After she decides to drop out, the first thing Naomi does is buy herself a better brain. 

Well. Cerebral boosters, actually. They're supposed to work, too -- increase memory, increase processing speed, increase pattern-recognition rate. She's been looking for a good surgeon for a while, surfing the Matrix and hopping through grids from a series of shitty commlinks.

(Her implanted cyberdeck is going to cost her a good three quarters of the money her parents left her. She's saving that purchase for last.)

Her guy happens to be addicted to BTL immersives -- one of the better vices for a surgeon, given that they don't mess with reflexes or finger dexterity. His office is in a good location, sterile, professional, has all the tools for the job.

She shows up, pays up-front, and goes under.

--

Naomi rubs her eyes. They aren't -- they aren't working right. She wants to move them and they won't --

"Stay calm," someone says. The voice is fuzzy and muffled. "Relax."

"You should have mentioned that earlier," Naomi says.

"The after-effects are different for everyone. Some people have racing thoughts for the first few hours, others feel disconnected from their bodies. Some people get paranoid."

Naomi lets out a helpless laugh. 

"... or manic."

He makes sense. The boosters weren't adding any personality that wasn't there. Just making her brain -- more. Faster. Better. It was still disorienting. 

"Head straight home," he continues. "It'll take a few hours to get used to them."

--

Her train's not here yet and she's been amusing herself by noting demographics of the people who get on and off the subway. She sits on a bench near the platform wall, watches the train windows slide past, and finds herself counting them too, assigning a price for each arbitrarily and counting up profits. 

They're black and shiny and one-way, and she never noticed before all the precautions to protect against a mage's line of sight but she sure does now. There's a special glint on one of them that catches her eye.