More memories unfolded as they ventured toward the core, unfolding like the disjointed dreams of a schizophrenic on amphetamine: V saw Juan breaking into the fluorescent corridors of Twin Mesas, saw him jack into the facility's mainframe; saw Gotoda and Juan carrying Ayako's body to a car parked among the saguaros and trash; saw Arasaka taking the body while Juan got manhandled by some soldier-boys; saw Gotoda bowing to Saboru in his skyline office.
"He used Juan to bring me back to Arasaka," said Ayako, and she sounded unsurprised. "So I could work on Relic," she added, and looked at V.
"If that's true," said V, "then how come Daisuke helped you escape Mikoshi?"
"Guilt, maybe?"
"He said you had some kinda 'destiny' to fulfill," said V, recalling something Gotoda had said to her a while ago.
"Who fuckin' knows," said Ayako, shaking her head, the animation running at a smooth two-hundred-frames-per-second. V couldn't believe Ayako got that kind of latency with her hardware, but then again, she shouldn't have been surprised; not many people could host an AI on their chrome, partitioned or not.
The memory playback stopped abruptly, dissolving into the matrix, in its place polygons of clustered light: three-dimensional pixels approximating the shape of a hallway lined with doors. They walked carefully along the gridlines, the lights coalescing into solidness as they were texture-mapped in something resembling glass: a skybridge extending over the rainbow sprawl of corporate dataforts beyond the boundaries of the spaceport subnet.
Mochi padded ahead of them, her little bobtail twitching. "There's Black ICE ahead," meowed the small cat. "We're close to the core."
V grinned, extending her hand, cycling through her CLI until she found the synaptic protocol for Castlebreaker. The katana's polygons rendered smoothly in her hand, its blade burning the texture of molten steel. She looked at Ayako. "Preem ICEbreaker, this," she said. "You really optimized the shit outta it."
"Would've been unwieldy as hell if I ain't done that," said Ayako, the ghost of a smirk touching her lips.
"Why Onibi, though?" asked V. "Coulda made the graphical representation anythin'."
"It's practical," said Ayako, simply. "If I did somethin' like a bomb or whatever, I'd have to animate that shit, do the particle effects—all that. Just a lotta work. But a sword, that's simple, functional." She looked at V and shrugged. "Besides, it's fun as hell swingin' a sword around. Feels good."
The gridlines suddenly canted downward, as though they were descending a steep slope. They started grinding down them, the approximation of wind rushing past, lending some reality to this unreality in which they found themselves. V had gotten pretty good at navigating the Net; it was like navigating an infinite skate-park. She could see the Black ICE ahead: textured-mapped in something simulating obsidian or anthracite, breaking apart and coming together again like shapes in a lightspeed kaleidoscope. "Holy fuck, shit's movin' fast," said V to Ayako, watching as something broke away from the ICE: an anti-infiltration subroutine. "We're gonna hafta weave, time our—"
"I got it," interrupted Ayako, pulling up her own CLI and punching a counter-attack program from the list of synaptic commands. Something like a light-show, like hundreds of flashing lasers, erupted from Ayako and hurtled toward the anti-infiltrators, derezzing them into clouds of useless bits.
The flashes of memory—Gotoda coming to Phoenix, his mind gone, posting up in some izakaya that might have been Beautiful Lumps—gave way to the non-color void of cyberspace, to its shimmering dataforts and the neurodigital leylines upon which they stood. They rode the gridline, felt the imaginary G-force of the matrix pushing against them, picking up speed, Black ICE rushing toward them, Mochi clinging to Ayako's shoulder and telling them to wait, wait—go .
V struck at the ICE with Castlebreaker, the code-fabric shattering like glass. Ayako laughed, then said, "Holy shit, it works even better than I thought. Shit was mil-grade AI ICE."
"Got you t'thank for gettin' it," said V, grinning. She turned her attention to the geometric whorls of Black ICE, timing her blows, slashing through the code-fabric as though it were kiddie-script.
The shifting patterns of Black ICE became thicker and more complex as they descended deeper into the subnet, hurtling toward the Core, creating intricate latticeworks of shapes that put in mind the subtle, elaborate fractals of snowflakes. V smashed her way through each layer, Ayako derezzing any attack programs that broke away from the ICE, streaking toward them like meteorites.
"The final layer is coming up," Mochi informed them, her claws digging into the texture-mapped polymer of Ayako's netsuit asset as though she were afraid of being whipped away and blown into the matrix.
V slashed through the thick ICE, the code-fabric erupting into polychromatic shards, latency hiccuping for a moment before smoothing out. They were plunging into a well of tightly-woven code, down and down, faster and faster, diving deep into the subnet's data.
And when they landed, they found themselves standing among texture-mapped wood and rice-paper and tatami, a Japanese sand-garden beyond a pair of sliding doors painted with cranes stalking among reeds. V heard chimes somewhere, the rustle of wind in trees.
Gotoda was sitting in this room, dressed in a sober-looking yukata, sitting on a zaizu and sipping barley tea, animation as smooth as Ayako's. "Enjoy the peace while you can," he told them, matter-of-factly. "It will only be a matter of time before Sam destroys this—and me."
"I thought Sam already got t'ya, Daisuke," said V, and sat down on the tatami.
