Half Speed

He’d known that her reflexes were souped up, jazzed by the neurosurgeons for combat, but he hadn’t experienced them on the simstim link. The effect was like tape run at half speed, a slow, deliberate dance choreographed to the killer instinct and years of training. She seemed to take the three of them in at a glance: the boy poised on the pool’s high board, the girl grinning over her wineglass, and the corpse of Ashpool, his left socket gaping black and corrupt above his welcoming smile. He wore his maroon robe. His teeth were very white.

The boy dove. Slender, brown, his form perfect. The grenade left her hand before his hands could cut the water. Case knew the thing for what it was as it broke the surface: a core of high explosive wrapped with ten meters of fine, brittle steel wire.

Her fletcher whined as she sent a storm of explosive darts into Ashpool’s face and chest, and he was gone, smoke curling from the pocked back of the empty, white-enameled pool chair.

The muzzle swung for 3Jane as the grenade detonated, a symmetrical wedding cake of water rising, breaking, falling back, but the mistake had been made.

***

Neuromancer ch 18