A lone figure stalked his way through the desolate park. Death synthoids were rare in these parts, and Reaper5 units even more so. He wore galvanized rubber on the soles of his feet and was as silent as a dead man's prayer. Every movement screamed with purpose as if each step he took was following some rigid agenda. He began to ascend a tall majestic oak and settled into a perch. He set his stare down to the northeast quadrant of the park, and left it there for the next hour. He began to pickup on the target's footsteps at around 500 yards. At 450 yards, Reaper5 had an audio lock on the target's voice frequency, and a pheromone lock from his sweat. By 300 yards Reaper5 had locked onto the alpha waves and it only took another 50 yards before he started broadcasting into the victims' mind. Wallace McAllister knew he was having a bad night. It was one of those days where he wanted to stay in bed, grab a bucket of chicken, and melt his brain with a good Vflic. [DIE, DIE, DIE.] What the hell? These disturbing thoughts came to him randomly. His psychiatrist said that. [YOU WILL DIE TONIGHT] Wallace nervously fumbled in his pockets for his pills. He was on a 50mg prescription of MDMA to help him deal with his odd anxiety. It seemed to be getting worse instead of better, and he figured sooner or later he was just going to have a good old fashioned break [DEATH], down.

Target Parameters : Insert Psychoactive Batch #33019324.. : Terminate.. Time Till Termination : 00:02:15:09.32.005 Alpha Wave Broadcast: Audio... enabled : Video... enable in 00:00:05.01.325 Target Sanity Level : 95% Time To Next Insertion: 00:00:00:50:12.223

Reaper5 uplinked into the satellites miles above and triangulated the coordinates of his target. He was accurate to 0.000055 microns, a .00002 improvement over last years Reaper4 model. He aimed for a blood vessel that went straight to Wallace's dopamine receptors with a tiny microscopic dart. The dart contained a concentrated dose of neo-delysergic acid 25 bundled with a time release enzyme. Over the course of the next 2 hours, Wallace would slowly lose his mind.

"Damn mosquitoes!" Wallace muttered as he rubbed his neck. Seems like they had been plaguing him constantly for the last few days. Wallace stepped to the side as an old lady dragged a rotting corpse behind her. Wait. He looked back again, but it was just a dog. One of those little purebred's with DNA enhancements.

"But I could have sworn...." Wallace knew that his mind was slipping, but till now he just heard things. That old bag was dragging a corpse, he was sure of it. He looked back to check his sanity, and there was the corpse again. It looked like someone he knew. Oh god, it was him. He wasn't being dragged along this time. He was actually slithering. The arms and legs looked as if a bear or alligator had gnawed them off, and the bloodied sinews were streaking blood along the crisp gray sidewalk. Wallace paused and felt, as the fear from this gory vision started to crawl down his back. He rubbed at the back of this neck, trying to eradicate the tingle of fear. As he drew back his hand, he felt the skin sticking. The entire epidermal layer had peeled off and his hand was now dripping with blood. Wallace fell to the ground vomiting and clutching at his neck. He started screaming so loud that a small crowd began to gather. Finally a young woman stepped up to try and give Wallace some help.

"Are you all right?"

"My neck, and the body, old lady!!"

"You aren't making any sense, are you on drugs or something?"

"God help me, I'm gonna bleed to death!"

"I hate to burst your bubble, but your not bleeding."

10:45 PM: New Angeles Providence Hospital

Dr. Blade rushed over to the West wing. Natalie the nurse's crew leader was walking briskly beside Dr. Blade giving him a debriefing.

"Patients name is Wallace Vandimeyer. He was picked up in Zilker Park after a woman called him in." Natalie rattled off.

"What was the reason for dispatch?" Dr. Blade questioned automatically.

"Mr. Vandimeyer was having an anxiety attack" Natalie responded, quoting 'anxiety attack' with her fingers.

"Don't buy the anxiety story eh? Do you think he's a druggie?" Dr. Blade asked.

"He had a bottle of MDMA on him. It was prescription though. I think he was seeing a psychiatrist."

"So you do think it was an anxiety attack?" Dr. Blade asked as he looked over at her.

"I think he’s lost his bloody mind is all." Natalie smirked.

Dr. Blade sighed, "I need a vacation." He looked over at Natalie again, "Want to run away with me right now?"

Natalie chuckled, "What, and miss all this fun?"

The medical duo strode into the room as two orderlies were struggling with Mr. Vandimeyer. They managed to hold him down just long enough inject a large dose of hyper-rohibinal with a xanex chaser. Seconds later Vandimeyer’s body decided to cooperate with the orderlies and just twitched now and again. He was still mumbling incoherently.

Alex hated airports, of course that made his impending job just a little bit more bearable. He was dressed in a slick looking pin stripe Armani with Italian loafers. He walked up to the security checkpoint and eyed the agent. She was an attractive brunette most likely in her early 40’s. She was thin and, were it not for her implants, her breasts would be sagging by now. It was time to kick in his charm. He extended the first bag.

“Here’s my garment bag, but this attaché has some sensitive computer equipment.”

“It’s perfectly safe sir” She replied automatically.

