Martin would have done his gunslinger ancestors proud, with how quick his sidearm was pointed at that tiny metal creature. "Doc, deactivate that thing right the fuck now."

Doc's eyes went wide, his hands went up, and he backed away as far as the small room would allow. "Marty, you should put the gun away."

But the Bird looked — far from frightened — nonplussed, and just a little put-out as he looked Martin up and down. "Let's see, steely-eyed expression. Strange haircut dyed blue. Trying hard to be a steely-eyed killer with a baby-smooth face. Are we in an anime? Japanese role-playing game?"

"Doc, turn that thing off. You don't know what you're dealing with," Martin ordered, gesturing with his gun for emphasis.

The little metallic bird looked like it was squinting at him. "Oh, wait, I see it now. We have crossed paths before. And not too far from where we are now. You're Martin Rawley, formerly a fixer for 'Peace of Mind', the now defunct mercenary company run by Lanval Adams. You were on the crew holding Luca Cardego and his friends captive, until that idiot Fabulo ordered Luca killed. Funny, given how much Luca paid you to bail on the Brotherhood of Vampires, I thought you'd be busy spraining your imagination by trying to spend all that money."

"Doc, that's not some automated drone. That's a sentient AI, and it's bat-shit crazy. Pull the fucking plug."

"Marty, this isn't odd behaviour for the BIRD model drones," Doc protested. "They're all a little peculiar, they think they're living in a world made up by some kind of extra-dimensional author. But they're completely harmless. More importantly, if you don't let it accompany you on this job, you won't be allowed in the city."

"Relax, Marty." BIRD waved its wing at him, and hopped across the small table. "I ended up betraying the Brotherhood less than an hour after you did. And judging by the equipment on your doctor's table there, it's either I go with you, or he replaces your eyes with some kind of cameras. And with how his hands are shaking right now, I wouldn't trust him with a tattoo needle, let alone complicated surgery he's probably not qualified for."

"Hey, I'm fully licensed," Doc insisted.

"For complicated brain surgery?"

"Well, no. But the instillation instructions are easy enough to follow," Doc said. "Nothing more complicated than a piece of IKEA furniture."

"Which means Martin has a 50/50 chance of coming out the procedure blind because you did step fourteen backwards," BIRD said, and turned back to Martin. "Would it help if I swore on the fabled Turning Machine that the interests of my circuits are aligned with yours for the moment?"

Martin scoffed, but he put away his pistol. And he fished out the combat goggles Doc had suggested, and put them on his forehead, beneath his hair.

BIRD stretched its wings, and fluttered up until it landed on his shoulder. The little metallic bird hardly weighed more than a few ounces, Marin barely noticed its presence on his shoulder, and its movements were quiet enough Martin wasn't likely to hear them unless he put his ear right up to its chassis.

A hard rap on the open door pulled Martin's eyes, and he turned to see the ship's captain pointing down the hall. Candice's hair was bright blue now, shimmering with flecks of white. "My cargo bay has a few good-sized windows. I know you've seen Mars once before, but have you ever seen Neo Tokyo?"

Martin followed her to the cargo bay, past the half-dozen motorcycles magnetically locked to ship's hull, and stopped beside her at a window so large he could fit a car through it. "A little big for a viewport. Aren't windows a structural weakness?"

"You always expecting to get shot at, Martin?" Candice asked.

"Shot, stabbed, vented into space when the only thing keeping my air in the room shatters."

"Relax, this isn't Earth. Mars doesn't have a giant cloud of space garbage around it," Candice said, and she pointed straight ahead.

Mars couldn't be called the red planet anymore. Its oceans were as blue as Earth's, its forests and fields just as green. Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the solar system, was now a snow-capped mountain so majestic and perfect Mt Kyoto was considered a tiny scale model of it now. And with Mars being so much smaller than Earth, they passed so close that Martin could actually see the vague contours of the now extinct volcano as it rose from the ground.

Candice leaned against the window, and looked down as far as she could. "And here she is. The impossible city of dreams."

Bird hopped onto the window's lip. "Well," it said, so quietly Martin might have imagined it was in awe. "I'm impressed."

Martin looked down, and saw Neo Tokyo for the first time.

