[beijing]

[ghost_racket]

Title: Split Function
ID: [beijing]
Word count: 10,500
Character(s) or pairing(s): Niou Masaharu, Yagyuu Hiroshi, Sanada Genichirou, Yukimura Seiichi

The call came through to my hotel room at three in the morning local time, where local meant Canton 15 colony, MT+1. I wasn't asleep. Actually I was only just in from a job, and sluggish with neurachem comedown, which was probably worse than a bit of sleepiness, but I answered anyway. You never knew when it was gonna be a call to tell you to get the fuck out, man, they've got snipers on the roof of the next building. Why chance it?

It was from Yanagi, requesting a chat in virtual. He and I went way back, in a convoluted sort of way; he was a good guy, more or less, and I had time of day for him pretty much whenever. I also trusted that if he was calling me up at three in the morning he'd have a damn good reason other than confusing time-zones.

I headed down to the hotel's virtual suite armed with the codes for the secure channel, put myself under, and waited, staring at the slightly grainy setting Yanagi had picked out. A forest clearing, huge trees, their canopies filtering what was meant to be sunlight. An old favourite, nothing like the slick office virtuals a lot of the big groups used or the more high-spec, discreetly tasteful setups some of the richer private clients liked to use; nowhere close to state of the art, but familiar.

I didn't have to wait around enjoying the dubiously-crafted digital view for long, anyway. Renji was never late, kind of a point of pride.

"Niou," he said, settling quickly into his virtual form, and smiled with as much warmth as he'd ever done. "I hear you've been busy recently."

"Sure," I told him. "Heard about the reward, right? I'm kinda impressed myself."

He shook his head slightly. "They'll catch up with you. I doubt it will even take terribly long, however good you are. You're never going to learn to stop offending people, are you?"

Offending people. With a Smith & Wesson. Only Yanagi. I grinned, a bit rueful, though I could've laughed in anyone else's face about it. "People ain't gonna stop asking for it. Plus, the pay was pretty good."

"You won't be getting to spend it when they put you on store," Yanagi pointed out mildly.

"How long d'you reckon it'll be? A hundred? Two?"

"More, quite possibly. But I hope it won't come to that."

"Yeah?"

"I've been asked to find someone for a job. I think you'll be interested."

I could've started asking awkward questions, like how exactly Yanagi figured more work of the kind I was qualified for would get me into less trouble, but Renji always had a reason for everything he did. "Go on."

"You'd be working for Yukimura Seiichi."

I raised an eyebrow. Well, that made a hell of a lot more sense already. Get on the right side of someone at that level and the law became sort of more like a gentle suggestion. A real power.

"Over on Kanagawa."

"That's right." Yanagi's expression went unfocused for a moment, presumably as he checked over the files. "I can send you more details if you're interested. You would be needlecast over and resleeved at their expense, of course. I would rather not tell you more here, but I wanted to assure you that I think the offer is worth your time. Especially considering your current circumstances."

"Okay," I said. "Send the files my way. I'll get back to ya."

"Think quickly. Seiichi is not the most patient of individuals, and I understand the job is urgent."

Three-in-the-morning phonecall urgent, obviously. "Yeah, sure. What ain't."

"As you say. The files will be sent to the usual location."

I nodded, already set to disconnect, wondering what was I was going to find waiting for me when I got back to reality.

I drifted into consciousness still in the tank, enveloped in the heavy liquid used for storage. I managed to push down the natural urge to draw breath and waited, floating there until hands closed around my upper arms and hauled up, dropping me slightly less than carefully onto the floor and passing me a towel, leaving me to find my own feet. Welcome to Kanagawa. Enjoy your stay in your new sleeve.

Taking stock as I was ushered out of the sleeving room in all its utilitarian starkness, it seemed like they'd pretty much gone all-out for me. Male, probably mid 30s, seemed healthy and in decent shape, really good smooth wiring. No huge aches and pains; there were always a few here and there, but after enough resleevings you got a sense of what was normal and what might be a problem. I wasn't getting anything through that flashed up warning signs.

I didn't really get any alarm bells at all until I got to the shower block, to get rid of the shit from the tank that was coating my skin and try to make myself feel like a genuine human being, and looked in the mirror. And then, fuck, were there alarm bells.

I was looking at myself.

Of all the things I'd mentally prepared myself for, that wasn't a possibility which had even made the list. Dissociation from a new sleeve had nothing on this shit. For all my training, for all I'd been ready to be freighted half way across the Protectorate and shoved into someone else's sleeve for as long as the job took, there was nothing I could do for ages except stare, trying to see through the trick.

Nothing changed. It was still me, staring back at myself. Silvery hair that stayed messy whatever the hell I tried to do with it, narrow eyes, sharp features. A mole on the side of the chin and a scar on the neck from a near miss way back.

Self image is a pretty fluid thing these days. You find yourself in a new sleeve, and it's a shock, sure, but before you know it it starts to feel like home. Whatever you thought you looked like before fades out. But there were all the sleeves I'd been bounced back and forth through with the Corps, and there were the ones I'd worn in hiding, and there were the ones I'd worn for work over the last few years. And then there was the one I'd been born in. I'd been in it for a good twenty years, before I joined the Corps. It was probably the last one I'd ever expected to see again.

The only conclusion that I could draw was that Yukimura Seiichi, with his apparently infinite resources, was fucking with me.

We weren't off to a great start here.

I signed the release form for the sleeve, skimming over familiar phrasing, terms and conditions, lawyer-speak and doctor-speak in hideous combination. They seemed to use exactly the same form on every world anyway, and I'd already got better things to worry about. Yanagi's assessment that this job was worth it had better be right.

The way out was through a huge, echoing hall that called back memories of my childhood, standing waiting by benches just like that with my mother and my little brother for my sister. She always was a hard one, and she got herself stored a few times. I lost track of her eventually. Maybe she did something really big and she was still in there, or maybe she cleaned up and lived and got old. Weirder shit had happened over time. Hey mam, you ever expect that your son'd be doing this, here, now? Believe it or not, I started out as the good kid.

I found myself wondering if I'd ever waited in this hall, but probably not. Kanagawa was my home back then, but we'd lived pretty far from this area.

