Sly knew that, in reality—whatever reality was—she was sitting in Theresa Smeland’s apartment, tapping on the keyboard of a cyberdeck. But that wasn’t the way it felt. According to her sensorium—the sum-total of the sensory data received by her brain—she was hurtling upward into the black sky of the Matrix, faster than a semi-ballistic rocket plane. Her chest felt tight with the terrible thrill of it; her heart beat a triphammer rhythm in her ears.