thought you did, but she was a voice in your head.”

  “She was my partner.”

  “Yep. But she was a lot more.” Delilah had to do this. Mike had to hear it because they needed him, and no one else had the emotional capital to get through his skull. She didn’t wear his ring anymore, but some touches couldn’t be forgotten. “She volunteered at a shelter in oldtown.”

  “Great, she liked vagrants.”

  “Pet shelter.” Delilah slicked back her hair. “Been doing it since she was twelve. Can’t imagine what it takes to go to oldtown twice a week for that long, especially once the company gets its claws in. There’s no time for anything else.” Mike didn’t move, watching her with optics holding the light like liquid fire. “The boring, usual stuff you’d expect. Parents died horribly. She was good at darts, bad at bowling. Trouble with authority. More trouble without it. Washed up on Metatech’s doorstep after an underground run gone wrong. Hired on the spot. The rest of her team took a bullet.”