They showed her to a stall and allowed her to shut the door, “Keep your feet on the floor at all times,”

warned Blondie.

They took her back to a cell. She couldn’t be sure it was the same one as before. They all looked exactly alike and she hadn’t counted them on the way out. “When will I be going to county?” she asked them. Brown eyes smiled and shook her head, and Blondie laughed, but neither of them answered her question, they just left her sitting there, and locked the door behind them.

She had a long time to think about things. About Ada and Vonda and Benny and Helix. About Orielle and Hyper and Mavi. And about herself and the many ways in which she’d been blind. Chapter 18 — What Have You Done?

Benny ran up the stairs to his apartment. He went straight to the closet, pulled out a case he’d been keeping for just this occasion, and started throwing his clothes inside. It took him ten minutes to pack clothes, toothbrush, razor and his daddy’s Smith-Corolla machine pistol. He stood in his emptied closet, staring at the small panel in the back where he’d cut through the ancient drywall and later fastened a piece of panelling over the hole. They’d lain there all this time. He’d sealed them in the wall the way he’d sealed his mind against the memory of what he’d done. He wondered if someone would search the place after he’d gone and find them. His secret would be discovered at last. But he’d be far away and someone else by then. He switched on the transceiver at his wrist and called up his numbered account. Benny sat down on the bed, gaping at the pitiful balance glowing in the air before him. There should have been a sizeable deposit made in the last few hours, but it wasn’t there. The arrangements for Hugo’s funeral had only left him with a couple hundred — too little to purchase a ticket to where he was going.

His hands clenched. That bastard Graham had screwed him over. He’d seen to it that Helix was taken into custody by GeneSys security. That was the agreement, but Graham hadn’t paid. Benny stood up and took the pistol from the case, fitted it with a cartridge and stuck it in his waistband. A little visit might jog Graham’s memory.

oOo

Hyper walked through the polyglass doors of the GeneSys building and onto the first floor mezzanine. The ceiling arched high above him, glittering with murals. Lush, red-haired women entwined themselves among eagles and fruitbearing vines, and the pictures were all edged in gold. It was like a palace. Catching himself he looked down again and walked to the information desk. He had decked himself out for the occasion in a lab coat, white shirt and grey dress slacks. The shirt and slacks were part of his funeral clothes, along with the thin black tie throttling his neck. For added effect, he carried a black briefcase with most of the scuff marks wiped off it. But his sartorial efforts were needless. There was no one at the information desk, or anyplace else, at this hour.

He swiped a card through the transceiver mounted on the desktop. It held Hector Martin’s id codes and his authorization for Chango’s release. The system acknowledged him as Martin and he dialed the security desk.

“Security offices,” said a clerk whose blank face appeared hovering above the counter. “Can I help you.”

“I’m here to pick up Chango Chichelski. I have clearance for her release.”

The clerk tapped at his console. “Chichelski. She came in tonight on trespassing charges. You say you have clearance for her release?”

“Yes,” Hyper said, trying not to hold his breath. According to Martin, he didn’t need to have a reason why Chango should be released, all he needed were the clearance codes for such action, and he had those.

“Send it through,” the clerk said.

Hyper allowed himself a long, slow exhalation, and swiped the card through the transceiver a second time.

The clerk scanned the release form, nodded his head and tapped away at his console some more. “She’s being released. Do you want to come down for her?”

Hyper smiled slightly at him. “I’ll wait here,” he said.

Hyper waited, trying not to stare at the vaulting archways or the frescoed ceiling they supported. Instead he turned his attention to the floor, a disc of brass lay set into the marble tile nearby, the figure of a dancing woman all but worn away from its surface by generations of scuffing feet. In a large alcove off the mezzanine and directly opposite the desk where he stood, an elevator pinged open and three figures struggled out. It was a pair of guards leading a man, handcuffed but still struggling, between them. “This is outrageous,” he shouted, his face red with fury. “You have no right to arrest me!

What are the charges?” He swung around, nearly dislodging the guards’ hold on him. They responded by grasping his wrists, which were cuffed behind his back, and bending them up to his shoulder blades.

“Ow! Goddamn it, what do you think you’re doing?” the man fumed, hopping forward in pain. “What is your name?” he demanded of the guard on his right.”

“Marcus Walsh,” the guard told him, grasping his upper arm firmly and leading him towards a door just past the information desk where Hyper stood.

“Well let me tell you something, Marcus Walsh,” said the man, now pretty much allowing himself to be escorted. “You’re never going to work here, or anyplace else again. This will be your last act as an employee of GeneSys, Marcus,” he said with a nasty edge in his voice. The guards took him through the door, and Hyper could hear his voice echoing up the stairs as they led him to security. “You’ve both made a big mistake. Nathan Graham is not to be trifled with in this way, you’ll find out...”

oOo

Chango couldn’t be sure how long she’d been sitting there when a new pair of guards came to her cell, opened the door and escorted her out. Finally, county, thought Chango, but as she stepped through the polyglass doors into the receiving area they moved away from her side. “You’re free to go,” said the blond guard, gesturing at the door on the far side of the room. “Dr. Martin is waiting for you upstairs.”

“I’m free to-Dr. Martin is-Oh.” Brown Eyes handed her backpack and Chango turned to the door just as it burst inward and two more security guards came through, escorting a tall man in a suit. His reddish brown hair was in disarray, flopping in strands across his forehead. The guards took him to the counter, where he fixed the clerk with a steely look. “Will you explain what I’m doing here? On what grounds and whose authority am I being arrested?”

The clerk held his gaze. “You are?”

“You know goddamn well who I am! Just this evening I had a bunch of you people out at Mercy College. What’s the matter with you?”

The clerk shook her head. “Your name?”

“Nathan Graham.”

“Nathan Graham.” The clerk scrolled through an arrest roster. “You’re being held for questioning in relation to a murder charge, Mr. Graham.”

“Murder? That’s insane. I didn’t murder anyone.”

“Would you like to call an attorney, Mr. Graham?”

“You better believe I would. What’s your name?”

“Cynthia Hewlitt.”

“Well let me tell you something, Cynthia Hewlitt. When I get through with this department, there won’t be a one of you-” he turned to motion at the guards with his shackled hands, “-still working here. You have no grounds to do this, no authority. This is harassment.”

Cynthia raised one eyebrow. “Your warrant was issued from the very highest levels of GeneSys personnel, with priority authorization to arrest.”

“But you can only hold me for two hours unless you make a charge. That’s the company charter.”

Cynthia ignored him and looked at the guard on his right. “Let him make his call, then put him in cell D-19”

Unnoticed, Chango slipped through the door and went up the steps. She saw Hyper standing by the information desk, studying a brass inlay in the floor. He was all tricked out in a lab coat stained with motor oil, his grey dress slacks and a scuffed black briefcase.