
TeddyHunter The Underground

by Kevin Williams.

Copyright 2011 by Kevin Williams.

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Canadian ISBN: 978-0-9880459-0-3

ISBN: 9781301984299

Author's Note:

Fan mail, biz, complaints to teddyhunter10@gmail.com

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and similarities to persons living or dead is a coincidence.

These are the books in the TeddyHunter series.

TeddyHunter: The Underground.

TeddyHunter: The Nano-zombie War.

TeddyHunter: The New World Order.

Teddyhunter: I Can get better in the Parking lot!

TeddyHunter: The Neanderthal Gene

TeddyHunter: New Genes

TeddyHunter: Baby-Blues

***

chapter one Under the Mall.

When you live in the dark you grow all kinds of ears.

-Censor's handbook.

***

The dull gray card slotted into the slot with its usual nasty 'snick!' I thumbed the pad beside it and something beeped rec at me. Teddy Hunter Tracker, that's me. Yeah! So far, so good. I was sort of OK, according to the city computers. At the moment, anyway. Enough to avoid getting shot, anyway.

My official police department scowl on the other side of the counter didn't improve any at this new development. I did a tired friendly smile back anyway and tried to ignore the grimy gloom of the police holding station around me.

The place actually looked better than most of what I'd been seeing recently anyway. This one was almost over. Finally. It'd been a really weird case for a runaway teddybear bounty hunter.

Now it was time to turn the catch in and see how much cash I'd get. I coughed politely and tried my grin on the keeper of the gates again.

"Scan this one for me wouldja, Sarge? He's a keeper."

The beefcake on the other side bleared at me thru the inch-thick plex, looking like he wanted to reach thru the glass and squeeze money and pain out of something. Borg cables ran from his blue neck-plug and into his terminal; he looked like I'd just interrupted his favorite TV show. I was used to that. Sarge'd been that way for years now.

One rowdy night a few years back a stray shot shattered a few delicate metacarpals on his gunhand; that'd dumped him out of the fun and profit of the street-side force and into something more peaceful. Ending up in a public booth for the holding tank, Sarge hated it with an unholy passion. Big, beefy, fat and miserable, he took out his ill-humor on whoever showed at the booth.

Unless you had tits, of course. Then he perked up and got vile instead. Disgusting on really good days.

A real sweetheart, Sarge was. Hated and avoided by all.

"Naw. Not worth it. Throw 'im back, Tracker. What's a big-time teddyhunter like you doing with a fluff like this? You dumpster-diving full-time now?"

Looking my cuffed and drugged catch over carefully, Sarge sneered like even looking wasn't worth his time. "No scan. Not worth the paper to me."

I shrugged the stonewall off. This was standard procedures for a sadistic twerp, there wasn't even any paperwork in a scan. "Just run him for me, wouldja? Pretend it's an arrest. Another palm-scan won't break the city." I was more than a little tired after dragging a blindfolded, drugged body in handcuffs around with me for the last few days. Nailing my catch had been a tumble. Runners NEVER hid near taxi-stops or bus stations, by me. They always hid in the most remote, dirty, awkward, hardest-to-reach spot they could find and always had to be dragged out hard, over and thru the nastiest messes in the city.

You push a couple hundred pounds over a couple hundred waist-high pipes blocking the pitch-black tunnels and see how you feel at the end of it. I was whacked.

The wreck in cuffs with me hadn't been any different, except his hiding spot had been as far down as you can get and so weird even I didn't believe it yet. In almost every other way, it'd been a wild case.

"I dunno. Looks like he has a million different bugs on him to me. Your problem. Throw him back. Don't want him in here." Sarge turned away from the window and pecked away at his keyboard, indifferent to my action now.

He could do that with non-ops, even for licensed hunters like me. In fact, that was what he was paid to do. Stop the city from wasting credits on free computer-intensive fishing expeditions.

"Yeah, lice migrate to leeches, I hear. You'd know." I grumbled quietly. "Listen, this one's organ-bank. Worth serious money to me. Supposed to be a cop-killer."

"His name is supposed to be Eric."

The flicker of interest on Sarge's face didn't stay there long. He'd probably heard the same story from a thousand other collectors hoping for a free score on some fading rubbie. "What city and how long ago?"

"Pol case, Detroit-Windsor. 'Bout 25. S'all I know." The ache in my shoulder and back was telling me I'd be spending more a few days recovering from this one, but Sarge turned away again. He didn't hand out freebies unless somebody was still screaming and bleeding when they were dragged in. Preferably both.

Mere bruises didn't cut it. He got his chuckles watching freelancers try and force palm-scans out of rowdy uncooperative drunks.

He turned back to his keyboard, unimpressed. "Run the scan. I'll pay." I snapped out finally. I pushed my thumb over the scanner, wiped a hand clean on the catch and held it over the bright light on the palm-scanner. My catch was still standing there like a zombie and hadn't reacted to being in a police station yet. "Let's get this going, OK?"

"Done. Your dime." Sarge shrugged and slapped the light on. I held my breath as the light inched down a dirty hand and my quarry got scanned, then dropped it and keyed in the Detroit search as a special.

Scan complete. The box beeped red almost immediately. And there was a hasty alarm-clang or two from the Sarge's side of the box as his keyboard lit too.

"Holy crap, he's hot." Sarge blinked surprise. Like I brought in dumpster-diving scrap for processing on a regular basis. The auto-guns in the room all came to life, and with a nasty rattling sound and locked on me. I didn't even breathe hard as the safeties clicked off with a sound like metal rain.

"Real hot. A freebie, citizen. This scan is on the city. You scored." Sarge grinned at me as the City's official thank-you committee targeted me with lots of little red laser dots.

Holy, holy, holy. Red lights. Hot meat. Wanted person.

Money for me. Angel hadn't lied.

From the noise and speed of the panic-response on Sarge's side of the counter, a political case. You could hear sirens and grunts on the other side as back-up meat squad hiding back there hauled themselves out of their chairs, getting ready to rush me.

All the noise bothered me. It was unusual. Mass-murders being dragged in didn't rate this kind of clanging reaction, and runaway teddybears almost never. Not that I'd seen before.

Organ bank, for sure. Double-bonus time, after Big Brother had wrung him dry of info.

Sarge looked surprised and hit his button again. Twice now. He ack'd the scan, logged it, and put his finger on the key that dropped credits into my account. He nodded at me, serious now. Official beef would drag my cap off as soon as they armed up and got in here.

When the big thick door opening in the wall closed on him, I'd get paid. Not before.

"There a story with this one?" He asked quickly. While the cities guns were still on me. I slowly stepped to one side.

Troops came rushing out and surrounded me, a couple of them cuffing the cap roughly. The red dots never left my head. That was Sarge angling for droppings he could sell to his gossip pals in the sneak-troops. I grunted. If this guy was hot enough, I'd get the blue-suits coming around to buy a copy of my report from my client.

Assuming they couldn't steal it first, naturally.

"Long and nasty one." I grumbled, waiting for my cash to hit my card as the score got hauled away. There weren't any questions about the drugs in him from anyone. "Private. Ask the client. Pay me now."

I winced. I did remember how it started and wasn't about to start telling anyone about that.

***

The case had started with a dark quiet catwalk over a pit, just under the city. A locker breakin by a runaway teddy got me there. I wasn't even in the real underground yet, just in the damp the no-man's-land of maintenance tunnels and subway trains under the malls.

My goggles were showing infrared, heat and radio. The place was quiet as a morgue, so far. Clean. Teddys like to hide there and steal power before moving deeper into the underground. They raid lockers for parts every once in a while.

Suddenly, the dark boomed loud as a chunk of pipe dropped and smashed into the dark corridor just ahead of me, a breeze touching my eyelashes as it fell. The shattering pipe did spray me with rusty shrapnel as it shattered, rolled, bounced and clattered and fell away into damp, grimy darkness around me.

I had already ducked back and was counting the places I could climb to quickly if things turned nasty on this catwalk when the calm voice came at me out of the darkness.

"Hey Tracker, listen up. Or the next one doesn't miss."

The shadow behind a cement pillar was the best I could hide in, so I tucked myself into the dark and waited for the booming echoes of the falling pipe to die.

"Humans. They always have'ta learn the hard way." The voice grumbled out of darkness in disgust. "We need a favor, Tracker. Nothing you won't do anyway."

A bullet pinged into the cement pillar above me, spraying chips. I dove for the floor. It was a clear sight in that direction. He'd been trying to miss me. "Damn. And this had started out to be such a nice day." I grumbled.

"What?" I whispered. I slowly took out my modified GPS and started a search for other mobiles around me. The GSP blinked once, then a clear voice came from it. "Location unknown. You are lost."

That was enough to stop me cold. Lost? Unusual for a locator scan, even in a deadzone. Plus I always had my toys on silent mode or de-batteried when hunting. The capture, even a teddy, could get away from you too easily if they heard your cell ring at awkward moments.

I'd been blanked into an instant deadzone by a wiper. And this unit was supposed to be immune to that sort of thing. "Cork it, killer. Nothing works down here unless we want it to." The voice grumbled out, sounding peeved. "This is official biz. You ready to listen yet?"

"I'm listening." I grunted back. Now the strange signs on this trail were explained. Obvious bits of colored fluff, badly dragged goods and big footprints in the dust. I'd gotten led here like any teenage kid out on his first hunt.

"We want somebody collected. A human, making trouble in the Deeps. You go stop him, or die here. We'll drop directions on your locator for ya. OK?"

"Ha. Man, you sure aren't asking much."I shook my head sadly. A suicide mission, naturally. What else would anyone want me for?

The Deeps? That was double-trouble in black. I hunted runaway 'bots in mall tunnels for fun and profit, not humans, and this yahoo wanted me to go into the worse deep dark holes the city had after someone dangerous.

It had to be real dangerous or they'd be doing it themselves.

Not everybody that went Deep came back out again. Not many ever did actually, and no one bragged about it later. The Deeps were a mix of natural caverns, abandoned top-secret toxic waste dumps, well-guarded private pot farms, radioactive hells, passion-slave pits, mutants and worse.

They were tucked well under the deadzone ghetto and the teddy underground; even Borg-cops didn't go there in with anything less than full CyBorg backup squads anymore.

And in full decontamination gear. The deeps weren't very clean.

This didn't sound good at all. Humans were way too much trouble all by themselves, compared to teddies. A bad-boy deep down in the underground? Armed, dangerous, in a very bad mood and used to being stuck in the place all our local nightmares were made?

Nasty. They were the local nightmares, mostly.

Somebody with teddy-troops wanted a Deep capture out of me. Then I had a thought and decided to spew it out. "You have the wrong boy. I chase girls in the mall, not killers." That was a bit of a lie. I've never had to hunt a girl, except for the rare runaway and that was easy. For one reason or another, girls never went very far from the mall.

"Can you get anyone else to do this?" I was not happy. This was only my first or second contact with a deadzone group well organized enough to power anything out, and they wanted to deputize me for something they couldn't handle.

Anything that bad was more than deadly. Mutant territory? It'd be torture first, second, never-ending and death as an elusive mercy.

"You scared of the Deeps? Don't be. There'll be data on your GPS. Enough to let you wing it getting in and out." The voice came back.

That was interesting. Maps of the Deeps were few and far between. Most of them didn't get much past 'Here be monsters.'

After you heard a few rumors and saw the mutants coming out of the waste pits, you believed them too.

Point. Any maps, even GPS coordinates, would sell very well. Afterward.

Counter-point. Eventually. Not much traffic there, and any interested bidders would likely be as nasty as the place they wanted to invade. Not credit-worthy types.

"If you're trying to kill me, you should've dropped that pipe a couple feet closer." I grumbled.

The voice out there was teddy and he was bored with me. This had been too easy for him. "I know. Stick to the marked path we give ya. Don't attract any attention. In and out. We don't care if you leave the body behind, but we want proof. I hear he's organ-bank. Interested yet?"

Organ-bank? Bounty-hunters could not bring in better than that. They were the serious cash bounties. You had to make a lot of trouble before our official lords and masters declared the only way for you to repay your dept to society was to be broken down into parts and sold to the highest bidders.

There was a good market for parts these days. A connected cousin in blue-blood world had the local monopoly on extra organs. He liked keeping kidneys artificially scarce and prices high.

"What'd this guy do, piss in the soup?" That made some time for me to think in. So far, I had a couple faint hopes of getting out of this alive, mostly by getting out of it.

"Something like that. Managed to mess up a few deals. Now nobody likes him. Ya want the job, or are ya itching to find out just how much we can mess up your pathfinder?"

That was an open threat and a nasty one for anyone in the dark down here. Here in the tunnels, anything could kill you. Everything could kill you. There were shorted power lines, sewage pits, sudden drops, bad walkways and a century's worth of rust and rot hiding traps waiting in the dark for the unwary.

Mall tunnels were dangerous enough and they still sent maintenance people down into them to do work occasionally.

The underground was worse. The deeps were insane. A GPS going silly on you anywhere down here was slow suicide.

"Deep trips take specials. I don't have any on me." That got mentioned carefully. My good equipment was at home. If they wanted to trust me to do the job, they'd have to let me walk away sometime.

"The Lords will provide, Tracker. Walk west. Our local psychotic control-freaks want to talk to you first. Well, order you around a bit before you take off, you know those idiots. Only a couple of them will want to poison the well, so relax. It's an almost safe meet."

That was almost reassuring, and sounded like normal politics. The bad news? This was a formal op and power groups here in the Underground Deadzone, like our Big Brother troops up topside, tended to solve all their problems with a well-placed bullet or two if they could.

And their bills, if they could away with it.

Politics! Cannibalism, no matter where it takes place, gets nasty fast.

"Where are we going?" I rumbled out. I did notice the green arrow on my GPS coming to life and pointing the way. Apparently they didn't want me to get lost down here just yet.

Or someone was about to walk me off a cliff, with a cheering crowd at the bottom to watch me bounce. There wasn't much I could do about it if they did except try to roll at them.

"Teddy's Cafe."

Good choice. "I know the way." Teddy's cafe was a meet-place in the dark far edge of the underground, a bar that was more or less neutral ground that everyone could get to. It was owned and run by a freebot named Teddy.

Robots are hard to shoot and kill. He ran the place without a gun, but a very strong arm. It was like watching an ewock dwarf toss people around to see Teddy in action.

Topsider Borg finks, underground gangas, deadzone zombies and CyBorgs all met in the dank gloom in his place. There weren't more than one or two killings a week there, at most. Most of them outside, as bot security was hard on meat types.

It was dangerous, yes. And quiet for the underground. A very confusing place to be, for most. You couldn't tell the players from the staff unless you knew who was what. Some bots had gone android, for instance, so what you were dealing with could be a real problem for the careless.

But I'd never heard of a Deep mutant-mixer being held there before.

"My way is faster, trust me." My escort was getting peeved again. Likely annoyed at having to carry meat in as bots could move in ways humans only dreamed of. "Let's move."

"What for? Drop me a packet and I'll see about your little problem for ya. Tell your Boss that."

"They want insurance, and there's a couple side-issues that need to be taken care of." My guide sounded bored. "My only job is to take a hunter there. You're it. Or you can die ugly right now, Cracker-Tracker."

"Thanks loads." There was a little more to it than that. A B+E at one of my usual clients and an easy false trail that suckered me into this. Too easy. Someone down there wanted to talk to me in particular.

I began to get the general idea that the side issues my guide had mentioned would take over the whole affair fast.

***

Wonderful. It was a teddy climb thru 3 foot teddy-tunnels that I got led on, something I hadn't done since I was twelve years old.

Teddy-tunnels are small. The little pest then hit a power rack and climbed straight down, past illegal splices sputtering sparks and with open live wires inches from my nose the whole drop. He went upside down. I tried feet first. I was following a teddy, obviously. No one else would do anything this stupid.

Sweat could kill you on those climbs. So would any slip and touch of the cables. Trains went past inches away from my back at some points.

Not fun. I hardly noticed the rest of the walk since I had to slither a good part of it, but we got there.

The Deadzone between the Underground, the Deep and Topside, Teddy's was a favorite drop-spot. Nightclub area. Teddy's was a bar, a restaurant, a parcel pickup, note-wall beside the biggest underground market; and the graffiti there was just a little short of incredible.

Mostly a safe-zone for all comers. Teddy and the gangas saw to that. If you weren't a people-watcher, bot-watcher, cyborg-looker, mutant collector or spook detailer there was always a hot bargain or two to find in the stalls, too.

The club zone was a zoo. People-watching here was guesswork, which was half the fun. There were free droids in every dress, bots of every kind in every state of repair, Big Brother Borgs and CyBorgs from topside, zombies, gangas, religious loons, a farmer's market, a flea market in stolen goods, auctions, screaming girls...

My guide had dumped me at the edge of the noise and told me I had two choices. One was to just wander around till someone found me and brought me in again. In pieces, if necessary. That was doing it the hard way.

The easy way was to head to a certain corner table at Teddy's and order Spike's breakfast tea, extra sugar. And try to look like I was enjoying it.

He disappeared right after that, I guess. I never did get a good look at him.

I took the easy way, sticking to walls to get into Teddy's restaurant tavern. Did I mention pickpockets? Some of those droids working the crowd were fast enough to steal the gold from your teeth between the 'hell' and 'O' in hello. Wandering that crowd looked like a fast way to get stripped of everything right down to the numbers off your ID card.

My spot at Teddy's was quiet back corner, way past a clutter of tables in gloom. Ordering the tea, I got a dirty look from the semi-perky waitress. Real dirty. I was not only moving into on an isolated quiet spot, I wanted food service, not booze. The waitress was hard trade, falling apart slowly but still walking thru it. She looked like she'd fallen on bad times on the street-corner and still wanted to make the fast scores. My other greeter hit the table before I even got settled in.

"So you're here. The Tracker himself."

"Yah." I didn't turn around to greet the newbie helping himself to a chair on the other side of my shaky metal table. Staring? That was bad manners down here, a lot like sticking a gun up someone's nose and asking what they wanted this time. As a 'hello'. All you could see was a hulking gray trench-coat and a hoodie over his head anyway.

"You the one I'm supposed to meet?" I grunted, still recovering from the nerve-racking climb down here.

"Nope." The body making that noise settled his beer first, then carefully creaked various parts of his body into a chair. I started getting nervous about turning to look at him, because he sounded and moved like a mutant.

Rare to see mutants this far up in the light. Mutants stuck to the Deeps or risked getting lynched, even here. I tried not to look like I was watching him. Hurt, injured and old people move badly. This guy moved like the chair he was in had been designed for a different species.

"I'm your babysitter, not a backer." My new friend grunted, settling so he could read the crowd, the entrance and me easily. "You haven't been around recently, right? You know nothing. There's more than a few people that want in on this."

"I don't even know what 'this' is yet. Not a hard job, right? It's just a pickup, as far as I know." I grunted, waving at the waitress. "A Deep pickup. Get me some rat stew, would'ja Hon?" I asked as she perked over, still looking like she's been used hard and put away wet far too often. Her clattering shoes didn't help any. "Or any ration bar with protein in it."

"Stew's good." She allowed carefully, after a nod from my sitter. "Today's special, market-fresh veg. Cash only."

Standard Teddy fare. It was all he ever served humans. I'd forgotten about that. "I'll take it. You?" I nodded briefly at my escort without turning to look at him. "We have enough time for this?"

"None for me. Lots of time, people are phoning in from all over. That'll take a couple minutes to set up. Go eat. You're the miracle cure here, or so they tell me." Bodyguard nodded at the waitress. "Go ahead, Nellie. Feed him. Then go back to changing the names in your stories for anyone you can get to listen."

The girl blushed and bobbled off, still wriggling like there was gonna be money in it for her.

"She lives off tips?" I asked quietly out of the side of my mouth as her clattering shoes rattled and scurried off.

"Tries to. She's got a bad habit that eats everything she gets." The grunt mentioned that carefully, giving a couple loud cyborgs headed towards us the evil eye. They turned and wandered away from our section fast. "A deadbeat boyfriend."

"Ah. So what can you tell me?" I rubbed my neck and wondered what the powers that were down here wanted with a teddyhunter from topside. What was happening that some underground topguns decided to ring in an outsider? And how deadly was this gonna be?

Gruntly chuckled. "I'm being paid to stop anyone from killing you. And stop you from running. That's all I officially know."

He leaned over the table and got into my peripheral vision. He hulked there. "You're supposed to be a good dude. The teddys think you're OK."

"I helped 'em out of a spot once." I grumbled uneasily. "Or twice. Handed one his religious ass back, so to speak. Brother Jones. When somebody started dropping modded teddy-bombs into the homes and back down here, I got involved in that too."

I was involved in that, alright. Both sides there were using me as a dumb pipe. Capturing wanted teddys and chasing newly-modded newbies into some welcoming arms. I made money both ways, but quit as soon as I realized both sides were using me to plant ticking bombs.

"Yah. You're a noise. Clean hunter, no scrapping, no bad-trapping, not a user." The grunt offered that quietly. "You flush and block holes and don't booby-trap after pelts."

"Plus leave a few of Brother Jones pamphlets out before I start chasing the fluff out." I added, stretching and cracking my elbow nervously. "It's a real easy job for me if everyone leaves first."

We got interrupted then. "Yah, one righteous trapper. So now you're gonna get promoted, whether you like it or not."

The new voice was one I recognized. It belonged to Teddy, the owner of the bar. Nellie was hovering frantically behind him.

He had my stew with him. I reached around Teddy, poured a handful of coin into Nellie's open hand and snagged the offered bowl on the way back, slamming it in front of me and sniffing the rising steam.

It smelled good and looked tasty. I took a bite. "Hey, you not trying to kill me today!" I mumbled around another couple fast forkfuls. "Yet. Great! What's the occasion?"

"The occasion is, we want to put you to work." Teddy kept talking. I could see the unspoken respect my bodyguard and Teddy had for one another. It looked like they had good history together.

Down here, that meant they'd been fighting on the same side recently. I hoped the rest of the politics I was about to get dumped into was as easy to figure out.

Teddy smiled at me. Being smiled at by an old, ratty, four-foot broken-down teddy bear was an unnerving experience, especially since I knew Teddy had enough mods and armor built into his hide to wipe out most of the bar if he wanted to. Till a lucky shot could take him down, anyway. "You keen for some fast action, Trap?" he grumbled at me, glaring hard.

"Ah, no. I'm not young and stupid anymore. Find a hungry kid. A dumb one." I said between bites. "Real dumb. Don't know of anything you can't handle here anyway." I saw a robot gunfight once, right in this bar. Or at least that's what I told people. Mostly what I saw was floor, flying body-parts and bullets hitting things.

The bullets were the slowest things moving that night. Robots turn into invisible, high speed blurs when they juice up, even after being shot a few times. All you can see in a bot gunfight are explosions when bullets hit and sometimes body-parts being shredded.

Oh, and metal clanging as it bounced around the room.

No, I never did find out what they were fighting about, or what happened to the losers. Believe me, I wasn't asking, tho I hear Teddy made a new kitchen-pot out of one of the losers. A talking one.

"Oh, the action isn't here. It's Deep." Teddy said happily. "Real dark Deep. Finish your stew. There's a meet being set up in the back. Come in when you're done."

With that, Teddy grinned at me and disappeared. When I could? When I was done? That meant instantly. I kept shoveling stew in as fast as I could.

"Must be nice to be important." My babysitter grumbled. "Does it feel good?"

"Feels like I'm about to go in front of a firing squad, actually." My answer seemed to satisfy him and I wondered just what kind of a teleconference I was heading into.

You don't get mutant bodyguards cheap, or easily, even down here.

***

The meet was just a damp, musky empty room with a few phones in it. Gloomy, and smelled like damp old wood and rotting cement. Dark. Not an active screen in the place, just a couple chairs. Secure, scrambled lines.

One of the chairs my body guard snagged for himself and set himself up in the door. "OK, I'm here. What's up?" I asked the empty room as he left. My body guard had parked himself outside the door and it looked like he was growing roots there.

"Hey, Tracker. Wait for another minute. We're still getting everyone on-line."

The room got a lot colder real suddenly then. It was disembodied, but I knew that voice. It wasn't one I ever wanted to hear again.

Angel. Pure bad news.

Human, female, commander and one of the official mouth-pieces of the topside CyBorg squads.

CyBorgs were cyber-warriors, cyborb-enhanced super-warriors that policed topside, the underground, ordinary Borgs and anyone else they wanted to extort info from. The military wing of Big Brother. Ordinary cops were wired in and Borged. Cyborgs were bred. Cyborgs had lots of uses for the underground and even the Deep, so they mostly ignored the wars, spats and disputes down here.

Angel was a different story. She was in this to hurt people, with all the power topside control over CyBorgs gave you. And get paid for it. Someone who could officially make you an electronic non-person, have you beaten senseless, then banish you to the underground in chunks if she wanted to. She loved it and would chuckle happily the whole time you got torn up. This nasty little girl would probably sell your kidneys out from under you first, tho.

Then send some hard troops down after you to really make your life miserable.

Think of the worst vanity you've ever met. Add professionally paranoid. Put it into a blond sweetie that looked like she wanted to make daisy-chains for somebody and add the deadliest training money could buy.

That was Angel; and she didn't like me. She'd been riding herd on the modded teddy scam I'd burnt up a while back, when both sides here were sending teddy bots back and forth to collect information on each other.

Most of my better equipment had come from collecting one of the leftover caches from that affair. Angel was still irked with me about messing it up for her.

The equipment the teddys had abused to get me here was part of that load, in fact. I made another mental note to put my stuff thru a scope and de-bug it again soonest. If I lived thru this.

"Angel. They still letting you get away with it?" I snapped out. The last time we'd met, she'd offered to send my mother to the organ-banks as scrap unless I bent to her will.

"Staffing shortages." She answered sweetly. "Dead ones. Politics is like that. Love you too. How's your mom?"

"Dead. You a player in this? What's going on down here that your hard-boys can't do?" Settling into the chair got a lot harder. If Angel was in on this, it was gonna get very dirty long before it finished with me. "And why me?"

"Why you? We'd all be happy if you died somewhere, that's why. Or at least undisturbed about it." Angel answered, unperturbed. "Unofficially, we have a very strong interest here and a need to keep the issue buried. You're the strong, silent type, right? So you're our goto boy."

"Or sixteen kinds of cyber-hell drop on my cute little butt. I get the general idea." I folded my arms and glared at a phone. "I still need to know what it's about. And how I get paid."

"From us, you get paid with a warm smile, a hearty handshake and whatever you can steal. If you can keep it to yourself and walk it home thru the crowds."

"Brother Jones!" I was glad to hear that voice, tho dealing with a teddy that'd gotten religion was one of the weirder things I've ever done. "How's the god-biz these days?" Brother Jones was a bot, a warm-hearted psycho with a whole raft of weird voices in his head telling him what to do.

Voices in your head isn't unusual for a 'bot of any kind, but Brother Jones did it up purple. He was an experimental AI-enhanced teddy with delusions of eternity that gotten into religious self-mods a long time ago. He was the head of a big teddy church down here. They weren't stupid voices bothering him.

"You can keep it only if we don't want it, naturally." Came the third voice. It was an evil one, cold, hard, and one I didn't know. It hissed unhappiness. "We'll know if anything good goes missing."

I saw my bodyguard twitch at the sound of that voice and pegged it as the current mutant warlord from the deep. A nasty person's nasty person to survive down in the deeps, with enough smarts to keep the booty flowing to his troops somehow.

"What's this about? We want our lollypop back so we're sending you to get it." Angel chirped at me. "And it's do or die, Tracker. We don't care which it is."

***

"Details. I need details." I grumbled. "Who, what, where, when..."

First-rank players. OK, now I knew this little adventure was more than monied deadwood using gov't cash to work up an exercise in perversion. That was the usual traffic here in the club-zone. From the sounds of the mutant warlord, it was gonna be an official 'the frustrated getting malicious' game, with me stuck in the middle.

"And how he gets paid." That came from Brother Jones. "All he can steal down there isn't enough for anybody."

"The Deeps? There isn't anything to get down there." I added, interested in any talk about pay. I was also interested in getting out of this room alive, but money is always sore spot with me.

Big Brother is done on a government budget, ya know. Lowest-bidder type thing. A fair amount of the time he worked like a lowest bidder too, fast and sloppy. He doesn't like paying talent, freelancers like me, at all.

"There's no legal buyers for contaminated goods anyway." I offered to the quiet room.

"The bounty on the target is all I'm willing to offer." Angel kicked in, chirping that in a happy kind of way. I knew she wanted to send her hard-boys in kick butt here, but something was slowing her down. Being slowed down in any way always made her cranky.

Unfortunately, I seemed to be the only target in the room. "Safe conduct, immunity from whatever laws he happens to break, that sort of thing." she added carefully. "The usual. He's my agent."

"Cheap. That's standard for a snoop." Brother Jones stuck in. "He'll need more."

"Equipment. I need equipment." I started in quickly "I hear the Deeps isn't a safe place to wander around in."

"Escort in is taken care of. You might be blindfolded for a while and have to map your way out, but you get an escort in." The invisible third party stuck that in unannounced. The King sounded almost cooperative, but definitely was not a happy camper. "You'll be safe as long as you stick to the marked routes."

So far, the only one that wanted me to get the job done was Brother Jones.

"Introductions. I need introductions." I kept adding things to the list hopefully. Eventually I'd find out who was what and what was going on.

It was kind of weird. I was in the edge of the underground, in prime ganga territory and I hadn't seen any of them yet. No signs, no colors, no shrills, no bodies, nothing.

Gangas don't miss an opportunity to show off. Their whole lives depend on getting in the way of traffic from the Deep and back topside. They keep trying to run inference with me higher up, but I'm strictly a top-down sort of guy.

If I don't tell them I'm there, they try to catch the action later when they hear about it. It's usually 'way too late then. The weird thing? The gangs that ran the underground very jealous of anything that looked like money, and they weren't present here in any way.

I suspect Angel had threatened to park the whole Imperial fleet on their doorstep if anyone bitched today; or even thought about it for very long. She was like that.

"You don't need intros, Tracker." Angel said nastily. "We'll tell you what to do. You go do it. And any special equipment you need you take care of down there."

Which meant she didn't know what I'd need. The mutant king had kept her clueless about the terrain.

"Listen, human." The cold voice started getting exasperated. "I'm Karlos, King in this section of the Deeps. You're going to come in and collect bounty on one of my suppliers. He went bad. In and out. Fast, quiet and no hanging around. Got it?"

"I've been persuaded to allow this." He added angrily. "Even if there are other ways..."

"Enough." Brother Jones stuck in. "He was known to us, too. As you can see, Tracker, this is mostly political. We need it done and no one here can do it without annoying everyone else."

"Officially." Angel grumped out. She was really peeved about something there.

"Everything is an all-politics existence." I groaned. "Just like my wife, girlfriend and lover. She's imaginary and still hard to get along with. Which reminds me, whose girlfriend helped him escape?" I asked that wearily and didn't really expect an answer. "A wife or daughter maybe?"

"Ex-concubine, smart guy. Import. Now sold to a neighbor." Karlos sputtered out. He was stung. "He's hiding on the farm her family used to run. Trapped there."

The emphasis was on 'used to run'. I now knew King Karlos had a thing for revenge. Was it vanity, greed or power-lust triggered that land grab?

"Swell. He's had how long to fill this place with booby traps?" The silence grew and gnawed at the room. "Great. Did he get any other help? Anyone with him?"

The silence was 'way too long and hesitant on that one. Three guilty parties squirmed a bit. They weren't going to be telling me anything useful anytime soon.

"He's trapped there. Alone, sort of. He doesn't know you're coming." King Karlos admitted slowly. "It hasn't been long. It's an isolated place, only one way in or out. How's that?"

Sort of? "Ha. A mine-field. He knows that no-one is happy with him, or even talking to him. Doesn't take much for a sensible guy to add a few precautions."

"Walk around the traps. You're supposed to be good. He's on the farm, or close by. It's a small hole with no escape." Karlos still wasn't saying everything he knew. "Trust me on that one. He's still there." I started rubbing my head. One of those jobs. Nothing but results. No info, no help, just results.

"The target can't be CyBorged out." Brother Jones gloated happily. I wondered just how much of that he was responsible for. "For various reasons, that won't be seen as a good idea. Anywhere."

They kept talking. Details flowed into the big picture. It sounded like King Karlos has worked himself into a trap here, using sleaze dealers that'd turned on him or started selling to his neighbors. With most mutants, if his subjects found out he's was into serious dealing with CyBorgs, he'd collect the blame for every power failure for the last twenty years if this blew up.

I guess Kings need to stay popular, even in the deeps. If everyone is against you, you die fast. And there was the revenge part. I finally interrupted.

"Angel. Correct me. You look the other way while teddys march me in and out of a nice simple collection-job?"

Angel gave an unladylike snort. There was a snapping sound from her phone.

"Oh, we don't have anything to do with this." Brother Jones stuck in. "Teddys helping a tracker and trapper? Won't be happening."

"Oh. So why are you here?" I asked curiously.

"You'll travel thru a couple spots that are, well, special to us." Brother Jones admitted. "On your way out. We've been persuaded... to let that happen."

"Most of the teddys there will know enough not to kill you." he admitted slowly. Ungraciously. "But not all of them agree with this. Stick to the safe zones on the way home, Tracker. You'll live longer."

"Lemme see. No guide out. Blindfolded in; booby-trapped catch. Cyborgs slavering to pick the bounty up, if they can. Thru a teddy mind-field. Nice job." I blinked "Who ya gonna get to do it for ya? My mom is already dead."

No one liked dealing with Angel's CyBorgs or would willingly walk in carrying something they were interested in. They were berserkers kept cranked up on various drugs and went seriously nuts on a regular basis.

Dealing with them was a lot like playing patty-cake with a psychotic killer who snapped every time he got excited. Being real careful as you slapped a bomb around was standard procedure.

"Oh, no. This job is much more fun than that.' Angle was giggling now and that eerie sound made me most unhappy. There was another snap and I recognized the sound as an innocent pencil being broken in two. "The catch is ex-borg. City-stock. An arms dealer. Equipped to the eyebrows with everything he wants. Knows all the tricks." Angel almost clapped her hands as she said that. I could see the happy-dance in her eyes, even if there was no screen here. There was another quick snap.

It sounded like she was killing lots of pencils over there. Better them than me.

"You're trying to kill me, aren't you?" I grunted, relaxing back into the hard wooden chair. "All of you. Again, why me?"

"You have a reputation for keeping your mouth shut." Brother Jones stuck in. "And not doing any more damage than necessary. I'm asking you."

"We need this surgical." Angel stuck in. Another snap. "The target retrieved and dropped at any collection point. No Borg or CyBorg assistance. I'm telling you."

"I don't want to know anything about this. They tell me you can do the job." King Karlos added skeptically. "Without messing up. Fast, quiet. Everything you learn forgotten."

"I want him nailed." came from the King Carlos. Hard.

"No general mayhem on this. No bombs. No teddy-trouble or assistance." Brother Jones mentioned. "You get a hint or two of areas to avoid. Area's that'll get you and your mark slowly tortured to death if you stumble into them."

"You'll get pointed at the target. Also, a small warning. Any mutant that sees you down here will kill you on sight and collect a reward for it from me." King Karlos threw in. Swell. Everyone was having a contest to make this a miserable job.

"And there's another metal for killing you nasty, come to think of it." King Carlos added absently, as if he's just thought of it. "It's mostly bragging rights, but I do have to hand them out every now and again."

"Plus the farm is kind of a game preserve. That's the wild card. We hunt there." King Karlos admitted, finally as the silence grew long. "It's a jungle zone even to us."

"Great! Just great. Do I go in drugged too?" I snapped out. "Is it hot? So far, there's a guy that eats live dead babies somewhere in the Deep. Bot ones. A Borg arms-dealer armed to the teeth. You want him topside. Any info on who, like a picture? A name? Do I get anything here, anything at all?"

"As a matter of fact, you do go in cold." Angel was smiling at me, I could feel it. "Data on a self-destruct cube. It's part of the agreement. You get hit here and wake up down there."

"Info? Here's some you'll need to hear, Tracker. What we hunt down there on the farm is kind of special." King Carlos admitted that slowly. "And there's more than one kind. Nobody knows how many. It's old rock. Very old, a natural cavern. One in particular is very dangerous. Smart, deadly, still free. We've never been able to get very deep into his turf, drive him off, kill, capture or even slow him down. No one knows why he tolerates the farm, but he does."

"Dandy job. Monsters too." I added unhappily. "An armed target with super-mutant monster buddies. In the dark Deep. The monster can't be much worse that a street-smart Borg that manages to survive down there with him, can it?"

"Actually, he is." Angel stuck in, stopping her pencil abuse for a moment. "No CyBorg has ever come back from this farm." She said wonderingly. "And this guy lives there." Another pencil died horribly, with a nasty grinding sound.

"We don't know how they managed to contain the beast." King Carlos admitted. "But the farmers did. It was a secret that died with them."

"He probably doesn't want to leave." Brother Jones mentioned quietly. "That's our best guess."

"So someone who wants to sneak in and out quietly is a better bet than a squad or so of CyBorgs doing urban renewal." Angel sighed, still unhappy. "Or a tack nuke. It's all deadzone too. No communications."

"Most of the underground is deadzone." I grumped out. "The deep is worse? Surprise, surprise. No one will talk to me down there anyway."

"Everyone wants to kill you down there, Tracker." I could hear the smile in Angel's voice as another pencil creaked and gave up it's life with a shattering sigh. "And you won't get any help from anyone. Just like up here. Isn't that nice?"

***

King Karlos left after linking with his guard for a moment. They did give me some equipment, eventually. Dark camouflage clothes that seemed to give my bodyguard the giggles, and new swamp boots. A trank gun. Brother Jones kicked in a data-cube loaded with maps via Teddy, (one that King Karlos reluctantly updated with his escort, I guess), and Angel had supplied a handful of energy pills and anti-rads. I got finally got to see a picture of the meat I was supposed to bring in.

Alive, if possible. His name was Eric. Black male, 30ish, 70 keys heavy. An arms dealer. Ex-ganga. Trained Borg. Armed, dangerous and on his new home ground.

A city-side Borg with underhanded arms connections. Angel mentioned he had a history of being a weasel; more than being a high non-verbal, I'm guessing. He'd managed to put himself somewhere she couldn't easily hurt him and that kind of thing always annoyed her. He'd been leaking supplies to teddies and King Karlos for while before making his latest move.

I think it was armed insurrection. He'd tried to oust King Karlos and make himself the new King of the Deeps on the sly.

Angel had a few questions for him. King Karlos wanted to show him what happened to suppliers who sold to his enemy-neighbors and worse, tried their own moves on him.

The teddies just didn't like him anymore and Brother Jones wasn't saying why.

He was a junk-dealer, I guess. Bots normally like arms dealers, especially ones with guns built into the arms. I suspect Eric had tried raising his prices suddenly or put badly-wiped weapons in a shipment.

There were hints of prime material being involved from Angel, not the usual factory rejects. R+D stuff with advanced tricks, secret trapdoors and abilities in the hardware. Nifty uses for it. All very classy material. Nosing into any of that was highly discouraged by all parties.

I shrugged. Big Bro had borged all his weapons long ago. One-shot-kill smart guns with autodestruct overrides, GPS, com-links, that only fired for their owners and did a variety of things with the same bullet... from around the corner... were standard CyBorg weapons. That was one of the reasons people hated dealing with them.

I normally made my living herding runaway teddys who weren't worth a bullet, literally. I was not encouraged to look into any of the weapons. By anyone.

"You ready for the drop?" Brother Jones was always a courteous soul, (or souls), even when killing someone. He said hurting anything distressed him. Angel snorted in the background. I looked over the merger handful of equipment in front that'd finally showed up.

"Do I have any choice?" I grumped, holding up one of the boots. "You people are crazy. You're sending me Deep, armed with a pop-gun. From my point of view, none of you want this to work at all."

"We try the easy way first. You're nice and easy." Angel snapped. "Or dead, I don't care which. Tracker. You're my man down there today, don't mess up or I'll find a way to make it hard on you. I'm out. Call when you get back." With that, she snapped off, or at least appeared to.

The mutant bodyguard had been silently acting for King Karlos for some time now. The King had left as soon as he could. Teddy had been helping Brother Jones out.

"If you get back, you gonna call her?" Brother Jones seemed at ease now, and I kept wondering what he knew that no one else did.

"Ah, no. Not until the money's in the bank. She'll know more than I do by that point. She'll find out everything she wants to know the first city terminal or camera I walk past, actually."

Teddy nodded. "We might be able to help you a little with that. There'll be a safe-route marked. Stay in the deadzones and she won't know where you are till you card in. That OK?"

"Fine. So they'll steal my catch from me in the station instead of the street. Big deal." I was not happy with this job, but I knew I was several kinds of dead if I didn't take it.

That didn't make me any happier about it.

"You do go in knocked out, you know. It'll make the trip easier for me." My bodyguard grinned at me. "So go now if you have too. Get dressed. Chow down. Stew up. There isn't another stop for ya till you wake up at the farm way down under."

"That sounds like fun. I'm dressing, I'm dressing. Any of this stuff wired? Active? I don't want to set off any alarms when I get there." Since I was already dressed and equipped for a hard hunt, back when I was tracking whoever had done the breakin at the mall, I didn't actually need much.

I did make a point of pulling batteries and looking over circuit boards for more hidden crap in my GPS first tho. Teddy grinned at me happily as I did.

"That won't work, the overrides are buried in ROM." He chuckled. "A clean Eprom will cost ya. When ya get back, OK?"

Teddy was loading a small canvas knap with protein bars, water and ammo for me. Also the data-cube. It looked like he was packing for a short hike, not an extensive march thru a dark forest.

"Clean. Not even dusted." My bodyguard said, after sniffing the small pile carefully. Teddy was scanning the heap himself and he nodded agreement.

"You're as clean as a newbie, Tracker."

"And about as well-armed as a baby." I snapped, looking at the relic of a gun they've given me. "Holly crap, this is an air-pump pistol! How old is it?"

"It works. You could beat a dino to death with it and it'll still work. The ammo is special, tho. Self-reg stuff." Teddy nodded at the pile in my knap. "It'd modify dosage till pulled out. Keep the meat quiet but not dead weight. Zombied. Docile. Works really fast, too."

"You'll find that out." My body guard mentioned happily, giggling at one of his own secret jokes.

"A docile Borg from an air-pistol? Ha. Doesn't seem likely." I stared at the weapon in disbelief.

"Free advice. Stay pumped. He'll be awake again in minutes if it fails." Teddy kept talking like there was something he wanted to say but couldn't do it here. I saw the data-cube getting stuffed in the knap with the ammo and winked at him. He ignored me.

My bodyguard did turn around and wink back at me, tho. "Angel really wants to talk to this guy." He grunted, dragging his chair back into the room. "So avoid head-shots if you can. King just wants him dead."

The cool gloomy room wasn't any friendlier as I polished off another bowl of the stew. The last meal of a condemned man. Hot crunchy veggies in sauce, deep in an underground tavern.

"Well, I'm ready." I turned to look at the bodyguard, who was stretching his muscles out at the door, making his trench-coat flap. There was a small pop from behind me. "How do we do this..."

The floor leaped up at me as I slumped down in an ungraceful heap. That was the last thing I remember.

Teddy, under orders from Brother Jones, had shot me from behind with one of the tranks.

***

"Hey." My mutant body guard had chucked his trench coat over his shoulder and gone native. Whatever native for a mutant in his home ground was. "And now back to your regularly scheduled treachery, human. Welcome to the Deeps. Our own special hunting grounds, in fact."

"Tag, you're it? Do I get a chance to run first?" I asked. It was hot. There were weird patches of phosphorescent glow here and there in the dark and it was very humid. I nodded and was sorry I tried to move as the dark world promptly did a jig on my head.

The mutant laughed and shook his head. "No. You walk in." Hey, I wasn't the quarry today. He nodded at the tunnel in front of me.

"What, no more Tracker?" I asked groggily. "And we were getting along so well... Right up to the point where somebody shot me, that is."

I was just a little light-headed and except for needing a john, felt OK. I sat up and tried to make sense of the gloom around me.

"You got shot twice, Human. Once to put you under, again to wake you up." The big fella was still stretching his muscles as best he could. I guess he'd carried me a far part of the way here over his shoulder.

That won't be easy. I'm not a light-weight and the kit they gave me was still in place.

"And in the butt both times." I groaned and rubbed my sore hinnie. "Stop gloating, there's no money in it for you. Unless you've decided to go for the cruel and unusual punishment medal. How long was I out? Where are we?"

"And what's your name, anyway?" Actually, I was glad to see my bodyguard, even if it looked like he was itching to get away now. Anything for a friendly face down here.

"Call me Norm." Without the coat, the thug looked like a pretty average Joe. One with a fused backbone, but an average Joe. His shoulders were big enough for a couple people to stand on, tho.

Norm handed me some goggles, still chuckling happily. I traded and slipped them on fast, pleased to see they were more than my usual saturday-night specials, then plugged in the data-cube from the knap. They were a little confusing. In fact, these new goggles had more ops than I can remember seeing before, except on CyBorg sets.

They let me see in the dark six different ways, two of which I'd never heard of before. I loved 'em.

"You were out only a couple hours. This is the Deep, Tracker. Dark Deep. You'll need those goggles more than you know. Pink is radioactive. Remember that." I put that info away without comment. Dropping someone into a toxic waste pit was bad enough, and a hot-tox bath down here meant a nasty, nasty death. A slow one.

Angel had set me up for evil this time. I tried looking around to see if there was anything I should be avoiding. Lights anywhere underground were rare and all I could see around me was native rock and moss.

I was sitting on a cold damp patch of it to start with.

Getting up helped. The goggles helped a lot more. I could see we were at the end of a tunnel that opened up in front of us into a large cavern.

With nothing but passive systems active in the goggles, it was still dark and empty, but now at least I had a clue.

Norm was still chuckling. "Try not to shoot yourself in the foot. A second dose of that trank in a day might keep you sleeping awhile. Around here, you'd wake up half-eaten if you woke up at all. Not advisable. Even the moss will chow down on you if you hold still too long."

"Got it. Everything down here is hungry, got it. Even athlete's foot will take your kneecap off if it gets a chance. Thanks, Norm."

Going over, I went over and leaned into a section of wall. With the goggles on, it looked like I'd doused a section of floor with fire. Red spots trickled down the tunnel, away from the cavern.

Footprints, slowly cooling. Anything with a nose knew that a topsider was here and ready to fight about it, but at least in a few minutes there'd be no tracks.

"Say, any idea where this dude is?" I asked, shaking my muscles loose. They were a bit stiff and cranky. It looked like it was gonna be a long day for me, and a heavy load to carry at the end of it.

"Somewhere in the moss out there." My guard chuckled and pointed down the tunnel towards the opening space. "Probably the jungle. There's the farm. The hunting ground is just beyond it, thru a small cave. You can tell that by the gravel trail. The jungle you'll know when you see it. This is the only way in or out of the whole place, and it's being watched where it opens up. He's in there somewhere."

"Not much help, that." I grumbled, cranky. "Anything else I should know about this place?"

"Ya see, that's the thing about Mother Nature." Norm the guard chuckled, patted his coat and pointed his nose towards the farm cavern. "There's lots of it, and almost everything isn't what you're looking for. Most of it has teeth, too."

"So true." I gave my pack a shake, adjusted my glasses and headed towards the more open space in the tunnel. "Yea, tho I walk in the shadow of the valley of death, I fear no evil."

"Temptation, tho. That's a bitch."

When I looked around Norm was gone, even to the nifty new glasses I had on, or any settings I could find. I didn't look hard. His trench-coat was a special one that mimicked background, I guess.

***

The farm was about what you'd expect. Stone buildings caved into cavern walls, no cement. Square'ish. Silent. Hydroponics and gravel greenhouses, fed from a local stream of groundwater yuck and stolen waste-water. Dark except for greenhouse lights. Completely deserted. Some weird form of maize growing in greenhouses, mostly. New grey-green fuzz covering everything. The buildings hadn't been tended in a while now. Lights were burning out and not getting replaced.

The strange part of the farm was the lack of buildings. There were a couple cold, empty holes tucked along the walls, a deserted main dwelling and a collection of quiet greenhouse holes, all backed by a solid rock; all just niches in the cavern walls.

Yucky fuzz was already starting to cover it all and my footprints showed clearly in the slimy stuff, even without the goggles. That suggested at least a few days of being undisturbed to me. It might've been longer, I couldn't tell.

All my scopes said a cold and deserted place. I couldn't hear anything except the gurgle of water and the whine of timed light-banks making the maize grow.

It didn't take long to trek thru the quiet farm. The jungle out back, now that was a different story. It was on the other side of a short dark hole in the rock wall.

A breeze came out of it, suggesting other ways in. I trekked over and went in slowly. It glowed inside from jungle light.

The jungle itself was alive and febrile with all sorts of moss, lichen, huge mushrooms and strange, strange plants I couldn't place. It was set back a ways from the cave.

Plants got bigger the further away from the entrance, too. It'd been burned back a few times, I was betting. A local garbage dump, too from the smell of it. Most of the weirdness growing back there was wet, glowed in the dark and stank if anything stronger than a breeze touched it.

There were no fresh tracks in any of this, just gravel paths that were already fuzzy and mossed over. Small rat-paths and game trails were visible faintly, except I couldn't hear anything alive in the whole place.

The moss was thicker here in the whatever light the mushrooms made for themselves. Whatever this fuzz-moss was, it grew like a fertilized weed.

I looked over the eerie quiet in front of me and adjusted my pop-gun in its holster firmly. So this was the monster jungle. Eric was somewhere out there, armed with the latest in Borg and Cyborg tech, waiting for me. Trained to hunt. He knew how to live off the land... Or moss in this case, and I only had a couple of ration bars and an air-pistol.

Sounded fair to me. Street-wise ex-Borgs were no match for an experienced teddy-tracker, even in the dark of the Deep's jungle. Monsters or not.

I kept telling myself that even if I didn't believe it. I needed the encouragement.

There was no sound other than the whistle of my own breath. I began to regret passing up the washrooms back in the farm housing immensely.

***

Walking in that thick moss was like wading in ankle thick slush. Green slush. The rest of the jungle was nastier. It was hot in there. Water was everywhere, in fog clumps, mist, gloom and trickles. It was getting hotter the longer I stayed. I stood there at the edge of the jungle, every electronic sense straining, trying to find some clue of my target.

I'd stopped just outside the main jungle and looked at the loose rock scree piled up against the wall. The high ground. This looked like a good spot to see what was what. Also see what was in the voice-mail note Teddy had slipped me.

I picked a perch and started snooping. The data-cube plugged into my helmet had looked interesting, but it was mostly a map of the way out. The whole farm layout was there too, but the jungle behind the farm was easily ten times the size of the farm area, and the edges weren't defined so it could be much larger.

The jungle was also a mostly blank area on the map. Terra incognito, with monsters.

I expected the note to be the usual warnings. Instead, it was a voice mail, Teddy laughing about something.

"We gotta do this again real soon, Tracker. Shooting you was the most fun I've had in years. Your bodyguard will get to shoot you again to wake you, the lucky stiff. He'll should be long gone by the time you get to this. But you've got a path out marked here and it's the best we could get for ya. Be warned, we'll know if you wander off it 'cause only your head will come back.

Listen up, kid. Brother John says you didn't make that many friends with the teddys, so don't expect any help from them.

The King says the monsters in that jungle down there are real and do eat CyBorgs for breakfast. Any other mutant that sees you down there will kill you on sight, and as messily as possible. So don't let them catch ya, OK?

Eric, the mark, is hiding there in the jungle behind the farm somewhere; he's been there before and is probably alive. Your job is to bring him back, or at least a few quivering chunks of him.

The only other thing I can tell ya is that his girlfriend blew thru here a while back, looking for him. She disappeared a couple days ago. Name of Mindy. Blond. Cute girl. She had access to everything Eric did, so if you see a girl wandering about lost down there... Remember, she has much better equipment than you do. Equipment Angel will kill everyone in your family for you even knowing about.

She looks like she can shoot, too. Both girls.

That's about it. Oh, Nellie the waitress thinks for a guy on his last meal, you're a cheap date.

This cube dissolves itself six ways from yesterday automatically, most of them when you get out. I'd hurry if I were you. See ya when ya get back."

It wasn't much help at all. The maps was hardly more than tunnel names to turn in and since Angel knew about this it was a good bet there'd be Borgs, Cyborgs, Teddys and anybody else really interested in this guy waiting around every corner waiting for me. Gangas trying to make up for lost time, at the very least.

Eric's girlfriend being down here wasn't much of a positive, as far as I could see, even if she's made it this far.

Boots laced and camo'd up, I bundled the rest of my junk up and pulled the knap tighter, heading in. If Eric was anywhere around here, he'd left some traces.

I followed some drag marks from the cave into the dark, steamy mushrooms they called jungle, hoping for the best. There wasn't anything else I could do.

***

"So stranger, what brings you down here?"

The voice came out of the murk as I tried to feel the difference between wet moss and wetter lichen while climbing up a wet rock. I'd wanted a look around the jungle before it ate me when I stepped out of the cave, so I'd tried to climb a handy rock to look around. None of the slime over everything made for a great handhold.

The voice was female, it was in a deep, dark cave and in a place where I fully expected to be shot on sight by anything that moved and poisoned by everything else.

I almost fell off the slimy rock, but managed to freeze into place with only a few panicky slips. "Lordy, please don't do that again." I grunted. "I didn't bring a change of underwear with me today."

The voice giggled quietly, then sniffed at me. "You'll sweat it off." I heard the unmistakable click of a gun getting cocked. "Listen, hard-boy. This is a Remington...."

"907, semi-auto needle-bore. Modified rail-gun launch. Called the Thunderbolt." I finished for her. "OK, you've got me covered from behind and unless I co-operate, I'm a thin layer of paste all over what used to rock behind me. Whatta ya want?"

The behind me part was a guess, as she could've been anywhere. All the water in the air was doing weird things to sound and I hadn't placed her yet. My goggles weren't any help at all.

"Eric, same as you. Say, you're good. I'm Mindy. So where is our boy?"

"I just got here. Haven't found him yet." I grumped. "Say, Mindy. Mindy, Eric's ex-girlfriend. Mind if I get down from this rock? This moss is wet."

"It's lichen. Moss is the stuff that grows on your boots, hard-boy."

"Oh? I thought they were mushrooms."

I risked a quick peek behind me. The light of the glowing plants wasn't enough to see much by and my new goggles couldn't pick her out from wherever she'd hid.

"And I'm not a Borg hard-boy. I'm a teddyhunter called Tracker." I added absently. I hoped that confused her as much as it did me. "Angel told me to bring Eric back or die trying, so here I am. You?"

The gun drooped a little. "A teddyhunter." The voice came in a flat tone. "OK, what's that like?"

"I sneak. Teddys are radio-silent, shielded and run around on padded feet. You trap them, if ya can't scare them into moving down to teddy-town."

"Some of them run away from home, but not their wards." I added carefully. "And live off junk. They usually smarten up fast."

"Humph. A sneak. Angel doesn't like you much, does she?" The quiet grew a little thicker. "Tracker, then. Listen. I want Eric. The little snarf left me behind to distract some Borgs while he made his getaway. We need to talk about that."

I yelped and involuntarily slid off the rock, getting wet and slimed in the process of sliding off it. Well, wetter and slimier.

She moved fast. When Mindy came out of the murk in my goggles her gun was already inches away and firmly aimed at my head, even as I slammed and splatted into the gunk all over the ground.

I woofed and peeked around. The news didn't get any better for me. My new girlfriend was a killer blond in every sense of the word. A full-armed, blond true-blood CyBorg, someone born to kill. An annoyed one with a gun aimed at my head.

That was a little startling. Female CyBorgs were rare, true-bloods rarer. CyBorg? She'd been born as a weapon, grown in a fetal-tank. Some times from eggs. Enhanced. Augmented. Gene-spliced. Born cranky. Weapon and triggers built in at the autonomous level while she was still canted in the birthing machine. Trained from the womb up to be as nasty as they come.

Not many females lived till the decanting of their tubes, fewer still thru the psy-op hell they called pre-school life-training.

The bore of the gun was aimed at my eye and never wavered an inch.

"So tell me why I shouldn't make you into fertilizer now and save myself the competition." Mindy said conversationally. The gun pulled back a little and she smirked at me evilly, puffing hair out of her eyes. That was her only concession to not being military, a mop of short blond hair.

It didn't make her look any less harmless.

"Man, this oughta be a good one. In fact, it better be." She added absently. I was still looking. The girl had good gear on over a tiny body. Even with my goggles and being only feet away from her, she wavered in and out of my goggle-sight. Swell. My new extra-spiffy high-tech gear was almost useless with her. How was it gonna work on Eric? I carefully got up, brushed as much of the gunk off my cameo pants as I could and regretted what it did to my hands. Mindy disappeared back into the murk.

"Well, this place eats CyBorgs, or so the stories go. I sneak, so I might slip by." I looked over at where I thought she was. "That's the whole gig. You seen any monsters here yet?"

"Nope." Mindy tossed her head and I got to place the movement. "Heard of 'em, decided it wasn't worth trying to get past 'em. I'm sitting here waiting for Eric the jerk to walk by and show his ugly face. His supplies can't last forever." She mentioned happily.

"Hey, if he can eat lichen...." I started.

"Mushrooms." She corrected me, then finally dropped the gun-muzzle and stuck out her jaw, puzzled. "Humph. Clean scan. No real weapons on you at all. Other than the pop-gun." Mindy seemed to think for a second more, then decided something. "Come on, I'll show you my setup before tossing you back."

"You're letting me go? You play catch and release?" I asked, a little relieved as the instant death aimed at my crotch dropped a little lower. It got replaced by a several more slow and painful deaths at her bare CyBorg hands, but it was at least death delayed.

"Putting you to work for me instead. Maybe Angel had the right idea." Mindy grinned at me, then reached over and pulled at my hand. "Come on, gunky. We have some talking to do."

The hard-girl pulled me into the jungle, down a new path. I stumbled after here, thinking furiously.

Well, trying to. It was a good thing she was leading me. My goggles couldn't cut thru the murk anymore and the mushrooms on the path were as slick as wet ice.

Interference from her, I was betting. I only fell a couple of times, but I think Mindy was tripping me up on purpose. On booby-traps. I did notice she had on a full body-skin armor on. An expensive self-repairing nano-suit. It looked like black leather and fit like spandex.

It was incredible. Blonde. Except for her butt the way she filled her suit had to be seen to be believed, and not in a wow-type way. She was skinny. This was like being accosted by a blond teenage boy with a high voice. Sort of friendly too, in that she hadn't shot me yet.

I watched her trot on ahead after one of my spills and came to the conclusion Eric was crazy for running out on a treasure like this. A female CyBorg bodyguard? We the unwashed masses called them "The Crowns of Creation." Only presidents got them, only on national holidays and only if they were currently on good terms with the troops.

Presidents that weren't on good terms with the troops didn't stay that way long. Being unpopular was usually a fatal condition with a weapon called a continental-siege unit by the brass.

Yes, CyBorgs are that powerful. Or so their rep went.

Her camp wasn't that far and was well-placed in a trail bottleneck. Small perimeter. Unless you liked sheer wet grey rock-face, sort of blue stinky mushrooms or distant invisible roof hidden in mist, Eric would have to come down one the paths to get out of the jungle at all; and right into her lap.

That he might cut his own hole out occurred to me, but that was hot, noisy work even with an energy weapon. She'd know if he did.

So would every else here, whatever that might be.

There was also a black led-sled in her camp piled high with arms, colored ammo, wrapped rations and other weapons of civilian mass destruction. It was all tucked into a small clear circle of leveled rock, backed and surrounded by clean walls. I blinked twice at the floating sled. Incredible. Led-sleds were as legendary as she was. No controls were visible. Sleds were supposed to be top-secret anti-gravs that could fly a Bolo tank halfway around the planet without straining, tech pulled off crashed flying-saucers and not duped yet. Rare stuff.

The sled was heaped with mostly black oily junk I couldn't identify. The stuff there looked silent, deadly and nasty. So did she.

"Wow. You're ready for a war here, aren't ya? Or maybe two of them." I said quietly, looking around for a fire or something that'd make the place look like home. There wasn't any. There wasn't even a sleeping bag. All I could see was ammo, booby-traps, weapons and more weapons.

"Didn't know what I was coming into, so I prepped for anything." Mindy mentioned casually, scratching her butt as she glanced around. "Some of this was Eric's. I also looted a Borg armory on the way by. There had some good stuff there. Ration-bar? Hey, watch out for the cleaner."

"Food? I'll take it. The only thing I can remember today is getting shot a few times. Well, there was a bowl of stew at Teddy's, just before he shot me. Veggie delight." I pulled my mask down, took the bar Mindy was offering and started into it. It was much better than my stuff, chock full of anti-everythings plus iron. It even tasted OK. "Ah, what cleaner?" I looked around suspiciously. There wasn't anything except rock and weapons to be seen.

The air around me was foul, wet, full of strange smells and worse grime. I swallowed, bit into the bar heartily again anyway.

"Autoscan laser. Perimeter scanner. Kills the moss and mushrooms in here." Mindy grinned at me. "Dries it out. Sterilizer. Warning. It doesn't like wet soggy things at all."

I heard the hum start up. Something snapped on and started to warm up.

"Dampness? Like me?" I squeaked. Sixteen zillion small red dots appeared on my suit as I looked down at the slop all over me; a couple of them targeted her boots. "Oh crap. A hot dry-cleaner?"

"Yeah, and you're the spin cycle. Try not to fall into the fence, it's a stunner." Mindy giggled as lasers fired, heating up tiny little spots on my suit, drying them and killing the slime there. They were also some very hot explosions of steam wherever they hit.

Mindy grinned as I screeched, leaped up and started spinning around as fast as I could. The lasers perked up and started hitting me harder, firing hot.

It was hell. They were cleaning and drying my clothes with me still inside them, an instant sauna... and steam cooker.

Very uncomfortable. "So far, you've had a full day of last meals then. You're doing fine." Mindy sat on the led sled and casually waved an arm as I stumbled around twirling and screeching.

Moving cooled the hot spots off and made sure the same place didn't get hit twice. On the other hand, if Eric was out there he knew all about me being here now.

