When the AV landed, spat out 'Saka spec-ops and a cyberninja so chromed up that the only 'ganic part of her looked to be her face, V heard Ayako say something in quick, nervous Japanese, her auto-translator only picking out one word: onryō. Vengeful spirit.

"My name," said the cyberninja, the auto-translator compiling her slow, precise Japanese into English, "is Oiwa." She moved, backlit by a fluorescent corona from the AV's spots, as unhurriedly as she talked, strolling across the platform with an air of calm, predatory patience that made V think of a praying mantis. Her 'ware, which was pretty much all of her, was painted a matte black that seemed to absorb light. Her hair was long and dark, cut in some neo-Heian hime style.

"What the fuck is an onryō in the context of 'Saka's hierarchy?" asked V, looking at Ayako.

"Engram downloaded into a borged-up corpse," said Ayako, drawing Onibi. "'Saka's best fucking ninjas," she continued, extending the blade toward Oiwa and shifting her feet into stance. "They keep 'em, the engrams of their best assassins, in an isolate called Yomi within the 'Saka subnet." Her hands white-knuckled the hilt of her thermal katana. "The bodies go on ice. Thaw 'em out, download the engram, when they really wanna get serious. Oiwa ain't her real name. Probably don't even remember her real name."

"Now that the lesson's over," said Oiwa, stopping and drawing her own katana, a mean-looking thing made of burnished carbon steel, "let's talk about that infected shard you gave the Locos. How much did Militech pay you?"

"Where the fuck is the train?" Judy asked Ayako, pulling The Chaos and suddenly sounding very, very sober.

"Who do you think built the PMR?" asked Oiwa, as if the answer should have been obvious. She made a vague gesture at herself and the two soldier-boys flanking either side of her. "We did. Arasaka. Now, the shard. What did Militech pay you to deliver that to the Locos?"

"We ain't delivered shit !"

"Not what our intel says, V," said Oiwa.

"You know—"

Oiwa interrupted Judy, "We know who you both are, Judy Alvarez. Your forger wasn't good at covering their tracks." She pointed her katana at them, smiling like someone mimicking a smile she'd only seen once. "Naughty, getting your biomon's firmware modified." She tutted like a disappointed mother. "You're not dead yet because you might still be useful to the company, despite everything you've cost us. Yorinobu-sama is willing to extend an olive branch if you agree to come with us and cooperate this time around." Still smiling, Oiwa said, "We just have questions about what Militech is doing. Why they're backing the Locos, why they took down the Las Palmeras subnet."

V darted a look around, spotted an access-point behind a row of S.C. . If she could jack into that, V thought, she could upload a quickhack, an ICEbreaker she'd written for cracking low and moderatesecurity subnets. She doubted Arasaka had invested much in transit ICE; they'd rather dedicate the resources, and the 'runners needed to maintain them, to more important data-architectures.

"The fuck we will," said Judy, and before she could pull the trigger, Oiwa blipped out of existence, then in again, beside Judy.

She grabbed Judy's arm and twisted, and The Chaos clattered to the concrete. "No need for all that," said Oiwa, putting the katana across her throat. Judy squirmed, unable to wriggle out of Oiwa's grip. "Don't make me kill her," said the cyberninja, tonelessly. They might have been discussing the weather. "I don't want to kill her. Doing so would make securing your cooperation even harder, V."

Before V could react, Ayako seemingly teleported behind Oiwa, who whipped around and parried Onibi with the edge of her katana. Judy scrambled away from the cyberninja, took up The Chaos and belched electromagnetic lead at the soldier-boys. They dissolved into clouds of grayish synth-fluids, and Judy slid, spraying wet grit, Oiwa's blade passing over her head like a sonic boom. Ayako came up behind the cyberninja, Onibi's blade carving a deep, molten rut across Oiwa's back.

"Modified Sandevistan," said Oiwa to Ayako, almost sounding impressed. "Tweak that yourself, deck-jockey?" She countered another blow from Onibi, the hot blade glancing off the carbon steel of Oiwa's, then said, "No use, net-ninja. I see the dataflows, too. I can predict where you're going to move."

