"This isn't working."  Nada rubbed her eyes.  "We're throwing everything we have at Sagittaria, and she just keeps on coming."

"She must be real confident that we can't beat her," DaVinci said.  He adjusted his sunglasses.  "But I'll be damned if I'm gonna let her bust Cato out of lock-up."

"We can't keep this up, David," Nada said.  "Maybe if we had Naught here, we'd could keep it long enough for us to get word to the Guardians, but he's away, in the lion's den, no less!"

DaVinci threw up another cyber-defense grid, then nodded, considering.  "That gives me and idea.  We could have Naught do a hack for us in Great Codex."

Nada stared at him.  "Are you crazy?  Naught's too clumsy for a solo mission!"

"He may be a klutz," DaVinci said, "but he's got skillz.  He's tried, on several occasions, to hack my links to Great Codex.  He would've gotten away with it if I hadn't caught him at it."

Nada shook her head.  "I still don't think that's a good idea.  But I'll keep it in mind."

They both stopped as the separate computer in the corner beeped.  DaVinci looked at it, then tapped a control.  A holographic map of the Resonate appeared, and a red dot flashed in Sector Avi, not far from where they were.  Nada paled, as did DaVinci.  "The viral scanners," the human hacker said.  "There's a virus coming toward us."

"What...what kind?" Nada asked, though she feared she knew the answer.

DaVinci checked the readout.  "A Class Seventeen," he said.  "It's Elogin.  Archer's virus.  She's coming for us!"

"Basic," Nada whispered.  She grabbed for her gun, then bit her lip.  She pointed at it.  "Will that do any good?"

DaVinci hesitated.  "Let me put it this way: did it ever do any good against Lean?"

"No..."

"So do you honestly think a gun that never worked on a Class Eight is going to have any effect on a Class Seventeen that ate Lean?"

Nada paled further, but she stuck it on her belt.  "Just in case.  You never know."

DaVinci rolled his eyes as he shut down his terminal and reattached his faux-icon to his jacket.  He checked the map.  "Shit.  She's almost here.  We need to get out of here."

Nada nodded, then went to the far wall.  She slapped it, and the wall slid aside, revealing a slim passageway that led to the Aughts' garage.  Naught's hovercar was parked there.  Nada ran to it, then leaped in the front seat.  She started the car up as DaVinci closed the passageway behind him.  He jumped in shotgun and motioned wildly.  "Go, go, go!"  Nada said nothing as she gunned the motor, blasting out through the underground garage into the Mid-Levels of the Resonate.  They headed straight for the Central Sector.

DaVinci opened his laptop and checked his defense grid.  He nodded.  "Good, Archer's still having trouble.  Let's see if I can't set up a little surprise for her."  He pulled a datachip out of his pocket and looked at it.  "I swore I'd never use this."

"What is it?" Nada asked as she drove.  She glanced over.

"It's a program I wrote a while back when I was living in Great Codex," he replied.  "It's an attack program I call Digibomb."

"Digibomb?  What's it do?"

DaVinci sighed.  "It's tied into a few other programs of mine.  It's designed to physically destroy another hacker's computer."

"That's impossible to do, D," Nada told him.  "Software can't damage hardware."

"This can," DaVinci replied.  "It works on a principle I discovered a while back but haven't put into general use.  It's like this: we both know GCN gives a hacker total anonymity.  But there are ways to get around it.  For example, of the people on GCN, a certain number are accessing the Resonate's computers.  Of those people, a smaller number are accessing the Resonate Government's computers.  Of them, an even smaller number are trying to hack the computers there.  >From there --"

"I get it," Nada said.  "Since we recognize Sagittaria's style, we can tell which of those hackers is her."

"Exactly," DaVinci agreed.  "It's then just a matter of marking her access number.  That number is punched into Digibomb.  Digibomb hacks into Great Codex's power grid.  I know where Archer lives in the system, so that's plugged into the program, which sends a power surge to her part of the grid."

"But a system as big as Great Codex has safety measures to prevent things like that," Nada protested.  "It wouldn't touch her."

"True, the safety measures would disperse the surge, but that's where Digibomb kicks in again.  It disables part of the safeties, sending a surge directly to Sagittaria's computer."  DaVinci grimaced as he inserted the chip into his computer.  "Then the terminal explodes in her face."

"Okay," Nada said after a grim moment, "so that takes care of Archer's hack.  But we'll still have a Class-17 virus chasing us."

"Not necessarily," DaVinci said.  "Archer merged with Elogin, remember.  So when Digibomb hurts Archer with the explosion -- BOOM.  Elogin'll feel it."

