"Watch your mouth, kid," I said, struggling not to breathe easily. "Fat or not, I can still spank you until you cry."

She looked outraged for a moment, her pale, round face spreading into an O of shock, but she quickly recovered, beaming at me, green eyes dancing. "I have never cried. Not once." She tapped her chest. "Cold and black."

"Uh-huh. Okay, Blackheart, you're cold as ice, whatever. I don't want any of this bullshit when we're at the meet, right?"

She sighed and spun around again, long red ponytail flipping behind her. "Don't worry. I'm a pro, Avery."

You're a kid, I thought, eying her oversized coat swimming around her ankles. I didn't know how old Gleason was, but I guessed fifteen. Old enough.

Boston had shrunk into a cold, icy kernel. Even five years ago it had still been a city, though a grim and broken one. Boston had never properly recovered from the Unification Riots, stuttering along for twenty fucking years on life support, and then the Monk Riots had hit and that had been it. The Undersecretaries had downgraded it from a Metropolitan Area to a Population Center two years ago. There were still thirty or forty thousand people living in Boston, but you could smell the rot.

It was cold, too. I pulled my coat-a good, expensive one, oily-smooth to the touch and comfortingly heavy on my shoulders-tighter around my neck.

"Why do we have to meet these assholes, anyway?" she asked over her shoulder, making a show of being serious. "We're not their business."

"I'm a guest, and they want me to kiss the ring," I said. "It's a professional courtesy."

"Courtesy," she said, spitting out the word like she'd never spoken it before. Which she probably hadn't. I'd given her a short list of words not to speak and things not to do, which included just about all of her vocabulary and most of her nervous tics. In a fight, on the street, you couldn't do much better than Glee and her knives. She was long-distance lethal but quiet. You're standing there and suddenly there was a knife sticking out of your belly, just materializing there like the genetic code for stabbed in the fucking belly was hardwired into your DNA, just waiting to metastasize. And she was small and flexible, able to tuck into dark spaces, just waiting for her moment. In the street, Glee was valuable. She was getting older, though, and I didn't want her trapped on the street, blood under her nails, for the rest of her life. I was trying to train her up a little.

I watched her rolling gait as we walked a few feet in silence. She had your classic downtown Manhattan roll, a drunken lurch that forced people to get the fuck out of your way or get hurt. Squinting, I shook my head a little. My work was cut out for me.

"So wait," she said suddenly without turning. "This is a fucking courtesy and all, so you're here as out-of-town talent and shit, but you bring me as your entourage?" She laughed.

I lunged forward and took hold of the hood of her coat in my fist, yanking back, lifting her off her feet a little as I jerked her back, letting go so she could stumble back into balance. She let out a tiny squeak of protest that sounded about as terrifying as a small furry animal.

"Don't walk in front of me," I hissed. "You're my fucking bodyguard, goddammit. All you're gonna do in front of me is turn around in time to watch me bleed out."

I didn't have to look at her to imagine the scrunched-up frown that appeared on her face, and I timed out the intake of breath for protest, interrupting her just as she opened her mouth.

"One, only assholes walk around with an army of shitheads. The more augment-junkies some guy has gathered around him, the more terrified he is. Two, you keep people off balance. They know my name, they're in fucking Boston, so they've got a chip on their shoulder about New York-the big man from New York in town to do a job. They're expecting me to walk in with an army. I walk in with this cute kid, clean behind her little pink ears, they're not gonna know what to think."

She shut her mouth with a click and we walked quietly for a few moments. I knew Glee was thinking. She didn't like being talked to, but she'd always been able to understand when you explained things to her. It was what made her valuable. "My ears are not fucking pink," she finally complained. Then she lifted a hand to her nose. "Fuck, I am pretty goddamn clean, though."

I smiled. "Stick to my side. When we get in there, you stand by the door. You don't follow me in like a fucking puppy. Take out a knife and play with it, but don't do anything threatening. Let them see it. Let them be distracted by you doing your circus tricks. Don't say anything. Don't answer questions unless I ask, and don't do anything they ask you to unless I repeat the request. You got that?"

