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behind her head a travel poster of Greece, Aegian blue splashed with streamlined ideograms. Get your security up here, Case told her. Then he sprinted down the corridor, out of her sight. The last two doors were closed and, he assumed, locked. He spun and slammed the sole of his nylon running shoe into the blue-lacquered composition door at the far end. It popped, cheap hardware falling from play it again sports erie pennsylvania the splintered frame. Darkness there, the white curve of a terminal housing. Then he was on the door to its right, both hands around the transparent plastic knob, leaning in with everything he play it again sports erie pennsylvania had. Something snapped, and he was inside. This was where he and Wage had met with Matsuga, but whatever front company Matsuga had operated was long gone. No terminal, play it again sports erie pennsylvania nothing. Light from the alley behind the arcade, filtering in through soot blown plastic. He made out a snake like loop of fiber optics protruding from a wall socket, a pile of discarded food containers, and the bladeless nacelle of an electric fan. The window was a single pane of cheap plastic. He shrugged out of his jacket, bundled it around his right hand, and punched. It split, requiring two more blows to free it from the frame. Over the muted chaos of the games, an alarm began to cycle, triggered either by the broken window or by the girl at the head of the corridor. Case play it again sports erie pennsylvania turned, pulled his jacket on, and flicked the cobra to full extension. With the door closed, he was counting on his tail to assume hed gone through the one hed kicked half off its hinges. The cobras bronze pyramid began to bob gently, the spring-steel shaft amplifying his pulse. Nothing happened. There was only the surging

of the alarm, the crashing of the games, his heart hammering. When the fear came, it was like some half-forgotten friend. Not the cold rapid mechanism of the dex-paranoia, but simple animal fear. Hed lived for so long on a constant edge of anxiety that hed almost forgotten what real fear was. This cubicle was the sort of place where people died. He might play it again sports erie pennsylvania die here. They might have guns. . . A crash, from the far end of the corridor. A mans voice, shouting something in Japanese. A scream, shrill terror. Another crash. And footsteps, play it again sports erie pennsylvania unhurried, coming closer. Passing his closed door. Pausing for the space of three rapid beats of his heart. And returning. One, two, three. A bootheel scraped the matting. The last of his octagon-induced bravado collapsed. He snapped the cobra into its handle and scrambled for the window, blind with fear, his nerves screaming. He was up, out, and falling, all before he was conscious of what hed done. The impact with pavement play it again sports erie pennsylvania drove dull rods of pain through his shins. A narrow wedge of light from a half-open service hatch framed a heap of discarded fiber optics and the chassis of a junked console. Hed play it again sports erie pennsylvania fallen face forward on a slab of soggy chip board, he rolled over, into the shadow of the console. The cubicles window was a square of faint light. The alarm still oscillated, play it again sports erie pennsylvania louder here, the rear wall dulling the roar of the games. A head appeared, framed in the window, back lit by the fluorescents in the corridor, then vanished. It returned, but he still couldnt read the play it again sports erie pennsylvania features. Glint of silver across the eyes. Shit, someone said, a woman, in the accent of the northern Sprawl. The head was gone. Case lay under the console for a long count of twenty, then stood up. The steel cobra was still in his hand, and it took him a few seconds to remember what it was. He limped away down play it again sports erie pennsylvania the alley, nursing his left ankle. x x x Shins pistol was a fifty-year-old Vietnamese imitation of a South American copy of a Walther PPK, double-action on the first shot, with a very play it again sports erie pennsylvania rough pull. It was chambered for .22 long rifle, and Case wouldve preferred lead azide explosives to the simple Chinese hollow points Shin had sold him. play it again sports erie pennsylvania Still it was a handgun and nine rounds of ammunition, and as he made his way down Shiga from the sushi stall he cradled it in his jacket pocket. The grips were bright red plastic molded in a raised dragon motif, something to run your thumb across in the dark. Hed consigned the cobra to a play it again sports erie pennsylvania dump canister on Ninsei and dry-swallowed another octagon. The pill lit his circuits and he rode the rush down Shiga to Ninsei, then over to Baiitsu. His tail,

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