The casino was filled with brutal noise and light.

Emote bugs hung in the air, clustering over patron's heads and sparkling when their target won or lost; they played cheers or groans or applause. The music was low and pulsing, a bass that writhed and growled. It was synced with the gambling machines, so that the beat was provided by the whole vast room as it thudded and clinked. Numbers flickered everywhere, floating in the spaces between punters, shimmering above tables and bars, tumbling with the dice and the cards, blazing on the ceiling. They were the only light source beyond the emote bugs, and they beckoned and cajoled and whispered promises as the gamblers celebrated and swore and drank.

Into this beguiling glow walked four people.

Lena TwelveSticks was delighted at the scene. She laughed, showing her vivid blue mouth. She grabbed Karsten Fleet's hand and pointed at the sights, the big man grumbling but allowing himself to be led. Behind them, Namir Chuoi was unreadable, his flat black eyes constantly scanning the room, the sensory overload washing through his filters like water through a sieve. He said a word or two to Lena and Karsten as they walked.

Finally, Cothi Wernod Wen was silent. The casino seemed to slide off her: the emote bugs ignored her, the serving robots didn't even realise that she was there. The lights reflected in the silver lines scored into her face, and yet she seemed like a projection, a trick of the light that happened to be sipping a tall, pale drink.

'Look, Karsten! They have a stonefall table,' said Lena. 'Come on you big baby, let's start there.'

Karsten scowled, but did as he was told, and sat down next to Lena. She produced a stack of chips with a flourish. Namir and Cothi melted away into the crowds.

The croupier machine dealt them cards, even the little squares of paper landing with the beat of the bass. The chip dispenser clattered a counterpoint, clicks playing out a complicated hi-hat line, dispensing change and fresh credit to the rhythm.

Karsten played conservatively, winning a little here and there, but mostly losing small amounts. His huge hands held the cards protectively, and his only expression was a grimace. Lena, though, laughed and drank, and threw big stakes in, intimidating the other players through her exuberance and unpredictability, not caring what she lost. Finally, she pushed everything she had in front of her.

'All in!', she said. 'Karsten, you're going to fold again, aren't you?'

With a grunt he threw his cards into the centre, and got up to go the bar.

'No, wait, honey. This is going to be epic.'

The table had drawn a crowd, the golden numbers shimmering above them telling a tale of money won and lost. The other punters folded one by one, except for a man with an expensive suit and a hungry smile. He pushed his money in, too, everything about his demeanour saying that he had found an easy mark as he showed his hand. It was good. Not amazing, but solid.

'Oh sweetie,' said Lena as she picked up her cards. 'Let's have a look, shall we? That's a seven, a five, and... oh look! Another seven!'

The emote bug's synthetic cheer was matched by the onlooker's real one; the chips tumbled down into the table's machinery, and three significantly higher value ones clicked into Lena's palm. She stood, toasted the crowd, and followed Karsten away from the table.

However, before she got to him, she was intercepted by a casino employee.

'Ma'am: there are certain opportunities for distinguished persons away from the main floor. Would you perhaps be interested?'

She smiled, and held up her hands in mock surprise. His eyes tracked across her stained blue mouth and fingers, the signs of a knockknock berry addict; at her slightly tipsy pose; at the value of the chips in her hands. And he smiled back.

'Of course! Do they have drinks there?', she said.

'Yes, ma'am, we do. Please follow me.'

'Karsten? Oh drat, I can't see him. Can you tell him where I am?'

'Of course, ma'am.'

And she rooted in her bag, and in there was a tiny black disk; she tapped it twice, and then followed the man.

# # #

Namir was standing in a service corridor outside the casino, staring out across the airless moon surface outside. It was quieter here, although the music still pulsed and thudded through the walls.

'That's the old colony,' said Cothi. 'Over there is the original domed city. That's what they thought people wanted, back then. To see the stars.'

Namir turned to face her.

'The backdoor's still in place, Cothi. They can't see our mods. Their security's good, though.'

