On Zef's first day of work, there are army vehicles and cop cars parked outside Bionic Capital HQ.

He can't miss his first day, and it's not likely they're here for him, but still. After a night of fleeing pigs, flashing blue and red lights get a Pavlovian response of perspiration and mounting blood pressure.

The elevator takes him up to an office in chaos. Nobody occupies their desks, instead backed against the wall like rows of starlings on hydrolines. They watch as soldiers, a cop, and a couple people in snappy suits that cost as much as Zef's annual salary root through desk drawers and scan computer data. A soldier goes through the crowd of employees, demanding they relinquish their biometrics. His uniform is crisp, Bionic Capital blue.

Despite no evidence this has anything to do with Zef's instincts cream, Run. Get out.

Beside him, a person in a soft, yellow hijab eyes him with suspicion. "Who are— Oh, wait. Are you the new guy?"

According to Zef's implant scans, their pronouns are they/them. He feels a brief flicker of solidarity finding another trans person in the office, but it's quashed by the soldier advancing through their ranks.

"Yeah, just started," Zef says.

"Ah, I'm meant to give you the tour but—" they click their tongue, jerking their head towards the investigation in progress. They've got wide, expressive brown eyes. A delicate nose piercing. A fancy moustache with curly ends. Lines of gold gild run from the corner of each eye into their hijab. The implant is like Zef's, only brand name, not homebrewed. "Someone pissed somebody off, so the company soldiers have been let loose. Give it a minute. What's your name?"

"Zef."

"Naveen. Or just Nav." They speak in a whisper as the soldier approaches.

The soldier sports an intimidating amount of gild, with body armour up to his chin. He takes Nav's hand, palm up, and holds the scanner over it. Lord only knows what data they're taking. Biometrics, sure, but what else? Grocery lists, GPS coordinates of past locations, phonebook contacts—

Zef's breath freezes in his lungs. He remembers Gray's fingers leaving a touch like a scar against his bare inner wrist. He remembers their flight through the sub-city, the drone of air vehicles in pursuit, escaping by the use of Zef's own nav system.

The thing about tech this convenient? You pay a price for it in privacy. The tech knew where he'd gone, who he was with.

That meant soldiers could find out, too.

He could delete Gray from his contacts, but it would be pointless. A toddler could recover deleted data. No, he'd have to scrub it, fresh install, but that took time and right now—

He takes a breath. They're Bionic Capital soldiers. Employed by the company to defend it against competitor attacks and subterfuge. It's nonsensical to worry they're here about a stolen car. Zef's association with CyberSuite is so loose; his dad worked for them years ago, and he was just a soldier. Nobody important.

Zef's inner monologue is still a long string of fuck shit rotten testicle goddamn as he holds out his wrist, though. What else can he do? Give it legs? He's not a sprinter. Built for endurance. Would get winded halfway to the elevator.

The soldier scans his hand, squinting at the data on it. "You work here?"

"Just started," Zef confirms.

"You're not coming up as an employee."

"He won't be in the system yet." Nav, bless their soul, speaks up on Zef's behalf. "I'll be the one inputting his data once we go through the tour."

"Right," says the soldier unaffectedly. "And you've got no history of working here before?"

"No," Zef says.

"No history working with a competitor, either?"

Zef's heart gives a kick. "No."

The suspicion in the soldier's eyes doesn't abate. An undercurrent of what the fuck permeates the whole stinking conversation.

The soldier says, "Might need to ask you a few questions later. Don't go anywhere."

"It's...my first day," Zef says. All the explanation required for why he literally can't go anywhere without getting fired.

The soldier moves along the line. Once he's out of earshot, Nav raises both eyebrows in silent question.

"So. What was that, huh?"

"I promise you, I've got no idea," Zef lies.

"You're not in any trouble, right?"

"Not last I checked."

"Because you are sweating like a nun in a porn shop right now—"

"I'm nervous! It's my first day."

"And I cannot lose this job by association with a cap spy. I don't want none of that mess in my life, you understand? I'm aiming for so clean my bum cheeks squeak when I walk."

"Nav. I get it." Zef raises his hands in surrender. "I'm real desperate for this job too. Like, if I lose it, I'm boned in the unfun way. I kinda can't transition without it. So."

Nav pauses an gives him an assessing look. It's like ah, okay. Like the missing piece of the Zef puzzle fits in. They nod. "All right, then."

The soldiers and lawyers disperse, probably to collate all the data they found, and as Nav leads Zef to what will be his desk, a sliver of guilt slides under his skin.

Because Nav has every right to be suspicious. Not for company fraud reasons, but for auto theft reasons, and association with a guy who lied about his identity reasons. Even if Zef never worked for CyberSuite, his dad did.

