PROLOGUE

Lightning flashed and, a half-second later, thunder cracked. The electricity in the air made Mel's fillings hum and throb, or maybe that was the booze.

His phone vibrated across a stack of papers and he snatched it up. The text was from Sneaky Cheetah:

Update?

He set down his glass and began to peck out a reply, needing both thumbs:

My agent is on route

No, autocorrect, you prick.

en route

Melvin Ferd: grizzled investigative reporter, sipping scotch-cheap scotch-in his shitty rented office and corresponding with a codenamed source via text.

There were a lot of cliches here, in this life of whistleblowing and wire-chasing that he led. But as long as Mel kept those cliches off the page and out of his writing.

His phone buzzed again.

OpSec? Sneaky Cheetah asked.

OpSec? He knew Sneaky Cheetah was legit, but there were times when their correspondence made Mel wonder, was his contact really a fed? Or were they playing the part a little too cleanly? Was Melvin Ferd about to be double-crossed?

There was no time for second guesses. Not now. Not with what was on its way to his office. En route.

Intact, he typed.

He hoped their security was intact. With all the psychos that Garbinger kept on his payroll, ex-military, mercs and-

Bzzzzztt.

Mel shoulder-rolled away his shiver, then looked to the security-camera monitor. He never kept that thing on. Never needed to because he never had visitors. He was amazed the monitor still worked. But the small CRT TV had been on for the last few days, as the shit got more real, as he felt the walls closing in.

Was that J.J. out there? It was hard to tell, the camera was so grainy and the contrast on the monitor so blown-out. But then the hooded figure on screen raised a hand and waved at the camera impatiently-not just impatient, in fact, but vibrating with excitement.

Yup. That was J.J.

OpSec intact.

God, Mel was starting to think like Sneaky Cheetah now.

Intact and nearly finished being en route, with his informant just downstairs.

They'd done it!

Well, nearly done it.

Mel pressed the button under his desk to unlock the magnetized outer door. On screen, J.J. pushed through and out of frame into the service stairwell.

Here it was. That dropping feeling at the bottom of Mel's stomach. Excitement and fear mixed together, with a strong indignation chaser that helped him to keep the fire burning. It was the feeling Melvin Ferd got when a story he'd spent months on-a whole year, in this case-was days from newsprint.

Newsprint and a modest paywall, of course, for all digital subscribers.

And a subpoena for Garbinger if Sneaky Cheetah held up their end of things.

Okay, BTH. Okay, you dirty, corrupt, corporate scumbags. You toxic assholes.

Mel stood up from his desk, toasted his own reflection in the framed headlines and small-fry journalism awards he kept on his walls, and finished his drink. Very Good Investigative Journalist, runner-up. Embarrassing. Why did he even hang that one? He'd have to throw those awards in the trash to make room for his Fulshinger Award and Presidential Medal of.

He opened his office door and leaned out.

There were footsteps on the stairwell, echoing up and down the hallway. The dropped ceiling had a few tiles missing and more dead fluorescent bulbs than live flickering ones. Maybe, at the end of all this, Mel would be able to afford to rent nicer office space. Maybe two offices, one with a corner view out on the good-well, less irradiated-side of town. Every time he looked out his window, it seemed like the junkyard waste of Outer Tromaville was creeping closer.

J.J. appeared at the end of the hallway and yelled, "We got these fuckers now!"

She was so happy. Melvin couldn't help it-he smiled too, wider than he had in years.

"Were you followed?" he asked, shuttling her inside his office and locking the door behind them, the knob and then the deadbolt.

"Followed? Please. I ran three reversals and a Kaufman field loop getting here."

As she said this, J.J. Doherty kicked away Mel's roll chair, crouched over his computer, and connected an external hard drive to one of the USB ports.

He was going to offer her a drink, but she was right. There was no time for pleasantries. No time for premature celebrations. He had to see what she'd brought him.

"Is that it?"

The hard drive spun, a soft electric whir, and J.J. unzipped her hoodie, then began to undo the buttons on her Body Talk Healthstyle work shirt. What a dumb name, Mel reflected. No wonder most people shortened it to BTH.

