I felt like I was going to be sick. My mouth watered, and the sour taste of bile rose from my throat. My eyes darted around the tiny incarnated space. Beads of sweat formed on my face. My fear was running away with my reason. I had to get out. To get somewhere safe. I closed my eyes so tightly they ached and reached out to sever my connection with Isbrand. For a brief moment, I felt myself detach and fall.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” I heard Isbrand’s voice before I felt a hand wrap around the back of my neck. My eyes shot open. I was back in the room with Isbrand. I was still inside the Incarnum.

  “Let go of me!” I protested, twisting my body and trying to pry myself from his grip.

  “To do what? Leave? We have a job to do!” Isbrand said. His grip on me never loosened.

  “Yes! Change of plans. I have to escape! Now!” I explained.

  “Slow down. What’s going on?” He asked. I would swear I heard concern in his tone if I didn’t know any better.

  “I’m done. It’s over. I’ve run out of time. Maria convinced Dice to reinstate Pritch. She’s going to the hab unit right now,” I said.

  A wicked smile crossed Isbrand’s face.

  “Pritch the Bitch?” He asked. “Now that is a treat.”

  “What is wrong with you?!” I demanded. “Have you forgotten the hell she put me through for years?”

  “Oh, I remember it well, buddo,” Isbrand said. “You never grew a pair, so she dog-walked you.”

  “You’re saying that was my fault?!”

  “Yes. All you needed was a fucking spine. You could have spared yourself a lot of trouble. Could’ve even had some fun in the process.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “You wanna bet?”

  “I’m not playing these games with you, Isbrand.”

  “Just let me handle her. I guarantee better results than you ever got.”

  “Absolutely not. You’re going to get me murdered. You know what Pritch is like.”

  “You know I’d never let her kill you. Kill us. Besides, she wouldn’t want to.”

  “And how have you come to that conclusion?”

  “She likes us too much,”

  “Are we talking about the same woman here?!”

  “Just take the bet if you’re so sure.”

  “What bet?! You’ve just been spouting nonsense!”

  “You let me handle Pritch, and I’ll get her to stop treating you like a plaything.”

  “And what’s the wager?”

  “Name your price.”

  “Fine. When I’m proven right, you will fall in line. No more fighting to get out of your cage. No more outbursts. You will follow my orders to the letter. No complaints. Understand?”

  “Alright. But if you’re wrong, the cage goes. I want out, permanently.”

  “You can’t be serious?”

  “What happened? I thought you were confident I had no chance of winning?”

  “Fine!”

  “Good. Let’s shake on it.”

  “Really?”

  “I insist.”

  I rolled my eyes and pulled away from Isbrand again. This time, he let me go. I faced him and held out my hand. Isbrand’s hand closed around mine and squeezed firmly. We shook briefly, him still grinning in my face.

  “You’re going to look back on this day and wonder why you didn’t listen to me sooner,” Isbrand said.

  “You’re going to look back on this day and wonder how you became delusional.” I countered.

  “We’ll both be better for the journey,” Isbrand said.

  “Doubtful,” I scoffed. “Let’s get to the hab. We are wasting time.”

  Isbrand disappeared, leaving me alone in the incarnated room. I sat back in the cold metal chair and tried to understand what was happening. Isbrand was going to fail. I was confident in that notion. Where did that outcome leave me? I would be done with Isbrand’s depredations of my soul. Pritch was suddenly back in my life. Isbrand would likely provoke her in this mad gambit of his. She would retaliate against me; that much was certain. Would she genuinely go so far as to kill me? Could she afford to? She knew who my handler was. I was a valuable investment in the eyes of influential people. I knew Pritch was insane. But she wasn’t that insane. There may have been a means to salvage this. I could placate Pritch in the short term. Just long enough to finish my preparations. When I’m ready, I escape to the emerald moon. I flee to Smaragdos.

  Hey, look alive in there. We’re getting close to the hab. Isbrand’s voice sounded in my mind.

  “Any sign of Pritch?” I asked aloud.

