Clio’s fucking bounty. What the hell was that all about? It wasn’t like Kapil to pull something like that on her, let alone something so elaborate. In all the years she’d known him, she hadn’t heard of him playing a single practical joke. Not even a whisper of one. And to do this now? With her the only thing between him and deportation?

It didn’t make sense.

She stalked out of the apartment complex, trying to ignore the looks she got. More people had gathered in the first floor hallway, milling around in casual groups and wearing clothes and expressions that suggested they weren’t on their way to work. Although Alderon and Seth had been dressed for a shift on the maintenance routes, the rest posed in a hodge-podge of obvious sleepwear and hasty ensembles. The few faces she’d looked into had been lined with fear, wide-eyed and cautious.

And Kapil. He hadn’t moved at all. Just stood there—like a sheep.

What in the ten hells was happening?

Whatever it was, she decided it didn’t involve her.

Screw the time. She was going to work. Yamaguchi would be there by now, and if he wasn’t, she’d wait.

The route up to the second level required an elevator ride. She encountered several others around the shaft lobby, and the way their gazes followed her made her self conscious. One person, a woman in her late forties with owl-rimmed glasses, a tired pose, and a can of coffee gripped in her hand, caught her eye, looking like she wanted to talk or call out, but she waited too long and the elevator doors closed.

No one got on with her. When the doors opened to the second level, the lift bounced as she stepped off.

It took her fifteen minutes to navigate to work. More spread out than the rest, the second tier consisted of a series of open-spaced lobbies and atria that segued into the station's regular boxy hallways. Most ran cleaner and more well-maintained than those on the lower floors, but were not necessarily easier to navigate. With more expense came more expensive and more complex design. Down below, the dead-ends and twisting hallways had a chaotic sensibility behind them. Up here, the twists and stops owed, with some exceptions, to the madness of the architects that had designed them rather than someone finding out that their new expansion happened to run into the sewage pipes. An oddity by design rather than happenstance.

Her firm, one of the exceptions to the rest of the open space, filled a slot in on a narrow hall sandwiched between a small copyright firm and a station ATM pod. Although far from the fancier lobbies that boasted the restaurants, banks, and fashion stores, it did sit close to a small square that had been modeled after a twenty-seventh century Indo-Japanese courtyard. Ignoring a growing sense of anxiety that had turned her stomach into a stiff, unraveling ball, she cut across its center with a determined stride, the netlink gripped hard in her hand.

Still early yet, but she suspected Yamaguchi would be there. He always was when she showed up.

Unfortunately, her suspicions ground to a dead halt before she’d even turned the corner.

A low murmur rounded the corner, accompanied by the brief static of a radio comm. When the first soldier came into view, the blood jumped in her chest. He stood in a casual manner, his gaze focused straight ahead of him, a flashlight held at shoulder-height. Its beam pierced the space in a way the corridor’s normal lighting didn’t quite manage. As she came around the corner, she found six other soldiers in a loose group, all gathered at the door to her workplace.

She paused, a deep frown cutting into her face. Sol on a stick. What now?

They wore riot gear—not quite the full combat suits she’d seen on the feeds, but helmets, bracers, and vests covered their regular steel-blue uniforms, accompanied by huge shields that rose up past their heads when they lifted them to regular height. Currently, they only seemed to be impeding their progress with the door.

Despite the dramatic sight, no one appeared to be in a hurry.

As she paused, surveying the scene with more than a little skepticism, the outer-most soldier—the one holding the flashlight—noticed her. “Hello, Miss? Are you all right?”

Several others looked over as she spoke. She cringed, regretting getting so close.

“What are you doing?” She made a gesture to the door. “Is something wrong?”

Their pause answered the second question for her almost immediately, and a cold, dark, sinking feeling gripped her chest.

Gods, it’s real, then?

One of the solders by the door cleared his throat. “Just an alert, so far. Nothing to worry about yet.” From this far, she couldn’t tell rank, but several of the other soldiers had looked to him for answer before he’d spoken. He paused, giving her the kind of assessing look she recognized from the many Yamaguchi had given her over the past year. “Do you know anyone inside?”

The plastic-glass face of the firm showed a dark, dormant inside, illuminated only by the few small, scattered lights she recognized from either the computers, the nearest emergency beacon and flashlight on the wall, or the phone system. Distracted, and realizing she’d let the question hang far too long to deny it, she forced her gaze back to the lead soldier. “I work here.”

“Ah.”

“What kind of alert?” she asked, pressing forward. “We’re electrical engineers. There’s a bunch of equipment. Maybe something inside went off—”

“Someone hit the emergency call. System operator heard sounds of a fight.”

Oh. Well, so much for her theory.

“What’s your name?” he continued. “What do you do here?”

“Jiayi Tian.” She hesitated. “I, uh, intern.”

He studied her for a moment. “Do you have the passcode?”

“Er… yeah. Of course.” As she started forward, more of the lobby came into view. The smoothed wood of the secretarial desk rose in a gentle curve away from the glass front, a rich oak vein embedded in an otherwise mundane, muted-teal surface, curving around into the distinct bird-wings of the firm’s logo. The sight of it pulled at her eyes, and her worry deepened inside her chest. Yamaguchi had ordered it ten years ago, part of a company anniversary celebration. If anyone was in there, it’d be him. Her reflection appeared when she came even with the door, joining the rest of the soldiers, and a hot, self-conscious feeling flushed her skin as she reached for the door panel. “Do you know who called in the alert?”

“We only know that it went off. It’s a bit of a simple system.” Up close, the soldier’s rich brown eyes caught her off guard. He had a deep skin tone, with a broad nose and thick lips. A thin scar ticked the side of his cheek. His helmet covered most of his head, with a nylon strap tight around his chin, but a close-shaved cut of hair was visible at the base of his neck.

