"Hoi, Yograj!" it called out in a voice heavy with reverb and echo. "Welcome to de promised Ian'."

Bloodyguts' eyes widened at the use of his real name. He hadn't used it in years and had carefully erased all traces of his former life once he'd started decking. He doubted that anybody would have been able to connect the decker Bloodyguts with the chiphead Yograj Lutter. And yet somebody had. Somebody with the body, mannerisms, and drawling voice of his chummer Jocko. That somebody was either a very clever decker… or Jocko himself.

But Jocko was dead. And that meant…

Had the jaguar-shaped IC really stopped his heart? Was he lying on the floor of his Tenochtitlan hotel room right now, his pulse flatlined and his eyes staring at the ceiling?

The bright light, the familiar voice-he'd been here once before, when the BTL chip had flatlined him. He'd floated free from his body and looked down as it lay on the mattress in the garbage-strewn alley. Then he'd ascended into a tunnel of light. That time, there had been no welcoming committee, no friend waving, beckoning him on to the other side. Fear had overwhelmed him and he'd pulled back from death-forced his spirit back into his abused and aching body.

This time, Jocko was there waiting for him at the other end of the tunnel. But Bloodyguts still wasn't ready to die. He still had too much left to do. He couldn't face Jocko yet, not with the job of avenging his chummer's death only half done. He'd never be able to look Jocko in the eye.

"No!" Bloodyguts raged. His persona thrashed against the light, its ghostlike limbs flailing. "I'm not fragging ready yet! Let me go!"

Then the tunnel of light disappeared.

The world collapsed into a perfect pinpoint once more. She was a dot, a single cell. Without thought, without sensation, without emotion. S/he simply was.

A wrench. Division. S/he was twice the size s/he had been before, but still minuscule, incapable of thought. And then came more shuddering divisions, more splittings, more doubling. Like a balloon filling with divine breath, s/he expanded, grew.

Now a sheet of cells, several thousand of them, began folding into a cohesive cluster with a trailing stem. Specializing, forming a unique structure. Gaining complexity as they differentiated into distinctive sections. Developing convolutions, giving him/her the ability to…

S/he thought. Sluggishly at first, a mere awareness of sensation. Of floating suspended in liquid, of being hemmed in on every side by soft warm walls. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of a muffled heartbeat. It reminded him/her that s/he had another body, another form. Elsewhere, outside. Beyond the darkness that enclosed him/her.

The thought was swept away by an unseen hand.

The changes continued. Deep within the clusters of cells that made up his/her tiny form, more complex structures were forming. A vast network of neurons coalesced, grew rootlets, linked with one another in a complicated and intertangled web. And with each new connection, his/her thoughts became clearer, quicker, cleaner-better than they had been before.

Before?

Somehow, s/he had a sense that this had all happened once before. But this time, the growth and development were being overseen by something other than random chance and genetic code. Some higher intelligence was directing the growth of each neuron and axon, the linkage of each synapse. This time the structure that was forming was… perfect.

Perfection achieved, the process came to an end. S/he hung poised, linked in perfect unison with his/her creator. The thoughts of each of them-parent and child-vibrated in perfect tonal harmony. The soft, resonant humming formed itself into thought-words.

It is time for you to be reborn.

A wrench. Sudden movement. S/he was being pushed down a tunnel, propelled by violent contractions of the soft walls that surrounded him/her. It hurt, it squeezed, it twisted him/her about… and yet it was somehow right. Somehow, it was time. Joy was waiting at the end of this tunnel. Joy and light. A whole new world.

But even as his/her head emerged from the tunnel, even as the world began to spring into focus, something changed. The gentle, guiding hands became clawed talons that hooked into his/her skull, dragging him/her out of the safe warm place and flinging him/her into a world of nightmare with the shock of a cold, hard slap…

09:47:03 PST

(10:47:03 MST) Cheyenne, Sioux Nation

The sudden log off had made Kimi dizzy. She stood with one hand braced against the wall to steady herself, wondering how many seconds had already ticked past. Had the experiment already begun? But there was no clock in the hallway.

She ducked into the change room and pulled her bow and arrows from her locker. The bow looked like a toy, but a series of tiny pulleys inside its fiberglass body gave it the equivalent of a fifteen-kilo pull. Whenever Kimi pulled it back to full draw, even a suction-cup-tipped arrow would tear through one of the sacks of soybeans she'd practiced on. The arrows he'd brought to the creche today, however, was special. Hidden under its thin rubber suction cup was a teflon-coated ceramic point.

It was sharp, but it wouldn't really hurt Raymond Kahnewake. Just scare him. It was just a game.

Kimi ran down the hallway of the FTL building, heading for the bank of high-speed elevators that led to the upper floors. The glossy black surface of the elevator doors reflected the hallway behind her. The floor was a clear layer of plexiglass over Navaho sand paintings, and the walls were inset with a series of three-dimensional holos of Iroquois "false face" masks. The hallway was empty of adults-for the moment. So far, so good.

At last the elevator doors opened. Kimi ducked inside and stabbed the icon for the eighteenth floor. The doors sighed shut and the elevator took off with a high whine, its rapid climb creating a familiar sinking feeling in Kimi's stomach. She gripped her bow with a sweating hand and fitted her arrow to the string. Then she chewed her lip while the elevator's muzak system played a muted drumbeat and soft chanting. It was meant to be soothing, but Kimi was wound up too tight. She glanced nervously up at the security vidcam and tried to smile mischievously, like the great spirit had told her to do.

The elevator did not stop. It rose all the way to the eighteenth floor. Kimi stepped out into a hallway whose walls were textured to look like pink sandstone. A series of office doors stretched away to either side.

Kimi turned right and tiptoed down the plush carpet, her heart pounding. She rounded a corner and nearly ran into the security guard who was strolling the other way. She let out a yelp and dropped the arrow from her bow. The guard, an ork woman in uniform-blue pants and a crisp white shirt with Eagle Feather Security patches on the shoulders, squatted to pick up the arrow. For a long moment, Kimi stared at the guard, at the heavy pistol in the holster on her hip and the remote com unit hooked over one of her pointed ears. She tried looking anywhere but at the arrow, which the guard held in one huge hand. Could the woman see that this arrow was special?

The guard smiled and handed the arrow back to her. "Heya, Kimi. On the warpath again? Who're you counting coup against today?"

Kimi swallowed. She tried to keep her hands from trem bling as she took the arrow and fitted it back to the string. "My mom," she said, her voice almost as squeaky as that of her Matrix persona. "Her office is just down the hall."

"Good hunting," the guard said. Then she walked away.

Relief washed over Kimi. Then she remembered how little time she had. She was probably already late; the other kids would have begun the experiment by now. She ran down the corridor to the last office on the left and peeked in the half-open door.