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  “You do NOT lay hands on a federal officer,” she shouts. He releases like she’s boiling.

  His face reddens. “You can’t take anything off site,” he says, without looking at her.

  “You’re saying I can’t take a tissue sample from this burned livedrive casing?” she glances at Slate and then at him just so he knows that even Slate might not have her on visual, it’s still recording.

  “I’m not saying that,” he says, too quickly. “But Meat4 Power – the manufacturer – want to preserve the scene as is.”

  She’s slow and clear so Slate gets every word. “So you’re enforcing a manufacturer’s stipulation over a Federal officer’s duty?”

  “I… they…” He’s suddenly pale. “Look, I just follow orders, you know? Maybe this is just a fire, maybe someone’s trying to hit Meat4 Power. You’ve seen it in the news – the whole corporation’s in the middle of a war right now.”

  “So what does that have to do with this?”

  He licks his lips nervously. “I only say what I hear. I think maybe M4 execs were partying upstairs. I hear this building’s fitted with high-end M4 wetware, that they test stuff here all the time. This comes first hand from Meat4 Power personnel. They’re on site. Why not check with them first?”

  “I will,” she says. “I’ll check with them.” She picks up Slate and turns back to the service elevator hoping to grab a sample but the cop stands right next to her until she strips off the glove and walks away from her best chance of some actual evidence.

  “File continuation. Name: Arclights. Evidence: Fire Department.”

  The cop passes her to the FD crew chief. He wastes no time, gives his name and badge number and gets to the point. Kirsty’s less nervous now. The procedure and the data gathering almost have her convinced that she’s doing more than shooting an elaborate home movie.

  “The fire’s fuel was multiple catering packs of vegetable oil stacked by the rear fire escape,” says the FD chief. “That’s a major safety violation right there. The oil should have been closed up in the adjacent storeroom but that’s over-filled already.”

  “What was the primary ignition?” she asks and he just sweeps his arms round banks of blackened gas hobs, deep fat fryers, broiler stations.

  “Take your pick,” he tells her.

  He shows her the kitchen door propped where his crew left it, buckled at the bottom where they’d popped it with a hydraulic jack. He points to the swollen foam heat strips round all sides.

  “The doors worked by sealing off and containing the fire on this level,” he says, “but they were death for the staff down here. See the finger scrapes here and here? See the fat and fabric scraps on the floor here? We found most of the dead piled against this door.”

  “The fire strips sealed the door?” she says.

  “I believe I was clear on that point.”

  “PD says the door was blocked by a livedrive carcass on the far side.”

  He shakes his head. “Access was clear when we arrived.”

  “PD says you removed the livedrive to get at the door.”

  “We just popped it with the jack. Maybe he confused us with the Meat4 Power team. They were on-site before us.”

  “File continuation. Name: Arclights. Evidence: Nightclub manager. Can you give your name, please.”

  “Friedlander. Glenn Friedlander.”

  They’re in Glenn’s office overlooking the dance floor. High above the bar. High above the lighting rigs. Kirsty has a bird’s eye view of emergency crews cleaning the floor with crimson mops.

  Glenn’s doing his own mopping, working his high forehead with a large handkerchief held in pudgy fingers. He’s only thirty but already on the way to bypass surgery thanks to supermarket shelves full of cheap pharm offcuts. Kirsty wonders how he copes with the curving metal steps to his office without going into cardiac arrest.

  “Have you ever given testimony to a federal officer, Glenn?”

  “No ma’am. I’ve never been in trouble before.”

  “Call me ‘Officer’ Glenn. You’re aware of federal government’s over-riding streamlining policies?”

  “Of course, officer. Who isn’t?”

  “Then it’s easy. Courts are out, lawyers are out, too costly, too wasteful. Instead, what you say now is federally-owned testimony, hard-etched into permanent memory without any recourse to later change or editing. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Officer.”

