Gotoda kept complaining that his head itched, so he itched it.
"Fuck's his problem?" asked V.
She and Judy were helping Ayako around the shop, sorting through inventory and touching up the displays since Gotoda, at the moment, was too itchy to get anything done. They should have been preparing for the recon run, but Ayako said that she, at the end of the day, still had a business to maintain, or at least still had the illusion of running a business to maintain.
"Bad WNI flare-up. Happens sometimes," she explained, fishing around in a box overflowing with packing foam. She came up with a voxboxer, a flat plastic rectangle with a jack-port on each end. "Thing's ancient, his WNI. Prototype back-of-the skull shit, wire it right into the occipital lobe and thread it along the convolutions of the brain. Shit's so hooked into his skullsponge that replacing it would kill the little guy."
V unpacked several carbon fiber-printed shurikens from a box stamped with a Chiba address, unwrapping each cheap little star from taped bundles of plastic and arranging them on a bed of red ultrasuede. "Damn," she said, watching Gotoda whimper, claw at the back of his head like a man suffering from a severe lice infection. "Poor dude. Crazy how subtle wire-work's gotten these days."
"Used to call that model 'the jellyfish'," said Ayako, wiping down the voxboxer with isopropyl, then setting it in a showcase displaying other voxboxers arranged by price, the numbers carefully written in marker on fluorescent pieces of laminated paper. "If you take the unit out, it looks like one of those big jellyfish." She paused, thinking. "Man-o-wars, I think they're called."
"Ew," said Judy, busying herself with a showcase arrayed with BD editor peripherals: trodes, cables, manipulators, RealFeel gloves. "So if they took the fuckin' thing outta his head, it'd just be this huge fuckin' tangle of wires'n shit?" She looked at Gotoda, wincing slightly. "Man," she said. "Wonder how they fit that all in his head."
"Some of it hooks into his spine," said Ayako, spritzing the showcase with cleaner and swabbing a microfiber rag over the glass. "Nervous system, too. Basically, the whole thing's so goddamn rigged into his meat that it's pretty much part of him now." She paused, scratched at the skin puckered along the edges of her own WNI. "Mine's a subtler job. People like Gotoda made it possible, you know? Prototypes."
"So he was some kinda lab rat?" asked V, locking up the shuriken display. She'd caught a couple of kids trying to steal one earlier in the shop while Gotoda was too busy scratching himself.
"Probably," said Ayako, shrugging. "Arasaka's gotta bunch of subsidiaries and fronts to conceal their illegal shit, as most companies do. It's possible the little dude was scraped outta one of those by 'Saka." She peered over at Gotoda, her mouth pressing into a thin, hard line. Then, "He's gotta knack for fixing things, like I said before. 'Saka probably saw the techie potential in him." She paused. "But that WNI he's got? Has me thinkin' he might've been some kinda 'runner at some point."
"Makes y'think he was a 'runner?" asked Judy.
"When you're a 'runner of a certain caliber, you get a sense for sussin' out other 'runners of certain calibers," explained Ayako. "But when his mind went, 'Saka sacked him."
"So y'don't just keep him around to man the shop," said V.
"No," confirmed Ayako, her laser-dot eyes settling on her. "I keep him around 'cause he fascinates me, V. I wanna see what he does. I wanna crack him open, poke around his 'ware." She sighed, shook her head. "But I can't without killin' him. Can't even probe his neuralware without alertin' 'Saka. I ain't a murderer, not unless I gotta be, and we got enough problems with 'Saka as it is."
"Nothin' fancy, other'n the fact his shit's encrypted, popped up on my scans," said V, remembering her initial encounter with Gotoda in Beautiful Lumps .
"Your 'ware's not keyed for deep-scans," said Ayako. "Would require learning how to read halfspace. Learning how to interpret and compile the code-fabric."
"And we are not fuckin' doin' that again," said Judy.
"It's not foolproof anyway," said Ayako. "Even I can't understand everything I read in halfspace. It's like bein' fluent in several different languages, but then you meet some asshole speaks a fuckin' dialect of some creole language only spoken by a specific tribe living in a five-mile-long tract of land in Butan." She came out from behind the showcases. "You can't learn everything," she said, and to V, Ayako almost sounded disappointed, even sad. "That's just our limitation as humans, no matter how much we chrome ourselves up."
The doors to the pawn-shop slid open, the soundbite of a bell announcing the arrival of a customer. It was Juan, the Digitales hood V often saw Ayako speaking to, and who reminded V of Jackie. He'd also been the guy who had helped them move their stuff to Las Palmeras. Juan was a big dude. Wore leather neotacs, and a flash bomber's jacket. His jacket was cut from a holo-material similar to the stuff they used in screamsheets, coded to display recorded patterns. Today, his jacket crawled slowly with bright geometric shapes, an Aztec design done in neon turquoise, yellow, and red. Juan had mentioned, while he'd been trucking their things into Las Palmeras, that he coded the designs himself, sold them on the side for extra cash.
"Hey, Yako, gotta problem I need some help with," said Juan. His hair was a contemporary take on the mohawks of the Cuachicqueh who, Juan had explained to her when she'd asked what a Cuachicqueh was, had been the Shorn Ones, a group of elite Aztec warriors.
