Judy was still asleep by the time V returned to the apartment, rolled up in the covers like a burrito to insulate herself against the air-conditioning. V kissed her cheek, careful not to wake her, then turned the thermostat down a few degrees. She put Judy's coffee and the reconstituted paper bag containing her sandwich inside the microwave, then texted their private BBS to let Judy know where she could find her breakfast.

V headed up to the roof for a morning smoke. She loved their balcony, but the roof offered better views of the city. Gotoda, to her surprise, was hanging out on the roof, sitting atop an ancient HVAC unit. "Ain't your ass cookin' on that thing?" she asked him, sweat already beading under her cropped T-shirt, on the pale trunk of her belly.

"Neuropathy," said Gotoda. "I do not feel it."

V frowned, walking over. "The clinic trials?" she hazarded, and stood beside him.

"Hai," he replied.

V touched the HVAC unit, determining whether or not she could sit on it without her ass melting, and decided that her ass would be fine, at least for now; it was still early enough in the day that, although hot, it wasn't yet sweltering like Satan's sphincter. She sat down beside him, took a long drag off her cigarette, reaching under her shirt and scratching between her breasts. "Y'mentioned somethin' 'bout 'runners comin' back changed?" V looked at him.

"Arasaka wished to make contact with AI, and such contact changed us if it did not kill us." He fiddled with his hands, his fingertips the glossy artificial paleness of vibrotactile units. "It started with seeing world as AI. Predictive software. It is not good enough for Arasaka. So they stuff us full of hardware, what Ayako-sama calls jellyfish. Artificial nervous system. They tell us to find AI. But our hardware was insufficient. AI cannot be caged in our bodies. Too much processing power, too much data. Like bottling a tsunami. Does not work."

V frowned, saying nothing.

Gotoda continued as if he were speaking to an imaginary friend. "We laid the groundwork for onryō, then later, for Relic. Most of us died. Some of us, like me, did not. But I hesitate to say we were the lucky ones." Gotoda looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, his eyes full of pain. Hairlines of gold nanocircuitry laced the browns of his irises. An exhaustion that seemed to belong to someone much older and much more world-weary pinched his narrow features. "Existence for me," said Gotoda, "is a special kind of hell, V-san."

"Jesus, Gotoda. I'm sorry."

"It is not your fault." He patted her knee as if she were the one who needed comforting, then turned his attention to the city again, his shag of black hair fluttering in the warm breeze. He hopped off the HVAC unit. "My break is over. I must return to the shop." Gotoda bowed stiffly at the waist. "Good day to you, V-san."

Judy came out on the roof not too long after Gotoda had gone, wearing a Bushido tank-top, rocker shorts, white canvas street-tongues. She sauntered over to V, sipping her coffee. "What, our balcony ain't good enough for ya?" she teased, and sat down on V's knee. "Your pasty ass is gonna burn out here," she said, as V slid an arm around her middle. "Your skin's real, babe. Not synthetic."

"I'll be fine," V assured her, despite knowing Judy was right. "Gonna head in soon, anyway. Just enjoyin' the day 'fore that Arizona hell-heat kicks in, full force." She paused. "Talked t'Gotoda."

"Yeah?" said Judy, and sipped her coffee. She'd put it in a tall, sweating glass of ice. "'Bout what? Us Cracks and their latest tour?"

"Nah," said V, and she recapped her conversation with Gotoda. "Sounds t'me like proxy biz."

"Like Yuki Fujiki?"

V nodded. ''Cept the puppetmaster is an AI. I think that's how Uncle Sam is doin' shit despite bein' locked up in an isolate." Judy offered a sip of her iced coffee, which V accepted, because her tongue was starting to stick to the roof of her mouth. "Problem is," said V, swallowing the too-sugary dessert concoction her girlfriend called coffee, "don't gotta clue who the proxy is. Though I s'pose 'proxy' ain't the word I wanna use. 'Vector' makes more sense, I think. This AI is a fuckin' virus, and viruses, they need vectors t'spread."

"And y'think that was what Militech was doin' with Buster, whoever else?" Judy looked at her, pursing her lips around her straw as she sucked up more of the sweet, foamy coffee.

"Not exactly," said V. "Was just the start. Intermediaries. Ultimately, they wanted t'download the AI into a body. Like some suped-up onryō. Buster said it himself: fuse meat and AI, make 'em work in tandem, together."

Judy frowned. "Y'think Meredith—Militech—wants t'do that to Ayako?"

"It's possible," said V. "They know 'bout Uncle Sam. Ayako's got the hardware for it—tech's come a long way since those black clinic projects—and they really want her. Might be tryin' t'dupe us inta handin' her over on a silver platter, babe." She told Judy about Meredith's offer.

Judy went quiet, seemingly chewing something over. Then, "You're not even sure Ayako can help you." She looked at V with sad eyes. "Songbird did the same shit to you, calabacita. Made promises she never intended t'keep. But Lucy Kushinada? Baby, she could get you help. The clinics up there on Luna? The fuckin' preemest. They got tech us groundsiders ain't even dreamed of yet. If there's a cure for your biochip, it's on the moon."

"I get why you'd doubt me, Judy." Ayako appeared, stood beside them. "But I really can help."

"How much didja hear?" asked Judy, grimacing a little.

