Inside, two men, both in black and with the chain-link tattoo, materialized out of twin shadowed alcoves set right and left of the main entry. Muscle said something in a burst of rapid Japanese and got a reply that made his face darken. He turned to McCain. “This way.”

Muscle led McCain through a labyrinth of halls and screened rooms to a room set well back in the house. The room’s shoji was shut tight, and two more guards flanked the entrance. At Muscle’s approach, they sketched quick bows then slid open the shoji. Muscle ducked in and motioned for McCain to follow.

McCain smelled the boy before he saw him: clotted blood and sour sweat. The boy, not much older than fifteen, lay on a low futon, a sheet pulled up to his neck. His eyes were shut and he moaned periodically. A woman knelt, mopping the boy’s sweat from his forehead then wringing out the rag in water from an enameled basin by her knees, and McCain figured he didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to get this one, either. “Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding. That boy needs a hospital.”

Muscle, his voice like flint. “You got to work here.”

Tabletop surgery definitely wasn’t on McCain’s agenda. “What happened?”

“He was ambushed a day ago, coming home from school. We think it was Kabuki-monoe.” At McCain’s perplexed expression, Muscle said, “Ronin. Street punks and dealers carving out their territory. Anyway, whoever he was… he got away.”

“So why haven’t you taken this boy to a hospital?”

“No can do. He had bodyguards, but they’re dead. Anyone that good can get into a hospital, no problem. You got to take care of him here.”

“Look, I’m just an ER doc, strictly treat and street. I…”

“Look, you don’t do it, I got to kill you. You seen the place. But you put the save on him, I don’t kill you. You do for me, I do for you, you know?”

“What if he dies?”

“You got to ask?”

Okay, this had not been the plan. Kneeling, McCain peeled the sheet from the boy’s body. A swath of rust-colored gauze the size of McCain’s hand covered the boy’s right side. Gingerly, McCain lifted away tape and then groaned. The bullet had punched a ragged, fleshy hole just above and to the right of the boy’s navel. The boy writhed just then, and a squirt of plum-colored, half-clotted blood dribbled down the boy’s flank. McCain looked at Muscle. “I suppose it’s too much to hope there’s an exit wound.”

“Naw. Bullet’s still in there.”

“Great. How long has he been out?”

“Since last night.”

“Ah, Jesus.” Oily sweat slicked the kid’s face and chest. He felt the boy’s forehead. Burning up, but when McCain pressed down on the kid’s cold, white-gray nail beds, they were slow to refill with blood. “Look, this is bad. You guys waited too long.”

“That’s why you operate here.”

“Yeah? With what? My trusty pocket knife?”

“Anything you need, we got. We got a clinic.”

“So where’s your doctor?”

“Dead,” said Muscle in a flat tone that suggested McCain really didn’t want to know how. “You’re the runner-up, Doc.”

“Well, now’s the perfect time to just say no.” McCain pushed to his knees. “At the risk of sounding hackneyed, I have no intention of running, and I will not run if nominated.”

Muscle’s face was grim. “Look, you don’t do it, I kill you. You do it, and he dies, I won’t be dancing in the aisles, but you stay alive.”

“I thought you said you’d kill me.”

Muscle shrugged. “I incentivized.”

McCain didn’t like it. But he did it anyway. Like he had a choice.

Two Forks, Junction

27 December 3134

Viki Drexel swayed along in a hoverbus. The vehicle was jammed with too many people crammed into too small a space, the overheated air smelling of cigarettes, sour rice and sweaty feet. Drexel inhaled, regretted it, thought: Oh, man, what can go wrong next? McCain was gone; snatched, but by whom and where to? She sure didn’t know, and unless someone dropped a helpful clue or two her way, she was stuck.

Nothing was going right. They’d slipped across the border between Prefecture III and the Combine, their JumpShip winking in and out at a pirate point. They had a mission and even kind of a plan. So far, other than McCain working himself catatonic and her pushing paper all day, their time hadn’t been particularly well spent.

On Junction, she was just Dixie Lever, catchy anagram, because she couldn’t afford to be anyone but Lever. Viki Drexel wasn’t notorious, but she wasn’t exactly unknown. Anyone with half his brain on life support would’ve put it together eventually, even if she had dyed her hair red from her God-given brown. All those stories about how her Shockwave had made short work of a munitions battery on Ancha. She could just see it now: someone giving her a double take and then, Oh, that Viki Drexel.

Matt McCain was just Matt McCain: doc and all-around stand-up, gutsy, nice guy. He’d wielded a scalpel; she’d done all the complicated stuff: securing the cutout, contracting the hit man, specifying the target. She’d thought for sure they’d nailed it a month ago when McCain pulled the save on that one kid who had gotten, well, aerated. And had McCain give her an earful about that one: I’m a doctor, not a gangster! Well, maybe, except they were dealing with gangsters, and monkey see, monkey do. They couldn’t very well go knock on the oyabun’s door: Excuse me, but we’re from Dragon’s Fury, and we’re making a tour of your neighborhood and wanted to know if you and the missus had anything you’d like to donate, say, a couple of ’Mechs, maybe some troops… She wanted to meet the idiot who’d dreamed up this harebrained scheme, maybe shake his hand, buy him a drink. Problem was: She was the idiot.

Face it, toots. You blew it. So what you going do now, wiseass?

A little less than a klick from her place, she got off, squirting like a wet watermelon seed through the bus’ open doors. She always walked the last part, keeping her eyes peeled, the tick-tick-tick of her heels against cracked concrete keeping time. As she rounded the corner toward her building, she glanced left—and froze. There was a street vendor, a woman by the looks of it, hawking noodles and fresh tamago. But it’s the wrong time of day unless…

At Drexel’s approach, the vendor, a short lumpy woman with a flat face, gave her a pleasant smile. “Help you, miss?”

“Yes,” said Drexel, heart fluttering in her throat. “Are your eggs good?”

“Oh, yes. Very good, very fresh. I make up nice tamago.” Drexel watched as the woman cracked eggs, whisked them with soy sauce and sugar, drizzled the mixture on a rectangular, cast-iron omelet pan, and deftly flipped the omelet three times before sliding the piping hot treat onto foil. “There,” she said, sealing the packet. Then, reaching beneath her cart, she brought out a paper sack. “And maybe you like some good eggs for later on, nice hard-boiled eggs.”

Drexel practically ran up the stairs, the bag of hard-boiled eggs in her left hand, the slim, still-warm foil packet in her right. A quick glance at her door confirmed that the red hair she’d placed on the knob that morning was still in place. Satisfied, she pushed open the door, flipped on the light—and stopped, cold.

Her holovid was on. A disk was squared on the table.

Carefully, Drexel put the foil packet and sack of eggs on a square, rickety chair by the entrance. Then she fished a pistol from her purse, screwed on a silencer, thumbed off the safety. Slipping out of her heels, Drexel edged down a short hall in stocking feet, high-stepping over the creaky floorboard near the bathroom. The bathroom door was half open, and she wasn’t sure if she’d left it that way or not. At the jamb, she dropped to a low crouch, straight-armed her pistol, kicked open the door. The door banged open on squalling hinges, and Drexel was through, whipping down and around, sweeping with the pistol from side to side. No one there. But—her eyes narrowed—the shower curtain was pulled, and she knew that was wrong. Maybe someone there …