THE

DECEMBER

PROTOCOL

By Devin Hanson

The December Protocol is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2017 by Devin Hanson

All Rights Reserved.

Thanks go to my wife, without whom this book would never have been possible.

Books by Devin Hanson

The Dragon Speaker Series:

Rune Scale

Rune Song

Rune Master

Table of Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

NOTE

CHAPTER

ONE

United Nations General Assembly

23 December 2120

The December Protocol (excerpt)

Henceforth, the use of the Womack Process or the Helix Rebuild shall be banned from Earth, as shall any research into alternate forms of regeneration or rejuvenation through biological extraction.  Active support of, or knowledge of, any clinic providing services for either of the two proscribed procedures will be grounds for censure.  Complete shutdown of all clinics and extraction facilities is the only way to preserve what is left of humanity.

Marcus Truman’s first steps on Mars lacked the promised romanticism from the travel brochures.  Far from the epic, sweeping panoramas of Olympus Mons, once he disembarked from the interplanetary shuttle, Terminal H had more in common with a subway station.  High ceilings dimly lit with stale biolumen strips, grimy antibac tiles on the walls and stained concrete under his feet.  If it weren’t for the lower gravity, Marcus could almost believe he was still on Earth.

The sheer mediocrity of the terminal did more to get Marcus’ feet moving than the spiritless glare from the arrivals officer.  Still, he hung back until his fellow passengers had passed through before approaching the gate.

“Welcome to Cydonia and Vastitas Cluster,” the officer said with a robotic lack of interest.  “Purpose for your visit?”

“Business,” Marcus replied.  He fumbled his passport folder from his jacket pocket and slid it under the grill.  Up close, Marcus saw the officer was a lot taller than he had originally thought.  Even sitting, she was taller than he was, her limbs thin and drawn out.

“Do you have anything to declare?”  If the woman was aware of Marcus’ scrutiny, she paid it no mind.

“No.  All my baggage was shipped ahead of me.”

The officer flipped through Marcus’ passport, pausing on the rear page with its lurid medical summary.  Interest stirred in her eyes and Marcus fought the urge to sigh.

“You have cancer?”

“Yes,” Marcus replied shortly.  He really didn’t want to get into it with this lady.

“They haven’t cured that yet on Earth?”

“The December Protocol blocked all rejuvenation research and procedures.  Are we done?”  Every school child knew that.

“You poor thing.”  She clucked her tongue and stamped the passport.  “You’ve come to the right place, dear.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Mars is much better than Venus,” she sniffed.  “They might think they’re better than everyone else, but you won’t see the Matriarchs helping cancer patients.”

Marcus gritted his teeth, but forced his voice to come out as soothing.  “It’s tragic.  If you don’t mind, though, I’m in something of a hurry.”

The lady’s eyes narrowed and she glared at him suspiciously.  “What’s the rush?”

Was this lady serious?  “I have a business meeting,” he said. When her face didn’t change, he added, “and I have a deadline.”  He glanced meaningfully at the passport she still held open.

Understanding washed over her and suspicion swayed into saccharine sympathy.  “Oh no!  And here I am, keeping you.  How much longer do you have?”

Marcus resisted the urge to reach through the bars and snatch his passport out of her elongated fingers.  “I have enough time to get myself set up financially on Mars,” he explained, “but I don’t have any time to waste.”

“Well, don’t let me keep you any longer.”  The lady handed the passport back to Marcus and he tucked it away.

“Thank you.  Have a good day.”  Marcus shifted the bag slung over his shoulder to a more comfortable position and walked away from the arrivals desk, relieved to have escaped from the awkward conversation.

He had a moment of confusion as he looked for an up escalator then remembered on Mars, there was nowhere up to go but the frigid, inhospitable surface.  Feeling sheepish, he got onto the down escalator and leaned against the railing, reviewing in his mind what his plans were for the rest of the day.  Then the escalator brought him down to the first open level and his orderly planning fell away.

In the early twenty-first century, human explorers on Mars had put an enormous effort into constructing atmosphere domes on the surface of the planet.  They’d tried a dozen different methods of construction, but the domes had always failed.  The failures hadn’t all been catastrophic decompression, but ultimately, one fact became patently obvious.  A pressurized dome could be made to last for months, years even, but eventually it would give out.

A better solution was required.  The obvious next step was to go underground.  It had taken decades for the first beachhead bunker to be completed, but then the tunnel system had taken on a life of its own.  Private enterprise had expanded the tunnels, searching out ores. The initial, tentative borings had expanded until there were miles upon miles of tunnels crawling throughout the bedrock.

The city of Cydonia had been founded, named after the famous “face” mountain that had so captured the imagination of the early twenty-first century.  The Mars population had moved into those tunnels and swelled over time with new arrivals and the first children born on a planet other than Earth.  The city had been built in layers, carved from the bedrock piece by piece.

As the pioneers had dug deeper into the planet’s crust, it had grown too hot for comfort.  New clusters had been founded and linked together, keeping the overall name of Cydonia.

One of those clusters, Vastitas, Marcus now entered.  It was a city of somewhere between five and six hundred thousand people.  Marcus had heard the word “city” and imagined what he was familiar with, only somehow in a cave.  Intellectually, he knew he wasn’t going to find rows of houses with manicured fungi lawns.  But the reality was vastly different.

Marcus stepped off the escalator into a cavern.  It was spacious, with ceilings twenty feet over his head, but it still felt cramped.  The rock ceilings were supported by thick columns spaced with geometric precision every forty feet.  Between the columns, people had set up booths from which they were selling everything from glassware to fried dumplings, from bottled oxygen to entertainment chips.

His first overwhelming impression was of filth.  The Lunar colony where Marcus had awaited the transfer shuttle had been a study in pristine cleanliness and the shuttle had been much the same.  But here in Vastitas, the antibac tiling was old and crumbling, dirt and sand drifted in corners, and a grunge of grime seemed to coat every surface.

The paths through the open market were choked with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people.  Marcus stopped at the base of the escalator and stood there for several minutes, just taking it all in.  The noise was tremendous.  Music blared from every other booth, contrasting and mixing with repeated product announcements, and with the din of people shouting to be heard.

Then there was the smell.  Water on Mars was a valuable commodity. Bathing was a luxury only for the super-rich.  The average citizen made do with chemwipes, or, judging by the smell, did without entirely.

Marcus felt light-headed for a moment and pain stabbed in his chest.  He fumbled in his jacket pocket for the small container of pills and tapped one out into his palm.  He swallowed it dry and gingerly massaged his side until the pain faded.

The pain never completely went away.  Lately, even the pills didn’t do much to help.  At best, they gave a temporary relief.  The pain was a reminder, as if he needed one, that he didn’t have much time left.

He raised his head and looked out into the bustling market with new eyes.  He wasn’t a tourist.  These people were his future customers.   His market.  His lifeline.

The city wasn’t what he had expected.  The travel brochures that catered to the fabulously wealthy had promoted an off-planet getaway with all the luxuries of Earth.  Unprepared for this slum, he felt let down that after all the scientific wonders of space travel and colonization, these people couldn’t be bothered to sweep up the dust piling in corners.

Marcus walked into the market, moving awkwardly in the low gravity.  He drew stares as he made his way through the stalls.  He ignored it as best he could, but he knew he stood out among the natives, a blip of off-world wealth.

And the natives were tall!  Not all of them, of course, but there seemed to have been a gradual increase in height over generations.  Most of the people Marcus saw were rail-thin and nearly eight feet tall, visible head and shoulders over others in the crowd.  Their features were elongated and drooping, and they moved with a swift, swinging grace.

It didn’t take long before he was helplessly lost.  The stalls between the columns formed a virtual maze.  Eventually, unable to find his way out of a district that specialized in salvaged electrical components, he asked for directions.

After another hour and two wrong turns, Marcus finally made it to the food district.  Here, the scent of unwashed bodies was mixed with the warm odors of curry and hot peppers.  His stomach rumbled and he ducked under the curtains of a noodle bar and climbed up on one of the stools.

Marcus wasn’t a short man.  At five foot ten, he was above average on Earth, and if his height had ever been an issue in his daily life, it usually was because he was too tall.  The counter of the noodle bar, though, was uncomfortably high, as if he were a child who needed a booster seat.  A glance to the side showed all the other stools were the same height, but the other patrons sat comfortably at the tall counter.

“What’ll it be, gov?”

Marcus glanced up at the menu and saw the lettering was all in Chinese script.  The images next to the numbered items were clear enough, though.  “I’ll have a number two.  What kind of meat is on it?”

That got him a smile and a raised eyebrow.  “Why, the best meat, gov.”

One of the other patrons shook his head and laughed, rattling off a string of Chinese that sparked a chorus of laughter.

Marcus flushed.  “Did I say something funny?” he demanded.

The patron turned to him.  “You like-a meat, hey?”  He slowed down his speech and punctuated each word with chopping gestures with his hands.  “This Mars, Earthman.  No meat here.”

“At least,” the server clarified with a grin and a calming gesture, “no meat that would get served in a classy joint like this.”

“Oh,” Marcus said, his flush of anger sinking down into chagrin.  “This is my first day on Mars.  If you don’t mind my asking, what is it made of?”

“Yeast, for the most part.”  The server put together the dish and slid it across the counter to Marcus.  “You really from Earth?”

Marcus nodded and lifted out a few strands of noodle from the bowl with his chopsticks.  They swam in a light green liquid putting off a pepper aroma that made his eyes water.  They looked like noodles, even if they were made of yeast.  He put the bite in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully.

“It’s not bad,” he said.  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the heat of the spice hit him and his face flushed.  Sweat beaded his forehead and his tongue burned in his mouth.

The server leaned on the counter and watched Marcus struggle with the spice with a wide smile.  “See, no meat is needed.”

Marcus lifted a bean sprout from the bowl and held it up in his chopsticks.  “Mars does have agriculture, though?  It’s not all culture vats?”

The server shrugged.  “Plants are easy to grow.”

Marcus took another bite.  His mouth was already on fire, eating more of the noodles wouldn’t make that any worse.

Getting actual, hard facts about Mars had been difficult on Earth.  Some things were nearly impossible to determine.  How many people lived on Mars?  Numbers varied from over ten million, to an official census that set the population at three million, to conspiracy theorists who claimed the population wasn’t more than a few hundred thousand.

The problem, the theorists posited, wasn’t that there wasn’t enough space on Mars to host a city of several million, it was that there wasn’t enough water.  Humans needed to drink around half a gallon of water a day.  That amount of water was impressive enough on its own, but didn’t take into account all the water needed to produce food for those millions of citizens.

Even with the most conservative hydroponic agriculture, growing sufficient crops to feed that many people required more water than could possibly be available to the colony.

Reading between the lines, Marcus came to the conclusion that there were sources of water available that weren’t common knowledge.  Ultimately, it didn’t matter.  Whether the water came from enormous, secret, subterranean aquifers, was shipped in from Earth, or had been harvested from passing comets was irrelevant.  The water was there.  What was important, to Marcus at least, was how much agriculture existed on Mars.

There had to be some.  Separating the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was a trivial task on Mars, but there had to be a renewable method of reclaiming the oxygen.  Plant growth was the solution Marcus had assumed.  The use of yeast as a food base hinted at a different approach.  Sufficient agriculture to provide the oxygen needs for the population of Mars would, as a necessity, provide an overabundance of vegetable matter.

Without the vegetable byproducts of agriculture, the oxygen had to come from algae vats.  Somewhere within the tunnel system of the city, there must be enormous vats of aerated green soup that converted the carbon dioxide into oxygen.

That was disheartening.  So much of Marcus’ plans revolved around a supposed system of agriculture being in place.  The bean sprouts, though, gave him a renewed hope.  There was agriculture, even if on a micro scale.  There wasn’t room in this noodle hut for a private sprout-growing operation, so somewhere a farmer had to be making a living growing bean sprouts.

Lost in his thoughts, Marcus took another bite of the noodles and almost choked on the sudden rush of heat.  Now that he knew what he was eating, he could taste the subtle, almost cheesy flavor of the yeast base in the noodles buried beneath the overwhelming spice.  The heat of the spices told another story as well: someone somewhere had to be growing pepper plants.

It made sense, he reflected as he gingerly took another bite.  With everything tasting of yeast, people would be desperate for some way to mask the flavor.  Making food spicy was the easy way out, which explained the prevalent scents of curry, ginger, and hot peppers, along with more that he couldn’t identify.

Marcus finished off the rest of the noodles with growing cheer.  Mars cuisine relied on the masking flavors of heavy spices.  Those spices all had to be grown somewhere, and in tremendous quantities.  There was no way nickel-and-dime farmers could produce the volume of spices consumed daily by the population.  There had to be significant infrastructure in place, growing tons of material a year.

He paid for his noodles and continued his exploration of the market.  He knew what he was looking for now.  He had to track down the suppliers of the spices and thence the growers.  As curious as he was to see the grow beds, he didn’t actually need to trace the chain of supply all the way back to them.

Eventually he found a store that sold spices in bulk.  Brilliantly colored powders were on display behind glass, labeled in Chinese script, English and Spanish.  Customers purchased their spices by weight, carefully measured out on gleaming stainless steel scales.

Marcus struck up a conversation with the clerk and learned the man purchased his spices wholesale from a warehouse.  After asking directions, Marcus headed in that direction.  He was feeling cheerful.  He hadn’t been on the planet more than five hours and he was already well on the way to figuring out how to get his business started.

He still had to purchase or rent a manufacturing location, but he had a few days left of paid-for storage at the warehouse holding his cargo from Earth, so there wasn’t a huge rush.  His other few errands could wait, too: a stop by the local law enforcement office, and a visit to whatever Mars had as a planning and zoning department. And, of course, he had to find a place to sleep.

That could wait, though. First, Marcus wanted to make sure his hypotheses were correct.  If he was going to set up a distillery on Mars, he’d have to make sure there was a way to produce the materials he needed.  It had taken every last penny he could scrape together on Earth to have his equipment shipped to Mars.  The copper distillery had been heavy, but most of the weight, and freight cost, had been in the water.

He wasn’t a fool.  Growing crops required water, no matter how you looked at it.   On a planet where nothing was more valuable than water, bringing his own supply had been the only way he could think of to guarantee his plan’s success.

He didn’t have time for a second chance if his first attempt failed.  His medical prognosis was clear: he had three months at most to receive the first treatment of the Womack Process or he would die.

CHAPTER

TWO

Federal Case Number 3:43-CR-1092-CA

Exhibit N

The following list of equipment and items was found at a clinic suspected of supplying the nucleonic therapy of the Womack Process:

DNA sequencing computer

Surgical tools: scalpel, forceps, scissors, spreaders

Tissue sample container

Liquid nitrogen cryogenic chamber

…

9mm Smith and Wesson handgun

Silencer for above weapon, attached at time of discovery

Box of ammunition containing 11 cartridges

Angeline Nueva de Vita was going to play hooky from school.  Evading the teacher wouldn’t be easy; Angeline was a seventh-generation Martian, and even though she had just turned fourteen, she was nearly six feet tall.  Like her parents, Angeline had a very narrow build, with long, delicate hands.  The low gravity didn’t require her to have much lung strength to breathe and her chest was narrow, giving her a spindly look.

Mr. Borden raised his hands, patiently waiting for silence to fall upon the class.  Angeline kept her face turned down and her mouth shut.  She knew from experience that it would be harder to sneak away if the teacher was looking for her.

Eventually the room grew quiet.  “Today we’re going on a field trip,” Mr. Borden announced.  “We studied about the algae vats that process our expired breath into usable air again.  Now we’re going to see them in action.”

“Again?” a boy complained.  “We went last month.”

“Oh, my mistake,” Mr. Borden said dryly.  “You must be an expert already!  Since you’re so familiar with it, Thomas, can you explain to the class how the photosynthesis cycle sequesters carbon dioxide into sugars?”

“I dunno what that even means,” Tommy muttered.

“Well, then I suppose there might be something left for you to learn after all.”

Tommy glared back in sullen silence.

Despite herself, Angeline was curious.  She found the biology she had studied so far fascinating.  A trip to the vats would be almost more exciting than what she had planned.

“Hey!” someone whispered, and Angeline turned to see her friend Jasmine leaning toward her, a conspiratorial smile on her face.

“Stop, Mr. Borden will see you,” Angeline hissed back, but she couldn’t help but smile in response.

“Don’t worry.  My mom says Mr. Borden only has eyes for the boys,” Jasmine giggled.

Angeline covered her mouth and glanced up to the front of the class where Mr. Borden was writing on the chalkboard.  She didn’t understand what Jasmine meant by that, but if the teacher wasn’t going to be watching her closely, it would make it easier to slip away.

Jasmine was a third-generation Martian.  She was tall for her age by Earth standards, but she was still a full foot shorter than Angeline.  She was a year and six months older than Angeline and was already starting to look like a woman.  Angeline knew she would never develop breasts as large as Jasmine had already, and sometimes she was terribly jealous.

Angeline’s mom called Angeline beautiful, but beside her friend, Angeline felt like a freak of nature.  Still, she felt lucky that Jasmine wanted to play hooky with her.  Jasmine could be friends with anybody, even the boys.

“Ms. de Vita,” Mr. Borden called, “care to share with the class what is so funny?”

Angeline blushed and hung her head, turning in her seat until she was facing the front of the class again.  “No, Mr. Borden.  Sorry.”

“Pay attention,” the teacher chastised her.  “If you don’t listen now, you won’t understand what is happening when we visit the vats after lunch.”

“Sorry, Mr. Borden.”

Jasmine giggled and Angeline carefully kept her eyes pointing forward.  After a moment, Mr. Borden turned back to the chalkboard.

As Mr. Borden lectured on the process of algae converting carbon dioxide into sugar, Angeline found herself drawn into the science of it.  She almost regretted the plan to play hooky.  The trip to the vats sounded interesting.

The day passed quickly, and soon they were lining up to leave.  Jasmine cut in front of Angeline in line and giggled.  Suppressing her irritation, Angeline stepped back to make room for her.  It was the nice thing to do, she told herself.  Jasmine was so much shorter. If she had to stand behind Angeline, she wouldn’t be able to see anything.

Mr. Borden did a last headcount down the line, verified all the students were present, and led the line out of the classroom.  Mrs. Chan was outside waiting for them.  The elderly woman often volunteered to help escort the students on their field trips.

Like Angeline, Mrs. Chan came from a long line of colonists, except where Angeline was dark haired with olive skin, Mrs. Chan had white hair that drifted about her head in a fine halo and her skin was pale, nearly translucent.  Rumor had it that Mrs. Chan hadn’t visited the sun rooms since her childhood, and if she was exposed to the bright light now, she would burn alive on the spot.

The presence of Mrs. Chan made giving the class the slip much more difficult.  Mr. Borden was short, barely taller than Angeline was.  It was easy to hide from him, since anyone passing by, blocked his vision.  Mrs. Chan, though, was over seven feet tall, and her ability to spot a student trying to escape was legendary.

“Great, the old bat is here,” Jasmine said sourly as they made their way through hallways and out of the school.

“Do you still want to play hooky?” Angeline asked.  “The vats don’t sound so bad.  We can ditch some other time.”

Jasmine shook her head.  “I’ve seen the vats,” she said dismissively.  “I want to have fun today.”

Resigned, Angeline nodded.  Without a distraction of some sort, Mrs. Chan would see them trying to escape.  Angeline found herself hoping that nothing would pull away the older woman’s attention, and Jasmine wouldn’t have an opportunity to run.

Traveling around Cydonia was done by foot, for the most part.  Calling the colony a single city was something of a misnomer.  The colony was broken up into clusters, separated by long tunnels.  The city clusters were ten to twenty layers deep, and each was separately viable, with their own atmosphere processing plants and food production.  The tunnels connecting the clusters were traversed by high-speed trams.  In the case of a catastrophic surface breach, each cluster could be isolated from the others with heavy airlocks on either end of the tunnels.

The individual clusters were not large.  They occupied roughly a square mile, with escalators running between levels.  Someone traveling on foot could easily reach any point in a cluster in less than half an hour.  A cluster might have a population of between fifty thousand and several hundred thousand, depending on the number of levels and size of the floors.

Cydonia was a network of forty-eight clusters, with new clusters being dug out all the time.  Angeline’s home, the Vastitas Cluster, lay under the northern slopes of Olympus Mons.  It was a larger cluster, as things went, with seventeen layers and a population of one hundred and eighty thousand. Angeline’s school was on the fifth layer, counting down from the top.

As Angeline rode the escalators upward toward the first layer, she kept an eye on Mrs. Chan.  The assistant teacher never took her eyes off them.  Jasmine fidgeted in front of Angeline.  She couldn’t look back at Mrs. Chan without being obvious about it.

The number of people about them increased dramatically when they stepped off the escalator on the first layer.  It was just after the lunch hour, and though the usual meal rush had dropped away, people still clogged the corridors.

Jasmine turned around far enough to give Angeline a smile.  “Follow my lead,” she whispered.

In Angeline’s experience, those words usually came before something that ended up getting her in trouble.  Still, her heart raced with excitement.  She had only been to the first layer market with her parents.  The thought of having the whole afternoon to explore it with Jasmine was worth the trouble she knew she would be in afterward.

Angeline kept one eye on Mrs. Chan, but the market fascinated her.  There were so many things for sale, and so many people.  Where Angeline lived on the twelfth layer, almost everyone was from a long line of Martian colonists.  It was rare to see an adult under seven feet tall.  In the market, though, the majority of the people were like Jasmine: closer to Earth-human, with more muscle bulk, and, in the case of the women, curves.

She even saw a group of wujin, their skin and hair pale.  They all wore sunglasses, but she didn’t need to see their red eyes to recognize the albinism genes.  It gave her a shudder, seeing the wujin.  They didn’t often come to Vastitas, preferring the newer, more prosperous clusters.  She had never met one in person, but her parents had been clear in their repeated instruction to leave them alone.

The high shriek of an air horn startled her, and then suddenly Jasmine grabbed her hand and yanked her out of the line of students.  Angeline stifled a surprised cry and let her shorter friend pull her into the press of the market.  A last glance back showed Mrs. Chan shouting down a lorry driver.

For a few seconds as they ran through the crowded market, Angeline expected to hear Mrs. Chan behind them, cursing them in Chinese.  But as the seconds dragged on into minutes and there was no sign of pursuit, Angeline’s fear turned into elation.  They had done it!

Their absence would be noted eventually, and there would be hell to pay later, but for the next few hours she was free to explore the market with Jasmine.

“What do you want to buy first?” Jasmine asked her, skipping sideways with her black curls wafting around her head.

“Buy?” Angeline shook her head.  “I don’t have any money.”

“No problem.”  Jasmine produced a credit chip with an air of studied nonchalance then broke into giggles.  “I lifted it off my baba this morning.”

“You stole it?” Angeline was aghast.

“He has more,” Jasmine brushed off Angeline’s concern with a wave.  “Come on, I know where there’s a sweets shop!”

Later, as Angeline was licking the granules of chili sugar off her fingers, she forgot to be worried about getting in trouble.  She had never had so much fun.  They wandered the market, buying snacks that caught their fancy and window shopping.  In a trinket shop, Jasmine bought Angeline a beautiful glass sculpture of a bird, its wings a rainbow of brilliant hues.

After an hour of wandering the market, Jasmine was starting to get bored.  Angeline would have been happy to wander and look at all the things that were for sale, but the novelty had worn off for her friend.

“I’ve seen all this stuff before,” Jasmine said finally, pulling Angeline away from a booth that sold toy robots.  “I want to do something exciting.”

Angeline looked back at the booth.  The robots had been plenty exciting to her.  She felt the weight of the bag in her hand with her carefully wrapped bird figurine.  Jasmine had been extremely nice to her so far.  She felt obligated to follow the other girl’s lead.

“Okay,” Angeline agreed.  “What is there to do here that’s exciting?”

“Have you ever gone dancing?”

The question took Angeline by surprise.  “No, I don’t think I know how.”

“It’s easy.  I’ll show you how.”  Jasmine grabbed Angeline’s hand and started pulling her through the market.  “My ma and her friends go sometimes.”

In truth, Angeline didn’t need much convincing.  Going dancing sounded like something adults did.  She was thirteen now, a teenager.  She wasn’t a little kid any more.

She eyed Jasmine, envious again of the other girl’s curves.  What would it be like to have boys pay attention to her all the time?  Maybe if she learned how to dance really well, the boys would treat her the same way they treated Jasmine.

They passed from the open market into a section that Angeline had never been in before.  The hallways were more cramped between the stalls, and many of the shops had curtains hanging in front of them, giving the shoppers privacy.

Glimpses inside the curtained shops showed things for sale that Angeline had no knowledge of.  There were a lot of smooth plastic shapes, garments made of black synthetics, and more.  She tried asking Jasmine what some of the shops were selling, but the other girl couldn’t get more than two words into a sentence before dissolving into gleeful giggling.

Eventually, her face burning with embarrassment, Angeline stopped asking questions.  There were other things to catch her attention, anyway.  Besides the curtained shops, there were stalls selling imported items.  These stalls had multiple grim-looking guards in front with stunrods crackling in their hands.  There were bottles of colored liquids for sale, expensive-looking foil packets, and once she passed by a store that sold leather goods.  Angeline lingered in front of that one, breathing in the novel aroma of leather until the guard threatened her with his stunrod.

Jasmine led the way to one of the rare permanent structures in the market, the nucleus around which the more exclusive stalls had gathered.  From the outside, the structure was featureless poured concrete.  Even the largest stores were never larger than the gap between two pillars, but this structure spanned three gaps on a side.

Placed dead center in the concrete wall, a polyresin door offered entrance.  Over the door, a twisted neon sign proclaimed it to be the Redstone Lounge.  Unlike the rest of this section of the market, there were no guards outside the door.

Angeline slowed to a stop.  There was something about the structure that worried her.  The distinctive oily appearance of the polyresin door told her the door was armored.  It would take the marines or the marshals to break it down with high explosives.  The complete lack of windows or other openings in the concrete gave her an odd feeling of being trapped, even though she was outside the structure.

“What are you waiting for?” Jasmine said, a teasing smile on her face.  “You’re not scared are you?”

“No, that’s not it,” Angeline lied.  “I’m just excited.”  Her stomach was twisting with excitement, but there was a tinge of fear too.

Jasmine grabbed her hand and dragged her toward the polyresin door.

“Are we allowed…?”

“There’s nobody to say we aren’t,” Jasmine pointed out with another smile.  “Besides, places like this, it’s money that gets you in, nothing else.”

Angeline didn’t ask how Jasmine knew that, but trusted her friend.  Jasmine seemed so much more experienced than she was.  She knew what those mysterious shops were selling, and she knew how to enter the Lounge.

As the girls approached the door, it slid open smoothly, revealing a dimly lit foyer, one wall of which was frosted glass lit from behind.  Angeline gave one last look out at the market then let Jasmine pull her inside.

A man who towered over Angeline stepped forward as the polyresin door slid shut behind them.  He was wearing an expensive suit, the fibers of which seemed to be individually reflective so gleaming ripples seemed to run across him as he moved.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” he said in a deep, smooth voice.  “Do you have anything to check in?”

Timidly, Angeline offered her bag with the bird figurine in it.  The man accepted it without comment and offered a fingerprint tablet.  Angeline pressed her thumb against the reader and a small deposit box swung open on the far wall.

“It will be kept safe until you are ready to leave,” he assured her gravely.

“Thank you.”  Angeline stared at the man, trying not to blush.

Jasmine declined to store anything, and the man gave a sort of half-bow, directing them toward a door leading further into the structure.  As they walked toward the door, vague shapes shifted behind the frosted glass, tracking them as they went.  Angeline swallowed a burst of fear and fought it under control.  It was just a scanner, she told herself, probably making sure they didn’t have any weapons.

Then the inner door swung aside and Angeline forgot her fear.  A quiet thump of music washed over her, along with a complex odor.  It smelled of leather, imported perfume, tobacco smoke and old oak.  The walls were paneled with a dark resin, cast to look like wood, that gleamed in the filtered light.

The room was open, divided into roughly three sections.  To Angeline’s left, tables set between low privacy walls offered a secluded dining area.  In the center, more seating surrounded a section left open for dancing.  On the far right, an expansive bar stretched nearly the full width of the room.  Real oak barrels were set high on shelves behind the bar, along with a bewildering array of polished glass bottles.

The floor beneath Angeline’s feet was carpeted with a deep pile that dragged at her feet.  The pillars in the room were sheathed in more of the resin paneling.  The room was thick with opulence.  One of the leather dining seats was worth more money than Angeline had ever even heard of.  The bar was made of real imported mahogany.  Just one of the barrels behind the bar was worth more than Angeline’s parents would make in a year, not to mention the contents of the barrel.

It was early afternoon, but there were people scattered about, mostly talking quietly in the restaurant section, though a few were at the bar.

“Oh, this is amazing!” Jasmine said, walking forward into the room and breaking Angeline from her shock.

Angeline was frozen with indecision.  Part of her was screaming at her to leave.  She did not belong here.  Her family would never have the kind of wealth that the patrons of this place had.  The rest of her wanted to stay and take advantage of Jasmine’s generosity.  She might never have another chance to be in a place as rich as this.

Reluctantly, Angeline followed Jasmine over to the bar.  She had never seen such a large piece of real wood this close.  It seemed to have a depth to it, a complexity of detail and refracted light that could never be duplicated by synthetics.

“What are you ladies drinking today?”

Angeline looked up from the wood into the smiling face of the bartender.  “Oh.  Sorry.”

“Vodka with cranberry,” Jasmine said.  “For both of us.”

The bartender lifted an eyebrow.  “That’s a sophisticated drink for a young woman,” he said.  “Unless you have sophisticated credit to go with that taste…?”

Jasmine handed over the credit chip they had been buying things with all afternoon.  The bartender retreated to scan the chip and Angeline leaned over to her friend and said in a whisper, “What is vodka?  And cranberry?”

“It’s a drink my mama says is delicious.”  Jasmine’s brassy surety seemed to falter a little bit.  “It’s imported.  And very expensive.”

The bartender returned and handed the chip back to Jasmine.  “My apologies, young lady.  Vodka and cranberry it is.”

Angeline watched in fascination as the bartender mixed the drinks.  The scents stung at her nose.  He set the completed drinks down, one in front of each girl and moved off to take care of another customer.

“What is this?” Angeline asked, touching the small wedge of green on the edge of her glass.

“It’s… lime?”  Jasmine pulled it off and licked it, then made a face.  “Sour.  Are you ready?”

Angeline picked up her glass, mirroring Jasmine.  Carefully, the two girls sipped their drinks as one.  Angeline felt the liquid rush down her throat, cold as ice.  Immediately her throat burned and warmth rushed through her body.  She coughed, taking care to set her glass back down.  The fumes running up the back of her throat made her eyes water.  The sour and bitter flavor made her lips pucker.

Jasmine tried to hide it, but the drink had had the same effect on her.  “It’s…” she coughed.  “Different than I expected.  I like it!”  The last she said as a challenge to Angeline, daring her to refute it.

In Angeline’s family, everyone cleaned their plates of all the food, regardless of the lack of seasoning.  Unprocessed yeast paste was unpleasant, and there had been too many days when that was all they’d had to eat.  The serving of vodka and cranberry was probably worth more than her father made in a month.  The drink was painful to consume and rough on her tongue and throat, but she could no more walk away from it than she could stop breathing.

“It’s nice,” Angeline agreed, her voice hoarse, and took another sip to prove it.

Jasmine hurried to follow suit.  Sip by sip, they drank down their glasses, daring each other to be the first one to stop.

Motion from the door drew Angeline’s attention when she was nearing halfway down her glass.  She turned to look and felt blood rush to her head.  She put an arm out on the bar top to steady herself and almost knocked her glass over.

She felt a rush of horror that she had almost wasted nearly half a glass, then a wave of giddiness that disaster had been averted.  She giggled and tried to stop, then snorted.  Jasmine was giggling with her, which made everything worse.  She felt lightheaded, and for the first time since ducking out of line she completely forgot to be worried.

“My, my.  What have we here?”

Angeline started.  She had completely forgotten the people entering the bar that had made her turn to look in the first place.  Pale red eyes in a face that was pasty-white met hers and she blanched.  It was a ghost!  Then her mind caught up with what her eyes were seeing and she realized no, it wasn’t a ghost, it was a wujin.  There were three other men behind him with the telltale paleness and light-colored eyes that spoke of the gradual change.

“Good afternoon,” Jasmine said, pulling the wujin’s gaze from Angeline.

“Aren’t you a little young to be drinking alcohol in a bar?” the wujin asked.  He had a lazy smile on his face that seemed a little threatening to Angeline.

“You’re showing your age, Anton,” one of the wujin’s followers said.  “There are no drinking laws on Mars.”

“My mistake.”  Anton smiled broadly at Jasmine.  “These girls are far too lovely to be drinking alone.  What are you having, anyway?”

“Vodka and cranberry,” Angeline blurted.  There was something edgy and dangerous about this wujin that made her want to know more about him.  She was scared of him, but she wanted those pale red eyes to be fixed on her again.

Anton favored her with a slightly incredulous smile.  “You’re drinking a Cape Cod?  That’s no drink for a girl.  Bartender!” he waved and spun a credit chip down the length of the wooden bar top.  “Get these girls something.  If you like cranberries and vodka, sex on the beach would go down far easier.  And I’ll have bourbon, neat.”

Angeline flushed.  Sex on a beach!  Belatedly, she realized Anton was talking about the drink, not the act.  Fortunately, the wujin had turned back to Jasmine and missed her discomfiture.

“So, what brings you to this corner of Mars?” Anton asked Jasmine.

Jasmine blushed prettily, looking up through her lashes at the wujin.  “Me and my friend are just trying to have some fun.”

Angeline bit off what she had been about to say, that they were playing hooky from a school field trip to the algae vats.  Jasmine’s version sounded so much better.

The bartender arrived with their new drinks on a tray, and set the tall glasses of riotously colored liquid down on coasters.  Angeline took a hesitant sip of hers and was astonished at the delightful burst of fruit that swept her mouth.  There wasn’t even a hint of yeast in it.  The bite of alcohol was still present, but she could almost ignore it.  Fruit, or even fruit flavors, were very rare to come by on Mars as most everything had to be imported from Earth.

“Drinking is fun,” Anton said, taking a sip from his glass.  It held perhaps an inch of deep amber liquid, and his face didn’t twist as he drank it.  It showed a familiarity with alcohol that demanded an incredible amount of disposable income.  “But dancing is more fun.  Do you know how?”

“I know how,” Jasmine said and slid from her stool.  She took a deeper swallow of her drink and set it carefully down on the bar.

Anton offered Jasmine his hand and Angeline realized with some surprise that he wasn’t very tall.  The wujin carried himself with such assurance that he seemed larger than he was, but he had to be less than six feet tall.

“Would you like to dance, ma’am?”

Angeline turned away from watching Jasmine to find one of the wujin’s companions offering her his hand.  She blushed.  “Oh, I don’t know…”  Angeline hesitated, waiting for her usual bout of shyness to sweep over her, but instead all she felt was a light lack of concern.  “Oh okay,” she said, grinning.  “But I don’t think I’ll be very good at it.”

“There is nothing to worry about,” the man assured her.  “Just follow my lead and you will have a wonderful time.  My name is Lucien, by the way.”

“Angeline,” Angeline said.  She left her drink on the bar and let herself be drawn onto the dance floor.  The music was loud enough to be heard clearly, but not so loud as to make conversation difficult.  Angeline felt light on her toes and slightly dizzy in a pleasant way.

Following Lucien’s prompts, she put one hand on his shoulder and the other in his hand.  Lucien was almost a foot taller than she was, and while he was narrow-chested, his shoulders were broad and well-muscled.  Her long-fingered hand felt delicate in his, and his other hand burned against her waist.

Gently, he guided her in a simple dance, stepping to the beat of the music.  After an awkward few minutes, she figured out the flow of the dance and stopped having to pay attention to her steps.  Lucien gave her a twirl and she laughed out loud.  Dancing was fun!  She could get used to this kind of life, she thought, drinking alcohol in expensive clubs and dancing with handsome strangers.

The song came to an end and Lucien led her back to the bar.  The sweet fruit flavor of her drink was perfect for quenching her thirst.  The bite of alcohol in it reminded her of its price and she resisted the urge to drink it in large swallows.

Jasmine was leaning on Anton, laughing at a joke he was telling.  Angeline thought she looked beautiful, more in her element than Angeline could ever be.  Another dance song started up, this one with a slightly quicker beat.  Anton drew Jasmine out onto the floor again, and another one of the wujin’s friends offered to dance with Angeline.

Angeline found the quicker beat more difficult to dance to, but she forgot to be awkward or shy.  The man she was dancing with didn’t have the same broad shoulders of Lucien, but he was quicker on his feet and Angeline soon started enjoying herself again.  She was having a hard time thinking clearly, all her thoughts seemed distant and as if padded with foam.  But she found she didn’t care.  She only cared for the moment, and the moment was enjoyable.

Time seemed to slip by in a blur of dancing and drinking.  Angeline lost track of the number of songs she had danced to.  Was it five?  Six?  She thought she was becoming quite good at dancing, though.

Lucien was Angeline’s partner again, and she giggled as he spun her round and round.  Then, abruptly, nausea swept over her.  Before she could say or do anything, she threw up.  Horrified, Angeline saw Lucien’s suit was stained all down the front, and it was puddled on the polished dance floor.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, brushing futilely at Lucien’s jacket with her hands.  Her head was spinning, she felt like Lucien was still dancing in circles with her but her feet weren’t moving on the ground.  The room tipped over and she lost her balance, falling to her knees in the middle of her sick.

She had never felt more embarrassed in her life.  The smell of bile stung her nose and she vomited again then burst into tears.  She had ruined everything.  Lucien would hate her.  Nobody would ever dance with her again.

A gentle hand on her shoulder made her look up, tears running down her face.  It was Lucien, in his shirt sleeves now, offering her a warm, damp towel.  The gesture made her cry even harder.  She wasn’t worth the sympathy.

“Don’t fret, Angeline,” he said kindly, his voice low and comforting.  “It happens to everyone eventually.”

“I’m so sorry,” Angeline said in between sobs.  “I just got so dizzy all of a sudden and I couldn’t help it.”

“There now.  Really, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.  There’s no harm done.”

Lucien helped her get to her feet.  It felt like someone had yanked the padding from around her thoughts, leaving her head throbbing.

“I must apologize,” Anton said, joining Lucien at her side.  “I forgot how young you two must be.”  Louder, he said to someone else, “No, no need.  I’ll escort them home.”

Angeline wrapped her arms around herself, feeling sick and miserable.  They were being thrown out of the club and it was her fault.  Jasmine stared daggers at her and turned to say something to Anton, her tone wheedling.  He laughed and said something reassuring.  Angeline felt like she should have heard what was said, but the blood thundering in her ears made it hard to understand.

“Here,” Lucien said, offering her a small metal flask.  “Take a sip of this, it will help settle your stomach.”

With hands that trembled slightly, Angeline accepted the flask and tilted it back to drink.  It tasted fresh and minty, and washed the lingering sourness from her mouth.  The rush of cool liquid soothed her roiling stomach.  A wave of lassitude swept over her and she found her head no longer hurt.  Her eyes sagged shut and she felt Lucien catch her in his strong arms as she wobbled on her feet.

Then a warm darkness crept over her and she fell asleep.

CHAPTER

THREE

WANTED!

$3000 reward

The Free State of Texas is offering a $3000 bounty for information that leads to the capture of individuals showing traits of non-genetic albinism.  Wujin are a violation of the December Protocol and are a plague upon our society.  Do not allow this cancer to spread within your neighborhood!

Do your duty.  If you know of someone with albinism who is not a registered genetic albino, do not hesitate to report them.

Min Yang checked his oxygen levels again.  He still had half a tank left, which gave him a few hours before he had to start worrying about getting back inside an airlock.  The carbon dioxide scrubbers were holding up, but they did little to remove the stink of stale sweat from the inside of his suit.

He fought the urge to sigh.  Three days of fruitless wandering about the surface had resulted in nothing but wasted air and a profound desire to be deep underground again.  There had been a time when the open skies of Earth had been natural, and living underground had felt claustrophobic.  He wasn’t agoraphobic, not really, but he had lived on Mars long enough that wide open spaces made him uncomfortable.

Min swiped a gloved hand across the console of his buggy, knocking loose the accumulated dust.  He was driving between the water mining camps on the southern pole searching for someone.  The camps were temporary, operating in the windows when the axial tilt of the planet kept the daylight hours short.  As the days grew longer, the sheets of dry ice that formed during the cold months evaporated and built up into katabatic winds.  The winds were so strong that the temporary shelters would be ripped from their moorings in a moment.

The mining camps attracted a rough sort of people.  They worked outside the safety of the clusters in barely habitable conditions.  For around a hundred days once every Martian year, the miners worked like mad dogs at their pneumatic hammers, collecting as much water ice as possible before the winds picked up again and made it impossible to work for the remaining five hundred days of the Martian year.

The water miners made a killing upon their return to the nearest cluster.  If their equipment didn’t break down, necessitating repairs and delays.  If their temporary habitats didn’t collapse or burst.  If they weren’t shot in the back and their load of ice stolen.  If nothing went wrong, a miner could make enough money to pay for a year of very comfortable living.  Or enough money to pay for another year of Womack treatments.

A disproportionate number of miners had the pale skin and pink eyes of the wujin, desperate men who knew their lives depended on the size of their ice haul.  People who were that desperate were one equipment failure away from turning criminal.  Out on the ice face, who could say if someone died from a cave collapse or an ice pick to the back of the head?

The buggy’s satellite uplink gave Min a navigation marker to the next mining habitat, along with a suggested route marked in red.  Red routes meant the software’s best-guess mapping algorithm couldn’t make out enough terrain detail to guarantee a safe passage.  Still, a red route was a better option than traversing the landscape blind.

To someone who had lived in Earth’s gravity, Min’s buggy would appear ludicrously unsubstantial.  Enormous balloon tires supported a chassis that was little more than a network of trusses.  The chassis was open to the elements offering the driver only a leaded-glass canopy to protect from harsh solar radiation.  Each tire was powered individually by a compact, yet powerful electric motor.  Having the motive drive on the wheels freed the buggy from the necessity of having axles and drive chains, which gave it a spidery appearance with the chassis lifted high off the ground.

Min got the buggy turned around to start following the suggested route and switched the navigation over to the AI.  This part of Mars was a maze of canyons carved into the red rock by the katabatic winds.  The canyons were fractal: the surfaces of the large canyons were carved with smaller canyons, which in turn were carved with even smaller canyons, until even the dust coating everything was arranged in ridges and valleys.

Here, the buggy’s design came into play.  The bottom of the chassis, with each long leg supporting a wheel at full extension, was nearly eight feet off the ground.  Each leg was individually articulated and extensible, to the point where it could, at times, lock the wheels from rotating and walk over the most difficult terrain.

The buggy could be manually controlled, but the batteries could only provide so much power.  The complexity of the terrain made wheel placement complicated, and a human driver’s best attempts at conservative driving fell far short of the AI’s control.  Even a skilled driver couldn’t hope to get thirty percent of the AI’s mileage.

Min’s role in steering the buggy could go from precision control of each articulated leg, to fully automatic with only a GPS coordinate as instruction.  Time was an issue, though, and Min didn’t have all day to reach the next habitat.  The AI might decide that taking a meandering path around a ridge might consume less power than going in a straight line over it, but it would take an extra twenty minutes to do so.  Min had power to spare, so he instructed the AI to prioritize speed over conservation.

With his navigation set up, Min leaned back in the driver’s hammock.  After watching the buggy’s progress for a few minutes, he laid his head back, darkened his visor, and took a nap.

He woke to a chime in his earpiece and the calm voice of the buggy’s navigation AI informing him that he would reach the destination in one minute.  Min slapped blindly at the controls, muting the voice before clearing his visor and lifting himself into a sitting position.

The habitat was visible, nestled in the crook where two ridges met.  Above the ridge, the dirty red wall of ice loomed.  The habitat was one large dome, with a half-dozen smaller domes connected to it in a radial pattern.  As the ground flattened out on the final approach to the habitat, the buggy automatically drew in its legs and collapsed down.

Min’s nav computer shrilled and chattered at the habitat’s automated vehicle airlock, establishing Min’s identity.  With a small puff of lost pressure, the airlock slid open and the buggy trundled inside, nosing up to an open charging station and powering down.

The garage had a score of charging stations, perhaps a third of which were occupied.  Most of the temporary inhabitants of the habitat were out on the ice.  The miners here were either sleeping or busy getting drunk.  Min unholstered the pistol at his belt, verified that it was loaded and the safety was on, and then put it back.  He examined the rifle strapped above the buggy’s hammock next, checking that the maglocks were secure and the trigger locked out.  Satisfied the weapon couldn’t be stolen or discharged into the habitat’s walls, he left the buggy behind and entered the airlock.

The main dome of the habitat was largely open, with life support machinery isolated against one wall.  Opposite, a short bar provided a scattering of stools.  A collection of entertainment consoles huddled in the center.  Min ignored the heads turning to look at him suspiciously and made his way to the bar, releasing the clasp on his helmet as he walked.

“We’re not looking for any trouble around here,” the man behind the counter said with a pointed look at Min’s pistol.

“Neither am I,” Min lied.  “I’m on my way east, just stopping by to top my tanks and refresh my scrubbers.  A bite to eat wouldn’t go amiss either.”

The man relaxed.  “That we can provide.  You don’t have the look of a miner about you.  If you don’t mind me asking, what are you doing so far south?”

“I don’t mind,” Min said easily.  “So long as you don’t mind me not saying.”  He gave a smile, taking the sting from his words.

“You a hunter?” one of the men at the bar stepped off his stool and walked over to loom over Min.

Min was a natural-born Earthman.  A long life spent in low gravity had made him taller than he would otherwise have been, but he was still barely over six feet tall on a good day.  The miner in front of him was seven foot six, at least.  Min eyed the miner and ran a hand through his hair that was damp with sweat.  Hair that was bone white, without a trace of pigment.

“Why don’t you sit yourself back down before you get hurt,” Min said quietly.  “I ain’t here for you, gweilo.”

The miner held Min’s gaze for the space of a held breath then dropped his eyes.  “Fucking wujin,” he muttered.

Min turned slowly, sweeping the room with his gaze.  The miners who had been watching him turned back to their drinks and games.  Slowly the murmur of conversation picked back up.

The man behind the counter set a bowl of yeast noodles down in front of Min, along with a collection of bottled sauces.  “I don’t want violence in my habitat,” he said.

Min slid a credit chip across the counter to the man and mulled over the offered spices before selecting one that promised a garlic and ginger flavor.  “I’m not looking for violence.  Just my mark.”

“We’re all law-abiding folk here.”

The chopsticks separated with a pop and Min held the man’s eyes for a moment before bending his head to eat.  He didn’t dignify the patently false statement with a reply.  Ice miners were often criminals, knowing that cluster law enforcers couldn’t be bothered chasing them above ground.  But the petty nickel and dime bounties offered for most criminals wouldn’t bring a wujin hunter to the ice fields, and the man knew that as well as Min did.

“What’s your name?” Min finally asked.

“Vito Nataniel.”

Min nodded, forgetting it as soon as the man had finished speaking.  “Well.  I imagine you want me gone.  Which suits me, as I don’t want to be here.”  He waited for Vito’s hesitant agreement before continuing.  “The mark I’m after is dangerous.  Multiple homicides, kidnapping, extortion,” Min ticked off the crimes on his fingers.  “The kind of person who would slit every throat here and claim their ice without so much as a blink.”

“Like I said,” Vito said, “There ain’t nobody here like that.”

Min sighed.  He held up another bite of noodles.  The sauce he had chosen glistened along the strands.  Abruptly he lost his appetite and pushed the bowl away.  He fumbled inside his suit for a moment before coming out with his tablet.

Vito flinched then cursed softly to himself.  Min raised an eyebrow at him and thumbed the tablet on.  He spun it around so Vito could see it.  “I’m looking for this person.”

Min read the truth in Vito’s eyes before the man flicked his gaze up to meet Min’s gaze.  “I don’t…”

“Save it.  Where can I find her?”

Vito glanced toward the back, where one of the smaller huts joined to the main habitat, then jerked his eyes back to Min.  Sweat was starting to bead on Vito’s forehead.

“Out on the ice.  In one of the far tunnels.  I’ll give you coordinates.”

Min tapped his tablet with a finger absently, wondering at Vito’s lies.  The man was so transparent Min could probably guess his birthday after a few questions.  “As you say,” he said calmly, putting the tablet back.  “I still need to fuel my buggy and change out my filters before I go.”

“You’re using standard?”  Vito turned away from the bar and started rummaging through baskets of recharged filters and coming up with a suitable pair.

Min checked the filters, confirmed the carbon dioxide-adsorbing media had been refreshed and replaced his suit’s nearly spent filters with the new ones.  Vito was watching him intently, his dark eyes narrowed.

“What?” Min asked testily.

Vito’s eyes flicking to something behind Min was all the warning Min had.  He spun, one hand darting to the pistol on his belt.   There were four of them, greasy-haired and long-limbed.  They wore suit liners, stained in the arm pits and crotch from long hours of sweating in cheap suits.  The gun in Min’s hand gave them a half second of pause, then they lunged forward with long, bounding strides.

Guns in habitats were a bluff, more often than not.  Even a shot that struck a man dead center still had a chance of going through the target and ripping open the habitat fabric.  Only a man with a death wish actually fired a gun without a suit on.  Min had a suit, mostly, but his helmet was sitting on the bar five feet away.  Even if it had been in reach, there was no way he could properly suit up before his assailants reached him.

Vito shouted, his words lost in the drum of adrenaline inside Min’s head.  While Min lived with a constant, itching death wish, he wasn’t quite ready to die.  Min’s pistol came up and the eyes of the assailant nearest him widened in disbelief.  Then the gun barked and a storm of monomol fragments ripped his face to tatters with a shrieking howl.

The man tumbled to the floor wailing, his hands clutched about the ruin of his face.  The other three saw their companion go down and fear was plain upon their faces.  Min felt a surge of admiration tinged with contempt.  Charging a man with a monomol gun was tantamount to suicide, but the men were already committed.  While the effective range of a monomol round wasn’t much more than ten yards, there was nowhere in the habitat they could run to that would be safe.  Surrender was their only sane option, but still they came, with the hope they could overpower Min before he brought them all down.

Min fought the kick of the pistol’s muzzle and dragged it around to the left.  The sights lined up with a wide open screaming face and he pulled the trigger, already turning his head to find the next target.  A great weight slammed into him from the right and Min went down in a tangle of limbs.

Somehow, he kept hold of the pistol.  Min crashed into the bar, knocking the remains of his yeast noodles flying.  One of the miners was on top of him, both long-fingered hands knotted together and raised over his head, already swinging down toward Min with crushing force.

Monomol fragments were notoriously poor at penetrating even the moderately tough material of suit liners, but at point-blank range the round came out as a nearly solid slug of metal.  Min pulled the trigger and the round tore through the miner’s suit liner and liquefied the man’s chest cavity.  The force of the round slumped the man sideways and tangled his legs with Min’s.

Before Min could turn his head to locate the last of his assailants, a heavy boot kicked the gun from his hand and sent it skittering across the floor of the habitat.  The last of the attacking miners pulled back his boot again, this time aiming at Min’s skull.

The deadweight of the lung-shot miner pinned Min down and he couldn’t do anything but throw up an arm to partially deflect the blow.  The kick numbed his arm from the elbow down.  Min kicked the dead man off of him and rolled to his knees just in time to catch another kick across his jaw.  Stars burst in his vision, and before he could do anything else, the long arm of the miner wrapped around his throat and pulled tight.

When Min had learned to fight on Earth, his size had been an advantage. Tall for a Chinese, at six foot three, he had learned how easy it was to subdue his smaller opponents.  After coming to Mars, Min found the tables turned.  The low gravity lengthened the natives’ bones and more often than not, Min found himself pitted against men and women more than a foot taller than him.

Though long years on Mars had lowered his muscle mass, Min was still substantially stronger than the natives.  Even so, the miner had him in a headlock that he would never be able to break out of.

Min’s vision pulsed black around the edges as the miner’s arm cut off the blood flow to his head.  He struggled weakly for a moment and felt his hand brush against one of the chopsticks from his overturned bowl.  With the last of his strength, Min grabbed the slim polymer stick and slammed it down on the miner’s knee.

He missed the knee, but the chopstick tore through the suit liner and stabbed deep into the man’s lower leg, scraping along the tibia.  The miner threw Min off him with an outraged yell and Min rolled away, coughing and straining for breath.  Min’s vision cleared and he staggered to his feet just in time to see to miner lunge at him again.

Instincts drilled into him endlessly on the practice floor made Min drop his shoulder and turn the impetus of the miner’s charge against him.  With one hand, Min grabbed the loose liner at the miner’s shoulder and let his own unstable legs collapse.  The charging miner bowled him over and Min kicked out as he fell, flipping the miner into the air.

Min rolled to his feet and found the miner lumped upside down against an entertainment console, his neck twisted to one side.

“Freeze, man!”

Min turned slowly, his hands spread to either side.  Vito had Min’s pistol aimed at him in shaking hands.  The clientele of the habitat had come running from all corners at the first gunshot, and now stood in the background watching with varying degrees of shock on their faces.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Min urged, his voice calm and quiet, if a little rough around the edges from his recent bout of choking.

“Fuck you, I’ve got the gun now.  And I said to freeze!”

Min stopped his slow walk forward.  “I’m a marshal,” he said.  Moving slowly, he reached into his suit and drew out his badge of office, a silver embossed image of Mars.  Chinese characters and Spanish script ran around the circumference, giving the motto of the marshals in two languages: Justice through Action.

A susurrus swept through the room and Min nodded at Vito.  “Put it down.  If you pull that trigger, you’re a dead man.”

Min met Vito’s eyes over the sights of the pistol and he waited, wondering if this was the moment when he would finally die.  The tension in the room grew until Min could feel it crackling between them, then Vito let out a choked sob and let the pistol’s muzzle swing down to the floor.

Min closed the distance to Vito and caught the pistol before it slipped all the way from Vito’s hand.

“Alright, I think it’s time you started talking,” Min growled as he holstered his pistol angrily.  He felt shaky with excess adrenaline.

Vito turned to walk back behind the bar and stumbled over one of the miners, his boots skidding in the blood that pooled around the corpse.  By the time Vito was back to his usual position behind the bar, his face was mottled with green and white.

“I’d say I’m sorry,” Min said, “but I’m not.  This could have been avoided if you had been honest with me in the first place.”

“I thought you were after a bounty,” Vito muttered, pouring himself a glass of water with shaking hands.  “Didn’t know you were a marshal.  You going to arrest anyone?”

Min rolled his shoulder, feeling the beginnings of a bruise on his back from where he had hit the bar.  “Why would I arrest someone?” he asked.  “Pour me some of that, would you?”

Vito stopped with the glass halfway to his mouth and slid it over to Min before pouring himself another glass.  “Isn’t that what marshals do?  If I held a gun on a marshal in a cluster, I’d be in irons before I could count to ten.”

“This look like a cluster to you?” Min asked wryly.  “If I arrested everyone with a record or poor crisis management reactions, I’d have half the population of the mining camps dragging behind my buggy.  And then I’d have to explain why the yearly ice shipment was cut in half.”  He made a dismissive gesture with one hand.  “Like I said before, I’m only interested in the bounty.”

“Didn’t know marshals collected bounties,” Vito said.

“We do the work, we get the reward,” Min shrugged.  “But we’re not paid to bounty hunt.  My mark killed a marshal after escaping custody and disappeared.  A facial scanner got a ping down here a few weeks back, so I was sent to collect.  With a body bag if I had to.  The reward is just a perk.”

“It’s like that, huh?”

“It is,” Min said.  “So I’ll ask you again.  You seen my mark?”

Vito let his head sag forward.  “Out on the ice.  I swear,” he said hurriedly, glancing up to meet Min’s glare.  “I’ll send you true.  I don’t want any trouble with the marshals.”

“I’m calling it in before I leave,” Min warned.  “If I don’t make it back, it will go poorly for you.”

“It’s the right place.  I promise.”  Vito’s face blanched.  “But, uh, I should get you some new CD scrubbers.”

Min’s face darkened.

“Just in case!” Vito said in a rush.  “The, uh, old recycled scrubbers sometimes have a shorter life than you might think.  I’ll get you a brand new pair!  No charge.”

Vito hurried to a storage cabinet and came back with an unopened box of filters.  He popped the tape and handed Min a pair of filters still in their factory wrappings.  Brand new filters were a luxury most miners couldn’t afford.  They recycled their old ones until the element was burned out completely and even then they usually used recycled filters purchased surplus.  The new filters were worth several times what Min had paid to have his old ones replaced.

With the new filters installed in his suit, Min felt some of the homicidal rage drain away.  Going out to the surface with burned out filters could have been extremely dangerous.  At best, he would have been forced to waste huge amounts of oxygen as his suit flushed the used air to keep the buildup of carbon dioxide below fatal levels.

“Any other surprises?” Min asked.  “Last chance to come clean.”

Vito shook his head.  “Nothing.  I swear it.”

“You’re sure my mark is at the coordinates?”

“It’s the registered site,” Vito shrugged helplessly.  “They should be correct.”

Min glared, but nodded reluctantly.  Less than scrupulous miners would sometimes hijack another claim, even if only for a few hours, and gather up all the loose ice crystals.  There was no way to be certain if the mark was there until Min actually went out to the dig site and looked.

“Alright.”  Min collected his helmet and secured it into position.  His suit automatically started going through a self-diagnosis and he held Vito’s eyes as each system returned green one by one.  The last check completed and Min nodded a farewell at Vito.  “Thanks for the noodles.  And sorry about the bodies.”

CHAPTER

FOUR

Sunday New York Times

April 22nd 2108

EUREKA!

The Helix Rebuild works!  Humanity has unlocked the secrets of immortality.  In a marvel of genetic extraction, an unfertilized human egg was discovered to hold the key to rejuvenation.  The egg has to be an exact genetic match, however.  The details beyond that are still classified, but there have been successful human trials running for several years now.  Mother’s Day is coming up, gentlemen.  There is still time to get your mother the gift that promises eternity.

Min rode his buggy slowly through the knife-edge canyons on the approach to the glacier.  From orbit, the polar cap had a clear demarcation.  On the ground, nothing could be further from the truth.  The gleaming white of the polar cap was really the surface accumulation of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice.  Water ice, the lingering remnant from millions of years ago when Mars had still had water oceans, was beneath that layer of dry ice.  Eons of dust storms and gradual sublimation had mixed in the fine iron oxide dust that was so prevalent on the surface with the water ice.

The result was dozens of yards of mud, frozen rock hard and coated with several feet of dry ice.  A miner boring into the glacier to find veins of clear water ice had to tunnel past the mud, and even then the ice was only clean in patches and rifts.  Drifts that had been mined for many years gradually grew richer and cleaner until surface pollutants were completely gone.  Deeper into the polar regions, clean water ice was closer to the surface, but getting there was prohibitively difficult.

Where Min was riding now, the drifts had been worked for only a few years, and the miners were barely scraping by, year to year.  Most of the water they collected was through melting down the mud and filtering the dust out of it.  Heating frozen mud from minus one hundred degrees Fahrenheit up to a liquid state took a ludicrous amount of energy, most commonly supplied by solar panels.

The drifts Min passed were marked by extensive arrays of solar panels, with fat cables running into airlocks cemented directly into the tunnel openings.  The miners worked in shifts.  During the short day when the sun was above the horizon, the miners worked with the refining equipment, extracting as much water as they could from the mud while the electricity flowed.  After the sun went down, the miners returned to the backbreaking effort of slowly carving at the mud, gathering chips and filings to be melted down once the sun rose again.  The miners cut the mud with hand tools, as every watt of energy from the solar panels went into melting free the water.

On a good day, a single miner might chip free enough mud to extract twenty or thirty gallons of water.  At the end of the mining season, a miner was lucky to have extracted and purified two thousand gallons of water.  At a hundred credits a gallon, that was enough to live frugally through the down season, repair equipment, and hopefully have enough left over to afford a few more solar panels to increase the harvest next season.

After ten or fifteen years of mining, a drift purified and the yield of water increased.  After investing all those years of labor and funds into the drift, a miner might expect a yield of five to ten thousand gallons of water.  Most miners, having reached that magical number, retired and sold time shares of their drift to new miners, where they could learn the trade and keep one fifth of their harvest as profit.

Some of the oldest drifts extended for miles beneath the surface in tangled catacombs.  Stories of miners getting lost within their own drift and freezing to death were commonplace.  And, of course, with that much wealth on the line, piracy and murder ran rampant.  There was no law on the drifts other than the gun at your belt and the goodwill of the men who ran the habitats.  A man guilty of piracy might find the doors of the habitat locked to them and a cold death by exposure their fate.

Min’s buggy stopped trying to roll and switched over to the slower but surer walking method of locomotion as the ground grew more ragged and wind-carved.  Min held onto the straps as the pilot hammock jerked and swung with the uneven gait of the buggy.  After thirty minutes of bone-jarring travel, the ground evened out again and a new spread of solar panels became visible, like an infestation of silicon fungi.

The buggy settled back into wheeled transit and soon Min started seeing the tracks of buggy tires leading toward the rising wall of ice.  Nestled in a crevice, the gleam of polyresin was visible: the airlock leading down into the drift.

Min slowed the buggy down to a crawl.  He wasn’t worried about the group back at the habitat having radioed ahead.  The heavy iron content of the mud made the drifts completely isolated from the outside.  It was possible, though, that his quarry might have a lookout watching for the approach of an unknown vehicle.

After a careful scan of the surrounds, Min decided there wasn’t a watcher outside.  It made sense.  The sun was up and everyone at the drift would be working at melting down the mud and filtering the water out of it.

Or so he hoped.

Min called up the marshal file on his mark and had it display on his helmet’s screens.  Sarah Esperalda.  Earth-born, of Spanish decent.  Five feet and seven inches tall, white hair usually left to grow long.  Beautiful, if your tastes went to wujin, with an aristocratic cast to her cheeks and nose.  Three hundred and five years of age.

That last number gave Min pause and his gaze lingered on it, lost in thought.  For Sarah to be that old, she had to have been one of the very first to receive treatment with the Womack Process, and was likely to be one of the oldest living humans.  It seemed a crime, somehow, a failure of society, for her to be where she was now, digging mud out of a hole and on the run from the law.

After a moment, Min kept scrolling down the file.  Sarah had a gang, for lack of a better term, the majority of which had been captured back in the cluster.  She was thought to have escaped with six of her men.  Having run into four “miners” at the habitat put the lie to the report.  She either had more men than they had expected, or she had been hiring among the miners.  Or both.

Briefly, Min wished that things had gone better back at the habitat.  Vito might have had useful information, such as how many men were currently working in the drift.

It was too late now, though.  Min guided his buggy to the row of other vehicles and parked.  A neoprene-covered articulated arm groped out from the station and mated up with his vehicle.  Min swung out of the hammock and recovered his rifle.  Unlike the pistol on his belt, the rifle fired solid rounds.  Monomol ammunition worked well in a habitat where he couldn’t risk punching a hole through the walls, but in the ice tunnels he wouldn’t have to worry about that.

He checked the rifle’s safety, cycled the action to chamber a round and swung it by its strap onto his shoulder.  After a pause for thought, Min ejected the half-spent clip on his pistol and replaced it with a fresh one.  Satisfied he was as ready as he was going to be, Min walked up the slight rise toward the airlock.

The drift tunnel had been carved into the nearly vertical face of the canyon wall.  After boring straight in a distance of fifteen feet, the airlock had been installed.  Like most mining airlocks, it was designed to be cemented into the walls of the drift with mud slurry.  A few seconds of exposure to the frigid Martian environment and the mud hardened like concrete, fixing the airlock in place.  A thin film of dry ice covered everything.

