corridor toward the suits. The second’s set on a lower yield. It takes down the wall adjacent to him. He steps through that opening, feels the whole place shake as his first projectile slams home. He moves through another doorway, keeping low—almost crawling now. He’s not slackening his pace. It’s as he expected. Most of these men aren’t even Jaguars. They’re just militia conscripted into service. They’re huddling in the rooms as he passes— some of them firing at him, some of them not daring. But the shots Marlowe’s sending out on all sides don’t differentiate between those who cower and those who fight. He leaves a trail of bodies behind him.
And then he steps on a mine.
Primitive construction, not showing up on any scanner: looks like people here knew not to go any farther down this particular corridor. Nor is that mine small: walls, floor, and ceiling get torn to shreds as Marlowe’s hurled off his feet and twisted sideways, tumbling to the now-exposed level below him. He hits that lower floor with a force that almost knocks him senseless. He’s far too full of inhibitors to feel any pain. But his screens have all gone dark. His suit’s computer’s out. He can’t move.
Through a visor caked in dust he can see faces peering down at him. Men start to jump down to where he’s sprawled. They’re clearly celebrating. One of them leaps onto his chest and starts dancing. Marlowe reaches out with his tongue, hits something that’s neither flesh nor tooth. He hears a whirring as his backup systems kick in: men whirl their guns toward him but he’s already lifting his arms and firing at point-blank range. Shouts of triumph turn to screams. Marlowe hits his thrusters, blasts back to the upper level as militia units scatter. He rockets down the corridor, sparing scarcely a glance at the screens that show the damage to his armor. Primary systems gone, outer hull compromised…he tunes it out, keeps going.
And reaches his target. It’s an armored door, set within armored walls. Guns mounted within those walls triangulate upon him. He destroys them—fires his thrusters, reaches the door, slaps a hi-ex charge on it, reverses back down the corridor, detonates the charge. Pieces of debris are still falling as he pivots back toward the remnants of the door.
But whoever’s in there isn’t going to go out easy. Bullets fly past him, ricochet down the corridor. The bomb- rack on Marlowe’s left shoulder spits out grenades—the first into the room’s ceiling, the next set for one bounce to allow it to careen deeper into whatever lies within. Immediately subsequent to the first explosion—but still before the second—Marlowe’s entering the room at floor level, his rack flinging an incendiary grenade out behind him as he moves quickly along the wall. Several bodies lie about the gutted chamber. Shreds of armor and spent ammo casings are scattered everywhere.
Marlowe has no time to inspect any of it closely. He knows that the flames now licking in his wake will only hold off survivors for a short while. And he still doesn’t know how much opposition remains ahead of him. Or whether the senior Jaguar agent he’s after is here after all. The whole thing might be a trap. If it is, it’s a remarkably elaborate one. He steps over bodies on the floor and through the door opposite.
The Operative’s been trying to get the crew to talk to him. But they’re no longer up for it. His access to the cameras has been shut off. Along with his access to everything else. The whole world’s gone silent. The only frequencies in use now are the ones shrouded in code. And the Operative isn’t in on any of the secrets. He’s been left to keep his own counsel.
So he does. They’re clearly within the vicinity of a live situation. The Operative’s hoping that any moment now the ship’s engines will slam into action and leave this whole mess behind. But he knows how such situations tend to work. He’s keenly aware that those who manage these sorts of crises always respond the same way: quarantine the area in question, shut down the comlinks, contain the scene. Which means that all he can do is sit here until this gets resolved.
And kill time.
He gazes out the window. The city’s moving slowly toward its edge. Ocean’s creeping in. What’s left of the sunlight glistens all along the water save for the space occupied by the massive shadow cast by the city’s pall. Somehow, the Operative’s totally taken by that shadow—at the way the city lights bleed out through it, at the way other lights shine here and there within it, at the way its black blurs into the greater dark of deeper ocean. He feels himself drifting. He feels his brain going as blank as it did before the launch. He feels that city unfolding through him. He wonders what’s going on inside it.
But the next instant, he doesn’t have to wonder.
Ancient zone’s suddenly crystal clear. Check out those corners coming up everywhere. Check out those doorways where there weren’t even walls before. Check it out: Haskell’s perspective telescopes outward in all directions. She watches as openings take their place within larger structures.
It’s just like Morat said. She’s staring backward into time. She’s gazing at long-ago wreckage. The map of old Belem clicks into her head, along with all that city’s infrastructure—and the lines she’s in wind among that infrastructure, just a few wires among so many millions. Somehow these survived. Somehow they weren’t dug up. Somehow they got overlooked.
She sees why. They got disconnected, the ends sealed. But there’s still data swimming through these lines. An isolated network: and some of the data within looks legit—small-time enterprise trying to eke out existence amidst the urban chaos. But most of it’s small-time crime: porn, snuff, drugs—all the flavors of vice licking back and forth in search of download. And there’s a lot of download points, too—lot of illicit subscribers, paying for the right to get some kind of net.
This doesn’t surprise Haskell. Access to the main zone, the integrated zone—the
But that’s the point. That’s why she’s looking at all the data set in motion by those who pay protection to the local gangs for the use of rogue systems powered by rogue generators that squat in forgotten basements and derelict rooms. That’s why she’s trying to determine what the larger pattern used to be—intimations of supply lines that once wound inland from the sea…query grids stacked along the floor…even graffiti on the walls: taglines left by bored programmers long since buried far deeper than these wires. She cruises up and down those long-gone roads. She runs up stairways, down ramps, through shafts.
And all the while, she does her best to keep it stealthy. Because she knows her eyes may not be the only ones scanning. She knows that if they’re looking, she probably won’t know it—that if they see her, she might not even guess. She might not even feel it coming either—just one bolt from the black to smack her dream-body senseless, send her meat-body flopping on the floor of the warehouse that’s so far away that she can barely remember what it was like. But that’s the nature of the recon. That’s the nature of this probe.
Which now detects something. Two things, actually. Anomalies. Each of them concealing the other. She can’t see one without seeing both. And they’re in different places. It’s a neat trick. But she’s trickier. She strips away all the history, rips out all the nonessential. She tunes out every last fragment of peripheral traffic, regards what’s left.
These anomalies aren’t data. They’re doors. They’re white where all else is black. They’re stars in the land of void. They’re lava in the land of ice. They’re different. She takes the readings, confirms them, locks in the references. She approaches those gateways. Reaches them. Looks through.
And watches as zone-shard shifts from universe to foreground.
This is no isolated fragment. She’s looking at the Jaguar net. There’s no doubt now. The contours of it show at least some of the codes her own side has captured in the past. It shows her others she’s never seen. Not to mention an expanse she never would have dreamt of. In one direction she can see something that leaps away from the city, tunneling under jungle and through mountains, all the way to what must be Lima, where it opens up to still more networks. In another direction’s Sao-Rio. She imagines those conduits: old telephone lines, cables, comlinks run beneath the floor of jungle before it all came crashing down. She can see that the place she’s been crawling in is a nexus. That the Jaguars have been using it to link their operations elsewhere with their operations in this city. She traces those links in turn and can see all the data now. The structure’s clear enough: patchwork quilt of legacy, and this place is just one thread. Belem-Macapa is just one piece. Just one limb in a stitched-
