Part One:

The décor was strictly late Twentieth Century, the kind of retro-furnishings that tended to crop up every few years like some sort of memetic plague, sweeping through those with shallow, fragile minds like a storm across the Martian plains. It was usually only basic furnishings, Christian Barrett mused as he tiptoed around the living room of the small apartment down in one of the federal districts, where the Martian Government sent their bureaucrats to retire. Invariably, the illusion faded as signs of modernity, for lack of a better term, crept in around the edges. Here, in an entertainment center designed to hold electronic media long extinct, one could find the control deck for an Afterglow Multimedia VR cortical stimulator, the latest thing for jaded entertainment junkies. Christian looked over his shoulder at the owners of the apartment, a man, thin, small in build, nearly bald, and his wife, who was overweight to the point that she seemed to serve as the universe's natural counterpoint to her husband. He knew their names-he knew everything that the Martian federal network had on them-but he found that he did not care. They had a purpose, after all. Both of them wore liquid crystal VR lozenges over their eyes, wireless links to the stimulator that jacked them directly in to Afterglow's proprietary virtual dataspace, and both sat, slumped in their chairs in the position that one associated with stupor. Christian smiled, an expression made all the more predatory by the black slashes of tattoos that scarred both his cheeks from ear to chin, two slashes per side. "Amazing what you can do with a little promotion," he whispered to himself. He reached into the pocket of the black leather jacket that he wore and produced a small device, about the size of a palm top computer, and rested it beside of the stimulator. He touched the icons on the face of the screen, and the device did its job, intercepting the two-way data flow between the users and the stimulator, seeking the medical data that told the stimulator the state of the user's brain. It took a moment, and then a series of images appeared on the tiny screen. Few people could even grasp that they'd seen anything as fast as the views had appeared, yet Christian had seen it all. Views of the areas in each user's cortex stimulated by the program, reflex response, signal phase distortions-and all were in the green as far as Christian was concerned. "Very good," he said to himself, pocketing the palm-top. He turned and looked at the old couple and wondered if, the experiment over, he should release these two. Then he laughed. "Let 'em fry," he whispered, and walked out of the apartment.

The street below was quiet at 1:45 AM, as befitted a neighborhood with an average citizen age of sixty-seven, the only sound the distant hum of vehicles driving through the adjoining neighborhood, Akiyama District. Christian wondered at the irony of city planning that had placed the retirement community next to a district long plagued by prostitution and juvenile crime. He supposed it was some sort of karmic balance. Waiting outside for him, standing astride a BMW/Viggen hybrid motorcycle, was a girl, Eurasian as they'd called people of her heritage once, wearing a school uniform, the pleated skirt criminally short, and thigh-high stockings. Tattooed on her left cheek was an ankh, the symbol given to her, as the facial scars had been given to Christian, the day she had joined the Practical Nihilists. She called herself Toxic Dancer, but Christian knew her real name. It delighted him in a perverse way that he knew this secret about her. "How did it go, Painful?" she asked.

Christian smiled a death's head smile. He had taken the gang handle of Painful Death out of a sense of crushing irony if nothing else and it amused him to be called that. "How do you think? Two users, brains turned to goo. They say the dataspace rots your brain."

Dancer shook her head. "You know what I mean. Did they download Twist?"

"Your doubts wound me."

"I'm serious, Painful. You know we're running out of time, right? Herron's put a twenty million bounty on your head."

Christian stepped closer to Dancer and cupped her chin in one hand. "Sweet Dancer, do you think I'm worried about a bounty hunter, given what Esperanza wants to do to me?" He gave her a light kiss. "Yes, they downloaded Twist. It had the full effect through the Afterglow servers. We can put it on the market."

"Esperanza won't like that," she pointed out.

"He needed to make a higher bid." He nodded at the motorcycle. "Let's get back to Akiyama, start making some calls. Tomorrow will be a busy day." Dancer nodded, and kissed him again before putting her helmet on. Barrett looked up at the apartment building that he had just left and wondered if the universe realized what had just happened today. Then he climbed on behind her and rode into the night.

