seven

KADOKAWA SAT CITY 2—WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 2141 10:00 P.M.

ANDREW COULDN’T SLEEP. He lay in his bunk staring at the ceiling, going over Natsumi’s coded message, rolling every sentence through his mind, searching for nuances and hidden meanings. He’d memorized the note and destroyed the original. What if he had missed something? Should he have kept the damn thing so he could go over every piece of it? No, that was only looking for trouble.

The note listed the humanitarian programs that had been canceled, as well as the new military actions taking place. The takeover of Meridian had been only one of them. At the end, Natsumi had spoken of the old corporation, the one her family had created. She had closed by saying she planned to bring the corporation back to its roots. Back to being a humanitarian organization instead of a military one.

She didn’t believe the new Kaijō-bakuryōchō and president were the right people for the job. The new president had replaced her father last year. He no longer had the will to run Kadokawa. The death of his son Gorō had changed him. The first thing the new president had done was replace the head of the military with Sone. Together they had turned Kadokawa into a money-hungry, warmongering corporation. Just like SoCal and IBC.

When Andrew had joined Kadokawa, his first job as a private had been digging through the rubble in Korea, finding bodies after an earthquake devastated the region. He remembered Natsumi digging beside him, working harder than most of the men. They had paused for a brief rest and a sip of water when they’d heard the noise. It had sounded like a cat meowing deep in the rubble.

They had dug methodically, careful to not collapse anything below, and followed the sound. First with picks and shovels, and then with their bare hands. The crying had gotten louder as they got closer, turning into the distinctive sounds of young child, hurt and alone. This was seven days after the earthquake had struck.

Then the crying stopped.

The digging became frantic, both of them with their heads in the hole, their arms reaching down and scooping out dirt and broken concrete. The first thing they had seen was a foot, so tiny and filthy they had almost missed it. They had slowed down then, anxious yet unwilling to rush to the point where they might cause a cave-in.

They had followed the foot to a knee, then to a waist. The child’s second leg was broken midthigh, angled away from the body. They brought the leg together with the other one as carefully as they could. The child screamed in pain, and they both smiled. The scream meant it was still alive. Once they got the legs together, he’d held them as firmly as he dared while Natsumi grabbed the child’s hips and pulled.

That boy had been the only one they’d found alive. His only family an older sister that had been visiting a friend out of the city. At the end of every day, when all he and Natsumi had found was the dead, they both spoke of the one boy. The survivor. The boy and his sister had tried to sign up with Kadokawa when they were old enough, but his leg had never healed right. The sister now served under Andrew as Kaisa.

Kadokawa had helped rebuild, replacing the old concrete and steel structures with reinforced fibercrete, bringing the old city into the twenty-second century. There had been talk of creating another megacity, but it was quickly voted down.

Andrew knew Kadokawa wouldn’t do that today. There was no money in it, no way to make a profit. Even if it helped their own people. It had taken the new president only a year to transition the corporation into what it had become.

After Natsumi had been promoted, they had still kept in touch, mostly on a professional level, but occasionally a dinner or lunch if he happened to be in Okinawa. They had been civil, but not much more than that. Each time they had parted, his heart had broken a little more. Each time, he had tried to harden it against the feelings he could no longer display.

And now this.

It wasn’t the note that had gotten to him, though its contents were keeping him awake. It was how she had signed it. The use of her given name had torn down all the walls he had taken years to build.

He pushed as much of it off to the side as he could and concentrated on the letter itself. It all boiled down to one item. The one thing he couldn’t even contemplate. To help her in treason.

And yet, she had asked.

He pushed the sheets aside and climbed out of bed. The chill of the room sunk into his skin. He slipped into a pair of slippers and pulled on a robe.

Kadokawa kept the Sat City’s time synchronized with Japanese Standard Time, which meant he could catch the late news summary. Normally his information was far more accurate than what the news channels got, but his didn’t have anything local. He wasn’t getting any sleep, so maybe a distraction would help. He turned on the vid screen and switched to NHK.

