They didn't leave The Way Down until last call, and by then, they were shitfaced, giggling as they wobbled through the serpentine streets of Three Parks, past twenty-four hour convenience stores and tenement buildings, bums and joytoys observing them from the shadows of doorways, their faces lit by bursts of cigarette cherry-glow.
Definitely not the safest hood, V decided, the thought floating through her head like a bubble, as they turned a corner and cut through a side-street that seemed to cater to a very specific niche of technomasochist. But then again, she thought, side-stepping a pimp who tried to wave them down, Heywood hadn't been safe either, and she'd been just fine, just dandy.
"What're we lookin' for again?" slurred V, swaying, walking as if constantly on the verge of colliding with someone.
"The Phoenix Metro Rail," hiccuped Ayako, her thumbs hooked in her netsuit's obi. She pointed up, beyond the neon and the holograms, and the tangled wires, at the loop of magrail passing overhead.
"Why ain't we just had Mochi drive us home?" asked Judy, thickly.
"'Cause," said Ayako, slowly, "'cause there's," and she hiccuped, "a bylaw in Phoenix. Can… can charge you with a DUI… even if a DHC's drivin'. Somethin' 'bout some corpo costin' their company thousands when they hit some politico with a company DHC vehicle. Smeared him across the asphalt." Another hiccup, a slight wobble to the side, though Ayako caught herself on a streetlight before she went over, and giggled. "Never gonna let it happen again, fuckers told themselves."
They came out of the alleyway onto a new street, still following the magrail of the PMR. Ayako was uncharacteristically chipper, her good mood, like theirs, riding in on a wave of booze-soaked dopamine. She was singing some Japanese rockerboy song by some ancient Visual Kei band whose name, in her current state of inebriation, V never quite caught whenever she asked Ayako what it was. V even started to sing along with Ayako, kind of improvising with her own approximation of the lyrics, because she couldn't speak any Japanese. Ayako didn't even try to correct her, just seemed to appreciate that she'd even tried. And when she showed that she didn't mind V butchering her native language, Judy joined in, the three of them singing this song that neither she or V understood as they stumbled their way down the sidewalk, past drifts of plastic garbage bags, fast-food joints, the neon and electric thundercrash of all-night arcades.
They got distracted by one of those arcades, found themselves sipping cheap Chinese S.C.S.M beers while playing a few sloppy rounds of a four-player virtushooter called Sundown Cowboys. It was sometime around the boss-fight with Chief Angry Horse that V felt the distinct cellular tingle of eyes on them. She took off the augmented reality goggles, which were wired to the game's kitschy western-themed cabinet, and scanned the arcade. A small, soaked crowd of Gomis had come in out of a cloudburst. They'd crowded around a Roppongi Fighters cabinet to launch an impromptu tournament while they waited for the storm to die down.
Ayako raised her AR goggles, looked around. She'd sobered since they'd entered the arcade—something to do with microfilters in her bloodstream and liver.
"Y'good?" asked V.
"Yeah," said Ayako, hooking her goggles to the cabinet. "Just gotta weird feeling, like someone was watchin' us."
Judy took off her goggles. "Gonna call the car?"
"Can't," said Ayako. "Might feel sober, but they pull me over, gonna ping drunk. PPD use hemolyzers—rig 'em to read higher, more sensitive. Generate a lot of eddies through the fines, so they make sure they nail you." She glanced over at the Gomis, frowning. "Weird."
Judy looked over with glazed interest. "What?"
"Gomis. Don't usually leave Little Japan," said Ayako.
"Couple of 'em tried to klep mi calabacita's bike," said Judy, watching the group. "Over near the Nest."
"Also weird," said Ayako. "Nest's in Sunnyslope, and that's Luddite territory."
"Who runs Three Parks?" asked V.
"Nobody," said Ayako. "Officially, anyway. But if I had to name the ones in charge, it'd be the Los Caballeros. Small gang that splintered off from the Pablo Abarca Cartel. Mostly smugglers, but they got some skin in illegal gambling too. Maintain Three Parks as neutral ground where gangs can cut deals, so maybe that's why the Gomis are here." She looked at V and Judy. "Anyway," she said, steering them toward the door, and the rain sizzling across the pavement beyond it, "we better go find that metro station. Gotta get you two back to your apartment."
"We gonna talk biz?" asked V.
"Not until you and Judy sober up," said Ayako, putting her arms around them. "We'll leave the biz for tomorrow." She didn't say anything for a few beats. Then, "Tonight, I just wanna forget about biz and hang out with my friends."
V smiled, and so did Judy. "Sounds good to me, choom," said V, and, with a deft gesture she'd honed in her Heywood pickpocketing days, swiped off Ayako's hair-tie, a loop of printed red Japanese silk, and bolted like her ass was on fire.
"V, you fucking shortshit!" laughed Ayako, chasing after her and gaining pretty quick thanks to long legs and, V assumed, preem speed boosters, and an OS clocked for fine twitch-reflex.
"Call me Valerie, dumbass!" said V, and she tossed the hair-tie to Judy, who, despite being drunker than her and Ayako, managed to jump and snag it out of the air, landing with a wobble before righting herself and shooting ahead of them with a shrieking giggle.
They carried on like that for a few blocks, her and Judy playing hot-potato with Ayako's hair-tie in piss-warm rain, and the smell of wet garbage and concrete. V knew Ayako could easily klep the tie, but she was enjoying the game as much as they were, intentionally lagging behind them to protract the fun, the tie always just out of her reach.
She gave the tie back to Ayako when they reached the elevator to the metro-platform, panting and smiling. "Couldn't help yourself, huh?" said Ayako, tying her hair back.
