Placide did not have time to react.
One after another, the Voodoo Boys netrunners collapsed in their chairs, brains cooked as if a top-tier counterrunner had found them inside a high-intensity data fortress and erased them on contact. He had never seen an operation fail at this scale.
Panicking, he reached for the remaining diver to pull him out.
The last runner snapped his deep-dive link and tumbled free of cyberspace. Placide felt a flash of relief and moved to question him about what had happened inside Ascension Technology's data fortress.
Sparks exploded from the jack at the base of the runner's skull.
He died on the spot.
The death did not end the damage. In the instant before his brain burned, his access cradle pushed a swarm of hostile programs into the local subnet around their dive bay. Lissandra had hidden those payloads inside the mark she left on him.
Everyone nearby was hit at once.
Placide howled, clutching his head as the malicious code chewed at his nerves. Others screamed across the hall. The mark's spread was limited, and its power thinned when it detonated at a wide range, which kept it from wiping the room, but the "gift" still made them pay.
Only after a long stretch did the Voodoo Boys base return to shaky order. They scrubbed the code, cleared the mess, and dragged bodies aside.
Placide cursed over the dead. "How does Ascension Technology have net tech like this? Impossible."
Back at his desk, he slammed a fist into the surface. Breaking Ascension's ICE had been easy. Why had it flipped in an instant? NetWatch? Arasaka?
Wrong on both.
He was still thinking about probing again when the people with the bill arrived.
"Wuhu!"
The wall of tempered glass in front of his desk shattered inward under a flying boot. Rebecca, green twin-tails bright under the lights, dove through the glittering hole and landed without a blink. Behind her, Rocky stepped down from the hovering Droso and crossed the sill.
"Ascension Technology," Placide said, recognizing them on sight. The company did not have many living employees or executives. The intruders were obvious, and their purpose was too.
They had come to settle accounts.
He refused to stay passive. The dive racks spun up to full, locked both targets, and he launched a net attack even though his neural interface still burned from earlier damage.
Their ICE shrugged him off.
Sweat ran down Placide's back as he failed to bite into Rocky's system. Rocky, meanwhile, watched the Voodoo Boys boss with bored attention, the kind that promised a short future.
Alarms screamed. The base reacted. More Voodoo Boys jacked in and piled their hacks onto the two invaders.
It did not matter. The ICE on Rocky and Rebecca came from Lissandra and held like a wall. Cyber attacks were useless.
Guns came out next. Even the Voodoo Boys did not rule Pacifica with netrunning alone.
"Have fun, Rebecca," Rocky said, palming her hair once.
She had been holding the heat in long enough. Rebecca pushed off with a sharp kick and blurred forward.
Placide never saw the movement. He only felt the impact as she drove him into a concrete wall. Stone burst. The wall dented deeply, and blood filled his mouth.
He was a hacker, but he was also a big, strong man from the Haitian quarter. It did not help. Under the boot of this small woman, he felt his ribs give.
Rebecca did not stop. She flashed in close, planted a heel under his jaw, and pinned his head hard against the cracked slab. Bone shattered. Words died in his throat.
"You're the number two of this trash crew, right? Do you know how angry I am right now?"
She drew the iron-bore shotgun she had tuned herself and set the muzzle against his skull.
"Gu… uh…"
He could not form language. Blood and broken teeth slid down his throat and turned his breath into wet sounds.
Around them, the other Voodoo Boys opened fire. Bullets rang off steel and tore at her jacket. Rebecca did not move. She kept her boot under Placide's jaw and held him there.
Impacts splashed red across her clothes.
The kill they expected did not come. In the storm of gunfire and mist, Rebecca began to laugh. It rolled out of her, bright and cracked.
"Hahahahahaha! Is this all? What a pity."