The sun was beginning to sink toward the horizon, the sky gold and salmon, the sun a bright blood-orange disc. Cicadas chirped in the brush, shot through with birdsong, the rustle of dry grass.

Ayako walked over to Panam's truck, a mulch of trampled plastic and aluminum crunching under her tabi-boots, hefting a large hardcase fitted with a neural scanner. She loaded the case into the back of the truck beside the spare water-jugs, flares, ammunition cases, and a box of MREs.

"What the fuck is that?" asked Panam, like she suspected the case contained a bomb. She looked at Ayako. "Don't just load some weird mystery box into my truck without telling me what's in it first."

"Chill, Captain Suspicious. It's the money for the 'Mancers," said Ayako, strapping the case down to the truck-bed with bungee cords. "Prefer to transact in cold cash, those guys. Harder for the corpos to track than digital."

Panam eyed Ayako like a skeptical cop. V came over, Judy beside her. "We good t'go now?" she asked, trying to ease the tension. "'Cause me and Jude are."

"Yeah," said Panam at length, circling around to the driver's seat. The three of them climbed into the truck after her: Ayako in front, V and Judy in the backseat. Once everyone was settled in, Panam ran a systems check on the truck's onboard computer. "Looks good," she said, watching the diagnostic feeds.

Ayako was staring at the computer. "That thing is fuckin' ancient," she said, sounding almost incredulous, like she was surprised the thing even turned on anymore, and also a little offended, as though the presence of such ancient hardware insulted her on a very personal level. She started tapping out a sequence on the touch-screen, reading the data-scroll. Panam swatted her hand away. "You're runnin' version 1.2 of ITS Silver OS," said Ayako, like she expected Panam to gasp in horror at this revelation. "They stopped fuckin' updatin' it a decade ago, Panam."

"So what? It works."

"I bet your ICE looks like swiss fuckin' cheese," tutted Ayako, shaking her head. "Y'know how easy a 'runner could crack your system? I could do it without even jackin' my personal into your computer. Two seconds, boom, my WNI blows your computer wide open."

"Touch my computer, I will throw you out of this truck," said Panam matter-of-factly, switching the computer over to comms. "Check, check," she said, adjusting something on the screen with a quick drag of her finger. "Can you hear me, Carol? Mitch? Cassidy?"

"We hear ya," said Mitch. "Well, least me'n Cassidy do."

"I hear you as well," said Carol. "But heads up, Panam. Weather scans show there's a sandstorm forming north of our position."

"That sucks, but also it doesn't," said Panam, her brown fingers flickering over the computer's touch-screen. "Provides us cover from Painted Springs. We just have to stick to the road."

"You punched the route into your computer, I hope," said Carol.

"While I was loading the truck with the emergency supplies you'd hauled in from Rancho Los Pozos." She pushed the computer away, the thing's articulated boom folding like an accordion into the dashboard. Panam pulled down a thrust lever, and something shifted with a pneumatic whine in the truck's undercarriage. "Should be good," she mumbled to herself, flipping a few switches on her dashboard, then twisting a knob. "Okay," she said, "let's get going." She put her boot down on the gas, and the truck sped forward.

The road they were taking was a long, meandering track of packed dirt that wound through canyons of compacted trash. Carol's car, a Mizutani Coyote, was ahead of them, and the Basilisk rode off to their right, its turbines carrying it screaming over mounds of rusted and sun-bleached trash.

The truck bounced and rocked on its shocks as Panam rode Carol's slipstream, swerving around debris and saguaros, the sides of the vehicle practically scraping up against the trash-drifts. Ahead, V could see a wall of sand gathering on the horizon—the sandstorm Carol had mentioned. "Looks pretty serious," said Judy, staring out the window. "Kinda reminds me of that sandstorm hit us when we first crossed into Arizona. Shit was bad."

"Lost Craig during that mess, the poor guy," said Panam, shaking her head.

"How'd that happen?" asked Ayako.

"Storm was really bad," said Panam. "He didn't see the ravine, the sand was so thick. His car took a dive." She paused, glanced at Ayako. Shifted the subject. "So," she said, "the FreeNet. What's that about?"

"Pet project," said Ayako, shrugging. "Juan and I started buildin' it with the help of the Las Digitales. Corporate-free Net. When the spaceport got hit and Juan bartmossed the Las Palmeras subnet, a few sectors of the FreeNet went offline; but I managed to salvage and migrate the data, get it up runnin' again with Mochi's help."

Panam looked sidelong at her. "Mochi?"

"My AI," said Ayako.

"You have a fucking AI ?"

"Built her myself," said Ayako. "Outta some code I grabbed from a dive behind the Blackwall. She ain't a rogue, though; she's, essentially, the custodian of the FreeNet. A kinda data repository, compiler and transpiler, interpreter, extrapolator. Does everythin', pretty much. A complex multifunction program. Without her, wouldn'ta been possible to build anythin'."

"How do you build an entire parallel Net, even with an AI's help?" asked Panam.

"It's not an entire Net," said Ayako. "Not yet, anyway. Needa annex more cyberspace territory, connect it into the Mikoshi Partition."

"Mikoshi Partition? What the fuck."

