“Where are you taking me?” Pita screamed. “Let me out! I don’t have your fragging chip any more!”

The mage stared at her and his dark eyes flared. “Be quiet,” he hissed. “I may not be permitted to damage you, but I can still hurt you.” He raised a hand menacingly, his fingers curled to cast a spell.

Pita fell silent and tried to blink back tears as the car sped away into the morning.

28

Carla stepped into the plush office and automatically panned the room with her cybereye, lining up an establishing the shot. Then she caught herself. There was no point. Mitsuhama's security had forced her to remove the image-storage chip from the camera implanted in her cybereye. The eye still functioned, but the data it captured was not being recorded anywhere. Security had also removed the datachip from the recorder in her ear. They didn’t want Carla to make any record of this meeting.

Trying to hide her discomfort, she made her way to a chair that had been placed in front of a massive hardwood desk and sank into it. On the other side of the desk sat John Chang. His fingers rested lightly on the desk’s polished surface, and he looked completely composed and serene. He was a lean man, with jet black hair, manicured fingernails, and a clean-shaven jaw. He looked as if he worked out, but perhaps that was just the cut of his expensive Volachi suit. His right index finger was decorated with a heavy gold ring that featured a large diamond set into the Mitsuhama logo, and his sleek wristcom was gold-plated. The smell of his aftershave hung in the air.

He regarded Carla coolly, with rock-steady eyes. As she settled herself more comfortably in the chair, he flicked a finger toward the secretary who had ushered Carla in. The woman returned with two cups of tea, bobbed her head in an abbreviated bow as she served them, and left the room.

Carla picked up the tea and sipped at it. Jasmine. Chang was playing a waiting game, trying to set her on edge. Instead Carla half-turned, looking past the holographic models of Mitsuhama’s latest robotics line and through the windows that framed a spectacular view of Lake Washington. The sky was a patchwork of clouds; the sun slanted through the blue spaces between them, painting the lake below with light. Carla stared at the unusual effect. wondering where the spirit was now.

John Chang cleared his throat. He was obviously ready to talk.

“Your producer has informed you of MCT’s most recent acquisition.”

It was a statement rather than a question. Carla nodded slowly, watching Chang’s face. He still hadn’t touched his tea. A wild, irrational thought flew through her mind-maybe the stuff was drugged. But she shook it off. She had already entered the lion’s den and Chang had her at his mercy. There was no need for him to get heavy-handed. Not now that he had those optical chips.

“MCT Seattle will be issuing a brief press release about the purchase of KKRU shortly. Mitsuhama is pleased to get into the local communications industry. It will give our company an opportunity to test some of the new trideo technologies we’ve been developing. It’s a move we’ve been planning to make for some time.”

“Sure,” Carla said. “If you say so.” Her reporter’s training screamed at her to directly challenge this bald lie, but she held her tongue, wanting to see what would come next. She found herself framing Chang, zooming in and out, even though the effort would prove fruitless without her datachips.

“There is a second press release we want to issue,” he said, at last picking up his tea cup and sipping from it. “We’d like to use our latest acquisition-KKRIJ News-to turn it into a news story. I’ve seen your work; it’s excellent. I’ll be asking Gil Greer to assign you to handle it.”

Carla wrinkled her nose. “I don’t write puff pieces,” she said. “If all you want is a press release, why call on me? Any data hack could do it. What do you really want?”

John Chang’s smile vanished. Clearly he was not used to being spoken to so abruptly. He sat forward slightly.

“Since this is an off-the-record conversation,” he said, raising a finger to tap one closed eye, “I will be blunt. I am aware of the story that you recently put together-the one alleging connections between our research facility and the spirit causing system crashes in the Matrix.”

Carla snorted. Alleged indeed! Even with her cybereye chip removed, Chang was still being cautious. “The story that you ordered Greer to spike?”

Chang ignored her barb. “We’d like you to put a slight spin on the story.” he continued. “We’re willing to concede that the spirit was developed by a mage who was formerly in our employ. But his research was not sanctioned by MCT. You will re-edit the story so that it stresses this fact.”

“You and I both know otherwise,” Carla said. “I saw the hermetic circle in your research lab. And the memo that-”

“Both could have been fabricated,” Chang said smoothly. He cocked an eyebrow at her. “It all comes down to your personal credibility, doesn’t it? And we’ve both seen how fragile that credibility can be.”

Carla felt her cheeks start to burn. The bastard had probably enjoyed watching her personal recordings. But she wasn’t going to lose her cool. Not yet.

“You do want to continue working as a trid reporter, don’t you?” Chang asked.

Carla decided to use the only edge she had. “I have information from a well-placed source that Renraku-your competitor-has stolen your spell and is experimenting with it.” She watched for a reaction, but wasn’t really surprised when she didn’t get one. She pressed on. “You can keep a lid on your own researchers, hut not on the competition. Sooner or later-especially if Renraku’s experiments also start chewing up the Matrix-the Crash of 2029 will repeat itself. When it does, nothing can stop the story from getting out. If I don’t cover it, some other reporter will. And when they do, they’ll trace the original spirit that started it all right back to Mitsuhama.”

“Back to Farazad Samji, you mean,” John Chang said in a soft voice. “Thanks to the story you’re going to do.”

He pulled a datachip out of a drawer and slid it across the desk toward Carla. “On this chip you will find a joint statement by myself and Dr. Vanessa Cliber, director of computer operations for the Renraku Arcology. In it, we announce that we have at last discovered the cause of the virus that is currently infecting certain nodes of the Matrix: a spirit, conjured up, regrettably enough, by one of Mitsuhama’s former employees.”

Carla picked up the disk and turned it over in her fingers.

“The mage was working on a private research project during a leave of absence,” Chang continued. “A project that MCT Seattle did not officially sanction. Only when the spirit became free and killed him-and then began attacking the Matrix-did our corporation begin examining the spell that Dr. Samji had created. Because this was a task of such grave public importance, we brought in experts from around the world to work on the project-even those employed by our chief rival, Renraku Computer Systems. It was simply imperative that we find a way to bring the spirit back under control and force it to stay out of the Matrix. And so the two corporations have pooled their personnel and resources in an unprecedented effort to eliminate this threat to the world’s computer and telecommunications systems by banishing the spirit.”

“So that’s what you want me to do,” Carla cut him off. “Paint Farazad Samji as the bad guy, and MCT and Renraku as the crusading knights, riding in to clean up the ‘unsanctioned’ mess he made. Well, it’s not going to fly. You’re going to wind up looking foolish.”

She knew Chang was lying to her. Mitsuhama might try to tell Renraku that they were banishing the spirit, but she was certain the corporation would try to control it instead. If not as a magical means of accessing the Matrix, then as a parabiological weapon. She tried a lie of her own: “Nobody can control that free spirit. You’d be making false promises to the public-and they’ll be angry when it turns out you aren’t able to keep those promises.”