Even as he put his panicpen to the back of the target's neck, he cased her unit for objects worth any value on the black market. From experience, he knew what to look for, and he was not seeing it. In that gaudy apartment he could find nothing but silicates, from the lamp shades, to the basin, to the fabric of the sofa too thick and shiny to be anything but synthetic, to the soap everlasting. Vander had enough of these plebs.

With a sharp, electric buzz and a smoke-colored flash, lighting up Vander's expressionless face, the woman's eyes went wide and she looked around, not at him, but through him, as if the sting of the panicpen allowed her to see into a universe Vander could never imagine, one filled with things inspired by terror. She opened her mouth to shriek, but nothing came from her lips. The light drained out of her face, her eyes shut, and she slouched over herself, head full of gray hair hanging between her legs.

In the second it took Vander to stun the woman, Five went from restraining her to holding her up. This unexpected switch of fate proved almost enough to make him lose her completely to the floor. But Five was a large man, muscular in a way that suggested physical labor rather than hours spent at a gym. And it didn't take much for him to regain his balance and lay the old woman out on her couch.

"Easy, there, Sailor. Why'd you have to stun her?" Five said, with one boot on the hard silicafiber of a cushion. It made a stiff, crunching noise like clothes left in the sun to dry. Putting his hands on his hips, he turned to Vander. "Answer me, agent. Why'd you keep doin' that? It's against protocol."

"She resisted."

"Agent," Five said, pointing to the pen Vander had neglected to return to its holster, "them things are harmful, and we don't know if she's human or ain't she. We never tested her yet."

The veins on her emaciated hand stood out in relief, making her appear even more gaunt. Nutrients were a rare commodity for the common pleb.

"She isn't human," Vander said, smirking. "Just look at her." He talked in something like a whiny monotone, as if he had to fight against himself to get the words out. "And why are you talking like a Prider all the sudden? I've noticed it. In the past few weeks or so."

"You know what's the protocol. You're not s'posed to stun the targets less they resist, or if we already proved they ain't humans. Last I checked, we didn't manage to get that far. What I do remember 'bout this whole deal, and you can chime in here any time if I'm missing something, is she opens the door, we serve the papers and give the whole speech, she freaks out—I'll give you that, the old bird did freak, but don't they all? I manage to calm her down, and the the next thing I see is you giving another poor soul an artificial panic attack."

"Soul? How much creds you willing to put on that wager? Let's run her code through the Machine. A thousand says she has no Amino."

"You ain't seeing the point. She never resisted."

"Wait a minute. She did resist though, if you'll think about it. She told us she's not a mod. If she says anything contrary to the truth, even if it is in order to escape her doom, then that's resisting, right?" Vander's limbs were long and slender, and he moved with the awkward grace of a eunuch.

"Just no more panicpen, got it? Unless I say so."

They managed to get her body laid out on the stretcher and Five began taking a DNA sample from under the target's thumbnail.

"Everyone does it," Vander said, arms barred across his chest. "I know for a fact they do. They don't talk about it, no, but all the coderunners use their stunpens to make the job easier. That's why they're issued. We all know it, whether we can say it out loud or not. The protesters complain, they make a fuss, and ten new protocols are issued, but nothing changes. You need to relax, Five. Think about how you contradict yourself. All you talk about is our quota, but every time we catch another mod, you complain. Our performance has fallen way behind, and the minute I actually start helping us get closer to the quota and that bonus, you suddenly bitch about it. You can't have it both ways."

"I don't care what other agents do. This is gonna make us look bad," Five said. "And don't forget I'm your superior officer." Five took the Machine out of its case. He set it down and inserted the sample.

"Yeah, okay."

"I'm starting to think you get some kinda sick pleasure outta this kinda thing."

Vander laughed. "Yeah, I love it. You know me, I'm frenic."

The Machine could take several minutes to detect recombinant DNA, and Vander could not prevent his eyes from wandering over the woman's possessions.

Vander didn't steal out of greed. Neither was he a kleptomaniac, because the thrill of kleptomania stems from the possibility of being caught. He knew if someone did catch him, he could always deny everything and the authorities would have no choice but to believe his side of things. That was one perk of being an agent. If the Authority allowed the public to see flaws in their agents, revealing them as little more than the simple, weak humans they were, just like the rest of us, the public would lose all faith in the entire scheme. The GSA would collapse and the gressives would win. And the sliver of a chance he might somehow get fired or prosecuted only hindered him from stealing more than he already did. It had nothing to do with thrill. It wasn't about stealing for the sake of stealing. Vander stole things because he deserved the things he stole. The Chicago Genetic Security Authority didn't pay him enough to achieve what he wanted out of life, so he supplemented his income. Vander took enough valuables to pay himself his own salary, one he deserved. The way he figured, stealing was just a part of his job.