Min approached the airlock and it automatically started to cycle, pumping the atmosphere within back inside the drift.  Fighting inside the drift was going to be much more difficult than in the habitat.  Even though the atmosphere was pressurized, the miners worked in their suits, making the monomol rounds next to useless.  It was far too cold to work without the suit’s built-in heating systems.  The atmosphere was there as a safety measure and to provide breathable air so the suits didn’t have to run on their onboard scrubbers.  It was far cheaper to pull the excess carbon dioxide out of the air through cryogenic liquefaction than to use a chemical scrubber.

The airlock finished cycling and yawned open.  Min swung the rifle off his shoulder and walked in.  The doors closed behind him and atmosphere rushed in.  After only a few seconds the inner doors popped with a hiss and slid aside, giving him access to the drift.

The ice tunnel was illuminated by a series of LED strips tacked to the low ceiling with globs of mud.  The strips gave a weak light, barely enough to navigate by.  Brighter lights would be a waste of wattage that could otherwise be put toward melting more mud.  Min fought the urge to turn his suit lamps on.  In a few minutes his eyes would adjust to the murk anyway, and the bright lights would only make him a target.

His suit sensed the atmosphere and opened the baffles, pulling in fresh, frigid air to replace the polluted air within.  With the baffles open, Min abruptly could hear the sound of machinery and the distant rumble of human voices.

Min waited, his rifle aimed down the passage, and his eyes gradually adjusted to the dim lighting.  The distant machinery hummed and clunked.  When he could see easily again, Min set off down the passage, taking care to place his feet softly.

The walls were dense, red mud that glittered with reflected light.  Tool marks were plainly visible in striations.  Over everything, a thin film of dry ice gleamed.  The walls were cold enough to pull the carbon dioxide from the air and precipitate it as ice.  The tunnel twisted erratically, following pockets of pure water ice the miners had stumbled across, but constantly sloped downward.  The miners had dumped the dried out mud on the slope after extracting the water, giving his feet a solid grip on what would otherwise have been a slope slick with dry ice crystals.

“Yeah, I said I’ll find out what’s keeping them.”

Min froze as a voice called out just around the corner ahead, muffled from wearing a helmet.  Before he could do anything, a miner swung around the corner muttering to himself.  The miner looked up, shock written plain on his face.  Min leapt forward and slammed the butt of his rifle against the man’s helmet faceplate.

Glass shattered and the man drew in a deep breath to shout a warning.  Instead of raising the alarm, though, the man fell to his knees as he croaked out a hoarse moan and scrabbled at his face.  The ragged edges of his faceplate shredded his gloves and cut his fingers leaving brilliant red streaks of frozen blood behind.  Min carefully kicked the miner in the solar plexus, driving the air from his lungs.  The miner struggled to catch his breath, but every gasp made it harder for him to breathe until he jerked in a spasm and died.

It was a grim reminder of how cold the air was.  It might have the right elements in it to sustain life, but a breath of it would freeze the tissue of your throat and crystallize the moisture in your lungs.  Too many breaths and your lung tissue would be coated with ice, and that would be the end.

Min waited, holding his breath so his suit’s air pumps wouldn’t drown out the sound of approaching footsteps.  After a minute, he let his breath out slowly.  Nobody had heard the sound of the breaking faceplate over the machinery.

With a last check to make sure the miner was dead, Min stepped over the body and continued down the passage.  The sound of machinery was growing louder and he could hear the periodic chunk of a shovel biting into a pile of mud shards, then the glassy cascade as the shovel-load landed in a metal hopper.

Min paused at the next corner.  Ahead, the narrow drift tunnel opened up into a wide cavern.  Columns had been left periodically to support the roof.  Scattered about the circumference of the cavern, small exploratory drifts had been started then abandoned.  Across the cavern from him, Min could see a larger drift descending downward.

In the center of the cavern, the ice processing machinery sat, giving off waves of heat.  On one end, a hopper was being fed a constant stream of mud shards.  On the other, a conveyor belt disgorged half-gallon blocks of pure water ice sheathed in polymer cling-wrap to prevent sublimation.  A chute trickled out a constant stream of dry Martian dust.

Around the machinery, a crew of miners worked.  Min counted eight miners tending the machine, bringing wheelbarrow loads of mud shards from deeper within the drift, stacking the ice blocks neatly on the far wall, or shoveling away the accumulated dry dust.

All of the miners were gweilo, the tall, stick-thin descendents of Mars natives.  Nowhere did Min see the diminutive figure of Sarah Esperalda.

Min frowned.  He couldn’t, in good conscience, simply open fire on the miners without knowing if they were working with Sarah.  At the same time, he couldn’t ask them if they knew where Sarah was.  There were too many.  If he got into a drawn-out firefight here, the odds were stacked against his survival.  As the dead miner in the tunnel had demonstrated, even the smallest breach to his suit could be fatal.

What he needed, Min decided, was a distraction.  From where he stood in the entrance, he could see a bank of batteries nestled in a hollow, with heavy cables running to the processing machinery.  A junction box fed a bundle of smaller wires that crawled up the wall to the ceiling and multiplied outward, powering the lighting in the cavern and throughout the mine.

Min unhooked the loudspeaker from his belt and tucked it into a crevice.  Normally, loudspeakers were used to communicate when direct radio wasn’t possible.  Marshal-issue suits came with oversized loudspeakers in case it was necessary to be heard over long distances or over loud ambient noise, like a gunfight.  After a long look around the room to fix everything in his mind, Min drew a careful bead with his rifle on the lightning junction box, thumbed the safety off, and gently squeezed the trigger.

The report of the rifle cracked through the cavern, echoing madly.  The junction box exploded in a coruscating waterfall of sparks and the cavern was plunged into darkness.  Pandemonium followed, with the miners shouting and running about.  Min slipped into the cavern and felt his way along the wall until he found one of the niches where excavation had been abandoned.

“This is the marshals!” Min cried.  His voice boomed from the entrance where he had left the loudspeaker.  “We’re here for Sarah Esperalda.  Lay down your arms and nobody needs to get hurt!”

A long burst of automatic gunfire lit the cavern, strobe-like, chewing a cloud of mud shards from the walls around the entrance.  Min sighted down his rifle.  The question of innocence among the miners had been answered.  The gunman spraying bullets toward the entrance was clearly visible, the only bright source of light in the cavern.  Min shot him and the gunfire died instantly.  In the dark, it was hard to tell if the shot had been good.

Min heard confused shouting over the ringing in his ears.  The din of the automatic weapon had been fantastic.  A woman’s voice, high and commanding cut through it, then the cavern fell silent.  They had switched to a private radio frequency.

“Sarah Esperalda,” Min called, “Lay down your arms.  This is your last warning!”

A gleam of light from the sparking junction box reflected off the curve of a helmet to Min’s right.  He pressed himself back into the niche and watched the miner creep by.  It was so dark that Min could only see the miner as a blob of darkness shifting around, with sporadic glints reflecting off polished surfaces.

Min let the miner get in front of him before easing out behind.  With one motion, Min grabbed the miner from behind with one hand, and with the other drew the knife in his leg sheath.  The knife was an emergency blade, sharp as a razor but not nearly long enough to kill someone with.  It did, however, work perfectly to cut a great ragged slash through the front of the miner’s suit.

“He’s here!” the miner shrieked, and swung his hand around, bringing something to bear on Min.  A cloud of steam erupted from the front of the miner’s suit as the warm, humid air inside was released.

It was too dark to see what the miner held in his hand, but it didn’t take a lot of imagination to guess.  Min blocked the swing, then twisted the arm around and locked out the joint.  If Min had been trying to subdue the miner, he could have just held pressure on the arm until the miner capitulated.  Min didn’t have the luxury, though, so he heaved his weight against the arm and felt the joint give with a soggy crunch.

The miner screamed, then choked as the cold rushed into his lungs.  Lights flared from a suit somewhere on the far side of the cavern, stabbing out into the darkness.  Min left the miner huddled around his shattered arm and started carefully making his way around the cavern’s outer walls.

The waving suit lights illuminated a cluster of miners near the bulk of the machinery in the center of the cavern.  Min braced himself against a crate and started shooting.  The miner with his lamp on made the easiest target, but Min ignored him for now, instead shooting the miners that the light shone on.

Min shot four of the miners before a burst of automatic fire took down the miner with the lamp.  Distantly, Min heard Sarah screaming at her men.  Min allowed himself a tight smile.  They would think twice before shining another light around.

A smudge of movement to Min’s left caught his eye, then a miner crashed into him, knocking him sprawling across the frozen ground.  Something heavy whistled through the air by his head and cracked into the ground, sending a burst of frozen mud tinkling against Min’s helmet.

Min rolled to the side frantically.  He had lost his rifle somewhere in the dark.  Motion blurred again and slammed into the crate.  Polymer shattered and foil-wrapped meal packets sprayed out onto the ground.  Min scrambled to his feet, his heart racing.  He closed a hand around the butt of his pistol and tried to listen over the pounding of blood in his ears.

He heard the crunching pop of a pouch of noodles being stepped on, and he drew and fired.  The muzzle flare gave him just enough light to see a towering miner staggering backward under the impact of the monomol round, a bare two yards away, a heavy pickaxe clutched in one hand.  Min adjusted his aim higher and fire again, this time he got the rewarding shatter of the miner’s faceplate.

“It’s just one man!” Sarah screamed.  “Will one of you useless bastards kill him already?  He’s over by the storage crates!”

Min dropped to the ground and started to crawl through the scattered meal packets.  He had been lucky so far.  His suit was undamaged despite rolling around on the ground.  He didn’t want to hit his faceplate against something and crack the glass, but he was rapidly running out of options.

Sporadic fire from two automatic guns starting ripping through the air over Min.  Shards of frozen mud, bits of polymer, and shreds of preserved food rained down around him.  Ricochets howled off the walls.  Any moment, Min expected to feel the flashing pain of a bullet tearing through him.

Then he reached a pillar and crawled around it, putting its bulk between himself and the storage crates.  He could see the two shooters, lit in flashes from their gunfire.  Behind them, he saw the small form of Sarah pacing back and forth.  If only he had his rifle he could end this right now, but the gun was somewhere mixed up in the debris of the storage crates.

During the course of the fight, Min had moved almost halfway around the cavern.  The electrical installation was close by on his left.  Whatever short that had been spraying sparks had melted down and only an occasional arc sputtered now.

Moving quickly and hoping nobody turned to look in his direction, Min circled around the cavern, making use of whatever cover he could find.  Finally, the gunners ran out of ammunition and quiet descended on the cavern once more.  Min heard Sarah shouting at them, and one of them turned on his suit lamp before the two of them picked their way over toward the storage crates with pickaxes clutched in their hands.

Sarah stood alone, nervously watching the two miners.  Min kept picking his way around the cavern.  He was close enough now that he could close the distance with a short sprint.

“He’s not here!”

Min abandoned stealth and ran toward Sarah.  The miners had both turned on their lamps and were sweeping the cavern wildly.  Their beams were visible as they swung around, the light shining off the frozen mist formed by the humidity vented from breached spacesuits.

Sarah spun around.  Min was close enough to see her eyes widen behind her faceplate, and then he plowed into her, knocking her sprawling and sending her gun skittering across the floor.  Min kept his balance, if only just barely, and was ready when Sarah surged up from the ground swinging.  Like most Earth-born who had remained physically active, she still retained more muscle mass than even the strongest gweilo, and in the low Martian gravity, she could use it to great effect.

She swung powerful blows that would have knocked Min sprawling had any of them landed.  Min turned her swings aside then caught one of Sarah’s wrists as she overextended.  A tug pulled her off balance and before she could recover, he lashed out with his knife, ripping a six-inch tear in her suit.

Sarah stumbled away, pressing her gloved hands against the tear.  Mist boiled from her suit and froze against her gloves, coating them in a white frost.

Before Min could re-engage with Sarah, light engulfed him, stabbing pain into eyes that had been adjusted to the darkness.  One of the miners charged forward, screaming wordlessly with his heavy mining pick held overhead.  Min jumped backward a moment before the miner swung and came down ten feet away, his pistol out and leveled at the two miners clutching their picks.

“I’m not here for you!” he cried.  “Piss off and I’ll forget I saw you here.”  His voice boomed from the entrance where he had planted the loudspeaker.

One of the miners set his feet for another sprint and Min shot him in the chest.  From the distance of ten feet, the monomol round punched through his suit and ripped into his chest.  The miner coughed and blood splattered the inside of his facemask.

Min turned the gun on the other miner.  “I’m not fucking around,” he said grimly.  “Is your life worth the five credits a monomol round costs me?”

The decision was visible on the miner’s face before his posture loosened and he dropped the pick.  “Alright, wujin,” the miner held up his empty hands.  “You win.”

“Go over there in the corner and sit on your hands.  If you so much as shift your weight before I leave, I’ll kill you.”

Min held the gun on him until he complied then turned to Sarah.  She was sitting against a nearby pillar, both hands crimping the slash in her suit closed.  Ice had formed on the inside of her facemask, but it looked like she had gotten it closed in time.

Min knelt down next to her, careful to keep out of range of her arms.  She had to keep both hands on the tear or she would freeze to death in seconds, but he wasn’t about to risk her deciding to take both of them to the grave.

“Sarah Esperalda, you have been found guilty of murder of a marshal, trafficking in illegal ovum, kidnapping, and twelve counts of murder.”

“Only twelve?” Sarah laughed bitterly.  “That the best you marshals can do?”

“That’s only in the last year,” Min clarified.  “I could keep going, but what’s the point?”

Sarah gave him a wintry smile. “Indeed.  What’s the point.”

Min stared at her, sensing the connection between her criminal choices and years of meaningless immortality.

“So,” she asked, breaking the silence.  “What’s my life worth then?  Five credits?”

Min returned her earlier smile.  “A whole lot more than that.”  He raised the pistol and shot her twice in the chest.

Sarah’s face twisted in surprise.  Her mouth opened and her lips tried to form words, but her strength failed and she slumped.  Min watched as her eyes lost focus and the last breath of air came from her lungs.

He sighed, suddenly feeling every bruise from the last few hours.  With a last glance toward the miner to make sure he was staying put, Min set about preparing Sarah’s body for the long trip back north.  He was due for a vacation.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Excerpt from the medical journal of James Womack, detailing his lab results and discoveries leading up to the codification of the Womack Process:

Even the primates seem to have the same issues as the mice.  I was hoping the more developed nervous system would prove more responsive to the treatment.  The Helix Rebuild is a simple thing, once it’s understood, but it is wholly reliant on an exact DNA match.  Any attempt to use incompatible DNA results in immediate organ shutdown.  Complete systemic shock happens in less than thirty seconds in mice, and takes only marginally longer in primates.

My process circumvents the necessity of using matching DNA, but while Dr. Everard’s genius lasts an entire year or more, I cannot seem to hold off the catastrophic withdrawal symptoms for more than a few days.  Without an extended period of cellular regeneration, my process will never be a viable alternative.

More testing is needed.

Angeline slowly regained consciousness and very much wished she could return to sleep.  Her head pounded and her mouth was sour with bile.  She tried to sit up and discovered her hands were trapped behind her.  She fought for a moment against whatever was restraining her, and then paused, panting.  Her arms were numb to the elbow, and her exertions had gotten blood flowing in them again.  Pins and needles stabbed pain through her arms and she moaned.

There was something wrong with her vision.  All she could see was perfect blackness.  The pain and disorientation was slowly replaced by fear.  Initial misgivings grew into fear and fear grew into panic.  She tried to scream and found her mouth had been taped shut.  Angeline struggled against her bonds again, almost mindless with fear.  The skin around her wrists chafed against her bindings and it wasn’t until she felt the sticky warmth of blood running over her hands that she forced herself to stop.

Angeline sobbed in the darkness.  Through her mind ran every horror story she had heard growing up.  She thought of the jiangshi, the reanimated corpses of lost astronauts.  She thought of the trow, misshapen creatures that lived in the deepest tunnels and fed on children.  She thought of the stories of Martians, skeletal beings who lived in caverns deep beneath the surface and rose in vengeance whenever a human mine dug too deep.

And she thought of Anton, his pink eyes smiling as he bought her another drink.

Memory of the afternoon spent with Jasmine came crashing back.  The exotic restaurant with its bar and fantastic imported drinks.  She remembered dancing with Lucien, feeling impossibly beautiful and light on her feet as he had swung her about.

She remembered, and she knew then what had befallen her.  There was no jiangshi holding her prisoner, no trow had her in its lair.  She had been kidnapped by the wujin.  At that thought, her fear of the dark fled to be replaced by something darker and more sinister.  It was one thing to be scared of a monster she knew deep down didn’t exist.  It was another to know she was being held by men who were going to kill her for her ovaries.

She had heard the stories.  Who hadn’t?  There were whispers of older girls who had gone on a trip to a different cluster and simply vanished.  There were the funeral processions winding through the tight hallways, at the head of each, the image of a deceased young girl, barely older than Angeline.

Strangely, her panic calmed, but she was left with a deep, gnawing fear.  The dark was friendly now, rather than frightening.  It hid her from the wujin, it kept her safe.  But what was she to do now?  Would people come looking for her?  How long had she been unconscious?

Now that she had some control over her fear, she discovered she desperately needed to go to the bathroom.  Her hands were tied together behind her, and her feet bound, but she could still explore the space a little bit.  By inching around and rolling from side to side, she was able to determine the size of her enclosure.  It was a box, four feet wide and six feet long.  Bent nearly double by her bonds, she hadn’t realized how cramped the space was.

She waited, and fear came and went in surges.  It was completely silent.  A subtle vibration came through the floor of the box, suggesting she was on some sort of transportation vehicle.  Eventually, with pain stabbing through her pelvis, she gave up on trying to keep from going to the bathroom and wet herself.  The urine smelled strongly and she crawled to the far corner of the box.

Then, with despair heavy in her heart, she cried herself to sleep.

Angeline woke as the box she was in tipped over and the pool of cold urine ran over her, shocking her awake.  She was jolted as the box hit something, then she felt a swooping in her gut as she was lifted, eventually coming down with a crash.  Stale urine fumes stung her eyes.  She forced her stiff muscles to action and she struggled upright, determined to be sitting when her box was finally opened.

The tape over her mouth had loosened after getting wet and she was able to work it off by rubbing it against the side of the box.  She shouted until her throat was sore without any results.  Eventually, she gave it up.  If nobody had heard her by then, nobody was going to.

She was moved several more times before being loaded onto a cargo autodolly.  The engine was loud enough to make it through whatever insulation was lining her box and the vibrations numbed her rear.  She almost lay down, but the revulsion of lying in her own piss kept her upright.

The autodolly stopped and started several times before grinding to a final halt.  Angeline heard laughter, muffled by her box, and then she was picked up and carried by hand.  Her bearers threw her box and she slid before banging into a wall.  She lost her balance and sprawled, getting her clothing wet again.

Gingerly, she forced her body back into her sitting position and waited.  Wherever she was, she got the impression that she had arrived.  Fear grew in her again.  She didn’t have enough of an imagination to picture the horrible things that were bound to happen to her now, but if anything, her unknown fate made her fear even worse.

Still, she refused to cower and sat with her hands bound behind her and her ankles tied together, waiting for her box to open.  It was a small act of defiance that settled the roiling in her gut.  She didn’t have hope.  Girls that were kidnapped were never found again.  She knew that.  But at the same time, she couldn’t help but remain upright.  If she was going to have bad things happen to her, she would face it as best she could.

A metallic clunk sounded and the top of her box was lifted off.  Bright light stabbed into her eyes and she winced, but refused to cower.

“Jesus Christ, she pissed herself.”

Angeline’s eyes grew accustomed to the light and she saw a tall Chinese man leering down at her.  Her box had been left inside a cage of wire mesh, maybe ten feet on a side.

“Where am I?” she asked.

The man chortled, slapping his knee with one long-fingered hand.  “Heaven, girlie.  Or the next best thing.  Get out of the box.”

“My ankles are tied,” she protested.

“Like I give a shit.”

Angeline felt tears brimming behind her eyes and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.  She would not cry in front of this man.

“Come on, Stinky.  I haven’t got all day.”

Awkwardly, she got to her feet, wobbling as she tried to find her balance.  She didn’t trust herself to jump over the lip of the box.  It would have been an easy jump yesterday, but her muscles were sore from dancing and cramped from her long imprisonment.  While still trying to figure out how to get out, her vision abruptly started to swim as blood rushed to her head.  She lost her balance and toppled sideways out of the box, landing with a bruising crash on her shoulder.

Thankfully, the box didn’t tip over.  Angeline got herself back into a sitting position as the man dragged the box out of the cage.  She was in a room with a low ceiling by Martian standards, barely eight feet high.  The man had to hunch his shoulders so he didn’t hit his head on the ceiling.  There was a ring of cages around the room, most of them empty, but three of them held boxes like the one she had traveled in.

Once the box was out of the cage, the man kneed Angeline roughly in the back, knocking her sprawling.  She hit her chin on the rough concrete floor and yelped.  There was a pressure on her back as the man kneeled on her, then there was a tugging at her hands.  With a pop, the bindings on her wrists came free and her arms flopped to the floor.  Before she could do anything, the man was up and out of the cage.  The gate swung shut and a magnetic lock clunked home.

Angeline rolled herself over and worked the pins and needles out of her hands.  Her wrists had been rubbed raw when she had panicked, and blood was dried between her fingers.  As Angeline started working the bindings loose around her ankles, the Chinese man Angeline had begun to think of as her jailer moved to the next cage and opened the box within it.

A familiar shriek met Angeline’s ears.  The jailer reached into the box and hauled out Jasmine with a fist knotted in her hair.  Jasmine kicked and screamed, which earned her a punch to the gut.  Jasmine folded over, gasping for breath and weeping.  The jailer cut her wrist bonds with a folding knife, moving with practiced boredom and left her lying on the ground.

Angeline crawled over to the mesh that separated her cage from Jasmine’s.  The older girl made no effort to untie her ankles, and lay on the cold ground, curled into the fetal position and crying.

Jasmine rolled to her side and looked out her with disbelief on her face.  “You!” Jasmine snarled.  “This is your fault!”

“What?” Angeline sat back, surprised at the hate that twisted Jasmine’s features.  “What do you mean?”

“You ruined everything!  My daddy is going to find me, but I’ll tell him to leave you behind.  You stupid gweilo whore!”

“Oy!” the jailer slapped the cage mesh.  “Shut your hole or I’ll come in there and give you a kicking!”

Jasmine spun around.  “Do you know who my father is?” she shrieked.  “He’ll find me, and your life will be ruined!  You’ll spend the rest of your life mining ice as a slave!  Let me out!”

“Right.  A kicking it is.”  The jailer left the third box unopened and opened Jasmine’s cage with a series of taps on the keypad.

“Stay away from me!” Jasmine screamed, scrambling backward to the back wall of her cage.

Angeline crawled to the corner of her own cage furthest away from Jasmine and watched in horror as the jailer knocked Jasmine over and started kicking her.  After the first couple blows, Jasmine curled up in a ball to protect her stomach and sobbed into her arms, crying out every time a blow landed.

After a minute, the jailer grew tired of the punishment and left Jasmine alone, locking the gate behind him and returning to his interrupted task of releasing the other captives.

Angeline watched, feeling numb as the other boxes were opened, both containing girls of Spanish descent like herself, though they were older, in their mid-teens.  Both tried to fight and got the same curt, rough treatment that Jasmine had received, though neither of them dared to challenge the jailer afterward.

Jasmine remained where she lay, sobbing hopelessly and cradling her bruised limbs long after the jailer had left.

An hour passed, or so it seemed, before the jailer returned again.  Afraid of what the punishment would be for speaking, Angeline didn’t respond to either of the other girls’ questions, though she did learn they were called Adora Martina and Eva Lupe.  Both Adora and Eva came from the Elysium Cluster, hundreds of miles from where Angeline lived.

When the jailer came back, he was pushing a trolley cart piled with bedding.  He stopped outside Angeline’s cage.  “Get against the far wall,” he ordered.  “Sit on your hands.  If you move, I’ll give you a beating you won’t soon forget.”  He brandished a length of iron pipe meaningfully.

Angeline didn’t doubt his word.  She followed his instruction and watched as he brought in a folding cot and an old mattress.  He threw a tatty blanket on top and turned to leave.

“Excuse me,” Angeline said timidly.

“What?”

“Could I get something to clean up?  And fresh clothes?”

The jailer grunted noncommittally and locked the door.  Angeline stayed against the wall, not daring to move until the jailer had finished giving the other girls their cots and had left once more.  She badly wanted to curl up on the cot and hide under her blanket, but she knew even if she stripped naked first the cot would smell like urine for days.

After only a short wait, the jailer returned.  He slid open a small panel at the base of the gate and pushed a bottle of water and a tin of yeast paste into the cage, along with an old shirt, a bottle of water-free shampoo, and a packet of sanitary chemwipes.  “Share it around,” he instructed.  “That’s all you lot will get for a few days.”

Apparently he was referring to the sanitary supplies, because he proceeded to give the other girls their own food and water before leaving.

After only a moment’s hesitation, Angeline stripped down and cleaned herself.  She tried to be frugal and use as few wipes as possible, but she was filthy and despite her efforts ended up using nearly half the package.  Her hair was matted with urine and though the bottle of shampoo was large, she ended up using most of it.

She bundled her rank clothes up and left them by the gate before dressing in the shirt.  It was sized for a tall man and it came down to her calves.  If she’d had a belt, it would have made a fairly functional dress.  Finally, feeling freshened and clean, she passed the bottle of shampoo and the remaining wipes through the mesh to Jasmine’s cage.

The food the jailer had provided was the most basic form of yeast.  Straight from the vat, it was drained of excess liquid and heated to kill the yeast cells.  The result was a grey-brown sludge that smelled like an armpit and tasted vaguely cheesy.  With the yeast came a packet of algae nori, square sheets of pressed blue-green algae from the oxygen-processing vats, dried and salted.  The nori made the raw yeast paste palatable and Angeline ate hungrily.

“If you’re done, pass the wipes through,” the girl named Adora said, drawing Angeline’s attention.

Jasmine pointedly ignored the other girl.  She picked at the yeast and shuddered, before eating a leaf of nori plain with a grimace.

“Hey!”  Adora slapped the mesh making it rattle.  “Stop being a little bitch and pass the wipes!”

“Why should I?” Jasmine asked frostily.  “You gweilo all smell like dirt and sweat anyway.  The wipes won’t do you any good.  Besides.  I need them, and Angeline used more than her share.”

“Like I care if your girlfriend pissed herself.  Pass the wipes!”

“She’s not my girlfriend!” Jasmine screamed.  “I hate her!  It’s her fault we’re here!  I hate her!”

Adora looked at Angeline and raised an eyebrow.  Angeline turned away, embarrassed.  Why was Jasmine acting like this?  Jasmine was difficult at school sometimes, giving the teachers a hard time and ditching classes, but she didn’t act like she was better than everyone else.  Not usually, at least.

Adora slapped the mesh again.  “I hope that old man comes back and beats you to a pulp,” she said grimly.

Angeline climbed into her cot.  The mattress was thin and lumpy, her blanket was tattered and worn, but it was more comfort than she had felt since she had left home.  Sadness and loneliness welled up in her and she felt tears fill her eyes.  With her back to the others, she let the tears come until gradually sleep claimed her.

CHAPTER

SIX

Partial transcript of a lecture given by Dr. Annette Everard at the Berkeley College of Sciences, January 8th, 2112.

“A human female is born with roughly two million eggs.  Every month of life prior to puberty, eleven thousand, give or take, of those eggs die off.  By the time a woman reaches puberty, the count is reduced to something between three and four hundred thousand eggs.  After puberty, the natural processes of the body eliminate another thousand eggs every month until the supply is gone and menopause begins.  It is the post-puberty eggs that we use in the Helix Rebuild.

“Interestingly, the normal degradation of the woman’s egg count halts once the Helix Rebuild treatments start.  If a young woman starts her treatments upon the first ovulation, she can expect to live a healthy life free of tumors, cancer, autoimmune diseases, et cetera, for another thirty thousand years.”

Getting permits was amazingly simple on Mars, Marcus thought to himself.  All anyone really seemed to care about was where the water was coming from.  When he spoke of his intention to start a distillery, the official response had been reserved excitement.

Marcus had the water.  He had done that part of the calculations over and over again.  How much water was needed to grow the crops.  How much water was needed to break down the starches.  How much water was needed to ferment the sugars.

The missing variables in the equation were the return end.  How many credits could he make per bottle of vodka?  How much water would be lost per bottle produced?  Would he turn a profit?  More importantly, would he return enough of a profit to afford the Womack treatments?

Once he started the treatments, he couldn’t miss a single one.  The human body was capable of amazing regenerative power, and the Womack process unlocked that potential.  Failure to provide the fuel to keep the regenerative cycle going led the body to scavenge from itself.  Once he started, only monthly treatments would keep his body from consuming itself.

Marcus had been a man of means on Earth.  His parents had died early, leaving him a fortune in inherited property and valuables.  If the Womack Process had been legal on Earth, he easily could have afforded the treatments there.

His cancer diagnosis had changed everything.  He’d had stage three lung cancer by the time the doctors discovered it.  Treatment on Earth was impossible.  He had to go off-planet to find a cure.  He could have gone to Venus, where the Matriarchs had continued their research into the secrets of genetics and cell manipulation that had been outlawed on Earth.  That proposition was uncertain of success.  The Matriarchs were usually unwilling to accept medical pilgrims, as their society had no room for those not part of the existing hierarchy.

That left Mars and the Womack Process.  If he got the treatment to cure his cancer, he would never be able to return to Earth, as the round trip was longer than a month, and he would die before he was able to get the treatment again.

So he had put all of his worldly wealth into buying a ticket to Mars and bringing with him as much water as he could possibly afford.

Marcus thumbed the fingerprint scanner on the door and felt a surge of excitement when it beeped in acceptance and the portal irised open.  He stepped into the small chamber that was revealed and watched the portal screw shut behind him.  His ears popped as machinery cycled the air in the chamber, then the inner portal irised open.

Humidity hit him with almost palpable force and his eyes scrunched tight against the blaze of light.  The general Martian living environments didn’t use particularly bright lights, and the sudden exposure to the brilliant growlights in the room beyond stabbed at his eyes.

Part of what made his eyes hurt was the brilliant fuchsia hue of the grow lights.  Back on Earth, he had joked that walking into the female section of a department store was physically painful due to the sheer quantity of pink on display.  This was similar, only more so.  The pink drove nails into his eyes.  Gradually, his eyes grew accustomed to the bright light and he was able to look around the room without flinching.

The room was Vastitas Cluster’s hydroponic farm.  Or rather, it was just one of the rooms dedicated to growing the spices that went into flavoring the food.  This room seemed to be dedicated to growing pepper plants.  Vaguely, Marcus remembered reading somewhere that fruiting plants needed the high-spectrum fuchsia lighting.  Row after row of plants were laid out in various stages of maturity.  One of the plants nearest him was heavy with golden orange habanero peppers; another was thick with still-maturing cayenne.

Marcus walked along the perimeter of the room, taking in the machinery.  To his surprise, it was remarkably mundane.  There were hydroponic farms on Earth that had much more sophisticated systems.  Each pepper plant was in its own bucket of expanded clay pebbles, with a water line running to it and a return pipe attached beneath.  He recognized the growing method: two or three times a day, the buckets would be flushed with nutrient-laden water.  In between cycles, the roots were allowed to breathe and air out to prevent them from rotting.

It might be a simple method, but the results were undeniable.  The plants were some of the healthiest he had ever seen.

As Marcus walked, he saw no humans.  The plants were being tended by automated systems.  At one point, he saw a harvester robot, a crab-like machine with disturbingly articulated grippers that moved slowly along a row, clipping free brilliantly-colored ripe peppers.

Further down the rows, he found a substantial piece of machinery that extended up through the ceiling.  Following the piping with his eyes, Marcus figured out that a blower pushed air up and louvers redistributed it around the room.  Putting his hand up in front of one of the louvers, he found the air return was frigid cold and felt dry against his skin.  The air must be going through a heat exchanger at the surface and precipitating the moisture out of the air.  It made sense.  Without a system to dehumidify the grow rooms, the condensate would be running down the walls and rotting the plants.

“You must be Marcus Truman.”

Marcus pulled his eyes away from the ductwork and found a woman approaching him.  She had the pale skin and pink eyes of a wujin.  Her white hair was pulled up in a loose knot on top of her head.  Unlike every woman he had met since arriving at Mars, this woman was shorter than he was.

Marcus held out his hand, trying not to stare.  It was the first wujin he had met close up.  “Are you Dr. Bannister?  I was instructed to come here and meet with her.”

“I am.  But please, call me Andrea.  You’re recently arrived on Mars?”  She shook his hand, her fingers rough with calluses.

“Thank you.  Is it obvious?”

“You’re still tan,” Andrea smiled.  “It’s a subtle thing, but different from the sun beds we use on Mars to keep healthy.  I’m told you’re here to purchase produce shares?”

“I’ll be honest,” Marcus admitted, “I only partially understood why I was sent here.  I was hoping for a better explanation.”

“Of course.  You’re not from here.”

“Sorry.  I know you’re probably busy…”

“Not at all.  The machines do most of the work around here anyway.  Why don’t we start with what you want to grow?”

“Potatoes,” he said then hesitated.  “Actually, potatoes are just what I figured would be best.  Things are so different here than what we think on Earth.”

“Potatoes.”  Dr. Bannister nodded.  “You want to start a distillery?”

Marcus nodded, a little put out at how fast she had guessed.

“Potatoes use a lot of water,” she said pointedly.

“I have water,” Marcus assured her.  “I know potatoes aren’t the most efficient way to produce alcohol, but they seemed the most foolproof.”

“You’re not wrong.  Corn and grains are ideal on Earth because the direct sunlight makes them grow quickly.  In a hydroponic environment, potatoes are far more productive.  Other potential crops, like sugar beet or sugarcane take even longer to grow.”

“I thought as much.  Even on Earth, hydroponics don’t attempt to grow those.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she said with a laugh, “we could grow them.  The issue is time.  Most of the crops grown here are very productive.  With sugarcane, you’d get one harvest every six months.  Potatoes, you get one every six weeks.  While you might get more alcohol out of an equal weight of sugarcane, you will get more alcohol per square foot with potatoes.”

“I’m guessing the same thing goes for grain?”

“You got it.  We do grow small grain crops every once in a while.  People with the credits to pay for it enjoy bread, but not enough people are that wealthy here in Vastitas to make it a regular crop.”

“I’ve relieved to hear that.  If it’s something we can arrange, I would also like to grow a small barley crop for their enzymes.”

“If you’ve got water, I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.  Why don’t I show you around the place?  We can discuss crop sizes and water requirements.”

“I would like that.  I do have a question, though, about water.  Water is expensive, at a hundred credits a gallon.  But I ate a bowl of soup earlier that had to have had at least a cup of water in it, yet I was only charged a few credits.  I don’t understand.”

Dr. Bannister chuckled.  “You aren’t the first to wonder about that.  The answer is that the cluster is a closed system.  There is enough water contained within the system for the existing life.  New water added to the system is worth a hundred credits per gallon, but water already within the system can be extracted from the air or drawn from reservoirs for next to nothing.  When you propose to grow a crop of potatoes, the water they bind up has to come from somewhere.  In a closed system, unregulated plant growth can actually be quite dangerous.

“On a small scale, imagine a single person living in a pod.  He has ten gallons of water for his use.  Since he can recycle the water endlessly, that is more than enough.  But if he then grows a crop of potato plants, the plants quickly take up that ten gallons of water and bind it into their leaves, stems and roots.  Suddenly the man no longer has any water to drink and he dies.

“In the cluster, we are dealing with the same principle, just on a much larger scale.  While it is true that your crop of potatoes would only make the smallest dent in the overall water volume, balance must be maintained.  However, once you pay the water price, you can grow the same amount of potatoes indefinitely as the water is now inside the system.”

“Who keeps track of it all?  That seems like an awfully complex thing to remember who has permission to use how much water.”

Dr. Bannister shrugged.  “The cluster’s government keeps track of it.  The actual process, once we have decided what crops you want grown, is that I send in a request to grow, for example, two tons of potatoes, and attach my calculations for the water deficit.  Then you hand over the required water to the Water Management Bureau, and they make a new entry: Marcus Truman, eight hundred gallons of water.  Your water will get filtered to make sure there aren’t any pathogens from Earth in it, then dumped into the cluster’s cisterns.”

“Then I process the potatoes and wind up with a quantity of alcohol, at which point the water is freed back into the system.”

“And the process starts all over again.  Technically minus the volume of water within the alcohol, but unless you export to other clusters, that doesn’t matter, since the water remains within the system.”

“I suppose you need to verify that the potatoes are completely used up before you can start a new crop for me?”

“I just need a written notification that your processing is complete.  In practice, there’s enough free water in the system that it won’t matter, but the Water Management Bureau likes to charge fines if it discovers you’ve been hoarding water.”

“What I don’t understand,” Marcus asked, “is why alcohol is so expensive here and imported from Earth?  You’d think someone would have started a distilling business before me.”

“There are distilleries, just not in Vastitas.  Remember, each cluster is a closed system.  To export to another cluster a gallon of alcohol at twenty percent alcohol by volume, that’s eighty credits in water alone, without counting the cost of manufacture and profit.  Alcohol brewed on Mars is too expensive to be consumed casually outside the cluster where it was produced.  And since it’s a product that caters to the financial elite, they prefer to go the extra mile and drink imports from Earth.”

“That sounds like personal experience talking,” Marcus smiled.

“I do well by myself,” Dr. Bannister returned the smile.  “And I do like a drink now and then.  That said, I think you’ll find distilling to be a rewarding business.  There hasn’t been anyone in Vastitas yet with the extra water and interest to start up a distillery.”

“Is it lack of credits, or lack of water that prevents people from distilling?”

“It’s lack of water,” she clarified.  “All the credits on Mars won’t get you a plant grown if you don’t have the water to do it.  The ice miners at the poles generate the majority of Mars’ water supply, but they sell almost entirely to the cluster governments.  In order to store up enough water, someone would have to buy water shares, finance a mining expedition, or go and mine it himself.”

“I suppose that makes sense.  In regards to setting up the crops, I imagine you have a fee you charge.”

“I do have to make a living,” she agreed.  “But if you have enough water to start a brewery, I don’t think you’ll find it burdensome.  There is an initial set up fee, and after that, I charge by weight of produce delivered.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Most find it so.  And here we are.”  Dr. Bannister stopped outside another iris doorway and unlocked it with a swipe of a finger, and they walked through into a new grow area.  Unlike the hydroponic setup of the previous room, the new room had a soil floor.

“I didn’t know there was soil on Mars,” Marcus said.

“There’s not.  But what is soil, except for broken down biological matter?  We keep all the non-edible plant matter and compost it with nitrogen byproducts.  A bit of pulverized Martian rock to provide trace elements and the result is a garden bed like you see before you.”

“It must have taken a long time to build up this much soil.  How deep does it go?”

“Ten inches, or thereabouts.  It didn’t take me as much time as you might think.  Barely fifty years.”

“Your predecessor started it?”

“What?  No, I commissioned the cavern to be cut out when Vastitas was dug.”

“But… I thought…”

“Oh.”  Dr. Bannister laughed to herself and shook her head.  “I forget that you’re from Earth.  How old do you think I look?”

Marcus took in the doctor’s white hair, her incongruously young face beneath, and what little he knew of the Womack Process.  “Forty?”

“Hmph.  Well, I suppose I should take that as a compliment.  I’m nearly two hundred years old, Marcus.  Don’t look at me like that.  I’m hardly the oldest person alive.”

“Sorry.”  Marcus turned his gaze to the cavern.  “There are a lot of things to learn on Mars.  I’m surprised you don’t have anything growing in here.”

“This is my grain room.  It’s fallow now and is ready for a new crop: your potatoes.”

Marcus looked out over the cavern.  There were widely spaced lamps illuminating the space, but there was also a grid hanging from the ceiling supporting dormant lighting fixtures.  He tried to imagine the ground covered with potato plants, their roots heavy with tubers.  How many tons of potatoes could be grown in this room in six weeks?

He tried to work the calculations, but didn’t have any idea where to start.  He had one large still that had a thousand-gallon capacity.  How many potatoes could he use before he had to buy more stills?  Dr. Bannister said it would take six weeks to grow a crop of potatoes.  If he staggered the production so he got one load of potatoes a week, he’d have to divide his water into six parts.

As if she was following the thought process inside Marcus’ head, Dr. Bannister asked, “How much water do you have?”

“I filled one large shipping container with it.  Twenty thousand gallons of water.”

Dr. Bannister raised one pale eyebrow.  “That’s…” her eyes slotted to the side as she did the mental math.  “Eighty tons?  Plus a few.  That must have been expensive to get into orbit.”

“All of my wealth,” Marcus admitted.

“You must have been quite wealthy on Earth, then.”

Marcus nodded.  This wasn’t what he wanted to talk about.  “My parents were,” he answered shortly.  “I simply kept their investments going.”

“Well.”  Dr. Bannister nodded to herself.  “Okay.  That’s far more water than I can use here.  Have you deposited your water with the Bureau?”

Marcus shook his head.

“When we’re done here, you might want to look into that.  The safest place for water is in the cisterns.  Nobody can steal it from there.  Onto more interesting matters!”  She rubbed her hands.  “I presume you brought seeds?”

“I did.  Bringing whole potatoes to Mars would have been a waste of weight.”

“And it would be questionable if they would even germinate after sitting in storage for a few days.  What variety did you bring?”

“I brought several, as I wasn’t sure which would grow best here.”

Dr. Bannister nodded approvingly.  “That was wise.  I can grow most things, but you never know if a variety will thrive on Mars.  Variations in soil chemistry, water quality, lighting, et cetera, all can make a plant grow explosively or shrivel up.  We’ll plant some of each variety and determine the most successful after harvest.

“You know…” she smiled at Marcus, calculation in her eyes.  “Regarding the extra water, it wouldn’t hurt to invest it with me.  There are crops that are grown rarely, if ever, because of the water cost.  Do you have any idea how much fresh fruit is worth on Mars?  I’m talking apples, Marcus.  Oranges, even.  Your distillery plan is a good one; you should follow through with that.  But consider my offer.  We could split the return.  It would be a long-term investment as fruit trees take years to start producing, but the credits it would bring could out-strip your distillery.”

“I didn’t think it could be done,” Marcus allowed thoughtfully.  “Let’s get the potatoes going then we can discuss other options.”

Dr. Bannister held out a hand for Marcus to shake.  “I couldn’t agree more.  Marcus, it’s been a pleasure.  I look forward to our business in the future.”

“Likewise, Andrea.”

Marcus left the hydroponic farm in a soaring good mood.  Things couldn’t be working out better.  He had enough water.  There would be no problems growing the crops he needed.  Six weeks to grow the potatoes.  Another two weeks to harvest, ferment and distill the alcohol.  In nine weeks, he would have the first flow of income on the new planet.

Nine weeks was uncomfortably close to the deadline given by the doctors on Earth.  If things grew truly desperate, though, he could start the treatments and hope everything worked out with the distillery.  The thought gave him a chill.  Starting the Womack Process treatments without a guaranteed source of income was the worst kind of risk.  And yet, what was the alternative?  Death.  If he started the treatments before the distillery started turning a profit, the absolute worst case scenario was he would have extended his life by an extra month.

That was worth gambling on.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

The December Protocol triggered the first true extra-planetary exodus of the human race.  Hundreds of thousands of individuals had received treatment in the Womack Process.  A smaller, but still substantial, number had received the Helix Rebuild.  Neither group was allowed to remain on Earth.

Venus, at the beginning of the 22nd century, had only just started expanding its fleet of floating city platforms, and could not support a sudden, massive influx of new settlers.  The details of the negotiations between Dr. Annette Everard and the Venusian colony were never made public, but the results were announced one week after the December Protocol became the new law of Earth.

Those who had received the Helix Rebuild would find a new home on Venus.  The recipients of the Womack Process were forbidden, on pain of death, to set foot on any structure owned or operated by the newly formed Council of Matriarchs.

With nowhere else to turn to, those who had received the Womack Process flocked to Mars.  Conditions on the so-called Red Planet were barely hospitable to life, and it took decades before the system of Martian clusters grew robust enough to make life bearable for the new arrivals.

Perhaps it’s for the best that the majority of those fledgling immortals perished on Mars.

Min Yang returned to his office in Olympus Cluster.  This triumphant return with the body of Sarah Esperalda had warranted a celebration party, during which the bounty reward had been ceremoniously delivered.  Min was happy, but tired.  He had been up for twenty-four hours: first the long, tedious drive to get to Arsia Cluster, then the equally long, but much faster trip by tram to Olympus.

He threw himself into his chair and leaned his head back, closing his eyes for a minute.  His feet were tired and his back was still stiff from the long tram ride, but his bank account had a healthy number of zeros in it.  If he were subsisting solely on his bounties, bringing in Esperalda would have let him vacation for over a year.

Min wasn’t one to take long vacations, but he was looking forward to a few days at home and some low-key assignments to fill out the week.

A knock sounded on his door jamb and he opened one eye.  An attractive gweilo wujin was leaning against the open door.  She had finely sculpted features, with a slight tilt to her eyes suggesting distant Chinese heritage.

“Inspector Min Yang?”

Min swung his chair around and sat up.  “That’s me.”

“I’m Lieutenant Shun Ruu.”

Min nodded absently.  Now that he looked, he could see the insignia on her shoulders.  She wasn’t familiar though, she must be from a different division.  “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”

“I have a job for you.”

“Sorry,” Min said, “you’ll have to go through Lieutenant Rickers.  He’s my CO.”

“Not any more.  He got transferred out while you were away to the south.”

“Then Captain Jiahao will be able to help you.”

“Ah, perhaps I should start over again.  I’m you’re new CO, transferred in to replace Lieutenant Rickers.”

Min suppressed a sigh and stood.  “I see.”  He gave her a salute, but his heart wasn’t in it.

If Ruu was bothered by the lack of enthusiasm, it didn’t show on her face.  “Like I said, I have a new assignment for you and your partner.”

“I don’t have a partner.  I prefer to work alone.  Look, I just got back from a month-long investigation.  Have Walters or Ying take the case.”

“They’re otherwise assigned.  Captain Jiahao put your name on top of the shortlist.”

“Did he.”

“If it’s any consolation, there’s a bounty attached to the case.  Captain Jiahao has led me to understand you prefer those.”

“Normally, yes.”  Min looked at his new lieutenant.  She looked young, a ladder climber.  Her Womack treatments made it hard to guess at an age, but she seemed to have the energetic idealism of someone new to authority.  He sighed and didn’t bother to hide it this time.  “What’s the case?”

“Kidnapping.  It’s already a day old, so you don’t have much time.”

“Great.  Which cluster?”

“Vastitas.”

Min closed his eyes.  It was late in the evening now.  If he got on a tram in the next hour, he could get to Vastitas before the sun came up tomorrow.  With a kidnapping, if the trail wasn’t picked up within the first forty-eight hours, there wasn’t much hope.  Most marshals would write it off as a loss and do the paperwork.  That there was a bounty on the case made him a little more interested, but kidnappings were difficult to resolve.  In all likelihood, he’d spend the next week chasing down leads onto to have the body turn up in some random cluster with the girl’s ovaries cut out and a bullet hole in the head.

“I can’t talk you out of this?”

“I’m afraid not.” Ruu gave him a tight smile.  “Welcome back, by the way.”

Min shook his head.  “Wonderful.  Remind me to thank Captain Jiahao later.”

“I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

Min Yang stepped off the tram in a foul mood.  Vastitas Cluster, for all its charms, was not home.  He hadn’t been able to board the Olympus tram until late in the evening, and it was mid-morning now.  Almost his entire forty-eight hours was already used up.

Irritably, Min made his way from the tram to the local police station.  Every cluster had a law enforcement branch that dealt with local crime, and whose jurisdiction ended at the tram station.  The marshals operated above the police, with a global enforcement writ that superseded the locals.  Inter-cluster crime, habitats and stations that operated outside the umbrella of a cluster, and the trams themselves were policed by the marshals.

The law enforced by the marshals was swift by necessity.  There was no space or resources on Mars for a prison.  Crimes were punished by community service, time served in the ice mines, or execution.

To say there was inter-divisional rivalry would be putting it lightly.

Min pushed open the door to the police station and stepped inside.  An aging desk sergeant lolled his head around the tablet he was absorbed in.  The sergeant’s eyes flicked over Min, then did a double take when he saw the pale cast of Min’s skin.  Then a triple take as he belatedly registered the pistol hanging off Min’s belt.

The sergeant surged to his feet, got tangled up in his chair and toppled out of sight with a curse.

Min let out a compressed sigh and held out his marshal badge.  Eventually the sergeant got his feet under him and got his head up above the level of the desk.  Min made sure his badge was in clear sight and his free hand was far away from his gun.

“Who the fuck are you?” the sergeant demanded.

Min waited, his patience wearing thin, until the sergeant took in the badge and understanding bloomed across his face.  Closely following the understanding, embarrassment, anger and stubbornness merged together into a scowl.  “What the fuck do you want?”

“The captain,” Min said shortly.

“He’s busy.”

“Then fucking get him,” Min snapped.

“Look, you.  There ain’t no reason for the marshals to get involved around here.  We can take care of our own without you lot butting in.”

Min put his badge away.  “Evidence is to the contrary, Sergeant.  Are you going to get your captain, or do I have to go find him myself?”

The sergeant sneered.  “Like I said.  He’s busy, down at the algae vats.  Some girls went missing.”

“I know,” Min said and turned to leave.

“We’re handling it!” the sergeant bellowed after him.  “We’ll have this case wrapped up by–”

The door swung shut, cutting off whatever the sergeant’s timeline was.  Min pinched the bridge of his nose.  He was starting to feel the beginnings of a migraine form.  God damned locals.

Min reached the level where the cluster’s algae vats were kept, stepping off the escalator as his watch beeped noon at him.  Vastitas had a large population, and the atmosphere processing plant was scaled to match.  From the escalator platform, the vats were visible through a panoramic half-circle of window glass.

The vats were heavy, squat, stainless steel cylinders, ten feet in diameter and five feet tall, that narrowed down to a funnel on the bottom.  The tops were open, showing the roiling, thick soup of the blue-green algae cultures.  Glaring halogen lights shone down on the algae, reflecting off the polished steel with blinding highlights.

Every child growing up in the clusters learned the function of the algae vats.  Air in the cluster was cycled through surface-level chillers that cooled compressed atmosphere.  The carbon dioxide in the air came off as a liquid, condensing before the oxygen or nitrogen did.  The liquid carbon dioxide was piped down to the algae vats, where it was carefully bubbled through the culture.  Using the illumination of the bright halogen bulbs, the algae photosynthesized, pulling in carbon dioxide and water and releasing oxygen.

The vats always made Min feel slightly uneasy.  He knew, vaguely, that there had to be enormous storage tanks full of pure oxygen somewhere, saved up for certain periods of the day when a rise in general activity increased oxygen demand, and stored during the night when most people were sleeping and using the least amount of oxygen.

But more than the dangers inherent in storing enormous quantities of oxygen, it bothered him that his life depended on an unseen government employee in charge of keeping the algae happy.  The fact that the process was largely automated did little to ease his concerns.

He hadn’t died yet, and the vat system was robust enough to survive a partial culture collapse.  In fact, now that Min took a moment to think about it, he had never heard of a cluster having an oxygen emergency.  Still, just because it hadn’t happened yet didn’t mean it wasn’t going to happen someday.

A knot of people exited the vat area.  Most of the people were gweilo, but two of them were shorter, only one or two generations away from Earth.  Min recognized their faces from his dossier: Zhen Chow and his wife Nuon.  With them was a collection of other men.

Min discounted the blue-coveralled vat worker and focused instead on the overweight gweilo of middling age wearing a police uniform.  The Martian physique rarely ran to obesity, and when it did, the fat gathered in odd proportions.  The man was rail thin except for his paunch, which hung out to an impossible extent.  In Earth gravity, Min thought it might hang all the way to his knees, but on Mars it just protruded from his waist like an enormous tumor.

Ignoring the feelings of misgiving, Min approached the gathering.  The fat man turned to him and Min got a look at the rank bars on his epaulets.  This was the police captain, Giovanni by his nametag.  Before Min could introduce himself, the captain rumbled out a gruff dismissal.

“We’re not giving quotes to the press.”

Min fought the urge to sigh and presented his badge.  “Inspector Min Yang, Colonial Marshals.  I’ve been assigned to the Chow case.”

“Look, Yang,” the captain started, but was overridden by Nuon Chow rushing forward and throwing herself on her knees in front of him.

“It’s my daughter!” she wailed, “My precious baby girl!  Marshal, you have to find her!”

Min knelt down and pulled Mrs. Chow to her feet.  “Rest assured, ma’am, I will do everything in my power to find your daughter.”

“She’s started her periods,” Nuon continued.  “You know what that means, right?  Her life is in danger!”

Min shot a glance at Zhen and he stepped forward, catching his wife’s arm and pulling her back into an embrace.  “He knows, dear.”

“We’ve got the investigation well under control,” Captain Giovanni insisted, once he saw an opening.  “There’s no call for the marshals to get involved.”

“Do you even have a Womack clinic in Vastitas?” Min asked.  Nuon wailed at the question, and the captain reddened.

“Yes,” he protested.  “And we’ve no reason to believe the girl is not still in the cluster.”

“Even if she is still in Vastitas, it’s a kidnapping, and that makes it a marshal case.”

Captain Giovanni scowled.

“I’ll be wanting your department’s assistance in dealing with the locals,” Min said.  “I don’t want a panic started by rumors of a marshal asking after a missing girl.”

“I’m sure you will,” the captain grumbled.  “Fine.  I’ll assign someone to you, but it won’t be until tomorrow.”

“Captain, the girl’s life is in danger,” he said calmly.  “Tomorrow is far too late.”

“Then maybe you better get started.”  Captain Giovanni hitched up his belt.  The buttons on his shirt strained against his protruding stomach.  With a last scowl at Min, he marched toward the escalators, his swaying bulk giving him a waddling gait that ruined any dramatic storming-off attitude he was trying for.

Min watched him go with a sense of disgust mingled with relief.  The man’s petty spite would set him back to the very beginning of the investigation.  It was possible he could pull rank and force the captain to cooperate under duress, but if anything, that would only slow down his investigation even more.

He sighed and fixed a pleasant smile on his face before turning back to face the Chows.  “Is there a place nearby where we could have a bit of privacy?  I have a few questions to ask you.”

“We don’t live too far away,” Zhen offered.  “We could go to our home.”

“That will do nicely.”

The Chow domicile had the mismatched splendor that comes when a family has recently acquired wealth but was raised frugally and so is loath to throw things away.  In the spacious great room, the couch was of middling quality and too small to fit the space.  Opposite, a gleaming state-of-the-art entertainment center occupied the majority of the wall.

Other details Min noted briefly and filed away for future reference.  There was a marked lack of childish artwork about the place.  It felt odd for parents apparently so devoted to their child to not have anything marking the detritus of childhood.  There were no children’s toys scattered about, no crayon on the walls, no stuffed animals.

Min let himself be steered to the couch, and Nuon bustled into the kitchen, returning after a moment with steaming cups on a tray.  Min accepted his and was astonished to find real, fresh-brewed tea.  He took a sip and closed his eyes, savoring the complexity of the taste and aroma.

“Thank you, Mrs. Chow.  This is a real pleasure.  Why don’t you tell me about your daughter.  How old is she?”

“Jasmine is fifteen,” Zhen said.  “She goes to school here in the cluster.”

“How is she in school?  Does she get good grades?”

“The teachers don’t understand her,” Nuon said, sipping her tea.  “She does well enough, but we think she is too smart for the curriculum.”

“Does she get in trouble often?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Zhen said stiffly.

“I’m sorry.  My intention is not to make you uncomfortable, but it will help to track your daughter down if I understand her better.”

“He’s trying to help, dear,” Nuon interjected.  “To answer your question, Marshal, the teachers have notes to send home on occasion, but nothing out of the ordinary for a strong-willed child.”

“Does she have a history of running away or playing truant?  Is it possible she took it into her mind to travel to a different cluster?”

Nuon brightened.  “Do you think she wasn’t kidnapped?”

“I honestly don’t know, Mrs. Chow.  For her sake, I hope not.  Has she ever left school before closing hours?”

“Once or twice.”

Min nodded.  “Does she have a boyfriend?”

“She’s fifteen!” Zhen protested.

Min looked to Nuon and she shook her head.  “I would have heard about it, I’m sure.”

“Alright.  Is Jasmine an only-child?”

Nuon nodded and dropped her eyes.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Min said, beginning to suspect how the Chows had come into their wealth, “what do you do for a living?”

“We made our money through the clinic,” Nuon said evasively.

So.  A young woman could go to a Womack clinic and have her ovaries removed.  The harvested eggs would make the woman quite a bit of money, depending on her fertility and the number of usable eggs recovered.  Several hundred thousand credits was an average payoff, and Min had heard the numbers go as high as several million when the market was in demand.

Nuon Chow had opted for the surgery after giving birth to Jasmine.  There would be no more children for the Chow family.

“I see.  Can you walk me through Jasmine’s day?  Help me get an idea of what her routine was.”

As the Chows answered his questions, Min gradually built a picture of the home life of the missing girl.  Diagnosed or not, it was clear that Nuon Chow suffered from a dissociative disorder.  The loss of her ovaries had traumatized Nuon, and it affected her relationship with her daughter.  Jasmine, likely feeling estranged in her own home, was a willfully disruptive child, often pulling other children into her misdeeds.  Her parents, operating on some level of denial over the whole thing, were blissfully unaware of the true nature of the girl they were raising.

For her part, Jasmine more or less kept to herself while home.  She had all the creature comforts a girl of fifteen could want, but lacked the loving parents that would help her develop into a functional adult.  Min didn’t doubt that eventually Jasmine would make the same choice as her mother and have her ovaries removed in order to continue the extravagant lifestyle she had grown used to.

It wasn’t an uncommon trend.  There were several thousand wujin living on Mars and they all had to get monthly treatments.  Where there was a market, there would always be people willing to make money off that demand.  And, of course, there were those who would kidnap and murder young girls and harvest their ovaries for the payoff.

It was the dark side of the wujin.  Every time Min went in to get his treatment, he wondered if the egg cell that was extending his life had originated from a girl locked in a cage and harvested like an animal when her period started.  A hundred years ago it had bothered him a lot more.  Now he did what he could in the marshals and received his monthly treatment without dwelling on it.

Jasmine’s daily routine was typical of a child in school.  She got up in the morning and went with one of her parents to the school two levels up.  There were thirty or forty other students in her age group, none of which she had made friends with that her parents knew of.  After school, one of her parents would meet her and walk her home.  She would do her homework then use the entertainment console in her room until it was time for bed.

On the weekends, her parents would sometimes take her shopping.  Once a year, they would take a holiday to different clusters and stay in a hotel.  Her parents would gamble and drink, while Jasmine was given a guardian and allowed to find what entertainment she could on her own.

It was hard to read Nuon Chow’s feelings.  Part of her, it seemed, was secretly glad her daughter was missing.  The other part was horrified at her disinterest and compensated to cover it up.  It was Nuon that had requested the marshals look into her missing daughter.  Not consciously following the appropriate law enforcement channels, more just a blind stab at the most dramatically obvious effort to show that she did, in fact, care about Jasmine.

It was just as well she had.  Captain Giovanni would have been loath to summon the marshals until it had become obvious Jasmine was no longer in Vastitas.  Of course, by that time it would have been far too late.  As things stood, Jasmine had been missing for a little over thirty-six hours.

“One last question, before I begin my investigation,” Min said.  “You mentioned earlier that Jasmine had started getting her periods.  When was her last menstruation cycle?”

“Eighteen days ago,” Nuon answered promptly.

“Do you know how long her normal cycle lasts?”

“Her last was twenty-nine days,” Nuon said.  “When Jasmine went missing, it was the first thing I thought of.”

“Thank you.”  Min stood to leave.  “You’ve both been very helpful.”

“You’ll find our daughter?” Zhen asked.

“I can’t promise anything, but I will have the full support of the Colonial Marshals investigating with me.  If your daughter can be found, we will find her.  I will stay in contact with you.  If you hear anything about Jasmine or think of any detail you haven’t told me yet, please, do not hesitate to call me.”

Min shook Zhen’s hand and made good his retreat.  Jasmine had had her period eighteen days ago.  He had to find her before her next menstrual cycle began and her eggs were ready to harvest.

He had ten days, starting now.

There were times, Min thought, when he hated his job.

“If you don’t mind, Mrs. Chan, start at the beginning.”

The spindly old crone glared at him through heavy spectacles that warped her irises into enormous, baleful pits.  Min felt exhausted.  He had spent almost a whole day tracking down and talking to various people that Jasmine had possibly interacted with on the day of her disappearance.  So far, he hadn’t gotten any good information that could help him start tracking down the missing girl.  The people he had talked to had been glowing in their memories of the poor missing girl, so patently saccharine that it made Min wonder just how awful a child Jasmine had been.

Mrs. Chan, the school’s part-time assistant teacher, had a sour attitude and a biting honesty that was like a breath of fresh air.

“Horrible little brat,” Mrs. Chan sniffed.  “Always getting into trouble.”

“When was the last time you saw Jasmine?”

“She and that other girl, the Nueva de Vita child, must have run off when we were crossing the market.  They certainly weren’t with us when we reached the vats.”

“Sorry, the other girl?”

“Angeline.  Sweet girl, very smart.  Wasn’t the best at picking her friends, but what child is?”

“Is Angeline missing too?”

“Oh, heavens yes.  Didn’t they tell you?”

Min sighed.  Whatever strings Nuon Chow had pulled to get the investigation started had been solely for her own daughter.  Nobody had seen fit to tell him that a second girl had gone missing as well.

A single girl might have run off on a lark or gone to hide with a boyfriend.  Two girls gone missing together cemented the case as a kidnapping.

“Could you tell me where the Nueva de Vita family lives?”

Twenty minutes later, Min was knocking on another door.  The Nueva de Vita family lived in a communal dwelling that had more in common with a prison than an apartment.  Tiny living spaces were packed as close together as possible, some without private bathrooms or kitchens.

It was as far from the spacious opulence of the Chow’s as it was possible to be in Vastitas Cluster.

The door swung open, and a haggard woman peeked out.  “What do you want?”

Min held up his badge.  “Marshal Yang.  I would like a moment of your time, ma’am.”

Whatever stitched-together willpower that had been holding the woman together fell apart. She slid to her knees, silent tears running down her face.  “She is taken, then?  My little Angeline?”

“Do you mind if I come inside?”

Numbly, the woman swung the door open and made her way to her feet.  Inside the Nueva de Vita home was a riot of color.  The rooms looked lived in and one entire wall was covered in a collage of proudly displayed childish artwork in varying degrees of sophistication.  In another area, partitioned off by a hanging sheet, a baby was crying.

“Hannah!” the woman called, “Get Emilio!”

A girl, fifteen or sixteen years of age, emerged from deeper within the apartment and vanished behind the sheet.  After a moment the baby stopped crying.

With a visible effort, the woman composed herself.  “Forgive my manners.  Will you have a seat?”  She gestured toward a cluttered table surrounded by well-worn chairs.

“Thank you.”  Min chose a chair and perched on the edge of it.  The Nueva de Vita family came from a long line of Martian colonists and were as tall as any Min had met.  Their chairs were a little too tall for comfort.  “Am I right in assuming you are Angeline Nueva de Vita’s mother?”

