“Just keep pushing,” I advised her in a calm voice cutting through the sudden cacophony, looking at her sideways, my eyes just brushing her face. I ignored the knife. If she was going to slit my throat for touching her, I’d already be bleeding out. “Just keep pushing.”

I let her go, and she relaxed, tenderly rubbing her nose. I turned to find Orel leaning against the hatch, looking at me blankly. “That how you handle things, Mr. Cates? Don’t try it with me.”

I shook my head. “Certainly not, Mr. Orel. You, I take out on the town, buy you drinks, and then shoot you in your sleep.”

All I got was a raised eyebrow, manicured to a razor edge.

“Look,” Milton broke in, pushing her way forward and standing with arms fiercely akimbo. “She’s got a point. You’re getting awfully high-profile, Cates.”

Her sister, still rubbing her nose and holding her knife, nodded. “Your face is on the Vids. That’s a problem.”

“Goddammit, I know it is.” I looked around at each of them. “This is my job. You want to walk away, go ahead-but there are no goddamn severance packages. You’re either here for the payout to defend your share or you’re not, it’s that simple. If this is too hot for you, bail. But don’t look back. And don’t ever contact me again. If you walk away, keep walking.” I looked at Orel. “That goes for you too, Canny. You want your money, you stick.”

His eyes were alive with energy. “And if I choose to just revenge myself on Mr. Kieth here? There are other things than money in the world, Mr. Cates.”

I shrugged. “I’m rapidly shedding anything I might have left to lose.”

He nodded and pushed off from the hatch, putting a manicured, heavy hand on my shoulder. He gently pulled me into his orbit. His calloused hand was heavily veined and rough, overdeveloped.

“Walk with me a moment, Cates.” We stepped out of the hover and I walked with him a few feet away. When he paused, I just waited, hands in my pockets. He glanced over my shoulder and then leaned in so that we were each looking over the other’s shoulder-an old habit of street hustlers, to minimize volume and watch each other’s backs. Orel and I fell into it easily. It occurred to me that it might be dangerous to give Orel such a clear opening, but I didn’t think it was his style to sucker-punch someone he obviously considered his inferior.

“You’ll have to kill the woman, of course,” he said easily.

I didn’t look at him, just bunched my jaw muscles. “No.”

“Bad enough,” he said in a clipped, precise manner, as if he’d had the speech memorized since childhood, “your face is on the Vids-but we can deal with that. The Vids have faces on them all the time, an endless parade of Bad People Who Must Be Stopped, all right? No one really cares about yet another heartless killer-not the people on the streets, at least. But she is a danger to us. Her, people will recognize. You and her seen together, almost certainly. What if she contrives to escape? To signal? Finally, what if she simply causes trouble? Throws a wrench, so to speak, in the works?” He pulled back enough to glance at me, and our eyes met. “No, Mr. Cates. She needs to be dealt with. Take her out back, now, and do it. She is too dangerous.”

I swallowed thickly. The suggestion itself didn’t bother me. I’d killed almost thirty people on contract, and at least that many in the course of things. I was a killer. I wasn’t an animal. I was prepared to argue my case to God or the Cosmos or whatever-I played by rules. I lived by them.

I leaned forward slightly, until my lips were very near his ear. “I do not,” I whispered, “simply kill obstacles, Mr. Orel, or whoever the fuck you are. It is not her fault that she is here. She should not be punished for it.”

“That is a mistake, Mr. Cates.”

I straightened up. “Mine to make. You know your options.”

He straightened up and studied me, and I stared back at him. I didn’t know if he was used to being ignored, but I wasn’t a starfucker. Reputations had to be maintained, and one bad night could end it. If I had to, I knew I could be Cainnic Orel’s bad night. After a few moments, he smiled.

“Yes, Mr. Cates. I know my options.”

I watched him disappear into the guts of the factory, followed by one of the nervous Droids, which had been programmed to stay close to us in case we got lost. I walked over to sit next to Gatz, letting out an explosive sigh.

“Bad day, huh?” he asked without raising his head.

“I didn’t tip anyone with Harper,” I said without preamble. “Fuck, you were there, Kev. We didn’t do anything stupid. How’d they get my name? A million fucking London crooks not half a mile away, and they fish me out of the hat? It was our fucking friend Moje. Colonel Moje. He probably doesn’t even know I really did grab her. He knows I’m in London, somehow, and he’s just pinning this on me to flush me out.”

“How do you know that?”

I grimaced. I’d gone from exhausted and hollow to impatient with sudden restless energy. I wanted to attack something and was frightened of the urge. “Because I know what everyone else who wants to kill me is up to.”

For a few moments, I just sat there. Gatz was the one person I was pretty sure didn’t want to hurt me. He maybe didn’t care much if I lived, but he wasn’t actively pursuing my death, either, and as sad as that was, it was the best I could do. We sat there side by side, both dirty, disheveled, and tired. We came from the same place. I felt comfortable next to him.

My eyes slid to the right, and Marilyn Harper was staring at me, eyes watery, drool pooling under her mouth from the ruthless gag. I looked away. I was amazed at how complicated everything had become. It had only been a few days. And amazingly, it would probably all be over, one way or another, in a few more.

Footsteps behind me, and I turned to find Milton and Tanner, looking clean but just as leathery.

“Come on, then,” Milton snapped.

“The surgery’s open. No hard feelings, brother.” Tanner grinned.

“Can’t have you goin’ septic on us, can we?”

I blinked. “What?”

They looked at each other simultaneously, and my head ached from watching them. “Your cheek, asshole,” Milton said. “Let’s get you fixed up.”

I sat on the crate we used as a table in the corroded kitchen while Milton and Tanner fussed over me. One of the Droids sat silently between them, bearing our meager medical supplies. When Tanner lifted a thick needle attached to coarse black thread, my hand whipped up and grabbed her wrist.

“You are not pulling that fucking cable through my tortured flesh, right?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t be a baby, sonny. You see any plastic skin grafts here? You see any laser scalpels? A Med Droid? We have,” she held the needle and thread in front of my nose, “good old-fashioned needle and thread.”

Milton chuckled. “You’ll never be pretty again, Cates,” she said. “But you’ll heal. We were running on the streets when you were just bad news on the horizon. I’ve stitched up more people and set more bones than you could count.”

I looked at her closely, the faint lines around her eyes and mouth, the lean, taut look of her. “Tell me, how’d you manage to retire?”

She laughed. “You mean, retire alive?”

I shrugged.

“It’s like anything else in this fucking world. We got lucky.”

I grimaced as her sister leaned in and began shoving the needle through the flaps of my wound. It hurt so intensely that moments after she started I was numb. I ground my teeth as the sisters stared at me, Tanner’s nose still red and angry.

“What?” I grunted.

Milton folded her arms across her chest as Tanner sewed me back together. I realized with a start that as her sister leaned in and out, working on me, she moved just a bit forward and back, in rhythm. “We’re here, Cates. We’re at each other’s throats and getting bullets thrown our way. And I have yet to hear a plan from you for getting into this fucking place.”