Flesh for Sale (Second in the Fleet Quintet)

By Susannah J. Bell

*The Fleet are moving in to the Sigma Sector and people are beginning to disappear.*

When Sistia Scarpora is seven, her mother is driven to her death by a mindwalker. When she is fifteen, her father sells himself to the Fleet on a five year contract. Fifteen years later, he still hasn’t come back. Sistia starts to dig to find the truth about the Fleet. Warned off by Sigma agents, stonewalled by Federal agents, she finally approaches a Recovery agent – Igen Dyce. With a success rate of zero, Sistia is reluctant to commit to Recovery. The price she will have to pay is too high. To find her father, she has to infiltrate a secret Fleet world. She will have to sell herself to the Fleet.

In Greater Control, Fleet personnel 270 makes a selection that has a chance of increasing her credit rating to 1 in a single lifetime. To attain absolute zero means freedom. The new body she assumes is beautiful. Her new name is Sistia Scarpora. Life in Wet City should be wonderful – but there is a flaw and it could cost her everything.

Lost to the Fleet, Sistia has to perform an act of desperate heroism to save the Sigma Sector. There is only one man who can help her and he’s a mindwalker: Vincent Gomenzi, a man who should be dead.

The second novel in the Fleet Quintet, FLESH FOR SALE is set 400 years after TRANSFERENCE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susannah J. Bell
• Release date: Mar 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310953019

Susannah J. Bell

Susannah J. Bell is a writer of science fiction and other strange and surreal works. She mostly writes novels and the occasional novelette. Her published works include A Doorway into Ultra, the Fleet Quintet and the Exodus Sequence. She lives in London in an attic flat but really wants to live in a tree. She wanted to be an astrophysicist but would settle for an alien abduction. She writes because she doesn’t know what to read.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

I didn’t want to die on Lomensis. I didn’t want to live on it either but every morning when I woke up, I was still there. I had been trying all my life to get off it. I had tried emigration, marriage and suspect underground agencies. I had let other people try for me. I had even given up hope. And then, when I’d finally been given a chance, I hadn’t wanted to take it. I had turned it down. I had refused. Twice.

The second time crushed me for a day and a night. I thought I was doing the right thing. I was following instinct. But then I wasn’t an animal and instinct didn’t have all the facts. Instinct was survival. Looking at my life, I couldn’t call what I was doing surviving and even if it was, it wasn’t enough. I wanted to live. It was just that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to die to have to live. I wasn’t sure if the price I had to pay wasn’t too high. And then there were the guarantees. They were all zero.

Lying in bed, the dawn yet to break, listening to the rain, because it always rained during the equivernal months in Narthenaecia, the most northern of the Lomensii Scape cities, I thought about my one chance. I thought about it and counted up the failures that had led me to it. I counted up every agent I had ever met, from every agency. I counted the warnings I had received. I counted the prophecies. I counted the mysteries. I counted the conspiracies. In desperation, I even counted sheep.

I didn’t have to count the chances. I didn’t want to think about the single chance I’d been given. I didn’t want to think that it could save me. And I didn’t want to be anyone’s salvation. I lay without moving, even though my hands had gone numb and my spine was twisted uncomfortably. I was afraid to move. I was afraid to admit that I was awake and that I couldn’t sleep. I tried to pretend that it was slumbering I was doing. I thought that if I could just lie there a little longer, in the greying dark, half my mind still curled up in a pose of sleep, then perhaps the solution would present itself to me. Forced awake, I didn’t think there was any solution at all, only the dragging despair that somehow I had to decide about something that would affect the rest of my life.

My eyeballs hurt from lack of sleep. Every time I had moved during the night, I had woken up. Every time I had turned over, I would find myself struggling once again to get back to sleep. And when I did, another bad dream would pull me from the dark jungles of relief so that once again I had to rearrange myself in my hot sweaty bed, the top sheet all twisted and annoying even though I was sure I had straightened it out at one point, sometime soon after midnight. I kept my eyes shut, in the hope that if I pretended to rest them, my eyeballs would relax. The grit would clear. Sleep would approach me once more. But it didn’t. I stared into the twilight of my room and wrestled with my fate.