The desks of the office are paired together, each facing each other with a foggy, transparent tablet screen between them. It offers exactly zero privacy, which is the point. Can't have anyone answering personal e-mail or playing poker on company time. The lack of cubicle walls prevents him from decorating, either. The only thing differentiating it from the others is a lit, red number thirty-seven in the bottom corner of the glass.

"This one'll be yours," Nav says. They gesture at the tablet to turn it on, and it gives a prompt for a valid user login. They use their own and go through a series of elaborate locks in order to register a new employee. Once again, Zef finds himself keenly aware of how many times his data, his fingerprints, his implant have interfaced with something here. A permanent record of his existence in strings of binary code.

He should have thought ahead, seen this threat coming. It took him so long to get home last night that he'd fallen into his stinky bedroll and woken up a couple hours later for a shower to get ready for his first day. The thought never crossed his mind that all this data sharing might out him as Gray's accomplice in his game of grand theft auto on his first day.

Zef resolves to perform a clean install of his implant software when he gets home. It should wipe any residual data related to his altercation with Gray.

It will also lose Gray's contact details. Unless Zef writes them down. But that's a record, too. The whole point is to leave no trail. No evidence of his association with the events of that night. It's the smart thing to do. If he wants to be extra neurotic, he should retrace their entire route last night and hack the traffic cams to ensure none of them recorded his screaming face through the Vitali's windscreen.

Nav finishes registering the tablet computer to Zef's name. "Okay, there. You're all set. You wanna hear about your first assignment?"

Zef perks up. "Yeah."

"So, the higher ups tell me you mentioned lung filter implants in your interview?" They raise their eyebrows with interest.

A moment's hesitation. "Yeah, but that was just a pet project—"

"Well, they liked your pet project. And, since you've done the majority of the work already, they'd like you to work on it with the company for mass manufacturing."

It tastes sour, this. It's his original idea. One he already developed. That time wasn't paid for. Bionic Capital isn't paying him for the patent on it. Not paying him to develop it. They're just paying him a salary and calling his ideas their own.

But, he supposes, that's what working for a big company is. You're a cog. They're the machine that gets all the credit.

At least it'll help sub-city workers, he reasons. They won't have to breathe that stewy smog.

He nods.

Nav sets him up with a tutorial for Bionic Capital's unique software, first. Within ten minutes, Zef wishes he could write the programmer a letter that begins Dear Cabbage-for-Brains, I hate you. The software might have been cobbled together by a troop of chimpanzees snorting buckets of cocaine. It's a navigational pig's ear. Three clicks where one would do. Short keys mapped to useless functions that can't be custom mapped to others.

But he can't just use the software he learned on because heavy forbid Bionic Capital give another tech company any money.

The only reprieve from the hell of learning new, asinine software is a fifteen-minute lunch break. Nav shows him to the break room. Despite Bionic Capital's unicorn-company status, the break room looks no more posh than a min-wage mall job. Two vending machines, the cloying smell of too many microwave-meals, and a window offering a prisoner's view of a neighbouring skyscraper. At a round table, three other employees gossip. Zef buys himself a bag of freeze-dried synth shrimp from the vending machine. There's a cafe downstairs, Nav tells him, if he wants to spend his whole paycheck there. Zef still remembers hurling up his macchiato after his interview. He doesn't want a repeat. He'd rather eat his shrimpy lil' lunch and get to know Nav.

Then he overhears one of the men at the table say, "Did you hear about Archer's car? Stolen. She came to work in a cab today."

And now Zef's got heartburn. Heartburn that has nothing to do with his spicy shrimp snack.

"Oh, a cab. How plebeian," says employee #2, her tone thick with sarcasm. "Let me just get the world's tiniest violin."

"Yeah, yeah, I agree, but listen. It's not like that car of hers is easy to steal."

Employee #3 says, "How do you know it's even stolen? How do you know she didn't just decide not to drive to work today?"

"Because she likes to be a raging dickhead showing off all her money," says employee #2. Zef admires her disdain for the rich, but it's hard to focus when the subject is stolen car and Rylan Archer and,

Oh fuck. Did he steal? His boss's car??

His boss's luxury car.

His boss's luxury, expensive, very recognizable car that all of her employees seem to know about.

Big city, he thinks. Big city. Lots of bigshot caps with fancy cars. Probably lots of them get stolen.

"I mean," says employee #1, "if I had a Vitali Thresher, I'd drive it from my bedroom to my bathroom just to take a piss."

Well, fuckity-do-da-day.

Zef nearly says it out loud.

