Cass stood in the darkness of the bar and waited for it to happen. Nothing. No attack, no danger, no instinctive reaction. Just a dingy old room, not a single threat here.

It was just a bar. Empty, except for the bartender – a clone, even from this distance - and a lone man leaning forward on his stool, head down, staring at his glass. Neither of them had noticed her enter.

No, there was another there as well. Another man behind the one at the bar. The same figure she’d tracked here, standing with his hand on the man’s shoulder.

Take them. Take them and drain them and find the answers later.

She took a step towards them and stopped. Her senses held her back. There was something in the air, and energy radiating out from them, a power. Not a threat, more of a warning.

Cass could feel her heart beating faster, the adrenaline from the kill and the possibility of more surging up her spine. The blade leap out into her hand, pulling her towards them, but she held back.

There was movement behind her as the door swung open. Cass jumped and spun in the air, flipping herself to land on a thick roof beam above the door.

Strike when they walk underneath you.

The curved blade waited just above the sill of the door, but froze as the figure beneath walked through and into the dim light. Something in the shape of the body made her pause. The hair, the slope of the shoulders. It’s…

A crash of glass at the bar snapped her attention away and back to the bar. There was something wrong. She dropped to the floor and strode towards the bar, forgetting entirely the new entry. It was obviously no threat.

The air had changed. It was warmer, heavier, more active. It wasn’t music or sound this time, it was something else. The air felt alive.

She could feel the edge of the blade slice through it as she moved across the darkness. There were just the two figures, nothing had changed, but the air around them positively hummed with energy. Cass was almost level with them now. Instinct told her to close her eyes and suddenly she saw it.

Her. The woman who took Quarters, the one she’s seen on the street, the mother of all those nightmares. The virus. She was standing between the two figures, eyes locked on the man at the bar, glimmering in the air like an aura, like a ghost.

Cass didn’t need to think. In three strides she was there, blade humming as it swept through the air. None of them reacted, not even when it brushed over the seated man, cut straight through the woman’s shroud and bit deep into the lone figure’s neck.

A shift and the woman was standing directly in front of her, eyes locked into hers, slowly advancing over the cold grass. There was no expression on her face, just a pure hate filling her eyes. She loomed closer, determined to feed until any last spark of life or consciousness was gone and forgotten.

At the last moment Cass forced her legs – or were they his legs – to buckle and rolled onto the ground. The woman passed over the sprawled figure and continued past.

She was lying on the grass. They were lying on the grass.

The woman halted her charge and turned slowly, eyes taking on another glint of fury.

“How did you do that?”

Cass could feel the voice pierce her brain like a shard of ice. The air itself was thick with noise, music rushing over her shoulders as she slowly got to her feet.

“Answer me!”

It was as if the voice itself was cloaked in other sounds, other layers. Cass could only just pick it out from the wash. She knew she didn’t want to pick up any of the other voices.

She took a breath and stared at the virus. There wasn’t that much to her, really. More an aura than a physical presence. Well, we can fix that.

The blade leapt into her hand and she waited silently to feel her next move.

The woman’s eyes travelled down to her hands and the glint in her eyes flickered, weakened. The air around her pulsed in exhalation.

“Madigan. I should have known he’d side with you.”

Her shoulders sagged. Suddenly she was just an old woman.

A moment later there was another alteration, in the air around them, another note joining the cacophony. Cass felt the hackles on her neck rise. Something was wrong.

“Always underestimating others, Adlai, that’s your problem. Always have been, hmm? Too damned arrogant. You think you’re the only one capable of turning traitor?”

The air around Cass’ head suddenly ripped open and a wall of sound rammed into her ears.

She fell to her knees from the shock of it. Her inner ear was humming, vibrating with wave after wave of noise which she couldn’t keep out. Her entire consciousness was forced out of her head, washed away as the music came in and filled her brain to the brim.

“You’re not the only one with powerful friends, and you’re not the only one with the power to tap into the Grid’s hardware. Not anymore.”

Cass saw the blade drop from her hands and bounce away, but couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t hear anything but the music and the lone voice winding in and out of it.

“Very clever of you, really, to find this assassin to take your place. Very like you. You’re used to others taking the fall.”

Cass felt a hand on her shoulder, then a wrenching separation as the world moved three feet to the left. She was still there in the forest, still drowning in the whirlpool of music, but she was no longer alone. Beside her crouched the lone figure from the alley.

He stared at her with eyes brimming, tears forced out by the noise filling his head. She turned back to face the woman, to face the end, and felt a hand close around hers.