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By Root 634 0

while above them hung suspended in space, glowing, a giant Net Force logo. It was ostensibly just as a courtesy that Net Force had set aside virtual “meeting space” on its own servers for these meetings. But Catie sometimes wondered whether there was some more clandestine agenda involved, some obscure security issue…or just a desire to “keep an eye on the kids.” For her own part, she didn’t much mind. There’s always the possibility that there are some of the “grown-ups” in here strolling around in disguise, listening to the conversations of the junior auxiliary and noting down which of us seem promising…. A moment later Catie put the thought aside as slightly paranoid. Yet, thinking about it, she decided it wouldn’t particularly bother her if that were happening. Catie firmly intended to wind up working for Net Force one day, doing image processing and analysis, or visuals-management work of one kind or another. If the cutting edge, in terms of excellence, opportunity, and potential excitement, was to be found anywhere, it was there. If someone from the adult side of Net Force wanted to look her over with that sort of work in mind, it was fine by her. The sooner the better, in fact….

Meanwhile, she had other fish to fry. Or one fish, a small one. As she came down the stairs to floor level, she paused, glancing over the group beneath her. A few faces she knew, a lot she didn’t, not that that had ever bothered her. She always left one of these meetings with at the very least a bunch of new acquaintances—

And there was the one she wanted to see. She finished coming down the stairs and walked around the edges of the small crowd, greeting a couple of people she knew as she passed—Megan O’Malley, Charlie Davis—and then walked over to her target from behind quietly, with the air of someone approaching a small and possibly dangerous animal without wanting to unduly frighten it.

“Hey, there, Squirt!” Catie said with an edge to her voice.

The figure actually jumped a little, and turned. A slight young boy, young especially when you considered that a lot of the other kids here were older by at least several years, tending toward their late teens. But Mark Gridley was no more than thirteen: dark-haired, dark-eyed, with Thai in his background and the devil in his eyes. “Ah,” Mark said. “Ah, Catie, hi, how are you…”

“You’re here early,” Catie said.

“Slumming,” Mark said idly.

“Oh, yeah,” Catie said. Since she’d first met him at one of these meetings, she’d been aware that Mark was obsessed with the idea that somehow, somewhere, he might possibly be missing out on something interesting. Even being the son of Net Force’s director was just barely enough “interesting” to keep him going, so that Mark routinely went looking for more. He was always early to these meetings, though he went out of his way to make it look accidental.

“How’s the artwork doing?” Mark said, with the air of someone who wanted to distract her from something. “Still fingerpainting?”

Catie grinned a little, and flexed those fingers. “Hey, everybody in the plastic arts has to start somewhere,” she said. “It’s what you do with the medium, anyway, not what everybody else does with it. Besides, it never keeps me away from the image work long.” She knew perfectly well that Mark knew this was her forte. There were few Net-based effects, in the strictly visual and graphical sense, that Catie couldn’t pull off with time and care. No harm in him knowing, either. Who knew, he might mention it to his father, and his father might mention it to James Winters, the Net Force Explorers liaison, and after that anything might happen. Networking is everything, Catie thought. “And how about you?” she said then. “The French police give up on you finally?”

Mark scowled, and blushed. He had gotten in some slight trouble recently when traveling with his dad, and those of the Net Force Explorers who knew the details were still teasing Mark about the episode, half out of envy that Mark had time to get in trouble while staying somewhere as interesting as Paris, and half out of the sheer