McBain retrieved his mo’comm from the side table and slapped it against his wrist. The organic alloy wrapped itself around his forearm, spreading and solidifying with a warm pulse. Soft lights flickered along the surface in sequence, signaling the device was active and connected to Sabara’s city-wide network.

He scrubbed his face with both hands. Then hauled himself out of the chair. He stared ruefully at his reflection in the windows. His suit was a disaster, rumpled and creased. McBain’s suits were his one indulgence—the thin, well-tailored armor between himself and…everything. The deep wrinkles in the fine material physically pained him. Why the hell did he kept sleeping in them?

He ran his hand over the sleeve of the jacket, his skin pale against the dark fabric. Eight years since sunlight had touched that skin. Eight years in the unrelenting twilight under Sabara’s dome. Eight years since the war.

He knew why he slept in his suits. The war was over, but he had never stood down. You don’t take off your armor in enemy territory. You don’t take off your armor when you’re under siege. Nothing here was safe.

You're wasting time. He turned away from the windows. The bedroom door swished open at his approach, the bed-pod’s pouty litany washing over him.

“CHIRON, reset the bed.” The bed-pod responded with a resentful click, cycled through a system check in a ripple of light from the monitor panel and fell silent. The bedroom was dark, CHIRON assuming that the typical human occupant would sleep until at least 0600, although dawn had long since lost its meaning under the city dome.

The windows making up two of the walls in the bedroom were un-opaqued and the view was magnificent across the harbor to the brilliant lights of a small island just off the coast. The glare from the glittering palaces of the ancient vampire clans who’d made the island their sanctuary—though, of course, their reach extended far beyond—were a gaudy smear across the calm water of the harbor.

Sometimes McBain dragged the chair into the bedroom and sat in his rumpled suit, looking past the lurid splendor of the vamp’s little palaces to the ships at anchor beyond the dome. The ships were shadowy, half-seen bulks in the darkness but their anchor lights gleamed against the black water of the Straits like bright stepping stones on a dark, restless ground. On nights like that McBain fantasized about becoming light and free and leaping from ship to ship, rising higher and higher into the wet, warm air of the equator to soar over the scattered islands of the South China Sea and away from Sabara, the moon over his shoulder and the heavy, fragrant wind in his face.

You’re wasting time. McBain turned away from the windows and worked on loosening the knot of his tie on his way to the en-suite. He slipped the heavy silk from his neck and hung the tie carefully on a rack behind the bathroom door, then peeled off the dress shirt and undershirt. He rested his hands on the edge of the sink in front of the mirror. The lights came up in the bathroom.

He stared at his reflection. Tired grey eyes stared back, the skin beneath smudged with shadow. His dark hair fell over the top of his forehead in short, jagged spikes. He frowned and fumbled for a comb to drag the spikes up and away and back into place. He didn’t like his hair like that, it made him look feral.

He fished the sonic mouth-fresher out of its sterilizing bath, placed it on his tongue and waited for it to finish its work. His eyes slid over the lean muscle of his shoulders and chest, the old scars familiar and uninteresting.

There wasn’t time for a shower. He switched on a hand-held fresher and ran it over his skin. It was doubtful anyone at Sips would complain about his hygiene over the haze of lust and alcohol and human blood at the bar. And the corpse waiting for him at Keppel Harbor certainly wouldn’t care.

McBain shrugged on a clean, pressed shirt and deftly guided a fresh silk tie though a four-in-hand knot, secure around his neck. He didn’t have a lot left after eight years on the force in Sabara, but he had his suits and he had his job and most days that was enough.

He retrieved his weapons from the table by the front door, clipping the tactical baton to his belt and checking the charge on the ranged taser. The taser would drop a human at 20 paces and the charge could easily be dialed up to lethal as needed.

The SPD didn’t issue weapons that were effective against vampires. Instead he had a number he could call. It would summon the operatives from the local office of the Nova Roma Federal Investigative Unit with a theoretical response time that numbered in minutes. Of course, up against a vampire, he’d be long dead by then but details, details.

McBain shrugged into his jacket and overcoat, and touched the mo’comm at his wrist to lock the door. He thumbed the elevator to B3 and the carpark and spent the ride down trying to work up some enthusiasm for dragging his partner out of one of hottest vamp/bleeder bars in Sabara.