The 'Sakas pried the doors open and leaned into the shaft, laser-sights searing across the concrete, beading red in her eye. V automatically dropped the bag to the first landing, letting go and catching herself three rungs down, a ricochet whizzing by her ear. She whipped out the Malorian, her Kerenzikov's reflex coprocessors kicking in, and squeezed off two shots, the gun bucking hard in her hand, muzzle-flash strobing, reducing movement to jerky stop-motion frames. The 'Sakas' kabutos exploded into spindrifts of jagged ceramic shards, bone and brains, one of the men tumbling, almost gracefully, down into the shaft, the dull thud of his bulk connecting with metal somewhere far below, the other pitching backward into the hall as though he'd slipped, cartoon-like, on a banana peel.

Above, V heard a rapid-fire exchange of modulated Japanese, the argument eventually reaching some reluctant conclusion. Boots retreating down the hall, her OS cooling. Sure the 'Sakas were gone now, V dropped to the landing like a gymnast and hefted the bag, looking at Judy. "Y'okay?" she asked, over the neuro.

"Yeah," replied Judy, wincing. She was sitting down, pinpoints of blue microlight gazing up at V. As V helped Judy to her feet, the makeshift platform vibrated precariously on its struts with their weight. "Slipped off the ladder," Judy told her, wincing again and rubbing at her back. "Almost ate lead, so I let go. Landed pretty hard on my ass—on my goddamn tailbone." She looked up at the wedge of light spilling into the shaft, the carbon-fiber kogake of the dead Arasaka soldier a narrow, black shape against the fluorescence. "Why'd their chooms beat it?"

"'Cause they saw two of their chooms get their skulls ventilated. Probably newbies," said V, and she holstered the Malorian in its synthleather shoulder-rig. "And they gotta get the onryō. Recoverin' expensive company assets is priority numero uno, babe. Imagine if the Scavs—assumin' there's any left after 'Sakas done wipin' their ass with 'em—gettin' their hands on preem tech like that." V looked up, the fluorescence, in that shaft-darkness, searing her optics. She screwed her eyes against the light until her photochromic compensators kicked in, adjusting the ambient luminosity to something comfortable. "Better keep movin'," she said, and looked at Judy. "'Bout to be one giant clusterfuck, this place. Trauma Team's gonna show up now, bet your perfect ass. Them and Biotechnica."

Judy giggled. "Y'think my ass is perfect?"

"The preemest cake."

They continued down the ladder. "Y'think the Myasniki built the ladder?" asked Judy, over the neuro. Judy already knew the answer, V knew, but small-talk was one of her coping mechanisms, a way to ease her nerves, ride out the slow waves of near-death glutamate. She was a few rungs above V. V could see the geometric patterns on the soles of her street-tongues, a fine grit of filth in the grooves. She was keeping an eye on Judy, making sure she didn't slip again; and if she did, V would toss Sergei without a second thought to catch her.

V found the 'Saka crumpled atop the inert elevator, half his head pulped, and the ARM was telling her to go down through the open service hatch near what was left of his skull, its outline pulsing red. She stuffed the bag through the hatch, then swung down into the elevator, its walls paneled in scuffed chrome. Judy dropped in after her, grimy and filmed with sweat. Sergei's vacant blue eye stared blindly at them through a tear in the sticky plastic.

"Fuckin' bag's comin' apart," said V, on the link. "Mochi, what's it lookin' like out there?"

"Militech agents are on the ground fighting Arasaka and what's left of the Myasniki," said the AI.

"Said 'I'," observed V.

"There's no point in hiding my sentience anymore, V-san. You know what I am."

"Gotta point," she agreed. "What's the sitch with Biotechnica?" She and Judy stepped out of the elevator; someone had removed the doors, cut them out with a plasma-torch.

"Incoming," said Mochi, and V saw something scud past the Lexan window on her left, banking toward the ground. An aerial vehicle, its sleek alloy hull painted dark green, emblazoned with the bright green logo of Biotechnica.

V hurried, following the dotted line through a maze of paint-scrawled hallways, apartments converted into storage-freezers and processing rooms. She and Judy encountered some 'Saka soldier-boys in one of those apartments—they'd been helping themselves to a cooler full of Biodyne implants—and V put down the bag, launched into her Kerensikov wire-dance, weaving out her steps in flashes of fish-line steel, the 'Sakas tumbling apart in clouds of bodily fluids.

