The edge of the meat hook had made a very precise cut, but a few minutes with the monofilament staplegun and the jacket would be as good as new. She tugged off her baggy ribbed pants and clambered into bed, and within minutes was asleep. Rani was too exhausted to be disturbed by the frequent sounds of shouts and gunfire that came up from the streets through her cracked window to her. Besides, she was used to it.

* * *

Strength.

The calm gaze of the woman holding the lion’s mouth open stared back at Geraint from the card. He didn’t know who she was, but he felt a mixture of calm and excitement after the horror and fear of the earlier images, a sense of reassurance and uncertainty at the same time. Well, powerful lady, I hope we meet sooner rather than later. After the soft-bodied creatures of the last few weeks, you should be interesting.

Geraint grinned, put the pack in its silk and in its box, and then poured a fresh glass of champagne. News was coming through fast from Tokyo and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong; something was popping in the pharmaceuticals markets, or so it looked. He reached for the plug and snapped it into the datajack behind his left ear, bringing the electronic chatter of the cyberdeck closer to his consciousness.

Geraint was in the Matrix now, and he felt predatory. At the same moment, his persona icon showed the place where his attention was directed in the Matrix. The icon had no objective reality among the optical chips, data-lines, and computer architecture they called the Matrix, but another operator in the same part of the system would perceive Geraint’s ‘‘persona” as a Celtic knight grasping a longsword, which represented a powerful attack program in cyberspace. Beside him, his sensor utilities took the image of a pack of Irish wolfhounds, eager and snuffling as they loped along beside him.