Virtual Vandals

loud way you hate the Irish. Who else could you be but Gerry the Savage?”

The room was quiet, except for the sound of sharp, sucked-in breath.

Matt had never seen Cat Corrigan’s eyes bigger, bluer — or more scared.

He plunged on, before they pulled themselves together and killed him. “You asked me what I’ve got to back myself up. I think I just showed you. When I came in, I wasn’t sure I’d gotten you all. But it looks like I managed to hit the nail — on each head.”

Matt held up a hand as Gerald Savage lumbered forward. “I haven’t told anybody— yet. But there are files out in the Net, ready to be opened if, say, something happened to me.”

The big jeweled figure turned its anger on Caitlin. “How did he get it out of you?” he demanded, his voice grating. “How?”

“She had nothing to do with it!” Matt shouted. “I rounded you all up with data searches. It was easy enough — if you knew what to look for.” He spread his arms. “What more do I need to do to show you that I can pull my weight in this bunch?”

Lucien Valery switched from his frog to his swordsman shape. “Why should we trust you?” he asked, his lip curling.

“For the best reason of all,” Matt shot back. “Because now you have to.”

He looked at the four unmasked thrill-seekers. “I gave you everything you asked for — and a bit more, I’d say. You guys think you’re something special — well, maybe not.” Matt took a deep breath, still pushing. “You can be found — so why not face facts and make me a full partner?”

Chapter 11

From his previous meetings, Matt figured there were two possible reactions from the virtual vandals. Either they’d try to kill him, and he’d have to pull the plug quickly — after his first meeting with this merry group, he’d set a panic button into his programming, just in case. Or they’d cut his connection, leaving him out in the cold.

Luckily, he guessed right. Even more luckily, they went with reaction number two.

Spangles of neon light spun around Matt with dizzying speed as he tumbled through the Net. His stomach heaved as if he were being whirled about in a high-speed carnival ride. Whoever taught this little trick to those rich kids had a nasty sense of humor. Matt would have been lost in the Net for hours, after blowing his virtual lunch all over the place. He’d have a hard enough time finding his way home, much less ever tracing where he’d been.

That is, he should have had a hard time. Instead, he had a little golden thread in his hands as he slowed down and straightened himself out.

Matt had been expecting to be blown out. That was why he’d worked so hard on the special program he’d worked into the key icon. It had spun the golden thread he could now follow back to the virtual vandals’ little clubhouse.

Pulling himself hand over hand, Matt began to retrace his path. The thread was incredibly thin, the barest glimmer of color in his hands. Out in the real world, wire or fishing line this fine would have sliced through his fingers. In the virtual world of the Net, each pull on the line accelerated his speed back to whatever node the rich kids were using.

Still, he was moving more slowly than he had when he and Caitlin had bounced their way in here. Matt could see now that the neon glare of the Web was growing dimmer.

Of course! he thought. Dead storage.

The virtual landscape changed into a vista of regularly spaced mounds with a dim firefly glow. Row after row of them spread out ahead, warehouse units for old records and seldom-used data. Matt couldn’t help the morbid thought that the data-dumps looked like a cemetery full of freshly dug graves.

Once again, the genius had shown his or her cleverness, hacking into dormant systems to create a personal chat room that would never be discovered unless someone asked a university library for some obscure study on Arctic butterflies, or tried to chase down some ancient piece of genealogy.

But Matt couldn’t hold back a feeling of anger at the selfishness the Genius was showing — the rich kids, too. In creating their little meeting place, who knows what data had been erased?

More importantly, who knew if there were backup copies? That data could be lost forever!

Well, Matt was sure of one thing as he followed the golden thread over the information mausoleums. He’d managed to identify the four virtual vandals. But he still had no legal proof against them. And unless Serge Woronov turned out to have unexpected computer skills, Matt still couldn’t identify whoever was behind them — the shadowy figure he thought of as the Genius.

An unpleasant thought made him stop in his progress. Could the vandals themselves not know who was giving them technical support for their midnight visits? In this world of proxies, the Genius could appear with any face when he dealt with the rich kids.

Then there was no more time to stop and think. The golden thread angled downward, toward one of the dump sites. Matt put on speed. This would be the test of his programming. If he’d done it right, he’d give the virtual vandals the shock of their young lives.

If not, the program would crash and he’d be home with another killer headache.

The low-lying mound rose up in front of him like an artificial hill.

Matt hit it — and went through!

He’d been afraid that the vandals might have left their meeting place while he was gone. But the four kids were still in the white room, arguing at the top of their lungs.

“Why can’t we let him help us?” Cat Corrigan pleaded.

“You know bloody well why!” Gerald Savage sounded as if he’d heard Cat’s line once too often. “D’you think you-know-who is going to jump up and welcome him with open arms?”

“How odd — you’re the one always telling us that you’re not afraid of…our friend,” Luc Valery sneered.

“And what friend is this?” Matt asked.

Their reactions would have been funny — if they hadn’t been so dangerous. Serge’s cowboy proxy leapt into the air as if he’d been goosed by an electric eel. But he was also twisting and bringing his huge gun up to aim. Gerry the Savage looked like a big jeweled fish as his mouth dropped open. Then he roared with fury and stomped forward, fists raised.

Luc Valery morphed into his swordsman form and unsheathed his blade. Caitlin just stared at Matt as if she’d seen a ghost — or perhaps a ghost-to-be. “I told you not to push them,” she said in a hollow voice.

“Okay, I’m completely convinced of how tough you are,” Matt said sarcastically as he faced murderers’ row. “Maybe now you can think of using your heads instead of your fists.”

He stared up at Gerald Savage, who seemed to be the leader — at least he was the most angry. “I don’t know why you get so bent out shape whenever I show how I can be useful to you people — or did you think you were the only people on earth who could drop system trapdoors behind themselves?”

“You see?” Caitlin cried, as if he were proving her argument. “He knows this stuff, and we don’t. Suppose he could help us.”

“Enough of that!” Gerald Savage cut her off. His voice came out in a deep growl, but at least he wasn’t moving to pound Matt…yet.

“Sorry, Yank, but the position’s taken — by a very dangerous sort of chap — person.”

“Still, it sounds as if you could use me.” Matt turned to the others, pretending he hadn’t heard Savage’s slip. Now he’d learned two things by coming back. The Genius wasn’t one of the four kids who actually did the raids. And the Genius was a very dangerous sort of chap, as Gerald had been about to say. That meant that the Genius, whoever he was, was male.

That narrows it down to half the population, Matt thought sarcastically. If I stay alive long enough, maybe I’ll pick up a few more clues.

“Perhaps we could use someone with your abilities,” Luc Valery said, suddenly taking sides with Caitlin. “But if others are afraid….”

“I’m not afraid!” Gerry Savage raged. “And I’ll show you! We’ll hit the Net right now — and pay a little visit to