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make way for a member of the Board, time seems to run backward. And of all the moments I could ever want to relive over again, it is not this one. Not even close. I can’t tell if it’s the same Operator who appeared at my front door all those months ago. Maybe, maybe not; it doesn’t matter. The last time I saw one, my world changed forever. He told me it was time to either kill or be killed.
    As a complete, I should be free of the Board.
    They know you used to be a striker.
    He stops when he’s a foot away. Too close.
    Being noticed by a member of the Board is guaranteed to leave someone cringing. I’m no different. They breathe, they move, but any creatures with healthy brain stems will do the same. It doesn’t mean they’re human. More like machines, no longer knowing how to feel.
    I fight the urge to check the nude-colored bandages wrapped around my striker marks—I know my marks are already well hidden. I’d only be drawing attention to them.
    “West Grayer?” His voice is toneless, static.
    The world around me is like a dying lung, expanding, shrinking, spots of dark decay dancing along my vision. From far away, I hear my voice. I sound weak again, just as I did when I first received my assignment.
    “Yes. I’m her.” The words burn a trail in my throat, hurting the way smoke does. I take a deep, shaky breath that does nothing to calm me. “I’m West.”
    He pulls out a Board-issued cell from his suit pocket, taps in something. Repockets it and says, “This way, please.” He turns his back to me and heads toward the car.
    He turns his back to me. An Operator, leaving himself vulnerable to a known striker?
    It would never happen.
    Is it possible they don’t know?
    And then I remember his bright red handkerchief—a Level 3 Operator and not a Level 2. How could I almost forget seeing that? The first twinges of relief let me breathe properly again.
    Though the Board has Alts and completions to keep the system running smoothly, outliers of the system who threaten the city’s safety—such as strikers, such as me —are handled by the Board in a different manner. I’d be a black contract, officially unofficial, and it’s Level 2 tactical Operators who decide which ones call for stealth … and which ones don’t. When cells throughout the city utter a low, gentle purr, sometimes it’s the vibration of an incoming news file informing the people of Kersh that someone has overstepped, not understood that the system is in place for a good reason, and met a nasty end.
    It doesn’t happen often, these official reports of black contracts. Five times in the last three years, and those are just the ones the Board decided they want us to know about. The last one was a woman in her late twenties, an eye surgeon who decided she would offer her skills to Alts wanting to excise their assignment number software from their eyes. She blinded more than forty desperate Alts before Level 2 tactical Operators caught her. Story was, they were aiming for stealth—she had good, if deranged, intentions, so no reason to be insensitive about it—but she ended up jumping off the Fourth Narrows Bridge that divides Calden from Gaslight. So much for stealth.
    Strikers are not known for their good intentions.
    “Wait,” I blurt out to the Operator before I can stop myself. “Why do I have to go? What do you want from me?”
    He stops, turns around. His eyes narrow just the slightest, and it’s next to impossible to make anything out of their depths. Whatever could be there. “ ‘You are hereby summoned, immediately and without further delay, to report to Board headquarters in Leyton Ward to speak with Board representatives.’ ”
    A robot, sheathed in human skin and clothes. I shudder. So not just a strongly worded request, then. But if it’s not because I’m a striker …
    “Is this about a tour?” Even as I’m asking the question, I don’t think that’s it, either. Barring circumstances like illness or injury,