The first item up was about SoCal. His reports had talked about mandatory drafts for several weeks, and it had finally gotten out to the general press. The video showed people lining up, chatting to each other, some of them smiling. It stunk like the propaganda it was. His reports had shown the reality of it, large-scale military sweeps grabbing people off the streets. It wasn’t humane. It was worth fighting against.

The story ended with a mention of Kadokawa tentatively planning to do the same thing.

Andrew’s mouth hung open, and he slowly closed it. They had to have gotten it wrong. He hadn’t seen anything in his reports. If it was true . . . He’d been in the Kadokawa military for most of his life, joining when he was nineteen, and for the first time, he thought he may have made a huge mistake.

The next piece of news only drove the feeling deeper.

Kadokawa had pulled its humanitarian aid out of Russia. The country had gone through a massive political upheaval months before, and the new regime was worse than the old one. During the battle, both sides had destroyed hospitals and bombed neighborhoods full of families on simply the rumor of dissidents collecting there.

Canada had been the first to arrive with doctors and food and water. Kadokawa took a few extra days, waiting for reports from the Canadians to see what was needed the most, and where. They had arrived with platoons of helpers and supplies, all coordinated by Natsumi. She must have known this was happening weeks ago. Knowing her as well as he did, he was certain it would have torn her apart.

This, then, was the reason for the message. This was why she would go so far as to talk treason. He couldn’t deny the reasons were valid. He didn’t have the investment in the aid program she did, but he had the deeply bound morals and training that had been driven into him by his family and the military. The military before Sone.

He closed his eyes and went over the note again. She was right, dammit.

She was right.

LOS ANGELES LEVEL 2—WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 2141 10:30 P.M.

The door closed behind Pat with a soft click, and she leaned her forehead against the frame. Miller was an idiot. You weren’t an operative for ACE and a parent at the same time. It didn’t work. Kris was proof of that, she had been a young kid with no parents. What the hell had he been thinking?

She heaved herself off the frame and walked down the hall back to the stairs. This was going to change everything for Kris. She had no idea how much work having a baby was, how much care and attention they needed. She was still a child herself! The girl was in for a world-changing experience.

The first thing they would have to do was find a quieter place for Kris to live. A small room on the fourth floor of this building was out of the question. Her neighbors on either side, and possibly all of them in a hundred-meter radius, would get pretty tired of a screaming baby at all hours of the day and night. This was no place to raise a kid.

They’d have to find a crib and clothes and toys, and when the time came, baby food. There would be bottles and wipes and diapers. It almost seemed more complex than a mission. But maybe she was getting ahead of herself.

Kris didn’t say she wanted to keep the baby. Pat sighed. She didn’t say she wanted to get rid of it either. She had said the baby was a boy. He was the only thing she had left of Ian. She wasn’t going to lose that.

Pat pulled her comm unit out of her pocket. She had a meeting with Kai and Jack in a few minutes. Keeping this away from Jack would be easy. Kai, however, seemed to have a sixth sense sometimes. Especially around Kris. Knowing him, it would come out tonight, and he’d question and needle her until she either told him or punched him. As long as she stayed focused on the task at hand, maybe he wouldn’t notice.

They met in Jack’s office, the same as they always did, but this time it was different. The guards weren’t at the double doors leading into the sanctified halls of the upper echelon; they’d been moved to the front door. The floor was still carpeted, but the extra-wide hallway had changed. In place of the comfy chairs and tables were desks, one for every two or three offices, except for Jack’s. His office had a desk all to itself.

Behind each one sat someone studiously staring at a vid screen, typing at something, or shuffling through pads of information. It was obvious they were assistants. The place looked more like a working facility than the prestigious offices of a large corporation. It was a move in the right direction. Visually, at least.

Jack stepped out of his office with a pad in his hand. He passed it to his assistant.

