The blade pressed closer. Babel’s mind raced like a massive computer system, struggling to integrate the new data welling up from the depths of his mind with what he was being told. Renraku had expected their agent to signal them and return willingly, not become involved with the tribe he was sent to infiltrate. They must have assumed he’d gone rogue, and in a way he had. Babel had lived with the Net-walkers, talked with them, became one of them. He saw the secrets of the Matrix and the spirits dwelling there, felt their words and their music inside his mind. He knew Renraku had no idea what they had truly sent him for, what they were asking for. Now they wanted to make sure they got the information they wanted about Babel’s initiation, his sacred experience as a technoshaman. It all made sense, but somehow the shadowed man’s words rang false in Babel’s ears. He knew in the depths of his being that there was more to this interrogation.