The black egg-shaped cocoon’s status display blinked amber as the program returned to its hold position, already calculating scenarios and adjusting scripts for the time it would be called upon again. The experience gallery’s lights remained dim where three dozen other cocoons sat in neat rows. Some were occupied by clients, but others waited empty to take a Starlight subscriber through to another world—a different life.

Reclined in the soft padding of his seat, Ricky rubbed his face, allowing vision to clear and blinking reflexively as slender, metallic arms withdrew a crown of input contacts slowly from his brow. It took a moment or two for the images to fade before he tapped sequential controls to open the long access panel upward with a hiss. The session consumed nearly two hours, but a deep, quiet satisfaction buoyed him as he paid the administration fee and walked quickly for a side exit onto Barrington Road.

Ricky scowled and blinked upward; the rains returned and with them, the familiar smell of wetted streets and rivulets of dirty water coursing steadily toward the storm drains. Thick fog hung motionless in the air, persistent and always clinging even to those most protected places, hastening the decay and corrosion that seemed forever ahead of Novum’s plodding repair crews. The narrow divide between mega-towers, built astride pavements and walkways in the last years of the Resurrection, made cliffs of glass and steel in all directions, holding the moisture in place as if stopped in time. It dripped in endless streams from overhangs and sky bridges, gathering in gutters with the garbage and refuse, but Ricky didn’t notice.

MPE searchlights played slowly across the shimmering surface from ten stories above, sweeping long shafts of cool blue light through the intersections where shift workers scurried for their pod trains. The beams held position once or twice, allowing the Watchers to identify and record land cars and taxis huddled in groups, or parked illegally in the rare, precious spaces where nothing had been built. They said it was different in the Old Time when people came and went without scrutiny, but Ricky ignored them and meaningless remembrances made by those who weren’t alive in a past they evoked as though the words alone would win them some measure of admiration. He looked upward to the cloud layer and another world beyond where the stars glittered above the haze—the Uppers enjoyed a different view that night, and one not meant for street people.

The evening crowd was thinning, but the afterglow of his time with Neferure held him tightly, making it difficult to shift from the alternate life he left inside a Starlight theater. The sensation eased at last, returned to a numbing reality waiting on the streets outside—patient and always there.

For those who were willing to meet its steep cost demand, Starlight remained the most popular diversionary software in the whole of Novum and a miracle of intuitive technology. But from it, a way to enhance the entertainment value of adventure simulations had been derived by enterprising marketers who understood its true potential. A full decade since it came online, the sophisticated, stunningly realistic program had become something more than a novelty. Now, it was a compelling, even unavoidable way of life for many seeking refuge from their ordinary existences in the teeming swirl of a metropolis still defining itself a century after the Fall.

So long as they could pay, most subscribers had been granted a Starlight account regardless of social station, willingly giving themselves over to its lure and promise of adventure; a secret hideaway from reality where one could do—or be—anything. Without content limits or restrictions, Starlight was a safe, discrete place to live out a virtual fantasy so realistic, some found it difficult to continue away from the privacy of an experience cocoon.

Despite fervent pleas from pockets of anti-technology zealots disappointed by Novum’s evolution away from the economic and cultural hegemony Abraham Standvor wanted it to be, more and more embraced Starlight each year. But with the phenomenon, nagging problems of addiction and social decay had become chronic. Ricky didn’t count himself among them, holding stubbornly to an illusion of control; he could enjoy it or not as he chose, but he was sure the decision was always his.

When he crossed the square, his thoughts were only of her. Ricky looked at the vacant streets but saw instead lingering images of pathways along the quiet Nile that always led to Ma’at Palace, or perhaps a chariot ride home to the General’s headquarters and the tents of his soldiers. It never rained there and the skies rarely brought even a hint of cloud. Winters in Thebes produced only longer shadows; there was no bone-chilling wind and snow that made Novum a frozen, icy wasteland. The Palace, caressed each day by calm waters flowing slowly on their way north was a better place, he decided, and one not congested, noisy and covered in filth. In every way, the Sector (and Novum) was the inescapable example of contradiction as an overcrowded, yet lonely nightmare. At Ma’at, he thought silently, they understood who he truly was and Neferure knew him better than anyone.

