Kept a loose grip on the butt. Peripheral vision told me Brasil had done the same with the frag rifle, and that Sierra Tres had her arms at her sides.

“Yes, I really meant relinquish your weapons,” said the same woman urbanely. “As in put them down altogether. Perhaps my Amanglic is not as idiomatic as it could be.”

I turned in the direction the voice came from.

“That you, Aiura?”

There was a long pause, and then she stepped out of the archway at the end of the ornamental space. Another orbital discharge lit her for a moment, then the gloom sank back and I had to use neurachem to keep the detail. The Harlan security executive was the epitome of First Family beauty—elegant, almost ageless Eurasian features, jet-black hair sculpted back in a static field that seemed to both crown and frame the pale of her face. A mobile intelligence of lips and gaze, the faintest of lines at the corners of her eyes to denote a life lived. A tall, slim frame wrapped in a simple quilted jacket in black and dark red with the high collar of office, matching slacks loose enough to appear a full-length court gown when she stood still. Flat-heeled shoes that she could run or fight in if she had to. A shard pistol. Not aimed, not quite lowered.

She smiled in the dim light.

“I am Aiura, yes.”

“Got my fuckhead younger self there with you?”

Another smile. A flicker of eyebrows as she glanced sideways, back the way she’d come. He stepped out of the shadowed archway. There was a grin on his face, but it didn’t look very firmly anchored.

“Here I am, old man. Got something to say to me?”

I eyed the tanned combat frame, the gathered stance and the bound back hair. Like some fucking bad guy from a cut-rate samurai flic.

“Nothing you’d listen to,” I told him. “I’m just trying to sort out the idiot count here.”

“Yeah? Well I’m not the one who just climbed two hundred metres so he could walk into an ambush.”

I ignored the jibe, and looked back at Aiura, who was watching me with amused curiosity.

“I’m here for Sylvie Oshima,” I said quietly.

My younger self coughed laughter. Some of the armoured men and women took it up, but it didn’t last. They were too nervous, there were still too many guns in play. Aiura waited for the last guffaws to skitter out.

“I think we’re all aware of that, Kovacs-san. But I fail to see how you’re going to accomplish your goal.”

“Well, I’d like you to go and fetch her for me.”

More grating laughter. But the security exec’s smile had paled out and she gestured sharply for quiet.

“Be serious, Kovacs-san. I don’t have unlimited patience.”