Nada nodded.  She looked at him.  "Under other circumstances, I'd tell you to destroy that program.  But right now it looks like our only option."

Quinn rolled his eyes as he picked the bottle up.  He tossed it in the general direction of Nails, the F'Val 'security agent.'  Nails snatched it out of the air and popped the cap off with one of his sharpened claws on his right hand.  "You know -- Nails, was it?"  When the F'Val nodded, Quinn went on, "Nails, if you're going to catch these True Force people by surprise, you can't exactly keep using the word 'User' all the time.  People will get suspicious, especially Martin."

Nails shot Quinn a dirty look.  "I don't take any orders from a User, let alone a User gimp."

Quinn's temper -- which was already short from having to deal with Tomasi again -- snapped.  He was standing just a couple of feet from Nails, so he stepped close enough to strike.  Nails glanced up and fell flat on his back from the kick Quinn delivered to his face.  Quinn's foot hit the ground again with a clang.  His bionic brace buzzed harshly, telling him not to do that again.  "Don't call me User," he snapped, "but especially don't call me a gimp."

"Gimp!" Nails snapped as he got to his feet.  He flexed his claw and snapped a punch forward.

A blue-skinned fist caught it.  Tomasi stepped in, glowering at his comrade-in-arms.  "Nails, yah startin' fights again?" he asked in the Texan drawl of Derik Salunsen.  "Ah tol' yah not t' do that."

"Hey, this fraggin' User gimp kicked me in the face!" Nails shouted at him.

Tomasi/Derik smacked him in the snout.  Nails yelped and grabbed his injured nose.  "Look," Tomasi growled in a low tone, dropping the accent, "I don't like Quinn any more than you, but we're not gonna catch the Crossies by fighting with him, neh?"

"Eh," Nails grunted.

"Good," Tomasi said.  "Then let's get back to work."  He glared at Quinn.  "And don't ever kick him in the face again."

"Fine," Quinn grated.  "Tell him to stop calling me a gimp."

"No," the sprite replied, then stalked off, Nails following.

Quinn sighed and sat backwards.  His bionic brace caught the movement and converted itself to hover-chair mode.  Quinn skimmed over to the rest of the crew.  Martin was looking over the script with Dugan and Carter.  The director looked up.  "Ah, Quinn," he said.  "We're having some trouble interpreting this part of the scene."  He handed Quinn a datapad.  "Det and Bobbo are having the discussion about Ordo."

"Yeah," Nate Carter said.  "I don't quite get what's going on in the scene."

Quinn reviewed the scene in the script, then mentally went over the scene again as he'd written it in the book.  He nodded.  "They're talking about Deuce's strategy with the games' security," the writer explained.  "Ordo is short for Novus Ordo Seclorum.  It basically means that, with Deuce's encryption, it puts the code in a New Order that'd take anybody Centuries to figure out.  The subtext in the entire conversation is that Deuce's games have already started to muddle with your memories, so I think a good way to do the scene is slightly high-strung and confused."

Dugan and Carter looked at each other, then at the script.  Martin skimmed over the scene and digested this.  "Good idea," he said.  "I forgot about that.  It was mentioned in the novel, wasn't it?"

Quinn nodded.  "That any help?"

"Yes," Michael Dugan said.  "It clears things up.  Thanks a lot."  He nodded to Carter and the two set their scripts down and went back to redo the scene.

Quinn stood back to watch, but someone tapped him on the shoulder.  It was Naught.  The hacker beckoned him away from the set, then asked, "Is it just me, or did I see you talking to Tomasi just a few minutes ago?"

"It's not just you," Quinn replied.  "It's a long story.  Suffice it to say, Tomasi and his buddy 'Nails' have figured out that True Force wants to kill me.  They want to hurt True Force, so they figure they'll use me as bait.  When Lazarus or his goons show up, they strike."

Naught blinked.  "I never woulda thought Tomasi smart enough to think up a plan like that."

"You're getting him confused with Rollo again."

Naught shrugged.  "Whatever.  The point is, Niente's gonna notice soon, and when that happens, all Hell's gonna break loose."

"No it won't," Quinn said.  "Because I'm going to tell her tonight after dinner."

"Yes, Hal," Lazarus replied, looking back at the report in his hand.  "Dr. Archer hasn't reported in today.  Go over to her apartment and fetch her for me."

"Me, sir?  Why not send one of the lesser people?" Kitz inquired.