“Kai’s not here yet. We won’t start without him, but why don’t you come in now?” He glanced at his assistant. “When Kai shows up, let him right in.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jack shut the door behind them and settled into his chair. “I wanted to thank you for yesterday. I . . . I know I’m not great at this job. I didn’t want it before all this happened, and I don’t want it now. We all have to do what we have to do. Thanks for keeping me on my toes.”

“You needed a kick in the ass.” Changes were happening, but she wasn’t willing to give in yet. She couldn’t shake the small kernel of doubt that had nestled into her brain. Everything had moved too fast and seemed too perfect.

“I sent messages to the other cells I know about. I don’t know if they’ll do anything or even if they’ll pass the message to the sections they know.”

The insurgents had always been a disorganized group, but from what she was hearing, it was worse than she, or anyone else, had thought.

Kai knocked on the door and walked in, breaking the awkwardness building in the room.

“Good, we’re all here.” Jack joined them at the round meeting table in the corner, looking almost apologetic for the agenda he held in his hand. “There’s two items we want to talk about today. The first is the acquisition of ex-ACE staff, and the other is about solidifying our food chain. Kai, let’s start with you.”

“I had a conversation with Doc Searls again. He is more than willing to help us out in the same capacity he did for ACE. He is also making a permanent move to Level 5, closing his Level 6 offices.”

“Damn,” Jack said. “Our resources on Level 6 are extremely thin. He could really have been useful to us. He wouldn’t have had to come down to Level 4. We have people that know their way through the service corridors between Levels 4 and 5.”

“I had that conversation with him. He really wants to limit what he does for us to the medical area. He certainly has no interest in becoming a spy. If information comes to him via his patients, he is willing to pass it on, but he will not dig for it, and he will not become a middleman or broker for information.”

“That limits his usefulness,” Pat said.

“It does,” Jack said, “but if he’s willing to stay there, we could use him. Even being on Level 5, he could at least bring us news of the outside world.”

“No,” Kai said. “He will not do anything that jeopardizes his practice beyond medical care. Besides, the new checkpoints stop us from getting whatever he could bring with him.”

“As I said, we have ways around that,” said Jack. “We’ll need doctors, but if he’s not willing to do much more than that, why are we trying to recruit him this hard?”

“He can give us more ACE operatives than Pat or I combined. He has either patched up or modified the trackers of almost every operative ACE has had in the last twenty years.”

Jack sat quiet for a while, thinking. “How will he contact them?”

“He has records of every modified tracker he has ever worked on.”

“That’s not smart. What if they were found? It’s a huge back door.”

“They are encrypted.”

“That doesn’t mean shit. You know that. Can we get the records ourselves? Get rid of the loophole, the potential back door in our security?” Jack asked.

“You can’t—” Pat said.

Jack held up his hand to stop her and watched Kai shift in his seat.

“He is a good doctor,” Kai said.

Jack smiled as if Kai’s response answered all his questions. “That works for me. Let’s get this moving and on the payroll as soon as we can. If things go wrong, we’ll look into it again. Now, onto our food problem. We don’t have enough to feed us and the people. Something has to give. That being said, we’re going on immediate rationing, which will give us a couple of extra weeks. What else can we do?”

“The Pasadena greenhouses are out of the question,” Pat said. “We don’t have access and basically botched the first job, and were saved by Kris . . .” She hesitated. “ . . . the last time.”

Kai gave her a quick glance.

“What we need are nonperishables. I thought the insurgents had stockpiles of food and equipment for just this situation,” Pat said.

“We do, and they do include food, but not enough for everyone. We need to supplement and store all we can.”

“There are regular shipments of food coming in by ship from South America and China. They transport those by trucks up to Level 6 almost every day, for now. If we could take one of those, maybe a couple of dozen trucks at once, we’d be okay for a while. From what I understand, every port along the SoCal coast gets regular food shipments. If we can coordinate with the others, we could get enough food to last a long time. The same thing happens on the landward side of the city, but those deliveries get direct access to Levels 6 and 7.”

“Yes,” said Kai. “And every port is also a SoCal military base. We would never get close enough to get anything.”

“We wouldn’t attack near the base.”

