He’d expected he’d have to work at it, and it turned out he’d been correct. He’d just underestimated how much.

  “So. Straight home, or do you want me to drop you off anywhere in particular?”

  Warner blinked, forcing himself to refocus on what the other man was saying. Quinn from Psyops had every reason to look at him with pity, but the only expression Warner could read clearly was a kind of awe.

  “I said, go home or go somewhere else?”

  Warner weighed his options. His mind buzzed; his bones, both real and titanium ones, felt hollow. He hadn’t eaten since the disastrous breakfast with Lyssa, and although there was no way to tell what time it was outside, he suspected it was even later than he might guess. Just as well. It’d be easier to get shitfaced.

  “Dude, it’s not every day that you get to commandeer government transport. Might as well take advantage. And if you’re going somewhere interesting, who knows? I just might join you. I’ve been on overtime for hours and have extra cash to spend.”

  Great. Now not only did he have to come up with a destination that wouldn’t make him sick to his stomach—he also had to somehow get rid of this guy. Warner wasn’t the type to hit the town with the boys even in normal times. And normal times, as far as he was concerned, had come to an abrupt end the moment he got the message from Lyssa. Getting rid of Quinn from Psyops automatically rose to the top of the priority list.

  “Club Lunatik,” he said.

  To his dismay, Quinn’s blond eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Really, now? That’s unexpected. Don’t mind if I tag along.”

  “Didn’t think it was your scene,” Warner muttered through clenched teeth.

  Quinn nodded cheerfully. “Which is why you suggested it. Correct?”

  Godfuckingdammit.

  “Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve been tasked with keeping an eye on you,” Quinn said.

  “By your boss at the Ministry?”

  There it was, the pity in his expression. “No. By Ms. Burkhardt.”

  “Since when do you answer to Lyssa?”

  “Since my superiors told me to protect the interests of VogelCorp.”

  “Then, as the heir apparent to VogelCorp, can I order you to go home?”

  Quinn smirked. Warner felt his hope die, feeble though it was to begin with.

  “Hey, don’t take it the wrong way. She’s just worried about you, that’s all.”

  “So you’re a glorified babysitter. Are you proud of yourself?”

  At that moment, the government transport arrived. Fresh out of options, Warner let himself get shepherded inside.

  Without windows, he couldn’t see the city as the car wove its way through its arteries. Yet somehow, he knew the moment they crossed the invisible line into the city center. He could feel it pulsing outside, its hum working its way up through the car’s wheels, the sound isolation not quite enough to filter out the noise.

  Normally, when he wasn’t looking for company, he’d go to the lower levels, but having a government spook trail him there would be humiliating. The Keepers didn’t mingle with the drones and had nothing to do on the lower levels. Hell, even going out to party in the clubbing district was regarded by Warner’s equals (Lyssa’s words, not his) as somewhat suspect. When one was young, it could be overlooked, and it even made him relatable (her words again), which was good. But he was thirty-two now, and soon, he’d be expected to get with the program. To be one of the Keepers, she told him, meant having responsibilities of which the average city denizen knew nothing. Nor would they want them if they knew.

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  He’d be happy to go back to his lab at VogelCorp and never come out, but a part of those responsibilities included perpetuating the Vogel bloodline. Since most Keeper women inspired nothing but boredom, he expected that Lyssa would eventually make the selection herself, and he planned to go along with it, putting on the show of courting a blandly gorgeous woman born to be bred like a racehorse from the olden days. The ordinary citizens could be “free” from old-school traditions, but in the Keeper ranks, those were still very much alive. You couldn’t govern efficiently without order and structure, Lyssa never tired of saying, and it all needed governing, constantly.

  Someone had to keep the wheels turning in the great machine. You kept those wheels turning and the cogs happy and compliant, always striving for things that were either insignificant in the grand scheme of things or unachievable. And in return, you got to have families and live in real houses with real windows that weren’t screens, from which you could see the real, living trees that surrounded them, and eat steak and olives while the lower ranks chowed down on processed, flavored insect protein.

