“She’s dead,” I told the shocked face, and held up the blaster. “They’re both dead. And you’re next, if you don’t get us on the ground right now.”

The chauffeur rallied. “We’re five hundred metres above the Bay, friend, and I’m flying this car. What do you propose doing about that?”

I selected a mid-point on the wall between the two cabins, knocked out the blowback cutout on the blaster and shielded my face with one hand.

“Hey, what are you—”

I fired through into the driver’s compartment on tight focus. The beam punched a molten hole about a centimetre wide and for a moment it rained sparks backwards into the cabin as the armouring beneath the plastic resisted. Then the sparks died as the beam broke through and I heard something electrical short out in the forward compartment. I stopped firing.

“The next one goes right through your seat,” I promised. “I’ve got friends who’ll re-sleeve me when they fish us out of the Bay. You’ll carve into steaks right through this fucking wall, and even if I miss your stack, they’ll have a hard time finding which part of you it’s inside, now fucking get me on the ground.”

The limousine banked abruptly to one side, losing altitude. I sat back a little amidst the carnage and cleaned more blood off my face with one sleeve.

“That’s good,” I said more calmly. “Now set me down near Mission Street. And if you’re thinking about signalling for help, think about this. If there’s a firefight, you die first. Got it? You die first. I’m talking about real death. I’ll make sure I burn out your stack if it’s the last thing I do before they take me down.”

His face looked back at me on the screen, pale. Scared, but not scared enough. Or maybe scared of someone else. Anyone who bar-codes their employees isn’t likely to be the forgiving type, and the reflex of longheld obedience through hierarchy is usually enough to overcome fear of a combat death. That’s how you fight wars, after all—with soldiers who are more afraid of stepping out of line than they are of dying on the battlefield.

I used to be like that myself.

“How about this?” I offered rapidly. “You violate traffic protocol putting us down. The Sia turn up, bust you and hold you. You say nothing. I’m gone and they’ve got nothing on you outside of a traffic misdemeanour. Your story is you’re just the driver, your passengers had a little disagreement in the back seat and then I hijacked you to the ground. Meanwhile, whoever you work for bails you out rapido and you pick up a bonus for not cracking in virtual holding.”

I watched the screen. His expression wavered, and he swallowed hard. Enough carrot, time for the stick. I locked the blowback circuit on again, lifted the blaster so he could see it and fitted it to the nape of Trepp’s neck.

“I’d say you’re getting a bargain.”

At point-blank range, the blaster beam vaporised spine, stack and everything around it. I turned back to the screen.

“Your call.”

The driver’s face convulsed, and the limo started to lose height raggedly. I watched the flow of traffic through the window, then leaned forward and tapped on the screen.

“Don’t forget that violation, will you?”

He gulped and nodded. The limo dropped vertically through stacked lanes of traffic and bumped hard along the ground, to a chorus of furious collision alert screeches from the vehicles around us. Through the window I recognised the street I’d cruised with Curtis the night before. Our pace slowed somewhat.

“Crack the nearside door,” I said, tucking the blaster under my jacket. Another jerky nod and the door in question clunked open, then hung ajar. I swivelled, kicked it wide and heard police sirens wailing somewhere above us. My eyes met the driver’s on the screen for a moment and I grinned.

“Wise man,” I said, and threw myself out of the coasting vehicle.

The pavement hit me in the shoulder and back as I rolled amidst startled cries from passing pedestrians. I rolled twice, hit hard against a stone frontage and climbed cautiously to my feet. A passing couple stared at me and I skinned my teeth in a smile that made them hurry on, finding interest in other shop fronts.

A stale blast of displaced air washed over me as a traffic cop’s cruiser dropped in the wake of the offending limo. I stayed where I was, giving back the diminishing handful of curious looks from passers-by who had seen my unorthodox arrival. Interest in me was waning, in any case. One by one the stares slipped away, drawn by the flashing lights of the police cruiser, now hovering menacingly above and behind the stationary limo.

“Turn off your engines and remain where you are,” crackled the airborne speaker system.

A crowd started to knot up as people hurried past me, jostling and trying to see what was going on. I leaned back on the frontage, checking myself for damage from the jump. By the feel of the fading numbness in my shoulder and across my back, I’d done it right this time.

“Raise your hands above your head and step away from your vehicle,” came the metallic voice of the traffic cop.

Over the bobbing heads of the spectators, I made out the driver, easing himself out of the limo in the recommended posture. He looked relieved to be alive. For a moment I caught myself wondering why that kind of stand-off wasn’t more popular in the circles I moved in.

Just too many death wishes all round, I guess.

I backstepped a few metres in the mix of the crowd, then turned and slipped away into the brightly lit anonymity of the Bay City night.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

There was a cold blue dawn over the city by the time I got back to Licktown, and everything had the wet gunmetal sheen of recent rain. I stood in the shadow of the express-way pillars and watched the gutted street for any hint of movement. There was a feeling I needed, but it wasn’t easy to come by in the cold light of the rising day. My head was buzzing with rapid data assimilation and Jimmy de Soto floated around in the back of my mind like a restless demon familiar.

Where are you going, Tak?

To do some damage.

The Hendrix hadn’t been able to give me anything on the clinic I’d been taken to. From Deek’s promise to the Mongolian to bring a disc of my torture right back across, I supposed that the place had to be on the other side of the Bay, probably in Oakland, but that in itself wasn’t much help, even for an AI. The whole Bay area appeared to be suffused with illegal biotech activity. I was going to have to retrace my steps the hard way.