The music ended and Jack and I stopped dancing. She'd had to drag me out onto the floor; I'm not a very good dancer and I know it, so I generally avoid doing it. Jack checked her watch and nodded at me. As the next song started, I (gratefully) followed Jack off the dance floor and over to the corner table where Max and Joe waited.

"It's time," Jack said, still somewhat breathless from her dancing.

Max nodded, and he and Joe rose from their chairs. We filed out of the blue-lit nightclub into the more brightly lit main corridor of the 'plex. It was a quick walk back up to the parking garage, though we discovered when we got out onto the marketplace that it was still raining.

When we rounded the corner and reached a point where we could see the Tank, we made another discovery. There were a half- dozen people loitering around the big Suburban, all human, and all dressed in black leathers with the black naga outlined in red on their shoulders. As we approached, one swung himself down to the ground from the Tank's hood, where he had been lying with his back against the windshield.

"This must be our little puppies now," he said, grinning. "The dwarf, the troll, the human... and the elf babe."

Jack tensed, her hands curling into fists. Joe stepped forward, bristling. "Who th' hell are you and what're ya doin' on my fraggin' car?"

The Naga grinned even more widely, hooking his thumbs through his belt loops as he looked down at the dwarf. "I'm Smiley Chinov, and I'm personal loo-tenant to Spawn, boss of the Black Nagas. An' these here are some of the Nagas."

As he spoke, the Nagas moved into more prepared stances.

"The boss sent us," Smiley continued, "because you screwed with a certain in-div-id-ual under our protection, and he'd like to invite you to talk to him about it."

"I think we'll have to respectfully decline his invitation," Max stated.

"You haven't a choice in the matter," Smiley grinned, and began to make a gesture. The Nagas all reached for weapons. Max must have revved his nerve-wires, to judge by the impossible speed with which he moved. He had his shotgun out and pointed before any of the Nagas had their hands on their weapons. He fired, catching the Naga immediately to Smiley's right full in the chest, then pivoted, working the receiver and firing again, awarding the Naga on Smiley's opposite side a slug in the heart, all before either the body or the empty cartridge produced by his first shot struck the ground. Smiley wasn't smiling any more - his expression was now one of shock and surprise.

One of the Nagas had his gun out by then, a nasty-looking machine pistol, an Uzi, I think. I shot him, not having realized until that moment that I had my gun in my hand. My bullet hit him in the shoulder, spinning him halfway around just as he pulled the trigger. Ricochets whined off concrete and steel as his gun went off, spraying lead randomly around the garage. One of the Nagas, braver or stupider than the rest, jumped Max, a machete or something similar in his hand. Max dropped his shotgun in the process of warding off the first blow, so he resorted to punching the Naga. I heard ribs crack, but it didn't seem to faze the Naga; he raised his machete for another blow.

A fiery beam lanced out from Jack's wand towards where Smiley stood, unmoving, in apparent shock. Instead of the wave of heat that Jack's spell had produced before, the beam splashed into a shell around Smiley and flowed away into the ground in a red wave. The attack on him seemed to jolt Smiley out of his daze; his hands darted inside his coat, coming out with a pair of revolvers.

The Naga I'd shot rolled into a sitting position, levering his machine pistol towards me, one-handed. I shot him again, right between the eyes, this time. Another Naga hit me from the side, grabbing at my gun. I let him take it, spinning far enough away to draw my sword from under my coat. As he quickly reversed my gun and pointed it at me, I lashed out with my blade, striking him in the wrist. My blow ruined his aim, and probably severed tendons, making it impossible for him to pull the trigger. As my little pistol tumbled to the ground, I heard a shot and looked away to see Max's assailant hit the ground, and Joe standing over him, his Ruger smoking in his hand.

Jack leaped forward, slamming shoulder-first into Smiley's chest. He fell, his revolvers going skittering across the concrete floor. Jack rolled and came back to her feet. Smiley quickly rolled back onto his feet, one hand reaching out to grab Jack's arm while the other drew a long knife from his boot. As his fingers closed around Jack's denim-covered arm, a fat blue spark leaped from her to his hand. He cried out and jerked his hand back. Jack's hand came out from underneath her coat, lashing out to strike him across the face with something metallic - the butt of her flechette gun, I realized. He went down again, the knife spinning out of his hand.

Smiley and my opponent were the only Nagas still moving, and all the fight seemed to have gone out of my Naga. I grabbed his arm and shoved him roughly towards Max. Max saw him stumble towards him and punched him neatly in the jaw, sending him to the ground, unconscious. Jack had Smiley on the ground, one knee planted firmly in the middle of his chest. The muzzle of the Viper rested lightly on the bridge of his nose.

"So, Mr. Chinov," Jack said, "would you care to tell us exactly why you were lying in wait for us?"

Chinov swallowed. "Just... um, just orders, you know. Nothing personal."

"Who ordered you, and why?"

"Well, the boss. Spawn. Said you'd screwed with someone who pays for our protection. Guy called Hank Sugerman."

Jack sighed. "I thought the little rat was smarter than that. Maybe I will have to cut his tongue out." She turned her attention back to Smiley. "I want you to go back and tell your boss that we appreciate his attention, but what we might say to Hank the Ratboy is none of his business."

She started to get up, then stopped and added, "Oh, one more thing." Her eyes unfocused for a moment, and she reached forward, seeming to grasp a small object at Smiley's throat, though I didn't see anything there. "I'll be taking this," she told Smiley, going through the motion of pulling something off over his head. As her hand moved away from him, there was a crackle of blue sparks and an object appeared in her hand - a shark tooth set in gold on a leather thong.

Jack got to her feet and waved the Viper at Smiley. "Get out of here," she ordered. Smiley stumbled to his feet and obliged, backing hurriedly towards the exit.

"I think we should be goin', too," Joe suggested, judiciously, "before th' cops show up."

The rest of us nodded agreement and piled into the Tank. Joe jacked in and backed out of the space, moving slowly and carefully to avoid bodies. We went over one without disturbing it, thanks to the Tank's high ground clearance and wide-set wheels. Then we were moving through the garage towards the exit, to the accompaniment of the regular whang, whang of the Tank's antenna against the concrete rafters. As we neared the exit, Joe began to slow to move in close to the credstick reader.

