Abi's slender figure cut gracefully through the crowded bar, her dirty blond hair done up in a pony tail and a tray of drinks balanced on one hand. It was a fairly typical job for a girl in her twenties, and a good way to pay her way through school while still having a little spending money for important things like shoes.

Waiting tables at Weltschmerz was a decent job, but it was located in one of the worst areas of the Old Cities. Many neighbourhoods were sketchy, the Rendering District was outright dangerous. The job had some perks though, she got to see a lot of really good bands, the bouncers usually did a good job of keeping drunk patrons in line and the tips were great. Tonight the place was packed, it seemed everyone wanted to see Uncloned Sparrow despite the 400 GlobalDollar price for tickets.

Abi liked the band and had seen them a number of times at other venues, tonight she had the pleasure of meeting them earlier when she arrived at work. It had so far been a very good night, in fact the night's only detractor was an earlier visit by a MiST unit asking some questions, when one of the bouncers got a little insolent, they stunned him and carried on with their business. Abi got the impression they were looking for something or someone, but they left soon enough and things got back to normal.

Tonight she had some really good tables and the tips were adding up. New Daylion boots, the latest fall trend, might soon grace the burgeoning shoe rack in her closet. The thought made her smile as she returned to the bar to load another tray.

The night wore on, the band rocked out and Abi's feet started to hurt. Fashion had its price. Separate from the large crowd enjoying the show, three young men sat quietly in the oxygen bar at the back of the building, despite their words being all but drowned out by the music they spoke as quietly as possible, each focused on their small, hand-held Netpods.

Miller Chang, Trey Hall and Nicolaus Corvid should not have been meeting like this. They knew it, but Nic deemed it necessary. Trey was especially nervous since he made a living engaged in activities that would be considered legal grey areas, other times he was a flat out petty criminal. He was long on charm, but his moral compass suffered from slight deviation issues. He tried to keep a low profile since he was known to the authorities and there was a standing detain-on-sight order issued for him. He did not feel that meeting at a crowded bar was very low profile, nor wise. He frequently checked the time and was trying to hurry the others along. While they were aware of the earlier raid, they figured MiST was unlikely to check twice on the same night. That knowledge did little to assuage their paranoia though. It was a bad assumption.

"I'll make this as quick as possible." Nic said and tapped the display deftly with his long, thin finger.

"Bring your nearfields online and I'll flash your units with the latest firmware. This upgrade includes better encryption, remote kill, eavesdropping detection and a bunch of other good stuff I'll not get into. The secured applications will no longer use your CIT keys - while they provide good security they also tie you to your device and I think we want deniability at this point. Miller, you will need to generate a secure pass-phrase like Trey and I use, 40 characters minimum length."

"What?" Miller scoffed, "How the hell am I suppose to remember that?"

Nic carried on without comment, "Also, the units are always in passive RF listen mode and can detect most, if not all MiST comms and scanning gear that is active within 1000 meters, they will not come online if that is the case. They will automatically sync with the server farm back at my place twice a day for the latest information and I can push data over a secure band to them when needed. They also run on the DarkNet mesh, less chance of the traffic being scooped. Downside is, DarkNet is not as reliable."

Nic was the kind of eccentric techie other techies idolized. Driven and at times fanatical, he was equal parts savant and revolutionary. In hacker circles his exploits were legend, like the time he found a way to game the GlobalDollar cryptocurrency. The hack was so high profile it was covered by the Meta media outlets for an entire week. At that point he took a hiatus from hacking and went dark.

Despite coming up on the radar of MiST Network Crimes Division from time to time, he managed to elude them one way or another. Always one step ahead. Confident but not arrogant, he knew when to quit. In recent years he divided his time between his research on Susan's Plague and taking on profitable projects, mostly for companies and governments outside of Meta.

Nic was natural born, an accident and a scandal to his aristocrat parents. The product of one of his father's many affairs, Nic was the only evidence of his father's rampant philandering. This particular indiscretion had potential for much social fallout and embarrassment for an elite family like the Corvids, this time there was a pregnancy.

