Glitch began to laugh. It was a hysterical, crazy, joyful laugh. The tiny hacker jumped onto the dirty plastic table and danced a little jig. "He did it! The Glitch did it! We are the richest ghosts in the world!"Rell looked at Evan. Her bright green eyes were filled with absolute respect. "I have met the best smugglers, the smartest thieves, and the deadliest killers in Neon City," she said softly. "But I have never met anyone like you, Evan Kennedy. You are a monster in a blue suit."Evan did not celebrate. He did not dance. He stared at the number on the screen. Fifty million years. He thought about the thousands of rich merchants in the Mid-Level Exchange who had just lost all their money because they invested in Omni-Synth. He thought about the Board of Directors, who had just lost one of their most profitable companies. He had hurt them. He had hurt the system badly. But as he stared at the screen, a new message suddenly popped up, covering the golden numbers. It was a priva

In the center of the massive room were one hundred giant, clear glass tubes. They stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Inside the tubes, thick, glowing blue liquid bubbled softly. Floating inside the blue liquid were massive, glowing, synthetic brains. They were not human brains. They were computers made of biological and digital material. They were the Algorithmic Brokers. These floating brains controlled the entire global economy. They watched every single stock. They tracked every single trade. They calculated billions of math problems every single millisecond. They did not sleep. They did not eat. They only watched the numbers. The room was perfectly silent, except for the soft hum of the cooling machines.Suddenly, a bright red light flashed inside one of the glass tubes. A soft, robotic alarm sounded in the quiet room. The brain inside the glass tube pulsed with red energy. It had found an error. To a human, the error would be impossible to see. Millions of trades wer

The roof of the Neon Spire was a nightmare of flashing red lights and freezing wind. Evan Kennedy stood perfectly still. He stared at the woman who had just stepped out of the silver drop-pod. She was the Lead Broker. Her skin was made of flawless, smooth white porcelain. She looked like a beautiful doll, but her eyes were hidden behind dark black sunglasses. She held a long, silver cane. "I have come to collect," the Lead Broker whispered. Her polite, quiet voice cut easily through the roaring wind. Around the edge of the roof, the ten massive automated turrets hummed loudly. Their six glowing barrels spun, charging up deadly blue plasma energy. They were all pointed directly at Evan. Kaine, the rebel leader with the terribly scarred face, did not wait to be shot. "Fire!" Kaine roared to his surviving mercenaries. "Shoot her!"The mercenaries raised their heavy assault rifles. They pulled the triggers. BANG! BANG! BANG! A storm of heavy metal bullets flew across the wet gravel

Evan smiled slightly. "You are amazing, Glitch.""Evan, there is no time to celebrate," Glitch warned loudly. The earpiece buzzed with static. "Because I am using the giant machine, I have incredible processing power. I can see the entire global network. I can see what the Board of Directors is doing.""What are they doing?" Evan asked. He looked at Rell. Rell looked nervous. "When you made that ten-million-year bet," Glitch said rapidly, "you triggered a massive alarm in Sector Zero. The Algorithmic Brokers noticed your reaction time. They know you are not a normal trader. They put a Trace Hound on your account.""We know," Evan said. "The data-pad turned red. That is how the Lead Broker found us on the roof.""No, Evan, you do not understand!" Glitch shouted. "The Lead Broker is not just a woman with a gun! She is the commander of the Financial Watchdogs. The gunship was just her personal ride. The real hunters are the Watchdogs. And I just intercepted a massive digital trace on th

The world slowed down to a perfect, silent crawl. Evan Kennedy knelt on the cold concrete floor of the freezing warehouse. In the slow-motion gray world of his Chronos Perception, the three massive metal wolves hung in the air. Their silver metal claws were stretched out. Their glowing red laser eyes were locked onto his face. They were jumping straight at him. They were the Financial Watchdogs. They were machines, but their power came from the digital stock market. Evan looked down at the black data-pad in his hand. He had fifty million years of life in his fake account. He did not look at the wolves. He looked at the digital chart for Apex Security Solutions, the company that owned the wolves. He searched for the brown rot. He searched for the probability decay. The company was worth twenty billion years. It was a giant. But Evan saw the truth. The company was spending too much power. It had bought the warehouse doors. It had bought the heating grid. It was using all its physic