They did not experience their journey as such. To their Matrix-bound perceptions, they simply stepped out and away from their home systems and seconds later stood at the foot of an enormous pyramidal icon. Its deep, nonreflective black was marked with a disk of glowing blue that regularly pulsed out an expanding ring of bright neon. The wave grew until it met the edge of the construct and another wave was unleashed. The first continued to expand, vanishing when the planar surface could no longer contain it. leaving arc segments to grow until gobbled themselves by the more distant edges of the construct’s surface.

“Bring up the masking utilities,” Dodger instructed.

He keyed his own, knowing without needing to see that his normal icon, a small ebon child with a glittering silver cloak, had been overlain with a simulation of the standard Renraku corporate decker icon. Sam’s Matrix imagery, having originally been one of those icons, underwent a less visible shift. The facial features blurred and smoothed as replicated corporate symbols and identification markings shimmered into existence.

The badges borne by Sam’s icon were faintly smudged, darkened as though slightly burned. With more time, Dodger could have done better, but he had to settle for unregistered duplicates of Renraku access authorizations that were imperfect. Though not foolproof, their disguises should withstand casual scrutiny by ordinary anti-intruder programming.

“ ’Tis time to see if your back door really opens our way into the castle.”

“Dodger, I don’t think I should let you see the code.”

“ ’Tis a place whose secret paths I have trodden before.”

“But you got in by yourself then. I wasn’t opening the door. I… well, it just doesn’t seem right that I should. Even now. What if we’re mistaken and Renraku has nothing to do with the killings? It would be wrong for me to give away this secret.”

“Do as your conscience bids, Sir Corp.”

“I just wanted you to understand.”

“Shall we get on with it?”

“All right.”

Sam’s icon moved ahead. They floated upward until they hovered at one edge of the pyramid, about a third of the way to the apex. Sam placed his hand at the point where an arc racing along the edge had revealed a slight discoloration. Just before the next wave hit that point, Sam’s icon swung between Dodger’s and the point of contact with the pyramid. As the wave passed, the faint glimmer of an outline appeared in the surface of the Renraku construct.

Dodger opened his eyes. Usually there was nothing to watch while decking. His gaze drifted to where his companion’s fingers tapped codewords into the Allegiance cyberdeck. Dodger’s fingers tapped an identical sequence on his own Fairlight deck. When Sam’s fingers ceased their frantic motion, Dodger’s hit one more key and the sequence was locked into storage on his deck.

Part of the price, he thought. The passgate was too valuable a piece of data to be denied him by Sam’s scruples. He refocused his full attention on the Matrix.

They entered the Renraku complex into a backwater slave module that was overseer for a bank of elevators. Such a node should not have allowed access to the system but it was, after all, a back door. The appearance was that of a small guardroom. Its smooth walls flashed infrequently with light as the elevators went about their business. A samurai dozed in one corner of the imaginary room, his neon armor dull. Because the elevators only connected a small spread of floors in areas of minimum security, the guardian ice would normally be activated only in an alert.

The run suddenly looked a lot more feasible. If Renraku had really been in an uproar over a major tech theft, the entire system would be on alert. Even here, the guard would be awake to watch the physical elevators and to report intruders to security. Such a monitor assignment was usually considered superfluous in such an unimportant node, but the presence of guardian ice was an indication of the thoroughness of the Renraku Matrix. At least that was the most reasonable conclusion if one assumed that Matrix security didn’t know about the back door. Dodger didn’t think such ignorance likely. He certainly wouldn’t want to bet his brain on it.

Though the guard was asleep and everything seemed peaceful, it might still be a trap. If their own programs weren’t successfully hiding their identities, the countermeasure programming might be sophisticated enough to present a pacific image until the intruding deckers could be drawn so deep into the system that escape was impossible. Corporate deckers could already be jacking in to hunt them down, or a tracer might be back-tracking their signal to detect their physical location prior to targeting a strike team.

Dodger hadn’t survived years as a shadowrunning decker without caution. But he had some experience with this particular corporate Matrix and he found nothing to indicate that all was not as it seemed. Somewhat assured, he signaled Sam to press on.

Sam leading, they left the elevator control node and stepped out onto the ethereal pathways that connected the components of the internal Matrix. In the infinite darkness, subsystems glowed like distant stars of arcane geometry. while pulses of data blazed comet-like across those subjective heavens. Before and behind them, their own path faded away, leaving them walking an insubstantial flare of light that came from nowhere and went to nowhere, until they reached the next node.

During the transit, Dodger noticed that Sam’s icon limped. His brow furrowed as he tried to understand the phenomenon. He had seen nothing in the persona programming that indicated such a visual interpretation for the construct. Once the run was over, he would have to re-inspect the chips.

As the limping chrome mannikin led him through node after node, Dodger’s confidence grew. He began to feel assured that there really was no alert. They had only encountered one roving corporate decker and Dodger’s programs has masked them from him. If an alert were in progress, they wouldn’t have gone three nodes without bumping into some deckhound. This might be an easy run after all.

Finally, they reached Sam’s goal, a datastore for medical files on non-Human assets. When first told of it, Dodger had questioned the worth of such data to their quest. Would not personnel files, though harder to penetrate, be more useful in identifying whether the feathered serpent worked for Renraku? Sam had assured him that Renraku would classify a Dragon, even a sentient one, as an asset rather than an employee. The distinction was foolishness to Dodger, but then he wasn’t Japanese like Renraku’s directors. Orientals sometimes had different ideas about how the world worked. He’d seen enough of such skewed attitudes from Sally Tsung, and she was only half Oriental.

The walls of the datastore were aswirl with alphanumeric characters. Symbols flashed different colors and danced at varying speeds, the pattern complex and ever-shifting. The image represented the code systems locking the data away from unauthorized access. Sam’s icon stood transfixed. “I think you’d better handle this. I might trip an alarm.”