"Because, Hal," Lazarus said, "lately there has been something about Dr. Archer that has rubbed me the wrong way.  It started back when Mr. Ginn turned traitor."

Kitz nodded, remembering the incident.  Dr. Archer hadn't seemed especially affected by Jono Ginn's execution.  "So what do you want me to do, sir?"

"Go to her apartment," the True Force leader replied, "and fetch her.  Don't knock first.  Use the security override code and just go in.  You'll need to surprise her if she's up to something."

"Of course, sir," Kitz said.  "If I knock first, she can cover up whatever she's up to."

Lazarus allowed a smile to cross his face.  "Good, Hal.  I knew there was a reason I kept you on.  Go."

Kitz nodded and left the office via the private elevator.  He took one of the TruPharm hovervans and went to Dr. Archer's apartment building.  Once there, he disembarked from the van and told the driver, "Follow me.  Don't do anything unless I tell you to."

Kitz and the driver went up to Archer's apartment on the fourteenth floor.  Kitz glanced back at the other man, who unconsciously gripped the butt of his pistol with one gloved hand.  The True Force Chief of Operations rolled his eyes slightly and took out a passcard.  He glanced up and down the corridor briefly, then started to bend to the keypad to swipe it.

"Shit," DaVinci muttered.  He drew his pistol long enough to fire a pulse straight back at the approaching virus.  As he'd expected, it did nothing to her.  The pulse spanged off an invisible force field around the virus, who merely laughed as she picked up speed.

Nada saw Elogin in the rearview and unbuckled herself.  She knew they were likely to crash when the Class Seventeen caught up, and she wanted to be thrown clear.  DaVinci tapped controls quickly on his keyboard, entering in Sagittaria's GCN access number into Digibomb, then closed his computer.  He ripped his faux-icon off his jacket and threw it aside, out of the car.  Nada saw it.

"What did you do that for?" she asked.

"If she gets her claws on us, I don't want her to be able to shut down my programs like she did in Great Codex."  DaVinci unbuckled himself and turned again to fire at Elogin.  The virus slowed down almost imperceptibly as the pulse struck the narrowest part of her bubble near her head, but she merely laughed again and continued to gain on them.

Nada grabbed her icon off her belt and threw it aside as well.  She was relying on the computer systems in the Resonate to keep track of her PID so she could find it later.  Besides, without her icon, Elogin couldn't Infect her, if it came to that.

Elogin's claws smashed into the back of the hovercar, and she latched on, being dragged behind for a kilometer as Nada dove the car down into the Depths to try and shake her.  Elogin snarled and unleashed a blast of viral energy into the car.  The engine blew out and the car slammed to a halt as if it had hit a brick wall.  DaVinci and Nada were both thrown straight forward, over the windshield and into the air.  The car plowed into the pavement as DaVinci tried to right himself enough so he could roll into a landing, but Elogin was far faster than he'd anticipated.  The Class-17 virus snatched both of them out of thin air, cackling.

"I don't think we've met," the virus said.  Aside from the viral resonance, Elogin's voice sounded exactly like Archer's, except Elogin didn't have her British accent.  "My name's Elogin!"

With that, the virus released a low-power blast that tore through DaVinci's muscles like an electrical storm.  The hacker screamed in pain, spasming, then grunted as the virus dropped him to the ground.  Nada didn't seem to be conscious, and her braids smoked slightly.  Elogin landed lightly next to DaVinci, who was getting to his knees, still bent over on the ground.

"You're the one who shut down Lean's mind," Elogin said.  She drove a foot into DaVinci's ribs, sending him sliding into a collection of garbage bins.  She stalked slowly toward him.  "That wasn't nice.  I was just about to get the location of Cragis out of his mind, too."

"Wh-what do you want," DaVinci coughed, "with Cragis?"

Elogin threw back her head and laughed.  "Why, think of it!  An entire colony world, ripe for the taking.  An Anthro race that I can easily subdue.  After all, if a pitiful little Class Eight like Lean Il Lupe can do it, it should be simple for me."

"Still haven't answered my question," DaVinci said as he rose to one knee.

Elogin glowered at him, her eyes flickering more colors than he could remember.  "With the sheer power of the Golems behind me, I can easily destroy all of the Metaverse, system by system.  Those that de-link themselves and try to avoid me, I'll just hack into and delete with the click of a button."

DaVinci realized here that although Archer and Elogin had merged, the two still acted semi-independently of each other.  At this moment, however, they seemed to be mentally linked.  That was both of them talking just now, he thought to himself.  Before he could figure out some way to possibly turn this to his advantage, Elogin stepped close and backhanded him into the wreck of the hovercar.

