Kellan kept silent as the decker worked. She could imagine Jackie's fingers playing the keys of the cyber-deck like a musical instrument. The collection of symbols began to coalesce into a complex, multidimensional sigil. The sigil collapsed into the shape of a tiny data card, which Jackie passed to the foreman.

He glanced at it, nodded, and began looking through the papers on his clipboard.

A sound from the shadows high above the shipping area caught Kellan's attention. Jackie heard it, too. She glanced up, and Kellan could see a dark, winged shape come flying out of the shadows directly toward them.

"Jackie!" she said.

"I see it, I see it," the decker replied. She gestured, and suddenly her persona was covered in articulated metallic armor of chrome and ivory, from fine gauntlets to a helmet that Kellan could feel around her head, its wide visor allowing almost full normal vision. A slender silver sword appeared just as suddenly in the persona's hand.

The thing swooping down from above was a hideous mix of human and bat, with black, leathery wings stretched between narrow fingerlike bones, a black-furred body, whiplike tail, and a face that looked vaguely human but distorted with rage and hatred. Kellan had seen pictures of creatures like this: it was a harpy, or at least a virtual representation of one.

Jackie dodged to the side, narrowly evading the harpy's slashing claws as a hideous shriek filled the air. She slashed with her sword, but just missed the creature as it flew past, banking around for another pass at them. Jackie glanced at the foreman, who stood calmly shuffling his papers, as if nothing unusual was going on, then focused her attention on the harpy as it closed in for another attack.

"Ha!" she cried, slashing at the black monstrosity, but her battle cry turned into a yelp of pain as the harpy's claws raked across her left arm.

"Ow!" Kellan said as Jackie cursed. She felt that! It was as if a real harpy had cut her arm. Burning pain throbbed along Kellan's upper arm and shoulder. She tried to turn her head to see how bad it was, but it wasn't her head, and she couldn't move it. Jackie was in control of the persona and she was keeping track of the harpy.

"All right, you want to play it that way," Jackie muttered. She grabbed the edge of the white cloak she now wore along with her armor, sweeping it up in front of her with a flourish. The harpy banked sharply as it swooped in for its next attack. Confused, it hesitated for a moment. Then Jackie dropped the cloak and lunged forward, stabbing the thing with her blade. It recoiled with a screech.

Jackie spun and Kellan could see the foreman holding out a small data card. The decker lunged forward again and snatched the card from his hand, triggering a download to her cyberdeck.

"Hang on, Kellan!" she said. "We're out of here!"

They shot out of the room, and suddenly they were standing out in front of the building again. The Cerberus program got to its feet. The bones Jackie left it were nowhere to be seen. It bared its teeth and growled with all three heads, but Jackie just waved at it.

"Sorry, Fido, maybe some other time," she said. Then everything went black.

The light inside the sleep coffin was dim compared to the harsh silver and neon of the Matrix. Kellan blinked a few times and slowly moved her arms and legs, just getting used to the feeling of being able to move of her own volition again. She gingerly reached up and pulled off the trode net. On the other side of the cubical, Jackie sighed and opened her eyes. She reached up to pull the connector from her datajack, letting the inertial reel wind the cable back into the cyberdeck's housing.

"What was that?" Kellan asked Jackie, dropping the trode net on the padding. She reached up and massaged her left arm, where she still felt a twinge of pain. She looked, but saw no sign of injury from the harpy's virtual claws.

"I pushed things too far," the decker replied. "Put the system on internal alert and triggered an ice program. Nothing major, but I didn't want to hang around there and wait for it to get reinforcements."

Kellan shuddered. If that was what Jackie considered minor, she'd hate to see a serious threat in the Matrix.

"Will Ares know:?" she began and Jackie shook her head.

"Don't worry about it. It was just an internal alert. The host system initiated some error checking and security procedures, that's all. It happens a lot, especially with corporate systems, so it's nothing to be concerned about. The system didn't alert anyone on the outside, and I made sure to wipe out all traces of our session when we logged off. So unless somebody goes through the system with a fine-tooth comb, there's no chance Ares will even know we were there."

"What did we get?" Kellan asked, recalling the data card Jackie grabbed right before they logged off.

The decker rolled out the screen of the cyberdeck and tapped a few keys. She shifted to the other side of the coffin so Kellan could see, too.

"Information on one other Ares weapons shipment that got hijacked a few weeks ago," she said. "The incident has been classified internally, but it looks like it was reported to Lone Star."

"That's weird," Kellan said. "Why report it to the cops and then classify it internally? Besides, I thought that Ares didn't like Lone Star?"

Jackie smiled. "Nobody likes Lone Star," she said, "but you've got a point. Ares usually handles this stuff internally. The megacorps have extraterritorial status, which means they're like countries unto themselves, and they take that status very seriously. They like to make noises as if they're cooperating with the local authorities; it makes for good PR, and this might just be more of the same. Except:"

"Except what?"

"The person who classified the earlier theft is none other than our own Simon Brickman."

"Again, why tell outsiders and then classify it internally?"

Jackie shrugged. "Maybe he needs to avoid an investigation from Ares higher-ups."

"Which means he's involved in the disappearance of those weapons."

"Good bet," the decker said.

"And that arms shipment went missing right before G-Dogg said the Spikes started showing up with new weapons," Kellan said, the pieces of the puzzle converging in her mind. "Brickman supplied them from the stolen shipment."

"Could be," Jackie replied. "I think it's interesting that Orion's gang, the Ancients, is currently at war with the Spikes."

"Which means Brickman is playing both sides of the street," Kellan said. "What does he hope to gain?"

"Apart from making a tidy profit from the sale of 'lost' weapons and getting two major gangs to wipe each other out?" Jackie asked. "Does he need another reason?"

"But then why supply both sides?" Kellan asked, and the decker shrugged.

"Double the profit, double the fun," she said. "Whatever his plan, it doesn't look like it affects us."

"What about Orion?" Kellan asked.

"What about him?"

"I think he should know about this."

"Do you really think he'll believe you, with no evidence to tie any of this together?" Jackie asked. "Do you think you owe him something?"

"I just don't like the idea of somebody I worked with getting played like that," she said stubbornly, and the decker couldn't restrain a small smile.

"Then you're in the wrong business, kid," she said.

Kellan bit back a retort. Even though she'd only worked with Orion that one time, he'd saved her life. He watched her back on the run, and she felt like she owed him the same.

"I need you to do one more thing for me, Jackie," she said and the decker raised an eyebrow in curiosity.

"Find out where Orion is."