"Um, Joe," I said, "I don't think we want to slot out. No point in informing the cops that we left right after that mess happened."

"Right," Joe answered, tersely, and gunned the engine.

The barrier splintered under the impact of the Tank's ramplate, bits of wood and aluminum flying. Joe took the Tank into a wide left onto South Winooski, which was, thankfully, empty. He let the big Suburban slow as we neared the intersection with Pearl Street, so we were moving at a normal speed when we turned into traffic going up Pearl.

"I'm gonna take th' long way t' King Street, t' make sure no one's followin' us," Joe said.

No one objected.

As we rode, I remembered something. "Jack," I asked, "what was that thing you took from Chinov?"

"What? Oh," she replied, drawing the pendant from her pocket and holding it up so I could see it. "It's a talisman, the spell focus for his shield spell. Or it was, anyway. The spell was broken when it left the person it was bonded to."

"Oh," I replied. "Why?"

Jack opened her mouth, stopped, and looked thoughtful. "I don't know," she answered. "Maybe because it needs... no, that can't be it. Hmm... I don't know," she repeated, and shrugged.

"If it's useless now, why'd you take it?"

"Well, it isn't really useless," she replied. "It could be enchanted again... it's still a decent quality piece of arcana. A Shark shaman would probably pay good money for a talisman like this. Besides," she added, flashing me a crooked grin, "we can't have shield foci strong enough to absorb my hellblasts floating around."

"Hellblast?" I mused. "Is that what you call that laser spell?" At her nod, I added, "Appropriate," as I remembered, with a shudder, what it had done to the Chameleon. "Why didn't the shield stop your second spell?"

"Chinov was stupid enough to get close enough to grab me. That put me inside the radius of his shield." Jack shrugged. "So I zapped him."

I nodded, judging Jack's explanation to make sense. We rode in silence for a little while, then Jack suddenly burst out laughing. I looked at her, startled, and asked, "What is it?"

"We really ought to stay out of parking garages," she said, grinning.

"Why?" I asked, then said, "Oh," as I realized that we'd been attacked twice so far in parking garages. "You need to quit making enemies of people who hang around in parking garages," I told Jack.

"Me? Make enemies?" Jack pretended to take offense at the very suggestion.

"Well, you were the one who threatened to cut out Hank's tongue," I observed.

"Children," Joe called back, "stop bickerin'. We're almost there."

Jack and I both made innocent looks, then grinned at each other. Joe pulled over to the side of Pine Street, just around the corner from the Chameleon's apartment. "Okay," Joe said, "everyone know th' plan?"

Max and I nodded. Jack inquired, "Why do we bother having a plan? We haven't done anything according to plan since we started this run."

"We have to have a plan," I told Jack, "so that we know what we're deviating from."

She shrugged. "Makes sense," she said. "Max, are you ready to... Max, you're bleeding!"

Max glanced down at the slowly growing red stain on the shoulder of his white jacket. "It's nothing," he said. "A mere scratch. I got nicked by a ricochet from that machine pistol."

"Well, if you're sure you're okay..." Jack said, uncertainly.

Max waved a hand in the air. "There's more damage to my jacket than to my arm. Please, don't concern yourself."

"Can ya still do th' scoutin'?" Joe asked.

"Of a certainty," Max replied. "Tom, could you hand me my Enfield and my duster?"

I reached into the back, quickly undid a pair of wing nuts, and lifted the Enfield from the rack. I handed it forward to Max, then scooped up Max's long, tan coat from its usual place in a corner of the cargo bay. It was stiff and heavy, and I realized that Max had added armor plates to it somewhere along the line. I passed that forward to him as well. Max opened the door and climbed out, pulled on his duster, and then tucked the shotgun away under his coat. In the darkness, the duster did a reasonably good job of hiding both the bloodstain and the automatic weapon, though anyone looking closely would be able to see the lump produced by the Enfield's drum magazine. Max turned the collar of his coat up against the rain, closed the door of the Tank, and walked away, around the corner and down King Street.

Jack, Joe, and I waited silently in the dark for what seemed like forever before Max reappeared in the pool of light under the streetlight on the corner on far side of King Street. He signaled towards us, then leaned back against the light pole, his left hand on the bulge produced by the magazine, his right conspicuously not sliding inside his coat.

"Okay, go," Joe whispered. "I'll keep th' getaway car warm."

Jack opened her door and slid out onto the sidewalk. I followed immediately behind her. We slipped through the back yard of the house next door to the Chameleon's and over to 42 King Street. There was a screened-in porch on the back of the house, the back door of which had a piece of yellow tape across it reading, "CRIME SCENE: BURL. SEC. ONLY". There was a police issue maglock box bridging the seam between door and frame.

"Keep out, this means you," Jack whispered.

I stifled a chuckle and, still grinning, stepped over to the window next to the door. I drew my sword, and, with a single thrust and slash, cut the bottom edge of the screen free from its frame. I wiped droplets of rainwater from the blade of my sword, ignored the new, equally large drops that landed while I was doing so, and replaced my sword. I reached through the slit, undid the screen latches, and slid the screen up as quietly as possible. Jack stepped forward - we'd agreed that she was to go first, because her elven eyes would be better than my merely human ones in an unlit building - and I gave her a boost through the window. She was lighter than I'd expected.

She moved away from the window for a minute, barely visible as a pale shape moving in the darkness as she checked out the room, then came back to the window and helped me through. I slid to the floor, the wet rubber of my boot soles squeaking on the floorboards. Jack and I both winced at the sound, though it was hardly loud enough to carry beyond the porch. The porch was empty except for a battered couch and a rocking chair, both of which I managed to avoid tripping over. Jack led the way through an open doorway into the next room.

It appeared to be the living room, to judge by the overstuffed furniture that was scattered around. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was able to pick out the shape of the telecom wall unit.

"Telecom," Jack whispered.

"I see it," I whispered back. "Now where's his computer?"

Jack poked her head through one of the room's two doorways, then pulled it back out and shook her head. "Kitchen," she informed me. She moved to the other doorway and stepped through. "Ah, bingo," her quiet voice came back.

"Found it?" I asked, quietly.

"Looks like it," she replied. "I take the computer, you take the telecom, right?"

"Right," I nodded, turning to the wall panel that held the 'com unit. I pulled my deck out, but, instead of jacking it into the port on the front of the unit, I opened an access panel and plugged the Zenith in inside.

