After hitching a ride on a few other vehicles over the course of an hour, Jobe reached the center of the city, where run-down buildings were replaced by gleaming towers of metal, plastic, and glass. The newest designs were evident in these marvels of modern architecture and engineering that reflected a desire to reach up towards the sky. Aside from a change in buildings, there were also shining new cars rolling past on well maintained roadways, as they were driven around by people in expensive apparel who had most likely never set foot in the sections of the city beyond the point where the quality of buildings began to degrade. Jobe saw a great many people in nice clothes crossing the streets, as functioning traffic lights kept cars from running down the pedestrians, and he shook his head as he thought about how much money must have been spent on that section of the city alone that could have went towards helping those in the surrounding areas who were barely making enough to survive in the veritable urban wastelands that lay all around, and yet conveniently out of sight of the city's denizens.
   The truck Jobe was hiding on stopped at a light, so he leapt off and went down an alleyway before he was seen. He quickly removed his bandanna and hid it inside one of his pockets, tied back his long hair, and then he reversed his jacket again so that he would look more presentable. A few minutes later, a group of people walked past, totally oblivious to the fact they were being watched from the alleyway, and then Jobe stepped out of the darkness and joined the group of people as they walked down the sidewalk. He made sure to keep his head down and his face hidden from the many cameras he knew were mounted on every signpost, streetlight, and attached to the corners of nearly every building he passed. Another group of people passed next to the first and Jobe broke off from the first group to join this new group of people as they walked in the general direction he wanted to go.
   Eventually, he reached the building he sought and went around to the back, where he knew there should be less security. He was pleased to find that his guess was right, and all that protected the back entrance into the building was an access code on the door, which Jobe circumvented with ease. Then with a quick glance to see if he was being watched, he picked up some empty boxes someone had left lying in the alleyway and entered the building. Down the long hallway he went, pretending to be a delivery person, until he reached a directory for the building, and then he looked for the name Douglas, Jamison. He found that this man's office was on the twentieth floor, and so he found the nearest stairwell and used it.
   His ascent was quick and Jobe felt no fatigue by the time he reached the twentieth floor. Once he reached the door he wanted, he pressed his ear against it and listened for the sounds of people, but he didn't hear anyone, so he opened the door leading out of the stairwells and quickly stepped out into the halls of the twentieth floor. He made sure to keep his face hidden from the view of the cameras with the empty boxes, as he walked across the hallway and entered the first office he came to.
   "Cameras appear to scan the hallway from each side," he thought as he watched the cameras move back and forth. From the shelter of the doorway he timed them and saw that all the cameras were turned completely away from the office he was hiding in for no more than three seconds at the most. So he closed the door before going farther into the office and sitting down in front of the computer used by whomever the office belonged to.
   "Let me see what I can do about those cameras," Jobe said to himself, as he bypassed the security programs on the computer and accessed the lawyer's files. The first thing he took notice of was that he knew some of the people on the lawyer's list of clients, and many of them were deserving of prison terms that this lawyer was trying to get them out of. Some of them were being put on trial very soon for environmental crimes, and so Jobe tracked down information about the accounts they were using to pay for a lawyer and transferred the balances of these accounts into funds for helping the poor and homeless in various ways including housing, clothing, and feeding.
   "Now let them try to hire a lawyer who can get them acquitted," Jobe said with a satisfied tone, as he returned to his original purpose and hacked into the main computer system of the building. He searched until he found the programs that controlled the security systems on the twentieth floor and accessed them. With skillful adjustments to the programs, he made the security measures run a maintenance cycle on themselves that he figured would give him five minutes at the most of freedom to do as he wished. Then he turned off the computer without shutting it down properly, so that it would run a system check before anyone else could use it, which would make sure his tampering wasn't noticed for a short while.
   He then stood up and went to the door to see if the cameras were still running, and he found that they were currently in a stationary position and the green lights that were on when they were recording were off for the moment. Quickly, he went down the hall and found the office of Jamison Douglas, but the door was locked. The lock was the same kind that was on the back entrance, and Jobe had little trouble disabling it long enough to allow him entry into the office.
   He pushed the door open and slipped through into the dark office. Knowing he had only a few minutes to do what he came to do, he turned on the computer and searched through a filing cabinet as it booted up. The search through the filing cabinet only told him that this lawyer worked for many wealthy people who had dealt with the firm of Wesley, Windham, and Pryce for years. He found much the same thing on the computer, and so he decided to search for anything involving missing family members. This brought up a list of clients who had relatives disappear mysteriously over the last few years, and names of other people who had the same thing happen to their friends and family, some of whom were middle class or lower. He noticed that these names matched up to the ones on the list he was sent with the HPD, and he decided to try to find out more about them, but before he could search further, he heard heavy boots moving down the hallway and he knew that the GSD had come for him, and this time with larger numbers.
   "I knew this was too easy," he muttered, as he exited the files and shut down the computer. The sounds of heavy boots got closer and Jobe realized that the door he came in through was the only way in or out of the office other than the thick windows behind him, which he knew were only there for aesthetic purposes and were not designed to be opened. He glanced out the window to see if breaking it and exiting that way was an option, but it looked to be a straight drop to the streets below, so he knew that idea wasn‘t feasible. As the sounds of weapons being loaded echoed through the hallways, he got a feeling much like that an animal gets when it is trapped, but then he felt a small amount of air blowing down on him, and he noticed that there was a vent about a meter above his head.
