“But she didn’t tell you what it was?”

He picked moodily at a smear of bodypaint on the automould. “Nope.”

“Plex, come on. She made a big enough splash with you that you called in your yak pals, but she never showed you what it was she had.”

“She asked for the fucking yak, not me.”

I frowned. “She did?”

“Yeah. Said they’d be interested, said it was something they could use.”

“Oh, that’s crabshit, Plex. Why would the yakuza be interested in a biotech weapon three centuries old. They’re not fighting a war.”

“Maybe she thought they could sell it on to the military for her. For a percentage.”

“But she didn’t say that. You just told me she said it would be something they could use.”

He stared up at me. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I’m not wired for that fucking Envoy total-recall shit like you. I don’t remember what she said, exactly. And I don’t fucking care. Like they said, it’s got nothing to do with me any more.”

I stepped away from him. Leaned back on the container wall and examined the shard gun absently. Peripheral vision told me he wasn’t moving from his slump on the automould. I sighed and it felt like weight shifting off my lungs, only to settle in again.

“Alright, Plex. Just a couple more questions, easy ones, and I’m out of your hair. This new edition of me they’ve got, it was chasing Oshima, right? Not me?”

He clicked his tongue, barely audible above the fusion beat outside.

“Both of you. Tanaseda wants your head on a stick for what you did to Yukio, but you’re not the main attraction.”

I nodded bleakly. For a while I’d thought Sylvie must have somehow given herself away down in Tekitomura yesterday. Talked to the wrong person, been caught on the wrong surveillance cam, done something to bring the pursuit team crashing down on us like angelfire. But it wasn’t that. It was simpler and worse—they’d vectored in on my own unshielded blunder through the Quellcrist Falconer archives. Must have had a global watch on the dataflows since this whole fucking mess blew up.

And you walked right into it. Nice going.

I grimaced. “And is Tanaseda running this?”

Plex hesitated.

“No? So who’s reeling his line in then?”

“I don’t—”

“Don’t back up on me, Plex.”

“Look, I don’t fucking know. I don’t. But it’s up the food chain, I know that. First Families is what I hear, some Millsport court spymistress.”

I felt a qualified sense of relief. Not the yakuza, then. Nice to know my market value hadn’t fallen that far.

“This spymistress got a name?”

“Yeah.” He got up abruptly and went to the hospitality module. Stared down into the smashed interior. “Name of Aiura. Real hardcase by all accounts.”

“You haven’t met her?”

He poked about in the debris I’d left, found an undamaged pipe. “No. I don’t even get to see Tanaseda these days. No way I’d be let inside something at First Families level. But there’s stuff about this Aiura on the court gossip circuit. She’s got a reputation.”

I snorted. “Yeah, don’t they all.”

“I’m serious, Tak.” He fired up the pipe and looked reproachfully at me through the sudden smoke. “I’m trying to help you here. You remember that mess about sixty years ago, when Mitzi Harlan wound up in a Kossuth skullwalk porn flic?”

“Vaguely.” I’d been busy at the time, stealing bioware and offworld databonds in the company of Virginia Vidaura and the Little Blue Bugs.

High-yield criminality masquerading as political commitment. We watched the news for word of the police efforts at pursuit, not much else.

There hadn’t been a lot of time to worry about the incessant scandals and misdemeanours of Harlan’s World’s aristo larvae.

“Yeah, well, the word is that this Aiura ran damage limitation and cleanup for the Harlan family. Closed down the studio with extreme prejudice, hunted down everyone involved. I heard most of them got the skyride. She took them up to Rila Crags at night, strapped them to a grav pack each and just flipped the switch.”

“Very elegant.”

Plex drew his lungs full of smoke and gestured. His voice came out squeaky.

“Way she is, apparently. Old school, you know.”

“You got any idea where she got the copy of me from?”

He shook his head. “No, but I’d guess Protectorate military storage. He’s young, a lot younger than you. Are now, I mean.”

“You’ve met him?”

“Yeah, they hauled me in for an interview last month when he first got up here from Millsport. You can tell a lot about someone from the way they talk. He’s still calling himself an Envoy.”

I grimaced again.

“He’s got an energy to him as well, it feels as if he can’t wait to get things done, to get started on everything. He’s confident, he’s not scared of anything, nothing’s a problem. He laughs at everything—”

“Yeah, alright, he’s young. Got it. Did he say anything about me?”

“Not really, mostly he just asked questions and listened. Only,” Plex drew on the pipe again. “I got the impression he was, I don’t know, disappointed or something. About what you were doing these days.”

I felt my eyes narrow. “He said that?”

“No, no,” Plex waved the pipe, trickled smoke from his nose and mouth.

“Just an impression I got, ‘s all.”

I nodded. “Okay, one last question. You said they took her to Millsport. Where?”

Another pause. I shot him a curious look.

“Come on, what have you got to lose now? Where are they taking her?”

“Tak, let it go. This is just like the sweeper bar, all over again. You’re getting involved in something that doesn’t—”

“I’m already involved, Plex. Tanaseda’s taken care of that.”

“No, listen. Tanaseda will deal. You’ve got Yukio’s stack, man. You could negotiate for its safe return. He’ll do it, I know him. He and Hirayasu senior go back a century or more. He’s Yukio’s sempai, he’s practically his adoptive uncle. He’ll have to cut a deal.”

“And you think this Aiura’s going to let it go at that?”

“Sure, why not.” Plex gestured with the pipe. “She’s got what she wants. As long as you stay out of—”

“Plex, think about it. I’m double-sleeved. That’s a UN rap, big-time penalties for all involved. Not to mention the issue of whether they’re even entitled to hold a stored copy of a serving Envoy in the first place. If the Protectorate ever finds out about this, Aiura the spymistress is going to be looking at some serious storage, First Families connections or not. The sun’ll be a fucking red dwarf by the time they let her out.”

Plex snorted. “You think so? You really think the UN are going to come out here and risk upsetting the local oligarchy for the sake of one double sleeving?”

“If it’s made public enough, yes. They’ll have to. They can’t be seen to do anything else. Believe me, Plex, I know, I used to do this for a living. The whole Protectorate system hangs together on an assumption that no one dare step out of line. As soon as someone does, and gets away with it, no matter how small that initial transgression, it’ll be like the first crack in the dam wall. If what’s been done here becomes common knowledge, the Protectorate will have to demand Aiura’s cortical stack on a plate. And if the First Families don’t comply, the UN will send the Envoys, because a refusal by local oligarchy to comply can only be read one way, as insurrection. And insurrections get put down, wherever they are, at whatever cost, without fail.”

I watched him, watched it sink in as it had sunk into me when I first heard the news in Drava. The understanding of what had been done, the step that had been taken and the sequence of inevitability that we were all now locked into. The fact that there was no way back from this situation that didn’t involve someone called Takeshi Kovacs dying for good.

“This Aiura,” I said quietly, “has backed herself into a corner. I would love to know why, I would love to know what it was that was so fucking important it was worth this. But in the end it doesn’t matter. One of us has to go, me or him, and the easiest way for her to make that happen is to keep sending him after me until either he kills me or I kill him.”