At first, when they placed the first course of insane, luscious, beautifully sculpted food in front of her, Piper wanted to flip the whole table over. The overt display of hedonism made her stomach turn.

Then the smell hit her and she could feel herself salivating. Toran's words rang in her ears.

The one thing about this night that will be actually 'good' is the food, and the drink, so I'm going to enjoy it. I suggest you do the same.

She breathed deep, straightening up in her seat and trying not to think too much about the events that had led a street kid from the Perrier Dockworks to dining with the highest echelons of corporate society. Odiye have a her a gentle nudge with one elbow, sending an electric crackle across her skin.

"Go slow," he advised with a wry smile. "If you are not used to it, it will turn your stomach upside down."

"Not your style?" she countered, picking up the obsidian black knife and fork that had been provided.

"I've gotten used to it now," Odiye said, "but when I first joined Code Vector – and AmpCore – it was not my... usual diet."

"What was the usual?"

"My parents are Carthage-born. They brought a little bit of home with them when they emigrated here." He smiled, but should see a twinge of sadness behind it when he spoke of his parents. She'd never asked outright what became of them, but there had been some fairly ominous comments about people asking questions they shouldn't have.

Piper could take some guesses. Probably they were just two more people who'd tried to play Hadrian's game and gotten torn up the rules. But they'd left a quandary like Odiye behind. He really did seem like a man clamped between two worlds, understanding the corporations and even thriving among them, while retaining a stubborn streak of empathy that most people got sand-blasted off of them after a lifetime of the evergrind.

He shrugged, popping a small forkful of what looked like some kind of cured, shredded meat into his mouth and chewing with relish. "Toran's right, though. You should enjoy it while you can."

Questions lingered on her tongue, but she buried them for now. Maybe later, and maybe somewhere a little more... private. The thought sent a delicious shiver through her implants. Boxing those images away for another time, she followed his lead and took a delicate mouthful of the meat. It seemed to almost dissolve on her tongue, a crisp, salty sensation tingling her gums, detonating with too many flavours to count.

The first two courses passed with in an eerie bubble of good natured conversation that made Piper's head spin. She watched it all, almost admiring how these people – people who she had no doubt despised each other from head to toe – could turn on a pin to talk like this to one and other. Growing up on the docks, you held a grudge, and you didn't make nice until someone had lost a few teeth to a fist.

Evidently those rules didn't apply to the heights of civilisation.

A bell-like ding echoed through the room, pulling her from her thoughts and sending her attention to the head of the table where Mazvinar Karga sat. His hand hovered near his sapphire goblet, a gleaming fork held daintily between finger and thumb. The hum of chatter ceased instantly and all heads turned.

"I thank you all for attending," Karga said, speaking warmly into the intervening silence, like he was at some kind of screwed up family reunion. "I know tensions have run high of late, and I welcome this opportunity for cooler heads to prevail."

The snort of derision was out before Piper could stop it. She quickly clapped a hand over her mouth, but far too late to hide it. Karga's gaze flickered impassively across her for a moment; other eyes turned on her with a mix of anger and disgust. Some of the more senior figures from Wayfinder and Gammaton looked at her like she was something that had crawled up out of a drainpipe. Lenor Karga's glare could have cut steel.

Controlling herself, she lowered her gaze and cleared her throat.

Karga continued after a beat. "Students of history among you are well aware that this is the cycle of things. There are... disagreements; adjustments." A low rumble of laughter swept around the table at that. Piper was shocked to see Toran joining in. Beside her, Odiye leaned further back into his seat, eyes narrowing, and she saw the fingers of his right hand slowly curl and uncurl.

"I would like to raise a toast to my counterpart within Skiltron, Mr Conan Knox. A consummate businessman and worthy adversary." Karga's face split in a vicious smile as he lifted his glass. "Whatever our disagreements, we are both here to advance the only cause that matters: Hadrian. The greatest city that this dreary pile of rock we call a planet will ever host."

A much louder chorus of hear, hear thundered around the table, and even Odiye joined in this time – albeit half-heartedly. Piper cocked a disdainful eyebrow, shot Vinder Tovas a disgusted glance and knocked back the rest of her drink with a single swallow. This was all becoming more than she could stand.

"I second that statement," Conan Knox grated from the other end of the table, his voice unyielding as a lump of granite. His eyes sparkled mischievously as he examined the faces that turned towards him. "There have always been clashes as we race for the summit. I hope this gathering takes us a small way down the road to finding mutual ground, where we may ascend to it together." His own glass rose, a crystal tumbler with a pale gold liquid inside.