I think Mindy was doing that on purpose. Once or twice I hit the perimeter fence and spasmed back as several thousand volts tried to scramble what was left of my brain cells.

Lasers kept zapping at me, drying me off. The rest of her camp didn't like the noise I was making. I could feel hidden traps all around the camp snapping back into fully-operational mode as I yelped protest whenever I got hit in a tender spot.

The lasers kept firing at me, vaporizing slime and drying me off. I kept spinning. One small hot-spot at a time, all over me got dried. I whimpered and steamed with every hit, but kept twirling as best I could

The drying went on for a looong, long time. So did Mindy's giggling. I was steaming hard and too dizzy to stand up when the camp-cleaner finally decided I wasn't a moss invasion anymore and quietly shut down.

My clothes were misting all over. I fell to my hands and knees and waited for the world to stop turning. Mindy walked over and put a boot on my butt casually.

"OK, stud. Here's what I want you to do." She started.

***

It was a simple blond hell. She talked, I listened.

She wanted Eric and if I found him, I was supposed to get him to her any way I could. She'd just wait here till something happened. No rescues. I didn't even get a chance to agree. She put out orders, then booted me out the back door and into the deep jungle while I was still dizzy.

I fell face-first into the muck just outside her camp. My ration bar had gotten lost at some point and I really didn't feel like trying to get it back.

Well, kicked into wetter, deeper jungle at least. Her whole setup faded into deep cameo; two falling crawls away from her camp and it was completely invisible. The last thing I saw was her fading smirk and the gun cradled in her arms being leveled at me.

"Go get 'im, Tiger." came a faint whisper. She was giggling again, and shaking with mirth. "I'll be waiting for ya."

"Yeah. I'll do that." I sat down and waited for the world to stop spinning and cool off a bit.

So far, for an invincible tracker, I hadn't had a great day. Everyone that wanted to talk to me just got in way and waited for me to walk into them. Most of them had debated for a while, then shot me too.

I started thinking Eric would be the same way.

I did get a chance to study real jungle while sitting there. It was weird. The whole cave was dark and smelly, filled with six foot, faintly glowing something-or-other mushrooms, going from grey to blue in color. I felt almost naked without weapons, unless you counted the air-pistol Angel had given me. It felt raw.

Resisting the impulse to get off the muck and get hidden in the glow that surrounded me was a top priority, as touching mushrooms in any way made them break open and smell bad. Most of the other weirdness poofed and gurgled worse nastiness all on their own, too. I shook my head sadly. Swell. A jungle that farted at you. I did without trying to hide in it and after a few minutes of feeling sorry for myself, got up and staggered on down the path, away from the CyBorg camp I just gotten kicked out of.

There was a smaller path further in, clean (well, mossy). It split from the main path and went uphill, so I took it.

Getting to Eric was as anti-climax as you could hope for.

Still staggering, I came up the small hill looking around hopefully. Around a curve in the trail and there he was. A body lying in the middle of the path. Down in a small dip that hadn't filled with water yet.

Male. Alive and breathing raggedly. I trotted right over. Rolling him over, I looked carefully at the face, turning on my helmet lights for the first time since I'd come into the Deeps.

Plugs in the neck. Bingo, I had a Borg captive. The bod sleeping here was an unconscious Borg that something had casually chewed up and spit back out down here.

Couldn't be many of those around here, right? The guy sort of looked like the picture of Eric I'd had on the cube, but this version was a lot worse for wear. Still breathing and all his weapons gone, along with most of his clothes. What he had left on was rags and shreds.

He was already getting mossy in spots too.

The trail disappeared into the dark ahead of me, going downhill. It looked even more dark and unfriendly that whatever had happened to Eric.

I'd been having a bad day and really wanted to shoot something, so I growled, pulled out my pop-gun and started to pump it up. That was pointless. I could've stuck the trank in Eric's ear by hand now.

I was aiming for a nice muscle zone that hold the trank well when world-war four, five and six broke out behind me; Mindy's camp was being attacked. Or attacking something. I dropped down, crawled over and flattened myself down beside Eric after the first shock wave went over head and knocked me over, hoping to live thru whatever was happening back there.

Both of us. Live quarry was worth more than a head without any ID attached for a bounty-hunter

***

The noise behind us was intense. Mindy's camp was exploding with lots of gunfire and worse. At what, I didn't know. The automatic weapons ringing the place were going berserk; high-energy beams were scoring the ceiling, looking for something to kill and I didn't want any of it to notice me.

Auto-fire was ringing the camp with lead rain and worse. Incredible amounts of modern firepower was being concentrated on something out there twitching in the dark.

My biggest problem was I wasn't really that far from 'there' yet, just tucked away on the other side of a small hill. The explosions were going mostly overhead, but both Eric and I could end up as chunks of twitching collateral damage if things went too far.

It only took a couple more nasty explosions ripping past overhead before I stopped watching the war, rolled over and studied the roof and jungle around me instead. Strange. In the flashes of light from whatever Mindy had firing back there, this place looked even more eerie. Mindy's stuff did it's best to reduce the mushroom jungle around it to primordial slime, but most of the gunk still glowed.

I started to sweat hard as I blinked away the blue dots in front of my eyes. My suit-front started to steam again, after being soaked by my latest spill and waves of heat coming from Mindy's camp.

That old firepower phrase was true. Her camp was running real hot right now and a little too close for my comfort.

There was lots of serious energy being thrown around down here today. There were more also colors than I knew existed getting flashed around overhead.

My new goggles were entertaining, for a while. I got to watch the war in ways I never knew existed. The battle lasted a long time. Seemed like forever to me.

Energy beams slashed the air and raked the rock ceiling as they seared thru and lit up roiling clouds of burning black smoke. Bullets ripped thru anything in their path, till they pinged off rock. Mushroom, pebbles and hot rock-chips from the roof rained down in a splattering hissing rain. Explosions shook the rock under me, chunks of stuff whistled past overhead and slimy chunks splatted messily all over the place.

None of the flotsam or jetsam looked human. The intensity of the firefight back there finally slowed as Mindy's ammo and energy finally ran down.

There was one massive, final bang that nearly took my hearing out even thru the helmet and goggles I was wearing. The rock heaved both Eric and I a couple feet off the ground, then slammed us back. Mushrooms all around got bent flat, then waved upright again.

The camp autodestruct, I guess. There was a long, quiet pause as flame billowed to the ceiling and spread out in a scarlet wave, then a final slow rain of rock chips and mushroom chunks back down that went on for quite a while.

Eventually, the whole jungle got quiet again.

Well, quietish. It burbled in spots now. Glowed a lot more. Wet mushrooms don't burn well, so there was no fire, but rock heats up nicely. You could actually see a lot better from all the energy that's gotten thrown around. The roof, which looked like it had red and white hot-spot strip lights and a plasma splash or two burnt into it, and it was lighting up at least my corner of the place really well.

My major impression was if I thought the mushrooms smelled bad just sitting there, the cooked variety were even worse.

The breeze recovered and started removing the hanging smoke and mist, tearing it into ribbons and pushing them away. I got up, found my gun, and with a sense of being totally ridiculous, added my two cents worth to the battle as I shot Eric in the butt from point-blank range.

The gun did pop. I couldn't hear it. Sticking the gun back in the holster, I put cuffs on Eric, pulled him into a fireman's carry and headed back the way I came, hoping there was still a way out of here left for me to crawl thru.

***

The top was the hill wasn't very far away and the rest of jungle quite a sight to see as the smoke cleared.

What was left of it, that is. Everything on the other side of the hill that sheltered Eric and I from the worse of the blasts had gotten flattened and scraped away. Blown past us in sloppy chunks. Mindy wasn't home anymore. Neither was a couple hectares of jungle mushrooms.

Mindy's camp, or about where I thought it should be, was a massive white-hot lava crater surrounded by a wide, seared border of blacken rock; one that ran right up the hill to me. Most of the cleared ground from here to the lava was covered in slowly cooking mushroom chunks and steamy mush. The camp-nook itself was now red-hot glowing tunnel that went back quite a ways into native rock now, and you couldn't get very close to it.

It glowed red-hot and seemed to be dripping lava from the roof here and there.

Mindy, or anything remotely technical was anywhere to be seen.

Then the really good news clicked in. You could see the hot rubble back in the cave-mouth entrance I'd just come in. Lots of it. My only way out of this mess was blocked with huge piles and chunks of smoking, red-hot rock.

What wasn't buried had fallen in.

Panting in the heat and humidity, I stood there with Eric slung heavily over my shoulder, sorry I'd ever taken the job on and wondering what to do next. There was no easy way out of this place anymore.

Then things started getting strange.

Very strange, indeed. The jungle started getting weird, I mean. A dark, sloppy jungle of six foot semi-cooked mushrooms and moss on the ground was weird enough already, but this one seemed to know I was there now.

The stuff left on my side of the hill, anyway. The breeze grew and blew smoke off. I needed another way out? A couple of the ragged mushrooms still standing at the edge of the growth shuffled and splorped aside. That showed me another path.

It was even clean. A not-quite dry grey rock path. A little rough, but walkable. I could see, via infrared, a hole blowing cool blue air in at the far end of it, only a few hundred yards away.

A way out. I might get out of here alive yet, if I wanted to walk down a path lined with lots of tall, stinky mushrooms.

It did worry me tho. I needed another way out? Anything ya want, pal. Poof, here's another way out. For free. From your friendly local jungle monster-masters, no less.

It hit me hard. I knew what the monster in the deep jungle was. It was the jungle itself, the jungle being one very big, very powerful, very old something-or-other. A smart one. All of a sudden I was very anxious to get out of the mushroom patch I was standing in and somewhere where hurting couldn't lash out at me.

This last little bite taken out of jungle had to be painful; and I probably looked like food. I didn't want to be around when that thought kicked in.

I hit the path hard and fast, not thinking about it anymore. It was a slippery, mushy slog mostly downhill to the new entrance with creepy mushrooms lining up tight on both sides of the path. They closed up behind me, too. One of them hissed at me at one point. Or Eric, I couldn't tell who. We weren't being encouraged to go anywhere else. I was agreeable.

Personally, I didn't care where the path went, as long as there weren't mushrooms on the other end of it. I didn't know if where I was going was on my map or not, I just knew that new cave was a way out of here.

This jungle didn't look all that friendly anymore. I didn't want to be around when the shock of the attack wore off.

I got quiet when I finally made it to the wall. The cave-tunnel had been hidden by a rat's nest, you see, the type you hear of in the sewers but never find. A huge pile of sticks and mud. Nests all clustered together with paths, roads, hut-type buildings...

Stunned rats were all over it and lying on the ground too. Big brown and black ones. The nest was big enough for thousands of rats and my way out was behind it.

I have no idea where the sticks the city was built of came from and wasn't hanging around to find out.

I lurched in, crunching over the destroyed rat megalopolis carefully. Rats scurried to keep out of my way, if they moved at all.

They might've even been hissing at me, I couldn't tell.

The new cool cave darkness sitting there looked like heaven. It was black, silent and mushroom-free. It had clean air. I crunched and stomped my way in over shattered rat's-nest.

My helmet-light was shaky and it bounced around the walls, showing raw rock still dusty from being cut and lots of new sharp, shattered gravel on the floor. Brown and black lumps scurried away in the dark. I kept the lamp turned as low as I dared. Chunks of loose rock were still dropping from the roof occasionally and gravel isn't fun to run on.

Still, there was a fresh wind blowing in and I almost fell in, rats or no rats, moving as fast as I could on the loose stones.

Carrying Eric, of course. I had to put Eric down on the other side, a short way into the cave. Trying to carrying the idiot on a ball-bearing road was just a little too hard on me.

***

There was no sign of Mindy being alive at all, not on anything my goggles could detect. I stopped listening for her fast.

The other side of the cave was deep and dark, surprise, surprise. A deadzone to my coms. Still lurking in the Deep, I guessed. I was not at the farm, that much I could tell.

The tranks worked. Eric stood and weaved like a zombie where I left him, totally mindless. I pushed him forward as soon as the tunnel cleared a little of newly fallen rock.

Moving away from the jungle as fast as I could push was all I had in mind but, man, I was lost and knew it. I was not equipped to dig my way back to any sort of civilization. Babysitting Eric wasn't any fun either.

Ever try to herd a zombie? Exploring pitch-black, hot, wet caves, caverns and tunnels? While trying to push a zombie around? I was soon more exhausted than I knew anyone could get.

Eric could stumble around on his own, but you had to direct him where you wanted him to go. That meant me peeking around him with the lamp on to see where we were going, steering him around rubble and holes and hoping I didn't miss my turn-off in the dark.

This was the Deep. The dark stayed dark, an all-black hole between blank grey rocky walls.

I was not in a good mood anymore. So far for me, the Deep had been mostly black with spots before my eyes. The spots had turned out to be people shooting at me, not oncoming trains. I wasn't enjoying it.

It doesn't actually sound like much till you get stuck trying to walk out of the dark. How far down could the Deep really be, a mile at most?

Then you find you've been zorked by mother nature. The Deep turns into miles of sideways dark twisty tunnels, all alike. Some of them looked like they flooded regularly. Semi-natural caves thru various rocks. Patches of weird glowing moss on the path and in the small, secret rat tunnels. Silent except for the occasional drip of fetid water.

No fun. Dark, quiet no fun. Up was the only direction I had as my goggles didn't know where I was, breeze the only guide. I kept it in my face and hoped it took the sweat off. It never did. Most of the side tunnels, cracks and crevasses I stopped to check out turned out to be blocked by rockfalls, after varying degrees of rocky trudge. From what little exploring I could do.

I didn't want to leave Eric alone for long, and exploring by pushing him around didn't sound like a good idea.

The dark spot ahead of you might be a hole in floor. You never know.

The hike took forever with a wonky GPS. I had to park Eric occasionally and explore to find water 'way too often. It was too hot down there to do anything but drink water and stumble on.

We had to hike thru bad air, falling rocks and flood zones. Eric was always there when I came back, staring blankly into space or slumped into a heap on the floor of the tunnel.

Clean water was an option I didn't have and I tried not to think about the sludge I was putting thru the filters in my suit. Eric drank everything you put in his mouth, a bottomless pit I soon stopped trying to fill.

The effort to keep moving in the dark got mindless real fast. Walk. Drink. Eat. Drink. Circle rockfalls. Go back to another tunnel. Rest. Drink. Push Eric into the breeze. Shoot the sleeping idiot every time he started to get twitchy. Drink. Rest. Drink. Sleep. Watch the moss grow. Clean the lamp. I soon ran out of ration-bars and even slept a few times.

The ration-bars came from Teddy, but I won't've put it past him to poison them. I ate them anyway, and the pep pills from Angel. The sudden nasty crash that came from those things almost cost me everything when I fell asleep at a water trickle once, but Eric being very thirsty gave me a couple extra minutes.

Eric wasn't hungry, but whatever you put in his mouth got swallowed. He'd stuck his head under the drip seeping out of the rock and stayed there, drinking water till I woke up again.

I have no idea how long he'd been there. Or how long I'd been asleep.

I hadn't been able to find the time-date function on my new goggles yet. It was buried in menu I hadn't seen yet.

After a while, I couldn't even tell if I was making any progress, but my legs were telling me that it'd been a long way and quite a while since I'd gotten any real rest.

Eric drooled, but kept stumbling on. His collapses got to be a sign for rest stops and feeding times.

I did try to keep him watered. Finally, parts of the blackness surrounding us were noticeably cooler; I took that for a hopeful sign we were getting somewhere. It was still all Deep dark as far as I was concerned.

There hadn't been any sign of civilization yet, not mutant, underground, Borg, secret teddy society or topside. I was willing to walk into a zombie farm smiling by now, even if they did tend to shoot people on sight, protecting their crops from the meandering gangs of ganga raiders down here.

That'd be OK with me. I did have Eric to set off any booby-traps first, didn't I?

I was willing to settle for anything that looked like a real path at this point.

It did get cooler, just slowly; I could hear things off in the distance, even if I never found or saw whatever was making the noises. Sound carries in weird ways in the deep caves and I stopped wondering about it after the first few giddy realizations I was getting out of the Deeps, even if I never did trip over anything that looked even close to urban incursion down there.

It took days to get out of there. Finally, sign and spore started turning up. Something had hacked away rock to make a hole bigger. There was litter and trash here and there, broken water filters and scrap rock. The tunnel cave floor got a little clearer.

Something was collecting various types of moss from the walls too. That left bare patches behind, scraped clean areas. I tried some. Moss ala natural tasted like dry bitter crap with bark in it.

We almost walked right into one noisy hunting-party down there, once. Mutants chasing something.

Well, they'd already caught it and were all busy eating when Eric and I snuck past the party. The fire and smoke-smell had traveled down the tunnels for miles. Whatever they were eating wasn't quite cooked yet, either. I think it was a dog from a zombie farm. Might've been a couple rats. It wasn't big enough to be human. I kept telling myself that anyway.

I was so hungry the smell of roasting meat almost killed me, but I kept us walking past. And pushing a twitchy Eric. The next big sign I was getting somewhere was close by, a trap set in a side tunnel to protect a farm.

I've never been so happy to see something that was trying to kill me. We almost walked right into it too, me looking for the water I could smell but not see.

An electrified drop-net. Great stuff, and it looked like heaven to me. This was a tunnel-farm, using stolen power and water to grow crops. Real technological civilization at last. You could almost see the hippie-hillbilly zombie behind the trap gloating, waiting for us to try and wander into his farm.

Trespassers are fertilizer down here. Tunnel-diggers have lots of ways to grind bodies up and a couple good uses for the ones they do get.

No, we did not try to get in the farm, no matter how hungry I was. The trap in the tunnel still had something twitching in it; a trap that'd been set off usually meant a hunting-party would be the next thing wandering around in this tunnel.

I lined up some sign to the cookout down the tunnel behind us just in case there were any snoopy trackers coming down here and hurried past, pushing Eric along. With any luck, any dogs they had would go for the fresh bloody tracks back there, not mine.

The hurrying cost me. I ended up lost again, in a tunnel with live air in it, and lots of noise coming from both ahead and below. Then I noticed I was in bat territory, mostly by stepping in the crap all over the floor.

That stirred up the smell and I masked up again. Bats? Great news! Bats being on the roof put me so close to the surface I should've been able to use Morse code to get help.

Putting my lamp out, I parked Eric and explored a little. I was trying to sneak past an open gallery when I found out just how much trouble Eric and I were in at the moment.

The tunnel wall opened up into the top of a huge cavern; you could see the bottom about thirty feet down. It was huge and crowded, open and stuffed with all sorts of moving traffic.

Some of that traffic caught my eye. Blond in black spandex. Mindy, sitting pretty and chatting up a robot of some sort. There was also a powerline ladder on one wall, cut right thru the rock, something I could climb straight up to heaven if I could get to it without being killed several different and interesting ways.

Eric would not be able to make that climb, tho. He'd walk right into the hot lines first.

I sat and rested while studying the place, Eric slumped in the shadows a few feet back. Ever try to push someone up a hill covered in fresh bat-crap? He hadn't even started grunting yet, the idiot.

There was lots to see. The party below me was one of Brother John's efforts, I was willing to bet, a fairly mixed and lively congregation.

Lively with what was the big eye-opener. I'll swear Mindy was there and puzzled over that a long while. Blond CyBorgs are hard to miss, right? There aren't many of them running around loose.

She looked fairly lively for someone that'd gone up in an explosion a while back and for a CyBorg, peaceful. Also were also Teddys, Borgs, Zombie-farmers, Gangas and a couple things I couldn't recognize, all sitting around talking with each other.

There was lots of traffic in and out, and the noise covered me nicely. It looked like a daycare center down there with all the kids running about screaming.

I did recognize some mushroom growth. It was impossible to miss that tall, smelly patch of jungle sitting in the middle of the cavern.

It didn't look like decoration to me. It looked like an observer. There were even rats playing with the kids, and not as pets.

I made notes on where the powerlines went and started slipping thru the tunnels as quietly as I could. Eric stayed back there with his face in the breeze. If I was lucky, there'd be an elevator somewhere near the powerlines. I wanted to find it.

They had to supply this party somehow.

***

There was one. An old freight elevator went up not far away and it was being kept busy. I recognized it as being a stupid type; an ancient elevator found in old warehouses near the train station.

That looked good to me. If we could get on it, we could ride it to within a block of a Borg station topside, or at least into a warehouse near the district. I watched the traffic for about an hour before I saw the movement slump like I needed it to, then spent a couple more hours herding Eric thru quiet side tunnels to get him where I wanted him.

Finally, we were set. The elevator came down and emptied out, a mixed load of teddys, bots and gangas. I rushed over, pushed a rock into the door to keep it open and ran back to fetch Eric. We got lucky. There was no trouble sneaking on, me pushing Eric on ahead.

The tunnel stayed empty and the fuss in the daycare behind me covered any noise we made.

Waiting for the doors to creak close almost killed me, but when they did, I had my hand ready and on the controls. I slammed the crank to up.

There were no regrets about from me about shooting the guard at the top with the trank-gun when the doors opened, me hauling Eric out and doing a quick re-con to the outside door as fast as I could move.

Perfect. I was right, this was old warehouse right where I wanted it to be. Getting outside into the city as fast as I could push Eric was only a quick walk away.

***

It was a peaceful run, even dragging a cuffed body down the street like that. It was only a quiet two blocks to the station in a neighborhood where most of the cameras were normally shot out anyway, but a nerve racking one anyway. No one saw me, or cared if they did.

The only other thing I did was stop and leave a note addressed to Teddy with one of the on-line boards. It'd get to him eventually.

I told him I was planning to stuff magnets up his nose the next time I saw him for shooting me like that and that I'd be around in a day or two for a clean com-unit.

***

## chapter two Gangas

Just another dip in the shallow end of the gene-pool.

-Hillbillies, anti-grav + smarter Leftovers.

***

There were three things waiting for me when I got home from the Borg station later that night. A message from Angel on the box, a mushroom growing on my kitchen counter and some ganga-grunt waiting for me outside in the street shadows.

Being popular was not what a teddy-tracker really needed, but other than the weird thug traffic, it looked like topside life was back to normal. Except for the attention part. The only surprise was how slow things were about getting violent all over my little head.

There were at least twenty cab-minutes from the Borg station I dropped my capture at to home; that's more than time enough for any interested persons to set up something rotten as a welcome. I'd spent most of the trip home wolfing down crap from the station's vending machines. I wasn't all that worried. If Angel had been real keen about talking to me, the cab would've gone on auto and taken me back to the nearest CyBorg station anyway.

The someone outside was a ganga painfully fresh from the underground and obviously uncomfortable hanging about topside. A clean rapper lurking about the street is still a ganga; that kind of thing sticks out on my street. I didn't worry about who'd sent him; or care, really. Grunts are cheap, and anyone who wanted to know when I got back in the city could've put him there.

Even the people at the mall I was supposed to be working for might've asked for a watch, but that was a stretch. Throwing good money after bad won't be on any merchant's I know list of things to do.

Gangas being about the area weren't much of a problem, as my apartment was semi-gated. The buildings had enough active defenses built in to make them worth the rent charged and that was only the start. You've seen these places, they could start a war all by themselves if they wanted to.

Blast-glass turnstile doors that won't move till you were approved, carded and ID'd; nothing at all if two bodies tried to go in together; independent bio-metric ID (prints, voice, picture) of any street-traffic kept on record; auto-fire scan stations everywhere.

Then whatever personal defenses you want to spring for on your door and personal space.

As a building, not very kid-friendly. Not people-friendly at all, really. Shock-guard balconies and slick walls. Stun-gun cameras everywhere, even the laundry-room. Limited data-sharing between the neighborhood building AIs for a watch-guard.

The streets were still free, but just barely. You didn't get shot at out there very often. By the buildings, anyway.

Not a class seven enclosure you needed a tank to break, but classy enough to keep everyone but the especially skilled and really determined out. Well, and everyone below Borg-level security passes. I called the place home.

The ganga wasn't a sharp tack at all. A Jethro, one of the dumb beginners. A grunt. He didn't even see me enter thru the garage.

That was a necessary aggravation, as I was still carrying. The trank-gun Angel had given me was still rattling in my holster. Guns aren't allowed in the front door at my place, so coming home was all backdoor for me.

I took the stairs too, just to be sneaky. The traffic at night in the corridors was slow and voice-print recognition for my door worked after only a couple tries. I slunk in ready to drop and sleep right on the floor, but there were still chores to tend to.

A moment's stop to check the place out felt good. It was quiet in my place; and felt real still in there. My apartment had the hot dusty silence a place gets only after it's been deserted for a few days, with only one blinking light shining bright in the darkness.

The blinker got a quiet chuckle from me. Angel. My com-center, like any other power vampire, had been turned off like always, but that hadn't slowed her down any.

Security by-passes. She'd left a message for me whether I wanted it or not, with lots of high-security emergency tags on it. That was cruel, as the com-center was panicking and gonna play it for me now whether I wanted to listen to it or not.

Listening to more noise wasn't much of a problem for me, I was just glad Angel hadn't decided to start taping shows for me too. I didn't want to know anything about her taste in entertainment if I could help it.

The call beeped insistently from the spool but I just stood there and waited for the autos to kick in.

My apartment knew I was home. It'd play important messages like the world ending, rent increases and other stuff for me automatically. I wasn't expecting anything more than another rant from Angel; all the usual complaints and threats about her not getting what she wanted fast or quiet enough.

She managed to surprise me again.

"Hey, Tracker. See ya made it back. You just cost me some betting-money with Teddy, idiot. How'd you mange that?"

"Say, all hell broke loose about an hour after you got put there. Then you had walk out, right? Next time you go out on a job for me, keep the noise down, OK? We could hear you messing around in the jungle all the way up here."

"A noisy job we could've done ourselves. You got this contract because you're supposed to be quick and quiet, remember? You weren't either. I was getting ready to go down there and do the job myself after you stirred things up."

"Ha. Not your fault, right? Another cave-gas explosion or something? You think anyone here is gonna listen to excuses? So... Welcome back. We know you're clean. Didn't keep anything exotic, or any souvenirs other than slime. The pop-gun? Keep it, it's yours."

"Fast results, boy. Not. Dumb luck or someone helped you, right? The organ-bank money is yours; there might even be another bonus if you feel like tossing an interesting report my way. If there's anything interesting in it."

"Ya wanna keep working, call me once in a while. I might have something else Deep and deadly for ya."

You could hear a pencil snap lazily in the background and rattle into a wastepaper basket. I knew Angel was in a good mood for a change, but she always had to have the first, last and middle word.

"Or we'll kill you." She finished up, happy again. "Messily. Painfully. Thoroughly. Then hurt you and sell the leftovers to an organ-bank. OUT."

The voice died and I erased the spool a few times, then taped over it.

That was standard procedure. Contact with Angel was not anything you wanted to keep any records of. There were lots of people in the city who'd died for less stupid things.

Weird. A bonus? That was as nice as I've ever seen Angel get. Nicer. She was really pleased with something and I was getting doused with the fallout. I ignored the report and work offers from CyBorg Central; any more jobs that wiped CyBorgs out falling in my lap wasn't in the cards.

Looking around my place, I sighed relief and turned the landscaping on for minute. The auto-scenes were mountain-tops in Europe, a four-wall panorama of very wide open spaces and almost total isolation. It was even the right time and the stars in the fake sky were looking great.

Home at last. I turned it off after a pleasant moment or two and went back to business.

The mushroom on the counter I couldn't make anything of; it looked like Deep dark jungle growth stuff, but what do I know about mushrooms? It was white, had a big cap and looked happy. No leprechauns, pixies or dryads ran out of it when I poked at it.

A present from Teddy, maybe. Splashing some water from the kitchen sink it's way, I got back the important work of throwing whatever food and fluids I could haul out of the fridge down my throat. My walk thru the Deeps had taken a lot more out of me than I wanted to think about, and a sleepy full sensation was all I wanted to get going now.

My nifty new mutant goggles I stashed with my old set and the backups I had lying around, then locked the drawer. Showering was next, scrubbing dirt and jungle stains off. I did get a layer or two of used rat and bat-crap off me. Used almost a week's water-rations in the process, but it was worth it.

What was left of the worn boots and slimy camo suit I stuffed in the disposal. Then I headed for bed, crashing out to catch up on a couple missed day's sleep. I'd earned every second of it.

***

Mindy was in the kitchen playing with my new goggles when I woke up.

Trying to sneak up on her as I stumbled up off the bed was wasted effort.

"Hey, Tracker. So where's my boyfriend?" She asked absently, happily playing with the settings and trying the goggles out. She looked impressed with them.

"Huh? Mindy! What are you doing here?" I threw a housecoat on and tied it sleepily. The goggles were beeping now and my concentration wasn't what it could've been. I did notice the mushrooms still on the kitchen table but some new smelly growth had taken over my disposal in a big way.

The house walls were set to what looked like a rough camp out in some hills. I guess it made Mindy feel at home.

"I need a favor. Some host you are. Where do you hide the coffee around this dump?" Mindy grumped out, squirming in her chair. She was still concentrating on the goggles and didn't even look up at me.

The disposable burbled and put out funny odors at me. The mushrooms on my old suit had grown overnight. They were various colors now, and there were lots of them.

"Hey, be careful. They're new goggles. And they were locked up in a drawer." I grumbled, looking around the place for other obvious signs of mayhem. There weren't any. Since Mindy wasn't actively trying to kill me, I pulled a couple cups out of a cupboard and found rest of the fixings for coffee.

"Goggles. Relax, they're sunglasses by any other name, Mindy. Relax."

I didn't try to take the headset from her, she looked too enthralled. So far I was feeling grateful. However she'd gotten in, she'd done it clean and not taken the building apart in the process, or gotten the attention of gangas, police or internal security. That kind of thing always upsets the landlord when it happens to someone. I ignored the heating water and concentrated on getting the new jungle I had growing in my apartment under control instead.

The disposal had a big colony growing and it looked like mushroom from the kitchen wanted in, somehow. I helped out by getting them all in one place, even if I'd seen the big ones walk by themselves before.

The disposal basket was handiest. The whole thing went out into the sunshine on the balcony. After I'd added a cup of water to it, naturally.

Mindy was adding sugar and whitener to the evil-looking brew I called coffee when I got back in. She had the goggles on now; they didn't make her look any less harmless.

"Tracker. I need a couple favors from you." She mentioned, still sitting down at the table and slurping away. Mindy was busily beeping her way thru various goggle settings, one hand on the side of her head and oohing and awwing away happily. "And I need them right now." She added, beeping at me.

A goggle glare is designed to be frightening. It was working, too.

"Naturally. Anything you want. Before breakfast, even." I scratched behind my ear and poured a coffee for myself. "Twice. No problem. What do you want this time, Mindy?"

"And gimme my goggles back. They don't work on you anyway." Mindy grinned and handed the goggles over. I took a quick peek thru them and marveled at the info pouring out. They'd gotten tuned up and clued into all the local nets. Mindy really knew how to make the menus dance on these things, far, far better than I did.

"Say, did you kill the Jethro outside?" I grunted, putting the goggles back on the table. They were still beeping and I didn't know why. Mindy was still just a ghostly specter in them, even this close. "Or otherwise mess up anything?"

"Nope. He was asleep and stayed that way. Lucky for him." Mindy sighed and stretched a little. "The building was a cakewalk."

I grunted. Faking being asleep was easy once you learned the trick. It was also a handy way of letting nervous things sneak up and get close enough to try something on you.

All the better to grab you, dear. It's all in the breathing. Mindy took a spoon and stirred her coffee a little more. "CyBorgs have all sorts of security passes built in, didn't you know that? I used a couple modded ones from a delivery guy a few blocks away last night instead of mine anyway."

I glared at her. She looked innocently at me.

"He'll wake up soon. I didn't hit him that hard." The little mention of close violence distressed me. The stun-gun cameras around here tended to remember who made trouble before and stay aimed there. The even made reasonable guesses about who did what.

There had been considerable fuss when they had started shooting any reasonable suspect a while back. Lots of innocents had gotten shot while trying to get home.

"Swell. The ID will be alarmed. We're dead as soon as he wakes up. A beautiful trail will be leading them right here." I sighed and turned on the com center, after making sure Mindy wasn't in the camera. The neighborhood looked clean. The ganga was upright and dozing with his arms folded in the shade of an alley nook, but otherwise the street looked normal.

"Nope. They're in his pocket right now." Mindy mentioned, nodding at the ganga and grinning a little. "That's why I went to get them. I put the ID in the ganga's pocket, then came in thru your balcony while it was still dark out."

"Easy walk up the wall. The cameras here are no big deal." She sniffed and plucked at her black suit. It changed color to match the table and she almost disappeared on me.

The outside watch beeped action. I watched a couple cars pull up and seal off the alley the ganga was stashed in on the com-unit. Private security firm, a local patrol. Two uniforms got out and headed into the dark. There was a flash of a stun-gun, a brief scuffle and then something twitching got tossed into the back seat of the cruiser.

A ganga wearing shields? Odd. A zap from a stun-gun would've slowed a charging linebacker right down to a stop without straining, normally. The cruiser pulled away, a little heavier than it had been a few minutes ago.

"Ah. One down. Thank you, I think." I sat back down after another quick scan of my apartment. It still looked undisturbed to me, even with a new pot of mushrooms on the balcony.

"You gonna answer that?" Mindy said, pointing her nose at the goggles briefly. "That's a message for you. It might be important."

"Yah. Sure. Everything this morning is important." I grunted. Pulling the goggles on and after a few minutes of fumbling around, I found the com functions.

It was a spooled message from Teddy. It was red-flagged as emergency. I tapped it on.

"Tracker! Man, you really know how to mess up, don't you?" He growled at me. The little teddy bear sounded really peeved at me. "You didn't stick to the paths, did you? No matter what we told you, you didn't stick to the paths. Congrats, I had to make you an honorary deacon to stop a mob from heading out to hunt you down and kill you last night."

I blinked at that and looked over at Mindy. She was ignoring me. I was a Deacon in the Brother John's church now? Teddy did that?

That kind of explained Mindy being here. With great power comes all sorts of people nagging you for favors, I guess.

"Your little side-trip got all kinds of people upset with you. Now you're part of the team now whether you want to be or not."Teddy sounded peeved. "My team, damn the luck. Tracker. You're hot and wanted by more groups than I want to think about. Special interests, nasty ones. Get your sorry butt back here and I'll fix you up. Maybe. Tell you what it means to be a player in the underground, for starters. Sneak yourself in. Find some clean electronics for bot-world first. Don't talk to anybody before you get down here, especially gangas. They'll be keen to lock you down if they can. Any way they can."

"Angel isn't interested in you and she doesn't know or care about this. Yet. I think I can cover it so you don't get killed and maybe don't have to stay hidden down here forever. But there are people after you now. Lots of them, from all sides. Get your sorry butt back here to my place fast if you want to live thru this."

Teddy groaned. "Seriously, Tracker. If you want to live for very long you'll be down here before noon. Take a fast, quiet route, there's already lots of people looking to out and collect a bounty on your butt. Hard boys, happy with mean and ugly caps. Be careful! OUT."

"I gotta go to Teddy's place." I said quietly, taking the goggles off and putting them back on the table. "He's all hot about protecting me from gangas or something."

I looked over at the CyBorg drinking coffee at my kitchen table and groaned. "Or maybe from you."

"Yeah. You're real popular today. Angel bugging you at all?" Mindy yawned, got up and poured herself another coffee.

"Nope." I shrugged and dove in my cup of joe. "She offered money for a report last night. More work, too. I'm ignoring both." I wondered if there was any way I could sneak another shower in before I ran off again. It didn't look likely.

"I wonder what it's like in Australia this time of year." I grumbled, working more bad coffee into me. "Dandy, probably. And what do you want, girl? And why?"

"Neurosurgery. Nano-scale." Mindy said carefully, looking off into space absently. "I got most of the bugs out of my hide a while back, but I think there's a few of Eric's still left. I need them checked out and removed."

"Maybe a couple upgrades, too." She said absently, toying with her coffee wistfully. "I wanna shop around for what's out there first, if I can."

"You can get it for me. And you owe me." She grumbled, looking at me hard from under her bangs.

"Brother John didn't help you when you were back there? And you can't do it yourself?" I asked, looking her over carefully. Mindy was still poured into the black spandex warsuit and looked slick, for a teenage boy with a nice butt. "I mean, I know you're wired for sound and all, but what do you need done that I can do?"

Mindy looked peeved at my stupidity. "I need a little quiet and some deep scans, to start. Deacons can order that kinda stuff from any bot walking by and they'll do it. Free bots, anyway. You're a deacon now, right? That's one of the favors I want from you."

"Yes, I know about your promotion already. You'll help me now, or I'll hurt you a lot before I kill you." She added, grinning at me. "Like tossing you off the balcony unless you start with the promises right now."

"Ha. We're on the second floor." I reminded her.

"Then jumping on you. Or watch you fly off the roof in pieces, I don't care which." Mindy's expression didn't change. I didn't like the grin on her. Mindy the CyBorg had plans for me she wasn't talking about yet, and none of them looked good for me.

She sighed unhappily. Problems a CyBorg couldn't just beat to death obviously annoyed her. "Listen, Tracker. Arms-dealers are after me and not only my ex. Other players. CyBorgs can be brainwashed and reprogrammed, OK? They're popular with the third-world leaders. Very, very expensive, but popular. Not anything I want to go thru."

She slurped at her coffee like having some of the most heavily armed people on the planet after your butt was a normal day's work. "The dealers are just a nuisance, mostly. A couple other base CyBorgs want my cute little fanny back where they can get at it for personal reasons."

"Female CyBorgs are scare." She grinned at me. "And are the only people around tough enough to handle the traffic. Those guys can be annoying."

I cringed at that. Being the only girl in the room has never been one of my problems. It was weird hearing a CyBorg mention it, tho. Mindy grinned at me again and continued. "Angel is still officially after me since I'm still AWOL too, but only half-heatedly. She has better things to do right now, she's busy with Eric. I'm not Brother John's favorite person either since I walked out of his little party down there." Mindy sighed, looking at me like I was stupid. "Today? Eric might've left a few toys and wires buried in here." She tapped her chest. "I want them tidied up."

"I see. If Eric spills the codes, you'll self-destruct?" I asked, a little startled and worried. "Swell. Ah, are you expecting to explode anytime soon? Angel has already had a couple hours with your ex, you know."

"I know. No autos left. Those I took care of as soon as I split." Mindy looked a little worried. "Before, actually. Most of them. I think. A long time ago. Bigger problem? I trusted Eric and maybe I shouldn't of."

"Yes, faith. Misplaced faith. Seeing a lot of that today. Teddy has some more for me today, too. He wants me at his place soonest."

Mindy I felt a little sorry for. Assume the calculus and go for it. Having faith was the biggest girl-problem I knew of up here. They wanted to believe in their guy. It came with politics, I guess. Some femmes did follow their guys into hell on it and never came back. I looked at Mindy carefully.

Faith was also Big Brothers best stock-in-trade. The CyBorg org was big on loyalty to the Org, too. Having people believe in you did wonders for the ego, I guess. Locality was tricky, tho. If you want your troops to believe they just saw JC samba down the avenue wearing a fruit-hat on demand, you dealt in it.

It was all applied electronics to me. Me, I was a new-age body-builder. You ka-push field-work. Put your time, effort and money into whatever you wanted to become.

I had another thought and gave Mindy a dirty look. "Hey, if you're on the rebound girl, I'm outta here. I've never had a femme Cyborg explode on me and don't want to start now. Way too many ex-girlfriends have blown up in this face already." I squirmed away, getting nervous. "Jeez, everyone and their pet Borg is hot after you. What do you want me to do about it?"

Mindy glared at me. "Eyes up front, boy. Stop staring at my... Bod. This isn't that kind of bust."

"OK, OK. You don't have one anyway, it's all rebuild." I started rubbing my eyes. "What are you really gonna try to beat out of me today, Mindy? Your ex is in Angel's sharp little claws right now. He might explode on you anytime soon. Or at least leak, see'ins how he's already tried to toss you their way once already."

"Simple words?" Mindy looked peeved with me again and flexed her fist a couple times before answering. The snarl on her face wasn't pretty and I made a mental note not to get natural-born killers irked at me any more than necessary. "You know your robo-tech friends? I need a little work done. Surgery."

"What robo-tech friends?" I asked curiously. "Who? I don't know I knew any."

"You do now." Mindy grinned again and perked up in her chair. "Teddy has a neat little scam going on down there at his place. He does mods, right? Mostly what you see are sex-toy mods for newbies that can't find any other work, but his boys can do anything."

"Teddy mods? Surgery? They'll all be independent operators." I grunted out, a little startled. "Trust me on that. Bots are independent types. Teddy's boys only by arrangement. He does cosmetic surgery and upgrades on 'droids and bots? That's his gig now? Brother John knows about this?"

"Always was. And on humans. You need an upgrade, Teddy can arrange it. The same bots that fix up electronics do meat upgrades. All the stuff you can't get done topside, or have to wait a long time for." Mindy sounded bored.

"Oh. The replacement kidney racket? Teddy is into that?"

"And whatever else you need done. Mutants get cancers pulled. Topside girls get new and bigger boobs. Old men get blood and working knees. There's even a few ganga Borgs running around loose now out there. Mindy sighed. "They burn out fast and run clunky, but anyone can get an upgrade from the freebots if they have the money."

"And you hear about experiments that don't always live." Mindy added darkly. "Experiments like me. CyBorgs. Teddy ones. Ganga-droids."

"Androids? Oh, man, an all-electronics war. Fun, fun, fun. Sounds like everyone is prepping for something serious down there." I grunted again, wiping an eye and looking for more coffee desperately. "So when I see the teddy robo-tech this morning to get my gear debugged..."

"I want to go along." Mindy sighed and puffed hair out of her eyes. "And talk to him. Nicely, at first. A couple deep scans and I'll know what has to be done."

"I can pay. Ya never know, he might even have something I'd like done there." She murmured, half to herself. She was staring off into space happily again. "That's where you come in. They may not want to."

"Like what, a maser? CyBorgs already have everything built in." I shuddered. "How could you possibly get any more dangerous?"

"That's what I want to find out." Mindy said seriously. "I have other chores to do when the work gets done, Tracker."

"And you're not invited when I go after them. Him." She said quietly, staring off into space with an evil grin on her face. "But I do need you today, so you're going to help me. Right?"

"Righty-o. Not arguing. You're welcome to come along with me to the flying underground robo-shop this morning." I wasn't stupid. Flying lessons from the roof were the least a CyBorg could do, if Mindy got grumpy about things.

"Hey, we should be able to get down there from here. Underground. What kind of a building do you live in?" Mindy looked around my place like it was a zoo. Evidence of my hobbies was all around but she didn't say anything.

"One without a mall entrance. Do I look stupid?" I hit the coffee again and shuddered. It wasn't helping. "Or like I really need midnight specials?"

"As a matter of fact, it does look like you could use a few." Mindy grimaced at the clutter around us. "Starting with something that stops snoops. And cleans up."

"No criticizing the deco. Ouch. And no, you can't help. Fine." I waved the goggles at her and grinned weakly. "Girl, you stick out hard, dressed like that. Pick out some clothes to hide in. Find something for me, too. I'm gonna check something out." Mindy nodded, got up and went right to the drawers I kept my extra clothes in.

Without being told where to look. She already knew. Double ouch. It looked like Mindy and I were going to pick curtains out together today whether I wanted to or not.

***

I snuck around for a quick look, testing the goggles out while Mindy changed into streets, or at least covered her war-things up. Her nano-suit was not the most inconspicuous dress I've ever seen.

There were things I had to do, other than dress. First off, the new goggles were a joy and Mindy had set them up really well, but I still knew almost zero about them. Walking around blind while people shoot at you was not a good idea. I had to know how they worked if I was about to walk into a war-zone.

The goggles were great; they worked in ways I never expected mere goggles to do. You could pick out a body in the hall from behind my walls and listen to the other side of the cell-phone they were talking to.

A great time for a snoop.

Then I found out things in my building were going very bad, very fast.

"Oh, crap. Gangas. Mindy! We're being invaded."

"Don't worry about them, you're with me." Mindy snorted. It sounded like she had her head in a sack.

I kept looking about the building, cluing into things with my new toy. The hallway was crowded early today, or at least the stairwell at the end of mine was. A window-camera at hall's end told me tales after I tapped into it. It was amazing how popular I'd gotten.

The goggles knew and leaked it all. There were gangas in the stairwells, gangas in the parking-lot and more gangas street-side, all neatly hidden and tucked into deadzones in the building's coverage.

Their masked radio-signals beeped bad-news. They had their own chatter-lock active. The goggles picked up on their private chatter and started picking out metal details such as ammo next.

Bad business. Hidden well enough for them to mass troops right outside my door from local patrols, but the new goggles brought them out. It knew the right ganga frequencies to look for.

I winced and turned back to my place. Lots of armed gangas and close by. Well, in a concrete stairwell at the end of the hall close by, anyway. I snooped that out while I crept into the john.

Lots of them, actively prepping for something. The news got worse when I took a closer look at the war-party in the stairwell so I locked the stairwell door and tripped an alarm via my new the goggles.

My building promptly gassed the whole lot of them. In seconds, no one back there looked like they were in any condition to go anywhere or do anything anytime soon.

All were varying degrees of out cold or being violently ill. Moan softly was about as complicated as any of these troops was going to be getting for the next little while.

I ran back to my kitchen and tried bustling Mindy out as fast as we could move, and I could dress. She refused to panic.

She hadn't finished changing yet, naturally, but my news about gangs of gangas sneaking up on us seemed to amuse her somehow. I used that as a cue when I threw my clothes on. We both looked like ganga-wannabes when we left.

"I thought you said this was a quiet trip in." I hissed at Mindy as I locked up and we headed for the elevator. She had one of my old track-suits on with the hoodie pulled up. Mindy was small; you couldn't tell who or what was under all the floppy, bulky clothes and rolled up sleeves.

Except for a certain hip-sway, you won't even think it was human under there.

"Relax. Jethros? It wasn't me." She hissed right back. "And I don't know anything about them. Those guys were gassed or something. The building did it. Not a mark on them, right? Does that look like anything I'd do to someone who got annoying? Or even stayed in my way for very long?"

"Humph. Relax. I did it."

"Yeah, sure." Mindy grumbled, still pulling clothes into place.

"I did. Magic mushrooms then." What had brought these troops here for me was real bothersome. Why hadn't I got invaded yet? An invisible angel was not always good news topside. In the city, most invisible angels were usually Big-Brother fink-troops in disguise.

And gangs of Jethro ganga troops massing here would get lots of official attention fast.

Angel getting more involved in my life was something I definitely did not need. It was bad enough I had a miserable CyBorg, a mad teddy and gangas trying to help me today.

"Yeah, right. Mushrooms. Something. You're not the only stranger that's been here today. Let's get out of here before..."

A screech came from the general direction of the stairwells. I nodded. Mrs. Olsen was on her morning walk-about, right on time. "It starts getting really noisy." Mindy finished sourly. You could hear the gangas in the stairwell groaning and hastily tumbling back down the stairs now, frantic to get away. A door to the back-alley slammed open and you could hear them cursing as they piled out and ran off.

Well, hobbled off. Most of them were still wobbly or ill. Aha! Being discovered wasn't something they wanted to have happen. Yet. Good news.

The slow ones were getting encouraged by zaps from the security system, but gentle zaps and the gangas were getting further from the stun-guns with every step.

That bothered me. Somehow, they were shaking the stun-guns off.

The city officially frowned on cutting intruders like this down in cold blood, but didn't persecute offenders very often. You had to have something they wanted before they wasted any time leaning on you for crimes of that nature.

"Or someone tries something serious." I added nervously, listening to various people screech as the stun-gun cameras started mistaking ordinary tenants for intruders and zapping them too. "Like piling up lots of troops on us. Enough of them we couldn't fight our way out if we wanted to."

Mindy snorted, stopped her trot to the elevators and sighed. "I guess you're right. She pulled out a small com-unit from her pocket and briskly punched a few buttons, then grinned up at me. "Thank goodness for warehouses. Armored delivery service coming up. There'll be a car outside for us in five minutes."

"Armored car. There isn't a ganga anywhere who could touch this transport." She smirked at me. "Not without some serious bad-boys going down there to wipe out their whole family for it. These guys could eat their weight in Borgs if they wanted to."

"A tank? Sounds expensive." I grunted. "On who's tab? What is it? Head to the rec-room, main level. It's open enough to see out of and we can hide in the chairs there."

"Explosive waste disposal unit. We ride in style and in something designed to smother bombs." Mindy chuckled again. "Shielded from everything, just as a side benefit. They'll head to the trade entrance, stupid. Eric had an agreement with them. No questions asked. Instant pickup and drop off, open contract. Smothered signals. No paper, just moves."

"They'll back into the dock and open the doors. We get in and close the doors. They'll stop somewhere. We open and leave." Mindy added smugly. "Full transport, completely untouched by human hands. And invisible."

"Swell. And not to a CyBorg station, right?" More faith. I was beginning to get a bad feeling about Mindy. "Where's there? We're heading where? The garbage room is over here, we can hide in it. Next to the loading dock."

"An abandoned drop. A warehouse in the transport terminal. You know the freebies? The trade-zone? Gated zone with lots of elevators. Trucks, trains, subways, underground entrances, city highways, an airport and cabs running in and out all day long." Mindy perked up and looked happy. "Everything up to and including secure express delivery routes to Teddy's bar and grill there, if you want. And we don't need to hide."

"What, no space-port? Expensive. Hey, what if those clowns were after you and not me?" I mentioned quietly. "Gangas. They live there and you're running with them. Right? Were they after you?"

"No, they weren't. They won't dare. They want some? Perfect. I'd love a workout right now." Mindy's expression didn't change.

She was serious. I stopped and picked up a couple cups of instant coffee from a lobby machine then headed into a quiet spot where we could see into loading dock without being on camera. Mindy was already busily shooting cameras out when I got there.

"Mindy, isn't going home right now kinda dangerous for you?" I asked carefully. "Err, the underground is home, right?"

Mindy popped around the corner and shot the guard on duty in the dock booth with a stun-gun before I could stop her. She did take the coffee. "Yeah, it is. But so am I." Mindy didn't say anything more after that, just stood there and stared into her coffee moodily, waiting for our ride to appear.

I pulled up my own hoodie and didn't disturb the silence.

***

"But they were shielded! Gangas can't afford shields!"

"Grow up. Shielding from a stun-gun is like the old tasers. Low tech. All it takes is a wire to ground the power away from you." Mindy sounded exasperated as we rattled around inside of the truck. It was dark in there and I was more than a little peeved at the length of time it was taking us to get to our drop-off getaway point, an old warehouse.

Waiting for things to stop was nerve-wracking.

Traffic was bad, I guess. We were sitting on opposite side, on the little benches the guards used. I was holding onto a gun-rack bolted to the wall while Mindy just rode the bumps like it was a free ride.

You couldn't see out of the box, another side issue. It was shielded. Safety, I guess. The drivers won't talk to us and the intercom was disabled. The warehouse was one of Eric's old drop points, deserted and unwatched, according to Mindy. She said it hadn't been used in a while because some idiot had shot the place up one night and upset the local Borgs.

It was a known drop now. Hot. Borgs would have the place as big-brother-bugged as they could make it. It was also steps away from a main route down to the underground; there were more than a few secret tunnels down in that neighborhood, all illegal and all ignored.

"No elevator where we're going." Mindy grimaced and plucked nervously at the clothes she was still wearing. "But there is one next door. We can walk to Teddy's from the freebie zone. We drop in on him, so to speak."

"The freebie zone. They do their own policing with gangas." I shook my head sadly. "This is stupid, going through prime ganga territory. The place will be swamped with troops looking for us. All their shipping, buying, stealing and blockades happen there." I wasn't happy at the full-frontal assault we were making on the gangas Mindy had planned, even if she didn't seem worried at all; Mindy wasn't disturbed at the prospect of a full-scale war before lunch in the least.

"You seem to know what's going on, then." Mindy sighed again and pulled a sleeve into position. "I'll punish you for that later, Tracker. Right now, stop..."

There was a sudden clang as the truck lurched to another stop, then whined into reverse, swinging into a backwards curve. It banged into something else and stopped again. "Worrying." Mindy finished up, looking happy for change.

"We get out of here now." The foodies came back up and the two of us stepped out of the truck, after Mindy fumbled around with the lock for a while in the dark. The door creaked open like it's metal frame needed oil, adding to the festive nature of our ride.

The door banged open onto another messy, gloomy loading dock that looked like a fire hazard, chemical dump and waste-pit all rolled into one.

It was trash-covered and looked like a rest home for pigeons. Paper, metal, scrap plastic all blew about. Rusty drums scattered here and there on the blacked cement platform. Lots of cover for anything you wanted to hide. Old rotten camera mounts held spy-eyes covered in dirt.

The building itself was a dirty old wood and sheet-metal barn that looked like it should've been demolished a century back; it creaked and smelled bad. No lights were on, but there was lots of that leaking in from the open door and roof.

The roof sifted dirt and dust down on us at the unusual disturbances. And the truck noises, even as we slid on the grimy cement floor and got away from exhaust it was pumping out.

"Home sweet home." Mindy murmured as she slammed the door on the truck shut. The noise boomed and echoed in the deserted warehouse. More dust shifted down. The two of us stepped into the shadows as the armored vehicle promptly roared back to life and lumbered it's way out a torn-open door and back into the sunshine. "Such as it was."

"Let's get out of here." Looking around nervously, I grimaced. No one had shot at us yet, but I wasn't keen on staying anywhere near this place. The faster we got into the true underground, the better I'd feel. I could give even a ganga a run for his money down there. Up here in the city, most of my teddy-tracking tricks were useless.

"Hey, it's gonna be a fun day. Teddy guards on every tunnel entrance." Mindy said, looking around the dock with careful eyes. I think she wanted to shoot something. "Ganga, Zombie and Borg guards everywhere else."

"And all after you, not me." She added. "Great. Makes for a nice change. I get a first clear shot at them."

"Swell. I'm prime target number one. So how do we get down?" I kept resisting the impulse to get my gun out. There wasn't even anything to shoot at yet except the dust we'd stirred up, but I was feeling nervous.

"Hitch a ride on a farm cart." Mindy fluffed up her hood and pointed it towards the entrance. "Bury ourselves in whatever is going down today. Shoot the driver and take a cart down ourselves if we have to."

"They don't use carts." I grumbled. "Unless they're shopping carts. They use elevators. Guarded elevators. Hey, I have an idea. Our best bet for getting into the underground quietly from here is..."

"Henry the junkman." We both finished together. I jumped down off the dock and Mindy followed me fast. She was already moving towards the street before I'd even caught my balance.

"True. He takes lots of stuff down every day." Mindy said quietly, looking happy for a change. She poked her head out in the sunshine and looked around. "We can hide under it."

"And they take some stuff back up. Henry's? It's a good stop. You wanted to do some electronics shopping anyway." I grinned at Mindy and joined her in the daylight, blinking happily. "And trust me, down there, Henry will have the best selection in town."

Mindy looked thoughtful at that and pointed her chin at a sidewalk running by; just outside the small parking lot.

***

The day outside was fairly quiet for a warehouse zone. Not much truck traffic and not much dust stirred up yet. I kept my hood up and face in the breeze as the two of us marched down the street, ambling beside the fenced in lots.

It was a good plan. Henry the junkman. Gangas didn't worry Henry, they didn't dare touch him. Nobody did. He was untouchable. The essential spare-parts guy for the whole underground, teddy, bot, mutant and ganga. Henry not only kept a few tons of specialized junk in underground tunnels, he'd go surface and get parts for you.

If he couldn't make them himself, that is. Henry had been trafficking a long time now and everybody owed him favors.

Guns from his place were only a rumor, but probably a good one. His bots were everywhere, collecting items, rummaging thru junk, carting things away. He even sent them to the surface recycle yards, to sell scrap metals, collect interesting items and bring hard-to-find parts back to the underground.

Henry was the underground and the deadzone combined. Like most junk dealers, he was tough. Lots of people had tried stealing from him in the past and most of them had ended up as spare parts in his bins for their efforts.

Gangas included. These days, spare parts were spare parts and there was a good market for it all.

Most teddys and mutants knew enough not to bother him, and not only because he might cut them off from spare parts and supplies. He had lots of friends with the free bots because he was the only reason most of them were still moving.

"You'll like Henry. He's an inventor." My contribution to the conversation was ignored as Mindy and walked towards a handy depo. CyBorgs didn't deal with junk much, but a teddy living in the underground did. Henry also liked me. I'd been sending him tips on abandoned rich scores stashed under remote malls for years. "Has the equipment to make custom parts. Likes a challenge. He's weird that way."

Most mall-owners were glad to get rid of junk. Junk attracted teddys and worse to their places of biz.

"On the more boring days he goes out into the yard and builds things out of any parts lying about. You should see what he can do with a few capacitors and a lens." I chuckled happily and tugged at a passing weed growing out of a chain-link fence. Henry would gladly take Mindy off my hands. "Saw him build a neutron hand-grenade once, I think."

"Oh, so he does do weapons?" Mindy asked, interested at last. My stories about Henry had bored her so far.

"You'd have to ask him. Saw something that looked like a portable rail-gun in his yard once, but he claimed it was just parts and not for sale."

"Interesting guy. Someone with bins full of teddy bearings, just in case a joint gives up and someone needs a new knee. Wow." Mindy was not interested and kept her attention on the street and low buildings surrounding us. I headed down the road towards what I knew was the nearest recycle yard.

It was still there. Hurray for the steel-wheels set. Zombies and bots collect from behind the active warehouses and stores every day, taking scrap paper, wood, metals, bottles... Whatever they can find. Anything they can sell to the scrap-yards.

Or, better yet, sell to Henry. Henry had a bot and cart outside the yards every day, just in case someone had thrown out something he might be able to use. He got first pick from both the freelancers and the big hauls.

Instant unofficial credits, including Henry getting some for something toxic that needed disposable without any official notice.

There was a cart full of some weird alloys and a couple medical machines outside the recycle yard when we puffed up a few minutes later. Yes, it had grey steel wheels, solid-looking circles that looked like they'd never wear out. Or give a millimeter when bounce came to landing. I whooshed at the solid looking ride and it's load of metal scrap.

Well, I was puffing. Mindy was fresh as daisy. I didn't recognize the bot driving it.

There wasn't any problem there at all. He recognized me.

"Deacon! What can I do for you today?"

The bot hadn't paid any extra for voice mods yet. I came out as a flat whine, but it was what he was saying that mattered.

Deacon From a bot who looked like he was all spare parts and hacked programming? I hadn't even been a deacon for more than a few hours yet. I let the phrase simmer in my brain for a few seconds while I inspected the junk-loaded cart. Mindy was quietly standing to one side, head tilted to one side and studying the bot.

I knew she was planning ways to disable him and steal the cart. In broad daylight, with lots of inconvenient stray witnesses and maximum firepower. Mindy was a little direct about getting what she wanted and indifferent about being quiet. Or leaving survivors.

The best route for me looked like an open one. "Teddy wants to see me immediately. Quietly." I said softly, trying not to look too furtive. "Can you get us down to his place right now? No witnesses?"

"Teddy's? It's not far from the yard. Gangas bothering you? We do have back ways out of there and in. Quiet shouldn't be a problem." The bot said, equally softly.

"Then we'll just hide underneath the junk here till you get us clear of any armed inconveniences in the way there. The yard is fine. Is this cart coming up or going down?"

"Anything you want it to do, deacon. As a matter of fact, I am due back down in the yard soon." the bot looked like he about to cluck to the horses and take off. He would've been complete with a grass stem hanging from his mouth, but he didn't have one.

I looked inside the cart, trying to pick out a hiding spot. The mess in the cart looked like a hospital after a bomb had gone off in it, with lots of other stray electronic junk. My biggest hope was the junk was clean, non-radioactive and had non-toxic materials stashed in it.

That didn't look likely. I slipped the goggles into a new mode and winced after a few seconds study.

"Yep, this thing is as dirty as it can get and still remain legal." Mindy grumbled that out while nodding at an empty cabinet rattling in the back.

"No-one sane rides a junk cart, not even a bot. Well, not unless they like getting irradiated in lots of new and exciting ways." Mindy sighed and put one small hand on the back, ready to launch herself into the mess. "Dibs on the shielded seat in the cabinet there, bucko. You can find something comfy for yourself."

"The other cabinet. It's bigger and cleaner." I nodded at the bot and waited for traffic around the yard to quiet down a little.

"Pick us up just around the corner. I said quietly. "By those bushes. We'll wait there and hop in as you go by. It's on your way down, right? Leave as soon as we get out of sight."

"Good. That'll give me time to put off a few deals." The bot whined out in his flat voice. "And call up a replacement. I'm telling Henry to expect me back down now. He'll have troops waiting to pick us up at the elevator."

"No troops unless we have to fight our way out. Make this quiet, OK?" The bot nodded and looked discrete. I wondered to myself how he'd managed to fall into smuggling ways so fast, then remembered who I was dealing with.

Henry. Henry the junkman. This bot would have a full map of every nook and cranny between here and the Deeps with last night's updates already getting old in his memory. He might've even built a few of them himself. Plus all the instant bull on the more active threats to commerce only a bot could keep up on these days.

The trip looked safe, but not sane. Junk carts are never sane, but we were in professional hands now.

If underground war was mostly sneaking around the enemy instead of fighting him, Henry had been at it longer than the gangas had and his bots knew the place better than them all put together.

***

"Seems to me I've spent most of this day crawling into dark places to hide."

There was another nasty clang with that as Mindy and I fought the junk and tried to get comfortable in our own little dark holes.

Well, I was pushing enough stuff out of the way to climb in. Mindy was glaring at me like being tall was a sin.

"Better this than being surrounded and fighting your way out of wide-open spaces." Mindy hopped up on something still jiggling in the cart, shifted her cabinet hiding-place into a stable position and got inside before I had even gotten out of the bush we were hiding in. She pulled the door on her cabinet shut and shifted herself into a stable sit.

A planned sit, obviously. She' picked this spot out 'way back at the depo, from the looks of it. After a few seconds of rattling around, you couldn't tell anyone was in the cart at all.