This hall was empty today, anyway. No-one up for parole; no families waiting to see what face they were gonna have to live with from now on. There was just the one cab waiting on the asphalt outside, a sleek black beast with tinted windows, not flashy as such but conspicuously wealthy all the same. That'd be my ride, then.

The driver had bright red hair and shades that I figured he probably thought made him look cool. I'd been on the world for all of half an hour and hell if I knew what the local fashions were, but I had a pretty strong suspicion that if I wanted to find out then I had a good candidate for keeping an eye on right here. He grinned at me as I made my way over, and gave me a lazy mock-salute. Not quite what I'd expected.

I smirked back at him, and slid myself into the passenger seat in the front, stretching my legs out, relaxing. Adjusting to a change of sleeve took a lot out of you, but that didn't mean I had to admit defeat and actually show it.

"So, new guy," the driver said, "the boss wants to see you right away. Let's get going."

"Right," I said, since there didn't seem to be anything more productive to add, and the cab slid quietly up into the air.

On the journey I learned that the driver was called Marui, that he loved his job, and that he was a genius.

I stared out the window, watching the buildings getting less and less towering, thinning out from city-sprawl to quiet suburbs to the villas of the super-rich dotted across the landscape. He talked, and talked, and talked. I listened, and a part of my mind made notes in case any of it turned out to be important later, but mostly I tried to get used to being as close to home as I'd been in years. I didn't bother thinking about what to expect when we arrived; I had a feeling my expectations would only exist to be undermined around here.

I didn't really bother actually taking part in the conversation, either, even to take pity on the guy when he hit a moment of awkwardness. I didn't have the energy, and chattiness wasn't in my nature at the best of times.

It was definitely in his. He seemed to be doing fine by himself.

Yukimura's home was on the edge of Krakow's west island, and we touched down without a bump outside the gates as the radio crackled with indistinct instructions.

"Okay," Marui told me, "this'll be your stop. I gotta get going. Good luck with the boss, yeah?"

Beyond the gates a broad drive cut across the gardens to the house, lined with trees; the house itself was white-painted, with huge shuttered windows; some kind of weird homage to a more ancient, earth-bound colonial past which Yukimura's descent, as far as my knowledge and his name suggested, gave him no right to whatsoever. But hey, what was cultural heritage worth these days anyway? I couldn't give a shit, myself, but I could imagine Yanagi getting earnestly involved in a debate about the significance of this, that and whatever and the impact of something or other. Me, I just wondered how much money they were pissing away keeping this place so picture-perfect.

I got ushered in through the front entrance by a maid, and shown into a waiting area, all rich dark wood and elaborate furnishings. This whole place was way more archaic than could be natural on a colony, and it wasn't likely it'd all been freighted in from Earth, though maybe they'd got the architects with traditional skills cast over to put the thing together. Just like they'd dragged me over. Yukimura and his colleagues could afford to employ whoever they wanted, to do whatever they wanted.

Keep thinking, I told myself. If you let your brain slow down now you don't know if it'll ever agree to start again without twenty hours sleep first.

Going into neutral right now might be the end of rational thought, and I figured I'd need a lot of that for dealing with Yukimura; I'd read the file carefully, and even peering between the lines it hadn't said much about why exactly someone like me was needed with so much urgency. I could see why Yanagi had felt the need to tell me the job should be a good one; I would've just rejected it out of hand. A manhunt, without many details, wasn't my style of work.

All things considered it was probably just as well I wasn't made to wait long.

Yukimura came to get me in person.

Another man, not one whose face was familiar to me, was just leaving the room as we entered it. He was a bulky guy, not fat but well-built, obviously muscular, dressed in a suit that make him look like an uncomfortable penguin. My spot-assessment was that he would rather have been wearing something allowing for more movement. He gave Yukimura a brief nod on the way out, which was rewarded with a smile, and walked past me as though I didn't exist. Wow, I felt welcome.

"Bodyguard?" I asked Yukimura.

"PA," Yukimura said, and there was something of a teasing smirk in there. I was meant to be fucking furious with the guy, but instinct on actually meeting him told me I should be getting on with him. There was something about him I just liked. PA indeed.

"Yeah? You need a lot of personal assistance with carefully targeted violence?" The guy had the look. Not on the level of the Corps, but he was trained to some level or other. Marui hadn't been doing too badly either. The way people moved could give a lot away, and the people around Yukimura -- or at least the ones he'd chosen to show me -- were all of a type. That type was along the lines of dangerous bastards. However they looked.

Yukimura seemed unbothered. "At times. I would have thought my engaging your services would've made that obvious. Do take a seat, I'm certain you have questions."

I sure did.

I sat.

Yukimura offered me a drink, and took his own seat; plush armchairs either side of what was probably a vastly expensive coffee table, carefully informal, like camouflage. I turned down alcohol, still not adjusted enough to want to chance it, and let him get me a glass of water.

"I appreciate that this may seem like an odd request," Yukimura said, "but this man has caused me a great deal of difficulty, and the police don't seem inclined to interfere. I believe they said they had better things to do than... what was it... chase ghosts."

"And you reckon I don't?"

"I know you don't, unless you consider standing trial to be more urgent."

"About that. Freedom of movement's gonna be a problem."

Yukimura waved a dismissive hand. "Don't underestimate me."

I thought back to the file. It'd been full of stock phrases, threatening the interests of Rikkai, an elusive and dangerous individual... signifying nothing, the lot of it. I slouched a bit in my chair, and looked Yukimura square in the eye. "This guy you want me to hunt. Tell me about him."

"Of course. Here, the details of his last known sleeve and all the information we have about him; you can keep this pad, for whatever good it will do you."

I picked up the slim screen, and took in what few details there were. Yagyuu Hiroshi; personal details missing. Last known to be using a synthetic sleeve, pictured beneath the bare few lines of text. It was a high quality synthetic, as far as I could see; a lot of them looked creepy, like plastic dolls, some crazy designer idea of what a human being should look like, technically perfect but totally fake. This one looked a lot more natural. Only the eyes could have really pegged it as synthetic from a quick glance, I figured, and they were largely obscured behind mirrored glasses. Most of the words accompanying were about the sleeve itself, not the person inside it. If he switched out, I wouldn't have a thing to go on.

The next screen, when I flicked on, had an outline list of incidents, expandable for full details.