Spaceship Bebop, in the hyperspace gateway from Ganymede to Mars:

Spike Spiegel was pretty sure that, no matter how long he kept his eyes closed, Jet Black would still be standing there, impatiently waiting for him to see what was on the monitor.

He had already leaned back on the couch once, "accidentally" knocking the monitor aside, in the hopes that Jet would catch on that he was not interested in the bounty that had caught Jet's eye, but Jet had calmly replaced the monitor in its location and had waited, arms crossed. "You aren't going anywhere, are you?" Spike asked.

"Not until you look at this," Jet admitted.

"And if I don't look at it?"

Jet looked over his shoulder at the hatchway that led to the crew quarters of the Bebop and said "I'm sure Faye wouldn't mind looking at a twenty million bounty."

Spike sighed. He had a good idea of which bounty Jet was talking about-twenty million was a fairly high bounty-and was decidedly uninterested in pursuing it. However, he was equally opposed to the idea of letting Faye Valentine have it. Not only would Faye lord it over him-she was rather good at that- but she would lose it in a hurry gambling, or incurring some other debt that would eventually draw him and Jet into the fray. "What exactly fired you up about this one, Jet. We could take four bounties that would make that on Mars easy."

"It's a corporate bounty," Jet replied.

"Which is why we shouldn't take it," Spike said. "Whenever corporations put a bounty on someone, they either welsh out of it or it's to try to cover up some kind of bullshit internal politics. No sane bounty hunter would touch it…"

"Which makes it perfect. We haven't exactly been rolling in the big scores lately."

"You'll have to remind me when we were rolling them in." Spike opened one eye and looked up at Jet. "What got you so hot for this one, Jet?"

"Maybe I'm tired of making so little that we can barely pay the Gate toll to move on to the next score."

Spike smiled. "Just trying to shed that lovable loser image, huh, Jet?" He opened his eyes and sat up. "The Jet Black self-improvement plan. How can I refuse an offer like that?"

"Shut up, Spike."

Before Spike could read what was on the monitor in full, Edward, the gawky, eccentric radical hacker, burst into the room, chasing after Ein. The little Welsh corgi wasn't exactly built for high speed sprinting, and Spike suspected that Edward took it easy on him for that reason. She-it was hard to tell, with her wild, unusual looks, that Edward was a girl-chased Ein past the couch, then stopped on a dime and stared at the monitor. "Oooh, a bountyhead. Edward must look."

"Knock it off, Edward." Spike settled in to read the profile, knowing Edward would do the same and realizing that he might as well not try to stop her. "Let's see-Christian Xian Barrett, twenty years old, five-ten, one hundred seventy eight pounds, distinguishing characteristics, four tattoos on face….whoa." The picture of the dark haired young man was marred by two slashes on each cheek that resembled open scars. "This guy's in a style gang."

"Style gang?" Edward climbed on the arm of the couch and perched there, like a bird. "Edward does not know the term."

"Style gang. Kind of a Martian tradition. Juvenile gangs will pick one fashion or personal philosophy and build a gang around it. Facial tattoos are big with style gangs." Spike read the remainder of the profile on Barrett and found he was a bit surprised by it. "Employed as a researcher in applied virtual reality programming skills for the past seven years by Afterglow LLC? This guy?"

Jet nodded. "I pulled his public jacket from the Afterglow database earlier. He's a serious prodigy, discovered at the age of thirteen writing programs that researchers twice his age could not even imagine. He invented the programming language that made the current trend of direct cortical stimulation possible."

"Come again?" Spike asked.

"You don't get out much, do you Spike?" Jet nodded at the monitor. "This guy made it possible for Afterglow to develop their new system, the one that allows for true virtual reality interfacing with full sense simulation. It's the latest fad."

"I don't do fads." Spike reached into a pocket of his jacket and produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. "So what did this guy do anyway?"

"Afterglow doesn't want to admit it. But the fact that they put a bounty on his head is rather suggestive, don't you think. Usually, with corporate bounties, that means it has something to do with the bottom line."

Spike lit a cigarette as Edward, apparently bored with what she was watching, decided to chase Ein again. "Anything else on him?"

"Yeah. Apparently he's still active in the gang culture. The Afterglow brass tolerated it because of his talent, but he still has associations with a lot of the style gangs."

