Shit, Benny! You fuck!

I was more than pissed. I’d had a bad feeling about the grenade since the beginning, but he wasn’t the type of guy you could say “no” to.

The explosion tripped a dozen alarms, and One Shell Square’s grid defenses had come to life. I yanked out all my fast-lines and ducked into the closure of the security hub.

I dumped the maintenance payroll, usurped a corporate decker’s identity, scrambled his access codes beyond retrieval and dumped his retirement savings over to the Science of Christ. When I turned off my camo, I looked as if I belonged there.

Before anyone else logged in, I juggled the fire alarm routines so that Benny would have a clear 15-minute window to escape in the evacuation.

The environmental monitors showed that the fire from the explosion had spread into the inner suites, and was showing no sign of letting up.

And then, suddenly, the security hub disintegrated around me, melted away. Up from the haze of digital destruction reared a Cerberus3 watchdog.

Time to run.