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this time, anyway. The whole thing’s too compartmentalized. And your part is crucial. What you’re crawling into could be the lair of the Jaguars. Or it could be nothing.”
    “Or it could be a trap,” she repeats.
    “Or it could be a trap. But if it’s not, we could end this war tonight. You could, Claire. We need someone who can get in there without triggering any alarms. Someone who can tell us where to strike. We need your talents, Claire. It’d be worth a lot to your future.”
    “So would living,” she replies. “How secure is this perimeter?”
    “As secure as I can make it. This place has been swept. Along with this whole block. It’s clean. If they have anything rigged, it’d be inside the zone itself.”
    “Great. And if I find something?”
    “Map out the physical locations of the executive nodes of that network. And then get out.”
    “In that order?”
    “In whatever order you can manage.”
    “Right,” she says. She breathes deeply. She looks around her. “I’m ready to do this.”
    “Excellent.”
    “You’re acting like I have a choice.”
    “You always have a choice, Claire.”
    “Can we get out of this shaft?”
    “We can.” He turns to the wall panel, adjusts the controls. They start to descend. They gain speed, hissing down through scores of floors. They slow. They halt. The door slides open.

    N othing. There’s nothing here. It’s as if there never was. Marlowe’s making his way down ladders and stairs and through trapdoors and it’s as if they’ve all just been dormant, waiting for his presence. Yet he can feel the presence of the ones he seeks close at hand. The force they have in here probably isn’t large enough to set up watch over the whole building. They’re probably keeping as low a profile as possible. But sooner or later he’s going to reach their perimeters.
    Probably sooner. For now he’s reached apartments that are inhabited. Open doors give way to living quarters—laundry hung all about tiny chambers, kids squawking, mothers screaming. Marlowe moves through them like a ghost, his suit’s camo cranked up as far as it’ll go, letting him take on the ambience of wall, of doorway, of ceiling—whatever surface he’s in front of at whatever moment. The most trouble he gets is from a dog that won’t stop barking. It knows something’s up. But Marlowe ignores it, becomes one more thing in that animal’s life that’ll never reach the lives of the humans who feed it. He descends through several more such levels. He steps over sleepers, moves past men and women engrossed in card games, drinking, laughing—he reminds himself it’s Saturday night, wonders how much it differs from all the other nights that go down in this city. Truth to tell, the cities up north aren’t that different. They’ve just got more money to blow on this kind of thing. Not to mention a better chance of surviving to see tomorrow’s parties.
    But the lower he gets, the more the ones going on around him fizzle out. Finally he finds himself moving through deserted halls once more. Most of the overhead lighting’s gone. And now Marlowe’s circuits are humming. His heads-up’s giving him the alert: there are sensors in here. There are wavelengths brushing against him like cobwebs. But his suit’s camoed in more than just the visible spectrum. It’s state-of-the-art.
    Now put to the test.

    I ntervention on the Elevator: the Operative watches through the magnifiers as two patrol ships move in toward the construction area. They’re drifting cables—and fixing those cables to the web of scaffolding that encrusts the Elevator’s spine. Hatches open. Suits emerge, fire jets, flit in toward the workers clustered along the scaffolding.
    “What’s going on?” says the Operative.
    “Looks like a raid,” replies the pilot.
    “Any idea why?”
    “What do you know about those workers?”
    The suits are going to town. They’re fanning out through the scaffolding. They’re grabbing