Jack studied the back of his hands before replying. “Okay. You have two days to come up with a plan. I’ll try to get you a list of contacts near the other ports. Coordinate with them and give me something I can bring to the other cells.”

Pat nodded. Two days wasn’t a lot of time, but it might be all they had anyway . . . even less if they dumped the trucks for air transport.

“If that’s it, I think we’ll call it a night.”

“Umm, no. I have one more thing.” Here it was. The part Pat didn’t want to talk about. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a choice. As long as she kept Kris’s pregnancy a secret, it should be okay. Though even that felt wrong. “Kris came back today,” Pat said.

“Kris? The same Kris who got drafted yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“How did she escape?”

“She didn’t. They let her go because of her age.” Pat swallowed the half-truth. It was easier than she’d thought it would be.

“How old is she?” Jack asked.

“Seventeen.”

“How close to eighteen?”

“A couple of months.”

He shook his head. “I can’t see that happening. I’ve heard of kids being drafted and trained if they were close enough to their birthday. What’s so special about her?”

“She was exhausted when she came in, I didn’t want to ask too many questions. I brought her up to her room and let her sleep.”

“You left her alone?”

“Yes.”

Jack got up and opened the hallway door. “Have a guard put on Kris Merrill’s room immediately. Make sure they verify that she is still in there. They are not to let her out.”

Pat heard a mumbled reply.

“You do not have to do that,” Kai said. “Kris would never do anything that would harm us.”

Somehow, Pat knew he was referring to her and himself.

“It’s too odd to leave alone,” Jack said. “A lot of people depend on me for their safety. I can’t let it slip because you know her. SoCal never lets people go.”

“I know, but—”

“There’s no discussion, Kai. Until we can figure out what’s going on, she’s under house arrest.”

Kai just nodded.

“Good. Get in touch with Doc Searls, and Pat, get me a working plan in two days.”

He held the door open for them and they left.

Kai stopped Pat partway down the hall. “Why did they let her go?”

She pressed her lips together.

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“No? Why not?”

“I can’t. It’s not my place.”

“Is she in trouble? Did she make some sort of deal with SoCal?”

Pat gave him a disgusted look. “You know better than that.” She slipped her arm from his grasp and walked through the double doors, relieved to be left alone.

LOS ANGELES LEVEL 2—THURSDAY, JULY 6, 2141 2:27 A.M.

I woke up to a dark room, shadows chasing demons into the black corners. My heart hammered in my chest and a silent scream fell from my lips. At least I hoped it was silent. My eyes slowly focused, and the light from the dimmed Ambients filtering through the window helped push the demons away, helped me remember where I was. It was still night. The long walk from where SoCal had let me go to my room on Level 2 came back in dribbles, and my heart settled down, my body eventually relaxing back into the warm bed.

We’d all heard the horror stories of how SoCal got the draftees to fight, whispered over meals in the mess hall. Some of it was straightforward. Give them basic training and throw them in the field against the enemy. They either fight or die. Or both. Some of it included brainwashing, sleep deprivation, drugs. The list went on. I knew I was lucky to get out.

It dawned on me as I lay in bed that I hadn’t felt sick the last few mornings. Maybe that was finally done with and I could get back to being a bit more normal. I had no idea how long morning sickness was supposed to last. I should have asked Doc Searls.

I had told Pat about the baby last night. Even as I thought the words, a massive weight lifted off my shoulders. I was finally able to share and talk about it with someone. Sure, Doc Searls had always known, but telling Pat was different. More personal. More of a relief.

Now, though, things would change. Pat would keep her promise about not telling anyone, at least I hoped so, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t do anything she could to keep me out of the field. She’d been trying her best since Ian had died, and I knew she would triple her efforts.

Maybe it was for the best.

No! I couldn’t let myself think that way. If I did, there was a chance I would never get back out there, and that was where I wanted—needed—to be. Sitting back and letting others do the work wasn’t who I was.

