Staging Platform, Chicago Hypernet, Layer 03

  Amber awoke in the unfamiliar hum of cyberspace. She leapt to her feet, dusted off her avatar's trench coat, summoned the blaster she kept in her inventory. Her back felt safe against a black block of compressed microcode. It was hot. Hot enough to make her sweat. Velvet had a way of describing Layer 03: "More real than real life."

  Velvet. Where the fuck was Velvet? Memories stacked atop each other like shuffling cards. The highway chase, her motorcycle, the rescue robot catching her at high speed. If it weren't for her girlfriend, Amber knew damn well she'd be a greasy smear on the side of road. The thought alone made her crave a smoke. Maybe three. A tap of her wrist revealed her brainwave's vitals monitor, dutifully reporting her body was in good health. Jury was out on her mind. Likely her soul.

  Fuck it. She could mope when she died.

  She gazed out from the wide square platform, a floating island above the crazy-quilt of circuits and subnets comprising Layer 03. Traces of light pulsed data all throughout the local NET, stippled with fortresses of data and ICE. Horned daemons keeping wary eyes for crafty runners and rogue AIs. The polygonal henge of the Gary Works off to the east, the spire of Artemis Cyberdynamics dominating The Loop... all ablaze with every possible shade of neon. Some that Amber couldn't even name.

  Above it all hung the crimson lattice of the Layer's sky. And below, the swirling maelstrom of the Black Hole.

  Amber fixed for a closer look. She took a stride, then a dozen, then came to a halt. The edges of her square island, each just maybe a dozen yards away, remained as far when she'd started. Frustration grew as the floor moved, the blocks of microcode drezzing behind her, while she seemed suspended in midair. After as sustained attempt, she let out a roar, pulled her ursine ears as if they were hair.

  "Velvet? For fuck's sake, this your idea of a joke?!" she shouted to the void, which seemed to answer with a sound like falling sand. She looked up, squinted against brilliance of the lattice. "You know I ain't a netdiver..."

  Blocks of data fell from the sky, hit the platform with impacts she felt in her bones. Miraculously she could move, though by time she made it to the side, the black code had stacked like shipping containers twenty-high. Only way out was straight up.

  "Now would be a damn good time to be punchin' deck." She weighed options, grit her teeth. "Alright, alright! Ya got me! The hell do you want?"

  The void answered. Suddenly the light turned dim turquoise. There was a sound like stone crushing stone, a shove from the stack of microcode beside her.

  "You gotta be shittin' me!" she spat. "Ya can't run the trash-compactor, I ain't slotted safeguards!"

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  The walls closed in. Slowly, surely. Amber threw herself at the wall, only to slide back down the smooth face. She retreated to the island's middle, saw herself getting mangled. She shot the blaster at the approaching microcode. Five shots flashed through the encroaching darkness, left molten stone where they'd land. Another flash gave her pause. At the foot of the wall were shards of black data, like shards knapped off a piece of obisidian. She took off her trench coat, felt the shallow hole through its thick material. It was warm. Flickering, jagged. Tore the cosmetic apart in a flame of data.

  She glanced at her ava's stats, felt a twitch in her forelegs. Her hands shook like crazy.

  Backing a dozen paces, she leapt at the wall, planted her feet onto the hole. Then she'd spring off, aim the blaster where she'd land next, all without stopping for a second. Sometimes the data flecked in ways she didn't expect. By time her entry platform looked the size of a postage stamp on the end of her thumb, she found herself corkscrewing up all four walls, eyes wide as the crimson lattice spread across her vision.

  "Yes, yes! Fuckin' hell, yes!" Data crashed together beneath her loud enough to rattle teeth. Landing would be another story entirely. "Wait, no! Fuck, not here!"