  “You can’t recant statements. You can’t alter details at a later date. If you lie or hold back now, you’ll earn a long stretch off-Hub, ploughing federal wheat fields at the far end of the Great Lakes. Do you understand?”

  He gulps. “Yes, Officer. I knew the vegetable oil was an over order, but if I’d sent it back, I’d have been liable for a wasteful journeys tax. I should have returned it, shouldn’t I?”

  “That’s for the Fire Department to decide. I’m only sanctioned to investigate the livedrive.” It sounds true. No one’s doubted her yet. “Now from up here, you’re overlooking the main bar. Did you see the livedrive come up through the service elevator?”

  “I didn’t,” he says. “I was bundling cash by the safe when it happened. I heard the bang, even through the glass. Even over the music.”

  “What about the aftermath? Did you see the livedrive blocking the kitchen door?”

  “No. My fire point is at the front door so that’s where I went. By the time I was cleared to go back in, Meat4 Power crews were cleaning up. They kept everyone back.”

  “But everything will be on closed circuit, right? If I link Slate to your datastore then I can take the visuals away with me.”

  “Oh, PD took them already. Or maybe it was M4.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Yes I realize they’ll have downloaded the data. But I need a copy too.”

  Glenn swabs his wide, pale face. “Officer, they took the datastore. They physically pulled the memory chipsets.”

  “Then it’s very important that you answer this last question truthfully, Glenn. Who did that? Who pulled the chipsets?”

  He squirms and sweats more than she’d thought was possible. “PD and Meat4 Power came together and left together,” he says, unconvincingly. “It could have been either…”

  She demands to see a Meat4 Power representative and they put her in a VIP booth over at the far side of the club and leave her there for twenty minutes. It’s a section of the club she’s only ever seen from the other side of the rope barrier before. Any other time, she’d be thrilled to be sitting with enough plush seating for a dozen clustered round a clear acrylic table. Sitting on her own now, her face reddening with every passing minute, all she can think about is how fucking dumb she is.

  Eventually, a lone woman in a plain dark suit arrives. She’s fifty at least, gray hair in a no-nonsense cut and carrying plenty of weight. She sits down opposite and raises a cautionary finger as Kirsty picks up Slate.

  “It’s my employer you are interested in speaking to,” says the woman. “He will be along shortly. For now, I need to set the ground rules.”

  Twenty minutes previously, her head full of contradictory statements and withheld evidence, Kirsty would have started shouting about criminal obstruction. Now though, she just stares hatefully. The woman looks at her blankly for a few seconds then continues.

  “Your conversation with my employer cannot be recorded as his position at Meat4 Power requires a higher level of caution than most. I’ve been told to hold onto your Slate for the duration of the interview.”

  “Not going to happen,” says Kirsty, shaking her head furiously. “All Federal Officer are chipped to their Slates. If that leaves my side, Slate burst-transmits its full content to FedNet as a precaution against attempted destruction of evidence.”

  The woman nods. “Then please leave it turned off and face up on the table at all times.”

  “I’ll think about it,” says Kirsty, defiantly.

  “I’m sure you will,” says the woman. �
�While you do, consider that my employer’s airship touches down in ten minutes, so he needs to be outside by then. You have five minutes with him.”

  “Lady…” says Kirsty through gritted teeth. “Don’t even try deadlining me. If I wanted, I could watch you leave, have ATC track you anywhere and talk to you both the moment you land.”

  The woman smiles. “Air traffic control has been off-line for the last two hours, Officer Powell. Please check this on your Slate but please do it quickly.”

  Only Kirsty doesn’t have to check. She knows no flights over Toronto are being logged so puts Slate in standby and slams it onto the table. “Deal… done it…” she says. “So send him over already.”

  The company man’s nothing special to look at. Old, tired and distracted, his fresh Meat4 Power coveralls clashing with bags under his eyes, days of graying stubble and silver hair crammed under a cap. He sits down heavily and slumps back into the soft padding of the chair.

  “Who are you?” she says.

