Shiva looked up just as sharply, but her expression was unreadable.

"I really don't think this is something we've got time for at the moment," Cullen Trey said dryly.

The first handful of bullets peppered the wedged door, causing it to vibrate. Shiva turned her attention there.

Skater accessed the Commlink IV. "Wheeler, talk to me."

"Yaks," the dwarf said. 'Thick as ants at a fragging picnic."

"Can you home in on us?" Skater dropped lo his knees and checked the flooring. It was wood, thick and gnarled, with scuff marks from years of use.

"Got you on the screen now, chummer."

"Stay with us, then," Skater said, "because we're getting the frag out of here."

"How?" Shiva demanded. "You figured out how to walk through walls and let bullets pass through you in the last couple of minutes.

"We go down." With a smooth motion. Skater drew the monofilament sword and used it to hack a large triangle in the center of the room's floor. It took two tries to kick the section of flooring away.

Just then a massive impact staggered the wedged door, forcing it back and leaving it listing open a few more centimeters than before. Smoke curled snarling tendrils around the door and reached into the room.

Thrusting the SPAS-22 through on his side of the door, Duran squeezed the trigger. The harsh baloom of the shotgun was near deafening in the confined space, but not loud enough to drown out Archangel's sudden screams of pain.

Skater whirled as she spilled from the chair onto the floor. As he rushed over, her eyes rolled back up in her head, her lids flickering like juiced Korean advertisements scaling buildings in downtown Seattle. She wasn't breathing.

"Dump shock," Trey said, joining Skater. "Whatever she ran into, the IC must have been rather nasty." The corps weren't shy about packing their systems with ever more vicious Intrusion Countermeasures, and no matter how good the decker, any Matrix run could be her last.