Something popped and crackled, and the clinic's lights flickered off, snapped back on when the system swapped over to auxiliary power. But the door was already fried by then, sliding open on its electromagnetic track, reek of burnt circuitry and ozone hanging thick in the air. Microemp, V decided. Crude, but very effective when you didn't have a blackbox handy. She expected, with that sort of crudeness, to see a couple of hoods step into the clinic, maybe people Buster owed, but no, not even close.
An Arasaka ninja, flanked on either side by two 'Saka soldier-boys, stepped into the clinic. The ninja, what street-kids like V called the specialized killers of the Arasaka Corporation, barely had anything 'ganic left in her, chromed to the teeth and looking as if she were perpetually teetering on the brink of cyberpsychosis. Her flunkies were standards, their armor military-grade ceramic, cut to resemble gusoku. Both soldier-boys were packing Nowaki assault-rifles modified to fire lead-azide rounds at three hundred rounds per second. Real serious kit, V thought. The kind 'Saka usually reserved for their spec-ops, not for their standards.
"What the fuck is 'Saka doin' here?" asked Judy, pulling her iron from under her jacket, a JKE-X2 Kenshin she'd spray-painted tropical pink and lovingly dubbed The Chaos, due to its electromagnetic burst-fire capabilities: firing rounds so hard and fast that they'd punch through tank-plate and ferroconcrete, and shred anyone hiding behind either.
"Doesn't matter," said Buster, and without waiting for Judy to reply, he fired two shots from the handcannon, the cracks bassing down into subsonics, making V's ears pop and throb. The ninja, her cyberware specifically designed for reflex and speed, flowed out of the way, but her two soldier-boys weren't so lucky. They splattered into meat-chunks, what was left of their bodies rocking on rubber boot-heels before toppling backward onto the tile.
The ninja launched herself at Buster, drew a carbon-steel katana and swung; but he side-stepped, the blade glancing off his chrome. The borg reached back, snatched the woman out of the air, her head caged in his steel claw—and squeezed. V heard silicon and bone crack, splatter, the ninja's body going limp as a boned fish. Buster slung her corpse at the soldier-boys filing through the door, and, surprised by the dead ninja suddenly hurtling toward them, the 'Sakas fumbled their shots, tried and failed to slew out of the way. Two shots of Buster's massive handcannon erased the soldier-boys, dissolving them into pinkish clouds of bodily fluids.
"Come on, stop gawking," said Buster, shoving V and Judy out of the clinic. "We got to move. 'Saka, they're like sharks. Once they whiff blood, they come swimming."
They hurried down the tunnel, past shuttered shopfronts, people screaming and panicking, milling around like dumb, confused cattle. V saw Skeet and the other homeless guys sprawled out on the ground, not much left of them thanks to the lead-azide rounds. What was left of them painted the tunnel's walls: blood, brains, little fragments of bone. V saw someone's ocular implant lying on the ground, the synthetic optic nerve twitching like a worm as its last electrical impulses burned out, and she idly found herself wondering if it had belonged to Skeet or someone else.
An Arasaka Rapid Response Unit pulled up in a company ATC, disgorging more soldier-boys and another ninja. V pulled her monowire and whipped her arm, glint of microfilament arcing out, catching the neon, passing laterally through the response unit, whipping up and descending. The soldiers and their ninja froze as if pinned in the headlights of some invisible car, hairline surgical cuts bleeding into existence, and then, in perfect silence, the 'Saka goons tumbled apart, anatomical jigsaw pieces surrendering to gravity and rolling forward onto the pavement. The monowire smoothly retracted back into its housing.
"Nice little yo-yo trick," said Buster, and they hurried toward the street, where V had parked her bike.
Except there was no bike, not anymore. It was crumpled under the wheel of the ATC, and seeing that, seeing Jackie's bike crushed under a 'Saka tire like a piece of gonk-junk, V felt something inside her break. Hot tears blurred the edges of her vision, an uncomfortable lump forming in her throat.
"We don't have time for crybaby shit," said Buster, and she felt his metal claw, cold and unfeeling, yank her away from the thing that had once been Jackie's bike. "Move, before more 'Saka assholes come."
