Fragment 113

I don't know what happened. I don't remember what happened. I'm in a motel room. My phone says that it's November 9th. The last date I remember is July 17th. I was getting ready to upload the next chapter. But. But something happened. I don't remember.

There's a few ripped pages in front of me. The first says "Fragment 113." What happened to the rest?

The Slender Man loomed over me. I cursed him. I spat at him. "They're all dead," I cried. "They're all dead because of you." Dead bodies littered the ground beneath me. Some had been trampled in the panic, some had killed themselves, others had been killed just because they were in the way. 

But all of them had been killed by me. I was the cause of their deaths. I was the cause of the death of the Pinnacle City, the death of the sprawl. I looked up and saw the Spire burning. The Slender Man looked where I did, mimicking my movements. I had seen it rip apart hundreds of people today and yet it still moved like a child sometimes. 

"I did that," I said. "I did all this. I let you loose. I let you loose." 

The Slender Man looked at me without eyes. I knew it wouldn't kill me. I was the reason it was alive. I was the reason it had spread. 

"Please," I said. "I just want it to be over. Please." 

The Slender Man, having understood my pleading or not, approached me and placed one hand on my chest. He reached inward and

The rest of the page is gone. It's been ripped away. Did I do that? Why would I do that?

Where have I been for the past five months? What happened?

Fragment 9

So I finally finished transcribing this chapter. I kind of got preoccupied reading these blogs about the Slender Man. Some of them are really, really well written. And very interesting. And very, very creepy. (Thanks a lot. As if my insomnia wasn't bad enough.) Anyway, new chapter:

Canto told me his story over a cup of pitch-black coffee. He needed a stimulant, I think, to keep talking. He was hesitant at first, scratching at the ID-chip, as if he wanted to pull it out, pull out his past and be free from it. 

But we are never free from the past. It always pulls us back. 

Canto told me that his great-grandmother was one of the first Architects, then his grandfather, then his father. His father has aspirations that Canto himself would become an Architect as well, but Canto insisted on getting a well-rounded education. From what he told me, he was pretty straight-laced back then. His father sent him to the pharm to learn, but he ended up learning things he was never meant to. He didn't expand on that and I didn't ask him to, but I could guess - those "secret black classrooms" he had mentioned sounded like they revealed secrets long buried, secrets that the Architects tended to keep well-hidden. Like the meme warfare, like the Slender Man. 

Canto told me that after he had been exposed to those secrets, he couldn't look at his father again. There was something he wasn't telling me, I knew - perhaps he learned a secret about his father - but I knew better than to pry. "One night, I packed my stuff and took off," he said. "Didn't tell anybody where I was going. Left a note tagged to my father's cloudsite. Just said 'Bye.' Never looked back." 

"If you never wanted to go back to that life," I said, "why choose a server in one of the Pinnacles as the infodump site?" 

"I didn't have time to set up a proper site," he said. "You wanted the kernel next day and I knew you were going to do the job soon. I don't like to disappoint you, Stray. So I used one I had set up a while ago. In the Spire." 

I looked down at him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, while I sat in a chair.  

"Can you still just walk in there?" I asked. "No complications?" 

"I should still have access," he said. "They don't revoke it when you leave. It's just...there's a lot of security. Lot of floating cams around. No privacy." 

"So taking something away could be difficult," I said. 

"Could be," Canto said. "Could be easy, could be hard." 

"I don't like walking blind," I said, but kept my voice from being too hard. He looked like he wanted to sleep a million years, even with the caffeine he had consumed. Like talking about his father had drained him. 

"We can scout it," he said. "I mean, they're always running parties in there. Top-tier parties. Could slip in one, scout out security." 

"We could," I said. "Let me check the cloudsite for the Spire and see if there are any parties upcoming." 

I switched on the cloudscreen I kept in the safehouse and one wall immediately burst into a harsh blue light. "Dim," I said and the light dimmed. A static-crawl immediately appeared and some of the preprogrammed cloudsites I set opened up. 

