"I was afraid of this," said Gotoda, mirroring V's movement, smoothly dancing around Oiwa's blade.

"Y'mind elaboratin', Goto?"

"Yes, Gotoda-san," said Oiwa, rushing toward V, striking out with the katana and failing to connect, "elaborate for Valerie-san."

"Arasaka used Soulkiller as the foundation for much of our research—including the onryō engrams," he said, both of them weaving around Oiwa and whipping their arms, monowire flashing. Oiwa ducked, the wire shattering the glass housing of a holo-ad projector. "Oiwa" he continued, swaying back, away from Oiwa's katana, "is a Soulkiller offshoot that developed into an independent artificial intelligence. She wasn't this autonomous when she was tethered to Arasaka's systems."

"How the fuck does an offshoot become a full-blown AI?"

"Data aggregation," said Gotoda, intuitively coaching V through an elaborate sequence of evasive footwork.

Ayako struck at Oiwa again with Onibi, Oiwa flowing to the side of the molten blade, quickly deflecting a bullet V had fired from the Malorian. "You're just a fuckin' copy!" she exclaimed.

"I am, yes," said Oiwa, and grinned Ayako's Yaeba grin, hurtling toward her, katana raised.

Ayako parried the blade, then stepped toward Oiwa, thrusting Onibi. Oiwa slid back, her servos screaming with the effort, and leaped onto the bartop, ducking underneath V's monowire as it passed laterally through the air above her head, its oiled alloy catching the yellow neon of a Sapporo advertisement. Ayako jumped up after Oiwa, the two of them dancing across the countertop to the throbbing pulse of heavy dance-synths, shattering glasses and bottles, their katanas clashing, coming apart, then clashing again in a frenetic battle-dance.

The lights began to strobe again, the club's walls and floors whorling into approximated gravitational singularity, Ayako's and Oiwa's figures shuddering across the bartop, then down and over the blood-sticky bodies strewn across the animated stardust of the dance-floor.

V attempted to flank Oiwa, alternating between the Malorian and monowire in a frenzied death-dance, attempting to draw the AI off Ayako. But Oiwa flowed around the bullets and wire like a jet of water, singularly focused on Ayako, coming at her with the cold, tunnel-visioned fury of a machine whose purpose was to kill, and to kill quickly.

"Valerie-san," said Gotoda suddenly, smoothly moving with her through the steps of her gun-and-wire dance, "let me intervene. I need your permission to access your neuroware."

"The fuck y'gonna do with my neuroware, Goto?"

"I am going to attempt to quickhack Oiwa-san with Castlebreaker," said Gotoda.

"Last time I tried to quickhack her, I almost died," said V.

"If you keep pushing your Sandevistan, you will die, Valerie-san." V became aware, then, of the blood dripping from her nostrils, the powerful ache throbbing in her head. Gotoda looked gravely at her, then said, "We will not be able to destroy Oiwa-san outside of the Net, but I can sever her engram's connection to the biointerface."

V watched Ayako and Oiwa come together again, come apart. The flash of Oiwa's blade. Then Ayako toppled backward, and V told Gotoda to do what he needed to do.

Her body seized for a moment, her actions no longer hers, Gotoda working her like a puppet. Two windows opened in her visual field, cascading unfamiliar data. Arasaka data, from the looks of it. Another window opened, this one a corporate netrunning IDE—an Integrated Development Environment—and then the CLI came up, scrolling through commands. In the IDE, Gotoda started writing code: some kind of tweak to Castlebreaker's asynchronous functions. Then he updated its executable.

Oiwa spun and charged at V, and V, reasserting her control, stepped to the side, the blade grazing her cheek. "It will take a few minutes to update," Gotoda informed her. "Just keep Oiwa-san busy until I can execute the ICEbreaker, Valerie-san."

"Valerie!" Ayako stood up, with visible effort, and kicked Onibi toward her.

V swayed back, Oiwa's blade narrowly missing her throat, and dropped to her knee, picking up Onibi and raising it. Oiwa's katana slammed into the molten blade; V felt the impact in her bones, like they'd splintered into microscopic fractures.

