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campus, nestled between copses of pine, maple, and dogwood. The most crime-ridden town in America, possibly on Earth, Hogantown used to look small and quaint, like a backlot movie set—Hogan’s Alley. Now it was an entire town with real apartments—for role-players and directors—and real stakeouts and real-time, year-around crime taking a month or more to solve and involving multiple classes of agent trainees. The town had a functioning drug store, AllMed, and a good-sized Giga-Mart that was a favorite hangout for Marines.
    Hogantown employed fourteen crime scenarists who surveyed the goings-on—alongside teachers and directors—from hidden walkways. It was the world’s biggest training center for law enforcement—even larger than the Gasforth complex at Bram’s Hill in England.
    Crime and terror had been good to Hogantown.
    Invisible flame shot along his arms and legs and up his neck to his jaw. William Griffin gritted his teeth to keep from screaming and clutched his pistol with two spasming hands. Ahead, angular and black against the gray concrete walls, the slammer wobbled on its drop-down carriage like an old dentist’s X-ray machine. This was Agent Instructor Pete Farrow’s last word on screw-ups—a quick, sharp blast from the shoot house’s microwave pain projector.
    Farrow had just blown the last of his meager reserve of patience.
    William jerked off his helmet and stepped away from the test track. Still trembling, he lowered his weapon and switched off his Lynx. There was blood in his mouth. He had bitten halfway through his tongue.
    Hogantown’s Rough-and-Tough had just gotten him killed—for the third time.
    ‘Mr. Griffin, you are a pissant .’ Farrow came around the corner of the observation deck and descended the metal stairs into the shoot house with quickstep precision. He stood six and a half feet tall and weighed in at two hundred and thirty pounds. With a bristle-fuzz of blond hair, a dubious squint, onyx eyes, and a face that seemed always on the edge of a cruel grin, Farrow looked more like a Bond villain than an FBI agent.
    ‘Sorry, sir.’ William had been second in a team of four going into an apartment. All his partners had been virtual. They had waltzed through the rooms with precision and then there had been gunshots and smoke and confusion. Drippingred letters across his visual field announced that he had taken two in the chest and one in the head. To emphasize the point, Farrow had unleashed the slammer.
    Even before the pain, the simulation had been so real that William could still feel the acid in his gut and the sweat under his body armor.
    Farrow took William’s Glock and with the click of a hidden switch removed it from the grid of computer tracking and control. ‘You heard shots. You saw Agent Smith go down. Then you saw Agent Wesson go down. Then you saw a miscreant come from behind the fridge.’
    ‘There was a child.’
    ‘The murdering SOB was right in front of you. The child was not in your line of fire.’
    ‘I’m not making excuses, sir.’ He could barely talk.
    Farrow hitched up his pants. He had the kind of build—barrel chest and slim hips—that precluded getting a good fit anywhere outside of a tailor’s shop. ‘Your squeeze and firing patterns are daggers, same height, all in a row, just fine—whenever you’re shooting at a target. Otherwise, you’re a complete, balls-to-the-wall pissant. Have you ever gone hunting, Mr. Griffin?’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ William said, his shoulders falling about as low as they could go. ‘I mean, no, sir.’
    ‘Your daddy never took you hunting? That’s a disgrace.’
    ‘Sir, I do not understand what you mean by “pissant”.’
    ‘Look it up. A useless, insignificant creature. It means you’re not worth your native clay. It means in a situation of selfdefense, with clearly defined antagonists whose mission in life is to put you down like a mangy dog, you cringe . To me, specifically, it means you have buck fever.