"...sex celebrity Hegemony Williams found dead of overdose from new drug nacio7, known on the platforms now as 'bleech.' A wildfire in the forestry region consumed over thirty-five percent of the saved redwoods, something which anti-tree activists are now lauding. And the splitter party in congress has stated their agenda that Washington be split in two, one side being Washington, DC, the other Washington, AC. This is the Thundersite, opiate for the masses..." 

I turned the volume off and then switched the browser to the Spire's cloudsite. Images jumped out at me of clean white rooms and beautiful smiling people. Part of the Spire was living quarters for the obscenely rich, while another part actually served a purpose, like the rest of the Pinnacles. The Spire's purpose was newsmedia. Everyone had access to cloudsites, but it was the Spire that gave you a rating, allowed your cloudsite to live or die based on that rating. In this way, they effectively controlled which cloudsites could operate. 

"There's a party in a couple of days," I said. The Spire's static-crawl asked that participants dress in "genuine 20th cent garb." I wondered if I could pull that off. Go without my harness. I guess I would have to. 

The cloudscreen fritzed, the image jumping upward, with a burst of actual static blaring across the screen. "That's not right," I said. 

"What?" Canto asked. 

"Just some distortion," I said. "Though this cloudscreen is mint. I never used it before." 

"Distortion?" Canto stood up. "Stray, that's another symptom." 

I looked back at the cloudscreen. It was fine now. No static, no jumping. But there was something on the edge of my vision. I blinked and the screen went dark. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, the screen looked fine. I turned to Canto. 

"Did you see that?" I asked. 

He swallowed and then said, "Yes." 

"Shit," I said and turned back to the screen. "Guess we're both infected. Or this is a crappy cloudscreen." 

Canto went laid back on the bed and closed his eyes and I quietly turned off the cloudscreen. Nothing was ever easy. Time was always running out. And we had angry assassins and an impossible idea after us. 

Hope seemed almost cruel, but that was what I had. Hope that I lived to see next week, hope that Canto would be fine, hope that I could someday see my brother again.  

Perhaps hope is the cruelest idea of all.

Interlude 1

Sorry for not posting the next chapter - work again. However, I found this written in the back of the first notebook. I googled it and it turns out that it's a poem from Emily Dickinson:

The Future — never spoke —
Nor will He — like the Dumb —
Reveal by sign — a syllable
Of His Profound To Come — 

But when the News be ripe —
Presents it — in the Act —
Forestalling Preparation —
Escape — or Substitute — 

Indifference to Him —
The Dower — as the Doom —
His Office — but to execute
Fate's — Telegram — to Him —

Also, on an impulse, I googled the Slender Man and it looks like my grandmother was using some sort of internet urban legend for her story. I started reading some of the blogs about the Slender Man, because they look interesting. (You may also notice I changed the look of the blog - I like it more monochrome.  It's noir-ish.)

Fragment 8

I'm trying to post the fragments more frequently. I may even divide up some of the longer fragments so I can post them more quickly. Anyway, here's a new chapter for your perusal.

My safehouse was in the middle-stories of Malak. We took several platform-cars there, switching back every few miles to make sure nobody was following us. Being outside, walking around, it felt like the world was watching me. Like I had done something very wrong and everyone was going to turn their heads to look at me at all once. It wasn't a good feeling. 

I was getting paranoid. Canto said that was one of the symptoms of the Slender Man meme. Paranoia, hallucinations, sometimes even physical sickness. A cough or a headache. I asked how a meme could cause a sickness and he replied that it was "psychosomatic." A psychosomatic illness caused by a idea monster. Great. 

I also asked how long I had. "I don't know," he said. "It varies. Sometimes people go for a long while before succumbing. Sometimes the meme gets through a person quickly and then leaves them alone. I was told there were lots of pharmers who tried studying it, but nothing ever came out of it. It was dormant for a while." 

Every shadow made me jumpy, every person on the sliding streets made me flinch away. I knew this probably wasn't the meme working, this was just myself, my own fear working against me, but it didn't help. 

