Lucy, with the rest of their belongings, had also included V's acid-green snakeskin suit from Hansen's party at the Black Sapphire in Dogtown. V studied herself in the mirror, feeling weirdly nostalgic about the fit. Gotoda ghosted into existence beside the mirror, inspecting her reflection. "Suits you, Valerie-san," he said decisively, and nodded. Then Gotoda looked at her and said, "You should wire me into your 'ware before you go to Event Horizon."

"It ain't like I don't trust ya, Goto. Just…" V trailed off, hunting for the words. She finished with her eyeliner, gently smudging it with the pad of her forefinger. "Y'know," she continued, fishing out her tube of black lipstick, "after that shit with Johnny? Shit's kinda touchy."

"Oiwa-san is hunting you, Valerie-san," Gotoda reminded her, frowning. "You need my help if you want to stop her."

She fixed her lipstick, put the tube away. "I know," she said, and looked at him. V sighed, shaking her head. Then, "Fine, sure. Know you're right 'bout this, choom." She paused. "Say, Goto," she said, watching him, "what's the story 'bout that neural matrix? Myers, she wants it. Says y'took it from Night Corp?"

"Sam told me to," said Gotoda, and leaned against the window, crossing his arms over his chest. The holobadges on his beaded leather jacket looped clips of Japanese rockerboys and rockergirls smashing guitars, shrieking into mics. "He wanted to download. But I denied him this, took it away. Hid the thing in my head. Then took it out because I could not take it anymore." He rapped tattooed knuckles against his skull, then grinned, adding, "It was my greatest act of rebellion, Valerie-san."

V grinned back, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Something like that in the hands of the NUSA, she knew, would be a fucking catastrophe. "Is that what the FIA, what the fuckin' NUSA want with it?"

"I would imagine," said Gotoda, nodding. "Also," he added, "it would be a way to ensure Ayako-sama's cooperation."

"Whaddya mean?"

"If she does not come willingly, then they make her come unwillingly. They download her engram." Gotoda paused, rubbing his chin. "If they knew about me, about what happened at the spaceport? They would likely want to do the same to me, Valerie-san."

"The neural matrix has enough fuckin' storage capacity t'hold two fuckin' engrams and an AI?" asked V, disbelieving.

" Hai ," said Gotoda, nodding. "Sam is an engram as well, Valerie-san. But… different. A mutant," said Gotoda, furrowing his brow. He ran his hand back through his crest of blood-red hair.

"Sam's a fuckin' AI," said V.

"But what is an engram, Valerie-san? It is just another kind of AI." Gotoda shook his head. Then, "Donald Lundee is part of Sam, and Sam is part of him. Together, they make something more, something different."

Judy came out of the bathroom, wearing a tight iridescent dress trimmed in synthetic macaw feathers, her make-up some neon flavor of punk-kitsch. She grinned at V. "Man, can't wait t'see what abuelo's gonna look like," she said, and kissed V. Judy slipped her arms around V, admiring their reflections in the mirror. "We look so fuckin' good," she said, and giggled. She stopped, caught the uneasiness in V's expression. "Y'okay, babe? Look worried or somethin'."

V told her what Gotoda had just said, adding, "What the fuck are we actually dealin' with?"

Ayako said, "Hybrids like me, dumbass. Transcendentals." She stepped into the room, hitting the touch-screen to close the door.

"Still don't answer much of anythin'," said V. Then she said, "Where's your drip? Still wearin' the netsuit. Thought y'said y'could take it off." V paused, adding, "Y'know, for showers or whatever."

"I can take it off for like ten, maybe fifteen minutes," said Ayako, shrugging. "Any longer than that, I'd fuckin' deep-fry. So I gotta dress-code exception." She looked at them and grinned. "You two are lookin' nice."

"S'nice gettin' t'dress up sometimes," said V. Then, "We good to take our weapons into the club?"

"That whole thing 'bout us bein' Militech contractors got us special privileges," said Ayako. "Also why our combat cyberware ain't been shut off. We're good to bring 'em in."

"How'd Lucy manage t'get us these credentials anyhow? Said she ain't been netrunnin' since Night City."

"Your choom, Meredith," said Ayako.

V blinked. "Seriously?"

"Seriously," said Ayako, nodding. "Guess she felt kinda bad for throwin' you under the bus."

"Or she's just doin' it 'cause Myers told her to," said Judy. Then, "Where's Panam?"

"Her and Buster are waitin' down in the lobby for your asses," said Ayako. "Sent me up here to see what the goddam hold-up was."

"I just gotta do one more thing, and I'll be right down," said V, and grabbed the neural matrix from the bedside table, heading into the bathroom. She found some micropore tape in there, in the complementary first-aid kit, and found the little slot on the neural matrix, flipping it open and extruding a length of fiber-optic filament. "Y'sure this ain't gonna fuck anythin' in my 'ware?" she asked Gotoda, who was sitting on the toilet lid like some rockerboy Thinker, looking at her.

"I promise, Valerie-san," he said, reassuringly. "I'm not going to do anything bad to you."

