Still in slow-mo, I felt my own body responding instinctively. I came out of the chair like I was on springs, right hand slapping ineffectually at my vacant left hip.

Tokudaiji was moving, too, one of his skeleton-thin hands plunging inside his thousand-nuyen jacket. His eyes met mine, and in a flash of instantaneous communication we both knew he was too late.

From the comer of my eye I saw Scott's Roomsweeper come to bear, saw it gout flame again. The blast-shot, not a single slug-took the yakuza boss full in the face, slamming what was left of his skull back into the leather chair, spattering blood and tissue across the room. My nose was filled with me smells of a shooting: cordite, blood, drek…

I was on my feet, turning, still reaching for me gun that wasn't there. Time clicked back into full-speed mode as Scott swung me smoking muzzle of the Roomsweeper to point direcdy between my eyes.

8

… And he said, "Get out of here, brah, I'll cover you as long as I can."

Through the door to the anteroom I heard the first sounds of alarm-muffled, but still audible. If I could hear that, then the sammies on the other side of the door would certainly have heard the two throaty booms from the Roomsweeper. Obviously the door was locked, and the normal release was somewhere in here-probably close to Ekei Tokudaiji's blood-spattered hand-otherwise Scott and I would already be absorbing high-velocity rounds.

"Get the frag out of here, ule," the ork barked again.

I didn't know whether to drek, go blind, or wind my watch. (Actually, I was down to two choices because I think I'd already done one of those three things when the first shot went off next to my head.) My mouth moved, and I think I said something cogent and pithy like, "Gaah?" My right hand was still pawing around somewhere down at my left hip-apparently searching for the Seco that was in the backseat of the Rolls-so I stopped it by clenching it into a fist.

"Kukae!" Scott swore in frustration. He pivoted and fired two ringing blasts into the nearest window. The first starred the reinforced glass; the second blew it out into the foliage beyond. (Mental note: Some kinds of reinforced glass don't work worth squat if the shot's coming from the inside.) "Get fragging goingl" Scott roared. He crouched, scooped up the pistol that the dead aide had been trying to draw and tossed it to me. Instinctively, I plucked it out of the air.

Finally my reflexes kicked into gear, and I got fragging going. Three running steps across me room, then a dive out the window, tucking into a smooth landing roll. Would have worked like a hot damn, too, if it hadn't been for the fragging hibiscus bush just outside the window. A silent tuck-and-roll became a loud rustle-and-crash, but at least the flowering bush absorbed my momentum and gave me a (relatively) soft landing.

I came up in a crouch and looked around wildly. Nobody coming for me, not yet. I worked the action on the pistol-a brutal-looking Browning automatic of an unfamiliar model-and checked the load. A full clip of fourteen rounds, according to the indicator, and one in the pipe. Feeling like I had a nasty big crosshairs painted on me back of my skull, I moved away from the blown-out window.

Just in time. Behind me I heard a smash, the sharp ripping of light autofire, then a godawful whump that felt like a troll had just boxed my ears for me. I hit the ground-not entirely my idea, as the pressure wave slammed into me-and out the corner of my eye I saw a dirty-red fireball lick momentarily out the window. On my belly I did the high-low crawl through the foliage as shrapnel, bits of wood, and assorted shreds of tissue spattered down around me. When I was what felt like a reasonable distance from the house, I bellied up and tried to calm myself.

Okay, just what the frag had happened? Scott had taken down my contact, mat's what had happened. And now he was dead.

He had to be dead, didn't he? When Tokudaiji's samurai tossed a grenade into the library…

No, that made no fragging sense at all. For all they knew, their boss-man, the oyabun. might still have been breathing. They wouldn't have fragged the room just in case.

Which meant bruddah Scon had done it himself, didn't it? Probably a belly-bomb of some kind. A suicide mission. He'd hung back to draw some more of Tokudaiji's troops in, men he'd suicided violently, taking at least some of them with him.

So why the frag was I still alive?

Later, I told myself firmly, think about that later. Lord knows, I had enough to worry about at the moment, like getting out of me oyabun's enclave with all my anatomy intact. By now, all of Tokudaiji's samurai would know of the hit. They'd know that two people had gone in, a chauffeur and some pale-skinned reprobate name of Montgomery. They'd be cranked up, and they sure wouldn't be in any mood to accept the excuse, "Hey, chummer, I had nothing to do with it…" Thanks, Scott. And thanks to you, too, Jacques Barnard, you fragging slot.

I had to move, and I had to move fast. It was still less than a minute since the gunshots, and only seconds since the explosion had gutted the library. Tokudaiji's sammies would be operating on instinct and training-both probably well-developed-but things would only get worse when they had a chance to think as well as react. By the time they got their collective drek together, ideally I'd like to be several counties away. Looking around to get my bearings, I took off in the old high-low crawl again, heading directly away from the house through the heart of a large flower bed.

It wasn't long before I ran out of bushes and had to cover some open ground. About ten meters of open ground, as it turned out, which separated me from some pretty thick-looking jungle. Ideal. A quick look around me, and I burst from cover.

Which startled the frag out of the Armante-clad guard who was just coming around the corner of my flower bed. He was fast as greased lightning, swinging his submachine gun around to cut me in two. But fear had me so hopped up that I was even faster. Also, the fact that he saw a wild man with rolling eyes and hibiscus twigs in his hair probably set him back for a millisecond or two. I dug in and cut to the right, planning to put my shoulder into his gut. He danced back just in time, so I slammed him in the throat with my forearm.

My left forearm. The forearm of the boosted-strength cyberlimb that Jacques Barnard had paid to have installed. Trachea and hyoid bone and vertebrae gruntched under the brutal impact of synthskin-clad titanium. The samurai went one way, his SMG went another, and I went a third, hesitating only long enough to put a round from the Browning into his chest just for good measure. At a full run I plunged into the jungle. Behind me I heard the fluttering whop-whop noise of a small helicopter spooling up.

Don't ask me how the frag I got out of there in one piece, chummer, I couldn't tell you. I made it, but I don't think I'll ever fully recall the details. Whole whacks of time, minutes upon minutes, were total blanks for me. I know I crawled through tropical jungle. I know I dodged homicidal guards. I know I eventually climbed a fragging palm tree to jump over a fragging ferrocrete wall. I know I ran through more jungle-how far I ran, I don't know-tearing the crap out of the clothes Scott had supplied me, and coming this close to blowing out an ankle. I know I eventually came to a narrow public road in a residential area where I boosted a car and basically got the frag out of there. But the images-the memories-are disjointed, like scenes in a badly edited simsense-disorienting and confusing.

I was driving my stolen car, a tiny Chrysler-Nissan Buddy three-wheeler that had seen better days, roughly west when the emotional reaction hit me. I pulled over to the side of the road, killed the electric motor, and got the bubble top open just in time to yarf up my breakfast all over the curb. My right hand was shaking as if I had some kind of palsy; my left would only move in ragged jerks, which was the cyber analog of the same thing. I felt cold and tight all over, as though I'd put on skin that was half a size too small and that had just recently been pulled out of a refrigerator.