Count Zero
Chapters - William Gibson
Chapter 1: Smooth-Running Gun
Turner, a corporate mercenary specialising in executive extraction, recovers in Mexico after a slamhound bombing nearly killed him in New Delhi. He spends weeks healing with a woman named Allison, who turns out to be a field psychologist planted by Hosaka to evaluate his readiness. Conroy, a Hosaka operative, arrives by yacht to recruit Turner for a new job: extracting Christopher Mitchell, the head biochip researcher at Maas Biolabs, who wants to defect. Turner learns that Allison was part of a psych evaluation programme, and despite his bitterness, he accepts the mission.
Chapter 2: Marly
Marly Krushkhova Krushkhova, a disgraced former Paris gallery owner, travels to Brussels for a job interview with Josef Josef Virek, one of the world's wealthiest men. Through an extraordinarily realistic sensory link set in Barcelona's Guell Park, Virek reveals he has been confined to a vat in Stockholm for over a decade due to a cellular disease. He hires Marly to find the maker of mysterious box assemblages that evoke the work of Joseph Cornell, offering her unlimited resources and giving her the rest of her life to complete the task.
POV: Marly Krushkhova·On page: Josef Virek, Paco·Mentioned: Andrea, Christopher Mitchell, Tally Isham
Chapter 3: Bobby Pulls A Wilson
Bobby Newmark, a teenage would-be hacker in Barrytown, New Jersey, attempts his first real cyberspace run using an icebreaker rented from a dealer named Two-a-Day. The base's black ice flatlines him, stopping his heart. In the instant before death, a mysterious presence intervenes - a girl-voice that shows him the ice is only a trick and frees him from its grip. He survives but is left unconscious on his mother's living room floor, profoundly shaken and confused by the encounter.
POV: Bobby Newmark·Mentioned: Two-a-Day, Angie Mitchell
Chapter 4: Clocking In
Turner arrives at a derelict oil rig off the California coast where Conroy has assembled the extraction team. He meets the site crew, inspects a prototype Maas-Neotek cyberspace deck, and confronts Conroy about why he was chosen for the job. Turner tests Conroy's nerve by pointing a loaded Smith and Wesson at his face and pulling the trigger on an empty chamber. Conroy reveals that Mitchell is holed up in a mesa-top research arcology in Arizona and will be coming out on his own, with Turner's team providing pickup and medical support.
POV: Turner·On page: Conroy, Oakey·Mentioned: Jaylene Slide
Chapter 5: The Job
Marly Krushkhova checks into an expensive Brussels hotel, overwhelmed by the sudden change in her circumstances now that Josef Virek's credit is at her disposal. She receives a package from the Galerie Duperey containing a Braun holoprojector and seven holofiche tabs showing the mysterious boxes. Lost in contemplation of their strange beauty, she realises with unease that the package was delivered to a hotel she chose at random, suggesting Virek's surveillance apparatus already surrounds her.
POV: Marly Krushkhova·Mentioned: Andrea, Christopher Mitchell
Chapter 6: Barrytown
Bobby Newmark wakes after eight hours, panicked that his Ono-Sendai deck is still jacked into the base he tried to crack, meaning they could backtrace his address. He grabs his gear and flees the condo, heading to Leon's pirate club in search of Two-a-Day, but the dealer is nowhere to be found. While checking a news kiosk, he sees a report of a bombing at his mother's address in Covina Concourse Courts. Realising the attack was meant for him, he panics and runs.
POV: Bobby Newmark·Mentioned: Two-a-Day
Chapter 7: The Mall
Turner and Conroy fly to a derelict shopping mall in the Arizona desert, where the site team has established the extraction base. Turner meets the point team - Sutcliffe, Lynch, and Webber - and inspects the medical pod containing Hosaka's surgical team, including a sharp Korean black medic. He grows suspicious that Lynch is Conroy's plant on the site, a concern deepened when the medic hints that whatever Mitchell carries in his head is far beyond ordinary implant technology.