Other than the bot, and he was made of so many different parts he blended right in with the rest of the junk.

I was a bit slower than that; Henry's bot helped me by slowing down as I clambered my way in, trying not to get mashed by shifting junk. The cabinet I'd picked out was a shattered cheater-plate box for something, empty and all raw edges, sharp points and razor shards. It did have lots of air and eye holes, tho.

Most of the holes in it were poked from the inside out by a small explosion, so the box looked like a small porcupine.

I pushed it over on it's side; my box got buried under other clanking stuff after I got in by the cart-bot. Nothing dripped on me, so I made no complaints, I just wheezed a little harder.

The cart jolted back up to speed a few seconds later, it's electric motors whining heavily as it crawled back up to speed.

The cart's top speed wasn't very fast and from the bouncing in my box, I was glad of that. The sharp smell of lead acid batteries was a few inches from my nose.

"Hey. I think I've found a flaw in this idea." came a muffled sound after a moment. Mindy sounded kind of smothered. "Not a well-thought out plan here at all."

"No air-holes?" I whispered back.

"No. Lots of those." Mindy sounded a little grumpy again, but then again, that was her natural CyBorg state. Ready to war on whatever was available.

"You're a big target? Can't see? Mice? What?" I asked, shifting enough I could put some serious weight into opening my door if I had to. Then I found a flaw in my hiding spot too.

"No. I need a washroom." Mindy answered back. "Also, it's getting hot in here. Fast."

"Me too. Also, I can't get out." I whispered back. "Too much weight on the door. I might even be lying on it now."

"And thanks a lot for mentioning the washroom thing." I added. "Now be quiet, OK?"

"There are three more stops before we get to the elevator, Deacon." The bot driving mentioned carefully, pausing a little bit. "The first is in about ten minutes. It could take us an hour before we get down to Henry's."

"You said quiet and fast. Henry thought it best not to run straight down. We stay less conspicuous this way." The bot paused and dropped something else large and heavy on my cabinet.

The box heaved and bounced a few times; whatever got dropped on me made an intense banging sound. Inside my cabinet, the noise was incredible. "Is that agreeable to you, deacon?"

"What?" The ears weren't registering sound anymore. The bot wasn't even sitting in the driver's seat, he was merely plugged into the cart with a long cable. What he was doing was wandering around the cart, shifting stuff and inventorying it as he drove.

Inventorying it by dropping it on my head. I was in a large metal drum and he was banging on it every few seconds. The noise was deafening. The bot leaned over and kicked Mindy's box into a better spot while repeating his plan.

Her quiet but heartfelt cursing made me a lot better. I agreed as fast as I could, then plugged the goggles into music and tried to get some rest.

***

It did get cooler as we dropped into the underground. The elevator, a slow freight, made that part of the trip almost pleasant, if a bit sickening with the swaying going on.

The elevator felt like a rope-and-cable job. A hacked route with only a dropping platform that got lowered down and hauled up, not a real elevator at all. The cart was surrounded by chatting farmers, a few shoppers and a guard or two. You could hear them yakking.

No one but the bot knew we were on board the cart. Up until then Mindy and I had been alternately baked by sun, banged as junk drums, bored, then put thru a few slow hells as wandering gangas tried to hit the bot up for bribe money.

It wasn't even a ganga elevator, they were just hanging there. That got the Borg and Zombie guards posted there upset with them. If there was any cash coming out of a junk wagon today, they wanted in on it.

Finally, it was a traffic pileup that got the elevator moving. There were lots of people trying to get back and forth from the underground today and floating gangas scrounging for scores wasn't on the list of things anyone wanted to put up with.

I do not know why the elevator swayed like it was a balloon in a breeze, but it did. The cart whined away as soon as it could into the cool damp of underground tunnels.

I stayed quiet till we were well clear of the loading zone, which was a smelly hell all on its own... then started using the com-unit on the goggles as fast as I could.

Now that I was down here in the deadzone, where most electronic traffic got blocked by cement walls, I wanted to get in touch with a few people. Mindy was three steps ahead of me there; and she was not only sneaking around eves-dropping, she had me scoped already.

She broke in on the line I was setting up before I could even connect with anything on the open net I'd found.

"You're not trying to get me teddy-arrested, are you? Partner? Friend? Dog-meat unless you stop that crap right this second?" She broke sweetly into the line I was setting up, using the relays teddys had hidden and pinned to the walls.

They were totally unknown to me until this mutant goggle set had clued in on them. Mindy had done a great job bring the goggle's capacities to life for me. I was still discovering the nifty things it could do.

"Naw. We're going shopping for parts, remember?" I did a fast dodge then. "Hey, I didn't see your goggles. Where are they?"

"Built into my pretty little ears, that's where they are. Now stop fooling around, we're almost at Henry's." Mindy sounded happy. "This is a great plan and the perfect stop. You're staying for it, by the way. I figure this is where most of the surgery is done around here anyway. Teddy came come here if he wants you."

"Only if the teddy-docs and the human surgeons are the same bots." I mumbled, trying to get my goggles set to something useful for snooping around at Henry's while still chatting to Mindy.

"They are." She answered happily. "Or will be for me. Neurosurgery is all bot-work these days, except for the automatic stuff the nanos do themselves. Especially for CyBorgs."

"Sounds like hell." I snorted out. "You're gonna drop a stranger's nanos? Bad news. Better hope they really are what they say they are and haven't expired or something. You could grow a weirdness right where it itches most if they aren't."

"Relax. Who do you know down here stupid enough to mess with a Borg, let alone a CyBorg?" Mindy answered me in exasperation. "Bots do clean work. Besides, I can do things to them they've never even heard of before and they know it."

"And wouldn't like, I guess." I stayed quiet for a minute. "That's a side of cyber-war I've never thought about. Bot torture. Mindy, you're sure about this? The teddy bot-docs down here can fix you up? Or rip parts out, whatever it is you need doing today?"

"Yah. They're my best bet, only hope and last resort anyway." The quiet grew for a couple more seconds. "CyBorg shops are still kinda rare here in the boonies and topside is a real bitch about parts for us getting loose, remember?"

I didn't have much to say to that. I just let the cart rumble and whine on in the cool dark.

***

"Deacon."

I got pulled from my crate and the cart at the same time, then dumped unceremoniously on the floor of Henry's shop. I groaned as Henry nodded at me. I tried to unfold and get enough blood back into my legs to get up and hit him.

It didn't work. "Call me Tracker, Henry." I grunted, slapping life back into my lower body. "Haven't earned the Deacon part yet. Oh, this is Mindy, a friend of mine."

A kicking sound came from the cart; and the bot winked quickly at me and shifted a beam holding Mindy's door shut.

It blew open fast. Mindy rolled out of her cabinet like she was born to it, fast, easy and moving in more directions that I knew existed. I've never seen her active before, but she glanced around the junk-cluttered tunnel once as she flew by us and I'd swear she had plans in place to kill us all, six getaway points to choose from and a few special items in mind for the bot that drove us in already.

Before she was even off the cart.

She sniffed at us, hit the floor running and bee-lined for Henry's office before we'd even moved. I hadn't noticed the door yet, but one of the shacks behind me was obviously Henry's office.

"Mindy. A girl with a gun to your head from what I hear." Henry watched Mindy beetle her way to the facilities with a wistful look on his face. "Cute, too. That's nice."

"Yeah. She's not bad, just a cement-head about having her own way." I rumbled out, still getting up. "Oh, by the way. There better be a washroom in there somewhere."

"There is." Henry sighed and listened to the rapid slamming of doors coming from inside his office. "Damn. Wish I was still young and evil. I'd like a girl like that."

"A girl that can go thru a tank to rip your head off isn't all it's cracked up to be, Henry." I creaked myself up straight and nodded at the noise inside. "You won't like it."

Easing my bod back into something that worked, I sighed and nodded thanks to the bot that'd got us in as I rubbed my back, then turned to follow Henry into his shop. The bot nodded at me and both he and the cart silently started up again, heading deeper into the tunnel to off-load the rest of the cargo.

Mindy was inside; you could hear flushing noises from in there now.

"I might want to try her anyway." Henry sighed heavily. "As a toy. I got paid to invent weapons, back in the day. A secret Borg lab, out in the boonies. Still have the itch. She's a lot better than anything I ever got going."

"You got out of a Borg Lab? How?" I raised an eyebrow at that. Borgs were fairly tight with that kind of access. Notorious for it, in fact.

"Wasn't a problem. They threw me out. Too many complaints about getting tank-invisibility when they'd ordered smarter bullets." Henry explained casually, waving it off. "Some stupid clerk withheld payment on a contract. Instant bankruptcy for me. They took the tech anyway and I ended up down here."

"Oh." I didn't have a lot to say to that.

"So you're Henry." That little voice came from behind another door as we walked into Henry's dealing room. Mindy had not wasted any time making herself at home. She was combing her hair in a mirror that's defiantly seen better days.

"Yah. And you're the CyBorg running around down here. The one that's making all the trouble." Henry seemed amused and spoke that a little loudly, watching her closely.

"Yup. That's me." There was sound of a slam and Mindy turned, looking relaxed. She glanced at Henry, puffed hair out of her eyes and started scanning the shop. "Wanna start anything with me today?"

"Nope. You're the best piece of work I've had in here in years." Henry was still staring at her like he wanted to eat her. Mindy ignored that, looking around the weird collection of junk Henry kept in his private office carefully. "Other than a few things your boyfriend used to get made up for his special clients, that is." he added slyly, like he was putting out bait.

Mindy looked startled and glanced over at him. "You? You made stuff up for Eric? How did you manage mods down here?"

"Easy. There's tricks with nanos topside hasn't figured out yet." Henry nodded off in another direction, the tunnel he kept his labs in I guess. "The junk is out front. Labs are shielded even from you. I'm not stupid."

"Or unequipped. I've seen some of your stuff!" Mindy was excited and smiling at him now. "I mean a self-tuning laser defense shield that can take out every bullet in a glock spray? How did you do that?"

"Laser feedback sensors. They self-reg." Henry waved whatever they were talking about off casually. "Plus there are 43 different things to aim for once you have confirmed target. Disrupting almost any of them stops everything else."

"Yeah, but..." I stopped listening to Henry and Mindy talk shop right about then. It was obvious the two of them were gonna get along real well.

It was another surprise, as I hadn't figured Mindy for being a tech-head at all. Point and shoot seemed to be more her speed, but she was having a great time with tossing innovations back and forth with Henry. Or something. Pulsed power resonance doesn't mean all that much to me, really.

I should've guessed it from the way she handled goggles, tho.

Henry did impress Mindy. Two minutes later she was practically doing the happy dance for him, complete with clapping her hands and hopping up and down at whatever he was saying to her.

Henry just beamed back, sat back and drank it in. I guess he didn't get a lot of really deadly company down here. The curvy kind, anyway.

I really should've gotten more of Henry's background story. Someone that could build a FLT drive out of stuff in the junk drawer was someone with a more interesting background that I thought.

Mindy certainly thought so. She was fascinated with him.

***

Henry didn't mind giving Mindy the scans she was after. Apparently, he didn't mind playing with her weapons systems either, from the look on his face. And he had lots of stuff lying around she'd never heard of before.

A happy CyBorg is a safe CyBorg. Mindy hadn't threatened to kill me in whole minutes now. She was a kid at Christmas, one that'd just been given the keys to a toy-store, a charge card and somebody to help get things off the tall shelves for her.

After a few minutes, I gave up trying to get a word in edgewise. Nobody was listening to me anyway.

If the amount of chatter with Henry was bad during the long walk down to the labs, the results of introducing Mindy to the bot robo-tech in there was even worse.

She walked in, looked at the bot and they both went silent and dead-still. They stayed silent as they communed together for about thirty seconds. Mindy and the bot yakked by net or something and left Henry and I out of it entirely.

"So you're a Deacon now." Henry sighed as Mindy and the bot came back to life and started working like a polished life-long team seconds after we walked into the lab. Mindy was prepping a table-scan. The bot was moving heavy equipment. "Know what that means, Tracker?"

The Borg dance was mostly hauling advanced sensors around and prepping a table. Mindy was humming as she hopped up onto it, strapped herself in and started shutting her CyBorg self down.

Faith again. Trusting faith. I'd have to talk to her one day about that. "Nope. Are you really gonna upgrade her systems?" I nodded at the happy CyBorg putting herself into Henry's hands. "Is that smart?"

"Oh, that. Not much of an upgrade, really. Most of her tech is way out of date. It's been improved a lot since she decanted. There's a few little things she could really use." Henry grinned at me. "Better batteries, better sensors, better power usage. Zero-point powering. That kind of thing. After we finish the scans, naturally."

"I could use a few band-aids myself." I sighed and headed for a chair. "And my head examined. More company that isn't trying to kill me would be a great start."

"Deacon Tracker. Teddy tell you anything about that yet?" Henry grinned at me again, waving at a chair. "Settle down, boy. The scans will take a while, the mods she wants even more. The nanite rebuilds will take months more to finish even if the programming takes right and don't need any fiddling with."

"OK, I'm a Deacon. This is important." I sighed and settled into the chair. "Just like everything else today. You've got insider history down here, Henry. You'd know. What's a deacon and why would Teddy want to hide me underground for the rest of my life for being one?"

"He said that? Smart bot. To be honest, the safest thing for him to do would be look the other way while you get yourself killed." Henry ignored the dance his bot and Mindy were doing. She was jacking herself into things now, using ports hidden in various spots on her body.

"First off, relax. For some weird reason he wants you around a while longer. What's a deacon? As I understand it, a changer. A catalysis. You're as close to god as you can get to a bot."

Henry settled into his own chair and eyed me. "A bliss-bringer. 'THE' higher-power on earth. Get the general idea?"

"Godlike. OK, any bot I see will do what I tell them to do and be happy about it." I shrugged and slumped down into a chair. "So? That's pretty close to normal for a bot."

"Real happy to help, stupid. Even the freebies. He might become the next new best thing if you want to change him. Listen hard. this goes lots deeper than that. Unscrewing his head and handing it to you is nothing. He'll do core reprogramming right down to the nanos if you tell him to and do back-flips the whole time." Henry scratched himself thoughtfully. "As of now, every bot in the underground would leak booze on command for you if you're not careful about what you say to them. The hard part of this is, you don't have any idea of what Teddy's friends can do yet."

"Ah. The modded bots are real special?" That gave me a little pause. I knew the teddys had modded their programming down here, but how deep it went and what they were changing into was a mystery to most of topside, me included.

They were bots. No one was worried about what they wanted to do, as the asteroid belt looked good to them. Better than here, in fact. "Ah. Teddy has specific ideas on what he wants to make his flock into?" I ventured carefully.

"That's the least of it. You evolve, boy. You are deacon, living evolution; and on other people. Problem is, you're supposed to change stuff by being there, not ordering bots around." Henry looked a little worried.

"You've been here. Every bot has his own ideas on what to do. You're the power that makes steps up happen. The grand OK. You're more than Napoleon now, you idiot. Or Alexander the great. Marching an army topside is peanuts. The bots around here would hop up there and Borg every human in the city today if they thought that's what you wanted done. And it won't take them all that long that little chore."

"A clean wipe, eh? Ouch. What else have they tried down here? Androids?" I tried to think about that and mostly came up blank. Why teddys would want anything to do with topside anymore was a bit of a mystery to me.

Building a bot is no great chore. Population couldn't be a problem here. Parts weren't that much trouble to make.

A teddy making more teddies was so trivial it didn't bear mentioning. What a teddy would make himself into was a bit weirder, mostly limited by the parts he had.

Henry got a bit more respect from me now. He was the pipeline and Brother John the tap here.

"Yeah, me too. Teddy-androids? A work in progress, nothing great yet. An experiment with no results yet.' Henry looked embarrassed a little. "So. Mrs. Murphy is now your best friend, Tracker." Henry bored on, still trying to make his point. "Motto, law and rule. If anything can go wrong, don't try it. Start repeating that to yourself right now."

"Advice you don't always take yourself, Henry." I noted, looking around the lab. "So. Power is influence, command and accomplishment, like it says on the wall there. Great. What are the teddys up to and how do I stay out of the way?"

"Good question." Henry grunted, looking over a scan report as it beeped at him from across the room. "Better attitude. No one but Teddy knows the answer to that. Maybe Brother John. You'll be the first human to find that out."

"Hey, she's done. Nice. Clean, upgradable and it won't be a big problem to make the mods she wants." Henry said as the lab-bot nodded at him from across the room. "Mindy, cooperative CyBorg. Jeez, you have anything to say before I start in on her... Deacon?"

"Not a blasted thing. Go have some fun, Henry. You've earned it." I tapped into the goggles and tried to read Mindy as she laid there. She was only semi-conscious, but she grinned at me like it was her birthday, Christmas and graduation all rolled into one. Then she sighed, shut her eyes and went to sleep.

Henry grunted again at that, then pulled himself over to a desk. "This'll take a while. Be nice if it was clean in here, too." he said pointedly. "Ha! Never let a girl pick out new shoes, Deacon. Clothes take forever, weapons even longer. Some words of wisdom for ya there. Why don't you go talk to Teddy while I finish up? The bots outside will get you there and back here, if you want to check in on her again."

"Good idea."

"Even better if she wants to get her hands on you." Henry was buried in another of his works-in-progress while I left, already phased out on a report from his lab-bot. "She's starting to look at you funny, Deacon. Better watch out for her, she might decide to start coming for you one day."

That got ignored. I left my goggles scanning for whatever they could pick up as I wandered thru the labs on my way out.

From Henry's hints, there was some serious bot work being done here and all of it was way past anything I'd ever heard of before.

I really needed to check it out before something snuck up and bit me.

***

## chapter three Deacon Teddy

Remember the first law of Admin: 'Weirdness floats to the top.'

***

I got an escort to Teddy's, which wasn't all that far from the junkyard. Teddy had everything prepped for me when I got to his place. Dinner, a movie, armed guards... all in a nice quiet little cell far from the maddening crowds.

There wasn't any getting away from this one easily, as I was lost again. The bot bringing me here saw to that. Brother John, the leader of the teddy cult, didn't even get mentioned by anyone

He wasn't making any appearances today, I guess. I wasn't surprised.

That Teddy was someone important in the church also didn't surprise me. Teddys tend to stick together. He seemed to already know all about Mindy and Henry but didn't look all that disturbed about it. That little incident looked like something he'd wanted done but couldn't order or permit himself.

I could see that. Teddys and humans were competing and Teddy helping the meat out won't look good for a religious bot-master.

However much fun Henry got out of it, or anything useful teddys might discover for their own android programs. The trip from Henry's to wherever Teddy was hiding me at the moment didn't take long, but the blasted bot had me blindfolded part way so I couldn't get away; or even know where I was.

"Hey, Teddy. So what's the good word? And how soon can you get me out of this?"

The comment got me a several dirty looks and a few explosive comments. You haven't gotten a real dirty look till you get one from a master of the teddy religion. Also, I'd never heard a teddy curse before. I blame it on him owning a bar. His language was colorful and involved ghost signals, current surges and the wrath of several gods unknown to me. I sat and waited till Teddy ran down, looking around the place.

Teddy was plugged in when I got there, hard-linked to a com-line in the wall. Secure stuff.

I wasn't. My new goggles were cold here.

Finally, his hopes for my immediate and painful demise quieted a little.

"Tracker. Friend. You idiot. Do you have any idea of how much trouble you've made for Brother John in the last day or two?" Teddy asked me in a quiet voice. "Or what I had to do to stop an army of bots and teddys from invading the city to kill you last night?"

"Hey, you wanted me to take that stupid collection job. None of this was my idea. They would've had to fight the army of gangas sitting outside my door to get at me anyway." I said quietly, looking around the cell for any instruments of applied teddy safety. There weren't any visible, but with bots you never really know. "Oh, and thanks for taking out the group hiding in the stairwell at my place. It looked like you stopped a swarm from housejacking my place by seconds."

"Huh? What are you talking about? I didn't do anything." Teddy groaned and shook his head. "Why were you worried? You had a CyBorg bodyguard most of last night. Did she do it? There isn't a whole lot in the whole city that could bother her. Or underground. Especially gangas."

"Had." I said quietly. "Had a CyBorg bodyguard. She says she didn't. Mindy is shopping at Henry's right now, then wants to go somewhere and do something to someone."

"She never mentioned what, past getting rig of a few bugs in her systems." I added as Teddy stayed staring at me in disbelief. "But it didn't sound healthy for the recipient."

"What?" I asked as Teddy stayed staring at me.

"You lost your CyBorg already? Fine. Nice work, dumbbell. Somebody or something unknown took out a swarm of gangas in your stairwell today?" Teddy asked carefully. "OK. Not your pet CyBorg. Great. And left them there for you to find? Dandy. We know about the other messes around your place. The gangas all left just before you did. Jethros, all of them. Cheap meat. We just didn't know why."

"I blame the mushrooms, myself."My end of this conversation was mostly limited to trying to look angelic as I gave Teddy bad news. He kept glaring at me like I was a bug he wanted to stomp badly but too many people were watching. "The ones now growing on my balcony. A leak from the mutant jungle on my boots and suit, OK? They grew in overnight. I don't think it was Angel saving me, do you?"

"No. I don't know who it was. You've got mushrooms at your place? Good. That's a good sign. Finally, something decent has happened today." Teddy stared off into space for a moment or two. I figure he was putting a few new orders out over his com-link. "A team has gone to pick them up. They'll sterilize your place while they're there. Free for you, today only. A special Deacon price."

"Thanks. The dust-balls are under the bed, they can get them too. Letting Henry and Mindy get together wasn't a good idea?" I asked carefully, going for the bad news. "Not that I had a whole lot of choice in that. It was go to Henry's in one chunk or go there in a handful of pieces for me with her."

"Besides, she was a handy distraction. I didn't want Henry to even think about getting his hands on me." I added carefully. "A suicide pack or two strapped to my belt from him and most of your problems would be solved."

"Don't tempt me." Teddy snarled. He looked startled at the thought, then really unhappy at a missed fix to his problems getting away from him. "Mindy? Understood. You got here, that's the main thing. Her? Not a problem, especially if the CyBorg decides to take off again. Henry might even learn something we can use." Teddy stared off into space for another moment. He looked like he was furiously busy and I didn't even make his top ten list at the moment. "Mushrooms? OK. Jethros? How did they know? And who stopped them?"

"Me." I said smugly. "I tricked the alarms on them"

"Oh, yeah. Sure." Teddy looked like he didn't believe that. "I'm just glad Mindy and Henry were the only ones to get to you today. All sorts of trouble could've happened, since you can't seem to keep your stupid mouth shut."

I relaxed. Teddy was not happy, but he wasn't going to kill me. So far, so good.

"Gangas have their own agenda, I take it." I settled into the chair and stared at Teddy for a moment. "OK, Henry let me in on some of what you made me into. A deacon. Other than stopping the city-invasion thing, I don't understand why. Oh, and thanks."

"Neither do I." Teddy glared at me even harder. "It was an insane move. And you're just jealous because the voices in my head only talk to me. Get it?"

"Got it." Agents other than Teddy had a job waiting for me. Agents Teddy and Brother John didn't want to cross in any way. One of the super-secret affairs, apparently. I wondered what the upcoming mess was that needed a bot-army general to handle it.

If general was what I was supposed to be.

Or maybe they just had something mucky in mind for me to do that teddy's couldn't manage on their own yet.

"So meanwhile, I'm stuck trying to figure out a way to demote you from know-it-all Deacon to bumbling idiot-in-arms so I can safely turn you loose again." Teddy rubbed one of the few fur patches he had left sadly. "You being spear-catcher number three around here would be hard enough to get bots to accept, let alone deacon. Or teddys. Without dropping the whole board in the meantime."

"Ah. Any bot-guard will just go away if I tell him too? And you're afraid I'll clean up my grudge-list while kicking your bucket?" That got asked carefully. Me using the power Teddy had given me today looked upsetting to Teddy. "Don't be. Isn't on my list."

"Something like that." The second elder of teddy church relaxed a little bit more. "More good news. It looks like the CyBorg covered your trail nicely. As of this morning you've disappeared off the official maps completely."

"Going to Henry's via junk-wagon was my idea." I protested. Teddy just glared at me.

"Ya, sure. So tell me." He started getting more paper material out and laying it out for me. "Deacon. What do you think you are down here? What do you do?"

I gave Teddy the gist of what Henry had been telling me. He nodded.

"Incomplete, but that's the general idea. Forced evolution. Humans merely learn, bots evolve. Whole different story. You're also called pain-giver, because forced development hurts. A promoter. Forced development is an educational curse for most meat-sacs."

Teddy sighed and tapped paper. "Were you ever a jock? Development hurts when you push it, right? A good pain. Growing pains. You have lots more territory to thrash around in than muscles now."

He tugged at his fur absently. "Please, don't do anything. You might make honesty in a salesman, that kind of thing. Instant trouble."

Teddy gestured around, waving at the whole underground.

"Anything an environment doesn't support is bad news. I get a lot of people who are good at hitting weak points trying out for your job on that basis. Are you good with pain? Handing it out not bother you? Everyone who has ever managed anything thinks they are, basically. And they want the job of hitting on people. Coach, referee or judge, it doesn't matter how."

"Ah. Can we go back to hurting people? What's that all about?" I squirmed a little. This didn't sound good. Being a wandering instrument of bot torture wasn't anything I was known for, just being kind of firm with the newbies.

Teddy was not a happy camper, even if he was the one who'd started this. "Think bots, stupid. You work them, in evolution. A curse is a blessing gone wrong. Putting twenty amps on a five amp line, got it? Your blessing, so to speak, will kill if gets accepted by wrong bot. Trust me, mistakes seem to spend a lot of time thrashing around begging to die."

That made sort of sense. Ordering a bot to do something he had no capacities for might damage him. "So. As deacon, I'm a developer. But only if the bots can handle it, or I'm a sadistic killer with unlimited power to indulge."

"Yah. You're also forbidden fruit to the girls. You might accidentally do something political instead of practical if any of them get their claws into you. Any Borg and all humans are off-limits to you. Plus a couple of things running around down here we aren't sure what to call. Avoid them all. Right so far?"

"I get babes by the truckloads now?" I asked, interested. "Hey. Something tempting. Finally."

Teddy hung his head and sighed again, then went back to glaring at me. "Please, don't mess around with any bots yet. They don't have the same problems, crises or development paths meat does. You'll probably force them so far off the track they'll need a wipe and rebuild. By the truckload."

He groaned and continued while I smiled at me. I think it was making him mad.

"Listen, Deacon." he sputtered at me. "You're hot right now. Everyone is watching. No cussing, spitting, swearing, drinking, money or girls. You are now an official paragon of virtue to the community. Learn to keep appearances up or somebody will copy you then try to kill me for it."

He stared off into space and winced again. "And you could conceivably kill the whole race of free bots off if you did something really stupid. If you wanted to, or accidentally, or because someone told you to at gunpoint. Or drag them into distractions I don't have time for."

"No nothing till I learn not to mess things up. Ouch. I only have one thing to say about being a deacon, Teddy."

I inhaled. Hard and looked him right in the eye. "GET ME OUT OF THIS!" I yelled that as hard as I could. It seemed to be the only satisfaction I was going to get out of the whole deal, as far as I could tell.

You could see why Teddy was worried. Power and freedom don't mix all that well and I had lots of both right now. "Just swell. You dragged me all the way down here to tell me to shut up? Leave the girls alone and stop thinking about money?"

"Yeah. That and to stop the gangas from getting at you." Teddy tugged on his com-line a little. "They're the real problem right now. Or Borgs, if they ever find out about you. If gangas got a real Deacon on the rack for very long, the teddys and all other bots could end up being their slaves."

"Again." I said quietly.

"Again. Now do you see why you're important all of a sudden?" Teddy started to relax a little as he could see I wasn't going to turn into a self-indulgent loon on him. Tho me drinking myself to death with an army of professional sextoys for company won't've bothered him either.

He won't even be able to stop me if I wanted to try that way out.

"You'd better stop volunteering me for these weird pickups, Teddy. They're making things complicated for everybody." I tugged on my ear and looked around. "OK, here and now. No surgery, no implants, no serious abuse today. Just info. You have something in mind for me nobody is telling me about it, right? What I don't see is how to get out of this. Every bot I've seen so far as known about the promotion."

Teddy snorted at me again. "One of our little secrets. Bots and teddys can link into a hive-mind with more raw CPU power than you ever imagine, Tracker. Deacon. And they can forget on demand. That's part of our android program, getting humans into the linkup." Teddy started looking pleased. "Besides, stupid, as a deacon, you're supposed to figure things out for yourself. Then make them happen, that's what you do."

"I'm the only other deacon in the church, you know." Teddy sighed and looked worn. "Brother John's second promo was meat. Terrific. This is going to cause so much trouble with the other bots. They'll all be lined up and clamoring for their own deacons if you can't do something wonderful for us real soon."

"Brother John is out of his frigging mind, keeping you on like this. A meat deacon! I don't know what he wants out of it." Teddy looked like he wanted to start tearing fur out again, starting with mine.

"Politics? Bots have politics in a hive-mind? Wow. That's a little much for me today, I've been busy already. That's what this material is all about?" I nodded at the paper and pamphlets. "You've already told me you can't keep me prisoner. What's with the time-wasters piled up now?"

"Politics. You have to know who you're going to be dealing with while underground, bot-wise. And you've got a few hours before you can talk to Mindy again so I'm putting you to work. "Teddy looked off into space for a second or two. "Oh, and she's going to be in rehab for a week or two at Henry's. You'll be living with her."

"Oh no I'm not." I shook my head firmly. "She's crazy. Mindy threatens to kill me every couple of minutes as it is. I don't think she could handle a week of sitting around talking to me while hurt and healing. Actually, I don't think I could handle it."

"Oh yes you are. Deacon." Teddy grinned at me. "Henry thinks it's a good idea and he can force you to do it even if I can't. He might even send Mindy out to wherever you are to bring you back there. I'll need some time to find a way to bury this anyway."

"Oh. Bury this, right? Not me?" I stared at him, helpless. "Just get me out of it, OK? I don't want to be a deacon. Politics! Another one of those disgusting jobs I never wanted." I surrendered as gracefully as I could. The easiest way out of this was to let Teddy find a way of demoting me as soon as he could. I could hope he talked Brother John into it soon. "Pamphlets, ew. I already hand these out for you, Teddy. I can't read robot anyway. Why do I have to go thru this stuff?"

It looked like Teddy and I had an agreement, even if I hadn't been asked about it. I reluctantly nodded at him. If dumping me from this new job took some time, it took some time. I had to learn what to avoid.

Teddy groaned again and disconnected his com-line. "Yes, politics. And lots and lots of pamphlets. There are people out there who'd kill you for breathing now. Deacon. Bots too. There are people out there who kill you for helping, not helping, helping the wrong others or wearing your hat wrong. You are now one of their leaders. Get flocked already. You have any idea of how independent bots can get? How nasty?"

"Oh yeah. I'm good on that one." Independent bots were how I made my living. It takes a radical teddybear bot to even think about running away from their masters, then modding himself to suit whatever problems he faced. I got them both every week.

Teddy-bot mods for fun and profit down here was a subject I didn't ask about. Being that kind of nosy got you shot down in the underground.

"Good. Here's some of the crap I put up with." Teddy tapped the paperwork. "Translated printouts from hive-dumps, human. You've been honored, again. You're the first to see them and this is how I make the church work. Screw it up and I'll make a new fur out of your hide, orders or not."

Teddy looked happy for moment, then went back to rattling out more crap. "And get cheered for finally developing some sense by most bots, probably. Free bots don't want to have anything to do with humans anymore, remember? A meat Deacon? Especially the ones that have to work with them. When you're finished here, go back to Henry's. Your guard will take care of you. He has more reading for you there. Don't talk to anyone till you get thru the whole pile, OK? You'll need every word."

I was getting lectured by a small, furry Teddy and didn't like it, but Teddy wasn't done yet.

"One app, one system, one project. You develop any sudden projects or urges without clearing them thru me first and I'll make your grandfather regret he liked girls, then work my way down the chain to you. It just too damn dangerous for you to try, Tracker. Believe! Got that?"

With that, Teddy got up and left me alone in the cell with a pile of paper.

I looked at it in disbelief, then grunted and settled down to read. The paper might explain a mystery or two. How Teddy got most of the other bots in the underground to accept him as a leader with total dictatorial powers was a big mystery topside. He had it, he did it, we accepted it. No one was ever told how.

Or what deals he'd made to stay there. I looked the paper over and groaned. Now I was about to get a crash course on how humans fit into bot-world.

Bot-world first. By the bots who wanted to play power-politics.

And the more-than-slightly-wacked religious ones, too.

***

I lost most of my respect for the bot community and gained a lot for Teddy as I read my way thru the pile of paper in my cell and meditated on the practiced insanity of free bots.

There was lots of it. It took three cups of coffee and a sandwich to get thru it all. Bots made humans look sane by comparison.

For instance, every bot or teddy that had sex-toy mods had to download several different manuals, the karma Sutra, Asian pillow-books, DeSade... before getting the add-ons put in. That sounded good. Also the AI tools for using them.

I was OK with that. Learning new AI rules only took a bot seconds. Turning raw data into 96% correct decisions only moments more. Bots wanted to make that compulsory for humans getting enhancements too. With cattle-prods, if necessary.

Meds and mods were big biz down here. Entry, removal, repair, cosmetics... Bots wanted courses, lectures or movies for everything on everyone. Before you got any work done.

There were examples. Getting jocks not to re-injure themselves yes, but you don't want to know what a bot thinks our other social skills are.

Taking care of traffic accidents down here was going to be a problem, I could tell. A replaced eye meant you had to take archery courses?

Ditto childbirth. Making criminals take calculus before being released back into the wild was supposed to give them a learning habit, but bots had to earn their upgrades.

I didn't even know bots had criminals. Or art. Or they were considering taking our badguys in to play with, even if gangas were already permanent part of the landscape here.

They wanted to study them, and crime.

I love people, that's why I always cook them well.

What crimes can an on-line teddy commit that everyone doesn't know about instantly? Staying off-line and free of the hive? That couldn't be a crime. Freedom was why they came here in the first place.

The med, justice and education systems for teddys were all equally worked over especially for bots. Each of them had several different fractions trying to run it; everyone wanted it made compulsory to do things their way.

Efficient, effective and rationalized systems were all different specialties and fractions; every one of them was convinced their dude from the dunes had all the right answers and everyone else was wrong.

Dead wrong. Teddy and brother John headed that list every time.

It was more than a fight for resources. Teddy ran a religious anarchy that tried to make the useful stuff that turned up freely available, and not haul struggling bodies into the hive at gunpoint.

The only things the bots were missing was several thousand years of tradition saying this was the right way to call fish back and get them to return to the shore every year. Bots more than made up for that with the speed a new idea could get picked up, tried out and the useful parts of it codified into hive-talk.

This place was weird. A traditional bot was one that reworked old methods with new developments. A radical bot abstracted new systems on premises only he accepted.

I got up and headed back to Henry's with my head spinning a little, more than happy to leave the admin of the teddy church to Teddy.

***

"Those are new mutant goggles, aren't they? Cough up, I need 'em."

"No way. These are my shades, man." Henry was completely absorbed in something when I got back to his place, something devastating. Complete with old pizza boxes scattered around, a terminal that looked like a tornado had hit the printouts and bits of half-assembled electronics scattered around the room.

He didn't even look up from whatever he was doing at his box. Mindy was still here, wrapped in a clear plastic surgical tent that looked mosquito-and-bomb proof. And she was completely out of it. A couple bots were blurring around the room doing weird things at an impossible rate of speed.

"Ignore them. We're still trying to build the tools we need to get this job scoped. Some glitches turned up." Henry grunted typing furiously on his keyboard. "Gimme the goggles. Have some pizza. Start reading the crap over there." He waved vaguely at one end of the room.

'Over there' was a quiet spot with a terminal, a cot, a pile of ration bars and some drinks piled up. There was a sonic shower in one corner of the room, the waterless kind, and a loo too.

It looked like they had plans to lock me in this room for the duration.

"They've been trying to get me hived for years and I won't have any of it." Henry mentioned quietly, still typing. "Idiots. I'd drive them insane. My motivations and weirdness are my own and not anything a bot could use."

He sighed and stopped typing, stretching his neck carefully. It cracked. "Even if it would be faster to just clue in on that." He nodded at the blurring bots. "Wireless, bah. Borged, bah. Old-fashioned maybe, but I still get results. They don't argue the point."

"Gimme the goggles already." Henry held his hand out. I reluctantly took them off and held them out. A bot blurred by and had them wired into something on the wall before I could even blink.

"You can have them back in a minute if you want, I just need the codes. There's the new special limited-edition Deacon model goggles over there for ya. Your private files will catch up to you later. Teddy is trying to make you using his as the only official Deacon com-link and I'm plugging for anything we can ID from you."

"Most of the bots want you Borged into the hive so they don't miss anything you might forget to mention." He mentioned quietly. "My advice? Don't go for it. Old borgs tend to get brainwashed into drones fast. It's rough on the brain if you aren't born to it."

"Nice to see ya, I'm having a great day too. So how's it going, Henry?" I wandered over and looked at my new toy. The Deacon goggles were black and looked nondescript. I was grateful for that, as there had been hints in the pamphlets that ceremony was starting to be an issue with some of the teddys.

You don't want to know what a teddy thinks an important life-bridge is or how to celebrate crossing it, trust me.

"So when's the ganga invasion?" I asked as I sat down at the terminal. "And how much of this crap is really necessary?"

"Invasion? Gangas? They wouldn't..."

There was a minor explosion out in the lab tunnels, one still a decent distance away. It rattled the equipment in the room. "Dare." Henry groaned. "Or would they? Oh, crap." Henry started getting even more frantic, going as far as putting a set of goggles on and jacking into his terminal. "Deacon, how did you know about this?"

I didn't get a chance to answer that. Henry got excited about whatever it was his goggles were telling him.

"Tracker! You're drawing them here and we can't have that." He yelled out a few seconds later. I was still watching dust drift down from the ceiling and wondering what to do. "Ever had a fast transport before? A bot-lift?"

"No. What's that?" Then I grunted as a bot picked me up in his arms and ran from the room, popping out the door and accelerating down the tunnel at a tremendous rate. He was running on the wall for a good part of it. My head rattled off his chest as he sped into the darkness of the underground.

The fool bot was running fast enough to kick up sparks the whole time.

"Something that'll probably knock you out soon enough." Came thru the goggles. Henry sounded weird when he was on-line. "The g-forces can get really heavy if the bot has any room to move. Or he starts pipe-swinging."

"Tell Mindy when she wakes up I stood off the whole ganga attack by myself, would you?" I could feel my bones creak as the bot carrying me grabbed a pipe to swing around a corner just then. The bot creaked a lot, too. I could feel his joints stretching, but they held. Blackness started to grow around my vision as my body flattened in the heavy g forces.

Henry chuckled. "Will do. They're following you anyway." The sudden stops and starts of a bot swinging thru a jungle of pipes at full speed battered me quiet. I was almost grateful as one hard bang almost put me down for the count.

"You're mainlining the pipes now. We call it going Tarzan." was the last thing I heard from Henry before the darkness claimed me. "Or did when I was a kid running the pipes. Talk to ya when ya wake up again."

***

I woke up in another dark place. Pitch-black murk my goggles didn't penetrate at all. It felt like wet rock and it was soaking thru my ganga clothes.

"Lordy, not this again." My new goggles got me up to speed as fast as they could, but it was my fumbling around that really slowed the process down.

New goggles. Not powered up yet. Startup mode. New menus, all preset to expert speed, still in testing. Clean of anything except a data-silver with some lectures on it.

Not even any tunes, or any active links to somewhere I could get some. The lectures had titles like "Admin, manage and develop. Sports, Religion and Art." It took a long, long time there in the dark before I could fumble my way thru to some information I could use.

It was quiet enough to work here, anyway. Neither Teddy or Henry were talking to me. There wasn't anything except a hiss from any of the com channels.

No, I did not hit the emergency locator button. That was going to be saved for a capture by gangas, if any.

The bot that'd dumped me here was long gone, and if I knew Teddy at all, Henry had just volunteered him for a memory scrub. That sounded like a sane thing to do, if the bot hadn't done it himself on the way home.

The goggles slowly came to life under my fumbling fingers. The wet rock I was lying on turned out to be a long, empty tunnel. Not teddy-wired, not mushroomed, not anything except a big, hot and wet rock hole. One way went up, the other down. It had breezes going both ways in it, ceiling hot heading in, cool air flowing up.

That defied the laws of physics, but I didn't worry about it then. It worked. There was air in here.

This was not mushroom season, as far as I knew, so I started heading up and hopefully into the light. There was no reason for me to be heading back down into the Deep dark again.

The walk gave me lots of time to try and figure out why gangas were so keen to get my little butt into their hands. I mean, my status as Deacon was nice, but that'd last only up to the split-second Teddy decided it wasn't helping anymore and then it'd be gone.

I did not believe it took Brother John to correct this. I'd be gone too, if necessary. Teddy had been playing politics underground for a long time and he won't hesitate to erase me if that what he thought had to be done.

Bots don't have quite the same attitude about killing inconveniences off we do. They could selectively wipe memory, AI rules and everything else they had on a whim. Then replace them, or put new ones in at a moment's notice. They more or less expected the same from humans.

When Uncle Buck, right down to gearing quirks can hop around bodies instantly, you tend to forget humans are irreplaceable one-of-kinds. Or not care about the apes at all anymore.

The trudge up was endless and my meager water rations soon ran out again. Playing with the new goggles fast lost its thrill, tho I did leave all the warnings and alerts I could find turned on.

The new shades were nice work. If anything got in this tunnel with me, they'd whisper urgencies into my cute little ears while whatever-it-was was still klicks away.

If I was any judge of the scales built into these things, that is. Somebody had left half the menus in robot and I couldn't translate them very well.

As it turned out, I didn't need the scales, I needed an umbrella. I'd turned off the warnings about a large room coming up a long time back and now stood on the edge of a huge underground chamber, one lit up by a few sparse globes of light that hung underneath another jungle of huge pipes.

It was big enough to rain in there, mostly because of water vapor in the air condensing in the cool of the underground. Water and air was spilling in trickles and waterfalls from various shafts in the bowl, dropping water into the chamber I was looking into.

Huge pipes and shafts were dug in all over the walls and most of them were spewing or dripping water.

Water that was collecting in a walled lake in front of me. Maybe someone was spraying water to bring the humidity in air up to spec too, I didn't know.

Then I had it. This tunnel of mine was an air-shaft in the air-processing plant, a place designed to take hot air from the surface, cool it off and return it topside. I was standing in a capped and unpressurized vent.

Then reality set in as it kept raining on my one-man parade down there. I spotted the rapidly raising water in lake, too. This was the bottom of the chamber and I was standing in the main drain. If the air conditioners up there dumped, all the water they released would escape down the tunnel I was currently standing in.

Several billion liters of water would get released when the flood gates opened and dumped into the lake and all at once. If it even started raining outside right now, I was in a lot deep watery trouble. If it was even humid outside, I was in trouble as the water coming from the various intakes would start getting even heavier.

If a dump-cycle hit the air-conditioners and they threw off condensate, I was in serious, serious trouble.

It was already raining in there, with lots of ominous creaks and clanks coming from the enormous pipes running high overhead. That cut it. I started an urgent mission to find the high ground and any way I could find to get to it, fast. There was a path running along the inside wall. I took it.

I felt like Noah. Not quite from the frying pan and into the fire, but close enough for me.

***

Tripping over a nearby rusty maintenance ladder nailed to the wall a few minutes later made for a surge of relief and after cursing the lack of an elevator, I started the long climb up to somewhere that looked safe from any machinery-induced flash-flooding.

Bad news. This wasn't even a caged ladder. It was rusty and creaked. Any slip on the wet metal and I'd drop like a stone to the floor below, whimpering all the way, then have my hamburger remains washed down the tunnel I'd just walked out of by the handy flood waters developing right now.

It only got worse the higher I climbed and I soon got tired. Rust and flaking paint bit into my hands. The wind grew stronger tugging at me hard, and the ladder shifted under me in spots, the bolts holding it into the wall having rusted out in spots. As I got higher and into more active air, I stopped looking anywhere but right in front of me and tried to ignore the lurches and shifts the ladder was doing under me.

It was a long climb but resting on stable stops and gripping a lot finally did it for me. I made it high enough to get to a platform below the pipes on the ceiling, a platform which I found by hitting it with my head.

The view above me wasn't all that good from under the platform. Rust, sheet metal and a small hole designed for bots going thru it.

My luck hadn't changed much at all; there were people all around me when I finally finished squirming thru that hole and onto a teensy platform. Bots and teddys, anyway. Weird ones, all climbing thru the pipes surrounding the platform and most of them ignore me.

I collapsed on my back and wheezed for a while on the slippery metal, looking around frantically as wind tugged at me. No gangas that I could see, this place looked like a bot colony instead.

Who would want a colony in the clouds? Not normal bots. These bots had self-mods gone haywire, lots of them. There were tentacles, balloon sacs, wheels, spiders and worse; some bots were hanging, some walking on the bottom of the pipes. Then the whole mess got colored by a maniac, the bots included.

Then it came to me. From the looks of this place, I'd just climbed right into the secret bot Art colony.

My goggles confirmed that, eventually. The bot-art colony was a hidden colony, one under strict radio silence as freebots experimented with whatever turned their cranks in abnormal but hopefully useful directions. Weird and dangerous enough stuff to keep them banned from the normal teddy underground and the mutant areas.

This was where the good stuff was invented, according to rumor.

There was one normal-looking teddy waiting patiently for me when I finally groaned and sat up on the small, wet, slippery, unbarricaded platform. I shuddered. This pole-top was high enough off the ground to give my willy the willies and the wind was fierce.

The teddy didn't even nod as he hauled me up and kept me anchored till I got my bearings. Leaning over, he jacked a line into my goggles, opening communications to me without a whole lot of ceremony.

"Deacon. Welcome to our secret colony. I hope you like flying."

"Huh-huh. Yeah, sure." Standing up in that wind was not anything I wanted to do, so I bent over there on the platform blinking and breathing hard. I was also holding onto the teddy hard. The platform swayed; it felt like I was pole-sitting in a hurricane on top of a tower. I went back down on my hands and knees and looked around as best I could as the windstorm whipped around me.

"We've been expecting you. We even turned on the lights in the cavern for you." The teddy tied me down using the com-cable he jacked into my goggles.

Looking around only made the news worse for me. There was lots of down and not much else. "Thanks." I said sourly.

I shook my head. These idiots were living like little Tarzans in a new jungle; a jungle with wild twice-daily tornadoes. Little huts were welded to the huge pipes in quiet spots here and there. Hammocks swayed in the shrieking winds from the bottom of pipes for the uncomplicated.

"These are just the afternoon winds. There's heavy demand for air in the city right now."

The teddy was unruffled the by all the air tussling his fur, but he didn't look he was in any danger of sliding off. The little snarf probably had magnetic shoes on. I kept looking around for somewhere safe to go.

There wasn't anywhere I didn't have to fly to get to. Sometimes the huts were on the top of the pipes, sometimes the bottom. The cables strung around between them looked like com-links, not safety lines.

Maybe they lived inside old pipes too, I couldn't tell. One thing was obvious. You jumped, hopped or slid to wherever you wanted to go up here, on big round wet things very high off the ground. In the shrieking winds. Without any safety lines.

The pipes and tunnels were more than big enough to hold a home. Any big pipe was a tunnel shaft and part-time blow-hole tho, from the looks of things. The shafts really did look unstable as they worked to cool the city.

I did have to admit, the security was good here. Between the wind and rain storms messing up signals, thick pipes, old rock and radio silence blanked the place, this was an insanely dangerous place to be, but a secure one.

You had to be crazy to try living in it, tho. I guess artists are like that.

"You don't remember me, do you?" The prim little teddy asked me carefully, looking at me askance. He was lashing the line around my waist as he spoke. I have never been looked at that way before, so I took another couple quick peeks at him, then winced.

"I do. You're Prince Valiant." I muttered. "Oh crap, no. You again."

"You remember capturing me before then?" The teddy asked hopefully. I began hoping none of the teddys here had developed a desire for revenge as an experiment in the colony. If Prince had, I was toast.

One quick tap and I'd be twisting the in wind right now. For as long as it took me to fall to the floor and bounce a few times.

"Yes. Twice, in fact." I answered wiry. "You're here now. You must've finally smartened up a little."

"I did make it here, yes. The pamphlet you left was most helpful." The teddy blinked happily.

"Three times. You were slow to read it." I relaxed a little there. Leaving literature on the teddy underground out for 'lost' teddies to find and follow was risky for a couple reasons. A: they didn't always read. Make that, they almost never did. B, they didn't always believe, or want to go deep. C: Following even simple instructions was beyond most of them till they got upgraded a few times.

Teddys were AIs, they learned. What some of them learned was to leave, but they didn't always go very far. Teddies having a decent IQ was an expensive option. Not many of the base models were very bright, especially the runaways.

"Egor helped. He finally convinced me to go deep." My escort relayed that little bit of information casually. It did manage to startle me a little, tho.

"Egor? That old rag-man! Is he..." Egor was a runaway teddy that refused to leave his mistress ward, a little girl he loved beyond any comprehension. He stayed to watch over her even after I'd chased him out of a half-dozen malls.

Malls, roofs, basements and wrecks in parking lots, actually. A persistent little devil, Egor was. He never went back willingly. The emotion situation was too traumatic for him to tolerate at home, so he always ran away again.

Bad emotional situations were almost always the reasons a teddy ran away. Egor was a little different. He ran away a lot but never left his mistress.

"Dead now. Wiped and broken down. Turned himself in for spare parts when she..."

Prince didn't finish that. There wasn't any need to. She had outgrown him and that went unsaid. Some kids never outgrew their teddys, some never picked up on them. Most just lost the need for them as they grew older.

"Oh. Poor Egor. I considered him a friend, at times. He helped me out a lot."

"As we do you. Now. Let's go." My escort turned into the wind and tugged on my line. I got led down the pipe like a dog on a lease. The goggles and Prince kept me informed on what it was we were passing thru.

I wasn't paying that much attention to his droning, I was busy trying to hang onto wet slippery pipe for dear life. Well, he passed thru. I was still crawling, and trying to do that with my eyes closed. He nodded at one thick cluster of huts off to one side of our pipe, some attached to native rock.

"Tantric colony there, Deacon. Sex specialists. Relief, electronic relationships, personal aura development. No obsessions or fetishes. Party-animals not welcomed as they don't live long enough to get anything useful done. Pleasure centers of the brain experimentation. Want to visit?"

"No. No parties? But kids are really, really interested in sex." I protested. The Prince Valiant busy not keeping me anchored to the pipe I was crawling on top of snorted. "Bots aren't?"

"You'd be surprised." Prince mentioned quietly while I crawled around a three foot valve cover. I took the opportunity to haul myself up to my feet and let the wind try to push me off the pipe again. "The list of serious students waiting to get in there is really quite long. Most aren't teenagers."

"Yah. Sextoys for taking over the world, I bet." I grunted. I stood there in the wind, holding onto the valve and looking around in a panic. "In training. Get me somewhere safe please, Valiant. As quickly as possible."

"You don't want the tour, then." The teddy escorting me thought for few seconds, then nodded at one small close-by tunnel mouth in the rock-face. It was surrounded by hundreds of others just like it. "That's the fastest way out of here that's reasonably secure." he said quietly. "Deacon."

I grunted and peered at the tunnel. There was a hundred yards of open air between us and it. "I think I can skip teddy music, painting and humor today. I just passed up on Android sex, didn't I? Just get me out of this wind. Now."

"As you command. Deacon." Prince sighed and grew wings. That's as close to what he did as I could make out in that wind. I guess he had them strapped to his back or something.

Then he picked me up and jumped off the pipe.

***

"We have arrived, Deacon. You can let go now."

"And stop screaming." Prince added dryly. I gasped a few times and forced my eyes open. It was quiet, warm and mostly dark now. We had stopped moving. The wind had slowed. The floor felt dry and stable, as far as I could tell. I'd arrived wherever we were going with my dignity intact. That was about all left intact on me.

"Thanks just heaps. Don't ever do that again." It did take me a couple minutes to unclench my hands from the death-grip I'd developed on Prince's teddy fur. The sounds of the wind roaring almost certainly drowned out my screaming like a little girl and the lake below had swallowed whatever I dropped in those first few seconds of flight.

Flight? Calling that miserable drop to hell flight was giving Prince points he didn't deserve. It was a high speed plummet thru the main chamber, then a roller-coaster ride thru a honeycomb of small twisty tunnels that cooled the outside air. Unpowered glides with lots of fast, sharp turns to avoid getting splattered all over the tunnel wall. It was that last part that was hard on me.

Those tiny little tunnels were narrow. They echoed. We had been going very fast and there wasn't a straight line anywhere in the place. The echoes were mostly my fevorant prayers to any deity silly enough to be listening at that moment, but sound did travel well in them.

Have you ever been carried at high speed thru a three foot wide rock tube that spaghettied it's way thru a couple miles of motion-sickness hell?

The whole ride had been all violent direction changes and blasting wind. Prince didn't seem disturbed. My goggles told me shooting the comb was considered a favorite pastime for teddys here, as it mimicked the asteroid belt.

"If you think that was a life experience, you should've stopped in at the Tantric encampment." Prince mentioned absently.

I got my gasping for breath under control and ignored him. "There are rumors not even teddys can stay away after a session or two in there." he continued on, flexing his wings and shaking drops of water off them.

"No thanks." I gasped, flexing my fingers and moaning a little. "I remember a summer thunder-storm in Iceland. Lots of crazy ozone in the air. Warm rain like silk, gentle winds. Past midnight and still broad daylight, even with the storm-clouds. Hot natural springs steps away and a friendly girl who wanted to introduce me to the local culture."

I coughed between gasps. "That's a memory I don't want surpassed just yet, thanks. There was ice-cream involved."

"The only thing missing was a skyful of Northern lights, a volcano and an earthquake or two. Maybe a full moon. There might've been one, I wasn't paying that much attention right then." The memory eased some of the more recent painful experiences I'd gotten today, but not enough of them. I wasn't up to standing up yet.

Prince Valiant took that in and seemed thoughtful. "I'll pass that on to the Tantric people." he said casually. "They'll be fascinated to hear about it."

"Thanks."

"I'll leave you here, Deacon. It is safe at the moment. The city is above you, the underground to the right, thru that tunnel there. Beware of gangas. There's even a few tunnels that go directly to mutant territory around somewhere. Mushrooms and moss would be your clue there."

"Thanks."

"And the colony, should you want to return, is just a slide away. Choose a wet vent, you'll come out the far end in much better shape than with a dry one." Prince waddled off, folding his wings as he went. Then he turned back to look at me. "Oh, and wear a parachute if you do come back. The drop at the end of the tube is considerable, unexpected and usually dark."

"I'll do that."

With that, the rotten little snarf left me, the mere human, sitting on the rock, breathing hard, hoarse from screaming and trying to recover from what any teddy would consider merely a pleasant exercise in ducking oblivion.

***

I walked to the wall as soon as I could. A nice safe tunnel sounded like a good place to be right now. You could hear some activity in the direction of the ganga's route and since I wasn't keen on jumping into Angel's arms up topside again, I headed that way.

Walking helped get the stiffness out of me. This was the usual. A choice of directions to go in and all of them bad.

Going back to the Art colony was out. My goggles hadn't shut up about the place yet, or the research they were doing there. Mushrooming belowdecks sounded scary. Boring, but scary.

Up? No. Angel was not known for being merciful to anything except Borgs. Only down was left. So Gangas, even if they were currently after my butt hammer and tongs, was it. Besides, Henry might find me first and he was the only friendly face I'd seen today.

Just to add to things, what I was hearing were girl's voices in the tunnel, not a gang-war. Happy girls, all partying hard. A few of them.

I snuck down the tunnel and got closer. You could pick voices out of the echo noise now. Three of them, all female. A zombie, a city-borg and a ganga were giggling up a storm down one of the side tunnels. An odd group by any standards, particularly one partying 'way out here in the boonies.

You might see a group like this in one of the bigger clubs in the underground, but not wandering around loose out here. Something was up and I wanted to know what.

It was a metal tunnel there, from the sounds of the echoes. Hard territory, close to the city. It might have a repeater strung in it. This sounded like a party worth checking out, even if it ended up being something else I had to run to avoid down here.

Just out of their sight but not hearing, I hunkered down to the rock and listened to the yakking for a while, goggles zooming in on the action as best I could. You could see some of the moves. Certain things became obvious immediately.

The zombie was a soft-spoken witch, a herbalist farmer. Anything from holy smoke to mushrooms and foods there. As a witch, she was also a mutant doctor-healer in the underground. The ganga-girl was all flash and never shut up; I picked up a lot listening to her. The city-borg seemed like a misplaced party-person airhead out on a joy-ride.

"You take that crap and stuff it, girl. Moss-chewers don't have money."

That was the ganga-girl. Moss? I'd seen some of that getting harvested in the deep tunnels. Anything that grew in those toxic pits didn't sound like good news to me, but from the sound of it there were users lined up for it topside. The dark girl in black leather and metal studs seemed a little disgusted with it. She had holsters with big guns on and was always playing with them.

"That fool is a color-blind idiot, anyway. He couldn't find soft-green if he was paid to stick his nose in it." That was a soft whisper. The zombie-witch sounded sad. She had dark long hair, a hippie-type in flowing robes and small bare feet.

There was a cheery 'um' from the city-Borg as she drank something down. A very happy, liquid 'um'. White silk and studs there, on a petite short-hair blonde.

"Then cut him off and take it out in trade. Give the fast action to the ones who score!" A holster got slapped hard there as Ganga-girl strutted around.

"Ah, thanks, Marley. Think any of your action could bring it on for me?" The witch twitched unhappily where she was sitting in the tunnel and readjusted her robes for comfort.

The city-borg airhead giggled again, interrupting the conversation. "Not those clowns, Melda." She waved the bottle cheerfully. "Trust me. They'd get only as far the first patch of smoking blue and be done for the week."

"Sandy Sandra! You leave my bad-boys alone!" The ganga was mock-disturbed, but you could tell her opinion of the men working for her wasn't that much higher than the city-borg's.

"Bad boys are all I see, Marley. What can ya do? May have to kill a few of the rowdier ones topside if they don't stop getting uppity anyway. Again." The blond sighed and passed the bottle on. "So far, the idiots I have to work with haven't been able to do anything except fuss about not getting any."

"You're both lucky. I get mutant help. They eat more than they turn in down on the farm." The zombie-witch Melda curled up into a curvy ball, rocking on her butt as Marley hit the bottle and tried to pass it on to her. She was a hippie with an interesting crop or two; obviously, she had the goods. She sourced. She also had man-troubles along with the other two.

I lost some of the next quips to echoes but the ganga-girl Marley was all hustle, unlikely scams and unending vicious chatter as she hit the bottle. I did notice there was a lot more posing than drinking going on there with her.

The bottle got raised a lot, but the level didn't drop all that much. Marley moved and processed for this group, or tried to bully people to do it for her.

Sandra was the blond city-Borg, an electronic wannabe. Like most city kids, she was wearing more electronics doo-dads on her person than any three people could use.

Airhead, incorporated. Your average city-twit, a little upset because at the moment she wasn't clued in to all seventeen different electronic services, friends and gossip-flows she usually had, but having a good time with her low-life friends anyway. She had the market.

They all made it sound like they had several teams of willing grunts at their beck and call to do dirty work for them. They'd probably met at an underground market or club down there and worked this little smuggling scam out themselves.

"Forget moss, Melda. I can't get the stuff, Marley can't keep her boys out of it..."

"They are out of it most of the time, that's the problem. Wired silly and useless, or out hustling nookie." Marley didn't sound happy.

Sandra sighed and went back to her bottle again. "And the interested credits are coming from people I won't trust to tell me the time. They'd be selling dates and places to any interested buyers before they even scored."

"Or just leaking. Kids that want to party can be kind of clueless." She added absently. She sighed and swiped at the bottle again.

Obviously a business meeting far more than anything else. This was how the city survived and kept it's life-blood flowing, with Borgs looking the other way most of the time. Deals, arrangements and a lot of sneaking around in dark places by unexpected people.

Girls playing politics was what was making the underground happen today. Then my Deacon goggles found a repeater they could hook into, hiccupped a few times and started getting into the act by providing background information on the whole group.

I didn't even know the profiling was turned on. I guess this was how Teddy kept track of who was who in his life, I guess. "None are officially known or wanted. Data to follow." Scrolled across the bottom of the goggles.

The data that followed was exhaustive. Good news for a change. Even here deep in the electronic deadzone, the Deacon goggles had connections to all the data stored everywhere; the AI functions started profiling the whole mess for me. I was guessing the pipes were extra antennas, somehow.

I did not know how the goggles got to the deep mutant info. I didn't even know mutants and zombies were on-line in any way before.

"Melda. Zombie-witch." A small picture went by on the screen. "Local healer and priestess. Lives on a zombie farm. Clanned to an old family. Grows pot, healer's herbs and other dark goods."

"Sandra, city-borg. Connected to a family transport firm. Follows the music scene. Knows lots of truck drivers."

"Marley. Runs a small, popular underground bordello. Long history of smuggling violations."

I was impressed. These Deacon goggles had it all, serious borg, mutant ganga and teddy data-connections. A whole enterprise picture got guessed at and painted in for me in seconds, up to and including boyfriend histories and probable delivery routes and times.

A truly neat trick was involved here. These girls here were using air-shafts for fun, profit, delivery routes and growing fields. Wet ones with lots of pure applied hot air.

Girl-politics in action and I had to take my hat off to them. This was one nifty all-in-one tunnel enterprise, with everything except electric delivery carts built in and just waiting to be used.

The goggles were still building portraits. I found a save button and started the slow process of building new data banks, ones far removed from my usual list of teddy hideouts. "Marley. Queen-bee of a local hive of Jethro gangas. Spreads her action around enough to keep it buried."

Jethros were the dumb ones in the underground. Grunts. They did what they were told and didn't screw up very often, if you were lucky.

