People didn’t get shitty side effects from pills, not these days, not unless they went too cheap. Her team’s supply came from highly rated expert designs backed by deep-pocket funders like Briella Jackson. Her genome had tested compatible with zips, juvers, and buffs before she joined the Marines. She closed her eyes and remembered her mother’s dying body covered in scarlet patches and weeping sores. Mama died of an early flow design, genetically incompatible and poorly tested, one of millions of cases that led to global riots and then new laws. Those regulations from the seventies required pills to undergo thorough evaluation before the designs could be sold. They also provided a pressure valve for violence, allowing protesters to advertise their causes by attacking funders directly, rather than going after police or private property.

Her tremors couldn’t come from pills. Totally different symptoms from her mother’s. Totally different enhancement, too. She knew what dying looked like, and this wasn’t it.

WELGA

14. The recognition of intelligence lies at the root of our humanity. How we treat other intelligent life, therefore, reflects upon ourselves. If we wish to continue progressing as a life-form, we must push the envelope of our morality beyond the species.

—The Machinehood Manifesto, March 20, 2095

Fifteen minutes before Jackson’s meeting ended, they dosed themselves with regular quad-zips. No sense wasting the good stuff while sitting in traffic—but Purity Now didn’t attack during the transition from the office building to the car. Probably didn’t want to reuse the same site as Death to Bots, she thought. The chance of attack inside the convention center doubled as a result.

During the long, dull ride, the boss swapped their assignments. Connor would take point this time, with Welga on Jackson and Ammanuel still in the rear. With swarms of microcameras everywhere, no one could sneak up from behind, and the tipping public preferred a frontal attack with style.

Welga had fought Purity Now before. They often came up with something inventive, though she and her team would have an unfair advantage—for action and tips—with Jackson’s new pills. Near the end of their ride, the funder personally handed out another batch of them. Jackson timed it perfectly to their arrival at the Ramaswamy Convention Center.

The organic shapes of the massive building contrasted with the blocky residential hives that surrounded them. Engineered tree trunks formed the framework. Glass panes filled the spaces between them, their tints ranging from clear to smoky gray depending on the sun’s angle. Maintenance moth-bots flitted by, moving from one trunk to the next, and shepherded the necessary insects and nutrients for the trees’ health. Chennai had built the modern wonder of the world in hopes of drawing business from its sister city, Bengaluru. The strategy had worked until other major cities followed suit. Singapore now boasted the largest bioengineered building in the world, but this one never failed to amaze.