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“Get him for me. Tell him it’s Ephraim.”

The Green just blinks at me.

“Before I grow a beard.”

“Keep up, pops. Already called him.” He taps the scar on his right temple where his neurolink went in. His eyes narrow rebelliously. “Told him a tinman was waitin’.”

A few minutes later, I spy Kobachi peeking out the crack of the door leading to the back of his shop, where he does his repairs. He catches me spotting him, then ducks away before reappearing grandly, extending his arms in welcome. He’s a little mechanized gecko of a man. In his deep sixties, his sleepy green eyes embedded with sensors and magnification lenses. Bald headed. In patched-up overalls with multiscrews and other tools sticking out of the belt on his tiny hips. Dull metal implants rise up out of the pale flesh covering his skull.

“Ephraim, my dearest friend,” he says in a thin voice as he comes up to me in the cluttered aisle. He hasn’t yet seen Volga past the stacks of music equipment. “What joy to see you again. Such a fright you gave Kobachi.” He leans closer. “I thought you were the Watchmen come back with cruelty on their minds. Such nasty, nasty customers, your kinsmen. All extortion and bullying and demanding the severest discounts. Sometimes they even demand…” His voice falters.“…refunds.”

“Refunds,” I say. “The horror.”

“I know. I know. But such times we live in. No protection for the small-business owner. Only taxes and extortion. Such is to be expected from leaders who have never run a business!” He waves to a floating sign that says NO REFUNDS. “But is it too much to ask for a literate militarized police?”

“At least they weren’t too upset about the shit knockoff lenses you repackaged in Sun Industries wrapping….”

He gasps. “Repackage! Insidious accusation! And this, from a dear friend.”

“More like insidious business practices. Those lenses you fleeced me for scratched my cornea. You’re as bad as Roduko.”

“Roduko! How dare you.” He sets his reedy hands on his hips and can’t find them because of the bulk of his tool belt, so he settles for crossing his arms. “Kal ag Roduko is a two-bit Terran hustler without a kilobyte of consideration for his customer. Profit. Profit. Profit. They’re all the same.”

“Immigrants or Silvers?”

“Either! Both! No care for being an institution in the Bazaar. It’s all about what they can extract from their customers.”

I smile, genuinely amused at the small man. He’s the most useless hustler I’ve ever met. But somehow, someway, he’s remained on this corner for forty years, like a benevolent fungus resistant to any and all change. Hell, I keep coming back even though a quarter of the commercial goods I buy here are guaranteed to break after a week’s use. But maybe that’s just because the turnover rate on everything else in Hyperion is manic. Gotta respect a fungus like Kobachi. Especially one that files off serial numbers and wipes digital signatures. Best ghost tech for fifty kilometers. Even if the toys occasionally break.

He smiles at me now, a toothy, obscenely disingenuous one that seems to grow every time he smells credits in my pocket. “What can Kobachi do for you today? Virility implants? Infrared ocular sensors? Zero-gravity acid applicators? Or will you be wanting something more…” His smile grows till it reaches his ears. “…expensive.”

“Actually, custom is the game of the day.”

“Crow! Mind your hands!” he shouts past me. I turn to see Volga frozen mid-reach toward an iridescent glass globe with floating electrical wires inside. She sheepishly steps away from the item. Kobachi wheels on me, eyelids pinched in anger. “Kobachi thinks it is not just Wardens who cannot read.” He waves to another sign that has an X drawn over an apelike monster that is supposed to be an Obsidian. “No crows. No exceptions.”

“Volga likes toys,” I say. “Volga is going to look at toys. And you’re going to mind your manners, Kobachi. For once.”

“This is my shop—”

“And you’re happy to have us here,” I say, producing the iron rose from my pocket so that only he can see it. He blanches, as if I were holding death in my coat pocket. “Aren’t you?”

“Very happy,” he says quietly, but the look on his face says otherwise.

“Glad we understand each other.” I pocket the rose and clap him on the shoulder. “Now, that custom order.”

He grunts and leads me to the back of the shop, which is filled with a large workbench stacked with half-completed projects. “So this is what it looks like back here,” I say. He looks at me with an altogether different set of eyes now that he’s seen the rose. He keeps glancing at my pocket.

“I was not aware…”

“It’s a new arrangement. And not permanent.”

“Silly Gray. It’s always permanent,” he says quietly. “They never let you go. You don’t want this, my friend.” I dismiss his words with a shrug. I don’t need him to know what I’m feeling. But I know he’s right. After so many years of watching the Syndicate’s tentacles stretch from the Lost City up to high Hyperion and out to Endymion and the other spheres, I know they never let go of something valuable. After the Fall, they decided they wanted the whole ecosystem. That’s what caused the Territory Wars between them and the old gangs. There’s few of them left anymore. Even old Golgatha fell hard.

“Is this all you have?” I ask Kobachi. “Gorgo will be disappointed.” The name affects Kobachi. His knees begin to shake so badly they almost knock together. He touches a button underneath the workstation. The back wall retracts into the ceiling, revealing a secondary room stocked with a treasure trove of gleaming titanium, slick plastic and steel—weapons, drones, data slicers and all manner of illegal military tech. He smiles with pride, despite the fear that the Syndicate has put in him. So this is what pays his rent. I laugh. “Kobachi, you old dog. I didn’t know you had so many secrets.”

“A better compliment, there is none.” He begins rattling off his catalogue of weapons. “For close work, the R-34 Widowmaker with ion pellets. Of if you’re feeing like something discreet, a wrist-mounted Eradicator. Or…”

“I’ve got a gun,” I say.