“Look, Micky, I’m not an activist and I’m not a soldier. I’m strictly a datarat. Mimints and code, that’s me. Put me in New Hok with a crew and there’s no one to touch me. But that’s not where we are right now, and you and I both know I’m not going back to Drava any time soon. So given the current climate, I think I’m going to bow out to this Nadia. Because whoever or whatever she really is, she stands a far better chance of navigating the waters than I do.”

She sat staring into her glass as it filled. I shook my head.

“This isn’t you, Sylvie.”

“Yes it is.” Suddenly her tone was savage. “My friends are fucking dead or worse, Micky. I’ve got a whole planet of cops plus the Millsport yakuza looking to make me the same way. So don’t tell me this isn’t me. You don’t know what happens to me under those circumstances because you haven’t fucking seen it before, alright. Even I don’t fucking know what happens to me under those circumstances.”

“Yeah, and instead of finding out, you’re going to stay in here like some fucking Renouncer dream of a good little girl your parents once had. Going to sit in here playing with your plug-in world, and hope someone on the outside takes care of business for you.”

She said nothing, just raised the newly-filled glass in my direction. I felt a sudden, constricting wave of shame pulse through me.

“I’m sorry.”

“You should be. Would you like to live through what they did to Orr and the others? Because I’ve got it all on tap down here.”

“Sylvie, you can’t—”

“They died hard, Micky. Peeled back, all of them. At the end, Kiyoka was screaming like a baby for me to come and get her. You want to plug into that, carry that around with you for a while like I have to?”

I shivered, and it seemed to transmit itself to the whole construct. A small, cold thrum hung in the air around us.

“No.”

We sat for a long time in silence after that. Tokyo Crow’s clientele came and went around us, wraithlike.

After a while, she gestured vaguely upwards.

“You know, the aspirants believe this is the only true existence. That everything outside is an illusion, a shadow play created by the ancestor gods to cradle us until we can build our own tailored reality and Upload into it. That’s comforting, isn’t it.”

“If you let it be.”

“You called her a virus,” she said pensively. “As a virus, she was very successful in here. She infiltrated my systems as if she was designed for it. Maybe she’ll be as successful out there in the shadow play.”

I closed my eyes. Pressed a hand to my face.

“Something wrong, Micky?”