"Where's your computer?" Elogin demanded as she stalked close.

"You'll never find it," DaVinci weakly laughed.  "I threw it away just before you caught up with us.  It's lost somewhere in the system.  By the time you find it, the Resonate PD'll've locked onto your ASCII and blown it from here to the Web."

Elogin roared and grabbed him by the shoulders, lifting him up off the ground and sending another searing burst of electric pain.  DaVinci's mind staggered under the assault, unusual feelings trickling through him.

Too late.  Hal Kitz and a True Force agent stepped into the archway of her Hacking Parlor.  Kitz's eyes widened as he saw her.  "Dr. Archer?" he said in disbelief.  "What are you doing?"

"Hal, bugger off," Sagittaria told him, swiveling the screen of her computer away and reaching for her lab coat.  If she could just grab it --

"Y-y-you're the hacker!" Kitz sputtered.  "It wasn't Jono Ginn at all!  It was you all along!  You're the one!"

"Don't sound so surprised," she spat, yanking her lab coat over to her.  A compact needle gun fell into her palm.  She raised it up in a flash, then fired haphazardly.  Kitz and the True Force agent both dove for cover.  The True Force agent screamed as a dozen needles, dipped in nerve poison, pierced the flesh on his legs.  He was dead in a millisecond.

Sagittaria glanced at her screen.  Shit!  She was almost into the Resonate's computers.  Just a bit further and she could reactivate Cato and break him out --

Kitz charged forward and grabbed for the needle gun.  Sagittaria fired again, but the needles stuck in the ceiling.  Kitz grunted, shoving against her, turning his head to look at her screen.  Sagittaria kicked him away, dropping her needle gun and turning to the computer.  Her fingers flew over the keys.  Just another few pings.

Kitz got back up and grabbed at her computer's casing.  As this happened, they both got a glimpse of the screen, which suddenly flashed a message:

Elogin released him, stumbling back, hands curled in pain.  The hacker dropped to the ground, still so shocked that he couldn't move.  Nada stirred somewhere while the virus gave a high-pitched moan of pain.

"Sarah!" the virus shrieked.  "What's going on?!"

She got to her feet and looked at her hands.  Festering blisters covered them, and electrical burns trailed up her arms.  As she moved her face around, she could feel the air tingling against burns on her face as well.  She rose to her feet, albeit a bit unsteadily, and turned to a nearby mirror.

The damage wasn't as severe as she'd feared.  Her VR headset lay askew.  The monocle was blackened and smoke curled up from the earpiece and microphone.  She shrugged it off her body and kicked it away. A few red burns covered her face, near her eyes, but her vision was fine. I'll give myself a quick physical once I get out of here.  She carefully opened a drawer on her bureau and pulled out a roll of bandages.  Wincing slightly, she started to wrap her burned fingers in the bandages, then her arms.

Sarah!  What's going on?!

The female hacker blinked a bit in shock, then remembered: Elogin. I'm all right, Elogin.

What happened?

Evidently, Sagittaria sent, our friend DaVinci laid a particularly nasty trap in his hacking defenses.  My computer just literally blew up in front of me.

Understanding and worry trickled through their merge.  You're okay.

Aside from some burns and shock, yes, I'm fine.  I wish I could say the same for Hal Kitz.

Is he there?

Sagittaria looked over at him.  In a manner of speaking.  The explosion probably took half his face off his head.

The hacker tucked the loose ends of the bandages into the wrap and tightened them with her teeth.  Satisfied that her burned hands were safe enough until she could treat them, she retrieved her needle gun and pocketed it in her lab coat, which she threw on over her hacker garb.

Where are you going? Elogin asked.

Somewhere where Lazarus won't find me.

"D?" Nada whispered as she came up to him.  "D?  You okay?"

The virus turned back to face them.  Her color-changing eyes narrowed.  "Sarah, I'll have to get back to you.  They're still alive."  She turned to face them and now they got a real good look at her.

Elogin was somewhat tall, with very pale cream-colored skin and wild gray hair.  Her eyes had a bit of a slant to them, and the colors of said eyes never stayed constant for more than half-a-second.  Her mouth was filled with sharpened teeth.  Her hands had elongated fingers with razor-sharp claws on the ends.  They were red, and this color faded up her arm into the standard cream color.  Her outfit apparently consisted of a simple strapless tube top and small shift that covered her lower body, both black in color.  Her feet were covered by small black boots.

