Emotional shell shock, that's what it was, coupled with the very real symptoms of "adrenaline overdose." While it ran its course, I was incapable of feeling anything, fragging near incapable of thinking. If Ekei Tokudaiji with his head split like a melon, had walked up to me, I'd have shaken his fragging hand.

The shakes and the nausea and the chills went away even¬tually the way they always do. After ten or fifteen minutes, I was almost back to normal except for the dull, thudding headache and queasy stomach of adrenaline hangover. I'm getting too old for this drek, I told myself. I wasn't a young lion anymore. Frag, I was thirty-five going on thirty-six… and feeling half a century older than that, at the moment. I was losing the edge. Losing? Frag me, I'd lost it. How long had it taken me, back there in Tokudaiji's library, to register the fact that Scott wasn't going to geek me, too?

It wasn't entirely age and diminishing capabilities, though, was it? There was more to it than that. I looked down at my left hand and clenched it into a fist again and again.

It was still with me, wasn't it? The emotional baggage of that cluster-frag beneath Fort Lewis, the op that had cost me my arm and Hawk, Rodney, and the others so much more. I was still fragged up by it. My timing was gone, my instincts were… well, were they fragged, or was it just that I didn't trust them? I didn't know. When that first gunshot had gone off next to my ear, the emotions that had paralyzed me hadn't been the emotions of the moment-if that makes any sense at all. They'd been loaded with resonances of the emotions of those distant moments when friends had been dying around me and when my left arm had been fried to charcoal. Somehow I'd never really recovered. It was as if I'd lost much more than my arm in Fort Lewis. Part of my self-image, part of my worldview, perhaps… part of my soul? It was that loss which hadn't allowed me to put it all behind me and move on.

I could have done things different, I recognized suddenly. What do people always say when you fall off a motorbike? Get back on the fragging thing right now, get back in the fragging saddle. Had I gotten back in the saddle after my "fall?" Not a frigging chance, omae. I'd slipped the Seattle border and fled on down to the slower pace of Cheyenne. And I'd built myself a rep as the master of minimal exposure. Had I climbed back on that bike? No, chummer, it's as if I'd run from it and never again gone near anything that moved faster than a slow stroll. My choice, and at the time it had seemed the reasonable one. But now I was out of my safe little no-exposure comfort zone, and I'd be paying for that choice.

I buttoned the C-N Buddy back up again and pulled back onto the road. I was still too close to the scene of the crime; I had to extend, had to put distance between me and Tokudaiji's samurai. I also had to think things through and decide on my best course of action, but I could think just as well driving as I could staring blindly into space.

Ten minutes later and I was heading northwest on Route 83, the coastal road that circumnavigates the island. At any other time, I'd have relished the view. Now I hardly even saw it, I had so much on my mind.

What the frag had gone down back mere at the oyabun s compound? What the frag had I gotten myself into?

Obviously, a conspiracy to geek the oyabun-no prizes for guessing that much. Barnard had used me as a kind of Trojan horse, hadn't he? Used me to penetrate Tokudaiji's security, to draw the yak boss out, to let Scott get close enough to cap him.

And more than that. Obviously, Barnard-with Yama-tetsu's resources behind him-had set up the magical provisions that Scott the hit-ork had needed to do the job. The physical illusion spell or whatever the frag it was, that had let him sneak a fragging Remington Roomsweeper through a tight search. The shattershield spell that he must have used to slam down the magical barrier that an important target like an oyabun would have as a matter of course. A lot of that drek, you could pour the mana into a spell focus or a fetish of some kind, something, say, like the pot-bellied little guy on Scotty's lapel. Scott himself would have to be a mage or a shaman-probably the latter, I figured, following in his mother's footsteps-to trigger it (that's the way I understood it, at least), but he wouldn't have to have much juice of his own.

So I was the cover, the camouflage under which the assassin got close enough to grease his target. Okay, I could scan that.

But why didn't Scotty take me down as well?

That was the sixty-four nuyen question, wasn't it? Frag, if he'd played it right, Scott could-maybe-have walked out of there alive. Grease Tokudaiji and his aide with the Roomsweeper, then cap me with another weapon. Claim that I was the assassin and that he'd been too slow to pulp me before I got my shots off. Sure, it might not have worked. Sure, Tokudaiji's sammies would probably have shot first and questioned the corpses. But it would have given him a chance, even a slim one. As it was, he suicided with a belly-bomb. Why not toss the dice and maybe-just maybe-live another day?

So why was I still sucking air past my teeth? Good question, chummer, with two possible answers. One, cacking me was part of the job that Scott just didn't feel up to doing. In other words, my winning personality had been enough to convince a corporate hit-ork to default on part of his contract. Yeah, right. Two…

Two, leaving me alive was part of the plan. A live Dirk Montgomery would serve Jacques Barnard's purposes better than a dead Dirk Montgomery.

Why? Who the frag knew. Maybe Barnard expected me to draw off the yakuza's resources, to lead the yak soldiers on a merry chase while… While what'! I didn't like the logic behind this train of thought. The way Barnard figured things, leaving me alive would only benefit him. Leaving me on the street with a grudge to settle didn't represent a significant threat to him or to his plans. (Not the most complimentary estimate of my capabilities, neh?) No, the way he figured things, I'd help him… without realizing it, of course. And-here was the most disturbing part-for the life of me (literally) I couldn't figure out how…

Frag! Just fragging wonderful, better and better, oh boy.

Now wait, hold it just a tick here, there was something I was missing. Something that just didn't ring true. I slowed down and let the biker who'd been tailgating me on his gyro-stabilized crotch-rocket scream by, flipping me the finger as he passed.

It was the belly-bomb, wasn't it? That's what was hanging me up. Call me hopelessly naive (I've been called much worse, trust me), but I'd always associated belly-bombs and suicide missions with ideologically driven fanatics-in other words, with slogan-chanting wackos. Not with corporate hard-men. I'd always classed corporate assassins as the cold and logical types, the slots who plan everything down to the minutest detail and won't take a job unless there's a 99.99% chance that they'll walk away from it. Hell, corporators- whether they're managers or killers-are driven by the personal profit motive, aren't they? I've never really thought loyalty unto death was part of the corporate world. You do your job because you're paid for it-paid very well, in many cases-not because you truly believe in what the corp's doing. Who in their right mind would die for the Just and Righteous Cause of Yamatetsu Corporation?

Yet apparently that's just what Scott did. Where was the profit motive in his actions? It's pretty hard to enjoy the fruits of your labors when a kilo of C12 in your abdominal cavity has splattered your body hither and yon. Was I missing something here? Was there more to Scott's actions than the obvious?

Or-now here was a nasty little thought-had bruddah Scott even known he was packing a belly-bomb or that it would be detonated when it was? Maybe he hadn't known he was on a suicide mission. Maybe he'd really expected that he'd be fighting his way out… possibly with me in tow.