She was over the line, LizAlec just knew she had to be. Black shadows raced in like clouds towards the edge of her vision, her cheeks were stretching, distorting. Her mouth was stiff, fingers cryo-cold, capillaries shrunk to invisible threads as her core temperature plummeted and Liz Alec’s body stole blood from her arms and legs. It was no good, she wasn’t going to...

“You ever thought of using the door?” The kid crouching in front of LizAlec wore a stained Voidoids3 T-shirt and baggy combats. A glass blade was taped ostentatiously to his ankle and he had a silver crucifix round his neck, a real one with the tortured man on. She recognized him from somewhere. And if she hadn’t been on her side vomiting her guts out, LizAlec might have remembered it was from the CasaNegro in Fracture. But instead she just noted she knew him, maybe.

Up close and personal, the boy looked street-rough, with a Luna accent to break glass. And he was staring at her with an odd, half-ironic expression. Like he couldn’t believe what he’d just caught. As it was, LizAlec merely moved her head and spewed again onto the steel floor of the airlock, a string of yellow bile that burnt her throat before bubbling into little yellow marbles that hit the floor and floated gently away.

“Here,” said the boy, climbing over her to wipe LizAlec’s frost-burned lips with his hand. He thrust an oxygen mask over her face, not asking whether or not she wanted it. She did. LizAlec pulled pure oxygen deep into her aching lungs. Inside her head, synapses relit and neuro-chemicals began to stabilize: it was like watching a city’s lights come on after a blackout. She was still sucking oxygen from the mask harder than a baby pulling at a teat when Leon jabbed an SB hypo against her neck and hit the trigger. Endorphins blasted into her bloodstream and then the boy slammed open the hypo and slid in another slug. Glucose and hypericum followed.

“Like, you know... My uncle taught me,” the boy said by way of explanation. “That smart skin’s a real neat trick,” he added longingly, as he ran his finger down her arm. “Never seen a real one before, too expensive.”

LizAlec shivered.

That was when she realized she was more or less naked, the spider’s silk pulled in so tight against her body she could practically see the goose bumps on her inner thigh. And if she could see that, then LizAlec had a pretty good idea why the boy was still gawking at her.

Pulling LizAlec to her feet, Leon grinned, holding her while both her ReeGravs found the deck and locked onto it. LizAlec was about to shake off his hand but then she changed her mind: she needed all the help she could get.

“Through here,” Leon told her and together they limped into the hold of the Shockwave Rider, Leon closing the airlock’s inner door behind him. He took her across the small hold and stopped at a door marked Danger, Radiation, Keep Out, opening it with a smart card hung on the same chain as his silver crucifix.

Inside the tiny room, white noise blared from every speaker, loud enough to blow out your eardrums. Voidoids3, LizAlec decided. Not that she could tell one Luna noise band from another. The area had started out as storage space and ended up as someone’s bolt-hole, at least that was how it looked to LizAlec.

The place was wall-to-wall mess, empty McDonald’s containers floating through the air, not even recycled or even netted down in a rubbish bag... But the bank of tek bolted to the steel floor was real enough. A Segasim, two Nintendos, a standard grey box and something square and black that had bits of crystal RAM sprouting from it like digital cancer. The walls were cluttered with cheap flickering flatscreens, epoxied or staple-gunned into place. Every single one of them was on. 197 channels and LizAlec didn’t know which one to watch.

“Here.” Leon lifted a silver flask to her lips. Warm sweet chocolate slid down her throat, so thick and synthetic it could have been melted plastic. LizAlec pulled a face, but then reached for the flask as warmth began to spread through her body, radiating out from her gut.

“You want that lifeboat?” Leon asked, clapping his hands to lower the volume. For a second, LizAlec looked blank and then realized the boy was talking about her pod. No, she didn’t want it. In fact, she hoped never to see the thing again.

“You mind if I have it?”

LizAlec shrugged. “Sure,” she said glibly, “it’s yours.”

The boy nodded and walked over to the nearest flatscreen. Running his fingers over its flickering surface he woke an icon called lasso and watched as a cartoon drone navigated slow circles around a cartoon dustbin, wrapping it in monofilament.

“Salvage,” the boy explained. “Space junk. You’d be ‘mazed how much there is out here.” Leon knew, it was his ship. Well, seventeen per cent of it was and the figure was rising. Jude had put up the guarantee, but then that was what mothers were for, and he’d never missed a payment. Didn’t intend to, either.

All that other shit was just stuff he’d told the other two. Fixx he could handle, provided Leon left his ma out of that equation, but the Japanese woman. Now that was someone he didn’t trust...

On a bigger screen the real drone had finished trussing LizAlec’s half-pod in a cocoon of monofilament, so the boy tapped a winch icon and the cargo doors opened to let the pod be pulled inside.

“Worth more than carrying people,” said Leon, without looking round. “Less grief too, especially that pair.” He jerked his thumb downwards towards where The Arc must be. “Should have seen the two of them. Bitched at each other the whole way out. Need locking up...”

Who needed locking up? LizAlec wondered, feeling puzzled. Mind you, she was getting expert at that. Maybe it was oxygen starvation, or perhaps she just didn’t know what the fuck was going on any more.

“Locking up,” said Leon, “and fed slop through a slit in the door. So they can blade each other to death or else fuck, whichever takes their fancy. Wouldn’t put my cache on the one with metal legs, though...”

“What?” LizAlec looked startled.

“Too old,” explained Leon, “too dopey. Came out to Strat looking for you and then fucked up, but Chink’s a real professional, I’ve seen people like her before.” He didn’t say it was on tri-D.

“Fixx?” LizAlec demanded, grabbing Leon by the arm. “Fixx is here?” She practically shook Leon off balance in her excitement.

“Tall guy, metal legs and arm, silver eyes...?”

The girl didn’t need the list, she already knew it was Fixx. Jeeeez. Well, she thought, better late than never. Fixx had actually got off his arse and launched a rescue mission. LizAlec was grinning like a lunatic, but she didn’t care. Swinging neatly on her heel, LizAlec let go of Leon’s arm and stamped for the door, ReeGravs ringing like bells on the metal floor.

“Where you going?” Leon demanded. He had his head cocked to one side and for once he was looking only at her face. Whatever Leon saw there, it interested him. Mind you, great tits, narrow hips and killer scowl, the whole girl interested him. You didn’t get too many of her type for your money in Fracture or Planetside. At least, not in the places he went anyway.

“I’m going to find Fixx,” said LizAlec as if it should be obvious.

“You and this guy...” For a second, Leon searched for a tactful way to ask but couldn’t think of one, and fell back on what he knew. Tact wasn’t in high demand in Strat or the salvage business. “You know, like, you guys fuck?”

LizAlec just looked at him.

“Just asking,” said Leon. “Because they had, you know? Didn’t much like each other but, well...” Leon spread his hands. “When has that ever stopped anybody?”

It wasn’t the bile, but her throat suddenly felt sour and her gut was so hollow it hurt, like he’d just sucker-punched her under the heart.