Nada could read the look on Elogin's face easily.  She was pissed.  The claws on her hands were burned somehow, but Nada could see the burns were healing as she watched.  Nada raised her pistol and squeezed off a shot.  The pulse skimmed away off a force field, doing no damage.  Elogin raised a claw.  The gun flew out of Nada's hands and into Elogin's outstretched grip.  The weapon exploded in a flash, leaving a small tear behind.  Elogin gripped the tear and quickly sealed it, then stepped forward, snarling.

Nada couldn't follow what happened.  Elogin moved so fast.  She had barely felt one blow before the next came.  Her body twitched and rocked in every direction as Elogin whaled on her.  Finally, Nada's mind shut down.  She dangled limply from Elogin's claw by her shirt.  Elogin looked at her briefly, then reached her other hand out to DaVinci.  The virus gripped him by the throat and pulled him up to his feet so he could look her in the eye.  Despite the blows he'd received, his sunglasses had miraculously stayed on his face.

"All right now, User," she hissed, "let's end this."  She started to squeeze.

DaVinci's eyes snapped open behind his sunglasses.  His hands went to his throat, and gripped Elogin's fingers.  Her face registered surprise as he pried them loose.  His fingers dug into the still-sore burns on her hand, and she involuntarily screeched with pain, letting him and Nada go.  Nada fell to the ground.

DaVinci snarled, grabbing Elogin's arm and shoving it first to his left, then around to his right, pulling her arm up behind her back.  Elogin writhed in surprise and some pain, then snarled and reached a long-fingered hand back to grab him by the head.  DaVinci snarled, shoving Elogin's arm up.  The fresh pain forced her to stop her reach.

"I have had just about enough of you," DaVinci growled angrily.  "You...and the bitch who wrote you!"  He shifted his legs and kicked out Elogin's feet.  She fell forward onto the pavement, and DaVinci dug his knees into her back as he continued to exert pressure on her arm.  Elogin cried out in pain and disbelief that a User was doing this to her.

DaVinci put one of his knees on her arm and took one of his hands to grip her by the hair.  He pulled her head up to look into her eyes.  His sunglasses slipped down his nose.  Elogin looked up and suddenly froze.  He scowled.  "You go back and tell your little bitch creator that I'm going to dedicate my existence to making her life a living Hell."  He gripped her hair harder and pulled her head farther back.  "Got it?!" he screamed at her.

Elogin grunted her understanding.  Her throat was stretched by DaVinci's grip, so she could hardly speak anyway.  DaVinci sneered and shoved her face forward into the pavement.  He stood up, glaring over his sunglasses.  Elogin got to her feet and looked at him.  She seemed to actually be scared of him as she turned and flew away.  She generated a tear and disappeared through a portal.

DaVinci pushed his sunglasses back up on his nose, then went over to Nada.  He knelt next to her and gently nudged her.  "Hey, you okay?"

Nada's eyes fluttered open.  She turned her head toward him.  "Where's Elogin?"

"I scared her off...somehow," DaVinci said.  "I'm a little surprised that I got away with it.  Come on, let's get back to the Hacking Parlor and do a damage assessment."

"Tomasi?  A human-hating F'Val Apocalypser?" the biker shouted. "What in the Maker's name were you thinking?"

Quinn shrugged.  "I was thinking I didn't want to do it, but they had a good point.  We've all got a common enemy right now -- the True Force.  We all know I'm on their shitlist for the things I said in my column and for being friends with you guys.  I figure if anyone's gonna kick True Force ass, it's gonna be somebody like Tomasi Exley."

"You can't argue with his logic, Niente," Naught added.  "I mean, the guy did lose a brother to these guys."

Niente shot him a look that essentially told him to stay the Hell out of the rest of the conversation.  Naught grimaced and turned to his computer, currently plugged into GCN.  Niente looked at Quinn.  "You could've at least told me before you agreed to anything."

Quinn scoffed.  "Well excuse me for not consulting you when Tomasi's buddy Nails had his claws at my throat.  I think I had more important things on my mind -- like not getting my neck slit."  He sighed.  "The point is, they didn't exactly give me time to call you.  Besides, if I'd done that, it might've blown some of our cover."

"What cover?" she asked.

"Well, since Tomasi and Nails were passing themselves off as security guards, I couldn't exactly consult you, a hoverbiker, about it.  It would've gotten complicated explaining why -- I'd've had to get into all the mess with Lean and who you guys are exactly, like Naught and Nada."

