The whale song of the world - there was a melody to be found within the Matrix for those who knew how to listen. Slivered threads of data spread throughout the city like the golden web of arachne from prince to popper and heroine to whore. The unspoken secrets from hushed lips and laughter from the pedestal. One could spend an entire life time following a whisper through the long and quiet halls of the wireless world and only to find themselves, there and back again, at the end of that well spent day.<br/><br/>The fish-net wearing hacker was practiced and poised when it came to that digital dance. She had followed the bread crumbs from node to node, fading silver finger prints left behind in the mathematics and the archived logs like fields of endless binary wheat. The source of Mr. Johnson's signal blossomed in redirected echoes throughout the city and even leaving Seattle and dripping out into California and the meat of the UCAS. She had tracked a thread to Tokyo, but some investigation there had only given her a private exhibition of a young couple making love in an office building after hours. Another thread had lead her to an abandoned satellite launch facility in Siberia, where a static ridden trid-feed gave the blonde a solid seven hours of snow falling on a tarnished bronze statue of a caged bird. The primary node by which all of this information fed in and out of the Hotel itself was something Danni had access to, even administration privileges, but a single data-store attached to the system was heavily firewalled and hard wired to a security hub which protected it.<br/><br/>A digital note easily accessible read, "Bad Girl. Do not open until Christmas."<br/><br/>These questions left behind were answers in themselves, however. She knew that whoever was orchestrating these events, gathering this team, and providing for them was at a level of technical expertise that was on par with her own (or at least had someone working for him who knew the game very well) - a digital fencing match between two masters come to stalemate. The black haired, AR Shade wearing chrome-boy they had encountered at the Alabaster Maiden was probably a match for Maeve, at least judging by the hardware he was packing beneath his skin. This itself did beg the question... of such a wealth of resources was available to the man behind the curtain, why had he been so specific in choosing those four particular young women?<br/><br/>A blinking amber cursor in her AR display confronted Danni with this very question.<br/>The game was still afoot, but this one was chess more so than was it checkers.<br/><br/>Meanwhile, the girls were all keenly aware of the unblinking lenses of the trid cameras which were watching them. Now and then they would pivot on their ball-joints and the small glowing red light would appear to brighten or dim, as though the cameras themselves communicated the interest of the man watching on the other end. These eyes followed them from room to room, trading off as they passed through the doorways, and stared with an uneasy persistence that was both simple voyeuristic and also unsettling.  It was 3:00 AM by the time anyone felt absolutely certain no new information was going to be given to them that evening. The antique grandfather clock in the main room ticked audibly. Then, as though on cue, one of the floor tiles near the bar, right beside Maeve in fact, opened up and an automaton wearing a black bow-tie was elevated out of the floor by a series of motors. He (for lack of a better term) was clearly artificial, with pore-less skin and gleaming glass eyes. The features of his face and body all seemed perfectly human, and perhaps in a still trid frame he might have passed for human, but his mannerisms and movement were all lacking in convincing mimicry.<br/><br/>"Hello there. My name is Sebastian. I have been monitoring your vital statistics and it has become apparent that you are each at an elevated level of stress. May I be of assistance? Perhaps I can pour you a Mimosa? I often receive compliments on my back-rubs and massages. There are 3,421 digital volumes of reading material available here for you and 71 classic hard copy books at your disposal. Please, be mindful when turning the pages - they are very fragile." Sebastian smiled, cheerful and dull.<br/><br/>