A few days had passed since Ayako had gone off with Juan. She'd called once to let them know she was alive, and that she needed to lay low for a bit. She'd sounded uncharacteristically anxious, and that had surprised V, because Ayako struck her as someone who'd evolved beyond trepidation. During the interim, V had sent the Teotihuacán BD to her by way of Trevor, the baby 'runner with the ancient Paraline MK. And now, all she and Judy could do was wait.

The newscaster on the television was talking about the explosion in The Flues, how the fission generators at an abandoned megabuilding had overheated and exploded, and had taken most of the megabuilding, and a portion of the surrounding neighborhood, with it. Terrorists, the newscaster went on to say, but no suspects had been taken into custody.

"Well," Judy said, and sipped her beer, "we know what happened to Fabrika. And why Ayako's been keepin' her head down." She frowned, helped herself to another katsu chicken skewer and slathered it in tonkatsu sauce. "How the fuck we miss this? A huge fuckin' explosion in the next district over."

V shrugged. "Weren't payin' attention, I guess. Or there was a news embargo 'til recently." She sipped her beer and glanced out the window, watching another Biotechnica AV, the third one she'd seen within the last two hours, scud past the building and bank out of sight. "Explains why Biotechnica's increased their security presence 'round Phoenix."

"Hopin' things get better," said Judy, though she didn't sound convinced that things would improve anytime soon. She added, "Biotechnica's got fuckin' checkpoints for people goin' in and outta the city."

"Wonderin' if this has somethin' t'do with Sam," said V, sagging against the couch, the rough polyester like sandpaper against her skin. "Another play. Revenge, maybe? Security checkpoints means we can't meet with the Technomancers." She helped herself to another swallow of Japanese beer and closed her eyes, letting the gestalt of television noise wash over her. "And if we can't meet with the Technomancers," she continued, sullenly, "then no Castlebreaker, no Crystal Palace, no fuckin' cure."

"Y'hear from Meredith at all?"

V shook her head.

"Think she's dead?"

"Doubt it," said V, opening her eyes and looking at Judy. "This shit with Biotechnica's probably got Militech pissin' themselves in anger. Bet Meredith's busy as all get-out with some inter-corpo peace-pipin', bein' the bigshot in Government Relations that she is." She paused, watching the ad-mobile spin its holograms, considering. Then said, "Least 'Saka's gonna be busy makin' nice with Biotechnica, too. Might've gotten ourselves a short break from Oiwa."

"Keyword 'short'," said Judy, rising from the couch and making her way out onto the balcony. V trailed after her.

A warm, breezy night. They sat in aluminum fold-out chairs and lit cigarettes, watching the tangled grid of neon, the forever-scroll of the hologram reels ascending above the jagged Phoenix skyline like the sacred pillars of some consumerist Baal. "We gotta figure somethin' out," Judy said, flicking ash into a heaped plastic tray advertising Sapporo beer. "Can't just sit on our asses while that biochip's sappin' away your life, calabacita. Gotta think of somethin', a plan."

"Can't do anythin' without Ayako," said V, taking a long drag off her cigarette. "It's her program that'll cure me."

"Mochi's program," corrected Judy.

"Mochi won't do anythin' without Ayako's say-so. AIs are sentient, sure, but they still don't got what we call 'free will'; they operate within their program margins." V looked at her. "'Sides, Ayako's got the money we need to get up to the Palace. Can't afford that shuttle or that ICEbreaker without her."

"We could go to Chicago," said Judy, reasonably. "Use the clan's StormTech connections."

V shook her head, blew a cloud of smoke. "Promised to help Ayako," she said, flicking ash into the tray. "Y'said it yourself, Jude." She shrugged. "We got scruples now. And I never leave a choom hangin'."

Later that evening, Trevor came into the pawn-shop with news. "BD's with Kunoichi," he said. "Hadda dodge some peaheads on the way over here, but job's done."

V passed him a slender roll of eddies. "Thanks, man," she said. "But peaheads?"

"Y'know," said Trevor, pocketing the cash without counting it, "Biotechnica soldiers. Got those green helmets."

"How bad's the Biotechnica sitch, anyway? Ain't really left Las Palmeras."

