V found Ayako on the roof, halfway through a pack of Fuji non-filters. "Y'know those'll kill ya," she said conversationally, leaning on the brickwork beside Ayako, hooking her thumbs in the pockets of her black jeans.

From atop the apartment building, the neon sprawl of Las Palmeras looked like some vast arcade table. Overhead, an enormous hologram advertising CheatMeat, some synthmeat brand native to Phoenix whose mascot was a busty coyote-eared and coyote-tailed woman (V was pretty sure otaku called those kinds of exotics kemonomimi, but she wasn't about to ask Ayako for clarification on weird Japanese biosculpt subcultures), flickered in the air like a pixelated aurora.

"I wish," said Ayako, and she took a long drag off the cigarette, watching the hologram transition into an advertisement for Rasta Masta, a strain of hydroponic Marijuana cultivated by Biotechnica. "Boosted lungs and carcinogen biofilters, courtesy of Arasaka. I'm incapable of developin' lung cancer."

V raised her eyebrows. "No repoware on that shit?"

"I disabled it, Val." She offered her a cigarette, and V took it, let Ayako light it.

They stood smoking in silence, watching the hologram morph again, this time advertising ChuSmoke, a Japanese tobacco-flavored chewing gum favored by zaibatsu sarariman ("Now with modafinil!"). V looked sidelong at Ayako, whose expression was unreadable, the hologram lights flowing across her mirrored black insets. "'Gotoda told me 'boutcha," she said, finally. "'Bout the clinic trials. How your fixer sold ya out to 'Saka. All that stuff."

"Yeah?" said Ayako, sounding unsurprised. "Guess you were gonna find out eventually. What'd he tell you exactly?" V told her, and when she finished, Ayako said, "I don't remember much from the trials, honestly. It's kinda blurred. Gotoda remembers more." She sucked down another lungful of Fuji smoke, venting it from her nostrils in ragged streams. "I remember divin' into different subnets. Militech stuff, mostly. How I knew 'bout that NUSA subnet I'd set up that VAP in." She paused, staring off into the middle-distance. "I lied, you know," she said at length. "I knew 'bout Uncle Sam before comin' to Phoenix. Was hopin' Juan and the Las Digitales could help me find out more, mostly 'cause I had questions."

"What kinda questions?" asked V.

Ayako shook her head. "Questions 'bout me. Don't really wanna get into it. It gets too existential."

Neither of them said anything, quietly smoking their cigarettes, the sounds of distant traffic hanging in the air between them. Then V said, "Okay, don't gotta tell me if y'don't wanna." She finished her cigarette, ground it under the toe of her boot.

"What I will say," began Ayako, "was that Donald Lundee wasn't the first person to consider human-AI hybrids. 'Saka thought 'bout it long before he ever did." She finished her own cigarette and flicked the butt to the bitumen. It exploded on impact, tiny embers scattering, burning out.

V stared at her, waiting for some kind of elaboration.

"Saboru's idea," she said. "Until he lost interest in the viability and moved on to engram tech." Ayako paused, then said, "Engrams are just another kinda AI, honestly. Human biomatter, reduced to code. But engrams have the potential to become somethin' more . Look at Alt Cunningham. She's proof of that."

V said nothing.

"You know," said Ayako, after a moment, "all this chrome I got? Arasaka kept sendin' us behind the Blackwall, into old NUSA subnets. Other subnets, too. We lost a little piece of ourselves each time." She looked at her hand, flexing her fingers. Her fingers were artificial, but just convincing enough in their imitation that V hadn't recognized their fakeness until then. "But I don't mind it. Even before 'Saka, I was a chromehead. I wanted to become an extension of the Net. Every 'ganic piece I lost brought me a little closer to cyberspace." She went quiet, her hand dropping back to her side. "I'm like that DDOS algorithm, back in Technobaby's," she told her. "I don't belong here, Val. In realspace."

"Ayako, you're worryin' me."

"Don't be worried," she said, and looked at her.

Whatever had just happened with Ayako, it had made V feel viscerally uncomfortable in a way she couldn't really describe, so she shifted the subject. "So y'gotta way could get us through those Biotechnica checkpoints? Y'work for 'em."

"I'm a contractor," Ayako reminded her. "Don't count as one of the arco-suits." She looked at V. "Couldn't you ask your choom in Militech? Meredith."

"Ain't been able t'get in touch with her," said V. "Guess she's been busy."

"Considerin' the shit-show goin' on right now? Don't doubt it."

"Know anyone might wanna do her, Ayako? For a fall , I mean." V told her what Meredith had said to her and Judy in Moretti Park. "Thinks someone's out t'get her," she finished. "Real paranoid. Wanted to hire me as huscle and everythin'."

"She's a corporat, so someone's always out to get her," said Ayako. "Those suits, they're like baby sharks. Just eat each other."

"Think Dean might know somethin'?"

"Be a good place to start," said Ayako. "Knows lots of people, Danny Dean. In and out of Militech. And if he gives you some worthwhile intel, might be able to pay your way outta the city with it." She shrugged, then elaborated, "Meredith's worried 'bout gettin' done; she won't let you leave Phoenix so easily. You're her shield, choom. She'll wanna keep you close."