“Yes.  Justine, please.  Do you have news of Angeline?”

“I’m afraid not.  In fact, I only just learned that she was missing.  I came hoping for a picture of Angeline and to learn what I could of her.”

Justine stood to get a family portrait from the wall.  “This is Angeline.”

Min took a picture with his tablet and cropped the image down to just the missing girl.  Angeline had the same wavy, raven-dark hair as her mother, with well-formed cheek bones and a slender nose.  Her eyes were wide and bright.  Despite the awkward posing for the family shot, Min could tell she was smiling genuinely.

“She’s a beautiful girl,” Min said.

“I don’t have much to offer, but would you like some water?”

Min nodded, and watched Justine as she busied herself.  Angeline’s mother was younger than he had originally thought, despite having four children.  Angeline’s disappearance had hit her hard, but she was coping as best she could.

Justine returned to the table, handing him a glass of water and a coaster for the table.  “Thank you.  Can you tell me about Angeline?”

“She wants to be a scientist,” Justine said.  “Always asking questions and excited to learn new things.”  There was a faraway look in her eyes as she spoke, and for a moment whatever memory she was thinking of lifted the cloud of worry from her face.

“She did well in school, then?”

“Yes.  Angeline always got good grades.  She worked hard on her homework.”

“There was another girl who went missing with her.  Jasmine Chow.  Do you know of her?  Did Angeline ever mention her to you?”

Justine shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes again.

Hannah emerged from behind the curtain, bouncing a boy in diapers on her hip.  “Are you looking for my sister?” she asked.

Min nodded.

“I know Jasmine Chow.  She dropped a grade last year and had to repeat a year.  She’s a little whore.”

“Hannah!” Justine cried.  “That’s no way to speak–”

“I don’t care, ma!  She pulled Angeline away from the school trip and now Angeline is gone!”  Hannah shouted back.  Bright tears shone in her eyes.  “I hate her!”  The baby started crying again and Hannah turned her back, hurrying to the back of the apartment cradling her brother and sobbing.

Justine buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking silently.

Min felt awkward.  He didn’t know how to comfort the woman without touching her.  The evident grief of the Nueva de Vita family compared to the carefully manufactured concern of the Chows twisted at something inside Min.

He cleared his throat, and busied himself looking at the artwork on the wall until Justine had gathered herself and dried her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Marshal.  I apologize for Hannah’s behavior.”

Min shook his head.  “Don’t worry about it.  Do you mind if I take a look at Angeline’s room?”

“She shares a room with Hannah.  Down at the end of the hall.”

“Thank you.  I won’t be long.”

Min walked down to the indicated door and knocked on it with a knuckle.

“Go away!”

“It’s the marshal,” he said.

The door snatched open immediately.  Hannah’s face was red with embarrassment but as she looked down at him her gaze was defiant.  “What do you want?”

“Your mother said I could take a look around Angeline’s room.  If that’s okay with you.”

“Oh.”  Hannah hugged herself and stepped aside, making space so Min could walk into the room.  “What are you looking for?”

Min shrugged.  “I don’t know.”  A bunkbed was epoxied to the wall on one side of the room and a portable crib had been set up in the corner where Emilio was lying on his back, batting at a mobile hanging above him.  The bunkbed hammocks were lined with pillows and the flotsam Min associated with children.  They looked comfortable.  “Who sleeps on top?” he asked, nodded at the bunks.

“I do,” Hannah said.  “Do you think you’ll be able to find Angeline?”

The unanswered part of the question, “before she is murdered for her ovaries,” hung in the air.

“I hope so.”

“You’ll kill the bastards who kidnapped her?”

Min looked at Hannah and raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t look at me like that.  Pa says men who kidnap and kill girls should be thrown out on the surface naked.”

“And what do you think?”

“Angeline is my sister.  I think that’s too quick a death.”

Min nodded.  “I happen to agree, but my first priority is finding your sister.  If the kidnappers get in my way though…”  He touched the worn holster at his belt, felt the textured polycarbonate of the grip.  Hannah’s eyes followed the movement and her mouth tightened.

“I hope they do,” she said firmly.  “I hope you kill them all.”

Min left the Nueva de Vita’s dwelling, but it wasn’t empty-handed.  He didn’t have much to work on, but it was more than he had had.  He had a photo of Angeline and scans of her fingerprints.  And he knew the girls had been kidnapped.  Any hope that this was a case of teenage angst was gone.  Jasmine he could see running away to spite her parents, but Angeline came from a loving family.

Knowing it was a kidnapping changed everything.  The girls had been missing for two days now.  So many kidnappings of this sort happened that the marshals couldn’t hope to chase them all down.  Normally, a case this old would be investigated briefly and then forgotten.  That the Chows had placed a bounty on finding their daughter made it worth Min’s while to follow the investigation to its conclusion.

It was mercenary, but it was a fact of the real world.  Min’s marshal salary could never cover his Womack treatments.  He stayed alive by taking on cases with bounties attached.  Normally, his cases were like Sarah Esperalda, murderers on the lam from the law, too dangerous for local police to deal with or outside the safety of the clusters.

A sad fact of life in the clusters was that the usual kidnapping victim didn’t have a family wealthy enough to put a bounty on her return.  Angeline fell squarely into the category of “investigate briefly then forget about it.”  By a twist of luck, Angeline’s fate was tied to Jasmine Chow’s.

For better or for worse.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

Excerpt from the medical journal of James Womack, detailing his lab results and discoveries leading up to the codification of the Womack Process:

I’ve found the answer.  Achromasia, or more colloquially, albinism.  Albinism is the key.  The discovery was made almost by accident.  One of the test subjects in control group 65b was an albino chimpanzee.  All the other test subjects suffered complete systemic organ failure in a matter of days except for the chimp I’ve named Ognan.

What was it about the albino chimp that made my process succeed?  I have a blood sample from Ognan before the treatment.  I’ll run it through the gene sequencer just to make sure the albinism allele isn’t a coincidence, but something in my gut tells me what the answer will be.

If albinism is the missing link to the success of the treatment, part of the therapy will be tweaking the recipient’s DNA gradually to manifest that trait.

Is that what the future looks like?  Mankind, living eternally, but albino?  Only time will tell.

Angeline was awake, staring into the blackness.  She was tired to her bones, but nightmares made sleeping difficult.  And once she had wakened, Eva Lupe’s snoring had made it impossible to get back to sleep.  It wasn’t the snoring that kept her awake, though that didn’t help.

Eva had confided to them that she had started her period in the late afternoon.

The snores grated on her.  How could Eva sleep at all?  Angeline closed her eyes and folded her arms over her ears.  It was uncomfortable; there was no way she could fall asleep like that, but at least it blocked out the snores.

Angeline didn’t fully understand what was going to happen to them.  She had heard stories.  Who hadn’t?  But the whispers traded in the schoolroom were vague.  She hadn’t seen many movies, and her family’s limited entertainment deck hadn’t offered any real information.

The Womack Process was an inescapable part of life on Mars.  Everyone knew the key to immortality had been found, and there were people walking around that had lived for more than two hundred years.  Vastitas Cluster didn’t have a large population of wujin, but Angeline had seen them.  That the Womack Process required a monthly treatment, somehow involving a human egg cell was equally well known.

The gap in Angeline’s knowledge was why young women were kidnapped and went missing.  She knew what the menstrual cycle was.  She shared a room with her older sister, after all, and the hygiene supplies involved in dealing with the monthly flow couldn’t be avoided.  She released an egg once a month, her uterus swelled with blood in anticipation of the egg getting fertilized, and then the uterus lining broke down and was flushed out.

She had a momentary image of thousands of young women chained in rows along a wall with machines inserted between their legs, greedily sucking out their eggs.

Angeline shuddered and tried to forget the image.  That couldn’t possibly be true.  Why, there would have to be a whole cluster dedicated to it!  Surely someone would have noticed.

The lights buzzed then flickered on.  The sudden brightness stabbed at Angeline’s eyes and she squinted around the room.  Jasmine was sleeping, peacefully ignorant of the light.  Eva started awake and stared around, disoriented.  Adora was sitting on the edge of her cot, blanket around her shoulders, her eyes red from crying silently in the night.

Angeline watched as Eva remembered where she was and horror washed over the older girl.  Eva rolled herself in her tattered blanket and faced the wall.  Adora leaned over and started whispering to Eva.  Angeline was too far away to hear, but the words had a comforting cadence to them.

The door to the room swung open and the jailer walked in, rolling a cart in front of him.  Angeline knew the routine and brought her waste pail to the gate without having to be asked, taking care not to slosh the contents.  The jailer opened the hatch at the bottom of the gate and traded her full pail for an empty one containing the day’s food and water.

The next cage over was Jasmine’s and the jailer rattled the mesh with his stunrod.  “Oy, missy, wake up and pass your piss or I’ll leave it in there with you for the day.”

Jasmine woke with a start.  After an alarmed glance at the jailer she hastened to comply, moving stiffly from the beating she had received two days ago.  By the time the jailer moved on to the next cage, Adora had her pail waiting.

Eva still hadn’t moved, and Angeline watched with growing trepidation as the jailer rattled the mesh.  “I ain’t gonna wait, girlie.  Shift yourself or you can smell your filth for another day.”

Eva remained in her cot, crunching herself into a tighter ball.

“Your loss.  Your cellmates might not appreciate it though,” he chuckled and kicked the hatch closed.

The jailer was nearly out the door when Jasmine spoke up.  “Hey, mister.”

“What do you want?” he asked, pausing long enough to turn and favor her with an ugly glare.

“Eva is on her period.”

Adora gasped.  “You little bitch!”

The jailer pulled the cart back into the room and leered at Jasmine.  “You lying?”

Jasmine shook her head.  “Why would I lie?  She told us yesterday.  Check her yourself.”

The jailer stalked over to Eva’s cage and rattled the mesh.  “That true, gweilo?  You leakin’?”

Eva moaned.  Angeline could see the girl tremble from across the room.

“Easy enough to prove you ain’t.  Just stand up and give me a look.  Else I’ll send for the doc, and he won’t be gentle.”

“Just leave her alone!” Adora shouted.

“Shut yer mouth,” the jailer replied.  “Lest you want me in there to shut it for you.”  He glared at Adora until she dropped her gaze.  “So what’s it to be girl,” he asked Eva.  “Show me you’re not or it’s the doc for you.”

“No…” Eva moaned.  “I’m not.  I swear I’m not!  Please, I just want to go home.”

“Yeah.”  The jailer spat to one side.  “That ain’t gonna happen.  Guess you get the doc.”

He turned and stomped out, taking the cart with him.  As soon as the door shut behind him, Adora turned on Jasmine.

“What the hell is wrong with you?  They’re going to take her now!”

Jasmine rolled her shoulders in an elaborate shrug and folded herself into a prim, cross-legged sitting position.  She portioned out her yeast block and started eating, her back straight, a small smile on her face.

Adora slammed her hand into the mesh.  “Hey!  I’m talking to you!”

“It’s simple, gweilo.  If they take you lot first, then there will be more time for my parents to rescue me.”  Jasmine smiled.  “Your parents probably already gave up.  One less skinny freak isn’t a big loss.  Probably didn’t even have a funeral, just a party celebrating one less mouth to feed.”

Adora stared at Jasmine, her face slowly going from fury to disgust.  “You’re a real piece of work.  There’s a special place in hell for people like you.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Jasmine said, carefully folding a piece of nori around another morsel of yeast.  “I’m just trying to survive.”

“My great grandparents were no different than you,” Adora said.  “Fresh off the ship from Earth, looking for a new life on Mars.  Your children, assuming anyone is fool enough to marry you even if you do get out of here, will all be taller than you.  And their children will look just like me.  There’s nothing for you to be smug about, you ignorant little bitch.”

Jasmine shrugged.  “Like I care what a gweilo thinks.  Maybe when you’re screaming under the knife in a few days you can share your theory with the surgeon.  In the meantime, I intend to live long enough to start my Womack treatments.  Your grandchildren will be cleaning my toilet in a hundred years.”

Adora slammed her hand against the mesh separating their cages.  “Yeah, come over here and tell me that to my face.”

Jasmine ignored her and after a minute Adora went back to Eva.  Eva had curled into an even tighter ball and was shaking with uncontrollable sobs.  Adora tried talking to her again, her voice quiet.

“Why are you being so mean?” Angeline asked Jasmine.  “We’re all alone here.  All we have is each other.”

“I wish I was alone,” Jasmine snapped.  “Free of idiots like you and Adora.  Who cares about Eva?  I don’t know her.  If I can live a few days longer, then it would be worth it.”

“And what about me?” Angeline asked.  “If I start my period will you tell on me?  You know me, Jasmine.  We were friends.”

Jasmine didn’t look at her, just carefully folded nori around another bite of yeast.  “I have to get home,” she said.  “That’s all I care about.”

“Don’t you think Eva wants to get home too?”

“There are too many gweilo already,” Jasmine sniffed.  “Who cares if they all die?  Another few hundred years and they won’t even be human any more.  Better to wipe them out and start with fresh DNA from Earth.”

Angeline gaped at Jasmine.  Where had that come from?  She had no idea her erstwhile friend had harbored such dislike.

She couldn’t talk to Jasmine anymore.  Another word and she would burst into tears or scream.  Or both at the same time.  Swallowing back the lump in her throat, Angeline forced herself to eat.  After a few bites, her stomach rumbled, reminding her that if she didn’t portion her food this time, she wouldn’t have anything to eat for dinner later.

Angeline had just finished eating her breakfast and hungrily debating whether it would be okay to have just a few bites more when the doors slammed open.  She lost all interest in eating as the jailer walked into the room.  Close on his heels were two more men, one of whom was Lucien, the other wore a white lab coat and carried with him an oversized briefcase.

Eva shrieked and leaped off her bed.  She cowered in the far corner of her cage, wrapping her blanket about herself and shuddering with sobs.

“Leave her alone!” Adora screamed.

“Which one is menstruating?” the doctor asked.

Angeline felt torn.  Intellectually she knew Lucien was responsible for her current predicament, but her last memories of him were of dancing to music and the floating sensation of being drunk.  She wanted to call out to him, to beg him to save her.

The jailer pointed to Eva and the doctor nodded.  “Get in there and secure her.”

With a hissing crack, the jailer extended his baton and the contact point at the tip fizzed with popping arcs of electricity.  With brusque efficiency he pulled the door open and strode into the cell.  Eva screamed at him and flung herself forward, fingers curved into claws.

Without so much as a blink, the jailer swung the stunrod and intercepted Eva’s lunge.  The first jolt of the stunrod rippled through Eva and she collapsed, her limbs twitching uncontrollably.  The reek of ozone filled the air as the jailer kneeled down and attached a pair of manacles to Eva’s wrists then another around her ankles.

With Eva secure, he stepped out of the way and made room for the doctor.

Angeline was afraid of the jailer.  She had seen his casual brutality as he beat Jasmine into submission.  He had a small mind to match his small deeds and took a twisted pleasure from the deprivations he put his captives through.  Angeline knew that if she made him mad, he would beat her and neglect to bring her food.  She was afraid of him for the immediate dangers he presented to her physical wellbeing.

The doctor, though, brought an entirely different kind of fear to Angeline.  He had the white skin and pink eyes of a wujin.  His head was shaved bald and the light color of his eyebrows made him look entirely hairless.  He had the tall, slender physique of a generational Mars colonist and he walked with a hunched over nervous energy that seemed inhuman.

His physical appearance was disturbing, but it was his eyes that send frigid fingers tightening around Angeline’s heart and goose bumps racing down her arms.  They were alive with malice, and he looked upon the trussed up Eva with a cruel glee.  To him, the captives were less than human.  They were chattel whose value was only in the eggs they carried.

The doctor kicked Eva’s knees apart, but it was hardly necessary.  The crotch of Eva’s pants was clearly spotted with blood.

With evident satisfaction, the doctor nodded and made a curt gesture toward Lucien.  Lucien ducked into the cage and lifted Eva’s limp body in his arms and carried her out of the room.  With a last, proprietary look at the remaining girls, the doctor followed.

The jailer spent a few minutes cleaning out Eva’s cell, then left with the cot and everything that had been in the cell.

Adora sat staring at the empty cage for a long time.  Eva might as well have never existed; her only legacy was a muddy smudge on the ground in the corner of the cell where she had cowered from the doctor.

Angeline felt empty inside.  Already, one of their number had been taken.  To what fate, she barely had the understanding to comprehend.  Over and over, she thought the same thing.

One down.  Three to go.

CHAPTER

NINE

MISSING

Juliana Novitsky

Brown hair, blue eyes.  4’10, fifteen years old.

Last seen entering a 7-Eleven on Wilshire Blvd. on the 18th of June.

Any information leading to her rescue will earn a $10,000 reward.

This poster was one of several hundred stapled to a telephone pole in West Hollywood, each with a photo of a different girl in the middle.  The posters were so thick on the poles that workers had to strip them off with a chainsaw in order to perform maintenance on the lines.

For these desperate families and friends, there was no official police recourse available.  The number of kidnappings reached into the hundreds every day in Los Angeles County, far outstripping the ability of the police and FBI to achieve individual rescues.  It is estimated that in the year 2127, more than eight hundred thousand girls between the age of fourteen and eighteen were kidnapped and murdered in the US alone.

Min Yang stood outside the police headquarters in Vastitas Cluster and debated with himself whether he should go inside.  With a sigh, Min ignored the last of his misgivings and pushed open the door.  It was still early in the morning in Vastitas, and the lobby was completely empty.

Unlike the day before, the reception desk was manned by a young gweilo officer who was flipping through his tablet in a desultory fashion.  Min strode up to the desk and knocked on the chipped enamel with his knuckles.

Putting on a cheery smile, he greeted the officer.  “Good morning!  I’m here to use your network stack.”

The officer put down his tablet with a wary look.  “You’re that marshal the captain’s been in a huff about.”

“I am.  Marshal Yang.”  Min held out his hand.

Suspiciously, the youth shook it.  “The captain didn’t give any orders about you using our stacks.”

“He wouldn’t have.  I only just came into new evidence that could help unlock this kidnapping case.  You know, the one with the Chow girl.”

“What do you want to use the stacks for?”

“Look, you seem like a good kid,” Min offered.  “But you don’t have the wit or the authority to challenge me.  So let me in, I’ll find what I need and be on my way.  No fuss, no paperwork.”  He paused, gauging the kid’s rebellious look and decided to sweeten the offer.  “How about this.  You help me get what I need, and I’ll put in a commendation for you with the marshals.  If you block me, though, I’ll register an official complaint against the Vastitas police.  Violation of section 6, article 32.  You know the one.  ‘All reasonable cooperation’ is the relevant bit.”

There was an article somewhere that required the cluster police to cooperate with marshals while investigating a crime, but he couldn’t remember the actual number.  Odds were the kid behind the counter wouldn’t remember it either.  He caught the dissolution of rebellion into doubt and pounced on it.  “Today, Officer.”  He knocked on the counter again.  “While you’re still young.”

The officer folded and he got up to buzz Min through into the offices.  “You’ll write me a commendation?”

Min nodded.  “Soon as you log me into the system.”

He stood back and let the kid rattle at the keyboard for a minute, then hooked his tablet to the terminal.  Min loaded the fingerprints he had taken from Angeline’s room into the stack and let it browse for a match.  The stack was an old one, probably the original hardware installed when Vastitas had been first dug out, and it laboriously started scanning through the cluster’s network, searching.

He should be thankful, Min thought sourly, that Vastitas wasn’t any larger or wealthier than it was.  If he were trying to search through Olympus Cluster with this antiquated stack, it would take years.

The outer door banged open and loud voices entered the station’s lobby.  Min glanced at the progress meter and sighed.  There was still quite a bit left of the stack to search.  He pushed himself to his feet and turned to face the door.

A pair of policemen entered, both of them well over seven feet tall and moving with the easy grace of habitual fitness fanatics.  They spotted Min and their jocularity dropped away.

“Who the hell are you?”

The closest one was already moving to grab Min’s arm and Min turned away the reaching hand, caught the man’s thumb and twisted it back.  The policeman dropped to his knees with a yelp, desperately trying to take the pressure off his thumb so it wouldn’t dislocate.

Min held the policeman there for a second, then kicked him away to go sprawling against the antibac tiles.  “I’m Marshal Yang, Officer.  Touch me again and you’ll spend the week in the hospital.”  Min caught the standing officer’s glare and held it until the policeman dropped his eyes with a curse.

“Fucking… just wait until the captain hears about this,” the downed man said as he scrabbled to his feet.  “Like I give a shit who you are, wujin. I’ll break you in half for laying a hand on–”

Min twisted the barrel of his pistol into the policeman’s neck.  His finger itched on the trigger.  It would be so easy, just a few more ounces, and this idiot’s brains would be all over the ceiling.  He thought back to Sarah Esperalda’s last words.  What was this man’s life worth?

“Back off, gweilo,” Min said quietly into the abrupt silence.  “Or don’t.  It’s all the same to me.”  In the background, he heard the console chirp as it found a match.

“Sorry, Marshal,” the other officer said.  Moving slowly, he grabbed his partner’s arm and pulled him away from Min.  “Honest misunderstanding.”

Min holstered his pistol, vague regret making his fingers linger on the grip.  “I’m sure.  Now fuck off, both of you.  I’ll be done here in a minute and you can forget you ever saw me.”

After watching the two officers retreat to the lobby, Min copied the search results over to his tablet and took a moment to clear the console’s search history.  Let them wonder what he was looking for.

Min stepped out into the lobby.  There was no sign of the two policemen.  The young officer at the desk looked at him wide-eyed.  “Sorry about that.”  Min made it halfway to the outer door before turning around.  “Hey, kid.  Don’t let them push you around for letting me back there.  You did the right thing.”

Still feeling like he somehow owed the kid something, Min left the station behind.  He hadn’t made any friends there, but such was the nature of marshal and police interactions.  Besides.  He wasn’t out to win any popularity contests.  Right now, all he cared about was rescuing Angeline Nueva de Vita.  And if Jasmine Chow was around when he did so, he supposed he’d rescue her too.

Min found a tiny restaurant, barely large enough for a dozen stools at a counter, and ordered breakfast, choosing an item off the menu at random.  While he waited for his meal, he retrieved his tablet and took a look at the results from the search.

There was a long string of matches, her thumbprint coming up connected to datachips she had checked out from the school library.  He scrolled through them and came to a stop at the last entry.  It was a claims ticket at a ritzy imports bar, the Redstone Lounge.

Min’s food came, rolls of yeast paste and nori, with a bean curry dipping sauce.  The sauce was hot enough to make his eyes water, and the beans were real black beans.  Pleasantly surprised, Min put his tablet away and enjoyed the meal.  Whatever Vastitas’ other shortcomings, they had a robust agriculture center.

Despite the heat of the bean sauce, Min couldn’t help but dwell on the last entry.  The Nueva de Vita family was a long cry from being patrons of the Redstone.  Even the Chows, wealthy though they might seem, couldn’t really afford to be regulars at the bar.  Nuon’s ovaries might have earned them enough money to live richly for many years, but without a regular source of income, that bolus of credits would dry up eventually.

Min finished his meal and complimented the chef on his food.  He pulled up a map of the Vastitas market floor and had his tablet find him a path to the imports bar.  Why had Angeline visited the Redstone?  And had the girls been kidnapped from there?

There was only one way to find out.

It didn’t take Min long to reach the Redstone Lounge.  From the outside it was unimpressive poured concrete, hardly inspirational architecture to trigger wanton spending.  The marketplace was just starting to show signs of waking up.  Vendors were setting out signs, customers hurried through mostly-empty passages.  It was peaceful; the quiet lingering between the stalls hinting at the rush to come.

Hardly the kind of setting where one would expect girls to be kidnapped and sold for their organs.

Min stepped through the doors of the Redstone Lounge.  The lights were all the way up and employees bustled about, cleaning and setting up for the day.  A towering Chinese gweilo saw Min enter and hurried over, his face set in lines of irritation.

“Sir, we’re not open for business.  The restaurant opens at noon, if you would like to come back then.”

Min held his ground and waited for the man to get close before flashing his badge.  “Colonial Marshals.  I’m here on business, not pleasure.”

“I assure you, all our papers are in order.  If you would like to see our import logs, you can go through the–”

“I don’t care about your imports,” Min cut him off brusquely.

A woman, dressed stylishly for a decade more than a century gone, entered the foyer through a side door.  She had hair dyed burnt umber, but her skin and eyes gave her away as a wujin.  She tapped the towering Chinese on the elbow, having to reach up to do so.  “Charles, why don’t you return to your duties.”

Charles glanced at the woman, then back at Min, his expression mutinous, but he ducked a little bow and left the two of them alone.

“Marshal Min Yang,” Min introduced himself.  There was something about the woman’s face that seemed strange to Min, and it took him a moment to put his finger on it.  The woman was of Anglo-Saxon descent, with high cheekbones and a square jaw that was almost entirely absent in the Martian gene pool.

“Grendal Crade,” she smiled and waved a hand absently at their surrounds.  “Owner of this establishment.  If you’re here on business, perhaps we could take this somewhere less public.”

“That’d be good.”

“Very well.  If you would follow me, I believe we can be accommodating.”

Min fell into step behind Grendal.  They didn’t make it halfway across the foyer when the frosted glass wall on Min’s right lit up.  Hidden by the frosting, vague forms shifted, the unmistakable movement of hardware deploying.  The overhead lighting sank into flashing tones of red and yellow.

“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Grendal snapped.  “We know he’s carrying a weapon.  Let him through.”

The lights relaxed back to their normal levels.  Behind the frosted glass, the shadows retreated from the glass, but were still visible as indefinable bulk that kept pace with them.

“Trouble with the locals?” Min asked, carefully casual.  The threat of machine security behind the glass had set his heart racing.

“Think of it as proactive security.”  Grendal ushered him through into the main space.  “Anyone who thinks a quick smash-and-grab at the Redstone would solve their financial woes, also knows about the security systems.  They look elsewhere for a quick credit score and we don’t have to mop the blood off the ceiling.”

Min skinned his teeth in a tight grin.  “And it doesn’t hurt to make sure you’re the only ones with the hardware once they’re inside.”

“Goes without saying,” Grendal agreed.

“You’ve got a nice place here,” Min admitted.  The plain exterior of the building notwithstanding, the inside of the Redstone displayed quite good taste.  “Probably more than Vastitas is good for, though.”

Grendal brought them to a table scaled to be comfortable for Earth-born humans.  No sooner did they sit down than a waitress appeared.  “Coffee,” Grendal said and raised an eyebrow at Min.

“Make it two,” he agreed.

“It is,” Grendal said once the waitress had hurried off.  “There are a few locals who patronize us regularly, but a good percentage of the population comes here for celebrations when they have a few extra credits.  And there are the visiting dignitaries, of course.”

“Still, you could be doing much better for yourself almost anywhere else.”

Grendal smiled impishly at him.  “I could, but if I were just in it for the money, I’d do something else entirely.  Besides, this way I get all the pleasures of Earth, without having to pay someone else’s inflated pricing.”

Min nodded.  “I haven’t had coffee in ages.  Is it real?”

“Colombian Roast.  You won’t find anything more real.”

Min’s mouth watered.  There were caffeine sources on Mars, though mostly synthetic.  Coffee just didn’t grow well under artificial lighting.  “I can’t wait.”

“Well, you didn’t come here for fun, Marshal.  What can I help you with?”

Min reached for his tablet and froze when Grendal flinched.  “Sorry.  I’m just getting out my tablet.”  Moving slowly, he drew it out and placed it on the table.

“How embarrassing,” Grendal laughed a little, shaking her head.

The waitress returned with their coffee, setting out the cups and carafe.  The moment of tension faded away as they turned their attention to the beverage, each mixing their coffee to their liking.  Min mixed in a large splash of cream; he preferred his coffee black, but passing up the novelty of cream when it was offered seemed like a crime.

After a minute of careful sipping and giving the coffee the attention it deserved, Min thumbed on his tablet and pulled up the photos of the missing girls.  “I’m on a missing person case,” he said.  “Angeline Nueva de Vita and Jasmine Chow.”

“And you’re looking for them here?” Grendal gave him an odd smile.  “We don’t get many young customers.”

“I have reason to believe they visited the Redstone,” Min said carefully.

“I don’t doubt you, Marshal.  I suppose we can pull up the footage from… what day did they go missing?”

“Three days ago.”

“That’s a cold trail for a kidnapping,” Grendal said.

“There are extenuating circumstances.”

“A bounty,” Grendal guessed.

Min sipped his coffee and smiled blandly.  “We all must make our way in this world somehow.”

“Very noble of you.”

Min gave her a seated bow.

“If I may?” Grendal gestured at his tablet and he spun it around for her to use.  After a minute of tapping, she returned the tablet.  “I’ve uploaded the footage from that day.”

Min pulled it up.  The recording came from a dozen feeds scattered about the interior of the Redstone.  He tapped through it, stopping the video on an image of two girls sitting at the bar.  One of the cameras caught the girls’ faces in profile.  It was unmistakably Angeline and Jasmine.

“They were here,” Min announced.  He hit play again, watching as the girls took their first taste of alcohol.  There was something wrong with the image, though.  As the video played, static built up until, after just a few seconds, the whole thing dissolved into snow.

“The video is corrupted,” he said.

“What?  Let me see.”

Min spun the tablet around and showed Grendal the footage again.  Grendal switched frames, jumping from camera to camera.  The static was affecting all the cameras, but the feeds closest to the two girls were completely unintelligible.

“What is that?” he asked.  “A pocket scrambler?”

“Must be,” Grendal said.  She worked at the tablet for a minute, then spun it around so Min could see.  She had isolated a frame from one of the corner cameras.  The image was tearing badly, but it was possible to see a group of five men in the bar area, one of whom appeared to be dancing with one of the girls.

“The kidnappers,” Min mused.  He checked the time stamp in the corner.  “They were with the girls for nearly an hour.  They must have bought drinks.  Do you have credit records of your customers?”

Grendal frowned.  “We have a privacy policy…” she hesitated then shook her head.  “Which I am happy to waive for these people.”  She sniffed.  “Nobody hacks my system and gets away with it.”

“Very noble,” Min grinned.  “And thank you.”

Grendal waved a hand dismissively.  “I’ll send the credit records to your tablet as soon as I have them.  Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Min nodded.  “One more thing.  One of the girls checked something into a safe here at the Redstone.  I would like to see the contents.”

“You got Captain Giovanni to let you search the stack?” Grendal sounded surprised and perhaps a little impressed.

“After a fashion.”

Grendal laughed.  “I’d love to hear that story someday, but if you don’t have anything else for me, I’m afraid I must return to my business.”

“Thank you for the coffee,” Min said, getting to his feet and giving her a short bow.

“Charles will accommodate you in the foyer.  It’s been a pleasure, Marshal.  Don’t be a stranger.”

Min watched her walk away and shook the stilted formality from his brain like a dog shedding water.  The caffeine from the coffee was starting to race around in his system.  There was nothing like the rush from real coffee.  Stimulants and artificial caffeine pills were effective but always seemed to give a chemical high, not the natural energy of a good cup of coffee.

He left the restaurant, suddenly finding the interior of the Redstone Lounge in poor taste.  He pictured Angeline walking in here, awestruck at the casual display of wealth, trusting, innocent, and having that all taken away from her.

By the time he got back to the foyer, he was in a foul mood.  Charles saw him enter and waved him over.

“Sorry about earlier,” he said smoothly.  Clearly Grendal had given him a piece of her mind.

“Skip it.  I’m after an item checked in by a young girl.  Angeline Nueva de Vita.”  He held up his tablet, showing him the missing girl’s face.  “She came in here three days earlier.”

“Madam Crade has informed me of your desires.  If you wait a moment, I’ll bring the item out.”

Min resisted the urge to dig under the man’s skin and see how far he could push him.  As pleasant as it might be he didn’t need the attention of the local police just yet.  They were likely still smarting from the confrontation earlier in the morning.  The last thing he needed was to be thrown in a cell for disorderly conduct.  He would get out eventually, but Angeline’s trail was already days cold.  If he was going to follow it, he couldn’t waste any more time.

Charles returned and handed Min a plastic bag and a datachip.  “This is what the girl stored.  The chip has the credit records of the men who purchased drinks while the girls were here.”

Min accepted the bag and weighed the chip in his hand.  The easy cooperation from the Redstone was almost suspicious.  “Thanks.”

Min left the Redstone and wandered around the market at random until he found a place to sit in a public booth that was unoccupied.  He unwrapped the ball of packing in Angeline’s bag and drew out the glass bird.  The vagueness of the anatomy betrayed the artist’s lack of familiarity with real birds, but it had a whimsical beauty to it.

He set the bird aside and pulled up the contents of the datachip on his tablet.  There were several entries, the first from Zhen Chow, and then the rest were from a man named Anton Engel.  Min frowned thoughtfully, turning Angeline’s bird over in his hands as he pondered.

For a man who engaged in kidnapping girls for their ovaries, this Engel was a pretty dim chap.  Using a secured credit line to make a purchase, then kidnapping the girls from that very establishment seemed remarkably unintelligent.

Come to think of it, it was strange that nobody at the Redstone had objected when Engel left the bar with two drunken girls.  But maybe that was just his Earth upbringing speaking.  On Earth, giving girls barely in their teens hard alcohol at a bar would have been grounds for jail time, or the loss of a liquor license at least.  On Mars, not only was it not taboo for young people to drink, it wasn’t strange to see very young women with much older men.

“You Yang?”

Min pulled himself from his thoughts and turned to find a fist swinging toward him.  Stars burst in his vision and he sprawled off the bench.  A quiet snick of metal-on-metal and a cold pressure at the back of his skull made Min freeze in place.

CHAPTER

TEN

Autopsy report from September 8th, 2128, in conjunction with case code 107951546.

Victim is a male, around 30 years of age, 5’9” and 184 lbs.  There is a large [redacted] tattoo on the left shoulder.  Initial examination shows ample evidence of systemic failure.  Major organs lack fibrous connective tissue or have liquefied entirely.  The liver is notably absent, with only a large quantity of fluid remaining in the cavity.

Given the frictional abrasions around the wrists and ankles, as well as subdermal hematomas in the feet and lower legs, it is likely the victim died while tied to a chair.  Given the [redacted] column of [redacted], it is likely a ritualized killing of the type commonly seen in response to failure to make payments for continued Womack treatments.

There is little sign of melanin bleaching, so the victim had not been on the treatments for very long.

Min’s vision swam.  Weight settled against his back and a knee dug into his spine.

“Easy there, Marshal.  You struggle too much and I’ll paint the floor with your wujin brains.  Any bets as to what color they’d be?”

Min forced himself to relax.  Angeline’s bird had been knocked from his hands when he had taken the punch, and it lay on the ground under the bench.  One wing had been broken and lay glittering amid the dust and grime.

“That’s better.  You just stay all peaceful-like and nobody has to get hurt.  We’re just here to give you a message, that’s all.  Forget the girl, Marshal.  She’s not worth your time.”

Min stretched out a hand and felt the razor edge of the broken wing come under his fingers.  He gripped it lightly and tensed his legs, preparing himself to roll if the gunman on his back decided to punctuate his message with a bullet or two.

“Say you understand me, so I know you’re not just sleeping down there.”

“I hear you.”

“You gonna leave the case alone?”  The barrel of the gun at Min’s head dug into his skin painfully when he hesitated.

“Since you asked so nicely.”

“See, was that hard?  Don’t want to see you snooping around anymore, Marshal.  Next time, we’ll just pick you out of the crowd.  We’re being polite, see.  Civilized.”

“I can tell.”

The pressure of the barrel removed itself from Min’s skull.  “You just lie there until we’re good and gone.  You stop kissing the pavement while we can see you, and I’ll put one through your bleached skull.  Capiche?”

“Crystal.”

“Good lad.”  The weight lifted off Min’s spine.

Min gave it a count of twenty before he pushed himself to his feet.  There were a few people looking at him curiously, but lost interest after a few moments.  Min gathered up his tablet from the table.  The datachip was gone.

He rubbed his jaw ruefully.  He hadn’t expected someone to take objection to his investigations so rapidly.  In retrospect, he shouldn’t have been surprised.  The Womack Process and its attendant treatments was a billion-credit industry on Mars.  The number of people receiving the treatment varied from year to year, but the current count was somewhere around several hundred thousand.

By the time someone like Nuon Chow got around to having her ovaries removed, she had only a fraction of the eggs she had possessed at her first menstruation.  At a conservative estimate, Nuon had donated a hundred thousand eggs.  The process of engineering the treatment serum depended on the quality of egg provided, with a success rate ranging from one in ten to one in several hundred.  The donor was paid based on the success rate of her eggs.  The rates changed from month to month depending on supply and demand, but if Nuon had chosen her timing well, she could have gotten a thousand credits per successful egg.

On the high side, Nuon could have made as much as ten million credits.  And while Nuon might have only donated a hundred thousand eggs, a young girl just starting puberty might have three or four times that amount.  A single kidnapped girl was worth millions, even considering the low rates black-market eggs would bring.

No, Min wasn’t surprised that the people involved were protecting their investment.

Min made his way to a net café and sat down before one of the terminals.  He fed it a credit chip and punched in a number from memory.  After a moment, the monitor cleared of the connecting icons and a man’s face resolved.

“Min, how are you?  Oh, man, you look like shit.”

“Good to see you too, Enrique.  I feel like shit.”  Min reached behind him and swung the privacy curtain closed.

“You calling from a public booth?  What’s going on?”

“Picked up a missing person case when I got back from the pole.”

“The Esperalda bounty?  I heard someone cashed that one in.”

“Yeah.”

“Would have thought you’d take some time off after collecting a tag like that.  What are you doing in,” Enrique’s eyes shuttled to the side, examining the call details.  “Vastitas?  That place is a pit.”

“I like to keep busy.  Anyway, I may have stuck my foot in deeper than I thought.  Had a hit squad warn me off the case.”

“So drop it.  What’s the bounty?  A few grand?  That’s not worth your head, Min.”

Min rubbed his jaw and winced.  Enrique was right.  Collecting the bounty from Sarah Esperalda had put Min in the black for years to come.  He could buy some water, invest in a tree farm and retire to a quiet life.  The thought galled him.  Someone like Grendal Crade could hide in their fortified bunker of a restaurant and live forever.  It would be a dull life, safe and secure.  A life that would drive Min mad as surely as getting married again would.

Then he remembered the look on Justine Nueva de Vita’s face, the soul-tearing loss the whole family was going through.

“Yeah.  I’ll think about it.  Run a name for me?”

Enrique rolled his eyes.  “Yeah, shoot it over.”

“Anton Engel.  Wujin, Earthborn build.”

“Not much to go on.”

“He’s probably an enforcer, or a headhunter.  Travels a lot.”  Min thought of the bar tab the man had run up.  “Likes an expensive lifestyle.  Probably lives in Olympus or Tharsis cluster.”

“This might take a few.  Oh, don’t forget you have your treatment coming up in a week or so.”

Min rolled his eyes.  He hadn’t forgotten.  “Thanks, mom.  Shoot it to my tablet when you get a result?”

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks, Enrique.  Owe you one.”

“Watch your back out there.  Can’t collect if you’re dead.”

Min flipped off the camera and closed the connection.  Enrique might nag like a shrewish wife, but he wasn’t wrong.  If he was going to stay on the case, he needed something more solid to go on than the name of a disposable enforcer.  If the people running the kidnapping ring knew Min was getting close, they’d have no compunction about sending Engel to the surface to collect rocks without a space suit.

Either way, if Min was going to continue this investigation, he had to return to base and get tooled up.  The thugs jumping him in the market had thrown a scare into him.  It wasn’t the death threat that worried him, he had more than his share of those on a daily basis, it was the way they had caught him with his guard down.  It showed a level of sophistication that was lacking in your average criminal enterprise.  He wasn’t dealing with the dregs of society this time.

Mostly, Min didn’t want to die in some back-alley koshing.  If he was going to die, he’d prefer to go out in a blaze of glory.

Angeline would have to hold on for a few more days.  Min wouldn’t do her any good if he died on the way.

Min boarded the tram an hour after he placed his call.  Calling the vehicle a tram always amused Min.  Where he had grown up, a tram was a truncated train, pulling its power from overhead lines.  The tram that went between Cydonia’s clusters had more in common with a railgun than a train.  Superconducting magnets held the tram in fixed levitation, and the near-vacuum of the Martian atmosphere let the trams reach speeds upwards of two thousand miles an hour.

He settled into one of the gimbaled seats.  The other passengers boarding the tram filed in and strapped themselves into seats around him.  A young mother with a squalling baby was last on board and hurried to get herself and her baby situated.

Min watched her with a sort of hopeless lassitude.  The two hour trip to the next cluster was looking to be miserable.  Babies never took the acceleration and deceleration well.  Since the whole trip would either be speeding up or slowing down, the baby would probably be bawling the whole time.

A conductor passed through the tram cabin, checking safety straps and making sure there wasn’t anything loose that would end up banging around the cabin.  “Tram is departing in five minutes,” he kept repeating in a bored monotone.  Min doubted it.  The conductor had been in their cabin for longer than a minute and he was still saying the same thing.

His tablet pinged inside his jacket.  With a sigh, Min pulled it out and thumbed it on.  Enrique had come through.  A dossier on Anton Engel filled the screen and he flipped through it, trying to get a general grasp of who Engel was before settling down to read the fine print.

Anton had been a low-grade thug-for-hire.  He had been picked up a few times in association with mild criminality.  A few years in the ice mines seemed to have cemented his career path, and afterward he was seen in the company of more organized crime.  His known associates were into illegal narcotics, military-grade surplus, importing embargoed cargoes and kidnapping.  Nothing had stuck on him, and then for two years he had fallen off the grid.

The next time Anton showed up in official records, he had received his first treatment of the Womack Process.  That was two years ago.  A crook like Anton normally would have been hard-pressed to make payments on his treatments.  Desperation would have made him search out bigger game and lack of patience would lead to him making mistakes and getting caught.  Min had seen it happen time and again.  Prison time usually put the final nail in the coffin for men like Anton.  No stable income, no savings, and no way a cluster was going to foot the bill for his treatments.  Most of the time, there was no need for the death penalty.  After a month in prison had gone by, the guard came by the cell to find the prisoner very, very dead.  Problem solved.

Anton had managed to escape that particular dwindling spiral.  Not only was he managing to stay ahead of his treatment payments, he was doing it without any overtly criminal activity.  And he managed to have enough liquid assets to buy imported alcohol on top of that.

A man like Anton didn’t have a particularly wide skill set.  He was a criminal by nature and by training.  He could work a protection gambit or break someone’s kneecaps, but he lacked the intelligence and motivation to engage in anything long-term.  That meant he was acting as someone’s attack dog.

The more Min thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Anton had seen the girls in the Redstone and had acted on impulse to kidnap them.  He might have standing orders to keep an eye out for likely victims, but it was unlikely his employer had him tasked solely with acquisitions.

Min reached the financial breakdown report and was unsurprised to discover that all credit deposits had been by unregistered chip.  There was no financial trail to follow up the chain of command.

A klaxon sounded and after a moment, Min felt himself pressed gently back into his seat.  The seats in the cabin all spun on their gimbals, orienting automatically so the passengers were facing straight ahead.  Gradually the pressure grew.  The baby started wailing in distress and Min grit his teeth.  Who brought their baby on a tram?  Honestly.

After a few minutes, the acceleration eased down to a barely noticeable pressure.  The tram had reached its cruising speed.  If the tram had been traveling through atmosphere or been built to run on wheels, the vibrations would have been unbearable for passengers.  Since the tram was a maglev on Mars, all Min felt was a slight vibration through hard surfaces, barely enough to comment on.

Idly, Min flipped through the pages of the dossier.  A picture caught his eye and he tabbed back to it.  The image was of a known associate, a Spanish gweilo by the name of Lucien Talbot.  There wasn’t anything remarkable about the man, really.  Nothing that would explain why Min’s eye had caught on him.  Skinny build, perhaps broader in the shoulder than your average gweilo.  Not particularly handsome, though who knew what women saw in men anyway, and Min was no judge of that particular quality in others.  The man had bushier eyebrows than average, and was sporting an ill-favored tuft of wiry hair on his chin.

It wasn’t a memorable face.  Min examined the photo for a minute, taking note of any minor defining characteristics that might help him spot the man later.

Up ahead in the cabin, the baby finally stopped crying and Min glanced up from his tablet.  The gimbaled seats were laid out in two rows, two on either side of a central aisle.  The spaces between the seats were generous, making sure that each seat was free to spin as needed to face the acceleration or deceleration forces.  There wasn’t anything Min could see from his seat but the backs of the seats in front of him and the man seated across the aisle.

Min glanced that way, and, like a perfect idiot, did a double take.  Seated across the aisle from him was the man in the photograph.  He had cut his hair, and the ugly facial hair had been shaven, but it was unmistakable.  Lucien saw Min recognize him and for a moment, the two of them stared at each other.

Lucien broke the silence.  “Shit.”

He ripped the safety harness off and sprang from his seat.  Min’s hands darted to his harness.  By the time he had fought free of the webbing and secured his tablet, Lucien had popped the forward cabin door and had vanished.

Min ran up the aisle and caught the door to the reinforced accordioned passageway as it was swinging shut.  He caught a last glimpse of the woman with her baby, her eyes wide with fear, and then he was through.

At the speed the tram was traveling at, it had to go in a perfectly straight line.  Even a gradual deviation of course would have flung the passengers around inside the cabin like dice shaken in a cup.  Fortunately, there was nothing in the Martian geology that prevented the tunnel borers from making a perfectly straight tunnel from cluster to cluster.  Still, minute changes in atmosphere, microscopically misaligned magnets and a host of other flaws made the tram vibrate.  In the cabins, the whole floor was magnetically suspended and the chairs were designed to absorb what little vibrations made it through.

There were no such luxuries in the passageway between the trams.

Cold gripped Min and he gasped for breath as if he had just plunged into a freezing lake.  The vibrations from the unsuspended floor of the passageway almost knocked him from his feet.  His vision blurred and his teeth rattled together.  He staggered and gripped a handrail.  Almost instantly his hand went numb to the elbow, but it gave him enough stability to yank the next door open and fall through to the next cabin.

Shrieks at the forward end of the cabin drew his attention and he saw Lucien struggling with the conductor.  Metal flashed and the uniformed man staggered back, clutching his stomach with red blossoming between his fingers.

Min forced himself to his feet and drew the pistol at his side.  The nerve endings in his hand were tingling still from the brief grip on the handrail.  Awkwardly, he switched hands and held the gun up left-handed.

“Freeze, Lucien!”

A female passenger saw him holding the gun and screamed.  It wasn’t an unreasonable reaction.  A bullet punching through the shell of the tram could depressurize the cabin at best.  Far more likely, the bullet hole would shred open under the escaping atmosphere, tearing the cabin apart and killing everyone on the tram in an instant.  Min still had monomol rounds loaded in the pistol, but the woman didn’t know that.

Lucien turned and saw the gun.  His face went pale and he bolted for the door to the next cabin.  Min cursed and ran after him.  Left-handed, he wasn’t sure he could hit Lucien at that distance, and even if he did, the monomol round would get mostly absorbed by the man’s clothes.

Min reached the door and hauled it open.  Knowing what to expect this time, Min jumped across the passage to the next door and crashed through it.  Instinct more than anything else made Min turn his forward momentum into an awkward tumble to the ground.  A poly crate smashed into the wall where his head had been, showering him with bits of shattered poly and printed plastic parts.

Lucien threw another crate at him and Min rolled to the side to avoid it.  The cabin was full of crates of various sizes: cargo being shipped between clusters.  The air in the cargo cabin was chilly, several degrees below freezing, but not as shockingly cold as the passageways between the cabins were.  Lucien slashed the webbing holding stacks of crates secure and pulled them into the narrow aisle between them, blocking the path.

Min got to his feet and snapped off a shot.  The round went wide and steel shrieked as the powdered round blasted a neat circle of paint clean from the wall.  Lucien cried out and ducked away between the stacks of crates.

“Where do you think you’re going to run to, Lucien?” Min called.  He picked his way over the tumble of crates and stood still for a moment, listening.  The ever-present rattle and hum of vibration made it impossible to hear anything as subtle as a footstep.

“They warned me about you,” Lucien called back.  “I said we should kill you instead of warning you away, but my employers didn’t want that.  They didn’t want the marshals looking for vengeance.”  He laughed.  “To hell with them.  I’m not going to die here.”

“Who said anything about killing?  I’m not interested in you, Lucien.  You tell me what I want to know and I’ll let you walk.”

“Bullshit,” Lucien shot back.  “You’re a marshal.  Marshals don’t let criminals escape.”

Min eased forward through the stacks, following the sound of Lucien’s voice.  “There’s no percentage in it for me,” he argued.  “I’m a wujin, in case you didn’t notice.  I’m in this for the money.  Bringing you in wouldn’t get me anything.”

“Doesn’t matter now, I stabbed that idiot conductor.  They have my face on camera and the next station will be swarming with police.”

“So help me out.  I’ll bring you out in marshal custody.  The locals won’t be able to do a thing about it.  Once we’re out of the station, I’ll cut you loose.”

“Like I believe that.”  Lucien’s voice was coming from just around the corner of the next stack of crates.  His voice was tight with fear and anger.

Min stepped forward.  He was almost within reach of Lucien.  There was a click and the cabin was plunged into darkness.  Something heavy slammed into Min and he staggered, barely keeping his balance.  The door forward swung open and Lucien was gone.

“Damn it,” Min growled.  He kicked his way free of the crate Lucien had pushed into him and followed the man through the passageway into the next cabin.

It was a maintenance and emergency cabin.

Thanks to the near vacuum of the Martian atmosphere, the amount of tunnel space needed to surround the trams had been cut down to almost nothing, except for a gap above the tram for maintenance vehicles, power lines and such.  But exiting a tram via the tunnels required a spacesuit.  This cabin had a rack of space suits on one wall, along with various equipment and emergency supplies.  In the far corner, an airlock provided access to the roof of the tram.  One of the suits was missing from the rack, and Min found Lucien within the airlock, just starting to climb into the suit.

“Are you out of your mind?” Min cried.  “The tram is going over a thousand miles an hour!”

“What choice do I have?” Lucien demanded.

“I already gave you a choice!  If you go out while the tram’s moving, it’ll be suicide.”

Lucien ignored him, focusing on getting into the suit.  “I started my treatments, Marshal.  If I go to jail, I’ll be dead.  This way, I at least have a chance.”

“This isn’t a chance, Lucien.  Think of the girls!  You helped kidnap them, right?  Help me find them and I’ll make sure you get your next treatment.  That’s a promise.  I’ll pay for it myself.”

“And after that?” Lucien sneered.  “You can’t keep me safe.  You think the marshals don’t get their cut of profit from our business?  Your own people would gun me down.”

Min grabbed one of the spare suits and started climbing into it.  “Tell me how we can make this work, Lucien.  You die out there and I’ve got nothing.  If you die, the girls will die.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”  Lucien finished fastening the chest of his suit and shrugged into the air tank harness.  “If I tell you what you want to know, I’m a dead man, Marshal.”  He lowered his helmet on and fastened it in place then started cycling the airlock.

The thump of the vacuum pump drowned out any further conversation.  Min watched the gauges swing down and the mercury column rise.  The top hatch irised open with a hiss, and Lucien climbed up the ladder and out onto the top of the tram.

Min waited impatiently as the hatch closed and the chamber re-pressurized.  He fit his helmet on and tripped the spacesuit’s radio microphone.  “Lucien, you hear me?”

“Fuck off, Marshal.”

“Listen, it might seem like it’s too late for you, but it’s not.”  Min climbed into the airlock and started the cycle again.  Inside the helmet, the thump of the vacuum pump sounded oddly hollow, like it was underwater.  “Help me find the girls.  That’s all I’m asking.”

“You don’t seem to understand, Marshal.  I don’t want to help you find the girls.  That’s the opposite of what I want.”

The chamber equalized with the outside pressure and the iris opened again.  Min climbed up the ladder and stuck his head outside of the tram.  No assignment had ever taken him to the top of speeding tram.

Above him, the tunnel was a smooth arch.  The stone walls passed by in a featureless ruddy blur.  Lucien’s suit lights made him visible down the tram.  He was walking in the middle, crouched over to keep his balance and the to keep the top of his head clear from the tunnel.

“Lucien, don’t be stupid, man.  Come back.”

“I already told you, Marshal, not going to happen.”

Min pulled himself the rest of the way out and the airlock shut behind him.  Controls bedded into the roof showed the chamber was re-pressurizing once more.

“God damn it, Lucien.  Don’t make me come after you!”

Lucien paused long enough to turn and give Min an obscene gesture.  He reached the end of the tram segment and started casting about, trying to work out a way to cross over to the next segment.

On top of the tram, the vibrations weren’t as bad as they had been in the passageway, but not by much.  The suit Min was wearing helped deaden some of it, but it made his footing treacherous and made the balls of his feet tingle.

Moving carefully, Min crept out to the center of the roof.  Lucien was standing in a half crouch, but Min couldn’t bring himself to stand up.  All it would take was one low-hanging wire, or a maintenance robot, or anything, really, and Lucien would die.  The tram was moving so fast that there was no way either of them would be able to see the obstacle coming.

“Look, man, I know about Anton Engel.  I know he’s the one that kidnapped the girls.  It wasn’t you.  How could you be responsible for that?”

“Shut up, Marshal.  You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Was it you who was dancing with Angeline?  You know how old she is?  She’s fourteen, man.  Hasn’t even had her first period.”

“I said shut up!”

Min grinned.  He had touched a nerve that time.  He continued his careful crawl up the tram.  Lucien was thirty feet ahead of him now, still trying to figure out how to cross over to the next tram segment.

“The other one, Jasmine.  It was Anton dancing with her, right?  Pretty thing, but I bet she wouldn’t give you the time of day.  Not a gweilo like yourself.”

Lucien turned around.  “The fuck do you know?  You know nothing about me.”

“To be honest with you, I couldn’t give a shit about Jasmine.  You can have her.  I’m only interested in finding Angeline.”  Min was ten feet from Lucien now.  Close enough that he could close the distance and tackle him to the ground.  If they hadn’t been on top of a tram going well over a thousand miles an hour, he might have tried it.  Instead he pulled his pistol from the webbing on his suit and aimed it at Lucien.

“Ain’t gonna learn shit if you shoot me, Marshal.”

“These are monomol rounds,” Min explained.  “At this distance they’ll punch right through your suit.  Probably not hard enough to do lethal damage, but then you’d have to worry about your air supply.  Have you ever seen a man exposed to vacuum before?”

“No, I–”

“It’s not the lack of air that kills you,” Min said, overriding him.  “It’s the cold.  Long before you suffocate, your lung tissue freezes.  Then, while your brain is still struggling to stay conscious, your eyes solidify.  Your vision locks into place and goes blurry as the aqueous humors crystallize.  The last thing you’re aware of is your heart thudding in your chest, trying to push blood through arteries slowly turning to slush.”

“Jesus Christ, man.”

“And then you die.  It takes roughly thirty seconds.  You might try and hold your breath, but your body isn’t designed to handle that much internal pressure.  You have to let your air out.  Then you’ll try and breathe and the dying begins.”

“You’re a sick fuck, Marshal.”

“Well, you’re going to die anyway, right?  So what’s in it for me?  I’d happily shoot you right now.  In the leg so you’ll be conscious throughout the rest of your miserable life.  Is that what you want?  A painful death?  Or do you want to come inside and help me rescue Angeline.”

Min could see the decision come over Lucien.  His shoulders slumped and he straightened from his half-crouch.  “Okay.  Fine.  I’ll help you, Marshal, but I want your word–”

Lucien’s microphone cut out with a truncated squeal and the tall man jerked amid gouting clouds of atmosphere.  Frost sprang up on Min’s faceplate, blocking his vision.  Min felt a tremor through the tram’s roof as Lucien fell.

The ice sublimated in patches, giving Min a broken view of Lucien as he slid bonelessly to the side of the tram.  Lucien’s shoulder touched the side of the tunnel and he vanished from sight.

Min lay on the roof of the tram for a long minute, trying to get his heartbeat back under control.  He hadn’t even seen whatever it was that had killed Lucien.

He was back to square one, but with more questions than he had started with.  Had Lucien been lying about the marshals being on the take?  Standard policy had always been to not waste resources trying to track down the hundreds of girls that went missing every year.  If the trail was cold by more than a few hours, it just wasn’t worth the effort.

Or was it?

Was that policy shaped by marshals who profited from the lack of official interest?  How many girls had died over the years because of possible corruption in the marshals?

Min crawled back to the airlock hatch, taking his time and staying as low as he could.  He had intended to return to the marshal headquarters in Olympus, but now he looked forward to the trip for an entirely new set of reasons.

Justice through Action.  That was the marshal code.  If he found corruption when he went looking, there would be justice if he had to pull the trigger himself.

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

Partial transcript of Dr. Annette Everard’s speech to the United Nations shortly after Dr. Womack made his announcement of the Womack Process.  It was the last public appearance of Dr. Everard.

“There is no greater threat to the well-being of mankind than the process discovered and codified by Dr. James Womack.  I say this as a humanitarian, as a mother of two daughters and as a scientist.  Any investigation into my financial motives will discover that I have none.  The Helix Centers operate on an at-cost level.  There is no profit made through my treatment process.

“The threat of the Womack Process is deeper than you can possibly imagine, deeper than I can guess at, deeper than any threat humanity has ever faced.  Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot overstate the danger posed by the Womack Process.  I urge you to ban it within your respective countries, outlaw its use and the people treated with it.  This is a plague of human creation that will dwarf the ravages of the Black Plague and the Spanish Flu.

“You look at me as a visionary, but you look at Dr. Womack as a savior.  Immortality for your children is well and good.  But what about us, you ask?  What about women past menopause? What about men?  Are young women to be the only ones to enjoy immortality?

“You are asking the wrong questions.  The Womack Process allows all twelve billion people living on Earth to live forever, but the question you should be asking is this: Where are all those eggs to come from?  Half of that number are male, and have no way to contribute to the treatments.  If the Womack Process becomes widely adopted, there will be no children left by the end of the century.  Humanity will wipe itself out.  This is not a scare tactic or a power grab.  This is a mathematical and sociological fact.

“This will be the fate of humanity.  It is up to you, individually, to convince your governments.  Ban the Womack Process.  Save humanity.  Or die in agony when the last human egg cells are used up.”

Angeline huddled on her cot.  Her blanket was around her shoulders to ward off the chill.  It had been two days since Eva had been dragged off by the doctor, and she had not returned.  Angeline knew, deep down, that Eva was dead.  The jailer refused to comment, but the truth was obvious.

Adora refused to speak to Jasmine.  For her part, Jasmine endured the cold shoulder of her cellmate with aloofness.

The days passed slowly, with only the morning visits of the jailer and meals breaking up the dreary boredom.  Angeline found that she didn’t have the energy to stay afraid all the time.  She was always exhausted, but nightmares kept her from getting more than a few hours of sleep each night. She dreaded the inevitable sag of her eyelids once the lights were turned out for the night.

Footsteps approaching the door drove a spike of fear through Angeline.  The door swung open and the jailer walked into the room.  Any hope that this was an inconsequential visit vanished when two more men stepped through the door.

“Alright, come on, you.”  The jailer stuck a finger out at Adora.  “You gonna come quiet-like, or do I have to beat six colors out of your hide first?”

“Go to hell, asshole!” Adora screamed at him.

“I like it when they scream,” one of the other men chuckled roughly.  He drew a stunrod from its sheathe on his belt and snapped it open.

The jailer unlocked Adora’s cage and the man stepped in.  Adora lashed out at him, snapping a kick at head height.  Angeline watched in amazement.  Adora could fight!  The man jumped back, only barely dodging the kick.

Adora fell into a crouch, her hands held loosely in front of her.  “You fuckers got the drop on me last time,” she said grimly.  “Won’t happen again.”

“She’s a feisty one,” the jailer laughed.  “Come on, Sam, get in there and pull her out.”

Sam shot the jailer a glare, but stepped back into the cage.  Adora feinted and Sam flinched back.  A flush of embarrassed anger rose up Sam’s cheeks and he charged forward.  Adora knocked the stunrod to the side, but there wasn’t enough room in the cage for her to maneuver.  Sam’s bulk crashed into her and they both went to the ground.

Adora rained blows down on whatever part of Sam she could reach, but without the ability to put her weight behind the strikes, they did little but annoy Sam.  He caught one of her arms with his free hand and pinned her long enough to drive the end of the stunrod into her side.

Adora screamed and convulsed.  Sam picked himself up and wiped a line of blood off his chin from a split lip.  “Alright, now I get to have my fun.”  He drove a boot into Adora’s stomach and the girl vomited, curling around herself in pain.

“Leave her alone!” Angeline shouted.  She was surprised to find herself on her feet.

Sam spared Angeline a curling look of amusement before grabbing Adora by the front of her shirt and hauling her upright.  He backhanded Adora with a meaty crack, sending her sprawling against her cot.  Blood ran down the side of her face and she moaned brokenly.

“Fucking little bitch,” Sam growled and drew back his foot again.

“Take it easy,” the jailer called.  “We can’t hurt them too badly.  Might throw off their cycles.”

Sam spat a bloody gob of spit onto Adora’s face.  “Maybe this one could use another month under our care,” he said.

“It’s not worth it,” the jailer shrugged.  “There’ll always be more.”

“Yeah, yeah.”  Sam rolled Adora onto her back and bound her arms behind her at the wrist and elbow with zip ties.  “Up you get.”  He pulled Adora to her feet and slapped her.  “Stand!  Or I don’t give a shit what he says, I’ll start breaking fingers until you follow orders.”

Adora complied, stumbling drunkenly.  The jailer and Sam both grabbed an elbow and hauled Adora out of the room.  The last man shut the door behind them after giving Angeline a wink.

Angeline sat on her cot, tears rolling down her face and dripping off her chin.  She couldn’t get the look on Adora’s face out of her mind.  For a moment, Angeline had entertained the thought that Adora could fight her way out of confinement.  Even if she were unable to free Angeline, even if she just made a run for it and escaped, that would have been fine.  But the look of defeat on Adora’s face as they dragged her away had crushed Angeline’s hopes.

Adora had given up.

“Oh stop crying,” Jasmine said.

Angeline looked up and abrupt hatred boiled through her.  If she could have, she would have gladly reached through the bars and strangled Jasmine, right then and there.

“How can you be so… so…”

“Aloof?”  Jasmine rolled one shoulder in a disinterested shrug.  “It’s not me.  That’s all that matters.”

Angeline had a thousand stronger words to call Jasmine, but she suspected the other girl simply wouldn’t care.  “They’ll come for you eventually,” Angeline spat.  “I hope they kill you.  Rip your guts out and throw your body into the methane tanks.”

“My parents will find me first,” Jasmine said confidently.  “You’ll see.”

“You’re the worst person I know,” Angeline said in a whisper.  “You’re worse than Anton.  You’re worse than the doctor.”

“You’re just jealous,” Jasmine said, flipping her hair back.  “You wish your parents had the money to send a rescue party.”

At the mention of her parents, Angeline’s anger drained out of her, leaving her feeling empty.  She thought of her mom, of her dad, of Hannah, Mateo and little Emilio.  Homesickness crashed through her and she curled up on her cot, trying to hold back the hot tears that burned her eyes.

The door slammed open again.  Angeline’s head jerked up.  Hope that they were bringing Adora back surged and puddled again as the jailer entered with the man named Sam.

“Your turn,” the jailer said, pointing at Jasmine.

Jasmine’s calm demeanor shattered and she screamed.  “No!  No, no, no, I’m not ready, I haven’t started yet!”

“Oh, for the love of…  Shut your little bitch mouth!”

