How It All Goes Down
- Case awakens in cyberspace. Dixie asks if he's trying to break the record for most brain deaths. Honestly, there are worse records to break.
- Case flips over to Molly's consciousness, where she tells him more about her past while she is infiltrating Straylight.
- It seems Molly once had a man named Johnny (Yes, he's the same Johnny from Gibson's short story "Johnny Mnemonic").
- Johnny was privy to some highly classified information on some high level crooks. Together, they used the information to blackmail certain mobsters and Yakuza, and lived very well off the cash. The Yakuza bid their time, waited for Molly and Johnny to be happy, and then sent a cold-stone killer for Johnny. Molly only saw the killer once as they passed each other in the hall. She found Johnny dead in their apartment.
- Molly infiltrates deeper into Straylight. She tells Case another story, one Wintermute told her. Wintermute was never able to reach his purpose because the Tessier-Ashpool family could never reach theirs. So, it was forced to play a strategic game of waiting.
- In one instance, he managed to manipulate a boy into hiding a key in a particular drawer in a particular cupboard. Then it had the boy killed. Molly obtains that very key.
- Case flips twice: once to check on the Dixie Flatline and the virus, the other to check on Maelcum.
- Case returns to Molly's consciousness right when she accidently runs into John Ashpool, 3Jane's father. He turns his gun on her, wondering if he should kill her as well as commit suicide.
- He's pretty messed up on alcohol and pills, not to mention paranoia and disillusionment. Based on his addled ramblings, it seems something went wrong during his last cryogenic sleep to mess him up.
- The pills take their toll, and Ashpool passes out.
- Molly snatches up his gun and discovers the dead and mutilated body of a girl. Case sees the face of Linda Lee on the body but realizes Wintermute altered the simstim broadcast.
- Molly shots Ashpool in the eye, killing him.