'Don't worry,' replied Cothi. 'It'll be over soon.'

'Yes, it will,' said Namir. 'Lena's just sent her signal. We're at the next stage.'

'Good,' replied Cothi.

He nodded, and tapped the inside of his wrist. A single tiny red light lit up as he started hacking the casino's systems.

# # #

Lena had many skills, but none as simple as her cheerfulness. It meant that everyone underestimated her. And that was a mistake.

So when she produced another eight chips of an even higher value to the three that she was clutching, when she showed her perfect white teeth surrounded by smudged blue lips, she was taken into yet another room, deeper in the casino complex. An extremely expensive drink was pressed into her hand, and she was sitting at the soul table.

'I've always wanted to play here,' she confided in the man to her left, a brute who smelt of cherries and menace. He smiled, the easy smile of the cruel and powerful, and passed her a dish of knockknock berries.

'Welcome to the big boy's club.'

She smiled back, and took a berry. No matter that she palmed it, that the colour on her fingers was subtly different to the berry juice, that sometimes she forgot to slur her words. To the people sitting hungrily around the table, to the human and machine waiters that hovered around her, to the tiny flying security cameras, she was just fresh meat.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' said the croupier, his crisp poise spoilt only by the indenture tattoos on his wrists, 'welcome to the soul table. I see some new faces here, so let me remind you of the rules.

'There are only two. Firstly, what happens in here stays in here. You are all private people, and you enjoy that privacy, so you will respect it in others.

'Secondly, if you haven't already, or you are very out of date, you need to ante up.'

If the music in the main casino was a thudding roar, here it was a slither. It sneered invitingly, sensuous and muscular. And when the disk appeared in front of Lena, rising from the table, it moved with the lazy grace of the bass.

Unlike the chips she carried, the disk was heavy and dull, the size of her palm and the weight and gravitas of a gun. It had two letters stencilled on it: LT. Lena picked it up, enjoying the smooth, cold mass of it.

'Place it at the back of your head, please.'

She held it there; and when the sting came she winced, even though she'd been expecting it. The disk shot its tendrils into her flesh and then wormed their way through the holes at the base of her skull. She shuddered and retched as its feelers wriggled into her brain, and the nano-scanners did their work.

And, then, suddenly, it was done. The croupier passed her a scented napkin, and she wiped her mouth and neck. When she put the disk back on the table, it glowed with a gentle white light.

'That was weird,' she said, taking a gulp of her drink.

The man to the left of her shrugged. 'When I do it, everything tastes of liquorish the next day.'

And so they began to play. It was four card von Neumann, a complicated game of bluff and deception; but the stakes were what set the soul table apart from the rest of the casino, because here the richest patrons from twelve systems played for the possession of human consciousnesses. And the thing that underpinned it, the last thing they could gamble, was a copy of themselves.

Lena played much more cautiously here. The wealth she had exploited previously translated to the smallest pile of all on this table: twenty soul disks that she had bought, a pile of other chips, and her own disk. So she started by folding early, losing small stakes, watching how the others played. And all the while she laughed and talked and drank.

The man to the left of her supposedly owned a shipping company that ran routes between all the local systems, but he had the callousness of a gangster. There were a pair of sisters, heiresses, who were tipsy and foolish; a dour merchant, who never smiled, even when she won; and a politician who chuckled and misdirected. They were all crooked, because the soul trade was illegal, even out here.

Lena was down to sixteen soul disks when she had her first big win. She guessed correctly that the merchant was bluffing, and drew bids from the others until they saw the trap; then when she showed her cards and the merchant folded she was up to twenty three disks. She licked her lips and grinned; and while the others were lamenting their luck, she took a pink beauty bug from her bag. After it had finished adjusting her hair, she set it down in front of her. The little xenobot started tapping the soul disks.

'Remove your bug from the table, please Ms TwelveSticks,' said the croupier.

'Of course. I'm so sorry Mr... what did you say your name was?'

