"There they are, Major!" The pilot pointed.

Below, the Major could see a red BMW screeching around drunkenly as it raced down the street, alternately braking and accelerating while a man tried to retain his grip on the roof. Twenty more vehicles swirled around the car, moving like a single organism. More vehicles converged on the site from all directions at high speed along cross streets, smashing into the occasional unlucky motorist. People fled for their lives. He shook his head. What a goddamned mess.How had this gotten so out of control? Behind him columns of black smoke rose here and there.

Let's give the city something else to look at.The Major pulled his L3 cell phone from his jacket and spoke to the pilot as he started dialing. "It's days like this that I almost miss working for the government."

The pilot's voice came over the closed-circuit headset. "Almost."

The Major laughed. The line picked up. "Project Hazmat." The Major turned to look back through the atmospheric haze at Building Twenty-Nine in the distance. "Demolition." A pause. "6-N-G-7-3-H-Z-6." Another pause. "On my mark. T-minus ten…nine…"

"We're almost there, Nat." Ross glanced back at Building Twenty-Nine, three hundred yards behind them now. It was burning somewhere inside, and the flaming wreckage of AutoM8s around it partially obscured it with smoke.

Philips spat out salt water. "I think I'm really blind."

"I don't think so."

"What if that was a ZM-87 Laser Blinder? My retinas would be gone."

"Doesn't make sense. Why permanently blind a target you're about to hack to pieces? It's probably meant to stun victims. I'd-"

Suddenly a wave of pressure blasted across their backs. A visible shockwave rippled through the atmosphere and pressed down around them-followed close on by a resounding BOOMthat they felt more than heard.

They both went facedown in the water as the depths beneath them glowed orange and filled with the sound of splashing boulders and thousands of rock fragments. As they came up sucking for air, rocks and small boulders were landing all around them. Their ears were ringing.

Ross covered her with his body as the rocks continued to rain down. He turned to see a towering mushroom cloud roiling up from the jagged tops of Building Twenty-Nine's walls. The structure was a pool of flame with refrigerator-sized blocks of reinforced concrete still tumbling end over end across the runway. Burning debris trailing streamers of smoke sailed down from a thousand feet overhead. Metal sheets spun crazily as they fell. "Jesus Christ!"

"What happened?"

"The building. It's gone!"

From his perch on the BMW's roof, Merritt glanced back at a black mushroom cloud rising behind him above the factory buildings. "Son of a bitch…" Later.

Suddenly Loki accelerated the car, pulling Merritt down onto the trunk, where he stopped himself from rolling off by pushing his foot against the metal knob on the right rear corner. He grabbed on to the lip of the trunk lid.

Where the hell are the police?

He jammed the knife blade under another metal knob and tore it up from the sheet metal. The knob dangled by exposed wires until Merritt sawed through them.

The Voice intoned again, "Uplink…four…of…twelve…has failed."

Gragg had eight uplinks left. With triple redundancy he knew he needed at least four to adequately control the car and his army of AutoM8s. He turned around in his seat to see the man mere inches away from his face now-still clinging on. Gragg pounded the window. "That's it!"

The man's motorcycle helmet clunked against the glass, awkward in its bulk as he tried to keep his center of gravity down. In between erratic car movements, the rider quickly pulled the helmet off, tossing it over his shoulder. It was immediately crushed by trailing AutoM8s. The man then pressed his head down against the trunk lid.

Gragg could now see the rider's face. "Roy Merritt…holy shit." Gragg smiled in spite of himself. The famous Roy Merritt-known to every Daemon operative in the world. The man who tackled Sobol's home defense system and survived-the entire ordeal captured on Sobol's security cameras. The one and only Roy Merritt was hanging on to Gragg's car. Gragg was being pursued-and pursued damned well-by the Burning Man himself. He should have known. The son of a bitch had a knife, and he was doing more damage than a squad of corporate military. Gragg couldn't deny some level of admiration. Merritt had probed Gragg's defenses, found a hole-one that would be filled in the future-and improvised an exploit. What hacker couldn't admire the man's cojones? His instincts?

Gragg waved his hand, sending the BMW and its entire escort pack to a screeching halt. Merritt was thrown against the rear window. As the BMW lurched to a stop, Merritt stopped himself from rolling off the end of the trunk.

Gragg flipped his voice to the car's PA system and pounded his finger into the blacked-out glass in front of Merritt's face. "You're a fucking crazy man, Roy! You think I can't kill you the moment I get out of this car?"

Merritt shook his head. "You're under arrest!"

Gragg pounded the car seat, laughing. "That's my boy! Shit, I'll make you a deal: give me your autograph, and I won't kill you."

Suddenly Merritt's stomach exploded, splattering blood across the rear window. Merritt's face went slack and his eyes rolled up as his grip on the car released.

Stunned, Gragg watched Merritt roll off the end of the trunk and onto the pavement. Gragg waved his hand and brought the BMW farther down the road, so he could see Merritt, lying in the middle of the street. Another wave of his gloved hands and Gragg cleared a ring of AutoM8s all around him.

Gragg looked up.

A blue helicopter with a yellow logo hovered low behind them, about a hundred feet off the ground. Gragg looked down at Merritt, who was moving now, pulling himself along the center line of the road and leaving a trail of blood. Rage began to build in Gragg. He looked up again at the helicopter, death in his eyes. A man wearing a black hood and holding a sniper rifle kneeled in the open doorway. He looked straight back at Gragg. No Daemon call-out hovered above him.

The Major muttered under his breath. "What the hell are you waiting for, asshole?"

He fired a shot at Loki's rear window, pounding a divot just next to the kid's head. But Loki barely flinched. He was looking fixedly down at Merritt, crawling across the pavement. There was a fifteen-foot blood trail now. Merritt was fumbling through his jacket, quivering. Looking for something.

The Major sighed. "Goddamnit…"

He saw two Mexican workers open a salvage yard gate to peer out at all the commotion in the street. The Major gritted his teeth and turned the rifle in their direction. He squeezed off several rounds.

Spouts of blood erupted from the chest of the first worker. The man pitched back into the stunned hands of his companion-who The Major nailed straight between the eyes. They both fell from view.

Then The Major turned the crosshairs back onto Merritt. Merritt was lying on his back, panting doggedly, blood shining on his stomach, while he held two small pieces of paper before his eyes. The papers fluttered in the wind.

Why wasn't Gragg finishing him? Why wasn't this over yet?

The pilot's voice came in over the headset. "We need to go, Major."

The Major made his decision.

As Gragg stared, suddenly the top of Merritt's head exploded. Merritt's body slumped, twitching on the pavement.

"You motherfucker!" Gragg pounded his fists against the glass, staring at the sniper. "You motherfucker!"