She sprang to her feet and swung the katana, Oiwa smoothly deflecting, ducking under the follow-through of V's monowire and smashing the point of her elbow into V's stomach. V doubled-over, gasping. Oiwa drove her knee into V's chin, the pneumatics in her cyberware magnifying the impact into something akin to being struck in the face by an industrial piston, and V's head whipped back, her oculars glitching into starbursts. If it hadn't been for the high-tensile ligaments and alloy flexors woven into her muscle, her vertebrae would have snapped clean.

"Just a little longer, Valerie-san," urged Gotoda.

V managed to right herself, digging deep into her reserves, pushing the Sandevistan to its absolute brink. Blood gushed from her nostrils as she clashed with Oiwa, their blades connecting. Oiwa was struggling now to match her, and V managed to carve a molten rut across Oiwa's chassis, bisecting the Arasaka logo embossed between her breasts.

Her cyberware burned, scorching the skin around her dermal vents. V's biomonitor flashed a warning across her visual field: her core-temperature was rising to near-fatal levels. "What's wrong, Valerie-san?" taunted Oiwa, leaning toward her. "Is it too much for you? You should have worn your netsuit."

Then Oiwa suddenly reeled back as if she'd been struck hard, dropping her katana and shrieking. She hit the floor, landing in a pool of someone's blood and the jigsaw pieces of their body, her oculars glitching out. Writhed and jerked like she'd been shot by a hundred scav-guns all at once, clawing at her oculars and facial implants like she wanted to tear them off her face.

V felt light-headed and steaming hot, her hands tremoring. She saw Judy and Panam running toward her with huge buckets of ice, unceremoniously dumping the contents onto her, jarring V from her fever-stupor. And they kept bringing more buckets until she was cool enough to think without it hurting. "You pendeja!" cried Judy. "What the fuck were you thinkin', pushin' yourself like that?

"She's not out of the woods yet," said Buster to Judy. "Lay her down, put her on ice. And Valerie, I don't want to hear shit from you. No complaints."

"Ayako," was all V said.

Buster looked at her. "I used my last biocoolants on her, but I can't get her temperature to stay down," he told V, as she laid down on the floor, letting Panam and Judy dump more ice onto her. "Oiwa cut her netsuit open. She's heating up faster than the biocoolant can cool her down." He frowned, knitting his eyebrows. "She needs to get to that Technomancer clinic—and so do you. Patched her suit with some polymer gel as best I could, but I can only do so much."

"I'm hangin' in there," said Ayako, stumbling up behind Buster, who turned and scolded her for moving. "It doesn't matter, Grandpa. Calm down," she said, and grinned. But there was real pain in the grin.

"You need to conserve your energy. Stop moving around," said Buster, firmly.

Ayako looked down at V. "You feelin' okay?"

"I'm fuckin' cold," said V, shivering under the heap of ice, feeling blood-slick tile under her and idly wondering whose blood it was.

"I rather you be fuckin' cold than dead," said Judy sharply, extruding her personal link and connecting it to one of V's chipware sockets, probably running diagnostics on her biomonitor. She glanced at Oiwa, who'd gone motionless, the microlights in her oculars glowing like tiny ring-lights. "What're we gonna do 'bout that puta? Could pulp her fuckin' head right now, be good fuckin' riddance."

"She'd come back eventually. Gotta destroy the engram," said V. Then, shivering violently, her teeth chattering, she added, "'Sides, it's Ayako's body. Or was. S'her decision what happens with Oiwa."

"Much as I hate to agree, Valerie is right," said Panam. "I know I would want the final decision if I was Ayako."

"Leave her," said Ayako, and when she saw the stunned looks on their faces, she added, "Just trust me on this, okay?"

"Don't know if that's wise, deckhead," said Buster. "You gonking on us?"

"Do you or do you not trust me?" asked Ayako.

Buster went quiet, then heaved a sigh. "I trust you. Reckon everyone else does, too."

"We do," said V, automatically. She held Onibi up, then said to Ayako, "Here. Ain't that good with swords, turns out."

Ayako shook her head. "Keep it," she said, and smiled. "I officially pass Onibi to you, Valerie. So better learn how to use swords." She shrugged. "Maybe download some instructional braindances."