Such things were often dealt with an exchange of money and a quiet abortion, but not in Nic's case, his biological mother, a bio-born servant in the Corvid household, wanted her baby. The impregnated servant went into hiding shortly after conception and only returned to confront the father after Nic was born. That did not go over well with Lane Corvid. A significant sum of money was the price of silence and Nic's biological mother setup a very well-managed trust in his name, she stayed on as a servant in the household for a couple years before she left inexplicably.

Nic later in life found that his father had a dark side, a menacing, vengeful propensity. It made him question what really became of his mother. He had few memories of her now and despite all his technological prowess, he was never able to track her down. It was the source of the greatest sense of disappointment in his life. A void he could never fill.

The Corvids retained custody of Nic, if only to manage the situation. They used their vast wealth to keep him sequestered. The dirty Corvid family secret. He bounced from one private school after another, almost since he could walk. Often registered under a pseudonym. He defected from the Corvid regime the first chance he got and never looked back.

The financial independence provided by the trust allowed Nic a comfortable existence for a natural-born, most of whom lived in poverty at the edge of society. They could not get work permits or enroll in any of Meta's premiere educational institutes. Enslavement was one of the few available options.

The Core facilitated breeding programs for citizens who were granted procreation licenses only, for others it was disallowed and that was enforced by the CIT implants. The bio-borns however had no CIT implants and could breed among themselves quite readily which only exacerbated the population problems Meta faced.

Until enabled by the authorities, the rest of the population was effectively sterile. The tightly controlled program of eugenics combined selective breeding, genetic manipulation, nutrition, and bio-mechanical augmentation - the program was called Purity.

Core medical staff overseeing the program also reserved the right to terminate any pre-term child at any time. All Core offspring are conceived in a lab and gestate in artificial uteri and only meet their parents after a battery of tests post-delivery. It's cold, clinical and very efficient.

Nic's Netpod chimed and an alert flashed up on the screen - 'PROXIMITY'. He holstered the device, "Gentlemen, it's time to get the hell out of here. MiST is on their way. Out the back and into the storm drain."

"I knew this was a bad idea." Trey cursed as he moved quickly to the rear exit. "These guys are onto us. What did I tell you guys!"

"Let's just get the hell out of here, we can hash this out later." Miller pried the storm grate up and the other two slipped down into the inky blackness, he followed and flicked on the small but bright light on the Netpod. They ran at length down corridors and tunnels until Nic could run no longer, Nic had nowhere near the physical stamina of the other two. Dirty and soaked they stopped at an intersection.

"Dammit Nic, the sewers again! I'm going to have to burn my clothes." Miller lamented. "I heard the Stephens cell in West Darlington was taken out by MiST in the sewers. "

"How the hell did they know? Why are they always turning up wherever we go?" Trey paced angrily back and forth. "I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to get caught - if I get snagged, that's it, I'm franged! This is serious shit now and meeting at a bar is just stupid. No more!"

Nic was having difficulty catching his breath, "They... have.... un...limit...ed.... resources... I... have to.... sit." he plopped down and continued to gasp for breath. He held up his finger, buying time. "They likely raided 100 clubs tonight.... they're casting a wide net. We need to make some adjustments.... With that new firmware though, we shouldn't need to meet again for quite a while."

"Maybe we should reconsider this," Miller countered, "I mean, even if we do discover something about the Plague, what the hell good does it do us. They'll just as soon kill us. We can't take it to the media, they own the media. What are we going to do - plaster the Old Cities with posters? Meta is sitting on a cure?" Miller's sarcasm had a hint of hysteria.

"We don't know for sure what happened to the Stephen's guys, they went dark, maybe they just gave up and dispersed. Maybe they got scared too. The might have been contact with Red Sabre, which would have been a bad move. Miller, you can cut and run at anytime, I can't let this go." Nic worked his way back up to his feet, still panting. "I think Meta is behind the Plague, somehow, or they know a lot more than they let on. I don't have anything concrete to back that up yet, but everything I have found seems to support the theory."