Up and down the table, everyone followed suite. Piper didn't want to. She stubbornly kept her empty glass rooted to the table, until Odiye's knee bumped against hers. Giving him an annoyed glance, she eventually relented.

A chorus of clinking echoed through the room. It made her teeth clench.

"There is obviously much to be discussed this evening," Karga declared, making a sweeping gesture to the room with one hand. "We will have a short intermission. Please drink, stretch your legs. There are scours for anyone who wishes them."

A rattle of laughter passed through the room, and an instant later more attendants emerged from several of the connecting doors to the main dining room, laden with treys of drinks, small white capsules that might have been mints, and she even saw some carrying elegant cigar humidors and gold-plated trays of cigarettes to hand out. Chairs scraped, feet shuffled and voices rose as the other guests rose to partake

"Scours?" Piper whispered to Odiye as they stood up.

"Way to flush the alcohol," he replied, his breath warm against the side of her neck as he leaned in. "Corporate execs like a drink, but they want a clear head for the deal. Best of both worlds."

"Sounds like cheating."

"Isn't it always?"

She smirked as they moved back from the table, and Odiye scooped two glasses off a passing tray; cylinders so thin that they looked more like flat-bottomed test tubes.

"Try it," he said, handing her one.

Piper eyed it dubiously. It looked like mercury – a thick silver liquid – but didn't seem to smell of... well, anything. When she sniffed at it, there was a void where a scent should have been. Seeing her hesitation, Odiye downed his in a single gulp and spread his hands.

"See? Not so bad."

Rolling her eyes with faux offence, she followed his example. The sensation was a strange, barely-there numbness as she silver ichor slid down her throat effortlessly. She almost didn't need to swallow it. The faint emptiness descended until it hit her stomach, and almost instantly she felt a tingling sensation on her skin. The faint fuzz and heat of the alcohol vanished, and she felt more clear-headed than she had in days.

"Hell of a hangover cure," she said, examining the glass tube.

"Amateurs," Toran chuckled as he approached, a glass of whisky swirling in one hand, Arrow standing at his elbow with a tall glass of rose-pale wine resting in their palm.

"What, planning to do the deal of a lifetime when you're half-plastered?" Piper shot back.

He shrugged. "I'll scour when I need to."

"I'll keep him clear," Arrow interjected, casting a wry glance at their companion.

Within a minute of the scours being supplied and cleared away, the efficient attendants reappeared with even more trays of drinks. Cleansed as she was, Piper realised she definitely wanted one. The initial surge of awe and seduction had quickly worn off, and a sick feeling was settling in her stomach, getting worse the more she thought about where she was, and what she was doing.

Eventually she picked out a clear, crisp cocktail, a clear-iced spirit garnished with herbs and a mildly flavoured tonic that fizzled pleasantly inside her mouth. She'd only just managed to enjoy the first sip, when she became suddenly aware of a presence at her side.

"Piper?" Bannerman whispered, leaning in beside her.

She grimaced, feeling his breath on her ear, his cologne cloying. "What?"

"We need to talk."

"Now? Right now?"

"It's about your parents."

She looked at him sharply. His eyes flickered to meet hers, and he gave her a small nod. Well, she couldn't let herself walk away from that, no matter the timing. Feeling a wrench of both annoyance and interest, she motioned him towards one of the massive windows at the edge of the room.

"Alright, come on." She caught Odiye's eye as he looked over at them. Piper mouthed give me a minute. Then she tapped an index finger beneath her right eye.

Keep watch.

His eyes flickered to Bannerman. He nodded, raising his glass a little as acknowledgment. Giving him a grateful nod, she turned and moved, with Bannerman trailing a step behind. She reached the window, where a small ledge allowed her to step just a little further forwards. It was then that she realised those colossal panes of glass leaned away from her just a touch; enough for her to look almost straight down to the streets below.

Piper took a gulp from her drink, her free arm wrapped tight across her stomach as she stared out. The vista hadn't lost any of its magnificence, stretching away into a halo of lavish light and power. Bannerman moved up alongside her, the neck of a bottle of dark beer pinched between a finger and thumb by his side.

"Looks like something to aspire to doesn't it?" he said quietly. "Shame it's just nice wallpaper."

"Didn't take you for a cynic."

"You don't know me very well, Ms. Russell."

"Maybe not," she glanced at him sidelong, "but apparently you know a lot about me."

Bannerman raised the bottle to his lips and took a long sip, his eyes closing in a moment of minor bliss before he let it dangle at his side again. His eyes remained gazing out over Hadrian's skyline as he spoke.

"Before he died – I mean, literally minutes before those bastards walked in a murdered him – Mattise gave me a job," Bannerman said.

"You were friends?"

"As friendly as anyone in our position can be."

