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was talking about. He had made a career out of being invisible, but Cray was the one always out in front. Any decent hammerjack knew Cray’s name as well as his methods, the same way a hustler knew all the cops on his turf. Obviously, Yin had put a lot of thought into this—and Cray had stepped right into his trap.
    “Son of a bitch,” Cray muttered. “You just put my head in a noose.”
    “Now you’re getting the idea,” Yin said offhandedly.
    Cray wished he had the emitter back, if only to use it on himself. He had spent enough time in the Axis to know that most of the stories about the
Inru
were real. If what Zoe had done was any example of their determination, it wouldn’t be long before they came for a piece of him.
    Unless Yin is just trying to scare me off.
    Cray thought he detected a slight tension in the man’s voice—not much, but enough to make him suspicious. “You’re offering me protection,” he said, following that track. “In exchange for what?”
    Yin turned back around. “Nothing more than you’ve given me the last ten years,” he answered. “As well as your discretion. It would be unfortunate if our competitors gained any more knowledge of these events. Of course, the choice is yours.”
    Cray’s lips pursed into a tight smile. “No, Yin—
you’re
the one with a choice to make, and you better make the right one. Because if you don’t tell me what’s
really
going on, I will walk out of here and dig it out for myself. I will sink into every goddamned corner of the Axis until I find out what you’re hiding.”
    There was silence as Yin thought it over, his black eyes evaluating Cray as a potential enemy. That Yin could have him killed was a realistic danger, one Cray had considered before making his demands. But Yin was also practical. As long as he needed Cray, he would not exercise that option.
    Yin conceded, spreading his hands in an open gesture. “What do you want to know?”
    So I get to live,
Cray thought.
For now.
    “Before I came up here,” he said, “I checked GenTec’s domain for signs of a proprietary trace. Imagine my surprise when I saw you had been compromised. That stuff Zoe was carrying originated here, didn’t it?”
    “Yes.”
    “What the hell is it? My GME told me he’s never seen anything like it.”
    “Something that looks like flash-DNA, but isn’t flash-DNA.”
    Cray leaned in toward him. “Go on.”
    “The next great breakthrough,” Yin explained, getting up and strolling about the room. His eyes scanned the dusty titles on his bookshelves as he spoke, like a professor giving a history lesson. “Strictly in the experimental phase. We believe it has the potential to be the biological storage medium to take the world into the next century.”
    “I take it the Collective doesn’t know about this yet.”
    “No,” Yin admitted, which was confessing the greatest of sins. “The other members of the Assembly would have sought licensing rights, cutting into GenTec’s share of development. We’re already working on a full range of applications for the new technology. The board thought it would be best to keep this to ourselves until we were ready to bring the new flash to market.”
    “
That’s
what this was about?” Cray asked. “Corporate politics?”
    “That was part of it.”
    “And what about this business with Heretic? Was that just more bullshit?”
    “The most effective lie contains a small portion of the truth.”
    “And it had nothing to do with sweetening the deal for me.”
    Yin shrugged. “The thought did cross my mind.”
    Cray had to laugh. He had been played all right, in more ways than he could have anticipated. For a long time, he had been following the faint traces of Heretic’s signature through the Axis, never coming up with enough data to form a decent profile. That, plus the legend that had built up around the man, made Heretic a prize of sorts—a hammerjack who could operate on the same level Cray did. Yin knew he