I tried to list the pros and cons, but there weren’t any. Or they were so equivalent, it made no difference which way I counted them up. I tried to take myself back to my former self, when I hadn’t had to make any decision about anything at all and was living on failed dreams. My former self had counted on magic because only an event of magical proportions would get me to Delph III. I tried to relive the dream in which the magic worked. It never had. There was nothing to dream about. Only Christine still believed I could get there but Christine didn’t know me as well as she liked to think she did. She didn’t know what I had done or where I had gone. She didn’t know the desperation I felt, the dark expanse that lay inside me, waiting, so that every time I might feel a momentary happiness, it would inflate exponentially to fill me up with darkness again. It was easier not to feel any happiness at all. It was easier not to think. It was easier not to dream. It was easier not to have any hopes. It was easier to just slide into the dark expanse itself and welcome it, a place where I didn’t have to be anything, where it didn’t matter that I was still on Lomensis, because, after all, no one knew about my dreams. No one knew I had failed them. It had never occurred to anyone that I might want something more than a memorial block in the rain, my name blurred by the elements, another forgotten Lomensii nobody. So why bother.

My alarm clock rattled enthusiastically in my ear, startling me from sleep. Shit, I said into my pillow, wishing I had thought to turn it off. I reached out to smash it into silence but it fell off the bedside lacquered box onto the floor and continued to rattle away on a rug. I lay stupefied with exhaustion. My cat Frath grumbled and stirred, a warm boulder against my thighs. It was morning and I still hadn’t made up my mind. I didn’t want to die on Lomensis, but then I wasn’t sure I wanted to die anywhere else either.

I got up, straightened a pyjama leg that had twisted around my thigh several times and went to the bathroom for a pee. My cats emerged and joined me in the kitchen. Frath and the stripy one I just called Cat settled down to crunch biscuits. The demonic Lowwer leapt up on the microwave and demanded milk. Gently heated. I stood in the window and drank tea. The radio was on. The lights were on. It was just another work day. While my pre-sliced bread turned into toast, I watered the thirstiest pot plants lining the lounge sills. Outside on the balcony, jungle ferns were being battered by the early summer rain. Their fronds smashed about in the cold and wet and bluster and I heard the sound of a small plastic pot rolling along the concrete. Something must have gotten loose in the night. I didn’t go out to check.

Lowwer was waiting for me when I stepped out the shower, as if expecting an explanation. I wasn’t the kind to confess all to a cat, but it was tempting. There was no one else to talk to. No one, at least, who would try to make up my mind for me.

You heard, I said. You were there. You know what happened.

Two nights ago, Igen had kissed me for the first time and the black expanse had roared back into my mind, a whole universe of denial and self-destruction. And from my sore, tired eyes, tears suddenly sprang. I tried to scrub them away with my towel but they kept coming. Lowwer walked away, indifferent, tail in the air, as if I deserved every moment of my misery.

I remembered the look in Igen’s eyes. I remembered the words spoken, cold and hard, just the way it had been when we had first met, except that this time he had been sitting on the edge of my bed and I had been curled up in a ball of mortification. I had let him down. I had let myself down. We had been standing in the hallway when we kissed. It couldn’t have been less romantic. Until that moment, I had thought a lot about that kiss. I had wrestled with its possibilities. I had expected it much sooner but it wasn’t the anticipation that had spoiled it. It had been me. Always me. The desire I couldn’t quell. The desire I couldn’t admit to. I thought I had seen a flash of disappointment in Igen’s eyes, but under the crummy hall light, it had been too hard to tell. So I had ignored it. As had he. We had both made the same mistake.

I finished my toast and watched tears drip off my chin onto the newspaper. Lowwer tried to lie on it so I fed him marmalade, which he licked off the spoon. The world seemed very normal. Nothing extraordinary was reported on the news. All that was wrong with its functioning was temporarily forgotten. My own anguish seemed like a very small thing. While Narthenaecia hunched along under its perpetual rain cloud, there was sunshine above. If only it could be reached. If only I hadn’t missed quite so many opportunities in my life to make me feel that this was the last one. This was my last chance. So I walked into the lounge and picked up the phone I kept there. The number was burned into my brain. One day I would even work out what it meant, when it no longer mattered. It took me directly to the cube’s message facility.

