“Right. Delay him: as long as you can, but remember he has Sonja, so no ninja-throwing drones or stuff like that. I’ll be there as soon as I can, but I have pieces dropping off me like I’m a hyperactive leper. One more thing: do you remember the promise you made to me when you were still flesh and blood?”

“Come the revolution, you will be spared.”

“Whatever it is you’ve heard, I’m still for you. Okay?”

“Shinkansen ha mata hashirou.”

The line went dead.

“Sam?”

“He’s… it’s gone.”

She turned the phone to her and looked at the flashing battery icon. “I don’t understand why it is that you’re taking the side of a machine that’s indiscriminately killing people?”

Petrovitch shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not. I’m lying through my teeth every time I talk to it. So far I’ve found out the New Machine Jihad is really Oshicora’s VirtualJapan supervisor, the whereabouts of the secret room, the information that yes, it can be damaged by something there, and I’ve got a promise it won’t try and kill me just yet. Tell me who else can get close enough to the Jihad to disable it?”

“You lied?” She sounded shocked, and Petrovitch was outwardly disappointed but inwardly pleased.

“Maddy, I lie all the time. About almost everything. My entire life is constructed on a lie, and if it means I get to save the Metrozone, I’ll carry on lying until my pants spontaneously combust.”

“So why did Chain get rid of us?”

“Because despite your ‘why can’t we just get along’ speech, the idiot thinks I’m pro-Jihad. In his binary mind, that means I’m willing to let the city burn, and because you’re naturally going to take my side in everything, he sees you as part of the problem.” He wanted to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He had no way of doing so; he’d run out of hands. “If Chain gets to the tower before I do, any advantage I might have had has gone and you can wave the city goodbye.”

She sat back on her heels, wiping the worst of the congealing gore on her face away with her armored sleeve. “There must be something we can do.”

“Short of calling down a nuclear strike, no.” He tilted his head to see her better, her worry lines, her misshapen nose, the black scab perched at the end of it and the streaks of blood on her lips and chin. “I’d do it, too, if I thought anyone would believe me.”

“I believe you.”

“All we have is some scaffolding and a phone that no longer works.” He grimaced. “And a mad computer who thinks we’re on its side. I don’t know if it’s enough.”