The City was built inside a massive drum, with an enormous expanse of cityscape stretching for impossibly long miles inside. Skyscrapers so distant Martin still couldn't see individual windows rose for what might be half a mile or more straight up, reaching for the city on the other side. Some of those skyscrapers did extend to the other side, likely support beams that had apartments and garden complexes all along the long miles that stretched from one side of Neo Tokyo's drum to the other.

"How many people live here?" Martin asked. He barely heard his own voice, so caught up in what he watched.

"Over fifteen million people. Earth has a large cyberpunk following, and a lot of us jumped at the chance to live their dreams out," Candice said. Martin saw the blue in her hair shift again, and realized Candice had included herself in that statement.

"The ship is entering Neo Tokyo's artificial atmosphere. The harbour master will take over guiding the ship to Port USB. Please check your magnetic boots now."

And like Dorothy dreaming of Kansas, Martin, Candice, and Doc all clicked their heels. Candice and Doc even both whispered, "There's no place like home."

"So far," Martin said to BIRD. "This sight alone's been worth the trip."

"Does that mean you'll waive your fee?" Candice asked. "Like you said before, you really don't need the money."

"I don't need the money, but I don't work for free."

"Ah, the mercenary's code. It's all about the credits."

"Dollars. I'm not being paid in whatever bitcoin derivative Neo Tokyo finds fashionable."

The ship's engines stopped, and Martin felt himself anchored in place only by his boots clinging to the ship's deck. The vibrations of the ship entering Neo Tokyo's atmosphere turned Candice's hair into a cloud of slowly swirling light, colourful as a nebula.

They passed inside the drum that housed this floating city in space, and Martin returned to gaping at the astonishing impossibility of it. Highways were lit up in bright lines of every colour, and the city slowly spun from left to right, buildings and parks passing from one side of the window to the other slowly.

Though not really slowly. It only looked slow because Neo Tokyo was so big.

"It's like being inside of a washing machine," Martin said to himself. "The drum spins, and centrifugal force pushes everyone against the sides. Artificial gravity."

BIRD looked over at him and somehow managed to frown, despite not having a beak capable of facial expressions. "Stop explaining things for the audience. If the author's doing his job, they'll catch the concept in the descriptions."

"Say what now?"

"Never mind," BIRD said.

The ship shuddered a little, and began to turn. The cityscape only shifted a little, stopped moving in the window, and then a slightly harder bump announced that they had docked.

"Well, we're here," Candice said as she stepped over to the cargo bay doors. "Lucky for you, one of the motorcycles we brought over from Luna is for you, otherwise you might have a hard time getting around."

Martin looked at the vehicle Candice was pointing at, a massive thing for a motorcycle with wheels wider than Matin was from shoulder to shoulder. He ran his hands over the handles affectionately, and grinned. "Doesn't the city have any mass transit?"

"Yeah, sure. But if you could cruse around as fast as you like on an electric bike, or sit on a train, which would you pick?"

Marin acknowledged the point with a short tilt of his head, just as the cargo bay doors began to open. Martin took a position behind the bike, his right hand casually resting against his sidearm. "So, cap," he said. "Who are we expecting?"

"Should only be a small research team. Doctor Rin Porter, and a couple of PhD students I don't remember the names of. I'll know them when I see them."

"So, if I see anyone else?" Martin asked.

"Then you start earning your exorbitant paycheque, merc."

The doors lowered, and to Martin's immediate relief there were only three people. The woman in the middle started walking forward before the doors had finished opening. And as Martin relaxed, he had a chance to actually see the woman walking onto the ship.

And he liked what he saw.

Her hair was pretty close of what he was starting to expect from Neo Tokyo. Platinum white and fire-engine red, wavy, and most of it on one side of her head. He could see one of her eyes was an implant, a fact she didn't even try to disguise as she met his gaze.

Martin didn't get much further into his assessment, because she was wearing the kind of warm, shy smile that could stop a man's heart if he knew it was meant for him. And since she had walked straight past the captain, and Doc was on the other side of the room, Martin found himself both terrifed and hopeful that her smile really was meant for him.

She stopped a dozen feet away, and her smile began to fade, as if she wasn't expecting anything about what she saw.

"Martin?" she asked. "Is that you?"