As Ariel sped through the telecommunications grid of the metroplex toward the Mandala Technologies system, she hoped the price her team had paid Milo for the local telecom number she was using was worth it. Her scanner programs were online and sending out invisible feelers along her path, prepared to warn her of any hidden dangers or software traps she might encounter. Ariel found her pulse rate increasing, the pre-run adrenaline surge starting to hit her. This was what most deckers lived for: the rush of preparing to break into a protected system, to test their skill against the skill of the programmers who’d built the system’s defenses and to lay their lives on the line that their skill and their hottest programs could beat the defenders’ skills and their coldest ice. A game with the highest stakes around.