You move like a soldier?

You a soldier?

She asked a lot of questions, but Orth answered only in short non-committal grunts.

In his spectrum of modes, stuttering a pizer on one end and a sharp monosyllabic fire iron on the other,

orth had wound up somewhere right in the middle. A light rain had started, but that didn't dissuade

Miss Green from prodding away at him.

So are we going exactly?

He'd never been to September before, but he'd heard rumors.

Some were surreal.

A floral quarry, the unification of the physical and the digital, a real workers' paradise in an empire

devoted to the pastiche of the thing.

Others were horrific, noises in the dark, wet gray soft laboratories, the sort of special

ops programs that could drive a man to disappear himself. How well do you know Audion them? You guys seem pretty close.

He stopped and turned around with a sigh, ready to let Jackie down with a well-placed look, but he saw something strange in her face.

The rapid questions had led him to expect a sort of childlike inquisitiveness, a big grin teasing eyes.

But that's not where she was, he realized.

I mean, like, do you trust them?

And suddenly it hit Orth too, how deeply they'd been dragged in. They were on

September with no backup and they were doing a job for EBX who as far as

Orth could tell was halfway to becoming a puppet for a very powerful computer devoted

to being a bit of a prick.

The rain sped to a torrent's pace, and Orth's breathing followed suit. One breath, then another, then a number more, and

...