Three o’clock, I said. Pipe Street. I’m coming in.

CHAPTER TWO

When Sistia Scarpora strolled through the glass swing doors of Supertronix on 900th Street, it was with the air of a woman who was trying to hide the fact that she thought she was being followed. Her predatory stroll was casual and free, the way you would expect an animal to be in a jungle, but an animal that was hunting, not one that was fleeing.

Only once did she turn back. Only once did she check to see who was there. The cold controlled expression on her face did not change. Her fear wasn’t an obvious thing and couldn’t be determined through observation, but when security tapes were checked later to catalogue the series of events, the look was noted. The look confirmed that she knew she was being followed. It was true she couldn’t know who by or what. When she said during the pre-reconditioning trial that she’d had no time to report the infiltration, she had to be believed. There had been no time. She hadn’t been sure. And in the next five minutes, all in her assumptive universe was to be affected by irrevocable change.

The security tapes showed that across the shop, heads turned as she strolled down the ramp into the sea of lunchtime consumers. Eyes swivelled to watch her. Glances were caught by her presence. Hearts hammered at her presentation. Yowzer, said a face. Hubba hubba, said another. She had the sort of legs you wanted to wrap around your neck. And she knew it. Her icy cool belied it but her animal grace was calculated. She knew the effect she had and she apparently didn’t care. She knew that eyes were watching her and she expected it but withstood it. What she could not withstand and could not understand were the eyes that followed her off the street, eyes that she should not have suspected because every time she turned to see who it was, there was no one there. They were a contingency that had nothing to do with the way she looked. And the way she looked had everything to do with why she was in Wet City.

Inviting only the best onto its grid, Wet City was legendary for its bodies of beauty. Its flesh was exceptional. Only here could you find flesh of such absolute perfection. Since perfection was so rare a thing, it remained noticeable, maintaining its distinctiveness amongst a population of lesser immortals. There was no rush on great beauty. Few had it. Few were blessed with purchasing it. Its invitation to Wet City did not mean the city heaved with it; to find it, you would have to petition to leave your provincial planet. Beauty did not live in the provinces. It stalked the streets of a glass jungle, ran the boardrooms of corporate steel, and commanded credit that kept the economy alive.

As a Wet City beauty, Sistia Scarpora was a prominent prime. She was visibly flawless. Her thighs, her throat, the soaring columns of each were breathtaking. Long and lean and strong, her body was not displayed with vulgarity but with momentary flashes, like tasters, a lick of chocolate before peeling away the layers for total consumption. She wore boots of animal black leather that clung to her calves and reached her knees. Her skirt was a tiny stretch of shaved suede and the flash of leg between boot top and hem showed no gooseflesh, no bruises, no scarring, the skin supple as silk and caramel brown. Not a vein marred the surface, not a hair or a mark or a freckle. Beneath the skirt was the promise of shaved skin, of pubes clipped close: no hideous tangle of bush. Underwear light and white. No seams. No impediment except the single word: no.

The security guard spotted her the instant she strolled through the glass swing doors of Supertronix. She had that look on her face, one he couldn’t miss, one no one could miss, the one that said she owned the world, or at least a part of the known universe. Steel-framed shades leant a new definition to mean. When she raised a hand gloved in smooth black and fur-lined to remove them, the definition wasn’t lost.

Her eyes gleamed like a tiger. They held a stalk-stare. Those that ventured into range weren’t so much prey as dead meat. But if she killed, it would be for sport. If she was hungry, she would eat her prey alive. Across the shop, her irises flamed amber. Gold burst around the pupils, hard and polished-looking like the fillings in her teeth and the cage around her heart. She was made of durable stuff. Her glance across the shop floor filed its contents in seconds. She knew what she wanted and where she would get it.

She snapped shut her shades and slipped them into the top pocket of her overcoat. It was cut frock style, narrow across the back, fitted into her waist, its skirts flaring to her ankles. She wore it unbuttoned. When she strode forward, the coat swung back with each step. Snow lay sprinkled on her shoulders and she brushed it off without thinking. Behind her, the security guard saw that a small flurry of it was churning up 900th Street. He zoomed in on her, hugging her face with the camera but she had moved out of range.

