DEADSTOCK

Me, he realized. Dung. Tableau had obviously put a tail on him. Eventually they'd see that he was headed for Beaumonde Square, for Steward Gardens, and then they'd be ready for him. Well, so be it. He'd deal with that problem once he arrived there.

"I'll be there soon," Fukuda said from Stake's wrist comp, his voice growing increasingly shaky. "I'd better sign off."

"Fukuda, I'm telling you-"

"You should turn around and go home, Mr. Stake. This is my affair now."

"It always was. Look, if you won't let me help you, fine-but let me help Yuki."

For a moment Fukuda didn't reply. Then he said, "We must follow our own destinies, detective. If that is your choice, then that is your destiny. For me. well, it's time to accept my destiny, instead of hijacking my brother's. Now I really have to go. I just can't bear to look at your face any longer."

And with that, James Fukuda broke their co

Stake didn't have to switch his little computer's screen to mirror mode to know whose face he had begun to assume.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

convergence

They had left the hoverlimo-with Nelson Soto still slumped down in the passenger's seat-behind at the warehouse, and taken Adrian Tableau's luxury helicar. So it was that Mr. Jones brought this craft down into the parking lot on the roof of Steward Gardens' A-Wing.

They disembarked from the vehicle, the chill wind up here making a streaming pe

Mr. Smithee had gone to the door that gave access to the building's interior, prepared to use a skeleton key card to override the lock. But he turned to the others to a

Tableau looked down at the overgrown gardens that set the apartment building back from the street, the dead vines entwined through the metal trellises, the scum-filmed fountain in the center of the front walk. "Blasting haunted house," he murmured to himself, before joining Jones and Smithee, who flanked the sniffling teenage girl. He had a gun of his own under his expensive jacket, and he drew it from its holster before they passed through the rooftop doorway.

The little party descended to the third and top floor of A-Wing, emerging in a murky corridor behind the large room central to this level. Jones stepped forward to lead the way, his ray blaster held ready. Not the first time in his life he had taken point. They passed the elevators, turned a corner and found themselves looking down another dimly lit hallway, with numbered doorways on their right-the first of these being 36-A. On their left: two more widely spaced doors giving access to the room that comprised this floor's center. Tableau himself took Yuki by the arm now, and whispered harshly, "If you've walked me into a trap, you're going to be one sorry little girl."

"I didn't," Yuki sobbed. "Krimson told Caren this is where she is."

Smithee flicked his eyes about warily. The sounds of street traffic had been left behind them, entirely blocked out. A silence like deafness, incongruous to this city. Had he not known differently, the veteran might have believed he was deep beneath the earth, as when he had stalked through the tu

Jones was keeping his eye on the numbered apartment doors, but it was the nearer of the two doors on his left that opened, just a few feet ahead of him. He whirled, bringing up his pistol, as a figure walked stiffly out into the hallway.

The entity had the form of a man, but unfinished, with the barest suggestion of a nose and eye sockets-no true features other than the number 32-B etched into its forehead. It was gray-fleshed and without clothes. And it turned as if it had no awareness of Jones and his pointing gun whatsoever, shambling off in the direction of the elevators and stairwell.

"What the blast was that?" Tableau hissed after the thing had trudged past him. He felt Yuki crushing herself against his side, as if he might protect her. "I thought it was a ghost!" he said.

"A belf," Smithee whispered, recognizing the bio-engineered life form as something remotely like himself and Jones, though on another branch of the plastic evolutionary tree.

Jones moved closer to the open door and began to peek inside, immediately jerked back as another figure lurched out of the darkened room beyond. It brushed against his arm but again seemed unaware of or uninterested in his presence, following its brother down the hallway, identical except for the number 21-A that Jones had glimpsed on its forehead.

He ducked into the doorway once more, and this time could see that the room served as a miniature theater. On its screen, however, there was only a fizzing and crackling sea of static, which once or twice flashed an image that didn't quite solidify. Accompanying these flashes was a burst of sound that suggested a multitude of voices moaning or chanting all at once, but the static drowned them out again.

There were a few heads silhouetted against the screen. One of these last remaining audience members stood, turned awkwardly, and started walking toward the doorway. Jones stepped back to let the faceless being pass, and stagger off down the hallway in the same direction the other two had gone, disappearing around the corner as they had. For the third time they heard the metal stairwell door squeal open and bang shut.

"Let's see where they're going," Jones said, leading the party back the way they had come.

"If those things have done something to my daughter… " Tableau began, but he didn't complete the unthinkable thought.

The four of them descended to the ground floor, but there was one level lower than that. The basement. Mr. Jones hesitated, looking down into the stairwell. Had the three ma

"I think we'd better stay up here," he said guardedly, straining his hearing toward the gloom below. The basement level emergency lighting was stuttering, nearly dead. "Fukuda will be coming to the front entrance."

"But if those things are down there, they might have my daughter," Tableau said, pressing close beside him. He held Yuki behind him by her wrist.

"When Fukuda gets here, maybe he can tell us where she is, specifically."

"He doesn't know!" Yuki spoke up.

Tableau looked back at her with his teeth clenched together. "What do you know about what he knows?"

"Daddy."

Tableau whipped his head around to peer down the stairwell again. "Krimson?" he blurted.

Jones looked at his employer, surprised.

"Krimson!" Tableau shouted. He started forward, but Jones blocked his way with his arm.

"Sir, what is it?"

"What is it? Didn't you hear her call to me?" "Your daughter?" "Yes-down there!" "No, sir, I didn't."

"Krimson!" he shouted again. "Are you down there?"

"Daddy."

A person, little more than a shadow, shuffled just barely into view at the bottom of the stairs. The person was shortish in stature, and had a feminine outline; she looked, in fact, like she wasn't wearing any clothes. She lifted her arms up toward them. Toward Adrian Tableau.