Niente was silent.  Quinn had a point.  Explaining how he knew Tomasi would have gotten into Naught and Nada's identities as the Flip Side Felons, and that would have gotten into a large legal mess involving hacking and aiding and abetting.  Quinn had been trying to protect them all by agreeing to Tomasi's proposal.  "I still don't like it," she grumbled.

"Neither do I," Quinn admitted.  "Tomasi at least barely tolerates me, since I'm the reason he's around.  His friend Nails is hardcore.  He's tried to kill me once already."

Niente blinked in surprise.  "How'd you get out of it?"

"I kicked him in the face, and then Tomasi stepped in and told him to watch his behavior."  Quinn sighed.  "This is just all way too complicated to get into.  Let's just put it all aside.  Tomasi and Nails have promised not to try to kill me.  They both want to kill Lazarus more than me."

Then again, Hal Kitz wasn't going to be telling anyone about her for a while.  TruPharm looked good.  Archer drew her lab coat tight around her hacking uniform and got into Kitz's hovervan.  She powered up and took the van back to the tall spire of TruPharm Inc. Headquarters.  She parked the van in the garage, then took the elevator to the clandestine laboratory where she conducted her experiments for the True Force.

Using vocal commands, Archer ordered the lab computers to prepare a treatment bath for her hands.  While that happened, she accessed her private files and set up her watchdog program, which would let her know when Lazarus or anyone else was coming, so she could hide the burns on her face.  She discarded her hacking uniform in a storage bin and changed into a spare outfit she kept in the lab.  This took a few minutes with her bandaged hands, but at least she could hide that aspect of her personality for the moment.

Now all she had to do was treat her burns before Lazarus paid a visit.  The treatment bath finished and the computer beeped at her.  Archer removed the bandages and soaked her hands in the treatment bath, grimacing at the stinging pain, but steeling herself.

"No, sir," his secretary replied.  "His hovervan is parked in the garage, but I haven't seen Mr. Kitz anywhere."

"Hmm," Lazarus said to himself.  "Thank you, Grace.  Keep me informed."  The reclusive racist stood up and went to his private elevator, then pressed a button that took him down toward Archer's lab.

The computer beeped obediently.  A tank of a blue liquid rose out of the table.  Archer tugged VR goggles over her eyes and tried to look as if she was observing what was going on in the tank.  A minute later, the elevator dinged and the form of Lazarus emerged.  "Doctor," he said, "where have you been?"

Archer looked up, the lenses on the VR goggles turning clear.  "Oh, apologies for my tardiness, sir.  I was busy at home with a separate experiment."

"'Separate experiment'?" Lazarus repeated.

She nodded.  "I am a doctor, after all.  Not everything I do is for the True Force or TruPharm.  This is one is just out of scientific curiosity."

Lazarus grunted.  "Mmphm."  He looked at the tank.  "What is that?"

She glanced at it.  "A new chemical I acquired from a new source.  It has interesting effects on humans.  I think it could prove useful for the True Force's manpower.  Especially for the new cybersoldiers, like Mr. Cato."

He nodded, then asked, "How go the hackers at their work?"

"Slow," she said.  "They've struck a setback.  DaVinci and his friends blocked access to the Resonate's computers with a particularly nasty program.  One of them has to replace their computer."

Lazarus blinked, then shrugged.  "See to it that it's replaced."  Beat.  "Have you seen Hal Kitz?"

"Yes, he came back with me," Archer told him.  "I think I heard him saying he was going to check on the prisoners."

Lazarus nodded.  "I'll go find him there, then."

Archer nodded, then turned back to the tank, but she kept an eye on Lazarus out of the corner of her eye.  He stopped partway to the elevator as the comm system beeped.  Archer froze.  The True Force leader looked up.  "Lazarus," he answered.

"Sir!" came the rasped voice of Hal Kitz.  He sounded as if he couldn't move part of his face -- which was the truth.  "...It's...it's Archer!"

Lazarus stiffened, then glanced sideways at her.  "What about her?" he asked as he turned.  His cybernetic eye was glowing harshly.

"Sh-she's a..tr-traitor, sir!" Kitz wailed.  "She's a hacker!  It wasn't Jono Ginn at all!"

Lazarus scowled.  Archer stood, removing the VR goggles and backing up.  Lazarus slowly moved forward.  "Are you sure, Hal?"

"Yes, sir!  I saw her hacking program myself!  Her computer...bl-blew up in my face, sir!"

Lazarus snarled.  "So," he said dangerously, "you're the one who was responsible for the failure to stop the hack!  You're the one who should have died that day!"

