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Chance Three's body is stiff.
His jaw aches. Chance says, “Yes, I've been overtaxing my drives. I suppose you guessed all that. I don't know how else you could know. I'm not proud of it. I'm not a risker. But I have been working hard. I want new drives.”

“I'm very glad you admitted that,” Rope Three says. “You're doing well. You've done us both a great favor by being honest. It means we can move together to the next stage. Now, you're a doctor. The next stage is the very beginning of a process that could result in you contributing to the greatest breakthrough in join science since the trial of one thousand.”

Chance shakes Chance Three's head, to clear it. Chance is having trouble processing all that Rope is saying. Rope Three leans forward. He is earnest, sincere, his elbows going up on the table, his hands gesturing as Rope Fourteen leans back to make room for him.

“Some interesting things are going to happen now, Chance,” he says. “You should prepare yourself. Before these things begin, I have to warn you. You'll want to contact the authorities. Your Four is positioned to do just that. But don't do it. If you do, things will go badly for you. Believe me, I wouldn't be doing this in public if I wasn't sure that the authorities weren't a threat to me and that I am in complete control of this situation.”

Chance Three aches. The drive's muscles seem to be almost glitching, seizing up and then releasing rather than moving smoothly. Chance is focusing on clarifying his connection with the drive.

Rope Three says, “First, I think we should talk about the waitress.”

The waitress is suddenly there, beside the table, standing next to Chance. Chance Three turns to his left to look up at her. She says, “I think you almost caught on. I left a few small clues. This is my Twenty-One.” Rope Three sits back in his chair.

The waitress, Rope Twenty-One, continues, “I've poisoned your coffee. Your Three drive is going to die. You want to play the game, Chance, the real game, for unlimited stakes. This is the ante.”

“And to prove that I'm in the game too,” says Rope Three.

Rope Fourteen says, “I've killed my Twenty-One.”

Through the rising aches, Chance sees now that the waitress also seems to be in pain. She's grimacing; she's resisting it, concentrating, but her eyes are beginning to cloud. Chance realizes that Chance Three can't move. The drive is somehow stuck. Chance begins pushing every cycle at it that can be mustered, but the limbs won't move. The chest is freezing up. Chance can't make Chance Three breathe.

Rope Fourteen says, “How am I going to do it? Well, I'm going to tell them that your number Three is my number Nineteen. I have a reputation for drive failures, so, in the early going I'll insist that this was just two more failures. That invention will be uncovered quickly, but that's okay. Its real purpose is to take advantage of some ambiguity in the laws around killing a drive. There are some suicide laws they interact with poorly. It's a trick I've used before. Complicated, but the result is that the story will give me a helpful legal standing. And I have friends who will adequately obfuscate a couple of records. This incident will annoy my attorneys, but that should be the only blowback. And, of course, I lose my Twenty-One.”

As if on cue, the waitress falls. Her head smacks the table—a wet crunching sound—on her way down.

“A paralytic poison,” says Rope Three. “She had more than you did. I cannot describe to you what this feels like.” He's quiet. Rope Fourteen's face is composed. His eyes are closed, as if he's meditating. Rope Three says, “But, fortunately, you're going to see for yourself.”

Chance is struggling against a tide of panic.

“This is what you want to know isn't it?” says Rope Three. “I'm glad you were honest. You'll recognize that I'm doing you a favor. Your experience won't be as rich as mine. I've had a lot of practice. I usually prefer a slower death, but I'm much better now at staying with the drive as it dies. Ah! Her heart just stopped.” Both Rope Three and Rope Fourteen are staring at Chance.

Rope Fourteen says, “Yours is about to.”

Broad, identical, senseless grins spread across the faces of both Rope Fourteen and Rope Three. Then Chance Three disconnects.

Chance seizes up. A period
of blank unawareness. Of unspecified duration. When the lights come back on, each drive is pulling in a long, gasping breath as if it were rising out of a deep, cold dive.

Simultaneous reengagement with all drives.

Chance One sits bolt upright in bed, his eyes wide. There is tranquil, bright warmth and mellow sunlight through the windows.

Chance Two wakes on the airplane amid the rumbling and pounding of extreme turbulence, the plane shaking and banging, throwing her against her restraints. Blood is running from her nose, over her lips, spotting her blouse. She is groggy.

Leap Two is managing three displays, responding to the crisis and lack of assistance with a practiced and focused precision. Leap, shrugging off the churning and buckling of creation.

Chance Three is gone.

In her pod, Chance Four blinks at the retinal projector, then begins to scan Civ News. Chance has been unaware for a couple of minutes. Police have already started moving to the restaurant. Images of the dead drives have hit local info feeds, including one of Chance Three—openmouthed, slumped across the table with Rope Twenty-One on the floor beside him. Rope Three and Fourteen are nowhere to be seen. A few moments later, an explanatory heading is added, “Join Pioneer Suffers Freak Drive Failures, Details to Follow.”

Chance Five's drug-induced hibernation wears thin. His eyes startle open. He also draws a shuddering, gasping breath. His eyes remain wide for a few moments. Then he breathes deeply and slowly relapses into slumber.

