Twin black Lincoln Town Cars, with their headlights off, pulled up behind the Mercedes like guardians. The throbbing engine of the coupe cut off, but the headlights stayed on.

In a few moments the door opened, and the dark form of the driver strode calmly into the light of his own headlights.

Brian Gragg gazed intently at the wreckage.

He was reborn. Gone without a trace were the tattoos and the piercings and the unkempt hair. In their place was a perfectly groomed and successful-looking young man. Dressed as Sobol might dress, all in black with tailored slacks, silk shirt, and sports coat. Except for the black synthex gloves and sports glasses he wore, he looked like any other Austin tech entrepreneur. He was now invisible to authority. A man of substance.

He sniffed the night air. It was thick with moisture and the aroma of field grass. The din of crickets filled his ears. He was never more alive than now. Never more happy. And never before could he see with such clarity. He could feel the world for miles around. Law enforcement GPS units, Faction members, and AutoM8 packs networked in the surrounding countryside-feeding their discoveries to him, like a wizard's familiars.

Gragg felt the tingling of the Third Eye on his stomach and back. The Third Eye was another of the miracles that Sobol had bestowed upon him. It was a form-fitting conductive shirt worn next to the skin-but it wasn't a garment. It was a haptic device that helped him use his body's largest organ-his skin-as another, all-seeing eye. An eye that never blinked, and an eye that could see around him in 360 degrees or halfway around the world, if he wished.

It worked by sending tiny electrical impulses to excite the nerve endings in his skin, much like a computer monitor projected pixels onto a screen. The microscopic electrical impulses represented data-from blips on a radar screen to full-blown visual displays. But what amazed Gragg was how the brain learned to accept input from this new source as if it were just another organ. Just another eye.

He feltthe networks around him, but he could do more than just feel them.

Gragg motioned with his gloved hands. Suddenly the headlights of the twin Town Cars flicked on. The cars roared forward and deployed on either side of the road at his command, illuminating the entire crash scene. Gragg halted them with a wave of his hand.

Glittering pieces of metal and plastic littered the roadway. Now he could see the pancaked wreckage of the AutoM8 he'd used in the attack. It was lying backward in a ditch along the road about fifty feet ahead. Smoking like a distillery. Only the rear half remained.

Gragg relaxed his arms and then cracked his knuckles. He strode toward the wreckage of the Escalade.

Both the driver and the front passenger were clearly dead. Someone's intestines spilled out over the twisted frame and looped along the ground. The smell of butyric acid and bile was mercifully masked by the odor of antifreeze and burning plastic.

Gragg heard whimpering. He moved to the rear passenger compartment and peered through the empty, twisted door frame. Inside, he saw only a jumble of spent airbags, white packing powder, and shattered glass.

Gragg listened intently, following the sound around to the other side of the wreck, where he soon saw the bloody and quivering form of Russell Vanowen lying twisted on his back on the pavement nearby.

Gragg took measured steps to look down on him, careful to avoid the pool of blood forming on one side.

Vanowen's head and face were covered in blood. His right arm was mangled-splintered bones sticking through his torn sleeve. A long, slow groan came out of his toothless mouth and formless, swollen face. His nose was almost completely flat.

Gragg regarded him icily.

He leaned down and with his gloved hands pulled back Vanowen's blood-soaked suit jacket.

The wounded man's chest heaved, and his eyes stared in stark terror as Gragg lifted out the bloody brochure for the Children's Golf Classic. Gragg shook some of the blood off it and flipped it open. He held it to the light.

It was still legible.

Gragg took out his cell phone and clicked a digital picture of it. Then he folded the brochure and slipped it back into Vanowen's chest pocket.

Gragg stood and turned to leave.

Vanowen's groan ascended to a wail as he reached out toward Gragg with his good arm.

Gragg stopped. He paused a moment before turning around, then kneeled down and grabbed Vanowen's swollen face with his gloved hand, causing the man to scream in agony. "Shhh…I'll go up a level for this. Maybe I should thank you, Russell." He searched Vanowen's bloody eyes for something worthwhile. "But then again, fuck you, you worthless piece of shit."

Tears streamed down Vanowen's cheeks. He was insane with fear and pain.

There wasn't an ounce of pity in Gragg's eyes. "If you see Matthew Sobol, be sure to tell him Loki said hello."

Gragg stood, straightened his jacket, and walked toward his Mercedes. He motioned with a gloved hand, and one of the Lincoln Town Cars screeched forward.

The headlights flashed in Vanowen's eyes as he shrieked.

The car crushed him under its wheels and dragged his corpse some ways down the road before it fell free. The black AutoM8 raced off into the night.

Gragg curled a finger at his Mercedes, and the car rolled forward to meet him. The driver's door swung open as it came alongside him.

Gragg concentrated on his Third Eye. He felt his distant AutoM8s following the car of the mysterious man whom Vanowen had met at the municipal airfield. Gragg brought the dashboard video of a trailing AutoM8 up onto his heads-up display-projecting onto one lens of his glasses. The infrared camera miles away showed the man's car heading south toward the interstate. There were two occupants. Gragg scanned the target car's license plate and retrieved its DMV records.

Federal Fleet Vehicle-no data

Gragg smiled to himself. The Daemon Task Force, eh?

He was closing in on them. He was mapping the topology of the plutocrats' elusive network-The Money Power. They were up to something. This man would help Gragg find out what.

These plutocrats were men of limited vision who needed to be swept aside. Men from a previous age. An age of oil and heavy industry. But the distributed technocracy would soon rise, and Gragg would be there at Sobol's side for the dawn of a new age. An age of immortals. A second Age of Reason.

Gragg's eyes narrowed at the video image of the man's car.

There would be no mercy for those who stood in the way.

Chapter 37:// Cogs in the Machine

The Haas mini mill was a miracle of modern engineering-a computer-controlled metal lathe, drill press, and router all rolled into one. The Haas could download a 3-D computer model into memory and from it produce a custom metal or plastic part cut and shaped to exacting specifications. It was essentially a self-enclosed, water-cooled machine-parts factory packed into a housing the size of a hot dog cart.

Linked to the Web, it almost became a 3-D fax machine-plans sent in digitally at one end emerged at the other as finished parts. The input could originate from any corner of the world via Internet or phone. All that was required was a human being to serve the Haas. To feed it the raw materials the plans required. To protect and maintain it. Man serving machine.

But Kurt Voelker and his crew loved their machines. The machines gave them entre into the Daemon network. The Daemon network gave them a future.

They had progressed significantly since their first AutoM8. Their Sacramento machine shop now boasted three half-million-dollar computer-controlled milling machines, running full-time off dual cable and satellite Internet connections. They were producing parts at an accelerating pace-but the Daemon had forbidden their company from growing larger. Three machines were the maximum they were permitted to possess. True, they'd generated three million in revenue last year and taken home hundreds of thousands of dollars each-but Voelker chafed against the prohibition to stay small.