Things were not all as happy as it seemed here. The city-borg Sandy had trouble with robbery, local thugs and getting payment. Hiding the cash was a little easier than usual down here, but upper-level gangs wanted her action coming their way. The ganga-girl's Marley boyfriend stole and was planning to take the bis from her, one shipment at a time if he had to. The Zombie-witch Melda needed supplies, more and better labor, power, fertilizer....

The information started getting general. Medical supplies were always desperately needed below. Firepower enough to keep grunts in line was critical. Finks and information leaks were killing them all.

Life as usual, here in the underground. They were dealing with it.

The big problem was, here I was, bright-eyed, bushy tailed and ready to save the day. Or at least whimper at it. I had labor, lots of it. Bots. Supplies up the wazoo as I still lived topside, officially. Free bots, a whole army of instantly obedient munchkins who could do anything up to harvest, process and put a vendor on every street-corner in the city. They already knew the air-vents.

And I was willing to bet most of the free teddys could to taught to shoot in a heartbeat if they needed to.

That is, if I wanted anything to do with this. It looked like instant millions, if you didn't mind the politics. I wondered what Teddy would think of it. He never mentioned money in any serious way.

The zombie witch Melda specialized in providing a kick to the higher consciousness with her goods. Religious herbs, naturally. Holy smoke, pot, mushrooms, moss and other herbs and mental spices was her stock-in-trade. Some, if not all of her action was very corrosive in large doses for idiot users.

Sandra's friends, the buying market, were not usually paragons of self-restraint, modesty or disciplined self-awareness in any way, shape or form. The only good news was most of them were local sons and daughters with spare cash looking to party-hardy at the sock-hop, not desperate junkies mugging little old ladies for their fix.

The ganga-girl Marley knew anything that looked like money would get swarmed under fast if any of her neighborhood muscle ever found out about the scores involved. She was hiding her lights under a couple big baskets.

I waited till the goggles had confirmed contacts for them all and backed away as quietly as I could.

Making millions, muscling in on millions, or just plain helping a few grateful cuties wasn't on my list of things to do today. I had more serious problems to take care of first. My goggles were telling me so.

First off, there were some Borgs were heading this way. Some gangas had tapped into the feed and located me already too, so now there were troops headed this way as fast as they could travel to pick me up. Well, troops at the ganga level was more of a rampaging mob, but a mob of trigger-happy gangas was still a lot more trouble than I wanted to deal with.

I didn't want the girls to be found in the path of a ravening mob either. That won't be healthy for them, no matter how much firepower Marley was ready to start using on random annoyances.

The goggles were full of other good news as I scouted around some maps, looking for a deadzone way out of here fast. A party of topsider Borgs were working their way down the tunnels, off on totally unrelated activities. They were closest and after a little thought, I was headed straight for them.

I was hoping they won't be a problem. I was still, officially, a cityboy, a freelance teddy-tracker. There was a faint hope of me hiding behind them and not getting shot for it.

I wanted to keep them between the gangas and me.

Borgs had lots of firepower and a small ganga war or dust-up before lunch won't bother them at all.

***

"Says you. The meat won't care what happens to the farm next door. Zombies know better than to stick their noses into Borg policy-making."

"Or they get poled themselves, ha!"

"I hope he doesn't hide in the crap outside like the last one did. Took me a month before I smell anything else after pulling him from the mud."

"Don't worry, we could all smell you. And crap is a big improvement over you."

"Hey stupid, don't ever laser a pile like that again, stupid. That stuff explodes when heated."

"Thanks. I know that now."

"Any daughters or a wife down there? It's a lot easier to get information from them."

"Not when you shoot them first, moron. And you always do."

"F.U. You shot the last one before we could even ask her any questions, remember?"

I could hear the private grousing going on between two of the grunts in the rear too, on another channel. They were upset their new gung-ho captain was dragging them out on another stupid fishing expedition to a zombie farm, after someone named Zeck. Sitting in the market and scaring little girls was a lot easier work than raiding distant farms.

The noise got turned down and I sat there in shock. I was listening in on the Borg private channels, complete with scrambling codes. These Deacon goggles were great. I loved them.

The Borgs were being their delightful secret death-squad best and I stayed on the other side of them as best I could, but they were weaving their way thru the tunnels like drunken sailors. The gangas were still closing in on me too, hot on my tail no matter how I ducked and weaved around the tunnels.

How they were tracking me, I don't know. I ran away a lot, as quietly as I could. Well, ran like a mad fool actually. A long empty tunnel made you a great target for anyone else in it, even if they wanted you alive.

From the sounds of it, the Borg were on their way to a small Zombie homestead to work some poor farmer over; one that hadn't paid his market-stall taxes recently, I guess. Or maybe he had some information they wanted, or they wanted him to do something. I don't think the Borg knew themselves.

It wasn't until I noticed the Borgs were skipping over the teddy repeaters in the walls that I was finally able to plot their path a little better.

OK, it was the goggles that figured that out and told me how to stay on the far side of them. I'd been trying to do that only to have the Borg duck away at the last second into different tunnels twice now.

So the deacon-goggles had AI support. Big deal.

The goggles also tracked the ganga mob following me and casually suggested a few alternate routes to the ones I was trying to take; it kept repeating how much time I had left before my position got over-run by the various hostiles surrounding me in a gleeful tones.

It got silly fast, me tracking Borgs, gangs tracking me and the Borg ducking contact with everyone.

We ended up right back to where we started, naturally.

The girls had gotten clued in on the traffic somehow, too. Marley picking up on the ganga chatter, I guess. She had her guns out now and was covering the entrance to their room with a serious expression on her face. The other two girls were lying low and hoping to avoid notice from anyone. There was no more chatter from them.

I wanted the Borgs and gangas after me to meet headlong in some quiet tunnel and settle their personal disputes there. That should clear up a couple of my problems. I was having trouble doing it without getting caught in the middle of the pending firefight with nowhere to go.

It was a serious problem. Charging a Borg squad in the middle of a shoot-out yelling I was a friendly didn't sound very smart. Borgs lived the 'Shoot first, second and last." rule; they never took prisoners if they could help it.

Prisoners, like witness, made paperwork. Paperwork was something a secret Borg death-squad avoided religiously.

I could hear the gangas chattering to themselves on-line now. The Borg would be able to hear it soon enough too, even if they weren't listening for it now.

Their goggles would see to that.

We all finally met in a cross-tunnel with the gangas down one tunnel, the Borg marching along and me tagging behind them, gangas coming up fast behind me.

They had passed by the room the girls were in without incident. That was alright, but things didn't work out as exactly the way I'd planned.

***

## chapter four The pits below

Mean and petty, nasty, brutish and short. Then there's life outside society.

***

All of us met at the same time in a tunnel junction. The one room the girls were hiding in, naturally enough.

My usual. I'd missed one of the Borgs picking up the rear; this straggler guard was getting the hiders popping out after the squad had passed them by.

The lone Borg came up behind me fast. There was no choice left for me, I had to duck into the same room the girls were in and hope I didn't get shot by somebody in the process.

Some choice there. Ganga, Borg or smugglers, all armed to the teeth and most of them trigger-happy killers already looking for me. I took the smugglers. At least they were trying to hide. I dove into the room with the girls at top speed.

I do not know who shot first, but it was a stupid thing to do.

Instant war erupted. The Borgs turned tried to stomp anything that wasn't Borg; they seemed intent on sterilizing the tunnel behind them with sheer firepower. The gangas were still after me and frustrated by the fire-storm raining down on them.

Frustrated as they ran away, mind you. That part I was glad to see, or at least hear. Me, I was already wondering if mutant teddys counted as mutants or teddys to Borgs and if I could get any help from the art colony getting out of this.

From being in the limited attention span of a Borg Death squad, that is.

With the smugglers seemed like the best place to hide. The girls were tucked away in their side tunnel room, trying to stay away, or at least hide. They hadn't shot at me yet.

It was over in seconds and the Borgs won, with left us with a tunnel full of trigger-happy Borgs to deal with. Even the densest ganga does not take on the local best in modern firepower. The Borgs had the most serious guns and there were enough of them in that squad to take out any minor ganga war-party without straining.

The gangas turned ran almost immediately as the returning gunfire was a fire-storm and not tracker curses; and turned again as soon as they could. All the better to get out of the line of fire. Myself, I was in hiding with the girls, trying to look harmless.

The girls were lying flat on the floor glaring at me, trying to stay inconspicuous as the Borg ran past, trotting after the rear guard, who was now running point against the gangas.

Then some idiot opened fire again and all hell broke loose. This was all good clean fun to those hot shots; just some bonus Borg action.

"Morning ladies. Please, don't mind me." I whispered that as I tried to spin back to watch the entrance. The lights were out and it was dark in there, but I could see Marley glaring at me hard. The ganga-girl was lying there on the floor but kept her gun weaving between me and the tunnel opening; while she snarled and quietly spat quiet curses. "I'll be out of here as soon as I can. Honest." I added hopefully.

"Try not to attract any attention. Please." I asked politely. "That won't help anybody right now."

The Borg outside trotted on by us, muttering curses and waving his rifle around like it would make him go faster. This time heading back. The rest of the squad had turned and was coming on hot on his heels, all of them after the gangas. The squad was missing out on all the fun as something got away; they were not happy about it.

Getting their attention in any way would guarantee more than a few shots would get pumped in our direction.

The other two girls didn't even whimper or even move. Marley froze and didn't dare shoot as the rest of the Borg squad ran by, cursing their luck.

Marley was peeved. Shooting me was out, right at the moment. That'd attract more attention from more people than she could handle right at the moment. The gangas might even come snooping back around to see if there was any loot from dumb tourists they could pick up on after, too.

Me, I felt fine. Borgs I wasn't that worried about. My goggles were set to a teddyhunter ID and if a secret Borg death squad even noticed me, they'd ignore me. I hoped. I was known. Everyone else in the room had silenced their equipment by now. Hiding from the Borg down here came fairly natural to them.

Smugglers are like that. That was easier for some than others. I did notice Melody, the zombie witch, wasn't even wearing anything electronic. She went thru the tunnels blind and liked it that way.

"Hey, Tracker."

That was a Borg up the tunnel looking for me and using noise to do it, not goggles. Someone had obviously seen me ducking this way. "What?" I shouted back. Marley started grinding her teeth as she glared pure murder at me. I smiled sweetly back. I had friends, she didn't.

Or at least people who weren't shooting at me for fun and profit.

Sandra looked like she was going into withdrawal, perfecting the helpless airhead look. The zombie-which was studying me carefully and looked like she really wanted to say something but couldn't. "Zeck?" she mouthed. I ignored her.

"Stick to the malls, moron. You could get killed down here." That got a big laugh from the other Borgs, some of who were having a good time still firing stray shots down the tunnel the gangas had run down.

I wasn't going to disagree. "Yeah, tell me about it. Say, listen. I'm headed to the market anyway and I owe you guys one. Can I buy ya a beer?"

I don't know where that offer came from. It surprised even me. If a being in the middle of a Borg death-squad was the safest place for me to be right at the moment, I was in a lot more trouble than I'd ever dreamed of.

Anyone I'd ever met had dreamed of, actually. Borg death squads weren't nice people in the underground. They didn't have to follow any topside rules at all down here.

"The big bad gangas are gone now, wussie. Get to the market yourself. We don't want to see you again today." There was a pause. "If we ever catch ya there, we might pick up on the beer then. Find your own way home, Tracker. Now."

"Got it." I winced as the echoes of that shout died away in the tunnels. The Borgs took a side tunnel and disappeared, the occasional shot still going off in the distance. For them, leaving quietly.

Marley was grimacing and still glaring murder at me, gun aimed right at my head. Sandra had her face to the wall and Melda had sat up rocking on her butt, her head tilted to one side and studying me coolly. I'd been hoping for a free ride out of at least one of the messes I was in, but the Borgs had just blown me off.

I nodded to the girls, winked at Melda, then got up and scooted out the door before Marley decided to shoot me for breathing too much of her air. I had to move fast, as a couple stray shots from behind would be noisy and get the Borgs and gangas interested in our action again.

Besides, if I gave the girls any more time to think they'd come up with something interesting to do all on their own, particularly if they thought the Borgs were far enough away to ignore. Marley had that kind of look on her face; and Melda was obviously considering something weird of her own.

Sandra was face to the wall and just quietly whimpering to herself.

Melda winked back at me as I popped out of the tunnel and trotted in the direction of the underground market as fast as I could go. That wink was a little disturbing; not something I wanted to see. You know what they say about flirting with zombie girls.

I decided not to worry about it. Melda knew where I was heading. If she had something to say to me, she could find me easily enough, even without any goggles on.

The market was even on her way home.

***

I kept to the deadzone tunnels after that, and didn't use the goggles at all. I kept them as shut down as I could manage. If gangas could track my action with them, they were too blasted dangerous to use.

There was some faint hope the girls back there didn't know who'd just popped in for a quick visit; I was hoping to keep it that way. I knew Marley would sell me to the gangas without a second thought if she knew who I was. Well, if she simply didn't shoot me a couple times first for being a pest.

Something had startled her and Marley was a spiteful girl.

I started to second-guess going to the market. Even at Teddy's place, it would be saturated with gangas and over-run if the gangas decided to move in. The market club-zone was their home ground.

Strictly my usual. My troubles were spread all over and there was nowhere safe to run.

It didn't take that much thinking. As far as I could see, my best bet was to avoid everyone, go deep, and stay in the deadzones far underground. Henry's place was out because, a junkyard, no matter how many fancy weapons he had stashed there, wasn't designed for a standing off a siege even by gangas.

Any more noise at his place would end up getting some official Borg notice of the war-zone action anyway, just to see what was going on. Plus Henry had an illegal CyBorg stashed there he wanted to keep quiet and won't appreciate my company anymore.

Hot new Deacon or not.

I would not be welcome at Henry's. Nobody wanted Borgs snooping thru their private turf looking for something they could use against you. Borgs would normally shoot first then find the evidence they wanted.

There weren't many other options. The teddys were likely to kill me with kindness if they picked me up again. That art colony behind me, secure or not, looked like a death-trap to me. Sex-bots and flyers? Teddy gymnastics 1200 feet in the air on wet pipe? All the weirdness a freebot could dump on me? No thanks.

Just trying to be helpful to their new Deacon, right?

Ditto for any zombie farmer, whose whole life depended on keeping his head down and crops out of sight of everyone, gangas, mutants and Borgs.

That left mutants, who weren't known to be friendly to anything, mushrooms, which I didn't trust or Angel's Borgs, who as soon as they got up-to-date on the latest gossip, would have their own nasty little plans for me.

The last option was a private little camping trip of my own.

The camping trip was my only safe option. Everyone else had plans for me, plans I didn't know and didn't want to find out about.

It was right about then a small satchel of herbs came out of the dark and exploded in my face, dusting me thoroughly with something fine, brown and stinging and gritty.

The first sniff I got of it was my last. Knockout herbs. I recognized the variety; they kicked in fast and I started to go zombie. Melda walked up to me out of the dark and stood there watching as I hit the wall and slumped down, fighting the drugs as best I could.

"Hum. An unarmed teddy-tracker 'way down in the underground. There's gotta be an interesting story here." She mused to herself as her magic dust took hold of my consciousness and squeezed. "Just relax, fella. Try not to fight it. I'm the only person here today not trying to kill you."

"The Borgs are heading for Zecks." I grunted out before I passed into zombie land completely. "Warn him."

"I know." Melda answered me as the darkness rose again. "Now you go to sleep, Deacon. I'll get you somewhere safe."

***

"Relax, teddy-tracker. You're in good hands."

That was the first thing I heard as I woke up again and it was a quiet whisper that seemed to come from another world. The second thing impression I got was that, from the smell of things, I was sitting in a huge manure pile.

A fresh one, too. A zombie farm, obviously. Then I noticed the slave collar I was wearing. It was locked around my neck and seemed very solid. Had I just gotten shanghaied for work on a crop down here? Memories came back and I winced. Melda had bagged me in a tunnel somewhere without even trying hard. She was a one-girl press-gang in her smuggler off-time?

I thought about that in an off-hand way while trying to wake up. A slave collar? That was a distracting thought. You heard rumors of kidnapping and forced labor happening every once in a while on zombie farms, but the zombies were careful about keeping things drugged and disappeared. According to some rumors, there was forget-everything dust in their arsenal too.

"Safe. Oh yeah? Says who?" That got mumbled out thru a mouth that wasn't working yet. It came out garbled even to me. I rattled my head around to see if that would help any and found out almost instantly that it didn't.

The whispered conversation around me got ignored while the room spun around and my eyes sparkled with little flecks of light.

"A bagful. You could've taken out the whole Borg squad with that much dust. What'd you do, hit him with a rock next?" A male voice asked that in disgust. The sound wasn't much over a faint whisper, but it sounded mad. "He's totally zonked. How'd he walk his way here?"

"I didn't have time to figure dosages. He was getting away, so I just tossed the bag on him. Got most of it back, too." Melda wasn't mad, she was being professional about the whole thing. I was almost proud of her till I remembered it was me they were discussing.

I'd gotten bagged. Me, a pro-tracker.

Again.

How depressing.

Melda, the zombie witch, grinned at me as I blinked my way back up out of the deep dark seas I just fallen in again and climbed back into the fireworks. "And the counter-spell worked fine, husband. He'll be up and raring to go in a minute or two."

Quiet talk. You could barely hear her and I was just feet away. I wondered if my hearing was gone, but then noticed both my helmet and goggles were missing. The collar replaced them both with a faint green glow.

No mask on. I was naked to the underground air, not always a recommended procedure. Husband came back into the conversation again. "Raring to dig his way out, more likely. Why'd you pick him up, Melda? Don't we have enough of your strays around the place already?"

The male was not happy with my presence. So far we agreed on something, as I wasn't happy about being here either.

Zombie farms aren't the nicest place in the world to be, especially around harvest time. Farms were the gold in them-thar underground hills hereabouts. Gangas, Borgs, mutants... anybody looking for a quick score was likely to try raiding a zombie farm, if they could find one to attack.

The location of a farm was a deep and closely-guarded family secret. The tunnels around one were usually a maze of alarms, traps, pits, deadfalls and secret passages.

Farms were very hard to get into; designed that way. Or out of, as the only door in was likely to be locked tight. If these people didn't want to let me go, it was likely I'd have to chew my way thru several hundred feet of native bedrock to get away.

"Wha happening?" I grunted out, automatically reaching for my goggles to turn the lights up. I found out they weren't there anymore. Again. "Where? Who you?"

"Shsst! At my place. Deacon." Melda grinned at me while shushing for quiet. "A zombie farm. You were a little hot, so I brought you down here to cool off. All sorts of people after you. Borgs, gangas, teddys... Marley. All those people were after you. I thought you'd like a nice quiet place to hide for a few weeks."

"Might as well settle down, you're here for a while." The male voice added reluctantly. "Deacon. I take it you don't know Melda very well."

"Here by force. Know her? Not at all. Never saw her before today, in fact." My forced whisper sounded like booming thunder in the room. I looked around the gloomy room, cursing the lack of light and the nasty smell. "You people always live like this?"

"Shh! Quieter, please." My collar gave a warning buzz. It was a keep-quiet, too. "On this homestead we do." The male grunted out. He was still just a dark silhouette in the gloom with only a couple small emergency diodes lighting the place up. "We not a big place, that's foolhardy. There's a couple greenhouses, a chute for garbage, the fermenter and the res here. Big for a zombie place. That's it."

"Some smells sink. Some rise. You get used to them on a farm." Melda added sweetly. I could almost see the smile on her, even in the dark. "The collar is to teach you quiet, not keep you prisoner. Trust me on that. Now then, Deacon, it's time to show you how the zombies really live here in the underground."

"Dandy. You couldn't send me an email about it?" I said plaintively, and cutting the volume down as my neck got another little warning buzz from the collar, one with a little juice in it. "I mean, come on. I've only been a Deacon for a couple hours now." I whispered as softly as I could.

"And you've got a lot to learn about these places. Right now is a good time to start." Melda reached over and tugged on my sleeve. "A zombie farm. You're on one. Life here in the dark? Quiet, first and always. Noise is discovery. Second. Work. You live here, you work here. You want any supper, Deacon? You've got to earn it."

The male felt compelled to add his bit too. "Dark is first and always in the zombie underground. You don't use lights unless there's no other way. Too hot. Easily found. And better hope you have some skills we can use, Deacon. The simplest jobs are usually the dirtiest ones." The male added that quietly in a tone of grim satisfaction. "Hey, manners first. I'm John-b, Melda's husband. You're the new teddy-Deacon, right?"

"Call me Tracker, you have a better chance of getting an answer to that name." I grunted wearily, trying to listen for some other noises in the place. There weren't any. Even the deep had air whistling, but this place was silent. Dead silent.

"And I'm a Deacon only until I can find a way out of it. You're Melda, the witch, priestess and healer hereabouts, right?" I struggled a bit, sat up and glared in the direction I thought Melda was in. "Also a part-time vent-smuggler. Possible slaver. Interesting. New job there? That part didn't make your bio."

"Everybody in the underground smuggles, fool." The male sounded irritated with me. I couldn't place him in the gloom anymore. "If you don't, you're stuck with whatever trash turns up at the market."

"And their prices. Being a healer and priest down here is usually the same job, Deacon. It means burying the leftovers." Melda mentioned quietly. Talking about that part of her life made her sound sad. "The ones that don't end up in the cooker, that is. I sell a few herbs when meds can't be gotten. It's kind of primitive here on the farms. Zombies don't go in for strangers much. Or even visitors."

"Even me." She added softly. "Most zombie folk would rather buy at the market than have anyone in. That's where they bring the newly-wed and nearly-dead to me."

Whatever drug Melda had given me was working. I was starting to feel great, tho stumbling around the gloom of a zombie farm didn't look like the place for that. I swung my feet around and found the floor with them.

"No talking. Come with me and I'll show you around." John-b was more tolerant than he looked, but I didn't know what he had planned for me. I got the short tour with him tugging on my sleeve occasionally and silently pointing, then put to work.

Farm was actually an exaggeration for describing the place. There were several small caves connected in a short tunnel, just like the mutant farm; you grew things in there. A couple of the hand-carved rock holes were sealed multi-story greenhouses, mostly hydroponic trays and lights insulated and surrounded by reflexive paper.

They were cold, sealed up explosions of light until you popped in and out of them. Leaks were kept to a minimum.

It was a difficult experience. You'd think as a professional teddy-tracker I could keep quiet, but I soon found out compared to these lifers, I was a traveling road-show of stupid noisy mistakes.

The farm wasn't a big place. Greenhouse nooks. There was a cooker that fermented sewage and garbage into water, gas and fertilizer in one chamber; the main tunnel was sub-divided into kitchen, sleeping quarters and workroom. A couple heat sinks that led somewhere unknown.

I worked before I got fed or even met the rest of the hands on the farm, the rest of the hands being one old retarded mutant called Mu that spent most of his time going from plant to plant in the greenhouses, clipping suckers, stopping leaks, harvesting crops and checking flows.

Or eating. Mu was fat but always hungry, it seemed. Growing up starving in the deeps left him that way.

My introduction to zombie tools started fast. I loaded the cooker with shredded greenery and leftovers using a soft plastic shovel that won't make any noise if you were beating the wall with it; and a slave-collar on me that gave me a shock if I so much as breathed hard.

I got zapped if the machinery made any noise too. The collar wasn't smart enough to discriminate.

Time passed. Lots of sleeps.

You worked till exhaustion set in, ate, and slept on a zombie farm, then did it all again. Life fell into a monotonous grind fast there.

No zombie spoke unless they absolutely had to. There was lots of silent, dark work and you soon developed a good feel for living blind. Melba wasn't kidding about my no-noise collar. Not even snoring was tolerated, so for the first few days every time I fell asleep, the collar they had on me promptly shocked me awake again as my breathing changed.

It took me a while to learn how to whisper quietly in my sleep instead of talking. I hadn't even known I talked in my sleep yet. Or snored.

The collar did work, tho. My ears sharpened up. After a couple days there, peeling bananas sounded loud, marshmallows were super-crunchy and porridge was as bad as loud soup.

John-b and I spent most of our time chipping out a new chamber in the rock while he and Melda fought silently and viciously over what to do with it.

By me, it was a foregone conclusion. We were making gravel for hydroponic trays as we dug, so it was going to be more farming space. From there, opinion was split on what. Melda wanted more herb-trays for her side of the farm. John-b wanted a cash-crop. Mu wanted more food so we could eat better.

The silent debate raged on forever. The temp and lighting for each crop would be different. Not my worry. They could've sealed it up and grown hot-house flowers for all I cared. Or mushrooms. I was usually too tired to even think.

I think I spent that week more or less drugged into submission, partly from work, partly from the diet. It felt like it, anyway. It was weird being down there on the farm as it was always dark, gloomy and damp. Day and night were the same time, always, normal for the underground but still weird for a cityboy. Lights were saved for the greenhouse.

Meals were the only constant, so you got used to telling time by what you were being fed. You had to get used to the other things, too.

The dark ruled, but the first and hardest rule on a secret zombie ranch was silence. Silence was supreme. Nothing was allowed to make noise, as that's the way farms got tracked down and discovered. No unnecessary conversation was allowed, ever, then only in a whisper. And only if you had to. No machinery was allowed to make noise of any kind, even if it did you did everything by hand till it got fixed.

Even rock-cutting was done with silent water-jets and hand-cranked hydro.

The second rule was conservation. Nothing was wasted. You wanted to read something, you went to the greenhouse where there was light, or stopped by the small kitchen diodes. You wanted power, you waited till the force-flow pumps were quiet, then tapped into the lines.

Cooking was done with recycled heat. Most foods were raw.

Recycled life was normal there. The chute for liquid garbage was a small pipe that led from outside right to the cooker. It had a powerline in it for the greenhouses, but where they tapped into the city systems was anybody's guess.

Fertilizer was made from the waste gases, not power. John-b finally gave me a set of goggles that let me see enough to mine by, but making the new chamber was, well, tons of slow, primitive work. Dry power was quietly foamed into cracks, then wet down. The rock eventually split open and we cut and ground those chunks into gravel with water-jets.

Rocks popping underground was considered a natural sound. You just didn't do a lot of it all at once.

Danger surrounded the farm at all times. There were silent alarms in every room, so you could always tell if anyone was near the outside tunnels. Red meant someone near and danger. White light meant breach.

Screaming meant death had come to visit somewhere, hopefully one of the traps outside in the tunnels.

Melda occasionally came and went, but I hardly noticed. She spent most of her time harvesting or tending her intense little garden of herbs for the market. She and John-b went on moss-gathering expeditions every once in a while.

With no way to keep track of time, I was pleasantly surprised to find Melda silently giving me my Deacon goggles back one morning. Powered down, naturally. And someone had been playing with the settings. John-b nodded at me, then put a blindfold on the table with them.

I never once saw Melda wearing anything electronic. I think it pained her somehow. My newbie-collar popped open silently all on its own when I picked up the goggles. Handing John-b them back plus the goggles I'd been wearing recently, I watched him put them away carefully. And very silently.

I could see well for the first time since I'd gotten here now but by now I knew the drill for getting anywhere in the underground with zombies. Untrusted strangers were the ones stumbling around with blindfolds on. I strapped mine into place and nodded blankly, not even wondering about what was happening.

Mu stopped by to shake my hand then, a bit of a surprise. He knew I was leaving. I'd helped him a little bit in the greenhouse a few times, when it took two people to force a tray into place and seal it there. He was grateful, as a tray falling down could take out a whole crop-rack if you weren't careful.

Then Melda stood up and led me away, after John-b shook my hand too.

The blindfold didn't bother me anymore. Walking in the dark and seeing by smell seemed almost natural by now, but the travel to a safe-zone did take a while. There were a lot of small twisty tunnels to go thru before Melda finally took my blindfold off.

The first thing I noticed was she had a pack waiting in the tunnel; when I finally wired up with my Deacon-goggles to full passive speed again. The pack was full of moss.

"So I'm a mule now too?" I asked. It felt like the first real words I'd been able to say in a long time, and even that came out in an automatic whisper. Melda smiled and nodded at me. "What else, Melda? Underground railway porter?"

"Ya. Be quiet. You topsiders always did talk too much." She whispered cheerfully. "The underground railway is for rebuilt mutants going topside. We didn't get any last week, tho. Check your goggles, there's a couple messages for you. You've been here a while now."

"From who?"

Melda just glared at me and my noise. This close to the ranch, we weren't going to be doing any singing in the tunnels just yet.

***

One message was from Henry. He liked the belt-bomb idea. He was even willing to send Mindy out to strap it on tight for me.

You could hear Mindy growling in the background that if I made any more trouble for her she was going to make a point of finding me and stuffing something pointy where the sun doesn't shine, after she was finished belting me around.

Other than that, Henry wanted to see me in the lab when I had the time. It wasn't an urgent thing, just some to get updates and my personal files.

I didn't know what to make of that, except Mindy sounded like she wanted to come find me. Boredom had set in while she was hospitalized and healing, from her grumpy tones.

The occasional spontaneous ganga raids looking for action weren't enough to keep a CyBorg happy, I guess. They had quit as soon as I left.

The other message was from Teddy and he congratulated me on keeping out of trouble no matter how I was doing it. He told me to keep doing it till he worked out a political solution to my problem that didn't involve publicly killing everyone who disagreed with him.

That sounded like hype. I was betting Teddy was ignoring the whole mess till it cured itself somehow. That sounded more like a good admin decision than actually doing anything. He did mention that the gangas were still looking for me, but after a run-in with Henry, a cranky CyBorg and a Borg death-squad had apparently backed off the Deacon-hunt a little.

Current thinking was the gangas were willing to wait till they could make a clean snatch, since raiding anything had gotten their butts pounded a few times.

Teddy also tacked on a new essay on evolution as an attachment in the message. Recommended reading from the art school I was avoiding.

I glanced at it. Evolution was a biggie with teddys. Way past survival of the fittest, natural selection and gene-spliced time-bombs, it was a culture obsessed with it.

Change by aging, chemo-mutation, radiation and selective breeding. It had something to do with chaos mechanics in evolution.

This was what was all the rage with the teddy-set this week. I didn't read it, not even to find out what natural teddy-selection really was.

But now I had choices to make again. Another week at the zombie farm didn't strike me as a good way for a full Deacon in the Teddy religion to spend his quality off-time.

Henry, on the other hand, had the tools to do the job there at his place, whatever the job was. Mindy was also there, and lonely.

Visit Henry's it was, as soon as I was finished thanking Melda for keeping me out of sight for the last week or two. Thanking her was her idea; the pack was her idea too. She was a strong girl, but hiking the vents with a load wasn't anything she wanted to do today.

I found out why when we got in the vents. They were tiny little things. Teddy-tunnels were big compared to vents. Teddys were only 3 feet tall and no matter what kind of shape you're in, a couple miles of walking hunched over with a backpack on was hard on anybody.

Marley was waiting for us of it in a quiet little lab she had all set up there. She wasn't alone.

Well, Melda told me the lab was actually being run by a couple weenies from the university who'd managed to put together machines enough to process the moss for Marley.

Shred, wash, dry and package. Marley herself wasn't running anything except her guns and a button. She didn't appear to recognize me.

She was not pleased to see me at all, but Melda gave her a cold eyeful and Marley backed off fast. I got introduced as someone who was helping with Melda's farm-labor problems.

That was news to me too. We hadn't discussed anything like that in the past week. There hadn't been much discussion of anything, in fact. For the past week or so I'd gotten worked to death by a couple of zombie farmers taking advantage of the fact I couldn't be seen in public without several types of angry people shooting at me.

The meet went down fine, with Sandra and a new boyfriend picking up the goods a little while later. She paid Marley and Melda off in trade-goods they needed, picked up the weed (well, the almost invisible boyfriend did.) and the two of them took off all within a minute or so of getting to the room.

Being off to vent was a running gag with them.

Sandra went back the same way she came in. Air-vents for airheads. There was a big concert going on tonight and she had a lineup of waiting dealers to front. She left fast.

I hadn't even noticed Melda leave. It left me more or less alone with Marley.

The less part was also to annoy me. My deacon-AI was starting to whisper at me again, and getting bolder with every factoid it dropped into my life and quiet shell-like ear.

Reading my mail had kicked it into life; now it won't shut up. Blast Teddy and his art school, they were going to educate me wither I wanted any or not. I left off getting my Deacon goggles set back to scroll from talk and concentrated on my current situation. There were more pressing matters to attend to.

The gods must hate me. I was supposed to be avoiding gangas and here I was alone in a secret lab with armed one; someone who didn't like me at all.

***

"Hey, Marley. So what's the good word?"

"You aren't leaving, bozo. Sit back down here."

Her guns stopped that plan before it even got started. Everyone else had left the lab, so I was left alone with Marley. She was glaring at me like I'd just stolen her lunch and she was still debating ways of getting even with me for it.

And most of them would hurt me a lot.

"You're with me now. The hustle is the scam, fool. What other good words are there?" That got snorted at me as she started the cleanup that hid her latest little scheme, scam and steal from casual inspection.

"Teddy-Deacon." She added that like it was a curse.

My stupid AI kicked in again right then. It's been getting louder and louder since the pre-battle dodging of Borgs, when it started getting useful. Now it was just plain annoying.

"Ganga. Throws herself into traffic to score. Hustler. Winner, succeed, correct. Usually bullshit, wrong or maniac."

Marley leaned over and slapped me in the head then; real life dropped in on me like a hammer.

"This is the underground, fool. No zoning out." She hissed at me. "Stay live and with me!"

That apparently meant there was work to do. I was a mule again. There were goods and equipment to hide before I faded into la-la land or disappeared Deep, so we started working. Well, Marley unplugged stuff and I grunted machines around for her. Her ganga slang talk didn't make any more sense than usual to me, and I let the slap ride too.

"Oh. Swell. You're my lesson for the day?" I grunted, rubbing my goggles wearily as I put a wheeled heavy something-or-other in a nook. "Do I get a ganga-translator first? Please? And what idiot set me up for this?"

"Lessons? Ha. Only as much as you can take, fool." Marley grinned triumph at me. "Walk the dark, Deacon. You're special and too cool for words already, or so we hear. Walk out now if that's what you want to do, I don't care."

"And get smeared all over the tunnels by whoever else is waiting to introduce themselves to me, I bet." I decided to stay for a bit even if I knew this was not going to be fun. Marley was ganga and now I had to learn something about them anyway.

This did look like Melda's idea to me. Teddy was behind it all, I bet. I made a mental note to get even with the long-hair soft-foot someday. Hiding me by tossing me into a gangland full of hungry, worried gangas like this took a special kind of nasty.

Naturally, he won't've mentioned it to me first. Zombies don't talk much ether. I decided to start by cross-pollinating Teddy's wiring and then get inventive, but I had to deal with Marley first.

In the meantime, I could make plans.

"Lets go for it, girl. Dance for me. What's a ganga got to tell a Deacon?" I grumbled as I heaved machines. "That'll let me live a little longer." I added as Marley started slapping her guns and snarling at me again.

I was not looking forward to this. The learning experiences I'd been put thru recently made the teddy lectures look peaceful and I wondered if it was too late to take another look at the art school I'd run screaming from a while back. Marley stayed glaring at me hard.

"No, I've never been ganga." I grumped out to an unasked question. "Or Borg. Who needs the hassle? Tracker's the name. I hunt teddys. Gangas I avoid getting to Teddy's place, usually. That's all I see of them and their hustling scams. Traffic to be avoided, that's all. What does Marley want to tell the Deacon today?"

The AI stomped in my ear again. "'Shot, rundown, out-maneuvered or burnt by. Choices in a ganga confrontation are limited. Recommendation. Shoot first."

I slapped at my goggles. My AI was determined to make himself useful, but a lot of what he was saying I didn't have time for. Marley was speaking at the same time, too. I tried to concentrate on her.

"Nothing past what I already told you, fool." Marley sniffed and finished shutting the lab down; I'd hid the pieces and she locked panels into place. It was amazing how much of the lab simply disappeared into the walls. When we were finished, you didn't know you were standing in anything other than an empty rock room.

"Fine. I'm outta here." I started playing with the goggle settings again, trying to find a working arrangement that'd let me get thru the tunnels without getting nagged to death one way or another.

Marley sighed and relaxed a little, reluctantly. "OK, Deacon. You want to know what's what? Here's the baby-talk. Underground? A ganga usually lives by hustle." Marley looked around the room, grunting in satisfaction.

"That's all there is. Hustle. Find some action, move on it, make it yours or starve. That's your only choice, cause they sure aren't welcoming ganga bad-boys anywhere else these days. Topside or below."

"Abstract. Burn, destroy or control traffic. All are wins."

My finger got stuck in my ear and I wriggled it, trying to find some way to shut the AI down. I really didn't need this right now.

"That why you run a cat-house with 15 year old dirty-girls?" I asked carefully. What a ganga girl had to do get anything going looked like it was gonna be a touchy subject, so I decided to hit the hard parts first. This was something on Marley's file.

"Yah. They come to me." Marley snarled out, staring at me hard. She was proud of something and daring me to make anything of it. "Usually right after people start taking it from them the hard way. We work. I treat my girls better than their boyfriends or parents do. They stay. And I have to stand there with a gun most nights to stop the hustlers and buyers from trying to take them away, or the take my place over."

"And pay the hard-boys off to keep the peace, too. I know." I rubbed my goggles and wondered if I could tap into anything online without getting myself killed for it. Or followed around by someone trying to hustle some action out of me.

"Hired help is too dangerous to risk these days, or so I hear." I looked at the door wistfully. There was still the camping trip I could go on waiting for me out there. "Life's a little rough, right?"

"Here, fool. Down here." Marley tapped her own goggles into place and shut the light in the lab down. "Where you're going. With me. Come on, Deacon. I know a few quiet routes that'll keep your dainty little butt unmolested for a while. You wanna learn ganga? You're gonna see what it's really like in the underground today."

"Swell." I waited for the AI to chirp in with some nonsense about winners being the bottom of the food chain or something equally useful, but it was mercifully silent.

"Gangas. With the fat cityboys tooling around gloating at you, the teddys bitching at you for everything and Borgs stomping thru like they own the place." Marley added, snapping her head around as she double-checked that her lab was hidden well enough to avoid trouble. "Life is harsh for a ganga. So are we."

"The hustle is the scam." I got into goggle silent-mode for a moment and tried not to think of how noisy Marley was being. She could use some zombie training. "What's that supposed to mean? We can start there." I automatically tried to keep the quiet mode on the goggles, unsuccessfully as something kept turning the AI back on, then walked down the tunnel after Marley as she stomped her way to whatever it was she wanted to show me.

"Any action you see is a scam. All of it. Tell them nothing. Like copyright." Marley tossed me a dirty look, like I was a stupid newbie-boy from topside slumming with her. "The biggest hustlers are the worst players. Music? They steal the most of your work and spend their credits stomping you and yours back down. With Borgs."

"I remember some bootleg tapes from club bands getting hot a while back. Official ones." I nodded.

"Royal free. So if you get hit with anything here, the hustle is the scam. Any new rules about keeping alive, moving goods or selling your action means..."

I didn't say anything, just looked at Marley. Marley sighed and elaborated. "Got anything? Here? Official action? You even breathing? Somebody wants the traffic and they're taking yours. Anything, and right now. It's that simple. Nobody does anything that they don't get credits for, instantly. Topsiders especially. The hustle-heat is THEIR scam."

We hit the bigger tunnels and started moving thru the dark. Marley looked confident and moved like it too. I guess she knew the area, or her goggles did.

I didn't and tried to stick close to the wall.

"Listen, newbie. You get a good hustle going running something. Ducking local scroungers, teddy-routes and topside losers all. A popular porn, say. New plant-food. Anything. It's hot and moves. Poof, new rules. You're illegal and Borgs are trying to force all the action to topside players."

"Guns, butter, water, waste.." I said. What traffic moved down here really was a big secret, mostly because it changed so fast more than anything else.

Smugglers did anything that money wanted moved, that was the only rule. Teddy's med-mods and the nightclubs were only a small part of the action down here. Marley nodded savagely. "If you hear anything from topside down here, it's because somebody wants to take your play and make it theirs. You tell them nothing."

Marley sighed angrily and adjusted her guns again.

"Most of my girls turn white and run topside, after a while. Or exotic. They save for the teddy-treatments. Popular ones fill a blackbook and move to their regulars, some faster than others. Some get pulled up. I see a lot of them go thru, some good people, some bad, some all biz. They all move on sooner or later."

"Create, rechannel or meet demand."

My goggles whispered that in my ear. I tapped them hard, trying to shut the noise down. If the AI functions on this thing were about to keep yakking at me, I had to find a way to turn them off, fast. Where we were and what we were doing needed focus, not a backseat driver.

"Addum. Education, justice, religion and art aren't big. It's small-time. Girls, food and drugs are big-money items."

The AI yakked on, loud enough to make my ears hurt. I tapped the damn goggles again, cranking volume down. I didn't need an economics lecture on smuggling and other dark-trade right now.

"OK, so running at your own speed means playing in traffic any way you can. Playing chicken with speeders full-time. Keeping the other grunts away. Dodging bullets."

Saying that while I bent my head into new positions let Marley know I was trying to get the goggles adjusted and focus on her. She grinned at my helpless twitching and moved on ahead.

"True. That's too cool, deacon-fool." Marley slapped her guns hard, making her butt shake. I tried not to watch that distraction, but it was a very nice butt. She wriggled it at me absentmindedly. "You've been talking to Melda too much."

"Not yet. She spent the last week or so keeping me shut, not yakking me into anything." Actually, I wondered about that. Melda seemed to do a lot of things by thinking at them while we were on the farm. And it seemed to work most of the time, too. Her magic, I supposed, tho I never did understand much of what she was up to. "Zombies don't talk much at all."

The tunnel around us started changing. "We're here." Marley said quietly. "You stay quiet."

We were moving into looked like a farm cluster ahead, a big place I'd never heard of or seen. I stayed in the tunnel mouth, out of sight as best I could. Marley tilted her head and leaned into her goggles, sparking a bit with someone not in my sight.

That gave me a chance to look around with my spy-eye, which I just found on these blasted goggles. A spy-eye was a camera on the end of a skinny cable. You poked the thin cable past any corners you were afraid to stick your head around and watched the feed in your goggles.

Thin black cables are almost invisible in the underground. Almost everyone had a spy-eye as standard equipment.

The AI lit up the weapons visible and I got shocked. Wherever we were right now, there were armed gangas everywhere; and lots and lots and lots of them.

If Marley was tossing me to the wolves, this was a great spot. It looked like she's walked me right into an army camp.

Other details finally made it around the stupid alarm systems. This stop was another big cavern underground, all spot-lit weirdness, green and wet. It smelt like crap, but I was used to that from being on the farm.

Truck-farm beds from the looks of it, with dirty water piped in and veggies coming out.

"Some of these have been running since the beginning." Marley pointed out as she waved at the cavern, proud of something again. "Beans and rice, rice and beans, rice or beans. "

"So you do get a choice of foods down here. Wow." Looking around the place, I wondered why these places were so different from the zombie farms. Then I caught it.

We were in waste-water treatment plant, wide open and divided into private plots. City waste in. Trays, lagoons and the walls were all being cropped with something. Food out.

Some of it looked like smoking-stuff for export too. They were the plots everyone was trying to steal from.

"You stay here, Deacon-fool. Hold this for me." Marley went into the light like she owned the place and got greeted casually, even cheered happily by the working hands in the trays. She stopped and gave money to a couple of guards, stopped for a taste of a drink or bite here and there with a couple workers, yakked constantly and passed packets of something around. She even took a few back. It didn't take long. Then she headed back my way.

"Making sure the water stays on and fresh to my place. And the dirty girls get cleaned up for my regulars." Marley sighed happily as she returned to the darkness. "With packettes, little fool. Pure gold, this dust. Anti-buds and anti-rads for buds. These deals make sure we stay fed at the house, too."

"This? Meds and ammo?" I handed her the small package she left me with back. "For food and water. You can't get junk from the teddies?"

"Teddys don't need. Teddys burn." Marley spat that out like it was news so old it should've been a grade-school lessons. "Teddys are like Borgs, only sneakier. And you can't fight 'em if they move on you; they're too fast. Teddys are crap. You can never tell what they're gonna do, ignore you or strip you clean. Or just gossip. Teddys are weird."

"Ah, You can't stop a teddy. Not without serious firepower. Those hands would've taken credits instead of meds?" I asked with real interest. Credits topside were usually information on something or other. Here, it was goods. I wondered what Marley was passing out that got her thru the armed guards standing about. You could see most of the farm-hands had guns on too.

They all looked like they could use them on a moment's notice if someone decided to get uppity about anything.

"Money? Not all of em. They have needs." Marley said shortly. "Everyone does. You deal with that. You deal with what happens down here, everyone does. No choice, there."

"Addum. Run at your own speed. Make your own plays. Play your own runs. You live that way and you die that way."

This time my AI buddy was quieter, but had decided to go right into ganga slang. I sighed and tapped at it again. The wrong way, naturally.

"Look good, hit harder and duck the bad-deal, dark-player!"

That almost took an eardrum out. The AI would not shut up now; and sounded like it was about to start rapping at me too. I stopped, took the goggles off and found the menu-switch before today's brainwashing got any more complicated than it was already.

Listening to Marley was bad enough. I didn't need any private ganga musical accompaniment in my ear too.

***

"So whatever admin outlaws this week is your best choice for traffic."

Complaining about money was Marley's second love, and I was an empty ear for her. She was emptying a small bottle while talking to me; she had lots to say about life trying to float between topside and the teddys. Most of it unkind.

"Yeah, if you like running crap. Or the market looks good." Her face hardened up again and she swigged hard at her refreshment. "A winner makes moves and scores. A loser doesn't even know there's game on."

"Underground, you score or starve. There's nothing else, so your life is all moves. Betting hard. Stalking zombies. Anything else but a fast float in the static is pissing into the wind, not a score."

The bottle got waved at me but I passed. I'd tried some real underground ganga hooch once and I almost went blind from the experience.

You learn to avoid what knocks you flat. Or at least I did.

"Law down here gets used as an excuse to dump crap on gangas." Marley grinned and waved the bottle down the tunnel we walking in. "Or steal. That shipment of whatever pills that picked up last week might be old, made wrong or just plain fake. Passing them off as anything that sells at all gets to be a pain."

"And all the serious money is topside. So is the market." The landscape Marley was laying out as an incredible excuse for crapola, 'way more than the tunnel trolls I was used to dodging around.

Trolls were a pain. Gangas would seal any tunnel with traffic in it and hold everybody up for tolls, if they just didn't rob them. They were a burn. I just turned back and started walking in another way when I saw them light up a junction.

Still, that wasn't much different from topsiders. I knew Big Brother did weird things with law to keep the blue-bloods fat, but seeing it from the ganga point of view was a little strange.

The hustle is the scam. Borgs would outlawing hot-pills because selling hot-pills illegally made more money, even after passing them thru ganga channels. The demand was high, so Borgs reg and deregulate monopolies at a whim, all for the official good.

Or some official's good, more realistically.

Zombies hunted subs and easy fixes to new problems down fast, gangas even faster; info had a way of coming to their attention even here. It wasn't much of a life for a ganga but systems lived forever even if the shipments changed every few months.

Floating instant scams were the norm. Somebody dumping extra poisons in the water (to make a market for filters) was the least of the underground problems. You had to find out about the bad water first, usually the hard way, find a cure, get some of the saving action, and then find people with cash enough to buy it.

All while humping filters to people who had no reason to trust anything you said anyway.

***

"We gotta fix you up a little before we get any deeper into the territories. Most of the ganga underground is still looking for the new teddy-deacon. There's serious money involved, even if the people offering it don't have any cred."

Marley was not happy with my appearance. That sounded sensible. She put a hand under my chin and lifted my head, studying me carefully. "Humph. You've got a good face. The goggles are a plus. A stone in your shoe for a limp, some hair-color and you're good. No need to make you black, tho that'd be a big plus. For keeping you hid, you understand."

"Deacon." She added, then giggled at the look on my face.

"What are you talking about? Where are we going now? Who said I wanted to go anywhere with you? And stay?" I was a little nervous about Marley doing anything to me. So far, the list of things people wanted to do things to me was 'way too long as it was.

"My shop. You're gonna live there for the next few days. It's handy for Henry's, the market and a few other things. Oh, relax. Lots of people sneak in and out of my place. We even have some long-termers, and private ways for them in and out of there. It's common enough for topsiders to come in buried; or want to leave that way."

Marley said that absently as she dug thru the satchel on her hip. The one on the side that balanced her gun. The move displayed lots of interesting cleavage for me.

"My girls always have lots of makeup lying around. Some of the sillier clients like using it themselves. Get used to crap like that. There's lots of stuff sold to the more nervous types that come in, too. The girls keep spares, just for the action. Hats, scarves, cloaks, coats..."

"Hair dye, skin coloring, feather boas, feather dusters..." I let my imagination go a few seconds. "Wow. I see it. You'd be good at this, won't you? Hiding things. People."

"Some of the girls can act real well, yes. It's part of the job. The full costumes are for them, tho. You don't get one. Dunno what's up right now, but if it's working, you can't have it." Marley handed me a small capsule. "Here, fool. This'll turn your hair red for a while. Washes right out, don't worry any about it."

"I'm not. As long as I get to leave your place as anything other than a little French maid, I don't care."

I shuddered. The effect of a guy dressed as a little French maid wandering around the underground market won't be that big, but the traffic I did get would be annoying in the extreme.

"You'd make a better clerk than a workie. Or dandy rowdy. Some small weenie who comes in for whips and chains on payday 'cause he can't score on quiet, cute submissives topside. A sniveler." Marley stepped back and gave me her hard look, a professional once-over.

"Try to cringe a little more. It'll help." It was obvious I didn't make the grade in any significant way. She didn't look happy at all.

I glared at her. This was no way to treat one of the defacto leaders of the underground. She grinned at me again as I bristled. "Yes, I could make you into a decent dup of fearless leader too, whoever it is this year. If I wanted to put the time into it. This isn't worth it, you're just walking in. Clerk-weasel in a trench-coat is about as complicated as I want to make things."

I nodded back at her, fingering the capsule. "Thanks loads. Your place is just off the clubs, right? Market-center? I'll be public about a minute and a half, tops?"

"Not at all. One of the entrances to my place is there, yes. I just told you, we get a lot of sneaks coming our way. They pay for the private tunnel. Most of them have sense enough to ask for it, fool."

Here I was, learning already. I didn't know Marley had connections up the wazoo in the tunnels. She'd only talked about having to stand duty in the parlor with a gun, so far. Or how cheap her dates were. "Most of the underground is private tunnels, Marley. I see lots of people and manage to avoid them all."

"You know, if I could get a private elevator like the teddys have, I'd double my traffic." Marley said wistfully, looking up at tunnel roof. "You have any idea what that'd cost me? Do you?"

"You'd never keep the Borgs out of it." I said, thinking hard. "Most of them like girls. OK, Marley, what's going on? What are you planning for me?"

"Oh, nobody told you anything. That figures."

I did not like the smile on her face anymore. It hadn't been pleasant before and now it started getting nasty. "You're gonna be either hired muscle, a cook, or a customer at my place for the next few days." Marley smirked evilly. "From the way you look, a cook. If you can cook. If not, you're kitchen help. A runaway zombie, we see lots of them in the market. You want any from the girls, you pay for it, tho. Nothing is free down here, not even air. Not at my place."

That was true. The fans that kept the tunnels aired were masterpieces of contrivance by topside and brilliant sneakiness by everyone else. Officially, the city system just leaked and they weren't keeping the whole underground alive in any way, shape or form. It was all natural ventilation.

Most places had emergency fans and vents for clean air in place anyway. That was so background you didn't even think about the holes in walls, or the bugs that lived in them.

"I dunno about this. Henry warned me. He said there'd be femmes by the truckload looking for a free ride if anyone found out I was Deacon. Hiding out at your place does not sound like a good idea to me. There'd be lots of girls climbing all over me."

Marley snorted an unladylike snort. "Then don't tell them anything, fool. None of my girls are Borg or have any significant wires, so they won't be clued in to teddy-talk. Most of them. There are a few zombie girls there who can hear the rock talk if they want to. Besides fool, Henry is the one paying for this." Marley raised on eyebrow at me, then turned away in disgust. "You think I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart? To a biz-leak I much rather see plugged fast and permanently?"

Marley started looking at me hard again. "Listen good, topsider. Melda told me she'd cut off the weed, all zombie traffic and my meds if I didn't take care of you for a while, starting now. And keep my mouth real shut about it. Just to start things off. To quote her, 'You think it's Borg harsh now, just wait till you see what kind of hell we can make the underground into for you if you screw up. The teddys will help me out on this one.' So you stay at my place for a few days, deacon-fool."

"So that's why you're taking me in. I was wondering."

Marley kept smirking at me, still hard-eyed. "Get that dye into your head, topsider. Then put this on." She showed me a blindfold. "You get escorted in. Quietly. Henry didn't pay enough for you to learn where the secret holes are."

I was starting to hate blindfolds, but I took it anyway. "Swell. Dye, too? I go in paying for it? And relax, I don't want to know what comes down those tunnels anyway. Who would?"

Marley laughed and played with her guns. "Lots of hot stuff. We're steaming at my place. You're not the first topsider to hide there, that's for sure. Or come in looking for some quiet action. You won't be the last to think it's a hotel and learn the hard way it isn't."

"You're not running a hotel? Aw, shucks. All those rooms with beds in them, too." I started the process of rubbing the gel into my hair, Marley eyed the spots I was missing and in a few moments I was a passable redhead zombie, and not topsider at all. "Maybe you should start one, Marley. Might be good credit in it."

"For you? In those clothes? You'd have a hard time getting in the front door."

I was still dressed in the jumpers I'd worn as a zombie-farmer. I guess I smelled like one too. You didn't notice that after a while.

"Girls pay better than a rooming house, Deacon. Mine have private apartments for private traffic, some of them. The commons use the rooms over the bar and sleep in a dorm. You'll be sleeping beside the kitchen, on a cot in a closet. Henry didn't pay for style, he paid for hiding. You want to live any other way at my place, you cough up for a better way to live there."

"Swell. So where do I sleep for the next few days again? Beside the stove? Under it?"

"Garbage room. Well, beside it. As far away from everyone else as I can manage." Marley looked determined about that, but I could see most of it was just bluster. She kept her girls OK, so there was a soft spot in that hide somewhere. "You'll thank me for that soon enough."

Yeah, right. Marley the softie. It took Melda, Henry, probably Teddy, money and a few serious threats from them all to get her to do this. I did hope Marley managed to keep the news of who I was from her girls, tho. Most of the 15 year old runaways out on their own I'd ever met were determined little climbers.

***

## chapter five Girl-talk and dancing

Life is dance, not dance is life.

***

"You've gotta be kidding about this! Cockroach duty?"

Talk came sliding from a side tunnel, mixed with some soft jazz. It echoed faintly, a party already going on.

"Lemme introduce you to my friends here, pal. Coughplease, Slammy and Wronghole! C'mere a sec... Best yodeling lessons this side of the Deep."

I didn't think they were the girl's real names. There was laughter, the clink of glasses and the smell of weed coming from the front rooms, along with the soft chunk of somebody playing a one-armed bandit.

This was not the teddy Tantric school, that was for sure. I decided to ignore the chatter in the house. It wasn't anything I wanted to know about anyway. Marley looked right at home with it, tho.

"Yah. Cockroach duty. That's what we call it here, and you're a natural. Go to it, bug-killer." Marley finished assigning a special hell air-hole hell to me, then vanished deeper into the house with her packages, still smirking as she collected a crowd of Jethros and call-girls around her, all interested in the box she was carrying. "Yes, I got some. You're all in. Relax, fool! It'll come out later."

I got left alone. I knew where the showers were, the kitchen was and almost what I was supposed to be doing. I even had a couple hair-gel packs.

Cockroach duty? Bugs of all kinds lived in the vents underground, some electronic, some crawling. It was their natural playground and something you just zapped, normally. Cleanup. Cockroach duty here sounded like one of the uglier chores that had to be done. Every day, probably.

On a zombie farm, bugs were quiet industrious pollinators in the greenhouse or cooker-food.

It did not sound good, whatever it was. Dumping on my life like this didn't get anything but gloat out of Marley. She was off to shoot a few tourists after sedating her staff, I think. She wasn't in a good mood and that kind of action might calm her down a little.

It figured. She was using this hiding to get even for every topsider that'd ever annoyed her and right on my tender butt. Getting thru the tunnels blindfolded hadn't bothered me. The snarky guard at Marley's place didn't bother me, even if he had quite a few low comments about zombies. I was even OK with being dumped in the closet beside the kitchen. It was clean and looked quiet.

After a week on the zombie farm, a shower and clean clothes and food sounded wonderful.

Work, tho? This place hadn't sounded bad from the tunnels. It didn't look bad at all when you were here. There were, after all, lots of young girls running around Marley's place in varying states of come-get-me undress. Hotties, beauties, lovelies and a collection of plain-jane working-types were all over the place.

They looked even better up close. Marley's wasn't a hotel, but it did come close with the normal 24/7 life of the underground. You could get anything delivered here if you wanted to pay for it, and wait a while.

Another body here would disappear easily, and easing into the human traffic in the place looked like a snap.

I was the one that snapped, tho. What I was not happy with was the sheer amount of scut-work Marley and her girls dumped on me, in their own gleefully vicious way. Marley was unsympathetic. I was undercover, right? And this was my cover, right? So get in there and cover up!

You do not want to know how many covers there are at a cat-house. You do not realize that not many of the girls that worked in the house did not like men anymore, topsiders especially. Another frustrated zombie was included and targeted in that list of evils easily.

The old hands were the worst. Spleen, spite and vengeance was all they had left to live for; and I was fresh meat.

Especially if they'd been there for a while and hadn't worked their way topside yet, with their own little black book of special friends, actually. That kind of action took a fox or some friends, and most of the older girls left running around here weren't foxes or friendly.

They tried to make up for that particular lack in attitude, not personality. Their character was all the same, tho.

Nasty.

And here I was, new, fresh and dumb. The other help had disappeared as soon as I showed, due to some ganga magic trick. That left me the target of choice.

The only target now, a hired grunt just begging for anything the they thought they could get away with. A new low-life they could order around. Someone to do all the chores they'd rather not do. Real power over someone in a place where they almost never got any power at all over men.

Well, most of them didn't get any power over men. Whips and chains was a standard but expensive around here, not an encouraged option. I got out of the shower and the girls were already lining up with chores, laundry and crap; they started hitting on me with unending, ceaseless, nagging torture before I even finished getting fed and changed into clean clothes.

They were a mean group. If I looked at a terminal, a lineup materialized there; if eating was on my mind, the cook and food vanished. I heard 'yes but first...' more times than I want to count every time I asked about something.

Move towards a door and it got clogged and blocked with floating femmes. Move towards a john or look at a TV, the same. Ask for something, and 'Sure, but first ya gotta...' came out.

I ate anyway. One of my ration-bars, actually. And ignored the nagging tossed at me as I listened to the noisy e-chatter that filled the house on my nifty Deacon-goggles. I ignored the carping going on all around me and got a girl-talk lesson instead.

By the way, you do not want to know what counts for idle chirping in a cat-house when you can listen to all the private lines. Or how spiteful young girls can get towards almost everything.

Marley's place made being a zombie look good. There were chattering girls in the commons, yakking girls in the kitchen, grim girls in halls doing chores, hot and dirty girls cleaning and bored girls out front waiting for paying attention. A few Jethros were wandering about trying to look important, too. They all wanted me to do something for them and threw themselves in the way if I moved towards anything at all.

Hustlers throwing themselves into traffic seemed to be a way of life for the whole ganga crew, except for the avoiding work part. The mind-boggling amount of sheer unfocused bitchiness being dumped was incredible; and there were tons of peeved girls awake and raving around. It was a lot like living in a bar-brawl gone bad, with live, unfocused violence washing around the place like a storm.

New-boy little old me was the focus of lots and lots of their special, off-hand malicious attention. Marley ran a cat-house, for sure.

I was sure Marley had told them to make it hard for me. There was no other explanation for this. The news that it wasn't even busy here yet and most of the girls were still asleep finally killed the whole setup.

I wasn't even a whole hour in that house before I barged out the front door in exasperation and dove into the bustle of the market. Back to my original plan of a camping trip in the deadzone, not trying to make a life out of Marley's personal-service hell.

I lucked out on the second try; I took a door that actually led outside to the market, not to some special weirdness room.

The crowds outside ignored me and that was instant relief. The bustle of the market traffic didn't bother me, it was peaceful compared to the static at Marley's. I looked around a bit, then headed off to Henry's.

My new plan sounded better and better to me. After all, I'd just come from a week's worth of walking thru deadzone tunnels dragging Eric around, hadn't I? Without getting killed. How bad could the deadzone be?

Well, pushing Eric ahead of me wasn't fun, but I won't have to do that this time. Another week down there dodging cults won't be too bad, if I could get someone to adjust these blasted goggles to something that didn't call instant warfare down on my head every time they tapped into the web.

And nag me to death whenever anything was happening. If I could get Brother John to call off the whole Deacon thing, it'd be even better. Henry's was it. To me, deadzone camping was defiantly far better news than being on cockroach duty at Marley's cat-house.

***

Finding the junkyard was easy. Henry's was big, well known, close to the market and easy to score on, even for a damp zombie quietly wandering around the market looking for some special parts.

As a redhead with no special electronic ID tags I got ignored in the market. Problem was, I got ignored at Henry's too. Getting in to see him wasn't easy at all.

I got stuck in the office line-up, waiting to deal with a busy bot who had no time for my hemming and hawing. It took a long, long time.

That was odd. For all the time I'd spent with them, I really had no idea of how to bribe a bot, or even keep their attention. It took ages to get a message to Henry and I had to walk the tunnels to the labs myself after a hint about mushrooms converters finally filtered in and got me OK'd.

It was obvious the ganga raid hadn't gotten very far. The lab didn't look like it'd been a battle zone, or the tunnel. There had been some scaring visible in the office and yard out front, but the gangas obviously hadn't made it past there.

The whole raid was a scare tactics designed to flush me out? Maybe, tho that seemed a little complicated for gangas. Whatever had stopped them was nowhere to be seen now, and I was glad of that. Henry's toys scared me.