She nodded, all business now. "Got it, Avery."

"Don't fucking call me Avery."

She turned her head towards me. I didn't turn mine to look at her. I knew she was beaming sarcasm and derision my way, her eyes wide and innocent. "What the fuck am I supposed to call you? Boss? I'm not calling you Boss, Avery. Daddy?"

I grimaced. "Do not fucking call me Daddy either. Call me Mr. Cates when we're in there. I don't care what you call me out here."

This wasn't true. I hated her calling me Avery like we'd grown up together. She was fifteen and had to have her ass wiped every few minutes or she'd fall over and explode, and I wasn't going to let her get away with that shit. At least not for long.

We only walked a few more blocks before we stepped up to a concrete box of a building, the sort of gray that looked like mold had grown up around a frame and flash-frozen solid. There was no marking on the building aside from a crude black number 43. Glee glanced at me and I made an exaggerated bow to her. Rolling her eyes, she shrugged her coat onto her shoulders, stepped forward, and pounded on the metal door three times, stepping back and positioning her hands so they were near her hidden blades. Glee always had an unknown and seemingly impossible number of knives at the ready.

The door popped open with a scraping and squeaking noise, and a man stepped halfway out into the cold. He was tall and thin, with deep-set eyes and a perpetually sweating face, wearing a heavy leather overcoat over several layers of fabric. He was shaved bald, including his eyebrows, his head a white oval of waxy, white skin.

"Kérem," he muttered, gesturing us into the building. I looked at Gleason, who beamed at me, her face suddenly turning pretty. She didn't say a word. Fucking smartass. I stepped forward and nodded at our host, who just watched me wordlessly as I moved past him into the hollow interior-the building was just four walls and load-bearing beams, empty, dark and cold. Most of the roof was in place, though rotted and sagging, except for a circular section in the middle which let in a weak shaft of frozen light, leaving the rest of the place in shadows. In the midst of this a table had been created from a warped plank of wood and two scorched barrels. A large cube sat beneath the table, and as we approached I could sense a hair-raising, almost sub-audible hum coming from it. Glee stepped in behind me and took up her post by the door, as instructed. She had sobered, and her face was blank and hard.

I looked at the tall, bald guy and gestured at the humming box.

"Signal suppression," He said in his thick accent. "Nothing in or out."

Two more men-young kids, of course, like everyone else doing business these days-in identical leather coats, their heads shaved similarly, sat behind the table and eyed me without expression as I approached. They were smoking cigarettes-cheap ones, by the smell. The one on the left was fatter than the others, and I decided that meant he was the boss, and kept my eyes on him. I didn't like the set-up-the shadows bothered me-but it wasn't my turf, and Belling back in New York had assured me that the Hungarians were traditional, and their safe-conduct meant something.

After a moment, he sat forward, exhaling a thick cloud of blue-tinged smoke. "Fasz kivan," he muttered, spreading his hands in a violent gesture. Then he shrugged his eyebrows. It felt all right. They were blusterers, I thought-not the sort who shot you in the head and rolled you for your yen. But it would be worth it if it saved us some trouble. The fat one plugged his mouth with his cigarette, eyes on me, leaning back. "Avery Cates, eh? Have heard of you. Rich man. Older than I thought."

I nodded, but said nothing. I hoped that Glee was looking blank and unconcerned.

Spreading my hands, I pushed my eyebrows up. "What can I do for you?"

He leaned back. "You are here to kill someone, on my territory." He shrugged. "There is a fee."

For a second, I was surprised. Belling was getting fucking unreliable. He was an old man, but he still had good moves, but he was usually smarter than this, sending me into a shakedown.

I put a smile on my face. Avery was a cheerful bastard, filled with love for all of the world's flora and fauna. "A fee, huh?"

The fat one spread his hands. "You have come to make money in my city. It would be best for you to not have any interference. To ensure that, a token, some thousand yen."

