This allows Molly to get into the building and steal the storage device.Ĭase and Molly investigate Armitage and find out he is really Colonel Willis Corto, a member of a failed military operation that tried to attack Soviet computer systems from an airplane. Case plants a virus in the Sense/Net network while Molly works with a street gang called the “Panther Moderns,” who simulate a terrorist attack. They are supposed to break into the vaults of the media corporation Sense/Net and steal a computer storage device containing the saved consciousness of one of Case’s mentors, the legendary hacker McCoy Pauley. The couple travels to New York to complete the first part of the job. Molly has reservations about Armitage and tells Case to look into his background.

While Case and Molly have a working relationship, they also begin a sexual relationship. This effectively cures Case’s drug addiction. Armitage also instructs the clinic to give Case a new pancreas and graft a special tissue to his liver, leaving Case unable to break down illegal drugs. Otherwise the sacs will erupt, crippling his nervous system once again. Armitage later tells Case that if the job is completed on time, he will arrange for the poison to be removed. Unbeknownst to Case, Armitage arranges for small sacs of the same mycotoxin that maimed him to be placed in Case’s bloodstream. Excited at the prospect of getting back into cyberspace, Case agrees to do the job without knowing all the details about it or much about his new boss.Īs payment for curing Case, Armitage gives an illegal clinic the technology to perform the procedure. Armitage has promised to correct Case’s neural damage if he agrees to do a hacking job. Molly, a mercenary who works for an enigmatic ex-military leader named Armitage, approaches Case. After a year of visiting illegal clinics and unsuccessfully finding a cure, Case is now a depressed, drug-addicted, borderline suicidal hustler in the futuristic metropolis of Chiba City, Japan.

It rendered him incapable of inserting his consciousness into the cyberspace known as the matrix. In response, they maimed him by injecting a mycotoxin into his central nervous system.

Twenty-four year-old Henry Dorsett Case was a talented computer hacker before he stole from his employers.

Neuromancer