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When he finally awoke properly late the next morning, the apartment was silent and empty. Jintesh climbed slowly out of bed, stopping only long enough to pull on some clothes against the cold, before he did a search of the place. Krispin was gone. He hadn't even left a note.

Jin picked up his bass and sat down, trying to play from memory the sad riff Krispin had been playing a few hours earlier. What was he supposed to think now? Krispin had come here high on Haze, seduced him, and then left as soon as he'd come down. Could he even believe Krispin's story about going intercity? He wanted to.. it was a legitimate reason for not threading him. But the boy was a Haze addict, and it dashed to pieces everything he had wanted to believe, had hoped to believe. Normally, he didn't care about drugs; the recreational drugs were pretty safe, and he didn't mind if other people did them, even if he didn't touch them himself. But the addictive stuff, like Haze.. that was different. That was dangerous. Did he want to stand by and watch while Krispin let it rule him? Did he have the right to ask Krispin not to take it?

Now was the perfect time to just forget about him. To let it all go as a bad experience and hope that he was never so stupid again.


But he found that he couldn't. Krispin's voice, and face, and laughter, refused to get out of his head. It didn't matter that Krispin was hurting him, or had hurt him, or would hurt him still.. he needed to see him again, wanted to be near him, dreamed of kissing him and even of flying with him; soaring off a bridge together and floating over the city, sharing a secret beauty that only the two of them could ever know.

He held out against his cravings. He reached his next deadline and span a depressing counterpoint to his last bubbly segment of his game; Quicksilver showed his darker, crueler side, putting his entire party in danger. He left the segment for his boss to pick up and finally, after all his promises to himself not to, he gave in and threaded Laran.

"Jin!" Laran looked both surprised and pleased to see him. "Now here's a face I don't see on my thread often. What's up? How's things with Krispin?"

"Ahh.. it's cool, Laran." Jintesh shrugged his shoulders, trying to appear nonchalant. He didn't want to go into it just now. "I got a question for you."

"Sure, ask away."

"What do you know about Haze?" He was startled to see Laran's eyes narrowing instantly, his pleased expression vanishing.

"Please tell me you haven't had any, Jin."

"Huh? Me?" Jin had expected Laran to have bad words about Haze, but this seemed a little extreme. "You know I don't do drugs."

"Good." Laran seemed relieved for a moment, then the worry returned. "Krispin?"

What could Jin say to that? Laran knew him probably better than he knew himself; he'd know if he was lying. "... yeah."

"Shit."

"What's the deal, Laran? Seriously. Tell me... everything I've heard about Haze is bad, but I don't really know enough to be sure why." Jin had been clinging to some vague hope that perhaps all his opinions on Haze were formed from overly paranoid warnings, but Laran's reaction was quickly destroying it.

"That's because there's nothing good to say about it.. unless you listen to the Haze addicts themselves." Laran glanced behind him at something, then sighed. "Let's see. Haze, daze, futz.. called illume by some people, hell only knows why. It hit the streets about, oh, seven years ago. Everyone immediately fell in love with it because it's such a great high, and there's practically no come down. Took them awhile to realise it was an addict's drug, not a recreationalist's. By then, too many of them were hooked, and some just didn't care enough to try and give up. The Haze addicts are just like all the other addicts; it's nothing nice, but you tolerate 'em and pity 'em. Except that Haze messes with your mind. It's not just while you're high on it. It kills braincells, slowly and completely. Most of the original Haze addicts are either dead or mindless vegetables in some corp-asylum somewhere. And the rest are headed that way."

"Fuck." Jin couldn't think of anything else to say. He'd had no idea about any of this; all he'd known was that it was one of the worst addict's drugs out there, and that it was damaging. Krispin, braindead and locked away in a cheap corporation asylum? The mental image was horrifying.

"Yeah, that about sums it up. Some of the more paranoid street sleepers say the corps invented it to help control the slums."

"The corporations? You think they're right?"