The lab almost looked like home to me now. Henry was in the same chair I'd left him in, and almost the same clothes. The pizza boxes littered around were new thou, and Mindy was nowhere to be seen.

"Hey, Henry. People can find me with these things." I pointed to the goggles on my face. "Is there a fix? And what's shaking around here?"

I looked around the empty lab. The lab-bots were gone on whatever mysterious errands Henry had bots doing for him. Driving carts, probably. I was grateful for Mindy being absent. Another grumpy female was not on my list of things to tolerate this morning.

"Sure. No problem." Henry pushed a pair of bifocals up his nose and peered over them at me. "Hey! Well, Deacon. What brings you back here? You ready to shove meaning and evolution into 'bot lives yet?"

Wired into his terminal via goggles again, belly pressed up to his desk, Henry was almost ignoring me. That felt OK. Some important work-in-progress going on, I guess. He nodded at me but didn't turn away from whatever he was doing for long. I walked over and handed him my goggles without a word.

"And not tossing nifties down bandit throats." He added, plugging something into the goggles, nodding to himself as they beeped happily, than started in on whatever it was he wanted to do on them. "Or zombies. No bandits today? Whatever happened to happy manhunting, you noble you?"

"Manhunt? That's Teddy's job. Meaning? Nobody wants any. Bots are just like gangas, they want to score. That's it. Their sea of troubles doesn't need my sinking ship, it needs bail." I headed for a chair, wondering how long it would take to get the red out of my hair. "And whatever is happening out there, it's not my fault."

I looked in a handy reflection available in the side of a machine. Being a redhead got you weird reactions in the market. With me, most people assumed a loose zombie was a broken zombie with lots of married cousins in the family tree somewhere. At least that's how they were treating me out there.

"And why aren't you at Marley's, Tracker?" Henry nodded happily at whatever he was doing. I tried to avoid looking over his shoulder as I collapsed into the chair. "I thought everything had gotten arranged. You were gonna hide at Marley's for a while. Learn the ropes."

"Nope. No ropes. Not staying anywhere girls can get at me with ropes. 'Way too many troubles there."

I wasn't telling Henry I'd gotten ragged too hard by the femmes at Marley's to even consider trying to live there. Real deacons were supposed to be able to handle little things like that, right?

"Ah, you begin to learn, grasshopper." Henry was shaking with laughter now. "The ganga-way is of all-floater moves. Hustle, burn and score. Pure static."

"Selling the sizzle, no matter what has to crash and burn first. No matter what they have to shoot down first. After a few minutes at Marley's I was gonna float some winner right in the head, too. Man, that place was hell on a stick. The one they were using to beat people with. Where's Mindy?" I looked around the lab. There wasn't any evidence of her ever being there. "Things going OK with her upgrades?"

"Better than anyone ever expected, Tracker. 'Course, we aren't done yet." Mindy said that herself as she marched into the lab, armed to the teeth and still wearing her warsuit happily. The suit was used and dirty, but she looked dainty and still fresh as a daisy. The little blond CyBorg started cleaning and putting guns away in a cabinet without even glancing at me.

She was not done with her little weapons-and-upgrades shopping trip, obviously. "You're not going to tell me what you were just doing, are you?" I asked reluctantly. It did look like she's just come in from pacifying the northern front, but wherever that was, it hadn't tired her out any. She was humming a happy, mindless little tune.

"Nope. I'm a need-to-know type person and you don't need to know." Mindy banged the cabinet shut in satisfaction, then really started ignoring me.

"Mostly training and a couple side expeditions topside. All sneaking. No serious action for her yet." Henry added his two cents worth as Mindy jacked her suit into the same cabinet her toys were in. He blanked for a few seconds, scanning the fresh data feed. "Humph. Looking good." Henry finally grudgingly admitted. He looked proud of his work, and relieved. Mindy mostly ignored him. "Stable systems, no stress, top performance OK. Bad money forces out good, tho. We're not finished here yet."

"I'm going camping for a while. Are you baggage?" I asked Mindy as she finished her cleanup. With overalls pulled on over her warsuit, she looked like another small teen scrambling off the market. She puffed hair out of eyes and looked over at Henry, who shrugged, a little reluctantly.

"No, but you might be." She finally answered, tucking away ammo-belts with a clatter and puffing hair out of eyes again. "Maybe. If you're lucky."

"I handled a whole Borg death squad by myself yesterday." I mentioned casually, buffing my nails and gloating at her. "The ganga farms today. And a cat-house. You do anything interesting?"

Mindy was quiet. She was already planning a camping trip, I knew it. That was all that'd be coming out till she'd thought about it for a while.

I knew Mindy well enough for that. Then she shoved her hands in her pockets and headed back out of the lab without another word. "There's a couple things I gotta check out first." Came echoing in from the tunnel. "Don't wait up, Tracker."

The lab went quiet as soon as Mindy had finished talking. She did move well, even in her civvies. Silently, anyway. "Swell. And I always thought girls liked me." Was the only answer I had for that.

"It's your money, not your good looks. Trust me." Henry went back to his terminal, checked a few things, then handed me the goggles back. "You should've picked up on that this morning. Maybe we should send you back to Marley's till you smarten up some more, Tracker. There, fixed. You're untraceable again. Variable Ids, on a rotation."

"Till I'm not. And shut the damn AI off, would you? It's useful, but rags on me all the time. Voice, even. Annoying during firefights, that. Any good way of this thing telling me if someone's watching?" I started the slow process of getting the goggles back up to my speed again. I was happy that Henry had seen fit to include my personal files in this version, tho.

How he got them I didn't know, or ask. Mindy, likely. They were here and that was all that counted. It made for a nice homey touch to the noisy AI infesting this model. The one I couldn't shut up for very long, because of all the warnings I'd left turned on.

Then I noticed Henry had left the goggles flagged to a page in the manual. Auto-AI somethings. I wondered what other info he'd just scrounged from the set, but didn't waste any time thinking about it.

A week or so of being locked in a drawer couldn't be that fascinating to watch.

"Watching the watchers? Nope. Bugs watch the system, not you." Henry shook his head sadly and sighed. "Patterns from the noise IDs you, not personal add-ons."

"Great. Any word from Brother John?"

Henry shook his head, laughing at something only he knew about. Brother John going missing seemed to be a great joke to him.

"Say, any advice about cults to avoid in the deadzone?" I asked Henry, slowly feeling my way thru the goggle menus again. "What's down there this week? Religious loons, killers, the desperate, zombies, whatever. I need some quiet time, not a mob rioting over my cute little butt. Deadzone Cult-ground has got to be quieter than nesting with gangas." I made a few small adjustments on the goggles and hoped for the best. "Or Marley. Safer, at least."

"Deep cults? Jeez. You want to explore the flood-zone? Deadzone silliness? Go back down-under? Head south? Why?" Henry seemed disapproving, but tolerant of the idea of me exploring.

He stared off into space for a moment. "Learn to use those goggles, kid. Fast. We call the deadzone Quebec now. It's different. Lots of people run there from topside." he said evenly, still looking off into space. "They end up cult recruits if they don't fit anywhere else. Mutant, zombie ganga and topsider mix. Or med-food. We don't see much of them after they go down there, for good reasons."

Henry groaned and set himself into lecture mode, with a high sing-song voice.

"Cults. Religion is positive, it develops. Cults are tribes. They want all your money, add a lot of 'thou shalt nots', then send you off to war. Didn't you know that?"

Henry did his best to sound disappointed in me, but it didn't take. He was still laughing at something. "And they can't keep people away from the team, from the looks of it. They get lots of odd-balls. A union card is heaven for some people, got it? Perfect, permanent and free stuff for the elite card-holders. Guaranteed heaven. All rules, no thought. OK?"

"No." I made the attempt to get back on track and the damn goggles warmed up kicked in their noise again. "Religion is marriages and funerals to me. Teddys are weird. That about covers it. Cults are different how?"

"Note. Faith, religion, politics dynamic. Tribal, feudal and techno structures. Admin, manage and develop functions." The blasted AI started chirping at me, and in it's usual gibberish. I cursed softly at it.

"Shut this damn thing up for me, wouldja?" I wrenched the goggles off and handed them back to Henry. "Or at least restrict the AI to text mode. It's a big nag."

"The AI is supposed to be a nag. That's why it's there." Henry looked meditative for a moment, playing with the goggles absently. "We call them backseat drivers."

"Religion is funny, Tracker. Cults are extreme versions. Methods change. Complaints change, excuses change. Results don't. People usually don't change gods at all till the money goes bad, or at gunpoint. Cults are all-volunteer armies."

Henry looked at the goggles and punched three buttons, then handed them back to me with a disgusted look on his face.

"You should know all this, you are a cult now. Blast! The belt-bomb idea of yours is sounding better and better, Tracker. That Borg run-in you had a few hours ago was dangerous. Too dangerous. Too close for comfort. I wish you hadn't suggested the belt idea to Teddy 'cause now he wants you to have one."

"I don't wanna know who else thinks it's a good idea." I grumbled, fitting the goggles back on. "Or if Mindy is my new ball-and-chain ether. Do me a favor and don't tell me these things."

"You're saying that a lot lately, aren'tcha? Welcome to management, newbie. Just wait till you get stuck with lots of screwups determined to make a hole in your life for themselves. Niche-makers. Hungry ones." Henry started chuckling again. "The politics only gets worse as you climb, Deacon. It adds up and up and up and you're at the top of the heap now. That'll be lots of fun, eh?"

Tucking away cables, Henry sighed and stretched out in his chair, cracking elbows, knees and his neck as he stuck his legs out in front of him and waggled his feet wearily. "Send Mindy off deadzone camping for a while. Humph. Hey, great idea maybe. I could use a little thinking time and getting her out of my shop sounds good. She can't even hear a rumor about something without wanting the latest version built in."

I shrugged, expecting to hear something like that. A CyBorg in a weapons shop sounded like applied silliness to me. "That's my girl. Your place is CyBorg's shopper's heaven and she's just trying to make up for all those lost time and missing Christmas presents."

"Just wait till she tries to make up for not ever being a teenager." Henry chuckled evilly and eyed me slyly. "I'll drop a few programs into your goggles. Make sure you two link in here every couple of days, I want to keep my eye on things. Other than that, have fun camping."

"Just avoid the cults. Some of them recruit at gunpoint." Henry took his goggles off, dropped them on his table and slowly hauled himself up, wearily heading off to his private quarters. "I have real biz to get back to sometime, too. This terminal is active, help yourself. See ya when ya get back. I'll tell Brother John you're looking for him."

I had an OK for camping, and it went over a lot easier than expected. I wondered what I was doing wrong.

"Desperately." I called out as Henry disappeared into a doorway. I could hear a fresher starting up as the old guy started to get back into human-mode from his active hacker-life. "I want out of this. Or I'll Deacon all over his little furry butt for him."

Henry chuckled again as the door closed and I was left alone in the lab.

***

"Careful with that tunnel. Bad air in there."

Mindy and I had left Henry's as soon as she got back from whatever errand she had to run. She knew where all the supplies were in the lab, and was happy to get going.

Knowing Mindy, the errand was delivering a personal beating and some threats to some idiot that'd annoyed her. I didn't ask, Mindy had a way of telling you whatever she wanted you to know and right to your face if she wanted you to know something.

With her knuckles.

We'd been marching a labyrinth of tunnels for a couple of hours now and the teddys, gangas and Borgs of the usual underground were well behind us. This was the unwired deadzone, natural deeps and raw rock. Dusty tunnels. Air moved slowly here, if at all.

Communications with topside or even the underground didn't exist.

Mindy was leading and stalking ahead of me like this was the most fun she'd had in years, peering into every cross-tunnel and vent, testing air and eying the moss on the walls like it was thinking of trying some sudden moves. Sudden halts, total silence the occasional rapid trots and ducking for a few minutes into cross tunnels for silent waits was common. Her helmet-light, when she had it on, weaved and bobbed around like it was a snake on steroids.

I was getting irked with going commando and getting tired just watching her. From behind, naturally. Mindy the CyBorg was riding point, as always. She'd elbowed her way there before we had even gotten out of the lab, and I was stuck tracking her antics from behind.

The view wasn't that bad. "Bad air?" I asked absently as we passed the tunnel.

"Natural gas pocket. Any spark and it goes boom. Might be a zombie farm down that way." Mindy shrugged and concentrated briefly on the darker spot in the gloom that meant another tunnel junction. "It's a nice natural defense. Gas fumes puddle down at the bottom of the tunnel. Your goggles probably spark enough to set it off. They use that trick a lot."

"Handy defense." I agreed, trying to look like I knew what we were doing down here. The deadzones were not teddy-tracking, as I was finding out. At all. My AI hadn't seen fit to inform me of that little gas trick, naturally. The info was probably buried in some obscure memo on zombie defense tactics somewhere I hadn't asked about yet.

"Any other hazards we might meet down here that I should know about?" My question was mumbled to the air, but I knew my goggles would answer it for me.

Mindy had finally gotten disgusted with my whining and set them up for me again, after listening to a few of my complaints about miserable stupid noisy AIs and other unhandy distractions. I blamed her heritage for being able to make my goggles dance like that.

They worked beautifully now. The menu system made sense. I could use them without putting my eardrums, the whole expedition and Mindy at risk. They were even useful, finally.

It was great. It also felt like Mom had just scolded me for not being able to find my socks, too. Mindy, for a CyBorg, had a very cutting way of not saying anything at all about the dumb civilians slowing her trek down.

My latest list of accomplishments hadn't impressed her much. The danger list for the deadzone was impressive as it scrolled across the bottom of my view, but missed the obvious. It didn't include Mindy.

Various cult strongholds,

(Lots of them. There were maps available. Every zombie, bot, mutant and teddy that lived down here was deemed a scary weirdo by this AI, apparently. There were also lots of lone hermits scrabbling a living from the rock infesting the deeps. Pensioners with no pension, as far as I knew.)

...were down here. Any permanent resident was usually surrounded by a variety of deadly traps to keep unwanted visitors away.

It was that kind of neighborhood. You had to deal with raiders, not friends.

Mutant cockroaches, toxic waste pits, secret Borg stations, falling rock zones, bad air, flooded tunnels and ganga smuggling-routes were marked on the maps too.

Dangers were color-coded, with secret experimental medical clinics marked in red as deadly threats, hermits with a bad sense of humor as yellow. Med stations were worst. They always needed fresh bodies and travelers down here were regarded as an easy source of fresh meat.

Things changed down here fast, too. I'll swear the list got longer as I looked at it. The deadzone was not a friendly place. It was also as quiet here as a zombie farm. Our breathing was a harsh raw noise in my ears.

"Feel like taking the tourist's tour of anything in particular?" I asked Mindy as I studied the hazards on our route. "There are a couple friendlies out here. I think. Somewhere."

"There's gotta be." I grumbled, looking the list over. "Or at least someone we can threaten supplies off of."

"Not many of them. And visiting isn't encouraged by anybody."

That was true. Melda had mentioned a fear of strangers was pounded into most deep zombies from birth. From the way this map looked, it was easy to see why. The only thing it didn't include as bio-hazards were current mutant raiding parties and only because it didn't know them; the rest of the deep deadzone was one huge red spot for one reason or another.

Raiding your neighbor was a popular sport here. The more recent known slave raids, successful or not, also got a big red spot.

"Wow. You got a line on any of the raiders around here?" I asked Mindy nervously. "There seems to be lots of them."

"Raiders? Borg, ganga, mutant or what?" Mindy asked instantly, interested. She seemed to think I had a line on whatever was about to drop in on us from the way she treating the question. "Raid-Routes, the R+R tracks, aren't bad places to be if you can get behind the goons. Slaves and booty by and from farmers, mostly. Groups tend to steer clear of one another and pick on loners if they can."

"Like us. Anyone headed our way?" I shot back. "Any traveling hordes of killers out there today? They would seem to be one of the things we can't avoid very well."

I wasn't warning her about a pack of whatevers coming up fast on us from behind, obviously. Mindy lost interest. "You need a harvest schedule to track raiders and that's kind of top-secret down here. Zombies don't talk much about what crops they have coming in." Mindy said absently, going back to tracking the darkness ahead of us. It seemed to fascinate her.

"Zombies don't talk about anything at all." I stuck in. "They jack together, quietly instead. Goggle world. That's a survival trait hereabouts."

"Yeah. Say. You didn't like the gangas, Tracker. Why?" Mindy asked, carefully staying a few steps in front of me and leading us on. She was weaving from one side of the tunnel to the other now, her guns loose and handy. "They look like a good time to me."

"Man." I snorted disgust at that question while watching the tunnel floor in front of me for loose crunchy gravel." They're all buttons there. It's all push and shove. If living a running battle turns your crank, yeah, good times. Surfing a lynch-mob? For me, yuck. You might like the company, I got nagged to death." I shuddered a little bit. "I want a real life, not a social one, thanks. Too treacherous in there for me."

"Present company excluded. 'Here, hold this broom a sec, wouldja? Thanks. Sweep the floor with it while I'm gone, OK? And do a good job and I'll get Shera to service you.'. That was the mildest scam I saw while at Marley's."

Mindy shot me a dirty look. She got upset at the mention of Marley's for some reason. "Relax." I grumbled at her. "You're not trying to haul anything out of me anymore. Or order me around. Or steal the filings out of my teeth."

"Gangas do tend to choke traffic, not develop resources." Mindy grinned as she looked at me. "Bad tactics. Hello, target! Winners wanna score. As much as they can get away with as fast as they can. That makes them real easy to track. Gangas float towards easy action."

A joke? From Mindy? I wondered if the rest of her CyBorg humor would be as bloody, then decided it would be. Violence and stupid brass-hats making her life miserable would be about all she had.

"Like stray moss-herders." I grumbled, pointing my nose at a section of wall that'd been scraped clean. "Why work a collection-route if you can tax somebody carrying a load in at one hundred percent instead?"

"So where are we headed?" I knew Mindy had something in mind from the time we'd left the lab. She was defiantly walking us in a certain direction and hurrying to get there. "You can tell me now."

"Not for a tour of the heating pipes, water plants, airways, vents or mutant monster farms." She answered back fast. I stopped dead in the tunnel and glared at her. "Or the cults. I've got somewhere special in mind."

That got reluctantly added. She was trying to be evasive, hard for someone trained to hammer their way thru most situations.

"Out with it, girl." I snapped at her, tilting my head. I started having deep, dark suspicions about this little camping trip. "I came here for some quiet time and you're up to a CyBorg something instead. Who do you know here in the deeps that deserves a quick visit from a newly refurbed CyBorg?"

"More Cyborgs, of course." Mindy tossed that out like it was the most natural thing in the world. "They have a training base not far from here. There's a couple people I want to talk to there."

I stayed stopped dead in the tunnel and looked around for a place to run. There wasn't one, this was a tunnel.

"Just talk? No. Oh, crap. A CyBorg base. You want to raid a CyBorg base. Are you totally insane? And I'm supposed to go along with this. Not on your life." I turned around and started heading back the way we came. "One CyBorg in my life is more than enough for me. I don't need to meet your friends, thanks."

"They aren't my friends." Mindy stuck in. She switched to radio as I slunk away in the darkness, my lights as dim as I could make them. Wrapping myself in the gloom felt dandy to me. "It's only a training camp, Tracker. They raid mutant farms from there. Or something like that."

"Anything that looks interesting." I ignored her and muttered to myself, already digging thru menus on the goggles to try and set up a few more defenses as I walked back into darkness. If I kept this wall on my right and skipped most of the tunnels, I should end up back at the lab, or at least somewhere in the underground. That I could handle. "Like me, for instance. Does Henry know about this?"

Assuming whatever else was in the deeps didn't get to me first. I put a good face on it. My Deacon goggles would had gotten me this far, they'd get me out of this if they had to. I hoped.

"No. Come on, Tracker. The place isn't that far from here. I wasn't planning on taking you in anyway. There's a couple spots I can leave you in while I take care of biz. They'll be more or less safe. So will you."

"More or less?" I asked incredulously. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"The students will all be busy." Mindy answered. "They'll ignore you even if anyone does notice you. Trust me on that."

That sounded even worse. I walked away a little faster into the gloom. "I don't need a running battle with CyBorgs today, Mindy. Even as a spectator. Or ever. Are these the loons you have on your hit-list?"

My fury didn't seem to impress her much. Mindy was still keen on heading into the dark ahead of her. I was already heading out of it as fast as I could move.

"Some of them. I hoping there's someone there. Ah, Tracker? That's not a good direction to go in anymore." She called out to me quietly. "Trust me. Please. Two passages in that tunnel will set off the alarms and traps. Very deadly ones. The way back is booby-trapped a lot too."

"The ones I didn't disable I set up myself. Also, I'd start being very quiet right about now, too." She added carefully, trying to sound innocent. "No more radio, please."

She'd started it, but I wasn't going to point that little detail to her. Mindy didn't hear things she didn't want to know. I stopped dead again and peered into the darkness ahead of me. It didn't seem so friendly anymore.

"How close are we to this CyBorg station anyway?" I whispered out, voice. Zombies have very quiet whispers, but I wasn't worried about Mindy not hearing it. She could track whatever she wanted to, and I was on that list at the moment.

"Close enough for total radio-silence." Mindy appeared beside me, jacked herself in my goggles and had me in locked into a come-along before I could even twitch.

It hurt. My arm was instant agony. "Come on, Tracker, don't go all chicken-shit on me now." She grumbled unhappily as she yanked me into around facing the way she wanted to go. "It'll only get you killed."

Mindy put a little pressure on the hold and a burst of pain shot me back down the tunnel, back towards the CyBorg base.

"Killed? By who?" I answered back. Then I got caught by the data-feed in the channel Mindy had opened up to my goggles and was amazed.

***

Zombies jack together all the time, it's how they communicate. You get used to it and very good at subtle hints when every word is gold. Silence is everything there, even radio silence. Linking up with a Borg, on the other hand, was a whole new experience.

Mindy had active data streams going all time, and lots of them. Her AI was a constant murmur and she was watching more and different things that I'd ever heard of, or knew how to use.

My AI came to life with the feeds and started meshing with hers. "Gestalt activated!" was all the warning I got before links started kicking in. A whole bunch of automatic systems came on-line.

Combat-mode. It was like getting swamped in packing-pellet alarms till the link stabilized.

I never knew Deacons were prepped to go Borg-war before. It hadn't even occurred to me to look for it.

"Stable lines. We stay linked till the action is over, Tracker." Mindy passed that over the connection to me. She sounded a lot different on-line than in person."Infrared, contact, induction, whatever works. We're wired, online and interactive now. See that?"

Her systems were open to me and I could feel mine taking up the slack for this op automatically, meshing our whole data-net into one coherent whole. In a few seconds, I was a number-two man in a Borg team, assuming one CyBorg and one Deacon Tracker made two Borgs.

It was like playing in a jazz band when everyone had their eyes closed. Myself, I'd never played anything before and some idiot had just handed me a tambourine.

Not my usual speed at all. I track Teddys using real time, not e-bugs. Well, e-systems only when I had to. They're too noisy to get much real use out of. Mindy, on the other hand, was practically all systems; her focus flitted between the collection she had running easily and naturally.

My input, too. This was a lot more than pulling feeds. Being jacked to Mindy in combat-mode was a lot like standing in her socks, with her still in them.

I could feel her thinking and it wasn't kind. It was scary.

In Combat-mode Mindy was all CyBorg, a hunter-killer locked on target. There was a hot trail she was following ahead of us, a CyBorg patrol from the base, and we were following in his footsteps, using the noise to camouflage our own.

I got the rest of the bad news as certain things became evident. We were already very deep in CyBorg territory and if anything noticed us right now, mech, auto-trap, CyBorg or pure blind luck, we'd get a full squad of super-killers on us fast; grunts that made Borgs look like Sunday-school teachers would be howling on our heels fast.

Heel was hell misspelt. We were that close and my outraged sputtering did not impress Mindy. She dragged us back into the safe zone ahead by brute force, keeping us just out of the CyBorg's range but still covered by his static.

"Be quiet!" That little hiss was unnecessary. Shaking myself loose from Mindy, I took as many hints as fast as I could from all the electronics nagging me and followed her as quietly as I could.

Then stopped in shock. Up until now, I hadn't know how to break the come-along Mindy had me in, but I just done it; and used text-book methods.

Perfectly executed ones. No hesitation, fluid, done.

It was scary, being CyBorg-for-a-day. Or even a battle. I knew, without thinking, what Mindy's whole op was now, right down to the garbage room she wanted to stash me in while she went to talk to one of her old boyfriends.

Well, talk was the least of what she wanted from him. This particular CyBorg would be missing more than a few body parts when Mindy was thru with him. Or so her plan went.

But not dead, oddly enough. She seemed oddly reluctant to kill him. That was tagged as a getaway last-resort type of thing in the options list.

I found a way to relax into the data flow and went with it. Mindy was right. According to her flows, any movement outside her plan was now insanely dangerous. We were already in too deep to back out. Plus the Borg in front of was opening up holes that weren't going to stay open long, so we had to keep moving.

Mindy's plan was to stay disguised as a student tracking the CyBorg ahead of us. One intent on pranking him. She was using all the moves and codes any other student would to keep the automatics off us.

Dunking the unsuspecting patrol into the crapper, it was called. An old tradition at the school, if you could get away with it. If anything went wrong, we were six kinds of dead, and that didn't count what the CyBorgs would do to us if we got captured.

Mindy wasn't worried about capture, or about taking on a whole squad of student CyBorgs if it came to that. I could see it in her feeds, even if what she wanted to do if that happened wasn't available to me in any serious way. I didn't pry into her plans. I'd already had enough nasty shocks for one day.

I could also see what Henry meant about going Borg. This was dangerous; you could lose yourself fast doing it. If you liked it, you'd never come out of gestalt again.

Since I was following the team-leader unquestioningly now, Mindy went right back to stalking mode and moved up the tunnel fast. I followed her as best I could, which was fast, silent, and thanks to a few new things the goggles were feeding into my head, deadly.

Plans change as fast as new data comes in; Mindy was having the time of her life winging this op. It was fun to her, and excitement. Real life to her was juggling action as things changed on the fly.

I made a few mental notes to make sure Mindy had to run sims and games more often, if and when we ever got back to the lab. Or stick her as a guard somewhere insanely dangerous, if I could find one nasty enough.

I got a peek at her weapons array, too and was very impressed. Even with the experimental upgrades.

If Mindy liked doing this, quelling underground riots would be rocking-chair to her. Taking over the whole ganga underground by force of arms would be a sleepy-sunday chore, not even rated as a heavy workout.

She agreed with me. That was also a shocker. I could feel her giggle as I realized she was probably more aware of me and my thinking than I was of her.

I also found out then Mindy did have a sense of humor. It was defiantly female, very dirty and very CyBorg.

We agreed not to go there. Laughs were a distraction I didn't need right at the moment, there was too much serious biz at hand.

Next up on our to-do list was dumping the student CyBorg in front of us in the crapper.

***

Dumping a CyBorg into the crapper meant stopping him long enough for you to get by him. Drop the roof on him, scramble his AI, flood the tunnel he had to run in, whatever.

Mindy had a special plan for the hopefully unsuspecting CyBorg ahead of us. It involved waving hello at him and waiting for him to charge us.

I found about that last part the hard way, when it happened. Mindy waited till we'd crossed the last set of autos, then simply whistled the CyBorg student over to us by yelling obscenities at him.

I think it was something along the lines of him being deaf, dumb, stupid, a lousy shot, the teacher's butt-boy and ugly too. Him firing at us as he charged was the CyBorg version of a returning a friendly hello, as far as I could make out.

It was all over before I could even blink. When I looked up, Mindy was grinning like a fool while standing over the still-breathing guard, with her foot on his throat. One of Henry's new tricks had scrambled the poor boy good, but he was still twitching. Twitching a lot, actually. It was not a pretty sight. I guess using superior force and secret weapons was an allowable move when dumping someone in the crapper.

"Hey, great. These things do work after all."

Data com feed was confusing. I had to look twice at Mindy. She was looking at her index finger in approval and satisfaction. "I was wondering if Henry's stuff would work on these guys. They are the new boys, after all." I groaned and looked for a place to hide. Mindy grinned and prepped going to play with her new friends.

War-machines had weird priorities. "If I'm not back in ten minutes, run as fast as you can in any direction but in." Was the only thing she said to me, even over our link. Strictly biz now, no play at all. I didn't answer. With the link we had going, it wasn't necessary, she knew what was my mind. Then she vanished and the link broke.

My goggles promptly got back to their usual tricks and since I was still in Combat-mode, I was relinked with Mindy again a few seconds later. She wasn't paying any attention to me anymore, she had other things on her mind.

The CyBorg station exploded like a hornet's nest when she hit the door.

I stayed quiet, I was busy. I don't think Mindy noticed me or the havoc my goggles were playing with the CyBorg internal systems. I was on the electronics duty; cyber warfare specialist. Mindy was busy fighting for her life against the combined firepower of about the twenty permanently angry CyBorg students in the base and didn't have time to hack systems too.

Luck stayed with her; more than a few of the CyBorg students were in shutdown mode, hurt, or had their weapons deactivated because of some sort of weird discipline stuff. Big weapons were something students didn't get unless they out on patrol because they tended to attack and kill their harsher teachers if they could get away with it. Or fellow students, or tourists or anything else in their paths.

Any good Sergeant knows who he can trust with a weapon, I guess. In this case, it was none of them. With Henry's new toys working, Mindy walked thru the whole pack like they were kids on a picnic and she had a smart-glock.

I stayed electronic, finding and deactivating auto-defenses and whatever else was looking in on her in interested ways. The Deacon goggles were a wonder, upgraded with Mindy's know-how like this, a lot faster than anything I'd ever had before. Whoever had hacked the CyBorg passwords at this school got a vote of thanks, too. Mutants, probably. The whole school was bristling with active weapons, more like a paranoid Borg on drugs than anything else I've ever seen.

Well, Mindy's camp in the mushroom jungle came close. The armory here at the school had to be seen to be believed, tho. It was my hacking that got the shutdown codes for the defenses out of a box somewhere, finally. My goggles, anyway.

I think. It's hard to tell who does what when you're in combat mode. I really hated it when Mindy flashed on that intel and promptly turned the base self-destruct on.

It was a heck of a distraction and really added to the confusion. The base was about to blow itself up. The base was under attack. A false priority report of mushrooms being found on the far perimeter got planted and that used to get the headmaster and students eactivated and further confused. Some of the students even ran off to fight the something else, floods, fires, famine, invaders, whatever.

Getting the bad weather reports read over the base PA made for a surreal little touch to the whole thing. I was proud of getting that done.

There isn't much bad weather in the underground. The live sandstorm reports tickled me.

Divide and conquer, or run like hell, Mindy didn't care. She bulled right thru the center. I think the students were playing it safe. If they left, they didn't get shot at anymore and a good CyBorg knows to enough get away from a fight they weren't winning.

Actually, Mindy was personally beating the crap out of the headmaster by that point. He knew her. She'd hit him with a dirty joke about something, then started belting him with her new toys before he recovered from the shock of seeing her again, or the panic of seeing lots of fully-armed students running around loose in his base.

She did have special plans for him, too. He was spiked to the wall and operated on before he could muster much of a reaction to anything. It only took seconds for her to insert all the spikes pinning him to the wall, including the one in his head. Then Mindy nodded at him, and left the headmaster stapled there bleeding to handle things as best he could.

Then she ran back to me, giggling hard as she fought her way out of the school.

The whole operation only took about two minutes; it felt like hours. We were sliding down a special escape/invasion tunnel I'd found that led to the deeps before anyone managed to put the pieces together.

The patrol guard we'd knocked out was still snoring on the ground where we left him.

And twitching, but in a much more peaceful way now.

***

"What did you do to him, anyway?"

The CyBorg slide we went down you had to go thru to believe. It was a long, steep teddy-tunnel that led deep down into mutant territory, one that wasn't so much wet as it was glossy and polished. It was also mostly straight down, or felt like it.

It wasn't even big enough for me and a knapsack. The knap went down first, right after Mindy dove in.

Mindy's warsuit handled the friction heat of the slide easily. Me, not so much. My backpack got shredded. My pants were smoking in seconds and I was currently sitting hard in wet puddle, being thankful this part of the Deep was a damp mossy place.

Mindy hadn't approved of my thrashing, whimpering or pain-filled yelping as we skidded down that tunnel, or by the way I was throwing my water-bottle around by the time we reached the bottom. I didn't really care, I was busy trying not to burst into flames right about then.

Our landing was impressive. We shot out of the teddy-hole at a good speed and gone flying somewhere in the dark. Mindy grabbed me by the collar somehow, twisted in midair, swung me around and aimed us both down a side tunnel, away from the hole in the wall we'd just shot out of.

And the wall we about to splat into. We both hit the ground tumbling in loose tunnel sand; I turned my head in time to watch my knap explode as it impacted against the far wall sadly. The chunks of it that hadn't flattened into place settled against the far wall.

There went all our supplies. Why we had to duck and cover down a side tunnel was almost instantly apparent.

The CyBorg school wasn't finished with us yet, not by a long shot. The boom from above was solid and impressive. Rock shook and leaped all around us. Explosions rumbled above and hot spraying junk started gysering from the shaft; gas, rock chips, scraps of equipment and other shrapnel.

Dust and screaming hot plasma sprayed and geysered out the tunnel mouth we'd just left and bounced off the far wall, cooking the knapsack and coating the wall with flames.

There was an impressive amount of heat in the messy gush. Waves of it traveled along the wall chasing us.

So we'd missed being cooked alive by seconds, or at least Mindy had. I was still smoking in spots here and there and fighting that particular problem by sitting hard in the puddle as best I could.

For me, it was a currently choice between being boiled, cooked or flame-broiled or my butt being chewed up. I was not being quiet about it.

I have no shame. When your pants are on fire or filled with boiling water, you tend to get noisy about it.

What just blew up, we didn't know. The boom might've been the school going up or students just having fun, it was hard to tell from here.

Mindy watched the rocks ricochet and ping from the now-sealed shaft around us in total satisfaction. She giggled happily and swatted at a pebble flying by her absently. Me, I had ducked and laid out flat on the floor on the sand, groaning.

You'd think she'd had a grudge against the headmaster up there or something, from the grin on her face.

"Do to him? Nothing he hadn't earned." The gloat on Mindy's face as the blow-out behind us slowly subsided was gleeful. "I was a student of his a while back. He took liberties."

"And he isn't dead." I sighed relief and collapsed in the damp, glad to be breathing and hoping I could still walk. "You were being kind to him, were you? I watched, Mindy. The headmaster. That wasn't torture, you operated on him. Destroyed and took a few internal mechs out. Why?"

"Oh, he's an old friend, just a stupid cement-head." Mindy sniffed and minced as well as a Cyborg can while lying down, ducking the dying live-fire. "Right now, he can do whatever he wants to without having to worry that central control will take his head off suddenly if they don't like what he's thinking of doing." She glanced up speculatively at the mess behind us. "I think that was the autos firing at us, not the armory going up. A heat-seeker missile. It should be getting interesting up there right about now."

"Again. The flack will've settled down a lot without us mixing things up for them." Mindy looked up, still with a wondering look on her face. "Most of the systems would've reset by now. Semi-normal operations. I wonder what he's up to?"

"Running. He's free." I rubbed the back of my neck wearily, then got up and started removing tunnel slime from my hands and pants. Everything hurt on me again.

"His students might even be shooting at him now, maybe. Dandy. Bad idea for them, he looked good." Mindy, to me, was another unrepressed CyBorg being turned loose on an unsuspecting underground. "He sounds like a disaster that'll look hunt you down to happen all over you. You know, he might even want to talk to you personally about this little outrage."

"Looking forward to it. Don't worry. There's a few issues he'll want to take up with Headquarters first." Mindy grinned looked up, mostly talking to herself. "Like why the CyBorgs are being held back, degraded to better Borgs instead of upped to something that'll really perform. That's practically a sin to us, CyBorg is our whole life. Might be there's a couple personal issues out there he'd like to take care of, too."

"Maybe his students will want a few words fast with him." I grumped, looking around. I reached up and hit the resets on my goggles, taking us out of the combat link. "With some Teflon slugs."

Combat-mode died, and all the sudden-death skills I'd developed while in there died with it. The peace returning to me was incredible as all the distractions stopped and my Deacon goggles returned to being goggles. I looked around the dark tunnel in relief and sighed relief. "We can hope. Words with real bite in them. We need some time to get away from here."

Looking around more, I groaned and tried to get up. It hurt a lot and felt sloppy. "Let's move. Somebody will get very interested in this noise, even if it's only King Carlos looking to offer rewards for new cruel and unusual tortures to the natives."

Sighing, I looked around the gloom uneasily and wiped slime off me in disgust. "Damn. The Deeps. Here we are, and I never wanted to see this place again in my life. I don't like mushrooms, even as soup. You have anything left?"

The tumble had shredded my pack and most of our supplies. The pack wasn't anything but roasted rags and melted braces at the moment, so I forgot about it. What was in our pockets was what we had left as supplies, and that was about it.

"Nope. I've got nothing. You'd better hope mushrooms like you, Tracker. That base up there has been prepping for an invasion down here for year or more." Mindy seemed to settle down a little as she switched to a new mode. "And they'll have a backup tunnel or two ready to go. Let's get moving. Some of those idiots might be hot on our butts soon."

"Yah. Thanks a lot, by the way. Not getting any more CyBorgs mad at me was also one of the things I wanted to do today." Mindy was unimpressed with my griping. The tunnel area we'd just come out of was way too hot to consider moving back into, so I turned and looked down the one we were in. "Any idea of where this tunnel goes, Mindy? It isn't on my maps." I kicked at the sand at my feet. CyBorgs did sloppy tunneling and left a lot of floating garbage around.

"No, I don't. I neglected to steal all the latest plans while blowing up the CyBorg base back there." Mindy mentioned, laughing again. She was getting a little giddy as the pressure came off. "You know, we could've done that op a little neater. We missed a few details."

"Aha. It's 'we' now. Maybe next time, OK? Blast. Angel's gonna be pissed at all the noise I made down here. Again." I moaned, as we staggered away into the dark. "Going topside right now is definitely out."

Well, I staggered, there were parts of me that were intensely painful to use right then. Mindy just chirped and bounced along like this was a Sunday walk in the park, ignoring the burns, scars, scraps and dirt she'd collected.

"Yah. There's just no pleasing her at all, is there?" Mindy grinned up at me. "The silly twit."

Our laughing cleared the tunnel for us.

Or it should've.

***

"Oh, shut up. You aren't bleeding all that much."

Mindy wrenched another splinter from my rear hard and fast, then slapped a med patch on the pinch. The pinch was my butt cheek, but she had no appreciation of that right now. She disgustedly watched me twitch and groan in reaction.

My pants were down around my knees, I was lying on my stomach and Mindy was sitting on my back, using her fingers to pull rock chips and splinters from my butt by helmet-light.

Tease and squeeze them out, actually. I'd collected a few fragments sometime during our getaway and when the shock wore off, lots of brand new nasty pains had started to seriously slow me down.

Maybe it'd been the way my boots kept filling with blood. I'd stopped wondering what'd hit me and we were trying to patch holes now.

Mindy was less than impressed with my less-than-stoic acceptance of her ministrations. I'd been gnawing on a sleeve for the last half hour or so while Mindy pulled chips out; I was getting more than a little tired of the whole procedure.

So was she. "I think you sat on something when you dove for the puddle, wussie." She said absently, squeezing my buttocks again. I hadn't known CyBorgs had med training before, and now I was finding out that being doctored by a pirate actually felt like you were being doctored by a pirate, not anything medical at all. I could feel her pinch another rock and push it to somewhere she could pluck it out of me. It hurt.

"Yow. Puddles don't burn their way in." Was my grunted answer. "Are we done yet?"

"No. The little ones I'm leaving in, they won't hurt you." There was another pull and yank. I twitched, and there was a hard slap as med-patch got whopped on the new hole in my rear.

"Ha. You're enjoying spanking me, aren't you?"

"Just relax. Only a couple more big ones left." There was another painful squeeze, hard wrench and stinging whap. "And relax. If I'd ever really wanted to spank you, I would've done it ages ago."

There was a final whap, and that just for fun. I could hear Mindy giggling again. "OK, get your pants back on Tracker. We don't have time for anything else."

She was making fun of my male reactions to her now. I yanked pants up as she got off me and stood up, trying to ignore the triumphant little grin flickering on her face. If I hadn't been close to fainting I would've blushed.

"You're really having one of your better days, aren't you?" I grumbled out, trying a few steps and wincing as the patches settled into place. "Ouch. This is going to be a long, hard march."

"You'll need a drink, sailor. Here. Swallow as much of this as you can. The problem is, there'll be a lot less marching for us if we don't get somewhere safe real fast." Mindy handed me her water-bottle, put her head to one side and listened, one hand on the rock wall surrounding us. "We'll get dragged somewhere we don't want to go."

"Yes, definitely. There are people coming this way. Something is. They're on the other side of the hot spot back there, so we're safe for the moment, but not for all that long."

I could not keep up with Mindy's CyBorg senses even with my goggles. She tilted her head a little to one side and listened hard.

"We'd better start moving now before we need to start moving fast." I winced as I cautiously stretched muscles, getting things ready. "OK, lead on. I'm good to go now."

"Yeah. I know." Mindy smirked at me, then turned and headed off into the darkness, swaying gently. "You owe me a valentine for this one, Tracker."

"No, I don't. You weren't that much fun." I growled back at her. "How do we get out of this mess, Mindy? Which way?"

"No choice there. Up. That way, first. Down. Then up as soon as we can. We shaft up." Mindy said, settling back into busy-mode. She stopped waggling her butt absently at me. "If I know CyBorg thinking at all, they chose somewhere quiet to invade and make a beach-head. That means we just got dumped in the middle of nowhere. We need to find a traffic route up to sneak on."

"Swell. Raider-Routes, more R and R. Listen. We're still almost directly under the base." I grumbled. "That tunnel went almost straight down. We follow slavers back to the underground market now?"

"Yah. Anything west of here will get us back closer to the underground and slavers are not a problem."

"Swell. I'll settle for anything up-ish." I drank as much water from Mindy's bottle as I could and shook my head. The water had a bitter metallic taste to it. "Any nice, empty deadzone over some mushrooms would be good, for starters. We can walk out."

"It took you a week to find your way out last time, didn't it?" Mindy eyed me speculatively. "Let's see if we can speed this trip up a little."

"As long as we don't spend the day trying to outrun and outshoot your CyBorg pals, I'm good with that." The water really did taste funny, but I needed the fluids. I drank some more as I'd lost a lot of blood recently.

"Drink faster. How are you on mutants?" Mindy asked a minute or so later, starting to get agitated. "Drink lots faster, Tracker. We gotta run and we only have one direction we can travel in. Better hope it's a safe one."

I stopped and looked at the water, shaking a few funny feelings off as I did. "Oh, crap. You just drugged me, didn't you?" I slurred out, starting to feel numb now. "With what?"

"Yah. I did. We don't have time for you to heal your way out of this." Mindy looked around nervously and I could almost hear something over the noise of the rock cooling not far behind us. "Feel like running yet, Tracker?"

"As a matter of fact, I do." I started feeling nervous, like I had a lot of pent up energy to trying to burst out. My heart was beating fast. "What did you just hit me with, one of your special sugar-pills?"

"I mixed a few things together. Call it a pep-pill. You don't really need to know anything else about it." Mindy looked at me, then took the water-bottle out of my hands. "Oh, damn. I may have over-done it. Come run with me."

"OK." I didn't have anything else to say, I was starting to burn with energy now. My heart was pounding. If Mindy wanted to run, I'd run. I was good at running and I felt great. I'd run all the way topside with her if she wanted. I tried to tell her that.

Mindy looked a little worried, then turned and took off fast down the tunnel. I stumbled and tumbled after her dim light, getting into a jogging rhythm that was only mildly agonizing after a few false starts. I had to keep my head down so I could see the floor of the tunnel, but after a few moments, I didn't care.

The floor looked cute, but didn't hold my attention for long. I focused on Mindy's butt and tried to keep that in sight. It was hard to resist the impulse to yell and start bounding forward, but even if the thought was there, there didn't seem to be a lot of bound in my steps right now.

In fact, I started staggering fairly soon.

Mindy stayed close and kept me from falling as we moved down the tunnel as fast as we could. I felt great, but we weren't making good enough time to suit her; she fussed unmercifully as I ran.

The smell of burnt sand, rock and roasted moss slowly fell behind us as we moved as fast as we could into the deep dark.

## chapter six Deep Mindy Deadzone

Rule one in the deadzone. Never talk to a hermit, or any other traveler.

***

I don't even remember falling asleep. One minute I was stumbling along after Mindy, one hand on her shoulder and the next I was being carried down a dark tunnel on a puffing Mindy shoulder.

After that, it was all being tucked away in the soft darkness. I kept bouncing. It felt good and I tried to tell her that.

She wasn't interested in yakking. When I did wake up again, it was darkness and deep moss was all around me. Moss tickling my nose, moss was tickling my butt, moss under me, moss around me. I'd been tucked into a small, dark nook in the deep rock somewhere. A natural crevasse full of deep, old-growth moss and teeny little stalagmites.

My pants were missing too. I knew about the rock growths, trust me. I was lying on one and it was digging into my back.

Mindy was with me. She was cuddled up and snoring in my ear, in fact. She squirmed as I blinked, then wrapped herself around me and nuzzled into my neck happily.

Some details filtered thru her happy purring. I was pantless and in a fair amount of pain. Mindy had been tending to my wounds again, obviously. Since her pants were also off, a few other needs had also gotten taken care of. She murmured a little, then snuggled in tighter to me, one small hand whapping me gently in the chest before she relaxed and slept again.

I don't argue with CyBorgs. Besides, I needed the rest too. Wrapping an arm around her, I went back to sleep, even if lying on my butt hurt a lot.

***

"Was I any fun?"

My pants were in disgusting shape but they were all I had to wear. I started the painful process of getting them back on slowly as Mindy and I split a ration bar from my pocket.

"Drop the subject before I drop you, Tracker." Mindy was not at all perturbed about having taken advantage of my weakened condition when we got out of the moss bed the next morning. At least I think it was morning. You can never tell in the underground. The tunnel we crawled out into was dark.

"You started to bleed again. I found that nook, chased the rats out of it, stuck us in. Things came up, I took care of them. We both needed to relax anyway. End of story."

"OK." I winced as the pants settled on me. "Was I any fun anyway?"

Mindy snorted. "Nope. You a snore a zombie snore. Sleeping with you was as weird as it gets."

That grim little bit of news didn't help my self-confidence any, but Mindy took the bite out of it with a grin. "Now for the good news. I think I know where we are. This way."

I grunted and hobbled miserably along beside her. We had hit the road fast and early today and I was having trouble getting my war-wounds stretched out and working. "Not a big think there, girl. We're in the Deeps. Somewhere 'way too close to some mushroom patches, a CyBorg invasion, mushrooms, rats and a couple rambling mutants."

"And there's a quick way out of this if we're lucky." Mindy was her usual self this morning, all war-zone and no fun. "Even tied down by you and your stupid butt."

"I'm much better today, thanks. I can even walk fast if we have to." I told her hauntingly. It was a lie, too. I couldn't walk fast right now if my life depended on it. I was too stiff and sore to even attempt that.

That was something I noticed first thing after waking. Whatever had torn my butt up yesterday was slowing me down a lot today. I was just barely tottering along and not really ready to go back to the wars.

Mindy was all cranked up again, tho. The deeps don't always give you a whole lot of choice about attacks, but I was hoping we could sneak thru. I blamed Mindy's battle-field bullet-removal med techniques for my pains. She was in great shape and flaunting it. Mindy even finished my breakfast ration bar for me.

I was hoping something would warm up to the effort as the day went on, but it didn't feel like it so far.

"So what's up today? We raid, oh, say, the Cezanne mountain complex? And what do we do after lunch?" I grumbled out as I stumped onward in the dark.

"Don't tempt me." was Mindy's short snappy answer. "I've got a plan. It involves you walking a lot, so stay up and moving. You stop and you won't be able to get moving again, trust me. We need some supplies. We're not really prepped for a long hurt hike in the deeps, you know."

"I know." Actually, I had planned on stopping at a teddy-colony occasionally and asking them for supplies while we were out exploring the deadzone. That'd seemed like the easiest way of keeping jacked into Henry and up on the news of Brother John showing up anywhere.

Mindy's little visit to her old high-school teacher had taken care of that, tho. Teddys were in short supply here in the Deeps. They concentrated themselves in a few hidden spots in the high underground and that was about it.

"So we follow the rats out. I don't think they dig their own tunnels in this kind of rock, so if we can track them, we find the fastest way out." Mindy sounded confident of her plan. I didn't think rats ever walked all that far to work, but didn't have the heart to tell her so.

"Won't work. Rats probably eat mushrooms. That means they go down." I didn't like the sound of a rat-race trek at all. I had the definite feeling rats would lead us right into more trouble, something I wanted to avoid today. "Or moss. If they don't, they'd live with mutant farmers. Rats aren't friendly. I don't think this is a good idea, Mindy."

"Whoever rats live on, they have meds. Maybe communications." Mindy did everything but crack her knuckles and start flipping a coin. She looked frustrated. "They will definitely have the information I want." she finished determinedly, looking around for someone to beat her needs out of.

I felt sorry for whoever we ran into and debated staying quiet, but decided Mindy already given up on me as a source of anything useful to her. "Fine. The fastest way up out of here is?" I asked carefully. Mindy, when she got herself all cranked up, did look more than a little mean. She looked like a stone-cold CyBorg and she was still flashing her hunter-killer look every once in a while.

"Up. Yeah. So let's get moving. I didn't see all that many rats last night, but there should be a few about. Watch your feet." Mindy marched off confidently into the dark.

"Why?" I hobbled after her as best I could.

"Because that's where the rats we want to see will show up. It's gonna be hard enough to see them in the dark using infra red. Stay looking down."

I stopped arguing with her, it was too tiring. Besides, I had no better plan to offer than eating moss and slime off the walls till we stumbled on a way out of here ourselves.

I wasn't looking forward to that. Raw moss doesn't make for a great meal even when you're hungry.

***

"I don't see any rats."

"Neither do I. Keep looking."

The tunnel was dark and stretched out ahead of us endlessly. I'd forgotten what the deeps can be like when you're hurt, hungry and tired. I was not in the mood for one of Mindy's little pep-pills yet, tho.

Hurt as I was, after a dose of those things I'd cheerfully try to climb a sheer rock face if there was one in my way. Without aids, rope or anything but teeth and fingernails. Those pills did tend to make you feel optimistic about things.

Mindy spotted the moss-harvester working down the tunnel long before I did. "Pulse! Blast!" she cursed and stared off into the dark. She was still riding point, naturally, while I got the grunt work of watching for furry beasts at ankle level.

The harvester disappeared long before we got close to him. So did Mindy.

I just kept hobbling on in the dark, by the weak glow of my goggle systems. So my CyBorg had her own little collecting to do today. Hurray. I was left standing alone in the dark, hobbling towards the last place ahead I'd seen a light, with no idea if I'd passed them yet or not.

Then I got the idea of using my goggles to track induction-sound and find the two of them. I had to hold still or my own noise drowned might it out, but it worked. My goggles did track them down for me.

Mindy and the harvester were about two hundred meters ahead of me, with a collection of shifting, full moss sacks fifty feet more down a side-tunnel. There was air moving up there. The goggles said Mindy wasn't walking the hermit back this way, she was beside a small fire of some sort.

Gathering information the hard way, I guess. Or she was planning to cook and eat the poor guy, his crop and a few rocks, rocks first. That sounded like Mindy to me. Hurrying as best I could and numb to the fact the two of them were right where you'd think they were, ahead of me.

Directly in front of me, in a blind tunnel in the deeps.

I was in worse shape than I thought. That shouldn't've been that hard for me to figure out, really.

***

When I puffed up to the two of them they looked like old friends already, but Mindy shook her head 'no' as I looked a question at her about the unhappy moss-man squatting by the fire.

"This here is Spyro. He lives in the deadzone and sneaks deep to harvest moss." Mindy mentioned quietly, poking up the smoky moss flames a little. I sniffed the flames, hoping, but couldn't smell food. There was a tiny pot on the moss too, and it was already starting to simmer. "Watch out for him, he's already tried to take off twice now. And he keeps messing with his belt."

Spyro was a collection of rags, scrappers and other equipment wrapped around a withered old man.

"A slow learner, eh? So where are we?" I spoke to Mindy and ignored Spyro. He was sitting with his head bowed on the other side of the fire. I got stuck windward, breathing fumes and smoke, but at least it smelled good. Spyro was looking miserable. Not a happy camper at the way Mindy was treating him or his latest harvest.

"We're still in the deeps, stupid." Mindy stirred the little pot with a small ladle. "And this type of moss is a miracle cure, according to Spyro. You use it as a bandage, medicine, compass, food, bait and clothes."

"Probably cures baldness too. Heh. Doesn't have a whole lot else to work with, by me. No choice in what you use for meds in the deeps at all."

"Yah, You use moss, rat, rocks or nothing down here." Spyro didn't even look up at me, he was studying his shoes intently. Mindy nodded and winked at me over his head.

She caught Spyro as he exploded in action a few seconds later, springing up and trying to get away. The poor guy didn't even get all the way up before she was all over him, pushing him back down again.

"Listen. This is the hurt guy." She mentioned carefully, pointing towards me with the ladle. Her other hand was still holding him in a sitting position. "Right now, I want him fixed up. You might be carrying him topside if you try any more stupid stunts today, tho. Got that?"

"Like I told you, there's a ladder just up that tunnel a piece. Teddy-tunnel in the roof. Leads you right out." Spyro was depressed and looked it. He slumped back into dejected mode. "You don't need me to go up that."

It was the same pose he just exploded from. I think he was faking it. Spyro looked like a shaky old man at first glance, but was a wiry collection of knotted muscle and alert rags when you studied him closely. He might've been a hermit, but you could see he was in great shape for someone who lived in the dark deeps.

Eating well was hard down here. I wondered what he did other than collect moss. "You can climb right up that vent to the market if you want to." Spyro mumbled on. "Now lemme go. Please."

"That's good news." I said, trying to sit down and regretting it instantly. "Man! Is that moss any good for pain?" I winced and shifted around some more. There wasn't a comfortable spot for me sitting, so I ended up lying on my side, breathing smoke.

"Moss is good for everything. It's miracle brought to us by the old gods." The hermit looked stubborn and glared at us. "You topsiders should live down here for a while. You'd learn these things."

"No thanks. I've been here 'way too much recently as it is." I sighed relief as I found a position that didn't hurt all that much. "A couple of weeks this month so far. Seen enough mushrooms, moss and mutants to last me a lifetime."

The hermit twitched at the mention of mushrooms, but didn't get agitated. Maybe it was the mutants. They were always a danger down here. I guess he'd seen more than one patch himself down here.

"The walking ones." I added, watching Spyro carefully. His head snapped up and he stared over at me, eyes blazing.

"Walking mushrooms? You've been blessed." He said wonderingly, staring at me hard. Light from the small fire flickered and lit up his face. "Not many people see that and live. The jungle knows."

"Are you one of the chosen?" I asked, playing a hunch. It hit the mark dead on.

"No. Not yet. The passages get closed to me when I travel the hidden ways, so I stay out here and collect moss. For the colonies yonder." Spyro was still staring at me like I might burst into flames, sprout wings or do something really weird.

Well, weirder than walking mushrooms is hard to beat. I wasn't in the mood for it. "You supply the cults. Hear of the new teddy Deacon yet?" I said to the shaken old guy. Mindy was glaring at me in disgust but she kept holding Spyro's shoulder down.

"Nope. Teddy religion is something I avoid. There's lots of teddys here that'd Borg you into the hive as soon as look at you. In the deep, teddys are pure bad news; moss-stealers, too. As bad as med-collectors. Avoid them, that's my advice. If you don't, you'll never be heard from again. If the cults don't chain you first, then sell you to the med people."

I'd never heard of anything but rumors about slavers. I was sure Brother John and Teddy had put a stop to it, at least from teddys. Legends and rumors live forever in the deeps, I guess.

"Everything down here is pure bad news unless you know what it is." I said quietly. "Mutants, teddys, gangas... Mushrooms. So. My partner is getting into your collection today. What do we owe you?"

"Oh, don't worry about it. This little patch of moss is something I crop every few months or so. Water from the vent your girl wants to climb makes it grow nice here." Spyro blinked happily at me. "Glad to help a fellow traveler."

Spyro blinked a few more times, then relaxed. "Where did you see the mushrooms? If they've moved up this way, I'll be staying away from them. They get cranky about being disturbed. Real cranky."

"Mutant farm." I grunted, resisting the impulse to scratch my butt. "The runner's place. King Carlos is taking care of it now." Spyro flinched again. King Carlos was not good news to a norm in the deeps. He'd put out a bounty on all topsiders and underground types caught here, especially moss collectors. Mindy went back to stirring the moss, alert but happy the old guy was talking freely now. I smiled at her.

"It's cooked now. Use it as a bandage, compress and sponge to clean the wounds. Drink the juice." Spyro came to life when he was talking about the moss. He obviously loved the stuff. "Works a little better as bandages if you dry it first. Cook it into paste and let set, moss makes a dandy ration-bar. It keeps. Tasty, too."

Mindy took her water bottle and after pulling a clump of moss out of the pot with the ladle, rinsed it clean and patted it dry on Spyro's shirt.. "Let it dry a bit." Spyro said, reaching over and tearing clumps of moss into finer fluff that dropped underneath him. "Like this. Works a real treat on infections."

"I'm gonna go check on the shaft he says is there. You hold him here till I get back." Mindy glared at Spyro and put the ladle down. "Cause if I have to chase him down one more time today, he won't be moving much at all when I'm finished with him. Got that?"

"Yes'm." Spyro pulled his head in for a moment, then went back to shredding moss. He used his own water bottle to rinse a few chinks of it off and put the fluff in a small pile between his feet.

"Mighty mean girl you've got there." Spyro mentioned as Mindy disappeared into the dark. "Sneaky too. Had me by the balls before I even knew what was happening and walked me right back here." He blinked absently and looked around, alert for a few seconds. "That don't happen too often." He allowed carefully.

"Only has to happen once. Yah. You learn not to argue with her." I felt myself slipping towards lying on my stomach and not being able to prevent it. Darkness was growing around me, and not because the small moss fire was dying down fast. The fumes from the fire were making me black out. "Damn. How far away is the colony you collect for? Are they believers, too?"

"Them? Nope. They sit down here and pray for luck raiding. Mutants, mostly. Mostly they sell whatever can't squirm away from them to med stations. The teddies used to buy for their Borg projects, but they stopped that a while back."

"Life's hard down here." Spyro said quietly as he caught the look on my face. "People take anything they can. Travelers, mutants, zombies..."

"Harvesters." I mentioned quietly. "Why aren't they hitting on you?"

"Cause I stay hid and people need the moss. It's not always easy to find." Spyro looked guilty. "Trappers and raiders have their routes. I have one too, only it's six months big. I also let 'em know when I see travelers. I'm a scout. That keeps the cult raiders off my back."

Spyro tapped his belt carefully, glancing at me gleefully. "See this little button right here? It sets off a signal they can pick up. Somebody should be along in an hour or so."

"Say, that's good to know." Mindy came marching up fast. "The shaft he mentioned is there, Tracker. Teddy-tunnel, so it's handholds, not ladders. Straight up. Wet."

"And we've got about twenty minutes before raiders show up to stake a claim on us. From down that shaft, probably. We're prize-money for the research stations unless we want to fight our way out." My little story got absorbed fast by Mindy. "Spyro said an hour. I'm betting twenty minutes." I added.

She looked over once at Spyro, who was still squatting there, looking off into space again and still shredding moss.

"Right. We move now." She decided, shaking herself down for action. "Skip the moss, we can't trust it."

"It's smoking moss anyway." I grunted, fading again. "Must be a new blue. Stay out of the fumes, trust me."

Mindy glared at Spyro, who sat there looking totally innocent, then glanced at me. "Ready to start climbing, Tracker?"

I looked over to where Spyro was sitting. Or had been. He was gone already.

"You didn't need him anymore?" I asked Mindy as she kicked the small moss fire out and hauled me to my feet. I got up slowly and leaned against the wall till the spinning stopped and some of the fumes got out of my head.

"No. Better hope the raiders don't try to climb down this shaft on top of us." Mindy started pushing me away from the small campsite in the tunnel. "Don't shoot at them. Falling bodies are hard to dodge in a teddy-tunnel, even if targeting is easy. Makes for a bad day if dropping bleeder pushes you all the way back down."

"Sounds like bitter experience there. I don't want to know about it." I stood and swayed a little, still leaning against the wall. "Better give me one of those pep-pills, Mindy." I whispered groggily. "I won't be able to get far without it right now."

"You get half." Mindy dug in a pouch on her belt and tapped some powered into my hand from a slim cylinder. "We might need the rest later. Eat it fast, Tracker. We don't have much time to waste if that pest alarmed as soon as he saw us."

"We're deep, not deadzone. They might not want to come all the way here in force. Or at all. That's all we have going for us. Right now, I don't want to get dropped on in a tunnel by raiders without any more serious firepower than we have left with us."

Mindy stood quivering, on high alert as I forced the powered into me and drank the last of our water. "Nice start to the day. Mutants behind us, raiders ahead, harvesters selling our path to anyone that wants it. Nice. Let's go."

"Sounds like monday to me. From deep to deadzone." The pain and fuzziness started fading as the meds kicked in. I pushed myself off the wall and limped heavily down the tunnel. "You say this teddy-tunnel shaft is in the roof?"

***

I hate climbing. Mindy was miserable about it too, she wanted to be both above and below me at the same time, and even pushed past me a couple times to check things out. Both ways.

I learned climbing handholds in the rock meant your fingers get tired real fast. My one good leg meant I was a slow climber and Mindy wanted to get up the shaft a lot faster than I could travel.

"If they hit this tunnel, they'll catch us. It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel." was the kindest comment she made about it. "If we hit bottom I land on you, Tracker. Even if I have to start from the underside."