When we finally got to my safehouse, I pulled out my extra harness I kept there and put it on. 

"You going out?" Canto asked. 

"No," I said, "I just feel safer with one on." Having a harness on meant if you fell, you could catch yourself. Up in the middle-stories, you didn't really need one, because there were so many platforms and the platforms usually had emergency cables you could catch. But up high, in the pinnacles, and down below, on the harsh ground, the platforms were few and far between. Better to have a harness, latch onto a building or girder and let it lift you up. 

I always felt better with a harness on. 

"So," I said, "what should I do?" 

Canto shrugged. He was quiet for most of the way here. He answered when I asked him questions, but other than that, he wasn't his normal self. I hadn't seen him imbibe any drugs or take any with him. There was obviously more to this Slender Man thing that he wasn't telling me. 

"Canto." I took his hand. "It's okay. I just need to know what I can do. To stay safe." 

He looked at me and then said, "Sometimes it does good to read more about him. Read the stories about him, about the people he followed." 

"The archive," I said. "Good. The original was destroyed, but I rerouted all the information with your kernel. Maybe I can even use it as leverage against the Golconda. Threaten to make it open source. This is a good thing." 

"Sure," Canto said, but he didn't sound convinced. 

"I just need to know where the server is," I said. "Where did the kernel reroute the archive, Can?" 

Canto was looking down again at his hands. "It's in a safe place," he said. "An office building. In the Spire." 

I looked at him. "The Spire?" I lifted a palm up to my face. "Canto, the Spire's in Shekina. The Spire's one of the Pinnacles!" 

"I know," he said softly. "It's a safe place." 

"We can't just walk into one of the Pinnacles," I said. 

Canto was quiet. He shuffled his feet and then said, "I can." He rubbed his wrist and then pulled up his sleeve - revealing an ID-chip. The chip's hologram jumped up and displayed Canto's picture (from when he had much shorter hair) and his full name: Canticle Gerard. Son of Arkos Gerard, Architect. 

Canto was the son of an Architect, the kings of the sprawl, the masters of the Pinnacle City.

Fragment 7

Man, I suck at updating. It's just become so hot here and I've been so tired lately. Gah. Anyway, I transcribed this next part. It's kind of weird, but I guess my grandmother kept up with current scientific theories and stuff.

When I blacked out, I dreamed. I dreamed I was back in the home I never had, back with my brother and my mother and father and everything was alright, everything was fine. Hec and I chased each other through the house while mom and dad watched over and made sure we didn't hurt ourselves. There was a darkness though - in the middle of the house, there was a darkness, like a crack in the wall. "Don't touch it," my mother warned, but we weren't listening, we were too busy having fun and so we ventured too close. And the crack widened and a man made of dark stepped out, arms longs like the branches of a tree and needles for eyes. And he caught us and we screamed and our mother said, "I warned you. You should have run. You should have run away." 

I woke up in Canto's liar, on the lonely mattress. I tried to sit up, but pain shot up my leg and made me scream out. 

"Hey, hey!" Canto entered the room. He looked more bedraggled than normal. "Don't move, Stray. I just injected the liquid splint an hour ago." 

"What," I said and then laid back, trying to ignore the pain. "What happened?" 

"Your AI bossman called me," Canto said. "Told me where to pick you up. You had a nasty fall from grace, Stray. Took a look at your harness - someone emped the bastard. Wiped it clean and cut all your strings." 

I gritted by teeth. "Golconda," I said. 

Canto took a look at me and for a moment I was afraid he was going to kick me out, but he didn't. He sighed. "That's what your AI was afraid of telling me. He seemed wormy. Don't worry, Stray. You can stay here while the splint kicks in and then I'll help you get to your safehouse." Every thief has a safehouse, whether your a grifter, conner, or lifter. You never know when you might steal from the wrong folks and end up without a safe place to stay. 

"Thanks, Canto," I said. 