An hour later, as Ricky closed the door to his flat, he made the calculations in his mind: At eighty-thousand tokens per year, Premium Starlight membership and the unlimited hours privilege it offered was out of the question and such a luxury would remain forever beyond his grasp; only those above—the Uppers, their obedient Bosses, or perhaps even Antonelli—could ever accept so steep a payment obligation. Still, the hours he needed with her were never enough and changes would be made; more money had to be found.

At once, he thought of Elden Fellsbach. Retired or otherwise, the former chief architect of exploratory software that would become the Starlight simulation’s programming still held sufficient influence to make an arrangement for additional time at any theater in Novum. It wasn’t necessary before, of course, but the need had never been so great or compelling. He couldn’t bear to hear the loneliness in Neferure’s voice, wondering aloud why the time between visits had become lengthier—their desperate, intoxicating encounters fewer. In the morning, Ricky thought with a satisfied grin, he would return to the old man’s apartment on the 80th floor, deep inside Marshall Center. Though it had been months since their last visit, Elden would have the answer.

By mid-day, the mist turned to a downpour. Ricky watched news feed images of a slow-moving weather system, obliging him to throw on a cloudy, plastic rain cover that forever leaked through its hood and down the back of his neck. The muggy air would only make worse his misery from body heat trapped inside a vinyl cloak with nowhere to go, but as he turned for the door, a chirp from his communicator sounded suddenly at his wrist; it was Vinnie Bayle, no doubt calling to check on an order for a case of expensive Topaz in half-liter bottles Ricky promised to find at a discount. He touched the comm’s tiny faceplate and answered with a dull voice to imply he had been awakened; an old trick, meant to convince an unwelcome caller the moment was inconvenient.

“Hullo?”

“Slider, it’s me.”

“What’s going on?”

“Have you seen the info-nets this morning?”

Ricky had, but there was nothing of interest beyond dire warnings of flooding near the river and at least four of the active canals up to the north already saw their banks threatened.

“No,” he lied.

“Turn it on; you need to see this.”

Vinnie was easily impressed by street news, but the moment was ill-suited for idle distractions that seemed forever captivating to his childhood friend.

“I was just on my way out; what’s on the ‘net that’s so important?”

“Just turn it on,” Vinnie insisted; “this is big.”

Ricky waited through a public safety message about the perils of wandering too close to the freight tracks until a video image showed two men being led away in handcuffs to a waiting MPE sky van. He recognized them at once, suddenly alert with a powerful, electric sense of urgency. An unseen commentator’s voice told of arrests and charges filed for possession of forbidden contraband in violation of municipal laws. As a camera drone hovered nearby, the men in custody turned and Ricky squinted in disbelief at the faces of Geraldo Espinoza and Benjamin Courtnall as they each stepped through the van’s narrow hatchway. A headline runner at the bottom of the vid screen showed their names and the sector where MPE officers found them in their hidden quarters.

“I’ll call you back,” Ricky said in reflex, tapping off his comm’s link.

Others, held by the entertainment value of a rare spectacle, would have looked only at the prisoners or heavily armed MPE troopers, but Ricky knew better. Instead, his attention went quickly to the surroundings in order to gauge the images and scan them for clues. The blackened, cinder-covered dirt was uneven and strewn with mud puddles, but he looked closely at ancient, ramshackle buildings beyond, clad in cheap, tin panels and treated in the usual, drab shades of anti-corrosion paint. Rooftops, gently sloped with corrugated shingle plates, betrayed the structure as one of many in the seldom-used warehouse district where a few of the old surface factories stored machinery and out-of-date merchandise in a thin, desperate hope market fluctuations would one day return the forgotten goods to a status of value. Ricky looked again; it was years since they ventured into the Industrial Zone, but he knew at once where the arrests were made, smiling at a secret well-hidden, but now exposed.

