They paused for a moment at the end of one of the tubelike lines, as the rabbit stabbed a finger at an icon shaped like a silver coin. Again they rushed through space, this time through a red field punctuated with a spangling of what looked like three-dimensional corporate logos that hung in the distance like stars. Ahead loomed a huge pagoda surrounded by halos of glowing light, apparently made out of coiled fiber-optic cables that bristled with datajacks. The stuff looked like barbed wire. They rushed toward the pagoda, then stopped abruptly at its base. The rabbit paused, brought its palms together in front of its chest, and did an elegant swan dive that carried it between two strands of wire.

Carla’s perspective suddenly did a flip-flop. Now they were inside what looked like a reception area, Walls, floor, and ceiling were made of chrome. Behind a desk made of a slab of frosted glass, a robotic head hung in mid-air. Its eyes were whirling kaleidoscopes, its mouth a dark oval. Words scrolled across the front of the desk: YOU HAVE ENTERED THE MITSUHAMA COMPUTER TECHNOLOGIES SYSTEM PLEASE ENTER IDENTIFICATION CODE.

The rabbit pulled a key out of its pocket and tossed it at the robotic head. The key slotted neatly into its mouth, turned, and the head dissolved in a sparkle of green light.

The background changed color, becoming a soft green. The sound of rippling water surrounded them. and streaks of darker green seemed to be streaming past. It was as if they stood inside a vertical tube of gently flowing water. Around them, floating in a circle about waist-height, was a ring of icons. The rabbit considered for a millisecond, then reached out and firmly grasped one shaped like a microscope. The icon shimmered.

Suddenly, Carla couldn’t focus properly. Everything around her began breaking apart, dissolving into a soft fuzz of broken squares. Back in the real world, she felt her fingertips start to tingle. And that frightened her. Black ice was designed to attack the decker himself, as well as his hardware. It would also attack his hitchers. But she’d been confident in Corwin’s ability to avoid any intrusion countermeasures they encountered, It seemed she’d made a mistake-possibly a fatal one.

Slowly-too slowly-Carla felt her real-world hand start to drift up toward her head. It moved at a painfully sluggish rate, a millimeter at a time, while her mind was whirling. She had to jack out, had to…

The world refocused. The rabbit was holding up a forefinger. On its tip, a child’s top spun furiously. It seemed to be creating a whirlpool in space that was gradually drawing together the polygons that had earlier been flying apart. At last it stopped. “Nasty,” the rabbit commented to itself. Then it pulled another icon from the pocket at its hip. This one looked like a cluster of numbers, tangled together, each a different primary color. The rabbit threw it at the microscope.

The numbers danced for a moment in the air, then three of them settled onto the microscope icon, sticking to its sides. The other numbers dissolved. At the same instant, Carla had the perception that she was shrinking, moving with great speed. The eyepiece of he microscope loomed in front of her like a huge, round portal-and then they were through.

They floated in a velvety black space. Around them, bobbing gently, were a series of rectangular off-white squares. These were standard file icons-modeled after he old-fashioned pieces of folded cardboard once used to manually store hardcopy. The top of each was marked with a small color bar.

The rabbit pulled out a sewing needle. Its thread was a series of words: LIGHT. SPIRIT. FARAZAD. SAMJI. The rabbit threw the needle like a dart, then watched as it punched its way in and out of the files, piercing each one and drawing the word-thread through it. When it had finished, two smaller file icons hung on the thread between the words. Like the larger files, each was coded with a color bar. The rabbit pulled what looked like a highlighting stylus out of its seemingly bottomless pocket and drew the tip over the bar code of the first file. The blocks of color turned into letters: PROJECT PERSONNEL.

The rabbit looked at Carla. “Upload?” it asked.

Carla nodded.

The rabbit tucked the file into its pocket. Then it used the stylus on the second file. More words appeared: LUCIFER PROJECT.

“Uplo-?”

A sudden flash of white light obliterated everything. Carla had the sensation of tumbling crazily in space. There was nothing to grab onto, no reference points. The entire Matrix and all of its graphic constructs had been instantly obliterated. She spun wildly out of control, knot of icy fear in her stomach. She was falling, drowning in a sea of featureless white, burning in an invisible white flame…

It ended as suddenly as it had begun. Carla was slumped over in her chair in the research department. Beside her, Corwin held the end of the datacord that he’d yanked out of the jack in her temple. His face was an ashen color, and had lost all of its usual cocky expression.

Both of them were breathing hard. For a moment, Carla was frightened that the intrusion countermeasure they’d run into had used a biofeedback loop to accelerate their heart rates out of control. She glanced up at the clock on the wall. Only ten seconds had elapsed since they’d entered the Matrix. It seemed like a lifetime.

“What the frag was that?” she asked. “Some kind ice?”

Corwin shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “It shut down everything in the sector-not just us.”

“Do you think it was-“

“Jus’ a sec,” Corwin cut her off. “I gotta check something.”

He jacked back into the deck and hunched over it, eyes unfocused. As the seconds ticked past, Carla saw his fingers tense once, then relax. Then his mouth dropped open and his breathing quickened. His eyes jerked back and forth rapidly, as if he were rapidly scanning text. Just as Carla was wondering if she should do something, he blinked and pulled the cable from his temple.

“Wow,” he said.

“What?” Carla was bristling with impatience. “What is it?”

“Whatever wiped us wasn’t ice,” Corwin said thoughtfully. “It was more like a virus. I edged back into the Mitsuhama mainframe, just to scan what was rezzin’ there. When I tried to access the research lab files again, guess what I found?”

Carla shrugged. She couldn’t even guess.

“Nada. Zilch. Static. A whole lotta nothing. The datastore for that sector is utterly clean, completely wiped. There wasn’t a single graphics pixel, not a single byte of data. And none of the programs were functional. That system is toasted. Gonzo.”

He paused. “Know what it reminded me of?” he asked.

Carla nodded. This time, she could guess. “The databanks at the U. of W’s School of Theology?”

“Yup. Exactamundo. Same effect exactly.”

“What about the files you uploaded?” Carla asked. “Did you manage to save them?”

Corwin tapped a button on his deck. With a soft whir, a datachip slid out of a slot in the side. “I got the personnel file,” he answered. “But the second file was erased, along with the rest of the lab data. The deck didn’t even have time to upload its name code.”

Carla cursed silently to herself. She’d been so close.

But at least she had a tiny piece of the puzzle now. She had a personnel file that should contain the names of the mages who’d worked on the project with Farazad. The information in their dossiers might give her some leverage during the interviews she hoped to conduct with them. And she also had what had to be the name of the research project: Lucifer.

It was a curious name for what Carla had assumed was a weapons research project. Lucifer was a Latin word that translated as “bringer of light.” It was also the name of the angel who was cast out of heaven and fell to earth in the form of lightning. That part certainly fit. According to the ork girl’s description of the spirit, it had looked like lightning as it launched itself into the heavens away from the body of the wage mage. One big bright flash of light…