“You can’t!” Jasmine shrieked.  “Adora is enough!  Do you know who my parents are?!  I want to see Anton!”

“Yeah, I’m sure Anton wants to see you, too.”  The jailer poked the code into the door lock and pulled it open for Sam.

Jasmine flung herself at the opening, and her high-pitched shriek cut off with a gasp as Sam drove the stunrod into Jasmine’s stomach.  Roughly, Sam threw Jasmine to the floor and pinned her there with one knee as she thrashed and screamed.

Almost bored, Sam bound Jasmine’s arms and pulled her to her feet.

“You gonna shut your fat face or am I gonna get to do some damage?”

Jasmine flinched and cowered.  She stopped screaming, but hysterical moans still trickled through lips clamped shut.

Sam sighed.  “Good enough.  Come on then.  We don’t have all day.”

Angeline watched in shock as Jasmine was led from the room and the door shut behind them.

She was alone.  Jasmine might have been a disgustingly self-centered bitch, but at least she had been there, able to speak, able to see. Simply proof that she wasn’t completely.  Totally.  Alone.

Angeline lay down on her cot again.  She couldn’t even cry any more.  She felt stripped of emotion, unable even to hate Jasmine any more.  She felt like Adora had looked.  For Angeline, there had been no chance at combat, no spirited resistance.  No screaming obscenities or pleading.  There had been no opportunity for her to stand up against her captors and offer what little resistance she could.  And yet, she felt completely defeated.  She had no hope left.

When the door swung open a few minutes later and the jailer entered with Sam again, Angeline didn’t scream.  She didn’t cry out or threaten them.  She didn’t plead or sob.  She just stood from her cot quietly.  When the jailer opened the door and Sam entered the cage, she held her hands out in front of her, her head bowed.

“Well, ain’t you just the most peaceful little thing,” Sam said.  There was laughter in his voice, but Angeline didn’t look up or struggle as he closed the zip tie around her wrists.

The jailer’s rough hand gripped her elbow and led her out of the room.  It felt strange to walk somewhere.  For five days she had been kept in a cage.  The shirt she wore billowed gently about her bare legs and cold air crawled up her spine, sending goose bumps down her arms.

The hallway was featureless, the same poured-in-place red-sand cement that was everywhere, in every cluster in Cydonia.  Dully, Angeline was aware that they were passing other doors, but there were no features that caught her attention beyond a clumsily-stenciled number above the door frames.

The numbers could be anything, really.  Apartments, or offices, or even more cells like the one she had just left.  The jailer pulled her to a stop at a door that had a letter designation in addition to a number.  E12.  Angeline noted it absently.  There was no lock on the door, and Sam pushed it open.

Angeline almost fainted with sudden relief.  Adora and Jasmine were there, strapped to upright gurneys.  Adora’s eyes were rolled up into her head, but she was alive.  A woman in a white lab coat was leaning over Jasmine, fitting her arm with an I.V. catheter.

“Put her there, on the gurney,” the woman said without looking up.

Sam pushed her roughly onto the gurney and held up his stunrod.  “No funny moves or you’ll get it,” he warned.

Angeline wasn’t really paying attention.  Her relief at seeing the other girls alive and relatively well was so strong she didn’t resist as Sam cut her bonds and strapped her to the gurney.  The woman finished with Jasmine’s arm and set up an I.V. drip, moving with practiced efficiency.

“I can take it from here, boys,” the woman said, coming to stand over Angeline.

“We’re supposed to provide backup in case–”

“I think I can handle a couple doped up girls,” the woman sneered.  “Get lost.  I can’t stand you breathing down my neck.”

Now that the woman was facing her, Angeline was surprised to find the woman was a wujin.  She wore heavy makeup and contacts, and her hair was dyed a deep black.  The fine wrinkles around her mouth and the creases under her chin had flaked the makeup away, revealing the white skin beneath.  It was a ghoulish look, and the closer Angeline inspected her, the worse it grew.

How much did you have to hate yourself, Angeline wondered, to want to completely change the way you looked?  And she was wujin; she would live forever, always hating her appearance, always struggling to hide what she had become.

The door behind the woman opened and the two men filed out.  Strangely, Angeline had felt safer being led down the hallway to an uncertain fate than she felt now, left in the room with this woman.  Fear tightened around her heart, but she refused to give in to it.  She hadn’t yet had her period.  There was no reason for them to kill her just yet.

“I had to sedate the other two,” the woman said conversationally.  “You stay quiet and I won’t have to do the same to you.”

Angeline nodded jerkily.

“This is just a routine medical check.  Despite what Ronaldo and Sam might have led you to believe, your health and wellbeing are in our best interests.  For now, at least.”  She smiled at Angeline, the unfamiliar movement pulling at the makeup and making her whole face seem like a grotesque mask.

The woman numbed Angeline’s arm with a swab and fit her with an I.V. catheter of her own.  “You have good veins, my dear.  Very healthy.”  She set up a bag of clear liquid and ran a tube to the catheter in Angeline’s arm.

Angeline cleared her throat and asked, “What are you giving me?”  Her voice came out thready, but at least she had managed to speak.

“Liquid, mostly.  You lot never do well in the cages.  You get dehydrated and the fear burns up your B vitamins too fast.  The yeast diet helps with that, but we have better results if you get a little extra C and some soluble calcium into you.”

Angeline had been to the hospital once when she had a sinus infection.  The nurse there had been very kind, with a bedside manner that put Angeline at ease despite the pain in her head.  This woman had the complete opposite effect.  Angeline’s blood ran cold as she listened to the woman describe her health as if she were an animal to be butchered as soon as she reached optimal weight.

“Will my friends be okay?” Angeline asked.  The question sounded inane as soon as it left her lips.  Of course they wouldn’t be okay.

“Oh yes,” the woman assured her with another fake smile.  “They’re just sedated.”

Her duties apparently completed for the moment, the woman turned away and started to putter about the room.  Angeline followed her with her eyes for a while, and then gradually lost interest.  The room’s contents attracted her and she looked around with growing curiosity.

It was a laboratory of some sort.  A full operating theater was on one side of the room, partitioned off by a clear plastic curtain, with an autosurgeon hanging over the table like a decommissioned spider.  Angeline’s gaze lingered there for several minutes.  She knew that was where Eva had died two days ago.

The rest of the room offered a fine distraction from the theater, though.  There were microscopes, titration tubes, shelves and racks of chemicals and liquids, a centrifuge, an incubation chamber, and machines that she had no name for.  This wasn’t a minor laboratory performing routine tasks.  The equipment and supplies could only be for research and development.

Despite herself, Angeline found excitement growing within her.  Her school’s lab didn’t have a fraction of the equipment on display here.  She had always dreamed of someday being able to visit, or even work in, a laboratory as well-equipped as this one.  She hadn’t imagined that she would be the subject of experimentation, though.

As Angeline looked about the room, she felt muscles in her neck and abdomen relax.  She felt brighter and more aware.  The vitamin cocktail being pumped into her was starting to take hold.  As Angeline’s eyes drifted shut, she realized that there had to be something else mixed in with the vitamins.  But then darkness closed about her and she stopped caring.

Angeline woke up back in her cot with her bladder full to bursting.  Moving stiffly, she got up and relieved herself.  Jasmine was still asleep in the cage next to her, but Adora was awake and stretching.

“How are you feeling?” Angeline asked, speaking quietly so she didn’t wake Jasmine.

Adora winced as a lunge stretched a muscle in her stomach.  “I’ll live.”  She coughed a rueful laugh.  “For now, at least.”

“I didn’t know you could fight.”

“Not much good it did me,” Adora said shortly.  She finished her stretches and dropped to the ground and started doing pushups.

Angeline watched her for a minute in silence.  Adora finished her pushups and rolled onto her back to start doing crunches.

“Could you teach me?” Angeline finally asked.

“Teach you what?”

“To fight.  I want to be like you.  Strong enough to not be afraid.”

Adora stopped her crunches and stretched out her abdominal muscles.  She was shaking as she did it and her shirt rode up, revealing the mottled blue and orange bruising on her stomach.  Angeline blanched, but held Adora’s gaze without flinching.

Adora sighed and sat down on her cot.  “I’ve been fighting for years,” she said ruefully with a shake of her head.  “Every Monday and Thursday since I was eight.  Taekwondo, judo and eskrima.  Not much good they did me.”

“What’s eskrima?”

“Stick fighting.  If I could get my hands on one of those stunrods…”  Adora’s face split in a grim smile.

“So what do I do?  How can I fight?”

Adora laughed, waking Jasmine up.  “Do?  Weren’t you paying attention?”

“Paying attention to what?” Jasmine said waspishly.

Adora turned her shoulder to Jasmine, ignoring her.  Moving stiffly, she got down on her knees, stretched out and started doing pushups again.

Jasmine turned to Angeline.  “What’s with her?”

Angeline watched Adora for a moment, then got down on her stomach and did a pushup of her own.  It was a lot harder than Adora made it look, but she managed it.  The second one was harder.  By the third, she was trembling and barely able to straighten her arms.  Angeline collapsed, breathing hard.

“What, you want to be like her?” Jasmine mocked.  “Is that your ambition?  To get kicked around and beat up?”

Angeline ignored her.  She pulled her knees up under her and did another pushup.  It was easier, but she still felt the strain in her shoulders and arms.  Adora finished her pushups and rolled over to start doing crunches again, and Angeline followed her.

“I could never work out,” Jasmine said.  “Guys don’t like it when you’re all muscley with veins sticking out all over.”

The crunches burned Angeline’s stomach, but she kept going, moving slower and slower until Adora stopped.  Angeline was shaking and she swallowed a sob as her stomach muscles screamed their protest.  Nausea coiled in her gut.

“Stretch it out,” Adora called.

Angeline looked over and copied the other girl’s position, lying on her stomach and using her arms to push her shoulders up.  The cramping pain faded and Angeline breathed deeply, feeling her abdominal muscles relax.

Adora climbed to her feet and started doing squats, hanging onto the cage mesh for balance and holding one leg out in front of her at a time.

Angeline got up shakily and tried to follow Adora’s example, but her legs just weren’t strong enough.  She made do with both legs on the ground at once.  Angeline tried to keep up, but Adora kept going with the squats long after Angeline’s legs quit working and refused to lift her weight.  With a groan, she sat down on her cot.

“See, you can’t do it,” Jasmine sneered at her.  “That girl is crazy.  All she’s going to do is get herself killed.”

Angeline pulled herself to her feet.  She was sorer than she had ever been in her life.  Her muscles throbbed and pain lanced through her legs.  Still, she dipped down into another squat.  If Adora could do on one leg, then she could do it with two.  She gritted her teeth and forced her legs to straighten, using the cage mesh to help pull herself up with her arms.

Adora looked over at met Angeline’s eyes.  She dipped her head in a tiny nod, acknowledging Angeline’s determination to keep up.

Angeline felt herself blushing.  She had never had to do anything to prove herself to anyone else before, not really.  And certainly not physically.  The exercises stabbed at her, but she lowered herself again, determined to keep it up as long as Adora did.

Jasmine scowled at her and flung herself on her bed.

Angeline shared a smile with Adora and focused on keeping her legs moving.  It was a tiny victory, but it made her feel warm inside.  The feeling was fleeting, and once more, all Angeline could think about was the pain in her legs and the need to push up from one more squat.

Finally Adora finished her squats and moved onto her stomach to start over with pushups.  Wearily, Angeline followed.

It might be pointless, she thought as she struggled to complete her first pushup, but she was doing something.  While she could act, there was still hope.

She just wished hope didn’t have to hurt so much.

CHAPTER

TWELVE

Live TV interview with a young woman waiting outside a large building still surrounded by the detritus of its construction:

Anchor: We’re here at the new Helix Center in Montreal.  It’s negative twenty out here, but the line still goes all the way around the block.  Excuse me, miss, how long have you been waiting out here?

Woman: Since six yesterday.

Anchor: You’ve been waiting all night?  I understand there’s only a slight chance anyone will get accepted to start receiving the Helix Rebuild.

Woman: There’s a psychological exam, a pretty strict one.  I guess they don’t want any crazies running around for the next thirty thousand years.

Anchor: And you’re freezing yourself on the off-chance you have what it takes?

Woman: I think I can stand a little cold for the chance to live forever.

Anchor: There you have it, folks.  Do you have what it takes to live forever?  With a line like I’m seeing today, better pack a sleeping bag if you want to find out.  This is Tara Alexis for the Channel 12 News.  If I don’t come in for work tomorrow, you know where I’ll be.

Marcus Truman woke coughing.  He was wringing with sweat and his head throbbed. His lungs felt like they were half-full of water and every cough sent pain tearing through him.

He struggled from the grasping tangle of sheets and staggered to the bathing cubicle.  His medicines and painkillers were set out on the counter ready for the morning dose.  Still coughing, he fumbled out the small handful of pills.  There were painkillers in that handful of colorful capsules, and muscle relaxants and expectorates, all designed to help control the wracking coughs that shook his body.  But he couldn’t take them.  He could barely draw a breath between coughs, much less hold his coughing down long enough to swallow the pills.

For a moment he panicked, sure he was going to die.  Then he remembered the skin patches.

For an emergency only, his doctor had warned him.

This felt like an emergency.

Marcus ripped the package open with trembling hands, peeled off the backing and slapped the patch to his upper arm.  Chemical wellbeing soaked into him.  The tearing pain in his chest faded away and his cough settled.  He could still feel the itch in his lungs that had had him coughing earlier, but his diaphragm lacked the strength to make him cough.

The hacking seemed to be under control.  Marcus flicked on the lights and stared at his reflection in the mirror.  His skin was pale, his eyes and cheeks sunken.  He looked like he was dying.

Marcus opened the packaging on a pre-moistened towelette and swiped at the flecks of pink foam around his mouth.  He looked like he was dying, because he was.  Stage three lung cancer.  He lay back on his bed, the aches and pains of his ruined body held back by the cocktail from his arm patch.

Modern medicine had kept him alive so far, but there was only so much that could be done with drugs and painkillers.  They were stopgaps, delaying tactics.  Not a cure.

He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.  He felt a general sense of things coming apart at the seams.  His body was on the brink of shutting down.  It would be so easy to just close his eyes and leave everything behind.

No.  With a groan, Marcus rolled to his side and shakily got his feet under him.  He was exhausted, but sleep wouldn’t do him any good now.  He knew from experience that he would wake up just as tired, just as sore.

Moving slowly and trying not to breathe deeply, he cleaned the stale sweat from his body and dressed.  He had things to do.  He wasn’t ready to die just yet.

“Good morning, Doctor Bannister,” Marcus said.  The humid air of the hydroponic farm sat in his lungs like warm porridge.  The itch in his chest was back with a vengeance, and he could feel the edges of pain starting to make their way to the surface of his awareness, as if there were a coil of barbed wire in his lungs and someone was pulling it out, inch by inch.

“Marcus, I’d say it is good to see you, but you look terrible!  Have you seen a doctor?”

Marcus smiled tightly.  He had to use a cane to help hold himself upright.  Without it, the spinning in his head would have sent him tumbling to the ground in a moment.  “I saw the doctor this morning, but I didn’t come to talk about me.  How are the potatoes coming along?”

Andrea looked at him for a moment before giving a small shrug and a nod.  “They’re doing quite well.  Come along and I’ll show you.”

Marcus followed her through the verdant farm, moving at a snail’s pace.  Andrea slowed down without comment to match his speed, and entertained them both with a running commentary about the plants they were passing.

Things were quite different than the last time he had visited.  It had only been five days, but the pepper plants that had been heavy with fruit had all been harvested.  Many of the plants had been pruned back and some of them had been removed entirely with new seedlings in their place.

“Turnover is the name of the game,” Andrea explained when she saw him looking.  “Most pepper plants are perennials, but they have an expiration date just like all other living things.”

Marcus ignored the half-worded question.

“It is the nature of all life to die and be reborn again,” she continued.  “As a farmer, it is my job to recognize when something has reached the end of its useful life span and terminate it before it turns into waste.”  She raised an eyebrow at him pointedly.

Marcus coughed weakly and tasted the metallic tang of blood.  “Very noble.”

“Humans have always striven to master life’s final decay.  It could be said that every pursuit of man has been either toward or away from death.  But it is only now that we can truly claim to have risen above that pursuit.  Tell me Marcus, if you were to live forever, what would you do?”

What would he do?  Ever since he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Marcus hadn’t had a thought toward what would come after he finally received the Womack Process.  Before that fateful doctor’s visit, he had been something of a professional lay-about.  Inherited wealth and a general lack of motivation had let his early years of life slip past without goal or purpose.

Suddenly he envied Andrea’s evident contentment.  Here was a woman who had found her place.  She was needed in her society, respected by those around her.  Wealthy, but not concerned with wealth.

“I… I don’t know,” he answered.

They walked in silence for a while.

“How long do you have, Marcus?”

He shrugged.  “A week.  More.  Less.”

“You came to Mars for the Womack Process,” Andrea said.  It wasn’t a question, but Marcus nodded anyway.  “Do they still hate us on Earth?”

Marcus looked up, surprised at the bitter note in the doctor’s voice, but nodded.  “We celebrate the December Protocol.”

“It must be strange for you, then, to come to Mars and look to make yourself into what you hate.”

“It isn’t like that,” he said.  “Well.  For some it was.  Is.  There have always been people that think the Process could have been made to work on Earth.”

“Misogynists.”

“Not all of them.”

“Rich, then.”

Marcus cleared his throat uncomfortably.  He didn’t actually know anyone who had had to work for a living back on Earth.  “Perhaps.”

“Let me clear something up for you, Marcus.  The December Protocol saved humanity as a species.  The Womack Process could never work on Earth.  There are too many people.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s simple.  When Dr. James Womack made the Process public, he made it so the open market decided the price of the treatment.  There was demand like nothing in history.  It was the ultimate commodity.  Forget oil.  Forget pharmaceuticals.  The egg of a human female became worth its weight in diamonds.  More than that.  And with value came investors and speculators and control.  With control came people who sought wealth outside those controls.

“It’s the story of every commodity in human history, but sped up and amplified to a degree that can’t be stated simply.  You were rich.  Acquiring your treatment would have been as simple as going to your nearest clinic and getting the injection.  It would have cost, but what of it?

“Think, if you can, of the plight of the average man who worked for his living.  What hope had he of acquiring his treatments when the price spiked into the thousands of dollars a month?  If he had been so unlucky as to start his treatments before the price spike, he was doomed unless he found treatment outside the clinics, and those treatments were made from murdered women.”

“No, Mr. Truman, in an open market, the Womack Process guarantees the destruction of the civilization.”

Marcus swallowed, digesting what Andrea had said.  He had known, of course.  What child who went to school didn’t?  But Andrea sounded like she had been there.  Hell, maybe she had been.

“How is it successful on Mars, then?”

Andrea smiled, dropping the grim look.  “You asked the right question.  It’s simple.  There is not a free market.  For you to receive your first treatment, someone who is already receiving them must vouch for you.”

“That sounds… flawed.  As a method of control, I mean.”

“You’re not wrong,” she laughed.  “But consider.  An upstanding wujin such as myself would want people who were going to be a benefit to society to live longer.  Someone who could produce and trade in value, either goods or services.  There is a finite supply of eggs.  Creating a new wujin increases the price of my own treatments.  I have to consider this, you see, before I give someone my blessing.  If every wujin were to bring in people freely, the market would collapse and the egg shortage would lead to many of us dying.”

“And what of people who are possessed of less than pristine moral quality?”

“For them it’s even worse.  You’re talking about criminals?”

Marcus nodded.

“Well.  Mars has them, don’t doubt that.  But a criminal enterprise is concerned about profit first.  The ring-leaders can afford their treatments, and it isn’t uncommon for them to offer the treatments as an incentive for loyalty or sacrifice.  What can be given can be taken away, though.  You’d be surprised how many criminals die of organ failure every year.”

“Sounds like it balances itself out.”

Andrea nodded.  “It does.  And so I come back to my original question.  What do you plan to do with your eternity, Mr. Truman?  Assuming you find a sponsor before a week is out.”

They came to a stop before the portal leading to the soil-floored chamber.  Marcus considered the question while Andrea opened the door.  The portal hissed open and Marcus followed Andrea through.  Perhaps a quarter of the wide-open space had been dug into furrows.  Marching in machine-precise rows in between the furrows, Marcus saw the twin leaves pushed up through the rich soil by sprouting potato plants.  Hanging from tracks in the ceiling, a robotic watering arm was moving with mechanical precision, squirting a calculated dosage of water onto each plant.

“I suppose I would distill,” Marcus said.  “I always enjoyed alcohol on Earth.  I ran a small distillery for a few years.  I enjoyed the work.  And it would pay for the treatments.”

Andrew nodded, looking out over the field with a proprietary gleam in her eyes.  “It is a business,” she agreed.  “But that doesn’t tell me what you’d do.  My farm occupies most of my time.  It is as big as I can manage comfortably, but it doesn’t leave me with much leisure time.  And I designed it that way, quite intentionally.  I imagine, though, that a small distillery would not occupy your time fully.”

Marcus shook his head.  “It wouldn’t.  I would have days of downtime between batches.”

“I can give you some advice for free,” she said.  “It sounds like a good idea, but after a hundred years, you will want something to occupy your mind.  So, back to the start once more.  What will you do, Marcus Truman?”

Marcus closed his eyes.  He recognized the cadence in Andrea’s voice.  She was testing him.  What had he enjoyed doing, back on Earth?  What could he do that would occupy his mind entirely?  He thought back to his life on Earth prior to his cancer.  He had not been happy.  An eternity of that life would have ended rather quickly with a bullet or an overdose.

It wasn’t until he learned that he was going to die that he had applied himself for the first time.  The furious activity during the days leading up to the launch of his supplies to Mars had made him feel alive.  There was irony there, that he had felt dead inside until he was, in fact, dying, and only then did he feel alive.

“There was a time,” he said slowly, trying to find words that fit around the amorphous idea in his mind, “where I was fully occupied.  I was researching and putting together the cargo for my shipment to Mars.  Bringing all those pieces together, arranging everything, making sure there were no problems and solving the problems that did come up.  That felt good.  I felt good.”

Andrea nodded.  “It must have been quite a feat to get so much water to Mars, no matter what your budget was.”

Marcus smiled, remembering.  “I had a launch window for a slow-burn cargo rocket that was coming up in six days.  I still don’t know how I got my container on board.”

“It’s variety that adds spice to life,” Andrea said seriously.  “I find growing things to be fulfilling, but if I did nothing but grow jalapeno peppers, I would quickly go insane.”  She gave a wry smile.  “Puns aside, an eternity spent distilling potato vodka would be a nightmare.”

Marcus nodded and coughed into his hand.  Beneath the blanket of analgesic numbness, he felt the stirring of pain.  “What is it that you find variety in?  I imagine it isn’t simply different peppers.”

“Trees, Marcus.  More than anything else from Earth, I miss having trees.”

So that was how it was.  Marcus suppressed a sigh.  For all of Dr. Bannister’s existential philosophies, she wanted what everyone else did.  Wealth.  It wasn’t credit wealth, he imagined she had plenty of that.  It was the material wealth that water represented.  It was the potential for opportunity.

His parents hadn’t taught him much, but they had ingrained in him a sense of conservation about the family fortune.  Andrea’s angle of holding his treatment ransom for his water wasn’t the first time someone had tried to talk him out of a portion of his wealth.  It was, though, the first time that he had seen it coming and been entirely unable to do anything about it.

“I could find solace in trees,” he said carefully.  “Apples make many beverages.  There would be variety there, and, I suppose, in the trees themselves.  One could find purpose in building up an orchard on Mars.”

Andrea’s eyes glittered.  “Have you had a chance to visit the Womack clinic here in Vastitas?”

Marcus shook his head.

“I propose we go together.  We can discuss terms on the way.”  She held out her hand for Marcus to shake.  “I must say, Marcus, I’m glad you walked into my farm.”

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Police report from December 22nd, 2130, in conjunction with case code 10136954.

Victim is Dr. James Womack, aged 52.  White male, with brown hair and brown eyes.  Cause of death is multiple GSWs to the head and chest.

Witnesses report an agitated man rushing up to the victim and screaming, “This is for my daughter!” before unloading a small-caliber handgun into Dr. Womack from a distance of three feet.  Dr. Womack had just left his vehicle and was preparing to approach the U.N. Assembly Hall where he was scheduled to make his defense of the Womack Process before the world court, when the suspect burst through the security cordon and approached Dr. Womack.

Video footage of the event confirms the suspect to be Alan Macovich, whose daughter had gone missing in a suspected egg-harvesting kidnapping six months prior.  Mr. Macovich is still at large, armed and presumed dangerous.

Min Yang rode up the escalator and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the bright sunlight streaming down.  Olympus Cluster was that last cluster that had a functional and occupied glass dome.  It always came as a shock to Min.  Every time he rode up the escalator he had to fight down the nagging agoraphobia.  It wasn’t as bad at night, but during the day, the view stretched from the slopes of Olympus Mons down south across the plains and foothills of Amazonis Planitia.  On a clear day, you could look out through the glass panes for hundreds of miles before the gradual buildup of atmospheric dust obscured everything.

As always, when Min reached the top of the escalator, he hurried to his destination.  He kept his head down and tried to ignore the gaping nothingness above his head.  His job took him out into the open often enough, but he always wore a space suit.  He felt naked, and the feeling of the sun shining on his exposed skin, even through the filter glass, felt alien.

Living in glass domes had been, at one time, the preferred way of life for the wealthy residents of Mars.  Gradually the population had moved underground where the safety and security of the clusters greatly improved the quality of life for the general population.  Residents of the domes had eventually concluded that the danger and cost of the domes wasn’t worth the risk.

The Olympus Cluster dome was the last of the city domes on Mars.  The others had been deconstructed or simply abandoned when their seals started to fail.  The Olympus dome was kept active out of a sort of civic pride, though nobody lived in it anymore.  Government buildings filled the space instead, including the Colonial Marshals headquarters.

Stepping inside the front doors felt for Min like sloughing off a heavy backpack.  Being in a hallway with a solid ceiling over his head once more was a relief.

“Morning, Jan,” Min greeted the woman at the sweeping front desk.

“You’re back already, Min?”

He shook his head, waving at her as he passed by.  “Nope, strictly temporary.”

“Oh!  Min!”

Min stopped and sighed.

“Director Rosario wants a word.  Said if you were to come in you should go meet with her, as soon as fucking possible.”

“That sounds like a direct quote,” Min said with a grin.

“I’m paraphrasing.”  Jan smiled sweetly.  “You didn’t do anything to get in trouble again, did you?”

“Not that she would be aware of.  I’ll go see the director.  Consider your message passed on.”

“Sorry!”

Min waved.  “Not your problem.  See you around, Jan.”

Min got into an elevator and stared at the panel for a moment.  He really wanted to visit the armory and stop by Enrique’s office, but Jan had probably already pinged the director’s tablet, letting her know Min was in the building.  If he was in trouble, it would only be worse if the director thought he was avoiding her.

With a sigh, he pressed the button for the top floor, holding his thumb down on the button long enough for it to scan his print.  The panel chimed and he took his hand away.

“Marshal Min Yang,” he said clearly.

The panel chimed once more and the elevator hummed as it shot upward to the top floor.  The elevator slowed to a stop, and the doors pinged open.  Min stepped out into the penthouse suite.  Originally, the building had been designed for a multi-billionaire who had wanted a place to throw parties during vacation visits to Mars.  The penthouse had been designed with all the subtle taste of a child checking off a list of expensive things.  The gold plating had been removed, but the inlaid hardwood in the walls and floor remained.  Most of the interior walls had been stripped out, leaving the sweeping panoramic windows open to the morning sun shining in.

Director Clara Rosario was striding toward him.  She was a wujin, a handful of inches taller than Min, and made taller still by her tasteful heels.  Curling white hair was gathered high behind her head before falling down in a long cascade.  She wore a business suit cut from imported silk.

“Marshal Yang.”

“Madam Director,” Min bowed his head politely.

“Do you know why I called you here?”

Min suppressed a smile.  “No, I can’t say I do.”

Director Rosario looked at him for a moment, tapping a finger on her hip before coming to a decision.  “Come, sit.”

She led Min over to a recessed lounge near the windows.  Uncomfortable with the view, Min selected a seat that put his back to the Martian expanse.

“Tell me about your current case,” she invited.

Min frowned.  The director was several layers above him in the organization chart.  Min was an investigator, but above him, he had a lieutenant and a captain.  “My lieutenant–”

“Isn’t here,” she cut him off.  “And doesn’t need to be, does she?”

“No.”

“Oh, good.  You were telling me about your case?”

Min shrugged.  Something seemed off to him.  There wasn’t any harm in the director asking about a case he was working, but it was something akin to the captain of a space frigate checking in with the deck hand to make sure the floor was being mopped.

“It’s a missing-person case.  A pair of girls kidnapped from the market.”

“Strange.  You don’t usually work the MP ring.  There are units that specialize in it.”

“What can I say?  I got back from the Esperalda assignment and my lieutenant put me on it right away.  There was a bounty on the case, so I took it.”

“And how are you doing?” she asked delicately.  “Do you, ah, need the bounty?”

Min shook his head.  “No.  Not after bagging Esperalda.”

The director nodded.  “That was good work, you know.  You’re up for a promotion.  Off the back of that action, you could rise to be a lieutenant.  Command your own unit.”

Again, Min shook his head.  “No thank you, ma’am.  Desk work isn’t for me.”

“I see.”  The director looked at him, her eyes unreadable.  She tapped her knee unconsciously, considering.  “How long have the girls been missing for?”

“Six days.”

“Six!” she exclaimed.  “That’s a long time for an MP trail to be cold.  Most people would have written the girls off as a loss.  The bounty must be large.”

Min noted the lack of surprise in her eyes and the contrast between her words and facial expressions.  The director already knew these things.  Why was she pretending?

“It’s sufficient,” he hedged.

“There must be better things for you to do than chase down a trail a week old,” she laughed.  “If it’s the bounty you’re after, I could point you at three other cases with twice the bounty.  Ones that you could actually collect before you die of old age.”

“To be honest,” he said, “the bounty is just an excuse.  Every century or so I like to do a good deed.  Keeps me balanced.”  Min chuckled, sharing in the director’s laughter, but he felt no more amusement than the cold eyes of the woman sitting across from him.

“I just don’t like to see my people wasting their time,” she said, her amusement fading.  “You should find a case you could actually complete.  It’s good for morale.”

“Is that an order?” Min asked.  Lucien’s mocking words echoed in his mind.  You think the marshals don’t get their cut of profit from our business?  Min had dismissed his words at the time, but looking about the penthouse, at the director’s imported clothing, he had to wonder.

“Of course not,” she waved a hand, dismissing the idea.  “Your lieutenant is the one that gives you orders.  I’m just offering a friendly suggestion.  The more cases you complete, the more likely a promotion is.  You pull off a few more like that Sarah Esperalda case, you could be looking at Captain.  Or you could waste yourself looking into dead-end MP cases.  I’m telling you this for your own good.  You don’t want to be dodging bullets forever, do you?”

That sounded remarkably like a threat to Min and he hesitated before answering.  On the surface, the director’s words were purely supportive.  Was he reading something into them that wasn’t even there?  Anyone listening to a recording of their conversation would hear it as a pep talk given to a promising investigator.

It was Lucien who had thrown doubt into Min’s mind.  Who was he to believe?  A scumbag criminal who kidnapped and murdered teenaged girls, or the director of the Colonial Marshals?

Min rubbed his brow.  “Sorry, Director.  I’ve had a rough trip.  Thanks for the advice.”

Director Rosario leaned back, her posture relaxing and she smiled.  “You’re welcome, Marshal Yang.  It’s been a pleasure talking to you.”

Min recognized the dismissal and he stood, giving her a short bow before returning to the elevator.  He reached for the basement button where the armory was, then changed his mind and hit another one.  He needed someone to talk to.  Hopefully Enrique was in his office.

“That’s all she said?”

Min nodded, stirring the leftover broth in his ramen bowl despondently.  “Pretty much word for word.”

“You’re off your nutter, mate.  Ain’t nothing to it.”  Enrique drained his bowl and set it down with a clatter.

“I know.”

“Seriously, though.  If Director Rosario called me into her office to offer me a promotion, I’d be thrilled.”

“You’re a tech, Enrique,” Min pointed out smiling despite himself.  “Only thing you’ll get promoted to is another computer.”

“Bigger toys, mate.”

“Whatever.  Look, I know it’s crazy, but there are pieces here that don’t add up.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.  I had a run-in with one of the goons that grabbed the girls.  He said something that stuck in my mind.”

“Shit, criminals cream themselves every time they think a marshal is dirty.  It’s like fairy tales and warm milk to them.  Helps them sleep at night.”

“You’ve never had milk in your life, Enrique.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.  What’d this guy say?”

“He implied that the marshals took a cut from the kidnapping rings to look the other way or drop the cases early.  How many girls go missing every year?”

“Hell.  Hundreds?  I don’t have the records in front of me, Min.  What’s your point?”

“How many of these kidnappers get caught?  How many Womack clinics using black-market eggs get shut down?”

Enrique grunted.  “Not a lot, and none.”

“That’s right.  Doesn’t it bother you that so many eggs being sold to clinics are illegally collected?”

“I’m not a wujin, mate.  Not a thought that crosses my mind much.”

“Yeah, well.”  Min pushed away the last of his ramen.  “It bothers me.”

“So what are you going to do?  If I was you, I’d give some serious thought to the director’s offer.”

“Not you, too!  I’m not going to abandon Angeline and Jasmine.”

“Give it a thought.  You said it yourself, these guys are playing hardball.  There’s a lot of wealth on the line.  Someone’s looking the other way to let it happen.  You’ve got forever in front of you; don’t throw it away for nothing.”

Min sighed and rubbed his face.  “I need to get going.  You ever consider getting the treatment?  Becoming a wujin yourself?”

Enrique laughed.  “I look like a fucking idiot, mate?  No.  I’ll leave that shit for you crazies.  One lifetime is plenty for me.”

Min unlocked the door to his flat.  He had to put down his load of packages to free a hand to operate the scanner, then kicked open the door and carried everything inside.  Recessed lighting came on as the flat’s sensors detected his presence.

“Good evening, Min,” a disembodied contralto voice greeted him.  “How was your trip?”

Min ignored it.  An ex-girlfriend of his had programmed the flat’s AI to be chatty and he hadn’t found the time yet to tinker around with it and turn it off again.

“What would you like to eat for dinner?”

“Surprise me,” Min said.  He carried his packages into the next room and grunted as he heaved everything up onto the workbench that ran around half the wall space.  Behind him, the autochef started chopping vegetables.  Min slid the partition closed and turned his attention to the packages.

One of the perks that came with being a marshal with a long tenure was he had access to everything the armory had in stock.  Some exosuit powered armor the marines jealously kept out of the hands of enforcement agencies, but besides that, Min had his pick of every piece of hardware that human ingenuity could invent.

For all that, what he ended up bringing home was limited.  He could tool up in full rapid assault gear, but he was alone.  If they saw him coming, he was as good as dead.  That eliminated all the more flashy weapons and visible armor.

He unboxed a form-fitting suit of ablative armoring, light enough to be worn under his clothes.  The armor felt slick under his hands.  Having it made him feel much more comfortable.  Even though it lacked head protection, the armor would turn away even short-range shotgun blasts.  It would still kick like a mule, and the armor didn’t protect against broken ribs.  While the ablative coating lasted it would protect him handily from gunfire.

Frying sounds from the kitchen distracted Min for a moment and his stomach growled.  The autochef was a luxury and the fresh vegetables a decadent expenditure, but he had had a long day, and it was nice to eat some good food every once in a while.  Besides, at least for the moment, he was flush with credits.  If he was going to get shot at in some swampy back-alley, he’d rather do it on a full stomach.

Min didn’t think he had many emotional weaknesses.  Three centuries of life had dulled the edges of most of his desires and longings, but he still harbored a childlike awe in unwrapping a new gun.

On Mars, there were too many places and circumstances that made solid rounds impractical.  The danger of rupturing a pressure vessel with a poorly aimed shot made the standard marshal load-out exclusively monomol.  It was standard practice to not even supply pistols with solid-shot ammunition.  All it took was a marshal forgetting which round he had chambered to kill himself and hundreds of people.

Min disassembled his gun and cleaned everything, piece by piece.  The flat’s AI said something that Min couldn’t hear and he rolled his eyes.  It was probably talking to the autochef or something.  He started putting the gun back together again.

“Min, you have visitors,” the AI announced.

“Tell them to wait,” he replied.

“I did.  They were disinclined.”

Min heard the heavy ratchet slide of a gun being cocked and threw himself to the floor.  Sound hammered into Min’s ears and bullets ripped through the partition.  These were not monomol rounds.  Ricochets screamed over the chattering crash of the gunfire.  Intermittent booms, punctuated by explosions of concrete dust told of a second gunman firing through the walls with a shotgun.

Keeping his head down, Min crawled across the floor as debris rained down on him.  He made it to the other side of his workshop and shoved open the partition to the next room.  He crawled around the corner and put a heavy concrete wall between himself and the gunmen.  After a moment the machinegun ran dry with a clunk.

“AI,” Min whispered.  “Activate privacy mode.”

“As you wish.”  The voice in Min’s ears was muffled, and sounded put out, as if the AI was insulted that he didn’t want the other people in the flat to hear it.

“How many gunmen are there?”

“Two,” the reply came back, throaty with excitement.

“How did they get in?”

“Through the door.”

Min sighed.  Residential AIs weren’t the brightest pieces of software.  A male voice called something, and Min caught the clipped tones of a military-trained sweep-and-clear order.  Min slid his issue pistol from his belt holster.  He wished he had solid rounds to load it with.  If the people shooting at him were wearing body armor, monomol rounds would be useless against them.

On the other side of the wall, the bullet-ridden partition was smashed through.  Heavy boots stepped into the workshop and Min heard debris grit under the treads as the gunman pivoted, searching the area.

“Clear.”

Min rolled out behind cover, pistol held in both hands and lined up with the gap in the partition.  A tall gweilo in body armor was turning back to the kitchen, a shotgun held at ready across his chest.  A much shorter woman in matching armor was just stepping through into the workshop and saw Min.  Her eyes went wide and Min started pulling the trigger.

His first couple rounds plowed into the back of the gweilo, knocking him sprawling into the woman.  Monomol might not have the penetrating power to blow through the body armor, but the rounds still punched like getting kicked by a donkey.  He put a few more rounds down range then rolled back behind cover.

“AI, keep me appraised of the gunmen’s positions.”

“Should I alert the authorities?”

“Don’t bother.”  By the time local police arrived, he would be dead.  On the off chance that he lived through this, the last thing he wanted was to be detained for questioning.  Always assuming the people trying to kill him were not, in fact, the police.  That body armor had an official look to it.  “Put a call through to Enrique Cande.  Flag as urgent.”

“Call is going out.  The man with the shotgun is circling around the workshop through the den.  Should I lock the doors?”

Min scrambled across the hall to the bedroom and leveled his pistol at the partition coming from the den.  “Let him come.”

The partition eased open silently then the gweilo sprang through, his gun leveled at the place Min had been a few seconds earlier.  Min’s flat had been designed for people of Min’s height.  The ceilings were eight feet tall and the lintels were seven feet.  The gweilo misjudged the height of the lintel and banged his helmet against it as he came through, knocking his balance off.

Min shot him in the face as he came down from his leap slightly wrong-footed.  The gweilo’s faceplate starred under the impact.  Min dashed across the hall, firing as he ran.  The gweilo had already twisted, protecting his face from the monomol rounds, and Min’s shooting did little but keep the man off balance.

It was all Min needed.  He reached the gweilo and kicked him in the back of the knee, collapsing the leg and knocking the man to his knees.

“Hey Min, what’s up?  You get locked out of your flat or something?”

Min grunted as he wrapped one arm around the gweilo’s helmet and heaved, spinning the taller man around and throwing him to the floor.  The man struggled briefly until Min locked his arm out and levered it back.  Polyresin armor creaked under the strain and the man bit off a muffled curse.

“Hold on, Enrique.”  Min rasped.  He jammed his pistol up under the rim of the gweilo’s helmet and dug the muzzle into the hollow at the base of his skull.  “Stand up, fucker,” Min gritted out.

“Min, the woman is moving through the workshop.”

The gweilo clambered to his feet, his hands spread wide.  Min spun him around so the gweilo was between him and the workshop.

“What was that, Min?  Who are you talking to?”

“Take it easy,” the gweilo said.  “You got me.”

The woman kicked through the partition from the workshop into the hallway and jammed to a halt.  She had her machinegun leveled.

“No, wait!” the gweilo cried out.

Min was already moving, spinning away from behind the man and crouching behind the concrete wall when the woman opened fire.  The man’s armor turned away several bullets before the alloys cracked and blood sprayed.

The man slumped to the ground and the gunfire cut out.

“Holy shit!  Is someone shooting at you?”

“Enrique, do a search for me.  See if there’s a warrant out on my flat.”

“What?  Why?  What’s going on, Min?”

“Just fucking do it!”

Min stuck his arm around the corner and emptied his gun blindly down the hallway.  He heard at least one round spang off an armor plate, and then his gun ran dry.  Machinegun fire hammered in response, blasting craters into the concrete wall and obliterating the partition.  Min threw aside his empty gun and waited it out, watching morosely as wild rounds destroyed his entertainment deck.

He heard the machinegun click empty again and he sprang around the corner.  The woman saw him coming and threw the gun aside, drawing a pair of long knives and dropping into a crouch.  Min jammed to a halt.  Even a mildly competent fighter with a pair of knives outmatched any hand-to-hand techniques Min knew.  If she hadn’t been wearing armor, he might have risked it, though.

The woman smiled and waggled a knife at him.

“I didn’t find anything, Min,” Enrique came back.  “Why are people shooting at you?”

“Thanks.  Just wanted to make sure this wasn’t an official misunderstanding.  Hang on a moment.”  Min put Enrique on hold.

“Oh, it’s official,” the woman said.  Her voice was hungry.  “You’re officially a dead man, Min Yang.”

“You know I’m a marshal, right?”  Min tried for confidence in his voice.  “You kill me, you’ll be compost inside the month.  Whatever you’ve been promised, it isn’t worth a bounty on your head that every marshal on Mars will be itching to collect.”

The woman sneered and darted forward, her knives feinting and jabbing.  Min danced back, barely keeping ahead of the blades.

“There won’t be any bounty, Marshal.  You know why?  Your own people sold you out.”

“Bullshit.”

“What can I say, Marshal?  You pissed off the wrong people.”

She lunged forward again and Min pedaled backward.  His heel caught on the dead gweilo and he tumbled back through the broken partition.  The woman leapt at him, a snarl on her face.  Min fell to the ground and rolled to avoid the stabbing knives.  His shoulder smacked into something and he grabbed at it, desperate for anything to help fend off the woman.

Min’s hand closed around the barrel of the gweilo’s shotgun and he whipped it around, slamming the stock into the woman’s shoulder.  She fell back, shaking her head, and Min clambered to his feet.  He pumped the shotgun and leveled it at the woman’s face.  She snapped her head up, her eyes wide.

“Who sent you?” Min asked.  “You get once chance.”

“Fuck you, you piece of–”

Min dropped the barrel to aim at her leg and pulled the trigger.  Armor plating shattered and the slug round ripped through her leg.  She collapsed screaming.

Min pumped the shotgun again.  “That was your chance.  Who sent you?”

The woman huddled around her ruined leg, her hands reaching out to hold the shredded flesh and shattered bone together, but afraid to touch it, as if physical contact with the wound would make it real.

“Answer the question!”

“I can’t!  Please, I can’t tell you.”

“Why, because they’d kill you?”  Min hefted the shotgun.  “Maybe you weren’t paying attention.  I have no problem ending you.”

Blood was pooling on the ground under the woman, pumping steadily from the wreck of her thigh.  Min lowered the shotgun.  She was going to bleed out in a matter of seconds if he didn’t do something.  He jogged back into the ruin of his workshop and grabbed the medical kit off the wall, thankfully intact.  By the time he got back to the woman she was slumped sideways, her face grey.

Min threw down the medical pack and ripped it open.  He put a battlefield tourniquet strap around her thigh above the wound and popped the chemical activator.  With a hiss, it tightened around her leg until the blood coming from the ragged wound slowed to a sporadic drip.  Min grabbed the woman by the shoulder and rolled her over onto her stomach.  The armor’s release catches were masked by blood, but he found them by feel and cleared them one at a time until the armor fell free.

Now that he had access to the major veins on the insides of her arms, he set up a blood line and hooked the bag into a convenient bullet hole in the wall.  Min checked her pulse with bloody fingers and was relieved to find a weak but steady heartbeat.  With the woman stabilized, Min took Enrique off hold.

“Enrique, you still there?”

“Are you okay?  Do you need me to send a medic?”

“I’m fine.  Got one fatality and one for the hospital, assuming I let her live.”

“Jesus.  Okay.  Listen!  While you were, uh, busy, I did a little searching.  There was a hit put out on you.  Criminal, not an inside job.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t sanctioned.”

“Granted, but you’re being paranoid.”

“Whatever.  Hold on, I’ll send you shots of their faces.”  Min went around with his tablet and photographed the two intruders and sent them over to Enrique.  “How long before you get anything back on these two?”

“It’ll take me a few minutes.  I’m on my station at home,” Enrique said peevishly.

“Right.  Well hurry up.  Call me back when you get something.”  Min hung up.  The woman was starting to stir.  Min picked up the shotgun again and leaned against the wall opposite the woman.  Gradually she started coming to, then snapped awake with a scream.

Min held up a syringe.  “Painkillers.  But I want your word first.  Tell me everything you know.”

The woman nodded frantically, her teeth clenched against the pain.  Min set the shotgun down out of reach and injected the syringe into her hip.  After a tense moment, the woman relaxed, panting, her face beaded with sweat.

“What’s your name?” Min asked.

“Marianne Lopez.”

“Okay, Marianne.  You answer my questions quickly and promptly, and I might let you live.  If I think you’re holding something back, I’ll blow out your other leg.  Do you understand?”

Marianne let her head fall back against the wall again and closed her eyes.  “Ask your questions.”

“Who sent you?”

“Like I said, I can’t tell you.  It was an anonymous contract.”

Min frowned.  “Who’s the dead guy?”

“I don’t know.  A bounty hunter that showed up at the same time I did.”

“No honor among thieves, hey?  What was your objective?”

“Kill the man at the address.”

“Did you know I was a marshal?”

Marianne opened her eyes again and looked at him.  “It was in the contract.”

Min grunted.  “You take contracts to kill marshals often?”

She shook her head and winced.  “No.  Never.”

“Why now?”

“The size of the bounty,” she laughed.  “I’ve never seen so many zeros on a head before.”

“You said I was sold out.  What makes you think that?”

“It was in the contract.  How do you think?”

Min sighed.  The woman knew nothing.  It was possible the woman was lying, but he doubted it.  It took a great deal of mental fortitude to have your leg nearly blown off and still have the composure to lie convincingly a few minutes later.

“Min,” the AI said brightly, “I detected an emergency call placed referencing your location.”

“Great.”

“Don’t worry, miss,” the AI said reassuringly.  “Help is on the way.”

Marianne rolled her eyes up to Min’s.  “Who programmed your AI?  She’s dumb as a rock.”

“Tell me about it.  So, Marianne, what am I to do with you?”

“I answered your questions,” she said, fear coming back to her eyes.  “You could leave.  I’ll say that guy over there shot me and I greased him in return.”

“And you won’t be after me again in a few hours after the medics fix up your leg?”

“For what?” she shook her head, flinging beads of sweat.  “I’ve had enough of marshals to last a lifetime.  I don’t care what the bounty is.”

Min nodded.  “Or I could shoot you and reinforce the message.  Discourage future bounty hunters.”

“You could,” Marianne said.  “Or you could let me live and I’ll spread the word.  Nobody will want to take that contract once I’ve had my say.”

“You make a good case for yourself.”  Min smiled a little and lowered the shotgun.  “Alright, Marianne, we’ll do it your way.  Just to be clear, I see your face, even in passing, and I’ll end you in a heartbeat.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” she said fervently.  “Thanks.”

“Stay where you are,” Min said.  “I’ll be right back.”

Min headed back to his workshop.  The place was a shambles.  He picked through the debris until he found the ablative armoring on the ground where it had fallen and filled a satchel with gear that he thought might come in handy then headed back out to the hallway.  The bounty hunter was lying where he had left her, though she had propped herself up against the wall.

“How’s the leg?” Min asked.

“Fuck off.”

Min grinned despite himself.  He liked Marianne’s spunk.  “Have fun with the police when they arrive.  Remember to be convincing.”

Marianne made an obscene gesture and Min left her.  As an afterthought, he threw the shotgun back into the lounge where the other bounty hunter lay.  It’d help sell Marianne’s story if the shotgun was found near the dead guy.  She’d have to do some pretty fast talking to stay out of prison or the ice mines, but he had a feeling she’d manage somehow.

With a last longing look at the autochef, Min swung his satchel onto his shoulder and left his flat, closing the door behind him.  Even if Marianne was good to her word and spread the news that Min was off-limits, it would be many hours before she could start getting the word out.

It was time to go to ground.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

The 22nd century brought one of the greatest ironies of human history.  America, the most powerful nation in the world, was brought to its collective knees in less than two years.  The open market that had made America into an economic powerhouse was ultimately its downfall.  Nowhere on Earth were there more people wealthy enough to be treated with the Womack Process.

With the declaration of the December Protocol, America shattered.  Of all its most wealthy citizens, all the business owners, all the politicians, all the executives, lawyers, doctors, engineers, stock brokers and marketers, nearly ninety percent had received the treatment.  And when the clinics were shut down, when the supply of eggs ran out, in their thousands, then in their tens of thousands, they died.  The top twenty percent of wealthy people in America were wiped out in a matter of weeks.

The chaos that followed the December Protocol in America can hardly be described.  Germany, Britain and France fared little better.   The Western world collapsed, almost overnight, nearly in its entirety.

In the general chaos, islands of calm were maintained.  Spain was perhaps the strongest of the Western nations, most able to send colonists to Mars.  China, seeing the encroaching end of their millennia-old empire, burned itself out in the rush to get its wealthy and immortal citizens to Mars.  After the last colony ship left Earth, the Chinese population retained one female in a thousand, and the majority of those had sold their ovaries.

As for Dr. Everard and the Council of Matriarchs, they had predicted the December Protocol and the self-immolation of society that led up to it.  When immortality treatments were finally banned, the last of the Matriarchs had already left Earth behind weeks before.  The Helix centers were empty when the rioters burned them to the ground.  It is a widely held belief that Dr. Everard left the secrets of the Helix Rebuild behind at every Helix center, knowing that the mindless hate of the mobs would destroy the technology and Earth’s last chance at peaceful immortality.

Min woke with a start.  His tablet was buzzing against his chest where he had dropped it when he had fallen asleep.  Irritably he ignored the call and tried to get his wits about him.  He didn’t recognize where he was.  He sat up in the dark and cracked his head against the low ceiling.

He cursed and rubbed the top of his head as memory flooded back.  He checked his tablet.  Thirteen calls had gone unanswered.

Moving carefully this time, Min swung his legs off the hammock and lowered himself to the ground.  Against his skin, the slick ablative armoring felt cool.  He had slept in his clothes, and it took only a moment to retrieve his pistol from under his pillow and holster it.  Min scrubbed a hand through his hair, gave up on trying to make it look presentable, and opened the door.

The transient worker lodging in Olympus sold hammocks for the night, at two credits a bed.  Min had bought all four hammocks in the cubicle, paying with a disposable credit chip.  As Min stretched some of the kinks out of his neck, he joined the flow of menial workers filing out of the lodging.

His tablet started buzzing again, and Min ignored it until he could slip into an alley and check the caller ID.  With a sigh he accepted the call.

“Good morning, Enrique.”

“What the fuck, man!”

Min held the tablet away from his ear, grimacing as Enrique shouted tinnily at him.  When the man calmed down, he brought the tablet back to his ear.  “Sorry,” he said.  “I didn’t catch that.”

“Do you know how many people are looking for you?  Or for your corpse?  I’ve been up all night, you wujin bastard!”

“That was the whole point,” Min replied testily.  “I needed to sleep, somewhere where nobody would find me.”

“Yeah, well, my whole department has standing orders to find you and bring you in.  Top priority.”

Min’s stomach growled.  He didn’t want to hear this yet.  “What for?”

“If you had checked your messages, you’d know.  Min, the gweilo you sent me that photo of?  He was a marshal.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Was being the operative term,” Enrique continued.  “He had left the service a few years back, but still did odd jobs as a contractor.  There are a lot of people who want to know why he was in your flat with a dozen machinegun slugs in his chest.”

“What did Marianne say?”

“That the bounty hunter broad?”

Min grunted affirmative.

“She’s shut up tighter than a clam.  Won’t say a word.  I think she’s in surgery now.”

“Probably for the best.  For what it’s worth, I wasn’t the one who greased the gweilo.  What’d you find out about him?”

“His name was Yahzu Hong.  There are sealed records under his name, standard procedure for contract work.  The last one was early yesterday evening.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”  Min cursed.  “Do you believe me now, Enrique?”

“It could be a coincidence,” Enrique started.

“Ah, that’s bullshit.  You don’t even believe that yourself.”

“There’s no proof here, Min!  I admit, it seems very suspicious.  But that’s not good enough.”

“I need to know who Hong’s handler was.  Who signed the order.”

“I told you already.  The record is sealed.  Encrypted.  I’d need the digital key to get in.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it?  Just ‘okay’?  You’re giving up?”

“Who said anything about giving up?  You need the key, so go get it.”

“Look, Min, you don’t understand–”

“You’re right.  I don’t understand.  You’re the computer guy, make it happen!”

“I can’t just–”

“Call me back when you have something.”

Min hung up on Enrique’s continued protests.  The software technician had a mousey demeanor, but he was brilliant.  If anyone could figure it out, it was him.  In the meantime, though, Min needed to figure out what he was going to do next.

As he slipped back into the crowd and started looking for a place to eat, he went over what he knew.  Anton Engel and his crew had kidnapped the girls.  Min had visited the Redstone Lounge, then immediately had been discouraged from continuing the investigation.  That had been fast work, and it screamed complicity from someone at the Redstone.  Only Grendal Crade’s cooperation kept her from leading his list of suspects.

That left him with Anton and his crew, minus Lucien Talbot.  Unknown to him was the person, or persons, in the marshals who had sent Marianne and Yahzu after him.  Enrique was chasing down the marshal angle.  Min felt a brief pang of guilt over browbeating Enrique into helping him.  In all likelihood, Enrique was going to be in danger because he was helping Min.  Well, they all had to make sacrifices.

That left Min with Anton.

The background summary on Anton gave him an address here in Olympus Cluster.  It was unlikely Anton would be home, but it was worth looking into.  It wasn’t like Min had any other options.

Anton’s apartment block was one of the oldest areas on Olympus.  The few gweilo Min saw in passing had to hunch far over to keep from knocking their heads on the ceiling.

The block hadn’t originally been designed to cater to xenophobes, just people of Min’s height.  But the area seemed to attract people who thought themselves superior.  It was irrational nonsense in Min’s mind.  Everyone would eventually develop the drawn-out physique; if not them, then their children, or their children’s children.  Disliking someone because of generations of living on Mars was pure idiocy.  That said, people were always looking for something to hate, and physical differences were something even the least intelligent could latch onto.

Min found he was attracting little attention.  If anyone saw and recognized the slick ablative armor sticking out of his collar and sleeves, nobody found it worthy of comment.

Anton’s apartment, when Min finally located it, looked just as run-down as the others in the no-longer-wealthy neighborhood.  The door was recycled and didn’t match the style of the external façade.  It had been built for a taller frame, and someone had taken a hacksaw to it in order to get it to fit.  The jamb had been replaced, probably at the same time the door had been, and the locking mechanism was poorly seated.

Min glanced up and down the hall to verify there wasn’t anyone loitering nearby who might take offense, then dropped a shoulder and rammed the door open.  The door popped off the bottom hinge and twisted open.

Moving carefully, Min stepped into Anton’s apartment with his pistol in his hand.  The air was stale with unwashed clothes and molding yeast.  At one point, this had probably been a very nice apartment.  It was bigger than Min’s flat, almost wastefully so.

Anton had put an entertainment deck on one wall and had set up a collection of mismatched sofas and easy chairs in a semicircle around it.  Beyond the large front room, hallways led deeper into the apartment, cloaked in gloomy half-light.

“Anyone home?” Min called.

Silence was the only reply.  Min took a moment to prop the door back into place.  It was barely functional as a door, but looked good enough that a passerby wouldn’t comment on it.  Even in this run-down neighborhood, a resident might call the police to report a break in if they saw a door hanging half-open on one hinge.

Min wrinkled his nose at the smell.  In the kitchen, he found the counters littered with dishes, and mold grew in lively shades of green and blue.  Whatever he was looking for, he wouldn’t find it here.

It was hard to say how long Anton had been away.  There was enough mold to suggest at least a week of absence.  The clothes in the bedroom were of decent quality, with a number of empty hangers.  Anton had packed for a long trip, and in some haste.

Min frowned, poking through the strewn debris in the bedroom.  The missing clothes implied the girls were being held somewhere too distant from Olympus for Anton to return home at night.  Min had assumed the girls had been kidnapped on impulse, but perhaps it had been more planned out.  Or maybe Anton had packed his bags after kidnapping the girls.

Min shook his head.  He didn’t have enough data to build a story line yet.  He left the bedroom behind and gave himself a tour of the apartment.  If this were a movie, he would have found a wall covered in segments of string and news clippings.  Or maybe a journal with snapshots of his previous victims.  Or a tram receipt lying on a counter.

There was nothing.  Or at least, Min thought sourly, nothing he had the wit to decipher.  Some marshals excelled at deriving meaning from insignificance and building it into a reliable lead.  Min wasn’t one of them.

Still, he was loath to leave the apartment without something to forward his investigation.  Min returned to the front room and gingerly sat on the edge of the sofa.  Everything in the apartment was garbage except for the entertainment console.  In fact, it was by far the most valuable thing in the apartment, perhaps even including the apartment itself.

Min cast around and found the remote lying under a heap of empty food wrappers.  He turned the console on and flipped through the menus until he found a list of the most recent things Anton had looked at.  The top item on the list was a promotional video for the Redstone Lounge.

That gave Min pause.  Had Aton gone to the Redstone on some other purpose?  Or had he planned out the kidnapping beforehand?  The first option seemed the more reasonable.  There was no way to have predicted that Jasmine would pull Angeline into the Redstone on that particular day.

Min scanned through the history, looking for something else of interest.  After paging past a few screens of cheap pornography, he found another high-end restaurant, this one in the Elysium Cluster.  Campos del Cielo specialized in imports like the Redstone, and had an equally expensive menu.

Min glanced around the apartment again.  It didn’t make sense that someone would live in such a dump and still visit such expensive restaurants, unless it was on business.

He sighed and leaned his head back.  What did two restaurants in two different clusters have in common?  He really didn’t want to go to Elysium just to wander around a restaurant and ask the manager a few vague questions.  He needed something solid to go on.

The light changed in the room, pulling Min’s eyes to the console.  The screen blanked and a number appeared on the screen.  Caller ID identified the man as Yaling Ha.

“Anton, you motherless fuck.  Take my call!  I know you’re home.  I don’t know what you’re doing back from Acheron, but if you’ve finished another job, then you had better pay me first this time.”

Min pushed accept on the remote and the screen clarified to show Yaling Ha.  He was an old gweilo, hunched and frail-looking.

“Good morning,” Min greeted him.

“Who are you?  Where is Anton?”

Min smiled pleasantly.  “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

“I don’t know who you are, but Anton owed me money first.  You can take your cut after he pays me off in full.”

“You can have his money,” Min shrugged.  “I’m just interested in tracking him down.”

“What are you, a cop?  What the hell would I tell you for?”

Min shrugged.  “I can pay for the information.”

Yaling scowled at him.

“A thousand credits,” Min offered.  “I just need to talk to him.”  He held up his tablet so the console could pick it up.  “I’ll wire you the credits right now.  Easiest payday you’ve ever had.”

“Jesus.  You with Esteres?”

“Yes.”  Min bluffed.

Yaling shook his head.  “I don’t know what Anton’s got into.  I’m just his bookie trying to collect what he owes me.”

Min nodded, keeping his pleasant smile fixed on his face.  His mind raced, trying to follow the thread of the lie.  How much to say?  “Like I said.  I’m just trying to find him.”  Min decided to twist the hook a bit.  “You aren’t hiding him from me, are you?”

“No!  No, I’m not.”  Yaling’s face paled.

“Good.  You want these credits or not?”  Min tried not to smile at Yaling’s discomfiture.  Whoever this Esteres fellow was, he could scare Yaling with just his name.

“Yes.  I mean, I don’t know where he is exactly.  If he’s not in Acheron, he might be out collecting.”

“Where would he be in Acheron?”

“Probably with Dr. Lenbroke… wait a minute.  You’re not with Esteres, are you?”

“Of course I am.”

“Oh no.  No, no.  Fuck that.  I’m not telling you anything.  Not for all the credits on Mars.”  The line went dead.

“Shit.”

Min glared at the blank screen, then cracked a grin.  Yaling might have figured out he wasn’t with Esteres, but Min had gotten what he had come for.  He had two leads to chase down now.  Esteres, whoever he or she was, and this Dr. Lenbroke.

Now he had to get to Acheron Cluster.  Things were looking up.

Min’s tablet buzzed and he glanced down at it to find Enrique’s number.  That was fast work, even for Enrique.  He picked up.

“Hey man, what’s the news?”

“I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing, but you need to get out of there, right now!”

“What?  Slow down, mate.  What’re you talking about?”

“Damn it, Min!  You need to go!”

“Yeah, yeah.  I’m going.”  Min swung off the sofa and ran over to the ruined front door to Anton’s flat.  “Alright, I’m moving.  What’s happening?”

“They had an AI watching the network streams, searching for your voice pattern.  They got a hit a minute ago and sent a response team.”

Min eased the door open and stuck his head outside.  The hallway was empty.  He stepped out and jogged toward the end of the hallway.  “I’m assuming you’re scrambling this call?”

“I’m not an idiot,” Enrique snapped.  “Unlike some others I could mention.”

“That’s low.”

Min reached the corner and peered around it.  The halls were empty in both directions.  That was strange.  He picked a direction at random and ran.

“Gotcha!” Enrique said.  “Wait!  Stop.  Go back the other way.  Hurry!”

Min skidded to a halt and ran back the way he had come.  Following Enrique’s prompts, he ran deeper into the neighborhood.  After a few minutes of running, he left the residential blocks behind and entered into raw, unfinished tunnels.

When the clusters were mined out, the boring machines had sometimes found rich mineral veins that were worth following, even though the cluster’s floor plan didn’t have a use for the tunnels.  Every cluster had them, in greater or lesser extent.  Most clusters eventually found some use for the space, but for whatever reason, Olympus had never expanded into these tunnels.

“Good, now wait.”

Min wrapped his arms around himself.  The tunnels weren’t insulated or heated, and the temperature was around freezing at this depth.  “For how long?”

“Until the search parties give up.  I don’t know how long that will take, but you better get comfortable.”

“Right.  Hey, Enrique.  Thanks for saving my ass back there.”

“You’re welcome.  Being your friend is hard work sometimes.”

“Yeah.  Sorry about that.  On the plus side, I think I found a new lead.”  Min described his conversation with Yaling.  “If you’ve got a moment, look into those names and see what you can find.”

Enrique sighed.  “I don’t know, Min.  You ever think about just letting this case slide?  Look at you.  You’re on the run from the marshals, your apartment is shot up, and you’re hiding in an unfinished mine drift.  As life choices go, you have to admit, this one is going poorly for you.”

