Caldwell woke up to find himself slumped over Glyph’s makeshift worktop. The terminal had logged him out of his netbase and he was totally exhausted from his memory trip. Blue light streaming in through the trailer windows told him it was the crack of dawn. He looked at his watch and the clock on one of Glyph’s consoles to confirm it. It was 6.10AM on both. That was the kind of accuracy you got when you get the time via radio waves in real time from the Atomic Clock in Switzerland by which all time was measured.

Kat was still fast asleep breathing with a faint rasping sound. Still curled up like a content fetus. She had somehow changed position though and her head was now at the bottom of the bed. Weird. Her Sim Film had ended and colored light from the default screensaver flashed intermittently over her eyelids. Caldwell headed into the modified shower cubicle. There was a shower seat in there with steel grips, which Glyph obviously used to hoist himself out of his wheelchair and on to the shower seat. It looked like a wheelchair but it was made entirely of plastic and devoid of wheels.

Caldwell showered and got dressed in his old clothes, every minute heightening the excitement. There was no hot water so he was now well and truly awake. An ice cold shower had a way of doing that to you. He checked his knapsack. The console was in there wrapped in its packing material. It’s all I have. It’s all I need. He rolled the knapsack’s combination locks. With the combination, only a slasher could gain access into it and he had no plans to be in the vicinity of any of those.

Caldwell sat on the bed and contemplated whether or not to wake Kat or leave her a note. While he was deliberating, as though reading his mind, she turned round and stared at him with sleep-puffed eyes ringed with marks from the goggles.

“Don’t know why you need to sleep with them on,” he said to her as her tired eyes adjusted to the natural light streaming through the windows of the trailer.

“Can’t sleep without them. You know that. Stayed up all night?”

“Pretty much. I’m off to the airport now.”

“So soon,” she said, yawning.

“Afraid so. But promise me you’ll stay here till I get back.”

“Already did. Besides, I like it here.” She smiled, traces of sleep still embedded deep within her pale skin.

“I’ve left some instructions on how to log in on Glyph’s main console. I also rigged it so that the message avatar is configured to prompt you when you have messages. I’ve unplugged the others. The HoloFlik is that gray projector thing on the ceiling.” He pointed up at the ceiling where a small holographic projector unit was hanging. “The Sims go in a slot on that box.”

“Thanks, I think I can handle it,” she said. Kat was already prepping for goodbye. The rest was just semantics.

“OK take care of yourself.”

“I will. You too.”

He hugged her. She held on very tight like a mother sending her only son off to war. It was like she was afraid he wasn’t coming back. Finally she let go, fighting back tears. After one last look at her, he stood up and left Glyph’s trailer. Outside, the police cordons were gone. The ever-efficient Fouler had seen to it that they had been removed at dawn. This guy seemed too eager to please. Suspicion rose in Caldwell like bile in a gall bladder.

***

On the way to Heathrow Union Airport, flanked on all sides by megacorp drones returning to work, a wave of excitement washed through Caldwell for the first time in a long while. The human automatons that made the Union tick were everywhere, scurrying back and forth via the entrances, exits, platforms and people movers, like a macabre biological orchestra. Several questions remained though. Could he trust Fouler? Was the girl Mei Lin for real? He hoped she was. Would he be able to track her down in Hong Kong? She could help him fill in some of the gaps in his past, what it had been like growing up in Hong Kong. And if his memories were correct and not planted by Fouler and his cronies, there had been some kind of a connection there, something that went far beyond the unrestrained raging of teenage hormones.

At the Heathrow Union Airport Terminal 10 station, Caldwell stepped off the translucent MagLev pulsing intermittently with advertising and made his way to the departure area. Fouler was standing at a special counter with no airline livery. He looked different standing up, taller, more fragile but positively more dangerous. Next to him were the two heavies from Fouler’s limousine and an attractive young woman carrying a red leather attaché case. The girl was pretty in a prim and proper British way and looked vaguely familiar. The two toughs made no secret of the fact that they thought the world of her. Fouler was his usual dapper self in a beige pin-striped suit. He hadn’t shaved though and a five o’clock shadow clung to his long sharp jaw.

“Good to see you didn’t get other ideas, Cad,” he said good-naturedly. He had probably managed just a few hours sleep but it didn’t show, except in the throbbing veins running up the back of his hands.

“After the last twenty-four hours, unlikely,” Caldwell said affably enough. He had made a conscious decision to give Fouler a break this morning. If Fouler was playing him it would do no harm to appear to be cooperating.

“I want you to meet Ms. Levin. She will be accompanying you on the flight, as will Agent Jones and Agent Jackman.

“Good to meet you. Do you have a first name?” Caldwell asked the prim and proper blonde. He figured there was also no harm in being friendly with the girl who was probably going to mess with his head during the flight.

“I don’t think you need ...” Fouler started.

“It’s alright Bruce,” she said. “My first name is Seven. My parents had a weird sense of humor and in keeping the name they chose for me I am humoring them.”

Caldwell found it hard work keeping a straight face but he managed somehow. He was sorely tempted to ask her something about being open all hours but he bit his tongue. For the first time in a long while, he was in an upbeat mood.

“OK, look here Cad. We’ve hooked you up with one of our agents in Hong Kong. Agent Jones and Agent Jackman will put you in touch with our contact in Hong Kong and they’ll be leaving on the next flight. Our Hong Kong agent will sort you out with everything you need.”

“OK. Sounds suspiciously like a plan.”

Fouler ignored him and continued.

“The deal is this. As soon as you identify this network and find a way in, you pull back, clean up all your traces and get your Hong Kong contact Agent Hsu to inform us. We’ll then take over from there. Do not attempt to play around in the network. Your job is just to get access and co-ordinates on this thing. I must warn you, in case you’ve forgotten, that the Chinese have some of the most sophisticated electronic Intrusion Counter-Attack Entities (ICE) in the world. These things don’t just keep you out. They track you down until you are a flatline in cyberspace.”

“Understood.”

“Do not attempt to lose Agent Hsu. We’ll have a GPS tag on you and will be able to know your whereabouts to within inches.”

With that Fouler strode off down towards the escalator, his striped beige suit fluttering in the subtle currents of the air-conditioning. Agent Jones and Agent Jackman stood gawking after him like children abandoned in a crowded shopping mall.

“Come on Mr. Caldwell,” urged Ms. Levin, grabbing him by the arm. “I have a date with that important brain of yours.”