There were so many unanswered questions and so many decisions to make. I pushed them away. One thing living on Levels 1 and 2 had taught me was to take life one day at a time. Long-term plans were good to have, but the day-to-day was what kept you alive, kept you moving.

I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes. Tonight I would sleep. Tomorrow would be a new day.

Fifteen minutes later I turned over, trying to get comfortable. Ten minutes after that I did it again. After tossing and turning for an hour or more, I finally got up. I wasn’t going to sleep. It was too fucking early in the morning to be awake, that was for sure. Maybe I could get a bite to eat from the kitchen. I hadn’t had anything during my walk yesterday, and I was famished. I tried to straighten out my crumpled clothes, still from SoCal, and opened the door.

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to stay in the room.”

I gasped and jumped back about three feet, ready to fight.

“Close the door and wait till someone comes to get you in the morning.”

A guard! They had placed a guard by my door. Why the hell would they . . . Because SoCal had let me go and the only person who really knew why was Pat. I closed the door and went into panic mode. My breathing was shallow and quick. I wasn’t ready to let everyone know. It was too soon. How was I supposed to get out of this mess?

For the second time tonight, I felt lightheaded. This time it wasn’t from relief. I was scared, truly scared of what the insurgents would do to me. Would they kick me out? Move me to the sidelines where I would be more useless than I already was? I’d thought of leaving them many times, but it was different when the choice was out of my control.

I stood behind the closed door for few minutes before crawling back into bed.

Sleep finally came, but with it came the dreams of Ian and me, and then the nightmares that had kept me segregated at boot camp. I hadn’t had them since I found out I was pregnant. Maybe their brief absence made them feel worse. Maybe the turmoil I felt amplified the emotions. The panic of the closed box, of the bullets entering my body, were the worst they had ever been.

I woke up screaming, my throat raw and Pat leaning over me, holding me down, trying to let me know everything was all right. Faces peeked in through the open door until the guard shoved everyone back and closed it. He’d been gawking as much as everyone else. I cried in Pat’s arms until there was no strength left in me, no more tears to release into the world. I must have fallen asleep again, waking up alone in a brightly lit room to the sound of tapping at the door.

I sat up groggily, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Every part of me ached and protested at the sudden movement. “Come in.”

The door opened and a head stuck through. “Hey.” It was Selma. “I’ve been asked to bring you to Jack’s office, if you were awake.”

I stared at her.

“I can tell them you were still sleeping, if you want.” I could almost feel the concern emanating from her. Was she one of the people who had stuck their head in the door last night? It didn’t matter. The story would have gotten around by now.

“No,” I sighed. “Just give me a couple of minutes to change and clean up.” I had forgotten to check if my buckets were full yesterday.

“Take as much time as you need.”

“Thanks.”

She left me alone. I crawled out of bed, looking for clean clothes in the dresser. I would stick out like a sore thumb wearing the clothes SoCal had given me. They looked too much like what the military wore. Someone must have come in and put my clothes away. The dresser had two of my pants and shirts in it, plus some clean underwear. I stripped down and got dressed, leaving the SoCal clothes in a pile in the middle of the room. They could burn them as far as I was concerned.

One bucket had a bit of water in it, enough to wash the crud from my eyes and rinse out my mouth. When I was done, I opened the door. Selma was waiting for me.

“You ready?”

“I guess.”

“Okay, come on.”

I followed her down to Jack’s office, and the guard followed me.

LOS ANGELES LEVEL 2—THURSDAY, JULY 6, 2141 12:17 P.M.

By the time the interview was done, I was more tired than the night before. My eyelids were heavy and I slouched in the chair Jack had offered me. I don’t know if he simply didn’t believe I was pregnant, or if he thought it was something SoCal and I had dreamed up in order to reinsert myself as a mole into his organization. At least he’d brought in food so I could eat.

At some point, I gave up and walked out, telling him to get his own damn doctor to check me out if he wanted. Fuck him. I didn’t need that shit in my life. The insurgent guards left me alone once I walked out of the building.