"Not a blem," he said. "This have to do with the kernel job I helped you with?" 

"Yes," I said, unsure whether I should tell him the entire truth. 

"Must've been some bad info," Canto said. "Worth rolling the die with the 'conda. They are not a light bunch." 

"It was..." I hesitated. Should I tell me? "It was an archive of stories." Canto laughed and then I added, "Stories about the Slender Man." 

He stopped laughing. He looked at me and I could tell from his face he knew that name, knew something about the Slender Man. "Stray..." he started to say and then stopped. "Stray, what do you know about the...the Slender Man?" It was almost as if he was afraid to say those words. 

"Not much," I said. "Some storybook monster. The place I hit was the Holy Church of the Thin Man." 

Canto sat down on a stool next to the mattress. I tried to ignore the stabbing pain of my leg and waited for the splint to kick in. I could have asked for a painkiller, but I knew Canto often mixed up his drugs, so I could get a hallucinigen instead, which wouldn't have been good. I do not trip well. 

Canto, on the other hand, didn't do sober well. He looked like all the drugs had been flushed from his system and maybe they had. Maybe I had caught him at one of those times when he was periodically purging himself of drugs, so he could take a whole new batch clean from the start. But then he started to talk and I realized it was something more than that. 

"He's not a storybook monster, Stray," he said. "He's a memetic monster. We learned about him in the pharm." The pharm - the establishment where all pharmacologists and pseudopharmacologists and therapharmacoligists and whatever else learned their trade - was notoriously hard-edged. That Canto went there didn't surprise me; even under a heavy drugload, he knew his stuff so well that he had to have learned it at the pharm. But what did surprise me is that Canto visably flinched when he said the name, as if he didn't want to remember his time there at all. 

"A story?" I asked. "Why teach a story at the pharm?" 

"It's not just a story," Canto said. "I told you, he's a memetic monster. You know what a meme is? An idea-gene. Where genes spread genetic information, memes spread cultural information. It's a thought contagion. Someone next to you hums a song and suddenly you start humming it, too. That's a meme." He took a deep breath. "The ultimate idea was to make a memetic weapon. Insert an idea into an enemy territory and suddenly all your enemies have the same idea to kill themselves. Meme warfare. Never really took place, though, because no one could figure out a way to make it work. You could make a song get stuck in someone's head, but not the idea that they should commit suicide. That would take generations and generations of instilled cultural ideas and no one was willing to do that." 

I noticed that he was looking at his hands, moving each finger around, trying to distract himself. But he went on talking. "There was this story, though. Of a successful meme weapon. They called it the Slender Man. A person would read a story about the Slender Man and then days, maybe weeks later, that person would become convinced they were being stalked by it. By him. It would...consume them. They were compelled to spread the meme, too, writing everything down into a story and passing it on, so others could be infected." 

I swallowed. "So, someone made the Slender Man meme?" 

"Yes," Canto said. "Well, no. Someone made him, but it was never meant to be a meme. It spread on its own. It...took on a life of its own. Or it was older than anyone else knew, older than we even thought. The pharm-professors wanted to make another one, but I learned. In the secret black classrooms, I learned that it wasn't a meme weapon at all. Weapons do what you tell them to do. Pull a trigger, shoot a bullet. Press a button, send a bomb. The Slender Man wasn't a weapon. It was a monster. It was uncontrollable. Everyone that tried to control it ended up infected or dead or both." 

"How would it kill you?" I asked. "If it's just an idea?" 

"Ideas are worse than bombs," Canto said. "Bombs kill you quick. Ideas can kill you slow. It starts off seeing him out of the corner of your eye, in windows, next to trees. You hallucinate that other people look like him. Some people can't take it and off themselves then. Others stick it out and experience it fully. Go right through the madness and come out the other end." 

"But the church," I said. "Those people knew about it and they didn't look bad." 

"It's been gone," he said, looking down. "Dormant, I think. An idea sleeping furiously, you might say." 