Every hustler in the sector would hear of it within minutes, if they hadn’t already; Ricky knew time and a window to move were both shrinking. After all, he thought with a satisfied grin, it wasn’t every day two of the Bosses—the mid-level administrators who stood as functional intermediaries between privileged Uppers and the teeming, less fortunate Flatwalkers—were taken away by the cops. Things had changed since the new Commission came to power, it was said. Before, the once bullet-proof Bosses did as they liked, but now, even they had been given limits. Ricky could not have asked for so opportune a moment, watching them speed Espinoza and Courtnall away to an uncomfortable arraignment hearing in front of the city’s unyielding magistrates.

Fumbling quickly for his bag, Ricky felt the excitement and sense of possibility begin to grow. Perhaps they pushed their chances once too often, he supposed, but that error could change his luck dramatically. How could it be, he wondered? Courtnall and Espinoza were the controlling force for the entire Sector’s undercity rackets, with soldiers, snitches and ‘sweepers’ counting in the hundreds. If two so influential and powerful could be brought down in public, their indiscretions must surely have been grave. Ricky played out the scenario in his mind, moving cautiously through a mental checklist to avoid missing crucial details; there was too much at stake for a wrong step now. He grinned openly at the image of one particular building in the news vid; the weathered structure was key, and Ricky knew it.

The Bosses were thought by many on the hustle to have made and maintained secret places scattered throughout the Industrial Zone where no one went—dangerous places, frequented by desperate streeties who would kill lost or wayward travelers trying to make it inside the border from beyond the wire, simply for a handful of tokens or just the clothes on their backs. Still, no one found those most guarded places among the abandoned fabrication plants and disused storage buildings in all his days on the street. Some regarded it as little more than grandiose rumor, but none were brave (or foolish) enough to look and Ricky was grateful for the security an old legend had made.

In a brief moment of fortune, the unwitting news cameras had done the work for him; Ricky had only to confirm that MPE’s hunt for evidence was concluded and he would take care of the rest. They would comb the area thoroughly, he knew, but cops were never bright enough to see the obvious; Ricky had always looked with better eyes. In the late hours, he would journey out to the Zone and poke around in places rarely discovered by the police.

Suddenly unconcerned for the heavy rainfall, Ricky went quickly from his flat. The cityscape was hazy and dulled by sheets of rain, obscuring all but the most prominent mega-towers across the sector. In the daytime darkness made by a heavy cloud layer, even the streetlights had switched on and Ricky closed his eyes to drift away, taken by the ever-present thoughts and images from that faraway place. Was Neferure thinking of him, he wondered? Could she? There would be changes if he could manage a reconnaissance mission and bring back the riches he knew were hidden within a dank, lonely building on the edge of the Industrial Zone.

When the train arrived at a plaza where Ninth Street crossed Moss Avenue, Ricky waited for an automatic door release to open the pod’s wide hatch, stepping cautiously onto the soaked platform at last. He went quickly through the crowd, jogging first left, then to the right as he struggled to find his pace. The lines were thinning and he found an MPE kiosk where it stood at a busy intersection. The tall, tube-shaped enclosure shimmering in the rain was perched atop a single pillar set deep into the concrete.

A station officer leaned his elbows on an open window frame, offering directions to the Trade and Commerce Building for three travelers, but Ricky waited for them to go before hurrying beneath a conical overhang to escape the rain. Sergeant Walter Ritnour, an MPE beat cop on the Corridor for as long as Ricky could remember, noticed him at last.

“Well, well, well; Slider Mills. What brings you all the way over here?”

Ricky smiled and glanced behind to make sure no one could overhear.

“Oh, just business; picking up, dropping off…the usual.”

Ritnour eyed Ricky’s bag and said, “You wouldn’t have anything illegal in there, would you?”

Ricky held up the empty sack.

“Nothing at all, see?”

“I’ll take your word for it. Now tell me why you wandered down to Ninth in a driving rain; I know you’re not here just to say ‘hello,’ are you?”

Ricky shook his head and laughed a little so that Ritnour wouldn’t stray from his presumption that only street business was in-play.

“Can’t a guy stop in and bullshit with his favorite cop?”

