Chapter 81

The street buzzed with hover-cars threading between quantum-glass towers that refracted sunlight, their engines mixing with the shouts of augmented pedestrians below. Bodies packed the elevated walkways—corp suits with chrome limbs shoulder-to-shoulder with street kids sporting black-market gene mods, all moving beneath the massive atmospheric processors that kept Paris's air cleaner than mountain spring water.

Jacques chomped on his hotdog as Eugene approached, fresh out of the station.

"So? You got it?" he asked, wiping mustard from his chin.

Eugene flashed his phone. "Yeah. Copied it here."

"What's the scoop?"

"Later," he said, waving his hand. "Let's walk and talk."

They fell into step, ducking under floating ad-spheres that tracked their consumer profiles and past the street vendors hawking vat-grown delicacies from self-sterilizing carts.

"Alright, spill it," Jacques prompted, tossing his wrapper in a nearby recycler.