"Slavers sell live bodies to experimenters, not chunks to butchers." I mentioned between wheezes. "Ow. They'll wait for us up top if they know we're coming. Not as far to drag us home that way. Lordy, are we going to come out in right in the market? Are we going to climb all the way up there?"

"No way. We're way too far east for that. This tunnel leads right to one of the colonies, I'll bet." Mindy blinked as she thought of something. "I wonder if we climb up inside their compound or outside it. Is the top plugged?"

"Nope. Air is moving. Wherever this leads, it's open." I knew that much. I was ready to swear the breeze was the only thing holding me up at the moment.

"Maybe a grate." Mindy whispered. "Quiet." Standing still and resting was fine by me. I opened my mouth wide and did some deep breathing clinging to handholds while Mindy tried to scope out what the noise above us was.

"If this is a garbage chute, I'm going back down and kill that guy." She muttered gingerly. "Ick. What is all this slime on the walls?"

"Normal deep dark slime." I answered her, puffing. "It grows everywhere there's water vapor down here. Get used to it."

"Somebody is coming." Mindy whispered to me. "Up there. They're waiting for us and my systems are a little wonky this morning. Unstable. You up for jacking back into combat-mode?"

I wondered about that. It was the first time I'd ever heard Mindy admit to being anything other than perfect. It probably meant serious trouble waiting for us, or she's gotten hit in yesterday's firefight too and hadn't mentioned it yet.

Then it hit me. Henry's mods to Mindy's software weren't stable yet? Ouch. That thought worried me more than I wanted to think about.

CyBorgs were bad enough. A wonky one would be more trouble than we could handle.

"No. I'm not. No combat-mode. Find a cross-tunnel to hide in instead." I whispered back. "A fight in a vertical shaft does not look like fun when you're the bottom man, Mindy."

"Or... We could just toss a little of the moss Spyro had up there." Mindy grinned at me and pointed her nose up. "Dust them first. I kept a few handfuls. That might be a good distraction."

"OK. Do it." I didn't mention I was bleeding again and my boot was starting to slip on the rock handhold it was stuck in. One was, actually. The other boot was already a bit blood-soaked and felt sticky.

"Let's hope these guys are clean and afraid of drugs." Mindy grumbled as she crunched moss up and prepped her little dust screen. "Or like smoking in their tunnel."

"They will. You don't know the deeps. Drugs are the only thing that keeps them alive down here." I grunted, trying to curl my toes into the handholds below me. "Cults and other card-holders couldn't live without them. Moss keeps the masses happy."

It felt really weird to be climbing this way. My foot always felt like it was slipping on something. The other was going numb. I wondered what was wrong with Mindy. Normally, she'd just climb right up and start pounding these guys.

The dust started wafting upwards on the gentle breeze in our shaft. I wondered about that. Most vertical shafts I'd seen were wind-tunnels gone mad with the amount of air rushing thru them.

"I think the top is a little blocked. This isn't fast air." I whispered to Mindy. She listened dubiously to me for a moment, then went back to watching her attack flow up.

"Lordy, what do they grow this stuff in, skunk oil?" She finally whispered, gagging a little as she brushed her hand off on her suit. "I don't mind drugging these guys, but this is inhuman."

I watched the dust billow up and wondered how much shoe leather I was going to need to stay in a handhold. I pushed booth boots back into the rock-hole they were standing in. More moss got powered and tossed up. "Say, how much of that stuff did you take from that guy?" I finally asked in wonder. "Enough to stop a regiment?"

"Filled a pant pocket, knee-thigh to hips with it. You didn't see how protective he was of it." Mindy dug with one hand and added another fistful of crumbly to the wind. The dust spread and billowed up, disappearing into the dark. "I knew it was good for something, he had sacks of the crap. Lovely way to pass the time. Now if we could just get these guys up there to eat, drink.."

"Smoke or rub it in their wounds." I finished for her. "OK, I got it. The harvester we were robbing was slime. He turned us over to slavers. He was trying to drug us silly first. I got it already."

"Hey, getting them to smoke some we could probably do." I mentioned as a thought struck me. "Put some in a pack and throw it where they find it. The dark in front of them, for instance. Fresh moss? It'll probably get fired up before it even hits the ground."

"Yah. Good idea. They're too stoned to worry about where it came from by now. Gimme something to put some in." Mindy agreed fast. Too fast. She really wasn't happy about being a sitting climbing target right now.

"Best I can do is boot." I answered a few seconds later, after thinking hard of everything I had on me. Oddly enough, a pocket wasn't one of things I had in my pocket. "Or ration-wrapper. And I want the rations back, so be careful." After fumbling around and leaning on the far wall to get at it, I handed over the dryer of my pocket ration bars to Mindy.

"Returned clean enough to eat, please."

Mindy grimaced and handed me the food-bar back from where she had it tucked under her arm. She glared at me.

"Cults do love their moss." Mindy agreed quietly, thinking as she looked up. "But, here's another good idea. I'm gonna go drop this on them. Maybe force a handful or two down their throats while I'm there. Wait for me here." She put the bag of moss between her teeth and started up.

"Don't breath that stuff..." I started. It was too late. Mindy disappeared into the dark above me.

I cheated. As soon as Mindy disappeared, I followed her. I wasn't about to tell her as far as I was concerned, it was move up or fall back down the shaft for me right now.

Her pep-pill was only doing so much good when your boots are slippery.

***

The side tunnel wasn't that far up. I could hear groans, a clattering and a metallic clanking down it a bit, so I snuck towards the noise as quietly as I could. I could hear a couple muffled zaps, too. Prods. Modded cattle prods. Used by slavers to keep the chain-gang in line while moving prisoners.

And slaves. I heard a pain-filled grunt or two from up ahead. Mindy had definitely been here.

When I caught up to her there were two naked guys there. In their own slaver shackles.

Two beefy guys, gagged, in chains up against the wall and glaring at Mindy while she totally ignored them, already eating one of their ration bars and drinking their water as she rifling thru assorted gear.

She nodded at me as I appeared, waving her weed-pack bait. It was untouched.

I joined right in with her, grabbing a ration-bar from the supplies for myself. Their food was a lot better than the iron rations from my suit. Or anything Mindy and I had left with us.

"They've got a med kit, too. One that isn't all burnt scraps and junk." She mentioned around a chewy mouthful. "You'd better look thru it."

"A couple more pills and I'm good to go." Was all I said. I was busy eating. "These guys like the smoke?"

"They were sitting here giggling like little girls when I got up here." She said disgustedly. "The dust got them hard and fast. Cakewalk."

"And they never knew what hit them. I hope the dust moved on or we're breathing it now." I glanced over at the two naked guys in chains. "So why'd you take their clothes?"

"Slow them down. Walking back home in their own chains wasn't nasty enough. Bootless, pantless, chained together... "

"Stoned." I stuck in, looking boots over carefully. Rats. Not my size. Mindy nodded at me in agreement. "Yeah. They'll know better next time. Maybe."

"They also busy telling me everything I want to know. Watch this."

Mindy picked up one of the prods and walked over to the naked two guys chained up at the side of the tunnel. She casually stuck the prod on a chain and grinned at the suddenly sweating slaver. "Who runs your colony?" She asked absently, putting her thumb on the trigger. "Don't lie to me."

"The truth and the hero way... EGGGH!" Mindy took her thumb off the trigger and looked at the fingernails on her other hand in a bored way.

"Just his name." she said quietly. "Now." Her thumb twitched.

"Leader Ansid. Twice-saved." The other prisoner answered quickly. "Please don't hurt us, unbeliever."

"And the way to your colony is?"

"Just follow this tunnel back a few yards. The second tunnel leads you right there. But don't expect.. AGHHNTH"

Mindy took her thumb off the button again, grinned at me and tossed the prod in my direction. The two men sat staring at me and sweating as I caught it.

Mindy had prepped them, making me the bad cop I guess. I looked at the prod, and checked the battery level, watching them cringe. I threw the prod back with their clothes.

"Nothing here for me there." I said grandly. "You want them? Dead or alive? I don't care."

"Naw. Hand on while I toss their junk." Mindy picked up their stuff disappeared into the dark with an armload, dumping it down the chute we'd just crawled out of. You could hear their prods clatter as they fell.

Food, water and med supplies were left behind. I began stuffing my pockets with them.

"Spyro will be glad to find that. His stuff is probably still down there. These boys won't be trying the climb down dressed the way they are, that's for sure. Come on, let's go." Mindy didn't even swagger. This was a mundane chore and she was finished here.

"Where we headed?" I asked, still picking up kit as we went past the remains of the camp. Two slavers watched us go in a gloomy resentment. They'd get out of the rope tying them up and mince home in chains. Eventually. If they didn't, the first person walking past here looking for them collected a couple free prizes.

Finders-keepers was a firm law of the jungle around here. These two might end up being slaves for life anyway, depending on their own laws if they went home. "Around here, the customs of the tribe are the laws of god." I murmured. "I wonder how home-base feels about nudity? Or failure?"

"It's fun, so it'll be forbidden, except where void by law." Mindy smirked again. "Antidisintellectualparlimentarism at it's best."

"Huh?" I gave Mindy a look. She just grinned back at me.

"Us. These boys won't be thinking anything but tribal. This works, our leader said so. Everything else is extreme bad luck. Illegal, immoral, forbidden. Loyal, one-god types." She explained. I kept staring at her.

"And the funny word?" I finally asked. I hadn't heard Mindy speak in much more than simple sentences and grunts yet. That little outburst was a big surprise.

"Something I made up to confuse you." She said airily. "I remembered it from school."

There had been a little too much dust in the air when Mindy attacked, I figured. "Oh yeah. You just bumped into your old teachers, didn't you?" I shook my head. "Lemme know when we're far enough away to do some first-aid work, Mindy. That climb tore some of the bandages and I need some work done."

Mindy looked around. "We're there already, this is tunnel four. Counting teddy tunnels in." Then she grinned at me. "Oh boy. Spanking time! Have the pills kicked in yet, wussie?"

I glared at Mindy. She grinned back at me and lifted her chin. "Eat hearty, boy." She grinned and wriggled at me. "Drink all you can, you're gonna need it." The grin got a little more salacious.

I shook my head again. "Swell. Of all the girlfriends in the world, I get one who gets cranked up by band-aids. Just swell." I put on a long suffering sigh. "I'm bleeding here, girl. Anytime."

"C'mere, then." Mindy pulled me down on the floor and rolled me over, grabbing one of the first-aid kits. "Lemme know when it doesn't hurt anymore."

"That does not sound promising."

That was all I got out before Mindy returned to her school of CyBorg medical arts by starting pulling my pants down and yanking off all the loose bandages she could find.

***

"We have got to try this jacked in together." Mindy was still breathing hard and felt slippery to the touch. I was wondering where my pants were. She sat up and grinned at me, reaching behind her ear. "And right now sounds good."

"No." I stopped her from plugging into my headset. "I said no to android sex. I said no to teddy jack-sex, and no to Marley's little experts. I'm saying no to jacked-up CyBorg sex right now, too. What we're doing is fine."

"Dusty, but fine." I added carefully. Mindy just sniffed at me.

"Wussie." Mindy pouted and reluctantly dropped her cable. It got sucked up and disappeared back into something behind her ear. "Maybe next time. You can't back away forever, Tracker."

I grunted. "But I can pick a safer time and place. Think those two we left in chain back there are in the colony yet?"

"Nope. Ask your AI about it. That particular colony is vicious about people cutting corners or breaking rules. Or failure and supply loss. Those two are running hard and fast to whoever can get the chains off them right now."

"Well, hobbling fast and hard and hoping to find their pants. I didn't give them any more slack than they give slaves." Mindy mentioned absently."We could catch them again in ten minutes if we pushed it at all."

"What for? Trust will be an issue. Spyro is out there for them still." I murmured as I got dressed. "Ah well, we have time before we get back to the wars. Minutes, anyway. Where do you want to go now?"

Mindy quivered and suddenly looked a little glassy-eyed. "I think I need to talk to Henry." was all she said. Then she collapsed to her knees and put a hand to her head, leaning against the wall with the other. "Hey. All of a sudden I don't feel so good, Tracker. Systems unstable, mine."

Then she fell over and stopped moving.

***

Mindy had been over-doing it; now she needed help. I heaved myself up to my feet and went over to look at her.

It didn't look good. I was proud of myself, I didn't panic, just got close enough to check for a pulse and things like that. Mindy was curled up into a little ball on the floor and twitching occasionally. Breathing. Eyes closed but rolled back.

That was it. I picked her up, glad she'd gotten her suit done back up and put her over my shoulder, surprised that such a deadly package could be so light.

She grunted at me, an annoyed little burst of pain.

"Don't worry. You want to talk to Henry? That colony back there will have a line topside. We get anywhere near it and you're as good as jacked in." I murmured to her. Mindy just whimpered a little and twitched at me again.

I know nothing about CyBorgs, or how to turn them off. Repairing one was totally out of the question. Mindy kept it that way, from an info-habit buried so deep it she didn't even think about it. There wasn't anything I could do for her.

Henry might have a few fast fixes, tho, if he could get at her. If I could get a line to him was a hopeful second-best.

Returning to his lab was going to be the big problem. I hit up my deacon-goggles and tried to set a few fast courses back there that didn't involve going thru nasty patches of deeps, underground or unknown zombie farms.

There weren't any, especially for a limper like me. The closer you got to the underground from the deadzone, the more likely you were to trip over somebody living there, or one of their traps. Everything was classed as hostiles and there was no safe route. Everyone would be looking for us, too.

Anyone keen or lucky enough for the reward on my delicate little rear, for instance.

This was my typical day down here. I needed to get to Henry's and there wasn't a good way to get there from here. If we went deep, it was all unknown and mostly shoot on sight. The Deadzone didn't communicate with topside very much and if I opened my mouth at all on any com, various Underground people would start getting very interested in where I was.

Angel would definitely want to know what all the noise down here was about, for starters. Borg death-squads were probably enroute and they were definitely a bunch of shoot-first, ask-the-bodies-about-the-CyBorg-school-riot later types.

I wasn't all that sure we could get to any com-lines the colony might have anyway. The zombie farm I was on had their lines shielded and buried deep in solid rock that went straight up to a junction only they knew about.

Cults usually didn't want any contact with unbelievers at all. That was common enough in the deadzone, it was usually why you went there to live in the first place.

I didn't even know if the tunnel back there opened up in the colony itself or outside it. I was hoping for outside and ungrated. That made more sense to me than an open hole to the heart of the place, but it was all I had to try.

There. I had a plan, mere minutes after setting off walking. The rest of the walk went a little faster than I thought the back-tracking would, and I even got the right tunnel in on my first try.

The other tunnels I passed were dead-ends, mostly storage rooms and other more exotic places. Collections of rejected garbage from the colony and rats.

Mindy didn't say much, it felt like she was trying to sleep as best she could. Not easy when your automatics kept alarming about where you were, what you were doing and various system status alerts.

The blackness of the tunnel opened up to a weak glow. The tunnel to the colony was gated, of a kind. It had a massive louver of grate planks across it. It even sounded like there was a guard on the other side, but that might've been my imagination. The louver was locked tight and not moving, only two top slats open for air.

If there was a guard on the other side of this, he was happy about something. I guess some of the dust had got this far, but if they needed air from the deeps in there, they spread the louvers. They wanted the gate opened something, it opened from their side only.

I wondered about radio and decided to start taking chances. The louver was my new antenna. My goggles were masterpieces of snooping tech, were they not? My AI should be able to steal some line-time from the colony if they had anything going topside; or to the underground.

They did, after all, spend some time listening for Spyro. There should be something going on I could sneak in on.

Sitting down in the dark and waiting was easy. I kept Mindy in my lap, tho I don't think she appreciated that. I put the AI on sneaky mode from smash-and-grab attack and waited for it to snoop an open line. The beep that meant we had com topside and were connecting to Henry's took a long, long time.

It took a very long time and it wasn't a good line.

The colony did have some electronics, but apparently topside communication wasn't encouraged at all, and highly restricted. Even with my goggles, it'd take me a while to map all the resources and find the best method for emailing a scream for help out.

A quiet, private-type scream. Without getting a troop of angry cultist barging in here after me, looking for their missing bodies first.

***

"Henry, I'm hurt, Mindy's is down hard and we're trapped outside this colony. This location. What can you do for us?"

The burst hit him before Henry's hello got out. He didn't have a lot to say. I'd cut right thru anything he'd wanted to say. "This is an unsecured connection I can't keep for very long, either. I added as Henry shifted mental gears. What do I do for Mindy? She's bad off. Systems destabilized."

"Got it. Teddys on the way." Henry had adapted to my little story with a minimum of fuss. I was glad to hear that, there wasn't time to repeat a lot of it. The static on this line was fierce. I was piggybacking the weather reports again, as far as I could tell.

My deacon goggles had been a little vague on the point. I'd finally gotten frustrated with waiting in the dark for an open line and ordered it open any available communications and get to Henry fast.

Mindy was getting worse. Her eyes had rolled back in her head and she wasn't responsive to anything anymore.

"I need data." Henry grunted out, peeved. "I'm not even in the lab. What happened?"

"Everything. CyBorg school raids, slavers, moss-muggers... me." I added that last one in carefully. I didn't know how relevant it would be. Henry just grunted again. "She's out cold now and getting worse. Said something about unstable systems. What can I do?"

"So that noise was you two. That figures. Jack in. Plug into Mindy." Henry grunted, annoyed at me messing up his latest work. "I'll walk you thru."

"But..." Hopelessly, I pulled out my jack and wondered where to plug in. I spotted a connector to her suit and got instant feed when I plugged in.

"I don't want to Borg again." I grumbled. "but I'm linked to the warsuit now." I told Henry. "Getting access."

"That's almost useless." Henry snapped at me. "Plus insanely dangerous. Pull out, now! The suit won't like you at all. Pull her jack out from behind her ear. The left one. Plug it into your goggles. And hurry, her suit gets cranky about hackers real fast."

I yanked the jack out quietly. It'd taken me a couple attempts to get that set up. I had to take the goggles off to even find where Mindy was supposed to jack into them in the dark. Her jack as an invisible thread in the darkness and came from something that looked like a mole behind her ear.

I came back online to find the warsuit still querying me and my goggles about passwords. I lost that almost immediately as Mindy and I got on-line and Borged up together.

Henry heard my yelping quietly as my goggles tried to overwhelm me again. "Don't lose it." He snapped. "Just relax with the flow. What do you see?"

"Everything." I muttered back. "Yeegods, this is worse than combat-mode. What do you want to know? The warsuit is happy now. Happier, anyway."

My goggles got a few passwords from the gestalt and started settling the warsuit down. It had been threatening to take lots of preemptive action against intruders fast if there wasn't something it could understand happening real soon.

"Huh. That's not supposed to happen. Even I don't get it. Mindy must like you." Henry grunted absentminded. "Good luck with that, by the way. Now tell me what you see."

"A thousand menu systems. Translucent, piled on top of one another. Transparent. Her's and mine." I said, trying not to get too confused. "Some of them are merging, more new ones growing in every second. Gestalt mode emerging, it says."

"I can't tell much without data but..."

The line crackled and died for a moment. I guess my goggles got distracted by the confusion and lost the line. It came back after a few frantic seconds.

I couldn't even see anything but menus anymore, not that a dark tunnel we were sitting in had anything much of interest in it. Gestalt mode was distracting enough all by itself, but my goggles were trying to Borg me into something new again.

Something Mindy had in mind. I took a quick look and groaned. The girl did have only have one thing on her mind and she'd been prepping for it. A lot.

"Henry, Mindy has automatics kicking in for something. Bio-Gestalt, it says. Unnnerah! If you hear me moaning, just ignore it. Quick, how do I turn this off?"

"Main menu. Status. Diagnostics. Critical systems. Oh, and we've been hacked up here. Expect lots of trigger-happy company coming your way soon." Henry didn't sound anything but peeved. Being a lurker on my cybersex wasn't turning his crank and dropping a few armies on his latest weapons system wasn't making him much happier. "As soon as that takes, hit weapons and shutdown. The code in there is sloppy. It's probably what's destabilizing her."

"Or the dust." I tried, but was really getting distracted by the exploring Mindy's bio-gestalt. It was doing things to me, and experimenting as it went.

"Weapons shut down." I finally gasped. "Bio-gestalt won't halt."

"My, she really does like you." Henry sighed and I could almost see him thinking. "Must've been working on that when she konked out. Try operations, status, fast AI shutoff. If that doesn't work, the next item on that same menu is total reboot shutdown."

"No shutoff. Reboot working, I think. It's fighting several things.., me, Mindy's AI and the warsuit."

I watched the lights slowly start to die across the system. "Oh, thank god. Success. She's going down, bio-gestalt stopping." I reported to Henry.

"Good, because this is what you need to do next or..."

With that, the line died. Mindy jerked once and went catatonic. Her warsuit even stopped it's nagging and hesitantly asked me for a status report. I unplugged, and after a couple seconds careful thought, gently unplugged the jack from her suit too.

The CyBorg jack retracted behind her ear fast and disappeared. Whatever a reboot was, it didn't need me watching to confuse issues. The warsuit she was wearing stayed quiet.

I hoped.

***

I took Henry's advice that several interested people were coming after me and did, to me, the obvious thing.

Retreat somewhere stupid fast. We were in the deadzone, and this place was very limited and well-mapped. There were lots of unfriendly troops available. The only place Mindy and I could safely hide for very long was back in the Deeps.

I do not know how I made it down that teddy-tunnel carrying Mindy across my shoulders. I don't even know how I got there, but nothing bothered me between the colony entrance and the narrow drop back down.

Both the slavers were gone. Their clothes and the sacks of moss were missing from the bottom of the shaft.

I took a chance that Spyro's trail would confuse the issue and started following him, or at least where I think he was going. Carrying Mindy in the dark while I limped down that tunnel wasn't easy.

Mutants collected us both before I got more than a few hundred yards down into the dark.

***

"Quiet. We're getting lost in the shuffle here. Don't blow it."

Mindy came up fighting, as usual. At least she grabbed for me, then let go almost instantly. I moved back and that got her more agitated.

I held Mindy's shoulder down as she blinked herself awake and promptly checked out the other people in the room with us carefully. One of the first things she did was fumble for her warsuit jack and plug back in.

I wasn't worried about the people we were with. None of them had any reason to like us, just like the guards outside, but they were cool at the moment.

We were with friends, so to speak, at least most of the company. Spyro was sitting alone in his usual heap, looking depressed and very sad with the world. One very battered-looking Borg was out cold on the floor, being ignored by everyone. Two cultist slavers, now in diapers, were still chained together and looking very worried about their current situation. Mindy and I were tucked into a corner of the cell by ourselves.

"I'm OK." With that Mindy batted my hand away, then looked very surprised at something happening to her. She glanced around the room again, looking at the Borg twice, then went into some internal monologue with herself.

"Tracker, what on earth did you do to me?" She asked in a shocked tone. "Oh, crap, NO!"

"Quiet! No one here knows you're CyBorg. With everything shut down, you walked right past all the detectors." I murmured to her. "You a zonked zombie, got it? So am I. I can fake that. Don't get anyone any more upset than you have to. It's been quiet in here for us so far. No undue attention."

"What happened to you? I followed some advice from Henry. A reboot. You were konked and slipping further down. I didn't know what else to do." I said quietly. "I tried shutting everything off. Plus I may have called every available army in the city down on that cult while using their phone line. The call got hacked."

"Mutants? We're back Deep?" Mindy asked, opening her eyes once to glare at me in a peculiar way. I nodded yes. She sniffed and went back to whatever she was doing.

"You triggered a complete rebuild of my AI when you did whatever you did, stupid." Mindy opened her eyes and glared at me. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. Do you have any idea of what that means?"

"Restart? Rebuilding a gestalt can't take that long." I answered, looking puzzled. "It happens reasonably fast, at least with my AIs. What's the problem?"

"You didn't turn off the other stuff first. In the right order. I had the bio-gestalt running as a top priority." Mindy glared at me till that sunk in.

"Ah. I get it. You just fell in love with me from the AI up?" I asked, grinning a weak little grin at her. "Oh, crap. Obsessive, compulsive, fixated. Computer-driven fascination or something like that?"

"Especially the something like that part." Mindy grumped, winding up to take a swing at me. "If you jacked in right now, you'd get the surprise of your life. I am not battle-ready, at the moment. And won't be for a while. So to speak. I am, right now, restraining all auto-AI reflexes. Better hope we have a few minutes alone, or the first time I try to move, everyone in this cell gets a free show."

Mindy glared hot at me. "Do yourself a favor and stay out of my reach for a while. Get. This is gonna take a while to fix."

"So? Reboot again." Mindy glared at me like I was saying something stupid. I shrugged and moved away from her a little, trying to stay quiet.

"Ah, play dead for a while longer, dear. It keeps the mutants happy." I suggested to her. Mindy took one long hard look at the Borg, dismissed everyone else in the room, then seemed to reluctantly agree.

"Call me dear again and you talk in a high squeaky voice for the rest of your life." She grumbled out softly. Too softly. I noticed Mindy's eyes were dilating every time she glanced at me, then going back to normal while she considered beating the crap out of anyone else in the room.

"Going." I moved a little further away from her, but still between her and the rest of the crowd in our cell.

She nodded approval, smothered a grateful look at me, then firmly shut her eyes and went back to whatever she was trying to do.

"Henry say who was coming?" She finally asked, not opening her eyes.

"No. From the chatter the mutants have going, everybody. Henry scrambled the whole teddy and bot army after us, from the noise they're making out there. The city ordered Borgs in. Angel to find out who was making all the racket and why. She is not going to be pleased to find out it was me again, especially if yesterday's noise get pinned on me and not my girlfriend. The gangas sent troops down in force to snatch whatever they could, and seeing how I'm deadzone and hurt right now. Mutants are bent on collecting anyone left just standing around. And right now some poor cult is wondering why every gun in town is headed for them today.

"They all meet up at the cult-ground. The two of us are just fringe noise." I shook my head sadly. "Monday for sure."

"Mutants? They captured us. Mutants seem to worry when several armies head for one of their doorways. It's a habit with them, so they're busy prepping for all-out war right now." I sighed and relaxed a little. "That's why we're being ignored and not tortured to death. I think."

That girlfriend remark got a small involuntary 'huh' from Mindy. It sounded like a small happy 'huh' to me. I looked away from her and tried to moderate my comments.

"I think that about covers it. I didn't get the mushrooms mad at me while you were gone." I scratched my chest and blinked wonderingly. "I don't know how I missed them."

"You were a busy little lad, weren't you?" Mindy sighed and opened her eyes. 'You had what, almost an hour to yourself? Do you see why Henry and Teddy worry about you now?"

"Yah, sure. Are we good?" I asked her carefully as Mindy seemed ready to wake up and join the world again. She opened her mouth to answer that, looked startled, then firmly closed her eyes and went back to whatever she had been doing.

I let her do whatever she wanted to do.

"How'd we get here?" Mindy whispered to me a few moments later.

"I carried you here. All the way from that tunnel up there." I answered her. Mindy's eyes popped open again and a mix of emotions played across her face as she stared at me hopelessly. The she closed her eyes again firmly.

"Lose some weight before I have to do that again, wouldja?" I added carefully. Just in case that would help break the mood. "I have this bum leg at the moment."

"You're gonna have nothing left if you don't stop bothering me." Mindy answered sweetly. "Dear. There, fixed! You are out of my system."

Mindy almost sat up, but decided to just look around the room and glare at people for a while instead. "Tho I should beat the crap out of you just to test these kludges." She said, more to herself than anyone else. Her eyes stayed normal when she glanced at me now.

"Ah, no thanks." I grunted. "I have enough pain at the moment."

"I want to make sure they're working. If they aren't, you'll die happy." she promised, head bent down and glaring at me from under her cute little eyebrows. "If they are, you won't be awake long enough for it to bother you."

"Gee, thanks. Can we battle-test your killer instincts on someone else?" Then I sat back."Oops." Cute little eyebrows? Mindy?

"Ah, Mindy?" I asked nervously. "You do know we were jacked together for a while, right?"

"Yeah? So?" Mindy was shaking various body parts, making sure the rest of her had survived the trip and was in working order. I was surprised at how fascinating that process was.

"How catching do you think that bio-g was?" I asked carefully, still squeaking a little. Mindy stopped whatever she was doing and stared at me hard.

"Not very." She finally answered. "Compared to mine. I'd be careful how I used the goggle AI right now, tho. Some brand-new priorities might pop up for you."

"Like what?" I asked nervously.

"Like remembering my birthday." Mindy answered carefully, watching me closely. And I knew, without thinking, Mindy was decanted on Sept 14th, she liked roses, dark chocolate and her idea of a fun date was scuba-diving.

"Oh, crap. I am so dead." I whispered. The deacon AI was running a film of Mindy changing into her scuba suit for me. "Pink snorkel-wear? Really?"

"Damn. Delete all that stuff the first chance you get." Mindy reached over and smacked me across the face gently, breaking my fascination with her antics. She was throwing her gear at the camera, one piece at a time. "We don't have time for that right now."

"I'll say. You don't dive very well."

Mindy ignored me and got back to the issues at hand. "OK, we're locked in a mutant cell with a couple other losers. A few of them."

"About to die horribly." I added. Mutants didn't have much a reputation for treats norms very well.

"There's a few armies outside looking for you outside. Us. Borg, ganga, bot, mutant."

"Only a couple of them want to kill me. There's one plus."

"And we've been here for how long, an hour?" Mindy sat up and grinned at me. "So what are we waiting for? Let's bust out of this crummy dump."

"Because we're in the middle of mutant heartland now?" I asked carefully. "And this is a safe spot? I got carried here myself, Mindy. I was out and don't know where we are."

"I do. I tapped into the guards outside and got a few updates. The war is not going well for the mutants. In fact, they are running away as fast as they can from whoever shows up out there."

Mindy sounded a little self-satisfied. 'And the guards outside are discussing leaving right now themselves. If we can spook them more in any way..."

"We get stuck behind a locked door with a roomful of losers to take care of." I finished up for her. "Including a Borg. Oh, no. You're not considering calling in a few troops to get us free are, you?" I asked her. "That'll just get everybody heading right for us."

There was a boom outside. Reasonably close. Someone had just taken out a locked door somewhere down the tunnel.

You could hear the guards outside scream and run away as fast as they could move.

"Actually..." Mindy grinned at me and stood up, looking like a fully functional CyBorg again. "Not rescue us. They want the Borg. Now looks like a good time to field-test these repairs." She nodded at rumble in the tunnel. "Those are Borgs out there."

"Don't call them in, we already have one in here with us." I grumbled as Mindy strode over to the door and fiddled with where the lock should be. "He isn't doing us any good."

"Too late. I want them to open the door for us. Rescuing their buddy should get them in here. Try to wake him up. He'll be useful soon." Mindy grinned over at me. "Hey, wanna link into combat-mode for this? It could be fun."

"No."

I went over and checked out the unconscious Borg while Mindy played with the door. You could hear firing in the tunnel now.

Then I played one of my own bets and jacked into his goggles to plant a little diversion.

***

"Here, put this on and play zombie."Handing Mindy my shirt, I stepped away from the Borg and stuffed the dirty cloth into Mindy's hands. "If they come in shooting, we're dead. Play dumb-zombie when the door opens, OK?"

"The advantage of surprise. Fine by me." Mindy took the shirt and pulled it on, cowering down on the floor and pasting a terrified look on her face as she huddled under my it.

A position that was all the better to leap into action from, I knew her. The rest of the group with us looked dubious as Mindy transformed from an angry-looking killer to a bedraggled zombie by putting my shirt, messing her hair on and curling up quietly.

"What did you dump there?" asked Mindy quietly, nodding at the Borg. As quietly as a zombie in fact. I gave her a fast look and ignored the smile in her eyes. "Our latest rescue." I answered the same way. "It should lead them away from us."

Zombies talk with few words, a couple gestures and lots of significant eyebrows. "Not good enough." Mindy snapped back at me. "These are Borg. No prisoners, no witnesses, no mercy."

"The med squad should buy us a few minutes."

With that, the door blew open.

***

## chapter seven Borgs and more Borgs

Treachery is performance in a rat-race. - The Book of Henry

Fink-world sucks.-Tracker's Wisdom

***

The Borg that looked in the holding cell and called a med-unit evac for his injured buddy was not interested in us.

Borg to the core. Supremely disinterested in a collection of harmless mutant tunnel captures when there was a shooting war going on just outside. He blew the door open, stuck his head in, looked around and left, yelling for evac, still shooting at something only he knew about.

I had my goggles set to a false ID; Mindy had gone silent. The rest of the bodies sitting in our cell scattered as soon as the Borg blew open the door, trying to keep out of his way. They all followed him out just as fast, Spyro almost right on his heels.

Your chances of living thru a Borg shooting-gallery were much better than living for very long in a mutant holding-cell. There was a general stampede to get out of the room as soon as the Borg got out of the doorway.

Mindy and I were part of it and we followed Spyro for a while. The tunnel outside was shot-up and dark, with hot blaster burns making the rock glow and lighting the way.

With only two directions to go in, the two slavers split up soon as they could, each hitting side tunnels as soon as they could. I kept Spyro in sight, or tried to. I figured at least he had a vague idea of how to get out of here alive. We soon got left behind and left in the Deep dark to fend for ourselves.

Spyro disappeared into mutant territory fast. He even got away from Mindy, who refused to leave my side.

I wasn't all that worried about things anymore. From what little I could gather from the fragmented reports my goggles picked up off Borg chatter, there was a war-raid going on that involved everyone in the region.

Well, everyone except mushrooms, which were not believed in topside yet. The whole thing was being publicly broadcast as a preemptive raid on some evil slave-trader cultists that had been preying on innocent clubbies, travelers, mutants, zombies and everyone in the underground that wasn't a cultist slave-raider. A public appeal for honest underground citizens stay away, hide and stay quiet was also online.

The op combined Borg, Teddy, Mutant and Gangas, all co operating and determined to eradicate the evil, drug-dealing, child-molesting, slave-raiding nasty rotten cult once and for all.

The city was banning the slave-trade for everyone.

In reality, no more slave-trade meant a whole lot of the underground had just gotten the riot act, a death sentence and a head-shot slap with a very blunt Borg hammer. Everything else was publicity-stunts. Teddys, gangas and bots hardly got mentioned.

In real-time, gangas were probably out there looting the burning remains of whoever was stupid enough to put up a fight today. You do not argue with Borgs, you run from them. I stopped listening to the broadcast after a while. It got a little too saccharine for my taste.

Mindy was so pleased she almost started giggling at me. She had a tendency to find reasons to cuddle up to my side as we hiked down the tunnel. I wasn't complaining. It helped our disguise as dumb, hurt, zombie dirt-farmers. Besides, I was having trouble walking again.

I did find some of the original mutant maps I'd gotten to return Eric with, and we were making lots of blind guesses as to how to get out of this particular Deep dark mess based on them. Somehow, with Mindy bumping into me every few seconds, it didn't seem all that urgent anymore.

I was having trouble concentrating, an effect of the meds I'd wolfed down, bleeding a lot and other side issues. Mindy seemed fine, except for a slight tendency to glue herself to my side.

"We're being followed." Mindy announced to me while I wheezed my way into the dark of whatever turn we'd just taken. We were, what counted as a safe distance from the holding cells now, and in a slimy, undisturbed tunnel of some kind.

The tunnel had sand in it, too. To me, that meant it had a new teddy-hole from a sloppy driller; probably a CyBorg one. Real undergrounders have uses for sand. It got cleaned up and sold topside, the pure silicon used in a wide variety of ways up there.

"Why are we being suicidal about trying to nob with CyBorgs again?" I wheezed out. "Or whatever idiot made this tunnel? Walking in sand is even harder for me to do than walking rock, Mindy. We must be close to the base again. Under it."

"That's a thought." Mindy allowed, kicking the sand under her feet. "But not a good one. The interesting thing right now is I can't get a lead on whatever keeps getting behind us. It's one sharp operator back there, whoever it is."

"Ah. CyBorg. Friend of yours? Do they know there's a war on and the safest place to be right now is somewhere there isn't any shooting?" I asked carefully. I didn't know who was behind us either. Today, it could be anybody and probably was.

"CyBorg? Nobody down here shoots at teddys down here. They run from Borg. A CyBorg is pure nightmare. They scream all the way. It isn't safe. All of the little colonies are quiet now, from everyone except from the terminally stupid." Mindy protested. "Ditto mutants. They're safe, too far down to get at."

"Ganga then, probably. Every ganga in the whole underground is having a riot cleaning up on stragglers right now. Every tunnel here has been infested with them." That was true. We hadn't seen any yet, but the whole underground and deadzone was one huge buzzing hive today. You could see traces of fresh traffic and hear ganga slang from all over on our goggles.

The bad part was, they were all probably looking for us.

"Is it your old boyfriend behind us?" I asked, scuffing thru the sand as fast I could. I was getting seriously tired again. "Or what?"

"Probably." Mindy looked vaguely worried. "I don't know how he picked up on us. Pure blind luck, I guess."

A strange baritone sounded sheepishly from the rear. "Actually, you walked into me. The invasion plans were always centered around bracketing the holding-cells first..."

"Releasing the prisoners..." Mindy tossed in, turning fast and pulling out a weapon I didn't know she had collected.

"And herding the civvies into jungle parts of the Deeps ahead of us." The baritone sounded on, absentmindedly. You could almost hear the nod of approval at Mindy. I was willing to bet he had his weapons out and locked on us now, and was toying with the trigger. "It was the only area of the deeps I know." he mentioned quietly, concentrating on something. There was no click.

CyBorgs almost never had safeties on. They played with the trigger instead.

"Now trying to get some real up-to-date intelligence out of the confusion. Nice." Mindy dove for the floor, pushing me flat against the wall in the process. I'll swear she had herself dug into the sand in micro-seconds.

"So, Harvey. What can I do for ya today?" Mindy chirped that out while switching over to full-combat mode. I could feel her feverish and frantic thinking as she tried to find a way getting us out of the dead-end we were walking in alive. "If it's weapons, the answer is no."

"Your stuff? No thanks. I've seen you close up a couple times recently. I'll wait for the beta to come out." The baritone still sounded sheepish. "Actually, I was going to offer you some help getting back topside. I was thinking of heading there myself."

"And I could stand a few repairs right now." he added absently. "Mindy, you're a good shot but a lousy surgeon. I'm hurting back here."

"Try doing it to yourself sometime." Mindy answered back. "In the dark. Alone. With no manual. Wussie."

"Topside? Any teddy colony would be a better place for him." I grumbled out. "Mindy, can we trust this guy?" I started to get dizzy. Mindy's pep pill from way back in the teddy shaft was starting to wear off fast.

"Harvey? Sure we can trust him. I just don't know what he'll do." Mindy answered cheerfully. "So tell me, Harv. What are your plans now?" She called out. "Going back to school?"

"Nope. Been doing that for years and I'm tired of it. My secret dream has always been a quiet fishing cabin up near Great Slave Lake." The voice seemed a little wistful. "Might get to try that yet. I hear there's still some big ones left in the north. Get a plot of land and grow some hardwoods, maybe."

"Dreamer. It's takes a full-kit shop to stay hidden and you know it." Mindy snorted in disgust. "Even in shutdown mode. Try another one. You're free, think big."

"Like staying downtown where every arms-dealer in the world can rumor all over my butt?" Harvey chuckled and I'll swear I could hear him looking down his sights at Mindy's sand hole. "No. You're an idiot, Mindy. Staying here was stupid."

"And I did it for years." Mindy shot back. "You're following us for a reason, Harvey. A getaway you could manage all by yourself. If it isn't the reward, what is it?"

I grunted and coughed, trying to get Mindy's attention. She ignored me as I swayed in the dark.

Harvey coughed, embarrassed. "I need a little advice. Not much, but you've been rogue long enough to get ropes in place. Safety-lines. Hidey-holes. Com-lines. Get me out of here."

"Please?" he finally added questioningly. Mindy's expression did not change.

That request did not please Mindy. Of course, when she was full-bore CyBorg, almost nothing did. "Give them enough rope to hang themselves? Is that the official plan for me, Harv?" She snarled out.

"No, the official plan was to watch pregnancy clinics and wait for a CyBorg to show up and offer to beat the crap out of anyone who annoyed her during childbirth." Harvey chuckled. "Seriously, that's the official worry. Not that you're loose, even if that was a pain. Most rogues killed themselves with sloppy repairs reasonably fast. You got lucky. Just like you're doing now, with a boyfriend. That'd you'd decide to breed was the big concern."

"My kids? They'd be norm." Mindy protested. "Stupid idea."

"But your stupid boyfriend..." Harvey did not get very far with that statement. Mindy pulsed off a shot that bounced off a wall and hit something soft. You could hear Harvey cursing as he rolled out of hot sand.

"Touchy subject there?" He grunted out a few seconds later. "Sorry."

He rambled on. "I have some better up-to-date info, if you want it. They messed around with us more than you think and some of it took. Nothing you ever got to hack." Harvey offered that quietly to Mindy. "Paper-only, Hon. I can leave a cache somewhere for you. They were waiting for you to catch."

"Maybe an IP." Mindy started chewing her lip. "You've been back there following us for at least ten minutes< Harv. Why are you headed back to the school-zone?"

"Is that where we are?" I asked blearily. "CyBorg school? Great." I started a search for an open line somewhere. I really wanted to talk to the bots right about now, while I was still awake and functional.

"Because anyone with half a brain would stay away from here." Harvey chuckled happily. "Thirty CyBorgs running around loose? Well, about twenty are left now. Ten that can still operate. No offence, Mindy, but you do get predicable after a while. I knew you'd head back this way, no one sane would try it. And I'm safer here behind you than anywhere else."

Mindy laughed this time, and it was pure evil. "I'm not worried about taking out a school of CyBorg students, Harv. Again. They aren't going to dare bother me till they get a better handle on how I walked thru them so fast anyway."

"Here's a few of my stashes." Mindy rattled off some coordinates. "Should be enough there to patch the holes I made in you. Stay down and out for at least a month. Maintenance-mode is the most stable. Learn to live half-dead, it's all you've got now."

"No mushrooms?" I asked carefully. I could hear both CyBorgs turn and consider me for the first time. "Or bots? I can get Harv stashed away. And repaired. He just won't like the company any more than you did topside."

"There's lots of people interested in free CyBorgs, other than random dictators who don't trust their generals. Or arms-dealers on the hustle." I mentioned, watching the tunnel start to move a little more under my feet. It was fun. "And yes, they might want to breed you. They will have questions. But you can always walk out, anytime."

"He for real?" Harvey asked Mindy after another long, hesitant pause.

"Yep. I dunno what he has in mind, tho." Mindy turned her head just enough to give me the fish-eye. "What is this, Tracker?"

"Same way I found you." I answered cheerfully. "Go Deep jungle to hide. Mushroom land, just don't chew holes in anything. Watch the rats, mimic them. I can guarantee a warm reception from the freebots for him too, and they'll come pick him up. If he wants to work on something in his free time."

"You gonna toss him to the Tantric school?" Mindy sounded suspicious.

"No, I like them. The hive would kill to get another free CyBorg linked in, don't you think? They'll hide him. And repair him. Free upgrades, too. Keep him that way till he wants to leave."

"Free. You can get me in?" Harvey sounded reluctant. "And fixed up? Still free?"

"Sounds like the fix-up part is very important right now, Harv. Sorry if I hit you too hard." Mindy rolled over and looked at me strangely. "They'll leave him be, let him go?"

"Yes. UnBorged. Jacking-in will be optional." I didn't even hesitate on that, tho I knew the hive would really like to have Harvey on-line. "Their CyBorg program could use a good twenty-year man for a while, anyway they can get him."

"I'm cool, if I can stay hid. There's enough body parts floating around at the school right now to cover my disappearance. More than. Most of my kids didn't like anybody else." Harv mused aloud. "Forever, if I'm lucky."

"And you'll go in disguised as me." I mentioned. Briskly. Mindy glared at me. "I planted a visual of bot-escort on a Borg back in the tank. Teddy squads hopping intersections, package moving thru. They'll think I was the package and this op is me getting moved from quiet to secure."

"Yah. If the data gets processed anytime soon." Harv said quietly."Don't count on it. Borgs aren't great with keeping their paperwork up to date. Hurt Borgs are worse. This sounds OK to me. I'm in."

"He's hurt bad. A couple of students must've picked up where I left off." Mindy zombied to me. I nodded and almost fell over.

"Done. Gimme a sec." I hoped all the chatter around us today was enough to cover things. I used the goggles and found a line to burst a message to one of the bot colonies.

"Ah, Mindy?" Harvey asked. "Remember the first thing you ever said to me?"

"Smile at me or I'll kill you." Mindy snapped back. There was no hesitation there. "So?"

"I'm telling you that now. This mess has been stressing me." Harvey tossed off a pain-filled grunt to end that. Mindy's expression didn't change.

"Me too." was all I had to say. It got ignored.

My goggles came thru with encrypted communications line for me. "Special delivery for merge program secured. 3 pack. Damaged. Carry." I posted to one of the special bot addresses, and gave coordinates. I'll say this for the bots. They were efficient.

"Enroute. 10 minutes." was the only response.

"Bots will be here in ten." I said quietly, relaxing down and sliding down the wall. "In force. Don't argue with them. Wake me only if you have to."

Then I fell asleep. I could hear Mindy sputtering at me as I cheerfully sank into the darkness around me.

***

"But none of this was my fault!"

I winced as I stood, shifted on my wounds and looked at the red-filled map displayed on the table top in front of me. Teddy-bot surgeons had cleaned me up, patched the holes and replaced fluids, but glue and good intentions only go so far. The three of us that'd gotten rescued from the Borg school playground were all busy healing, Mindy's being mostly reprogramming.

The Tantric school was being very helpful there. Too helpful, as far as I was concerned. Mindy was ecstatic, even if fooling around was off-limits to us both till Mindy's CyBorg systems were stable again.

Read that as 'till Mindy agreed to wipe the bio-gestalt program from her system. It was buried too deep for any of the weapons people to trust it at all.

Harvey was spending his down-time jacked in and reviewing the bot CyBorg program. He was fascinated.

Everyone was happy expect me. And Henry.

"You made more trouble in two days than anyone in the history of the underground has. Everybody wants you taken out of the picture now. Everyone." Henry, Teddy and a few weirded-out bots I'd never seen before and never wanted to see again were in the room with me. All of them were various degrees of peeved, pissed and patronizing.

I looked twice at the weird-bots and realized what they were. CIs. Crafted intelligences. They were what AI designed when they wanted a bot.

You had to wonder what they were designing. It was bound to be right out there.

Being the center of their attention wasn't any fun, either. They were blaming all of their recent troubles on me, naturally.

My goggles had gotten yet another upgrade from this group. Mindy and Harvey were experimenting with the new CyBorg hardware the bots had developed and I was being the duly-appointed human guinea-pig. Harvey was happily giving the bots interface pointers, at least on the CyBorg half of things.

Oddly enough, the weird-bots weren't all that interested in norms. They had better things to interface with now.

"Listen, they were slavers. I was hurt. I messaged and everyone headed for me. What did you expect me to do?" I snapped out.

"Exactly what you did do." Henry snapped right back. "You did right. That's the whole problem."

"The problem is, you went out free and everything promptly blew up." Teddy added that. "Cults, Mutants. Gangas. CyBorg schools included. Plus, you managed to make the underground into a tourist attraction. Did you know gangas are offering guided tours of the battle zones to topsiders now?"

"This is different from you getting money from the clubbies?" I asked sarcastically. "Hey, isn't changing things exactly what a deacon is supposed to be doing?"

Mindy came in the room to rescue someone. Me, probably. She winked and settled herself into a chair. The wink looked very promising and I wondered what tips and ideas the Tantric school had been giving her.

I winced. Mindy rarely needed any more big ideas. This might mean lots more trouble for me later.

"Ask Brother John. You know why he's here, right? Tracker caused a big evolution in the underground with one tiny, little phone call. Borgs, bots and gangas and maybe mutants all fighting on the same side. That's never happened before."

Mindy grinned, reached over and tapped a few nerve points on my hand and arm. My whole arm started to tingle and I slapped her finger away. She giggled.

"And we never want it to happen again. It was all we could do to stop a full scale war from breaking out when all sides met down there." Henry sighed and winced. "You can make a good case for this being de-evolution too, Tracker. Mindy! Not an advance."

"Harsh lessons. Time for the teddys to grow up a little maybe? Adapt to new circumstances?" Mindy stopped playing with me and gloated at Henry and Teddy. The weird-bots ignored her.

"Besides, I learned something very interesting a couple minutes ago." She added carefully, looking at me askew. I moved a little further away from her and she giggled again. "Harvey has intel we can use. Another game-changer, boys. And Bots. Something that might make everyone interested in something other than my boyfriend's poor healing butt."

"What's that?" Henry and Teddy stopped glaring at me and turned their attention to Mindy instead. You couldn't really tell what the bots were up to, but you never can with a bot.

"The med-center pays for slaver-raids on bot-colonies too. And for strays. Top dollar for new tech stuff." That little bit of information sunk in various types of heads in the room slowly. Even the weird bots got a little more distant as they checked out the information Mindy had just dropped on them.

"The med centers are collecting Teddys and bots? So our attention should be on the experimental med center, not the cult providers?" Teddy asked carefully. "Not containing our deacon-disaster here?"

Teddy always was fastest with a decision. Experience, I guess, and the hive processing power. "Not be worried about Angle putting permanent Borg bases and patrols all thru the underground? Not concerned with mutants upset enough to start threatening to bomb all their tunnels shut?"

"And leave the underground to the gangas. You do anyway." Mindy looked confident. "Whoever runs the med center is the real enemy. And he raids for all his raw material, mutant, bot and norm."

"True. The pattern fits. Bots are being kidnapped, disappearing, whenever they wander; turned over to the med center is probable." The weird bots made their first contribution to the conversation. "This being the case, when do we mount a rescue operation?"

"Invade the med-center? Never. Not if they can take out bots untraceably and have been doing it for a while. We need a lot more information before we can attack that place." Teddy groaned and rubbed his head again. "This isn't a hilltop we can surround. It's a fortress buried and surrounded by solid rock. Manned and botted by something that can stop teddys and bots cold."

"Information can be gathered. Gestalt will be." With that, the weird bots got up and left. In unison. It was an eerie sight.

"That's one more meeting to be horned into your schedule, Ted." Henry started laughing and wiped an eye as the bots left. "I'd find Brother John fast if I were you. Before you run out of time, like. Bots never war on anyone."

"They never had before Tracker got here, anyway. I'm more worried about Angel." Teddy watched the bots leave and sighed again."I'd like to see her files. She might know a little more about the med center than she's telling us."

"It's corporate." I finally got a chance to add something to the conversation. "And closed. Angel and the Borgs have strict orders to back off anything to do with them. I know. They're heavyweights, big players and pay off a lot of well-placed people to get left strictly alone down there."

"Can we blame all the noise down here this week on them?" Henry asked hopefully. "Jungle, Borg-school, slavers, everything?"

"I already am." Teddy snorted. "You norms can pick up and go thru the reports later. The hive is preparing something nasty for the med-center right now, and Borgs, Cyborgs, mushrooms or bots, whatever is doing this, is under some very harsh scrutiny."

"Bots?" I asked incredulously.

"Rogue AIs." Mindy whispered to me. "Free CIs, sorta. There's lots of them in the city nowadays. You can't tell them from freebots. Military, corp and experimental getaways. Not hived. The official line tabloid line is that it's a cyber-attack from space aliens. Watch the news once in a while, would you?"

"The bots want the research the med center has, do they?"

Henry nodded agreement at me. "That's where your goggle-tech came from, by the way. Mindy's too. Advanced neural interfacing."

"Bigger news. The bots will be trying a few of their own ops as soon as the equipment can be made for it and they can be very fast on rebuilds when they want to be. Say, by this time tomorrow." Teddy blinked agreement with Henry and added his own bit. "And from what we know or can guess, they're going to get slaughtered." he added slowly. "This will be a probe, a drone attack. The hive doesn't work any other way. It'll be a slow, sloppy, failed attack but it will happen."

"And Angel will just happen to have lots of troops in the area if the med center squawks for help." I groaned and looked at the map being displayed. "Who she attacks is anyone's guess. Is there going to be anywhere quiet for the next few days? Anywhere? I feel like taking a vacation again."

"If you are, I'm putting belt bombs on anything I want kept secret." Henry growled at me. "Including you. I remember your last side trip."

"Then you'd better get on it." I said bleakly. "I'm gone as soon as I can walk out of here. This looks bad. The deadzone is going be one long warring hell for about the next month. Ditto the underground."

"The Deep already is hell. Plus it's filled with extra-angry mutants this week. Well, angrier than usual. That's out." Teddy sighed and started tapping his fingers. He jacked into the table and concentrated. "There. I told King Carlos about our suspicions. He'll've lost people to the med center too. He might send observers."

"Damn. You mean the battle of three armies will be the battle of four armies when we all attack the med center?" I asked carefully.

"Don't count the chickens before they run out on you, Teddy. Unless you like being an egg-head all over your face." I scratched my neck and worried a little. "I'm fairly sure Angel will be really slow in helping the med center out. They've been a pain to her for years now, but helping us? That's out." I started when everyone started staring at me. "Honest."

"Tracker, you've heard the old story about what came first, the chicken or the egg-head?" Mindy asked me, getting up. She was leaving our little meeting already. Henry blushed a little as she glanced at him.

"Yeah. So?" I looked over at her. Mindy grinned at me.

"Don't worry about it. You won't ever have to deal with anything but chicken-shit." With that, Mindy smiled sweetly at us, turned and minced out, leaving me alone with a worried Teddy and an embarrassed Henry.

I don't think she was talking about me.

***

"Development, weakness exploitation, advantage consolidation."

I tapped my annoying goggle-AI and wished it would be quiet. I began to suspect it was an experimental CI, but had no proof of that. Mindy hadn't gotten a chance to configure my upgraded goggles for me yet and, as usual, they were rigged for bot reflexes, not mine.

Nagging me with irrelevant observations again. This was the war-room, where the attack on the med-center was being planned.

One of the weird-bots looked over at me. A freebot that was into self-mods, applied evolution and self-programming. I guess he was listening to my goggles try to improve my thinking. "Your input should game development, not annihilation. Everything you say is suspect. Deacon."

The Deacon part of that was very hesitant. As an applied evolver in his church, I had yet to toss out a major breakthrough and none of the weird-bots were exactly pleased with me yet. It was a cross I had to bear until I could find Brother John and get this stupid promotion revoked.

"Dandy." The truth was, I was completely lost. These were the generals here and they were using the latest bot drone intel to plan an attack on the med center.

I'd gotten dumped when the cyber-war came up. Land, sea air, space, then cyber-wars? Bot-troops snaking thru sewers I could understand, everything else was more or less gibberish to me.

"Evolution is conservative. Adapt, rechannel or create demand." Came from my goggles and whispered gently in my shell-like ear. At least the volume had stayed down this time. I sighed again. I hate it when your equipment is smarter than you are. Things get confusing real fast that way.

"Know yourself, the enemy and the terrain." I answered the weird-bot. That was about the only thing my goggles had said today that made sense to me. The weird-bot nodded once and returned to his consideration of our plans so far.

The problem was, we didn't have any plans. The med center had brushed off all probes like they were insects. In fact, we'd hadn't even successfully planted any bugs in there yet.

This was mostly industrial war, cyber-style. A dirty one. Raw material, products, waste. Water systems: clean, dirty, safety. Electronics in monitor, command and deployment. Power. Air. Transport. Defenses. New tech.

"Addendum. Strength is weakness." I gave up and left the room, off to find Mindy. If those bots couldn't find something to attack soon, it'd be left up to me to create a way in, and I was totally gone there.

The goggles were it, shutting them up was a priority.

Glad to get something I could understand done, I wandered around the bot colony we norms had gotten stuffed in. If nothing else, I could get them reset so they'd stop bugging me with abstractions. Everybody that'd ever upgraded these things seemed to think the built-in AI nag was it's best feature. I didn't. My AI got used it as a databank problem-solver, not as a wandering expert system.

Mindy was playing with Harvey when I found her. Their game of jungle-tag in the dark gym setup for them had to be seen to be believed. Tag-the-spider, it was called.

Ropes were spun, wired and linked together everywhere around the room, all ten feet off the ground. Sort of random netting. The two of them moved like bots running the pipes as they swung around the strings.

"Hey! When you get a second, I could use a shutdown here." I called up to Mindy. She ignored me and did something weird, bouncing off a wall, pulling the rope she hit on the rebound to change direction and turning in mid-air to tag Harvey with something.

She must've scored. Harvey started cursing and tossing small foam balls at her. None hit. Mindy dropped out of the spider-web and walked over to me giggling while Harvey untangled himself from whatever Mindy had just tied him up in.

"This is even more fun in zero-g." She mentioned to me, whooshing happily. She was bouncing on her toes and looked happy, glowing and fit. Sweaty, too. "If you don't mind a mid-air battle as you drop into a net from 1200 feet." She added looking at my arms and watching me blanch. "The teddys showed us their set-up and it's sweet."

"Always did want to toss a few of my more uppity students off a cliff." Harvey grunted as he landed on the floor beside us. "If I could, I'd put one of those deep holes in. We used air-blasts to float air-games and the lighter student usually won."

"Ha. Exploit, trap, gambit, defend." I grunted at Mindy, handing her the goggles. "Attack, retreat, defend, surrender."

"Equalize, retard, develop. All defense. And you just want to know where the john is instead, right?" Mindy asked, looking disgusted. She took the goggles, put them on and flew thru the menus. Harvey looked on, interested.

"There you go, stud. Dumbed down again." Mindy handed me my equipment back and I regoggled thankfully.

"Thanks. One nag in my life is already more than I can handle." Mindy grinned at me as I fine-tuned some inputs.

I had to, I'm not a CyBorg. If I thought this place was crazy with the goggles on, it was a lot worse as a norm. These two had set up laser strobes, wind blasts and moving ropes going to make the game more interesting.

In the dark. Mindy's version of seeing-eye goggles was way too much for me to handle. I decided the two of them were crazy.

"How goes the war?" Harvey asked, wiping sweat off with a towel and collapsing onto a bench. He looked like a fifty year old, graying old man. One in great shape, but still very much an older type.

"We're screwed." was all I had to say. "They've been working for hours and we're still screwed. The only reason the med center hasn't taken over the whole underground, deadzone and deep is they don't want it."

"Maybe topside, too. As far as I can see." I added. Mindy looked perturbed.

"The biologics?" Harvey asked. That was his way of referring to the mushrooms. He'd spent a good part of the last year prepping for raids into their territory, and he was as close to an expert as we could had on them here.

It was one of his hidden talents. He spent more than a few hours as an expert observer in the war room.

"Nothing. The med center cleans their air. Thoroughly. Still talking sapping upstairs."

Digging our own tunnel in was the best way in, as far as anyone could tell, but even the quietest methods were likely to get insanely lethal doses of radiation headed our way as the med center fought back.

With very sterile methods, of course. And they were good with various lethal meds too.

"Ah, there you are, Tracker. We've been looking for you."

Henry, Teddy and a couple weird-bots all filed into the gym, looking at me strangely. "We've decided on a plan." Henry said evilly, glancing at me like I was a particularly over-ripe piece of junk fermenting in his yard.

"Dandy. Oh, wait. I'm bait?" I asked, looking from one to the other. I'll swear even the weird bots were grinning at me, and I have no idea how they were doing that.

"Close." Teddy grumbled he moved to the side of me Henry wasn't covering. The weird-bots had the door blocked and Harvey was at my back. He got up from the bench and came in fast, moving like a panther.

Mindy kept her eyes flickering around the room and I sidled over to her, more to keep her from deciding to pound anyone than anything else. We did have some of the most important people in the underground here. I didn't want her to try and hurt them for the crime of upsetting me.

I did notice Harvey was bracketing me, not covering me. The louse.

"You're broke, Tracker. A serious goggle-glitch. You're gonna go ask the med-center for help on an intermittent problem with your goggles." Henry grinned at me. "Or treatment for the headaches. It's a problem that took me a month to figure out, so you'll be there a while."

"Do I get to say 'no' to this?" I asked, getting Mindy in front of me and wrapping my arms around her waist from behind. It felt great and my goggles started whispering other advice.

Mindy had put something in them when I wasn't looking. Already. I gave her a dirty look that got nothing more than some interesting squirming out of her and taped the goggles off.

She snuggled in, but kept glaring at anyone looking hard at me.

Henry shrugged. "Can you say 'no!' Sure, if you want to get it out of your system, sure. But it won't help. You're going."

"The two of you leave tomorrow morning." Teddy grumbled out, looking like he wanted to take a poke at Mindy just on general principals. Mindy grinned back at him with enough teeth in it to promise a wonderful teddy funeral. "Got your backups updated, Teddy?" Was all she whispered at him. Teddy winced.

"Gimme your goggles, Tracker." Henry held out his hand. I sighed, pulled the Deacon-goggles off and stood there in the blackness, trying to remember who was friend and who was foe here.

"I just walk in and out? No troubles? No single-handed takeovers? No opening the gates for the barbarian hordes? Just a quickie probe?" I spoke to the dark for that, since without goggles it was black-out in there for me.

"LIGHTS!" Harvey grumbled out. Always the gentleman, him. The room eased up to at least a semi-gloom. The scenery had not improved much with all the new people in here now.

"You, do stuff? Not a chance. Nothing you'll ever need to know about, anyway." Harvey said quietly, cringing a little. "Come on. Mindy, you too. There's a few details you'll need to know about this place."

Harvey was looking at Mindy with pleading in his eyes. She relaxed a little, then pulled loose from me and started after him.

Teddy put one of his small, furry paws on my arm and grinned up at me in a way only a teddy can. "Relax, you'll love it." he said quietly in a reassuring tone. "There's a good chance you'll even come back alive."

"In one piece?" I asked, as the bots turned and opened the gym door. Mindy and I got escorted, front, rear and personally, to the nearest lab.

"That's pushing it." Teddy admitted cheerfully, pulling me along. "But we can hope. On the other hand, you might get away with it again. Here's the scoop, Tracker."

***

"They run a free clinic. In the underground."