While Judy and Ayako tag-teamed the onryō, V sprinted toward the access-point. She jacked her personal in, fumbling through her synaptic commands until she found the protocol for the ICEbreaker. The PMR ICE, in her head, looked like translucent sheets of polycarbonate against the television void of the transit subnet: a glittering nebulae of transportation data, constellations of municipal biz, all around.

Her ICEbreaker punched through the ICE easily, and she slid in on a gridline, toward the transit core. Her ICEbreaker visually presented as a laser, carving ingresses into the transit ICE that she smoothly passed through, closer and closer to the clustered nodes of data that was the transit system core.

Since she wasn't deep-diving, V was still partially aware of what was going on in realspace. Ayako, in hypnagogic flashes, fought Oiwa like a Masaki Kobayashi samurai, the fight on permanent fast-forward as the two women clashed and came apart, then clashed again in a frenetic, dizzying dance over a slick expanse of neon-smeared concrete, the electric sprawl of Phoenix coruscating behind them like a pixelated rainbow.

V needed to focus, skidding further into the transit system, her ICEbreaker cutting through sheet after sheet of ICE.

She came up on the core, started to hurriedly sort through the tightly-wound nodes, trying to find the data for their train. In realspace, V was aware of the film of hot sweat on her face and palms, the steady increase of body-heat under the jacket. Although not as taxing and potentially fatal as cutting corpo-ICE, the physical strain was annoyingly palpable, and she wished she was wearing a netsuit. Didn't help that it was taking longer than usual, she thought, because of the booze circulating her bloodstream, softening her synaptic reflexes.

Found it. She plucked out the node, then wired in one of her own to bypass the Arasaka 'runner's block and reboot the train's onboard systems with her own protocol. Rougher than she normally liked to hack, but V didn't have the time right now to be subtle and clever. Done.

V reversed on her gridline, the ingresses in the ICE becoming her egresses, and she landed in realspace again, in the shell of her body, senses sharpening to the scent of rain and the city. Ayako and Oiwa continued weaving through their smooth, violent choreography, blades clashing, parrying, countering.

"For someone who's supposedly just a netrunner," said Oiwa, sliding out of the way of another burst of The Chaos's electromagnetic fire, her servos screaming with the effort of so much split-second movement, "you sure have yourself some slick, slick combat hardware, Yoshida-san." She side-stepped Onibi, the blade melting a steaming rut into the concrete. "Maybe you're an onryō, too."

"Fuck off!" hissed Ayako, parrying another blow, navigating around the onryō in her flashing Sandevistan dance.

The train came sliding along the magrail, screeching to a halt. V fired a few potshots at Oiwa, who easily deflected or flowed out of the way of the Malorian's lead, and bolted for the door to the train. She grabbed Judy and practically threw her inside. Ayako blinked out of existence, appearing behind V and slapping the manual security latch on the door. The trains were built out of high-performance, bullet-proof carbon-fiber, and were reasonably hard to physically break into, even with Oiwa's impressive hardware. The onryō's katana glanced off the door, and the train lurched away from the station, hurtling, silent, along the northbound curve of magnetic rail.

Judy collapsed into a seat, lit a cigarette with a shaky hand. "Jesus fuckin' Christ," she quavered, taking a long, uneasy drag off the smoke.

V sagged into the space beside Judy, running a hand through her shag of red-black hair, palm brushing the microprocessor pattern stenciled into the closely cropped side of her head. "What the fuck," was all V managed to say, staring at Ayako, who kept pacing and glancing out the windows: panels of dense, shatterproof polycarbonate. She lit her own cigarette to settle her nerves. Then, "You okay, Ayako?"

"Overclocked my hardware," she said, looking exhausted and smelling faintly of burnt electronics and insulation. "But I'll be fine. Can't handle another lengthy fight like that though, not so soon. Need some fuckin' coolant." She swore in Japanese, then said, "Forgot to bring some."

"Hear those Sandies are fuckin' mean," said V, offering Ayako a wrinkled cigarette, who took it gratefully. V lit it for her with a plastic tube. "Also," she said, "I overrode the train's onboard systems with my own code. 'Saka won't be able to track us."

"They could just use that Valgus and follow the rail," said Ayako, blowing smoke. "But I don't think they will."

"Makes y'say that? Their super ninja just tried killin' us." She frowned, looked at Judy, brushing a thumb across her cheek. "Almost killed Jude."