I left, not knowing where to go. I just knew I didn’t want to be there right now. It was tiring being treated like I was the bad guy, and I already missed my bike. By the time the insurgents had gotten back to the scene of the draft, it was gone. Probably stripped for parts and sold off to put food on someone’s table. I couldn’t blame them. But without it, I felt exposed and vulnerable. I didn’t like it.

I turned toward Chinatown, staying by the buildings that lined the streets, my old haunts pulling at me like I was a puppet. I didn’t know what I was going to do until I got there. The street kitchen was still setting up. From what I had heard, they had cut the meals down to one a day. Even though the food was supplied by the insurgents, it wasn’t run or staffed by them. I would come back when the food was ready and at least help serve it. I still had to get my mind off of the distrust that had oozed from Jack, so I walked into the Lee’s fish market, wanting a reminder of where I had come from. It worked. The second I walked through the door, I was transported back to last year, when I had lived here. Though the shelves were almost empty, the smell of raw fish filled my nose and the oils soaked into my skin.

It lasted no more than a minute before I realized I could never—would never—go back to the person I had been. Too much had happened since I was a courier. I had gained and lost so much. I walked out, uncomfortable and feeling like I needed to shower for a week. It had reminded me of a life I wasn’t part of anymore. Though I had enjoyed it at the time, I had been forced to move on, had lived a lifetime since I’d left.

I walked down to Kai’s old restaurant, faded menus still covering the windows. He had put them up only a couple of weeks ago to stop people from looking in, from seeing us in there. I cupped my hands to peer through the gaps. The inside was dark. I barely made out the counter separating the kitchen from the public area. Despite the covered windows, the restaurant still looked ready to open, ready to serve lunch to hungry people. The chances of it happening were pretty much zero.

As I pulled away from the window, a reflection in the glass grabbed my attention. I leaned back in, pretending to take another look inside.

Though the glass rippled the image, I was fairly certain of what I had seen. It was Janice, pulling on the arm of a man I didn’t know. He was tall and thin, and for the briefest moment I thought it was Quincy. My insides loosened in fear, turning into a blob of jelly. I knew it couldn’t be him. Even if they’d gotten him to a hospital, there wasn’t a chance of bringing life back into his body. Not after what I had done. I watched Janice and the man for a few seconds before casually turning around and staring right at them.

I had to be one hundred percent sure it was her. I’d seen her fly over the handlebars of her bike, which meant if she was here, she wasn’t working alone. Someone had gotten her to a hospital and fixed her up. The image in the glass was too wavy to be certain. Turning may not have been the smartest move though. On one hand, if they knew I had seen them, they might give up and go away. Though I didn’t think that would happen. She had been too persistent for too long. It was more likely that they’d be extra careful, making it even more difficult to see them.

But I had to be sure.

The moment I made eye contact, a voice called out to me. I recognized it immediately. My aunt. I caught Janice staring at her, memorizing her face, her walk, her posture, and my heart fell. Suddenly, I wished I’d never met my aunt again. Knowing Janice had seen her ripped away the certainty that if anything happened, it would happen to me. That no one else would be dragged into what was coming.

Before I could turn away, before I could warn my aunt, she came up to me and gave me a hug. If Janice had paid attention to half the training she’d gotten at the ACE compound, she would have spotted the weakness. I didn’t think she was stupid enough to have missed it. If she did, her partner would have caught it instead. Even dressed in clothes worse than most people on Level 2, he gave off an aura of danger.

Suddenly, it wasn’t just me in trouble. I raised an involuntary hand to my abdomen. I guess it never really had been.

LOS ANGELES LEVEL 2—THURSDAY, JULY 6, 2141 12:10 P.M.

Despite her initial misgivings, Janice’s new partner seemed good. Very good. When she had first met him, when John had introduced them, she was worried. Manfred was dressed in a crisp steel blue three-piece suit with the thin lapel and high vest that was all the rage. He looked more like a fashion model than an operative of any sort.

