Whipping out a gleaming pen from an inside pocket, Geraint scribbled her telecom code onto a paper napkin. He preferred to defer the query that way, not wanting to suggest that the three of them meet back in London. That might be just a little too awkward.

Serrin returned to his room and started filing his report on the laptop. He checked through his diary and noted every time and place he’d been, letting his employers know they’d got overtime and value for money. He knew he still needed to run checks on the Optical Neotech guys at some point, but that could wait. For now.

If Rutger had spiked the Johnson’s drink, the man was showing no appreciable effect of it. He was a New Yorker, a hard guy from the Rotten Apple, and he had briefed her quickly and concisely, with an answer prepared for every query Francesca could muster. But there was just one possible slip in the fifty-minute workout that had intrigued her.

“I must emphasize that my client’s interest in this matter is confined to the seeding of the target’s system with the corrosive. It is entirely possible that you may encounter an unfriendly operative once in the system. Under such circumstances your contract permits you to withdraw from hostilities if you are endangered, and we add the proviso that under no circumstances are you to enter any other system."

She pondered that one over breakfast the next morning, which was Saturday. The job would pay well, as befitted the task. Being a freelance security consultant was a discreet cover for her. To those in the know, it said, I bust systems open as well as test them.

This one was a bust. Someone wanted a nasty corrosive virus dumped into the computer system of a Fuchi subsidiary. The virus came in its own autodegrading chip; any attempt to do anything other than download it into its predestined target would melt the cyberdeck into which the chip was loaded. She hadn’t paid all that money for a Cyber-6 to have a melting chip rakk it up, and she wasn’t going to take too close a look at the thing. Thirty-five thousand nuyen were also a slamming good reason not to fool around.