"That's crazy!" Miller shook his head. "What the hell is the point of creating a plague on your own people? Sometimes I think your personal vendetta over being bio-born conflicts with your objectivity."

"It's not being bio-born that's the problem," Nic shot back angrily. "It's the marginalization of bio-borns that pisses me off. We didn't ask to be born this way, it's not our fault, we aren't lesser people because our DNA isn't tweaked."

"Sorry Nic, I didn't mean anything by it." Miller apologized. "I just don't get what would make Meta infect their own people."

"I don't know Miller, but a couple weeks ago I got a strange message. A print out actually, I think it's a cryptographic hash, I've had Katherine working on it 24/7, but it's complex. I can't even figure out how they got access to my systems. I wasn't going to bring this up until I had it figured out, but I guess this is as good a time as any."

"Wait, what?! Someone hacked you?" Miller was genuinely shocked.

"I don't know about hacked - but they did access my systems. They didn't wipe all the logs so I have some information on their activity in my network. They accessed internal surveillance, and an antique printer. They used the printer to send me a message. The message is a hash, but it was signed 'from Erik' in plain text. I was also able to back trace the connection a fair ways. Remember that anomaly I've been tracking and how it always seems to disappear back into the high security Nets. That's already kind of suspicious, then I get this message and it traces back to the same damn network."

"You're chasing ghosts."

"Maybe, but this one chased me back. That message is important."

"What if it's just some kind of bait, so that MiST can break down your door and shoot you in the head?" Trey added.

"I think if that was MiST NetSec, they would have exfiltrated my databases for forensic review - they had complete access, nothing was taken or damaged. I knew they were their and they knew I knew - they made no effort to disguise their connection. Besides, I've seen MiST NetSec's work, this was something else - something elegant, organic. They passed my firewalls almost politely, for lack of a better word, it wasn't a forceful intrusion. It sounds weird, but it's as if the system let him in. But like I said, you can still get out, I will wipe all evidence either of you were ever involved."

"No, never mind... let's get moving, which way do we go." Miller asked staring down one of the corridors, now spacially disoriented but feeling calmer. He really wanted to be part of this, his cousin died from the Plague recently and she deserved better. He had visited her in the late stages, she was completely restrained, strapped to a bed. She growled and spat and frothed like an animal, it was not the way he wanted to remember her. He really hoped Nic was wrong about the Core being involved, it was a difficult theory to agree with, but sometimes he did wonder, what if Nic was right?

"You two go that way - north. I'm going west. I will send your device some test messages later tonight. Better keep moving." Nic got up and started a slow march to the west, sloshing his through the dark, putrid bowels of the Old Cities.

* * * * *

Abi was just grabbing another tray of drinks when MiST returned, eight men, clad in heavy body armor pushed their way into the club. This time they were not so cordial, one of them immediately silenced the band by shooting out their stack of amps, causing the band and bar patrons to dive for cover wherever they could find it.

"Down! Down! Down assholes!" One of them yelled, his voice disguised and amplified by his helmet.

"That's not necessary!" Carl, the barkeep barked from behind the bar, the Security team leader unholstered a stun gun and fired. Carl collapsed in a heap and began to convulse.

"Have you seen any of these people tonight." Another asked of Abi, who had crawled behind to the bar to help Carl. He held up a tablet with 9 faces. One caught her eye, good looking guy she'd seen in the bar before. She shook her head to the contrary. He continued on, pushing the tablet in everyone's face. MiST was generally disliked by the public, their reputation for brutality was well-known so even if people recognized the faces, they would not say.

"Team two, check the back, secure the building, no one in or out."

"Roger Oscar lead." They replied almost in unison, and moved quickly in a tactical wedge to the rear of the building.