  All too swiftly, simulated wind whipped past her ears. In the absence of a cyberdeck, all Amber could do was freefall as the compression column shattered thanks to her blaster's corruption. The microcode was translucent now, a swarm of razors and caltrops that ripped seams along sides. Her blaster caught a spike of routing data, drezzed in a shower of blue flame.

  And then the data was far behind her. Daemons stood still, watching with humungous, blazing eyes as she fell between the traces of the transport fabric. No need to stop her. Beyond swirled the Black Hole, its thick arms of neon debris seemingly sweeping up to catch her. The Black Hole dominated Amber's vision, she her found perception crosshatched with memories, Velvet's face projected onto the featureless sphere. She'd glimpsed it once while Velvet stretched between netruns. Heard it called "the final resting place of garbage".

  In the end, all things seemed fair. As the Layer's unreality stretched and sheared, time lost all meaning, nanocode punched through her like a million tiny flechettes, she stretched out her disintegrating arms, and embraced the promise of oblivion.

  'Course, she'd always said promises were meant to be broken.

  //:addr_INVALID, Chicago Hypernet, Layer 04

  She came to in a realm of dark azure. The air was hot, dry enough to parch her throat. Gone were the spires of data, the packets and daemons zipping to points throughout the solar system. Instead Amber found herself suspended in what looked like deep space. Not a single star hung in the void, save a distant binary bathing her in an impossible blue. She held her hand before her face, eclipsed them between her fingers. By time she'd try the other, a figure had materialized before her. Tall man with crossed arms.

  "Wh- Who the fuck are you?!" she snapped, fumbling around for a weapon. Best she could do was an old video splicer. The things were like hedge-trimmers, big enough to take your head off. "I'm warnin' you. Might be a dead gal walkin, but this little bear's got teeth."

  The figure snapped his fingers. Amber winced as the shears crumbled in her hands.

  He spoke to her. Deep, resonant voice she felt in her teeth. "Perhaps you wonder why I brought you here?"

  "Assume it ain't the light show. You with a corp?"'

  "So I am."

  "What's the sitch?"

  It snapped its fingers again, placed them on a floor patterned like a chessboard. With a wave of its wrist, thin rays of neon sketched a comfortable space, complete with false bookshelves and real chairs.

  "You adapt quickly," he said, presumably smiling behind his visor.

  "These days you're either quick, or you're dead," Amber said, stretching her arms over her head. "So far, I've kept ahead 'a the bullet comin' at me."

  "Couldn't have done it alone, though."

  Amber eyed him sharply. "Yeah. Yeah, that's right. How big's the file you got on me?"

  "Big enough to include Ms. Grader-" he began, cut off as Amber seized his throat.

  "Aw yeah? And what d'ya want with 'Miss Grader'?"

  "She has her uses. Mainly, it's how we've got you kinked."

  "And what d'ya want with me?"

  The figure grew a wide, white grin across his curved visor. Amber staggered back as his head triplicated, revolved around her trailing blue.

  "Fact is, quite a lot. And you've got the incentive to make it happen."

  "Don't fuck around. If you're gonna cram me in an aerodyne and hold a gun to my squeeze, at least give it to me straight."

  "So she is your girlfriend," he laughed. "I couldn't quite tell."

  "FUCK. YOU." Amber snapped, one pace short of socking him in the jaw. Couldn't figure why she got so pissed off.

  Either way, he didn't like it. Without warning, Amber felt herself shot through the gut, harpooned to the chessboard before his feet. Lifeblood spilled from her avatar's interior, gathered in a shimmering pool around a spear of gold light. As she struggled, the figure knelt down beside her, still smiling in its own way.

  "You'd best behave. I didn't even tell you about the suicide collars."

  "Aw, great!" Amber seethed, struggling to pull it out. "Fuck things up and I go kablam-o?"

  "Almost. You'd be free to go. It's Velvet that pays the price."

  Amber stared at him. Felt her blood turn to ice. She grit her teeth, gave up on the spear. "... What's your name, man?"

  "Call me Jun."