A token. I believed that. It was a token. A few thousand yen didn't buy much. I tried to think fast: All I had in available resources was Glee. Together, Glee and I were capable of some serious damage, but he wasn't really strong-arming us. He was selling us insurance against delays and problems. He was selling me being in-and-out of Boston in a few days, job done.

I looked down at the floor for a second, running through my short bag of physical tics to buy time with. I shook my head. I was being fucked with. All I had was Glee, but I could burn Boston to the fucking ground with her if we put out minds to it.

I looked back up at him, still smiling. "You think you own Boston, huh?"

He nodded and started to say something else, but a flicker of movement behind him drew my eye. As I blinked in surprise, there was a soft scraping noise, unmistakably a boot on the gritty floor.

I beat the Hungarians by a second, my gun leaping into my hand, extended blindly. The three of them weren't stupid, pulling their own weapons and spreading out wordlessly, two of them finding their own shadows while the fat one stood calmly, his gun in hand but pointed at the floor, all nonchalance.

"Please," a voice said clearly. "I am unarmed."

Gritty footsteps echoed, and slowly a man formed out of the shadows. He was of average height and slim, dark-skinned with close-cut curly dark hair that gleamed in the weak light. His suit was expensive, and he still had his sunglasses on. He held both hands up in the air like a jackass-or like a man who thought we were jackasses-and smiled. I considered the horrible possibility that he'd been standing there the entire time.

"Okay," I said. "We won't shoot you immediately. Who are you?"

He looked at me with a curious jerk of the head.

"This is a surprise, Mr. Cates! I certainly did not expect to find you here. I am Major Herman Miggs," he said, stopping about ten feet from the fat Hungarian. "I am unarmed."

"A Major, huh? I've met a lot of Majors. The System craps them out pretty regularly."

He laughed, a sudden guffaw that was like a file being uploaded, decrypted, and played, instantaneous and creepy. "Met a lot of Majors, Mr. Cates?" he said, cocking his head in that horribly familiar way. "Killed a lot of Majors, more accurately, yes?" He shotgunned a grin at me and then pointed over my shoulder. "And this must be Patricia Gleason, the proteg??, yes?"

I grimaced. "Hey!" I shouted, twitching my finger and putting a bullet at Miggs' feet, a puff of concrete dust leaping up into the air. "Talk to me, okay?"

After a silent moment of hesitation, the cop turned his smile back to me. "This is lucky. You should know my team is outside. Only five, but you do not look like so much trouble to me. We would prefer to have you all alive," he said the word with a twisting of his mouth, as if he found it amusing. He shrugged. "But that decision is certainly yours, Mr. Cates."

I heard movement behind me, and then Glee was in my ear. "The signal suppressor," she whispered. "They haven't called this in; their signals are blocked."

I nodded, glancing down at her wet, dirty boots. Looking back at Miggs, I started walking slowly towards him. "Okay, you stumbled on us. Staking out the Hungarians in the city they fucking own, huh? And then we walk in. Halla-fucking-leuah." I forced a smile onto my face. "And now we're supposed to just bend over and close our eyes, huh?"

Miggs cocked his head and grinned. He wasn't a big guy, and had a little paunchy belly, soft, like he hadn't been keeping himself in shape. He wasn't wearing a coat; his suit was immaculate. "I'd prefer it if you kept them open, Cates. That's my favorite part."

I nodded, still giving him the smile. The System Pigs, they hated me. More than anyone else in The System, probably, because I'd been killing cops without warning and for no pay. For years now. "Fucking cops." I looked back at the fat Hungarian. "What's the range on that thing?" I said.

He blinked dumbly for a second and then blinked. "Yes! Few blocks. Maybe six, seven." He said.

I nodded, brought my gun up to Miggs' face, and fired. The back of his head exploded outward and he crumpled to the floor. I tracked him with the gun and put four more shots into him, then looked back at the fat man.

"Outside!" I shouted, pushing myself into motion. As I passed him, he reached out and grabbed my sleeve, yanking me to a staggered stop.

"Baszd Meg!" he hissed. "What the fuck?"