"I took a piece of Mikoshi for myself," said Ayako. "And I've been buildin' off it, addin' subnets, expandin'. Like addin' rooms to a house. But the house, in this case, is a really big fuckin' house. And Mochi is the construction firm contracted to build it. Get what I'm sayin'?"

"Unfuckingbelievable," said Panam, flabbergasted. "You stole a piece of Mikoshi? How ?"

"I'm a really good netrunner," said Ayako, grinning. "A really good netrunner who once worked for 'Saka, and ain't cared for her employers much."

"Y'think that's why the FIA's targetin' you?" asked Judy. "'Sides needin' another Songbird."

"The FIA is after you?" asked Panam. Then, "Jesus Christ, where do you keep digging up friends like these, Valerie."

"Dunno. The weirdos just flock t'me," said V, grinning.

"No kiddin'," said Judy.

Nightfall settled over the Sonoran, the sandstorm blowing in toward them, full force, washing the desert away in a pall of pitch-black darkness. Panam flipped a few more switches on her dashboard, slowed the truck down behind Carol's Coyote. They rode like that for several miles, and the storm didn't show any signs of letting up. She glanced at her computer, then said, "Coming up on Painted Springs. Once we get past that, should be relatively smooth driving—"

"We're going to have to pull over and wait," interrupted Carol over the truck's comms, the interference from the storm lurching her voice over the frequency. "This storm's too dangerous, Panam. And with all the trash out here in the Sonoran, we're asking for trouble if we keep going."

"We need the cover," said Panam.

"Do you also need to crash your truck? For the wind to whip debris up and hurl it through your windshield?"

Panam swore, then said, "Fine. Fine, you're right."

"Cassidy and I'll keep watch from the Basilisk," said Mitch, on the comms. "Thing's got long-range scanners, and it's built for this kinda shit. Can keep an eye out, patrol around for any Raffen fucks lurkin' in the drifts."

"Doubt anyone is lurking out there in this storm," said Panam. "Even so, I would appreciate it if you boys kept an eye out."

They parked their cars behind the rusting chassis of a junked AV, to use it as a windbreak. The wind howled and rattled the truck's frame, rocks and unidentifiable pieces of garbage pelting the polycarbonate windows. Ayako started fiddling with the truck's computer controls, and Panam smacked her hand away. "I'm just tryin' to update your OS," she huffed. "It bein' so outdated is really fuckin' botherin' me."

"I like it just the way it is," said Panam. "Leave it alone."

"What the hell's your issue with me?" asked Ayako.

"I don't trust you," said Panam, plainly. "I'm only giving you the benefit of the doubt because of Valerie and Judy. But you're hiding something, deckhead. I know you are."

"Makes you think I'm hidin' somethin'?"

"Because you are," said Panam.

Ayako said nothing.

V decided to redirect the conversation to something a little more amicable. "Panam's just a real suspicious person," she explained, leaning between the front seats and looking at Ayako. "It ain't nothin' personal, Ayako. And Panam, Ayako's been nothin' but good t'me and Jude—give her a damn chance."

Panam didn't reply, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, watching the sand gust outside. She sighed, looked at Ayako. "So," she said, "the FreeNet. Why would the FIA want something like that?"

"You kiddin'?" said Ayako. "An unregulated Net with no NetWatch to speak of? Why wouldn't the Feds want somethin' like that?" She turned slightly in her seat to face Panam, her laser dots training on her. "Even they ain't exempt from the bullshit. The corpos, the governments? Spyin' on each other all the goddamn time. But the FreeNet? It's a Wild West of cowboys and no lawmen. NetWatch don't got access, and neither do the corpos, the NUSA, the Myers Administration—all of 'em. It's a Net for the people, by the people. The Las Palmeras subnet was just a piece of it. A big piece, but a piece nonetheless."

"And you're just going to kindly let people use it, no strings?"

"Exactly," said Ayako. "The Net was our last free frontier, and the corpos took it away, started imposin' their rules, censorin' and regulatin' everything people said and did until their opinions just coalesced into some bland, amorphous blob of regurgitated media-junk. The Net, as we know it, just became a giant fuckin' propaganda cock designed to fuck people into submission. And I'm tired of watchin' people get fucked stupid, Panam."

"So what does Uncle Sam have to do with all of that?" asked Panam. "How does a military AI tie into this vendetta of yours against 'the establishment'?"

"'Cause I don't want the establishment gettin' their hands on the fuckin' thing," said Ayako. "Rich assholes already destroyed the world one way, and they get that AI, they're gonna destroy it in another. 'Cause, ultimately, the people in power don't give a fuck 'bout you or me, Panam. It's all 'bout the eddies. And there ain't nothin' more lucrative than war."

"Meredith ain't seemed too keen on a war," said Judy.

"Meredith's just one Militech suit," said Ayako. "She might be against a war, but there's a dozen other suits in her company slobberin' at the chance to make some eddies. And anyway, Stout's largely inconsequential—just another lapdog for the NUSA. The Myer's Administration, that's the real threat here, Judy. Militech's just one of their many tools. They get Uncle Sam, we're fucked."

The storm gradually passed, rolling southward. Panam started to drive once the sand had thinned enough, following Carol's car down the track.

"Hey," said Cassidy, on the comms, "we got some movement on the scanners. Best prepare yourselves, ladies."