Two guards setup at the front door and ushered people out, first running a scanner over their wrists' I/O port and doing a quick ID check. Some they interrogated briefly and released. The place emptied rapidly.

"Oscar one-six, sitrep." The leader spoke to the guard with the tablet.

"Nothing sir."

"Shit, no matches!" He cursed, "Oscar four-six, this is Oscar lead, status on rear entrance?"

"Negative on backdoor, over." Came the broadcast reply.

"Copy four-six." He turned to his team, "either we have bad intel, a room full of liars or they were tipped off." He switched from the tactical band over to Core-Comm frequency. "Command two-one, this is Oscar lead, over."

"Go ahead Oscar lead."

"We got nothing here, request Investigative Unit with a SensTech, I want a full sweep, video, DNA, fabric, nearband and bioband signature. They must have left something behind, over."

"Roger that Oscar lead, will have IU dispatched at oh-two-forty, over."

"Sounds good, we will hold position until their arrival, out."

"Show's over - get the hell out, you're contaminating my crime scene!" Oscar lead yelled at the remaining stragglers and bar employees.

"Crime...wha-?" The barkeep was slowly rousing from his induced stupor, Abi wiped his forehead with a damp cloth.

"Core Security, Carl, they say terrorists were meeting here. Something to do with the 'Lev explosion maybe."

"That's absurd." He said getting to his feet. The last of the crowd was now being moved expeditiously out the door. "Hey, can we at least clean this place up? We got another show tomorrow." He yelled at the closest guard.

"Hey - how dumb are you?" Oscar lead yelled back from the far end of the bar. "You want another zap dumb-ass? Get the hell out, this place is closed until further notice!"

Abi and Carl grabbed their jackets and headed out into the night, Carl scowled at the guards near the door, but with their helmets on, you couldn't see there eyes, much less their reaction. They could not care less about Carl, they had a job to do and they were going to do it. The crowd had already dispersed quickly into the mist, some grabbing taxis, others walking to the nearest Mag-Stop.

"You gonna be okay?" Abi asked her boss.

"Yeah, just dizzy." He assured her unlocking his car, "you got someone to walk you to the PodStop? I can give you a lift."

"No thanks Carl - I'm meeting James, he'll walk me."

"Ok, you take care."

"Call me when we're open again - I need the money!" She called after Carl as he began to drive away. He honked as he past the front of his bar, giving the guard out front a rude gesture with his hand, which made Abi giggle.

Outside the night air was chill and the street lights had difficulty penetrating the fog. Instead the whole area just had an eery glow about it. The rendering district was often obscured in mist, especially this time of year. James was not right outside as Abi expected, so she messaged him on her Netpod. He messaged back promptly,

'Running late, just down 3rd Ave, stay there, just a couple mins away.'

Abi crossed her arms to stay warm and paced a bit back and forth. Despite all the time Abi spent with James they were not a couple, although many people presumed they were. They had a date a couple years ago and it was immediately clear to Abi that James was like a brother, not a romantic partner. This was good for Abi since she had lost her brother, Daniel two years before meeting James.

Daniel had joined Core MCSF as soon as he could get his parents to sign the consent papers. He excelled in the soldier role and Abi was very proud of her big brother. He made it into the MCSF SpecOps regiment and about six months in, he was killed in action on foreign soil on a classified mission. The mission was deemed so sensitive that Abi and her parents were given almost no details, no body was delivered home, a drone delivered the notification of death. They were not allowed a military funeral and they had to bury an empty casket, not a single officer from MCSF attended the funeral.

It was hard on all of them, but Abi especially - her big brother had been her confidante and protector all her life. They got along so well, people could not believe they were siblings. His death made her feel alone and exposed, she made a shrine in his room that she visited often, to try to alleviate the grief. Childhood toys and pictures of them on vacation, his favorite sports team jersey and rocks they collected on a beach as children, a hundred little items of no great value except for the memories they triggered. It was her desperate attempt to keep him close, to honour him and not let his memory slip away.