"This guy, he's got some power behind him?"

Yukimura watched me carefully. "What makes you say that?"

"The sleeve. It's better quality on the outside than I've seen in bloody ages, for a fake. And the way it's wired..." I stared for a moment longer at the impassive face on the screen, and then looked back up at Yukimura. "Know where he got it?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Yukimura said. He wasn't smiling any more, and it made his face look older. Immeasurably old, especially the eyes, hiding behind a young man's face. "It came from one of my own facilities."

I didn't blink, or double-take. I was surprised, but even with my mind and my sleeve not in total cooperation I had at least that much control. "Okay. How did he get it?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know."

"I don't know." His hand twitched in the beginning of an impatient gesture, hastily suppressed. "I don't know who Yagyuu Hiroshi is. I don't know what he looked like before he walked a state-of-the-art synthetic sleeve out of the facility it was developed in. I don't know what his grudge against me is, although frankly I'm not certain I care. But he's causing trouble and I need him caught."

I was already beginning to feel a none-too-grudging admiration for the nerve this guy had, whoever he was; and for his technical skill, too, if Yukimura really didn't have a clue who he was behind it all. Whispers on the street sometimes said Yukimura knew everything, and most of the time there was just enough truth in that to make people think twice.

Most of the time.

"You said he has a grudge."

"He's walking around in a sleeve developed by one of my companies, and he's targeting my interests exclusively, as far as I've been able to discover. You can inspect the list and carry out your own investigation if it makes you feel better, though I promise you I've been thorough. How would this not be personal?"

I shrugged. "I think I agree. I wanted to know your thoughts."

Yeah, it pretty much made sense for it to be a grudge case. There was a touch of dramatic flair to it, and it called up something that someone'd said back in the Corps. Make it personal. Just an odd moment of resonance.

"Quaint," Yukimura said. "Now, terms and conditions. If you succeed, you'll receive payment in full as detailed in the files. You'll also be found innocent at trial, entirely legally. While you're in my employment your trial is deferred; the necessary arrangements have been made. You should have no trouble with the local police unless you cause undue disturbance. Should you violate the terms of your contract..."

I let the toned down lawyer-speak wash over me, and tried to pick out any points I hadn't seen coming.

It was all pretty much as I'd expected, anyway.

I waited to get annoyed until the business talk was done. By that time I had a bank account, a security pass, and authorisation to carry out investigations, though I figured there was still plenty of stuff I'd need to bring up for Yukimura's personal stamp of approval before poking my nose into. I'd sipped at a few glasses of water, but I had one hell of a headache building anyway, and Yukimura's offer to show me around the house and grounds wasn't entirely welcome. Not that I was gonna say so.

There was artwork everywhere. You couldn't help but notice it. Art ain't much my thing, but to my inexpert eye a lot of the pieces looked expensive, some bordering on totally invaluable. Old masters, older artefacts. I guessed when you were hundreds of years old you could wait to have stuff shipped from Earth in a carrier after all, the old-fashioned way. Maybe I'd have to reassess my opinion of the house itself.

"You're a collector," I said, as our footsteps echoed in syncopated beats down an empty hallway. "Some guys have this shit just to show it off, because they've got money and they wanna spend it. But I don't reckon that's you."

"Quite right," Yukimura said, with a truly brilliant smile. He really was charismatic, when you didn't look too closely at those eyes. Three hundred years old, was he? More? I'd never seen the exact figure, but I knew it was in that region. "I know the story to every piece I own. They're important to me."

"Collect people too?" I asked. There. A little bit of anger carefully called to the surface.

He gave me a sharp look. "What makes you say that?"

"The kinda people around you. They're all..." I shrugged, pressure pounding away at the inside of my skull. "You know the story to every piece you own? That how you knew to put me in this sleeve?"

"I don't presume to own you," Yukimura said, almost blandly. "But I have done background work on you. I had a list drawn up of sleeves available that you might find suitable, and seeing this one on the list, well... it's a very happy coincidence, surely. There's no doubt that you can work with it."

Not owned. Maybe loaned; maybe still in the process of being bought. I'd been told before that guys like this, the super-rich who decided that they just weren't going to die, were nothing at all like humans; I could feel that, now, for all that Yukimura could smile at you like you were the centre of the universe. Because of it, possibly.

Christ, I needed sleep.

I let the subject drop, and stored it for another time. We walked around empty rooms, cool and dark, and then stepped out into the shocking warmth and brightness of an early afternoon; the gardens stretched out as far as I could see, beautiful and elaborate. Off to one side stood a swimming pool and hard-surfaced tennis courts, but the rest was all green, on and on and on.

It felt like a long time before I could make my excuses and head for the gates, and when I got there it was to be faced by Marui's signature grin. His sleeve was synthetic too, I judged; hair red by original design, not dyed. Another good quality one, though.

He had another guy with him, in a sleeve of some unknown mixed heritage, who did a total double-take when he saw me, something really weird in his expression that I was just too tired to process, though he smoothed over pretty quickly. I got into the back of the cab, not sorry of the extra space.

"I need a hotel," I told them.

"I know a few decent places," the unknown companion told me. "What're you after?"

"Something clean," I muttered. "With a bed." Hell, it could be run by AI for all I cared.

The place they took me to actually turned out to be pretty pricey, but maybe Yukimura paid his lab-rats so well they figured that was the lower end of normal. It wasn't like I was on a budget for now either, I figured, but somehow it still made me feel uncomfortable stepping through the spotless glass doors and into the hushed, cool reception area. I made it through booking a suite of rooms for the indefinite future anyway, told the receptionist that I'd probably break something if she put any calls through to me before I was awake, and took the lift up towards my bed.

If I could just sleep, I was pretty sure, this sleeve would stop feeling simultaneously like an old friend and a set of clothes that didn't fit right.

Safely in my room, I didn't even bother getting undressed.

I woke up to the phone ringing, and it didn't stop when I tried ignoring it. I was about ready to murder the receptionist who'd promised no calls, but then I noticed the time. Almost the same as when I'd gone to bed, and I sure as hell hadn't been asleep as little as half an hour.

I picked up, grudgingly.

"Yeah?"

"Niou Masaharu, I presume," a rather stiff voice said.

"Who's this?"

