"All right, Alvarez, have to make an incision right here." Buster's voice sounded like noise coming over a shaky frequency. "Got to rig this in through her occipital and thread it down her spine."

V heard the whir of Buster's claw, felt something ice-cold caress her spine, needling the bone; then something like a pneumatic drill punching into her occipital bone. She couldn't feel any pain, however; it was locked tight inside a vault of endorphin-analog. Warmth welled up along her back, blood trickling like thick sauce over her skin. V couldn't see anything; she was lying facedown on the op-seat, face saddled in a padded cutout.

"God, why do people voluntarily do this to themselves?" said Panam's voice, coming in over the same shaky frequency. "I don't get you chrome-junkies."

"In my case," said Buster, mopping up her blood with something soft and spongy before the needling sensation returned: a slender, pneumatic thing, maybe a needle, stitching something into her spinal column like some kind of fucked-up sewing machine, "it wasn't all my choice." The stitching stopped. Then, "Alvarez, get the cauterizer."

"Ain't you got one built into your hand?"

"I do," said Buster, "but you ain't going to learn how to rip if I do it. Come on, it's easy."

Warm blood, the reek of cooked meat and solder. "There," she heard Judy say, somewhere above her, "that was easy. Y'holdin' up, calabacita?"

V might have responded, but she was too doped on analgesics to know for sure. And passed out at some point, because the next thing V knew, she was waking up on a cot in another room, Judy, Panam, Buster and Ayako hovering over her, their heads lit from behind in nimbuses of fluorescent light.

She tried to move, but Judy stopped her, gently easing her back down. "Y'move too quick, your spine's gonna fall out, babe," she said. "Gotta heal up, take it easy for a day or two so the new implants can take."

V's spine felt brittle, like it was made of twigs and would fall apart if she moved too fast, and it probably would have hurt like a motherfucker, too, if they hadn't smoothed some analgesic micropore over the inflammation. Her head throbbed, pressure mounting behind her eyeballs like someone was trying to push them out of her skull with their thumbs. "My eyes hurt," she murmured.

"That's just the new chrome in your head," said Buster. "Part of the OS overhaul. Needed to boost processing power to accommodate the modified Sandy OS."

"The same kinda Sandy I got," said Ayako, and grinned at her. She looked tired, V decided, like Ayako hadn't been sleeping too well lately. Or V thought she looked like that anyway, but it was hard to tell through the haze of drugs. "Welcome to the Elite Netrunners Club, Val."

"What'd y'do with my Kerenzikovs?"

"Gone, babe," said Judy. "The 'Mancers are gonna keep your old OS. Still good shit, that OS. Just not the kinda good shit ya need." She leaned down and kissed V, smiling at her.

She passed out again, and this time, when she woke up, V woke up in a wheelchair. Judy was wheeling her out onto the roof of the arcology, through a maze of solar panels, and onto a ferroconcrete landing pad that had, in the arcology's past, accommodated aerial vehicles. Panam and Ayako were there, chatting. Ayako was smoking her Fujis; they had a distinct sweet smell to them that reminded V of those cheap CHOOH-station vanilla cigarillos she'd used to roll her weed, back when she was a teenager.

"Why am I on the roof?" asked V, the words coming out slightly mushy. Her head still pounded, but ebbed when Judy smoothed an anodyne patch onto her neck.

"Y'need some fresh air, babe," said Judy, and kissed the top of her head. "Besides," she continued, "Ayako wanted to talk to us."

Ayako looked at them, smiling. But there was something nervous in her smile, tension in the corners of it. "So," she began, and took a long, steadying drag off her cigarette, "think it's 'bout time I told you guys somethin' I been keepin' from you."

"I don't like the sound of that," said Panam, narrowing her eyes.

"You're not gonna like it, but… it's gotta be said." Ayako finished her cigarette, flicking the butt to the concrete and grinding it under her tabi-boot exojack. "All that stuff I told you 'bout workin' for 'Saka is true, but there was somethin' I failed to mention—"

"Her real name," interrupted Yuji, stepping out onto the landing pad, "is Ayako Arasaka. Yorinobu is her father."

Ayako looked at the group, her laser dots darting between their surprised faces. She frowned. "Yeah, Yorinobu is my father, but he ain't ever publicly acknowledged me," she said, shifting uncomfortably. "The man who raised me was Kei Yoshida. My mother Kaede, she—well, you see me standin' here. I don't gotta explain it to you."

"I knew there was a fucking reason I never trusted you," hissed Panam, her eyes flashing.

"I ain't with Yorinobu," said Ayako, shaking her head. "If I was, I wouldn't be tellin' you this. Would've let Oiwa kill you."

"So all those eddies y'got," said V, "it came from—"

"Yeah," said Ayako, grimacing. "Yorinobu's been givin' me money for as long as I can remember. I guess he considers that takin' responsibility." She paused. "But it ain't all his money; most of it's mine. From my side-hustles."

"And you can see what Yorinobu-san thinks of his own daughter," said Yuji, sweeping a hand toward Ayako. "Allowed his father to experiment on her." He paused as if mulling something over. Then, "You asked me before who Oiwa is. She is Ayako, and Ayako is her."

They all stared. V was the one who spoke, but only managed, "What?"

"Ayako," said Yuji, "flatlined during the attack on the original Uncle Sam isolate. Her engram, however, was stored within Mikoshi, and from that engram, Arasaka created the first onryō engrams in Yomi." Yuji paced, hands clasped over the small of his back. "Originally, the onryōs were meant to be Net-assassins. Shinobi. Flatline their targets, hack their implants—that sort of thing. But when Soulkiller happened, Arasaka decided to integrate its code into the Yomi engrams. And then they introduced cadavers, to make them operators within Realspace. Oiwa was the only successful one in that regard." Yuji looked at Ayako, adding, "Or so they thought."

Ayako didn't speak, but she didn't seem stunned, surprised—nothing. "I did some diggin', confirmed it on my own," said Ayako, finally. "Biotechnica used to ship cadavers from this location to 'Saka." She looked down at herself, then said, "This ain't my original body. My original body, it got fuckin' deep-fried. Like T-Bug."

"So you're… an AI?" asked V, furrowing her brow. This was a lot of information to take in, and if she wasn't doped up with painkillers, V figured she would have been freaking out more. But right now, she kind of just settled into sedate acceptance.

"Ayako-sama," said Yuji, "is a human and AI, in one body."

"Mochi," said Judy.

"Yeah," said Ayako, nodding. "She's my tether. Keeps me rooted, so I don't wind up like Oiwa."

"Daisuke Gotoda's greatest achievement," said Yuji, looking at Ayako.

"Gotoda? He was—"

"The chief netrunner behind the Onryō," interrupted Yuji.

Judy looked at Ayako. "So d'ya really wanna zero Uncle Sam 'cause it's a threat, or 'cause you wanna eliminate a rival?"

"Wanna destroy it," said Ayako. "If the Locos manage to rebuild the data-structures of the spaceport's mainframe, we're fucked. I don't gotta keep impressin' that on you. That mainframe will give Sam a foothold in the FreeNet, where the NUSA, Arasaka, or whoever else can't reach it. And once it's in the FreeNet, it's over. It'll change all the Net-protocols to lock us out, and then the fuckin' thing can carry out its war with impunity."

"Why're you tellin' us this all of a sudden?" asked V.

Ayako looked at her. "We don't know what's gonna happen in the comin' weeks," she said, ominously. "Wanted to unburden my conscience, I guess. Just in case."