Snapped out of his usual lethargic video-security shift, the guard leaned towards the control board. The wheels of his chair protested under his weight. He could see her prowling through the lunchtime crowd on screen seven so focussed it on her, zooming in on cheekbones that soared sheer like a cliff under helicopter lights. Jostled in the mass of bodies, he saw her mouth tighten. It was a dark mouth, painted with chocolate gloss. Her hair was sculpted against her skin, small waves that hugged her forehead from a central parting and hung in a curtain of ripples down her back. She was class. She had cool. She had more style in her little finger than a thousand supermodels could pool between them.

The vid-sec guard thought she might be a name, but he knew that he had never seen her before. She could be new in town, but Wet City was huge. People applied from all over to be transferred into its grid system. She could be anyone or no one. She could be a film star or a lawyer. She could be someone’s wife. He watched her face as she moved from camera seven to camera three and sucked his teeth with pleasure. The camera was poised on a wide beam so he narrowed it and swivelled its head down so that he was watching her from above. Her forehead was smooth as glass. No frown marred her skin. Her nose flared narrow and fine, her eyebrows cool arches to lift her eyes. She was standing at a shelf of personal organisers and tilted her head back to study the display on the top shelf. Her eyes struck the camera like headlights.

The guard sat back. She was the most stunning creature he had ever seen. She was a goddess. But she was also way out of his league. He puffed out his cheeks in a sigh and brought a mug of cold coffee to his lips. A skin in its surface wrinkled at him and he changed his mind. Keeping camera three on hold, he passed his eyes professionally across the bank of screens, their images flicking from one camera to another. There were thirty in the shop, ranged over the mezzanine floors to the mass production lines on the street level floor. They were less for security purposes than record keeping. Who bought what and why and where did people go. Statistical research kept city life evenly balanced. Rank immortals were catalogued and removed. Only the very successful or very compliant were permitted to remain. Visual records were kept for easy documentation. Snap categorisation could be made at Central Services. The Projects followed their personnel very closely. There was no margin for error. There could be no error. Because the guard in his brief moments of love and lust for Sistia Scarpora had trained a camera on her so closely, the tapes could be reviewed and replayed with no uncertainty that a recall was necessary. A virtually instantaneous recall.

A silver pendant lay flat on a curved cashmere cleavage. Mesmerised, the guard watched Sistia Scarpora’s gloved left hand touch its artily mangled matt surface for just a moment while she made her decision, then with the other hand lift a memo launcher from the shelf. The latest design in personal organisers, memo launchers were an innovation that guaranteed never forgotten appointments and instant connection to all known systems. The vid-sec guard zoomed in on her choice. It was a Low Rad X-4YY 7": Memoranda Launcher, so small it fit into her palm. Briefly she replaced it to remove her right glove, then picked it up again. It was a chrome-plated model, a 200th anniversary edition in PO’s, its finish sleek and fashionably mirrored.

Fingers tightening around it, she tried the one-hand easy-snap instant-lock device. Her thumb caught the switch but it jammed. The guard’s eyes hooked on her thumb, its nail narrow and shaped into a smooth oval, painted pale chocolate. The bank of screens in front of him flickered and shimmered with movement, bodies heaving with the unlikely possibility of crimes being committed, but he saw nothing except the chocolate brown nail struggling with the launcher.

He failed to see an harassed shop assistant mazing through overcoats and briefcases, clutching to her chest a boxed Syntech-Advisory System. The cameras caught the shine of her scalp. Her nostrils were pinched and a tight ponytail exposed her ears, large and looped with loops through the lobes. Camera fifteen caught her, then camera nine. Then she tripped. The merchandise jolted from her fingers, flying across heads that jerked back in surprise.

Someone stumbled and jostled the goddess under camera three. The guard half-lifted out his chair, wanting to help her, protect her, anything, just to keep the mass of flesh away from her divine space. In a clearing at her feet, the Syntech-AS box crashed. The plastic casing cracked and the device rolled free. Steadying herself, the hand clutching the memo launcher was in direct contact with the metal shelving. The Syntech-AS was at the toe of her left boot. It sparked.