"Sanada Genichirou. I have authorisation to show you the facility Yagyuu Hiroshi's sleeve originates from, and any of his other targets you wish to inspect."

Way too much formality to get woken up by. I winced. "Okay. When?"

"The visit was scheduled for three hours ago."

"Hey, I was re-sleeved yesterday. What d'you expect?"

There was a sound that might've been a snort of disapproval. "I will rearrange. Meet me in the entrance hall of your hotel in an hour."

"Sure," I said, and hung up before he could say anything else.

I showered, got dressed in the clothes they'd given me yesterday at the centre, and ordered food. Then I wandered down to the entrance hall, ten and a half minutes late.

It wasn't hard to spot Sanada. He held himself like he was in the military, and his face was familiar to me now anyway -- last time I'd seen him, he'd been dressed up penguin-like in that scarily formal suit. He was looking more relaxed today, but it was just a matter of degrees. He probably never looked relaxed unless he was unconscious.

He stared at me, and then stared meaningfully at the clock over the reception desk.

"So are we going?" I asked, ignoring the look, treating him to a laid-back smirk. I really was feeling better for sleep, on form, all my senses sharpened again and my mind back up to speed. When I'd looked in the bathroom mirror it'd felt more like looking at my reflection than looking through a window to see someone else's face.

"Certainly," he said, a bit cool, and we made our way down to the same sleek black cab. The sound-proof partition was closed today between the front and the back, but Marui threw me a quick grin over his shoulder anyway. This time, the ride was much more pointedly silent. I closed my eyes and used the chance to catch up on some thinking.

The facility stood on an island all of its own, which wasn't uncommon around here; this part of Kanagawa was dotted with small islands clustered in around the larger ones, and it was as good a way as any to increase security. In deference to said security we went the last leg of the way by boat, leaving Marui behind on the shore.

"Pretty impressive, walking out of here," I said, as the engines cut, leaving us bobbing in the water by the quay.

Sanada frowned. "'Walking out' is something of an exaggeration."

It wasn't a satisfactory answer.

Our footsteps were loud on the metal walkway to the entrance proper, and a man had stepped out to meet us before we got there. We greeted each other ever so politely, though I didn't give a shit about him and he obviously didn't want me to be there. Just like politics in miniature.

"What am I showing today, Sanada?" the man asked, leading us inside. He was tall, and he wore very square glasses, and he looked like at least fourty percent of the scientists working in places like this that I'd ever met. It's another one of those things; some people just have the look.

"Outline the security system for him, and answer any questions he has about the incident. Show him anything he likes, he has permission." Sanada managed to sound incredibly sour about that. Obviously I'd really made a friend for life there.

We walked around the place, looking at control rooms and vats and research facilities, and the scientist explained.

On the morning of the 24th last month, instructions had been received to decant the sleeve known to the researchers as 31-B and to me as Yagyuu Hiroshi, and to ship it to a much smaller facility on the mainland. They'd been received through a perfectly legitimate channel and Yukimura had since confirmed that the first part of those orders was genuine and the second part was not. The alteration of the message had been done moderately skillfully, probably by dipping into the broadcast between origin and destination or by altering it after its arrival. This implied foreknowledge that the broadcast was going to take place or an ally within the facility. Neither was particularly likely unless we were dealing with one of Yukimura's men who had defected.

And then the man's identity would hardly have been a mystery.

I expressed my doubts to the scientist, who looked pretty sniffy about it.

"Or perhaps," he said, "we are simply dealing with someone who is extremely adept at dipping data-streams. Careful monitoring could provide this information. I promise you, staff at the facility have all undergone polygraph tests and none of them are collaborating with this man. If he had assistance I can only assume it would have been from a skilled individual unassociated with us, or an AI."

"I'd like to talk to the staff anyway, if you don't mind," I said.

There was a moment, some unspoken communication between Sanada and the man. "I'm afraid I don't have permission to grant you that access right now, and in any case we have few staff here at any one time, but if you speak to Yukimura then I'm sure he'll put you in touch with the appropriate people," the scientist said.

"Okay," I told him, though there was something off about his words right there, and tuned him out, turning back to Sanada. "What about the other facility?"

"He cleared it on his way out. Staff RD'd, place gutted with fire. Organic damage were all over it. You can take it up with them if you'd like."

I thought about Yukimura's promise that no-one was going to try and arrest me so long as I was working this case, and I tallied it with Sanada's expression. Sanada, I guessed, wasn't as keen on fucking with the justice system as his boss. Or just wasn't keen on me. Well, not everyone could fall for my natural charms.

"RD'd?" I queried. RD. Right, Real Death. "Burnt out cortical stacks?"

"Just so. Five people in all, with no chance of resleeving."

"And the cops ain't interested, even with that?"

"The culprit is someone who doesn't really exist, as far as anyone can determine. And he hasn't targeted anyone but Seiichi since. You should know enough about this world to know what people think of his type."

Oh, I did. Fucking meths, and other less complimentary statements. The Methuselah weren't exactly popular on any world, though, as far as I could tell. And I could understand why. I remembered that moment when I could feel Yukimura's age, and wondered what being just that old did to your view of the world. To your values.

But still. What did they think, that he was making it up for the attention?

That evening, back in my hotel room and well away from Sanada's disapproving watchfulness, I spent a while going over the details of the rest of Yagyuu's exploits; he'd engaged in moderately petty but complicated theft, along with sabotage and a raft of others, and the crimes had a lot in common. For a start, they were universally more complicated than the outcome would seem to merit; more showmanship than someone after real financial benefit.

I spent a while staring at the facts and figures, amazed that such inventive if somewhat pointless crimes could end up sounding so dull when pinned down in words.

Then I put a call through to Yukimura.

It took a few arguments with secretaries, but I got him in the end.

"Niou," he said, with a moderately convincing approximation of warmth. "I hear you've been causing trouble."

"I asked some questions," I said. "But I reckon that's what you're paying me for. About that, though..."

"Yes?"

"Got a question for you, too. You sure you've been straight with me about everything?"

"Everything is a remarkably broad topic. Could you be a little more specific?" Amusement.

"Yagyuu's identity."

Yukimura actually laughed. "Now, that was quick. But still; more specific yet, please."

"Do you know who Yagyuu is?"

"I told you I don't."

