Human beings were funny that way: exceedingly inventive and lazy as hell. Old things remained – built over, built around. Living literally in the shadow and underneath the shiny new skyscrapers in Manhattan, ancient crotchety buildings like my office still stood, mostly unchanged since the nineteenth century.

While some technology raced ahead, like wetware, pockets of low tech survived all over. As a species, we tended not to clean up after ourselves. When we redesigned the LINK, we left vestiges of the old system to haunt the hard lines like cobwebs.

The war machine fueled most of the dramatic changes in tech. Wetware was invented so that we could have soldiers who could receive electronic commands sent from headquarters to the battlefield. The war had started in the Middle East over the shrinking oil resources, so in order to win, America finally implemented the electric-vehicle plans it had kicking around since the last oil crisis. Of course, once the Medusa bomb got dropped, scientific advancement ground to a halt – except, of course, in the area of entertainment. If there was a way to make a holo-vid more virtually realistic, then the tech appeared overnight, only to be replaced by something better the next day.

I shivered and pulled my arms closer around my chest. Despite the draftiness, there was a certain comfort in the way the wind howled around the gables of the old building. Reaching along the wall, my fingers searched for the thermostat. When I found the ancient contraption, I lightly touched the wheel in the direction of warmer. Not that it did much good in this rickety place. I smiled and shook my head. Moving away from the window, I felt for the coffeemaker in the dark. I fumbled along the side of the smooth plastic until my fingers found the switch and flicked it on. The orange brewing light glowed. I waited for the telltale gurgling sounds before I headed back to my desk.

With any luck, the information-retrieval programs would have turned up something on Jordan Institute by now. Scootching the chair closer to the monitor, I peered at the message: "No matches found."

"Nothing?" I muttered out loud. I looked at my romance novel. I might be a sensualist and Neanderthal in my attitudes toward the printed word, but at least paper-and-ink information could not be altered. The LINK refreshed its information stream so often that archiving became unmanageable. There were companies that tried to save information, but, because of sheer volume, they were forced to narrow their fields of interest. Most of yesterday's news vanished into the ether.

I tried to recall details of the case. Blurred faces floated in from the back acres of my mind. The sysop, I remembered well: she was a skinny, nervous kid who was frantic about losing her job. She kept offering Daniel and me coffee because that's what you did when detectives arrived on the scene in all the cops'-n'-robber holo-vids. I'd liked her immediately. She'd had tight braids of the deepest ebony tied off with those blinking beads that had been all the rage with the twenty-somethings.

The Jordan Institute's carpet had smelled new. The whole complex was part of one of those business-incubator buildings designed to accommodate rapid growth – or sudden collapse, as I suspected in this case. The product information that had been stolen had something to do with the treatment of mental patients. The sysop had said it was "revolutionary," but every new tech got that label these days.

There was nothing about the tech theft that had struck me as out of the ordinary. "Damn," I muttered. "If only I had access to my case notes."

When I was on a case, my LINK connection recorded all interactions: every interview, every debriefing with my partner, thoughts muttered out loud, everything. I occasionally kept paper notes, but after a case was finished, I shredded them. I had never imagined a time when I couldn't, with a simple thought, access all my stored information. The chips were on file, but, of course, the data for the Jordan Institute case had been seized as evidence in Daniel's trial.

As a cop, Michael had access to them. I could have him get a hard copy of them for me. A knot twitched in my stomach. Michael would be here in a couple of hours. The wail of a distant siren mingled with rolling thunder, and rain continued its steady barrage against the windowpane.

As much as I wanted it, I was crazy to agree to the re-LINK. For the right price, I could buy an external LINK on the black market, but as an ex-cop I had a certain number of strikes against me. First, despite everything, I still walked the walk. No illegal marketeer would come within ten feet of someone who could be a tech-vice cop in disguise. That was the other problem. I already had a reputation among the wireheads, and it wasn't the kind that got me an invitation to tea on a Sunday afternoon, much less a connection to pirated tech.

The biggest deterrent to getting a new connection to the LINK was the equipment itself. As Michael said, the hardware was still there in my head, microscopic threads running through my gray matter like a rabbit's warren. Even if I somehow managed to get the external stuff, the feedback loop alone would permanently crisp a few synapses.

God only knew where on earth Michael would dig up a bioengineer to do the reconnecting work. Sure, there were hack techs everywhere, but no one but a complete wirehead had the faith to go under their dirty scalpels. Even if I was that desperate, which I was, the LINK hardware in my head was restricted code; only a city-licensed biotech had the password. Rumor had it that there were booby-trap viruses ready to burn out the hardwiring if anyone used the wrong pass code to reactivate.

My only hope was that Michael was part of some underground organization with connections to rogue cop-techs; otherwise, I was fried – literally.

Thunder clapped outside and rattled the window. I stood up and stretched. Despite its loud clanking, the radiator hadn't kicked in yet. It was still cold in here. After I'd poured myself a cup of coffee, I returned to my desk. Though the coffee was smooth and rich, my stomach fluttered.

When the phone rang, I was startled out of my reverie.

"Damn." I flipped the receiver on and clicked it over to video. "McMannus here."

"McMannus? We didn't get much of a chance to talk at the restaurant ..."

I smiled politely. It was my old pal Sergeant Dorshak. "Talk?" I laughed. "You avoided me like the plague."

"You were obviously busy."

"Yeah, yeah," I pursed my lips. "What can I do for you, Dorshak?"

"No. It's what I can do for you, Deidre." He pointed at the video.

"This ought to be interesting." I smiled tightly. I set my cup down and stared intently at Dorshak's grizzled face. "So, what is this altruistic favor, Ted?"

"Angelucci. He's trouble. I hope you're not even vaguely considering working with that guy."

"I'm not," I lied. "You know I stay away from police business. Besides, I've already heard this tune from the captain."

His eyes narrowed, and he stared intently at my video image. Dream on, Ted, I told him silently, the LINK won't help you over the phone. You need face-to-face contact to read an elevated heart rate. "Right," he finally said. "Well, I'm glad you're not, because people here think he might be connected to leftist extremists in the Jewish community."

"Jewish community," I repeated, with a smirk. "I see you've been taking those sensitivity courses to heart. Last I heard you talk about the Malachim, the nicest thing you could call any of them was 'heathen.' "

"Yeah, well." He shrugged. Tugging at his collar, he added, "Promise me you'll stay away from Angelucci."

"Already done." I smiled. He looked unconvinced, so I added in what I hoped was a genuine tone. "Ted, seriously, do you think I want to deal with all that crap again? I'm already excommunicated. You think I'm going to risk losing anything more?"