A moment later three Stormers skidded to a halt around her, gave us the once-over, and then took her by the arms and brought her to her feet. Hense and Happling had cop written all over them, and I guessed that was enough for the Stormers, who’d spent their entire adult lives getting their balls kicked by officers.

“Sorry, ma’am,” one of them buzzed through his helmet speaker. “Emergency curfew.”

They carted her off without another word, her blank face staring back at us until they’d turned the corner, where by the sound of it a hover idled, slowly filling with all the citizens who’d been too slow or too reluctant to get off the streets.

Hense started off east, heading up the block as she clipped her shiny gold badge to the front of her coat. “Keep your head down,” she said to me in a tense whisper. “And resist… the… urge… to speak.”

I was one solid ache, the rhythm of it mesmerizing. My heart would beat, and then my whole body would pulse with a muffled, diffuse pain, and as we walked I landed on my right foot with each pulse, imagining the whole side of my face inflating and deflating with each step. The empty streets were eerie. There was trash everywhere, just random things-paper, foam cups, a single black dress shoe. It looked as if there’d been quite a little dustup when the SSF had declared an emergency and ordered the streets clear. Hense set a killer pace, and I struggled to keep up; I hadn’t eaten in a long time, a time spent getting acquainted with the System Pigs’ newest interrogation techniques, which had turned out to be exactly like their old ones, only a little more enthusiastic.

The ruined building just off the river loomed up over us, big swathes of it nothing but gaping holes, exposed guts, all that glass that once made it shine in the sun shattered and jagged. It was like a huge box, thin and square, ugly as hell. It had taken a beating in the Unification Riots and no one had ever bothered to do anything about it. I stared at it as we ignored a hastily constructed checkpoint-so far no one had wanted to mess with a colonel-and crossed the last street, its pavement broken and uneven, before the river. The hover field was a small, fenced-in affair guarded by a couple of Crushers who eyed Hense in terror as we approached.

I looked over her at the field itself. It wasn’t well populated; just a few sad-looking hovers, rusty and dented, remained.

“I’m sorry, uh, Colonel,” one of the Crushers, an elderly gent of at least forty, his face gaunt and his uniform almost comically big on him, said. “We’re under orders to keep these bricks on the ground.”

To my surprise, Hense stopped and visibly collected herself. She glanced at me and then at Big Red Happling, and then looked back at the Crusher, who didn’t enjoy her attention at all.

“By whose orders?”

The Crusher managed to look embarrassed. “Director Marin’s, Colonel.”

She nodded and took one step forward. “Director Marin is not here,” she said in a cool, level voice. “And cannot hurt you. I am here, and can. Call it in. But don’t try to stop us.”

The Crusher looked at her, then at the rest of us, and then spun around looking for his partner, who had wisely retreated back into the little shack provided for them. “Shit,” he muttered. “You won’t even get out of the city, Colonel. I mean-”

“Excuse me!”

We all turned, startled. I saw Happling’s arms twitch for his gun and then stop as we all watched an elegantly dressed figure crossing the street. He was a tall, broad-chested young man, his face chiseled and his skin clear-serious, serious surgery, I thought, with some genetic workups to boot. Expensive shit. His outfit, which was pink and white, was cut expertly and moved easily as he trotted up to us. The two cops, I thought, were too shocked to do anything.

“Please,” he said with a smile. “I am willing to pay-handsomely-for a ride out of the city.” He produced a credit dongle from his pocket. “Please-I have a family. There are rumors-disease, those animals downtown again. I am-”

Happling stepped forward, crowding him and making him step back. “Did you just offer to bribe us, you piece of shit?”

The man’s confident smile drained off his face. “No! No! Of course not,” he said quickly, putting up his hands. “I was just-”

The big cop slapped him across the face, moving so fast there was no time to react. The gorgeous man’s head whipped back instantly, his lower lip split open, blood running in a weak trickle down his chin. His expression told me he’d never been hit before. In his entire life. He wasn’t even afraid, he was fucking amazed. And I thought, Who grows up without being hit? How rich did you have to be? I wanted a number. I wanted statistics.

“You stupid fuck,” Happling said, turning away.

He marched past us toward the field. The Crusher stepped aside as the bigger man approached, and without saying anything more we followed him onto the field to a decrepit hover that had once been silver but was now a charred sort of gray. It was a small, ancient model, but designed for long trips over water. Happling climbed in without a word, and we followed him, one by one.

“Ah, hell,” Marko muttered as Happling and Hense disappeared into the cockpit. “It smells like shit in here.”

I had to agree with the kid’s delicate nose, though my own-probably broken-wasn’t working too well. There were seats, however, a great luxury, and I sank into one with a snort of pain. Nothing seemed to be working right. It was as if I had a million tiny fractures, all waiting for the right moment to snap.

My hosts didn’t waste any time. The hatch snapped shut, the cabin pressurized, and the roar of displacement, somewhat muffled, sprang up outside. With a lurch we were off the ground. I turned to look out the tiny window by my seat and saw the two Crushers standing there, paralyzed. I knew they were wondering who to be more afraid of, Dick Marin, who they imagined was a single man in an office far away, or these crazy cops who were right there, who’d been close enough to touch.

“Mr. Cates.” Hense’s voice filled the cabin. “Where are we going?”

I hesitated just a moment, but there was no margin in keeping it a secret. “Paris,” I said. “There’s a beacon. In my nanobots or some shit.”

As we rose higher and higher, I heard Marko muttering darkly to himself as he got settled in, bringing out an endless array of devices and setting them up fussily around his seat. I kept my eyes trained out the window, watching as the city spread out below us. We floated over downtown, and instead of the serene emptiness we’d just left, there were masses of people, smoke, and other SSF hovers, most with the thin silver threads pouring out of them that meant Stormers being deployed. Downtown hadn’t paid any fucking attention to any curfew and wasn’t going to sit idly by while everyone died of some mysterious disease.

I wondered if there’d be anything left to save, if I ever had the choice.