"You want us to go beyond the Blackwall," said V, Judy and her trailing behind Ayako. The netrunner was whistling a tune, one V recognized, mostly because of Johnny, as Samurai's Black Dog. "Are you fuckin' nuts?" It was less of a question, more of an accusation. "And what's this shit 'bout Mikoshi and partitions?"

"Yeah, as the girlfriend of the woman you're askin' to take a dive into AI-space, gonna hafta veto," said Judy, staring at the back of Ayako's head as if she were trying to set the 'runner's hair on fire with her mind.

"To answer your first question," Ayako said to V, "yes, I am absolutely fuckin' nuts. Gotta be when you deep-dive into the Net. To the second, I cleaved a little piece off for myself. Reasons you don't gotta worry 'bout, but if it helps allay some concerns, it ain't corpo biz. I'm a contractor, don't give a steaming shit 'bout the companies who hire me." She spun around on her exojack tabi-boots, shuffling backward, meeting Judy's scowl with the laser-pupil oculars. "Sure," she said, unimpressed, "go ahead, veto your output's only chance at survival." The laser-pupils scanned Judy up and down, the 'runner cocking her head like a cat watching the aquarium fish. "It always this easy for you to pull the life-support, Mox?"

"You're a fuckin' Ronin," seethed Judy. "And I'm supposed to trust your ass with my calabacita? Outta here, y'fuckin' deck-ninja, 'fore I beat your ass with a chancla."

"Touchy," said Ayako, cracking a grin.

"Who's holdin' your leash right now?" asked V, looking at Ayako.

"Biotechnica."

"How do you know so much 'bout, well." V hesitated, gazing into the 'runner's laser-glass eyes. "Well," she resumed, "about everything, I guess. Arasaka, Mikoshi, the fact Judy was Mox."

"The Net is a continuous flow of information," said Ayako, as if priming to expound on some kind of treatise, "and information is knowledge, V. You just gotta know how to interpret the data, and I'm very good at interpreting data." She tapped the thin, metal plate bolted to her temple, which V recognized as a WNI, wireless neural interface. That kind of 'ware cost mega, and far as she knew, was Chiba stuff, unavailable in the States unless you bought it off the Chinese black-market. "I'm always semi-jacked into the Net, in that interstitial space where matter becomes data. That's how I see the world, V. As data. As information." She looked down at herself, adding, "Don't wear this cooling suit for fashion, even if it looks pretty nova. Without it?" She mimed an explosion with her hands. "Whoosh. Overheat and flatline."

V couldn't imagine what that looked like, a world composed of data. Of matter translated into binary. Then Ayako told her she'd cook without the suit. V shook her head. "You are fuckin' nuts," she said, pushing her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket, absently running her thumb over the textured silicon of the shard in her pocket. "Y'know your girl Yuki's back there in the dumpster."

Ayako shrugged. "Dangerous being a proxy sometimes."

"Sounds like y'don't give a single shit."

"Yuki Fujiki got three 'runners flatlined by NetWatch. She was an informant. So yeah, I don't give a shit. She owed me a favor, and now we're square."

They arrived at a very flash Quadra: matte black, sleek as a hypersonic spyplane's fuselage, tinted windows. "Someone's got eddies," said V, staring at the car and wishing she owned it. "I used to own a Quadra. Used to own some Rayfields, too." That seemed so long ago now, another V's life. A V with a rep and money, well on her way to becoming a street-legend. She didn't miss that V, not anymore, but she did miss the nice things that V had owned.

"I do okay," said Ayako, and she gestured at the car. "Get in, we'll go for a ride."

"I got my bike," said V, stupidly.

"You got geo-recall on it, right?"

"Sure."

"Then get in," said Ayako, and she rounded the car to slide into the driver's seat. "We'll head to my place, talk. Can call your bike later."

V climbed into the backseat, Judy beside her. The seats were upholstered in charcoal-colored leather. Real Eurotheater leather, she decided—like the stuff in the dollbox. "Fuckin' nova," remarked V, feeling a small, sharp pang of jealousy.

Ayako started to drive, the car's stabilizers running it smooth and quiet, the city-scape blurring into a wet neon smear beyond the rain-stained window-glass. "So," said Judy, disturbing the careful surface-tension of the silence, "your 'ware. Ain't seen a WNI before, not in the flesh."

"I was born in Chiba," said Ayako, her eyes firmly fixed on the road. "Lived and breathed the Net to escape the dismal fucking reality of the slums. Digital hikikomori. Developed a talent for deck-jockeying." She paused, almost as if she were hesitating to say more. Then, "Anyway, some powerful people noticed, paid for my 'ware. Though I've heavily modified it since. Black market stuff."

They headed out of Gijutsu, riding the Shibata Interchange over a sprawl of old industrial parks, the distant lights of the comms-towers pulsing steadily like constellations of dying stars. Ayako drove them east, toward a place called Las Palmeras.

