There were three rip-chairs inside the op-room, the walls racked with computer monitors and server-banks, a steady, subliminal machine-whine pitching in the room like white noise. V helped Buster heave Ayako into one of the chairs.

Buster pulled the biochip case from a drawer in the wall, setting it on the tiled floor. "The deckhead brought this over before that shit-show at the club," he explained, extruding his personal link and plugging it into the case. "Get your ass into the chair," he instructed V.

V did. RELIC MALFUNCTION flashed across her visual feed, her Kiroshis glitching as they struggled to compensate for the tanking refresh rate. "Buster, shit," she said, feeling herself falling down that long, dark well again, into the deeper shadows of death, "it's fritzin'. Fuckin' shit, I'm fuckin' dyin'!" V collapsed backward, her back meeting the chair's leather upholstery, black-tipped fingers clawing into the armrests, vision vanishing behind a cascade of artifacts. She heard Judy and Panam panicking, their voices slowly dissolving into static.

She saw Buster pull a fat rubber cable from a slot in the computer banks, plugging himself into the system via an occipital port. "Going to take care of you, kid," she heard him say, his voice pulling farther and farther away as if carried on a receding tide. His oculars glowed blue. "Alvarez, quit crying and get over here. Going to need your help."

Then V was falling, falling down into the unpleasant, familiar void of non-existence.

Except V was still alive. Or maybe, she thought, it was just the last synapses in her brain firing off, clawing for some kind of purchase on life—or something approximating life.

Texture-mapped tatami and wood. A sand-garden beyond sliding doors. The tinkle of wind-chimes. "This was Ayako-sama's family's mansion," said Gotoda, sipping barley tea. "On her mother's side, anyway. In Miyazu." He was dressed in a black yukata. Gotoda set the tea down and looked at her. "Or, rather," he continued, "what it would have looked like had they managed to keep it."

"Am I dead?" asked V seriously. Then, "Like am I fuckin' engram now?" She was dressed in her street-clothes, in her Samurai jacket, and although V didn't feel like an engram, how would she know what being an engram felt like? V wished she could ask Johnny about it, but he'd gone far away, way beyond her reach.

"You are not dead," Gotoda assured her. "You are in the Mikoshi Partition."

V blinked. "What?"

"This neural matrix we are in? It contains the FreeNet, Valerie-san. Or, rather, it contains the seed of it."

"That's the case, how the fuck did Night Corp get it? Thought it was Juan's and Ayako's project."

"Ayako-sama is a contractor, Valerie-san. She once contracted with Night Corp, until the company stole her project. They used her data to create this neural matrix," and Gotoda gestured around them.

"Why ain't Night Corp flatlined her? Ain't a corpo's style to leave loose ends."

"Simple. Ayako-sama is more valuable alive than dead."

"What the fuck is Night Corp up to, Goto?"

"I can answer that." Ayako slid open a paper-textured door, stepped inside. She was dressed in a red yukata patterned in cranes, her tabi-socked feet moving quietly over the hardwood texture of the floor. Her face was normal: no oculars, no hardware. She had the looks of a gravure model; V felt the biofeedback of a blush. "They wanted a leg-up on the competition. A way to operate without the scrutiny of the other corporations. A place for AI."

"You look—"

"Different," agreed Ayako. "I'm just fittin' into the theme of this place. That's all."

"Are you dead?"

"Depends on what you consider dead," said Ayako, kneeling on the zaisu beside Gotoda. "But never mind that right now, Val. Need you to focus. Once you're up again, it'll be time for the run on Sam. Head's gotta be in the game."

V said nothing, sitting cross-legged on the tatami, listening to the chimes. Then, "What's Night Corp doin' with AI?"

"Same thing any corp does. Findin' ways to capitalize." Ayako paused, then said, "Ain't sure, but it's possible the AI have taken the reins of the company for their own ends, whatever those might be." She frowned. "There's gonna be a reckonin' in a few years, Val. It's gonna test you. It's gonna test me. But I want you to know that whatever happens, I always got your back."

"You ain't tellin' me somethin'," said V.

"Maybe," admitted Ayako. "But if it was important, I'd tell you."

"Ayako-sama has nothing but everyone's best interests in mind," said Gotoda, and there was something in his tone, a quality suggesting finality. "Even if the methods might not seem correct in the beginning. But she has my support." He paused. "This is my farewell to you, Valerie-san. I am very glad we were able to speak one last time. And I am very glad you were my friend."

"Goto, what the fuck is goin' on?"

"What must go on, Valerie-san. I am going to join something greater, like Trevor-san."

"Fuck happened to Trevor?"

"He is gone," said Gotoda. "He left willingly, just as I am leaving willingly."

"But," Ayako cut in, "I'll be with you, Val. The whole way."

V woke suddenly to Judy crying, Panam comforting her, the charred remnants of the 'Saka biochip on a steel tray on her right. Smelled burnt electronics and flesh. "Got to stabilize her, Alvarez, now that the chip's out," she heard Buster growl. "Get a fucking grip on yourself and help me."

Out again. Back in the calm of Miyazu and the sound of wind-chimes. Gotoda was gone now, but Ayako was still there.

