They zipped Yuji's corpse into a black plastic bag, then loaded him into the Surveyor. Like most Nomads, Yuji didn't enjoy Trauma Team coverage, so it was up to the clans to dispose of their dead: either themselves in whatever way they saw fit, or at one of the many franchised crematoriums—subsidiaries of the Funer-All Corporation—across the United States.
Her neurowire buzzed. V didn't want to answer, but the line kept buzzing. So she opened the wire, Ayako's call-window appearing in the corner of her Kiroshis. She looked like shit. V wondered if her condition was getting worse, that maybe the sporeware was finally shutting her system down. "Ayako?" she hazarded, grabbing a steel hand-rung as the AV lurched, lifted off the Militech building.
"Couldn't contact Yuji. Guessin' he's dead. So I'm flickin' you some coords," she said quietly, and did. V accepted the data-transfer: a sat-image of Phoenix overtook her vision, pinpointing a defunct SoftSys warehouse in Downtown Phoenix, on Mojave Street. "Be there, Val. Please." Before V could reply, tell her they were definitely coming, Ayako was gone.
"Ayako's in some kinda trouble," said V, to the others. "Got the coords. Shuttered SoftSys warehouse in Downtown Phoenix, on Mojave Street."
The Technomancers nodded, went to relay the message to the AV's pilot.
"Y'think she's… y'know?" said Judy, furrowing her brow.
"God," said V, "I hope not."
The stairwell was glassed-in, overlooking the street. Already dark now, the neon burning bright through a haze of holograms and rain. She wondered how long she'd sat beside his net-chair. Hours, she knew. It had been daylight when she'd first arrived at the warehouse.
She just had to haul him up one flight of stairs to reach the rooftop.
"But where the fuck are you?" she said aloud to Oiwa, heaving Juan's inert bulk up the steep steps, his booted feet dragging lifelessly on the concrete. "You think this is funny?" she continued, because she knew the AI was listening. Watching. A silent voyeur in her neuroware. "You gettin' some kinda sick fuckin' kick? He's dead, you fuckin' bitch! He's fuckin' dead." Her tabi caught on a step and she stumbled a little, Juan's body lolling to one side, almost dragging her down to the floor.
Ayako wanted to cry, but she'd rigged her tear-ducts to serve as heat-shunts for her Akosofus.
On the rooftop, rain sizzled across the bitumen, shimmering like liquid neon. Ayako sat Juan against a rusted HVAC unit, his shoulders slouching, chin dropping to his collarbone, the holopolymer of his netsuit glitching out.
She sagged into the space beside him. "I'm so sorry," she said to Juan, who said nothing, and would never say anything ever again. "I'm so fuckin' sorry," she sobbed, the words lurching out of her, her repurposed tear-ducts itching, burning with nonexistent tears. "This all happened because of me. Because of what I fuckin' am. What Arasaka made me."
"Now, now." Oiwa phased into existence, her metamaterial cloaking melting away. "He's dead, Ayako-san. He can't hear you." Her back unfolded in a succession of sharp clicks, and she drew her katana, her head lit from behind in a rainbow nimbus. She stared at Ayako, tipping her head to one side. Her face was a pale, expressionless mask that reminded Ayako of ko-omote.
Ayako drew Onibi and sprang to her feet with a cry of raw, animal rage, Oiwa swaying back and raising her katana, their blades clanging, the reek of hot metal thick in the wet air. Ayako struck again, and Oiwa smoothly parried and side-stepped, her tabi-boot connecting with Ayako's lower-back, pitching her forward to the wet, gritty bitumen.
Ayako jumped to her feet and pivoted, riding the momentum of her swing straight into another parry, this one opening her solar-plexus for a hard, sharp punch. She gasped as the air was driven out of her by the blow, doubling over.
"This is pathetic," said Oiwa, kicking Ayako into a skid over the roof's wet grit. "I see you've been pushing yourself a little too hard, Ayako-san. You're dying. You don't have very long."
"Fuck you," said Ayako, willing herself to her feet. She wobbled, then lunged again. Oiwa stepped to the side, Onibi carving a molten rut into the rusted metal above Juan's lifeless head.
"Suppose it doesn't help that Juan-san's dead," said the cyberninja, grinning like a skull. "Really has thrown off your game, hasn't it, Ayako-san?"
The scream of anti-gravs shattered the air. Ayako heard Valerie call out, watched her drop from above, landing with the precision of a gymnast. She leveled the Malorian with Oiwa's head and said, "Fuck off, 'Sakabitch."