POV: Turner·On page: Conroy, Sutcliffe, Lynch, Webber·Mentioned: Christopher Mitchell
Chapter 8: Paris
Marly Krushkhova returns to Paris and visits her friend Andrea, who has been sheltering her since the gallery scandal. She views the holofiche boxes with Andrea and discusses Josef Virek, then learns that her ex-lover Alain has been trying to reach her. Meeting Alain at a brasserie beneath the Louvre, she sees through his manipulations for the first time and feels genuinely free of him. He produces a hologram of one of the mystery boxes and demands payment for information about its origin. A waiter, who is actually Virek's agent Paco, warns Marly that Alain is armed and broadcasting their conversation.
POV: Marly Krushkhova·On page: Andrea, Alain, Paco
Chapter 9: Up the Projects
Bobby Newmark wakes in the Projects, having been rescued by two women named Jackie and Rhea after Barrytown Lobes slashed him up and stole his deck. A street doctor called Pye stitches his wounds with an advanced centipede-like suture device. He is wheeled into Two-a-Day's apartment, a vast hydroponic forest inside the arcology, where he meets two imposing men: Beauvoir, who wears old-fashioned glasses and a sharkskin robe, and Lucas, a large man in an immaculate black suit. They ask Bobby about a vision of the Virgin - the mysterious girl-presence that saved him in cyberspace.
POV: Bobby Newmark·On page: Jackie, Two-a-Day, Beauvoir, Lucas
Chapter 10: Alain
Marly Krushkhova meets Alain at a brasserie beneath the Louvre, where he attempts to leverage information about the boxes for money. She sees through his manipulations but agrees to his terms. A waiter reveals himself as Paco, Josef Virek's agent, who has been monitoring the meeting. Paco warns that Alain is armed and broadcasting, and that someone else has put Alain in Marly's path. She agrees to pay Alain, knowing Virek's money makes the sum irrelevant, while Paco's team works to determine who is controlling Alain.
POV: Marly Krushkhova·On page: Alain, Paco
Chapter 11: On Site
Turner settles into the extraction site, inspecting the communications and cyberspace gear in the command post bunker. He reviews the team's capabilities: Ramirez on console, Jaylene Slide monitoring from the offshore rig, Nathan on repair, and the muscle crew for security. He discovers through Mitchell's biosoft dossier that the scientist's daughter existed - a detail that triggers strange emotional responses. The Korean medic privately warns Turner that Mitchell's biochip implants are beyond her normal experience, hinting at something extraordinary.
POV: Turner·On page: Ramirez, Webber, Sutcliffe, Lynch·Mentioned: Conroy, Christopher Mitchell, Jaylene Slide
Chapter 12: Café Blanc
Marly Krushkhova meets Paco at a cafe and negotiates the mechanics of paying Alain. She feels increasingly certain that Josef Virek's surveillance machine surrounds her at all times, and begins to suspect Paco himself may have been placed in her path as more than just an operative. Paco takes her to the Roberts Gallery, where one of the boxes was originally sold, but the manager Picard cannot explain how the gallery obtained the piece - it arrived through the now-deceased American dealer Roberts, whose acquisition trail is a dead end.
POV: Marly Krushkhova·On page: Paco·Mentioned: Alain, Josef Virek
Chapter 13: With Both Hands
Beauvoir explains to Bobby Newmark how Two-a-Day set him up as an expendable test subject for a mysterious icebreaker. The software came from powerful Sprawl oungans - Beauvoir and Lucas themselves - who needed someone to run it against a dangerous base without risking themselves. Bobby realises the full extent of the betrayal: Two-a-Day knowingly risked his life. Beauvoir and Lucas then use a projection tank to show Bobby the recording of his run, revealing the anomalous white entity - the thing Bobby experienced as a girl's voice - that intervened to save him from the black ice.
POV: Bobby Newmark·On page: Beauvoir, Lucas, Two-a-Day, Jackie
Chapter 14: Night Flight
As night falls at the extraction site, Turner enters the edge - a heightened state of awareness that comes before a major operation. He recalls how Conroy first recruited him years ago in Mexico, when he was doing security for a Sense/Net SimStim crew. That earlier job ended in tragedy when half the cast, including the star Jane Hamilton, were killed by a roadside bomb. Turner kills Lynch, having confirmed he was Conroy's spy, and the extraction begins. Mitchell's ultralight arrives but crashes off the landing strip, and the site comes under attack with flares and gunfire. Webber destroys the medical pod with a rocket, and Turner reaches the crashed ultralight to find not Mitchell but his teenage daughter Angela.