A couple Myasniki appeared from behind a sheet of grubby plastic, one of them raising the transparent barrel of a microsonic gun. They said something in Yazyk, probably threatening to kill them or whatever. V swayed to the left with the precision of a stunt-jock preparing to fall sidelong, and Judy took the cue, goulashing the Scavs in a humming burst of electromagnetic lead. One of them coughed once, convulsively, and toppled. The other was silent mincemeat as she sank to the blood-slick tiles. Judy stuffed The Chaos back into the waistband of her rocker shorts, beside the microsonic she'd lifted off Sergei, and slung the garbage bag over her shoulder, sagging a little under the weight.

"Jude, ain't that too heavy for you?" she asked, on the neurowire. V snapped the monowire back into its casing, extending a hand. "I can take it."

"You carried old comrade long 'nough," replied Judy, in V's head. "My turn to pull some weight. Got flexors, mostly so haulin' around BD gear wouldn't be such a pain in the culo." She grinned. "How else y'think I'm able to pin you down in bed, mi calabacita? Fold you like a fuckin' lawn-chair."

V actually felt herself blush. "Yo, fuck off."

Judy giggled.

The ARM directed them through more hallways, into a stairwell. They carefully made their way down, the screes of garbage shifting precariously underfoot. Huge, fat cockroaches skittered out from under trampled screamsheets and empty takeout containers. It was sweltering in the stairwell, and V was sweating by the time she hit the fourth landing, choking on the hot fumes of cooked trash. Judy inched along behind her, clutching the bag with both hands, skidding and slipping on the detritus. V offered to take the bag again, but Judy was stubborn, just shook her head and toiled on, cursing to herself in Spanish on the neuro.

"V-san," said Mochi, "Biotechnica is on the ground. There's been a ceasefire. Better hurry while you can."

"How's Ayako, Mochi?"

"Busy," said the AI. "Very busy."

As she and Judy ventured outside, hugging the perimeter of the yard to avoid drawing attention to themselves, V glimpsed the Biotechnica soldiers: green carbon-fiber camo suits, tactical helmets with multifunction infovisors, mil-grade iron. "Peacekeepin' force my fuckin' ass," muttered V, aloud. "They look like MaxTac." They, the Biotechnicas, were mediating between the Militech and Arasaka reps. The Myasniki, the ones who'd managed to survive the slaughter, were being rounded up by the Biotechnicas and herded onto their AV. There was something almost poetic about that, thought V: they trafficked meat, and now they were the meat being trafficked. Ripe piggies for the corpo meat-grinder. The rest were all dead; their bodies were strewn across the makeshift trailer-park, meat-smears barely recognizable as human.

Not that it mattered, V knew; there would always be Scavs. Some rival gang was probably already licking their chops at the prospect of taking over Fabrika.

Mochi drove them to Buster's in the Quadra, told them they could jack out of the neurowire, and they did. Juan was up, sitting on the op-chair, his netsuit a glitchy, mad swirl of color that occasionally stuttered out, displaying error codes. Half his face had been fitted with a face-plate of black polymer, the ocular a Kiroshi lens, its sclera and iris laced with coppery traces of nanocircuitry.

"Couldn't save his eye," said Buster. The borg's hair had grown a bit; he'd buzzed the sides, left the top a dull gray wedge. Real old-fashioned military cut. It made him look younger, somewhat; though the effect was blunted by the scruffy genesis of an insomniac's beard, which did little hide the lines on Buster's face, like stress fissures in a granite rockface. "Couldn't save much of his face either. But the kid's lucky to even be breathing."

"You do somethin' to your hair?" asked V.

Buster flashed his steel toothbud implants in a rictus that was only nominally a smile. "Used some QuikGro. Was tired of looking like a goddamn mummy." He glanced at the garbage bag in Judy's hand. "That the Russian?"

Judy nodded. "Yup. Where y'want him?"

Buster looked at Juan. Juan didn't look at him. "Need you to move, kid. Promise the plate won't fall off." He looked at Judy, then said, "Just put our comrade down on the op-chair."