She took a moment to search his face. “Have there been other attacks?”

His attention slid back to her. “Did you hear something?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.” She shook her head. “It was weird.”

“Weird is one word for it.”

“Fucked is another,” said one of the men behind him.

His head snapped around. “You watch your mouth, soldier.”

At that, Jiayi gave a little snort. “Oh, don’t worry about that around here,” she said. “We swear all the time.”

And if what I saw earlier is any indication, then yeah, ‘fucked’ pretty accurately describes it.

She decided to keep that last bit to herself, instead turning to the door and reaching for the doorpad. “Two e-call spots, one in Main in front of us and the other toward the back.” She indicated the direction with a tilt of her head to the left, where the hallway disappeared into the back storage and offices. “No flashing lights here, so I assume it’s the one in the back.”

“Of course it is.” In the reflection of the glass, one of the soldiers beside her pulled his lips back from his teeth in a grimace.

“Shut it, soldier.” The leader of the group turned to her and gave her a considering look. Then, after a moment, he shifted his grip on the rifle, let it swing on its strap, and offered her a hand. "I'm Sergeant Damien Preston."

His hand felt dry and rough under hers, a little cool to the touch. Extracting it, she paused to give their equipment a study, eyeing the soldiers. "I can get the lights, if you'd like, and check the computers? We have CCTV."

"Lights would be well appreciated," Sergeant Preston replied. "Once we're in, you stay back. We'll perform a quick sweep of the place, see if anything's wrong."

"If anyone's in there, it'll be my boss. Ray Yamaguchi. His office is in the back left, close to the second e-call station."

"Don't worry, if he's in there, we'll get them out," Sergeant Preston reassured her. "Safely," he added, perhaps seeing her gaze linger on one of his men's rifles.

A queasy feeling shivered through her throat. Hiding her discomfort, she turned back toward the door. The lock interface lit up at her touch, spreading a blue-green visualization of a number pad on the glass. She input the code–drilled into her muscle memory by now—and the doors peeled back on their tracks with a soft whoosh. The soldiers slipped past her and into the lobby. The quiet air filled with the quick steps of their boots, the rustle of their uniforms, and the small clicks and jingles of the equipment.

She followed in their wake, but, a few steps in, thought better of it and pulled to the side. Her hand came up against the smooth edge of the counter, a tremor she hadn't noticed making itself known as she leaned into the surface. The wood under her wrist felt warm, somehow—warmer than the rest of the room, at least.

Curlew Circuitries, named after the founder’s favorite bird some three generations back, had a modest workspace compared to some of the other companies on this level. The last few decades had seen the company become more of a workhorse for the station, raising its role in maintenance and repair as opposed to building and design. That had meant that she'd needed to become familiar in at least ten generations of circuit design, along with common patchwork problems and even the odd Alliance design that popped up now and then. Unlike some of the more highbrow, flowing, open workspaces that the flashier, more design-oriented companies went for, Curlew's office looked more like a middle-class accounting firm. Planned in a basic “L” shape, the company's sole hallway headed straight back past reception, then made a ninety-degree turn and headed toward the back offices to the left. Reception itself was little more than a large desk with a raised counter—albeit a fancy raised counter with Yamaguchi's prized woodwork. Beyond, a series of conjoined cubicle workspaces formed a rough square, separated from the surrounding hallway by a low, gray fabric wall.

She'd spent the past year living in the space at the far corner. Often, Yamaguchi would come around from his office in the corner, lean over the wall, and frown down at her while he relayed some new work assignments or corrections. Never an actual frown, though. For him, grumpy pessimism was his natural state, but she'd never heard any genuine mean-spiritedness from him. And she'd gotten used to his gruff demeanor long ago.

As the soldiers rounded the corner and headed up the hall to the back offices, visible over the low wall, she remembered her promise about lights and jumped hauled her upper body onto the counter to reach over for the panel on the other side. With an audible clunk—Yamaguchi was always particular about hiding that from paying customers—the central lighting switched on throughout the office.

She gritted her teeth as the counter dug into her ribs—she was not as fit as she remembered being—and lowered herself back down. With one more glance to the soldiers, who were now disappearing beyond her sight into the back part of the hall, she re-accessed the front desk, this time taking the time to dip around the end of the counter instead of going over. The front chair's wheels gave a quick rattle as she sat down and pulled herself in. With a quick tap on the small terminal box to the right, the reception computer booted up.

That was the thing about Curlew. The office may look middle tier in appearance, but its technology was state-of-the-art. Within seconds, she was online and accessing what they affectionately called the black box records.

There. The door had opened at five o'clock with an admin passcode. Even without confirming the CCTV snapshot, she knew it was Yamaguchi. Only Emily Chang, the assistant manager, had another admin passcode, and she was on part-time mat leave.

So he is here, then. She swallowed hard, staring at the time stamp. A sick feeling molded to the bottom of her stomach. That meant it was him who'd set off the e-call. And, if the military was in such a drastic response mode as to don riot gear, then the situation was serious. Which meant that Alderon probably hadn’t been lying, and that the Shadow-man she’d seen earlier might actually be real, and that Kapil really was…

Oh, Gods.

She needed to call him. Hells, she needed to call everyone.

She lunged for where she'd put her purse on the desk, ripping into the second pocket for her Netlink and fumbling it onto the desk. Her message history with Kapil stuttered into view, blinking and faltering as she lost her grip and it bumped into the desk.

But, just as she made to connect the call, something dark passed into her peripheral vision. She glanced up—and froze.

(Due to a character-count limit, Chapter 4 is split into two. Keep reading for part 2!)