program icon for communications protocols. He picked up another, which looked like a man shrouded in a hooded cloak. And after a second’s thought he reached for yet another figure which looked like a particularly ugly Chinese demon.
It didn’t come free when he touched it. Instead, an entire section of shelving swung out — a secret panel, revealing another set of shelves hidden in the wall. The icons in here represented programs which Leif didn’t want borrowed, lost…or, in some cases, found.
He hesitated again over the shelf he considered his arsenal and finally took a program icon that looked like a small knife.
Closing the outer shelf, he placed the knife program in his pocket and stood with the other two icons in each hand. Leif held out the lightning bolt and thought of the Net address he’d been given.
An instant later he was flying through a neon paradise — or nightmare, depending on your point of view. Virtual constructs in eye-searing colors competed to put on the best show in cyberspace. It was part funhouse, part kaleidoscope. And no matter how much some people might complain, it was an unavoidable part of life here and now.
He flew on, leaving the more heavily trafficked sections of the Net, zooming off to what he considered the “suburbs”—sites put up by lesser companies, or constructs which allowed even smaller businesses or individuals to maintain a Net presence. Several hacker acquaintances of Leif’s operated out of locations like that, moving through a succession of cheap, anonymous virtual offices.
Could one of them have shifted his base? Leif tried to remember his most recent credit charges. If a professional hacker had information, it wouldn’t come cheap. He’d hate to redline his credit accounts. It would bring unwelcome questions from his parents.
But Leif continued on, entering the bleak outskirts of the Net. Nobody bothered with eye candy out here. The constructs were all the same: low, plain, utilitarian warehouse-like structures, marching off to the virtual horizon like chips on a circuit board — or mausoleums in a cemetery. This was deep storage, the home of dead — or at least deeply archived — data.
Leif knew some people who hacked into this inactive memory, erasing hopefully worthless records to create virtual party rooms, or secret rendezvous sites…or places to mousetrap people who poked their noses into the wrong secrets.
This was like entering the virtual equivalent of a dark alley. And, while there were all sorts of safeguards in place to keep people from getting hurt in veeyar, Leif was living — and hurting — proof that there were a few people who could program around some of those blocks.
Leif looked at the program icon in his other hand and activated it. The hacker he’d bought it from had described it as the computer version of a shroud of invisibility. Lots of people surfed the Net in proxies, false semblances to hide their true identities. This program took that idea further, turning Leif into the little man who wasn’t there, blanking out all indications of his presence. He’d tried it out a couple of times at parties and such, and it seemed to work well enough.
This time it would be useful rather than amusing. He wanted to see who was waiting for him before they saw him. And he wanted to know what this mystery person had up his or her virtual sleeve.
There was the address. Leif spiraled down to settle on the roof — and pass through it.
The interior was apparently unused, a big, echoing space about the size of the virtual hall that housed Net Force Explorer meetings. But there was only one person in sight, a pretty girl with brown hair and hazel eyes. Megan O’Malley.
Leif cut his invisibility shield and dug out the knife icon. That was a little item guaranteed to mess up Net programming. Leif hoped it would deactivate any booby traps — and, if necessary, put a little hurt on anyone who might try to attack him.
“I sure hope you’re the one who called me here,” he told Megan. “Otherwise, we both might be in trouble.”
Megan nearly jumped out of her virtual skin at his sudden appearance.
“Did you have to do that?” she snapped. Then, after a deep breath, she said, “You can put away whatever you’ve got in your other hand. I sent the message.”
Leif relaxed slightly. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
“I…found it not too long ago,” Megan said. “Apparently it was set up for storage but never used.” She hesitated for a second. “I thought it would be good for a private talk.”
“About?”
“What do you think? The weather?” she flared again, then shook her head. “We’ve seen how the official world is completely willing to shaft Captain Winters. And the people who want to help him…well, they’re either too bent on revenge to do anything useful, or they’re like Matt Hunter.”
“A little too goody-goody for their own good sometimes?” Leif asked.
“He means well, but it’s like that petition thing he did. Really nice, but not terribly effective. He won’t go far enough.”
“And then he gets co-opted by the powers that be,” Leif went on. “If you can consider Agent Dork a power.”
Megan nodded grimly. “Matt’ll try very hard, but he’ll play strictly by the rules. And he’ll probably break his heart trying to disprove a very cleverly constructed frame job.”
“Yeah. Don’t get me wrong,” Leif said. “I admire Matt’s straight-arrow approach. It gets him pretty far a lot of the time.”
“But it’s not going to work in this case,” Megan insisted. “So it’s up to us.”
“To do what?”
She leaned close to Leif. “To do whatever has to be done. It’s not as though we never did it before. And we didn’t even have as good a reason then.”
“We also nearly got thrown out of the Net Force Explorers for that excess of…initiative,” Leif pointed out.
Megan gave him a look. “Yeah. And that’s really worried you, considering some of the stuff you’ve pulled since. You’re not about to let some idiot rules get in your way.” Her face twisted. “I keep wondering how you got all that information about HoloNews and Tori Rush. Probably charmed it out of some airhead intern. What did it take? A few dances? A couple of drinks? What else?”
Leif could feel the color rising on his face. Sometimes Megan could be downright uncanny. Or had she somehow been checking up on him? Either way, she was giving him a great case of the guilts. Megan had to know he was attracted to her. Was she using that in proposing this partnership?
He took a deep breath. “Okay, so sometimes well-meaning people can cross the line for something they believe in. Going by that reasoning, why couldn’t Winters break the rules and kill off Alcista?”
Megan looked as if he’d slapped her in the face. “If that’s that way you feel—” she began.
“That’s not the way I feel,” Leif spoke over her words. “I
Leif stabbed a finger at Megan. “But I hope we both learned a few useful things in our last little adventure. We’ve got to be straight with each other. This isn’t a job for the Lone Ranger here. The person behind this is a killer, and one willing to frame an innocent man in the process. We could be in real danger if we aren’t careful. We have to keep in touch. And we back each other up — information-wise, and physically, if necessary.”
Megan looked mutinous, but she nodded.
“Fine,” Leif said. “Now, you tell me what you’ve been holding back, and I’ll do the same.”
Matt paced back and forth across his room, swinging close to his computer system, then turning away again. He’d done his best to destroy the Internal Affairs case against Captain Winters, but it was like pounding his head against a brick wall. He could bring up objections and contradictions, but it was all vaporware compared to the solid evidence and supposed facts Steadman had assembled.
Yes, someone could have broken into the captain’s garage and planted traces of plastic explosive on his
