Serrin returned to his room and started filing his report on the laptop. He checked through his diary and noted every time and place he’d been, letting his employers know they’d got overtime and value for money. He knew he still needed to run checks on the Optical Neotech guys at some point, but that could wait. For now.

If Rutger had spiked the Johnson’s drink, the man was showing no appreciable effect of it. He was a New Yorker, a hard guy from the Rotten Apple, and he had briefed her quickly and concisely, with an answer prepared for every query Francesca could muster. But there was just one possible slip in the fifty-minute workout that had intrigued her.

“I must emphasize that my client’s interest in this matter is confined to the seeding of the target’s system with the corrosive. It is entirely possible that you may encounter an unfriendly operative once in the system. Under such circumstances your contract permits you to withdraw from hostilities if you are endangered, and we add the proviso that under no circumstances are you to enter any other system."

She pondered that one over breakfast the next morning, which was Saturday. The job would pay well, as befitted the task. Being a freelance security consultant was a discreet cover for her. To those in the know, it said, I bust systems open as well as test them.

This one was a bust. Someone wanted a nasty corrosive virus dumped into the computer system of a Fuchi subsidiary. The virus came in its own autodegrading chip; any attempt to do anything other than download it into its predestined target would melt the cyberdeck into which the chip was loaded. She hadn’t paid all that money for a Cyber-6 to have a melting chip rakk it up, and she wasn’t going to take too close a look at the thing. Thirty-five thousand nuyen were also a slamming good reason not to fool around.

Get this one right, Francesca, and the employer could become a gravy train. This could be holidays in Sri Lanka until the gray hairs started sprouting.

"I wonder why he said that, though, Annie.” As usual Francesca had asked her friend to be nearby in case the IC got nasty and she needed someone to take care of her after getting dumped, or worse. It had happened before, just once, when she’d foolishly strayed into the black IC of that Edinburgh system. On that occasion Annie had been able to give her the kiss of life in time.

“Who knows? Just do the job, honey.” Annie sprawled her six-foot length over the leather sofa, stretching her legs-and she did have fabulous legs, long and lean and muscular. If all went well now they might celebrate by going out on the town tonight. Francesca the blonde in black, Annie the brunette encasing herself in something white, tight, and very, very inadequate to the purpose. They didn’t ask too much about each other’s lives, speaking of their relationships with the flippancy more common to men talking about women, but it worked at that level. They didn’t talk much about their work, either. Francesca needed to keep quiet about what she did, while Annie proclaimed herself a model. Francesca knew what that meant, though. If Annie’s hard edge didn’t give her away, the high rents she had to pay on her flat around the corner did. But they shared a certain wary mutual respect and unspoken trust. Each knew the other was someone she wouldn’t regret having as a companion while getting far too drunk. That counted for a lot.

Francesca’s thoughts turned back to the run. The priorities for this job were different from her last. No subtleties needed here; it was bod mode all the way and the most vicious attack program she could muster. She wasn’t as happy with the attack stuff as she could have been. She’d gotten it with area-effect rather than high-penetration, thinking the shotgun approach was best when she couldn’t be sure what the Fuchi boys would have built in. Still, the Filipino armor program she’d hawked from Paris looked as if it was good enough to buy her the extra time and defense she’d need when up against the heavy IC. She also had a reliable medic program to keep the MPCP rolling when the guano hit the fan; that venerable utility had done yeoman work for at least the last couple of years.

The key to it all was programming the smartframe. She was going to use it as a decoy, she decided, rather than to cover her butt as a defense back-up. That meant she’d have to program it with instructions to confuse, detour, delay, and generally frag with anything she might encounter while dumping the virus into the Fuchi system. She’d contemplated exploring the system in sensor mode, trying to learn what she could in order to better instruct the frame, but then thought better of it. One mistake could place the system on alert, and she wasn’t about to hand out any advance warnings.

Chewing her lip, Francesca keyed in the instruction codes. When in doubt, she figured, nuke the bastards and shoot ‘em when they glow in the dark. Let’s bust through to the CPU and frag anything else.

The adrenaline was pouring through her veins now. Second-guessing Fuchi’s strategies, she used her experience and skills to anticipate what she might find, allowing for just a bit of the smartframe’s capacity for contingency programming. She flew as high as a kite, and by three in the afternoon the cyberdeck was humming. Francesca jacked in to her deck and entered the Matrix.

Optical Neotech, here I come. You are about to get squared.

The resistance was just what she’d expected. She’d battered through the IC, the frame smoking her from one crucial attack, and then she’d downloaded the virus into the CPU. She was thinking that was the safest bet when the thing suddenly appeared in the glowing world of cyberspace as a reptilian worm with the head of a moray eel, a really evil-looking beast. It snarled at her, spat hatred, and began gorging itself on subsystems. The IC began to weaken around her, its force diminishing as it faded and dislocated, fragmenting in a burst of nothingness.

The corporate decker had been there, of course, a multi-armed Kali whirling shortswords and dripping venom from his blades. Flashy, but strictly the mark of a wage slave aiming to intimidate rather than wielding true threat. Admittedly, she’d also chosen flashiness, her laser-firing chainsaw ripping arcs of blue light across the distance, blinding and driving away the assault.

Francesca was headed out of the system when she saw the ghostly figure from her last run floating off toward the SAN. The cloaked figure carried a bag, and her pulse and endocrines went through the roof when she saw him. Whatcha got in the bag, Faceless? You wanna fight for it?

She hammered toward him through a blur of abstract space, exiting the system and downlining past another SAN, not caring which system she’d entered. She switched to attack mode, too full of herself to register the menace he presented.

The cloaked figure turned to face her oncoming rush, and as he did so he opened his bag. Inside were surgical instruments: vicious pincers, blades, saws, and a long, dreadful, ivory-handled scalpel. Taking this last instrument in his taloned hand, he swiped at her.

Francesca panicked, desperately trying to dive into the SAN and escape the maniac. She was paralyzed and he knew it. This time he had a face; a terrible, fleshy, contoiled grimace suffused with madness and hatred. His visage expanded into a ghastly rictus as he pocketed the scalpel for later use and reached out with his hands, grasping for her throat.

Whore!

She felt the word expand out of the persona, an insult spat like venom from the deepest reaches of whatever elemental madness seemed to possess the thing. She felt warm hands close around her throat, felt her limbs jerking spasmodically as he strangled the life out of her, felt his hot animal breath on her face as his eyes bore into her soul. She choked as her heart pumped frantically, her hands scrabbling ineffectually at his hideous face, her screams silent as her windpipe ruptured and the world was shredded black.