When I regained my bearings after the shift in reality, I took a quick glance around. There wasn't much to see. This part of the 'com was for practical purposes, not for looking at. It monitored the activity of the 'com's Matrix access port, among other things, though it wasn't itself accessible from the Matrix. A lot of the electronics that were packed into a cyberdeck went to fooling this portion of a telecom to avoid having access logged.

I began to use my deck to interrogate the telecom's internal memory, pulling up data as fast as my available bandwidth allowed. When I was done, I quickly scanned through it. As I checked the last item, I was filled with a sudden urge to kick something. There was nothing there. Well, there was line after line of calls, to and from dozens of different addresses, but the one we were after, along with several others, were gone. The telecom had recorded the fact that the port had been in use, and for how long, but no address existed for the source. It didn't even tell whether it had been a call to or a call from. I cursed under my breath and jacked out.

The disorientation wasn't as bad as usual; evidently the transition from a mostly dark node to a mostly dark room helped. I disconnected my deck from the 'com's innards and closed the access panel again, then went to find Jack. She was in what appeared to be the bedroom, sitting in a swivel chair in front of an old desk, jacked into the big old boat-anchor of a computer resting on it. I waited patiently and quietly for her to finish.

At last, she jacked out. Her eyes opened, she blinked several times, as if adjusting to the light, then said, "I got it."

"You...?" I began to inquire.

"I fragging found it." Her voice held a note of triumph this time. "CeNYDEx. The Central New York Data Exchange. They hired him for the snatch and seem to be the ones that have been concealing his business calls for him. He's got everything on every one of his runs hidden in this thing. There's a whole mess of files that purport to be the records for his cover job as a consulting something-or-other, but the real records were hidden among them." She grinned broadly. "I got them all. Downloaded them into my headware memory and my deck."

"Time to go, then?" I asked.

She nodded, switched the computer off, pocketed her deck, and got up. We retraced our path out through the porch window, which Jack closed behind us.

As we slipped out of the back yard and out onto the sidewalk, I heard approaching motorcycle engines and a shouted, "There they are!"

"Oh, drek," Jack commented. We both turned to see a string of bikes approaching, each rider wearing the Black Naga colors. One of them was Smiley Chinov.

"Fraggit. They're between us and the Tank," I observed.

The Naga bikers pulled into a circle and dismounted, eying us with an air of practiced threat. Max, across the street, moved into a more prepared pose. One of the Nagas, bigger than any of the other humans, called, "You must be the chummers who declined my polite invitation." He turned to the three who seemed to be his lieutenants - an ork, a troll, and Smiley. "Whaddaya think, should we kill 'em?"

The troll nodded vigorously, a silly grin on his face. "Kill'm, Spawn!" the ork shouted. Chinov nodded slowly, glaring grimly at Jack all the while.

I suddenly realized that there were more motorcycle engines coming up King Street. We didn't stand a chance. There were more than a dozen of them, and more coming. Spawn began to open his mouth, presumably to give the order to kill us.

Then the other group of cycles arrived, half a dozen of them. They pulled to a halt farther down King Street. "Spawn! Care to explain just what the hell your buncha lizards're doing on my turf?" a feminine voice called from the head of the pack of bikes.

Spawn's head snapped around. "Stay outta this, Shadow," he called back. "It's none of your business."

"You're on Shadow Warriors turf; that makes it my business," Shadow retorted. I could see her now, a tall, dark, elven figure who had shouldered her way through the group of now-dismounted black-clad newcomers. A long, lethal-looking shape with a cluster of slender muzzles swung from her right hand.

"Then you'll die with them," Spawn shouted. He raised a hand and made a chopping motion. His lieutenants motioned to various of the Nagas. They split up and headed for each of us, three coming at Jack and I, larger groups heading towards Max, the Tank, and the Shadow Warriors.

Even as Spawn's hand came down, Max was pulling out his Enfield. His first burst came in conjunction with the first burst from one of his (evidently wired) assailants' AK-97. Nagas went down under the brutal impact of the AS-7's massive slugs. The armor plates in Max's duster seemed to take the brunt of the fire on him.

The Tank roared to life, rolled into the intersection of Pine and King, and slewed into a wild fishtail, the back end swinging completely around, rear tires spinning. When the driver's side was facing us, the Tank came to a rocking stop and the twin muzzles of Joe's shotgun slid out through the driver's window. It fired twice, and two of the Nagas approaching Jack and I went down, one gravely wounded, the other dead.

I drew my sword and went after the other, who looked at my weapon, at the length of pipe and long knife he held, and evidently decided he had the advantage. He was wrong. He was stronger than I, but had absolutely no finesse. I damn near severed his right arm with a riposte, warded off a wild slash from the knife, then dropped him with a thrust to the heart.

The Shadow Warriors were firing on the Nagas as well, and the Nagas were firing back, the chaos of gunfire punctuated by the regular boom, boom, boom of Max's Enfield. Two of the Warriors had gone down, but they'd taken with them several of the Nagas. The most effective fire came from Shadow herself, who had raised the baby chain gun she'd been carrying and proceeded to send a lethal rain of bullets sleeting into the Nagas' ranks, concentrated on Spawn and his lieutenants. Chinov hit the ground when he saw the cannon swivel his direction. The ork bought it, chewed into hamburger by the chain gun's slugs. The troll shrugged the fire off with the help of the obvious dermal plating under his skin. Spawn was wearing body armor under his leathers, but he got knocked flat by the impact of the bullets anyway. He began to roll to his feet, seemingly unhurt, just as Shadow ran out of ammo. She calmly dropped the chain gun and drew a pistol.

The Nagas had managed to put down two of the Warriors, and the Warriors had killed several more of the Nagas, when Joe got his shotgun reloaded. His fire hit the Naga troll, who roared in pain with the first telling damage to him. He waved at the Tank, and several of the Nagas shifted their fire from Max or the Warriors to the Suburban. Bullets thudded and ricocheted from the big vehicle's heavy hull. Max took advantage of the respite from enemy fire to quit trying to take cover behind the light pole and to take careful aim with his Enfield. His burst of fire blew the other troll's head in half.

"Yuck," Jack, standing beside me, looking for something to do, said. I couldn't help but agree.