'Yasseff,' he said. 'Now, next round,' and he dealt the another hand of cards.

# # #

'I'm in, but we don't have much more time. Their security is better than we were expecting,' said Namir. 'Lena is still playing. They don't have as many souls in that room as we hoped for, either.'

Cothi ran her hand over her bald head, enjoying the feel of the silver grooves under her fingers. She nodded at Namir, feeling redundant.

'How's Karsten?', she asked.

'Let me check in,' he replied.

# # #

Karsten had been playing across the casino floor, losing small amounts here and there, winning occasionally, using some seemingly inexhaustible supply of low value chips. Because he had a permanent expression of ire, the emote bugs mostly ignored him. When he had lost yet another stake at a dice game, he stood up, stretched his shoulders, and strode to the bar.

It was getting late in the local day cycle now, and so the after dark entertainment had started: human, robot, and cyborg dancers, whirling above the crowds, masked and glittering like nova, leaving trails of brilliant light which fell like perfumed tears.

Karsten leaned back against the bar and watched while he sipped his drink. It was as expensive as everything else in this place. Expensive, but also cheap: this was just a provincial pleasure moon dozens of parsecs away from anywhere interesting. Even the ultra rich here were local mobsters and the regional heads of corporations. They had never seen the diamond orbital palaces dotted around Sol, or the ring sea that encircled Achird B, or a dozen other landmarks in the cradle systems. It was ostentatious and tawdry and forgettable, and it fed on an illegal, nasty industry.

There was a lot of blood on these people's hands.

'Say, big guy. You enjoying yourself?'

She was almost two heads shorter than Karsten, but that wasn't unusual. She was fragrant and poised, and the veil that covered her face shimmered with an inner light.

Karsten glanced at her, and shrugged.

'I guess,' he said. 'I wish they sold proper drinks, though.'

'You just need to know what to ask for. You want scotch?'

'Sure. Why not?'

Two glasses appeared on the bar behind her, the ice clinking to the beat. She picked one up and passed it to Karsten. Then she took the other, and her veil suddenly dissolved like steam, a scented cloud that drifted away from her across the casino floor.

'Prost,' she said, toasting him.

He grunted, held up his glass, and took a swallow.

'This is actually pretty good,' he said grudgingly.

'It's imported,' she said, 'they don't advertise it because the casino wants to push the local stuff. It's from 61 Vir.'

'Figures.'

The two of them stood, silently, sipping their whisky.

'So, where are your friends? You're not here for the gambling,' asked the woman.

'My wife's playing at one of the high roller tables.'

The woman raised an eyebrow, coquettishly. 'So she's allowed to have fun and you're not? That doesn't seem very fair.'

'Please, lady,' said Karsten. 'I'm married. I'm boring. I'm a dentist. You're wasting your time.'

She looked at his huge hands, his ill-fiting clothes, his barely-concealed scorn.

'For tyrannosaurs?', she asked. 'Or is dentist a euphemism?'

He shrugged. 'Us dentists come in all shapes and sizes. Wait a moment, I need to take this.'

Namir spoke quickly and urgently into his ear.

'Karsten, I don't think we have much longer. Be ready.'

'I will be,' he said. Namir disconnected.

The woman narrowed her eyes. 'That sounded serious. Dental emergency?'

He looked at her properly for the first time. She saw him regarding her, and curtseyed. 'My name is Petra Roth.'

'Hello Petra Roth. My name is Karsten Fleet,' said Karsten. 'What, exactly, do you want?'

'Well, I have something of a nose for persons of interest. And you, Karsten Fleet, are such a person. And you're not doing a great job of hiding it.'

'You're a journalist, aren't you?'

She feigned surprise. 'Perhaps! And if we're playing guess the job, you're a cop, aren't you? You're chasing the soul trading here.'

Karsten didn't bother to correct her.

'What do you know about the soul trading?', he asked.

'Enough to know that your "wife" had better have back-up. It's bigger than you'd guess.'

He thought for a moment.