POV: Turner·On page: Webber, Sutcliffe, Lynch, Ramirez, Angie Mitchell·Mentioned: Oakey, Christopher Mitchell, Conroy
Chapter 15: Box
Marly Krushkhova views the holofiche boxes in Andrea's apartment, mesmerised by their melancholy beauty. She catches a news recap mentioning events that parallel the novel's other storylines - a New Jersey bombing and an Arizona incident near the Sonora border. She meets Paco at the Roberts Gallery and learns the dead dealer Roberts had developed an interest in outsider art before his death, but the trail to the boxmaker remains cold. Alain phones to double his price, and Paco's team monitors the call using a sophisticated mobile phone that generates Marly's digital likeness.
POV: Marly Krushkhova·On page: Andrea, Paco, Alain·Mentioned: Josef Virek
Chapter 16: Legba
Bobby Newmark is dressed in borrowed clothes and taken by Lucas in an extravagant old Rolls-Royce called Ahmed through the Projects and into the Sprawl. During the drive, Lucas explains the vodou concepts using street tech metaphors: Jackie is a deck, Danbala is a program, and cyberspace is the world. They arrive at the Finn's fortified junk shop, where the Finn has killed three assassins that morning. The Finn reveals the icebreaker came from a man called Wigan Ludgate, the Wig - a former console cowboy who went mad, convinced God lives in cyberspace, and now resides somewhere in orbit, periodically sending the Finn software and mysterious box sculptures to sell.
POV: Bobby Newmark·On page: Lucas, Jackie, The Finn·Mentioned: Beauvoir, Wigan Ludgate
Chapter 17: The Squirrel Wood
Turner's stolen jet lands autonomously in a forest near running water, its mimetic coating camouflaging it among the trees. He discovers that his passenger is not Christopher Mitchell but his teenage daughter Angela, who says her father sent her out deliberately because he knew Maas would harm her. The jet's course was set for Bogota, not Mexico City, revealing Conroy's double-dealing. Turner wipes the jet's memory and carries the injured girl on a four-hour walk to his brother Rudy's rural homestead, where Rudy and his partner Sally take them in.
POV: Turner·On page: Angie Mitchell, Rudy, Sally·Mentioned: Christopher Mitchell
Chapter 18: Names of the Dead
Marly Krushkhova finds Alain dead in a grim suburban apartment, killed by a fine wire inserted into his ear. Shaken and furious, she searches the apartment and finds a folded blue Gauloise wrapper with a number written in green felt pen - the coordinates Alain had promised her. Paco arrives and she tells him Alain is dead. Later, she takes several million New Yen from Paco's money bag while he examines the apartment, and goes to a shabby travel agent named Paleologos to book immediate passage off-planet, paying cash under her mother's maiden name.
POV: Marly Krushkhova·On page: Alain, Paco, Andrea·Mentioned: Josef Virek
Chapter 19: Hypermart
Bobby Newmark is taken by Lucas to Hypermart, a fourteen-storey warren of stalls and shops in the Sprawl, where a woman named Jackie introduces him to the building's anarchic culture. He settles in at Jammer's, a nightclub on the top floor run by a retired console cowboy. Bobby gets new clothes and explores the bustling market while waiting for Beauvoir to arrive from the Projects with news. Jackie feeds him coffee and tells him stories, keeping him out of sight and trouble.
POV: Bobby Newmark·On page: Jackie, Lucas, Jammer
Chapter 20: Orly Flight
Marly Krushkhova, traumatised by finding Alain's body, confronts Paco and insists on independence, then secretly pockets millions from Josef Virek's cash delivery. She visits a cut-rate travel agent named Paleologos and books immediate passage to orbit, paying cash under her mother's maiden name. During the JAL shuttle flight, she's trapped in a SimStim cassette that Virek has hijacked, and he reveals that Maas Biolabs murdered Alain and that his quest for the boxmaker is about more than art - he believes the maker can free him from his dying body.
POV: Marly Krushkhova·On page: Paco, Josef Virek