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point in merger talks, pictures of the young man were rare -- and blond. Neither was the son's name Gabe. Tetsu rummaged through his brain.
    Tetsu pinched the collar point of Gabe's shirt. "Dillon?"
    "Yeah, better go with that. Don't call me...you know..."
    Tetsu pulled his hand back. His arms fell straight to his sides. “I don’t see why you didn’t tell me.”
    Gabe cocked a surprised brow in Tetsu’s direction as he swiftly stood up and faced the door that shut the entry room off from the rest of the floor.
    “Right, dumb question,” Tetsu agreed. Tetsu’s life would still be forfeit if he showed up at Iyashii, but there were a dozen other companies in the city that would pay a king’s ransom to not only have Magnus Valnyk’s son as their hostage but to know that the young man had certain… tendencies. But that meant Gabe didn’t trust him. Fair enough. He was still worried the little danshou was playing him.
    He nodded at the door. “Let’s meet Daddy, then.”
    * * *
    An hour later, Tetsu had the feeling no one had ever called Magnus Valnyk “Daddy.” Gabe, when he called his father anything, referred to him as Magnus with an undertone of longstanding animosity. It was as if “Magnus” were some truce father and son had arrived at -- some middle ground between “Father” and “Mr. Valnyk.”
    He’d figure that out later. Right now he was still busy convincing Valnyk that Gabe had recruited him before last night’s shooting. More than that, he had to convince Valnyk that he was of continuing use in bringing down Iyashii. He had two weeks to make his case. Less than that because of the time he would need to set up a secure location with the right equipment.
    Tetsu finished typing up a list on the laptop Valnyk had provided. He turned the screen around so Valnyk and Gabe could read it. They both looked slightly confused.
    Valnyk scrolled through the requested items. “Why just components?”
    “Because I don’t trust you, Mr. Valnyk, any more than you trust me.” There were other reasons, of course. He’d programmed the security breaches into Iyashii’s system years before Gabe had first danced his way into the tea room. He’d done it at other companies, too, all in the name of serving the Code. He’d shown others the way in, but none knew how to deconstruct his work.
    In the hands of Valnyk’s programmers? They’d shred it eventually. Maybe it would take six months or a year and dozens of them working on it. After that, it would only be a matter of time before they realized his was a betrayal broader in scope than just one man against one company.
    “You’ll have it as you wish,” Valnyk said after a few seconds. “But not here in Nu Edo. Iyashii has a full hit squad out on you both.”
    Valnyk’s irises were a pale blue that bordered on white, and it was easy to track his gaze as his attention shifted between Tetsu and Gabe. Tetsu could tell that the man was still trying to figure out just how involved his son had become with the Iyashii traitor -- whether it had moved beyond recruiting Tetsu to something more.
    Tetsu was still trying to figure it out himself as he and Gabe lifted off at dusk in a ValCo helicopter.

Chapter Five
    Tetsu was drawing when Gabe came out of the bathroom. More than filling time while he ran a debugging program, he was getting a message ready for Tori. It was a simple theme intricately drawn -- a geisha draped in a kimono decorated with cranes. One hand held a fan, the other reached up to pluck a cherry blossom. In among the blossoms, the tree bark and cranes, the folds of her obi and her elaborate hair, were the logistical details of a revolution.
    A small revolution, to be sure -- just big enough to bring down Iyashii when the security system at Shimizu and half a dozen other major facilities failed at 2 a.m. on the following Thursday. While prisoners were fleeing their cells, member of Tetsu’s network would be streaming in to hack files -- arrest