Seeing that small arms fire wasn't doing much to the Tank, and growing annoyed when Joe poked his shotgun out the window again and awarded both barrels to a Naga with an Uzi, Spawn grabbed a long tube that hung from the side of his Harley. He lifted it, set it on his shoulder, and pointed it towards the Tank.

"Oh, drek," I said, as I recognized it as an anti-tank missile. I went for my gun, knowing that I couldn't possibly get it out and pointed in time, and knowing that Spawn's armor would probably deflect my bullet.

Jack was faster. Her wand snapped up and the laser-like beam stabbed out, striking Spawn full on. He went up in a fireball, stumbled, and fell onto his bike. The rocket tube exploded as the propellant cooked off, pelting nearby Nagas with shrapnel. One of them pivoted, leveling his AK-97 towards Jack, just as Jack began to crumple, unconscious. I stepped forward and caught her, letting her slide gently to the ground rather than hitting hard, just as the Naga pulled the trigger. I caught the burst meant for Jack. It lifted me and knocked me to the ground. I rolled, coughing and wondering if I was still alive. The Naga who'd shot me went down, victim of a Shadow Warrior's fire - possibly Shadow herself.

Just then, the gas tank on Spawn's Harley went up. That seemed to be the cue for those few Nagas remaining alive to run for the shadows. I came to the conclusion that I was still alive, and decided the next priority was to check Jack. She was still breathing, so I slumped down onto my back and wished that it would stop hurting when I breathed. Next thing I knew, Max was kneeling over me. He peeled my coat away from my side, checked it gently, then, with a puzzled expression on his face, reached into my inside pocket and pulled out my deck. There were two deep dents in the thick steel of the case, one of them with a lead slug still embedded in it.

"It seems your deck just saved your life," Max observed. "You have two holes in your right sleeve, two dents in your deck, and a bullet burn across your left side. You may also have some broken ribs where your deck hit you."

"I can deal with armor bites. It's better than being dead," I observed, trying to sit up, and succeeding, to my surprise.

"Armor...?" Max began, but I cut him off, asking, "Is Jack okay?"

"She doesn't seem to be hurt, although she is unconscious. I'm not altogether sure why."

"Wiped out from that spell she cast, I'd guess," another voice said. I looked towards it and saw Shadow looking down at us, bright blue eyes gleaming from a dark, elegant elven face. "I don't know whether to thank you for your help or blame you for bringing the Nagas here, but it was well fought, anyway. I've only two wounded and one dead, and I think the Nagas've been pretty well eliminated as a force in this city." Sirens sounded, nearer than I cared for and coming closer. Shadow glanced towards the sound. "I'm for leaving now," she said, "and I'd think you'd want to do the same."

She turned and walked back towards the Warriors' bikes, gracefully scooping up her chain gun as she walked past it. She locked it to the side of a big, black Harley chopper, swung her leg over the bike, and roared away, the other Warriors following - five of them on four bikes where there had been six before.

I got to my feet with a groan and a little help from Max. "We need to go, too," I remarked.

Max nodded agreement, scooped Jack up like a rag doll, and slung her over his shoulder. I leaned over, stiffly, picked up my sword, wiped it on the jeans of the Naga I'd slain, and sheathed it. At the sharp twinge in my side, I said to Max, "I think you were right about the broken ribs."

We walked over to where the Tank idled, waiting. Max walked around it, opened one back door, and set Jack down on the back seat. I climbed in the other back door as Max slammed Jack's door and squeezed himself into the front seat. Joe had started the Suburban moving even as Max and I closed our doors. As we roared up King Street, Joe asked, "What's th' first aid report?"

"Jack is unconscious, from spell overload, we believe, but otherwise unhurt," Max said. "Tom has a shallow bullet score across his side and possible broken ribs. I've bruises and lacerations, nothing serious. Praise whoever invented kevlar armor inserts. And you?"

"I'm okay," Joe said. "Not sure I can say th' same fer th' Tank. She got pretty well hammered back there. Wanna check her over as soon's I can. Which brings me t' my next question - where're we goin'?"

"I believe I know a place where we can obtain medical attention," Max suggested.

"Just as long as it's not th' fraggin' M'morial Center Hospital of Vermont," Joe replied.

"Hardly," Max answered. "It's a business acquaintance of mine."

Joe, following Max's directions, drove us to a low, windowless building near the waterfront in South Burlington. When the Tank grumbled to a halt in front of it, Max swung himself out of the vehicle, saying, "I'll have to obtain an invitation first - Dr. Welleher doesn't like strangers."

He walked over to the front door, a makeshift but very solid looking assemblage of planks. He banged on it (lightly, for a troll) with a massive fist. After a minute, the door opened a crack. Max conferred with an unseen person within for a minute, then the door closed momentarily and reopened, wider. Max turned and came back to the Tank, opening Jack's door and lifting her out.

"Come on, Tom, Joe," Max said. "The doctor's agreed to let us in."

"If ya don't mind - and if th' doctor don't mind - I'd rather stay out here an' check over th' Tank," Joe responded. "Wouldn't do t'have her die on us."

"Go ahead," Max replied.

He came back around to my side of the car and, with one hand, supported me (unnecessarily) on the way to the door, while carrying Jack like a baby in the crook of the other arm. Joe hopped out of the driver's door and immediately began to examine the damaged side of the Tank, oblivious to the rain that drizzled down on him.

The door opened wide enough to allow Max through when we got near it. He stepped through, still carrying Jack. I followed. There was a man standing, holding the door. He closed it again as soon as we were through, then bolted it and chained it. I took the opportunity to take a good look at him. He was human, in his mid-thirties. He wore a white lab coat and thick glasses, and his brown hair stuck out wildly in Einsteinian disarray.

He turned to look us over, saying, "Welcome, welcome. You must be my patients. Who needs to be examined first?"

"Jack here is unconscious, and we're not sure why," Max informed him. "Tom and I will live at least until you discover if she will."

"Come into my parlor then, (said the spider to the fly)," the doctor invited. "Put her down on the table and we'll see what's wrong with her."

He led the way a room deeper into the building. This room was a cluttered workroom with what seemed to be an examination table in the middle of it. Max laid Jack down on the table. The doctor turned on the light above her and leaned over to examine her. After a moment, he said, "She looks like an elf..."