"What's up?" asked Ayako. She stood several inches shorter than Juan, who seemed to loom without meaning to.
"Locos," he said, and sighed. "They been lurkin' around the old Orbital Air spaceport."
"Fuck," said Ayako.
"What's the issue?" asked V, leaning against a showcase. "S'just an old spaceport."
"That spaceport," said Juan, "is the backbone of the Las Palmeras subnet. Ain't Ayako told you?"
She had, and V told him so.
"There's the issue, chica," said Juan, folding his huge, tattooed arms, each one sleeved in a colorful storm of feathered dragons and Aztec warriors superimposed over a blown-up image of a microprocessor, its traces and various units arranged to look like the sat-map of Phoenix. "We got the place locked down pretty tight, us Digis. Even gotta couple dwellers. But I think the Locos have been strikin' deals with a corpo. They're gettin' bolder, and they're packin' heat they ain't had before. We're talkin' mil-spec ICEbreakers, guns, drones."
"Think 'Saka has somethin' to do with it?" asked Judy, joining the group, her hands pressed into the small of her back. "Probably don't like there's a free subnet operatin' in Phoenix. Maybe it's even Militech."
"I can't imagine Militech givin' much of a shit 'bout the Las Palmeras subnet," said V, avoiding the topic of Uncle Sam and her theories about how it might be related, at least tangentially, to this coming shitstorm. She looked at Juan, then asked, "This subnet, what's its architecture look like?"
"Kinda like its own city, but with a tunnel we can open and close at will that connects into the Phoenix Net," explained Juan, using layman's terms, V figured, for Judy's benefit. "It's protected by some serious ICE—only way in and out of our subnet. Lets our 'runners covertly slip into the Phoenix Net, ghost-like, and fuck around until the corpos send out their netrunners and force us to retreat."
"There's the answer," said V, snapping her fingers. "Or one of 'em, anyway. Corpos don't like technoanarchism, and they especially hate technoanarchists. That's what the Digis are, right?"
Juan grinned. "Corpos should've left the Net alone," he said, and shrugged his huge shoulders. "Was the last free place we had. So the Digitales are just taking it back piecemeal, you know? Giving control back to the people. Reminding these corpo-fucks that it ain't theirs—fuck 'em and fuck their mothers, too, the pendejos." He looked at Ayako. "So you gonna help us chase these Locos off, Yako?"
"'Course I will," said Ayako. "Gotta jack into your server's access point though, since your demon don't like me coming through a back-door. Almost flatlined me the last time I tried." A slow grin unfurled on her face. "Think your dwellers will mind if I join the party?"
Juan snorted. "They might get a little uppity, but who cares? You're the best netrunner in Phoenix. They need your help."
Ayako looked over at Judy and V. "Mind if I bring along some huscle?"
Juan regarded her and Judy as if he were appraising the value of artwork, then shook his head. "Nah," he said, "I don't mind. More the merrier." He jerked his chin toward Gotoda, frowning. "Little cabron over there gonna be okay if you delta for a couple hours?"
"I'll just send him back to his apartment, lock the shop," said Ayako, planting her hands on her hips and rocking back on the heels of her tabi boot exo-jacks. "He'll be fine by the time I get back."
"He got lice or something?"
"No," said Ayako, "he's gotta jellyfish."
Juan winced at some phantom pain, reflexively touching the back of his skull. "Poor guy," he said, sympathetic.
"You know 'bout 'em?" asked Judy.
Juan nodded. "When netrunning started getting really advanced, the jellyfish was among the first conpro—that's consciousness-projection—hardware the corpos rolled out for their 'runners. Used a bunch of black clinic guinea pigs before they were ready to install it on their own people."
"Nasty shit," agreed Ayako, hoisting herself atop a showcase, absently running her finger along the line of her obijime. "Told V that earlier. Also, thanks, you confirmed my theory the guy's probably a former 'runner. That said, mentioned they sometimes selected people from these black clinic trials to work for 'em. Probably what 'Saka did."
Juan nodded. "And then the hombre cracked, and his bosses didn't need him anymore."
Gotoda itched his head, bringing his knees up and curling into himself on the stool, fingers frantically scratching at the back of his head. One of his plastic zoris clattered to the scuffed, tiled floor.
"Gonna get things ready," Juan told Ayako. "Head over to the spaceport in, say, an hour?"
"We'll be there, choom," said Ayako, smiling.
"You're a lifesaver, Yako. When we're done, drinks are on me at Don Quixote's." Juan left.
"What 'bout the recon run?" asked V, looking at Ayako.
"Won't get very far if the Locos manage to make it past the Digi's demon and effectively take over the subnet," said Ayako, hopping off the showcase with an almost feline grace. "The VAP's not goin' anywhere, V. Besides, if Militech or 'Saka has somethin' to do with this? Better nip it in the bud."
"I mean, I know 'Saka had some deals with the Tyger Clawz back in Night City," said V. "I know they ain't strangers to strikin' deals with hoods, and neither is Militech. But, I dunno. Somethin' 'bout this smells, and it don't smell like corpos."
"Makes you say that?" asked Ayako.
"Y'know how you can sus out netrunners, gotta feel for it? Like that. I gotta feel for sussin' out unconventional trouble."