“Cheers,” Kieth said breathlessly, dumping the bag on the floor and tearing it open. “Give Ty a moment while he scans and cleans the place. Ty doesn’t make a peep in public until he’s safe.”

I nodded, raising my glass and taking a sip-always a mistake; Pick’s gin was meant to be bolted, winced over, and held down by sheer force of will. “Knock yourself out.”

He began extracting a startling amount of equipment and laying it in a perimeter around the room, pausing each time to spin around with a handheld device in one hand. Gatz and I watched him silently. When he was done, he grinned and dropped heavily into a chair.

“Well, that’s done. We can speak safely now.” He winked at me. “You’re a hot name, you know that? Everyone knows

Avery Cates out of Old New York has something big brewing.”

I choked a little on my drink. “Great.”

Milton Tanner arrived without fanfare and leaned up against a wall, arms crossed, looking very unhappy. I muted the huge Vid installed in the wall behind me with a gesture.

“Okay, since you’re all here I assume we’re all on board, yes?”

Ty Kieth attempted a smile, nose quivering. “I think we’re all desperate enough to be in this.”

“You don’t speak for us,” Tanner growled. I saw Milton’s lips move, silently. “But yeah, we’re in.”

I didn’t give a shit why they were in. “Okay, let’s get started. I have three items to address here. Number one is, as of this moment, you are all in my employ. This job has begun, and if you have any problems with me or taking orders, walk away right now.”

I waited again. Stony silence.

“We’ll make introductions later. The second item is this: This is not a democracy. The money flows through me, so if you want your share, do what I say when I say it. Your expertise is needed and I’ll ask for it. But don’t argue with me. Questions?”

I waited again. After a moment, to my surprise, one of the twins raised her hand.

“Okay, we’re experts, Mr. Cates,” she said crisply. “I know who Kieth is by reputation. Who’s the zombie?”

I glanced at Gatz and grinned. “Kev Gatz is who you deal with if you piss me off.”

We all stared at Gatz for a moment. He appeared to be asleep.

The sisters looked at each other for a second and then looked back at me. “Okay.”

I nodded. “The final item is this: How we’re going to proceed. We need information. The Electric Church is a protected state-registered religion under laws 321 and 322 promulgated by the Joint Council. There’s no detail concerning their activities or facilities. We need to do some recon.” I paused, finally knocking back my drink. It burned, and my eyes watered. “We’re going to begin the discovery process by acquiring a unit from which to extract information.”

I waited again. Everyone stared at me and Kieth became excited, glancing this way and that to gauge the reactions of the others. “Wait a sec, Mr. Cates, are you saying we’re going to acquire a fucking Monk?”

I nodded. “That’s priority one. We need to identify a unit, snatch it, and then it’ll be up to you to dissect and get whatever you can from it.”

Gatz suddenly animated, sitting forward with a scrape of gritty dust beneath his boots, looking over my shoulder at the Vid. He didn’t move any more than that, but a vibrating stiffness settled on him and made me watch him from the corner of my eye.

“We can’t do this here in New York, though,” I said, ignoring Gatz. “As Mr. Kieth has pointed out, I’ve attracted the attention of a System Cop named Moje.”

Milton and Tanner moaned in unison. “Elias Moje,” Milton said. “We know that cocksucker.”

“So the idea is, we leave here tonight with an action plan for acquiring a Monk,” I concluded.

“Ave,” Gatz croaked. I glanced at him. He was still staring over my shoulder. “We got a situation.”

I twisted around to view the silent screen of the Vid. I almost jumped out of my skin, because a three-foot-high image of Barnaby Dawson’s face filled it. I gestured the volume back on.

I gestured the sound off again.

“Another SSF friend of yours?” one of the sisters asked with a raised eyebrow.

Her sister raised the opposite eyebrow. “I’m thinking we should get hazard pay.”

I stared into Gatz’s blank tinted lenses for a long moment. Then I shook myself. “Just someone we thought was dead. He doesn’t factor into this.” I took a deep breath. “Action plans for acquiring a unit. Let’s hear ’em.”

Dawson’s face, with his crazy, dancing blue eyes, stayed in my head. I knew I’d be seeing it again soon. If there was one rule every one of us scrabbling for survival at the bottom of the barrel lived by, it was Never fail to kill a System Cop.

XII

FORCED INTO THIS LIFE BY THE EVIL WORLD

“Kieth really came through, huh?”

I glanced at Milton-I assumed it was Milton-but didn’t respond immediately. In my ear, the commlink hummed with dead air, the sound of the city’s wind rushing by. I looked back at Gatz.

“Everyone came through,” I said curtly.

Kieth had produced an astonishing amount of high-quality tech in a few hours, including the wireless commlinks we all sported, a tiny earplug and ambient microphone that picked up the slightest whisper. Milton and Tanner had somehow found the perfect transport for our quarry. I had armed us, finding just about everything on my wish list in hours-word was out that I was a dead man, on the SSF’s shitlist and in over my head, but word also said I was a rich dead man, so transactions were easy, even with my credit. Kev Gatz, although his role in our first foray into world-class criminal activity was a passive one, took it without complaint. He was now standing out on the ruined street, looking like he remained upright through simple habit.

“Where the hell are we, anyway?”

I ground my teeth. Milton never shut up. Separating the twins had been a mistake: She chattered aimlessly, and I thought she didn’t know what to do when her sister wasn’t standing right next to her. “Newark,” I said stiffly. “What’s left of it. Riots nearly burned it to the ground. No one really lives here anymore, except a couple of villages built out of borrowed stones.”

She nodded. I hefted the sniper rifle I’d acquired and examined its action for the hundredth time.

“You know how to use that, sonny?”

“Yes.”

“I know it’s old, it’s from the Iraqi Wars. Fucking ancient. But the shells are armor-piercing, and it’ll fire. You know what the Iraqi Wars were?”

I closed my eyes for a dangerous moment, gathering strength. I was Gatz’s lifeline; if this went wrong and it looked like the Monk was going to start tearing new asses, I was going to blow its head off. “Yes.”

“I wasn’t sure. Can you read?”

“Of course I can read.”

“Just checking. You’re just a kid, and the lack of education is shocking these days.” She paused for a blessed moment. “You ever wonder about them? The Monks?”

I gritted my teeth again. I imagined death, imagined my breathing getting harder, more labored, my mind dimming, everything going dark… I pushed the thoughts away, my heart pounding. Swallowing thickly, I oriented on Gatz, who still stood in place, like a statue. I knew the Monk would come if we managed to not set off any alarms. It had harangued Gatz earlier in the day, just like the Monk had harangued Nad Muller. It was coming.