### 1. LOOKS LIKE KONJAC, TASTES LIKE CHICKEN
The lab is low-ceilinged, humming. Past the sheet metal over the vent it is more of a crawlspace than a warehouse. Subdivisions upon subdivisions tear the city into so many little compartments and shreds. The two women tumble through the shaft like ghosts.
Eletheria blinks. “Hell of a way for Amelie to get in.”
Lisette’s already down the walls, feeling for a switch. “Airgapped like a bird -- Maman would have insisted on a separate generator… eh, found it.”
A pilot light dances faintly down the hall. They follow.
Thick cables spurt from the bottom half of a sawn-through door. The room is like a dialysis machine split open and plastered over the floor. Lisette tiptoes across the nest of plastic tubing and refrigerator parts. A small motor whirrs; she startles and her torch beam swings across a fishtank. It is full of moon-coloured tissue and is beating like a heart. Somewhere in the lab, a piston is running.
“There’s one in every room,” announces Eletheria. “Food grade lipids and glucosamine, mostly. But it’s too high-energy for a meat op -- there must be other stuff, too.”
At the end of the corridor are stairs that lead down into the next subdivision, and then some. Two flights down, Lisette’s hand brushes earth. The hum is louder here. Torch beams scrape the shape of several linked vats, some blinking orange, the rest blinking red. The glass wall at the back of the cavern is about three by twenty metres and packed with fluorescent meat.
Lisette whistles. “More than we can carry out. Reiji’s on his way.”
---
### 2. LIKE BLOOD ON THE INSIDE OF A BONE
Mizu, close to the humming, squints at the poster in the back of the alley. The presence is here again. It is telling her that there are secrets in this city borne through the hundred thousand electrical shivers in the air, like a stuck engine, like a pulse in the wrist before a strike. The poster of the Lady Snowdrop like a billion plastic petals like an error message like a promise like a rice-paper screen.
The poster is smiling.
Mizu, confused.
“I don’t understand. You say we need to help you?”
The poster blinks twice, sings black.
“Where can I find you?”
Mizu, her infinite kindness. Mizu touches the poster, like she has done many times before.
The poster reels. Something in the net is stirring. There is a snap and a twist and a greyness and a whirr and a serrated cauliflower of code spills out into her fingers, dread ice, warm shiv. This is not the poster. Lady Snowblood’s eyes are rolling back no-no-no and the code whips up her arm socket into every tiny crevice of her shoulder, neck, spine. The ghost in the poster vanishes.
For a second there is a silence.
Then the worm arrives, little steel tendril from the base of her spine to the cerebral implant, a BWOMP-BWOMP-BWOMP echoing from an actuator wired deep underground, a seismic pain she hasn’t felt since the first implant, the steel discs, twisting from the inside of some cavity to reach the forebrain, spreading sick little knots of ice. With a supreme effort, she yanks herself away -- it’s all in the mind it’s all in the mind -- like a velcro on the brain -- comes free, hits face-first on pavement.
Ears ringing, vision shot. Wetness trickles down her cheek. She doesn’t squint to check if it’s red or clear.
What she knows is -- and this she tells to the others -- that she’s just bitten a Seeker.
---
### 3. HE’S CALLED THAT BECAUSE HE TAKES NO L’S
Now we have somehow managed to fit into the meeting room. The decor is chintzy, marblised vinyl and greenwood laminate, more fly-by-night corporate services than underworld den. Faint receipt trails of janitorial call-ops mark it as rented by the hour. There are at least seven cameras in the hallway before the. My torso clips through the desk; there is no space to fit normally so they have shoved me front at centre.
Even with the constraints, they have managed to build in a second door. Such subtleties mark the business centre as neutral meeting space -- Oniko runs on such theatrics. It opens, and Mister Christmas enters.
Or rather, his virtual attendance -- twelve cigar-shaped Jefferson Tech monoluminaries, wingless and silent, gleaming fractal spines of green and gold and red. I have only seen single units in the wild. They are preferred by senior PIXEL judiciary in corporate campuses to serve notices of dissolution or death.
HO HO! WHAT CAN SANTA BRING TO YOU TODAY, chimes our host.
Nobody so much as even breathes, except Reiji, who sneezes loudly.
I compose myself. “We are -- uh -- in need of some holiday cheer.”
SPLENDID, booms the holographic tree. AND TO WHAT OCCASION?
“Well,” I say. “We have a bit of, say, a shopping list on our hands. Many ingredients for a holiday meal.” Eletheria taps her earlobe and the compounds flash across the table -- cisdormitexan, kinetrexol, n-myotrinine -- then the smorgasbord of research chemicals -- prionic acids, cyclopentines, and all.
From the corner of my vision, Lisette nods at me to keep talking.
“As you can see, the wet markets can provide some, but the finer goods are a bit more -- perishable.”
