Chapter 2

Gloria Carter, still in her t-shirt and jeans, walked into her manager's office. Rows of tall windows formed two of the sides, one row looking out at a half-occupied open-plan cube farm and the other to a conference room. The other two walls were covered with a double row of two-meter vidscreens. The furniture was generic, plain white, and every horizontal surface was covered with data storage artifacts. Gloria recognized three sizes of floppies, a reel of half-inch magnetic tape and a couple of papyrus scrolls buried in the books, stacks of paper and piles of datachips of various sorts. "Mission accomplished, Boss."

He nodded at a screen on his desk. "I was watching. Good job, but was it really necessary to stick him like a pig and let him bleed out?"

She shrugged. "Little pachucho deserved it. He originally got clipped in a drive-by a couple of days later. No impact. I thought of taking a gun and blowing his head off but this didn't introduce any contamination."

"Like I said, good job. Now go home."

Gloria stretched and covered a yawn with her hand. "Yeah. Time for some ganja, a hot bath, a tall drink and some serious eyelid maintenance. See you tomorrow, if we're still here."

"Yeah, if we're still here."