Ayako looked up, saw Judy, Panam and Buster hanging out of the AV's open door, their guns trained on Oiwa. From behind the sights of his handcannon, Buster said, "This is the bitch everyone is yammering about? Don't look like much. Another 'Saka shitheap." He jumped down, the ground quaking under the impact of so much Militech steel. His oculars panned over to Juan's slouching corpse. "Christ Almighty," muttered the borg. "Poor kid."
V moved toward Oiwa, who stood stock-still, backlit by neon glare, visibly calculating her odds against all of them and finding, to her immense irritation, that they weren't very good. "AI or fuckin' not," said V, "y'can't take on all of us, and you fuckin' know it. Until now, s'only been you against one or two people. Now? Y'gotta whole posse here wants to see you scrapped, cuntface."
Oiwa shrugged. "You're right, V-san," said the AI. Her back opened up in sharp staccato, unfolding like an elaborate origami trick. Magnetic clips locked the katana into place, her hardware folding over it again.
V breathed an internal sigh of relief; her gamble had worked. AIs weren't people. They were simulacrums operating on the parameters coded in their software; the things they felt were only approximations of feeling. AIs, when you stripped away the elaborate veneer of humanness, were ultimately just computers operating on algorithms of optimums and sub-optimums. And in this case, the optimum was to disengage, because Oiwa knew she couldn't handle all of them at once.
V kept the Malorian on her. "Piss off," she said.
Oiwa bowed, slowly dissolving into the scenery like a chameleon, taking on the mottled hues of deep shadow, wet concrete, bright neon. "I still got her on my oculars," said Buster. "Got a thermal toggle, and her chrome burns real hot." He was tracking Oiwa with his handcannon. When the cyberninja was gone, Buster lowered the gun, the thing transforming back into a metal claw. "She's gone," he grunted. "For now."
Ayako said nothing. Then, "Help me get Juan." She stood, went to haul his corpse up.
Buster gently nudged her away, then carefully maneuvered Juan's bulk over his shoulder. Ayako made a sound like a sob. "You just take it easy," he told her, uncharacteristically soft. "I got him."
"Why ain't Trauma got him?"
Buster looked at her like he was debating whether or not he wanted to slap her upside the head. "Why do you think, shortstack?"
V cringed at herself, realizing her mistake and feeling very fucking stupid for it. "Sorry."
"Where do you want us to take him?" Buster asked Ayako, his tone surprisingly gentle.
"Crematic, over on Hopi," said Ayako. She started walking toward the Surveyor, seemingly in a stupor. "My TT Platinum," she murmured, scratching angrily at the corners of her oculars, "only covers dependents and spouses."
The flight to Crematic was quiet, Ayako holding Juan the whole time there.
Wedged between a twenty-four laundromat and a Taco Ted's, Crematic looked part dentist office, part pachinko parlor, its exterior and interior done up in neon and bright, cartoon-look plastics. The stores were fully automated, though there were onsite technicians; but they mostly stayed in the back, watching porn on their laptops until something broke, or a customer got uppity enough to warrant their attention.
They stepped inside, into a waiting room carpeted in cheap polyester. Opposite the door stood a wall-sized S.C.S.M interface, the buttons offering everything from Deluxe (burial urn included) to Economy (a reconstituted cardboard box) cremation packages. Buster pulled out a burnt drawer, settled Juan's body down on it. "Kid deserved better than this," said the borg, shaking his head. He patted Juan's broad chest, noticed the hole in it. "Stabbed," he remarked. "Wound's cauterized." Buster peered at Ayako, who was sitting in a hard plastic chair by the wall, fiddling with a piece of holopaper she'd torn off from a Modern Funerals screamsheet.
"Feel so fuckin' bad for her," said Judy. "If that was Val, I dunno—fuck, I don't wanna even think 'bout it."
Panam nodded. "Me either," she agreed.
Ayako stood up, walked over to Juan and placed a small origami crane atop him. "All the things I wish you could've had," she told him, stepping back. Buster pushed the drawer in and secured the latch. Ayako punched the Deluxe button on the S.C.S.M interface, the cremator's guts igniting into a dull, fiery roar.
A few minutes later, a smaller hatch slid open, a steel burial urn inside it. A stock machine-voice thanked them for using Crematic, and that it hoped to see them again soon for any and all their future funerary needs.