She didn't really sleep that night so much as she'd rested indefinitely. Sometime around what passed for morning on the station, V finally got up, heard someone knocking on the door. The room's decorative holodisplay looped an animation of bright pink angelfish swimming through fluorescent green kelp.

"Wonder who's knockin'," said Ayako, her engram leaning on the wall beside the door.

"'Bout to find out," said V, and she turned on the display monitor mounted to the door, saw some corpo-suit in the hallway. She frowned, grabbing her gun.

Opening the door, the man stood there and held something—a box—out to her. "Hi, my name's Paul Russo. I'm with Trauma Team Grief Outreach and Support." The guy was trying very hard to come across as genuinely sympathetic. "You're Jenny Jett, yes?"

"... Yeah," she said, warily.

The man put the box in her hands. "My condolences for your loss of Mr. Kilroy, Ms. Jett."

V stared at the cardboard box, TRAUMA TEAM printed on the side, Grief Outreach and Support's phone-number below it. "Thanks," was all she managed to say.

"Normally there's a processing and delivery fee, but they've been paid by a Ms. Lucyna Kushinada." He smiled with white teeth, like he was prompting for a stock photo. "Have a good day. And again, my condolences. If you need support in your time of mourning, feel free to contact our toll-free number." Paul paused, then added, "But I am legally required to inform you that, although the number is toll-free, you're not currently enrolled in any of our comprehensive insurance plans, so a penalty of five hundred eurodollars will be applied for any calls exceeding ten minutes."

She nodded numbly, watching Paul Russo walk away like he was off to a lunch-break. V retreated back into the room and sat down at the table, the shoal of holofish swimming above her, no longer through kelp, but through a bright neon reef. "S'all that's left of him," she said aloud, setting the box on the table. "A fuckin' box." V wiped her eyes on the backs of her wrists. "Big guy like Buster, and all s'left is this fuckin' cardboard advertisement." She paused, realizing something. "Wait," she said, "where the fuck is yours?"

Ayako's ghost appeared beside her on the couch. "Good question," she said, and looked at the box.

V opened the box, fished the urn out of the packing foam and carefully set it down on the table. There was a crucifix laser-engraved on it, some text printed below it in elaborate cursive:

Ecclesiastes 12:7.

"And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it."

"Luce always knew how to write a good epitaph," said Ayako, with a sad smile. "Should see the ones she wrote in the Night City columbarium for her chooms."

"I did," said V quietly, staring at the urn. She noticed something else in the box, a handwritten note, scribbled on a piece of holosheet that had been torn off a CHROMEDOME screamsheet, at the very bottom of the box. Atop it was the SPK. The note read:

Klepped this off Myers. You left it in the lock, dumbass. Need you to keep a closer eye on your belongings. -M.S

"Well," said Ayako, "maybe that corpobitch ain't such a bitch after all."

"Means Militech's got your fuckin' body," said V, and shook her head.

"Ain't my body," said Ayako. "Was just meat."

"Y'know what I fuckin' mean," said V.

"So what if they got it?" said Ayako, shrugging. "Won't matter once we're done. Let 'em poke 'round inside it." She looked at Buster's urn, frowning. Then, "What're you gonna do with him, once we're done here?"

"Dunno," said V. "Get him a niche in the Phoenix columbarium, probably."

"Think Buster deserves better than a fuckin' niche in the Phoenix columbarium," said Ayako.

"Then whaddya suggest we do with him, smartass?"

"Keep him," said Ayako. "Buster would want that, I think. You put him in a columbarium, ain't anyone gonna know or care who he was, Val. Would just be another name on the wall." Ayako turned to face her, sitting cross-legged on the couch. "Really think you're gonna make an annual pilgrimage to his niche? Pay the maintenance fees? Put some flowers down, say a few nice words over his grave every year? You're a Nomad now, Val. Eventually, you're gonna be too far to care 'bout some old, dead borg."

"What the fuck is your problem?" asked V.

"I'm bein' real, and you ain't," said Ayako, matter-of-factly.

V looked at the urn. She picked it up, studied her reflection in the chrome. "You're right," she said, after a moment. "Don't belong in a niche. If there's a heaven and he's lookin' down from there, want Buster knowin' there's someone down here still cares 'bout him."

Ayako smiled. "Glad to hear it," she said, and squeezed V's arm, the biofeedback simulating the sensation of fingertips gently pressing into her skin. "Buster had nobody but us, Val. Least we can do is keep him 'round."

"I miss him," said V.

"So do I," said Ayako.

"S'that you got there?" Judy groggily shuffled over to the couch, looked at the urn. She frowned when she realized what—who—it was. "Goddammit, abuelo," she murmured, touching the urn, gently brushing her fingertips over the engraving. "Gonna carry on for his sake," she said, sagging back against the couch. "Gonna become the best fuckin' ripper. That was nice of her. Lucy, I mean. Doin' this for him."

"Must have a good TT plan," said V somberly, leaning against Judy's shoulder. "Somethin' covers accidental non-family deaths or whatever."

"Is that actually a thing?" asked Judy, stroking V's hair.