A zigzag of lightning shot through her body, connected with the memo launcher and fused it to her hand. Pain broke through the chilly planes of her face and from between perfect teeth, a gasp escaped, a cry not heard on camera as all events were recorded in silence, but one that was obvious as she fell to her knees, released from the metal shelf. Central Services noted the incident at once. It was a minor incident that would normally have passed without regard, except that in the moment Sistia Scarpora experienced the electric shock, she had cried out not with physical pain but with terror. She had seen something that was not supposed to be there. In the incident rooms, the moment was played over and over again, as if at that moment her life had stopped and analysis of it would reveal why. But they couldn’t have seen anything extraordinary. Whatever it was, its manifestation was not physical. The tape showed them nothing. Only her reaction revealed the truth. An unknown truth, but not the one being played out on the shop floor. Her status was shunted down for potential modification.

Let’s see what happens, said Central Services, and sat back to watch.

On her knees, Sistia Scarpora’s face had resumed its lack of expression. She did not lose consciousness. The shop assistant screamed. The vid-sec guard was already bellowing a med alert. The screens in front of him surged. Supertronix was so big and so packed that only a few were aware of the incident. Cameras twenty-one to thirty showed diplomatic types studying total immersion in-ear systems, oblivious even to burnt flesh. There was a sale on the second mezzanine floor of multi-channel retinal implant screens. They had proven unpopular because it required surgery which automatically lowered credit rating. It was a price some were willing to pay. A chubby man’s attention was arrested by the incident on the ground floor. Chubby eyes regarded her gracefully sprawled legs with a phrrrwww before turning back to consider a major eye operation.

A doctor appeared at Sistia Scarpora’s side at once, the guard not far behind him, his weapon unnecessarily on hand, his cap squashed on a little skew. He was breathing hard. He was so near to her he could almost touch her. She struggled to her feet, ignoring the doctor’s helping hand, her hair falling in a black sheet of marcelled waves across a cheek. Her thigh muscles clenched as she pushed herself up. The shop assistant tried to take the memo launcher from her hand but the woman flinched and pulled it away. The doctor and the shop assistant both began talking at once, her voice tearful, his belligerent, matching his heavy frown. While the shop assistant tried to explain herself – It was an accident, she kept repeating – the doctor turned to the injured woman. A posse of young men pushed past them and the guard was momentarily separated from his goddess. One of the young men, a suit in a black overcoat, hair sleek and eyes pale shallow pools of charm, was chatting about the Megawall deep-phonic high9-all-surround-screen installation in his new capsule lounge. It’s mega Mega, he said, describing it with imagination. The guard pushed through the suits, using his uniform as an authoritative shield. A suit regarded him as one might a wedge of dirt caught in the tread of one’s shoe, but his eyes flicked away to regard instead Sistia Scarpora, who was infinitely more interesting. She was brushing back her hair with her free hand, pulling the strap of her briefcase higher on her shoulder, all while ignoring the doctor’s intensely whispered insistence that he help her. She said nothing in return and did not look up to meet the doctor’s eyes.

Finally, there was a gap in the shoppers. The vid-sec guard felt light-headed. His moment had arrived. He stepped forward, risking his heart and his soul.

Madam, he said. In the interest of health and safety, I must insist that you accompany me to the manager’s office.

Her eyes met his and he felt as if he had been struck. By the time his heart had stopped hammering from the recoil, the manager had arrived anyway, weaving his way through throngs immobilised around spot lit glass shelving. His eyes raked the length of Sistia Scarpora’s body, from the finely drawn planes of her face to the slim brown sexy thighs on display. He came to stand directly under camera three, his head glowing baldly on a screen in the deserted vid-sec room.

Madam, I insist, the doctor was saying. He had taken the woman’s hand by the wrist, the memo launcher reflecting his nose with chromatic distortion.

I can do it myself, said the woman. Her voice was like dark honey. Please let go of my hand.

Please let go of my hand.

Please let go of my hand.

