A/N: I don't own the Sprawl series.

It took almost the entire night for Molly to be satisfied that they weren't being followed anymore. Then they grabbed an early breakfast (or late dinner) at a café in Pennsylvania, on the very edge of the Sprawl, and hopped aboard a tube. They continued taking tubes, getting as far as they could from the East Coast, until they were rural enough that there weren't any more tubes to take. Then Molly rented a car. Cheap old model, non-hover, with tires and a steering wheel and everything.

"Never much been out in the outdoors," Molly mused, driving through the fields of Pennsylvania. "Wonder how close this looks to how it did, before the War."

"There were more trees, I think," Rikki replied. "But it's re-grown pretty nice. My dad used to take me and my brother camping, sometimes."

"Always wondered what they looked like, real animals. I mean besides dogs, cats, rats. I mean real animal animals: tigers, horses, dolphins. You used to see a lot more animal augmentations, five, ten years back. Dog teeth, snake eyes, I even knew a dolphin once. I mean a fellow'd had himself cut up to live underwater like a dolphin. Navy." She shook her head with a feint smile, as if reminiscing on some nostalgic memory, ignoring the disgust in Rikki's blue eyes. "God, we had no class back then. You old enough to remember that decade, Rikki?"

"Sure, I'm the same age as you about. I guess I just didn't see it from all angles."

They talked on. Talked about where they'd grown up. About past jobs. Past boyfriends. Molly revealed she had a thing for computer jockeys.

"My boyfriend before him was killed, 'bout six months ago. Yakuza. Not gonna go into that." Her mouth moved like she was gonna spit again, but she swallowed it. "I was vulnerable when I took it up with Bobby. Otherwise I'd've seen from the get-go what a prick he is. I outta' thank you for turning up as quick as you did." Rikki wanted to say something, but Molly talked on, "I did a lotta dumb shit when I was young. I mean really dumb shit. Figure if I'm allowed to whore out at a puppet parlor, take up with Quine, piss off Yakuza and still be alive at this age, no reason you shouldn't either."

"I think you're even more driven than me," Rikki complimented.

They were coming up at a fork in the road. A ways down the path that crossed theirs was a large truck. It looked like a typical delivery vehicle, probably transporting cars or sodas or computer decks for some company, and Rikki gave it no thought. Neither did Molly.

Molly moved her face in something approximating a smile. "Yeah. Guess we both cut people, cut a trail through people, to get where we wanna be. Me in a more literal sense obvi—"

The car swerved, and there was a small explosion right where the car had been seconds earlier. The bang momentarily deafened Rikki. And just when her ears were starting to recover, Molly screamed right into them, "Shit!"

"What's going on?" Rikki cried.

"Fireworks, it's the fucking Forth of July. Someone's trying to kill us, dipshit! Here, take the wheel. Now!"

Rikki obeyed, reaching over to steer, while Molly pulled a gun from her pocket and climbed into the back. Rikki moved into the driver's seat, while Molly took aim from the window and shot. In the rearview mirror, Rikki saw it was that truck chasing them, someone throwing grenades out the passenger's window.

"Subtle," Molly hissed, "Real fucking subtle. Guess these assholes figure if they don't kill us, they can make enough noise get the Feds over here finish the job for them." Her voice raised angrily, "Didn't occur to you that's not in your best interests either, huh?"

The car roared as Rikki shifted into top speed.

"Good news Rikki," Molly yelled between her gunshots, "is our buddies here ain't too bright. It's not the Yak or the Mob. I think I know these morons. No big-shots, just think they are."

Molly's lip curled as she took one last, careful aim, and fired. Then her face fell. "Fucking shit move, turn, out of here!" She dissolved into screams Rikki could hardly decipher, and reached across Rikki to grab the steering wheel.

They swerved off the road, almost tumbling into a ditch. Molly yanked on the emergency break, and Rikki slammed into the steering wheel. The truck roared past, aflame. Molly must've hit a gas tank, or something. Rikki wasn't sure how that worked, shooting a car to set it on fire or blow it up.

"Follow 'em." Molly ordered.

"Wha?"

Molly grabbed the wheel, steered them back on the road. Rikki's hands returned to the wheel and she took the car rest of the way, up to the burning truck.

"Wait in here," Molly said, and got out of the car, gun ready.

Somehow, the driver of the truck was still alive. A woman with spiked hair climbed out and shot at Molly. Molly moved just in time; either her reflexes were so jacked up that she could actually dodge bullets, or else those lenses somehow let her predict where the next bullet would be. Maybe both. Molly dodged another bullet before shooting the spike-haired woman in the head.

