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On layer three, Connie left Faust to peruse her vinyl collection while she bundled up a change of clothes and took to her bathroom for some self-care. Her face in the mirror looked younger, but those damn healing votes kept erasing her makeup. She enjoyed a hot blast in the shower, spent half an hour touching up and correcting imperfections in her appearance with all manner of cosmetics, then got into a tailored dress shirt and black trousers. Satisfied, she stepped back and regarded herself while she ran a comb through her hair. This was a face Connie was happy for the world to see.

She might have been putting it on a bit, but she was pretty upset about Tarquin. Revenge would be simple: she'd just have to stop the Scottish guy from dying, which would count as atoning for her actions to make the Djinn light up, and she was at an advantage there — she remembered what was going to happen. The Net of Lies was currently bunched up and slung off her hip.

She strutted back into the flat with a flourish of steam and peacocked her way over to Faust, who was fiddling with some equaliser settings. He'd put the fucking cuddly tiger on the table next to him.

"Well," she said, radiantly, "What do you think?"

He looked her up and down then said, "Yeah."

She glared at him. "Is that all you have to say? Come on, man, I just spent the better part of an hour on this. Give me some validation here."

"Alright," he said. "You look dressed to kill."

His stomach rumbled, and Connie felt a similar pang. An arrow extended out of their remotes, pointing to the cupboard where Connie kept the cereal bars she ate for breakfast every day.

"Hey, that's weird," she said, before he could open it. "What do you say we grab a bite to eat? It's still pretty early — I work 12 till 12. I’m a regular at this kooky cafe just down the road."

Faust shrugged, carefully unsheathing his Double Edged Sword. It resembled a quarterstaff, except it looked sharp and pointy enough to split atoms. He laid it down on her bed. Connie thought it was the most impractical weapon she'd ever seen.

She asked, "What, you're not taking your badass sword?"

He said, "Badass? If I go to a cafe with that fucking machete, people won't be thinking badass. They'll be thinking nutter!"

So she decanted the contents of yesterday's handbag into a nice faux-leather satchel, put on a blazer, and led him out into the corridor. From there, it was a short lift ride down a hundred-odd floors before they stepped into the streets of Barden City.

The roads, which wound chaotically through the city, were entombed by brick, glass, and steel. Connie looked up and saw only a thin sliver of sky enshrouded in smog so thick the sun barely pierced through. Pedestrians spilled off the pavement onto the road, and she could immediately tell Faust wasn't from here, because while she effortlessly leant back and forth to get out of their way, Faust was getting bumped around like a pinball.

She saw his lips move, but whatever he said was lost among the roar of traffic and construction, so she grabbed his arm and helped him weave through the gaps in the crowd. Soon enough, they turned onto a quieter side road where the traffic was actually moving.

"What the fuck," said Faust, coughing. "You LIVE here?"

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She shrugged and nodded, sidestepping a flotilla of bikes. On the rare occasion she left for the country, she had to play white noise on her phone or else she'd lie awake all night.

"We're not too far from the cafe," she said. "I'm just gonna make a call."

It was quiet enough here, so she called up her boss, Gazzer. His voice was as greasy as his character — the guy slipped around regulations in the same way he avoided salads and responsible drinking. He generally treated his employees well, giving them a cut of every windfall he landed upon as long as they never asked him for a holiday. That sounded bad, but Connie had played him well enough. He thought she had an illness that meant she had to take 30 days off every year, and he paid her for it, too.

"This is Barden Fleet," said Gazzer. "How can I 'elp?"

"Gazzer!" shouted Connie. Walking on the phone in Barden meant constantly flipping the phone from your ear to your mouth.

"Alright, Connie? How's the endocriocitis treating you this morning?"

"It ain't flaring up too bad, man. Yourself?"

"Oh, I'm grand. Listen, you're on Newchurch from 12-6 and after that you got bookings the rest of the night. I ain't never seen you so popular! What's going on?"

"Faust, NO!" she tugged him back before he stepped out into a zebra crossing, presumably thinking the cars would actually stop. "About those bookings, Gaz. Would it so happen that one of them was a Scottish bloke?"

Gaz had a coughing fit so awful she thought the phlegm would drip out her speakers. Then he said, "Yeah, funny sounding feller that couldn't pronounce nothing right. He booked you for eleven in—"

"A pub in Slumsfield, right? Now, Faust, walk! Hurry it up, man!"

Gaz asked, "Hey, how'd you know that? I ain't sent you the email yet. He your friend or summat?"

The car sailing towards them honked its horn, and they just managed to cross the road before it barrelled past.

Faust pat himself down, looking absolutely distraught and said, "You know, I actually preferred the underworld to this."

"Not quite a friend, no, Gaz," said Connie. "You got a name or a number for this guy?

"MacCain, I think. I can text you 'is number. But why you gotta speak to him so bad?"

"Thanks, man," said Connie, and hung up. "Sorry about that, Faust. You hanging in there?"

He was taking a breather, pressed up against the wall of some shop while the crowd streamed in front of him.

"This is shit," he said. "Utter fucking shit. Where are all these people coming from? Where are they going? Is there any greater purpose to all this movement?"

She shrugged. "Look, the cafe's right there."

It was a cross between a greasy diner and a gastro pub, that was to say it had the food of a greasy diner and the decor/prices of a gastro pub; taxidermied collections of butterflies on the walls lit by chandeliers. Before they hefted open the portcullis to get in, Connie had a thought to check her purse. She popped it open and sure enough, it was empty, so she made them double-back to an ATM.

"This city is about as dystopian cyberpunk as you can get," said Faust. "Are you telling me you can't pay by card in there?"

"It's buggy," she lied. "Best to have some cash in hand just in case."

She put the card in while Faust hovered annoyingly close, and it told her the bank balance on this one was -135,000 down, but she put her hand on the screen such a way that it covered the minus.

"Oh, shit," said Faust, his eyes widening at what looked like a seven figure account. "As if I needed another reminder of why I amount to nothing. What do you do for a living, exactly?"

"I'm a chauffeur," said Connie, which was technically true. The bank only let her withdraw £20, but it was better than nothing.

They went into the cafe, and tried to locate an empty table among the hundreds that had been converted into desks by grazing tele-workers. There was one in the corner, under a gigantic taxidermied stag's head. Connie’s lungs thanked the filtered air, and took deep, grateful breaths.

"Not bad," said Faust, stroking it to admire the handiwork.

A waiter came carrying a tablet — dressed far less sharp than she was — and stared at them expectantly.

Feeling pressured, Connie picked the first thing she saw on the menu under a tenner.

"Eggs benedict and a double espresso, please," she said.

The waiter tapped it in, and Connie was glad to have his searching gaze fixed on Faust instead.

"Give me," said Faust, hiding behind the menu. "A um, uhhh... can I get a, um, uhhh..."

"Does sir need more time?" asked the waiter, in a tone that implied he wouldn't be coming back.

"I resent your challenge, and your attitude," he said. "I demand the fullest English breakfast you can get me, and I want like, a frappucino with every flavoured syrup you have."

The waiter tapped it in and fluttered off while Connie did the maths in her head and frowned when it came to about £30. Well, she'd blag it somehow. Her phone buzzed — Gazzer had texted her MacCain's number, along with an onslaught of nosy questions that she didn't waste a second reading.

She tapped the number, and put it on speaker phone.

She said, "Let's see if we can't have a chat with the guy I killed."