There was a thin mob of night-owls waiting for the elevator with them. Couple of joytoys, looked like, and their inputs for the night. Some sketchy-looking dudes V figured for tweakers. Couple of gangoons. "After the shit we went through," said V, her words a little less slurred now as the gestalt of booze started filtrating out of her system, "nothin' wrong with havin' a little fun."
Judy, who didn't enjoy the benefit of extensive chrome, slumped drunkenly against V and slipped her arms around her. "Can't wait to be cuddlin' in bed," she mumbled, hugging her like a teddy bear. Then, giggling, she added, "Maybeeeee doin' somethin' else too, calabacita."
"You two are too goddamn cute. It's gross," said Ayako, smiling in amusement.
Judy grinned at her. "Y'jealous, Ayako-sama?"
"Maybe a little," said Ayako, laughing. "Not for the reasons you think, though. Just that it must be nice, you know? Havin' someone to care about like that."
"Y'got anyone?" asked V, stepping into the elevator with the rest of the mob, squeezing herself into a corner with Judy and Ayako. She normally wouldn't ask people about that kind of thing, because in a world where you could catch a bullet just for stepping outside your house, it could be a sore spot for a lot of peeps. But the alcohol had relaxed her usual cautions.
"Nah," said Ayako. "Never paid much attention to that kinda thing. Preferred the Net to people."
The elevator lurched, started to ascend. V said, "So say a good-lookin' AI came along."
Ayako giggled. "Shut the fuck up."
"Thought maybe you and Juan were somethin'," said Judy.
Ayako said nothing. She turned her attention to the glass, watching the jewel-glitter of Phoenix, her expression unreadable.
"Y'like him," said Judy, poking Ayako.
"Sure," admitted Ayako, after a moment. "But ain't really worked out."
"Why not?"
"Judy, c'mon," said V. "Leave her be."
"Just ain't built for relationships," said Ayako, shrugging. "Not how I'm wired."
The elevator stopped, and they herded onto the platform. They paid for their e-tickets at a battered kiosk, then stood at the edge of rain-slick concrete, huddling inside the weather-shelter, which was just a cheap corrugated metal roof slapped onto a plastic rectangle, waiting for their ride. A dozen holograms flickered in the plastic walls of the shelter, advertising everything from food to toothpaste. A few panhandlers who'd been squatting in the shelter attempted to shake some eddies out of the commuters, but were largely ignored.
They sat on the shelter's bench, a thing made of polycarbonate tubing, watching the magrail. Judy spoke. "Sooooooo… what happened with you'n Juan?"
V sighed. "Judy, babe, leave it." She gave Ayako an apologetic look, and said, "Gets a couple drinks'n her, she turns into the 'hood gossip. Sorry."
"No big deal," said Ayako. Then, to Judy, "Just ain't had the energy to maintain it. Focus has always been on work."
"I get that," said Judy, nodding. "Always had the opposite problem, me. I get gung-ho 'bout relationships, go all in."
"That how it went for you and Val?" asked Ayako.
V told her the story about how she and Judy Konpeki BD in the basement of Lizzie's, the Clouds fiasco, the Laguna Bend dive, and how that had been the day V had decided that this woman was her forever-woman. "She hated me in the beginnin'," said V, laughing. "And truthfully? Thought she was kinda bitchy, at first. But we got t'know each other, and turned out we got along real well. Been together ever since, with no plans on changin' that."
"You're really that sure, huh?" said Ayako. Her tone wasn't patronizing, V decided; she actually sounded impressed, maybe even a bit envious. "So," she continued, "when you're better, don't got that illness chippin' away at your skull-sponge. What's the plan? If you don't mind my asking."
"Findin' somewhere quiet to settle down eventually," said V, automatically. "Somewhere with a lake, and a small house."
"Sounds real nice," said Ayako, smiling. "Still gonna do the merc shit?"
"Yeah," said V, "s'what I'm good at, what I know. But maybe less huscle, more netrunnin'." She paused, watching the shift and flicker of the holograms in the shelter's window-walls. "When I'd jacked into the Net, y'know, back at the thing? Ain't realized how much I'd missed it."
"It's a hard high to shake," agreed Ayako. She looked at V. "So, you get your lakehouse, go netrunner. What then? After that."
"Better involve a damn ring," mumbled Judy, in V's ear.
V grinned. "Duh," she said, "like I'm gonna let some other chick lock y'down. See somethin' good, y'jump on it 'fore it's gone."
Judy smiled, planted a drunk-sloppy kiss on her cheek.
"Got artificial sperm they code up from stem cells, or they use nanite facsimiles to mimic sperm cells," said Ayako. "Use gene-editing to make the kid viable with two sets of maternal DNA. Biotechnica and a handful of real cutting-edge biomedicals outta Chiba developed the tech on Luna, in Tycho. Highrider laws are pretty lax when it comes to genetic research, mostly 'cause genetic research was necessary to make living up there viable for the long-term."
V's cheeks went hot. Judy's face turned bright red.
"You know," said Ayako, innocently, "just in case you two were thinkin' about bio-kids someday. You'll have plenty of money from all those netrunnin' gigs, after all."
"Yo, c'mon, Ayako. Killin' me," said V.
"Wonder which one of you would carry the kiddo," said Ayako, as if she hadn't heard V at all. "Somethin' tells me it'd probably be Judy. You're too chromed-up, Val."
"Y'gettin' off on makin' us uncomfortable, or somethin'?"
"Maybe."
Silence. Then Judy said, "I just realized somethin'."
"What?" asked V.
"Either our ride came and we missed it while we were talkin', or it ain't showed up." Judy paused. "Somethin' tells me it was the former, 'cause there ain't nobody here."
That was when they heard the jet-roar of an AV's engine, saw a dark shape descending toward the platform like a fat horsefly. Arasaka.