Up close, she saw that the tattoos on Trevor's arm were crude prison-job doodles, probably done with a straight pin and homemade soot-ink. "It's bad," he said, and shook his head, his feathered crest of blue hair swaying like some avian mating ritual. A thin, pink cable of scar-tissue cut down his cheek, from ear to mouth. "Fuckers crawlin' all over Phoenix. Think Militech or 'Saka hired some crew to do the Myasniki for whatever reason. Both were there, 'Saka and Militech, the night Fabrika went boom."

Ain't either of 'em, thought V. Strategic discord being sown. Uncle Sam had a vested interest in the megacorpos fighting each other, because it needed the megacorpos to fight each other for its war.

And that made V uneasy, an AI having such a raging hard-on for war. Its taste for violence felt, to her, uncomfortably and familiarly human. "Kunoichi say anythin' to you when y'dropped off the BD?"

Trevor shook his head, hair bobbing. "Ain't seen her," he said. "Just dropped the BD off at Juan's place."

"Where's Juan's pad?"

The kid hesitated, as though he wasn't sure if he should divulge that information. V slipped him twenty eddies, and she watched the money vanish into a zippered pocket on his patchwork denim vest. The patches were for different bands: Wounded Machine, Corpo Murder, Sour Pussy, Tainted Overlord, even Samurai. Some of the patches were miniature holograms playing short clips from various concerts; V watched as Zanna Razor, lead singer of Sour Pussy, smashed her guitar into pieces on a Zurich stage. "15 Guadalupe Ortiz Street," Trevor said, looking at her. His eyes were dark, almost black, pupils white skulls. "But if Kunoichi asks…"

"I'll keep ya outta it," she assured him.

"She told me to tell ya," he said, and shrugged.

"Slick little shit," she said, and grinned. V reached up—at sixteen, Trevor was lanky and tall, a lot taller than she was, but so was mostly everybody—and mussed his deathhawk. "Y'earned that twenty, kiddo."

Trevor grinned back. One of his front teeth was chipped, a charming little snaggle that somehow made him look innocent. "Gotta make money," he said. "Thanks for not holdin' it against me."

"'Course not," she assured him. "Did the same shit when I was your age, and worse."

Once Trevor left—she let him hang around and browse the goods, try them out—V shuttered the shop for the night. On the way over to Juan's pad, V couldn't help but notice all the Biotechnicas patrolling the streets, stopping anyone they deemed suspicious, which, in Las Palmeras, was pretty much everyone. There were Phoenix cops with them, but they seemed to be there mostly for show, to let citizens know that Biotechnica was operating with the city's blessing. V, knowing this kind of situation too well from personal experience, rode the back-streets in an effort to circumvent the cops and their corpo jackboot chooms. She'd only gotten stopped once, but after the peahead's scan turned up nothing—Sherry Shiv was an upstanding citizen after all, unlike V—they let her go with a warning, and a hundred eddy fine for wasting corporate resources, and another hundred eddies, under a Biotechnica bylaw, for driving an environmentally-unfriendly bike, both of which she was automatically charged for out of her Phoenix sub-account.

"Fuckin' bullshit," Judy was saying as they drove away from the cop-stop. "Two hundred eddies for 'wastin' their time' and drivin' an 'environmentally-unfriendly bike'? Have they seen the fuckin' Sonoran? Covered in trash."

"Wastin' their resources ," corrected V, bitterly. "And fuckin' corpos can make up as many bylaws as they want, 'cause nobody does shit 'bout it. Why I keep our fuckin' eddies in a Tycho cryptoserver, babe, and use a sub-account for everyday biz."

Juan's place was in a nondescript brickwork building on the other side of Las Palmeras. From the outside, it looked abandoned, but V suspected that was the point. A couple of Digis were hanging out on the stoop, and V knew they were Digis from the scroll-jackets they wore, which looped artesanía patterns that seemed to revolve, primarily, around the subject of death. Maybe some kind of mourning custom the gang had, she thought, as she and Judy hopped off the bike.

"Glad t'see some of you got outta the spaceport," she said, conversationally.

"You those mercs were with Ayako," said one of the Digis, a pale man with burnt-orange hair, a black lightning bolt stenciled in it. The man watched them from behind his infovisor, his expression unreadable. "Don't recall Juan mentionin' he was expectin' you." Then he went quiet, tipped his head to one side as though he were listening to something. "My mistake," the hood said, finally. "You're clear." He stood up, reaching behind his ear and extruding a loop of fiber-optic filament, slotting it in a small, hidden port on the door.

