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go to the Drifts.
    As the hunger for vengeance raged through her, she opened her eyes and saw a darkened world. Her face upturned toward the moon and she reveled in it, giving way momentarily to the violence before she caged it again.
    Kayla glanced at her mage-tech wrist transmitter and frowned; looking over the coordinates she’d been given. These look wrong. She punched a few buttons and brought up a holo-map in the air in front of her She traced the path with her finger. The directions didn’t seem to lead anywhere, but then it had been so long since she’d entered the Drifts that she didn’t know for sure. She powered down the screen and thumped her palm lightly against her leg.
    “Come, Roo. I don’t like this.”
    He whimpered as he kept pace.
    Kayla hit her hand against a wall in frustration; she felt it give. The ward’s slime coated her hand while the building tried to swallow it. She yanked back, shaking her head at her own stupidity, knowing better than to touch the buildings in this place. Flinging the slime from her hand, she felt in her pocket and activated one of her charms to protect her from hungry boundary wards. The charm she chose, illegal nowadays, rendered her signature invisible.
    “How could I have been so stupid?” she lamented as she stumbled into yet another dead end alley. Roo whined, growling at shadows, uneasy as howls filled the night.
    Kayla paused at the opening to an alley and brought up her wrist unit. The map didn’t seem right.
    “Recall previous data.”
    The map flickered and went dark. A static roar filled her mind. She dropped to her knees, clenching her head. Staring at the unit, she realized the sounds weren’t coming from it.
    Her hand wearing the wrist unit moved without conscious thought as it reached into her pocket, fingering the bag she’d gotten from Keaton. A numbing sensation crawled up her arm. Pulling it out, she held the bag in her hand, but couldn’t feel it.
    Her other hand took the bag and the tingling numbness spread up her left arm. She tried to fling the bag away, but it didn’t move. She couldn’t stop her hands from working open the knots. Her mind screamed in denial. She’d never opened a client’s package before. Her rep would be ruined. Her rep was all she had.
    Her arms brought the contents of the pouch into her field of vision. She studied them in numb fascination as visions exploded into her mind, uncontrolled. Slumping against the wall, Kayla tried to focus, striving to see, as her third eye blasted open, followed by searing pain that shot throughout her body.
    She vomited and clung to the wall, unable to control her convulsing body. The small pouch slipped through her fingers, forgotten. She didn’t know how much time passed before her equilibrium returned. At the edge of her awareness, she felt Roo lying near her.
    The light in her mind dimmed, but not the memories. Haunting images of herself doing things she had no memory of seemed familiar. She searched the memories and came upon something elusive, something that hadn’t been revealed. Unsteady, she took a deep breath and pulled herself into a sitting position. She dragged her hands down her face, using the back of one to wipe the vomit from her mouth.
    Kayla regained control of her body. Fearing what she didn’t understand, she reached out tentative fingers towards the pouch. She forced her hand to close around the vile thing; fearful it would open again, and slipped the pouch back into her pocket, vowing not to take it out before she reached her destination.
    She had the feeling she’d been set up. She just needed to finish the run and get the hell out of town before Keaton put a bounty on her head for violating her contract. Though she had charms to protect her against compulsion spells, they were old and ineffective.
    Kayla slid up the wall, leaning heavily against it. The night seemed darker from a moment ago. How long had she been in the trance, she wondered — a second? An