Pardua's work station was sunk deep into a broad recess at the back of his apartment, safely sealed behind a sliding wall section that completely concealed it from prying eyes. His visor glittered as he withdrew his hand from DNA lock sensor, a thin smile on his face.

A shining forest of screens looked back at them. The one in the centre was the size of a dinner table, currently shimmering with a screensaver of an elegant coral dragon swimming through emerald seas. Around it, the subsidiary monitors lay dormant for the moment, their gossamer screens arranged in a symmetrical arrangement on either side. Holly could feel the intricate hive of circuits behind it all, a system as beautiful as it was powerful.

"And all this time you never invited me to see this?" she said quietly.

Pardua smirked. "As I understand it, people like you don't really need computers, do you?"

"Well, no, but..."

"Come along."

Gathering his robe around him, he glided across the room and settled into the plush, high-backed chair. She felt the sing of the visor chips in his temples, and a glass-band of light shone across his eyes. His hands moved delicately over the intricate holo-interface in front of the screen cluster.

One by one they came to life, drifting into wakefulness, as though the whole machine had surfaced from a tranquil lagoon. The central screensaver melted away to be replaced by a massively complex directory of networked files under Gammaton logos. Pardua made gentle motions with his hands, and files whipped away to the left and right until the screen was clear.

He keyed a command in, then beckoned her.

"Alright, Lockley," he told her. "Let's see what we can see. The chip."

She handed it to him. "Make sure you're not networked."

"What do you think I just did?" He swivelled to face her and gestured to the screen. "Go on. Check it yourself."

Holly felt around the structure of the computer with her implants. Sure enough, the whole complex jungle of circuitry was roped off from the rest of the data-stream with a sheathe of formidable firewalls, connections severed to the wider networks.

"Alright."

Pardua sniffed indignantly and slipped the control chip into a malleable port interface. The needle-thin limbs folded shut around the chip, mapping its structure and finding connections. He took another sip of his scotch, turning idly left and right in his chair.

"Where'd you dredge this up, Holly?" he chuckled. "It usually only takes a couple of seconds to map a new port configuration."

"Honestly, Pardy, it's probably better if you don't know."

"Now that just invites more questions."

"Humour me."

He rolled his eyes, his attention turning back to the screen. "O-kay. Looks like we're ready." Putting down his glass, he danced his fingers over the interface. On the main monitor an image of the chip appeared, stripped down to its deepest layers, with text annotations spilled across the screen around it. Some of it she understood, some not so much. Pardua's brow furrowed and he tapped a finger thoughtfully against his chin.

"Well, that explains why the port had trouble identifying it." He looked back over his shoulder at her accusingly. "Schism-tech, Holly? I thought you had more sense than that."

Oh, Pardy, if only you knew what you were saying. She stuffed down her surprise and kept her thoughts to herself and threw him a wan smile instead. "Being sensible isn't a luxury I have right now."

"Clearly." He swivelled back and keyed in more commands, stripping out specific parts of the chip for the system to examine. "Garbadine Autonomics model, circa 2258. Out of circulation for a very long time."

"Garbadine," Holly murmured. "Liquidated during the Schism, right?"

"Very much so." Pardua nodded to the image on the screen. "Frontrunners in AI tech and very much scapegoats for a lot of very bad things. This chip hasn't been manufactured in decades."

"Maybe someone's been dipping a toe into the history books again?" she suggested, mindful of her own company's dabbling with 'banned' AI tech.

But Pardua shook his head. "No, the serial numbers are still intact. Of course, I don't have an exact match because Garbadine records were cleaned and sealed, but the suffix is pre-Schism for sure. This is an original." He looked at her pointedly. "And this is the point where I insist that you tell me the truth, Holly. Where did you get this?"

She sighed. No putting it off any longer. "I yanked it from a cyborg's brain cluster."

"A ... you what?!" Pardua's eyes went wide.

"I said what I said."

"Where in the holy piss did you find one of those?!"

"Out on the docks. It's a long story, Pardy, and I'm telling you, you better off staying out of it." Holly moved closer, gripping the back of his chair and gently pivoting him back toward the screen. "I'm trying to figure out where it came from, and how it ended up on this side of the river. You think you can do that?"

"Holly, it's dead. Inert." He threw up his hands helplessly. "How would I even..."

His rant stopped before it could really get going. She saw the look on his face, one she recognised from her old life. His eyes narrowed and his mouth snapped shut, lips pressing into a thin line. Grabbing his scotch, he swallowed the rest of it, sucked in a breath, and then started typing.

"Pardy...?"

"These old style chips have unique EM signatures. Mess with the data-stream if you have them too close for too long. If I give this thing a little juice..."

Pardua's hands moved fast and furious across the holo-interface. The image of the chip vanished, replaced by a deluge of data moving too quick for her to process it. His tongue edged out of the side of his mouth in concentration as he worked. She saw the port holding the chip light up.

A tingle of unease shot up her spine, the memory of her confrontation with... whatever it was, still raw. Holly bit down any objections. She needed to know. Minutes ticked by and she waited, resisting the urge to start pacing around the apartment as her impatience grew.

