JEFFREY THOMAS - DEADSTOCK

Another figure entered the room. One of the last remaining Blank People. This creature, too, approached its master so as to add its flesh to his own. Its contact as it crawled upon him was an irritating distraction, however, and he almost swatted his supplicant off him like an ant. He was being bombarded with too many confusing feelings, sensations. He had previously sensed the creature above him named Adrian Tableau, the one that his extended essence had just ventured forth to meet. And now he sensed another familiar presence up there. Not familiar to some ill-digested splinter of another creature's mind, embedded in his own. No, this presence was familiar to him. But it was an echo from another, earlier life or incarnation. This echo was as distant and muffled as the voice of a child's mother as heard from beyond the womb, a voice remembered by a mere fetus of the god-like being he was close to becoming.

Still, the voice Dai-oo-ika had heard inside the muffling womb of his head haunted him deeply.

"No," that familiar voice had bawled. "No… nooo…"

As the four of them made their way toward the smaller lobby structure that connected Steward Gardens' two wings, they passed the last few mannequin beings walking in the opposite direction. On impulse, as the last creature approached him, Adrian Tableau lifted his handgun and fired three rounds in rapid succession into its rubbery gray head. The two clones were startled and Yuki yelped. The thing dropped at their feet and flopped in a dying convulsion.

Tableau glared at his companions. "All right- come on!" With his pistol he motioned for them to continue onwards. "Fuck Fukuda's toys."

James Fukuda parked his hovercar to the right of the building. His was the only vehicle in this lot, which curved around to the apartment complex's rear-though he had seen one lone helicab perched atop the roof, as he had approached Steward Gardens along Beaumonde Street.

It had been quite a while since he had entered these grounds, and their neglected state depressed him. Some small animal scurried ahead of him through a tangled underbrush that had once been a neat row of hedges, geometrically perfect in shape. He recalled the plans for these gardens as designed on computer, and as they had appeared when finished, back when Steward Gardens had had a future. In a way, it had never even had a past. It was a stillborn thing. Something that made him feel sadness, embarrassment, even loathing. Could Tableau really appreciate the humiliation of forcing him to come here and face this place again? Face who he truly was, and why he had locked that person away for the past four years, just as the doors of this place had been locked up?

But they were not locked, he saw. The front doors were wide open, as was every window of both wings, gaping blackly like rows of eye sockets in a titanic skull. But stranger still was that every one of the bio-engineered "stewards" was missing from its nook between the apartments' outer doors. When had that happened? Could thrill-seeking youths be responsible for spiriting away so many of them?

The side path he had taken from the parking lot joined the main walkway to the front doors. When he came to the fountain he paused to glance back at the street, the traffic flowing past, cars containing people bent on their own destinations, troubled with their own problems. He did not know that when a gang girl named Nhu and a mutant named Haanz had recently died in this yard, none of the people speeding by who had happened to look over and glimpse their strange deaths had bothered to call the forcers, even with communication devices right before them on their consoles or around their wrists. This was Punktown, after all.

Still watching the distant movement of the street, Fukuda felt that this was the last time he would ever see the world outside this building again. All along he hadn't realized the true destiny for this place, but now he understood. He had built Steward Gardens like pharaohs had once built pyramids for themselves. As a tomb.

He smiled bitterly when he recalled his brother John's mockery, comparing James with his army of quasi-alive statues to the Chinese Emperor Qinshihuang, who had filled his tomb with an army of 8,000 terracotta warriors. No wonder the encephalon had never worked right, no wonder this place had been cursed, when John had agreed to help him but had done so without faith, without enthusiasm, without the support he should have shown for his twin brother.

James shook his head. Shook away the anger. Hadn't he left it in the past yet? Hadn't he accepted that the anger should only be at himself? Couldn't he learn that lesson at last, before he went inside to meet his punishment?

Before he could will himself to go inside, however, someone came outside to meet him. Perhaps the person had been watching him from within, and grown impatient.

Though he was dressed in a forcer's uniform, and though the Blue War clones with their blue-mottled faces all looked the same, Fukuda knew from past experience that this was Adrian Tableau's top security man, Mr. Jones. The one who had tortured him, and the one he had tortured in turn.

Jones had a gun in one hand, and beckoned Fukuda with the other. "Mr. Fukuda," he said calmly, "would you please come this way? We've been expecting you."

Once he hit Beaumonde Street, it hadn't been hard to find. There was a name on the large plaque outside the structure, its letters deeply recessed into a slate-gray background, like an epitaph carved on a tomb: STEWARD GARDENS.

Jeremy Stake noted that there was one vehicle parked in a lot to the right of the building, and a helicar on its roof. It didn't surprise him that Fukuda had reached this place before he could, but he swore under his breath anyway. His hoverbike had been delayed by the snags in traffic, but he prayed that Fukuda's larger vehicle had been delayed even worse, shortening the time between their arrivals.

Stake overshot the building and continued on to an office block next door. He left his bike in its lot, thinning out as evening set in, and jogged back toward the apartment complex on foot. He entered its unruly grounds as warily as if he were creeping through a jungle of blue vegetation, bent low and darting from cover to cover. He moved in on the left flank, not wanting to come straight at the front doors. Every window stood open. That was odd, but it would grant him a stealthier entrance.

As he got closer to the building, he glanced up at the darkening sky several times, expecting to see a helicab with the number 23 on its belly floating above him, but he had lost sight of it when he had entered Beaumonde Street. So, had he only imagined that it was following him? Paranoia, perhaps, but he couldn't blame himself for that.

The Darwin .55 was out of its holster and nosing ahead like an anxious bloodhound.

When he reached the building itself, Stake squatted below the window of one of the apartments, poked his head up gingerly to peek into the unlit room beyond. Judging the room to be empty, he hauled himself over the sill. He was inside.

The door leading out of the apartment and into the hallway was open. When Stake stepped into the murky corridor, he saw that every one of the inner doors for the apartments had come open, like the windows. Open like the eyelids of a corpse. He detected a distant shouting that the hollowed-out husk of the building caused to echo.

He ran lightly in that direction.

"Let me go to my daughter!" Fukuda exclaimed, as Jones held him back. Tears had filled his eyes at the sight of her, sitting in one of the front lobby's chairs, again unbound but with one of Mr. Smithee's hands resting heavily on her shoulder. "If you've hurt her in any way…" he began.