I took a deep breath. "I saw it. Before I blacked out. I saw it." I didn't tell him that I saw it kill one of the Golconda, because how could an idea do that? 

Canto closed his eyes. "Guess it woke up then." He started to cry quietly. 

[this part appears to be written later] 

Canto. Canto Canto Canto. I wished I had hugged you then. I wish I had never told you I had seen it. I wish so many things. You were a good friend in a bad world. I'm sorry, Canto. I'm so sorry.

Fragment 6

Woke up this morning and I just wanted to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, I need to work and I had a dentist appointment to boot. Anyway: another thrilling chapter in the life of a cyberpunk thief.

When I stopped for breath, I called Guillemet. <<Hey, Stray,>> he buzzed in my ear. <<How did the job go?>> 

I took a deep breath and then said one word: "Golconda." 

<<Fuck.>> I rarely heard Guillemet swear - sometimes I thought cursing wasn't programmed into his motherboard - but this time it was justified. <<Okay, you've got to get out of there.>> 

"No shit," I said. "I ran like hell. They'll still come after me though." 

<<Of course.>> He was silent for a few seconds and then said. <<They can track you.>> 

"How?" I looked up at the cage of girders in the sky. "I wasn't tagged by anything, I would have felt it." 

<<Nanotags,>> he said. <<Specifically designed. They have implants in their eyes. They look at you, they can track you.>> 

"Fuck!" I said. "They saw me!" 

<<That's not good,>> he said. <<You're going to have to ditch the clothes. If its attached to them, once its gone, they can't track you. If it's on skin, you're screwed.>> 

"Thanks," I said, starting to unbutton my shirt. "You want to tell me how I'm going to get around while naked?" 

<<This is the sprawl,>> he said. <<There are at least half a dozen religions who require young women to go around naked. Pretend to be a Nudianist or something.>> 

"Great," I said as I stripped. We were both silent for a few seconds and then I asked, "Hey, G, how did you know about their nanotags?" 

He didn't answer me and for a moment I thought the connection was lost. Then, he said, <<I designed them.>> 

"What?" 

<<They paid a shitload, Stray,>> he said. <<And you don't say no to the Golconda. Please, I'm sorry.>> 

I was silent as I stripped, angry that Guillemet had basically engineered my own downfall. "Not your fault," I finally said. "You didn't know they would show up on the job. It would help though if you sent me some new clothes." 

<<Can do,>> he said. <<If you can make it to corner of Diom, Navaa, and Siosp, I'll send out one of my drones. With something extra, too.>> 

"Thanks, G," I said. I took off my shoes, balanced myself on a girder, and started to run. I pretended I was twelve again, racing against my brother, chasing each other on girder after girder, ignoring the angry shouts of our father. It brought back memories I thought were long forgotten - sliding in the rain, laughing as we tripped each other up, as we fell and gripped the harnessed our mother had carefully made for us. 

I finally made it to the corner of Diom, Navaa, and Siosp and found G's drone - a gray spidery thing that gripped the path with six limbs. Its center opened up to reveal a new set of clothes - all black, thanks G - and something else. A very expensive present from Guillemet. 

I hurriedly dressed, then slipped Guillemet's present into the back of my pants. I didn't like holding it, but it was a necessity. 

"Hello there," a voice said behind me. I turned and there was one of them - the first of the Golconda. If he was here, the others wouldn't be far behind. Perhaps they were already here, waiting in shadows. 

I didn't give him a chance to speak again - I turned and ran, making sure my harness gripped girders and rooftops that were high above me. They could follow, but it would be difficult. I felt an adrenaline rush as the wind whipped past my hair and then... 

And then I was falling. My lines had been cut, my harness was dead. He had done something, disabled my harness somehow. In the sky without a harness was deadly and I was in the air, in the wind, and then the wind was rushing past in the other direction. I watched the city above me grow smaller and then I slammed into a platform, my leg bearing the brunt of my weight. I could feel the crack in the bone as I screamed. 

