"Still could be." Skater didn't offer any misguided hope. He still didn't know how deep a hole he was in.

"I think 1 recognize one of those guys," Aggie said. "That elf come up from the Barrens with Tone. If Larisa is with Tone in this thing, she's in way over her head. She'd never stand for someone flatlining you. Especially here."

Skater dropped his right hand into his duster pocket and gripped the Predator. His nerves were taut as piano strings and stretched thin as monowire, and he knew one wrong move would bust out the sturm and drang waiting between them. He used the reflection trapped in the dark Plexiglas over the bulletin board at the back of the hallway to keep watch over the two men. Neither of them appeared interested in closing in at the moment.

"Find her," Aggie said. "And get her out of this drek-if you can." She gave him the address.

He repeated it after her to be sure he got it right. The number was in the wealthy Bellevue District. If Larisa was living there these days, she'd certainly made her way up in the world.

Gently, Aggie touched his face. "And get yourself the hell out of there if you find out she's in too deep. I always hoped you were different than the other guys I've been with."

Before Skater could even say thanks, she was gone, turning into a swivel-hipped simsense wet dream on her way to the stage. Lust-filled applause and catcalls greeted her arrival.

He took advantage of the momentary confusion created by the music and the loud noises of the crowd to move quickly toward the club's rear exit. He didn't have to turn and look to know the two men were coming after him, closing in rapidly.

6

The instant he made the alley behind SybreSpace, Skater launched himself into a full run. High and narrow, the alley was a concrete chasm that twisted and ran without interruption to Cherry Street. A trio of Cutters jerked around at his approach, bringing weapons into view from under their leathers. The well-dressed woman with the gangers quickly ducked into the shadows. Moonlight danced off her earrings and amulets and sygils of protection.

"Personal problem," Skater yelled as he stayed to his side of the alley.

The three gangers huddled around the woman, protecting her.

He pounded past them, knees driving hard as his breath rasped in his lungs. A dumpster loomed before him, turned sideways. Gathering his strength and kicking in his boosted reflexes, he vaulted two meters up to the top of the metal containers, scanned the open ground before him, and leaped just as a blue-white laser beam cut through the air where he'd just been.

He hit the ground running, cutting back toward the building on his right. His shoulder slammed painfully into the brick wall, staggering him. Before he could make the comer, two more laser blasts sliced holes through the dumpster behind him.

One of the blasts faded out of existence just before it touched the plate glass window of a small restaurant across the street, at the end of its range. The other sheared through the rear tire of a green Volkswagen Elektro. Out of control, the little three-wheeler slammed into a light pole and sent a shower of yellow electrical sparks cascading down. A screamsheet vending machine sandwiched between the pole and the Elektro spilled out its load of chips while the sec-alarm emitted a high-pitched squeal in protest.

Skater figured the two guys tailing him were wetworkers, professional assassins whose one and only mission in life was to bring him back iced to whoever owned them. He turned the corner and ran west along Cherry Street, the canopies over the sidewalk deepening the shadows.

The three a.m. traffic slowed to a near halt around the crash site. He knew some of the drivers were probably calling in the accident right now, and the blue crews would soon descend over the area.

When the two shadows darted out of the alley, he pushed away from the side of the building and cut across the lines of traffic. Trying to get around the gawkers, a Gaz-Willys Nomad pickup started to pull around the Americar in front of it, but the driver was almost on top of Skater before he noticed him.

Skater put out an arm without breaking stride and caught the Nomad's nose on his forearm. The driver applied the brakes and rubber shrilled. Rolling with the impact as much as he could, Skater slid across the vehicle's broad windshield and dropped to the street on the other side. He was close enough to feel the heat of the laser blast that hammered into the Nomad's cab.

The driver let out a string of curses above the din of frying metal and glass.

Wheeling and bringing up the Predator, Skater saw the driver leap from the wreckage of his vehicle as flames consumed it. His two pursuers knifed through the tangle of vehicles, dodging the ones that still moved as they sought their prey.

Switching to low-light vision, Skater scanned the two faces again, burning them into his memory and making sure that he'd never seen either one before. To Skater's right, the troll pulled himself up onto the cab of an Ares Roadmaster to take the high ground.

Focusing on the man's chest, Skater squeezed the Predator's trigger three times, ignoring the twisting gray smoke from the fiery Nomad that burned his nasal passages. The pistol jumped in his hands.

Caught full in the chest, the troll went backward off the truck. Realizing he was in the center of a bad situation, the Roadmaster's driver engaged the gears and pulled forward, ramming past a smaller car in front of him. In the cargo truck's wake, the troll got to his feet and unleashed another laser blast.

The blue-white beam slashed into the building behind Skater and set the festive canopy on fire.

Skater abandoned his position and ran for the alley behind him. Flaming bits of the canopy swirled around him and dropped to the pavement. Other drivers were bailing out of their cars now, many of them clutching weapons. Skater knew their anger would be directed at him as well as at the two men following him. If they felt frustrated enough at being trapped in their cars, the drivers would join the fight as well.

Perspiration coated him in a thin sheen, partly from the heat and partly from the exertion. He slapped burning debris from his duster, then took the corner and darted into the alley. He and Larisa had to walk a number of places that were only a short distance from the club. He knew the area, and he figured that gave him an edge over his pursuers.

Halfway down the alley, not more than three meters from ground level, a ring of advertising space jutted out from a closed simtheatre. Once, the meter-high advertising bands had pulsed clips from the latest releases. Now they were dark and dormant, burnt from years without maintenance and abuse by neon graffiti artists who'd left pornographic images charred into the reflective surface.

Measuring his pace, Skater shoved the Predator into the waistband of his pants and leaped upward behind the advert surface. He caught one of the support poles and pulled himself up into hiding, perched uncomfortably across three of me struts.

The alley continued on, butting into James Street. Across that was a wooded park area, mimicking Kobe Terrace Park on the other side of Yesler Way. With luck, Skater figured his pursuers would think he'd gone that way.

The pair came, running and working in tandem perfection. As each moved forward and took up a new position, the other kept a clear field of fire. Seeing the alley apparently deserted, the troll ran to the other end and peered out over James Street.

"No way," the elf called out. "He's not that fragging fast. The fragger's around here somewhere."

"We're pushing the clock, Dion," the troll grumbled, coming forward.

"You want to tell that to the big man later?" Dion asked.