"I don't understand why she won't talk to me," Beth said, her anger turning to pain. "I've told her to stop by or call anytime. But instead she sneaks off…"

Kyle took a step toward her and gently laid one hand on her shoulder. Beth didn't look up. "She goes to them because-right or wrong-she thinks there's no one else who understands. You read that report I had sent to you. That's exactly the kind of dependence the Universal Brotherhood tried to create in people to keep them vulnerable and believing the Brotherhood was their one and only hope.

"They taught their followers that the government and the corps were never to be trusted, but that's exactly who shut down the Brotherhood and had the leaders thrown into jail. None of the UB members believe any of the official statements that have been given out. They think it's all part of a massive cover-up. And now that all the Brotherhood chapterhouses have been closed, Ellen and the others believe they are all that's left of the Brotherhood."

"I went with her to the government meeting," Beth said. "We both saw the same trideo. How couldn't she believe?"

"Because it really doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense on any level. Ask yourself, why in god's name would the Universal Brotherhood be conducting illegal medical experiments on the homeless? Financially, it makes no sense. Not scientifically either. They didn't have the resources to really do much of anything. That story could have been-and probably was-faked because the corps don't want anyone threatening their hold on things. The Brotherhood was starting to get mighty powerful."

He took her hand. "She thinks she's going to be alone again and doesn't want that to happen. She's not going to shake off their influence easily."

Beth nodded. "I know. I'm just worried she'll do something desperate."

"I doubt it. The Brotherhood taught dependence, not escape." Beth looked up at him with a hesitant smile. "Do you want me to talk to her?" he asked.

"Would you?"

"Of course. My work here shouldn't take up all my time."

She looked visibly relieved. "Thanks, Kyle. It means a lot."

"I know you're worried, but I don't-"

"Daddy!" They both looked up at the childish shout from the other room.

"Yes, honey?" Kyle called back.

"Daddy! I need your help! I'm at the sixth level and the Corrupted Ones keep chopping me in half even though I hit them with the ashes!" From where he was standing Kyle could see his daughter sitting on the couch. She looked frustrated and was madly adjusting the sim-reality glasses on her head, apparently hoping that doing so would somehow help her win the game.

"I'll be right there!" he called out, then said softly to his ex-wife, "Do you think I should have gotten her a doll instead?”

"She'd only have traded it away for the chip."

Kyle laughed. Beth was right. He gave her shoulder a squeeze. "Be right back." He turned toward the living room, but his attention was inexplicably diverted down. It must have been the flicker of motion, the scurrying passage of a small cockroach almost underfoot. Kyle took a step forward to crush it, but the insect darted clear and "behind a cabinet. Kyle wondered idly if he knew a spell that could reach back there and incinerate the bug, but Beth spoke, distracting him again.

"Did you know she wants a datajack implant so she can play the games 'right'?" she said.

"Great Coyote," Kyle said, his fingers unconsciously jumping to the datajack in his own temple that had been implanted only after he'd begun his hermetic studies at Columbia. "She's only eight!"

Beth frowned as Kyle turned and walked off down the hall. "I didn't say I was going to get her one, did I?” she said.

No, maybe not. But Kyle was sure she would. For Christmas, if he knew his ex-wife at all.

A suite had been arranged for him at the Marriott SkyTower down near where 1-57 crossed 103rd Street at the edge of the financial Core, and Kyle had ended up there earlier than he'd expected. Both Natalie and Beth had tired early, and he could see Beth wrestling with her own desires about where she wanted him to stay that night. He'd solved the problem by saying he had an early-morning meeting and some research still to prepare. He'd also wanted to ask if she needed more money, hating the idea of her jacked in a desk at Fuchi America. But she hadn't mentioned money problems, so he resisted the urge to offer. There would be time enough later.

Kyle knew Chicago fairly well, but let the autopilot on the Ford Americar he'd been provided do the driving. Moving through the night, the car took him south from Irving Park Road on the Northside, down a short distance along Lake Shore Drive, past me rows of ritzy lakeside developments mat barely hid the blight of the sprawl stretching to the west. Traffic was light, and except for the fly-over of a police helicopter, its lights blazing and clearly illuminating the Eagle Security logo on the side, uneventful.

At North Avenue, the view changed as the Drive wove itself along the eastern edge of what had come to be known as the Noose. Victim to the migration of Chicago's economic heart to the south side after the fall of the IBM Building in 2039, the area was a mecca for the city's criminals and underclass. Kyle turned away to watch the faintly rippling waters of Lake Michigan, not looking west again until the Drive crossed the Chicago River.

There, in the now black and dead former heart of the city, he could just barely make out the Shattergraves area among the rubble of the hundreds of buildings destroyed or burned when terrorists had demolished the IBM Building following the anti-metahuman Night of Rage. Even more than the Noose, the Shattergraves was ungoverned and left to rot. Few lived there, for not many could retain their sanity against the thousands of ghosts and lost souls that haunted those broken, deserted streets. Still, small fires and other lights were visible in the area flanking the river. Despite the horror of the place, some apparently called it home.

The Noose continued past the Shattergraves, but now the near horizon was dominated by the new corporate towers of the transplanted Downtown area. The car continued on to the end of the Drive at 67th Street-and then continued down Stony Island Avenue to 103rd. There it turned right and approached me northern edge of the corporate Core.

The sleek corporate vehicle in which he rode traveled unrestricted into the area of chrome, steel, and glass. Here and there, Kyle saw a local vehicle being checked out by Eagle Security, but everyone knew better than to delay a car bearing the ID tags this one had. Truman Technologies was the Chicago corporation, and even the police were smart enough not to play games with them. Perhaps the biggest non-multinational corporation in the United Canadian and American States, Truman Technologies all but dominated segments of the mega-nuyen entertainment industry. It produced, marketed, distributed, and sold the technology for the truer-than-life sensory-encoded simsense chips that had replaced CD-video decades earlier. In Chicago, there were few more powerful than Daniel Truman and his corporation.

Kyle's room on the ninety-second floor of the Marriott was high enough to give him a view of the lakeside campus of the University of Chicago near where Lake Shore Drive ended. He could also see the mist-shrouded lights of Elemental Hall, the corporate-sponsored metaphysical research park half a kilometer offshore from the University. Though Kyle had a standing invitation from a former classmate at Columbia to visit the Hall anytime, he wasn't sure whether he'd take him up on the offer. The idea of visiting Elemental Hall was more man intriguing, and he would certainly profit from a grand tour of the U of C's metamagical and conjuring facilities, but Kyle wasn't that anxious to renew his former classmate's acquaintance. He'd decide later. There'd be plenty of time.