He had a gun, but it might as well have been a picture of a gun-there was no way this fat turd was ever going to put a bullet in me. I leaned in and took his ear between my fingers and pulled him close. "Kill them before they clear the suppression field, fucking moron!"

I let go and spun away. Glee was already out the door; as I emerged she threw two blades in rapid succession, both sinking into the soft bricks of the building across the street.

"Two, behind the old cars," she said, smirking. Two new knives were already in her hands.

There was no time to hesitate-I'd never know what Major Miggs was doing, putting himself in my line of fire, but I did know that the moment his team escaped the Hungarians' signal suppression, the System Cops were going to come down on us boots first.

I darted to the right, throwing myself down at the ground, shots sizzling over me as the ice sliced through my heavy pants and tore into my knees and shins. I came up awkwardly, off-balance, and saw two of them crouched across the street using the rusted carcases of ancient vehicles-the kind you saw in every rotting old city-for cover. I gave them two shots to think about as two of the Hungarians popped out behind me. I'd lost track of Glee, but then felt her crash into my back, rolling off me to pop up at my shoulder.

"You run like you're mad at the ground, old man," she hissed.

"Shut up and move." Kids are always talking when you should be moving.

The cops poured fire at the Hungarians as they scrambled for cover. I lurched up and started across the street, eyes squinted against the sun glare. I managed to drop into an ugly slide behind a rusted, scorched barrel before I was noticed, to the side and a little behind the pair. I flipped onto my back and rolled another foot or two, peering around the barrel to get a good line on them. Gunshots thundered back and forth, becoming one long roar as they blurred together. I rolled back and checked my gun quickly, rocking forward and picking my shots. I knew the Hungarians were getting pummeled, but I took the seconds, sighting with one eye closed while my hands shook just enough to make it interesting.

The noise suddenly stopped, and I took my first shot. Without even waiting to see what the result was, I ticked down and to the right and squeezed off another. I didn't wait, struggling up onto my good leg and peering over the barrel. Both figures were prone on the icy street, and I heaved myself back onto my stiff leg and staggered over towards them, gun held down and ready. When I was a few feet away I put six more shots into them as fast as possible. They didn't even twitch, and I'd never even seen their faces.

I whirled and limped back towards the building, panting heavily. Glee and the Hungarians slowly rose from behind the piles of frozen trash that lined the street, staring.

The fat one burst from the doorway, holding two different hunks of plastic in each hand, spinning around slowly. He started speaking rapidly in their own language, and then blinked at me as if he'd expected me to be dead.

"Signals suppressed," he shouted, still spinning. "But I have audio traces-heavy feet. Okay," he spun to a stop and chopped one hand out. "Two going north, directly this way!" He waved at his own people. "We have them," he said in his thick English. "Last one," he continued, putting his tiny eyes back on one of his handhelds. "East-south!" He spun. "On this line!"

I turned and sighted along his outstretched arm. "Got it!" I lurched into a respectable run, snapping a clip into place. The Hungarians didn't need cops raining down on their operation here, and since I'd shit the bed by killing a System Cop right in their place, they didn't have much choice but to try and keep it quiet. For a few minutes, against their better judgement, we were partners, and it felt good to fuck them with their own bullshit demand that I show up and pay a fucking toll.

Glee, coat billowing out behind her like exhaust, sailed ahead of me, young and effortless and fucking hell annoying.

Breathing hard, I pushed my body into a sprint, ice crunching beneath me and waiting for its moment to spill me onto the street, take a few teeth. I turned wide onto the street the fat Hungarian had indicated, skidding and catching myself with my free hand, opening up some nice, deep cuts on my fingertips as I scrambled back into control. Glee danced around me, making sure I wasn't about to spill, and then surged ahead of me. I could see the cop, three or four blocks ahead of me, an outline against the horizon.

"Stay on him," Glee shouted, veering off to the right and sprinting for an alley.

"Don't you-" I started to shout, but she was gone, absorbed by shadows. I cursed under my breath as it sawed painfully in and out of me. I hadn't brought her along so she could go adventuring. She wasn't any fucking use to me freelancing in the broken remnants of the city.