"He did," he agreed. "But I hid myself again in the spaceport's data. To buy myself some time. Some peace." He set his cup of barley tea down, regarding them with stoic calm. It was probably the calmest V had ever seen him. "I wanted to show Ayako-sama the truth before I am gone."
"Gotoda," said Ayako, and sat on her knees. "I forgive you, okay? Look," and she went quiet for a moment, watching him with a melancholic look. "Look," she continued, "you don't gotta sacrifice yourself as some kinda apology. You still got your neural matrix."
"But my body is dead," said Gotoda. "I cannot access my WNI, Ayako-sama."
"You can use mine. Use Mochi's protocol to transfer your engram data, Gotoda."
Gotoda seemed to consider this, then slowly shook his head. "I do not deserve this kindness, Ayako-sama. I betrayed Juan-san. I brought your body to Saboru-sama because he demanded so." He stared at her, frowning. "You were trapped within Arasaka, within Mikoshi, because of me."
"But it all worked out," Ayako countered. "If you hadn't stuck me in 'Saka, kept me workin' on the Relic under Hellman, Val wouldn't have a goddamn cure. Everythin', it happens for a reason, Gotoda. Sure, you might've betrayed me—whatever. It was what you had to do, and it worked out. If you'd done anythin' else? Val would die." She paused, emoting a smile. "Besides," continued Ayako, "you've made it up to me a hundred goddamn times over. Use my WNI, choom."
Mochi padded over to Gotoda, sat on her haunches beside him. "I can establish the necessary connection whenever you like, Gotoda-san."
"C'mon," said Ayako, "do it, Gotoda. We'll nuke this fuckin' subnet again. Just gotta show us where the program's core-nodes are." She glanced at V, then said, "Val's got Castlebreaker."
Gotoda seemed to consider that, then slowly rose to his feet. He turned to the open sliding doors, and she and Ayako followed, stepping out into the sand-garden. Gotoda pointed at the garden, then said, "The core-nodes are right here. Hidden."
V peered down at the patterns, saw each grain as a microscopic node, like a tiny cube, texture-mapped to resemble sand. Each groove in the garden represented a connection between the system's data-nodes.
"Fuckin' destroy it all," Ayako told her. "Mochi will jack us out before the system collapses."
V nodded, making her way out into the garden with Castlebreaker, raising the katana...
Started hacking, severing connections and shattering nodes. The virtual environment, with each blow, became increasingly more unstable, textures disappearing, polygons coming apart, data derezzing into screes of corrupted bits…. And right before it all collapsed, V came out of her net-coma, waking to realspace and the concerned faces of her chooms.
"Holy shit, y'had me worried," said Judy, touching V's cheek. "Y'okay, calabacita?" she asked, and kissed her before she could answer. "Buster was monitorin' y'both the whole time," she said, combing her fingers through V's hair. "Havin' some serious brain-spikes; we thought y'were gonna go into neuroshock."
"If they sustained that kind of brain-activity, they would have," said Buster. "And you know that, Alvarez. I taught you."
"I don't envy netrunners," remarked Panam, shaking her head.
"Also," said Buster, "your friend, the little Japanese guy? His corticals finally went dark." The borg frowned. "Just thought you'd want to know."
Ayako sat up in her net-chair, picking up Gotoda's neural matrix. "Ain't gone," she told Buster, and stood up. She showed him the small black cube. "Gotoda's in here, in the neural matrix."
"How?" said Buster. "He's dead as dead can be, deckhead."
Ayako shook her head. "Mochi used a data-transfer protocol," she told him. "Used my WNI as a proxy so his engram could hop into the neural matrix." She studied the cube. "I can talk to him with my WNI, long as he's in data-proximity. Can use my biochip's renderin' capabilities to ghost himself up."
"Shit, like Johnny Silverhand?" said Judy.
Ayako nodded. "Exactly, Judy."
V opened her mouth to say something, stopped when Gotoda suddenly appeared in her Kiroshi's visual field. "Holy fuck," she said aloud, "I can see him, too. How the fuck's that possible?"
"You had a WNI installed when the Technomancer's upgraded your hardware, Valerie-san," said Gotoda's engram. In her head, Gotoda looked like he had in the memories of Chiba, presenting in a black mil-grade netsuit, a patchwork leather jacket of band-names and holobadges, and a bright red mohawk.
"Y'look great, Daisuke," she said, smiling.
"I miss who I used to be," he answered, smiling. "Now I can be that person again."
"But why show up in my head?"
"Because you are my friend, Valerie-san. And because I want to help you." Gotoda hoisted himself onto a console, his booted feet dangling a couple inches above the tiled floor. "You are going to need my help with Oiwa," he told her, matter-of-factly. "I will explain it more later, but for now, I just wish for you to focus on getting to the Crystal Palace."
"Awright," she said, and paused. "Do I gotta worry 'bout—"
"No," interrupted Gotoda mildly, "you do not have to worry about Sam. The AI no longer has a hold over me. I am free, thanks to yours and Ayako-sama's efforts, Valerie-san." He hopped off the console, slowly lowered himself to his knees and bowed dogeza, his forehead touching the tiled floor. "Thank you, Valerie-san," said Gotoda. "You and Ayako-sama have given me back my freedom."