"That will mean Akiyama District, then. Rough neck of the woods." Spike tried not to think about his life on Mars, before, but Akiyama District had a reputation that was hard to forget. "Sounds like a bit much, even for twenty million. But we'd better take it…right, Faye?"

Jet looked around, confused, as he could not see anyone there. Finally, Faye Valentine stuck her head around the edge of the hatchway and asked "How did you know, Spike?"

Spike smiled. "I didn't. Just wanted to be sure you weren't spying."

Faye walked into the room with her accustomed confident strut, clearly playing off the fact that Spike had outwitted her. "Whatever. How are we going to get this one?"

"We?" Jet asked. "So we're a 'we' now, Faye?"

"For twenty million we are." She walked over to the monitor and read the screen. "Doesn't look like he's worth twenty million."

"I wasn't aware that there was an industry standard," Jet growled.

"Aren't we grouchy today?" Faye looked up at Jet and smiled sweetly. "Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?"

Spike decided to put a stop to the latest installation of the Valentine-Black verbal wars before they started again. "Okay, kids, don't make me put you to bed without your supper. Jet, you work this guy's background when we get to Mars-I'll take Akiyama District."

"And, uh, what about me?" Faye asked, tapping her foot impatiently.

Spike stood up and began to leave the room, his hands in his jacket pockets, walking in his traditional slouch. "I'm going to get the Swordfish ready. Feel free to follow me if you want, Faye."

"Your trust in my abilities overwhelms me," Faye scoffed. She looked the profile on Barrett over again, thinking. A corporate bounty. We must really be desperate to take this one. The proud crew of the Bebop, reduced to this. "Well, who knows," she said to herself. "We might actually get this one."

On the other side of the room, Ed crashed headlong into a wall trying to catch Ein; she shook her head, said "Ouchies," then continued chasing the dog. Jet watched her go with a certain species of amazement, wondering exactly how her head worked. "That child is not right," he remarked.

"Who's right on this bucket of bolts?" Faye asked. "Well, better go down to the hangar and preflight my little Redtail."

"So you're going to follow Spike's lead for a change?"

Faye looked back over her shoulder at Jet. "Well, you know how I like to play the long odds, don't you?"

"Ain't that the truth."

Mars, Akiyama District:

Christian awoke at precisely 6:00 AM local time, his left arm numb because Dancer had fallen asleep next to him and had rolled onto his arm. He was not certain if they had made love, but given their mutual nudity it had a high probability. They had returned to the converted warehouse that the Nihilists had purchased using money that he had funneled from one of Afterglow's black program budgets and Dancer, after a few drinks and some of her preferred designer drugs, had gotten sentimental. Christian, himself more than a little drunk, had agreed to it if only as a study in semantics, on how the word "love" meant different things based on the dynamic of the situation, but he couldn't quite recall how the argument had gone. He pulled his arm out from under Dancer, who mumbled something and rolled over. Christian pulled on the same pair of pants that he had worn the day before and walked across the room to the table that his custom built computer sat on. He booted it up and called up, once again, the source code for his greatest creation, Twist. Millions of lines of code flowed up the monitor in an endless stream of data that, soon, would change the human universe. If it was allowed to. He called up a mail program and checked his in-box, and found that there was no new mail from Herron. He's relying on bounty hunters, then? Christian thought. He needs to worry more about the competition, or doing the job himself.

Christian picked up from beside the computer a pair of VR goggles, an older iteration, wired to the computer as opposed to the wireless links Afterglow promoted now, plugged them in, and placed them over his eyes. Instantly his mind lit up with a million icons representing the data paths through the dataspaces of Mars, routes that he preferred to travel highlighted in green. Barrett ignored them and took a road less traveled, finding himself in front of the representation of the private dataspace of the third party that he intended to involve in this affair, the one that, he hoped, would draw Keith Herron out of his defensive posture, which he needed to have happen.