The cop ahead of me wasn't exactly making record time. He was a big guy, round, like a huge boulder slowly rolling away from me. I could tell he wasn't fast because I was catching up to him, but I didn't like the short, unhappy future stretching out ahead of me, filled with running and chasing a System Cop through unknown ruins. When I was just a block or so behind, close enough to see the way the cold sun shined off his round bald head, I stumbled to a stop and took a bead on him with humiliatingly shaking hands. After two deep, shaking breaths, I squeezed off three shots, sending a fountain of dust up around his feet.

"Fucking hell," I muttered, throwing myself at the ground. Plumes of dust followed me as I rolled to my left-the popping noise of the gunshots sounding weak and comical in my ears. They just kept coming, shot after shot, and I kept rolling, pushing my body, collecting dust and grit and pieces of broken glass like I'd been coated in adhesive. I finally disappeared into a shallow ditch on the side of the road, coming to a stop as the noise clicked off. I breathed in enough dirt to coat my insides with mud and flipped over onto my stomach, pushing myself up into a crouch high enough to see over the lip of the ditch.

He wasn't far away. A few dozen steps, crouched down and peering in my direction, afraid to turn his back on me until he knew where I was, if I'd been hit. I brought my gun up slowly, imagining my joints making horrible squealing noises as I moved, resting the barrel on the lip of the ditch and angling it slightly. I squinted, trying to pick a perfect shot.

Suddenly, about as fast as I'd ever seen any living thing move, he crouched down, whipped his arm out, and began spitting death at me-just an endless roar of gunfire, dirt and glass leaping up in front of me. I threw myself flat and hugged the ground, hoping there was enough cover to keep me alive. The shots kept coming, burying me under sound and a fine spray of dust, fucking cops with their modified Roon handguns, apparently infinite rounds to a clip.

Then, sudden silence. I sucked in a breath that was more dirt than air and pushed myself up. In my head, it was a fast pop-up, a sudden surge. In reality it was a sloppy, stumbling eruption, and by the time I'd gained my feet, the fat cop already slapping a fresh clip into place, I didn't have time for anything but a volley of random shots in his general direction. He had to dance off the street into an alleyway, but I hadn't even come close.

Panting, I leaped up out of my ditch and slammed as flat against the brick wall of the abandoned building on my left, gun extended along the wall in front of me. When the fat cop poked his head around the edge of the wall, I fired twice, scoring two nice divits in the brick right where his eyes were, making him dance backwards again.

I crept. I had him pinned down in the alley; if he made a break for it I'd have his nice wide ass as a target and in the mean time I knew exactly where he was. I crept, keeping myself flat against the crumbling wall and moving slowly towards the alley, counting bullets in my head. I had three shots left in the clip. I didn't want to reload; with my usual luck he'd pop around the corner just as I dropped the spent clip, and I'd be standing there with that look on my face. That look that was almost burned-in anyway, the look I was probably going to die with: Outraged amazement. The look of surprise, and death.

I decided to risk it on three bullets.

I chose my steps carefully but tried to move fast; the longer he was trapped in there the better the chance was he'd think of something brilliant. Were we even still inside the Hungarians' suppression field? Were they still running the field? Honor amongst thieves and all that, but it wouldn't have surprised me if they'd shut everything down and made a run for it, and my fat fellow here was calling in a hover filled with angry Stormers, ready to drop on my head.

About five feet away from the corner, I pushed off the wall and ran the last few steps, ducking down and swinging my gun around as I cleared the alley's opening.

There was no one there.

I blinked, once, thinking that the motherfucking cops were hard, but not that hard-they hadn't invented invisibility or teleportation yet. Then there was the slightest noise from above me and I brought my gun up just in time to see that fat fuck falling from the ancient rusting fire escape, right on top of me, blocking out the sky. I fired once, a spasm of instinct, and then he hit me, knocking me flat onto my back. My head bounced off something sharp and a purple flash filled my head, and then it was just his smothering weight on me, the smell of his cologne like fucking gas, seeping down with heavy atomic weight into my lungs.

