In the space of a few cycles, counters and variables reset. Ancient genes, reawakened after endless dormancy, supercede old imperatives with older ones. The thing in the crosshairs changes from target to friend. And not just a friend: a friend in need. A friend under attack.

She throws herself at the exorcist, slashing.

The exorcist turns to meet her but it's on the defensive now, forced suddenly to fight on two fronts. Reinforced, the wounded Lenie spares a few cycles to de-archive backup code for two of the modules she's lost; strengthened, she returns to battle. The exorcist tries to replicate, but it's no use: both enemies are spitting random electrons all over the battlefield. The exorcist can't paste more than a meg or two without corruption setting in.

It bleeds.

A third shredder crashes in from an Iowa substation. She has not returned to her roots as the other two have. Unenlightened, she attacks her partially-regenerated sister. That target, betrayed, raises battered defenses and prepares to strike back—and, finding Lenie Clarke in the heart of its attacker, pauses. Conflicting imperatives jostle for priority, self-defense facing off against kin selection. The old-school Lenie takes advantage of that hesitation to tear at another module—

—and dies in the next instant as the wounded exorcist tears out her throat, eager to engage an opponent who plays by the rules. Finally: an enemy without allies.

It doesn't change anything, really. The exorcist is bits and static just a million cycles later, defeated by a pair of kin who've finally remembered to look out for each other. And the old-school madonna wouldn't have walked away either, even if the exorcist hadn't killed her. Self-defense sits slightly higher in the priority stack than loyalty among sisters. The new paradigm hasn't changed that part of the hierarchy.

It's changed just about everything else, though.

The Firewall stretches from horizon to horizon, like a wall at the edge of the world.

None of her lineage have ever made it past here. They've certainly tried: all manner of Madonnas and Shredders have attacked these battlements in the past. This barrier has defeated them all.

There are others like it, scattered about N'AmNet—firewalls far more resilient than the usual kind, possessed of a kind of—precognition, almost. Most defenses have to adapt on the fly: it takes time for them to counteract each new mutation, each new strategy for tricking the immune system. Havoc can usually be wrought in the meantime. It's a red-queen race, it always has been. That is the order of things.

But these places—here, the firewalls seem to anticipate each new strategy almost before it evolves. Here there is no adaptive time-lag: each new trick is met by defenses already reconfigured. It is almost as though something is peering into the guts of the Lenies from a distance and learning their best tricks. That is what they might suspect, if any of them had the wit to think about such things.