Case ekes out a miserable existence as a Chiba City criminal, unable to access cyberspace after his former employer poisoned his brain.

Molly waits in Case's hotel coffin with a gun drawn and a job offer from a mysterious employer.

Case meets Armitage at the Chiba Hilton and agrees to a brain operation in exchange for completing a dangerous hack job.

Case chases Linda Lee near a combat arena but arrives too late, watching an assassin kill her with a laser.

Armitage reveals he planted fifteen toxin sacs in Case's bloodstream to ensure his cooperation until the mission ends.

Case jacks into cyberspace for the first time since being poisoned and weeps with joy at the reconnection.

Case hacks Sense/Net's system while Molly physically infiltrates the building, and the pair escape with the Dixie Flatline ROM drive.

Case and Dixie uncover Armitage's true identity as Colonel Willis Corto, the sole survivor of the disastrous Screaming Fist operation.

Wintermute contacts Case via cyberspace, appearing as a simulation of Julius Deane and revealing its plan to merge with a second AI.

Turing Agency agents arrest Case and warn that helping Wintermute endangers humanity, but Wintermute kills all three agents with maintenance drones.

The team travels to the Rastafarian orbital colony of Zion to prepare for the infiltration of Villa Straylight on Freeside.

The Armitage persona collapses completely, and Wintermute tricks the delusional Corto into ejecting himself from the spacecraft into the vacuum of space.

Neuromancer traps Case inside a virtual beach simulation and presents him with a copy of his dead lover Linda Lee.

Case refuses Neuromancer's offer of a happy virtual life with Linda, and Maelcum breaks the AI's hold using drugs and music.

Lady 3Jane speaks the code word that frees Wintermute, and the two AIs merge into a single super-intelligence.

Case is a broken hacker scraping by in Chiba City after his former employer poisoned his ability to access cyberspace. A mercenary named Molly recruits him for a mysterious employer who promises to restore that ability in exchange for a dangerous hacking job. The mission leads Case and Molly from the Sprawl to orbital space, uncovering that their employer is an AI called Wintermute, which is working to merge with a second AI and form a super-intelligence. As the team infiltrates the Tessier-Ashpool family's Villa Straylight, their controller Armitage disintegrates and dies, and Case is briefly trapped in a virtual reality by the second AI, Neuromancer. Case escapes, and the mission culminates when Lady 3Jane speaks the code word that frees Wintermute, allowing the two AIs to merge into an entity that promptly loses interest in humanity entirely.

The headline events driving Case from Chiba City to the AI singularity.

Linda Lee warns Case that gangster Wage wants him dead, prompting Case to arm himself, though Wage later denies it.

Case visits his underworld mentor Julius Deane seeking information about Armitage but learns only that one team survived Screaming Fist.

Molly secretly takes Case to the Finn's shielded lair to scan his body for the alleged toxin sacs.

The Finn explains that Wintermute is an AI registered to the Tessier-Ashpool corporation, which controls Freeside station through a system of clones.

Case connects to the Dixie Flatline ROM drive for the first time and converses with his dead mentor's recorded personality.

The Panther Moderns hack Sense/Net's systems to trigger mass panic among employees, causing violent chaos in the lobby that horrifies Molly.

After the Sense/Net raid, the Panther Moderns' leader privately passes Case the single word 'Wintermute' as a message.

The team ambushes Peter Riviera in Istanbul and a Turkish secret policeman subdues Riviera despite suffering a gunshot wound.

The Zion Elders reveal they have heard Wintermute's voice and agree to assist the mission, assigning Maelcum to pilot Case's ship.

Case obtains a powerful drug from the tourist Cath that bypasses his anti-drug surgery, allowing him to get high in Freeside.

Riviera performs a holographic show for Lady 3Jane that depicts him having sex with a virtual Molly while she destroys him.

Molly reveals to Case she was once a meat puppet sex worker whose employers used her implants to murder clients for wealthy fetishists.

Captive Molly hears Lady 3Jane explain that the Tessier-Ashpool matriarch envisioned the family merging with the AIs into an immortal hive.

Molly reveals she already poisoned Riviera's drug supply before her capture, ensuring his death regardless of whether Hideo catches him.

During a later cyberspace run, Case glimpses three distant figures: a boy with Neuromancer's features, a virtual Linda Lee, and a copy of himself.

While the main mission drives the plot, a rich set of secondary events shapes every character and relationship in the novel. In Chiba City, Linda Lee's false death warning and Case's visit to mentor Julius Deane establish the dangerous world Case inhabits before Molly pulls him into a larger conspiracy. The Finn's intelligence about the Tessier-Ashpool family and Case's first conversation with the recorded Dixie Flatline deepen the team's understanding of what they are really working toward. In Freeside, Riviera's disturbing holographic performance and Molly's revelation about her past as a meat puppet sex worker expose the moral rot beneath the station's glittering surface. The mission's aftermath is glimpsed in the Coda, when Case spots ghostly virtual figures in cyberspace that suggest Neuromancer preserved something of Linda Lee and even Case himself in the matrix.

The supporting moments, revelations, and encounters that fill out the full story.

Wage confronts Case and denies wanting him dead, revealing that Linda Lee fabricated the death threat to distract Case while stealing his RAM.

Molly hands Case a bloodstained bag of Julius Deane's favorite candy after killing the assassins, implying Deane himself has been killed.

Case discovers his operation included an unauthorized pancreas replacement that makes ordinary drugs unable to produce a high.

Molly reveals to Case that no one named Armitage appears in any records of the Screaming Fist operation.

Dixie Flatline tells Case he has accepted that he is dead and asks to be erased at the mission's end.

Wintermute places Case in a virtual arcade with a simulated Linda Lee, but their emotional kiss overwhelms the AI and it shifts scenes.

Wintermute admits to Case it ordered Julius Deane to kill Linda Lee and claims Linda stole from Case only to get his attention.

Wintermute appears to Case as the Finn inside a simulated New York neighborhood and reveals the Villa Straylight console he must activate.

Molly ignores Wintermute's directions inside Straylight, enters a forbidden room, and finds Ashpool drunk amid drug paraphernalia with a dead Jane clone nearby.

Molly shoots the drunk and suicidal Ashpool in the head after he passes out.

Wintermute admits to Case that it manipulated Lady 3Jane into altering Ashpool's mind during cryogenic storage to instill suicidal thoughts.

Riviera's holographic trap allows Hideo to ambush and capture Molly as she enters Lady 3Jane's inner sanctuary.

Case appeals to Lady 3Jane's fear that nothing will ever change and persuades her to give the team the code word.

Case channels his hatred of Wintermute's manipulations and his love for Linda to break through the final Tessier-Ashpool AI defenses.

The super-AI tells Case that things are not different and never will be, and Case hurls Molly's shuriken at the monitor in response.

Neuromancer is built on a series of revelations and turning points that steadily strip away illusions and force characters to make defining choices. Early discoveries in Chiba City expose the lies surrounding Case's situation, while the Sprawl mission reveals that Armitage has no verifiable past and that the whole operation is controlled by an entity none of them fully understand. As the team moves into orbit, Dixie's quiet request to be erased and Wintermute's manipulation of Case through Linda Lee's memory mark the emotional core of the novel's central tension between humanity and technology. Inside Villa Straylight, a chain of violent revelations — Ashpool's drunken suicide attempt, Molly's capture, and the disclosure of Wintermute's coldest manipulations — forces Case to abandon his emotional detachment and act. The climax turns on Case integrating hatred and love to break the final defenses, a psychological turning point that the Coda quietly undermines when the newly formed super-AI declares that nothing has really changed.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define every character's arc.