The dataspace was designed to resemble something out of Japanese architecture, suggesting several different buildings at once, fitting for the president of an electronics firm that had had it's start in Tokyo. Barrett reached out and touched the icon, and left the message that the owner of the dataspace was waiting for. "This is Barrett, Mr. Misawa. I'm ready for the meeting now. Club Gothic Slam, midnight tonight." He doubted that Toshiaki Misawa would even bother to come himself, but that wasn't the intent. Afterglow's comp-sci division had hacked this message hub months ago, and right now alarms were ringing in the Afterglow system. Mass mayhem will erupt tonight, he thought as he logged out. Assuming that I live that long. He watched the lines of code that defined his creation for a long time after that, wondering if things were going to work out the way he wanted them to. They seldom did.

A knock came at his door, and before he could answer, the door opened. Standing there was a tall, powerfully built man with a blonde crew cut and tattoos that resembled jagged bolts of lightning running from temple to jaw. Silent Fury had been the leader of the Nihilists before Christian had come along, supplanting him with his resources within Afterglow, and in truth, Christian allowed Fury to run the gang for him. He was not certain exactly how much Fury resented him for it, but was certain that he did. "We getting it on tonight?" Fury asked gruffly.

"High probability. It's likely to get messy-if I were you I wouldn't bring anyone you're fond of."

"You contacted Misawa then?"

Christian nodded. "The trick to successful negotiations is to make sure that you have options. If Herron and Afterglow don't want to play, we bring in another player."

"And Esperanza?"

"Is a cut-rate thug who hopes that the Red Dragons don't notice his business. He thought he could break their monopoly on the Red-eye trade with me. It doesn't work that way."

Fury considered this. "So tonight we could see two different corporate security teams and possibly Esperanza's muscle. Painful, how many ways are you trying to get people to kill you?"

Christian's expression was unreadable. "As many as it takes to make me rich, Fury. As many as it takes."

The Bebop made planetfall, as was Jet's custom, in the water of the artificial bay that surrounded the main Martian settlement, which was in keeping with the ship's origin as a fishing trawler. As soon as the Bebop had come to a stop, the hangar bay doors opened and Spike's personal craft, the sleek, angular Swordfish, moved into launch position. Spike extended the wings, fired up the engines, and said to himself "Here we go again" and launched himself into the sky. Moments later, Faye's Redtail, a less-aerodynamic looking craft, basically a cockpit with a wide variety of weapons built around it, followed. Spike, watching his screens, grinned to himself. "Such loyalty," he said.

"All right, guys," Jet called to both of them, "Ed and me will try to hack the Afterglow system and find out just why Barrett has a bounty on him. Spike, can I assume you have a reason for going to Akiyama District?"

"I'm not going to Akiyama," Spike replied. "Going to pay an old friend a visit first."

"Spike has friends," Faye called, incredulously. "Who would have guessed?"

"Funny, Faye. Remind me to laugh later. No, this person used to run the gangs before they got old enough for it to be boring. She might be able to tell me what's up, though-she liked to keep an eye on the street."

"Hmm, Spike, a 'she?' Old girlfriend?"

Spike decided to let that one pass.

One of the greater difficulties in owning a flying vehicle as your main form of transport was the fact that, in built up urban areas, it was difficult to find a place to land. Spike and Faye had been forced to land twenty blocks north of their goal and walk back through one of the business districts, skyscrapers rising into the twilight above them. Faye, typically, was complaining. "I knew I should have made my own leads," she grumbled. "But no, I have to follow your sorry ass all over hell's half acre."

"You could leave you know," he told her. "I don't need your help here."

"And miss out on some more of the famous past of Spike Spiegel?" Faye laughed, "Wouldn't dream of it."

"I knew you'd say that," Spike complained.

Spike led Faye to a small store built between two larger skyscrapers almost like an afterthought, identified by the small neon sign in the window as being called "Modern Electronics." Spike pushed open the front door and was nearly knocked back out of the store by a blast of noise that he thought was music. "Hasn't changed a bit," he said to himself, walking in. The store sold second hand electronics-computers, VR sets, playback units-and the owner and operator sat behind the counter, listening to the ear-blasting, guitar driven music while working on a computer. She was a very pretty girl, in her early twenties, still had the same red streaks dyed into her long black hair as before. Some things do stay the same, he thought. He walked up to the counter and said over the music "What do they call this music again Donna?"