Someone else was in the truck, a young man in the passenger's seat. Probably the grenade launcher. He moved into the driver's seat and tried to start up the car, as if he didn't notice or care that the damn thing was on fire, but froze when Molly fired a warning shot through the windshield, hitting the seat just an inch from his head.

"Don't move or you're dead," Molly called across the road.

Rikki's hands tightened around the steering wheel. She was beginning to like Molly, but that didn't mean she liked seeing Molly kill people.

Molly climbed up to the truck, grabbed the young man by the T-shirt, dragged him out of the flaming car. Once safely away from the heat, Molly moved her hand from his back to the back of his neck, burgundy nails poking the flesh.

"Now you're gonna answer my questions," Molly told him, "Or I'm gonna unsheathe my claws."

Pale and sweating, he nodded, blinking tightly, working to stay conscious.

"Who sent you."

"Angel Barry," he said quietly.

"Fucking figures. And who tipped off Angel Barry, where to start tracking us?"

"Quine, Bobby Quine."

"I figured that too. Okay kid, I'm feeling sentimental today, so guess what: you get to live. I guess you don't have a phone on you, but you can't be more than a few days from civilization of some kind, and it's not like you're bleeding to death anyway. Soon as you get to a phone, you make two calls. Call your boss, and tell 'im I killed his men, fair an' square, and he'd be wise not to try going after Molly Millions again. Long as he doesn't, I'll stay outta' his way too. This is all business, nothing personal."

He nodded. "Nothing personal."

"And then, you call that shit Bobby Quine, and first off, you tell him I called him that. And then you tell him I see him again, I'll kill him. Deal?"

He nodded.

She took her hand off his neck. "Good." Smacked his back. "Safe journey."

Back into the car, Rikki now the driver, Molly relaxing into her seat.

"You really gonna kill Bobby?" Rikki tried to keep her voice casual, hide the nervousness that prompted the question. She agreed, beyond a doubt, that Bobby was a "shit," was pretty sure that she didn't want him dead.

Molly lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Maybe. I dunno. Depends on my mood."

They drove all day. Made one long stop to get some sleep, on the side of the road, then drove on. Took turns at the wheel, only snatching food and bathroom breaks at convenient stores and fast-food joints. A small city in Ohio was where they finally stopped, where Rikki decided she'd be staying, "lying low" as Molly called it, for the next few months.

"It's too bad I can't never use that stim," Rikki said casually, when Molly dropped her off at a motel. "You're a real interesting person Molly. You, the Finn, even Bobby, dickweed that he is."

"Yeah, real interesting." She couldn't tell if Molly was being sarcastic or not. "But we got our own ways of passing history down, in the underground. You wanna maybe catalogue all the legends, go for it. But you publish anything with my image or voice, I'm gonna fucking kill you Rikki. Nothing personal, I actually like you, for some reason. But I will fucking kill you, you don't dump that footage, no lie."

"I got nothing to publish anymore, so I should be good." Just earlier that day, Molly had taken Rikki to another techie, to have her new recording dumped, and the stimming gear in her head messed with so it'd take a trip to a professional to be able to record again. Rikki'd be irrevocably pissed, if she didn't owe Molly her life three or four times over by now. "You ever change your mind Molly, wanna try a proper interview, I'll give you my contact info." Rikki pulled her little wallet from her coat pocket, pulled out a business card, handed it to Molly.

Molly laughed, examining the card. "A dozen-hundred businessmen'll will want me dead if I do that, so let's wait till I'm old and retired, and got nothing to lose. Then you can dig me up."

She was obviously joking, didn't think she'd live that long. But Rikki logged the offer away in her memory, nonetheless…

…and took Molly up on it a decade and a half later.

Rikki was at a bar in California with her second husband, teenaged son by the first husband, and some friends, celebrating her thirty-ninth birthday. Rikki, now known half the time as "A.J.," had a successful career in independent simstim. She was no household name like Tally or Angie, but she had her name in the credits of plenty of notable stim series and docus, and her fanbase was nothing to sneeze at. A career that was big enough to be proud of, and small enough to leave some wiggle-room for privacy and a family.

And it was at that birthday party at the bar that she caught the news, on the screen behind the counter. Some shit gone down in the Sprawl, connected to some other shit in London, and more shit yet in Japan. Several people involved only partially identified, still on the loose. Lots of contradicting stories. And one in particular that stood out to Rikki:

"Three witnesses claim to have seen a woman with mirror-lenses insets, two reports in London and one in the Sprawl. All three gave consistent descriptions, however, no such person fits any records anywhere in England or the States. Investigations are still underway…"

Rikki tracked Molly down a couple months later, to a hotel in Europe, got a hold of her on the phone. The phone conversation was short.

