“If you’d rather we sit in subcanopy gridlock, I can tell the driver to put her back down.”

Ambrose sighed. “Okay. First thing. Can you give me back my Admin Deck?”

Len shook his head. “Maybe I can restore some backend privileges while you’re being calibrated, but I can’t give you Admin. They’ll trace a new high-level presence exactly one second after you shimmer in.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? Admire the furniture? I’m supposed to be finding out why I exist.”

“What did you find out?” Len prompted again. Ambrose wondered if his brother was being pushy because Martin was listening in. Then he remembered that paranoia was one of the side effects of the Level Seven.

“Who are these people you’re working with, Len?”

“Actually, Dad’s right about them: they’re basically low-level saboteurs.”

“Terrorists.”

“Eh. They told me the truth. Dad stopped doing that a long time ago.”

“What do they want?”

“Magnus and Ivor have been nursing a grudge against UniCorp ever since they got fired fifteen years ago. They had allies who either died or drifted away over the years. Finally possessing both you and the girl is a major victory.”

“Nobody possesses me. And Mistletoe’s gone.”

“Good. We’re all better off if she disappears. My priority is you.”

“I’ll go find her myself if I have to.”

“You’ll go where? Back to Little Saigon? Scream her name in the streets?”

Ambrose nodded. “If I have to.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“You don’t get to tell me how to be anymore, Len.”

The Security Associate sitting next to Len struggled to control his smirk. His mouth twitched and spasmed. Ambrose wished he could see what he looked like when he tried to be forceful and assertive. Apparently, it was hilarious. He wondered if his UniCorp colleagues had been laughing at him for years, if he’d been too blinded by his own last name to see the contempt all around him.

Paranoia.

Ambrose turned and shifted his attention to a scene out the window. The entrance to a topside airlock was swarming with subcanopy cops. They parted to clear the way for a pair of technicians in white thermal suits and helmets. Someone in the crowd tossed a banana peel that hit a cop in the shoulder and slid down his back. The other cops drew their stunners. Then the transport turned a corner and the scene disappeared behind a shanty-stack.

“Anyway, you know the Unison backend better than almost anyone,” Len continued. “You should be able to translate your skill set into a query system to filter out the gossip and define the next steps in your investigation. If it were me, the first thing I’d do would be to—”

“Okay, Len, seriously, just shut up for one second. There was this freelance App creator who told me the cross-chatter about Greymatter’s been freaky lately. Like, Martin’s Version 3.0 might have already started. I asked her when the gears started turning, and she told me yesterday.”