Magnetic locks thudded out of place, and the composite door released. The Digi pulled it open and waved them inside, then closed it behind them. A webwork of cables snaked along the walls and ceiling, down a claustrophobic hall. A hardware susurrus filled the building, a gestalt of computer noise whose coalescing frequencies made V's phonics prickle, her brain and teeth ache.

"Packin' some serious hardware in here," said V.

"Your phonic implants will adjust." Ayako came down the hall. She looked as though she'd gone days without sleep. "Glad Trevor remembered to send you over."

"You get a chance to look at that BD?" asked V.

"Not yet. Just got it," said Ayako. "Besides, been preoccupied with other shit—and not by what you think, gutterbrain." She jerked her head toward the elevator. "C'mon, show you what I mean."

They rode the elevator to the topmost floor. Ayako let herself into Juan's apartment, and they followed her inside. Cables snaked across the floor like the roots of some strange species of banyan tree, monitors glaring at them like the multifaceted eyes of some huge mechanical beast.

Juan was seated in the jack-chair in his net-station, a room every bit as impressive as Ayako's. She waited for him to disconnect from his deck, and when he did, Ayako said, "You're gonna hafta stop this soon, Juan. Jackin' in."

Juan looked like a palliative patient, as though he were a breath away from a deathrattle. His skin was corpse-pale. A subconjunctival hemorrhage had turned the sclera of his 'ganic eye a mean shade of red, and he was sweating profusely despite the room's temperature hovering a few degrees above freezing. "No fuckin' way," he said, and slowly sat up in his chair. "I can't do that, Yako."

"You can't fuckin' risk spreadin' it," said Ayako. "You're linked into too many subnets."

"The fuck is goin' on?" asked V.

"Nothin'," said Juan, dragging a hand across his sweat-slick face. "Just a little neurovirus."

V frowned. "Shit."

"Buster said his scans ain't picked anythin' up," said Judy.

"Because the fuckin' thing's in Juan's ICE," said Ayako. "That's how the fuckin' sporeware works. If it manages to stick, it infects the ICE so the system don't detect it, then starts infectin' the system since the ICE ain't lookin' for it." She stared at Juan, looking defeated. Then she swore in Japanese and slapped the chair in frustration, turning her back to Juan and folding her arms.

V suddenly felt intensely voyeuristic, like she was witnessing something she was never meant to see. She fidgeted, looked at Judy, then Ayako. "Y'need a moment, Ayako?" she hazarded.

Ayako said, "I need more than a moment. I need a fuckin' miracle." She looked at Juan. "Mochi's managed to slow the infection down, but…" Ayako trailed off, shaking her head. "I need some air." She left the room without another word, brushing past her and Judy as if they were invisible.

"That how it took out your demon?" V asked Juan.

"Most likely," he replied, looking at her. "Yako won't know 'til she looks at that BD, but you've seen the state she's in right now." He ran a hand through his mohawk, drawing his legs up onto the chair, wrists on his knees. "This shit with Biotechnica ain't helpin' either. Why I been jacked in. Monitorin' their comms. Don't want 'em getting the drop on Yako."

"They any closer to figurin' out it was her did Fabrika?"

"So far? No," said Juan. "Lot of talk 'bout keepin' the peace between 'Saka and Militech, though. Just an excuse for Biotechnica to deploy troops, swing their dick around a little before they fuck the shit outta Phoenix. Same old corpo song."

"Know of any way t'get outta Phoenix, past the checkpoints?" she asked.

"Sure," said Juan, "if you can manage stealin' a corpo-car. Suits can still get out."

"Might actually be able t'swing that," said V.

"Why do you wanna leave Phoenix anyway? Ain't nothin' out in the Trash Pan except Raffens, cartels, and ghost towns."

"Technomancers," said V. "Gonna meet with 'em."

Juan laughed. "So Yako wasn't pullin' my leg. Mierda, what I wouldn't give to meet the Technomancers."

"Maybe they could help you," she said.

"I don't got that kinda scratch," said Juan. "And even if I did, the 'Mancers wouldn't risk infectin' their systems." He shrugged, glancing at the door. "Figure if I die, well, just what's gonna happen." Juan looked at them. "And I am gonna die. Ain't gonna let myself become the puppet of some fuckin' Militech AI, 'cause that would be a pretty bitch way for a techno-anarchist to go out." Juan smiled, then added, "And if there's an afterlife, the fuck would Rache Bartmoss and all the other dead greats think of me, I let that happen?"