“I realize most laptops are safe, but this laptop is sensitive to tachyeon emissions so I would prefer that you manually check it.”

“Sir, it really is…”

“Look, Rita” Alex said quickly glancing at her tag, “I know you may not understand this, but this laptop costs three times my annual salary. It contains cyclotronic phase inducers, which allow me to monitor shifts in the time continuum. Do you understand?”

Alex flashed his warmest smile. “Sure, would you mind stepping into the blast shield and turning it on for me?” Rita replied, pointing to a circle on the floor.

“Not a problem darling.”

Alex stepped into the circle and Rita fiddled with some controls on her panel.

He heard the hum of a generator as a force shield raised around him.

“Please turn your laptop on for me.” Rita instructed.

Alex turned his laptop on and several screens of text and diagnostic messages scrolled by.

“Ok, that’s good.” Rita lowered the field.

“You’re the best Rita, thanks.”

“You’re welcome sir, have a nice flight.”

Alex boarded the DC-50, and waited for take off. Being the smart-ass that he was, he mimed the instructions back to the stewardess. He figured for once in his life, he could really do what ever he wanted, no one was going to be able to do a whole lot about it when they got on the ground. They made the initial clearance and taxied around for a while. Finally the plane made its departure and ascended to a 50,000-foot cruising altitude.

During the ascent Alex had some time to think about things. It would be the last time he got to do so in this body. He really began thinking about how lame security was here. They scanned everything with tachyeon sensors, but they only looked for recognizable patterns that resembled bombs. Hell, the portable hard drive he also had in his bag wasn’t even touched. Rita simply looked at it and moved on.

“This is the captain speaking, we have reached our cruising altitude of 50,000 feet. It is now safe for you to use any approved electronic devices such as teradisk players, laptops, and portable gaming devices.”

Another thing they scan for is explosive compounds. But who would be stupid enough to walk into an airport with C4 tucked under his arm. Now C2 is not illegal. C2 can be carried on without threat and nanotech devices can be used to combine the molecules and form C4. Alex booted his laptop and attached his OI. Occipital Interfaces were the latest in display devices, they scanned low level lasers directly onto the eye and produced images of higher quality than reality.

Logon: please state your name.

“I am DataThief.” Alex whispered under his breath. The subdermal mics picked up his whispers as if he were shouting to the other side of the room.

You have been verified, proceed.

“Begin Alpha1.”

This began to compile all the programs that were needed. Normally this was a tedious task, but this laptop was screaming through. It was NeoTek’s latest 133.5 Thz machine and only took 1 second to compile all 378 Gigabytes of code.

Alpha1 completed.

“Initiate Phase 1.”

Small nanotech devices inside the hard drive began combining the large carbon blocks stored in his portable hard drive. Within minutes the task was complete.

Phase 1 completed.

In his visual cortex, an image of the molecular compound sitting in his portable hard drive shell glowed with ambience. Trillions of nanotech devices surrounded the C4 ready to deliver a burst of high-powered electrons. It was time.

“Begin Omega1.”

Omega1 commencing, waiting for your mark.

Alex got up and walked up to the first class cabin. He glanced down at a man with a dark trench coat.

“Nice to see you Agent Solos.” Alex said warmly as he pulled out a cigarette.

“Alexander, or should I call you DataThief?” Agent Solos replied.

“You can call me whatever you like, it doesn’t matter now.” Alex chimed as he withdrew a lighter from his pocket.

“I’m going to bring you in when we hit the ground, you know that don’t you?” Agent Solos said.

“Funny you should mention hitting the ground…” Alex smiled that warm grin.

As soon as he lit his cigarette the small crew of flight attendants gawked in confusion. One of them started to approach with a serious attitude.

Agent Solos’ eyes got real wide, “What do you mean…”

“Computer, This is DataThief, “ Alex winked at Agent Solos , “MARK!”

“This is Claudia Nyles reporting from Channel 411 News. Tonight a DC-50 exploded over Salt Lake City today on it’s way to New York. All 600 passengers were killed and there are no leads as of yet.”

Yorkian Megalopolis Proper

Dr. Kevork grinned as Ms. Nyles reported the completion of his task. He gingerly stepped over to the DNA growth accelerators and checked on the status.

“Computer, what’s our status?”

Tissue generation is at 98%.

“Great, as soon as generation is complete, wait 65 seconds and initiate a UV pulse scan across the subject.”

Command acknowledged.

Once the tissue was complete, the UV pulse scan would cause the newly formed body to grow some skin. Then he could begin downloading DataThief's stored alpha’s into the body. In a little less then an hour from now, he would be reborn. DataThief had left his alpha transmitter on longer than expected so he may actually be reborn with memories from inside the plane. Dr. Kevork was interested to see the results.

Generation is complete, beginning UV pulse generation.

The body was reacting normally to the pulse and skin was beginning to form.

“Computer, when the skin is done growing initiate alpha brain core dump from DataThief.”

Command acknowledged. Estimated time to completion, 35 minutes 13 seconds.

“Great. Signal me when everything is done.”

Command acknowledged.