  None. We’ve got a hell of a lot of company, though. Enforcers everywhere. Scav drones, as far as the eye can see. It looks like someone kicked the info-junkie hive, too. They’re practically beating through the enforcer’s barricades down there!

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “For fuck’s sake! We’re never going to catch a break tonight, are we?!” I shouted.

  Stop whining and get up here with me! It’s time to go to work!

  “Finally, I can agree to something,” I muttered, closing my eyes and transferring myself to the control node of the Incarnum. I felt my existence stretch like a thin line, extending to an unseen horizon. Colors I couldn’t understand cascaded across my lack of vision. Sounds slid past me until no space was left between us. My consciousness tore itself apart and poured into the Incarnum’s senses. I opened my eyes and adjusted to the display of Isbrand’s visual sensors.

  “Alright, let me shift to the Egg,” I told Isbrand. I blinked and appeared outside the Incarnum, floating a few feet from Isbrand’s shoulder. The egg referred to the Incarnum’s Omnidirectional Viewpoint Module. OVM for short. I always found the pun funny. It must have been why the manufacturers made the avatar you projected outside the Incarnum an oval-shaped sphere. That has more marketing potential.

  Isbrand turned to look at me dismissively.

  “All tucked in up there, buddo?”

  “Are you finished?”

  “I could come up with something more if you want?”

  “Spare me,” I said, looking towards the view of the hab unit below. Isbrand had stopped on an overpass situated above the scene. Most of the crowd had moved closer to the action, leaving this level of the platforms around the hab unit practically empty. A few stragglers meandered about, hawking wares or conversing loudly. Everyone gave Isbrand and me a wide berth.

  The situation was precisely as Isbrand described it: a rat’s nest. The Enforcers barely controlled the bystanders, scavs, and press-heads. The barricade lines were too close to the building. I couldn’t let anything escape the hab unit without risking an outbreak, so I brought up our scan of the building and placed it between us.

  “I’m reading zero activity from the upper tiers of the building,” I said.

  “Of course not; anybody with enough scratch to their accounts can afford Trevelli’s monitoring service. They were exfiltrated at the first errant J-reading. The Imps are only going to show in the sub-level.” Isbrand said.

  “So we can disregard the upper floors. We clear from the main floor down.” I said.

  “Yes, but we’ll have to graft into the hab unit’s network. As we move down, we limit access to each floor. We send any survivors up and out through a single emergency corridor,” he said.

  “That’s the only way we guarantee safe extraction for them.” I agreed.

  “Hold on. I’m picking something up—” Isbrand’s voice was drowned out as my mind exploded in pain. White-hot and searing, but it was also short-lived. These were all the hallmarks of intrusion. Someone had punched through all my mental defenses to forge a connection. I only needed one guess as to who.

  Oh, Caldburn, I’m touched. A husky, euphonious voice slipped into my psyche. Were you waiting for me?

  Livia Pritch had reached me again. I wasn’t here. This wasn’t happening. I couldn’t move, think, or breathe. Something cold and sharp gripped my heart.

  “I don’t have time for games, Pritch,” Isbrand said, covering my silence. He did say he was going to deal with her. Now, I had to stand back and watch this disaster unfold.

  That’s too bad. You know how I love playing games. Pritch pouted mockingly.

  “Maybe later if you promise to play nice,” Isbrand said. “Right now, we must deal with our most pressing issue.”

  You’re right. There is a very pressing matter we have to address. Pritch said. Her voice had lowered to a snarl. Our sensors started to pick up movement from above. Isbrand and I both looked up to see a Dice personnel carrier. The craft looked like a box with stubby wings jutting from both sides. Each wing housed its own engine. What it lacked in aesthetics, it made up for in rugged adaptability. The back hatch of the craft opened as it neared the platform. I could make out an imposing figure standing at the edge of the opening in the carrier. The few wandering locals left on the platform scattered like shadows in the face of light. No one wanted to risk drawing Dice’s attention. The carrier dropped low toward the platform, lining its open hatch up with the overpass.