More 'Saka assholes did come, this time in a Surveyor. "Fuckin' shit," said Judy, staring up at the aerial vehicle. "They're serious. Sendin' in the goddamn spec-ops."
"'Course they fucking are," said Buster, as if that should have been obvious. "Probably caught wind of Uncle Sam, and that isn't something they want to see in the competition's hands."
The borg suddenly grabbed her and Judy, tucking them in the crooks of his arms as though they were a pair of footballs. V heard the pneumatics in his legs start to work, servos and boosters whirring into action, propelling the juggernaut forward like a supersonic gunshot, the city blurring, burning into an electric abstract.
"What the fuck, man?" V demanded, hair whipping into her eyes, skin feeling too tight on her skull as the firm, invisible hand of momentum pushed against her face.
"Some thank you," said Buster, already sounding tired, overtaxed. Then, "If I go too hard and too fast for too long, I'll burn out my 'ware." V could already smell his chrome overheating, the odor reminding her of an electrical fire. He added, "Systems aren't built to cool this much heat."
Buster suddenly skidded to a stop, momentum carrying him forward as if riding in a slipstream, his heels carving deep ruts into the asphalt in an effort to drag himself to a stop. Pneumatics hissing. Smoke came off his 'ware in thin, ragged clouds. He put them down, wobbling a little. Judy looked as unsteady as the borg did, stumbling a little, nearly going ass-over-head as her body readapted to a sense of gravity and motionlessness. V steadied her, then looked around.
They were standing on the sidewalk along an interchange—not the Shibata, she decided, but one of the other ones leading away from Three Parks toward Las Palmeras. How far had they run?
V turned, the decrepit sprawl of Three Parks glittering below in the distance. Cool desert wind blew on her face, and an odd sense of calm descended on the interchange, like the sudden dying of wind before a tornado.
She saw the Surveyor bank around a megabuilding, its brutalist steel worn smooth by wind and sand, and beeline toward them like a large, black hornet.
Then the Surveyor suddenly exploded in a cloud of fire, shrapnel raining down on Three Parks like an extinction event in microcosm. V heard the roar of a car, saw a Quadra, matte black and sleek as a spy-plane's fuselage, hurtling toward them from the direction of Las Palmeras. It turned sharply and rode into a drift until it stopped, the door opening vertically to reveal Ayako.
"I dunno if I can fit the borg," she said, grinning.
"Who the fuck is this?" asked Buster.
"The person who just hacked that 'Saka bird," said Ayako. "Overloaded the heat-sinks on its autocannons until boom." Her laser-pupils scanned over him, and she said, "Aren't you neat? Big ol' Militech machine-man."
"Look pretty borg yourself," grunted Buster, furrowing his sweaty brow. "You one of the Uncle Sam fuck-ups?"
"Nah," said Ayako, "I'm just the person who wants to fuck up Uncle Sam."
"Cute," said Buster, dryly. He looked at Judy and V. "You go with her. I'll find you later." His eyes flashed green, and a monospace prompt flared in V's vision, asked if she wanted to accept the data-transfer. She did. "My details," he told her. "I want to know what you ladies are up to, maybe even help. But right now, I need to have a look at my clinic, and myself."
"Got a fair bit of internal damage," agreed Ayako. "Deep-fried your wirework."
"Nothing I can't fix," said Buster.
"You're Buster Kilroy," said Ayako. The grin had never quite evaporated from her face, and now it widened into something cheshire-like. An asshole grin, V decided. The kind you put on when you wanted to hit a nerve, get under someone's skin. "I tried getting work done by you once, you know."
"Did you?" said Buster. "Probably said no. You got the kind of face people either love or hate. Guess I hated it."
Ayako snorted. "Probably," she agreed, and shifted her attention to her and Judy. "V," she said, "you and Judy get your asses in here already, before 'Saka realizes I rerouted their RRUs." She looked at Buster. "You gonna be okay, man?"
"Sure," he said. "Isn't the first time 'Saka's raided my clinic. Nothing quite on this level, but bad enough." Buster grinned with steel teeth, and V wanted to know how much PSI those chompers put out. She figured they could probably bite through steel, if Buster was determined enough. "What happens when you're a ripperdoc for Militech. Just got to up my security. Been meaning to, anyway." He turned, lumbered away in the direction of Three Parks like some awkward, bipedal tank.
