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* * *

“Maia Vosloo,” Harry Orphan repeated. He rolled my name in his mouth, like a pickled egg. “Long time, lady. Never thought I’d see you here.”

“In the Mood Ring?”

“Alive.”

Harry and I had met at Dar ‘es Alaf, before the wave. He’d been covering American women in action, or—as he put it—“The Babes Behind the Bombs.“ I was infantry, which hadn’t interested him much until I’d pointed out that if he followed my platoon long enough he was sure to be in line for a few charred civilians, not to mention a nice, juicy prospective “Why Are We in Kuwait?” sob-piece.

Ah, the simple pleasures.

Harry tugged at his wispy beard. I knew what he saw: A tiny woman wrapped scalp to sole in black vinyl, goggles sc

rewed down tight over the slits in her fetishistic full-face mask. A plastic zipper where my smile should be. I run a normal body temperature of one hundred and thirty degrees; in daylight, with my suit on, I can make thermometers explode.

Curiosity notwithstanding, Harry didn’t ask about my clothes. Or where I’d been for the last five years. Or whether or not my discharge had been . . . honorable.

I thought I could trust him. For a while.

“Harry,” I said, “I have a problem.”

I sketched in the details, and watched his color fade.

“Oh, Maia. Oh, shit.”

I went on, keeping my tone plausible. “You know me, Harry. Nothing if not professional. For murder, I charge extra—and I don’t recall my fee being anything out of the ordinary.” I paused. “I’ve been framed.”

He gulped. “Well, what do you think I can do about it?”

“Just a bit of extracurricular research. Access to your terminal at work.”

He bit his lip. “I don’t know.”

“If you can’t help me, Harry,” I said, softly, “I certainly understand.”

Harry sighed. He bit his lip again, worrying at it. He brushed back his thinning curls with one visibly sweaty palm.

Hurry up, I thought.

“Tonight?” He asked, at last.

“That’d be nice.”

He stood up. I joined him, pushing back my chair as he fumbled with his coat. “This place closes at one,” he said. “What say we take a stroll?”

And out we went, across the asphalt, neon reflections running like rain beneath our feet.

* * *

I let Harry struggle with the door’s lock for a full minute before I offered to help. “Thanks,” he gasped, and stepped aside. I heard him breathing raggedly, over my left shoulder, as I stooped to examine it. Not exactly complex. I removed a hairpin from my kit—not one of those half-plastic Western ones with its ends tipped in resin, but a true kanzashi of solid, blue-honed steel—and thrust it between the tumblers, as far as it would go.

Then I stood up again, and kicked the door in.

Harry’s editor’s office was cramped, and smelt of mouldy pizza. I’d expected as much. The Nova Express was nobody’s New York Times, just an underground rag with (fairly) new management that’d finally made the long plunge into a haze of recycled, high-yellow tabloid headlines: Two-headed feti, cannibalism, miracle cancer cures. They’d paid big bucks for Harry, though, mainly because he always knew just the right angle for a celebrity car crash, or a particularly gory industrial accident.

“What was the name of that building, again?”

“Spiro Garments,” I repeated, absently. A faded centrefold hung above the filing cabinet; she looked vaguely familiar to me. Closer examination placed her as my third-to-last landlady, the one whose house I’d had to take out after she broke my lease.