"She is an elf," I retorted, surprised.

"She can't be an elf. The elves won't appear until 2011, and then..." he trailed off, looking up at Max. "Maxwell, what are you doing here? You won't be... what year is it?"

"It's 2054," Max replied.

"Oh. Well, that explains it," Welleher said, apparently satisfied. He went back to examining Jack. I glanced up at Max, sharply. He made a placating gesture with his hand and turned to watch Dr. Welleher. He peeled up her eyelids, shone a little penlight into her eyes, then turned her head from side to side. "Magically induced overload catatonia," he stated. "The big medical words for 'she put too much into a spell and passed out'. Easily fixed... unless you think it's better to let her sleep. She'll awaken in due time."

"We haven't time to wait for her to awaken of her own volition," Max stated.

"She won't be harmed if you wake her up, will she?" I inquired.

"No, no, not at all," the doctor assured me. "She may catch the tail end of a headache she'd rather she'd missed, but nothing more than that." As he spoke, he was rummaging through the cluttered assortment of bottles and vials on one of the counters. "Aha!" he exclaimed, pouncing on a large capsule. He turned back to Jack and broke the capsule under her nose. There was a pop and a hiss. Jack shuddered and her eyes fluttered open.

"Tom. Max," she said, weakly, focusing on each of us in turn. "Did I get him?"

"If you mean Spawn," I replied, "then yes. He went up like a fragging torch."

"Oh. Good." She glanced around the room, then sat up, exclaiming anxiously, "Where's Joe? He didn't..."

"He's okay," I replied. "He's outside, working on the Tank."

"Oh. Okay," Jack sighed in relief.

"Yes," Max put in. "The injured are all in here."

"Tom?" Jack inquired. "Injured?"

"Nothing much," I replied. "A shallow scratch and maybe a cracked rib. My deck took more damage than I did."

"He's too modest," Max contradicted me. "He took a machine gun burst meant for you. It's dumbest luck that he got out as relatively unscratched as he did."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "A machine gun burst?" she asked me.

"Well, yeah," I admitted, embarrassed.

"My hero," Jack said, with just a trace of humor, and leaned over and kissed me lightly on the cheek.

Time stopped for a moment. I stared at her, heart racing, as she sat back. "Um... er... uh..." I said, still feeling the spot where her lips had brushed my cheek.

Jack chuckled, swung her feet to the floor, and stood. She swayed for a moment, extending a hand to steady herself on Max's arm, then reached out and tousled my hair. "Close your mouth, Tom," she said, smiling to soften the words, "unless you want to catch flies."

The doctor, apparently oblivious to what his patients were doing, said, "You ought to let me look at those ribs now, Thomas. You two can wait in the next room."

Jack hesitated, as if she was about to say something, then shrugged and walked out. Max followed.

Dr. Welleher had me sit down on the examination table and remove my coat, sword, and shirt. He examined the score across my left side, then, wordlessly, applied the usual stinging fluid to it. He then began to poke at my ribs. When I winced at the sharp stab of pain, he said, "Almost certainly broken. Wish I had an x-ray machine to be certain. I can't do anything to unbreak them, short of spinning time backwards, and that would cause a paradox I'd have to go back to last week to avoid. I suppose we'll have to settle for taking away the pain and helping your ribs knit faster. Fortunately, I've got just the thing."

He shuffled through his jars and bottles again, finally coming up with a jar full of derms. He extracted one and pressed it to my ribs. The ache in my side went away almost instantly.

"What is that?" I asked, surprised at its effectiveness.

"Can't tell you," Welleher replied. "Professional secret. Besides, they haven't been invented yet. Won't be until 2010."

He picked up a roll of gauze and began to bandage my torso. When he was done, he said, "I'd say to avoid strenuous activity, but I knew by next week that you didn't." While I tried to make sense of that, he added, "I know Maxwell knows how to change dressings, even if you don't, so I'll skip those instructions." He placed several of the derms in a little zip-lock bag and handed that to me. "Replace the derm each morning. You can come find me and get more if you think you still need them after those are gone. I'm done with you, now. Send Maxwell in."

Thus dismissed, I put my shirt back on and walked out into the next room, carrying coat and sword in my hand. Max and Jack were sitting on the one piece of furniture in the room that wasn't covered with random junk, a old couch with hideous paisley upholstery.

"Shadow shot the one that injured Tom, and the rest of the rogues fled," Max was telling Jack.

"Max, the doctor will see you now," I interjected.

"Well, then," Max said, and rose from the couch with a groan.

As he passed me on his way to the examination room, I stopped him and asked, quietly, "Are you sure Dr. Welleher is sane?"

"Oh, no, not at all," Max answered. "He's nuttier than a fruitcake. That's hardly relevant, however. He's still an excellent doctor."

"I suppose that's true," I replied, not having looked at it in quite that way before.

Max went into the examination room, ducking to avoid banging his head on the doorframe, and I sat down on the couch next to Jack. While we waited, I pulled out my deck and began to tear it down, checking how much damage had been done and whether or not I could fix it. As it turned out, two boards had been damaged, one cracked, the other broken clean in half.

Jack, watching over my shoulder, said, "That thing's not going to be real useful without an interpreter board."

I grinned as I removed the broken board. "It's got another," I said.

"What? Why?" Jack asked, puzzled.

"Remember I told you how this thing's combat mode works? Well, setting it up that way required two completely separate interpreter boards. Also two separate I/O controllers... and I've lost one of them, too," I said, as I removed the cracked I/O board.

Jack peered more closely at my deck. "That's a really bizarre setup you've got there. Where's your MPCP?"

I tapped a board. "It's on one of the expansion cards."

Jack looked at me for a moment, then looked back at my deck. "That's really weird. I've never seen a deck that didn't have the MPCP on the motherboard."

"It hasn't got a motherboard," I said. "This was a pretty strangely designed deck before I started tweaking it. It's guaranteed to give cybertechnicians nightmares now."

"Why don't you get a standard deck?" Jack asked. "It would probably be cheaper than continuing to modify that thing."

"Sentimental value," I replied, turning the deck over in my hand. "This was the first deck I ever owned. Got it when I was maybe ten. More sentimental value now, considering that it saved my life not so long ago. If I'd been carrying a nice new deck like yours, with one of those nice, light plastic cases, they'd - at best - have me in there on the operating table picking these," I tossed the slug that had been embedded in my deck on the couch between us, "and bits of shattered deck out of me. As it is, I've got a couple of cracked ribs and some dents to hammer out of the case."

