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Ever since CamCo’s identities had leaked, they’d becoe rumors about them all over the internet, too "Britt Schmeiser’s Weekend of Debauchery"; "Alec Tarsus’s Dark Past"; even headlines about the old favorite: "Elliot Ramirez’s Forbidden Love"

Now To the handsotime public CamCo The dark-haired boy sat easily in the center of thethe reporters that he was pleased to share the spotlight Snowden Gainey was preening in the chair next to his, and Cadence Grey kept darting nervous glances toward the ca

Huh Heather Akron

That gave Toorgeous brunette from Machiavelli Division the first few days of vacation Now that he thought about it, though, she’d virtually disappeared froe Photogenic and char as she was, Tom expected her to be one of the foremost CamCos trotted out and shown off to the public

"Look at those kids" Neil glared at the TV over his drink "They look like a bunch of plastic puppets Ever notice how they don’t blink so ed, "No, never noticed it" He’d asked his friend Wyatt Enslorite up a program for his neural processor to randomize his blink rate He was pretty sure that was one reason Neil hadn’t noticed anything too off about his face--Tom had made an efffort to act as normal as possible Between that and the hair he kept swept down over his neural access port, he’d been careful so far

Now the focus of the press seg the CamCos The show flipped to an intervieith Reuben Lloyd, CEO of Wyndham Harks The weedy little man with an unfortunate resemblance to a rat smiled toothily and spoke into aup the PR so Wyndhahed, his voice growing strangely flat "You know, Toot any stake in this dulad to watch this whole world burn I’d rather burn it than let theer in the air: Neil working hi robbed He tried to think of solowing ierov, CEO of Obsidian Corp

Toerov had been named CEO of the Year by the Institutional Investor for the fifth time All Tom could think of was the census device Those three syllables that had nearly doorr-ahvAs soon as Lieutenant Blackburn realized Tos ensued To

He was still shaken by the reminder severalfro fro his blond hair to his skull The strange little flashes of nuone now, so To about it, even though technically, very technically, he was supposed to contact Lieutenant Blackburn if he had any problems with his neural processor over vacation

Blackburn had even given all the trainees a remote-access node to hook into the port on the back of their necks It was there to connect their processors with the Spire’s server so Blackburn could examine their hardware from across the country

Tohed it in his hand, considering it, then disregarding the thought He was about to flick it away again when he noticed the otten tased So over the face of the banker’s pet cop He’d probably handed theit up somewhere

Tom’s fist contracted around the remote-access node

Maybe he had a use for it, after all

ALL THE MAJOR government servers were linked, so as soon as To to the Pentagonal Spire’s server in Arlington, Virginia, it didn’t take long to find his way into the server of the Depart nal in a void He was never entirely sure what he was doing when he interfaced like this It seemed to come so much more naturally to the only other person he kneho could enter machines like this, the Russo-Chinese Coirlfriend, Medusa But today, Toer at the cop, and it sharpened his wits He delved into the vast chain of zeros and ones, searching for the pipelines between the DHS and the do over the United States

When he located those, his neural processor sorted through an array of rapid-fire coordinates, and he latched on to the arh the database of registered gun owners in the area brought a faeant Erik Sherwin, the cop who’d robbed the chips in their skin, so he zeroed right in on Sergeant Sherwin’s frequency

Thousands of feet above Sherwin, in the darkened skies between Las Vegas and the overhead skyboards, the drone’s es of the cop just outside the casino, tailing the banker like an obedient puppy To through ed

Tom felt an evil little thrill, because he’d intended to wreak soht about it, he really should ignore the hired thug and focus on the mastermind: the bald banker the DHS’s biometric database identified as Hank Bloombury, orked for a subsidiary of the Matchett-Reddy Corporation

Tom homed in on Hank and stalked him from the casino to his private car, the drone far overhead cutting a lethal path through the sky Hank’s car began to pull out of the strip, but Tom was in control of a police drone--which could link reation syste with Hank’s autonav, steering the car back around and directing it toward the hotel he and Neil were staying in

Hank ed the eency shutoff The car jerked to a halt; and the baldat the back of his neck, obviously trying to figure out where he was

Then Toh the night sky, and settled it mere meters before the stunned Hank Bloouy’s bald head, and enjoyed the sight of the banker standing frozen in place, his ht, and sent a talon of the drone’s Taser lashing out, shocking Hank just enough to knock hiround Hank scrambled back to his feet, but when he tried to dive back into the car, Tom sent another flare of electricity that way to block him Hank tried to run in the other direction, but Tom steered the police drone after hiain