“Sure,” Ritnour replied, “if that was the reason for his visit, but…”

Ricky answered quickly; he couldn’t afford to appear tentative.

“I need to check on a few things with the door guy at the Imperial; he’s been helpful finding new customers, and I have a few minutes to kill so I ducked in here. You’re a suspicious bastard!”

“Uh huh,” said Ritnour with clear skepticism. “I guess that’ll have to do; you wouldn’t tell me if it was something else anyway.”

“I’m legit; nothing to hide this time!”

Ritnour nodded and smiled, knowing Ricky’s assurances were likely half-truths at best.

“So, how’s your mom doing? I heard she had a bad time with her shoulder?”

Ricky felt the relief at once. Ritnour may well have suspected other intentions, but he was willing to accept Ricky’s explanation and leave it alone, at least for the moment.

“Yeah, she fell at work and tore it when she landed wrong. The clinic couldn’t do much, so she had to wait for a slot up at the hospital. By the time those assholes called her in, her shoulder was so swollen she could hardly dress.”

“Is she okay now?”

“Doing a lot better, thanks. They gave her something to take care of the pain and inflammation, but she had to go back last month and they operated on her.”

“Did she get a decent settlement, at least?”

“They paid up pretty good if she agreed to stay on after she was better, so…”

“No problems from the company?”

“Not this time,” Ricky said with a smirk; “the people who run her shift at the plant stuck up for her; they made the managers cough up twice what she would’ve gotten on her own.”

Ritnour shook his head knowingly.

“The clinics aren’t worth shit, but I’m surprised they got her in at a Sector 4 hospital that fast; it usually takes months to even get a diagnosis.”

“I know,” Ricky answered, grateful for the casual tone of the conversation. “I think the plant managers wanted to avoid any bad publicity, so they worked it with the doctors to see her sooner.”

“Small favors, eh?”

Ricky nodded and smiled.

“So how’ve you been lately? I thought they were going to give you a desk job this year.”

“Nope,” said Ritnour with a satisfied grin, “I refused it and asked to be left at my post right here. Can’t watch out for baddies when you’re stuck behind a goddamn desk all day, can you?”

“Hell no!” Ricky laughed. “And anyway, this street would go to shit if you weren’t here to keep an eye on it; everyone knows that.”

“That’s right—all you little hoodlums and streeties need a firm hand!”

The banter was perfect. Ritnour liked trumpeting his disdain for the bureaucrats at MPE Sector Headquarters and once he started, his mind wouldn’t likely return to more suspicious thoughts. It was the moment Ricky had been waiting for.

“Hey, what the hell happened with Espinoza and Courtnall? The news vids said your guys finally nailed them out in the Zone at some warehouse?”

“I heard about it this morning at our briefing. Hope you didn’t have anything in the works with those two; Investigations Section will be all over that place.”

“Shit, I stay as far away from Bosses as I can,” Ricky said, holding up his hands in mock surrender; “I don’t want any part of them.”

He waited for a moment, but Ritnour hadn’t taken the bait. He decided to steer the conversation gently, probing for what he needed.

“I hear they found them inside an old storage building on the edge of the 217 Canal; the one with the green roof?”

“Not that one,” Ritnour replied, “it was an empty machine shop. They kept some of their illegal stuff inside and our people found out about it.”

Ricky tried hard not to smile; Ritnour confirmed the vacant building where Mister Anthony went to meet with Courtnall years before was indeed his target. He moved quickly to continue the conversation.

“The detectives will have a good time when they get their hands on it, won’t they?”

“They already have,” said Ritnour with noticeable pride. “I heard they brought in a dozen inspectors and really worked that place for hours.”

“Still, it’s probably going to take days, right?”

“Not for those boys; they scoured around non-stop and pulled everything out to the evidence vans—more stuff than anyone has ever seen in one place. Just like that—bang, bang, bang, then they locked it up and went downtown. You’d never know they were there!”

At last, Ricky had what he needed. The MPE investigation was complete, paving the way for him to slip in under cover of night and look where no cop would’ve thought to try.

“Damn! Well, it’s not going to break my heart if the magistrates send them to the cylinders; they’re both assholes and they made life hard on a lot of people.”