If Spike had expected her to act shocked at his presence, Donna amazed him. "I told you years ago it was called alternative, Spike."

"Alternative to what?"

"You never did listen did you?" Donna looked up and noticed Faye. "And this is?"

"My personal fan club," he said, a comment that caused Faye to make a face at him. "So, Donna, things still the same with you?"

"Depends on how you define 'same", Spike. Obviously I'm not quite the woman I used to be." She held up her hand and showed him the ring on her finger "Got married."

"To a lucky guy. You still keep up with the street?"

"Half my business is street still, Spike. People wanting modified hardware or something rare and I'm their girl. So what do you need to know?"

"There's a style gang with connections to Afterglow LLC down in Akiyama. Know which one it is?"

"That's easy. The Practical Nihilists. Some Afterglow employee took over the gang about six months back and since then things have been weird. Rumor has it that there's a lot of noise about how Painful Death-that's the Afterglow employee-is trying to make some big score with the Esperanza mob, and of course there's the bounty." Donna cocked an eyebrow at him. "That's what you want, right? I'd heard that these days you were a bounty hunter."

"Word travels fast. The Esperanza mob, huh? Still tired of being number two to the Red Dragons in the criminal fraternity." What would a crime lord want with a virtual reality programmer? Spike thought. "They have any preferred hang out?"

"Gothic Slam. A retro-metal club down in Akiyama. But unless you're in a gang, or invited, you don't get in there."

"I think I can handle that, Donna. Well, thanks for everything." He turned and walked for the door, waving over his shoulder. "Be good."

"Try to be, Spike."

"So, Spike, " Faye asked once they were outside the store, "who was she before?"

Spike lit a cigarette. "One of a million kids in a gang that the Red Dragons used for their own purposes. She's rather good at building electronics, and that's what she did. One day she woke up and was tired of it and she got out. One of the few who did."

"I see. So how do we get into this club?"

Spike looked Faye over. "Well, normally I would recommend using some of your assets, but gang bangers like their girls a bit less demure than you." Given that Faye was wearing her customary outfit of very short shorts and a halter-top in a rather bright yellow, this seemed unbelievable. "Don't worry, I'll take care of it."

"You are so well known here, after all."

The Bebop:

Ed, sitting cross-legged in front of her computer, was starting to get impressed.

She liked a challenge, to be sure, and Afterglow's corporate security arm's computer security was serious, radical in fact. She had hacked her way into the majority of the system with ease, but the gateway to the records division was a nasty one. Ed raised her hands over her head and intoned loudly "This will be the one that does it!" She hit a key, and one of her standard intrusion codes, represented in VR space by a series of smiley face icons, was inputted into the code field-and promptly got an "access denied" message as a response. "Oooh, a tough nut to crack, " she said in a singsong voice. On the other side of the room, Jet, who had been trying to get information on Barrett from the police database, looked up in disbelief. He wondered if Ed was really having trouble or just playing a game with the system. Usually did not take her this long, he mused.

Ed was in fact deadly serious, as she proved as far as she was concerned when she shouted "Time to worship the Green Grin!" She pulled out her deadliest code pattern, one written in a series of smilies that were green, grinning madly at the viewer. "Okay, Green Grin, go get 'em!"

In computing terms, what Ed's code did was roughly equivalent to a mugging, as she basically battered her way in. She launched another code to repair the damage that she had made as she headed for the data on Christian Xian Barrett that Jet needed. "Pay allegiance to the Green Grin, " she cackled, which made Jet wonder exactly what Ed was up to. Once inside the system, finding what they needed was easy, and Ed downloaded a rather considerable file then left, still laughing. "Got it, got it, got it," she said, capering around. "Wanna see?" Before Jet could answer positively, Ed put her computer on her head and walked over to where Jet was working. Jet took the computer from it's rather precariously position and began to read. "Let's see what we have here...Christian Barrett, head researcher, Project Twist." Jet read on and found that it was mostly technobabble about the goals of the project that Barrett had been working on.

"Enhanced emulation of cortical stimulation in terms of chemical balance," he read. "What does that mean?"