"Now, now," the first of the Golconda said. "That's no way to treat a guest. And here I was, all ready to let you go when I had what I wanted." 

"What..." I winced and said, "What do you want?" 

"The information," he said and smiled. "Where did you transfer it to? Where is it now?" 

"Will you...will you let me go?" I asked as my hand slowly slid behind my back. 

"I promise," the first of the Golconda said. "Cross my heart, hope to die-" 

I pulled out Guillemet's present, the needlegun, and fired. The needlegun was an unusual weapon - designed at first to be non-lethal, each of the needles it fired was equipped with an electrical charge that would stun whoever was hit. Weapons dealers soon figured out a design flaw though: the space where the battery that sustained the electric charge was held could be modified and retrofitted to contain other things, specifically tracking systems. The needlegun had become a smartgun, capable of hitting whatever target you wanted. They were strictly controlled, not even given to the skypol anymore. 

Guillemet had already programmed the needles in this needlegun it looked like. It curved from the direction I had fired (probably wildly missing anything) and directed itself towards the only target it could find: the first of the Golconda. And then it hit its target square in the eye. 

He screamed as the needle penetrated. "You stupid bitch!" he said as he pulled it out. "You think that would kill me? Tear out both my eyes, I will still carve you up, you fucking b-" His voice trailed off as he looked upward and the angry expression on his face turned into fear. 

I ignored my own pain and turned my attention to where he was looking. There was a man, a very tall man, standing on one of the platforms. He wore a dark gray suit with one long white line down the center and his face...his face was as white as snow. My pain must have been too much, because I couldn't see any features of his face. 

"No," the first of the Golconda said. "No, it can't be you. You're not here." For the first time, he looked afraid. I prepared to fire another needle, but the tall man looked at me and suddenly I found that I couldn't pull the trigger. The tall man turned back to the first of the Golconda. "Can't be you. Can't be," he repeated. "Operations must commence. Operations. Can't be you." The tall man walked forward, closer and closer, as the first of the Golconda fell to his knees. "Can't be. Operations. Commence." He was babbling and crying. 

The tall man lifted one arm and I could see if it was abnormally long and it seemed to stretch out as I watched it, twisting and turning in unnatural ways. The tall man reached out with the arm and stuck it down the first of the Golconda's mouth and I could see him squirming, writhing, wanting to get free, but unable to move. 

Everything seemed to be still at that moment, as if time itself froze. And then the first of the Golconda collapsed to the ground and the tall man removed his arm. He turned to look at me and I knew then that it wasn't the pain making me see things. He had no face. 

And then I remembered. I remembered Father Caulis's mask and his stories. The Slender Man. This was the Slender Man. 

He seemed to regard me and then he turned his gaze away from me. He picked up the first of the Golconda's body as if it was nothing, then started to walk away. He stopped, though, and turned back to me and nodded. 

And then darkness enveloped me as I passed out.

Fragment 5

Sorry for not posting lately. Work has been very hectic - we're moving into a new office soon, so I've been very busy getting everything ready. And I haven't been sleeping that much, so I've been very tired at work. But this next chapter is a doozy, so it's worth the wait.

I told Canto eight am sharp, so of course he was ready with the kernel at ten. Surveillance hadn't shown up anything other than what I had already seen, so I managed to pull in a good six hours of sleep the night before and I was ready and rested. Of course, robbing the Church of the Thin Man during broad daylight was too risky, so I was going to have to wait until nightfall. 

Canto told me how to use the kernel. Just inject it into the chemical computer and he set up the relay station where the information will be rerouted. He gave me a tracker that tracks how much of the information has been rerouted - I think he just likes making things. 

That left me with time to kill. I didn't have anything else to do and I didn't just want to sit around doing nothing - doing nothing before a job was bad, it made you nervous. The more free time you had, the more chances you had to make yourself completely paranoid. What if this, what if that, what if things go wrong. 

Nine times out of ten, things go wrong because you expect them to go wrong. People sabotage themselves, my mother used to tell me. She was talking about my father, but I didn't know it at the time. 