  It never stopped to baffle him how easily most of these happy people stumbling intoxicated through the streets just accepted this as a given, even welcomed it. He never got the appeal of guaranteed mediocrity.

  The car dropped them off a block from the entrance to Club Lunatik. Warner watched his unasked-for companion straighten the collar of his shirt.

  “You’re going in there like this?” he asked, eyeing Quinn’s outfit that screamed government worker from a mile away.

  “Oh, yeah,” Quinn said, grinning. “Everyone digs this. I think they think it’s a costume. But who cares, right?”

  Warner glanced down at himself. He’d worn scrubs on top of his clothes to avoid getting blood all over him, but he would have fit in better splattered in red. Anyway, he had no plans to stay. The moment an opportunity came up, he’d ditch Quinn and get out of there.

  The entrance to Lunatik was a narrow staircase leading to a metal basement door. Behind that door, anything went as long as consenting adults were involved. The first thing Warner saw once the door opened and the door attendant scanned them in was a man dangling from the ceiling by some hooks that pierced the flesh of his trapezius muscles. Quinn whistled.

  “Playroom? Or bar?” the attendant had enormous, all-black eyes and implanted horns on her forehead.

  “Bar,” Warner said quickly, before Quinn could accidentally-on-purpose drag them into the public playroom. What went on there was only somewhat less kinky than what happened behind closed, camera-free doors in the private rooms, and public humiliation had never been Warner’s thing.

  The bar looked almost normal by the standards of Lunatik. The shots were distributed by what appeared to be a perfect likeness of a pulsating human heart from which veins and arteries snaked in all directions. It made zero sense from a realistic standpoint. It wasn’t meant to. Like everything here, it was meant to shock and awe.

  “Look, if this is too much for you, you can go,” he said as Quinn settled in next to him.

  “Nice try.” In the black light, Quinn’s teeth glowed the same color as his shirt collar. “What are we having? It’s on me. My treat. You had a hell of a day. Plain old booze? Dopamine? Epinephrine? Serotonin? Neuros?”

  “Neuros are illegal,” Warner pointed out.

  “They’re a legal gray area,” Quinn corrected.

  “Are you trying to collect kompromat on me?”

  Quinn gave a carefree shrug. “I don’t get paid enough to collect kompromat in my off-work hours. Let alone kompromat on anyone from VogelCorp. Let alone the guy whose last name is on the building in giant neon letters. I just thought you could use a pick-me-up.”

  “And your idea of a pick-me-up is neuros.”

  “To be honest, I can’t think of anything better. So are you in or not?”

  Warner thought about it. The guy whose name is on the building in giant neon letters, indeed. That’s why he liked the lower levels, and not because of whatever debauchery Lyssa imagined there to be—it was actually tame compared to what people got up to on your average Tuesday in the above-ground party districts. That’s why he chose this place, the last place he should want to be. In here, he didn’t have to be that guy.

  Meanwhile, Quinn took his silence as acquiescence. With an impish grin, he hopped off his barstool and disappeared in the crowd.

  Warner looked around. Club Lunatik lived up to its name. The intricate design of synthetic human organs blending seamlessly with machine parts covered the walls and ceiling. The dim lights swung on strings of muscle and tendon, their red glow pulsing with purple veins. The result might have resembled somebody’s idea of hell, although in Warner’s experience, hell was not only devoid of these gimmicks but also quite brightly lit.

  He opens his eyes. Above, a pattern of tiles, and a round surgical lamp hovering low over his face, almost low enough to touch.

  And the voice he’ll remember for the rest of his life.

  “Look who’s awake.”

  “Hey!”

  It took him some self-control not to give a start. Quinn’s neon smile hovered right next to him like a demonic Cheshire cat. “To be honest, I was sure I’d come back and find that you’ve split.”

  As I should have done, Warner thought grimly.

  “Just like I thought,” Quinn said, “it took me less than two minutes to find someone with neuros. So. Are you in?”

  He hesitated.

  Then said yes.