Ed peered over his shoulder and said, "Ooh, he's a naughty boy."

"What do you mean, Edward?"

"Read it…." She scrolled the report down, having speed-read the file's summary letter when she was on-line. "He stole it…. Stole all the work and took off. "

Jet read on further and found that Ed was correct. Barrett, who was already under suspicion of embezzling funds from the Twist budget, had taken three years or research and all of his security codes and had disappeared-to an extent. In the file were transcripts of phone and e-mail communications to the CEO of Afterglow LLC, Keith Herron, that were obviously attempts by Barrett to sell his work back to Herron. Jet smiled; he could almost admire the kid's style. "But what did he steal?"

"You don't know?" Ed peered into Jet's eyes. "Hee hee, you must read!"

"I hate technobabble," Jet sighed.

Akiyama District:

Gothic Slam was a cramped, industrial space, which, Christian knew, was attributable to the fact that, once upon a time, it had been a machine shop. Someone with a decided sense of irony had decided to convert the shop into a club catering towards retro-heavy metal, and Christian supposed it fit. The club was laid out with a raised level that surrounded the murderous "mosh pit", which could get ugly sometimes. At present, three hundred or so gang bangers were on the floor, basically beating the hell out of each other to the music of a band that called itself Pale Deviant, five denim and leather clad youths banging out songs learned from ancient MP3s. It was a hell of a place to conduct business at, which was exactly the point. He and Dancer had taken a table that afforded them a view of the entire sweep of the "upper" level-actually, you entered the club at a higher level and descended into the pit-and were waiting for someone to come. Afterglow, Misawa, Esperanza…someone would show up and accelerate the game. Dancer was watching the band, bobbing her head up and down in an almost ritualistic motion; Christian looked down and saw that she was carrying a gun, one of those cheap nine millimeters that Bad Brad sold out of the back of his pawnshop, jammed into the waistband of her leather pants. He looked around and saw Fury, who'd recruited about five members of the Nihilists to serve as security, and none of them looked as if they had been around long. Must think it'll be bloody, Christian thought.

Dancer leaned over and said "Why bring Misawa into it, Painful? It's too risky."

"I don't disagree with you, love. But the problem is a question of code conflicts. I wrote Twist using my programming language, but that language, thanks to my contract, is based on Afterglow source code. It will never work as well outside of the Afterglow system. If Afterglow does not buy it, it will not work."

"So that's why you entertained other offers," Dancer said knowingly. "To draw them out."

"And for alternate funding. The money I received from both Misawa and Esperanza did not go into the gang, my dear." He noticed movement at the entrance and saw a Japanese man in an immaculately tailored grey suit, followed by three men in almost cliched black suits and sunglasses. "Bodyguard fashion 101," he said to himself. He caught Fury's eye and nodded at the newcomers, who could only be the party from Misawa-the bouncers had orders to not let anyone in who was not in a gang that could not present Misawa corporate ID-and Fury nodded. "Game on, Dancer." She took a deep breath and got ready for whatever was to come.

The Japanese man walked up to them and said, in a tone that barely carried over the tumult of the band; "I am Kobashi, Mr. Misawa's representative in this matter. He has briefed me on the specifics of your business with him." Kobashi indicated the table with a wave of his arm "Might I have a seat, Mr. Barrett?"

"You might…but the goons keep standing. I like them where they're at right now." Kobashi took the seat directly opposite of Christian, his guards flanking his seat. "Very good. So you know why you're here?"

"Mr. Misawa contracted you to serve as a mole within Project Twist, to hand your data over to us in sufficient time for us to match Afterglow's product. Yet many things that he has heard disturb Mr. Misawa. He has heard that you have disappeared from Afterglow's sight, and that you are rumored to be in contact with criminal organizations."

"I was of the opinion that industrial espionage was illegal, Mr. Kobashi. Be careful what aspersions you cast. I have completed Twist, Mr. Kobashi. It has a sensory effect of 99.967% on a human mind within a VR dataspace. And it is as of now on the open market."

Kobashi considered this. "This does not conform with Mr. Misawa's plans."