"Most of it," said Ayako. "But chill, Judy, I get why you feel that way. I'm a small sacrifice to get your girlfriend cured." She looked at them, regarding them with insect calm. Unlike them, Ayako wasn't sweating. She didn't say anything to them for a stretch of time, the three of them listening to distant traffic, disjointed conversations in Spanish drifting up from the street below. Then, "I have a biochip, too. I know how it works. Stole the data, along with that chunk of Mikoshi, when I was working for Arasaka." She pointed to the chipware-slots, six total, on her neck; there was a pale chip slotted in the first one. "I modified it with Mochi's help. Swapped out Arasaka's shit nanotech for that Biotechnica NSRM, upped the storage capacity, connected it to my WNI."

V blinked, wondering if she was just imagining this conversation, hallucinating on her chip's fumes. "You voluntarily slotted the fuckin' thing. Why?"

"Mine ain't broken like yours," said Ayako, leaning against the HVAC unit. "And I had Mochi's help. Fixed all the issues that were present in the prototype version. But I can make yours even better than mine with what I've learned."

"Mochi ain't a DHC, is it?" V had already known, but she wanted Ayako to confirm it.

"No," said Ayako, "she's an AI. I built her." She paused, studying the toes of her tabi-boots. "She developed a program that'll cure your condition, Val. Interfaces with the biochip," she told her. "Just needs a proxy with enough processing power to run its executable. I was gonna offer a copy to the Technomancers, this program, when we meet with them. It'll catapult 'em ahead of the competition by a decade in neural reconstruction."

"I thought you already paid them."

"For Castlebreaker, sure. But not for a shuttle-ride to the Crystal Palace."

V stared at her. "You're goin' up," and she pointed toward the sky.

"We're goin' up," she corrected. "Think that's where Uncle Sam's access-point is. Mochi agrees. Problem is, the Crystal Palace is a big fuckin' station. Lots of hidey-holes that AI could be in." She shook her head. "I tried hunting around NUSA's subnets for more information, but they upped NetWatch's presence in their Net sectors. Probably thanks to your choom, Meredith."

"Sorry," said V, and meant it.

"Got nothin' to apologize for," said Ayako. "You didn't bring her here. She found us."

"Thanks to my fixer," said V, sighing.

"Your fixer. Not you," said Ayako.

Silence settled between them, and V was beginning to sweat in the slow boil of dry Arizona heat. Then she asked, "Why would you wanna biochip, anyway?"

"Why do you think?" asked Ayako, looking at her. She'd started to sweat finally, but only a little, pinheads beading on her forehead and neck. "I wanna make a backup, an engram, of myself. If somethin' happens, you know? Netrunning's dangerous, and I don't wanna die."

"Guess my opinion on the whole biochip thing's kinda biased," said V. Judy slid off her knee, and they both stood. "Sometimes I forget it wasn't designed t'be a torture device."

"Depends on the perspective," said Ayako, walking with them to the flaking red-painted fire-door that led back down into the building. "Johnny Silverhand would disagree. Hated it, didn't he?"

"Whaddya know 'bout Silverhand?"

"That nobody in Mikoshi liked him," she said. "Raised hell, bothered the other engrams somethin' fierce." Ayako shrugged, opened the door for her and Judy. "But he's gone with Alt Cunningham to the Ghost Towns. Won't see him again."

"Y'know Alt?"

"Only by reputation," said Ayako, and stepped inside behind them, closing the door against the molten glare of the Arizona sun. "Took my chunk of Mikoshi before she sucked up all the engrams and nuked the fuckin' place."

"What happened t'the engrams in the section of Mikoshi y'took?" asked V, curiously.

"Mochi forked their code," she said. "They're gone, choom. In a manner of speaking."

Back in hers and Judy's apartment, Ayako told them she'd managed to secure a meeting with the Myasniki. "So you're sure Sergei ain't just tryin' to roll us?" asked V.

"If he tries, it'll be us three against his crew. And that ain't nothin' you ain't handled before," said Ayako, pacing in front of the television. The television was a huge, ancient flat-screen; V had managed to rig up an adapter so it could work with current resolutions. It was tuned to a reality show titled Swapped Parts, where people were paid to swap their cyberware for a day. Ayako said something in Japanese, turned the TV off. "Why're you watchin' that shit?"

"Dumb entertainment," said Judy, shrugging. "Not everythin' has gotta be an exercise in intelligence, Ayako."

"Suppose you've gotta point," agreed Ayako. "I watch anime, chambara films, dramas. Dumb entertainment." She stopped pacing. "Also," she said, "Buster called me. Said Juan's gotten through the worst of it. Told us to stop by when we're done with the Myasniki."

"Why not before?"

"Juan still needs some time to settle." Ayako looked at V. "Also," she said, "Buster wants to take a peek at a Locos corpse. Told him your plan. Says he's got just the setup."

There was an undercurrent of tension in the room, then, that became more pronounced the quieter they got. Judy said, "Hey, Ayako. Sorry. 'Bout what I said on the roof."

Ayako shook her head. "I get it." She smiled, crossed the room and sat down in the beat-up armchair, absently fiddling with a brittle curl of oxidized duct-tape. "You just wanna save your girl. Val's been played by a lot of real shitty people; I understand why you'd doubt me. But promise, I ain't dupin' you. This is real." Her laser-pupils fixed on Judy, trembling like scan-lights in the depths of her smooth black insets. "Listen," she said, reassuringly, "if my solution don't cure Val? Go ahead, sell me out to the NUSA. I mean that."

Judy stared at her, looking conflicted.

"Just keep that in mind," said Ayako. "You're gonna win with or without me. I know what clinics Meredith was talkin' 'bout. They can help your girl."