On her next step her foot came down on something and she froze, not wanting to put her weight on it. She looked down and saw faint lines in the dark, curves and twists like tiny snakes, and she cursed silently. This is one of the rows we unplugged, she thought. The floor’s covered with cords. She moved her foot to the side, finding a safe place to put it down. The floor was a maze of looping cables, and she placed each foot strategically to avoid them: here, twisted this way, oriented just so. Each step seemed to take an hour.

The Partial she was following was getting farther away. Kira pulled out her third bullet and hurled it at the wall ahead of the Partial. He froze, and she crept forward while their link conversation cascaded through her mind: I HEARD A SOUND. IT’S A TRICK. IS IT A TRICK? He figured it out a second too late, turning to shoot her just as she stepped up behind him, shoved her semiautomatic pistol into the gap between his helmet and his chest armor, and fired. He fell to the floor, firing his dart gun harmlessly into the ceiling, and instantly she felt the pounding link message—DEATH!—and heard the sound of footsteps running toward her. She dove to the side, dropping her flashlight and ripping the ammo clip from her belt, popping the bullets into her hands as fast as she could, not caring about the noise. She hurled the entire handful into the air, her back pressed up against a computer tower, and then ran as fast as she could when the bullets clattered down, masking her movements in a raining metal cacophony. She felt frustrated snippets of the link from her last pursuer: SOLDIER DOWN. TARGET LOST. ANGER.

Kira realized she’d lost her flashlight, and with no more bullets to throw, she was out of tricks. She checked her pockets for something she could use, for anything—

FOUND HER. DEATH.

Kira gnashed her teeth—how could he have found her? She wasn’t on the link; the first one had been three feet away from her and hadn’t felt a thing!

DEATH.

She felt it again, the overwhelming feeling of death, and cursed silently. It’s me, she thought. The link data is all pheromones—tiny particles—and I was standing right next to him when he released a cloud of them. The death particles are on me, trailing behind me like a path, and he can follow them right to me. She looked at her pistol, too small to make a stand against an alert Partial in a direct assault. She had nothing else. If only I had my flashlight.