“I’ll think about it.  In the meantime, it’d be interesting to know who wanted to have me found so badly,” Min said and ended the call.

Enrique might have a point, he thought.  He settled down against the rough-hewn wall and tucked his legs up to his chest and hugged his knees.  Thing were going poorly for him, there wasn’t much he could say to argue against that.

So why did he feel so alive?

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

Handwriting sample from a 2nd grade student, circa 2123.

I wish all the wujin were gone.

My mama says that Jenna has gone to heaven.

I do not know if there is a heaven, but I hope there is.

Because then there would be a hell, and all the wujin would go there.

When I grow up, I want to be a police man so I can find my sister.

It was the seventh day of Angeline’s imprisonment.  When the lights came on in the morning, she was already awake and slowly stretching out muscles that had stiffened overnight.  She had never been so sore in her life.  Even when she had fallen off the escalator and broken her arm it hadn’t hurt as much.  The soreness was a different kind of hurt though.  Her broken arm had been a stabbing pain and felt like someone ramming red-hot nails through her skin to the bone beneath.  Her pain this morning had a wholesome throb to it.  She knew muscles had to be torn down and rebuilt before they would grow stronger, but she wished there was an easier way to do it.

Two cages over, Adora woke and rolled out of her cot with a limber ease and started going through her own stretches.  Angeline watched her, envious of the other girl’s fitness.  She had never had much interest in playing sports in school, and now she wished she had.

With her stretches completed, Angeline didn’t have anything else to do.  She was ravenously hungry, but the jailer had not yet returned to give them their food and water for the day.  Her stomach growled and she settled down on her cot to wait.

Next to Angeline, Jasmine rolled over in her cot, and Angeline caught a glimpse of the girl’s face.  Jasmine had been crying.  Her cheeks were blotchy, her eyes red.  Angeline opened her mouth to ask Jasmine what was wrong then shut it again.  To hell with Jasmine.  She was probably just feeling sorry for herself.

Time was impossible to track.  Without some reference to go on, she had no idea what time it was.  For all she knew, the lights would go out at noon and they would sleep through the afternoon and spend all night awake.  The best way they had to keep track of time was their own stomachs and the usually regular visits of the jailer.

Angeline paced her cage for a while, then returned to her cot to lie down again.  She played with the I.V. catheter in her arm then forced herself stop touching it.  Still the jailer didn’t return.  To help take her mind off her empty stomach, she went through the motions of keeping herself clean, taking the time to give her long hair a good cleansing.

Jasmine still had not gotten out of her cot.  She had her blanket pulled up over her face, with only the top of her head showing.  Angeline stared at Jasmine, hating her.  How had she ever considered Jasmine to be her friend?

Finally the door swung open and the jailer walked in.  He wasn’t pushing his usual cart, though, and after a moment, Anton followed him through the door.

Seeing Anton again brought a welter of emotion.  In a way, he was one of her only tangible links to her old life, before the cage.  He was also the embodiment of the cruel fate that had befallen her.

Anton pointed a finger at her.  “You’re first.  Don’t fight me, or I’ll beat you bloody, just for fun.”

Angeline nodded meekly and turned, holding her wrists together behind her back.  The cage gate opened, and she felt Anton’s rough hands seize her wrists painfully, then the cold plastic of the zip tie cinched tight.  Angeline stumbled as Anton hauled her around by her arm and shoved her toward the gate.  She managed to catch her balance before she fell.  As she was marched from the room, she saw Jasmine staring wide-eyed at her.

It wasn’t until they reached the lab and Anton was strapping her to the gurney that she realized Jasmine hadn’t been looking at her, she had been staring longingly at Anton.  The thought turned her stomach.  What was wrong with Jasmine, anyway?

Anton left after giving each strap a tug to make sure they were secure.  The gurney was cold against the bare skin of her legs.

She didn’t have long to wait before the woman Angeline had seen last time returned.  She looked tired, with dark circles under her eyes, visible despite her makeup.  Without so much as meeting Angeline’s gaze, she hooked a small test tube to Angeline’s catheter and took a blood sample.

Anton came back with Adora and set about strapping her to the next gurney.  Adora let herself be strapped in peacefully.  When Anton turned to leave, Adora gave Angeline a broad smile with absolutely no humor in it, then smoothed her face out when the woman returned to take Adora’s blood sample.

Angeline wanted to ask Adora what was happening, but she didn’t want to do it while the woman was there.  Adora winked at her then turned her head to stare at the ceiling.

When Anton returned, he kicked the door open and flung Jasmine into the room.  “Stupid little whore scratched me,” he complained.

Jasmine scrambled off the floor and lunged for the doorway.  Her arms were bound behind her back with a pair of zip ties, and when Anton kneed her in the stomach, she couldn’t catch herself when she collapsed.  Angeline heard the crunch of Jasmine’s nose breaking when she fell to the floor face first.

Anton kicked her over onto her back and pinned her in place with his foot.  Jasmine wriggled wildly, trying to get away.  Anton sneered down at her then pulled his stunrod from his belt.  He snapped it open and jabbed it into Jasmine’s stomach.

Jasmine’s muscles seized then started jerking uncontrollably when Anton finally pulled the stunrod back.  He grinned down at her and raised the rod again.

“I think she’s got the message,” the woman said quietly.

Anton lowered the stunrod, but didn’t take his weight off the foot keeping Jasmine pinned to the ground.  “I don’t tell you how to do your job, Dr. Lenbroke.  Don’t tell me how to do mine.”

“My interest is in the girl’s health,” Dr. Lenbroke said firmly.  “Not their mental wellbeing.  If you shock the girl too much, you could disrupt her menstrual cycle.”

Anton sniffed, but he took his foot off Jasmine.  “Sounds like you’re going soft to me.  Maybe Dr. Chung should take over for you.  Just for a little while.”

“Jie Chung is a butcher.  He couldn’t keep a houseplant alive, let alone care for a group of girls.”  Dr. Lenbroke said frostily, but she turned away, waving one hand in dismissal.  “But do what you like.”

Anton jabbed Jasmine with his stunrod again, looking at Dr. Lenbroke, daring her to turn around.  Angeline saw the doctor’s back stiffen, but she just bent her head and ignored the sound of Jasmine’s choked shrieks.  After a moment, he pulled the rod back.  Jasmine twitched feebly on the floor.  Blood from her broken nose was smeared over her face and matted into her hair.

With a grunt, Anton picked Jasmine up and flung her onto a gurney.  Jasmine seemed only partially conscious, her eyes were rolling in her head and flecks of white foam sat in the corners of her mouth.  Dr. Lenbroke walked over and pushed Anton away.

“I think you’ve done enough.  I’ll have to keep the girl overnight to make sure you didn’t do anything permanently damaging to her.”

Anton shrugged.  “Whatever.  No skin off my back.”

Angeline saw Adora smiling at Jasmine, clearly enjoying the girl’s suffering.  For her part, Angeline only felt sad.  As much as the violence seemed fitting and just, she couldn’t take pleasure in it.  She didn’t feel any sympathy either, though.

“Why are you here, anyway?” Dr. Lenbroke said.  “Shouldn’t you be out finding the next batch?”

“I would, but that idiot Lucien got himself killed.  He was following the marshal and got made.”

“Someone had better put an end to Marshal Yang before he finds his way here.  I’m not going down because you got sloppy.”

“Don’t worry about it.  Word is the boss pulled some strings.  His own people are hunting for him now.”

“Good.  Though I won’t be happy until we get word he’s dead.  I’ve heard stories.  The man won’t give up until we’re dead or he is.”

“You worry too much.  Want me to stop by later?  Help take your mind off things?”  Anton leered at her.

“I’d rather stab my eyes out with a fork,” Dr. Lenbroke smiled.

“That a yes then?”

“You should leave,” she said.  “And contemplate the meaning of justifiable homicide.”

Anton laughed and left with a wave.

Dr. Lenbroke watched Anton leave then sighed.  “God I hate that man.  Alright, let’s see what he’s done to you.”  She put on a stethoscope and held it over Jasmine’s heart.  After listening for a minute, she peeled back Jasmine’s eyelids and shone a penlight into them.

“This might be a bit late for you,” Dr. Lenbroke muttered as she took Jasmine’s pulse and blood pressure, “but you’ve really got to learn which men are dangerous.”

She took a blood sample from Jasmine and brought it over to her workstation before hooking I.V. bags up to each girl.

Angeline watched as Dr. Lenbroke ran tests on their blood samples.  She was close enough this time so she could look over the doctor’s shoulder.  She didn’t recognize any of the tests being done, but even Angeline recognized when one test showed up glaringly positive.

Dr. Lenbroke cursed and repeated the test.  Again the clear reagent turned milky when she stirred in a few drops of blood.  The doctor’s shoulders sagged then moving slowly, she tapped out a number on her tablet.

“What can I do for you, Kim?” a man’s voice asked.

“Another one is ready, Jie,” Dr. Lenbroke said, and hung up.

She turned in her chair, moving with renewed purpose.  Quickly, she stepped up to Angeline’s gurney and injected something into her I.V. bag, then repeated the action on Adora’s.  Almost immediately, Angeline felt her eyelids start to sag.

Angeline struggled to stay awake.  Whose blood had made the reagent react?  She didn’t think it was her.  As far as Angeline knew, she hadn’t started her period yet.  But since she hadn’t experienced it yet, she didn’t really know what to look for.  There was no blood between her legs, or in her urine when she woke up.

The lab was going black.  Concentrate as she might on staying awake, whatever drug Dr. Lenbroke had put into her I.V. was dragging her under inexorably.  Distantly, she heard the door swing open.

“Which one?” a man’s voice asked with undisguised excitement.

“On the end, the bloody one.”

“Ha ha, good one.  The bloody one.”  He chortled, enjoying the joke.

Dr. Lenbroke’s voice was exasperated.  “The one with the broken nose.”

Angeline felt her grasp on consciousness slip away.  The last thought that went through her mind was that Jasmine hadn’t made it.  A marshal was coming for them, but for all Jasmine’s cold-hearted attempts at staying alive, in the end they had come to nothing.

Angeline woke slowly.  Her thoughts were sluggishly chasing themselves in circles as she sat upright and rubbed her eyes.  Her mouth tasted foul and her head throbbed painfully.  While they had been unconscious, someone had swapped out her used bucket with a clean one containing the day’s rations.

She got out of bed, her movements stiff and painful.  Adora was awake, sitting against the cage mesh, her eyes closed, head leaned back and a distant smile on her face.  Angeline emptied her bucket out on her cot and relieved herself, then put the bucket in the furthest corner where the smell wouldn’t be too bad.

It wasn’t until Angeline had rinsed her mouth out and taken her first bite of food that she realized Jasmine’s cage was empty.

Adora laughed when she saw Angeline’s reaction.  “Your friend started her period last night.”

Angeline put her food down.  She wasn’t hungry any more.  Jasmine was dead.  She closed her eyes and prepared herself to cry, but the tears didn’t come.  She felt… relieved.

“I’m glad,” Adora declared.  “After what she did to Eva, it is almost poetic justice that she had her period next.”

Angeline hugged herself.  “Jasmine… wasn’t a good person.  But I don’t know that she deserved to die.”

Adora shrugged.  “We’re all going to die.”

“There’s a marshal coming,” Angeline said.  “We just need to stay alive until he gets here.”

“I’m not going to hold my breath.”

Angeline’s stomach growled and she started eating again, one slow bite at a time to make the food last.  “I’m scared,” she finally said.  “I haven’t had my period yet.  I don’t know when it will start.  It could be tomorrow.  It could be in a year.”

Adora rolled her eyes.  “I know exactly how long I have.”

“How long?” Angeline asked.

Adora shook her head.  “I’m not going to tell you that.”  She tapped her ear.  “They’re probably listening.  If they want me, they’ll have to work to get me.”

Angeline finished eating and put her food away.  The cage next to her felt hollow, like there was someone there but every time she looked, it was still empty.  After a while, Adora started her exercises again.  Angeline watched her.  She thought about getting up to copy the other girl, but she felt drained.  What was the point?  Adora finished her first set and started back with pushups again.

With a sigh, Angeline rolled from her cot and joined her.  There might not be a point, but at least it was something to do.  The thought of waiting for a year for her period to start, every day wondering if it was her last, galled her.  She had to find some way to break out.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

Excerpt from Dr. Everard’s journal, dated April 10th, 2108.

How do you choose who will live forever?  The Helix Rebuild works, there is no doubt of that.  But should I release it to the world?  What consequences will such technology have upon our society?  One thing is certain: life will never be the same again.

The Rebuild is simple to perform, once you know what to do.  It requires some sophisticated equipment, but nothing that is not in every hospital in America.  The question is, whom should I permit it to be used on?  Should it be open to everybody?  Should I restrict access?  I think it is safe to say that there are women who should not be allowed a chance at eternity: the criminally insane, the mentally unstable, the dregs of society that we try to forget.

Those are the obvious ones.  But what about those with a criminal record, but had acquired it through an act of justice?  Our laws are far from perfect.  Should a woman convicted of murder be forbidden the treatment?  What if the murder was to protect or defend?  It would be rank folly to create a society of immortals who could not protect themselves.

More thought is needed on this.

Marcus Truman’s breath came shallowly.  Through the haze of pharmaceutical numbness, he could feel the soggy tearing in his lungs.  Every breath he took did a little more damage to the scarified tissue.  He no longer had the energy to sit upright on his own, and straps held him into his wheelchair.

“Almost there, Mr. Truman.”  Dr. Bannister’s voice seemed to come from a long way off.

Marcus tried to reply, but couldn’t get a deep enough breath to make the words come out.  The effort left him dizzy, with pain coiling in his chest that the analgesics couldn’t suppress.  He badly needed to cough, but lacked the energy to do so.

I’m dying.

The thought seemed to come from a great distance and Marcus struggled with it.  How had he come to this?  The stone ceiling over his head seemed miles away.  Was this his life now?  Forever trapped underground, never to feel the bright sun on his skin or grass beneath his feet?

Was an eternity of caves something he even wanted?  When he had first received his diagnosis, he wanted nothing more than to live.  But now that he was here on Mars and knew the reality of his future existence, it didn’t seem worth it.

He lost track of his surroundings.  He didn’t go unconscious, not really; it was more like he saw and heard everything going on around him, but lacked the energy to focus on it and bring meaning to what he saw.

Something settled over his mouth and cool, sweet air filled what was left of his lungs.  He was still breathing shallowly, but the rich oxygen mix brought life back to him.  Death still lurked around the corner, but the final embrace seemed more distant now.

He grew aware of a bright light shining into his eyes and he flinched.

“Cutting it close, Marcus,” a male voice said.  “Dr. Bannister has vouched for you, so you’ll get your treatment.  The first injection of the Womack Process…”

The voice droned on, but Marcus found his attention drifting.  The wow and flutter of his hearing was more interesting than the meaning in the man’s voice.

The lights overhead were painfully bright.  Marcus felt himself being lifted.  Vague pain bloomed in his chest, but his nerves were so saturated the signals seemed to come through delayed, with strange echoes.

He never felt the needle that punched through the skin of his shoulder.

A strange, gritty, burning sensation tingled in his arm and shot down to his finger tips.  It hurt the way your arm hurts when you sleep on it wrong and blood starts returning.  The nerves in his fingers fizzed uncomfortably.  Gradually, the sensation spread out from his shoulder.

The sensation grew as it spread.  It wasn’t pain, not like what he was used to.  This was something different.  It was sensation, magnified ten times, a hundred times.  The touch of his shirt, the pressure of his shoulders against the bed, the constriction of his socks, all of it came through more powerful than any feeling he had ever experienced.

Marcus moaned in panic.  The sensations were too much.  His mind flailed feebly against the onslaught, unable to cope with the sheer volume and scale of what his nerves were sending him.

The pain in his chest spiked upwards, as if all the pain signals that had been muffled by drugs over the last week finally burst through the dam and flooded his mind.  He tried to scream, but he couldn’t breathe.  He thrashed, but he was strapped down.  He couldn’t move, and the pressure of the nylon straps digging into his arms burned like a brand on his arms, legs and chest.

Starting from his scalp, a wave of new agony washed over him, rushing down his spine and crawling out to his extremities.  Every hair follicle felt like a red-hot needle was stabbing through his flesh.  The pain rose higher and higher, each new wave ratcheting up the agony until Marcus was sure he would go insane.

He had been wrong.  Getting the Womack treatment was worth than death.

Then, when he was sure his mind was slipping and the last tenuous fingerhold on his sanity was on the brink of failure, the nature of the pain changed.  It still hurt, but with it came an undercurrent of pleasure.  The shrieking pain under his fingernails gave way to pleasure first.  One by one, the individual sources of pain changed their nerve signal to pleasure.

It was a relief, but only for a short while.  The sensations grew ever stronger.  The brush of his wrist against the sheet sent stabs of ecstasy shuddering through him.  If the pain was bad, the pleasure was worse.  His body shook and trembled as his muscles twisted in an uncontrollable spasm.  It was like he was experiencing a full-body orgasm, magnified over and over again.

Marcus screamed, his back arched against the webbing.  Distantly he was aware of someone cheering, but he couldn’t spare any attention to see who it was.  Euphoric waves shot up his body and detonated behind his eyes.  The pleasure was so intense it became indistinguishable from the pain that had wracked him earlier.

Finally, something in his mind snapped.  He couldn’t take the sensations anymore and blackness swept in on him, blessedly enveloping him and pulling him down into unconsciousness.

Marcus opened his eyes.

The sheets were cool against his skin.  When he shifted his legs, his hairs brushing the sheets sent shivers up his spine.  An echo of the overwhelming sensations was there, but faded in moments.  For the first time in months, he didn’t feel any pain.  It wasn’t the distant numbness of analgesics, it was real, true lack of pain.

He took a deep breath and felt nothing but cool air fill his lungs.  The edges in the room seemed sharp, the colors vivid.  Gingerly, Marcus sat up, marveling at the strength that seemed to surge through him.  He was naked beneath the sheets, and someone had laid out a set of clothes on the side table for him.

Marcus dressed.  Every movement seemed larger than life.  He felt expansive, too big to fit in the confines of his flesh.  He finished putting the clothes on and sat down on the edge of the bed.  Wonder filled him, and he felt humbled by the miracle of life.

He had been on the brink of death, separated only by the slender finger grip of tenacious determination, and even that had been failing.  Another hour, another minute, and he would have given up and let the final dark sweep him away.  And now he was wondrously, vibrantly alive.

Someone knocked and the door swung open.  Dr. Bannister walked in, a wide smile on her face.  With her was a tall, slender man in a white lab coat.

“Welcome back from the dead, Marcus!” Dr. Bannister exclaimed.

Marcus smiled, genuine pleasure at seeing her bubbling up in him and making him laugh.  It was the first unencumbered burst of laughter since he had been diagnosed with cancer.  It felt good, like a scab coming off.

“I feel amazing!” he said.  “Better than I’ve ever felt in my life.”

“You’re a lucky man,” the man said, and held out his hand.  “I’m Eric.  We’ve got some tests to run on you before we can release you out into the wild again.  Those tumors in your lungs might need extra work.”

Marcus shook Eric’s hand.  “I feel fine,” he declared, taking a deep breath to prove it.

“It’s routine.  Any lingering tissue damage will be repaired in the next treatment, but we would be remiss if we let you go with potentially dangerous conditions still extant.”

“You’re the doc,” Marcus shrugged and grinned.  Even the thought of more tests didn’t worry him.  If someone asked him to count out the grains of sand in a full bucket, he would have agreed cheerfully.  He was alive!

“I’ve got to get back to the farm,” Dr. Bannister said.  “When Eric is done with you, drop by.  I’ve got a project for you.”

“So you’re from Earth?” Eric asked once Dr. Bannister had gone.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Okay.  Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m going to assume you know nothing at all about the Womack Process.  God only knows what weird ideas have cropped up on Earth about it.”

“It’s hard to find any information about it at all, to be honest.”

“Not surprising.  Even on Mars, being a wujin has a certain stigma to it.  I can only imagine what it’s like on Earth.”

“Really?  I hadn’t noticed anything.  People seem to respect Dr. Bannister.”

Eric waved his hand in a vacillating motion.  “Eh.  What you might see as respect is probably fear.  Dr. Bannister is a good sort, don’t get me wrong, but most people see the wujin as monsters.”

Marcus started to laugh until he saw that Eric wasn’t smiling.  “You’re serious?  How come?”

Eric coughed a laugh devoid of amusement.  “You’re from Earth, Marcus.  Why do you think?”

“Kidnapping is a problem?”

“Let me put it this way.  How much did you pay for your treatment?”

“Dr. Bannister handled it.  I understand it’s around a thousand credits.”

“Yes.  A thousand credits is about what an unskilled laborer makes in a month.  There is an incredible amount of money being moved around in relation to the Womack treatments.  The women who donate their eggs get paid handsomely for it, often enough that they don’t have to work for many years.  Wherever there is that much wealth being generated, there are people who try and take a slice off the top.”

“I guess human nature hasn’t changed.”

“You got that right.  But enough of that.  You’re here now, and there will be plenty of time to work out your new place in the world.  My job is to make sure you survive to enjoy it.  Listen.  I can’t stress this enough.  You must get your treatments on schedule.  The Womack Process might just be an injection, but it is extremely invasive to the body’s systems.  If you miss a follow up treatment by even a few hours, you will die.”

Marcus nodded.  That much he had known.  “How is the treatment schedule set?”

Eric snapped his fingers.  “Excellent question.  For each person it lasts a different amount of time.  Generally speaking, it’s about a month, give or take a few days.  Most people fall within a twenty-eight to thirty-two day cycle.  Usually we want people in the clinic from day twenty-five onward, closely monitored to catch when the withdrawal begins.”

“Withdrawal?”

“You felt the serum take hold.  That euphoric rush starts in again, only in reverse.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry, we catch it starting long before it gets to that point.  Once we know your cycle, then we set up an appointment with you to come in next time, a day in advance.  That’s to verify we’ve got the timing down right.  The withdrawal almost always starts right on time, but we don’t like to take chances.  After that, you come in for your treatment the day of, get the injection, and you’re on your way again with minimal wasted time.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“We think so.  Okay, I know you feel fine, but I want to do a quick scan of your chest to see if there is any lingering scar tissue.”

“I have to say,” Marcus commented as he followed Eric to another room and lay down on the scanning table.  “I’m amazed at the speed of healing.”

“The human body replaces its cells rather quickly.  The fastest organs replace themselves entirely in only a day or two.  The Womack Process accelerates that and triggers cell replacement in tissue that wouldn’t otherwise regenerate.  But it wasn’t as fast as you think.  You were unconscious for over a full day.”

“How is that even possible?  What about nutrient requirements?  Waste management?”

Eric laughed.  “I’m just a technician.  If you really want to know all about it, look up Dr. Havarti.  He’ll explain it to you.  Now hold still for a moment while I run this scan.”

Marcus arrived at the hydroponic farm in high spirits.  He felt reborn; perhaps, in a way, he was.  His muscles seemed to hum with energy and he felt stronger than he ever had.

His new life was only just beginning and he found himself looking forward to what the years would bring.  It seemed impossible that he could be alive, let alone immortal.  He would live forever.  He couldn’t wrap his mind about that concept, no matter how hard he tried.

Even the Helix Rebuild didn’t offer true immortality.  The Matriarchs would only live so long as they had eggs.  They would live for tens of thousands of years, but even so, their life was on a clock just as surely as an untreated human.  Marcus, on the other hand, had no such limitations.  Assuming he played his cards right, he would still be alive when the sun cooled.

The damp humidity of the farm felt thick in his lungs, but he breathed it in deeply, reveling in the ability to just breathe without needing to cough.  The last time he’d been here, he had been too far gone and swamped with painkillers to really experience the hydroponic farm properly.

The scent of greenery and rampant plant growth was a rush.  It was vastly different from the sterility of the cluster’s hallways.  Marcus walked down the first row he saw.  He felt like a child, awash with wide-eyed wonder at even the smallest things.  The way a pepper plant branched, the curve of a flower’s petals, the humming efficiency of the mechanical pollinator wands.

“There you are Marcus,” Dr. Bannister called.  She stood at the top of the row and waved when he turned to her.  “How is the universe’s newest immortal?”

“Wonderful!”  Marcus grinned.  “I don’t know how anyone would ever get bored living this way.”

Dr. Bannister smiled indulgently at him.  “It’s just euphoria.  In a few days it will fade.  I still get echoes of it when I get my treatments, but they never last long.  Enjoy it, is what I say.”

Marcus pulled his attention away from the rhythmic dripping of a hydration nozzle.  “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes.  I’ve been thinking of our conversation a few days ago.  You mentioned how you found particular fulfillment in the organization and execution of getting your cargo assembled and shipped to Mars.”

He nodded in agreement.  “I did.  Do.  I mean, yes.  It is something I quite enjoy.”

“An acquaintance of mine has need of an urgent package delivery.  She requires someone to escort the crate to its destination and ensure everything goes smoothly.  Delays would mean damage to her enterprise, something she is keen on avoiding.  I assured her you were the perfect fit for the task.”

“I am?” Marcus asked dubiously.  “I’m not really familiar with customs law on Mars, nor do I know any people who could help me if I run into trouble.”

“You’re a smart man,” Dr. Bannister encouraged him.  “You found your way to a Womack treatment in record time despite being half dead with cancer.  I’m sure you’ll be able to work out any setbacks before they delay the delivery.”

“Oh, that reminds me.  I need to pay you back for the Womack treatment.”

Dr. Bannister waved a hand, dismissing it.  “Consider it paid for.  Assuming you accept this charge?”

“You want to pay me a thousand credits for escorting a crate?  What’s in it?”

“Does it matter what’s in the crate?  Could be solid gold, could be old socks.  Either way, your client’s confidence is what is important.  And really, credits aren’t the issue.  Favors, Marcus, are the real specie among wujin.  Any fathead dune scratcher can earn credits.  By doing this, you earn some recognition, I pay off a favor, and my acquaintance gets her package delivered.  Everyone is happy.”

Marcus nodded.  “I guess I need to start finding my place in my new community.”

“Quite so.  Come with me, I’ll introduce you.  You’ll like her, another Earth-born like yourself.”

Marcus shook Grendal Crade’s hand.  That she was wujin was obvious despite her hair dye.  It took some getting used to: skin that lacked any pigmentation and eyes whose only coloring was the blood in the iris folds.  Self-consciously Marcus touched his own face, wondering how long it would take before he took on the albino traits.

He had been raised to loath albinos.  He had never seen one before coming to Mars, but every school child was carefully taught the signs of those who were receiving the Womack Process.  Taught the signs, and taught what to do if ever he saw one.

Marcus smiled a little, remembering.  Cross to the other side of the street.  Call the hotline, 666, give the location and description of the albino, and wait on the line to keep the authorities updated in case the albino went anywhere.

He wondered what would happen on Mars if he called 666.

To Marcus’ eyes, the extravagance of the Redstone Lounge was somewhat lost.  Intellectually he knew it must have been expensive to import the hardwood and the silk, but he saw the wood paneling as kitschy and quaint.  Maybe when he had been on Mars for many years, he could come back to the Lounge and be properly impressed.

“So you’re the new guy Andrea has been on about.  Take a seat.  We have time for a drink.”

Marcus sat, trying not to stare.  He had grown accustomed to Dr. Bannister’s appearance, but for some reason, Grendal’s hair made the paleness of her skin stand out even more.  “Thank you for this opportunity,” he said carefully.

“Andrea vouched for you,” Grendal said, nodding to Dr. Bannister.  “I have my doubts about using someone new to Mars, but I understand you’re eager to fit in.”

“If I’m going to be living here forever, I want to be on good terms with the people I’ll be sharing eternity with.”

Grendal smiled.  “Keep up that attitude and you’ll fit right in, my dear.”

A waiter arrived at the table and carefully laid out mugs and a carafe.

“Is that coffee?” Dr. Bannister asked, sniffing the air.  “I tried to grow a crop a few years back.  I got them to fruit, but the beans were sour.  I must be lacking something in my soil.  One of these days I’ll figure it out and you won’t be the only one with coffee, Grendal.”

“Until then,” their host smiled, “I’ll keep charging extortionate rates.”

Marcus sipped his coffee when the waiter poured for him.  He was pleasantly surprised to find whiskey had been added.

“That’s for you,” Grendal said, marking the look on his face.  “May you bring us booze for years to come.”

Marcus raised his mug in acknowledgement.  “I plan to.”

“Excellent.  And perhaps when you have produced your first batches of vodka, you and I could enter into an arrangement for selling your product.”

“I would like that,” Marcus said with a smile.  This was how he had always dreamed of doing business.  The old boys club, doing deals and making money.  The fact that both the women were significantly older than he was, and, well, not boys, didn’t retract from it.  Through whatever twist of fate, he had found the perfect entrance to life on Mars.  All he had to do now was not screw things up.

“I understand you have a package for me to deliver,” he said.

“I do.  I need it delivered to Acheron Cluster.  Do you know where that is?”

“I have seen it on maps,” he allowed.

“Good enough.  I’ll give you the location where the package needs to be picked up.  You’ll make the transfer to Acheron and deliver it into the hands of a man named Anton Engel, who will be at a certain address.”

“Is there anything I need to be aware of while transporting the package?”

“The contents are delicate,” Grendal said with a smile.  “Other than that, the less you know, the better.”

“You can count on me, Ms. Crade.”

“Please.  Call me Grendal.  If you’re ready to begin, my doorman, Charles, will give you the directions you need.”

Marcus got up from the table, knowing a dismissal when he heard one.  “Oh.  One last thing.  Is there a way to contact you in case of an emergency?”

Grendal’s face froze.  “There won’t be an emergency.  The reason I have someone escort the package is to prevent an emergency from occurring.”

Marcus winced.  “Of course.  I look forward to reporting my successful delivery.”

“And I to hearing it.”  Grendal smiled, but her eyes remained flinty and cold.

Marcus dipped a short bow and hurried away to find Charles.  He was good at this, he reminded himself.  Delivering a package is simple.  Everything is already arranged, I just need to make sure nothing unexpected happens.

Nothing will happen, he told himself firmly.  His future on Mars depended on his success.  If he could do this, he would prove himself to the wujin community in Vastitas.  He would have friends, allies that he could develop business relations with.  If he failed somehow, if the package didn’t arrive, then he would lose all that.  Grendal wouldn’t do business with him.  He would embarrass Dr. Bannister and she would cease being so helpful.

No.  He would not fail.  No matter what happened, that package was going to arrive at its destination.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

During the years after the announcement of the Helix Rebuild and leading up to the December Protocol, Dr. Annette Everard, was, unsurprisingly, one of the few people who had any real grasp on what was happening.  And nowhere else did that understanding make itself felt as clearly as in the Matriarch Manifesto.

The development of the Helix Rebuild was the most significant course of research in human history, but in Dr. Everard’s eyes, it paled in comparison to her creation of the Matriarchs.  Creating immortality was not a solution in itself.  Designing an entire society that functioned around the presence of immortals was just as necessary.  Failure to include that structure is what made the Womack Process fail on Earth.

The Matriarch Manifesto laid down the rules of a society containing immortals, and the first women chosen to rise to that status were taught the importance of the Manifesto.  It was a lesson hammered home by the destruction brought about by the Womack Process.  The newly formed Council of Matriarchs watched as Dr. Everard’s predictions came to pass, and their belief and devotion to the manifesto deepened to a religion.

Min Yang disembarked from the tram at Acheron Cluster.  The tram terminals were decorated in a way that reflected the civic pride of the cluster.  Olympus had a big statue of Anatoly Richardson, the founder of Cydonia.  Vastitas was decorated with gears and bare girders, representing (and Min was stretching here) the manufacturing role that cluster played.

Acheron’s call to fame, if it could be called that, was a humongous hunk of uranium ore smack dab in the middle of the concourse, surrounded by thick panes of leaded glass doped to spark whenever a decaying particle impacted with the glass.  Sometimes the ore was so active with decay that the glass was almost too bright to look at.

Acheron was a mining cluster.  Originally, Acheron was slated as a sort of overflow extension to Olympus, but a vast deposit of uranium and other valuable minerals changed that.  Acheron itself had been built to one side of the open pit uranium mine.  It was the sort of violently eco-unfriendly strip-mining operation that drove the environmentalists into frenzies back on Earth, but this was Mars and nobody gave a shit.

While the uranium lasted, Acheron would continue to be the most productive source of ore and raw minerals on Mars.  Maybe when the deposit ran dry, some enterprising engineer would throw a dome over the pit and turn it into Eden.  Maybe Min would live long enough to see that happen.

Today, Geiger Rock, as the uranium ore was affectionately called, was throwing off enough decaying particles to make the glass sporadically sputter with light.  Min tore his attention from the mesmerizing display.  There would be plenty of time to sight-see after Angeline was no longer in danger of being vivisected.

Escaping from Olympus had been nerve-wracking but ultimately uneventful.  After a few hours spent in the back tunnels cooling his heels, Enrique had called him back and sent him on a winding course through Olympus’ underbelly.  It had been stressful, but tedious, and he had gotten to the tram terminal without being recognized.

According to Enrique, the marshals were searching for him like he was public enemy number one, but were unwilling to spread the manhunt to the local forces, lest the police get the idea that marshals couldn’t take care of their own.  Enrique had said the orders were conflicting: to find Min at all costs, but withholding any logical explanation.  The death of Yahzu Hong was cited most commonly as the underlying impetus for the search, but Min couldn’t be tied to that death directly without opening up the question of why Yahzu had been in Min’s flat in the first place.

Enrique had sent Min one last email before declaring himself ill and going home.

The email was an office joke circulation email, with several dozen people CC’d.  Min had almost deleted it on reflex, but had held off in case it was some subtle way of Enrique passing him information.

Min wandered about Acheron, trying to get a feel for the cluster.  He had visited a few times, but there wasn’t much that happened in Acheron that drew official marshal attention.  Most of the time, he had only stopped briefly for a meeting before getting back onto the tram again.

Right away, the first thing he noticed about Acheron was the air quality.  Much of Cydonia was pushing the population limits, and there was only so much the air could be recirculated without causing a noticeable breeze.  There were times in Olympus when the air pumps had to work overtime to deal with the number of visiting people and the long corridors had a breeze strong enough to set your clothing flapping.

In Acheron, the air tasted fresh and clean.  That meant this cluster had an underworked algae bay and a population that was significantly smaller than the architects had planned for.  Everywhere else in Cydonia was overpopulated.  So, either Acheron was the best-kept secret on Mars or, more likely, there was a reason for a population decline.  Perhaps digging an underground city right next to an open-pit uranium mine hadn’t been the best idea.

Min wasn’t worried about radiation poisoning.  His monthly Womack treatment would set any cellular damage right again before it escalated out of control.  The rest of the citizens might not be so lucky.  Still, that wasn’t why he was here.

As was his custom, Min walked until he found a tiny, secluded food stall and ordered an item at random off the menu.  While he waited for his ramen, he took out his tablet and examined Enrique’s email.  Most of it was inane comics and over-used memes, but a limerick near the bottom caught his eye.

There once was a man named Nim,

Who grew only white hair on his chin,

He thought it was his boss,

But he was at a loss,

For his other options were slim.

As a limerick, it left a lot to be desired and rhyming chin and slim was pretty weak.  Min frowned at Enrique’s message:  Director Rosario was not the one behind the search, and Enrique didn’t know who was.  Min’s food arrived and he ate while contemplating the rest of the email.  Enrique had planted the limerick to get his attention.  Other, more useful information would be buried deeper.

Back to the top.  He passed over a few jokes that he had seen previously , then came to a meme about uranium miners having three eyes.  It was a common joke, but there wasn’t anything particularly amusing about this one, just a poorly manipulated image giving a man in a hardhat a third eye with the tagline, “If you look hard enough you find what you’re looking for.”

Min stared at the image, even blew it up to see if there was a message hidden in the pixels.  Nothing.  Maybe the website URL watermarked into the foot of the image would lead somewhere.  He typed it into a search engine and got nothing, just a “page unknown” error.

Yet something about the URL snagged in Min’s mind.  It had looked like a random jumble of letters and numbers initially, but if you pulled the numbers to the front and added a space, it suddenly looked very much like an address.  He typed it into his search engine and sure enough, it was an address here in Acheron, an apartment that was part of a large block on the ninth level.

Min searched through the rest of the email without finding anything else helpful.  If Enrique had hidden more in the email, Min didn’t have the wit to see it.  Considering the crudity of the other pieces, Min felt fairly confident that he had found everything there was.  Enrique might be many things, but cut out to be a spy he was not.  Still, Min couldn’t be too hard on him.  The man had delivered as promised.

He considered the information about Director Rosario.  She had pulled her influence out of the case.  Either she’d had nothing to do with it in the first place, or had already started damage control, cutting ties to anything that might incriminate her later.  Min smiled wryly to himself.  He was good, but not that good.

He’d love to have a few minutes alone with Rosario again.  It’d be interesting to find out who had suggested to her that Min should not follow the case to completion.  It was possible she had really only been acting in Min’s best interest, but he thought that unlikely.  An urgent summons to her office when she had barely given him the time of day previously, just to give him friendly advice?  No, someone had pulled her strings.

As for the address, it was probably linked to Dr. Lenbroke.  Min finished off his meal and paid for the food.  He started walking again, contemplating his next move.  He wished he could talk to Enrique and verify what the address was to.  If it was the location of Dr. Lenbroke’s lab, that would be very different than the doctor’s apartment.

Doing any further online searching himself was probably unwise.  A single random search to the address was likely lost in the noise, but any in-depth investigation into the address was sure to trip red flags.

His only course of action was to go and knock on the door and see what happened.  It was the kind of cavalier rookie move that led to an early grave, but Min was out of options.  He couldn’t go back to the marshal headquarters and turn himself in.  He might as well just shoot himself in the head as do that.  And he was running out of time.  Eight days had passed since the girls had gone missing.

From the dates Nuon Chow had given, Jasmine still had three days before her period would start, but Min couldn’t remember if he had accounted for the actual days of the period itself.  Either he had three days to find the girls, or Jasmine was already dead.  The vagueness of the female menstrual cycle frustrated Min.

The only silver lining was that Angeline had not yet started her periods when she was kidnapped.

Min found the escalators going down in front of him before he realized he had subconsciously steered himself toward them.  He paused at the top of the escalator.  The sloping shaft descended into gloom where a biolumen strip had failed.  Far at the bottom, light bloomed once more.

“Either get on, or get the hell out of the way.  Not all of us live forever, you know.”

Min stepped aside to let the man pass, but his mind was made up.  With a last glance around the open market floor, Min stepped onto the escalator and descended into darkness.  He only hoped the light at the bottom of the escalator prophesied his eventual success.

Apartment ACH9-541 was remarkable only in how completely mundane it looked.  The hallway was brightly lit with fresh biolumin strips, the walls clean.  Small personal touches brought life to the otherwise sterile hallway: a door painted a bright pastel color, or a welcome mat placed out in front.

541 was like any other on the strip, its numbers crisp, the door well maintained.  The color was the original manufacturer’s shade of off-white.  The only personal touch was a high-grade security lock in place of the standard-issue keycode entry, but even that wasn’t enough to be remarked on.  Min had passed half a dozen other doors on the way with upgraded security.

Min placed his thumb over the peephole and knocked on the door with his other hand.  An old couple passing by stared at him and he waved and winked with a smile.  It was late in the afternoon, long past time most people were off work.  Dr. Lenbroke should be home.

He was about to knock again when he heard footsteps on the other side of the door.  After a moment, a muffled female voice called out, “Who is it?”

Min pitched his voice high, not trying for a falsetto, but maybe passable for a child, given the height at which his voice was coming from.  “Sorry to bother you.  I’m doing a survey for a school project.  I was wondering if you had a moment to answer a few questions.”

“I’m busy.”

“Please?  It’ll only take a minute.  I’ve got everyone else on the block already.”

Min heard a muffled curse come from the other side of the door and grinned.  That had worked better than he had hoped.  The lock disengaged and Min dropped his shoulder into the door, swinging it suddenly open.

Whoever was inside had been in the act of opening the door when Min hit it, and he stumbled through, getting tangled with the woman and bringing them both crashing to the ground.  He kicked the door shut and scrambled to his feet.  He had one hand on his pistol, ready to bring it up and fire it if she fought him, but she didn’t even get up off the ground.

“So you’re the marshal,” she said, rubbing a hand across her nose.  The door must have hit it; her nose was bleeding, but not obviously broken.

Min relaxed a little.  “Dr. Lenbroke, I presume.”

The woman tilted her head forward, pinching her nose to help stop the bleeding.  When she spoke, her voice came out nasally.  “I suppose there’s no point in denying it.”

“Not really, no.”

They stared at each other for a moment then she held out her hand.  “Help me up.  I’m not going to try to fight you.”

Min shrugged and hauled her to her feet.  He was a little put off by how well she was taking it.  Most people involved in a criminal activity have much more active reactions when a colonial marshal kicks down their door.  If she had thrown herself at him screaming and clawing for his eyes, he would have known what to do.  If she had gone for a gun or an alarm, he would have known what to do.

Quiet compliance threw him off.  He helped her to her feet and, following her directions while she leaned over the sink, got an ice pack out of the fridge and wrapped it in a damp cloth.  She went and sat on a stool in the breakfast nook and tilted her head forward, one hand pinching her nose, the other holding the ice pack to her face.  Her heavy makeup was smeared by the blood and the cloth, letting her pale skin show through in patches.

It wasn’t an uncommon reaction to the albinism change.  Min had seen far more elaborate attempts at covering up the pale skin and white hair.  Most people eventually grew out of it.

“Sorry about your nose,” Min said then cursed to himself.  He didn’t want to appear weak to her.

Dr. Lenbroke raised an eyebrow at him, acknowledging the absurdity of it, but refraining from comment.  After a few minutes, she cautiously took her hand away.  The bleeding had stopped, and she spent a moment cleaning the blood off her hands and face.

“So,” she said while she worked, “what now?”

“I suppose that depends on you,” Min said.

“Is this where I bargain information for a reduced sentence or something?”

Min shook his head.  “You know the penalty for trafficking in stolen ovaries.”

She sighed.  “Death.  I was hoping there might be extenuating circumstances.”

“I don’t have the authority to offer that.  And given the heat coming down from within the marshals to get me to halt my investigation, I kind of doubt you’ll get any special consideration for turning your pals in.”

Dr. Lenbroke winced.  “So, what?  You take me in?”

“I don’t have time for that.  The girls don’t have time.”

“Girls?  Which ones are you after?”

“Jasmine and Angeline.”

“Jasmine… dark hair, Chinese?”

“Yes.”  Min got out his tablet and showed the picture of Jasmine to the doctor, but she was already nodding.

“You’re too late for her.”

“Shit.”  Min put his hand on the butt of his pistol.  It felt solid in his grasp, full of lethal potential.  It would be so easy.  She was defenseless, unresisting, but the need to do damage coiled in Min’s chest, begging for release.  The woman sitting on her stool glanced down at his hand and her face paled.  Moving deliberately, Min took his hand off and gripped the edge of the counter instead.  He needed her alive and talking.  “What about Angeline?”

Dr. Lenbroke shook her head.  “She still hasn’t had her first period.  Kidnapping her was a mistake.  Anton is getting sloppy.”

“How many other girls do you have prisoner?”

“One other right now.  Adora Martina, from Elysium.”

“She’s not part of my case, but I’m sure her parents will be happy to have her back.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Min demanded.  “Why are you doing this?”

Dr. Lenbroke shrugged.  “It’s not like I intentionally planned to do this for a living.  It makes a lot of money, but to tell the truth, I hate it.”  She took a deep shuddering breath and tried a small smile.  “Would you like some tea?  I purchased some a while ago for a special occasion, but I don’t suppose I’ll have the chance now.”

Min’s mouth watered.  Tea was a rarity on Mars.  Most people who had the money to have things imported from Earth focused on more permanent objects, or things that they could sell for a large profit.  Tea didn’t have the same monetary value as alcohol, or even a steak.  There was a restaurant in Olympus where you could buy a marbled Kobe steak grilled over apple wood coals for ten thousand credits.  It was a ludicrous amount of money, but every time Min visited the restaurant they had been sold out.  Compared to that kind of import value, tea wasn’t given much priority.

Seeing the look on his face, Dr. Lenbroke made her way unsteadily to her feet without waiting for a response.  Min stiffened and dropped his hand to the pistol again, but didn’t object as she set about heating water.  The tea was a bright green powder she kept in an oxygen-tight tin.  When she popped the lid, Min caught the aroma.  Green tea, not that barbaric filth the Europeans drank.  Black tea was better than nothing, but it was green tea that he craved.

He watched as she carefully portioned out the powder into bowls and stirred in the hot water with a whisk.  The scent of green tea filled the room and Min accepted his bowl with a small bow.

“I admit,” Min said as he raised his bowl to breathe in the aroma, “You aren’t what I expected.”

Dr. Lenbroke sipped her tea and sighed with pleasure.  “You were expecting an evil bastard who delights in torture?”  She waited for Min’s nod.  “That would be Jie.  I keep the girls alive and healthy, he performs the oophorectomy and termination.”  She shuddered.  “I… cannot.  Participate.”

Min sipped his tea.  The slightly bitter flavor brought back memories he had thought long-buried.  Running through tall grass with the sun beating on his shoulders and blue sky overhead, his mother carefully pouring tea in the shade of a towering tree, the scent of the ocean over the next hill.

He cleared his throat and put down the bowl, pulling his attention back onto the doctor before any more memories could surface.  There were some things that were best left buried in the past.

“Is the tea alright?”

“It’s fine,” he said shortly.  “You were telling me about Jie.  What’s his last name?”

“Chung.  He’s a doctor, too, but just a surgeon.”

Min picked his bowl up again and sipped, carefully keeping his mind on the present.  It went down almost flavorless.

“Tell me about your day.  What is your routine?”

Dr. Lenbroke started talking and Min listened carefully, sipping his tea and interrupting occasionally to clarify something or ask for more information.  As Dr. Lenbroke spoke, Min found himself growing more and more distracted.  The memories of Earth kept niggling at the edges of his thoughts.  He was so tired of Mars, so tired of the endless turbulence of human existence.

Min raised his bowl again and found the tea was down to the dregs, sharply bitter and cold.  He blinked and tried to focus on what Dr. Lenbroke was saying.  The familiar tickle of energy green tea always gave him sat coiled in his gut, but his limbs felt sluggish and unresponsive.  He looked up at the doctor and found her watching him closely.  She didn’t look harmless anymore; she was watching him like a predatory hawk.

He glanced down at the bowl and realization crashed through him, along with a sinking feeling.

He went for his gun then, but his hands seemed far away, belonging to someone else.  He fumbled the pistol out of the holster, but it hung slack from nerveless fingers.  Dr. Lenbroke darted forward and snatched the weapon from his hand.

Min tried to stand up.  His feet tangled in the stool and he toppled heavily to the ground.  There was a roaring in his ears and the salt taste of blood in his mouth.  Distantly, he heard the door bang open and footsteps ran into the room.

From the corner of his eye, Min recognized Anton Engel.  He tried to roll over, but he couldn’t seem to summon the energy.

“Took you long enough,” Dr. Lenbroke said sourly.

“We were waiting for him to go down.  He has a reputation, you know.  We couldn’t risk getting into a firefight with him.”

“This piece of shit.”

A foot crashed into Min and he groaned, curling up around his stomach.

“I had to keep him entertained for almost an hour.”

Min heard the mechanical sound of his pistol’s action cycling.

“No, don’t do that,” Anton said urgently.

“Why the fuck not?  Asshole broke my nose, or near enough.”

“He’s a marshal.  People know where he’s been looking.  He shows up dead and the entirety of the colonial marshals will come crashing down on us.”

“We can’t just let him go.”

“Of course not.  But listen, I’ve got an idea.”

Min slipped into unconsciousness, the roaring in his ears transitioning into the rolling crash of surf on a sunny beach.  The taste of green tea was in his mouth once more, strangely salty.  Clouds scudding across the sky and the calls of seagulls on the wind…

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

The first real drawback publicly recognized about the Womack Process was the sterility it produced in the people who had received the treatment.  In the case of Ettricks v Womack, the plaintiff sued Dr. Womack for incomplete testing of his process, claiming damages of ten million dollars.  Dr. Womack’s legal team defended the claim handily, arguing that nobody had forced Mr. Ettricks to receive the treatment, and at any rate, immortality was a boon that outweighed any financial burden.

The case might have been thrown out, but it was the first piece of the platform Dr. Everard started building condemning the Womack Process.  It was the first hint that the two processes were not alike.  The Helix Rebuild brought about an almost hyper-fertility, the complete opposite of the Womack Process.

Time would show the glaring differences between the two processes.  In the end, it was clear to anyone who put the effort into researching beyond the media hyperbole that the Womack Process produced immortality, but at a cost.

Meanwhile, the Womack Foundation became the first privately owned organization to earn a multi-billion dollar quarterly profit.

Angeline woke with a start.  It was pitch black in the room.  Adrenaline raced through her, banishing the last tendrils of sleep.  What had woken her?  She couldn’t remember a nightmare, though she had them often enough.

A distant door slammed, followed by the muffled clatter of running feet.  Angeline heard a creak as Adora sat up in her cot.

“Something’s happening,” Adora whispered.

Light came on in the hallway outside and shone through the crack at the bottom of the door.  Angeline wrapped her blanked around her shoulders and sat cross-legged on her cot.  She didn’t have long to wait.  After a few minutes, footsteps approached and the door opened.

Angeline squinted against the stabbing brightness and saw Anton and the jailer enter the room.  They were dragging another man between them.  His face looked battered, and he was naked except for a pair of shorts.  He was Chinese, with the height and muscle mass of a first-generation Martian or Earthborn, and his pale skin and white hair identified him as a wujin.

Anton and the jailer dragged the new arrival into one of the cages on the wall across from Angeline and dropped him unceremoniously on the ground.  Anton gave him a last kick and let the jailer lock the cage.

“Be seeing you in the morning, fuckhead.  Don’t go nowhere.”  Anton laughed and left the room.  The jailer followed, flicking the lights out and shutting the door.

Silence followed, broken by the slight liquid wheeze of the unconscious man.

“Who is he?” Adora whispered.

Angeline hugged her knees.  “I don’t know.”

It took a long time before Angeline was able to fall asleep again, and the man’s broken breathing haunted her dreams.

Angeline woke up again in the morning.  The lights were on and the man was pacing the tight confines of his cage, giving the mesh exploratory rattles every now and then.

“We tried that,” Adora called out.

Angeline sat up and rubbed sleep from her eyes.  In her dreams, she had thought herself free, running naked with the man over the surface of Mars.  It had been a dream with oddly clashing senses of giddy exhilaration and knowledge of impending doom.  Waking brought reality back, stripping away the joy but leaving her with the nagging feeling of time draining away.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Min Yang,” the man answered.  “You are Angeline.  And you are Adora.”

“What?” Angeline asked stupidly.  Her mind was still half caught up in the dream and she felt sluggish and drained.

“You’re the marshal,” Adora realized.  “You’re the one who was supposed to save us.”

Min sat down at the rear of his cage and leaned his head back, closing his eyes.  “Yes.”

Adora surged to her feet and slammed her hands against the mesh.  “Then what are you doing here!?” she screamed.  “You can’t save us trapped in a cage!”

Min winced and opened his eyes.  His irises were pink, his skin pale, his hair white.  He stared at Adora, his gaze sad and gentle.   The fury drained out of Adora and her shoulders slumped.

“Damn you,” she whispered.  “Damn you and all wujin like you.”

Angeline curled up on her cot.  She didn’t have the drive to get out of bed.  What was the point?  The only person who had been looking for her sat across the room in a cage.  She was doomed now.  She would live out her last days in this cage until she finally had her period, then that cruel male doctor would cut her open and steal her ovaries.

The marshal, for his part, lay down in his cot and seemed to go to sleep.  Angeline watched him.  She had never had the opportunity to stare at a wujin for any length of time before.  What she saw disturbed her.  Marshal Yang was a handsome man despite his albinism, his features strong and his shoulders broad.  She could see the muscles in his chest and arms, strange to her eyes.  Under the low gravity of Mars, muscle mass drained away over generations; even those who were Earth-born or recently descended tended to be skinny, as there wasn’t enough gravity to fight against to maintain their physiques.  Adora had spent long hours exercising, but her muscle mass was lean and stringy.  In comparison, Min seemed to bulge with muscles, evidence of long hours spent working out with very heavy weights.

That wasn’t what disturbed her, though.  The marshal was a wujin, an immortal that lived off the life of other humans.  He was a parasite.  He and others like him were the reason why she was trapped in this cage, slated for harvest and slaughter.  She thought she should hate him, revile him as Adora did.

But she couldn’t.  As much as she tried, all she saw was another human being.  Trapped.  Alone.  She still saw the way he had looked at Adora, the weary gaze of a man who cared, but was unable to do anything about it.  The marshal might be wujin, but he had done everything in his power to find them and rescue them.  That he had ultimately failed didn’t make him a bad man.  At least he had tried.

Footsteps outside the room brought Min swinging to his feet.  Angeline could see the strength behind his movements, the ease with which he came to his feet.  He wore only a pair of shorts, and she could see the muscles ripple in his stomach, the bulge of his thighs and the gather in his shoulders.  She stared at him, unabashed, wondering what it would feel like to run her hands over his chest.

The door swung open and Angeline tore her gaze away from the marshal.  Her stomach rumbled on cue as the jailer pushed his cart into the room.  The marshal paced inside his cage, eying the jailer.

The jailer ignored the marshal and went through the motions of swapping out the used pails for the girls before turning to leave.

“I need food,” Min said.  “Or water.  You can’t just leave me here.  I’m a marshal!”

The jailer smiled at Min, acknowledging his presence for the first time.  “I know who you are, Min Yang.  Anton’s got a surprise for you.  But orders are no food or water.”

Min nodded and went to sit back down again.

That was it?  Angeline stared at him incredulously.  He didn’t threaten the jailer, or shout, or even get angry.  He just went back to his cot meekly.  No, Angeline saw, not meekly.  She could see the tightly controlled emotion in his face before it smoothed out again.  He wasn’t meek.  He was simply conserving his strength, waiting patiently until a time came when he could take action.

Angeline ate her breakfast portion.  Adora had already finished hers and was starting up her exercises again, going through stretching before starting her workout.  Angeline watched her, debating with herself about mimicking the other girl’s actions.  She glanced over at the marshal, but he was lying down, his eyes closed.

With a sigh, Angeline got to her feet and joined Adora in stretching.  After a few motions, she felt her muscles starting to loosen up again.  She still felt sore from her first exercise session, but it wasn’t as bad as she had feared.  Adora dropped to the ground to begin her pushups and Angeline followed.  To her surprise, the pushups were easy at first.  She was already stronger than she had been the first time.  Angeline remembered the corded muscle on the marshal and wondered how much she would have to exercise in order to get like that, if it were even biologically possible.

Adora switched to crunches and Angeline followed suit, proud of herself for being able to keep up so far.  She was doing her pushups on her knees, but at least she had been able to finish the set.  Doggedly, she followed Adora through the routine.  Pushups, crunches, squats, burpees, lunges, and back to pushups again.

On the third set, Angeline noticed Min watching her and fumbled her burpee.  Her face burned with embarrassment, but she continued with the exercise, ignoring her screaming muscles.  She stuck with it through the end of the third set then collapsed on the ground, panting and dripping sweat.  Adora glanced over at her and started back at the beginning again for a fourth set, her face set in determination.

Angeline considered rolling over and starting with pushups again, but she just couldn’t do it.  She didn’t know how Adora forced herself to push on, set after set.  Her muscles were trembling, but it felt good.

“Why do you exercise?”

Angeline tilted her head back until she could make out Min, standing at the front of his cage.  The concrete floor was cold against her back, and she was suddenly aware of how her baggy shirt clung to her sweaty body.  She flushed again and forced herself up to sit on the edge of her cot.  If she leaned forward, the fall of the fabric concealed her body the most.  She thought of Jasmine, of her easy sexuality and rounded breasts.  Angeline wished again that she could have Jasmine’s body.

“I don’t know,” Angeline lied.  To be strong and fight back, she thought, but she wasn’t ready to share that with the marshal just yet.

“It’s a good idea.  If you can exercise hard enough, it might delay your period, even make you miss it completely.”

Angeline looked over at Adora, who was grinning through gritted teeth as she levered herself up at the waist again.

“I didn’t know that,” Angeline said.

“Your friend does.”

Angeline watched Adora, her stomach muscles aching in sympathy as the girl executed crunch after crunch.  Adora had the same general physique as Angeline, though epicanthic folds hinted at mixed Chinese heritage.  She was just as flat-chested as Angeline was, but she somehow managed to look mature anyway.  She was sixteen, two years older than Angeline, but she looked like a woman.

“I’m sorry about Jasmine,” Min said after a long pause.

“I’m not,” Adora gritted out between breaths.

Min raised an eyebrow at Angeline.  Angeline shook her head.  The last thing she wanted to do was tell the marshal how Jasmine had betrayed Eva and had acted so selfishly up until the end.  The truth was, Angeline admitted to herself, Jasmine didn’t deserve to be rescued.  And here the marshal was, trapped because of them.

“Your parents miss you, Angeline,” Min said.  “I promised them I’d get you back safely.”

“You’re not doing a very good job of it,” Adora said.  She had finished her set and was pacing her cage, flapping her shirt to cool herself down.

Angeline ducked her head, sudden tears burning in her eyes.  She hadn’t thought of her family in days.  Homesickness washed through her and she struggled to keep from breaking out in sobs.

Min smiled.  “I agree.  But they won’t kill me.”

“Why not?” Adora asked.

“People know where I was looking for the kidnappers.  If I disappear or show up dead, they’ll assume I was looking in the right spot.  The marshals won’t let me die without response, even if some of them are dirty.  This cluster would be swept from top to bottom and those responsible would be punished for my death.”  Min shrugged.  “The kidnappers know this.  So I am trapped, but it won’t be forever.”

“Yeah, they could just wait a month,” Adora rolled her eyes.

Min nodded.  “Only another day, actually.  My next treatment is scheduled soon.”

“But… then you’ll die!” Angeline exclaimed.

“Yes.”  Min gave her a sad smile.  “I have lived a long time.  If this is my time, so be it.”

“Just like that,” Adora scoffed.  “You’ll just give up and die?”

“Oh no,” Min smiled again, and this time it was hungry, with no humor in it.  “I won’t give up until the very end.”

Min went back to his cot and settled down on it, crossing his hands behind his head.  Angeline lay down as well.  She wanted to ask the marshal more questions, but she felt embarrassed and didn’t want to disturb him.  She closed her eyes.  With nothing to do, she let her body relax, savoring the pleasant ache of her muscles.  She thought of her family, of the happy bustle right before dinner, of her mother’s smile and the way her father hugged her.

The door to the room opened with a bang, startling Angeline out of her sleep.  Her shirt was still damp in places, so she couldn’t have slept long.  She sat up in her cot, clutching her blanket around her shoulders.

Anton entered the room with three other men that Angeline recognized from the Redstone Lounge.  Behind them came the jailer, wheeling a heavy poly crate on a cart.

“Okay, Marshal,” Anton sneered.  “Here’s the deal.  You’re going to get in that crate.  If you don’t, we’ll beat you unconscious then put you in it anyway.  Understand?”

Angeline looked wide-eyed at Min.  He was standing already, and he looked relaxed.

“Sure,” he said, a slow grin spreading over his face.  “Just open the door.”

It quickly became obvious to Angeline that Anton had a problem.  There was no way from them to get the crate into the cage without opening the door.  It was five men on one, but even all but naked, the marshal looked like a wolf among sheep.

“You heard the man,” Anton waved at the jailer.  “Open the door.”

“Are you sure?” the jailer asked doubtfully.  “This is what Esteres said to do?”

“I’m solving Esteres’ problem,” Anton said.  “The marshal is here.  We can’t kill him, we can’t let him go.  I’ve got the perfect solution.  So just open the fucking door like I said.  There’s five of us and one of him.  Where are your cajones, man?”

The jailer fumbled out his stunrod and snapped it to full length.  The tip sparked and snapped angrily at full charge.  “I’m opening the door, Marshal,” he said.  “But if you try anything funny, I’ll let you have it.”

Min spread his hands.  “You’re the boss.”

The jailer stepped forward to the electronic lock.  It was the first time Angeline had had a chance to watch him open it.  Because he was operating the keypad at arm’s length, she was able to read the combination as the jailer pushed the buttons.  795, and the fourth number was obscured by his hand.   Was it a 3?  She couldn’t tell.

The door beeped and swung open.  Anton snapped out his own stunrod.  “Come on out, Marshal.”

Min pushed the door open and the jailer flinched backward, holding his rod out.  Min feinted at him and the jailer leaped away, stumbling and rolling to the ground.  The marshal laughed and strode from the cage.  Immediately, he was surrounded by four men holding stunrods.

Angeline gulped, her fists clenched white-knuckled around a fold of her blanket.  For a long, drawn-out moment, nothing happened.  Min met the gazes of Anton and his men and held them back, daring them to come and force him into the crate.  Then one of Anton’s men lunged forward.

The marshal moved, fast as lightning but smoothly as flowing silk.  Somehow he evaded the snapping end of the stunrod and did something to the man’s arm.  The man shrieked as cartilage crunched then Min was spinning away.  Angeline gasped as the man staggered backward, his forearm swinging limply off his elbow.

The jailer found his feet, his face twisted and ugly with hate.  Min’s back was to him, and the jailer gathered himself to attack Min from behind.

“Behind you, Marshal!” Adora cried.

Min turned just in time to dance away from the tip of the stunrod.  The jailer swung once, twice, then on the third swing Min darted inside the arc of his arm.  Angeline couldn’t follow the blows as Min struck the jailer repeatedly, ending with a final kick that knocked the jailer staggering back.

Angeline jumped as the jailer crashed into her cage.  He stared at her through the mesh, his mouth working soundlessly.  There was something terribly wrong with his throat.  Angeline watched in horror as the man clung to the mesh, his eyes pleading at her.  Gradually his strength drained away and he slid to the ground, his stunrod loose in nerveless fingers.

The melee was continuing outside.  For the moment, Min was holding his own against the remaining three men.  They had stopped attacking him one at a time, and were slowly working Min back into a corner.  Nobody was paying attention to Angeline, except the jailer.

Angeline crept forward.  The jailer’s lips were turning blue, his eyes rolling madly as he struggled for breath.  She felt sick.  She wanted to scream, to cry, to cower in the far corner of her cage as far from the violence as she could.  Instead she forced herself forward until she was inches away from the jailer.  He didn’t seem to be aware of her.

With a last glance around the room to make sure nobody was looking at her, Angeline pushed her hand through the cage mesh and grabbed the handle of the stunrod.  It seemed to hum in her hand, the grip made of heavy, plasticized metal.  She pulled at it and the jailer’s hand moved toward her.  She almost cried out before realizing the stunrod had a strap that was around the jailer’s wrist.  Working feverishly, she got the strap off the man’s wrist and pulled the stunrod through the mesh into the cage with her.

The tip of the stunrod brushed the cage, sparking when it came in contact with the mesh.  The current ran through the jailer, making his muscles jerk wildly for a moment.  With fumbling fingers, Angeline found the switch and killed the juice.  She moved to her cot and hid the rod beneath her blanket.

Her pulse was pounding and sweat beaded her forehead.  She felt like stealing the stunrod had taken long minutes, but Min was still fighting.  Anton and his two remaining men had backed Min all the way into a corner.  One of the marshal’s arms was hanging limp and blood ran down his face from a split eyebrow, but he wasn’t giving up.