  “I’m Bishop,” he says.

  “First name? Initial?”

  He shakes his head. “Just Bishop.”

  “She said you’re in a high-risk position at Meat4 Power,” says Kirsty, pointing at the gray-haired woman.

  “We live in dangerous times,” says Bishop.

  “What’s your role then? Specifically?”

  “Specifically?” He raises his eyebrows. “You know, this and that.” He’s got an accent that’s neither Toronto Hub nor Canadian. That’s odd in itself. That means he’s off-Hub.

  She thinks about time ticking. “Your wetware killed people tonight. Lots of people.” She says it as a statement rather than a question.

  He nods. “Regrettably, yes.”

  “Yet PD told me no one died. Did you tell them to say that?”

  He ignores the accusation. “If consumers can’t follow simple operating instructions, that’s not our liability,” he says. “On-site minilab results suggest that management deviated from the approved fuelfood regimen, adding short-term performance by omitting a substantial pharmaceutical docility regimen specifically designed to prevent spontaneous hyper-reflexivity.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” she says.

  “But that will be the conclusion of Meat4 Power’s report into this matter.”

  “Internal reports are irrelevant. The cause is for me to investigate.”

  He smiles briefly. “Of course it is, Officer.”

  “FD say you were first on scene. That you removed the livedrive.”

  “It’s already been taken to a secure facility pending full postmortem,” says Bishop.

  “Well that’s okay,” she says. “Whoever you send to bring the livedrive carcass straight back here can bring the club’s security chipsets too.”

  Bishop huffs, shakes his head and finally looks straight at her. “Why are you here, Officer?”

  “I was sent here,” she lies. “Alarms went off, I was directed here.”

  “The alarms in this facility are a closed loop to Meat4 Power,” says Bishop. “This incident’s off all comms channels so you weren’t directed here. I know this and you know this too. Why else would you flash an invalid work log to the cops on the gate?”

  Feeling her cheeks flush hot makes her blush even more. “You don’t know that,” she says.

  “I don’t,” he says, “but I do know neither of those PD got more than a glance at it either. What if I insisted on seeing it right now? What would you do?”

  She’s bluffed out and knows that Bishop knows it. “Okay,” she says. “So I was in the area and wanted to know what all the PD units were doing here.”

  “And that’s it?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re just being curious?”

  “Yes” she says. It’s been sounding dumb in her head for the twenty minutes they’ve been keeping her waiting. Hearing him say it makes her neck redden even more.

  “Well that is unfortunate,” he says, “because everyone else here is currently off-duty and earning overtime on Meat4 Power’s card. We were aiming to keep this quiet by simply compensating everyone inconvenienced by this.”

  She’s used to people being less forthcoming. “You’re actually admitting all of this?” she says.

  “You caught us at an awkward moment,” Bishop shrugs, “but where’s the crime in that?”

  “The crime, Bishop…” she says, slowly, “…is killing people. Meat4 Power is responsible.”

  “You don’t know that, we don’t know that,” he says. “You work with wetware so you know it malfunctions. Mostly, each unit pumps peacefully though its billion heartbeat life then expires. Sometimes, one shits blood-flecked diarrhea all over the basement floor and you get called in to deal with it. Very, very rarely, one catches fire and lashes out like the wounded animal I suppose it is. When that happens, no one calls for a wetvet. They call for someone like me to sweep up, write blank checks and move on.”

  “Anyone who bled out on the dancefloor won’t be moving on.”

  “But they are being cared for and generously over-compensated. This mess here?” he says. “It’s unusual only by its scale. But a lost limb or a kick in the head? That happens two, three times a month and when it does, we’re here to help. Product-related accidents are PR disasters, you must know that.”

  He gives her a moment to chew her lip. “My time’s up,” he says, “but before I leave, I need to know your next move. You weren’t meant to see any of this. You certainly weren’t meant to take statements. What do you intend to do with them?”

