I walked with Xen to work that morning, arm in arm.


    Silly, overprotective perhaps, but I was worried about all the things that could potentially go wrong today. My fingers itched to reach behind my ear, where the switches for most of my mods lived. But there was no point starting any of them up just yet.


    Xen, however, was perfectly chipper. Maybe it was a front. I didn''t know Xen well enough yet to know if Xen had any tells.


    We walked into the Atrium to find a whole crowd of people facing the windows, just like the day I got here. Without noticing, I drifted towards it. It wasn''t until Xen patted my arm and said, "Go on, go have a look," that I realised I''d been pulling in that direction.


    "I can walk you to the cafe first, if you want?"


    "No, no, probably best if we''re not seen together too much before... you know."


    "Right. Well, best of luck. See you back at mine for the change-over."


    Xen nodded firmly, then smiled brightly. You''d almost think Xen was on the way to do something lovely, rather than to fake Xen''s own death.


    I stayed watching Xen walk away for far too long, until Xen disappeared behind the cafe counter. Clenching and unclenching my hands at my sides, I took a stroll over to where all the gawkers were staring at the little singularity. I had to sidle my way through several layers of people until I could see it. Sometimes being small had its advantages.


    The cloudy fluffball had grown to twice the size of when I''d last seen it. It was definitely drawing on the green gases of the Bramble now, pulling them in like three kite strings caught in a slow-motion rotor. The reason why the crowd had gathered in particular right this moment was that an old star, a red giant, was being stretched like so much mozzarella cheese into the centre of the dark fuzzy haze, sending off huge flares and plumes of light, as if it were a ship sending out a distress signal.


    It was quite terrifyingly beautiful, though I hadn''t the heart to appreciate it fully at this time.


    Whereas the previous time I''d been part of the spectators the mood had been curious, this time the agitation was palpable. I overheard more than one couple talking about the possibility of moving off the station, at least until the uncertainty of this celestial anomaly was over.


    I left the crowd and paced around the Atrium waiting for the action to begin. No point in going back to my rooms for now, and no way I could focus on chasing any more leads around Lisia right now. The wall I''d hit on that was irritating, but it was an irritation I could ignore while Xen was in trouble. After today though, once Xen''s owner had gone home, I''d be able to focus again.


    Hopefully it wouldn''t involve calling Astera for more information. Anything but that.


    Hands in the pockets of my coat, I descended to the bottom tier of the Atrium and waited for the ship to arrive. An hour after Xen''s shift started, I finally saw it. The Cyrano grew from a small grey dot to a large, blocky passenger ship. The Thorn’s docking clamps extended, flexible arms which reminded me of petals more than anything else. They hugged onto the ship''s nose. Within ten minutes, passengers were disembarking.


    There was my mark. Teg Korr, a large Terran with a brutish face, features hard and lined like I was looking at a statue of a man rather than the man himself. He was more disturbing in person than the picture I''d seen, especially because of his greyish pallor. His nose looked as if it had been broken a couple of times over his life. He wore a blue three-piece suit, but he was out of place in it, like someone had dressed up a gorilla.


    Okay, I’ll admit: my assessment of him might have been coloured by what I already knew of him.


    I fell into step behind him as he headed toward the Atrium directory. A cursory search gave him directions to the Vindemia Cafe. I got into the elevator behind him, pressed the button for the floor I needed, and made myself small in the back of the cab. His shoulders were so broad, and he was so tall, he was basically my volume cubed. I was more grateful than ever that our plan involved no contact at all, because I knew I would come out of any such contact the poorer.


    The elevator arrived at the floor of my office, two floors below the cafe. The doors slid open, and I slipped past Korr, holding my breath for fear. I wanted to stay, to keep tailing him, to be right there when the action went down. But I wasn''t allowed. I had to be in the right place at the right time. Xen would be doing the next part alone. I knew Xen could do it, but damn, I wished I could be there.


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    As soon as I heard the elevator behind me rising away, I ran to the point where I could see the cafe through the see-through panes of the railings. At first, I could only see the tables and the heads of the nearest customers to the edge. The elevator made it to the level, Korr exited the cab, and for a moment I panicked, thinking I wouldn''t be able to see Xen seeing him. But there Xen was, rolling towards some customers with a tray.


    It was all as we rehearsed. Xen saw Korr. Korr saw Xen. Xen held still for one torturously long moment. Then Xen dropped the tray on the ground and rolled in the opposite direction before the tray had even stopped clattering.


    Korr gave chase.


    He was fast. Really fast. Was he modded?


