Or tried to slag him.

The cranial bomb had been defective. It had taken Red Wraith to the brink of death. For more than a minute, he had been clinically dead. But fortunately, he'd been in Amsterdam when the bomb was activated. And fortunately, he'd secretly purchased a platinum-class contract with the Hoogovens Groep Clinic. The Daf TraumaVaggon had gotten him to the clinic in time.

The doctors hadn't known who their patient was-all records of the human named Daniel Bogdanovich had been erased long ago from public databases, and, given the cybereyes, retinal scans were not an option anyway. But their patient's credit had been good. And so the cyberdocs did what had to be done to save his life.

Daniel settled in Amsterdam afterward. It was as good a place as any to call home, and the houseboats on the canals provided accommodation that was cheap and private. He didn't venture out much; suffering a spasmodic episode in public was not his idea of a fun time. Instead he spent most of his time in the world of the Matrix, a world in which the icon that was his "body" never failed him. A world in which the encephalon implants they'd used to repair his damaged brain gave him a distinct edge.

He had chosen Red Wraith as his on-line handle and constructed his persona in the image of a particular form of ghost known as a wraith. According to superstition, a wraith was an apparition that took the form of the person whose death it portended. And that pretty much summed up Red Wraith's previous career.

In his role as cyberassassin, his most important asset had been his ability to infiltrate his target's home, headquarters, or place of work. He did this by "becoming" the target through a combination of disguise and technological mimicry. All assassins prepare by acquiring as much information on the target as possible, and Daniel had taken this to the bleeding edge. Into the datasoft link in his skull he slotted not only chips containing the target's personal data, but also chips comparable in function to an activesoft. These contained programs that overrode Daniel's own emotional responses and motor skills, allowing him to precisely duplicate the target's behavioral quirks, speech patterns, and emotional reactions. Like the wraith for which his on-line persona was named, Daniel became a mirror image of his target-an apparition whose arrival portended the target's death.

Part of the function of the headware memory system that accommodated the data from the skillsofts had been to suppress Daniel's own long-term memories, so that he could not give information on his past hits, if apprehended and magically mind-probed. He remembered his current mission-who he was to assassinate, where, and when- but remembered nothing prior to the start of that mission. As for his memories previous to becoming a UCAS assassin, only flashes and fragments remained. He knew that he had been based out of UCAS SEACOM and that he had once lived in Seattle. As for his personality… well, all he had left was the chip he'd slotted on his last job. His own, original personality was like an erased chip, wiped clean by the installation of the datasoft link in his skull.

But fragmentary memories occasionally surfaced. And one of those fragments-the memory of a woman-was what had gotten Daniel through, had given him the will to come back from the brink of death after the cranial bomb nearly killed him.

When the Daf TraumaVaggon team had found him, Daniel was clutching a holopic of her. His mind held equally tightly to the memory fragments of her that remained in his wetware. The memory of her face: high cheekbones and sparkling green eyes framed by auburn hair. Her name: Lydia. Her relationship to him: lover, friend, wife.

But the rest was missing. Daniel had no idea where the pair of them had lived, no idea where Lydia might be today. He desperately wanted to touch the smooth skin of her cheek once more, to stare into the eyes that had once burned with such intense love.

But the only way he was going to do that was if he accessed his old personnel records, found out where she had been living on the day that he'd "died." Seven years had elapsed since then, but there was still a good chance that Lydia was alive, that her current address could be traced once he had her SIN. It wouldn't even matter if she were in a relationship with someone else; if she had forgotten all about him. Red Wraith just wanted to see her one last time…

He'd been preparing for this datarun for seven long years, honing his skills as a decker. Now he was one of the best. And he had reached his goal. Or nearly…

Red Wraith turned his attention to the datastore. It was shaped like a metal ammo box with a large hasp on one side. A marquee of stenciled block letters flowed around the ammo box: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. The analyze utility he'd used on this datastore earlier had triggered the attack by the blaster IC. But it had also alerted Red Wraith to some white IC that he now would be able to deal with.

He clenched his hand in a particular motion and a scalpel appeared in it. Studying the hasp that sealed the ammo box, he slid the blood-lubed blade of the surgical knife into it and turned it slowly, feeling the resistance. The action triggered his cyberdeck's defuse utility, neutralizing the data bomb that was attached to this datafile. The hasp broke apart into pixels that shimmered and disappeared, and the ammo box swung open.

A cyclone of swirling alphanumeric characters rose from the box. Red Wraith triggered his browse program, sought out the file that bore his name. Names spiraled past his eyes, too quickly to read. The As, the Bs…

The cyclone stopped, frozen in place. Paydata! Bogdanovich, Daniel. Red Wraith reached out and seized the name, felt raw data stream through him as the personnel file downloaded into his cyberdeck. Then he released the cyclone. It spiraled downward, neatly compressing itself back into the ammo box. He closed the lid, and the hasp reappeared.

He glanced at the tiny red numbers that logged the amount of time he'd spent on this run: forty-seven seconds; local time 09:46:59. It was time to jack out of here and scan the data he had so painstakingly acquired, to solve the mystery of his past life…

(02:46:15 JST) Jackpoint: Osaka, Japan

Lady Death smiled as she put the finishing touches on her virtual sculpture. The icon that hung in front of her was a perfect duplicate of her own Matrix persona: long, dark hair drawn up in a bun at the back of the head, skin a pure, dead white as if drained of blood, face with red accents on the lips and cheeks. It was dressed in a flowing white kimono-the color of mourning-patterned with glowing red dracoforms.

The image was drawn from kabuki-the overly formal, traditional style of Japanese theater whose feudal tragedies played so well as simsense. Lady Death's icon was that of a woman who had committed shinju-double-lover suicide. Which was both appropriate and ironic…

Satisfied with her high-resolution double, Lady Death sent the icon out into the Matrix. While it dutifully logged onto AS/NIPO-TOK-5673, the telecommunications grid that was home to one of Tokyo's many cramming schools, Lady Death would be elsewhere. The icon was merely part of a mirrors utility that would fool her guardians into thinking she was logged onto the juku. She even had an excuse to explain why she had awakened at the unusual hour of just before three a.m. to study. This was university entrance exams week, and the Osaka telecommunications grid was jammed from five a.m. on. She was just getting an early start to her cramming.

The icon disappeared into a system access node. At the same moment, her cyberdeck's masking program activated, throwing up a shimmering haze that rendered her actual persona almost transparent.