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  "Where is she, Chin-Hae?"

  "Not here.” The man shook his head, and wattles of flesh below his chin jiggled in time. “You really should leave. It isn't safe for you."

  "Is that a threat?"

  "I would never threaten you, my friend. I value my life far too much."

  "Then I'll say it again; I know they came in here, and I know they have her with them. Where is she?"

  "Oh, Will, you've gotten into something now, haven't you?

  Look at yourself. You've lost focus completely, worried to death over a woman who isn't worth your time. She's a clone, and a traitor to boot, and if she doesn't belong to us and she's not a sex worker, then who does she work for?"

  "I don't know."

  "What you really should be thinking about is Prime."

  "That's the second time today I've heard that name. The people being killed, they were a part of it, weren't they?"

  "It does seem that way. I wish I had all the answers. But I'm not God, and I haven't Transformed, as they say. We all want to become something else—something better—don't we? Everyone has a wish they want granted."

  "Stop talking in riddles."

  "But I'm speaking quite plainly. That's the key, don't you see? Humankind's greatest weakness. The wish to become someone else can be exploited. Who do you think Gutenberg really is, and why did he create the Transformations movement? What was his purpose—goodwill toward man? My time is running short, I'm afraid, but you should understand that the world is at a refraction point. Nothing is going to be the same after this—for any of you. I wish I could be there to see it."

  "You'll survive. You always do."

  Chin-Hae's eyes were gleaming, his words coming faster. “Listen to me now, Will. The answers you're looking for can be found in only one place, somewhere within New London Industries, but you must be careful—"

  A noise from behind made Bellow whirl. The two clones and six members of the New London Security Force had come into the room. The clones had Kara between them. Her mouth had been taped shut, her hands secured behind her back.

  Kara's eyes were wide and frightened as they scanned the room for him, then settled on his face. She shook her head frantically, making choking sounds from behind the tape.

  The security team held Hammer Glock 1800 full automatics with high capacity magazines, modified for rapid fire. No directed energy weapons there; these were meant for killing. The men fanned out across the room, surrounding Bellow and Chin-Hae with careful precision.

  "They came about an hour ago,” Chin-Hae said sadly. “Tracked you to me, or perhaps she brought them in.” He inclined his head in Kara's direction. “I'm sorry, I had no choice. I couldn't warn you. This is bigger than either of us. They threatened to set off a pulse bomb and kill everyone in the chamber."

  "Enough of the talk,” said one of the clones holding Kara. “We're here to bring you back to the surface."

  "And then what?"

  "We want you to finish the job you started."

  "Let her go, and I'll come willingly. Don't, and you're going to get hurt."

  The security team glanced at each other. One of them chuckled. “There are eight of us, and we're armed,” he said. “What the hell are you going to do?"

  There was more scattered laughter, but Bellow sensed a tension underneath it. They knew who he was, and maybe something of what he might do. They would be tight, their trigger fingers itchy. He might be able to use that to his advantage.

  "So you're all working for New London?” he said, edging casually toward the closest member of the security team, the one who had spoken. “Is that it? Kara too?"

  "She's a useless bitch,” the first clone said.

  "We're going to have to shut her down,” the other clone said. “We thought you might like to watch. It will remind you who is in charge."

  He pulled a large laser blade from a case on his belt and flicked it on. The edge glowed a deadly red.

  "Easy,” Bellow said. “Nobody has to get hurt."

  The clone smiled at him. Then he turned, and with one swift movement, he slit Kara's throat.

  A gout of thick blood splashed to the floor as Kara's eyes rolled back in her head and her knees buckled.

  She slumped. Her body, half held up by the clones, started to shudder.

  Bellow felt the world tremble beneath his feet. Panic electrified him as he reached impotently for her from across the room. She was too far away, the wound was too deep, the blood coming too fast. There was nothing he could do.

  No. Nothing made any sense to him anymore—who he was, or what he was meant to accomplish, or how this woman had so completely overwhelmed his emotions in such a short time. He could not think of how this had come to pass.

  She was dying before his eyes, and he could not reach her fast enough to save her.

  The closest guard brought up his gun. A terrible, mind-altering rage swept Bellow up in a crashing wave that pushed everything else aside. His senses shrank to a single, focused point. With one lightning-quick move, he pulled the laser blade he'd taken earlier from the clone out of the pocket of his coat, flicked on the blade and swept it upward under the guard's wrist, shearing muscle and bone clean through.

  Time slowed down until it became a series of stuttering snapshots. The guard's severed hand with the gun flew upward, finger tightening reflexively on the trigger and letting loose a hail of bullets that ripped through the room, tearing through Chin-Hae's sculpture of the man in armor and shredding it into a hundred pieces of shattered plastic and silicone. Bellow released the laser blade, grabbed the hand and gun from midair, and turned with it still firing as he felt the warm blood from the guard's wrist stump spatter his back.

  He aimed high as he spun in a circle, spraying the room with angry, whining hornets that took out the five other guards’ faces in an explosion of blood and bone and drove the two clones backward against the door, where they slid into a limp heap on the floor.