Ricky had to pass through the obligatory small talk, simply to avoid tipping his hand. Begging off now, he reasoned, Ritnour might notice and wonder why.

“Oh, they’re on their way, believe me.”

“How do you know?”

“The stuff they found laying all over that building was more than enough evidence; they won’t be seeing daylight again any time soon, not if the Magistrate’s prosecutors have anything to say about it.”

“Good!” said Ricky. “It’s gonna be interesting to see who fills the gap, now that these idiots are gone, especially Courtnall; he’d slit your throat for looking at the clock wrong.”

“He won’t have the chance,” Ritnour declared; “When they get you with that much contraband, you’re pretty much screwed.”

“Have you heard something else?”

“Nothing I can tell you, Slider! I know your network goes all the way up, but my job is more important to me than your next score!”

“That’s a shitty thing to say.”

“Maybe, but it’s also true!”

Ricky smiled again. It had been a nice chat, but Ritnour was still cautious enough to watch his words; the strange relationship between cop and street hustler hadn’t changed and Ricky’s signal to withdraw had been given.

“I’m gonna head out.”

“Okay, Slider; mind how you go.”

Ricky paused for a moment before leaning close to whisper up at Ritnour.

“You need anything from me?”

Ritnour smiled and shook his head.

“Not today, but thanks for asking.”

Ricky nodded and stepped quickly through the rain, but as he went, Ritnour’s smile faded. He watched for a moment, waiting until the Slider disappeared before tapping a call code into his wrist comm.

The ride went slower than usual as maintenance crews struggled yet again with a pod train stuck on its overhead rail between stations in the pouring rain. When at last he turned down the alley for home, Ricky felt the excitement building with each step. The other hustlers, he thought with a grin—those saps who went along with the rest like stupid sheep—would never consider such a thing. If he could get out to the Industrial Zone and search the old machine shop before anyone else thought to try, the bounty would be considerable and more than enough to stock his account at the theater for nearly endless sessions. As he tossed his bag on the floor beneath the window, Ricky ran through his mind the steps needed to make it to the Zone and home again undetected.

The problem of enraging psychotic murderers like Espinoza and Courtnall had been removed by their timely arrests, but the Watchers could foul things considerably. Those dull, civilian misfits MPE maintained to stare at status displays and transit access records ‘round the clock from a bunker downtown might have been instructed to search for telltale signs inside system alerts. Perhaps, Ricky thought, anyone curious enough to go out that far, especially late at night, would show when their identification scans registered a trip on the pod train that made its turn near the borders of the warehouse compound. When they did, he knew, the Watchers would see it immediately and react. Instead, he would have to follow a different path, and one followed completely off the grid.

It was far enough to the Zone to rule out trying it on foot, but that meant hopping a local land freight, or asking Vinnie to borrow his father’s delivery van. In the end, he opted for the guaranteed anonymity of the surface freight trains; Vinnie was another pair of eyes who would see and know—another risk to be taken and interrogated if MPE ever came to suspect.

Ricky pulled his boots from tired feet and tossed them aside, intent on getting sleep before his journey that would begin in the hours after midnight. The rains would be heaviest in the early morning hours, the news vids insisted, making it unlikely his movements would be noticed; MPE rarely bothered to patrol on foot without a reason, especially in horrid weather. Once more, he settled and let his mind wander. When he faded, his last thoughts were only of Neferure. He remembered her excitement at the prospect of the fearsome Apheru, finally approved and named as her suitor. Soon, Ricky thought in the sweltering darkness, his rise through the layers of court politics would be secured by the word of Pharaoh herself; no one would stand between them again.

Ricky slipped quietly from his flat as the huge chronometer in the center of Morrissey Square clicked over to 1:12. Despite the late hour, it would take time to walk the distance between his home and the low-speed tracks where cars of still-glowing alloy ingots were shunted through the darkness from the new foundry, destined for noisy rolling presses and hammers of metal processing plants on the border where the Zone met the canals—bleak, soulless and mostly deserted.

