If you list all the things that people care about, the things that we think we can’t live without, the most fundamental are always at the bottom. Light. Gravity. The physics of the world. Forget food and shelter and alcohol and pornography. They mean nothing without the sun to power them and invisible forces to keep them anchored to the ground. The things that we swim in every day — the things we truly, physically need to survive — barely rate a mention.

Except after a bad night, when the fundamentals of survival seem so much closer at hand.

I could feel the dirty gray light of a Los Angeles mid-morning pounding against my face when I woke up, every photon landing with a discrete dull thud. I considered opening my eyes, but they were sort of stuck together and I didn’t like the idea of letting light ricochet around the inside of my skull.

Instead, I moaned, and that hurt.

I tried to raise my left hand, but my shoulder was restrained, bound up. I’d had medical attention. Chet must have come out of his little coma at some point on the drive home, hauled me upstairs and done what he could. My right hand was free and reluctantly crawled up my body, taking an inventory as it went.

Crotch: check, seemed OK. Magnum gone from my belt: probably put away. Ribs bound but hurt like hell: expected that. Lots of dried blood on chest, chin, lips. A couple of plump leach-packs on my cheeks: Chet must have put them there to lessen the bruising. Nose was puffy and raw but mostly straight. Gun muzzle at my temple.

That shouldn’t be there.

Wake up with a gun to your head enough times and you learn a few things. First, they’re not going to kill you. If they were going to kill you, they would have done it already, while you were asleep. It’s simpler that way, and avoids the possibility that you’ll try to do something dramatic. Second, you should move very, very slowly, because they don’t know that you’re not going to try something dramatic.

I gently pushed the gun away and said, just above a whisper, “Gimme a second, OK?” I rubbed my eyes — they made crunching noises — and managed to get them open. Light flooded into my head and made lots of racket. I moaned again.

Three of Koizumi’s paramilitaries were crowded into my bedroom, looming over me, each with their rifles on-line and pointed at parts of me I wouldn’t want holes in.

The one to the right, with the muzzle-contact fetish, said, “Mr. Koizumi would like to speak with you.”

“OK,” I said, and tried to sit up. “Let me just—”

“Now,” he said. His weapon retracted — the other two re-aimed their guns to higher priority targets — and he pulled a small rod from a tube on his arm. It broke apart vertically and unfolded into half a square that he held in front of me.

The air between the arms of whatever it was shimmered as waveforms started to interfere with each other, an image of Koizumi resolving out of the mess.

“He could have just sent a fruit basket,” I said.

“You’re live, sir,” the grunt said into his comm.

Koizumi looked stern and focused, like the last time I had seen him, up on his desk. His eyes — even semi-transparent — were the same piercing brown and his mouth was drawn and serious, his jaw set hard. He looked — and I’m not entirely unfamiliar with the situation — like a man bent on delivering a reprimand to an underperforming flunky, and delivering it with a measure of dignity and reserve.

He failed.

“You dog!” Koizumi exploded, his grim seriousness dissolving into a sputtering rage, his image not quite keeping up with the audio. “You half-wit! You simpering, slope-headed, wall-eyed buffoon!”

“Good morning, sir,” I said.

He fell into Japanese and I lost track of what he was saying. He knocked a few things off his desk and threw something at the transmitter, the display doing its best to show it — a vase? — coming at me.

“Boss is sure grouchy today,” I said to the grunt.

Koizumi had stalked out of the transmitter’s range, but I could hear him thrashing around his office. A chair came in one side of the frame and went out the other.

I tried to sit up again, but a heavy, armored hand landed on my bad shoulder and I grimaced and laid back down.

Koizumi reared back onto the screen, tendons and blood vessels and sweat popped out all over his face. “One simple thing,” he said, “and you couldn’t manage to do it! One simple thing!”

“Hey, now, wait a minute,” I said. “Danning is dead. There’s not even enough of him left to clean up.”

“Danning is not dead, you pathetic amateur,” Koizumi said. “You killed a hover, a lot of people on the ground and just about any chance left of actually doing what you were paid to do.”

“But—”

“He was flying it remotely, bakayarou! If you had bothered to run decodes on the drone frequencies, you would have known that!”

Oh. Drone. Damn. No response to that.

Except… Except L.A.P.D. drone protocols had military-grade cryptography and there is no way anybody could decode them without a week’s computer time and a lot of luck. “I—” I said.

“Shut up!” Koizumi spat. “If I want to hear from you, sanpai, I will ask you a question. Is that clear?”

“Ye—”

“Shut up! Shinkan! Shut up!”

Something was wrong here. This wasn’t the way Koizumi was supposed to be. It didn’t match with his psyche report at all. This guy was crazed, out of control. Once you got past the anger in his voice, there was something else there, and it was driving him. Driving him hard.

Koizumi was gritting his teeth and methodically pounding his forehead with his fists, muttering in Japanese. He’d realized the same thing I had — he was giving too much away — and his shoulders rose and fell as he breathed deeply, trying to collect himself.

He turned, planted both hands flat on his desk and leaned into the transmitter.

“You have been manipulated, Mr. Baxter. You did everything Danning expected you to do, and he did it on his terms and his timetable.”

“Well, hey,” I said. “Thanks for the heads-up about the ninja shit. It didn’t help that he could walk on walls.”

“Walk on walls?”

“Or, y’know, swing from pipes. It sounds more dramatic the other way,” I said. “And don’t change the subject! The son of a bitch knew I was coming and he didn’t get that information from me. Your security leaks like a cheap suit!” Unresponsive got his information from somewhere.

Koizumi dropped his head for a moment, then raised it. He had softened, and looked a little pained. Apologetic. That was unexpected. “I did not know about the ninja shit, Mr. Baxter,” he said.

“Oh, come on. You’ve got some reason to be pissed off at this little zero and you hired me to kill him. That’s not something that gets done lightly, or without you knowing exactly what you’re getting into. I play the fool much better than you do, Mr. Koizumi.”

A faint, sad grin appeared on his face, barely visible against the water stains on my apartment ceiling. “Your mistake,” he said, “is in assuming that I don’t have superiors who keep me in the dark as well.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Tend to yourself, Mr. Baxter. I have people to talk to, but I would appreciate it you would meet me tonight, at the Griffith Emitter. I’d like to speak to you, face to face.”