Malin had forgotten how noisy nightclubs were and how annoying it was to make her way through the crowd that dived into the gloom, with no other light than a zigzagging of multicolored sparks.

What she would have liked to forget was the oppressive heat generated by many people crowding together in a closed place; spacious, but closed.

Still, walking around B-Crush brought back memories of good times, and not even the urgency of her mission or the clumsy attempts of seduction by some players could erase that hint of nostalgia from her face. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since the last time she’d entered a disco, bearing only the innocence of a teenage girl and much desire to have fun; without having to worry about obligations or duty.

Someday you’ll get back to this, gal, she said to herself. Now, she had to think of what Juzo had asked her to do.

Sneaking through the back door had been a simple task; when you can fly, entering through uncovered courtyards required little strategy. Now came the tricky part: finding the suspect.

She checked the computer on her left bracelet. If Broga had followed them and brought people with him, one of them might have worn Auriga bracelets just like hers. But there was no blue light on the screen to announce the presence in the room of another person wearing one of those.

Well, she had no choice but to use her own eyes.

She tugged at the collar of her T-shirt to vent her breasts, pushed her hair back from her forehead, and walked among those who danced, careful not to receive a slap inadvertently. She saw many faces, but none of them told her anything other than ‘I’m having a great time!’ or ‘I’m so high!’

The frontal perspective had several things against her; she lost an important angle of vision when surrounded by people. It would take a long time to get around the place, and it was easy for the enemy to slip through the crowd. She had to find a way to widen her visual spectrum.

The ceiling, after the reflector harnesses, was an immense dome in the shadows, filled with crisscrossing beams that ran down the walls like the legs of a spider. She looked for the darkest corner of the club where the light bombings came with less intensity, and she found the perfect hiding place. In that sector stood two of the beams that curved towards the ceiling, and between them, there was a narrow space where a thin person, someone like her, could fit.

Spreading the thruster’s wings just a few degrees, covering the silver aura it emitted with her back, she rose about thirty feet off the ground and got a wide panorama of the disco; she could even see a platform towering over the main dance floor. Holy damn! Was that place crowded! Where all these people came from? The dance floor was so packed with people she wondered how she’d got through it. There were people on the platforms, on the catwalks, on the stairs…

“The perfect place to hide.”

What would her father think of these people who wanted nothing more than to have fun? She thought that her old man, bitter by nature, surely would have dynamited every nightclub on the planet if he could, and if the law granted him the right, he would have done it with those people inside. Her old man despised carefree youngsters, and she despised him. Why bring him to her memory at all?

Keep him away from you, gal, she told herself.

She opened her eyes wide, and running them through every corner of the wide place, she took mental snapshots from which she extracted hundreds of faces; faces she studied in a quick blinking. That was an art she had learned in the military academy, and her father had made her train it. Another reason to be grateful to that stubborn old man?

Malin hovered in the air for a few minutes, but as far as she could see, there was no one in B-Crush that she knew or looked familiar; no one who could be linked to Broga. However, the darkness was an inescapable factor; the margin of doubt in her analysis was quite large. She descended. As she stepped onto the ground, she came face to face with a stranger who had seen her fly, a skinny man with long sideburns who looked at her with a joint hanging from his mouth.

“Forget it, cutie;” she said, winking at him, “smoking that won’t get you this way of high.”

Determined to carry on with the mission outside of B-Crush, Malin moved toward the exit. She put her wrist close to her lips and spoke through the radio.

“Juzo, I’m leaving the club. I found no one.” She waited for an answer that didn’t come. “Juzo, can you hear me?” She raised her voice in case her partner hadn’t heard her with the noise. “Juzo! Are you there?”

She fretted. Her Auriga was low on battery, but the radio should work just fine; her partner had to copy her. Something had happened. She got worried. Pushing people out of her way, she quickened her pace.

Suddenly, someone grabbed her arm.

“It’s too late for your friend,” a woman’s voice said in her ear.

She remembered what Uri had told them, about how he had earned the scratch on his arm. But before she could turn around to discover the identity of whoever was holding her—if it was indeed the woman Uri had described to them—she felt the tingle of an electric kiss right on the back of her neck.

She turned to face her attacker, then knew she was fainting.

She saw her. It was just as Uri had described her; tall, with dark skin and long white hair.

She tried to stay lucid to see her better, but it was impossible. Darkness won and turned off her senses.