  It was over in less than three seconds. Nobody else had had the time to get off a single shot. He was left in a dripping, cordite-filled silence, broken only by Chin-Hae's labored wheeze. Bellow's aim had sent the slugs just over the fat man's head as he sat in his chair, and now he lay half-reclined in quivering terror, one huge hand clutching at his chest.

  The terrible silence settled like a lead weight over them, pushing down on Bellow's shoulders with the strength of a colossus, driving him down toward the floor. He saw it in the chipped concrete walls, the screens that had gone suddenly dark in the angry swarm of bullets, the blood that had spattered everywhere and ran freely like a red ocean toward his feet.

  The guard with the severed hand was holding his wrist and moaning. Bellow walked over and put one bullet between his eyes. Everyone else lay motionless. Kara had slipped to the floor when the clones had released her, and she lay facedown in a pool of her own blood.

  He turned her gently and winced at the deep slice in her neck. Her carotid artery had been severed. She was already gone, the glint in her lovely eyes faded to a dull and vacant haze.

  He stood up again, the rage alive and screaming within him, burning a hole through the center of his being. He walked back over to where Chin-Hae lay half-reclined in his chair.

  The smell of urine was sharp in the air. Bellow took him by his fat throat. “What is Prime?” he said, leaning close into the man's face.

  "I ... don't ... know for sure,” Chin-Hae whispered. “Something top secret ... a group of three programmers and two scientists working for New London at the very highest level. Please. You're hurting me."

  Bellow released him. “Julia Vaille is one of them. Stephanie Vaille's twin sister. But she changed her name."

  "I don't know what she calls herself now. All the records have been purged. The rumor was that New London got their hands on something special. Nobody knew what it was, but suddenly their software began to change. It was better than before, way better. Better, even, than I could do."

  "This h
ad something to do with the Prime group?"

  "I don't know."

  There was a noise near the door. One of the guards was executing a jerking, one-armed crawl, the back of his head a bloody red mess. Bellow put a bullet in the man's spine and turned back.

  "Please believe me,” Chin-Hae said. “I had no choice. They came in fast and overwhelmed my guards. There are more of them coming. You'll never get past them."

  "Don't bet on it,” Bellow said.

  "You saved my life again."

  "Your reprieve may be short. Before she was taken, Kara told me someone else died last night, another member of the group. She also told me I was being set up."

  Chin-Hae struggled to sit up in his chair. “I know nothing about this, I swear. I would have heard of another death through my sources."

  "Who are the others involved in Prime?"

  "A man named Mark Beiser, a programmer; he was the first to die. And two other women. Fernanda Rios, a geneticist. She's dead too. And Mo Naam—those are the names I know. They've gone dark and deep underground, off the grid. They're running from someone, or something."

  The canary fluttered in its cage, beating its wings against the bars. Feathers drifted into the air as it flew back and forth, pecking and swooping.

  "You must go now, before it's too late,” Chin-Hae said. “There's only one place to find your answers. Ask them about Gutenberg. Ask them why they brought you in, Will. It's a question that's been bothering me from the start. There are other bug killers. Why you?"

  Bellow left Chin-Hae and stepped to the door. He did not look at Kara's body on the floor, her face grown pale and bloodless in death, her chest forever still. He would use his anger to paint his soul black. He had only one purpose now.

  Chin-Hae might know more than he let on, but he wasn't going to tell Bellow. Whatever was going on, the true answers could be found at New London Tower. It was time to cut through the bullshit and get his hands around this thing's neck.

  He only hoped that when he got there he wouldn't hesitate long enough for it to make a difference.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  -12-

  When Bellow walked through the front doors, the manager looked as though he'd seen a ghost. “I understood you were in the hospital,” he said, hurrying to keep up as Bellow kept walking. “A terrible thing, what happened to your hand—good lord, the blood!” He motioned to Bellow's coat. “Is it yours?"

  "Unfortunately, no."

  "What have you done?"

  "I'm guessing you probably heard already."

  "I don't know what you mean. How would I—"

  "Cut the bullshit, Crowther. You've been tracking me, and you sent the clones and your little security force to bring me back. I don't take kindly to being used, and I don't like being manhandled. They're all dead now. Better send a cleanup crew."

  Crowther flipped a hand at the sentries who began to close in on them, and they backed away quickly. “What are you doing here?"

  "I'm going in. From a cubicle. Strap on the monitors, hold my body hostage, do whatever you need to do. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

  "I'm not sure this is the right time."

  "What's not to like? Beautiful evening, the net's quiet, love is in the air.” Bellow stopped suddenly and turned to face the building manager. “What are you afraid of, anyway? We're wasting time. Let's get it on."

  Perhaps his eyes were a little too frantic. For a moment he thought the man might actually say no. But then Crowther sighed and nodded. “All right, if that's what you want. I wouldn't recommend it after what happened earlier to your hand. It's too dangerous. But I won't stop you."

  They stepped into the elevator and rode up in awkward silence. Bellow ignored the news broadcast playing in high definition three-dimensional glory across the translucent doors, at least until he saw his own face once again. It was a motion capture of himself from after the Mexico City debacle. His cheeks were plump enough, almost boyish, but his eyes held a haunted look that spoke of more years and sorrows than he cared to count.