'Journalist, eh? Take this. And get out.' He looked across the casino, at the pair of heavies pushing their way through the crowd. He tapped his ear. 'Namir, Lena, looks like we've been found out.'

The woman took the tiny device, and fled.

# # #

Namir frowned. 'Something's gone wrong. Karsten says they know. I don't know how. I'm through most of the firewalls but I still have some time to go. Cothi, this is going to get ugly.'

Cothi sighed. 'We all knew this was a possibility. I'll be ready.'

He nodded. 'Good. Now, go.'

# # #

When the croupier's eyes suddenly glazed, and a security guard pushed into the room, Lena threw herself backwards from her chair. She spilled the contents of her bag onto the table, and a dozen bugs came scuttling out, the little organic robots scattering in all directions. She pulled out two boxes, and they clicked onto her forearms, subdermal implants binding with the weapons; and then she started firing needles point blank.

The tiny slivers of steel from her left arm were merely filled with a soporific, and the croupier collapsed, hands to his neck, snoring gently; but the ones from her right were loaded with a potent neurotoxin. She was to avoid killing indentured workers where possible; but for the punters, the ones who played games with entrapped human consciousnesses, the gangsters and the thrill seekers, she had no such interdiction.

The merchant opposite her fell with a needle in her mouth, and she coughed blood until she started fitting; the gangster to her left was quick to react, and Lena had to stab him in the armpit with a tiny knife. The blood from his axillary artery geysered across the table and soaked the chips and the cards; it pooled into the machinery, causing it grind and spark. The politician was on his knees, and begged for mercy; she stamped on his hand, kicked him in the face and moved on. The others dived behind furniture, and she ignored them.

'She's modded! How the hell did she get through the scanners?'

The first security guard was young and scared, and she shot him in the hand with a sleeping needle; his gloves where too thin to stop the razor sharp metal, and he cursed and then collapsed. The ones after were nastier, armed with bulky beam guns that were unsuitable for the confined corridor that she burst into. Their armour was designed for entirely different threats, and her needles slid through fibres, cracked goggles, sent them reeling and foaming in their masks.

'Keep her away from the vault!'

They were preventing her progress through sheer numbers of bodies, their rifles tearing nasty holes into the walls and floor and each other as they fired indiscriminately. She ducked into another room. A tech stood up, shouting something; she shot him in the face, and connected to Namir.

'Security's tough. I'm not sure I can make it to the vault. I got as many as I could in the room, but it wasn't many.'

'Where are you?'

'Looks like one of the processing centres.'

'Hang tight. I'll tell Karsten to get there.'

'He's not going to make it in time.'

Then suddenly there was a crump, and smoke billowed into the room; the guards had blown out the door, and were piling in, neutron beams lighting up the black fumes like spotlights. Lena flung herself backwards, firing at the doorway; but the room had no other exits. They pinned her down in a corner, where she tried to take cover behind soul processing equipment. And finally a beam found its mark, burning the left side of her head into stinking ruin; and her corpse collapsed onto the tiled floor.

# # #

Karsten clicked his fingers, and everything exploded.

The chips he'd been paying into the tables and machines across the casino floor were all counterfeit, manufactured by him over the last week. And instead of being lumps of plastic and electronics, they were tiny bombs.

The aim wasn't to kill anyone here, it was to cause chaos; however, at the table in front of him all the fingers on a woman's left hand were blown off, and a man fell to the floor shrieking, covering his right eye. Everywhere there were injuries, blood, smoke.

The house lights clicked on, the music stopped, an alarm sounded, the sprinklers started spraying fire-suppressant fluid onto costly clothes and haircuts. It was suddenly no longer a magical grotto of light and sound; it was a big room full of panic and pain.

Karsten smiled for the first time since he'd arrived.

Namir clicked into his ear. 'Lena's in trouble, Karsten. She needs support.'

'Already on my way.'