His cybernetic eye glowed fiercely, and then a concentrated laser beam shot out of the lens.  Archer whirled away, ducking behind the table as the shot burned the wall.  The laser beam swung around, cutting through the table.  Archer reached for her needle gun as she grabbed a beaker of a weak acid.  She stood, throwing the beaker toward Lazarus, who raised his arm to deflect it.  It shattered, soaking his arm and splashing on his face.  He cried out in pain as it burned his skin somewhat.  Archer fired a few rounds of her needle gun toward him, running to grab her hacking uniform.

Lazarus tore the acid-soaked sleeve off his shirt and fired another laser toward her.  It ignited the cabinet where her uniform was.  Swearing, Archer fired another salvo at Lazarus, then grabbed her faux-icon off her uniform before running for cover.  Lazarus turned to fire another shot.  Archer looked around the lab for something to use.

There was another beaker of liquid.  Archer glanced at it, then remembered what it was.  She threw it on the floor around Lazarus, soaking it.  Then she held out her hand and concentrated.  Elogin, help me tap into our link...

Her hand quivered a moment, and then the liquid around Lazarus burst into flames.  As the True Force's leader cried out, she ran past him to the elevator.  She pounded the button for the garage, praying the doors would close before Lazarus got out of the fire.

Just as the doors closed, she saw him turn around and fire another laser toward her.  It deflected off the doors and burned the wall.  Archer jumped back then sighed in relief.

Something else occurred to him, and Lazarus switched to a more specific frequency.  "Squad Gamma, report to Dr. Archer's apartment and pick up Mr. Kitz and take him to the hospital.  Be sure not to reveal the True Force when you do so."

"Yes, sir!" the True Forcers replied before they shut off the comm.

Lazarus switched to another frequency.  "Operative Milton, come in."

"This is Milton.  I read you, sir."

"It's time to cut our losses," Lazarus said.  "When you get the opportunity, kill Quinn Rentack and his synthetic friends."

In truth, Nails' scowl was actually due to the fact that he was surrounded by Users, and he couldn't do a blasted thing about it.  This was an Apocalypser's dream, having access to a bunch of unsuspecting Users, but he had sworn not to kill anyone.  What's more, that User gimp and his User-loving friends practically rubbed it in his face.  It was intolerable.

Martin O'Brien was filming one of Game Over's action sequences.  The scene was in a giant computer room, with girders and catwalks criss-crossing it, like a spider's web.  Gene Deuce was attempting to hack into a government system and upload a deadly program that would plunge the world into chaos.  Detterick Noble had to get to Deuce before such a disastrous event could occur, but Deuce's agents were shooting at him, and Bobbo Bosworth was hanging from a girder.

Nails watched with veiled interest.  Though he didn't like Users, he had to admit, they made a good movie.  Nails preferred those high-octane flicks by the likes of...what was the guy's name?  Woo, or something like that, and that other guy, Bay.  This O'Brien guy was pretty good.

Tomasi came over to him.  The sprite was in his Derik Salunsen disguise, and he asked in the drawl, "Wuht's been goin' on?"

"Nothing," Nails replied.  "They're shooting one of the climax scenes.  Haven't seen hide nor hair of any Crossies."

Tomasi/Derik nodded, turning to go, then looked up to one of the catwalks.  One of the extras, playing one of Deuce's devious agents, was examining his prop -- a multipulse gun.  There was another pair of men nearby, and they were talking in low, hushed voices.  The sprite couldn't hear them, but he had a suspicion.

"Hang on," Tomasi/Derik said to Nails.  He went over to Martin, who was talking with Todd Bunsen and Quinn.  "Say, Mistah O'Brien, mind if Ah have a look at'cher weapon props?  Ah wanna make sure nothin' goes wrong -- yuh know, so no one gets hurt."

Martin and Quinn shared a look.  Martin nodded.  "Sure thing, Mr. Salunsen."

Quinn clomped over in his brace.  "What's going on?" he asked in a hushed voice.

Tomasi/Derik nodded toward the three men he'd spotted.  "Ah think those three guys ah Crossies."

"You sure?"

"No, Ah'm not.  Tha's why Ah'm doin' this.  Relax.  If they ah Crossies, they're not gonna do anythin' to yuh."

"Just try not to kill them," Quinn said.  "If we can force them to tell who they work for, we can expose True Force."