"And broken interpreter and I/O controller cards," Jack reminded me.

"It may work without them," I told her. I touched the broken card and said, "I lost combat mode along with this interpreter, but I should still be able to use normal mode. `Should' is the operative word in that sentence, of course."

"Isn't it always," Jack said, understandingly. "Have to test it, huh?"

At that point, Max came out of the examination room, followed by Dr. Welleher.

"This armor is incredibly handy for avoiding having holes punched in one's hide," Max observed, holding up his tattered duster, "but if given a choice, I'd rather forego getting shot at entirely. However, the good doctor has fixed all my bruises and scrapes, and I'm good as new again."

"Thank you, doctor, for your help," Jack said. "How do you want us to pay you?"

"Don't worry, don't worry," Welleher replied. "Don't worry your pretty head about it. Maxwell and I have accounts of a sort with each other. One of these days, past or future, I'll call for his services and be in his debt again. It evens out over the course of ages. Pay your debt to him, if you feel you need to settle up with someone."

Jack didn't seem to take the "pretty head" comment as a compliment, but otherwise seemed to accept Welleher's words.

At that moment, there was a sharp rap on the door. "It's Joe," came a gruff voice through the plywood. Dr. Welleher glanced at Max, who nodded. Welleher went over to the door and unbolted and unchained it. It opened and Joe's stout form came through.

"It's a fraggin' miracle," Joe was saying, even as he entered. "All those bullets that hit th' Tank, and y'know how many got through?" As none of us seemed inclined to guess, Joe continued, "One!" holding up a stubby finger. "Hit th' seam b'tween th' door an' th' fender. And y'know what that one did? Clipped th' fraggin' washer fluid line. An' that's it. 'Cept for that, there's no damage I can't fix with a ball-peen hammer an' a little time." He shook his head. "I knew th' Tank was tough, but I hadn't realized she was armored that well." He stopped in front of the couch, gave me and Jack a once-over, then looked over at Max, giving him the same. "I take it you're all gonna live?"

"For now, at least," Max replied. "Perhaps we had best vacate the premises before we bring unwanted visitors to Dr. Welleher's abode."

"I don't think there's anybody after us just at the moment, but that still wouldn't be a bad idea," Jack observed.

"Th' question is, where're we goin'?" Joe asked.

"Jack got the information we need," I commented.

"CeNYDEx. They do for the Albany area pretty much what CI does for Burlington," Jack stated, as all eyes turned to her.

"You certain about that, this time?" Joe inquired.

"As certain as I can be," Jack answered. "I don't know why that suit would have falsified his own personal records."

"So people like you two couldn't break into his house and find out who he's workin' for," Joe replied. "Or so th' cops couldn't do th' same."

"There was a lot of stuff that was more incriminating than CeNYDEx's name that wasn't fake, or encoded, or whatever," Jack stated. "Like my name, my description, and what, exactly, he was hired to do. If he didn't cover that up, I don't know why he'd have bothered to cover up his employer's name."

"Okay, okay, I'm satisfied," Joe said.

"Wait," I said, suddenly. "Jack, your name and description were in the computer?"

She nodded, mystified.

"Even B-town Security can't be stupid enough not to have taken a copy of that thing's memory. It's only a matter of time before they find out your name and maybe even make the connection with the garage incident." I paused, then corrected, "The first garage incident."

Jack looked momentarily worried, then said, "Quite a bit of time, most likely. There's an awful pile of fake files in there. The only reason I was able to find what we wanted so fast is because I could work backwards. I already knew what had to be in part of the file, so I searched for that. Unless they get real lucky..." She shrugged.

"This is all well and good," Max said, "but it seems to me that the question was: where are we going now?"

"I think the answer depends on what we're doing now," I replied.

"Same sort of thing we tried on CI?" Jack suggested. "But kinda stick to the plan and find the real bad guys this time?"

"Time," said Dr. Welleher, surprising us all (we'd kind of forgotten he was there). "Time is an illusion. Tomorrow is the past, yesterday is the future. My mind roams the ages and plays tag with the tachyons."

We all stared at him for a moment.

"Well, it's true," he said, then wandered off to fiddle with some vials on a corner table.

"Anyway," Max said, "We'll need to find out more about this... Sunny-deck," ("CeNYDEx", Jack corrected.) "if we're going to attempt something like that. I dislike going in without proper intelligence."

"Well, then, I s'pose we've gotta get some intelligence," Joe observed. "Jack, you know anythin' more about CeNYDEx?"

"Not really," she responded. "Not beyond what I've told you."

"I may be able to find out something," I offered. "I've got a lot of stuff I thought might come in handy someday filed away in my personal datastores on the college system, and I may know some people..."

"And does your deck still work after you graciously flung yourself in the path of a machine gun burst?" Jack asked, pointedly.

"What does... oh. Good question," I admitted. "Can you use yours if mine's permanently off-line?"

"Not tonight," Jack replied. "I'm still drained from that last spell I cast. I haven't got enough in me to power the sorcery I need to use my deck."

"I guess we hope mine works, then," I said, beginning to hurriedly reassemble my dented Zenith. "The first thing we need is a public telecom access - since I don't think we want to implicate the doctor if anyone should trace me. We can do the rest of our planning on the road."

We took our leave of Dr. Welleher, and rode the Tank half a block to the nearest public 'com booth. Max stood, once again, as a metahuman shield to block casual passers-by from seeing what I was doing. I plugged my deck into the telecom, crossed my fingers, and jacked in.

The neon pathways of the Matrix materialized around me. I breathed a silent sigh of relief. The image fuzzed slightly, visual static flickering across my field of view as I tested the deck's basic functions. I shifted nodes, moving out through the SAN into the complex tangle of datalines that was the LTG. My deck handled smoothly, but the image was slightly snowy and my peripheral vision had a tendency to contract suddenly and without warning. A bad ground in the interface, thanks to the missing cards and the remains of my customized setup for dealing with them, I decided.

I grabbed a dataline and slid over to the UVM student access system. I made my way automatically through familiar nodes, then froze as I reached the node that hosted my own access nodes. I coasted a little farther forward as my deck caught up with commands that were already issued and waiting in the buffer, then stopped.

