The air seems to collapse in and then blast outward in spherical ripples—he blurs towards me but the blast catches him and he drops dead, eyes shutting out like television screens. Every piece of machinery in the place goes haywire, spurting electrical currents, then drops deadly silent.

It’s quiet.

“Well damn,” I mutter to the dark and lifeless room. Wonder what that was Drake was saying at the end about me killing his sister—CyberCorp must have majorly mucked with his circuits before sending him to kill me. Now he was dead, Mandy was dead, Jared Paris was dead, and here I was the only piece of genuine functioning biology left in a mile.

A coughing fit hits me like a kick in the chest and I double over. My throat feels like its being cleaned out with sandpaper. When I pick myself back up, there’s blood on my fingers, along with some thick dark phlegmy mass. I’d seen enough infected bums to know I had the nano-virus, and a bad case of it at that. I’m not quite so happy to be biological anymore.

I don’t have much time. The timer for TRUScape’s counting down—I need to get to CyberCorp. Then again, I might never make it with the plague. I need to find some kind of cure without getting the TRUchip reinstalled. I glance over at Paris’ file cabinet, tossed open during the chaos, data banks scattering across the floor. Maybe, just maybe, there’s something in there. But without a chip or a terminal, I’ll have to lug the whole cabinet to my car and find public access. It’s going to take time to sort through, and I’m running out.

It’s worth the time to keep off the plague—I start searching through his contact files.

I’ve wasted too much time. I head straight for CyberCorp.