She still wasn’t sure why they had sent her back down. They’d barely questioned her. Maybe there was something in her records that had helped. More likely, they were testing her. Trying to figure out whose side she was on, and whether her skill set matched what they had read. She figured she wasn’t hanging on by more than a thread. One mistake and Manfred’s orders were probably to kill her and dump the body.

The whole shuttle ride down, she tried to figure Manfred out. He was quiet, not responding to her questions. At one point, he told her to shut up. She’d stopped trying then.

They hadn’t given her the gun back. Instead they’d given her a stun gun. It could only be used to incapacitate, not kill. SoCal wasn’t taking any chances.

By the time the shuttle landed, Manfred had already changed into something more casual. The same button-up shirt, but with a more relaxed pair of pants and comfortable-looking shoes. He’d blend in on Levels 6 and 7 with that, but stick out like an intruder on the lower levels.

They got a car to drive from long-term parking. Another thing that made them stand out. It was too new and too clean to be of any real use. It reeked of money and wealth beyond what anyone, even on Level 5, could afford. Even an amateur would be able to recognize the car and realize they were being followed, that it didn’t belong.

When they reached Level 5, he locked her into the car and left. She tried to unlock the doors, even groping under the dash for any wires. She struggled to remove the front seat headrest, hoping to use it to break the glass, or at the very least pry off the inside of the door so she could fiddle with the locks. They didn’t budge, and she gave up. Twenty minutes later, a beat-up old thing pulled in beside her. The driver looked worn out, tired, but not too badly off. His clothes, though somewhat clean, were frayed and patched. It took her a few seconds to realize it was Manfred. He unlocked the car she was in and pulled her out, shoving her into the front seat of the one he had driven up in. They still hadn’t spoken more than a few words.

On Level 3 he made another switch, dressing more like the homeless and destitute on Level 2 than she did. It was ridiculous how often he changed. It would have been easier to do one switch on Level 5 and stay with it.

They left the car in a parking garage in the Italian sector and walked down the ramp to Level 2, blending in with everyone else heading to the food in Chinatown.

Manfred shuffled his feet, as though he barely had the energy to move them, to get to the only thing that might keep him alive for another day. It was all a bit much, the costume and posture changes. Even his skin was dirtier than when they had left orbit. She wasn’t sure if the effort was for her benefit, or if this was something he always did.

They walked into Chinatown side-by-side, his hand on her shoulder, as though he needed her support to walk. The tightness of his grip told her otherwise.

“I can’t be seen here. We need to move off the main strip,” she said.

“Try to blend in.”

“If Kris is here, she’ll recognize me.”

He stopped across from a shut-down Chinese restaurant and looked her up and down, as if really seeing her for the first time. “We don’t need to get you different clothes. These ones look like shit already. Not much we can do about the hair. I can hack it off a bit, make it shorter and rougher. Maybe rub some dirt in it. It looks too clean.”

Janice bit back a sharp retort. She balked at the idea of chopping off her hair, but knew he was right. “We could stay in the alleys,” she offered instead.

“No. If the insurgents have people on guard here, and they should, they’ll be on the lookout for anybody who doesn’t fit, and skulking in alleys will trigger them. Not good.”

Janice froze. Someone had stopped to look in the window of the Chinese restaurant across the street, and from the back it looked a hell of a lot like Kris. She grabbed Manfred’s arm and started dragging him away.

He stopped, staring in the same direction as her.

The person turned and looked right at them. Janice let go of Manfred’s arm. It was her. It was Kris.

A woman’s voice called out, and Kris turned. Manfred stepped back, behind a family heading toward the tables set up for the street kitchen. He turned and walked with them, slouching to change his profile, dragging Janice behind him. She tried to do the same. She was too slow for him and he jerked her closer, almost pulling her off her feet.

An old woman walked in the opposite direction, heading straight for Kris and called out her name again. She raised a frail arm, all skin and bones, and waved. Kris didn’t wave back. The woman approached Kris and gave her a hug before pulling away.

Janice followed Manfred, doing her best to blend in, while keeping an eye on Kris and the old woman. She memorized her face. It might come in handy one day.