"This Molly?"

"Who wants to know."

"Rikki Stephenson. Rikki Sterling when we met last. In the Sprawl, 'bout fifteen, sixteen years ago?" When Molly didn't respond, she jogged her memory. "We, uh, met through Bobby Quine?"

"Right," Molly said finally. "Right. Rikki, simstim Rikki." From her tone, it sounded like she was smiling bitterly, barring her teeth. "This about that interview I promised ya?"

"Um, yes."

They set the time and date, and Molly hung up without saying goodbye.

Rikki was truly a tad fearful for her life when she stepped into the hotel. At least she didn't stand out like she used to. Ikon had made several updates in their eyes over the years, and you could now have them tinted to a natural look, like Angie Mitchell had done. Rikki's were back to their original coffee-brown, or at least as close an approximation as she could get. Her hair sat around her aging face in its natural brown curls.

Sound of boot heels, as Molly came to answer the door.

No, that wasn't Molly. She didn't have…

"Your mirrors," was the first thing out of Rikki's mouth.

Molly regarded her with slightly-slanted, hazel-green eyes. They weren't much more expressive than her lens implants; but then again, Molly probably hadn't been using them for so long, maybe she'd forgotten how. Around her eye-sockets were thin pale rings, where the lenses had once sat. Her black hair was short now, short as a man's. But her makeup was classy, brought out her eyes, working with the way her face was aging instead of trying to hide it.

Molly stepped aside, granted her entry. Timidly, Rikki entered the room.

"Why'd you lose the lenses?"

Molly looked at her, with those green eyes. "Why'd you change your Ikons?"

Rikki got the point. She glanced at Molly's nails. They were mother-of-pearl now, but still looked artificial.

"Still got those claws?" Rikki asked casually, and hoped she wouldn't be answered with a demonstration.

The blades slid just a hint from under their housing. "Can't be too careful," Molly smiled.

Rikki got nervous when Molly closed the door and bolted it. "I ain't gonna give you my life's story," Molly pinched two beers from the fridge, handed one to Rikki, "on account that'd mean giving up parts of other people's life stories. Not a smart move on my part, ya dig?"

Rikki nodded, and popped open her beer.

"Speaking of which," Molly flopped onto the bed, sitting hunched over, mother-of-pearl nails dangling over the edge. "You used me in your stim about the Sprawl. Bitch."

Rikki offered a tiny smile, shrugged. "I had my career to think about. I was driven."

"Your fucking career helped some assholes track and blackmail me." Molly said flatly.

Rikki gapped stupidly, and finally mumbled, "…sorry 'bout that."

"You're damn right you'll be sorry. Because I just cut a deal with some real powerful people, erased all evidence of my existence from any records. So those docus of yours now have gaps where a certain character once appeared."

Rikki felt her eyes widen. "I hid your identity! Your name was edited out! How…?"

Molly just sat there, chucking sadistically, and raised her beer for a sip.

Rikki sighed deeply. "So what name you wanna go by for this interview?"

Molly shrugged. "You pick one. Just not Molly, Sally or Misty. You gonna edit that last sentence out, right?"

"Yep. Okay, how about," she shook her head, shrugged. "Jane."

Molly made a face. "Guess it's better than Misty Steele. Okay, what'cho wanna know from 'Jane?'"

"Oookay, Jane," Rikki folded her arms, leaned against the hotel wall. "I get to hear about that story, those guys 'blackmailed you? Or is that one of the off-limit topics?"

"For now it's gotta be off-limits, cops on my ass n' all. You're editing this so no one sees my face, hears my real voice, right?"

"I got it on audio only. And set up to automatically splice a stock voice over yours."

"'Kay, well, Dali here's gonna make sure you're telling the truth, if you don't mind."

A tiny Indian boy sitting in the corner, who Rikki hadn't noticed, looked up from a computer deck. Teenager, probably another one of Molly's hired street techies, like the Finn. Dali spent a couple minutes checking Rikki with some scanning equipment. Once he and Molly were convinced they could trust her, the interview began.

"Okay," Molly crossed her legs on the bed. "I got a story for you, Rikki. Not gonna tell you the whole thing, just the part that'll make your rich. Assuming anyone believes it, of course, which they might not. There's so many stories out there, already, about when It Changed…"

A/N: It's never stated for a fact that Molly removed her lenses at the end of "Mona Lisa Overdrive," but I always took that to be the implication, when she says she's off to go "be my fucking self for a change."