So I went to an abandonded library I had discovered a few years back. It had fallen into disuse some years ago, but nearly all the books were still on the shelves and I sometimes liked to walk through the stacks and pick a book at random to read. Old and musty tomes that had never been opened in fifty years. That occupied my time until the sun dipped below the horizon and night descended. 

My scouting of the Church had shown there was an access duct that led into the control room containing the chemical computer containing their archive. Normally, these sorts of ducts would have been miniscule, allowing only the smallest of bots to crawl through, but this was an old building. Air was pumped in via large ducts attached to the ceiling which could clearly be used as an entry point. The only reason they weren't secured was probably because Father Caulis didn't believe anyone wanted to steal his information. Even I was starting to wonder why the stories in the archive were so important to my employer. 

Seven pm and I observed no one within the church. I slid onto the rooftop and then into the panel leading to the air duct. It was times like these I was lucky I was so skinny. A more, well, voluptuous thief might have been trapped in the duct. 

Once I got inside the computer room, I opened the vent and repelled down. The chemical computer was waiting for me, sitting in the middle of the room like a throne. I removed Canto's kernel and injected it into the bag of gooware. Then I waited. Canto's tracker told me .2% of the information had been rerouted. 

It was then that I heard a voice. "Hello? Is anyone there?" It was Father Caulis. I flattened myself against the wall and stepped slowly to the door to the next room, the meeting room. Father Caulis was standing there looking around. "Hello? I know I heard something." Had I made any sounds? Any at all? 

Then, another voice. "Hello, Father." Cold and monotone. Three men emerged from the dark shadows of the room and surrounded Father Caulis. They wore dark overcoats and bowler hats and carried umbrellas. "How nice to see you," the first one said. I shivered involuntarily. 

I knew them. Everyone knew them. They were the Golconda. If you wanted someone dead and you had enough money, you went to them. Sometimes they would do it. Sometimes they would take your money and kill you. You never really knew about the Golconda - hiring them was like playing Russian roulette. 

"What- why are you here?" Father Caulis asked. I wanted to know the same. If they were after the same information I was, I was screwed. 

"He is returning, Father," the first of the Golconda said. 

"Wh-who?" Father Caulis whispered. 

"He is returning," the first of the Golconda said again, "and we can't allow that, now can we? Operations must commence." 

"Op-operations?" Caulis tried to back away, but he was surrounded. "What operations?" 

"Can't go around telling people about operations," the first of the Golconda said. "I mean, two can keep a secret if one of them is dead, right?" He smiled.  "But then I guess you'll know all secrets soon." He lifted his umbrella and I saw the glint of a blade as he swept it and Caulis fell down, his blood spilling onto the floor. 

I covered my mouth and tried to take deep breaths. I hadn't seen someone killed in a long time, but that feeling of helplessness never really left you. 

I needed to get out of here. My harness was still hooked up to the duct, so I pulled myself up and managed to get inside before the Golconda came into the computer room.

They didn't say a word, just lifted their umbrellas and slashed the bags of chemicals, spilling everything onto the floor, like strangely colored blood. Two of the Golconda were carrying cans and as they poured them on the floor, I realized it was gasoline. The spread it around, making sure to soak all the puddles of gooware. The first one took out a lighter and opened it. 

And then the tracker I was still holding beeped. I looked at it and it said "Information Reroute 100% Complete." Goddamn Canto and his goddamn gadgets. All the Golconda looked up and saw me through the vent. 

I crawled as fast as I could. I had the advantage that I knew where all the vents went and was able to get back to the roof quickly. But they got there soon after me and I could see on their faces, I could see that they wanted me dead, they needed me dead. I was a loose end and one thing the Golconda do not have, it is loose ends. 

There was only one thing to do and I did it: I ran. I knew they would catch up to me eventually, but I ran and ran and ran. Past steel girders, past the skypol stations that were empty for the night, right into the heart of the sprawl itself. 

I ran and didn't look back.