Willy was gone from his usual position guarding the line that led to my personal datastore. My first thought was that the Computer Resources Department had gotten tired of having security on their system that they couldn't easily bypass - Willy was, after all, against the usage policy. I almost immediately realized that that idea was ridiculous, however. The CRD didn't have the resources, as far as I knew, to crash ice of Willy's caliber (not particularly hot, but then, neither were the individuals in the CRD who passed for deckers...). Also, the giraffe and a couple of other students' modified watchdogs were still active - they were all as illegal as Willy and mostly much easier to crash. No, if Willy had been crashed, it was because someone was targeting me, specifically - and I was willing to bet that whoever it was worked for CeNYDEx.

Only one thing to do, then, I decided. Well, two, but turning tail and running didn't seem like much of an option to me. I slid past Willy's abandoned guard post and into the datastore. I noticed first that it wasn't occupied. I'd been half expecting my intruder to either be there still or have left me a cold, black present. The second thing I noticed was that the oaken chest that represented my scramble ice had been cracked without activating the defenses. I dropped automatically into combat mode to get some more technical information on what exactly had been done to the ice. It was a mistake. The universe exploded into brilliant snow, growling, hissing static, and the sensation of someone driving fuzzy pins into every nerve in my body. I crashed, hard.

I struggled back to consciousness. I laid with my eyes closed for a while before deciding that the lack of any specific source of pain (besides my entire body, that is) meant that nothing was broken (Well, nothing new, anyway.). I opened my eyes. It took some effort to focus, and it wasn't for a few seconds after that that I realized that the round, pale object above me was a face. Jack's, to be specific.

"You are alive," she said, sounding relieved. "I was beginning to wonder."

I was lying on the floor of the telecom booth, I saw. Jack was kneeling behind me, supporting my head with her hands and looking down at me. Joe was looking over her shoulder. Max still kept a nervous watch on the street.

"Oh..." I moaned. "How long was I out?"

"Not that long," Joe said, at the same moment Jack replied, "Quite a while." They looked at each other, then Jack clarified, "Depends on your point of view, I guess. Five or ten minutes. What happened?"

I closed my eyes, thought briefly about passing out again, then said, "Murphy happened. I pulled something stupid, crashed myself."

"How?" Jack asked.

"Later..." I told her. "More important things, now." I opened my eyes again. "Someone crashed my security and looted my cache. If there was anything in there, there won't be now." I thought for a minute, then added, "Joe, I don't think it's safe to go back to your house. If CeNYDEx raided my stores, they may have hit the main UVM system as well. Student records has you and Max listed as my next of kin, or whatever."

"Great," Joe responded. "Means we're gonna hafta wrap this mess up b'fore we can go home. Any ideer how we're gonna do that?"

I grimaced. "I lost my personal stores, but I've still got my connections at ThoughtWorks and other places. More information available there than in the stuff I'd collected, I hope." I sighed and rubbed my aching temples. "Gotta jack in again, I guess."

I rose and turned back to the 'com terminal.

"Tom..." Jack's hand touched my shoulder. "I can do it for you, if you want."

I turned to look at her. "But... I thought your deck...?"

"With your deck," she said. "I'm not up to spell casting just now, but if I used your deck, I wouldn't need to."

I hesitated. Jacking back in immediately wouldn't be the best thing for the headache I'd given myself. Then I shook my head. "You could, but they're my connections. Might not talk to you, and they certainly wouldn't tell you as much as they would me."

Jack nodded and shrugged, as if to say, "I tried," and stepped back.

I turned back to the 'com, reset my deck, and jacked back in. I shifted smoothly through the nodes of the Grid, aiming for ThoughtWorks. I ignored as best I could the thin lines of pain that outlined my skull, though they, in combination with the erratic fuzzing of the bad ground in my deck, began to get extremely irritating.

The crowd in ThoughtWorks was the usual assortment. I sought out, one at a time, some of my acquaintances who owed me favors, and inquired discreetly as to what they knew or could find out about CeNYDEx. The first few - Griffin, Chrome, and Deejenz - came up empty. I didn't hit pay dirt until I started to talk to Nighthawk.

Nighthawk was a lot of attitude with not much substance behind his front. He liked to make out that he was a hotshot decker with connections, and that he'd taken lessons from some of VTC3's legends, and had even met Magnus. I figured that if his stories had a word of truth in them, he wouldn't come to me for help nearly so often. However, he did occasionally come up with surprising info or software.

"CeNYDEx? Why do you want to know about CeNYDEx?" Nighthawk asked.

I remained silent and waited.

Seeing that no response was forthcoming, Nighthawk shook his glossy back hawk's head and allowed, "Maybe I got something. Whaddya need?"

"Addresses and layouts, both Matrix and physical. Plus anything else you've got." I replied.

Nighthawk was silent for a moment, then said, "Christ, Broadsword, you're talking serious..." He shook his head again and added, "I can help you with the Matrix stuff an' some corporate background. The physical layout... well, it's not my department."

"Okay." I said. "If it's all you've got, I suppose it'll have to do. Anyway," I added, "if you give me a Matrix address, I can always hit them for the rest of what I need." I knew that cracking CeNYDEx wasn't likely to be as easy as I was trying to make it sound, but it didn't do to understate your abilities around Nighthawk. I think he figured everyone else inflated their reps the way he did.

"Well, here's what I've got," Nighthawk said, producing a dull white oblong of data from beneath his feathered cloak. I began to reach out to download it, but he pulled it back out of my access range. "Broadsword, you realize that this more than squares us," he commented.

I nodded. "So I'll owe you for a change. Keep it in mind next time you come to me for help with your ice."

Nighthawk hesitated, then held the datablock out for me again. I copied it quickly (or, at least, as quickly as my damaged Zenith could handle) to deck and headware memory, then nodded to him. "See ya," I said, and jacked out.

Sharp pain stabbed like long needles into my temples, then slowly faded as I oriented myself to my surroundings. I detached my deck from the telecom's systems and turned away. Joe, leaning against the door of the Tank, asked, "Ya got what ya need?"