Aboard an empty flat car, Ricky watched through the darkness as the train clacked and trundled beyond the Sector border into the wide spaces between habitat cells where identical, ten-floor apartment structures loomed in neat rows. It was mercifully cooler than the days before and a heavy blanket of fog had drifted in from beyond the wire to linger across the entire Zone, ghostlike and eerie. Most would dread the prospect, but for Ricky, the heavy mist was a silent ally that would frustrate the view for anyone who might have noticed on clearer nights.

As the freight slowed around a wide curve, Ricky looked for his chance. The fields and vacant lots gave way to the first darkened structures where a footpath aimed directly and suddenly toward the Zone as Ricky’s comm clock showed 2:43. Well beyond the busier neighborhoods (and any nuisance an MPE checkpoint would make), he turned toward the old cracking plant where monstrous pressure vessels and connecting pipes stood in silence, silhouetted against the pale gray cloud cover.

But it was not the blackened, malevolent shapes in the twilight that were disturbing to Ricky—he’d made the trip before. Instead, it was the likelihood others waited within that brought a nagging sensation of dread as he padded silently through soaked, ankle-high weeds between two control stations. Streeties—hungry, feral and desperate—often took shelter against the rain in old, empty structures where few dared to venture, especially at night. Once roused, they would gladly run down and attack a loner so far out from the safety of the Sector’s lights and MPE patrols.

After twenty minutes, the angular shapes appeared slowly out of the fog as Ricky drew near. A heavy chain fence encircled a dozen structures within, three meters tall and fitted with elaborate, endless coils of razor wire; an effective barrier that kept out all who came without the lock codes to one of the gates or knowledge of another way inside, especially wanderers or streeties looking for a haven against the weather.

The complex went dormant years earlier when the Zone’s output dwindled. Each new plant moved deep below the surface into the cavernous, subterranean factory district meant one less on the surface. A handful of fabrication shops remained in the control of one property group or another, while the rest waited for a demolition team’s torches. Suddenly a deserted and forgotten place, the warehouse enclave’s solitude made for Ricky an ideal condition suited perfectly to searching about in the dead of night.

Nearly a decade passed since Mister Anthony brought him along on a ‘business trip’ to meet with some of his associates, but Ricky understood when Courtnall waited for them at a narrow gate on a dark and blustery autumn day. Even then, Ricky knew Mister Anthony’s affairs were mostly illegal, but he kept quiet and took in all he could against the day when his first missions running for the old master brought him money no apprenticeship in the factories could match. In the dank, humid silence, Ricky paused again and remembered the stern faces of Courtnall’s men, dressed in cheap, shiny suits only thugs on the street seemed to wear, palming guns none of them felt the slightest compulsion to hide. As Mister Anthony chatted with Courtnall, Ricky had made a purposeful survey of his surroundings, determined to memorize the details in a place where remaining ever alert often meant the difference between life and death.

In those early days, it was intoxicating for a kid from the housing blocks; plastic cartons full of new tokens were stacked beside tables heaped with the illegal treasures he would eventually route between the streets and the Uppers years later as a matter of course. A skinny, quiet boy who watched and listened more than he spoke, Ricky noticed everything, but mostly those places where Courtnall and Espinoza locked an office door behind them, or pulled back a stack of empty crates beyond the sight of others.

He watched it all, flicking a thumb against his ring finger nervously in the silence, surrounded by five or six menacing brutes who did the unspeakable things the Bosses ordered—people like Junkyard. So long ago, he looked and learned, committing to memory a floor plate’s location here, or a collection of solvent barrels there. The early days brought thrilling and dangerous missions when Mister Anthony entrusted him at last with those tiny packages, but he knew even then it was tomorrow that held more promise than today; Ricky was learning how to become the Slider. Ten years later, the effort was about to pay off as he found a rusted, metal hatch concealing a drainage culvert and slipped unseen inside, struggling to make his way in ankle-deep rain water and sand collected at the bottom of a two-meter, concrete tube. When he climbed crude, metal rungs set into the cement of a vertical pipe, feeling his way in the echoes and darkness, another hatch opened onto the muddy ground thirty yards beyond the barrier; at last, he was inside the fence.

