Acid rain fell over Aethelgard as if the city were trying to erase its own fingerprints.
Kaelen Vance walked with his head bowed beneath the old pipes, one hand holding his jacket collar, his left hand holding back pain that no longer had a hand. The cheap prosthetic trembled whenever its hydraulic pump engaged. Soma sold arms that could lift vehicles. To people like Kaelen, Soma sold versions strong enough to open a door—and fragile enough to remind them who owned their bodies.
Above the alley, advertising lights reflected Vektor Vane's face in the black puddles.
IMMORTALITY FOR THOSE BRAVE ENOUGH TO PAY.
Kaelen passed the face without spitting. His saliva was too valuable.
He was almost to the night shelter when he heard something heavy fall between two cooling units.
Not the sound of a drunk. Kaelen recognized the sound of bone striking metal.
“Don't,” he told himself.
His feet turned anyway.
The narrow alley smelled of ozone, blood, and synthetic flowers from the funeral kiosk at the end of the street. Beneath the flickering red light, a girl lay on her back. Her face was pale, too delicate for a slum corridor, with thin stitch marks running along her neck. Her black hair clung to her cheeks in the rain.
One eye was open. Her iris rotated, searching for focus.
“Don't call Soma,” she whispered.
Kaelen crouched. “Do I look like a medic?”
“You look like someone who hasn't decided to leave yet.”
“Bad observation.”
He pressed two fingers to the girl's neck. She had a pulse, but it was irregular. Beneath her skin, something glowed in a blue pattern—not a standard implant. Kaelen had seen a similar pattern in photos from cases that never made it to court.
“Name?”
The girl looked at his prosthetic. “Kaelen Vance.”
The blood at the nape of Kaelen's neck felt colder than the rain.
“Wrong question,” he said.
“Right name.”
In the distance, an armored vehicle's engine roared. The sound bounced off the alley walls, drawing closer. Kaelen checked the end of the street. Three Soma drones descended through the fog, their searchlights sweeping across the puddles.
The girl tried to get up. Failed. When her hand gripped Kaelen's jacket, her fingernails split into thin blades.
Kaelen raised his pistol, but didn't aim it at her.
“If you're going to kill me,” he said, “wait until I'm not trying to save you.”
“I don't want to kill you.”
“Good. My night's been bad enough.”
He slipped the girl's right arm over his shoulder. Her body was light in the wrong way—as if some of its weight had been left behind in a laboratory. They moved toward the service door behind the funeral kiosk.
The first drone entered the alley.
“Subject Aira-9 detected,” a synthetic voice said. “Civilian, move away.”
Kaelen kicked the door. It didn't move. His left prosthetic trembled. He cursed, activated manual-force mode, and slammed it into the magnetic lock.
Pain shot from the end of the false arm into a shoulder that had been gone for years.
The door opened halfway.
Two bullets struck the wall above their heads.
Aira-9 turned. Her innocent face went blank.
“Don't,” Kaelen said.
“What?”
“Don't do anything that'll make me regret this.”
Aira stood without help. Her joints moved too fast. She stepped toward the drone, caught the barrel of its firing weapon, and twisted it until the metal screamed. The drone fell. The other two fired electric nets.
Aira spun, using Kaelen as the center of her movement. The first net struck the wall. The second burned her shoulder. She didn't scream. She only stared at the last drone with eyes that now glowed white.
Kaelen shot the drone's sensor.
“Thank you,” Aira said.
“I shot it because you were blocking my view.”
“Liar.”
“Don't learn too fast.”
Sirens began sounding throughout the block. On the advertising screens, Vane's smile was cut off by an emergency directive: DANGEROUS BIO-SYNTHETIC SUBJECT. DO NOT PROVIDE PROTECTION.
Kaelen looked at the girl. “Aira-9, right?”
She nodded.
“What do they want?”
Aira inserted a finger into the wound beneath her collarbone. Kaelen raised his pistol again, then lowered it when he saw her pull out a shard of clear crystal pulsing like a tiny heart.
“This,” she said. “And something inside me.”
The crystal projected light onto the wet wall.
An image appeared of a seven-year-old girl running through a yard filled with digital snow. Her hair was tied in two pigtails. She turned toward the camera and laughed.
Kaelen forgot how to breathe.
Mira.
Not the face he remembered from the last photograph. A living face. The face from before the reports, before the morgue, before he signed the paperwork declaring the case closed.
The projection flickered. The child's voice broke apart in a hiss of static.
“Dad, if you're seeing this—”
The wall went dark again.
Kaelen leveled his pistol at Aira's head.
“Where did you get that recording?”
Aira looked at him, frightened for the first time.
“I don't know.”
“Who is Mira?”
“I don't know.”
“Why is her voice inside your memory?”
Aira held her own chest. Behind bone and synthetic fiber, something knocked from within.
“Because,” she said softly, “I died in the place where she disappeared.”
Outside, Soma forces filled the alley.
Kaelen lowered his pistol by a centimeter—enough to choose, not enough to forgive.
Then he pulled Aira into the darkness of the Under-Grid.