Chapter 1
The twelve Committee members chose a Friday early in February of 2096 as the day to kidnap Mok. They scheduled his trip to
begin shortly after noon. The field ops had reported it was Mok's daily habit to nap at that time. They would find him in a
crumbled portion of the abandoned subway tunnel that ran beneath Broadway.
By 9:00 a.m. on that Friday in February, eleven of the Committee members were seated in a luxury high-rise. The Committee
owned the building, which sat on the west side of the Hudson River. All eleven sipped on imported water as they safely
watched a vidtrans monitor Mok's last three hours in Old Newyork.
The twelfth Committee member was missing. He said he had a bad flu. It was a lie.
Besides those twelve, two others knew Mok's destination. They were level-five field ops. Both were in far more danger than
the Committee in the high-rise. The field ops were stuck in the center of Old Newyork. They were doing their best to keep
their mini-vidcams on Mok.
Mok, of course, knew nothing of this.
Old Newyork. The field ops, Miles Steward and Lee D'Amico, had been waiting in the building shadows for five minutes,
watching Mok.
Just down the street, Mok stood at the edge of a small crowd around a waterman. Sunlight glinted diamonds through the flasks
of water on a rack behind the waterman. No pretty diamonds, however, glinted from the ugly machine-guns the guards on each
side of the waterman carried.
Mok did not move. He stood taller than most in the crowd around him. He might have been a big fifteen-year-old. Or smaller
at age twenty. Mok probably didn't know his age either. No hospitals meant no birth certificates. And bad nutrition meant
slow growth.
The only thing certain about Mok was that his face -- framed by dark, curly hair -- showed a mixed background, a mongrel
nobility of high cheekbones and faintly Asian eyes.
"Heat bomb," Miles said to his younger partner.
Miles was the taller of the two. Height was all that distinguished him from Lee at the moment, as both were dressed in
formless bodywraps. They were as filthy and ragged as any of the Welfaros who passed them in the crowds. Their faces were
lost in the unkempt beards they had grown for this assignment; not a single one of their Mainside friends would have
recognized them.
"Huh?" Lee replied. The mini-vidcam in his sleeve was directed at Mok and the waterman. But Lee's attention was on a rat that
nosed the pants cuff of an old man nearby on the cracked pavement.
"Hit 'em with a heat bomb," Miles said, half indignant his junior partner didn't hang on his every word. "I tell you, kid,
we should nuke 'em. Zap! Fuse all these Welfaros and their cockroach hotels into a puddle of glass. No more smell. No more
garbage. No more food riots. And best of all, more water for the rest of us. I'll bet Mainside could save a couple million
gallons a day."
Miles scratched his side. The old clothes were itchy. Or maybe it was fleas. He hoped it was the clothes.
Lee hardly heard his partner. He had just watched the rat crawl up the old man's pants leg. Head, body, then tail of the rat
disappeared.
"Miles?"
"Yeah?"
"I think that guy's dead."
"What guy?" Miles didn't like it when his younger partner ignored his great ideas
.
Lee pointed. "That guy. See the bump moving up his pants leg? It's a rat."
"No big deal," Miles said. "This is Old Newyork."
Not that either needed a reminder. Every breath they took filled their nostrils with the stench of sewage from the gutters.
Up and down the street, as far as they could see, rickety shacks filled the street canyons. Some shacks were lost in the
shadows of the taller buildings. Other shacks were warmed by the morning's sunlight.
Miles softened his tough-guy voice. He told himself to remember this was only Lee's second time across the river. "Look, kid,
you'll get used to it. Welfaros live different from Technocrats."
"They die different too." Lee couldn't take his eyes off the rat crawling beneath the man's clothes.
"Don't get bleeding heart on me," Miles said. "At least we haven't cut off their water. And -- "
He broke off. "Your vidcam better be getting this. Look!"
Mok had moved to the stands and grabbed a water flask. He shouted at the waterman, waving the flask. Then Mok threw the water
flask high and hard toward a nearby shack
.
The waterman's guards, filled with horror at the possibility of seeing the flask shatter, dove to catch it. In that brief
moment, Mok plucked another water flask from the stand and dashed back into the crowd.
Before the guards could raise their machine guns, the crowd broke into a stream of shouting, panicking people. Through the
confusion, the waterman stared at the fleeing figure of Mok as he ducked and weaved his getaway.
"Did your vidcam get that?" Miles asked.
"All of it," Lee said. "Do we follow?"
"Of course. But not in a hurry. That's why you brushed up against him to plant that velcrotrak a half hour ago."
Miles paused. He let his voice get tough again. "Earlier you wondered if this was right. How do you feel now that you've seen
he's low enough to steal pure water?"