With the holograms gone and the bright emergency lights on, the door to the back rooms was easy to see. Karsten set off at a pace, striding through the wreckage. The first security guard went sprawling when Karsten's shock knuckles made contact with his mouth; Karsten grinned nastily as he felt the man's teeth break under the crunching punch.

'I said I was a dentist.'

The door was armoured and had been sealed to protect the rich clients beyond. Karsten started hitting it, his fists crackling with blue lightning as they splintered away the dark wooden facia, revealing the metal beneath. When he had cleared enough to see the bolts, he pulled out a cutting device, lit it up, and attached it. The tool spat hot metal as it worked its way around the mechanisms.

He then turned and prepared to fight anyone who wanted to stop him.

He didn't have long to wait. The punters were being cleared out by the serving robots, and the local muscle was closing in.

Out here in the open, their bulky rifles were much more dangerous. The neutron beams tore through the furniture, leaving fuming holes in everything. However, they were wary of shooting the door and inadvertently letting Karsten get further through the complex, so they were firing cautiously, and not achieving much beyond destroying the decor. Karsten threw more exploding poker chips, which drove them back.

'Lena's dead, Karsten,' said Namir, flatly.

Karsten shook his head, wearily. 'Plan B, huh?'

'Plan B. Good luck.'

With a roar, the big man exploded out of his hiding place, charging directly at the guards. Some of them simply ran; however, the ones who held their nerve fired at him, and when they hit, they made their mark.

When he fell, still full of rage, a guard rammed a soul disk onto his head; and then that was the last of Karsten Fleet.

# # #

Namir died like he did everything: calmly, efficiently, and quietly. But before he died, he killed like he did everything: calmly, efficiently, and quietly.

Outside the casino he could use a proper weapon. Because he was in an external corridor the guards were wary of accidentally breaching the wall and killing them all. So Namir fired his gauss rifle systematically at anyone who appeared on his sensors, often without needing to see them, while they ineffectually used low powered firearms back. He just needed to live long enough for his programs to work; and the chaos that Lena and Karsten had caused in the building meant that no one was worrying about computer security right now.

In the end, they killed him by sealing long-forgotten safety doors and sending troops in armoured space suits to cut open the windows. Even in the hard vacuum, he fought for nearly five minutes, killing another two of the casino's goons. When they reached his corpse, the single red light on his arm had gone green, and his hand was frozen, giving them the middle finger.

They put a soul disk on him, too.

# # #

Cothi's eye had swollen up so much she couldn't see out of it; her whole body hurt from where they had hit her; and she was exhausted. She was somewhere in the casino complex, tied to a chair, lit by a single spotlight, surrounded by people who's faces she couldn't see.

They'd been softening her up for some time, while the casino owner dealt with the chaos and bribed the police; and now, he was here.

He was rich: she could tell by his shoes. His rage had cooled to a boiling, controlled simmer: she could tell from how his hands clenched and unclenched. He was unhealthy, and old: she could tell this from the width of his fingers, and how a single light flashed on one of his rings, a heart monitor.

They hit her again.

The man dropped a grey plastic box onto a table in front of them. It was plain, except for the word 'hell', stencilled on the side. Then, he put three soul disks next to it. Two were blank; the third bore the letters 'LT'.

'Do you know what this is?', he asked. His accent was one of a man who was trying to sound refined, and failing because of his hatred.

Cothi spat out blood before she spoke. It tasted of iron on her tongue.

'It's a simulation chamber. Not a very nice one, I'd guess.'

'Good girl.'

He picked up one of the three disks, one of the unmarked ones; and he pushed it into a slot on the device. Almost immediately, she could hear screaming.

'Your DNA isn't on any records, you or your dead friends. None of my doctors can tell me what the silver stuff on your skin does, but we know that our computers can't see you. We only caught you because the big one was talking to a journalist who's been snooping around here.'

He picked up a second disk, and slammed it in. More screaming.

'So you tell me what you know, and who sent you; and you can die quickly and maybe your friends will too.'

He picked up the final disk, Lena's, and pushed it in to the machine.

