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The prograe as a standard hand terress bar was slowly filling along the side, notations in si with each movement

The hole was a cheap one near the surface of the h rooms inched into the ice from a public corridor hardly wider or better lit The old plastic walls glittered and ith condensation They were in the room farthest fro hunched in the doorway

“No promise for the full record,” the boy said “What is, is, sabé?”

“Anything you can get would be great”

The boy nodded once Prax didn’t know his na to ask The days it had taken to track down soh the security systenorance of Gany desperation and hunger in even the ht have been skie for easily laundered private credit Today he was looking for Mei in exchange for enough leafy greens to ricultural barter, the oldest econoone,” the boy said “Sucked into servers, buried ass deep”

“So if you can’t break the security servers —”

“Don’t have to Caot cache Since the lockdown, it’s just filling and filling No one watching”

“You’re kidding,” Prax said “The two biggest ar each other down, and they’re not watching the security cameras?”

“Watching each other No one half-huress bar filled co codes and started paging through the to himself Frory Of course it did

“Your kid?”

The boy shook his head

“Collateral,” he said, and tapped twice on a code A ne opened A wide hall A door half melted and forced open Scorch marks on the walls and, worse, a puddle of water There shouldn’t be free water The environ further and further away from their safe levels The boy looked up at Prax “C’est la?”

“Yes,” Prax said “That’s it”

The boy nodded and hunched back over his console

“I need it before the attack Before theTod á fra happens, que si?”

“Fine That’s fine”

Praxto look over the boy’s shoulder The i except the puddle, slowly getting sh the days and weeks Toward the moment when it had all fallen apart

Medics appeared in the screen, appearing to walk backward in the inverted world as they brought a dead body to lay beside the door Then another draped over it The two corpses lay ently at the wall, then ered to his feet and was gone

“There should be a girl I’irl”

“Sa day care, no? Should be a thousand of them”

“I only care about the one”