22. Ghosts And Empties

En route to New York, Kumiko questions Sally about leaving London. Sally explains Petal let them go because stopping her would cost face, and Swain is under pressure. She admits someone knows her past and is coercing her. They check into a gray, anonymous hotel where Sally rests, then orders supplies and prepares to meet “the man.”

They move through the Sprawl’s decayed streets, briefly stop at the Gentleman Loser for information, then follow directions to a dead-end alley. There, offerings sit before an armored fixture housing a construct of the Finn. Sally makes contact; the Finn recognizes Kumiko as Yanaka’s daughter and jokes about the oracle setup.

Sally invokes the Straylight run and confesses she’s being hunted by 3Jane. The Finn says Case quit and settled into family life. Sally recounts post-Straylight years: drifting through Europe, losing and making money, a bad year in Hamburg escaping contract killings, then becoming a London-based backer with a stake in an Aix-la-Chapelle casino and moonlighting as the fighter “Misty Steele,” which left her scarred.

The present problem surfaces: Swain’s enforcer Prior delivered a dossier of incriminating history, showing Sally is being blackmailed. Swain, himself coerced, wants a “rip” of a warm-body celebrity. Sally’s London cowboy identified the client as 3Jane. Pressed by the Finn, Sally names the target: Angela Mitchell.

The Finn sketches Angie’s background: daughter of Christopher Mitchell, a Maas biolab luminary, raised in a sealed compound in Arizona. After a mysterious, non-radioactive megaton-class blast, Maas declared Mitchell’s suicide; rumors say Hosaka backed a defection. Street talk places Angie in New Jersey with dealers steeped in “hoodoo.” The Finn concludes those voodoo notions about the matrix are true, widening the implications of Sally’s coerced mission.