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She said nothing, just focused her attention on him with an unsettling intensity.
"Whats a clockwork venom?" Jato asked.
Soz glanced at him. "The name comes from clock reactions." Although she sounded cool, sweat was
beading at her temple. "Combine certain chemicals under proper conditions and they cycle through a
series of reactions. In human blood, clockwork venoms undergo a cycle, each step producing a different
poison."
"Can your nanomeds fight it?" Jato asked.
Crankenshaft answered. "Even sophisticated meds have trouble with complicated cycles. This one has
hundreds of steps, all with varying duration lengths and side reactions that change from cycle to cycle. Its
a brilliant work of chemistry." He gave Jato an appraising look. "Youve felt one poison in the cycle. Last
time you were here. Perhaps you recall?"
Jato remembered all right. It had burned like hell.
"The others have different effects," Crankenshaft observed, as if Soz were a lab experiment. "Nausea,
muscle stiffness, dizziness, pain. Shell start vomiting soon. Eventually she will die."
Soz remained calm, but sweat was running down her temples. When she wiped at it, the motion looked
mechanical, as if she had let the hydraulics in her body take over.
"As soon as her hands are bound," Crankenshaft said, "Ill give her the antidote."
"Jato." She spoke quietly. "Do what he says. Please."
There was no mistaking the strain in her voice. Jato grabbed the thong off the floor and wrapped it
around her wrists. The broken lock mechanism on her manacles felt warm, probably from the energy
released when her chompers ate it. He tied the thong loosely around her wrists, making no attempt to
knot it. But the ceramoplex balls activated and yanked the cords tight, binding her wrists and then locking
into each other.
"Leather," Crankenshaft said.
Jato straightened up. "What?"
"In molecular terms, its complex," he said. "More heterogeneous than, say, manacles. Not as strong, but
a logical backup when dealing with disassemblers."
Jato gritted his teeth. How did Soz stay so cool? She just watched Crankenshaft, intent and quiet.
Crankenshaft took a ring with two mag-keys off his belt and threw it to them. As the keys hit the floor
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near Jatos foot, a syringe on the globe hissed. Soz moved like an automaton, trying to duck, but the shot
hit her anyway.
"That had better be the antidotes," Jato said.
"The red key unlocks your ankles," Crankenshaft said. "Gold unlocks hers."
After Jato freed their ankles, Soz moved stiffly, swinging her legs off the ledge.
"Go to the pool," Crankenshaft said. "Both of you."
"No," Jato said.
"Dont make it harder on her than necessary," Crankenshaft said. "I can calculate a lot of what I need,
but Ill achieve better results with genuine images of the two of you to work from."
Jato stayed put. "I wont rape her and I wont kill her. You can doctor holos to make me look like a
Trader, but nothing can make me act like one."
Crankenshafts voice hardened. "Go to the pool. Otherwise, Ill pump her so full of clockwork venom
shell beg you to kill her."
With no warning, Soz moved. Fast. Dropping to one knee by her boots, she whipped out her hands,
shreds of leather flying away from her wrists. She yanked the "decorative" tubes off her boots and
brought them up, one in each hand, liquid shooting out from both. One stream splattered over the drone,
creating clouds of gas. The other hit Crankenshafts carbine and splashed into his face. He shouted,
dropping the laser as he covered his face with his hands. When the gun hit the ground, it shattered like
porcelain.
The Mandelbrot globe hissed and a shot from its air-syringe hit Jato in the neck. In a bizarre blur of
motion, Soz threw her boots. They hurtled through the air and smashed into the globe, shattering its outer
shell where the liquid from her cylinder had doused it. The whole assembly crashed to the floor, its
innards breaking apart on the stone. Blinking and humming, the debris moved in twitches as it began to
reassemble itself.
"Smash the components!" Soz yelled, sprinting across the studio. She moved like a puppet, her body
under control of hydraulics rather than muscles and bones.
As Jato strode over to crush the remains of the drone, he saw Crankenshaft lower his hands, revealing a
face covered with burns. In the same instant that he grabbed for a gun on his belt, Soz reached him. She
brought her hands up with eerie speed and hit him under the chin, snapping back his head. He flew over
backward, crashing to the ground. His head hit the floor and he lay still, breathing but unconscious.
"Soz, no!" Jato raced forward when she jerked up her leg. He collided with her as her foot came down,
and they staggered to the side, enough to make her miss Crankenshaft. Her foot hit the floor with a
teeth-jarring impact that would have crushed the Dreamers chest.
Jato gulped in a breath. "No killing."
She turned to him like a machine, no emotion on her face. It was hard to believe this was the same
woman he had kissed on the Promenade.
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Then her expression became human again, as if she had reset herself. She exhaled. "Hell live." Grimly she
added, "We might not. Are you all right?"
A familiar burning was spreading in his neck and torso. "I took a shot of venom. Did he give you an
antidote?"
"No. More venom." She went to retrieve her boots and their tubes. "My meds are trying to synthesize an
antidote, but its hard to do when their target keeps changing."
"We better hurry." He grabbed his bird off the console. "His node must have alerted the city and his
other drones."
She pulled on her boots. "I put locks on his system. It will take a few minutes for it to break them." Her
voice sounded strained. Labored.
As Jato turned toward the door across the room, his gaze raked the pool and he froze.
The holosculpture was still evolving. It had spawned more and yet more Jatos, until they blended into a
design of feathered motion. A superimage had formed, a fractal, its pattern repeating on a finer and finer
scale. Superimposed on the fractal, a face was coming clear. A giant Trader face.
His face.
"No." He spun back to the console.
"Come on!" Soz called.
He stabbed at the console. "We have to destroy that sculpture."
"We have to go! We dont have much time."
"He stole my life." Jato gave up on the computer and swung around to her. "He created a mirror of
himself, but he put it on me. Its like like " He slammed his palm against the console. "Hes a thief. Of my
soul." He pointed at the sculpture. "Thats me. No matter where I go or what I do, as long as that exists
he owns me."
Sweat was dripping down her face. "I cant guarantee Ill find all his backups."
"If anyone can, its you." He clenched his fists. "He owes me. And for him, losing his masterpiece will be
a punishment worse than dying."
Soz strode to the console and went to work, making hieroglyphics ripple across its panels in garish
displays. She didnt waste time pulling out her wrist socket; instead, she hauled off her boot and set her
foot on the console, showing no strain with the contorted position as she plugged a prong from the
console into her ankle socket.
Seconds passed.
Longer.
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Waiting.
"Got it!" Soz jerked out the prong. "Downloaded one copy into my internal memory for you. Erased
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