"Like I give a fuck." Christian tossed a computer disc across the table, delighting in the startled expressions that crossed the faces of the bodyguards. "Twist is in the Afterglow networks, uploaded to their VR server but not yet released. I hacked a few VR systems in order to send a few users to Twist, and two people downloaded it. That disc contains an overview of the project and the user profiles of the two souls that are currently addicted to Twist. Take that to Mr. Misawa and see what he can do with it." He snarled ferally at Kobashi. "Or does that not conform to Mr. Misawa's plans?"

The Bebop:

"Hold up," Jet said, exasperation in his voice, "You're saying that this guy invented a virtual drug?"

Ed shook her head. "No, Edward did not-the file did." She gave Jet a look that seemed to convey how out of touch with the universe in a millisecond. "He made a program that tells the mind that it feels silly-goofy-a drug emulator."

Jet could not believe that was possible, but it was true. Project Twist was a black project designed to create a program that simulated the effect of a mildly addictive chemical on the human brain. The possibilities were staggering-you could work Twist into the source code of an Afterglow VR web site and unconsciously addict someone into only going there. "My god, this is monstrous."

"He's very naughty-naughty," Ed agreed. "Will he be punished?"

"Let's hope so-I need to talk to Spike, fast." He picked up his hand held communicator and called Spike's frequency, yet after a few moments, it became apparent that Spike was not answering. "Goddamnit," he swore.

Ed covered her hands with her mouth. "Ooh, Jet was naughty-naughty too."

Akiyama District, Gothic Slam:

It was not that Spike would not answer Jet; he could not hear the tone coming from his handheld.

He and Faye were standing at the end of a short line of people in the colors of various gangs, directly below an industrial sized speaker blasting out heavy metal music at an insane volume. Spike remembered the space trucker, VT, who had blasted this genre of music at him and Faye once, and the experience had not gotten better with repeated exposure. Faye pulled the red jacket that she wore wrapped around her closer and complained "Can't they turn this noise down?"

"And ruin the lovely ambiance?" Spike asked. They had reached the head of the line, where a doorman and two muscular bouncers blocked the way. "You're going to let us in," Spike began.

"Oh, really?" the doorman, who carried an electronic notepad, said. "Well, tonight we had a pretty short guest list and those guys are already here, so bugger off."

Spike did not move. "This is Red Dragon business boys. I'm not going back and telling my bosses some low rent door jockeys got in my way."

The doorman looked nervous at the mention of the most powerful criminal organization in the solar system, but did not move aside. "I have my orders, sir," he replied.

Spike nodded and turned to go. "All right. I'm sure that Vicious won't mind to hear that either." He felt like spitting out the name of his most hated rival, the savage cutthroat whose name, he hoped, would open the door. The doorman turned an interesting shade of pale and stepped aside. "That's better, boys. Glad to keep things on a good footing." Spike slouched past the doorman and the bouncers, Faye following with an impish wave.

"That was an interesting approach," Faye shouted into Spike's ear, the volume of the music and the press of the crowd equally oppressive. Spike ignored her, his eyes scanning the club. It took him only one sweep to find what he was looking for. "There's our boy. Table in the back next to the girl, talking to the suits." Faye looked and saw Barrett, talking earnestly to a man of Japanese descent. The men surrounding the Japanese practically screamed bodyguard based on their postures. "Hmm. There are quite a few gang bangers paying way too much attention to our boy too," Spike continued. "Big boy at the bar, blonde crewcut. Keeps eyeing the conversation too much." Faye had already spotted him; he looked tough but young. "Best to not waste this opportunity. Mind going over to blondie and getting his attention?"

"Why don't you do it?"

Spike grinned. "I ain't got the chest for it Faye. Just go over there and do something that will get the gang bangers looking at him." Spike made his way into the crowd before Faye could protest. She looked over at the blond gang member and decided to take out her frustrations on him. She shouldered her way through the crowd, realizing as she did that these guys were serious amateurs. They were set up to keep non-gang members out of here, but they aren't giving me and Spike a lick of attention. She slid up to the bar beside of the blond and, in a calculated, sexy voice, called to the bartender, "Excuse me, but could I have something…wet to drink?"

The blond turned and, while certainly giving her an admiring stare, did not seem too happy to see her. "Miss? You aren't supposed to be in here, you know?"