I weighed this up. I wasn't getting an immediate sense of untruth from those words alone, but Yukimura would've had a lot of time to get good at lying. The situation was making me more suspicious than Yukimura himself would've, just taking the conversations with him alone.

"I think he used to be an employee of yours. And I think there's no way you wouldn't've known that, and you definitely would've known I'd notice how much of an insider job some of this shit looks like."

"You know," Yukimura said, "the police told me something very similar. I'm not convinced. I know my staff. Continue the investigation into Yagyuu's location. With an open mind, if you please; I would hate to think you were leaping to conclusions. We can establish his identity easily enough once he is located. If you are all right I will have to make my apologies."

"Okay," I said. "Well, as an advance apology, how about you give me a list of where all your holdings are? I ain't gonna find this guy just by looking at where he's already been."

After I hung up I thought about this for a while, and then thought about the merits of Helping The Police With Their Investigations. After all, we seemed to be more in agreement than we'd ever been before right now.

Maybe tomorrow, if nothing else I wanted to check out looked more hopeful, and if my suicidal streak was showing.

I was up early the next morning, walking down already busy streets, bombarded from all sides by projected advertising, noisy and garish and persistent. None of this had been there when we'd come through by cab the day before; it must have filters. It wasn't too much of a distraction, anyway, if you could focus well enough to tune it out -- I was naturally more inclined to worry about people following me in the growing crowds, but it probably wasn't a serious worry; I hadn't actually done enough here to piss anyone off, as far as I could figure, except the ones like Sanada who objected to my existence in a more general sense.

Despite that, I actually was getting a creeping sense that I was being watched, so I changed my plans, and went shopping.

I needed some clothes not picked out by Yukimura anyway.

A few hours later I had several new outfits, and I'd also got a few sightings of my stalker, which just went to show that sometimes you really should listen to the voices in your head. The guy was doing a good job, but not quite a good enough one; a sour-faced younger guy who looked like he wanted a fight more than he wanted to be on watching duty. Asian sleeve, maybe a bit like a twenty years younger version of Sanada who'd been hit in the face with a club at a critical stage of his development. His hair was half-covered with a bandanna, which wasn't exactly uncommon around this district. Maybe I should get one too. Join the fucking club.

I didn't know the area well, but a little walking took us to the edge of the busy area, onto a broad, uncrowded road that ran down in a straight line to the sea. Nowhere to hide.

By the time I reached the abandoned and run down seafront I was happy that I hadn't been followed any further, so I called a cab and got to work.

It was Yanagi I called that night, mostly out of a need for something familiar. I was in no damn mood to talk to any of Yukimura's lot, and who else was there?

"Is the job going alright?" he asked, all mildness.

"I dunno. I do bits of work here or there, and I'll probably find the guy sooner or later, but the whole thing ain't right."

"Has Yukimura only been telling you half the facts, perhaps?"

That brought me up short, just for a moment. "I'd say good guess, but that wasn't a guess. Was it."

"Yukimura can be a little mistrusting. His history isn't exactly... no, don't worry, I'm not trying to make excuses for him. But it doesn't necessarily mean anything other than that his habits are rather ingrained."

"Right," I said. "You know the guy well?"

"Fairly."

"Fairly as in you spoke a few times at a meeting years back, or fairly as in you're really good friends and you just don't wanna tell me?"

"Somewhere in between the two," Yanagi said.

I gave up. It didn't make a ton of difference right now.

"Oh yeah," I said, "there was a guy following me today. Wondered if you might have a clue who was keeping an eye on me."

I described him.

Yanagi was quiet for a moment.

"The bandanna tends to show gang colours," he said eventually. "Not always, of course. And I recommend that you don't go around beating up everyone wearing a scrap of green fabric around their head to find out."

"Would I do that," I said, a grin beginning to tug at my lips, which hadn't happened a whole lot since I was in this sleeve.

"I don't believe I should dignify that with an answer," Yanagi told me.

"A bandanna's an easy thing to put on, if you're sure enough you ain't gonna get the shit kicked out of you by some other gang for it, anyway," I muttered. "More likely to be a distraction than a real--"

Someone was knocking on the door of my hotel room.

"--hang on," I said. "Gotta get the door. I'll get back to ya."

So. Someone of Yukimura's? Someone of Yagyuu's? A psycho with a gun? A psycho with a gun pretending to be roomservice? Oh, the possibilities.

Actually it was Sanada, who probably embodied both option a and option c at times, but was currently leaning more towards a. I stared at him through the fish-eye distortion of the peephole, and tried to decide whether I actually wanted to see him or not. The answer was a fairly definite no.

I opened the door anyway. He was probably just as unwilling to see me as I was to see him. Why should he get off easy?

"Yo," I said. "Social call?"

We travelled in the silence of men who had fuck all common ground and weren't really interested in finding any either. Sanada hadn't said anything much to me beyond that there'd been another incident, and then it'd been another of those smooth, rapid journeys full of other people's urgency until we arrived at the scene.

I worked my way around the facility, not really sure what they were wanting to see me do; get out my magnifying glass and dust for fingerprints, maybe, or something equally cute and archaic. I wasn't exactly a professional detective, either. If the police were paying any attention they'd probably want to shoot me for fucking up their crime scene.

Fortunately, as Yukimura had indicated, we were pretty much on our own here.

It was a data centre, and the hardware itself had been carefully taken apart to a stage where, in my inexpert estimation, putting it back together would be pretty much impossible. The security hadn't exactly been light, but it had been bypassed neatly; another argument for it being someone within Yukimura's organisation, though someone with AI assistance would also have been able to get far enough through the virtual security to pull out details about the physical side, probably. Actually, someone skilled enough working alongside an AI would probably have been able to do all of the things Yagyuu had pulled with no previous insider knowledge of the places they were dealing with, but if it wasn't an inside job then I had no damn clue about the motive. Which didn't mean there was no motive there, of course. I couldn't imagine that Yukimura had been going through his life not pissing people off, given how fast he'd got me on edge.

Something to think about. AIs were out there and, like people, they weren't all on the level.

"So we know for sure this was Yagyuu,"

"He was caught on camera," Sanada said, with a scowl. "That's running on a separate system. He left that one well enough alone."

"It alright for me to see that, or am I gonna get more stalling?"

