It's been one of those games. A few turns ago, you ran right into one of the Corp's traps, and wound up losing all of the cards in your hand, as well as most of your cards in play. And during the few turns it took you to build your hand back up, the Corp pieced together a brand-new data fort and installed something inside it. You have the icebreaker Black Dahlia in play, and the first thing you did this turn was to install Tinweasel, so you're well armed. You then spent two actions getting back up to a paltry , compared to the Corp's . Now you take your last action to jack in, and meet the Corp on its own turf once again.

The first piece of ice the Runner approaches is our Neural Blade. Though the sword cannot stop the Runner on its own, it can deliver a shock to the Runner, who will be at the mercy of any ice appearing later in the fort. Also, the Runner cannot afford to break both Neural Blade and Triggerman, so if we rez Neural Blade and the Runner chooses to breakboth subroutines, the Runner will not be able to deal with Triggerman later in the run. Rezzing Neural Blade will cost us , but it will cost the Runner this much to break both subroutines, so we decide to activate it.

After defeating the simple code locks on the outside of the fort, you turn the first corner, only to find a Neural Blade rezzing in front of you. Sword programs like the blade are bad news; while they can't force you out of the Net, they will give your gray matter a healthy shock, leaving you temporarily vulnerable to any nastier ice patrolling the fort.

Quickly, you select Black Dahlia from the main menu. The Neural Blade is a sentry, after all, and Dahlia was designed to attack such ice. Rising up in front of Neural Blade, your icebreaker absorbs most of the feedback (and you spend to break the subroutine that prevents you from breaking the next ice in the run). However, you don't want to run out of bits later in the run, so you choose to leave the first subroutine unbroken, and therefore discard one card at random.

Although the Neural Blade was able to shock the Runner, it was not sufficient to repel the intrusion. The Runner is now approaching Filter, so we must decide whether to rez it. As the code gate is no threat to Tinweasel, we decide not to. With any luck, the Runner will assume that the ice is a powerful one that we can't yet rez, and will be more cautious in the future when we have a larger bit pool.

Shaking off the residual effects of the Neural Blade, you continue into the data fort. Looks like you caught a break, since the Corp doesn't rez the second piece of ice. However, you're not out of the virtual woods yet, since you still have to pass the innermost piece of ice.

Because the Runner saved by not breaking Neural Blade's first subroutine, the projection is that our agenda will be stolen. Even if we rez Triggerman, the Runner can simply spend to keep the run from being ended. However, rezzing the killer will also force the Runner to choose between losing a program (namely, the Black Dahlia, which is what we would choose to trash, as the Runner well knows) or running out of bits by spending another to break that subroutine, so we decide to activate it.

Frack! Your cyberdeck slips a low buzzing noise into your feed, indicating that a sentry is rezzing somewhere nearby....

The first assault from the killer almost severs your connection into the Net. However, you quickly recover, and call up Black Dahlia again. With disturbing efficiency, the icebreaker blocks Triggerman's advance, and causes Triggerman to release its hold on your connection (that is, you pay to break the second subroutine). The ice and icebreaker then battle it out, and by keeping on top of things, you patch Dahlia's code back together fast enough to keep her from crashing (that's another , to keep the ice from trashing a program; the Corp could choose a program other than Black Dahlia, but we both know what the source of its pain is).

And look what the Corp was hiding! It's the details behind its bid to construct an extension to the Tycho lunar colony. Without a second thought, you download the files, erase the originals, sell the data to the highest bidder (recorded as 4 agenda points rather than as bits), and retire to a quiet evening of bushwhacking Netwatch agents.