They emerged from the stairwell into the parking garage. "Wait here," said Ziggy. Pushing back his hair--it kept falling into his eyes, distracting him--he edged out farther and peered around a wall into the subterranean cavern of metal and concrete. A few heat signatures flickered in the distance, near the limits of his range. He waved for Juli to follow, but she gestured back and held up her connection gear, the screen casting a thin blue glow in the shadow of the wall.

He crept back to where she stood, near the entrance to the stairs. Over the connection gear, she was speaking to another woman in a voice too low to carry across the lot. "Helmer said you'd be able to help us."

"I'll do what I can." The other woman's voice sounded familiar, even with the volume on the connection gear turned to barely above a whisper, but Ziggy couldn't remember where he had heard it before. "Your best bet is to get out of Fifth Jerusalem as soon as possible, but you can't use the orbital spaceport; they'll be waiting for you there. Now, there's a Marine base outside the city with a mass driver used for launching military vessels. They're currently getting ready to deploy the Fifth Jerusalem fleet to the outer regions, so you should be able to escape aboard one of the transport units and then get a ride to neutral territory once you're out of range. I'll give you the coordinates of the base and the names of my contacts there, but you'll have to handle the rest on your own."

"Understood," said Juli. "You've done more than enough already. Thank you, Captain."

"Don't mention it," said the captain, and abruptly signed off.

Juli put away her connection gear and looked up. "We're going to have to stop at home first. I have important files there too, and they're bound to search our apartment when they realize we've gone missing."

"Right. What about Alby?"

She gave him an uncomprehending look. "The dog? You're worried about the dog at a time like this?"

"I just thought ... MOMO would be upset if ...." He stopped when he saw a pained expression flash across her eyes, as brief and sudden as lightning. "I'm sorry."

Juli sighed. "It's fine."

They started across the parking garage, taking cover behind parked cars and sections of walls. The signals he had noticed earlier were moving closer now, and even if the two of them reached Juli's car without incident, they would still have to get past the police barricade outside.

Halfway across the lot, he grabbed Juli's shoulder and ducked behind the nearest vehicle. "Over there," he whispered, pointing. "I don't think they saw us."

She leaned out to look past him, at a group of uniformed figures a few aisles away. "It must be strange to have the Federation Police against you."

The corners of his mouth tightened, in a faint approximation of a grimace. "Not as strange as you might think."

"It's happened before?" She inched nearer to him, clutching his right arm, the weight of her head on his shoulder an unexpected comfort in spite of their present circumstances.

"I told you they tried to shut down the investigation, right?" He felt her nod, the sharp jab of her chin; even that was reassuring somehow. "Yuriev was behind it, that time. He pressured us from his position in the government and had us all arrested, including the chief of my department." The recollection surfaced like a sudden iceberg, shearing his breath away; he had pushed it from his mind after Michtam, and even then, he hadn't been able to remember it this clearly. But now, crouched on his knees behind the vehicle, he remembered kneeling on the concrete floor of the prison cell, the crumpled figure in his arms, the moment when he felt the life leave the body.

Juli pressed closer still, and for a moment he felt her breathing against his neck. "Are you all right? You're shaking."

He hadn't realized it, but when he held up his right hand he saw what she meant. "Yeah, I ... I'm fine." Absently he raked his hair out of his eyes again; it felt like picking up an old habit, like something he had done a long time ago.

The uniformed figures moved across the parking lot. "Someone's over there," he heard one of them say, too quietly for ordinary human hearing to detect at this range. Juli hadn't heard it, but she must have noticed when he suddenly tensed.

"They've spotted us," he said under his breath. "Don't move."

"What are you going to do?"

He didn't answer. Holding himself motionless against the side of the car, he monitored the officers as they ducked behind another car across the aisle.

"This is the Federation Police," said one of them, in a voice that echoed across the lot. "We know where you're hiding. Come out now and you won't be harmed."

He pulled away from Juli and stood, positioning himself so that the car blocked the lower half of his body. "Don't shoot," he said. "I'm an officer. I'm with the counterterrorism department."

The officer stepped out into the aisle and the others followed, pistols drawn. "Man, they called you guys out here? This must be a big deal."

"So it would seem," said Ziggy. "I understand several members of the DIRE were implicated in a terrorist plot against the Federation."

"That's right, and it turns out Committee Member Mizrahi was the ringleader. We've suspected it for years--hell, you know, your department's been in charge of the investigation since before the Ormus hearings. She wasn't even mentioned in the chairman's report, but after he died, documents were found in his office that directly linked her to the incident in Patmos along with a string of other attacks. He called her right before he kicked the bucket, too." The officer shook her head at the scandal. "The way I see it, that woman has 'guilty' written all over her. It's about time we had enough evidence to take her down."

"I see."

"Yeah, well ... you hear the latest? Mizrahi escaped from her office, and apparently she has a guard with her, some kind of Life Recycling freak that knocked out three of our guys." The woman shuddered, still gripping her pistol. "I hope they don't come this way. I'd hate to meet that thing in a place like this."

