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eventually located the customers he was looking for, only to find they were generic, nondescript aliases that gave no indication of who they really were. None of them had addresses or contact info. None of them seemed to be linked to any other part of the system. More time passed.
    He eventually gave up on the customers and simply explored what orders had taken place. The prices varied widely from one customer to another, but were always in the seven to eight figure range. The delivery location was always listed simply as "D'Arcy".
    Deck ran some more searches to try and find out what sort of place D'Arcy was. A city? A warehouse? A department? A code name for something else? More time passed. He checked the clock. 12:30am.
    Crap.
    He needed to be gone over an hour and a half ago. This was suicide. He was so close. Five more minutes.
    Suddenly a message appeared on his screen:
Run.
    Deck blinked. He had no idea who would be sending him a message like this. He traced it and found that it appeared to be coming from Citadel itself. This made even less sense. He checked SECWATCH anyway. All clear.
    He ran some more searches for D'Arcy - there was simply no location called D'Arcy anywhere in the system.
Run. Now.
    Deck shook his head. He didn't normally take advice from computer systems he was hacking, but he knew he had pushed his luck too far already. He needed to go, SECWATCH alert or not. Before he closed his rig, he decided to run a check on the local police to see if they had any alerts going.
    There were several, but only one was important to him:
REPORTED: 08/20/42 - 12:15am
TYPE: Intrusion
LOCATION: TriOptimum Square
ACTION TAKEN: Multiple Units, Ambulance dispatched.
SUSPECT: Adult male, black clothing, armed + dangerous
LOCATION: TriOptimum Bldg. 64th floor
    The building's security guards had simply called the police instead of tripping their local alarm. Deck wished he had set up a program to monitor elevator activity, because then he would know which way to start running. Too late for that now.
    Even worse, he was dealing with cops instead of security personnel. Cops were much less predictable in their use of force and far more likely to use deadly force.
    Deck shut his rig and took a small metal lipstick-sized cylinder out of his pocket.
    Just then the door slid open. Before Deck could react, two cops swept into the room. By the time he saw them their weapons were trained on him. One advanced directly to the desk while the other flanked him from the left.
    They were wearing hard-core cop gear. Their bodies were encased in lightweight armor, and they were wearing bulletproof helmets that provided high-grade night vision.
    Deck looked down to see a laser-site dot pointed at the center of his chest. He could guess where the other one was aimed.
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Chapter 3: DOWNWARD
    "Hands on your head, sir. Step away from the desk," the cop commanded. His voice was harsh as it spat out of the helmet speaker. The lights of the city reflected off the polished black surface. "Do it now!," he added when he saw that Deck was hesitating.
    Deck hadn't moved since they came in the room. He had just sat there, like a rodent in the headlights. He still held in his hand the small metal tube - an EMP grenade. It was time to see if this thing was worth the money.
    He thumbed the detonator on the end of the EMP grenade as he placed his hands on his head.
    There was a pop in his hand, and muffled cries of confusion from both officers. Deck counted himself lucky that neither of them pulled the trigger in panic. They stumbled back as their helmet displays died, leaving them completely blind. The screen on the desk winked out for good, and Deck cursed as he realized he had just toasted his rig.
    In one graceful motion, Deck scooped up the burned-out rig and slid across the desk. The cop in front of the desk was the first to realize what was wrong and struggled to remove his helmet. Deck smashed him in the back of the knee with