"Look as much as you like."

He took me up to the control room, on the floor above, and showed me. There was a corpse up there, presumably the guard, but there wasn't any damage to the neck. I stepped over it, grabbed the chair off the floor where it'd been knocked, and sat myself down in it. Surveillance systems were pretty much the same right across the protectorate, technology that'd reached the extent of its useful development and stopped, so operating it wasn't a problem.

I watched Yagyuu, dressed like some random mid-level businessman, pick his way through the facility; I watched him at work inside, employing a combination of technical skill and brute force. He was thorough, and meticulous, which were traits I could appreciate.

Before he left he glanced up once at the main camera, all the image-quality in the world not enough to render his expression interpretable.

"Showoff," I told the screen, pausing the footage. It reminded me just a little of myself, quite a few years ago. That little flashy streak that, as they'd liked to tell me in the corps, could get a guy killed. Show off when you're better than me, I could remember Tachibana telling me, grim and unsmiling. I hadn't paid any damn attention; I always figured they had enough control over my mind and body anyway without giving them that last little concession. The point had only really come home years later, and painfully.

People only learnt from their own mistakes, as far as I'd ever been able to figure.

"So he does this every time?" I asked. The file had said he'd been confirmed as present at each scene, but that'd been about as far as it'd gone. Could've been visual, could've been forensic; I hadn't had a chance to bug people for details to date.

"More or less. He doesn't seem concerned about being seen."

I stared at the figure held in freeze-frame in front of me. "Yeah, well, why would he? Everyone keeps telling me he's a ghost, so spotting him does about as much good as spotting the Fifth Arc. And for a grudge job? You wanna let them know who did it." Personal. People fuck with you, they always tell you it's nothing personal. That's bullshit. Take control. Make it fucking personal. Akutsu sitting like a gangster on one of the solid plastic chairs in the mess, looking totally at ease, smirking, getting in people's way. Most likely he'd never really been cut out for the corps -- all the psychotic edge without the group mentality -- but he'd bullshitted his way through somehow. No mean feat.

Last time I'd seen him was when he was about to go into storage for a spectacular number of counts of organic damage, dereliction of duty and more, just a hair short of getting his stack totally wiped. He hadn't looked like he gave a shit even then; a few hundred years, who cares? But it was the best way, they'd always told us -- you go under in a panic, you'll be in a panic when they finally pull you out. Even if that doesn't happen until the other side of a criminal sentence when it's time start your new life, debt to society paid. It all gets stored, the whole damn thing. The wonders of the Protectorate justice system.

Great. I wasn't meant to get nostalgic about all that shit.

I killed the image on the screen and headed back downstairs, shaking off the past. Ghosts, what the hell.

Sanada followed. Keeping an eye on me.

"So what was stored here?" I asked him.

"That I can't tell you."

"Oh come on. It's probably relevant, right?"

"I can't tell you," Sanada said, even more irritable than usual, "because I do not know."

So Yukimura was keeping secrets even from the big guys.

I was beginning to see what Yanagi meant.

I was on my way out when someone almost crashed into me, on their way in at speed, calling after Sanada. I sidestepped, uninterested, but the guy came up short when he registered me.

"Oi," he said, staring, "what the fuck are you doing here?"

I stared right back. "Working."

He was young, with mad curly hair and a cocky expression which turned to confusion at my words. "...Huh."

I smirked. "Something wrong?"

"Quit being a dick," he said. "I'll catch you later, okay? Gonna win for sure."

And then he vanished inside, calling Sanada's name again.

I was waiting outside when Sanada finally came out. I'd kind of planned on going straight back to the hotel without waiting on his pleasure, but then there'd been the kid.

"So," I said, staying where I was leaning against the perimeter fence, not bothering to fully face him, "who's the kid and who's he thinking I am?"

"Akaya thought you were Genkuro. He used to wear that sleeve at times, and I'm afraid Akaya never reads memos."

"Yukimura employs people out of old-world mythology?"

Sanada snorted. "I'm surprised you recognise the name."

"I remember everything," I said, staring up at the haze of light-pollution that obscured the sky. "That's part of what being an Envoy means, yanno. Heard it once." Nara, Japan. The Old World. It'd been a good while ago that I worked there, and I hadn't even thought about the girl who liked mythology in ages, but it was all still there, just waiting to be called up.

"How nice for you. In any case, Seiichi employs all sorts of people. Some of them prefer to take on names other than the one they were given at birth. It's none of my business, frankly."

"Okay." I wondered who Genkuro was, and if he'd enjoyed wearing my sleeve, and where he was now.

"I'm going back. If you want to spend any longer here then you'll have to call a cab for yourself."

I shrugged. "Hey, don't wait up on my account."

He left. Akaya came trotting out of the facility and went with him.

I stayed staring up at the sky for a while, trying to see if I could spot any stars and failing, and then set off to walk back towards the area where I might be able to hail a cab without having to call up a company. The facility was in an industrial area, deserted at this time of night. It felt better just to be by myself, without anyone watching.

I was enjoying the lack of Sanada so much I was paying way less attention to my surroundings than I should've been, which was why it took me a while to realise that actually, I had company.

I stopped walking, irritated. "Hi," I said to the darkness. "After something?"

Mr. Bandanna presented himself for my inspection, although if I'm totally honest I found myself focusing a little more on the gun he was holding than on his face. "Yeah," he said. "Wanna talk to you."

"That's nice," I said. "Can't say I feel like chatting."

His grip tightened on the gun, just a bit, but not with total certainty. "Too bad."

"Shit," I told him, "didn't they tellya never to threaten someone if you don't mean it?"

The neurachem slowed the world down around me so that I had time to actually watch as he pulled the trigger on the gun, firing it into the space where I'd been, and then I was beside him, kicking his legs out from under him. As soon as I was sure he was falling I cut it, dropping back into real time; a few seconds was okay, but drugs were drugs, and it was gonna be a bitch to deal with the comedown if I kept it up and running for too long. He was swinging for me as he fell, trying to use the gun to club me, his body twisting to hit the ground better; his reflexes were pretty good, and it wasn't really his fault I was cheating, tuned up for speed even before the chemical boost, but still. Too bad.

He ended up flat on his stomach, arms twisted behind his back. I kept my weight carefully applied.

