[Tuesday 1st January, 2075; Public Grid, Somewhere over Puyallup Barrens]

Silk slipped serenely through the sparsely populated region of the matrix. It was a relief in many ways to be away from the hectic stream of data and the inherent Patterns that her Gift enabled her to see. In the wash of static out here there were very few icons and Silk had even disabled the scrubbers that would have given her a clearer picture given the distance from her flesh and blood form back in central Seattle.

It was hard to believe another year had passed, four and half since her mother had been killed. Whilst she was closer to the truth the details were still only tantalisingly present, in fact they hinted at a much wider conspiracy than Silk had ever envisaged, one that could have major ramifications on the world.

It had taken a while to forge Argent’s fixer network into something that Silk could operate but her time as a former runner meant that she had a perspective on the whole thing that some fixers, particularly those of corp descent, lacked. Despite her youth she knew that she had won the respect of the people she worked for and those she hired. In the shadows that respect could be the difference between success and a bullet in the back of the head. But she didn’t want to dwell on all that now, she had come here to relax…