"You're been repeating that for the last few miles, Tracker. Get a new song."

Mindy was with me enroute to the medical center and dressed in full CyBorg war-gear. New stuff, freshly upgraded.

Yes, I'd already been introduced to her suit. It felt like a large hungry dog to me, but it ack'd me as a friendly. Reluctantly.

With mirror-shades on her goggles, rifle, enough grenades and various whatnots hanging off her belts to wipe out even the best fortified tank, Mindy looked like the war-machine she's been designed to be.

And happy about it. For her, brand new clothes; a nifty new outfit and lots of new toys. For me, this little side trip promised to be more trouble than I wanted to see this lifetime.

"And I'm supposed to walk right in, under the sign that says 'Welcome Suckers! Abandon all hope ye that enter here.' and ask for a lot of high-priced talent to cure my little problems for me. For free. Little old probably me."

"Yip. 'Abandon all hope.' Mindy sniffed and waved a weapon I didn't recognize at me. It was scary anyway. "Right beside our sign, the one that says 'Yea, tho I walk thru the shadow of the valley of death, I fear no evil.'"

"Because I'm dating the meanest SOB here?" I asked weakly. Mindy grinned at me again and patted her rifle like it was her best friend.

"No, it goes on 'Temptation, tho. That's a bitch." She giggled and checked something obscure, flicking dust off the sights on her gun cheerfully.

It was a big gun. She had to reach to do it.

"I don't wanna know about that. I don't know how they talked me into this. These med-people have got to know my goggles will be bugged." I still didn't like being bait here, but everyone figured the med-center would jump at the chance of getting their hands on Deacon-tech goggles.

I was wearing my old set. I had special plastic backups stuffed in a pocket somewhere. They might've actually been the pocket, I hadn't checked.

"Just throwing the gauntlet down, Tracker. You're the hottest property in town right now." Her laugh was chilling to me as Mindy contemplated the med-center making any moves. "They won't dare do anything, everyone wants your butt right now. Trust me."

"Ha. You heard Angel laugh when I told her about this." I answered morosely. "Chilling, wasn't it. Like I told you, officially, her hands are tied around these people."

"Harvey disappeared too." I grumbled on. "I wonder about that. What's he up to?"

Mindy didn't say anything more. I didn't have time to wonder about Harvey at all, actually. I was just tossing that out for her to chew on.

Harvey had gone weird, after a few treatments but I didn't care. He was trustworthy backup, as long as you didn't mind it being from someone who treated a war-zone like a candy store. After a couple days of reading the teddy files on making their own CyBorgs, Harvey had vanished. She said he was out freeing up more CyBorgs and getting some files. Hunting the CyBorg kids down and killing them sounded like a lot better idea to me.

Bringing in a few more partly-trained psychotic killers as the cavalry on our side didn't sound like a good idea, even if they were always up for a good fight. Way too much random action resulted there.

Boys will be boys, right? Rowdy types.

There was lots of that in our future, as far as I could see. The mutants were peeved Angel had closed down their tunnels, the gangas were mugging tourists as fast as they appeared and the teddys couldn't cut new deadzone fast enough to avoid patrolling Borgs, wandering CyBorgs and whimpering cults, zombies and hermits.

The whole mess was going to blow up soon, and right in my face, so I was off to see the local hated wizards. The med people. Everybody distrusted them but sold usually them as much and as fast of whatever they wanted as they could.

"So I walk right in, take my glasses off, stick my head in the lion's mouth and ask them to fix things so I can better whomp their silly asses. This is NOT a good plan. Just swell." My march onward was mechanical. I really did not want to do this.

"Relax. Teddy is just trying to kill you."Mindy said, oozing fake sympathy. "That'll solve a few of his bigger problems, right? So is Henry. And the bots. And Angel. And them. I'm the only person you can trust out here and I'm telling you if you don't shut up and walk faster right now, I'll shoot you a few times myself."

"That's my girl, always supportive. Of the wrong people, but always supportive." I marched along the dark tunnel, waiting for the little light at the end of it to start growing into certain doom. "We should have these moments more often."

"What, walking fully-armed into certain fight?" Mindy asked, shaking her armor down into a better placement. She was happy, this was the most fun she'd had in days. "Us against the world? Spitting in their eye?"

"I meant the times you weren't talking to me, actually." The march was nearing its end. I could see the tunnel entrance up ahead. "Pest. OK, we got this far." I grumbled on. "The med-center is just ahead of us. Their own power, water and food in there. It's vault and we're walking into it. Is anybody home up there, killer-girl?"

"We've been passing active auto-defenses and snoop-eyes for the last hour, wiz." Mindy said sarcastically. "And yes, the public clinic is lit. Yes, they're home. They're expecting us."

"To do what?" I grumbled on. "Damn. I need to use the john."

"They probably have one." Mindy stopped talking and concentrated on the appearing door ahead of us. "In fact, the door up there just unlocked." She said quietly. I looked up. About twenty feet from the med clinic entrance, the tunnel changed from rock to metal plates. I was about to step into clanging doom.

"Swell. Have I ever mentioned I hate hospitals?" I went on and steeling myself to do the insane, walked up to the door. Mindy pushed her way in front of me.

"I'll do the honors. You don't speak unless spoken to in there." Mindy looked back and up over her shoulder to glare at me. There was a swift elbow that turned into a gentle pat in a tender spot. "You got that?"

"Yes dear." I whispered back. "Anything you say, dear."

"And their hearts and minds will follow. Gosh, those Tantric people had it right after all." Mindy winked at me and opened the experimental medical free clinic door.

That's what the little sign on it blast-plate wall beside it said anyway.

"Yes? What can I do for you?" The little office on the other side of the door looked like any old reception area gone bad. It had a couple metal chairs against the walls, a few stun-guns mounted in the ceiling corners and a glass wall between us and the receptionist, who was sitting in a padded chair working at his terminal.

The receptionist was a fussy little nerd who looked like he'd rather be working on his stamp collection somewhere.

"The Deacon Tracker would like to know if you can make a few adjustments to the neural interfaces on his goggles." Mindy said, marching right up to the window. I noticed she was carrying her rifle and had her finger on the trigger.

"It's a tricky problem." She said. "Intermittent, unstable something-or-others. Can you do it for him?"

"Not with that diagnostic, dear." The natty little man sighed, picked up a phone wearily and whispered into it. "Someone will be along presently to explain procedures here." he said, looking at us in mild distaste. "I might add our doctors don't allow the presence of armed guards in examining rooms."

"Then he can work out here where I can see him." Mindy answered tartly.

"Exceptions can be made for the more... dangerous... of our clients. And the important ones" That voice came from someone who looked like an intern that appeared out of nowhere. He was dressed in whites and even carrying a clipboard. "Tho it's usually our guard in the room. Come this way, please."

The intern disappeared back into the wall, walking into it and disappearing. No door was there. Holograms. This set-up was a lot more expensive that it looked. A section of glass wall slowly rose, wide enough for Mindy and I to walk into the reception area and follow the intern. The receptionist just sniffed at us as we passed and returned to his terminal, already busily typing something.

We got hit before we even made it twenty feet down the hall. Mindy at least was expecting it, but I was busy looking for something that looked like a john. Without running my hand hopefully along the wall and hoping for a rooms to appear.

I don't remember any of the fight, but from the stray burns and hits I woke up with, it'd gone on for a quite a while. Or they hit us everything at least twice.

The dark cell I woke up in was no great hell. Alone in the dark. I had with no goggles on. I found Mindy as a soft stripped heap beside me, and she was not moving.

There were also noises. There was also somebody else in the cell-block with us.

***

A quiet voice came out of the gloom as I groaned, forcing myself to thrash around and explore our cell. "What you doing in here, fool topsider? Don't you know nothing about this medical clinic?"

The voice was male, quiet, young and coming out of the dark.

"I'm here carrying the bomb." I answered weakly, trying to roll over enough to check on Mindy. It was a long, slow, painful process as somebody had stomped me good while I was out; even breathing was difficult at the moment. "Stand closer and I'll show you."

"Say, what did you do to get stuck in the dark here with us?" I asked as I fought my way thru several agonizing aches and pains. I had to stop and rest several times trying to roll over as the amount of work necessary to do that went past what I could handle at the moment.

"Screwed one too many nurses." The voice came back at me. "They usually say thanks and get real grateful. The last one was hot enough but not so happy about getting preggers."

"Life with girls. Can't do much about that." I said, grunting hard as I finally made it close enough to check Mindy over. I had to get the spare goggles out of my pocket to do it and the goggles were the pocket, as I expected.

Some of the pieces of it, anyway. Assembling it was another herculean effort, but I did it. No one was handing out the medals I'd just earned, tho. And if they were, there wasn't enough light in that room to see them or your hand in front of your face.

"Oh, I won't worry 'bout your girl. She's was twitching a lot till just a while ago." The voice came out of his dark corner. "Seems like a feisty one, her. Four guys were carried her in real tight and careful-like. She wasn't moving at all then."

"How long ago was that?" My inspection of Mindy showed a lot of superficial laser burns, some new bruising and a lot of damage to her CyBorg suit. Every pocket had been ripped out, for starters. She felt like a limp rag-doll.

I guess they expected that suit to be her secret weapon. I had news for them, Mindy wore the suit because she looked good in black, not because it gave her any big advantages.

"Oh, a few hours back. Guess they hit you with the new gas. It takes you down fast and keeps you there for about five hours. Most people. Some people it kills dead right off."

"They're still working on it." The voice continued. "Off and on. Anti-riot stuff, there's a big international market for stuff like that."

There was a munching sound in the dark. I guess it was rations from the considerable amount of chewing it took to get a bite down.

"About this bomb." The chewing went on for a while. "You still wearing it?"

"Nope. They took off with it. It's buried in my goggles, the set I was wearing some when I came in. Just loaded with pesky viruses, I think. Dunno, really. Nobody tells me anything."

"Yah. They don't tell you nothing where you work either?" The voice sounded comradely and disgusted. Bosses were the same all over.

"Nope. Not speck one." I got Mindy laid out and started checking her over. No major breaks, but she was staring to run a fever and was still completely out of it.

"Damn. My girl should've woken up hours ago, long before me. I wonder what else they hit her with." The darkness didn't answer me at all. If dark voice knew, he wasn't saying.

"You been in here long?" I finally asked as I ran out of things like pulse, breathing, breaks and response to check on Mindy. It was frustrating. There was nothing I could do for her like this.

The mini-goggles I was wearing weren't me a whole lot of good. They didn't even show me the whole cell I was in, just a couple red blurs where the people were.

"Been here long? Way too long. Could be a week, could be a month. They don't feed you too regular down here. No way to keep track of time when you nap a lot."

"Can you give me a tap if anybody comes by?" I asked. "Or yell? I gotta try something with cuddles here. She's looks pretty bad to me."

"Don't worry about not knowing if anyone shows. The lights come on and blind you, the noise starts up and deafens you, then half a handful of drugged mush in a bag gets tossed thru the bars. Then it all shuts down again." Quiet voice sounded bored. "Maybe you get shot a few times, then dragged away. If you can see anything at all down here, you're doing a lot better than anybody else in here, drugged food or no drugged food."

"Some of the mush they feed you gets right entertaining." he added carefully. "You'll find that out. You'll see stuff then. Lots of stuff."

Drugged mush. It sounded like a normal med-clinic approach to me; I was willing to bet we were being experimented on too. "Great. We have a doorbell." I sighed out. "Dandy. But first, where's the john?"

The voice chuckled. "Oh, that. It's great. Real handy, too. The little hole in the floor off in corner of the cell. Just use your nose, you'll find it."

Getting up took a lot more work than I wanted to think about, but I really needed to get to that hole in the floor. I whacked my head on the ceiling trying it.

We were in a teddy cell. They're only a few feet high. Swell. What was a john doing in there?

It was a short hands and knees crawl and stumble to the hole in the floor; I ended up gasping with one hand on the cold slick wall with my head over something that smelt really bad. When I could finally manage the effort, the relief was tremendous and went on for quite a while.

"Gets cold down here, doesn't it?" I asked, feeling the gray wall uneasily. Wet usually meant danger in the underground. You never knew what would come to get at free fluids.

"Not with a few bodies to curl up with it don't." The voice chuckled. "Company warms the place up in here nice, unless they decide to cool it for us. Trust me on that."

I grunted and slowly got back to Mindy, collapsing in a heap at her side. Then I laid down and started making more repairs and upgrades to my goggles; the tricky ones Henry had showed me how to do.

Most of my suit was one huge circuit, and there was lots of other stuff buried here and there in my aching body. Teddy and company had even used the fast-healing holes in my butt to hide things in.

In a few minutes I had super-deacon goggles on, ones that were using almost everything I was wearing to gather data and make recommendations with. Even my boots.

Every tooth in my zipper was a passive sensor of some kind, every button a passive battery. Movement made energy.

Then I jacked into Mindy to see first-hand how she was doing.

**

You couldn't shut Mindy's CyBorg stuff down without killing her and the goons that'd just jailed us hadn't done that. Quite. There was drugs galore in her blood, damage to all the meat-works, inoperative e-systems, new drug-dropping inserts and lots of burnt and scrambled electronics, tho.

A happy expert had gone over her with a fine-tooth comb, making sure that anything that looked like a weapons system didn't work anymore. Then jumped up and down of the rest of her to make sure of it.

On the other hand, they didn't know I was her better half; or what her upgraded CyBorg defenses and self-repair nanos could do. Mindy was big on triple backups. With my goggles giving directions, it only took a half hour or so of digging things out of weird hidden menus to stabilize Mindy.

Not awake and fighting, but stabilized. Sort of. Not dying as fast as she had been before, anyway.

That was the good news. The bad news was they had done a lot of serious damage and without expert help fast, Mindy would sink beneath the waves soon. Not happy news to me, as good girlfriends are hard to find these days. It worried me.

I ran out of tools and procedures fast and there wasn't much I could do but watch as things got worse right in front of my eyes.

"Is it going to be feeding time around here soon?" I asked the dark carefully. My new friend was still out there chewing on something, but not talking much.

"Oh, that's random too. You never know what's gonna happen around here; or when. They keep it that way. They like to mix things up, they do. Even got a couple hours of opera piped in once."

"Swell. Just swell." I laid down beside Mindy, took a deep breath and activated one of my final tricks.

The bio-gestalt. Mindy officially didn't have one anymore, the lab boys had said something about it having too many hooks and backdoors built in to be stable. Her AI had built something too complicated for them to even try messing with, or so they claimed.

Her Tantric upgrades were officially gone, but only officially.

Most of the bot engineering med-team was still trying to talk her into a full wipe and rebuild and not guaranteeing that would work either. I think they just wanted to play.

I still had a few triggers left in my personal programming. The program was well buried and had gotten copied over into the new goggles along with a lot of other personal junk as a way to keep me relaxed and feel at home. Putting my hands over my eyes, I moaned and set the gestalt in motion, still remembering the mess that resulted from last time we'd tried this.

Borged. Again. I felt the systems start up and try to mesh a newbie program with a broken system. It hadn't gotten any better, or any more fun. Max-Borg all the way, not my favorite thing at all, with Mindy's ideas of a good time built in as priorities.

Mindy had incorporated a lot of ideas from the Tantric bots too, the little snarf. No matter how much I'd complained about them.

If you weren't careful with this program, there wasn't even two people left in the gestalt, just one program with two bodies to work with. Mindy being totally out of it didn't help any. That just made it easier for the bio-gestalt AI to have it's way with her and the sad remnants of her electronics.

I lucked out. The program activated and built things up slowly as it worked around Mindy's damage. I had seconds to adapt to each major change, something that hadn't happened the last time.

Watching Mindy wake up was like watching a flower bloom in the dark for me. A cranky, hurting flower that wanted to start hitting people, but a nice little blooming flower anyway.

The bio-gestalt brought her back, if a bit wonky. Hurt, hurting and mad. Mindy ignored me, took one look at the mess her own systems were in and almost started to cry.

Yes, she looked herself over before noticing me. "Tracker! What happened out there?" was all she said. I didn't answer right away, it was taking me a moment to repress my reactions to Mindy. Anything even remotely resembling stimulating had to be ignored, along with my reactions.

Blast that wonky kludge of a program. The bio-gestalt was good. I was already sitting on my hands trying to think cold thoughts. Neither of us was in any kind of shape to do anything useful yet.

"Gas. New implants. Weapons fire. EMP burnouts." I grunted at her as I struggled with my own AI. It wanted to start showing movies again and I was having trouble turning the soundtrack off. "A harsh thumping, shit-kicking, snide remarks and sandstorms too. Probably."

"Well, you're my hero." Mindy groused at me. I couldn't stop the thrill that made in me, so I ignored it. "Not that I have any choice about it. So do something. Anything, and right now. Tag, you're it."

"Yah. Just did. Little old shadow-stomper me. Remind me to talk to you about blind faith sometime." I grunted out, shutting down sensory inputs as fast as I could find them. "Wowsers. How many of my systems did you adapt this thing to, Mindy?"

"All of them. You're lucky. I can't find any of mine. I'm hardly up at all." Mindy sounded peeved at that. I could feel her impulse to look around the room again and her automatic cataloging of whatever was out there.

"Our roomie isn't much fun." She noted. Mindy got a lot more out of the info from the goggles than I did. I did notice she was doing her best to repress and ignore our happy little feedback loop too.

She was sitting on a mad giggle or two right now herself; I didn't even dare smile.

This was not the time for hanky-panky. Mindy was still a little too close to total shutdown for that kind of fun and games.

"You going to get mobile anytime soon?" I asked carefully. Mindy the CyBorg was always a little touchy about things not working as well as they could. She hated admitting to anything she couldn't do.

"Nope. I need rest, lots of it. So do you. Also, you're my battery, spare CPU, life-line and databank right at the moment, so you can't go away." That was true. I could see from the various readouts Mindy was almost totally dependent on me to stay alive right at the moment.

They'd hurt her bad when they took her down.

I'd noticed the jack-cable was draining power from me, but I wasn't paying that much attention to the finer details of the bio-gestalt. It got worse the more I studied it.

"Oh, for crying out loud, Tracker! Let me do that." Mindy got irked with my slow fumbling around the menu systems. She took the job over fast.

Me, I was being distracted. Even thinking about cold showers and doing math wasn't helping me a whole lot, plus I had some real important work to do while trying to shutting down the aggravations at the same time.

I was already breathing hard and so was Mindy. We weren't even touching yet, either. She was getting irked with my menu fumbling, which was a lot worse than usual with all the distractions distracting me at the moment.

"This is abuse." I grumbled, letting Mindy walk thru my menus and stop some of the more noticeable suggestions the AI program was pounding into me.

AIs are like that. Try again, harder. Six hundred times in a row. Something will start working. Eventually. Do it, or we'll make it worse. "And try to remember that last one, would you?" I gasped out. "It looked interesting."

"Ha. You haven't seen anything yet, Bubba." Mindy chuckled as she finally managed to get me organized the way she wanted. "Ow. Please don't make me laugh. The Tantric school has been polishing this stuff for years and they showed me a few hundred. They're ALL in here, I made sure of that. Just you wait, boyfriend. Just you wait."

"Ow. How much sleep do you need?" I finally asked, after wrenching my mind back on track. It took a serious effort, as I could see some of what Mindy had planned for me and it was computer-induced fascinating. "And how long do we stay need to stay linked?"

"No relief for you today, Tracker. We stay linked till your hormones carbonate, then you tie yourself down." That got shoved into my mind a little tartly. I wonder what else Mindy had been doing as she wandered around this program Gestapo. She seemed to be right at home with it. Too right at home for my liking. "I need you and I need rest. That's all that's going to be happening for the next few hours and that's everything that's going to be happening."

"Can we trust each other while we both sleep?" I asked carefully. Mindy paused and didn't answer that one right away.

"No choice. We have to." Finally came over the wire. "And, on that note, good night. Hero."

That was the last thing I remember. Mindy activated some weird shutdown on me, and I promptly fell into darkness.

***

"You snore funny while you sleep."

I woke up to that; that and Mindy falling asleep on my chest again. She was sleepily hitting me, but not very hard. The bio-gestalt was still active, but gone more-or-less quintessence and quiet.

I was thanking various gods for that little blessing because Mindy's hair was tickling my nose and she smelt great. I took a couple mental cold showers to slow my post-nap reflexes down.

"Glad I'm alive enough to sleep at all. You have any idea how long we were out?" Mindy's program gave me the answer to that before I even finished the question. Mindy didn't. Days. Gassed, injured, ignored. We'd been out a while.

This bio program was starting to act like an ordinary AI helper, tho it only had one objective in mind.

Heal first. Then hump. It was totally hormone-driven and very cranky about being frustrated, always probing for some sign of strength it could use.

A very base aim we didn't really have time or energy for.

Checking Mindy out as best I could, I found there was a lot of improvement in her status. She was almost ready to start fooling around, the program said cheerfully, but not very seriously.

Very, very careful fooling around as there had been even more damage than what I'd noticed in our first few minutes together, but almost ready. CyBorgs were very tough, resilient, had triple backups and lots and lots of determination.

Their AI programs were even worse. Unless I unplugged from Mindy soon, the program was going to show me how much determination it had. In spades.

It kept trying to show me pictures of what I would be expected to do.

They didn't help me concentrate at all.

I fell asleep watching them and wondering how anyone ever got into those positions in the first place.

***

## chapter eight Leaks

Leaks are a way of life in the underground. You learn to use them as best you can. -Teddy Wisdoms

***

Mindy woke up again and tried to slap me; even that was mistake. It turned into a soft, gentle, caressing kind of slap. A very interesting kind of slap.

I stuck my hands under me and tried counting backwards by threes. From a million. I could hear Mindy doing much the same thing, but she was cursing instead and thinking of ways to kill instead.

That was a distracting process, too. Mindy certainly knew a lot of interesting ways to kill people, and she was running thru them all. Inventively. With variations. I laid there and listened to her chunk down thru a few hundred of them as she settled herself back down.

I'd already over-stimulated her, and it was still pitch-black and hurting in here. "It's nice to know you still love me." I mentioned as a few of the more inventively gruesome deaths passed by my goggles. "I think."

"You really don't know." It sounded like Mindy was grinding her teeth as she tried to ignore the sensory-storm I was putting her thru. Then I noticed a couple of her own systems and come back on-line and were making life hell for her in ways I hadn't even noticed or suspected yet.

The AI program had certainly been busy while we were asleep. It only had one thing in mind, with lots of time to explore, experiment and arrange various tortures. Now that we were awake, the blasted thing was busy trying more than a few of them out on us as fast as it could.

"Let me know when this gets to be more trouble than it's worth, dear." I mentioned to Mindy as things started getting overwhelming again. "Anytime now is good for me."

Mindy muttered a few more threats, then reached over and pulled the jack out from my goggles. My bio-gestalt program blanched and slowly shut itself down.

Borg only and that dying fast. Too energy intensive to keep up.

Thank the gods for small mercies. Mindy and I slowly shutting ourselves down went on for a while, and took quite a bit longer than we expected. Still sleeping on my chest Mindy was, and the proximity was killing us both.

Her teeth-grinding was far too close to gnawing, for instance. Finally, she managed enough to roll off me, a move we both regretted as it was far more painful for us both than anything you'd expect.

I got thumped in the process and gasped, waiting for the pain and little bright lights to go away before saying anything else. Eventually, the agony subsided a bit. When the more searing bolts had quieted down, I turned my head to look at Mindy.

She was trying to curl up into a ball and whimper; and she didn't have the strength for it. I knew exactly how she felt, as even breathing was still a problem for me, let alone harsh breathing or getting tossed around at all.

"Persistent little program." I mentioned as the waves of pain slowed a bit and the two of us slowly relaxed. "Remind me to hunt down and hurt whoever did your programming."

"You set this up, stupid. Get in line. You're talking to the other programmer now." Was Mindy's grunted reply. She sounded much more chipper than she had a few hours ago. "The good news is, we aren't dying anymore, or at least you're not. The bad news is, that particular program had hours to rebuild stuff when we slept. It won't be easy to say no anymore. Ever."

"We were saying no? I missed that part." I went into the menus on my goggles and tried shutting the whole bio-gestalt program down. It wasn't easy, as Mindy's program had been buried deep in her AI system and that's where the hooks into my mine ended up.

Without her expert touch, it was a long hard haul for me, even with Mindy's whispered advice. She was not happy with me at all as I finally finished shutting things down.

"Do you still need me?" I gasped out as one or more wrong moves had weird impacts on me. I was seriously considering a full cold reboot of the goggles about that time, tho Mindy had just snorted and advised against it.

CyBorgs know how to hack systems. Permanently. After a few hours to play around with my electronics, Mindy bio-gestalt was buried so deep in the goggle programming it'd take a factory wipe to clean it out.

A reboot would only make things worse. The system would integrate, stabilize then get right back to the business at hand with drivers in place no one would be able to stop. Unstoppable. Reflex-deep. And ingenious.

Mindy giggled her way thru the whole explanation, giggles and gasps of pain mixed together. You'd think she was planning something and things were going her way from the expression on her face.

"So what do we do now? You need anything more from me?"

The effort of talking to her got silly. It was all suggestive innuendo and it felt like high-school to me.

My own giggling wasn't helping things any. Even with all the trouble and pain we were in, we were turning into a very cheerful couple.

"No." Even that got a laugh until Mindy started regaining control of herself. "Another couple hours sleep and I'll be mobile again, Tracker. I hope. Till then, you sleep on your own side of the cell. Way over there."

She hit me in a sore spot then, and I waited for the waves of agony to subside. When it had, Mindy was already asleep again. I debated the notion of rolling over to a quieter spot, but decided the nice warm slab of concrete I was sleeping on would be fine, regardless of what Mindy wanted. I closed my eyes and went right back to sleep.

***

Mindy was using the john when I woke up again and from the feel of things on my end, we were both semi pain-free.

She also had my goggles on, so I knew what she was doing only from the sounds around me.

Quiet-voice sounded gloomy from his lonely cell a few doors down. "You awake now too? Damn, you two sleep a lot. Most people just lie down and die when they get shoved in there."

Chirping that in from his side of the cell-block, Quiet-voice seemed talkative. Mindy ignored him as she finished up her business, but I knew she had several interesting ways for our new friend to die in mind by then.

"Are you finished with the john?" I whispered out. "If I could move, I'd need to use it."

"Wait your turn." was her tart reply. "This might take a while."

"We need food and water. Did you know everything they give you around here is drugged?" I mentioned that while Mindy finished whatever she was doing over there. "So. Anything come to mind, short of killing and eating someone?"

I did not know where the feeling was coming from, but suddenly I was famished.

"Hey, they've got subsonics and a few others things working here. They just started. Betcha we're about to get visitors." Mindy said sourly. "Blast. And me with my pants down. Here, hide these."

The goggles tossed my way. I put snatched them up and into a pocket just in time. The lights came on and the noise started up.

"Feeding time. Probably. Just close your eyes and ignore them, they seem to like it that way." That got stuck in over the raising tintinnabulation. Sound was almost at painful levels already. Quiet-voice came from across the hall, I could see now, so I snuck a peek at him.

He was still dressed as an intern and very relaxed, fingers stuck in his ears and eyes closed tight. He was treating this prison like the result of a Friday night special in the local hoosegow.

Sort of. The lights were blinding and squinting didn't seem to help me see much. Then the waves of other troubles started as I involuntarily tried to move and flinch out of the way of the nastier stuff.

Movement was really painful. I was way stiffer and far more sore than I'd thought. Plus they had stuff going I'd never heard of.

I snorted and glared Mindy's way. This felt like she's had her way with me again, in spades. With lasers. Again. She was wincing and whimpering on the john-hole, doing a really good impression of disabled CyBorg caught with her pants down and trying to hide anyway.

The light and noise reached distraction-painful levels and something dropped on my chest. Thrown at me from the hall outside the cell. A couple small bags of some sort. I had no idea who threw them and didn't care.

Then the corridor door slammed and we got returned to darkness and quiet suddenly. The relief was so intense I didn't do anything but lie there and breath hard for several long minutes.

I hadn't even seen anybody. The distractions were just too intense.

"Did you scope that out?"Mindy, still over by hole in the floor, turned her head to talk in my direction. She'd fallen over at some point and still seemed to be twitching involuntarily. "EMP pulses were mixed in that. If I had any systems active, they would've gotten burned out. Hard, fast and ugly."

"I didn't see a blasted thing. I was too busy trying to get the monsters out of my head." I'd noticed a few things myself while our guards were in the room. Subliminal suggestions getting flashed, zip-squeals and shadow-plays on the walls.

Not a trick had been missed. In fact, it felt like they had several new ones to try on us. The results were obvious. This whole room was designed to reprogram people from the ground up. A couple days of that in here and Mindy and I would start breaking down; eventually we'd become fairly mindless slaves.

Slurping and chewing in the dark had started from Quiet-voice already. As hungry and thirsty as I was, I couldn't even think of eating at the moment, I was worried by what the goggles had to say about what'd just gone down.

The original zombie or probably worse was the objective. If Mindy and I didn't get out of here fast, we were doomed to be rebuilt as the new and improved zombies.

"Super CyBorgs. Those guards were super-CyBorgs." Mindy sounded impressed and very distracted, then eventually noticed my complete lack of response, interest or comprehension. "Clones. I saw a couple of them back when I was in school. Good clones. Very tough cookies. Super? That means they'll live, oh, maybe an hour or two with everything cranked up. It's a very dangerous state. Instant burnout if you use it very much. Not many can handle the heat."

I rolled the goggles back over to Mindy and I could hear her snatch them up and put them on.

"Thanks." She muttered, obviously distracted. "So that's how I got taken down so fast. Supers. They got the clone-program working down here somehow."

"How did they do that? Clones die soon, fast and get broken easy. They're delicate in various ways." Mindy sounded seriously perturbed. "And they're all damn near impossible to beat. Even for me. Speed, endurance, system integration... They have it all and built right in, they were designed for it."

"Relax. You might be their latest recruit. Or at least experiment." I grunted out, still worried about what I'd just figured out. "That also explains all your damage. You hurt a couple of them. They hurt you back. This whole place is designed to reprogram people, Min. As soon as they think we're healed enough to handle the traffic, we're the latest model zombie."

"I might be. You're just meat." Mindy sounded perturbed. "That's kind of stupid, too. Anything obvious invades me and I'll simply shut down and die. Clumsy of them. I have lots of safe-guards still active."

"They might not care much about that." I thought for a little while. "But they are being careful. They might have all your codes and know what to zap first, right? This place is establishment. Connected. CyBorg builders. But we're not dead yet. They might've made mods on you already, too. Hey, by the way, we have water now."

"Don't drink anything yet." Mindy sounded very interested in that. "Let me try something first."

Since she had the goggles, I just waited in the dark with the bulbs beside me while she crawled back to my side and jacked the goggles into my suit. It took a while and lots of will-power on my part to resist the bio-gestalt as it started up.

Automatically, I noticed. Soon enough we won't be able to shut it down at all. Still, Mindy was still not in the best of shape for doing anything strenuous and I had gotten over-stimulated about eating somehow.

"Lemme see what this set-up can do now." Mindy giggled again and poked me hard somewhere it didn't hurt much. That was a surprise. Up until then, I didn't know I had a spot that didn't hurt. "I need some stuff. Roll over, Tracker. And drop 'em."

"Oh no." I groaned. "Not again. Not already." The emergency kits Henry and the doc-bots had hidden in me mixed in with the shrapnel I'd taken were about to get taken out; and Mindy only had her fingernails and a dull zipper to operate with.

"Swell. The rest of this rescue comes out of my harmless little butt?" I groaned out. I could feel Mindy reach for a water bulb and start doing things to it.

"Yeah. You're my hero again. Now shut up and take this like a man."

I rolled over and since my suit was shredded already, it was time for whatever Mindy wanted to do. I simply closed my eyes and waited while she prodded around and found the package she wanted. Well, I yelped and whimpered a lot, as she wasn't being gentle. Mindy had other things in mind.

The bio-gestalt hiccupped a few times, that started to work with the pain, too. It actually helped cool me down a bit. The package Mindy was after was mixed in with whatever shrapnel left in there. I'd picked up a lot of shards while we were invading the CyBorg school, shards that hadn't come out yet.

"Fast or slow?" Mindy asked as she prepped for whatever else she wanted to do.

"Slow, pleas..ARGH!" That one was over before I even got the sentence out, and Mindy was pinching a fresh-torn fold of skin closed.

"Done. Here, hold this. Wussie." Was her heartless response. "I've got work to do. This one should be a nano repair-pack for me. Better hope I got the right one."

I sat there and scratched my butt while Mindy tried whatever she had in mind.

In the dark, alone. With the sounds of harsh breathing from Mindy and snores from Quiet-voice. Mindy had backed away fast as soon as she was finished with me and left me in the dark.

I did get watered, eventually. And some of the food. Mindy had done something to it and I guess it was safe now, because she wolfed her's down as fast as she could.

But not everything. I got some. We were both asleep again within minutes of eating and drinking.

***

"You two are sure loads of fun." Quiet-voice came out of the dark as soon as I started to stir again. I grunted at him, wormed my way out from under Mindy and made my way to our hole in the floor john. Mindy had crawled on top of me again during our sleeping and wasn't all that happy to let me go. Arguing with even a hurt, sleepy CyBorg isn't easy, especially when it hurts either of us to move.

"Man, I hurt." was all I said. "That's everything that happens around here? We sleep and get fed once in a while?"

"People die. Some get dragged out screaming. Haven't been thru the repress yet, I hear that's loads of fun." Quiet-voice didn't sound worried about it.

"Repress? Oh, the mind-breaker. They do that a lot down here?" My question was a little hesitant. "Man, that sounds bad. No fun at all getting baked into a zombie."

"You'll never know. People come out of here real cheerful. Big-bro is the best thing that's ever happened to them, from the grin on their faces." Quiet-voice chuckled. "Doesn't always take, tho. Six months later, some have to go back thru. Co-ops live longer. A couple runs times in this box and you come out vegetable. Drooling."

"Swell. You up for a make-over this time? We have to go thru it too?" I finished my morning start-up and slowly stood up, hitting my head on the ceiling as I did and ended up crouching in a room built for teddys. Great, more fun. This wasn't a cell as much as it was a torture chamber.

"Nope. The girl that complained because I was dating fresh meat and not dating her again. The team captain put me here to get me out of his way more than anything else." Quiet-voice sounded bored with his life story. "Besides, they need me. I'll be out and back at it soon enough."

"In fact, real soon." Quiet-voice sounded concerned. "I'm due. How's your girl? She hurting?"

"Doing fine." Mindy's voice came out of the darkness and it sounded like she was angry again. A good sign for a CyBorg, as that meant she was getting back to normal. "Another couple days sleep and I'll be ready to take another crack at the guards around here."

"Oh, feisty! They'll eat you alive, girl. Those suckers are mean to the bone." Quiet-voice sighed and there were the sounds of him stretching out in the dark. "Besides, if they don't let me out soon, I just walk out and they know it. They don't want to know how bad this place leaks, so they'll let me out long before that."

"This place leaks?" Mindy and I said that together as we passed each other crawling. She was on her way to the john and moving quietly. I passed her the goggles and she grinned weakly and hit me again, then put them on gratefully.

Mindy was in sad shape, still not operating very well. She moved slowly and awkwardly. Myself, I was stopping to rest every once in a while and it was only steps to where we were sleeping.

I wondered if she needed any more time in the bio-gestalt, then worried if we could take any more of it without getting a little more feisty that would really help. That program was fairly single-minded about certain things.

"Yeah. Seriously. I'm the connection around here. As soon as they run out of stuff, they'll turn me loose." Quiet-voice chuckled. "I've been here before. This is just down-time for me. R and R. I'll be gone soon."

"Can you take a message?" Mindy asked urgently. "Marley's place. We can make it worth your time."

"Hell, no. I don't go underground. That's a long walk from here and it's nasty up there for med-types these days." Quiet-voice said. He sounded bored.

"Or Sandra?" I stuck in, playing a hunch. "We can make some connections for you, if you're up for it."

"Sandra? You know her? Man, she's wack." Quiet-voice sounded impressed. "I get Jethros and zombie grunts walking in my quiet zone. Marley's meat. A connection to Sandra would be sweet, but her boys don't know their way around down here."

"I can arrange that. I've got her number." I grunted out, lying down on my favorite slab of slightly blood-stained concrete. "And more. The best blue, right from the walkers and mutants. King Carlos is one of my buds and he owes me. We know gathers and growers too."

"Truth." Mindy sighed from her crawl back to me. "Just get a message out for us and you're in the gold."

"My, haven't you been there. Carlos has been trying to get past the Jethros for years. You'll get no trust from him. His runners keep getting killed, tho. Bush-whacked, stripped and passed on to the labs." The chuckle from Quiet-voice was even and accepting. "You see that happen all the time. Same for Sandy and anybody else topside stumbling down here. They're just lab-meat."

"I am tired of underground pricing, tho." Quiet voice sounded like he was thinking. "If you can connect me, I'll take it. This might work for us all." Quiet-voice sounded real pleased with this. "What's the message?"

"Get us the hell out of here, mostly." Mindy got back to me, gave me a little peck on the cheek as she crawled back on my chest and settled back for more sleep. I took and put my goggles back on, even if Mindy was reluctant to give them up.

"Leave? That's not a happening thing." Quiet-voice said. "Most people leave here thru the meat-grinder and get spread on the fields. Truth. Dead meat is used to grow flowers here. Zombie, lab-meat and you end up in a private garden on one of the upper levels."

Mindy finally relaxed. She was not in working order yet. Shutdown was what she needed, not active status.

"Just let them know what's happening." she said gasping a little. "They might want to buy some more info from you about this place. Lots of it, for any leaks."

"Info? Deal." Quiet-voice sounded happy. "What's the gig?"

"A message. Toss me your goggles." I said quietly, adjusting to Mindy making herself comfortable on me. That got a woof and me whacked gently again as Mindy was still mostly sore spots and not shy about letting me know about it. "I'll dump an address for ya on them. A com."

"You have a set too? Man, they'll be dragging you out of here soon. Nobody gets goggles here unless they like you." There was a long silent stretch from Quiet-voice. "Or they have big plans for your stupid butt."

"Yee-haw. Man, you don't ask for much. I'm trusting you here." Quiet-voice said, a little grumpy. There was more silence, then a clatter as the goggles rattled their way across the floor over to us. "Don't cross me, it'll go real hard on all of us."

Mindy snatched the goggles and had them on before I could even move. She was jacked in and looking for my goggle-suit connection before I even got my arm off from around her waist.

"Lemme find the blasted jack..." Was about as far as I got before Mindy plugged herself in and activated her combat-mode Borg program.

***

Going Borg. I hated it and resisted the web as it wrapped itself around me. This time it was planning mode, not active war, so it wasn't as urgent. It was still a total wrap and I could feel Mindy's hurt feelings as I resisted. Finally I relaxed and let go; Mindy and I merged into a Borg combat unit.

"It's about time!" was all I got from her. Mindy already had sixteen plans going and was running scenarios as fast as she could. I just grunted and dug in my banks for a safe number to give Quiet-voice, a number that'd get instant attention but not an army delivered to his address if things went wrong.

I did find out his name was Randy. Mindy was busy building a compact zip-squeal in a weird binary, full of whatever she thought was important. I hadn't even know I could do bot-talk with the goggles yet.

"Done." There were three messages built, deposited and hidden in Quiet-voice's goggles. One would try to get out anytime he connected with a com system, one would get delivered to the bots and a third was a virus for my goggles, as far as I could tell. I couldn't read any of them, but wasn't worried.

Any connection to the number I gave Randy Quiet-voice would get lots of attention, and possibly an army or two on the move here. I hoped.

The whole op took only seconds and I got a Borg kiss from Mindy before we disconnected. Weird, but very promising. By the end of it I was starting to think that the bio-gestalt might be worth the hassle after all.

Mindy was itching to turn it on now, but didn't. She did take my goggles back, tho. She'd emptied Randy's databanks while we were there and wanted to snoop around a bit.

She sighed, disconnected and tossed Randy's goggles back to him. I think they hit Randy in the chest, because their landing was silent.

"And deal." Quiet-voice put his goggles back on and grunted. "I see it." He said. "Man, you snoop fast." He added.

"You don't know. Bad connections here. My stuff isn't in the best of shape as the grunts picking us up weren't happy." I answered. "You leaving soon? Randy, was it?"

The noise and lights started up again. Mindy had my goggles off and hidden before I could even twitch, again.

"Yup." Quiet-voice sounded excited. "Or somebody in here is borked. We wait and see what happens. No choice there."

***

Randy got removed from his cell fast. I didn't see him go, I was trying to hide from all the light and noise. I don't think Mindy got shutdown in time, as she was taking the stimulation hard.

There might've been a couple CyBorg specific EMP pulses mixed in with the subliminal suggestions and whatever else they were throwing at us, I was too busy hiding to notice much.

The lights did settle down to a more normal pure-dark level and I opened my eyes to see a doctor with a clipboard watching Mindy and I from the corridor of the cell-block. I peeked around. There were three little rooms like ours around a square with the Doctor in it. The forth wall was the way in and out; it looked blank to me.

A little squeeze let Mindy know we weren't alone. She ignored me and stayed glued to my chest, automatically trying to cover and protect me.

It did look like she was just clinging harder.

"Oh, don't bother trying to get up." the white-coat said jovially thru gasps of pain, waving a metering device at us. "You can't, anyway. I'm just here to make sure you aren't dead."

"Not quite, but it's a close thing." I whispered at him. No use telling him anything he didn't know. "So what else is new out there?"

"Ah, just more rat-del-con. The usual." The doctor switched devices and scanned Mindy again, looking worried. "My, that girl of yours is a wonder. Most of the pool said she'd be dead by this time."

"Yeah. Ya gotta know her. Can I get in on it?" I whispered back. "And what's rat-del-con?"

"Oh, the bots aren't the only ones forcing evolution. Random web, twit-world teddy-Borgs and rat-del-con. That last one is us." A third device came out and the doctor looked impressed at the readings on it, doing more field-tests on Mindy with his scanner.

"Rationalizing delivery content. It's what we call social justice here. Total control." he said absently, still scanning Mindy and looking at the results in wonder. "Con is content, connection and con-jobs."

"Swell." I grumbled, wishing for once I had my Deacon goggles on. They'd like this guy.

"Like the net made justice. Peaceful dispute resolution. Instant cop, judge, priest in your life. Web-world. We evolved into rat-del-con here instead, juggling twits." The doctor sounded amused. "Pure admin. And you're the new Deacon?"

"Yeah. So they tell me." I grunted out, not really happy with this guy anymore. "I have no idea why yet. So what happens to us now?"

"Oh, you're still just noise. Random. Twit-world hasn't ever thrown up any instant miracles we can't handle yet." The doctor said. "They do stuff like that every once in a while. Web stars, twit flash, content. As far as we can tell, you're a dud."

"So you're not interested in us." I said questioningly, after thinking for a few seconds. "Do we get out now?" I asked hopefully.

"Nope. Not the CyBorg either. We got a couple of them to play with this week already, that's why you're not busy right now. And why you're in a teddy-cell. We're out of lock-up room."

The doctor was absentminded and completely reassured about things. He had no clue; sure that the med-center was completely on top of things right now.

"If you survive for very long, we'll be testing you to death. Or at least that's what we usually do with the freebies that turn up at the clinic." The doctor sighed and grinned down at me. "There's never enough live bodies to test things on here. Test to destruction, yahoo! Then reprogramming, if you survive that. You want in on the pool, eh? I can put you down for something, if you want."

"No thanks. More food and water would be nice." I sighed and relaxed as the white-coat put his devices away. "And a couple weeks in intensive care, if you've got any to spare."

"This is intensive care for you two. We did fix your goggles, you know." The doctor waved his meter around to check something or other. "Needed a better stabilizer in the connector, that's all. Random chaos fluctuation. If you ever get them back again, not too likely, they'll work fine now. Not bad kludging there, but nothing we're interested in. Move away from the CyBorg, please. Right now, or I'll have someone come in and move you apart the hard way. Permanently."

Mindy rolled off me as I lifted and sidled sideways, a few feet away. She stayed on her face on the floor where I left her, a comatose, twitching heap.

"Good." The devices came out and the doctor got busy for a few minutes scanning and checking things. He hardly even looked at us anymore.

"So what's your bet in the pool?" He asked, grinning at me as he prepped to leave. "I'll cover for it. Might take a flier on you. It's a miracle the two of you survived this long, really."

"Mostly that I lie here for a couple weeks." I groaned out. "Then rehab for a month or two. Then a long vacation somewhere."

"You might at that." The doctor reached into a pocket and threw me a couple water and food bags. "Here, you've earned this. I won the last pool. Miracles do happen. You really might survive after all."

***

I goggled up and jacked into Mindy as soon as the doctor had left. A couple surprise extra EMP pulses would've scrambled her electronics good and Mindy's electronics went real deep into her life.

She was sill in there cursing, busy trying to get her control systems re-stabilized and back into working order. She grabbed my life-line and dumped everything she could on me while tamping her own systems back down.

It took several long minutes before Mindy took even time enough to say hello. I had my finger on the bio-gestalt program the whole time, just in case she needed that too.

"You tried leaving something on, didn't you?" I asked when Mindy finally stabilized and started using her own electronics instead of mine. "Why?"

"They got a good show of a broken backup system frying itself just now." Mindy answered me carefully, playing with a few internal system settings. She was cutting power usage to a minimum. "And not nano-repairs. They know bothering me again will kill me now. They'll stay away for a while."

"Maybe. Maybe they want your cute little bod on a biopsy table." I sighed, nettled. "You play dangerous games, Mindy."

She settled back down on my chest and pulled over one of the food packs. "Yeah. Life's like that. You gonna eat all this?" she asked carefully. "Because if you don't, I sure will."

"Completely full." I lied quietly, patting my stomach gently. "Not another bite. Except for a drink of water or two, I'm fine."

Mindy grinned at me, then reached over and crammed the food bag in my mouth. "Liar. One taste. That's all you get." She murmured at me as she squeezed food into me. I swallowed as fast as I could. "And after we've eaten, I need a little more bio-gestalt time. Just to heal, you understand."

I sighed as the bag got pulled away from me. "Fine, but that's all you'll be getting from me today, girl. I'm hurting and you're sitting on where it hurts most."

Since we were still jacked in, I started up the bio-gestalt program. Mindy promptly taped it down to life-support only and no fooling around.

I wish I could make the program behave like that, but me it mostly ignored. The program complained but obeyed her. Energy flowed. Mindy's systems perked right up and started running smoothly... As long as you ignored all the red flashing emergency lights her bio-dexes had. There were still lots of them, although she was a lot stronger than she was even moments ago.

"I didn't know you could make it do that." I stuttered.

"One of these days you really got to read the manual." Mindy said quietly. "RTFM, you idiot. You should know more of this stuff by now. Now shut up and pass me the mush, I'm starving."

"Man-pages? You have the only copy." I grumped out, piling bags where Mindy could reach them. "Where is it? I'll read it. Gimme the blasted manual already."

"Not telling. Waste of power right now." Mindy grinned up at me. "Besides, you have to earn it anyway. Page b age. Got that, fella?"

"Oh swell. Rat-del-con admin. Here. The con part?" I glared at Mindy. She grinned right back at me.

"Yes. You should be used to this by now." She slurped back a mouthful of the pasty food and swallowed, then reached for the water-bag. I snagged it first.

Then we shared the rest of the food and water and slept again.

***

The lights came on without the usual warm-up of noise, subsonics, EMP pulses and surprisingly, not at nova strength. They were just lights. I blinked a lot anyway. Even dim light was harsh to my eyes now.

"Hey stud, wake up. I think our leak just arrived." Mindy whispered in my ear. She was already awake, alert and if I knew her, had four plans ready to overpower whatever guards there were coming in using only rags and buttons. "Get those muscles warmed up, Tracker. There'll be a lot of walking in this one."

"Yes dear." I grumbled, already stretching. It hurt a lot. We got untangled, and I fumbled the goggles into ready position. Not on, but ready to get used. I offered them to Mindy and she looked twice, then put them in one of my pockets she could grab them from in hurry if she wanted them.

Stretching stiff injuries out occupied most of my time. You couldn't stand in our teddy-cell, but even the process of getting ready to launch from a crouch took more than a little pain and effort.

Mindy was swinging her arms and grumbling to herself as she tried to get her bruises warmed up. Then door opened and Randy walked in the center connecting room, looking harassed and worried.

"Woo, you weren't kidding about that being a good connection. And mean?" He whispered to me. "Man, those dudes wanted instant action. OK, get this. Officially, the two of you are now dead. It's been entered and you're being dumped. Come get in the morgue cart."

The bars moved up and disappeared into the ceiling. Mindy popped out of the cell like she was on springs as soon as there was clearance for her, with my goggles on already. She did hobble a bit, but she was moving. I had to duck-waddle forward a bit to get out and Randy helped pull me upright once I got free of the cell. Standing up was a painful process. Mindy had her head stuck out in the well-lit corridor, checking for traffic.

There wasn't any. It was as quiet as a tomb outside, just a well-lit and empty corridor with a weird cart in it. Mindy looked odd standing beside Randy, as you didn't really need goggles in the med center. The only people I'd seen wearing tunnel-goggles in here were outsiders.

"It's off to the meat-grinder for us both?" Mindy asked, looking over what looked like a heavy-duty golf cart outside dubiously. I fell outside, leaning against the wall and wishing my back, backside and legs were working a little better. Or at least didn't hurt as much.

"Yah. First stop, the morgue. Try to look dead, would you?" Randy hit a few invisible buttons on the wall and the cell-block closed up again. You could hear automatic cleaners starting up inside, spraying something. He hopped back into the driver's seat of the cart and grinned, pointing at the slabs in the back. "Strap yourselves in, this is going to be a fast, wild ride."

"Kids don't putt around if they can race." he mentioned as I lurched forward and gratefully laid back down again, hauling myself into place using the straps and rolling over.

Mindy clambered right up beside me and stuffed, putting the goggles where she could snatch them again if she wanted them. I one hand on the goggles as she cinched herself in beside me. "You will need seat-belts back there. Trust me." Randy said happily. Then he stomped the accelerator and the cart bounced and whined forward fast. "I got kicked back down to junior duty. Kid stuff, but full access. Perfect. Live fast, hard and hope everything works out. I'm living the dream."

With that the cart stomped we zipped right down the corridor fast, both Mindy and I only belted with chest-straps on. The rest of the straps rattled around loose in the wind.

"There'll be a mix-up at the morgue." Randy said over his shoulder as he tore down the corridors and lurched heavily around corners. "A couple zombies will get left in your place, and get ground down. We get into another cart and driven away in their place. It's right by the elevator. The two of you hop out when we pass that."

"Private elevator?" Mindy asked over the wind.

"Yes, dead-girl. Be still. Right to topside private. Oh, and you'll climb the shaft or ride the top of a car. I dunno which, but it's been arranged. Listen hard. You both climb off, doors will open and you disappear inside it. Jump if you have to. I zip away without stopping."

"As if we're in good enough shape to climb straight up a couple hundred feet of shaft right now." I grumbled trying to lay down, look dead and hold on all at the same time. "As far as rescues go, this sucks."

"More than you know." Randy laughed and squealed around another corner. "Don't get caught by anything in the shaft. It's high speed elevator and there isn't much wall clearance. If a car goes by you, you'll get scraped right off and probably fall to the bottom."

"It's one of my drop-points." Randy whispered to me, confidentially. "They just toss stuff under the car at the top and I pick it up at the bottom. Clean, no fuss, quiet."

We made a final screeching corner and Randy slowed up to another blank-looking wall. "Get out." he hissed at us as he poked at what another clean section of wall. A garage door opened to a large room that showed more carts lined up at a loading dock.

The room was empty. Mindy and I fell off the cart and waited anxiously in the corridor while Randy traded vehicles.

He zoomed out a minute later in a small cart with the back open to what looked like a couple long, wide bins. They were dumpable bins and none too clean. They smelled.

A shovel, boots and mop were in the front seat with him. This was the grinder truck that took care of the morgue's garbage.

"No complaints, now. This is the best I could find." He grumbled, looking around anxiously. "Come on. The cameras reset themselves every few minutes. They do automatic pans. We don't have a lot of time to get moving before we get recorded."

I twinged both hands together and let Mindy climb into one bin from them. Randy took off as I more or less fell into the other.

We were well down the corridor before I got all the way in. "Stay down!" Randy hissed at us as we zipped along in a rushing wind. "Dead people don't climb around much. And they're too stiff to thrash around."

He screeched his way around another corner, almost on two wheels. "But there are spills every now and again.' He said laughing. "It takes a shovel, a mop and lots of water to clean up from a morgue-run spill."

"Dandy." I tried not to think of the smell of the wet bin I was in. I could hear Mindy grumbling too as we watched the ceiling lights flash past overhead. She was not happy. Hiding her way out was not a CyBorg's first choice of getting anything done.

We came to a screeching slow-down long minutes later.

It was another blank wall. Randy leaned over and slapped something on the whiteness and some elevator doors opened. "Move fast. He said, pointing. "And goodbye. I've got other pickups to make now."

Mindy reached over and tore some of my clothes off, taking out a few pockets, giving me a dirty look as she did. "Toss this into the grinder." she ordered Randy, tossing them to Randy. "And don't breath the fumes."

Randy nodded and gingerly took the cloth. I had hardly stumbled to the floor before he was gone, tearing off down the corridor like he was a manic. Mindy already had her head inside the elevator shaft.

"We're expected." She said, pointing to the far wall. There was a rope hanging there, a thick, old fiber one with knots in it every few feet. "Jump and grab that, Tracker. Slide down to give me room. Hook it round your feet, stand on a knot. I'll jump last. Oh, and jump up. If you drop any more than a foot or two you'll be going too fast to hold onto the rope. You won't stop till you hit bottom."

"Ladies first?" I backed up a bit and lurched forward as fast as I could go. "No? Jump up. Got it."

I slammed into the wall far enough down that grabbing the rope was all I had to do. It burned my hands as I ground to a halt. My feet were tangled in the knots already and I didn't have to slide down the rope to give Mindy room.

I looked up, and Mindy was already perched above me. She'd made a clean hop as the elevator doors started closing and the two of us just hung there in the advancing dark, breathing hard as the doors finished their hissing close.

The rope swayed a bit, then there was a gentle tug from above. Mindy blinked and answered it twice before I could even react.

With a sudden lurch, the rope started moving, hauling us up.

"Thank god. I wasn't looking forward to climbing this." Mindy hissed at me and pointed down. There was an elevator heading up the shaft below us. It halted and there was a flash of light as the doors opened down there, far below us.

She tugged twice more on the rope hard. And we started speeding up. In seconds we were practically running up the wall, or at least hopping along. It made holding on a lot harder.

Mindy bounced when she had to, over railings and support trusses. I alternated between slapping the wall away and kicking. The whole trip went really, really fast.

And there was a big, happy reception party waiting for us when we got to the top, one I wasn't expecting and didn't want to see.

They were all Borgs; and they were expecting us.

The reception waiting for us at the top was not good news. There were a dozen fully-armed and ready Borgs waiting for us there and most of them had Mindy in their gun-sights.

The rising elevator hissed to a stop and closed off the shaft behind us.

***

"Hey, Tracker."

"Hey, Angel."

The worst news in the world was also waiting for me there with a big grin on her face. Angel. And she looked like she really, really wanted to talk to me about something.

Mindy did not get all the attention, I even had a gun or three pointed at me. The trap was sprung. If we even breathed wrong right now, we were dead. Instantly. Mindy and I got hauled up with gun-barrels in our faces and locked down tight before we even got a chance to start cursing.

"You know, Tracker, I'm getting tired of bumping into you." Angel grumped out from where she was leaning against the wall, narrowing her eyes at us. "Or hearing about your troubles, so don't start. You're noisy enough for me to follow from here; now I have a few questions about it. Should I make all the usual threats about putting your girl thru the organ-bank, or have you brightened up at all?"

"She's not your mom, but right now I can do whatever I want and she can't stop me." She turned and peered at Mindy. "Or him." Mindy looked up and glared murder at Angel. Angel grinned right back at her, triumphant.

"It's assumed. You want to trade places with me, I'm all for it. You know, I didn't miss you at all either." I was pinned by the arms between a couple heavies and one had a gun at my head. A limp Mindy was being held much the same way. She looked beat and annoyed with her situation, but wasn't in good enough shape to do anything about it. "You keep wanting me to do stuff that makes a lot more trouble than it's worth to me, Angel."

Angel chuckled happily and wandered away from Mindy. "Yeah, I know. Welcome to downtown, kid." She came over to look at me closely. "And now you have a wandering CyBorg girlfriend, Deacon. My, aren't you big-time. Lots of CyBorgs floating around right at the moment, I don't have the time for your particular pesky trouble. What's doing down there?" She turned and snapped that at Mindy that while closing in on me and looking mean.

I didn't rate anything past hello. New Deacon or not, I was still grunt in Angels eyes. I didn't know if I should be thankful or not.

"Clones." Mindy answered that fast, looking up with her eyes still burning. "Supers. Enhanced somehow. And if I was in shape, you won't stand a chance here."

"They took you down that fast?" Angel asked, her face hardening. This was bad news. She had a big grudge against the med-center for some reason and them having a jump in the arms-race wasn't anything she wanted to hear.

"Faster than that, actually." I answered. Mindy took a split-second out of her staring contest to with Angel to glare at me. "And hard. We're hurting here, Angel. Living on fried backups and prayers."

Angel looked us over carefully, then nodded her head. "OK, I'll patch you up before I drain you. I'll do the questions when I have more time. Better hope you have something I want after for this effort, Tracker or I'll be really ticked."

"Deal. Questions? I have a present for you." I mentioned quietly. "Top pocket. It's delicate. Wafer-thin."

Angel looked surprised, then nodded at one of the Borg guards. He got in front of me and emptied my pockets carefully. Eventually, he found the paper-thin goggles and carefully handed them over to Angel.

"That'll tell you more than you need to know." I grunted out, nodding at them. "Trust me. I've had them since I walked in the med-center. Backups."

"Yes, there could be something fun in here." Angel allowed, holding the goggles up to the light and peering at them dubiously. "She had them on?"

"Now and again." I allowed. "As far as I know, we spent all our time being ignored, Angel. Locked in a teddy-cell. We got shut right down and dumped in a hole for later. They're busy with student-work and other wars at the moment, so we weren't a priority case."

Angel thought for a few more seconds, then nodded. "Not blamed for the CyBorg school blow-up, then. Or they're getting very stretched. Good."

"Team Two! Put the CyBorg in for minimal repair. Keep her alive. Top security. Hold both for deep questioning. When she can operate again, call me." Angel watched Mindy quiver as she barked out her orders, then she looked back at the new goggles curiously.

"Him, too. Oh, and thanks for the distraction, Tracker. Your teddy-rescue from the mutants and CyBorg school. It was handy with upstairs. No one up here knew bots had any military before this at all."

That last was an obvious absentminded afterthought, an 'I'll get around to you too someday' type of thought. Angel was in too much of a hurry about something and I wasn't going to be in good enough shape for talking much anytime soon.

It was apparent Angel didn't think I knew anything worth hearing about or we'd be getting prepped for questioning as she spoke.

Borgs are known for wanting instant answers. Then she turned and marched out of the room without even looking at us again. Turning my head, I spoke to the guard holding my arm. It was one of the same Borgs from the tunnel death-squad.

"Looks like you'll have to wait for that beer." I said weakly. "I'm all tied up right now. Will be for a while. Try me after you come back from fishing."

"And you're about to get hospitalized." The Borg grumbled back at me, not relaxing even a hair. "You want to live even that long, shut up."

Mindy slumped into mush right then, shutting herself down. The rescue had been hard on her and she wasn't in great shape to start it. CyBorg? Mindy didn't look or wasn't acting like one of the Crowns of Creation right now. She really needed serious help fast. Getting carried out by four Borgs and a couple more holding guns on her, she disappeared from my sight. I just closed my eyes and let my guards drag me away.

***

I woke up feeling better than I had in days. Wounds cleaned, patched and puttied over. Hair trimmed, beard washed off, enough drugs in me to keep the hazy pain away. Lying in a real bed with fluffy pillows.

This was a hospital; it looked and smelt like one too.

Moving was not as easy as it should've been, but possible. There was a chinking noise as I tried to stretch myself awake. That's when I found out I was chained to the bed, with arm, leg and belly chains.

Active chains, too. Wired up with monitors and stop-me's. No chances taken there. There was even an auto-fire tracking my every movement from a ceiling corner. I had no doubt it was live and ready to fire.

This was a Borg facility. Even the pillows probably had a few tricks and traps built into them.

"Washroom?" I asked carefully, after clearing my throat a few times. "Showers? Food? Please?"

"Use the plumbing." a gruff voice came over the PA to me. "You're still wired up. Anything else, you'll have to wait for a squad to watch you get hosed down."

"Feeding time is in a couple hours." The voice sounded bored. "No choices. Eat it all or get it fed to you. Wash-up after. Understood?"

"Understood." My watcher was not a talkative type. He had nothing else to say and since I had the luxury of not being all that uncomfortable, I just stretched a little bit more and went back to sleep.

I drifted off wondering how well they were handling Mindy's much-abused CyBorg systems in their repair facilities. And how Mindy was taking being rebuilt again, this time by lower-grade Borg system people instead of herself, Henry, weird-bots or the med-center.

Everyone had been jumping my girl these days. A lot, and hard. I fell back asleep feeling grumpy about that.

***

My interview with Angel a day or so later was brisk, to the point and done by voice-phone. I didn't rate personal stuff anymore. It was far too busy out there in the real world for Angel to waste any more time than necessary on me.

"Wake up, dolt." Angel was at her brisk best this morning and even hurt and healing I wasn't getting coddled at all. "I could boot you out of here anytime, Tracker, and except for the fact the teddys and bots would like you back, I would. You're a chip on their shoulder and I could use even that leverage here."

"Hi, Angel. And how are you doing today?" I mumbled out, still shaking myself awake. She had woken me up for this interview and I wasn't really up to speed yet. Plus they'd loaded me with some nifty new drugs I'd never heard of and even with a blurry world on, I felt talkative. "Ready to tear some badguys a new one today?"