    All the hairs on the back of my neck rose. Was he modded? This was not part of the plan. I flicked on my speed mod and ran back to my office. Within, standing a metre from the door, was the double with the blank face, wearing the same white dress, the same blue- and white-chequered apron, the same hair and rollerblades. All I needed was for the real Xen to come through that door and swap places.


    But would Xen make it?


    I couldn''t wait inside, not knowing. I hung in the open door, looking to the left, to the staircase within the corridors, where Xen had planned to arrive on this floor. Waiting with no knowledge of what I couldn''t see was unbearable. I switched my audio-visual mods on, and then I could hear them: wheels scraping the floor, feet pounding inhumanly fast and heavy and far, far too close.


    The sound of wheels stopped. I wanted to scream - had Xen been caught? - but no, the sound of a heavy landing and wheels scraping painfully on the landing above this one carried through the stairwell. It happened again, as Xen took the next set of stairs in the same airborne fashion, as practised - but so too came the pounding of Korr''s footsteps, far faster than what we''d timed for.


    Xen appeared on my floor at last, slamming into the wall opposite the stairs, then pivoting in my direction. Shredded synthaskin was dangling off Xen''s forearms - this wasn''t part of the plan. As Xen got closer, with my mods, I caught the panic in Xen''s eyes.


    Teg Korr landed in the corridor behind her, and swivelled to his right, coming barreling towards her.


    Too fast. He was going to catch us during the change-over.


    My hand hovered by my weapon mod button, when a black streak came out of nowhere and slammed into Korr.


    Xen zipped past me and clung to the doorway. "Nadir," Xen breathed, then pushed past me then took the double''s remote control out of Xen''s apron pocket. The decoy drove straight out into the corridor.


    The double pushed me forward as it passed and rolled to the right, but my eyes were trained on the spectacle to my left. Nadir was pulling Teg Korr to his feet, but doing it in such an incompetent way that they both kept falling over one another.


    "I''m so terribly sorry - let me help you - oh!" the impossible skinny creature mumbled as he fumbled with the Terran. Was he intentionally helping us? How would he know to do that without knowing what we''d been planning?


    It couldn''t last. Korr threw Nadir off and got to his feet. He turned toward me, murder in his eyes.


    No, not me. He was looking at the decoy Xen vanishing down the corridor behind me.


    I threw myself to the right as he charged past me. Out of its proximity, my officer door slid closed, barring the real Xen from his sight. Once he had passed me, I came out of the opposite doorway and ran after him.


    The plan was that I was supposed to go back inside. But I needed to see how this ended. I needed to know it worked.


    I reached the Atrium balcony just in time to see the moment of truth. With Korr less than a metre behind it, the decoy Xen ''lost control'' as had been meticulously choreographed by Xen the night before. Its waist slammed into the railing over the multi-storey gap, and its head and torso, with the bulk of the equipment that went into making a gynoid of Xen''s model, toppled irresistibly over the edge.


    Korr reached a large fist out and grabbed it -


    No. Just an apron string. It came away in his hand, leaving him with only the blue- and white-chequered apron.


    The crunch of the double landing screeched through my mod. I turned it off, gritting my teeth as the after-effects set in, but at least it was off before the screaming started. I sped to the left, putting a few shocked bystanders in between myself and Korr before I turned off my speed mod too. With an aching head and bones, I looked over the railing.


    Far below, a shattered body lay at the bottom of the Atrium. Without my mods, I could not make out any of the individuals in the crowd, but they came to form a large circle around the tragic scene. And I could see clearly too that many of them had upturned faces, and were pointing at the figure they blamed for this death: Teg Korr, looking very guilty with the apron still in his hand.


    As for him, he was frozen, expressionless. I thought perhaps I saw a shake of anger in his fist, in the tightness of his jaw, but I wasn''t close enough to see him properly through the post-flash artefacts in my vision. All I knew for sure was that as he walked away, it was to hurry to the elevator, completely ignoring the corridor we''d come in from.


    Xen was safe now.


    I sighed, but held back on laughing with relief. My knees wanted to collapse, so I clung to the railings as they tried to take me down.


    "Are you faint?" asked an old Ferolian woman beside me, reaching out both pincers to steady me.


    "Oh, thank you... thank you, I''ll be fine." I smiled a wan smile at her, and tried to pull myself up.


    As my eyes rose upwards to the pinnacle of the Thorn, I saw her.


    Black Rose looked down on the proceedings. She raised a glass, as if to toast Xen, then left her balcony and went back into her penthouse.