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everything, & is not like that. It s like it s real.
But someone did hire you, right?
Cyke glared at him. Yeah. Chief Technology Officer signed the contract
himself. Best I can figure, he conveniently neglected to mention it to anyone else.
Probably planned to sell what I stole. Or add it to his portfolio when he moves
on to a bigger corporation with a bigger year-end bonus. Shit hit the fan, and he s
letting me take the fall. Which is why I need to get back to my place. The eye sees
all, you see he winked, smiled grimly and often records all. Add that to the
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Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
contract and I have rock-solid proof he hired me as a white hat, not as a common
thief.
Bear rather suspected that Cyke wasn t a common anything, but that hardly
seemed appropriate to mention just now. All right, he said. If Cyke was going
to run off half-cocked into a nest of waiting SenTech stooges, he d need some
help. I m coming with you.
Fuck that. No you re not.
Cyke&
You ll slow me down. I ll have to worry about you.
I m not the one wanted by the authorities.
True. Cyke pulled the jack from the back of his neck and stretched
experimentally. From the looks of it, he felt no pain. But you will be if you re
seen with me. Now stop arguing and give me my damn gloves. I ll be back in a
couple hours.
Bear hesitated, but in the end he handed over the pincer gloves and his car
keys, goddamn it and let Cyke walk out alone. After all, the guy could
probably kill him eight different ways with just his pinkie. And besides, Cyke
was right. Bear would just slow him down.
Funny, though, how that didn t make it any easier to watch him walk away.
Cyke knew this was a bad idea, but he wasn t exactly a man with options
these days. Nothing for it. He just had to go and hope they weren t waiting for
him.
At least he was fairly certain they didn t know where he lived. The storage
unit was rented under a fake name, relayed through sufficient levels of bullshit
to stymie even an FBI traceback. The cops hadn t tied him to the John Doe
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Break and Enter
ambulance pickups yet, either. He might have left forensics at the scene in
particular he seemed to recall Sentinel Tech s anti-theft system making imprints
of his ware s emissions and physical structure. That would have given them a
clue if he d been carrying civilian tech, which was all registered in databases for
law enforcement use. They might be able to match forensics to his military
records, depending on the level of clearance they could buy, but he wasn t even
sure if SenTech s system had taken a full imprint with which to search. After all,
it was shocking him stupid at the time. Even if they could make a match, they
still wouldn t know where to find him. No, all they d know was he was
dangerous and alone.
Still, he approached the storage facility with extreme caution, parking Bear s
car a good half-mile away in the back lot of a 24/7 convenience store. From there,
he hiked through the scraggly tree buffer between the crumbling strip malls that
lined the highway and the residential units built out behind them. The city s arc
lights reflected dull and orange off a low cover of cumulus clouds, but the night
was still dark enough to switch to image-enhancement mode. Barely even hurt
this time, thanks to Bear s tune-up. The tree stand and everything in it took on a
glowing green cast, sharp and detailed as daylight.
As he neared the industrial park and the storage facility beyond it, he
switched to thermal IR, checking for heat signatures in or around the buildings.
Dozens of bodies in the apartment complex in front of the storage unit, mostly
horizontal and unmoving sleeping. One body in a gatehouse in the industrial
complex parking lot. Three more inside the building, two clearly cleaning, one
likely patrolling the halls, none carrying guns. The storage facility was empty.
Tech scan next. No new signatures, nothing out of the ordinary. He darted
back behind the industrial complex, ducked low and close to the wall and ran,
keeping his head below the first-floor windows. Paused at the corner, ran
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another thermal IR scan, another tech scan. No chatter on the cop radios. None
on the security guards either.
Visual inspection last. Nobody up and about. He left the safety of his cover,
sprinting hard and keeping to the shadows. Pressed his eye to the retinal scanner
on the storage facility s back door, slipped inside and shut it quietly behind him.
The lights came on and his night vision snapped off in response, leaving him
blinking in an empty hallway. His door was locked, appeared undisturbed. Even
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