Angeline found herself at the front of her cage, her hands painfully tight about the mesh.  Her heart was in her throat as she watched the marshal fight.  Every fiber of her pleaded for the marshal to win.

One of Anton’s men broke formation and darted in.  Min snapped out a punch into the side of his head that dropped him senseless, but not before the stunrod connected with Min’s knee.  Angeline saw the muscle spasm shoot up and down Min’s side.  It only lasted for a moment, but it was all Anton needed.

Anton brought his stunrod down onto Min’s shoulder, smashing him to his knees.  The marshal jerked wildly as Anton and his last remaining man rained down blows upon him.

“Stop!” Angeline cried.  Tears were running down her face.  “Please stop, you’ll kill him!”

Anton stepped back and caught the shoulder of the other man with his free hand.  “Ease up, Mateo.  We can’t kill him here.”

Mateo kicked Min one last time then let himself be pulled back.  “What a fucking mess,” he said surveying the room.

“Whatever.  The marshal’s down.  Help me get him into the crate.”

Together they wrestled Min into the crate, kicking his limbs into place and latching the top down.  “There, that wasn’t so bad.  Check on the others, make sure they’re alright.”

“Pretty sure Vito’s not alright.”

“He’s just got a broken arm.  He’ll be fine.”  Anton knelt down over the man Min had knocked out and slapped his face a few times.   “Vasco!  Hey, snap out of it.  He didn’t hit you that hard.”

Vasco groaned and pushed Anton’s arm away.  “Fuck my head hurts.  Stop hitting me, asshole.”

Anton laughed and stood up.  “Mateo, check on Miguel.”

Angeline backed away as Mateo approached her cage and rolled the jailer over onto his back.

“Holy shit, Anton.  Miguel is dead.”

The men gathered around the jailer’s body, staring down at it.  Angeline backed slowly away to the far wall.  Any moment she expected someone to notice the missing stunrod.  They would search her cage and find it, and they would beat her.  She was terrified.  Half of her wanted to run to her cot and get the stunrod out.  She could fire it up before they opened the door.

But then what?  She couldn’t fight three men at once.  Min had been infinitely better at fighting than she was, but he had not succeeded.  What chance did she have?  Still, she’d rather go down fighting than meekly accepting her fate.

She was poised to jump to her cot and grab the rod when Anton spoke, startling her.  “Get him out of here.”

“What about Esteres–”

“I said, get him out of here!  I’ll deal with Esteres.”  Anton watched as the other two dragged the jailer out of the room.  He paced the around the room, then kicked the crate that held Min.  “Fuck!” he yelled.

Angeline flinched.  Then Anton strode from the room and she sat on the floor in sudden relief.  They hadn’t realized the stunrod was missing.  For the first time since she’d woken up in the crate, she felt a thin thread of hope.

She would have to time things just right, and she would have one chance at it.  She could stun whoever came to get them for their next trip to see Dr. Lenbroke, free Adora, and together they could make a break for the cluster.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but at least it was a start.

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

News Article from the New York Times, 23 December 2154

Freedom!

The long years of horror are finally at an end.  The last of the immortals are gone from Earth.  Our daughters, wives, sisters and mothers are finally free of Womack’s curse.  It has been twenty-four years since the December Protocol.  On this day, the twenty-fourth anniversary of that historic document, we, the people of Earth, celebrate our freedom.

Never again shall an immortal set foot on the surface of Earth.  We shall stay forever alert.  For only through constant vigilance and unremitting determination will our planet remain free of the scourge.  Let Mars and Venus suffer their immortals to live.  While humanity lives on Earth, we shall remain free and pure, uncorrupted by the twisting science of Everard and Womack.

Marcus Truman checked his tablet one last time to verify the address.  This was the place.  He put the tablet away and knocked on the door.  He was, he thought, justifiably proud of himself.  There had been no delays between picking up the “package”, a large crate, four feet long by three feet wide and two feet tall.  Fore-warned about the size of the crate, he had brought an autodolly with him to the meeting place.

Nobody had batted an eye when he showed up at the tram station and bought a freight ticket to Acheron Cluster.  There were no seats and no passengers allowed in the freight segments, so he had bought a ticket in an adjacent segment where he could keep an eye on the crate.  Finicky shippers must be common on Mars, because nobody had given him a hard time about it; in fact, they had been very accommodating to his demands.

The trip to Acheron had gone without incident.  He’d spent a total of six hours on the tram, with stops in two stations.  At each station, he’d gotten up to stretch his legs and had hung out near the door where he could keep an eye on the crate.  Upon arrival in Acheron, he’d rented another dolly and loaded the crate onto it himself.

Something had seemed to shift inside the crate while he was loading it, but nothing had rattled or sounded broken, so he’d passed it off as a shoddy packing job.  He was responsible for delivery, not the way the crate was packed.  So long as he maintained a reasonable degree of care in the transporting, there was no fault of his.

Nobody was answering the door, so Marcus knocked again, then noticed the buzzer next to the door and gave that a press for good measure.  After another minute, a slot opened up in the door and Marcus could see a man looking out at him.

“What do you want?”

“I have a package delivery for Anton,” Marcus said.

“What was the origin of the package?”

“Vastitas Cluster.”

The man grunted and slid the slot closed.  After a moment the door swung open.  The man was about a foot taller than he was, and dressed in clothes that were expensive but poorly maintained.  He also had a deep bruise developing high on one temple, with his eye swollen half-shut.

“Are you Anton?” Marcus asked.

“No.  My name is Vasco.  Vasco Ajuilio.”

“Well, Mr. Ajuilio, I have specific instructions to deliver this package to Anton Engel.”

“Well, Anton’s my boss.  Is that good enough for you?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Alright.  Anton’s busy, but I can show you where he’ll want the carrier.  If you want to bring it and wait for him there, I’ll show you the way.”

“That works for me.”  Marcus got his tablet out to guide the dolly.  He maneuvered it carefully through the door and set out on Vasco’s heels.  Remembering Dr. Bannister’s cautions about sensitive client information, he refrained from asking the dozens of questions that popped into his head.  What kind of operations was this group running in the bottom layer of Acheron Cluster?  And what was in the package that was so valuable it required someone to personally escort it to its destination?

“Right this way, Mr…?”

“Truman.  Sorry.  My name is Marcus Truman.”

Whatever they were doing here, it occupied a full suite of rooms.  Marcus passed a coldroom, the heavy, insulated door emanating waves of cold, then a chemical laboratory.  He didn’t recognize any equipment in it, but had watched enough television on Earth to know a lab when he saw one.

“This is the place,” Vasco announced, stopping by a nondescript door.

“Thank you.”  Marcus got the dolly lined up and through the door, then stopped in sudden shock.  The room had rows of cages stretching down the two long walls.  There were blood stains on the floor and the stench of feces in the air.

But what really made him freeze in disbelief were the two girls locked into cages on one side.

“What the fuck?” he gaped.

Vasco looked at him, perplexed then registered Marcus’ surprise and horror.  He drew the stunrod at his waist and snapped it to full length.  The end fizzed and spat, blue lines of electric discharge popping from the terminals.

“Is there a problem, Marcus?” Vasco asked, suddenly suspicious.

Marcus turned to look at the man, his eyes wide and his heart hammering in his chest.  He had to get out of here!  He had to warn the authorities, cry for help, something!  Then he remembered he was here to prove himself.  His future depended on the success of this delivery.

“Hey mister!” one of the girls cried out.  “Get us out of here!”  She rattled the mesh of her cage, her eyes pleading.

He saw the marks of deprivation on her, the sunken eyes, filthy skin, and ratty hair.  She had been here for days already.  Perhaps even weeks.  Still, Marcus didn’t move.  He met the girl’s eyes and saw the desperation in them.  She knew she was doomed.  He dropped his eyes first, unable to look at her.

Marcus knew he could probably bluff his way out of the situation.  He could reassure Vasco, get Anton’s signature, and go back to Vastitas.  It would be a simple matter to blow the whistle once he was at a safe distance.  The police would come down on the operation with the weight of furious justice.  It was a certainty.

But then what?  Grendal Crade would know it had been him.  Dr. Bannister would find out.  His future on Mars would suddenly be in tatters.  There would be no trade, no source of income.  He would burn through the credits his remaining water could bring, and then he would die.

He hadn’t crossed interplanetary distances and beaten terminal cancer to fail now.  When he had made his decision to leave Earth and receive the Womack Process, he had made his peace with the likelihood that his treatment serums would be derived from murdered girls.  In the end, what was the difference between getting the treatments and turning a blind eye to the murder?

Marcus cleared his throat and nodded at Vasco.  “No problem, Mr. Ajuilio.  Just surprised is all.  Where do you want the crate?”

Vasco eyed him for a moment before putting the stunrod away.  “In the first cage on the left.  Let me open it for you.”

Marcus guided the dolly into the cage and unloaded the crate.  Now that he knew it contained another girl, the way the contents shifted no longer surprised him.

“Maybe you should stay here until Anton comes back,” Vasco said.

Marcus could see the unease in the man’s face.  “Not a problem.”  He went and sat on the crate in the middle of the room with his back to the other girls.  He might have convinced himself that he could act as a courier for these people, but he didn’t think he could see the victims waiting for their death.  “I need Anton’s signature for the delivery anyway.”

The mesh rattled behind him.  “You’re just like the rest of them, aren’t you?  Another sellout piece of shit angling for a payday that you didn’t earn.  Well, fuck you!”

Marcus looked at Vasco.  “They ever shut up?”

Vasco chuckled nastily.  “After a beating or two they learn their manners.  Hey, chica, you want another beating?  I’d be more than happy to oblige.”

The girl cursed, but it was muffled, and the banging stopped.  “Thanks.  Hey, when’s Anton coming?”

Vasco shrugged.  “He’s having a meeting with Esteres.  Probably come back when he’s done.”

Marcus nodded.  He could wait.  Vasco looked nervous, and Marcus didn’t feel like trying to make small talk in front of the girls.  He tried to get an idea of the number of girls that must be killed in a year.  There were two here now, and he had just brought a third.  There were eight cages available in this room.  If there were four or five girls captured every month, that meant there were between fifty and sixty girls captured every year.

Even considering the profit loss from illegal trade, that added up to an incredible amount of credits.  This operation probably made a profit of tens of millions of credits a year.  It made his alcohol business look like amateur, bush-league tinkering.

Before he could follow that train of thought any further, the door banged open and another man strode into the room.

“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.

Marcus stood up and extended his hand.  “Marcus Truman.  I came with a delivery.”  He nodded toward the crate in the cage.

“I see.  I’m Anton.” He shook Marcus’ hand.  A sudden gleam came to his eye and he glanced at the crate Marcus had been sitting on.  “You come from Vastitas?”

Marcus nodded.

“How’s that old witch Crade?”

“I imagine she’s doing just fine,” Marcus said with a thin smile.

“Listen, I might have a job for you.  It’ll pay very well.”

“I’m listening.”

“Grendal thinks highly of you, or you wouldn’t be here.  So I want to extend our relationship.  You deliver that crate over there to an address in Olympus Cluster and you’ll make yourself a cool ten thousand credits.”

“Just like that?” Marcus glanced at the crate.  “It must contain something very interesting.”

“And dangerous,” Anton nodded.  “But perfectly safe so long as the crate stays fucking shut.  Understand?”

Marcus hesitated.  It was one thing to prove himself to Crade and Dr. Bannister.  They had connections that could make or break his life on Mars.  But Anton struck him as little more than a thug.  A wealthy thug, if he was throwing around ten thousand credits on a whim, but still a thug.  He reminded Marcus of the dealers he had met in clubs; men who preyed on the rich and stupid, selling designer drugs too new to be classified as illegal.  They seemed glamorous and enviable under the dim lights of the club, but were rundown and unhealthy when seen in the bright light of day.

“I don’t know, Anton.  My business was with Ms. Crade.”

Anton snapped his fingers.  “Not a problem.  I’ll give her a call, clear it through her.”

Before Marcus could protest further, Anton had pulled out his tablet and made a connection.  “Hey, Charles.  What’s up, my man.  Put me through to Grendal.  Of course.  No, tomorrow.  Yes, I’ll fucking hold.”  He put his finger over the mic and rolled his eyes.  “Idiot.”

Anton winked at Marcus and his tone became unctuous.  “Hello, Ms. Crade.  Good afternoon.  I have Marcus here… yes, he delivered the crate perfectly.  No, there’s nothing wrong.  Everything is peachy.  I was just wondering if my new friend Marcus here could run another delivery.  No, no, nothing like that.  Low-risk.  Uh huh.  Yeah.  Okay, I’ll tell him.”

Marcus sighed.

“Hey, Marcus,” Anton ended the connection.  “Grendal says you’re clear to go.  Good to get off the apron strings, eh?”

“I want half up front,” Marcus said firmly.  “And no more sudden jobs.  I don’t like having my arm twisted, even if it’s with a smile and a pile of credits.”

“Sure.  Relax, man.  Easiest credits you’ve ever made.  Vasco!  Help Marcus load this crate onto his dolly.”

Marcus and Vasco wrestled the crate onto the dolly.  It was considerably heavier than the girl he had shipped in.  Marcus wondered what was inside.  The chopped up remains of the previous girls?  He decided he didn’t care.  He was a delivery man only.  He picked up a package from one address and moved it to another.  Simple.  There was no risk of getting in trouble for what was inside the crate.

Anton gave him the address and wired the five thousand credits to Marcus’ account.  It was a little surreal, how fast and easily the credits had stacked up.  In an afternoon, he had already made more credits than his wildest predictions for his alcohol business.  It would have taken him months, perhaps even years before he started turning a profit on the vodka.  And yet, here he was, already treated with the Womack Process and the next five months of treatments guaranteed.  By the end of the day, he’d have twice the credits.

As Marcus made his way up the escalators toward the tram terminal, he revised his opinion of those drug dealers on Earth.  There was something to be said for large amounts of credits being earned for little to no effort.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

The core of the Matriarch Manifesto was based on the length of time that a Helix Rebuild treatment lasted before the serum had to be re-applied.  In all cases, the duration seemed consistent to roughly 400 days, with individual withdrawal symptoms starting within twenty days, plus or minus.  This meant that the matriarch need only use one egg per year to maintain her Rebuild safely.

The remaining eleven eggs were available for use upon her male children.  Upon passing the tests, qualifying for the treatment and receiving the Rebuild, a new matriarch began incubating her eggs in vitro to bring life to eleven sons.  When they came of age, they too received the Rebuild.  These first eleven sons, or the ainlif, as they came to be called, were bound inexorably to their matriarch: if ever she were to die, the ainlif would soon follow, dying one at a time as withdrawal destroyed their bodies.

When the matriarch produced two eggs in a month, the extra egg would be incubated in vitro, with the gender decided by the needs of the people.  If a son, he would join the endlaf, the remnants, and would serve the people.  If a daughter, she would have a chance to prove herself and become a matriarch herself, or fail and be sterilized.  There was no room for uncontrolled breeding.  On the Venusian floating cities, space was at a premium, and population was strictly controlled.  If something were to happen to one of the ainlif, the eldest male endlaf would receive the Rebuild and join the ranks of the ainlif, elevated into immortality.

And so the society designed by Dr. Everard would have fanatical loyalty to the matriarchs, with closely knit family ties forming a web of reliance and mutual support that far exceeded any societal dynamic in human history.

The Manifesto received its share of criticism, but none who lived by its tenants ever questioned it.

Min’s first awareness was a searing pain that stabbed through his body.  It jolted him awake and he broke out into a cold sweat.  Every wujin knew the feeling and dreaded its return.  It was the first herald of his death.  The first onset of the withdrawal that would ultimately destroy him.

He tried to move and found that while he wasn’t bound, the dark, cramped space had little room for him to adjust his position.  Memory returned, then: speaking with Dr. Lenbroke, the fight in the cage room, the despair on the faces of the girls as he had been overwhelmed at last.

Gloom crept through Min.  This is how he would die.  Locked in a box until the process that had kept him alive for over two hundred years tore his organs apart.  He wasn’t afraid of death.  He had lived a good life, for the most part.  All of his family was already long dead and there was little to live for beyond his duty in the marshal service.

He just didn’t want to die like this.

Of all the ways he had envisioned dying, helplessly locked up in a pitch black box while time dwindled away hadn’t been high on his list.  Death by gunshot wounds, suit failure, starvation, being unable to buy the next treatment either due to lack of funds or availability, freezing, carbon dioxide poisoning, and a hundred other ways to die had all been possible, and at times, even likely.  Mars was a cruel planet to live on, and life held on by a thread.

Still, somehow, he had managed to survive this long.  He had survived the early starvation riots, the oxygen purges, the settlement years when the Womack serum couldn’t be had for any sum of credits.  He had survived countless fights, with guns, knives and fists.  He had survived decades of poorly manufactured space suits, unreliable city domes, collapsing tunnels and temperatures so far below freezing that most Earth thermometers didn’t even go that low.

By all rights, he should have been dead a dozen times over.  More than that.  And yet, somehow, he was still alive.

He’d be damned if he died now.

With an effort, he calmed the panic in his thoughts, concentrating on taking slow, deep breaths.  His heart rate dropped, the pounding frenzy in his temples eased away.  There was no light within the crate, even around the cracks, so he shut his eyes and extended his other senses.  He felt a faint vibration.  He was on a tram, or some other form of suspended transport.

Okay, that was a start.  He was traveling somewhere.  From Acheron Cluster, the longest trip by tram was no more than twelve hours.  How long did he have left?  The stabbing pain had been enough to wake him, but it wasn’t really that bad yet.  It would keep getting worse until he finally died, but that was many hours away.  He estimated he had maybe eight hours of functionality left before the pain grew so bad he’d be reduced to curling in a ball and waiting for death.

When he had found Dr. Lenbroke, he’d still had had two days left before his scheduled treatment.  No, that wasn’t right.  It had been in the evening of the second-to-last day.  Then he had spent the night in the cage with the girls, and fought Anton and his men in the morning of his last day.  Given the strength of the pain, it was in the evening of his scheduled treatment day.

The methodical thought process eased him.  He had already been traveling for several hours, then.  He would reach his destination, wherever that was, before his eight hours were up.  Systematically, he began flexing his muscles, trying to get circulation moving in them again.  Compared to the pain in his vitals, the ache of cramped muscles was barely worth noticing.  But if he was going to come out of the crate in any sort of fighting form, he couldn’t do it with numb limbs.

For a while, the pricking of returning blood to his extremities distracted him from his chest pain, then the numbness faded and he was left with the twisting knife in his chest.  It felt like heartburn and appendicitis, mixed with the sickening agony of a blow to the groin and the stabbing throb of a kidney punch, all at once.

Pain is a difficult thing to quantify in the moment.  After a certain threshold, inane attempts at numbering the levels became pointless.  On a scale of one to ten, Min would have said with confidence that he was at a solid nine.  But then some new pain would stab through him.  Would that be enough to raise the bar to ten?

What about when that new pain blended in with the general agony and a fresh lance raged through his body?  What could he call that?  Eleven?  And what if he grew accustomed to the persistent torment?  Did that somehow lower the level of pain he was in to an eight, or maybe even a seven?

Pain is subjective.  A degree that might be considered intolerable could become unremarkable, given the proper mindset and circumstances.  A man with a broken leg can run for miles if he is being chased by wolves, when he might otherwise be in too much pain to even stand.

The body has mechanisms for managing pain, such as endorphins and adrenaline.  Similarly, the mind has methods of embracing pain: necessity level, anger, distraction, pure cussedness and willpower, to name a few.

Min had ample opportunity to experience all of these.  The crate he was in offered little in the way of sensory stimuli, so he had nothing to do but wallow in the agony.  There were times when he was sure he was about to die, that all his calculations were off and he was minutes away from complete organ shutdown.  Other times, sometimes only minutes separate, he found the pain to be unremarkable, certainly no worse than he had suffered innumerable other times.  He blocked the pain with meditation, and when that failed, his body flooded his system with endorphins.  And when those glands ran dry, he screamed his agony into the uncaring darkness.

If he could just do something, even for a moment, if he could see something, hear something, smell something other than his own drenched animal pain, it would give him something to focus on.

Time passed.  Slowly or quickly, it was impossible for Min to tell.  He could have been in the crate for ten minutes or five hours.  After the endless period of stillness, Min felt a jolt in his crate as it struck something.  New pain surged as muscles tensed, but it was welcome.  Change, even if it brought more pain, meant things were coming to an end.  Maybe not now, maybe in ten minutes, or an hour, but soon things would end one way or another.

Further jolts and a sudden thud as the crate left the suspension system flooded Min’s body with adrenaline.  The pain was ever-present, how could it not be, but it was secondary to the coiling readiness of his body.  When the lid opened, he would do harm.

A minute passed.  The peak of endocrine response faded and Min’s focus slipped.  Gradually the pain returned, leeching the strength from his muscles and corroding his willpower.  When the lid finally opened, it was all he could do to lift his head and squint into the blinding light.

“Holy shit.  It’s Min Yang.”

Min’s eyes adjusted slowly.  Hands helped him stand from the crate and guided him to a soft cushion.  When he could open his eyes for more than a second without the light burning them, he gradually made out a familiar face.

“Captain Jiahao?” Min said.  He swallowed, his teeth locked against a moan of pain.  For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why the Captain of Cluster Affairs had helped him out of the crate.  He had been shipped to the captain?

“You look like shit, Min,” another voice said.

Min turned his head, squinting against the light and made out his lieutenant, the woman directly senior to him and the one who had assigned him the Chow case in the first place.  “Lieutenant Ruu?”

“Well, at least his eyesight works,” Shun Ruu said wryly.  “With investigative skills like that, it’s no wonder you blew the case.”

Sudden cramps doubled him over and he clutched his stomach, unable to stop the keening that escaped his lips.

Lieutenant Ruu’s face tightened with concern and realization washed over her.  “He’s going into withdrawal.  Min!  Look at me.”

Min tried to focus on her face.  Her grip on his jaw supported his head and forced him to turn and face the light directly.  He couldn’t concentrate on anything but the washes of pain.

“His pupils aren’t constricting.”  Ruu’s voice came from far away.  “He’s running out of time.  A few hours, tops.”

“Isn’t that in a manual somewhere?” Captain Jiahao mocked.  “Don’t engage the suspect when you’re due for a Womack treatment?”

“You have a stash, right?  Hurry up and give him a serum shot.  I’ll make sure he reimburses you.”

“Or maybe we wait.”

“What?  You can’t be serious.  Look at him!”

“Think for a second, Lieutenant.  This might just solve all our problems.”

Min lost track of the conversation.  Desperately, he latched onto the shred of meaning he had gleaned.  There was Womack serum nearby.  It was close, and Ruu would give it to him.  With an effort of will he forced his body to relax despite the waves of agony sweeping him.

He opened his eyes and found the captain leaned over him.  The man’s eyes were cold.  “Are you listening, Min?”

Min nodded fractionally.  “Please,” he croaked, his throat sore from his earlier bouts of screaming.

“Here’s the deal, Min.  We’re in a bit of a pickle.  You know too much.  Lieutenant Ruu believes if you gave your word, you’d drop the case and forget what you know.  I think she’s wrong, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.”

Min closed his eyes for a moment.  The effort of following the meaning in the captain’s words was draining.  What did the captain mean?  His thoughts moved sluggishly, and the underlying meaning to the captain’s words finally sunk home.  Captain Jiahao was the corrupt marshal?  And Lieutenant Ruu was also complicit.  That might explain why Ruu had received the transfer.  Jiahao was securing his chain of command with corrupted officials.

Jiahao seemed to be waiting for something, and Min concentrated.  The captain had asked him a question.

Ruu was partially right.  If he gave his word, he would follow it to the best of his ability.  It’s just that he would rather die than promise to let these child-killers get away with their crimes.

He spat, but didn’t have the lung power to drive his spittle to the captain’s face.  It rolled out of his mouth and slid down his chin.  Rage poured over Jiahao’s face.  Abruptly a heavy pistol was inches from Min’s face with the captain’s finger tight on the trigger.  Min leaned forward and pressed his forehead into the barrel.

“Fucking do it,” he rasped.

“Captain!” Ruu snapped.  “Not here.”

“You know what, Yang?  I’ve changed my mind.”  The captain put up the pistol, breathing heavily.  “I want to watch you scream as your organs tear themselves apart.  You’ll beg me for the treatment before the end, and I will make you promise.  You’ll eat your God damned righteousness before I let you die.”

Jiahao grabbed Min by the front of the shirt and hauled him to his feet by brute strength.  Min dangled in his grasp and struggled to get his feet under him.  Pain exploded in Min’s chest at the sudden movement and his vision pulsed as he teetered on the edge of consciousness.

The captain waved a syringe in front of Min’s face with his free hand.  “Your treatment, Min.  It can end, right here, right now.  All you have to do is promise me.”

Min got his feet under him and with great difficult managed to take his weight.  His knees threatened to buckle and he swayed, but he looked Jiahao in the eyes.  “Never.”

The captain’s face twisted.  “We’ll see.  Ruu, get him into a suit.  We’re going for a drive.”

Giving the order was easier than following it.  Ruu left the room and came back a minute later with a general issue marshal space suit.  It took her several minutes more to wrestle Min into the suit and Min didn’t fight it.  He didn’t have the energy, and the thread of sympathy he saw on his lieutenant’s face gave him a slim fragment of hope.  Ruu didn’t like what was happening to him any more than he did.

It wasn’t surprising.  Ruu was a wujin, Jiahao was not.  All wujin knew the pain that withdrawal brought and you had to be a really sick bastard to wish that on someone else.  Jiahao didn’t know.  Couldn’t know.  And while Ruu might be going along with it for now, she couldn’t condone it forever.

“Thanks,” he said quietly as Ruu fit the helmet onto his head.

“I’m not helping you, you stubborn bastard.  I’m just making sure there’s no blood in my office.”

“Still.”  Min held Ruu’s eyes until she averted her gaze.

The initial movement to get into the suit had spiked Min’s pain, but as he went through the familiar motions, he either grew accustomed to the pain or it had faded somewhat.  It wasn’t alleviated by any means, but he found that he could stand without assistance and even walk after a fashion.

Min felt something dig into his back through the suit fabric.

“This is loaded with slug rounds.  They’ll punch straight through you.  Just follow the good lieutenant and no funny business.  There’s no need to look around, I’ll be right behind you.  Lieutenant, lead the way to the garage.”

They made an odd trio, Min thought.  He was barely mobile, swaying and staggering.  Ruu led the way, tall and slender, her vaguely aristocratic face set and grim.  The captain followed last of all.  Min presumed he had put away the pistol while they walked.  Even the captain would be questioned about why he was leading a prisoner in a space suit around at gunpoint.

Min didn’t see anyone else on the short trip down to the garage.  It must be late at night, he reasoned.  If it were during the day, there would be dozens of people about.  The marshal garage had several dozen vehicles parked in it, ranging from small two-man runabouts to massive sixteen-wheeled armored personnel carriers designed to rapidly move a dozen men in full battle gear between clusters on the surface.

The captain led them to a search and rescue rover with a passenger cabin separate from the driver’s bay.  An airlock in the rear allowed entry into the pressurized cabin, and a large, multi-dimensional scanner array loomed on the roof, giving it the appearance of being top-heavy.  Such vehicles were necessary to perform field repairs on a damaged suit, and the scanner could pick up electronic traces for miles.

Ruu and Jiahao took turns getting into their own suits, while the other held a gun on Min.  It was grimly amusing to Min.  He didn’t have the strength to run or fight them for the gun.  Still, they weren’t giving him even the slightest hint of an opening.

Once suited, Ruu directed Min into the cabin with a pistol of her own.  Min climbed stiffly into the cabin and collapsed into one of the seats, too drained to sit up straight.  Ruu climbed in after him and settled onto a bench on the far side of the cabin.  She kept the pistol trained on Min unerringly.

Min hinged up the face mask on his helmet.  He felt claustrophobic and the open air of the cabin felt good on his sweaty face.

“You should have your helmet sealed during airlock cycles,” Ruu said, her voice coming from the speaker at her belt.

“Yeah.”  Min leaned back, staring at the ceiling.  “I’ll take my chances.”

The rover hummed as Jiahao powered it up.  From inside the cabin, Min couldn’t see outside, but he could guess what was happening easily enough.  A few starts and stops as they passed through the airlock to the slopes of Olympus Mons, then a bumpy ride that told Min that Jiahao wasn’t using the autonav system.

“He’s going to kill you, you know.”

Min lifted his head and found that Ruu had hinged up her own faceplate.  Her eyes were sunken, the dark circles standing out against her white skin.

“Yeah.  He murders children for a living, I hardly think he’ll suffer moral qualms about killing me.”

“God damn it, Min.  Don’t do this to yourself!  All you have to do is give your word.  You’ll get your treatment.  It’ll be distasteful for a while, but you’ll get used to it.  It’s better than dying.”

“Is that the line he fed you?”  Min turned his head, unable to keep looking at Ruu.

“You think I like the position I’m in?  I wasn’t too different from you, you know.”

“Except you took the deal.  What happened to justice?”  Min felt anger rising in him, hot and raw.  The pain was forgotten as he glared at Ruu.  Only the gun leveled at his gut kept him from lunging across the cabin and sinking his fingers into her eyes.  If he weren’t already on the brink of death, he might have risked it anyway.  A flesh wound would be worth taking Ruu down.

“You can’t help anyone from the grave, Min.”

“I’ve lived for over two hundred years.  The thought of dying doesn’t bother me that much anymore.”

“So that’s it, then?  The Min I heard about wouldn’t give up on life.  He’d fight.”

The rover bumped to a halt.  Ruu’s radio crackled to life and Jiahao’s voice came out, muffled by distance.

Ruu slid her helmet shut and gestured for Min to stand.  “End of the line,” she said.  “Last chance.”

Min flipped her the bird then closed his faceplate and stood.  He staggered over to the airlock and fit himself inside it.  His anger at Ruu was starting to fade and the pain was coming back even stronger than before.  It was all he could do to breathe and remain upright.

The airlock cycled and he stumbled out.  He reached for a handhold, missed, and tumbled out of the airlock to the ground.  For a dozen feet he slid down the slope, before coming to a halt against a rock.  It was night time and the stars overhead were crisp and bright.  It never ceased to amaze him how bright the stars were on Mars.  There was no light pollution to dim them, no atmosphere to blur them.

Below him, the slope of Olympus Mons dropped away an impossible distance, with the plains of Gordii Fossae stretched away endlessly.  Barely visible on the horizon, the craters of Gigas Fossae were smudged with the thin film of atmospheric dust.  It was a hauntingly beautiful view.  There were few times when the atmosphere was as clear as it was right then.

Footsteps crunched in the powdered dust and Jiahao loomed over him.  “You’re pathetic,” his voice sneered over the intercom.  “Pathetic in life, pathetic in death.”

“Yeah well.”  Min struggled to raise himself to a sitting position and managed it, eventually, with the help of the rock.  “You try missing a Womack treatment, see how well you do.”

“Do I look like a fucking idiot?”  Jiahao waved his gun, gesturing for Min to stand.  “There’s a reason I haven’t made the jump just yet.”

“Probably couldn’t find a fragrant enough asshole to bury your nose in.  No wujin I know would sponsor a piece of shit like you.”

“You think you’re funny?  We’ll see how much you’re laughing when you’re dying out here, all alone.”

Min got his feet under him and struggled upright.  He stood, swaying and panting.  “I touch a nerve, Jiahao?”

“You don’t know anything.”

Up the hill, the airlock finished cycling again and Ruu climbed out, with considerably more grace than Min had managed.

Min nodded up toward Ruu.  “Is this how you trapped her?  Blackmail her into joining your little gang?”

“Leave me out of this, Min,” Ruu said.

“Or what, you’ll shoot me?  Somehow I don’t see the lieutenant cozying up to a career dickhead like yourself.”

“You idiot,” Jiahao said, his grin audible over the intercom, “It was money that made Ruu give up her vaunted integrity.”

“What, she was falling behind on her Womack payments?”

“Her girlfriend, actually.  Forever in love, or some shit like that.  Until her crappy art stopped selling and our little Ruu’s paycheck couldn’t cover both of them.”

“So you keep her girlfriend alive?  That’s got to be expensive.”

“Not really,” Jiahao laughed.

“Ping died,” Ruu said shortly.  “An accident with a loading dolly.”

Min coughed out an incredulous laugh.  “You really believe that?  Ruu, this piece of shit had your girlfriend killed so he wouldn’t have to keep up on the payments.  Isn’t that right, Jiahao?”

“No,” Ruu gritted out.  “I saw the scene myself.” Her stance was locked up, her hands clenched into fists.  “The dolly’s sensors had been obscured by paint.  The same paint she was using the day… fuck does it matter to you, Min?  She’s dead!”

“And how long did it take Jiahao to have her killed?  Once he had incontrovertible proof of your corruption, how many days did it take for her to die?”

“I think that’s enough talking, Min,” Jiahao said coldly.

“Yeah, or you’ll kill me.”  Min started walking up the slope carefully.  He’d heard the pain in Ruu’s voice and felt stirrings of sympathy for his lieutenant.  Could he blame her for the decisions she had made?  It had been more than a century since he had let himself have any real feelings for someone else, but he could only imagine the desperation Ruu had been in to find a solution to her lover’s financial problems.

Jiahao drew his gun and leveled it at Min.  “Damn right I will.”

Min ignored him.  “Ruu, Lieutenant, I understand.  I really do.  But there’s a chance now, an opportunity to make this right.”

“Jiahao,” Ruu cried, “the plan wasn’t to shoot him.  It will make people ask questions.”

“Fuck the questions,” Jiahao snarled.

Min had been making his way up the slope slowly, cutting a zig-zag switchback through the powder.  The slope was almost forty-five degrees, very difficult to climb up in a straight line.  He was nearly halfway between Ruu and Jiahao now, and directly up slope from the marshal captain.  He looked up at Ruu and was close enough to see the anguish on her face, and the indecision.

A sudden flare of pain made Min cramp up and he doubled over.  He saw Ruu start to raise a hand toward him.  He wished he had had more time.  A few more minutes with Ruu and he was sure he could turn her, get her to help him escape.  But Jiahao wasn’t going to give him the opportunity.  Plan or not, Min knew the other man was about to shoot him, if only to keep Min from ruining the pawn Jiahao had in Ruu.

Min lifted his head and winked at Ruu.  He saw her expression freeze in surprise, then he let the pain wash over him and he fell.  It didn’t take much for Min to get himself rolling.  He flung out one arm to give himself some initial impetus then crossed both arms over his faceplate to protect it from any protruding rocks.

It was nearly fifteen feet down the slope toward Jiahao, barely enough distance to work up an appreciable speed.  If he hadn’t actively been trying to fall faster, he probably would have skidded to a halt before covering the distance.  As it was, though, Min built up a great sliding mass of dust and gravel that tumbled down the slope with him.

Over the static rush of small rocks against his helmet, Min heard Jiahao cry out a moment before he felt his legs impact with the other man, and then Jiahao was tumbling with him down the slope.  Min stretched one arm out and grasped some part of Jiahao’s suit.

Pain fogged Min’s mind and his vision pulsed.  Darkness threatened to crash over him.  Min knew that if he let himself fall unconscious now, he would never wake up again.  Drained adrenal glands gave their last assistance and Min held his eyes open through sheer ornery determination.  His grip on Jiahao’s suit held and he reached out with his other hand to find something else to grab onto.

A rock spalled off Min’s faceplate but the glass held.  Min fought the urge to cover his faceplate with his arm.  It was a toss of the dice, whether he would land on a rock at just the wrong angle and shatter the glass, but he didn’t have much choice.  He had to use the momentary confusion to overwhelm Jiahao somehow.  Distantly, Min was aware of the other man shouting at him, the words muffled and seemingly far away.

Min’s hand closed on something hard and his fingers recognized it as the chestpiece of Jiahao’s suit.  Their wild tumble down the slope slowed and skidded to a halt.  Somehow, Min had come out on top.  It would be so easy to grab a rock and bring it smashing down on Jiahao’s faceplate.  It would be so easy, if he could just focus long enough.

Pain wracked Min.  He screamed.  Something felt torn within him.  Jiahao shoved at him and he rolled off in a puff of powdered dust.  Min’s limbs felt enervated; all he could think of was the tearing agony in his chest and abdomen.  He wanted to curl up, cradle the damage, protect his organs any way he could, but he didn’t have the strength to do it.

His scream ran out and he couldn’t catch his breath.  He tasted blood and knew that his lung had torn during the fall.  He was choking, but the panic was distant, drowned out by the overwhelming agony.

He was going to die.

Distantly, Min felt a thump in his ribs as Jiahao kicked him.  The pain didn’t even register, but new grating sensations told Min ribs had been broken by the kick.  It was hard to care.

Jiahao loomed over him, blobs of shadow and light.  Min couldn’t focus on him.  He lacked the energy, or his eyes had started to degrade too.  It didn’t matter either way.  Words were coming through the intercom, but they were just noise without meaning.

The blob that was Jiahao shifted, and Min knew, somehow, that the captain was pointing his gun at him.  The end was coming.  Finally, an end.

Min had a fleeting thought of the girls locked in their cages.  There would be no rescue for them now.

Then Jiahao jerked sideways and vanished, leaving the sky above Min empty.  There were no stars now, just the vague white blur of Deimos off to the left.  Min coughed and felt hot blood flood over his chin.  Breathing was getting more difficult.  Soon, there would be no room left in his filling lungs, and the world would fade to black.

Already the pain seemed far away, the agony happening to someone else.  He was drifting, conscious only on a technicality.

Sand rattled off his helmet and his intercom warbled at him.  There was meaning there, somewhere, but it was too far away, too hard to grasp at.  Blackness swamped Min, occluding the sky and the blur of Deimos.  There was new light visible, shapes that should have meaning.  The peace of death was so close, it frustrated Min that something demanded his attention, denying him his peace.

Reluctantly he put his will back into the effort of consciousness.  With consciousness came pain.  The shadows shifted again and Min’s world spun around.  Fresh agony roared through him, but it was muted; his nerves were already worn and raw.  There was only so much pain the nerves could send and they had been screaming at maximum for too long already.

Min struggled to breathe; every breath bubbled through the blood in his lungs and drove fresh spikes of red-hot pain through his chest.

Finally it was too much.  There was only so much agony a human body could endure.  Consciousness drained away and Min slipped at last into the blissful black.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

The December Protocol’s first public announcement brought a mixed reaction.  To most people, it was as if centuries of injustices had finally been reversed in one karmic swoop.  The Womack Process was illegal!  The clinics were illegal!  They didn’t wait for law enforcement or government to form laws in favor of the Protocol.  In less than a day, rioters had burned every clinic in America to the ground.  Overnight, anyone who worked for a clinic suddenly had armed mobs of furious people screaming for their blood.  Tens of thousands of people were killed, many of them innocent, such was the rage of the rioters.

To those who had already received the treatment, Christmas Day of 2130 was a day of fear.  The guarantee of eternity had been turned on its head.  Instead of centuries of life to look forward to, they had less than a month.  These people were the powerful, the wealthy, the influencers.  And for all their power, all their wealth, and all their influence, there were no clinics available to treat them.  There was no serum and there were no technicians to create more.  Even the inventor of the Process, Dr. Womack, was dead.

Not all of those who’d had the Womack Process died right away.  Those that found a way to keep getting their treatments lived through the month, but the newly re-formed governments and law enforcement agencies came down squarely in support of the December Protocol.  Having the telltale albinism of the Womack Process marked people for death.  In many parts of the world, America included, albinos were shot on sight.

Still, the number of immortals who survived to go to Mars was an incredible number, in the tens of thousands.  That they expected to find serum on the red planet was more an act of faith than the result of planning.  Small wonder most of them perished in transit or shortly after arrival.

Angeline waited until the door closed before she moved to the front of her cage.  The new girl was curled in a ball in the furthest corner, lying on her side and sobbing uncontrollably.

“Hey!” Angeline called.  “My name is Angeline.  What’s yours?”

The sobbing continued unabated.

“Oh, leave it alone,” Adora grumbled.  “She’ll settle down eventually.

“I’m from Vastitas Cluster,” Angeline continued, ignoring Adora.  “Her name is Adora.  She’s from Elysium.”

Angeline gave up after a few more attempts to communicate.  Adora was right: the new girl would calm down eventually.  She knew from experience that grief was exhausting.  There came a point when it took too much effort to keep crying.  The fear and loss didn’t go away, but in time the new girl would discover the futility of tears.

There were other things that demanded Angeline’s attention.  The stolen stunrod hidden in her blanket dragged at her.  She was terrified about the theft.  How long would it take them to realize there was a stunrod missing?  Would they suspect her?  Would they search her cage, force her to turn out her bedding?  Or the next time they were brought to Dr. Lenbroke would someone check their cages?

She wanted to go lie down on her cot, but what if she acted unnaturally?  Would they suspect something?  The cot was barely wide enough for her to lay down on it, her blanket only slightly larger.  How would she hide the stunrod during the night while she slept?

And, of course, when would she use it?  She had to use it when someone opened her cage alone.  She thought back, and realized with a sinking feeling that every time her cage door was open, there had been at least two people in the room.  She thought she could surprise a single guard, but the second guard would overpower her.

If only she had the kind of fighting ability Min had!  The marshal had been incredible.  Yes, he had fallen eventually, but not before he had killed one man and incapacitated two others.  If he had had a weapon he would have eliminated all of his opponents.

Marshal Yang might have been captured, but he had given Angeline the means to free herself, even if accidentally.  Now it was up to her to make the most of the opportunity.

Adora started stretching in preparation for an exercise period, her second for the day.  Reluctantly, Angeline followed her.  She felt stronger already, and the exercises were getting easier, but she had no illusions.  Compared to Min, or even Adora, she was hopelessly weak.  Adora had been training for years using weights and her body was taut and strong.  Angeline had only been exercising for a week now.  She wasn’t constantly sore any more, but it would take years before she had the physical strength to directly contest one of the men who held her captive.

Still, the exercises might give her that little bit of an edge she needed in order to survive.  And, of course, the exercises might delay her period.

Angeline gritted her teeth and pushed herself to keep up the rotation of exercises as long as Adora did.  Pushups, crunches, squats, burpees, and back to pushups again.  By the time Adora finished her fifth set and ended with a series of stretches, Angeline felt ragged and worn out.  She also felt ravenously hungry.  It was still early in the afternoon, too early for dinner, but she couldn’t wait any longer.

The portion she had reserved for her dinner disappeared remarkably fast.  All she had left were a few sheets of nori.

“Why are you exercising?”

Angeline looked up to find the new girl staring at her.  She was of Chinese descent, with wide eyes and a skinny frame even by Martian standards.  She was plain looking, with uneven teeth that overlapped each other wildly.

“Hello,” Angeline said.  “To keep our… Just to pass the time.”  She didn’t know why she was being secretive, but she had had a sudden flashback to Jasmine and her betrayal of Eva.  If this new girl told the guards she was exercising to delay her period in an attempt to earn favor, it would ruin everything.

“You said your name was Angeline?  I’m Xinyi Jun.”

“Hi, Xinyi.”

“And I’m Adora.”

“How long have you guys been here?  Where are we?  What’s going to happen to us?”

Angeline shared a look with Adora.  She really didn’t want to answer those questions.

“Fucking guess,” Adora snapped, rolling her eyes.

Xinyi’s face fell and tears started running down her face again.  “I’m… I’m sorry.”  She sniffed and wiped her tears away.  “I don’t know why I’m here.  I fell asleep at the market while my mom shopped, then I woke up in a box.”

Angeline felt a distinctly uncharitable irritation at Xinyi’s obtuseness.  “You’ll figure it out eventually,” she said, then immediately felt bad about it.  Xinyi went to her cot and curled up again.  Her shoulders shook with her sobs, but they were soundless this time.

“I prefer her crying,” Adora said, glaring over at the cage opposite.

Angeline flapped the hem of her shirt, trying to get airflow around her body to help dry the sweat.  She had been in the same shirt since she arrived, and it was stained with sweat and food and smelled terrible.  She thought about taking the shirt off and washing it as best she could, but then she would have to wrap her blanket about herself until it dried, and that would leave the stunrod exposed.

So, lacking any other option, she kept the shirt on and tried to get it dry while she still wore it.  It didn’t work very well, and her arms were tired from exercising.  Then, since she didn’t have anything else to do, she lay down in her cot.  The stunrod dug into her back.  It was two inches in diameter, and even collapsed, was as long as her forearm.  She shifted around, trying to find a way to lie in her cot comfortably without exposing the weapon.

Time passed.  Angeline found she could put the stunrod between her legs without too much discomfort and eventually dozed off.  The lights turning out for the night woke her and she sat up abruptly.  Between her legs, the green charge light of the stunrod was visible through her thin blanket.  Angeline’s heart pounded and she reached down to rotate it until the light wasn’t visible any more.

She had forgotten that the stunrod needed to be charged to work.  She wasn’t certain about it, but didn’t batteries drain over time?  Even if they didn’t, having the stunrod made Angeline far too nervous.  She had to take her chances.  If things went as normal, tomorrow would be a visit to Dr. Lenbroke.

Trying to move quietly, Angeline crawled out of her cot, taking a moment to make sure the stunrod was fully covered by the blanket.  She moved about her cage carefully and put things into position.  She didn’t have much to work with, but everything she had she put to use.

With everything prepared as best she could, she climbed back into her cot.  Sleep, when it finally came, with fitful and brief.  After she woke in a sweat for the third time, she gave it up as a bad idea and went to her position.  She was nervous and scared, but more than anything else, she was excited.  She was not a violent girl by nature, but she looked forward to the morning.  More than anything else, finally taking action and doing something on her terms gave her a giddy sense of determination.

She would do everything she could to regain her freedom.  If that wasn’t enough, so be it, but at least she would have tried.

The morning lights came on and Angeline squinted her eyes against the sudden brightness.  She was standing with her back to the wall, both hands behind her back.  Her waste bucket was against the door, partially hidden by the hatch at the bottom.

Adora sat up and rubbed her eyes.  She saw Angeline against the wall and her brow furrowed, but she didn’t say anything.  Stiffly, Adora began her morning stretches.

Angeline had already done her stretches an hour ago.  She was feeling loose and strong.  Part of her wanted to tell Adora what she was planning, but she was afraid of what Xinyi would do.  Adora she could trust to play along, but would the new girl panic?  Tell the guards?  Act unnaturally?  No, it was best to leave both girls in the dark.

She had been standing for an hour before the lights came on, and when the sound of footsteps outside the door sounded, Angeline felt relieved.  Her legs were getting tired, but she forced herself to stand naturally.  There was nothing wrong.  Nothing unusual.

The door swung open and two men entered the room.  Angeline had heard their names yesterday.  What were they?  Mateo was one of them, and the one with his arm in a splint was Vito.  Mateo strode across the room and stopped in front of Adora’s cage.

“Back up against the wall.”  He pulled out his stunrod and snapped it to full length.  “I’m not in the mood for any of your shit, girl.  You fuck with me, I’ll put you in a coma, understand?”

Adora nodded and ducked her head meekly, but Angeline could tell she was furious.  Adora backed up to the wall and stood against it, the same way Angeline was.  Mateo nodded and unlocked her cage.  Adora held out her hands and let him zip tie them together.

Mateo pulled Adora out of the cage and shoved her in the direction of Vito.  “Hold onto that one while I get the other.”

Angeline kept her face down, praying that nothing in her expression gave her away.  If there was something visible, Mateo didn’t see it.  He unlocked Angeline’s door and pushed it open.  The edge of the door caught Angeline’s pail and knocked it spinning across the floor, spreading a pool of waste behind it.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Mateo groaned.  “I’m going to make you clean that up when you get back.”  He gingerly stepped into the cage, placing his feet in the dry spots.  His gaze was on the ground, his attention on keeping his shoes clean.

Angeline lunged off the wall, the stunrod already stretched to its full length.  She pressed the power button as she swung and the end of the rod snapped into life.  Mateo was just looking up when Angeline smashed the end of the rod into his shoulder, at the base of his neck.

The stunrod cracked and Mateo gave a choked scream.  Electricity coursed through his nervous system and he jerked wildly, legs and arms out of his control.  Angeline drew the stunrod back and Mateo collapsed to the ground like a marionette with its strings suddenly cut.

Vito was holding onto Adora with his good hand, and he gaped at Angeline.  Then he let go of Adora and reached to his belt for his own stunrod.  It was a mistake.  Adora had her hands bound in front of her, but she flung herself at Vito with a cry of rage.  She head-butted Vito, driving her forehead into his broken arm, then spun in a roundhouse kick that knocked his stunrod flying.

Angeline gave Mateo one last zap with the stunrod to make sure he stayed down, then jumped over the puddle of waste and hauled the cage door shut, trapping Mateo inside.  Vito was backing away from Adora, trying to shield his broken arm from her kicks.  Angeline dashed past Adora and lunged forward with the stunrod, smashing it into Vito’s stomach.

Vito collapsed with a cry and Angeline rained down blows on him repeatedly until the head of the stunrod sputtered and went out.

“Get these off me,” Adora panted.

Angeline knelt over Vito warily, keeping one eye on his face.  He was still conscious, if only just, stunned by the repeated blows.  She went through his pockets and found a folding knife, and hurried to cut Adora free.

Adora ran over and grabbed Vito’s stunrod, then grabbed Vito by his good arm.  “Help me get him into my cage.”

Angeline grabbed a leg and together they hauled Vito over and locked him up.

“Where’d you get the stunrod?” Adora asked as they struggled to get Vito moved.

“From the jailer, after the marshal killed him.”

“Nicely done.”

“What did you do?”

Angeline turned and found Xinyi staring at them in horror.

“We’re getting the hell out of here,” Adora said.

“Those men… stunrods can leave permanent damage from multiple shocks!  You might have killed them!”

“Good.” Adora picked up the spent stunrod and gave it a few experimental swishes, then tossed Angeline Vito’s fully charged one.  “You seem pretty handy with one of them, you hold onto the charged one.  The dead one is more than enough for me.”

“What about Xinyi?” Angeline asked, nodding toward the girl.

Xinyi cowered away from them, her eyes wide.  “I promise I didn’t see anything!  I’ll just tell them I was asleep!”

“Listen, you idiot.  Those men, they were going to kill us.  Harvest our ovaries and throw our corpses into the methane tanks.”  Adora rapped the mesh of Xinyi’s cage with the dead rod.  “They already killed my friend, and the girl Angeline came here with, along with God only knows how many others before us.”

“I think I know the combination to let her out,” Angeline said, remembering suddenly.  “Min was held in a different cage, but it’s possible they all have the same combo.”

“She’ll probably just slow us down,” Adora griped.  “We’re wasting time.  In a few minutes, people will realize the men are missing.  If we’re not gone by then, we’re never getting out of here.”

“I can’t just leave her behind,” Angeline protested.  “Let me just try.”  She moved to Xinyi’s cage and tried to remember the combination.  What had it been?  She punched in the numbers from memory and hesitated over the last digit.  It had been obscured.  “795…6,” she said aloud as she punched the numbers in.  The lock beeped angrily, rejecting the code.

“Come on, Angeline!  We have to go!”

“Just leave me alone,” Xinyi pleaded.

“Hold on.  7953,” again the lock denied her entry.  “Augh!  I know it’s one of these!”

Adora grabbed Angeline’s arm.  “There’s no time for her.  She doesn’t even want to come!”

“She’ll be killed!”  Angeline shook off Adora’s hand.  “7952,” this time the locked chimed and the light turned green.  Angeline shoved the door wide, beckoning to Xinyi.  “I did it!  Come on, Xinyi!”

Reluctantly, Xinyi came out of the cage and flinched a little when Angeline grabbed her arm.  “Just don’t hurt me, okay?”

“Oh for the love of…”  Adora threw up her hands and went to the door.  She pulled it open and stuck her head out, checking both ways.  “It’s clear,” she whispered back to the other two girls.  “Come on.”

Angeline followed Adora out into the hallway.  She felt exposed, and fear thrilled down her spine.  There was no indication of which way would lead to the cluster and freedom.  They had eliminated two of Anton’s men, for the moment at least, but who knew how many other people were within the complex?

“Which way?” Angeline asked.

Adora turned in a circle.  In both directions, the hallway stretched for thirty or forty yards, studded on both sides with doors.  To the left, stairs led downward.

“We go right,” Adora announced.  Without waiting to see if the others were following her, Adora set off in that direction.

Angeline followed behind.  Xinyi was dragging her heels, looking fearfully at the doors as they passed.

“What is this place?” Xinyi whispered to Angeline.

Angeline slowed, gesturing for the other girl to hurry up.  “Later!  There isn’t time.  We have to get out.”

“I don’t know…”

“For Christ’s sake,” Angeline whispered fiercely.  She wanted to shout and slap this idiot around.  “They had you in a cage.  You think that was for your benefit?  These people murder girls!”

Xinyi frowned and turned her head to the side.  “Did you actually see it happening?  What do you know?  You’re just a kid.  I bet you’re not even fifteen yet.”

Angeline stared at Xinyi in disbelief.  Was she really that stupid?  “I’m fourteen,” Angeline said stiffly.  “Adora is sixteen.  Does it matter?  Come on!”

The other girl slowed to a halt, a look of mutiny on her face.  “You’re just going to get us in trouble.  I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

Angeline threw up her hands.  “Fine.  Go back to your cage, then.  I’m sorry I tried to rescue you.”

Xinyi started to say something, but movement down the corridor caught Angeline’s attention.  It was Anton.  He was far away, nearly sixty yards down the long hallway, but even at that distance Angeline clearly saw the look of surprise and anger on his face when he saw the girls.

Without hesitation, Angeline turned and ran after Adora.  If Xinyi didn’t have the wit to take advantage of her rescue, then that was on her.  Angeline had already done all that she could.

“Stop!” Anton shouted.  “The girls are loose!  Stop them!”

There was a bang from down the hallway, followed by a multi-toned shriek that ripped through the air to Angeline’s left.  Despite herself, Angeline turned her head and saw Anton had an enormous pistol out and aimed down the hallway.

Xinyi was running toward Anton, one hand pointed back down the hallway toward Angeline.  Reflexively, Angeline threw herself to the ground.  She had seen enough movies to know that when a gun was pointed in your direction, it was prudent to make yourself as small a target as possible.

Angeline saw the muzzle flare at the same moment another bang crashed down the hallway.  Xinyi’s back blossomed red and she pitched forward, tumbling with her forward momentum.  Anton was still advancing down the hallway and Angeline forgot her prudence.  Small target or not, she had to get away from Anton.

She got up and ran.  In school, Angeline had never bothered to play on any of the sports teams.  She had never considered herself particularly athletic, and was too busy studying in her honors classes to commit the time.  Two weeks ago, running even a short distance would have been exhausting.  As she ran from Anton, she found that, rather than being tiring, running felt good.  She was breathing easily and her leg muscles felt strong rather than rubbery.

At the top of the corridor, Adora waited for her, peeking around the corner, her eyes wide.  Angeline was almost there.  Fifteen more yards.  Then a door swung open and a man jumped out into the hallway, his arms spread wide to catch her.

Without thinking, Angeline swung the stunrod in her hand at him as hard as she could, with all the strength of her arm and torso.  It was a wild swing, and she had forgotten to turn on the power.  Still, the rod caught the man on the forearm and she heard the brittle crack of his arm breaking.  He gave a cry of surprise and pained outrage then Angeline was past him.

Her heart pounded in her chest.  Fear gripped her, but it was abstract.  She had just seen Xinyi die, but she hadn’t had time to really process it yet.  She had always been afraid of Anton and afraid of guns.  That Anton was shooting at her was an intellectual fact, not something she really understood as yet.  Deep down, she knew that if she stopped to think, terror would overcome her and she would freeze.

Behind her, Angeline heard Anton shouting at the man who had tried to intercept her to get out of the way.  Putting on a last burst of speed, Angeline made the corner and Adora pulled her to safety.

“So much for sneaking.  What happened to Xinyi?”

Angeline shook her head.  “Anton shot her.”  Her ears were ringing from the gunshots and Adora’s voice sounded as if Angeline were under water.

Adora peeked around the corner and jerked her head back as another gunshot cracked down the hallway and dug a divot from the concrete wall.  “He’s coming,” Adora said unnecessarily.  “I guess we’re going this way.”  She nodded down the corridor they were in.  The other way would require crossing the open space, impossible with Anton shooting at them.

Angeline ran after Adora, but it quickly became obvious that the hallway they had chosen was a dead end.  They slowed to a stop when they neared the end of the hallway.  There was nowhere else to run.

Anton came charging around the corner and skidded to a stop when he saw the girls were trapped.  There was a wild, toothy smile on his face as he raised the gun again.  The barrel leveled off directly at Angeline and she stared down the bore of the gun.  It was enormous and black, seemingly wide enough to swallow her whole.

“End of the road,” Anton panted.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

Video journal of Susan Everard, eldest daughter of Dr. Annette Everard.  4 August, 2168.

“This is to be my final vlog.”  Susan Everard looks old, far older than her 72 years.  Her skin is sallow, her blue eyes fogged with cataracts.  Behind her, a dialysis machine whirrs, fighting a losing battle against sepsis.  Her kidneys had both failed two years ago.  Off camera, someone is moving about and whispering urgently.

“Mother turned me down for the Helix Rebuild.  I’ve never told this story before, but I’m dying.  Secrets mean little to me now.  My younger sister, Macy, was the first person to take mother’s tests and the second person to receive the Rebuild.

“Imagine my shock when mother told me I couldn’t receive the treatment!  This was all I had been looking forward to my entire life.  I knew mother would succeed with her research; I had all the faith of a loving child backing that up.  I just never thought I wouldn’t get the treatment.”

Susan hitches herself up in her bed, irritably trying to find a comfortable position.  Her shirt rides up, revealing the two oophorectomy scars on her stomach.  She settles down, not comfortable but recognizing the futility in trying.  “I was bitter.  Who wouldn’t be?  I hated mother, I hated Macy.  And as the December Protocol came about and they were preparing to leave Earth, I felt vindicated.  They had to leave, while I could stay.”

She gets a faraway look in her eyes, and a small smile twists her mouth.  “I’ve had a good life, short as it is.  I hope their lives on Venus are happy.  I doubt they think of me anymore, and who could blame them?  They will live forever, while I will die slowly.  Still.  There are times I wish I had answered the questions differently.  Who knows?  Maybe I would be young still, living in a floating city on a planet far away.”

Susan Everard died later that night.

Marcus Truman stepped through the airlock and smiled as the hot humidity washed over him.  He had a fresh ten thousand credits sitting pretty in his bank account.  He had just placed a down payment on a nice apartment with enormously arching ceilings.  Tomorrow, he would move into the apartment and spend the afternoon furniture shopping.

Life was good.

Dr. Bannister waved to him as he walked into the hydroponic farm, then bent back over a plant.  She was wearing a dark glass facemask, almost like a welding helmet, to protect her eyes from the glaring light fixtures overhead.

Marcus wandered over to her and watched as she worked.  She was pruning, her shears darting through the verdant foliage unerringly.  She finished the row she was working on and stood, easing her back.

“Marcus, how are you?”

“I’m good, thanks.  I’m surprised you don’t have a robot to do that for you.”

Dr. Bannister shrugged.  “It’s harder to educate an AI to do a decent job pruning than you might think.  Besides, I enjoy the work.  So, tell me about your trip!  I take it everything went well?”

“Better than well!”  Marcus grinned expansively.  “The client had another small job for me, and I came away with quite the bonus.”

“Oh?  Well that’s good.  Referrals are always a sign of a job well done.”

“Yes.”  Marcus’ grin slipped a little as he remembered the girls in their cages.  “Though I guess I also discovered why they were so keen on discretion.”

He opened his mouth to say more, but Dr. Bannister held up a hand, cutting him off.  “Better stay discrete.”

“What?  Oh.  Right, plausible deniability and all that.”

Dr. Bannister stared at him for a long moment then shook her head.  “Marcus…”

“Don’t worry.  This isn’t my first rodeo.”

She sighed.  “This isn’t Earth, Marcus.  The motto of the colonial marshals is Justice through Action.  You’re more likely to get a bullet between the ribs than an arrest if they find you guilty of something.”

Marcus shrugged, his good mood soured somewhat.  “There isn’t anything to find.  I delivered the package as instructed then the client gave me another delivery.  I never looked inside the packages.  If there is some legal action down the line, I’m just the delivery guy; there’s nothing to accuse me of other than being punctual.”

“If you say so, Marcus.  I’m glad things went well for you.  Have you heard back from Grendal?  I understand she often has deliveries that need to be made.”

“Not yet.  I was looking forward to some down time.  I’ve got a whole new life to set up.  No small thanks to you.”

Dr. Bannister waved her hand dismissing it, but she smiled.  “Speaking of thanks, you have mine for agreeing to my proposal.”

“How else could I have repaid you for your timely assistance?” Marcus shrugged.  “Mars needs more trees, anyway.  I’m just glad my water can be put to a good use.”

“The very best.  Would you like to see them?  Your new trees?”

“Our new trees,” Marcus corrected her with a smile.

Dr. Bannister laughed and led the way into the back, a place where Marcus had yet to go.  They walked through a small airlock and entered a nursery, where young plants were sprouted from seeds and prepared to be entered into the larger hydroponic system.  She led the way through the nursery to where a tray held an array of rock wool growth cubes, each one topped with a miniature sapling, barely three inches tall, the leaves delicate and bright green.

Marcus marveled over them, crouching down to view them up close.  “They’re much further along than I thought!”

“I’ll be honest,” Dr. Bannister said with a smile, “As soon as you told me how much water you had available, I started these seedlings.  It was a gamble, but I was confident you’d come around.  And what’s the worst that would happen?  I have to terminate the saplings, no big loss.”

“You had me figured out pretty quick.  What kind of trees are these?”

“These are all apples.”

Marcus stood and noticed the next tray was full of trees as well.  “So many!  How many did you plant?”

“Oh, they won’t all grow to full tree size.  Some of these are root stock, dwarf crabs, mostly, while the others will be grafts.  Each tree will have three or four separate varieties on it.  When you have limited resources and infinite time, you make the most of every opportunity.  There will be eight trees grown to full size, once all is said and done.  I’m having a new chamber prepared specifically for an orchard.  Eight trees is only the beginning.  As I find more water, I’ll expand the orchard with more trees.”

Dr. Bannister continued, expanding on her plans for the new orchard.  Her eyes were far away, consumed by the vision she had.  Marcus watched her, secretly jealous that she had such an all-consuming passion.  Running packages and being a facilitator was interesting, but it wasn’t an obsession.  Maybe someday he would find his own niche.  In the meantime, being a part-owner of Vastitas Orchard would eventually return dividends and make his life easier in the long run.

On the way out of the farm, they stopped by the field to check on the potatoes.  It had been nine days since the first planting and the new potato plants stood nearly knee high already.  The light was a glaring fuchsia that made him squint.  Beneath, the leaves of the plants looked almost black, dark with chlorophyll.

Marcus was proud of them, and though he’d had no hand in actually planting the crop, it was his water that had made them possible.  Still, as a dream, it lacked the overarching grandeur of the orchard.  It would, however, give him his first true source of income, something the orchard wouldn’t provide for many years.

He bid Dr. Bannister goodbye and wandered back to his apartment.  The high-ceilings and spacious, open rooms seemed luxurious to him.  Back on Earth, his house had been five times the size of his current apartment, but it had never struck him as particularly opulent.

A knock sounded on his door.  Curious to see who would be calling on him when he hadn’t even properly moved into the apartment yet, he went and opened the door.  A tall woman stared down at him, head and shoulders taller than he was.

“Can I help you?” he asked politely.

“Madam Crade requests your immediate presence,” she said bluntly.  There was something cold about the woman’s eyes that sent a tremor of unease through Marcus.

“I’m sorry, what is this about?”