"If you wanna do some talking now, that's fine," I told him. "Like, I dunno, maybe about why you followed me the other day and what the fuck you're doing here."

Whatever his reply was, I couldn't catch a word of it, though the tone was pretty self-explanatory. I eased up just enough to let him get a better breath into his lungs, in case that was the problem. Might as well give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment. It wasn't like he was going anywhere.

"Sorry," I said, "didn't get that. Try again." I twisted a bit harder on his arm for emphasis; a cheap trick, but it so often helped get a point across.

He swore and struggled a bit, but not nearly hard enough.

His gun was lying temptingly nearby, within reach. It'd be an extra motivator, for sure -- I didn't actually have a gun of my own on me. Yukimura had offered, but I wasn't in the habit, not unless I actually had a reason. It was an invitation for trouble if you weren't gonna use it, just like an empty threat.

If I picked up his gun, was I really gonna use it on him if he wouldn't talk? I thought about it.

Yeah, okay. So long as I kept his stack in one piece I could probably get Yukimura to give me access to a virtual suite. Being the nice guy was something I was pretty happy to leave to other people.

I reached for the gun, but as I did, something cool and solid pressed itself to the base of my skull, making me freeze.

"That's enough," a voice said. "You can let him up, Niou."

I couldn't think of anything to say except the blindingly obvious, like you know my name or shit, you move as quietly as I do, so I just eased off the guy and edged cautiously to my feet. The guy behind me gave me enough space for that, but I could feel the gun barrel against my neck every bloody inch of the way, at exactly the right height to bury a bullet in my cortical stack.

"Good," the voice told me. "Now turn around."

I turned, feeling metal trailing across the side of my neck, over the old scar, and coming to rest against my throat, the length of the barrel lying against my jaw, keeping my chin raised.

He was watching me with a cool, detached sort of expression, showing no sign of wavering, and I'd seen the way his sleeve was put together. A totally different proposition from the guy who'd tried his luck first.

I smirked, the voice of panic tiny and distant, buried beneath layers of careful conditioning. I could feel the pressure of unmoving metal when I swallowed.

"Hey, Yagyuu," I said, figuring I might as well go for the blindingly obvious after all since one of us had to say something. "Been lookin' for you."

"Yes," Yagyuu said, a tiny smile twitching the corners of his mouth. "I know."

They had a cab waiting on the next street. The guy who'd followed me got in the front, and Yagyuu and I shared the seats in the back, sitting close together, that fucking gun still aimed at my stack.

"Ain't this cosy," I muttered.

"Mm," Yagyuu agreed. "Just in case you are thinking of trying anything, Niou, allow me to assure you that while I'd like to talk to you I'm just as willing to kill you. Should it be necessary."

"Okay," I said. "You do that."

"I rather hope it won't be necessary. But all the same."

"Uh-huh." I slouched a bit in the seat, and the gun moved to follow me. I ignored it and stared out the window as we left the city lights behind, and then the island, shooting out over choppy black water towards a destination I couldn't guess at.

"So you used to work for Yukimura?" I offered, after a while.

"Oh, he told you that? I would have imagined that he would have left you to guess."

"He did. I guessed."

"Of course you did." Yagyuu sounded amused. "Did you guess anything else?"

"About you? Huh. I'll psychoanalyse you some time when you ain't got a gun pointed at me, thanks."

Yagyuu might have smiled, but I wasn't looking.

I got a feeling he had, all the same.

"You're already angry, of course. I'll leave the rest for later."

And then there was silence again.

We drove on.

It was just beginning to get light, the strip of sky I could see between the shutters over the window turning grey and then pink as the dawn arrived. I'd been alone all night, half-asleep, brain in neutral. Why waste energy? Yagyuu was gonna want to talk at me more sooner or later, and I got the feeling that was gonna be a pretty illuminating conversation. Ever since I met him there'd been something itching away in the depths of my brain that I couldn't reach, which just shouldn't happen. So much for perfect recall and perfect conditioning.

"Good morning," Yagyuu said when he came into the room, shutting the door behind him. "Did you sleep well?" His expression looked sincere enough, but his tone was on the side of mocking. Lovely.

"Oh, just great." Actually the room was pretty comfortable, like someone's bedroom that'd been abandoned in a hurry and only half stripped out. But after last night, dozing had been the best I could hope for, especially with my hands tied up. "Come to monologue at me and tell me your life story? All your motivations? How misunderstood you are, might be?"

"Not particularly."

I waited.

"How much have you worked out about the situation you've been dragged into?" he asked me, when he realised I wasn't up for contributing unless it seemed necessary.

"Wasn't really dragged," I said.

"Really?"

I shrugged. "It's a job. Not a kidnapping. Well, up to now, anyway."

"However you want to view it. My question stands."

"I know you've got a thing about Yukimura, that you used to work for him... you used to use this sleeve, right? And the name Genkuro."

"Yes."

"Akaya sends his love."

"I'm sure. Anything else?"

"Hey now, I've been on the job for all of a couple of days. I'm good, but I ain't so good I know your life story already."

Yagyuu pulled up a chair and sat down close to the bed, his expression unreadable. "As a point of interest, you'll find that you do know most of my life story, Niou. Intimately well, even." He gave me an odd little smile, and something in my mind clicked and shifted, the first little shift towards understanding that made the rest inevitable. The process was gaining momentum before Yagyuu was even able to say anything else.

Expressions, gestures, moments.

A job only I could do. A crisis urgent enough to drag me in from another world. Something the police wouldn't touch, or possibly something Yukimura wouldn't let them touch. A feeling of familiarity that I couldn't pin down, when my thought processes should be so precise.

"You're me."

"There. Although it's not strictly true."

"'How long would it take...'" I muttered.

"...for us to stop being the same person. Yes. I did ask that question."

'Who we are is only the sum of our experiences, that's the kind of shit they keep saying, right, so given long enough...'

'Whatever, it's not like we'd ever get to find out. You're a temporary computer-generated copy.'

'Really? From where I'm sitting, I look pretty much identical to you. Maybe you're the copy.'

"Fuck," I said, and really really meant it.