"Alright," he murmured. "So we just isolate the frequency. And if we run a city-wide cross-check..." The big screen in the centre switched to a satellite view of Hadrian, showing the vast sprawl of the city across the river's northern bank. The view swivelled and zoomed, hunting for the parameters Pardua had given it.

He cocked his head to one side quizzically. "Somebody thinks they're being clever."

"What is it?"

"It's working, but someone didn't want to be found. Whoever's using those chips, they're sending out a mute signal – trying to cancel it out. Obviously not someone who knows all that much about the new Hadrian." His hands moved again, quick and sharp.

A moment later the screen slid back and forth over the map, before zeroing in on a section of the riverbank. She saw immediately that it straddled the corporate cordon, a blob of darkness stretching over a few city blocks.

"There," he said triumphantly, spinning in his chair with an insufferable grin. "Some people think they're smarter than me."

Holly smirked. "What did you do?"

"They were blocking a direct trace with the counter signal, so I changed the cross-check to search for where the EM signature couldn't be. It's not as precise, but I can say for sure, whatever you're looking for is in that little hole."

"They should be paying you more."

"Indeed they should."

The computer bleeped. Pardua's smile vanished as he turned back to face it, looking over a red warning screen that had popped up on one of the sub-monitors.

"What the...?"

"What is it?"

"I... system says there's a firewall breach."

"What? I thought you weren't networked?"

"I'm not!"

"Then what's happ-,"

She was cut off when the main screen changed, red warning symbols spattering across it like blood. A high pitched whine filled the room and she stepped back, reaching for her amplifier instinctively.

"What's going on?!" she shouted.

Pardua shook his head in bafflement. "I don't know, I don't know! It's not the chip. It's not from the city. I can't... one minute there's nothing, and the next there's something inside my fucking system!" He frantically keyed in commands to no avail. The warnings continued to pile up and whine increased to an ear-splitting pitch. "Jesus Christ, Holly, what is this thing?!"

Before the could reply, the entire wall housing the computer system blew apart.

All she had time to do was dive for cover. Holly hurled herself sideways behind the wall as a blizzard of flame and glass ripped the room apart. Several shards raked her leg and side as she dived, landing behind the sliding wall section with a scream of pain.

The wall buckled, and some spears of razor-thin glass ripped through it, propelled by the force of the explosion. Shards shattered all over her, and all she could do was cover her head with her hands.

It was all over in a few seconds. Holly lay there, panting for breath, eyes screwed shut until the last few tinkles of falling glass subsided.

With a groan, she sat up, blinking and flexing her jaw, her ears ringing from the blast. Gingerly, she picked herself up. The apartment was awash with thick electrical smoke, and she could hear an alarm bleating plaintively from somewhere. She looked around.

"Pardy?" Holly blinked and coughed through the smoke. "Layne?" Spitting out the acrid tang, she pulled her amplifier out and swept it over the open space, trying to clear away the worst of the smoke.

She wished she hadn't.

As the air cleared, she found Pardua lying on his back, thrown several meters into the apartment by the blast. His body was a mess of broken glass and blood, a shard the size of her hand buried in his windpipe. Crimson pooled around his body.

For a moment she couldn't move. Holly's mouth opened soundlessly and she staggered, numb with shock. This wasn't supposed to happen. He wasn't supposed to die.

It's not my fault, she screamed inside her head, staring at her friend's corpse. It wasn't supposed to be networked. It wasn't supposed to be networked!

She managed a step forward, raising her amplifier with a trembling hand. For a brief second she allowed herself to hope that he was still alive; that she could peel those bits of glass out of him and patch him up.

Sorry, Pardy.

That was a close one, right?

My bad.

God how we laughed right?

Well it's all in the past now.

Then the first pieces of her touched his body, and she felt the cold nothingness of death. Tears began to roll down her cheeks unbidden. She blinked them away and more came. Holly shook her head; let her amplifier drop. AmpCore agents who mastered the Internal Principle could do a lot. With her skills, she could reset broken limbs, mend ruptured arteries, burn out cancers... but death remained an impassible barrier.

Layne Pardua was gone.

She pressed the fingers of her hands through her hair and finally let out a single, long scream that echoed through the apartment for several seconds. Clamping her teeth together, she breathed in and out, counting the breaths one after the other.

What the hell was she supposed to do? Indecision almost ripped her in half. Holly knew, logically, that she needed to get out of here – to erase every sliver of her presence here and run. But looking down at Pardua's slender, ruined body, she couldn't get her body to follow that impulse. He was a friend, dead because of her.

What about his husband, Misha? Should she send a message? What could she say? Her implants balked and flexed painfully as she struggled to get her emotions in check. No, no messages. She couldn't tie herself to this. If she did, the corps would descend – her old contacts at Gammaton would hunt her down and kill her.

If that happened, it would all be for nothing. Pardy's death would be for nothing.

She just about convinced herself. Holly sniffed, and glanced back at the wrecked computer.

She had one thing left: the location. She'd trapped it in her memory, stuffed it deep into the Logistic subroutines of her implants as soon as she saw it. Fear coiled inside her, but she knew she had to go there. Had to figure out what was happening.

Fighting back her tears, Holly stepped around the corpse of her friend, and walked out the door.

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