Doesn't, though. He pretends he's so so normal. Chats with Nav about the stupid software and how much he hates it. Even has a little hello and introduction with the gossip gang. Heads back to work like he's going to the gallows, sits at his desk, plugs back into the tutorial and thinks through his options.

There's no way two Vitali's went missing yesterday. That's just not the kind of coincidence he can bank on. The coincidence that he happened to meet a guy who happened to steal his boss's car with Zef in said car at the time? That's coincidence enough for one lifetime. He can't possibly pray that the Vitali missing from Rylan Archer's garage is a different one he sat his plush ass in yesterday.

So, his options are: leave now. Say he's going to the toilet and go home. Not to his shitty apartment, but back to the bayou. Turn his back on Neorleans, find a job somewhere else, hope this never catches up with him.

Or, play it cool, do his best to scrape any last trace of his involvement from his implant and any other surveillance he might have passed during the night prior. Maybe even give one last call to Gray and demand he ensure the Vitali itself has no surveillance footage. Surely that, of all things, is something Gray would have disabled.

Rule number two, though. Don't take risks.

It's risky. But as Zef feels his heart race and his chest fail to inflate all the way—not from the binder restricting his ribs but panic taking up too much space in him—he thinks...both options have got their risks. Maybe it's worth it for just the chance to be himself.

He doesn't get very far in his inner-debate. Without warning, the door to the office slams inward and soldiers pile in. A stream of five through the door, marching in formation. An encroaching army. The muted discussions of the other employees goes still enough they can't hear more than the tromp of boots and the dull din of traffic outside. Maybe it's Zef's imagination that the soldiers look in his direction. That their eyes scan the rows of desks and fall on his face.

But his pulse is thick in his throat, his heartbeat a hammer strike against his ribs.

Turn down another row, he thinks.

They pass the first row. The second. They turn down the third. Zef's row.

He considers running, but there are about thirty employees and five soldiers between him and the exit. Even if he evades them, what's to stop one of the other employees from tripping him up? It's not like they know him. Not like they have any reason to protect him.

The soldiers march towards him. Feels like a pre-emptive funeral procession. 'Cause Zef is pretty sure he's dead. He is way too small and squishy for prison.

Two desks away.

One.

Then they pass him.

Straight on past.

He whips his head around as they continue toward a desk at the back.

One of the soldiers, a woman at the front of the procession, says, "Mira Lyonne, we're taking you into Bionic Capital custody for fraud and theft of trade secrets in accordance with—"

Mira bolts from her chair.

The soldiers give chase, shouting. Mira vaults over an empty desk and tries to cut down the second, vacant row. She might have made it, but another soldier appears, blocking the door. She freezes, hands clenching into fists. Along the back of one arm, a six inch blade slides out and over the back of her hand. Like goddamn Wolverine but, like, one big dagger instead of knuckle knives. Pointless weapon. A slash of blood over the soldier's chest rings with the screech of metal on metal when her blade encounters subdermal armour. Blue electricity arcs from the soldier's fist across the blade and wraps around Mira in a cage, frying whatever implants or weapons might have been her backup and knocking her out to boot.

Hopefully not permanently. Cybernetics could be fixed, but human hearts and high voltage electricity weren't the best of friends. Zef cringes.

Mira sags, and her captor gathers her up like a sack of potatoes. The small army marches on without a backwards glance, closing the door behind them.

It's over.

The entire room lets out a breath as one. All except Zef. He's pretty sure he forgot how lungs work. The air smells thinly of ozone, burnt out electronics and blood. He should feel relieved the soldiers weren't there for him. The crimes investigated had nothing to do with his bad judgement and last night's gay shenanigans.

Instead, he feels trapped by the data logged in his implant, in his head.

Nav eyes him, their expression a combination of you okay? And stop acting so dang guilty. "Can't say your first day wasn't eventful, huh?"

"Wouldn't mind if tomorrow was boring," says Zef. God, he hopes the assessing look Nav gives him doesn't result in a judgement of, this guy is so damn suspicious he might as well be tiptoeing around like a 1990's cartoon robber in a striped jumpsuit.

He continues with his tutorial, trying to absorb the protocols of this software. With six minutes to five-o-clock, he itches to go home and begin the arduous process of wiping his implant.

Then a notification flashes across his eyes.

>>Incoming call from Rylan Archer

Zef's throat closes. He answers it. He has to. Can't avoid it. But the timing of the call and the rumours flying around the office?

Nausea-inducing. His shrimp snack threatens to reappear like a magic trick. Rabbit from a hat.

"Zeffir Kovac," says Rylan. "Come speak with me in my office."