Part 4.

Jen turned to the terminal logged in and started surfing. Knowing the habits of most scientists she used the logon and password written on paper and secured to the keyboard with blu-tack. Above her Jen could hear her office being trashed. She needed somebody who really knew how to vanish. She looked round for the man who had helped her and found the room empty. Glancing at the door she noticed it was closed from the outside, she raised an eyebrow and thought out loud; "I don't remember using the door or closing it." Abandoned such thoughts she pinched her leg and put all her mind to contacting Rotor.

The office was the normal collection of black art deco Rotor had seen many times before. He sat in the oversize leather chair and placed Mickey on the table. Before Mickey had got in to the room he had started setting up links. He doubled and doubled them over and over. This was done through microwave link, infrared and once he was placed on the desk, hard wire. The holographic matrix of a thousand layers of TFT with an active surface could carry up to a gigabit a second. Holoblocks as they were known were capable of creating the illusion of a three-dimensional image. For over a hundread years no one had moved on they had just improved the quality and dropped the price. You could find them on any computer case and even some clothes. The current case for Mickey was a fifty-year-old mobile computer. He had gone through so many upgrades and had so many solid state trilobite chips it had been a case of not being able to ware him as a badge anymore. Mickey was bound to the case by a code and the eight hours it would take to download himself to any other computer. A computer being has no physical form due to the way information is processed you can say it is anywhere it can look. The public chat room came online Rotor sat there waiting for the right name to pop up.

Rotor had met the contact in the chat room and had exchanged e-mails he was trying to check the funding for the job. "Mickey where has the money gone then? It has to be there right." The cartoon voice responded; "The money has been frozen the account is locked up and the bank has a Police order on it." Rotor was already picking everything up. "I also have movement in the basement and first floor. They are in teams and accessing the buildings computer, I have ghosted them the control. There are three teams, no cars. They could have been waiting." Rotor got out an over modified mag-canon and turned on the charge; there was a small high-pitched whine as the gyroscopes spun up. A mag-canon was every killer's dream. Maximum damage for the smallest energy and least of all there was no type of signature. It was a cut down rail gun that fired hundredth of a gram of magnesium, that was charged gas plasma by the time it left the guns vacuum field. Lethal over a few hundred meters it transferred a large kinetic charge to the target. The modified canon was in part controlled by Mickey's influence and locked on to heat targets picked by Rotor.

"I need a rout out of the building; I think we can lock down the whole building now. Send all the lifts to floors above this one. And direct me to the stairs." Rotor felt ill. He did not need this today and he needed the call on the personal line even less.

"I have a call from Jen for you." Mickey came up with followed by; "Left and then right at the end of the passage and the pull open the air vent and it goes all the way to the basement. Rubbish duct." Rotor gave a nod.

"Yes Jen how are you been eight years or so what's up." Rotor thought she was part of the present trouble. "Make it quick I have a few problems to deal with at the moment. How is the wife? And why are you calling at all. How did you ever find the number."

From the COM bead came the low quality response. "I have three minutes before I am found. You have never changed your e-mail address and your company file is blank so I guess you are a criminal or a covert officer; either will do. Jane left me for a man. And your fee has been e-mailed for a mission to get me out of this company tech centre in South America. I have important information." Rotor listened as he undid the air vent. "I know what you are thinking and in the e-mail are funds. I will explain it all. The money in the e-mail is untraceable, pay off money I have taken in the last two years, never had the notion to spend it. Use it well I am trusting you." The transmission was cut off short by a second of static fuzz. Rotor paused and then dived into the duct as the first shots screamed down the passage at him. He fell for a long time at a steep angle.

In the basement a man in an old black suit stood waiting. He had a plane face and no real look of form you might say. He seemed to hang in the air nothing seemed right about the place he stood or how he moved. Almost as if he looked how he imagined a person might look stood there. He smoked but there was no smell and it did nothing for him. An old man faded into existence next to him. "We are watchers remember. You already did too much at the 'tech centre'. If a council member were to find out about this they could 'remove' us. Is it not fun enough to watch their plight? We may not involve our self in the matters of such a race. I know the council gave them the message we are here to watch what happens and what they do with that information. And at this rate they are already failing to listen to the rules." The old man was the Solar from before he smiled. "We can offer words and change acts of pure fate but we may not get involved directly with the path of a single race. This race is very isolated and many other beings would have this planet for their own. All we do by acting is to send out a beacon to all the other races at our level of technology that they are here. The worst ones would come for the water here alone. The balance here is fantastic over five billion life forms live on a single planet. Remember when we flew with the Dragons. The Dragon is a creature that hunts the universe and follows the Unicorn. The Dragon has a taste for no other meat, they cross dimensions and vast distances in space. They evolved over hundreds of billions of years to do what we did in a million or so with science. Their nervous system resonates with the same electromagnetic harmonics as our own, so does the Unicorn. They use it to travel; manipulating the energy passing out from the sun and planets to move through the logic of comic maths. The Unicorns and Dragons have almost been everywhere over and over. The persistence of life is not finite it is unbounded. This race will survive this without our help. The council fears their technology. It far outweighs the rest of their advances. A new universe may open up here on this planet one we can not get into. It is here already in this man has its first information based self aware life form; a first on this universal plane."

Rotor fell into the room and into a bin. He jumped out not seeing the two shadows and blasted the door through with the mag-canon. He ran out to the passage Mickey's instructions in his ear on which turn. This was the most dangerous part of the escape and Rotor stopped to take stock of all the information. They were after the data right. He knew they were no police otherwise there would be cars outside as well. "Mickey I need the whole street to look like it has just gone up in smoke. We need fire alarms the works."

"Ready." Responded Mickey.

"As I start a fire fight in the main hall." He crept towards the main entrance. In logic terms Rotor thought that would be the place with the fewest goons. All Mickey could find was two on the surveillance systems. Rotor walked in to the hall, holding the gun down at his side he walked for the door. A man yelled to stop, Rotor turned and the gyroscopes held the gun as if locked in a notch as he fired straight through his left shoulder. Mickey informed that the other man had ducked after seeing the distance of the shot and was calling for back up. It was too late though almost five hundred people were running out of the building and all the buildings on the street. Rotor joined the throng and was swept along dropping his cap and putting on some dark holoblock glasses. Video feeds mixed with the flow of people. Calmly he made his way to the nearest tube station, he studied Jens. The money was enormous and so was the task. Even with half of what would be left he would be able to live in for a long time. After he had changed tube four or five times and come to the city of Manchester he boarded a overnight train to Paris. The stations were the ideal place to hide. With all the different types of data a crowd was still the best place to hide.