Altered Carbon

Ortega drives Kovacs back to the Hendrix and asks what he was doing at Jerry’s. Kovacs tells her he was merely enjoying himself, but Ortega does not believe him. He insists that the large man was waiting for him, but Ortega also doubts this. Kovacs realizes that she must be following him.

After Ortega drops him at the hotel, the Hendrix notifies him that Miriam is waiting for him in his room. She requests that he stop investigating Laurens’s death. He refuses, saying the case is too interesting now. Miriam offers Kovacs another way to satiate his curiosity.

The sleeve she is in produces Merge Nine, a drug that enhances sensuality and helps bring sexual partners together. Kovacs cannot resist and they have sex multiple times, with Kovacs reveling in the drug’s effects. Afterward, Miriam offers to take Kovacs to her private island where she has multiple sleeves like this one and can be in them all at the same time. Kovacs does not commit to this, though the idea is enticing. He drifts off to sleep and wakes to find Miriam gone.

The next day, Kovacs experiences a Merge Nine hangover and decides to go shopping. He buys himself new clothes before going to an armorer Laurens recommended called Larkin and Green. While there, he buys two guns and a knife. As he walks around, he notices that someone is tailing him. He goes down an alley to evade them but is stopped when ads project into his head. The ads are for Stiff, and when Kovacs snaps out of it, he finds the boy running the ads and threatens him. The boy argues that he is just doing his job.

Back at the Hendrix, Kovacs suffers from fragmentation. When people download into a new sleeve, it takes their minds some time to meld with the body, and they can feel like the body they are in is not in their control. Kovacs panics and avoids looking in the mirror as he dresses, afraid that this sleeve may notice him. He leaves his new weapons when he leaves, remembering his training as an Envoy: Weapons are a weakness.

He returns to Licktown and to Jerry’s. Kovacs goes to the same room as the night before but finds Louise dead. He is confronted by an armed group who call him Ryker. They bring in the big man from the chase the night before, who identifies Kovacs. Kovacs insists he is Elizabeth’s mother, but the group refuses to believe him. They escort Kovacs out, taking him to another location where they strap him down and knock him out.

Kovacs wakes up in a virtual reality in the sleeve of a woman. He is tortured repeatedly by the group from Jerry’s. He thinks of his friend Jimmy, who lost control of his mind in Innenin. Meanwhile, the group kills Kovacs in the virtual reality and then reboots him, prolonging the torture.

After one rebooting, he wakes up unharmed. He approaches a woman from the group who admits she does not believe he is Ryker and assures him she wants no trouble. He promises to raise no issues if she helps him with his investigation. He wants to know where he is and why they brought him there. She tells him she will consider these questions as they both fade and Kovacs wakes from the virtual reality.

Kovacs wakes up back in his previous sleeve. The woman from the virtual reality, named Trepp, comes in and gives him his clothes, saying they will bring him to someone who can corroborate his story. He reflects on how the days of torture he just experienced were probably mere hours in the real world, since virtual time occurs faster.

Trepp and another man blindfold Kovacs and leave the facility in a limo. As they fly away, Kovacs hears Jimmy’s voice telling him to flee before the person they are taking him to can ruin his investigation. When the man who is transporting him takes Kovacs’s blindfold off, Kovacs punches him in the temple, knocking him out. He steals Trepp’s ray gun and uses it to kill her. He then threatens the driver to land the car and escapes.

Kovacs arrives back at the Hendrix in the early hours of the morning, retrieving his guns and returning to Jerry’s. He shoots the robot at the door and storms into the lounge area, killing his attackers from the night before and cornering Jerry. He forces Jerry to tell him what happened to Elizabeth. Jerry reveals that Elizabeth became involved with a Meth and tried to bring Jerry in on a deal to extort the man. Jerry refused, so Elizabeth went to the Meth alone. To save his reputation and business, Jerry had Elizabeth killed.

Kovacs is not satisfied and tells Jerry that Trepp is dead, wanting to know who she worked for. Jerry does not know this, but he does know why so many people keep calling Kovacs “Ryker.” He says Ryker was a police officer who dated Ortega; however, he is currently in storage for destroying the stacks of some suspects. When Kovacs appeared in Ryker’s sleeve with Ortega, his attackers assumed Ryker was released.

Kovacs uses the threat of Real Death—the destruction of the stack—to force Jerry into taking him to the facility he was tortured at the night before. They pretend that Jerry is bringing him back and demand to see the director. When one of the surgeons, Miller, stops them, Kovacs takes Jerry’s guns and kills everyone, including Jerry. He then sees a machine operating on Louise, with spectators watching, and he kills all of them and also shoots and destroys the machine. He then takes Miller’s head, making it look like it was shot off, and leaves before the police arrive.