A long time ago -- subjectively fifteen years, objectively more like sixty, though most of those had been spent in store for me -- I'd been in training on a little rock of a world that more or less only existed for use by the Envoy Corps. The Corps is picky about who it takes, and though there's no way of ever knowing I'd always suspected I'd slipped in just under the wire, bloody near as much of an unlikely case as Akutsu. They like people with psychotic personality traits, and a group mentality, and as few close personal connections as possibly. They usually start looking in the army, and that's where they'd pulled me out from, though I'd never been totally keen on army life. As it turned out the Corps would suit me better, but still not well enough.

I learned a lot about working in virtual there, some bits of it way less pleasant than others. Psychiatrists like to work with people in virtual, because they can get a load of contact time in and it barely takes any real time. Interrogators like it for much the same reasons. The Corps is generally a lot bigger on the latter than the former.

A couple of times, when I'd got good at the work but not smart enough about the way the Corps worked to know better, I'd sent a copy of myself into the virtual training, just to see if I could; a game, kind of.

They'd been pretty down on that one, as it turned out. I'd always figured the copy they caught had just got wiped, after our little virtual chat. Who would've wanted to keep it? The lot who trained me all seemed pretty much in agreement that one was more than enough, not to mention how totally illegal it was.

And yet here we were.

Yagyuu had left me to deal with my own brain, which was almost thoughtful of him, only he was me, sort of, and I was a totally unthoughtful bastard, so he probably had some other reason.

I sat on the bed, arms aching, legs stretched out in front of me, and thought. If I was a half-trained version of me and I knew there was a copy of me out there, walking around all sleeved up and legally allowed to exist, what would I do?

Try to kill him, probably. I'd been pretty direct in some ways back then, and if there could only be one copy of someone walking around at any given time I was going to make damn sure I was that copy, without a bit of philosophical dilemma in sight. Must've been nice, being that kid. Yagyuu and I had both left him a long way behind, though. He hadn't fought at Io, and he hadn't spent years doing Yukimura's dirty work either.

I didn't know what I was going to do next. I didn't know what Yagyuu was going to do next, either. There's no way to describe how difficult it is to try and read someone who is you and isn't you at the same time.

I still didn't have a plan by the time Yagyuu came back, my mind a curious, unfamiliar blank, shutting itself off in something like self-defence.

"I'd like to think I could persuade you not to turn me over to Yukimura, should I release you," Yagyuu told me. "But I'm not sure if that's possible. Is it?"

I didn't answer. What was there to say? Well, sure, I'd love to let me--I mean you--carry on running around robbing from the rich and giving to yourself, only there's this trial, yanno, and...

That'd go down well.

Yagyuu nodded as though I'd spoken and he'd understood. "All the same, don't you think there's an argument for letting me be?"

"Yeah," I said. "Look hard enough, there's an argument for pretty much anything. Remember Reileen Kawahara? Bet she had an argument for all that shit she did."

"Now you're being difficult. The situations aren't comparable."

"Hey, you should know." I hunched in on myself. "Yanno, only one of us is allowed to exist at once. What're you planning to do, play rock-paper-scissors for it?"

"That would certainly be a thought," Yagyuu said, expression deadpan-bland, "if I had any idea what you were talking about. You are the only Niou Masaharu in existence; I am Yagyuu Hiroshi. Yagyuu is not a fully trained Envoy, and has never worked as a mercenary, and is not the subject of an interplanetary manhunt. And if you'll forgive me saying so, he's also rather more polite than Niou."

This, I thought, might just be what I would sound like if I ever went batshit insane.

"Why didya work for Yukimura?" I asked, cautiously, like trying to talk someone down from a ledge.

Yagyuu seemed to take a moment to adjust his mental position, refocusing, losing something of that slightly mad edge. "He was the one who took me out of storage and resleeved me. He told me I had been terminated from the Corps for... well, I'm sure you're aware... and that he would give me employment. Even a partly trained Envoy would find it hard to get legitimate work, I should think. It seemed like a good enough deal."

"Yukimura plays a whole load of games, don't he?" I muttered. I'd been planning on asking why Yagyuu had stopped working for Yukimura, but I was getting a picture already.

"A few too many for my tastes, yes," Yagyuu said, and gave me a polite, emotionless little smile.

I thought about all the other people working for Yukimura, and the echoing hallway in his house full of ancient paintings. Collect people too?

I'd had no bloody idea of the extent of it. Shit.

By mid-morning Yagyuu had untied me, letting me work feeling back into my hands. I didn't try to kill him; I didn't even try to make a run for it.

To be totally honest, I was just as curious as he was.

"Pretty big risk you're taking here," I told him. "Your sleeve's good, but all the same."

"I caught you before, didn't I?" Yagyuu murmured. "With a little luck."

"Sure. A little."

"Yes, I know you're better than me. In any case..."

I watched him, sitting cross-legged. "Yeah?"

"We are not the same person. But still close enough, I think."

"Man. Does it hurt you to say that?"

"Yes. A little." That smile, again. "I assure you, I'll live."

We avoided mentioning what was going to happen next for as long as we could. One of us was pretty much fucked, whichever way we jumped; maybe rock-paper-scissors wasn't such a bad idea after all.

After a while Yagyuu's sidekick came in, and gave Yagyuu some tech. A scanner, it looked like.

"I need to check something," Yagyuu told me.

I nodded. It wouldn't be totally shocking if I was bugged; actually the main shock was that Yukimura's guys hadn't descended on us yet, if I was.

It turned out the bug was buried right in with the cortical stack. We didn't even discuss rooting it out; no need to make myself die faster by fucking up the stack itself. And the damage was sure to be done by now.

We exchanged a look. "You could just head out now, yanno," I told Yagyuu. "Ain't like I can't lie well enough to cover you. Bet I can even make Yukimura buy some story."

"You aren't angry?" Yagyuu asked, his own voice bizarrely cool. "You know the bug means you have been used more as bait than anything."

I grinned at him. "Bloody furious. But that ain't got a thing to do with it. I'm gettin' found whatever happens."

Yagyuu kept hesitating, all the same. I wasn't sure I could even figure out why. So much for self-awareness.

"I think--" he said, and fell to silence, eyes turned to the door. Too late.

"I think this has gone on quite long enough," Yukimura said, smiling softly at us, as though we were unruly children. "Yagyuu, don't you think it's time to come home?"