Ronin was proof of that. He had boasted to Lanier that he’d won his freedom, but Lanier didn’t think so. Whatever it was Ronin talked to in the Matrix—the voice he spoke of in his visions that showed him how to be a technoshaman—it had used Ronin just as much, if not more, than his corporate employers ever did. Ronin had been turned into a weapon to be used against Renraku. He would teach them not to frag with the otaku, then be discarded like a spent gun.