BUT OF COURSE, laughs the shiny green haze. NOTHING IS TOO EXTRAVAGANT FOR A SPOT OF FESTIVE CELEBRATION AND I AM GLAD YOU HAVE PUT YOUR TRUST IN A MAN OF MY MEANS TO HELP YOU. YOUR PARTY MUST KNOW HOWEVER THAT EVERYTHING GOOD MUST COME AT A PRICE. SOME HIGHER THAN OTHERS. And he shimmies his leaves in way that looks to some of us like a wink. HOMEBREW CYCLOPENTINES, AM I RIGHT?
I bow. “We are of course prepared to pay any reasonable terms --”
Lisette’s hack completes at the same moment -- a tiny sliver of fact linked to conjecture borne from a thousand fragmentary hearsay around the deep web -- and she pings us this fact -- in the trace of this man’s allegiances is a glint of a name -- ZERO DAWN.
The lights shift, ever so slightly. IT SO HAPPENS THAT ONCE A YEAR I MUST BE AWARE OF CERTAIN POWERFUL INDIVIDUALS. AND POWER CORRUPTS, WHICH YOU MUST KNOW, EX-EMISSARY SENMEI. SOMETIMES SO ABSOLUTELY AS TO FORESTALL ANY HOPE OF PLAYING NICE WITH THE OTHERS.
The room tenses -- reeks of tungsten and blood, of flechette-perforated chest cavities and slashed throats. I do not recall giving him my name.
I CALL THIS LIST MY NAUGHTY LIST.
A face flashes across the desk.
HIS NAME, says Mister Christmas, IS HONG ZHOU.
---
### 4. CAN YOU SEND BACK THE TISSUES, THANK YOU
Banquet for six at the roof of the world. The Club Astatine is one-hundred-and-eight floors above Oniko’s streets and is just as fleeting as its namesake -- a throne of tensigritied steel set atop the Teawater District’s highest skyscraper punctured through with hololight, spiked like a star and wrapped in a shell of blastproof smart-glass threaded through with adamantine visor crystal and the latest in anti-ballistic anti-radar technology, of course. Because to dine here is to be seen, but not acquired, much less penetrated or killed.
Hong Zhou is on the top deck of the metastructure, separated from the reception by twin flights of transparent steps. Dull man, blue suit, head built like his parents had ordered a fire hydrant with a side of modified bulldog. Five of his Triad’s wickedest soldiers, each with body counts longer than most people’s contact lists, sit in supplication around him.
Reiji and Jules, shadowing local security, watch the ganglord’s drones patrol the restaurant out of the corners of their eyes. The two are not being very subtle with it, though there is no need to be because the entire room is staring. Circling the restaurant are armoured, twin-barrelled gunbirds, bristling with IR eyestalks and ammo, built for prolonged loitering conflict in some dustier foreign field. Their presence here is a show of force, and everyone knows it. The wait staff hover around with microscopic trays of dim sum and try very, very hard not to look up.
Eletheria and Senmei, running interference, stationed slightly closer to the centre, looking to all the world like a socialite’s grouchy daughter on a forced video-call with her family’s least-favourite diplomatic representative. Neither is looking at anything, or each other. The virtual attendance of Senmei pokes idly at the virtual attendance of some food. The charade is key, for Blackchain is watching.
Mizu and Lisette, the coupe de grace, seated the closest on the third deck -- twenty metres’ distance, as the drone flies. Lisette has her back turned. Mizu’s eyes are closed.
T-minus eighty seconds. Jules’ thumb closes around the trigger of their speaker, and the room bursts into soul --
---
### 5. SO GO AND DANCE YOURSELF CLEAN
T-minus sixteen hours. Reiji and Jules at the noodle stand.
“So we creep into the kitchen, and sneak something real bad into the food. That’ll make him go to the bathroom, where we put the bomb.”
“Why don’t you just poison the food? Look, a place like this isn’t just going to let you walk in. Also, Jingle Bells is a sick fucking guy -- he’s gonna want the whole city to watch.”
“But -- but if he wants everyone to see it, then Blackchain’s gonna see it. But if Blackchain doesn’t see it, then it’s not loud enough for Mister Jingle Bells, I mean, Mister Christmas, which means --”
“Oh, that’s it. Loud.”
“Huh?”
“You know, like when you mess up a transition in the last song of a set -- everybody hears it but nobody needs to notice. Sometimes you just need to drown things out in the noise.”
---
### 6. ACTUALLY, IT’S PRONOUNCED ‘ORDURE’
“No it’s not,” frowns Eletheria, “it’s horse-dovers. Everyone knows that. Just because your upbringing happened in a place where they speak funny --”
T-minus thirty seconds. She’s drowned out by the slick hemituned vocals of Shigeru ‘Slack-Jaw’ Moonblade caterwauling from the hideously overtuned speakers on Jules’ boombox deck. From the other side of the room, a wave of disgust as a waiter cuts his way through the cocktail line -- “sir, I’m going to have to ask you to turn your noisemaker down” -- Jules, flapping his arms most vigorously, gesturing -- “it’s just a vibe, bro, don’t kill the vibe, it’s my friend’s birthday, he’s a little birthday boy” -- Reiji beet-red with his face in his hands, and across the room people are getting up to leave --
“-- an upbringing in culinary and literary French, mind you,” says Senmei, barely a-flicker. “Which I can’t say I wanted to have, but it has been immensely useful for times like these.”
