How It All Goes Down
- Molly and Case meet the Finn at their hotel. The Finn has already checked the two into their room, and has moved on to whinging about how much he hates this town.
- The next day, Case answers the phone. Armitage tells him a man named Terzibashjian is coming to their room and to be ready.
- Terzibashjian takes an instant dislike to Molly, disapproving of a woman endowed with her modifications. Molly, for obvious reasons, takes an equally instant dislike to him. She threatens him with her fletcher gun. She's subtle like that.
- Terzibashjian informs them the man they are after, Riviera, is at the Yenishehir Palas hotel (which actually exists, by the way).
- A Mercedes drives Case, the Finn, and Terzibashjian to their destination. The car tells the sights like a tour guide.
- At the bazaar, the Finn is amazed to find a taxidermied horse. Apparently they're extinct.
- In an alleyway, the trio bumps into Riviera as he leaves his dealer's place. A floodlight shines on him, but Riviera crumbles to the ground. He gets up, but he's a bloody stump of a man, like a victim from a zombie flick.
- Things happen real fast here. Terzibashjian leaps through the zombie since it was just an illusion created by Riviera's tech implants. A gun is fired. Riviera is tackled to the ground, but Terzibashjian was shot in the left hand, and Molly shows up from wherever she was.
- The Finn takes Riviera away. Molly puts Terzibashjian in a car, telling that if she'll kill him if she ever sees him again. Again, subtle like that.
- Case and Molly drive to Topkapi Palace, once a Sultan's harem but now a museum, to talk.
- Molly wants to try and get closer to Wintermute, but Case thinks it's a bad idea. The ice (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics) is always too good around superior artificial intelligences. Plus, he'd have to deal with the Turing Police, a kind of law enforcement group meant to keep AIs in check.
- They also discuss Riviera. Molly informs Case that the man a sociopath. He makes women fall in love with him and then finds pleasure in betraying them.
- Armitage waits for them in their room. Time to go. Next stop, Freeside.
- At the airport, Case goes to buy some cigarettes when a payphone rings. It's Wintermute, and it says the time to talk has come. Case hangs up, but every phone he passes rings. Wait a minute. So, horses are extinct but payphones aren't? What a future.