"You're gonna be fine," Ayako told her. "Chip's out. Now it's a matter of installin' the new one, fixin' all the neural damage. The nanites on the chip will help with that. Still, it's tricky." She stood up, gestured for V to follow, and she did.

They stepped out into the garden, except it wasn't a garden anymore; it was a Chiba street, neon pooling on the wet concrete. Ayako was herself again, in her netrunner suit, in her canary-yellow pozer and black glass insets. The textures were crisp, the biofeedback approximating the smell of karaage and beer. People walked by them, their models detailed, animated smooth. "Lotta NPCs," said V, walking beside Ayako past bright pachinko parlors, tenements, net-cafes, hostess bars, love hotels, rinky-dink yatais.

"They got basic personality matrices," said Ayako, shrugging. "Makes everythin' feel less lonely."

"Ain't much of a FreeNet if there ain't people usin' it."

"Yet," said Ayako. "And this ain't my FreeNet. This is Night Corp's attempt at my FreeNet." She glanced at V, pushing her hands into the pockets of her pozer. Seeing the look on V's avatar, she elaborated, "They copied my code, did some tweakin'. This is the Mikoshi Partition, sure. Same as Johnny Silverhand's engram was Johnny Silverhand."

"Dunno if you mean that in a good or bad way," said V, a mulch of trampled Styrofoam and cigarette packs crunching underfoot.

"Good way, I guess," said Ayako. "When you break humans down, we're all just meat and electricity. Engrams are just the electricity without the meat." She shrugged, then said, "All in all, Night Corp did a good job copyin' my work. Gonna annex this territory, choom. Fuck those corpos."

"Man, you've been around," said V, smiling. "Arasaka, Night Corp, Biotechnica."

"Contractor," said Ayako, grinning. "I confess, the whole reason I got in with Biotechnica was to access their nanite tech for your biochip. They were doin' some collab with StormTech, somethin' 'bout usin' nanites as facsimile cells, so they could revive dinosaurs or whatever." She paused, adding, "Also wanted to find out more about their clonin' shit."

"My clan was tryin' to set me up with StormTech," said V. She looked at Ayako. Rain sizzled on the Chiba concrete. "You really did all that shit t'help me? Why?"

"You're a datanex," said Ayako. "Important events wind themselves around you, Val. You're the axle that makes the wheel spin." She looked at her, throwing an arm across V's shoulders. "And I was a wheel in need of an axle. But," and Ayako smiled, "you're also my friend. Maybe it ain't started like that, but it's true now. You got fucked over 'cause of my mistakes with the chip, 'cause of Arasaka. And although I don't count myself among those assholes—regardless of who my dad is—I still felt responsible for you. Had to make it up to you for everythin' 'Saka did to you." Ayako stopped in front of an udon shop, watching, through the window, a harassed-looking Japanese woman behind the counter. The woman might have been gorgeous once, but age and stress had whittled away her looks, lined her face with pain and worry. "My mom. What I remember 'bout her," said Ayako, pressing her face to the glass, watching her mother navigate the kitchen in smooth, precise movements. "You know she was an idol, once upon a time? Back in the prehistoric age. Sang this song Aishiteruyo. Lotta otaku speculate she wrote it for Yorinobu." She paused. "But I never considered that asshole my dad. Dad was Kei Yoshida."

"Where's he in this?" asked V.

"Dead," said Ayako, moving away from the window. "Pissed off some corpo client of his, and the asshole had him killed. Borrowed money he couldn't pay back. Was around that time I started spendin' more and more time in the net-cafes." She looked at her mother again. "She always worried 'bout me, but I didn't care back then. Blamed her for everythin' for the longest time." Ayako stopped, scratching at the edge of her inset. "Dunno if she's even still alive. I left her in Japan a long time ago."

"You ever wanted t'go back?"

Ayako shook her head. "Even if I wanted to, I can't now. 'Sides, I been gone from Japan so long that I don't really feel like it's my home anymore. Ain't even really felt like it was home when I was there." She shrugged, adding, "I'm comfortable with bein' an American."

"Well, we're glad t'have you here, Ayako."

Awake again, eyes opening to Judy stooped over her, lines of mascara running down her cheeks. "Jesus, she's awake," she said. "Panam," and she turned her head, "she's conscious."

Panam appeared. "We thought you were a goner," she said.

V's head throbbed, and her neck was sore, patched up with analgesic dermals. "Buster?"

"He got the biochip out," said Panam, holding up the sliver of red-filigreed silicon. The whole thing was toasted. "Judy replaced the chip-socket it was slotted in, so you will feel some discomfort."

"Sucker ain't wanted t'come out," said Judy, sniffling. "Slotted the new biochip in one of your other chip-sockets, calabacita. Gotta keep the chip in for a while, let the nanites do their job."

"Never understood," said V, thickly, "why I needed another chip."

"Your body developed a dependency on the nanites," said Judy. "Need 'em to maintain your neural pathways, keep 'em healthy. But this one ain't gotta dead rockerboy on it. Ain't nobody gonna take y'over, calabacita. You're cured. You're gonna live."

V turned her head despite Judy's warnings not to. Buster was slumped over the rip-terminal, his hardware cooked through, the occipital port blown to shit, like a mini-nuke had gone off in it. Ayako was in the other rip-chair, motionless, half her face melted off, insets dark. No laser pupils.