V crawled into the back of the Quadra with Judy. She would have sat up front in the passenger's seat, but Ayako had modded it out with a mobile net-station. Nothing that would penetrate too far into the Deep Net or crack serious corpo-ICE, but enough that Ayako could do some mean damage to more surface-level nets if she wanted to, like she'd done to the 'Saka bird.
As the car smoothly slid forward, purring toward Las Palmeras, V suddenly felt a deep, painful pang of sadness. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, she was thinking about Jackie's bike again. Ayako seemed to sense the off-vibe coming off her, and asked, "You okay?"
"My bike got smashed. 'Saka ATC."
"It's just a bike," said Ayako, jacking out of the mobile. "Can get you another one."
"No," said V, "you can't. That bike belonged to my buddy, Jackie. He died."
Ayako said nothing. Then, "Sorry."
"If Mama Welles ever finds out, she'll kill me," said V, sullenly. She stared out the window, felt Judy squeeze her hand.
They didn't talk until they reached Ayako's pawn-shop. As they were walking out of the garage, Judy asked, "How'd you find us anyway?"
"Weirdness in the dataflows, odd accretions of information. Seein' all those goddamn 'Saka transports headin' somewhere and knowin' you probably had somethin' to do with it. And Gotoda."
Judy squinted. "That weird little gopher told y'where to find us?"
"Told you both before," said Ayako. "His Kami-sama, whatever the fuck it is, tells him where to find things."
They went inside the pawn-shop, found Gotoda swaying on his stool, humming along to some Us Cracks song on the radio. He wore a Red Menace shirt today, this one daubed with medallions of ponzu sauce and salsa verde, plaid shorts, and white plastic zoris. V shook her head, not really in the mood to deal with the weirdo. Mercifully, Gotoda said nothing to them as they passed, too lost in the music, or too lost in his head, to even notice them. A bag of Japanese milk-candy sat on the countertop, Gotoda occasionally dipping his hand into the bag, the obnoxious crinkle of cheap plastic jarring V's phonics, to fish out a candy and pop it into his mouth, like a toddler snacking on raisins.
In Ayako's apartment, V told her Buster's whole story over coffee. And it was real coffee too, not the instant shit she would get from the S.C. , the kind that always left a bad chemical aftertaste in her mouth. "Is that kinda shit even possible?" she asked Ayako, finally. "Fusing AIs to humans."
"Anything is possible with enough money, tech, and intelligent minds," said Ayako, shrugging. "Once upon a time, the Relic was a pipe-dream too."
"I mean," said Judy, and looked at V, "remember that story you told me 'bout that dude thought he was Lina Malina? Kinda similar, I guess. I mean, ain't exactly AI-level complexity, but y'get what I mean."
"And I wouldn't put it past Donald Lundee," said Ayako. "Guy wanted to beat Saburo so bad he would be crazy enough to fuse himself to a fuckin' AI to do it." She paused. "Listen," she said, "you can't go back to the Phoenix Nest. 'Saka will be lookin' for you there." Ayako stood up, sipping black coffee from a chipped Samurai mug. She wandered over to the glass doors that led out onto her balcony, contemplating the Phoenix skyline. "But," she continued, "you can stay here if you wanna. In the building, I mean. Plenty of empty apartments." She spun around to face them, leaned back on the glass and slurped her coffee. "Las Digitales manages their own subnet here in Las Palmeras. Damn good ICE, too," she told them. "Its architecture is built off Orbital Air's Phoenix subnet, back when Orbital Air was still building a spaceport here, over in The Flues. That's the Industrial sector, right on the fringe of Las Palmeras. OA abandoned it, though, about three, maybe four, years ago. Decided Phoenix wasn't worth the investment—we're a poor-ass city—but the launchpad's complete, and pretty neat to look at." She finished her coffee. "Anyway, the Digis will keep 'Saka off your backs, and I'll do the same."
"How're me and Jude s'posed to get around now?" asked V. "My bike's fuckin' gone. Be riskin' our necks with 'Saka by takin' public transport."
"I'll talk to Juan 'bout gettin' you a ride," said Ayako. "And you can use my car until then. I prefer traveling via cyberspace, anyway."