JEFFREY THOMAS - DEADSTOCK

In his rearview monitor he now caught sight of a black-garbed figure approaching his limo from behind. He immediately recognized the uniform as that of a Paxton law enforcer. The forcer wasn't going to hassle him about waiting here, was he? Surely he didn't take him for a pedophile stalking pretty teenage girls. Again, not that he didn't allow himself to peek.

Yes, the forcer was coming to talk to him. He rapped with the back of his gloved hand on the driver's side window, which Soto lowered with a tolerant sigh. He looked up at the man. The forcer wore a beetle-like black helmet with its visor down. A voice over a microphone said, "Can you state your business here, sir?"

"Look, I'm just waiting here for the daughter_"

The little gun that came up in the forcer's other hand was not a standard police issue. It was small, silent, fired a bright blue ray beam straight into Nelson Soto's forehead. It cauterized its own path as soon as it burrowed it, minimizing the spilling of blood, but when he slumped back in his seat Soto was just as dead as if Mr. Jones had emptied a shotgun into his skull.

Jones reached in, deactivated the door lock, and ducked inside the car, shoving Soto over to the passenger's side. He shut the door and adjusted every window's tint so they would appear fully opaque from the outside. And then, as Soto had been doing, he sat waiting for the bell.

When Janice Poole looked through the lobby windows and saw Caren Bistro's famous father talking to a tall, long-legged black student, she decided to go outside and chat with him a bit herself. She had watched a good number of his vids, one of them with Jeremy Stake, who had not been cooperative about mimicking the star. Ron Bistro had flirted with Janice before-though, to her irritation, he seemed to much prefer these kids-and if her sullen and distant Jeremy kept evading her as he had been doing, she might just have to give in to Bistro's Everyman charms.

Janice left the building in a stream of departing, chattering schoolgirls, buffeted by them a little. The traffic of teenage bodies grew momentarily congested, and she sighed, trying to remain patient. She craned her neck to see if Bistro were still there. He was, but her eyes flicked to take in another adult figure. A forcer in black uniform and helmet had stepped up to Yuki Fukuda and taken her gently by the arm, guiding her toward the same hoverlimo Janice saw waiting for her every day. From Yuki's body language and expression, even at this remove, Janice could tell the child was confused. The forcer opened a back door for Yuki, then pressed inside after her. When the vehicle started forward, Janice assumed that the usual driver (who was rather cute, if unfriendly) was up front behind the controls.

But Janice could have sworn she'd heard the start of a cry from within the car, just before the forcer pulled the door closed behind him. A cry of surprise or alarm, from Yuki.

Against the wall between the doors of the two shipping/receiving docks, three loader robots were stored in a row, their chipped yellow paint indicating that they'd seen a lot of use before this place had been abandoned. Yuki had thought all three of them were dead, but when her kidnapper moved across the room, she saw the automaton in the center turn its head a little to follow him with its eyes. Its eyes, its whole aspect, seemed to express a great melancholy. The middle robot had the coils of a thick black cable looped around its neck, and a plastic loading pallet leaned up against it. To Yuki, it looked forlorn at being hidden away here. Trapped here. Like herself.

She sat in an old office chair, a small girl made smaller by the great, empty and echoing space that surrounded her. It was as though she drifted far out to sea, clinging to a scrap of wreckage to remain afloat. She was not bound, but she might as well have been. The two men in forcer uniforms had their guns in hand at all times, though they had both removed their helmets-to reveal bald heads and identical faces entirely covered in blue camouflage. One man called the other Mr. Jones. Jones called him Mr. Smithee.

The men who had killed her father's driver, poor handsome Nelson, had taken the stolen limo into a warehouse or factory district that she didn't recognize. Was it the terrible slum called Warehouse Way? But the drive from her school hadn't seemed long enough for it to be that. It didn't matter. Wherever it was, she didn't want to be there. Wherever it was, she knew she was in grave danger.

But despite their threatening appearance and the presence of their guns, the men had not been violent toward her. They had not abused her sexually, or even verbally, beyond giving her terse commands. It was very apparent that they were just doing a job. And waiting for someone else to show up.

It wasn't long before he did.

A man entered the spacious, largely vacant shipping department from its opposite end, and walked toward Yuki and her two captors. His expensive shoes clicked against the floor and he wore a five-piece business suit personally tailored to his short, powerful body. The man's graying hair was neatly cut, his face as creased but hard as a clenched fist. When he planted himself before Yuki, he stared down into her face with an intensity that bored straight through her. His husky voice revealed the tough accent of someone raised on the streets.

"Do you know who I am?"

Yuki had been crying, on and off, since she had first seen Nelson Soto's dead body slumped down in the passenger's seat of her father's hoverlimo. Tears ran afresh from her red and swollen eyes, and she whimpered, "Nooo."

"I'm the father of your classmate, Krimson Tableau. Do you know her? "

Yuki had been too panicked, too disoriented, to formulate any clear theories about what was happening to her, but now things made a terrible sense. "Yes," she answered, sniffling.

"I think your father knows her, too, little girl. And I think he knows what happened to her. Your father believes my daughter did something to some fucking toy of yours, doesn't he?"

"No," she whined. "No, I don't know, please."

"Look, I don't want to have to hurt you. But I'm not getting anywhere with your father, and now he's not getting you back until he gives me some answers. Dead or alive, he had better let me know where my daughter is. Or I'm afraid he's going to start feeling the feelings I'm feeling. Don't you think that's fair enough?"

"Please… I think I know where Krimson is."

If Adrian Tableau's face could grow any more intense, it did. "You do? Where is she?"

"Her friends heard her on their Ouija phones today."

"What? Those goddamn things?"

"She told them she's at a place called. called Steward Gardens."

"And where the hell is that?"

"It's not too far from Quidd's Market," Yuki went on hopefully.

"Beaumonde Square?" one of the camouflaged men spoke up.

"Yes. One time my dad took me to Quidd's Market and he drove me down the street to see Steward Gardens."

"Why?" Tableau demanded.

"Because he said my Uncle James owned that place, but it never opened up because of problems."

Adrian Tableau looked around slowly at his two waiting security men. "Leave her car here. We'll take mine."

Mr. Smithee came over and took Yuki by the arm, to help her up from her chair and to escort her while walking. As the four people crossed the room toward its exit, the middle of the three forgotten robots turned its head to watch them, looking all the more morose at having lost its temporary company so soon.

His meeting with Pablo Fujiwara fresh in his mind, for an hour now Jeremy Stake had been searching out and reading archived news stories on the net regarding the cult that had formerly owned Alvine Products, and used its resources to create a bizarre army.