Eletheria, not even audible over the electric wailing: “-- god, and I thought my sister was annoying --” (Jules, far away: “I’m so sorry I meant to turn that all the way down!”) “-- should we stop playing for time --?”
“Just a moment.” Senmei, head cocked, as if on a call elsewhere. “Say, à quelle heure arrive le bus?”
---
### 7. LAST MINUTE PACKING GOES THE QUICKEST
T-minus fifteen hours. Lisette, neck-deep in coolant, awash in holographic webs of hired muscle, duels in a thousand seedy dojos, back-to-back reels of takedowns, quips, side-eyes, finishing moves. Being a Triad goon is flashy business and you can learn a lot about grudges this way. She plots constellations of tracking points around each chrome-jawed, swollen face.
Eletheria poring over day-zero manuals for blackbox-therapy chambers, the kind that Oniko Municipal South can’t afford, EM-proof shatter-proof smart-glass guaranteed to hold and shield out all but the most high-emission cases of cyberpsychosis, save, of course, for a failsafe in the adamantine weave in case you need to get the patient out, but it’s Oniko and everyone knows it’s actually so that the kill team can get in -- the backdoor nearly gorges her en-chip, but Lisette’s patch should tamp it down long enough till dinnertime.
Elsewhere, a proprietor of a certain inter-city touring company, mouth agape over a screen. “Emissary, you want to what the glovebox with what?:
---
### 8. BANG
-- and one-hundred-and-eight floors down, the bus rigged with a kilo of Tek-five explodes.
---
### 9. OBJECTS IN SMART GLASS MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY SEEM
Blackchain is watching, though it soon must be made to blink. ‘A red sash shows no colour in the dark.’
Eletheria, frantically thumbing the backdoor. “C’mon, c’mon!”
Five hardened Triad soldiers blink simultaneously and see shades of each other’s worst nightmares. Yufeng Lai (‘The Mountain Crow’) thinks he sees his nemesis Zai Hu (‘The Calamity of Heronlake’) lunge at him with spinning claws. Saiban Huolu (‘The Stone Tiger’) finds himself at the business end of two vibrametal tantos wielded by his archenemies, Zhang Lei (‘The Undefeated Mountain God’) and Yue Fu (‘The Unbowing Knife God). And why, seated at the head of the table is none other than The Illusory Fist of the Nine Ghoul, the dread hacker prince Jessamine Leng, who has artfully taken the place of their employer, Hong Zhou, himself!
Lisette keeps her back turned so that they do not see the immense computational load of five concurrent ghosthacks run her irises bone-white.
The gunbirds spiral out of the air, driven mad by the infrasound baked into Slack-jaw Moonblade’s siren yowl. Reiji’s personal assistant, chittering subroutines, sends them careening into the holocandles.
All other eyes are turned to Oniko’s spybirds buzzing outside, milling towards the plume of smoke rising from the street, until the backdoor finally hits the endpoint and smart-glass windows cut to black. Eletheria, heaving a sigh of relief.
Jules, already getting up to leave, a handful of synth-oysters under their coat.
Two of the largest Triad soldiers slam Hong Zhou into the darkened smart-glass. There’s something like ceramide under his suit -- the adamantine visor crystal of the restaurant’s shell rings sonorously, once, twice. Weaving through the fracas, five solid iron discs fly towards the temples of five confused goons.
Mizu, still sitting in her seat with her eyes closed.
---
### 10. I FEAR NOT THE WOMAN WHO HAS PRACTICED ONE THOUSAND KICKS ONCE
T-minus twelve hours.
Mizu by herself, dawnlit in the dojo, rehearsing the six simultaneous movement of the iron discs through the holographic mockup of Club Astatine, swooping them past the second weblike deck through the steel wires into the third, towards the five targets, then the sixth. Like the first twirl of a leaf in the wind -- swoop, reset, repeat.
“Nine hundred and ninety nine,” she counts under her breath.
---
### 11. BUT I FEAR THE WOMAN WHO HAS PRACTICED ONE KICK ONE THOUSAND TIMES
Five discs knock the five goons out. Mizu opens her eyes.
The sixth skims the top of the gang lord’s head and slams straight into the weakened smart-glass at full speed.
The impossible happens: it shatters.
All eyes in the restaurant watch Hong Zhou plummet into the night.
Adamantine crystal rains upon the street.
Ceramide battlesuit can’t stop a hundred-and-eight-storey fall -- the crunch is audible from up high.
Rabid screaming. A sea of stampeding feet down the stairs. Exit six from the banquet, Reiji still licking plum sauce off his fingers.
---
### 12. YOU KNOW HOW THE REST GOES
It’s January twenty-third, twenty-ninety-nine, and the city is streaked with blood…