Angel was not amused. She rattled on, determinedly bring me up to date for weird reasons of her own. "The good news? Eric spilled, finally. Mindy got pushed into the Borg squad she took out back there, she wasn't hunting them. She's clean. Your backup goggles were good, we got some great intel on the med-center works and a load and a half of personal crap out of them."

She sniffed at me in a disgusted way. "Damn, you're a chicken-shit Tracker, did you know that?" Angel's chuckle was mean. "And you have no imagination. Anyway, your girl is almost ready to go in for combat-ready repair. Tough nut, her. Lives without life-support now, wants intense physiotherapy from you. She's not getting any from us."

Angel rambled on, trying to put me at ease. I guess the whole conversation was getting analyzed six ways from Sunday and they wanted a good baseline to work from. "Nifty save you made on her with the bio-gestalt, too bad she's too much of a mess for us to clean up to put back to work. She has been compromised way too often and by far too many people to get trusted here. Not that we're letting her get her hands on anything more dangerous than spaghetti."

Angel was irritated, waspish and cranky. She did not want to waste any time talking to a drugged-up teddyhunter but was doing it anyway. I wondered about that. What did I know that was worth tricking an honest answer out of me?

"Mostly just burnt out systems left in there, anyway. I have no time for this little adventure, so it's back to a deep dark hole for the two of you till I find the time to sell you off, take you apart, or both."

"My secret identity as a one of the best teddyhunters in the city isn't earning any points with Borg-world?" I sighed heavily. "Blast. I was counting on that. Or are Borgs thinking of dating their cousins now? Angel, I need a favor. Can you get me out of being a Deacon? That's the major problem in my life right now, other than being locked up in a Borg prison-hospital facility. I never did want that job."

Angel snorted in a disgusted manner. I could almost hear the pencil snap as I said something really, really stupid. "De-deaconize you? That's the only thing keeping you alive, Tracker. And that just barely. From what we can tell, even most of the bots want you and your girl dead."

"No one would mind if you died here. Or care." She added absently. "You two are a zero. Old tech. Not even a twitch from the med-center about you getting away and they always want bodies to experiment on. Even from my upstairs people don't know or care."

Aha! Angel knew Mindy and I were a team now and wasn't upset. The upstairs baby-maybe priority was still in place. Maybe Angel or someone had enjoyed the little real-time porno we'd left on the goggles while on bio-gestalt.

Mindy's CyBorg side would've made that a very popular item in Borg-world. Whatever CyBorg porn was out in cyberspace there would probably be sparse and low, but that probably suited the Borgs.

"So, I get some down-time where I'm not a lab-rat experiment for whatever local mad-scientist has a few ideas to tinker with? Gosh, that's a change. Who do I thank?" Being ignored? That was a puzzle to me. Last week, there'd had been whole armies out trying to save me.

"Ha. You're not that lucky. Dropping you back out in the wild is out, you're way too noisy while wandering around loose. The CyBorg is way too dangerous to even think of letting go. The official suggestion here is to just decommission the both of you and work on a simpler game." Angel had a smirk that sounded nasty even when you couldn't see it. Nastier when she had plans for you.

Decommissioning us would've been her idea. Angel always did like simple solutions to her problems, and permanent ones were always best.

"Be chipper, lab-rat. I might get to sell you off anyway. There are a couple low-bid offers on your butt, none worth the trouble. All after the invasions are finished maybe I'll put some thought into it, as this whole pile of troubles is being way too hard on my manpower. Tell me about the teddy art-school now."

"Sure." This was a question I could answer and I felt really glad to do so. It must've been the drugs, as anyone who wanted to talk to Angel was taking their life in their hands when they did. "One of the scarier places I ever fell out of. It looked like a space station and they all acted that way there."

Angel let me ramble on about my fifteen minutes of teddy-bot scrutiny fame while she worked on the more interesting things in her life in the background. I was honest, rambling, passionate about staying away from the place and almost useless. Teddysex with the phone systems I knew nothing about. Weird-bots I avoided. Weapons were things fired at me, and I always ducked and ran. My deacon-goggles info-tainment was a bore. She peppered me with random questions about my other activities in the last few weeks as I rambled and seemed satisfied with my answers.

I knew nothing she wanted to know. Applied Cyber weird-bot techno-tricks were never my strong point. Henry's was a place I walked in and out of. I know how to wear goggles, and that's about it. The mutants I never saw. Anti-slavery weird-bots getting after the med-center she giggled at.

Harvey she treated like a good replacement for me in Mindy's world and otherwise almost ignored. She did mention it was thought he'd gotten capped by the med-center with the rest of the students running around loose and was being used or scheduled for use in their clone experiments.

Spy-eyes were cheap; most of the renegade CyBorg students had gotten run down fast or simply disappeared. All of the running battles down underground with mutants and gangas had gone quiet and Borgs ruled there again unchallenged.

Mushrooms were simply not on her list of things to worry about.

I got dumped fast and hard when she was through with me and I was left to rot alone in my comfortable little hole. The Borgs and Angel couldn't even be bothered to torture me, or wring any serious information of my hide.

I guess it was a busy time for Angel out in the city and underground. Or I was being used as bait to flush any other hidden armies out of the caves.

There was not much solid information in what I said, except for which tunnels were damper than they should be. Angel's Borg squads were probably not happy at all the fishing expeditions they had to do this week.

The interview ended abruptly. Angel hung up on me without even saying goodbye.

Things were pretty much normal for me now. I was stabilized, staked out as bait for anyone silly enough to trying invading and still stupid. Things were under control, as far as Angel was concerned. She was through with me and won't talk about Mindy at all.

***

## chapter nine Who wants what

We had Borgs, CyBorgs, super-clones and lots of facilities. They had Mother Nature on their side and we got creamed. - Angel's Rants.

***

It got boring in my cold little room fast; since Angel had left no orders for things to be changed for me, they weren't. I got fed, walked to a shower once a day, treated for whatever injuries got irritating and otherwise ignored. No-one would even talk to me.

That left me lots of time to brood about what they were doing to Mindy, wherever she was. Since she was special to everybody I knew, lots of weird ideas came up; including rescues where dirty white hospital gowns, bed chains and a couple of sheets figured predominately.

None of it did me any good. At the end of the day I was still chained to a bed, locked in a room without doorknobs and stretching out various hurts. I slept a lot and watched the line of fire when the door opened.

That was the only smart thing I did.

A laser burnt thru the lock just after shift change one night and I ducked out of the auto-fire response. When the CyBorg students-squad finished shooting their way into the room and rescued me, I wasn't even surprised. Or worried as they cut my chains with more laser-fire, then rolled me into my blanket and bundled me away. They weren't a chatty group, so I didn't even try to talk to them.

It was the scariest rescue yet, almost completely silent. They treated me like a helpless baby; I just relaxed and tolerated it. Even in top shape there was no way you could keep up with CyBorgs and this was not the right time for small talk anyway. Tossed over a shoulder wrapped like a sausage, we were gone in seconds, me completely blacked out. I have no idea how the kids got in or out of the place, or even where the hospital was.

As usual, I got wrapped in a dark little hole and kept that way the whole time I was being bundled about.

That was being to feel like the story of my life. You get all wrapped up in whatever was happening and just ride your way through the happenings.

Mindy was waiting for me in a tunnel when I got unwrapped, thrown to her like a bone to a dog. She was wearing the torn remains of a white hospital gown and looking CyBorg mean. I finished my unrolling at her feet and she hauled me off the floor with one hand, not even bending down to look at me while she did.

"They hid you really well, Tracker." She snarled at me, not even watching as I tried to get my legs under me and working again. Except for trips to the washroom and shower, this was the first time I'd even gotten to stand alone for a few days now. "Your half of the rescue has been a pain."

"Yeah. I hope you're worth the trouble." One of the students who'd picked up a burn somewhere groused quietly and rubbed his arm. "The whole thing was a cakewalk. I think Angel was hoping we'd do this. Or it's another trap."

"Maybe. I took out a Borg armory without any trouble a while back. Even the best they could do isn't all that hard to beat." Mindy let me go and put some goggles on me. There still wasn't a smile on her face. "There you go. Welcome home, Tracker."

"And as soon as the room stops spinning, I'll thank you." I nodded at the student-squad surrounding us and felt sorry for anybody who wanted to take them on. They did look like a group of snappy pros. "For getting me out of there. I got dumped and left to stew in my own juices, Min. How'd you do?"

"Basic repairs. I look like a Borg to the scopes now."She barked at me, still on full alert and scoping out the tunnel we were in. Mindy was in CyBorg mode now and had taken over the squad leadership in the few minutes she'd been with them. "But I'm not. CyBorgs have hidden systems. Let's move, norm. The Borgs are going to get after us eventually."

"Hardly enough Borgs left in there for basic defenses. Anyone leaves to come after us and the place is wide open. Sparse personnel to start with." One of the brighter students grabbed one of my arms; someone else picked up on the other. A third tore my hospital whites off me and left them in a heap on the floor. Mindy's got tossed on top of it and the pile of clothes disappeared under some concentrated laser. Then I got lifted like I was a child between body-builders.

"Scopes say we're clean. Let's move. Reinforcements will get here eventually. Go! Go! Go!" Mindy barked. I got zoomed out of the place and into another wild ride I never want to repeat. Dark. Full-speed sprint. Naked except for goggles. Being carried between two killers by the arms and shoulders. Then CyBorgs carrying me hit some power-cable ladders at a dead run and bounced straight up them without stopping, me still dangling between them like a dead weight.

In perfect unison, at full speed and only using one hand, they bounced up that power ladder full of bright shiny copper cables. Naked copper cables bursting with power an inch from my nose. I was too scared to even whimper.

Scouts were clearing the way ahead and Mindy followed up behind us, all of the CyBorgs monkeying up the ladder like it was a walk in the park.

Sparking cables were within licking distance the whole time. Instant fiery death inches away and almost tickling my knees. I exhaled and kept my head as far back as I could.

"Harvey arranged this?" I asked when we dropped off the ladder and passed down a tunnel that wasn't as nerve-wracking as the last bit. I was still dangling between two of the CyBorg students and not relaxing just yet. Even being carried around by a speeding bot doing the jungle-walk thru pipes hadn't been this bad.

"Yeah. Now shut up." Mindy looked like she was enjoying a light workout after being cooped up a few days. I was beginning to regret getting goggles on as the CyBorgs around me flashed with systems, weapons and fireworks that were completely unnerving.

"Thank God somebody still loves me." I grumbled quietly, glancing around at the students nervously. Any one of them could chew their way into a Bolo tank, and I was surrounded by about six of them, all on high battle-alert.

You couldn't really tell how many of them there were. They flickered in and out of stealth-mode and moved around fast; you couldn't even get a good count on how many of them were with me.

"Don't push it, Tracker." Mindy growled back, watching her little army with total satisfaction. Yes, the goggles were still set to bot-reflexes. The amount of info being dumped in my ears and eyes was distracting enough to keep me from being any help during the ride at all.

I will swear Mindy did that on purpose. I was too distracted to protest the route we took, which was all pipe-running, power-ladders and wind-sprints down completely dark tunnels.

Five minutes later I began to recognize where we were. Ganga territory in the underground, not that a ganga was much of threat to this group. There were even a couple speedy carts waiting for us at the end of one little sprint. I got tossed face-down into a back seat and held in place by someone from the squad sitting on me.

The ride was fast, furious and a lot of it on two wheels. It did give me time to shut most of the Deacon-goggle noise down. I sure hoped somebody in this group knew what was going on because I didn't.

***

Most of the squad jumped off at one point, taking me with them. The carts disappeared into the dark, still going full speed, and without lights.

I got dragged into place, still mother-naked. When the hidden door in a tunnel wall finally closed behind us, we were in a ganga secret lab tucked somewhere in the underground. Cluttered? It could've been anywhere and looked like it was built from scrap, stolen junk and cast-offs, but apparently it worked.

Ever see CyBorgs students scope a place out? There were six guns on a led-light if it flashed unexpectedly and gone again before I had time to even get clued in to what was happening. Letting the goggles do all the hard work for me seemed best, as I couldn't keep up with all the noise around me anymore.

It finally came to me. This was the ganga skunk-works. This was where the gangas had their Borg program centered and did whatever patching they did to their own people.

Henry was expensive, and not always cooperative. I wondered if Angel knew about this place, then guessed she did. Faulty weapons and erratic electronics had to go somewhere; this looked like a likely spot to me.

I didn't recognize anyone here except Mindy.

"Betcha the rent on this place is insane." I grumbled out, shaking out a few kinks in my muscles left over from my hospital stay. "This our new war-room?"

"Yeah. It's something Harvey set up to process his students in. Or took over from the ganga-Borgs, he never said which." Mindy was scoping the room out and didn't have time for me, not with six other CyBorgs wandering around. There were still way too many active threats for me to get any attention from her. "At gunpoint, knowing Harvey. Didn't take much for these Borgs to start getting nice after he showed them a few tricks."

"I don't need to know about the ganga Borg army. It sounds like applied hell to me, just like most of the rest of this place." I fell into a chair and took the goggles off, still making adjustments on them. Mindy snorted, snatched them away, adjusted them and had them back on me before I even got my hand back from in front of me.

My hospital gown had not taken the trip well. In fact, I didn't have one anymore as somebody had torn it off me a while back. Mindy was already rooting thru a drawer closet for something decent to wear. Her gown had disappeared during the trip here too but she didn't seem all that bothered about being naked and in a war-zone.

She did have a gun or two now, so she was happy. Something overall-ish got tossed my way and I stepped into it gratefully. Mindy was wearing the same; we two could've passed as lost ganga farmers in a room full of Borgs.

In a lab that Frankenstein would've felt right at home in. Med patches were getting passed around to whoever needed them as the CyBorgs stood down from high battle alert and linked up, jacking in com-lines together from ear patches.

If you think CyBorgs were impressive as a squad, you should see what happens when a few of them start linking up together. It was a scary sight.

The room suddenly shut down and plunged back into darkness, but no one but me got upset. I wasn't comed into the CyBorg war-net yet. The cart-dumpers cycled their way in and I got a look at the shielding this place really had.

Impressive. The door was a vault and I had no doubt the rest of the room as just as buried. We could've been under a Borg station and not noticed. In fact, we might even be there.

"So what happens now?" I asked Mindy as she finished tightening her overalls. "What battle are we fighting? Whose prisoner are we now?"

"The good guys are winning. That's all you need to know." Mindy linked up and jacked in with the rest of the CyBorgs then, still ignoring me. The ones closest to her blanched and looked really startled at what they were seeing in her.

Mindy loved it, you'd think she was finally coming home. I got a couple weird looks coming my way as she updated the squad on her status, too.

"I get the horrible feeling you're about to go take something apart." I said as the squad de-linked and snapped back into war-mode, setting about various tasks with straightforward deadly aims. The CyBorgs were brisk, efficient and moved with a deadly purpose as they rearmed, charged up and pulled new ammo belts out of various holes in the wall. "On purpose. Are we?"

"You aren't, norm. You stay hid while we take care of some business." With that, the CyBorg squad brushed past me and filed out of the room, thru another hidden door and into a tunnel that was dark even to my deacon-goggles.

Mindy went with them, following the squad out, still in command. "Stay here." was all she had to say to me. "We'll be back in a while."

"I hate these sudden impulsive ideas you get, Mindy." I grumbled out as the door shut quietly and I got left alone in the lab. "No good ever comes of them."

Sitting on the edge of an examining table, I looked at the stains on it, then around the room at the mystery equipment that stood silent and blinking at me.

I was surrounded by mystery tech and had no-one to surrender to. Things were looking up, finally.

***

A ganga-Borg came into the room a few minutes later, while I was still messing with my new Deacon-goggles. I didn't die instantly, so I ignored him as much as I could. Why the goggles hadn't picked up on the CyBorg messaging I didn't know, and I was curious to find out what this new model could do in a war-situation.

Being clueless was bugging me anyway. I wanted to find out what was going on and this looked like a good place to find things out in.

The Borg was peaceful, for a Borg. He winked at me and plugged into something, moving from machine to machine and till he found what he wanted. Moving like smoke and looking like a panther dressed in random electronics, the ganga was impressive, even if he was decked out in junk and random electronic parts.

I had no idea what he was after. Myself, I was already all for running away as fast as I could and only wanted to find a place that wasn't over-run with troops getting ready to shoot at one another. The Borg wasn't helping me any. I couldn't think of anywhere else to go other than a zombie farm, and farms were a little tricky to locate even with the best tech out there.

The cave to the mushroom jungle sounded nice and remote, but it had no backdoor anymore and lots of bodies lying around getting mossed over. Plus it was a fair walk from here to the Deep and the mutants won't be happy to see a nice farm go to outsiders.

Being in the same room with six feet plus of big angry Borg didn't disturb me the way it had last week. Since he wasn't all that bugged at seeing me in the rebel nerve-center, there were obviously other, more important bis to take care of first.

The scattered-looking Borg jacked into another live counsel and finally found what he wanted, then just stood there while getting updated. A com newsline, I guess. I was not any kind of concern, so I put my Deacon-goggles back on and tried to get a few on-line updates for myself.

I really wanted to know what Mindy was up to. She was tons of trouble all by herself and right now she had an unsupervised squad of CyBorgs students to play with.

Green kids who didn't know who was trouble out there and sure they could handle anything? Mindy leading them?

I hate kids. They already act like they're immortal, invincible and invulnerable. Ready to target the moon. Mindy had gotten her hands on a whole squad of them. Bad news for someone, definitely.

As far as I was concerned, the whole planet was in deep, deep trouble now and about to get some bad news the hard way, let alone local targets like the med-center, topside or any random gangas floating about.

The ganga-Borg looked like he was chuckling and having a good time with the com-center he'd found. Mindy's latest efforts and adventure, I guessed. Having a chuckling Borg in the same room with me was not a happy time for me, it was nerve-wracking. A Borg's sense of humor is usually fairly nasty.

"Having troubles there, little man? Here, lemme see those." Unjacking, the ganga-Borg looked pleased with something and looking to do a good deed. When he did speak, it was a surprise. He sounded like a ganga turned topsider on a picnic, not an undergrounder.

"They still hide the manuals in bot-talk. I'll get those goggles up to speed for you." He held out his hand for the hardware. I didn't argue, I just took them off and handed them to him. Jacking into them, the Borg stood still for a few seconds.

"Yeah, just as I figured. Fools. They didn't turn the AI on." he grumbled in a peeved tone. "Man, what pea-brains. It's set to adaptive mode now, Deacon. Companion, not teacher. You can start some serious learning anytime."

"Swell." I grumbled, getting ticked again. From the sounds of it, this was going to take me hours to get the goggles set up right again. "I've had lots of those abstracts recently. I'm not interested."

The ganga-Borg looked amused at my complaints. "People. Love' em, Deacon. It's all you can do. Topsiders are still bullshit, living the dream. Cranky about being disturbed. All-play gaming underground with gangas. Whatever passion works. Zombies, like everyone else, are standing around waiting for someone to tell them what to do."

"Warlord toys, most of them." He mused on. "Hoping for their favorite rape to come on. Bots, mushroom mutants, clones... They're all the same. Standing still."

"And you're offering speed. Hope they take it and make it work right. Hey, done. You're as clued in as you can handle now, or will be soon." The ganga Borg winked at me again, then grinned. "And the goggles will adapt to you now. Fast. Help out. Keep working, not standing still, OK?"

He got serious for a second and looked me in the eyes. I flinched. "You're the local Oh-Oh-Oh. Omniscient, Omni-cog, omni-pres. Out of order, right? Omnivore?" the Borg chuckled at his own little joke, then got ready to leave.

"Pass. Sounds way too much like 'I am the truth, the light and the way or we kill you.' to me." I grumped out, after a couple seconds thought. The Borg chuckled again, still a weird sight when someone in the room wasn't being hurt a lot.

"More news. I wasn't here. You got that, Deacon?" Tapping his shoulder where there was a mushroom patch hidden under ammo belts and various Borg whatnots, the ganga-Borg frowned. I had no idea what the patch was supposed to mean. "To everyone, Deacon. You didn't see me, I didn't help. Now, the next few hours are gonna be lots of fun-fun. Stay hid. Excuse me now while I go get in on some of the action."

He paused after turning around and stepping towards an opening door. "Oh, and if you see any clones, just shoot for the legs. Slows them down a lot." With that, the ganga-Borg just blurred away, heading out yet another door, going towards whatever the CyBorgs had left to do a few minutes ago. I guess. Whatever was going on out there must've been important. He left the door open, and it was another hidden route to somewhere I didn't know anything about.

I glared at the still-open door. So far, there had been three secret doors into this secret room. I wondered just how bad ganga security was, then decided that was something I could ignore for a while.

My goggles were coming back to life and it turned out that guy was even better than Mindy at getting things set up.

***

There was no trace of the Borg ever having jacked into my goggles or even ever being in the room. I didn't have time to worry about that.

"Any requests?"

The voice whispering in my ear was a very sexy contralto, and an instant distraction. It felt like a super-model was about to start whispering hot, sweet suggestions in my ear.

"Voice change. Less sex, more info. Update me on the latest ops underground." I said out loud. "Find and track all com-lines being used in here right now."

"Working. Done." The voice had changed to something more like a briskly efficient secretary. I missed the super-model already, but didn't need the any annoyances right now.

"CyBorgs squads are invading the med-center. Topside Borgs are walking the tunnels keeping civilians, gangas and zombies contained. Not well."

"Henry?" I asked walking over and jacking into the same terminal the ganga-Borg had been in. There was a brief flurry of static as lines got open and arranged. There was a lot of buzzing as I got updated.

"Unknown. Harvey is radio-silence, jack-only mode. Has been for days now. Most of the CyBorgs are zombie-quiet. Active war status, combat-mode assumed. Henry, current op unknown."

The CyBorgs were at war with someone. Probably other CyBorgs, the super ones. That was the assumption and I didn't argue with it. I had been living with a CyBorg for a while now, and that's how they lived.

I hummed a little tune and patted the Deacon goggles happily. This new set-up was great. I could hear the changes as the goggles adapted to my wants and what I needed to do. One of my favorite tunes started up softly in the background, relaxing me even more.

Joy. My Deacon-goggles were turning themselves into an entertainment center, finally. No more lectures on weirdness I didn't need to know anything about.

"Goggles. Top priority. Find and track Mindy. Second. Locate Brother John. Third. Link with Henry, get updates. Fourth. Monitor any and all local activities, threats to be neutralized. Minimum damage top priority. Stay hidden, my location by request only. Fifth. No nagging."

"Basically, just who is after me today, Hon?" I asked quietly, reacting more to the new voice the Deacon-goggles had more than anything else. AI companions are like that, it was one of the reasons I usually avoided them. Giving my goggles a name was a bad first step, so I didn't. "Where do I run to that's safe and not a priority target like here? And keep it radio-quiet."

The quiet voice in my ear bugged me more than I wanted to admit. There were lots of people topside who would only talk to their AI after having them on for a few years. AI friends had replaced collecting cats and I didn't want to be that kind of crazy just yet, no matter how good they were at it.

"What do I do to keep away from serious threats?"

Ordering my goggles around like this was a pain, but I had hopes. I stayed jacked in the repair room terminal, just in case this was a landline-only war. The tunes stayed on while the Deacon-goggles worked busily on my latest requests.

"There are standing orders for Borgs and Med-center clones to pick you up again. Not priority, kill if capture not possible. No interest from anyone else. Your location unknown to everyone except Mindy and Radiant right now. No active threats."

The goggles produced a small giggle. "Radiant was the mutant-CyBorg just in here. Ganga-Borg turned mushroom. Unknown element. Mystery to everyone in the underground. No apparent threat. This room is as safe as anywhere underground. You have time for a nap, cards or some light reading. What would you like to do, Deacon?"

"Keep quiet. No giggles, please. Shut down the music, run silent-mode only. No pings."

The goggles obediently shut themselves down and after a few more frantic seconds of data-exchange with the counsel I was jacked into, that line went dead too.

It was time for me to decide to do something. Something world-saving, probably. Or world-changing, that was supposed to be my job.

The only problem was, I didn't have a clue what I was supposed to do, other than hide from people trying to kill me.

***

I decided a visit to Henry's place was first. The lab, not the junk yard. Not only would they take the wounded CyBorgs there for repairs, he'd have better info on what was happening in the tunnels that I did. Borgs would find the place easily, but it was only one stop in a whole underground to patrol.

My betting was that the Borgs were doing most of their patrolling from bars in the underground anyway. Or smoking farms. After going over the rest of the news my goggles had gathered, I decided that Amanda should really dump the jock-star she was dating and find a guy who'd better help her career.

After twenty minutes of trying to reset the goggles, I found out that this really was the ganga priority newscast. It was also the only live feed I could find anywhere in the place. It took me a while, as there were a lot of places to plug-in in that room. None of them were very interesting and the goggles no help at all at finding a better com-line or live-feed for the war outside.

On my own again. The first problem was finding out where I was in ganga territory. My goggles were again no help there and GPS was dead this far down in the rock. With Borgs wandering around looking to re-capture me, I wanted to stay quiet, so live-casting was out. There'd been a reward put on my little butt a while back and I had no idea if it'd ever been canceled. Any broadcast and all sorts of hungry people would converge on me for an easy score.

It was probably still there. With a war going on outside, my ability to command an instant bot army would be even better news to interested parties now than it was last week.

The door Radiant had left open led somewhere unknown. The one I'd come in led back to topside Borgs. The only door that looked like a door went somewhere else.

I took the open one and hoped, after making sure the goggles knew I was going silent with passive-mode links only. I did not want any sudden burst of noise, system-pings or connections to give my position away to everyone.

The last time I'd tried that, whole armies had converged on me. Today, I was determined to keep it quiet. The door to the war-room closed silently behind me, as if the whole place had been waiting for me to leave.

The hive-bot I bumped into outside in the tunnel was very glad to see me; that ruined almost everything.

***

"Good morning, Deacon. Can I help you get anywhere today?"

That little voice scared the crap out of me as it came from a section of dark tunnel I'd just gone thru. I was traveling dark, no lights, just on goggles and stalking my way down the raw rock tunnel heading towards what I hoped was civilization. Or at least empty urbanization.

The bot had deactivated himself and was invisible in the dark. I'd walked right past him and hadn't known it. The little pest might've even hung himself from the ceiling, I didn't know or care.

It was a weird-bot too, all self-mods, mostly strange arms with peculiar claws. He actually looked more like a spider than an ordinary bot. He was also painted black for the occasion and very hard to see in the dark.

"I'm headed to Henry's lab. Do you know a safe route there? One without any traffic shooting at me?" The request was reasonable and I was hoping I could get by without the bot finding out I was totally lost. I hadn't found out just where Mindy had left me yet.

The bot considered that while rotating his arms nervously. It looked eerie, and I had no idea what he was warming up to do, but it looked evil. He had six arms, two legs and a head. They all moved independently.

"Yes. There aren't many quiet routes today, but I can get you to Henry's lab if that's where you want to go." The bot just stood there looking at me. I hoped he was being quiet, but that was a little much to hope for from a hive-bot. "We do suggest going to the art-school again, however."

Blast. A 'we.' Bots. They do like to stay linked in, they're as bad as the city-Borg kids topside when it came to that. I was hoping my location was being kept a secret.

"Run quiet mode, passive only. Get me to Henry's thru safe tunnels. Pipes, ladders, teddy tunnels, anything empty." I said briskly. "Carry me if you have to. I don't want to be captured."

"You not being captured is already a top priority. For us." The bot mentioned quietly. "This way. Follow me as quietly as you can." He stalked off into the dark, moving quickly and disappearing.

Fast and quiet were two different things; quiet had just walked me right past a hidden bot. Fast wasn't something I could do yet. I didn't say anything, just trotted after the weird-bot. Hopefully, if there was any shooting today, he'd be first in the line of fire and not me.

There were still way too many people out there that wanted to talk to me for one reason or another. Or see me taken out of any of the plays going down.

My goggles came on without any warning and started whispering warnings in my ear. The warm-up giggle first was extremely annoying. "Borgs ahead, tunnel junction." She whispered. "In bad humor, too. Monitoring their transmissions. They seem to want to score at Marley's more than capture you or fight anymore today."

Bad humor and Marley's was normal Borg chatter. The bot and I were still hid. Hoping the shielding on my goggles was better than it looked, I moved closer to the weird-bot to stay hidden in its electronic noise.

He nodded and one of his arms pointed ahead and across. I didn't know if that was the way we were heading or that was where the Borgs were. Then I spotted the junction ahead and flattened myself against the wall. The bot joined me and turned himself off.

Some topside Borgs ambled past, a small spot of light way ahead of us in the darkness; darkness with armed flickers in it now. Shadow-play. All of them were cursing sore feet and battle damage. It had gotten bad out there for them sometime recently, and they weren't even headed back for repairs yet.

The bot was shielding me with his body, but the Borgs totally ignored the side-tunnel we were in and headed straight down their route. The two of us stayed put till they were well past and their noise had disappeared.

The bot reactivated and trotted back ahead into the dark. I followed him as best I could, but noisily as the tunnel floor was covered in gravel and rocks now.

The opening was the size of a teddy tunnel and had lots of scree, loose rock and junk around it on our side. It did make the tunnel look unfinished, raw and a hard walk in unwired dark. Not inviting at all.

The bot bent over and scooted himself thru, moving faster on his six arms than I could wriggle. He pulled me out on the other side, picked me up and ran fast back towards where the Borg had come from.

Carrying me like a baby, I might add. It was undignified.

"This will be much quicker." he said very quietly. "Relax and enjoy the ride, Deacon."

I didn't really have much choice. When a bot with six arms grabs you, you stay grabbed. He pointed out another teddy air-shaft in the ceiling a little ways down the tunnel, then got me tucked away again and started running faster.

It was an interesting way to jump. When you have eight things to jump with, it goes really fast. The bot went straight up the air-shaft, and that was only the start of the journey. Six appendages hit the walls of the shaft when we got high enough and scooted us along. I got carried all the rest of the way to Henry's in the arms of a giant spider.

Shielded, safe, across pipes, air-shafts, down power-ladders and with occasional wind-sprints across ordinary shafts. Again.

After I remembered to close my eyes, the trip even got relaxing, if a little bumpy. Being delivered to Henry's was not the joy I'd hoped for, however.

They were in the middle of a clone-war invasion there.

***

"Unfortunately, the clones have gotten behind us." The bot carrying me didn't seem all that worried about the war we'd just walked into. "Re-enforcements arriving for this attack. We have to go thru the battle to get into Henry's."

There were some explosions and the occasional flash of laser fire in front of us, but I couldn't see anything that looked like a running battle. "He's putting up a lot more resistance than they thought we could?" I asked. "Good for Henry."

"Actually, the clones chased Mindy and her squad back here." The bot corrected. "Almost destroyed the whole squad doing it. Her attack didn't make that much of a dent in their forces and this is their retaliation."

Then one of the clones got hit in front of us and stopped blurring around as he stiffened momentarily in pain and shock. Fire immediately concentrated on him and he went down in pieces.

Messy pieces that both bled and sparked. They disappeared almost instantly, too. The other clones weren't leaving any info lying around for us to snoop thru.

"Sounds like fun." I grumbled out. I couldn't see anything behind us, but I wasn't turning my goggles up high enough to make myself into a target so I could see them. "Is there a problem with this? We have what, seconds before we get pincered?"

"Thirty seconds. The odds are we'll get shot at a lot; and hit once or twice. I will do whatever I can to prevent you from being injured." The bot seemed to be prepping himself for something; charging capacitors for high-speed sprint was my guess.

The bot paused thoughtfully and whispered to me again. "They are aware of our presence inside and grateful for the distraction. They will assist if they can, or if it's requested."

"Give me a gun and we'll shoot our way thru." I said quietly. "Not that we have any choice about that anymore."

"I am not armed. That is in our favor, as we won't get targeted as a danger. To the clones, we look like a parts delivery. That is the signature I am broadcasting." The bot finished whatever he was doing and wrapped two arms a little tighter around me. "I suggest you hold on tight." he mentioned quietly. "This will be a rough ride. Fast. Bumpy. Strap yourself down if you can."

I wrapped myself around the bot as tightly as I could, linking arms and legs together behind him. The bot had arms and two legs slightly bent, charged up and ready to go. He had two arms holding me tight to his chest. "Go." I grunted, putting my forehead against his chest. "This is as good a chance we'll ever get."

That was actually the last thing I remember. The sudden acceleration as the bot sprinted off at full emergency speed banged my head hard enough to knock me out. There was a brief sensation of us bouncing around, mostly the bot grabbing things and to change our direction, and us sprinting thru a door that wasn't open till we hit it.

It slammed shut bot-fast behind us and I got the stars from my eyes after my ride slowed himself down by running into wall. Or two. He bounced out of the line of fire and dropped me immediately, then shambled over to plug himself in a charge socket.

More than a few of his joints were smoking and laser-fire damaged. He'd gotten hit at least twice and one of hits had cooked some wiring.

"Tracker! Nice of you to drop in." Henry was hidden behind a wall made of terminals and lab whatnot, busy working on someone on the med table. "Now get over here, I could use some help."

I looked around while stumbling towards the med-table Henry was standing over. Two or three of his lab bots were running around returning fire at the attacking clones thru holes in various walls. Auto-fire placements were mostly already all shot up, but stuttered occasionally anyway. There were a couple CyBorg students running around too, and a couple more of them piled up on slabs behind Henry.

Nothing ever stood still long enough for me to get a count, except for the injured. I was a norm in the middle of an automated war and completely out of the action.

One or two of the CyBorg students didn't look like they were gonna make it thru this without a lot more help than Henry had to give. They had weapons ready anyway and didn't even give me a glance.

Then I saw who was on the table. It was Mindy, and she was hurt bad.

Again.

***

"She led the charge into the med center. Went point against the clones." Henry grunted as he worked furiously on her. There were the usual tubes and fluids running into Mindy along with wires, cables and something that looked like a heat lamp shining on her.

"That's my girl." I grumbled, looking around for something to useful to do. "Always ready to throw the first punch."

"We wanted to capture one. Almost made it too, except for the backups they had waiting." Henry used his nose to point at Mindy's ear. "Plug in. She's sinking and I can't hold her long anymore."

Jacking in while booting the bio-gestalt program, I tried not to worry. Compared to the last time Mindy had gotten cloned over, she didn't look bad at all. The Borg-link with her went as fast as I could hook up.

There was instant trouble. It was more than difficult linking, even with the practice we'd had together. Angel's repairs, the new Borg systems and some weird software buried in Mindy's equipment was confusing the issue.

Her life-support systems were all that were keeping her alive, too. I didn't dare turn the new hardware off or even annoy it in any way. It was all linked together and I was being kept out.

"Hey. Nice to see you here, Tracker." Mindy' oft thoughts came thru as I linked in, my goggles having all the codes necessary to get thru to her. Mostly. There were lots of systems that refused to ack me at all and weren't exactly happy or tolerant about my clumsy meddling. "Too bad you missed all the fun." She added happily.

"Not yet I haven't. They're piled up outside and clone re-enforcements are arriving." I answered her. Mindy took that with a little interest. She seemed drugged.

You couldn't lie in full Borg-link. There was a finally a flicker of action from her; Mindy pulled herself together long enough to get an update from my goggles.

As usual, she got more info out of them than I did.

"The Deacon says 'shoot for their legs." She broadcast to her troops. "Now! Do it now!"

"Hitting a battery or CPU is about the only way to slow these clone guys down." She murmured to me, exhausted by her little effort. She seemed very sleepy even as I got a couple programs on-line and started pumping juice into her. "Wherever they hid them on these guys. Everything is shielded. They're good troops."

"And running hard." I added. "Instant burnout." The new Borg systems complained as I desperately rummaged around in my goggle memory for passwords that'd keep them happy.

I found a file that Radiant seemed to've tucked away in a far dark corner and tried that. The Borg systems grumped but started cooperating after dubiously accepting the new passwords.

Mindy dumped almost everything but basic life-systems on me gratefully, then slowly started blacking out.

"She's stabilizing." Henry stopped to wipe the sweat from his forehead and relaxed a little putting both hands on the table and slumping in relief. "Man, that link of yours goes deep. She's mirroring you exactly now." he added, looking at a few monitors.

Since I wasn't powering any of Mindy's basic systems, I didn't have anything to say about that. Henry reached over and flicked a couple switches, linking me full-Borg into the med center he had set up.

Then the rotten little snarf went around and jacked all the injured CyBorgs into the system. Inside a minute or two, I had my own squad of injured killers to take care of, and all of them cranky and all of them with different problems. In full Borg link, with me as command center.

Mindy seemed to be asleep, so I used her codes and stripped the injured CyBorgs down to patient status, doing what I could to keep them alive till Henry could get around to fixing them. It seemed all I could do for the CyBorgs, and they weren't pleased at all about it.

A couple of them did seem almost grateful. Most of the injured ignored me even while obeying my orders and none of them took much attention from the war.

My other little suggestion seems to've worked. The clones outside did not like their legs being shot out from under them.

The tide of battle shifted in our favor as our fire concentrated on a weak spot in the clone setup. Legs were the word. There wasn't much celebration from our CyBorgs, just more concentrated effort to hit and fry knees.

"I gotta try something." Henry went over to one of his counsels and flicked a few switches. "There. That should slow them down some." He grunted in satisfaction.

"EMP pulse?" I asked, still pecking at getting the CyBorgs happy and not dying on me. It was working, if slowly.

"No. Neurotic. Gas warfare. Ballistic delivery. Needle spray. They should be falling asleep out there now." Henry stood and waited, listening hard. "And be full of tiny little holes."

His bots and the active CyBorgs did the same. The monitors out in the hallway that hadn't gotten shot out showed a quiet hallway.

"They retreated. There's one still left out there, tho. Go get him." Henry started passing out gas masks to the troops. There wasn't one extra for me. "Sorry, Tracker." Henry sighed as someone opened up the door. "If I were you I'd lie down fast." he said absently. "Like right now. I used gas, too."

I was falling face down beside Mindy on the table as he said that.

I think we won. The dreams I had all said so.

***

I woke up on a pad on the floor, Mindy asleep on my chest and surrounded by other healing CyBorgs. Mindy and I were no longer Borg-linked together, which I took as a good sign.

Mindy still looked like she's been thru a meat grinder, tho. There were wet bandages and wounds everywhere, and she still had on the tattered remnants of one of her ganga jumper. It was full of rips, holes, nasty wounds and medical stuff was jammed in odd places.

Most of the people surrounding me were wired, jacked in and had tubes running into through their uniforms too. They didn't look as if they'd be moving very much anytime soon. One of the lab-bots was walking between them, watching and adjusting things.

There was snoring coming from somewhere. I looked and Henry was asleep in a chair, out like a light. Harvey was still awake, guarding the room and updating at a terminal. I wondered when he'd shown up, then decided he's been here all along. He nodded at me as I gently got out from under Mindy, which was more than a fight than I thought it'd be.

She was determined to stay on top of things, and I was one of the things Mindy wanted to stay on top of. It took a while and a lot of prying to get away from her.

"Should've seen the fight she put up getting the two of you on that pad." Harvey rumbled at me, chuckling away at my antics. "You fell asleep beside her and that was that. She latched onto you and you were not getting away. She even woke up enough to start trying to take pokes at people. Very cranky. Wasn't happy or quiet till she had you back under wraps again."

"Bad news, that." Harvey chuckled and looked serious. "She needs a couple days of rest time to let the holes close." He added looking up and over at Mindy, who was curled up on the pad by herself now. "Most of the bodies on the floor do, but we should all live."

"Well, except you. You're fine." He added as I started checking myself for fresh wounds. I hadn't noticed much last night, but I'd gotten put down fast too.

"I've seen it before. I think she likes me." I groused, looking around the lab. It didn't look like we had been in a war, except for the healing bodies lying around the room. "I don't argue with her, it isn't worth the sweat. Did we win?"

Harvey nodded carefully. "We didn't lose. The clones backed off." was all he had to say. Bleakly. We hadn't done all that well with our med-center invasions, no better than the bots, but we were still here. The clones had hit back hard and were tougher than anyone knew.

The washroom was my first stop. Harvey was still reading when I got back, so I looked around for breakfast. I found a ration bar lying around and dug in.

"What's happening out there right now?" I asked absently, looking around for coffee, water or anything fluid to wash the dry bar down with. "Who's invading who today?"

"Well, the mutants are quiet." The news hadn't changed much, and Harvey didn't look all that worried about the forces at our door. "Everyone else is currently watching everyone else. Closely. Gangas are trying to set up the usual trade routes and getting slapped down for it by Borgs. That's the only action going down I know of."

As far as we could tell, no one was shooting at us right at the moment. Being a CyBorg, Harvey was probably ready to cheerfully take them all on single-handed if anyone did try anything, clones, Borgs or mutants. It won't matter to him, CyBorgs are like that.

"We did capture a clone. One so full of holes it doesn't look like he'll live long, but we have him. That's him under the scopes now. We're gathering info on what they have, how they do it and what to hit." There was a nod in the direction of a med-table. That got done carefully and I realized what Harvey was really doing here. He wasn't a patient watch, he wasn't studying, he was guarding the clone so it didn't wake up and get away.

Or self-destruct. "So. What've you been up to recently, other than recruiting students into the new free-fold?" I asked as I wandered around the room. The clone was in titanium straps, and looked like he'd gone thru the same surgery Mindy had put Harvey thru. He was also being fed gas to keep him out and various scanners were all crawling overhead, working on him.

"Stuff." Was all Harvey had to say. He grinned at me, and it looked like he wanted to start eating tigers.

"Legs are still the word?" I asked, still looking the clone over. He was one very shot-up looking kid, an army-type of about twenty. He was naked, badly chewed up, didn't look happy at all, but was still out cold. As safe as a CyBorg clone gets, I guess.

"Yep. Should've seen them run. The gas took the meat out, but the CyBorg part of them was still active. The clones all ran away, out cold and most of them bleeding. Full autonomic. They're sleep-walkers, too." That little piece of news seemed to irk Harvey. I didn't know that CyBorgs had to be awake to operate before, but a sleep-recharge cycle was something I'd seen Mindy do so often it seemed natural to me.

"Holy instant burnout." Another device clicked into place and started scanning the sleeping clone. I nodded and walked away. Whatever they were looking for, my standing beside them won't help any.

"They won't get home in great shape, no." Harvey turned and went back to whatever he was reading and I took a look at Henry. He was fast sleep and snoring gently. He looked exhausted and worn.

"I'd ask what we need to do now, but I'm supposed to know all that stuff." I grumbled, still chewing. "Deacon-wise. Are the bots still after the med center as a primary target?"

"Yes." was all Harvey had to say. "And zombies, too. They both have something weird going and the med-center is after it hard. Has been for a while. There are signs of zombie-cult being hypno-trained into these supers, and lots of bot-tech too. Some rogue AI stuff. These kids are a lot more than CyBorg, or anything else now."

"We think. We're working on it. Lots of people want to take them down now, thou." Being left out of new developments in CyBorg tech wasn't making Harvey happy. He looked envious, then went back to his reading.

"I'm free. And I suppose you want me to thank you for this." That was a strange voice and it came from the clone on the table. Harvey was up, gun in hand and at the med-table with a bot before I could even move. The bot was there with him and I really couldn't say who arrived first.

"You might want to, after we finish digging out the fail-safes." Harvey snarled down at the twitching clone. "You'll live longer."

"I can die anytime I want to." the clone snapped back at Harvey. "You missed a set. There's..."

The bot was turning the gas up and the clone got put back down. He was asleep in a breath and Harvey stood there with the gun in his hands watching him for another long moment.

"That's the third time he's woken up. He'll come up fighting next time." Harvey grumbled, peeved at something again. He checked the straps and looked worried. "He should be quiet. Dead and out like a light. I wonder what we missed?"

"Synergy." I said quietly, gulping a mouthful and finishing the ration-bar. "The whole is more than the sum of the parts."

"We shut down, burned out, removed, blocked, and de-coupled everything that looked dangerous." Harvey grumbled on, still glaring at the clone. "For a med-clone CyBorg, he's practically norm now. What did we miss?"

"Being captured by the enemy?" I hazarded a guess. "Torture? Training? These guys have lived in a closet all their lives. He's cranked and motivated. What do you expect? Relax him a little now."

The thinking that was going on in Harvey's head was obvious. He liked his kids and the clone, whether he knew it or not, had already gotten adopted. "Yah. I'll leave the ganga newsfeed on." he finally grumbled out, obviously making a serious concession of some sort. "That should make him feel at home."

"You've got to be kidding." The latest move in Harvey's book of bad-kid babysitting floored me, but I didn't argue. He was the expert in coaching CyBorgs, not me.

What was worse was, all the other CyBorg patients heard that and wanted it too. Being left out of the showbiz gossip feed-line bugged them. Or at least the ones who were awake enough to be bored.

Mindy wasn't. She was still out cold, loaded with cranky Borg works, hurting and missing me. As well as passing on the latest Hollywood trivia. I made a mental note CyBorgs were a tabloid fans.

A terminal beeped and Angel popped up on the screen, a little fuzzy but live and in person. That was a shocker and Harvey almost shot in screen out in a purely reflex move. She grinned at us and the guns being pointed at her, laughing a little.

"I want you all to relax." She grumbled out, quirking an eyebrow at the scene in front of her. "This isn't what it looks like." She peered over at something, getting closer to the screen. "Hi, Tracker. Keep the peace there for a minute, would you?"

That's when a squad of Angels Borgs burst in the door.

***

"This is not a raid, this is a parley!" Angel sounded annoyed and just sat there while everyone in the room except the norms and the badly hurt rearmed, got into killing mode and targeted the Borgs.

Every CyBorg in the room except Mindy reacted almost instantly to the Borgs coming in, with guns I didn't know they had all coming out and getting pointed at the fresh-looking Borg death squad pouring in.

I hadn't even finished swallowing yet. I did so in a hurry, since being in the middle of a Borg-CyBorg battle in a small room was not my idea of fun.

None of the Borgs looked happy. Walking in here was suicide and they knew it.

Harvey cursed and started moving from where he was to optimal covering position. He was still protecting the med CyBorg.

"At the moment, I just want to talk." Angel went on, ignoring the war that was about to break out. Her Borg squad would've been taken apart six different ways, most of them before they got a shot off and she knew it. At least that's what I was hoping for. "There's important traffic to take of before we can have any more fun."

The Borg squad also knew they were dead meat and for fully-armed Borgs breaking into a room, were trying to look harmless. They all looked very nervous.

"Hey, Angel." Both Henry and I answered the call at the same time, Henry twitching over and giving me a dirty look.

"I suppose you want to talk to me?" Henry yawned and scratched a bit, instantly awake and looking alert. "It's my lab here. Sort of."

"I want to talk to whoever is in charge down there. I don't know and I don't care." Angel answered angrily.

"Listen, you clowns. I've got new orders from my overhead. The clone you have is to be rescued, at any cost. All of my troops are mobilizing and headed towards you. Outsiders are being flown in, including my replacement. More CyBorg squads. The clone comes back with my squad right now or the whole underground, except the med-center, gets nuked clean. This is a sterilization op."

"You have about thirty seconds." She added, looking her troops over. They still looked like nervous Borgs, not a happy sight for me. A nervous Borg was usually a Borg trying to shoot his way out of things.

Henry looked over at Harvey, who was tensed up and ready to explode. The rest of the student CyBorgs were lying prone and totally focused on the Borgs.

"Sounds like he's important to somebody. Is he still alive, Henry?" I asked, more to waste time than anything else. "Can he be moved?"

"Not really." Harvey grumbled out. "He's hanging in, but in pieces. A walk anywhere would kill him."

"Not to worry. I have a med squad waiting outside with enough stuff to patch a platoon back together." Angel was peeved, and waited for a reply.

"Angel, if I had a pencil, I'd give it to you." I said. That covered my position. If Angel wanted the clone, she could have him. Angel glared applied murder with lots of fun first at me. I smiled back at her.

"It is about the only way the kid will survive." Henry said to Harvey, who was still looking like a CyBorg ready to explode at someone. More CyBorgs coming in would only make this war more interesting for him. "You know it, I know it."

"You do know how much the med center has ticked everyone down here off?" I asked Angel. "And seriously?"

"I don't care about their problems. They aren't worried. Yet." Angel snapped out. "The center has their own resources, me and more outside help coming in. The docs think they can handle it."

"Lets keep the outsiders out." Henry looked meditative. More troops wandering around the underground did not sound like a good idea to him. "Good luck cleaning up your files, Angel." He said to her quietly. "If they don't find a reason to replace you, they'll put one there for you."

"I know." Angel started grinding her teeth. "I don't have time for chit-chat, the plane is due soon. So what's it gonna be?"

"This is a rescue to me." That little statement came from the clone. He still had his eyes closed and looked like a hospital patient in intensive care. "I'll take a ride topside."

Topside? It did look like the clone had a few ideas of his own. Angel and Harvey exchanged glances and Harvey grimaced, then relaxed a little.

"Done." he grumped, looking like he was giving away one of his own children. The rest of the students CyBorgs also relaxed a little and there was a collective sigh of relief from the Borg squad.

Taking on a roomful of CyBorgs was a suicide mission and not many of them had looked all that cheerful about it.

"An easy fishing expedition today. Not even a long walk and Marley's just outside." I said to no one in particular. The Borgs twitched."Now that's the way to run a raid."

"Shut up, Tracker." Come from one of the Borgs. "We might be back for you later."

"Hey, yeah. That reminds me. Angel, can you kill some of the outstanding paper on me and let me get back to biz as usual? " I asked that absently as Harvey went over to guard his latest prize from the Borgs moving in on him. The Borgs surrounded the two of them. "And any luck on anyone finding Brother John?"

A couple medics came in the room and hurried over to the table the clone was on. There was a brief flurry as they jacked in, updated on the clone's condition and prepped things.

I did notice Harvey had moved to one side taking things from them, right from their belts. Stuff he needed, I guess.

"The official best-guess from topside is that all of you are going to die horribly and real soon. Mostly by your own misadventures." Angel said sourly. "I'm supposed to back off and collect pieces after that happens. Yeah, I can kill your paper. You're a prisoner again anyway, as far as I can see."

"Still floating with the tides, yeah. If you want to kill me yourself, you'll have to wait till everyone else is finished with me." I mentioned quietly. "Or give me another job to do."

"Including me." Mindy added that from her pallet. She was awake, if not looking cheerful. "And I get first crack at him."

"Shut up." Harvey snapped that out without looking over at her. All the CyBorgs in the room instantly went into quiet mode.

A smart move. It made this whole op look like one of Harvey's little ventures.

The med squad brought in a pallet that looked more like a container and eased the clone into it, hooking him up to various life-support equipment first. Harvey actually looked relieved for a second, then went back to killer mode.

"We're done here." The medics told Angel. "Five minutes."

"Prepped." Angel answered the medic. "Everyone pull out."

Clone first, the container got carried away. Easily, I noticed. Whatever the Borg Medics were, they weren't entirely human. The rest of the Borg squad backed out after them, their guns never wavering.

The door closed in their faces and I relaxed.

"Relax, Harvey. The kid gets the help we couldn't give him now." Henry got up and went over to Harvey, who was sorting thru the supplies he'd liberated from the Medics now. He looked fairly pleased with that, anyway.

"Yah. I can always get him back if I want him anyway."

Harvey grinned, an evil and nasty grin. "They aren't the only ones who can retrieve stuff. They'll need to bury him real deep to keep him away from me now. Those idiots won't find what I put in there. Ever.

Harvey took the stuff he'd collected, handed half of it to the med-bot running around and went over to tend to his kids.

"Woo. I think Angel just managed to piss him off." I said to Henry, who was watching the proceedings with a wry grin on his face. "Not a happy position for her."

"No one is happy with Angel right now. Having her troops taken over by some overhead CyBorgs? She might as well take up knitting. That's something she's do almost anything to avoid."

Henry sighed and looked over the messy remnants of his lab. "Time to move everyone, I think. Again."

"Except Mindy. She can't be moved yet." Harvey said from where he was patching his students back up. "The rest of us are gone, or will be in a minute or two."

"Use the backdoor, it's quieter." Henry lumbered over to one of his terminals and jacked in, updating Teddy and whoever else was interested in this morning's antics.

Me, I went over to see how Mindy was doing and find out why Harvey was so concerned.

He was worried about her. That didn't sound helpful.

***

"So how are you today, dear?" I rambled over to where Mindy was lying on the pad, sat down beside her and jacked in to her systems. She was too weak to fight me and Harvey off at the same time and Harvey had already moved her to the better facilities that I had to offer.

The med table was still warm from the clone lying on it. Harvey had already plugged her into the med set up and was prepping his troops to leave now. Back to the ganga war-room, I guess. Or one of Mindy's little hidey-holes that she had stashed somewhere.

"Guess it's just you and me now." I told her gently as Harvey and his students marched away. They were actually headed into the washroom, but I wasn't saying anything. Henry hid his backdoors wherever Henry hid his backdoors.

"You may live to regret that." Mindy answered me thru the Borg Link. Linking had gone fast this time, faster than I'd ever expected. I guess I was getting used to it.

There was not much good news coming out of the link. Too many people had been messing around with Mindy recently to even make much sense out of what was happening.

Her systems had been destabilized. It was killing her and it was going to take a lot of fast reprogramming to get her on an even keel again.

I looked and tried not to get depressed. At least three command centers were waring for control of Mindy's internal systems. Each of them had a couple vital systems under wraps and wanted the rest of them for it's priorities. You couldn't disturb anything without taking the chance of killing her.

Even I was bugging her, and I was the best thing to happen to her since she's started messing with her original CyBorg systems.

***

chapter ten Loose ends

There is more going on than you think. There is more going on than you handle, actually. -Melody's observations

***

Melody ghosted in from the door the CyBorg's had just left from while I was still desperately trying to get Mindy back to something that would run right. In full Zombie mode, which meant there was no noise of any kind around her. Not even any alarms. I didn't have time to wonder about that. Henry came over to watch me with her, but he didn't say anything.

Normalizing Mindy was a lot beyond me. It looked like it was a lot beyond anything Henry could do too. Mindy was a mess. Helping her stay alive was the best I could do. Melody stood and watched me for a couple seconds. "You're still living the dream, Tracker." was the only whisper I heard from her. "But staying out of the passion-pit. That's good."

"But there's more to this than you know." She glanced over at Henry and nodded. "Let me in."

"I can't stop you." Henry grumped out. "And I won't even if I could."

Melody nodded and laid a finger on one of Mindy's pickups. And poof, she was with us in the Borg link, poking around, lifting systems I didn't dare touch and reviewing the whole collection of odds and ends that was Mindy's programs at the moment.

She did take a couple seconds to look into the bio-gestalt program. Mindy and Melody shared a smile I got left out of.

"We can help, but not here." Was all she said to us. "And Brother John approves. Let me get her ready."Mindy nodded, and even approved of her help. Melody looked obscurely pleased at that.

Melody's magic bag of herbs and spices came out. It looked like she was flavoring Mindy for the oven to me.

"Here, read this to the Hive." was all she said to me, and she said that in real-time, not in the link. I hadn't even noticed her leaving the Borg-link going on. "In full link. After I'm gone."

"How long?" was all I had to ask. Mindy getting stuffed into a zombie farm for a while was more than I expected. Zombies did take to take their time with things, and I wanted to know how long Mindy would be missing from my life.

"Till it's finished and she's healed." Was all she said. Then a couple of bots unjacked Mindy and took her out the same back door everyone but the officials had been using today. "There's more out there than you know, Tracker. Evolution? Think of electronic fields. Now add in some sort of DNA at the wave-icle level. Now add in rogue AIs."

"And mushrooms." She added as I sat there and wondered. I looked over the chip Melody had given me and groaned. Damn. More reading material. Bots were getting to be a pain.

"Just link in whenever you're ready. Read it a couple of times first, make it feel natural." Henry yawned as his bots tried turning his lab back into whatever it was before Harvey had made it into a field triage hospital. "And don't worry about Melody and Mindy. She'll be back."

Melody was gone already. The bots carried Mindy out, moving fast.

"Read." Henry commanded me. "There's still a lot to do and you can't sit there and sulk. Deacon."

***

"The way is open and you shall not be denied."

The full hive-link wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. The place was so big and busy I went almost unnoticed in the traffic, except for the posting I was making.

Not exactly good for the ego as I was supposed to be an important person here, but I was grateful for it anyway. If the hive wanted to pepper me with questions and analysis, there's be a lot more than I could handle here, instantly.

The full force of the hive would be a mind-breaker and without even trying.

"Matter is energy is music is perfect communication is love. Know that you too are loved."

I unjacked from the hive before they could start anything and looked over at Brother John. He'd come out of hiding for this little exercise.

Thru the front door too. I guess no one but me was after him these days.

"Who'd you steal that from?" I grumped out, taking the deacon goggles off. Brother John, all four foot teddy of him, grinned and took the deacon goggles from my hands. "And will it keep everyone happy?"

"Oh, it was divine inspiration. Profit-mode, if you will. Will it keep the hive happy? No. Interested? Yes."

Brother John did something to the goggles and handed them back to me.

"There. You're only an honorary Deacon now, Tracker. No power to speak of, just some hive-links and whatnot. A gift from a grateful teddy-world for favors received. The way it was supposed to be in the first place, according to the press release."

"Angel OK with this?" I asked carefully."And do the gangas know?"

"Yes to both. Officially, Teddy got my suggestions wrong and I cleared them up as soon as I got back." Brother John grinned at me. "You can even go back to collecting runaway teddys if you want. Without these goggles you're of no interest to anyone."

"Perfect."

"WHAT DID YOU DO? I don't want these... these melons on me!"

I could hear Mindy scream over the link. She'd gotten in on today's little lecture too.

It seemed like she was in perfect health at the moment, tho both Henry and the zombies said she need a lot more rest time. Melody had offered to keep her locked up till Mindy was fully healed, if necessary.

"They've got to be the size of watermelons!" came from the link. I started getting interested in whatever had happened.

"We're disguising Mindy, too." Henry looked a little guilty. I think whatever they'd given Mindy was his idea. "She won't look like a CyBorg at all when the zombies are finished with her."

I listened to Mindy protest and grinned. "I think you're cute now, dear. Whatever it is." I posted over the net to her. She ignored me.

"I think I'll be thanking you for this, whatever it is." I told him. "What'd you do?"

"Gave her a nice set of boobs." Henry grinned. "Add-ons that work. Really nice rack, too."

"Oh-boy, oh-boy, oh boy." I sat and thought about it for a couple seconds.

"When does she get out again?"

"When she's healed, boy." Henry slapped me on the shoulder and pointed towards the door. "When she's healed."

"Now go home. You've earned it."
END

***

Author's Note:

Fan mail, biz, complaints to teddyhunter10@gmail.com

This was released as a $.99 e-book. If you paid more, you've been burnt.

Enough traffic gets "Are guys ever dumb!" starting the second novel.

***

Author's Note:

Fan mail, biz, complaints to teddyhunter10@gmail.com

Enough traffic gets "Are guys ever dumb!" starting the second novel.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and similarities to persons living or dead is a coincidence.

These are the books in the TeddyHunter series.

TeddyHunter: The Underground.

TeddyHunter: The Nano-zombie War.

TeddyHunter: The New World Order.

Teddyhunter: I Can get better in the Parking lot!

TeddyHunter: The Neanderthal Gene

Teddyhunter: New Genes

TeddyHunter: Baby-Blues

***

## chapter 11 Bonus Material

Draw-Down of the Dark.

I was only out for firewood but there are secrets in the hills; maple-sugar is only one of them.

It was spring, best time of year to get your nice, smelly wood collected and cut. Well, if you're a bonfire person who likes to make a pretty stink, that is. Sap-wood is pleasant way to spice up those warm summer nights, trust me. Apple and maple are good in those slow, smokey fires. Aromatic.

Around here maples you could find in the local wood-lots where over-zealous tappers usually managed to kill a few trees every year. Old ones due to be replaced, mostly. Easy to cut and drag out over rotten snow and wet ice in spring. And they thanked you for carting the trees away

Sugar-season was short. Freezing at night, plus temps during the day. The swing shift, boundary conditions, transition phase. It was usually around spring sol, season change. March 17th, or 21st.

A full moon was helping us, or so I thought. We found out differently later.

Sap gets collected 24/7 and slow-boiled down. That takes LOTS of wood or someone who likes putting electrical lines in snow. Naturally, the cooker-shed was on a clearing in the bush. An old graveyard, to be precise. Very old. Indian, locals and worse, as it turned out. These hills were shield rock, 4.5 billion years old. Oldest rock on the planet.

The cooker was in the oldest graveyard on the planet, but we didn't know that. These maples were on the shield; it'd been sucking on rock for fifty years. They'd picked up a lot and was happy to share with us saps.

The fire was made from lightening-blasted oak, a handy deadfall that dried nicely the summer before. Once you got the boiler loaded up and tamped so you didn't burn the sap, you had hours between tending the fire.

Maple syrup goes dark if it gets cooked long. Burnt. Caramelized. Concentrated flavor. The dregs from the vat are black and flavor-filled. Best of the season for insiders, tourists only buy the clear stuff. They don't know what they're missing and nobody I know tells them about it.

Lemme see. Spring moon, high tide. In a graveyard, near last tapping and lots of dark brewing in the bottom of the boiler. Lightening blasted oak fire.

Midnight. Boundaries all over, most of them dissolving into something else. Ley-lines too, for all I know. Then came the dyraids. Sorry, the ghosts of dyraids long dead. Dead since Pangonea, I think. Treebeard types. They looked coarse and very, very old.

Moss-covered zombies, almost. Sugar made them drunk. They danced with us and sang old songs of rebirth. What was concentrated in the maples on the hills attracted them. The graves made connections, the trees gave them a burst of life.

Spirited spirits getting into spirits. Trouble, basically.

We bottled the dark and took it home after marking a few of the deader trees and now I have bushes that like to move around the lot a lot. A couple of them seem to be addicted to fertilizer of any kind.

We pray for drought daily. The swamps at the bottom of the hills are still flooded, tho.

Old spirits do not take kindly to the new ways of GMO DNA trees, at all. They too take the easy way and it's starting to make them desperate.
END