Behind him, Juli suppressed a cough. One or two of the officers glanced around nervously for a few seconds, then dismissed the noise when they couldn't figure out which direction it had come from.

Ziggy glared at them. "In any case, I doubt your superiors sent you here to stand around talking. You'd better continue with your assignment."

"Ah ... right, sir. Of course." The officer turned away looking suitably chastised, but one of the other officers stopped her.

"Captain, look," he said, holding out a government-issue connection gear. "That's him. He's even wearing the inspector's uniform."

The woman glared at the screen, and her face paled even in the dim orange glow of the lights overhead. She swung around, aiming her pistol. "All right, who the hell are you? Get out in front of the car where I can see you. And drop your weapons."

Ziggy considered that the last command would present some difficulty, as several of his weapons were semi-permanently attached to his body. Before he could respond, a flash lit up the inside of the garage as one of the cars, parked a few spaces to the right of where the officers stood, disintegrated in a cloud of flame and shrapnel. The officers flinched and staggered back from the explosion. While they were still reeling, another vehicle erupted to their left, and a third behind them.

Ziggy didn't realize he was standing in shock until Juli grabbed his arm and hauled him after her. "Now!" she hissed. "While they're distracted."

"How long have you had a vaporizer plug-in installed on your connection gear?" he said, staggering to keep up with her until he had recovered his footing.

"Ever since Miyuki sold me on the idea that having the ability to trigger explosions by remote control couldn't possibly be a bad thing." She was pushing her strides to match his now, her chain belt flashing at her waist as she ran.

"This was recently?"

"Not really. I just never found a use for it before. Over here," she added, steering him toward her car. She opened the doors by remote and climbed in on the driver's side, starting the engine as soon as she sat down; he took shotgun, and the car lifted off the pavement before the doors had pulled back into place.

"We might have some difficulty getting out if the building's still surrounded." He glanced out the rear window, but the officers hadn't caught up with them yet.

"I'm aware of that," said Juli, shifting her grip on the controls. "I was hoping you'd have figured out an exit strategy by now."

He nodded. Patches of light flickered and jumped against the windows as the car accelerated, the darkness in between like missing frames in a damaged holographic film. When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the light stuttering against his eyelids, and it reminded him of the way his memories played out in his dreams sometimes, in bursts of bright light and clarity spaced between absences. "I've thought of something. But it might be rough."

"That's fine." With a shrug, Juli steered the car down an exit ramp into the white glare of midday. "As long as we get out alive."

He opened the passenger-side door and leaned out, transferring his missile launcher onto his shoulder from its storage point on the AMN. As Juli's car emerged onto the street, several GFPD vehicles and AMWS units moved to block the exit. He fired before they had a chance to close off the street ahead; the missiles ripped through the pavement, and the recoil jolted the car to the side, but Juli recovered control and ploughed through the smoke and debris.

Gunshots spattered out of the confusion. Most of the shots rebounded off the bulletproof hull of the car; a few struck Ziggy before he could transfer his weapon out and pull himself back inside, but his armor was bullet-resistant and so was he, to an extent. Still, when they were clear of the office complex he doubled over in his seat, so out of breath it hurt, and tasting something viscous and metallic at the back of his mouth. Static jammed his sensors; his vision kept dissolving into silvery-black clots that pulsed angrily against his eyes even when he closed them.

"All right, that was a little rougher than I thought," said Juli, her voice sounding high and far-off above the ringing in his ears. When he didn't answer right away, she touched his shoulder and pulled her hand back in alarm. "Jan, are you okay?"

He tried to nod but ended up wincing instead. "I'll be fine. Keep driving." Swallowing the acrid taste in his mouth, he blinked and sat up. Through the fading static he watched her lean over to check the rearview camera on the dashboard, and heard her swear again.

"They're still following us. And you're in no condition to pull another stunt like the one that got us out of there, I can see that." She sounded irritated, but for once he didn't think she was upset with him. "We're going to have to jump out. I'll set the drive program to autopilot; if we're lucky, they won't notice we're gone for a while. Do you think you can make it the rest of the way on foot?"

He nodded again, with less pain this time. "Can you?"

"Don't worry about me." Squinting in the glare over the windshield, she reached across the dashboard and reconfigured the autopilot settings. "Just start looking for a place where we can get out."

They approached the First Business District at ground level, the sloping embankments to either side of the highway supporting buildings and overpasses higher up. He checked the rearview display and his own radar; when their pursuit fell back behind a curve in the road, he tapped Juli's arm. "On my side. Hurry."

She climbed across the seat as he opened the door. He jumped out, shielding her in his arms; the car was moving fast, and the impact when he hit the ground might have killed a normal person, but the mechanisms in his legs absorbed most of it, and he registered only a slight jolting sensation and a numbness in his organic parts. For a moment the silver-black spots swam in his eyes again; he staggered a few steps and caught his balance, then scaled the embankment, pulling Juli and himself onto the lowest tier above the road. They set off running again before the signals he'd been tracking rounded the bend in the highway below.