Las Palmeras was everything Little Japan wasn't: crude, old, a confused mix of sloppy cable-webworks, ancient brickwork walk-ups, megabuildings scoured smooth by years of Sonoran sandstorms. Bright artesania murals had been painted on many of the buildings, although over some of these, which greatly disappointed but did not surprise V, local gangs had scrawled their tags, or crude doodles of dicks.

"You don't live in Little Japan?" asked V.

"Why, just 'cause I'm Japanese I gotta live there?"

"Not what I fuckin' meant," said V, her cheeks and ears burning.

Ayako grinned at her in the rear-view camera. "I'm just fucking with you, V. Chill," she told her, giggling like she'd just said the funniest shit in town. V wanted to slug her, but something told her that would be a very bad idea; she was pretty sure that thermal katana wasn't just a flex, that Ayako could handle that thing as professionally as V handled Johnny's Malorian. Not to mention she'd run the risk of getting flatlined by some deck-ninja quickhack, and no thanks, V didn't want her neuralware fried.

And she was driving. Only a gonk would punch the driver of the car in which they rode. El Capitan had once told her that on a drive in Santo Domingo, when they'd gotten, somehow, on the topic of the hazards of fighting in a car.

"Anyway," said Ayako at length, "I was never very good at being Japanese. Never fit in, even back in good, old Nihon."

"That so?" said Judy, trying not to look interested.

"Sure," said Ayako. "Japanese society has too many fucking rules, most of them fussy and pointless. For example: biz-cards. Face the person, use both hands to offer your detes—gotta be face-up, the card, and you gotta bow while you're doing it. Not leaving the fucking office until your boss does. Drinking every goddamn night with your coworkers, 'cause you're obligated to keep that team cohesion." She glanced at them in the rearview cam. "I could go on—but then we'd be talking all goddamn night."

"Yikes," said V, "sounds rough."

Ayako nodded. "Kinda gotta chip on my shoulder about it, sorry." She hit her blinker, cruised over to the rightmost lane and rode the deceleration ramp into Las Palmeras. "That Japanese saying about the nail that sticks out gets hammered down? I was the nail hoping the hammer wouldn't notice."

They pulled into a neighborhood of pre-war walk-ups, their brickwork eroded and crumbling. Cars were parked along the street, most of them old and in various states of disrepair. V spotted a '56 Thorton Galena, its rear passenger-side window taped over in glossy, fraying strips of duct-tape and reconstituted cardboard, the fender rusty and sand-blown, windshield cracked. A few Hispanic guys were crowded around the car, smoking and listening to the kick and snare of neo-reggaeton on the car's radio. Ayako pulled up alongside the group.

"Hola, ninja-girl," greeted one of the guys, a big dude who vaguely and painfully reminded V of Jackie. He wore a bright neon jacket, and jeans worn thin around the knees. "Never seen you bring no friends 'round."

"Just for some biz, Juan. Any trouble with the Modernos?"

"Nah, not since you crashed their fuckin' demon." Juan snickered, showing a sliver of white teeth. "Fuckin' Net-punks. Anyway, you got any work you need facilitated, holler at me."

Ayako nodded, then drove a few meters up the road, turning left and following the curve of an alley to a three-door garage behind a walk-up. "Los Locos Modernos and Las Digitales," she explained, and parked the car in the third garage. "Analogous to the Voodoo Boys, I guess, and NetWatch, but for the gangnets. Juan's part of the latter, the Digitales. Bad blood between them and the Modernos." She took something out of the glove-compartment. "Come on."

They stepped out of the garage into a thin drizzle, the neon of the pawnshop's sign, its name a stylized cluster of kanji, glittering green on the wet tarmac. Ayako rattled down the corrugated metal garage-shutter and secured the latch. "Pretty low-tech for a netrunner with your rep," said Judy, looking at Ayako.

"Low-tech is exactly what you want to be in a high-tech world," said Ayako. "Unless you're gonna jack into the Net. Then you need to be as high-tech as possible." She tossed the thing she'd taken from the glove compartment to Judy, who fumbled the catch but managed not to drop it. "Besides," added Ayako, "the corpos don't really pay attention to Las Palmeras, and that suits me fine."

Judy looked at the thing in her hand, and so did V. "That's Fujiki's fuckin' neuralware," said V.

"Your girl's a preem scroller," said Ayako, grinning. "Might as well put her to work, since you both are a goddamn package deal." She jerked her chin toward the processor in Judy's hands, and said, "Gotta get the data off her cache. Bank was too fried to save."

"Cached data? I can't fuckin' work with that," said Judy, sounding partly annoyed, partly flattered that Ayako thought she could.

"I got the gear you need," said Ayako. "Chill, choom."