  For a moment something important seemed to be within his grasp, but it slipped away and he was left with the frustrating feeling that he remained one step behind everyone else.

  "The media is looking for you,” the manager said, almost shyly. “We've tried to keep them off the scent until now, but we can't do that forever. You seem to have upset them."

  Bellow turned away to keep from grimacing. “Some people are just unlucky. Haven't you paid them off by now?"

  "Regardless of what some people might think, the MSNetwork operates as an independent entity from New London Industries. We'd very much like to control their actions, to be honest, but it doesn't work that way."

  "If you say so.” Bellow again resisted the urge to grab Crowther by the throat and throw him against the elevator wall. Maybe he knew about the clones and what Bellow had done to them, or maybe he was just a pawn for the board, or for someone else. The Prime group came to mind; who were they, and why were they being targeted for death?

  He thought about asking Crowther, but decided it was too risky. There were too many loose ends, and something was barking at him to watch his back. The less said, the better.

  He flashed back to the blood and smoke of the earlier shootout and Kara lying dead on the floor. His mind was spinning and he felt like he was on the edge of losing control completely. Was he being set up, as she'd told him? If so, by whom? New London Tower didn't make sense—they had too much to lose here.

  —

  Crowther showed him the inside of the same empty cubicle where he'd burned his hand. “If you need anything,” he said, “just call."

  "Did someone else die last night, Crowther?"

  Crowther looked confused. “There were no incidents, other than your hand, of course. Why?"

  "I'd heard a rumor, but couldn't confirm anything through the net. Just wanted to make sure."

  Crowther nodded once, and then left. Kara had lied to him. Why? To get him out of the medical unit more quickly? It seemed like as good an answer as any.

  Bellow knew they would be watching closely through the monitors. He wasted no time in stripping off his coat and hanging the bloodstained garment in the corner; he did not leave his hotsuit on, either. He didn't need it. He would ride this one the way he'd been born, sliding in and out on his own slippery flesh. The world buzzed before him like a fluorescent light, and he knew he was as tuned in as he had ever been in his life. He felt Kara's presence, and along with it came the anger that pushed him forward; he welcomed it because it left no room for anything else.

  He lay back in the zero gravity pod and everything faded to a soft, cool green. The walls and slightly arched ceiling overhead were perfectly smooth and empty. He blinked in, located a port of access and a programmer's backdoor, and slipped below the interface meant for everyone else as effortlessly as a knife through softened butter.

  There were users on the other side of the port, and he watched them as though through a one-way peephole. Three women played the virtual slots in a private casino room; their tab was rising, and he could see in a blink that their funding account was running dry. The bank had probably set a limit and they would play until it was gone, but they were strictly recreational users. New London's alpha waveforms were hard at work, pushing the urge to bet more and to take more risks, and the women were eating them up. Tomorrow they would wake up with virtual hangovers and a hollow feeling inside and wonder why they had gone so far ... until their alphas were tweaked again for some other purpose.

  This was the rest of the world, always searching for something to fill the emptiness inside. Chin-Hae was right.

  Within moments he could find out where they lived, what their families were like, their financial background, the kind of vehicles they drove, prescriptions they took, even peek at their medical records and sexual histories. He could find out whether they were members of the Church of Transformations.

  A sour taste
filled his mouth, and he set himself adrift into the main data stream.

  The building was an enormous physical and virtual space, much more complete and powerful than it had been in the early files. Millions of users across the globe were running software, and the building handled them all seamlessly and with little effort. It breathed deeply and evenly like a body in a meditative state, power flowing up from below and coursing out through countless lines like veins feeding blood to the skin. He did not sense a single corrupted file or unnecessary loop. It did not seem possible that anyone could have created such a thing.

  Bellow probed gently through various ports until a higher-level security access prompt brought him up short, but his signature was recognized and he was let through without trouble. They were letting him go, then. Crowther either hadn't told the board about his little massacre in the sewers or they didn't care.

  He could sense streams of data running everywhere; these were the private files and programs where the real money was made. He saw why the board had wanted to keep him out: a lively slave pornography trade exchange in real time; a network of pirated software running on mirrored servers; money-laundering efforts concealed beneath complex webs of false data, empty rooms, and dead-end code. It was illegal as hell, but it wasn't what he was looking for, and nothing else was hiding there.

  A bug would set off waves inside the net, and to find one he had to get up close and personal with that code. He had to listen. Binary was like any other language; it could be learned by anyone who was patient and had a knack for linguistics. He backed out and tried to track down any broken fragments and corruption that would signal that something foreign had gone through.

  Bellow was concentrating so hard that he almost missed it. Intent on finding gibberish and broken lines, searching for an increase in traffic, a hotbed of activity and confusion, he overlooked the opposite. Beyond the normal streams and a series of partitions there was something that felt like a black hole. He could sense nothing, feel nothing coming from it, would not even have known that it was there save for the subtle influence it had on the surrounding code.