  “I can’t wipe anything,” she admits. “Slate’s memory is hard-etched and unalterable. And since I have to account for everything on Slate, I can’t just look the other way either. I have to file something.”

  “Which is a problem for us both, isn’t it, Officer?” he says. “Using federal authority without a mandate to do so is a crime, I believe.”

  “As is removing evidence from a scene and hindering an investigation,” she shoots back, angrily. “My reasons for being here may be sketchy, my right to work unimpeded is not.”

  He nods enthusiastically. “And here’s my point. We can confess to whatever infractions you choose to impose on us. If you require people to serve penal time, we can give you those too. In return for us not revealing the questionable status of your visit. All that I ask is that you allow us to clear this up in our own time.”

  “I’m a federal officer,” she says. “I’m not in the habit of being told what to do.”

  “Am I trying to bribe you,” asks Bishop. “Am I suggesting you don’t do your job? I’m just suggesting a certain flexibility in your approach. Show willing and limit your work log to matters already on record and we won’t feel compelled to bring up the matter of your unsanctioned entry.”

  She blinks back tears as she searches for the right way to say how she feels. “I don’t… like… being told what to do.”

  “Life is compromise, Officer,” says Bishop as he stands up. “I guarantee you’ll have security visuals and livedrive samples soon. Play it low key and you’ll get your bust while the poor victims of this will get our money. Really, who loses?”

  He smiles again and she decides she really doesn’t like this Bishop guy. But at least he’s offering her a life line.

  “Okay,” she says. “Security visuals and hands-on time with the dead livedrive before end of shift, right?”

  “You have my word on it,” he says and Kirsty believes him because at that one moment, she wants to believe there’s a simple, straightforward and streamlined way out of this.

  Monday 20 January

  02:17 pm

  HEMBLEN STOOD AT the front of Crash The Pad’s windowless briefing room and watched them wander in, the fifty men and women he’d use to take down a billion dollar corporation. They dressed for the street but looked ready to fight. They wore oversized leather coats to hide pistols in shoulder holsters or parked on their hips. They wore bike-styled leather
jackets whose angular padding naturally hid Kevlar-3 armor and ceramic plate inserts. They wore boots light enough to run in, hard enough to deliver a crushing blow. Hemblen knew even their t-shirts and jeans were impregnated with woven strands of freeze-dried antibiotics and coagulants to counter puncture wounds or ballistic trauma. His were too.

  Over half of Crash The Pad, together in a room. It was a rare enough event that he let them catch up a little before he cleared his throat. Hemblen hated speeches but the circumstances called for it so he gave it his best shot.

  “Within the Union, Crash The Pad has a well-deserved rep for handling determined, well-planned, single-building assaults,” he stated. “Outside mercwar though, I doubt that anyone’s even heard of us. Both those will change, starting today. Right here, right now, we’ll plan a strategy of conquest on behalf of Meat4 Power, the biggest wetware manufacturer north of the Great Lakes. When we’re done, I guarantee that everyone in Crash The Pad will be rich, rich and more rich. Crash The Pad’s already contracted so all I want to know is… are you coming with me?”

  “Yeah!” they roared. A little gung-ho spirit never hurt anyone.

  “I thought so!” he shouted back. “So here it is then. Client – Meat4 Power, our operational contact there, callsign Frog One. Mission – to eliminate Bostov Cryonics from Denver, Colorado by seizing and holding every single property they have in that Hub. That’s offices, wetware holding pens, transit stations and workshops. Everything.

  “Mode – attack, attack, attack. There are too many targets for us to take and hold so Frog One has contracted three different mercwar crews for this mission. They’ve hired Sue For Peace, Possession Is Nine Tenths Of and, of course, Crash The Pad. Sue For Peace will be exclusively providing defense for Meat4 Power facilities within the Denver Hub since once we start hitting them, Bostov are sure to fight back. PINTO will hold every Bostov building we capture against counter attacks which leaves us free to do what we do best – move on and kick down more doors.