a paperweight.”
“You give me too little credit,” she said. “Thirty-five hundred if I can unlock it in the next five minutes, otherwise seven-fifty locked.”
“Three thousand unlocked or five hundred locked,” I countered. “Plus, I will see what other things I might want to purchase from your lovely shop.”
The fence inclined her head. “You drive a hard bargain, madam, but I accept. I will start a timer.”
I glanced at my current com. This room and probably the entire compound blocked the signal, but I could still check the time. I went back to shopping. Loch remained standing by the door. Apparently he was playing silent bodyguard.
I found a bracelet and necklace, a pretty scarf, some clothes, and several other odds and ends. I pointed at the stiletto and an assistant materialized from the back to pull it from the case. A couple of anonymous hard credit chips—ridiculously marked up, naturally—rounded out my purchases.
I’d spent a fortune, but by the way Veronica was frowning at the com, she wasn’t having any success. It had been well over her five-minute allotment at this point.
She sighed in defeat. “I wish you luck, madam,” she said. “This com is locked more thoroughly than any I’ve ever seen. I feel bad selling it to you.”
“No worries, I agreed to purchase it. Plus, I found all of these other lovelies to soothe my frustration when I can’t unlock its secrets.”
“Twelve-fifty for the lot of it,” she said. It was a more than fair price, so I nodded. I tapped my right thumb and pinky finger together under the concealment of my cloak.
“Hard credits?” she asked. When I shook my head, she held out a chip reader. “Then scan here, please,” she said.
I checked the total then modified it to fifteen hundred and scanned the chip embedded in my right arm. The machine beeped, I picked the correct account, and then I handed the reader back to her. “I added a little token of appreciation,” I said. “I do love a woman who barters well.”
Veronica smiled in acknowledgment. She produced a plain white card with a number embossed in a beautiful antique font. She leaned across the display case and tucked the card in my overshirt pocket. “If you need anything, anything at all, call me,” she said. Her smile turned sultry. “Any time, day or night.”
Once we were outside, Loch took the lead. “Do not say anything, and do not return to the house,” I murmured to him. “I need a secure space.”
We walked for ten minutes in a direction I knew was opposite from where we’d spent the night. A few curious eyes followed us at first but soon we were once again in an abandoned part of the city.
Loch stopped outside of a seemingly random plastech building. Now that I wasn’t freezing, I could see what drew him to the buildings he chose. For this one, the walls were solid and dust around the entrance showed no signs of footprints.
He picked the lock in record time and soon we were inside. The living room was right off the entry. I set the bag of items I’d bought, the card the fence had given me, the cloak, and my overshirt in a pile in the middle of the floor. It might be overkill, but I didn’t think so.
“I need your cloak,” I said. Loch added his cloak to the pile. Without the heat field or extra shirt, the temperature in the room was bitingly cold.
“I’ll see about some heat,” Loch said.
I picked up the new com, touched my right thumb to my right ring finger, and held the com up to the chip in my arm.
The highly illegal, highly specialized, highly secret chip in my arm.
Most people were embedded with a single identity chip at birth. I had that one, my main identity chip, in my left arm, but it was dormant most of the time. The chip in my right arm was a House von Hasenberg family specialty, though I had no doubt the other Houses had something similar. The chip could hold multiple identities and each identity could be selected by a series of finger movements.
Designed for spying, the chip also worked great for staying a step ahead of Father’s trackers. Purchase a new identity with untraceable funds, and—voilà!—a clean break. The trackers would eventually find the new identities, but it took time and gave me a chance to escape.
The com unlocked. Some sneaky bastard had stolen the com from my abandoned room on