Faye batted her eyelashes at him. "Really? Now why can't little old me be in here? Dontcha…like girls?"

"Ah…that isn't it, miss, you see…"

Faye was rather fond of keeping people off balance, and she did so here. "Oh, really…I see. You're just like all the others, are you?" She clenched her fists and held then up in front of her face. "All of you insufferable bastards…you're all just like him!"

The blond took a step back, his ire clearly rising. "Now, look you little…"

Faye did not give him a chance to finish his sentence; completing the illogic of the past half-minute, she hauled off and punched him in the nose, driving him backwards. Surprisingly, a cheer rose up from the people nearest them, as if a fight breaking out was entertaining. The blond waded forward and ate a knee to the stomach followed up by a roundhouse right that would have floored a super heavyweight. To his credit he did not fall, and Faye felt the sudden press of weight on her back as someone grabbed her from behind. She saw in the mirror behind the bar that it was a rail thin youth with some sort of tattoos on his face; she stomped on one of his feet with the heel of her boot, hard enough that she heard bone snap, and when his grip loosened she threw him, over the shoulder, at the blond. She saw a flurry of activity in the corner that Barrett was in and hoped it was Spike getting their man. Then more bodies headed her way and Faye got back to work.

Christian had convinced Kobashi to convey his offer to Misawa when the roof caved in.

He had noticed the woman, a very attractive one with a figure to die for in a pair of short yellow shorts and a matching top, slide up beside of Fury, but Kobashi had been making the usual promises of prompt response that the average corporate toady made and he had paid it little heed. But when the woman started to rather expertly clean Fury's clock, it had gained his attention in record time. "Mr. Kobashi, it appears that we will have to continue this business elsewhere." Kobashi and his guards turned and noticed the brawl, and you did not have to read minds to know that all three smelled trouble. Christian got to his feet, Dancer at his side, and started to head for the side of the bar, where he had a deal with the owners to use the service exit as an escape route…and that was when the tall, lanky man appeared from seemingly nowhere and grabbed him, an arm going around his throat, the cold steel of a gun pressed against his neck. "Normally, I don't like making plans up as I go but in this case, I'll make an exception," the man said.

Christian realized on almost an instinctive level that the man was a bounty hunter for two reasons; an Afterglow security operative would not have moved in with Misawa employees so close, and a hit man from Esperanza would have shot on sight. Thinking quickly, he shouted at the top of his lungs "Mr. Kobashi! This man has a gun!"

The three bodyguards turned towards them, and Spike swore to himself as Barrett worked his way out of his grip with a well timed elbow. Spike doubted that the guards would listen to reason as they all produced rather wicked looking machine pistols. "Well, fuck," he remarked.

All three opened fire at a range of less than twenty feet, but Spike was moving, the high speed bullets chasing him as the first screams and shouts of full-fledged panic broke out. Spike dove over the bar, bullets gouging the surface of the wood. Spike popped his head up and saw that the gunfire had turned the crowd into a rioting mob, and various souls trying to escape were interfering with the bodyguards as they tried to close on him. Spike put his Jericho 941 away and threw himself over the bar, catching the first guard with a kick that loosened teeth. The second raised his gun but had no clear shot: Spike shoved the man he had kicked into the second man, then rolled aside as the third raised his gun and fired, emptying his magazine. Spike closed the difference between them in a heartbeat and threw a punch into the guard's stomach that crumpled him. Spike looked around wildly and saw that Barrett and his girl had gone over the railing around the higher level of the club and into the swirling mass of humanity that was in front of the stage. Spike ran to the railing and thought about following, but realized that by the time he got through that crowd, Barrett would be far away, and Spike would probably have taken a hell of a beating. Spike, amazingly, grinned. "You win round one, kid. But there's always round two."

Faye ran up to him, breathing hard. "Don't tell me you let him get away?" she panted. "Used some of my best moves for nothing."

Spike looked over his shoulder, where the bodyguards were all rising to their feet, none looking all that happy. "Don't worry, Faye. Plenty of guys left to go around." He sighed. "I hate making up plans as we go."

To be continued…