Chen looked about him, sickened by the glow of excitement in every face, then came away, returning to the table in the corner.
"So what's happened?"
Karr looked up from the map, smiling wearily. "It's gone cold. And this time even our Triad friends can't help us."
Chen leaned across, putting his finger down where the map was marked with a red line—a line that ended abruptly at the entrance to the stack in which the Black Heart was located. "We've tracked them this far, right? And then there's nothing. It's a—what did you call it?—a white-out, right?"
Karr nodded. "The cameras were working, but the storage system had been tampered with. There was nothing on record but white light."
"Right. And there's no trace of either of them coming out of this stack, correct? The records have been checked for facial recognition?" Again Karr nodded.
"Then what else remains? No one broke the seals and went down to the Net, and no one got out by flyer. Which means they must be here."
Karr laughed. "But they're not. We've searched the place from top to bottom, and found nothing. We've taken the place apart."
Chen smiled enigmatically. "Which leaves what?" Karr shrugged. "Maybe they were ghosts."
Chen nodded. "Or maybe the images on the tape were. What if someone tampered with the computer storage system farther down the line?" He traced the red line back with his finger, stopping at the point where it took a sixty-degree turn. "What if our friends turned off earlier? Or went straight on? Have we checked the records from the surrounding stacks?"
Karr shook his head. "I've done it. A sixty-stack search. And there's nothing. They just disappeared."
At the gaming table things had changed dramatically. Beneath the spotlight's glare the smaller mantis seemed to be winning. It had pinned the larger creature's forelegs to the ground, trapping it, but it could not take advantage of its position without releasing its opponent. For a long time it remained as it was, moving only to prevent its foe from rising. Then, with a suddenness that surprised the hushed watchers, it moved back, meaning to strike at once and cripple its enemy. But the larger beast had waited for that moment. The instant it felt the relentless pressure of the other's forelegs lapse, it snapped back, springing up from the floor, its back legs powering it into the smaller insect, toppling it over. The snap of its forelegs was followed instantly by the crunch of its opponent's brittle flesh as it bit deep into its undefended thorax. It was over. The smaller mantis was dead.
For a moment they looked across, distracted by the uproar about the central table, then Karr turned back, his blue eyes filled with doubt. "Come . . . let's get back. There's nothing here."
They were getting up as a messenger came to their table; one of the Triad men they had met earlier. Bowing, he handed Karr a sheet of computer printout—a copy of a Security report timed at 4:24 A.M.
Karr studied it a moment, then laughed. "Just when I thought it had died on us. Look, Chen! Look what the gods have sent us!"
Chen took the printout. It was a copy of the first call-out on a new terrorist attack. On a place called the Dragonfly Club. The details were sketchy, but one fact stood out—a computer face-recognition match. He looked at Karr, then shook his head, astonished.
"Why, it's the woman . . . Chi Li, or whatever her real name is!" "Yes," Karr laughed, his gloom dispelled for the first time in two days. "So let's get there, neh? Before the trail goes cold."
YWE HAO WOKE, her heart pounding, and threw back the sheet. Disoriented, she sat up, staring about her. What in the gods' names . . . ?
Then she saw it—the winking red light of the warning circuit. Its high-pitched alarm must have woken her. She spun about, looking to see what time it was. 7:13. She had been asleep less than an hour.
Dressing took fifteen seconds, locating and checking her gun another ten. Then she was at the door, breathing deeply, preparing herself, as the door slid slowly back.
The corridor was empty. She walked quickly, her gun held out before her, knowing that they would have to use this corridor if they were coming for her.
At the first intersection she slowed, hearing footsteps, but they were from the left. The warning had come from her friends—the two boys at the elevator—which meant her assailants would be coming from that direction; from the corridor directly ahead. She slipped the gun into the pocket of her one-piece and let the old man pass, bowing, then went to the right, breaking into a run, heading for the interlevel steps.
Even as she reached their foot, she heard urgent whispering in the corridor behind her—at the intersection. She flattened herself against the wall, holding her breath. Then the voices were gone—three, maybe more of them—heading toward her apartment. -^
Vasska's brother Edel. She was certain of it. She had no idea how he had traced her, but he had.
She was eight, nine steps up the flight when she remembered the case.
"Shit!" she hissed, stopping, annoyed with herself. But there hadn't been time. If she'd stopped to dig it out from the back of the cupboard she would have lost valuable seconds. Would have run into them in the corridor.
Even so, she couldn't leave it there. It held full details of the raid; important information that Mach had entrusted her with.
People were coming down the steps now; a group of Han students heading for their morning classes. They moved past her, their singsong chatter filling the stairwell briefly. Then she was alone again. For a moment longer she hesitated, then went on up, heading for the maintenance room at the top of the deck.
karr looked about him at the ruins. It was the same pattern as before— broken Security cameras, deserted guard-posts, secured elevators, the terrorists'
trail cleverly covered by white-outs. All spoke of a highly organized operation, planned well in advance and carried out with a professionalism that even the T'ang's own elite would have found hard to match.
Not only that, but the Yu chose their targets well. Even here, amid this chaos, they had taken care to identify their victims. Twenty-four men had died here, all but one of them—a guard—regular members of the club, each of them "tagged" by the Yu, brief histories of their worthless lives tied about their necks. The second guard had simply been beaten and tied up, while the servants had again been left unharmed. Such discrimination was impressive and rumors about it—passed from mouth to ear, in defiance of the explicit warnings of the T'ing Wei—had thus far served to discredit every effort of that Ministry to portray the terrorists as uncaring, sadistic killers, their victims as undeserving innocents. Karr shook his head, then went across to Chen.
"Anything new?" he asked, looking past Chen at the last of the corpses. "Nothing," Chen answered, his weary smile a reminder that they had been on duty more than thirty hours. "The only remarkable thing is the similarity of the wounds. My guess is that there was some kind of ritual involved."
Karr grimaced. "You're right. These men weren't just killed, they were executed. And, if our Kb Ming friends are right, for good reason."
Chen looked away, a shudder of disgust passing through him. He, too, had seen the holos the assassins had left—studies of their victims with young boys taken from the Lowers. Scenes of degradation and torture. Scenes that the T'ing Wei were certain to keep from popular consumption.
Which was to say nothing of the mutilated corpse of the child they had found in the room at the-far end of the club.
Karr leaned across, touching Chen's arm. "It'll be some while before we can move on what we know. We're waiting on lab reports, word from our Triad contacts. There's little we can do just now, so why don't you get yourself home? Spend some time with that wife of yours, or take young Jyan to the Palace of Dreams. They tell me there's a new Historical."