With her button-down shirt gone, it became clear that J.J. had been wearing three layers-the hooded sweatshirt, then her office-drone attire, then her own clothes underneath: stockings, buckles, patterns and straps. J.J. was a punk shedding her corporate skin, letting herself breathe.

"I spoofed an exec IP, dug this out of their internal network," she said and pointed at the computer.

"Risky," Mel said, nodding at the information that was beginning to flood his screen. It was a cornucopia of fishy-sounding file names. There was so much here. Maybe press-time wasn't going to be tomorrow, the next day, or even this week if he didn't have the hours to sift through it all, and then more time for Sneaky Cheetah and the rest of the feds to build an ironclad case for an arrest. Mel needed to be patient. Do this right. If he didn't have what he needed spelled out, hard proof in black and white, he might not get a second chance.

"Only other option is a physical sample from on site," J.J. said, stepping back from the computer. "I've got a collection of hardware stashed at my place, but like you said, this was risky enough. Letting my employer know I have that stuff, that I stole it."

"That'd be suicide," Mel said, nodding.

Her BTH employee lanyard still pinned to her studded belt, J.J. stepped back and let Melvin take a look at the computer.

"This is." Mel said, looking at the screen. "You've done enough, kid." And he meant it. He was grateful for everything J.J. had done, the risks that she'd taken. But it was hard to elaborate on that now. Not while he had these files opening up.

Melvin felt his eyes burning. Not wanting to see everything he was looking at, but not daring to blink, unless this prove to be a dream.

A study about the long-term effects of cranial stims, phrases like "lobe scarring" and "mostly malignant, usually fatal" and then internal documents detailing how best to seek approval for "over-the-counter use." And then there was a similar study for hemo guns, whatever the hell those were. The data made them sound just as dangerous, but they came in both pink and polka-dot designs, and there were additional memos asking about their efficacy in children.

He moved the cursor over a spreadsheet bearing the heading "Test Subject Survival Rates."

Then there were swaths of legal memos, sorted into folders for outstanding and settled cases. Even if you ignored their tendency to conduct bioweapons development under the guise of cosmetics testing, BTH's boilerplate NDAs were as strongly worded as most bomb threats.

Then he scrolled down further, opened a few more windows, and got to the really horrific shit. Pictures of animals, before and after shots. He tabbed through, finding it hard to watch as the cute and fluffy house pets were turned into mewling, blood-soaked abominations.

"Those bastards," Mel heard himself say.

"It's worse than we thought," J.J. said. "And they knew it all along."

"Look, I can't tell you too much," Melvin said. He didn't want her getting too involved. What she knew could hurt her. "But they've already got a case going. This is exactly the kind of evidence Sneaky Cheetah needs to blow this whole thing wide open." And get me that Fulshinger, he thought a little guiltily. But he was helping the city by doing this, wasn't he? Was it so wrong to want some recognition for his work?

"Sneaky Cheetah," J.J. said with an eyeroll. The name did sound silly when spoken out loud. "When do I learn his real name?"

"When it's over," Melvin said. "When this goes wide." Goes to print. "Until then, we're vulnerable. Keep one eye over your shoulder and help me keep this."

".compartmentalized, yeah, yeah, yeah," she said. She was impatient. He could be that way too sometimes, but he hoped that neither of them were impatient enough to get sloppy. If they got sloppy, they'd get dead.

"Patience, J.J.," he told her.

She was a nice kid. Brave. Hellbent on doing the right thing, or at least getting her revenge. She reminded Mel of himself a few decades younger, gender swapped and-he remembered trying to put a pocket protector on a Members Only jacket-with a very different fashion sense. "You did real good here. You-"

And before Mel could get mushy with it, before he could say words like proud and heroic, there was another bzzzzzt at the outer door.

Shit.

"How did they.? I." J.J. began, her voice small and defeated. "I. I ran a Kaufman loop."

Even before Mel could realize what he was looking at on the security monitor, J.J. already knew what this...