Tomasi/Derik nodded.  He flagged down the extras and told them to rally around him.  Tomasi/Derik easily noticed the disguised disgust on the extras' faces as they came up.  One of them unconsciously tugged his sleeve over his arm, but the sprite saw the stylized cross emblem of the True Force on the man's arm.  Tomasi/Derik took the first man's rifle and checked it.  "Routine, boys," he said with his Texan accent.  "Jus' gotta make sure no'n gets hurt durin' the scene."  He passed it back, then did the same for the other two men before flashing a thumb's up to the director.  He climbed back down to the main level and went over to Quinn.

"Well?" the writer asked.

"Jus' like Ah thought," Tomasi/Derik said.  "Those three guys ah Crossies."  He jerked his head in the direction of the man who had pulled down his sleeve.  "One of 'em has a Crossie tattoo on his arm, and one of the others is wearin' a Crossie pendant."

"So what d'you plan to do about it?" Quinn asked.

"Leave that to me."

Within the partially computerized mind of Cato, his cybernetic psuedointelligence continued to whittle away at the mnemonic block it had discovered so long ago.  In actuality, it had discovered it only a day or two ago, but this psuedointelligence didn't think in such realistic terms; like the bygone days before the Metaverse had been established, it thought in terms of nanoseconds and microseconds.  By now, the constant work on the block was ancient to the psuedointelligence.

And now, roughly thirty-six hours since the mnemonic block had been discovered, the psuedointelligence discovered the fruits of its labor.  It very quickly digested all of the information behind the block, then searched through it for the last-resort commands it had sought.  If it had been capable of such things, the psuedointelligence would have been surprised.  The mnemonic block had contained not commands, but emotions and memories.  The psuedointelligence gave the cybernetic-equivalent of a shrug and assimilated the new data into itself.

That's when it happened.

When Dr. Archer had first converted him into the cyborg he now was (under orders from Lazarus), she had pushed every thing that was Julius Cato deep down into the recesses of his brain, submerging his very soul beneath computer circuits and cybernetic protocols.  He'd become little more than a shell for the psuedointelligence, accepting orders and following them without question.

Now that the psuedointelligence had unwittingly freed Cato's mind from its prison, it was quickly overwhelmed by his sheer will.  The psuedointelligence and Cato merged into a personality over which Cato was extremely dominant.  The psuedointelligence was now little more than a repressed memory -- never to be consciously released.

Cato blinked his eyes a few times, lubricating them fully, then winced as the new information bombarded his brain.  Very quickly, pieces of the cybernetics embedded in his brain adapted to the new situation and Cato found it easier to deal with the spectra his enhanced eyes were able to see.  He glanced at himself and shuddered with revulsion at what Archer had done to him.  He felt nothing through his skin -- the perma-cover resin that his flesh had soaked in precluded such unimportant things as touch.  His right hand was completely gone, replaced by a gunmetal robotic fist, which hung limply as the EMPs and bionic buffers around his cell disabled it.

Cato's mind took all of this in within a second or two.  Then the full horror of what had happened to him clicked into place.

He screamed, then fainted.

Red and Yellow snapped confusedly out of their slumber and looked around for the noise that had roused them.  They glanced at each other, at the empty box of doughnuts on the floor, then in the cell.  When they saw that the prisoner had collapsed on the floor, they did what seemed to them the most logical course of action: investigating.

Red disabled the cell's force field and cautiously crept into the cell, one hand on his sidearm as he went over to turn the prisoner on his back.  He looked at him, then made his diagnosis to Yellow.  "I think Cross-Head fainted."

"Well, hallelujah," Yellow said sarcastically.  "Now we get outta bathing and feeding him."

Red laughed along with his partner, then gasped as Cato's flesh hand suddenly grabbed him by the neck.  The cybernetic protocols in Cato's body, sensing that something unauthorized had happened (namely, fainting), had administered a stimulant into his system, awakening him.  Cato's mind -- faster than it had ever been in his human life -- had taken stock of the situation and now took steps to free himself.

Cato pulled Red down closer and said, in a voice that was a bizarre amalgamation of human and synthesized, "Forgive me."

Cato raised his limp robotic hand and clobbered Red with it, rendering him instantly unconscious.  Cato sat up, then got to his feet, striding toward the door.  Yellow was so stunned that he completely forgot to put the force field back up.  Cato was soon out of the cell, and out of range of the EMPs and bionic buffers' influence.  His implants and robotic hand came back to life.  Cato pinned Yellow to the wall using his robotic hand, then whispered, "I will not kill you."

Cato's hand sent a mild shock into Yellow, likewise rendering him unconscious.

"Dr. Archer," Cato said to himself, "we are going to have a little chat."