The tape was rewound a thousand times at this point, personnel at Central Services leaning forward to watch, again and again, as they saw the terrible fear in Sistia Scarpora’s eyes. The source and structure of the fear was discussed and debated, aspects of it dismissed and reintroduced, insisted upon and retracted. Her status was inspected. All the potential outcomes had already been listed so the list only needed to be perused for the correct item. It was found. The discussion ended. It had only taken a few moments and already her status was modified.

Please let go of my hand. What she really meant was, where am I? Her eyes said it all but no one noticed. They were too busy being dazzled by her glamour. His heartbeat returning to normal, the guard tried again. I must remind you that the electrical shock…

Where am I?

The hesitation that followed was so minuscule that it was barely detectable over the general hubbub of the shop. A variety of beeps and meeps and other meaningless sound effects of electronic gadgetry reached them, briefly magnified as the hesitation turned into embarrassment for the shop manager. You’re in a shop called Supertronix.

You’ve had a terrible shock, madam, said the doctor, who was in a better position to understand her confusion. You really should get to a hospital.

But how did I get here?

Madam, we can call an ambulance for you.

I don’t remember, said Sistia Scarpora. I don’t remember anything.

She turned her fearsome eyes on the doctor but he was too involved with his own heroics to note there the blank terror.

It wasn’t real electricity, the shop assistant piped up desperately, tears dashed aside. The manager’s eyes slid towards her as if grateful for the interruption.

What my employee is trying to say, he oiled, is that not only does the Syntech system advise you on the various options available for synthetic technology, its structural components are synthetic as well, therefore all projections would be of an holographic nature…

Nevertheless, said the doctor, I demand that this woman receive medical treatment at Supertronix’s expense. I’m willing to act as full witness should she chose to sue.

But it’s not real, persisted the manager.

Whether it was real or not is not the point. The effect was injurious to your customer.

It looked as if it hurt, said the shop assistant, not sure if she was helping or not.

I saw a lightning bolt on the security camera, said the guard bravely. It looked real enough.

Do you need a lawyer? said a charcoal suit with elegant grey temple sidings, leaning in on the argument. The shop manager and store doctor turned to glare at him as if to argue the issue, forgetting that they were on the same side. Taking advantage of his distraction, the woman freed her wrist from the doctor’s grasp. Without hesitation, she pulled the fused launcher from her palm. The guard watched with horror as a thin layer of burnt skin tore from her flesh. Blood welled into her hand. She looked at it, dismissed it and made a decision.

Excuse me, she said the shocked assistant. I’d like to purchase this.

Certainly, madam, said the assistant, taking the damaged launcher between stiffened forefinger and thumb. I’ll just get you another one.

No. I want that one.

But madam…

I want that one. Perhaps you can clean it.

The assistant stuttered and protested, then went off muttering something about solvents. The guard stood too forlorn to be of any help while the manager busied himself placating interested customers. The lawyer had withdrawn. The woman allowed the doctor to clean and bandage her hand on the shop floor. From a medical box with a fold-back handle, he produced a can that made her flinch at its cold spray. Her eyes were fixed on the floor. The guard’s eyes were fixed to her thighs.

I wonder, said the manager, if I could take your name.

Scarpora, she said at once. Sistia Scarpora. She turned to the doctor. Thank you, she said, her chocolate brown mouth pretending to smile. Around them, the shoppers began to disperse. The security guard heaved himself back to vid-sec, arriving in time to see the doctor speaking to the woman insistently, while she shook her head, once, firmly, to negate all that he had said. Then she and the manager moved out of camera three’s range and the doctor was left, his face wearing an expression that described the state of the guard’s heart: that of yearning loss. She had broken them without even knowing they were alive.

The pair moved into camera seventeen’s range. Queues snaked away from a pay point island. The manager tried where the doctor had failed. I wonder if you wouldn’t consider our store doctor’s advice about seeking medical advice.

I’m fine, really, I’m fine. It was nothing. Just a little jolt. She lifted up her bandaged hand. It doesn’t even hurt anymore.

Since he could hardly accuse of her lying when he knew she was, he pulled her up to the front of a queue to pay for the launcher. Customers behind them looked thunderous, but politely averted their eyes, some looking up at the lights, some down at the speckled carpet, some staring into the middle distance while they waited their turn. The guard watched the shop clerk ask the standard question. Will that be credit or chip, madam?