   Quickly, he climbed up onto the edge of the desk and popped the cover off of the vent with one of his tools. Then with amazing speed, he pulled himself up into the ducts and had the cover back over the vent just seconds before the door was kicked open. He gave silent thanks that the ducts had been reinforced to allow cleaning robots to traverse their length without running the risk of the robots' weight causing any damage.
   Looking down through the vent at the officers, he wondered what kind of weapons his pursuers were carrying this time, but his survival instincts told him to escape while he had time and opportunity, and so moving as fast as he could, Jobe slid through the ductwork for many meters until he reached a wall, which he could hear machinery moving behind. Looking through the vent, he saw that there was an elevator shaft beyond. Without hesitation, he knocked the vent outwards and stuck his head out. He saw an elevator coming up and he slid out of the hole and fell a few feet onto the roof of the elevator.
   The motor moving the elevator slipped for a moment because of the added weight, but then it caught and let the elevator continue going upwards. Around a minute later, the elevator stopped on the twenty-third floor and Jobe waited until the passengers were out of it before opening the hatch on the top and dropping down inside as silently as possible. Then with a quick look around, he ran out of the elevator and down the hallway, as alarms went off all around him thanks to the people manning the security office spotting him in the elevator. Ahead and off to the right there was a door leading into a stairwell and Jobe went through it. Below him on the stairs he heard the heavy boots of GSD officers climbing towards him, and so he went upwards towards the roof.
   Jobe moved as fast as he thought reasonable, as he continued running up the stairs, and he didn't see any other signs of law-enforcement personnel until he reached the twenty-sixth floor. Then he heard a door being kicked open below him, and he increased his speed.
   "Stop and we won't hurt you!" yelled one of the officers a few flights below, as Jobe finally reached the door to the roof.
   Jobe ignored the officer and kicked open the locked door. He ran across the rooftop and tried to see if there was any way to get down, but he saw none. Then he looked around the building and finally saw some heavy poles sticking out from the west side of the building with signs bearing vapid slogans attached to them. Behind him the door was shouldered the rest of the way open by one of the GSD officers.
   "You had best give up now, because the only way down is with us," the first officer through the door said with gun raised.
   Jobe looked at the officers all wearing body armor and he saw that they were armed with automatic weapons that were all aimed towards him. "You leave me with few options, officers," he commented, as he casually stepped onto the edge of the roof.
   "This isn't worth killing yourself over," one of the officers said.
   "Who said anything about killing myself?" Jobe asked before turning around and leaping off of the roof.
   After falling for no more than two seconds, he grabbed the first of the heavy poles he came to and swung off of it to the next one. There was a long banner hanging off of this pole, and it stretched across the street to the next building, so he grabbed the banner with one hand and pulled on it to make sure it would be strong enough to support his weight. Then he hung from the banner with one hand while reaching for his pistol, and quickly learned that he must have lost it after jumping off the roof. So he improvised and raised one leg enough to remove a short, thin knife from a sheath on his ankle. He then used this knife to cut through the fabric between the edge of the banner and the metal rings holding it to the pole. As soon as the blade had cut most of the way through the fabric, the banner ripped loose and he swung across the expanse between the two buildings.
   By luck more than anything else, he managed to land on a ledge protruding from the building he swung towards. Once he was balanced on the ledge, he looked around quickly to figure out his options, as he carefully returned the knife to its sheath. Below, he saw a balcony and he jumped down onto it as a bullet flew past him and struck the wall behind the ledge he was just standing on. The occupants of the room the balcony was attached to saw him landing, and one of them reached for a phone while another shouted about calling the police. Jobe tried to decide his next move, and he thought that maybe he would have to break into the apartment behind him. Then he saw a truck with a covered bed passing below him, and he jumped off of the balcony, falling nearly ten meters onto the cover. He looked up at the officers many stories above him, and then he slid across the cover and swung himself into the bed of the truck, which he quickly learned was hauling scrap metal. His hopes that he had escaped capture again were soon dashed, however, as he saw a pair of police vehicles swing around a corner and begin to follow the truck at a high speed.
   Shaking his head, Jobe looked at what was in the bed of the truck with him and saw some smaller bits of scrap metal with sharp points lying around him. He grabbed a handful of these, crawled to the edge of the truck's bed, and stood up so he could have a clear view of the police vehicles. Then with a quick toss, he threw them in the path of the closest vehicle. This caused the first car to jackknife as its tires were punctured and the second vehicle to swerve around the first and move forward in an attempt to close the distance.
   Quickly, Jobe grabbed a length of metal with a jagged end and threw it towards the other vehicle's hood. He struck where he aimed, as it went through the hood and pierced the battery pack beneath. The second car swerved uncontrollably and slammed into a lamppost, as its electrical system shut down from having the battery speared. Jobe ducked back down beneath the tarp, as the truck pulled onto the road that would take it out of the city, and the truck's android driver remained totally oblivious to what had just occurred behind the truck it was driving.