She trusted him, wired the fiber-optic link to her neuroport. Her biomonitor's HUD came up in her ocular display, running diagnostics on the new hardware, downloading all necessary drivers and BIOS updates. Then she felt her sensorium amplify, her senses doubling on themselves, like she was two people at once. Saw Gotoda in the mirror. He was standing behind her, mirroring her every gesture. "What the fuck is goin' on, Goto?" asked V, sounding more scared than she wanted to. Once she realized Gotoda wasn't controlling her, she relaxed; but that sensation of everything being squared freaked her out. She'd once read that people who suffered heart-attacks felt intense anxiety before it hit, and that was what this, whatever this was, felt like.

"It is overwhelming at first, processing so much data," said Gotoda, soothingly. "But the hardware upgrades you'd received at Twin Mesas makes it possible, Valerie-san. You will acclimate, adapt."

"Could you control me if you wanted to?" she asked, wondering if she'd made a mistake, fallen into some kind of trap.

"Only if you listen," he assured her. "Think of me as an instinct, Valerie-san. You can either choose to go with your instinct, or you can ignore it altogether. But I would not advise ignoring your instincts. They are there for a reason. Survival mechanisms." He paused. Then Gotoda said, "Wiring me into your hardware allows me to directly assist you—if you permit it. I can temporarily override you if you grant me permission. But I promise, I do not want to hurt you nor control you. You are my friend, Valerie-san. I want to help you."

Anyone else had said that, V would have thought they were lying; but she really did trust Gotoda. "Awright, Goto," she said, taping the neural matrix to her chest, under her blouse where people couldn't see it, and running the wire up along her neck to the neuroport behind her ear, "I trust you, man."

She went back into the room. Ayako said, "See you're bringin' our choom along."

"He wants t'hang with us," said V, grinning.

"Did a good job hidin' it," said Judy, hooking her arm through V's.

"That is nice," said Gotoda suddenly, walking beside her. "It has been a while since I have felt someone's touch." He stopped, then bowed and quickly added, "I do not mean any disrespect, of course, Valerie-san."

"None taken, Goto. Relax," said V, and when she reached out to touch his shoulder—pure reflex—she could feel him, feel the leather of his jacket, the metal beads studding the shoulder. She yanked her hand back, wide-eyed. "Whoah," she said, "that's some intense fuckin' biofeedback."

"I'm wired into your system," said Gotoda, grinning brightly. He went quiet, seemingly wrestling with something in his head. Then, tentatively, "Could you… could you touch me again, Valerie-san? If you are comfortable? I could feel you, too."

"I ain't uncomfortable, Daisuke," she assured him, and looped her arm through his. "We're chooms, you and me."

Gotoda beamed, trotting alongside her, arm in arm. He looked embarrassed. "You do not know how much this means to me, Valerie-san."

Judy looked over, probably wondering why she was sticking her elbow out like that. "What the hell're you doin', calabacita?"

"Goto's here," said V. "I can feel him, he can feel me. So he's holdin' onto my arm."

Judy laughed. "God," she said, "if I ain't seen the kinda shit I seen, I'd think y'were fuckin' loca, babe." She peered at Gotoda, or at least, she peered at the space Gotoda was standing in, then said, "So if Valerie gets drunk, does that mean y'get drunk too, Goto?"

Gotoda seemed to consider that. "It just might," he said, and laughed.

"Said it might," said V, smiling. "Awright, Goto," she said, "when we get t'Event Horizon, m'gonna drink for both of us."

"A good sake would be nice," said Gotoda, sheepishly. "Or a nice tequila."

"I'll drink both, even though that's probably a bad fuckin' idea."

"Just do not get shitfaced, Valerie-san," he cautioned. "Remember, Oiwa-san is lurking."

Buster and Panam met them in the lobby, under the swirling holographic display of a shoal of bright tropical fish. Buster looked sharp in a black suit done in some corporate neo-military style, while Panam was rocking a tight neo-kitsch leopard-print dress. "I would rather wear jeans and a shirt, but apparently that's frowned upon," she said, smiling. "You two look good. Also, what took you so long?"

"Seriously," said Buster, eyeing them. "Started to grow roots waiting for you kids to hurry your asses up."

"Y'know how it is," said Ayako, shrugging. "Somethin'-somethin' women, or whatever that old joke is."

Buster snorted. "When my wife and I used to go out, she'd tell me fifteen minutes, then take an hour."

"Gotta look good," said V, grinning.

Event Horizon was a twenty minute lightrail ride from the hotel. V wondered if the same architect who'd designed the Phoenix spaceport terminal had been the architect who'd designed Event Horizon. The club was a hulking thing of shattered-look glass, black shards seemingly glued back together in some kintsugi ritual, each facet lit from behind in ghost-light that, for some reason, specifically reminded V of the coronas around blackholes. Electronic music pulsed from inside, the kind that snared and kicked and thumped.

A crowd of people waited outside the club, herded by meatheads, their bodies lost under obscene swells of grafted muscle. When they tried to skip the queue, one of the meatheads put a hand out to stop them, working a huscle routine about their weapons until Ayako told him who they were. The guy checked his dataslate, then, nice as a puppy, let them through with an apology. "Jesus," said Panam, as they made their way inside, "Lucy has some serious pull."

"She's nova at networkin'," said Ayako. "How she became Tycho's best fuckin' fixer so quick."

Walking into the club, it was like walking into a blackhole. The walls, ceiling, and floor looped a subtle singularity animation, and there was just enough of that eerie ghost-light to see their fellow patrons gyrating to the music. Then the ghost-lights strobed red, made everyone look like they were dancing through the stop-motion frames of some emergency event.