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the other pleaded, fluttering tendrils of itself in all directions.
    > your name? < Raven ordered, clamping down. The other could resist no more than the locked programs that swung open at Raven’s approach.
    > ali < responded the other and Raven was almost overwhelmed with a flood of images that the name had set free. A sixteen-year-old schoolgirl from somewhere far above in the shielded security complexes of the rich. This was her second foray into the net and she was terrified to have been caught. Raven laughed. The girl was a novice. In a few microseconds she had disgorged enough information for Raven to trace her identity and current location while Raven herself had revealed nothing. The stranger could do virtually nothing in the net, but however inept her bunglings, she would not be caught while within the circuitry. It was more likely that she would betray herself in the real world. In a flash Raven transmitted that information to the girl, still giving away nothing about her own identity. Disengaging, Raven prepared to let herself be swept back into the net.
    > wait! < Ali pleaded. Her immediate panic was dulled by the information Raven had communicated while its substance deeply frightened her. > you must wait—please wait—don’t leave me! <
    > why? < Raven demanded, already bored by the exchange and considering she had done enough for the unknown Hex.
    > you have to stay/help me/stop the cps catching me. <
    > (?) < Raven was annoyed now, her responses becoming more basic.
    > because you’re like me. we (you/me) are the same. <
    > each of us is on our own < Raven replied. > this conversation is terminated. < And she was gone, leaving nothing of her essence behind with which the stranger could trace her. But now she knew indisputably where to find the girl, should she want to do so. Ali’s signature would be imprinted on her eidetic computerized memory until she chose to expunge it.
    Raven shot through a thousand data pathways in search of records. Names, dates, ages swam in and out of her awareness. School records, vidcom registrations, bank accounts, mailing lists. Nowhere could she find any sign of Rachel. But a thousand databases was a fraction of the city’s computer network. She wouldn’t complete the search tonight. Releasing her hold on the information that whirled round her, obeying her commands, she fell back through the net to her originating node. Releasing herself slowly from the circuitry she re-entered her body.
    For a while she blinked, trying to assimilate the impressions of her senses, so different from what she had been experiencing in the net. Slowly she reacquainted herself with reality. The dark room, the breathing sounds of the two sleepers, the flat keypad under her hands and the lingering smell of Chinese take-out food when she breathed in deeply. She stood and stretched, moving awkwardly like an underwater swimmer, her body slow to respond. She walked carefully toward her bed, lying down with a deliberate precision and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
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    Ali slammed back into her body and realized she was shaking. The encounter with the stranger in the network had terrified her. At first she had thought it was the end, that the CPS had found her. The discovery that the stranger was also a Hex had been almost as alarming. The feel of that other presence had been cold and alien. The stranger had been chillingly confident of his or her own abilities and openly contemptuous of Ali’s. She remembered the feeling of that flood of information sweeping over her, the knowledge that the stranger knew everything about her. But worst of all had been the stranger’s refusal to help her before disappearing without a trace. Intellectually she knew that the last person to betray her would be another Hex but up until now no one else had ever known her secret.
    Getting up from the computer terminal, Ali walked to the window and