Sean McArdle’s veeyar.”
“B-but we’re not supposed to—” a surprised Cat Corrigan began.
Gerald didn’t let her finish, drowning her voice out with his. “Blow all that!” he shouted furiously. “I want a chance at that jumped-up little Paddy, and I’m going to take it — you follow?”
Luc, still in his swordsman proxy, gave the British boy a thin smile. “Since you put it so charmingly.”
Serge Woronov’s cartoon cowboy tipped back his hat and shrugged. “If everybody else is going, I reckon I’ll come along.”
Gerald whirled his hulking proxy around to loom over Matt. “You’ll come along, too, won’t you, Mr. Oh-So- Clever Yank? Do your bit? Be right there in the thick of it with the rest of us?”
Then he turned to Caitlin, his voice cold and cruel. “Happy now, luv? We’ll see just how much help your new friend can be.”
The Savage thrust out a jeweled hand toward a shelf on the wall. A dozen or so icons lay scattered across it.
“Find yourself a proxy, and we’ll get going.”
Cat Corrigan seemed pale as the walls while she selected an icon. Activating the program, she became taller and older — a pale-skinned woman with waist-length black hair and a flowing black gown. Her eyes seemed to gleam from within, and her lips were a shocking shade of red. And when she opened them — she had fangs!
She’d chosen to go as a vampire!
“Excellent choice,” Luc Valery complimented her. Matt noticed that the French boy was staying in his swordsman form.
Luc smiled as he noticed Matt’s eyes on him. But it wasn’t a friendly expression. “In my country, the laws are somewhat different from your American Constitution,” the young swordsman said. “The police are allowed to use
He ran a practiced hand over the hilt of his sword. “You didn’t push the Savage to go off on this little adventure. But if you try to betray us, then blood will flow for the vampire, eh?”
Matt forced himself to laugh. “Right. I look like a cop, don’t I?”
Luc laughed just as mirthlessly. “In this world of masks, who knows the truth?”
“If you two are finished with the philosophy, you can join the circle,” Gerry Savage said. The others had already gathered around him.
Matt noticed that the English boy had somehow shrunk his jeweled proxy. He wasn’t a giant anymore, just a large human — say, about the size of a high school football linebacker. In his palm, Savage held an icon whose glow clashed with his bejeweled glitter. It was in the shape of an arrow, and it gave off a poisonous green radiance that reflected off Gerald’s gemstone hands. As they stood around him, all their faces were speckled with mirrored pinpoints of sickly green — as if they’d all caught some terrible disease.
Could that be it? Matt wondered, thinking of the destruction these kids had left behind their previous little adventures. And had Matt himself caught the virus? Because here he was, ready to go along with this wrecking crew. Yes, he was trying to win their trust so that they could be stopped. But he had to admit that he felt a certain excitement….
“Link up,” the Savage commanded.
Matt glanced around. If he didn’t go along, the vandals might well jump him. And even worse, he’d blow his chance to get in solidly with them and perhaps discover the mastermind who was pulling their strings.
He took a deep breath. “Count me in.”
Caitlin grabbed Matt’s left hand, clutching tightly. Luc took his right.
The green glow blazed up as if the little icon were truly on fire. Luc and Serge each seized one of Gerald’s elbows. The room faded around them, and all of a sudden, they were rocketing across the Net.
Matt had half expected them to shoot across the sky like a vast green comet. But apparently they were stealthed. They seemed to give off no light, and the neon glare of the virtual constructs all around their flight path didn’t reflect off them, either. Not even Savage’s jeweled body caught any gleams from the blazing collections of computer imagery they passed.
The area began to look familiar, and Matt realized they were approaching the modernistic virtual office tower that housed the Irish embassy’s bit of cyberspace.
As they came up to the glowing wall, Matt had a sudden unwelcome thought. What if Captain Winters and Net Force had warned embassy security about the trapdoor they’d discovered in the copy of Sean’s veeyar programming? They could be flying right into a trap!
It might end up with Cat and her friends getting nailed for their lawless activities.
But would the Genius be able to recruit a new bunch of bored kids to keep the vandalism going?
Too late to worry now. They approached the wall of light — and flashed right through. A couple of seconds routing along the system, and they arrived in Sean McArdle’s veeyar. The space was just as large as it had been at his press conference. But now the cavernous space had been turned into a library.
Matt looked around in amazement. A high arched ceiling was held up by two-story-tall carved wooden bookcases. There were just too many details for this to be made up. Sean must have based the veeyar on a real location — maybe someplace famous in Ireland.
Then Matt saw the ornate wooden desk at the far end of the big room — with a surprised-looking Sean McArdle behind it.
“What—?” he began.
“Trash the place!” Gerry Savage commanded, charging straight for the Irish boy.
Whooping like savages on the warpath, Luc and Serge set to work. Luc’s long, thin blade seemed more like a wrecking bar or a buzz saw as he sliced through the delicate wood carvings. Serge unholstered his cartoon six-gun and started blasting away. From the holes it was making, the silly-looking weapon must have been loaded either with buckshot or small mortar shells. And it had the typical cartoon-gun’s capacity. Matt counted Serge squeezing off fourteen shots without having to reload.
The boys managed to cut through one of the graceful pillars supporting the weight of the bookshelves above. The small walkway began to sag.
“Here it comes!” Luc shouted gleefully. He and Serge scampered out of the way as an entire portion of the huge bookcase gave way, crashing down and spilling volumes across the floor.
“Gather ’em up!” Serge called to Matt and Caitlin. “Pile ’em, while we find something to make a real campfire!”
But neither Matt nor the girl moved toward the books. Both whirled as they heard a cry of pain from behind them.
Gerald Savage had reached the desk — and Sean McArdle. The Irish boy was wobbling on his feet beyond the beautiful wooden construct. He was blinking his eyes and cradling the side of his face.
Even from a distance, Matt could see the large, red handprint on Sean’s cheek.
The Savage, however, was ignoring Sean just for the moment. He swept a glittering arm across the desktop, disrupting the ordered ranks of icons — Matt had never seen so many for a single computer. Program markers tumbled to the floor, and Savage ground them under his feet.
“You bog-trotting baboons think you can run the world because you know
Sean may have been hurt and scared, but he still answered. “We were saddled with England for eight hundred years, to be beaten, starved, and treated like animals. We’ve been free little more than a hundred years, reunited less than twenty — and we’re doing quite well without your moth-eaten Crown, thank you.”
With a wordless roar, Savage hurled the desk aside. It toppled and shattered. Then he started advancing on Sean McArdle.
Matt raced down the length of the half-ruined library as fast as his legs would take him. Sean was tall, but built like a string bean. The massive Gerry Savage could take him apart.
