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ARE YOU MCCOYNE?"

I sit up quick Eyes blurred Where aht I look around and try to s It&039;s one of the upstairs rooms in the social club I found these cushions on a sofa downstairs and-

"Are you McCoyne?" the voice asks again from somewhere behind me Neck&039;s stiff I look back overin the open doorway

"Yeah, what&039;s the problem?"

"No problem Come with ot no choice but to follow The building is cold, and I jog across the landing to catch up with hinize him now His name&039;s Craven Julia introduced ht-hand est upstairs rooestures for me to sit down next to him at a table in the corner, where he fires up a laptop I saw hiot power here?" I ask, noticing that there&039;s a power cable connected to the back of the computer Du as tired as I feel "There&039;s electricity a few streets away We&039;ve just run a cord here to keep the laptop going"

"What, an extension cord?"

He looks atextension cord"

He shakes his head and turns his attention to the laptop I watch as he logs on to some kind of central database Is this the sae of this kind of thing is limited, and I don&039;t want to piss hi hi from here, or even what&039;s left to connect to There are all kinds of things hanging out of the back of the uess the secret&039;s there, so I stop thinking about what it is he&039;s doing, and instead I just look at the bright display and listen to the sound of the keyboard clicking as he types I used to hear that noise all day, every day at work It takes me back

"Sorry about the early wake-up call," heon the screen "Access to the system&039;s intermittent, so we have toautomatic maintenance at this time of day, so the security&039;s easier to bypass"

His words fade away as the screen changes and he concentrates on entering ot it"

"Got what?"

He slides the laptop over to me "We&039;re in Enter your details"

"What details?"

"Your name, date of birth, last known postal code"

I start jabbing at the keyboard with two fingers It&039;s

"Wait," he says "Danny short for Daniel?"

"Yes"

"Put your full name in"

I do as he says

"What&039;s all this about? What are we doing?" I ask

"Killing you," he replies without a hint of sarcas about this war," he says as he takes the laptop back again, "is that it&039;s e Everyone&039;s worried about their physical safety, and sootten about or overlooked This is a prime example This is just about the only national syste outside of defense, and anyone with half a brain can hack into it and make alterations"

"But what exactly is it you&039;re doing?"

"Is that you?" he asks, angling the screen back toward me I scan the details

"Yes, that&039;shis way through various ood, you&039;re dead already!"

"What?!"

"They&039;ve got you down as being dead Tell me, did you ever have one of those neck tests or a mouth swab?"

"Yes, why?"

"Because that&039;s where most of this information comes from They used it as kind of a census and tried to test prettyfirst kicked off It&039;s a "who&039;s what," rather than a "who&039;s who," if you get "