He was pouring invective down at me, a molten rush of abuse, pushing at me, blood running out of a shallow gash on his cheek. I'd grazed him. He'd landed with his gun arm pinned between us, and I reached around the fat fuck and locked my arms around him, pulling him close to me, keeping his gun trapped. He was a hairy bastard, a perfectly trimmed red beard, flecked with white, wrapped up along the sides of his head and spread out from there, cut close but thick. Bastard probably had to cut his hair twice a week. Bunches of the stuff exploded from his wide, flat nose, and his eyebrows threatened to migrate over to the sides and form an infinite loop of coarse hair. Tendrils of it poked up from his collar, centimeters from my nose. If he didn't stay on top of it, I thought, he would just wake up as a fucking yeti.

"You want to fucking marry me, sweetheart?" He panted, grinning. "Gimme another minute, I'll have some friends in for the party. We'll all take a ride."

I didn't like breathing him in, and I wasn't sure how to proceed if I didn't dare free my hands. I was grinning up at him to buy time, considering how to somehow roll him over, when his face suddenly convulsed, his whole body stiffening like someone had found the thread that held him together and given it a nice hard yank. For a second we were in stasis, with the cop grimacing in frozen agony on top of me, and then he went completely limp, a sudden spreading warmth soaking down into me. The fucking cop had pissed himself.

Sucking in breath, I pushed him off me, gasping and crawling away. I staggered to my feet, waving my gun around like a drunk, and stood there breathing hard for a moment, studying the bleached, worn-smooth handle that protruded from his back. I glanced around and found her standing on the old fire escape, smiling at me, a fresh blade in one hand.

"Sorry if I interrupted you," she said. The knife disappeared with a flick of her wrist and then she was dangling from the old rusted platform by both hands, dropping lightly onto her feet with a soft grunt. I admired her as she strutted up to me, all pimp-roll and confidence, grinning, red in the cheeks. Glee was going to be pretty when she grew up. She came to a stop next to me and stood there, looking down on him almost sadly.

I studied her. Gleason was going to be huge in New York. I'd found her like a fucking starving kitten, all tangled hair and white skin, and here she was, a fucking queen. Glowing with pride.

"Ever meet him-" she started to say, and then I reached out and grabbed a fistful of red hair, yanking down hard until she was bent backwards, staggering into me with grunts of pain. Her hands shimmered for a moment as instincts had her going for the blades she kept hidden in her sleeves, and then stilled as she mastered herself.

"You don't go off on your own unless I say so," I said easily, looking over her nose to stare at the crumbling brick wall behind her. "You don't fucking improvise. You do as I say and you fucking stick to me like you're sewn to my sleeve, you understand me?"

She licked her lips, breathing hard, wincing as she struggled to keep her balance. Tears were forming in her eyes. "Yeah, yes, Avery."

I was proud of her. Real calm, real controlled. "You think you're so fucking clever, kid," I said, still holding on to her. "You think you own the fucking world." I sighed. "You don't know shit. And it's going to get you hurt someday."

She shut her eyes, tears dripping onto the ground beneath her. "O-okay, Avery. Okay."

I held onto her for a moment, not feeling anything. This was necessary. This was education. I didn't enjoy it.

Then I released her and stepped back, feeling myself up for cigarettes. She stumbled backward and tripped, falling flat on her ass, her hands slapping the ground comically. She sat there for a moment and dragged her sleeve across her face a few times.

"Come on," I said, sending a cloud of smoke into the air. "Let's get back."

Snuffling snot, she nodded and stood up, stepping over to me and pausing. I was about to reach out, tousle her hair a little and say some thing nice when she wrinkled her nose.

"Shit," she said, the corners of her mouth kinking up, "Avery stinks. Avery smells like piss."

I tried to keep myself still, but couldn't help it: I started to laugh. Shaking a little, I shoved her lightly. "Shut the fuck up, kid."

THE END