I nodded, silently, and stepped towards the Tank. Suddenly light-headed, I swayed and almost lost my balance. Before I could fall, though, Jack stepped in, catching hold of my arm to support me. The brief dizziness passed, and I pulled gently away from her, saying, "I'm okay now. Just lingering dump shock."

She shrugged, but remained close at hand as I climbed into the Tank.

"Max, we're ready t' go," Joe called, as he started to board the Suburban himself. Max turned, nodded, and circled around the front of the Tank to climb in on the other side.

As the Tank rumbled to life, Joe asked, "So, where're we goin'?"

"The main CeNYDEx facility is on the outskirts of Albany," I said, having scanned some of the data Nighthawk had fed me as I was downloading it. "If we want to visit them in person, we're going to have to go there."

"If we hafta, we hafta," he replied, and the Tank lurched away from the curb.

Joe took us down to the waterfront and the ferry dock. We were lucky; the ferry was just coming in. Water churned in front of its blunt prow as it nosed its way between the pylons and up to the dock. Painted on its side, beneath the sensor-studded pods it saw with, was its name - Samuel de Champlain. There was a thump as it reached the dock, and a clang as the ramp at the end of the roadway lowered onto its flat deck. The three cars ahead of us rolled onto the boat, parking where the chaser lights set into the deck guided them. We followed them on, Joe slotting his credstick at the boarding ramp, then parking in the flashing blue rectangle. The Tank was somewhat bigger than the rectangle outlined on the deck, but that didn't seem to bother the ship. It waited for a decent interval for latecomers, then the deep note of its big diesel engines changed pitch and we headed out into the Lake.

We were well out from shore when Jack, watching the waves roll by out the window, suddenly inquired, "Tom, what's that?"

I looked where she was looking, and didn't see anything except ink-black waves highlighted by the reflection of the city lights. Then, a dark shape rose above the waves and almost as quickly vanished. After a moment it reappeared, remaining visible for a little longer before vanishing beneath the surface again.

I grinned. "That's the Lake Champlain Monster. One of them, anyway. Want a closer look?" Jack's mouth opened slightly, but she didn't speak. I opened the door and dropped out onto the deck. "Come on," I said. "It won't bite you. They don't eat people."

"Eat flatlanders, sometimes," Joe interjected. "Not quite th' same thing." After a moment, he added, "Oh, sorry. You're a flatlander, aren't ya?"

Jack glared at Joe, then opened her door and stepped out. I circled the Tank and pulled her by the hand over to the railing. As we watched, the monster's head rose above the surface, illuminated by the Champlain's running lights. Its head was as long as my arm, on the end of a long neck covered with dark greyish-green scales. It cruised alongside us, throwing up a bow wave as it easily kept pace with the ferry. It cocked one yellowish eye at us, then dived, the neck flowing down into the water in the wake of the head. The length of body followed, then the tail, the tip waving above the surface for a moment before vanishing.

"What is it, a sea serpent?" Jack asked, watching the spot where the monster'd disappeared.

I shrugged. "The freshwater version of one, I guess."

"And they don't eat people? Some of those old-time sailors'd be disappointed."

"Relieved, more like," I replied.

"What do they eat?" Jack wondered.

"Plankton, or zebra mussels, or some such," I answered. "I dunno... I'm not a metabiologist."

We stood, watching the lights of shore as the ferry churned along its programmed course. After a while, Jack shivered and said, "It's cold out here."

"Wind off the lake," I replied. "Nothing to stop it for kilometers. The rain, at least, has let up." I'd noticed that for the first time - it had quit raining while I'd been under from dump shock.

She shrugged and moved so that I stood between her and the wind, and leaned up against me.

"I hope you don't mind me using you as a windbreak," she said.

"Not at all," I replied. "But, if you're cold, there's no reason to stand out here in the wind."

She shrugged. "I'd rather stand here by you, I think," she said, and leaned back against me.

I was only standing out there still because she was; I'd seen the Lake from the ferry at night before, and likely would again, and saw no reason to stand out in the cold wind to see it. Having a pretty elven girl huddle against me for warmth - that was worth standing in the cold for, though. Her leg and her side were warm against mine. There was a cold line against my cheek and temple that I realized was the edge of her long, gracefully pointed ear. It surprised me, suddenly, how tall she was. She was probably within a centimeter of my own 178, and I couldn't say which side of it. Somehow, she didn't look that big.

We stood there, watching the lights drift by in the night, until we heard the constant hum of the Champlain's engines change pitch and start to throb with the effort of bringing the ship to a halt at the Port Kent docks. We climbed back into the Tank and slammed the doors at the same moment that the ferry thumped gently into the dock.

Joe found a convenience store in Port Kent that still sold gasoline (the Tank was a petrochem guzzler) and filled both the main tank and the backup tank on the Suburban. Then we got on the Northway and Joe pointed her at Albany and turned on the autopilot.

The Northway (old U.S. Interstate 87) cuts through some of the emptiest country in the Northeast. Between Plattsburgh and Lake George, there isn't much but pine trees, mountains, deer, moose, and unicorns. South of Lake George, you hit sprawl. It's pretty much solid concrete from there to Baltimore. North of Lake George, though, it's some of the most boring country in the world to drive through at night. There's nothing to look at but row after row of trees.

I dozed off soon after leaving Port Kent. Some time later I was awakened by a twinge in my ribs, caused by Jack leaning against my damaged ribs while she slept. I shifted her into a more comfortable position, noted that Max and Joe were both sleeping as well - Max huddled into a position in the too-small front seat that must have been uncomfortable, and Joe leaning against the door and snoring loudly. The Tank's autopilot light blinked regularly as she cruised through the night. I settled back and tried to get back to sleep, which was, for some reason, difficult.

While I laid awake, watching the rows of trees march by, I became aware of lights behind us. I turned to watch as they approached. The other vehicle cruised up close behind us and matched speeds with us. It had four headlights, evenly spaced across a bumper wider than the Tank's, but I couldn't tell anything more about it. After a minute, it pulled out and around us. When it moved into the cone of the Tank's headlights, I saw that it was a big GMC hovercraft with a semi-military look, painted matte black, with a red light-bar and a security company logo on the side.

I felt a quick jolt of paranoia, then realized that there wasn't any reason for the Northway highway patrol to be after us, and that they'd evidently looked us over and were continuing on their way, anyway. I kept telling myself that as the hovercraft cruised away.