Ricky waited a moment, turning in a slow circle to inspect the wide apron between the ends of two warehouses. At once, he knew where the target building hid in the mist, making the short walk down a row of outbuildings and smaller workshops in minutes. Finally, the blood-red warehouse loomed, dark and quiet before him. A tiny hatchway, hidden behind an old freight container, had never been locked and when it gave way easily to his touch, Ricky smiled in silence. A moment later, he stood alone inside the building where only hours before, a swarm of policemen and investigators played the beams of their bright hand lamps in a vain attempt to find something more to help convict the two Bosses and add to an already lengthy jail term. Ricky knew the answer would be revealed near an office and the secret place it kept hidden from unwanted eyes.

He moved quickly across the oil-stained floor, cluttered with cast-off junk and personal rubbish, avoiding shallow puddles of water made by leaks from the aging roof panels above. The place still held the stink of grease and chemicals, but he reached the little office where it sat, solitary and exposed on the north end of the building. At once, the memories returned; he could hear Mister Anthony’s strange twang, yattering with Courtnall in deliberate, careless tones. But more than that, he remembered the ancient, metal shelving where it lay flush against the office wall.

With a knowing smile, Ricky pulled an empty rack forward a few inches, careful to lift it from the floor and avoid the metallic screech that might betray him to anyone lurking nearby. There, as it had always been, a small grate—heavy and serrated across its upper edges—lay neatly into a drain trough. It looked to the unsuspecting eye as if the filth, sludge and mud from decades of use had left it completely clogged, but Ricky knew better. He positioned himself directly above and pulled. At once, it came free and he set it carefully onto the floor to look inside the trough. A thin, sheet metal pan filled with muck came free with little effort, revealing two small compartments recessed into one side of the trough’s concrete sides, confirming what he so desperately needed to see; the Bosses left behind a prized possession and MPE bunglers had missed it entirely.

Wrapped in dark canvas, two small containers opened with ease and inside each were a dozen token transfer chips, data sticks and bits of jewelry. Ricky could only guess as to their value in the underground markets where burglars and stick-up men traded their stolen loot, but it followed that anything held and carefully concealed by Courtnall and Espinoza would necessarily be counted as rare or exceedingly valuable. Moving quickly, he stuffed the contents into his bag and secured it on his back, retracing his steps to the little hatch. A few minutes later, he was once again outside the fence line, resisting a temptation to run and determined to avoid being noticed should anyone linger unseen in the fog. A slow freight ride would have him back inside Sector 4 in an hour’s time.

It was nearing 4:30 when Ricky pushed open the door of his flat and slipped inside. If Mrs. Abber was watching, she would likely suspect only his customary return from normal, evening rounds, but it didn’t matter; he had what he needed and with it, the way to a better life. He laid the pack carefully behind his couch near a wall so that no one would notice. It had been weeks since Litzi’s last visit, he thought suddenly; it wouldn’t do if his sister saw and looked inside.

He leaned wearily against the counter in his kitchen and opened a can of diluted fruit concentrate with a loud snap. In the silence, he sipped the cool juice, letting it slide down his parched throat slowly. It was best to wait, he thought, just to be sure; the cops could look and look, but the race had already been won. Soon, the infonets would tell a woeful tale of conviction for crimes against the people of Novum and life-ending jail sentences, putting Courtnall and Espinoza’s once-grand syndicate out of business.

With luck, the other Bosses would hesitate before moving in, if only to maintain a discrete distance until public outrage from above died down. If he could manage it, the power vacuum might be filled in smaller, less noticeable increments. More than just the value of a secret cache, the departure of the Sector’s most notorious Bosses could open once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Perhaps, he thought silently, he would earn enough to elevate his status to that of a junior Boss. Maybe then, Boris and his partners would find Slider a different man indeed; a man not to be trifled with. Better yet, he nodded to no one, they would come to understand their mistake in tormenting Ricky Mills. Tomorrow, he thought, a full, three-hour session with Neferure would make for a wonderful celebration. When he felt her touch again, he would stand before her a better man.