"Fair enough." His tone made it clear he didn't want to talk about Mattise any further, so she took the hint. "So that job – it was about me?"

"Not exactly. He wanted to do a full trawl on Skiltron, Wayfinder – everyone involved in the codewraith project – and dig through their blacktech records."

She smiled thinly. "I thought they weren't supposed to have that stuff anymore."

"That is a very pleasant fiction for people outside our little bubble."

"I'll drink to that." And she did, relishing a sip of the cocktail and letting it soothe her throat. Bannerman took the opportunity to do the same before he continued.

"He told me to 'chase the rabbit' if I found it. I think I might have."

"And what does that mean?"

"You're aware of the transferable graft research?"

Piper snorted. "I've never seen it, if that's what you mean, but apparently it's what they think explains..." She failed to find the words, and in the end just made a vague gesture to herself. "Explains my implants."

"That's the theory. A kind of organic synthesis to pass implants from one generation of operative to the next."

"Sounds fucking creepy."

"I think that's a fair assessment." He smiled uneasily. "Most of the research into that area didn't yield much. From what I've found, all some of them managed was to optimise the existing process, but actually passing implants from a parent to a child proved a much bigger challenge."

Piper felt her frustration rising. "I'm not here for a history lesson, and we don't have a lot of time. What did you find out about my parents."

Bannerman looked a little put out at not being able to tell his full story, but he relented.

"Niall Casimir – your father – did not have these implants. I trawled decades of classified blacktech records, personnel files from Atom-Tech, Skiltron and any other corporation he so much as passed in a hallway, and there's nothing to indicate that he had anything more than the standard AmpCore grafts."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that, if you really are a product of the Transferable Graft tech, your father wasn't the carrier. Which leaves...?"

Piper's breath caught in her throat and she stared at him. A nearby light flickered faintly from an errant discharge from her implants. She pressed her tongue to the back of her teeth for a moment, fighting to keep the tension off her face before she took another large gulp from her drink.

"That leaves my mother," she murmured.

Bannerman nodded. "My rabbit."

"You found her? You know who she is?" Piper stepped close, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper.

"Take it easy," he whispered, turning to fully face the window and taking another languid swallow from his beer. "I have... a theory."

"A theory?"

"They buried this, Piper. Deeper than you can fully grasp," he hissed. "They tried to bury the graft tech too, but Niall Casimir managed to salvage some small piece of it from Hadrian South. I believe he used the tech on your mother."

"What?!" Her implants simmered and the glass in her hand grew hot, the drink inside it beginning to bubble. "He experimented on her?"

"I don't know, Piper. Maybe she wanted to; maybe not. We may never know what happened, but I think I know who it happened to."

"Who?"

"It's impossible to verify, but the timeline fits."

"Bannerman," she growled, grabbing his wrist with her free hand, "who?"

"There's a technician – she worked for Atom-Tech around the same time. According to personnel records that I could get my hands on, she got out of Hadrian South when everything went to hell, and she worked in their tight-locked R&D division. Privvy to all the blacktech, including – I'm guessing – your grafts."

"So she wasn't AmpCore herself?"

He shook his head. "Just a plain old human being with a better than average brain. There's a registration record after the schism when Atom-Tech was liquidated: Azelle Connor."

"Azelle Connor." Piper repeated the name, hoping it might spark something – some visceral memory that had been hiding in the recesses of her mind.

Nothing. She felt nothing. Her stomach churned and anger sizzled in her implants. With a breath, she controlled herself, feeling the liquid in her glass beginning to heat up.

"Why her?" she said eventually, biting the words out.

"Timeline, and lack of records," Bannerman said, glancing back over his shoulder before continuing. "No death logged on the Atom-Tech records, no hiring record with any of the companies that subsumed their assets. The only listing I could find was a "Missing-Presumed-Dead" in the Skiltron after-action reports. Given where she worked, I don't believe for a second that someone let her just... wander off into the sunset. I think somebody helped her disappear."

"They could have just killed her and blamed it on the Schism," Piper pointed out. "Shit, maybe she did get killed in the Schism. Wouldn't set her apart."

"Maybe. But she dropped off the grid of Hadrian at exactly the same time as Niall Casimir. That's a bigger coincidence than I'm about to overlook."

Piper chewed her lip, the cocktail forgotten. She could feel the milling of the bodies behind them, and Odiye's glances rebounding off the back of her skull. They didn't have much longer until they were summoned back to the table.

"So what did happen to her then?" She made a bitter gesture to the city.

"You want to know what I really think?"

"Of course!"

His eyes swept thoughtfully over Hadrian's skyline. "I think she's still alive out there, somewhere. Somehow. And I think you should find her."