"I don't know. Are you sure he's on Haze, Jin?"

"Pretty sure. I.." Jintesh ran his hands through his hair, trying to think. "Is Rhys around?"

Laran glanced behind him again. "Yeah, she's spinning. You want me to get her back?"

"No.. I need her loom skills, really. She'll be somewhere usual, right?"

"Yeah, she's predictable." Laran gave him a wry grin. "You gonna be okay, man? I can come over, if you like."

Jin shook his head. "I'm cool. You know I deal with stuff better on my own."

"I know. Thread me if you need me, or tell Rhys, okay?"

"Got it." Jin cut the thread. A mindless, senseless Krispin? Not if he could help it. He moved to sit down and picked up his kit, hooking up and hitting the looms.


It took some time to find Rhys, but eventually Jintesh saw her familiar avatar -- a loom representation of her real form -- amongst several others at one of the lesserknown hacker corners of the loom.

"Rhys!" He hurried towards her. He too was wearing an avatar that looked like his real form; he prefered not to let many people know that he used any others. It was easier to be anonymous in raven form that way.

"Jin. How's things?" Rhys turned away from her friends, her manner cool and abrupt, as always. She'd been with Laran almost as long as Jin had been friends with him, and they'd become good friends as well, once they'd both realised that neither of them were goodnatured or easy to talk to. Laran said they sounded as if they were fighting more often than not, but they shared a great love of the cyberlooms, and Jin enjoyed the serious discussions they often had about spinning.

Rhys was also a highly skilled hacker, and that was what he needed her for right now. "Livable. I need a favour."

"Only for you." Rhys graced him with a rare smile.

"I need to get in touch with a guy, and no matter how hard I try, there's no records or anything about him. You're a hell of a lot better, you could crack whatever's hiding his info from me."

"Of course I can. Krispin?"

"Yeah." Jin wasn't too surprised. Telling something to Laran meant Rhys would know it soon enough, and he didn't really mind.

"Tell me everything you know about him."

"Umm.. Krispin, I don't know his last name. He's about shoulder height to me, long silver hair, one grey eye and one green eye. He rides a streambike. He's in a band called Crustacean. He may have gone intercity about a week ago."

"Crustacean. The ones with that revolting disc cover." Rhys was looking his avatar up and down, no doubt trying to measure his height. He managed a grin at her words.

"Yeah. That's them."

"Alright. You want me to start now?"

"If you can."

"Sure. Give me a few hours. I'll thread you, okay?"

"Okay. Thanks, Rhys."

"My pleasure, Jin." She winked at him, and then her avatar was gone. He sighed, and before any of the hackers nearby might recognise his avatar, he pulled the plug on his own connection. Now all he had to do was wait and hope that Rhys would come through.

The unfamiliar tone of his data-thread several hours later startled him enough to drop his bass on the floor. In a way he'd gotten used to its annoying blare; this soothing tone was strange to him now. He hurried over to the machine and flicked the answer switch.

"Jin." Rhys' ghostly white face, surrounded by her shock of black and green hair, peered up at him seriously. "I found him for you. You want to spin and see it yourself? It's interesting."

"Sure. Where at?"

"Hook up. I'll make myself traceable long enough for you to trace me and move there. Be quick -- I feel naked when I'm traceable."

"Okay, be right there." He managed a grin as Rhys cut the thread without bothering to say goodbye. It was so typical of her. Then he hurried over to his kit and jumped into the looms. She wouldn't be impressed if he was slow after she'd specifically told him to hurry.

He chose his human avatar again and hastily set up a trace on Rhys. She was deeper in the looms than most people bothered to go, amidst the more sensitive material the corporations stored there, and surrounded by countless data-traps and threadbreakers. He smirked as he moved himself there. Trust Rhys to dig deep.

"Ah, there you are." Rhys' avatar shimmered as she made herself untraceable again. "Much better. You recognise this?"

Jin glanced around at the blocks of data, all of them shining with protection and threadbreakers to keep out as many people as possible. "Looks like.. intercity travel records?" he guessed.

