He was going to need a tendon stapler. He stood up carefully, without bothering to push his chair back. The chair toppled backward, and he stepped out of my line of sight without a word.

'He better get a medic to look at that,' she said. 'That's a nasty cut.'

'You have no idea,' said Ralfi, suddenly sounding very tired, 'the depths of shit you have just gotten yourself into. ``No kidding? Mister. I get real excited by mysteries. Like why your friends here's do quiet. Frozen, like. Or what this thing here is for,' and she held up the little control unit that she'd somehow taken from Lewis. Ralfi looked ill.

'You, ah, want maybe a quarter-million to give me that and take a walk?'

A fat hand came up to stroke his pale, lean face nervously.

'What I want,' she said, snapping her fingers so that the unit spun and glittered, 'is work. A job. Your boy hurt his wrist. But a quarter'll do for a retainer.'

Ralfi let his breath out explosively and began to laugh, exposing teeth that hadn't been kept up to the Christian White standard. The she turned the disruptor off.

'Two million,' I said.

'My kind of man,' she said, and laughed. 'What's in the bag?'

'A shotgun.'

'Crude.' It might have been a compliment.'

Ralfi said nothing at all. 'Name's Millions. Molly Millions. You want to get out of here, boss? People are starting to stare.' She stood up. She was wearing leather jeans the colour of dried blood.And I saw for the first time that the mirrored lenses were surgical inlays, the silver rising smoothly from her high cheekbones, sealing her eyes in their sockets, I saw my new face twinned there.

'I'm Johnny,' I said. 'We're taking Mr. face with us.'

He was outside, waiting. Looking like your standard tourist tech, in plastic zoris and a silly Hawaiian shirt printed with blowups of his firm's most popular microprocessor; a mild little guy, the kind most likely to wind up drunk on sake in a bar that puts out miniature rice crackers with seaweed garnish. He looked like the kind who sing the corporate anthem and cry, who shakes hands endlessly with the bartender.