The woman turned her back on him, striding away from the door, already hurrying off to her next destination.  “You have your summons,” she called back over her shoulder.

Marcus frowned.  He might be a little unclear about his position in the greater scheme of things, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t some lackey to be summoned at his master’s whim.  The woman was already gone, and it was pretty clear she was just a messenger.  Demanding an explanation from her probably wouldn’t have achieved anything.

It galled him, but the only thing he could do was go to Grendal and try to clear things up.  Ignoring the summons would only sour his relationship with the woman, and his position was too fragile to endanger it needlessly.

With a sigh, Marcus left his apartment and made his way up to the market level where the Redstone Lounge was.  It was still early, some hours before midday, so the market was mostly empty.  As he got closer to the Lounge, he gradually became aware that there were others who were moving through the market with him, apparently to the same destination.

By the time he reached the door to the Lounge, he was one among a group of a dozen or so.  They entered the foyer together, and Marcus gave up on the hope for a private conversation with Grendal.  One by one, the people handed assorted weapons over to Charles, who took them without comment and locked them away.  Marcus watched the proceedings, feeling more and more out of place.  These people were mercenaries, thugs, and criminals.  He didn’t belong here.

The group entered the interior one at a time, passing by the frosted-glass partition.  Vague shadows shifted behind the glass, but other than cursory interest, whatever machinery was deployed there raised no objection.

Marcus lingered in the rear of the group.  He debated with himself whether he should just turn around and go home.  He wasn’t a fighter.  He wasn’t a criminal, nor did he take pleasure in hurting others.  Going through that door and into the Lounge would place him in association with the others.

There was little doubt in his mind that the gathering had something to do with the kidnapping operation he had been exposed to.  Grendal was calling in her forces, preparing for, or reacting to, some emergency.

Charles was looking at him expectantly, and Marcus realized that he was the last one left in the foyer.  He could still turn around and leave.  It would be an insult to Grendal, perhaps enough that she would refuse to do business with him in the future.  Without the patronage of the Lounge, how long would it take him to build up a client base and earn enough money to survive?

On the flip side of the coin, he had already had demonstrated to him how flush with credits Grendal’s organization was.  He had no doubt that those who participated in whatever emergency would be compensated handsomely for their effort.  He had a decent chunk of credits in his account right now, but with the expenses of the Womack treatments and his rent, living expenses, et cetera, it wouldn’t last long.  Certainly not long enough to get a comfortable start to his vodka business.

And now he didn’t even have access to the wealth his water had brought him.  It was tied up with the trees in Dr. Bannister’s orchard.  Withdrawing from that arrangement would be even worse.  Dr. Bannister could refuse to grow his next crop of potatoes.  It would ruin him if that happened.  With no source of income and no marketable skills, he would burn through what credits he had and then he would die.

He was trapped.  If he didn’t walk through that door, he would be dead before the end of the year.  If he did, he stood to make an even larger sum of credits and he would cement his relationship with Grendal.  Later, he could find a way to get out of the illegal activities.  Perhaps once he had his distillery running, he would have a mutually lucrative arrangement with the Lounge, and his personal involvement in Grendal’s other business could be dropped.

As if in a dream, he nodded to Charles and stepped forward, past the milky glass and into the Lounge.  He was committed now.  For better or worse, he had thrown his chips in with Grendal.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

Once the dust settled following the December Protocol, historians and scholars picked over the tattered remnants of society and slowly pieced together a now widely accepted account of the rise and fall of immortality on Earth.  In time, most nations figured out how to move on and did so.  The economic collapse was restored, if not quite as high as before.  Gradually, the lives of the survivors turned back to what could be considered normal.

One nation stood out in its complete inability to recover.  China, eldest of civilizations, was gone.  There were still people of Chinese descent living in other nations, but the great, impossibly populous nation was suddenly empty.  Straggling groups still lived, but their gene pool was too limited.  Survival drove them to intermingle with other peoples and the “pure Chinese” heritage was gone forever.

While the account of what actually happened during the years leading up to the December Protocol is rarely disputed, discussions over what could have been done differently were continuous and heated.  Some blamed the free market and greed, others blamed Dr. Womack for making his process public, others blamed Dr. Everard for letting the secrets of the Rebuild into the hands of the scientific community, and others blamed the U.N. for meddling in the affairs of nations where it had no right.

Every scholar had their own opinion, but for all their argument, the promise of life everlasting was gone forever.  The bulk of humanity had had one chance to move to a higher stage of evolution, and they blew it.  Maybe in a thousand years, or two thousand years, Dr. Everard will return to Earth and offer her Rebuild one more time.  Maybe then the human race will have matured enough to see the blessing for what it is and evolve their society to match.

Pleasure and pain are very closely related.  From the depths of darkness, the first stirrings of sensation could easily have been mistaken for pain.  Awareness, as such, was limited.  There was no room for external perception, no capacity for understanding or cognitive function.  The whole world was nothing more than howling nerves and pulsing, shuddering, life.

Time passed.  How much was impossible to tell, impossible to quantify.  Time could be considered nothing more than the perception of expected motion.  How, then, could one experience time when there was no awareness outside of nebulous center-ness?  And the pleasure so intense it was like pain.

Awareness of the exterior grew slowly.  A nucleus of sensation developed into pressure on a hip.  Swirling saturation resolved into an awareness of lightness and darkness, and then hue.  Meaningless drumming settled into the rhythmic crunch of tires over sand and gravel.

External awareness grew, and time passed in a more measured fashion.  Gradually, the overwhelming waves of pleasure faded to bearable levels and gradually a more complex self-awareness developed.  Self-awareness grew and relational understanding manifested.  Knowledge of position and motion grew, and with it an understanding of time.

Buried within the pleasure, knowledge of the body grew, of limbs and muscles and movement.  Self-movement was attempted but thwarted.  Emotion followed.  Frustration.  Fear.  Anger.  With emotion came rational thought, then, in a sudden torrent, identity, memory and purpose crashed down.

Min lay quiescent, in wonder at his survival.  Lassitude gripped him and he felt at peace, harmonious.  How had he survived?  The last thing he remembered was tumbling down the slope, grappling with Jiahao.  He had failed, he remembered that much.  But then… what?  He was alive, which meant he had received the serum injection somehow.

Ruu!  Min remembered how Jiahao had been suddenly knocked sideways.  The lieutenant must have shot him.  And then what?  Pain had made his memories foggy and unreliable.  Ruu must have gotten him back to the rover and injected him before his heart stopped beating.

So Ruu was on his side now?  As soon as he thought it, Min knew that was too simplistic a viewpoint.  The lieutenant had always been acting in her own best interests.  For the moment, having Min alive fit that.

The serum would have repaired the damage to his organs, but it couldn’t have been quick.  How much time had passed?  Min tried to sit up and discovered he was strapped to the table.  His arms were free, though, and it only took a moment of fumbling to find the releases on the straps and free himself.

Min was still in his spacesuit, though his helmet had been removed completely and was no longer in the cabin.  So.  Ruu wanted something from him still.  A quick search of the cabin turned up the small two-way radio that had been knocked into a corner.  A specimen tag tied around the antenna read simply “Call me.”

Min depressed the talk button.  “I understand I have you to thank for my continued survival.”

After a moment, Ruu’s voice came back, scratchy over the interference from the motors.  “How are you feeling, Min?”

“Really good,” Min stretched, luxuriating in the feeling of complete wellbeing that always followed immediately after a treatment.

“I’m glad.”

Silence followed and Min waited patiently.  The ball was still in her court.

“I killed Captain Jiahao.”  Ruu’s voice was troubled, and Min could see her face in his mind, her brow furrowed in consternation.

“I figured.  Thank you.”

“I did not do it for you, Inspector Yang.  What you said about Ping being killed by Jiahao.  What made you say that?  What proof do you have?”

“I’ve been nailing bastards like Jiahao to walls for most of two hundred years, Lieutenant.  It’s how they operate.  As soon as you are within their control, they take away the carrot.  It’s always easier for them to offer a relief than to actually provide it.  And once they had you under their control, they no longer needed to keep Ping alive.”

“But it could only have been an accident.  I saw the body.”

“You said she was killed by a loader with a bad sensor?  It could easily have been tampered with after the fact.”  Min kept his voice calm and level.  He had already told her all this, but he supposed she needed to hear it again now that she’d had time to think.

After a minute, Ruu’s voice came back.  “I see what you are saying.  But I would like to have proof.”

“That might be difficult to find.”

“I killed a marshal captain, Min.  I require proof.  Otherwise I might as well step outside without a suit on right now.”

Min’s helmet was probably in the cab with her.  If she did that, Min would be dead as well.  “I’d advise against it,” he said, trying to keep humor in his voice.  “If you are looking for the kind of proof that would justify your actions, I’m sure we can find it.”

“I would also have your assistance in removing the hold Captain Jiahao had over me.”

“And in return, what?  You walk away and pretend this never happened?”

“They killed Ping,” Ruu said grimly.  “Nothing can forgive that.”

“Going against these people will be dangerous.  There will be killing needed,” Min pointed out.

“I did not get my current rank by being meek, Inspector.”

“Point taken.  So what now?”

“I need access to Jiahao’s files first.”

“I was talking about our immediate situation.  This would be easier to plan if we didn’t have to do it over a radio.”

“I see.  You are willing to work with me?”

“You mean will I turn you in the moment we get back inside Olympus.”

There was a pause.  “That was a concern.”

Min sighed.  “Listen, Ruu, I wasn’t in your shoes, but I understand the desperation of trying to make the payments on Womack treatments.  If you help me close this kidnapping ring down, I’ll consider your amends made.”

The rover ground to a halt and after a minute, Min saw Ruu arrive at the airlock.  She held his helmet in one hand and a pistol in the other.  She cycled the airlock and stepped through into the cabin.

Min nodded at the gun in her hand.  “That shows a certain lack of trust, Lieutenant.”

She tossed the helmet to him underhand.  “It’s for you.   Jiahao had it on his person.”  After a moment’s hesitation, she relaxed her grip and let it flip over, one finger through the trigger guard.  She offered it to him butt first, and he accepted it.

Min hefted the pistol.  Ruu looked steadily at him.  He could shoot her right now.  Proof would surface, showing Jiahao and Ruu as corrupt marshals, and Min would be exonerated.  Hell, he would even be honored for his part in cleansing the marshals’ ranks.

A month ago he would have pulled the trigger.  But Ruu had been forced into an untenable position, one which Jiahao had taken advantage of.  Besides, she had saved his life.  That was worth something, wasn’t it?

No.  He couldn’t kill her.  Or shouldn’t?  Did the distinction make a difference?  One made him unfit to be a marshal, the other was a moral dilemma.  It was a problem he would have to sort out later when he had time and preferably a large quantity of alcohol.

He tucked the pistol away and noted the relief in Ruu’s eyes, though she turned her head to hide it.  Min settled the helmet over his head and verified the seal, then gave a thumbs up to Ruu.  “All set.”

They cycled out of the airlock, and Min saw the dome of Olympus Cluster looming over them, a mile up slope.  It would take them at least half an hour to get back, time he intended to spend trying to work out a plan for how he was going to survive the next twenty four hours.

At three in the morning, the marshal headquarters was mostly empty.  Min and Ruu made their way through the vacant hallways, heading for Captain Jiahao’s office.

“How many others in the marshals are…” Min was about to say corrupt but thought better of it.  “Involved?”

“I don’t know,” Ruu said.  If she heard his hesitation, she didn’t comment on it.  “Jiahao never told me of anyone else, though I inferred I wasn’t alone.”

“Guess we better find his files then.”

“Min, it is possible the others were coerced as I was.”

“And what, you want to give them a chance to surrender?  Lieutenant, you killed Jiahao before he could kill me.  That makes you a good guy.  But the rest of them, what have they done to exonerate themselves?”  He saw the defiant look in her eyes and held up a hand.  “I’m not going to go out of my way to hunt them down,” he said, “but if they try and stop me, I’ll put them down as hard as I can.”

Reluctantly, Ruu nodded.   “That is fair.”

“Glad we agree.”

They neared Jiahao’s office and Ruu put her hand on Min’s arm, stopping him.  “Listen.”

Min paused and strained to hear.  Distantly, he heard the crash of something breaking.  He drew his pistol and Ruu copied him.  Together they ran towards Jiahao’s office and drew up a few yards from the door.  The jamb had been shattered, all three deadbolts ripped free of the doorframe.

Min slowed to a halt, closing the last few yards at a careful walk.  He heard voices muttering to each other inside the office.  Carefully, Min pushed at the door and it swung open a few inches before sticking.  Any further and it would squeak.  He put his eye to the crack and made out a figure swathed all in black, leaning over a table.  The figure turned and tossed something to a person out of Min’s view.

Min pulled back from the crack and turned to Ruu, holding up 2 fingers.  She nodded and slipped to the other side of the doorway.  She held her gun up, ready to swing in and cover any assailants.  Her hands did not shake.

With a held up hand at full spread, Min counted down on his fingers from five.  At two, he took a step back and kicked in the door.  It flew open with a crash.  Min’s momentum carried him forward into the room and he moved to the side so Ruu could have a free arc of fire.

Ruu swung in on his heels and peeled off in the other direction, splitting any potential incoming fire.  Her voice rang out, strident and commanding.  “Freeze!”

Min steadied himself against the wall and drew a bead on the closest figure.  A quick scan of the room suggested that there were only two intruders, though a door in the back could be hiding more.  Both intruders had frozen in position, their hands raised.

“On your knees!” Ruu ordered.

One of the masked figures complied, but the other lowered his hands.  “What the hell?  You’re alive, Lieutenant?” He turned and locked eyes with Min.  “And you’re with Min?  Explain yourself!”

Min took up some of the tension in his trigger.  “Maybe you should be the one explaining,” he said.  “What are you doing in the captain’s office?”

“Ruu, why isn’t this man dead?” the intruder demanded.  “Where’s Captain Jiahao?”

“Out on the mountain,” Ruu said, her voice tight, “with a bullet hole in his head.  Who are you?  Take off your mask!”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” the man sneered at her.  “If you’ve turned traitor, you’re going to die a slow and painful death.”

Min dropped the barrel of his gun and shot him in the knee.  He didn’t really decide to do it; it was a reflexive response to the threat against Ruu.  The man’s knee exploded outward in a spray of blood and shattered cartilage, and his leg buckled, sending him crashing to the ground.  He hooted, more in shock than pain and stared down at his leg that was bending in the wrong direction.

The other figure started to get up and Min swung around.  “Give me a reason.”

Ruu strode forward and ripped the man’s mask off.  Min recognized him by sight, a marshal who served in a different division, and not one Min had ever had any personal contact with.  His face was tightening with growing pain and the first keening prelude to screaming was leaking out between clenched teeth.

“You recognize this guy?” Min asked her.

Ruu shook her head and turned to the other intruder.  “You too, take off your mask.”

“Or what, you’ll shoot me too?” the voice was feminine, but she complied, shaking out her hair and glaring defiantly up at Min.  She was a wujin, Spanish, but he didn’t recognize her at all.

“Why, you want me to?” Min asked.

“I think that’s enough, Min,” Ruu said quietly.  To the intruders she said, “If you’re done fighting back, I’d like my question answered.”

“I’m not telling you shit!” the leg-shot marshal snarled.

Min stepped over to him and put his boot on the man’s knee.  The marshal shrieked and clawed at Min’s leg ineffectually.  Min leaned his weight on the ruined joint for a moment before taking the pressure off.  “I think you will tell,” he said.  “I don’t think you have the cajones to stay silent.  Answer the lieutenant’s question.  Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

“No!  I’d rather–”

“We came to collect any chips there were in the safe.”

“Shut up!  Don’t say anything else!”  The marshal cried out.

Min pointed his gun at the marshal’s head, then moved the barrel a few inches to the side and fired a round in the floor next to the man’s ear.  “Next time you speak out of turn, it goes in your head,” he informed the marshal.

“We’d like those chips,” Ruu said.  She had flinched at the gunshot, but looked down on the woman levelly.

“Right front pocket,” the woman said, nodding her head at the prone marshal.

Min kicked away the marshal’s arm and jerked the bundle out of the indicated pocket, then tossed it to Ruu.

Ruu pocketed the bundle, ignoring the weak curses of the marshal.  “Thank you.  And my other question?  Who are you?”

“Nobody.  A local.  I’m only returning a favor. I have no interest in the contents of the chips or whatever vendetta your partner is carrying.”  The woman met Ruu’s eyes squarely.  “In my defense, I was acting on the orders of a marshal.”

“You’re not a marshal?” Min asked.

“I’m a locksmith.  I was asked to open the safe, nothing more.”

Ruu glanced at Min, who shrugged.  “The chips have to do with a child kidnapping and harvesting operation.  You understand what I’m talking about?”

The woman’s face twisted in disgust and for the first time, fear tightened her brows.  “I didn’t know.  I would never have agreed to help with the safe.”

Ruu nodded.  “I believe you.”

“I swear, I will leave peacefully.  I am unarmed and will say nothing of this to anyone.”

Min twitched the barrel of his gun toward the door and the locksmith got up unsteadily.  “Thank you.”  She glared down at the wounded marshal and spat with commendable aim into his face.  “I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused.”

“Get out of here,” Ruu said.

The locksmith snatched up a tool satchel and hurried out, with one last contemptuous look for the marshal bleeding on the ground.

“So,” Min said, kneeling down next to the marshal.  “What are we going to do with you?”

“You’re a traitor,” he hissed at Ruu.  “You think you’re going to go away with anything?  You turn us in and they’ll still kill you for what you’ve done.”

“Maybe.”  Ruu tapped her chin, frowning down on the marshal.  “I recognize you.  You’re in the Transportation division.  Adain, wasn’t it?”

“Fuck you, Ruu.”

“Well, Adain, make a case for yourself.  Why should I allow you to live?”

“Because I’m a marshal?  You’re adding manslaughter to corruption charges.”  He sneered.  “You’re going down anyway, but maybe they’ll just sentence you to a lifetime in the ice mines.  Of course, that’ll be less than a month, won’t it?  When was your last treatment, Lieutenant?”

“I think we’ve heard enough,” Min said.  “This piece of shit is fucking with my qi.”

Ruu shrugged.  “Time’s up, Adain.  Unless you have some vital piece of information…?”

Adain laughed.  Min pulled the trigger and the monomol round punched Adain backward to the ground.  Blood clotted with rubbery lumps of grey matter fanned outward across the floor.  Adain’s corpse twitched a few times then lay still.

Ruu nudged the dead man’s boot out of the way distastefully and went to examine Jiahao’s terminal.  The display had been smashed in and the terminal’s innards had been ripped out and crushed with a heavy glass paperweight.

“We’re not getting anything from this,” Ruu observed.

“We wanted to destroy the data anyway.  Mission accomplished.”

“I suppose.”  Ruu patted the packet of chips in her pocket absently.  “I’m very curious to discover what is on these.”

“The usual, I suppose.”  Min shrugged, suddenly disinterested in the whole matter.  He wanted to leave Olympus and return to Acheron.  Getting back to Angeline and Adora was more important than saving the reputation of his lieutenant.  Even if she didn’t truly deserve to go down with the kidnappers, she had to have some pretty messy crimes behind her in order for Jiahao to keep her silent.  Enough to ruin her life.

The chips probably had names, locations and evidence on dozens of marshals and other officials, enough to keep the criminal organization out of official view.  How many of those marshals were actually corrupt, and how many were like Ruu, coerced into cooperation?  Min felt only exhaustion contemplating that.  There would be thousands of hours of work tracking down all the people mentioned in the chips and determining if the blackmail contained within was worth taking action on or not.

“You alright, Min?”

Min shook his head, forcing his attention back to the present moment.  He would deal with the chips later.  “Yeah.  Just getting a little existential in my old age.”  He sighed.  “Got everything you need?”

Ruu looked around the office.  “This is a Charlie Foxtrot, isn’t it?”

“It’s just beginning.  We need to get to Acheron Cluster.”

“Where the girls are being held?”

Min nodded.

Ruu made one last turn about the office then shrugged.  “Sure.  Let’s get out of here before people show up and start asking questions.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

War, it is said, accelerates the technology of a society.  At the beginning of the 22nd century, Earth was plunged into war.  Not a war fought by armies, with tanks and fighter planes, or with nanomachines and biological agents, but war, nonetheless.  There were no sides, no clear enemy to attack, no propaganda or fear-mongering typically associated with human conflicts.

Yet, there was no doubt that the entire population of Earth was plunged into war.  With the December Protocol, there was suddenly a clear enemy to strike at.  The war spontaneously developed sides, and while he battles grew no less confused, each side began claiming victories.

One of the early victories of the proponents of the immortality treatments was the establishment of a lunar city.  Plans had been in the works for years, but lacked funding.  Suddenly, all the wealthiest people on Earth desperately wanted to get into space.   Luna was built almost overnight, as hundreds of millions of tons of materials and supplies were launched in less than a year.

As a long-term home, Luna had flaws.  The moon, for all its proximity, had almost no available resources.  Still, it served as a launching point for Mars and Venus flights, and in time grew to be a stable and valuable trading point.  The Matriarch Manifesto forbade any contact with those who had received the Womack Process, and Luna was the obvious middle ground where goods and raw materials could be exchanged through intermediaries.

Angeline stared down the hallway at Anton and the gun in his hand.  He was breathing hard from his run and his arm wasn’t steady, but the distance was only twenty yards.  She was paralyzed with fear.  He hadn’t pulled the trigger yet, but there was nowhere to run.  The only way out was past Anton.

A movement to her left caught Angeline’s attention.  A door was opening.  She turned her head and saw it was the examination room, E12.

Dr. Lenbroke stuck her head out into the hallway and gasped when she saw them.  “What are you doing out?!  Anton!  What the fuck are you doing with that gun?”

Angeline saw the momentary hesitation cross Anton’s face and the muzzle of the pistol drop.  Without thinking it through or considering the consequences, Angeline acted.  She flung herself at Dr. Lenbroke.  The doctor’s arms spread wide, as if to catch her or embrace her and Angeline rammed into her, leading with the blunt end of the stunrod.

With the wind knocked from her, Dr. Kim Lenbroke fell back into the examination room, surprise etched onto her features.  Angeline tripped on the doctor’s legs and tumbled.  There was the crack of a gunshot outside, and then Adora dived into the room.  She kicked the door shut and leaped up to flip the lock closed.

The doctor was struggling to sit up and catch her breath when Adora swung her stunrod with all the strength in her body, catching Dr. Lenbroke across the temple.  Angeline flinched as the doctor’s head snapped sideways and she collapsed, limp, to the ground.

“Did you kill her?” Angeline asked, shocked by the ferocity of the blow.  Then the door banged and shook against the lock, as Anton crashed into it.  Her concern over the doctor vanished and she shrieked, cowering behind one of the gurneys.

“Don’t shoot!” Adora screamed.  “The doctor is against the door!  If you shoot, she dies!”

Blood was running from the long gash along Dr. Lenbroke’s temple.  Angeline knew next to nothing about medicine or doctoring, but she knew that a heavy blow to the skull could be fatal if not treated correctly, and soon.

Angeline realized she didn’t care.  Dr. Lenbroke was one of the people responsible for her capture and the deaths of Eva, Jasmine and God only knew how many others.

“Open the door, Adora!” Anton cried.  “Let us in and we won’t kill you.”

“Angeline!” Adora hissed.  “Knock that shit off and help me think!  What do we do?”

Angeline forced herself to take deep breaths until her mindless panic faded.  She turned slowly, examining the room.  Half of it was a lab, where Dr. Lenbroke did her work.  A row of gurneys was against the wall adjacent to the door.  On the opposite wall was a long counter, with cabinets above and below.  The counter was cluttered with medical equipment, most of it unfamiliar to Angeline.

The other half of the partitioned room was an operating theater, with a stainless steel surgery table and an enormous light array on an articulated arm hanging over it.  One of the walls in the theater was dominated by a cryogenic condenser, the others by racks and shelves of more equipment.

There had to be something in this room that could help them, if only she had the wit to figure it out.

In Angeline’s school, lab safety had been etched into her mind forever.  She vividly remembered a demonstration the teacher had done with a human eyeball taken from a cadaver.  A single drop of acid onto the eye and, in a flash, the clear surface had milked over completely.  Had it been a living eye, the person would have been instantly blinded.

Now, Angeline had to deliberately figure out how to do something dangerous.  It was hard to force herself to think of ways to cause harm to a body.  Acid would do it, but required direct application to be successful.  An explosion would be nice, but she couldn’t think of any common lab chemicals that could rapidly be mixed up to create a significant blast.  And, anyway, an explosion would pose as much danger to Adora and herself as it would to Anton.

The door shuddered as something crashed into it.  Again and again, the heavy blows drove into the door.  The doorframe by the hinges started to crack and splinter.

“We’re running out of time!” Adora cried.

Angeline tried to focus, ignoring the pounding on the door and Adora’s cries.  What did she want to accomplish?  She wanted Anton dead.  Not maimed, not blinded, not driven off, but dead.  None of the medical equipment on the counter looked lethal.  She opened the cabinets above.  Blankets.  Towels.

She yanked open the door under the sink in the center of the counter.  There was a large glass bottle of industrial-strength disinfectant.  She saw a warning label and emergency procedures should any get on your skin or in your eyes.  She unscrewed the plastic cap and lifted the container to smell.  The strong, almost overpowering scent of chlorine burned her nose.  Bleach.  Thank you. Thank you.

One of the very first things she had been taught about chemistry as a small child was to never mix and match cleaning supplies.  An acid-based cleanser, mixed with bleach or a related product, would produce chlorine gas.  She knew it would burn your lungs or irritate your eyes in even small amounts.

The door was beginning to sag under the blows.  Adora was braced against it, her teeth bared, but she was fighting a losing battle.  Angeline didn’t have much time left.  Thirty seconds, definitely not more than a minute.

She needed acid.  She found a rack of brown glass bottles with hand-lettered labels and she pawed through them until she found a bottle labeled simply HCl.  She was still learning chemistry in school and didn’t know many acids or what they were good for, but hydrochloric acid was one of the staples of a school lab.

She took a deep breath and unscrewed the caps from both bottles. Holding her breath, she poured the acid straight into the cleanser bottle.  The cleanser was perhaps two-thirds full and started to foam.  She got about half the acid in before she saw the foam climbing toward the mouth of the cleanser bottle.  She screwed the lid on quickly, and, turning her head, finally took a breath.

Through the glass, Angeline could see the cleanser roiling as the acid reacted with it.  “Adora!” she cried, “Get away from the door!”

Without waiting for the other girl to move, she shoved the glass bottle.  It slid across the tiled floor and bumped against the door.  Nothing else happened.  The crashing on the door paused as someone outside shouted for quiet.

Angeline realized the flaw in her plan, but it was too late to do anything about it now.  Soon, any second now, the pressure within the bottle would grow to the point where the plastic lid wouldn’t hold it back.  A geyser of acid and cleanser would shoot from the bottle, propelled by the buildup of gas inside.  If she had judged correctly the gas would be mostly chlorine, and deadly.

But she and Adora were still stuck in the room.  They would be swimming in poison gas any second, and the only escape was through the door where Anton waited for them.

Desperately, Angeline scanned the room and spotted an air vent above the counter cabinets. It might be large enough for Angeline to crawl through and perhaps Adora, though it would be a tighter fit for the older girl.

“The vent!” Angeline hissed, pointing.

Adora turned from the door and leapt up onto the counter, kicking equipment to the floor to make room to stand.  The vent cover was hinged for easy cleaning and Adora popped the latches and propped it open.  “You first,” she said.

Angeline climbed up onto the counter and Adora made a basket from her hands, giving Angeline a boost up to the vent.  Angeline climbed in, but it was too tight to turn around.  She could crawl on her elbows, but that was it.  Ahead of her, the duct lead upward at a shallow angle.

Behind her, the door crashed open and she heard the pop-whoosh of the bottle finally blowing its lid.  A man cried out in shock and someone screamed.  Angeline wanted to turn around to see what was happening, but all she could see was a section of the wall.  A man cursed, followed by the crack of a pistol shot.

Adora cried out, a wordless challenge and Angeline heard the thwack of a stunrod against bone.  “Run, Angeline!” she yelled.

“No!” Angeline shouted, “Don’t stay there!  Don’t breathe the gas!”

“There were more screams, mingled with choking rasps.  Adora’s cries turned to pain and panic, then gurgling screams.  Then, less than thirty seconds later, the room was silent.

“Adora?” Angeline called.  She couldn’t turn around.  Didn’t dare back up.  A slight breeze was against her face, the ever-present cluster air circulation pushing fresh air past her and into the room.  She was safe from the gas.

Silence met her cry.  Distantly, she heard the drip-drip of some liquid falling.  “Adora?” she called again, her voice hoarse.  Tears ran down her face.  She knew there would be no response.  Adora was dead, by her hand.  With her, Dr. Lenbroke and an unknown number of men had also died.

Numbly, Angeline crawled deeper into the air vent.  If only she had thought of the vents first, rather than the gas bomb.  If only Adora hadn’t stayed to fight.  After slowly crawling into the vent ten or fifteen feet, she broke down completely and sobbed into her arms.

It wasn’t fair.  What had she done to deserve this?  Was this all punishment for playing hooky?  She had always tried hard to be a good student and helpful at home.  She had never known anyone who had died before.  The list was long now.  Everyone she knew in the cluster was dead or trying to kill her.  Even the marshal, Min Yang, was probably dead now.

Gradually, Angeline’s tears dried up and she realized she was hungry.  She hadn’t eaten since her early dinner the night before.  Her family wasn’t wealthy by any means, but she had never gone hungry before.

Now, she didn’t know when her next meal would be.  In theory she could work her way through the vents and reach other parts of the level or even make her way to a different floor entirely.  The thought gave her some hope.  She could still escape!

She crawled forward some more, and the vent gradually grew pitch black.  Suddenly, the vent duct opened to the sides and she cautiously felt about.  The duct had opened up into a service tunnel.  She crawled out and thankfully sat with her back against the wall.  The breeze was stronger here, cooling the sweat on her skin and blowing her hair about, tangling it.

She still had her stunrod.  The looped strap at the butt end made it easy to carry around her wrist.  She held it up and turned it on.  Blue arcs of electricity leaped and popped between the contacts, giving her a dim view of her surroundings.

The air passages were low tunnels roughly four feet on a side and ran through the layer, providing fresh air to the inhabitants.  In the old days on Earth, clever architects had learned how to use natural convection to get fresh air to the deepest mines and innermost dungeons.  None of that was in evidence here.  The cluster air tunnels embodied a brute-force approach to getting air where it was needed.  Rather than trying to train a populace in aerodynamics, the vents just shoved air into individual rooms.  Hallways provided the outlet, which were designed to funnel the airflow back to the enormous circulation fans.  These directed the used air back to the surface filters where the carbon dioxide could be precipitated out of it and the clean air returned for new use.

Angeline’s stunrod gave her a flickering glimpse of the maze of tunnels.  She turned the stunrod off again and leaned her head back against the wall.  There were dozens of small passages leading off the main trunk.  She hadn’t been able to see very far, but there had been several branches of the big tunnel as well, disappearing into the gloom.

She wished she had a flashlight.  That would make it easy to find her way around the tunnels, but the stunrod hardly gave off any light.  And she dare not use it too much.  She had been lucky so far, but without the stunrod, there was no way she could fight off someone trying to capture her.

The blowing breeze was cold against her skin and she shivered.  All she wore was the worn out shirt, and it did nothing to block the breeze.

Angeline wrapped her arms around herself and set off down the tunnel.  She didn’t know where she was going; only that she had to get as far from her kidnappers as she could.

Every ten or twenty paces, she held out the stunrod and flipped it on for a few seconds, giving her a quick glimpse into what was ahead of her.  The low tunnel forced her to stay bent as she walked, and the strain was making her back ache.  Still, she persisted.  There was nothing behind her worth returning to.

It was slow going.  The tunnels were far too ramified to get any clear sense of where she was, but she followed a distant humming sound, keeping the flow of fresh air in her face.  Machinery meant access points, which meant a way to escape that wasn’t through another vent.

Eventually she came to a trunk line, a straight tunnel that was tall enough for her to walk comfortably upright.  The wind here was strong, almost enough to push her off her feet.  Her hair bannered out behind her and her shirt pressed against her front, the trailing edges flapping wildly in the wind.

The trunk line had rounded corners to facilitate air passage, but she found that if she walked as close to the wall as she could, the wind wasn’t as strong.  The first time she passed one of the side passages, the eddy in the wind almost knocked her over.  She learned to crouch down while passing the side tunnels, keeping her center of gravity as low as possible.  Tears streamed down her face and left icy trails across her cheeks.

Light in the tunnel ahead gave her a sudden surge of hope.  A system of louvers came into view, with furiously spinning fan blades behind them.  Angeline had to crouch the last twenty yards then get down on hands and knees to crawl against the force of the wind.  Finally she reached a door set flush against the wall.  It was a small door, sized to be comfortable for someone six feet tall.

She tried the handle, hoping with all her might.  It was unlocked!

Angeline pulled the door open.  It came out six inches then the door was yanked from her hand and slammed shut by the wind.  It was almost enough to make her burst into tears.  She turned her back to the wind and collected herself.  She was almost free.  All she had to do was get the door open and make a run for the escalators.

It took her a long time to get her spiraling emotions under control again.  Hunger and thirst gnawed at her, making her feel weak and trembly.

She just had to approach it logically.  The first few inches hadn’t been that hard, but as the door opened wider, the increased surface area had caught the wind and yanked the door from her hands.

Angeline turned back into the wind and opened the door again, this time wedging her bare foot into the crack.  She got her hand in, and her arm and one leg.  The door was open about seven inches now, and the pressure on the door was very strong.  With gritted teeth, Angeline worked her arm around until she could push the door open as if she was doing a pushup.

Day after day of pushing her muscles to their limit had given Angeline a wiry strength that she hadn’t had before her capture.  She got the door open another inch and got her shoulder behind the door, and the side of her chest.  She had a better angle now, and could push with her knee as well.

She fought the door open against the wind and scraped her back across the jamb.  A last effort got her head inside, then her hips.  Angeline jammed her foot against the bottom, holding it open long enough to pull herself through the door the rest of the way.

The pressure was too great, though, and the door slammed shut before she could pull her foot away, ripping the nail off her big toe.  Pain seared through her whole body, and she fell backwards with a cry.  The sudden absence of the howling wind made her skin tingle and her ears ring.

In the sudden darkness, she gasped out a sob and grabbed her toe.  That was a mistake.  More pain crashed through her and her hand came away wet with blood.  Angeline cried out in agony then collapsed in sobs.  There was no way she was going to be running now.

The darkness closed in about her, suffocating.  Wind moaned through the cracks in the door, counterpoint to Angeline’s shaking sobs.  She didn’t know what to do next.  She couldn’t think past the pain in her foot.

Gradually, her despair, pain, fear and exhaustion pushed her down into a disturbed sleep.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

15 November, 2130.  Partial transcript of the only known recorded meeting of the newly formed Council of Matriarchs.  The camera is pointed down at a pair of feet the whole time, but the speaker is clearly Dr. Everard.

“Ultimately it’s not a matter of good and evil.  That is too black-and-white.  Evil as a concept is easily misinterpreted.  Most people who commit acts we consider evil are not intentionally doing harm.  Oh, there are the small percent of people who fit the term completely, but we’re not talking about them.  We’re talking about normal people who do things out of desperation that others look on with horror.

“It’s a different look at evil.  The Womack Process is evil, not because it itself is irredeemably horrible, but because of the lengths it drives men to out of desperation.  When a man is against the wall and he must come up with the payment for his next treatment within the next twenty-four hours or die… well, people will do anything in their power to keep on surviving.  If that means killing another person, or robbing them, or any of the atrocities that man commits against man, he will do it.

“Does that make him evil?  I don’t think so.  But the Womack Process that drove him to it is evil.  And when enough of the population is locked into this endless cycle of depravity, it will mean the end of civilization as we know it.”

Marcus gripped the unfamiliar weight of the pistol and tried to fight the growing sense of doom.  He had been in this room not twenty-four hours earlier, and it had been completely different then.  The two rows of cages were still here, but against the back wall was an untidy row of corpses.

Two of the bodies were young women, barely into their teens.  With them was a woman in a lab coat, one side of her head a bloody mess, and three men.  What the hell had happened here since he had left?

Anton paced in front of the bodies.  His breathing was hoarse, and when he spoke, his voice came out raspy and laryngitic.  His eyes were bloodshot and a vein pulsed in his forehead.

“We are currently in a state of crisis.”

Behind Marcus, the room was crowded with men and women.  They were mercenaries, career thugs and criminals.  As far as he knew, Marcus was on the only one there who had had to ask for a weapon.  They watched in various stages of interest.  Marcus felt out of place as the only person there disturbed by the pile of corpses against the wall.

“Our entire operation is about to be fucked,” Anton continued.  “One of the girls escaped.”

“How?” someone asked.  “You had them in a cage!”

“We still don’t know, exactly.  Mateo died from being repeatedly shocked.  I think they must have grabbed his stunrod and killed him.”

Someone in the crowd blew a disgusted snort.  “So why are we here then?  Do you need your diapers changed?”

“Wow, would you?” Anton sneered back.  “I’ll tell Crade how helpful you were.”

The man muttered, but didn’t respond.

“If you are quite done interrupting me…?  Good.  Like I said, one of the girls escaped.  Right after she gas-bombed Dr. Lenbroke and two of my men, she escaped into the air vents.”

There were mutters from the group and Marcus could understand.  How did a couple girls, unarmed and locked in cages, escape, somehow make a gas bomb, and kill four grown adults?  There had to be a truly awesome level of incompetence to let that happen.

The general mutters were that this wasn’t any problem of theirs.  Why should they suffer because these idiots couldn’t keep a couple children locked up?  Marcus agreed.  He didn’t even know how to shoot the gun in his hand.  He was a dilettante, a trust fund baby who hadn’t worked a day in his life before his sudden cancer diagnosis.  And yet, Grendal had a great deal invested in the black market ovary business.  She had pulled every resource she had to deal with the situation.  Marcus’ future was tied inextricably to Grendal’s.  Anything he could do to resolve the problem before the girl reached the authorities increased the chances of his own survival.  Anton was trying to speak, but his ruined voice wasn’t loud enough to drown out the others.

Marcus stepped forward and turned to face the gathered group.  Hard faces looked back at him, angry, afraid, or disgusted.  These were people who took calculated risks for a living, and they didn’t like their chances.  He held up his hands.  “Listen!” he shouted over the rumble of discontent.  “We’re all here because our lives depend on the success of this operation, one way or another.  It might provide us with our Womack treatments, or purchase our services, or perhaps we just owe Grendal Crade a favor.  The job is a simple one: we find the girl and do whatever it takes to protect this business.”  Marcus turned back to Anton.  “Just tell us what we need to do.”

Anton nodded his thanks as the growing mutters died away.  “By the time we got up into the air ducts the girl was long gone.  We looked, but we didn’t have the manpower to track her down.  There’s no way to go between levels by the air ducts, so she’s still somewhere on this level.  We need to patrol the level, track her down and bring her back.  Alive, if possible.”

“What’s the girl look like?”  Marcus asked.

“I’ll have an image sent to your tablets.  Split into pairs.  I want one group posted on the escalators to keep her from escaping.  Marcus, you’re with me.  Let’s go, people!  The sooner we find this girl, the sooner we can all go home.”

The people filed out of the room.  There were still some mutters, but the rising mutiny was gone.  These people were professionals.  They knew how to carry out a search and they weren’t fighting the directions given them anymore.

Marcus waited while Anton got out his tablet and forwarded the image to the searchers.  Marcus checked his tablet when it beeped, and was surprised to see the face of the timid girl.  If there had been a fighter in the cages, he would have put his money on the other one.  He glanced over at the row of bodies and swallowed.  The second girl was one of them.

“Jesus this is such a fuckup,” Anton sighed and put his tablet away.  “Thanks for standing up back there.”

Marcus shrugged.  “I don’t know that I’m happy with the business you carry out here, but I owe Grendal.”

“Don’t we all.”

“So,” Marcus asked, “what is our job going to be?”

“Coordination.  I didn’t tell them, but things are a little more complicated than they seem.”

“Anton, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but things are rarely simple.”

Anton smiled without any humor in his eyes.  “There may be a marshal or perhaps more coming for us.”

Marcus rolled a shoulder.  “I’m only recently arrived on Mars, Anton.  Who are the marshals?  Some kind of cop?”

“You would find them most common to your American FBI. They enforce law between clusters.  The crate I had you deliver, you remember it?  To Olympus Cluster?”

“It was last night, Anton.  I remember.”

“That crate had a marshal inside.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”

Anton made a wry face.  “At the time it seemed like a good idea.  The marshals had a warrant out for this one.  We figured, why not let the marshals solve our problem for us?  The man you delivered it to was a captain in the marshals, someone on our payroll.”

“Was?”

“He had a transponder hooked up to his heartrate.  He died sometime in the very early morning.”

“So this marshal you shipped him…?”

“Probably killed him.  And now he’s likely to be on the way back.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“He could have died too, or gotten captured, we just don’t know.”

“So we could have an entire marshal squadron dropping on our heads?”

It was Anton’s turn to shrug.  “It’s possible, but not likely.  That sort of mobilization is usually reserved for the marines.”

“So we might have marines trying to kill us?”

Anton gave an exasperated sigh.  “Look, Marcus, I like you, and I appreciate your assistance, but this isn’t your planet, right?  Unless we get into a huge firefight in public, the marines aren’t going to get involved.  At the most we have to deal with one or two marshals.

“The doc is already packing up his stuff since this location is burned.  Soon as we catch the girl, we’re outta here.  She’s the only one who can finger us, so we get the girl and lie low for a few weeks, then set up again somewhere else.  We’ll lose a few months of product, but we’ll come out the other side alive.”

Marcus nodded reluctantly.  “Okay.  That doesn’t sound too bad.”

Anton clapped him on the shoulder.  “It’s not.  The last couple days have been shit, but things will get better.  Christ, I could use a vacation.”

“Okay.”  Marcus fidgeted.  “But what do we do now?”

“We go and meet with the boss.”

“Grendal is here?”

“Oh, hells no.  The old witch isn’t the boss.  We’re going to meet Esteres.”

Meeting with Esteres wasn’t what Marcus had expected.  Anton had led them to a large room with vaulted ceilings and locked the door.  Then Anton spent nearly ten minutes going over the room inch by inch with a wand, sweeping for electrical signals and outside radiation.

“The room is lead-sheathed,” Anton commented as he carefully paced the walls, waving the wand in overlapping patterns, “and the rock is iron-ore.  It would take a very focused beam to get through.  Still, we sweep every time just in case the lead is breached anywhere.”

Marcus was sitting in one of two chairs at a desk which sported a rather expensive monitor.  Around the desk, a metal mesh had been rigged suspended from poles, with a lead running across the ground and plugging into the wall.

Anton finished sweeping and joined Marcus inside the mesh.  He fastened it behind him then tapped on his tablet.  The mesh flexed gently and Marcus heard a hum at the very top of his hearing range.  “It’s a faraday cage,” Anton said smugly.  “Extra security because nobody really knows you, Marcus.  It will stop any outgoing signals, just in case you’re an elaborate plant.”

Marcus started protesting, but Anton held up a hand, cutting him off.  “I know you’re not.  Still, orders are orders.”

Anton fiddled with the monitor and tapped in a code when prompted after a pointed look at Marcus to avert his gaze.

“Why am I even here, Anton?” Marcus asked.

“An excellent question.  Why are you bothering me, Anton?”

The monitor resolved to show a trim wujin gentleman with a prominent hawk nose.  His white hair was cut short in an almost military style.  Anton settled himself in the chair next to Marcus.  “Mr. Esteres, this is Marcus Truman.  An associate of Madam Crade’s.”

Marcus heard his cue and ducked his head in a short bow.  “It’s an honor, Mr. Esteres.”  He still had no idea who this Esteres was, but he had met men like him on Earth.  He forgot his irritation with Anton and his frustration at being dragooned into this messy situation, and simply focused on being polite.

“Mr. Truman.”  The wujin twitched his head in the slightest acknowledgement of Marcus, and then turned his attention fully back to Anton.  “You still haven’t explained yourself, Anton.  Is there something wrong with the location transfer?”

“No, sir.  Everything is moving on schedule.  Dr. Chung will be out of the area in the next twenty minutes.”

“Then why are you calling me?  You risk exposure.  If the marshals have an AI watching the traffic stream, this call could be picked out and traced.”

“Sorry.”  Anton was clearly flustered.  The interview wasn’t going the way he had planned it.  “Mr. Truman here has been instrumental in keeping things moving smoothly.  I wanted to suggest keeping him on in a more permanent capacity.  You required all personnel changes to go through you.”

Esteres glared at Anton.  “This is what you disturbed me for?  This line is for emergencies!  Fine, use Mr. Truman as you see fit.”  The screen went dead.

Anton leaned back in his chair with a strained smile.  “That could have gone better.”

Marcus closed his eyes and cursed silently to himself.  What had he just gotten himself into?  “I wish you had told me you were going to offer me a job,” he told Anton.

“What, and ruin the surprise?”  Anton clapped him on the shoulder and stood up.  “Cheer up, man!  You just hit the jackpot.  You’re set for life, now.”

“I have a job,” Marcus said irritably.

“Good.  You’ll need a cover.  One that explains a bit of travel, I hope?”

Marcus shrugged hopelessly.  Anton wasn’t getting it.  “It might, I suppose.  But that’s hardly–”

“Look, we’ll talk about it later, alright?  Think about it.  Esteres already gave you the green light.  We’re talking a hundred thousand credits a month, easy.  More, if you play your cards right.  We got vacancies that need filling, you feel me?”

A hundred thousand credits a month?  Marcus stared at Anton in surprise.  That was an incredible amount of money.  He followed Anton numbly out of the faraday cage and back to the halls.  There was a faint tinge of chlorine in the air, as if someone had just recently dosed their pool.

It took Marcus a minute to realize how out-of-place the smell was.  On Earth it would hardly raise a comment, but there were no swimming pools on Mars.

“What’s that smell?” he asked.

“Gas bomb,” Anton grunted.  “Only got a whiff of it myself, but it burned my throat something awful.  Dr. Lenbroke, Vasco and Jimenez got the full dose.  And that little bitch, Adora.  Word to the wise: you corner Angeline, watch for your life.  Fucking psycho killed her friend to escape.  She’s dangerous.”

Marcus’ stomach turned and he swallowed convulsively, trying not to throw up.  Anton was walking a pace ahead of him and didn’t notice his discomfiture.  Marcus struggled with his emotions.  This was all wrong!  He wanted to scream and run, find the nearest policeman and plead for protective custody.  But now, even that option was closed to him.  Thanks to Anton, Esteres knew who he was.  Marcus didn’t doubt for an instant that Esteres would have him killed if he tried to turn informant.

Once again, Marcus found himself forced into a role that he detested.  Yesterday his biggest problem had been how to somehow make enough money to keep himself alive.  Now that problem was handled, but replaced with the even greater threat of criminal involvement.

He wasn’t a bad man, Marcus reminded himself.  He had been forced into some bad situations, that was all.  Surely if he explained himself to Esteres, to Crade, to Dr. Bannister, they would understand and let him back out.  He wasn’t a stranger to difficult business deals.  Hell, it was a rare deal in big business that didn’t have some sort of unsavory attachment.  He didn’t care what other people did.  If Crade wanted to run a child smuggling operation, that was her prerogative.  He just didn’t have the stomach to get involved himself.

But first things first.  He was a problem solver.  A facilitator.  He was good at it.  He had a knack for smoothing situations out, greasing the right palm here, dropping the odd compliment there.  The current emergency was something he could work on.  Maybe if he made himself useful to Esteres in that capacity, he could stay detached from the actual kidnapping and murder.

He had to do something to take his mind off the scent of death in the air.  Time to get to work and find out where Angeline had gone.

“Is there a way we can get a map of the air ducts?” he asked.

Anton shrugged.  “Probably.  I don’t know how though.”

“It’s probably in a public archive somewhere.  Is there a terminal I can use?”

“Why?” Anton asked, suspiciously.

“If we know the layout of the air ducts, we can figure out the routes Angeline might have taken,” Marcus explained patiently.  “Once we know that, we can narrow down the search radius.  It’s not likely she’s gone far.  If I was a terrified little girl, I’d be holed up somewhere.”

Anton nodded.  “Okay.  Let’s go find a terminal.”

Marcus followed Anton, hating himself.  He hated the inescapable situation he found himself in, he hated Anton, he hated Crade, he hated Esteres.  He felt like he was betraying Angeline.  If it were only these mindless thugs searching for her, she might just avoid capture and tell the police everything.  Forget that.  Marcus’ survival was inextricably bound to this kidnapping operation.

Anton logged Marcus into a terminal and stood looking over his shoulder.  Marcus began searching, every keystroke like a nail in Angeline’s coffin.  He didn’t have a choice.  It was Angeline or him, and Marcus wasn’t about to die now.  He had too much to live for.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

The outpouring of colonists to Mars in the wake of the December Protocol didn’t come to a planet unprepared to receive them.  The colony domes were already in place, with the mechanism for creating more of them available and easy to duplicate.  The first wave of new colonists had no difficulty finding a place among the existing domes, and they set about constructing more as fast as humanly possible knowing the burden of refugees soon to come.

Not everyone that traveled to Mars was a recipient of the Womack Process.  Many people leapt at the opportunity to pit their wits and fortitude against a new planet.  For the wujin, life was precarious.  Nearly ninety-five percent of all who survived the trip to Mars died within their first year.  The other colonists took it in stride and gratefully added their bodies to the methane generators.  Methane fuel and nitrogenous fertilizer were more valuable than human lives.  Indeed, life on Mars would not have been possible if it were not for the tens of thousands of dead wujin providing biological material to grow crops and the fertilizer to run the algae tanks.

And not all the wujin perished.  The early years were difficult, but those wujin who had the nature to persist and survive against all odds won through and grew even stronger.

Min Yang disembarked the tram at Acheron station, feeling as though a thousand eyes were watching him.  Despite his imagination, only Shun Ruu was paying any attention to him.  He walked past Geiger Rock and led Ruu off the platform and into the market district.  It was nearing the lunch hour and the narrow passages between the stalls were a churning morass of humanity.

“Where are we going, Min?” Ruu asked.

It was a fair question.  Once Min was lost within the flow of the lunchtime press he felt safer, but every instinct he had was screaming that Acheron was a trap.  He wove his way through the press, using his shoulders to bull a path that Ruu could follow in.  At every corner he checked behind him, looking for a face that appeared too often, or someone hurrying to catch up.

Ruu caught his mood and followed silently.  Like Min, she was dressed in inconspicuous civilian clothing.  Someone looking closely might see the bulge of a handgun riding in a shoulder holster, but that was it.

Min ducked into a noodle shop and swung comfortably up onto one of the too-high stools.  If the proprietor felt any surprise at a pair of wujin dropping into his shop, he covered it well.

“What are we doing, Min?” Ruu asked.

“Eating.  What do you want?”

Ruu shook her head but reluctantly examined the menu.  “Is that real soya sauce?” she asked.

“This look like Tharsis Cluster?  What do you think?”

“Whatever.  I’ll have your special.  Extra sauce,” she said, turning back to Min.

Min shrugged and held up two fingers, doubling her order.  “I’m hungry,” he said, answering her accusatory gaze.

“We passed thirty places to eat, a dozen noodle shops before we got here.  What’s special about this place?”

“I haven’t been here before,” Min answered.  He didn’t tell her the real reason, that he didn’t feel safe in crowds since he had been attacked in Vastitas.  Only after going through the crowd for ten minute watching for someone following did he feel comfortable enough to sit down and eat.

“That’s not a very good way of picking a restaurant,” Ruu objected.  “Statistically, you’re bound to eat in a lot of shitty places.”

Min rapped the bar to get the attention of the proprietor, pulling him away from spooning thick green sauce over two bowls of steaming noodles.  “Is this a shitty place?”

The man puffed himself up indignantly.  “I make the best noodles in Acheron.”

“See?”  Min said.  “Best noodles.  Served right here.  What are the chances?”

Ruu rolled her eyes.  They were served and Min split his chopsticks, watching as Ruu took a cautious mouthful.  She raised her eyebrows in surprise.  “Huh.  This is actually really good.”

Min grinned at her and took a bite.  The extra sauce added enough punch to make sweat break out on his forehead.  They ate in silence except for polite slurping.  Ruu finished first and laid her chopsticks across her bowl.  The server whisked the bowl away and she leaned onto the bar staring curiously at Min.

“I don’t get it.  You always pick somewhere to eat at random?”

“I enjoy the unpredictability,” Min shrugged, speaking between mouthfuls.  “Even the bad places are a nice surprise.  It makes me look forward to eating good food even more.”

“How old are you, anyway?” Ruu ducked her head after asking the question, blushing.  It wasn’t really a rude question, but not a polite one either.  Some wujin took offense to it, while others were proud of how young or old they were.

“I was born on Earth,” Min said.  “I had my first Womack treatment there.”

Ruu’s eyes widened a little as she did the math.  “So you’re… old.”

Min sighed.  The food had suddenly lost its flavor and all he could taste was the sting of the spice.  “How old are you?”

Ruu stiffened then realized she couldn’t take offense when she had asked first and wilted.  “Fifty-three.”

“Most people wait to get the treatment until they’re older,” Min observed.

“I had an… autoimmune problem.  It was either get the treatment or live in a cleanroom for the rest of my life.”

Min nodded, pushing his bowl away and letting the server take it.  He tossed a credit chip on the counter.  “And Ping?”

“She got the treatment with me.  A show of support.”

“Sorry.  I had to know.”

Ruu brushed away a tear.  “It’s been eight years,” she said shakily with a tiny smile at Min.  “You’d think I’d be over it by now.”

Min shrugged.  “I’m not judging.”  He stood up, feeling satisfied but not full.

Ruu stood too.  “Thank you,” she said to the proprietor.  “Your food is delicious.”

The man beamed.  “I told you I make the best noodles.”

Min led the way back out into the market.  The press of shoppers had lessened and they could move easily through what crowd remained.  Ruu walked by Min’s side now.  Min glanced down at her, feeling an unusual degree of camaraderie with her.

He couldn’t stand most wujin.  They were grasping, self-centered, egotistical assholes for the most part.  Most operated in a sort of messiah complex, holding themselves above the unwashed masses, interacting with untreated humans as if they were the second coming of Christ.

Ruu was different.  She hadn’t gotten the Womack treatments out of some sense of personal entitlement.  She was still relatively young, and hadn’t yet become hopelessly cynical and bitter.  Min had long since given up on finding a woman he could love.  He didn’t like wujin, and normal humans were too transient.  They grew old and died, or whined at him to support their treatments.

It was a pity that Ruu batted for the other team and was clearly still hung up on the death of Ping.  If they both lived through the day, maybe Min would look her up in a hundred years and see if anything had changed.

As far as Min knew, there weren’t any wujin like him left.  He had gotten the Womack treatment in the line of duty.  He had never wanted to live forever, but had received the treatment so that he could go undercover and investigate officials who were suspected of corruption.  Only by becoming albino could he gain their trust…

“What’s next, Min?”

Min blinked, pulled out of his reminiscence by Ruu’s voice.  “Sorry, I was lost in thought for a moment.  Ninth level. Back to Lenbroke’s place.”

Ruu frowned, her brow furrowing.  “That sounds like a really dangerous move,” she said.

“Yeah.  They know we’re coming for them.”  Min unconsciously checked the pistol in its armpit holster.  Extra clips heavy with ammunition gave balance to the webbing.

“That’s it, then?  We just walk in and hope their aim is poor?”

“We already talked about this,” Min said.  “We don’t have time to call in the cavalry.  And even if we did, the marines would carry out their own investigation.  Your involvement would come under scrutiny and we both know how that would end.”

“I know.  I just…  I wish there was a better way.”

“If it’s any consolation, they probably won’t shoot first.”

“Not really.”  Ruu reached for her own pistol, caught the movement, and firmly tucked her thumb into her belt.  She scrubbed her free hand against her pants to wipe away the moisture.  “Shit, I haven’t done this kind of thing in years.  I’m nervous as a new whore.”

“It’s like riding a bike,” Min said, suppressing a grin.  “It’ll come back to you.”

They reached the escalator and stepped onto it together.  Down the tunnel, new strips had replaced the failed biolumin.

“I’ve never learned to ride a bike,” Ruu groused.  “How can you do this all the time?  Aren’t you afraid?”

Min took a deep breath, feeling the muscles in his chest stretch pleasantly.  The bruises he had received in his fight against Anton and his men were gone, along with the rib broken by Jiahao, healed by the Womack serum.  He felt fresh, rejuvenated.  He was ready to fight.  “I don’t know,” he said with a smile.  “I never wanted to live as long as I have, but I’m not ready to die just yet.  I’ve been telling myself that for two hundred years, and I’ll probably keep telling myself that for another two thousand.”

“That’s your big secret?  You just aren’t ready to die?”

“Statistically, it’s worked out so far,” Min turned away from Ruu slightly, cutting off her next question.  It was subtle, he didn’t want to offend her but he also didn’t want to continue down that topic of conversation.  Ruu took the hint and clamped her mouth shut.

It was a long ride down to the ninth level.

Min picked out the guards watching the escalator before Ruu did.  The guards were facing away from them, scanning the crowds.  He jogged Ruu’s elbow and she glanced up at him then followed his gaze out onto the open plaza.  A slight intake of breath told Min that Ruu had spotted them too.

“What’s the play?” she asked.

“Just… follow my lead.”

Min stepped off the escalator at the bottom and moved to the side so they weren’t blocking the flow of traffic.  The guards bracketed the escalators, one on each side to guard both the up and down escalators.  Min loosened his pistol in its holster and stepped up behind the guard covering the up escalator.

The guard was a man in his late thirties wearing red eyeshades and a drooping mohican.  He turned around at Min’s approach and glared at him.  “The fuck you want, cabron?”

Min looked up and stopped in mock surprise.  “Sorry, didn’t see you there.”

The guard glared at him for a moment and distant recognition exploded dimly behind his eyes.  “Hey, you’re the–”

Min drew his pistol and held it close to his body so people passing by wouldn’t see it.  “Take it easy,” he warned.  The guard boggled at him then twisted his head to look toward his companion.  “Ah ah, none of that,” Min said calmingly.  “I think you better take a bathroom break.”

“What, I can’t… no!”

He went for his gun.  Min was waiting for it, and it was almost comically slow.  He blocked the draw with his free hand and swept his gun around in a tight arc, punching the guard in the throat.  He staggered backwards choking, and Min swept his legs out from under him, catching the man’s weight as he went down and lowering him the last foot to the ground gently.

People were starting to look in their direction with mixed levels of concern and outrage.

“Get the other one,” Min grunted to Ruu.  He trapped the man’s gun arm with his knee and kneeled over him with his back to the second guard.  Louder, he called out, “Help!  This man is injured!”

Footsteps came running, followed by an “Oof!” and the crash of a man taking a dive onto the hard concrete.  Min turned his head enough to see Ruu twisting the second guard’s arm up, one foot planted in his armpit and using both hands to twist his wrist around at a painful angle.  She kicked the man’s gun away and jerked viciously as he tried to break free.  There was a crunch somewhere in his shoulder and he yelped.

Min turned his attention back to his guard, confident that Ruu had things under control.  The mohican was just getting his breathing back and gasped for air.  Min put his knee on the man’s solar plexus and leaned his weight in, watching with a critical eye as the man burbled around his bruised throat and fought for air.

“Here now!” a woman shouted.  “Get off that man!  I’m calling the police!”

“Shit,” Ruu said.

Without turning around, Min fired two rounds into the ceiling.  The reports echoed around the plaza.  There was a moment of silence, then screams and shouting broke out in a clamor.  Min released the pressure on the man’s chest and snugged the hot barrel of his pistol up under the man’s chin.  With his free hand, he grabbed the man’s hair and hauled his head up until he was looking directly into his eyes.

“Do I have your attention?” Min demanded, and got a frantic nod in response.  “Good.  I’m looking for a girl.  Angeline.  Do you know of her?”  Again the nod.  “Where is she?”

“Du– do– don’t know!”

“Min!” Ruu shouted.  “We have company!”

Min let the man’s head fall back to the concrete and stood.  The mingling traffic of people carrying out their lives had vanished.  A few discarded bags and tumbled crates marked where people had bolted for safety.  Down the wide hallways leading to the plaza, Min saw a few people running toward them.  Min fired a round into the man’s chest and stepped back fastidiously as he shrieked and coughed blood.

Ruu was looking at Min, her eyes wide, and then her gaze hardened.  With a twist of her shoulders, she broke her captive’s arm in two places and kicked him hard in the head.  He slumped back to the concrete twitching and moaning quietly.

A bullet ricocheted off the concrete floor and buzzed angrily through the air.  Min leaped at Ruu and pulled her down to the ground as more bullets screamed through the air about them.  “Get to cover!” he shouted and threw himself toward a pillar.  He scrambled behind it as more bullets dug into the stone, spraying puffs of rock chips through the air.  Min glanced over and saw Ruu had taken cover behind the metal escalator railing.

“Your plan sucks!” Ruu shouted at him, flinching as the steel she was hiding behind dimpled under a bullet impact.

“I’m improvising!” Min shouted back.  “If you have a better idea, I’m all ears!”

The gunfire stopped for a moment, and Min peeked out around the corner.  There were three of them, two of them were reloading as the third covered them.  Min jerked back around the corner as another salvo hammered into the pillar.

Ruu was right.  They were in a difficult position.  For the life of him, though, Min couldn’t think of a way it could have gone differently.  The gunmen advancing on them were professionals.  Thugs and amateurs didn’t have the coordination to advance under cover fire.  They were fighting mercenaries, ex-marines, probably.

“They’re going to flank us,” Ruu called.  Her voice was tight, but her brow was furrowed only with concentration.  Whatever fear or nerves she had had were gone.

Min cursed the regulations that restricted their load-out to monomol rounds.  The mercenaries would have to come to within ten paces for the rounds to be effective.  All the mercenaries had to do was hug the walls and they would be able to riddle Min and Ruu at their leisure.

Ruu started shooting.  Min glanced over, his mouth open to tell her to save her ammunition, but she wasn’t shooting at the approaching mercenaries.  She was shooting up.  The quality of the light changed abruptly.  Biolumin strips set into the ceiling shattered under Ruu’s fire and rained down into the plaza.

Capacitors in the broken strips shorted and vaporized, sending sparks arcing into the air along with boiling clouds of blue smoke.  Min felt like cheering, but he was already out of cover and running in a crouch across the plaza.

There was a muffled order, and a hail of bullets tore through the smoke, dragging threads of carbonized electronics in their wake.  Min rolled to the ground, but the mercenaries were aiming at the pillar he had first taken cover behind, and were way off target.

Blessing Ruu’s ingenuity, Min slid behind another pillar and held his sleeve to his face.  The smoke was acrid and stung his eyes.  Any second now, the fire suppression systems would kick on and coat everything in the plaza in foam.  He had to make the most of his opportunity while it was available.

A footstep grating on rock debris caught Min’s ear and he held his breath, not daring to inhale, lest he cough on the smoke and give away his position.  A figure pushed through the smoke to Min’s right.  It was a woman, her eyes locked on the pillar Min had originally been hiding behind.  She held a pistol in a two-handed grip, her face lowered to the sights.

Min let her pass him by then slipped out of cover quietly.  He holstered his pistol and drew his knife as he came up behind her.  In one motion he reached around and clamped a hand over her mouth, and rammed his blade hilt deep into her kidney.  The mercenary screamed into his hand and bucked wildly.  He held her head locked against his chest by brute strength and stabbed her in the neck.  Hot blood splashed over his hand as he ripped the knife free.  Her boots scrabbled wildly against the floor, but she was weakening fast.