"If she really wanted to kill anyone, she would have," said Ayako. "She was havin' fun. Testin' us out. Probably been a while since she's been outta Yomi, walkin' around as a mobile construct." She took another drag off her cigarette. "Yorinobu's hurtin' bad if he thawed an onryō. Desperate. Thinks we're workin' with Militech and still wants to secure our cooperation?" Ayako shook her head, sat down opposite her and Judy, watching them with her laser-glass eyes. "Real fuckin' desperate. Guess your stunt in Night City cut deeper than I thought."

"Pretty much fucked the company," agreed V. "Lost a lotta influence and respect when Hanako died durin' Alt's takeover of Mikoshi. Yorinobu, as I hear it from some of my chooms back home, is pretty shit at runnin' the company. More suited for gangoon bullshit than corporate backroom-fuckery. 'Saka probably thinks we're workin' to kickstart some kinda war on Militech's orders. And they wanna prevent that, a Fifth Corporate War, bein' weak as they are by buyin' us off, I bet. Gettin' us t'be their inside-chooms." She'd been around enough corpo intrigue, usually against her will, to whiff shit when it started to stink. V finished her cigarette, flicked the butt aside. "Yorinobu ain't a leader," she said, blowing a cloud of smoke. "They'd lose, and lose real bad. 'Saka, they wouldn't recover from a Fifth Corporate War—not without Saboru steerin' the warship."

"Can't get over that fuckin' cyberninja bein' Goro's senpai," said Ayako at length, and sighed like a woman who was tired of the world's shitty sense of humor. "Even dead, guy's still tormentin' me. Like a bad stink won't go away." She peered at V through a thin haze of cigarette smoke, her head caged in the frame of her window, watercolor lights of Phoenix flowing past, behind her. "Ain't surprised to hear that 'bout Yorinobu. He ain't his daddy. Doesn't have the kinda smarts and patience only comes with living over a goddamn century, and his sister ain't around to make decisions for him." She paused. "You know," she said, around her cigarette, "wonder who told them we were on the take with Militech."

"Who fuckin' knows," said V, and shrugged. "But somethin' tells me Uncle Sam knows all this already. It sees the fuckin' chessboard, and it's already makin' moves." She frowned. "But what I can't figure out is how the fuckin' AI is doin' all this from an isolate." She leaned back, crossing her ankles. "An isolate on the Highrider Net, of all fuckin' places. Explains why y'couldn't reach its datafort from your VAP. Fuckin' thing's on a separate Net." She looked at Ayako. "Your VAP still accessible? Y'know, after the Las Palmeras subnet went boom."

"Yeah, it's on my own subnet," said Ayako, finishing her cigarette and crushing it under her tabi-boot. "Mochi's been migratin' what Las Palmeras metadata she could scrape together to my subnet, so might be a little trickier to find in all that sudden data-influx. But it's there."

"Once we wheel some biz with the Myasniki, still wanna do that recon run. Check it out. Gotta theory I wanna confirm."

Judy sighed. "Do we really gotta do biz with those weirdos?"

"If we wanna find out where that sporeware came from, and maybe who gave it to 'em? Yeah, Jude. We do."

"Goddammit, Valerie, y'always wind up dealin' with the weirdest fuckin' people."

"At the very least," said Ayako, shifting in her seat, the cheap synthleather squeaking with the movement, "'Saka ain't gonna try to actively kill us anymore. Seems like their plans have changed." She shrugged. "Long as they think they need us, should be safe. So let 'em keep thinkin' we're with Militech."

When they arrived at the apartment building in Las Palmeras, Gotoda was waiting for them, wearing a stained Blue Moon shirt and baggy cargo-pants, and his plastic neon zoris. Meredith Stout was standing beside him.

"Weird shit seems to be your MO," said the Militech suit, to V. She lit a cigarette. She wore a crisp, black Militech uniform and leather gloves, and smelled of expensive perfume. Looked like someone who'd walked out of a military kink BD. But she'd looked like that in Night City, too. "You're a hard lady to track down—and your new name's fucking stupid. Sherry Shiv?" Meredith shook her head, inhaled her cigarette slowly, then blew the smoke at Gotoda. "Word's getting around certain circles that you're on our payroll." She regarded V with hooded eyes rimmed in black paintstick. "But I don't remember cutting you or your chooms any checks, V."