Within all this, Chance is struggling against a rapid flood of sensations and impressions, unable to fully process, to select relevance and filter the rest; to make sense of everything that's happening or even some of it.

Chance remembers the face of Rope Twenty-One as she succumbed to the poison, the body struggling to survive but the eyes accepting, the awareness urging the body toward death rather than recoiling with it, rather than fighting against the insult.

And Chance rewinds through the battle with Chance Three's failing body. A lurking sense of inevitability, as if a face could appear perfectly healthy while fronting a skull that is missing the cup that holds the brain. And Chance fighting to believe the evidence of the face, the story it's telling, while each new moment advances a complete refutation. A sudden stabbing pain in the knuckles of an index finger. A liquid sensation at Chance Three's waist. The weight and unforgiving hardness of the drive's rib cage. The incremental petrification of the drive's throat. Within an advancing delirium, Chance clings to a single, frightening certainty. Any assertion of health is a fairy tale.

Someone taps on the pod
window. Chance Four tears her attention from the trickle of online news reports and is startled by the face of a Rope she knows—the drive who was drinking in the bar the night before. He's bending toward the pod, motioning for her to open the hatch.

“Home!” she shouts in panic. “Chance, home!”

And the pod slides smoothly away from Rope, who straightens and watches as it slowly begins to ascend toward its vertical-lane height. Rope holds up his left hand as if urging her to wait. Her pod accelerates away, and he's lost in the receding blur.

Chance changes destinations, heads toward the restaurant where Chance Three died. A comm request from Rope. She blocks it. Another comm request. The block option on the heads-up display appears to be confirming that Rope can't be trying to communicate with her, that Rope is blocked. But a comm request rings again, a light, upbeat melody. Her small hand twitches as she flicks it to the messaging center. Another comm request from Rope. Chance Four shuts down comms.

She watches spires speed by, then studies the greensward below, the thick brush and trees glistening between spires. In a moment she's over the broad, straight streets that lead to the front entrance of the Praxis Center. Then she's descending. Then parked. The left side of the pod retracts, and she sits for a quiet moment, watching a growing hub of activity around the restaurant door.

It occurs to Chance that if comms go back on, Rope will track her drives. Chance One is at the spire apartment, reviewing security video. Nothing untoward is approaching the spire. Chance Two is instructing the airline system to enforce the personal comm block.

Chance Four steps out of the pod. No one pays attention to her as she reaches the group milling about near the restaurant's entrance. The Join Praxis Center, where Chance works (worked!), is across the street, so emergency personnel are probably already on the scene.

Chance Four shoulders through the crowd toward a drive wearing a red jacket and a Vitalcorp Directorate badge.

“One of the drives who died was me,” she says. “The male.”

The Directorate drive looks her over. His eyes move as he accesses civilization records online.

“You're disconnected,” he says.

“Yes. My drive was killed by a join named Rope, who I was having lunch with. The other drive who died, the waitress, is his Twenty-One.”

The Directorate drive is impassive. “What's your name?”

“Chance.”

“Why aren't you connected, Chance?”

“I'm afraid Rope will track me.”

“Why wouldn't you just block him?”

“I tried.”

“You're saying you tried to block Rope, and it didn't work?” The skepticism in the Directorate drive's voice is a wind of doubt that blows through Chance, leaving a deeper cold and a greater uncertainty.

“That's right,” Chance Four says.

“Give me supervision, then turn comms back on,” he says. “I've already sent a request.”

Chance hesitates. The Vitalcorp Directorate will require that Chance turn on comms to be authenticated, to prove identity. They'll believe that they can protect Chance, that their security is sound. But Rope has already shown an ability to override a block. Only civ admin levels have that kind of access. If Rope has civ admin authorization, Rope will be able to watch Chance's interaction with the Directorate. If Rope is higher than civ admin—Vitalcorp Directorate admin or something else—Rope will have other, secret authorizations, the kind everyone knows exist but that aren't made public. Turning on comms will make Chance vulnerable.

Usually, each drive has its own physical reactions, but in the face of overwhelming emotion, a physical response can reverberate from a single drive out to others. Adrenaline pulses through Chance Four as she confronts the Directorate drive, and an adrenaline response spreads to Chance One and Two.

Chance Four says, “I think Rope has at least civ admin–level access.”

The Directorate drive's eyes flicker, and she knows he's checking on Rope's clearance levels.

“If we're both talking about the Rope who just lost two drives in there,” the Directorate drive says, “then that Rope is a private citizen. Well connected, but only high citizen. No civ admin authorization.”

So Chance knows: Rope isn't listed as having civ admin but can defeat a comm block. That means Rope's got some other kind of clearance, and unless the Directorate confirms it, Chance can't trust either the Directorate or the Directorate's records or both.

Chance asks, “Then how did Rope override my comm block?”

“I'd need to check your comm block to know that.”

“I can't give you access.” Chance's frustration breaks into Chance Two's voice. “He can override.”

It happens quickly—a decision—and then impatience overcomes the Directorate drive's impassivity.

“I can't help you,” he says. “Please step back, away from the entrance.”

He motions her backward.

“That was my drive,” she says. Her voice rises and frays.