  Pritch jumped from the back of the craft, sailing through the air in a wide arc until she hit the platform. Her body twisted as she made contact with the ground. She stabbed a blade that jutted from the top of her forearm into the platform. It gouged out a long groove through the metal, slowing her to a stop. She stood up from a low, kneeling position to her full height. The blade slid back down into her arm and disappeared.

  She was a vision of beautiful vulgarity. Her hair was a sharp two-toned affair: platinum above, dyed indigo below that framed her pale face in a choppy bob. She had one red-orange eye to the left of her face. On the right was what looked like an implanted eye patch. The neon glow of sensors on the patch betrayed it as an advanced targeting system. The rest of her screamed out just as hard to be seen. Her body was a long curved blade, all smooth and sloping synth-flesh with a deadly, perfect cutting edge. She sheathed herself in an ensemble of exposed black and gold machinery, fabrics draping to give her the faintest whispers of modesty, and enough biomechanical musculature to punch a hole through nano-comb plating.

  “Why don’t you start by giving me a good fucking reason not to gut you?” Pritch said, glaring at Isbrand and me.

  “I understand. You missed me. I’m happy to see you too, Pritch,” Isbrand said.

  “That new Incarnum has you on a different vibe, huh?” She asked, walking closer. “Who’s in there with you? Kearn?”

  “Nothing gets past you, does it?” Isbrand asked. “Alright. Ask nice, and I’ll make introductions.”

  Pritch’s firey orange eye flared open wide.

  “Look at the shine on this one...” She had closed the distance to Isbrand now. She stood directly in front of him. Her hands rested on her hips as she looked Isbrand up and down. “They broke the mold with you.”

  “I’m Isbrand, by the way.” He said.

  “Still waiting on that reason not to flat-line you.” Her reminder was cold and humorless.

  Isbrand shifted his hulking metal frame, turned to Pritch, and lowered his visual dome sensor directly into her face, leaving only inches between them.

  “Because as much as I would love to hold hands and walk you out under that pretty green moon all night long. Lives are at stake. We’re Dealers with a job to do. Now is not the time to be fucking around.” Isbrand’s hushed monotone made a poor mask for his voice’s raw, visceral implication.

  I waited for Pritch to strike. I knew the attack was coming; I couldn’t predict its origin. She would lash out in fury, and I wasn’t sure I would survive. Every thread of my consciousness was pulled taut and tense enough to produce a musical note if plucked. The anticipation stretched out my perception of time. I felt like I would be trapped in these few seconds for an eternity.

  And nothing ever came.

  “I guess I can’t afford to have my first job back become a shlock-news headline,” Pritch spoke with renewed levity. She cast her eye down at the ground for a brief moment as she let out a sigh. She remained facing Isbrand.

  “No, we can’t. Work with us so we can help you.” Isbrand said, matching her new tone.

  “We, huh?” Pritch said, turning her gaze back into Isbrand’s eye. “Is poor little Elias still even in there?”

  “He’s here with us. Just a little shy, is all. I think he might warm up a bit if you apologized.” Isbrand said.

  “Don’t push it,” She warned, jabbing a finger towards Isbrand.

  “Whoa, relax. I’m not…” Isbrand said, raising his two smaller arms in a gesture of feigned surrender.

  “Do you have a plan for this mess?” Pritch asked, turning from Isbrand and walking to the edge of the overpass. The hab unit waited below.

  “Yes. And there’s a place in it for you especially, watching my back,” Isbrand said.

  “Fuck off,” Pritch scoffed. “I’m taking point…”

  “Alright. Have it your way,” Isbrand acquiesced.

  “Give me five on recon once I’m in the building. Then, meet me at the elevators.” She said. Pritch hopped over the railing of the platform and pushed off the side. She sailed through the open air to a building on the opposite side of the overpass. Pritch clambered down the structure towards the hab unit, falling, sliding, running, and climbing, all in smooth sequence and equal measure.

  Isbrand waited until she was out of earshot to speak to me.

  “And you doubted me…” He chuckled.

  I was still too stunned to speak. Somehow, Isbrand had done it.

  He won the wager.

  I had set him free.