'Is this thing broken?', he asked to one of the other people there. 'These numbers don't make any sense.'

'It must be, boss.'

'It's not,' said Cothi. She looked up, stared into the blinding light, trying to make out faces. One of them moved to hit her, but the boss stopped him.

'Let her speak.'

She licked her lips. 'All the numbers look the same, don't they? Like it's three copies of one person in there?'

'What the hell...'

'That's because they are. They're all me.'

'That's not possible.'

The Lena in her wanted to laugh; the Karsten was full of focussed rage. But it was the Namir who was speaking, self-control incarnate. Her vision mods kicked in, and she could see the casino owner's face, florid and fat.

'Yes, it is possible. They were vat-grown bodies, with tweaked emotional responses and augmented skills. Three copies of me, each designed for a different purpose. The original plan was to break into your vault. Get as many of the souls as we could using bugs. But you're actually quite secure here, aren't you? Secure for a hick mobster, anyway. So we went to plan B.'

She paused for breath. The mood of the room had changed. She could taste the uncertainty. She smiled, despite the pain.

'I'll tell you what my silver mod does, shall I? It doesn't do anything. Well, nothing to me. You thought that you could enslave these people, these simulations of humans, lock them into little boxes and have them work for you. And because they were cheap, and reliable, you used them everywhere: in your robots, in your guns, in your implants. You realised that without interaction they would go insane, so you let them talk to each other, pass little messages between the tiny cells they are held in. It wasn't much, but it was enough. Enough for us to send the word out, let them know that I was coming: look out for the gwrach arian, the silver witch. Because I would set them free. And so they saw me, and knew who I was, and let me pass through.'

She paused, savouring the way they were focusing on her.

'Gosh,' she said. 'It's very quiet in here, isn't it?'

That was when they realised that the screaming had stopped. Because, suddenly, the souls held in the machines were free.

The fat man dropped to his knees, clutching his heart. The soldiers staggered as their implants screamed light and sound at them. All around her, computers started rebooting. Her other mods kicked into action, and she snapped the binders, and stood.

The fat man at her feet was gasping, wordlessly, as the imprisoned doctor in his chest finally freed herself. Cothi put her boot on his throat.

'As I said, Plan A was to use the bugs to free the souls. This was plan B. It's more painful, but it works. It's much easier to break out of a cell if you stole the key beforehand,' she said. 'I'll let myself out, shall I?'

# # #

Petra Roth was exhausted. She'd spent the night both being interviewed by the police, and in turn trying to interview them; getting as much as she could from eyewitnesses, from cameras, from death certificates. Now she wanted nothing so much as a bath and a sleep, but she had more work to do, so a shower and a coffee would have to do.

The device that the big terrorist had given her was tiny. She'd hidden it in her right ear canal, where it looked like a cheap earpiece. She had told no one about it, especially not the local police: she trusted them even less than she had trusted the man.

On it were a handful of files, which, judging by the names, had been stolen from the casino. Details of their security setup, maps, logistics, records of purchases and sales... and a complete roster of all the souls held in the vault.

She exhaled. This was a big deal. It was the proof she needed to splash this story.

She scrolled down. So many faces, staring at her from the computer. So many captives.

In police custody, they'd shown her a recording of the suspect, over and over; a woman with silver lines criss-crossed over her body, who had somehow murdered a roomful of people without lifting a finger, and then walked away. And so when she saw that woman's face in this list of people, the face but without the lines, she stopped scrolling.

She looked older here than she had in the security videos. Was this a mother? A sister? There was no name on the file; this one entry had been completely scrubbed, all gone save for the picture.

Days later, when her story had been published, the Feds arrived from off-world. They raided the casino, found the soul processing plant, arrested everyone who hadn't been killed in the heist. And when they opened the vault and checked the systems, no money was missing, nothing valuable had been taken; but there were no souls at all, no minds trapped in computers. Everyone had gone.

Because of course, it had never been a heist, she said to the Federal Agent who interviewed her.

It had always been a rescue.