"Fine, let's follow this protocol then," Vander said. "Hundred percent. I'm gonna go look for hiders in every nook and cranny of this fucking strato-apartment, and maybe we'll be out of here by sundown."

"Just do your job. That's all I'm asking. Do your job," Five looked directly at him, with eyes of blue.

Vander disappeared down a hallway so thin he had to turn sideways to fit.

Five took the woman's hand, hanging over the side of her couch, and rested it on her chest. She seemed to stir from her panic-induced coma, and looked up at him weakly. He was unable to hold back a smile. "Just rest, old mother. The hard part is finished."

The unit smelled musty. And for being so high above ground level, it grew hot in there, sweltering, even for the dry season. Out of his naivety, Five tried to open a window, finding it impossible. The City codes demanded no windows could be opened above the third floor to prevent jumpers. Heat rises. On the sixtieth floor of a skyscraper which suffered frequent blackouts, that heat grew to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit on most days throughout the summer. If only he could crack a window and capture that breeze which caused the building to sway slightly, he could get some relief. But, of course, nothing in the City made sense.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"You okay, Van?" Five shouted. "Need help?"

Vander did not respond.

The woman owned figurines. Vander had seen these type of cheap, Gothic imitations before. They lined every windowsill, cupboard and inch of molding she could fit them on. The unit was a grotesque museum to these demon faced children. But they weren't worth taking. They were mass produced and without an ounce of carbon in them.

Vander went through the slit passage into the kitchen, which separated the living room with a thin switchwalli. Down on his knees, he ran his hand along the underside of the cabinets, feeling for a lever or a contact, a wire which might open another secret compartment. His fingers found nothing but dust. He checked all the textbook places he knew secret compartments to be in a standard, CHA public housing unit kitchen, not even to unearth a tomato plant stashed away. The target really did own nothing of value. Her appliances were decades old, clothes all bought second hand, and all of them silicates. Her fridge was full of liquid steak, highprotienmilk, V-vegetables, all the thrifty types of food, synthesized from algae, nothing real.

Not long after he began stealing did Vander realize these mods could never afford real milk, bread, fish, even a actual mushrooms, something he'd be able to make a profit on. They rarely had any wood, vinyl, plants, nothing organic aside from their cheap food and gossamerii clothes. Everything else in these units down to the toilet paper was non-carbon-based. And he couldn't give away their outdated computers or readers. Almost never did he come across anything of real value. But it wasn't their appliances or food or clothes or even jewels he was after. Despite their poverty, an increasing number of them possessed something far more expensive than what their impoverished lifestyles suggested.

"You know," Vander said, loud enough for Five to hear in the next room, "there's a genmod defect that makes you age quicker." He pushed a gypsum board at the foot of the small bed and it popped open. His eyes momentarily went wide, but he betrayed nothing in his voice. "The echos get it."

"Them are the one's with kid brains?"

"Not quite 'kid brains' exactly. It was a genmod they did to make these people's brains so they'd always learn the way kids learn, pick things up really quickly. But they still wanted them to be able to progress into the adult stage in terms of abstract thought. So in your old age you could learn a new language and concepts as fast as a five-year-old. To just sponge it up. You'd have the ability to do something with the information. Problem was, they all ended up being pedophiles. Go figure." He was already-elbow deep into the secret compartment.

"These Doctor Frankensteen pricks mess with the human genome, and now we have to mop up the mess they left behind," Five said, shaking his head. "Where'd you learn all this anyway?"

"Don't you ever read Anton Rhodes? The entire GSA is based on his concepts."

"I know that," Five said. "But—there it is. She's green."

Just then, Vander noticed some graffiti between two light-condensing windowsiii above the bed. The sight of this froze him for a moment. In this amateur spray he could make out the image of a tree with no leaves. At least, it had no leaves as Vander knew them. This tree had only one, giant, seven-lobed leaf poking off a scrawny branch. The leaf was as large as the tree itself and seemed to threaten to topple it. This was not the first time he had seen this graffiti.

"Van?"

"Huh?"

"You listening to me? I said we're done here. Her code come out already. She's dirty as racism. Let's bound her up and haul her off," Five said. "You got any hiders?"