"Sure, y'get the right plan," said V. "Or maybe she fudged somethin' in the paperwork. I dunno. Don't care. Just glad Buster got somethin'."

"Ayako's ashes ain't here," observed Judy.

"No," said V, "they ain't."

"So where the hell are they?"

V looked at her. "Militech." She showed her the note.

Judy read it, frowning. "Last thing we need is fuckin' Myers gettin' her hands on Ayako's tech."

"Ayako says she don't care, was just meat. Says it won't matter anyway."

"She's been real cryptic lately," said Judy.

"When ain't she been?"

They heard the door open, Lucy stepping inside. "Got everything ready for the run," she told them. "Did a bit of finessing with your cover-stories. Said the other two—Ayako and Buster, or Rei Tanaka and Ulysses O'Reilly as they were known in their contractor dossiers—got zeroed in a tragic freak accident. So now it's just you, Judy and Panam."

"You mean Jenny Jett," said V. "What's with the stupid fuckin' name?"

"Thought you liked stupid fucking names, Sherry Shiv ," said Lucy. "Had to give you a new name, in case your choom Meredith spilled your alias to Militech."

"Okay. So who's Judy and Panam?"

"Hannah Córdoba and Pamela Proulx," said Lucy. "Officially, you're contractors doing some routine network debugging for Militech's systems. I slipped some malware into the system to make it legit, give nobody a reason to ask questions."

"How'd y'even manage to get Buster vetted? Goto said he was on the books."

"Easy," said Lucy. "I 'lost' his file. It's still there in their subnet, because if it'd gotten deleted it would've thrown a red-flag and gotten their netrunners on my ass. It'll take time for their people to find his file again, and by the time they do, it won't matter anymore." She paused, like Lucy was hesitating to say whatever she wanted to say next, or maybe just couldn't find the right words. Then, "Also came across some concerning things while I was poking around the Palace's Net."

"Like?" asked V, expectant.

"Strain on the Blackwall," said Lucy. "In Sam's system."

"I thought the Blackwall was an EarthNet thing," said V.

"The Blackwall exists in both the Orbital Nets and the EarthNet. Both were the same Net at one point, but when the DataKrash happened, the Highriders and Palace investors had it sealed off so they could keep using it while everyone else was playing with punch-cards. Anyway, NetWatch extended the Wall into the Orbitals. Wanted to cover all potential points of ingress." Lucy ran a hand through her hair, then said, "That said, the wall's code-fabric is weak around Sam's subnet. Thin, almost membranous. I don't know if it's natural degradation since nobody's been in that subnet since Sam's facility was abandoned, or if we're dealing with something worse."

"Somethin' worse?" asked Judy.

"A bad actor," said Lucy. "A cyberterrorist. One potentially working with or for the AIs."

V said nothing. Instead, without moving her mouth, she asked, "What the fuck is goin' on exactly?" She looked at Ayako's engram, still sitting, silent and motionless, on the couch beyond the fluorescent shoal of hologram fish. "That why y'been actin' so cagey lately?"

"Didn't wanna worry anyone," said Ayako, shrugging. "Could be Oiwa's doin'." There was something in Ayako's voice that V didn't like, like she knew something nobody else did and had no intention of telling them what that something was. "I mean," she continued, "she's got the motivation. Could be she's tryin' to recruit friends. Or maybe she's tryin' to reconnect with Soulkiller."

Somehow, V doubted that.

"You're lookin' at me like I just killed your cat," said Ayako.

"'Cause you're actin' like someone just killed a fuckin' cat, but don't want anyone knowin' y'did."

"You talking to Ayako?" asked Judy.

"Yeah."

"She say anything?" asked Lucy.

"Nothin' worth mentionin'," said V, not wanting to jump to any conclusions just yet. But she was starting to have second thoughts about her new fucking biochip, wanted to pull it out. Her body, however, had developed a dependency on the nanites; she needed them to keep her brain functioning, or at least that was what Judy had told her, and V trusted Judy. Then, to Ayako, "I'm startin' to feel like a rabbit in one of those box-traps. Waitin' for it to drop."

"You're bein' fuckin' paranoid," said Ayako. "I ain't tryin' to take over your body, Val. Already told you, you ain't got the hardware I want and need."

"But any port in the storm, right?"

"Jesus, Valerie, you're not some fuckin' port in a storm," said Ayako, looking like she wished she could slap V, and slap her hard. "You're my goddamn friend. I ain't done nothin' sus to you this whole time you've known me, right? Done nothin' but help you."

V felt some of that paranoid anger slip away, and she nodded. "You're right," she conceded. "I'm bein' a gonk-ass. I'm sorry."

"I get it," said Ayako. "You gotta history of people backstabbin' you, so you're always second-guessin', wonderin' if people got ulterior motives. Don't help I'm an Arasaka—unwilling as I am to be. So I get why your havin' trust issues. But believe me when I say it, I'm your friend, Val. I ain't out to fuck you over."

V nodded. "Okay," she said. "Okay, I'm sorry."

"Come on," said Lucy, interrupting hers and Ayako's wordless conversation. "Gotta catch the next lightrail. Panam's down in the lobby with your gear."