For the first time in a long time I felt my muscles start to relax. I was among professionals. I could feel the "vibes," and I recognized them. I knew Argent, the sole surviving street op from the late, lamented Wrecking Crew, would feel very much at home here.

And as I relaxed, my brain finally acknowledged various physical signals that parts of my body had been sending for some time. I glanced over at Kat, suddenly a touch embarrassed. "Where's the… um, the…" She chuckled and pointed.

That part of the ops facility was sophisticated, too. I took care of immediate needs and did a little damage-control on my appearance before I re-emerged.

Another member of the team-so I assumed, at least- was waiting to use the facilities. Yet another ork, yet again with a Polynesian cast to his features. His large eyes narrowed when he saw me-suddenly encountering a stranger in a place like this was probably as disconcerting as catching an unidentified tourist using your drekker at home-but then I saw understanding dawn. I stepped aside to let him into the facilities…

But he didn't go, not immethately. "You were with Scott, huh?" he asked me without preamble. His voice sounded like a bunch of rocks in the hubcap of a moving car.

I hesitated, men, "Yeah," I admitted slowly.

"How'd he go out?"

I glanced over toward the briefing table, where Moko and Kat were, for guidance. But they were deep in conversation with each other. I shrugged and said, "Belly-bomb, I think."

"Yeah, but he got the oyabun first, huh?"

"He did that," I confirmed.

The ork smiled. "Good. He did it up right, then, the way he wanted to go out." And he strode past me into the drekker.

I blinked in surprise at the closed door. That certainly hadn't been the reaction I was expecting. I didn't get any time to think about it right then, though, as Kat called, "Hoi!" and beckoned me over.

A third figure had joined them at the table by the time I'd crossed the open floor. Hawai'ian or Polynesian or whatever in coloration, but this one was an elf, complete with the pointed ears and almond eyes. (For the first time, I realized just how few elves I'd seen here in Hawai'i.) Apart from the coloration, he wouldn't have looked out of place in Seattle… or in Cheyenne, for that matter. Instead of what I'd mentally labeled as "tropical adventure gear," he was wearing close-fitting black leathers bedecked with a fashionable assortment of chains, studs, and plates. His quasi-Mohawk coiffure left his forehead and temples bare, and three datajacks and a chipslot glinted in the overhead lights.

Kat indicated the elf. "Poki," she told me. I nodded a greeting. The elf just looked right through me, too chill to even acknowledge my existence. Like all too many elves, I added mentally.

"I hear from Marky you got a chip you need decrypted, huh?" Kat said.

I hesitated for a moment. Then-this was what I'd been looking for, wasn't it?-I reached into my pocket and pulled the chip carrier out. I slid it across the tabletop to Poki.

He picked it up, again not acknowledging my presence. It was Kat he asked, "What's the scan?"

"Seventy-bit public-key," I told him.

That got him to actually look at me rather than through me. "Yeah?" He grinned, a real predatory expression on his thin face. "Meat for the beast, hoa. By when?"

"Soonest." Kat and I spoke the word almost simultaneously.

The elf picked up the chip carrier. "When are you going to get me something tough!" he asked Kat with a decidedly evil chuckle. And with that he strode over toward the computer corner.

For the next six hours I sat in a corner well out of the way and watched the shadow team-if they had a name, they (predictably) hadn't told me-go about their biz. Poki, the elf decker, spent all that time hunched over his computers, singing tunelessly along to some three-year-old shag rock fed directly into one of his secondary datajacks. The others… well, they did "shadowrunner stuff." The ork I'd met outside the drekker-his name was Zack, I'd learned-was the team's equivalent of a gunnery sergeant, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy his job of stripping down and cleaning some of the lethal-looking weapons in the team's arsenal. A Chinese dwarf-I never caught her name-helped him from time to time, occasionally going over to Poki and giving him a deep shoulder massage as he worked. Moko slept most of the time away, sprawled in a net hammock hung between too support pillars. Kat and another female ork-Beta, Kat called her-had networked a couple of pocket 'puters together and seemed to be doing administrative datawork. (I'd never really thought about it, but I guess even shadow teams can't avoid that joyless task.)

Of the seven people in the sprawling ops room, only I had nothing to do, assuming that Moko's current assignment was catching up on his zees. I've never handled down-time all that well, particularly when I've basically put my life in the hands of people I don't really know. The wait should have given me time to think things through, to come to some significant conclusions, but my brain just wasn't up to incisive analytical thinking at the moment. I couldn't stop my mind from churning; I couldn't stop my thoughts from running around and around in the same, well-worn track. I wished I could sleep, but I knew that wasn't in the cards.

About four hours in a receiver in the team's commo suite chirruped. Beta hurried over and slipped a hushphone head-set on. I could see her lips move as she subvocalized, but I couldn't hear squat of either incoming or outgoing communication. After a minute or two she set the headset down and came over to Kat. Beta glanced in my direction before she spoke, but I'd already made sure I was staring blankly into space, quite obviously paying no attention to the proceedings. I quieted my breathing, trying to hear everything I could and momentarily wished for cyberears and enhanced peripheral vision.

"It's him," I head Beta say.

"Neheka?"

Beta shook her head. "The big'worm," she corrected. (Or that's what I thought she said, at least. It could just as well have been "the bookworm" or "the big word," or even "the bakeware," really…) Whatever it was Beta had said, it was enough to break Kat away from her datawork and send her hurrying over to the hushphone. That piece of hardware did its usual fine job of work, and I couldn't make out a single syllable of the conversation, which lasted more than five minutes.

When Kat was done and had terminated the circuit, I watched her expression and body language out the corner of my eye as she walked back to the briefing table and the networked 'puters. Nothing meaningful; maybe Hawai'ians have their own body language as well.

It was something like two hours after the conversation with "the bakeware" that Poki let out a creditable rebel yell. I was on my feet in an instant and hurrying over to him. Kat got there before me, though-chipped? I wondered-and it was to her that the elf decker announced, "Got it."

"Yeah?"

Poki smiled nastily at my skepticism and told me, "Hey, slot, seventy-bit's old news. Where you been anyway?"

I shook my head, isn't there anything that doesn't change so fragging fast you can't keep up? The elf had sliced a corporate code in less than a fragging quarter of the time I'd expected. Whatever is the world coming to, etcetera etcetera drekcetera. I held out my hand for the chip, but the decker just pointed to a high-res data display.

I shot a meaningful look at Kat, and she picked up on it right away. "Got a couple of ticks to check my 'puter's memory, Poki?" she asked. 'Think I might have picked up a virus."

The decker looked absolutely scandalized for a moment, and he opened his mouth to bag about it. But then he saw the hard edge in Kat's eyes, swallowed his kvetching, and nodded. (I'd already scanned that Kat had the juice in this outfit, but it was nice to get a little confirmation.)