Case had seen panic before, but never in an enclosed area. The Sense/Net employees, spilling out of the elevators, had surged for the street doors, only to meet the foam barricades of the Tacticals and the sandbag-guns of the BAMA Rapids. The two agencies, convinced that they were containing a horde of potential killers, were cooperating with an uncharacteristic degree of efficiency. Beyond the shattered wreckage of the main street doors, bodies were piled three deep on the barricades. The hollow thumping of the riot guns provided a constant background for the sound the crowd made as it surged back and forth across the lobby’s marble floor. Case had never heard anything like that sound. Neither, apparently, had Molly. “Jesus,” she said, and hesitated. It was a sort of keening, rising into a bubbling wail of MW and total fear. The lobby floor was covered with bodies, clothing, blood, and long trampled scrolls of yellow printout. “C’mon, sister. We’re for out. ” The eyes of the two Moderns stared out of madly swirling shades of polycarbon, their suits unable to keep up with the confusion of shape and color that raged behind them. “You hurt? C’mon. Tommy’ll walk you.” Tommy handed something to the one who spoke, a video camera wrapped in polycarbon. “Chicago,” she said, “I’m on my way.” And then she was falling, not to the marble floor, slick with blood and vomit, but down some blood warm well, into silence and the dark.
The Panther Modern leader, who introduced himself as Lupus Yonderboy, wore a polycarbon suit with a recording feature that allowed him to replay backgrounds at will. Perched on the edge of Case’s worktable like some kind of state of the art gargoyle, he regarded Case and Armitage with hooded eyes. He smiled. His hair was pink. A rainbow forest of microsofts bristled behind his left ear; the ear was pointed, tufted with more pink hair. His pupils had been modified to catch the light like a cat’s. Case watched the suit crawl with color and texture. “You let it getout of control,” Armitage said. He stood in the center of the loft like a statue, wrapped in the dark glossy folds of an expensive-looking trench coat. “Chaos, Mr. Who,” Lupus Yonderboy said. “That is our mode and modus. That is our central kick. Your woman knows. We deal with her. Not with you, Mr. Who.” His suit had taken on a weird angular pattern of beige and pale avocado. “She needed her medical team. She’s with them. We’ll watch out for her. Everything’s fine.” He smiled again. “Pay him,” Case said. Armitage glared at him. “We don’t have the goods.” “Your woman has it,” Yonderboy said. “Pay him.” Armitage crossed stiffly to the table and took three fat bundles of New Yen from the pockets of his trench coat. “You want to count it?” he asked Yonder boy. “No,” the Panther Modern said. “You’ll pay. You’re a Mr. Who. You pay to stay one. Not a Mr. Name.” “I hope that isn’t a threat,” Armitage said. “That’s business,” said Yonderboy, stuffing the money into the single pocket on the front of his suit. The phone rang. Case answered. “Molly,” he told Armitage, handing him the phone.
The Sprawl’s geodesics were lightening into predawn gray as Case left the building. His limbs felt cold and disconnected. He couldn’t sleep. He was sick of the loft. Lupus had gone, then Armitage, and Molly was in surgery somewhere. Vibration beneath his feet as a train hissed past. Sirens Doppler Ed in the distance. He took corners at random, his collar up, hunched in a new leather jacket, flicking the first of a chain of Yeheyuans into the gutter and lighting another. He tried to imagine Armitage’s toxin sacs dissolving in his bloodstream, microscopic membranes wearing thinner as he walked. It didn’t seem real. Neither did the fear and agony he’d seen through Molly’s eyes in the lobby of Sense/Net. He found himself trying to remember the faces of the three people he’d killed in Chiba. The men were blanks; the woman reminded him of Linda Lee. A battered tricycle-truck with mirrored windows bounced past him, empty plastic cylinders rattling in its bed. “Case.” He darted sideways, instinctively getting a wall behind his back. “Message for you, Case.” Lupus Yonder boy’s suit cycled through pure primaries. “Pardon. Not to startle you.” Case straightened up, hands in jacket pockets. He was a head taller than the Modern. “You ought a be careful, Yonder boy.” “This is the message. Winter mute.” He spelled it out. “From you?” Case took a step forward. “No,” Yonderboy said. “For you.” “Who from?” “Winter mute,” Yonderboy repeated, nodding, bobbing his crest of pink hair. His suit went matte black, a carbon shadow against old concrete. He executed a strange little dance, his thin black arms whirling, and then he was gone. No. There. Hood up to hide the pink, the suit exactly the right shade of gray, mottled and stained as the sidewalk he stood on. The eyes winked back the red of a stoplight. And then he was really gone. Case closed his eyes, massaged them with numb fingers, leaning back against peeling brickwork. Ninsei had been a lot simpler.