Her job wasn’t to kill Kris anymore, and that really bothered her. She was supposed to monitor and find any patterns, document the people Kris hung out with. SoCal knew Kris was part of the insurgent cell that had been pestering them, stealing their food, had staged the protests outside the water distribution centers weeks ago. Maybe even supplied some people with guns.

Their hope was that Kris would show them where the insurgents were. Janice had given them the location outside Chinatown, but there were more insurgent buildings scattered throughout San Angeles. Follow Kris, find out some of the higher-ups, follow them, repeat, and eventually figure out the infrastructure of the entire faction. Standard surveillance. If she did what SoCal wanted, she’d come out of this alive.

They’d blown it right off the bat.

KADOKAWA SAT CITY 2—THURSDAY, JULY 6, 2141 12:20 P.M.

Andrew drank tea alone in his room. Even the warmth of the golden Hachijūhachiya Sencha failed to boost his spirits. He had left Operations on the pretense of needing to catch up on some paperwork, but in truth, he was exhausted. He hadn’t slept much the night before, tossing and turning, waking with a hollow feeling in his chest, his pulse racing. Strange dreams of being caught doing something he shouldn’t—chopping down his father’s prize bamboo to make a play sword when he was eleven years old, stealing his sister’s konpeitō when she wouldn’t share with him—filled any sleep he did get.

It had been a while since he’d had an anxiety attack, even one as small as the couple he’d had last night. He knew what had brought them on. What he didn’t know was what to do about them.

The reports he’d brought with him sat on the table mostly unread. Some of them were simple things to do with allocations of personnel. It was one of the other ones that intrigued him the most.

The main docking bay lights on SoCal Sat City 2 had gone out for two minutes that morning. Shuttles had been forced to stay in holding patterns until they came back on. His intelligence officers were trying to figure out exactly what was going on. Had the city experienced some sort of malfunction, unheard of in recent history, or were they trying to hide some activity in the darkness? Some of his officers had even tossed the idea of malcontents messing with the systems. Interestingly, the lights on the military bay hadn’t gone out.

He picked up the pad and scanned it for the third time. Earlier in the day, a strong location beacon had gone off on the SoCal satellite as well. It had lasted for one-point-two seconds and abruptly cut off. They hadn’t intercepted any communications from SoCal about the incident.

Some of the scenarios in the report tied the two together, almost going so far as to describe a potential stealth vessel that had been rumored for years. The vessel put out no signals of its own, using only passive devices, and would therefore require an active signal to target its docking site. For some, that led directly to the docking bay lights going out. Hide the ship at all costs. If that was what truly had happened, it was a huge risk on SoCal’s part. Andrew didn’t believe that, though. Why use the commercial docking bay to hide the arrival of a stealth vessel? If you worked to keep something a secret, you didn’t have a big public display.

It was all guesswork at this point. No one knew for sure what was going on, and their moles hadn’t gotten a message through. Tough to do during a time of war.

Moles or infiltrators were a constant problem between corporations. Their entire existence was predicated on finding out more about their competitors than anyone else. Even Kadokawa in the better days had people planted everywhere. The Kadokawa corporate arm, which financed the military and humanitarian side of the operations, still had to be competitive in the global markets.

Kadokawa had stayed out of the first corporate war—as much as they could anyway, preferring, once again, to help the people hurt by the fighting. This time around, they were taking a more aggressive stance. The hostile takeover of Meridian had positioned them into one of the lead instigators.

Andrew threw the pad back onto the table in disgust. He took the last sip of his tea, already gone cold and bitter. He’d tossed around the implications of Natsumi’s message and the new Kadokawa actions all night. He wasn’t getting anywhere except frustrated and mad. He had a job to do, and that was that. SoCal’s fleet was still holding its position, but they could move at any time, and he needed to be ready. He would do what he had done when she had been promoted. Lose himself in his work and his duty.

It wasn’t until he was walking out of his office that he realized he had used a modifier when referring to Kadokawa. The new Kadokawa. When had he started doing that?