"Told you she'd be a mod." The secret compartment was empty. He pulled out his arm. The room was sky-pink.

"Van. The Machine shows green. We're good to go. Do you got any hiders? Yes or no."

"Hold on a minute. This place is full of holes. I haven't seen one this bad in weeks," Vander said, tearing open the shower curtain. He couldn't bend over in the tiny bathroom without one of his long, gangly limbs bumping into something.

"I ain't ask if the place is full of holes. I asked if you got any hiders."

"Wait, just hold on. We need to give it a thorough search. You can't rush these things," he said, with the aural manifestation of a marked lack of confidence, and yet his words themselves were often the words of a confident man. He pressed against tile after tile to no avail.

"Get a move on," Five said, his footsteps approaching the bathroom. "We gotta get over to some building in Little LA by the end of the night. And now it's gonna be a pain getting her down to the rickshaw, now that we're gonna hafta get the gurney through them narrow stairwells, or just doing a fireman's carry. And if it comes that, you're doin' it this time."

"Yeah, sure." Vander tapped on the pipe and stopped. Again he tapped and the lower, bass noise it made, different from the hollow reverb of the other pipes, caused his heart to speed. Carefully, he turned the cap to a cleanout and it gave with a slow, metal shriek. The interior of the cleanout did not have the rancid and astringent smell common to raw sewage. He reached an arm into the pipe and felt it. There. There it was. A small, cool vial. This was what Vander came to steal. This was tryp.

"Uh, what're you doing?" Five said. He stood in the doorway, the Machine thrown over his shoulder. Despite the girth of his arms, and the broadness of his chest, he looked harmless in his gray helmet with the one, red streak, horizontal across the top, ear to ear, curly blond locks poking out from underneath.

When Vander turned at that moment, the vial slipped from his one-finger grasp. It made a tinking sound of thin glass clinking against thin glass. Vander kept his arm fully in the wall, not daring to lose that vial, and equally not knowing what to say. He had his teeth barred so his cheeks popped out, mouth open.

Before Five could ask again, they heard a scratching noise from the other room. Bumps against the ground. The noise of footfalls on the carpet. They both looked down the skinny corridor, not seeing anything.

"You hear that?" Five said, taking out his gun and starting toward the main room. "Cover me, agent."

Vander looked down at his gun, but he still had an arm wormed into the wall.

"Van? You got me?" Five said from the corridor. "I'm going in."

"Yeah, be right behind you."

Again Vander peered down the corridor, seeing his partner disappear around the corner where the pink wall met ocean-blue. He only turned his head that way because with his head to the side he could reach his arm further into the pipe, but something unexpected happened. The force of most of his weight on the pipe caused it to burst through the gypsum wall. It was a fake, a false pipe. He turned it over, and what poured out were more vials of tryp than he'd ever see in his life. His eyes made like saucers.

From the front of the unit, Five shouted, "Hold it! Stop right there! In the name of the Genetic Security Authority, put your hands behind your head!"

Two shots went off, followed by three more. Another two shots followed, and the thump of something heavy hitting the ground. Silence.

While he shoved the vials greedily into a secret pocket sewn into the inside of his uniform, the shots caused Vander to stop. He stood bolt upright. "Five? Shit, you alright?" calling into the next room. "Five?"

Five groaned in the type of agony Vander had never before heard from his partner.

He still held two hands worth of tryp he didn't know what to do with as he already overfilled his pockets, his heart racing. In a quick decision, he ditched the handfuls and tucked his shirt in, closing up the hole in the wall.

"I'm coming, Five. I just had my hand caught trying to find a contact for a false wall back there. Couldn't get it all the way—"

As soon as he entered the room he couldn't believe what he saw.

iSwitchwall: Wall that can be switched from transparent to opaque. Often, the color of the wall or the pattern of 'wall paper' could also be controlled by a switch.

iiSpidersilk: the toughest substance (by weight) known to man. The research firm AGE, American Genetic Engineering, (later to be known as ACE, American Cosmetic Engineering) reportedly discovered a way to synthesize spidersilk from silkworms, due to the impossibility of harvesting any practical amount of gossamer from spiders. By the time this story takes place, garments from this material, by lasting for so many years without tearing or showing wear, became symbols of poverty. Only people who couldn't afford to buy new clothes wore gossamer. (See note xxv:Gossarmor)

iiiLight-condensing Windows: Photovoltaic Windows, i.e. transparent solar cells. Also known as TPP, or Transparent Photovoltaic Polycrystal