"Yeah. Whoever hides your Krispin didn't make quite as good an effort with his recent trip as they did with the rest of his information. You got a decent stealth field in that second-rate avatar of yours?"

"Yeah, it's one you gave me." He reached for the code and wrapped the program around himself. "So he did go intercity last week?" Well, it was a relief to know that Krispin hadn't been lying.

"He and four other guys went to Paradon for four days. Come inside; I tagged it long enough to show you." Rhys turned to the datablock closest to her and opened a pathway. "Their security's not so hard to break, but you've got to be careful moving around, even with a field."

"Okay." He followed her inside the datablock, mirroring her slow, deliberate movements. He wasn't a hacker, he was just a loom junkie who knew a little about breaking the most simple security. Rhys was the expert here, and he'd be an idiot if he didn't do as he was told.

"Here." Rhys finally paused, and pointed to the flow of data in front of her. She'd left a tag on one part of it, and he peered at the words. It was a list of names, each with a date and time next to them. He spied the name 'Taisho' and slowed his reading.

"His name should be there, beneath that one.. it's hidden, but whoever did it was either lazy or high on something, because they didn't cover it properly. See the break in the list?"

Jin looked to where she pointed, beneath Taisho's name. She was right; the list was broken slightly, the name beneath Taisho's further down than it should have been. Rhys reached out to it and pressed against the slight space there.

"I already broke the seal; whoever's hiding him is good. They not only hide him, they put security on it. And they cover their own tracks as well." She pulled at the flow, and Krispin's name appeared. Then she pressed against his name. After a moment, a subscreen popped up, showing his id card.

"Krispin Shirai." Jin stared at the picture of Krispin. He almost couldn't believe that he finally had something to go on. The card included his height, his weight, his bloodtype, his birthdate -- he was 21, only two years younger than Jin himself -- and also his current datathread and home address.

"You want to save that information off?" Rhys glanced at him. "We shouldn't stay in here much longer."

"Yeah." Jin reached for the subscreen and pulled a copy of it into his avatar. "Lead the way." He followed Rhys as she moved back out of the datablock, into the somewhat safer realms of the looms.

"How'd you find that, Rhys?" Jin shut down the stealth field program. Rhys shrugged.

"I looked up Crustacean. The rest of them are easy to find, there's nothing hidden about them. I checked their intercity travel records and then came down here to find them. Intercity security keeps id card checks on everyone who passes through. I figured this was the easiest crack since I knew exactly where he'd be listed. It was doubly lucky that it wasn't done properly. But every other place I was checking where he should have been, the coverup's perfect. I could break it, but it'd take time. Either he's one hell of a hacker, or he has some intense friends."

"I wonder why he makes such an effort to hide himself."

"Beats me. He's your friend." Rhys looked around them at the masses of datablocks. "If we're gonna chat, let's do it somewhere friendlier, okay?"

"Nah, I gotta go. Thanks for this, Rhys. It means a lot to me."

Rhys looked at him for a long moment, then grinned. "Hey, if it means making your sour face smile more often, I'm all for it. Catch ya, Jin." Her avatar blinked out of sight.

Jin sighed and sent a copy of Krispin's id card to his kit's view screen, before pulling the plug on his connection. He sat up in his chair and stared at the image of the card. So, now that he had Krispin's thread, did he actually dare thread the boy? After all, he'd not heard from him since that night over a week ago. He was scared that he'd try to talk to him, only to find that Krispin didn't care anymore. That he'd moved on, found someone else to mess up. And yet.. Krispin had made such an effort to find him in the first place, to take him out and show him some fun, to take him somewhere special that he never took anyone else. And what was it Laran had said to him? That if Jintesh ran and hid this time, he'd be very disappointed? It was about time he actually took a risk.

He clenched his fists, gathering up as much courage as he could, and then walked over to his datathread and entered Krispin's thread before he could talk himself out of it.