"Could just bring her with me."

Ayako snorted. "Suits don't leave cities, Val. Especially when the only place to go is the fuckin' Trash Pan. Besides, she's a bigshot. Militech's gonna keep her on a short leash."

V nodded, considering her next words carefully. Then, "I'm sorry 'bout Juan."

"So am I," said Ayako, sounding like a woman whose heart was breaking. And it was hard seeing her like that, so vulnerable, because V had always thought of Ayako as someone whose heart was unbreakable, a thing encased in steel. "Fuckin' stubborn pendejo," she mumbled, burying her face in her hand.

V, unsure of what else to do, squeezed Ayako's shoulder.

Ayako fished out another Fuji non-filter. "You know the one thing I regret 'bout my chrome?" She lit her cigarette, then said, "No tear ducts. Can't cry anymore, and I really wish I could."

Sensing Ayako wanted to be alone, V left her on the roof. She saw Ayako squatting on the edge of the roof, arms folded over her knees, watching the Phoenix skyline as though the city, somehow, held the solution to her problem somewhere in the pattern of its lights.

Judy met her outside Juan's apartment. "Idiota wired in again," she informed her, frowning. "Didn't wanna disconnect him 'cause I don't wanna fry his skullsponge. So I just left." She grimaced as she said, "Ain't gonna watch someone kill himself 'cause he wants 'to stick it to those corpo assholes' 'fore he dies."

They walked, stepped into the elevator and descended. V said, "We gotta talk to Dean."

"Why?"

"Gonna ask him if he knows anyone wants to zero Meredith."

The Digitales hoods watched them from the stoop as they climbed onto the bike, their scroll-jackets still playing visual dirges; though the patterns seemed darker, more solemn, this time around, and V wondered if that had something to do with Juan. Taps for their dying leader.

V hit the ignition and swung out into the road, threading through traffic. Over the helmet comms, Judy asked, "Why we gotta talk to Dean 'bout that? We need to focus on meetin' the Technomancers, Valerie."

"S'why we're gonna talk to him," replied V. "We need somethin' to pay our way outta Phoenix, and that somethin' is gonna be information."

"And if he don't know anythin'?"

"I'll figure it out," said V.

Cowpuncher's was abuzz that night with arco-suits, and the specialists who preyed on them. Several Paradise Cooks, all of them wearing lurid Hawaiian shirts and tropical-colored suits trimmed in synthetic macaw feathers, were working the suits at the bar, plying them with an impressive selection of amphetamines and barbiturates. Hersh watched the gangoons with obvious disdain, but since Dean allowed the Cooks to push product in the bar, there wasn't much the bartender could do other than make his dislike of them known. Not that the Cooks or their customers cared.

V muscled her way between a pair of drunk arcology techs, leaning on the bar. "Hersh, y'seen Dean?" she asked, raising her voice above the loud cowboy music playing over the bar's audio-system.

The Hopi bartender looked at her, wiping down a glass tumbler. "VIP. Biz with some suits."

"What kinda suits?"

Hersh shrugged. He looked absolutely ridiculous in his dadaist gunslinger getup. "Suits," said the man. "Important-looking ones." On the neon mural behind him, a line of cowboys rode across the neon desert, tiny shadows against the neon sunset. The little cowboys fired their colts into the sky, the gunsmoke spelling out the club's name. "Should be done soon. Want a drink?"

One of the drunk arcology techs turned to her with a glazed grin. "Hey, beautiful," he said. "Buy you that drink?"

"Buddy, I think you've had one too many," said V.

The man kept grinning, then slumped down onto the bar and passed out. He snored in deep, magnificent snores, while his choom picked through a selection of colorful lozenges in a small plastic baggy, like a child digging through candy for their favorite flavor.

"Way too many," agreed Judy, shaking her head.

Herschel got them two Kicking Horses, a mutant but tasty variant of a whiskey sour. "Just shout if you need anything. I'll let Dean know you're here." He left to tend the other patrons.

She and Judy decided to retreat from the bar, settling on a booth beneath a schizophrenic dadaist collage that chronicled the rise and fall of the Cochise County Cowboys. The booth was upholstered in vat-grown cowhide, the table a lacquered slab of cloned mesquite wood. The chandelier above their table was made of elk antlers, but elks had been extinct for fifty years, so V figured they were probably lab-grown. Though she'd heard Biotechnica had managed to clone a few bulls and cows, reintroduce them into company land near what used to be Las Cienegas.

Dean showed up an hour later, accompanied by a complement of corporats in Jinguji suits. Execs looked like, though V couldn't tell which corporation they represented. But she got the feeling that they were important people. Big players.

"Gentlemen and ladies," said Dean to the suits, "I bid you a good evening." He watched them go. Dean was dressed in a gunmetal suit, and he'd exchanged his mullet for a caesar cut. His flame-beard was gone too, shaved to stubble. Dean turned to her and Judy, smiled with too-white teeth. "To what do I owe this pleasure? Looking for work, I assume."

"Happened to all your trailer-trash panache?" asked V, downing the last of her second Kicking Horse.

"I needed a new look," he replied.

"Right," said V. "Anyway, ain't here for work, not exactly. Need information. Mind if we chat in your office, Dean?"