Neither, snapped the manager. Run it through as an exchange.

Certainly. But the shop clerk looked bewildered.

Estelle is just cleaning it. The manager’s teeth were clenched. The queue fidgeted. Sistia Scarpora reached into the top pocket of her coat to retrieve her dark glasses but didn’t put them on, holding them by one arm as the manager’s eyes flicked nervously towards the back of the shop. Call her, he hissed suddenly at the clerk.

Yes, sir.

The clerk turned aside and spoke into a hidden device hooked around his right ear. Estelle appeared in moments, pink around the eyes, her fingers trembling as she handed the memo launcher to the manager.

I couldn’t, she said. I couldn’t get it all off.

It doesn’t matter, said Sistia. Please charge me for this item.

Madam, I must insist…

You’ve been very helpful.

The manager knew when he had been dismissed. He could not argue with a customer. Estelle trotted after him, anxious to confirm that her job wasn’t on the line. The memo launcher lay on the counter, clean and shiny on the glass, a thousand shop lights sparkling on its surface.

Will that be credit or chip, madam?

In vid-sec, the guard’s despair dispersed suddenly as he caught her odd reaction. She blanched. She stepped back from the clerk, her spine rigid, her fingers tightening around the arm of her dark glasses. Her eyes in camera eleven darted across the shop with an unexpected fear. She looked shocked, as if someone had said something to her that she hadn’t wanted to hear. The clerk spoke again.

Credit or chip, madam?

Disgruntled shoppers made impatient noises behind her. One had a nose in the air, humming. Another had a chin sunk to the floor. Suddenly frantic, Sistia Scarpora tore a plastic card from an outer pocket on her briefcase.

Thank you, said the clerk, taking the card and sliding it into a slot. Sistia had resumed the frozen-faced look she must have been born with. Then the clerk paused and raised a free hand to push deeper the in-ear device.

Excuse me for a moment, his mouth said to Sistia. She shifted her weight from one boot to the other. Her eyes drifted down to a display of pastel-shaded electronic highlighters on the counter. Her spine did not lose its rigidity. The guard watched an expression of insincerity carve itself onto the clerk’s face.

I have to check your Identity Card.

Pardon?

Your Identity Card. I have to check it.

Puzzled, she reached for her briefcase.

I already have it. It’s customary to request a check.

The clerk indicated he was armed.

Oh, you mean…oh.

The guard, his cameras still zoomed in on them in vid-sec, felt helplessness clutch his stomach. His spine turned to jelly, his knees to custard. This time he couldn’t rescue her. The card was run through the system, details jumping up on a screen hidden from view. When he handed it to Sistia, she snatched it back.

I’m afraid I can’t sell you this item.

Why not? There’s nothing wrong with it.

It’s damaged.

It’s just a bit of skin. And it’s my skin. That makes it my launcher.

I’m sorry, madam. I’m not permitted to sell it to you.

I don’t understand. What’s the problem?

I have to follow instructions. I’ve received orders from the Project.

The guard saw the word project leave the clerk’s lips. He saw the woman’s face: could almost sense her skin crawl and her scalp tighten as blood flushed into her skull. Terror moved in a second to anger, but he had recognised the expression. It was the one you wore when you thought you were going to die.

Then it was gone. She lashed out at the clerk. Her demeanour remained cool but the guard saw her eyes flash and burn. The guard imagined she was insisting on the manager’s return. The clerk’s eyes and mouth remained immobile during her tirade. He looked brain dead. Then his head jerked. The communication device in his ear must have sounded again.

Madam, it has come to my attention that your I.C. has been marked with a denier.

Camera one showed the manager in his office. He had on his interlinked systems-screen personal data relating to Sistia Scarpora. The guard saw the icons arrayed up the side of the screen that the shop was bound to offer no assistance. He felt sick. A customer had just been electric shocked and burned by an employee’s negligence but when her card showed a denier, she was on her own.

