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same. Within a couple of seconds, they’re both headed for Downtown at something like fifty thousand miles an hour. Hiro’s half a mile behind Raven but can see him clearly: the streetlights have merged into a smooth twin streak of yellow, and Raven blazes in the middle, a storm of cheap color and big pixels.

“If I can take his head off, they’re finished,” Him says.

“Gotcha,” Juanita says. “Because if you kill Raven, he gets kicked out of the system. And he can’t sign back on until the Graveyard Daemons dispose of his avatar.”

“And I control the Graveyard Daemons. So all I have to do is kill the bastard once.”

“Once they get their choppers back to land, they’ll have better access to the net-they can have someone else go into the Metaverse and take over for him,” Juanita warns.

“Wrong. Because Uncle Enzo and Mr. Lee are waiting for them on land. They have to do it during the next hour, or never.”

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YT. suddenly wakes up. She hadn’t realized that she was asleep. Something about the thwop of the rotor blades must have lulled her. She must be tired as shit, is what it really is.

‘What the fuck is going on with my corn net?” L. Bob Rife is squalling.

“No one answers,” the Russian pilot says. “Not Raft, not LA, not Khyooston.”

“Get me LAX on the phone, then,” Rife says. “I want to take the jet to Houston. We’ll get our butts over to the campus and find out what’s going on.”

The pilot messes around on his control paneL “Problem,” he

‘What?”

The pilot just shakes his head forlornly. “Someone is messing with the skyphone. We’re being jammed.”

“I might be able to get a line,” the President says. Rife just gives him a look like, right, an hole.

“Anybody got a fucking quarter?” Rife hollers. Frank and

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