"Confirm the option. Dispatch the Drone the moment the card is received. I will also require a fax tiket with details of the transaction printed out."

"It will be provided. Time starts… now."

Shadith leaned forward, plucked the card from its slot, laid it on the tray the pulochair extruded for her convenience. She chewed on her lip as she thought over what she wanted to say, then she took up the stylus and wrote, using her birthlangue. She was the last Weaver of Shayalin and she'd died the first time over twenty thousand years ago; Aleytys could read Shallana weave, so could Harskari and Swardheld, but no one else (particularly not the Station Kephalos which had to be recording what she wrote). She laid out her problem, described the guard, finished: If I don't message you from University within a few days after this reaches you, Lee, it means I'm either dead or in deep shit. Come along and raise all kinds of hell in my memory, dear friend. Make this slime sorry he was born.

She slid the card back in its slot, pressed her credit bracelet to the stripper and tore off the fax tiket that arrived half a tick later. She looked at it, smiled. If you get your hands on me, I'll shove this in your face. Read it and know you're a dead man walking.

She slid the tiket into her shoulderbag and left the booth, almost dancing in a triumph that drained from her when she stepped through the portal and saw him standing in her way.

"Buy ya drink, Bait?" He reached for her.

She shied away from him, stumbled into the entourage of the Clovel Matriarch she'd seen on a lower level. Swearing at her stupidity, angry and afraid, she went scurrying off with the guard's laughter and the screeches of the Matriarch ringing in her ears; moving as fast as she could without actually running, she went up and up until she reached the highest level and there was nowhere left to go.

There was a salt taste on her tongue-she'd bitten her lip hard enough to draw blood, acid in her throat and knots in her belly and her head wasn't working. Futile and feeble. Come on, Shadow, get it together. Decorticate the bastard. Eviscerate him. Ahlahlah, grand words, why don't you stop spinning words and DO something?