What’s a denier? said Sistia, casually putting her hands into her pockets. The clerk squeezed his teeth together, sucking in air through gaps his orthodontist had missed. The guard scowled at his chilly coffee mug. How could she not know what a denier was? Everyone concerned seemed to freeze in time. No one moved. No one in the queue behind her breathed. Then she withdrew a bundle of money from her pocket, clutching it with surprise in her bandaged hand. She tore a 500-chip note from the roll and flung it at the clerk. He barely glanced at the enormous denomination.

You are not permitted to use chips. He looked directly into her eyes. You are not permitted to have chips.

The Project protects the customer, she snapped.

And the Project protects the law, returned the clerk.

Shit.

She grabbed the memo launcher with her bandaged hand. The chip note fluttered to the floor. The clerk did not take his eyes off her and in a later report, could state with certainty that she was terrified. But it wasn’t the denier, he would say. After all, why should she be frightened of a denier. It was the memo launcher. I’m sure of it.

But still she took it, unwrapped, unboxed, sticky with solvents. She swung round, dark hair flying, eyes searching, bright and nervous, as if there was someone behind her, watching her, someone who could not be. The glass doors swung open silently onto the wet street.

Let her go, said a voice in the clerk’s ear. Next, please, said the clerk. Thank you, sir. Will you be paying by credit or chip?

The vid-sec guard, his romance almost over, watched Sistia Scarpora spin on one spiked heel and push her way to the exit. The glass doors swung open once again. A winter wind caught her hair and tossed it about her shoulders until it looked like liquorice. By the time she had clamped her shades in place, she was gone. The guard knew he would never see her again.

CHAPTER THREE

The wind of 900th Street cut like knives. The snow flurry had cleared and the sky had turned a turquoise blue. Tinted squares in vast, mirrored buildings reflected the turquoise in three dimensions. In curved steel and glass, the structures soared from the sidewalk into the sky. Sistia Scarpora looked up at them, her eyes still hidden behind shades. She might have been seeing the buildings for the first time in her life.

She buttoned her coat to her throat and began to walk. The sidewalk slid from the sunshine into shadow so deep it closed like night around her. 900th Street dipped towards an intersection. Arched across the road was a building finished with matt pink metal. High in the sunshine, it blossomed like candyfloss. Its windows were blind and bright, a dark tint turning the turquoise reflection an underwater green.

Sistia passed under it. Great revolving doors led into the sanctified vacuum of a luxury glass lobby. A long black couch and an ornamental tree stood posed on the marble white floor. Beyond the pink building, walkways like thin pedestrian bridges criss-crossed the streets. People in long coats hurried across them.

At the foot of a street staircase, Sistia stopped. Behind her, the shopping district hung below the mirrored office blocks. Cement sidewalks sanded regularly for the white beach effect, curled like ribbons on either side of black macadam. Every drain she had passed, every fire hydrant, every street lamp with its ornate glass casing she could remember like a snapshot. But someone else had taken the pictures.

A hand reached out to take the staircase rail, then hesitated. Her cold, smooth, moisturised skin looked unfamiliar to her: the long, chocolate brown nails gleamed against a light tan, hands so beautiful they required no adornment like rings. She straightened her fingers to admire their length and grace, then inspected her palm. She thought it must be her palm but couldn’t recall the links or the lines. She had no sense of herself, of who she was.

She hurried along the walkways, up one, down another, skirting an ornamental lake that lay built in concrete two stories below. Fountains bloomed from its surface, spraying like rain onto the breeze-rippled water. Her hair flew when she walked. Twin towers soared into the sky behind her, their shadows long and cold in the winter sun. A patch of grass flared, trimmed and swept, under a flowering tree. A magnolia petal floated free but Sistia kept going, eyes fixed forward, breath just a little ragged between parted lips.

Her heels were all she could hear. Traffic sounds were muffled and conversing voices too distant to determine. The lake complex was deserted. She heard footsteps once on a walkway overhead but by the time she had looked up to find them, they had gone. Arrows painted on the ground tried to lead her in opposing directions, but she ignored them. Another walkway beckoned and she marched down it. In the shadow of the street, where the sun couldn’t reach, she saw Supertronix. She had walked a full circle.

She stopped. Moving closer to the edge of the walkway, she gripped the rail in both hands. Its metal surface shocked her left hand to the bone with cold while the palm of the right screeched with pain. But she