Juan moved, stood up. "Real charmer, old man, ain't you?"

"I put you back together," Buster told him, thrusting his multitool in his direction. "Try to sound a little more grateful, amigo."

"Sorry," said Juan. "Just still kinda gettin' over half my face bein' gone." He looked at V and Judy, then asked, "Where's Yako?" His brow furrowed.

"Doin' somethin' with the mainframe at Fabrika. She's fine," said V, deciding to skip the specifics; she didn't need to worry the poor guy, not now. She paused, gave Juan a once-over. "Y'feel funny at all?" she ventured. "Like maybe y'caught somethin', like maybe a neurovirus."

"If you're worried 'bout the AI's sporeware, I'm fine," Juan told her. "Buster ain't found anythin' on his scans. And he ran every test you can think of, chica. Certified bug-free."

"Well, s'good," she said, and looked at Buster. "Really? Nothin'?"

Buster shrugged. "Nothing my scans picked up. If he's got anything, then that shit's the subtlest kink I ever didn't see." The borg untied the garbage bag, servos whirring softly as he rolled Sergei out onto the foam-padded chair. "Surprised his neuralware's intact," he said, raising his eyebrows. "You're damn lucky. Too goddamn quick to play that fucking yo-yo trick, kid." He slid open a compartment on his rip-terminal, extruding a length of insulated cable and connecting it to Sergei's neural port. Buster glanced at his monitor, slid out his keyboard and tapped something out. "Lot of the data's corrupted," he told her.

"Gotta be a way we can recover it, right? Clean it up."

Buster didn't answer. Then, "Sure, kid. You got access to a mil-grade recompiler program?"

"Don't need one." Ayako stepped into the clinic. "We got Judy." She glanced at Juan and smiled. It was the smile of someone who couldn't be happier to see the person they were smiling at. "Glad to see you're up on your feet again. The plate looks good."

"You were always weird," said Juan, grinning.

"So the fuck I gotta do with anythin'?" asked Judy.

"We're gonna use your BD skills," said Ayako. "I had the craziest idea."

Judy stared at her.

"You scroll a BD in the isolate," said Ayako.

V looked at Buster. "Y'gotta isolate?"

"Sure," said Buster. "Need a place to safely debug viruses without risking my system. Test viruses, find out how they work. That kind of stuff."

"Wait, wait, wait," said Judy. "You want me to scroll a netrun?" She beamed. Then she started pacing, like she always did whenever she was excited and sorting out the finer points of her creative epiphanies. "Never even considered that was a possibility," she was saying to herself. "Holy shit," she continued, her eyes wide, "this is gonna be as preem as the Laguna Bend BD I'd scrolled."

"Want you to run the data through your BD's recompiler program like you'd do any virtu, scroll the sporeware event reconstruction, then we play it back and find out exactly what fucking happened in the spaceport. Mochi can make some improvements to your firmware that'll make your gear Net-capable and better, and she's got the program Val will need for the reconstruction itself." Ayako glanced at V, then said, "Gonna send Val into the isolate. Still a little fatigued from that Fabrika run, so I'm not up for it. Gotoda's fetchin' everything we'll need, and Mochi will bring it back here."

"Mochi?" said Buster. "That Japanese shit, the cake thing?"

"No," said Ayako, "my AI."

Buster regarded her with interest, her reflection twinned in the green-tinted lenses of his CRT oculars. "Well now," he said, almost sounding impressed, "you have an AI. Guess you're as good a netrunner as everyone says you are, deckhead. Phoenix's very own Alt Cunningham."

"She's a hero of mine," said Ayako, smiling. "Looked up to her since I was a kid. Was the whole reason I'd learned English, gotten into netrunning."

"She had a reputation over in Chiba?"

"In certain netrunning circles," said Ayako. "Whole reason I got into programming, like I said. Alt Cunningham. I wanted to be as good as her, and eventually, I wanted to be better." She turned to Juan, and asked, "By the way, you remember anything from the subnet crash?"

"Not much," said Juan, and shook his head. "Almost flatlined. Was too busy tryin' to stay alive. And thanks, Yako. For disconnectin' me when you did. Wouldn't be standin' here without you."

That couldn't-be-happier-to-see-you smile came back to Ayako's face. "You would've done the same for me."