Ross: None here, true.

Ross's female warrior gestured dramatically, as if performing a spell. In a moment a magical portal appeared in the street. A wandering player character tried to walk into it but bounced off. After a few tries, he got bored and walked off.

Philips: What's this?

Ross: A Type II gate. It will only permit those I choose to enter, and I just typed your character's name in. What does «FANX» mean, anyway?

Philips: I'll let you puzzle it out.

Ross: Please step through the portal.

NSA Tech: Doctor, we've got a physical address, but it's in Helsingborg, Sweden.

Philips: [MUTE ON] Notify local authorities and Interpol. [MUTE OFF] Where's this lead to?

Ross: What does it matter? Look, I hope efforts to trace my physical location are not distracting you. I'm running several layers of proxies, Dr. Philips. By the time you track them all down, this will be long over. Just pay attention, please. This is important.

Philips: Jon, I'm not-

Ross: It's okay, Doctor. That's your job. Just step through the gate, please.

The perspective of the screen changed as Philips moved her character through the gate. It was a swirling vortex of blue lines, and then suddenly the view changed to a darkened masonry tunnel filled to a depth of a couple feet with black water. The area was lit by the swirling lights of the nearby magical portal. Rats scurried away along ledges, and the water's surface rippled with the dazzling lights.

Someone in the dark muttered. "Nice algorithm…"

The NSA chief craned his neck. "Shhh!"

On- screen, Ross's hentai warrior princess waded out into the water and stood in front of Philips's character.

Philips: What is this place?

Ross: It's a sewer beneath the Temple District. Not accessible without a magical portal.

Philips: What did you want to show me, Jon?

Ross: Look straight ahead. What do you see? You may need to move side to side to notice it.

The view on-screen changed as Philips focused straight ahead. There in the semidarkness of the slime-covered wall was the outline of an oxidized bronze door-nearly the same color as the surrounding stones.

Philips: A door.

Ross: Not just any door. A back door.

Philips: It's a literal door?

Ross: You were expecting a code snippet? Maybe something that accepted anonymous connections at a certain port address or carried out actions on the user's computer with their rights? But you didn't find that. You didn't find it because you shouldn't have been looking for a back door leading IN. You should have been looking for a back door leading OUT.

Philips: But how would that permit Sobol to control a user's machine?

Ross: It isn't their machine he's trying to control.

Philips: You're saying he was trying to control the user?

Ross: Why don't you step through the portal and find out?

Philips: Wait a minute. We still should have found this in the code.

Ross: Why? Were you looking for a graphic of a door that when used as an object in the game environment loads a game map? Do you know how many times that innocuous function call appears in the source code? The code itself is benign-it's the map it loads that isn't. Because the map in question is not on the CyberStorm servers, and I'll bet you didn't look farther than the IP addresses of the map links.

Philips: [a sigh of disgust] You mean he's using a redirect.

Ross: It will look local in the map database, but when you try to load it, it redirects to an external IP address-which logs the user off the current game and establishes a new connection on an alien server. In short: this portal leads to a darknet.

Philips: A darknet. An encrypted virtual network.

Ross: Correct. Except that this is a graphical darknet.

Philips: How do you know all this?

Ross: Like I said-step through the portal. However, I will leave you now. Your colleagues are quite skilled and have probably located my zombie in Sweden, maybe even my zombie in Germany-and I really must be going. Please remember that I am innocent, Natalie-if I may call you Natalie. I'd really like to tell you the whole story over dinner sometime.

Philips: I don't date felons, Jon-especially cross-dressing felons.

Ross: Till we meet again, Doctor…

At that, Ross's avatar disappeared-as did his magical gate-leaving her in relative darkness. There was just the faint glow emanating from the door.

NSA Tech: He's off-line, Doctor.

Philips: We're still recording?

NSA Tech: Affirmative.

On- screen, Philips approached the door and activated it. It creaked open, the noise echoing down the sewer tunnel. Animated cobwebs stretched. A dialog box appeared reading "Loading Map…"

NSA Tech: Connection severed to CyberStorm server. We're establishing a connection to an IP address assigned to a domain in…South Korea.

Philips: Are the packets really routing there?

NSA Tech: Stand by.

Philips: Get us a fix as soon as possible.

In a few moments the map was loaded. Philips's character moved out into a medieval hall, with a gallery on either side above and pennants hanging down bearing heraldic symbols. Set into the wall straight ahead was a statue of a man, disquietingly similar to Sobol, in flowing robes, hands outstretched. Virtual water glimmered like a fountain as it rolled down each cheek from his eyes. Mineral stains marked the path. A perpetual fountain of tears.

A black- robed figure stood before the statue like a sentinel blocking her way. Its face was lost in shadow.

NSA Tech: It's fingering us, Doctor. I didn't spoof our IP address.

Philips: It's okay, Chris, I didn't ask you to.

The hooded figure snapped alert suddenly, then raised a finger and pointed at her.

Guardian: You don't belong here!

Lightning arced from that finger in her general direction, and the Blue Screen of Death filled their view.

Then everything went black.

NSA Tech: We are down! Down, down, down!

Chapter 29:// Memory

Pete Sebeck stared at a dimple in the concrete of his cell wall. It was the only imperfection in an unrelenting sameness. It was his secret-a place upon which to center his mind as the world turned unseen around him.

It might have been night outside, but it was never dark in here. There was nothing even to mark the passage of time, and if there was, they would erase it. He was watched constantly. A fluorescent fixture buzzed light down on him from overhead. Surveillance cameras in mirrored enclosures on two ceiling corners recorded his every movement. A microphone his every utterance. He was alone, but never alone. As a high-profile prisoner, no expense had been spared to monitor him 24/7-guarding against the possibility that he might harm himself before the government could mete out justice.

As Sebeck lay staring at the wall, his memories were still raw nerves. Each turn of his mind made him wince.

Worth losing everything for.That's what he used to tell himself about Cheryl Lanthrop. She was beautiful, but there was more to it than that. It was what that reflected about him. That he was worthy of attracting such a successful, confident person. Why did he think she would want him? What part of him nursed such fantasies? That was the sad truth of it. He was ripe for programming. He was ready to suspend disbelief to live that life. He hadn't wanted to know the truth-not about her and definitely not about himself.

They said Lanthrop was dead now. If she had only confided in him. Perhaps he would have done the right thing. To his shame, he wasn't certain.