He risked a deep breath then hauled her back into the smoke before letting her fall to the ground.  Biolumin shards crunched under his boots.  The mercenary bubbled at his feet, but didn’t have the strength to cry out.

The fire suppression system clicked on, sirens shrieked, and a mist of fine liquid sprayed down over everything in the plaza.  Even while it was still in the air, the liquid expanded into foam, blanketing everything and sweeping the smoke out of the air in an instant.

Min was ready for it, his pistol out and aimed.  As the foam rained down, Min caught sight of the closest mercenary, not ten feet to his left.  Reflexes drove his motions on automatic.  Min pivoted and fired, two rapid shots in center mass, then one considered shot in the head.  Before the mercenary had hit the ground, Min was already spinning, searching for the last one.

He needn’t have bothered.  Ruu came out from behind a pillar and dropped the last man with a rapid double-tap to the head.  In the even blanket of white foam, the explosive bleeding of head trauma was a crimson marker where the mercenaries had died.  Then a fresh layer of foam fell and obliterated any trace of them.

Min panted from his exertions.  The air was still harsh with the smell of smoke.  He and Ruu stared at each other.  They were covered in foam from head to toe.  She had a stupid grin on her face and it took Min a minute to realize he had a matching grin himself.

“Nice improvisation,” Min said.  His voice came out flat, the foam soaking up almost all the sound.  Even the fire alarm sirens were hushed, like they were too lazy to be properly loud.

“You fight well for an old man.”

“I’d laugh,” Min said, “but you’re not funny.”

“Come on, you’re just mad my plan worked better than yours did.”

Min rolled his eyes.  “We need to move.”

He led the way out of the plaza, wading through the hip-deep foam.  It was already drying out, sloughing off their clothing in sheets and lumps.  They made it to a hallway where the fire suppressant hadn’t sprayed. The last clinging lumps of foam cracked away and dissolved into dust, leaving behind a faint scent of chemical disinfectant.

Doors were opening in the hallway and people were sticking their heads out, staring at the plaza covered in foam.  A few of them were looking at Min and Ruu, taking in their clothing still white with powder.  The foam in the plaza would linger for several more minutes before finally breaking down.  The bodies would be revealed then, and Min wanted to be well away by the time that happened.

“Dr. Lenbroke’s apartment?” Ruu asked.

Min nodded.  He fixed his bearings and pointed down the hallway.  “This way, then to the left.”

Min led the way.  He didn’t know what they’d find in Dr. Lenbroke’s apartment, but for the moment, he didn’t have any other clues to follow.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

TV interview on a talk show, in August of 2102, six years before the Helix Rebuild became a reality.  The host is laughing, following the production agenda to mock the idea of human immortality.  Dr. Everard is quietly intense, no humor on her face or in her manner.

“Oh come now, immortality?  This is real life, doc, not science fiction.”

“Is it so hard to believe?  In the bible, people lived for centuries.  I believe the human body is capable of complete regeneration if only it is reminded how.  Stem cells are producing miracle cures every day.  All that is needed is a catalyst to prompt the body into creating a massive bolus of new stem cells.  Fresh DNA and unlimited stem cells would be enough to completely cure any cancer or damaged organ.  And if that is so, I don’t see why the effect wouldn’t also cause immortality.  What is old age but the gradual failure of the body to fix itself?”

“The bible?  Next you’ll tell us God has given you the formula!”  He pauses for the laugh track.  “Seriously though, who wants to live forever, anyway?”

Angeline woke to the sound of a distant fire alarm.  She was curled up in a corner of a room.  After so long spent in a cage, it was strange having open space around her.  Her toe throbbed and her muscles were cold and stiff.  In the dim light coming under the door, her toe was a clot of partially dried blood with her torn nail jutting out of it.

Painfully, Angeline climbed to her feet, drawn to the light coming from under the door.  She didn’t know what time it was or how long she had been asleep.  She walked over to the door, every other step leaving behind a bloody print.  She was limping heavily and only walking on the outside of her injured foot.  Even so, every step sent a fresh wave of pain spiking up her leg.

There were distant bangs, barely audible over the sound of the alarm.  Were those gunshots?  She felt a cautious stirring of hope and quickly squashed it down.  The only ones she knew of with guns were the kidnappers.  If she went running to the gunshots, in all likelihood they would just shoot her or capture her again.

She could walk easily, if painfully.  The searing pain of her toenail being ripped off had settled to a hot throb.  Delicately, she touched the nail sticking up from her big toe at a right angle.  It felt numb, but there was a twinge of pain at the base.  Angeline thought about tearing it off, but just imagining the resulting pain made her break out into a cold sweat and her hands shake.  She couldn’t do it.

Angeline had to move.  She had to get out of this room and do something.  It wasn’t logical, but just the feeling of being stuck inside a room drove her nearly into a panic.  It was like being stuck inside the cage all over again.

She opened the door and peeked out, squinting against the bright light.  She found she was looking into some sort of maintenance office.  Shelves of machinery parts ran along one wall.  A fabrication workshop took up most of the room, with an industrial-sized acrylic printer dominating the space.  The printer head was whirring around, moving and rotating on a three-axis gimbal, printing out a replacement part for something.

A bowl of soup had been left out on the table next to the printer with steam rising from it.  Someone had been in here only moments ago, probably pulled away by the sirens and the gunshots.  Her stomach cramped at the smell.  Feeling guilty, she entered the room and ate the soup, bolting it down, careless of the spills and mess she was making.  It was the best soup she had ever had.

Angeline drained off the last of the broth with a sigh.  There hadn’t been much left in the bowl, but she felt energy pouring back into her.  Muscles she hadn’t been aware of relaxed in her back and legs, and even the pain in her foot eased and became more tolerable.

Whoever was running the printer would come back soon to finish his lunch.  Angeline wiped her face with the hem of her shirt and made her way through the maintenance office to the door.  She opened it and stuck her head out.  There were people out there and she flinched away, her heart hammering.

It took her nearly a full minute before she worked up the courage to look again.  Yes, there were people out there, but none of them were paying any attention to her.  They seemed intent, moving quickly away from the sound of the siren.  Even as Angeline watched, the last person ran around a corner down the hallway and disappeared.  A distant door slammed.

Angeline inched through the door.  She had never felt so alone.  Even crawling through the air vents with her last friend dead behind her, she had been distantly aware of other people trying to find her.  Now, limping down the deserted hallway, it was like she was the only living person left in the cluster.

She had two options.  Instinct told her to run, to hide, and hope everything just went away.  Instinct wanted her to turn her back and flee deeper into the cluster, away from anything human.  Instead she went the other way, toward the sirens.  It was dangerous.  Loud noise would draw her captors.  But it was also the direction toward the escalators and freedom.

She made it to the hallway junction that led to the escalator plaza.  She heard movement ahead, and came to a stop at the corner.  Angeline peeked around.  There were maybe a dozen people in the plaza, wading through ankle-deep drifts of white powder.  In the center of the plaza under a section of destroyed ceiling biolumen strips, a line of people were lying on the ground.

It took her a moment to realize the people were dead.  The white powder was caked to their wounds, making everything look cleaner than it should.  There seemed to be two groups of people in the plaza, not counting the dead ones.  The first were loud, angry men with guns, arguing amongst themselves.  The other group was quiet, afraid, clumped together.

Angeline was torn.  The men with guns she didn’t trust at all.  She automatically clumped them in with her captors though she had never seen them before.  Two of the other group wore the brown uniform coveralls of maintenance workers, and she guessed the people without guns were concerned citizens or maybe there to turn off the fire alarm and clean up the powder.

Beyond both groups, the escalators ran up into the rock, leading to the level above.  The plaza was thirty yards across, a distance she could cross in a short sprint.  Then, once she was on the escalator, she could ride it up to the top level and find the police kiosk.  Safety was only a short dash away.

Except the men with guns were in the plaza.  Angeline gripped her stunrod with white-knuckled desperation.  If she was lucky, she could take one out with the stunrod before they realized she had it.  But there were three of them.  And they all had guns.

She weighed the possibility that the other group would assist her and dismissed it.  They wouldn’t get in her way, but she could tell by the way they treated the first group with deference that they wouldn’t challenge the guns.  Not for some girl they didn’t know.

The proximity of the escalators ached within her.  She was so close.  She longed to make the sprint and pray that she would make it to the escalator.  A month ago, she might have tried it.  She would have sprinted across the plaza, and trusted her life to God.  A month ago, she would have died, or been captured again, which was the same thing.

Her time in the cage had taught her a bitter truth about life and God.  There was no-one but herself that she could blame, and there was no-one but herself that she could rely on.  God helped those who helped themselves.  If she ran out into the plaza, trusting blindly, God would turn a blind eye to her fate.

So she waited.  She pulled back around the corner and leaned against the cold stone.  She could hear the men arguing in the plaza.  They were discussing whether it would be right to call the police.  The civilians thought it a necessary action, the gunmen argued it was a fine idea, but should be delayed for a time.

Suddenly, a shout snapped Angeline out of a half-doze.  She looked around the corner and saw a pair of policemen riding the escalator down into the lobby.  They had their guns out, covering the kidnappers.  Angeline wanted to shout with happiness and run out into the lobby right then.  Something made her hold back though and strain to hear what was being said.

“I swear, officer, we didn’t kill these men!  Look, those are monomol rounds!  Some psycho got ahold of police ammunition and killed them!”

Another of the kidnappers said, “Yeah, they’re our friends.  Co-workers.  We’re working a protection gig, someone is out trying to kill our employer!”

One of the policemen held up his hand, cutting off the earnest explanations.  “Who’s in charge here?”

A gunman stepped forward.  “I guess that’s me.  I’m the leader of our patrol.”

The policeman holstered his gun and pulled out his tablet, flipping it open so he could take notes.  “Start from the beginning.  What did you hear, what did you see?”

Angeline couldn’t believe it.  The police weren’t arresting them or anything!  She was already out from around the corner and walking toward the plaza before she realized what she was doing.  Surely the police would protect her.  Even if they didn’t, she could just get on the escalator and ride it out of there.  The kidnappers couldn’t do anything while the police were standing there watching them.

One of the gunmen saw her and his eyes went wide.  He nudged his companion and nodded in Angeline’s direction.  The other gunman saw her then they both turned their heads to look at the two policemen.

The police weren’t paying attention.  One was taking notes while the other had his back to Angeline.  He had his gun out still, but he held it loosely, clearly no longer on his guard.

Angeline broke into a run.  Her toe spiked pain up her leg and she felt fresh warmth leaking out under her foot.  Every other footstep was sticky with blood and the white powder stuck to her foot and stung the raw flesh where her nail had torn off.  She ignored the pain.  She was halfway across the plaza now.  One of the workers saw her and gasped, pointing a finger.

The policeman taking notes turned and saw her.  Concern flashed across his face.  Angeline wondered what she looked like.  It had been several days since she had the chance to clean herself.  Her hair was knotted and straggly.  Her shirt, her only item of clothing, was filthy and stained.

“Help!” she called.  “I need help!”

Both policemen were looking at her now.  The second officer holstered his gun and started toward her.  Behind him, Angeline saw the gunmen trade looks, and then the policeman was standing over her, reaching out with both arms to catch her.

His face exploded.  One second he was standing in front of Angeline, his face smiling kindly at her, and the next second, blood was showering down on Angeline and the policeman toppled forward on top of her.  She fell beneath his dead weight.  Pain in her foot lanced up her leg and she screamed, partly in pain, partly in horror.

Angeline’s ears were ringing.  There were more gunshots, then the throaty hammering of a fully automatic weapon.  Angeline struggled out from under the dead policeman.  Blood was in her eyes and she couldn’t see.  Her foot was burning with pain but she hardly felt it.  Panic swamped her and she desperately kicked free of the heavy policeman’s body.

She scrambled to her feet, scrubbing at her face.  The white powder had stuck to the blood and was clotting in her hair, on her hands, all over her face.  Blindly, she ran for the escalators, but a strong arm caught her around the midriff and she felt herself lifted off the ground.

Angeline remembered the stunrod dangling from her wrist.  She powered it up and swung it blindly, felt the head impact with something.  The arm around her waist jerked and she fought free, kicking and punching wildly.  Her throat was sore and she realized she was screaming.

Her vision cleared just enough for her to make out the escalators and she ran again for them.  She didn’t make it more than two steps before a great weight slammed into her and brought her crashing to the ground.  She groaned, the wind knocked out of her.  The stunrod had been knocked from her hand, but the strap was still around her wrist.  She felt a knee on her back, pinning her down and she groped through the drifts of powder until she felt the cold, hard handle of the stunrod again.

She swung it backward and a strong hand caught her wrist.  The stunrod was jerked away and her wrist was twisted up behind her back.  Angeline struggled, but the weight and strength of the man on her was impossible to overcome.  A hand slammed into the side of her head and the world spun.  Her limbs went limp.  She couldn’t muster the concentration to fight back.

Her screams were choked off as she struggled to get her breath back.  Her other wrist was seized and wrenched up behind her back painfully high.  A single hand wrapped around both her wrists, far too strong for her to pull free.  His fingers felt like iron, digging painfully into her as he hauled her up.

“Fucking bitch shocked me!”

Motion surged toward Angeline and a fist slammed into her stomach.  Sickening pain washed through her and she retched, bringing up the soup that she had just eaten.  She would have fallen but for the hand wrapped tight around her wrists.

“Knock it off, Adams.  Don’t be a sore loser.  You had your chance for the collar, but you fucked it up.  I caught her now.”

Angeline was dazed.  Her shoulders shrieked at her and sour bile filled her mouth.  Vaguely she was aware of the escalators, not five paces away.  She coughed and took a sobbing, shuddering breath.  Tears were running down her face, carving tracks through the blood and powder coating her.

She was swung around and pulled through the powder.  There was no strength in her legs to hold her weight and her feet dragged.  Behind her, she saw the two policemen, their red blood glistening brilliantly on the white powder.

In a tumbled pile, the workers and other civilians lay, bleeding copiously from multiple gunshot wounds.  As Angeline was dragged out of the plaza, she realized there was nobody left alive to tell the tale.  Fifteen men and women were dead in the plaza, and her freedom was gone once more.

“Is she even still alive?”

Angeline lay on the floor.  Her arms were behind her, zip ties binding her elbows and wrists together.  Another zip tie bound her ankles together.  The plastic strips dug into her skin and cut off her circulation.  She couldn’t feel her hands any more.

Her mouth tasted foul.  Distantly, she was aware of pain throbbing: in her foot, in her stomach, in her shoulders.  She wanted to move, to ease the pain and try and get some circulation back, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.  She had tried her hardest, done everything in her power to escape.  It just wasn’t enough.  There was no hope for her now.  If they didn’t kill her right away, they would watch her like hawks.

A man leaned down in front of her, waving his hand before her eyes.  She blinked and after a moment, strained her eyes to focus.  He grunted and stood up.  “Do you always damage your captives this badly?”

Angeline heard someone spit followed by a warm impact against her cheek.  The saliva rolled down her jaw and across her neck, leaving a cold trail behind it.  “You know how many of my men are dead because of her?”

She shuddered in revulsion and her stomach squirmed, threatening to empty itself again.  She tried to twist her shoulder enough to wipe away the saliva but her hands were bound too tightly.  Pain flared in her shoulders and she moaned involuntarily.  Tears welled and she gave up.  She didn’t have the energy to even cry properly.  She felt like if she started, it would continue endlessly until she finally died.

“I hardly think she’s a threat now.  Her hands are turning blue.”

Hands rolled Angeline over and fresh pain raced through her shoulders.  Her arms felt like they were going to pull out of their sockets.

“Stop, Marcus.  I won’t tell you again.”

“Oh, fuck off, Anton.  I’m just cutting the tie on her elbows.  If you’re so worried, why don’t you put in her a cage until we’re ready to move?”

“We don’t have time.  We’re only here until Dr. Chung finishes packing.”

“How do you expect to move the girl?  We can’t just lead her on a leash through the cluster.”

“Fine, put her in a crate.”

There was the buzz of a radio and a crackle of speech that Angeline couldn’t make out.

“Shit.”  Anton’s footsteps grew distant.  He shouted back, “Marcus, you’re responsible for the girl.  We have company!”

A door slammed.

“Fucking dick.”

Angeline felt cold metal against her arm, and then the zip tie holding her elbows together parted with a pop.  The sudden release of tension made her arms flop open.  She cried out in pain as abused muscles suddenly shifted.

“Come on, girl.  Time to get in your box.”

She felt arms circle her waist.  They were thick with muscle, but it wasn’t the same defined muscle as Min had.  These arms were thick only because the owner used to live on Earth.  He tried to pick her up, and Angeline let herself go limp and thought heavy thoughts.

“Ugh.  Damn, girl.  You’re taller than I am.  I can’t just carry you.”

Angeline felt a wary thread of hope.  Whoever this Marcus was, he seemed like an idiot.  And he was sympathetic to her pain.  She could use that, perhaps.

“My feet,” Angeline groaned, “my feet hurt so much.  I can’t walk on them!”

Marcus hesitated.  He wasn’t buying it.  Angeline wasn’t much of an actor, but fortunately she didn’t have to try very hard to sound hurt and lost.  She let some of the pain and despair of the last few weeks choke her voice, and thought of the policeman shot in the back of the head.  Tears rolled freely down her face and she curled up, trying to make herself look small.

The man held out for almost a full thirty seconds before his will broke and he cursed to himself.  He held the knife under her nose threateningly.  “I’m going to cut your ankles free.  But any funny business and I’ll be right behind you.  I’ll stab you before you have the chance to do anything, understand?”

Angeline nodded, trying not to look too happy about it.  Elation soared within her and she ducked her head, hiding behind her tangled hair, not trusting her face to stay sad.  Marcus leaned down and cut through the zip tie around her ankles.

“Okay, get up.”

“I just need a moment.  I can’t feel my feet.  Please,” Angeline cowered as if she expected Marcus to hit her.  “Only a minute.”

“This better not be a trick,” Marcus snarled.

Angeline shook her head.  She watched him through the curtain of her hair, studying him.  He was short, not even six feet tall.  While he had broad shoulders and thick wrists compared to a Mars-born, he also had a general softness about him.  There was none of the ripcord strength Min had, no defined musculature or surety of movement.  She didn’t doubt that Min could have picked her up and carried her with one hand, while Marcus had struggled to just get her off the ground.

Feeling began to return to her feet and she flexed her toes.  Pins and needles burned along her soles and she tapped her feet against the ground, trying to hurry the process.  She groaned in pain, mostly for Marcus’ benefit.

She was beginning to feel stronger.  Her wrists were still bound behind her back, but her legs were free.  Five minutes ago, she had been on the brink of total apathetic failure.  Now, she felt like she could take Marcus on, hands bound or not.

Her feet had stopped stinging so she rolled over onto her stomach and made a big show of struggling to pull herself to her feet, but not having the strength to do it.  Marcus stood back for a moment before lending her a hand and pulling her to her feet.  Angeline swayed and would have fallen if Marcus hadn’t grabbed her again.

“They really did a number on you, didn’t they,” Marcus muttered.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered.  She deliberately stubbed her injured toe and hot pain stabbed through her.  She groaned, not having to fake it, and leaned heavily on Marcus’ arm.

“Let’s get you to a crate.  I’ll cut your wrists free and you can rest there.  I’d put you in a cage, but Anton is right.  There’s no time.”

Angeline let Marcus half-carry her out of the room.  In the distance, she heard shouting and the thump of gunfire.  Marcus turned his head in that direction, worry on his face.

“I’m scared, Marcus,” she said.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said firmly.  “I’ll protect you.”

Angeline smiled beneath the curtain of her hair.  Marcus dragged her onward and she let herself be pulled along, though she leaned on him as much as possible, making every step an arduous task.  She thought about attacking him, but he still had the knife in his hands.  With her hands bound and without a weapon, she didn’t like her chances.  Patiently, she bided her time.  Marcus had said he would cut her hands free.  There would be an opportunity there.

Marcus pulled her through a doorway and into the room with the cages.  The bodies against the wall caught her attention and she cried out involuntarily as she recognized Adora.  The other girl had died fighting.  She had died free.  That was more than Angeline could say for herself.

A tug on her arm pulled her around and she saw the crate against one of the walls.  If she let herself be put inside a crate, that would be the end.  Wherever she came out, Marcus wouldn’t be the one in control of her.  They would never let her be free again.

This was her last chance.

Marcus held her by the elbow and lifted the lid of the crate up.  It gaped open at her and she felt a thrill of fear go through her.  That crate meant death for her.

She let herself sag downward.  She didn’t quite fall to her knees, but it was a near thing.  Marcus caught her elbow before she went all the way down and held her up.  “I’m going to cut your bonds,” he said.  “I want you to get into the crate and lay down after I do.  Do you understand?”

Angeline nodded.  Marcus was behind her, so he couldn’t see her face.  If he could have see her look of furious determination, he would never have cut her hands free.  But he didn’t, and the cool of his knife ran alongside her wrist.  It hitched for a moment, and then Angeline’s hands came loose.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-EIGHT

Press conference on 21 December, 2130, two days before the U.N. was to meet and hear testimony from Dr. Womack.

“Dr. Womack!  You’re going to have your first formal debate with Dr. Everard on Saturday.  How do you think it will go?”

“Dr. Everard is a brilliant scientist and a humanitarian of the first class.  It will be an honor to debate with her and discuss the future of our treatments.  I’m confident that the officials listening to the debate will come to only one conclusion: the Womack Process is not a danger to society.  There is too much that is solved by it to consider banning it.  Cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, heart disease, organ failure, just to name a few, and let’s not forget old age.”  Dr. Womack winks and grins.

“And what of the allegations that you stole the research from Dr. Everard?”

Dr. Womack’s comfortable smile fades and he scowls at the collected journalists.  “Who told you that?  It’s nonsense.  Dr. Everard released her study to the general public.  Look, I understand people are upset.  But it’s not something you can blame my treatment for.  If someone gets drunk and runs a pedestrian over in a car, you don’t blame Ford for it.  The Womack Process is the only way all humans are guaranteed a life that goes on forever.  Criminals kidnapping children and murdering them is not something I would ever condone.  What do I look like, some kind of monster?”

Min Yang pushed open the door to Dr. Lenbroke’s apartment cautiously.  The apartment looked as if Dr. Lenbroke had left for work and had simply forgotten to lock the door behind her.

“What are we looking for?” Ruu asked, shutting the door behind them.

“I’m not sure.  We need some way to figure out where the kidnappers have their operation.”

“I don’t think the doctor would have it posted on her fridge,” Ruu grinned.

Min glared at her.  “I’m not looking for a fridge note.  Are you going to help or just be sarcastic?”

Dr. Lenbroke’s apartment wasn’t large, though it was well appointed.  The throw rug in the living room was soft organic cotton; the couch was upholstered with imported leather.  The entertainment console was large and new, with small, high-quality speakers mounted around the room.  The kitchen and dining areas were spacious, with an imported hardwood dining table.

It didn’t take the two of them long to search through the front area of the apartment.  Satisfied they hadn’t missed anything, Min moved to the rear of the apartment.  Through an open doorway, the rest of the floor plan was split into a bedroom and an office.

Ruu took the bedroom.  “I know where a woman might keep things that are secret,” she said.  “You do your man thing in the office.”

Min shrugged.  There was sense in that.  The office featured a fairly nice computer workstation, which Min left alone for now.  There might be something of use on it, but he couldn’t imagine Dr. Lenbroke leaving it without a password.  It would take months with an AI to get past even a semi-competent password.  One wall was lined with bookshelves; heavy medical texts took up most of the shelf space, with knickknacks and mementos occupying the gaps.  A large reading table sat next to the computer desk.

He wasn’t searching for evidence.  He had enough of that to justify Dr. Lenbroke’s execution on the spot.  He wasn’t interested in building a case against her and making sure she served time in the ice mines.  He wanted to kill her.

The drawers under the reading table were locked, but, as Ruu had suggested, he simply had to “do his man thing.”  He could easily shoot the locks out of the drawers, but the monomol rounds might obliterate anything useful inside.  Looking around the room didn’t offer any immediate solutions, so he went to the kitchen and grabbed the heaviest pieces of metal he could find.

Equipped with a honing steel and a rolling pin, he returned to the office.  The honing steel made a poor chisel, but he wasn’t concerned with subtlety or preserving his tools.  Using the rolling pin as a mallet, he put the tip of the honing steel against the drawer locks and with a few hard strokes, drove the locks through the wood.  It felt like a desecration, but in the end it was just wood.  More could be shipped in from Earth.  The same could not be said for the lives being taken by the kidnapping ring.

“What the hell are you doing in there?” Ruu called.

“Being a man,” Min answered.  He hauled open the drawers and dumped their contents out onto the reading desk.  There was a smattering of office supplies that he pushed to one side, leaving a collection of papers and a plastic shipping box containing a handful of data chips.

Min flipped over the shipping box, searching for a label.  Sure enough, he found one, though it had been mangled when the box had been opened.

Ruu stuck her head into the office.  “Nothing in the bedroom.  Find anything?”

“Maybe.”  Min smoothed out the label carefully, trying to match the edges of the tears.  After a minute, he had reconstructed enough of the address to determine it wasn’t Dr. Lenbroke’s apartment.  “Get your tablet out,” he said.  “Search for this address: ACH9-618.  I think.  That eight might be a five.  Or a three.”

After a moment of tapping, Ruu said, “Eight is nothing, but five is a storage facility.  Spare parts overflow for mining equipment.”

“That has to be it!”  Min scooped up the data chips from the box and pocketed them in case they held something useful or incriminating.  “Got directions?”

“Yes.  One second… okay.  Oh.  It’s right around the corner.”

“Guess the good doctor wasn’t interested in a long commute.”

“What’s the plan now?  Do we just go in shooting?  We have no idea how many guns might be in there.  Or if it’s even what we’re looking for.”

Min frowned.  His blood was up and he itched with the urge to do damage, but Ruu had a point.  “I’m open to suggestions.”

“If the last fight we were in was any indication of your normal operating procedure, I don’t know how you’re even still alive.”

“I would have figured something out.”

“I’m sure.”

“Look, I’m open to constructive criticism, but you’re not helping right now.”

“Okay.  Sorry.  I think I have an idea.”

“I don’t like this plan,” Min grumbled.

“It’ll get us in the door.  That’s what’s important.  Now be quiet and play your part.”  Ruu hammered on the door with her pistol butt.  Her other hand was twisted up in Min’s collar.

Min stood to one side.  His hands were behind his back, zip tied together.  The plastic tie had a very fine cut in it, almost all the way through.  All it would take was for Min to yank his hands apart and the tie would break.  At least in theory.  His pistol was tucked into his belt behind his back and his shirt hung loose over it.  There was no way it would remain hidden if he was searched, but they didn’t expect things to go that far.

Ruu raised her gun up to knock on the door again and it swung open abruptly.  A man greeted Ruu with a shotgun aimed at her face, cradled awkwardly with one arm in an inflatable cast.  “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the one cleaning up your mess.”  Ruu glared at the man.  “Who the hell are you?  Get that fucking gun out of my face, God damn it.”

A hint of uncertainty crossed the man’s face and Ruu pushed the barrel of the shotgun to the side.  With her other hand, she hauled Min from behind the wall.  “Look who I caught skulking around outside.  Weren’t you assholes supposed to have dealt with this piece of shit already?”

The man startled as he recognized Min.  “It’s the marshal!”

“It’s the marshal!” Ruu mocked, and shoved the mercenary backward into the room, pushing the door open wider and pulling Min in after her.  “Of course it’s the fucking marshal.”

The room had a reception desk in one corner with a shoddy terminal planted carelessly on it.  There were waiting chairs against the wall and a double door in the back with a sign with “STORAGE” above it.  Two more men were coming through the door, they were armed but their pistols were in their holsters.

“Vito, who’re these– is that the marshal?”

Vito stepped to the side and raised his shotgun to cover Min.  “Yeah.”  He licked his lips nervously, his hands working on the grip of the shotgun.  “She captured the marshal outside.”

“And who’re you?” one of the new arrivals demanded.  “You’re not one of us.”

“Of course I’m not,” Ruu snapped.  “You shit stains sent this man to us trying to make your problems disappear.  He killed my boss and left me for dead.”

Vito looked at Ruu again and his shotgun swung around to focus on her.  “You’re a marshal too?”

“Of course I’m a– for fuck’s sake.  Is there someone here who isn’t a God-damned retard?  Who’s in charge?”

“Anton?” Vito frowned.  “He’s busy.  But we can take Marshal Yang off your hands.”

“So you can claim the reward?  Do I look like an idiot?” Ruu blazed at him.  “No, fuck that.  I caught him, I get the prize money.  And a job while I’m at it.”

“A job?” Vito took half a step back, his resolve withering under Ruu’s anger.  “I can’t… I mean, that’s up to Esteres.  Anton can set up a meeting, but–”

“Why am I wasting my time with you then?”  Ruu pushed Min in front of her and headed for the door.  Vito tried to protest, but wasn’t fast enough to get in front of her.

One of the other mercenaries was faster on his feet though, and planted himself in front of the door.  “I don’t think so, puta.  You ain’t going nowhere.  Not until we find out who you are.”  He stepped up to Min and raised his hands getting ready to pat him down.

“Oh well,” Ruu said, and shot him in the head.

The monomol round took the mercenary between the eyes, punching a tiny hole before it expanded and blew out the back half of his head in a fountain of gore.  Vito shrilled a screech and hauled the shotgun around, but he was awkward with one arm in a cast, and didn’t get the gun anywhere near Ruu before she shot him twice in the chest.  Vito collapsed and the shotgun went off, blowing a hole in the reception desk and filling the air with clouds of shredded paper.

Min twisted his wrists, and for a long moment the zip tie held before it finally parted with a pop.  The last mercenary was reaching for his gun when Min caught his wrist and twisted it around.  Min grabbed the pistol from the mercenary’s holster and shot him twice before letting him fall writhing to the ground.  He planted a boot against the mercenary’s chest to hold him still and shot him one more time in the head.

Ruu snatched up Vito’s shotgun and darted for the door with Min hard on her heels.  The door said it led to storage, but Min expected it to be a sham.  To his surprise, the room beyond was an enormous warehouse.  Shelves marched in orderly rows, stacked with crates and loose parts.  There was a wide center aisle, and enough space between the rows for a forklift.

Min caught Ruu’s arm and pulled her out of the center aisle moments before a door on the far end banged open and a group of mercenaries poured through.  In the back, Min recognized Anton, waving his arms and exhorting the mercenaries into action.

If only he had his rifle.  Min watched the mercenaries rush toward them across the warehouse.  With a rifle, it would have been easy to pick them off one at a time before they could close the distance.  Instead, he was stuck with the pistol he had lifted off the mercenary and his own monomol pistol.  He had solid rounds in the mercenary’s pistol, but, he checked, only six rounds left in the magazine.

Min slid the magazine back into the pistol with a sinking feeling.  There were eight mercenaries, with Anton in the back.  They had lost the element of surprise, too.  The mercenaries were all running, with weapons drawn and ready to use.  If there was any blessing to be had, not all of the mercenaries were carrying guns.  One of them had a compact submachine gun, three had handguns of various descriptions and the rest sported stunrods and one was carrying a heavy fire axe.

In the back, Anton was swinging a huge, chrome-plated hand cannon, a Compensator, as Min liked to call them.  There just wasn’t any practical purpose for carrying such a large pistol.

“You take out the one with the Uzi first,” Min whispered to Ruu, handing over the mercenary’s slug pistol.

“The what?”

“The submachine gun.  In the back, dark hair.”  It wasn’t often that Min felt old, but every once in a while he dropped an Earth term that left the others around him baffled.  It made him abruptly homesick for blue skies overhead and wind-blown clouds scudding above the trees.

“Right.  Wait, is that your plan?”

Min grinned at her.  “My turn.”

“I hate your plans,” Ruu grumbled, but she rested the pistol on the shelf in front of her and drew a careful bead on the approaching knot of gunmen.

Trusting Ruu to cover him, Min slid down to the end of the shelf and crouched behind a crate.  The running footsteps were coming closer and he tightened his grip on his pistol.  Sometimes he hated this whole fucking planet.

Mentally, he paced out the effective range of the monomol rounds and estimated the position of the approaching mercenaries.  Too close and they could engage him in overwhelming numbers.  Ruu wouldn’t be able to assist without risking hitting him on accident.  Too far and his monomol rounds wouldn’t have the penetrating power to be lethal and the gunmen among the mercenaries would just shoot him full of holes.  His window would only be seconds wide.

He wanted to peek but restrained the urge.  If they saw his head poking out from behind the box, however unlikely, it would ruin everything.  The footsteps came closer and Min tried to remember if the mercenaries had been stringing out as they ran, or if they had stayed bunched close together.  Ultimately, it didn’t matter.

Min almost jumped out too early, pulled himself back, and then almost jumped out too late.  The mercenary leading the pack was only ten feet away and startled with a shout when Min leapt out.  The rest of the mercenaries were in a straggly group with the furthest a good twenty or thirty feet outside of monomol range.

At ten feet, the monomol rounds were barely distinguishable from bullets.  Min’s first two rounds punched clear through the leading mercenary and he toppled in a tumbling tangle of limbs.  It took time for a man running at full tilt to come to a stop and aim a weapon with any sort of reliable accuracy, and Min took full advantage of the opportunity.

Min emptied his pistol into the approaching mercenaries as fast as the gun could cycle.  He was going for damage, not necessarily killing shots.  He didn’t have time to line up more considered placement, just concentrated on pulling his trigger whenever a mercenary lined up with his front sights.

Min’s sudden appearance sent a ripple of shock through the mercenaries.  They were running toward gunfire, so they were at least mentally prepared to deal with an intruder, just not quite yet; and not one that appeared out of nowhere firing wildly into their midst.

Two more mercenaries died before Min’s pistol ran dry, then the first of the mercenaries reached Min, swinging wildly with the fire axe.  Min threw his empty gun in the man’s face and dived into a roll.  He came to his feet in time to frantically duck another hurried swing.  In the back of the pack, the mercenary with the submachine gun was running sideways, trying to find a gap in the press he could shoot through.  Min danced to the side, keeping the axe man between himself and that gun.  What was Ruu waiting for?

The axe man pressed Min again and he had to dance back out of range and into the sights of the submachine gun.  With a shout, the mercenary in the back raised his gun and Min knew he was dead.  Then, with a crisp report, the mercenary’s head was slapped sideways in a spray of gore.

The two remaining gunmen spread out, peering into the shadows trying to locate where Ruu was hiding.  The axe man and another mercenary swinging a buzzing stunrod redoubled their efforts on Min.  The mercenary with the stunrod was bleeding from a monomol leg wound.  His heavy canvas pants had stopped most of the round, but enough had gone through to pulverize a coin-sized chunk of flesh and muscle.  Blood ran down his leg and squelched in his shoe.  He was limping heavily, but had worked himself up into a rage, ignoring the pain and swinging wildly at Min.

Min was forced back.  Between the heavy swings of the fire axe and the wild, uncoordinated buzzing of the stunrod, he couldn’t find an opening to press an attack of his own.  He kept moving to the side, forcing the wounded mercenary to put weight on his injured leg and keeping the axe at a distance.

Ruu fired again and one of the gunmen folded over, clutching his stomach and screaming.  The other gunman started shooting into the shelves.  Ricochets hummed and fabricated polymer parts shattered.  Min saw Ruu crouched behind a crate, then a bullet ripped through and knocked her sprawling.  Min shouted and the distraction nearly cost him his life.

A kick from the axe man hit Min in the hip and pushed him off balance.  Before he could recover, the stunrod slammed into his arm and a light detonated behind Min’s eyes.  He stumbled and tried to put out his hand to catch himself, but his arm was nothing but a bundle of fizzing, agonized nerves.  Min crashed heavily to the ground.  He rolled, more on reflex than conscious thought, and the axe smashed into the ground where his head had been, digging into the concrete with a spray of sparks.

Min rolled again and kicked out blindly.  His foot connected with something and a man grunted in pain.  Min pushed all thought of Ruu from his head.  Another lapse and he was a dead man.  From his back, Min saw the axe man wind up for another skull-splitting strike.  Min faked a roll to the left then threw himself to the right.

Again the axe whistled down and smashed into the concrete.  Min was ready for it this time and grabbed at the axe with his good hand.  The reverse of the fire axe was an ugly six-inch spike, and Min closed his fist around it as the mercenary pulled it from the concrete.  The mercenary hauled on the axe, trying to break Min’s grip, and Min let himself get pulled to his feet.  Then, seeing how pulling wasn’t working, the mercenary rammed the axe forward into Min.

It was like a gift.  Min rode the push of the axe and turned the weight of the mercenary against him.  It took barely any effort and Min flung the mercenary bodily through the air, the axe now in his hands.  With a last, grunting effort, Min leapt at the mercenary and brought the axe down spike-first into the man’s chest.  Min pulled at the axe to free it, but the head had smashed through the man’s rib cage and was bound up among the shattered ribs.

Intense pain exploded in Min’s back and he screamed as every nerve in his body burned with fire.  He collapsed next to the dead axe man, his muscles jerking out of control as the stun current chewed through his system.  The wounded mercenary loomed over him and stabbed down with the stunrod again.  Pain exploded in Min’s stomach and his abdominals contracted involuntarily, folding Min in half with a jerk.  He curled around his shrieking muscles, unable to do anything as the mercenary worked the axe free of his dead companion.

From the corner of his eye, Min saw the axe sweep up for the killing blow.  Then the throaty boom of a shotgun punched the mercenary from his feet.

Min’s nerves shrieked at him and blackness threatened to close down around him.  Ruu staggered out from behind the shelves, the shotgun hanging loosely in one hand.  The last thing Min was aware of was the far doors swinging shut behind Anton as he fled.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

The last recording of a Matriarch available on Earth is a shot in a colony transport in lunar orbit, a few hours before launch and the long fall toward Sol’s second planet.  The Matriarch is a young woman in appearance, no more than sixteen, yet she carries herself with the gravity and intensity of a powerful businesswoman in her prime.  An old man is pleading with her, his hair white with age.  Liver spots are scattered over his loose skin and his hands tremble.

“I’ve told you a hundred times,” the Matriarch is saying.  Her voice is rich with authority, though not without a measure of compassion.  “I’m sorry, father, but there is nothing the Helix Rebuild can do for you.  You cannot come to Venus with us.”

The man seems to deflate.  He stares at his daughter with a terrible longing and a tear tracks down his wrinkled face.  Without another word, he turns away.  The Matriarch watches him go, her face stony, then something cracks in her and she races over to him.  The gravitas falls away and for a moment she is a girl of sixteen again.  The old man at the end of his life and the Matriarch just beginning hers embrace before the airlock one last time, father and daughter for a final stolen moment.

Angeline felt the bonds on her wrists fall away.  She turned her head and looked through the tangled curtain of her hair at Marcus.  He nodded at her and gestured toward the crate.

“You’ll be safe in there,” he said.

Safe?  Angeline bared her teeth in a rictus of hate.  This… this man, this outsider who was so fresh from Earth he still had a suntan, dared to tell her what was safe?

Marcus saw the change come over her and he took half a step back, his eyes widening.  Angeline spun and jumped at him, her fingers hooked into claws searching for his eyes.  She was silent, only heavy breathing and grunts of effort coming from her.  The rest of the noise in the room was coming from Marcus.

Angeline ignored his shrieks and pleas.  Her finger nails were bloody and red lines were cut across Marcus’ face.  One of his eyes was bloodshot and squinted nearly closed and she felt a surge of raw, barbed joy at seeing damage done.

“What is wrong with you?” Marcus cried out.  “We had an agreement!”

“What’s wrong with me?” Angeline hissed.  “Are you stupid?  They’re going to kill me!”

Marcus cupped his scratched eye with one hand.  He shook his head, unable to dispute it.  “If I let you escape, I’ll die too.”

“So I’m supposed to just die for you?” Angeline laughed.

“Yes.”  Marcus lunged at her, his free hand spread wide to grab her.

Angeline had spent a lot of time in her cage, thinking about ways to overcome a man trying to grab her.  All the dozens of glib self-defense suggestions she had discarded one after the other as being impractical or insufficient.  In their place she had decided on a few potential moves which she favored for their simplicity and reliability.

Marcus ran toward her and Angeline took half a step forward and kicked as hard as she could, with all the power of her newly strengthened legs, directly in Marcus’ groin.  He coughed out a gargling scream and fell to the ground, both hands clamped around his groin.  Angeline felt no sympathy for him, only the feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment for a kick well-placed.

She watched him sobbing on the ground and he seemed so little now, broken and doomed.  Would they really kill him if she escaped?  Angeline found she didn’t care.  Let them.  She hoped they would.

Without another glance back at Marcus, she left the room of cages.  Marcus was no longer a threat to her.  She closed the door and found there was a lock on the outside.  With a grim smile, she spun the lock over.

Now to make good her escape.  She could take the same path she had taken last time, return to the examination room and climb up into the air ducts again.  She was fairly certain she could find her way to the maintenance room once more.  She thought of the workers being gunned down with the policemen and bile rose in her throat.  How many people had died today?  How many people were dead now because she had decided to escape?

And what of the gunfire she had heard earlier?  Was Marshal Yang looking for her still?  She was torn.  The safe way might be through the ducts again, but that hadn’t worked out for her last time.

A door down the hall banged open and a wujin backed out, guiding an autodolly piled high with crates strapped together.  The man turned and Angeline recognized him as Dr. Chung.  For a moment, Angeline locked stares with the doctor.  She was beyond fear, now.  She almost wished he would attack her.

To Angeline’s surprise, Dr. Chung backed away from her.  There was fear in his eyes.

Angeline took a step toward him and he abandoned the dolly and fled, tearing off down the corridor.  She pursued him and caught a glimpse of her reflection as she passed the dolly.  Her shirt was soaked in blood from the slain officer.  Her hair was tangled and matted, her face streaked and caked with white powder.  She looked like an avenging spirit, a creature raised from the dead to hunt the living.

The doctor knew the way out.  Angeline latched onto that thought and ran down the hallway after him.  The pain in her toe was forgotten.  Ahead of her, Dr. Chung turned left where Adora and Angeline had taken a right.  Angeline heard a door open, then the tumbling crash of someone falling to the ground.

Angeline turned the corner.  Dr. Chung was on the ground, staring back at her, his eyes wide with terror.  Anton was picking himself up, but his gaze was turned toward the door he had just come from.  He held a massive pistol one-handed, covering the door like he expected someone to charge through at any moment.

Dr. Chung grabbed Anton’s leg.  “She’s here!” he shrieked, “She’s right here!”

Anton kicked the doctor loose.  “Get off!  They’re not here yet, I…”  He followed Dr. Chung’s gaze back and saw Angeline.  “You!  What’d you do to Marcus?”  Anton pivoted and pointed his gun at Angeline, then glanced back at the door and swung the gun back around.

“She killed him!” Dr. Chung cried, scrambling backwards away from Angeline.  “She’s killed us all!”

Angeline didn’t know what to do.  Freedom was through that door, but Anton blocked the way with that enormous pistol of his.  She couldn’t back down now.  If she ran, Anton would track her down and she would die.  No.  She refused to die trapped in a cage like an animal.  If she had to die, she’d do it standing on her own two feet, on her terms.  Adora had taught her that much, at least.

She gritted her teeth and walked forward.  If the only way out was through Anton, then so be it.

Min’s face stung and he shook his head and held up an arm, blocking Ruu’s next slap.  His head ached and his nerves burned beneath his skin.  From the tips of his fingers to the roots of his hair, everything hurt.

“Leave it, I’m up!”

Ruu sat back on her haunches and stuck out a hand to help pull him to his feet.  Grudgingly, Min accepted it and stood, swaying slightly.  He felt worn out.  The buzz of vibrant good health from the Womack treatment was gone, leaving only exhaustion and pain in its place.

“How are you doing?” Ruu asked him.  “One of the mercenaries ran away.  He might be going after Angeline now.”

“Anton,” Min grunted.  He scooped his pistol off the ground and forced himself to stand up straight with a muffled groan.  “I’m well enough to take that fuck down.”  He reloaded, the routine action calming.  Already his hands weren’t shaking as much and he felt steadier on his feet.

“Good.”  Ruu looked at him with concern in her eyes.  “I need you, Min.”

“That’s touching, but bad timing.”

“No, I’m serious.  You’re the only one who could speak on my behalf, so I need you to live through this.  No more heroics.”

Min frowned at her.  Heroics?  “Look, we can talk about this later.  Right now, we have a girl to rescue.”

He turned, ignoring Ruu’s frustrated glare, and jogged across the warehouse to the far door.  The short jog loosened his muscles and shook away the worst of the lingering stun effects.  He reached the door at the same time as Ruu.

“I’ll go first,” she said firmly.

Min nodded.  Just the short run had left him winded.  Bravado and stubbornness could get you pretty far, but he didn’t relish getting into a gunfight with Anton.  Despite his vocal certainty with Ruu, he could feel the sluggish response in his nerves.  It would take hours for the rest of the stun damage to clear from his nerves.  Maybe it wouldn’t clear all the way until his next treatment.

He got into position at the door and Ruu stacked up, ready to roll around the jamb as soon as he opened the door.  Her appropriated shotgun was tight against her shoulder.

Ruu nodded to him and he hauled the door open.  She flowed through and Min followed, feeling distinctly less agile.

The hallway looked like an office corridor: ten feet wide and stretching away around forty yards.  Halfway down, another hallway forked off to the right.  Doors studded the hallway, presumably leading to offices or more storage space.

Min took it all in as he stepped through the doorway.  There was a man in a lab coat on the ground, propped up on his elbows, his hair and skin proclaiming him a wujin.  Down the hallway near the fork, Anton held a squirming girl in one hand, that monster handgun of his pointed at her head.  Min took in Angeline’s state and a cold fury gripped him.

“Stop where you are, Marshal!” Anton cried.

“Min!” Angeline cried.  “Don’t let him take me!”

Min raised his own gun, knowing the distance was too great for the monomol rounds to do anything but cause skin lacerations and bruising.  The wujin on the ground was pushing himself away from Anton toward the door.

“She’s dead,” he was saying, his voice high with hysteria.  “I’ve killed too many and they’re coming back to haunt me!  Oh God, protect me!”

Min took a step forward and Anton pressed the barrel against Angeline’s head.  “Ah, ah, Marshal.  Not one more step or the girl dies.”

“What happens after you shoot her?” Ruu asked, matching Min’s step forward.  “Then you don’t have a hostage anymore and we gun you down.”

Anton licked his lips nervously.  “Don’t come any closer!”  He took the gun away from Angeline’s head and aimed it at Ruu.  “I’m warning you!”

The wujin turned over and crawled toward Min on his hands and knees, moving with panicked haste.  Min dropped the barrel of his gun and shot the wujin twice in the back as he passed, not breaking eye contact with Anton.

Anton flinched.  “The fuck did you do that for?” he cried out.

Min ignored him and kept walking forward, his pistol trained once more on Anton.  He had closed the distance to twenty yards.  Still too far for a killing shot.

“You have once chance,” Ruu said, advancing in lockstep with Min.  “Surrender now and you can spend the rest of your life in the ice mines.”

Anton coughed a laugh.  “That’s not a chance!  That’s a death sentence!  I wouldn’t last a day in the mines.”

“Or you could die here and now.”  Fifteen yards.  At this range, the monomol round would stay intact enough to punch through skin and shred muscle, but wouldn’t penetrate bone.  Anton was holding Angeline in front of him, looking at the approaching marshals over the girl’s shoulder.  It would have to be a head shot.

“Don’t come any closer!” Anton screamed, and pressed his gun to Angeline’s head.

But Angeline wasn’t there anymore.  As Anton had swung the gun around to point at her, Angeline let her knees sag and she dropped halfway to the floor.  Anton still had her arm in a white-knuckled grip, but he was exposed.

Min squeezed the trigger and the monomol around punched Anton high in the cheek, shredding the flesh and skin and cracking the bone.  Anton head was snapped backwards and he staggered, but still somehow kept on his feet.

Angeline twisted her arm free and dived to the side.  Ruu’s shotgun boomed and caught Anton full in the chest, knocking him clean off his feet.  Min sprang forward into lethal range, but Ruu’s shot had ended it.  Anton lay on his back, blood pooling around him.

Min holstered his pistol and gently helped Angeline to her feet.  The girl had tears streaming down her face and she flung herself into Min’s arms, sobbing against his chest.

“You came back for me,” she choked out through her sobs.

“Of course I did,” Min said, brushing her hair back from her face.

Angeline couldn’t believe it.  Min was alive!  It felt so good to be held by someone who wasn’t trying to kill her.  When Anton had grabbed her, she had fought with all her strength, but when he had pressed the gun against her head she knew she had lost again.

It was bad enough being captured, but then Min had come through the door and Anton was holding her as a hostage.  She had never felt worse in her whole life.  Min had come back from the dead to save her, and he was going to die, they were all going to die, because of her.

But all that was over now.  Anton was dead!  Angeline looked up at the woman at Min’s side, smiling through her tears.  The wujin woman knelt down next to them, her arms open to give Angeline a hug.

From the corner of Angeline’s eye, she caught a hint of movement.  She blinked the tears from her eyes and saw, impossibly, Anton roll over and fling a hand out to grab his gun.  Panic swept through Angeline.  Min and his friend had their backs to Anton, neither of them saw that he was still alive.

Without thinking, she yanked the pistol from Min’s belt and shoved him aside.  Anton fired and the wujin woman spun away in a spray of blood and a cry of surprised pain.  The kidnapper was sitting up, his shirt shredded by the shotgun blast, and a slick, wet-looking garment was visible underneath it.

Angeline pulled the trigger on Min’s handgun.  She had never fired a gun before, but Anton wasn’t more than five feet away.  She couldn’t miss.  The recoil made the gun jump in her hands.  Anton jerked as the monomol round slammed into his chest, but he was swinging his gun around still, bringing it to bear on Min who was still recovering from Angeline’s shove.

She fired again, wrestling against the punch of the gun, but she knew what to expect now and pulled the trigger as fast as she could.

The hail of monomol rounds slammed into Anton.  The ablative armor turned away the rounds, but the impacts knocked him about and threw off his next shot, which blew a crater in the wall eight inches over Min’s head.

Then one of Angeline’s shot’s found an unarmored spot.  The monomol round hit Anton at the base of his throat and deflected off his clavicle.  The round fragmented and ripped upward tearing through both carotid arteries and shredded soft tissue until it pulverized against the fifth and sixth vertebrae, shattering the bone.

Anton slumped backwards, his gun falling from nerveless fingers.  Blood sprayed from his neck in surging gouts.  Angeline struggled to her feet and stood over Anton.  He was all but decapitated by the last round and very dead.

Angeline felt Min leave her side and rush over to Ruu.  The wujin woman was sitting up, cradling an arm and swearing.

Somehow, hearing Ruu cursing, Angeline knew it was over.  She was safe now.  She was going home.

CHAPTER

THIRTY

The December Protocol couldn’t really be called a law.  The United Nations has no role in creating legislation, and while the U.N. could condemn the Womack Process and the Helix Rebuild, it could not enforce the Protocol.  It didn’t need to.  Human civilization was on the brink of destruction.  Fear and hate boiled among the populace, more so than at any other time in history.  The December Protocol, while not a law, finally gave a definite target for all that rage.

The destruction of the Womack clinics and the wild, free-for-all slaughter of those who had received the treatment was not a legal action, nor even condoned by the U.N. and their Protocol.  It was an action by the people, for the people, and it swept the world entire.  Even nations that were not part of the U.N. found the Protocol taken as incontrovertible gospel.

The U.N. penned the December Protocol, but the people enforced it.

Marcus Truman leaned back in the leather armchair and sighed with pleasure.  A tall glass sweating moisture sat on the side table next to him: double-distilled vodka from his still.  The distant bass beat of music was barely audible in the isolated room.

Grendal Crade raised her glass in a silent toast to him and he smiled and raised his own glass in response.  He sipped, and the cold liquid touched off a trail of warmth down his throat.  It was good.  Life was good.

In the year and a half since his disastrous ordeal with the kidnapping ring, things had settled down more or less exactly as he wanted.  That final night in Acheron had been awful and still gave him nightmares, though.

He had been locked in the room with the pile of dead bodies for nearly twelve hours before a marshal investigative unit arrived.  That had been bad enough, but then the marshals started asking him all sorts of probing questions.  He had told the truth, more or less, leaving out only the parts where he colluded with the kidnappers.

To his surprise, the marshals had let him go.  He suspected they didn’t buy his story about being an unwitting accomplice, but he didn’t argue when the lead investigator waved him out the door.

Marcus had cautiously reached out to Crade through Dr. Bannister, and had received a terse acknowledgement.  Months went by.  His first batch of potatoes grew to maturity and were duly processed into alcohol.  Crade had requested a tasting, and he had returned to the Redstone Lounge for the first time since arriving back from Acheron.

Crade had greeted him neutrally, tasted his product and bought out his entire production run, with a standing order to purchase all the alcohol he produced in the future.  The whole time in the Lounge, Marcus expected Crade to bring up the Acheron Affair, as he had taken to calling it, but she had made no mention of it.

Business with Dr. Bannister continued on good terms.  The profit margin from the vodka enabled him to increase the amount of land set aside for growing potatoes and he began discussing possible grain crops for the coming years.

His Womack treatments continued on regular intervals.  He had enough money set aside for a year’s worth of treatments, and every time he made money, he put another portion into his rainy day fund.  His skin bleached out and his hair turned white.  By the end of the year, he was fully wujin.

Vastitas Orchard was progressing nicely.  Marcus bought a share of the bi-yearly water harvest and added another ten thousand gallons to the Water Management Bureau’s cisterns.  Dr. Bannister planted another half-dozen trees and doubled his potato plot size.

If things kept going the way they were, Marcus knew he would become exceedingly wealthy.  Another ten years, and his personal worth would likely exceed even his erstwhile fortune on Earth.

He smiled contentedly and sipped at his vodka, lost in daydreams of the future.

“Shall we get to business, then?” Crade asked him.

“Certainly.”  Marcus set his glass down and sat forward.  “What are we discussing, anyway?  My next batch of vodka won’t be ready for another week.”

Crade smiled at him.  “Why, your promise to Esteres, of course.”

Marcus felt the floor drop out from under him.  His mouth went sour and a sudden rush of blood to his head left him dizzy.  With an effort, he forced his face to remain calm.  “Indeed?”  He meant to sound disinterested, but it came out choked and his voice cracked halfway through.

“Oh yes.  It’s been nearly eighteen months.  The marshals have dropped the case and moved on to better things.  Esteres has decided to create a new processing facility.  You’ve demonstrated a keen eye for business and remarkable tenacity.  In fact, Esteres has put your name forward in a shortlist of possible directors.”

Marcus swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.  He took a sip of vodka and coughed.  “Forgive me.  I thought the… processing had been abandoned.”

Crade laughed and shook her head.  “Oh, Marcus.  No.  No, no, no!  The last facility was poorly operated and directed, but it still turned quite the handsome profit.  And the demand is up!  Treatment costs are reaching a high of fifteen hundred credits in some clusters.  You understand business.  Supply and demand, Marcus.”

“I don’t mean to offend,” Marcus said hesitantly, “but I don’t think I have the necessary… qualifications to run a, uh, processing facility.”

“Nonsense!  Esteres is quite right.  You have all the necessary skills to make it work.”

“Perhaps I’m not making myself clear.  I–”

The levity dropped away from Crade’s face and she frowned at him.  “Unless you mean to say you’ve been abusing our relationship?  That would hurt, Marcus.  We might have to stop being friends.”

Sweat beaded on Marcus’ forehead and he wiped it away.  “I… no.  No, that’s not what I want.”

“Excellent!”  Crade’s smile bloomed again, as if it had never been gone.  “I’m glad.  Esteres bet that you would back out anyway, but that’s one wager I’ll be more than happy to collect.  Now that we’re all friends, we should have a meeting with your benefactor.  You’ve met Esteres?”

Marcus could hardly think.  He felt like a great weight was crushing down on him.  Just when everything was going so well!  Why did Crade insist on involving him in her schemes?  “Yes,” he said woodenly.  “I met him over video call when I was in Acheron.”

“Perfect.”  Crade tapped on her tablet and a projection screen came down out of the ceiling, then lit up with a call overlay.  After a moment, the overlay lifted and Esteres looked down on them.

“Grendal Crade.  You look more beautiful than ever.  And the man of the hour!  Marcus Truman.”

“It’s a pleasure, sir,” Marcus bowed his head.

“I must say, I’ve never been so happy to lose a bet.”  Esteres looked positively cheerful, a long cry from the scowling anger of Marcus’ first call with the man.

“I’m honored that you would choose me,” Marcus said, “but I admit, I haven’t the first idea how to start.”

“Details, Marcus, merely details.  In a few days I’ll…” Esteres turned his head and looked at something off camera.  The cheer dropped off his face, making him look wary.

Marcus glanced at Crade, but she was frowning at the screen, no more aware of what was going on than he was.  There was a crack, muffled by the microphone pickups, and a sudden billow of dust swept into the room.  Esteres leapt to his feet and went for a holdout gun under the desk.  He had it almost free when a harsh chatter of gunfire sounded and a line of bullet holes stitched up Esteres’ chest.  The camera was splashed with blood and was knocked over when Esteres collapsed across the desk.

The camera spun around, coming to rest pointing upside down across a room crowded with booted feet, and Crade slapped her tablet, ending the call.  For a moment, Marcus stared at Crade in the gloom, shocked by what he had just witnessed.  Grendal was clutching the armrests of her chair, her knuckles white.

The door to the room slammed open and something unlocked in Crade.  She stood and spun, all haughty outrage.  Marcus turned and saw a pair of masked men walk into the room.  The Redstone Lounge was filled with smoke.  Marcus saw broken glass and shattered wood paneling before the door swung shut behind the two intruders.

“Who are you, and how dare you invade my private rooms?” Crade demanded.

The larger of the two figures pulled the mask away from his face and Marcus recognized the marshal, Min Yang.  “How’s it going, Crade?” Min asked, a toothy smile on his face.

“Marshal Yang?”  Crade said in disbelief.  “What are you doing here?”

“Well, that’s an excellent question, isn’t it, Ruu?”

The other figure pulled down her mask, revealing a beautiful Chinese wujin woman that Marcus didn’t recognize.  “It is, it is indeed.”

“It took me a while,” Min said thoughtfully.  He started walking around the circumference of the room, the assault rifle in his hands cradled comfortably.  Smoke trailed lazily from its barrel, a sign of recent use.  “I had to ask myself the right question.  That’s always the hardest part, you know.  Once you have the right question, then finding answers becomes easy.”

“And what was your question?” Crade asked.  She stood stiffly, hands loose at her sides.  Her face was drained of blood and she was slightly hunched, as if waiting for a blow to fall.  She didn’t bother tracking Min as he circled around the room.

“I’m glad you asked.  See, what I couldn’t figure out was how Anton, a remarkably unimaginative individual, managed to get two unconscious girls out of the Redstone Lounge without some concerned citizen seeing him.”

“There was only one possible solution,” Ruu added.

“The Redstone Lounge had to be complicit!”  Min spread his arms and chuckled.  “I have to admit, giving me the recording of Anton drugging the girls was masterful.  Put me completely off your scent.  Still, I kept worrying at it.  See, I knew that shutting down one of your kidnapping operations wasn’t a permanent solution.  I wanted the ringleaders, the brains behind the operation.  I wanted the financers, the ones who grew wealthy off the death of innocent girls.”

“Esteres was a hard nut to crack.  You know his real name isn’t Esteres, right?” Ruu ran her hand along the back of the leather chair Marcus was sitting in.  A shotgun hung from a three-point sling, held loosely in her other hand.  “Nice leather.  Once we figured out the Redstone was complicit, we put a trace on your signal traffic.  I understand it was a difficult hack, fortunately we have some really skilled guys on our payroll.  It’s too bad.  Our hacker wanted to be here to do the bust with us, but gunfire makes him nervous.”

“It didn’t take us long to track down Esteres’ location after that.  You’ve had some nice long chats in the last couple months that led us right to his door.”  Min chuckled.  “He moves around a lot, you know.  A very cautious man.  So we set up teams to lie in wait at each of his bolt holes and waited for you to give him a call.”

Min stopped in front of the projection screen, his face dappled by the image still being cast to the screen.  He seemed to notice Marcus for the first time.  “Do I know you?” he asked.

Marcus swallowed.  “Uh… no?”

“He’s the transport guy,” Ruu supplied.  “The CSI unit found him locked in a room.”

Min snapped his fingers.  “Right!  I thought I recognized you from somewhere.  What are you doing here?”

Marcus felt lightheaded.  “I was…” he cleared his throat.  “Crade and I have a business arrangement.”  Min’s face darkened and Marcus shook his head frantically.  “No!  Nothing like that.  I supply her with alcohol.”

“Oh!”  Min smiled again.  “I guess the transport business didn’t work out for you?”

Marcus shook his head numbly.

“Yeah, can’t say I blame you.  Well, you probably don’t need to be here for this part.”

Marcus stood.  He felt like he was dreaming.  Grendal was staring straight ahead, her face frozen, her eyes dead.  As Marcus made his way to the door, he couldn’t help but glance back.  Min’s eyes bored into him.  Marcus flinched, certain that at any moment the assault rifle would swing up and bullets would rip through him.

Min didn’t lift the gun, though, and Marcus backed out of the door and shut it behind him.  He was trembling and his back was wet with sweat.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.  That was twice he had nearly been caught.  Never again, he decided firmly.  He didn’t care how much pressure was put on him.  Getting involved with people like Crade never ended well.

Behind him, there was the muffled boom of a shotgun going off and he jerked involuntarily.  Without another backward look, he fled the Lounge.

“So what’s next for you?”

Min shrugged.  “I thought I’d stop in with the Nueva de Vita family, check on Angeline.”

Ruu nodded.  “She wants to be a marshal, you know.”

“Yeah.”  Min made a face.  “Maybe I can talk her out of it.”

“I wouldn’t.  You’re her hero.  I think she’ll make a good marshal.”  Ruu stepped fastidiously around the growing pool of blood.  Shotgun wounds sure did bleed a lot.

“You might be right.  I’m hardly a role model though.”

“Well, Chief Inspector,” Ruu said, flipping the safety on her shotgun and slinging it up on a shoulder.  “I’ll see you back in Olympus?”

“Tomorrow morning, bright and early, Inspector Ruu.  I’m sure the new Lieutenant will have some work cut out for us all ready and waiting.”

“Right you are, boss.”

Ruu left and Min stood alone, looking down at Grendal’s body.  The smell of cordite was sharp in the air.  It had been a long year and a half, tracking down Esteres and coordinating the final sting.  He was glad it was over.

It still felt strange, being called Chief Inspector.  Director Rosario had insisted on the rank increase when the full report of the kidnapping case came to light.  Ruu’s involvement in the kidnapping ring was never proven, but there were too many unanswered questions to leave her in her old rank.  She had been busted down to Inspector and placed under Min where he could keep an eye on her.  Or so the official line went.  The truth of the matter was Min had agreed not to bring up Captain Jiahao’s name in the official inquiry in exchange for Ruu’s pardon.

Min spat in the growing pool of blood at his feet.  Esteres and his ring of kidnappers might be dead, but there was still plenty of crime happening on Mars.  His job would never be done.

That was good.  Otherwise he might get bored.

AUTHOR’S

NOTE

Thank you for reading The December Protocol!  I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

If you did enjoy the book, please take a few minutes and write a review.  You would make this author a very happy man.

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If you’re looking for more to read, The Dragon Speaker Series is available on Kindle.

Until next time!

Devin Hanson